[Efonukmp]

It might be of interest to the people from sub-continent in the west, particularly the US, that the people associated with these units (the operators of the Sangh Parivar organizations) approach people like you for funds by deception. They'll introduce that they are running Ekal Vidyalayas (Single Teacher School) in India and the results have been good and wonderful but your financial support is needed.
Wassalam

True. They run some pretty posh schools in Bombay also. Their schools are usually called "Vidya Mandirs".

[Efonukmp]

http://drmaxtor.blogspot.com/2009/07...in-german.html

[Efonukmp]

Two weeks after a Muslim girl stopped attending her college after refusing to take off her hijab in class, the school’s principal has admitted that pressure from an unnamed Hindu fundamentalist student organisation forced administrators to impose the illegal ban.

Area Muslims say the anonymous group is the student branch of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which had recently launched a campaign against the burqa on the college’s campus.

Aysha Asmin, who is studying commerce at SVS College in Bantwal town close to Mangalore, in the communally sensitive Dakshin Kannada district of Karnataka, was told by the college authorities that she would not be allowed to attend classes wearing a headscarf because some non-Muslim students had protested. But the 18-year-old girl said she would not stop wearing her headscarf, and called the ban an infringement on her constitutionally guaranteed rights.

On August 19, the principal of the college, Seetharam Mayya, said in a press conference that a campaign by an “organisation” against the hijab and burqa was destroying peace and harmony on campus and so school authorities chose to give in to the majority and ban the Islamic garment.

“I am sorry, I cannot name the organisation,” the principal said.

KM Kaveriappa, the vice chancellor of Mangalore University, which operates SVS college, explained that “[it] is a government-aided [private] institution. As far as discipline is concerned, the university does not have jurisdiction over colleges. These [private] colleges can independently frame their own rules.”

The Muslim community leader and Islamic scholar Zafarul Islam Khan in Delhi said: “Everyone can understand that in this case the principal is referring to the Hinduist student group the ABVP, which controls the college student union and for months has been engaged in various anti-minority activities in the area.”

“Since ABVP won our college election last month, they took this aggressive stand against my hijab. I think pressure from the strong ABVP-led union has forced the college authorities to order this ban on hijab,” Ms Asmin said. “The college prospectus does not carry any instruction that there is a ban on any Islamic dress. When I appeared for the interview, before my admission to the college, I was in burqa and the college authorities did not object to it. Now, suddenly, the college says that I cannot wear even the hijab.”

India’s National Commission for Minorities said yeterday that it would seek a government explanation for the hijab decision.

“We will seek a report from the chief secretary of Karnataka and take necessary action,” said HS Hanspal, a member of the commission. “Every individual has the right to choose his or her own religion. The college cannot interfere in that. It’s very unfortunate.”

V Ponnuraj, the chief administrator of Dakshin Kannada, has recommended punitive action against the college for imposing the “unconstitutional” ban. “It is an infringement on one’s individual and fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution and a negative development,” he said.

“This ban is just another symptom … a manifestation of the deep social divide in this region.” Since the BJP came to power in Karnataka last year, many militant Hindu groups such as the Rashtriya Hindu Sena (RHS) have been active in the region, campaigning for what they call the “cultural purification of society” and attacking whatever they consider detrimental to “Indian culture”.

Muslim leaders in Dakshin Kannada say that while Hindu-Muslim tensions have at times boiled over, campaigns by organised militant Hindu groups against Muslim students is a new phenomenon.

Minorities haven’t been the sole targets of the growing Hindu fundamentalist movement. In January, SRS men barged into a pub in Mangalore and beat up a group of mostly Hindu young men and women for “violating” traditional Indian values.

“Hindu activists have beaten up Muslim male students for talking to their female Hindu classmates in some colleges, charging that they were trying to convert and marry the Hindu girls,” said Shabeer Ahmed, the Karnataka western regional president of the Students’ Islamic Organisation, who took part in a rally “seeking justice” on behalf of local Muslim students in Mangalore today.

“They have already divided the society on communal lines. Now they are trying to divide educational institutions, with their goal being to communalise the minds of future generations. They don’t want Muslims to be educated and be part of the mainstream. They want them to live in poverty, in ghettos,” Mr Ahmed said.

Ms Asmin said that she has appealed to the local educational authorities to allow her to return to SVS or another college as soon as possible.

“I have requested the university to arrange for my studies in another college if my [present] college does not allow me in hijab,” she said.
Mangalore University has assured that it will help her return to another college where she can continue her studies.

“India is a secular country. There should not be a bar on her hijab,” said Ms Asmin’s father, Mohammad Bantwal.

“I hope she will finally be allowed to study in hijab and be able to fulfill her dream to become a chartered accountant.”

http://www.awid.org/Library/Inda-Hin...-for-hijab-ban

[Efonukmp]

http://indianmuslims.in/victims-of-i...war-on-terror/

[Efonukmp]

Shocked and outraged at the venomous, offensive and inflammatory article of writer-politician-economist Subramanian Swamy, the students and faculties of Harvard University have called on the varsity to sever its ties with Swamy who teaches economics at Harvard Summer School.
They have started an online petition after Swamy’s op-ed titled “How to wipe out Islamic terror” that was published on July 16 in Daily News and Analysis (DNA), a Mumbai-based daily newspaper.
http://drabutamim.blogspot.com/2011/...s-barking.html

[Efonukmp]

http://twocircles.net/2010aug12/inst...zoor_alam.html

[ffdfriendforurr]

http://twocircles.net/2010aug12/inst...zoor_alam.html

I suppose discrimination has been there for long-this can be ascertained from factual reality as has been exposed by Sachar Committee. What is new is that Muslims have started speaking about it and against it. Earlier Muslims, and I mean the so called higher ups, used feel scared of talking about discrimination for fear of being labeled communal.
Wassalam

[Efonukmp]

I suppose discrimination has been there for long-this can be ascertained from factual reality as has been exposed by Sachar Committee. What is new is that Muslims have started speaking about it and against it. Earlier Muslims, and I mean the so called higher ups, used feel scared of talking about discrimination for fear of being labeled communal.
Wassalam

True. The educated Muslims are much more assertive now as I can speak with personal experience.

[Efonukmp]

Mangalore: The hijab row keeps haunting girls in educational institutions still. A Muslim student in a Mangalore college has been denied permission to wear the head-scarf in class and she has approached the district administration for justice.

Hadiya, a second PU Commerce student at the Jain Pre-University College, today went to the District Collector to seek his help in the matter when the college authorities refused to let her attend classes wearing the hijab. The Collector has reportedly informed her that he would contact the college and get details.

Hadiya told TwoCircles.net that she has been wearing the college uniform and had made no change in it. “The uniform is salwar-kameez and a white dupatta. I am not wearing any extra cloth, I am just wearing the dupatta over my head like a Hijab.”

When she joined the Jain College last year, Hadiya used the hijab in the initial days before she got the uniform. After getting the uniform also, she used the dupatta to cover her head. “We went to the principal and asked him permission to wear the dupatta as head-scarf. He agreed to it. After about a month, suddenly he said in the assembly that hijab was not allowed in the class. When we went to him and asked about it, he said he was not involved in anything but the management was in authority. When we met the management, they said the principal was in charge,” she said.

There are many Muslim girls studying in the college. They come to college wearing the burqa over the uniform and take the burqa off in the ladies’ room before entering the class. Last year, Hadiya could not attend classes for one and half months due to this opposition to the hijab. But after that she had to go to the class as her exams were approaching.

Hadiya had a signature campaign in the college in which several students supported her, including non-Muslim students. However, the principal did not get ready to allow her use the hijab even after showing him proof of students’ support, she said.

This year, Hadiya did not go to college in the first 10 days. Hadiya said, “When I went to college on the eleventh day, I was stopped outside the class and said that hijab was not allowed in the classroom. Afterwards, I used to go to the college in hijab, sit in the ladies’ room and complete my notes. However I have not been going to the college for the last two months.”

Hadiya asks if the same would be the response to the turban of Sikhs. She says that many girls would be sitting at home without attending colleges just because of this opposition in educational institutions to the hijab.

Shabeer, a former member of the SIO who helped Hadiya approach the District Collector raising the matter, said that the problem of ban on head-scarf and beard was very common in the colleges in Mangalore, a southern city in the BJP-ruled Karnataka where the Sangh Parivar is very strong. “Earlier when a problem occurred we used to solve it without making an issue but when the colleges do not go smoothly in the matter, we have to inform the media. Problems arise in the beginning of every academic year, then parents talk to the management and college authorities and things will get settled. But it happens every year.”

He informed that the SIO had called a meeting of Muslim community leaders on 15th August to discuss the matter and try for a permanent solution.

[Efonukmp]

By Rama Lakshmi

Special to The Washington Post

KALOL, India -- Sultana Feroz Sheikh sat motionless, staring at the mud floor in a dark, windowless room.

Three months ago, as religious riots engulfed the western Indian state of Gujarat, Sheikh saw her husband and several relatives burned alive. Then, she said, she was brutally raped by three men as her 4-year-old son wailed nearby.

Sheikh wants to see the criminals brought to justice. But Gujarat police are routinely refusing to file charges against individuals accused of rape during the violence in late February and early March, because they say mob violence cannot be broken down into specific crimes.

"It is difficult to determine who in the mob pelted stones, who raped and who killed," said police inspector Ramanbhai Patil. Though the riot on March 1 that claimed the lives of Sheikh's loved ones and resulted in her rape engulfed the entire village of Kalol, she said Patil has arrested only four men in connection with the day's events.



The violence then spread throughout Gujarat, where nearly 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, have been killed in Hindu-Muslim clashes since Feb. 27. That was the day Muslims launched a firebomb attack on a train carrying Hindu activists, killing 60. Countless cases of arson, looting, murder and rape have been jumbled together in what are known as first-information reports, or FIRs. Police have filed "general FIRs," simply blaming riots on Hindu tola, or mobs, and refusing to register individual complaints.

Arrests increased markedly after the Indian government appointed K.P.S. Gill -- known as the "super cop" of Punjab state for his work there in the 1990s -- to assist with law enforcement in Gujarat. Police have arrested about 3,200 suspects in more than 300 cases of attacks against Muslims in Gujarat. The suspects have been charged with murder, rioting and arson. But advocacy groups say arrests for rape are still rare.

"The police FIR said that a Hindu mob attacked a Muslim mob," said Sheikh, who is Muslim. "I am not a 'mob,' I am a woman who was gang-raped by three men. How can I hope for justice, when they don't even register my complaint properly?"

Farah Naqvi, an independent journalist who is part of Citizen's Initiative, a fact-finding team that recorded testimony of sexual violence in Gujarat, called it "a piracy of silence."

"Cases have been filed against the nameless and the faceless," Naqvi said. "When you register them as mobs, it gives you a basis and an excuse for inaction. A single, collective FIR cannot take care of all the individual losses, as the time, loss and place varies. And it is especially true for rape."

There are no reliable estimates of how many women -- Hindu or Muslim -- have been raped in the Gujarat violence. According to the Citizen's Initiative report, however, almost every relief shelter in the state houses people who are victims of or witnesses to rape, molestation or other types of sexual assault.

Part of the difficulty in gauging the problem, said Sejal Dand, an aid worker, is that "many women were raped and then killed or burned."

Dand said fear of the police, who have been widely accused of standing idle as violence peaked, discouraged women and witnesses from reporting crimes for days. When the victims and witnesses finally did file reports, police often asked them to omit the names of influential men, Dand said.

In addition, in India's conservative and inward-looking Muslim minority of 130 million, even talking about rape is a matter of deep shame and stigma.

In the village of Fatehpura, aid workers reported, a Hindu mob dragged 30 young women into full public view, sexually assaulted them and forced them to run naked. Yet the Muslims of Fatehpura refuse to go to the police or even reveal the names of the women, fearing no man would marry them, the aid workers said.

"There is a lot of denial on the issue of rape of Muslim women in Gujarat," Dand said. Even after citizens groups published reports with women's testimonies, many officials were dismissive. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in Parliament that reports of sexual violence were "exaggerated," and the country's law minister said only two FIRs have been filed for rape in Gujarat so far.

Sheikh hasn't filed one, because the police wouldn't let her, she said.

Her ordeal began on the morning of Feb. 28, a day after the attack on the train, she said, when she heard hundreds of angry Hindus marching toward the Muslim quarters of her home village of Delol, shouting, "We will burn you!" She and her husband grabbed their son and fled to some wheat fields, where they hid with a group of other panic-stricken Muslims. Their homes went up in flames.

The Muslims retreated in a milk van the next morning to the nearest town, Kalol. There, another Hindu mob surrounded them.

"One by one, they pulled out the men from the van and burned them. My husband was burned alive in front of my own eyes as I screamed and pleaded with them," Sheikh said, tears welling in her eyes.

Sheikh said she managed to jump out with her son, then ran toward a nearby river. Eight men wielding swords chased after her.

"One of them grabbed my hair from behind and pulled me; another snatched my son away," she said. They threw her down and hit her, and three raped her. "They were ruthless," she whispered.

Sheikh ran and hid for days before going to a relief shelter in Kalol. Ten days after the rape, she summoned the courage to go to the police to file a report.

"To my surprise, the police said I cannot file an FIR," Sheikh said. "They said an FIR already existed for that day's events."

Police officials investigating the Kalol violence said they could not register two reports for the same incident. Because a general FIR had already been filed, they said, the most they could do was attach a statement to it.

Patil said Sheikh's case was weak anyway, because she did not undergo a medical examination until more than 10 days after the alleged rape.

Citizen's Initiative recommends that special courts be set up to hear women's cases and that their testimony be treated as the basis for legal action if FIRs are not filed. And the requirement of medical evidence should be dropped, the group says, because so many women hid for days before going to the police.

Trauma counseling, according to the group's report, is the most urgent need.

For a number of emotionally scarred women now languishing in shelters, consisting of tents in the scorching heat, simply returning to their homes could provide the first healing touch. But homecoming is fraught with risks, too.

Bilkees Rasoolbhai Yaqub, 19, was one of many women gang-raped outside the village of Randikpura. She is the single witness to many killings and rapes in Randikpura and has named three men in her police report. Now Yaqub's Hindu neighbors say they will not allow the Muslims to return to the village until she withdraws the names of the accused in her police report.

The villagers say her statements are baseless; the police say Yaqub's story contains inconsistencies and her medical report was negative.

But, asked an anguished Yaqub, "Why would I lie about my rape? Which woman would invite social stigma upon herself?"


© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[Efonukmp]

http://twocircles.net/2011sep05/raja...id_prayer.html

[Efonukmp]

http://twocircles.net/2011sep03/why_...aks_media.html

[Efonukmp]

http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/RAJ...s-2431923.html

[ATTILAGLIC]

What's the discrimination of Hindus like in Pakistan?

[Efonukmp]

What's the discrimination of Hindus like in Pakistan?

Perhaps bro Taliban can answer? or anyone else from Pakistan on the forum?

[Efonukmp]

What's the discrimination of Hindus like in Pakistan?

http://dalkhalsa.blogspot.com/2011/0...family-in.html