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Newscan / February  2001                                                                                                                        <<<Go to index page

Discrimination Saudi style
Senior Indian mission officials in Riyadh claim that more than 23,000 Hindus of Indian origin have converted to Islam in the past decade, motivated by greater benefits to accruing to persons who are Muslim, in Saudi Arabia. According to a report carried in The Statesman, state-provided facilities in the Saudi kingdom distinguish and discriminate: families of accident victims or survivors of victims of murder who are Muslim get 100,000 Saudi riyals as compensation; a Christian family gets half the amount that is 50,000 riyals and a Hindu family, one-fifteenth; 6,666 riyals exactly.

Of crimes, policemen and connections
Psychological rehabilitation gone all wrong? In it’s bid to clip the wings off militancy, the Punjab police has, since  1993 been inducting militants turned approvers into the rungs of the state police. Now, over the past years these ‘cats’ a they were termed, turned policemen have been found committing worse crimes than those that took place at the height of militancy; for example ‘supari’ kiings of innocents. Worse than the crimes themselves, these ‘cats’ have been receiving protection from seniors within the state police causing widespread resentment and outrage.
A strong protest was lodged against the growing crimes by ex-militant turned policemen in Ludhiana a few weeks ago. The conduct of one Gurmeet Singh, alias Pinky,who held the rank of Inspector when he shot down, in cold blood young Avtar Singh and seriously injured his father –simply for being asked to move out of the way –has fueled citizen’s outrage. Allegations include the fact that these ‘cats’ enjoy the protection of seniors within the force. While the Moga SP who was accused of protecting Gurmeet Singh has staunchly denied this, while praising Pinky for his services, there has been an open denouncement of Gurmeet Singh by the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Ludhiana who described him as a ‘monster’. There are as many as three petitions pending against Gurmeet Singh in court and following this denouncement he has been demoted to the post of head constable.
Gurmeet Singh’s case is not isolated. Another ‘cat’, Joginder Singh who was also brought into the Punjab police was notorious for land grabbing from a widow in Jagran and also introducing contract killing into Punjab; he began with the killing of a Canadian girl who had come and married in Punjab without he consent of her family. Joginder Singh even got a senior citizen falsely implicated in a murder case, it is alleged. Another such case is that of  former militant turned assistant superintendant of police, Dalbir Singh who allegedly kiiled both the senior SP, Patiala, Sital Das and SP, R.S.Brar in August 1988 inside the Civil Lines police station, Ludhiana.

Numbers in discourse
The Indian Census 2001, the fourteenth such, after the first was conducted by the British, in 1872 began this month, and is expected to be completed in a few weeks. Though it seems a routine even tiresome exercise, it’s value cannot be underrated, influencing as it does economic, social and political planning, the works of academics, and last but not the least, communal discourse. Certain new and specific features are special to the fourteenth census including the choice of an individual not to confine herself or himself to a particular religious denomination, among others. A major controversy revolving around the census is the government’s motives in dictating that those people who declare they belong to a Scheduled caste must chose religious affiliation from a limited three categories arbitrarily fixed by the government. A Scheduled caste, or Dalit, Indian citizen is being forced to chose only between the Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist faiths, and is not allowed to claim that he belongs to the Muslim, Christian, animist, ‘indigenous, agnostic,  or no-faith  categories. This has serious implications for the total numbers game, those dalits who are Christian or Muslim, denied  being counted as belonging to the scheduled castes; conversely the assumption that all scheduled caste persons are Hindu or Buddhist or Sikh will seriously affect the final count and resultant assumptions. 

Afghan Hindus in Germany denied visas to India
Hindu refugees fleeing the religious fanaticism of the Taleban and the civil war in Afghanistan have found shelter in Germany, but are being denied visas to India. Hindu refugees in Germany have complained to The India Abroad News service that they are being prevented by India’s red tape from maintaining their “spiritual links” with India. Not only are they not allowed to visit holy places in India, they are also prevented from immersing the ashes of their dead in the Ganges, as prescribed by the Hindu faith. 
There are some 8,000 Afghan Hindus in Germany, mostly in Hamburg, Frankfurt, Essen and Cologne. Cologne alone has two Afghan Hindu organizations, each of which has set up a Hindu temple. Kewal Nagpal, who had an import-export business in Afghanistan and now works as an administrator of a Hindu temple in Cologne run by an Afghan association called the Afghanische Hindu Gemeinde (AHG), lost his mother four-and-a-half months back. Her ashes are lying in an urn in a funeral home in Cologne, awaiting the holy immersion. Nagpal pays Deustch Mark 40 as storage charges for the urn at the funeral home as he can’t keep the ashes in his house, according to Hindu faith. He would like to take the ashes to the holy Hindu pilgrim town of Hardwar in India to immerse them in the Ganges. Apparently, the Indian government refused to grant him a visa because of “security reasons,” he was told by the Indian Embassy in Bonn.

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