Lesbians vs. Gays vs. Hinduism vs. Modernity?

okay this is where it all started, india and it heritage are really effecting neigbor uring countries

Ref Sangilikaruppan #209

[I haven`t expressed any ``concern`` for the ``criminal tribes.`` You must be confusing me with dost-mittarji. If you spent half the time you`re spending on guessing the caste origins of people you don`t know, on getting some medical help, you may have some hope of gaining sanity...]

If you haven`t expressed any concerns for the criminal tribes of India, that would only be because the criminals are in power there now and you feel safe.

One longs for the days of yore when mobility between castes was possible. You would then definitely be assigned the caste of professional thieves based on your criminal activities and accomplishments so far. The act of stealing the professional education seat reserved for Dalits stands out as the first step in your criminal career.

#208
Your effort to hang yourself with your pooNool (sacred thread) is duly noted. I haven`t expressed any ``concern`` for the ``criminal tribes.`` You must be confusing me with dost-mittarji. If you spent half the time you`re spending on guessing the caste origins of people you don`t know, on getting some medical help, you may have some hope of gaining sanity...

Ref dost-mittar #207

You must understand that Sangilikaruppan`s (aka Soysauce) concern about profiling or for the criminal tribes of India has no altruistic basis but is rooted in self-interest.

After all, he is likely a member of the Kallar caste (caste of professional thieves) of Tamil Nadu. To hide this, he calls himself a Marava, a Thevar or as belonging to the Mukkulatthor caste but a thief is a thief. Naturally, he is concerned about profiling for he is likely to pop up as the criminal element of society.

soysauce:
I am not sure that those people were making attempts in the 10 years prior to 9/11 with the same vigour - Bush`s `war on terrorism` hadn`t yet started. As far `criminal tribes`, I had said that the practice was continued even after the partition. Sometimes back, I read about the `criminal tribes` creating problems in the Noida area near Delhi.

I do not like being profiled. Nobody does (unless it is in a positive way, such as bengalis are intellectuals or south indians are geniuses in maths!). But I am willing to put up with the inconvenience as long as my personal ``costs`` do not outweigh societal benefits.

#205
dost-mittarji, it`s early yet to tell if profiling is working in the US. Not profiling also worked for almost 10 years. This line of argument therefore is specious.
You seem to be saying that just because we as individuals or groups stereotype, it`s OK for government to do the same. I disagree.
Finally, i`m confused as to why you are accusing ``bleeding-heart liberals`` of not condemning something that happened during the Raj. Are you expecting these liberals to take a stand on everything that happened in history? Sounds like something the khaki shorts would be demanding, not a paki-hugging punjabi like you.

soysauce:
I was talking about the statistical basis of profiling, which is different from something based on prejudice. It is essential when it is impractical to suspect each and every person about whom you do not have any information and subject them to the same screening. And it appears to be working. Since 9/11 when the profiling started, there has not been any case of terrorism in North America; I cannot believe that people who want to harm the US are not trying to get in; it has to be due in part to the profiling used to screen people. The key thing is that even after profiling, the overwhelming majority of muslims are not denied admission into the profiling countries. We all do mental profiling; for a long time people wouldn`t rent their houses to Panjabis in Delhi, even Panjabis. I find that offensive, because people were not merely suspecting panjabis but even assuming them to be a troublemaker. But there was good reason for people to suspect panjabis, because there was empirical evidence of a high correlation between panjabi tenants and defaults.

The `criminal tribes` were a legacy of the British Raj; the police classified many tribes as criminals; I think that the practice was continued in India even after the British left.

#194
Being a statistician by trade, I fully understand the reasons for profiling and prejudice is not the only one. Inspectors who are looking for a potential target have to work on a limited information model; the only basis for developing a `maximum likelihood model` is from past empirical data, which is prejoratively known as `profiling`. But I draw the difference between suspicion and accusation; while I understand an inspector`s reason for suspecting me I would find it unacceptable if, after questioning, I were stopped from admission on the basis of my place of birth, religion and a pakistani visa.

Dost-mittarji, are you saying there are incidences of bearded men and veiled women doing harm to indians in statistically sufficient numbers that profiling them would be warranted? I don`t think even the brits would claim that people fitting these profiles have done them any harm. Bringing in statistical arguments to buttress a practice based on prejudice is like putting lip stick on a pig and calling it a lady...
Profiling, referred to pejoratively, is simply another name for prejudice. That prejudice is not based on statistics but on politics and individual beliefs. Blacks are profiled extensively in the US and the condition has come to be called ``Driving While Black.`` Depending on how you cite the statistics (Number of blacks cited for an infraction as a percentage of their total number in the population or total number pulled over) the practice is either derided or praised. Here`s a case of statistics serving the purpose of its practitioner and not at all objective.
I didn`t get your reference to ``criminal tribes``. Are you saying you have some statistical proof that there are such?

14 arrested for hoisting Pak flag in Karnataka
Our pakistani friends here will be happy to see this.


http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=33194

Press Trust of India
Posted online: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 at 1504 hours IST

Davanagere (Karnataka), June 29: Police have arrested 14 people for allegedly hoisting a Pakistani flag at a place of worship at Chinur village in the district.

Police said all the detainees have been remanded to judicial custody till July 9 by a court here.

The arrests were made on Monday after protestors gathered outside the police station following the flag hoisting incident and demanded immediate action.

Senior police officials visited the place and ensured that the flag was removed.

Additional police forces from Davangere were sent to Chinur, where the situation is normal.

Why profiling of Muslims is a must.

The fact is that Muslims are the greatest and most comprehensive official profilers on the planet. Whether or not you profile Muslims, Muslim states and groups profile you as surely as there is night after day.

Porfiling has always been considered a natural and acceptable practice. People don`t ask Islamic states to become non Islamic because there is nothing unusual or wrong about profiling people based on religion. Three turks hostages were released today. Good for these poor souls, but they saved their lives only because Muslim groups, like Muslim states, profile people based on religion.

I could go on giving examples because profiling is as common and natural, as I said, breathing. We do not have an organization of Christian countries but we have an organization of Islamic countries because Muslim states profile the entire humanity. Nobody would consider the Red Cross to be a religious organization, except Muslims, who have a Red Crescent. There are no calls for creating a buddhist, sikh, hindu, or christian United Nations, but there are regular calls for creating an Islamic United Nations. Why, because non profiling is an unnatural act for them. Who has ever seen groups of Muslim liberals protest?

You are being profiled. Whether or not you profile is your decision. But if you choose to risk your life and your religious liberty, you have a right to make decisions only about yourself, not about others.


Urstruly

Taliban had every right to profile Hindus if they had evidence of some Hindus receiving funds from India to overthrow the Taliban. Profiling is not the same thing as making followers of certain religions wear particular bands. That is an Islamic issue which you need to sort out.

#184 by ankit

`` A piece by Tavleen Singh

http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=49831

Why we are a soft target for terrorists

On the morning that the American engineer, Paul Johnson, was beheaded by his terrorist captors in Saudi Arabia I happened to be arriving in London. At Heathrow airport, ahead of me in the immigration queue, was a Muslim family of sub-continental origin. The man wore an Islamic beard and looked as if dressed for Friday prayers. Skullcap, short pyjamas and long kurta and the three women accompanying him were so totally veiled that only their eyes showed. The orthodoxy of their attire or the beheading in Saudi Arabia must have been playing on the mind of the British immigration officer ``

What puzzles me about that muslim and his family is why did he even bother to immigrate to the west. The man is obviously obsessed with his religion/culture ( or whatever the cr@p that is ) and wants TO STICK TO HIS ROOTS. I got a better idea for these third world immigrants.... THE BEST WAY TO STICK TO YOUR ROOTS IS TO STAY BACK IN THE SEWER OF YOUR HOME COUNTRY.

Urstruly:
Thanks for the poem. I did not say that my children dont think I am a good man. They are my children but they are no longer `children`. They are politically conscious and we do have honest discussions about various contemporary issues. And yes, I should always try to measure up to their expectations. It`s not always easy, though, since their values (canadian) are not the same as mine (desi canadian!). I am too conservative for them and you would be a lot more conservative in their opinion than I am, except for your views about globalisation.
...and I do admit my prejudices and biases to them, which they appreciate.

dost mitter

Actually I think, it should be matter of shame for you that your children call you prejudiced. Children cannot lie. Listen to them and try to be a good man before it is too late. Here is a poem that I read the other day and I thought you might like it:

mera baap kitna tanha hay! kitna udaas hay!

mera baap!

mera baap!

mera baap!

apne baap ki izzat kar!

apne baap ke larazte qadam daikh

daikh keh yeh saya-e-sooraj gharoob ke khauf se laraz raha he

daikh yeh saya shaam ki zulmat se jhaggaR raha he

daikh aur sauch!

yeh saya kaheen tera apna to nahiN?

urstruly:
Religion is not the only variable in profiling; demographics, appearance, occupation, countries visited are some of the other important variables. I have been profiled and I am not a muslim nor do I have a muslim sounding name...And you dont have to be shy, my children call me prejudiced too for some of my views, and they don`t hate me!

#193 by Ralph

Agree with you. Profiling happens all the time in our daily lives. We constantly favor or discriminate against a person based on our analysis, whether right or wrong. So just what`s wrong with the profiling of adherents of a certain religion when there are more than a fair share of them claiming to be fighting for a religious cause? I think it is better to err on the side of caution and by profiling, most countries are doing exactly that.

Harish

Aah . . . bleeding hearts and sacred cows and feet of clay . . . Dost Mittar, you have travelled the world, without documents to start with, and with them subsequently, so I am sure you understand . . . bleeding hearts evacuate copiously as per the need of the moment.

Initial article by FV was on lesbians gays and Hinduism and modernity . . . so in any case, the movie has now vanished, sunk without trace as all garbage eventually does. (Garbage unrelated to sexual orientation, religion or ``modernity``, btw.

So a consensus is emerging among hindus now that profiling of muslims is as natural as breathing. Excuse me but aren`t you the people who once were choking when Taliban were profiling hindus living in Afghanisan by making them wear yellow arm bands. Keep in mind that taliban didn`t do it because hindus were hindus but because hindustan was actively pumping in weapons and money to destabilize taliban, thru northern alliance. I am not saying that you hindu people are hypocrites but I just want to know what is the statistical probability that a hindu residing in afghanistan might be facilitating in the said destabilization.

soysauce:
We do indeed disagree! Being born in Pakistan and having a Pakistani visa stamped on my passport, I am these days a prime candidate for profiling and indeed have been taken for secondary examination twice and `randomly` selected for screening. Being a statistician by trade, I fully understand the reasons for profiling and prejudice is not the only one. Inspectors who are looking for a potential target have to work on a limited information model; the only basis for developing a `maximum likelihood model` is from past empirical data, which is prejoratively known as `profiling`. But I draw the difference between suspicion and accusation; while I understand an inspector`s reason for suspecting me I would find it unacceptable if, after questioning, I were stopped from admission on the basis of my place of birth, religion and a pakistani visa.
..and yes, sikhs were subjected to racial profiling during those days and still are to a lesser extent.

And how come none of the bleeding hearts ever complains about the horrendous practice of calling a whole goup of people ``criminal tribes``?

soysauce #192

Profiling is as natural, human, and reasonable as breathing. Unless we constantly profile people, our information processing capabilities will be quickly overwhelmed. Where there is greater uncertainty, greater profiling must invariably follow.

Like it or not, after 9/11, a group of bearded middle eastern man carrying leaflets printed in arabic will cause greater concern among the passengers of an airline than will a group of old white ladies wishing good byes to their grand children.

During the Khalistan movement, I doubt if Sikhs did not have to bear the brunt of extra security.

We will have to ask some Sikhs to help us out.

Dostmittar #190

That reminds me of the incident during the Lok Sabha elections this April where PDP president Mehbooba Mufti lifted the veil of a burqa-clad woman voter under the suspicion that she was bogus. There also seems to be reason to believe that terrorists in Kashmir have used the burqa to move about more freely than they could otherwise. I think Tavleen Singh’s concerns are quite valid.

#190
Huh? The incident that Tavleen Singh describes appears to be a case of `profiling` of muslims and I think Ms. Singh is saying that should be OK in india. I think that is bigotry and therefore, no, we are not in agreement. Profiling does not require any other reason to be suspicious. It`s enough if a person belongs to a certain category which in this case appears to be religious muslim. Profiling is stupid, arrogant, alienating and ineffective.
I do wonder if Ms. Singh would have approved of searching sikh men and women extra carefully during the khalistan movement? From what I know EVERYONE was searched carefully, sikh or not. That was not only humane but also EFFECTIVE.

soysauce:
``Bearded men and veiled women have lived in india for centuries as indian citizen and for Ms. Singh to claim that profiling of the sort done in a foreign airport should be acceptable to indians (muslims or hindus) betrays bigotry, confusion or both.``

I dont think that Ms singh would disagree. I might add that a muslim woman at heathrow is also not a strange sight anymore. Before 9/11, the poor women wouldn`t have been put through the hassle that they were in Ms Singh`s queue. But supposing that an indian inspector had reason to be suspicious, subjected these women to a similar intense questioning only to find out that they were totally innocent, wouldn`t some people have harassed the poor inspector out of his/her job?

I think that Ms singh was using this incident to make the point that those criticising should not pick one particular community for communalism or bigotry. A sonia gandhi finding a cabinet seat for someone accused of leading anti-sikh mobs in `84 is as hypocritical in asking the removal of Modi as the BJP asking for the removal of Tytler while not doing anything about Modi.

I muddled my last post. Corrected version below:
#186 dost-mittarji,
In the part that you fully agree with, Ms. Singh makes a point that`s uncontestable by its very nature (I for one asked what was she (Ishrat) doing with those characters), repeats the insinuation that they (these characters) were after Modi and then tries to establish her (own) credibility by arguing that she is holier than the civil rights groups. A through and through political, self-aggrandizing statement.
The essay itself seems targeted at a certain kind of audience and an artificial attempt at balance permeates it. Bearded men and veiled women have lived in india for centuries as indian citizens and for Ms. Singh to claim that profiling of the sort done in a foreign airport should be acceptable to indians (muslims or hindus) betrays bigotry, confusion or both. If this woman is a progressive, india is in big trouble.

Innocence Betrayed

The involvement of Ishrat Jehan, an educated middle-class girl, in a terrorist plot is a pointer to the fading faith in the system. The plot, the encounter to bust it and the uproar symbolise the sense of disquiet in civil society.

By Uday Mahurkar and Sheela Raval


It was the first spell of monsoon. Shamima Shaikh and three of her daughters were lazily surfing channels in their two-room apartment in Hasmat Park in the dreary township of Mumbra on the outskirts of Mumbai. Even as they settled down to watch a popular family melodrama, there was loud knocking on the door. Shamima`s eldest daughter Zeenat Jehan opened the door only to find herself facing a battery of cameras and microphones. Mediapeople asked her about her sister Ishrat Jehan. Bewildered by the clamour, Zeenat just about made sense of the fact that Ishrat had been killed in a police encounter the previous morning on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

It was as if melodrama had come knocking and soon enough the lower middle-class family found themselves unwittingly starring in one. The second child of Mohammed and Shamima, the 19-year-old, five ft two inches, good looking and seemingly happy go lucky Ishrat was gunned down with three other alleged operatives of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). They were allegedly on a mission to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Ishrat was with her friend Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai and two others, Zeeshan Johar alias Janbaaz and Amjad Ali Rana alias Salim, identified as LeT suicide squad members and citizens of Pakistan.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Did Ishrat`s family know of Javed`s LeT links and, therefore, her activities?
How come no policeman was injured despite 42 rounds being fired by the terrorists?

Why hadn`t the police arrested Javed and Ishrat on their earlier visits to Gujarat?

How were the terrorists planning to eliminate Narendra Modi?
As the family rushed to the neighbours to borrow a newspaper, the news had already gripped this small hick town and the nation. ``This can`t be true`` was the initial public reaction. Zeenat claims, ``Ishrat has never killed an ant; just forget about her going on a murder mission. How can a caring person like her, who fends for her entire family, be a terrorist?``

Testimonials of Ishrat`s good character and behaviour poured in from school and college teachers, neighbours and friends. To Safia Qureshi, a neighbour, ``Ishrat was a model daughter and sister who was mature enough at a tender age to support the family.`` Down south, in Kerala, M.R. Gopinatha Pillai, 67, a middle-class farmer and Congress activist, couldn`t believe that his son Pranesh (alias Javed) could be involved in terrorist activities.

Conspiracy swirled with cordite as politicians barged into the din. The pre-election environment in Maharashtra triggered curious reactions, charges and demands. NCP leader Vasant Dhavkare rushed to donate Rs 1 lakh to the family, Maharashtra Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde was cornered in Delhi and pressured to hand over the case to the CBI, M. Siddiqui, a Mumbai Congressman, said the encounter was engineered to save Modi from being ousted and Abu Azmi of the Samajwadi Party dubbed the encounter a fake and promised to take it up with the President of India.

The doubts over the genuineness of the encounter are not unexpected. A self-confessed gangster Ketan Tirodkar has alleged on a sworn affidavit in the MCOCA court in Mumbai that he and encounter specialist Daya Nayak delivered one Sadiq Mehtar as a target for an encounter for the Gujarat Police in January 2003. Mehtar was dubbed a LeT operative and killed. While the court has admitted the statement as a petition and is looking into the charges, the credibility of the police has been seriously eroded.

The June 15 encounter also raises several questions ranging from the timing of the incident to the manner in which the police were found scrambling to prove their case. Perhaps it is the lack of credibility that dogs the police force-particularly the Gujarat Police-across the country.

But P.P. Pande, joint commissioner of police, Ahmedabad Crime Branch, doesn`t think so and brushed off allegations of the encounter being stage managed: ``Thanks to the coordination of intelligence and security agencies, we have been able to avert a great calamity.``

T H E E N C O U N T E R
A 15-km chase, an exchange of 112 rounds of fire and four dead.
JUNE 12: Ishrat and Javed leave for Ahmedabad. Halt at Malegaon and reach Ahmedabad on June 13.
JUNE 13: Make recce of Chief Minister Narendra Modi`s residence and other places along with Salim and Janbaaz.

JUNE 14: Ahmedabad Crime Branch receives message at 11 p.m. that four persons in a blue Indica were suspected terrorists. Target: Modi.

JUNE 15: Less than 90 minutes after the message, the Ahmedabad Police seal off entry points and six police teams are out.

JUNE 15: 4 a.m. A team led by ACP Narendra Amin at Narol Circle sees a blue Indica coming from Mumbai zoom past them towards Naroda. Amin`s team intercepts the Indica after a 15 km chase. His guard fires his AK-47 at the tyres bringing the car to a halt near the road divider.

JUNE 15: Around 4:30 a.m.: A terrorist jumps out of the car and starts firing at Amin`s vehicle with an AK-56 after taking cover behind his car. Another team led by ACP P. Singhal fires from the other side. After eight minutes, the firing ceases from the terrorists` side. Score: terrorists fired 42 rounds and police 70 rounds.

THE BOOTY: Police recovered from the Indica one AK-56, one pistol, a satellite phone (its record is still being ascertained), diaries believed to be those of Ishrat, Salim and Javed with details. From the boot of the Indica the police recovered several coconuts and a sack of yellow powder which is being examined by forensic experts. The coconuts indicate that the four also intended to target a place of worship or a religious gathering, perhaps the Jagannath rath yatra in Ahmedabad to be held three days later.

D E A D L Y F O U R S O M E
A student, an electrician and the LeT

ISHRAT JEHAN RAZA, 19: Part-time teacher, first-year BSc student. Resident of Hasmat Park, Mumbra. Was in the front seat next to Javed. No criminal record.

ZEESHAN JOHAR ALIAS JANBAAZ: LeT operative. Resident of Gujranwala in Pakistan, he entered India illegally. Sitting in back seat with Salim, he also fired a pistol.

AMJAD ALI AKBAR RANA ALIAS SALIM: Medical student turned LeT operative. Resident of Sargodha, Pakistan. Was in the back seat and fired a pistol.

JAVED SHEIKH ALIAS PRANESH PILLAI, 32: Electrician-turned-LeT member. Resident of Pune. Was in driver`s seat and fired an AK-56. Long criminal record.

P R E V I O U S I N C I D E N T S

OCTOBER 2002: Samir Khan Pathan, who was plotting to kill Modi and other leaders, was shot when he tried to snatch the pistol of an official. All 13 accused in conspiracy LeT off after his death.

JANUARY 2003: Police killed LeT operative Sadiq Mehtar, a gangster from Bhavnagar, who was accused of plotting to kill Modi, Togadia and Advani. He was killed when he tried to flee from police custody.

JUNE 2003: Police shoot Ganesh Khunte and Mahendra Jadhav who had come to kill Gujarat Law Minister Ashok Bhatt and BJP MLA Bharat Barot at the behest of the Dawood Ibrahim gang.


As the air cleared, police investigations revealed Ishrat was everything her family and neighbours believed. But she was also connected with LeT operatives. Typically, fundamentalist groups target young, educated non-stereotypes for indoctrination. Intelligence agents in Kashmir and Delhi have been regularly intercepting messages of LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad modules aimed at Modi and VHP factotum Pravin Togadia.

A message was intercepted in May in which LeT`s Pakistan-based chief of Indian operations (barring Kashmir), Muzzamil alias Tariq, spoke to Javed. When Muzzamil asked him, ``Lalaji kahan hain (Where is Advani)?`` Javed replied, ``Woh apne ghar pe hain (He is at home).`` Then Muzzamil said, ``Mubarak ka ab kuch karo (Do something about Modi).`` Javed replied, ``Khad ka intezam karo (Arrange for weapons and ammunition).`` The names of the two Pakistani terrorists Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali also figured. Terrorists from Kashmir and the distraught in Gujarat seem to have formed an unusual coalition.

ISHRAT`S DIARY
She had received Rs 4.8 lakh from unidentified sources.
Visited Ahmedabad and Surat thrice in two months.

With Javed and stayed in hotels under false names.

Paid Rs 1,09,000 to Pakistani fidayeen Salim alias Rana.
As unusual as the pairing of Javed and Ishrat. Contrary to rumours, police reveal that there was no love angle. Like Manisha Koirala in Mani Ratnam`s Dil Se, Ishrat had no romantic links with Javed but an allegiance to a cause. Says Amar Jadhav, DCP, crime branch, Thane, ``Prima facie evidence suggests that Ishrat wasn`t innocent. Her role and involvement are matters of investigation and deep concern.``

Police investigations reveal that Javed offered to get Ishrat a decent job in a good company and convinced her mother to send her for interviews to other cities, including Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. Ishrat also acquired a cell phone and fashionable clothes.

In fact, Javed and Ishrat made their first recce of Ahmedabad on March 13. Police are now scrutinising the CCTV footage at the Akshardham Temple to ascertain their second visit in May. Apparently, Javed and Ishrat, who had checked into an Ahmedabad hotel on May 15, had also visited the Akshardham Temple before leaving for Lucknow where they met Salim alias Rana on May 17. Rana accompanied them back to Pune where he stayed with Javed. What is not known is when and where the fourth member Janbaaz joined them.

DIARIES OF JAVED AND SALIM
Plot to target Narendra Modi, L.K. Advani, Pravin Togadia, Bal Thackeray, Vinay Katiyar and Uma Bharati.
Details of making explosives and use of incendiary chemicals, besides drawings of five types of ID circuits.

Details of payments made to other LeT operatives.

UNEASY CALM: Javed with wife
Sajda and child
Javed`s own connections and involvement are less of a mystery. Born Pramesh Kumar Pillai and baptised Javed Ghulam Muhammed Shaikh, he grew up in Thamarakkulam village in Alappuzha district of Kerala before he came to Pune in 1988 to train as an electrician and worked for various contractors including Ishrat`s father in 1992. Besides an income Javed also acquired notoriety. He had been booked for rioting , grievous criminal trespass and possession of lethal weapons. Thereafter he worked in Dubai between 1998 and 2002. Armed with three passports Javed had apparently met Muzammil during his visit to Oman and joined the LeT. Javed last visited his father in the blue Indica with his children and returned to Pune on June 5. His father next saw him in photographs splashed in newspapers.

It isn`t clear as yet as to what triggered the public uproar. Perhaps it was the cold brutality of the encounter laid bare in the pictures splashed by TV channels and newspapers. Public perception revolved around an intriguing contradiction which accepted the apparent involvement of Javed and the two Pakistanis but refused to believe that Ishrat could have had anything to do with the trio despite her travels with them. This is not surprising because Ishrat didn`t fit the stereotype. But then neither did Waleed Alsheri, who held a degree in aeronautical science, and Mohammed Atta, who studied at Technical University of Hamburg, two of those involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack. If the WTC attack was the response of warped minds to humiliations perceived and real, the enrolment of an Ishrat into a terrorist module is a symptom of desperation. In a sense the uproar over the killing of Ishrat Jehan symbolises the disquiet in civil society.

#186 dost-mittarji,
In the part that you fully agree with, Ms. Singh makes a point that`s uncontestable by its very nature (I for one asked what was she doing with those characters), repeats the insinuation that they were after Modi and then tries to establish her credibility by arguing that she is holier than the civil rights groups. A through and through political, self-aggrandizing statement.
The essay itself seems targeted at a certain kind of audience and an artificial attempt at balance permeates it. Bearded men and veiled women have lived in india for centuries as indian citizens and for Ms. Singh to claim that profiling of the sort done in a foreign airport should be acceptable to indians (muslims or hindus) betrays bigotry, confusion or both. If this woman is a progressive, india is in big trouble.

ankit#184:
That was a relevant piece from tavleen singh. I fully agree with the following:

``Every newspaper I read painted the dead girl out to be a model of virtue who could not possibly have had anything to do with terrorism or terrorists. Almost nobody asked what she was doing in a car filled with armed men allegedly on a mission to assassinate Narendra Modi. And, speaking of whom may I say that in the campaign to demonise him (of which I totally approve) what puzzles me is the absence of clamour from our hyperactive civil rights groups about the fate of those Muslims in Gujarat who are still unable to return to their villages. Modi’s crime was not just that he allowed violence against people he was supposed to protect but that after the violence was over he did nothing to help the victims return to their homes. There are thousands of Muslims in Gujarati villages who continue to live in terror because the killers remain unpunished. Nobody speaks for them just as nobody speaks for the victims of other riots who continue to fight their lonely battles for justice``

To be fair to the much maligned author of this thread, she did not assume the girl to be innocent.
If tavleen singh has not already been dubbed a saffronite, she soon would be. But IMs should instead pay attention to what she says and do some introspection. She strikes a highly responsive chord among the unbiased hindus or what one might call soft secularists; a lesser known fact is that she is not a hindu herself. And she has made a point that I have repeatedly made on chowk - that unless secularists condemn muslim communalists as strongly as hindu communalists, they play right into the hands of the the likes of Modi and Tagodia. I admire the strict way in which Antony handled the hindu killings at Marad in Kerala. Unfortunately, the secularists criticised him and called him a soft-hindutva supporter, although his timely condemnation and strict action probably prevented the backlash and the growth of support for the bjp that would have happened in the absence of such timely action.

172

have not been able to see Dev. Nevetheless, this article is totally biased.

Look at this:
``
Yet, Dev has scenes of Muslim mobs retaliating, daring to torch Hindu shops (an acceptable version of events — communal violence as a clash between two `equal` enemies). Far worse, Nihalani reinforces the action-reaction justification for the carnage. (The burning of the Sabarmati coach at Godhra and the killing of the kar sevaks is here substituted by a motorcycle bomb which kills devotees at a Ganesh temple.)

``

did muslims not retaliate where they could in gujrat? then why were so many hindus among the victims of the violence? the administration did take sides, but it is nobody`s case that the muslims did retalitate with violence where they were capable of doing it.

and what is this action reaction part? is it not a fact that the things started after godhara. it is a different matter to justify and say that since godhara happened, the riots can be forgiven. that is not acceptable. but it is definitely true that things started with godhara- it is a historical fact and one cannot just wish it away.

and this:
``
While the true facts of Godhra remain a mystery (which we hope our new and esteemed railway minister will soon unravel), Nihalani does not engage with such bothersome detail
``

so the true facts of godhara are a mystery. maybe a raw conspiracy similar to the one in which they were trailing four terrorists for months? even better will be declaring it a rss conspiracy!


and why are you fuming Farzana. Why did you post it if you dont think what it says is okay?

A piece by Tavleen Singh

http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=49831

Why we are a soft target for terrorists

On the morning that the American engineer, Paul Johnson, was beheaded by his terrorist captors in Saudi Arabia I happened to be arriving in London. At Heathrow airport, ahead of me in the immigration queue, was a Muslim family of sub-continental origin. The man wore an Islamic beard and looked as if dressed for Friday prayers. Skullcap, short pyjamas and long kurta and the three women accompanying him were so totally veiled that only their eyes showed. The orthodoxy of their attire or the beheading in Saudi Arabia must have been playing on the mind of the British immigration officer because he interrogated this family longer than I have ever seen anyone being interrogated at immigration before.
While the rest of us waited impatiently in a queue that got longer by the minute the Muslim gentleman was questioned and questioned again. His passport was examined first by one official, then another, then some sort of supervisor poured over it frowningly. The veiled ladies, meanwhile, were escorted to a hidden chamber and kept there for what seemed like half-an-hour and it was only at the end of all this that they were allowed to enter Britain. Exhausted though I was from my long flight I watched the proceedings with interest because it made me realise how political correctness in our own fair and wondrous land makes us an even softer terrorist target than we already are.


If a Muslim family had been treated this way at an Indian airport there would have been a case in the Human Rights Commission against the immigration department. Political correctness, particularly in the media, makes us nearly always give terrorists rather than the police the benefit of doubt. A recent example is the case of the Mumbai college girl who was killed in a police shootout with alleged terrorists.

Every newspaper I read painted the dead girl out to be a model of virtue who could not possibly have had anything to do with terrorism or terrorists. Almost nobody asked what she was doing in a car filled with armed men allegedly on a mission to assassinate Narendra Modi. And, speaking of whom may I say that in the campaign to demonise him (of which I totally approve) what puzzles me is the absence of clamour from our hyperactive civil rights groups about the fate of those Muslims in Gujarat who are still unable to return to their villages. Modi’s crime was not just that he allowed violence against people he was supposed to protect but that after the violence was over he did nothing to help the victims return to their homes. There are thousands of Muslims in Gujarati villages who continue to live in terror because the killers remain unpunished. Nobody speaks for them just as nobody speaks for the victims of other riots who continue to fight their lonely battles for justice.

This peculiarly selective approach to human rights discredits the cause just as the absence of firm measures to deal with Islamic terrorists, and the institutions that breed them, ends up discrediting all Muslims. The root cause is political correctness carried to such absurd lengths that we in the media do not even dare point out that young Muslims are being misled onto paths of violence by half-literate, half-witted mullahs whose influence has grown dangerously ever since political Islam began its confrontation with the West. Civil rights groups must share the blame because quick though they are to point out the evils of ‘‘saffronisation’’ they rarely pick up on the tirade against ‘‘infidels’’ that carries on in Muslim religious and educational institutions. It is these institutions that are the breeding grounds of terrorism but not even a BJP government was able to do anything for fear that it would be seen as an attack on Muslims.

It is an issue that will have to be addressed if we are to stop the poison spreading. There is no harm in Islamic schools and religious institutions teaching knowledge of the religion but if that is all a child is taught from its first day of learning to its last it grows up thinking of those who are not Muslims as infidels. From this exclusivity comes the desire to kill unbelievers as enemies of the faith. Whatever Islam’s grouse against the West it cannot be used as an excuse for terrorism in India and yet we have been dealing with Islamic terrorism longer than any Western country.

Kashmir’s ‘‘freedom movement’’ was hijacked by radical Islamists in the early nineties and the first beheading of a Westerner was that of that poor Norwegian tourist in Kashmir in 1995. Nobody even found out what happened to the others who were abducted along with him and then we saw the advent of Omar Sheikh and Azhar Masood who were in India to recruit troops for the cause. So hopeless were our anti-terrorism measures that we kept these two evil men in our jails for several years before graciously exchanging them for the passengers of IC-814 in Kandahar.

Incompetence and an absence of political will are part of the reasons why we have been unable to deal with terrorism but political correctness is almost as much to blame because its pressure forces our political leaders to turn a blind eye. Political correctness to such a degree that we cannot say Islamic terrorism without being accused of communalism. We can, though, say Hindu fundamentalist and Sikh terrorist without anyone protesting. What does that tell you?

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Re. 177
[#172 by FarzanaVersey
`` While the true facts of Godhra remain a mystery `` ]

Read first. I have posted an article by someone else, and it screams out in the first sentence itself. Because you cannot get back at that writer, just spew your venom here. Old tactic. Quit.

This board is slowly becoming the RSS, Sai Baba Apologist and Hindu Extremist hound.

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Farzana,

Ashok Row Kavi`s letter is very poignant. As for the rest, my mind crashed navigating the anfractuous path of your logic obscured by the fog of information.

Simplicity is terribly under-rated.

Satire

#172 by FarzanaVersey

`` While the true facts of Godhra remain a mystery ``


Like, may be, more than 25 women and children set themselves ablaze to malign muslim community ?

Oh!!!! how devious they are. Muslims sure deserve a free pass to commit mass murders because the evil non-muslims just commit suicide inorder to malign muslims.

#171:

I had read a comment about the court case against `Dev`. You are right that the case itself is about communal clashes that could flare up. The full story of the legal battle is available on http://www.rediff.com/movies/2004/jun/19dev.htm...I took my time to respond because I wanted to double check.

The Poetry of Healing Doctor, Who Took Time Off to Write, Uses New Book to Chronicle Struggle With Being Gay and Hispanic
The Miami Herald, Inc.; Thursday, February 20, 1997
Fabiola Santiago; Herald Staff Writer

---

Tucked between poetic sentences about love and healing, between lines that speak of death sentences and life choices, is the story of the little boy Rafael Campo used to be. So intertwined are the pain of growing up a gay man in a macho culture and a Cuban in an Anglo world that his memories of alienation meld into one.
When he returned to suburban New Jersey after spending several years living in Venezuela, some of Campo`s new elementary school classmates beat him up. They called him ``faggot,`` or maybe it was ``spic.``

``I cannot remember which,`` Campo writes in his new book of essays, The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor`s Education in Empathy, Identity and Desire (W.W. Norton, $23), a chronicle of his struggle to reconcile being Hispanic and gay.

``My sense that I was in some way different led me to write,`` Campo said during a recent visit to Miami Beach. ``I began writing at a very young age to try to heal the fractures, the differences. The act of writing represented an opportunity for healing. Not only was I different ethnically from my peers, but I began to understand I was different in terms of my sexual orientation as well.``

Born of immigrants

Campo, 32, was born in New Jersey of immigrant parents who met in college. His mother is Italian. His Cuban father came to the United States after the Cuban Revolution. One of his fondest childhood memories is the voice of his father reading him poems in melodious Spanish. Raised in a bilingual household, Campo spent part of his childhood in Venezuela and part in New Jersey, where his impeccable grades in public schools won him scholarships to Amherst College and Harvard Medical School.

``I thought medicine could provide me a camouflage, or shield me from those in the majority who could never understand my being different,`` said Campo, who now teaches and practices medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital of Boston, where he is an internist.

In his book, he writes, ``As a child of immigrants, I imagined that my white coat might make up for, possibly even purify, my nonwhite skin; learning the medical jargon might be the ultimate refutation of any questions about what my first language had been.``

Tried to deny differences

Throughout young adulthood, Campo tried to deny to himself and hide his sexuality and heritage from others. His gnawing need to write made him an even greater target of ridicule, even within his family, who thought writing was ``queer and sissy.``

Medical school, he felt, ``could contain me and straighten me out.`` On campus, he and his friend Jorge Arroyo, who later became his lifelong companion, shut out their sexual feelings for each other by chasing girls like other college men.

``I thought I could cure myself of my own emerging identities; perhaps drinking too much guava nectar and listening too intently to merengues had made me too obviously Cuban, or masturbating too much had made me gay,`` he writes.

Meeting Arroyo, who is Puerto Rican, at predominantly Anglo Amherst brought him closer to his identity as a Hispanic American, Campo said. Their developing friendship and later love -- ``confirming what we had known for almost two years`` -- gave Campo the courage to accept who he was. They`ve been together now for 11 years.

Medicine to literature

And medical school -- a training process he found ``so demanding and dehumanizing, with such disrespect for the suffering people`` -- gave him the motivation he needed to take a risk and do something many considered outrageous. In his third year of medical school, Campo took a detour to go to graduate school and study literature.

In the process, he wrote two books of poetry, The Other Man Was Me, published by Houston`s Arte Publico Press in 1994 and the winner of the National Poetry Series Prize, and What the Body Told. His essays also found readers not in scientific publications, but in prestigious, popular magazines such as The New York Times Magazine and the Boston Review.

In writing The Poetry of Healing, Campo has broken with at least one taboo in the Hispanic community -- the code of silence when it comes to gay lifestyles.

``I don`t think Latin culture is more homophobic than the Anglo culture,`` said Eduardo Aparicio, who publishes Perra, a magazine for South Florida`s Hispanic gay community. ``It`s just that there is a different code of behavior: You don`t flaunt it.

``In the Anglo culture, you verbalize all these things, you talk publicly about sexuality, you demand your rights through laws, you give testimonials on TV,`` Aparicio said. ``But in Latin families, what occurs is an acceptance without talking about the issue. That, however, doesn`t mean there is a rejection. On the contrary, there is almost a sheltering, a need to protect from others. That`s why your mother will tell you, `It`s OK, but don`t tell your cousin or your uncle.` ``

Breaking the silence

Telling his parents he was gay was difficult, but the distance that the silence had put between them was more painful, Campo said.

``Being able to give voice to some of this has allowed me to have a dialogue with them, and they have accepted me,`` Campo said. ``Healing is to love when love seems not possible. They have been able to love me despite this issue, which is still very difficult for them in many respects. My partner, however, has not been so fortunate. His father has practically disowned him.``

Campo said his willingness to reveal himself also has enriched his practice of medicine. His patients, many of whom are Hispanic and are living with HIV, often ask, ``Are you married? Do you have children?``

``I`m very open with them,`` he said. ``I haven`t had a single patient react with anything but acceptance. It`s part of the therapeutic relationship. There is so much power in the ability to talk about issues, to share in suffering. They can understand the pain I felt in being rejected in the same way I try to understand their pain and suffering in living with their illness. It`s amazing how that provides the opportunity for a deepening of the relationship. I think I`m very lucky that way.``

Campo is developing a course on literature and medicine, ``a way to share some of the writing I found so useful.`` He plans to keep writing about how culture and identity affect the healing process.

What he learns every day is so important it must be published, Campo said, despite his fears of others in his profession who may not be so tolerant of differences. After all, he said, he has already conquered his greatest demon.

``Now, I realize,`` Campo said, ``that for a long time, what I had feared most was my own humanity.``

MARICE COHN BAND / Herald Staff TIME TO HEAL: Rafael Campos, a doctor in Massachusetts, reads from The Poetry of Healing, which he wrote in his struggle to identify himself as gay and Hispanic.

CAPTION: photo: Rafael Campos (a)

Jang,

Perhaps one day you`ll write something as humane and intelligent....

sridhar

I respect your faith in Baba, but I think in today`s world you should not shy away from questioning. Others may not look at him in the same manner that you are doing and they have the right to differ, although I agree that it should be in a manner that tends to accomodate you emotions.

More important that this, I think people who are Baba`s disciples should come forward and take the initiative in answering the questions that are asked. Otherwise you will run the risk of being of the same quality who invoke kuran to justify all kinds of heinous things going around. I am sure you dont want to fall into the category of apologists that we see here in hordes.

Not relevant to the topic, but since I mentioned it in one of my posts...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/752851.cms

Patronising Secularism: Watching Dev Through Muslim Eyes
FARAH NAQVI

[ FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 2004 12:00:00 AM ]

Hamlavar ban kar aaye the, badshah ban kar raaj kiya ab gaddar ban kar aish karna chahte hain (they came here as invaders, ruled like kings, and now want to have a good time as traitors), declares Om Puri, `the bad cop` in Dev about Muslims. As my (Muslim) friend and I cringe in the darkness of the cinema hall in Ahmedabad, the titter of laughter which greets this grotesque description hits us. It`s the way people laugh at an inside joke. `We` are on the outside. Nothing has changed in Gujarat.


The lines are sharply drawn. And so, we watch the rest of the film, feeling very much like two `Muslims`, surrounded by a sea of tittering `Hindus` whose first instinct — sympathise with the paranoid Muslim-hater Om Puri — is only gradually won over by the secular moral narrative of the Hindu hero Dev (played by Amitabh Bachchan). But even this is a sad, compromised victory. For what Dev peddles is `soft` secularism, the preferred parivar version of Gujarat 2002.

Dev is about Gujarat. Make no mistake about it. Ignore Govind Nihalani`s protests that his film is `really` about Mumbai, Meerut, Bhiwadi and every other riot in the country. (That the location of the film is Mumbai rather than Gujarat is a matter of irrelevant detail.)

The `meaning` of a film is determined by its context, by how its audiences choose to `read` it. Certainly in Gujarat, perhaps elsewhere too, Dev is being `read` as the film version of the events of February-March 2002. And to those events Nihalani has done a grave injustice. For those events were not a riot, by any stretch of the imagination. They were a one-sided massacre. And Muslims were a cowering herd, not a violent mob. Yet, Dev has scenes of Muslim mobs retaliating, daring to torch Hindu shops (an acceptable version of events — communal violence as a clash between two `equal` enemies). Far worse, Nihalani reinforces the action-reaction justification for the carnage. (The burning of the Sabarmati coach at Godhra and the killing of the kar sevaks is here substituted by a motorcycle bomb which kills devotees at a Ganesh temple.)

While the true facts of Godhra remain a mystery (which we hope our new and esteemed railway minister will soon unravel), Nihalani does not engage with such bothersome detail. In his version, an evil Muslim don is responsible for the bomb blast which begins the cycle of revenge-massacre of Muslims. It`s all justified. The final approval comes from the mouth of Dev himself, the moral exemplar, the police officer with a conscience who embodies the secular spirit of `Indian (Hindu) nation`. When Farhan, an angry young Muslim played by Fardeen Khan, tells Dev to stop offering sympathy when the latter`s hands are tainted with the blood of Muslims, a furious Dev reminds his misguided Muslim friend of the Ganesh temple bomb blast, par is saare fasad ki jad kya thi ? (What started it all?) Tab kiske haath khoon se range the?`` (Whose hands were tainted with blood then?) he asks.

The audience hums in approval. Farhan is silenced. Godhra as the cause for Gujarat 2002 (the fasad ki jad ) is upheld. Dev invokes the `liberal` sentiment: ``It was truly terrible to kill so many Muslims, but really that burning at Godhra was so grizzly and somehow `they` always seem to start it all...`` Not only are Muslims blamed for the carnage, they are responsible for catalysing pretty much anything bad which happens in the film. Even when Muslims refuse to lodge FIRs despite being raped and pillaged, the fault lies with one of them — the Muslim don-leader has instructed them not to. (Anyone who has stood in Gujarat`s police stations and watched a hostile police blatantly refuse to lodge any complaints from Muslim survivors will fume at Nihalani`s storyline).

At another level, Dev is a narrative about an Indian nation whose salvation lies in soft, patronising secularism. The upright police officer mouths platitudes about the samvidhan or Constitution. He will not violate the samvidhan at the behest of the wicked CM, he declares time and again, with portraits of Gandhi-Nehru prominent in the backdrop. It would be fine if things stopped here. But his secularism is made greater, its generosity even more generous, because he has ample reason not to worry too much about the samvidhan . Dev lost his young son to a terrorist`s bullets. (The religious affiliation of the terrorist is never specified. Nihalani leaves it to our imagination.) In this, Dev is India, a nation wounded by Muslim terrorists. Yet, Dev is magnanimous enough to embrace all religions in his secular person. Secularism, the narrative seems to suggest, is not a matter of right but of patronage by a large-hearted and forgiving nation-state. Indeed, so great and inclusive is this secularism, that Dev even begins to see Farhan as his dead son, wooing him away from the influence of Muslim don Latif.

Finally, Farhan sees the truth. Only in accepting the moral leadership of Dev, the high secular Hindu, can the Muslim community get justice and salvation. Farhan (read as legitimate Muslim anger) is neutralised. Long live secularism.

Dev is insidious. It takes one of the most brutal communal carnages in modern India, and seeks to resolve its dilemmas by resorting to stereotyped image-making about Muslims, distorting the events of Gujarat, and peddling a watered-down, patronising version of the secular principle. At best, it`s another offensive film but one whose secularism will appeal to far too many people.

is a journalist expected to, at the very least, retract his/her claim when evidence is provided to the contrary?

i am referring to #113 and #144.

#168. . .anytime to accomodate your ignorant, nonsensical, toxic, long hot-winded responses.

#161 by Saminasha

that was beautiful. Did not understand it but beuty is about experiencing and not necessarily about understanding. Now I shall go see ``Paris is Burning`` again. Thanks Samina.

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#151

could i have expected anything different from u people?

brilliant response, sir. absolutely. please don`t even bother explaining what that means, because your passions on chowk are quite evident. it doesn`t even merit a defense, except to comment that to lump myself and urstruly in the same category, nay, even in the same nationality would be an insult to urstruly. for goodness` sakes man, there are people here who think you speak intelligently. please don`t prove them wrong.

So what if people are gay. I am gay and have lived in Pakistan as one. While I`ll probably never go back - boy did I have a great time there. Actually us gays are probably the most secular and tolerant folks back there - maybe you need more of us.

Yeah, and dont anyone say bad-stuff about Michael. Just Beat it ok, he is a Lover! He built the never-never land and all those laundas just want his money and the DA of Malibu is a racist, ( this i dont get since Michael is a born-again white). And the AP cops will not be able to accept-pursue an FIR for the same reason Mumbai Cops cannot sell confisticated Bhai property in Byculla.

Incidently Ferzana, there are also a lot of new Muslim Peers/Babas advertising on the Satellite Channels in the US. Are they also big bussiness in India or Gulf or something?

Whats wrong with Gay Godmen? Where do I sign up? Boy you guys are running scared. Tell me is it our fangs or our multiple heads that scare you? Or just the thought of us getting a head? We live, we breath and we die just the same as you. Our lives are not spent in thinking just about sex all the time. We work, have jobs and want to succeed as as much as the girl in the next cubicle. Most of us have very strong views on child abuse - do you think they are all done by gay men and Catholic priests? There is in my mind nothing more beautiful in the world than a child`s laughter.
So tell me what scares you most about us? That your husbands and brothers will abandon you for a brother in arm? Famlies will collapse?
The world will go on. Hetrosexual people will meet, marry, divorce and have kids (not necessarily in that order) and in the midst of this if some sex people meet and truely love each other what makes you think that your world will collapse? If I want to adopt some orphaned child and provide him/her with a future what makes you think only pedophila is on cards? Dad and Dad can love their kids as much as Mums and Dad or Mums and Stepdads or Dad and his new Partner.
Sorry for the outburst - feel much better now - don`t evne remembered what triggered it.

Ref my post 160 below, the first sentence in the third para should read, ``It might be of interest that the person questioning me has made several allegations against me...``

Jang and other people who are afraid to to think outside their prejudices-ignore the following poem and continue to live in your fantasy worlds in which you think you will be welcomed into God`s heaven.

All humane and fearless intellectuals, I was reminded of Mark Doty`s poem:



Adonis Theater

It must have seemed the apex of dreams,
The movie palace on Eighth Avenue
With its tiered chrome ticket-booth,
Tibetan, the phantom blonde head

Of the cashier floating
In its moon window. They’d undone each other
All over the neighborhood, raising
These blunt pastiches of anywhere

We couldn’t go: a pagoda, a future,
A Nepal. The avenue fed into the entry
With its glass case of radiant stars,
Their eyes dreamy and blown

Just beyond human proportions to prepare us
For how enormous they would become inside,
After the fantastic ballroom of the lobby,
When the uniformed usher would show the way

To seats reserved for us in heaven.
I don’t know when it closed,
Or if it ever shut down entirely,
But sometime-the forties?-

They stopped repainting the frescoes,
And when the plaster fell they merely
Swept it away, and allowed
The gaps in the garlands of fruit

That decked the ceiling above the second balcony.
The screen shrunk to a soiled blank
Where these smaller films began to unreel,
Glorifying not the face but the body

Or rather, bodies, ecstatic
And undifferentiated as one film ends
And the next begins its brief and awkward exposition
Before it reaches the essential

Matter of flesh. No one pays much attention
To the screen. The viewers wander
In the steady generous light washing back
Up the long aisles towards the booth.

Perhaps we’re hurt by becoming
Beautiful in the dark, whether we watch
Douglas Fairbanks escaping from a dreamed,
Suavely oriental city-think of those leaps

From the parapet, how he almost flies
From the grasp of whatever would limit him-
Or the banal athletics of two or more men who were
And probably remain strangers. Perhaps

There’s something cruel in the design
Of the exquisitely plaster box
Built to frame the exotic
And call it desirable. When the show’s over

Its is, whether it’s the last frame
Of Baghdad or the impossibly extended
Come shot. And the solitary viewers,
The voyeurs and the married men go home,

Released from the swinging chrome doors
With their splendid reliefs
Of the implements of artistry,
Released into the streets as though washed

In something, marked with some temporary tattoo
That will wear away on the train ride home,
Before anyone has time to punish them for it.
Something passing, even through the blood,

Momentarily, has broken into flower
In the palace of limitless desire-
How could one ever be done with a god?
All its illusion conspires,

As it always has, to show us one another
In this light, whether we look to
Or away from the screen.

--Mark Doty
From Turtle, Swan, & Bethlehem in Broad Daylight

As expected the issue has become one godman...blind belief garbed as admiration indeed. And now only because people already know there is a lot of material available against the Baba, I should not go along with it. What an argument! Just as those who have been to Puttarpathi Ashram can return and talk about the great work being done there, others who have had other kinds of experiences have expressed their thoughts. Some will agree with one, some with the other.

This is what I had written:``Why has there been no follow-up regarding the recent allegations against the famous baba who had sexually assaulted a boy?``

It might be of interest that the person questioning me has made several allegations (found two precious ones #32, 34 on the `Excavating India` board). Will anyone care to back these with proof? I will not even comment on the level of such discourse.

And for general information, I do not seek to get posts censored.

Re. Satya Sai Baba, those interested can run a search engine and you will find various aspects, positive and negative...you can also buy Sai incense sticks.

The following url interested me because it had reports from various papers and since it is from a decade-old, it shows that the matter is not new.
http://home.no.net/anir/Sai/enigma/PressEvidence.htm

There is also an online petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/saibaba/petition.html

I have no intention of commenting further on this godman on this board.

resridhar

welcome back my friend. It made me shudder to think what would chowk be like without hindu religious nuts and bigots, we might then end up with just hamidm`s endless recycling of his tripe. (shuddering). I think some heeng is always necessary to spice up life.

#155 by soundmeister

[people trust their lives to this god-man, not to mention their children`s. why should his behaviour be above question? if there really **have** been allegations of abuse aganinst him, the least we can do (and I don`t mean the authorities, half of whom are probably blind devotees themselves) is ask a few pointed questions. those who believe will continue to do so, a few sceptics won`t affect their faith.]

Fair enough, there have been numerous allegations against Sathya Sai Baba, and Farzana`s question is very valid, but may I add that not one, not one of these allegations has been proved. Again, isn`t the onus of proving him guilty on those who have made the allegations in the 1st place? I`m not a devotee of the Baba, though I live close enough (some 300 miles away) to be able to visit him whenever I wish, and I`ve passed his town on at least half-a-dozen occasions without caring to stop by. But c`mon, is it fair to hurl allegations at someone just because someone else has?

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Farzana

I commend your boldness in taking up a thorny issue which somehow makes people insecure. It is always difficult to see the patterns one assumes as normal shaken up by alternative lifestyles and I am no different in that sense of overwhelming shock and fear. O my goodness, will heterosexual marriages be a thing of the past? will the safe sturdiness of family a man a woman and the kids disappear into singletons indulging in endless rounds of casual sex, gender regardless?? Are there no rules left in life to give order and predictability? No morals, no limits, no perfect family? Will we all be gay in a 100 years??

if it is of any use, people who have researched the gay issue say a few things that should reassure us:
1. Gaydom isnt catching; it is a tendency/a talent like hand eye coordination or depth perception.
2. The mind and the body have very subtle and unique connections. People feel sexual attraction both emotionally and physically. So people cant fall in love with one gender and have sex with another.
3. Gay people`s relationships survive against all odds in many many cases.
4. They suffer the same agonies of love that the rest of us do.

The interesting thing is that gay researchers are the ones who tend to put out research on gay lifestyles marriages and parenting. So we really dont have a totally objective yardstick assuming that our often dysfunctional heterosexuals are the yardstick.

I have little idea why people are so upset with you. wish you the best. The only thing that bothered me slightly were a few sweeping generalizations. I am guessing you have your observations to back you up.

hey sridhar, for someone who swore off this board you sure stop by a lot!

i think farzie`s question is very fair. people trust their lives to this god-man, not to mention their children`s. why should his behaviour be above question? if there really **have** been allegations of abuse aganinst him, the least we can do (and I don`t mean the authorities, half of whom are probably blind devotees themselves) is ask a few pointed questions. those who believe will continue to do so, a few sceptics won`t affect their faith.

what I find disturbing is your apparent assumption that nobody should dare question the man just because he has done some good in his life (which is undeniable fact).

re: #151
``There is a superspeaciality hospital that has 3 free by-pass surgeries.``
The above should read: ``There is a superspeciality hospital that performs about 3 bypass surgeries a day free of cost``
Sridhar

re: #129 by nooralain
Not accused!
Reread the following sentence she wrote:

``Why has there been no follow-up regarding the recent allegations against the famous baba who had sexually assaulted a boy? Because he was sanctified by religion?``
Farzanabibi has already decided that the allegations are true but questioning why nobody is protesting. I think, unless this woman has made some grammatical error in framing a sentence (which is taught in the fifth grade level in school), i think i am right in saying what is said. Let her come and clarify if she meant differently.
Where is she hiding anyway?
Sridhar

re: Urstruly, Noorlain
Could i have expected anything different from u people?
re: Ralph`s post
You may not believe and that is O.K. BTW, i am not a sai baba follower. Just an admirer. I visited that place (Puttaparthy) some years ago and was impressed by the way that saint has turned it around. There is free education till the college level. There is a superspeaciality hospital that has 3 free by-pass surgeries. Doctors from the world over give free time to serve there. It is just amazing.
But, as i said, you or anyone else do not have to believe in it. One however must show some respect to a person who has 100 million followers all over the world. Farzana bibi just throws words to the winds. A journalist has to be careful what he/she writes. Is that asking for too much?
Sridhar

re:#135 by AlephNull
Thanks for the post.
I joined Chowk in the beginning of 2001 and it has been 3 years and more than 2000 posts already. I have seen some good people leave. People like Shashi, Prem etc. It was fun and one could argue with some passion.
Chowk has not evolved the way i thought it would. Hardliners would not ever give in even when confronted with the truth. I think it is asking for too much but i also get very worked up when plain stupid articles get published and people waste time debating on it.
I saw a program on TV on my visit to India sometime ago and it was about the increasing episodes of kissing in public places in India (i have never seen one!) and i thought: was this a relevant topic? Is this the burning issue?
In the same vein: is lesbianism a relevant topic (BTW, i tried to see the movie Girlfriend and could not finish it. it just sucks)?
Anyway, i will take sometime from Chowk and see how it works. If i am addicted (i hope not!), i will come back and hope people won`t take me to task for it. Otherwise, it is adieus and goodbye to all (yes, that includes Urstruly, Romair and the like; i had fun whipping you guys and you know it!).
Sridhar
PS: Thanks again for your kind words

re: Gujjubania`s post to me
I like u but did not like the way u went about defaming a whole community. Muslims are a part of India and India is enriched by their presence. Where would we be without Md Rafi, Naushad, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Duleep Kumar etc. Can we say we do not want muslims but want the Taj Mahal? It is just a POV and may be i am an just old fashioned fool. My secularim of course comes from a deep understanding of hinduism and its scriptures. Nowhere have i read about hatred against other religions.
That apart, i hope u realize none of what i said to u or others is to be taken personally. Still. i apologise to u and othere if i have caused any hurt.
Sridhar
P.S: Gujjubania, if u are really in your teens, then it is i who envy u. You seem precoccious for your age. I hope u steer your brainpower in the right direction and not be a victim of hate.

nikki7777

your responses personally are incredibly pathetic and not at all amusing. and whoever you are, you don`t deserve any more responses. everyone of course is free to offer their opinions here, but if you are using what you call intelligence to offer your opinions on anyone and everyone at this site, you`d better think again brotherman. give us facts, don`t give us your messed up excuses for `writing`.

and if you call this tripe, it`s still steps above what comes from the sewer (and below). . .

just for the record, and your information. . .this is not an anti- anything site. it`s the people who make this anti-this or anti-that. you make this an anti-pakistani, anti-punjabi, anti-kashmiri, anti-bhagwaan jaane place. and your pathetic imagination chooses to consider this an anti-indian site. if this is where you want to let off your droppings, be my guest. . .some of us prefer to keep far away from your stink. . .and i hope farzana does just that. you just ain`t worth it baybeh.

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An article by Nivedita Menon-
indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=39566

concerned
``you can replace the words `sai baba` in the above narration with any religious figure and the outcome is likely to be the same, or in some cases, worse``

yeah stuka, try saying bad stuff about a sikh guru for a trial, and you wont be surprised ;-)

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just for confirmation of my #113.

http://www.rediff.com/movies/2004/jun/16dev.htm

The first protest against Govind Nihalani`s film Dev has risen from Gujarat...

Sandeep Chandrasinh Revre, a resident of Rajkot, has filed a case in a Rajkot court against Nihalani for making a film that threatens to ignite communal clashes between two communities...

According to Revre and his counsel Kamlesh Shah, there are many dialogues and scenes in Dev which are sure to hurt the feelings of Hindus as well as Muslims. Some of these dialogues and scenes are so sensitive that they may do great harm to their faith and respect for their respective religions, the petitioners claim.

In response to Revre`s petition, Civil Judge D J Shah has issued a notice to Nihalani, asking him to be present in the Rajkot court on Friday, June 18.

KS#116: I missed this post earlier. I know there were men in our region who looked very wimpy and some times acted very feminine..they were ridiculed by most other ``real`` en insinuating things and spreading rumours about them.....not many may be 2 or 3 in the whole village of 5000 people...I don`t remember anything about chichi paalish thingie.

KS#116: I missed this post earlier. I know there were men in our region who looked very wimpy and some times acted very feminine..they were ridiculed by most other ``real`` en insinuating things and spreading rumours about them.....not many may be 2 or 3 in the whole village of 5000 people...I don`t remember anything about chichi paalish thingie.

stuka,

[...I have noticed generally that followers of Sai Baba are pretty sensitive. This gora housing agent in Boston once refused to show me homes because he found out I was Indian and asked me my opinion on the guy and I said he was a fraud...]

you can replace the words `sai baba` in the above narration with any religious figure and the outcome is likely to be the same, or in some cases, worse.

indeed chowk needs intelligent folk to label others as scum, call women moronic and low-class, make personal pointed comments about their sexual lives, refer to certain people at chowk as islamic fascists, question people`s patriotism, label people as pond scum and worse, go on the rampage on our mothers and sisters and on many many many an occasion have not a grip, or a clue.

i love chowk and i say yeeeeaaaaaah boooooy! bring on the noise! bring it on!!!!