Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu cancels visit to India

by Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday (Sept 3) cancelled a planned visit to India on September 9 to meet his counterpart Narendra Modi who last month annexed the disputed territory of Kashmir.

This is the second time this year that Netanyahu on has cancelled a planned visit to India, doing so earlier before the April elections.

Netanyahu’s planned visit was widely seen in Israel as an effort by him to project his acceptance worldwide and prop up his campaign just days before the September 17 repeat polls, according to the Press Trust of India.

Netanyahu, who created history on July 20 by becoming the longest serving Israeli Prime Minister, surpassing Israel’s first premier David Ben-Gurion, is facing a tough political challenge as opinion polls show flagging fortunes for his ruling Likud party.

Israeli lawmakers in May voted 74-45 in favor of dissolving the 21st Knesset (Parliament) and hold an unprecedented re-elections on September 17 after Netanyahu failed to form a coalition government after the April 9 polls.

Netanyahu visited India in January 2018, while Modi travelled to Tel Aviv in 2017, becoming the first Indian prime minister to tour the Jewish state.

Over the past two years, Netanyahu and Modi have hailed “a new era of friendship between the nations,” with mutual high-profile visits and several bilateral agreements signed in the fields of oil, gas, renewable energy and cyber cooperation. In his January 2018 visit to India, Netanyahu called Modi a “revolutionary leader,” who had transformed the relationship between the two nations.

According to media reports, Israel wishes to sell India several advanced weapons manufactured by the country’s defense industries, such as spy planes, unmanned aircraft, anti-tank missiles, cannons and radar systems.

In January, National Security Adviser Meir Ben Shabbat travelled with several members of the council to India, where he met with his Indian counterpart and with Modi. In those meetings, Ben Shabbat discussed different weapon deals between the two countries.

“By revoking autonomy from Kashmir, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is taking a page straight out of the Israeli playbook.” This is the tile of Abdulla Moaswes’s article published by +972 Magazine where he provides a graphic scenario of the Indo-Israeli collaboration to implement Hindutva, or extreme Hindu Nationalism policies adopted by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) backed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Abdulla Moaswes writes:

“Relations between India and Israel grew even closer with the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 1990s. The BJP, which today is led by Modi, adheres to the political ideology known as Hindutva, or Hindu Nationalism. The history of Hindu nationalists’ affinity with Zionism is well documented by professor Sumantra Bose of the London School of Economics, who traces it back to the 1920s when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the father of Hindutva, supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The BJP and other Hindu Nationalists have since become obsessed with replicating the Zionist project in turning a constitutionally secular India into a Hindu ethnocratic state.

“Many of the BJP’s aspirations and policy proposals for Kashmir are imitations of extant Israeli practices in Palestine. Key among these is the desire to build Israeli-style Hindu-only settlements in Kashmir as a way of instigating demographic change. For example, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a non-state volunteer Hindu paramilitary volunteer group to which the BJP are affiliated, have long desired the repeal of the state subject laws that have maintained the demographic make-up of Kashmir.

“These changes are clearly inspired by the Israeli settlement model, as expressed by BJP lawmaker Ravinder Raina, who, in 2015, stated that the government of India will use its army to protect Hindu-only settlements in Jammu and Kashmir. This type of securitization and protection would entail an expansion of the security apparatus that already restricts the flow of life for most Kashmiris, using them as a pretext to justify a new level of domination and intrusiveness.

“Aside from the parallels in policy objectives, the discourse used by supporters of the current regime in India resemble old Israeli refrains. Both Israel and India claim to be exceptional democracies, despite their treatment of large swaths of populations under their control. Additionally, both Zionists and Hindu Nationalists argue that the existence of many Muslim countries in the world necessitates a Jewish and Hindu state, respectively. This perpetuates the lie that Palestinians and Indian Muslims can supposedly live elsewhere, yet choose to live in Palestine and India only to antagonize Jews and Hindus.

“Meanwhile, the variety of tactics used by India to control the civilian population of Kashmir strongly resembles t hose used by Israel in Palestine. These include, “arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, curfews, collective punishment, administrative detention, torture, rape and sexual abuse, the suppression of freedom of speech and assembly, house demolitions, and so forth.”

“The revocation of Articles 35A and 370 paves the way for Indian presence in Kashmir to further mirror Zionist presence in historic Palestine, since this allows the Indian state to rule Kashmir directly without the need for Kashmir’s state legislature, which was also recently abolished. Furthermore, it facilitates the execution of plans to alter the demographic make-up of Kashmir by allowing Indians from across the country to purchase property and settle there under the protection of the Indian military presence, just as the demographic make-up of the West Bank continues to be altered with the construction of Jewish-only settlements.

“With the unprecedented change of Jammu and Kashmir’s legal status from a special status state to a union territory without a legislative assembly, India’s colonial domination over the contested region will only become more overtly coercive in representing Indian interests. This is a crucial development to be observed closely by Palestinians who live in areas where the Israeli occupation is currently facilitated by the Palestinian Authority.

“As things move forward, it is increasingly clear that the colonial processes in Kashmir and Palestine will become further interdependent on one another. What Israel does in Palestine is likely to happen in Kashmir, and what India does in Kashmir is likely to happen in Palestine. In aiming to dismantle Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism, it is essential to observe its global consequences, for it is highly likely that these interdependent processes will require a multilateral confrontation.”

“Although the Indian presence in Kashmir never amounted to settler colonialism like in the Palestinian case, where a large proportion of the existing population of the region was expelled and replaced by a settler population, India has maintained a heavy military presence in the area and has acted as a police state vis-à-vis Kashmiri civilians and politicians,” argued Abdulla Moaswes, a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the University of Exeter.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) 

If Maoist Violence Is Illegitimate How Is Hindutva Violence And State Violence Justified?

by Sandeep Pandey

Co-Written By Swami Agnivesh and Sandeep Pandey

There was major police action against Sudha Bhardwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Varvara Rao, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira on 28 August, 2018. Before this police arrested Professor Shoma Sen, Adocate Sudhir Gadling, Sudhir Dhawle, Mahesh Raut and Rona Wilson on 6 June. Even before this Dr. Binayak Sen, Soni Sori, Ajay T.G., Professor G.N. Saibaba and Prashant Rahi have been arrested and all these activists have been accused of having links with Maoists. Maoists are considered dangerous because they are thought to be plotting to destabilize the government and the five who have been most recently targeted are also accused of having planned to assassinate the Prime Minister. This charge is ridiculous because they are dedicated activists fighting for the rights of marginalized sections of our society and don’t really have the time to indulge in frivolous activity like planning an assassination. The cooked up charge is to justify the police action.

The Maoists are considered illegitimate because they support violence. Any violence cannot be justified in a democracy. However, the question is if violence is bad how is other kinds of violence more legitimate than the Maoist violence?

The history of right wing is replete with incidents of violence. How can we forget that the person with whom India’s identity is associated in the entire world and who lived the value of non-violence was murdered by people believing in Hindutva ideology? The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh can never wash off this sin irrespective of however much Narendra Modi may have tried to coopt Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar instead of using the icons of Hindutva ideology Hedgewar, Golwalkar and Savarkar.

By demolishing the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 the RSS, Bhartiya Janata Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal have reignited the fire of communalism in this country after its partition in 1947 and have devilishly pushed the society towards Hindu-Muslim polarization for their political gain. The incident has caused irreparable damage to the politics and social fabric of this country. 17 Muslims were burnt alive during the Babri Masjid demolition and many people died in communal riots following the incident.

Demolition of Babri Masjid is responsible for inviting the problem of terrorism to India. The first terrorist incident in India, which were then called serial bomb blasts, occurred in 1993 in Mumbai as a reaction to Babri Masjid demolition. Many such incidents have taken place since then. Bomb blasts have also taken place which were plotted by the people subscribing to Hindutva ideology. What can be more cowardice than retired Major Ramesh Upadhyay and serving Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Srikant Purohit associated with Abhinav Bharat, an organization inspired by the Hindutva ideology of RSS, being part of conspiracy to explode bombs in their own country? On 8 September, 2006, 38 people died in explosions in Malegaon, Maharashtra and on 29 September, 2008, 10 people died in blasts at Malegaon and Modasa in Gujarat. Workers of Abhinav Bharat organization were made accused in both incidents. Bomb explosion on 18 February 2007 killed 68 persons in Samjhauta Express. The same year on 18 May in bomb explosions outside Mecca Masjid of Hyderabad 9 people were killed and 5 more became casualties in police firing. Abhinav Bharat again is believed to have a hand in these blasts. On 11 October, 2017 in bomb explosions at Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti’s dargah in Ajmer in which 19 people were killed. Bhavesh Patel and Devendra Gupta having connections with RSS were convicted for this incident with life imprisonment.

In 2002 in reaction to a fire in a coach of Sabarmati Express outside Godhra railway station communal violence took the lives of 1000-2000 people most of whom were Muslims. Leaders-workers of BJP, VHP and Bajrang Dal openly participated as perpetrators. It is believed that the then Narendra Modi government in Gujarat was directly or indirectly involved in fanning the violence. At least the police didn’t actively put an end to the violence. At that time PM Atal Behari Vajpayee had to admonish Narendara Modi to follow the righteous principles of governance. Because of his dubious role in the violence United States denied Narendra Modi a visa until he became PM.

Between 2013 and 2017 assailants associated with Sanatan Sanstha are suspected of having murdered in cold blood Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, Professor M.M. Kalburgi and journalist Gauri Lankesh essentially because they held and propagated views which were critical of the Hindutva ideology.

A new trend of violence was initiated after Narendra Modi ascended to power in Delhi. Muslims began to be lynched to death on suspicion of cow slaughter or for simply transporting cows. On 28 September 2015 Mohammed Akhlaq was lynched to death on the suspicion of having stolen and slaughtered a cow in Bisada village near Dadri. An announcement was first made from the loudspeaker of a temple to assemble the people before the assault. On 18 March 2016 in Latehar, Jharkhand cattle trader 32 years old Mazlum Ansari accompanied by 15 years old Imtiaz Khan when walking 8 oxen were lynched to death by members of a cow vigilante committee and dead bodies hung from a tree. On 1 April, 2017, 55 years old Pehlu Khan resident of Mewat, Haryana when returning after having purchased cows and calves from Rajasthan with five others was dragged out of his vehicle and lynched to death in front of his son’s eyes in Alwar by some people inspired by the Hindutva ideology. Pehlu Khan had the receipt of purchase of cattle and documents to show that they were being taken for the purpose of dairy. On 20 July, 2018 Rakbar Khan also from Haryana while taking two cows was lynched in Alwar and declared dead when brought to hospital. The police thought it fit to first take the cows to a gaushala before taking Rakbar to hospital.

Another type of incidents have been launched since Narendra Modi came to power in Delhi. Youth associated with Hindtuva ideology insist on taking out motorcycle rallies with national flags as well as saffron flags forcibly through the Dalit and Muslim localities and try to provoke violence. On 5 May, 2017 some Rajput youth took out a motorcycle rally through a Dalit locality ostensibly to garland a Maharana Pratap statue and in the ensuing violence a Rajput and a Dalit youth lost their lives. It is in connection with these incidents that Dalit youth leader Chandrashakhar Azad Ravan was kept in jail for more than a year including under National Security Act. On 26 January, 2018 some youth associated with Hindtuva ideology tried to take out a motorcycle rally through Abdul Hameed Chowk in Kasganj, where Muslim youth celebrate Republic Day every year. In the resulting violence a youth Chandan Gutpa was killed. The Bareilly District Magistrate Raghvendra Pratap Singh had to say on twitter, ‘It is becoming a strange tradition. Take out a rally forcibly through Muslim locality and raise Pakistan Murdabad slogans. Are they Pakistanis?’

So that there is no doubt that these incidents are not premeditated, on 7 July, 2018 in Hazaribagh central minister Jayant Sinha garlanded eight members of a cow vigilante group who are accused of lynching and were out on bail. On 19 April 2017 Sadhvi Kamal didi honoured Vipin Yadav, one of the accused in Pehlu Khan’s lynching case, and compared him to Bhagat Singh, Chandrashakhar Azad and Sukhdev. This shows that Sangh Parivar does not only justify the violence committed by its cadre but also glorifies it.

In addition there are incidents of state violence. On 11 July 2004, in Manipur 34 years old Thangjam Manorama was raped and killed by members of paramilitary force Assam Rifles. On 15 July 2017 Supreme Court ordered Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct enquiry into illegal encounters in Manipur by security forces. On 22 May 2018 when about 20,000 people marched toward the District Colletor’s office to protest against pollution caused by Vedanta company Sterlite in Thoothukudi in Tami Nadu, 13 people died in police firing.

If the civil society thinks that violence is illegitimate then all kinds of violence must be condemned and government should make an attempt to stop all such violence.

Swami Agnivesh and Sandeep Pandey are social activists

Tamil Lunatic Fringe Anti-Muslim racism – Observation On Muslim-Tamil Relations – II

By Izeth Hussain 

Izeth Hussain

A clarification is required about the title of this article. I refer only to a narrow segment, a very narrow segment, of the Tamils, not the totality of them, or the generality or the majority of them. Does that very narrow segment of Tamils merit a two or three part article? I believe they do for several reasons. By and large the relations between Muslims and Tamils are quite satisfactory. In fact, I am told, that there is better rapport between the Muslims and the Tamils – the Tamil-speaking peoples – than there is between either of them and the Sinhalese. It is only in the Eastern Province that Muslim-Tamil relations are troubled, already I suspect to a fairly serious extent. There the Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racists could come to play a catalytic role in creating yet another monstrous ethnic problem in Sri Lanka.

We must also bear in mind that what today seems to be the lunatic fringe can tomorrow become the center. The French Prime Minister forecast some weeks ago that the National Front – which for decades was regarded as belonging to the lunatic fringe – could come to power in a couple of years. In India the RSS was for decades regarded as belonging to the lunatic fringe but today its idiotic Hindutva ideology reigns in the state, mosques and churches are being destroyed, and moves are afoot to build temples in honor of Godse the assassin of Gandhi. The most distressing example of the commutation between the lunatic fringe and the center has been that of Sri Lanka. For here the lunatic fringe has always been at the center, on both sides of the ethnic divide. The result has been a quarter century of war with 100,000 dead. It would be very foolish of us to ignore the incendiary potential in the Tamil ant-Muslim lunatic fringe on the ground that they are numerically not very significant.

I come now to a relevant autobiographical detail. Sometime in the first half of the ‘nineties, I was one of the three speakers at a meeting organized by the Church of Sri Lanka, the other two being Sarachchandra and Dr.Devanesan Nesiah. The latter stated that as an official I had had a blameless record but thereafter I was somehow at the center of controversy. He added that he was in agreement with ninety percent of what I wrote. He clearly meant that my writings proving to be so controversial was difficult to understand and required explanation. I will not venture on an explanation at the moment. The point that I want to make is that my peculiar capacity for being at the center of controversy, spotted by Dr. Nesiah, has continued over the decades, so that I have plenty of experience enabling me to assess the peculiar character of Tamil attacks on me.

My weekly articles in the Island are published simultaneously in the Colombo Telegraph where, unlike in the print media, there is ample space for responses. I have received many encomiums directly through email, disproportionately from Tamils which I thought was easily understandable because for decades I have been outspokenly critical on Sinhalese racism against the Tamils. Quite suddenly my articles in the Colombo Telegraph started receiving extremely negative responses. I noticed after some time that all those extremely negative responses came from writers using nom de plumes, and invariably those nom de plumes declared a Tamil identity. When I pointed this out the reply was that I had been attacked also by several others whose non de plumes did not suggest a Tamil identity. Quite true, but those responses registered sober dissent and nothing of the rage and hatred that characterized the Tamil responses. For instance a writer with a Burgher name was very critical of me but he declared nonetheless that I had “much to contribute”. That would have been unthinkable from a Tamil racist. A Sinhalese, who I know hates my guts, declared that I am “well read and readable”. That too would have been unthinkable from a Tamil racist.

Some features struck me as rather curious about the Tamil attacks. They were invariably written in fluent English and obviously came from educated professionals. The emails I get – very infrequently -from Sinhalese racists are usually written in poor English. I had the impression that the Tamil attacks came from expatriates – I made the point and it was not denied. The most interesting feature to which I want to draw attention is that the Tamil attacks seemed to be organized, not just a random phenomenon. They did not start with my first article in the Colombo Telegraph, it took a little while for them to get going, after which for several weeks every article of mine provoked attacks by around seven to ten Tamils. Suddenly they subsided for some weeks, after which they erupted again with the old fury. In the present phase they have subsided again, but a couple of newcomers have entered the fray with the same fury as the old-timers. Recently one of the old-timers blurted out a detail that clearly indicated that he was attacking me under instructions. I leave it to others who may be better informed to make sense of all this.

I am afraid that this article will be excessively long if I go into details to substantiate my charge – made on the basis of the attacks on me in the Colombo Telegraph – of Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racism. The interested reader will have to access the relevant material through the internet. I can do no more here than provide just a few pointers. A consistent feature of my exchanges with the Tamil racists has been a total imperviousness to fact and reason and a total absence of moral scruple on their part. I will provide an instance. I wrote more than once that if not for India the Tamils would be treated like a conquered people – that is to say like dirt. A Tamil reader claimed that I showed disrespect for the Tamils in using the term “like dirt”. Another, one of the worst of the Tamil racists, declared that in using such language I showed up my very low upbringing, unlike that of my former colleague Bandu Silva. The racist hated was so strong that he failed to understand – although he is fluent in English – that I was deploring the ways of the conqueror, not of the conquered. In reply I cited the case of Somerset Maugham, a life-long Francophile, who fled France when the Nazis invaded that country. When asked what would be the fate of the French under Nazi occupation, he replied tersely “Eat shit”. I pointed out that Maugham was deploring the ways of the Nazi conqueror, not of the conquered French. In fact he was showing contempt for the Nazis. Instead of accepting that clarification, the Tamil racist burst out that my choice of an example using the word “shit” only showed what a low degraded fellow I am. He clearly displayed a total imperviousness to fact and reason, a total absence of moral scruple, and also a savage racist compulsion to view the Muslims as low degraded people.

I will provide one more example to illustrate the depth of the Tamil racist hatred. The ostensible reason for the attacks on me is supposed to be that I am anti-Tamil and that I am widely notorious for being anti-Tamil. I will show in the next part of this article that the truth is the very opposite. I have in fact been dangerously outspoken on Sinhalese racism against the Tamils and on Muslim support for that racism. It is a mystery why the Tamil racists feel under some sort of compulsion to project me as anti-Tamil. Anyway they are unable to provide any evidence to substantiate their charge. Therefore they picked on a charge made against me by a Tamil that I had advocated famine as a weapon to subdue the Tamil rebels. I showed in an article in the Island that in fact I had advocated the very opposite – that the Government should not use famine as a weapon. In recent months the Tamil racists have repeatedly made that charge. I challenged them to produce the documentary evidence but they were unable to do so. Actually the document can be easily accessed by clicking on my reply to Arvind in 2006. I believe that the Tamil racists were deliberately lying all along. It must take a terrible hatred to try to incriminate someone by imputing to him the very opposite of what he had advocated.