COMMUNAL VIOLENCE BILL

Ever since the UPA Government came to power in 2004 there started a cacophony about bringing a stricter law to prevent communal violence in the country. In its first term the UPA Government had, as its alliance partners, the Left parties as well as leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan etc. It may be worthwhile to recall that it were these very people who had launched a massive campaign of disinformation about the then existing anti-terrorism law called the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). They finally succeeded in getting the POTA repealed on the specious ground that it was being used to harass innocent Muslims. Any amount of statistical data contrary to their false claims against POTA wouldn't convince them because the main objective behind the campaign against the POTA was to play the same old game of vote-banks. Incidentally after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York many countries in the world including America have introduced fresh stringent laws against terror while India became the only country to repeal the existing laws thus leaving the security agencies without any instrument to tackle the huge challenge of terror.

Not content with repealing the existing anti-terrorism laws the new UPA Government decided to bring in a new act in the name of preventing communal violence in the country. Although sounding noble, it was clear from day one that the real motive of the protagonists for this act was to harass the Hindu groups and organizations in the country. For them the violence in Gujarat in 2002 became a good excuse to justify introduction of a law that would prevent what they described as the 'Majoritarian violence against the hapless Minorities'.  Leaders like Lalu Prasad went to the extent of making ridiculous suggestions that carrying sticks should be banned under the new act. For him the stick is identified with the RSS uniform.

Finally the UPA Government did introduce a draft Bill in the Parliament in 2005. It was described as THE COMMUNAL VIOLENCE (PREVENTION, CONTROL AND REHABILITATION OF VICTIMS) BILL, 2005. Official declaration described this bill as below:

A bill to empower the Sate Governments and the Central Government to take measures to provide for the prevention and control of communal violence which threatens the secular fabric, unity, integrity and internal security of the nation and rehabilitation of victims of such violence and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

The draft Bill was placed before the Parliament in December 2005 by the then Home Minister Sri Shivraj Patil. Since the intentions of the Government of the day were suspect there was opposition from various quarters to the draft. As mentioned above the draft talks of imposing a ban on even lathis – sticks, calling them weapons. However the draft Bill does make some significant points. It sufficiently empowers the State Governments as stakeholders in preventing communal violence. It also extends the application of the Bill to all forms of communal violence by all groups, irrespective of their religion or social background.

Objections from Muslim and Christian Groups

However the Bill didn’t find favour with anybody. Leaders of several political parties felt that the draft Bill provides sweeping powers to the Central Government thus undermining the authority of the State Governments. But the most vocal opposition to this draft Bill came from the Muslim, Christian and pseudo-Secular quarters. Their contention was just the opposite of what the political leaders were saying. In the eyes of the so-called civil society groups and Muslim and Christian groups the 2005 draft Bill is completely toothless. They argued that the Bill lacked accountability. They demanded that the powers of managing communal violence be vested in non-Government actors and make governments and administration accountable for communal violence.

The All India Christian Council was in the forefront of this campaign against the draft 2005 Bill. In a letter written to the Prime Minister the AICC conveyed the following concerns about the draft Bill, by then revised once and called the Bill – 2009.

1. The Bill doesn’t adequately address the question of hate campaigns and the “communalisation process” (i.e. hate speech published in local language media) that precedes communal violence. This well-studied phenomenon of activities, some already illegal but not often prosecuted, is a root issue.

2. The Bill doesn’t take into account the demography and pattern of living of various communities. Specifically, anti-Christian violence is normally dismissed by public officials as “sporadic” (although there may be a serious incident daily in some areas). Because other minorities live in concentrated or contiguous areas, those “communally disturbed areas” are more easily identified. In Orissa, Kandhamal would likely not fit the Bill’s definition but we know what happened there in 2007-2008.

3. The Bill doesn’t give States guidelines on reparations and compensation. We need a uniform national policy as well standards on the assessment of damages after riots in order to prevent ghettoisation.

4. The Bill doesn’t fully address police and administrative impunity properly or adequately. The “good faith” clause, which exempts police and public servants from prosecution unless there is permission from the executive branch, is a major concern.

The Muslim bodies too had started a protest campaign against the draft. More than 20 Muslim scholars and leaders, under the leadership of Syed Shahbuddin, issued a statement arguing against the draft Bill. They wanted provisions to make police and civil administration and state authorities accountable. The Joint Committee of Muslim Organisations for Empowerment (JCMOE) has made the demand on behalf of these organizations. JCMOE also urged the government to convene a meeting of leaders of targeted communities to note their views on the bill.

“The Bill does not make police or administration or state authorities accountable and provide for timely and effective intervention by the National Human Rights Commission, if the communal violence spreads or continues for weeks, or by the Central Government under Articles 355 and 356 of the Constitution, duly modified. On the other hand, ironically, the Bill grants more power to the local police and administration, which, more often than not acts in league with the rioters by declaring the area as ‘communally disturbed area’” JCMOE statement said.

 “The undersigned call upon the Government to provide for prompt registration of communal crimes, their urgent investigation by special agencies and prosecution of identified culprits, including policemen, administrators and politicians, in Special Courts with Special Prosecutors, who are acceptable to the victims and in such cases the provision of prior sanction of the government should not apply to such culprits. The undersigned also demand a uniform scale of compensation for the whole country, irrespective of religion of the victims or the culprits or the venue of communal violence, for loss of life, honour and property and as well as destruction of and damage to religious places with the provision to revise the scale every 10 years and assessment of losses and damage by a Special Commissioner from outside the state occurrence.”

“The undersigned, for the reasons mentioned above do not find the Bill of 2009 acceptable and request the Government not to introduce it in a hurry without consulting the representatives and leaders of the civil society, particularly the communities which are generally targeted and to revise the Bill in the light of their suggestions and observations.”

The Muslim leaders have requested “all secular forces, the civil society and the political parties represented in the Parliament to press the Government to revise the Bill before introduction in order to remove the inadequacies, defects and flaws which have been pointed out and objected to by the targeted communities, in order to assure them of absolute Equality before Law and guarantee their Security and Dignity.”

What is interesting and important to note is that these two statements, the Muslim and the Christian, come at around the same time as though they were premeditated. Simultaneously the so-called civil society, a euphemism for pseudo-Secular intelligentsia, too started raising the pitch against the draft.

From their arguments in opposition of the draft Bill it is clear that they wanted a Bill that would consider only the Christians and Muslims as the “generally targeted” victims of communal violence; that the word ‘communal violence’ be defined in such a way that only the Muslims and Christians are treated as victims and Hindus as ‘rioters’; that the local police and administration, including the State administration, is always hand-in-glove with the perpetrators of violence; that the Bill should empower the Central Government to invoke Art.355 and 366 of the Constitution in the event of communal violence.

Since the Prevention of Communal Violence Bill – 2005 as amended as Prevention of Communal Violence Bill – 2009 doesn’t discriminate the perpetrators and victims of communal violence on religious grounds and also it envisages the State administration as an equal stake holder in preventing such violence these groups wanted the Bill to be withdrawn.

It is around that time that the new National Advisory Council – NAC - had been constituted by the UPA Government under the chairmanship of Ms. Sonia Gandhi. The UPA Government promptly handed over the matter to the newly constituted NAC and asked it to come up with a fresh draft.

History of Communal Strife in India

India has a long history of communal strife between various communities. Before Independence the country’s history was replete with worst communal violence. Post-Partition the scale of communal violence has come down considerably although it has not been completely mitigated. Sporadic incidents of violence continued and occasionally some major riot would take place here and there. Most of the communal strife and violence in the country occurs in places where the specific Minority groups, especially the Muslims are in greater numbers.

Under Rajiv Gandhi, the Union Government had embarked on identifying communally sensitive districts in the country and ended up identifying mostly those districts that have Muslims as the demographic majority. Some of the communally sensitive spots in the country like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Meerut, Delhi, Kolkata etc have large presence of Muslims.

This one factor negates the propaganda that the Hindus are the perpetrators of communal violence. There is a general global understanding that the majority is always a bully and the minority a victim. However in India we don’t have such majorities and minorities. Secondly the country remains largely peaceful essentially due to the demographic majority of the Hindus only. There are enough instances in our country where the so-called minority groups were found to be the instigators and perpetrators of communal violence.

Hence the basic premise that the Majority community – read Hindus – are the perpetrators of communal violence in India and the minority – read Muslims and Christians – are the victims is essentially wrong. Equally wrong is the premise that a particular government or party is good in governance and the other bad. History of India provides enough evidence to suggest that highest number of communal clashes take place in Congress-ruled states and in many instances of communal violence political interests too play a vital role.

Writing in Economic and Political Weekly author of the book Communal Riots in India Steven I Wilkinson observes: “In the book I highlight examples of Congress and Muslim League politicians’ complicity in partition-era riots in Bihar, UP, and in Calcutta (pp 5,74). I also point out that in the post-independence era Congress has at times benefited electorally from Hindu-Muslim violence (p 50) and I find that we can identify no robust statistical relationship between Congress rule and the level of riots, a result I attribute to the widely varying communal character of the party and its leadership across time and place (p 153). Lest anyone be in doubt about my position, I say on p 153 that “at one time or another, Congress politicians have both fomented and prevented communal violence for political advantage. Congress governments have failed, for example, to prevent some of India’s worst riots (e g, the Ahmedabad riots of 1969, the Moradabad riots of 1980, and the Meerut riots of 1987) and in some cases Congress ministers have reportedly instigated riots…and have blocked riot enforcement.”

Following chart shows the major incidents of communal violence in Indian between 1947 and 2003.

Year    City/State                   Casualties/Injured    C.M.                             Ruling Party

1947   Calc/WBengal            5000/25000                         Prafull Ghosh             Congress


1947   Punjab                        5000/3000               Gopichand Bhargav  Congress


1964   W. Bengal                   2000                           Prafull Sen                 Congress

1967   Ranchi/Bihar             183                             Mahamaya Prasad    Congress


1968   Asam                           82                               B.P. Chalina                Congress


1969   Gujarat                       512                             H. K. Desai                  Congress


1970   Maharashtra              120                             V.P. Naik                     Congress


1972   Nonari / U.P.              76                               K. P. Tripathi              Congress

1977   Varanasi / U.P.           5                                  Ram Naresh Yadav   Janata Party

1978   Sambhal / U.P.           25                               Ram Nresh Yadav     Janata Party


1978   Hydrabad/ A.P.          19                               J.Vengal Rao               Congress


1979   Jamshedpur/Bihar   120                             Karpoori Thakur       Janata Party


1980   Moradabad/ U.P.       2000                           V.P. Singh                   Congress I


1981   Biharsharif/ Bihar    80                               Jagannath Mishra     Congress I


1982   Meerut / U.P.                         12/30                         Sripati Mishra            Congress I


1982   Baroda / Gujarat       17/50                         M.S. Solanki                Congress I


1983   Malur/Karnataka                                          Ramkrishna Hedge   Janata Party


1983   Malegaon/Maharashtra                               VasantRao Patil         Congress I


1983   Hazaribagh/ Bihar                                        ChandraShekher       Congress I


1983   Hydrabad / A.P.         45/150                      N.T.Ramarao              TDP


1984   Maharashtra              146/611                    VasantRao Patil         Congress I


1984   Delhi                           2733                           Central Govt.              Congress I


1985   Ahemdabad               300                             M.S. Solanki                Congress I


1986   Ahemdabad               59/80                         Amarsinh chodhary  Congress


1987   Meerut/ U.P.              3000                           Bir Bahadur Singh    Congress

1989   Indore                                    27                               Moti Lal Vora             Congress


1989   Kota/Rajasthan                                             S. C. Mathur               Congress


1989   Bhadrak/Orissa         17                               J.B. Patnaik                 Congress


1990   Gujarat                       265/775                    ChimmanbhaiPatel   Janata Party


1990   Jaipur / Rajasthan    72/644                      B.S. shekhawat           Janata Party


1990   Uttar Pradesh                        94/69                         Mulayam Singh         SJP

1990   Delhi                           100                             Central Government


1990   Assam                         37                               P.K. Mahantha           AGP


1990   Maharashtra                                                  Sharad Pawar            Congress


1990   Bihar                           996                             Jagannath Mishra     Congress


1990   Madhya Pradesh       13/150                      Sunderlal Patwa        BJP

1990   Karnataka                  60                               S. Bangarappa           Congress


1990   Hydrabad/A.P.           299/350                    M.Chenna Reddy       Congress


1991   Banaras/U.P.              50                               Kalyan Singh             BJP


1991   Baroda/Gujarat         66/170                      Chimmanbhai Patel  Janata Party


1992   Sitamarhi/Bihar        44                               Laloo Prasad Yadav  Janata Dal

1992   Surat/Gujarat                        200                             ChimmanbhaiPatel   Janata Party


1992   Bombay                      1000                           Sudhakarrao Naik     NCP


1992   Bhopal/M.P.               143                             Sunderlal Patwa        BJP


1995   Madras/Tamilnadu  4                                  Jayalalita                    AIADMK


1995   Karnataka                  ½                                HD Devegoda             Janata Dal


1995   Kerala                         2                                  AK Antony                  Congress


1995   Bihar                           5                                  Laloo Prasad Yadav  RJD


1995   Hydrabad/AP                        2/100                         Chandrababu Naidu TDP


1998   Ajmer/Rajasthan       25                               B S Shekhawat           BJP


1998   Moradabad/UP         3/50                           Kalyan Singh             BJP

1998   Hydrabad/AP                        4/16                           Chandrababu Naidu TDP


1998   Munger/Bihar           3/39                           Rabri Devi                  RJD


1998   Suratkul/Karnataka 12                               JH Patel                      Janata Party


1999   Surat/Gujarat                        7/27                           Keshubhai Patel        BJP


2001   Nalanda/Bihar          8/6                             Rabri Devi                  RJD


2001   Moradabad/UP         6                                  Rajnath singh                        BJP


2001   Maharashtra              2/30                           Vilasrao Deshmukh   Congress


2001   Malegaon                   16                               Vilasrao Deshmukh   Congress


2002   Gujarat                       1000                           Narendra Modi          BJP


Liquor baron Ponty Chadha and Hardeep Chadha killed in Delhi.

Liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his elder brother Hardeep were killed and a security guard was injured in a firing at a Delhi farmhouse on Saturday.

TV reports suggest that after an altercation, Hardeep fired at Ponty and killed him. Ponty’s guard then fired at Hardeep who returned fire. The entire incident reportedly took place in the garden of the farmhouse.

“Lot of problems were there between Ponty and his brother Hardeep over property settlement,” Hardeep’s lawyer told TV channels.

Police said that the brothers had called a meeting to resolve disputes related to property issues.

First reports said that Chadha’s brother, Hardeep, was killed after an unknown assailant opened fire at the family’s farmhouse in Chhatarpur.

The incident happened between 1:00pm and 1:30pm.

Reports said that the police was questioning a guard who was also injured in the firing.

The injured have been admitted to Vasant Kunj’s Fortis hospital.

Chadha’s business empire, the Wave Group, is conservatively valued at Rs. 6,000 crore. It encompasses distilleries, multiplexes (Wave Cinemas), sugar and paper mills, real estate, poultry and films (he produced the 2005 Sunny Deol starrer Jo Bole So Nihaal).

Chadha’s brothers, sons and a grandson run parts of the empire and he rarely appears before the media.

In 2005, during the government of Mulayam Singh, Chadha won statewide contracts to supply ready to eat food for poor, underweight or otherwise malnourished children under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS).

Chadha’s business interests didn’t suffer when Singh’s rival, Mayawati, came to power in Uttar Pradesh.

Chadha’s company, Great Value Foods, retained the nutrition contracts, and in 2009, he gained an unprecedented monopoly over the state’s wholesale liquor trade.

Chadha’s companies have been probed by Income Tax authorities several times but he has never suffered legal setbacks.

After his properties in 25 locations in Delhi, NCR and Uttar Pradesh were raided in February this year, Chadha reported ‘undisclosed income’ of Rs. 175 crore and paid Rs. 54 crore as tax to the Income Tax department.

Are all religions equal?

Some thought-provoking excerpts from Separate truths by Stephen Prothero…OR why is it misleading — and dangerous — to think that religions are different paths to the same wisdom. Pl read on (Note: emphasis is mine).

*** Excerpts from “Separate Truths” by Stephan Prothero ***

…At least since…the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim…is as odd as it is intriguing. No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. …The same goes for democracy and monarchy. Yet scholars continue to claim that religious rivals such as Hinduism and Islam, Judaism and Christianity are, by some miracle of the imagination, both essentially the same and basically good.

…This view resounds in the echo chamber of popular culture…Even the Dalai Lama, who should know better, has gotten into the act, claiming that “all major religious traditions carry basically the same message.”

…To claim that all religions are basically the same…is not to deny the differences between a Buddhist who believes in no god, a Jew who believes in one God, and a Hindu who believes in many gods. It is to deny that those differences matter, however. From this perspective, whether God has a body (yes, say Mormons; no, say Muslims) or whether human beings have souls (yes, say Hindus; no, say Buddhists) is of no account because, as Hindu teacher Swami Sivananda writes, “The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same. There is difference only in the nonessentials.”

This is a lovely sentiment but it is untrue, disrespectful, and dangerous.

The gods of Hinduism are not the same as the orishas of Yoruba religion or the immortals of Daoism. To pretend that they are is to refuse to take seriously the beliefs and practices of ordinary religious folk who for centuries have had no problem distinguishing the Nicene Creed of Christianity from the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism from the Shahadah of Islam. It is also to lose sight of the unique beauty of each of the world’s religions.

But this lumping of the world’s religions into one megareligion is not just false and condescending, it is also a threat. How can we make sense of the ongoing conflict in Kashmir if we pretend that Hinduism and Islam are one and the same? Or of the impasse in the Middle East, if we pretend that there are no fundamental disagreements between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?

This naive theological groupthink — call it Godthink — is motivated in part by a laudable rejection of the exclusivist missionary view that only you and your kind will make it to heaven or nirvana or paradise.

…I understand what these people are doing. They are not describing the world but reimagining it. They are hoping that their hope will call up in us feelings of brotherhood and sisterhood. In the face of religious bigotry and bloodshed, past and present, we cannot help but be drawn to such hope, and such vision. Yet we must not mistake either for clear-eyed analysis.

When it comes to safeguarding the world from the evils of religion, including violence by proxy from the hand of God, the claim that all religions are one is no more effective than the claim that all religions are poison. As the New Atheists (another species of religious lumpers) observe, we live in a world where religion seems as likely to detonate a bomb as to defuse one. So while we need idealism, we need realism even more. We need to understand religious people as they are — not just at their best but also their worst. We need to look at not only their awe-inspiring architecture and gentle mystics but also their bigots and suicide bombers.

What the world’s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point. And where they begin is with this simple observation: Something is wrong with the world. …

So religious folk agree that something has gone awry. They part company, however, when it comes to stating just what has gone wrong, and they diverge even more sharply when they move from diagnosing the human problem to prescribing how to solve it. Moreover, each offers its own distinctive diagnosis of the human problem and its own prescription for a cure. Each offers its own techniques for reaching its religious goal, and its own exemplars for emulation.

Christians see sin as the human problem, and salvation from sin as the religious goal. Buddhists see suffering (which, in their tradition, is not ennobling) as the problem, and liberation from suffering as the goal. Confucians see social disorder as the problem, and social harmony as the goal. And so it goes from tradition to tradition, with Hindus seeking release from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, Muslims seeking paradise via submission to Allah, and practitioners of the Yoruba religion seeking sacred connections — among humans, between humans and the persons of power they call the orishas, and between humans and the natural environment.

The great religions also differ fundamentally when it comes to the techniques they employ to take you from problem to goal.

…For more than a century, scholars have searched for the essence of religion. …Today it is widely accepted that there is no one essence that all religions share. What they share are family resemblances — tendencies toward this belief or that behavior. In the family of religions, kin tend to perform rituals. They tend to tell stories about how life and death began and to write down these stories in scriptures. They tend to cultivate techniques of ecstasy and devotion. They tend to organize themselves into institutions and to gather in sacred places at sacred times. They tend to instruct human beings how to act toward one another. They tend to profess beliefs about the gods and the supernatural. They tend to invest objects and places with sacred import.

These family resemblances are just tendencies, however. Just as there are tall people in short families (none of the other men in Michael Jordan’s family was over 6 feet tall), there are religions that deny the existence of God and religions that get along just fine without creeds. Something is a religion when it shares enough of this DNA to belong to the family of religions. What makes the members of this family different (and themselves) is how they mix and match these dimensions.

…

There is a long tradition of Christian thinkers who assume that salvation is the goal of all religions and then argue that only Christians can achieve this goal. Philosopher of religion Huston Smith, who grew up in China as a child of Methodist missionaries, rejected this argument but not its guiding assumption. “To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion,” he wrote, “is like claiming that God can be found in this room and not the next.” It might seem to be an admirable act of empathy to assert that Confucians and Buddhists can be saved. But this statement is confused to the core, since salvation is not something that either Confucians or Buddhists seek. Salvation is a Christian goal, and when Christians speak of it, they are speaking of being saved from sin. But Confucians and Buddhists do not believe in sin, so it makes no sense for them to try to be saved from it. And while Muslims and Jews do speak of sin of a sort, neither Islam nor Judaism describes salvation from sin as its aim. When a jailer asks the apostle Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30), he is asking not a generic human question but a specifically Christian one. So while it may seem to be an act of generosity to state that Confucians and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews can also be saved, this statement is actually an act of obfuscation.

A sports analogy may be in order here. Which of the following — baseball, basketball, tennis, or golf — is best at scoring runs? The answer of course is baseball, because runs is a term foreign to basketball, tennis, and golf alike. Different sports have different goals: Basketball players shoot baskets; tennis players win points; golfers sink putts. To criticize a basketball team for failing to score runs is not to besmirch them. It is simply to misunderstand the game of basketball.

So here is another problem with the pretend pluralism of the perennial philosophy sort: Just as hitting home runs is the monopoly of one sport, salvation is the monopoly of one religion. If you see sin as the human predicament and salvation as the solution, then it makes sense to come to Christ. But that will not settle as much as you might think, because the real question is not which religion is best at carrying us into the end zone of salvation but which of the many religious goals on offer we should be seeking. Should we be trudging toward the end zone of salvation, or trying to reach the finish line of social harmony? Should our goal be reincarnation? Or to escape from the vicious cycle of life, death, and rebirth?

While I do not believe we are witnessing a “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam, it is a fantasy to imagine that the world’s two largest religions are in any meaningful sense the same, or that interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims will magically bridge the gap. You would think that champions of multiculturalism would warm to this fact, glorying in the diversity inside and across religious traditions. But even among multiculturalists, the tendency is to pretend that the differences between religions are more apparent than real, and that the differences inside religious traditions just don’t warrant the fuss practitioners continue to make over them.

We pretend that religious differences are trivial because it makes us feel safer, or more moral. Butpretending that the world’s religions are the same does not make our world safer. Like all forms of ignorance, it makes our world more dangerous, and more deadly. False rumors of weapons of mass destruction doubtless led the United States to wade into its current quagmire in Iraq. Another factor, however, was our ignorance of the fundamental disagreements between Christians and Muslims, on the one hand, and Sunni and Shia Islam, on the other. What if we had been aware of these conflicts as of 9/11? Would we have committed 160,000 troops to a nation whose language we do not speak and whose religion we do not understand?

What we need is a realistic view of where religious rivals clash and where they can cooperate…

*** End of Excerpts ***

SOURCE : http://satyameva-jayate.org/2010/05/05/are-all-religions-equal/

Unity of Religions

Following are from the Book ‘ Hindu Dharma” , a book which contains English translation of certain invaluable and engrossing speeches of Sri Sri Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi MahaSwamiji (at various times during the years 1907 to 1994).

Republished here with the Sri.Kanchi Mutt’s Permission.

May the Good Word Spread.

All religions have one common ideal, worship of the Lord, and all of them proclaim that there is but one God. This one God accepts your devotion irrespective of the manner of your worship, whether it is according to this or that religion. So there is no need to abandon the religion of your birth and embrace another.

The temple, the church, the mosque, the vihara may be different from one another. The idol or the symbol in them may not also be the same and the rites performed in them may be different. But the Paramatman who wants to grace the worshipper, whatever be his faith, is the same. The different religions have taken shape according to the customs peculiar to the countries in which they originated and according to the differences in the mental outlook of the people inhabiting them. The goal of all religions is to lead people to the same Paramatman according to the different attributes of the devotees concerned. So there is no need for people to change over to another faith. Converts demean not only the religion of their birth but also the one to which they convert. Indeed they do demean God.

“A man leaves the religion of his birth because he thinks there is something wanting in it,” so you may think. ‘Why does the Svaamigal say then that the convert demeans thenew religion that he embraces? ” I will tell you why. Is it not because they think that God is not the same in all religions that people embrace a new faith? By doing so, they see God in a reduced form, don’t they? They presumably believe that the God of the religion of their birth is useless and jump to another faith. But do they believe that the God of their new religion is a universal God? No. No. If they did there would be no need for any change of faith. Why do people embrace a new faith? Is it not because that the continuance in the religion of their birth would mean a denial of the blessings of the God of the new faith to which they are attracted? This means that they place limitations on their new religion as well as on its God. When they convert to a new religion, apparently out of respect for it, they indeed dishonour it.

One big difference between Hinduism and other faiths is that it does not proclaim that it alone shows the path to liberation. Our Vedic religion alone has not practiced conversion and the reason for it is that our forefathers were well aware that all religions are nothing but different paths to realise the one and only Paramatman. The Vedasproclaim: “The wise speak of the One Truth by different names. ” Sri Krsna says in the Gita: “In whatever way or form a man worships me, I increase his faith and make him firm and steady in that worship. ” And says one of the Azhvars: “Avaravar tamatamadu tarivari vahaivahai avaravar iraiyavar“. This is the reason why the Hindus have not practiced- like adherents of other religions- proselytisation and religious persecution. Nor have they waged anything like the crusades or jehads.

Our long history is sufficient proof of this. All historians accept the fact of our religious tolerance. They observe that, an empire like Srivijaya was established in the East, people there accepted our culture and our way of life willingly, not because they were imposed on them by force. They further remark that Hinduism spread through trade and not through force.

In my opinion the Vedic religion was once prevalent all over the world. Certain ruins and relics found in various regions of the planet attest to this fact. Even historians who disagree with my view concede that in the past people in many lands accepted Indian culture and the way of life willingly and not on account of any force on our part.

All religions that practice conversion employ a certain ritual. For instance, there isbaptism in Christianity. Hinduism has more ritual than any other religion, yet its canonical texts do not contain any rite for conversion. No better proof is needed for the fact that we have at no time either encouraged conversion or practiced it.

When a passenger arrives at a station by train he is besieged by the driver of the horse-cart, by the rikshavala, by the cabbie, and so on. He hires the vehicle in which he likes to be driven to his destination. It cannot be said with reason that those who ply different vehicles are guilty of competing with one another for the fare. After all it is their livelihood. But it makes no sense for the adherents of various faiths to vie with one another to take a man to the one and only destination that is God.

There is a bridge across a river, consisting of a number of arches, each of them built to the same design and measurement. To the man sitting next to a particular arch it would appear to be bigger than the other arches. So is the case with people belonging to a particular religion. They feel that their religion alone is great and want others to join it. There is in fact no such need for anyone to leave the religion of his birth for another.

That the beliefs and customs of the various religions are different cannot be a cause for complaint. Nor is there any need to make all of them similar. The important thing is for the followers of the various faiths to live in harmony with one another. The goal must be unity, not uniformity.

NOTE:-

source of this entire content : http://ramanan50.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/hindu-dharmaunity-of-all-religions-by-kanchi-periyavar/

Congress Reshuffle

Today on 28/10/2012 came out the new reshuffle of the congress.. as per this shuffle of theirs many new youngsters were shown
Going back in to the past at the time when the congress party was born and Gandhi was the president of this party.. This practical tactic was brought about at time with a perfect combination of elders leading the party and the youth to come forward and help the country in its progress because of the perfect fire in them to do something...
But the question of the youth getting into politics is a BUZZ ?
the youth has come in is good but if the youth is still channelised by those people who themselves are accused of criminal cases and corruption cases against them or those ministers who are not fully qualified what kind of a guidance and suggestion can we expect from people like those
Getting the youth in is a very good idea but promoting the corrupt people like salman khurshid and rahul gandhi.. having people like Sonia gandhi as a major part of the congress shows that all this has just been done to gather votes..not with the help of youth as like before they will work on dividing the people into various sects like religion, caste etc in order to gather votes..
By promoting the youth as the new dummy faces they will show us that they have thought of progressing but by now i am sure that mostly all of us are aware about the facts and the problems that we are having to face because of these issues... since the time of congress rule we have never become independent nor can we if we do not think for ourselves, if we do not rise up together as a unit, if we still do not raise our voice against these injustices and discrimination.... We all need to think, take a stand for the cause , rise up and raise our voice against the injustices, rise together and hold our hands so that there is no person standing alone in this fight for justice..

Observe at the politics being played by the congress men :

in the reshuffle they have elected the youth to come forward so that people think they are supporting the youth and making them come forward... but no one knows that the reality that these youth people are puppets like Dr. Singh on the other hand their own ministers are resigning because of this strange attitude of theirs...

most important Salman khurshid is being given the ministry of external affairs which indicates that their motive is not to encourage the youth and find the problem to corruption but to increase it to an extend where the middle man and underprivileged are totally crushed...

It is time that we create leaders and send them and support them so that they help our country in progressing and eliminating the parties like congress , bsp etc who have done nothing for the people except destroying them  and stepping on their rights..

And even if now we don't unite and rise then it'll take a very long time for all of us to actually see INDIA RISING...
JAI HIND

How to wipe out Islamic terror – Subramanian Swamy

“Guru Gobind Singh showed us how just five fearless persons under spiritual guidance can transform a society. Even if half the Hindu voters are persuaded to collectively vote as Hindus, and for a party sincerely committed to a Hindu agenda, then we can forge an instrument for change. And that is the bottom line in the strategy to deter terrorism in a democratic Hindustan at this moment of truth.” – Dr. Subramanian Swamy

The terrorist blast in Mumbai on July 13, 2011, requires decisive soul-searching by the Hindus of India. Hindus cannot accept to be killed in this halal fashion, continuously bleeding every day till the nation finally collapses. Terrorism I define here as the illegal use of force to overawe the civilian population to make it do or not do an act against its will and well-being.

Islamic terrorism is India’s number one problem of national security. About this there will be no doubt after 2012. By that year, I expect a Taliban takeover in Pakistan and the Americans to flee Afghanistan. Then, Islam will confront Hinduism to “complete unfinished business”. Already the successor to Osama bin Laden as al-Qaeda leader has declared that India is the priority target for that terrorist organisation and not the USA.

Fanatic Muslims consider Hindu-dominated India “an unfinished chapter of Islamic conquests”. All other countries conquered by Islam 100% converted to Islam within two decades of the Islamic invasion. Undivided India in 1947 was 75% Hindu even after 800 years of brutal Islamic rule. That is jarring for the fanatics.

In one sense, I do not blame the Muslim fanatics for targeting Hindus. I blame Hindus who have taken their individuality permitted in Sanatan Dharma to the extreme. Millions of Hindus can assemble without state patronage for the Kumbh Mela, completely self-organised, but they all leave for home oblivious of the targeting of Hindus in Kashmir, Mau, Melvisharam and Malappuram and do not lift their little finger to help organise Hindus. If half the Hindus voted together, rising above caste and language, a genuine Hindu party would have a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the assemblies.

The first lesson to be learnt from the recent history of Islamic terrorism against India and for tackling terrorism in India is that the Hindu is the target and that Muslims of India are being programmed by a slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus. It is to undermine the Hindu psyche and create the fear of civil war that terror attacks are organised.

Hindus must collectively respond as Hindus against the terrorist and not feel individually isolated or, worse, be complacent because he or she is not personally affected. If one Hindu dies merely because he or she was a Hindu, then a bit of every Hindu also dies. This is an essential mental attitude, a necessary part of a virat (committed) Hindu.

We need a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the Islamic terrorist. The Muslims of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindu. That they do I will not believe unless they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims, their ancestors were Hindus. If any Muslim acknowledges his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her as a part of the Brihad Hindu Samaj (greater Hindu society) which is Hindustan. India that is Bharat that is Hindustan is a nation of Hindus and others whose ancestors were Hindus. Others, who refuse to acknowledge this, or those foreigners who become Indian citizens by registration, can remain in India but should not have voting rights (which means they cannot be elected representatives).

Any policy to combat terrorism must begin with requiring each and every Hindu becoming a virat Hindu. For this, one must have a Hindu mindset that recognises that there is vyaktigat charitra (personal character) and rashtriya charitra (national character). For example, Manmohan Singh has high personal character, but by being a rubber stamp of a semi-literate Sonia Gandhi and waffling on all national issues, he has proved that he has no rashtriya charitra.

The second lesson for combating terrorism is that we must never capitulate or concede any demand, as we did in 1989 (freeing five terrorists in exchange for Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya) and in 1999, freeing three terrorists after the hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC-814.

The third lesson is that whatever and however small the terrorist incident, the nation must retaliate massively. For example, when the Ayodhya temple was sought to be attacked, we should have retaliated by re-building the Ram temple at the site.

According to bleeding heart liberals, terrorists are born or bred because of illiteracy, poverty, oppression, and discrimination. They argue that instead of eliminating them, the root cause of these four disabilities in society should be removed. This is rubbish. Osama bin laden was a billionaire. In the failed Times Square episode, failed terrorist Shahzad was from a highly placed family in Pakistan and had an MBA from a reputed US university.

It is also a ridiculous idea that terrorists cannot be deterred because they are irrational and willing to die. Terrorist masterminds have political goals and a method in their madness. An effective strategy to deter terrorism is to defeat those political goals and to rubbish them by counter-terrorist action.Thus, I advocate the following strategy to negate the political goals of Islamic terrorism in India.