Understanding Azad

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was a great religious scholar, orator and politician who influenced the religious and political trends of his time. By virtue of being a member of a religious family he had a number of disciples who followed him devotedly. As a religious scholar, he believed that the Muslim community of India could be rejuvenated through religion. To accomplish this object, he organised a party of Ulema known as Hizbullah in 1912. He was the first person who involved the Ulema in politics with the aim of using religion as a tool to unite the Muslims of India and to create the political consciousness among them to struggle for their survival. On the basis of this organisation he wanted to train the Ulema in the art of politics and bring them out of their isolation. To extend his role Azad became a Pan-Islamist and started two weekly newspapers, Al-Hilal in 1912 and AlBalagh in 1914, through which he disseminated the news of the Muslim world. When the Ottomans were engaged in the Balkan wars, his newspapers widely reported about it, sympathising with the Turkish cause. These newspapers were widely read by Indian Muslims as they created a sense of identity among them and they started to associate themselves with the larger Muslim world. Azad also made an attempt to glorify the historical role of the Ulema. In his book, Tazkira, he traced the contribution of Indian Ulema to the Muslim community and paid high tributes to Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi who, according to him, alone resisted and defended Islam against the `atheism` of Mughal emperor Akbar. Azad was the first person who promoted Sirhindi as a hero and criticised Akbar`s religious policy. Unfortunately, Azad is greatly mistaken in saying that Akbar subscribed to atheism. This is historically wrong. Akbar was not an atheist; on the contrary, his intention was to search for truth. For this purpose, he invited scholars of all religions to the House of Worship (/badal Khana), which he established at Fathpur Sikri, and discussed the nature of their respective beliefs with them. Azad`s interpretation of history created a lot of misunderstandings. As a result, Ahmad Sirhindi became the champion of the two nation theory, while Akbar is condemned as a `secular` and an enemy of Islam. Further, he glorified other Ulema such as Shah Waliullah for their laudable services as reformers of the Muslims of India. His account promoted the image of these Ulema, who later on played an important role in Indian politics. When the Khilafat movement started in India, Azad became its ardent supporter. After its failure, he made an attempt to become a supreme religious leader of the Muslims of India, but failed in his attempt because religious scholars refused to accept him as an Imam. After its failure, his followers started to refer to him as Imam al Hind. However, this opened the gate for more Imams to appear on the scene, such as imam-i-Sharia, the title given to Ataullah Shah Bukhari. Azad also adopted his own style of Urdu writing. He changed the simple structure of`Urdu language which was introduced by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who liberated it from its Persianised form. Azad, opted to Arabicise the language by introducing religious terminology and Arabic words. As a result, the Urdu language became largely incomprehensible to the common reader.There were lots of misunderstandings about Azad`s personal life. No one knew his place of birth and there were speculations as to whether he studied at AlAzhar or not; but he remained silent and never clarified his position. Perhaps he loved to retain an aura of mystery around his persona. Gradually, Azad`s religious and political views changed, and from being a Pan-Islamist he became an Indian nationalist and a member of the Indian National Congress. During the conflict between the Congress and the Muslim League, he faced criticism from Pro-Muslim Leaguers. Muhammad Ali Jinnah called him a `show boy` of the Congress. He endured all this humiliation and insult but continued his nationalist approach which he regarded as beneficial to the Muslims of India. On the eve of Partition, he appealed to the Muslims to stay in India and not to migrate to Pakistan, thus leaving their cultural heritage behind them. After independence, he played a pivotal role in ensuring the safety and security of the Muslims of India. However, one aspect of Azad`s personality is that he never recognised the change of` his political and social views and the mistake he committed in his early career. Now, it is the task of historians to unfold and discover Azad`s personality and his views. By Mubarak Ali, Dawn.com Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul_Kalam_Azad

MAULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD (r.a) 1947 LAST SPEACH ...
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... Of Hazrat Umar Farooq (R.A) - Maulana Tariq Jameel 18:33 by Jason Lee. MAULANA ABUL KALAM ...

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Maulana Abul Kalam Azad giving speech at Delhi Jama Masjid worth listening and also read the ...

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (r.a) Partition-Predictions ...

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1947 سےپہلے مولانا ابوالکلام آزاد کےپاکستانی رہنماوں کے بارےمیں خدشات اور پاکستان کی موجودہ سورتحال۔ Maulana Abul Kalam Azad: The ...

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Lagos, Nigeria:on the edge of violence

THREE strangers on a beach in Lagos, Nigeria. A scientist with a tumultuous marriage, a rap star trying to find quiet and a military man desperate to contact his family. Each is there searching for solace, each with her or his distinct, complicated life. `Fast and quiet as a whisper,` a huge wave drags them into the water, as if `the ocean had opened its great maw and swallowed` them. But they do not drown. Instead they find themselves alive and unhurt back on the beach after a strange encounter with extraterrestrials, an encounter that changes each of them unequivocally, and sets them on a path to save the city of Lagos, in Nnedi Okorafor`s novel Lagoon.

The strange alien life form falls from the stars and into the sea around Nigeria, cleansing it and giving it new life. The aliens have given the sea creatures whatever it was they have asked for, leaving the lagoon now full of massive spiked octopi, monstrous swordfish and sweet, sweet water that now heals `the worst human illnesses and [will] cause a hundred more illnesses not yet known to mankind.` But they do not want to `rule, colonise, conquer or take.` According to their first ambassador Ayodele, they `just want a home.` Ayodele is the first shapeshifting alien to take human form and talk to the three people on the beach Adaora, Agu and Anthony. `You people call me an alien because I am from space, your outer heaven, beyond,` Ayodele tells them. `I am what you all call an ambassador, the first to come and communicate with you people. I was sent.` It takes a single physical transformation for her to convince the three humans that they must use their wits to navigate the chaos fast descending over Lagos to get Ayodele to the Nigerian president, if she and her people are to help Nigeria become all that it is capable of.

The simplest description of Lagoon would be to call it a classic alien invasion story.

Okorafor uses a number of classic tropes of the genre, often with tongue planted firmly in cheek there is even a `take me to your leader` scene (actual words used, and hilarious) when the Nigerian president asks to see the elders of the alien race. Lagoon`s characters are all brightly painted not even the ones with supporting roles are anything less than full technicolour. From Adaora`s confused and angry husband who suspects his wife is a marine witch, to the priest who decides that the aliens must join his flock, proclaiming that he has `been chosen to bring this creature and all of her kind into the light,` each of Lagoon`s characters is complicated and richly imagined.

As Ayodele says, `You people are very interesting.

Part of what makes Lagoon an entirely original alien invasion story is the very fact that it is set in Lagos instead of the usual suspects: New York, LA, London, Paris.Lagos often seemed a great deal like Karachi: big, confusing, bursting full of people of every possible sort and always on the edge of violence. It is described as `the city where nothing works yet everything happens,` a concept familiar to Karachiites.

Imagine an alien invasion in such a city, a city entirely accustomed to power breakdowns, lack of clean water, hideous violence and extreme poverty. Reactions to confusion created by an invasion are likely to be very different than in a city where even a basic power cut can cause some form of societal breakdown. It`s even possible that the residents of a city like Lagos (or, I repeat, Karachi) may well have greater survival skills in the face of an alien threat. Of course, it may also mean that xenophobia is more extreme all the better for conflict, drama and action in Lagoon, of course.

Okorafor never holds back, not with her ideas and not with her language. She slips into Nigerian pidgin easily when it is appropriate for her characters, never stopping to explain the vernacular (there is a glossary included for those who need it, but the pidgin isn`t hard to follow and definitely doesn`t take away from the ease with which the dialogue flows). Lagoon also freely shifts perspectives, not just between the main characters but also at times to connect a number of Nigerian myths to the main story. The citywide chaos reaches fever pitch, especially when all sorts of old gods wake once the aliens are in Lagos, including a horrific road monster called the Bone Collector that rises up `like a huge snake-like slab of concrete, the faded yellow stripes still in view` and quite literally swallows dozens of people.

The violence never comes from the aliens though they, in fact, try to stall it. It is an alien in human form who saves theLagosians from the Bone Collector, offering herself to satisfy its immense hunger. `I am everything and I am nothing,` says the alien woman, who is then `pulled into the road`s hot flesh,` until it is finally satisfied, shuddering and stretching with the `relieved sigh of millions of ghosts.

This combination of myth and aliens, of ancient stories and new futures, is what Nnedi Okorafor`s writing is all about. Her last book was a collection of short stories called Kabu Kabu, each story contemporary yet deeply resonating the myth and magic of Nigerian culture. In 2011, she won the British Fantasy Award for best novel for Who Fears Death, a frightening and powerful story set in post-apocalyptic Sudan that wove together both Igbo mythology, conflict and yes, change. In Lagoon, this change comes in a different form: `You are evil, shouts one Lagosian bystander to Ayodele, who replies succinctly, `I am not. I am change.

Lagoon is a first contact, alien invasion story in the best of all possible ways. There is great joy in Okorafor`s writing, a clear enjoyment of both the genre and the boundaries she constantly pushes at. First contact science fiction stories are often heavy, sobering tales of politics and economics, traditionally exploring xenophobia, and while Lagoon is no less an intelligent comment on all of the above, it is never heavy-handed with morality. Okorafor doesn`t judge people for their lifestyle choices and there are all sorts of lifestyles represented in Lagoon but she does judge the corruption and violence that has infiltrated Nigeria in this case a place representative of so many other developing countries. Lagoon is both socio-politically and environmentally aware, without ever letting go of the strongmythological narratives that form the core of Nigerian culture. Okorafor may be looking to the future for the city she loves, but she knows its strength lies in its ancient soul. 

by Mahvesh Murad, Dawn

World's Most Crime-Ridden Internet Network Found in Nigeria

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This crime scene in Southeast Washington dc happens often, isnigeria like this. offer your comments.

Jungle Justice: Two Burnt Alive In Lagos For Alleged ...

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Jungle Justice: Two Burnt Alive In Lagos For Alleged Robbery - Festour ... in Nigeria? what does this jungle justice say aboutNigeria's criminal ...

Lagos, Nigeria The Africa You Dont See On Television Pt 1 ...

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Lagos, Nigeria The Africa You Dont See On Television Pt 1 .... who came to the new world..the crime rate in india is horrendous too in the usa in ...

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US, China trade barbs at Asia security forum

The United States and China squared off at an Asian security forum on Saturday, with the US defence secretary accusing Beijing of destabilising the region and a top Chinese general retorting that his comments were `threat and intimidation` Using unusually strong language, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel took aim at Beijing`s handling of territorial disputes with its Asian neighbours. `In recent months, China has undertaken destabilising, unilateral actions asserting its claims in the South China Sea,` he said.

He warned Beijing that the United States was committed to its geopolitical rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region and `will not look the other way when fundamental principles of the international order are being challenged`.Mr Hagel said the United States took no position on the merits of rival territorial claims in the region, but added: `We firmly oppose any nation`s use of intimidation, coercion, or the threat of force to assert these claims.

His speech at Singapore`s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia biggest security forum, provoked an angry reaction from the deputy chief of staff of the Chinese Army, Lieutenant General Wang Guanzhong.

`I felt that Secretary Hagel`s speech is full of hegemonism, threat and intimidation,` he told reporters just after the speech.

Gen Wang said the speech was aimed at causing trouble in the Asia-Pacific region. Mr Hagel`s comments followed the keynote address by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the same forum on Friday evening, who pledged`utmost support` to Southeast Asian countries, several of which are locked in maritime disputes with China.

`I felt that they were just trying to echo each other, Gen Wang said. Mr Hagel later held a bilateral meeting with Gen Wang, where the Chinese military leader expressed his surprise at the US defence secretary`s speech.

`You were very candid this morning, and to be frank, more than our expectations,` he said. `Although I do think those criticisms are groundless, I do appreciate your candour likewise we will also share our candour.

A senior US defence official said that, despite Gen Wang`s opening remarks, the tone of the meeting had been `businesslike and fairly amicable`.

In Beijing, President Xi Jinping said China wouldnot initiate aggressive action in the South China Sea but would respond if others did, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

`We will never stir up trouble, but will react in the necessary way to the provocations of countries involved,` Xinhua quoted Mr Xi as saying in a meeting on Friday with Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia. China claims almost the entire oiland gasrich South China Seas, and dismisses competing claims from Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. Japan also has a territorial row with China over islands in the East China Sea.

Tensions have surged in recent weeks after China placed an oil rig in waters claimed by Vietnam, and the Philippines said Beijing could be building an airstrip on a disputed island. [Reuters]

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Modi’s foreign policy challenge

If India is to play a meaningful role as the Asian century unfolds, it needs to rethink its unipolar strategy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to invite South Asian leaders to his swearing-in ceremony signals the new government’s desire to reboot its Asian engagement. Even before he took the oath of office, it was clear that Asia is going to be high on Modi’s foreign policy agenda. Japan is likely to be Modi’s first foreign visit as Prime Minister, followed by China.

India’s new Prime Minister enjoys close ties with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He visited Japan five times as chief minister of Gujarat. In July, he will go to Brazil to attend the BRICS summit where he will meet leaders of the emerging powers including China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

These meetings will, of course, give Modi an opportunity to lay out his foreign policy agenda and infuse energy into the Asian diplomatic bloodstream. But this is not an easy task given the pitfalls in Asian geopolitics and the structural limitations of India’s foreign policy orientation.

Unipolar mentality

For a meaningful engagement with Asian powers based on mutual prosperity, India should overcome its unipolar mentality, much the same way it got out of the Cold War mentality, and prepare itself for a more dynamic world order and the ‘Asian century’. The term ‘Asian century’ came up as a passing reference at the December 1988 meeting between the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and the then Indian prime minister the late Rajiv Gandhi.

At the meeting, considered one of the defining events of Indo-China relations, Deng told Gandhi that in recent years many people had been saying the next century would be the ‘Asian century’. The phrase eventually became a popular geo-strategic term to refer to the steady rise of China and the fast-changing equations in global power politics.

While the Chinese seem to have realised the real potential of the Asian century much earlier, India, the third largest Asian economy, failed to structurally reorient its engagement with the new Asia.

China gave foremost importance to economic development and restrained its strategic play within Asia, apparently in a bid to emerge as a dominant player in the region; the changes India made in its post-Cold War foreign policy were largely aimed at accommodating itself within a unipolar world.

The policymakers in New Delhi seem to have been convinced that the world had changed for good, and the global domination of the US was there to stay. While this policy shift actually improved India-US ties, it did little to strengthen India’s geopolitical standing in Asia, where China was steadily expanding its reach.

According to Nouriel Roubini, a noted economist who advised Bill Clinton, the biggest geopolitical risk of our times is the rise of China. With China emerging as a regional power in Asia, tensions between Beijing and its neighbours are also on the rise.

Besides, US President Barack Obama had earlier unveiled his plans to “pivot” to Asia to “contain” China.

Japan’s position

Japan, upset over China’s muscle-flexing in the region, has shown clear indications that it wants to end the “passive diplomacy” it followed in the post-war period and project itself as a counterpoint to Beijing.

The US plan is to stitch together a broader alliance in Asia that could check China. It encouraged the changes in Japan’s foreign and security policy thinking because it sees Japan as a major partner in the pivot. It wants India to join this alliance.

This coincides with another pivot, that of Russia. Putin recently clinched a $400 billion gas deal with China under which Russian energy giant Gazprom will supply natural gas to China National Petroleum Corp for 10 years. The deal not only intensifies energy cooperation between the two countries, it takes bilateral relations between the word’s fastest-growing major economy and an ambitious former superpower to new highs.

In other words, there are two rival blocs, one theatre and multiple players. It is a Cold War-like situation in Asia.

Asian stability

India cannot sidestep this larger scenario while crafting the contours of its new Asian engagement. One way or the other, it will have to respond to the boiling geopolitical competition in the continent.

It can, however, take a cue from the Gandhi-Deng summit of 1988. If the ongoing century is an Asian one, India should radically realign its foreign policy priorities and give foremost importance to stability in Asia. The rise of China has already turned Asia into a hotbed of geopolitics, with both the US and Russia already present in the region. Both blocs will want India to join them, and selecting one over the other is a move that would jeopardise not only India’s interests but also Asian security.

New Delhi’s decision to back Tokyo in its territorial disputes with China was a move in such a direction. Such acts would only antagonise China. Choosing the middle path while simultaneously strengthening partnerships with other Asian powers is a difficult job that needs imaginative diplomacy, but it will pay off in the long term. It’s possible only if India places Asian stability at the centre of its foreign policy agenda. That’s perhaps the greatest challenge before the new government.

By STANLY JOHNY: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/modis-foreign-policy-challenge/article6072280.ece

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Savage capitalism is back — and it will not tame itself

BACK in the 90s, I used to get into arguments with Russian friends about capitalism. This was a time when most young eastern European intellectuals were avidly embracing everything associated with that particular economic system, even as the proletarian masses of their countries remained deeply suspicious.

Whenever I’d remark on some criminal excess of the oligarchs and crooked politicians who were privatising their countries into their own pockets, they would simply shrug.

“If you look at America, there were all sorts of scams like that back in the 19th century with railroads and the like,” I remember one cheerful, bespectacled young Russian explaining to me. “We are still in the savage stage. It always takes a generation or two for capitalism to civilise itself.”

“And you actually think capitalism will do that all by itself?”

“Look at history! In America you had your robber barons, then — 50 years later — the New Deal. In Europe, you had the social welfare state ...”

“But, Sergei,” I protested (I forget his actual name), “that didn’t happen because capitalists just decided to be nice. That happened because they were all afraid of you.”

He seemed touched by my naivety.

At that time, there was a series of assumptions everybody had to accept in order even to be allowed to enter serious public debate. They were presented like a series of self-evident equations. “The market” was equivalent to capitalism. Capitalism meant exorbitant wealth at the top, but it also meant rapid technological progress and economic growth. Growth meant increased prosperity and the rise of a middle class.

The rise of a prosperous middle class, in turn, would always ultimately equal stable democratic governance. A generation later, we have learned that not one of these assumptions can any longer be assumed to be correct.

The real importance of Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster, Capital in the 21st Century, is that it demonstrates, in excruciating detail that, in the case of at least one core equation, the numbers simply don’t add up.

Capitalism does not contain an inherent tendency to civilise itself. Left to its own devices, it can be expected to create rates of return on investment so much higher than overall rates of economic growth that the only possible result will be to transfer more and more wealth into the hands of a hereditary elite of investors, to the comparative impoverishment of everybody else.

In other words, what happened in Western Europe and North America between roughly 1917 and 1975 — when capitalism did indeed create high growth and lower inequality — was something of a historical anomaly. There is a growing realisation among economic historians that this was indeed the case.

There are many theories as to why. Adair Turner, former chairman of the Financial Services Authority (the body regulating the UK’s financial services industry), suggests it was the particular nature of mid-century industrial technology that allowed both high growth rates and a mass trade union movement. Piketty himself points to the destruction of capital during the world wars, and the high rates of taxation and regulation that war mobilisation allowed. Others have different explanations.

No doubt many factors were involved, but almost everyone seems to be ignoring the most obvious. The period when capitalism seemed capable of providing broad and spreading prosperity was also, precisely, the period when capitalists felt they were not the only game in town: when they faced a global rival in the Soviet bloc, revolutionary anti-capitalist movements from Uruguay to China, and at least the possibility of workers’ uprisings at home. In other words, rather than high rates of growth allowing greater wealth for capitalists to spread around, the fact that capitalists felt the need to buy off at least some portion of the working classes placed more money in ordinary people’s hands, creating increasing consumer demand that was itself largely responsible for the remarkable rates of economic growth that marked capitalism’s “golden age”.

Since the 1970s, as any significant political threat has receded, things have gone back to their normal state: that is, to savage inequalities, with a miserly 1 per cent presiding over a social order marked by increasing social, economic and even technological stagnation. It was precisely the fact that people such as my Russian friend believed capitalism would inevitably civilise itself that guaranteed it no longer had to do so.

Piketty, in contrast, begins his book by denouncing “the lazy rhetoric of anti-capitalism”. He has nothing against capitalism itself — or even, for that matter, inequality. He just wishes to provide a check on capitalism’s tendency to create a useless class of parasitical rentiers.

As a result, he argues that the left should focus on electing governments dedicated to creating international mechanisms to tax and regulate concentrated wealth. Some of his suggestions — an 80pc income tax! — may seem radical, but we are still talking about a man who, having demonstrated capitalism is a gigantic vacuum cleaner sucking wealth into the hands of a tiny elite, insists that we do not simply unplug the machine, but try to build a slightly smaller vacuum cleaner sucking in the opposite direction.

What’s more, he doesn’t seem to understand that it doesn’t matter how many books he sells, or summits he holds with financial luminaries or members of the policy elite, the sheer fact that in 2014 a left-leaning French intellectual can safely declare that he does not want to overthrow the capitalist system but only to save it from itself is the reason such reforms will never happen. The 1pc are not about to expropriate themselves, even if asked nicely. And they have spent the past 30 years creating a lock on media and politics to ensure no one will do so through electoral means.

Since no one in their right mind would wish to revive anything like the Soviet Union, we are not going to see anything like the mid-century social democracy created to combat it either. If we want an alternative to stagnation, impoverishment and ecological devastation, we’re just going to have to figure out a way to unplug the machine and start again.
By David Graeber —By arrangement with the Guardian, Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2014 http://www.dawn.com/news/1109795/savage-capitalism-is-back-and-it-will-not-tame-itself

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