After subjecting the nation’s biggest banks to the most public scrutiny

After subjecting the nation’s biggest banks to the most public scrutiny in decades, federal regulators ordered 10 of them on Thursday to raise a total of $75 billion in extra capital and gave the rest a clean bill of health. Skip to next paragraphThe long-awaited results of the “stress tests” set off an immediate scramble by major institutions for more capital. By June 8, they must give regulators their plans for raising the money, and raise it by November.

The verdict was far more upbeat than many in the industry had feared when the tests were first announced in February. And the banks that came up short will have to raise much less than some analysts had expected as recently as a few days ago.

The stress tests were aimed at estimating how much each bank would lose if the economic downturn proved even deeper than currently expected. But regulators gave the banks a break by letting them bolster their capital with unusually strong first-quarter profits and also by letting them predict modest profits even if the economy again turns down.

Despite an almost tangible sense of relief among the banks and investors, the report card is unlikely to silence an intense debate over whether the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve let the banks off too easily and glossed over their problems.

Under the worst-case assumptions — an unemployment rate of 10.3 percent next year, an economic contraction of 3.3 percent this year and a 22 percent further decline in housing prices — the losses by the 19 banks could total $600 billion this year and next, or 9.1 percent of the banks’ total loans, regulators concluded. That rate of loss would be higher than any other since 1921.

But while the adverse situation was supposed to be unlikely, it is not that much worse than what has happened so far. Unemployment hit 8.5 percent in April and could top 9 percent as early as Friday, when the Labor Department releases its employment report for May.

Bank of America was told it would have to come up with $33.9 billion. Wells Fargo will have to find $13.7 billion. And Citigroup will have to produce another $5.5 billion, on top of the $52.5 billion that it had planned to acquire by letting the Treasury become its biggest single shareholder as part of a broader deal.

Industry executives reacted with jubilation, as if they had proved their critics wrong and passed the tests with flying colors.

“The results off the stress tests should put to rest the harmful speculation we have seen over the past few months,” declared Edward L. Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association, hours before the results were even made public.

Investors, who had already bid up share prices of the big banks in reaction to leaks about the results earlier this week, reacted with relief.

Regulators and bank executives alike predicted that most of the institutions would be able to build up the necessary capital from private sources — either by selling off assets or by converting shares of preferred stock into ordinary stock.

“With the clarity that today’s announcement will bring, we hope banks are going to get back to the business of banking,” Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, said Thursday.

Wells Fargo immediately announced that it would raise $6 billion through a new stock offering. Morgan Stanley, which was told to raise $1.8 billion, announced plans for a $2 billion stock offering.

GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, will need to find $11.5 billion in capital. Last week the government gave GMAC more federal funds after it agreed to be the lender for purchasers of Chrysler vehicles while Chrysler is under bankruptcy protection. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department supplied the company with $5 billion through its Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Regulators did not push for the ouster of any chief executives, or demand any specific board shake-ups. They also said they would not subject the rest of the nation’s banks to similar stress tests or require them to have additional capital buffers.

But Treasury and Fed officials said they would press banks to improve their governance and would reserve the right to demand changes in management for banks that need substantial additional help from taxpayers.

Indeed, Bank of America is expected to announce that it will start recruiting fresh board members in a bid to strengthen oversight over its management.

Despite the reassuring picture outlined by Mr. Geithner and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, the stress test results hardly silenced critics who have warned that the tests would amount to a whitewash.

“It’s window-dressing,” said Bert Ely, a longtime bank analyst based in Alexandria, Va. Mr. Ely was particularly skeptical about letting companies bolster their balance sheets by converting preferred shares to common.

“That won’t add one extra dollar to a bank’s capital buffer against losses,” Mr. Ely complained. “It’s just moving capital from one place to another.”

From the start, Treasury and Fed officials have steered between what Mr. Bernanke recently described as “Scylla and Charybdis” — being perceived as too easy and too coddling of banks on the one hand, or so tough and antagonistic that investors and consumers alike become even more anxious.

But the big question, which remains unanswered, is whether Mr. Geithner and Mr. Bernanke will in fact confront banks over their risk management practices in a way that regulators have been afraid to do for years, or whether regulators will simply revert to business as usual once the crisis eases.

Officials also disclosed detailed estimates of potential losses at individual banks, concluding that losses could skyrocket at institutions with particularly risky loan portfolios. At Wells Fargo, which was a major subprime mortgage lender during the housing boom, regulators estimated that losses on first mortgages would hit almost 12 percent of its loan portfolio if the adverse situation proved correct. At Morgan Stanley, regulators estimated, loss rates from commercial real estate loans could potentially exceed 40 percent.

But analysts increasingly agree that the economic outlook has brightened considerably in the last month or so. A wide array of recent indicators, from consumer spending and consumer confidence to home sales and credit conditions, now suggest that the economy is stabilizing and that a fragile recovery will begin later this year.

Mr. Geithner and top White House officials worked carefully to manage public expectations and avoid the kind of scathing reaction that greeted the Treasury’s first big announcement in February of plans to rescue the banking system.

Unlike in February, when both Mr. Geithner and President Obama raised expectations in advance, then unveiled only vague concepts, Mr. Geithner took much of the surprise out of the results by emphasizing early on that all the big banks were solvent. The only question, he said over and over, was whether they had enough capital to withstand a downturn that was even worse than the one already under way.

In addition, Treasury and Fed officials remained tranquil as most of the results dribbled out through leaks before the official disclosure. As a result, the results seemed almost anticlimactic when they finally became public.

Arun Rath has found America's most-wanted man -- or a theatrical facsimile of him -- on the streets of Calcutta.

Arun Rath has found America's most-wanted man -- or a theatrical facsimile of him -- on the streets of Calcutta. In April 2003, Rath traveled to India to see a wildly successful jatra, or street opera, about September 11 and its aftermath. For Rath, a New York-based journalist who witnessed the events of 9/11 firsthand, the mythical version he found in India is far more surprising and ultimately disturbing than he ever expected. Rath's story takes place in Calcutta, best known in the West for overpopulation and poverty, but in fact a place churning with art, culture and political debate. Rath arrives as the war is raging in Iraq, and Hindus and Muslims are putting aside their deep-seated differences to join in heated protests against America's actions  In the days preceding the performance, Rath meets many of the players involved in putting the opera together. The first of these are Gautam Chakrabarty and Tinkari Goswami, the producers who dreamed it up and whose previous productions include shows about Ho Chi Minh and Hitler. Chakrabarty says they picked bin Laden because he was big in the headlines, a frequent source of plot and character for the jatra. They hoped it would be popular with the crowd, many of whom often have no access to newspapers or media. They were right -- Osama bin Laden is turning out to be their biggest hit yet.
Rath next meets Amit Pradhan, the man beset with the daunting task of portraying Osama bin Laden. Rath asks him how it feels to play the most hated man in America. "I try to portray the facts about bin Laden to people who may not know about him," the actor says. "Is he really this vicious terrorist or just a devout Muslim? I just want to make them understand that."
Pradhan says this play, with Hindu actors portraying Muslims, has met with some resistance; some outraged people have asked them not to perform in their neighborhoods. The government has threatened to shut down the production because any drama dealing with religious conflict could resonate with long-simmering Hindu-Muslim tension and provoke unrest.
But the opera is not only about religious conflict. Like all jatras, this one, Roth discovers, also contains a love story. In a small sweltering room in Calcutta, Rath meets Arun Mukherjee, the romantic lead. Ironically, Mukherjee portrays an Indian-American journalist who lives in New York, just like Arun Rath. Both men marvel at the coincidence. Mukherjee is one of Calcutta's most sought-after actors, but prefers to perform only in street theater because it's one of the oldest forms of Indian folk art. "It's an effective way to reach people," he says. "And if they don't like the performance they'll tell you -- to your face!"
Just before the show, Rath heads to the green room, which is more of a lit-up sidewalk than anything else, but the backstage tension is no different than in any other theater. This is certainly accentuated by the oppressive 100-degree heat that frustrates the actors in their attempts to apply makeup to their sweaty faces.
After a few touch-and-go setbacks, the opera gets under way just before midnight. The late hour doesn't seem to matter, even to the many children in the crowd, despite that the performance carries on for three and a half hours.
The show begins with scenes of New York before September 11, people dancing without a care in the world. The tragedy of the day brings on a somber mood for a time, but the mood picks up when, in a love scene reminiscent of Bollywood musicals, two journalist lovers are reunited at Ground Zero. Soon afterward, bin Laden appears and rejoices in his victory, celebrating that Bush is too afraid even to return to the White House.
And then, Rath notes, the opera takes a surreal turn as Bush aides appear on stage. They appear as bloodthirsty, maniacal men who seethe with rage and are even more despicable than bin Laden himself. "Let corpses of babies and old people -- civilians -- litter the streets!" one of the men proclaims. Then when the scene shifts to Afghanistan, American-backed Northern Alliance soldiers are depicted raping women and killing babies, then celebrating in drunken dances.
But perhaps the biggest shock of the play is the ending, when bin Laden returns to the stage, this time portrayed as a Muslim Robin Hood of sorts, protecting his countrymen, especially women and children. And the Indian-American journalist portrayed by Mukherjee ends up so upset with America's policies that he abruptly abandons his career and becomes an antiwar activist.
In the final scene, the journalist is assassinated while protesting for peace in Afghanistan, killed not by the Taliban or al Qaeda but by an American soldier. The closing message is clear: American imperialism is more savage and cruel than bin Laden's terrorism.
And what's worse, Rath realizes, is the chilling reality that this take on Osama bin Laden and September 11 might be the only version that endures for many in the crowd. Indeed, after the show, Rath speaks with several children, who confirm that they used to think that bin Laden was a bad guy, but the jatra changed their minds. As one girl puts it, "Now I feel like I've seen a more human side of bin Laden."
In the small hot hours of the morning, Rath leaves the opera with the thought that he found a lot more than he bargained for. He expected for the opera's message to resonate with radical Muslims, but to see this reaction in the Hindus is something entirely different. And yet Rath recognizes, in a moment of more perplexity than clarity, that the same cast and crew who performed this anti-American message onstage has been treating him all along with warmth and friendship.

What happens when three teenage girls living in Minnesota decide to visit the land of their birth? All three were adopted as infants from an orphanage in Calcutta, India. In this week's Rough Cut video, Sasha Khokha follows the girls back to South Asia, as they explore their roots, with curiosity and trepidation

"A child on the street is what we call a roofless and rootless kid," says Father Thomas Koshy. For the past 17 years, the Salesian priest has been working in southern India providing education, shelter, and better opportunities to India's growing number of street children. As this report shows, many quickly become addicted to life on the street and find it hard to leave

Amina Masood Janjua was an ordinary Pakistani housewife, proud of her country and loyal to its military. But all that changed in July 2005, when her husband never came home. David Montero reports on how her campaign to find her husband sparked national protests challenging Pakistan's feared intelligence agency, the ISI, and led to events that would severely test Musharraf's power.

In a joint project between FRONTLINE/World and the Christian Science Monitor, David Montero investigates a mysterious Taliban cleric who has been waging war against the Pakistani government in the mountainous former tourist haven of Swat Valley. Montero also reports from the capital, where President Pervez Musharraf is battling moderates who demand that he restore democracy and step down.

Sharmeen Obaid to her native Pakistan as she investigates the clashes between President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally, and the increasingly powerful Islamic fundamentalists who oppose him. Obaid visits the scene of the most recent assassination attempt on Musharraf, meets with key military leaders and interviews a clandestine jihadi fighting a holy war in neighboring Kashmir

In a vivid FlashPoint slide show, Getty photojournalist Ami Vitale presents a portrait of "a magnificent but cursed landscape." Her images of Kashmir, taken over a period of five years, reveal the beauty and the violence in a place claimed by both Pakistan and India.

In this week's Rough Cut, Samantha Grant heads to Chennai in southern India to explore the illicit kidney trade. Traveling between India's high-tech center of Bangalore and the slums to the south, Grant spoke to government officials, doctors, kidney brokers and donors to try to find out why so many people are still getting paid to give up their kidneys even though a law was passed 12 years ago to heavily regulate the practice.

In 2006, when my wife and I traveled to India to live and work, the one issue that kept grabbing our attention was northern India's deep cultural preference for sons over daughters. The desire for sons can be so great, that some families, after having a girl or two, will abort female fetuses until they bear a son. The practice is called female feticide or sex selection. Suicide by pesticide: It's an epidemic in India, where farmers try to keep up with the latest pest-resistant seeds only to find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle of pesticides that don't work, drought and debt. Since 1997, more than 25,000 farmers have committed suicide, many drinking the chemical that was supposed to make their crops more, not less, productive Before a peace deal was reached this November, FRONTLINE/World reporter Aaron Goodman traveled to Nepal to see what was tearing the country apart. He also wanted to know how journalists were able to report about the conflict after the government virtually shut down the media in 2005. Goodman follows Guna Raj Luitel, a Nepalese reporter, who has made it his mission to cover all sides of the conflict for his newspaper the Kantipur Daily.

While trekking in Nepal in 1998, American John Wood saw that many children couldn't afford to go to school and that schools in the poorest rural areas had a chronic shortage of books. It was a transformational experience for Wood that spurred him to start a literacy program called Room to Read. This week's Rough Cut tells the story of Wood's nonprofit that now helps to educate millions of children in the developing world and visits some of the Nepalese communities his program has helped.

Four Lashkar-e-Toiba militants were killed in two separate encounters in the Wattergam and Chuntipora villages

Four Lashkar-e-Toiba militants were killed in two separate encounters in the Wattergam and Chuntipora villages of north Kashmir today. Local residents at Wattergam held a protest demonstration in the village.

Some militants also threw a hand grenade at a police vehicle on the strategic north Kashmir Amarnath Cave Shrine route on Monday evening.

The police said that militants targeted a passing police vehicle in Kangan town, 38 kms from Srinagar [Images], in the evening.
The grenade, which missed the target, exploded in the main market.

Kangan is located in north Kashmir's Ganderbal district, on the route to the Amarnath cave shrine. The annual pilgrimage is scheduled to begin on June 18.

Criticising the BJP for its demand for scrapping Article 370 and redefining the word secularism, Congress today lashed out at it, alleging it was trying to undermine the secular fabric of the country.

"Secularism is the very basic of our Constitution and it cannot be altered. BJP and its president are up to old tricks. They are showing their true colours," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi told reporters.

After a series of electoral victories including those in Karnataka and Gujarat, the BJP yesterday raised again its contentious demands for scrapping Article 370 and bringing in a uniform civil code from the closet, ahead of Lok Sabha polls.

On the backburner for long owing to coalition pressures, the saffron party has sought to bring these issues back on its agenda and also floated a new idea of "true secularism" to target the Congress, which it has always accused of appeasing minorities.

"Along with cultural nationalism, Article 370, uniform civil code and true secularism, we are committed to preserve the national unity and integrity," BJP chief Rajnath Singh had said in his address at the party's National Executive meet.

The Congress also tried to put cold water on BJP's win in Karnataka and said the saffron party did not get a majority. "It barely emerged as a single largest party by getting 10 to 15 more seats than others. But after the Karnataka elections they are showing their true colours by playing with words," Singhvi said.

On the issue of true secularism raised by the BJP, Singhvi said, "the basic question we want to ask the saffron party and its president that do they believe in 'Sarva Dharm Sambhav'."

"Do they believe in the secular ideals of Gandhiji and Vinoba Bhave?" he asked.

Criticising the BJP for raking up these issues, he alleged BJP always represented divisive forces while the Congress has stood rock steady against fundamentalism.

Referring to the setting up of the Constitutional Review Committee during the NDA regime, Singhvi said "BJP had made similar attempts earlier also but they did not succeed because the committee did not recommend what they wanted."

Most Pak students in Pakistan are surprisingly keen to learn about Hinduism, despite the hostility that has prevailed between their country and India in the previous sixty years.
According to Dr. Maureen Korp, as art critic and a religious studies scholar based in Canada, the students in Pakistan were different to the ones she was used to teaching in Canada.
Korp, who is visiting Lahore at the invitation of the Beaconhouse National University (BNU), said she had given an assignment to her students in which they were asked about religions including Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism.
“Surprisingly, I found that most students were keen to know about Hinduism despite the enmity, which India and Pakistan have,” the Daily Times quoted her, as saying.
An author of two books, Korp received her doctorate from the University of Ottawa and has won various academic awards.
Her books — Sacred Geography of the American Mound Builders and Sacred Art of the Earth - have received critical acclaim.
Korp also has to her credit many articles and scholarly book reviews. She has taught at Carleton University, Ottawa School of Art, Pacifica Graduate Institute, California, University of Bucharest, Romania, the State University, New Jersey, and Atlantic Country Community College, New Jersey. (ANI)

Guru Nanak jee, came across bigoted, self-righteous,
self-supremists attitudes amongst the Mullahs and
others of that kind. They would impose, force, convert,
oppress, subjugate and kill people for being
non-believers. The Christian and Islamic
establishments from the medieval times, went to
bloody, savage war to convert each other to their 'true'
way. Each of these religious establishments were
driven by power-minded, and less by actual ethics of
kindness and justice and sarbat-da-bhalla. Guru
Nanak jee challenged these bigoted, dogmatic forces.
Guru Nanak jee encouraged self-contemplation,
dialogue, discussion, meditation, and a soul-search
approach to life. Guru jee gave us guidance and a
positive example to follow. They gave us gurbani, good
practises, and much more.

Today, we face, exactly same challenges, in different,
more insidious, sophisticated guise. Both Islamic and
Christian groups, operate in a very organised,
well-funded, and vociferous to convince the world,
Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Pagans and more,
that they will be condemned to hell if they don't
proclaim allegiance to Jesus or Mohammed. A simple
ritualistic proclamation is all that they require. They
are not interested in the quality or substance of the
life of a person. They simple seek to proclaim that they
have converted a new person to their ranks. They are
interested in numbers, and not quality.

Like self-righteous, supremist Christians, Muslims a
section of Sikhs too display the same horrific,
frightening characteristics of dogma and bigotry. We
are right, because this is what is written. No
discussion. No reasoning. No explanation.

All such persons are stuck in a poisonous disease of
self-serving power, based on sectarian control and
superimposition. All of this is the anti-thesis of a
spiritual journey.

US President George Bush announced that there had been no successful terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2001 claiming
that he and his policies had made America safe for Americans. Maybe, but US nationals continue to die in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of course, he forgot to
mention that there were hardly any incidents before 9/ 11. Also that neither Canada nor Mexico harbour, train and equip terrorists who plan to dismember the US.
Soon after 9/11, apart from bombing Afghanistan and Iraq out of existence, the Bush administration armed itself with the most draconian anti- terror laws and has
not relented despite objections from human rights organisations and the liberal sections of American society.
The intelligence, security and counter- terrorist organisations were strengthened and reorganised. Hampered by inadequate human intelligence, the
Administration concentrated on enhancing its electronic capabilities.

Institutions
Millions of dollars were spent on research designed to increase intelligence surveillance capabilities. There is no cash crunch and considerable intelligence
related activity is now outsourced to the private sector. The British too plan to build amassive government data base of every phone call, e- mail and time spent
on the internet by the public. This is in continuation of asimilar EU directive in operation since last October.

In India, every terrorist action evokes the same national response. Important politicians visit the scene, promise zero tolerance, suspend afew policemen, dole out
compensation, the media pronounces intelligence failure, allegations and counter allegations fly, experts pontificate on TV, momentous decisions that bicycles
can be purchased only with ID cards are taken and we move on till the next incident takes place.

In arecent commentary, Dr Ajai Sahni of Institute of Conflict Management, has referred to recommendations made by the Intelligence Task Force following the
Kargil War. Two of these recommendations related, rather optimistically, to the establishment of a Multi Agency Centre (MAC) for collecting and co- ordinating
terrorism related information from all over the country and aJoint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI) responsible for passing on this information to state governments
in real time.

"Regrettably", Dr. Sahni asserts, "both MAC and JTFI remain understaffed, under equipped and ineffective, with even basic issues relating to their administration
unsettled. Their principal objective, creation of anational terrorism data base, has made little progress."
He also pointed out that the police force in our country averages only 126 per 100,000 apart from being illequipped and ill- trained, whereas in the Western
countries this figure is double. In the years ahead terrorists will select soft targets for maximum effect and ease of operation.

 They will also target the private sector, the economy and the more networked India gets, the more vulnerable we become to cyber terror that could cripple
government networks and financial institutions. 23 per cent of British business was attacked by malicious software in 2007.
Internet
Even the character of the terrorist has changed from the stereotyped version to the boy or girl next door -- well educated and techno savvy. Terrorist organisations
have been using the Internet as adiscussion forum, library, sounding board; it is also used for spreading hate, planning attacks, recruitment, messaging and
training. Funds are raised on the internet and e- mail addresses, account numbers and names changed frequently.
Al Qaeda (which is estimated to have 5,600 websites with 900 added each year), Hamas, Hezbollah, Lashkar- e- Tayyaba and Jaish- e- Mohammed have all used
this technology.

B. Raman had warned in 2000 that the Pakistanis had launched aproject to systematically develop IT capability to reduce the gap between the non- Islamic and
Islamic world. He wrote about aproject called Operation Badar designed to provide high quality low cost web application education.

The founder of this project was Ziaullah Khan, resident in the US, who wanted to raise 313 "Java Mujahedeen architects" spread all over the world and 10,000
developers. The battle of Badar was the most important battle in the life of Prophet Mohammed who had only 313 warriors to fight the battle and later 10,000
saint soldiers --Faran --( Muslim soldiers) had assembled to join Him in the march to Mecca. Whether this is just a Pakistani obsession with religious symbolism or it
signifies battles of another kind, is difficult to say but it is also difficult to ignore, considering the contribution the Pakistani state has made to terror in India and
globally.

There is no magic solution for the various kinds of problems we have in India. We need to strengthen existing counter terror bodies, including intelligence
agencies before creating new ones, if we want to succeed.

It has to be accepted that beyond apoint intelligence agencies find it hard to share information about sources with other agencies. This is a universal truth and not
India- specific.

Inadequate information leads to indiscriminate arrests and creates more terrorists in almost the same manner as a Predator attack does. The citizen must be given
the confidence that the State is working for him and not at him; only then will he share information with the State. Governance has to improve --vastly in some
parts of the country, justice has to be speedy and the writ of the state must be visible.

Our IT protocols have to be tightened.

Publicity
Publicity is oxygen to the terrorist's cause and he has to be starved of this.

All of us, especially the media, have to ensure that in our reporting, the terrorist or his act is not lionised. The terrorist wins each time gruesome pictures
reach families in their homes as they sit down to watch their favourite programmes on the box or read newspapers.

The choice between what to report and how is always going to be adifficult one. Describing him as amilitant instead of aterrorist is to give him respectability and
calling him afedayeen is to glorify akiller. Battling terror is going to be long, hard and frustrating because the terrorist is often one of us and does not wear aspecial
badge.Source : Mail Today , 28th May 2008

Yonder world is the sacrificial fire, the sun is its fuel, the
 rays its smoke, the day its flame, the four quarters its
 cinders and the intermediate quarters its sparks. In this fire
 the gods offer faith as libation. Out of that offering King
 Moon is born.

  Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad VI, II-The Process of Rebirth, 9

 Parjanya (the god of rain), O Gautama, is the fire, the year
 is its fuel, the clouds its smoke, lightning its flame, the
 thunderbolt its cinders, the rumbling its sparks. In this fire
 the gods offer King Moon as libation. Out of that offering
 rain is produced.

  Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad VI, II-The Process of Rebirth, 10

 This world, O Gautama, is the fire, the earth is its fuel, fire
 its smoke, the night its flame, the moon its cinders, the
 stars its sparks. In this fire the gods offer rain as libation.
 Out of that offering food is produced.

  Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad VI, II-The Process of Rebirth, 11


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 These daily verses are drawn from the Rig, Yajur, Sama and
 Atharva Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scriptures, which are
 6,000 to 8,000 years old. Many of the verses are from the
 book The Vedic Experience, by Raimundo Panikkar,
 available at our Minimela online store.

The Home Minister of India is either unmindful of the consequences of what he says or is incapable of talking sense. He continues to embarrass the Government and compromise the nation

After the public display of his ineptitude, Mr Shivraj Patil would be doing a great favour to the Government in which he is the Home Minister if he were to resign from the Cabinet. By equating the death sentence given to Sarabjit Singh, an Indian in a Pakistani jail, to the pending execution of Mohammed Afzal, the mastermind of the terrorist attack on Parliament House, Mr Patil has not only displayed his ineptitude but also virtually sealed the fate of the poor Indian languishing in a Pakistani jail for 17 years now. Worse, he has contradicted his Government's stand that Sarbajit Singh's is a case of mistaken identity and there are several circumstances that justify his release.

The UPA Government is quite embarrassed as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has recently impressed upon his Pakistani counterpart during his visit to Islamabad that there is a strong case for Sarabjit Singh's release. Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, too, has responded by recommending his pardon. By equating an unfortunate Indian to a hardened terrorist, Mr Patil has embarrassed the UPA Government so much that it has to take refuge under the usual excuse that the Home Minister was misquoted!

If Mr Patil does not step down, thanks to his known loyalty towards the Nehru-Gandhi family, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should demand his resignation from the Cabinet.

Time is ticking away for Sarabjit Singh. With Mr Patil's statement even the Pakistan Government will find it difficult to pardon him. The Government of India has been trying at various levels to get relief for Sarabjit Singh, but its own Home Minister has undone all its efforts. In this context, it is the Prime Minister's responsibility to ask his Home Minister to pay the price for this ineptitude by contradicting the stand of a Government of which he is a senior member.

There is no end to such embarrassment for the UPA Government. The latest being the Home Ministry's reminder to Karnataka Governor Rameshwar Thakur that he cannot invite BJP leader BS Yeddiyurappa to take oath as Chief Minister because President's rule has not been revoked. The communiqué to the Governor was obviously meant to delay the swearing in ceremony. Senior BJP leader LK Advani had to talk to the Prime Minister to get the Governor to do the right thing.

The Home Ministry's justification for trying to delay the swearing in ceremony is that technically the invite by the Governor must follow and not precede the lifting of President's rule. This is nothing more than legal quibbling, something that petty lawyers resort to when all their tactics fail to save their client.

The notification for the election is issued by the President and the Governor, as his agent in the State, is aware of the process of electing a new Government. Once the election results are out and there is no doubt who is the winner, the Governor takes steps to advise the President to lift the Central rule as per the Constitution. These steps involve finding who is the leader of the winning party and establishing to the Governor's satisfaction that he has the sustainable numbers.

Why did the Home Ministry tell the Karnataka Governor to wait for some more time before inviting the BJP to take over the State Government? Political analysts believe that the Home Minister's advise to the Governor to delay the invite to the BJP legislature party leader was meant to see whether there was any chance of manipulation and horse trading.

The Home Minister's ineptitude and crude manoeuvring do not seem to end here. After the Jaipur bombings, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje disclosed that the Home Ministry had advised the State Government to round up the Bangladeshi immigrants and put them in camps, besides paying for their livelihood. Later when Mr Patil insisted that he did not make this suggestion, Ms Vasundhara Raje had to confound him with the evidence of the Home Ministry's letter to her.

The significant aspect of this spat is that the BJP Government has regularly been ringing the bell on illegal Bangladeshi immigrants; this, however, was not good enough to wake the Centre up. The reason is obvious -- the Congress does not want to dilute its electoral appeal to Muslims.

A week after the Jaipur bombings when the police took into custody some of the people who might have been connected with the bombings, there was this usual uproar by a section of the Muslim leadership that "innocents" were being implicated. This same cry was heard after the Hyderabad bombings.

The Congress apparently refuses to learn even after the electorate in State after State throws it out of power, the latest being Karnataka where terrorism was an issue and the Congress was unable to answer the questions that people posed to it. Mr Patil's argument that there is no easy way out and that there could only be a long-term effort to contain terrorism is not liked by the people. After all, they have seen in Punjab that strong measures alone can curb terrorism.

Buoyed by a series of election victories including those in Karnataka and Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday took out its contentious demands for scrapping Article 370 and bringing in a uniform civil code from the closet ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

On the backburner for long owing to coalition pressures, the saffron party sought to bring these issues back on its agenda and also floated a new idea of "true secularism" to target the Congress, which it has always accused of appeasing minorities.

"Along with cultural nationalism, Article 370, uniform civil code and true secularism, we are committed to preserve the national unity and integrity," BJP chief Rajnath Singh said in his address at the party's national executive in Delhi.

On the issue of true secularism, the party wanted the government to stop use of Hindi word dharmanirpeksh for secular and instead use panthnirpeksh so as to come out of the colonial mindset.

Apart from the Ram Temple issue, demands for scrapping of Article 370, granting special status to Jammu and Kashmir [Images] and a common civil code for all the religions were part of the BJP's core issues that propelled it to the national centrestage.

The party had to put these issues on the backburner after formation of the National Democratic Alliance.

The meet is being held in the shadow of the violent Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan at the Parliament Annexe, the main venue, as also the party headquarters which saw massive security arrangements.

Under attack from the opposition over handling of the Gujjar stir, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje chose not to attend the national executive.

The morning after the May 13 serial blasts in Jaipur, people were still picking up the pieces. Lives had been shattered, and the Pink City was still reeling under the shock of the attack that claimed 80 lives. But inside police control rooms, sleuths were already picking up a trail of terror.

Within days, a few things became clear. The blasts were synchronized and masterminded with clinical precision. RDX may have been used and like the blasts in UP courts, the explosives were stored in cycles. "Each of these links point to the involvement of HuJI, the Bangladeshi extremist outfit that has taken over from Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed as India's biggest terror threat. HuJI operators use Kolkata as their base and the porous border with Bangladesh to smuggle arms and explosives into the country," said an intelligence source.

In fact, since 2005, the majority of terror attacks in India - Mumbai train blasts, Mecca Mosque explosion, Sankat Mochan attack - have reportedly been carried out by HuJI.

The connection has been evident for a long time. On October 12, 2005, suicide bombers attacked the Hyderabad office of the Special Task Force. Two months later, police arrested Kaleem, who revealed that the operation had been executed by a Bangladeshi national. He said he had been recruited and taken to Bangladesh for training. Later, a Bangladeshi arrested from Murshidabad confessed he was a HuJI member and had been involved in the attack.

These were the first tremors. Over the next three years, HuJI emerged as the prime terror outfit involved in most jihadi attacks in India. Most of the attacks were remote-controlled from Bangladesh. As the probes progressed, sleuths found HuJI's terror network went far deeper into India than thought previously. Their hand was seen in several other terrorist strikes that were earlier attributed to other groups.

Delhi police, for instance, had claimed that LeT was behind the serial blasts of October 2005 in the capital. But Jalaluddin, alias Babubhai - a top HuJI operative in eastern India arrested in June 2007 - confessed that he had transported 20 kg of RDX to Delhi weeks before the blast. The Mumbai train blast, too, was initially claimed to be the handiwork of LeT. It was later revealed that HuJI had planned the attack.

In the face of this sustained terror campaign, sleuths have been able to do little. Take the example of Abdul Rahaman, who was 'arrested' in Delhi on May 22, 2008, and charged with involvement in the Jaipur blasts. Babubhai revealed that as far back as 2004, Rahaman was transporting explosives across the Bengal-Bangladesh border. A minor accomplice then, Rahaman had been sent to the Biswa Ijtema at Tongi and attended a training camp in Bangladesh before final training in Pakistan.

According to central intelligence sources, by the time Rahaman returned from his Pakistan stint, he was an important member of HuJI. Babubhai confessed that around one and a half years back, Rahaman was sent to look for fresh recruits in Bangladesh. But around eight months ago, he was nabbed in a raid by Bangladeshi intelligence agency DGFI. Under pressure from India, he was allegedly handed over around two months ago. This, in effect, quashes the Delhi Police's theory that he might have been linked to the Jaipur blasts less than a month ago.

Indian agencies have also failed to secure the custody of Abu Hamza, believed to be the second-in-command of HuJI in India. A native of Hyderabad, he is a close aide of Shahid Bilal, one of HuJI's masterminds in India. Police claim Hamza and Bilal planned the Hyderabad blasts in 2007. Hamza is also wanted by Mumbai police for the Ghatkopar blasts in 2002. Central intelligence agencies claim he is in the custody of DGFI.

The Bangladesh government, however, denies this. But sources in Bangladesh confirmed Hamza is now in custody. Indian agencies have reportedly managed to lay their hands on one of his recent photographs.

For India, Hamza is the key links the other HuJI big gun, Shahid Bilal, has allegedly been gunned down in Karachi in September 2007. Indian agencies are worried that Hamza, too, might be killed. "Hamza's arrest would unearth how ISI is backing the militia. Unknown gunmen had killed Bilal, probably his own men," said a senior intelligence officer.

At a recent conference on radical Islam, attended by scholars from India
and South-East Asian countries, it was irritating to hear professors from
Jamia Millia Islamia repeating the canard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks
being an elaborate conspiracy hatched by the Christians (of America) and
the Jews (of Israel) to "defame Islam" and use the globally televised images
of the imploding twin towers as justification for the US-led "war against
Muslims".

The first time I heard this astonishing fiction was in Cairo where I had
arrived soon after the terrifying attack, led by an Egyptian, Mohammed
Atta, on the World Trade Center, one of the symbols of American power.
The war in Iraq had not yet begun but the Taliban hoodlums, including
Mullah Omar, were fleeing Afghanistan to save their lives.

The fall of a 'model Islamic state' and the walloping the 'soldiers of god'
were receiving from the invading kafirs had greatly distressed my friends in
the Muslim Brotherhood who had wrongly believed that the flattening of
the twin towers would signal the liberation of Cairo, not Kabul. Instead,
they were shocked to see a tsunami of anger striking Arab shores.

Rather than accept the 9/11 attacks had proved to be counter-productive,
they chose the path of denial. Whispered allegations, anonymous e-mail
and stories buried in the inside pages of Arabic newspapers began to do
the rounds, spreading the patently false claim that the attack on the twin
towers and the Pentagon had been planned and executed by the
Americans and the Israelis.

To substantiate this absurd claim, there were further absurd claims -- Jews
did not report for work on that fateful day, only the Mossad could have
carried out an operation of this scale, the CIA had ensured the hijackers
would not be frisked, etc. I found the assertions mildly repugnant and
largely amusing, attributing the fiction to the street Arab's lack of access to
facts.

Seven years later, when I hear that absurd claim being repeated, that too
by those who should know better, I don't feel amused, but irritated.
And so it happened at the conference on radical Islam when a professor of
Jamia Millia Islamia questioned the authenticity of events as they unfolded
on September 11, 2001, two of his colleagues nodding their heads
vigorously in approval.

My irritation gave way to anger when he went on to suggest that analyses
of video images of the hijacked aircraft being flown into the twin towers
showed they were "studio-generated". Only someone who has undergone
lobotomy would say something so stupid in public. But more than being
silly, there's a sinister purpose to such comments and they should not be
attributed to a lobotomised brain; Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil
would vouch for this.

A lie repeated again and again, as Paul Joseph Goebbels proved through
word and deed, tends to be believed by the masses. Islamofascists, both at
home and abroad, who peddle the myth that 'Islam is the solution' and thus
see nothing wrong with the ghastly crimes committed in the name of Islam,
would naturally take to Goebbelsian propaganda tactics like a duck takes
to water.

Fiction propagated slyly at conferences and seminars, mentioned between
the lines in newspaper articles, and slipped into Friday sermons by
mullahs after the jumma namaaz, acquires a certain legitimacy and is
soon perceived as fact.

We have seen this happen on more than one occasion. When Hindus were
forced to flee their ancestral homes in the Kashmir Valley by killer squads
of Islamists who indulged in rapacious depredations and revelled in the
slaughter of innocent men, women and children, an insidious campaign was
launched, pinning the blame on Mr Jagmohan, then Governor of Jammu &
Kashmir: He was accused of telling the Hindus to flee the Valley.

Strangely, this fiction was believed by the secular intelligentsia which, in any
event, is desperate to clutch at straws to absolve Islamic fanatics of their
crimes and eager to paint Islamist marauders in the most glowing of
colours. Similar tactics were -- and continue to be -- used in the wake of
the slaughter of kar sevaks in Godhra and to tar Hindus by blaming them
for the violence that followed.

After the bombing of commuter trains in Mumbai, killing 187 people, it
was blatantly suggested by our homegrown Islamists that the massacre was
the handiwork of either "Government agencies" or "Hindu organisations".

They are now using the same tactics in their response to the jihadi attack
on Jaipur on May 14, in which at least 80 people were killed and many
more maimed. The Hindustan Express, a Delhi-based Urdu newspaper,
pontificated in an editorial comment on May 16, "Apart from elements like
Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Al Qaeda or HuJI (who may possibly be involved
in these explosions) why should we not think also of those international
powers and agencies who are known to the Government for their
discomfort towards Indo-Pak peace?" Why not, indeed!

The Jamaat-e-Islami's biweekly journal, Daawat, was nauseatingly sly in
its comments on May 19, "The truth cannot be out without changing the
formula for the probe into the bomb blasts. Instead of going through the
formality of a probe and connecting the links, we will have to see which
group of people gets political benefit out of such incidents."

The only group that stands to benefit from the bloodbath in Jaipur, the
Jamaat-e-Islami, whose mullahs pretend to be as innocent as Goldilocks,
needs to be told, comprises those who subscribe to the slogan, "Islam is
the solution."

These are the people who are at ease with explosives being strapped to an
eight-year-old girl and the button on the remote control being pushed as
she reaches out to take a chocolate from a soldier (not an American) in
Iraq.

They are untouched and unmoved by the sight of the blood of innocent
victims, as was spilled on the streets of Jaipur, of their perverse ideology.
They are fully aware of their criminal misdeeds, but they want us to believe
they are not to blame. And if you dare point a finger at radical Islam and its
army of Islamofascists, they will accuse you of indulging in Islamophobia.

It's time we called their bluff. The only other option is to subjugate
ourselves to those who know no mercy and meekly accept Islam as the
solution.

From: yashwini1@aol.com Date: Fri, 30 May 2008

It is very important to look forward, but its also
important to remember History and learn from
it the lessons it teaches. History repeats itself
for those who forget it. I would like to share an
article with you on this topic. Its a book review
of Mr. Francois Gautier's book by C.J.S.Walia
of India Star.

http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/forgive-but-never-forget-%e2%80%93-history/
Forgive but never forget history: by Francois Gautier

** Forgive but never forget history
Jump to Comments
Rewriting Indian History
by Francois Gautier

Book Review: C.J.S. Walia

“From my perspecive as a secular humanist, and my own experience, I regard a typical liberal Indian Muslim to be as good a human being as any other Indian.” c.j.s. wallia

Rewriting Indian History is a provocative new book by the French writer Francois Gautier, who currently serves as the political correspondent in India for France’s top newspaper, Le Figaro, and for Switzerland’s leading daily, Le Nouveau Quotidien.

Having lived in India for 25 years has helped him “to see through the usual cliches and prejudices in India to which I subscribed for a long time, as most foreign (and sometimes, unfortunately, Indian) journalists, writers, and historians do.”

Rewriting Indian History,the author prefaces, “might well be called an antithesis” for it questions many of the assumptions in the “standard” treatises by Euro-centered colonialist historians and their imitations by Indian Marxist writers.

Gautier focuses mainly on the Muslim period of India’s history. “Let it be said right away: the massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.”

However, the British, in pursuing their policy of divide-and-rule, colluded “to whitewash” the atrocious record of the Muslims so that they could set up the Muslims as a strategic counterbalance to the Hindus.

During the freedom struggle, Gandhi and Nehru went around encrusting even thicker coats of whitewash so that they could pretend a facade of Hindu-Muslim unity against British colonial rule.

After independence, Marxist Indian writers, blinkered by their distorting ideology, repeated the big lie about the Muslim record.

Gautier cites two eminent historians who wrote free of any colonialist or ideological agendas, basing their accounts on documents by contemporary Muslim chroniclers themselves: Alain Danielou in Histoire de la Inde: “From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoilations, destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of ‘a holy war’ of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilisations, wiped out entire races.”

And the well-known American historian Will Durant in The Story of Civilization: “…the Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within.”

(From my perspecive as a secular humanist, and my own experience, I regard a typical liberal Indian Muslim to be as good a human being as any other Indian.)

Gautier should have continued with the Will Durant quote: “The Hindus had allowed their strength to be wasted in internal division and war; they had adopted religions like Buddhism and Jainism, which unnerved them for the tasks of life; they had failed to organize their forces for the protection of their frontiers and their capitals, their wealth and their freedom, from the hordes of Scythians, Huns, Afghans and Turks hovering about India’s boundaries and waiting for national weakness to let them in. For four hundred years (600-1000 A.D.) India invited conquest; and at last it came.

This is the secret of the political history of modern India. Weakened by division, it succumbed to invaders; impoverished by invaders, it lost all power of resistance, and took refuge in supernatural consolations; it argued that both mastery and slavery were superficial delusions, and concluded that freedom of the body or the nation was hardly worth defending in so brief a life.

The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry.”

About Gandhi’s whitewash of Muslims, Gautier observes: “Ultimately, it must be said that whatever his saintliness, his extreme and somehow rigid asceticism, Gandhi did enormous harm to India… The British must have rubbed their hands in glee: here was a man who was perfecting their policy of divide-and-rule, for ultimately no one contributed more to the partition of India, by his obsession to always give in to the Muslims; by his indulgence of Jinnah, going as far as proposing to make him the prime minister of India.”

Worse yet, Gandhi’s anointed disciple, Nehru, propagated false readings of Indian history in his books and speeches. Gautier quotes Nehru’s “amazing eulogy” of the tyrant Mahmud Ghazni, the destroyer of Mathura’s great Hindu temples, Gujarat’s Somnath, and numerous other Hindu and Buddhist temples.

When Nehru, the arrant appeaser of Muslims, became India’s first prime minister, he appointed a fundamentalist Muslim, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, as the first education minister.

Under Nehru’s pseudo-secular rule, “Hindu-bashing became a popular pastime.”

Moreover, Nehru “had a great sympathy for communism…. He encouraged Marxist think-tanks such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University [JNU] in New Delhi, which has bred a lot of ‘Hindu-hating scholars’ who are adept at negating Muslim atrocities and running to the ground the greatness of Hinduism and its institutions.”

These Marxist “historians,” well-ensconced at JNU, have long been masterminding the politically correct textbooks of India’s history used in Indian schools. No wonder, JNU is also known as “the Kremlin by the Jumna.”

For a long time, the Indian Marxists had been so brainwashed that whenever it rained in Moscow — the capital of their “only true fatherland”– they opened their umbrellas in Delhi.

To be sure, dissenting voices were raised against Gandhi’s whitewash of Muslims. Before the partition of India, Aurobindo Ghosh, the great Hindu poet-philosopher, posed the question about Islam: “You can live with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live with a religion whose principle is ‘I will not tolerate you’? How are you going to have unity with these people?… I am sorry they [Gandhi and Nehru] are making a fetish of Hindu-Muslim unity. It is no use ignoring facts; some day the Hindus will have to fight Muslims and they must prepare for it. Hindu-Muslim unity should not mean the subjection of Hindus. Each time the mildness of the Hindus has given way. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organise themselves and Hindu-Muslim unity will take care of itself, it will automatically solve the problem. …I see no reason why the greatness of India’s past or its spirituality should be thrown into the waste basket, in order to conciliat
e the Muslims who would not be conciliated by such policy.”

Another strong dissenter was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Seeing through Nehru’s pseudo-secularism, Patel commented, “There’s only one nationalist Muslim in India: Jawarharlal Nehru.”

Gautier warns: “Even today, there is no doubt that Islam has never been fully able to give up its inner conviction that its own religion is the only true creed and that all others are kafirs, infidels. In India it was true 300 years ago, and it is still true today. Remember the cry of the militants in Kashmir to the Pandits: ‘convert to Islam or die!’ … The Hindu-Muslim question is just plainly a Muslim obsession, their hatred of the Hindu pagans, their contempt for this polytheist religion.

This obsession, this hate, is as old as the first invasion of India by the original Arabs in 650 AD. After independence, nothing has changed: the sword of Allah is still as much ready to strike the kafirs, the idolaters of many gods.”

The source of Muslim’s fanatical aggression, Gautier points out, is the Koran itself, from which he quotes: “Slay the infidels, wherever ye find them and prepare them for all kind of ambush”; and “Choose not thy friends among the infidels till they forsake their homes and the way of idolatory. If they return to paganism then take them whenever you find them and kill them.”

In the section on Ayodhya, Gautier says that demolishing the Babri Masjid has proved that Hindus too can fight.

He criticizes Nehruvian “secularism” as interpreted by the Congress party to mean “giving in to the Muslims’ demands, because its leaders never could really make out if the allegiance of Indian Muslims is first to India and then to Islam or vice-versa.”

For many of India’s Hindu journalists, this pseudo-secularism has meant “spitting on their own religion and brothers.” Curiously, Gautier does not mention Arun Shourie’s well-researched, lucidly articulated columns, which, in recent years, have laid bare the pretentions of Nehruvian pseudo-secularism.

From my own perspective as a secular humanist, I believe that any whitewashing of historical record is counterproductive. No matter how lofty the ideals of a current cause, any whitewash of history tempts the fates. To forget history will always be fateful; to forgive its horrendous facts can be redemptive. Forgive — but never forget — history.

A salient example of making sure that the horrors of history are not forgotten is the contemporary German state’s law prohibiting any World War II history that whitewashes the holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews, Gypsies, and Poles.

The Jews rightly insist that the world must never forget what happened to them.

Where is the Hindu Holocaust Museum?

The historical record of the Muslim rule in India is soaked in blood — just take a look at the documents left by contemporary Muslim chroniclers.

Yet, as a secular humanist, I would like to make a distinction between an ideology and its adherents, especially those born into it. From my own experience, I regard a typical liberal Indian Muslim to be as good a human being as any other Indian.

In the opening chapter, Gautier briefly examines the “tainted glasses” which made Euro-centered historians expound gross “disinformations” about ancient India: the discredited Aryan invasion theory; the deliberate mistranslations of the Vedas; and the erroneous theory of the origin of the caste system.

Throughout the book, Gautier quotes Sri Aurobindo, and in the concluding chapter, “The Final Dream,” pays an inspired homage to the great visionary’s writings.

Like Konraad Elst’s Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam, Francois Gautier’s Rewriting Indian History contributes to the growing literature of dissent against the “standard” textbooks of India’s history.