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[1] 136 Christian tribals reconverted to Hinduism in Orissa http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=87792 Rourkela, Orissa: Nearly 136 tribals who were converted to Christians were reconverted to Hinduism at a function organised by the local unit of the Viswha Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajarang Dal. The reconversion ceremony was held at a remote village in Tumbei under Gurundia police station, about 40 kms from here. Those reconverted to Hinduism included 61 male and 75 female from as many as 25 tribal families belonging to Kodaligochha, Pankadihi and Tumbei villages. Rourkela VHP unit Prsident Mitrabhanu Panda and several other Bajarang Dal and VHP leaders were present at the reconversion ceremony. [2] "Women's Centre" <womcentr@bom7.vsnl.net.in> Re: [India Thinkers Net]Updates on sunday To Shri Subhash Mendhapurkar, thank you for the endorsement; am forwarding it to AIDWA, along with your email address. Ammu Abraham ----- Original Message ----- From: India Thinkers Net at Zinester.com To: <womcentr@bom7.vsnl.net.in> Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 Subject: [India Thinkers Net]Updates on sunday > From: Subhash Mendhapurkar <sutra992003@yahoo.com> > Date: Sat Jan 14, 2006 > Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] Shri Ramdev and the Divya Pharmacy workers > > We at SUTRA endorse the letter. > Subhash Mendhapurkar > > Women's Centre <womcentr@...> wrote: > Forwarding copy of support letter sent to AIDWA > Ammu Abraham > > Friends, > Baba Ramdev has been on the electronic media for quite a while, and apparently has a massive following. > ---------------------------------- [3] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Wed Jan 18, 2006 Subject: Will 'Clemenceau' Hit India's Coast? http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011706M.shtml Will 'Clemenceau' Hit India's Coast? By J. Sri Raman t r u t h o u t | Perspective Monday 16 January 2006 A toxic disaster of about 500 tons may strike India's western shores in less than a month and a half, if environmentalist warnings are lost on ostrich-like authorities and entrenched vested interests. Decommissioned French warship Clemenceau, carrying a horrifyingly heavy load of asbestos by all accounts but that of French officials, is heading for India after getting the green signal from initially-demurring Egyptian authorities. The ship, with its deadly cargo, is expected to reach the Alang shipyard in India's state of Gujarat by February's end, if it proceeds at a speed of four nautical miles per hour. Greenpeace activists fear that the speed may have now been increased to six nautical miles per hour. The speed would not have mattered, if there had been any indication of official will to avert the disaster. The greater apprehension of environmentalists, however, is that the government of India may just prefer the tactic of turning the other way. The government, particularly the ministry of environment and forests, has remained strangely unmoved by the worldwide protests following in the wake of Clemenceau. Environment minister A. Raja would appear not to be bothered any more, even by domestic campaigns for the ship's certified decontamination before it is allowed to enter India's territorial waters and its Exclusive Economic Zone ... Raja and the rest of the government have shown no signs of hearing and heeding even the vigorously expressed views of the Supreme Court of India on the subject. The Supreme Court's Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes voiced its apprehension in the matter even before the Egyptian authorities detained the ship on environmental grounds. The committee has, more than once, advised the government against allowing the ship's entry without the required documentation and its subsequent dismantling in Alang, fraught with dangerous public health consequences. The court has now made it clear that the ship cannot enter India's waters until February 13, when the case comes up next for hearing before it. This is no assurance, of course, that Clemenceau will reverse its course from that date. New Delhi's tacit acceptance of Clemenceau made the task of Egypt's environment ministry easier. Said the ministry: "Following the agreement by the French government to export Clemenceau in its current state and India's agreement to take it for dismantling, the French aircraft carrier does not pose an environmental threat." Greenpeace India said it was "shocked" by what it called "a political decision." Vinutha Gopal, however, Greenpeace campaigner, did not seem shocked by the Indian government's eerie silence on the subject. Talking to me, she recalled a similar case of last year. An asbestos-laden Danish ship was making its way to India in April 2005, and Danish environment minister Connie Hedegaard wrote to her Indian counterpart offering to take the ship back. The later "feigned ignorance" first, and then gave his open approval to the ship's entry. When Clemenceau left Toulon harbor on December 31, 2005, it did so amidst a fierce controversy in France itself . Yann Wehrling, head of France's Green Party, said it was "scandalous to endanger the health of Indian workers who would be forced to deal with asbestos-contaminated materials on the ship." He added. "We should be doing this ourselves." The government and the major political parties of India, however, have not spoken up for the endangered workers. Close to 40,000 of manual workers from Orissa, Bihar, and Jharkhand - even poorer than the other states of India - have for a long time been exposed to dangerous levels of contamination from about 600 over-aged ships sent to Alang for scrapping every year. The health hazards from asbestos hardly need fresh demonstration. Since the end of the 19th century, the material has been recognized as the cause of asbestosis, a severe form of lung disease that can degenerate into lung cancer. For decades, Alang has been home to an increasing number of asbestos-induced diseases, and even the available partial record of them is alarming. The total number is anybody's guess, but 500 recorded cases figure in a public interest litigation pending before the Supreme Court, asking for a ban on manufacture and use of asbestos as well as a trade in the hazardous commodity. It was recognition of these hazards that led to the signing of Basel Convention of 1992 against a trade in toxic wastes. The recognition also led to a ban on asbestos in European countries including France, Japan and Australia, while the US Environment Protection Agency even disallows manufacture of products with more than one per cent of asbestos. Even as the use of asbestos has been decreasing elsewhere in the world, it has been increasing as much as 12 per cent per year in India. Used commonly in water, drainage pipes, roofs and other construction, it now finds place even in tsunami shelters. A curious fact worth recalling, in the current context, is that France went to the World Trade Organization some years ago against Canada's insistence on exporting asbestos to it in exercise of its "free trade" rights. France won the case in 2001. Canada supplies 90 per cent of India's import of asbestos, amounting to about 100,000 tons per year. And anti-asbestos France now sends to India Clemenceau, turned back by country after country over the past few years. As Clemenceau has continued its voyage, opposition to it in the media has undergone some dilution of a subtle kind. Some now dismiss the idea of disallowing Clemenceau and proceeding to dismantle the ship-breaking industry as unrealistic. The industry, they point out, involves no less than 20 billion Indian rupees per year, despite the high incidence of diseases among workers and accidents in the shipyard. A practicable solution, they say, is to provide elementary equipment like helmets, glasses, masks and gloves to the workers, who now work with bare hands, as Greenpeace photographs testify. The idea of converting ship-breaking venues into ship-building ones, as suggested by other experts, does not quite appeal to them. What about the workers' hard-acquired skills at scrapping, they ask. Supreme Court Monitoring Committee chairman G. Thyagarajan counters: "If a ship with a hundred thousand cobras comes to India, will you accept it just because Indians are good at catching snakes?" The Clemenceau affair has only come as yet another illustration of the callous indifference of India's successive rulers to the entire issue of the dumping of toxic wastes by the developed countries on the developing world. Instances of this make occasional news, as in the short-lived campaign against the dumping of mercury by the multinational giant Unilever through Indian subsidiary Hindustan Lever in the summer resort of Kodaikanal in the southern resort of Tamil Nadu. Multinational dumping of electronic wastes (including computers and cell phones) in the name of "recycling" is acquiring even more alarming proportions, say experts. What is happening to India, add observers of an unequal trade, is also happening to Bangladesh and Pakistan in South Asia. This makes Clemenceau a test case and invests the campaign against it with extra-India significance. ----------------------------- [4] From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com> Date: Wed Jan 18, 2006 Subject: Islam & Inter-Faith Relations Summer Course, Hyderabad, India Greetings from the Henry Martyn Institute! Full Text available on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mahajanapada/message/8637 --------------------------------------------------- [5] From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com> Date: Thu Jan 19, 2006 Subject: Sikh Minority Issues in India HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS BULLETIN January 19, 2006 Full Text at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mahajanapada/message/8639 HUMAN RIGHTS & LAW UNIT (HRLU) INDIAN SOCIAL INSTITUTE Centre for Reseach, Training and Action for Socio-Economic Development and Human Rights Lodhi Road, New Delhi - 110003 (INDIA) Email: hru@..., Phone:24622379/ 24625015 Web Site : http://www.isidelhi.com For free subscription of this E-News Letter, please send us an e-mail on hru@... NEXT THEMATIC ISSUES MUSLIMS - YEAR 2005 CHRISTIANS ??“ YEAR 2005 MINORITIES - SIKHS ??“ Year 2005 (News Clippings on Sikhs Year 2005) 1. Sikhs want Nanavati report to be made public (7) 2. Shabd sardar jokes anger Sikhs (7) 3. Pakistani Sikhs join Amarinder??™s quest (7) 4. Pak Sikhs pray for peace (7) 5. Sacked SGPC employees stage-managed conversion (7) 6. Sikhs angry over Jo Bole So Nihaal (7) 7. ???Jo Bole So Nihal' withdrawn from theatres in Punjab, Haryana (7) 8. Badal warns Haryana Government (7) 9. 1984 riot victims to get Rs 1.23 lakh each (7) 10. 'Stay off our religious affairs??™ (7) 11. Blast accused eyed top Sikh leaders: Cops (7) 12. NCM asks MEA to act on Sikh attacks (7) 13. Sikhs angry with UP CM, threaten to burn selves (7) 14. Report on Nanavati panel to be tabled (7) 15. ???I??™m denied access to my Mecca??™ 16. Credible evidence against Tytler: Nanavati (7) 17. Who were the real killers? (7) 18. Army deployment took time during 1984 riots (7) 19. Mother of all cover-ups (7) 20. Jagdish Tytler resigns bowing to pressure (7) 21. Sikhs in Jharkhand unhappy with Nanavai report (7) 22. Manmohan: I bow my head in shame (7) 23. Punjab officers seek relief for 32,000 displaced families (7) 24. Panel suggests Rs 5 lakhs each for Sikh riot victims (7) 25. Injured to get Rs 1.25 lakh each (7) 26. Jail officials seek to bury Sikh shave-off incident (7) 27. Govt refers probe, compensation issues to Cabinet (7) 28. Haryana bans text 'insulting??™ Sikh guru (7) 29. Higher compensation likely for 1984 anti-Sikh riot victims (7) 30. French Sikhs lose right to wear turban (7) 31. Rs. 714 crore aid for Sikh riot victims (7) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Mahajanapada/message/8639 |
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January21, 2006 - [India Thinkers Net]WTO,nuke news,Qalandar etc >> |
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