Bappa Majumdar

A government-backed inquiry has accused several of India’s top opposition politicians of having a role in the destruction of an ancient mosque in 1992 that triggered some of the country’s worst religious riots.

The report has sparked political protests from opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which finds itself in even more trouble as it struggles to emerge from internal feuding after an election defeat in May.

Hindu mobs demolished the 16-century Babri Mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodhya, claiming it stood on the birthplace of their god-king Rama. Riots between Hindus and Muslims left hundreds dead across India.

The report, 17 years in the making, says some of India’s best known BJP politicians — including former Prime Minister Aal Behari Vajpayee and current opposition leader Lal Krishna Advani — did little to stop the destruction despite knowing of plans to demolish it.

Here is our news story on the report and a Q&A explaining the background.

A government-backed inquiry has accused several of India's top opposition politicians of having a role in the destruction of an ancient mosque in 1992 that triggered some of the country's worst religious riots.

(Photo: Muslim at New Delhi protest, 6 Dec 2005/B Mathur)

The report has sparked political protests from opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which finds itself in even more trouble as it struggles to emerge from internal feuding after an election defeat in May.

Hindu mobs demolished the 16-century Babri Mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodhya, claiming it stood on the birthplace of their god-king Rama. Riots between Hindus and Muslims left hundreds dead across India.

The report, 17 years in the making, says some of India's best known BJP politicians -- including former Prime Minister Aal Behari Vajpayee and current opposition leader Lal Krishna Advani -- did little to stop the destruction despite knowing of plans to demolish it.

(Photo: Lal Krishna Advani, 29 April 2009/Jayanta Shaw)

Here is our news story on the report and a Q&A explaining the background.

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I have been noticing a debate in newspapers and television channels about the need to call in the army to tackle the Maoists and wonder whether it is indeed time to turn towards them before the movement spirals out of control.

Last week, hundreds of Maoists, who are expanding their influence in India, chased away police from a tribal area based around the town of Lalgarh about 170 km (100 miles) from Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state.

By attacking Lalgarh and then keeping the police at bay for four days, the Maoists demonstrated their growing influence over poor villagers and their capability to strike close to a big city like Kolkata.

(For Analysis on how Maoist insurgency can hurt industry in India, click here )

Thousands of villagers caught in the crossfire have left their homes in panic and have been put up in makeshift government camps. They are clearly shaken by the siege and the subsequent police campaign to sanitise Lalgarh.

Indian states have time and again asked the central government that it might need the army to fight the Maoist movement, which is rapidly spreading in the country.

But for the moment, India is banking on the police to tackle the Maoists and equipping its forces with modern weapons and training to fight the Maoists in their own den.

Experts say it is clear that the strategy of the rebels with their 22,000 plus combatants is to encircle bigger towns and cities and could hit industry.

Maybe Indian authorities should also rework their strategy as the police with their limited prowess have always been soft targets in rural areas and have failed to gain confidence of poor villagers.

Will India look to deploy the army at some stage?

(Reuters photo of a paramilitary soldier keeping watch from a tree in Jhitka near Lalgarh June 21, 2009)

Is India pushing the ordinary Kashmiri people further away by enforcing regular curfews, putting most of their separatist leaders under house arrest and denying them religious freedom by banning Friday prayers in Kashmir's Jamia Masjid (grand mosque) on a regular basis to avoid violence?

I travelled to Srinagar, the summer capital of India's troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir this week, and saw how people were tired of violence and wanted peace and dignity in the region.

Many told me how they felt unhappy each time an incident of violence in a remote corner of the city would scare authorities into shutting down the city and forced them to stay indoors, many without any provisions.

The majority of people in Kashmir appear tired of the 20-year-old violence, involving militants and Indian troops, which has declined significantly -- with almost no major attacks in the main city of Srinagar for more than a year now.

Having tasted peace for a while now, people in Srinagar want to spend time near the Dal Lake or travel to a picturesque location with their families, instead of being locked up in their homes.

Industry heads and businessmen I spoke to recollect their endless meetings with Indian ministers, requesting them to do more to restore confidence of potential investors to boost the handicraft, horticulture and tourism sectors.

Many bookshop owners, fruit sellers and students I talked to want the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, the main separatist alliance in the disputed region, to hold talks with the government.

Some separatist leaders admit that talks can help their cause.

"With militancy down, this is the perfect opportunity for talks and the onus is on India now to take advantage and resolve the Kashmir dispute once and for all," Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told Reuters.

Could this be the right time to hold talks with the separatists to resolve the Kashmir crisis? And do Indian authorities agree?

Are the ruling communists in the stronghold state of West Bengal losing the confidence of its traditional Muslim voters, ahead of their most crucial electoral test this month?

For decades, Muslims have always felt safe in West Bengal, although they have been caught in an uncomfortable position elsewhere in the country after each bomb or militant attack.

West Bengal's left boasted that Muslims, a little over 26 percent in the state of 80 million people, were free from discrimination and were living in harmony.

But the ground situation has changed in the last five years with the government pushing for industry after years of land reforms.

Violence over acquisition of land has seen Muslim groups pouring into the streets to protest against the left, and saying they would not vote for them again.

Muslims are also saying they have been ignored for top job positions and were the worst affected when it came to losing farmland for industry, an allegation denied by the communists.

"The Muslims have always stayed with the communists for years, but now they are angry," says Ahmed Hassan Imran, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Bengal.

"They feel betrayed, the left has not done anything significant to help poor Muslims. The left candidates will not get many Muslim votes," Siddiqullah Choudhury, chief of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind, added.

I wonder whether news of Indian priests doing a purification ritual after a minister belonging to a lower caste visited a temple comes as a surprise in a country where religion plays a big role in politics?

Sadhus or Hindu holy men chant hymns as they carry a photograph of the Hindu god Shiva in Jammu in this July 1, 2004 file photo. REUTERS/Amit Gupta

While officials in Orissa said they will question the priests for throwing away holy offerings and washing the floors after the minister's visit to the temple this week, the incident has left the controversial minister angry.

Pramila Mallick, the Orissa state minister for women and child welfare, said her political rivals must have been behind it because she had been to the temple a few times without any fuss.

Mallick is said to be partial to lower caste voters who have been instrumental in her winning elections, while ignoring upper-caste people who administer temples.

Upper-caste Hindus may have tried to get even with her this time around, she said.

In spite of India's secular constitution banning caste discrimination, Dalits, who represent 16 percent of India's 1.1 billion population are sometimes beaten or killed for using a well or worshipping at a temple reserved for upper castes.

Dalit political leaders are also accused of instigating caste wars to help shore up voter support.

Temple politics is nothing new. India's former prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was stopped at the gates of the famous Jagannath temple in the town of Puri. She was deemed to have become an outcast after marrying a non-Hindu.

In 2007, the temple priests in Puri threw away food cooked for 7,000 devotees after a foreigner entered the temple.

The other night I was surprised to see my seven-year-old son walk out of bed, shivering, crying and barely able to speak.

Calming down after 10 minutes, he said that he was getting regular nightmares about bomb blasts.

India has seen a series of bombings in recent years, this year serial blasts have rocked three major cities.

The first was in the western city of Jaipur on May 13, killing more than 60 people.

At least 16 bombs exploded in Ahmedabad on July 26, a day after blasts in the southern Indian city of Bangalore killed one person and injured several.

Television channels have flashed footage of the bombings time and again and my son has asked me endless questions like "why do people set off bombs and kill"?

I consulted a child psychologist the other day, who gave me a patient hearing and said my son was probably getting panic attacks. He advised me to take him for a counselling session as a precautionary measure.

This incident got me thinking about the effects of violence in children and I wonder how people have been coping with this problem.

A colleague asked me to keep my son away from the television for a while.

Is this the only solution? I am still searching for answers.

Taking a cue from a popular 2006 Bollywood film, where the hero follows the path of non-violence to protest against injustice,  hundreds of travel agents in India sent sweets to airline offices on Monday to protest against a cut in their commission.

Come October, and most airlines in India will stop paying commissions to travel agents, citing rising operational costs.

This will effectively seal the fate of hundreds of agents who will have to close shop for good.

In India, travel agents get a five percent commission on basic fare from airlines and most of them do not charge passengers any extra money.

On Monday, about 1000 agents of the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) dispatched boxes of sweets and flowers to offices of various airlines across the country.

An airline official admitted he was initially clueless to receive so many sweets for taking such a tough decision.

"We decided to follow the path of Mahatma Gandhi, as depicted in a Hindi film and tell the airlines that this is how we will protest everyday," Anil Punjabi, chairman of TAFI says.

The film Punjabi is taking about is "Lage Raho Munnabhai" or "Carry on Munnabhai" which stars popular actor Sanjay Dutt.  He follows Gandhian values and the path of non-violence as preached by Mahatma Gandhi to protest when some aged people are thrown out of an old-age home.

The film won rave reviews and won four national awards, and people began emulating the Gandhian way briefly.

Now that it is back, I wonder whether this could be the new way of resolving corporate wars and disputes ?

Last month, authorities in a southern Indian state fined people caught urinating in public view for a few days.

This week, officials in a remote town started offering people money for using public urinals.

Quite amused reading these news items, I wonder whether we are witnessing the winds of change finally in India or are we just watching another piece of local image-building exercise before elections ?

In India, a drive to ensure cleanliness in streets for a week or so is a common exercise, but people often forget such drives in a hurry and the street corners are suddenly smelling again and people using handkerchiefs and sometimes masks to cover their nose.

But the novel idea of asking people to earn money by using a public urinal was certainly worth noticing I thought.

 Dozens of people are queuing up to use toilets in Musiri, a remote town in Tamil Nadu state, where authorities are succeeding in keeping street corners clean with the new scheme.

 The urine was also being collected and tested for its efficacy as a crop fertiliser, an official of Tamil Nadu's  agricultural university said.

The poor of Musiri, are earning upto a dollar a month and very happy to keep the street corners clean.

 Will initiatives like fining people or offering money work in a country like India, where basic sanitation eludes millions and people flout rules without bothering about the law ?

Sometime ago a passenger in the United States was off-loaded when she jokingly asked the cabin crew if the pilots were sober.

But as a frequent flier I wonder if it's an impertinent question to ask Indian pilots.

Why? Sample this: Around 50 pilots each year in India are grounded because they had consumed alcohol before flying, the country's civil aviation authorities say.

This year around 20 pilots have already been grounded for a brief period.

As if pilots who love their bottle were not enough, last week we had a gaggle of monitor lizards, jackals and birds saunter on the Delhi airport runway, delaying around 100 flights.

And not to speak of mid-air near-misses that we keep reading about in newspapers because of cramped airspace, lack of runways and increasing air traffic.

Then there is poor maintainence of aircraft that result in frequent flight cancellations.

A pilot friend says he often gets requests from his company to fly at extremely short notice. "I have often refused if I am partying and they ask me to fly out of turn," he told me.

But wait there is more.  Forget flying, earlier this month, a Ukrainian tourist found out how unsafe was walking, when his father died after he was hit from behind by a bus carrying crew members inside New Delhi's airport.