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Pakistan Clerics #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan tourism minister Nilofar Bakhtiar has dismissed speculation that she was asked to quit by the prime minister Shaukat Aziz in the wake of a fatwa by clerics for hugging her French trainer, saying she chose to resign as she was hurt by the malicious criticism following the incident. Bakhtiar said she has sent her resignation papers to the PM, but would go public with the reasons only after meeting Aziz.

However, she dispelled an impression that she had been asked by Aziz to quit following pressure from the clerics of Lal Masjid, who issued a fatwa against her for hugging her French para trainer in Paris. "French media praised my daring attempt but unfortunately some irresponsible elements in Pakistan presented this noble cause in a malicious manner," she said.

"Whatever I did was well within the realm of faith and patriotism. I had para-jumped for a noble cause during my stopover in France - charity for the quake-devastated areas of northern Pakistan, and all I got in return for the maiden glide was a congratulatory pat on my shoulders from the instructor."

Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha (All India Hindu Conference) #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Hindu outfit observes Black Day on R-Day eve

MEERUT: At a time when the country is engrossed in Republic Day celebrations, at least 50 persons under the banner of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha waved black flags to observe 'Black Day' and 'mourn' the Constitution of India on Monday.

The leaders of the Hindu outfit claimed to have been celebrating the day for the past five decades to put forward their demand of declaring India a 'Hindu Rasthra' and protest against the Constitution which claims that India is a 'secular country.'

"The Partition of India took place on the basis of religion and eventually India was declared a secular country. Had India been secular, it would have had a Uniform Civil Code, which is not the case. We have been observing this day for over five decades now and will continue until India is declared a Hindu Rashtra", said Ashok Kumar Sharma, national vice president, Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha.

To mark 'Black Day' or 'Kaala Divas' - as the party members call it, member of the organization waved black flags at the office of Hindu Mahasabha on Sharda road on Monday.

Bharat Rajput, district president, Hindu Mahasabha, Meerut, said, "We do not believe in the Constitution of India and have been protesting against it for the past 50 years. Secularism doesn't exist in India and that is why we mourn the Constitution. When India was divided, Pakistan was given the title of Islamic state then why was India not given the title of a Hindu Rashtra? It is this Constitution, which has failed to recognize India as a Hindu state that all of us are against."

Earlier, arrests used to take place whenever black flags were waved outside the office but the court refused arrests after 1987. Every year, party members hand over a memorandum to the station officer of Bhrampuri police station, who further gives it to the district magistrate.

Yakub Qureshi #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

MEERUT: A day after gunmen killed 10 journalists in Paris, a BSP functionary in Meerut sparked a nation-wide controversy on Thursday when he offered to pay Rs 51 crore (arcane: For those unaware, it's about 8 million dollars) to "anyone who comes forward and claims responsibility for the attack".

Yakub Qureshi, the BSP functionary said, "Whosoever disrespects the Prophet Mohammad deserves death."

The district unit of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was quick to condemn the remark. "Yakub Qureshi has made these controversial statements in his personal capacity. Bahujan Samaj Party has no association with those statements," a senior leader of the party's Meerut unit told TOI though he insisted that he not be named. Local BSP netas usually don't comment on controversies and leave it for party president Mayawati to express the party's viewpoint, the leader explained.

Sources claimed that Qureshi had been immediately reprimanded by the BSP chief, prompting him to call off a press conference scheduled for 2 pm and switch off his phones to avoid media queries.

While the French satirical weekly has a history of satirical depiction of Islam and Islamist fundamentalists, Qureshi has a history of his own. In 2006, at the height of a global stir over a Danish cartoonist's satirical portrayal of Prophet Mohammad, Qureshi had announced an identical sum of "prize money" to anyone who could kill the cartoonist.

Meanwhile, lawyer activist Shehzad Poonawalla has written to Uttar Pradesh DGP Arun Kumar Gupta and exhorting him to get the police to file a case of hate speech against Qureshi.

Responding to the controversy and Poonawalla's call for legal action against Qureshi, the Meerut police said they were in the process of establishing facts of the case. "We are first consulting our legal team on the matter and will take necessary action after that," SSP Onkar Singh told TOI.

Late night on Thursday, cops in Meerut filed a case against Qureshi. SP (City) Om Prakash said, "The police has filed an FIR against Yakub Qureshi under section 505 of the IPC for hate speech."

Ali #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

[This is wrong on so many levels]

A 36-year-old man who married his teenage daughter, apparently after convincing his wife that he was carrying out divine instructions, kept the event under wraps for more than six months. Until, his 15-year-old daughter began showing signs of pregnancy.

Full article at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Daughters_pregnancy_signs_raised_suspicion/articleshow/2554460.cms

Y Sudershen Rao, Dinanath Batra, Narendra Modi #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: Indians were flying aeroplanes, carrying out stem cell research and may even have been using cosmic weapons 5,000 years ago, according to the chairman of India's leading historical organisation.

Professor Y Sudershan Rao, the head of the Indian Council of Historical Research, has been criticized by fellow historians for comments that Hindu epics are adequate to understand the ancient world, rather than relying on evidence or research.

The BJP government appointed Rao to the prestigious academic post soon after winning the biggest landslide in three decades, fuelling concerns of a push to teach the superiority of Hindu values and mythology at the cost of academic rigour, and cutting against the grain of secularism that runs through multi-faith modern India.

"We have so many proofs that these events happened," Rao, 69, said in an interview, describing events in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epics about love and war, truth and deceit, that feature characters using inextinguishable fire and weapons with the destructive power of a nuclear arsenal.

Similar views have won support from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and in part reflect a belief that India's history books are beholden to colonial powers, foreign invaders and Marxists.

While there is debate over the exact age of the Hindu epics, historians say they were probably written at least two millennia ago. Rao says this in itself is proof the texts are factual because humans did not develop the art of fiction writing until a few centuries back.

Many academics are horrified by such views, and describe his appointment as a blow for the history organisation set up four decades ago to guide research and hand out grants. They point to signs of a broader plan to bring more Hinduism to the classroom through changes to the curriculum.

Two states run by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have recruited controversial Hindu nationalist Dinanath Batra to advise on writing textbooks.

In June, thousands of schools in Gujarat were given textbooks by Batra that claimed cars were invented in ancient India and told children to draw an enlarged nation to include countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Teachers at Batra's organisation say they want the books to be in every school.

"The lessons from today's history books are that Indians are nothing and good for nothing," said Atul Kothari, secretary of Batra's Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, or Save the Education Movement. "The truth is that historically we have been a far superior race."

Union HRD minister Smriti Irani declined to comment on what revisions will be included in a review of the curriculum planned next year.

The last time the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was in power a decade ago, it began to rewrite school books in line with Hindu-nationalist orthodoxy.

When the Congress party came back to power, it rewrote the books again. Academics say the loser in all this are confused, and sometimes ill-informed, schoolchildren.

Modi is the first Prime Minister to publicly back the view that holy texts show many discoveries of modern science were made by ancient Indians. He told an audience of doctors last month that the Hindu god Ganesh's head was evidence of ancient plastic surgery. A warrior the Mahabharata describes as born outside his mother's womb was a test-tube baby, Modi said.

"These claims can be interpreted as signs of an inferiority complex," said Romila Thapar, a leading scholar on ancient India. "The most disturbing thing is that many people accept this without questioning it," said Thapar, whose books one BJP leader has said should be burned.

Sonu, Lalua Balmiki and an unnamed tantrik #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

AGRA: In chilling disclosures made by a man who wanted to cure his wife of debilitating mental illness, he told shocked policemen on Thursday that on the "advice" of a tantrik he had already killed four minor girls and was on the lookout to murder three more.

The man, who has been identified as Sonu (he apparently just uses his first name), also revealed to horrified cops that he had raped the four minor girls before killing them. The tantrik had told him that to cure his wife he needed to kill seven minor girls in all.

Incidentally, Sonu is the friend of the man who on Tuesday had been dragged out of a police station in Mathura and lynched by a mob of about 100 men. The dead man has been identified as Lalua Balmiki. The mob had attacked Lalua after accusing him of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl.

Police said that Sonu further told him that in his dark deeds it was Lalua who aided him. Sub-inspector Omkar Sharma of Farah police station in Mathura, tasked with guarding Sonu from angry mobs as he recuperates from injuries at the SN Medical College in Agra, said the man had confessed to the murder of the 12-year-old girl whose brutalised body was found in the bushes outside Parkham village early this week.

[...]

There has been much tension in the village after the lynching. While the Thakurs protested on railway tracks and halted trains, the Dalits said one of their sons was killed and their houses burnt by upper caste men.

On Wednesday, police lodged an FIR against 100 unnamed men for dragging Lalua out of police lock-up and lynching him. Four policemen were suspended for laxity at work.

Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

A senior Iranian cleric has claimed that dolled-up women incite extramarital sex, causing more earthquakes in Iran, a country that straddles several fault lines, newspapers reported on Saturday.

"Many women who dress inappropriately ... cause youths to go astray, taint their chastity and incite extramarital sex in society, which increases earthquakes," Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi told worshippers at Tehran Friday prayer.

"Calamities are the result of people's deeds," he was quoted as saying by reformist Aftab-e Yazd newspaper. "We have no way but conform to Islam to ward off dangers."

Abu Azmi, G. Parameshwara #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: The man who said women should be punished for being raped, today blamed women for the mass molestation that occurred in Bengaluru on New Year's Eve.

"In these modern times, the more skin women show, the more they are considered fashionable. If my sister or daughter stays out beyond sunset celebrating December 31 with a man who isn't their husband or brother, that's not right," said Abu Azmi, a Samajwadi Party leader who two years ago said women should be punished for being raped.

[This isn't the first time Azmi has been a waste of oxygen here, FYI http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=101626 ]

Azmi didn't stop there. He went on, in an increasingly lewd manner.

"If there's gasoline, there will be fire. If there's spilt sugar, ants will gravitate towards it for sure," Azmi continued.

This SP leader, who said two years ago that women should get the death penalty for sex outside marriage, is by no means the only one who feels this way - in 2017.

When asked yesterday about the mass molestation by mobs on MG Road and Brigade Road in the heart of Bengaluru, Karnataka home minister G Parameshwara said " these kinds of things do happen."

"During days like New Year or Christmas Day, there are women who are harassed or treated badly. We take precautionary measures. But unfortunately, on days like New Year, a large number of youngsters gather on Brigade Road, Commercial Street and MG Road. And youngsters are almost like westerners. They try to copy the west, not only in their mindset but even in their dressing. So some disturbance, some girls are harassed, these kinds of things do happen," Parameshwara told a TV channel yesterday.

Residents of Gabela Village #fundie timesofindia.indiatimes.com

DEHRADUN: In a short span of 45 days, the second instance of dalits being allegedly thrashed for entering a temple in Gabela village in the outskirts of Dehradun has been reported. However, this time the victim includes a pregnant woman, who along with her father and husband had gone to the renowned Kukarshi Maharaj temple to seek blessings for the child.

The matter was reported to revenue police and on the complaint a case under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of IPC has been registered against the accused.

A resident of Mallawala village Tikam Singh along with his wife Kavita and father-in-law Daultu Ram went to Gabela village to offer prayers in the temple on November 18. While Daultu preferred to remain outside, Kavita and Tikam entered the temple. Some locals identified Daultu and thrashed the trio. As per the allegations, the locals instructed them to give a goat for sacrifice. However, after a payment of Rs 501, which had been slapped as cash penalty on them and a warning to never enter the temple again, the three were given permission to leave the temple.

A similar scenario had been witnessed in the village on October 5, when a group of dalits led by Daulat Kunwar were denied permission to enter the temple. After days of protest and fast, the dalit group was made to offer prayers in the temple in the presence of police and administrative team on October 12.

When contacted SDM Chakrata Prem Lal told TOI, "We have received the complaint and an FIR has been registered. In the next few days, we will record the state of the victim and the probe would be taken to the next level." He pointed out that the complainants have identified three residents of Gabela village. "Once we question them on the issue, we will proceed further in the matter and if required arrest the accused," he added.

Kavita told the district authorities that she and her family members had been publicly humiliated. She maintained that the entire family was "terrified" after the instance and was looking forward for justice in the matter.

This is not for the first time when such allegations have been made in Gabela, which is about 130kms from Dehradun and has the temples of two villages gods - Mahasu devta and Kukarshi.

On October 5, Quansi resident Daulat Kumar under the aegis of his organization Aaradhna Gramin Vikas Kendra took out a 10 day procession for "the welfare of dalits." He first reached Quanu village where he was reportedly denied an opportunity to address a gathering following which he reached Gabela village on Monday evening.

A high voltage drama was witnessed at the village as "a group of locals under the influence of village god" did not permit them to enter the temple. Hundreds of villagers gathered at the spot claiming that the almighty did not want them to enter the "holy place."

First Kunwar held a protest at Gabela and thereafter shifted it to Dehradun. After much hue and cry, he and his team offered prayers at the temple in presence of police and district officials.