I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
No one should discount the importance of noble feelings to seek solutions that people need. But in a political and social order that is based upon class divisions, and even caste system in countries like India, where racial supremacy of some over others is believed to be the 'law of nature', the masters will remain masters and the 'lower' classes will remain at the mercy of their masters. The wheels of class domination and oppression will not stop circling.
Peoples' prayers and appeals to some heavenly powers or warmongering imperialists and brutal colonialists will not change the status quo.
The challenge to the existing oppressive system in a consistent and systematic way comes only from the revolutionary path of Marxism-Leninism. That's why imperialists, fascists, Zionists, Islamists, Hindutva supremacists and all reactionaries have been and are the relentless enemies and falsifiers of Marxism.
"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think."
-- German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Hegel puts it precisely about the interrelationship between thinking and generalising. We
all think about various things in our daily lives. Out from our
observations and experiences, we also draw some general conclusions or
generalise that is more of an evaluative process.
We also meet
people who hold an opinion or view to be only a ‘generalisation’;
therefore, by calling it a generalisation what they imply is that it
should be cast aside as ‘non-factual’ or ‘illusory’. However, that’s a
simplistic view. On the contrary, in the hands of thinkers and critical
observers, their views are based on empirical data and a rational
analysis of such data. As a result, for them to offer generalisations is
an essential part of communicating some facts that are part of a
cognitive process. Thus by generalising, a specific instance is extended
to cover a wider range of similar cases.
No wonder, all thinkers
and mentally mature people generalise. That helps us to see their views
as sound and verifiable. But all generalisations do not meet this
criterion. By adducing evidence, we can show the erroneous assumptions
on which such generalised views may be based.
For instance, we
have seen that whenever the US rulers have invaded any country, they
have killed very many innocent people and caused much damage as they did
in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. etc. From these
instances, we as observers of international events conclude that US
militarism is dangerous and murderous. That is our generalisation about
the US militarists. But if they stop doing what they have been doing for
so long, we may change our generalised view about them. However, the
prospects of any such change in American policies seem remote.
In the following article, Indian author A.G. Noorani gives a brief account of the politics of Hindutva in India. Many people are not aware that Hindutva is not the same as Hinduism. Hinduism is an ancient religion that evolved in India, but Hindutva is an extremist religious-nationalist ideology that is opposed to the idea of a democratic India, based upon the principle of secularism, equality of all its citizens, irrespective of their religion, creed and caste.
Hindutva rejects the ideas of such equality of all its citizens but, instead, aims at transforming India into a Hindu polity - Hindu Rashtra - where only Hindus will be supreme. In such a state, 200 million Muslims and 30 million Christians will be made second-class citizens.
Hindutva as an extremist nationalist ideology uses the cover of Hinduism to justify atrocities against Muslims, Christians and Dalits. It founders and mentors have copied and developed further the authoritarian and military model of fascism that was practised by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.
Since 2014, the BJP government had power in India under the premiership of Narendra Modi, who has the notorious record of being an ardent anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan leader for decades. After BJP's sweeping electoral success in May last year, the Modi regime started implementing the political programme of Hindutva fascists. After imposing direct Indian rule over Jammu and Kashmir, his party led the terrorist campaign against Muslims in Delhi, where Hindu militants and gangsters plundered the shops owned by Muslims and then torched their homes and properties. They killed over 50 Muslims in Delhi alone. All this took place under PM Modi's nose. That was Hindutva in action.'
Members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh take part in the daily morning drill.
Hindutva is the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh. The election manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party — the party
in power and political front of the RSS — has sworn by it since 1996.
What is more, Hindutva provides ample warning for what is in store for
the future of India’s democracy and secularism. It splits the nation
into ‘us’ and ‘them’, and discards Indian nationalism in favor of Hindu
nationalism
A G NOORANI
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]INDUTVA sums up the ideology that moved
champions of Hindu nationalism for decades before Partition. In 1923,
V.D. Savarkar coined the term in his essay, Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? As
an atheist, he took pains to emphasize that Hindutva was not synonymous
with Hinduism. It is important to understand the term, in all its
nuances, because of its past and present significance.
Hindutva is the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The election manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party — the party in
power and political front of the RSS — has sworn by it since 1996. What
is more, Hindutva provides ample warning for what is in store for the
future of India’s democracy and secularism. It splits the nation into
‘us’ and ‘them’, and discards Indian nationalism in favor of Hindu
nationalism.
Savarkar wrote, “… Hindutva is not identical with what is
vaguely indicated by the term Hinduism. By an ‘ism’ it is generally
meant a theory or a code more or less based on spiritual or religious
dogma or system. But when we attempt to investigate the essential
significance of Hindutva we do not primarily — and certainly not mainly —
concern ourselves with any particular theocratic or religious dogma or
creed”. His concern was politics; the political mobilization of Hindus
into one nation.
If not religion, what, then, is the basis for the divide?
With crystal clarity, he wrote, “To every Hindu … this Sindhusthan is at
once a pitribhu and a punyabhu — fatherland and a holy land. That is
why in the case of some of our … countrymen, who had originally been
forcibly converted to a non-Hindu religion and who consequently have
inherited along with Hindus, a common fatherland and a greater part of
the wealth of a common culture — language, law, customs, folklore and
history — are not and cannot be recognized as Hindus.
For though Hindusthan to them is fatherland as to any other
Hindu yet it is not to them a holy land too. Their holy land is far off
in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and god-men, ideas and heroes
are not the children of this soil. Consequently their name and their
outlook smack of a foreign origin”.
Modern hatreds are supported by ancient (real or not) wrongs.
The divide cannot be bridged except by obeying Hindutva’s
demand for conversion to Hinduism. Savarkar exhorted, “Ye, who by race,
by blood, by culture, by nationality possess almost all the essentials
of Hindutva and had been forcibly snatched out of our ancestral home by
the hand of violence — ye, have only to render wholehearted love to our
common mother and recognise her not only as fatherland (Pitribhu) but
even as a holy land (Punyabhu), and ye would be most welcome to the
Hindu fold”.
Gandhi’s assassination put paid to Savarkar’s ambitions, but
the RSS picked up the baton. Its supremo, M S Golwalkar, drew
inspiration from Hindutva and coined its synonym, ‘cultural
nationalism’, in contrast to ‘territorial nationalism’ in his book, A
Bunch of Thoughts (1968). Everyone born within the territory of India is
not a nationalist; the nation is defined by a common ‘culture’ (read:
religion).
Golwalkar wrote, “… here was already a full-fledged ancient
nation of the Hindus and the various communities which were living in
the country were here either as guests, the Jews and Parsis, or as
invaders, the Muslims and Christians. They never faced the question how
all such heterogeneous groups could be called as children of the soil
merely because, by an accident, they happened to reside in common
territory under the rule of a common enemy … The theories of territorial
nationalism and of common danger, which formed the basis for our
concept of nation, had deprived us of the positive and inspiring content
of our real Hindu nationhood …”
This explains the RSS’ ghar wapsi (‘return to your home’)
campaign, simply a repeat of the past shuddhi (‘purification’) movement.
Nothing has changed; an unbroken ideological thread binds Savarkar’s
Hindutva, Golwalkar’s ‘cultural nationalism’ and the RSS-BJP policies
today. On Sept 24, 1990, BJP president L K Advani launched “a crusade in
defense of Hindutva”, which culminated in the demolition of Babri
Masjid, in his presence, on Dec 6, 1992.
Since 1996, the BJP’s election manifestos for Lok Sabha
elections pledge to espouse Hindutva in these terms: “The cultural
nationalism of India … is the core of Hindutva.” This explains the Modi
government’s systematic purge of educational and cultural institutions.
It is a quarrel with history. As scholars Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph
remarked, modern hatreds are supported by ancient, remembered wrongs,
whether real or imagined. The RSS-BJP combine rejects the concept of
composite culture that Jawaharlal Nehru and others propounded.–Courtesy Dawn
Pakistani physicist Dr. Hoodbhoy's dismissal proves once again that there is no place for any enlightened academic or scientist in Pakistan who does not follow the official line of the horrid ignorance that is imposed in the name of Islam. The Islamist right-wingers have the final say what is to be taught in the educational institutions.
Thus ignorant people have a decisive voice in shaping the educational policies of the educational institutions. They decide what a teacher of science or other subjects should say and not say. We have heard and witnessed over the decades that Pakistani ruling elites and exploiters of Islam proclaiming time and again that in Pakistan everything taught should be according to the teachings of the Quran. But the irony is that these people even don't know this basic fact that the Quran is a sacred book of Muslims, not a guide or manual on physics, chemistry, geology, history, geography or cosmology, etc.
File photo of Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy. Attila Kisbenedek—AFP
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy’s dismissal from Lahore’s FCC University is a win for irrationality
Professor Dr. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, currently teaching physics and
math at Lahore’s Forman Christian College University, has been informed
that his contract will not be renewed in 2021. The same week, Punjab
Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar announced that all universities of the
province would be required to teach the holy Quran as a compulsory
subject, with students allowed to graduate only after the course has
been completed.
Hoodbhoy, born in 1950, is a Ph.D. in nuclear physics; he objects to acts of state and society against reason. His book Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality
explains the source of his trouble with the ideological state of
Pakistan. It is not that he hates religion; he objects to acts of
irrationality in the name of religion. The two scientists he most
admires, Ramanujan and Abdus Salam, were deeply religious.
He protested, however, when Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s own
police guard murdered the politician after Taseer defended a Christian
woman accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet under Pakistan’s draconian
anti-blasphemy law. Having lived under General Ziaul Haq’s Islamic
martial law, he was put off by a 1987 conference on “scientific
miracles” in which Muslim scientists mixed religious miracle with
scientific discovery. Pakistani scientists, encouraged by a funding of
Rs. 6,600,000 (half provided by Saudi Arabia), flew off the handle and
talked rubbish about science and demeaned the divine writ of the Quran.
Pakistan’s chief scientist, Salim Mehmud, tried to give himself a
leg-up by making a hash of the theory of relativity after linking it
with the “mairaj” (ascension) of Islam’s Prophet. Another scientist,
lucratively employed at The Holy Quran Research Foundation, proposed
that taming “jinns could solve the country’s energy-related problems” as
the creatures are made of fire. Many others, lured by the limelight,
delivered of themselves gems of medieval gibberish in the name of
Islamic science. Hoodbhoy has examined the roots of these ridiculous attitudes among
Muslim scientists and come up with a well-researched book about the
maltreatment of the scientific principle in Muslim societies. He asked
Nobel Prize laureate Abdus Salam to write its preface because the
professor had already made a plaintive appeal to the Muslim world to
spend money on scientific advancement instead of “conquering” science
through dogma.
Hoodbhoy tells us that scientific facts are contingent on reality.
They are empirically proven but subject to change upon further
discovery. In his view, it is wrong to link the eternal truth of Islam
to this evolving understanding of natural phenomena. Science relies on
observation and logic whose predictability is not destroyed by the new
understanding of quantum physics. For a believer, it is important to
separate divine knowledge from empirical fact, but this separation
should not impinge on the ferocious Islamic polemic against secularism.
Science in Islam was destroyed because it was never applied enough to
involve the common man. Kings often employed scientists, but they were
at times killed after the death of their patron. Al-Kindi was lashed 50
times in front of an illiterate approving crowd; Al-Razi was hit on the
head with his own book on rationalism till he lost his eyesight; Ibn
Sina’s entire life was spent running away from one prince after the
other for fear of being killed for heresy; Ibn Khaldun, the great social
scientist discovered by the West, was condemned by Taha Hussain as a
non-believer pretending to be a Muslim.
In his book, Hoodbhoy quotes Syed Ameer Ali on Islamic thinkers who
thought the scientific method anti-Islamic: Al-Ashari, Ibn Hanbal,
Al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya. He examines the case made by leading
Asharite Imam Ghazali against the study of logic and mathematics and
thinks that this was to become the greatest intellectual hurdle against
the learning of science. He criticizes contemporary Islamic scholar
Hussein Nasr for blaming the sciences for the misdirection of the Muslim
mind. His critique of Ziauddin Sardar for introducing the polemic of
secularism into the sciences is balanced and fair.
Hoodbhoy steps beyond the pale of anti-scientism in today’s new
intellectual trend when he gives statistics about the poverty of science
learning in the Muslim world. The gap between India and Pakistan is
significant because it goes beyond the argument of population ratios.
One has to helplessly concede that where Muslims control societies, the
one branch of knowledge that becomes neglected is the sciences. Prof
Salam’s advocacy of the pure sciences becomes meaningful when one
realizes that professional disciplines far outstrip the disciplines that
teach science.
Hoodbhoy is not the only dissenting voice to have been dismissed from
the echelons of academia in recent weeks. Author Mohammad Hanif posted
on Twitter that he, too, had been let go from Karachi’s Habib
University. Similarly, Prof. Ammar Ali Jan, also affiliated with FCCU,
has also claimed on the social network that he had been released as
visiting faculty over his public activism that was making the varsity
“controversial.”
Pervez Hoodbhoy’s book has diagnosed what is happening to the Muslim
mind toward the end of the 20th century. This mind is not only producing
strange reactions to the sciences in general; it is also trying to
tackle the question of governance without separating the state from
religious belief. The new coercive order spreading over Muslim society
is not political but intellectual. The tragic fact however is that this
experiment is too late in the day and quite redundant in the light of
what the institution of the state has gone through in Islam’s own
history and in other civilizations.
Former president George W. Bush has returned to the spotlight to give moral guidance to America in these troubled times. In a statement released on Tuesday,
Bush announced that he was “anguished” by the “brutal suffocation” of
George Floyd and declared that “lasting peace in our communities
requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the
fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for
all is the duty of all.” Bush’s declaration was greeted with thunderous applause by the usual
suspects who portray him as the virtuous Republican in contrast to
Trump. While the media portrays Bush’s pious piffle as a visionary
triumph of principle, Americans need to vividly recall the lies and
atrocities that permeated his eight years as president.
Most media coverage of Bush nowadays either ignores the falsehoods he
used to take America to war in Iraq or portrays him as a good man who
received incorrect information. But Bush was lying from the get-go on
Iraq and was determined to drag the nation into another Middle East war.
From January 2003 onwards, Bush constantly portrayed the US as an
innocent victim of Saddam Hussein’s imminent aggression and repeatedly
claimed that war was being “forced upon us.” That was never the case. As the Center for Public Integrity reported,
Bush made "232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda." As
the lies by which he sold the Iraq War unraveled, Bush resorted to
vilifying critics as traitors in a 2006 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Bush’s lies led to the killing of more than four thousand American
troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. But since those
folks are dead and gone anyhow, the media instead lauds Bush’s selection
to be in a Kennedy Center art show displaying his borderline primitive oil paintings. In February 2018, Bush was paid lavishly to give a prodemocracy speech in the United Arab Emirates, ruled by a notorious Arab dictatorship. He proclaimed: “Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.” He openly fretted about Russian “meddling” in the 2016 US election. But when he was president, Bush acted as if the United States were
entitled to intervene in any foreign election he pleased. He boasted in
2005 that his administration had budgeted almost $5 billion “for programs to support democratic change around the world,”
much of which was spent on tampering with foreign vote totals. When
Iraq held elections in 2005, Bush approved a massive covert aid program
for pro-American Iraqi parties. The Bush administration spent over $65 million to boost their favored candidate in the 2004 Ukraine election. Yet, with boundless hypocrisy, Bush proclaimed that “any (Ukrainian) election…ought to be free from any foreign influence.” US government-financed organizations helped spur coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. Both of those nations, along with Ukraine, remain political train wrecks. In that October 2017 New York speech, Bush proclaimed: “No democracy pretends to be a tyranny.”
But ravaging the Constitution was apparently part of his job
description when he was president. Shortly after 9-11, Bush turned back
the clock to before 1215 (when the Magna Carta was signed), formally suspending habeas corpus
and claiming a prerogative to imprison indefinitely anyone he labeled a
terrorist suspect. In 2002, Justice Department lawyers informed Bush
that the president was entitled to violate the law during
wartime—and the war on terror was expected to continue indefinitely. In
2004, Bush White House counsel Alberto Gonzales formally asserted a “commander-in-chief override power” entitling presidents to ignore the Bill of Rights. Under Bush, the US government embraced barbaric practices which did
more to destroy America’s moral credibility than all of Trump’s tweets
combined. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” regime included endless
high-volume repetition of a Meow Mix cat food commercial at Guantanamo, head slapping, waterboarding, exposure to frigid temperatures, and manacling for many hours in stress positions. After the Supreme Court rebuffed some of Bush’s power grabs in 2006, he pushed through Congress a bill that retroactively legalized torture—one
of the worst legislative disgraces since the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850. During his years in the White House, Bush perennially denied that
he had approved torture. But in 2010, during an author tour to promote
his new memoir, he bragged about approving waterboarding for terrorist suspects. Is Bush nominating himself to be the nation’s racial healer? When he
was president, Bush inflicted more financial ruin on blacks than any
president since Woodrow Wilson (who brought Jim Crow barbarities
to the federal government). Bush trumpeted his plans to close the gap
between black and white homeownership rates and promised in 2002 to “use the mighty muscle of
the federal government” to solve the problem. Bush was determined to
end the bias against people who wanted to buy a home but had no money.
Congress passed Bush’s American Dream Downpayment Act in
2003, authorizing federal handouts to first-time homebuyers of up to
$10,000 or 6 percent of the home’s purchase price. Bush also swayed
Congress to permit the Federal Housing Administration to make no–down
payment loans to low-income Americans. Bush proclaimed: “Core American values of individuality,
thrift, responsibility, and self-reliance are embodied in
homeownership.” In Bush’s eyes, self-reliance was so wonderful that the
government should subsidize it. And it didn’t matter whether recipients
were creditworthy, because politicians meant well. Bush’s 2004
reelection campaign trumpeted his down payment giveaways, a shining
example of “compassionate conservatism.” Thanks in large part to his policies, minority households saw the
fastest growth in homeownership leading up to the 2007 recession. The
housing collapse ravaged the net worth of black and Hispanic households.
“The implosion of the subprime lending market has
left a scar on the finances of black Americans—one that not only has
wiped out a generation of economic progress but could leave them at a
financial disadvantage for decades,” the Washington Post reported in 2012. The median net worth for Hispanic households declined by 66 percent between 2005 and 2009. That devastation was aptly described in a 2017 federal appeals court dissenting opinion as “wrecking ball benevolence” (quoting a 2004 Barron’s op-ed I
wrote). But almost none of the media coverage of the ex-president
reminds people of the economic carnage of this Bush vote-buying binge. It is possible to condemn police brutality and, even more importantly, the evil laws and judicial doctrines that enable police to tyrannize other
Americans without any help from a demagogic ex-president who ravaged
our rights, liberties, and peace. As I commented in an August 2003 USA Today op-ed,
“Whether Bush and his appointees will be held personally liable for
their [Iraq War] falsehoods is a grave test for American democracy.” The
revival of Bush’s reputation vivifies how our political media system
failed that test. As long as George Bush doesn’t turn himself in for
committing war crimes, all of his talk about “achieving justice for all”
is rubbish.
James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.
Introductory remarks: In his poems and articles, Badri Raina often reflects upon the social and political conditions in his native land, India. He knows how Hinduva's fascist nationalists have hijacked the secular direction of the Indian polity which accorded full recognition to ethnoreligious diversity of the state after the end of the British colonial rule in 1947.
Many left-wing people also became convinced that India's constitution will protect the minorities of India under an independent judiciary. But such hopes were shattered when the Hindutva emerged as a dominating force that had broad support in the Hindu population.
Badri Raina's new poem is a reflection of his long-held views and struggles. However, the ideas he advances in this poem are also applicable to many countries where morbid rightists use the cover of religion and populist demagoguery to further their sectarian objectives.
Keir Starmer is playing political games to gain electoral support from the large British Indian community to further his political career. To this end, he has chosen to side with the ultra-rightist Hindutva regime of PM Modi.
On 5 August 2019, Modi set aside the constitutional guarantees of the semi-autonomous status to the State of Jammu & Kashmir which the Indian rulers had given to this state after the Partition of India in 1947. When Modi's PJP won a large electoral majority in the Indian national elections in May last year, he set in motion a total blockade of Jammu & Kashmir to impose direct Indian rule there. That was in flagrant violations of the eh UN resolutions and also the guarantees that Indian rulers had given to Kashmiris in 1947.
However, the people of Kashmir never compromised their demands and their national right to self-determination. Their movement for freedom from the Indian rule became an open revolt in 1989. Since then, Inda has done all to crush by its military power the freedom movement of the people of Kashmir, who are mostly Muslims. Indian army has killed over one hundred thousand Kashmiris.
At a time, when the colonised people of Kashmir need the support and solidarity of all freedom-loving people, trade unions and labour organizations, the direction taken by Keir Starmer is the opposite of what a Labour leader should have done.
The steps taken by the British Muslims are fair and must be a reminder to this Labour leader that his policy to appease the Hindu voters is downright opportunistic and degrading. He is pushing the Labour Party in a direction that will make it look like an extended arm of Isareli Zionists and Hindutva fascists.
Ordinary working-class people have been the backbone of the Labour Party. We who have stood by the Labour Party, as I have done for over half-a-century, are deeply anguished to see Keir Starmer turning a blind eye to what the ordinary members of the Labour Party have stood for. It is high time that such people raise their voice collectively and also stand with people who oppose Starmer's political overtures to the brutal oppressors of Kashmir and also Palestine.
Over 100 British mosques and Islamic centres have
signed a letter to Labour leader Keir Starmer saying they would support
a call for Muslims to abstain from voting for Labour unless it supports
Kashmir’s right to self-determination. The letter came after Starmer described the Kashmir dispute as a
“bilateral issue” between India and Pakistan after a meeting with an
Indian lobby group at the end of last month. Starmer’s comments caused outrage among Muslims and eventually led to
several Labour Muslim MPs reiterating their support for Kashmiri
rights. The Labour leader has since said that the party’s position on Kashmir
has not changed and that it recognises previous UN resolutions on the
rights of the Kashmiri people. Here is the letter from the mosques in full: We, the undersigned members of the Muslim community living in the UK
(many of whom have families in South Asia), are writing to express our
utter shock at the contents of your letter in which you clearly express
unflinching support for the Indian Government’s position on Kashmir. This, at a time when the very same Indian Government is engaging in
anti-Muslim rhetoric and failing to protect the Indian Muslim community
from populist violence, and enacting laws that will potentially render
40 million Muslim citizens in India stateless, which as you well know
contravenes international law. Muslim coronavirus patients are being turned away from hospitals.
Kashmir itself has been in lockdown for more than eight months now.
India, under the premiership of Narendra Modi, is stepping away from
being one of the world’s largest democracies and hurtling instead
towards becoming a fascist-led authoritarian state where minorities,
Muslims and others, no longer feel safe or protected. It is the members
of this very same hate-fuelled ideology who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. We wish to remind you that Kashmir is not a bilateral issue,
evidenced by the 11 UN Security Council Resolutions which declare
Kashmir a disputed territory and that the people of Kashmir have the
right to self-determination, something which was enshrined in India’s
constitution under Article 370. The meeting at the Security Council last
year on 16th August 2019 is further evidence that this is not just a
bilateral issue between India and Pakistan. It is one of the world’s oldest unresolved territorial conflicts that
has the potential to lead India and Pakistan into a devastating nuclear
war which would have global repercussions. You have not only completely
disregarded the international element of the conflict but have also
pointedly ignored the Labour Party’s own resolution, voted in at the
2019 conference, which states: “[We] accept that Kashmir is a disputed territory and the people of
Kashmir should be given the right to self-determination in accordance
with UN resolutions. The Labour Party to stand with the Kashmiri people
fighting against occupation, this is vital as we stand for social
justice and ethical foreign policy.” It would seem to us that holding foreign governments to account over
their discriminatory policies and human rights abuses does not seem to
be a foreign policy goal under your leadership. As a former barrister,
you will clearly be aware of the seriousness of India’s violation of UN
resolutions. In addition, you, as the new leader of the Labour Party
ought to shoulder greater responsibility on this issue given that the
partition which led to this conflict was overseen by a Labour government
at the time. Indian occupation forces in KashmirIt seems to us that there is an ingrained view that the British
Muslim vote has and always will be a secure one for the Labour Party, to
be taken for granted with little consideration of the issues and
concerns which matter to us as British Muslim communities. In view of
the concerns raised above, we strongly urge you to reconsider the
party’s position. We hereby state in no uncertain terms that should you fail to modify
your position on the issue of Kashmir and by extension, the plight and
oppression of the large Indian Muslim minority within India, then we
will consider the Labour Party to have simply taken advantage of the
Muslim community. We will, therefore, have no option but to support a call for the
Muslim community to abstain from voting for Labour at all upcoming
elections. We hope that this will not be necessary and that the Labour
Party will continue to stand against human rights abuses wherever they
may be. We urge you not to underestimate the strength of our feeling on
this issue. Yours sincerely, Federation of Redbridge Muslim Organisations (FORMO) – 17 organisations
Hazrat Sultan Bahu Trust – 22 centres
Indian Muslim Federation UK
Muslim Association of Kent – 20 organisations
South East London & Kent Council of Mosques (SELKOM) – 7 organisations
Waltham Forest Council of Mosques (WFCOM) – 9 organisations
Al-Hira Masjid Newham
Academy of Inspiration
Al Ansar Masjid
Al-Emaan Centre (Keston Mosque)
Al Madina Mosque Barking
Al Noor Foundation
Anjuman-e-Islamia Newham
Apex Trust
Association of Muslim Lawyers
Attiq Malik on behalf of Liberty Law
Barking Muslim Social and Cultural Society
Brent Central Mosque
BWA Muslim Cultural Centre (New Cross Mosque)
Chingford Islamic Society
Gardens of Peace Muslim Cemetery
Faizan-e-Islam
Finsbury Park Mosque
Ghosia Masjid WFIA (Lea Bridge Road Mosque)
Great Barr Muslim Foundation Birmingham
Harrow Central Mosque
Hounslow Jamia Masjid
IG-Soc (“Connecting Muslims in Redbridge”)
Ilford Islamic Centre (Albert Road)
Ilford Muslim Society (Balfour Road)
International Business and Professional Corporation,
Redbridge Jamia Masjid and Islamic Centre (JMIC)
Stoke Poges Lane Masjid
Kent Muslim Welfare Association (Gillingham Mosque)
Lewisham Islamic Centre
Leyton Jamia Masjid MCT
Leytonstone Masjid Majlis-e-Ulama-e-Shia-Europe
Masjid Abu Bakr
Masjid Al Humera Newham
Masjid-e-Owais-e-Qarni (Belgrave Road)
Masjid-e-Quba Newham
Masjid-e-Tauheed Manor Park
Masjid-e-Umer
Masjid Falah
Masjid Tawhid
Muslimah Sports Association
Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC)
Neasden Mosque & Islamic Centre
Newbury Park Mosque
Newham Community Project
Newham North Islamic Association
Noor-ul-Islam
North West Kent Muslim Association (Crayford Mosque)
Pakistan Welfare Association (PWA) Slough
Qur’ani Murkuz Trust (South Woodford Mosque) Redbridge Islamic Centre (Redbridge and Gants Hill) Redbridge Talks
Seven Kings Muslim Educational Trust
Shirley Muslim Association
Sri Lankan Diaspora UK
Tehreek-e-Kashmir UK, London
The Mosque & Islamic Centre of Brent
Ujala Foundation Slough
UKIM Masjid Ibrahim and Islamic Centre Newham
