Some propose that what the Islamist loss to European Colonial powers did was to bring back the worst of Islamism that had been suppressed during the march of time. As Islam conquered new areas, it is claimed to have lost most of its unsavory practices in order to retain the conquests and a moderation was underway. This moderation is in turn claimed to have got defeated along with loss of political power and the so-called reversal is really a reaction to this defeat.

I also thought so for a long time. Then I realized that a lot of the representations of “moderation” or “compromises” were actually a selection of narratives under the British and German fight over how to represent Islam. The British colonial planners hated the Ottomans and upped the Arabs. The Germans took up nosing around with the Ottomans and took up upping them. In the process, and especially post WWI – the contrarian researchers like Margoulis (the noted linguist and not another scholar currently active in a similar domain) are carefully allowed to slip out of the “public” academics.

Delving down, none of the horrors seemed to have decreases in any manner over the centuries. We find narratives being written down in the 13th to the 17th century that show no decrease at all. Suddenly in the era of European colonial success we begin to find selective “whitewashing” (simply not bringing forward the “horrible”) in the versions meant for public consumption. There are open acknowledgments from the European translators of Islamic texts that they find it impossible for their “tastes” to translate faithfully all the atrocities mentioned. Just like in India, the non-translation and editing out of the more “horrible” stuff creates the impression that the “horror” went down as time passed.

Preliminary considerations as to land-rights or occupation rights

Arabs choose a certain time-frame – that is the post Islamic conquest of Syria and Palestine – to push for dissolution of the Israeli state, or as it comes out in many of the narratives of aspirations by the major Islamist organizations supporting the current Palestinian self-determination movement – to put Jews back to their “original state under Islam”. These Arabs or Islamists fail to consider the previous time frame when the Jews were independent of Islamic subjugation, or Arab rule. But if selectivity of time-frame is used as justification, the opposite view that before the Arab conquest, Arabs were not present on Jewish lands and that they had simply come from Arabia to colonize, or that the Arabs lost out to Kurds and Turks afterwards, and it was the Ottoman Turks who ruled the area before 20th century and not the Arabs – must also be considered.

Now whether all Arabs have their original homeland in southern peninsula or not – is an interesting issue, and one can simply try raising this issue with any Arab one happens to know. The Yemenis still have some historical claims of culture [perhaps linked to Sabataens], but generally the coastal Arabs seem to have had a long-standing reputation of being pirates according to other cultures in the region- as claimed in Graeco-Roman records, and therefore their habitat and continuity of that “spirit of adventure” have been continuously studied [right up to the British period when British warships were used to “finish” off the piracy in the Gulf from “leading” Muslim tribes]. I would say most academics would still agree that the modern Arabs have been living in the peninsula for a long long time and they were usually not allowed to expand outside that perimeter by the other strong empires or historical powers. Even the

Jews were found to be useful as labour and skilled labour in later times [Egyptian historians like Zahi Hawas refuse to accept that slavery was widespread or that slave labour was the foundation of the Pharaonic economy, and therefore the presence of Jews as labour force in the Nile delta could only mean as paid skilled labour]- but Arabs are not mentioned except as harvesters or transporters of myrrh, and more of a nuisance (there are some critical Egyptian references to the Bedu).  So their cultural presence in Palestine is not provable before the Islamic Arab conquest.

The first narrative claims of exile/enforced migration was when Babylonians took part of them – mostly the elite – to Babylon. But there were sufficient numbers left behind because this gave rise to sectarian difference later on between those who had been allowed to stay behind and those who later on returned. Moreover Cyrus allowed those Babylonian Jews who wanted to, to return. Neither the internal difference nor the question of return would have arisen if the Jews had all been “cleaned up”! From there it did not go straight to Roman rule. It went through the Greek imperialism and then they had the Macabean uprising leading to an independent principality. Romans destroyed the temple built by Herod but complete expulsion of all Jews is hard to prove. Byzantines did not expel Jews in any significant numbers, and in fact Jews were persecuted by the Spanish Goths at the time of the first Arab raids on Spain – on suspicion of being collaborators of the Byzantines.

In the Persian(Parthian)-Byzantine conflict, a portion of the Jews did
side with the Byzantines. Did it lead to expulsion? Byzantium actually won in the end (Heraclius). It is sometimes claimed that the population dwindled under “taxation” thereby avoiding the discussion on any possible role of islamic states/regimes/armies. But why should taxation decrease population? Islamists, including the Hamas claimed that Jews had always been protected under Islam.

Okay, so those who could not  pay the taxes converted? Migrated out? If out-migration happened because of “taxation” then this is an acknowledgment that Jews were subjected to discriminatory taxation beyond their means – by the Muslims. For otherwise, all populations should have decreased under taxation and not just the Jews.

The Christian versus Islamic role debate

Christians are blamed for Jew-cide. Crusaders are definitely reported to have killed Jews. They are also reported to have killed Muslims, and even Christians. So this cannot be seen as part of war and general war-culture of those times? Such excuses are only applicable if they excuse Islamic war-”crimes” of historical periods?

For the sake of argument let us assume that Crusaders expelled all Jews and that  “kind” Muslims let them return [Which is not true but more of that later]. So the Jews were returning already from the time after the Crusades? And their “return” increased? In spite of constant protests and demands that Jews should not be allowed to settle? But then it is already being acknowledged that Jews were there for the previous five hundred years from 1948 since the fall of the Crusader kingdoms.

How can one “kick” a “nation” or whole community out repeatedly? Unless some were definitely not kicked out? Or why allow some one to “return” if they did not have a “homeland” to return to? The lead up to 1948 involved the antics of the so-called Grand Mufti of the region, the various conflicts and open declarations of intent to expel the Jews, agitating to stop Jewish immigration from the Muslim side. We even know that the Brits actually gave in to this Islamist demand and tried to restrict Jewish inflow. At that stage, Jews were buying land – they were not simply squatting or occupying land. The Grand Mufti, his political hobnobbing with both the Nazis and his appointment by the care-taker British authorities [over ana above more moderate Islamists and specific hints now available from old records as to how he might have been encouraged by some British officials to make it look tough for the Jews] is another lurid side of this story that is often not told and explored as to what effect it might have had on the fledgling Jewish state hopefuls.

Now if I see a hostile community who have openly declared intent to finish me off, if they get half a chance, I will treat the members of that community with suspicion, and every sign of hostile preparation as a preparation to wipe me out. I would definitely try to restrict the possibility. A common legalese on behalf of the Palestinians goes as follows:

I owned land, kicked out for whatever reason, house is sold on to numerous people over the years, after 80 years, I decide to come back(because of my personal circumstances) and say I used to live there, get out of my property. Is that fair to the guy who bought the house to be kicked out after many years and confined to one small room out of the house?

Apart from historical untruths as to how legally these properties were
“bought”, the legal argument itself is fallacious. Jews were in continuous
occupation of the land, maybe their numbers dwindled, and they lost out state power. “Kicked out for whatever reasons” is a highly callous attitude.

Those reasons are all-important. Who kicked whom for what. Those who
try to avoid the reasons do so because they perhaps have some thing to hide. In the case of “kicking Jews” – the Islamic reason is out and out ideological, racial and genocidic. The Islamic narratives themselves are absolutely honest about which Muslims kicked “Jews” for what motivation? The Badr wars, the genocide of Banu Quraizah, the battle of Khyber. It is not Judaic claim- it is all there in the most respected texts of Islam. From the legal viewpoint, suppose we say that the occupants were “kicked out” and new residents bought them from the “possessors”. Now if the initial act of “kicking out” was illegal then the subsequent occupation was illegal.

If you buy stolen goods or “illegally occupied” property/object then your rights are not legally acceptable. At least not in most modern legal thinking (only in Islamic thinking there is a justification for that in the context of property/women obtained through jihad/ghazwa and Islamic jurisprudential basis for this starts in Al Baqara of Quran and explicitly mentioned in the Hidaya).

[Continued in part 2]

Interestingly, these same voices – both inside India and outside, Christians or Hindus who have learned to hate their birth culture, apparently still remain rather silent about the open threats issued by Kashmir Valley Muslims against Christian missionary and especially conversion activities.

In a recent open warning the Ameer of Karwani Islami, Maulana Ghulam Rasool Hami, has apparently expressed serious concern over the alleged role of Christian missionaries in converting young Kashmiri Muslim boys and girls to Christianity.

http://www.kashmirdispatch.com/headlines/30106712-repent-or-face-social-boycott-karwan-to-christian-converts-kashmir.htm

On Sunday, 30th October, Hami said that some Christian missionaries were attempting to alter the Muslim majority character of Jammu and Kashmir at the behest of America and Israel and added that “We ask Muslims who have fallen for the trap of these missionaries and converted to Christianity to present themselves before Ulema before Eid-ul-Azha, and seek repentance from Allah…..Otherwise, Karwani Islami and Darul-Ifta will convene a joint session of Ulema and Muftis on November 11 and issue a fatwa(decree) of  social boycott against these  converts”.

According to Hami, the Ulema will not remain silent over the activities of Christian missionaries. “ They are luring young Muslims with money to convert and we will go to any extent to stop their activities,” he said.

Hami and his Karwani Islami is not dismissible as an isolated, “fringe” group – as is typically done by so-called secularist apologists of Islamic sectarianism and exclusivism . Just few two days before, Mufti Bashir-ud-din – J&K’s official ” mufti azam”, or head Muslim clergyman – issued new summons to a leading Christian priest, CM Khanna, on Friday, asking him to appear before his court to explain his alleged activities of reported conversions of young local boys and girls at his church in Srinagar. Khanna alleged in counter that the mufti was annoyed with him because Khanna had expressed his inability to help the mufti in the admission of a boy to a Christian missionary school. Talking to Times of India, Mufti Azaam Bashir-ud-din is reported to have said: “Our shariat court had summoned the Christian priest, CM Khanna, to appear personally today at 11am but he failed to appear. Now we have issued fresh summons to him for personal appearance on November 12.”

I have often come up against the explanation for the alleged atrocities committed on Hindus in the Portuguese colony of Goa, apparently to cleanse the pagan out of Indians – known infamously as the Goan Inquisition – that the “Church” had nothing to do with it, and it was all about politics and politicians who were on the ground from the Portuguese side. No atrocity is ever to be blamed on “religion” but on the over-zealousness and “misinterpretations” of “one and only true doctrine of pure love and mercy” – all three mutually exclusive versions.  It seems that the same logic is not to be applied to non-Judaeo-Christian-Islamic traditions -for whom all atrocities carried out by people overtly and officially allied to the religions stem from the religions themselves.

But when the same thing happens within a Judaeo-Christian tradition like Islamism, it becomes immensely problematic from the theoretical apologetics viewpoints. Here the theologians themselves are taking up the cudgel and clearly sourcing it within the claims of one-sided right to convert others.

It would be interesting to see some explanations of the puzzling silence from “secularists” and Christian evangelists!

Americans should not have said that they were leading it but allow UK or France to do the honours. Moreover they have a short window in which to decimate Gaddafi’s forces, and restock the opposition.

As for Russia, India or anyone else mumbling and playing it safe, it is important to realize that historical turning points do not stay on forever. It is a tendency in Indian analysis of situations to be confounded by complex contradictions in political developments and get stuck in an overemphasis on “nothing is entirely black and white” which then becomes the excuse for decision paralysis. On the other hand it is this same “nothing is black and white” mindset to stick to paradigms and never update even with real experiences. Thus it appears that policy-makers of India have a rigid mindset to think that the Islamic regions do not have forces and dynamics of change within themselves that are not entirely mullahcratic.

It is critical to support the non-mullahcratic component against the mullahcratic component in the uprisings or movements that at the moment have converged on the point of common hatred against their ruling regimes. If we don’t support the more modernizing trends within these movements, the elite of Islamic systems will hijack this popular sentiment into their pet agenda – hatred of the “qufr”, wallowing in the Sharia, and erasure of the Jews as a first step towards erasure of all perceived obstacles to their absolute mullahcracy.

The West once made the blunder of encouraging Islamism and authoritarian dynastic or dictatorial regimes in their short-sighted strategy of tackling the so called Red-Menace. As a result the world suffers from the genocidal and totalitarian mindset of the mullahcracy.

The same blunder should not be repeated. It is important for the younger generations within the uprisings to be aware that both the Arab and Iranian leadership, the Islamic organizations, as well as the West, or even say China, (Russia and China are more scared of getting burnt unnecessarily and therefore non-intervention) are scared of independent popular uprisings. They want these revolutions to serve their own desires. Iran wants to paint these revolutions as anti-Israel and will rant and rail and turn against the revolution if that does not happen. Arab league wants to maintain their filthy rich lifestyles of their emirs and their sheikhs and the network of feudal patronage and arbitrary power. The west wants a pliable regime popular or not.

For the West or less-sectarian countries like India, it is crucial to realize that it is in their interest to encourage the modernizing sections within these revolutions. Next time around there will be little opportunity left to correct such errors as made in wiping out modernizers in Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq or even Saudi Arabia.

First, does Egypt has an identity of its own? Does it have a national foundation which is uniquely Egyptian and which will provide the rallying point for its society and youth to cluster around? Does Egypt have something which makes it unique among the Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean circle of nations and people?

The name Mubarak itself comes from an Arabic root, ironically showing how much Arabic culture has replaced that of Egypt. The first signs of a nation of people losing its identity and becoming the slave of another is losing its original language, its mother-tongue. Whatever be the reason for Arabic expansion into the land of the then Copts – at least the Coptic had far greater connections to the Egypt of the old, its imperial past where it ruled much of populated parts of its neighbourhood. From that thread, can the new Egypt reinvent itself as distinct and separate and a path breaker for Eastern Mediterranean?

Second, actually is closely related to the first. A lot of Egypt’s problems came to be Egypt’s problems because it thought itself as Arab, and made Arab causes Egyptian causes. It fought Arab wars against Arab’s enemies, made Arab’s friends its friends and Arab’s enemies its own enemies.

Does Egypt really have to make Israel its unconditional enemy, because the Muslim Brotherhood wants Egypt to fight Arab or Iranian wars? Does Egypt need to make Israel its unconditional friend because its military needs American support? Does Egypt have to tolerate a pseudo-transition where the more things change the more they remain the same?

The youth of Egypt can make a new Turkey out of itself, or something uniquely Egyptian. It can reinvent itself, by not constraining to any of its obligations to colonizers – Europeans, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, Arabs, Europeans – in sequence. It remained colonized in its national spirit even after formal presence of colonizers were gone. Egypt’s spirit is lost under the burden of Europe and Arab causes, jealousies and insecurities.

Can you, Egypt’s young, steer a path of your own? Can the young of Tahreer square form a new party of your own on the spot- declare a Constituent Assembly and elect your own parliament, and declare your own interim government of transition? Can you declare yourself neutral in international politics of the region  -a policy of equidistance from the two sides in the everlasting Middle Eastern conflicts and chart a programme of profound reform aimed inside the country? Otherwise your sacrifices will only feed the old colonial interests – including that of the Arabs.

Having said that, there is no alternative verification possible about the truth, reality or reliability of the information posted, so we can neither accept them at face value, nor reject them at face value. There are wild speculations about the possibility of these being a selected list of items which have been manufactured to create a certain opinion in favour of US foreign policy itself or help the US attain specific foreign policy objectives. Attacking the apparent source in public could then be seen as increasing the credibility of the source. On the other hand, it could also be simply a random act of omission, carelessness, negligence combined with various personal grievances and ideological dissent from among American personnel at various levels. It could even be an act of penetration and sabotage by opposing international forces like China which has been alleged many times as behind hacking attempts against national governments.

But whoever has selected the items to be released must have selected it out of some purpose, some aim at creating some impression. Here I will look at one item that has raised a huge storm in India : the alleged quote of Rahul Gandhi alleging much greater threat of supposed “Hindu Terror” compared to Pakistani or Islamist terror. The concerned text can be found here : http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09NEWDELHI1624

5. (C) Responding to the Ambassador’s query about Lashkar-e-Taiba’s activities in the region and immediate threat to India, Gandhi said there was evidence of some support for the group among certain elements in India’s indigenous Muslim community. However, Gandhi warned, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalized Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community. (Comment: Gandhi was referring to the tensions created by some of the more polarizing figures in the BJP such as Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.) The risk of a “home-grown” extremist front, reacting to terror attacks coming from Pakistan or from Islamist groups in India, was a growing concern and one that demanded constant attention.
Comment

If true, Rahul is actually causing some severe logical problems for both himself as well as his party.

(a) Alleged “Hindu terrorists”—who are so completely penetrated, rounded up and cases put up in a jiffy by the Indian anti-terror organizations currently under the Congress led government in contrast to the lackadaisical pursuit of cases, penetration and rounding up or even absence of proper cases by the same government agencies if a single Indian Muslim name appears in connection with any terror atrocity — are accused of bomb blasts in 2007 and 2008 in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra that killed 17 people. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the toll in India from about two dozen radical Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11 stands at more than 950 dead and many hundreds more injured.

The principal Hindu groups accused have little or no international presence – no theological support within Hinduism similar to the doctrine of violent Jihad (yes violent, as amply borne out by the core texts of Islam, where one ambiguous citing for “conditional peaceful treatment of people of the book” is propagandized by modern hagiographers compared to numerous references where Jihad is only mentioned in the context of violence). But those alleged to have a hand behind incidents like the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, have a wide ranging support network and connections of Islamist Jihad.

No Islamist government whose territories have been used to perpetrate terror on India has seriously taken any steps at all to try and book the culprits or even properly investigate the organizations. India under the Congress on the other hand jumps up and down ardently to pin the blame on its majority community.

Nowhere in the alleged report by Roemer, Rahul Gandhi is quoted as saying similar things about Jihadi terror. Significantly there is no hint of any importance being given to the Maoist terror or Left wing radicalism, which has consistently claimed lives and property damages. No mention either of outfits in the North East with open affiliations to Christian beliefs or who appear to tout their religious affiliation as a means of attracting obvious international interest and support.

(b) Rahul is a shame on his “historian” great-grandfather, who at least selectively quoted histories existing at his time and predominantly created by colonial historians with their own imperialist agenda in mind.

He tries to blame all Islamist Jihadi reaction against India as a reaction to supposed Hindu atrocities or provocations. But then can he answer what Hindu provocation in Jammu and Kashmir provoked the violent rapes and massacres and ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri pundits in 1989 – a full three years before the supposed incident over the disputed structure at Ayodhya?

Moreover, if Islamist reaction has only started as reaction to Hindu provocation, then did his great-grandfather Jwaharlal Nehru – who became the sole and supreme leaders of the Congress, its legislative wing, and key figure in the transitional government for independence of India – provoke the Muslims so much so that they went into Direct Action (rather Direct Rape and Genocide Action) Day leading to the Partition in 1947? The majority of Hindus made up the Congress at the time.

If every violence is due to historical trauma, why cannot Hindus have a similar justification and only Muslims are allowed to use such an excuse? If every historical atrocity event has a precursor provocation  event, why does not Rahul try to apply the same logic to alleged Hindu violence?

–
¶6. (C) Gandhi was forthright in describing the challenges faced by the Congress Party and the UPA government in the months ahead. Over the past four years, he was an elusive contact, but he could be interested in reaching out to the United States, given a thoughtful, politically sensitive and strategic approach on our part. We will seek other opportunities to engage with him and with other promising young members of the new generation of parliamentarians. Gandhi mentioned that in the recent election 60 members of the new Parliament were 45 or younger. In a system long viewed as relatively static, the influx of new faces and the rising profile of young leaders like Rahul Gandhi provides us an opening to expand the constituency in support of the strategic partnership with a long term horizon.

What is however more seriously damaging for Rahul Gandhi and the US itself is however here. If the US feels that reaching out to Rahul will ensure securing US strategic interests, that damns both Rahul and the US and their mutual strategic interest.

(1) Rahul’s desirability for the US makes him rather dubious as a candidate to win the future trust of Muslims.

(2) For India’s Hindus, US approach to enlist Rahul on their side is discomforting. His religious affiliations have been publicly ambiguous, unlike her illustrious grandmother Indira Gandhi who at least had no discomfort in display her Hindu affiliation, and there are increasing concerns in many quarters of India about the aggressive proselytization and conversion activities of Christian missionaries funded by Evangelicals from the USA – activities often seemingly protected by state machinery whereas any attempt at reconversion back into Hinduism is treated as “violence”.

USA forgets that the record of Christian missionaries and the Churches have often been actions in favour of colonial and imperialist designs, and that perception remains in the general Hindu society although it always does not come out in the Abrahamic violent intolerance of the “other” because of the inherent pluralistic nature of Hinduism.

(3) USA also should keep in mind that if the majority Hindu is sought to be disempowered and its faith undermined or attacked, then there are two fallouts that the USA will not be able to control.

First, removal of the Hindu from India will mean that there will be no moderating influence to mediate between the Islamists and the Christians, and these two have never been able to flourish together. No country exists today where this has been so. The only known example where it comes close to co-existence is Lebanon, which however speaks for itself. Removal or weakening or attacking the Hindu will mean civil war between Islamist Jihadis and Christian Jihadis – and who will ultimately win that war – Chinese or the Russians or it will become all a part of the grand Islamic Caliphate.

Second, Hindus have never proven easily digestible. They have not always gone the Abrahamic sectarian, non-pluralistic way – but neither have they always succumbed to onslaughts. Islamics made the error of treating the Hindu as a single category to be wiped off, and the Sikhs and the Marathas were the result who practically made the Mughals their slaves. Timely intervention of British saved the Muslims to an extent, but if US lends a hand to a similar attack against the “Hindu” – will it not do the opposite of what USA or its Evangelists want? What if it only consolidates the moderates and the conservative Hindu together more?

USA has often proved its shortsightedness in dealing with nations by concentrating on individual apparently pliable fanbois. Most of the time they turned out at the head of corrupt and unpopular regimes, supporting which even the US became ultimately unpopular in that country. It would be better sense to look at the national fabric, its majority culture and framework – which in case of India will provide a much better long term security for US strategic interests in Asia.

I hope there is more sense in one of the few remaining hopes for democracy and freedom of thought and words – that is the American “conscience”.

Exhibit historian Sri Suresh Chandra Mishra : (bold parts are due to me, and not highlighted as such in the original judgment).

Hon’ble Sudhir Agarwal, J.
Vol 6,
http://www.rjbm.nic.in/sa/Judgment%20RJ … vol-06.pdf

Page 1468 (219/251)
Quote:

There have been traditional narratives of pre-Islamic religious structures and complexes on the site to have had undergone a series of iconoclastic attacks by Islamists and Islamic rulers who consolidated their military power on the northern plains of India from the late 13th century CE up to and including the mughal period. The latest incident of vandalism is attributed to a commander under Babar, the leader of a faction of the neo-convert Mongols in or around 1538, when he destroyed most of what Hindu structures had existed and built a mosque. This is attested to by Islamic chroniclers and foreign travelers. This is a different and larger issue discussed threadbare from both Islamophile and Hindu sides.

What I find most interesting is however the reported statements of one of the judges, a Muslim by faith, among the panel.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article805067.ece

Justice Khan said:“As this judgment is not finally deciding the matter and as the most crucial stage is to come after it is decided by the Supreme Court, I remind both the warring factions of the following. The one quality which epitomised the character of Ram is tyag [sacrifice].

“When Prophet Mohammad entered into a treaty with the rival group at Hudayliyah, it appeared to be abject surrender even to his staunch supporters. “However the Koran described that as clear victory and it did prove so. Within a short span therefrom Muslims entered the Mecca as victors, and not a drop of blood was shed.

“Under the sub-heading of demolition, I have admired our resilience. However we must realise that such things do not happen in quick succession. Another fall and we may not be able to rise again, at least quickly. Today the pace of the world is faster than it was in 1992. We may be crushed.”

Now taken together that is a dangerous piece of text! Is he a judge in an Indian Court of Law or he is here representing Alim or a Mufti? He has to interpret Indian law as it exists and not argue himself as a Muslim or Islamic scholar on behalf of Muslim litigants in the case? What is more dangerous is the “subtext” of which he seems to be very particular.

From the “Hindus” he wants “sacrifice” and tyag, but from the Muslims he clearly mentions the tactical retreat involved in Hudaybya from which ultimately Muslims emerged victorious. Maybe he thinks that under the careful management of the rashtryia educational apparatus most Hindus kept ignorant of the actual history of early Islam as narrated by accepted Islamic narrators, would be unaware of the real significance of mentioning “Hudaybyah” to Muslims and especially Islamic theological establishment.

This was a “treaty” meant to be and clearly intended to be “broken” as soon as the early muslim army around its leader gained enough strength and the treaty was simply to buy time. This is what he clearly indicates in the following lines to that reference. Mentioning this in the context of the Janambhumi case can only be interpreted in one way – it is a reminder or a “subtext” message that for “survival” of Islamism in the current world, where more and more non-Muslims were becoming aware of the underlying agenda of Islamism and taking political action to prevent the spread of Islam – it was necessary to make a show of compromise. This is only to buy time and “strike back” as and when “opportunity arises”.

Moreover the claim that no blood was dropped in entering Mecca is false. There were executions, including of women who had once composed sarcastic poems ridiculing the the founding father of Islam when he secretly preached his faith in Mecca for three years before negotiating a move to Yathrib outskirts with the Yathrib Jews. The entry into Mecca followed from victory in a battle against the last Qureysh army to resist him.

Hudaybya was about gaining time and pretending cooperation simply to mask the preparations for final annihilation. The treaties were typically faithfully maintained by the non-Muslim parties but were always broken on some pretext [dreams/message from Gabriel/suspicion] when opportune and the groups finished off /driven off/killed off/enslaved.

A unique position

“Muslims must also ponder that at present the entire world wants to know the exact teaching of Islam in respect of relationship of Muslims with others. Hostility, peace, friendship, tolerance, opportunity to impress others with the Message, opportunity to strike wherever and whenever possible, or what? In this regard Muslims in India enjoy a unique position. They have been rulers here, they have been ruled and now they are sharers in power (of course junior partners). They are not in majority but they are also not a negligible minority (after Indonesia, India has the highest number of Muslims in the world). In other countries, either the Muslims are in huge majority, which makes them indifferent to the problem in question, or in negligible minority, which makes them redundant. Indian Muslims have also inherited huge legacy of religious learning and knowledge. They are therefore in the best position to tell the world the correct position. Let them start with their role in the resolution of the conflict at hand.”

That bolded part is curious! it is almost verbatim from some major Islamic works – and as a theme occurs in many Islamic core texts as a strategy of war and impose the system on non-Muslims.

Is the “subtext” also a message to the Indian Muslim to wait and remember the history of Islamic spread – pretending to compromise when militarily weaker, and make a show of cooperation so that the core group is not wiped off in a conflict for which they are not prepared. Wait and gain strength and annihilate the ex-treaty-group.

Some on the media have called for “moving on” and derided “revanchism”. Moving on is a collective business – we cannot move on if only one subgroup are asked to and tries to move on. All the reactions of the Sunni Waqaf board, and people like Irfan Habib  show that the Islamists are not prepared to move on. For them, the supposed past glories of the supposed military invincibility of Islamic regimes in parts of the country – the one-sided extraction of surplus from the majority non-Muslims and the abuse of the very basics of humanity through abduction of women and whole-sale enslavement as well as religious torture and conversion which was tuned to a fine art of state policy and finance [which Irfan Habib and his father both acknowledge in their early works] – is something that cannot be abandoned.

Every fruit of such repression is cherished as a symbol of Islamic identity in India. Why? Why don’t pro-mosque voices trying to be neutral on terms set by the Islamists or their tactical supporters among non-muslims – fail to also point out the fact, that the Owaisis and Habibs [representing the supposed extreme opposites in intellectual "liberalism" among the Indian Muslims] are solidly refusing to give up on their past?

It should have been obvious to anyone with the slightest training in logical analysis that the sole reason for such cherishing of Islamic structures of the past in India – is exactly because of what they are associated with in the Indian Muslim mythology. These are all symbols of imagined Islamist triumph over the culture and religion and society of the “Hindu”. Without these landmarks, the version of Islamism in India that hopes for the “Islamist revanchism” in some future time point when hopefully Indian Muslim alone or with external help can be mobilized to finish the unfinished business of Islamization – can be kept alive.

Islamists are very keen users of site or structural iconism. It is ironic that those systems which claim greater abstraction in their theology and abhor visualizations of the “supreme” are maddeningly obsessed with “houses” and “property” and “structures/building” of the “supreme”. This is because they realize that visualizations are almost a must for the majority of any community to consolidate identities.

What is particularly revealing about the virulence with which Islamists are running the campaign about the disputed site is the connection it has to historical atrocities on Hindus. In a way the struggle in their mind is on two levels – the outer symbolic one of triumph and the imagery of Ba(r)barism that is being diluted and hence will lose its iconic message for the future. The inner level is that one of the highest and most popular deity of the Hindus seem to be winning back against Islamism’s highest deity. It is a retreat of Islamism’s “God” before the “Hindu” “God”.

This is a crucial thing to understand as to why it is important to roll back every such presence and structure. It is the Islamist refusal to move on that is the key to dealing with them. Every structure cleaned of Islamist memory of “triumph” over the “Hindu” or the “buddhist” or the Sikh – both humans as well as their “supremes” or cherished deities, is a psychological crushing of the spirit of Jihad and delegitimizing its hidden currents that is constantly seeking to “strike when opportunities arrive” along the expression that justice Khan uses in his verdict.

Parvez’s name itself is a compact history of Kashmir which is suppressed by interested forces in the West keen to tag along to Islamic bandwagon – a history of pre-Islamic Indians desperately searching for ways to survive against a murderous and sadistically fanatic belief system. Kaul is a Kashmiri Pundit surname – indicator that the person descended from Kashmiri “Hindu” Brahmins. His ancestor probably converted and became a Muslim and hence his name of Parvez. Finally he or his ancestor became a Christian given his middle name of Samuel [ the Islamic form would have been Ishmael/Ismail]. But no matter what the Kashmiri tries out – nothing saves him from the sadism that originated from the deserts of 7th century Arabia.

Islamists worldwide claim repression on them and justify atrocities on Kashmiri Hindus or Sikhs by Kashmiri and other infiltrator Islamic terrorists, and many in the West take up their refrain – without caring to know the other side of the story.

Burning books of non-Muslims has always been a standard practice of muslims everywhere in their militant phase – when they are no longer militarily weak and capable of Jihad. They of course copy non-Muslim books and sources of knowledge when they are weak [as the Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan copied and stole nuke tech while studying in the West] using the liberal values of the non-Muslim. But they neither have the gratitude nor the conscience to acknowledge this debt or extend protection when they win militarily. “Cordoba” is now often cited as a paragon of tolerance and academic cooperation , but its foundational history is now suppressed. Interested people can do some research on their own on the created myths of these “tolerant Moors” of “Al-Andalus”.

Muslims use the knowledge gained by non-Muslims if it helps in war, and they will steal, loot, and preserve such knowledge. But it is all for destruction of anything that reminds humanity of its real civilization – for to Islam anything other than what the early Islamic militants said was Jahilya – darkness. They will seek to erase all other human civilization’s histories and cultures and components as long as the last Muslim survives.

Book burning is core Islamic tactics – and they claim the right to protect their own “holy text” while burning the “holy texts” of all others.

Futûhãt-i-Fîrûz Shãhî This small history was written by the Delhi Sultanate period Islamist ruler  Sultãn Fîrûz Shãh Tughlaq (AD 1351-1388) himself. The writer of Tabqãt-i-Akbarî, Nizãm’ud-Dîn Ahmad, a 16th century historian, says that the Sultãn had got the eight chapters of his work inscribed on eight slabs of stone which were fixed on eight sides of the octagonal dome of a building near the Jãmi‘ Masjid at Fîrûzãbãd.

[At Gohana, located in the modern Indian state of Haryana]

“Some Hindûs had erected a new idol-temple in the village of Kohãna, and the idolaters used to assemble there and perform their idolatrous rites. These people were seized and brought before me. I ordered that the perverse conduct of the leaders of this wickedness should be publicly proclaimed, and that they should be put to death before the gate of the palace. I also ordered that the infidel books, the idols, and the vessels used in their worship, which had been taken with them, should all be publicly burnt. The others were restrained by threats and punishments, as a warning to all men, that no zimmî could follow such wicked practices in a Musulmãn country.” [Elliot and Dowson, History of India. Vol. III, pp. 380-81.]

Now let us come to Kashmir proper.

Writes Srivar, “The erudites of that period witnessing the en masse destruction of books by Muslims fled their land with some books through mountain routes.” Sikander Bushtikan organized state administration to get the houses of Pandits ransacked and looted and the choicest books retrieved were thrown into rivers, lakes and wells and hurled into deep ditches and ravines.

Walter Lawrence states that ” All books of Hindu Learning which he (Sikander) could find were sunk in the legal lake and after some time Sikander flattered himself that he had extirpated Hinduism from the valley.” An Islamic chronicler, Hassan, writes, ” All the Hindu books of learning were collected and thrown into Dal Lake and were buried beneath stones and earth.”

Jia Lal Kilam records, “Even in their miserable plight they (Pandits) did not forget their rich treasures which linked them with their past. They felt that they were custodians of their past cultural heritage-the illuminating treatises on the stupendous Shaiva philosophy and other great works on literature, art, music, grammar, and medicine-works which have excited the wonder of an admiring world and wherever they went they carried these treasures with themselves. Judging from the depth of thought displayed in these works that have been preserved, their high literary merit, their insight into the depth of nature, their poetical flights, their emotional Devour coupled with an incisive logical treatment of the subjects dealt with in them, one can easily imagine the colossal loss the world has been subjected to by the acts of vandalism which resulted in the destruction of hundreds of works which contained the labours of more than two thousand years.”

Mohan Lal Koul writes http://www.kashmir-information.com/WailValley/B2chap11.html

“The destruction of books as leitmotifs of Hindu worldview, Hindu philosophical probes into supra-sensible realms, Hindu historiography, Hindu aesthetics did not diminish in its fury even in the comparatively peaceful times of Zain-ul-Abidin popularly known as Budshah. It is surprising that before his conversion to Shriya Bhat he is said to have constructed a cause-way from Naidkhai to Sopore with the temple stones and pillars along with invaluable stock of books that were looted from the temples, libraries and Pandit houses. He is the same king that rehabilitated the Pandits after their first forcible and massive exodus from their natural homes to unknown destinations.

The prolific and high calibre Kashmiri pandit scholars and intellectuals having scaled heights in creative drinking based on an all-embracing outlook and psychical diversity w ere reviled, humiliated and tortured to death. Bhuvaneshwar who had tremendous reputation all over the country for his amazing levels of scholarship in Vedic lore and learning was harassed and put to an orgy of plunder and loot (lotri-dand). Ultimately under motivations of infinite bigotry he was butchered in a merciless Muslim manner. His severed head smeared with tilak as a caste-mark was hurled away on a road-side with a view to instilling fear and trepidation among the intellectuals who had not renounced their religion and continued contributing to the indigenous expressions of learning and scholarship. All the Brahmans who were learned and had mastery over theology were exterminated. The fanatical intolerance and inveterate hatred that was exhibited against Hindu lore and learning and especially scholars irrigating them led to the demise of an ethos that had fostered plenitude and plenteousness of scholarship and learning.

Nona Dev, Jaya and Bhima Brahman with their depth of knowledge and breadth of vision were forced to commit suicide by leaping into the rivers. The Kashmiri Pandit scholars who were highly venerated for their varied contributions to learning and aesthetics were subjected to the mutilation of body-parts and gruesome killings. Nirmal Kanth who had mobilised resistance against Muslim holocaust was physically eliminated not for encouraging apostasy but for his attainments in the annals of learning and scholarship. Men of letters were put to a whole-sale massacre and the books which they had authored were looted, torn and burnt.

Records Shuka, “Khwaja Mir Mohammad on the other hand induced Kak Chakra (Kaji Chak) who was alarmed at the work of Nirmal Kanth and others to give him permission to act against them, and actuated by malice caused them to be killed.” Sukha again laments, “O Brah,nans, where in this Kali Yug are your Brahmanical spirit and practice? It was for want of these that the sorrowful and the affrighted Nirmal Kanth and others were killed. The oppression of the Mausalas (Muslims) which began in the times of Saidas (Sayyids) was perfected by Kaka Chakra (Kaji Chak).”“

Now has this tendency of the Muslim stopped in modern times? No, long before the so-called Babri-Mosque demolition incident that is claimed by Islamophiles as the root cause of all Islamic violence on India – in 1989, The Muslims had started their core Islamic practice – ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims, complete erasure of non-Muslim literature, books and cultural icons, and abduction and looting of non-Muslim women to simultaneously swell the Islamic army with unbounded reproduction and denying the same route to the non-Muslim.

Koul further writes :

With the motive of destroying Sanskrit learning and its vestiges in Kashmir the invaluable treasure of Sanskrit manuscripts in Sharda script that was preserved in the Research Library, Srinagar was shifted to the Department of Central Asian Studies where it is said to have been dumped in gunny bags left to the care of hostile moths. The manuscripts are a veritable treasuretrove dilating on mind-body disciplines, recondite philosophical doctrines, arcane fortune telling systems, integrated theoretical systems from aesthetics to rhetoric and complexities of language nuances.

The books looted from Pandit clusters prior to their total decimation have been contemptuously torn, mutilated and scattered over the interiors of the houses. There are marauders who have collected numerous books on varied subjects, and have been selling them by weight. There is a special class of Muslim marauders who have dumped a huge stock of invaluable books in their residential quarters and have been selling them to retailers who in turn tear them page by page and convert them into cones and other geometrical shapes to vend off their retail items like tea, sugar, salt, spices et al. There are Muslim fanatics of the Jammaat-i-Islami breed who make a pile of the looted books in the isolated corner of a lane and set it afire chanting “death to Pandit Kaisers.” A few more cunning among them harness the services of Kashmiri Pandit hostages staffing back in the valley and despatch them to Jammu and other metropolises to mobilise the sale of old manuscripts in Shardascript at a lucrative price. The horoscopes looted from Kashmiri Pandit houses are also a saleable item with the looters.

An officer in the state government, a literattucr by all standards, at the time of “office move” from Jammu to Srinagar way back in 1992, was shocked and dismayed to learn about the sale of the looted books at a particular shop in a down-town locality. Camouflaging his real identity he made a foray into the Muslim den and succeeded in locating the shop. While accosting to the Muslim shopkeeper putting on a well-cut beard he was plainly informed that he had been selling books looted from the houses of Pandit Kafirs who had fled the land thus rendering a damage to the on-going movement. On enquiry he was told that he himself had been looting books from the Pandit houses and then he had contacts who have been pursuing it as a profession at the behest of respectable Muslims. “Who are the persons at whose behest they pursue it as a profession?” asked the officer. “That I cannot tell”, was the reply. Ultimately the officer was led into the interior of the shop where he purchased 5 kgs of books for fifty rupees. When back home he was surprised and vexed to find that the books he had purchased included Stein’s Rajtarangini and two volumes of Nilmat Puran. On perusal he discovered that all the books he had fetched home bore the signatures of the Pandits who had purchased them with the moneys that they had earned with the sweat of their brow. For the officer it was a shock, but for the Muslim looter it vas a religious act as he was vending off booty legitimised by the Textual injunctions.

It is rather interesting to see that the strongest Western power has now bowed down to this Islamic demand to protect its own texts while burning non-Islamic books. This is a very interesting following in the footsteps of what the Congress led governments in India have consistently done. So USA has now learned to follow India! Those grumbling in America about what happened should perhaps have the beginning glimmers of understanding how the most powerful elite of powerful and prosperous people – like Indians in the 7th or 12th or 16th century – start becoming dhimmi – or literally conditionally and whimsically protected trembling bootlickers of Islamism.

Same has been the case with a certain Christian lecturer in the so-called “socialist republic of Kerala” where leftists and Islamists are two sides of the same political coin. This lecturer allegedly earned Islamist wrath by giving the name of the prophet of Islam to a character quoted from a play in one of his question papers, and he was ambushed and his hands chopped off. Not much has been heard of this in the world news papers and no discussion at all from Islamophiles in the west who jump and down on the slightest wind passed by any critique of the ideology. Not much is being heard even from the Christian denominations and Church organizations who were so loudly present in all forms of the media regarding alleged atrocities on Christians in the Indian state of Orissa. Then of course the alleged perpetrators were “Hindu”, but with any Islamic perpetrator – apparently atrocities are sweeter and the true forgiving and forgetting principles of Christianity are to be stringently applied.

These are not uncommon news for most parts of India.  Some time ago, this year, a certain town in Uttar Pradesh, one of the electorally key political provinces of India,   was engulfed in violent riots. The source of the riot was apparently another trivial incident in the increasingly bitter fights beteen the Barelvi and Deobandi schools of Indian Islam. These two have been fighting a sometimes violent and sometimes polemical battle for centuries now – in rhetoric over the “true” interpretation of Islamic doctrine. In reality, as many locals observe, it is about a fight to posses the mosques, Islamic institutions and financial networks – and in this recently the Deobandis have been winning. [the factors of external monetary inputs, the success of Deobandis in both Pakistani Punjab and Indian Gangetic Valley as well as Kerala, role of Islamic charities and their global networks of raising money in non-Muslim lands and transferring it to other places to expand Islamism is a much larger issue to be touched on perhaps in another post].However, the known victims of this Islamic factional rioting turned out to be Hindus.

The provincial government, led by one of the stalwarts of the abstract and twentieth century created Indian category of “Dalits”, clamped down on all information regarding the rioting to come out into the media. Apparently this censorship, imposed by the administration or voluntarily adhered to by Indian media – who typically suppress anything that may show the Islamic in bad light, but who are quite eager to report anything that will show the non-Muslim except Christians in bad light – was quite successful.

So the outside world does not come to know of the constant attrition or provocation faced by the “Hindus” spread over India from over-zealous factions or leaders of Indian Islam. The world does not come to know of fanatical Indian Muslim mobs in southern and eastern India rioting to banish the Bangladeshi female author, Tasleema Nasreen – who writes in Bengali – one of the national languages of India, and was hosted by India after her virtual exile from Bangladesh at the behest of equally fanatical Bangladeshi Islamists. The primary crime of Tasleema was of course that she had dared to write about the rape, and abuse of Hindus and other non-Muslims in Bangladesh by Islamists, as well as the abuse and torture of women by the Fatwaists.

Both the Marxist provincial government of Indian West Bengal, as well as the superbly “secular” central government at New Delhi, quickly succumbed to Islamist pressure and Tasleema was forced to come under virtual house arrest in the name of “safe house” and then bundled out of the country.

The Indian system is ruthless only if there appears the possibility or imagination of a  “law and order” deterioration. However the state’s reaction is entirely dependent on who can “cause” the deterioration of ‘law and order”. If it is the “Muslim”, then of course all their demands are to be met in the name of “communal harmony”, whose maintenance in India apparently is the responsibility of only one community. This is why even the media cooperates to prevent any news of any atrocity by any Muslim or Islamic group of Indian origin, from being spread around or known globally. This was why, the rape and genocidic ethnic cleansing of Indian hindu Kashmiri pundits from the Valley portion of Jammu and Kashmir was never allowed to be publicized, and the Indian government simply keeps shut as if the Pundits never existed in the province. But all the while Islamophiles in the West and in Indian cry themselves hoarse about supposed repression on muslims in “Kashmir”.

Why do I write this? Because one day, all this one sided propaganda in favour of Islamism and total suppression of all information about its continual atrocious behaviour on Hindus and other non-Muslims of India, will come to haunt the world. Just as north Europe and the USA conveniently forgot the atrocities by Islamists and the Ottomans on Balkan society, and ignored the careful planning by Islamist organizations to use this weakness to create a beachhead for an Islamist state in Europe and moved against the Serbs – they may have to try and do the same in India. Because the anger and frustration will accumulate and burst one day. Yes with external help from Christian West, Islamism can perhaps win the day using the shared deep-lying hatred of the “pagan” – but then the West should not be surprised.

It is the price of suppression of any information that does not suit a desired world-view. Once of course the Islamists win in India in any major way, the Christian “white”, “non-mud-race” West will enjoy the Islamist attention fully! Cheers to that future!

The illuminated and enlightened Jammu and Kashmir coalition government that includes the intensely secular Congress, could order a CBI inquiry in the Shopian case, but only a magisterial inquiry in the case of Rajneesh after extensive agitation by the local population.  As noted by many, in a police cell where a blanket, tooth brush or even a paper pin is not tavailable normally, the rope  with which Rajneesh was found hanged, appeared magically.

Here is a link from the “Hindu” side of the story – which has not found press and media coverage in the intensely and supremely secular Indian apparatus for “manufacture of consent”  : http://www.aryasamaj.org/newsite/node/769.

Here is a selection from the above link:

“When Ameena disclosed her desire to convert to the Hindu Dharm and marry her beau ideal, hell broke loose in the Muslim society and opposition to the wedding became an Islamic issue. Ameena eloped to Jammu. Rajneesh and Ameena went to the Arya Samaj, Jammu and declared their intention to tie the knot. The Arya Samaj received them with open arms and supported their idea of a wedding. On conversion to the Vedic Dharm, Ameena became Aanchal and along with Rajneesh performed the Havan, walked seven steps together in Saptpadi and took the vow to be together in life and death as husband and wife. Rajneesh’s father and the entire Sharma family along with friends, relatives and neighbourhood celebrated the Vedic wedding with feast, fun and frolic that it merited.

Back in Srinagar, Ameena’s father lodged an FIR with the Kashmir police that his minor daughter had been kidnapped by Rajneesh and forced to marry him. The complaint was against facts of the case. However, the communal overtones swayed the course of action and the Srinagar police went to Jammu and arrested Rajneesh. They brought him to Srinagar, tortured him endlessly for days and beat him black and blue for no fault of his. The bride, Ameena, in Jammu supported her husband through thick and thin but it did not cut ice with the pre-conceived notions of authorities in Srinagar. Ameena’s brother turned out to be the villain of the piece in perpetrating physical and mental cruelty on Rajneesh till he died of wounds inflicted on him. Here was a case of custodial death.”

Let us do an equal-equal with the case of Rijwanur in Calcutta. Muslims and Hindus came out on to the streets of Calcutta and the media unanimously ran a trial where the bride’s Hindu family was found “guilty”.  The innocent love of Rijwanur that was apparently quashed by fanatical “Hindutva” found the top space in government concerns, CBI concerns, political party concerns, and most importantly in the apparently peaceful, and tolerant Islamists of India.

The suicide was deemed a murder. Just as every custodial or other death in Jammu and Kashmir is deemed a murder by the security forces and indirectly by the Hindus. But there is a big conditionality – suicides can be deemed a murder by the Indian media, only if they happen to Muslims. Rijwanur cannot be made equal to Rajneesh. Because Rajneesh is a Hindu and therefore it is a crime for him to “make a Muslim girl” fall in love with him, where it is a natural born right for a Muslim to make a “Hindu girl fall in love” – a right to be protected by all the instruments of the state.

Nothing so far has moved in Rajneesh’s case. No CBI inquiry. And in an uncanny parallel to Rijwanur’s case, Rajneeshs’ wife vanished recently to resurface at her parents to claim that she had been “duped” and “married against her will”. I guess, even this will be turned around to prove “victimhood” for Muslims and further justification to carry out violent jihad against Hindus who dared to “steal” Muslim women and maybe compensate for this imagined outrage – by a dozen rapes and abductions when Ghazwa’s would be appropriate – as the Islamists did in 1947 and 48 in India and Kashmir, in 1971 East Pakistan.

Their real ambitions is for global domination, and the real long term targets for Islam – militant Jihad and Ghazwas to convert, loot, rape and take over non-Muslim majority nations. This became clear to the racially and colour blinded ideology of the west only when the Jihadis turned their attention directly to pricking the west, as part of their global strategy to tie down western forces away from any protective interest the west may develop for Israel and India.

The calculations were quite clear and as consistently seen in the tactics of Islamist groups ranged against their Asian targets.

(1) Carry out terrorist outrages against both military and civilians of Israel and India, so that the military of these nations are forced to react. Use the terror attacks to stimulate survivor instincts within the civilians in the hope that they will create political pressure on their governments not to retaliate. Use the internationally conformed limitations within which national armies have to work as a tactical field advantage.

(2) Pressurize Muslims living within the territory of these nations to take sides, which in the ultimate analysis has always been historically proved to be on the position that “jihad cannot or should not be opposed violently” by Muslims anywhere. In every situation of war or conflict where Islamism has taken up arms to subjugate non-Muslims among them or beside them, the Muslim population has never ever really taken any effective steps to resist such Jihadi outrages on non-Muslims. In Middle East, in now Pakistan occupied western India, or in then East Pakistan now Bangladesh in 1971, large Muslim populations which apparently showed all outward forms of communal amity did not do anything to stop Jihadi outrages on non-Muslims and in many instance took advantage of the situation to possess land, wealth and women of non-Muslims. This practice is consistent with the basic line of Islamist expansion as formulated in their core texts.

(3) Simultaneously carry out a publicity campaign among western nations – especially those in academia and media who for various reasons have had anti-establishment fantasies all the while being sustained by the establishment. There have always been a toying undercurrent with Marxist thinking in the west, especially in the British universities beginning in the post war radicalism phase of 60′s. Probably this was maintained out of two tactical considerations by the authorities – as a honey trap to confine radical intellectuals so that they did not go out to do more damage in the outer world, and at the same time work as a captive experiment where the Leftist thought process could be observed and manipulated. Problem with this game is that it basically creates a reward system for radicalism and anti-establishment sentiments which over time will draw more and more opportunist political activists who will use this legitimacy to carry out their personal political agendas.

The Islamists used this sympathetic base from within the western establishment. It was natural that with the fall of the USSR and an overtly nationalistic and dictatorial redefinition under Putin the western establishment radicals were without a cause to champion. This they now found in championing the cause of supposedly repressed Islamic communities under Israel and India.

(4) To drive home the Islamist representation of reality, Islamists selectively targeted western institutions with violence. Having placed a pro-Islamist radical western sympathy base among the very vocal academia, media, NGO’s, charities etc, such targeting could be used to pretend that all this was because the west was not doing enough to destroy Israel and India or dismember these countries so that the Jihadis could occupy the dismembered portions. The general risk avoidance of the civilian populations of prosperous economies would ensure that there would be a backlash against any government retaliation.

(5) Once the western core of governments or regimes realized the new trends, the policy formulated was perhaps two pronged : give the Jihadis a new target of shifting attention towards Russia in Chechnyia and adjoining Muslim dominated areas sensitive for Russian security, and towards Eastern Turkmenistan currently under Chinese occupation. Simultaneously, overt pressure would be put on both India and Israel to concede more towards Islamist demands. It is possible that the first hesitant and obviously confused (read secret intense debate and therefore indecision) implementation of this policy was in the Balkans with the ultimate creation of a Muslim homeland within Europe.

(6) The success of the Croatian case showed the Jihadis the way forward, and they now know almost all the manipulative strings that they can use to pressurize the west into conceding more and more Islamist homelands carved out of non-Muslim dominated areas, from where they will launch more and more Jihadi campaigns.

The western strategists are losing this game. It is crucial that Israel and Indian people do not get confused by the manipulative propaganda and representations of Islamists and their non-Muslim sympathizers, and see to it that regimes capable of resisting western pressures are put in government.

The national armies and even special intervention forces have to work under international forms and restrictions that will be stringently applied by Islamists and their sympathizers for their ulterior motives. In both countries there should be targeted erasure of the sources of support for Jihad, or all anti-state terror under forces that do not officially exist. Forces which also have strong ideological indoctrination to add that extra armour to manipulation. Forces which do not exist and therefore are free of formal restrictions of so-called one-sided humanitarianism.

The Jews opted out of the empire game early, perhaps because of factional experiences and therefore thinking of non-kin communities as unreliable. So that after this stage of national evolution, they became much more strictly endogamous and ceased proselytizing or converting to any significant level. However with the Islamists, one can easily see that the main centres of Islamic ambitions are exactly those which had empire ambitions also in pre-Islamic periods. The Qureshyi Mecca that produced the founding fathers of Islam are not exceptions in this regard, since the area had been at the periphery of major empires as well as quite close to major trade routes. The Nabateans and Sabateans lined the Red Sea trade routes right into the Arabain Sea as well as the trade routes connecting the Mediterranean to the CAR and India overland.

The two other ambitious Islamic centres are Anatolia-Syria, and Iran-Persia. Perhaps Afghanistan-Pakistan satisfies the criteria of being on the trade route while not being that productive themselves. Each of these centres thought that their imprial ambitions could be spurred and supported if they could use the universalist pretensions of Islam to justify imposing their regional rule on other territories under Islam.

But at the same time this universalism poses an unsolvable dilemma. Some have observed that each retreat of Islamist power is followed by decades or centuries belated but all-sweeping Islamist reaction. I would like to add that the reaction in fact is a much more complex phenomenon that is both the source of strength as well as the downfall of Islamists. The reaction is actually a cover for other regions within the reach of Islam to rush in in the name of Islam and impose their own regional imperial ambition on an area that has been weakened in fighting with the non-Musilm.

You can see this in noting that the cases that fit such succesful reaction, like the Mameluks, or Turks are all by Islamic armies led or core formed from regions external to the place they ultimately come to fight the “infidel” and clear the land of “kufr”.  Arabs are primarily interested in the riches of the Persian empire, and Egypt. Saladin was a Kurd prancing around in Egypt, Palestine. Mameluks were essentially Central Asians first enslaved and employed as soldiers in the early Caliphate. Seljuk Turks swept all the way from around the Pamirs, finsihing off the northern reaches of Ghaznavids, and ultimately expanding to form modern Turkey.

This is the reason in apparent century level gaps in the cause and reaction. It is not really a reaction, but an opportunistic use of Islamic universalism by regional ambitions to impose imperial extraction of profits from larger regions. However such imperial ambitions also impose a huge drain – economically, intellectually and ideologically – especially because the Muslims are mostly confined to areas which are not that highly productive. Over time, the new imperialist sucks the regional economy dry – and keeps other Islamic regions under constant subversion and suspicion – because it knows that other regions could try to emulate its successful strategy.

This is why in each corner of the Islamic world we find the ambition to pose as the centre of the Caliphate – be it Pakis, or Turkey or KSA or Iran. The more Islam expands the more we will see proliferation of that internal conflict. It is the universalist claims of Islamism that generates regionalism within Islam and which fuels further Jihad.

This “running the blockade” has perhaps been carefully planned for a long long time that shows political planning of the highest order from people who are used to manipulation of international opinions. So if there are claims that there are members of this “delegation” who are trained or qualified in social “sciences”, or maybe even “professional historians”, then almost surely they have been involved from within academia in lobbying for “pro-Palestine” anti-Israel activism.

This same thinking usually also pretends that what they are driven by are “pure academic” interests and humanitarian concerns. However any criticism of their historical reconstructions are likely to be immediately, publicly, and very loudly denounced as “politically motivated”. When questions about Palestinian, Arab and Turkish Muslim role of anti-Semitism and typical Islamic Jihadism and riots or genocides in the lead up to 1948, denial of Jewish connection to the land, or the Holocaust by Muslims are raised the immediate redneck reaction is “oh dont give that bull**** of Islamic conspiracy”. This is the same general group think that is also obsessed with trying to prove “assimilative, tolerant and non-militant” Hinduism was in the past and how recently “right-wing Hindu fascists” were “revising Hinduism” for their “sinister political agenda”. In such a discourse typically  the plight of Hindu Kashmiri Pundits is dismissed as mere propaganda, and all records or claims by Islamists of iconoclasm, genocide, enslavement and ghazwas on non-Muslims of the subcontinent as propaganda or exaggeration. In fact I had once a long running debate with someone who dismissed even the extent of atrocities by the Pakistani army and their Muslim accomplices in 1971 in then East Pakistan. He wanted to say that what happened was negligible, dismissed all western historians finding support for factuality of genocide, and all others from the subcontinent finding similar “proof” as being politically motivated.

When I raised the issue as to why, if “others” talking history could be driven by “political motives”, what made themselves – the professional historians – free of similar political agenda or motive, I was dubbed a “right wing” activist too.
People sympathetic towards the “Palestinian cause”, do think of the possibility that – the motivations that drive anti-Israel and pro- Palestinian movements in non-Muslim social groups share a certain common underlying political and ideological agenda. Is it possible that those among such “sympathizers” coming from a Christian, European cultural background probably have a twisted and ancient anti-semitic strain masquerading under “humanitariansim”? Those coming from say Indian, “Hindu” background – are doing so from a hidden and twisted interpretation of Marxism? Early Marxists use Christian, and New-testamental memes widely – especially the “activist” Engels.

Fall of Israel is strategically a disaster for India. Israel absorbs a lot of Islamic attention. Once Islamits are free of that thorn in the side, their full loving hands will move towards India. Now, at this stage, any formation of an independent Palestinian state means one more step in the progress of Islamic Jihad. One more step towards eventual overrunning of Israel. One more point bolstering the confidence and clamour in Pakistanis about “Kashmir”.

The new Islamists of Turkey needed an excuse to part ways with Israel, that is all. Turkey is not going to risk a direct war just now. Because that will scare off some in EU – which is the main kicking point Turkey is jumping on – and tie up the hands of pro-Islamist groupings within the EU. However the Turkish Islamists will encourage Iran to go after Israel covertly. It will probably also facilitate such covert support for Palestine from Iran. But Turkey will want Iran and the Saudis to get involved in a tussle over Palestine and Israel and wear each other out as much as possible. Turkish islamists are definitely looking back towards a pseudo-Ottoman revivalism.

Is it possible that the traditional Anglo-Turkish rivalry could be in some twisted EU minds, to encourage the Turks  when UK has been going after Iran? If any covert European sympathy has been behind the Turkish rise in temperatures, then they should think of the long term consequences for Europe of a fall of Israel and overrunning of Israelites. Europe will be next in line, and this time a much larger horde will be knocking at European gates compared to Sulaiman the Magnificent.

They should see again and again the videos where the humanitarians chant asking Jews to remember Khyber. How many Europeans know what these chanters are talking about? Search out, outraged sympathizers of humanitarian politics!

The speaker list is a who’s who of  academics known for their soft corner towards Islamism. The keynote speaker is Paul Brass.  He has written several books on Hinduism whihc has been accepted as standard texts on Hinduism by many western universities. A close collaborator and fellow-traveller of the Thaparite school of Indian history (whose main thrust is to deny atrocity on non-Muslims by Muslim regimes and states in India )- is one of the leading academic activists to paint comparative pictures of Hindus vs Muslims antagonism and is supposed to be an authority on Hindu-Muslim violence. His books show an uncanny association of the word “Hindu/Hinduism” automatically with “right wing/extremists/nationalists” in close proximity or as qualifying adjectives. Read them and you will be inspired!

Read up on the other speakers and contributors mentioned and their sometimes not so much aired political positions and leanings : Angana Chatterji, Meenakshi Ganguly, Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, Chinnaiah Jangam, Ratna Kapur, Omar Khalidi, Shafeeq R. Mahajir, Manoj Mitta, R.K. Raghavan, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Haimanti Roy, Srirupa Roy, Bish Sanyal, Ornit Shani, Mukul Sinha, Nirjhari Sinha, Arvind Verma.

They serve ironically as great catalysts for “Hindu consolidation” and acceleration towards “right”.  Moorthy Muthuswamy has studied Khalidi for his apparent influence on political parties within India with an obvious agenda of creating a separate state for Muslims within India. This fits in with perhaps a perception among a section of Jihadis and their backers that  for the next stage of Islamist expansion, resources needed can be gleaned from non-Muslims in India since the Pakistan experiment has failed to provide the resources on its own.

Now why this consistent pattern of western support for elements that bring on Islamic Jihad on non-Muslim civilizations? Maybe the key lies in a fundamental weakness of Christianity towards Islam -specifically to the Arabic Sunni sect of Islam. The problem in fact can be traced back to this weakness after we eliminate all other potential reasons.

It appears that both Islam and Christianity had been in competition over the Judaic legacy and therefore each in its own way saw Judaism proper or the community of Jews as an obstacle to this ideological supremacy.  However, ideologically they cannot go too far away from each other in the fundamentals because of this root foundation in Judaism.  The conflicts bewteen Christendom and Islam in the historical period basically starts over this claim of sole legacy and takes the form of imperialist conflict – because, both the proselytizing versions of Judaism emerged out of a practical imeprialist need for expansion.

The conflict therefore took the form of war for territory and control of productive economies and trade routes of others. To maintain the drive for this imperialist expansion, each side needed to identify the other side as “alien” and the “devil”. The peculiarity of common origins and memes however forced them to find racial divide as an identifier of alien-ness and  the enemy.

To date there has been no solid, logical refutation of Islam by Christianity except the claim that Islamics do not recognize Jesus as the sole way to salvation. Even this is problematic because Islam places Jesus as one of the principal prophets and reserves a special role for Jesus in the “end-times”.   So the Christian-Islam conflict has taken the loose and weaker basis of “race” rather than any concrete and profound difference in ideology.

It is this theoretical confusion that is clearly indicated in the responses that Christian dominated west gives to Islamic moves. Contrary to the propaganda that west’s reaction to Islamism is purely determined by economic motives, it is actually Christianity’s secret attraction for what it perhasp considers the “purity” of the Sunni Arabic extension of Judaism. For example the West has studiously cultivated the Arabs since using them  as tools against the competitors of the British  – the Ottomans.  But there would be no reason to continue preferring them over and above the Iranians long after Ottomans have been finished, and both Arabia and Iran sit over oil wealth.  Not that the west does not dip to deal with Iran when needed – as in the Contra-hostage deal.

Where does this put Christianity and Islam in the eyes of other non-revealed-tradition cultures?

In UK, judicial and executive systems enforce the law  strictly when it comes to the case of say liquidation of the “holy cow” of a Hindu temple becuase, reasonably – the cow was diseased. However the same country and system finds desecration of its prized memorial by a Muslim as not being driven by religious hatred and has allowed a symbolic violent form of expression of hatred in Islam – the throwing of the shoe (typically symbolically used against the devil), as a legitimate form of public expression.

In the USA, the California text book controversy showed that the administration and system would be reluctant to withdraw protection to  attempts to represent the non-Muslim past of India in a way that suits the Islamic agenda aginst Hindus. The same system finds a Chief Minister of an Indian state known for his strong Hindu affiliations persona non grata even though he has not yet been convicted on the charges of complicity in Hindu-Muslim violence – the main excuse given to refuse him visas. However the same administration has no problem with Omar Kahlidi’s claims which as Muthuswamy points out are based on dubious scholarship. So the “Hindu” fall foul of freedom of expression but Islamist views do not.

In India, the Christian proselytizers are not known to target the Indain Muslim communities for conversion, but Hindus. Indian Christians are also not seen as active protesters against Jihadi activities or statements by various sections of Islamists.

Alll this shows up as a secret attraction and weakness towards the Sunni-Wahabi form of Islam within Christianity of the west to the Hindus, among whom the mistrust of Christian missionaries and their motives have been increasing. Moreover the gradually increasing intervention of western states in favour of protecting the primary propaganda mechanisms of Islamists, and prevention of movements or expressions of ideological criticisms of Islam, is bound to alarm Hindus or Buddhists across South Asia.

If  Christianity cannot resolve this fundamental dilemma, it will not be too distant a day, when the Azaan will be heard from Westminster Abbey, the British Monarch may well come out of his Zenana Harem to attend Friday Prayers where the Khutba will be read extolling a new Caliph in the middle East, and the USA rechristens itself the United American Emirates.

Yes, absurd perhaps – but just imagine it for a moment and decide!

But there the similarities end. The Vatican’s leadership has made amends to its historical victims, and has shown its flexibility and readiness to change with the times. It has steadfastly refused to underwrite radicalism of the theological variety [the severe castigation of the Liberation Theology for example].  This may change in the future. But the leadership of the Vatican have proved themselves consummate statesmen in the concessions and compromises that they have made while never abandoning the fundamental objective of total global ideological domination. This is an objective that would have been a crime if not from the “one and only true message” for any other “religion” in the times when the Church ruled supreme. But now in the days of “total religious tolerance”, there is nothing wrong in having a declared agenda of “harvesting all souls”. In fact, legal and state coercive machinery can be used to guarantee protection of any proselytizer – even someone swearing by texts that recommend putting the unrepentant unbeliever to the sword.

Where Pakistan differs is not in its protection of organizations claiming the right to practice “Dawa” or spreading of the Islamist beliefs – but in its total lack of statesmanship. Unlike the Vatican, the Pakistani leadership never apologizes to the victims of its Islamists, never acknowledges that it has nurtured Jihadis in its madrassahs, never concedes to modernization in education and social practices, never really allows any land reforms or dismantling of feudal exploitation in its backyard.

Pakistan is basically an anachronism, a nation whose only foundational claim for identity is a religion – in a historical period where the world is leaving behind, exclusive and historical claim based religions. Moreover, that religion is not even unique to the country – it is shared by a host of other nations, some of whom have louder and more well established claims of being the centre for that religion. So Pakistan is based on a type of ideology increasingly irrelevant globally as national foundation, and moreover on an ideology based identity shared with other “nations” – and therefore has no real claims of distinction from other nations. It cannot look at history and culture, for in spite of the best sadistic efforts of generations of  “mullahs” – elements of pre-Islamic cultures lie firmly interwoven in the national fabric, and those elements are shared by its imagined nemesis – India. In fact the pre-Islamic cultural element proved so strong that a part of it broke away in reaction in 1971 as Bangladesh.

So now Pakistan finds itself in a terrible dilemma. To strengthen and give uniqueness to its national foundation, it has to become more Islamic than “others”. Becoming more Islamic means more and more unquestioning obedience to a strict and literal interpretation of the core texts. That in turns means more Jihad with violent means which accelerates the competition between the ruling feudal elite, the army, the mullahs, the commons, the militants – to become “purer” than the others. That means an almost perpetual state of national Jihad. Purer Islam can only be maintained by preventing modernization – in education, productivity, technology and above all the questing mindset. Which means Pakistan will become more and more dependent on largesse from interested external sources and be a drain on the global economy as the sources would spread the cost around.

So the West and the global community should perhaps start thinking of dissolving the entity called Pakistan. Here are the brief reasons :

(1) Dissolving Pakistan saves the West (and therefore the world economy )a huge amount of money and resources needed to keep the state afloat, and a total drain, because none of that capital goes into productive capacities.

(2) Even though the Chinese are now playing second fiddle to the West, it is uncannily similar to the Ribbentrop-Molotov handshake where both sides appear to be buying time. Eventually, Russia and China could come together with Iran (or whatever is left of it even if a so-called revolutionary liberalization and democratization takes place there under non-theologians) to which the CAR will lean. As long as Pakistan remains an independent entity, it can play the prostitute and threaten to kiss the higher bidder or the one more willing to pay.  That is both a security risk and a potential disaster, if everything given to Pakistan lands up in Russian, Iranian or Chinese hands and the West’s presence is virtually terminated in the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. Dissolving Pakistan takes away this worry.

(3)  Dissolving Pakistan and putting up new independent states actually creates new multiple centres where Jihad can be protected and nurtured. One Pakistan becomes many and the western problem multiplies. One of the best bets is to allow India to absorb the populations and the territories.   India is a growing economy which can absorb the costs. It has the capability and the will to manage multicultural groups and religious animosities. Culturally Indians of the western part of the country will be closer to the Pakistanis across the border [Punjab for example shares the language across the border in spite of the state sponsorship of Urdu] compared to any other external ethnicity or country. Moreover the costs of developing infrastructure and the economy or carrying out necessary social reforms will be borne on Indian shoulders and not on the west.

(4) As the price for non-intervention in the absorption, the West could extract concessions from India that it will have assured access and facilities to reach the CAR through channels and routes maintained and developed through Pakistani territories connecting the Karakorum Highway and other CAR approach routes.

(5) The Taliban lose their foster home, and are buffered off from the crucial supply routes of Karakorums and the Arabian Sea. The so-called Kashmir problem vanishes as the Pakistani military and ISI mechanism to foment terrorists inside India vanishes.  So one of the greatest excuses for maintaining Jihad from the Pakistani side vanishes.

India, because of linguistic and unique cultural history, will remain firmly in western and specifically the Anglo-Saxon or Atlanticist orbit for generations to come. There are sufficient fissures in the Indian ruling class for the west to exploit and protect western interests.

It is worth a try – at least the largest source for generating terror of the Jihadi and allied kind (through international crime and other non-religious or ethnic militancy) will be effectively liquidated. At one stroke West no longer has to face Islamist terror, pay for upkeep of Jihad, and instead can profit from a growing economy which bears all the costs!

Whereas if Iran gains Yemen, it can stretch out and outflank the USA+Saudi Arabia strategic presence on the western side of the Gulf. Both sides are therefore likely to accuse the other of carrying out a proxy war in Yemen. What is strange is the supposed existence of the Al Qaeda in Yemen, with solid origins from Saudi Arabia and one-time collaboration with USA (Osama’s connections during the anti-USSR AFG war), and the simultaneous supposed Iranian sponsoring of the Shi-ite Houthi’s. But no reports of conflict between Qaeda and the Houthis.

Added complication is the often missed problem of the Al Ahwaz area under Iran. This is claimed to be a primarily “Arab” area and population with the greatest concentration of natural gas/petrol resources of Iran. There is a separatist movement based on this claim, and their spokespersosn find sympathetic ears in Yemen.  It is possible that USA+Saudi Arabia allows Al-Ahwaz separatists to function to pick at Iran, while Iran allows the Shia tribes in north Yemen to function to pick at USA+Saudi Arabia. But a connection between Qaeda and Iran is interesting to the point of absurdity. They obviously can have common purpose – overthrow of the Saudi Royal regime and then wiping off Israel. But how far will this Shia-Sunni collaboration go? Iran can very well think of sponsoring Osama, as an antidote to Israel+USA. But how much will the Arabian Sunnis accept Shi-ite domination? They have accepted “non-Arabic” Islamic over-lordship before though – Ottoman Turks for example. Or is it entirely a representation to tar and feather Iran and Qaeda together? It will be important to see how far Iran digests attacks against Shias in Pakistan and still does nothing against Pakistan.

Being seen as “sympathetic” to theologians in the various Islam dominated countries can appear sweet as a strategy for the moment – but it is much better to think of the future in these countries in the long run. The best bet lies in holding out the hope for a liberal democracy in today’s youth in these countries. If we have to choose sides, lets choose it on the side of the future of these countries. Assuming a blanket trend towards extremism could be realistic but does not help us to divide up these societies so that the theologians do not get all the advantages of a united society behind them!

The death sentences against the condemned army- personnel indicted for the assassination of  Sk. Mujibur Rehman in Bangladesh, are most likely to be carried out early this morning. There may not be any immediate backlash against the hangings. But the hangings are likely to convert the executed into icons for the militant Islamists  and their supporters in the Islamic world. The trial and execution already generated several threats against state personnel and politicians, but nothing concrete has yet taken place.  There was a substantial proportion of voters who voted for candidates not belong the Awami League led alliance, and a proportion of this vote would overlap with the “Islamist” vote. The move towards de-religionization of politics in Bangladesh has already brought out the Islamists in protest especially against any move aimed at weakening or delegetimizing “Islamic poilitics”.

The dynamic of the “Islamist politics” is changing. Regimes like the “royal” house in Saudi Arabia will become increasingly identified with and dependent on the “west”. Looking carefully as to how USA is being forced to shift its military attention, from Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, back to Afghanistan, back to Iraq, to Yemen – all the while the militancy is gaining recruits across north and central Africa – spanning the two oceans is illustrative. Increasingly the Islamist militancy is taking on its traditional twin front struggle. On the one hand it is the struggle between theologians and temporal rulers for ultimate dominance of the Islamist movement. On the other it is the dream of conquering the whole world in the name of Islam.

In time, the “royal houses” in Saudi Arabia/Jordan or the emirates – will lose their prestige and position if the Islamist movement continues under the radical theologians. On the one hand – there is the exclusivist strand of claims of bloodline/clan connections to the Qureyish. On the other there is the urge to gain popular representation and empowerment irrespective of bloodlines within the “greater” Islamic identity – this is the Iranian trend. Over the long run, the ideals of “democracy” and empowerment prevalent in non-islamic societies will reinforce and strengthen its twisting into Iranian style theocracy dominated “populist” Islamic rule.

The “life span” of the Saudi royal house will be short if the “house” does not make tactical compromises with the “populist Islamism”.

There can be all sorts of explanations and possibilities of deception to explain this away. One of the most plausible ones will be that of the need in some school of opinion within the USA to create the impression that India should contribute towards US plans as India is also “threatened” – or that if the collapse of Pak is not staved off with Indian contribution also, India will “suffer”. UK’s inner strategy or secret services may also be interested in maintaining their own strategic asset which they had created by the Partition on the subcontinent – Pakistan. China has contributed its own towards this “save Pakistan” bandwagon by raising the spectre of a “threat” in Arunachal Pradesh. At the same time Naxals have been activated inside India.

This means that all of the non-Indian parties involved in this merry game think that for one reason or the other, the time for loss of direct handle on the Pakistani Jihadi state is imminent. The Jihadis have organized and overcome their factional divisions, to further the overall aims with which the Islamists joined the British project of creating Pakistan. This overall aim on the part of the Islamists, was a revival of the legendary and mythical Caliphate that sat astride the main economic exchange route between the main production centres of the world – East and the West. The Islamists’ extremely low intellectual and educational level, combined with the aridity and nonproductivity of the lands they occupied, implied they could only live off the produce of others. Once oil runs out or is replaced by alternatives, the temporary productivity in economic terms that allowed them to flourish – will be lost. Then they will need to go back to the Caliphate model – which was essentially a way of justifying the basically looting economy of Islam – to extract surplus from allowing trade between the east and west.

Islamists cannot allow modern educational pursuits that could have allowed them to try and climb back on to the current knowledge based economy. Modern education is typically based on open exploration and unrestricted questioning. This is dangerous for Islam – as learning to question in one direction can spill over on to questioning the very claims based on which theologians and Islamic social system imposes itself on human society. So the Islamists’ very own obsessive search for permanent and absolute power, limits their educational, research and knowledge-base improvement. This leaves them only with the old Caliphate model to extract a peace-tax on global trade between the two main regions of innovation and productivity.

The Islamists have seen their chance now. USA the main thorn in their side (as the controller and chief patron – although supportive but still restraining beyond a certain limit) has been weakened. China has come up as a competitor economy to the USA, and is willing to take up the role of the patron. Also because of the competition, China will be more lenient than the USA in allowing the Jihadis greater freedom in their murderous objectives as long as such objectives do not directly infringe on China’s own imperialist designs.

Contrary to popular speculation I  had tried to emphasize that Pakistan will not implode on its own. Instead, the basic Jihadi core behind Pakistan’s state will activate its programme of Jihadi expansion in both directions – Afghanistan and India. This is part of recreating the only economic model they can understand and which they feel will still allow them to maintain their lifestyle and power structures – that of the mythical Caliphate (in historical reality a very short period of success).

The conflict we see now is a superficial one – maintained only because of external interest and pressure. This does not mean that every part of the state machinery of Pakistan is insincere in its formal confrontation. But only those parts which are vulnerable to western pressure or believe in a middle road between the Jihadis and the west are participating actively. This is a minority in Pakistan. Over the years, Arab patronization of Wahabi radicalization through education and other sociopolitical means have practically erased all resistance to the core Jihadi ideology within Pakistan. The society itself has no firm ideological and cultural basis to resist the Jihadis.

Sooner or later, India will have to face the Jihadis. It cannot do so by imagining and trying to convince the Indian people – that Islamic ideology is completely detached from what Islamists are practising. It cannot pretend that preserving the roots and basis of Islamic culture on the subcontinent will allow peaceful coexistence of Pakistan and India. By doing any such pretension, any Indian regime betrays its people – for it creates the false impression and expectations of inherent “benevolence” that is the source of confusion in being ruthless towards Jihadis.

There is only one solution for this whole problem – dissolution of Pakistan as a state, and complete dismantling of Islamic educational system, complete deactivation of those theologians already brought up in the Wahabi tradition. These in turn can only be done if the current populations under Pakistan comes under direct  control of  a secular regime that is also firmly anti-Islamist.

One way of course is the reunification of the people and land currently under the control of Islamophile and Jihad-tolerating-supporting regime in Pakistan, with that of a firm and no-nonsense secular power based in India. That will be the opening of untold opportunities for the people now living in Pakistan in terms of health, education and an open society where voices of dissent and protest against arbitrariness cannot be silenced by fatwas and fanatical Islamist zealots. Freedom from the terror of violent and personal-greed-hiding imposition of Sharia – is something which these people have even forgotten to dream about. The Indian ruling elite has proved its secular credentials by being more ruthless on what it dubs “Hindu right wing fascism” than it ever showed the teeth against Islamic Jihad. The “Muslims” of Pakistan will actually be treated more fairly than the “native” Hindus under such Indian regimes.

Those who will oppose this objective will do so from a variety of covert and overt interests and positions. This will include excuses of humanitarian values, claims of inherent benevolence of the ideology and all blames only on “misinterpretation”, supposed positive and inseparable cultural contributions, as well as claimed inherent superiority of the ideology compared to all other pre-existing ones on the subcontinent in terms “equality/fraternity” etc. with attendant suppression of real historical experience.

Covert interests will primarily be external – with strategic interests of  continued energy, economic and territorial imperialism. These can also be tackled, if India shows the will and determination to do so.

Any strengthening of the hands of the semi-feudal elite at the head of Pakistani regime and military, means strengthening of Jihadi Islam. For only by propagating Jihad, Pakistan has been able to ransom the world, and particularly the West, to survive on a state which was, right from its paranoid conception, unsustainable.

So what really could have been the run-up to the supposed concession by the Indian Prime minister?

Suppose we have the following hypothesis :

The inner echelons of decision making within the Congress hierarchy decides in tandem with (or is persuaded by) USA and UK, that, in the short term – stabilization of the Gilani government is necessary. If the Gilani government falls, and the unreliable Pakitani Army (PA)  is left with government powers, or Musharraf makes a comeback, or the PA teams up with the Talebs, or atleast some sort of  Terrorist State of Pakistan (TSP) government pressure is not mounted against the Talebs until the Afghanistan elections are over, USA will lose all its bases in TSP although TSP will still carry on with support of China.

This could panic the Congress leadership, if they do not have much faith in the fighting ability of the Indian people. The current Congress-top-think is probably geared towards equating survival with the proximity of USA. USA could convince the Congress leadership that, it was more important to increase the prestige of Gilani in the eyes of the “commons” of TSP, since Gilani was actually on amuch weaker political basis and is only being propped up because of USA. The Congress on the other hand has been given a strong electoral mandate recently to do as they please. So some concessions, to Gilani, would be important.

As is usual in such cases, MMS might have been reassured that it would all only be verbal, and not meant concretely and as a commitment. The coterie around the dynasty however were not sure of the political fallout, and hence the “future leader” was solidly kept out of any association with this. If any negative thing comes out of S-e-S, it will be blamed on the benign ego of a well-meaning but elderly gentleman inching towards senility (no MMS is not senile – but I am saying it could be passed off as such).

I also think of  him as amenable to “persuasion”. Of course he is subject to “influence”. But he is too weak politically to take such decisions all alone. Such decisions have to come from a more protected and better hidden core. The script is definitely there – and I had been worrying for quite some time that the new Government of India seemed too “eager” and over-ambitious and was in a hurry, and for me that was a possible indication that they knew they had little time before something quite negative was possible.

My worry is that the phenomenon that happened around Sanjay, is repeating itself around Rahul Gandhi. A so-called young gun think-tank could be forming. But this time around, the interested “outsiders” will not take the risk, and will ensure that at least some of their controllers belong to this circle. Likely candidates will be those who have had long “foreign” stints – I have a certain gentleman from “God’s own” in mind.

A Bharatyia society that takes the decision to reincorporate territories currently under Government of  TSP occupation, will only do it after it has come to certain decisions about TSP and the people under it. People are not born with genes for Islamic Jihad and universal hatred for the Quafir. Children born in TSP and Afghanistan are not born with a gene for Jihad either. These are people, who are  kin of the Indic (in spite of their tall-claims of having Arabic descent) – they have almost entirely Indic roots. I, for one think of them simply as blood brothers and sisters of Indians who are forced into a crucible of hatred from birth and not given any other options to even think of other options. Incorporation under a liberal, democratic and modernizing nation of India gives them that option to be otherwise – to be different from the rabid pack of animals they seem to be headed towards.

I would consider it a civilizational duty of Bharat to create conditions under which branches of the Bharatyia civilizational family, however distant they might have become, and however wayward they might have become, are brought back to the family hold – by the ears, if need be, kicking and screaming if needs be. To be thrashed if they want to go back to the lawless streets, and loved if they behave. This is to ensure that we do not have a vicious bandit on the loose whom we could have easily controlled and made otherwise useful.

It will also be much safer for the “neighbours”.

In countries like Iran, urban “revolutions” against religious or theological establishment cannot sustain themselves at this stage of economic organization, unless these are staged and led by the armed forces. The rural Iran is still solidly behind the Ayatollahs. If Mousavi and Khatami are not careful they will simply serve as agents for liquidation of a generation of urban youth.

If we go back to Napoleon’s period, then there would be many examples – for example all the urban uprisings in Europe in the 1830′s and the widespread ones of 1848 – all of which failed or actually led to being defeated and creating conditions for more despotic or dictatorial regimes. The Chinese communist uprising is another example whose urban uprising phase failed horribly with the spectacular example of the Shanghai massacre. The crucial factor in urban uprisings is whether the army joins in or stays neutral or not. Consider the Afghan “revolutions”, the Iraqi -earlier Marxist revolution and then the Baathist “revolution”, same for the Iranian ones. Significantly, in Afghan, Iran, Iraq, no revolution/palace coup/ urban putsch succeeded without backing and involvement from the clergy and rural theologian networks.

Iran is no longer going to be pro-west. What the younger Iranians are looking for is a greater freedom to pursue modern “happinesses”. They will remain strongly nationalistic and in fact any overthrow of the Ayatollahs will lead to a stronger nationalistic reconstruction of the foundational values of Iran as a replacement for the “binder” of Ayatollahaic Islamic authority.

The Islamic clergy already senses the change in the mood of the younger generations and they have begun to hedge their bets as Islamic theologians always do historically. They try to dissociate in factions away from established but doomed or unpopular Islamic regimes so that the theologians ultimate hold on the population does not come under attack. In time they will grow back again in military and political power if they manage to survive with their ideological “sanctity” undamaged.

The pivotal changing years in Iranian history in the modern period have been 1919 (post WWI British+US penetration and disruption of Ahmad Shah’s hold – leading to the Pahlavi coup in 21-25), 1949 – the post WWII start of the replacement by a younger Pahlavi more likely to be open to western manipulation – leading to the upheaval of 51-53, 1979 – the Iranian “revolution” led again by “modernizers” and “leftists” giving vent to popular generational anger against the Shah’s regime and its western counterparts but taken over by the Ayatollahs because of their wider support base in the countryside and among rural populations. This was followed by the typical period of crisis from 1981-1983 when Iran won the psychological warfare with USA with perhaps secret Reagan help but forced to compromise and get mauled by Iraq. This 30 year generational cycle comes back in 2009. So the processes that started post WWI will start unravelling in the next 30 years.

Countries in the region like India should cultivate “nationalism” in Iran, and be firmly on the side of democracy. They should look for future populations who are going to increasingly take over the country and not bank calculations solely on the short term adhoc approaches so typical of the regimes in Indian politics. The US influence in the Caspian region is on the wane. Does the “West” want Russia and China to step in completely and fill in the blanks? A cautious but firm ideological commitment to see democracy in Iran cannot harm the “western” or Indian interests. It holds out hopes to the future generations, but it does not immediately threaten the Ayatollahs. But any country in the region or in Europe should be very very careful about being seen by the Iranians to be dealing with the “devil” – that is something that will be remembered.

As I have mentioned before, when popular support indicates anger turning against state authority which in classical Islamic terms is a fusion of theologian+military+executive, then the theologians typically split themselves into factions. One or more factions then disassociate themselves from the existing setup, and allow a change of faces. This is done so that the basic image of the theologians and the theology itself is not delegitimized. In time, when heads cool, the theologians can crawl back to their supreme seats of power.

The Taliban thrust towards India is now probably materializing. Those who have been dreaming for implosion of Pakistan should sit up and notice. A lot of the strategic negatives for India I had scoped for are possibly coming together now. Obama’s policy as I mentioned before was about stabilization and all his initial bluster would be simply to not be outdone by Bush’s legacy. His ultimate goal would be a compromise with Jihad, minimize US commitments and withdraw without appearing to withdraw. The US is leaving the neo-caliphate, and Obama is simply trying to buy it out by paying Pakistan lavishly.

Whether India likes it or not, my envisioned TalebaniPakistani caliphate expansive thrust from their base area in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, into the South East will start now in earnest. They will be helped by China, who will see this as a golden opportunity to seal off India’s potential linking up with Afghanistan and blocking Chinese access to the subcontinent through north Kashmir. The Caliphate’s expansion into Kashmir is a big strategic gain for Jihad. A weak and Islam-appeasing Government of India will simply give this as proof that Indians are not doing sufficiently in appeasement. Even the unthinkable could happen – the Indian state could fall before Jihad in the North. And this would then be an unrelenting aggression from neo-caliphate jihad.

With the declared and proposed “army action” by Pakistani Army against the Talebs, one of two things is going to happen. Either the Pakistani Army command arranges for an “eyewash” of temporary retreat by the Talebs so that international pressure can be staved off a bit. But a worse future scenario would be the formal switching over of sides by the Pakistani Army troops once they are in the “contact zone”. This would lead to a very rapid “collapse” of the entire north of Pakistan.

For the moment, it is not in the interests of the Pakistani Army to reveal to the world that the entire north collapses before the Talebs or that the Talebs are simply the irregular wing of the theologian-Jihadi-military structure of the Pakistani Army. This will choke up the material resources supply that it needs to finance and support its long term Jihadi ambitions for the subcontinent. With the recent phased supply promised by the “west” it needs to formally wait until this resource is delivered. Also, China would be under pressure to and there could be concerted effort by the US to remove the nukes from within Pakistani territory. Which would be a great loss of bargaining power for the Pakistani Army.

So my guess will be a formal temporary retreat by the Talebs, and much fanfare about assembling troops for military action against the Talebs. This will never materialize fully on the ground. Any formal engagement that Pakitani Army is forced to go in with the Talebs now, is problematic. If they really have to take action, for the sake of the media and the western opinion, this would mean a war of attrition between irregulars and regulars of the same force. This is not good for the future projections and ambitions of the Pakistani Army. So there is going to be no serious fight. At most those units will be sacrificed deliberately whose loyalty to the essential Jihadi cause of the Pakistani Army leadership, is suspect. Or whose future preservation could preserve military expertise in “undesirable” ethnic communities.

The promised huge western help and the undercover help provided by China and the Islamic powers has to be built up sufficiently, as stocks have been depleted to provide for the success of the Taleb adventure in Afghanistan, and maintaining terrorist activities against India. Once sufficiently built up, the resources will be used to plan and support the next phase of Jihadi expansion – more into Afghanistan and east and north into Pakistan, and finally on to India – the ultimate target.

But any serious attempts by the Pakistanis to use the Talebs to finish their unfinished agenda of grabbing Kashmir by People’s Liberation Army, will necessitate actions on many fronts, both to the general direction of south-west and west from Srinagar. The complication can be facilitation by the PLA of the Talebs from the “north” or Karakorum highway, and any diversionary attacks or movements by the PLA in Chinese occupied sectors of India.

Hopefully the USA is not at the same time manipulated by its allies and “business interests” like UK or China, to treat this as an opportunity where the Talebs appear to be less strong in the Afghanistan sector as they appear to have moved their momentum to the east. There could be genuine agreements between the so-called good-Talebs and the USA to “shift east”. On the other hand it could all be a part of ruse and deception, where the Talebs want to appear to have moved to the east, but in reality preparing to trap the NATO forces in the west.

Some Indian political parties have promised Indian army support to tackle terrorism inside Pakistan. Promising openly, Indian soldiers to fight Taleban in Pakistan, can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, this can activate US and western forces who have interests in the outcome of Indian elections in favour of the “promiser”. But on the other hand this will prompt the Taleb-Pakistanis to intensify their campaign against Kashmir and western India in general. Given that the grounds have been prepared for both “withdrawal to save the skin” as well as “jingo” mentality, this can lead to an uncertain outcome. There can be loud cries of, “more needs to be done to assure the communities, since all these attacks are actually because of rise of right-wing Hindutva”.

What appears to be lack of control by the government, is actually an appearance. This is partly true but represents possibly a deliberate attempt by the ISI+Pakistani+Taleb combination to delegitimize the civilian governmental structure. Behind all this facade, the combination is working towards its traditional goal – the overall subjugation of the subcontinent under an Islamic regime, and restoration of what they consider their glory days of lording it over India.

They have managed to coax Obama admin’s funds, which in-spite of all attempts to the contrary, will still be surreptitiously diverted to fund the Pakistani national project of conquering at least part if not whole of India. USA is trying to find glorious ways of covering up withdrawal from Afghanistan. Already this has led to inventing a “moderate” Taleban (Islamic Jihadis always pretend to be moderates when they think they can extract resources, or buy time). If the plan has been hatched between Pakistan+China on one side and USA+UK on the other, it can be a dangerous trap for India, if India has to divide its forces and get bogged down in a war which China and allies sponsor as a proxy war, while the entire north-west of India lies vulnerable.

Suppose, US cuts a deal with its invented “moderate Taleban” and brokers an agreement between Zardari and the Talebs for power-sharing in the North West. This will simply be a ratification, according to my thinking, of the TalebPakistaniArmy plan to coax USA into a position where, the defacto transition to a TalebPakistaniArmy Islamic state is tacitly endorsed by the USA in the “hope” of showing to its electorate and the world media that USA has retreated “ethically”. This plan could have the support of UK+China. Karazai could be brought in on this out of necessity on his weak power and resource basis. Russia+Iran could be made to wait and watch. So in that case the entire brunt of the TalebPakistaniArmy expansionist plan would fall towards India. Why India? Because of many different possible calculations.

TalebPakistaniArmy can hope to get tacit Chinese support. It can hope to get US reluctance to commit forces in this theatre as a favourable scenario. It can calculate that Government of India can be made to negotiate in an international form of “zazyia” extraction. This can be made in a form very similar to the way in which “zazyia” was extracted from the USA – by posing as “funds” required to “develop” sufficiently “to alleviate poverty and economic factors that gives rise to terrorism”. A situation can easily be developed by which India is made to look like a “miser” “who is reluctant to share her fortune” with the poor “neighbour”, and therfore must face the consequences of continuing “terror attacks”.

Internal divisions, fractured and antagonistic opinions within the “anti-Jihadi” section in India, who still agonize over the “hows” and “why’s” of Jihad and what strategy should be appropriate, can be banked upon to provide the typical scenario of lack of ruthless retaliation that probably existed during the early years of Islamic invasions into India. It can also be a military preemptive move to prevent India participating in any joint military operations in the core areas of Pakistan. China could panic if Indians start talking too much of sending expeditionary forces into Pakistan.

The asinine policy of inventing a “moderate Taleban” to cover up the eventual retreat from the Afghan theatre, is the latest in the superb series of contributions from the Anglo-US to human civilization. The help provided to Pakistani Army (the state and the army is the same in Pakistan, at least from the army viewpoint – so resources provided formally to the civilian government will be surreptitiously moved to Pakistani Army disposal or manipulation) will simply be used against remaining “divergence” in Afghanistan and the final push towards the Jihadi dream of an uninterrupted Islamic empire running from Arabia to Indonesia.

Whether that dream is realistic or feasible is an entirely different question, but the enormous pain and horror on the way even towards the eventual demise of that dream, is something that the west will forever be guilty of.

The immediate background of the BDR uprising could turn out to be a damp squib officially – it will be blamed on long-standing grievances, and “wayward” soldiers. But it takes a greater significance in the light of the recent urging by the emissary of Pakistan to the BD  government to drop the proceedings towards war-crimes trials of the Rajakaras and the AlBadrs, Al shams for their atrocities during ’71.  On top of that the AL led government moves ahead with transit and trade agreements with India, a reasonable and pragmatic move on the part of Bangladesh as the country is even now crucially dependent on Indian imports of essential commodities. This draws immediate vehement protests by the nearly decimated BNP, as expected. Just like many political parties in Pakistan, a lot of political careers are made in Bangladesh by inflating up the “demonic” “Hindu” India.  However, it is Pakistan’s palpable fear at possible re-exposure of Pakistan’s role in the ’71 war of liberation that is significant.

Why does Pakistan have to be so paranoid about it ? It is already almost 40 years old – and could be passed off as a historical event, and not redounding on the current regime! There could be question of compensation and fear  by a bankrupt Pakistan government. But financial compensation is a lesser worry, given the Pakistan government’s traditional expertise in moving money around meant for one purpose to fuel another pet agenda, and the fact that it can still milk the USA for some time into the near future. With the increasing acceleration of the Pakistani Army and the Taleban coalescing into a neo-Caliphate on the gray borderland between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the now overtly Jihadi Pakistani state can be worried that the war-crimes trials could damage and expose the true character of Jihadi Islam, to a population which has so far proved a safe haven for Jihadi terror to be launched on India. It is the ideological delegitimization that worries the Jihadis of the subcontinent, and the transit agreements could actually cover eventual move towards military agreements between India and Bangladesh to destroy the Jihadis themselves in the eastern part of the subcontinent.

I will primarily characterize this election as a four-cornered struggle for state power in which the forces in order of “strength” are (1) the military establishment (2) the Jamaat (3) the Awami League and associates (the so called  “great alliance”) (4)  the BNP +non Jamaat associates.  The military as per my earlier analysis is in favour of Islamic consolidation of the state regime – in tune with the power base of the military command among the elite of Bangladeshi muslim society, whose prime feudal motivations of gaining and controlling “land” and dominance over society is best served under strengthened Sunni Wahabi authoritarian framework. The military has consistently reasserted its dominance over the state machinery whenever it had felt that its long term strategy of bringing Bangladesh closer to the Islamic axis centred in Saudi Arabia is being threatened – this was why it eliminated Mujibur and even its own – like Jia, or leftist “heretics” like Col. Taher. At present, the  prime tool is the Jamaat. As I have mentioned before, the Jamaat will be the key political force which can be used by the military to serve its agenda. The Jamaat was allowed to suffer the least in the anti-corruption drive against the political establishment. To be fair, the military’s weakness for the Jamaat could be coming out of reasons very similar to those that kept the two major political groups also “strangely” weak towards the Jamaat – that all the political elite including the Jamaat share core social networks at the same level and that all the non-Jamaat political elite share political secrets as to activities during the 71 struggle as well as post-Independence that could be used by the Jamaat to manipulate them.

The Jamaat is the direct descendant of the philosophy of Moududi – the ideologue and founder of a strict Wahabi/Sunni interpretation of Islam whose core message therefore almost always inevitably landed up into the domain of cataclysmic confrontation with everything deemed “unIslamic and therefore anti-Islamic”.  The top leadership has been accused persistently of war-crimes but they take pride in claiming that apparently none of these accusations could be proved – they can do so, as the Bangladesh military post-Independence ensured (with the help of factions within the “liberators”) that cases/investigations/charges were withdrawn and that the Jamaat were politically rehabilitated.  The Jamaat has minuscule vote share, but displays an impact and influence on Bangladesh state power hugely out of proprtion to its apparent electoral strength. The Jamaat will be the most likely stable political Islamic group to receive Saudi and extended Islamic expansionist network support, and this Islamic axis will see Bangladesh and Jamaat’s role as crucial to its overall expansionist agenda of takeover of the subcontinent in the name of Islam. The Jamaat of course has now turned ultra-nationalist and pretends to fight “colonial aggression” which of course as conveniently for Islamic agenda is seen only in India which is portrayed as “Hindu/Kaffir”. Hiding under the ultra-nationalist slogans is of course the mother of all colonialism – the ultimate Jihadi Islamic takeover of not only Bangladesh but the entire subcontinent – an experiment already started by the Taleban in the west of the subcontinent.  The recent Mumbai attacks is a signal that Islamic agenda for the subcontinent is intensifying and Indian “war posturing” will be used as a rallying cry and panic button to push further for Islamic consolidation in Bangladesh. (Mumbai Islamic message)

The Jamaat’s strength does not lie in numbers, but the social networks among the elite, the theologians and the international Jihadi and Sunni Wahabi fundamentalism – (1) the military has ensured that it suffered almost nothing in the anti-corruption drives and so will claim themselves as “pure” and untainted compared to the others – and is likely to be rewarded for this by the electorate (2) the various military regimes as well as political ones, by failing to try the culprits of war-crimes and infighting among the “liberators” has ensured that newer generations have far less concerns about what happened almost 40 years ago than other “more pressing” concerns (3) the Islamic propaganda machinery allowed to flourish under the pro-Islam military regimes as well as political forces have been able to increase the rate of Jihadi Islamization of the rural as well as a section of urban Bangladeshi youth – Islam holds several attractions for males especially – it promises all that they biologically desire, consumption, women and power – without having to make the hard effort of intellectual skills development required to compete in a modern knowledge based economy, or having to tolerate modern rights given to women over their sexuality or their bodies. (4) sections of the younger generations are likely to be relatively free of qualms about experimenting with an authoritarian Islamic system which of course at first they would like to believe would be along the lines of Malaysia or Iran- especially since the military has succeeded in discrediting the pre-existing political establishments. All these factors could have been instrumental in repeating the general pattern observable all over the subcontinent – of increasing radicalization of younger recruits who gravitate to the armed forces in Islam dominated countries.

The Awami League represents strongest electoral combine as of date but will have to reckon with the Jamaat. The BNP has taken a bad knock but will not lag far behind the Awami League, as the military would have strong connections with the setup and would like to keep it afloat as a second line of defence and the major political face of the Islamic agenda which will be led from behind by the Jamaat – this is simply a tactic to allow the Jamaat to grow and takeover.

The uprising was most likely to have been carefully planned, with sleepers trained by Pakistan and Jihadi organizations acting in careful coordination to use genuine grievances and liquidate the older generation of commanding officers – a group less likely to be submissive completely to the charms of the Jihadis. The core group has most probably now vanished, and been taken to safe havens maintained by the Jihadis in West Bengal under a tolerant Leftist regime. This was simply a warning, in showing that the force which is on the border of Bangladesh is out of  control, and that the Jihadis still hold the keys of state power. It could not have happened unless key elements of the security apparatus allowed it to happen.

For the subcontinent, Obama’s main strategic steps will be to reassure and to a certain extent increase cooperation with India mainly in the economic arena. Obama will also see to it that Indian regimes are not penalized at the elections by not taking aggressive retaliatory measures against Pakistan. Obama’s tactic will be to increase public visibility of military collaboration with India, and a declared programme of strengthening defence capabilities of India, and maybe even some kind of enhanced NATO type guarantee of alliance/protection in case of third party aggression. Similarly Obama will see to it that any Pakistani regime is not penalized by the people, by holding off India from POK. If India can bargain here properly, it can wrangle out an agreement to station troops on the eastern border of Afghanistan as part of a strategy of anti-terror and disruption of Taleban supply lines to the POK.

The key here again will be to stabilize rather than expand. This is here where Obama and US policy will begin to unravel. The situation in the Afghan+Pakistan front needs expansion and dynamic rather than stabilization. Stabilization of control would mean the beginning of loss of initiative on NATO part and the turning point of the campaign. The reason static war would be disastrous for the US, is because of the peculiar ground situation. So far the anti-US forces have been fighting Chinese Red army style mobile warfare. Such war style can only be matched by continuous positional movement and encirclement of mobile warriors. As soon as this movement is lost, the mobile warriors gain advantage. For now, in an unfamiliar and unaccustomed territory, positional static NATO can be picked off at ease by its opponents.

Obama’s concentration on economic affairs out of necessity, is likely to lead to less stress on foreign affairs that are seen to be expensive and without direct long term benefits. This in turn is likely to lead to less clarity on strategic military objectives, and a corresponding confusion in the military command over operations. It will not be as if Obama himself will be directly responsible, but his preoccupation with internal affairs and priority to world economic manipulation will lead to a neglect of military expansion and therefore adoption of stop-gap stabilization tactics. Obama will try to get India onboard for the US economic recovery programme, and formulate joint policies to counter China. Strategically, this can benefit the entire Indian subcontinent, especially those economies in a position technologically and educationally to benefit from such US-India relationship – especially India, Bangladesh and SriLanka. But this will also be a great opportunity for India to push through in strategic initiatives of its own about the central Asian republics. India can shrewdly play around to force US acceptance of Indian military presence, if India offers to provide substantial military and economic help directly to the Afghan government. Most diplomatic pressures are only effective when the other party realizes that the pressurizing party will go ahead and do something anyway – and that it is better to join in before it is too late to appear to be a reliable “friend”.

US current needs coincides with India’s on the economic front, primarily against Chinese capture of world markets, and I think there will be no problems in the evolution of collaboration here. But overall this economic movement will subtly and in a very complex way, leave its mark on the military/political strategic scenario, whereby the US and the NATO will ultimately retreat from the Afghan front. This is both a danger as well as an opportunity for India, if it has the correct leadership.

The “Geeta” ["that which has been sung"] is also called Srimadbhagavatam, or simply Bhagavat, ["from Bhagavan - owner of the creative principle - a close approximation would be the "supreme creator" of the revealed traditions] and is actually a part of the epic Mahabharatam and starts with the section entitled “survey of forces”. Some of the clearest statements of the Vedantic or Upanishadic “Hindu” philosophies are available in this part, and there are long standing debates about the timing, source, and authenticity of these verses relative to the whole of the text of the epic. I would like to give my own commentary on the Mahabharatm later separately in a page, and non-Indians will find this epic in truthful unabridged translations a real eye-opener as to the basic views the ancient Indians held about society, state, politics, the relationship between individual and the group, and life and its aims. However for our purposes, only relevant portions from the Geeta will suffice.

Briefly, the context is that of the great war between two forces led by two royal factions who are also cousins of each other. When the most skilled warrior of one side, that led by the Pandavas [sons of Pandu], called Arjuna, hesitates and almost breaks down seeing his blood-relatives, or respected elders and teachers arrayed against him on the other side, and whom he would have to slaughter in due course, his chariot driver, Krishna intervenes and gives him a psychological pep-talk [a very realistic modern day version would of course be the psychological conditioning given before active field duty]. Krishna is no ordinary chariot driver, but a key politician of the time, with dreams of unifying the subcontinent under a single political authority and establish rule of “law”. Krishna is also thought to be an “avatar”, a human form of “Vishnu”, the creator version of the “supreme one”, who “descends to the world” from time to time in each “historical” era to re-establish “law”.

It is significant that the actual description of the war in the epic is mostly given in the narrative of Sanjaya, a person gifted with “remote vision and hearing”  who describes events as they unfold on the battlefield to the blind king and father of the opponents of the Pandavas, Dhritarashtra.

SECTION XXV  [(Bhagavad Gita Chapter I)] ([This where is the Bhagavad Gita proper starts])

Dhritarashtra said,–”Assembled together on the sacred plain of Kurukshetra from desire of fighting what did my sons and the Pandavas do. O Sanjaya.”

“Sanjaya said….when, the throwing of missiles had just commenced…Arjuna said,–’O thou that knoweth no deterioration, place my car (once) between the two armies, so that I may observe these that stand here desirous of battle, and with whom I shall have to contend in the labours of this struggle. I will observe those who are assembled here and who are prepared to fight for doing what is agreeable in battle to the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra….[Krishna] placing that excellent car between the two armies…said,–’Behold, O [Arjuna] these assembled Kurus,–And there [Arjuna] beheld, standing (his) sires and grandsons, and friends, and father-in-law and well-wishers, in both the armies. Beholding all those kinsmen standing (there), the son of Kunti, possessed by excessive pity, despondingly said (these words).

“Arjuna said,–’Beholding these kinsmen, O Krishna, assembled together and eager for the fight, my limbs, become languid, and my mouth becomes dry. My body trembles, and my hair stands on end. Gandiva slips from my hand, and my skin burns. I am unable to stand (any longer); my mind seems to wander. I behold adverse omens, too, O [Krishna]. I do not desire victory, O Krishna, not sovereignty, nor pleasures. Of what use would sovereignty be to us, O Govinda, or enjoyments, or even life, since they, for whose sake sovereignty, enjoyments, and pleasures are desired by us, are here arrayed for battle ready to give up life and wealth, viz., preceptors, sires, sons and grandsires, maternal uncles, father-in-laws, grandsons, brother-in-laws, and kinsmen. I wish not to slay these though they slay me, O slayer of Madhu, even for the sake of the sovereignty of the three worlds, what then for the sake of (this) earth? What gratification can be ours, O Janardana, by slaying the Dhartarashtras [sons of Dhritarashtra]? Even if they be regarded as foes, sin will overtake us if we slay them. Therefore, it behoveth us not to slay the sons of Dhritarashtra who are our own kinsmen. How, O Madhava [Krishna] can we be happy by killing our own kinsmen? Even if these, with judgments perverted by avarice, do not see the evil that ariseth from the extermination of a race, and the sin of internecine quarrels, why should not we, O [Krishna], who see the evils of the extermination of a race, learn to abstain from that sin? A race being destroyed, the eternal customs of that race are lost; and upon those customs being lost, sin overpowers the whole race….Alas, we have resolved to perpetrate a great sin, for we are ready to slay our own kinsmen from lust of the sweets of sovereignty. Better would it be for me if the sons of Dhritarashtra, weapon in hand, should in battle slay me (myself) unavenging unarmed.–’”

Sanjaya continued,–”Having spoken thus on the field of battle, Arjuna, his mind troubled with grief, casting aside his bow and arrows, sat down on his car.” [Here ends the first lesson entitled "Survey of Forces"]

SECTION XXVI
[(Bhagavad Gita Chapter II)]

Sanjaya said,–”Unto him thus possessed with pity, his eyes filled and oppressed with tears, and desponding, [Krishna] said these words.”

The Holy One said,–”Whence, O Arjuna, hath come upon thee, at such a crisis, this despondency that is unbecoming a person of noble birth, that shuts one out from heaven, and that is productive of infamy? Let no effeminacy be thine, O son of Kunti. This suits thee not. Shaking off this vile weakness of hearts, arise, O chastiser of foes.–”

Arjuna said,–”How, O [Krishna], can I with arrows contend in battle against Bhishma and Drona, [both teachers of Arjuna] deserving as they are, O slayer of foes, of worship? Without slaying (one’s) preceptors of great glory, it is well (for one), to live on even alms in this world. By slaying preceptors, even if they are avaricious of wealth, I should only enjoy pleasures that are bloodstained! We know not which of the two is of greater moment to us, viz., whether we should conquer them or they should conquer us. By slaying whom we would not like to live,–even they, the sons of Dhritarashtra, stand before (us). My nature affected by the taint of compassion, my mind unsettled about (my) duty, I ask thee. Tell me what is assuredly good (for me). I am thy disciple. O, instruct me, I seek thy aid. I do not see (that) which would dispel that grief of mine blasting my very senses, even if I obtain a prosperous kingdom on earth without a foe or the very sovereignty of the gods.’”

Sanjaya reports that Arjuna once more said, ‘I will not fight,’–and then remained silent.

Note that no such hesitation, and no such “lofty” sentiment of allowing oneself to be slaughtered at the hands of enemy which includes revered relatives or teachers is ever seen anywhere in the Quran.

Krishna then says “‘Thou mournest those that deserve not to be mourned. Thou speakest also the words of the (so-called) wise. Those, however, that are (really) wise, grieve neither for the dead nor for the living. It is not that, I or you or those rulers of men never were, or that all of us shall not hereafter be. Of an Embodied being, as childhood, youth, and, decrepitude are in this body, so (also) is the acquisition of another body. The man, who is wise, is never deluded in this. The contacts of the senses with their (respective) objects producing (sensations of) heat and cold, pleasure and pain, are not permanent, having (as they do) a beginning and an end. Do thou. O Bharata, endure them. For the man whom these afflict not, O bull among men, who is the same in pain and pleasure and who is firm in mind, is fit for emancipation. There is no (objective) existence of anything that is distinct from the soul; nor non-existence of anything possessing the virtues of the soul. This conclusion in respect of both these hath been arrived at by those that know the truths (of things). Know that [the soul] to be immortal by which all this [universe] is pervaded. No one can compass the destruction of that which is imperishable. It hath been said that those bodies of the Embodied (soul) which is eternal, indestructible and infinite, have an end. Do thou, therefore, fight, O Bharata. He who thinks it (the soul) to be the slayer and he who thinks it to be the slain, both of them know nothing; for it neither slays nor is slain. It is never born, nor doth it ever die; nor, having existed, will it exist no more. Unborn, unchangeable, eternal, and ancient, it is not slain upon the body being perished. That man who knoweth it to be indestructible, unchangeable, without decay, how and whom can he slay or cause to be slain? As a man, casting off robes that are worn out, putteth on others that are new, so the Embodied (soul), casting off bodies that are worn out, entereth other bodies that are new. Weapons cleave it not, fire consumeth it not; the waters do not drench it, nor doth the wind waste it. It is incapable of being cut, burnt, drenched, or dried up. It is unchangeable, all-pervading, stable, firm, and eternal. It is said to be imperceivable, inconceivable and unchangeable. Therefore, knowing it to be such, it behoveth thee not to mourn (for it). Then again even if thou regardest it as constantly born and constantly dead, it behoveth thee not yet, O mighty-armed one, to mourn (for it) thus. For, of one that is born, death is certain; and of one that is dead, birth is certain. Therefore. it behoveth thee not to mourn in a matter that is unavoidable. All beings (before birth) were unmanifest. Only during an interval(between birth and death), O Bharata, are they manifest; and then again, when death comes, they become (once more) unmanifest. What grief then is there in this? One looks upon it as a marvel; another speaks of it as a marvel. Yet even after having heard of it, no one apprehends it truly.

Compare this with the Quranic injunction :
047.020 Those who believe say, “Why is not a sura sent down (for us)?” But when a sura of basic or categorical meaning is revealed, and fighting is mentioned therein, thou wilt see those in whose hearts is a disease looking at thee with a look of one in swoon at the approach of death. But more fitting for them-
047.021 Were it to obey and say what is just, and when a matter is resolved on, it were best for them if they were true to Allah.
047.003 This because those who reject Allah follow vanities, while those who believe follow the Truth from their Lord: Thus does Allah set forth for men their lessons by similitudes.
047.004 Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens. Thus (are ye commanded): but if it had been Allah’s Will, He could certainly have exacted retribution from them (Himself); but (He lets you fight) in order to test you, some with others. But those who are slain in the Way of Allah,- He will never let their deeds be lost.

004.066 If We had ordered them to sacrifice their lives or to leave their homes, very few of them would have done it: But if they had done what they were (actually) told, it would have been best for them, and would have gone farthest to strengthen their (faith);
004.067 And We should then have given them from our presence a great reward;

009.088 But the Messenger, and those who believe with him, strive and fight with their wealth and their persons: for them are (all) good things: and it is they who will prosper.
009.111 Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Qur’an: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme.

004.074 Let those fight in the cause of Allah Who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fighteth in the cause of Allah,- whether he is slain or gets victory – Soon shall We give him a reward of great (value).
004.095 Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward.

The Embodied (soul), O Bharata, is ever indestructible in everyone’s body. Therefore, it behoveth thee not to grieve for all (those) creatures. Casting thy eyes on the (prescribed) duties of thy order, it behoveth thee not to waver, for there is nothing else that is better for a Kshatriya than a battle fought fairly. Arrived of itself and (like unto) an open gate of heaven, happy are those Kshatriyas, O Partha, that obtain such a fight. But if thou dost not fight such a just battle, thou shalt then incur sin by abandoning the duties of thy order and thy fame. People will then proclaim thy eternal infamy, and to one that is held in respect, infamy is greater (as an evil) than death itself. All great car-warriors will regard thee as abstaining from battle from fear, and thou wilt be thought lightly by those that had (hitherto) esteemed thee highly. Thy enemies, decrying thy prowess, will say many words which should not be said. What can be more painful than that? Slain, thou wilt attain to heaven; or victorious, thou wilt enjoy the Earth. Therefore, arise, O son of Kunti, resolved for battle. Regarding pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, as equal, do battle for battle’s sake and sin will not be thine. This knowledge, that hath been communicated to thee is (taught) in the Sankhya (system). Listen now to that (inculcated) in Yoga (system). Possessed of that knowledge, thou, O Partha, wilt cast off the bonds of action. In this (the Yoga system) there is no waste of even the first attempt. There are no impediments. Even a little of this (form of) piety delivers from great fear. Here in this path, O son of Kuru, there is only one state of mind, consisting in firm devotion (to one object, viz., securing emancipation). The minds of those, however, that are not firmly devoted (to this), are many-branched (un-settled) and attached to endless pursuits. That flowery talk which, they that are ignorant, they that delight in the words of the Vedas, they, O Partha, that say that there is nothing else, they whose minds are attached to worldly pleasures, they that regard (a) heaven (of pleasures and enjoyments) as the highest object of acquisition…. and promises birth as the fruit of action and concerns itself with multifarious rites of specific characters for the attainment of pleasures and power,–delude their hearts and the minds of these men who are attached to pleasures and power cannot be directed to contemplation (of the divine being) regarding it as the sole means of emancipation.

The Vedas are concerned with three qualities, (viz., religion, profit, and pleasure). Be thou, O Arjuna, free from them, unaffected by pairs of contraries (such as pleasure and pain, heat and cold, etc.), ever adhering to patience without anxiety for new acquisitions or protection of those already acquired, and self-possessed, whatever objects are served by a tank or well, may all be served by a vast sheet of water extending all around; so whatever objects may be served by all the Vedas, may all be had by a Brahmana having knowledge (of self or Brahma).

Thy concern is with work only, but not with the fruit (of work). Let not the fruit be thy motive for work; nor let thy inclination be for inaction. Staying in devotion, apply thyself to work, casting off attachment (to it), O [Arjuna], and being the same in success or unsuccess. This equanimity is called Yoga (devotion). Work (with desire of fruit) is far inferior to devotion, O [Arjuna]. Seek thou the protection of devotion. They that work for the sake of fruit are miserable. He also that hath devotion throws off, even in this world, both good actions and bad actions. Therefore, apply thyself to devotion. Devotion is only cleverness in action. The wise, possessed of devotion, cast off the fruit born of action, and freed from the obligation of
(repeated) birth, attain to that region where there is no unhappiness. When thy mind shall have crossed the maze of delusion, then shalt thou attain to an indifference as regards the hearable and the heard.
When thy mind, distracted (now) by what thou hast heard (about the means of acquiring the diverse objects of life), will be firmly and immovably fixed on contemplation, then wilt thou attain to devotion.’

“Arjuna said,–What, O [Krishna], are the indications of one whose mind is fixed on contemplation? How should one of steady mind speak, how sit, how move?” “The Holy One said,–’When one casts off all the desires of his heart and is pleased within (his) self with self, then is one said to be of steady mind. He whose mind is not agitated amid calamities, whose craving for pleasure is gone, who is freed from attachment (to worldly objects), fear and wrath, is said to be a Muni of steady mind. His is steadiness of mind who is without affection everywhere, and who feeleth no exultation and no aversion on obtaining diverse objects that are agreeable and disagreeable. When one withdraws his senses from the objects of (those) senses as the tortoise its limbs from all sides, even his is steadiness of mind. Objects of senses fall back from an abstinent person, but not so the passion (for those objects). Even the passion recedes from one who has beheld the Supreme (being). The agitating senses, O [Arjuna], forcibly draw away the mind of even a wise man striving hard to keep himself aloof from them. Restraining them all, one should stay in contemplation, making me his sole refuge. For his is steadiness of mind whose senses are under control. Thinking of the objects of sense, a person’s attachment is begotten towards them. From attachment springeth wrath; from wrath ariseth want of discrimination; from want of discrimination, loss of memory; from loss of memory, loss of understanding; and from loss of understanding (he) is utterly ruined. But the self-restrained man, enjoying objects (of sense) with senses freed from attachment and aversion under his own control, attaineth to peace (of mind). On peace (of mind) being attained, the annihilation of all his miseries taketh place, since the mind of him whose heart is peaceful soon becometh steady. He who is not self-restrained hath no contemplation (of self). He who hath no contemplation hath no peace (of mind).
Whence can there be happiness for him who hath no peace (of mind)? For the heart that follows in the wake of the sense moving (among their objects) destroys his understanding like the wind destroying a boat in the waters. Therefore, O thou of mighty arms, his is steadiness of mind whose senses are restrained on all sides from the objects of sense. The restrained man is awake when it is night for all creatures; and when other creatures are awake that is night to a discerning Muni. He into whom all objects of desire enter, even as the waters enter the ocean which (though) constantly replenished still maintains its water-mark unchanged–(he) obtains peace (of mind) and not one that longeth for objects of desire. That man who moveth about, giving up all objects of desire, who is free from craving (for enjoyments) and who hath no affection and no pride, attaineth to peace (of mind). This, O [Arjuna], is the divine state. Attaining to it, one is never deluded. Abiding in it one obtains, on death, absorption into the Supreme Self.’

These are “controversial” Quranic verses :

022.039
To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged;- and verily, Allah is most powerful for their aid;-
022.040
(They are) those who have been expelled from their homes in defiance of right,- (for no cause) except that they say, “our Lord is Allah”. Did not Allah check one set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of Allah is commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid those who aid his (cause);- for verily Allah is full of Strength, Exalted in Might, (able to enforce His Will).
022.041
(They are) those who, if We establish them in the land, establish regular prayer and give regular charity, enjoin the right and forbid wrong: with Allah rests the end (and decision) of (all) affairs.
022.042
If they treat thy (mission) as false, so did the peoples before them (with their Prophets),- the People of Noah, and ‘Ad and Thamud;

002.190
Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors.
002.191
And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.
002.192
But if they cease, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
002.193
And fight them on until there is no more Tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression.
002.194
The prohibited month for the prohibited month,- and so for all things prohibited,- there is the law of equality. If then any one transgresses the prohibition against you, Transgress ye likewise against him. But fear Allah, and know that Allah is with those who restrain themselves.

009.073
O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the Hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell,- an evil refuge indeed.
009.123
O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him.

008.060
Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly.

As we can see, there is a wide divergence between the basic motivations in the two – the Geeta wants Arjuna to fight without thinking of fruits of  action. Geeta wants detachment, moreover the entire motivation of war is to set right “injustice” done upon the injured party – in this case the Pandavas, and not because their enemies believe in a different religion. What were the injustices done on Pandavas – they were setup to lose a game of chance in which they were made to lose and sell themselves into slavery, including their wife whom one of the victors attempts to strip in public, they were disinherited from their share, there were assassination attempts on them even in exile, and finally their peace offer of being given just five villages for the five brothers were rejected. We do not see, any such sequence of injustices on Muhammad from the start. In spite of propaganda, we can see, that the Qureysh did not try to enslave the women of  Muhammad’s party or strip them in public – in fact there are stories of how one of the daughters of Muhammad was secretly and safely escorted out of Mecca to her father when the city was boiling with news of the Muslim’s treacherous and murderous ambushes. The Qureysh hit back only after repeated ambushes and murders of Qureysh businessmen leading their caravans. Muhammad never offers to be happy with a village for himself – although we do not know under what inheritance claim this would be valid. In fact  Muhammad urges war simply for not believing in his religion, or on suspicion of treachery without proof, or simply an opponent defending their property or family from unexpected attacks, or simply because his opponent is relatively wealthy in camels and beautiful women.

Pakistan’s state promoted the Taleban with Western blessing, and the madrassahs were utilized to brainwash and train generations of Jihadi males – the resources were a heaven-sent for the Muslims since the western support could be used to radicalize more of the youth in Jihad and ultimately use it to carry out “Ghazwa-e-Hind” – total liquidation of the “Hindus”, looting their wealth, land and women – the lucrative incentive to participate in Jihad for the millions of products of only feudal Islamic preaching and nothing else. The military-secret service establishment, probably already moved a major portion of the army to the Indian border knowing fully well about the planned attacks on Mumbai. This army movement would have served a dual purpose (1) the brainwashed Jihadi tutoring of the younger generations most likely to provide the lower ranks of the army are in all likelihood collaborating with the Taleban in the North Western provinces or deserting to them, or supplying the products of the ordnance factories of Pakistan to the Taleban. Moving the remnant under the control of the government to the eastern borders separates them from the Talebani contagion (2) since the elected government (but not the army) has already lost control over the north-western areas and the tribal belt, and failed to contain the Taleban and Al Qaeda, this attack provides a good excuse for abandoning the sham fight against “Jihad” from Afghanistan altogether, and practically leave it in Talebani hands. All these indicate that the theologian-elite nexus of Pakistani society has already come to an agreement with the Taleban-Qaeda to form an alliance to takeover the Pakistani state, and turn it into a hardcore Islamic regime able to strategically extract support from Iran and China and the blindly shortsighted opportunist imperialist elements within European elite  to liquidate the only thorn in Islam’s side in Asia and the Indian Ocean region – India. Once India can be subjugated to Islamic sadism, the pan-Islamic belt runs in an uninterrupted belt from Africa, middle East, through to Indonesia – the weak and pacifist societies of Myanmar and Thailand will be mere tasty morsels before Jihadi Islamic greed.

What was the hidden Quranic and Hadithic message within the Mumbai attacks ? This was more a message for the remaining terror modules within India and their support bases within Indian state protected Islamic communities, networks and theological establishments.

22nd-27th of November must be the second half of the Islamic month of Dhu’l Qadah – and as far as I can remember, this is a very significant month in the Islamic calendar. This is the first pilgrimage or Umrah that the Muslims made after the migration/hijra to Medina under Muhammad. The Muslims came on the morning of the fourth day of Dhual-Qadah, in the 7th year after migration, after the treaty of Hudaybiyyah the previous year. The entire event lasted for three days. Any pilgrimage during the month of Dhul-Qadah is named a “major pilgrimage”, or just “pilgrimage” (Hajj), while pilgrimages on all other month are called “minor pilgrimage” (Umrah). The Muslims were armed even though the prevalent practice was not to carry weapons on pilgrimage. The treaty had provided for temporary abandonment and evacuation of the town of Mecca, by the Qureysh when the Muslims entered it, and was primarily meant as a show of strength by Muhammad to the Qureysh.

I find it highly significant in the context of Islamic viewpoint to mount the attack on Mumbai at this date -we have to consider actual terror activities described unemotionally and compare with Mumbai outcomes. A highly significant incident in this month was the destruction of the Banu Quraiza Jews. The Banu Quraizah Jews were originally part of an alliance of Jewish tribes who managed and cultivated the oases farms in the desert of northern Arabia who had been alarmed at the systematic expulsion, sudden ambush and slaughter, and looting of all their camels, women and children. They tried to form alliances with expelled Jews and defend themselves against the Muslim raids. There is hardly any evidence of their having done any atrocity on the Muslims even by Islamic chroniclers – their only crime seems to have been resisting ethnic cleansing, eviction from land which they had worked hard on, and defend their women and children – typically described by the chroniclers as “conspiracy against Islam and Allah’s messenger”. After a siege lasting for 25 days, the Jews surrendered:

Sahih Bukhari records: [Original Sahih Al-Bukhari]
The women and children were then separated from their husbands, others were put under the care of Abdullah, a renegade Jew. All the goods and possessions of the B. Qurayzah Jews, their camels and flocks were all brought as spoils of war. The B. Qurayzah Jewish men were handcuffed behind their backs with their women and children having already been separated. They were placed under the charge of Mohammad ibn Maslama, the assassin of Ka’b ibn Ashraf, to be sent to Medina before their execution in batches. A long trench was dug in the marketplace of Medina. The Prisoners were then taken there, made to kneel down and beheaded in a group of five or six. Muhammad was personally present to witness this slaughter. Ali and Zubayr cut off the heads of the Jews in front of Muhammad. Sourcing from Al-Waqidi, Tabari writes:
“…the messenger of God commanded that furrows should be dug in the ground for the B. Qurayzah. Then he sat down, and Ali and al-Zubayr began cutting off their heads in his presence.” Ibn Ishaq writes that they were taken in groups to Muhammad for beheading in front of him.

Tabari further writes:
‘The messenger of God went out into the marketplace of Medina and had trenches dug in it; then he sent for them and had them beheaded in those trenches. They were brought out to him in groups. Among them were the enemy of God, Huyayy b. Akhtab, and Ka’b b. Asad, the head of the tribe. They numbered 600 or 700-the largest estimate says they were between 800 and 900. As they were being taken in groups to the Messenger of God, they said to Ka’b b. Asad, “Ka’b, what do you understand. Do you not see that the summoner does not discharge [anyone] and that those of you who are taken away do not come back? By God, it is death!” the affair continued until the Messenger of God had finished with them.’

The Sahi (authentic) Hadith of Abu Dawud: Book 14, Number 2665:
Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu’minin: No woman of Banu Qurayzah was killed except one. She was with me, talking and laughing on her back and belly (extremely), while the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) was killing her people with the swords. Suddenly a man called her name: Where is so-and-so? She said: I I asked: What is the matter with you? She said: I did a new act. She said: The man took her and beheaded her. She said: I will not forget that she was laughing extremely although she knew that she would be killed.”
The very old Jewish man Az-Zabir had saved the life of a Muslim convert, Thabit b. Qays in the Bu’ath war. When Az-Zabir was about to be beheaded Thabit requested Muhammad to save the life of Az-Zabir and his family as a return to his favor. Muhammad agreed. Az-Zabir then asked Thabit b. Qays about the Jewish leaders such as Ka’b b. Asad and Huayy b. Akhtab, as he preferred to die rather than to live without them. Az-Zabir replied, “Then I ask you for the sake of the favor I once did for you to join me to my kinsmen, for by God there is no good in living after them. I will not wait patiently for God, not even [the time needed] to take the bucket of a watering trough, until I meet my dear ones.” So Thabit brought him forward, and he was beheaded. Abu Bakr commented “He will meet them, by God, in the Gehenna, there to dwell forever and forever.”
[this is the battle that gives explicit culling of all adult males including those that had begun to show pubic hair] Hadith from Sunaan Abu Dawud: Book 38, Number 4390: Narrated Atiyyah al-Qurazi: I was among the captives of Banu Qurayzah. They (the Companions) examined us, and those who had begun to grow hair (pubes) were killed, and those who had not were not killed. I was among those who had not grown hair.
After executing all the adult male Jews, Muhammad sent Sa’d b. Zayd al-Ansari with some captive women and children from the B. Qurayzah to Najd to sell them in the slave market.  Among the captive was a young woman called Rayhanh bt. Amr b. Khunafah [all her male relatives including her husband were executed under personal supervision of the prophet of Islam] and took her as his concubine. It is said that when Muhammad offered to make her his wife by embracing Islam, she declined. She preferred to remain a concubine to becoming a Muslim and said, “Messenger of God, rather leave me in your possession [as a concubine], for it is easier for me and for you.” [Some biographers claim that Rayhana eventually accepted Islam].

I think this is highly relevant as the terrorists were perhaps trying to send a message not only to non-Muslim Indians but more so to the Muslims of India who would connect the significance better than non-Musilms. If the reports of supposed torture [comment by Dr. Aaron Abraham, physician friend  of the slain Rabbi in Mumbai on Indian media, who has claimed the Rabbi's body] on the Jewish family, separate execution of the women, and deceptive negotiation with the commandos about hostages when they had already been executed, are confirmed then this will tie in exactly with the significance of this raid in Islamic theologian eyes.

For the Taleban-Qaeda and their various backers all over the middle-east, China, Iran, theologians of Saudi Arabia – this is the start of the signal for Muslims in the subcontinent, that those who are really “faithful” should see this as the command of the final offensive towards annihilation of the Jews and the “Qureysh” of the modern world – the Americans. The month of Dhul Quadah was used to attack Mumbai so ferociously and target Israelis because of Islamic historical significance of notorious Jew-liquidation campaigns by the prophet of Islam and show of strength to his opponents at Mecca in this “sacred month”. The genocide of the Banu Quraizah Jews by the Muslims in this context came immediately after the battle of the “trench” in which the leader of Islam was almost killed and was only saved by “falling into a ditch” and another Muslim resembling him becoming the centre of wrath of the enemy and being killed in error. This could be a message to the remaining terror modules and community support networks of Jihad within India to the effect that recent advances and attacks by the NATO forces with elimination of key commanders, is like the temporary setbacks of the “battle of the trench” and that the “faithful” should take this as the signal for the final campaign – to eliminate all “tribes” (read India, Israel etc) allied to the “Meccan Qureysh” (read Americans) before “conquering Mecca” (read USA).

But, I hope, the Islamic Jihadis get this message clearly into their heads – that they have made a tremendous blunder. Since many from the middle east do visit this site – they should clearly understand, that they have fallen a victim to propaganda from a certain section of regime sponsored historians of India and colonial neo-imperialist historiography of European origins, that “Hindus” are soft targets, and that they can be beaten to a pulp without much damage to Islam. Reality was that “Hindus” managed to survive, still maintaining all their liberal practices compared to Islam, over more than 1300 years of brutal fighting and resistance – a history of conflict and resistance that brought successive Islamic regimes to their knees, completely erased out of public discourse by Indian official historians under Western pressures for tactical reasons of the Cold War. What Islamists have done in Mumbai, has set in motion a process, by which the Hindu will galvanize into a nation and regime that will visit terrible retribution and possible complete eventual liquidation of Islam in most parts of Asia – this time around no imperialist regime will succeed to keep it in check.

It will be the height of political stupidity to think that this is going to be led by this or that party of Indians, the Congress or the BJP – not really, it will be a political force in the making from the grassroots that will coerce even the BJP if necessary to pursue a less opportunistic line, and will leave the shattered remains of both parties by the roadside in its march towards an extreme rightwing reaction against all things Islamic. I already feel sorry for the “common” Muslim who will have to bear the brunt of this reaction if they do not liquidate their theologians and reject the Jihadi core of Islam as ant-Islamic and not just un-Islamic – an outcome most unlikely I think!

India’s Islamophile regimes’ typical obsession is about giving highest priority to protection of Islam, and is the only non-Muslim majority country that sponsors and hugely subsidizes costly Hajj pilgrimage for Muslims and even uses government infrastructure overseas especially to provide for such pilgrimage. The reason for this is the steady decline in the voter fraction of the Congress as evident right from the first general elections in independent India (less than 50%) when it had hardly any opposition left thanks to the British who selectively wiped off the competitors of Nehru, their lackey and choice for continuation of their interests in India. In fact electoral laws that appeared to go against the Congress even as apparent in the that very first elections were amended at the behest of the Nehru government. This was thus a problem right from the start even as the two major most populous and influential opposition from people, those from Punjab and Bengal, were partitioned and traumatized and decimated under Islamic Jihad as allowed to develop by the British with most of their policymakers deciding to side in favour of Islam probably out of revenge for the loss of the Indian empire resulting from the anti-British movement spearheaded predominantly by the Hindus.

Indian Hindus have known for 1300 years what Islamic terror means, (see here) and Indian Hindus have fought back with the only tactic that is effective against Islamic terror – with similar tactics of deceptive, violent, sadistic attacks – this is how the non-collaborator Rajputs, the Vijaynagar empire, or the Marathas under Shivaji, or the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh were able to bleed the Sultanate and the Mughals to getting dismembered. Only after independence, which coincided with the start of Cold War, British pressure was high on India to protect and nurture Islam as part of whole range of strategy based around immunizing the south and middle east of Asia against communism. This was the reason, combined with Nehru’s increasing realization that over time, the British suppression and removal of credible opposition to him and his coteries would be neutralized as the basic forces within Indian non-Muslim society would reassert, that for the future the marginal Islamic vote would be crucial for the survival of the Congress in power. This led to a huge campaign to whitewash the record of Islam in India, by regime sponsored and dependent historians so that future generations of non-Muslims did not have access to knowledge and evidence that showed the real agenda and modus-operandi of Islam – while the madrassahs and Muslim religious educational institutions, systems were protected and continued to disseminate the actual Jihadic core message of the texts of Islam.

This has made generations of Indian Hindus unprepared psychologically for Islamic violence. But the trend has reversed once the British nurtured intelligentsia, historians, academics, and politicians began to die out from natural demographic factors – with more and more Indians being educated within India and being able to move out of India as well and becoming independent of government control and influence and finding out on their own about the real nature of Islam from resources not restricted (even if the rulers wish to) in the free world.  They are vilified by the whitewashers of the Thaparite school of Indian history for they realize the danger these new generations of India pose for the existence of the Islamophile regimes.

In the short term the only thing Indians can do is to have zero tolerance for politicians, media and academics that protect, justify, or do nothing against the ideological motivator for terror – Islam, and especially politicians at the centre of the federal system in whose tenure terrrorist attacks take place -simply try to give zero votes to each candidate of the regime in the next general elections – that is the only thing that will hurt these callous bootlickers of Islam.

Related previous post

The media under the overwhelming influence of a leftist political correctness imposed by almost 60 years of Islamophile and blatantly anti-Hindu propagandist regime dependent Thaparite school of Indian history, will continue to do damage control in favour of Islam, and the Indian political establishment will try to divert attention by hinting at “foreign hands”. But this is one damage that cannot really be covered. The bulk of the Indian population has disjointed itself psychologically from everything Islamic – including every element in the apparatus of state and civil society that appears to have sided with Islam, protected Islam or patronized Islam. If the BJP fails to give shape to this disjunction, the momentum of the “Hindu” will not stop, and we will see a new nationalist avowedly Hindu movement taking birth.

The Taleban, the Al Qaeda, Pakistani state and security apparatus that supplies and sources terror outfits and outrages in India, the ideological backbone from which modern Jihad took its inspiration – the return to orthodoxy movements of the Tabliqi Jamaat and the Deobandis in the subcontinent, in spite of all their tactical show of condemnation of terrorists as unIslamic (but not antiIslamic and not punishable like sexual offences by stoning or death), the communist imperialism of China which sponsored both Iran and Pakistan, all will now be clubbed together by the “Hindu” as the enemy – and anyone, any force in the world that sympathises, patronizes, justifies Islami Jihad will be silently assigned the status of enemy by the “Hindu”. The Congress’s political future is doomed, the BJP may not fare much better if it does not reflect this rising silent rage in the Hindus. The Congress will still survive in the next general elections but its political pre-eminence is now on inevitable decline.

As I have tried to warn many times in this blog, once this Hindu consolidation takes place, the days of Islam on the subcontinent are numbered. Once India itself frees itself of Islam, the new “Hindu” India will turn its attention to Pakistan and Bangladesh and the next round of retaliatory and liquidation moves against Islam will take place. Its start of the endgame in the  Indian subcontinent at least for Islam – a faint glimmer of hope in an otherwise overwhelming gloom.

Why did the Jihadis get so bold? They have got the clear message from the Left of Centre Indian regime currently in power that with the general elections next year in sight, the regime will do everything to convince the Muslim populations of India that the regime is prepared to go to any lengths to please Islam – what better method than to try and paint the “Hindu” – the  hated “infidel”, the “qufr”, whose land is to be looted by Jihad, whose women are to be raped and captured and enslaved by Jihad, and all whose cultural icons to be erased by Jihad, as the “bad guy” and therefore gain the gratitude of Islam.

The Islamists know that the Islamophile regime of India will use its state power to prevent any retaliation – the only language of retaliation and revenge that Islam understands will not be spoken to the Muslims. This whole game of Islamic Jihadi sadism on the non-Muslims of India would have been over forever in a matter of months if the “Hindus” decided and were allowed to take matters into their own hands. The Islamophile regime at the centre knows this very well and has used every means possible to prevent the majority community come to exactly such a conclusions – including traditional state influence and regime sponsored academics’ control over the media. It is possible, that Centre-Left has already decided or panicked that the next general elections could be quite bad for them and that the majority sentiment was veering away from them – so they desperately went out to ensure minority support which because of long term steady mobilization by Muslim theologians and infiltration from the neighbouring Muslim countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh has now significant vote swing capabilities in terms of sheer numbers.

The Centre-Left regime’s tactic is self-defeating. Its antics and Jihad’s singleminded agenda of destroying non-Muslim cultures has now more or less ensured that non-Muslims of India mostly have now come out of the traditional illusion of mythical peaceful advent of Islam in India propagandized by the Thaparite school of Indian history. There will be a huge campaign now mounted by the Indian media and the regime in power that the greatest need of the hour is for Indians to respect “communal harmony” – so that the only language Islam understands (and if spoken, historically, Islam always turned “peaceful” – for their greatest theological concern is to survive and increase in numbers) that of retaliation and liquidation of Islamic leadership and support bases, will not be used – giving time and confidence for Jihad to expand further in India. There will also be an attempt perhaps to divert attention and justify Jihadi action in two cliche modes (1) “we have to understand the frustrations that lead to such desperate actions!” (implying that Indians should concede more and more to Islam while similar logic should not be applied to non-Muslim frustration) (2) “it was because of the Hindu terror that Muslims reacted” – implying that Hindus should never think of resisting Jihad.

Non-Muslims of India should identify which political groups appease Jihad and Islam and vote accordingly.  At this stage, India will not survive, if Islam and its Jihadi agenda cannot be contained and liquidated – this will be the primary issue for the nation’s existence. If India survives only then can it deal with its economic problems – and non-Muslims have to consolidate their position with respect to Islam. For those in the West who have been supporting and still continue to think of protecting Islam in India as continuation of British Imperialist and Cold war western strategy – should get it into their myopic thick heads, that the fall of India to Islam will complete the pan Islamic regime running from NorthAfrica through the Middle East to Malaysia and Indonesia and will nicely cut the West off from all the major sources of world’s oil and the Asian markets.

It will not matter if the “Hindu” accused really were or were not involved in the blasts. Any calculation by the Centre Left of using this “case” to serve one or more of the three main possible objectives (1) in regional/provincial elections to gain  Muslim votes (2) demonize the “Hindu” and make it embarrassing for the common “Hindu” to vote from community and cultural affiliations (3) to distract the general and rising anger in non-Muslim populations of India about the de-facto helplessness or lack of political will in the Centre Left whose only strong stands against Islamic Jihadi terrorism excel in the volubility of their media statements, will prove futile. The Centre Left completely fails to understand the long-term shift in the general non-Muslim Indian consciousness towards a open recognition of the extremely retrogressive and traumatic role of Islam on the subcontinent (this recognition remained deeply submerged but dormant under official educational propaganda and patronage of Islam compared to denigration and demonization of the Hindu starting officially approved school textbooks which detail plenty of “evils” of “Hinduism” but none whatsoever in the revealed traditions).

By picking on a “Hindu” armyman  and a “Hindu” woman religious activist, ironically the Centre Left will realize soon what cultural icons they have created for the “Hindu” – symbols that will only gain stature if the government manages to prove them “guilty”. To the common Hindu mind, if they really carried out the “blasts”, they were for the first time in decades doing something in revenge or retaliation against persistent Islamic terror that started within India through Pakistan sponsored Talebani Jihad in Kashmir – in the face of what will appear to be consistent failure by the Centre Left to protect non-Muslims of India from Jihadi Sadism. This is the same strategy of “retaliation” from the population in a situation that appears to continue to provide relentless terror and repression “tolerated” or “indirectly protected” by a national government that was followed by the Palestine “Liberation” movement against Israel and was romantically lauded by the Centre Left for decades. This has proven quite successful for the Palestinians with Israel politically cornered, and the basis for this success, the gain of political legitimacy in the the minds of populations who had felt helpless and unprotected before has every likelihood of being repeated in the arena of social consciousness in India.

It is this tremendous blunder by the Centre Left in failing to read the basic social trend that will cause them to regret this incident in the decades to come. The Right of course in the future will come to realize this as a turning point that indicates the fundamental changes taking place in Indian society that ultimately will lead in its favour.

part 4

The recent investigations and attempts by the Mumbai ATS to implicate the so-called “Hindu Right Wing” in the blasts in the predominantly Muslim areas of Nanded and Malegaon in Maharashtra is significant for more reasons than the obvious immediate ones in the minds of the investigators or in their political “motivators” within the Congress led government both at the state as well as the national level as suggested by the political detractors of the Congress. Any speculation as to the political motivations to paint the “Hindu” as terrorist and equate with the “Islamic” terrorists with the next general elections in sight is good food for the “political” media. So far all the “brain mapping” and “modern” techniques of extraction of truth has failed to provide any basis for the speculative allegations against the so called “Hindu Right”. Scanning the media reaction and media trial by “secular” forces of the security apparatus’ attempts at “nailing” Islamic terrorists we can find a deep suspicion and derision of any “identification” of Islam with “terrorism” and where it becomes really indefensible – we hear loud protests that we should all actually look into the real “provocations” behind such “Muslim reactions”. The same voices appear to be instantly convinced about the legitimacy of the Mumbai ATS’s claims, and leads us to realize the real political affiliations of this “progressive” “neutral and objective” voices which are allowed solely to be voiced on the media. In any case these are all processes of short term duration played out in the immediate future.  We should look at the real significance of this phenomenon for the longer term.

The fact that some “Hindus” could decide to take matters into their own hands, was always a possibility, and I have repeatedly stressed this out here in my blog.  The root of this phenomenon goes back a long way into the history of the Indian subcontinent and how that history has been reconstructed in the modern period under the British and its successor regimes for their own hegemonistic purposes. The fundamental problem is that of the complete denial by regime dependent historians of the Nehruvian and post Nehruvian Congress-(pro-Soviet)-Leftist schools of Indian history of Islamic atrocities on the non-Muslims of India throughout the numerous invasions and conquests and the various Islamic state authorities, and the struggle carried on by the non-Muslims against such Islamic behaviour. The fact is that the memory of Muslim torture, rape, abduction and forced marriage of women, enslavement, extreme economic exploitation with religious justifications, carries on in non-Muslim groups who have strong traditions of intergenerational transfer of knowledge and experiences. The handing down of this memory, a basic distrust of all things Islamic, runs deep in most strongly bonded “Hindu” clans and communities that have faced Islamic onslaught and survived still maintaining their “Hindu” identity, and does not need the “official” vehicle of “historical education” under the watchful reconstructive eyes of the Thaparite school of Indian history.

Just as Islam failed to completely convert all Indians because of the intensive and long drawn out struggle against Islam – an aspect completely suppressed by the Thaparites as it would jeopardize their “idyllic” myth of peaceful conversions and perfect communal amity – the Thaparites failed to completely brainwash all Hindus and rewrite the history of Islam in India in their minds. The Hindu appears docile, compromising, philosophical, “other-worldly” etc., but this is a deceptive impression – for the story of their struggle and their survival against the ruthless barbarities of Islam have been edited out of public representation through the media or education. This long struggle, which preserved their culture to a great extent (although traumatized and showing the cultural effects of such trauma in “self-repression”) if studied properly and honestly, will show that this is a community which appears “loose”, divided, ritualistic and carrying a lot of baggage like “caste” which can mostly be traced surprisingly to modern colonial regimes of Islam and the British – but all these are mere superficial features, the social veneer hiding their actual strategic flexibility and determination that have continuously produced characters like the legendary founders of the Vijaynagar empire, or Shivaji and Ranjit Singh.

The transition to “independence” in India followed the general subcontinental pattern of elite mobilization to get control of state power and machinery established by a colonial regime for the elites’ monopolistic hegemonistic enjoyment. This meant that the British actually handed over power to a regime that was likely to remain in the British sphere of influence and carry out policies in favour of British interests. The British helped liquidate opposition to Nehru within India by using discriminatory repression against likely alternative popular candidates, because Nehru showed significant psychological disjunction from the majority culture on the one hand and great affinity for the British “taste” or Islam on the other- thereby ensuring continuation of long term British imperialist design on the subcontinent.

The apparatus of state control under colonial regimes depended on the apparatus of personal power, and this structure was retained essentially even after transition. This implies retention of personnel and systems faithful to the previous colonial masters, with direct and indirect structures of ideological and cultural hegemony of the British continuing through various mechanisms like education (the current Prime Minister proudly reminded his British audience once that he was an “Oxonian” himself and that “many Oxonians” have in the past gone forth to rule India). This regime embarked on the project of redoctrinating the forthcoming generations of Indians into a soporific mythical history of India where everything “Hindu” was retrogressive and evil, and only those aspects of Hinduism which tried to be syncretic with the revealed traditions were worth treating without disdain – and all the revealed traditions as practised or introduced in India as paragons of virtue and as liberating for Indian society (The Thaparites actually manage to “confess” this agenda in their public posturings).   Such indoctrination programs could be maintained only as long as the generation represented in the state apparatus derived from colonial affiliations, remained active. Natural causes progressively diminish the proportion of such elements in the apparatus of social control, and it was a matter of time only that newer generations of Indians from the majority community would reassert their deep cultural affiliations to their own community.

All this will lead to a gradual strengthening of the “Hindu” community bonds, and cultural affinities. Modern generations of professionals or intellectuals will gradually erode or eliminate practises that are seen as retrogressive or obstructive towards reassertion of “Hindu” hegemony.  This cultural consolidation would not have taken a political turn, if the Indian regimes did not try to denigrate or delegitimize this “Hindu” cultural identity. Blatant whitewashing and patronizing of religions like Islam, in complete contradiction to social historical memory of the “Hindus”, alienated the community from political forces that supported such regimes. We have to remember, that there are concrete case studies of how Islamic forces were encouraged by such regimes when faced with possible electoral defeat at the hands of “leftists”, beginning in the 60′s – long before the rise of the BJP.  Similarly the Kashmiri Islamic aggression, the atrocities and ethnic cleansing of non-Muslim Kashmiris, continued without hindrance under these very same regimes beginning in the 70′s and intensifying into the late 80′s, long before the BJP became a significant electoral force. Early 70′s also showed that the essential character of Islam on the subcontinent had remained unchanged from its first appearance through the Arab raids into Sindh – through the brutal massacre, organized rape, and destruction of cultural icons of the “Hindus” in the then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. All these factors combined with the relentless terrorist activities of Islamic groups supported by Pakistan, forced the “Hindu” cultural consolidation process to take a political turn -as Hindus probably came to realize that they would need to control the apparatus of state power to ensure survival against violently retrogressive Jihadi Islam whose sole aim is to completely liquidate all traces of non-Muslim cultures.

The more the “Hindu” is demonized, and Islam raised sky-high in praise, the greater will be the politicization of this essentially cultural reassertion. Retaliation against atrocities that appear to continue under state “non-chalance” has been found to be effective – and is romantically praised in many circles both in the West and India – take the case of the Palestine “Liberation” movement for example. The Indian state has not been able to stop Kashmiri Jihadi Islami atrocity nor has it been able to prevent explosions at huge human costs sourced by Islamic militants. It was only a matter of time before some “Hindu” thought of retaliation seeing in the government’s consistent failure  and indirect “encouragement” and protection of Islam – the root ideological cause and motivation for such violence (and not the humans who are brainwashed at madrassah’s from childhood in hatred of the Qafir). Just as in Palestine, or Algeria, such retaliation will unfortunately prove quite effective – and the “villains” of today have every likelihood of turning “heroes” or “liberators” of the future. A long term side-effect of continued demonization of the “Hindu” will be an increasing acceleration of the community towards the “Right”, and I feel that the process has now become irreversible. The next general elections may not reflect this, but over a longer span of 10-20 years the trend will be evident.

This Right-wing tendency will not necessarily be characterized by a dominance of “Brahmins” (as its opponents hopefully try to prophecy). The leadership is more likely to come from the “middle/upper middle” order of the social hierarchy, and surprisingly or in complete contradiction to “social wisdom” could even contain so-called “backward castes”. This wil be a defensive consolidation initially, and then turn increasingly aggressive towards all forces it sees as potentially hazardous for its cultural survival. Once this trend takes political shape, there is hardly any force left in the subcontinent that will be able to survive against it without huge foreign intervention. This Right wing consolidation also has effects on the periphery. Its immediate beneficial effects will perhaps be first felt by Sri Lanka and Nepal. But more of this later!

part 5

As I have speculated before, the elections will take place only if the two major groupings in Bangladeshi elite can be coerced into agreeing to the long term agenda of the military and its international allies – which come under two major mutually dependent but antagonistic international groups – the predominantly Christian, white industrial export oriented West, and the Islamic oil-gas exporters of the Middle East (historically no less colour based racist compared to Europe – for this it is enough to look at the Arabic and Persian Islamic chroniclers who inevitably refer to the people of Indic origin abusively and derisively as “black faced Hindoo”, or are always very conscious of “white” or “black” colour in the Indians and write appreciatively of “white” whenever they see them in an otherwise “dark” subcontinent – see Firishta, Biladuri, Masudi, and many others, especially the Arabic ones). The mutual dependence between these two international “blocks” (not homogeneous, they have their own internal conflicts, but here I refer to their block nature in terms of Bangladesh only) is over “energy” and “markets”, and the conflict is of course over “ideological domination” over the world (in both religions, historically at a practical implementation religion has always been very nearly indistinguishable from biological greed – i.e., religions simply justify and “legalize” taking over of the biological resources of the “others”).

The Awami League has shown its flexibility already (as it has done also on many occasions previously) by possibly agreeing to the terms and conditions which like many other such “agreements” before, will never be made public. As I have also speculated before, the two weapons of “persuasion” in this has most likely been (1) mediation by the West (which probably affected the change in the “mood” and “modus operandi” of the caretaker government over the last one year from aggressive deconstruction of the political apparatus to rehabilitation of the political apparatus) (2) the use of the trump card of the “Jamaat” – which typically is used by the military-feudal-business elite leadership to keep the “anti-Urdu non-Jihadist Bengali” elements in check.

The case of the BNP is more interesting. I have already written about my assessment that the elite and its social support heavily leans towards Islamic authoritarianism, and they remain the overall dominant force in Bangladesh politics. This ideological leaning should not be confused with formal party affiliations, as its elements will appear all across the political spectrum with the exception of perhaps the extreme Left. One of the features of any society where Islam has managed to finish off “almost all ideological opponents” is a distinctive feature  of the mass psychological acceptance of “authority” endorsed by the Islamic theologians- which is consistent with the basic tenor of the Quranic and Hadithic “revelation”  as a submission to some authority – and inevitably to the personification of that authority. In the struggle for claim over this authority the theologians always appear to have been stronger, and have always managed to keep Islamic societies closer to their own fossilized mindset that lives in the 7th century Arabian desert. Because Islam cannot deal with the complexity of modern science and technologically complex socio-economic superstructure, the theologians whose sole power derives from the existence of as near a copy as possible to the society of the prophet of Islam, the theocracy is ruthless in taking societies back as far as possible to their primitive ideal.

In the background of the history of Bangladesh, all this implies the incomplete Islamization of the region stemming from the late intrusion of Islam into the heartlands of Bengal, and the protracted struggle between predatory Islam and the non-Muslims as evident in numerous legends (which sometimes reveal the military resistance and the essentially initial military subjugation of mainly non-violent Buddhist groups followed by supposedly “peaceful” conversion as per modern propaganda – typically in modern renditions of the “spiritual” conquest by Islamic preachers and adventurers the chronicled accounts of initial military raids are either completely avoided or when undeniable are “mumbled” away  as “defensive” actions, and the historically significant clues as to the presence of some major Islamic state-military machine in close proximity is also suppressed) and significant clues in the British censuses which indicate slightly less than half the population still remaining non-Muslim at the beginning of British Imperialist presence. This “incomplete” Islamization of Bengal was always a problem with the theocracy of Islam and their closely linked patrons in Islamic state machinery. To a certain extent, with the help of the British, and the political dishonesty of the Nehru-Gandhi axis, they managed to revive the classic Jihadi Islamic strategy of ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims to capture land, wealth and women of non-Muslims, during the partition of India to create Pakistan, and thereafter manipulate social conditions to ensure that non-muslims continue to “emigrate” out of Islamic Bengal.

The process having accelerated during the buildup to the Liberation War of 1971, (exact proportions of non-Muslims raped, murdered or forced to flee as refugees compared to overall estimates are never concretely discussed, and typically “patriotically” dismissed as all part of overall Bangladeshi casualties implying that any further demographic analysis which might reveal the basic Islamic Jihadi bias against non-Muslims would be “unpatriotic”), Bangladesh’s elite cleverly managed three basic objectives (1) reducing the number of non-Muslims (the census revelations of missing Hindu populations are indirectly blamed on the “unpatriotic” India leaning mindset of “Hindus”) and gaining their lands (the Enemy Property Act which was practically a license for Muslims to take over “Hindu” property without any compensation enacted by Pakistan was retained for a long time in independent Bangladesh) (2) manage to exclude West Pakistani elite from exploitation of Bangladesh resources which the elite could now control for their own private profit through the achievement of an independent nation (3) reestablish more direct ties and connections with the Islamic heartland as an independent nation without having to go through the regimes of Pakistan.

We have to remember that a substantial portion of Bangladeshi elite are ethnically descended from pre-Islamic non-Muslim elite, who as late as the waning Mughal period were converting into Islam to preserve their political and feudal existence. This is also evident in the anthropological composition and appearance of the spectrum of elite leadership – even if they have high flying claims of descent from “illustrious” Arabic or Persian Islamic roots.  The fundamental concern of this elite is to hold on to power and hence overall control of exploitation of resources. There could also be a basic continuity of cynical Brahmanical priestly theocracy under the new garb of Islam which provides lots of opportunities to reduce embarrassment for evidence of personal biological greed compared to pre-Muslim ideologies. The incomplete Islamization has paradoxically given rise to this peculiar situation of polity in Bangladesh – it has transformed Brahminical theocratic exploitation (the Brahmins could have been eager converts as they were numerically weaker compared to the Buddhists, and could have found a better excuse for their greed  in Islamic formalism) into a Islam justified feudal mindset and claims of authority. Having separated from the main subcontinental culture with violence, the elite needs the support of the Islamic power centres of Saudi Arabia and Iran, to maintain the predominance of Islamic theology which would allow a more natural submission of the non-elite to that of the elite – this comes out in the frequent defiant admissions of favouring “Islam” or “refusal to take action against Islamic theocracy” by spokespersons of the military-elite “caretaker” governments as well as “past” leaders from the military.

In the mindset of the elite, the key to holding onto state power is the deepening of Islamic authority under their political control, as otherwise the cultural tendencies of the Bengali’s (like their non-Muslim brothers in West Bengal) would lead them to experimentation of the most radical of modern ideologies which usually spells disaster for what one Bangladeshi author has translated as “timber mullah’s” (I would rather translate it as “dimwit”).

The Jamaat has been re-kitted out in formal political clothes that would make it less embarrassing for the military political elite  in its international posturing towards the West, and promptly adopted into the political process. This is the key force of Islamic theocracy, and will never be abandoned by the elite. It will be used to keep those in favour of modernization and weakening of theocracy in the left-of-centre/centre as in the fourteen party alliance around the AL, under pressure. It will also be used to bring around the remaining right wing of the elite’s broader social basis of support  based around the BNP into the agenda of the military leadership. The BNP leadership may rail its rhetoric against the “current government” in field “rabble-rousing” for political credibility, but incredible as it may sound, it is the wee little tail of Jamaat that will wag the dog of the right wing “led” by the BNP.

With consistent and persistent state patronage and extensive foreign support, Islamic theocracy has substantial hold on the common Bangladeshi now. It will be the height of political stupidity to assume that the Right has taken a knocking and will come out the worst in the “elections”. The campaign of the sector Commanders against the Jamaat and the existing “Rajakars” will not be very successful, as Jamaat’s role has been carefully politically rehabilitated by the military and allied political elite. Unless the West has worked out a compromise with the Saudis, to include and give a share of power to the AL, the military will actually ensure that the forces “centred” around Jamaat will win the elections to form the new regime.

This regime will be characterized by a strengthened Islamic theocracy, greater role of Islam in the long term internal and international policies, greater indirect military support, involvement in, control and mobilization of the Islamic forces, long-term eventual rise of Jamaaat as the dominant political force, greater penetration of the influence of the theologians into academics and the media and overt and covert liquidation of cultural entities deemed to be a threat to absolute eventual control by the Islamic forces (more of incidents like vandalization of the statue of the “integrative” “syncretic” Baul “emperor” will take place without any state retribution).

Part 2