India Insight

(Any opinions expressed here are the author’s own. Any offense that the author causes is unintentional.)

Writing anything about India, no matter how picayune I think the topic might be, means that I run the risk of offending someone. Someday I’ll write a book about the unique culture of offense that I’ve found in India, but until then, I’ll write about examples that I see in the news. This weekend’s come from pop musician and poverty activist Bob Geldof as well as a senior government official of the Maldives, and an irreverent drummer from the heart of Punjab.

First, Bob Geldof, as reported by India Today:

Irish rockstar Bob Geldof’s remark that he got his “best drugs” from Goa has come under attack from a right wing Hindu organisation which has accused him of hurting national sentiments. While tourism industry players in Goa have said that Geldof’€™s statement was not in the context of current situation, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) has filed a complaint with the Irish embassy against the rocker.

Geldof, who was recently in Goa to participate in an event, had claimed that he was happy to be in the state which gave him the “best drugs”. He was referring to the era when he was 14-years-old and used to get drugs from Goa. “Someone told me that these drugs were from Goa,” Geldof had told reporters. Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) President Fransisco de Braganza said that there was no need to take Geldof’€™s statement as a judgement on the current situation. “It is secondary evidence. He never came to Goa. Somebody told him that those drugs came from Goa. The time line is late 60s,” Braganza said, adding we are all aware that there was hippie culture in Goa at that time.

“It was a different world. It is not a statement which relates to the present period,” he added.

(The opinions expressed are the author’s own, and may not necessarily reflect those of Thomson Reuters)

Mumbai’s Sufi shrine Haji Ali Dargah Trust has barred women from entering the sanctum that houses the tomb of the Sufi saint Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari. The reason: authorities said that they saw a woman visit the tomb in inappropriate clothing.

This might not be entirely surprising. The mosque and dargah – or tomb – sit on a tiny island in the waters off Mumbai that is connected to the mainland by a tiny causeway. It is one of Mumbai’s most well known tourist attractions, and many people from India and other countries walk past the mendicants and beggars, some of whom are missing limbs and often chanting, on the causeway to admire the architecture and the view.

Of all the things to get exercised about, yoga would seem to be an unlikely candidate for controversy. But such has been the case in Malaysia this week.

Malaysia's prime minister declared on Wednesday that Muslims can after all practice the Indian exercise regime, so long as they avoid the meditation and chantings that reflect Hindu philosophy. This came after Malaysia's National Fatwa Council told Muslims to roll up their exercise mats and stop contorting their limbs because yoga could destroy the faith of Muslims.

It has been a tough month for the fatwa council chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, who in late October issued an edict against young women wearing trousers, saying that was a slippery path to
lesbianism. Gay sex is outlawed in Malaysia.

It was another sign of how Muslim organisations in India appear to be taking the initiative as the country suffers from a string of bombings, often blamed on suspected Islamists, that has raised tensions between majority Hindus and minority Muslims.

The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, one of India’s leading Islamic groups which has been active in the country since the start of the 20th century, endorsed on Nov 8 a fatwa against terrorism.

More than 6,000 clerics signed the edict, which follows a similar one issued earlier in the year by India’s top Islamic institution Darul Uloom Deoband. The fatwa follows a series of police crackdowns on Muslims after bomb blasts across Indian cities this year in which more than 200 people have died.

For those Western critics that say Islam does not enough to to condemn terrorism, perhaps they should look at India, home to one of the world’s biggest Muslim populations — around 13 percent of mainly Hindu India’s 1.1 billion people.

 On Wednesday, it was the turn of Khalid Rasheed, head of the oldest madrasa in the northern city of Lucknow — a traditional centre for Muslims and religious scholarship. He rejected terrorism as anti-Islamic after he and his colleagues had been accused of apostasy over their pacifist stance by at group that calls itself the Indian Mujahideen.

Indian Mujahideen made threats against the madrasa in which they also claimed responsibility for last week’s bomb blasts in Jaipur, western India, which killed 63 people.

The issue of redressing the imbalance of Hinduism's ancient caste system by creating job and college entry quotas for lower caste and other disadvantaged groups in India seems to be gaining headway in an election year. Now it may be the turn for private industry.

Parties across India's political spectrum appear to be seeing caste-based reservations, as the quotas are known, as potential vote winners. It is a sign again that caste consciousness will become ever more important in what in theory is a secular Indian state.

Now multinationals enjoying the fruits of an Indian economic boom may find they are not immune. Much to the horror of many industrialists worried about their international competitiveness.