Dilip Simeon's blog

A joke popular on social media these days goes like this. ‘Dear Pakistanis we as a nation have become immune to the martyrdom of our soldiers because they are paid to die, you just try and kill one of our cows then we will show you the fun.’ I begin with this joke to make the point that India is in danger of becoming a laughing stock in the rest of the world because of our new, violent obsession with cows. So enough is enough, Hindu fanatics. Stop! Stop right now if you really love Bharat Mata. It is hard to understand why a Prime Minister so passionate about making India a modern, digital, prosperous country has seemingly not noticed that hunting and killing Muslims on the pretext of cows and love jihad does not sit well with modernity. The PM talks about a ‘new India’ built with the energy of the largest population of young people on the planet. Has he noticed that hunting Muslims is serving mostly to distract these same young Indians from far more important tasks? Vipin Tri...

The sickening attack by Karni Sena hoodlums on a school bus last week had a surreal quality when seen from Davos. Our Prime Minister had just left after giving a speech whose gist was that from ancient times India has believed that the world was one single family. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. In a conference whose theme was building bridges in a fractured world, these words of ancient wisdom had real resonance. Then came those images of small children screaming in terror as their teachers urged them to hide under the seats of their bus to escape the stones and glass from broken windows. If the teachers had not been speaking in Hindi, I would have found it hard to believe that the attack was in India and not in some war-ravaged African country. It was an attack so reminiscent of the kind of thing Boko Haram does that Farhan Akhtar could not have said it better than he did in this tweet. ‘Attacking a school bus is not an agitation. It is terrorism. The people who did this are terrorists. ...

There is a rule in journalism that most of us follow. It is not a rule etched in stone but an unwritten one based on that old idiom that dog does not eat dog. When I tried to find out where the idiom originated and why, all I came up with was the explanation that ‘one disreputable person will not harm another disreputable person’. You do not need me to tell you that disreputable people abound in the media, but on account of the dog not eating dog principle, we of the mighty fourth estate almost never attack our comrades. Tavleen Singh - Modernity or murder, Mr Modi? // Vipin Tripathi: Funds to help Pehlu Khan's family This week I am going to break this rule and write a critique of our newest English news channel, Republic. Not because I have anything personal against Arnab Goswami or against his frenetic, haranguing style of television journalism, but because he is breaking a journalistic rule that is definitely etched in stone. This is that journalists must not usurp the ...

NB: Professor Vipin is one of India's staunchest activists for communal harmony and social integrity. He never fails to arrive wherever people are in pain and does his utmost to restore people's faith in humanity. India's rulers seem to be hell-bent upon destroying traditions of togetherness & inculcating fear among religious minorities along with impunity among hooligans. It is a crying shame that the government of the day finds communal hatred and violence to be the only means of retaining political power. Neither conscience nor compassion may be seen among the leaders and ideologues of the RSS/BJP. If untrammelled cruelty and defiance of law is what we may expect of this government, let us be very clear - they will poison the Indian polity for decades to come.   We must be grateful that we have persons like Professor Vipin amongst us.  वैष्णव जन तो तेने कहिये //  जे पीड परायी जाणे रे । पर दुःखे उपकार करे तो ये //  मन अभिमान न आणे रे ॥ Thank you sir - DS ...

Jaipur / New Delhi, June 18: Social activist Zafar Khan, 55, was beaten to death allegedly by staffers of municipality in Pratapgarh town Friday morning when he objected to them clicking pictures of women defecating in the open. Despite police lodging named FIR against the assaulters with murder charges soon after the incident, no arrests have been made till this report is being posted now, nor has the victim family got any compensation from the district authorities or government. In the FIR lodged by in Khan's elder brother Noor Mohammed, civic employees called Kamal Harijan, Ritesh Harijan, Manish Harijan and municipal commissioner Ashok Jain were made accused. Four of them were detained as a huge crowd of the locals thronged to the civil hospital Friday noon where Khan's body was kept and the police persuaded the family and locals to allow post-mortem and funeral and assured them that the accused would be formally arrested, says Nadeem Ansari, president of Pratapgarh Co...

Message from Professor Vipin Tripathi: Friends, remember Sadbhav Mission online meeting on  "Religiosity and Human Life" on January 16, 2022, Sunday, 5-7 PM, India time. The link is https://meet.google.com/enh-nsdk-ivp Confirmed speakers for 5-7 min talks are: Shri Md. Adeeb, Ms. Teesta Setalvad, Ms. Shirin, Ms. Sehba Farooqui, Shri Goswami Sushil ji Maharaj. I also expect two three more. Schedule 1) Shram Devta song - VKT,  3 min 2) Welcome and Theme- VK Tripathi 10 min 3) Presentations of 5-7 min each - 60 min 4) Brief interventions/ Discussions - 30 min 5) Adoption of Resolution - 10 min 6) Ghazal - 3 min Let me share a few ideas.  1) Secular bases. In early 1993 we formed an Ekta Panchayat in Indira Colony, Yamuna Pushta, New Delhi. It worked well up to 2004 when the locality was uprooted. However, our efforts in Mehrauli failed. We may try in Shaheen bagh/ Okhla  2) Temples and mosques in poor localities are places of shraddha (fa...

NB: The atmosphere of impunity that has overtaken the country since this government came to power has crossed all limits. Now the guardians of law are threatening citizens with murder. The message delivered to Shabnam is meant for all opponents of the so-called Sangh Parivar. Welcome to modern India - DS New Delhi, July 15: Eminent social activist Shabnam Hashmi has sought a thorough probe into death threats to her allegedly by a Delhi policeman over phone. She has written a letter to the Delhi Police Commissioner and sent its copy to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. "I was directly threatened that I will be killed in an encounter," Hashmi told reporters at a press conference at the Constitution Club here on Saturday. She informed that a man who claimed to be Sub Inspector Sandip Malik from Lajpat Nagar police Station threatened her over phone Friday night. The cop told her that there is the new law according to which whoever doesn't have an Aadhaar card and...

Memorandum to Prime Minister Contain Religious Adventurism  in Faridabad-Mewat-Alwar Belt Sir The merciless lynching of 16 year old Junaid (resident of Khandawali, Ballabgarh) in a crowded train in broad day light on June 12, 2017 is a high point of religious humiliation and violence being perpetrated on the Muslim masses by organized gangs in the Faridabad-Mewat-Alwar belt for the last 2 years. Junaid and his brothers were bitterly abused and vulgar aspersions were called on their religion while they were being brutally beaten and stabbed. His brother Shakir Hussain is struggling for life in Trauma Center, Safdar Jung Hospital, New Delhi. The incident is not an isolated event, it has a sinister pattern. In May 2015, an attack was mounted on 150 Muslim families of Atali (Ballabgarh)  when they were preparing to complete an unfinished mosque following court order in their favor. 25 people were injured and 25 homes burnt before police intervened and took the Muslim ...

NB: More of the same. The Sangh-instigated cow vigilantes now seem to be demanding that all cows owned by Muslim cattle-herders should be immortal. This is a plan to destroy livestock-farming by anyone other than RSS certified 'patriots'. DS A police team of just 15 managed to hold off a mob of around 1,000 people for around two hours before reinforcements from a CRPF camp nearby arrived to rescue a 60-year-old dairy farmer, who was attacked after the carcass of a cow was found outside his house at Barwabad village in Jharkhand’s Giridih district.  According to eyewitnesses and police, the mob also set fire to a portion of the house on Tuesday afternoon and wanted to throw the victim, Mohammad Usman, into the flames before police dragged him into their jeep and prevented attackers from pulling him out, twice. Basant Rath - We the Cows “We were only 15 personnel. The crowd, which was there for the weekly bazaar, had swelled to a thousand. Our first aim was to take ...

NB: At least 67 people have been killed in encounters since 2017, but not a single charge-sheet has been filed nor action initiated against police officers involved. In May, the NHRC directed the state government to constitute a five-member team to investigate 17 of these cases. This is a government of gangsters, for gangsters, and run by gangsters. DS Key witnesses to the lynching of Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan last year, including two of Khan’s sons, were Saturday fired upon on National Highway 8 in Alwar while on their way to a court in Behror to depose in the lynching case. While police have registered an FIR and assured the family of security for court appearances in the future, Khan’s family said they will move an application to transfer the case to Alwar from Behror before the next hearing. Asad Hayat, the lawyer representing Khan’s sons, Irshad and Arif, told The Sunday Express that he was in the car with them when a black SUV without number plates tried to force them to sto...

When the economy slows enough to seem stuck at a speed-breaker and the Finance Minister has to explain new rules about trading in cattle, you know something is very wrong. To be completely truthful I am sick of writing about cows, but every time I try to change the subject, and speak, for instance, about more important things like the terrible bombing last week in Afghanistan, I am forced to return to the craziness that has spread across the land in the name of cows and other non-human beings like peacocks. When a high court judge declares that peacocks breed without copulation and that cows were sent to Earth by Lord Krishna as an advance guard for his own arrival, then it is really not possible to ignore the craziness that is going around these days in the name of Hindutva. Justice Mahesh Chandra Sharma gave several interviews last week on the day that he was retiring from the Rajasthan High Court. Not about the failure of our justice system to speed up the delivery of justice, ...

The National Investigation Agency investigated seven terror cases in which Hindu right-wing groups are suspects. These cases – involving attacks where Muslims were targeted - were handed to the federal agency by the previous UPA government. This is also when the NIA made most of the arrests, including that of Swami Aseemanand and Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit. After remaining in jail for nine years, Purohit - one of the prime accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast - walked out of the Taloja prison on Wednesday. There have been allegations that over the past three years, the pace of investigations in these cases has slackened and witnesses have turned hostile where the accused belonged to organisations close to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Petition in S C Accuses National Investigation Agency of Soft-Pedaling Hindutva Terror Cases Public Appeal - Resist degradation of Indian criminal justice system Here’s a status check of the cases by Hindus...

EVERY CULT OR ORGANISATION  typically carries forward the legacy of its founder, and it is rare for those who build upon that legacy to exercise the same influence—let alone exceed it. But the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, has never been a typical organisation, and, in this regard too, it stands out. It was founded in 1925 by Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, but it bears the far more emphatic stamp of his successor, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar. While Hedgewar is referred to as Doctorji within the RSS, Golwalkar is known as Guruji. Golwalkar took over as the RSS’s sarsanghchalak, or chief, after Hedgewar’s death, in 1940, and held the post till his own death, in 1973. When he assumed charge, the RSS—also known as the Sangh—was still establishing itself, and did not have a major presence outside Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region. Under him, the organisation passed through great turbulence: it played an incendiary role in the Partition violence, and was banned after the assassination...

What happens when the state gives moral sanction to violence? When through its silence, it validates target killings? When through its actions, it penalizes the victim and pardons the accused? When instead of outright action against those who lynch, torture and brutally kill in broad daylight and among dozens of eyewitnesses, it starts a police or judicial inquiry to question the innocence of the dead? A couple of months ago, when Mashal Khan was lynched on alleged blasphemy charges in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, chief minister Pervez Khattak confidentially issued a statement saying that a judicial inquiry should be held as there was no evidence that Khan had committed blasphemy. Perhaps if the deceased had been found guilty by the inquiry, the actions of the mob that killed him would have been deemed appropriate. Just like Mumtaz Qadri, the man who shot Punjab governor Salman Taseer 28 times in 2011, in an upscale neighbourhood of Islamabad. He was hailed as a ghazi, a Muslim figh...

NB: The brutal nature of RSS politics and the Modi government has never been so clear as today. This is a government that openly sympathises with and protects hooliganism in the name of religion and 'patriotism'. The Indian Constitution and Article 21 - which protects a citizen's right to life - has been rendered a joke by this regime. If we do not protest this galloping criminalisation of India we will have ourselves to blame for what happens next - DS There is no doubt that a form of  medieval madness  has taken over India in the shape of Islamophobia and regular lynching of Muslims in different states. The situation has moved quickly from not renting out homes to Muslims to refusing to tolerate their presence in public spaces. Muslims are being taunted on trains and streets, fights initiated and lynched. The lynchings have become so common that we do not know which one to respond to.  Should we weep for  Mohammad Naeem  in Jharkhand or  Hafiz Junai...

Determined to fight the case of stalking of her daughter to the end, senior Haryana-cadre IAS officer V S Kundu on Monday said that “supporters of criminals” have started a campaign aimed at “character assassination” of his daughter, but the family will not come under such pressure and is “mentally prepared” to battle it out. “Baseless posts are being posted on social media by taking photographs from my daughters’ Facebook account and the internet. This is pressure tactic,” Kundu told The Indian Express at his residence in Panchkula, bordering Chandigarh in Haryana. Kundu, Haryana’s Additional Chief Secretary (Tourism), gave the example of an old photograph of his daughter that is being circulated on social media forums in an attempt to project that his daughter, Varnika was with the accused. “In reality, the picture was clicked with a musician from South (India) in 2011 or 2012.” Varnika was stalked, allegedly by Haryana BJP president Subhash Barala’s son Vikas and a friend, ...