-Anon.

Bade miyan Amitabh Bachchan needs to be reminded of one simple fact that zilch compares to a dignified old age!

-Khalil Gibran.

As Pooh always joked,

Beggars are not choosers!

Though, the back ups are good enough but I don’t know where the heck I’ll dump this passion I had for research. Let’s see where I’ll land up… the only thing that bothers me is… I have started missing those long night sessions I had with my BT books! Though I enjoy writing as well but I don’t know how will I survive without these cutely ugly viruses, miles long chains of nucleotides and that smell of formaldehyde!

Expectations make matters worse!

(Quiet a thoughtful thought, isn’t it?)

I’m trying not to let myself expect anything out of everything. But expectations are a part and parcel of human instincts and unfortunately or fortunately I still haven’t lost a few of them…

The romantic inside me wants to continue dating those good ol’ BT books!

So, till the time I’m not fixed somewhere I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

-Henry Wotton.

-Virginia Woolf.

Received this image in a forwarding mail.

Actions speak louder than words?
This ain’t some Photo Shop fantasy. Try googling with keywords: President Bush eating a cat.

Instead of bombing others and plunging in to wars one after the other the Bush junior must spare sometime for his own electorate. The US is turning out to be a belligerent state and it is high time it should start thinking of the after-effects of war on its own countrymen if it cannot feel the pain of others!

Violence begets violence!

I have all my sympathies to the common people of the country in question, which is pointlessly being thrown into war. People want peace be it America or some third world country. No nation on the face of the earth is invincible even if it’s the biggest superpower of the world. Something or the other can create tribulations and in this case is the inner randomness in the minds of the Americana youth. Too much violence leads to hysteria, which is evident from a number of such cases that happened in America, time and again.

August 1966: Charles Whitman killed 15 people and wounded 31 at University of Texas campus in Austin.

March 1998: Two boys aged 13 and 11 killed 4 students and a teacher at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

April 1999: Two students killed 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High school in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.

January 2002: A student dismissed from Appalachian school of Law in Virginia killed the Dean, a professor and a student, wounded 3 others.

September 2006: A drifter took six female high school students hostage in Bailey, Colorado; molested them, then shot one to death and killed himself.

(Source: TOI)

I wonder what kind of a “fancy� term can be given to such issue less killings of innocents. Humanity needs empathy and compassion instead of coldness that’s dragging humanity towards annihilation.

-Anon.

-Sudipta Mukherji
(Adapted from the annual magazine “Hans� of Hans Raj College)

In a country like India, where we have educational institutes run by different religious organizations like the DAV society, which is a chain of schools and colleges run by RSS, the Khalsa schools and colleges and numerous convent educational institutions. Convent schools and colleges too have a 50% reservation for Christian students. Some Convent schools in Delhi offer a seat to a non-Christian student if the family of the student agrees to bear the expenses of a Catholic child for a year. Whereas colleges under the Khalsa board give a preference to Punjabi students. Even those Punjabi students who are lagging behind academically make it to their desired courses in Khalsa. There’s virtually nothing wrong with these institutes if they give preference to students from their own community, the reason as to why only those institutes that prefer Muslims are put to test is hard to understand.
Can we have the same yard sticks please?

Time and again this issue is raised dramatically, soon acid support is gathered from all nooks and corners of India without even thinking about the rest of the minority institutions that enjoy the same status as AMU and Jamia. What’s wrong with the rationale and the conscience of those who think that everything that’s Muslim is going to prove fatal? The secular identity that India brags appears to be a distant dream when such issues are raised.

 

-Anon.

She contemplates,

“We don’t need any shariat courts; we don’t need any religious code in a democratic and secular country. What we need is a common civil code. I don’t think shariat courts are civilized, women suffer a lot under it�.

Now a million dollar question is when did she become a part of “we�? My finite knowledge tells me that she still owns a Bangladeshi passport. After the turmoil she created by her boisterous blabbering about Islam and her exile that followed, she took refuge in the land of the free and the liberals… the wild Wild West! Again, she was disowned by her phirang friends, now the poor damsel is in a fix and seeks asylum in India. After two unsuccessful attempts of urging the Indian government to grant her Indian citizenship, this is her third endeavor. I guess someone needs to remind her that she is still a Bangladeshi with no legal rights to poke her nose into matters that concern

India and Indians. She is only trying to fish in troubled waters. Her over indulgence in our internal matters will only add fuel to the flame. If she understands the depth of her own proclamation,

“I want to make the state secular and humanistic�.

Then she should stop poking her nose in something as personal and individualistic as religion. She is just cutting a sorry figure by taking advantage of the already disturbed atmosphere in India.

My only advice to the lady is to get over her childhood nightmares!

-Anon.

Sounds crazy?

Yes it does.

So, in a country like India, where people play all sorts of cards there’s nothing wrong if BJP is trying to appease the minorities, in other words they are trying to appease the biggest threat to the Hindu Rashtra!

As I generally say, there’s nothing right and absolutely nothing wrong in Indian politics. After all. kharbooje ko dekh ke kharbooja rang badalta hi hai…

So BJP is using their favourite stooge or the head of the Muslim PR Department of BJP for the same. Any guesses? Anyone?

Ah! Who else can it be if its not Shabuddin the great?

So Mr. Shahbuddin is the new head of the “minority wing of BJP”. He claims that BJP has the highest number of karyakartas working in a minority wing. Ahaan, even I agree to him on this one. Certainly BJP has the highest number of karyakartas dedicated to a specific minority but the fact is they are not working to uplift the minorities!

Mr. Rajnath singh made a tall claim of resolving the ayodhya issue….”peacefully”

After demolishing Babri masjid… shaking the entire Muslim population in India from its very roots… killing innocents in the riots that followed… deepening the ridge between hindus and muslims… and isolating the muslim population from the mainstream population… they are talking of resorting to non violence!

But, nothing can be as dramatic as the statement by Naqwi, another one of his kind in BJPs goodie bag. In one revelation, Naqwi claimed that “he is not proud of what his party did to Babri”.

Very touching… indeed!

BJP claims that congress uses Muslims as a votebank, well all parties do! But BJP aint innocent either, they use the majority as a votebank. Now when their trump card is not working for them, they are looking for back ups.

BJPs victory in Bihar might have given them some hope in the otherwise hopeless Muslims in India

It appears to be some kinda joke to me… but when UP elections are round the corner these guys have all the reasons to be Politically [in]correct.

Now lets see in BJPs dictionary what the definition of “peace and non violence” is..

As they say,

“All Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims�

These people very cleverly ignore the red brigade, the ETA, the PKK, irgun, kach, IRA and the recent ones being LTTE, ULFA, Maoists, babbar khalsa, bajrang dal and the naxalites.

Terrorism is simply a destructive ideology. They can use anything and everything to achieve their goals but not even once in the history of mankind, terrorism was associated with any religion the way it has been associated with Islam. So much so that today, Islam is taken to be synonymous to terrorism.

The saffron brigade in India uses religion too; to achieve their political ambitions but no one links terrorism with Hinduism, the religion they claim to follow!

Even I, don’t associate saffron terror with Hinduism, it’s simply insane to taint a religion because a wild mob quenches its thirst of human blood in a vulgar show of communalism.

Millions of people lost their lives in the war of terror waged by the empire. But who cares!

A Muslim’s life has a cheaper MRP than the lives of his counterparts.

This is the picture in Iraq…

“Of the total 655,000 estimated “excess deaths,” 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.â€?

“The Department of Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere else,” said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. “The coalition takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries.”

I was more than agitated when I read this article published by BBC, which is known as the fairer of the fair in terms of media reporting.

I guess, BBC needs to read this.

“The right of minorities to live in the country as equals was increasingly undermined by both state and non-state actors, despite it being clearly asserted in the Constitution. Religious minorities, particularly Muslims, were increasingly targeted for abuse. In Gujarat, Muslims were victims of massacres allegedly masterminded by nationalist groups with the connivance of state agencies. New and stringent security legislation, which gives wide powers of arrest and detention to the police, was misused to target political dissent in areas of armed conflict and elsewhere. Human rights defenders were frequently harassed by state and private actors, and their activities labelled as “anti-national�. The criminal justice system remained extremely slow, under-resourced and difficult to access for people from socially and economically marginalized sections of society, including lower castes and women. Security agencies continued to enjoy virtual impunity for past abuses, thanks to specific provisions contained in security legislation and to political protection. International human rights monitors, including UN independent experts and international human rights organizations, were de facto denied access to areas of armed conflict and were granted only very limited access to the rest of the country.�

May be, this one as well.

The country who was shouting in one voice “release Sarabjeet Singh� hindus and Muslims alike, changed its tone hypocritically when the fate of Afzal Guru was being written by the supreme court of India. Sarabjeet Singh allegedly exploded a bomb in Pakistan. In other words, a terrorist for Pakistan who allegedly claimed innocent lives there. People cried on top of their voices, if Pakistan won’t spare Sarabjeet Singh on humanitarian grounds then India should shun all the diplomatic ties with Pakistan! Surprisingly, Pakistan delayed his “phassi�. And when, Afzal’s case was being considered, people started shouting, in the same vigor… “Hang him without delay!�

Without even knowing, that he is a surrendered militant. Here’s Arundhati Roy’s take on Afzal. We are not asking to spare a terrorist. We are only asking to make sure if he’s a terrorist or not!

“It is Afzal’s story that gives us a glimpse into what life is really like in the Kashmir Valley. It’s only in the Noddy Book version we read about in our newspapers that Security Forces battle Militants and innocent Kashmiris are caught in the cross-fire. In the adult version, Kashmir is a valley awash with militants, renegades, security forces, double-crossers, informers, spooks, blackmailers, blackmailees, extortionists, spies, both Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies, human rights activists, NGOs and unimaginable amounts of unaccounted-for money and weapons.â€?

I don’t remember even a single time when a criminal who happens to be a follower of Hinduism or Christianity or any other faith for that matter was caught, and his religion was the first thing that was mentioned unlike the case with the so called “Islamic terrorists�. It’s pretty disgusting when terrorists are given a community name like that of kashmiris. No religion is criminal in its purest form. The adulterators make it corrupt. So, does that mean the religion or the community in itself is corrupt?

It’s always easy to put the blame on someone without even realizing its pros and cons. We Muslims are a family of around 1.4 billion now; irresponsible is such a small word to define the negligence of the media!