Factbox – Swami Ramdev, India’s most popular yoga guru
India’s government suffered a fresh blow in containing growing anger over corruption from million of voters as Swami Ramdev, the country’s most famous yoga guru, gained the support of a leading civil activist for his “fast-until-death” against graft. Anna Hazare lent his support on Thursday for Ramdev’s hunger strike from Saturday to protest against corruption in Asia’s third-largest economy and has called on his legions of followers to join him.
Here are some facts about Ramdev:
YOGA GURU
Ramdev, who successfully brought yoga to the masses through live telecasts, is revered in a country that places great emphasis on spirituality and health. His yoga demonstrations and performances to thousands of followers regularly include postures like a headstand or making his belly dance inside his ribcage, a popular trademark.
NATIONWIDE CLOUT
The yoga guru claims to have a follower in every household in India, and at least 30 million people tune in every day to his yoga programme that describes methods and teachings for treating anything from diabetes to high blood pressure.
While Ramdev is not a spiritual leader, yoga’s cultural resonance in India, where Hindu gods are often depicted in yoga poses, means his followers show a devotion similar to religious gurus such as Sai Baba, who died in April.
Indian court sentences 11 to death for fiery attack on Hindu pilgrims
A special Indian court on Tuesday sentenced to death 11 people for setting fire to a train in Godhra in the western state of Gujarat in 2002, killing 59 people in an act that led to some of the worst religious riots in the country since independence in 1947. The Sabarmati Express was carrying Hindu devotees returning from the site of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya.
More than 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the subsequent riots in Gujarat. Critics say the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules Gujarat, did little to stop the violence and many believe the riots led to the defeat of the BJP in the 2004 general elections.
The court last week found the 31 defendants on trial guilty of conspiracy to torch the train, a judgment that seemed to back the BJP’s stand that the train was deliberately set on fire to provoke the riots. Opponents say the fire was accidental and was used as an excuse for the violence. The death sentences must be confirmed by a higher court.
The 20 not sentenced to death received life sentences, prosecutor J.M. Panchal told reporters outside the courtroom.
SRead the full story by C. J. Kuncheria here. See also comments on our Indian debate page at The Godhra verdict: Will there be closure?
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from India Insight:
A Republic Day to forget for India’s opposition party
As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh watched India’s 61st Republic Day parade in the New Delhi sunshine on Wednesday morning, senior opposition leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley were in a Jammu prison, where they had spent a night under arrest.
Detained for attempting to lead thousands of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers into India’s northern state of Jammu & Kashmir to provocatively raise the national flag in the state that has been racked by unrest by Muslim separatists opposed to Indian rule, Swaraj and Jaitley’s politically-driven mission had ended in failure.
The BJP appear to have thought that the nationalism-drenched plan to hoist the flag in the centre of Srinagar, the state capital, would galvanize their Hindu support base, and show the ruling Congress party as ineffective in defending the disputed state from separatists who rile against New Delhi’s rule.
Thursday’s media post-mortem strongly suggested that they failed on both counts.
“Omar steals a march as BJP flag mission foiled,” summed up Mail Today on Thursday, as the opposition’s plan to paint the Congress-backed state chief minister as a weak leader spectacularly backfired.
The provocative rhetoric that accompanied the march also risked alienating moderate Hindus and a large section of secular voters, as newspaper editors strongly criticized the brazen attitude to stirring tensions in the unstable region where more than 100 people were killed last year.
India Congress scion Rahul Gandhi says radical Hindus a threat
Rahul Gandhi, seen as an India prime minister in waiting, told the U.S. ambassador radical Hindu groups could posed a bigger threat to the country than the Islamists who attacked Mumbai in 2008, a leaked cable showed. The comments made to Timothy Roemer last year were immediately criticised by the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), adding to political sparring that has deadlocked parliament and pushed policymaking into limbo.
Gandhi’s comments, made in response to a question from Roemers on the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group, referred to religious tension created by more extreme BJP leaders, according to the cable dated August 3, 2009. It was released by WikiLeaks and published on Friday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
Gandhi said there was evidence of some support for the LeT among Indian Muslims, the ambassador wrote, according to the cable. “However, Gandhi warned, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community,” Roemer wrote. The ambassador added a comment that “Gandhi was referring to the tensions created by some of the more polarizing figures in the BJP such as Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.”
Gandhi, son of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, has sparked the BJP’s ire before. He once compared the opposition party’s parent organisation to the banned Students Islamic Movement of India. On Friday, the BJP said Gandhi’s comments were adding grist to propaganda from Islamist militants and Pakistan.
India has a history of communal tensions between majority Hindus and minority Muslims, and critics say several political parties play on insecurities amongst Muslims to win votes. Radical Hindu groups, some with ties to the BJP or the BJP’s more extreme sister organisations, have been linked to bomb attacks against Muslim targets.
Hindu party BJP wants beef ban at 2010 Commonwealth Games in India
The Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition party in the Indian parliament, wants to ban beef from the menu at this year’s Commonwealth Games in New Dehli on Oct. 3-14 to showcase the country’s “cultural values and age-old traditions”.
The cow is worshipped in India and and a majority of Hindus do not eat beef. The slaughter of cattle is also banned in several states.
Rajnath Singh, a senior member of the BJP, demanded the ban in a letter to the organising committee of the Games, the DNA newspaper reported on Thursday. “Cow is considered sacred in India. This thought has been integral to our cultural ethos for ages,” the paper quoted from the former BJP president’s letter.
Indian report raps politicians over Ayodhya mosque destruction
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.
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WHY blame BJP alone? Political party means Congress too. But, for everthing Good and Bad happening in India only the politicians are responsible. They are in the top level to make things in favor or against them. WHat happened to 1987 Sikh Riots? What has happened to 26/11 terror plot. There were numerous terror hits before 26/11. WHO will take responsibility for these? Which party? ruling or opposition? WE Indians will not be let to develop under these politicians. We always end up selecting the least worst amongst the worst leaders contesting. when will we get freedom? In how many ways do civilians should get educated? need not blame pakistan , for 26/11. we are not correct first. Similarly, need not blame BJP for Ayodhya demolition.
India’s defeated Hindu nationalist party faces survival test
Riven by squabbling, India’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be forced to name a new leader in a crisis that could reshape the main opposition party, strengthening the left and hindering government efforts at financial reforms.
An election defeat in May touched off a leadership struggle and a debate over whether its Hindu-revivalist agenda, once its passport to power, was now irrelevant for younger voters. Moves are underway to replace 81-year-old leader L.K. Advani with someone from a younger generation, but the BJP is struggling to find a candidate who balances its pro-Hindu ideology (“Hindutva”) with its history of pro-market reforms.
Narendra Modi, the firebrand chief minister of western Gujarat state whose pro-market image saw leading Indian industrialists float his name as a potential future prime minister, appears to be sidelined. That signals the party is worried about losing the middle ground by boosting Modi, accused of turning a blind eye to religious riots in Gujarat in 2002 in which hundreds of people, mainly Muslims, were killed by mobs.
“For the BJP it is not only about leadership but also about what kind of politics the party would want to pursue — one that hinges on the Hindu identity or a liberal, responsible opposition,” said political analyst Amulya Ganguli.
Read the whole analysis here. For more on religion and politics in India, see Holding back the “religion card” in India’s election campaign.
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It is difficult for BJP/RSS to dilute, much less junk, its Muslim bashing Hindutva ideological plank, as the constituency that it has built up with its religio-chauvinistic platform, is a very large portion of its base and it cannot afford to relent on its aggressive anti-Muslim rhetoric. It has now become the prisoner of its own making. The Brahminical BJP faces opposition from both caste-ist as well as religious groups.
Religion and politics in “bewilderingly diverse” India
“Bewildingerly diverse” is the way Asghar Ali Engineer describes his native country, India. This 70-year-old Muslim scholar has written dozens of books about Indian politics and society, Islamic reform and interreligious dialogue. As head of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism in Mumbai, he works to promote peace and understanding among religious and ethnic communities through seminars, workshops, youth camps, research and publications. The centre even organises street plays in the slums of Mumbai to teach the poor about the dangers of communalism.
Our long conversation at the Centre in Mumbai’s Santa Cruz neighbourhood of Mumbai during a recent visit to India provided a few key quotes for my earlier analysis and blog post on religion in the Indian election campaign. Since these issues are crucial to the general election taking place in India, I’ve transcribed longer excerpts from his answers and posted them on the second page of this post.
Why do we always have to mix religion with politics ? True, its a fact but then the media can be a little more sensitive and sensible. Can we not talk about the development instead ?? Which government has contributed the most to nation’s development ? Which state govt. has performed the best ?? I think that should be the criteria of political analysis. That is what should drive the voter to the polling booth and the candidate…not his / his candidate’s caste and religion. These politicians play around with our emotions and we become their puppets. That’s not what democracy means… Democracy, as it is known, means Rule of the People, By the People and For the People …. WHERE ARE WE THE PEOPLE ????
Holding back the “religion card” in India’s election campaign
Hindu nationalism, Muslim “vote banks”, anti-Christian violence, caste rivalry — Indian politics has more than enough interfaith tension to offer populist orators all kinds of “religion cards” to play. Coming only months after Islamist militants killed 166 people in a three-day rampage in Mumbai, the campaign for the general election now being held in stages between April 16 and May 13 could have been over- shadowed by communal demagoguery.
But in this election, the “religion card” doesn’t seem to be the trump card it once was. It’s still being used in some ways, of course, but the main opposition group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has played down its trademark Hindu nationalism in its drive to oust the secular Congress Party from power in New Delhi. A BJP candidate who lashed out at the Muslim minority saw the tactic backfire. During a recent three-week stay in India, I found religious issues being discussed freely and frequently in the boisterous election campaign. But they were usually not the main issues under debate and not isolated from the pocketbook issues that really concern voters. Click here for the rest of my report quoted above.
This is one of those stories where context is king. Thanks to the internet and India’s lively English-language media, anyone around the globe can find Indian reports highlighting the religion angle. One of the news magazines, The Week, ran an interesting cover story about the “high priests of hate.” On balance, I think it looks a bit overdone — it was written at the height of the Varun Gandhi controversy — but it had this classic anecdote:
“A former BJP minister once said that he had won five times in a row using a simple trick: his men would make an issue of a Muslim boy marrying a Hindu girl or the death of a cow in a Muslim area on the eve of elections. He lost the last Assembly election when he campaigned with a development agenda.”
But religion isn’t just on the politics pages. Outlook, another news weekly, reported that an American investor long associated with the Hare Krishna movement has offered to build a huge Hindu temple in a planned Himalayan ski resort as part of a project previously nixed by religious leaders who feared it would desecrate the mountain home of their gods.
The Economic Times reported on its property pages that “more and more Indians want to have homes in religious centres.” Real estate developers and analysts differed on whether the financial crisis would hurt this trend, some seeing a lack of faith in the market while others firmly believed these investments were good. And the tabloid Mumbai Mirror had this story about a court defending religious names on clothes.
While in Mumbai, I went to see Asghar Ali Engineer to talk about the role of religion in politics in India. He explained the central role of communalism — the use of religious, ethnic or other loyalties to mobilise social groups — in Indian politics. A noted Muslim reformer, interfaith dialogue advocate and head of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, Engineer said:
from India Insight:
Lalu Prasad’s roller: courting the Muslim vote in Bihar
Muslims are seen as a crucial vote bank in several possible swing states in India's general election and many politicians are making the right noises to court the community.
In the state of Bihar, which I recently visited, its chief minister Nitish Kumar told me his campaign focused on caste-blind development but also communal harmony:
"Now everybody is happy. There is complete communal harmony," he said as we sat at night on the veranda at his residence.
If what he says is true, then communal harmony could be a vote winner for Kumar, whose party still has far fewer seats in the national parliament than that of his main rival in the state, the federal Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Prasad was chief minister for years, backed mainly by the Yadav caste and the Muslim vote. Could that Muslim vote now be slipping away from him?
Hussain Ansari, a Muslim rickshaw driver whom I met, ironically, outside Prasad's campaign office, told me he will vote for Kumar: "The situation is changing. Lots of development is taking place."
It remains to be seen to what extent Biharis believe Kumar has changed Bihar under his tenure as they go the polls.
Muslims in Gujarat are living richer life than any other state from kashmir to kerala. BJP is not discriminatory as is evident by appointing a muslim as the chief police man running the law and order in the state.
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