An Insight Into the Way Shiv Sena Functions

Re: # 89
This relates to No 10 (Hardeep). Sorry!

As a former boy scout myself (also gay, incidentally) who was and is still proud to wear khaki shorts, I hope it isn`t too petty to register my disapproval of these yobs desecrating the traditions of this illustrious garment with all its honourable scouting associations. The result is that their use of the colour khaki in this context reflects the worst excesses of militarism - maybe not such a coincidence after all?

dost-mittar #88
``Alas, it`s the opposite, it`s the condemnation by vox populi of the kind of governance provided by the electoral system``

dost-mittar, governments and local councils get voted out of power in the bestest democracy there is, the US too. Does this mean US governments are not `for the people`? `For the people` encompasses more than just managing to avoid voter disaffection at election time.

Infact the voter turnouts in the US are in the 30-40%, even for Presidential elections, while they are always 50-70% in India. In terms of voter apathy, on the average Indians seem to have more hope for their system than Americans.

Secondly, if an eunuch can aspire to elected office and his supporters come out in full force to canvass on his behalf, isn`t he `of the people`?

I think the biggest gain for India from its democracy is that if some Indian politician had done no more than made a handsome speech like Musharraf, he would know for sure that he cannot be wowed simply for making speeches, that Indians have a healthy skepticsm about his subsequent delivery of the goods and have the power to hold him accountable he doesnot.

RE Pmishra2 #75

Having read your posts again I think I own you an apology - sorry.

Subroto

Dost-Mittar ji # 85

Just yesterday, NPR broadcasted a lengthy interview with an eunuch running for office in ``Cawnpore`` (Kanpur, for the rest of us). That candidate was quite certain of his/her victory, given that ``the traditional parties carry no credibility.`` There was real narabazi going on in background in support of that eunuch.

And the best was when the eunuch claimed that when he/she wins, he/she will force everyone to do his/her bidding by threatening to expose him/herself.

Long live Indian democracy! At least we get to laugh :)

P.S. No offense to eunuchs. They are better than those who sit on their haunches and complain about the world.

http://www.indian-express.com/ie20020217/top1.html

Calendar calendar on the wall, who’s the unfairest of them all?

» Red faces in Aizawl and Delhi as Mizoram students’ union publishes 2002 calendar with pictures of houses ‘illegally’ built by Govt, Opp politicians

now it gets interesting...what happened to all that hoohaa over Pokhran?...money talks, and the amercians will be damned if they let the british, french, and russians run away with all the juicy weapons contracts from india...

{{US to send LCA engines, radars to India

WASHINGTON: Jet engines for the Light Combat Aircraft and gun locating radars for the Army are on their way to India. The Bush administration has notified US lawmakers that it is going ahead with the supply a variety of arms and high-tech equipment to India.

The communication, which is Congressionally mandated, is sent to what is called the committees of jurisdiction — in this case the House International Relations Committee and the Armed Forces Committee. It is essentially a way of informing the Congress of an executive action, which usually takes place within 30 days of the notification.

With this executive action, Washington has effectively resumed a military relationship with India that, of a limited nature in the first place, was curtailed after the sanctions that followed the May 1998 nuclear tests. Such is the compulsion and momentum of Indo-US relationship that it now looks like the military ties may surpass anything seen before. }}

I donot see anything inaccurate in pmishra2`s posts about the RSS schools on this board. RSS`s overall intentions are VERY suspect and I donot like the idea of their running schools AT ALL, but given that they do, if the schools are CBSE-affiliated, CBSE is a national board, the curriculum itself is not different from thousands? of government schools, and doesnot leave a lot of room for preaching of hatred besides, though it can be managed. I suspect thats why the principal of one school made a comment about finding it hard to contradict their own history textbooks. Ultimately, people donot want a ideological education for their children, they want a board-certified education and IMO, CBSE offers a pretty good curriculum in that respect. One question is, are these schools recognised by the CBSE?

re: pmisra

...it is pointless to engage in any debate or meaningful discussion with many pakis on chowk...

...in their perpetual inferiority complex viz-a-viz india, they will either ignore facts completely (like mullah hayat is doing), or will resort to selective use of facts and revisionism (ylh, romair)...

...in mullah hayat`s case, he is struggling, rather pathetically, to find something in india which he can equate to the violent, islamic fundamentalist madrassahs in pakistan and to its international terrorists who hurt OTHER countries, including the US (Yousef Ramzi), India, and Afghanistan...neither of these exists in india...

..i`ve tried hard in the past to understand where this paki insecurity comes from, but i`ve had little success...

Reply Subroto # 74

``Asim Hayat, PMisra2 you are actually identical in your thought and blind hatred. The objects of hate differ thats all, are you sure you guys didn`t get separated in a mela at a young age? Yaad karo aaj say bees saal pehle....``

Subroto, it happened in 1947...

Reply Prem

re: suitcase party etc. - in Sydney a private citizen takes it upon him/herself to mark election campaigns by driving around the CBD with a very large papier mache turd strapped to the top of his car. True.

Breeding grounds for Harvard educated bigots and fanatics masquerading as liberals

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/books5.htm

12 February 2002 Tuesday 28 Ziqa`ad 1422

ARTICLE: Textbooks and the jihadi mindset

A report prepared by the Centre for Information and Research (CIR) at SZABIST, Karachi, is quite an eye-opener. Intrigued by the growth of intolerance and violence in a society which had at one time been home to peace-loving sufis, CIR undertook to investigate the factors which have spawned the ``jihadi`` mindset in the people - to use its director`s words. An evaluation of the social studies and Pakistan studies textbooks proved to be a revealing exercise. It is plain that from a very early age children are virtually indoctrinated in what has been claimed to be the ideology of Pakistan.

Without going into a discussion on what this is supposed to be, one can discern a pronounced bias in the textbooks that are being taught. Thus, the students are told that the cause of the downfall of Muslim power was the fading of the spirit of jihad. The young minds are in a very subtle manner also filled with prejudice against the non-Muslims, specially the Hindus in India, against whom, by implication, jihad is to be waged. Regrettably, no effort is made at all to instil in the readers tolerance and respect for other faiths. In the same vein, the textbooks manifest a strong bias against pluralism. Hence the country`s cultural diversity is not projected as a positive phenomenon. Equally disturbing is the anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian thrust in the contents of the books our children are studying in schools and colleges.

All this is besides the factual mistakes that proliferate in the textbooks. By distorting facts, a writer can easily give a twist to events to prove the point of view he wishes to project and reinforce. When exposed continuously to such negative messages, specially in the formative years of life, it is inevitable that the youth of our country grow up believing that all non-Muslims are the enemies of Islam and to survive we must take up arms against them. Similarly, by instilling in the minds of the students that India is the enemy number one of Pakistan, our textbooks make it difficult for the youth to think rationally about the imperatives of India-Pakistan relations.

The textbooks` failure to instil tolerance and acceptance of plurality in the students has led to violence in our society. On the one hand, the reader is taught unwavering discipline and unquestioning acquiescence to authority. On the other hand, he doesn`t learn the basic sociological fact that cultural and linguistic diversity enriches a society and a country. To live with people from heterogeneous backgrounds, it is important that every individual recognizes and respects the basic right of the other to his own cultural identity. This respect forms the underpinning of a democratic society in which `live and let live` should be the norm and a participatory method should be adopted to allow representation to all.

Unfortunately, our textbooks are sadly lacking in this respect. Although textbooks are periodically revised - every major change of regime ushers in a process of revamping the textbooks - no consideration is given to the basic approach. Attention is invariably focused on the political contents, the idea being to villify the ousted government and lionize the regime in office. The more immediate need is to revise the textbooks with the idea of making them a medium of imparting human rights education, tolerance, a breadth of vision and respect for human beings, be they men or women. Some NGOs have been doing a commendable job in this field. HREP, Simorgh, the Book Group and others have produced books which are designed to teach students humanism and libertarian values. One hopes the government will look into this matter as it embarks on its programme to reform the education sector.

© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2002

dost-mittar #73
The Election Commission says at least 500 candidates in the current UP elections have criminal records..

Dost-Mittar ji # 73

The iridescent theater of Indian politics is both impressive and absurd. Did you hear of the ``Suitcase Party`` launched by our inimitable Jaspal Bhatti, with the slogan:

Suitcaisan dee sarkar chaubees ghante khulla darbar.

and lifetime reservations for his wife and family members? :)

Or, the man who went around asking for votes, wearing a garland of shoes?

Also, read this:

http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_520960.html

Election candidate canvasses as resurrected corpse

An election candidate in India is canvassing votes by pretending to be a corpse that suddenly comes alive.

Supporters of Lal Bihari carry him around the Uttar Pradesh town of Azamgarh in a coffin until they come to a standstill.

He then sits up, throws away a cloth covering him, and screams he`s alive. He`s protesting that local records wrongly show 3,000 people are dead.

He is accusing officials of trying to transfer land to potential buyers by showing that the owners are dead.

A local court has ordered officials to correct their records, but he complains not much has been done.

``We have only seen a handful of dead people being revived. Justice can only be done when all of us are shown to be alive,`` he said.

As well as being an election candidate, Mr Bihari is president of the Mritak Sangh (the Dead People`s Forum).

subroto #74

I may be missing something, but could you please point me to a statement I made that is blind or hateful?

Asim Hayat #72

I realize that it is OK for your conscience to post hate speech towards hindus while at the same time complaining about the RSS or PN Oak`s nonsensical theories. This kind of mental problem is quite natural in a person of your background.

BUT, let me ask you this question AGAIN. You posted an article from an excellent indian newspaper (#39) describing a religous school run by the RSS. I have asked you TWICE to present FROM the article statements that were hateful or showed contempt for other groups. You are unable to do so because the article has no such statements. Instead, you are ranting on about various other statements about the RSS.

I have also asked the question: why should we treat a hindu religous school differently from a christian or islamic religous school? I wont discuss Islam because in your current state of juvenility you will take it as a personal attack. In a christian school you will learn:

(1) God had a son!

(2) the son was born thru a miracle

(3) etc. etc.

To me, as an atheist of hindu background, these statements sound very, very bizarre. Similarly, in a RSS school you will learn:

(1) Rama lived in Ayodhya 981000 years ago!

(2) etc. etc.

These sound no more bizarre than the statements above. So what is the fuss here? What is the difference between these two statements? Why is one acceptable and the other reprehensible?

Asim Hayat, PMisra2 you are actually identical in your thought and blind hatred. The objects of hate differ thats all, are you sure you guys didn`t get separated in a mela at a young age? Yaad karo aaj say bees saal pehle....

Re : Recent Brouhaha from the Indians on my having posted a few innocent articles exposing their fascist govt`s true colours.

Dear All,

The second article is written by H.K. Burki, a Harvard Educated Pakistani journalist.Granted the bow-tie clad journalist does not mince any words in his exposition of the Hindus, but The fact remains, the time for sugar coating reality is perhaps past. Who can deny that a pugilistic India is trying its bst to flex her muscles within South Asia, thinking of herself as possibly another United States.

Granted I might not agree with all tha the learned Mr Burki wrote, but the eseence of the articles still holds. This can be verified by the plethora of responses that have emanated from the children of the Sangh Parivar/RSS goons. My mistake was to have posted a single articles written by a conscientious and objective indian journalist who wrote of her own accord about the wrongs being taught at the RSS run scholls that Qutab Minar and Taj Mahal were Hindu temples, amongst a lot of other prevarications in the name ofan education. My Raison de etre for posting this own this site was to gauge the indian opinion when confronted with facts from an well respected indian newspaper, like The Hindu. The article clearly stated, that the children are being taught false ideologies about ``their`` history and origins in full defiance of the truth, and yet my dear indian brothers from across the border have the unmitigated temerity to suggest that it was alright, and were willing to turn a blind eye to such shameless distortion of young infertile minds so that they grow up tainted by the hatred which has held these very messiahs of liberalism captive for the longest time.

Pmishra, your conjecturing about your opponents education and qualifications is nothing but ``penis`` envy at its worst and perhaps puerility at its best. Do not ever underestimate your opponents, using such dismissivbe logic, as this is going to be your demise. The modern day moderate Pakistanis are perhaps better educated than your Indian Muslims, held back by a systematic apartheid. You may not be able to push us aroudn as easily as you can those icons of your ``democracy``. You ad-hominem attacks do not merit any further response.

However, feel free to condemn the RSS schools philosophy of teaching rubbish and petty jingoism to their poor and downtrodden. Though one does needs an iota of character and personal integrity to denounce an obvious wrong, howsoever painful it might be. Sadly, few men can rise above paltry natioanlism to do that.

Regards

Asim Hayat

Best of Regards