Indian principal jailed for 17 years over deadly school meal

The children, aged four to 12, fell ill within minutes of eating the lunch of lentils, potatoes and rice at their primary school in the poverty-stricken village of Dharmasati Gandaman on July 16, 2013.

NEW DELHI: An Indian court Monday sentenced a school principal to 17 years in jail over the death of 23 pupils who were served a free meal laced with pesticide, a prosecutor said.

The head of the government-run school was found guilty last week of culpable homicide for the 2013 tragedy. In all, nearly 50 children consumed the poisonous lunch in Saran district in the eastern state of Bihar.

“Meena Devi was sentenced to ten years for culpable homicide and seven years for attempt to commit culpable homicide,” public prosecutor Sameer Mishra told AFP.

Devi was also fined 375,000 rupees ($5,500), with much of the money intended for the families of 24 injured children.

Prosecutors said they were satisfied with Monday’s ruling but would challenge the court’s acquittal of her husband Arjun Rai for lack of evidence.

Rai allegedly supplied the pesticide-laced oil used to cook the meal.

Investigators told the court Rai had stored the pesticide alongside the cooking oil, and supplied the contaminated oil to the school.
He had secured the contract for school supplies from his wife without following any guidelines, investigators said.

The children, aged four to 12, fell ill within minutes of eating the lunch of lentils, potatoes and rice at their primary school in the poverty-stricken village of Dharmasati Gandaman on July 16, 2013.

“We were hoping both of them would be jailed but the court let her husband off,” Madav Ram, father of a 12-year child, who died, told AFP.

The disaster prompted the government to improve food safety in schools. Children often suffer food poisoning due to poor hygiene in kitchens and occasionally sub-standard food.

Free lunches have since 2001 been offered to some 120 million schoolchildren throughout India, in the world’s largest school meal programme.

Educators see the scheme as a way to stop children dropping out of school, in a country where almost half of all young children are undernourished.

U.S. returns $100 million of stolen artifacts to India

(CNN)It's taken a while, but India is finally welcoming home some long-lost national treasures.

The U.S. has handed back more than 200 ancient artifacts, valued at more than $100 million, that were stolen from religious sites in India and smuggled out of the country.

The artifacts included religious statues, bronzes and terracotta pieces, some of them dating back more than 2,000 years. They were returned to the Indian government Monday at a Washington, D.C. ceremony attended by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"On behalf of President Obama, it is my great privilege to return these marvelous objects to the people of India," Lynch said.

Most of the pieces were seized during Operation Hidden Idol, an investigation that began in 2007 after Homeland Security special agents received a tip about a shipment of seven crates destined for the United States and labeled as "marble garden table sets."

Examination of the shipment in question revealed numerous antiquities. The shipment was imported by Subhash Kapoor, owner of Art of the Past Gallery in New York. The investigation found that Kapoor allegedly created false provenances to disguise the histories of his illicit antiquities, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Kapoor was arrested in 2012 and currently awaits trial in India.

The stolen treasures were recovered as a result of a massive collaborative effort between U.S. customs officials, New York and federal prosecutors, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Department of Justice's Office of International Affairs.

"Today, more than 200 antiquities and cultural artifacts that speak to India's astounding history and beautiful culture are beginning their journey home, where they can be studied and reflected upon for generations to come," Lynch added.

"It is my hope -- and the hope of the American people -- that this repatriation will serve as a sign of our great respect for India's culture."

Prime Minister Modi thanked the U.S. for returning the national treasures to their rightful home.

Among the pieces is a statue of Saint Manikkavacakar, a Hindu mystic and poet from the Chola period (circa 850 AD to 1250 AD), that was stolen from the Sivan Temple in Chennai, India. It's valued at $1.5 million. Another is a bronze sculpture of Hindu god Ganesha, which is estimated to be 1,000 years old.

Since 2007 the U.S. has returned more than 8,000 stolen artifacts to 30 countries, including paintings from France, Germany, Poland and Austria; 15th to 18th century manuscripts from Italy and Peru; and cultural artifacts from China, Cambodia and Iraq.

Here are pictures of some of the artefacts. pic.twitter.com/Q4PWMOee2X

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 7, 2016

Taj Mahal's white marble walls are under threat... from insect excrement: Monument to love is being turned green by bugs from nearby polluted river

The Taj Mahal's stunning white marble walls and decorative interior attracts millions of tourists to India every year but now the site is facing a disgusting new threat - from green insect excrement.

Authorities have ordered an investigation after green-tinged patches began appearing on the back wall of the monument to love, which stands on the banks of the heavily polluted Yamuna river.

The world famous tourist attraction has previously been damaged by India's air population, caused by decades of heavy industry in nearby cities.

Environmentalists believe the pollutants in the river have caused a rise in levels of algae, which has in turn led to a surge in the numbers of the insects which feed on it.

India's National Green Tribunal, which hears cases related to environmental protection, raised the issue last week. Now the state government of Uttar Pradesh, home to the world's most famous tomb, has ordered an inquiry.

'The state government is extremely concerned about this issue. People can rest assured that we will let no harm come to the Taj Mahal,' said the chief minister's spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary.

He said the chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, had ordered officials to find urgent solutions.

The alert was sounded by environmental activist DK Joshi.

'Three types of insects breeding in the stagnant and polluted waters of the Yamuna flowing behind the Taj Mahal are causing the problem,' he told AFP.

'They're attracted to the white sheen of the marble and the swarms are leaving behind greenish-black faeces, which is discolouring the ancient monument.'

Authorities have taken steps in recent years to try to protect the 17th-century monument from pollution from the nearby busy city of Agra, including banning local coal-powered industries.

The Taj - India's top tourist attraction - was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth in 1631.

It has drawn a string of world leaders and royalty including former US President Bill Clinton, while Diana, the late British princess, was famously photographed alone on a marble seat there in 1992.

District officials in Agra said they had not yet heard of the chief minister's directive but would take any action deemed necessary.

Forced into a burqa, separated from kids: Mumbai Urdu editor pays for Charlie Hebdo cartoons

Even as debate continues over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, a former female editor of a Urdu daily Avadhnama, finds herself in the middle of legal trouble and facing threats to her life after she made a decision to publish some of them in the wake of the attack on the Paris newspaper.

According to an IANS report, Shirin Dalvi, the editor of Avadhnama, was arrested by Mumbra Police on Wednesday and produced before a magistrate who granted her bail. "She was arrested on charges pertaining to hurting religious sentiments and related issues by reprinting a controversial cartoon of Prophet Mohammed," an police official said.

In its 17 January issue, the Mumbai edition of the Avadhnama had published the same cartoon which had resulted in the attack on the offices of 'Charlie Hebdo'. A local citizen, identified as Nusrat Ali complained to the Mumbra Police against the Urdu tabloid, contending that it hurt the religious sentiments of the Muslim community and could create hatred among communities.

Soon after the complaint in Thane and similar complaints in Mumbai by various individuals, the Mumbra police investigated the matter and arrested Dalvi. According to an Indian Express report, she now has six FIRs against her and lives in so much terror that she has been forced to wear a burqa at all times. She never wore the veil before this.

Dalai told the paper, "Facing the community again has become a great concern for me as there is still a lot of unrest. I have avoided showing my face in Muslim-populated pockets. I have not gone back to my house (in Mumbra) since the protest started." She also says that she has been unable to meet her children, since the controversy broke out. Her kids are now staying with relatives.

Dalvi has also received threats on her mobile. “My children have my old phone and they told me that someone has been sending messages through WhatsApp, saying “Maafi nahin milegi (You won’t get forgiveness),” she said.

Avadhnama is published from Lucknow, Faizabad, Aligarh, Azamgarh and Saharanpur, and the Mumbai edition was launched around a year ago. Now the owners have issued a statement saying the parent organisation has nothing to do with the Mumbai edition.

According to the IE report, in a statement on behalf of Taqdees Fatima, owner of the Avadhnama title, Waqar Rizvi said Fatima had no links with the Mumbai edition which was run by a separate entity. Interestingly a day after the Mumbai edition published the photos, all its staff including Dalvi were sacked.

Following the outrage, Dalvi admitted to the "mistake" and tendered an unconditional apology through the columns of her newspaper, but it was not accepted by the community at large.

Dalvi however says she's being singled out because she's a woman editor. She told Indian Express, “When organisations such as Raza Academy and Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind were satisfied with my apology, I do not understand why these letterhead organisations are hounding me. Their only agenda is to harass a woman editor.”

She also pointed out that hers was not the only organisation in India to publish the pictures but they were the only ones targeted with FIRs. While some of her colleagues told IE that Dalvi published the photos to get "publicity," she has denied the charge.

The Charlie Hebdo cartoons, which mocked Muhammed have generated controversy ever since the attack on the magazine office that left most of the staff dead. While most in the Muslim world see the cartoons are offensive (given that it is forbidden to represent Muhammad and the Charlie Hebdo relied on crude depictions of the Prophet), others say that the right to free speech includes the right to offend as well.

In India, however as we've seen even with the recent FIR against AIB, the right to feel offended takes precedence over freedom of speech. However in Dalvi's case, she is right to point out that she is being singled out given that hers was not the only publication in India that printed the cartoons.

With inputs from IANS

Modi throws open doors to people of Indian origin around the globe

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today appealed to millions of people of Indian origin across the world to turn to their homeland after he eased visa rules to lure overseas talent, in a bid to make the country a top power.

India has the world's second largest diaspora after China, with more than 25 million people settling overseas since colonial times, from Guyana in South America to Singapore in East Asia.

Modi's desire to harness the group's skills and resources is bolstered by his Hindu nationalist leanings towards reasserting India's position as a global leader with a unique civilisation stretching back thousands of years.

"There was a time when professionals in India went to distant lands to explore new possibilities," Modi told an annual gathering for people of Indian origin in the western state of Gujarat. "Now India awaits you with opportunities."

The diaspora event was timed immediately prior to a large investment meeting that will be addressed by US Secretary of State John Kerry and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.

Yesterday, President Pranab Mukherjee approved an executive order to ease the way for those whose families left India as many as four generations ago, as well as their spouses, to get lifetime visas and own property in India.

Modi's pitch has a harder economic aspect too, as the diaspora holds investments of more than US$100 billion (RM357 billion) in India.

Young, foreign-educated Indians came back in droves at the turn of the millennium and poured in funds as the economy took off with a roar, but the flow has dried up as growth sputtered in the past few years. Modi is keen to reverse that trend.

Officials said they are also assisting citizenship efforts by those whose ancestors left India centuries ago, shipped by British rulers to distant corners of the globe as indentured labourers.

Last year, overseas Indians greeted Modi with a rockstar welcome and stadium rallies on his state visits to the United States and Australia.

The energetic leader's popularity has already won over some high-profile individuals, including Arvind Panagariya and Arvind Subramanian, two of the world's top economists, who recently joined his government after long careers in the United States.

The diaspora meeting was attended by Guyana's President Donald Ramotar, and also sought to tap into the French-speaking Indian diaspora from island nations such as Mauritius. – Reuters, January 8, 2015.

- See more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/world/article/modi-throws-open-doors-to-people-of-indian-origin-around-the-globe#sthash.bXY7EqIJ.dpuf

Two brothers arrested in India over rape of Japanese tourist

PATNA (INDIA) (AFP) - Indian police have arrested two brothers accused of repeatedly raping a 22-year-old Japanese tourist over three weeks near Bodh Gaya, Buddhism's holiest site, an official said Saturday.

The tourist had been held hostage at gunpoint in a secluded underground room close to a pilgrimage site, according to a preliminary investigation.

"When her health condition deteriorated due to repeated rape and poor living conditions, she was brought to Gaya (district headquarters) for medical treatment on December 20," a police officer who is part of the investigation told AFP on condition of anonymity.

But she managed to escape and reached Varanasi where she met some Japanese tourists who helped her contact the Japanese consulate in the nearby city of Kolkata, the officer added.

Sajid Khan, 32, and his 25-year-old brother Jawed Khan, both tourist guides, were arrested in the case on Friday, police deputy superintendent Alok Kumar Singh said.

"We have arrested the duo for confining and raping the Japanese student," Singh told AFP by telephone from Bodh Gaya.

The Bodh Gaya complex, 110 kilometres (68 miles) south of Bihar state capital Patna, is home to one of the earliest Buddhist temples still standing in India and attracts visitors from all over the world.

The Japanese woman, a university student, had come to Gaya from Kolkata where she had checked into a hotel in November.

India has faced intense scrutiny over its efforts to curb violence against women following the fatal gang rape of a medical student in New Delhi in 2012 which sparked global outcry.

Since then, several attacks on foreign women have also been reported, leading to a dip in tourist numbers to the country.

Last January, a 51-year-old Danish tourist was robbed and gang raped at knife-point in Delhi.

In 2013, a Swiss cyclist holidaying in central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh was robbed and gang raped by five men, all of whom were later sentenced to life terms.

Indian Court rules conversion for marriage invalid

The Court said that the conversion of a person, “without any real belief in the religion to which he/she is converting, was null and void”.

FMT

KUALA LUMPUR: Ruling that their conversions were not valid because it was done with “the sole purpose of marriage”, the Allahabad High Court on Tuesday refused to grant any relief to five couples who had got married after the girls who were Hindu converted to Islam, according to a report by the Indian Express which has gone viral on social media.

The couples had approached the Court seeking relief against alleged harassment by relatives and police.

A single-judge bench of Justice Surya Prakash Kesarwani passed the order after clubbing together five petitions from couples hailing from Siddhartha Nagar, Deoria, Kanpur, Sambhal, Pratapgarh and Mau in Uttar Pradesh.

The Court said that the conversion of a person, “without any real belief in the religion to which he/she is converting, was null and void”.

Such a marriage was against the tenets of the Quran and also the rulings of the Supreme Court on the issue, it added.

While dismissing the couples’ pleas, the Court said: “The alleged conversion of petitioner No. 1 (girl) in each of the writ petitions cannot be said to be bona fide or valid. The religion of the petitioner was converted at the instance of petitioner No. 2 (boy) to marry the girl. The petitioner girls have stated that they do not know about Islam.”

In the writ petitions, as well as in the statements on oaths made before this Court, “the petitioner girls have not stated that they have any real faith and belief in the unity of God and Mohammed to be prophet. They all stated that the boy got their religion converted with the sole purpose of marrying her.”

Concluding that these marriages were “against the mandate of… the Holy Quran”, the Court said: “Thus conversion of religion to Islam in the presence of the facts by these girls, without their faith and belief in Islam and at the instance of the boys, solely for the purpose of marriage, cannot be said to be a valid conversion to the Islam religion.”

The petitioners (girls), most of whom were aged around 18 or 19, had earlier submitted before the Court that they “did not know anything about Islam; they were not in the room when their religion was converted; and that they converted only because the boys wanted them to.”

The boys had also submitted before the Court that they were not aware of the paperwork regarding conversion.

But they did admit that they had got the women converted for the sake of marriage.

It was not immediately clear whether the marriages, which the parents and relatives of the girls and apparently police were against, were valid. The Court did not seem to have ruled on the validity of the marriages.

Muslim girls shouldn't wear short clothes, says attacker after slapping Gauhar Khan

Mumbai: Model and actor Gauhar Khan was today slapped by an audience member while she was hosting 'India's Raw Star', a reality show, at Film City in suburban Goregaon, police said.

Gauhar Khan was attacked and threatened by an audience member who said that, "being a Muslim woman, she should not have worn such a short dress", Aarey Colony police said.

The accused, identified as Mohammed Akil Mallick (24), slapped and touched her inappropriately during the break of the show, but was immediately overpowered by the security guards deployed there, following which the police were notified.

According to a report on Hindustan Times, there were 250 bouncers present at the venue, which had 2,500 people as audience. Yet, the man managed to break the security cordon and get into an argument with Khan.

HT quotes a source: "While he was being escorted out of the place, he managed to go up on stage and slapped her. The source adds, “It was chaos after the security pulled the man away. Gauahar was shocked and was crying a lot. A stunned Gauahar didn’t understand what happened. Though the shooting was stopped, Gauahar took a break of an hour to gather her bearings and then reported back on stage to finish the leftover one hour shoot.”

Senior inspector at Aarey police station, Vilas Chavan, told PTI that the accused was subsequently arrested and booked under IPC sections 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation). Mallick will be produced before the court tomorrow.

Love For Sale in India

By Neeta Lal

One woman’s story of enslavement in the sex industry

India’s parliamentarians again are debating whether prostitution should be legalized or decriminalized. It is an argument that a 36-year-old sex worker in a brothel in New Delhi’s infamous GB Road is watching closely. She gives her name only as “Lata.”

The story of how Lata got to GB Road, Asia's largest and the world's second largest red-light district, housing an estimated 12,000 of India’s 3 million-odd sex workers, is a sad one lived by far too many of India’s girls and women and depressingly will inevitably be lived by more as more women enter the work force and a steadily growing economy gives men the money to visit sex workers.

Lata was born in the Etawah village of Uttar Pradesh, she says, ironically to school teacher parents.

She had no idea her life would take her, at the age of 16, to 20 years of prostitution. She had three siblings, she said, all of whom studied at a local government school where her father once taught.

But when she was in her 10th year of schooling, the wife of a rich farmer neighbour died in childbirth. He was Lata’s father’s friend. He offered the equivalent of U$4,000 for the 16 year old girl. Her father, an alcoholic, quickly accepted the offer.

“Mom wasn't too happy about the arrangement, but she capitulated as dad had threatened her with dire consequences,” Lata said. “I was mortified at the thought of marrying an old man but succumbed under familial pressure and the thought of how so much money would dramatically alter the lives of my brother and two little sisters. However, two days after the wedding, panic set in. I realized I'd rather die than live for the rest of my life with a husband old enough to be my father.”

Telling her family of her decision to run away would spell trouble, so she thought of suicide, she said.

“Then another thought crossed my mind -- why not run away to a different city? So in the dead of night, five days after my marriage, I ran away from my husband's home after packing in my clothes and some jewellery my mother had given me. I boarded the local bus to Delhi, hoping for a fresh, clean start.”

On the bus, she met what she described as an attractive young man who suggested she visit a women's organization in Delhi which could offer me vocational training and even a job.

"’A place to stay and food could also be a part of the deal,’" he said. “I was hooked. Upon reaching Delhi, the guy took me to this large old Haveli [a dilapidated mansion] on GB Road to meet the ‘manager.’ I had no clue what I was heading for. A few girls were learning Bollywood moves from a dance master on the premises wearing loud makeup and gaudy clothes.”

The manager, a woman in her 50s – the madam – told Lata that if she could learn to dance, she would line up stage shows in return for a commission.

“I didn't suspect anything as the lady was very nice. She gave me a room (a dingy one which I had to share with another girl) and food in exchange for doing housekeeping on the premises,” she says “Once I got acclimatized to my new environs, the madam gradually started sending me `clients'. At first I was repulsed by the thought of selling my body. But what other choice did I have? Going back home wasn't an option. Nor was I educated enough to get a job.”

Besides, she said, “the other girls told me the money was okay. Plus there were tips too.

People from all strata of society – politicians, students, professionals, rickshaw pullers – visit her and her confreres. “Some of them are decent while the others create problems by insisting on not using condoms. As madams hate to turn a client away, they occasionally force us to have unprotected sex. As rates for such encounters are double, few girls object.”

In India, sex workers hardly undergo the tests HIV/AIDS, which jeopardizes their lives. Worse, a major chunk of earnings (usually US$20 per client) is taken away by pimps who bring in costumers. These dalals further have to send hafta (bribe) to the police to run their businesses.

“The cops are another nuisance. They want sex – for free! If we refuse, we're harassed, or our regular clients prevented from visiting us or worse, beaten up.”

Every year in India millions of young girls go missing, fathers sell their vulnerable girls, husbands unconscionably sell their wives, traffickers inject steroids to young girls to make them look like adults...

“There are plenty of such horror cases in our brothel too,” Lati says. “Most of us come from the poorest states and from the lowest strata of society. Exploitation of sex-workers is a common practice as the sex trade is proliferating due to social media.”

As India has become famous for medical tourism, with westerners flocking to the country for inexpensive medical care, it is becoming famous for sex tourism, with many Indian cities turning into sex tourism hubs.

“The government isn't doing much to stop prostitution because poor lives have little value,” Lata says.

Another dark aspect of sex-trade industry is pornography. Though pornography in India is a punishable offence, thousands of such websites run unregulated. The business has gone virtual and pimps are increasingly shifting their work online for fear of being caught. Social networking sites are turning into virtual brothels.

“Obviously, the government isn't serious about tackling this issue,” she says. “More than the debate over legalization of prostitution, we need to remove pornographic websites as they set in chain an undesirable chain of events. Pornography fuels the demand for prostitution leading to an increase in trafficking of women and children. Some people feel that legalizing prostitution will check the exploitation of sex-workers from police and pimps while keeping AIDS in check. I don’t think so. Sex is a slavery in any form. The trauma and exploitation of prostitutes at brothels is unimaginable and legalizing the trade will only lead to increased trafficking of young girls.”

People say prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, she concludes. “Is it a profession? I'd say it’s the oldest crime committed against humanity. Rather than wasting time over debates and TV discussions, why doesn't the government focus on rehabilitating us and providing us some decent work. We should be integrated with the rest of society. All human beings deserve to live a life of dignity including us.”

M’sia deports Sikh militant to India

The man alleged to be responsible for the 2009 killing of Indian politician Rulda Singh.

FMT

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has deported a suspected Sikh militant wanted for the 2009 killing of an Indian politician, police said today.

Inpector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said in a statement that the man, 36, using a fake Nepalese passport, was arrested in Johor Baru on October 24 for immigration offences and deported yesterday.

He is alleged to be part of a Sikh militant group responsible for the 2009 killing of Indian politician Rulda Singh.

Rulda Singh was a former president of Sikh hardline group Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, which supports the Hindu nationalist grassroots organisation linked to country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Khalid said Malaysian authorities cooperated with their Indian counterparts to make the arrest, bringing to six the total number of militants believed to be linked to the group held since 2009.

– AFP

India’s Modi Merges Myth and Reality

Ancient art of plastic surgery fixed Ganesh’s head onto a man’s body. What??

By John Elliott - Asia Sentinel

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has caused consternation and controversy by telling an audience of doctors and scientists last weekend that plastic surgery and genetic science existed and were in use thousands of years ago in ancient India.

That, he said at the dedication of a hospital in Mumbai on October 25, was how the Hindu god Ganesh’s elephant head became attached to a human body, and how a warrior god was born outside his mother’s womb.

The theme of Modi’s speech was that India needs to improve its (grossly inadequate) healthcare facilities, which is in line with campaigns he has launched for cleanliness and the provision and use of toilets in schools and elsewhere. Quoting the ancient Mahabharat epic, he extended this to say that “our ancestors made big contributions” in such areas and that those capabilities needed to be regained.

The speech,at a hospital funded by the Ambani family of Reliance, one of India’s two biggest groups, is on the prime minister’s office website in Hindi (click here), and theIndian Express has published some of the paragraphs with an English translation (click here):

“We can feel proud of what our country achieved in medical science at one point of time. We all read about Karna in Mahabharat. If we think a little more, we realise that the Mahabharat says Karna was not born from his mother’s womb. This means that genetic science was present at that time. That is why Karna could be born outside his mother’s womb…..We worship Lord Ganesh. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head onto the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.”

This is significant for three reasons. One is the unusual position of a prime minister who makes such utterances as fact, which caused the consternation and was debated earlier this week on the Headlines Today To the Point tv channel. The second is that, apart from that program, there has been very little coverage of this part of his speech in the Indian media, which has largely fought shy of criticizing or questioning Modi and his ministers since the general election.

The third reason is that it controversially illustrates how Hindu nationalist views are moving to center stage now that the BJP is in power. Activists have a simple vision of building a strong India that is respected worldwide as a modern version of an ancient Hindu civilisation, which is the pivotal point of their view of history.

It is this vision that drives Modi and many of his ministers, raising the question of how much they would disturb India’s broadly-based traditions and view of history that have been built since independence by Congress governments to embrace Muslims and other minorities. Re.-writing school textbooks is part of the government’s program, as it was when the BJP was last in power.

That Modi supports theories such as Ganesh’s head is well known. He has spoken about them before and propagated them in schools when he was chief minister of Gujarat, writing the preface of a book that claimed the ancient inventions of motor cars, airplanes and origins of stem cell research.

In a similar vein, Modi’s water resources minister, Uma Bharti, has revived a geological search for the mystical River Saraswati, which is mentioned in Vedic texts and is alleged to flow roughly parallel to the Indus from the Himalayas to the Arabian sea.

Even under the recent Congress government, the Archaeological Society of India, an official body in charge of ancient monuments and sites, last year authorized a (fruitless) dig under an old fort in Uttar Pradesh after a seer had dreamed that 1,000 tonnes of goldwere buried there

The Ramayana, the Hindu religion’s most popular epic dating from 3,000 years ago, has for seven or more years been the basis of opposition to a project to dig a shipping channel in the Palk Straits between the southern tip of India and Sri Lanka. It has been argued the channel would breach a crop of rocks known as Adam’s Bridge (or Ram Setu) thatLord Ram built across the straits so that his armies could rescue his wife Sita from the clutches of the Lankan king.

Such suggestions and actions need to be seen in the context of Indians’ everyday lives, which absorb mythologies and religions without necessarily questioning and analyzing the boundaries between mythological and religious beliefs and modern reality.

What is unusual is to have a prime minister say Ganesh was the product of plastic surgery without acknowledging that accuracy cannot be vouched for in the empirical western sense of history, even though inspirational mythology usually has some basis in truth.

John Elliott is Asia Sentinel’s New Delhi correspondent. He also blogs under the title Riding theElephant, which can be found at the bottom right corner of Asia Sentinel’s face page.

Indian jihadist calls for attacks on non-Muslims

Henri Rose Cimatu

An Indian Jihadist operating out of Pakistan has made a call to "kill an American or European, whether French or Australian or Canadian, or other unbelievers who have declared war on the Islamic State."

Ansar al-Tawhid fi'Bilad al-Hind, Indian jihadists based in Pakistan's northwest border area called on supporters to attack non-Muslims in the region, in an online Eid message on October 4, The Indian Express reported.

The call was delivered by 39-year-old Maulana Abdul Rehman al-Nadwi al-Hindi.
Indian security analysts say Maulana Abdul Rehman is a pseudonym for fugitive jihadist Sultan Abdul Kadir Armar.

The Indian Express reported in August that Armar delivered his first call for Indian Muslims to join the global jihad.

In his words, he encouraged the Muslim community to take the "Quran in one hand and the sword in the other, and head to the fields of jihad."

Now through a 30-minute video, Armar has directed the Muslims to "kill the mushrik (those who practice idolatory) wherever you find them... shoot them if you can, stab them, throw stones at their heads, poison them, run them over, burn their fields - and if you are unable... spit in their faces,"

He specifically instructed that they should target the "security forces, the agents, and the helpers of the oppressors."

He also likened the blood of an unbeliever to the blood of the dog as it is permitted to spill the blood of civilians and soldiers.

In the speech, Armar also pledged loyalty to jihadist leader Ibrahim al-Awwad al-Badri, acknowledging his status as self-proclaimed Caliph, or ruler of all Muslims in the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, Ajay Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi told Reuters news agency, "There is no doubt that the radicalisation process has begun in different parts of the country. Islamic fundamentalists are seeking to indoctrinate Indian Muslims."

The Indian jihadists have been involved in various attacks against Western nationals like the suicide bombing of Glasgow airport in 2007 and the September 2010 Indian Mujahideen attack outside Delhi's Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India.

Imprinting the Face of Gandhi on a New Brand of Leadership

By ELLEN BARRY

NEW DELHI — Watching Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the last month, as he began to carve out an image for himself beyond India’s borders, one might have gotten the impression that Mohandas K. Gandhi was his ideological progenitor, or his running mate.

Gandhi is everywhere in Delhi these days. A stylized drawing of his steel-rimmed, circular glasses is the logo of Mr. Modi’s new cleanliness drive, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, introduced with great fanfare on the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth. He is posed with a broom and basket on the cover of Organiser, the magazine of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the right-wing Hindu organization connected to Mr. Modi’s party. When the president of China, Xi Jinping, visited, Mr. Modi received him at Gandhi’s ashram. Then Mr. Modi visited President Obama in the United States and presented him with a copy of Gandhi’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita.

Gandhi, of course, is an unlikely avatar for the ascendant right wing in India. For most of the last century, Gandhi has been the symbolic leader of the Indian National Congress party, which Mr. Modi drove from power this year. Gandhi’s economic vision was fundamentally anticapitalist: He extolled rural over urban life and called industrialization “a curse for mankind.” During his lifetime, Gandhi was excoriated by right-wing activists — including the man who assassinated him — for acquiescing to the creation of Pakistan and advocating the rights of India’s Muslim minority.

Though Mr. Modi has always spoken of Gandhi with respect, he has echoed the criticism that Congress leaders gave preferential treatment to India’s minorities. Mr. Modi’s reputation as a Hindu hard-liner was defined in 2002, when bloody sectarian riots broke out under his watch as chief minister of the state of Gujarat. No Indian court has found him responsible for the riots, which left more than 1,200 dead, most of them Muslims.

So the Gandhi now embraced by Mr. Modi is an edited version. First and foremost, he is a preacher of cleanliness — a fair depiction, since he was passionate on the subject, known for seizing brooms and for insisting that even highborn followers, like his wife, empty their own chamber pots.

Mr. Modi has endorsed some elements of Gandhi’s economic thinking, urging consumers to buy homespun cloth instead of imported products. But his Gandhi hardly believes that “the future of India lies in its villages.” To a prosperous crowd of mainly Indian-Americans at Madison Square Garden in New York last month, Mr. Modi described Gandhi as a character remarkably like them, a man who “went abroad, became a barrister, had opportunities,” but “came back to serve the nation.”

Tushar A. Gandhi, the great-grandson of the independence leader, has watched this process from his home in Mumbai with curiosity and, at times, satisfaction.

He noted, however, that during his 12 years as a state leader, Mr. Modi had never invoked Gandhi with such enthusiasm.

“In this short period of 100 days that he has been the prime minister of India, it seems everything he does is guided by Bapu,” he said, using an affectionate term meaning father. “It is a bit of a surprise. The only thing I can say at the moment is, I hope it is sincere.”
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While preparing to seek the post of prime minister, Mr. Modi set out to create political space for himself outside the Hindu right wing, in part by laying claim to beloved figures associated with the Congress party.

The most obvious was the independence fighter Sardar Patel, known as “the Iron Man of India,” whom Mr. Modi so admires that he has begun a project to build a 597-foot Patel monument, tall enough for recognition in the Guinness Book of World Records. There is little mystery in why Mr. Modi identifies with Mr. Patel. He was a rival to India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and unlike the secular, Anglophile Mr. Nehru, Mr. Patel was an ascetic Hindu, far less sympathetic to the demands of India’s Muslims and more to the right on economic matters.

Outside India, however, Mr. Patel’s name provokes only a dive for an encyclopedia, whereas Gandhi’s prompts hushed reverence. More surprising, perhaps, is Mr. Modi’s effort to associate himself with Mr. Nehru, a leader whom he has publicly criticized in the past as weak. Last week, Mr. Modi called him “Chacha Nehru,” or “Uncle Nehru,” and proposed that his Nov. 14 birthday become a nationwide celebration of — you guessed it — hygiene and cleanliness.

With the adoption of Mr. Nehru, Mr. Modi has “got the whole packet” of Congress’s heroes, said Shiv Visvanathan, a social scientist and self-described liberal. “Congress is left with very little,” he said. “It’s literally a stealing of intellectual property.”

Tushar Gandhi declared last week that Mr. Modi’s rollout of the cleanliness campaign, which required top officials to go out and clean neighborhoods, was the only celebration in decades “which would have gotten Bapu’s seal of approval.”

Whether it represents an ideological shift toward the center is still unclear. Mr. Modi has a knack, unique among recent Indian leaders, for broadcasting political signals in all directions at once. Prabhu Chawla, editorial director of The New Indian Express, ticked off a long list of gestures aimed at proving Mr. Modi’s credentials as a Hindu nationalist. When he visited Nepal on a two-day trip, he stopped to make an offering at a famous Hindu temple. At the White House, he stuck to a religious fast and refused to eat or drink anything except hot water.

“His idea of India is Hindi Hindu — people who speak Hindi and those who are Hindu,” Mr. Chawla said. “He is wearing his Hinduism on his sleeve, and saying, ‘You take it or leave it.’ ”

Mr. Modi’s invocations of Gandhi may simply be an acknowledgment that one cannot rule India without allegiance to him. More than two decades have passed since Atal Vajpayee, the last prime minister to rise out of India’s right wing, began to praise Gandhi in public, opening the door for the Bharatiya Janata Party to interlace his name and image with Hindu nationalism, said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor of political science at Brown University.

Elements of Gandhi’s thinking fell by the wayside, he said, such as the love he professed for India’s Muslims and his vision of a “feminized,” less aggressive Hinduism. Professor Varshney added that there was nothing unusual in that.

“No one in India, not even Congress, has fully embraced Gandhi,” he said. “Gandhi is the father of the nation, no doubt. But Gandhi is also a difficult father.”

Cleanliness, in any case, is a proposition that no one can dispute.

Rajmohan Gandhi, the independence leader’s grandson, certainly could not, though he called it “an incomplete representation of Gandhian thought.” Asked whether the prime minister was moving in that direction, Rajmohan Gandhi said he was skeptical.

“Time will tell,” he said. “Gandhi is available to all to use or misuse. My complaining will make no difference. But Gandhi may spring back and create problems for those who misuse him.”

Indian jihadist group calls for attacks on non Muslims

By Rupam Jain Nair

(Reuters) - A group of Indian Islamic militants, operating out of Pakistan, has called for attacks on non Muslims in the region in retaliation for U.S.-led air strikes on fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The head of the little-known Ansar al-Tawhid fi’Bilad al-Hind urged Muslims to kill foreigners and other infidels in mainly Hindu India where Muslims have largely stayed away from global jihad.

"If you are in the fortunate position to kill an American or European, whether French or Australian or Canadian, or other unbelievers who have declared war on the Islamic State, then do so," said Maulana Abdul Rehman al-Nadwi al-Hindi in a 30-minute video posted online last week.

Indian security analysts said that Maulana Abdul Rehman is a pseudonym for fugitive jihadist Sultan Abdul Kadir Armar, a former resident of southern India who attended an Islamist seminary before going to Pakistan.

"Kill the idol worshippers wherever you find them ... shoot them if you can, stab them, throw stones at their heads, poison them, run them over, burn their fields - and if you are unable ... spit in their faces," al-Hindi said, referring to Hindus.

The emergence of a Islamic State-aligned militant group in India comes weeks after al Qaeda announced the formation of an Indian branch, aiming to rouse the world's third largest Muslim population into action.

"There is no doubt that the radicalisation process has begun in different parts of the country. Islamic fundamentalists are seeking to indoctrinate Indian Muslims," said Ajay Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi which monitors militant groups across South Asia.

The rapid rise of the Islamic State has evoked admiration among some groups in India and the flags of the insurgent group have appeared at rallies in Indian Kashmir, the country's only Muslim-majority state and the site of a nearly 25-year armed revolt.

The push for new jihadi recruits comes at a time of increased tension between Muslims and Hindus in India following the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister in May. Some of Modi's Hindu nationalist followers have been stirring up communal differences.

India has long believed that its democracy provided a platform for Muslims and other minority groups to address grievances and that they didn't have to turn to violent jihad to pursue their aims.

Modi said last month that al Qaeda would struggle to recruit members from India's 175-million strong Muslim community and praised Muslims for their commitment to fight for the country.

Two suspected al Qaeda supporters were killed when a bomb they were making exploded in a house in the state of West Bengal on Oct. 2, police told Reuters. Police said they found documents linked to al Qaeda and Chechen rebels.

(Additional reporting by Sujoy Dhar in KOLKATA; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Jeremy Laurence)

India’s Modi Draws Huge US Crowds

Now back in office, he urges Indians to sweep the streets

Asia Sentinel

Just back from a tumultuous five-day visit to the US, Narendra Modi yesterday launched his Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Movement) by sweeping up rubbish in Valmiki Basti, a Delhi neighborhood where Mahatma Gandhi, once stayed. It was the father of the nation’s birth anniversary, and a public holiday at the beginning of the long festival weekend of Dussehra that celebrates the triumph of good over evil.

In his first radio broadcast to the nation, marking the Dussehra holiday, Modi asked people to “pledge to remove dirt from our lives”. He ordered thousands of bureaucrats to go to work and clean their offices in a drive that started a week ago, and the Delhi symbolic street sweeping was repeated in other state capitals where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power.

After four months as prime minister, Modi is emerging as a motivated hands-on politician, who leads by example and expects others to do the same. He is beginning to strike chords with the mass of Indians who respect his and the BJP’s nationalism, which was echoed in a televised speech this morning by Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the RSS, the BJP’s arch Hindu fundamentalist parent organization.

Modi and Bhagwat called on people to follow thesimple life style of Mahatma Gandhi, and Bhagwat even asked them to boycott goods from China, apparently because of the two countries’ border confrontations,

Modi also sticks to his beliefs, refusing food at banquets during his successful US visit because he always fasts for nine days of the Navratri festival running up to Dussehra.

India is becoming accustomed to his symbolic gestures, which began with South Asian leaders being invited to his swearing in, and continued with him playing drums when he was in Japan, taking China’s president Xi Jinping to his home state of Gujarat for a festive evening, and last weekend addressing huge crowds in New York’s Central Park and (photo below) in Madison Square Gardens.

He has established himself as a tough politician who expects ministers and bureaucrats to turn up for work on time, actually take decisions, and keep files moving, so that policies are turned into action. He has shown the world he can be a friendly politician as well as a capable orator. Clearly a man on a mission to make India work, he also wants to make the world realise it is happening – something he seems to have achieved with President Obama earlier this week in Washington.

Now he needs to spend time in his grand Prime Minister’s Office in Delhi and turn all the symbolism and gestures into action.

But he won’t be doing that yet because tomorrow he is off to Haryana and Maharashtra to campaign for the BJP in state assembly elections due on October 15. The party needs to win those states from the Congress Party, partly to strengthen Modi’s ability to implement policies at state level, and partly because the BJP needs to build up its minority position in the Rajya Sabha, which is elected through state-level electoral colleges. Modi also needs to ensure that the BJP’s embarrassing defeats last month in various state assembly by-elections do not turn into a trend – and he wants to prove that he is still the party’s primary vote winner.

When he is back in Delhi after the political campaigning, Modi faces mounting problems. The most serious is that too many top ministers are in charge of several ministries, especially Arun Jaitley, the finance, defense and company affairs minister, who is a diabetic and is in hospital with a chest infection after a stomach operation. Jaitley is the most important, and also the most experienced and probably the most capable minister in the government. Doctors have said he might be home this weekend, but his load needs to be lightened.

Some commentators have been calling for Modi to introduce economic reforms that would catch headlines, but India does not need reforms so much as implementation of existing policies.

The clean India campaign, which expands on work done by the last Congress-led government, needs to be driven beyond yesterday’s symbolism. The task is huge in a nation that dumps rubbish in the streets, where a third of garbage is never collected, and 70 percent of rural homes have no access to toilets. Traditionally, cleaning is regarded as something best left to the lowest castes.

A new Made in India manufacturing policy needs political and bureaucratic leadership to reduce blockages that impede investment at all levels. Among many other examples, the highway building program needs to be actively revived, the railway system needs to be modernized, and care needs to be taken in revising environmental laws and regulations so that infrastructure projects are speeded up without seriously harming India’s natural heritage. Dreadful educational and health facilities also need to be improved in hundreds of thousands of villages and urban areas.

Governments everywhere love to go for high profile and fine sounding projects such as industrial corridors, special economic zones, smart cities, and bullet trains. Such long-term vision is of course necessary, but none of these projects, which Modi has been promoting, will help him to fulfil, by the time of the next general election, his pledges in this year’s election campaign to get India moving again. To do that, he and his ministers and top bureaucrats have to focus on the hard slog of unblocking bureaucratic lethargy and corruption, simplifying laws, and speeding up implementation.

Not a ‘pain in the ass’

Modi attracts a lot of brickbats from observers who find it hard to come to terms with his rise and international success. Pankaj Mishra, an Indian writer who has a following for views aired from his vantage point in the UK, scathingly wrote after Modi’s flamboyant success in the US that “India desperately needs a vision other than that of the vain small man trying to impress the big men with his self-improvised rules of the game.

The former Mumbai correspondent of The Economist, who is now posted in New York, managed to work “pain in the ass” into his blog report on Modi at Madison Square Garden, after which his editors responded to complaints by issuing a statement saying: “The Economist does not consider Mr Modi to be a ‘pain in the ass’. ” The epithet had merely been “how we imagined an uninformed New Yorker might feel about someone who causes a traffic jam” – which Modi had done as tens of thousands of Indians flocked to see him. That was especially embarrassing for the magazine because it had amazingly backed Rahul Gandhi to become prime minister in the general election since it could not bring itself to be identified with Modi.

There are many people waiting for Modi to fail to deliver on the dreams and visions of a successful India that he spun during his presidential-style general election campaign. Obama belted out “Yes we can” from his election platforms and, many would say, failed to deliver. Modi added, “Yes we will do” – now he needs to turn the oratory into practice.

John Elliott is Asia Sentinel’s New Delhi correspondent. He blogs at Riding the Elephant, which can be found at the bottom right corner of Asia Sentinel’s face page.

India Gets to Mars but Can’t Mine Coal

Recalcitrant judiciary wrecks mining plans

By Asia Sentinel

India yesterday became the first country in the world successfully to complete a space mission to Mars on the first attempt, beating China, which does not yet have a craft in orbit around the planet. It also beat Russia and the US which did not succeed first time,and its cost was only us$74 mllion spent over three years compared with the US spending $679m over six years.

Narendra Modi, the prime minister launched his “Make in India” campaign at a televised jamboree in Delhi. This is aimed at persuading both foreign and Indian companies to invest in India and thus boost both its unsuccessful manufacturing industry and its exports. Twenty-five sectors have been identified for social focus.

Abandoning the usual comparison between India as a lumbering elephant and China as a prowling tiger, Modi has chosen a lion (made of engineering cogs) as the logo of the campaign, presumably because his home state of Gujarat is home to India’s only lions.

With these two events, one might think that all is beginning to come right for a country that has lost its way economically in recent years. The timing is good. Modi is about to leave for what promises to be a spectacular five-day visit to the US where he will try to persuade investors and politicians – and world leaders at the United Nations – that India is bring back on track

Sadly it is not so. Just as Mangalyaan, (the Mars-craft in Hindi) was entering the Mars orbit, three judges in India’s supreme court cancelled, with effect from March next year, 214 of the 218 coal mining licenses that have been issued without open tendering between 1993 and 2011. This endangers India’s power generation industry, its steelworks and other industries, as well as adding to foreign investors serious worries about the risks and uncertainty of doing business here.

All these events link up to illustrate why India’s fudge and fix-it approach policy making and governance, known as jugaad, coupled with a belief that everything will work out ok (chalta hai) have whittled away at the country’s institutions and economic performance to such an extent that Modi won a landslide general election victory four months ago because voters believed he could restore India to its rightful place in the world.

Even though it fails in many industrial areas, India is a world leader in space and rocket technology, manufacturing, and delivery, mainly because the US and other countries stopped it being able to import high technology after its nuclear weapon tests in 1974 and 1998. This meant that India was on its own so, capitalizing on work initiated shortly after independence in 1947 by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, scientists and private sector companies produced a series of successes that culminated in yesterday’s Mars achievement. Two companies that have done pioneering work for decades, the Godrej group and Larsen & Toubro, contributed to the Mars mission.

The development speed and the low cost of the Mars probe illustrates how Indian industry is capable of developing the negative skills of jugaad into frugal engineering where the best is made of limited resources at minimal cost.

Contrast that with India’s defense industry, where there has been no ban on imports and where US and other foreign companies have connived with the defence establishment to such an extent that as much as 70% of India’s defence orders have to be bought from abroad – even night vision goggles, radars and guns as well as helicopters, other aircraft, ships and missiles have not generally been manufactured in India to satisfactory standards.

This bureaucratic throttlehold on the growth of manufacturing industry stretches far beyond the defence industries, and Modi’s hopes of reviving the industry will not succeed unless he stops bureaucrats working with foreign suppliers to boost imports at the cost of local companies.

Governments till now have failed to tackle these and many other failing in the way India works, which has led to an escalation of “judicial activism” that began over 30 years ago, where courts take it on themselves to order governments and other authorities what to do. Initiatives have ranged from protecting bonded labour and enforcing environmental regulations, to ordering Delhi’s buses to be powered by compressed natural gas, and even recently challenging the government’s tardiness in appointing an official leader of the opposition in parliament

This has progressively upset the balance between the executive and the judiciary as the machinery of government has begun to implode, but yesterday’s mining judgment is probably the most damaging and irrational of edicts. It follows a similar but less economically damaging ruling two years ago that cancelled mostly corrupt telecommunications licenses. It stems from a coal scandal during the time of the last government when coal licenses were handed out without proper controls to a wide range of companies in order to speed up coal-fired power generation. But many companies simply sat on the assets and did not start mining, which led to the Supreme Court action.

It would have been understandable if the judges had cancelled licenses where coal mining had not been started, but it has acted retrospectively on 21 years of licenses and is also fining companies Rs 295 per tonne of coal mined. That money will go to the government which now has six months to reorganize the industry and the inefficient Coal India to try to fill the gaps.

The judges no doubt felt they were doing their legal duty, and it is of course the failings of successive governments that have led the supreme court to intervene to such a degree. And it will no doubt continue to do so until the government gets a grip on affairs that it should be running.

John Elliott is Asia Sentinel’s New Delhi correspondent. His blog, Riding the Elephant, appears at the bottom right of Asia Sentinel’s face page

Al Qaeda launches India wing to 'raise the flag of jihad' in subcontinent

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahri on Wednesday announced the formation of an Indian branch of his militant group he said would spread Islamic rule and "raise the flag of jihad" across the subcontinent.

In a 55-minute video posted online, Zawahri also renewed a longstanding vow of loyalty to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, in an apparent snub to the Islamic State armed group challenging al Qaeda for leadership of transnational Islamist militancy.

Zawahri described the formation of "Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent" as a glad tidings for Muslims "in Burma, Bangladesh, Assam, Gujarat, Ahmedabad, and Kashmir" and said the new wing would rescue Muslims there from injustice and oppression.

Zawahari said al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, or AQIS, "break all borders created by Britain in India", and called on all Muslims in the region to "unite under the credo of the one god".

The new organisation, named the Jamaat Qaidat al-jihad fi'shibhi al-qarrat al-Hindiya, or Organisation of The Base of Jihad in the Indian Sub-Continent, also released online manifestos written by al-Zawahiri, spokesperson Usama Mahmoud, and organisational chief Asim Umar, said a newspaper report.

Meanwhile, reuters citing counter-terrorism experts said al Qaeda's ageing leaders are struggling to compete for recruits with Islamic State, which has galvanised young followers around the world by carving out tracts of territory across the Iraq-Syria border.

Islamic State leader Abu Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi calls himself a "caliph" or head of state and has demanded the loyalty of all Muslims.

Zawahri's announcement has also made two references to Gujarat.

"In the wake of this al Qaeda video, we will be on a higher alert. We will work closely with the central government to tackle any threat posed to the state," SK Nanda, the seniormost bureaucrat in the home department of Gujarat, told Reuters. A high security alert in the state involves activating informer networks in sensitive areas.

Zawahri described the formation of "Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent" as glad tidings for Muslims "in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Assam, Gujarat, Ahmedabad, and Kashmir" and said the new wing would rescue Muslims there from injustice and oppression.

A senior police official said that Gujarat has been high on the list of militant organisations, including al Qaeda, since the 2002 riots.

The ISIS fell out with Zawahri in 2013 over its expansion into Syria, where Baghdadi's followers have carried out beheadings, crucifixions, and mass executions.

The announcement could pose a challenge to India's new prime minister Narendra Modi.

However, while al Qaeda is very much at home in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, due to influential contacts and a long presence there, it is a minnow compared to local militant groups in terms of manpower and regional knowledge.

Kashmir has long attracted foreign mujahideen fighters as well as home-grown separatist militants. In June, al Qaeda released a video urging young radicals in Kashmir to draw inspiration from militants in Syria and Iraq and join the "global jihad."

Intelligence sources in Kashmir told Reuters on Thursday that they had so far detected no traces of al Qaeda in the Himalayan region that borders Pakistan and China.


Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/al-qaeda-new-branch-indian-subcontinent-renews-loyalty-to-taliban-chief/1/380797.html

Indian court orders DNA tests to settle cow dispute

 

A court in India’s southern state of Kerala has settled a legal dispute between two women over the ownership of a cow after conducting DNA tests, a news report said today.

A woman called Geetha alleged that her cow was stolen by another woman named as Sasilekha in a nearby village two years ago. Geetha filed a police complaint and the case went to in court.

The court in Kollam city ordered DNA tests after Geetha said one of her other cattle was the mother of the disputed cow, and could prove she was the original owner.

The tests showed that the DNA of the cows did not match and the court yesterday gave Sasilekha possession of the bovine, the Hindustan Times daily reported.

“It is a rare case. Perhaps, the first time a DNA test was held on a cow to find out its real owner,” N Chandra Babu, the lawyer for Sasilekha, said.

He said he was planning to seek compensation from Geetha for “undue mental agony” inflicted on his client.

Many families in India are farmers who earn their livelihood through cattle-breeding. Cows are also held sacred in the predominantly Hindu nation.

- dpa

Man held for torching wife over ‘not having son’

GUJRAT: A father of two minor girls was booked on Sunday for setting his wife on fire, allegedly for not bearing a son, at Jedpur village in Jalalpur Jattan Sadar police limits.

The suspect, however, denies the allegation and alleges the woman attempted self-immolation following a domestic row.

A case has been lodged against the suspect under sections 324, 147 and 149 of the Pakistan Penal Code on the report of Muhammad Sarwar, the victim’s brother. The police have arrested the suspect.

According to the FIR, the suspect, Jameel, who had two daughters -- one some three years old and the other one-year old — would often quarrel with his wife Asma Bibi over not bearing a baby boy. Following such a quarrel on Sunday he poured kerosene on her and set her on fire.

The injured woman was immediately shifted to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Kharian, from where she was referred to the Mayo Hospital, Lahore, in critical condition.

According to police, the suspect refuted the allegation of burning his wife, claiming she attempted self-immolation following a domestic quarrel.

Police were yet to record the victim’s statement and were waiting for her to be stable.

Published in Dawn, Aug 4th, 2014
 http://www.dawn.com/news/1123165/man-held-for-torching-wife-over-not-having-son

Uproar after India MP ‘force-feeds’ fasting Muslim worker

(The Rakyat Post) – India’s Parliament erupted in anger on Wednesday after television footage showed a hardline Hindu nationalist lawmaker apparently trying to force-feed a Muslim man during the fasting month of Ramadan.

Opposition Congress MPs launched raucous protests in the Parliament, saying the lawmaker had violated the man’s religious beliefs by aggressively trying to shove a chapati or piece of bread in his mouth.

“It is absolutely reprehensible and should be condemned in the strongest possible manner,” Congress party spokesman Manish Tewari later told reporters.

The lawmaker is from the hardline Hindu nationalist outfit Shiv Sena, a key ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party which swept to power at May elections.

The incident is likely to fan concern among Muslims and other religious minorities over Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.

The footage, aired on national television, showed a group of Shiv Sena lawmakers confronting a catering supervisor last Thursday in New Delhi.

The lawmakers were complaining about the quality of food offered at a guest house for officials from the state of Maharashtra, where Shiv Sena is based.

The footage showed lawmaker Rajan Baburao Vichare attempting several times to push the bread into the supervisor’s mouth as a crowd gathered.

Vichare said he was not trying to break the supervisor’s religious fast. Instead he was trying to demonstrate that the chapatis being served were too hard.

“This was only a protest against the quality of food and other arrangements at the Maharashtra Sadan (guest house) where all the important dignitaries come and stay,” Vichare told Headlines Today news channel.

“The canteen management here is in a bad state. The chapatis they made didn’t even break, the quality of vegetables and pulses is bad.”

“Making this a religious issue doesn’t make sense,” he said.

The catering company’s general manager said the supervisor had been “deeply pained and hurt” over the incident as “religious sentiments are attached”.

The manager said the lawmakers had marched into the dining hall last week flanked by television crews and threw kitchen items around.

“They also issued physical threats to the kitchen and service staff while using highly objectionable language,” the manager said in an email to a Maharashtra government official, which was obtained by the Indian Express newspaper.

Shiv Sena, which has a history of intimidation and creating unrest against minorities, won 18 seats at the election and is now the sixth biggest party in Parliament.