“Are Hindus Violent?” – Excerpts
Brief excerpts from a three-part series on “Are Hindus Violent?” by Bandyopadhyay Arindam, courtesy iVarta  (emphasis mine).
*** Excerpts Begin ***
…are the “nonviolent” Hindus taking recourse to violence? Do Hindus indulge in unprovoked violence? Even if provoked, is “Hindu” violence justifiable? Should Hindus retaliate and be revengeful? What is the Hindu scriptural dictate”?
During the Mahabharata war, according to the Bhagvat Gita, Lord Krishna revealed himself to Arjun and asked him to wage “dharma-yuddha”. Do we question the Lord for inciting Arjun into violence? Was Lord calling for revenge or was he merely advocating preservation of Dharma and the path of righteousness that befits Kshatriya Dharma? Arjun rightly feared the destruction but the Lord merely asked for right action guided by Dharma, not action tailored to outcomes of personal gain.
To make a nonviolent interpretation of the Gita, was what perhaps Mahatma Gandhi did, but that does not negate the need for necessary violence, without which we would not have any need for judiciary, police or armed forces. Protection of self is a necessity – all civil societies so agree. Nobody argues that nonviolence is a desirable quality….(but)…A malignant self-destructive nonviolence has been subtly allowed to sprout and mushroom in the collective psyche of the Hindus, and “inaction” has been deceptively euphemized as “tolerance” to destroy our righteous will. Our independence struggle has been almost totally credited to this Gandhian philosophy, which is a huge injustice to the large number of leaders and common people who have given up their lives for our freedom.
Have Hindus always been nonviolent? Don”t we believe that the “virtuous Devtas” always fought the “evil doing Asuras”? Wasn”t it a necessity for Lord Vishnu to incarnate repeatedly in the form of his various “avatars” to save the universe from evil forces? Wasn”t it required of Ram to kill Ravan for a just cause? Didn”t Krishna use his divine power right from childhood to slay the demons and “save the innocents” repeatedly?
It is devious to say that Sanatan Dharma preaches only “nonviolence”? It is equally wrong to claim that tolerance of atrocities and adharma is a virtue. On the contrary acceptance of “adharma” is not merely cowardice, it is also sinful. This is why Swami Vivekananda said, “if there is a sin, it is weakness”.
Does that make Hinduism the same as other religion in its approach to the concept of violence? The answer is no. Unlike the scriptural sanction of violence in propagation of some monotheistic faiths, Sanatan Dharma has no such parallel; it merely exhorts one to righteousness, which does not include propagation of one”s faith as the only true faith. This is a foundational difference which must never be lost sight of.
Hinduism does not promote violence when it is not necessary or against the innocent. Even in war we had our ethos and principles. Harold Wilson (1786-1860), a British Orientalist wrote “The Hindu laws of war are very chivalrous and humane, and prohibit the slaying of the unarmed, of women, of the old, and of the conquered. ”
Megasthenes observed “. among the Indians, . by whom husbandmen are regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighborhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain quite unmolested. Besides, they never ravage an enemy”s land with fire, nor cut down its trees”
Can we say the same about the invaders of Bharatvarsha over the centuries? Even our whitewashed history, as we read today, will not support that. Whole scale massacres, rape and destruction in the name of religion and God were the rule rather than the exception. Dr.Younis Shaikh, Pakistani and author of “Islam and Women” writes “..eighty million were slaughtered and millions of women were raped…it was standard practice for Islamic warlords like Ghori and Ghazni to unleash the mass rape and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of women after the slaughter of all males. A large percentage of Muslims in South Asia today are the progeny of forcible conversions and systematic rape campaigns by marauding Muslim invaders. ”
In the words of Alain Danielou (1907-1994), French philosopher and writer, “From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of “a holy war” of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races..Mahmoud Ghazni.was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked..Indeed, the Muslim policy vis a vis India, seems to have been a conscious systematic destruction of everything that was beautiful, holy, refined. ”
The Western (read Christian) mission on India was no less barbarous. This was Max Mueller”s comment” “India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again. the ancient religion of India is doomed, and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be? ”
…The Goa Inquisition (1560-1812) in India, the idea of St. Francis Xavier (who is glorified by the unknowing Indians, in the form of all the educational institutions that bear his name, in almost every major cities in the country) was described thus by a Christian historian Dr. T. R. de Souza, “At least from 1540 onwards, and in the island of Goa before that year, all the Hindu idols had been annihilated or had disappeared, all the temples had been destroyed and their sites and building material was in most cases utilized to erect new Christian Churches and chapels. Various vice regal and Church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories; the public practices of Hindu rites including marriage rites, were banned; the state took upon itself the task of bringing up Hindu orphan children; the Hindus were denied certain employments, while the Christians were preferred; it was ensured that the Hindus would not harass those who became Christians, and on the contrary, the Hindus were obliged to assemble periodically in Churches to listen to preaching or to the refutation of their religion. ”
All in the name of the cross!
…Rizwan Salim, reviewer, New York Tribune, writes, “Given the reality that Hindustan is the longest surviving ancient civilization and Hindus have to their credit so many unaccountable and such astonishing achievements of architecture and painting, music and dance, poetry and drama, epics and narratives, intellectual systems and philosophical doctrines, healing systems and mind-body disciplines, Hindus of every caste and class today should have possessed a well-informed and well-developed, intense and, fully conscious cultural pride. But one of the principal tragedies of contemporary India is that the majority of even the educated and otherwise affluent Hindus does not possess a deep and extensive knowledge of their culture-and do not give evidence of an intensely felt cultural pride. Lacking profound cultural knowledge and intense cultural pride, India”s intellectuals regard the fashionable ideas and ideologies from Europe and America as unquestionably superior to Bharat”s thousands of years old Hindu culture and wisdom. “
We still remain under forces that do not allow us to live our life and practice our religion freely in our own country. Our subjugators prefer the tolerant, docile harmless Gandhian Hindu. We are made to believe that an assertive Hindu is not the “real Hindu”…(and) …It is unfashionable to claim oneself as a Hindu – doing so is equated to “being a fundamentalist”
…Every attempt is made to divide Hindu unity, to disrobe Hindu pride, to denigrate Hindu saints and deities. Our religion is portrayed as superstitious, our tradition as old fashioned, our beliefs as non-progressive. Our history is distorted and our achievements are belittled. Our historical exhibitions are forcefully shut down, our processions are diverted, our celebrations are rescheduled and our meetings are disallowed to avoid “minority displeasure” and to promote “peace and communal harmony”. Ram is abused as a drunkard and Krishna is vilified as a “characterless womanizer”, while an invited Pope openly aspires to change the religion of our land and a resident chief Imam continuously delivers anti-national speech and open threats to the integrity of the country.
…Hindus watch silently in the case of “Rama Sethu” and “Amaranth shrine” that their own leaders pamper all except the Hindus and crush the Hindu”s just rights with arrogant impunity. They see and realize that non-Hindu religions get their demands fulfilled and things done because they are much more organized, more forceful, more connected, more political, more aggressive and more threatening. On the other hand, there is a conscious effort of multiple forces to prevent Hindus from organizing.
Hindus have seen their land divided, their people uprooted before and they see again the shadow of infiltration by the same perpetrators, encroaching their country, with the support of their own leaders and government.
Hindu religious institutions are being governed by people, including non Hindus, contemptuous of their faith. The sacred donations they put at their deity”s feet are used, not for temple upkeep, but to fund mosques or for religious pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem.
…Hindus see that their government, lead by their Human Resource Minister, Arjun Singh, has no hesitation in allotting funds for development of Madrassas and Mosque but wants to throttle the Ekal Vidyalaya movement, the single teacher schools that are the only hope of remote, tribal area children, because they teach “the Indian way (A for Arjun rather than A for Apple)” and because they are “communal” since they are run by Hindu organizations…The is the same Arjun Singh who, without hesitation, approves the decision of Jamia Millia Islamia University to fund legal aid to two of its students accused in the Delhi serial blasts.
…Hindus worry when the Shahi Imam Bukhari of Jama Masjid aspires “We were rulers here for 800 years. Inshaallah, we shall return to power here once again”” and threatens “this country is in for another partition, so let us be prepared for nation wide riots and violence. ”
…Christianity has grown phenomenally in the Northeast India. According to 2001 Census the percentage of Christian population in Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland are 34, 70, 86 and 89 percent respectively. Practicing Hinduism is forbidden in some areas and several Hindu saints have been killed….Hindus have been turned into minority in the Northeast but, not surprisingly, without any “minority right”. Many of the North-East separatist organizations like the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB),the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), are not only Christian dominated, but enjoy overt or covert backing of the missionaries. A BBC report in 2000 states that the NLFT was involved in forcing Tripura”s indigenous tribes to become Christians and give up Hindu forms of worship in areas under their control. The government of Tripura had proof that the state”s Baptist Church was involved in backing separatist rebels. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar was quoted to testify the arrest of Mr Nagmanlal Halam, secretary of the Noapara Baptist Church in Tripura, with a large quantity of explosives.
…Despite all these, Hindus have been largely tolerant to Christian aggression. The growth of Christianity by itself is not so much the reason for Hindu resentment, but it is the methods employed, from simple allurement of the poor, to the lies and deception to mislead, the staging of miracle healings to persuade, the “trading of soul” in exchange of medical, vocational and educational help, the defamation of Hindu traditions and scriptures and above all the vilification of Hindu Gods, Goddesses and Deities that has been far below any level of decency and respect. In the current conflict of Mangalore, which had no prior history of clashes between Christians and Hindus, not only the local residents, but even the Mangalore Diocesan agreed that the violence had broken out against forcible conversions. (Mangalore residents blame forcible conversions for violence)
…Hindus have seen the Christian propaganda at full throttle in the Jabhua, Madhya Pradesh case, in Sept 1998, when a group of people raped 4 nuns and the obvious suspects were workers of Hindu organization. Hell was raised for days but when the criminals were arrested, it was found to be mostly Christians themselves, without any member of any Hindu organization being incriminated. Not a word of apology or a statement of correction was offered to the Hindu organizations.
The same was the case of the hugely publicized, death of the evangelist, missionary Graham Staines and his two children in Manoharpur, Orissa. The sympathy factor created by the unfortunate death of the two children made international news and Hindu groups were lambasted. Following investigations, it was found that no Hindu group was involved. The chief accused Dara Singh himself also denied any association with any Hindu group.
…The recent violence in Assam that killed at least 50 people and injured more than 100 is hardly getting any importance in the news media. It was initially reported as clashes between Bodos and illegal Bangladeshi migrants (Assam violence toll rises to 40) and is now suspected a systematic ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), a Christian affiliated rebel group, fighting for an independent tribal homeland. ( Assam violence was systematic ethnic cleansing, says minister) against a predominant Muslim crowd of Bangladeshi infiltrators. One does not hear any major uproar from secular political leaders or any stunting gimmicks from human right activists in this clash of the “peaceful religions”, since there is no “Hindu extremist, involved.
…When was the last time we saw an article praising the work of Ramakrishna Mission or Bharat Sevashram Sanga? Is it because they are Hindu, Indian organization, not as filthy rich as World vision International or Caritas India, Delhi, that their effort and spirit is not worth mentioning?
…But things have started to change. The silent, united resolve of the Jammu people should serve as a warning. The restlessness in Orissa and Karnataka are early signs. Hindus are rising! …Bharatvarsha and Hindus have been around since ancient time and have survived assaults after assaults. Yes, we are peace loving, tolerant and non-interfering. We had sheltered the Jews and the Parsees during their difficult times. We are broadminded enough to accept people of all religious faith including the Muslims and Christians. We consider the Indian Muslim and Christians as sons of the soil and admit their equal right and freedom. But Hindus want reciprocity. Hindus want coexistence with respect and honor. We want non Hindus to respect our temples and our deities if they desire that we will respect theirs.
…Koenraad Elst, in his book, “Negationism in India”, writes, “Consider the situation in Africa: in 1900, 50 % of all Africans practiced pagan religion; today Christian and Islamic missionaries have reduced this number to less than 10 %…..That is the kind of threat Hinduism is up against.”
…What is our role going to be? Look to the inner Krishna forever guiding us through the Gita at every battle where Dharma stares upon the face of Adharma. The battle is eternal as is the call for righteous action, irrespective of consequences…
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Read the essays in full: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Related Posts:
Our Kurukshetra is approaching fastÂ
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you may find this interview interesting of Prakash Sharma of the Bajrang Dal interesting — speaks volumes of why the P sec junta is scared witless by these guys.
Hindus are now turning violent simply because they’re fed up.
And people like Sharma can articulately, factually and coolly establish this.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main40.asp?filename=hub081108Muslims_widen.asp
AG: I will have a look…thanks
Good points, Francois. It is surprising that a western white man, with chrsitian background, writes for the cause of Hindus and India. But in India, a section of Hindus ( name-sake Hindus) work relentlessly aginst their fellow Hindus, Hindu dharma and the nation. Nowhere in the world, not even in African jungles, one find natives work against the natives.
We have to defeat enemies inside, the name-sake Hindus, sickular brigades, to defeat enemies outside. We can never defeat Jihadis and chrsitian missionaries, untill and unless we defeat enemeis inside. Jihadis and chrsitian missioanries are emboldened and work aggressively due to the aggressive support of the enemies within Hindus.
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The Hindu Rate Of Wrath
When the Mahatma’s cowards erupt in fury, it hurts. It isn’t terror.
Francois Gautier
Is there such a thing as ‘Hindu terrorism’, as the arrest of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur for the recent Malegaon blasts may tend to prove? Well, I guess I was asked to write this column because I am one of that rare breed of foreign correspondents—a lover of Hindus! A born Frenchman, Catholic-educated and non-Hindu, I do hope I’ll be given some credit for my opinions, which are not the product of my parents’ ideas, my education or my atavism, but garnered from 25 years of reporting in South Asia (for Le Journal de Geneve and Le Figaro).
In the early 1980s, when I started freelancing in south India, doing photo features on kalaripayattu, the Ayyappa festival, or the Ayyanars, I slowly realised that the genius of this country lies in its Hindu ethos, in the true spirituality behind Hinduism. The average Hindu you meet in a million villages possesses this simple, innate spirituality and accepts your diversity, whether you are Christian or Muslim, Jain or Arab, French or Chinese. It is this Hinduness that makes the Indian Christian different from, say, a French Christian, or the Indian Muslim unlike a Saudi Muslim. I also learnt that Hindus not only believed that the divine could manifest itself at different times, under different names, using different scriptures (not to mention the wonderful avatar concept, the perfect answer to 21st century religious strife) but that they had also given refuge to persecuted minorities from across the world—Syrian Christians, Parsis, Jews, Armenians, and today, Tibetans. In 3,500 years of existence, Hindus have never militarily invaded another country, never tried to impose their religion on others by force or induced conversions.
You cannot find anybody less fundamentalist than a Hindu in the world and it saddens me when I see the Indian and western press equating terrorist groups like SIMI, which blow up innocent civilians, with ordinary, angry Hindus who burn churches without killing anybody. We know also that most of these communal incidents often involve persons from the same groups—often Dalits and tribals—some of who have converted to Christianity and others not.
However reprehensible the destruction of Babri Masjid, no Muslim was killed in the process; compare this to the ‘vengeance’ bombings of 1993 in Bombay, which wiped out hundreds of innocents, mostly Hindus. Yet the Babri Masjid destruction is often described by journalists as the more horrible act of the two. We also remember how Sharad Pawar, when he was chief minister of Maharashtra in 1993, lied about a bomb that was supposed to have gone off in a Muslim locality of Bombay.
I have never been politically correct, but have always written what I have discovered while reporting. Let me then be straightforward about this so-called Hindu terror. Hindus, since the first Arab invasions, have been at the receiving end of terrorism, whether it was by Timur, who killed 1,00,000 Hindus in a single day in 1399, or by the Portuguese Inquisition which crucified Brahmins in Goa. Today, Hindus are still being targeted: there were one million Hindus in the Kashmir valley in 1900; only a few hundred remain, the rest having fled in terror. Blasts after blasts have killed hundreds of innocent Hindus all over India in the last four years. Hindus, the overwhelming majority community of this country, are being made fun of, are despised, are deprived of the most basic facilities for one of their most sacred pilgrimages in Amarnath while their government heavily sponsors the Haj. They see their brothers and sisters converted to Christianity through inducements and financial traps, see a harmless 84-year-old swami and a sadhvi brutally murdered. Their gods are blasphemed.
So sometimes, enough is enough.At some point, after years or even centuries of submitting like sheep to slaughter, Hindus—whom the Mahatma once gently called cowards—erupt in uncontrolled fury. And it hurts badly. It happened in Gujarat. It happened in Jammu, then in Kandhamal, Mangalore, and Malegaon. It may happen again elsewhere. What should be understood is that this is a spontaneous revolution on the ground, by ordinary Hindus, without any planning from the political leadership. Therefore, the BJP, instead of acting embarrassed, should not disown those who choose other means to let their anguished voices be heard.
There are about a billion Hindus, one in every six persons on this planet. They form one of the most successful, law-abiding and integrated communities in the world today. Can you call them terrorists?
(The writer is the editor-in-chief of the Paris-based La Revue de l’Inde.)
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081110&fname=BMalegaon+Terror+%28F%29&sid=2
Thank you for endorsing my articles,“Are Hindus Violent?â€.
I follow your writings and thoughts closely and appreciate your newly expressed initiative to change India – one step at a time.
I would appreciate your comment on my recent article, “Are you scared of the Hindus, Comrade Brinda Karat?” published in ivarta, (http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/Are-scared-Hindus-Comrade-Brinda-Karat/blog-198.htm.
Honestly I was surprised not to see a protest from any of the pro-Hindo, pro-national writers about such a scathing remark about the ‘entire Hindu community’.
Please continue your good work.
Regards.
Arindam
The Hindu Terrorist and Current Investigations
http://desicritics.org/2008/11/06/113955.php
My comments in Desicritics.
So, ‘Hindu terrorst’ has become common usage. Is it inserted in Oxford dictionary or other dictionaries? Wow, we many Hindus yet to learn this. Thank you for giving us the lession. So, I am Hindu terrorist, as I am a Hindu. Not bad, Sardar Patel was called Hindu terrorist by some muslims. Netaji Bose was called a terroist by the British. They too were Hindus.
Wow, overnight 1 billion plus Hindus became terrorists. Your name too indicate a Hindu word Ashish, are you too a terrorist? Shall we call you Ashish Terrorist? What about your parents, are they too terrorists? Surely they are, as per your writings and common usage of the term Hindu terrorist. Are you ashamed to call yourself and your parents terrorists?
Congress party too have many Hindus (eg Pranab Mukherjee, Shivraj Patil, Karan Singh, Digvijay Singh, etc), are they too terrorists? There are Hindu Judges in the courts, including Supreme Court Chief Justice (Balakrishna…), are they too terrorists? Do we call Justice Balakrishna Terrorist?
What about President Pratibha Patil, she too a Hindu. Shall we call her President Pratibha Patil Terrorist?
PM Manmohan Singh, his sikh brothers assassinated Indira Gandhi? Shall we call him, PM Manmohan Singh Terrorist? And all Sikhs must be called Sikh terrorists, as per your writings.
Congressi goons massacred over 5000 sikhs within three days under Rajiv Gandhi, what you call Congress party and Rajiv? Shall we call Congress Terrorist party? Bharat Ratna Rajiv Gandhi Terrorist? Communists cadres massacred hundreds of people recently in Nandigram, do you call Communists Terrorist Party? Maharastra Police murdered a Bihar boy Rahul Raj, we shall call all Police forces Police terrorists.
If you thinking to intimidate Hindus by such terms, then good luck. Are you wishing to join professional pros titutes of NDTV, CNN-IBN? But they themselves uses Hindu names, Pranoy Roy, Rajdeep, etc and earn their livlihood from Hindu terrorists. Are not they ashamed?
Wonderful articles. Particularly the ones by Francois Gautier & hard hitting one by Bharat. We should ALL covey to the Pseudo Secularists (Congress, Communists, SP, BSP, JD (U) & others)IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that we will also mean business here after. No more tolerance. Let Jihadi & other terrorists beware.
Frankly folks,
I am dismayed at this new phrase “Hindu Terrorism” for simply that terrorists have no religion- it is an axiom that has been found to be true anywhere in the world.
Secondly, the phrase is an oxymoron.The facts bear it out- Hindu is the only community that has never actively propogated by war, propoganda or any other means its growth. How it has survived thus far with no institutionalised marketing and growth strategy, no tactical wizardry is in many ways a mystery. In fact it would be a case study in strategic marketing if one thought about it care fully enough.
I shall submit this to the secular media machinery that routinely spits out these phrases that it would do well to understand what “brand hindu” means.
One thing is for sure, a good understanding of “brand hindu” would mean no more a need of spitting out phraseology with a shelf life of no more than weeks but if your really figured out what “brand Hindu” means then an eternal source of readership revenues should follow. Come on folks, it aint that hard, a few years ago “brand India” was invented, look the revenues are still coming thick and fast. Isn’t that what you “secular media” folks care about anyway?
If you are secular media then i am nationalist non-media, if I am terrorist hindu then you are cowardly islamist and so on the phraseology can be expanded. There is no end to this name calling with a shelf life of a day or a weak.
Secular Media- you know who you are- or so i am guessing- your fundamental weakness is getting exposed and hiding behind this phraseology is not going to help. Time for re-training or coming out with a new strategy? Or perhaps going for that deep introspection with some education thrown in with a good measure, perhaps?
We are tired of your half-wit. Just get it.
From SC decries forceful religious conversions:
CNN-IBN
Updated Jan 21, 2011
New Delhi: The Supreme Court, while upholding life imprisonment for
Dara Singh and Mahendra Hembram, main accused in the killing of
Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa’s
Koenjhar district in January 1999, also came down heavily on Christian
missionaries for indulging in forceful conversions.
The bench of justices P Sathasivam and BS Chauhan observed that there
cannot be any justification for interference in someone’s belief while
decrying forceful conversions.
While delivering the verdict in the murder case on Friday the court
observed that investigations reveal that Staines was involved in
conversions and there are materials to suggest that the missionaries
were indulging in forceful conversion in the area.
From SC takes back conversion remark in Staines case, the twist in the tale
Severe criticism of its remarks over conversion has forced the Supreme Court to expunge its controversial observations on the subject in the judgment holding Dara Singh and Mahendra Hebram guilty of burning Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons to death in 1999.
…
The bench had observed: “In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death… at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity.”
The bench has now replaced these lines with: “However, more than 12 years have elapsed since the act was committed, we are of the opinion that the life sentence awarded by the HC need not be enhanced in view of the factual position discussed in the earlier paras.”
Similarly the bench has re-phrased another paragraph criticising conversion.
“It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.”
The court has now changed it to: “There is no justification for interfering in someone’s religious belief by any means.”
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