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Three traits of an Indian pseudo liberal – an easy guide to identify them

Srivy Anand
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Three traits of an Indian pseudo liberal – an easy guide to identify them

Indian liberals have been actively at play in the mainstreams of politics, media and art for decades since independence. Their character, shaped by the aristocratic foothold they enjoyed over the years, has changed considerably and thus the meaning of “liberalism” in India is no longer what a textbook might tell you.

With the rise of the social media, they faced some resistance, but they soon discovered how to “game” this platform as well. From selective “blue ticks” (in the beginning on Twitter) to using their foothold in mainstream media to promote “favourable” social media handles, such as selected stand-up comedians, they know the art of keeping hold on narrative and perception.

This unchallenged power has given rise to an army of the pseudo-liberal talking heads and their cheerleaders. It is not easy to speak against them, but it is easy to identify them.

Let us see how you can recognize them in the crowd with some special characteristics they possess.

Note: If you are reading this and have ever been name-called as an anti-national/sickular or even an Aaptard, please oblige this piece of work with patience and perspective.

Common symptoms of an Indian pseudo-liberal:

Disguise

The Indian liberal masquerades under the hood of being “neutral”. Well, in a country whose major political opposition figures are reduced to theatrical caricatures like Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal, what else can one afford to do?

Secondly, it is easy appear neutral if you love Red colour and all the choices you have are shades of Red.

But this neutrality is a mask. More often than not, the receivers of their outrage are extremist elements of only one religious ideology. And more often than not, the receivers of their outrage or contempt are gaffes of only one political party.

When pointed out this lack of neutrality, they usually dismiss your critics as “whataboutery”, but when suffering from rare pangs of honesty, they may justify their bias by saying that the incumbent government deserves more outrage because they are in power.

But somehow this theory fails to see that Trinamool Congress (TMC) is in power in West Bengal, Left Democratic Front (LDF) is in power in Kerala, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is in power in Delhi, and so on and so forth. There have been communal riots in TMC’s West Bengal, ideologically motivated daylight murders in LDF’s Kerala and an agriculture crisis in AIADMK’s Tamil Nadu in the recent past.

Try to recollect the outrage, contempt, or activism you saw from the so-called Indian liberals over such issues and against the people in power. You get the disguise?

Disenchantment

They’re not happy.

Yes exactly. They are never happy.

They will share/rant endlessly about the issues with the current state of affairs, the ones which have been long withstanding, the ones which can’t be solved overnight, but somehow they know that there is only one reason why these problems exist – presence of people who are not like them.

Mind you that they won’t provide a practical alternate solution to the issue at hand. The only solution they have is to protest against and demonize “the other” – the not so enlightened who are not like them.

For example, if you spot a social media post offering practical alternatives without hyper ventilating, you can safely assume that the person is not your typical “liberal”. It’ll be a rarity to spot even a few approving articles or social media posts with constructive argument/opinion directed towards the policies or problems.

They’re just here to outrage. Just outrage, call names and have a hearty laugh (while being deeply distressed about problems).

After all, who wants to get into “serious” stuff after you spot a nice rib-tickling troll on cow vigilantism and rising “Hindu terror”?

Denial

Many of such liberals had threatened to leave India if Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister. They did not want to live in a “Hindu India”. And they are not living in one, they are living in denial.

They deny that people like Narendra Modi or Yogi Adityanath can represent the people of India, despite winning huge mandates.

They deny that there is extremism among Muslims in India, or that Kashmir issue is about Islamic extremism.

They deny that they themselves are intolerant bunch who are not open to dissenting views, and who would trample of the freedom of expression of dissenters on the first possible opportunity. Labeling someone “troll” and “bigot” to silence them is just one of the tools they employ. They have tried to take away jobs of those who disagree, and they give intellectual cover to those who kill in Kannur and Dantewada.

They deny that they can ever be wrong.

Conclusion

We, as a country of more than five thousand years of culture of assimilation and mutual respect, are strong enough to tolerate the conveniently twisted pseudo-liberal views, which doesn’t allow assimilation or respect for the tradition.

However, this tolerance will be ill conceived if the “liberals” go on an unjustified tirade with a vile agenda, similar to the one which broke our country into pieces several decades ago.

cTherefore we must identify the pseudo-liberals and keep an eye on their agenda, with a hope that the real liberals take control and save “liberalism” from becoming a bad word for good.

Data vs Data – is India really ‘Lynchistan’?

Editorial Desk
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Data vs Data – is India really ‘Lynchistan’?

In the recent Lynchistan debates, the data assembled by the scientist and writer Anand Ranganathan was quoted widely, on TV and social media, to dispel the fake Lynchistan narrative. A counter set of data, being repeated ad-nauseum these days, uses reports in the English language media as raw data (data set included reports from unreliable websites like Catch News, whose journalists have been caught spreading fake information many times) to prove that there indeed is a rise in cow related violence.

This is most absurd enough use of data, because the main criticism of those who disagree with branding the country as Lynchistan, is that the narrative is being pushed by the English language media, which has inherent bias against a particular ideology and thus it is wired to churn out biased reports.

To suggest that this media bias is some “conspiracy theory” is as naïve as believing that government is never wrong. It is not rocket science to realise that the mainstream media has a “liberal” bias. So much so, that renowned thinker and media critic Noam Chomsky once said that “if the system functions well, it ought to have a liberal bias” (emphasis added).

Almost every journalist identifies himself or herself as “liberal” and flaunts this identity and swears by this allegiance. There have been open admissions that the media used to “downplay” various incidents earlier, lest it leads to communal tensions – something television journalist Rajdeep Sardesai refers to as “moral compass”. The same Sardesai had given “political context” to killing of a person who was saving cows and virtually termed it a lesser crime when compared to killing of a person who wants to eat a cow.

The question is not whether the mainstream media has a “liberal bias” – it obviously has, and it is so as a matter of ingrained principle – but what does being “liberal” mean in India. And that’s is an open and relevant debate.

At OpIndia, our belief is that liberalism has been corrupted beyond recognition in India, with the mainstream media leading this “corruption”. Therefore, any research or analysis based on trends in news reports churned out by the same biased media is pointless. Such conclusions are as good as result of any Twitter poll.

However, that leads to a valid counter question that if we are not ready to accept a conclusion based on biased English language media reports, why should we accept the arguments made by Anand Ranganathan, who also used the reports by the same media.

On our part, we did not see him throw any numbers or graphs – as the other “research” articles are doing – to back his claim. His moot point was that mob lynchings – including cow related and communal ones – was hardly a new phenomenon that saw “alarming” rise under Modi.

Still, we asked him to elaborate on why he felt there was a need for this data and what this data actually meant. Following is his response.

Anand Ranganathan:

The whole point of my collecting rudimentary data was:

  1. To quickly counter the view professed by a journalist that a dozen odd lynchings in 3 years make India now Lynchistan. If they did, then dozen odd lynchings in 2012 and 2013 should have made India Lynchistan as well. Moreover, many of these lynchings were communal and caste-based in nature, and many were carried out by Muslim mobs.

For example:


  1. To explain in detail – 15 points – why the Lynchistan narrative is specious, both on account of data, and logic.

Here:


And here:

  1. To show that there occurred in just one year (2016) more than two dozen Muslim mob attacks, to dispel the notions of Islamophobia and exclusive attacks on Muslims, the two primary reasons why Media quickly began branding India Lynchistan.

Here:

  1. To show that the IndiaSpend data was non-normalised.

Here:

  1. To explain that purely in data terms, basically, all this data is noise, not signal. 60 odd attacks in 7 years, that too non-normalised data, cannot be anything else but noise in a population of 1.3 billion. On top of it, if this figure is not normalised with respect to to population and vocation, as I point out here, it doesn’t mean much. For example, if 2 incidents happened in 2013 and 4 happened in 2014, can we shout from the rooftops that 2014 saw a 100% increase in such incidents? Sure, technically, one would be right in saying so, but in my opinion, it would be alarmist to assert this, in a nation where every year there occur more than 60,000 communal incidents involving all communities. The same non-normalisation methodology for cow-related incidents has been followed in an article recently published in ORF blog. Signal Vs Noise distinction and normalisation is crucial and elementary for any meaningful interpretation.
  1. To show that data based exclusively on English news media reports cannot be the basis for reaching a definitive conclusion, given the obvious bias in the media as well as given that not all news is reported by the English news media. As people discovered in 2014-15, tens of temple thefts and robberies were reported in regional and other language media but not in the mainstream English media. Had it been, the scaremongering on account of church vandalism and robberies could have been quickly nipped in the bud and not taken 3 weeks to do so. And as people are finding out now, multiple instances of mob violence perpetrated by the Muslim community on account of goat theft was reported in non-English media but never found its way into the mainstream English media. Therefore, at best, such data is useful only to quickly point out the hypocrisy of some, or to provide quick counter arguments that themselves are based on such data.

As succinctly put here:

  1. To show that given the noise/signal point of above, and non-normalisation of data, and the fact that more than 2 dozen incidents of mob violence occurred in 2016 where the mob belonged to the Muslim community (just 1 year), it would be unwise to link scaremongering/hate speeches/anti-community sentiment, with the actual occurrence of the crime itself. Some of these issues have been addressed in point 2. Another interesting question that also arises if one were to think thus, is the following: UPA2 saw an 18% increase in crimes against Dalits. [In one year alone, 2012, 5 Dalits were raped every day.] Now would one assume that this astonishing increase was because the Cong professed anti-Dalit sentiment? I don’t think that they did. So then why did the crime increase? And here we aren’t talking of a dozen odd attacks to make a conclusion; we are talking of enough volume in data terms, tens of thousands of crimes, for us to be able to make a sound conclusion.

Nonetheless, I am happy that my tweets have led people to focus on data and its use in the media.

Goat belonging to Hindu strays into farm belonging to Muslim, four injured in ensuing violence

OpIndia Staff
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Goat belonging to Hindu strays into farm belonging to Muslim, four injured in ensuing violence

In a bizarre incident coming to light from Esakhpur village in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, the village is locked in a communal dispute from the past 4 days, which started over the grazing of goats. Things have turned so serious that there have been communal fights involving sharp weapons and even guns.

The genesis of the incident took place on 25th June, when the 10-year-old kid of Shivkumar Rajbhar was out grazing their goat. Around that time the goat decided to go into the fields belonging to Ahmed. This angered Ahmed who then proceeded to slap Shivkumar’s son.

This soon took shape of altercation between the two groups, however things remained in control though tense. But on Wednesday night, when Shivkumar’s elder son named Ranjit (25) was out in the market buying meat for some guests, a few people from the other community attacked him. In the resultant fight Ranjit got badly injured.

The police were informed, who then arrested Ahmed and three other people. On Thursday when they got out on bail, they decided to attack those who had filed a complaint against them. This resulted in both the communities coming face to face on Friday and violence ensured. This resulted in injuries to total 4 people.

Seeing the situation, the authorities decided to send in a police force from various nearby police stations. Even PAC jawans were deployed in the area to maintain peace. Meanwhile the police have registered a case against 4 people on the basis of a complaint by Saraswati Rao, the mother of Hriday Rajbhar who was shot in the right thigh during the communal violence. The police are still waiting for a complaint from the other community.

Such incidents of ‘goat related violence’ are unfortunately in no ways a new affair. These violent incidents have varied from being petty skirmishes to serious incidents of communal violence. Following are a few such incidents:

Fight between two groups:
  • Last month, the Purushottampur village in Shrawasti district of Uttar Pradesh witnessed heavy fighting in between two groups which resulted in injuries to three people including two women. Apparently two goats of Jhabbar Ali entered the farm of Gaffar Ali’s son and ate all the grains present there. This resulted in a violence between the two groups even though Gaffar and Jhabbar were brothers.
  • On 26th June, 6 people were injured in Meerut after a two month old goat theft incident involving Noor Bano and Abdul Javed again caused tension which resulted in stone pelting between the two groups.
  • In Maharajganj, Uttar Pradesh two people named Umesh and Jhinak were badly beaten by a mob and then were handed over to the police after they attempted to steal goats from the locality.
Leads to communal incident:
  • Last month, Hindu-Muslim tensions were witnessed in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh after the goat of Gangaram strayed into the fields of Nusrat Jahan after which it was brutally beaten. This resulted in both the groups getting locked into a fight where shots too were reportedly fired.
  • In March this year, in Azamgarh of Uttar Pradesh, communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims were witnessed when goat of a person named Arvind strayed into the house of a Muslim neighbour. Arvind’s wife was beaten up and had to be hospitalised, due to which Arvind decided to file a police case, leading to communal tensions.
Deaths due to goat related violence:
  • In April this year, a biker named Ram Navin Singh was lynched by a mob while his co-passenger was badly beaten in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur, after he accidentally hit a goat on route to buy some diesel. After the people from the Ram’s village came to know of this killing, they ended up attacking the locality of the mob and vandalised many houses.
  • In March this year, a fight over goat grazing which broke out between the children of two brothers named Mohammed Gaffar and Mohammed Tohid resulted in the death of the former after they decided to have a go at each other during which Tohid decided to hit Gaffar on the head with a bamboo which caused his death.
  • In May this year, two families were involved in a bloody fight, triggered by goat grazing, which resulted in the death of a 65 years old elderly person.
  • In May last year, in Jalpaiguri region of West Bengal, alleged goat thieves were nabbed from their car by a mob who then proceeded to beat them, leading to death of one. The other 2 alleged thieves somehow ran away. The mob then also proceeded to burn their vehicle.
  • In 2015, a thief named Prahlad was caught and lynched by villagers in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh for stealing goats from the residence of Sunderlal.

Man depressed as he runs out of ‘full forms’ to coin for GST

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Man depressed as he runs out of ‘full forms’ to coin for GST

In some utterly depressing news coming out of Mumbai, a self-styled acronym and abbreviation enthusiast named Venky Nayadu, who calls himself VN, has been shattered after learning the fact that he has no more alternate full forms for GST to coin.

According to an estimate, since most people don’t know enough about GST, they are sharing memes and jokes as opinions. Finding full forms like “Gau Seva Tax” is being seen as an insightful commentary and VN wanted to add to the ocean of knowledge.

A proud parent of over 100 acronyms, VN is now finding it tough to reconcile with the fact that he has reached the end of the road when it comes to GST, as all possible full forms have already been coined, including “Good & Simple Tax” by the Prime Minster Narendra Modi himself.

We managed to connect with a visibly distraught VN. “Well everyone who knows me calls me coma or Creator Of Modern Acronyms. Many say I have done for Acronyms what Adam Smith did for Economics or what Max Plank did for Quantum Mechanics. So when the government indicated that they wanted to bring in GST, I promptly realised that it would be a fertile breeding ground for countless acronyms.”

“The letters in GST are so common that I knew I had stuck gold. I quickly started dishing out impressive definitions like Galactic Shift in Taxation and Goodbye Service Tax, but they were not getting viral. I realised that the I have missed the bus, as even the Prime Minister himself had come out with alternative full forms.”

With over 13 hours gone ever since GST came into effect, VN has been unable to make a funny full form, and has gone into depression.

According to latest reports, NDTV journalists are waiting for medical report of VN, so that they can break the news of first victim in India due to implementation of GST.

Indian money parked in Swiss banks hits all time low

OpIndia Staff
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Indian money parked in Swiss banks hits all time low

Money parked by Indians in Swiss banks has been reducing drastically, thanks to the Modi government’s relentless efforts to curb black money.

The latest data published by Swiss National Bank (SNB) shows that the total funds held by Indians with Swiss banks in 2016 stood at a record low of 676 million CHF (Swiss francs), which was about Rs 4,500 crore. This amount is in form of customer deposits, money owed to Indians through other banks, and other liabilities.

In 2015, the total funds held by Indians with Swiss banks stood at CHF 1,206.71 million. In the year 2014, the total funds held by Indians with Swiss banks stood at CHF 1,814 million. This is the third straight year of substantial decline of funds held by Indians with Swiss banks.

The funds held by Indians with Swiss banks stood at a record high of CHF 6.5 billion (Rs 23,000 crore) at 2006-end. In about a decade it has come down to almost one-tenth.

The total fund held by Indians with Swiss banks in 2016 is the lowest ever since the Alpine nation began making the data public in 1987. Earlier the lowest figure was recorded at CHF 723 million in 1995.

Neighbouring Bangladesh though saw a rise of 20% in Swiss bank deposits compared to last year while Pakistan saw a marginal decline, though their deposits still are more than double of that of India.

Earlier this month, Switzerland had ratified automatic exchange of financial account information with India which would facilitate immediate sharing of details about suspected black money. Adopting the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) – a global convention on tax matters – the Swiss Federal Council said the implementation is planned for 2018 and the first set of data would be exchanged in 2019.

The development came following hectic parleys between India and Switzerland for introduction of the AEOI on tax matters under the guidance of G-20, OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and other global organisations.

After resuming office in 2014, the Modi government has taken various steps to curb black money. The government has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to combat the back black money menace in both overseas and domestic domain. The government has enacted a black money law, amended the anti-money laundering Act and given compliance windows for people to declare their hidden assets.

According to reports, the Income Tax Department detected over Rs 13,000 crore black money post investigations on global leaks about Indians stashing funds abroad and launched prosecution against hundreds of entities, including those with accounts in Geneva branch of HSBC.

The tax department had detected Rs 8,186 crore of undisclosed income against those whose names figured in the HSBC list. Of the total 628 cases under this list, the I-T Department got “actionable” evidence in 415 cases, of which assessments have been completed in 398 cases.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has started taking action, including seizure of properties, of those named in the HSBC list under a new clause in the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).

India-China border face-off intensifies over Chinese road constructions in Bhutan

OpIndia Staff
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India-China border face-off intensifies over Chinese road constructions in Bhutan

Indian Army and People’s Republican Army of China are in virtual eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation at the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction with both the sides strengthening their respective positions by each reportedly deploying around 3,000 troops. Reports suggest that both sides are not willing to budge from their respective positions.

This is the biggest such confrontation between two powerful Armies in the last many years. It could be noted that Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army had confronted each other at Daulat Beg Oldi in 2013.

The genesis of the flashpoint is China’s attempts to build a motorable road in the Doklam plateau, which is Bhutanese territory. This has led to the current standoff between the two Armies. The 269-sq km Doklam plateau is strategically located at the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. The plateau adjourns to the Chumbi Valley, which is shaped like a dagger jutting into India, separating Sikkim from Bhutan. Chumbi Valley faces Chicken’s Neck, a strategically-vulnerable and thin strip of land in Siliguri.

Clearly, this is part of Beijing’s plans to gain strategic advantage in the region. India has strategic and defence interests in the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. India could lose its strategic advantage in the region once the Chinese road is constructed. Through this road, China wants to enhance its military logistics in the region with an aim to endanger India’s sovereignty. Because through Doklam intrusion, China ultimately wants to intrude into Sikkim.

Bhutan has issued a demarche to China and asked Beijing to restore status quo by stopping the road construction activities in Doklam plateau immediately. But a desperate China has termed the construction of road in Doklam plateau as “legitimate” saying the road is being built in its own territory.

India is strongly opposed to China’s creeping territorial aggression. Though Indian Army or Foreign Ministry of India are yet to make any official statement, China says Indian Army is preventing its People’s Liberation Army from road construction activity in Doklam plateau.

India has progressively strengthened its defences at Line of Actual Control to stem any Chinese ingress. On Thursday, Army chief General Bipin Rawat visited the headquarters of the 17 Mountain Division in Gangtok and 27 Mountain Division in Kalimpong and took stock of the operational preparedness.

General Rawat has been apprised by the top Army commanders about the entire security situation in the region. The Army Chief’s visit to troubled region came on day China’s People’s Liberation Army had conducted trials of a battle tank in the plains of Tibet, near the Indian border. Invoking the 1962 war, Chinese Army has asked the Indian Army to learn from the “historical lessons”.

Court denies bail to Congress leader accused of inciting riots over beef rumours

OpIndia Staff
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Court denies bail to Congress leader accused of inciting riots over beef rumours

Last month, around 9 people were killed by local villagers in different areas of Jharkhand as tribal mobs suspected them of being child lifters engaged in human trafficking.

However, one of these incidents of lynching was wrongly claimed as lynching due to ‘cow slaughter and beef’ and was given a communal colour, even though more Hindus than Muslims had died in these incidents.

Not just miscreants, even the mainstream media played its part in giving the unfortunate incident a communal spin and vitiated the atmosphere. This was used to incite communal passions, which saw violent demonstration by Muslims in Jamshedpur on 20 May to protest against the assumed targeted killings of Muslims.

The protests – based on twisting of facts related to the case that did not have a communal angle – turned into a pitched battle between a Muslim mob and Jharkhand Police, leading to arson and stone pelting that caused widespread damage to property and injuries to policemen.

Once the situation was brought under control, police arrested dozens of miscreants and rioters, and subsequent investigations suggested that the protests were well organised and not spontaneous reaction to the wrong news of beef related lynching.

Police has named local Congress leader Feroze Khan as one of the main conspirators who organised the mob and led them to attack the police. Apart from being a Congress leader, Firoze Khan is also a founding member of an organisation called “Muslim Ekta Manch” which is an organisation of local Muslim leaders cutting across party lines.

Other leaders of this organisation have also been named as accused by the police, which includes leaders from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the Bharitya Janta Party (BJP). Most of these leaders are reportedly ‘absconding’ ever since police has filed the case. While on the run, the leaders have reportedly dissolved the “Muslim Ekta Manch”.

They are also trying to get bail for themselves from courts, and latest reports suggest that a district court has rejected the bail application of Feroze Khan and his associates. Court has also rejected bail applications of others already arrested by the police for being part of the mob that took part in riots.

Shopkeepers close shops for 2 days in a Mumbai market in wake of death of Mumbai blasts convict

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Shopkeepers close shops for 2 days in a Mumbai market in wake of death of Mumbai blasts convict

On 22nd June, the prosecution for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts in which 257 people died, demanded the death penalty for the 5 out of 6 convicts in the case. One of those convicts was Mustafa Dossa.

Mustafa Dossa who was in his 50s, was deputed to oversee the shipping and retrieval of of arms, ammunition and explosives, including 3,000 kg of RDX from Dubai to India. It was reported that it was actually on Dossa’s instructions that arms were distributed among the accused. According to the CBI, Dossa was the first to get the ball rolling by sending the arms and ammunition for the blasts.

Dossa had also reportedly attended meetings at his brother Mohammed Dossa’s Dubai home between December 1992 and January 1993 to hatch the whole terror conspiracy. These meetings were also attended by Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon among others. Other accused including Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan were flown in by Dossa who facilitated their pick-up, accommodation and other arrangements. He had also sent some youth to Pakistan to acquire arms training to execute the blasts.

On Wednesday Mustafa Dossa died at at a Mumbai hospital due to a cardiac arrest after he had complained of chest pain while being lodged in the Arthur Road Jail.

Incidentally this death prompted a peculiar reaction from shop owners of Manish Market which is situated at a 5 minutes walking distance from  Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

According to a report, after the word of Dossa’s death spread, the shopkeepers in Manish market started closing their shops. Apparently most of the shops in the market are owned, aided or financed by the Dossa family. According to a shopkeeper they had opened the shops in the morning but then shut it down in the afternoon after all the shopkeepers made an unanimous decision to do so.

A notice had then also reportedly been put up at the market complex which stated that all the shops in the complex would be closed for two days on Wednesday and Thursday. Many of the shopkeepers had also visited JJ Hospital to catch a final glimpse of Dossa.

Dossa was buried earlier today in Mumbai with over 200 people taking part in his funeral.

How China is intruding both into Bhutan and India by constructing a road

Saswat Panigrahi
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How China is intruding both into Bhutan and India by constructing a road

China’s attempts to construct a road on Doklam plateau have led to the current stand-off between Indian Army and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China. China recently accused India of aggression.

The 269-sq km Doklam plateau, which belongs to Bhutan, is strategically located at the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. The plateau adjourns to the Chumbi Valley, which is shaped like a dagger jutting into India, separating Sikkim from Bhutan. Chumbi Valley faces Chicken’s Neck, a strategically-vulnerable and thin strip of land in Siliguri.

Clearly, this is part of Beijing’s plans to gain strategic advantage in the region. Doklam plateau is Bhutanese territory. But China, which has named it as Donglang, wants to lay claims over this territory.

A desperate China has termed the construction of road in Doklam plateau as “legitimate” saying the road is being built in the “Chinese territory”.

“Chinese construction of the road project is legitimate and normal action on its territory. It doesn’t belong to Bhutan, nor does it belong to India,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.

But does Doklam plateau really belong to China? We can find the answer in the pages of history. On 26 December, 1959, a Chinese Foreign document had admitted that the Doklam plateau belongs to Bhutan.  But in 1988, China’s People’s Liberation Army had crossed into Bhutan and illegally took control over the Chumbi Valley, below the Doklam plateau. Since then, China has been regularly making incursions in the Doklam plateau by threatening Bhutan and claiming it as its own territory.

Meanwhile, Bhutan has issued a demarche to China and asked Beijing to restore status quo by stopping the road construction activities in Doklam plateau immediately.

India has strategic and defence interests in the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction. This is not to dispute that India will lose its strategic advantage in the region once the road is constructed in Doklam plateau. Through this road, China wants to enhance its military logistics in the region. It won’t be wrong to suggest China’s latest move aims at constant provocation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Sikkim.

China’s road construction in Doklam plateau has led to a standoff between Indian and Chinese troops. Since Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army had confronted each other at Daulat Beg Oldi in 2013, this is yet another major confrontation between the troops of both the countries.

China, however, accused Indian troops of “provocation” and alleged that Indian Army had “entered into Chinese territory” and is preventing its “road construction activity” in Doklam plateau.

However, there is no official statement from Indian side so far. If that is true, Indian Army has absolutely done the needful.

Following the standoff, China has shut down the Nathu La pass entry for Indian pilgrims travelling to Kailash Mansarovar in a retaliatory move and warned India that future visits of its pilgrims would depend on whether it “corrects its errors”.

Amid the ongoing standoff, an editorial in China’s state-run Global Times said India needs to be “taught rules” of handling boundary disputes. “This time the Indian side needs to be taught the rules. India cannot afford a showdown with China on border issues. It lags far behind China in terms of national strength,” it said.

On Thursday, the Chinese Army conducted trials of a battle tank in in the plains of Tibet, near the Indian border. It now remains to be seen if the stand-off is resolved amicably or gets escalated.

Haryana’s Waqf Board gets embroiled in land scam allegations

OpIndia Staff
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Haryana’s Waqf Board gets embroiled in land scam allegations

The Manohar Lal Khattar led Haryana government has reportedly got involved in a tussle with the state Waqf board, which is facing accusation of mismanagement and has also denied information to the various RTI queries directed towards it.

The Haryana government’s information commission has reportedly found the first appellate authority of the Waqf board guilty of hiding facts from the public regarding all the Waqf properties and their current status. The authorities also observed in their 20 June order that the Waqf board deliberately delayed the furnishing of information to RTI activist Harinder Dhingra because of ulterior motives. The commission has also called for appropriate action against Imtiyaz Khizar, who is the first Appellate Authority of the Waqf board.

Waqf is nothing but a grant made by Muslims to religious or charitable institutions and can either be in the form of land or any other endowment. The Waqf is regulated and managed by various state Waqf boards who in-turn are answerable to the Central Waqf Council. According to the Indian law, the Waqf board’s possessions cannot be either sold or transferred and can only be used for the community’s welfare. Waqf boards also get government grants to carry out their activities.

According to RTI activist Dhingra, Waqf properties in Haryana have long been mismanaged and he wanted information regarding the manner and the people to whom the properties were leased out, which was ultimately denied to him. Incidentally it were Dhingra’s efforts which led to the Haryana state Waqf board coming under the purview of the RTI act in 2012.

This isn’t the only time state Waqf boards have been a center of similar irregularities.

It has been alleged that if the findings of a Waqf board scam in Karnataka were made public, as many as 10 ministers of the Congress led Karnataka government would go to jail. It has been alleged that 40-50% of the land allocated to the Waqf board has been embezzled and over a whopping 2.3 lakh crore worth of land was denotified for either personal use or was sold to the land mafia.

In March, the Maharashtra government had suspended the Waqf Board Chief Executive Officer Naseeba Bano Patel, after she was found guilty of wrongly ruling that a 2500 crore Waqf board property was a non-waqf one. This resulted in the encroaches upon the land becoming legal heirs who were then compensated by a builder who is all set to build a township on that plot.

Even top political leaders have seen themselves involved in irregularities involving the Waqf board. Recently it was reported that SP leader Azam Khan had unlawfully transferred 3.5 acre of Waqf board property worth Rs 500 crores to his close friend Shahzeb Khan. Azam Khan then allegedly sold the property and as a result made crores of rupees.

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