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Umh!, Whats this? |
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. |