Junaid, My Son By Harsh Mander: New Age Islam's Selection, 01 July 2017

New Age Islam Edit Bureau

 01 July 2017

•  Junaid, My Son

By Harsh Mander

•  India Is Warming Up To Israel, but Americans Are Growing Sceptical Of Tel Aviv

By Kanishk Tharoor

•  Forging New Relations with Kazakhstan

By RK Pachauri

Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau

-----

Junaid, My Son

By Harsh Mander

July 1, 2017

Junaid Khan was my son.

I did not know him when he lived. But in his death, in the way he died, I mourn him like a son.

His dreams were unfamiliar to my agnostic world. He wanted to become a scholar and teacher of the Quran, and perhaps, one day, an imam. For this, from the age of six, he was sent to a madrasa, in neighbouring Nuh in Haryana. He was a sincere and bright student, who had memorised the Quran, all 80,000 words of the holy text. He was to be declared a hafiz in recognition of this achievement. Hafiz in Arabic means both one who remembers, but also one who is a custodian of the sacred words of the Quran.

He would return to his home only once a year, during the month of Ramzan. This year he proudly recited the entire Quran from memory to pious gatherings of his own village over 20 days. He had completed this recitation of the Quran one day before he died. In appreciation, the villagers had made small offerings of money to him. His father added his contribution, and with a total sum of Rs 1,500 he set out with his brothers to the old city of Delhi to purchase new clothes, prayer mats and some gifts.

He wore a skull-cap on his head. This was to be his fatal undoing.

I travelled with a band of my friends to his village, Khandawali, in Faridabad district of Haryana. We felt compelled to say to his bereaved family that we grieved with them after Junaid’s brutal lynching. We knew that these words may mean little to a family that has been so brutally dispossessed, but for whatever they may be worth, we felt that these words still must be spoken. Just two months earlier, we had made a similar journey to share in the same way in the pain of Pehlu Khan’s family in Nuh. I wondered how many such journeys — of solidarity, of atonement — will we have to make before we resolve to say as a country, no more. Until then, we need at least to say to those devastated by hate violence: We share your anger. We share your sorrow. It does not make your pain less. But know at least that you are not alone.

Junaid’s father, Jalaluddin, less than 50 years old, looked both numb and stunned, as though he still could not comprehend or accept what had happened. He was unused to the large crowds that had gathered outside his small home. In one corner, a plainclothes local police inspector was grilling his sons about the details of the incident, but curiously writing nothing in his notebook. A village official came in and said peremptorily to Jalaluddin that he must clean up his house because a senior politician, a former chief minister, would be visiting later in the day.

Jalaluddin accepted our words of condolence wordlessly. “My sons are very frightened,” he only said. “I hope my older boy Shakir, who is in hospital, gets well soon. He has two small children.” The women in our group went in and sat with Junaid’s mother, who was inconsolable. CPM leader Subhashini Ali was also with her. “My son Junaid was too young to understand that he should not have worn a skull cap,” his mother Saira Begum mourned. My friend John Dayal went into the women’s chamber and said to Saira that he had brought a prayer from his wife for her. They prayed together.

We sat outside with Hashim, Junaid’s 18-year-old brother, who had a beard and skullcap, and was also knifed in the train. He spoke to us of the horrors of that evening. The story is now well-known. After their Eid shopping at Jama Masjid, the three brothers took a local train from the Sadar Bazar station and found seats. Crowds entered in Okhla, and Junaid gave up his seat to an old man. A group of 15 men asked the others roughly to vacate their seats. When they refused, they slapped and beat them, threw off their skullcaps, pulled the beards of the older boys, abused them for their faith, and called them Pakistanis, beef-eaters and the circumcised.

Seeing the situation worsen frighteningly, one of them managed to call their brothers in the village, urging them to come to their rescue to Ballabhgarh station, where they were to alight for their village. The station came, but the men did not allow the boys to leave the train. The brothers who had come to their rescue were also pulled in.

In the nine minutes from Ballabhgarh to the next station Asaoti, the men took out knives and stabbed the three brothers several times, even as they screamed for help. Not one person came to their rescue. A few took videos and pictures on their phones instead, as the compartment filled with blood. Several egged on the lynch mob. These included the old man to whom Junaid had given his seat.

At Asaoti, the three boys were thrown off the train. Some of the killers may have also got off in the melee. The train stopped just for a minute and then went ahead on its journey. The brothers were desperate, but no one at the station came to their rescue. No passenger, no rail staff, no policepersons, and none of the vendors and shopkeepers at the station. Junaid bled to death, his head cradled in his brother’s lap. Two other brothers also lay wounded. They carried the boys across the tracks to the entrance of the railway station. One of the boys managed to contact a private hospital in Palwal. Its ambulance came after 45 minutes. Junaid was declared dead when they reached the hospital.

My colleagues and I drove to Asaoti station after we left the family in their grief. We spoke to the rail officials at the station, and to the shopkeepers around the station.

We heard only these words from every one of them — none of us saw anything that evening; we saw nothing at all.

Junaid was my son. He was son also to the people on the train compartment of his last journey, and those at the railway station where he breathed his last. And yet they let him die.

Source: indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/junaid-my-son-4729828/

----

India Is Warming Up To Israel, but Americans Are Growing Sceptical Of Tel Aviv

By Kanishk Tharoor

Jun 30, 2017

People protesting for Palestinian rights attend the ‘Celebrate Israel’ parade, New York City, June 4. Criticism of America’s unflinching support of Israel is more palpable than before(REUTERS)

Next week, Narendra Modi becomes the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel. His trip confirms a change in policy that’s long been in the offing: India’s abandonment of an inflexible, anti-colonial position of support for Palestine in favour of stronger commercial and military ties with Israel.

Under Modi’s administration, Indian diplomats refrained from condemning Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza in a vote in the UN Human Rights Council — an abstention that surprised their Israeli counterparts who were used to seeing India take an almost ritual stance of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Part of the thaw in relations with Israel reflects a pragmatic turn away from the old positions of non-alignment. But it isn’t entirely free of ideology. Many Indians look admiringly at Israel’s bludgeoning treatment of the Palestinians and at the way the Israeli military responds to Palestinian violence. Where in the past we sympathised with the Palestinians as a people oppressed by a colonial power, now many Indians sympathise with Israel’s seeming battle with Islamist terrorism. There are clear parallels between Zionism and Hindutva, two ideologies that developed in the early 20th century seeking to equip a religion with the force of a nation-state.

Defence, water, agriculture on agenda of Modi’s historic visit to Israel

While Indians might be warming to Israel, the citizens of Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, are growing increasingly sceptical.

Criticism of America’s unflinching support of Israel is more palpable than before. The Boycott Divest Sanction movement (which hopes to copy strategies used against apartheid-era South Africa to marginalise Israel) has become prominent on many college campuses. It’s been enough of a cause for concern that a pro-Israel official like Andrew Cuomo, the governor of the state of New York where I live, signed an executive order promising to punish groups that sought to boycott Israel.

A fixture of US presidential campaigns is the appearance candidates make at an annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Candidates normally go to the AIPAC conference and try to highlight their love for Israel and their faith in the US-Israel alliance. Last year, it was remarkable to see Bernie Sanders (the only Jewish presidential candidate in the election) decide not to attend the AIPAC conference and then do the almost unthinkable: Insist on the rights and dignities of Palestinians.

Sanders is hardly a friend of Palestine; he couldn’t be confused with those European or Indian leftists practiced in denouncing Israeli excesses at the drop of a bomb. But he does reflect a shift in American society that’s borne out by statistics.

While more Americans still sympathise with Israel over Palestine, attitudes are changing. According to a 2016 Pew survey, in the last 10 years, support among millennials for Israel has declined while tripling for Palestine. For the first time, more people on the American Left (classified in Pew’s terms as ‘liberal Democrats’) support Palestine than Israel.

Israel also enjoys less support among minority groups in America. According to a 2015 study, Hispanic Americans on average were 10 points less likely to sympathise with Israel over Palestine than non-Hispanic Americans. So, too, are blacks more critical of Israel. A 2014 Pew survey revealed that African Americans were more likely than white Americans to blame Israel for that summer’s conflagration in Gaza and to believe that Israel had used too much force.

Blacks, Hispanics, young people and unmarried women together form what American political analysts term ‘the rising electorate’, which is now a majority of American voters. Staunch support for Israel remains the preserve of older, mostly white Protestants, many of whom believe in a strong US-Israel alliance for millenarian, evangelical reasons. As that group ages and others grow, changing public opinion may encourage new policy imperatives in West Asia.

This is not to say that America’s firm backing of Israel is about to end. Indeed, one of the few capitals where Donald Trump enjoys a genuinely warm reception is Tel Aviv. Benjamin Netanyahu sees Trump as a more reliable ally than Barack Obama, who was critical of the Israeli prime minister. Still, under Obama in 2016, the Americans agreed to a new package of military aid for Israel worth nearly $4 billion per year.

But the trend is clear. In the long-run, it may transform America’s ties with Israel, and drive Israel to seek closer friendships elsewhere.

Source: hindustantimes.com/columns/india-is-warming-up-to-israel-but-americans-are-growing-sceptical-of-tel-aviv/story-XTaNs2uejFuSjhoRGJTxSJ.html

-----

Forging New Relations with Kazakhstan

By Rk Pachauri

30 June 2017

The opening up of relations will have substantial benefits for India to expand its cultural, political and economic linkages with Central Asian region. Efforts must be made to harness the potential

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been extremely active in travelling to various countries round the world with which India either has already or needs to develop closer relations. While his visit to the US, which from all accounts has been extremely successful, will receive heightened interest from the media and the public in this country, there is another visit that the Prime Minister made recently which merits detailed analysis and comment.

Prime Minister Modi travelled to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, essentially to mark India’s entry as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and to participate in the opening of Expo 2017. While there has been some comment on how India’s entry would have a major impact on the SCO itself, possibly bringing India closer to China, what in this writer’s view is even more significant is the opportunity to develop closer relations with Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan, among the former Soviet Republics, has been by several measures the most successful country in the whole group, both in terms of economic progress that it has achieved and prominence it has attained in the international arena. President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s leadership has been a crucial part of Kazakhstan’s progress, as he has been the President of that country since it attained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

One of the first decisions that President Nazarbayev took was to close many nuclear test sites that existed on its territory during the Soviet period. The year 2016 marked the 25th anniversary of closure of the world’s largest nuclear test site, and this symbolic move has been reinforced by Kazakhstan and its leadership being identified with diverse efforts to promote world peace in every possible manner.

Some, particularly in the Western world, are critical of President Nazarbayev’s quarter century as President of the country, but if one looks at the history of nations that have been built or rebuilt, strong leadership and continuity have been essential ingredients of the emergence of nations in strong positions of economic standing and in building institutions that withstand the test of time.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was President of Turkey from 1923 to 1938, Bismarck was Chancellor of Germany from 1871 to 1890, and both are regarded as the early builders of their respective countries. After the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer, who was the Chancellor from 1949 to 1963, is credited with re-building of the Federal Republic of Germany as an industrial power, after it suffered the trauma of Germany’s division between east and west and destruction of its infrastructure during the war.

Kazakhstan is the dominant power in Central Asia, and its per capita income is already in excess of $11,000, which is far above that of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan respectively which are just above $2,000 each.

Given India’s deep interest and engagement in Afghanistan, a closer economic and political relationship with Kazakhstan is clearly in India’s interest.  The country has a population of about 18 million and a vast land area which ranks ninth in size in the world, just a little less than the land area of India, which ranks seventh in the world. India has substantial opportunities for investments in Kazakhstan, possible assistance in development of scientific and technological skills and increase in overall trade with that country, which is extremely rich in minerals and possesses substantial potential for enhanced cooperation in the agricultural sector.

The growing season in Kazakhstan is, no doubt, very short given the harsh winter that most of the country experiences, but in a world with a rapidly growing population, and being in the neighbourhood of both Russia and China, Kazakhstan has major opportunities for supply of food grains to both its neighbours in the future. Russia is currently an exporter of food, but projections indicate that it may have deficits in the future.  China is already a major importer of food, and as a result of the impacts of climate change its agricultural yields are likely to decline in the future, particularly in the western part of the country.

Kazakhstan’s leadership needs to be complimented on developing a vision of the future, which is defined in the document entitled “Kazakhstan 2050” based on the identification of seven long term priorities. The theme of Expo 2017, which is currently being held in Astana, is “Future Energy”. Kazakhstan is a major producer and exporter of hydrocarbons, but the country's leadership has clearly laid down plans for tapping renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar, because it sees itself as a globally significant adherent to the goals set by the Paris agreement on climate change, and as an early innovator towards sustainable patterns of energy supply and consumption.

These plans represent a sector in which India could be an important partner not only in the supply of energy from renewable sources but also in bringing about significant increases in the efficiency of energy use throughout the country.

Quite apart from the economic opportunities and benefits from a closer relationship between India and Kazakhstan, the political benefits for India would be significant, such as coordinated action to deal with fundamentalism and the threat of terrorism. Islam is the largest religion practiced in Kazakhstan, since over 70 per cent of the population is Muslim, with a dominance of Sunnis, but the extent of religious tolerance in the country is noteworthy and commendable. There is a small number of Shias and some Ahmadi Muslims against whom there is no evidence of discrimination or isolation. Kazakhstan could be an important partner for India in social and cultural exchanges as well, because Kazakh society exhibits richness of cultural values and practice, which would support strong cultural ties with Indian society.

Overall, the opening with Kazakhstan would have substantial benefits for India expanding its cultural, political and economic linkages with the entire Central Asian region. The period since the breakup of the Soviet Union has seen the emergence of Kazakhstan as a significant nation straddling the continents of Asia and Europe.

Building a stronger relationship with Kazakhstan and its leadership would have mutual benefits for both countries and strategic significance for India as the Indian economy grows and its strategic interests diversify to cover the entire Central Asian region. The Prime Minister’s visit should now be followed up with concrete actions to harness the potential that is evident in an expanded relationship between the two countries.

Source: dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/forging-new-relations-with-kazakhstan.html

URL:https://www.newageislam.com/pakistan-press/junaid-son-harsh-mander-new/d/111731