An Insight Into the Way Shiv Sena Functions

Congress gets initial lead in Maharashtra civic polls

Press Trust of India

Mumbai, February 11: Congress is forging ahead in the elections for the various municipal corporations in Maharashtra, according to results available so far.

In Solapur, Congress has bagged seven seats followed by BJP winning six seats, while Shiv Sena won three and NCP two, sources in the state election Commission said in Mumbai.

Among the results available so far from the orange city Nagpur, Congress has won three seats.

In the neighbouring Thane, NCP has bagged four and Shiv Sena and BJP shared one seat each, sources said.

In Akola, BJP bagged one seat while the a local front bagged five seats and Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh three.

In Amrawati municipal corporation polls, Congress has won four seats as against two seats by Shiv Sena.

Meanwhile, according to trends available for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika) polls, Shiv Sena is leading in 14 seats, followed by Congress in nine while BJP and NCP have established leads in two seats and one seat respectively.

Well, I guess I was off the mark when I had predicted that the Shiv Sena goons will restrict themselves only to giving moral lectures:

We will bash up Valentine`s Day couples: Sena

http://headlines.sify.com/563news1.html

dost-mittar #41
Without holding any brief for the `enlightenment of India`s middle class`, it needs to be pointed out that Manmohan Singh while campaigning last time asserted that his party the CongressI was not responsible for the 84 Sikh riots and that the RSS was. This created a major uproar and the riot effectees staged public protests against him. If he is as deserving of support as his professional competence seems to imply, he should stop peddling blatant lies on a sensitive issue like other politicians do.

re: Ferozk # 45

Feroze, in EACH case, the murderer was driven by a blind hatred of the ``OTHER`` group.

Yigal Amir, the Jew, who killed Rabin, did so because Rabin wanted to make peace with the Palestinians.

Khaled Islambouli, the Muslim, who kiled Sadat, did so because Sadat was trying to bury the hatchet with the Israelis.

Nathuram Godse, the Hindu, killed Gandhi because Gandhi sought to advocate the cause of Muslims.

James Earl Ray, the white Christian, killed the black Christian Martin Luther King.

The Jew loved all Jews. The Muslim loved all Muslims. The Hindu loved all Hindus. The white Christian loved all white Christians.

Except, none of them loved the simple Human Being.

Enormous love for `one`s own` and enormous hatred for `the other` are as closely tied as the two sides of a dollar bill.

Both have the same name - fascism. And Cruelty and Murder are fascism`s natural children.

Stuka:

``semipreciousme: (God !! pls choose a smaller handle..)``

...good exercise for your fingers....but if you insist on being lazy, semi`ll do...

re: # 35

...that`s better...

Asim Hayat #44

As a product of a extremist islamist state ruled by a military dictator, you have excellent credentials to carry the message of democracy to the world.

That aside, here is a simple request: produce from the facts in the *news report * (taken from an excellent indian newspaper) three statements that are hateful or reprehensible. I am not referring to your various beliefs that Vajpayee is a form of Hitler etc. I am referring to the actual contents of the news article you included in your message.

One point I had made in my message was that true ``believers`` accept all kinds of ``facts`` about their religous traditions. Christian belief includes ``facts`` far more startling than the idea that Rama lived in Ayodhya a trillion years ago. I wont bother you with my opinion of islamic beliefs, as you will certainly construe it as a personal attack. If a hindu religous school teaches such beliefs, well, its their problem. Needless to say all this subtlety is water off your duck back.....

re: Ferozk

{{Religion, in itself, is not bad; rather, it is we who have given it a bad name by our own misdeeds.}}

the nuclear bomb, in itself, is not bad either; it is the people who drop it on others. ditto for guns, poison gas and the AIDS virus...so let`s keep all those things around and pray that people improve?? or better to get rid of them so fools can`t use them to hurt themselves or others?...

=== Interact Filtered ===
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Re: Harish et al

Has anyone considered the fact that it was a Jew who killed Rabin; a Muslim who killed Sadat; a Christian who killed Martin Luther King, Jr. and a Hindu who killed Gandhi...

Let us stop talking about ``cross-religious intolerance/terror``, because we have done more to malign our religions than any outsider could have done. Religion, in itself, is not bad; rather, it is we who have given it a bad name by our own misdeeds.

Ciao

Re : Pmishra2 on Madrassh system in India

Dear Sir,

Your impassioned appeal to support these purveyors of falsehood and hatred is indeed well noted. However, petty jingoism aside, your rush to defend these very madrassahs shows one thing that you are trying to bury your head in the sand in so far as being objective and ``truth`` oriented. I would have expected no less from an indian fellow whose sole purpose in coming here to Chowk is to possibly cast aspersions and slanber our nation;and yet one whoo does not even have an iota of impartiality to condemn the very wrongs being perpetrated in his own back yard in the name of an ``education``. Notwithstanding Pakistan`s history of poor leaders, one thing stands out, and that is the fact that we have never had such blatant bigots as rulers as Vajpayee who proudly associates himself as swayem Savek of RSS, which is clearly a fascist organisation and immulators of Hitler et al. These people are so self deluded not to mention oblivious of truth and objtivity that they would modify the truth and the history to suggest that the Taj Mahal was a Hindu Temple. Indeed, the goop being dished out at these places of learning to the infertile minds shall result in a class of people who shall not only be more biassed and bigoted but also anti Pakistan to their own detriment. Surely you do not think that the false ideologies being taught at your 2000 odd schools is going to provide another Gandhi!

Learning English is well and good, but learning a jingoims driven version of history when the so called facts being taught by your RSS goons can be refuted by any and every ``white`` historian is hardly productive.

You may continue to live and prosper in your ``democratic`` state as long as the Hindus are left to run the country as per the Sangh Parivar.Good luck to you my friend, and may your see the folly of your reasoning.

Asim

I was unaware of this good news. Now that rogue Thackeray will not be able to cars vote in civic polls. Good work Election Commission of India and VICTORY TO INDIAN DEMOCRACY.

http://www.timesofindia.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=555763

Summary: ``Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, who was disenfranchised by the Election Commission (EC) for six years in 1995 could not cast his ballot for the prestigious BMC polls on Sunday, despite expiry of the ban period.

``

semipreciousme: (God !! pls choose a smaller handle..)

``....let`s not over-generalize, please..``

ERM, UH ...You`re right ofcourse. I actually had that thought on my own as well. Please refer to my post # 35, which I posted right after the one you are talking about. One has a habit of losing one`s temper and shooting of a post, to be filled with a general sense of regret and a desire to make amends.

Asim Heyat #39

If this is an indian madrassah, then I dont think we are in trouble at all.

From the article we learn that students are:

(1) learning English

(2) Competing well in public exams

(3) include students from ``non cow-eating`` backgrounds

(4) not taught to hate any particular community.

Like all religous schools these students are taught that their particular traditions are ``real``. Rama, the hindu god-king, truly lived at a certain time etc.

How is this different from believing that Jesus Christ was a historical figure? There is no historical evidence for this, nor is there any historical evidence for any part of the old testament. I would suggest you visit a Christian school and review their curriculum.

I won`t comment on Islamic beliefs, except that a whole lot of them seem to depend on whether the prophet did or did not do certain things. Sounds pretty irrational to me, but I have a feeling most muslims would disagree and view these issues differently.

How is the ideology of these schools differ from traditional christian and muslim religous schools? Leaving aside, of course, that conversion is a key part of christianity and islam but plays a very small part in hindu discourse.

Manufacturing believers

The RSS runs a network of schools country wide Anjali Mody looks at what is taught there.

Talk about the Indian variety of Madrassah educated elites!

http://www.hindu.com/stories/2002021000061200.htm

ON A cold January morning, the Union HRD Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, told a captive audience of restive high school students from 12 institutions run by Vidya Bharati (the RSS` education wing) about the changes his Government had made to school syllabuses and textbooks. Pradeep (not his real name), a class 11 student from GLT Saraswati Shishu Mandir, in South Delhi who was there, summarised what he understood of the Minister`s message: ``He told us that although some people say that Lord Ramachandra never existed, that he did... He produced him in front of us... No... no... that`s only a joke... he said that there is this river which people say never really existed, but he has scientifically proven that it did exist, that Lord Ramachandra was born on its banks... so he also existed.``

The strange logic of this deduction would not have bothered the Minister. Nor, perhaps, Pradeep`s teachers. For they, like him and his classmates, are drilled in `sanskriti gyan` or `cultural knowledge` based on a series of workbooks devised by Vidya Bharati. Last year, the `history` section of Pradeep`s Sanskriti Gyan Pareeksha workbook would have told him: ``In Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh where present day Ayodhya stands, there on the banks of the Sarayu river was ancient Ayodhya, capital of Suryavanshi Kshatriya kings. Manu and Maharani Shatroopa were reborn in Ayodhya as Raja Dasharatha and Kaushalya, and in their home sakshaat Narayana took incarnation (as Lord Ram). According to astrologers and the puranas the time of Shri Ram is believed to be around 8,86,000 years ago.``

This lesson in `history` is part of the `national education` that Vidya Bharati`s 19,741 schools around the country impart to their 24,00,000 students. Vidya Bharati is, says its head Dinanath Batra, one of the ``organisations through which the Sangh`s vichardhara or way of thinking is propagated``. Its aim is to provide an education which will turn out ``self-less citizens... suffused with the spirit of Hindutva``.

The first Vidya Bharati school was set up in 1952. Since then growth has been exponential. In just five years from 1998, the number went up from 13,000 to 19,741. These are by and large fee paying schools, started with private donations. Mr. Batra says Vidya Bharati has neither received, nor sought, financial support from the Government to run its schools. At Vidya Bharati`s schools across the country there is much talk of `sanskara`. This broadly includes prayers in Sanskrit, the Saraswati Vandana, teachers being called `acharya` and students who touch their feet. Respect for parents established by touching their feet. Some schools run tulsi planting campaigns as part of `environmental awareness`. Mr. Batra believes that it is the `atmosphere` of a school that makes the `difference`. With uncharacteristic flourish he declares: ``walls should speak, stones should sing``. The walls of Vidya Bharati`s schools do speak, to those willing to listen. They are lined with calendar art images of `mahapurush` — RSS gurus, M.S. Golwalkar and Baliram Hedgewar, Shankaracharya, Dayananda Saraswati, Vivekananda, Shivaji, Rana Pratap, Subhash Chandra Bose, Chandrashekhar Azad, sometimes Sardar Patel, but not Mahtama Gandhi.

A curious panoply of greats given that the majority of schools run by Vidya Bharati — variously called Saraswati Mandirs, Gita Niketans, Vivekananda Vidyalayas across the country — are affiliated either to the CBSE or the local state education boards, which still accept Mahatma Gandhi`s pre-eminence in the history of the nation. Mr. Batra dismisses this observations saying: ``We publish many pictures including a very beautiful one of Gandhi.``

Pictures apart, how do those who run Vidya Bharati schools balance their version of the truth with the facts and figures in the prescribed syllabuses and textbooks? Sitting in front of a life size portrait of Golwalkar, R.P. Vishvendu, Principal of the Shri Sanatan Dharma Saraswati Bal Mandir, in New Delhi`s Punjabi Bagh neighbourhood, admits it is a tricky business: ``When you are teaching a child to distinguish between good and bad... you tell them Shivaji was good... then how do you tell them that Auranzeb was also good... that there was a battle between two good people?... similarly with Subhash Chandra Bose... and Gandhi...`` He adds, ``if you pour water over concrete it simply flows off... But if you keep dripping water at the same spot then after sometime there will be a dent even in concrete... that is how we work...``

Clearly, Mr. Vishvendu hopes that the drip-drip of a compulsory regime of Sanskriti Gyan Pareeksha (the workbooks to which he contributes) from classes 4 to 12, with their own version of history, will do the trick. Especially since two-thirds of the over 70,000 teachers in Vidya Bharati`s schools have been `qualified` to teach the truth according to these books through a three-stage exam specially designed for them.

Sandeepji, the young clear-eyed history teacher at the Mata Ramrakhi Sanatan Dharma Saraswati Bal Mandir(MRSD), just north of Delhi University, whose students are drawn from the post-Partition resettlement colonies of north and west Delhi, has a far more sophisticated method: ``I present the truth as written in the textbooks. The textbook for instance says `In the end the Congress accepted the partition of India`. I tell my students to go home and talk to their grandparents who experienced Partition about whether there was any need to accept Partition, I then have a discussion in the classroom. And through the stories of their families and friends they understand that although Congress accepted partition it was not necessary.``

Teachers at Vidya Bharati schools are happy to share their teaching techniques. Mrs. Kulsreshta, the highly regarded English teacher at the Punjabi Bagh Shishu Mandir, says that ``in every lesson you can draw out the impact of Indian culture... from the Gita. I point out examples of this... I tell my students that even in this foreign author`s writing you can see the influence of the Gita.``

Veena Khanna, the Hindi teacher at MRSD, says, ``It is so hard to remove the wrong ideas from their minds... to teach them that it was not the Muslims who built the Qutub Minar, that Muslims peeled off the sculptures of gods and covered them with Arabic script... Prithviraj Chauhan`s sister used to look at Yamuna maiya from the top of the minar.`` With great feeling, and no sense of irony she pronounced, ``If you repeat a lie ten times it becomes the truth. It is even happening today``. At least in Model Town the lessons have had their impact. In sanskritised Hindi students of class 9 and 10 at MRSD deliver well-rehearsed lines. Manish: ``They said Hindus were cow eaters. This is wrong.`` Gaurav: ``They said Aryans came from outside. This must be changed.`` Neha: ``They have called Guru Gobind Singh a looter, when he gave his life for the nation.``

``You mean Guru Tegh Bahadur, don`t you,`` corrects Om Prakash, the principal who runs his school of 300-odd students from a building that also houses the local sanatan dharma temple. A soft-spoken man, he is very open about his long connection with the RSS. It was as a child at an RSS shakha in the 1950s that he learnt of the ``wrongs`` being perpetrated by modern school education. Before he joined the Vidya Bharati school network he was an RSS pracharak. Even today he keeps his eyes open for bright students whom he can point out to the local shakha as ``worth working on``.

A more thorough-going venture of ``propagating the RSS vichardhara through education`` is Sewa Dham Vidya Mandir.

A free residential school run under the guidance of Vidya Bharati by another RSS-affiliated NGO, Sewa Bharati, funded primarily by donations from the Sangh`s NRI supporters. Located on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border the school, with 285 students from 21 States, mostly from Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste backgrounds, has results that many fee paying schools would envy.

The CBSE schools football trophy sits proudly among other sporting awards in the Principal, O.P. Sharma`s office. School exam results displayed on the notice board declare over 50 per cent first classes, and only a tiny number of thirds.

Mr. Sharma hopes that the school will produce future administrators, who will ``do work to improve their districts having learnt their sanskars here``. The school regime is a far more rigorous and unequivocal induction into the Sangh`s way of life than the Vidya Bharati schools in cities. Shakha attendance, complete with exercise and intellectual `discussion`, is built into the school`s tough regimen that begins at 4.30 in the morning and ends at 10 p.m., with television viewing permitted only on Sunday.

Mr. Sharma says the school has an open atmosphere and students can `think and speak freely` on any subject. They have a 10,000-book library, carefully selected to include books that ``speak of gauravata ki batein not gulami ki batein``. He says they may have to be taught, because of the existing textbooks, that the Taj Mahal was a mausoleum built by Shah Jahan, but there are enough books in the library, including many by P.N. Oak, which will tell them that it was not a mausoleum but a Hindu temple.

Mr. Sharma, whose academic discipline is economics, illustrates the focus of teaching in his school. He says, ``for example economics books tell us that India is a poor country... we will not teach this. We will teach children that India is a very rich country... it has had a green revolution... it has the best record in milk production... the best cows in Denmark have gone from India.``

Sewa Dham has its particular problems. It is not so simple, as it is at an average Vidya Bharati school, to assume that the students will find the fact that ``Hindus ate beef`` objectionable. Many of their students come from communities that do eat beef. Mr. Sharma who is something of a cow protection missionary and has a cow and calf tethered near his rooms on the school campus says, ``Christians working in areas like Arunachal Pradesh have said beef is the most nutritious... we have to convince these children otherwise... we tell them that the cow is our mother... that gods reside inside her... that breeze from the direction in which a cow turns her head is pure... that there is no other treatment for cancer but go-mooth (cow urine).``

Outside the formal school system, the Sangh`s affiliates are also involved in a variety of `educational activity`. Vidya Bharati, according to Mr. Batra, is to set up `Sanskar Kendras` in poor neighbourhoods and slums. Beyond city slums, he says, they are focussing on ``sensitive areas`` — the Northeast, Jammu and Kashmir, Bastar, the Bihar-Nepal border, with ``50 centres for primitive tribes``.

Mr. Batra explains the motivation: ``Take the Northeast, you can hear the voice of disintegration... there are a lot of Bangladeshi immigrants. These are areas in which Christian missionaries are very active.``

The Bihar-Nepal border, border areas with Pakistan? ``They are full of madrassas funded from abroad... Muslims must be taught that they are born in this country, nursed by this country and must live for the country.`` Bastar? ``It has naxalwadis and vanvasis.``

`Vanvasi` is the Sangh`s catch-all term for adivasis, devised to fit its thesis that far from being the original inhabitants of the subcontinent forced to the margins by later arrivals from central Asia, they are lost tribes of Hindus waiting to be reawakened.

Another Sangh affiliate, Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, is already involved in running schools in adivasi areas with the hope that they will be ``awakened to their Hindu heritage``. The foundation runs some 7,000 one-teacher schools in ``remote areas where Government schools do not exist or are not being run properly``.

The three-hours-a-day school is designed to deliver reading and numeracy skills, `general knowledge` no different from the material in Vidya Bharati`s Sanskriti Gyan workbooks, `sanskara` — like Sanskrit prayers, touching the feet of parents — exercise and personal health and hygiene.

Seema Ajgaonkar, co-coordinator of the foundations Expert Committee, speaks with a missionary spirit about the activities of the school which ``unite the village youth``, give them a chance to throw off the ``dependence created by Government`` and ``awaken in them the knowledge that they are not adivasis but vanvasi Hindus``.

Stuka:

``This statement, made by a Paki Muslim, should be publicised among all Indian Muslims as a true representation of the love and affection Paki Muslims have for Indian Muslims. This statement is living proof that a Paki Muslim is happiest when innocent non Paki Muslims are slaughtered. I wonder why Paki Muslims were so unhappy when the throats of their own kind were being slit in Afghanistan?``

....let`s not over-generalize, please..

Mastram

``We might want to believe that Shiv Sena`s support base comprises only of `lumpen proletariat` but the fact remains that Shiv Sena has considerable support amongst middle class maharashtrians in Bombay.

``

No Sir, what you call support is, at best, a helpless realization that he is a ``necessary evil``. No educated man, whether he is a Bombayite or not, can defend the actions of Thackrey with a straight face. In the beginning of his career he collected a bunch of ruffians and harassed South Indians in the name of marathi chauvinism. Then he needed another sentimental issue to expand his base. This time he used ``communal agenda(I wont call it Hinduism)`` to do this. Afterall, if he such a staunch Hindu, why did he persecute his own Hindu bretheren, the South Indians. Believe me, he is neither a Hindu nor a Marathi, just a cunning mafia leader who wants to rule over people. He opposes ``Valentine`s day`` in the name of cultural corruption but his own son and relatives invite Michael Jackson, the paedophile, for a stage program so that they can gobble 4 crores from that show in their pocket. Actually the real story is that the Archies refused to bribe him and he therefore ordered his goons to loot Archies shops and harass people on Valentine`s day. All Indians Hindus or Muslims, and especially Hindus should see the true colors of this person and teach him a lesson.

Sincerely

A UPite