Terror Live On TV Puts Everybody in Danger: New Age Islam's Selection, 09 July 2016
New Age
Islam Edit Bureau
09 July 2016
• Terror Live On TV Puts Everybody in Danger
By Manish Tewari
• ISIS Down, Not Out: Ways to Kill It
By Ashok Behuria
• Terror in Bangladesh by the Privileged
By Hiranmay Karlekar
• Aligarh Muslim University Is Facing a Minority Test
By Faizan Mustafa
• Burhan Wani: Better Living than Dead
By Harinder Baweja
• A Contagion of Nativism Is Oddly Spreading In a Globalised Space
By Anirudh Bhattacharyya
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Terror Live On TV Puts Everybody in Danger
By Manish Tewari
Jul 08, 2016
Guidelines in the form of an advisory on how to cover an evolving terrorist outage were repeatedly issued to the TV channels, but they are observed more as an exception than a rule
The Dhaka terrorist attack that claimed the lives of scores of innocents has, once again, focused attention on the role of the media, specially the electronic media, in situations like these. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was withering in her criticism. She said: “When we are taking preparations, channels were telecasting these live. Do they not think the terrorists were watching and devising their strategies accordingly? I request television channel owners to please not do this.” She went on to add: “In the United States, when people were killed, neither CNN nor BBC showed anything to jeopardise the operations. But in our country, there is competition between television channels. Some channels don’t want to listen.” In the same vein, she delivered a not-too-veiled threat: “I can issue the licence, and I can revoke it as well. This is not a childish game.” Sheikh Hasina urged TV owners to show the bad side of militancy: “It’s the responsibility of all.”
This isn’t the first time a person holding a responsible office has articulated the exasperation of the state with the electronic media’s role in such circumstances.
In November 2008, while the terrorist attack in Mumbai was still going on, a similar scenario had played itself out. TV channels competed relentlessly with each other to cover every second of the attack. Preparations and plans of the security forces were broadcast live, giving the attackers’ Pakistan-based handlers vital information that allowed them to give updates and instructions to their merchants of death on the ground. One channel even broadcast a live phone interview with one of the terrorists at Chabad House while he was engaged in the grisly task of butchering innocent people held hostage there.
In the aftermath of Mumbai’s 26/11, there was consternation with many strategic and counter-terrorism experts taking the media to task for endangering the lives of not only the security personnel involved but also the innocent people holed up inside hotels and other places under assault by the terrorists.
Guidelines in the form of an advisory on how to cover an evolving terrorist outage were repeatedly issued to the TV channels repeatedly by the information and broadcasting ministry, but they are observed more as an exception than a rule.
Even the Supreme Court severely criticised the media coverage of 26/11. In the judgment confirming the death sentence of Ajmal Kasab, it observed: “From the transcripts, specially those from Taj Hotel and Nariman House, it is evident the terrorists who were entrenched at those places and more than them, their collaborators across the border, were watching the full show on TV.”
The court further added that it was not possible to find out if the security forces actually suffered any casualty or injuries due to the way their operations were displayed on TV screens. But it was beyond doubt that the way their operations were freely shown made the task of the forces not only very difficult, but also dangerous and risky.
Any attempt to justify the TV channels’ conduct by citing the right to freedom of speech and expression would be totally wrong and unacceptable in such a situation. The visuals shown live on TV channels could also have been shown after the terrorists had been neutralised. But in that case the telecast wouldn’t have had the same shrill as well as chilling effect, and wouldn’t have shot up the channels’ TRP ratings. It must, therefore, be held that by covering live the attack on Mumbai in the way it was done, the TV channels weren’t serving any national interest or social cause, but simply acting in their own commercial interests, and putting national security in jeopardy. The coverage of the Mumbai terror attacks by the mainstream electronic media has done much harm to the argument that any regulatory mechanism for the media must only come from within, the Supreme Court held.
While this may be the view of the state as represented by the executive and judiciary, the fourth estate has another view, one that also needs to be taken on board. Media organisations argue that a terrorist attack is “news” and, therefore, it is their responsibility to cover it holistically in real time. The fact that viewership shoots up at such times is not due to their endeavour to monetise an unfortunate situation, but primarily because of the desire of people to remain updated about the situation.
Media industry bodies and self-regulatory mechanisms contend it is extremely unfair to put restrictions on such coverage given that freedom of speech and expression is a treasured national maxim, even though with some caveats. It should, therefore, be left to the media organisations to determine their individual red lines than be subject to the coercive regulations of the state. The other argument that is put forth is that while it may be easier to regulate and monitor the mainstream media, how would governments stop the dissemination of citizen-generated live feeds both visual and text on the Internet and social media platforms given the technological advances and the miniaturisation of the instruments of information dissemination.
When told that their counterparts in the West display far more sensitivity and restraint while covering such events, whether 9/11 or the recent Paris, Brussels or even Istanbul attacks, they just shrug it off saying the media habits in each country are different. Can this really be put down to a cultural thing, or is it the commercial thing at work?
There is enough empirical evidence to suggest that media mores in South Asia are distinctive as revenue models in most countries that have a shrill dog-eat-dog ethos are non-existent. However, can that justify the competition for eyeballs during monumental national catastrophes? It also brings to the fore another key issue: Should this restraint, whether by the state or self-enforced, be limited only to terrorist situations and other national security imperatives, or should it also extend to natural disasters?
There is an urgent need to find a golden mean on this issue. It would be advisable that the media itself takes the lead before it is too late.
Manish Tewari is a lawyer and former Union minister.
Source: asianage.com/columnists/terror-live-tv-puts-everybody-danger-868
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Isis Down, Not Out: Ways to Kill It
By Ashok Behuria
09 July 2016
It’s necessary to fight the ideology of terror that ISIS has spawned by evolving a counter-ideological narrative which would rescue both Islam and Muslims from the abyss that ISIS is seeking to push them into
Close on the heels of the Holey Artisan Bakery attack in Dhaka’s posh Gulshan area on July 1, came the brutal attack on a multi-storeyed shopping mall in one of busiest corners of Baghdad on July 3. The former attack, orchestrated by a team of seven young men of decent pedigree, claimed 22 lives, most of them foreigners. The latter, caused by a suicide truck bomber, has so far claimed 250 lives, most of them Shias. Days before the Dhaka incident, three Fidayeen armed with automatic weapons and explosive vests staged a simultaneous attack at the international airport in Istanbul on June 28, killing 42 people.
Bloody Ramzan
What connects these three attacks? These attacks came on the eve of Eid-ul-Fitr, and were claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or Levant) — call it in its acronymic form, ISIS or ISIL. A day later than the Baghdad attack, there were three separate suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia — in Jeddah, by a Pakistani origin driver who blew himself close to the US consulate; in Medina, by a suicide bomber who wanted to enter the Prophet’s mosque where he is buried; and third, in Qatif, by again suicide bombers, who attacked a Shia mosque.
All these three attacks, however, went unclaimed. Only a day before the Eid-ul-Fitr, the harrowing tale of 18-year-old Yazidi girl
Lamiya Aji Bashar was splashed in the international media. She luckily escaped the ISIS torture cell in northern Iraq, where about 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are being held captive as sex slaves ever since ISIS swept the cities of Zumar, Sinjar, and Wana in northern Iraq, which had the significant presence of Yazidis — a Kurdish-speaking minority with a religious outlook that was a curious amalgam of Zorasrianism, Islam and Christianity. Institute for Study of War, a non-partisan, non-profit, public policy research organisation, based in the US, had predicted quite correctly in its publication in May this year that this year’s Ramzan, starting on June 6 and ending on July 6, 2016, would witness a surge of attacks which ISIS would launch to make up for serious losses it had suffered in the preceding months.
The attacks would aim at boosting the morale of its followers on the one hand and catalyse its recruitment process in the Western Asian theatre. It had also isolated slow penetration of ISIS into Saudi Arabia.
Predictable Trajectory Of ISIS
Was it not so predictable? Aren’t we seeing all this for quite some time? Turkish President, right-wing and known for his sympathies for Islamic rule, called “Daesh” — as ISIS is called by its Arab detractors — “a dagger plunged into the chest of Muslims”. The ISIS cadre hate their outfit to be referred to as Daesh, as it has pejorative meaning in Arabic language. Call it ISIS or Daesh, the outfit, known for its brutal tactic and regressive ideological moorings based on ultra-orthodox reinterpretation of Islamic history and theology, has spread like wildfire across the world both in countries where Muslims are in majority as well as in those where they are in a minority.
Ever since, the reclusive leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the arrival of the new Caliphate on June 29, 2014, the appeal of ISIS has overtaken the appeal of all other radical Sunni Muslim groups in recent history. ISIS has expanded its network during the last two years from Africa to the Philippines with ease, as splinter groups from local Islamist radical groups, many of them formerly pledging notional loyalty to al-Qaeda, switched their allegiance to ISIS — starting from Boko Haram to Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar (JMA) in Chechnya, from Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) to Jabhat al-Nushra (a known al-Qaeda affiliate, initially created by Islamic State of Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS).
Egyptian militant Islamist group, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, and Libyan radical Islamists also announced their loyalty to ISIS in 2014. Similarly, there is a steady desertion of cadres from other sister Salafi-Wahhabi outfits, who joined ISIS over the last two years, as it operated like a defect State with a well-operated revenue system, howsoever illegitimate and based on fear, and also with a well-oiled propaganda machinery which made good use of modern communication technology — catering to the new Twitterati and Facebook generation. Its glossy internet publication as well as circulation of videos and audios exhorting the faithful to join the Caliphate did result in gradual expansion of its ranks worldwide.
Outflanking al-Qaeda
Although a split-away group from al-Qaeda, ISIS has managed to establish itself as non-al-Qaeda group fighting for the rights of Muslims the world over. Unlike al-Qaeda, which sought to use territory held by — like-minded groups — like Mullah Omar’s Taliban in Afghanistan, the ISIS first occupied significant stretches of territory in Iraq and Syria before it announced its presence as a force to reckon with.
Unlike many other groups, it tried to consolidate its financial position well before it announced its arrival. It has raised its finances quite skilfully by gradually overrunning oil fields, engaging in oil and drugs trade, looting of banks, extortion, levying of taxes, in territories held by it. Unfortunately, ISIS has benefited from the turmoil set into motion, first in 2003 with the fall of the Saddam regime in Iraq, and also in the wake of the call for regime change in Syria since 2011. (In my earlier piece in The Pioneer on July 7, 2014, I had traced the origin of ISIS). Five years later, today, all the anti-Asad forces, trained and supported by the Western countries, are losing their cadre to ISIS as it is showing its resilience in the face of concerted attack by powerful countries to weaken and decimate it. As the age-old dictum has it — nothing succeeds like success.
The consolidation of ISIS in a large geographical area straddling Iraq and Syria has led to Islamic terror groups affiliating themselves voluntarily to ISIS. Most of them have expressed their willingness to operate as ISIS franchisees. The net result has been obvious. It has come up as a new but powerful group, slowly poaching on most groups cutting across States and regions. In the bargain, al-Qaeda has lost its shine vis-à-vis ISIS, and there is a competition for influence between these two radical outfits.
Sometimes it has resulted in clashes between the affiliates of these two outfits. Ideologically speaking, there is not much difference between al-Qaeda and ISIS. However, ever since ISIS decided to operate as a State, especially since 2011, and that too much before declaring Caliphate, al-Qaeda leadership had cautioned against ISIS efforts to territorialise Islamic struggle and look for global Islamic revolution. ISIS under the leadership of al-Baghdadi turned over a new leaf and decided to first strengthen their hold over the territory they controlled and look for global Jehad at later date.
Al-Qaeda snapped all its relationship with ISIS in February 2014, and in 2015, top al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri criticised al-Baghdadi for engaging himself in sedition within the fold of Islam. He has questioned the way al-Baghdadi was chosen as the Caliph of the entire Muslim Umma and also taken objection to al-Baghdadi’s emphasis on the apocalypse and the day of final judgement. In fact, ISIS followers are made to believe that as per the prophecy cited in the Hadees (compilation of prophet’s sayings and deeds), the final battle between the forces of Islam led by it and those of the West will be fought in a place called Dabiq, in Syria.
Al-Qaeda leadership is not that certain about such apocalyptic vision of ISIS. Moreover, al-Qaeda, known for its intensely conservative Sunni outlook, has raised its concerns about the anti-sectarian, anti-Shia activities of ISIS. Such differences at the top leadership level does not foreclose the possibility of al-Qaeda supporters gradually shifting their loyalty towards a group which is showing better promise of realising its Islamic goals it has set for itself. In that sense, ISIS has managed to attract the attention of the Muslim youth through its unapologetic endorsement of violence as a tool for radical change in society, and also its aggressive zeal to defend Islam against its enemies.
Moreover, lower rung al-Qaeda sympathisers have pooled their resources with ISIS in certain theatres of war against a common enemy.
Southern Asian Theatre
In the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, ISIS is slowly but surely making its presence felt. The leadership of Taliban and al-Qaeda have been particularly chary of their affiliates and cadres veering towards ISIS. There are several reports of ISIS sympathisers being neutralised in Afghanistan, especially in Faryab and Nangarhar. Some factions of the Pakistani Taliban group have also joined ISIS and registered their deep aversion for both al-Qaeda and Taliban. In fact, the central philosophy of Pakistan Taliban is similar to the worldview of ISIS.
Most analysts in South Asia believe that the penetration of ISIS into the region has been rather exaggerated by the regional media. However, as the recent attack in Bangladesh suggests, ISIS sympathisers have shown exceptional zeal and enthusiasm to adopt its brutal methods to propagate their extremist world view. Moreover, South Asian countries have a large labour force in the oil-rich Arab countries, who run the risk of getting exposed to the ISIS world view.
That is how, one has witnessed even Maldivian and Indian Muslims coming under the sway of ISIS and recruiting gullible Muslims for the “final battle” to be fought in Syria. Interestingly, the lure of ISIS continues despite many returnees from the Syrian theatre sharing their horrible experiences with the ISIS in the media. Recently, reports of security agencies busting ISIS cells in India have hogged the headlines. Therefore, there is no room for complacency when it comes to dealing with a threat as real as that of the ISIS today.
Fighting ISIS
After the ISIS-claimed attack on Russian aircraft and frequent suicide bombings in Turkey, there is a consensus now emerging among the wider international community that there is a need to arrest the growth of ISIS and its ideology of terror. After Russian pounding of ISIS facilities in Syria and recent recapture of the town of Fallujah from ISIS, it is being hoped that, if this tempo could be maintained, ISIS can be neutralised soon.
However, the sectarian animus haunting the region is likely to interfere with the consensus that was slowly emerging among the world powers that decimating ISIS ought to be the prime goal of international intervention in the region. As it has been noticed, regional heavy-weights like Saudi Arabia and Iran are busy working at cross purposes creating the context for ISIS and its affiliates to regroup and reassert. An asymmetric threat like ISIS can only be countered through united action, which is now impossible to find. Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, there has been no leader of vision and calibre in Iraq to hold the country together. The resultant uncertainty in the country is likely to indirectly strengthen ISIS further. True ISIS has suffered some reverses and has also retaliated very fast in the shape of a string of attacks in different parts of the world. But the war is not yet over. ISIS is down but not out.
It is also necessary to fight the ideology of terror that ISIS has spawned by evolving a counter-ideological narrative which would rescue both Islam and Muslims from the abyss that ISIS is seeking to push them into. As the Islamic world is passing a serious churning process, in different countries across the world voices of sanity are slowly coming to the fore. These voices stress on plurality within Islam; they are ready to reinterpret Islamic precepts in light of the requirement of the times. Such voices need to be encouraged to share their perspectives and devise a counter-ideology that can fight out the ISIS effectively.
One must remember that today the appeal of ISIS is primarily ideological. While every possible measure needs to be taken to militarily weaken ISIS, it is the fight at the ideological plane that can alone neutralise ISIS. Until then, ISIS will continue to surprise us with its terror tactics and lure away people to fill its ranks.
Ashok Behuria is Senior Fellow, South Asia Centre, IDSA, New Delhi
Source: dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/isis-down-not-out-ways-to-kill-it.html
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Terror in Bangladesh by the Privileged
By Hiranmay Karlekar
09 July 2016
Bangladesh has a squally passage ahead; India, which has the friendliest ties with the Government in Dhaka, must step up its strong support. Fire in a neighbour's house can spread into one's own
A large number of people, particularly in Bangladesh, are shocked by the fact that all except two of the terrorists perpetrating unspeakable acts of savagery during their capture of a Dhaka restaurant on the night of July 1 to July 2 were from affluent families and have been to some of the best schools in the country. Most people have in mind the stereotypical image of a terrorist as a madrasa-educated young man from a dis-privileged background, brainwashed and trained to becoming a cruel killing machine. The fact is that poverty and inadequate education steeped in religious extremism are not the only causes of terrorism.
This becomes clear on reading Eric Hoffer’s, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, and Erich Fromm’s, The Fear of Freedom, both definitive books explaining why people surrender their judgements and will to mass movements and leaders preaching doctrines calling for root-and-branch change. Their analysis is relevant here. The Islamic State of Syria or Levant (ISIL), or Islamic State (IS) as it calls itself, is a militant mass movement waging wars as well as perpetrating terrorist acts.
According to Fromm, the most powerful factor is the search for security. An infant’s world is coterminous with his or her mother’s which envelops his or her with a feeling of security. One becomes aware of the insecurities and dangers threatening one as one grows up, develops a sense of self, and becomes an individual aware of his aloneness and vulnerabilities. The way to overcoming this feeling of loneliness and insecurity “is to relate spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of one’s emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities.” Many, however, cannot do so and seek security in sadistic domination or masochistic submission.
Fromm writes, “The annihilation of one’s individual self and the attempt to overcome thereby the unbearable feeling of powerlessness are only one side of the masochistic strivings. The other side is the attempt to become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, and God, the nation, conscience or a psychic compulsion.” By thus surrendering one’s self, “one gets a new security and a new pride in the participation in the power in which one submerges. One also gains security against the torture of doubt.”
Erich Hoffer shows how insecurity leads one to mass movements when he writes, “A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but from the refuge it provides from the anxieties, barrenness and meaningless of an individual existence.”
Insecurity is a purely personal feeling in an individual; its causes vary according to people. Certain causes, however, are present in societies in general at certain junctures. These range from the fear of attack by wild animals or enemy tribes, to warfare, arbitrary arrest and extortion by feudal lords and, from the 16th century, tyranny by kings as well as republican dictatorships. These also include fear of banditry, natural calamities like floods and famines and, during the last century or so, economic phenomena, particularly recessions.
What kind of insecurity could haunt the sons of affluent families who turned into the terrorists who killed savagely in Dhaka? It could not have emerged from a threat to their lives and limbs; nor from abject poverty threatening them with starvation. One cause could be the fear of being less successful than their fellow students and others in their social milieus. The other could be insecurity resulting from doubts about being able to achieve the goals they had set for themselves. The third could be insecurity about not being able to sustain emotional relationships with others — mainly girls in the case of young men in their late ‘teens and early twenties’.
The wider societal causes which influence goals and attitudes, relate to the spread of market capitalism, soaring on the wings of advertising. It has made the enjoyment of a high level of consumption the primary goal in life and has projected success in one’s chosen field as the principal means of achieving it. Competitiveness, the much-proclaimed engine of market capitalism, has become sharply ingrained in the psyche of people. This, in turn, has bread selfishness and a proneness to leave the hindmost to the devil. Eric Hoffer writes, “The inordinately selfish are particularly susceptible to frustration. The more selfish a person, the more poignant his disappointment.”
It is important to note here what Seuty Sabur, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bangladesh’s BRAC University, has stated in an article in The Wire on July 5. She has written, “With the neoliberal turn in the early 1980s, we saw major shifts in the economy and lifestyle in Bangladesh. It was not only the MNCs and NGOs penetrating the economy, but the corporate education system as well…. English-medium schools mushroomed in Dhaka. Many members of the aspiring cosmopolitan middle class thought these schools would be the playground for global citizens, and a gate pass for achieving a higher status. Surely this served as entry to a lifestyle which was alien to these parents.
These were the generations of children who were literally ‘looking London, talking Tokyo’ in their dreams; a world which was inaccessible for most of their parents. Many of these children never managed to get out of the country; they were the ones who were left behind, stuck in the private universities as our students. Either their parents were trying to protect them from ‘politics’ and archaic education systems in public universities, or adulthood in a foreign land — which is perceived to be decadent. The post 9/11 world order made their departure for higher studies even more difficult.”
Hoffer writes, “There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfilment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favour a radical change.” So do many young people in Bangladesh and fundamentalist Islamist organisations like the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh, IS and Al Qaeda.
One does not know their number. But then it does not take many to spread terror. The attack in Dhaka on July 1 and Kishoreganj Eid prayers on July 6, show that Bangladesh is in for a tough time. India, which has the friendliest ties with its Government, must further step up the strong support it has been providing Dhaka. Fire in a neighbour’s house can spread into one’s own.
Source: dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/terror-in-bangladesh-by-the-privileged.html
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Aligarh Muslim University Is Facing a Minority Test
By Faizan Mustafa
Jul 09, 2016
Parliament amended the law concerning Aligarh Muslim University in 1981.
Aligarh Muslim University’s (AMU’s) minority character is in the news again. Smriti Irani, just four days before the cabinet reshuffle, had approved the Central government’s affidavit opposing AMU’s minority character. The case will come up for hearing in the Supreme Court on July 11. Most people including some top TV anchors are not aware that this historic case is not about the rights of minorities. The case is fundamentally about the powers of Parliament: Can Parliament, to promote fundamental rights, enact a law ‘incorporating’ a minority university? Does Parliament have the powers to overturn judicial decisions? Can a government in a parliamentary democracy refuse to defend Parliament in the court of law?
As many as five Fatwas were issued against AMU’s founder Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, including one from Mecca, which declared: “This man (Sir Syed) is erring and causes people to err. He is rather an agent of the devil and wants to mislead Muslims. It is a sin to support the college. May God damn the founder! And if this college has been founded, it must be demolished and its founder and his supporters thrown out of the fold of Islam.” At a time when religious fundamentalism is on the rise and the country is debating whether to ban a fanatical Muslim preacher, the human resource development ministry’s affidavit is not only strange but hugely disappointing. This will close the doors of modern liberal education for thousands of poor Muslims.
What to say of AMU, even Banaras Hindu University was originally a minority university because the Hindus too, in spite of their numerical superiority, were a minority in terms of powerlessness during the British regime. Article 30(1) of the Indian Constitution gives the minorities, whether based on religion or language, the fundamental right to ‘establish and administer educational institutions of their choice’. Thus, this right is available not only to the religious minorities like the Christians and Muslims but also to the Hindus wherever they are a minority. In fact, in some states like Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and several north-eastern states, they too are a religious minority.
No one has ever doubted the minority character of Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO College). The Supreme Court in 1967 and Allahabad High Court in 2005 admitted the so-called ‘deep green’ character of the college. The moot question is: Has the college on its conversion in 1920 into Aligarh Muslim University through an Act of Governor-General-in-Council lost its minority tag? Section 5 of the AMU Act says AMU shall inherit not only all debts, liabilities, etc. of the MAO College but also all its rights. Thus, common sense tells us that AMU has inherited the minority tag of MAO College.
Departing from its otherwise liberal approach of expanding the ambit of fundamental rights in general and minority rights in particular, the Supreme Court in 1967 opined that since the preamble of the 1920 AMU Act had stated that ‘whereas it is expedient to establish a Moslem University at Aligarh’, it is clear that the university was established by the government and thus it cannot be given minority status. Justice KN Wanchoo’s judgment has been criticised by all the leading jurists. In fact, HM Seervai, India’s greatest constitutional law writer, went to the extent of terming this regressive decision as ‘productive of great public mischief’. The Supreme Court itself in 1981 noted these criticisms and decided to have a fresh look at the decision by a larger bench.
In the meanwhile, Parliament took the initiative through an amendment in 1981 itself to clarify its intention and not only deleted the crucial word ‘establish’ from the preamble and the long title of the Act but also explicitly stated that AMU was an institution of their choice established by Muslims of India and it in fact originated as MAO College and was merely ‘incorporated’ and not really ‘established’. In 2005, the Allahabad High Court struck down this amendment and termed it as the ‘brazen overruling of judicial verdict’. Thus Parliament lost the case in Allahabad and the government of India, which is subordinate to Parliament, appealed to the Supreme Court on behalf of Parliament. In a parliamentary form of government, the government takes directions from Parliament because it is responsible to Parliament. The Central government’s affidavit has now abandoned Parliament’s cause and AMU has the onerous task to speak for Parliament. The government’s decision is legally untenable as Parliament’s power to amend the AMU Act, 1920, was upheld even by the Supreme Court in 1967.
How to decide the question of Parliament’s competence to legislate? The thumb rule is to see whether the subject concerned is within the competence of the assemblies. If the answer is ‘no’, Parliament’s jurisdiction cannot be challenged. Since AMU is mentioned in the Union List, the legislative competence of Parliament cannot be questioned. Now the next issue is: Does the 1981 amendment violate any fundamental right? The answer is a big ‘no’. It in fact promotes fundamental rights under Article 30. What the constitution prohibits is the violation of the fundamental rights by Parliament, not their promotion and realisation.
Finally, can Parliament overturn a judicial verdict by amending a law? The answer is ‘yes’. It routinely does so by removing the basis on which the judgment was rendered. This year itself the Central government overturned a Supreme Court decision on enemy property through an Ordinance and recently on UGC NET by mere UGC Regulations. The Vodafone judgment was similarly overturned during UPA rule by a retrospective parliamentary amendment. Whether the court rises to the occasion again and protects minority rights as it has been doing all these years remains to be seen.
Faizan Mustafa is Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR University of Law
Source: hindustantimes.com/analysis/aligarh-muslim-university-is-facing-a-minority-test/story-9Ey392rlvB28HjMpF6e4tM.html
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Burhan Wani: Better Living than Dead
By Harinder Baweja
Jul 09, 2016
“He has gone to Allah,” Muzaffar Wani, the father of Burhan Wani, said before switching off his phone. Muzaffar was a proud father – a very proud one – when I met him at his village home in south Kashmir in October last year.
In that meeting, we had discussed how his son, a brilliant student, had given up the comfort of his classroom and chosen to become a gun-wielding militant. The conversation is worth recalling.
So what is the main motto of Burhan and young boys like him?
Freedom from India. It’s not only his motto but everybody else’s. Even mine. Look at the current incident of beef ban where a truck driver was lynched in Jammu only because he was a Kashmiri, a Muslim. This has happened so many times before also. Beef is Halal for us (Muslims), we sacrifice it, and they have banned it.
But isn’t it hard to win against the might of Indian Army? The insurgency is now 26 years old.
Yes, it’s very hard. Everyone knows it. It is a hard task, but a Muslim has his faith in God. He knows if he dies in the path of God, he goes to God. In our religion, whosoever dies because of the oppression from India, or by an Indian bullet, doesn’t die. He goes from this world to the other world (as promised in the Quran); there will be no disease in that world, no oppression. This is what our Islam tells. That’s why Muslims don’t fear that. We prefer dying with honour rather than living a life of shame under oppression.
You know Burhan will be killed one day… That is the outcome of the path he has chosen.
Yes, I do get a bit disturbed, but our Islam says that God, Quran and the Prophet are bigger than anything, even bigger and more important than our sons. It’s not the other way round. If our God is not happy with us then we don’t need our sons. Our God should be happy with us even if my son’s or my sacrifice is needed for that.
Watertight Security
Funerals of militants have been drawing huge crowds. In anticipation, the local police are making elaborate arrangements. “All roads leading to his village Sharifabad in Tral will be blocked,’’ one senior officer from the Jammu and Kashmir police said.
“But it is not only the funeral that we need to worry about. He had fired the imagination of the Kashmiri youth and we will have to watch out for those who might want to step into his shoes.”
Sixty percent of the Valley’s population is below the age of 30 and the Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP government has not succeeded in engaging with the youth.
The demographic bulge comprising the youth is hyperactive on social media and the army has been flagging its concerns on the issue.
What the army and the police do not say on record is the fact that the spike in the number of Kashmiri youth knocking on the doors of militant outfits is directly linked to the fact that the PDP, once known for its soft separatist agenda, has now joined hands with the BJP, who Kashmiris see as a threat to their very identity protected under Article 370.
Wani’s killing in an encounter will prise open the insecurities and fuel the deep sense of alienation that has grown under the current government. His funeral is only the first step in a new chapter that will be written in Kashmir.
Source: hindustantimes.com/opinion/he-has-gone-to-allah-says-burhan-wani-s-father/story-eEogAUL2vijKIHXbuq7KCI.html
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A Contagion of Nativism Is Oddly Spreading In A Globalised Space
By Anirudh Bhattacharyya
Jul 09, 2016
Heavily armed militants murdered 20 hostages in Bangladesh, hacking many of their victims to death, before six of the attackers were gunned down at the end of a siege July 2 at a restaurant packed with foreigners. (AFP)
The Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka’s Gulshan, the city’s diplomatic enclave, will now forever be linked, tragically, to Mumbai’s Leopold Café: Two expat hangouts targeted for being just that, a global meeting point. The roster of corpses recovered in the Dhaka outlet spanned Americans, young Tarishi Jain, Italians, and Japanese nationals. Their presence was a testament to the interconnectedness of our world. Even the average Walmart shopper is aware of Bangladesh, courtesy the label on his or her cargo shorts.
Decades earlier, when I lived for a couple of years in what was then Dacca, those connections were missing, except for some Brit-accented Sylhetis who had imported curry culture into England and sent their children back home to marinate in their native flavours. Now, buoyed by the Internet and international commerce, many locals and expats are plugged into the same network.
However, while those chilling at the bakery were part of it, so were those killing them, scarily enough, a pattern that repeated itself in many of the recent attacks around the world. If Toronto-based researcher Amarnath Amarasingam is correct, the leader of the Islamic State faction in Bangladesh could well be a “skinny”, “shy” kid from small town Ontario, the Canadian province I currently reside in. The difference between the two sets at the bakery is that while the victims had used their digital access to expand their worldview, their vicious hackers (another term the Daesh has appropriated, literally, from nerd culture) had become insular. Weirdly enough, it’s the open web that often nets them into that closed mindspace, a curious anomaly.
Those watching the Euro football tournament in France will have noticed the Turkish Airlines promotions on billboards. As the tournament progressed, its hub Istanbul became another major casualty of new age terror. That attack, targeting both Turks and foreigners, was probably led by a Chechen. In Orlando, many that died were children of Cuban émigrés, slaughtered by the son of an immigrant from Afghanistan. But these free radicals that associate themselves with a distant Caliphate, with its even more distant and outdated ideas, have much in common with others that share the impulse of looking inward.
A contagion of nativism is oddly spreading in this globalised space. Ironically, that narrowing of outlooks is in itself a broadening trend.
We’ve seen that with the Brexit vote in England, though even the most virulent opponent wouldn’t compare them with terrorists. But that drawing away from a continent was also a reaction to a perceived threat from the world without. Again, that’s an idyll that will not be recovered regardless of Leave lobbies multiplying across Europe.
In another example of connectedness, a professor at an American university heads (though he’ll soon head back) India’s central bank, while his British counterpart was imported from Canada. And in the group think tank that’s social media, where every two-finger tapper is a wonk, even Lindsay Lohan got to tweet to Remain. Meanwhile, there’s a dizzying array of display pictures that has to accompany each fresh Jihadi outrage. We can be over connected at times.
That anger against the outside is also manifest in the United States’ presidential election cycle. Donald Trump has made that his manifesto — America First and Foremost. Trade deals can be junked, walls raised. His opponent Hillary Clinton has bought into that spiel, deleting, like those pesky emails from her personal server, whole passages about her former support for the Trans Pacific Pact or TPP from the latest edition of her memoir.
You may feel sympathy for those undercut by cheap labour abroad or even immigrants vying for scarce opportunities, by shutting the world out can be a false fix. The real issue is that angst in places like America’s rust belt emerges from a trust deficit.
We live in a flat world and many are afraid they will fall off the edge. The emerging conflict is between those who are always on edge and those who want to see the whole wide world. Right now, it seems the former have the edge.
Anirudh Bhattacharyya is a Toronto-based commentator on American affairs
Source: hindustantimes.com/columns/a-contagion-of-nativism-is-oddly-spreading-in-a-globalised-space/story-W8yYJQJ94zPf3dajGcm7TL.html