HINDU SAMHATI: Mamata Banerjee Expels Senior Party Leader to Appease Islamists

• HINDU SAMHATI: Mamata Banerjee Expels Senior Party Leader to Appease Islamists

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  • There is a small dilapidated building in Burrabazar area of Kolkata. It was once owned by a Muslims before 1947. Presently there is no Muslim house in the locality. About 20 years back some Muslims came and requested local Hindus that they want to offer Namaz there every Friday. Hindus granted their appeal. Not only that, local Hindu businessmen helped them to remodeling it as a Mosque providing them stone and marble as donation
  • Since last one year Muslims tried to make illegal construction on the roof of the building. Naturally local residents gave objection because it would block the windows of the neighboring households. One of the adjacent building is of Sri Ashok Jha who was the President of Trinamool Congress of Burrabazar District till six day back.
  • In this situation Ashok Jha with his followers started fast unto death from 7th January morning against the unlawful activities of the Muslims. 8th January was Friday. Tension was palpable in the area. Police posting was there. At 12 noon, about 300 Muslims came by trucks and cars. There was no space inside the building for such a huge crowd. They assembled on the road Rabindra Sarani. Mohalla committee members appealed to the police to disperse them as Sec. 144 was already imposed there. But police took no action. Muslims formed cues, blocked the road and offered Namaz. By this time about 2000 Hindus also gathered there. They did not create any obstruction to the Namaz. But, they too started Bhajan and Arati on the road. Hindu women took part in it in large number. When the Namaz was completed, then Police started action flexing its muscle. Police mercilessly lathicharged upon the Hindus, dispersed them and forcibly arrested Ashok Jha with his wife and 25 Muhalla Committee members. The whole area became tense, all the shops in he busy market place shut down their shutter, local schools declared closure immediately. Police dispersed any mob throughout the day and after who tried to peep into the disputed building. Police ruthlessly crushed any type of protest on behalf of the Hindus.
  • The situation of Burrabazar area is speedily deteriorated scince last Assembly election in 2005, when the most communal and criminal Mohammed Shorab was elected from Burrabazar Constituency in the ticket of RJD, with the support of CPIM. Since then Shorab, a small time fruit seller, calls the shot in the area.
  • Earlier, this business community i.e. Marwaris were used to be prey of the Marxsists, now the same people are being squeezed and persecuted by the Muslims goons.

    As in Assam, the internal conflict between the Assamese and the Bengalis ultimately weakened the Hindu Society and resulted in Muslim domination ( now 7 districts out of 23 in Assam have become Muslim majority), in West Bengal too, the Marwari – Bengali difference may create the same condition here.

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www.outlookindia.com | The Glitter In The Godliness

• www.outlookindia.com | The Glitter In The Godliness

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  • Gireesh G.V.

    ‘Karma capitalism’ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living empire has millions of devotees
  • India’s new affluence runs parallel to a new, homogenised Hinduism that is riding on a crest of religiosity. Gone with Nehruvian economics is Nehruvian secularism.

    William Dalrymple
  • 
  • The God Market: How Globalization Is Making India More Hindu
    By Meera Nanda
    Random House | 320 pages | Rs 395
  • This new religiosity has recently been the subject of a remarkable study by Meera Nanda, an academician at JNU, who has shown how globalisation is making India more religious, and religion more political. “Globalisation has been good for the gods,” she writes in The God Market. “As India is liberalising  and globalising its economy, the country is experiencing a rising tide of popular Hinduism, which is leaving no social segment and no public institution untouched. There is a surge in popular religiosity among the burgeoning and largely Hindu middle-classes, as is evident from boom in pilgrimage and the invention of new, more ostentatious rituals. This religiosity is being cultivated by the emerging state-temple-corporate complex that is replacing the more secular public institutions of the Nehruvian era...a new Hindu religiosity is getting more deeply embedded in everyday life, both in the private and public spheres.”
  • India, Nanda reveals, now has 2.5 million places of worship, but only 1.5 million schools and barely 75,000 hospitals. Religious pilgrimages now account for over 50 per cent of all package tours, while the bigger pilgrimage sites now vie with the Taj Mahal for the most visited sites: the Balaji Temple in Tirupati had 23 million visitors last year, while 17.25 million trekked to the mountain shrine of Vaishno Devi. In a 2007 survey jointly conducted by the Hindustan Times and CNN-IBN in 2007, 30 per cent of Indians said they had become more religious in the last five years. Such is the appetite for rituals in this newly religious middle-class. There has recently been a severe shortfall of English and Sanskrit speaking priests with the qualifications to perform Vedic and Agamic rituals. When it comes to rituals in the new India, demand has outstripped supply.

    Nanda writes engagingly about what she calls ‘Karma Capitalism’ and the TV godmen, some of whom have huge following: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living empire apparently claims 20 million members; much of its land, she reveals, is donated by the state of Karnataka.

  • While Nanda probably gives undue space—an entire chapter—to the liberalisation of the economy since 1991, material that is widely available elsewhere, she might have said a little more about the homogenising tendencies of modern Hinduism, and the way local and regional cults and variants are falling out of favour as faith becomes more centralised. Small devtas and devi cults giving way instead to the national hyper-masculine hero deities, especially Lord Krishna and Lord Rama, a process scholars call the ‘Rama-fication’ of Hinduism.

    For this tendency, the best source remains Romila Thapar’s essay Syndicated Hinduism. Here, Thapar shows how, since the mid-19th century, reformers such as Vivekananda have systemised Hinduism into a relatively centralised nationalist ideology that now increasingly resembles the very different structures of the Semitic religions its more extreme adherents tend to abhor. “The model,” writes Thapar, “is in fact that of Islam and Christianity...worship is increasingly congregational and the introduction of sermons on the definition of a good Hindu and Hindu belief and behaviour are becoming common and register a distinct change from earlier practice.” According to Thapar, this homogenising process is accelerating: “The emergence of a powerful middle-class,” she believes, has created a desire for a “uniform, monolithic Hinduism, created to serve its new requirements”. This new Hinduism masquerades as the revival of something ancient, but it is really “a new creation, created to support the claims of [Hindu] majoritarianism.”

    Ironically, there are strong parallels in the way this new Hinduism is standardising faith to what is happening in South Asian Islam. There too, the local is tending to give way to the national as the cults of local Sufi saints—the warp and woof of popular Islam in India for centuries—loses ground to a more standardised, middle-class and textual form of Islam, imported from the Gulf and propagated by the the Wahabis, Deobandis and Tablighis in their madrasas.

  • (William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India is published by Bloomsbury.)

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FT.com / Reportage - Love and dishonour in India

• FT.com / Reportage - Love and dishonour in India

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  • By Amy Kazmin
  
  • Gaurav, meanwhile, has been left unable to accept the loss of the woman he loved, even as he battles with his doubts about whether she will ever return. “I don’t know where to go and which path I have to follow,” he says. “I am just living on the hope that some time she will be back.”

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With RSS push, is Varun poised for a BJP 'post'? - India - The Times of India

• With RSS push, is Varun poised for a BJP 'post'? - India - The Times of India

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  • Sources claim that an important organisational post could be coming Varun's way even though the old guard in the state BJP is not too comfortable with the move to ``paradrop'' the young man who is no stranger to controversy.
  • In Sultanpur, the local RSS units worked overtime to coax crowds to attend Varun's rally in big numbers. In fact, interest shown by the Parivar resulted in pulling 20-odd MLAs to the venue, despite the fact that a powerful lobby in the state unit tried its best to play spoiler, it is learnt.
    
    The second coming of Varun is probably due to a rethink in the Parivar, which sees the MP as the perfect foil to Rahul gandhi.
  • Bhagwat feels roping in young blood could be BJP's best bet. The mindset was in evidence during his Lucknow sojourn as he laid great emphasis on youth participation. Grooming Varun to interface with the public as a youth icon and prepare him for a bigger role in the party, probably as head of the BJP Yuva Morcha, could be a part of the same strategy.

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सांप्रदायिक भावनाएं भड़काने का आरोप

• सांप्रदायिक भावनाएं भड़काने का आरोप

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  • HimachalSirmour ZilaNahan
  • धर्मपुर मस्जिद के नजदीक रह रहे दुकानदारों ने सैयद अहमद गिलानी पर सांप्रदायिक भावनाएं भड़काने का आरोप लगाया है। दुकानदारों ने इसकी शिकायत मुख्यमंत्री प्रेम कुमार धूमल से की है। दुकानदारों ने आरोप लगाया कि गिलानी ने मस्जिद के दो कमरे तोड़कर मकान बनाया है और इसके सामने ऊंची दीवार खड़ी कर हिंदू किरायदारों के बिजली, पानी कनेक्शन काट दिए हैं। दुकानदारों ने गिलानी की शिकायत डीसी सोलन, पुलिस अधीक्षक, कार्यकारी अधिकारी वक्फ बोर्ड और हज कमेटी शिमला से कर उचित कार्रवाई करने की मांग की है। सैयद अहमद गिलानी ने आरोपों को निराधार बताते हुए कहा कि कुछ लोग उनकी छवि खराब करने में लगे हैं, उन्होंने कहा वक्फ बोर्ड ने उन्हें मस्जिद इमाम बनाया है। मस्जिद में रह रहे किराएदारों पर किसी प्रकार का दवाब नहीं बनाया गया है।

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BBC Hindi - अंतरराष्ट्रीय ख़बरें - मलेशिया में 'अल्लाह' को लेकर रस्साकशी

• BBC Hindi - अंतरराष्ट्रीय ख़बरें - मलेशिया में 'अल्लाह' को लेकर रस्साकशी

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  • मलेशिया में ग़ैर मुसलमानों के अल्लाह शब्द के प्रयोग को लेकर रविवार को भी ईसाइयों के धार्मिक संस्थानों पर हमले हुए हैं.
  

  •  

    ये धार्मिक हिंसा पिछले महीने तब से बढ़ गई थी जब मलेशिया की एक अदालत ने सरकार के आदेश को उलटते हुए ये फ़ैसला सुनाया था कि ईसाई प्रकाशनों में ईश्वर के लिए अल्लाह शब्द का प्रयोग किया जा सकता है.

    सरकार की दलील थी कि ग़ैर मुसलमान अगर अल्लाह शब्द का प्रयोग करेंगे तो देश में अशांति फैल सकती है.

  • मामले की सुनवाई के दौरान कैथोलिक ईसाइयों के अख़बार हेराल्ड ने दलील दी थी कि चर्च में अल्लाह शब्द का प्रयोग दशकों से हो रहा है. हेराल्ड ने सरकार के आदेश के ख़िलाफ़ 2007 में अदालत में अपील दायर की थी.

    कई मुस्लिम संगठनों ने अल्लाह शब्द के प्रयोग के बारे में कैथोलिक चर्च के आग्रह पर संदेह व्यक्त किया था.

    इनका ये मानना था कि अल्लाह शब्द के प्रयोग के आग्रह से चर्च की मुसलमानों को धर्म परिवर्तन कर ईसाई बनाने की मंशा ज़ाहिर होती है.

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मकर संक्रांति : करें सूर्य उपासना

• मकर संक्रांति : करें सूर्य उपासना

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  • ज्योतिष शास्त्र के अनुसार सूर्य वर्षर्पयत मेष से लेकर मीन तक एक-एक माह की अवधि के लिए सभी राशियों में भ्रमण करते हैं। १४ अथवा १५ जनवरी को सूर्य मकर राशि में प्रवेश करते हैं। मकर और कुंभ राशियां सूर्य के पुत्र शनि की राशियां हैं और शनि सूर्य से बैर रखता है।

    
    
    

    दुश्मन की राशि मकर में सूर्य के प्रवेश करने और अगले दो महीनों के लिए शनि की मकर और कुंभ राशियों में सूर्य के रहने से और पिता-पुत्र में बैर भाव स्थिति से पृथ्वीवासियों पर किसी प्रकार का कुप्रभाव न पड़े, इसलिए हमारे ऋषि-मुनियों ने तीर्थ स्नान, दान और धार्मिक कर्मकांड के उपाय सुझाए हैं। मकर संक्रांति पर तिल और गुड़ से बने लड्डुओं का उपयोग करने और उसके दान के पीछे भी यही मंशा है।

    
    
    

    ज्योतिष के अनुसार तेल शनि का और गुड़ सूर्य का खाद्य पदार्थ है। तिल तेल की जननी है, यही कारण है कि शनि और सूर्य को प्रसन्न करने के लिए इस दिन लोग तिल-गुड़ के व्यंजनों का सेवन करते हैं। तीर्थो पर स्नान और दान-पुण्य की व्यवस्था भी इसी उद्देश्य से रखी गई है कि पिता-पुत्र के बैर भाव से इस जगत के निवासियों पर कोई प्रतिकूल प्रभाव नहीं पड़े और भगवान उसे किसी भी बुरी स्थिति से बचाएं।

  • मकर संक्रांति के दिन से लोग मलमास के बंधन से मुक्त हो जाएंगे। विवाह, गृह प्रवेश और अन्य शुभ कार्यो के लिए लोगों को इस दिन का बेताबी से इंतजार रहता है। ज्योतिष शास्त्र में मलमास के दौरान शुभ कार्य अनिष्ट कारक माने जाते हैं। मकर संक्रांति से सूर्य दक्षिणायन से उत्तरायण में आ जाते हैं।

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Shourie finds Jinnah repelling

• Shourie finds Jinnah repelling

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  • In his 25th book titled "We Must Have No Price And Everyone Must Know That We Have No Price", the former Editor of The Indian Express and The Times of India and ex-union minister "profoundly" disagrees with Jaswant Singh's assessment of Jinnah.
  • The book released yesterday touches upon a variety of issues ranging from internal security, India's Tibet policy, reforms in higher education and climate change.
  • "In a word, far from being attracted by Jinnah, as my senior, Jaswant Singh is, I am repelled by him," he says.

     

    Shourie also differed with those "who still dream of a grand confederation of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh" and who talk of "Akhand Bharat".

     

    "The best thing that has happened for us is the Partition. It has given us breathing time, a little time to resurrect and save our pluralist culture and religions. Had it not happened, we would have been bullied and thrashed and swamped by Islamic fundamentalists," he says.

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‘Irked’ Vinay Katiyar threatens to take ‘sanyas’

• ‘Irked’ Vinay Katiyar threatens to take ‘sanyas’

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  • Ayodhya
  • Bharatiya Janata Party’s revival plans received another jolt on Sunday when irked by his negligence within the party senior leader Vinay Katiyar threatened to take sanyas from active politics.
    
    Speaking to media here, Katiyar said that he is disappointed the apathy in the party and wants to devote more time to religious and spiritual activities after quitting the politics.
    
    Katiyar said that he is not being given any big responsibility in the party and that has led to his aversion from politics.
    
    He made these comments while beginning his one-month long ‘kalpvaas’ in Ayodhya.

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