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
-----
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/
------
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
------
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/
------
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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