Carriages of Death

My family sits on the Partition fence.

My "Dhadha" (paternal grandfather) was a Crown Prosecutor who was based in the outer-Delhi neighbourhood of Gurgaon. When the communal riots started in Delhi, he and his family were moved to the border town of Sialkot in Punjab. His family never managed to get back to Delhi, and they ended up as accidental Pakistanis.

My "Nana" (maternal grandfather) taught philosophy at the Aligarh Muslim University. He had no plans of leaving behind a cushy job and a nice home provided by the university. He remained in India with his family following Partition.

I grew up in Sydney, the son of a Pakistani father and Indian mother. At home, my parents insisted we speak to them in Urdu so that we could learn the language. They mainly mixed with Hindi and Urdu speakers. Most of our family friends were from the sub-Continent ᠈ndus, Sikhs, Muslims, Parsis, Catholics and even a Pakistani Anglican priest.

We all spoke the same language, had the same coloured skin, listened to the same music, watched the same movies and ate the same food. We celebrated each other's religious festivals. It wasn't until I was 9 years old that I realised there was a difference between turbans worn by my Sikh and Muslim uncles. It was also around that time that I learnt Divali wasn't the same as Eid.

We all shopped at Bondi Beach where an Indian Jewish family ran Sydney's first (and at the time only) Indian spice shop. My mother's first friend in Australia was a Hindi-speaking Jewish woman.

I grew up thinking how wonderful it was to be an "Indo-Pak" person, to be exposed to so many different faiths and foods and festivals. But I also grew up to learn that being Indian wasn't always this good. My Hindu, Muslim and Sikh uncles often told us harrowing stories of the communal bloodbath that claimed over 1 million lives during the 1947 Partition that created two independent states of India and Pakistan.

One image that features prominently in these tails ɱ4e image of trains arriving at Lahore and Amritsar, their silent carriages filled with the stench of death. These carriages were communal coffins of innocent Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs massacred by religious militants.

The image of these carriages of death runs deep in the sub-Continental psyche. Religious fanatics wishing to disturb India's fragile communal harmony could not have picked a better methodology of terror than bringing death to Mumbai's railway.

Mumbai ȱe Many Sources of Terror

At the time of writing, over 250 people have been counted as dead and over 700 injured. The Mumbai blasts of 11 July were targeted at first-class carriages usually ridden by members of India's burgeoning middle and upper classes.

Ironically, it was people of the Mumbai slums who first came to aid the injured. Many lived in shanty towns located adjacent to the railway lines and close to the stations. In almost all cases, these slum areas were heavily populated by Muslims.

A cursory glance at the published death lists shows that names like "Mohammed" and "Ali" are represented together with "Ramesh" and "Krishnan". Muslims and Hindus are both represented in India's burgeoning middle class, the largest of any country in the world. Terrorists are yet to produce a bomb that discriminates in the manner they do.

Nor has the hatred which inspires terrorists been able to infiltrate the poorest sectors of urban Indian society for whom each day is a struggle to survive. India is one of Asia's least urbanised countries, with hardly 28% of the population living in cities and towns. Each day, over 800 impoverished rural Indians migrate to Mumbai in search of work. Many build makeshift homes by railway tracks.

No doubt, there is a possibility that groups such as al-Qaida and Lashkar-e-Tayiba may have been responsible. Al-Qaida's paranoid propaganda has recently added Hindus to its grand Judeo-Christian conspiracy to destroy Islam. LeT isn't happy with India's warming relations with Pakistan, and with Indian efforts to bring some semblance of democratic rule to the disputed Kashmir region.

But there is more to Mumbai terror than meets the jaundiced eye. Writing in the Australian Financial Review on Thursday 13 July 2006 under the headline "Islamabad not the prime suspect", Nick Hordern writes of "the size and diversity of India's cultural and religious landscape".

Hordern continues: "As well as a subcontinental range of insurgencies and communal conflicts, India is riddled with organised crime gangs and cast militias. Added the fact India is surrounded by neighbours with similar problems and it's no wonder that in the aftermath of terrorist attacks the list of suspects is a long one."

Politically respectable terror?

Mumbai is no stranger to pseudo-religious terrorism. Neither is the rest of India. But as in other parts of the world, those deemed terrorists by conventional standards are often able to use multiple covers to make their deadly deeds look respectable.

Religion and ethno-religious identity are frequently used as rhetorical cover, as are national liberation and self determination. Institutional cover is provided by conventional politics.

We often hear and read about "Islamist" terrorism (some even using the oxymoron of "Islamic terrorism"). A number of groups proscribed as terrorist organisations in Western countries are following the IRA's lead in manufacturing "political wings". When the armed wing commits an atrocity, the political wing can choose to condemn or support it, depending on the political stakes.

India has its own groups of religious extremists, many of which are not afraid of using both electoral politics and communal violence to achieve their goals. Indeed, voters in this largest democracy in the world have been known to elect religious fanatics at both state and federal level.

More Muslims live in India than in any other nation on earth apart from Indonesia. But Indian Muslims hardly make up 15% of its total population. They are the largest religious minority, and their communities can be found scattered across the length and breadth of the country.

Religious extremism and separatism has appeared among Indian Muslims, though it is largely limited to the disputed region of Jammu & Kashmir. A similar phenomenon has also existed among the Sikh communities, though it has been largely limited to Punjab.

Both Sikh and Tamil separatism has claimed the lives of Indian Prime Ministers. However, the first Indian leader to fall victim to the assassin's weapon was India's independence leader Mahatma Gandhi. His killers emerged not from a minority community but from a movement wishing to establish a Hindutva nation, a Hindu theocratic state in which non-Hindus would become second class citizens.

Just as extremists have hijacked Islam for their own ends, similarly the peaceful and tolerant theology of Hinduism has been held hostage by an array of extremist groups misusing Hindu symbols to rape, pillage and murder their neighbours. This brief essay examines the Mumbai bombings in the context of India's internal struggle between secular moderates and crypto-Hindu fascism.

Muslim Hindu Christian Jewish Peace Plan
By William Glick
[url=http://www.equalsouls.org]http://www.equalsouls.org[/url] (The Jewish Hindu Dialouge)


The desire to bring peace to the world is most likely the inner mood of most of us today. Todo that we need to come to a common understanding of religious terminology and beliefs.

For example most of us have no idea that the name Allah comes from the Hebrew letter Alef, our A, in the English alphabet. This simple point contains enough information for every Christian, Jew and Hindu to accept Allah as a name of God.

I will explain further, in the "Old Testament" which Jewish people call the 5 books of Moses, God explains that He is the beginning to the end. This same idea is expressed in the New Testament. Revelation 22:13, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. This English usage of Alpha is based on the Hebrew Alef. Also in the Hindu (Vedic) scripture, Bagavad Gita, Krishna says "of letters I am A."

Has God sent so many messengers each with a different message? Is He sitting in the Garden of Eden laughing at us? I think not! We have twisted His message based on our own material desire, creating our own Hell on Earth.

The objection we find from our Muslim brothers today comes from the desire to bring the world back to God and His ways. We find this mood in our Jewish-Christian tradition also. Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

This lack of discipline, this foolish rush of insane materialism is what every deeply religious person objects to, no matter which faith he or she is coming from. We can take good example from our Amish brothers and Hindu (Vedic) sages.

part 1

An error of modern society and religion is to identify the body as the self. The Bhagavad-Gita clearly explains that we should see and accept the spiritual essence (the soul) of each living being as spiritually equal. There it is said, "The humble sage, by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle Brahman, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcast]." [Bagavad Gita 5.18]

We should see the spirit soul within the heart of each of God's creations. and that spiritually we are all equal.

If we identify ourselves by race, religion and ethnic group we will then suffer or enjoy the results of that identity, but the fact is we are spiritually equal and the bodily identity that we accept is both temporary and insignificant compared to our eternal spiritual identity.

If everyone understood and acted on the level of the soul rather than the body, the world's problems would practically cease. Understanding the difference between matter and spirit, and that God is the controller of all things, is the essence of knowledge.

Due to our deep attachment to materialism, we are drawn to perceive religion in much the same manner, as we perceive ordinary social activities.

Our religion or faith can change but the soul's relationship with God is eternal. For example, I may claim that I am a Christian today, but I may adopt the practices of a Hindu or of a Jew tomorrow. However, whatever faith you my follow, the essence of that faith is loving service to God.

We must understand that our Muslim brothers and sisters who have come to understand the true message of Allah accept all of us as children of God based on this verse from the Koran. 2.62: Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.

We should also understand that as a a human race if we do not come to follow God's laws and develop our love for Him and His creation, our future is all too clear.

For Our Lord says: Isaiah 46: I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.

Thank You
William Glick
[url=http://www.equalsouls.org]http://www.equalsouls.org[/url]

Now this reminds me of a most interesting encounter. Just a few years back. As a decidedly Muslim by identity person of Pakistani origins with very anti-American foreign policy and anti-corporate views, I was working in a factory one time choke full of immigrants. And there was this very social 'I luv Amreeka' type typical Guju boy working with me (Guju = business minded gujarati hindu) A term not, well, necessarily derogatory, more synonymous to "moslem" here in America. Duh.

What really prickled this young fellow was my total disinterest in "making it big" here in America, after being here forever, perhaps the ultimate stage of nirvana or something in Gujuland "came to amreeka and made it big". And for him here I was a live example of the exact opposite.

It was interesting how much he hated Muslims deep down inside while always reminding me of how in Gujuland (Gujarat) he has "many many Muslim" friends. Would often point to me and say "you are such a dangerous person man, you could be recruited by Osama Bin Laden you know, guys like you who don't care about wealth, who knows, you could go crazy some day, blah blah blah".

The irony of which only became apparent one day when the discussion ended up about the Muslim-Hindu riots that had occurred in Gujarat the year before and our friend blurts out without realizing that he was out there with hockey sticks in hand with his friends looking for local Muslims to beat up in his small city in Gujarat. This highly educated son of an upper class Hindu family!!

I found the irony, atleast to me personally, quite bemusing, that he had the gal to accuse me of great potential for terror, while at half my age, he had already committed mindless violence against fellow community members.

When reminded of the irony, he retorted, "Well it was you know, you are just taken up by the moment, you know how it is, right?". I thought to myself, no, not really, I have not a clue!!!! Only violence I have done in my life is against the fly community.

But perhaps this goes to shed light on something about the model democracy called India. Everybody lives next to each other and everything, but violence simmers just below the surface. Often exploding into ugly releases similar to the Balkans.

Sounds like a typical RSS BJP thug, Asif. I've noticed the same sort of behavior with some Indian guys during my clinical ed years. Most of them at the end of the day are nothing more then a bunch of saffron simians hopped up on too many bad bollywood films.

Not to be dismissive of the causes that are being fought for, but fundamentalism feels like the application of spiritual ignorance sometimes. Ultimately more muslims end up becoming victims of state abuse through these efforts. Its as if muslims must become active only after being exposed to a process of vicitmisation and exclusion. This process uses these random acts of violence to justify its aims. Fundamentalists thrive on this ideology of vicitimhood (bad word). They don't just expose it, they encourage it. Its as if muslims MUST feel like victims of non-muslim aggressors. That is ultimately becoming the broader muslim identity. But thats such a bad basis of Islamic identity.

We are benefactors of the world as well. We are part of its greater struggles and greater failures. We have to see ourselves as part of the world and its people before we start separating ourselves from it and them. These fundamentalists are eating away at our rightful place in the world by asserting an identity that may not even exist and hurt muslims and other innocent human beings in the process. Is India racist - of course it is. Is racism our solution to the problem - of course not.

I am an Indian muslim and must admit that if Hindu people are the poor minority, then as much repression occurs. If we take a principled stand against non-muslim imperialism or racism or fascism, then we must take that same stand against muslim imperialists, racists and fascists --- no matter how its justified with our deen. This is the right thing to do. If it means showing solidarity behind our shared Indian heritage then so be it. That is the responsible and Islamic thing to do. But most Gujerati speaking muslims believe themselves the children of Arab soldiers, different and superior to their Indian counterparts. That ideology will result in resistance of Indian society. How much of the oppression are we responsible to resolve throught self criticism.. Alot I think.

Still - who's claimed responsibility for these acts anyways?

The problem with Islam is that there criteria set along the lines of inferior and superior. Grades of Jannah (read elitism). 70 sects in hell, one sect in heaven. "Those Among you highest in the sight of God......" and so on and so forth. This leads to classes of believers and to elitism and the usual malises that inflict the rest of the humanity.

Islam should be about WRIGHT and WRONG. This is the right way and this is the wrong way. So that people focus on doing what is right and prohibiting what is wrong, not competing with each other in puritanical nirvana and thus taking things to extreme.