» Archbishop George Pell of Sydney states that Jews are intellectually inferior—Jesus was a Jew—and then goes on to demolish his own argument.

“Everyone in IPL is not corrupt; most owners and managers came  for the novelty, for the fun and for the possibility that legitimate  money could  be made in a new form of entertainment. By far the majority of cricketers still cannot believe their luck as they check their bank balances; their wildest dreams never foresaw such lottery-level riches for four overs of work and 20 of vigilance. But there was a price. Silence. Any leak about the T-20 underbelly would contaminate the whole tamasha.” – M.J., Akbar

The only surprising fact about most corruption stories is that anyone in authority gets surprised. Everyone in charge knew that the Commonwealth Games organizing committee was buying toilet paper at art paper prices, and turf at the rate of platinum. This was not considered unusual, let alone criminal, because the price of cream is built into public expenditure.

Every detail of the spectrum sale bazaar was public knowledge and raged in epileptic spasms across the media. Four years ago, this month, police taped conversations between lobbyist Nira Radia and other middlemen, and indeed middlewomen, to force Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh to keep A. Raja as telecom minister. They succeeded.

The system knew why Santosh Bagrodia, a minor Calcutta businessman with a major genius for dipping ten fingers in the till, was made coal minister in UPA-1: to set up the coal scam.  There are two reasons why mortals become ministers: political clout and personal utility. Bagrodia’s talent was distinctly fiscal.

Similarly, everyone involved in T-20 knew that a serious stench was emanating from the underbelly from inception.

Some punters  were attracted by precisely that, the stink. One top honcho, now out of his depth as well as his league, used to brag before freeloaders that whenever his preferred team lost, he won – through bookies.

Such party talk elicited the usual oohs and aahs from priests of this religion called wealth.

Everyone in IPL is not corrupt; most owners and managers came  for the novelty, for the fun and for the possibility that legitimate  money could  be made in a new form of entertainment.

By far the majority of cricketers still cannot believe their luck as they check their bank balances; their wildest dreams never foresaw such lottery-level riches for four overs of work and 20 of vigilance. But there was a price. Silence. Any leak about the underbelly would contaminate the whole tamasha.

Now that the police investigation has gone public, reports are tumbling out about parties hosted by slurping bookies, and how so many manful, morality-intense cricketers refused to go. Why did some cricketers stay away from bookie Chandresh Patel’s party at the Country Club in Gurgaon on April 6, when general standing orders are to spread fun in all directions? The absentees knew this would be a gathering of crooks, and that some of their playing brethren were very happy indeed to sup with thieves. What did they do next? Kept quiet. Did they tell their captain, or their coach? Cheating changes a result. We do not know. Did the superiors add to the growing silence? Was everyone instructed to stop squealing for the larger good of the circus? Were owners told? They keep in close touch with the team, as everyone who watches them prance across the playing fields of Cheaton for the glory of television coverage is aware. [Apologies for the pun, but it was irresistible. If the playing fields of Eton were the epitome of character for the long-departed Duke of Wellington, then surely a scribe can coin a rotten pun when irritated.]

Was the field marshal of this glitter, sex-and-six gala, Rajeev Shukla, aware and kept quiet, for which silly fool is going to decapitate the goose that lays golden eggs every night, and often twice a night? We do not know, and you can bet your non-IPL fortune that we are unlikely to be told.

The principal culprit – at least until the moment more names are revealed – Sreesanth, a ranking idiot, might break down and admit his mistakes, but he is a wobbly child compared to the steel-faced tycoons at the top.

As the public mood shifts from popcorn exhilaration to cynicism and anger, there is a growing feeling that even this post-expose clamor is merely dust in the consumer’s face: dust that will cloud the truth, buy time, and finally settle after scapegoats have been sacrificed, in the hope that there is nothing shorter than the public’s memory. Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar has lived through torment since his appointment. He deserves our congratulations now, not just for the physical dissection of a public cancer, but for the courage in challenging the collective silence that protected this racket. That required guts.

It might be easier to take on a tottering government than a towering cricket establishment these days. Kumar knows that he has only scratched the surface. But once the police begin scratching you never know which suppurating sore will begin to bleed. This disease is not limited to 20 overs. It spreads into the national game. Test cricketers have been photographed in the obedient company of bookies, and they have kept their place with the help of an obliging captain and selectors. There is more to investigate than Neeraj Kumar has time for. In the meanwhile, keep a beady eye open for the deluge of cosmetics that will drench the underbelly in the hope that you confuse malevolent odor with perfume. – Saudi Gazette, 18 May 2013

» M. J. Akbar is an eminent Indian journalist. Write to him at letters@covert.co.in

If in the 1960s it was the fashion to predict the imminent collapse of India, with even the brilliant writer Sir Vidya Naipaul succumbing to the Churchillian influence of those who regarded the people of India as incapable of unity. Since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from London to Beijing, several books and articles have talked of the “coming collapse of China”. Indeed, that was the title of a book by Gordon Chang, a formidable intellect. Most such doomsayers regarded the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as being incompatible with continued rapid growth and social stability, whereas in fact the Chinese economic model depends on strong government to ensure rapid growth.

Had the CCP loosened its grip over policy, growth would have slowed down rather than accelerated. While the private sector in China needs to become as much of a priority for policymakers as state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been since economic reform accelerated in the mid-1980s, the unique Chinese model of development necessitates robust mentoring by the state in order for even the private sector to achieve its full potential. Nearly nine years ago, this columnist had written (in the Far Eastern Economic Review) that in China, it was not “Authoritarianism versus Growth” but “Authoritarianism and Growth”, that China owed its rapid material ascent to the CCP’s policy of central control over overall trends, and nothing has happened since then to cause a revision of this view. While the current leader Xi Jinping is unlikely to go the Roh-Ching-kuo way, his successor is very likely to leave office in 2033 after having initiated a transition to a popularly elected executive in place of the present system of nominated leaders. The Chinese people are modernising themselves as fast as their economy, and are today completely different from what they were even fifteen years ago.

The danger to the stability of China will come not from declared enemies of the CCP – these can be handled with relative ease, at least so long as growth continues to be beyond 6% annually. Rather, the true Achilles Heel of the Peoples Republic of China is the fact that across institutions, those who have studied humanities abroad are taking over the higher rungs of decision-making in preference to those who were educated within China. There is a difference between the study of science and engineering and the learning of humanities. The latter often result in the ingestion of mindsets and world-views incompatible with the core interests of the country of origin of the student studying in the US, the UK or other NATO-bloc countries. More and more children of top leaders of the CCP are going to fashionable NATO-bloc universities for higher learning in non-technical subjects, including finance and economics. A western education usually results in the individual concerned losing familiarity with the basic conditions within his or her country of origin.

A substantial part of the reason why India continued to proceed to advance at a snail’s pace after 1947 was because both Jawaharlal Nehru as well as Indira Gandhi were educated in the West, in contrast to Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was wholly educated in India. Both Nehru and his daughter fashioned policies that continued the colonial pattern of not trusting the Indian people, so that the straitjacket of state control that had snuffed out enterprise during the British Raj was continued. Only when the India-educated P. V. Narasimha Rao or Atal Behari Vajpayee took charge did the economy accelerate,only to once again decline now that the duo of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh (both of whom were educated abroad) are in charge.

In a travesty of what is needed in order to ensure good governance, each year the Government of India spends tens of millions of dollars educating its officials (and a scatter of politicians) in pricey universities such as Oxford or Harvard. Those that return imbibe the colonial mistrust and contempt of the Indian people, and fashion policies that have the effect of promoting NATO-bloc interests rather than that of their own country. In ministries dealing with economic matters in particular, a foreign degree is highly prized, and the higher echelons get filled by these birds of passage, who often see a stint in India as just a means of earning the goodwill of NATO-bloc countries, to which they yearn to return.

China is facing the same problem as India. Its policy elite are sending their sons and daughters to NATO-bloc countries for education in the social sciences. When they return, these favoured individuals ensure that they and other foreign returnees slowly begin to elbow out from higher positions those educated in China. As a consequence, policy gets skewed in an elitist direction, thereby creating conditions where economic progress and stability can be at risk. Even more than in India, there is a craze in China for Western education, western dress and western lifestyles. Slowly, those that have fallen prey to such a transformation of their psyches are extending their tentacles across the various agencies of government. However, as yet, at the top those in charge are still those who have studied entirely in China, at least so far as the social sciences is concerned. There is as yet no Manmohan Singh in Beijing.

However, unless the Chinese leadership looks at the example of India and understands the value of education at home rather than in NATO-bloc countries, increasingly policies that are skewed in an elitist direction will get formulated and implemented, as they were when Jiang Zemin was in charge. Things changed during the ten years under Hu Jintao, and it is to be hoped that President Xi Jinping will follow the “Asian nationalist” track of Hu Jintao rather than the blind westernization favoured by Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin. The problems facing Chins need Chinese, not western, solutions. And for these to be worked out and implemented, those educated at home need to be given primacy over those educated in the NATO bloc. Indeed, the latter are modern China’s hidden Achilles Heel. — Pakistan Observer, 29 March 2013

» The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Karnataka State, India.

“The time has come for China to stop obfuscating and to spell out precisely where, in its view, the Line of Actual Control lies. China should be told that in our view the Line of Control on the Ladakh-Tibet boundary lies in the Karakoram Mountains, up to the Indus River Watershed. The LAC we are defining is, therefore, along “well-defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features” that Prime Ministers Wen Jiabao and Dr Manmohan Singh concluded in 2005. The way we virtually capitulated after the recent Chinese incursion has only set the precedent for an assertive and aggressive China to keep us in a constant military disadvantage in Ladakh.” – G. Parthasarathy

The recent intrusion of Chinese forces in Depsang in the Ladakh sector should mark a turn in the entire style and substance of Indian diplomacy in dealing with threats posed by China to India’s border, water, cyber, nuclear and energy security. The visit of Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang on May 20 is a good occasion to get this process started.

China’s assertiveness on its land and maritime border claims on neighbours like Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and India has grown significantly in recent years, with an increasing readiness by China to use force to enforce its claims. First and foremost, China should be asked to reaffirm its commitment to the “Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the India-China Border Question” that Prime Ministers Wen Jiabao and Dr Manmohan Singh signed in 2005. It was then agreed that in resolving differences over the border issue, the Sino-Indian boundary would be along “well-defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features” and that “interests of their settled populations” in the border areas should be safeguarded. China should be told its claims to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh and refusal to treat its population as Indian citizens are unacceptable and that we could review our policies on Chinese citizens in Tibet and Xinjiang, if they persist. China even seeks to unnerve us by protesting about visits by Indian dignitaries to Arunachal Pradesh and tries to block foreign assistance for development projects there.

Similarly, in Ladakh, where we have dismantled military structures in Chumar on our territory and even pulled back forces from our territory following the recent Chinese incursion, the time has come for China to stop obfuscating and to spell out precisely where, in its view, the Line of Actual Control lies. China should be told that in our view the Line of Control on the Ladakh-Tibet boundary lies in the Karakoram Mountains, up to the Indus River Watershed. The LAC we are defining is, therefore, along “well-defined and easily identifiable natural geographical features” that Prime Ministers Wen Jiabao and Dr Manmohan Singh concluded in 2005. The way we virtually capitulated after the recent Chinese incursion has only set the precedent for an assertive and aggressive China to keep us in a constant military disadvantage in Ladakh.

A similar approach has characterised our dealing with increasing Chinese use of the waters of the River Brahmaputra. Unlike India, China unilaterally utilises river waters as an upper riparian State. It refuses to provide any advance intimation of upstream dams it builds on the Mekong River. It brushes aside concerns of lower riparian members of the Mekong River Commission—Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. Overawed by Chinese power, some lower riparian States avoid challenging it on this issue. While making it clear to Premier Li Keqiang that we expect transparency and advance intimation on Chinese hydro-electric projects on Brahmaputra, we should seek and obtain sovereign and internationally binding assurances from China that the Brahmaputra waters will not be diverted. Members of the Mekong River Commission and Bangladesh should be co-opted in this effort.

One hopes that the forthcoming visit of the Chinese premier would be used as the first occasion for India to voice its concerns at the highest political level, about the dangerous and destabilising impact of China’s transfer of nuclear weapons and missile data, equipment and designs to Pakistan on our national security, and on global non-proliferation efforts. China is viewed with concerns globally, over its offensive capabilities to undermine the cyber security of others. We should seek Chinese cooperation and transfer of technology for building indigenous capabilities in the electronics, communications and power sectors. More importantly, Japan and even Taiwan need to be persuaded and incentivised for investment in building these indigenous capabilities and reducing our dependence on China. All this will require more proactive diplomacy across our eastern neighbourhood. – The New Indian Express, 19 May 20113

» Parthasarathy is a former diplomat. Contact him at dadpartha@gmail.com.

Chumar Buddhist Monastery: Isolated and desolate

See also

1. Chinese aspirations and Indian interests – Subramanian Swamy
2. Neglecting National Interest: From Nehru to Sonia-G – N.S. Rajaram
3. Ladakh Debacle: Indian Union rudderless under UPA government – Gautam Sen

“The amount of criminal money in our financial system is more or less impossible [to calculate]…. Nevertheless, some organizations have tried. The International Monetary Fund believes that money laundering transactions make up between 2 percent and 5 percent of global gross domestic product. The United Nations, through its Office of Drugs and Crime, analyzed a number of studies and found that proceeds from criminal activity of all kinds are likely to be some 3.6 percent of GDP, and that more than two-thirds of this would need to be laundered each year—a sum of approximately $1.6 trillion.” – Chris Morgan Jones

Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, shady foreign officials, sanctioned regimes such as Iran and Sudan—those are just some of the sources of income for the global banking industry. Wachovia, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Deutsche Bank have all accepted fines for laundering money from illegal sources. The question is: why take the risk? One would think that even with extraordinary pressure coming from shareholders and fierce competition between corporate rivals, surely taking such money must be an unusual and misguided step.

But in fact  what these isolated incidents reveal is that illegal money—the basis of the so-called “dark economy”—so thoroughly saturates the world’s businesses that banks and bankers are simply swimming in illegal profits, whether they like it or not.

The now-defunct U.S. bank Wachovia was the first. In 2008 it was investigated for taking in money from Mexican and Columbian drug cartels, and two years later its new parent paid $150 million in fines. HSBC processed drug money, too, at least $881 million of it, and paid fines of $1.9 billion as a result. Elsewhere, corruption has generated the suspect cash. Last year, German authorities settled money-laundering charges brought against four executives of Commerzbank who had been accused of hiding assets on behalf of a Russian minister; and a month before that one of Britain’s oldest and most respectable banks, Coutts and Co., was fined for accepting deposits from politically exposed persons. Most recently, another British bank, Standard Chartered, agreed to pay $327 million to settle charges that it had routinely accepted money from Iran, Sudan, Libya and Burma, in breach of U.S. sanctions; and the moment the headlines from that news had settled, five Deutsche Bank executives were arrested in Frankfurt by prosecutors investigating a large VAT fraud with significant money-laundering elements.

Who is Philip Wollen?

The full debate (for those who are interested)

“The story of the annual smuggling of an estimated 1.5 million cattle says much about modern India – about the sometimes hypocritical treatment of supposedly sacred cows, the political power of right-wing Hinduism and the corruption that allows the £320m illegal trade to flourish. But ultimately this story is about supply and demand. Hindu-majority India has an estimated 280 million cows but killing and eating them is legal in only a handful of states. Meanwhile, Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where beef is eaten with relish, suffers from a shortage of cattle. Half of the beef consumed in Bangladesh comes from its large, western neighbour. — Andrew Buncombe

Even in the dog days of summer, the quiet paddy fields that mark the border between India and Bangladesh look as supple and green as the soft stems of herbs grown in a window box. But the daytime tranquillity belies a stark reality. This delta region of the Ganges river is a place of often deadly conflict that underpins an activity many in India would rather not discuss. Every year, hundreds of thousands of cows – considered sacred in India, with export of the beasts banned – are illegally smuggled into Bangladesh where they are turned into shoes, belts, bone china crockery and, of course, meat.

“There is smuggling here every day,” said Umesh, a member of a three-man Indian Border Security Force (BSF) team on duty at a watchtower near the village of Kaharpara, just a few hundred yards from the Bangladesh border. “The smugglers will take 50, 100 or 200 cattle at a time. We try to create an ambush and surround the smugglers.”

The story of the annual smuggling of an estimated 1.5 million cattle says much about modern India – about the sometimes hypocritical treatment of supposedly sacred cows, the political power of right-wing Hinduism and the corruption that allows the £320m illegal trade to flourish. But ultimately this story is about supply and demand. Hindu-majority India has an estimated 280 million cows but killing and eating them is legal in only a handful of states. Meanwhile, Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where beef is eaten with relish, suffers from a shortage of cattle. Half of the beef consumed in Bangladesh comes from its large, western neighbour.

The snaking border that divides the two countries runs for 1,300 miles. Here in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal, 150 miles north-east of the state capital Kolkata, large sections of it are unfenced. It is a lure both for human traffickers and gangs from both sides of the border smuggling cows.

Villagers, who claimed not to know any smugglers but appeared to know the intricacies of the operation, said cattle were brought by truck from states across eastern India such as Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand. Some may even be brought from further away. Despite the effort involved, the mathematics is persuasive. An animal that might sell for £60-£80 in the country’s cow-belt hinterland will here fetch £130. Once inside Bangladesh, they could change hands for £225 or more.

“Those buying the cows always look to see how fat it is. They feed them husks from the paddy,” said Mohammed Ashraf, a blacksmith who was hammering into shape a glowing curved sickle that locals use to cut the rice crop that is harvested three times a year.

Yet the trade comes with a deadly price. The BSF has been accused of killing hundreds of cattle smugglers, as well as civilians not involved in the trade. A 2010 report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) suggested that more than 900 people had been killed with impunity by the BSF over the past 10 years. It also said locals claimed some BSF members were complicit with the smuggling and took bribes. This year, an incident in which an alleged smuggler was badly beaten by the security force personnel was captured on video.

“Over the last decade, they used excessive and indiscriminate force, shooting at villagers on suspicion that they were smugglers,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW’s south Asia director. “While many may have been engaged in cattle rustling, the BSF ignored the most basic principles of protecting the right to life. Instead of arresting suspects, they shot and killed them. The BSF claimed they had to use lethal force as self-defence, an argument hard to believe since the police reports on the weapons recovered usually [refer to] sickles and sticks.”

Asked about the allegations, a BSF spokesman said: “The BSF is a disciplined and professional force [and] exercises utmost restraint in the use of any force. The BSF has also an impeccable record of upholding human rights.”

Ms Ganguly said that since issuing its report, the BSF had started using rubber bullets which led to a drop in fatalities. But, villagers said their evenings were still sometimes disrupted. “We hear the gunshots at night-time. Sometimes the smugglers get shot. It’s mainly people from the other side of the border,” said Mr Ashraf. Locals said the smugglers often used teenagers to transport the cattle across the border in the belief the security forces were less likely to shoot a youngster.

There is a clear antagonism between the guards and the villagers. Some locals said the BSF troops retaliated against anyone they could find. Matir Rahaman, a rice farmer who was cycling back from the fields, said he had been badly beaten by BSF personnel. “One night the cows came over the border and the paddy got smashed. I went to the BSF and said, ‘Why is this happening’. They said, ‘You are smugglers’ and they attacked us with [metal-tipped bamboo sticks],” he alleged.

Ashfaqur Rahman, a retired Bangladesh diplomat who now chairs the Dhaka-based Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies, said the matter was sensitive but that legalising the export of cows or beef would put an end to corruption and violence. “There needs to be wise counsel on both sides,” he said.

An irony is that India is expected to become the world’s largest exporter of beef – from non-sacred buffaloes, rather than cows – by next year. According to an estimate recently published by the US Department of Agriculture, India is likely to export 1.5 million tons of beef in 2012, a 25 per cent increase from last year. Its biggest markets are south-east Asia, the Gulf and Africa.

Cows have been considered sacred in India for centuries, and in only a few states is killing and eating them legal. More recently, a movement by Dalits, or so-called untouchables, demanding the right to eat cows has gathered pace. In 2004, Indian historian D.N. Jha published the controversial The Myth of the Holy Cow, which argued that during the period when a number of the most important Hindu religious texts were produced, people in India ate cows. [Sic: Jha was an unethical Marxist historian who spent his life trying to undermine the Hindu culture and identity of India. He cherry-picked the data for his book on the holy cow, and gives a very distorted and untrue picture of ancient India. -- IS]

Kancha Ilaiah, a Dalit activist and a professor at Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad, believes Aryan invaders of Hindustan promoted the (white) cow over the (black) buffalo. “The buffalo predates the Aryans,” he said. [Sic: Of course the buffalo predates the Aryans---because there were no Aryans, stupid! Kancha Ilaiah---who is not a dalit but some sort of shudra---like Justice Katju, are clowns who pose as learned public intellectuals with official titles. They are tolerated because their lies and distortions are entertaining. Nobody takes them seriously except, perhaps, the christianised newspaper editors who publish them. -- IS]

There have been attempts by the Indian authorities to review the ban on cow exports. Earlier this year, a report by the government’s central planning committee suggested changing the law to allow the export of beef. The plan was hastily dropped and explained away as a “clerical error” amid an angry backlash from right-wing Hindu organisations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and so-called “cow protection” groups.

Among those who complained was the UN-affiliated International Organisation for Animal Protection. The group’s India director, Naresh Kadyan, said: “It is the fundamental duty of Indians that [everyone] should respect all animals. We strongly opposed the lifting of the ban and the government made a U-turn,” he said. “The cow is a very important animal for Hindus.” — The Independent, 1 June 2012

Article 48 of the Indian Constitution states:

“The state shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.”

See also

The number of Catholic priests in Africa and Asia has shot up over the past decade while decreasing in Europe, mirroring trends in the numbers of Catholic faithful that helped lead to the election of Pope Francis as the first non-European pope in over a millennium.

The Vatican on Monday released statistics on the state of the Catholic Church in the world, showing a 39.5 percent increase in the number of priests in Africa and a 32 percent hike in Asia from 2001 to 2011. The number of priests in Europe fell by 9 percent, while remaining stable in the Americas. Worldwide, priest numbers were up 2.1 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of Catholics overall — or those who have been baptized — rose from 1.196 billion in 2010 to 1.214 billion in 2011. Given the world’s population increase, though, the overall proportion of Catholics remained essentially unchanged at 17.5 percent. 

For years, the Vatican has been battling a drop-off in vocations and baptisms in Europe and North America, while seeing a boom in the developing world. Retired Pope Benedict XVI spent most of his eight-year pontificate trying to revive the Catholic faith in these once-traditionally Christian lands.

Francis was elected the first pope from the Americas in part riding a wave of demands that the Catholic Church hierarchy better reflect the demographics of today’s church, where two-thirds of the world’s Catholics live in the southern hemisphere. Yet while the pope hails from Argentina, most of the Vatican leadership is European, the majority of cardinals who elected him are European and the bulk of the world’s bishops — 70 percent — continue to hail from Europe and the Americas, not Africa or Asia.

One bright growth spot for the Church in Europe and the Americas is the increase in so-called permanent deacons, who can be married men who can preach: Their numbers shot up 43 percent in Europe over the decade, and in the Americas went from 19,100 in 2001 to 26,000 in 2011.

While the number of nuns rose in Africa and Asia over the past decade, their numbers couldn’t offset the steep, 10 percent global drop in sisters of religious orders, with Europe registering a 22 percent decline, Oceania a 21 percent drop and the Americas down 17 percent.The situation of religious sisters in the United States is particularly dramatic: The Vatican in recent years has launched two investigations into their plight, one focusing on their quality of life to determine how to reverse their decline, and one into doctrinal problems in the main umbrella group of women’s religious congregations. – Star Tribune, 13 May 2013

Pope Emeritus Benedict returns secretly to his Vatican hideout from the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo by air, hoping to avoid arrest in the many pending child abuse cases. Pope Francis, who walks to work in boots, has decided to stay in the Vatican’s guest house and not move into the Apostolic Palace.

They had waited for years. So when the opportunity came they took it, even if it meant leaving behind friends and neighbours, brothers and husbands. Even a three-day-old baby boy. Seven weeks ago, almost 500 Hindus from Pakistan crossed into India on the pretence of visiting a religious festival. In reality, they had come to escape religious persecution and poverty. Some said they would rather commit suicide than go back.

“Pakistan is worse than hell for Hindus,” said one of those who managed to flee, Laxman Das, a fruit trader from Hyderabad.

Though Pakistan was established as a state for Muslims, the original vision of its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was of a place of tolerance and inclusion.

“You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state,” he said in speech in August 1947.

Yet Jinnah’s vision has steadily been eroded. Today, as Pakistan prepares for a historic election on 11 May, its Christians and Hindus, which together comprise perhaps 3 per cent of the population, face persecution and assault. Some have fled.

“If people have any resources, they want to leave here,” Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, of the Pakistan Hindu Council, said from Karachi.

The Pakistanis who have made their way to the village of Bijwasan, not far from Delhi’s international airport, all belong to the same Hindu caste and come from the same part of Sindh province. They have applied unsuccessfully for visas to India for years and hit upon the idea of asking to visit the Kumbh Mela festival, the most auspicious date in the Hindu calendar. Though the festival is held every three years, it is only every 12 years that it is held at the confluence of the sacred Ganges and Yamuna rivers in Allahabad. This year the festival was held in February and March.

“Getting a passport is not so difficult. But getting a visa is very hard,” said 35-year-old Hanuman Prashad, another fruit trader from Hyderabad, explaining how they told the Indian authorities they wished to attend the festival.

The Hindus, who came in three groups, said their biggest motivation to leave was the challenge of educating their children. There was discrimination in government schools, where they were referred to as “kafirs”, told to go and work in the fields and obliged to recite the six kalimas, or tenets, of Islam.

For girls, it was even more difficult, so much so that few of the families bothered sending their daughters to school. “For the wealthy Hindus it is easier – they can send their children to better schools or else abroad,” Mr Das said.

They said the situation had become worse since the rule of the military leader General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977 and for the next decade oversaw an increased Islamisation of Pakistan. Following the destruction of India’s Babri mosque by a Hindu mob in 1992, the Hindus of Pakistan were often the victims of revenge attacks.

While hundreds of Hindus received visas to attend the festival, not everyone did. Almost everyone at Bijwasan – where they are squeezed more than 20 to a room in a former school, the air filled with flies – can tell a story of leaving someone behind.

Hanuman Prashad, who came to India with his wife and six children, said his parents had not been successful. When it came to leaving, with the knowledge he would not return, everyone wept. But his parents were insistent. “Whatever happens to us, go and save your life. Take your kids,” they told him.

Bharti Sulanki had travelled to the crossing at the Pakistani border town Khokhrapar with her husband and seven children, the youngest being only three-days old. She said the Pakistani authorities demanded a passport and visa for the newborn, too young even to have been named.

She said she pleaded with the guards to let her cross with the boy she was still breastfeeding but they refused. Dazed and tear-stained, Ms Sulanki said she believed she had no alternative but to hand the child to a relative who had come to the border with them. Since then she has been unable to make contact to discover what has happened to her baby.

She said she had prayed they would get their visas earlier so she could have given birth in India.

“I had no option,” she sobbed. “I sacrificed the baby for the sake of the other six children, so they can have an education.”

A 30-year-old pregnant woman called Laran Keswari was equally distraught. She had crossed with her five children but her husband, who is disabled, had not obtained a visa. She told him she did not want to go without him but he insisted she go ahead for the sake of their children. “God is on your side,” he told her.

Ms Keswari is anxious about how she will manage by herself with her children, hoping against hope that her husband will be able to join them. “We speak on the phone but we are both always crying,” she said.

An irony of the group’s exodus from Pakistan, a journey to escape discrimination, is that it was made possible by people with fundamental and, in some cases, extremist views. Their host in Bijwasan was Naher Singh, a former customs officer and policeman, who accommodated another smaller group of refugees in 2011. He asked his rent-paying tenants to leave his property and housed the Pakistanis instead. “These people are my God and Goddess. I worship them,” he said.

Mr Singh said the cost of feeding and housing the 483 people was met by various Hindu groups, including the Vishva Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Some of their members have been linked to confrontations with minority groups across India.

Mr Singh, who has been rousing his refugee guests at 3am to lead them in yoga and religious chants, said he wanted to forcibly drive Muslims from India. He made a series of inflammatory remarks.

Mr Singh was accompanied by a Hindu priest. Asked if Mr Singh was not displaying the sort of bigotry from which he claimed to be saving the refugees, the priest replied: “This is God talking through him. And I agree with him.”

The government of India has yet to publicly comment on the refugees or its plans for them. Sending them back to Pakistan would be politically fraught. Pakistan has not commented on the matter.

Mr Singh said he would fight any attempt to repatriate the refugees and claimed they would be accepted by the local community. He said: “We will find jobs for them here in the villages.” – The Independent, 7 May 2013

» Andrew Buncombe is the Asia correspondent for The Independent. He is stationed in New Delhi.