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[1] From: "River Basin Friends\(NE\)" <riverbasinfriends@yahoo.co.in> Date: Sun Oct 2, 2005 Subject: Crimes against women increasing in Assam Crimes against women increasing in Assam GUWAHATI, Oct 1 ??“ Cold statistics could rarely be so alarming for a civil society. From the year 2000 to June 2005, 24,942 cases of Crime Against Women (CAW) were registered by the police in Assam. The figure includes cases of molestation, kidnapping, rape, cruelty by husband and dowry deaths. A total of 4,949 cases of CAW were registered in the State in 2004 alone. During that year there were 758 cases of molestation, 1,238 cases of kidnapping and 1,036 cases of rape. The cases of cruelty by husband was as high as 1,843, while there were 74 dowry deaths. All the cases, except that of molestation compared to those in 2000, reveal a steady increase. Here, it is worth mentioning that the figures are of cases registered by the police and it is certain they would inflate if all incidents of atrocities against women were documented. Unlike some other criminal offences, many crimes targeting women go unreported or are simply not registered. Even with conservative estimates, the impact of such crimes cannot be overlooked in any society. Molestation and kidnapping are crimes leading to severe mental trauma that can last a lifetime. Young girls, especially, suffer untold miseries once subjected to such inhuman treatment. Incidents of rape, also growing in the state, often result in debilitating psychological and physical damage to the victims. The agony of an individual intensifies when she sees the criminal go scot-free due to lack of evidence or some other reason. Dowry deaths have shaken the state on several occasions, but cruelty by husband is a crime that is only now being taken with some seriousness. This form of abuse is related to physical pain or mental agony afflicted by the husband, because of which women ??“ many of them rather young ??“ have to endure an ordeal that they just do not deserve. According to a senior police official, cruelty by husband is one form of CAW that goes ???most under-reported.??? The great majority of women simply would not dare speak up against their husbands. On other occasions, police also treat it as a marital problem that does not deserve to be registered as a case. The rising number of CAWs has attracted the attention of the police, NGOs and conscientious citizens, some of whom believe that it reflects the growing vulnerability of women in a society of changing mores. They stress that society must first identify the factors responsible for the trend and thereafter develop a suitable strategy to combat the phenomenon. Speaking to The Assam Tribune, Anurita P Hazarika of North East Network, an NGO working on women??™s issues, said that a fundamental cause behind escalating CAW was the patrilineal society in which a girl or a woman was considered inferior to a man. ???This makes it difficult for her to oppose an act that causes her to suffer, and even if she speaks out, it is perceived as an aberration.??? Hazarika believes that localised conflict situations prevailing in parts of the State are also contributing factors to CAW. ???We have seen it happen??¦humiliation of a single woman or a group of women is more frequent where there is strife and turmoil.??? CAW has also been linked to runaway consumerism that has witnessed women being portrayed as glamorised objects devoid of sensitivity. Delineating women in a poor light has created situations that encourage offences like molestation, kidnapping and even rape. It is widely acknowledged that rising material aspirations have resulted in dowry deaths. According to some social workers, domestic violence is another offence that requires serious attention from police and civil society. Any family member can cause domestic violence on a wife, sister or mother, incidents now frequently reported in the media. Surprisingly, the police are yet to recognise it as a crime that ought to be documented under a distinct category (refer list). A strategy to mitigate CAW would have to acknowledge the fact that there exist considerable hurdles, including a shortage of sensitised police personnel to handle CAW cases, said noted social activist Hasina Kharbhigh recently. Suitable police action coupled to an informed judiciary is necessary to provide just and fair punishment to those found guilty of CAW. Moreover, civil society and NGOs would have to come forward to report and document atrocities against women, in which cases the media has its own role to perform, she maintained. http://www.assamtribune.com River Basin Friends AKAJAN District-Dhemaji.787059. Assam. India E mail.assamravi@... ----------------- [2] From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Oct 2, 2005 Subject: Amir Mir: Pakistan--Primers of Hate PAKISTAN Primers Of Hate [http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20051010&fname=Pakistan+%28F%29&sid=1] History or biology, Pakistani students get anti-India lessons in all their textbooks AMIR MIR When Mohammad Qasim stepped out to participate in the declamation contest held to celebrate Pakistan's Independence Day, the topic he was to speak on was: 'Why Islam and Pakistan are integral to each other'. Instead, this Class XI student of Lahore's Government Central Model School lashed out against the Hindus, giving vent to inexplicable anger and hatred. This was particularly shocking because the Hindu community, constituting an infinitesimal percentage of Pakistan's population, hasn't been an aspect of Qasim's life. Asked to explain his outpouring in the contest, the 14-year-old boy said, "We hate Hindus because they are Hindustanis and the number one enemies of both Islam and Pakistan. How is it that no one asks why jehad and references to Quran should find mention in bio textbooks? We know it all through our history and Pakistan Studies books. We learn what happened years ago all the time at school." Qasim's explanation illustrates vividly the inimical impact of school textbooks, where history is manipulated to foster national chauvinism, where knowledge becomes a vital tool in the construction of national identity, where the sense of nation is promoted through veritable lessons in bigotry, hatred and gross misrepresentation of history. The extracts (see box) culled out from textbooks taught in government schools demonstrates how the ruling establishment, under the aegis of President Pervez Musharraf, is misusing books to develop an anti-India, anti-Hindu mindset??”and also fan sentiments against Christians, Jews and the West. The regime's control over the education system is exercised through Lt Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, who heads the federal education ministry. Head of the ISI between 1993 and 1995, Qazi supervised the recruitment of students from Pakistan's madrassas for constituting the extremist Taliban militia. These textbooks came under the scanner following a story in the Los Angeles Times highlighting the tilt against non-Muslims. "Thousands of Pakistani children learn from LA Times expressed surprise that such lessons were being taught in schools of a country whose leader was an ally of the US. history books each year that Jews are tight-fisted moneylenders and Christians are vengeful conquerors," the newspaper said. It expressed astonishment that such lessons are taught not in madrassas but in government schools of a country whose leader (Musharraf) is an ally of the US in the war against terror. The LA Times report prompted the US administration to voice its grave concern over the textbooks to Islamabad. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a news briefing last August, "The issue is a matter of serious concern for Washington and the Bush administration would like the Pakistani leadership to effectively address it." Minister Qazi subsequently claimed efforts were afoot to revise and reform the public school curriculum. But the gargantuan nature of the task can be illustrated through the mindset dominant in the Islamabad-based National Curriculum Wing (NCW). Functioning directly under Qazi's ministry, the NCW sets the guidelines for the four provincial textbook boards which publish course material for government schools. The NCW issued a directive in 2002 laying out the following objectives: nurture in children a sense of Islamic identity and pride in being a Pakistani and regard Pakistan as an Islamic country and acquire deep love for it. Ignored was the possibility that a child in school could be non-Muslim and might feel alienated because textbooks equate the Pakistani with Muslim. Although the subject of Islam, or Islamiat, is compulsory only for Muslims, the directive awarded an extra 25 per cent marks to a non-Muslim student should he or she opt for the course. The 2002 directive was issued a month after then education minister Zubaida Jalal had directed the NCW to revise history books taught in public schools. Scientist and educationist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy feels the ongoing redefinition of education, first initiated under President Zia-ul-Haq, will have profound illiberal implications for Pakistan. "A new concept of education now prevails, the full impact of which will probably be felt when the present generation of schoolchildren attains maturity." Not only have the Pakistan rulers divorced education from liberal and secular ideals, they also view it as essential for Islamising society and forging a new national identity. Hoodbhoy explains, "Important steps have already been taken in this direction: enforcement of chador in educational institutions; organisation of congregational afternoon prayers during school hours; compulsory teaching of Arabic as a second language from Class VI onwards; introduction of reading the Quran as a matriculation requirement; alteration of the definition of literacy to include religious knowledge; establishment of an Islamic university in Islamabad; introduction of religious knowledge as a criterion for selecting teachers; and the revision of conventional subjects to emphasise Islamic values." Renowned historian Dr Mubarak Ali says the westernised liberal elite, which had inherited power from the British, had given to education a basically secular and modern character. The NCW under Qazi ignores that a non-Muslim student could feel alienated. "However, the self-seeking and opportunistic elite in independent Pakistan simply abandoned liberal values because of political and economic exigencies," explains Dr Ali, adding that this trend has impacted adversely on the education system. The debilitating role of the political class in Islamising the education system can best be illustrated through an example. In March 2004, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the fundamentalist alliance of five religious parties, disrupted the National Assembly proceedings and staged a walkout claiming that a certain reference to jehad as well as other Quranic verses had been excluded from the new edition of a state-prescribed biology textbook. The MMA threatened to launch a protest movement if the Quranic verses were not reinstated. However, then education minister Zubaida Jalal clarified that no chapter or verses relating to jehad (holy war) or shahadat (martyrdom) had been deleted from textbooks, and that the particular verse referring to jehad had only been shifted from the biology textbook for intermediate students (Classes XI and XII, that is) to the matriculation level course (Class X). The education ministry never bothered to inquire??”as most people familiar with the discipline of biology logically would??”why there were references to jehad in the biology textbook in the first place. The illiberal nature of Pakistan's education system American math for Pak kids: 'If a man has 5 bullets and 2 go into heads of Russians, how many are left?' was brought out in pitiless detail by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad, in its report 'The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan'. Authored jointly by A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim, the 140-page SDPI report illustrates, through examples, how the education system is contributing to the culture of sectarianism, religious intolerance and violence. Some of the important findings of the SDPI are: the current curriculum and textbooks are "impregnating young and impressionable minds with seeds of hatred" to serve a self-styled ideological straitjacket; substantial distortion of the nature and significance of actual events in Pakistan's history; insensitivity to the existing religious diversity of the nation; promotion of perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow citizens, especially women and religious minorities and other nations; a glorification of war and the use of force; and incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of loaded concepts like jehad and martyrdom. The SDPI report, however, also exposes America's hypocrisy.Claiming that the concepts of jehad and martyrdom were incorporated into the Pakistani curricula after the start of the so-called Afghan jehad against the Soviet occupation troops, the SDPI report says, "At that point, it suited the US and its most allied of allies, Pakistan, to encourage and glorify the so-called mujahideen, or holy warriors, in the war against the Russians. An American institution of higher education was asked to formulate textbooks for Pakistani schools accordingly. The University of Nebraska at Omaha, which has a center for Afghan Studies, was subsequently tasked by the Central Intelligence Agency in the early eighties to rewrite textbooks for Afghan refugee children. The new textbooks included hate material even in arithmetic books. One question asked, 'If a man has five bullets and two go into the heads of Russian soldiers, how many are left'?" But the context changed dramatically post-9\11. A research thesis exposed in 2002 the role of Americans in writing pernicious textbooks. The SDPI report states, "Since the Soviets are no more, the mujahideen have not only mutated into Taliban but have also outlived their usefulness, the same American University (the University of Nebraska at Omaha) has been given an additional grant by the Bush administration to re-re-write textbooks, taking out material on jehad, etc." America's hypocrisy apart, it is in Pakistan's interest to delete from textbooks hate material and ensure today's schoolchildren are groomed into liberal, democratic, secular Pakistanis, harbouring hatred for none and love for all. 'Hindu, Enemy Of Islam' These are extracts from government-sponsored textbooks approved by the National Curriculum Wing of the Federal Ministry of Education. | e-mail | one page format | feedback: send - read | "Before the Arab conquest people were fed up with the teachings of Buddhists & Hindus." "Before Islam people lived in untold misery." "European nations have been working during the past three centuries...to subjugate countries of the Muslim world." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Class IV The Muslims of Pakistan provided all facilities to the Hindus and the Sikhs who left for India. But the Hindus and the Sikhs looted the Muslims in India with both hands and they attacked their caravans, buses and railway trains. Therefore, about one million Muslims were martyred on their way to Pakistan. The Hindus treated the ancient population of the Indus Valley very badly. They set fire to their houses and butchered them. The religion of Hindus did not teach them good things, Hindus did not respect women. Class V After the war of 1965, India with the help of Hindus living in East Pakistan, incited the people of East Pakistan against West Pakistanis. In December 1971, the Indians themselves also attacked East Pakistan. As a result...East Pakistan separated from us. We should all receive military training so that we can foil the designs of the enemy in the future. The Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam. Class VI In the middle of the city of Deebal (Sindh), there was a Hindu temple. There was a flag hoisted on top of it. The Hindus believed that as long as the flag kept flying, nobody could harm them. Mohd bin Qasim found out about this.... The Muslims began to catapult stones at the temple and at the flag, ultimately making it fall to the ground. The whole city became tumultuous and the Hindus lost heart. Some Muslims clambered up the walls of the temple and forced open the door. Qasim's army entered the city and after conquering it, announced peace. The Muslims treated the vanquished so well many Hindus converted to Islam. Before the Arab conquest the people were fed up with the teachings of Buddhists and Hindus. The foundation of the Hindu setup was based on injustice and cruelty. The Hindus who had always been opportunists cooperated with the British. The Hindus used to please the goddess Kali by slaughtering people of other religions. Class VII Some Jewish tribes also lived in Arabia. They lent money to workers and peasants on high rates of interest and usurped their earnings. They held the whole society in their tight grip because of the ever-increasing compound interest. History has no parallel to the extremely kind treatment of the Christians by the Muslims. Still the Christian kingdoms of Europe were constantly trying to gain control of Jerusalem. This was the cause of the Crusades. European nations have been working during the past three centuries, through conspiracies or naked aggression, to subjugate countries of the Muslim world. w Hindus always desired to crush the Muslims as a nation. Several attempts were made by the Hindus to erase Muslim culture and civilisation. The Hindus too wished to ruin Muslim civilisation and culture by destroying Urdu which has been closely associated with the Pakistan Movement. Class VIII During the Khilafat Movement Hindus and Muslims were completely united and like brothers and they started to cooperate and live in peaceful togetherness. But as soon as this movement ended, Hindu hatred of the Muslim re-emerged. Before Islam people lived in untold misery all over the world. Class IX The Hindus and the Muslims...could not amalgamate each other's way of life to become one nation.The main reason for this difference of cultures, civilisation and outlook was the religion of Islam which cannot be assimilated in any other system as it is based on the principle of...oneness of God....On the other hand, Hinduism is based on the concept of multiple Gods....There lies the difference between the Hindu and Muslim way of thinking. In connivance with the (British) government the Hindus started communal riots and caused loss of life and property.At the time of prayers the Hindus tortured the Muslims by playing music in front of the mosques. Before the commencement of classes the students saluted the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi and Muslim students were also forced to do so. Muslims promoted equality and social justice as against the division (created by) the (Hindu) caste system. Class X (The ideology of) Pakistan...was a revolt against the prevailing system of India in which Hindu nationalism was imposed on the Muslims.... Islam gives a message of peace and brotherhood.... There is no such concept in Hinduism. Moreover Islam preaches brotherhood, equality and justice.... On the other hand, the Hindu society is based on caste system which downgrades the entire mankind. After the establishment of Pakistan the Hindus and Sikhs created a day of doom for the Muslims in East Punjab. The Hindus were encouraged by the (British) government to force the Muslims to join the Congress. = (These extracts have been translated from Urdu which is the standard medium of instruction in government schools in Pakistan.) --------------------------------------------------- |
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| << October02, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Time running out for Iran? |
October04, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Insidious Betrayal of Constitution: Dr. B.D.Sharma >> |
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