by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : On the intervening night of February 28 and March 1, 2002 when Gujarat was engulfed in flames, Lt. Gen Zameer Uddin Shah, met the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi, in the presence of the then Defence Minister George Fernandes, at 2 am in Ahmedabad and gave him a list of immediate requirements to enable the Army columns to fan out to restore law and order.
But the 3,000 troops that had landed at the Ahmedabad airfield at 7 am on March 1, had to wait for a day before the Gujarat administration provided the transport — during which period hundreds of people were killed.
“These were crucial hours lost,” Shah, who retired as the Deputy Chief of Army Staff, has revealed in his upcoming memoir titled “The Sarkari Mussalman” (Konark Publishers) to be launched by former Vice President Hamid Ansari on October 13 at India International Centre here.
In the memoir, a copy of which is with IANS, Shah writes that the Gujarat government requested for deployment of the Army through the Union Home Ministry and the Ministry of Defence on February 28, 2002. The then Chief of Army Staff, General S. Padmanabhan was quoted by him as saying: “‘Zoom, get your formation to Gujarat tonight and quell the riots.’ I replied, ‘Sir, the road move will take us two days.’ He shot back, ‘The Air Force will take care of your move from Jodhpur. Get maximum troops to the airfield. Speed and resolute action are the need of the hour.'”
Upon arriving at the “dark and deserted” Ahmedabad airfield, he enquired: “Where are the vehicles and other logistic support we had been promised?” He learnt that the state government was still “making the necessary arrangements”.
“The crucial periods was the night of 28th February and the 1st of March. This is when the maximum damage was done. I met the chief minister at 2 am on the 1st morning. The troops sat on the airfield all through the 1st of March and we got the transport only on the 2nd of March. By then the mayhem had already been done,” Shah, who has been conferred Param Vishisht Seva Medal, Vishisht Seva Medal and Sena Medal for his services to the armed forces, told IANS.
Asked if the damage would be lesser had the army been allowed full freedom and provided with what he had personally asked Modi for, he agreed and said: “Most certainly the damage would have been much, much less had we got the vehicles at the right time. What the police couldn’t do in six days we did in 48 hours despite being six times smaller in size than them. We finished the operation in 48 hours on the 4th of March but it could have been finished on the 2nd of March itself had we not lost those crucial hours.”
He said that he is not blaming anyone in particular. “It may take some time in arranging transport but in a situation like that, it could have possibly been done faster,” he added.
He said the police were “dumb bystanders” while the “mob was setting fire on streets and houses”. They were taking “no action” to prevent the “mayhem” that was being done.
“I did see a lot of MLAs from the majority community sitting at the police stations. They had no business to be there. Whenever we used to tell the police to impose the curfew, they never did so in the minority areas. So the minorities were always surrounded by the mobs. It was a totally parochial and biased handling,” the decorated army veteran maintained.
Asked of the political links in the riot, Shah said that he does not “want to reopen any old wounds”, maintaining that the purpose of his memoir is “to tell the facts as they happened in Gujarat in 2002”.
“It takes three generations to forget. I do not want to reopen the wounds. I have spoken the truth about police and I stand by every word I have written,” he said.
The government had told the parliament in 2005 that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed, 223 more people reported missing and another 2,500 injured during the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Shah maintains in the book that the “official figures of deaths and damage do not reflect a true picture of the actual extent of the carnage”.
The book — packed with revelations as also his personal experiences in life, both as an army man and a Muslim in India — has been endorsed by at least two chiefs of army staff, including General S. Padmanabhan.
“Many eyebrows were raised when I nominate‘ ‘Zoom’ to lead the Army complement to Gujarat. Some seniors told me of their misgivings. I told them in no uncertain terms that the choice of troops and their leader was a military decision and not open to debate. The Army moved into Gujarat, led b‘ ‘Zoom’ whose ability, impartiality and pragmatic decision making, soon brought the situation under control,” Gen Padmanabhan wrote as an endorsement of the book.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Representational Image
By Amulya Ganguli,
The advent of the festive season has brought good luck for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
After Mayawati’s imperious scuttling of any chance of an alliance with the Congress in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the BJP can rest easy with the thought that the projected “mahagathbandhan” (grand alliance) of the national opposition may be now dead and buried.
After several by-election successes in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the Congress appeared to have taken it for granted that the two states were already in its bag with the possibility of winning in Chhattisgarh as well on the basis of an anti-BJP wind blowing in from Madhya Pradesh.
But the Congress hadn’t taken into account its own internal fissures along with an ingrained arrogance and deviousness. One manifestation of the cracks within the party was the palpable gulf between two senior leaders in Madhya Pradesh, the party chief in the state, Kamal Nath, and the former chief minister, Digvijaya Singh.
Even as Kamal Nath teamed up with Jyotiraditya Scindia and “negotiated” with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), thereby hogging the limelight, Digvijaya Singh, perhaps feeling left out, decided to make his presence felt by throwing a spanner in the unity efforts.
True, the first chink in the mahagathbandhan was caused by Mayawati when she left the Congress in the lurch in Chhattisgarh, forming an alliance with the breakaway Congress leader, Ajit Jogi, and even announcing contesting 22 seats on her own in Madhya Pradesh.
But there was no immediate need for Digvijaya Singh to see her move as a scared response to the investigations against her by various government agencies.
Although this interpretation was being aired in the media, it was evidently unacceptable to the temperamental BSP czarina to find a senior Congress leader echoing the views of some analysts.
Hence, her huffy departure from any talks with the Congress on the grounds of the party’s arrogance and underhand manoeuvres of those like Digvijaya Singh whom she accused of acting at the BJP’s behest.
It is also possible that she believed that a tie-up with the Congress will benefit the latter rather than the BSP, not least because she suspected that the Congress was trying to regain its lost position among the Dalits as in the hoary days of the Congress’s Brahmin-Harijan-Muslim base decades ago.
This was the reason why she was not too pleased with Rahul Gandhi’s earlier practice of spending nights in Dalit villages, alleging that he soaped himself copiously on returning home.
Since then, her attitude has not only changed but, as she said even after the break-up with the Congress, both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi were sincere in their desire for an alliance with the BSP.
It is obvious, therefore, that the Congress should have been far more careful in its dealings with Mayawati, with Rahul Gandhi himself playing a more proactive role to placate the oversensitive BSP leader, who is already under considerable strain because of the emergence of young challengers from within her own community like Jignesh Mewani and Chandrashekhar Azad “Ravan”.
The Congress’s mistake was to leave the task of talking to her only to the faction-ridden Madhya Pradesh unit, especially when disgruntled elements like Digvijaya Singh were lurking in the background, fearing that he would be further marginalised if Kamal Nath and Scindia managed to clinch a deal.
Now that the idea of a mahagathbandhan has collapsed for all practical purposes, it remains to be seen whether, if at all, the Congress is able to pick up the broken pieces.
Its dependence on a “grand” combine was based on the realisation that the only way the national opposition could take on the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah electoral machine was by acting in unison.
This arithmetical approach — one “strong” opposition candidate against the BJP in every constituency — was a concession to the fact that the opposition lacked a charismatic leader who could effortlessly draw crowds and articulate an inspiring vision.
Since the Congress and the opposition fail on both counts, the least they could do to offer a credible challenge to the BJP was by ensuring that the different parties developed a close understanding among themselves which took into account the idiosyncrasies of individual leaders and their apprehensions about being deceived.
However, the problem in the non-BJP camp is that it has only local leaders with little national appeal — Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, Chandrababu Naidu — while the “naamdars” (leaders with a lineage), to use Modi’s sarcastic word for the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, are too preoccupied with rebuilding and even altering their own shattered images by visiting temples to undertake the arduous task of building a coalition brick by brick.
Mayawati’s desertion of the secular camp in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh was, therefore, waiting to happen. All that the Congress and the other parties in the national opposition can hope for at present is that the gathbandhans (alliances) elsewhere, notably in Uttar Pradesh, remain intact.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Interviews, News, Social Entrepreneur, Success Stories
By Bhavana Akella,
Murshidabad (West Bengal) : Walking home from school in a small town in West Bengal, a nine-year-old boy saw some of his friends work as rag-pickers. The thought that his companions were unable to study like him because they were poor so agonised the young Babar Ali that he decided to do something about it and bring school to those who could not afford it.
Determined to share his education as a fifth grader at a state-run school at Beldanga town in Murshidabad district, about 200km north of Kolkata, he turned teacher to his poor friends in the backyard of his own home. With a dream to make India’s children have access to quality education despite their economic backgrounds, he has been, over these many years, a silent crusader imparting education to hundreds of poverty-stricken child labourers in the state.
“I couldn’t tolerate my friends picking garbage while I attended school. So I asked them to join me in the roofless backyard of my home, so I could teach them how to read and write,” Babar, now a 25-year-old youth, recalled to IANS in an interview.
That backyard became Babar’s school, Ananda Siksha Niketan (meaning Home for Joyful Learning), in 2002, making him possibly the world’s youngest headmaster.
“My school began with a total of eight students, including my five-year-old younger sister Amina Khatun. We sat together under a guava tree for three hours every afternoon learning to read, so that the children who worked as rag-pickers or ‘beedi’ (handrolled cigarettes made of unprocessed tobacco) rollers could continue to work in the mornings,” recalled Babar.
With a population of about eight million, Murshidabad district has a large section of its adults and children working as daily-wage labourers in farms and rolling beedis. The district is among the largest manufacturer of beedis in the country. Collecting used-up chalk pieces from his school, Babar continued to teach children in his neighbourhood how to read and write in Bengali along with basic math, science and geography, completely free of cost, while he was in school himself.
“Teachers at my school thought I was stealing chalk to scribble on the walls, but after they learnt that I was teaching other children at my home, they began to offer me a box of chalk each week,” shared Babar.
The support from his mother Banuara Bibi, an anganwadi worker, and father Mohammad Nasiruddin, a jute trader, both of whom were school dropouts, allowed him to pursue his vision to create an educated neighbourhood, he said.
“The children I have been teaching receive very little support from their families and are often left to fend for themselves. With help from my family and teachers at school, I have been able to run my school and provide the kids with uniform, books and other reading material,” added Babar.
Admitting that it was a difficult task convincing families to send their children to his home school, Babar said he gradually won the trust of parents as students grew fond of him and enjoyed his classes.
Donations from teachers at his school, district officials, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers from the region and other individuals has kept Babar’s institution running through the years — and in 2015, it shifted into a building near his home, with a recognition as a private school from the West Bengal School Education Department.
“The focus is on holistic education at Ananda Siksha Niketan, as I want the students to positively impact the society through whatever professions they choose in the future,” he stressed.
In a span of about 16 years, from 2002 till date, Babar has taught more than 5,000 children from Classes 1 to 8 — a few of whom have have returned to his school to work as teachers.
“Six of my former girl students have returned to the school as teachers after finishing their under-graduation courses,” said Babar, who holds a MA in English literature from the University of Kalyani, about 50 km from Kolkata.
Pursuing another Masters in History from the same university, Babar remains an ambitious headmaster who wants to bring about change in the district’s poor female literacy rate, which stands at just above 55 per cent, according to data from the district administration.
“Several families are still reluctant to send their girls to a school and prefer to marry them off in their teens, but through continuous effort we are seeing a change in their attitudes. Parents are realising the need for education as children are in turn helping them read, make a signature on paper and write,” he added.
The co-education school currently has 500 students, 10 teachers and one non-teaching staff, with classes from 1 to 8.
“We require more classrooms and infrastructure as our building can accommodate only 350-400. I also want to expand the school up to Class 10 so that kids do not have to go to other towns for education.”
Babar, who is also a motivational speaker, offering talks across the country inspired by venerated Hindu monk-philosopher Swami Vivekananda’s (1863-1902) teachings, wants to set up more such schools catering to the poorest sections across the country.
“Education for all will remain my life mission and, to realise that, several institutions and individuals need to come together,” he reiterated.
Babar’s inspiring journey has also made it to the first year English text book of pre-university (Class 11) in Karnataka’s state board and Class 10 communicative English text of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
“Governments alone cannot change the system. We need people of all sections to come forward and work together to bring in quality education for all our country’s children, irrespective of their social classes,” stressed Babar.
(The weekly feature series is part of a positive-journalism project of IANS and the Frank Islam Foundation. Bhavana Akella can be contacted at bhavana.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By M. Burhanuddin Qasmi,
Masjid is very important and both religiously and culturally an integral part of Islam. There are clear texts in Hadith where it is emphatically instructed that Muslim men must offer 5 daily prayers in masjid with congregations. This has been in practice ever since Islam existed in this world. If some individuals are not doing so then this is their personal default which does not change rules. Hadith, Fiqh and all Islamic sources are unequivocally stating that masjid is an integral part of Islam and Muslim society.
Islam is what is in the Qur’an and Sunnah of Prophet Mohammad (saws). There are several verses in the Qur’an which speak about importance and sanctity of a masjid in Islam. Here is one of the verses from the Qur’an:
“And who is more unjust than he who prevents (men) from the masjids of Allah, that His name should be remembered in them, and strives to ruin them? (As for) these, it was not proper for them that they should have entered them except in fear; they shall meet with disgrace in this world, and they shall have great chastisement in the hereafter.”
(Al-Qur’an, Surah Al-Baqara,Chapter 2, Verse 114).
The Prophet Mohammad (saws) said: “The congregational prayer exceeds that of individual prayer by twenty seven degrees. Whoever performs ablution properly then goes to the masjid, every step that he takes erases one of his bad deeds and elevates him a degree (in Paradise). If he enters the masjid and starts praying, the angles will implore Allah to forgive him and have mercy on him saying: ‘O Allah! Have mercy on him and forgive him.’ And one remains (receiving an equal reward as if he is still) in prayer as long as he is awaiting (the coming) prayer.” (Sahih Muslim)
Muslims should go to the masjid day and night and should love being there. A companion of the Prophet (saws) Abdullah ibn Mas`ud (ra) says: “No one would miss the prayer at the masjid except the ill and the hypocrites.” He also added that the Prophet (saws) taught us the means to guidance and one of these means is praying at the masjid.
The majority of jurists are of the opinion that praying in congregation at masjids is a stressed upon Sunnah.
If masjid is not the essential requirement for Salah (prayers) then mandir is also not an essential requirement for Puja or worship. The same should be true for all religions and all religious places. If pure places of worship are not included as integral part of any religion and not protected by articles 14, 15 and 25 of Indian Constitution, then what? Does it mean all masjids, mandirs, gurdwaras, churches and synagogues; all endowments and waqf properties are vulnerable that any government can confiscate them under land accusation act as and when it wills?
However, it is Islam alone which puts extraordinary importance on congregational prayers. Muslims pray five times a day and Juma (the Friday prayer) each week in a masjid only. Juma and Eid prayers cannot be done except in a masjid or an open ground in congregation. Then how masjid is not an integral part of Islam and Muslims – – my Lord!
The three judge bench’s majority judgment – 2/3, barring Justice Abdun Nazir in the Supreme Court of India on 27 Sept. 2018 with reference to Ismail Farooqi vs Union of India case’s outcome in 1994 is inconceivable. If under the land accusation law the Union of India can acquire certain land of a worship place from one group then how can the Government or any court allow the other group to perform worship in the same land before the title is cleared by a verdict ? If the outcome of 1994 case already had influenced the title suit judgment on Babri Masjid – Ram Janmabhoomi, on the basis of ‘aastha’ in the Lucknow Bench of Allahbad High Court in 2010, then what is the assurance that the same is not going to influence the upcoming judgment in the same case in the Apex Court in future?
We, as laymen, can ask these questions to ourselves only. However, upholding the spirit of justice, sanctity of law and saving the constitution of India are lying in courts’ wisdom. We as citizens of this country wish that equality for all and transparency in justice should prevail everywhere and forever!
(M. Burhanuddin Qasmi, Director, Markazul Ma’arif Education and Research Centre Patliputra Nagar, Oshiwara, Jogeshwari (W), Mumbai)
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Tariq Anwar
Katihar (Bihar) : Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) General Secretary Tariq Anwar on Friday quit the party and the Lok Sabha, expressing his disagreement with party chief Sharad Pawar who gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Rafale deal.
“I have resigned from the NCP as well as the membership of Lok Sabha because I totally disagree with Sharad Pawar’s statement in support of Modi on Rafale deal,” he told the media here.
“The Prime Minister is fully involved in the Rafale deal,” he said, reacting to Pawar’s television interview in which he had said he did not think people doubt Modi’s intentions on a personal level.
Pawar’s statement was welcomed by BJP chief Amit Shah who praised him for “placing national interests above party politics”.
Anwar, 67, who was expelled from the Congress in 1999 along with Pawar and P.A. Sangma after they questioned the foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi, said he personally respected and honoured Pawar but felt his statement in support of Modi was unfortunate.
“I do not agree with his statement and have resigned from the party and membership of Parliament,” the MP from Katihar said.
Anwar told IANS that he was forced to take this decision to prove his moral stand in politics. “I am telling people one thing and cannot take another stand,” he said.
Anwar, who has been a Lok Sabha member several times and in the Rajya Sabha once, said he will talk to his supporters before taking a move to join any party.
—IANS
