(1) There is an attempt from certain circles to use the outrage against killing #Aditi, the pregnant young elephant in Kerala -as a campaign point to get Safoora Zargar released from custody. With all due respects to Ms Zargar, this comparison is as outrageous as #Aditi's murder.
(2) Ms Zargar, has a right to dignity and facilities and humane treatment, like all undertrials or arrested persons deserve from the police. Instead of making an exceptional case, police reform shd be made a general campaign that benefits the thousands of hapless ppl in custody.
(3) #Aditi's case has nothing in parallel to Ms Zargar. Note that our outrage on #Aditi's murder is not just because she was pregnant, but because she was killed deliberately and deceptively in a most sadistic way using her trust or hunger and isolation.
(4) To be equivalent, Ms Zargar wd have to be without family/friends/lawyers/"civil society"/activists/political and NGO support when she was nabbed, fed an explosive diet that fatally destroyed her mouth and upper respiratory tract, and left to die slowly without medical care.
(5) To be equivalent, #Aditi wd hv to hv allegedly promoted potentially violent campaigns and demonstrations against fellow elephants, (yes the accusation by fellow elephants and its refutation by #Aditi will need tests in a court of elephants), confined to an elephant jail,
(6) provided elephant food not laced with explosives or poisons meant to fatally injure and slowly kill, deprived of all medical attention, not chased from one part of the elephant jail to another as she sought relief from pain and shelter.
(7) Ms Zargar faces none of the horrible treatments meted out to #Aditi, and unlike #Aditi, she has recourse to both medical and legal facilities fully geared to come to her rescue, activists to carry on the campaign on her behalf.
(8) #Aditi died at the hands of sadists, looking for food in what shd hv been her natural home, her needs, desires simple& limited - she didnt plan any political campaign or seen/accused of trying to organize violent protests -and she had none of the support enjoyed by Ms Zargar.
(9) From Hindu view, however in practice we may hv deviated, animals hv a right to dignity& protection frm humans (more so as they don't grow food). What was done to #Aditi is unacceptable, there is no parallel with Ms. Zargar. Its an insult to both to make their cases equivalent
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1) All borders are temporary compromises in space and time. Retreats and expansions are part of the process. Identities should not be linked to physical borders, even though never give up on territorial claims, even while retreating.
2) Country and nationhood are not identical, and they don’t have to be. However, their deviation from each other over long periods can only be resolved by the dissolution of one or the other, eventually leading to dissolution of both.
3) Sometimes existing power relations in a state form itself prevent the natural fulfilment of a nationhood. It becomes a state where every force within balances and wears the other out, paralysing the state. That is when the state itself becomes the greatest enemy of nationhood.
1) Some observations. Hindus, (and all those in other identities who find themselves aligned closer to Hindus than their community leaders) should not rely only on the country’s army to stand fast against jihadi aggression. They might. They may fail. But a bigger issue remains.
2) the army is conditioned to obey superior command. Their first reaction will be to obey the order. If the order is to hold back, or retreat, bulk of them will follow. The greatest weakness in national armies before jihadis is the vacillation or betrayal of their commanders.
3) many hv argued with me on the most used defence of Indians in the British army of India, “the oath”. It’s not that oath was a novelty invented by the Brits, but Indians obviously wr not so shy about flipping oaths when they left defeated Hindu kings to join invaders.
1) The E.Pak army could easily paralyse jihadis. Two reasons it won’t: such a move can provoke jihadis inside the army to revolt, 2nd, the longer jihadis rampage, better army’s case for not handing over power to elected parties. Current arrangement works for three key players.
2) the intention of international backers of E.Pakistan is to create a weak political regime (Ghazi Yunus is excellent for this with no real networks of power in a jihadist social base) dependent entirely on the army. As long as he can be the facade, army rule can’t be blamed.
3) with Yunus in facade, the army can protect jihadis so jihadis can be reassured to do what they do best: rape, arson, massacre, generally terrorise the population and impose mullah rule at all levels of society. Both Yunus and army have plausible deniability.
1) Nice try. But USA, China, Pakistan form a threesome where India is concerned. Given all three’s record in attempting or managing to destabilise other countries, and all three’s links into Bangladesh, it’s a reasonable projection that they were involved.
2) Interim gov won’t go and can’t go against mullah networks in control of society. The interim gov wont displease an essentially Islamist society that has been consistently and increasingly Islamised under every Bangladeshi regime, via foreign agents, aid, and organisations.
3) anti-Hindu violence has always existed in Bangladesh/E.Pak and is just not a regime induced thing. it has support from underlying Islamist networks who see it as their traditional tool to clear an area of pre-Islamic natives, subjugated into serving jihadis lust and greed.
1) Seemingly rational. But one has to be careful in giving rationale publicly to policies that help exactly what the enemy want. Here’s a long list of things here that range from wishful thinking to the dangerous. First is the line of appealing to reason in Islamic countries.
2) the two primary arguments of appeal to reason to jihadis here is that (a) absence of Hindus among them will lead to intra-Muslim conflict destroying Muslims as a whole. (b) modern technological progress doesn’t come from Quran, and Hindus among them can provide that.
3) this is a futile delusion that refuses the reality that all jihadis think of Hindus as Untermenschen, as prey, and internal conflict among Muslims can go alongside preying on Hindus, and is desirable to refine Muslim society to one pure imagined 7th c desert jiahdotopia.
1) Such clarity does emerge in India too, but can only be expressed from outside India. There is an internal problem in Indian society and state because of its colonial derivative nature that deliberately sides with the jihadi simply out of fear and hatred of the majority.
2) the colonial intervention created a fundamental disruption between the majority common Hindu and the political, military, admin Hindu elite who inherited and adopted the world view of colonial masters that saw the common Hindu as the primary threat to their hold on state.
3) the societal memory of colonial abuse of power, reinforced by the post independence Hindu elite in power means the common Hindu still see their current state as effectively the same as the colonial one with no recourse left for them even through the judicial route.