From a Sify report on a seminar held last Friday at IIC on ‘1914 Shimla Convention Agreement and Consequences’ (emphasis mine):
The fact that the Chinese refused to ink the 1914 Shimla Convention agreement between India and Tibet puts question mark over the legality or morality of China’s claim of sovereignty over Tibet, a group of India’s top jurists, scholars and security experts feel.
…The participants - who included senior Supreme Court Advocate Rajeev Dhavan, Arunachal MP Khiren Rijuju, Lt Gen. (Rtd.) F.R. J. Jacob, veteran diplomat Dalip Mehta, and writer Dr Parshotam Mehta - felt that this could make a strong case for India to press for autonomy of the Tibet in its negotiations with China during sixth round of discussions on Indo-China border that started today.
…Dhawan argued that China’s case for sovereignty over Tibet was inconclusive, contradictory and un-established. “I have gone through all relevant documents. At best, a nominal suzerainty was imposed by the imperial powers, which lapsed when the Chinese did not sign the agreement,” he said.
Writer Parshotam Mehta and Dr Anand Kumar of Jawaharlal Nehru University drew attention to the July declaration signed by the “plenipotentiaries of Great Britain and Tibet” which said if China did not sign the agreement “she will be debarred from all privileges”.
”It was an agreement between the government of India and Tibet and did not accept any claim by China if the latter did not accept the conditionalities,” they contended.
But all the legalities in the world pale against lack of political will and resolve…I am not in the least optimistic that the sixth round of discussions with China would be any different from the previous ones…
Related Posts:
Of sound bites, Shilpa Shetty and Arunachal
Tibet - not always part of China…
Dancing with the Dragon…
.
If you liked what you read, consider subscribing to my feed or subscribe by Email.
July 6th, 2008
Posted by
B Shantanu |
British Rule in India, China related, Current Affairs, Geo-Strategic Issues (incl. Nuclear, Oil, Energy), India & Its Neighbours, Miscellaneous, Modern Indian History, Politics and Governance in India, Post Independence History, World History |
one comment
I recently came across this interesting admission by a senior US government official putting it on record that:
“Saudi Arabia today remains the location where more money is going to terrorism, to Sunni terror groups and to the Taliban than any other place in the world…”
As the report, “Saudi Arabia’s Terror Finance Problem” by Douglas Farah notes,
“…There is little willingness to tackle the Saudis anymore on the issue of cracking down on terror finance. Intelligence services here and in Europe know most of the money for the mujahadeed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere still come from wealthy donors in the Kingdom.
Only a handful of officials, however, dare to say so publicly…
…The exception has been Stuart Levy, the Treasury undersecretary for terror finance issues, who recently and publicly took on the Saudis in little-noted Congressional testimony.
…One of the more interesting parts of the story, however, is…that, in essence, the Saudi government has repeatedly lied to the U.S. government over the steps the Kingdom has taken to crack down.
For example more than two years ago, the Saudis assured then-Rep. Sue Kelly (R-NY) that the Kingdom, as promised in 2003, had set up a financial intelligence unit and a commission to oversee the financial dealings of charities, many which have had ties to funding terrorist activities.
Now, Saudi spokesman Nail Jubeir (brother of ambassador Adel Jubeir) “confirmed that Saudi Arabia has not set up the financial intelligence unit or charity commission, but said it was cracking down on the financiers of terrorism in other ways, such as making it illegal for anyone to send money outside the kingdom “without going through official government channels.”’
Why should I loose sleep over this, you may ask. What concern is it to us?
If this report is anything to go by, it should be of pretty serious concern to us…I doubt though that anyone is loosing sleep over this – yet.
From, “Saudi Arabia Woos China and India” by Harsh V. Pant, read this richly referenced extract:
“…A more significant impediment, especially with regard to India, is the proliferation of Saudi-funded religious schools in the country.
…A madrasa (Islamic school) education in India has long been a part of many Muslim children’s lives. Madrasas in India number between 8,000 and 40,000.[46] But concerns have been rising in India about the dated and, with Saudi financing, increasingly radical curricula. In 2001, a report of the Group of Ministers on “Reforming the National Security System” recommended the need to modernize madrasa education.[47]
Saudi financial assistance has gone to a range of Indian-Islamic organizations resulting in the establishment of mosques, madrasas, and publishing houses inculcating the Saudi worldview.[48]
Riyadh also provides scholarships to Indian students to study religion in its universities. …The Ahle-Hadith (People of the Tradition of the Prophet), a Sunni Islamic sect with ties to the Saudi state dating back to the 1920s, has arguably been the biggest beneficiary of Saudi monetary assistance contributing to internecine rivalries among various Indian Muslim sects.[51] …While the early Ahle-Hadith was in many ways progressive, it has now altered into an intolerant, literalist strand.
Several Indian Islamic jurists and scholars seem to have gravitated towards this Saudi-sanctioned, radical interpretation of Islam and to a conspiratorial version of global politics. Instructive in this context is a claim made by a Muslim jurist from the Deoband sect in India that “should it be proved that Osama was the mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, he would not be punished under Islamic law since his actions were the result of an independent, legal opinion issued by top jurists.”[52]
Another Islamic scholar from a prominent seminary in north India has argued that “a worldwide anti-Muslim alliance has been formed and is headed by the U.S. It runs in an arc from Hindu fundamentalist India, through China and Russia, and ends with Europe and the U.S. in the west. The effect is to encircle and choke the Islamic world.”[53]
While the radicalism of Deoband would hardly surprise readers - given its reputation for teaching ”the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of Islam that exists anywhere in the world today” - what is more worrying (at least to me) is the slow radicalisation of otherwise harmless Madrassas – now flush with Saudi money and dominated by Wahabbi ideas…(do remember the “S” in SIMI)
That is the real danger lurking beneath the surface…and that is what we should be most worried about.
Unfortunately, such worries are rather unfashionable in Lutyen’s Delhi…and such thoughts are far from the mind of our government which earlier this week sent External Affairs Minister, Sh. Pranab Mukherjee to Riyadh to establish a “strategic partnership” with Saudi Arabia.
Curiously, ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna issued a statement after the meetings saying:
“Both sides were keen that genuine businessmen from both sides be given multi-entry visas to boost bilateral investment…”
“genuine businessmen”? I hope they mean it!!
Related Posts:
“India’s Islamist Groups” - Extracts
Madrassas on Nepal border…
April 23rd, 2008
Posted by
B Shantanu |
Impact of Islam on India, Islam & Reform, LeT, SIMI etc., World History |
one comment
Halfway through an innocuous article about an unusual Saudi programme to “rehabilitate“ jihadis, the Director of the Care Rehabilitation Center, Sheik Ahmed Hamid Jelan lets his guard slip.
The excerpt (from the TIME magazine article) needs no further commentary (emphasis in bold is mine).
“…Although the perimeter is guarded by police, the facility feels like a country club or college campus. Detainees (Young Saudis caught fighting American forces in Iraq) have lots of downtime and soda pop.
They spend their days in vocational training, psychological counseling and classroom lectures, most of which are given by religious scholars from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, including the center’s director, Sheik Ahmed Hamid Jelan.
He walks the detainees through religious texts on jihad–a theological minefield, considering that while the Saudi government forbids fighting in Iraq, it once recruited young Saudis like bin Laden to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.
The basic difference, Jelan explains to his charges, is that fighting the Soviets served the interests of Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world, while struggling against the U.S. in Iraq does not…”
.
Does this mean that it is acceptable to wage “jihad” if it serves the interests of Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world?
See also: SRK: “Jihad…a small little word”
Adjacent Posts:
Jihad in Islamabad and The Counterjihad Calendar for 2008
November 10th, 2007
Posted by
B Shantanu |
Global Terrorism, Islam & Terrorism, World History |
12 comments
Here is a link to a thought provoking article from some time ago… “Israel’s domestic enemy”
I first read it in The Pioneer (Dec 27 ‘06) and was reminded of it while looking for something else on the web over the weekend (the link is from FrontPageMagazine’s site).
It makes for sobering reading.
*** SOME EXCERPTS ***
“After nearly sixty years on the sidelines, Israel’s third and final enemy may be joining the battle.
Foreign states are Israel’s enemy no. 1. With the declaration of Israeli independence in May 1948, five foreign armed forces invaded Israel. All the major wars that followed – 1956, 1967, 1970, 1973 – involved Israelis at war with neighboring armies, air forces, and navies. Today, the greatest threat comes from weapons of mass destruction in Iran and Syria. Egypt increasingly presents a conventional arms danger.
External Palestinians are enemy no. 2. Eclipsed for two decades after 1948, they moved to center-stage with Yasir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The 1982 Lebanon war and the 1993 Oslo accords confirmed their centrality. External Palestinians remain active and menacing today, what with terrorism, missiles landing on Sderot, and a global public relations campaign of rejectionism.
The Muslim citizens of Israel, usually known in English as Israeli Arabs, constitute enemy no. 3. (But I focus on Muslims, not Arabs, because Arabic-speaking Christians and Druze are generally less hostile.)
Keep Reading…
May 15th, 2007
Posted by
B Shantanu |
Global Terrorism, World History |
one comment
A few days ago, I came across this interview of Daniel Pipes on the newly launched Lokmanch by Amitabh Tripathi. It is his first-ever interview with any Indian journalist.
Some excerpts: “…Q: Several apologists and leftists across the world had their argument that Arab-Israel conflict is pivotal to phenomenon of Islamic terrorism; once this conflict is resolved there would be no terrorism? How do you take this argument? DP: Its solution would marginally reduce the problem, but it is silly to imagine that. Settlement of the Palestinian issue would end the beheadings in southern Thailand, the pro-Kashmiri terrorism in India, or the anti-Shi`i terrorism in Pakistan.
Q: The term “Islamism”™ has been your favorite term to elaborate the subject of Islamic terrorism, being an expert of Islamic politics how do you define term “Islamism”™?
DP: It is the effort, based on the idea that whatever the question, “Islam” is the solution, to impose a totalitarian version of Islam on the entire world…
Q: In some of your article you have categorically stated that it is Islamism - not religion Islam as a whole - is responsible for terrorism, how could you differentiate Islamism with religion Islam when both of them have equal respect for Shari at, vision of Khilafat and theology of Islam?
DP: The religion of Islam goes back nearly 1,400 years; although terrorism was an intermittent problem during that long era (think of the medieval Assassins), Islam has not historically been associated with terrorism.”
Read the interview in full here “Lokmanch par Daniel Pipes”
March 24th, 2007
Posted by
B Shantanu |
Islam & Terrorism, World History |
3 comments
“The stadium was packed, the guns were cocked and even the drenching rain could not douse the jihadist fire”…
- From “Islamists rally Somalis to prepare for war with Ethiopia”, IHT, Dec 14, ’06 (by Jeffrey Gettleman and Mark Mazzetti, Pg 4).
So I guess Somalia is probably going to be the next jihadi hotspot. I thought this was stale news (my post was in Oct ‘06).
But lest anyone has forgotten, here is a sobering piece of what happened the last time US interevened in Somalia: “Anatomy of a Disaster” (George J. Church, TIME Cover story, Oct 18 ‘93).
January 11th, 2007
Posted by
B Shantanu |
Islam & Terrorism, World History |
no comments
Peter Worthington wrote a great piece in the Toronto Sun last week titled, “War cannot be waged ‘peacefully’”.
Excerpts:
“Want to know why we (meaning the West) won’t win the war on terror?…
The other day, after a rocket attack, Israel announced it was attacking the home of a suspected terrorist leader where explosives were stored. It gave the occupants 30 minutes warning to evacuate before war planes obliterated the house.
So what did the residents do? Well, not only did they not evacuate, but neighbours formed a human shield at the targeted house and, guess what?
The Israel war planes were called off. So now, every time the Israelis give the 30-minute warning which, apparently, is policy, the “human shields” of women and children head for the targeted house, secure in the knowledge that the Israelis won’t attack.
This is madness — no way to fight a war, or terrorists. And this is Israel — the toughest democracy on the block. And yet Israel hasn’t even gotten its kidnapped soldiers back from Hamas and Hezbollah, which provoked Israeli retaliation.
…War cannot easily be waged peacefully. Restraints often mean prolonging the war and increasing its casualties.
…Today, humane considerations are paramount. The symbol of peaceful protest is Mahatma Gandhi, the creator of passive resistance that anti-military activists like to cite as a way to thwart authority. Often overlooked, is that Gandhi’s formula worked against the British. If he and his followers had lain down in front of Cossacks, the Wehrmacht or the Golden Horde of Genghis Khan, Gandhi would have become an asterisk of history rather than an icon.
…Remember the U.S. bombing of Baghdad prior to the 2003 invasion? Peace activists from the West pompously announced they’d be human shields around prospective targets.
Once the bombing started, these people fled — outraged that the Americans could be so inhumane, even though none were targeted.
…As for Israel, if its government is nuts enough to give warnings of attacks, then it deserves what happens. The next warning should be that if human shields remain, they will quickly become ex-human shields.
One attack should be sufficient to persuade Palestinian human shields to take cover.
It’s idiotic to give warning of an attack. Hezbollah and Hamas don’t warn intended targets of rocket attacks and suicide bombings…”
December 3rd, 2006
Posted by
B Shantanu |
British Rule in India, Current Affairs, Global Terrorism, Modern Indian History, World History |
no comments
Yesterday, I read in the Dail Telegraph about the deportation of illegal Georgian immigrants by Russian authorities.
I wonder whether our government even acknowledges the millions of illegal immgrants present the country?
Arun Shourie wrote on this issue some time ago and if I can, I will try and find the article in the next few days…If anyone of you has come across it, could you pl. put the link in a comment?
October 9th, 2006
Posted by
B Shantanu |
Current Affairs, World History |
no comments
I almost missed this story “Pope: Conversion by violence not of God“ when it broke a few days go…but judging by reactions “Muslim leaders demand apology from Pope“), it looks unliklely to die down quickly.
These were the excerpts that are said to have caused anger and disquiet:
“In a speech at Regensburg University…Citing historic Christian commentary on holy war and forced conversion, the 79-year-old pontiff quoted from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologos.
“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” the pope said. “He said, I quote, ‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’ “
Clearly aware of the sensitivity of the issue, Benedict added, “I quote,” twice before pronouncing the phrases on Islam and described them as “brusque,” while neither explicitly agreeing with nor repudiating them.
“The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable,” Benedict said.
“Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul,” the pope said, issuing an open invitation to dialogue among cultures.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the pope was not giving an interpretation of Islam as “something violent,” although he said the religion contains both violent and nonviolent strains.
September 16th, 2006
Posted by
B Shantanu |
Current Affairs, World History |
no comments
Baron Bodissey (blogs as Fjordman) has written this long and thoroughly researched article on “Why We Cannot Rely on Moderate Muslims“…
The article explodes the myth of “moderate Islam”…very worrying and a must read for anyone who is watching these developments across the globe.
If any Muslims are reading this, I respectfully invite them to comment.
September 9th, 2006
Posted by
B Shantanu |
Current Affairs, World History |
no comments
