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Indian Press On Khadim Rizvi’s Letter From Heaven, Anti-Muslim Legislation And Biden Calculus: New Age Islam's Selection, 28 November 2020


By New Age Islam Edit Desk

28 November 2020

• Khadim Rizvi’s Letter From Heaven: Dear Pakistan Army, I Would Have Made An Excellent DG ISPR

General Twitter

•  The Bottomless Pit Of Anti-Muslim Legislation

By Saba Naqvi

• Pakistan Exploits Security Fault Lines: BSF Vs Army Turf War Won’t Make India Safer

By Sanjiv Krishan Sood

• For Fulfilment, Sow What You Seek

By Dada JP Vaswani

•  The Biden Calculus: India Will Have To Work Much Harder To Get Washington’s Attention

By Kanti Bajpai

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Khadim Rizvi’s Letter From Heaven: Dear Pakistan Army, I Would Have Made An Excellent DG ISPR

General Twitter

28 November, 2020


Iam dead, but I can write. Don’t you think I am still alive? People come, people go but what stays in the world are my 18+ jokes.

“O dallay”, I address this letter to General Twitter, for my heart is oozing with hateful gratitude over my passing-away parade. I want to make it clear that as an “austere religious scholar”, I was first approached by the New York Times to be their columnist from jannat. But I decided to reach the other side of the tunnel.

Who would have imagined the Pakistan Army’s love for me? Even before I had breathed my last, Army chief Qamar Bajwa tweeted condolences — staying true to his army’s Rs 1,000 promise of “kya hum aapke sath nahin?” Did he know something that I didn’t? Seems like both Bajwa and Prime Minister Imran Khan had the condolences saved in their twitter drafts. Pe** di siri.

In my life, people thought I was against the Pakistani Army. Reality is — I was just their fauji. If I were in uniform, I would have been the DG ISPR, better than Asif Ghafoor, and I would have taken several extensions over my death, like Bajwa. Influence, I had. Why else do you think CENTCOM (US Central Command) was crying over my demise? Wish Alia Bhatt cried too. I thought I meant something to her.

Me, my menace and mazhab

When I was born, my mother taught me just one thing. Ammi jaan kehti thi mazhab se bada koi dhanda nahin hota. I stuck to it and look where I am now. There is no slogan bigger than saving Islam in Pakistan. Why else do you think we created Pakistan in the first place?

I was no Taliban, I was no Al-Qaeda — I was my own menace.

Everyone wants to know how is it that I am dead. Here is exactly what happened.

As you know, I was the Gabbar Singh for blasphemers. Mothers used to tell their children, ‘So ja warna Khadim aa jaeyga’. But when I left the earth, all of it became history. One blasphemer on my radar was France. I urge why Pakistan keeps an atom bomb when it is not going to use it? What’s the fun in that? For as long as I was alive, I wanted to nuke France and all the countries I ever heard the name of, but everyone thought I was joking. Then I decided to do a suicide nuke attack on Emmanuel Macron’s country. Little did I know that in this blastphemy, I will bomb myself to bits. Sh*t happens.

There is gain in all pain. Now I sit in jannat, still filled with immense hate. That is just what my fate is. But with my ideas, revolution is just around the corner in jannat, not much different from General Twitter’s corner plots in which he enjoys pepperoni pizzas.

People called me an enigma, an Allama (scholar). But, in reality, I was just a guy next door, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love him. I was the shaheen of Allama Iqbal. You can credit me for this — only I could understand the real meaning of Iqbal’s poetry. You Pakistanis just wanted a holiday, so that you could sleep on Iqbal Day.

In Jannat, no Hoors, no Tinder

I am asked if I have any regrets. The only one I can think of is that I wasn’t able to use Tinder before Imran Khan banned it. I had several exciting options but was too shy to swipe. If I could go in the past, casual hook-ups is one thing I would like to add to my dharnas. Why should Imran Khan have all the fun in his dharnas?

After death did us apart, I became an entrepreneur. My colourful vibrant language made it possible for me to open several food joints across the land of kufar, especially in The Netherlands and France. Next, I plan to venture into the world of music, based on my galam-galoch. After all, I inspired many singers into writing songs over my flowery mouth, not to forget those MTVish remixes. A Coke Studio from jannat is in the works, and even this music will blow your brains, literally.

My days start, my days end. It is kind of anticlimactic for all the fuss we created about life after death. My companion is Ludo and my guilty pleasure remains offering jannat to all my neighbours in Jannat.

Wish one day Maulana Tariq Jameel could join me here and see for himself that all those stories about Hoors were just hoax.

This is part of an occasional, irreverent take on Pakistani issues by General Twitter. The real name of the authors will not be disclosed because they don’t want to be taken too seriously. Views are personal.

https://theprint.in/opinion/dear-pakistan-army-i-would-have-made-an-excellent-dg-ispr-khadim-rizvis-letter-from-heaven/553531/

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The Bottomless Pit Of Anti-Muslim Legislation

By Saba Naqvi

Nov 28, 2020

In a post-truth age, the Sangh Parivar and the BJP are adept at insisting that a particular reality exists to frame laws on it. They see ghosts (mostly Muslim) and then energetically legislate against the ghosts. The latest ghost that’s been resurrected is that of love jihad — a formulation never proven in a court of law that suggests Muslim males seduce/entice/fool Hindu women into marriage with the explicit purpose of converting them.

It’s supposed to be a mass conspiracy and the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has brought in an ordinance that is designed to put inter-faith couples under the scanner and act as a deterrence against such marriages. Four other BJP-ruled states have declared their intentions also of doing so.

It shows a remarkable singularity of purpose in a year when the GDP has contracted by a quarter, when China is sitting on the border, when Covid-19 has ravaged the citizenry.

The love jihad laws are unlikely to stand legal scrutiny as they go against the freedom of choice and liberty. The UP ordinance, therefore, does not mention the term love jihad per se— although the CM had publicly said he would punish those who do this (love jihad) with a fate akin to death.

The ordinance, therefore, seeks to skirt its explicit purpose and is called the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion and lays down that those wishing to convert for marriage must inform the district magistrate two months in advance. Since conversion through fraud or coercion was already a crime under the IPC, there was really no need for this.

Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, adult inter-faith couples now have to apply for government permission to have a love marriage, often against the wishes of family, community and local thugs. And should a Muslim male be found guilty of coercion and false representation, it’s a non-bailable crime with anything from one year to 10 years in jail as punishment. Any man of any community, down the ages, can fool a woman and vice versa. But this law absolutely discriminates against Muslim men marrying outside the community but not Muslim women who do so.

For, beyond raising the Muslim bogey again, the law is deeply patriarchal. At the heart is the presumption that women are so ‘silly and helpless’ that they will be seduced (by Muslim males, of course) and bring dishonour to the family and community. Hindutva emerges from a society that is deeply patriarchal anyway and sees women not as entities unto themselves but as extensions of male, family and clan honour. And no surprises that this law has first come in a state where the current CM famously gave the go-ahead to citizen vigilantes that called themselves “anti-Romeo” squads and believed they were saving women from males, mostly Muslims.

No society that claims to be moving towards equality and assimilation should have such laws.

But we are willfully moving in the opposite direction. In the first term of the simple-majority BJP government, from 2014, we saw lynching and hate speech against Indian Muslims (the most frequent cause of violence was the transportation of cattle or the simple ruse that cows were being slaughtered). It was a chaotic spraying of hatred. The second term, starting 2019, has been about organised legal action to make India as close to a Hindu rashtra as possible under the current Constitution.

The revival of the love jihad theme reveals that the country’s largest minority remains the enemy to be legislated against. It’s been law after law, starting last year. First came the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, passed on July 30, 2019, in common parlance known as the law through which the rarely used practice of triple talaq was outlawed and made a non-bailable offence that invited three years’ imprisonment for the Muslim male. In that instance, it was claimed that the BJP regime was protecting Muslim women from Muslim men. Now, it’s apparently protecting Hindu women from Muslim men.

Six days after the triple talaq law was passed, on August 5, 2019, the government revoked Article 370 that gave limited autonomy and special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir and reduced the state to two union territories. The only Muslim-majority part of India, Kashmir, was cut off from the Union, put into complete lockdown and its political leadership placed under house arrest, media muffled.

Four months later, on December 11, the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) was passed. It fast-tracked citizenship for refugees or migrants from neighbouring countries, unless they happened to be Muslims. The anti-CAA protests that followed and the cycle of resistance and crackdown are now part of contemporary history. Many Muslim men and a few women have landed in jail for being part of the protests in Delhi and UP (in between all this legislation had come the Supreme Court verdict on November 9, 2019, that handed over the bitterly contested Ayodhya site to the Hindu plaintiffs).

One would have imagined all these laws and judgments and multiple chargesheets criminalising Muslims would be enough to satiate Hindu pride and show the minority community their place in contemporary India. Not quite. For, as far as the cadres, foot soldiers and strategists of the BJP/Sangh Parivar are concerned, dog-whistling against Muslims could be the gift that keeps on giving.

Post-election data shows that in areas where there is a substantial Muslim presence, the BJP often performs well in elections, particularly if the circumstances are created, virtually or actually, to communalise the atmosphere. There are exceptions, such as the Delhi Assembly elections held in February this year. But raising the Muslim bogey does not seem to repel many Indians any longer.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/the-bottomless-pit-of-anti-muslim-legislation-176931

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Pakistan Exploits Security Fault Lines: BSF Vs Army Turf War Won’t Make India Safer

By Sanjiv Krishan Sood

27 November, 2020

The encounter of four suspected Jaish-e-Mohammad militants by Jammu and Kashmir Police at Nagrota on 19 November and subsequent discovery of a tunnel — supposedly used by these militants to cross over to India from Pakistan — in Samba area has once again started the debate around command and control of the border-guarding forces or the BGFs. A similar debate had erupted in May this year after the Chinese intrusion in Galwan Valley. Many retired Army officers have taken to social media to strongly advance the case for placing the BGFs under the command of the Army.

Laxity on part of the Border Security Force (BSF) is being alleged as the reason for the tunnel construction and militant intrusion. It is nobody’s case that the responsibility for such lapses should not be fixed. However, a few questions beg answers.

First, the circumstances of the encounter indicate that the police had access to minute-to-minute information about the moves of the militants. It can, therefore, be concluded that the agencies knew about the existence of the tunnel and the militants using it to cross over. If that is the case, then why was the information not shared with the BSF? Had that been done, the militants could have been intercepted at the very first stage itself without the risk of them being lost in the vast countryside.

Second, keeping in view the sensitivity of the International Border (IB) in Jammu, the vigil has been increased with the deployment of the Army in the second tier — if militants breach the BSF’s first tier, they can be intercepted by the Army. What then explains the breach of this second tier of security? How is the transfer of command to the Army going to help?

Resorting to blame game and tinkering with well-established systems, therefore, should be avoided. The aim should be to identify and rectify mistakes.

Instead of indulging in a turf war, we should analyse our attitude towards security of borders in general and fill gaps so that such incidents are minimised in future.

One border one force

The Group of Ministers (GoM) set up after the Kargil war had mandated the principles of ‘One Border One Force’ and ‘One task one Force’. As a result, the BGFs were relieved of their internal security responsibilities and deployed as per their original mandate of guarding the borders. The BSF, which primarily conducted anti-militancy operations in J&K, was relieved by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) early last decade.

However, over the years, this principle has been diluted to a great extent with BGFs being frequently withdrawn from borders and deployed for internal security and election purposes. Nowadays, every requirement of troops for internal security requires thinning of BGF troops from the border. Consequently, the vigil on the border gets heavily diluted.

One can sympathise with the government because internal security issues have cropped up in large parts of the country, necessitating heavy deployment of forces. The gravity of situation can be assessed from the fact that as many as two frontiers’ strength (over 15,000 troops) of BSF are deployed in anti-Naxal operations in central India, besides deployment for anti-infiltration duties in J&K.

The requirement of additional forces for smooth conduct of elections is understandable. However, withdrawing forces for a long duration for conduct of even minor elections like Tripura Tribal Council (TTC) or Panchayat elections in states and now for District Development Council (DDC) elections in J&K amounts to downgrading the importance of securing our borders. The forces are not only withdrawn, but continue to remain away for long durations — the 2018 Panchayat elections in Kashmir was one such instance. Large number of troops have been reportedly withdrawn even from the sensitive Jammu border for the DDC elections.

Such thinning out, coupled with other accentuating factors —general shortage of manpower (on an average each unit is said to be deficient of about 100 personnel), limited technology access, excessive attachment of soldiers with higher supervisory headquarters and commitments like annual raising day and Republic Day parade — are constant challenges that the BGFs face. Covid, this year, has taken an additional toll.

Predictability of operational methodology, too, has contributed to suboptimal vigil along India’s borders. Despite these challenges, the fact that the enemy is compelled to take tunnels and use drones, instead of adopting surface route, points towards effectiveness of domination by BSF and the fence. However, use of technology and more effective domination of areas across the fence is likely to yield better results.

The tunnel problem

The area in J&K where the tunnel has been detected has thick foliage spread, both on the Indian as well as Pakistani side. This makes it easy for the Pakistanis to disperse the dug earth without being detected even by a drone. The same method has been adopted in the past. The average depth at which these tunnels are dug is about 10 feet or more and, therefore, cannot be detected from the surface.

While one cannot do anything about the foliage on the Pakistani side, it is possible to manage it on one’s own side. Areas where the land belongs to private persons are clear of the foliage. It’s the government land or unused land that is the problem. The BSF neither has funds nor the implements to clear such vegetation. And why should the land lie idle? If it is government land, it can be used for some useful purpose.

Most importantly, the intelligence branch of the BSF must reorient to collect information related to border crimes, instead of deciphering the intentions and plans of other security agencies.

Secure borders are crucial to the security of the nation. Proper border guarding and management, therefore, is particularly important in context of our western borders, where Pakistan’s focus is to destabilise us by exploiting our fault lines. We must realise that border guarding/management is not a single agency function. We must concentrate on foiling all attempts to breach our borders through coordinated efforts, instead of indulging in futile debates.

https://theprint.in/opinion/bsf-vs-army-turf-war-wont-make-india-safer-pakistan-exploits-security-fault-lines/552664/

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The Biden Calculus: India Will Have To Work Much Harder To Get Washington’s Attention

By Kanti Bajpai

November 28, 2020

Will Joe Biden be “good” for India? It is too early to tell, but we can reasonably conclude that international life will be more predictable with him. India-US relations will not unravel, but there are significant challenges ahead.

For India, the key issues with the US are China, terrorism/ Pakistan, arms sales, trade, visas and human rights. Ideally, Biden would push back against China both geopolitically and economically. He would partner India against terrorism regionally, which means against Pakistani support of trans-border attacks against Indian targets. And he would continue to sell high-tech weapons to India.

On trade, he would roll back US tariffs on Indian products and quickly sign a trade deal (there is one waiting to be signed). With respect to visas, ideally, he would raise the limits on H-1B visas. And on human rights, he would leave India alone on Kashmir, treatment of minorities, and the decline of democratic checks and balances.

Is this likely? Biden will definitely adopt a softer tone with China even though the Democrats are far more stiff-necked about Beijing than they used to be. The US will inevitably rebalance between India and China somewhat. While Biden won’t sell India out, his team favours more liberal approaches to security even with China.

More positive for India is that Biden will be tougher with China on economic issues than on security issues since the economy affects Americans directly. Also, having the US back in international institutions will be a gain for Delhi: Beijing’s global influence will be checked more effectively than during the Donald Trump era. Will Biden sell India high-tech weapons as the US does to allies? Probably yes, as arms sales create jobs and profits and help build India into more of a balance against China.

Trump had a mixed record on terrorism and Pakistan. He called Pakistan out on terrorism and cut some bilateral aid. On the other hand, he stayed engaged with Islamabad so that he could cut a deal with the Afghan Taliban on a US exit from Afghanistan. Like other presidents, Biden will find himself deeply ambivalent towards Pakistan but unable to take strong action against it. He is also likely to continue Trump’s policy of looking for an exit from Afghanistan, though his timetable will be slower. Worth adding here is that Biden will ease the pressures on Iran, which will help India.

On trade and visas, Biden will find his hands tied by Congress. Democrats and Republicans will be pretty tough on trade. Both political parties have to keep an eye on working-class and middle-class Americans and their jobs and salaries. China benefited from two decades of a wide-open US economy, and it thrived on it. India, as always, came to the party too late. It will never see that kind of openness. There is simply no return to the halcyon days of globalisation.

So also on liberalising visas, Biden will encounter stiff opposition from his own constituencies and a Republican-dominated Senate. Trump’s controls on immigrants probably raised the incomes of many Americans who voted for Biden. They will not want Biden to loosen controls too much. As for human rights and democracy, Biden will certainly be more watchful of India’s record. The new administration will not break with India over the issues, but Delhi will not get a blank cheque politically.

Delhi cannot be complacent on relations with the US, for at least two other reasons. One, India will have to work much harder to get Washington’s attention. Biden will pay more attention to European and East Asian allies, and to climate change than Trump did. As a result, India may not figure as high as it did for Trump. Two, Biden is likely to be a one-term president, and Trump could return to power in four years. How fulsome should India be with Biden given those possibilities?

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/the-biden-calculus-india-will-have-to-work-much-harder-to-get-washingtons-attention/

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For Fulfilment, Sow What You Seek

By Dada JP Vaswani

November 28, 2020

If freedom is to be won, our entire life must undergo a change. If only we knew that we are confined in prisons of our own making! No outside force fetters us. It is what we say and do that forges the chains which bind us mercilessly to the wheel of sin and suffering.

We try to construct relations with people by thinking what we should not have thought about them, by saying what we should not have said about them. We have thought in terms of jealousy and hatred, of suspicion and scorn, of doubt and disdain. Let us start thinking the other way round! We have spoken words of disrespect and dishonour, of insult and abuse, of rage and outrage, of irreverence and affront, of mockery and ridicule. We have spoken words that have cut into the hearts of others, wounding them beyond repair. It is time we embarked on the work of healing.

We often enter into controversies when we would rather remain silent. All controversy is heat: and heat is pride. Controversy puffs up the ego and so throws barriers in the way of Self-realisation. Who is right, who can say? Let each one walk according to the light that is shown to him. What is right for me may not be right for another: What is right for him may not be right for me.

Although we all come from One and to that One we must one day, return, we all are so different from each other – in equipment, in opportunities, in heredity, in traditional background. Let us only be true to the Truth as we see it. If I know what is right for me, let me strive to live by it. I can never know what is right for another: He will know it himself and will shape his life in accord with it. No fighting over words, for words never reach Reality. The world will not improve by argumentation and hot discussion, but by radiating thoughts of love and compassion.

And how often we gossip about others, when we should be minding our own business? How often, as Jesus said, we choose to see “the mote in another’s eye,” when we should be careful about “the beam in our own?” Our houses and clubs, hotels and hostels, aye, even our offices and workshops are becoming, ever-increasingly, centres of gossip. Gossip, it has been rightly remarked, is spiritual murder. Many a promising life has been wrecked by gossip.

There is an inviolable law that governs the universe from end to end: What you send out comes back to you! Do you send out thoughts of hatred and enmity to others? Hatred and enmity will come back to you, turning your life into a veritable hell.

Do you send out loving thoughts to others? Do you pray for struggling souls? Do you serve those that are in need? And are you kind to the passers-by, the pilgrims on the way who seek your hospitality? Then, remember, all these things will return to you, making your life beautiful and bright as a rose garden in the season of spring. He whose heart is a flowing fountain of love will be greeted with love wherever he goes. He who is harmless will be harmed by none.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/for-fulfilment-sow-what-you-seek/

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