BENCY'S WORLD

Within a few unlikely seconds, a pair of size 10 shoes have become the most destructive weapon the people of Iraq have managed to throw at the occupying powers, after nearly six years of occupation and formidable resistance. One Iraqi writer called the shoes, hurled by a journalist at George Bush, "Iraq's weapon of comprehensive destruction".While the uprisings of Falluja, Najaf, Basra and Baghdad against the occupation will always remain as landmarks of a people resistingoccupation, these incredible seconds have united Iraqis in the most dramatic fashion.Contrary to most media coverage, the 28-year-old TV reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi made history not by merely throwing a pair of shoes, thehighest expression of insult in Iraqi culture, at the US president, but by what he said while doing so and as he was smothered by US andIraqi security men. He groaned as they dragged him out of the press conference. They succeeded in silencing him - and according to hisbrother he was bea...

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Madhya Pradesh has set a sort of record in the country, with the arrest of a minister (under directions of the Election Commission) for threatening, insulting and intimidating a returning officer. He is to be prosecuted under Sections 186 (obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).If a minister has the effrontery to browbeat a returning officer in an attempt to coerce her into rejecting the nomination papers of the Congress candidate, only those in the higher echelons of bureaucracy are to blame. The State IAS officers, the chief secretary downwards, have been behaving more like the retainers of the ruling party than as the officers accountable to the Constitution and the law. They did not feel ashamed while trooping to a contractor's house to get orders and were often seen be...

While it is now known that the Indian Mujahideen which claimed responsibility for the Ahmedabad blasts, is another name for the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, the fact remains that the terror outfits have an entirely new agenda. Disrupting India's economic progress through engineering terror attacks is very much its prime focus, but what has changed is how it proposes to go about the task. The Intelligence Bureau says terror outfits are upset that they have not managed to garner mass support from Indian Muslims. With the number of increasing terror strikes, many influential Muslim organisations have slammed the terrorism as un-Islamic, and this has been causing concern to the outfits waging war in the name of Islam. To counter this, the IB says the Indian Mujahideen has put together a twin strategy. Its primary aim is to take the heat off SIMI and to give jihad a more Indian orientation. The IB says the second plan, which is more worrisome, is to garner support from loc...

After the March 12, 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, the terror coordinators in Pakistan realised it was folly to rely on gangsters to conduct terror operations. They used the underworld in 1993 because they did not have anyone then to do the logistics. They had the bombs but they needed people to place them. After many of the accused in the 1993 blasts were arrested, the terror coordinators realised that when the underworld is used, secrecy is never maintained. These underworld people also talk. Also, the underworld is mercenary, doing it for money or because "Bhai ne kaha karne ke liye (the Boss told us to do it)) -- and not for the qoum (the community) or mazhab (faith). After the communal riots of 1993, the terror coordinators realised they had a readymade infrastructure in groups like SIMI and Al Hadees. After the Gujarat riots a whole number of revenge forces have mushroomed. They usually consist of white collar individuals, novices without a criminal record. They are pious, pe...

Consider this - religious conversions are permissible if they are genuine, and not brought about by fraud or coercion. That many reasonable people would agree with this statement demonstrates the extent to which the Hindu right has transformed the terms of public debate in India. What, after all, do "fraud" and "coercion" mean? Of course, no decision taken on the basis of actual physical force, or the threat of it, can be legitimate... But nobody believes that conversion "by the sword" is an issue today. (It is another matter that if it had ever been seriously practised in India, Muslims would not be a mere 12 per cent of the population, and Christians less than 3 per cent, after centuries of rule.) Going by the last election manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party, fraud and coercion refer to "promises of social or economic benefits" but many opponents of the BJP, too, would endorse this interpretation. Genuine religious conversion, on the other...

Chandra Mohan, a gifted art student of the faculty of arts of Sayajirao Giakwad University, Baroda had to be in jail for five days (May 2007) for the 'crime' of painting an assignment for his degree. The problem was that the painting he made was not to the liking of the BJP camp. When the display of the paintings was going on for assessment by the teachers, BJP leader, Neeraj Jain attacked the exhibition with his band of supporters. The police put Chandra Mohan behind the bars, Neeraj Jain, who had violated the law by entering the university came out with a sense of pride for saving, protecting the honor of 'his religion' or a religion, which is the base of his party. As the matters unfolded the students of the University peacefully protested against this breach of their right to learn and against the false implication of one of their fellow students by the barbarians in the garb of religion. The Vice Chancellor of Baroda university, Manoj Soni who is wedded to the poli...

Perzania, a film based on a true story in the backdrop of Gujarat violence, sensitively portraying the plight of a Parsi family, whose son goes missing during the carnage, was released all over the country barring Gujarat. Earlier to this, another film, Fanaa starring Amir Khan, who personally sympathized openly with the plight of those displaced due to the Narmada dam project, could also not be screened in Gujarat. What is the social and political scenario as we are just a month away from the fifth anniversary of Godhra train accident and the Gujarat carnage?Gujarat carnage was very different from the communal violence which took place in Independent India so far. Here one could most clearly see the well planned violence unleashed on the pretext of Godhra train accident, duly supported by the state Government under the patronizing eye of the central government. While every possible rule of the law was violated by the authorities, the hapless victims were left to rot in the refugee cam...

Beginning this twenty Fourth February, RSS combine is going to undertake programs in different parts of the country to celebrate the centenary year of RSS second Sarsnghchalak (supreme dictator), Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, known in Sangh circles as Shri Guruji. At a time when the communal common sense is seeping strongly, propagating his ideology will definitely be detrimental to the democratic values of the country. Golwalkar penned a small book, 'We or our Nationhood Defined' (We…), which gives an outline of his ideology. Later his articles were published as a compilation, 'Bunch of Thoughts'. In both these books and also in various other outpourings of his, he denigrates democracy and pluralism on one hand and upholds fascist concept of nationhood and sectarian version of culture on the other. His writing is most intimidating to the minorities in particular. He was the chief of RSS for 33 long years and was instrumental in giving RSS a direction, which assumed menaci...