NEW DELHI, April 26 — The Central Government has conceded that infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals belonging to the Hindu community was continuing unabated in spite of checks and control at the international border. The Centre, however, held the terrain and porous nature of the border responsible for the unchecked infiltration. The problem of infiltration of Bangladeshi nationals into India has been endemic and various factors including, economic, cultural and political have contributed to the influx, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, S Reghupathy said in a statement in the Lok Sabha.
The Minister also revealed that the Government does not maintain any data on infiltration from across the country.
In a separate reply, the Minister added that there was no proposal to hold a fresh inspection of the disputed areas along the international border in Assam.
However, joint demarcation of the three km of Lathitilla-Dumabari sector in Assam is pending. During the last Home Secretary-level talks between the two countries last year, the Bangladesh side said that they were examining the Indian proposal to resolve the pending boundary issues, the minister added.
The minister also denied that farmers along the Indo-Bangladesh border were facing problems in cultivating their land because of the ongoing fencing work. Gates have been provided at appropriate places for easy movement of inhabitants whose land falls between the fence and the international border. Necessary security is being provided by BSF to the inhabitants residing along the international borders, he stated.
The Government of India last fiscal spent Rs 270.47 crore for fencing of the Indo-Bangladesh border, the highest-ever allocation so far. In 2003-2004, a sum of Rs 247.74 crore was released for fencing work.
BJP demand: According to a PTI report from Guwahati, the BJP today urged the Centre to call an all-party meeting to discuss the issue of illegal migration from Bangladesh and accused the Congress and other "so-called secular parties" of encouraging the influx in the interest of "vote-bank politics."
"A national consensus must be evolved on the issue of Bangladeshi influx in North East and the Prime Minister must call an all-party meeting to discuss this else the country will head for another partition," vice-president of BJP's Kisan Morcha Radhamohan Singh told reporters here.
BJP, he said, does not view the immigration from Bangladesh as a Hindu-Muslim problem but as
a national problem and added that only those parties that do not value national interests dub it communal.
“The party," he said, "supported the view of non-political organisations that if the population pattern of the minority community in Assam, West Bengal and the rest of North East was not immediately reversed, the country will head for another partition.”
He urged the Centre to immediately scrap the Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunal (IMDT) Act, contending that instead of encouraging detection of migrants, it was providing legal protection to the infiltrators.
It is well mentions that the communal BJP , who allways from long before use to say all against muslims , but when did they started to be pro muslims ?
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Monday, April 25, 2005
End of 2,700-year exodus for India's lost tribe of Jews
By Simon Denyer
AIZAWL, India (Reuters) - In unison they dip their middle fingers into their plastic cups of grape juice, calling out in Hebrew the names of the 10 plagues they believe their God sent to curse the ancient Egyptians.
Plastic Israeli flags and photographs of Jerusalem adorn the chipboard walls. Saturday's feast could have been a celebration of Passover anywhere in the Jewish world, but this is no ordinary celebration and these are no ordinary Jews.
In India's remote hill states of Mizoram and Manipur, thousands of people who believe they belong to one of the Biblical 10 "lost tribes" of Israel are celebrating what they hope is their last Passover before ending a 2,700-year exodus.
Three weeks ago, reports came from Israel that Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar had accepted the B'nei Menashe as one of the fabled lost tribes, and would send a team of rabbis to formally convert them and bring them back to Israel.
"All our dreams have come true," said Liyon Fanai, who embraced Judaism two years ago. Just as the Passover marked the Jews departure from Egypt for Israel, so Liyon hopes this year will mark his departure for the Promised Land.
On Thursday, a call came from Israel saying a place had been put aside for him, his wife Leora and his 12-year son Sampson, in a Golan Heights settlement.
MIXED UP GENES
"It is our Mitzvah, our duty to go," he said after blessing and breaking the bread at a Sabbath gathering in his home in the Mizo capital Aizwal, which spreads over the steep hills outside his window. "Internally, I feel I am an Israeli... not an Indian."
On the face of it, it is hard to imagine a more unlikely story. A tribe, exiled from Israel by the Assyrians around 720 B.C. somehow finds its way, via Afghanistan and China, to this thin slice of India sandwiched between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
On the way, they forget their language, their history and most of their traditions. Their genes are so mixed up they look like their Mongoloid neighbours, their memories so faded they speak a Tibeto-Burmese language, rear pigs and eat pork.
Almost all that remains is a name -- Manasseh, Menasia or Manmase, an ancestor whose spirit they invoke to ward off evil.
In 1950, a holy man from a remote village in Mizoram said the Holy Spirit had appeared to him in a vision, to explain that the "children of Manasseh" were in fact the children of Menashe, a son of Joseph -- and it was time to come home.
Gradually his ideas took hold, among a population that had only just been converted to Christianity a few decades before. Today, there are 800 Menashe in Israel, most in West bank and Gaza strip settlements, and 7,000 more in Mizoram and Manipur hoping for their chance to join them.
The answer to an intriguing Biblical mystery, or simply a case of mass delusion?
The case for the defence rests with Zaithanchhungi, a Christian woman who has made her name researching and defending the Menashe's claims.
Before Christian missionaries came from Wales and England to these misty, forested hills in the late nineteenth century, the Mizo, Kuki and Chin peoples worshipped one Almighty God, albeit challenged by more than a dozen other spirits.
'CROSSING THE RED SEA'
Some of the practices involved in animal sacrifice were similar to ancient Hebrew traditions, while an ancient song among one tribe talked of "crossing the Red Sea", with enemies in chariots at their heels, she says.
Mizo woven shawls are not unlike Jewish prayer shawls in design. In place of circumcision, is a cleansing ceremony eight days after a child is born, involving burning of incense.
"This is trying to manipulate ethnology to fit your own interpretation," counters Pachuau Biaksima, an elder with the Presbyterian church to which most Mizos belong. "In any two tribes, you cannot fail to identify similarities."
Biaksima sees Satan's hands at work, "the dark kingdom" filling idle minds with "delusions of grandeur".
Even the Menashe themselves acknowledge that the idea of rediscovering their roots resonated deeply with a people struggling with their sense of identity, after the rapid spread of Christianity all but wiped out ancient practices.
"Christianity made me feel alien in my own land," said Azriel Hmar. "It was in contrast to our original customs."
Science has yet to give a conclusive answer to Mizoram's mystery. Calcutta's Forensic Science Laboratory found no trace of typical Jewish genes in the male Y chromosomes of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo, but found some evidence of a possible, but diluted, maternal link to the Near East.
Research by Israel's Technion institute and the University of Arizona may provide more conclusive results, even if they are unlikely to change the Menashe's fate. For now, the ball is in the court of Israel's Chief Rabbinate -- a spokesman said a final decision on whether to allow mass conversions outside Israel would be taken after Passover ends on April 30.
In Aizwal, 23-year-old Samuel Lalrindika is back from Israel, on leave halfway through three years of military service. He emigrated with three friends in 2000.
"I am homesick. And I do face discrimination, because of my features and because my Hebrew is not perfect," he said. "But this is the Promised Land, and I have to fight for my country. I am an Israeli."
AIZAWL, India (Reuters) - In unison they dip their middle fingers into their plastic cups of grape juice, calling out in Hebrew the names of the 10 plagues they believe their God sent to curse the ancient Egyptians.
Plastic Israeli flags and photographs of Jerusalem adorn the chipboard walls. Saturday's feast could have been a celebration of Passover anywhere in the Jewish world, but this is no ordinary celebration and these are no ordinary Jews.
In India's remote hill states of Mizoram and Manipur, thousands of people who believe they belong to one of the Biblical 10 "lost tribes" of Israel are celebrating what they hope is their last Passover before ending a 2,700-year exodus.
Three weeks ago, reports came from Israel that Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar had accepted the B'nei Menashe as one of the fabled lost tribes, and would send a team of rabbis to formally convert them and bring them back to Israel.
"All our dreams have come true," said Liyon Fanai, who embraced Judaism two years ago. Just as the Passover marked the Jews departure from Egypt for Israel, so Liyon hopes this year will mark his departure for the Promised Land.
On Thursday, a call came from Israel saying a place had been put aside for him, his wife Leora and his 12-year son Sampson, in a Golan Heights settlement.
MIXED UP GENES
"It is our Mitzvah, our duty to go," he said after blessing and breaking the bread at a Sabbath gathering in his home in the Mizo capital Aizwal, which spreads over the steep hills outside his window. "Internally, I feel I am an Israeli... not an Indian."
On the face of it, it is hard to imagine a more unlikely story. A tribe, exiled from Israel by the Assyrians around 720 B.C. somehow finds its way, via Afghanistan and China, to this thin slice of India sandwiched between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
On the way, they forget their language, their history and most of their traditions. Their genes are so mixed up they look like their Mongoloid neighbours, their memories so faded they speak a Tibeto-Burmese language, rear pigs and eat pork.
Almost all that remains is a name -- Manasseh, Menasia or Manmase, an ancestor whose spirit they invoke to ward off evil.
In 1950, a holy man from a remote village in Mizoram said the Holy Spirit had appeared to him in a vision, to explain that the "children of Manasseh" were in fact the children of Menashe, a son of Joseph -- and it was time to come home.
Gradually his ideas took hold, among a population that had only just been converted to Christianity a few decades before. Today, there are 800 Menashe in Israel, most in West bank and Gaza strip settlements, and 7,000 more in Mizoram and Manipur hoping for their chance to join them.
The answer to an intriguing Biblical mystery, or simply a case of mass delusion?
The case for the defence rests with Zaithanchhungi, a Christian woman who has made her name researching and defending the Menashe's claims.
Before Christian missionaries came from Wales and England to these misty, forested hills in the late nineteenth century, the Mizo, Kuki and Chin peoples worshipped one Almighty God, albeit challenged by more than a dozen other spirits.
'CROSSING THE RED SEA'
Some of the practices involved in animal sacrifice were similar to ancient Hebrew traditions, while an ancient song among one tribe talked of "crossing the Red Sea", with enemies in chariots at their heels, she says.
Mizo woven shawls are not unlike Jewish prayer shawls in design. In place of circumcision, is a cleansing ceremony eight days after a child is born, involving burning of incense.
"This is trying to manipulate ethnology to fit your own interpretation," counters Pachuau Biaksima, an elder with the Presbyterian church to which most Mizos belong. "In any two tribes, you cannot fail to identify similarities."
Biaksima sees Satan's hands at work, "the dark kingdom" filling idle minds with "delusions of grandeur".
Even the Menashe themselves acknowledge that the idea of rediscovering their roots resonated deeply with a people struggling with their sense of identity, after the rapid spread of Christianity all but wiped out ancient practices.
"Christianity made me feel alien in my own land," said Azriel Hmar. "It was in contrast to our original customs."
Science has yet to give a conclusive answer to Mizoram's mystery. Calcutta's Forensic Science Laboratory found no trace of typical Jewish genes in the male Y chromosomes of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo, but found some evidence of a possible, but diluted, maternal link to the Near East.
Research by Israel's Technion institute and the University of Arizona may provide more conclusive results, even if they are unlikely to change the Menashe's fate. For now, the ball is in the court of Israel's Chief Rabbinate -- a spokesman said a final decision on whether to allow mass conversions outside Israel would be taken after Passover ends on April 30.
In Aizwal, 23-year-old Samuel Lalrindika is back from Israel, on leave halfway through three years of military service. He emigrated with three friends in 2000.
"I am homesick. And I do face discrimination, because of my features and because my Hebrew is not perfect," he said. "But this is the Promised Land, and I have to fight for my country. I am an Israeli."
Many in Mizoram believe they are lost tribes of Israel AIZAWL, April 24 – Moving across Aizwal, Israel Store and Zion Street are common sights and a newcomer to the state capital could be excused if he momentarily wonders he is in any part of Israel. For many among thousands of living in Mizoram and Manipur, Israel is the promised land and believe they are the lost tribes of Israel. They were overjoyed when the Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar reportedly recognised them as 'descendants of Israel'. After the recognition and announcement on March 30, 'Amishav Hebrew Centre', the institute for learning Hebrew language, Jewish religion and culture at Republic Veng locality here, was re-christened as 'Shavey Israel Hebrew Centre'. While 'Amishav' means 'Return my people', 'Shavei' conveys that these people are now citizens of Israel, it is noteworthy that Principal of the institute Alenby Sela and his family have already migrated to Israel after the announcement. Veronica K Zatluangi, land lady of the centre, told PTI that Jewish rabbis would be coming here to teach and formally convert the 'Bnei Menashe', or the children of Menashe,'one of the lost tribes of Israel', from the first part of May.However, Zaithanchhungi said "The Mizos, after realising that they belonged to the Israeli nation, do not have to resort to conversion of religion" as nationality does not have anything to do with religion. She claimed there are around 6,000 Jews who are already cenverted and ready to migrate to Israel from Mizoram and Manipur. The concept of Mizos being lost tribe of Israel had a deep root in the minds of these Indi-Tibetan people as majority of them are Christians reading the Old and the New Testament where Israel is projected as the Promised Land and the Holy Land. Like Rebecca Rei, who left her profitable beauty parlour business in the center of Aizawl city for Israel, about a thousand Mizos from Mizoram and Manipur have migrated to the Promised Land and were settled in the Gaza and West Bank in the forefronts of Palestinian hostilities. Most of them became affluent there. – PTI
Monday, April 18, 2005
BSF submits list of 190 ultra camps to BDR
GUWAHATI, April 17 – The Border Security Force (BSF) has handed over a list of 190 camps of the militant outfits of India in Bangladesh to the Bangladesh Rifles. The Director General of BSF, RS Mooshahary said that the list, with pinpointed location of the camps, was handed over to the BDR in a meeting between the two forces, which concluded in Dhaka yesterday.Mooshahary told newsmen here today that the BSF has also handed over a list of 161 militants taking shelter in Bangladesh and requested the BDR to take action to evict them. He said that the lists were prepared on the basis of intelligence inputs and on confessional statements of the arrested militants. The BDR assured to verify the list and “let us know,” he added. It may be mentioned here that earlier also, the BSF had submitted lists of camps of Indian militants in Bangladesh but so far no action has been taken by the Bangladeshi forces in this regard.Mooshahary said that the general secretary of the United liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) Anup Chetia has been released from prison in Bangladesh but the Bangladeshi authorities have not handed him over to India despite repeated requests. He said that they had raised the issue during the meeting, but the BDR officials said that the matter was not in their hands and the BDR is not authorised to take any decision in this regard.
Tarun Gogoi statements
GUWAHATI, April 17 – Axom Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s latest acknowledgement, that groups like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) and Harkat-ul-Jehadi-al-Islam (HuJI) are trying to expand their network in Axom, there are reports that Bangladeshi Bangla Bhai has entered neighbouring West Bengal and is planning to cross over to Axom soon. Bangla Bhai is currently on the run in his native country where he is hunted by the local police for involvement in a string of political murders.Despite the Chief Minister’s effort to downplay the threat of Islamic militancy in the State, the sources said that the activities of the jehadi groups within Axom as well as in Bangladesh hold ominous portents for the State.Bangla Bhai is a key figure in Operation Pin Code launched in Bangladesh last December with the design of creating a separate Islamist homeland out of Axom and West Bengal territories. . The JMJB has been recently banned in Bangladesh.“Bangla Bhai is supposed to meet religious leaders in West Bengal and Axom,” the sources disclosed, adding that a sharp eye is being kept on the latest developments. Operation Pin Code, they said, was launched in the town of Mahammadpur, near Dhaka, during a two-day conclave of several Islamic organizations on December 27 and 28. The meeting was convened by Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh. The plan has been masterminded by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Significantly, the ULFA had also sent a representative to the meeting.The sources said that Brigadier TK Baksh of the ISI was the one who explained the nitty-gritties of the operation to all those who attended the meeting. Among them was a Bangladeshi minister. The plan includes the raising of a 20,000-strong army to fulfil the objective of creating a greater Islamic homeland on Indian soil. A large part of lower Axom comes in the ambit of this “dreamland”, the sources said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)