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SEXUAL VIOLENCE: How India can end the attacks on women and children

SEXUAL VIOLENCE

How India can end the attacks on women and children

 
 
An Indian protester holds a balloon with a slogan during a protest of gang rape in New Delhi, India

It’s time to shift cultural attitudes toward women and children in India (AFP/Getty)

India’s government, under intense pressure to respond to December’s deadly gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a Delhi bus, has brought forward a new law with tougher sentences for sexual crimes and a broader range of offences, including stalking and sex trafficking.

But the law doesn’t go nearly far enough; it doesn’t even begin to address the shocking sexism of India’s male-dominated institutions. Meanwhile, a new report details the widespread and horrific sexual abuse of children of both sexes in India, and the government’s failure to prevent and punish it.

This momentum must lead to better laws and tougher enforcement, but those alone won’t be enough. What hope is there of progressive laws when there are so many politicians with criminal, rape and sexual assault charges? Only a comprehensive, long-term public education campaign can force the full “mind-set revolution” needed to end the horrific and ongoing victimisation of women and children.

Children: ‘shielded by silence and neglect’

The facts are grim: rape is the fastest-growing crime in India – up by 875% since records began 40 years ago – and one in every three rape victims in India is a child. An Indian government survey found more than half of the children interviewed reported being sexually abused.

Last year, India passed a law that for the first time makes all forms of child sexual abuse specific criminal offences. It also calls for police and courts to be more sensitive and responsive to the needs of child sex abuse victims.

But a new report, released by Human Rights Watch last week, details the many ways the government isfalling short in its obligations to protect children. Some examples:

– Police often humiliate the victims of child sex abuse and their families, insulting them, refusing to file a complaint and even detaining and threatening victims until they drop the complaint.

– Doctors and other medical personnel re-traumatise victims by subjecting them to humiliating, painful and medically useless exams.

– Because rape victims are often considered to have brought shame on their families, relatives and neighbours will deny the abuse took place, or pressure victims to remain quiet. Some families say they’ve been ostracised for reporting abuse.

– Orphanages and other bodies entrusted to care for children are frequent sites of horrific abuse, with many unregistered institutions and lax government oversight. One government-supervised residential facility was found to have forced young girls to have sex with strangers for money. Vinod Tikoo of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights told Human Rights Watch: “It is not neglect. It is systemic failure.”

All this and more leads to such heartbreak …

 

Leaving gaps

The picture is similarly shocking for women across India. In 2011, 65% of men surveyed said they thought it was OK to beat a woman; last month, after the brutal Delhi gang rape, a survey showed that 92% of men in Delhi knew someone who had harassed or sexually assaulted a woman.

The temporary ordinance just signed by India’s President Pranab Mukherjee toughens penalties for rape (in fact, it allows for the death penalty, against the recommendation of the panel headed by Jagdish Sharan Verma, former chief justice of India, who was tasked with suggesting revisions to the rape laws). It also adds penalties for stalking, acid attacks and trafficking of women and children.

But the ordinance ignores recommendations from the Verma committee to criminalise marital rape and remove barriers to prosecuting soldiers for rape.

It also changes the legal term rape to sexual assault, making it gender neutral. That might seem a progressive move; many countries, including the UK and the US, already have legal language that makes sexual violence a crime, whether perpetrated by males or females. But many activists fear that India’s notoriously slow and ineffective legal system will become bogged down as men accused of rape file counter charges against their victims, saying the women sexually assaulted them.

These omissions in the new law leave big gaps in protection for women and leave many wondering whether the government is at all serious about ending the epidemic of violence against women and girls.

Laws are not enough

At root, all these horrors grow from cultural attitudes that see women and children as worth less than men. And it’ll take more than changes in the law to make the key shift here.

The child sex abuse epidemic demands that there be training for police, courts, social workers and medical personnel so they know how to properly respond to child sex abuse. There must be reliable monitoring, oversight and enforcement of the law and related policies – and above all, perpetrators must know that sexual abuse of children will be punished.

Meanwhile, Avaaz has proposed a massive, sustained public education campaign across India to cure the epidemic of violence against women by driving home the message that it’s always wrong. The effort would enlist top celebrities from the worlds of sport and entertainment, as well as social leaders across the board, in a high-profile programme of media outreach and engagement focused on transforming people’s attitudes.

It won’t be cheap; to be effective, this campaign will likely cost about 50 rupees (about $1) per person per year. That works out to $1.2bn annually for at least four years running – and core education programmes should carry on for decades.

But look at the price, in money as well as human suffering, of the current situation. Keeping India’s women and children under a state of siege has untold costs, from stifling economic growth to the emotional and psychological stresses of constant fear and uncertainty.

 

Avaaz activists in India drove a symbolic pink bus through New Delhi to demand a mass public education campaign to cure India’s rape epidemic (Avaaz)

 

This type of campaign can change even deeply entrenched social attitudes. In the US, drink driving – once seen as relatively harmless – is now widely frowned upon. Cigarette smoking – once something a majority of adults did – has been socially stigmatised and continues to shrink. In India, the Bell Bajao campaigndramatically increased awareness of laws and discussion on domestic violence.

So by continuing to strengthen legal protections for women and children, as well as embarking on a focused, sustained campaign to shift cultural attitudes, India can end the culture of impunity for abusers – and help set the global standard for how a just and compassionate society treats them.

There may never be a better moment to fix this problem, and make sure that something good finally comes from an appalling tragedy on a Delhi bus.

Read more: Check out Curing India’s Rape Epidemic: The Education Option, Avaaz’s forward-looking proposal for making the difference for women in India. Then pledge below to help end the global war on women – and share this with everyone.

Sources: Avaaz, India Today, Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera, Association for Democratic Reforms, CNN, Unicef, Christian Science Monitor, Human Rights Watch, International Centre for Research on Women, NDTV, IBN Live, Times of India, First Post, Tehelka, Washington Post, National Institutes of Health, Bell Bajao

End the war on women
Violent and abusive men often use their power to obstruct reforms that would protect women. But now we can change this through a global, coordinated effort to make political candidates like these pay at the polls. Let’s seize this moment to make it happen – pledge now
 

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John Boone, Islamabad, The Observer: ‘Malala survived – that is a big defeat. Now they want to kill many Malalas.’ Ghanizada @Khamaa.com: Indian Consulates in Afghanistan Infiltrating Taliban Militants into Khyber Paktunkhwa

India is behind the insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Indian Consulate in Jalalabad and Indian Army are arming and training terrorists exported to Pakistan, as Taliban militants. While, Zardari is enjoying wine and women in Bilawal House.
 
As the Pakistani schoolgirl leaves hospital in Britain, extremists continue their murderous campaign by turning their guns on health workers and teachers. Pakistan Army has to destroy militancy from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, even it uses non-conventional methods. 
Naila ul Hadi
After Naila ul-Hadi begged for her son to be spared, one gunman threw him out of the vehicle in an apparent act of mercy – she was killed

For the teachers and health workers serving the village of Sher Afzal Banda, there were few things more mundane than their daily return journey to work.

Every morning a cramped Suzuki minibus owned by the charity Support With Working Solutions (SWWS) would collect them from the junction on a main road and drive them down the rough country track, just wide enough for a single vehicle. In the late afternoon it would bring them back.

“She never thought she was running a risk,” said Zain ul-Hadi, the husband of Naila, a 28-year-old who led a team providing basic healthcare to some of the 2,000 people who live in traditional mud houses in the village in Pakistan‘s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. “She had no reason to be scared of anyone.”

He last spoke to her on Tuesday afternoon, when she called to confirm she would meet him as normal. “She said she was on her way and I said I would be waiting to pick her up.” Thirty minutes later she and six out of the nine people, mostly fully veiled women, riding in the Suzuki would be dead, murdered by as yet unidentified militants while they sat inside the vehicle.

The appalling incident has raised fresh alarm about the growing willingness of Pakistan’s increasingly brutal militants to attack civilians. Like many other parts of the country where ethnic Pashtuns live, the district of Swabi has had its share of trouble with militancy. But while some schools have been blown up, no one can recall anything like last week’s attack.

One victim, a male nurse called Umjad Ali, had even moved home from his employment in Karachi after his family feared for his safety in the strife-torn coastal megalopolis.

The two gunmen, faces covered with cloth, had picked their site carefully. Their motorbikes were parked at a narrow point where the road dips, forcing traffic to slow down. There were no people or houses for miles around, only fields sown with a young wheat crop.

The driver, who survived a bullet in his chest, asked whether he should try to smash past the two sinister, pistol-brandishing men. But Umjad Ali thought it better to stop and talk.

In one apparent act of mercy, one of the men pulled Naila’s four-year-old son, Ehsan Shehzad, out of the vehicle and threw him into a field after she begged that he be spared. The gunmen asked for everyone’s mobile phones, but then began shooting through the windows of the vehicle before the devices were handed over.

In a part of the world where people hate to break the worst possible news over the phone, relatives of the six women and one man eventually received calls saying their wives and daughters were “seriously hurt” and they should come immediately. Days on, they are all still in deep shock.

“When the Taliban killed the polio vaccination team it occurred to me she could be targeted as well,” said Umara Khan, father of Shourat, a 28-year-old who taught in Sher Afzal Banda’s small primary school. “But I did not ask her to leave, she loved to teach.”

Like many of the other families affected, Shourat, with her well-paid NGO job, was the main breadwinner for her household.

“What are they trying to achieve? I don’t know,” said Hussain Wali, the father of Rahilla, a 25-year-old teacher who was also in the Suzuki. “We did not have a sense that women, teachers and health workers would be targeted.”

On Friday police claimed that one of the culprits blew himself up after the police attempted to arrest him.

The incident in Swabi comes after the killing of nine people working on UN-backed anti-polio vaccination teams during a string of attacks last month.

In October, Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl from the nearby district of Swat, survived being shot in the head by a Taliban gunman, who objected to her fight for girls to be educated. Last week she was discharged from hospital in Birmingham after weeks of treatment. In December, militants kidnapped 23 tribal police. Observers say that in the past the militants would probably have tried to trade them for a ransom, but 21 of them were killed with no demands made.

“Things are changing, things have been happening that never happened in the past,” said Rahimullah Yousafzai, a journalist based in Peshawar who has been covering the tribal area for decades. “Attacking mosques, funerals, graves and, of course, these teachers and health workers.”

Yousafzai says Pakistan’s militants have come to see anyone involved in charitable or development organisations as fair game: “They take it for granted that if you work for an NGO you are funded by the west, that you are trying to change local traditions and customs, you are doing something that is secular. They no longer expect to get any public support, so no effort is being made to win hearts and minds. That is beyond them. Now all they want is to intimidate and pre-empt an uprising against them.”

For the time being, the people of Sher Afzal Banda are defiant. Local residents say they want the school to be reopened as soon as possible.

Javed Akhtar, executive director of SWWS, is considering hiring armed guards for his staff. Like most humanitarian workers, he hates the idea of using guns but sees no alternative. But he fears more trouble. As in nearby Swat, the people of Swabi have a strong commitment to educating their daughters and the district boasts a high female literacy rate. “Malala survived, she was discharged from hospital – that is a big defeat for them,” he said. “They now want revenge, they want to kill many Malalas.”

India hosts training for 30,000 Afghan army troops (to be infiltrated into Pakistan as Taliban)images-51

By GHANIZADA 

 
  • The government of India is intending to arrange military training for more than 20000 Afghan security forces inside the Indian soil in a bid to pave the way for expanding its political presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, when all the NATO-led combat forces will leave the country.

The United States of America is going to sponsor the training expenses of the Afghan national security forces and has vowed a $12 billion budget to train Afghan security.

In the meantime, the United States of America urged the other nations having common interests to take part in the Afghan national army trainings.

On the other hand, lack of tendency by the Afghan government to train its national security forces by Pakistan has doubled the responsibilities of the Afghan counterpart India, to burden shoulder for more training responsibilities of the Afghan security forces.

According to reports, India is going to host around 30,000 Afghan national army soldiers to train in Indian military facilities in northern and western parts of India.

Meanwhile, training Afghan national security forces also makes a section of the strategic cooperation agreement between India and Afghanistan, which was signed on October 2011 between the two nations.

 

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The Two Castes of Pakistan: JINS & JUNKIES

Pakistan has a Caste System Based on History and Economics. There are only two Castes in Pakistan, the Jagirdars/Industrialists (the JINS)

and the 99 percent who make up rest of the people (Junkies).

 

Junkies are named so, because 99 percent Pakistanis are addicted to poverty. They are fed an opiate of poverty as being “ordained” by Allah Almighty. It is a part of their Kismet. A concept light years removed from the social dynamics; and the emphasis on effort to enhance ones economic condition, as described by Islam. Pakistan’s wealth, economy, political power, and opportunities are controlled by the Jagirdars/Industrialist Axis (the JIN Axis).The JINS preach the gospel of Status Quo.  Don’t rock the boat, the big bad wolf from India will come and get you, if you did.  So in 65 years, the JIN are the rulers and the Junkies are the ruled.  The JINS use their wealth to gain an unfair advantage over the Junkies.  Any one person or entity, including a religious scholar turned activist like Tahirul Qadri or a political party like Tehreek-i-Insaf or MQM, tries to act as proponent of parity or equal distribution of wealth are labeled as foreign agents or corrupt. Pakistani media is owned by the JINS, because without it, they could not maintain their hold on wealth and power. But,  who laid the foundation of this institution of  JINS and Junkies.

Here is the history of how it all began:

This is an in-depth article on the genesis of the curse of Jagirdari in Punjab and Waderas in Sindh. How the likes of  the Jatois of Sindh, the Noons, the Tareens, the Mazaris, the Legharis, the Qureshis, the Syeds of Sindh, the Hayats, the Tiwanas, the Daultanas, of Punjab became powerful in Pakistani politics.  Their roots date back to a more than a hundred years. These families were collaborators with the British and fought the Freedom Fighters during the 1857 Struggle for Independence.

Rewards for Ghadaars-Noons, Syeds, Sheikhs, Qureshis, Hayats, and Tiwanas: Collaborators of British during 1857 Struggle for Independence 

 Landowners accounted for over 60 per cent of the Punjab’s restricted electorate. This stood at just over of two and a quarter million voters, just 1 in ten Punjabis. Moreover, non-agriculturalists were still disallowed from contesting rural constituencies. This resulted in men committed to the imperial connection dominating every government which was elected in the new era of provincial autonomy...

Ian Talbot quoted from Khizr Tiwana, The Punjab Unionist Party and the Partition of India, Routledge, 1996. 

David Page quoted from Prelude to Partition,  The Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control 1920-1932, OUP, 1982.

The British dependence on Punjab for  military manpower after the 1857 mutiny heavily influenced  British policies towards land, administration, franchise and demands for self-rule in that province. These quotes provide glimpses  of the particularity exercised towards Punjab by the British.  

Punjab and the 1857 mutiny
Ian Talbot writes:
John Lawrence, the first Chief Commissioner of the British Punjab favoured the interests of the cultivators rather than the landowners. He fell out with his brother Henry, a fellow member of the Punjab Board of Administration, over the treatment of the jagirdars left by Sikh rule. The debate raged fiercely over the fate of the Sikh jagirdars of the central Punjab. But the British were keen to confirm the landed authority of the Tiwanas and other ‘tribal’ leaders who had supported them against the Sikhs in the conflicts of 1845-6 and 1848-9 in the West Punjab. Such families as the Noons, Tiwanas, and Hayats of Wah were to subsequently play central roles in the future colonial administration to the localities.

The British recognition of such ‘tribal’ leaders paid a rich dividend in 1857. Historians remain divided over the causes and nature of the uprising of that year but agree that this was the supreme moment of truth for the British in India. The crucial support of the Punjab’s chiefs safeguarded the Raj. It ended any doubts concerning the desirability of maintaining the influence of the rural intermediaries.

On 10 May 1857, soldiers of the Bengal Army mutinied at Meerut. News of this event reached the Punjab at midnight two days later. The concentration of European troops in this key frontier region left towns in the Gangetic Plan open to attack. The fabric of Government collapsed in Oudh which had been recently annexed by the British and also in the North Western Provinces. Henry Lawrence was killed in the fighting in Oudh to which he had been recently transferred. John Lawrence organised irregular forces of Punjabi cavalry to snuff out disturbances in the region before mounting an attack to recapture Delhi.

Groups of sepoys mutinied in their Punjabi cantonments of Ferozepore, Jullunder, Ambala and Jhelum. When a body of sepoys massed for an attack on the British district headquarters at Shahpur, Malik Sahib Khan rode over from Mitha Tiwana to parley with the anxious British deputy commissioner. Their meeting entered the Raj’s folklore.

Malik Sahib stood before Mr. Ousley, salaamed and offered him the handle of his sword with the point directed to his own body and said ‘I have fifty horsemen and I can raise three hundred. I can clothe them and feed them, and if no questions are asked, I can find them arms too. They and my life are yours.’ Malik Sahib Khan’s dramatic gesture was the first offer of assistance to the beleaguered authorities in the West Punjab. Moreover, it was proffered at a time when the triumph of British arms was uncertain. The deputy commissioner was well aware that he could have mounted only token resistance, if the Tiwana chief had jointed the ‘rebels’. The British thereafter remembered that the Tiwanas’ loyalty had stood firm when it had been put to the test.

Malik Sahib Khan’s forces defeated the sepoys of the Bengal Army in battles at Jhelum and Ajnala during the course of July. In one episode they captured 200 ‘rebels’ without firing a shot. In August, the Tiwana troops joined the forces which John Nicholson was massing in Amritsar to recapture Delhi. By this stage the Tiwana contingent had been swollen to a thousand sowars with the addition of the forces of his brothers,.. and great nephew.. They joined the British forces on the Ridge outside Delhi. The besieged city finally fell on 14 September. The aged Mughal Bahadur Shah escaped with his life, but the British exacted a heavy retribution on its other Muslim citizens.

Following the siege of Delhi, Malik Sahib Khan with his brothers took part in several other actions including the battle of Kalpu which sealed the fate of the Rhani of Jhansi. Malik Sahib Khan then accompanied General Napier on his campaign in central India. The British were so impressed by the fighting capacity of the Tiwana irregulars that a detachment was incorporated in the regiment of the 2nd Mahratta Horse at Gwalior which was raised for duty in central India. In the military reorganization at the end of the revolt, the unit became the 18th Bengal cavalry.

When the Prince of Wales(the future George V) visited India in 1906 he became Colonel in chief of the regiment which changed its title to the 18th(Prince of Wales’ Own) Tiwana Lancers. Finally in 1921, the 19th Bengal Lancers amalgamated to form the 19th King George V’s Own Lancers. Both Umar and Khizr[Tiwana, Malik Sahib Khan’s descendants] displayed great pride in wearing the regiment’s scarlet uniform and blue pagari in their capacity as Honorary-Colonel. Tiwanas held most of the regular Indian commissions in the regiment, as the British saw their ‘natural leadership’ as vital to discipline in a fighting force recruited entirely from the Salt range.

The creation of the Tiwana regiment climaxed the ‘tribe”s emergence as military sub-contractors of the state. Henceforth military service and their local power as landholders were closely enmeshed. Army pay and pensions enabled Tiwana chiefs to both increase agricultural productivity in their home villages, and invest in land elsewhere. No other Muslim Rajput ‘tribes’ formed their own regiments, but they were heavily recruited in the Indian Army from the late 1870s onwards… The economic multiplier effects of military service enabled the transition from ‘tribal’ chief to West Punjab landlord to be completed. A military-agriculturalist lobby also emerged. Provincial autonomy which was introduced by the 1935 Government of India Act gave it full expression. The Unionist Party became its mouthpiece and fittingly a Tiwana served as the last Unionist Premier.

British policy in Punjab 1857-1920
Ian Talbot writes:
The loyalty of the Muslim and Sikh landowners of the newly annexed Punjab region in 1857 confirmed the school of thought associated with Henry Lawrence. This sought to govern with the assistance of rural intermediaries. The British richly rewarded those who had stood by them in their darkest hour. The Tiwanas were the most successful but by no means the only rural family which embarked at this time on what were to prove lengthy and lucrative ‘loyalist’ careers. The Noons and Hayats shared a similar history.

Officials recognised the need for securing the support of the rural elites, however, not only because they were local peacekeepers, but because they were military contractors. The Tiwanas, as we have noted, exemplified this role, although it was played by many other Rajput ‘tribes’ following the Punjabisation of the Indian Army. This resulted from the thorough overhaul of military organisation after 1857.

By the end of the First World War, the Punjab so dominated the Indian Army that three-fifths of its recruits were drawn from the region. Moreover, they hailed from a narrow range of Hindu Dogra, Sikh Jat and Muslim Rajput  ‘martial castes’ which represented less than 1 per cent of the subcontinent’s total population. Punjabis saw action  in the mud of Flanders, in the deserts of Arabia and in the bush of East Africa, winning over 2,000 decorations, including three Victoria Crosses. The Punjabi ‘martial castes’ continued to dominate the Indian Army throughout the inter-war years.

At no time did the Punjabi contingent drop below three-fifths of the total strength. The imperative to secure the loyalty of the ‘martial castes’ understandably exerted a profound impact on the Punjab’s political economy.

The British adopted a number of policies to secure rural stability in the sword arm of India. Overriding all other considerations, until it was fatally dislocated by the Second World War, was the imperative to defend the rural power structure. This was achieved by the following methods: first by associating the ‘natural leaders’ of the ‘agriculturist tribes’ with their executive authority; second, by ensuring that the rural leaders politically controlled the economic forces set in train by the colonial encouragement of a market-oriented agriculture; third by using the resources which this produced to reward the agriculturalist population rather than stimulate industrial development; fourth by establishing a framework of political representation which institutionalised the division between the ‘agriculturalist’ and ‘non-agriculturalist’ population.

The British identification of the ‘tribe’ as the focus of rural identity underpinned all of these policy initiatives. Indeed, the maintenance of the tribal structure of rural society became the legitimising principle of British rule, thereby obscuring realpolitik imperatives. However, as David Gilmartin has revealed, the definition of the ‘tribe’ was vague and ‘workable principles of tribal grouping were extremely elusive’. The British therefore created their own around the artificial construct of the ‘agriculturalist tribe’. Although this built on pre-existing social structures, it was a political definition enshrined in the 1900 Alienation of Land Act. This measure not only ‘crystallized the assumptions underlying the British Imperial administration’ but ‘translated’ them into popular politics. Henceforth, both the justification of British rule and the programme of the leading men of the ‘tribes’ and clans who banded together eventually in the Unionist Party was the ‘uplift’ and ‘protection’ of the ‘backward’ agriculturalist tribes.

The British co-opted the ‘natural leaders’ of rural society into their administrative system by means of the semi-official post of the zaildar.This was unique to the Punjab’s local administration…Subordinate to it but serving a similar purpose was the post of sufedposh. ‘Tribal’ chiefs and landowners were also tied to the administrative system by being made honorary magistrates and members of the darbar… Posts were also reserved for agriculturalists in the official ranks of the local administration.  Sir Michael O’Dwyer’s governorship witnessed an especially sharp increase in the agriculturalists tribes’ representation in the public services. In the Irrigation Branch of the Public Works Department this rocketed from 29 to 66 per cent of the officials. Such reservation strengthened ‘tribal’ as against ‘communal’ identity.

The Pax Britannica encouraged the commericalisation of agriculture. The British also vastly extended irrigation facilities and slashed transport costs. The West Punjab underwent an agricultural revolution as arid subsistence production was replaced by commercialised production of huge amounts of wheat, cotton and sugar.

The Shahpur district stood at the forefront of this transformation. The Lower Jhelum Canal converted the waste of the Kirana bar into first class irrigated land. This was parceled into 337 colony villages or ‘chaks’. New market towns came into existence where the agriculturalists brought their commercial crops. These were lined by rail to Sargodha from where 500,000 tonnes of wheat were being annually dispatched to Karachi by the 1920s. At this date the Punjab produced a tenth of British India’s total cotton crop and a third of its wheat. The region thus emerged as the pace-setter of the subcontinent’s agricultural development well before independence. At the most conservative estimate, per capita output of all crops had increased by nearly 45 per cent between 1891 and 1921.

The Lower Jhelum was just one of the Punjab’s nine Canal Colony areas. These transformed the endless waste and scrub of the Jhang, Lyallpur and Shahpur districts into flourishing agricultural regions. The Lyallpur district which had been only sparsely populated by nomadic herdsmen possessed a million inhabitants within thirty years of the opening of the Chenab Canal in the 1880s. Three and a half million rupees worth of crops were annually produced from its Lower Chenab Canal Colony. The whole area was neatly laid out into plots of land known as squares, with market places, towns and villages spaced along the roads and railways which criss-crossed the Colony. By thus ‘creating villages of a type superior in civilisation to anything which the region had previously experienced’ the British hoped to establish a model for the Punjab’s development.

The Canal Colonies were also intended to mop up surplus population from the crowded districts of the central Punjab. Large number of Sikh Jats migrated to the Lower Chenab Canal Colony where they eventually owned a third of the land. In all, a million Punjabis moved to the nine Canal Colonies. They not only relieved congestion but formed a market for the produce of other regions, as the colonists specialised in cultivating a narrow range of cash crops. Furthermore, they remitted much of their income to their home villages.

The Canal Colonies’ creation coincided with the Punjab’s emergence as the sword arm of India. Indeed enlistment was encouraged by the British policy of rewarding ex-servicemen with lucrative grants of land in the Canal Colonies. Much land in the Lower Bari Doab Canal Colony was set aside for this purpose. The vast increase in productive land also enabled the British to earmark large areas for breeding horses and cattle for the Indian Army. During the First World War, the Lyallpur Canal Colony provided huge amounts of wheat and flour for the troops and gifts of horses and mules were made to the Army. The Shahpur District was, however, the main areas for Army horse breeding. In all 200,000 acres within it were leased for this purpose….

Although the bulk of the land in the Canal Colonies was sold to peasant proprietors, the Punjab Government reserved areas to reward both the ‘martial castes’ and the ‘landed gentry’. At the end of the First World War over 420,000 acres of Colony land were distributed to just 6,000 Commissioned and Non-Commissioned Army Officers. Under the terms of the ‘landed gentry status’ seven and a half per cent of the Lower Bari Doab Canal Colony alone was earmarked for the landowning elite. It is important to note that such land was among the best in the whole of the subcontinent and was highly valued….

The Tiwanas

 

 


A file picture of 1945 in which viceroy Lord Wavell (left), convener of the conference greeting Malik Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana (centre), premier of Punjab while premier of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) (2nd from left) and Bhulabhai Desai look on, at Simla conference, in Simla.

The Collaborator


 

Viceroy Wavell

A file picture of 1945 in which viceroy Lord Wavell (left), convener of the conference greeting Malik Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana (centre), premier of Punjab while premier of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) (2nd from left) and Bhulabhai Desai look on, at Simla conference, in Simla.

   
Credit : (Source: The Times Of India Group)
© BCCL
Photograph Date: : 01/06/1945 (tentative)
     
     
     
 
 

 

The Tiwanas like other Punjab chiefs shared in this bonanza. When Umar was a minor, about 90 squares of land in the Chenab Colony was purchased on his behalf at an auction. The main village was called Umarpur. The Government also gave him 43 squares on nazrana terms during his minority.

British rule, however, also swept away the barriers which had previously prevented moneylenders from acquiring land in the countryside. As land prices rose- the result of the Pax Britannica, as well as improved communications and irrigation- it became increasingly tempting for landowners to pledge land in return for easy credit. Moneylenders supported by a westernised legal system foreclosed mortgages on the lands of agriculturalists debtors. In other parts of India, most notably Bengal, following the Permanent Settlement of 1793, land had changed hands dramatically in this way. A similar process in the Punjab, however, would threaten political stability in a region of immense importance to wider Imperial interests. Furthermore, it would strike at the heart of its administration’s strongly held assumptions and beliefs.

S.S. Thorburn in his book ‘Mussulmans and Moneylenders in the Punjab’ sounded the tocsin. Thorburn, a Deputy Commissioner in the Dera Ghazi Khan district highlighted the alarming rate at which land was being alienated to money lenders. The large Muslim landlords of the trans-Indus districts were not, however the moneylenders’ only victims. The Hindu Rajputs of the submontane districts of Ambala Division also suffered at the hands of powerful moneylenders who ‘exact free services and free fuel fodder and ghi and (take their) dues as much in grain as in cash. The Hindu Jat cultivators of the agriculturally poor Rohtak district also suffered from the moneylenders’ exploitation…’

The British first attempted to solve this problem with piecemeal measures. They took a large number of encumbered estates under the wing of the Court of Wards Administration. It soon became apparent, however, that more sweeping action was required. After a sharp internal debate concerning the virtues of intervention against sticking to laissez-faire principles, the Punjab Government implemented the 1900 Alienation of Land Act. It barred the transfer of land from  agriculturalist to non-agriculturalist tribes. The former were designated by name in each district. They included not only the Rajput martial caste landowners and Jat, Arain and Gujar cultivators, but the Muslim religious elites-the Syeds, Sheikhs, Qureshis. The measure not only halted their expropriation by the non-agriculturalist commercial castes of Khatris and Banias, but also provided the framework for the structuring of politics around the idiom of the ‘tribe’, rather than that of religious community. The Unionists Party’s agriculturalist ideology was directed rooted in this legislation. ..

The British had in fact earlier prepared the ground for a rural domination of Punjab politics… ..Only members of the agriculturalist tribes, as defined by the 1900 Alienation of Land Act were allowed to stand as candidates for the rural constituencies of the New Legislative Council created by the Montague-Chelmsford Reforms.[1919].

1900-1920s British military recruitment in Punjab and allied concerns
David Page writes:
  ‘..out of a total of 683,149 combatant troops recruited in India between August 1914 and November 1918, 349,688 came from the Punjab….Out of the 250,000 soldiers recruited up till April 1918, the lion’s share had been provided by three main communities, the Muslims of West Punjab, the Jat Sikhs of Central Punjab and the Hindu Jats of the Ambala Division.

The first community provided 98,000 combatant troops, the second 65,000 and the third 22,000. The finest record, however, belonged to the Muslim majority districts of the Rawalpindi division. From Rawalpindi and Jhelum over thirty per cent of the manhood of the district went to the War; in Attock the figure was sixteen per cent, in Gujrat thirteen per cent and in Shahpur ten per cent. These five districts were amongst the eight most heavily recruited districts in the entire Punjab, the other three being Ludhiana and Amritsar, the two main Sikh recruitment areas, which sent fourteen and eleven per cent respectively, and Rohtak, the main Hindu Jat recruitment area which sent fifteen per cent.’

..In the 1920s, the total rural electorate excluding soldiers amounted to 216,324 while 163,085 had the right to vote on account of their military services to Government.

Ian Talbot writes:
By 1928 over Rs. 140 lakhs were being paid annually paid out in pensions. There were 16,000 military pensioners in the Rawalpindi district alone.

David Page writes:
The Governor of Punjab Michael O’Dwyer said this in the Imperial Council in in 1917 : “The great improvement in the pay, pensions and allowances of the Indian army has already given a powerful stimulus to the fighting classes, the earmarking of 180,000 acres of colony land for allotment to men who have rendered distinguished services in the field is a further encouragement, which the recent announcement in regard to the grant of Commission will specially appeal to the landed gentry.”

Next, after casting aspersions on the courage of the urban classes and hinting at further legislation to regulate usury, he laid stress on the importance of the Land Alienation Act. “It is to it[he continued] that we owe the fact that we are appealing today not to be a sullen, discontented and half-expropriated eager perhaps for a change which might restore them to their own, but to a loyal and contented body of men who realise that Government has stood and still stands between them and ruin and who consequently rally in their tens of thousands to its support.”

“But [he continued] we have not only done what legislative and administrative measures could do to maintain the zemindars in possession of their paternal acres, we have also relieved congestion and increased their prosperity by opening up to them several million acres in the great canal colonies. In allotting those lands we have invariably given them priority seeking not so much the profit of the Government as the advantage of the rural population…
..
Again, take the question of land revenue settlement. The Punjab government has long accepted it as a principle of revenue administration that the peasant proprietors, especially in those districts from which the Indian army is  largely drawn, shall receive special favour in assessment. The re-assessment of all the rich districts of the Central Punjab has been completed within the last 5 or 6 years and I am in a position to say that Government has rarely imposed a demand above half of the half net rental which is supposed to be the standard of assessment in the Province. At the same time, where agricultural conditions are fairly stable and fully developed it has raised the terms of settlement from 20 to 30 years. The result of this leniency is to appreciate enormously the value of proprietary rights which 50 years ago sold at from 5 to 10 times by now sell at an average of 170 times the land revenue demand, a figure which excites the envy and admiration of other provinces, even those under permanent settlement.

All these things are done in the interests of our zemindars and especially of those tribes and classes which enlist so freely in the Indian Army…”

Post-World War I British crackdown on Punjab
Encyclopedia Britannica writes:
Politically, as well as economically, the postwar years proved depressing to India’s high expectations. After the war British officials, who in the first flush of patriotism had abandoned their ICS posts to rush to the front, returned to oust the Indian subordinates acting in their stead and carried on their prewar jobs as though nothing had changed in British India. Indian soldiers also returned from battlefronts to find that back at home they were no longer treated as invaluable allies but reverted immediately to the status of ”natives.” Most of the soldiers recruited during the war had come from Punjab, which, with only 7 percent of India’s population, had supplied over 50 percent of the combatant troops shipped abroad.

Indian Support of the British

It is thus hardly surprising that the flash-point of postwar violence that shook India in the spring of 1919 was Punjab province. The actual issue that served to rally millions of Indians, arousing them to a new level of disaffection from British rule, was the government of India’s hasty passage of the Rowlatt Acts early in 1919. 

Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus in a United Front

These ”black acts,” as they came to be called, were peacetime extensions of the wartime emergency measures passed in 1915 and had been rammed through the Supreme Legislative Council over the unanimous opposition of its Indian members.

Indian leaders viewed the autocratic enactment of such legislation, following the victorious conclusion of a war in which India had so loyally supported Britain, as a confession of British treachery and duplicity and the abandonment of the promised policy of reform in favour of a new wave of repression. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Gujarati who had returned from South Africa shortly after the war started and was by then recognized throughout India as one of the most promising leaders of Congress, called upon his country to take sacred vows to disobey the Rowlatt Acts, launching a nationwide movement for the repeal of those repressive measures. Gandhi’s appeal received the strongest popular response in the Punjab, where the nationalist leaders Kichloo and Satyapal addressed mass protest rallies from the provincial capital of Lahore to Amritsar, sacred capital of the Sikhs. Gandhi himself had taken a train to the Punjab early in April 1919 to address on of those rallies, but he was arrested at the border station and taken back to Bombay by orders of the tyrannical lieutenant governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer.

On April 10, in Amritsar, Kichloo and Satyapal were arrested and deported from the district by deputy commissioner Miles Irving, and when their followers tried to march to Irving’s bungalow in the camp to demand the release of their leaders they were fired upon by British troops. With several of their number killed and wounded, the enraged mob rioted through Amritsar’s old city, burning British banks, murdering several Englishmen, and attacking two Englishwomen.

Gen. R.E.H. Dyer was sent with troops from Jullundur to restore order, and, though no further disturbances occurred in Amritsar until April 13, Dyer marched 50 armed soldiers into the Jallianwallah Bagh (Garden) that afternoon and ordered them to open fire on a protest meeting attended by some 10,000 unarmed men, women, and children without issuing a word of warning. It was a Sunday, and many neighboring peasants had come to Amritsar to celebrate a Hindu festival, gathering in the Bagh, which was a place for holding cattle fair and other festivities. Dyer kept his troops firing for about ten minutes, until they had shot 1650 rounds of ammunition into the terror-stricken crowd, which had no way of escaping the Bagh, since the soldiers spanned the only exit. About 400 civilians were killed and some 1200 wounded. They were left without medical attention by Dyer, who hastily removed his troops to the camp. 

Sir Michael O’Dwyer fully approved of and supported the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, and on April 15, 1919, issued a martial law decree for the entire Punjab: The least amount of firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect it was my duty to produce . . . from a military point of view, not only on those who were present, but more specially throughout the Punjab.”

Dyer was relieved of his command, but he returned to England as a hero to many British admirers, who presented him with a collected purse of thousands of pounds and a jeweled sword inscribed “Saviour of the Punjab.”

 The Jallianwallah Bagh massacre turned millions of patient and moderate Indians from loyal supporters of the British raj into national revolutionaries who would never again trust to British “fair play” or cooperate with a government capable of defending such action. The following year, Mahatma Gandhi launched his first Indian satyagraha (“clinging to the truth”) campaign, India’s response to the massacre in Jallianwallah Bagh.

 

(http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/post/india/history/colonial/massacre.html)

British policy towards rural indebtedness in Punjab in the 1930s
Ian Talbot writes:
.. The 1935 Government of India Act and the Communal Award which had preceded it, reflected Fazl-i-Hussain’s powerful influence.

Landowners accounted for over 60 per cent of the Punjab’s restricted electorate. This stood at just over of two and a quarter million voters, just 1 in ten Punjabis. Moreover, non-agriculturalists were still disallowed from contesting rural constituencies. This resulted in men committed to the imperial connection dominating every government which was elected in the new era of provincial autonomy…

[..The 1930s witnessed a growing problem of rural indebtedness, brought on mainly by falling agricultural prices, but also partly by the kind of conspicuous consumption we have noted above. The Batra moneylenders of Sahiwal and Girot, like their counterparts elsewhere in the province, grew fat on the indiscretions of the landowning class. By 1937 rural indebtedness amounted to about Rs. 200 crores and the Punjab’s farmers annually paid back in interest on their loans 4 to 5 times the aggregate amount of land revenue and the water rate. ]

..The Restitution of Mortgaged Lands Act was another retrospective piece of Unionist legislation. Sunder Singh Manjithia introduced the measure in the Assembly in June 1938. It enabled farmers to recover all the land which they had mortgaged before the passage of the 1900 Alienation of Land Act. The Hindu and Sikh moneylenders claimed it was merely a cover for the expropriation of their land. They wanted it to cover transactions involving the agriculturalist money lending class which had grown up after 1900. This demand was of course rejected. The upshot was that over 200,000 Hindus and Sikhs had to return an estimated 700,000 acres to its original owners. ..

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S.K.BALOCH OPINION: Sydney Schanberg, Selig Harrison, & Andrew Gavin Marshall’s – Unfulfilled Dream of Pakistan’s Destruction

Indo Israel“The worst enemies of Believers will be Yehud, Pagans/Polytheists (Hanud,Hindu) . . “Quran: [5.51] 

It is the duty of every true Muslim to relentlesly oppose the Jew-Christian-Infidel axis at every turn, at every step. O Musslaman! Forget not the injunctions in the Holy Quran: Surah Al-Maidah #5: Ayat # 82. “The worst enemies of Believers will be Yehud and Pagans and Polytheists (Hanud,Hindu) . . Quran: [5.51] O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people. ! [4.160] 

Breaking-up Pakistan:  The Passing of the Mantle: Zionist Selig Harrison’s is nearly 90 years old but his Dream is still Unfulfilled, but the mantle is passed to a fellow Zionist, Andrew Gavin Marshall. The same virulence and anti-Pakistan rhetoric is being regurgitated, which Selig Harrison & Sydney Schanberg, both of New York times and Washington Post, did in the pursuit to destroy Pakistan for the last 40 years. US Press, Media, and Zionist Blogs reproduce the same articles against the existence of Pakistan, which Selig Harrison and Sydney Schanberg, and now Andrew Gavin Marshall*, another Zionist is in the forefront of Anti-Pakistan and Anti-Muslim Propaganda. Another actor in this game is

*Marshall Name Meaning

The surname is also borne by Jews, presumably as an Americanized form of one or more like-sounding Jewish surnames (http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?view=1&surname=marshall).
 

In an interview with Press TV, Hamid Gul, former Inter-Services Intelligence chief revealed more of what he sees as the US strategy in Pakistan. He explained that with the massive expansion of the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, and alongside that, the increased security staff, the Chinese are becoming increasingly concerned with the sovereignty and security of Pakistan. He claimed that the money that the US government offered (with heavy conditions) to Pakistan, $1.5 billion every year for five years, will be spent under the direction of the Americans, and that “they are going to set up a large intelligence network inside Pakistan,” and ultimately “they really want to go for Pakistan’s nuclear assets.” He further claimed that the Indians are trying to destabilize Pakistan; however, he explained, this does not necessarily mean disintegrate, but rather:

they are trying to destabilize Pakistan at the moment so that it feels weak and economically has to go begging on its knees to Americans and ask for succor and help. And in that process they will want to expect certain concessions with regards to nuclear power and also with regards to setting up their facilities here in Pakistan.[1]

When he was asked what America’s long-term goal was in regards to Pakistan, Gul responded that the goal:

for America is that they want to keep Pakistan destabilized; perhaps create a way for Baluchistan as a separate state and then create problems for Iran so that this new state will talk about greater Baluchistan… So it appears that the long-term objectives are really to fragment all these countries to an extent that they can establish a strip that would be pro-America, pro-India, pro-Israel. So this seems to be their long-term objective apart from denuclearizing Pakistan and blocking Iran’s progress in the nuclear field(2)

Salim.K.Baloch said…

Breaking Pakistan. According to a column in a newspaper Selig Harrison has proposed that Balouchistan should be encouraged to become independent as it will serve American interests in the future.It reminds me of a memo sent by Gen. Lord Wavell to the India office stating that Pakistan’s independence should be supported because Pakistan will remain weak and helpless and will always need the help and aid of Great Britain. Furtheremore it will a valuable tool in furthering Britain’s interest in till the end of history. India’s help in this scheme is also highlighted. If today we are able to solve the Kashmir issue both Pakistan And India will fragment beyond recognition.People in both the countries will at one another’s throat.In india so many insurgencies are being fought.In Pakistan the smaller prvinces will be at Big bad brothers throat.People of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are alredy suffering because charlatans acting as leaders ignored what was happening.It may be better for for the ruled than for the ruers.Recall the words of Churchill that Independant India will be ruled by rascals, thieves and charlatans who will steal everything leaving nothing for the people except the air to breathe over which they have no control.It is time that subcontinent which is home to the most miserable people on God’s earth should be subdivided into more manageable entities. Mazher Ali Shah Nowshera

 

These Zionists work in close co-ordination with RAW, MOSSAD, and US Think Tanks like Brookings and Carnegie Endowment led by Jessica Matthews, in a single minded effort to raise a spectre of imploding Pakistan with its nuclear arsenal in the hands of fundos and fanatics. Zionist are almost psychotic in their belief that Pakistan is a clear and present nuclear danger to their beloved first homeland Israel. This fear is exacerbated by the close cooperation with Indians, who keep feeding a diet of Pakistan run amok and thereby, enhancing the Zionist paranoia. they are now forming an axis to bring China into their fold, and in a concerted effort use both India and China to destabilize Pakistan. Unfortunately for them, the Chinese people and People’s Government are aware of this game and have not fallen for this Zionist stratagem.

Western media is controlled by Zionist managements and reporters, who get story lines to pursue from their hindu counterparts in India.  The Zionists reporters serve a dual purpose :1) serving as reporters, e.g. Selig Harrison2) as well as siyanim, the eyes and ears for Israel (http://www.texemarrs.com/082012/sayanim_everywhere.htm). They can legitimately enter the most sensitive sites in the Islamic world (such as Kahuta and Chashma) without being questioned, because, the Muslims lacks enough sophistication, to unravel their real mission. Once in a while, a bunch of fanatics or fundamentalists killers get hold of one of them, and do what they do best, shoot the messenger. Such acts end-up harming the Islamic interests and serve as a fodder to zionist dominated Western media, who milk these stories for years to come. A case in point, the “martyr,” Daniel Pearl, whose dual mission was forgotten, because he became a cause celebre, after “martyrdom.”  In Pakistan, there is growing suspicions, that, the killers of Daniel Pearl were foreign intelligence agents working in tandem with local fundamentalists. They wanted to create a martyr for the cause. These days another Jewish reporter for NBC TV is traipsing all over the Muslim world. His name is similar to the famous Marxist Ideologue, Engel, that is Richard Engel. The game these zionist reporters play is very subtle. Their reports shed crocodile tears for “Muslim” on “Muslim” violence. For example, Bashar El-Asad (an alawite, non-Muslim Kharji kicked out of Shia Fiqh )and his atrocities against the people of Syria. Zionists demonize Islam, Muslim governments, and the 1.2 billion Muslims. They do not differentiate between secularized Muslims or the so-called, “fundoos,” or the fundamentalists. They consider all Muslims as potential enemies. This myopia pervades their opinion columns and bylines.  They are subtle and sophisticated in their approach, they write very positive articles about the Muslim secularists, but in their last paragraph or conclusive sentence, put in a sprinklingof negative spin. This is similar to the  proverbial Urdu story on the suitor, who was perfect in all aspects, but loved onions or “Piaz Khata hai.” 

Here are some comments on Pakconnects Blog of Pakistanis on the Zionist involvement in Balochistan.

Anonymous said…

Breaking Pakistan. According to a column in a newspaper Selig Harrison has proposed that Balouchistan should be encouraged to become independent as it will serve American interests in the future.It reminds me of a memo sent by Gen. Lord Wavell to the India office stating that Pakistan’s independence should be supported because Pakistan will remain weak and helpless and will always need the help and aid of Great Britain. Furtheremore it will a valuable tool in furthering Britain’s interest in till the end of history. India’s help in this scheme is also highlighted. If today we are able to solve the Kashmir issue both Pakistan And India will fragment beyond recognition.People in both the countries will at one another’s throat.In india so many insurgencies are being fought.In Pakistan the smaller prvinces will be at Big bad brothers throat.People of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are alredy suffering because charlatans acting as leaders ignored what was happening.It may be better for for the ruled than for the ruers.Recall the words of Churchill that Independant India will be ruled by rascals, thieves and charlatans who will steal everything leaving nothing for the people except the air to breathe over which they have no control.It is time that subcontinent which is home to the most miserable people on God’s earth should be subdivided into more manageable entities. Mazher Ali Shah Nowshera

February 13, 2012 8:25 PM

Salim K.Baloch said…

SELIG HARRISON is a New York Zionist, who is a siyanim or a Jew working for Mossad. He works for the New York Times, a Jewish owned newspaper, which was instrumental in break-up of United Pakistan. In 1971, the Jewish siyanim at New York Times was Sydney Schanberg, New York Times correspondent in New Delhi,India. He handled the Anti-United Pakistan propaganda for Indians. Jews are now in collusion with Hindus, they are planning to destroy Pakistan. But, Jisay Allah Rakhay Usay Kon Chakhay. Pakistan is a Nuclear and Ballistice Missile Power with China as its senior Partner in security, HinJew (Hindu-Jew combine) Axis will fall on its face. Inshallah.

August 12, 2012 1:35 PM

Anonymous said…

Americans have intensified their preparations for a major attack on Balouchistan against Pak Army in Oct 2012 in disguise of human rights violations. Now I remember why Pak army had been conductiong massive military excercises along Balauch border with afghanistan soon after General kiani took office as Army Chief. Pakistan Army has succeeded with help of ALLAH in SWAT INSHALLAH it will also in Balochistan. If America attacks Pak Army in disguise of talibans, then Pak Army must use full muscle including all lethal bombs and missiles against the insurgents. In my openion Americans will suffer a massive defeat and their exit strategy in Afghanistan will becom 1000 times more bloddy than Vietnam.

August 27, 2012 4:30 PM

 

[1] US military bases ‘will destabilize Pakistan’. Press TV: September 13, 2009: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=106106&sectionid=3510302

[2] Ibid.

 

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VIDEO: Quran does not encourage polygamy: Why is Polygamy allowed in Islam

 

 

 

 

 

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Why is Polygamy allowed in Islam

Dr. Zakir Naik

 

 

 

Polygamy

 

Q. Why is a man allowed to marry more than one wife in Islam? Or why is polygamy allowed in Islam?

 

Answer:

 

1. Definition of Polygamy : Polygamy means a system of marriage whereby one person has more than one spouse. Polygamy can be of two types. One is polygyny where a man marries more than one woman, and the other is polyandry, where a woman marries more than one man. In Islam, limited polygyny is permitted and polyandry is completely prohibited. Now coming to the original question, why is a man allowed to have more than one wife?

 

2. Qur’an is the only religious scripture in the world that says ‘marry only one’ Qur’an is the only religious book, on the face of this earth, that contains the phrase ‘marry only one’. There is no other religious book that instructs men to have only one wife. In none of the religious scriptures like the Vedas, the Ramayan, the Mahabharat, the Geeta or the Bible does one find a restriction on the number of wives. According to these scriptures one can marry as many as one wishes. It was only later, that the Hindu priests and the Christian Church restricted the number of wives to one.

 

Many Hindu religious personalities, according to their scriptures, had multiple wives. King Dashrat, the father of Rama, had more than one wife. Krishna had several wives. In earlier times, Christian men were permitted as many wives as they wished, since the Bible puts no restriction on the number of wives. It was only a couple of centuries ago that the Church restricted the number of wives to one.

 

Polygyny is permitted in Judaism. According to Talmudic law, Abraham had 2 wives, and Solomon had hundreds of wives. The practice of polygyny continued till Rabbi Gershom ben Yehudah. (960 A.D to 1030 A.D) issued an edict against it. The Jewish Sephardic communities living in Muslim countries continued the practice till as late as 1950, when an Act of the chief Rabbinate of Israel extended the ban on marrying more than one wife.

 

3. Hindus are more polygamous than Muslims The report of the ‘Committee of The Status of Woman in Islam’, published in 1975 mentions on page numbers 66,67 that the percentage of polygamous marriages between the year 1951 -1961 was 5.06 among the Hindus and only 4.31 among the Muslims. According to Indian law only Muslim men are permitted to have more than one wife. It is illegal for any non-Muslim in India to have more than one wife. Despite it being illegal, Hindus have more multiple wives as compared to the Muslim. One can imagine what would have been the percentage of polygamous marriages among the Hindus if the Indian government had made it legal for them. Earlier, there was no restriction even on Hindu men with respect to the number of wives allowed. It was only in 1954, when the Hindu Marriage Act was passed that it became illegal for a Hindu to have more than one wife. At present it is the Indian Law that restricts a Hindu man from having more than one wife and not the Hindu scriptures. Let us now analyse why Islam allows a man to have more than one wife.

 

4. Qur’an permits limited polygyny As I mentioned earlier, Qur’an is the only religious book on the face of the earth that says ‘marry only one’. The context of this phrase is the following verse from Surah Nisa of the Glorious Qur’an: ‘Marry woman of your choice in twos’ threes’ or fours’ but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly, (with them), then only one’ [Al-Qur’an 4:3]

 

 Before the Qur’an was revealed, there was no upper limit for polygyny and many men had scores of wives, some even hundreds. Islam put an upper limit of four wives. Islam gives a man permission to marry two, three or four women, only on the condition that he deals with them justly. In the same chapter i.e. Surah Nisa verse 129 says: ‘It is very difficult to be just and fair between women’. [Al-Qur’an (4:129)]

 

Therefore polygyny is not a rule but an exception. Many people are under the misconception that it is compulsory for a Muslim man to marry more than one wife.

 

Broadly, Islam has five categories of Do’s and Dont’s.

 

(i) ‘Farz’ i.e compulsory

 

(ii) ‘Mustahab’ i.e recommended or encouraged

 

(iii) ‘Mubah’ i.e permissible

 

(iv) ‘Makruh’ i.e ‘not recommended’ or discouraged

 

(v) ‘Haram’ i.e prohibited or forbidden

 

Polygyny falls in the middle category of things that are permissible. It cannot be said that a Muslim who has two, three or four wives is a better Muslim as compared to a Muslim who has only one wife.

 

5. Average life span of females is more than that of males By nature males and females are born in approximately the same ratio. During paediatric age however, in childhood itself a female child has more immunity than a male child. A female child can fight the germs and diseases better than the male child. For this reason, there are more deaths among males as compared to the females during paediatric age.

 

During wars, there are more men killed as compared to women. More men die due to accidents and diseases than women. The average life span of females is more than that of males, and at any given time one finds more widows in the world than widowers.

 

6. India has more male population than female due to female foeticide and infanticide. India is one of the few countries, along with the other neighbouring countries, in which the female population is less than the male population. The reason lies in the high rate of female infanticide in India, and the fact that more than one million female foetuses are aborted every year in this country, after they are identified as females. If this evil practice is stopped, then India too will have more females as compared to males.

 

7. World female population is more than male population In the USA, women outnumber men by 7.8 million. New York alone has one million more females as compared to the number of males, and of the male population of New York one-third are gays i.e sodomites. The USA as a whole has more than twenty-five million gays. This means that these people do not wish to marry women. Great Britain has four million more females as compared to males. Germany has five million more females as compared to males. Russia has nine million more females than males. God alone knows how many million more females there are in the whole world as compared to males.

 

8. Restricting each and every man to have only one wife is not practical Even if every man got married to one woman, there would still be more than thirty million more females in USA who would not be able to get husbands (considering that America has twenty five million gays). There would be more than four million females in Great Britain 5 million females in Germany and nine million females in Russia alone who would not be able to find a husband.

 

Suppose my sister happens to be one of the unmarried women living in USA, or suppose your sister happens to be one of the unmarried women in USA. The only two options remaining for her are that she either marries a man who already has a wife or becomes public property. There is no other option. I have posed this question to hundreds of non-Muslims and all opted for the first. However a few smart people before accepting, said they would prefer their sisters to remain virgins. Biologically, it is not possible for an average man or a woman to remain celibate throughout life. It may be possible in exceptional cases of one in ten thousand. In the vast majority, the person either gets married or performs illicit sex or indulges in other sexual perversions. Sex hormones are released in the adult body every day. That is the reason why Islam has prohibited monasticism.

 

In Western society it is common for a man to have mistresses and/or multiple extra-marital affairs, in which case, the woman leads a disgraceful, unprotected life. The same society, however, cannot accept a man having more than one wife, in which women retain their honourable, dignified position in society and lead a protected life.

 

Thus the only two options before a woman who cannot find a husband is to marry a married man or to become public property. Islam prefers giving women the honourable position by permitting the first option and disallowing the second. There are several other reasons, why Islam has permitted limited polygyny, but it is mainly to protect the modesty of women. 

Hats Off to Judge Kamini Lau of India for Beating Muslim “Mullas,” in Correct Interpretation of Islamic Jurisprudence 

Quran does not encourage polygamy: Court

 
 Judge Kamini Lau of India, as Muslims, we salute you for correctly interpreting Al-Quran. 
 
 
 
Quran does not encourage polygamy: Court
The court said that the practice of polygamy has been regulated or abolished in many Muslim states/nations and it cannot be encouraged in a liberal democracy like India.
 
 NEW DELHI: The Holy Quran permits a Muslim man to marry more than one woman at a time but does not encourage such behaviour, a trial court has observed.
The court made these comments while denying anticipatory bail to a maulvi, who is accused of performing a girl’s marriage forcibly with a married man, and added that the Sharia law allows polygamy but only under special circumstances.

“I may observe that even in countries governed by Sharia (Islamic) law, the second marriage is permitted under special circumstances such as an illness of the first wife or her inability to bear children. In these cases, with the first wife’s consent, a man may marry again and this is referred to as polygamy, a subset of polygamous marriages. The Holy Quran permits a Muslim man to marry more than one woman at a time (up to a maximum of four), but does not encourage such behaviour,” additional sessions judge Kamini Lau said while dismissing the arguments of Maulvi Mustafa Raja of Delhi, who said that as per Sharia law, a man is allowed to keep four wives at a time.

In its order, the court said that the practice of polygamy has been regulated or abolished in many Muslim states/nations and it cannot be encouraged in a liberal democracy like India. “In the secular states of the Muslim world such asTurkey and Tunisia, polygamy is illegal in any form. Even in the nations where it is permitted, polygamy is only practised by a small minority.”

The judge also observed that polygamy is permissible in Sharia law “as a part of social duty and charitable motives or when it seeks to prevent destitution.”

It said polygamy is only permitted in certain circumstances, including when the husband’s death has left his wife with no other means of support.

According to the police, Raja had forcibly got the girl married with accused Nadeem Khan last year without her consent and also in her parents’ absence and that the victim was raped by her alleged husband.

 

 

 

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