Not worried about China building air strips: India: Rediff.com India News

• Rediff.com India News

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  • With reports suggesting that China was building over two dozen new airstrips along the Line of Actual Control, the government on Tuesday said there was no need to be 'unnecessarily' worried as India [ Images ] was adequately strengthening itself.

    "I don't think we need to be unnecessarily alarmed. As a regional power, they (China) will strengthen their infrastructure. They will procure their arms and we are doing what we have to do for strengthening our line," said Minister of State for Defence M M Pallam Raju.

  • On the stopping of work on a link road in Ladakh region after objections by the Chinese army, the minister said, "I think some of these things happen when there is a difference of perception. I guess that must be the reason."

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Image: The man who will now defend Kasab: Rediff.com India News

• Image: The man who will now defend Kasab: Rediff.com India News

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  • Additional Sessions Judge M L Tahaliyani appointed 55-year-old K P Pawar as 'accused number 1' Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab's [ Images ] lawyer after he sacked Kasab's defence lawyer Abbas Kazmi for 'non-cooperation'.
  • "Pawar's hold over Marathi will surely work to his advantage over Kazmi as most of the documents are in Marathi," said a noted lawyer who's close to both Pawar and Kazmi and who obviously requested not to quote his name on the subject.

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When politicians have baby trouble: Rediff.com News

• When politicians have baby trouble: Rediff.com News

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  • They may be world leaders, but they too can't escape the innocence of children.

    Some odd moments get captured when politicians seek a photo-op with them.

    We bring to you some such odd moments that politicians have faced with kids in public.

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Lanka lifts restrictions on Tamil refugees: Rediff.com News

• Lanka lifts restrictions on Tamil refugees: Rediff.com News

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  • The Sri Lankan government on Tuesday allowed nearly 1.30 lakh Tamil civilians housed in refugees camps in northern part of the island country to visit their relatives, as authorities lifted restrictions on their movement.

    Some 3 lakh Tamils were housed in the refugees camps after the final stage of the government's military operations that defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels in May.

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Priest on mission to save Sabarimala from plastic threat: Rediff.com News

• Priest on mission to save Sabarimala from plastic threat: Rediff.com News

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  • Shobha Warrier in Chennai

  • incidents in the last couple of years made Sreejith E Namboodiri, a priest in an Ayyappan temple in Chennai, take a vow that he would do something actively to free the forest in Sabarimala from plastic.

    That was how he decided to distribute and popularise 'plastic-free' irumudi kettu (which Ayyappa devotees carry on their heads on the pilgrimage). "These days, Ayyappa devotees buy a kit with lots of plastic packets inside and after the darshan, throw away all the plastic packets there. This contaminates the forest permanently. So, what we do here is, educate all the Ayyappa devotees to pack all the items in butter paper instead of polythene. They also buy cheap raincoats (made of plastic) and throw them away at the foothills," he said.

    Namboodiri and three others (T R Anantha Padmanabhan, Bhaskaran Guruswamy and Krishna Kumar) have joined hands and distributed 10,000 pamphlets at various temples urging Ayyappa devotees to keep Sabarimala clean and plastic-free.

  • Namboodiri feels the new initiative started by the Devaswom Board of giving Re 1 to anyone who gives them a plastic bottle, is admirable. "Even if the devotees throw away the bottles, there may be poor people there who will collect them for money. They can make Rs 100 a day if they collect 100 bottles," he said.

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25 years on, lives are still 'poisoned' in Bhopal: Rediff.com News

• 25 years on, lives are still 'poisoned' in Bhopal: Rediff.com News

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  • an all-party religious prayer meeting in which Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister is also expected to take part, that claimed 15,274 lives and affected 5,74,000 persons after leakage of MIC gas from the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984..

  • Hitting out at the Centre and Madhya Pradesh government, NGOs fighting for the cause of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy victims have alleged that neither the gas-affected persons were paid adequate compensation, nor any steps had been taken to dispose off the toxic wastes from the plant site.

  • A recent report indicated high levels of toxic chemicals in Bhopal's drinking water. Residents in the areas surveyed had high rates of birth defects, rapidly rising cancer rates, neurological damage, chaotic menstrual cycles and mental illness, it said.

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Contours of emerging US strategy in Af-Pak: Rediff.com India News

• Rediff.com India News

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  • All in all the most likely scenario in Af-Pak seems to be a continuing civil war-like situation in Afghanistan and a real possibility that the present counter-insurgency in Pakistan also degenerating into internal revolt in south Punjab and the North West Frontier Province. A bruised Pakistan army may well think of taking over the reins again but this time at the behest of the Taliban and not Americans. A Taliban-like regime in Pakistan/Afghanistan seems the most likely outcome.

    What this means to the world at large and India in particular is worth pondering. It appears to me, as some American military analysts have been thinking for a while, that the long-lasting solution to the Af-Pak situation is balkanisation of the region -- a Bangladesh-type solution.

    Colonel (retired) Anil Athale is Chhatrapati Shivaji Fellow of the United Services Institution and coordinator of Pune based Inpad.

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The Pioneer > > A non event foretold

• The Pioneer
  

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  • Rajeev Srinivasan
  • The Prime Minister’s visit to the US shows that if India cannot articulate a vision about its being one of the poles in a multipolar world, it does not deserve any respect. Those who can’t assert themselves deserve vague platitudes and dinners where gatecrashers can casually walk in
    
    It is not clear why some are disappointed by the non-event of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington, DC. In fact, a sigh of relief is in order, as there was no major faux pas, which is customary when the Prime Minister and his Sancho Panzas sally forth abroad. No, the soporific, meaningless joint statement was better than the abject surrender of some major national interest, as in Havana 2006 and Sharm el-Sheikh 2009.

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(Part 1 of 2) Devotees of Amar Nath: Revolutionary Pioneers of a People’s Movement, by Bhagyashree Chanda Sathye | Tattva

• Tattva

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  • Part 1/2 of a first person account of the Epic 62-day struggle to get a land grant for the Lord Amar Nath (Shiva) Shrine located near Jammu city, India.
  
  • Around half a million people participate in the movement led by Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti (SASS) for the J&K Government to restore land to the ANSB.
  • the rallies on August 18, 19 and 20, 2008, were attended by literally hundreds of thousands of people. 250,000 women, and 1, 35,000 children also participated in these mammoth meetings. These numbers, as reported by the media, are simply too large to fathom.

  • END OF PART 1

    (Part 2 will be published in February 2010)

    Bhagyashree Chanda Sathye is a full-time worker of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti based in Maharashtra, India.

Chikmagalur: ‘Datta Jayanti’ Celebration Concludes without Untoward Incidents

• D A I J I W O R L D  :  Chikmagalur: ‘Datta Jayanti’ Celebration Concludes without Untoward Incidents

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  • Curtains fell on this year’s ‘Datta Jayanti’ celebrations on Tuesday December 1. The district administration, bending under pressure from the government, provided for the darshan of the ‘Dattapduke’ by the devotees, although this was not scheduled to be permitted as per the earlier plan. Widespread security arrangements were in place to control the mobs that included devotees who were wearing the ‘Datta Mala’ around their necks. People started making a beeline for the cave shrine since the early morning, notwithstanding chilly weather.

    Special puja, oblation etc., were performed by keeping the idol of Lord Dattatreya and Paduke at a place adjacent to Datta Peetha. The ‘Poornahuti’ at the oblation on Tuesday signalled the culmination of the ‘Datta Jayanti’ rituals including Anusuya Jayanti, ‘begging’ by Datta devotees, Bhajan troupe going around the town, holding of a procession, etc.

Now Chidambaram's turn to clash with Opposition

• fullstory

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  • Home Minister P Chidambaram today exchanged angry words in the Rajya Sabha with Opposition BJP which objected to his statement on "Hindu militancy".
    
    Trouble began when Chidambaram said the government would follow a "zero tolerance" policy for "Jihadi terrorism" or "Hindu militancy".
    
    BJP's objection was why the Home Minister was refraining from using the term "Islamic terrorism" though he used the words "Hindu terrorism" during his reply to the debate on the internal security.
    
    Interruptions by BJP angered Chidambaram who said, "I cannot modify my argument to please the BJP. My argument is that terrorism is inspired by religious groups - whether by Hindu religious groups or Islamic religious groups".

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KalingaTimes.com: Dalits make their way to Hindu temple in Odisha

• KalingaTimes.com:

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  • By Manoj Kar

  • In a departure from caste-bound tradition, hundreds of Dalits from an obscure village today made their way into a 900-year-old Hindu temple that that till date had remained out of bounds for them.

    “It was a festive occasion. There was palpable amity and goodwill among the residents of Kisinapur village under Souri gram panchayat. The upper caste people besides Sarvodyaya workers exchanged warm pleasantries as lower caste devotees entered the local Shiva temple. After the deity's darshan, they offered puja,” narrated Sandhyarani Mallick, coordinator of Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust.

    There never existed caste-bound ill-will or the conflict in the backward. However, Dalits were adhering to the tradition and never made their way into temple, Mallick narrated.

  • Kendrapara
  • Later, the villagers cutting across caste spectrum dined together in a grand community feast that was organized to mark the occasion.

NE Borders Reassessed :: KanglaOnline

• KanglaOnline ~ Your Gateway

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  • Source: IMPHAL FREE PRESS
  • The recent hiccups in diplomatic relations between Indian and China over the disputed MacMohan Line in the event of the visit to the border town of Tawang and Bomdila by the Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, the Dalai Lama who head the Tibetan Government in Exile in beautiful hill station of Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh should be an eye-opener on not just how sensitive the international boundaries that “contain” the northeast region are but also however arbitrarily they came into existence with little or no consultation with the immediate populations along them whose lives would be profoundly affected by them. Apart from the MacMohan Line, there is also the Radcliff Line in the south and indeed the Indo-Myanmar boundary in the East. To begin with the last named, it is extremely ironic that if not for the executive whim of a single colonial officer in 1885, the British Secretary of State, Randolph Churchill, who decided not to treat the Ava Kingdom (Burma) as a princely state after King Thibaw was defeated and his territory annexed to the empire on which the sun once never set, for all that the history of the post colonial world has been witness to, India’s eastern boundary could have been very different from where it is now. Rather than keep it as a princely state, the Ava kingdom, like the Mughals in India in 1857, was systematically and totally dismantled and a new British administration put in its place. The last of the Burmese king was exiled without ceremony in Benares in India just as the last Mughal, Bahadur Shah was similar banished to Rangoon. Had the British officer decided to keep Burma as a princely state like Manipur and Tripura for instance, in all likelihood, at the time of the British departure, Burma could very well have ended up a state of India, leaving Thailand and Laos as India’s immediate eastern neighbours.
  • it is extremely ironic that if not for the executive whim of a single colonial officer in 1885, the British Secretary of State, Randolph Churchill, who decided not to treat the Ava Kingdom (Burma) as a princely state after King Thibaw was defeated and his territory annexed to the empire on which the sun once never set, for all that the history of the post colonial world has been witness to, India’s eastern boundary could have been very different from where it is now. Rather than keep it as a princely state, the Ava kingdom, like the Mughals in India in 1857, was systematically and totally dismantled and a new British administration put in its place. The last of the Burmese king was exiled without ceremony in Benares in India just as the last Mughal, Bahadur Shah was similar banished to Rangoon. Had the British officer decided to keep Burma as a princely state like Manipur and Tripura for instance, in all likelihood, at the time of the British departure, Burma could very well have ended up a state of India, leaving Thailand and Laos as India’s immediate eastern neighbours.
  • Down south the non-intrinsic nature of the border is again as pronounced when the manner in which the populous province of Sylhet came to be in Pakistan and not India in the 1947 Partition of India. A bitter entangle between linguistic nationalism and religious nationalism ensured that this Hindu majority province dominated by Bengali speaking population was left behind on the Muslim side of the Radcliff Line, although the Partition of India was on religious line. The only way Sylhet could have become a part of India was by its merger with Assam, but Assamese bitterly opposed such a move, for such a merger would have made Bengali speakers the majority in Assam. A letter by Gopinath Bordoloi to Jawaharlal Nehru while the Partition process was going on, melodramatically declared that every Assamese would resist a merger with Sylhet to the last drop of their blood. Nehru was known to have remarked in exasperation as to who the chief minister thought he was adding sarcastically that the chief minister might as well think Assam is an independent country. Like Sylhet, the Buddhist Chakma dominated Chittagong Hill Tract could and should have been on the Indian side of the Border as well. Had these been so, the Indian boundary in the northeast region would have been a lot different from what it is now.

Devraha Baba's indictment enrages seers in Ayodhya - The Times of India

• The Times of India

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  • Inclusion of Sant Devraha baba - the ageless Yogi with a secular image - in the list of Babri accused by the Liberhan Commission even though he died two years before the demolition, has set off a spate of holy fury in Ayodhya. In a show of aggressive posturing, two most powerful mahants of the temple town, the president of Ram Janma Bhoomi Trust and Mani Ram Chhavni Nritya Gopal Das and head Akhil Bhartiya Akhada Parishad (ABAP) and Hanuman Garhi temple, Mahant Gyan Das, have sought "public apology from justice Liberhan or be prepared to face the aftermath of his evil doings."
    
    For records, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das commands unflinching loyalty from more than 2,000 temples in Ayodhya and heads the body empowered to grant holy affiliation, ABAP headed by Mahant Gyan Das is the highest recognised body of seers combining both Shaiv and Vaishnav sects. The Parishad, among other things, charts out the agenda to be followed at the Kumbh congregation.
    
    "This is a lowly mischief aimed at hurting the sentiments of Hindus," Nritya Gopal Das declared. "Baba was a spiritual guide to everyone from a pauper to the most powerful and was above narrow confines of caste and community. Each saint and guru in Ayodhya is deeply anguished at Liberhan's folly and meetings are being held all across the town to chalk out a retaliatory strategy," he said.
    
    "Does Justice Liberhan know that the departed saint he slandered so casually in his useless report could quote Quran and Guru Granth Saheb with the same felicity as Gita or Vedas? Or that the list of his callers even included late president Zakir Hussain. Dragging his name in the muck is a sin which needs to be atoned, a visibly disturbed Das said while talking to TOI. The matter, he said, would be taken up by the congregations of saints in Magh Mela at Allahabad in January followed by the Kumbh congregation in Hardwar.
  • AYODHYA

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Devotees have darshan of Datta padukas - The Times of India

• The Times of India

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  • CHIKMAGALUR
  • The Datta padukas, which were kept in district treasury after the closure of Datta cave shrine following its collapse, have been placed atop the hill for the devotees to get a glimpse.
  • Last year, the district administration had turned down the request of Sri Rama Sene, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishath, to keep the Datta's silver sandals atop the hill on Datta Jayanti. However, this year the government intervened and instructed the deputy commissioner to keep the padukas atop the hill.
    
    More than 15,000 devotees thronged the hill to participate in the Datta Jayanti programme. The devotees relinquished their malas and offered Irumudi (rice, jaggery, oil and coconut) in the ritual place.

VHP is committed to Shri Ram temple in Ayodhya—Dr Pravin Togadia

• Organiser - Content

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  • VHP is committed to Shri Ram temple in Ayodhya—Dr Pravin Togadia
  • VHP general secretary Dr Pravin Togadia said the VHP is fully committed to building a magnificent Shri Ram temple in Ayodhya and the Hindu society is ready for any sacrifice for the temple. He was reacting to the Liberhan Commission Report tabled in Parliament on November 24. He said the saints would take a decision for starting the construction of the temple at the Kumbha Mela in Haridwar in January next year.
  • Dr Togadia reassured that a magnificent Shri Ram temple would be built at the very site in Ayodhya. “It is a socio-religious, cultural and legal right of the Hindus of Bharat who worship Shri Ram for ages even before invaders’ religions were even born. Playing with Hindu religious sentiments has become a fashion these days. But over 85 crore Hindus in Bharat and many millions of Hindus internationally have been waiting for the glorious Shri Ram temple at the site. VHP is fully committed to it and to the Hindus. Shri Ramjanmabhoomi movement is not just a one off event and the movement has been taking place for over 450 years in different forms.
  • Bharat recently saw the similar Hindu unity in Rameshwaram Ram Sethu movement, in Amarnath movement and in Gouraksha movement. This Hindu unity will make wonders for Bharat and stand up against any odds. Hindus and VHP are ready for any sacrifice for building Shri Ram temple at the site,” he added.

Many shades of Hindu-bashing

• Organiser - Content

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  • Many shades of Hindu-bashing
    By Dr Pravin Togadia
  • But a somewhat similar situation is being enacted in Bharat these days and that too by film personalities who never wasted a single opportunity to hysterically yell and condemn all that is Hindu, who blamed entire Gujarat for 2002 riots and who blamed entire Bharat for Malegaon. They even blamed Bharat for jehadi attacks on Mumbai! The comment of a veteran film man then was that instead of blaming people like Kasab we should find out why these poor innocent youth get into such acts-if at all they have done it! He did not have the similar logic for Gujarat.
  • Now when his son’s phone records, meeting records, pub-going records are all splashed with jehadi David Headley alias Dawood Gilani from Pakistan, he suddenly remembers the principle that unless proven otherwise everyone is innocent! He and the family are even throwing filmy dialogues and playing ‘me victim’, ‘me hero’ etc games. It is time that Bharat stands up and tells this filmy family that command over language and proficiency in acting are not proofs of innocence. This family even has the audacity to tell Bharat that its son is a hero because he himself went to police!
  • This group of the so-called celebrities has a specific agenda and that is to tom-tom greatly about only a particular community. This group vanishes when millions of Tamil Hindus get brutally attacked in Sri Lanka or in Malaysia or even in Assam! This means they are biased; they not only blah-blah on media all the time but also have an agenda against the majority of this nation. Their celebrity status gives them access to media. They even try to influence the judiciary through their blah-blah and their behind-the-screen activities- anyway most of them are expert in scripting and acting!
  • Some years back, a channel ran a story "Rapist Uncle" based on an FIR by a niece. Police kept on requesting the channel not to say so until investigations are done. But the channel continued. Socially and mentally hurt, that man and his wife committed suicide. A day after this, the police came to conclusion that he was innocent and even that niece confessed to a fake FIR. Many social celebrity activists said all sorts of things about that man on that channel. The celebrity itch and some media enamoured by them got a family killed in the process! One hopes the judiciary would take a suo moto note of such proxy killings by the celebrity itch and biased media trials.
  • when some celebrities in such fields, using their social status, hurt the very logic of justice, it is time that Bharat, its investigating agencies and the judiciary stand up and tell such people to focus on their fields and not to interfere and disturb social systems of Bharat. It has almost become a notion these days that freedom of expression is available only to such celebrities and so-called pseudo-social commentators. Before the celebrity itch virus spreads further, let’s start common man’s justice council to check such a menace, work towards preventing such ‘holier than thou’ attitudes and ensure that no partial favours are done by the governments to such celebrities and to their families or neither is there a hard view only because one is a celebrity. Let us ensure that there is a true justice for all.
  • (The writer is a renowned cancer surgeon and secretary general of VHP. He can be contacted at drtogadia@gmail.com)

HINDU SAMHATI: Creation of a New Pakistan in Barrackpore

• HINDU SAMHATI

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  • Mosque to be Revived after 63 Years to enhance anti-Hindu activities in Barrackpore, West Bengal
  • An absolutely dilapidated mosque, named Bhanga Masjid, is situated in Ward no. 3 of Barrackpore town in North 24 Pargana district. It is just on the side of the main railway track of Sealdah – Krishnanagar line. In last 63 years, i.e., after independence, nobody offered Namaz in that mosque as there is no Muslim locality nearby. Before independence, some Muslims used to live here who migrated to Pakistan after partition.
  • In the month of April this year, on one Friday before the Parliamentary Election, some Muslim activists came from distant places and tried to offer Namaz in that dilapidated structure. Local people sensing the mal-intents of these outsiders drove them away. Next Friday, Tarit Baran Topdar, the then local M.P. of CPI(M), came there with a few outsider members of a right-wing Muslim lobby group and his party cadres.
  • Since then, Muslims from distant places come here every Friday noon to offer Namaz. The local people sensing future troble made several representations to I.C. (Police), S.D.O. and District Magistrate and submitted memorandum with mass signature. Their demands are : (1) outsiders should not be allowed to come and offer Namaz as there is no precedence of it, (2) status quo should be maintained, (3) communal harmony should not be allowed to be disturbed. But all efforts were in vain. The S.D.O. misbehaved with the Hindu delegation and told that it is a mosque and he will not be able to stop the Namaz.
  

Coming: The Taj Mahal hoax story on celluloid « Hindu focus

•  Hindu focus

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  • Another mythical ‘Jodha Akbar’ on the make.

    Another Arabian Night fairy tale to be legitimized.

    Another batch of ignorant and gullible Hindus will seek this opportunity for personal glories.  

  •  

    Kingsley to play Shah Jahan to Aishwarya’s Mumtaz

     Actor Ben Kingsley, who won an Oscar for playing Mahatma Gandhi 27 years ago, is back in India. The actor plans to play Mughal emperor Shah Jahan with Aishwarya Rai as Mumtaz Mahal in the period film Taj. Kingsley, 65, last worked with Aishwarya, 34, in The Last Legion in 2007.

  • Kingsley said the focus of the film would be the building of the Taj Mahal and the isolation and loneliness of the man (Shah Jahan) who built it. “All of this is held together by love and the power of love, which transcends the prison cell and even death,” Kingsley said. The actor plans to start shooting in India from the autumn of 2010.

  •  

    The Controversy Surrounding the Origins of the Taj Mahal

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