The RSS-combine must adhere to the law of the land to solve the Ram temple imbroglio so that Hindus and Muslims live in harmony. Demanding that Ayodhya should be earmarked as the holy land of the Hindus only will add fuel to the fire of communal unrest.
Now that the Ram temple issue has lost some momentum with the Bharatiya Janata Party, cow slaughter is being used to whip up communal tempers with the introduction of a prevention of cow slaughter and preservation of cattle bill introduced in Karnataka in June this year.
While one does not expect the BJP to keep out of communal politics, one does hope that the Congress handles its unprecedented misdeeds of 1984 in an honest way
A spiritual zest to worship the Goddess Ragnya Devi (to whom this temple is dedicated) was in the air. A big congregation of local Muslims greeted the visiting pandits with cold drinks and kheer. Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and many other Kashmiri ministers also turned up for this emotional occasion, marked by the reunion of many pandits.
What a sorry state we have come to that people like Uddhav Thackeray and Narendra Modi, who are blatantly communal, are members of the National Integration Council, which is meant to combat communalism!
ISLAMIC SEMINARIES issue fatwas by the dozen, day in and day out. It is only on few occasions that these get media publicity, and the quantum of media publicity is also not uniform. Some fatwas hog all the lime light while others are hidden on the back pages in small column centimetres while few others are never taken note of. Which are the e ones that garner maximum media interest and curiosity? This is the question which media pundits can introspect and debate, but few observations are in order.
THIS MAY 2010, the UPA completed one year in the seat of power for the second term. Now it is being christened as UPA II and political pundits are evaluating its performance on various scales of performance, foreign policy, economic performance, farmers’ suicides, foreign affairs, etc. One point which does not find much mention while evaluating its performance is the plight of minorities during this year. The ground reality is that after the Gujarat carnage and Kandhamal violence, the minorities are feeling a great amount of intimidation and fear over the curtailment of their democratic right to equality.
THE AJMER bomb blasts took place inside the holy shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti on October 11, 2007, killing two people. In the wake of this, the Union Home Minister — in his standard statement — said that it was the handiwork of HUJI and Lashkar-e-Toiba type groups who indulge in these activities aimed at disrupting communal harmony in the country. Three years down the line, an RSS functionary, Devendra Gupta, and his associates have been accused of triggering this blast and have been arrested.
MANY SEX scandals related to ‘holy men’ have come to the surface during the last few weeks. It’s not that these are the first to have been brought to social attention; such incidents have been coming to social notice time and again. The present ones’ about Swami Nityanand and Ichhchadhari Baba (Bhimanand) have highlighted this issue in a very intense fashion as these scandals are blatant.
THE RSS is one of the major organisations in the country which influences and controls different political and semi political organisations, calling themselves the Sangh Parivar. It does claim to be a cultural organisation, but it is implementing its political agenda of achieving a Hindu nation by creating organisations which implement its ideology and political agenda at different layers, by different means. While its progenies claim that they are autonomous, their autonomy is a ‘controlled autonomy’. The boundaries of their autonomy are decided by the RSS, which directly or indirectly controls them.
