யாருக்கு சுதந்திரம்?

66-வது சுதந்திர தினத்தை நமது தேசம் கொண்டாடி முடித்து இருக்கிறது. ஆங்கிலேயர்கள் நமது தேசத்தின் மீதான ஆக்கிரமிப்பை விட்டொழித்துவிட்டு சென்ற பிறகு நாம் ஏராளமானவற்றில் முன்னேறியிருக்கிறோம். சாதனைகள் நமது சுதந்திரத்திற்கு புகழ் சேர்க்கும் என்பதில் ஐயமில்லை. சுதந்திரத்தை விட மதிப்பான வேறெதுவும் இவ்வுலகில் மனிதனுக்கு இல்லை எனலாம்.

“சாரே ஜஹான்சே அச்சாஹ், ஹிந்துஸ்தான் ஹமாரா
ஹம் புல்புலேன் இஸ்கி, ஏ குல்ஸிதான் ஹமாரா…”

“பரந்த உலகில் சிறந்தது எங்கள் இந்தியா
இந்திய பூந்தோட்டத்தின் பறவைகள் நாங்கள்
அதன் மணமும் குணமும் எங்கள் உயிர் மூச்சு…..”

Labor official wants laws eased for long-term expats

Abdullah Sadiq Dahlan JEDDAH: Foreign workers who have been living in Gulf countries for 25 years or more should be granted free iqamas (work/residency permits) or permanent resident status outside the sponsorship system, says Abdullah Sadiq Dahlan, the Kingdom’s representative to the Geneva-based International Labor Organization (ILO). In an interview with Arab News, Dahlan also suggested that the Kingdom reform the citizenship system to open the way for long-term legal residents to acquire naturalization. “This group of expatriates has become deeply rooted in our society and their return back to their respective countries has become a real problem for them,” he said. Dahlan described the new regulations to obtain Saudi nationality, issued about two years ago, as “pioneering and in favor of foreign manpower,” but he also said more needs to be done for long-term foreign workers. “We should further develop investment regulations for these foreigners in order to enable them to practice business and trade according to certain rules and without certain fees.” He said that foreigners working under the sponsorship of Saudis run more than half of the small establishments in the Kingdom. “We have to facilitate the process that will enable the foreigners who have stayed for a long time in the Kingdom to easily obtain Saudi nationality,” he said, also suggesting that such workers should be exempt from having to renew their iqamas every two years. Dahlan suggested that Saudi Arabia do more to retain and benefit from the labor skills that workers acquire when they spend so much time working in the Kingdom. “The GCC countries and Saudi Arabia cannot dispense with foreign manpower in the foreseeable future. We will continue to need thousands of doctors, pharmacists, engineers, technicians, experts and skilled labor to meet our demand,” he said. Regarding labor abuses, Dahlan said that “only” 20,000 to 30,000 labor disputes are reported annually in the Kingdom. “This is small when you take into account that there are about six million foreign workers in the country,” he said. “I can safely say that both the Saudi government and the Saudi private sector are keen to apply international labor laws on the foreign manpower. If there are any violations, they are mostly individual in nature. This happens in most parts of the world.” Dahlan stressed the fact that the Kingdom will not abide by international labor regulations that contradict Shariah, such as labor equality between men and women. “This agreement contains many articles which are against our values and traditions, not to mention Islam,” he said. On women’s employment, Dahlan said the atmosphere created by the reformist reign of King Abdullah, which puts particular stress on education, research and dialogue, have opened doors for the employment of women who are now involved in the process of decision-making in the commercial sector through their participation in the chambers of commerce, labor committees and companies. “Thousands of women are now working in the business sector.” The representative stressed that the Kingdom was keen to sign and endorse most of ILO’s agreements and said the last in this regard was the agreement preventing child labor. “Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries in the world that has no child laborers. The few children we see in the streets are not Saudis and are not workers; you can call them street children,” he said. The board of directors of the chambers of commerce and industry should also include representatives of foreign companies and foreign investors, he added. Asked about the impact of the current world financial crisis on the presence of foreign manpower in the Kingdom, Dahlan did not believe that it would have any adverse influence on them. “I do not expect any decisions to expel the millions of foreign workers from our labor market,” he said recalling the announcement made by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah a few months ago that $400 billion would be spent on government development projects over the coming years. “This meant that spending on the development projects would continue and so our need for foreign manpower would always be there.” He said the presence of foreign manpower in the Kingdom is an economic decision linked to the theory of demand and supply and not a political one. “Arab and Asian countries exporting manpower to the Kingdom should not have any worries in this regard,” he asserted. He, however, said the structure of foreign manpower might change in the future from an unskilled labor to a skilled one. Asked about the practice of not renewing the iqamas of certain job titles and the recruitment of doctors and engineers on worker visas, Dahlan said the issue needed to be resolved so that the job titles were commensurate with the qualifications in the system of iqama. He said the continued upgrading of labor laws would settle many complaints that were now being filed at labor offices and human rights organizations. Dahlan called for accepting the children of foreigners in government schools against certain fees or else allowing these foreigners to open their own schools so they were not forced to send their children home for studies.

EXCLUSIVE: India's secret torture chambers

- Imaging: Jijo Sebastian; Photos: Shutterstock They are our own Gitmos. Where, far away from the eyes of the law, 'enemies of the state' are made to 'sing'. THE WEEKinvestigates By Syed Nazakat Little Terrorist, as the intelligence sleuths came to call him, turned out to be a hard nut to crack. No amount of torture would work on 20-year-old Mohammed Issa, who was picked up from Delhi on February 5, 2006. The Delhi Police believed that he had a hotline to Lashkar-e-Toiba deputy chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhwi, who later masterminded the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. At a secret detention centre in Delhi, the police and intelligence officers tried every single torture method in their arsenal-from electric shock to sleep deprivation- to make Issa sing. He stuck to his original line: that he had come from Nepal to visit a relative in Delhi. Only, they refused believe him. According to the police, the youth from Uttar Pradesh, who had moved to Nepal in 2000 along with his family after his father, Irfan Ahmed, was accused in a terrorism case, returned to India to set up Lashkar modules in the national capital. More than six months after he was picked up, the police announced his arrest on August 14. He has since been shifted to the Tihar jail. His lawyer N.D. Pancholi said Issa was kept in illegal custody for months. If not, let the police say where he was between February 5 and August 15, he challenged. Issa could have been detained in any of Delhi's joint interrogation centres, used by the police and intelligence agencies to extract precious information from the detainees using methods frowned upon by the law. As one top police officer told THE WEEK in the course of our investigation, these torture chambers spread across the country are our "precious assets". They are our own little Guantanamo Bays or Gitmos (where the US tortures terror suspects from Afghanistan and elsewhere for information) . Not many admit their existence, because doing so could result in human rights activists knocking at their doors and bad press for the smartly dressed intelligence men. It is a murky and dangerous world, according to K.S. Subramanian, Tripura's former director-general of police, who has also served in the Intelligence Bureau. "Such sites exist and are being used to detain and interrogate suspected terrorists and it has been going on for a long time," he told THE WEEK. "Even senior police officers are reluctant to talk about the system." So are people who have been to these virtual hells that officially do not exist. THE WEEK has identified 15 such secret interrogation centres-three each in Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir, two in Kolkata and one in Assam. (One detention centre that is shared by all security and law enforcement agencies is in Palanpur, Gujarat.) Their locations have been arrived at after speaking to serving and retired top officers who had helped set up some of these facilities. Those who have spent time in these places had no idea where they are. They were taken blindfolded and were allowed no visitors. The only faces they got to see were those of the interrogators, day in and day out. The biggest of the three detention centres in Mumbai, the Aarey Colony facility in Goregaon, has four rooms. The Anti-Terrorism Squad questioned Saeed Khan (name changed), one of the accused in the Malegaon blasts of September 2006, here. He was served food at irregular intervals (led to temporary disorientation) and was denied sleep. Another secret detention centre maintained in the city by the ATS at Kalachowky has a sound-proof room. Sohail Shaikh, accused in the July 2006 train bombings, was held here for close to two months. "He was kept in isolation for days together," said an officer. "He crumbled after being subjected to hostile sessions. Intentional infliction of suffering does not always yield immediate results. Sometimes you have to wait for many days for the detainee to break. It is a tedious process." The smallest of the three facilities at Chembur has just two rooms. Parvez Ahmed Radoo, 30, of Baramulla district in Kashmir, was illegally detained in Delhi for over a month for allegedly trying to plot mass murder in the national capital on behalf of the Jaish-e-Mohammed. The Delhi Police's chargesheet says he was arrested from the Azadpur fruit market in Delhi on October 14, 2006. But according to Parvez's flight itinerary, he travelled from Srinagar to Delhi on September 12 on SpiceJet flight 850. The flight landed at Delhi airport at 12.10 p.m. He had to catch another flight at 1.30 p.m. (SpiceJet flight 217) to Pune, where, according to his parents, he was going to pursue his Ph.D. But he never boarded the Pune flight as he disappeared from the Delhi airport. Parvez wrote an open letter from the Tihar jail, where he is currently held, in which he said he was arrested from the airport on September 12 and kept in custody for a month. Apparently, he was first taken to the Lodhi Colony police station and then to an apartment in Dwarka, where electrodes were attached to his genitals and power was switched on. (Delhi's secret detention centres are located at Dwarka in south-west Delhi, the Inter-state Cell of the Crime Branch in Chanakyapuri in central Delhi, and the Lodhi Colony police station in south Delhi.) "After my arrest on September 12, I was taken to Pune, where I was shown pictures of many Kashmiri boys," Parvez said in the letter. "They wanted me to identify them. As I didn't know any one of them, they brought me to Delhi again and threw me into the torture chamber of Lodhi Road [sic] police station. They took off my clothes and started beating me like an animal, so ruthlessly that my feet and fingers started bleeding. I was later forced to clean the blood-stained floor with my underwear. They gave me electric shocks and stretched my legs to extreme limits, resulting in internal haemorrhage. I started passing blood with my urine and stool. Later I was shifted to one flat near Delhi airport [he later identified the place as Dwarka]. From the adjacent flats, voices of crying and screaming had been coming, indicating presence of other persons being tortured." Throughout his detention, wrote Parvez, he was asked to lie to his parents that everything was fine. In the letter he also gave the mobile number from which the calls were made-9960565152. His family is trying to collect the call site details of the number to prove his illegal detention. Delhi-based journalist Iftikhar Geelani, who spent nine days in the Lodhi Colony police station after his arrest in 2002 on spying charges, is yet to get over the traumatic experience. "There are lock-ups with such low ceilings that a person will not be able to stand," he said. "There is an interrogation centre within the police station where people are brutally tortured with cables, and some are completely undressed and abused. They also have a facility to raise the temperature of the cell to a point where it is unbearable and then suddenly bring it down to freezing cold." Assistant Commissioner Rajan Bhagat, spokesman for the Delhi Police, denied the existence of such facilities. "Nobody ever asked me the question [about secret detention centres]," he said. "We don't operate any such facility in our police stations." But Maloy Krishna Dhar, former joint director of the IB, confirmed the existence of secret detention centres in Delhi and other parts of the country. He was convinced that detention outside the police station and torture are an inevitable part of the war on terrorism. "Now I would never dream of doing the things I did when I was in charge," said Dhar. "But security agencies need such facilities." Interrogating suspected terrorists at secret detention centres, he said, is the most effective way to gather intelligence. "If you produce a suspect before court, he will never give you anything after that," he said. In other words, once you record the arrest you are within the realm of the law and you have to acknowledge the rights of the accused-arrested and contend with his lawyer. An officer who worked in one of the detention centres admitted that extreme physical and psychological torture, based loosely on the regime in Guantanamo Bay, is used to extract information from the detainees. It includes assault on the senses (pounding the ear with loud and disturbing music) and sleep deprivation, keeping prisoners naked to degrade and humiliate them, and forcibly administering drugs through the rectum to further break down their dignity. "The interrogators isolate key operatives so that the interrogator is the only person they see each day," he said. "In extreme cases we use pethidine injections. It will make a person crazy." Molvi Iqbal from Uttar Pradesh, a suspected member of the Harkat-ul-Jihadi- Islami who is currently lodged in Tihar, was held at a secret detention centre for two months according to his relatives. They alleged that during interrogation a chip was implanted under his skin so that his movements could be tracked if he tried to escape. "He fears that the chip is still inside his skin," said one of his relatives. "That has shattered him." Kolkata has its own Gitmos in Bhabani Bhawan, now the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department, and the Alipore Retreat in Tollygunj, a bungalow that is said to have 20 rooms. They were bursting at the seams at the height of the Naxalite movement, but are more or less quiet now. "A large number of innocent people, as well as suspected terrorists, have disappeared after being taken to such secret detention centres," said Kirity Roy, a Kolkata-based human rights lawyer. "Their bodies would later be found, if at all, in the fields." That was how militancy was tackled, first in Punjab and then in Kashmir. Today no secret prison exists in Kashmir officially after the notorious Papa-2 interrogation centre was closed down. But secret torture cells thrive across the state. The most notorious ones are the Cargo Special Operation Group (SOG) camp in Haftchinar area in Srinagar and Humhama in Budgam district. Then there are the joint interrogation centres in Khanabal area of Anantnag district and Talab Tillo and Poonch areas in Jammu region. Detentions at JICs could last months. Lawyers in Kashmir have filed 15,000 petitions since 1990 seeking the whereabouts of the detainees and the charges against them without avail. The most recent victim of the torture regime was Manzoor Ahmed Beigh, 40, who was picked by the SOG from Alucha Bagh area in Srinagar on May 18. His family alleged that he was chained up, hung upside down from the ceiling and ruthlessly beaten up. He died the same night. Following public outrage, the officer in charge of the camp was dismissed from the service in June. Maqbool Sahil, a Srinagar-based photojournalist who was held at Hariniwas interrogation centre for 15 days, says it is a miracle that he is alive today. "If you tell them [interrogators] you are innocent, they will torture you so ruthlessly that you will break down and confess to anything," he says. Human rights organisations are understandably concerned. Navaz Kotwal, coordinator of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, said that there should be an open debate on the illegal detention centres. "The US had a debate on the Gitmos. Our government should come forward and respond to these allegations, " she said. No one wants to compromise the nation's safety, but the torture becomes unbearable, and questionable, when innocent people like the 14-year-old boy Irfan suffer (see box on page 30). The security of the country and its people is important and terrorism should be crushed at all cost. But the largest democracy in the world should also ensure that human rights are not violated. Dhar defended the secret prison system, arguing that the successful defence of the country required that the security establishment be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the legal system. "The primary mission of the agencies is to save the nation both by overt and covert means from any terrorist threat," he said. "But to keep the programme secret is a horrible burden." with Anupam Dasgupta Sidhique Poocholamad,

மனதோடு மனதாய்... அச்சாஷ் தரும் பாடம்

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source : VIDIYAL VELLI

June 6, 1944: UK's last day as a superpower

The scale of the D-Day landings, 65 years ago this week, will never be repeated. But this last hurrah for British military might also became the model for armed intervention from Bosnia to Afghanistan, says Peter Caddick-Adams.

Sixty-five years after the event, the 1944 campaign in Normandy remains a battle of awe-inspiring proportions. The simple facts of D-Day itself still conjure visions of wonder in an era used to telephone-number salaries, international travel and lightning-speed communication, and represented an unprecedented feat of military planning.
Two hundred thousand seamen manned 6,939 ships, including 1,213 warships. One astonished German described the off-shore scene as "a city on the water". Putting troops ashore involved 4,126 landing vessels of all types, including 1,073 tank landing craft, as well as 864 merchant ships. By the day's end, the Allies had deposited 132,715 troops and 20,000 vehicles directly on to the beaches, with another 23,490 parachutists and glider-borne troops dropped by the allied air forces. The aerial armada supported the landings with 11,590 aircraft, which flew 14,674 sorties.
In the previous nine weeks 197,000 sorties had been flown (at a cost of 1,251 aircraft and 12,000 aircrew) and 195,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on German military and communications targets.
The cover of Time Magazine called the 1994 Normandy celebrations The Last Crusade, implying that in the future no single invasion fleet or military force would be so concentrated - the subsequent invention and deployment of atomic weapons with their awesome destructive capabilities would make such a fleet too vulnerable a target.
It was Britain's last day as a superpower.
No army in the world today could project such force and much of the effort on 6 June 1944 was British - about 60% of the troops landed were UK or Commonwealth (Canadians); the warships were predominantly from the Royal Navy - even the landing craft taking the Americans to Omaha Beach were manned by British seamen - and much of the air power came from the RAF. The senior commanders under Eisenhower (an American) were all British, led by Montgomery. So the clock started ticking as more US troops gradually arrived (and therefore started taking a higher percentage of the casualties) and eventually the Americans had enough men ashore to warrant their own Army Group and their own direct command under Eisenhower.
So, while the Normandy campaign ended with more of an American flavour, it was prefaced by our last hurrah on D-Day itself.
We have never competed with the Americans on anything like equal terms since.
One of the myths of Operation Overlord (the codename for the invasion of France) is it was the biggest seaborne invasion in history. It was not. Nor was it the biggest maritime invasion of World War II. That accolade goes to the 1943 invasion of Sicily - a far greater undertaking than Normandy and one from which many valuable lessons were learned. Ironically, because of the casualties, the Normandy campaign ended up as more attritional than the worst battles of the 1914-18 war, something its commanders - haunted by the shadow of the Somme - desperately tried to avoid. The campaign lasted 77 days (as against the 90 days predicted by allied planners), and resulted in the destruction of the German Seventh Army and Fifth Panzer Army in the Falaise Pocket by 21 August.
Some 209,672 allied soldiers were killed, wounded or went missing, 16,714 allied aircrew lost their lives. German losses were estimated at 250,000.
Additionally, 2,483 Normans connected with the French Resistance were executed before or during the campaign, while as many as 35,000 civilians died (the lowest estimate is 15,000) and 60,000 were wounded in the liberation. This averages out at 6,600 casualties per day for the entire campaign.
This daily average exceeds the Great War daily casualty rates of Verdun 1916 (2,300 per day over 299 days), the Somme 1916 (6,400/day over 142 days) or Passchendaele 1917 (4,600/day over 113 days).
By mid-July 1944, the region was as heavily populated with troops as the Western Front of World War I: there were 2,052,299 allied troops and nearly half-a-million German soldiers in Normandy that summer of 1944. From a purely European spectacle, it can be argued that the allied co-operation for the campaign was the military forerunner of modern coalition warfare, Nato and the political antecedent of the European Union. British, Free French, Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourgois, Czechs, Poles, Greek, Danish and Norwegian naval and military forces all took part, or flew overhead with the vast air armada. Many soldiers from the Irish Republic fought with British units, while some anti-Nazi Austrians and German Jews were involved in the allied deception and intelligence war.
You'll find a rainbow of nationalities in Normandy this summer - Swedish and Chinese, Pakistani, Nigerian and Colombian military folk all trek to the region, for the campaign is widely studied today by military leaders from around the world. They walk the terrain looking not at the tactics, but at the example of a multinational military operation, encompassing air, land and sea forces, which ended in victory but saw costly mistakes and unwelcome surprises along the way.
In many ways, the way military business has been done in Bosnia, Iraq or Afghanistan and on UN peacekeeping missions owes much to the seeds sown on 6 June 1944.

RSS will be Defeated Soon!

Hindutva and its group will be defeated in India soon. A strong foot prints have been maintained all over india to make India Empower by defeating the Dangerous Ideologies of Hindutva Fascist. Today in India all the Minorities like Christains, Muslims, Daliths and Aathi vasis suffers a lot due to the dangerous policies of Hindutva Fanatics. This should be stoped and all the Indian Should get equal rights, equal freedom and equal Justice. POPULAR FRONT OF INDIA is an organization started in Kerala in the Year 1989, with in the 19 years of span now its well developed in all over the India to help the minority communities to get their rights as well as to protect all the Indians from Fascism. Fascism is the worst and Dangerous ideology in India which stops the growth of India. In India we are proud to follow the policy "Unity in Diversity" But this Hindutva fascist create mischief between the different communities. Hindutva is the only group which is responsible for Communal riots in India example, Gujarath, Orissa, Bagalpur, Mumbai etc. This Ideology should be defeated and this to be eradicated from India. POPULAR FRONT OF INDIA will fight for this with the new route with the help of Indians and its Caders working Hard and make the normal people to understand the reality of Hindutva Fascist. We should Join Hand with this great movement to make the India Empower. some Normal Hindus may mistook about the policy of PFI. But PFI Clearly states that "Hindus will never become Hindutva and Hindutvan will never become an Indian." & "Hindu is different from Hindutva, No Hindu will become a Hindutva".

Naya Caravan! Naya Hindustan!

Freedom<> Justice<> Security

POPULAR FRONT OF INDIA.

Strong Foot Prints against "HINDUTVA", will RSS Survive?

Bismillahi Rahmani RaheemIn the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.

Respected guests, the representatives who arrived from various parts of the country, dear brothers and sisters, and colleagues!
Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmathullahi Wa Barakkattuhu.
May the Blessings and Generosity of Almighty Allah be always showered upon us. I am inviting you all to this final session of the great National Political Conference, organized by Popular Front of India, which is reverberated by utmost enthusiasm and hope. You have responded to the call of the Popular Front and made another human ocean, at this beach of Malabar which has the grand legacy of defense and sacrifice to attain freedom from the yoke of Western hegemony and imperialism.
It was exactly on May 20, 1498 the colonial pirate Vasco De Gama, who was destined to initiate great plunder and enforce foreign rule over third world nations, anchored his ship on this very shore. Even when the then ruler of Malabar, named Samudiri (Zamorin), succumbing to the enticement and allurement of the colonial power, finally compromised with the forces of Gama, the great naval force leader, Kunjali Marakkar, fought heroically against the invading forces and attained martyrdom. And we have named that great leader, Kunjali Marakkar for the Conference venue in order to pay homage to that brilliant warrior. The entrance of Islam with its pure doctrines of monotheism, unity of mankind and commitment to justice, into this caste–ridden country was initiated through the beaches of Kerala. Let us remember for a moment those brave fighters and hundreds of martyrs of Malabar rebellion who fought against the British for over a century and brightened the pages of history with their sacrifices. Let us also pray that those living memories of freedom fighters and valiant martyrs of history and contemporary period may throw light into our path, at a time when the enemies of humanity are trying to darken it with nasty designs.
We have to remember that the untouchability and caste discrimination, which were widely prevalent, for the eradication of which our forefathers have vehemently fought, are still persisting in various forms, albeit in a camouflaged manner. We are a caravan determined to bestow equal rights to all Indians, irrespective of caste, creed, and religion, and rebuild the nation on the sound foundations of justice. Naya Caravan… Naya Hindustan…
We had dedicated this movement Popular Front of India exactly two years back to the people, at the Shaheed Tipu Sultan Nagar, Banglore, in the Empower India Conference on 13, 14 and 15 February 2007. Popular Front came into being as the common platform of the National Development Front (N.D.F) of Kerala, Manitha Neethi Passarai (M.N.P) of Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka Forum for Dignity (K.F.D) of Karnataka.
We were dedicating ourselves for the cause of total empowerment of the people of the nation. The Adivasis, who are the sons of the forest, the Dalits, who are the children of our land, and the minorities including Muslims, who are the descendants of those who emancipated the society from its dark past, have volunteered to declare their affinity to the objectives of Popular Front. They also shared our slogans of freedom, justice and security.
We achieved two things during the past two years. Firstly, there disappeared the barriers between various state organisations and psyche of togetherness and unity arose among them. Secondly, the message and methodology of the movement got attracted even in the Northern, Western and Eastern parts of India. It was quite natural, and I may say quite inevitable, to amalgamate in to a single organisation. It was just a month ago, on 8, 9 and 10 January of 2009, that the important decision to merge N.D.F, M.N.P and K.F.D was taken in our National General Assembly. While the campaign and attendance of Empower India Conference were limited to southern states of India, this National Political Conference Campaign gained a wider space. Some provincial movements and organizations of remote states came forward to take the responsibility of spreading the conference message. I still remember with gratitude that delegates of 13 other states in addition to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are attending this conference. When this National Political Conference ends, the erstwhile movements with the names of N.D.F, M.N.P, and K.F.D will become part of history. In fact, we are taking part in the creation of a new history. In this occasion, we remember with immense reverence and gratitude, those brave martyrs of this movement, who will never die, who have preceded us in fulfilling their oath and returned to Allah, the Most Merciful. Let their pious martyrdom ever awaken our sprit as a beacon.
When the communal fascists along with the wheels of their chariots and the sharp edges of trishuls continued the massacre of innocent people, our movement emerged as a creative intervention which is now at the juncture of a new phase.
It is also historic that the caravan originated and sprouted from this part of Kerala, Calicut has completed a circle and returned to a Grant Public Meeting at the same place. We are about to hear a thrilling declaration. Along with N.D.F of Kerala, M.N.P. of Tamil Nadu, K.F.D of Karnataka, five other organizations are also joining with Popular Front: Citizen’s Forum of Goa, Community Social and Educational Society of Rajasthan, Nagarik Adhikar Suraksha Samithi of West Bengal, Lilong Social Forum of Manipur. Their representatives, who are determined to become a part of this neo-social movement, are present here. O… Urdu, Hindu, Telugu, Bengali, and Manipuri speaking brothers! This great ocean of people salutes you. Dear brothers! This historic moment doesn’t give us an opportunity for leisure, but a strict warning against any laziness. In fact, it is a call to re-dedicate ourselves for greater self–sacrifices and endeavors.
The message of the conference namely ‘Power to People’ is self revealing. We have to realize that this message has evoked mixed responses. Some were suspicious while others apprehensive. Indeed, our activists were able to read the mind of the multitude of people through the conference campaigns which touched important centres of the country, and most nukes and corners of the southern states. The general public has no qualms, anxieties or doubts. The people have gained realization, they became politically conscious.
The people, who were always victims of the political exploitation by various parties and were cheated by them continuously now proclaims with one voice: ‘Our destiny will be carved by ourselves. We should not allow any political party, by spreading the fear about BJP, to earn our votes and to continue their deceits, whether in the guise of secularism or in the name of security of minorities.
We are striving for the realization of the true democratic values. We observe that despite having a very strong constitution, and recurring elections, the poor are still poor. The political power is far away from the people. In spite of our claim as a nuclear force, the nation is still leading in poverty and illiteracy. The development, occurring in this country, is that of tycoons, both ‘foreign’ and ‘national’. The real beneficiaries are the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the ruling upper castes. The great masses of people, who are the majority, namely the Adivasis, the village dwellers, the Dalits, the Muslims, the farmers and laborers are all, severely victimized. The political power is denied to them. Their representation in the three arms of government, legislature, executive and judiciary, are marginal. Dalits and Muslims are at the forefront of the victimization by various governmental discriminations and political exploitations.
The caste-ridden communal fascists and the upper castes of the ‘Bunch of Thoughts’ stream are aware that it is difficult to ethnically cleanse the Dalits and Muslims. Therefore, the strategy is to maintain them as slaves by evoking fear psychosis among them. The Hindutva fascists are trying to cause an in–fight among Dalits, Backwards and Muslims and thus fabricate a rift within the oppressed society. Unfortunately our ruling system and the political parties are striving to fulfill this fascist agenda. The Dalit colonies and Muslim villages in North India are bereft of water and light, the basic facility for roads and housing. The Congress ruling states are at par with the BJP ruling states in this regard. There is not any good news coming out of West Bengal where there has been a continued political control of CPM for over 30 years.
The number of Muslims in the Police, the Intelligence and other Investigating agencies is very marginal. By taking part in the anti-Muslim riots, by spreading the fear of so-called ‘Muslim terrorism’, by incarcerating educated Muslim youth, by killing them in pseudo-encounters, the police acts as tools in the hands of Hindutva fascist forces. They are nullifying and negating their own integrity by such criminal actions.
The real ingredients for the formation of a civil society are proper representation of various classes of people, equality before law, equal sharing of the resources and the fruits of development. These are not gifts or beneficences of somebody; neither have we hoped to obtain them without any effort. These are basic rights to be achieved by continuous fights of the down-trodden, with the firm realization that they are being unduly captured from them.
By organizing such an ocean of masses, we are posting a milestone in the onward struggle for the legitimate rights of Muslims and other oppressed masses. This is the beginning of history moving in a new direction. There are various vested interest groups which want to create suspicion and mistrust about us. The questions about the possibility of Popular Front to become a political party or forming a new political party of its own are being raised. All such questions will be cleared, all such apprehensions will end.
The truth is obvious. There come new responsibilities on the shoulders of Popular Front. The idea that all the marginalized groups including Muslims have to self determine their political destiny has gained momentum far and wide. They are no longer ready to play as pawns of the chess board set by various political parties. The time is ripe for the emergence of a national political party which caters the inner sprits of the oppressed. The historic mission of a neo-social movement is to be with the time and poise as a guide post in the fore front of the society. We want to declare with firm faith in the Almighty and trust in people that the Popular Front will take the lead of the historic responsibility of leading the oppressed masses to political power, thereby putting an end to disgustingly repetitive negative politics.
History is not intended for sleep, it has to get repeated. My dear brothers and colleagues! Let us wreck and destroy the fake trade ships of Gamas! Let us advance in the warships of Kunjalis. Let us win our goal, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand: Naya Caravan…Naya Hindustan… Once again, welcome and salutes.

Veer Savarkar : Brave By Half

This article was written when Savarka's potrait was unveiled in the Parliament. The article is republished in the context of the latest controversy involving Manishankar Aiyar and the Sangh Parivar

The film on Savarkar is due to be released shortly. The film even before its release has created lot of ripples of excitement. It may be probably the first major venture eulogizing the pioneer of Hindutva ideology. One is aware that any objective discussion on Savarkar is filled with lot of emotional outbursts as he has been iconized amongst sections of population as the brave freedom fighter. He also gets the prefix of 'Swatantra Veer' (Brave warrior for Freedom), which is only half true.

One needs to look at the trajectory of his life to understand this transition from anti-British revolutionary to the ideologue of Hindutva. Savarkar's life underwent major transition during his confinement in Andamans. He was a changed man after the period of his jail life. He was a committed anti-British revolutionary prior to his deportment to Andamans but later he never associated with any thing even remotely sounding as anti-British.

He had gone to study law in London and for his anti-British stance he was denied the barrister-ship. In England Savarkar formed 'Free Indian Society' committed to overthrowing British rule in India. That time he rejected the British proposal to give the undertaking not to participate in politics. His group had learnt the art of bomb making from a Russian revolutionary in Paris. One member of the group killed a top-ranking official in India office (London) and was sentenced to death.

For involvement in this and for another charges on him in Indian courts, Savarkar was arrested, sentenced and was to undergo life imprisonment. He was deported from England. The ship carrying him stopped at Marseilles, where he jumped into the sea and swam to the shore to claim asylum on French soil. He was captured back and was transported to Andamans for life imprisonment.

The conditions in Andman jail were very painful and he was tortured severely. It seems that conditions of jail life broke his spirits. Incidentally from 1920 Indian National Congress was asking for his unconditional release, but due to reasons best known to him Savarkar preferred to give a written undertaking to get released from the jail - "I hereby acknowledge that I had a fair trial and just sentence. I heartily abhor methods of violence resorted to in days gone by and I feel myself duty bound to uphold law and constitution (British, added) to the best of my powers and am willing to make the 'reform' a success in so far as I may be allowed to do so in future" (from facsimile of Savarkar's letter to British authorities, Frontline, April 7, 1995. Pg. 94). The reforms he is referring to here are the Montague Chelmsford proposals of 1919, which did not satisfy the nationalist movement's demands.

In response to this, as a trade off, the British Government released him under the condition that he will stay in Ratnagiri district in Bombay province and will seek permission of the government to leave the district. Also that he will not engage in any public or private political activities without the consent of the government. The period of conditions lasted till 1937, when the Congress ministry was sworn in. Subsequent to this he assumed the office of the President of Hindu Mahasabha. This aspect of his total surrender is totally hidden by the Hindutva forces, they confer on him the epithet of 'Veer (brave) Savarkar'.

Why did British government release him? How is it that after his release the track of his politics totally changed and he came to adorn the mantle of ideologue Hindu Rashtra? How is it that later he never undertook any anti British agitation? How is it that he never joined and supported the major movements of those times like Quit India movement? How is it that instead of being the part of freedom struggle, he chose to help the British in recruiting Indians for their army? One can have ones' own inferences but his compromise with British hides lot of messages about the nature of his politics from then on.

He did emerge as the undisputed leader of Hindu Mahasabha. In most of the times, post-1937, his politics was the polar opposite of National movement led by Gandhi and 'no support to Congress move' was his basic dictum. This can be best exemplified in the 1942 Quit India movement, when Gandhi gave the call for the people to leave the government jobs. Instead Savarkar issued the edict - "I issue this definite instruction to all Hindu Sanghathanists in general holding any post or position of vantage in the government services, should stick to them and continue to perform their regular duties". (Quoted in A G Noorani Frontline, Dec. 1, 1995). Also working committee had passed a resolution on August 31, 1942 asking all Mahasabhaites to remain at their jobs.

Savarkar does have the 'honor' of brewing Brahminical Hinduism with nationalism, and he was the first exponent of the doctrine of Hindutva. Savarkar's initial anti-British struggles were very impressive but after assuming the role of the proponent of Hindutva his major energies were channelised in
strengthening the politics of hate, formation of communal Hindu Mahasabha and helping RSS from distance. Savarkar's work `Hindutva: Who is Hindu' (1923) became and remains the basic text defining this political concept. With the simultaneous rise of Muslim communalism, in due course most of the Hindu consolidations took place by showing the fear of Muslims. This nationalism consolidated itself on the ground of the 'threatening other', but this threatening other was not the British imperialist colonizers whose rule the country was suffering but was the `Muslim'.

As an aside we should note here that Savarkar's anti-British struggles and anti-British activities totally ceased after his release by the British, and from then on all his guns were to be targeted against the Muslims. Savarkar argued (later on this became the ideological base of most of the Hindutva organizations) - "the Aryans who settled in India at the dawn of history already formed a nation, now embodied in the Hindus.... Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the love they bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through their veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affection warm but also by the tie of the common homage we pay to our great civilization, our Hindu culture." (Hindutva, Page108) Thus Hindutva according to him rests on three pillars: geographical unity, racial features and common culture. He further went on to elaborate the criterion for who is Hindu?

According to him all those who regard this land as their fatherland and holy-land are the only ones who are Hindu and thereby the people to whom this land belongs. This led to the automatic interpretation that the Christians and the Muslims, whose holy places are in Jerusalem and Mecca are not on par with the `Hindus' who 'own' this country. Initiating the theorizing of the `doubting of patriotism of Muslim's', Savarkar states - "but besides culture the tie of common holy-land has at times proved stronger than the claims of a motherland. Look at Mohammedans: Mecca to them is a sterner reality than Delhi or Agra."

Savarkar's politics was rival to Gandhian politics. Gandhi - the representative of Indian Nationalism was branded by Savarkar as conciliator and appeaser of Muslims. Savarkar propounded that struggle for supremacy would begin after British left and that the Christians and Muslims were the real enemies who could be defeated only by "Hindutva". He maintained that this land belonged to Hindus and so by implication Muslims with Hold Land in Mecca and Christians with Holy land in Jerusalem cannot have equal status to `Hindus'.

It is also worth remembering, that murderer of Gandhi, Godse was his ardent follower. Savarkar himself was the co-accused in Gandhi murder, but was let off as Godse took the whole responsibility of this murder totally on his own self. While the film and the present projection of Savarkar is going on, one has also to assess his role in second half of his life. An honest assessment of our past will show us the different versions of Nationalism and their political stance. The present hysteria of paying blind obeisance to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar should not come in the way of objectively assessing his changed role in later part of his life

America faces double-digit inflation and over 15% unemployment within a year or so – what will US Treasury bonds do?

Federal Reserve’s policies are about to backfire. America may face something never seen before ever in the history of world economics. It is an unemployment level at the depression level. And it may accompany severe double-digit inflation.
The unemployment will rise because of hopelessness among entrepreneurs. The business confidence has plummeted and is perhaps irreversible in the next ten to twenty years. That will have a serious effect on the employment. The tax receipt is plummeting deepening the red in the budget deficits. The unemployment can rise to 15% and perhaps to 25%. If you consider underemployment as a fact since 1979, the unemployment rate in US is actually above 25% right now. By 2015, 78% US citizens can be underemployed or unemployed.
The stimulus package from US, Europe, China, and India is making commodities go for a steep run again. The bull market in commodities will be inflationary worldwide. The US dollar index can drop below 50. Currently it is at 85 approximately. Lower dollar, ballooning budget deficit will fail to push gold up too much. The reason is that central banks will sell gold to raise cash.
What happens to US Treasury bonds then? US bonds will plummet in price. The bubble on US Treasury bond is about to implode. The US long-term interest rate can go as high as 22%, believe it or not. When in India Daily we warned about the banking collapse and depression in US for four years starting in 2003, no one believed us.