Wednesday, 28 October 2015
Tuesday, 27 October 2015
Friday, 9 October 2015
Thursday, 8 October 2015
India's Hindu Fundamentalists
AL JAZEERA
According to a leading Christian rights group, at least 600 such attacks took place between Modi's election and August of this year. One hundred and forty-nine of these assaults were against Christians; the rest were targeted at the country's Muslim community.
The attacks, say critics, are being orchestrated by radical groups affiliated to Hindu nationalist and political pressure group: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS.
Prime Minister Modi is a lifelong member of the RSS and the backing of its members was crucial in helping his BJP party win the 2014 election. Since then, emboldened by the result, Modi’s most extreme nationalist supporters have routinely taken to the streets, using violence and intimidation to press their claim for a purely Hindu India.
Muslims have been forced to convert to Hinduism, homes burnt down and people even murdered for allegedly consuming beef; cows having special status in the Hindu faith.
Meanwhile, Hindu nationalists have been rewriting school textbooks in
some states and holding training camps for teenage boys and girls in an
apparent attempt to inculcate children into their cause.
We asked Indian filmmaker and journalist Mandakini Gahlot, herself a Hindu, to go in search of those who want a purely Hindu nation and find out what their resurgence means for the future of the world’s most populous secular democracy.
FILMMAKER'S VIEW
By Mandakini Gahlot
On September 28th, just a few days after we completed filming this documentary, a 52-year-old Muslim man, Mohammaded Akhlaq, was lynched by a Hindu mob on suspicion of slaughtering cows and consuming beef.
His 22-year-old son also suffered severe injuries in the attack. He was hit over the head with a sewing machine and remains in hospital recovering from two major brain surgery procedures.
The cow is considered a sacred animal in Hinduism and worshipped widely across the country. Various states have legislation in place to control the level of cattle slaughter. But more recently, Hindu nationalists have been demanding the law be more stringently applied and even calling for a blanket ban on beef. In March, the local government in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power, did just that, introducing a wide-ranging ban on the sale and consumption of beef.
At street level, emboldened mobs of Hindu nationalists appear unwilling to wait for such laws to be passed in other states. Across the country, they have been taking matters into their own hands over the last year. Ajju Chouhan, leader of the radical group Bajrang Dal who consider themselves foot soldiers in the Hindu nationalist movement, agreed to let us film his followers on just such a patrol. We joined the group as they walked the city roads inspecting vehicles and seeking out anyone transporting cows for slaughter. Chouhan was quite open about what would happen to anyone caught; they might not be killed, but they would be "badly beaten."
What appears to drive Chouhan and others like him is the belief that Hindus are somehow being ousted and replaced in their homeland. "The time has come for us to take back what’s ours, to claim Hindustan for Hindus," he told us time and again.
In fact, the figures on religious affiliation tell a very different story to Chouhan’s proclamations. As things currently stand, Hindus are by far and away the majority religious group in India, constituting 79.8% of the population. The second largest religious group in the country are Muslims at 14.28%.
I have been tracking the activities of most radical Hindu groups for
several years now, but the last 18 months has brought ever more
unreasonable, intolerant and sometimes violent displays of aggression
towards anyone deemed to be diverting from their vision of a pure
"Hindustan." A leading Christian rights group documented 600 attacks on
minority communities by Hindu extremists between Prime Minister Modi
coming to power in May 2014 and August of this year. One hundred and
forty-nine of these assaults were against Christians, the rest were
targeted at the country’s Muslim community.
The attack on the Akhlaqs, the father and son accused of slaughtering and consuming beef, occurred in the village of Bisara, which sits barely 100 kilometres from the capital New Delhi, in the state of Uttar Pradesh where much of this documentary was shot.
Local reports quote state police sources as saying that eight of the eleven men who have since been arrested on suspicion of murdering Mohammad Akhlaq are direct relations of a local BJP campaigner, Sanjay Rana - one of them is his son.
Yet despite apparently compelling evidence that a hate crime was committed in such close proximity to the centre of government, calls for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address it and take action appear to have fallen on deaf ears. He has so far remained silent on the issue despite a large public outcry.
Other members of his BJP party are more vocal on the subject. MP Sakshi Maharaj, who features in the documentary, openly says he is willing to kill and be killed to protect the cow.
Hinduism is, and continues to be, one of the great religions of the world. It’s polytheistic nature means that Hindus worship a wide range of Gods - often within the same family - thereby allowing greater tolerance for differing views. This tolerance has been the hallmark of Hinduism for generations.
But the Hindu nationalist movement is attempting to hijack our religious identity to serve its own vision, ignoring, and often attacking, any opposing viewpoint.
India is the world's most populous secular democracy. The Indian constitution is supposed to guarantee minority groups the freedom to practise their religion without fear. But today there are worrying signs everywhere suggesting that intrinsic right to freedom of expression and affiliation is under threat.
While attacks against minorities, and indeed writers and intellectuals have occurred in India before, some groups within this new wave of resurgent Hindu nationalism may be more brazen and potentially dangerous than anything we have seen before. Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Modi’s silence on the subject appears all the more ominous.
India
People & Power investigates India's Hindu fundamentalists and their influence on the country's government.
According to a leading Christian rights group, at least 600 such attacks took place between Modi's election and August of this year. One hundred and forty-nine of these assaults were against Christians; the rest were targeted at the country's Muslim community.
The attacks, say critics, are being orchestrated by radical groups affiliated to Hindu nationalist and political pressure group: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS.
Prime Minister Modi is a lifelong member of the RSS and the backing of its members was crucial in helping his BJP party win the 2014 election. Since then, emboldened by the result, Modi’s most extreme nationalist supporters have routinely taken to the streets, using violence and intimidation to press their claim for a purely Hindu India.
Muslims have been forced to convert to Hinduism, homes burnt down and people even murdered for allegedly consuming beef; cows having special status in the Hindu faith.
 |
| Hindu nationalist summer camps for girls take place across India, all operated by an organisation called the Durga Vahini [Al Jazeera] |
We asked Indian filmmaker and journalist Mandakini Gahlot, herself a Hindu, to go in search of those who want a purely Hindu nation and find out what their resurgence means for the future of the world’s most populous secular democracy.
FILMMAKER'S VIEW
By Mandakini Gahlot
On September 28th, just a few days after we completed filming this documentary, a 52-year-old Muslim man, Mohammaded Akhlaq, was lynched by a Hindu mob on suspicion of slaughtering cows and consuming beef.
His 22-year-old son also suffered severe injuries in the attack. He was hit over the head with a sewing machine and remains in hospital recovering from two major brain surgery procedures.
The cow is considered a sacred animal in Hinduism and worshipped widely across the country. Various states have legislation in place to control the level of cattle slaughter. But more recently, Hindu nationalists have been demanding the law be more stringently applied and even calling for a blanket ban on beef. In March, the local government in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power, did just that, introducing a wide-ranging ban on the sale and consumption of beef.
At street level, emboldened mobs of Hindu nationalists appear unwilling to wait for such laws to be passed in other states. Across the country, they have been taking matters into their own hands over the last year. Ajju Chouhan, leader of the radical group Bajrang Dal who consider themselves foot soldiers in the Hindu nationalist movement, agreed to let us film his followers on just such a patrol. We joined the group as they walked the city roads inspecting vehicles and seeking out anyone transporting cows for slaughter. Chouhan was quite open about what would happen to anyone caught; they might not be killed, but they would be "badly beaten."
What appears to drive Chouhan and others like him is the belief that Hindus are somehow being ousted and replaced in their homeland. "The time has come for us to take back what’s ours, to claim Hindustan for Hindus," he told us time and again.
In fact, the figures on religious affiliation tell a very different story to Chouhan’s proclamations. As things currently stand, Hindus are by far and away the majority religious group in India, constituting 79.8% of the population. The second largest religious group in the country are Muslims at 14.28%.
 |
| We filmed at Ishak Numberdar’s village in May after it was attacked by a mob of radical Hindus [Al Jazeera] |
The attack on the Akhlaqs, the father and son accused of slaughtering and consuming beef, occurred in the village of Bisara, which sits barely 100 kilometres from the capital New Delhi, in the state of Uttar Pradesh where much of this documentary was shot.
Local reports quote state police sources as saying that eight of the eleven men who have since been arrested on suspicion of murdering Mohammad Akhlaq are direct relations of a local BJP campaigner, Sanjay Rana - one of them is his son.
Yet despite apparently compelling evidence that a hate crime was committed in such close proximity to the centre of government, calls for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address it and take action appear to have fallen on deaf ears. He has so far remained silent on the issue despite a large public outcry.
Other members of his BJP party are more vocal on the subject. MP Sakshi Maharaj, who features in the documentary, openly says he is willing to kill and be killed to protect the cow.
Hinduism is, and continues to be, one of the great religions of the world. It’s polytheistic nature means that Hindus worship a wide range of Gods - often within the same family - thereby allowing greater tolerance for differing views. This tolerance has been the hallmark of Hinduism for generations.
But the Hindu nationalist movement is attempting to hijack our religious identity to serve its own vision, ignoring, and often attacking, any opposing viewpoint.
India is the world's most populous secular democracy. The Indian constitution is supposed to guarantee minority groups the freedom to practise their religion without fear. But today there are worrying signs everywhere suggesting that intrinsic right to freedom of expression and affiliation is under threat.
While attacks against minorities, and indeed writers and intellectuals have occurred in India before, some groups within this new wave of resurgent Hindu nationalism may be more brazen and potentially dangerous than anything we have seen before. Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Modi’s silence on the subject appears all the more ominous.
Source: Al Jazeera
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2015/10/indias-hindu-fundamentalists-151008073418225.html
Egypt to ban niqab-wearing women from voting
MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
Women
wearing niqab (full Islamic face-veil) will not be allowed to vote in
this month’s parliamentary election, the electoral commission has said.
Speaking at a press conference in Cairo on Thursday, commission
spokesman Omar Marwan said that niqab-wearing voters must remove their
outfit or else they will be prevented from voting.
The niqab, which covers a woman’s entire body from head to toe, is worn by women of ultraconservative Muslim backgrounds. In Egypt, however, it is only worn by a small minority of women.
Last week, Cairo University, one of Egypt’s oldest institutes of higher learning, barred lecturers from wearing the niqab.
Egypt’s parliamentary election is scheduled to be held in two phases starting Oct. 18-19. A second round of the vote will be held on Nov. 22-23.
The upcoming parliamentary vote will be the final step of a political "roadmap" imposed by the army in mid-2013 following the ouster of democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup.
The army’s roadmap also included a constitutional referendum and a presidential election, the latter of which brought President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi – a former army chief who ousted Morsi – to power.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/africa/21532-egypt-to-ban-niqab-wearing-women-from-voting
- Thursday, 08 October 2015 16:37
The niqab, which covers a woman’s entire body from head to toe, is worn by women of ultraconservative Muslim backgrounds. In Egypt, however, it is only worn by a small minority of women.
Last week, Cairo University, one of Egypt’s oldest institutes of higher learning, barred lecturers from wearing the niqab.
Egypt’s parliamentary election is scheduled to be held in two phases starting Oct. 18-19. A second round of the vote will be held on Nov. 22-23.
The upcoming parliamentary vote will be the final step of a political "roadmap" imposed by the army in mid-2013 following the ouster of democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi in a military coup.
The army’s roadmap also included a constitutional referendum and a presidential election, the latter of which brought President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi – a former army chief who ousted Morsi – to power.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/africa/21532-egypt-to-ban-niqab-wearing-women-from-voting
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Cross Generational Dating and The Hook Up Culture
( By Oyunga Pala) A 70 year old pastor, was caught in a lodging in broad daylight with the wife of one of his congregants. Pastors getting caught with their pants down is no longer news but the allure in this particular story was the woman’s age. The straying woman was in her mid-30s and she was married to a 40 year old man. The wife’s husband got wind of the affair and arrived with his posse, TV cameras in tow and busted the couple. The elderly man was dragged out by his shirt collar as he endured slaps to his face. The aggrieved husband was so annoyed, he demanded dowry reparations for damages caused to his ‘investment’. I am not making this up.
Nonetheless, the fury was reserved for his wife. He descended on her with blows and kicks whilst trying to strip her at the same time, I suppose to further humiliate her. She was not a submissive woman and resisted the assault as she gave him a piece of his mind in the ensuing struggle. While the onlookers agreed that pastors have gone rogue and that the wife was out of order, it was the wounded husband who bore the brunt of the social scorn. How could he have been scooped by a guka? As expected, social media commentators deduced that the man was an outright failure. In a society where sexual prowess is a highly rated symbol of masculinity, news of your wife’s affair with a man 30 years your senior, casts a man in very poor light. The younger man obviously failed to appreciate the reality. As men grow older and more prosperous, they tend to start dating younger because they enter the field with the clear advantage of experience.
I recall an incident at a house party in some plush Nairobi neighbourhood years back. The crowd was composed of glamorous upwardly mobile executives, majorly in their 30s and a good number were still in the singles club. The women were fairly reserved as the men fought to rank themselves into an imaginary hierarchy of importance. Then a senior citizen walked in, a man clearly past his sixties and a known playboy who owned oil fields. He rolled in his sleek machine that was visible from the lounge and all eyes shifted in his direction. Men know competition when they see it.
The former loud mouths retreated into the shadows under the pretext of ‘needing’ a drink. The car was undoubtedly a superior piece of engineering, oozing with class and designed solely to leave the female admirers gasping. A Jaguar gives its owner an unfair advantage.
Needless to add, several of the women in the room suddenly started angling for the senior citizen’s attention. Traffic to the bathroom increased tenfold. For all the talk we hear about ‘dirty old men’, isn’t it amazing how widely they are tolerated. Hiding behind the façade of female independence, are a bunch of financial strapped girls who would not be adverse to ‘doing girl’ for economic gain.
Some women have no qualms chasing men of power, even if it means starting off as mistress number five. The important thing is to have your foot in the door. The competition can be dealt with later. The popular notion is that money compensates for a man’s flaws. Generally speaking, women have come to realize that in these precarious economic times, a straying husband beats a broke one hands down. For many women, love translates to security and the man who provides sufficiently will remain viable.
On the other hand, societal judgment is harsh when the younger man shacks up with the older woman. Women cannot have what men have and dirty old ladies are only tolerated if they are white and their boyfriends are motor-mouthed, scrawny, dreadlocked, former beach boys.
In our patriarchal society, mature women fall in the motherly bracket of respectability and are expected to have gotten over lustful pursuits following childbirth. So, inter-generational dating remains a challenge for older African women. While, there is no shortage of men under 30, willing and ready to do ‘handsome’ for economic gain, the women involved in illicit liaisons with ‘boys’ have to employ very elaborate cover up tactics to preserve their reputations.
These scenarios are the telling signs of a new dilemma of our modern society. Since young people can no longer meet the unrealistic expectations of their peers, both male and female have gone shopping for love and security from partners old enough to be their parents. There is no patience or discipline required to cultivate a solid relationship or marriage these days. This is the instant gratification generation. The hook up culture. They want it all and they want it now.
No wonder, 70 year old pastors are still getting caught chasing tail.
http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/lifestyle/2015/10/07/cross-generational-dating-and-the-hook-up-culture/
Tuesday, 6 October 2015
Sunday, 4 October 2015
Saturday, 3 October 2015
Friday, 2 October 2015
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