Super power’s superlative failure

Bangalore: We were perhaps the first in the world to say that US would meet utter defeat in its “war on terrorism” (read Muslim) and also that the US would never be able to catch Osama bin Laden. President Bush, goaded by his zionist-backers, uttered mountains of lies and fooled the peace-loving Americans.

Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man, worth a total of 50 million dollars, hunted for the last five years is not caught — “dead or alive”.

We wanted to remind all this to our DV family members as USA was observing the fifth anniversary of the 9/11. Did we not prove right?

Stage-managed 9/11: The hunt for Osama is going on in full strength but he not only remains elusive but more committed and more aggressive. What a shame on the sole super power.

Afghanistan is fighting back. Saddam Hussein is smiling. Iraq has proved a killing field for Americans. Bush poodle Blair is drowning. Zionist Israel, guiding USA, is defeated in Lebanon. The “axis of evil” Iran is aggressive and has become the leader of the entire Muslim world which has turned wholesale against America and the West.

This is the total achievement of the stage-managed 9/11 on the occasion of its 5th anniversary.

DV June 1, 2006 p.5: “Who is ruling India & US?”

Dv June 1, 2006 p. 6: “The bloody Bush & Blair era ends”.

DV May 16, 2006 p. 21: “Power of king-makers in America”.

DV Nov.1, 2005 p.23: “Is America changing?”

DV Oct.1, 2005 p.9: “America’s decline & fall begins”.

DV Aug.16, 2005 p.5: “Religious war grips America”.

DV May 1, 2005 p.10: “American aggression gaining speed”.

DV Dec.1, 2004 p.7: “Re-elected Bush will step up war on Islam” & p. 8: “Bush re-election proves arrogant America is bent upon suicide”.

DV Oct.1, 2004 p. 21: “Israelisation of USA & fall of a great nation”.

DV Aug.16, 2004 p.6: “Neo-Cons shift from Bush to Kerry?”

DV Aug.1, 2004 p.27: “Fall of Bush confirmed”.

DV Edit Nov.16, 2003: “ Euro getting ready to drown dollar”.

DV Oct.16, 2002 p.4: “Who is real enemy of America?”

DV April 1, 2002 p.21: “Jewish stranglehond on US”.

DV Oct.16, 2001 p.9: “Did Israel attack Pentgon & WTC?”

Dalit Panther leader embraces RSS

Bangalore: A top Dalit leader and one of the founder members of the legendary Dalit Panthers, Namdev Dhasal, a bitter critic of RSS, has finally surrendered to Brahminism.

The Dalit poet embraced the Hindu terrorist party (RSS) chief Sudarshan at a book release function in Delhi on Sept.6, 2006.

The Marathi Dalit leader is the founder president of Maharashtra’s Dalit Panthers that has all alone fought with the RSS. It looked upon the RSS as representing the Brahminical order. But on Sept.6, he released a RSS book on Dalits.

Dhasal, an outspoken literary figure and the first recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Lifetime Achievement Award, said, he was initially reluctant to share the dais with the RSS chief:

Leftist friends would pounce upon me with abuses and accusations that I have shifted camp, but I don’t care, because I have only one mission — to strengthen national unity and social integrity. This can’t be achieved if we remain divided in thousands of castes and subcastes and keep pouring venom against each other. Neither can politics help eradicate castes, which rather thrive on casteist divisions.

Manuwadi communists: He said he had high hopes in RSS which should get into action to remove the concept of untouchability and casteism from the country:

Mere speeches and books won’t help. The work that RSS outfits like Samarasta Manch are doing in Maharashtra has to be further strengthened, he said.

He narrated how he had lost his childhood to tyrannical caste-based hatred and had to face what he called a “death-like situation” at the hands of “so-called high caste people just because I had dared to go near their house”.

He did not even spare the socialist movement and claimed that leaders of the movement had shielded casteism and that even communist leaders were Brahminical in their outlook and actions.

Sudarshan shed crocodile tears saying the “Dalits are our own flesh and blood, but because of some ill practices and social evils the practice of untouchability has brought havoc on those who were an integral part and defenders of dharma. This has to be corrected through our deeds and actions”.

What he meant was Dalits are also Hindu though Dr. Ambedkar had said “Dalits are not Hindu and were never Hindu”. Dhasal knows this.

An unusual kinship was thus effected at the release of the book, Samaraste Ke Sutra (threads of harmony), which contains articles from Dalit writers and social activists working among Dalits and is edited by Tarun Vijay, editor of the RSS weekly, Panchjanya, and Ramesh Patange, editor of the Marathi weekly Vivek, also an RSS publication.

Total collapse: Dhasal’s fall into the Hindu nazi net is no surprise. It is happening all over India. Brahminism has virtually swallowed the Dalit movement. Many highly placed Dalit political leaders and officials have married Brahmin girls.

There are some other innocent pro-Marxist leaders who fall into the Manuwadi marxist net without understanding that India’s entire marxist movement of all shades, including the naxalite and maoists, are controlled by the Brahminical people. And the Dalits are used only as slaves.The total collapse of the Dalit movement is not far away.

(DV Editorial of March 16, 2000: “Sunset on the Dalit world”).

M.S. Swaminathan as king of scientific frauds

Bangalore: Is there another side to the “eminent Indian scientist”, Dr.M.S.Swaminathan, that we do not know of? Read the website article from www.gmwatch.org presenting his ‘other side’. Is this a case of professional jealousy or is there some truth in this?

“In taking India down (the Green Revolution) path...he neglected high yielding indigenous varieties adapted to local conditions in favour of chemical and irrigation dependent varieties which have with time had adverse effects on both productivity and the environment, often with catastrophic consequences for India’s millions of small and marginal farmers.”

“...Swaminathan’s rise to prominence went hand in hand with the suppression of the work of Indian scientists who were making a case within the agricultural mainstream for less input-intensive farming.”

“There are accusations of scientific fraud as well as scandals involving the suicide of scientists at the institute from which he launched the Green Revolution. But these have been buried beneath a plethora of awards and honours.” (He is accused of harassing scientists who exposed his ‘tall claims’. In the case of one of them, Dr.Y.P.Gupta, the Supreme Court termed the action of the IARI’s academic council, chaired by Swaminathan, as ‘callous’, ‘heartless’, and ‘shocking’).

Here’s a profile of the Godfather of India’s Green Revolution, M.S. Swaminathan:

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4179

Swaminathan, India’s premier Green Revolution scientist, has a talent for dressing up the industry lobby’s agenda in the rhetoric of village India, women’s empowerment, eco-tech etc., creating a facade of an unthreatening, ecologically and socially sensitive biotechnology ‘domesticated’ to local conditions.

But how credible Swaminathan and his promotion of a locally aware biotechnology really are remains open to question. His track record remains controversial. There are accusations of scientific fraud as well as scandals involving the suicide of scientists at the institute from which he launched the Green Revolution. But these have been buried beneath a plethora of awards and honours. The real importance of Swaminathan’s record is that it points to the errors India will repeat if it embarks on a Swaminathan-led “Second Green Revolution”.

M.S. Swaminathan - a GM WATCH profile (for all the links: http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=291&page=S)

Since 1988 the plant geneticist M. S. Swaminathan, a Tamil Brahmin (Iyer) has headed his own M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Madras. The Foundation sees GM crops, and biotechnology in general, not only as having immense potential but as ‘the only way we can face the challenges of the future’. It also sees India as needing to ‘move forward vigorously in mobilising the power of biotechnology’ in order not to lag behind China and more developed countries.

As Swaminathan is considered the “Godfather of the Green Revolution in India”, his promotion of GM crops is inevitably projected as an ushering in of a Second Green Revolution. Indeed, that is the title of an International Conference in August 2004 in New Delhi, organised by his Foundation in partnership with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the biotech industry-backed International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Application (ISAAA).

The conference was organized to ‘deliberate on the recommendations of the Task Force on Application of Biotechnology in Agriculture’. This Task Force, headed by Swaminathan, had been charged by the Indian Government with the task of making recommendations on how to reform India’s biosafety system.

PROMOTING G.M. CROPS

The Task Force’s recommendations have proved controversial. Greenpeace India accused it of seeking ‘to strip away regulation of biotechnology, rather than improve it’ while P.V. Satheesh of the Deccan Development Society had earlier warned that the real agenda behind the reforms was to introduce ‘fast track approval’. (Swaminathan Panel Recommendations on Biotechnology Flawed and Dangerous).

Although a GM proponent, Swaminathan does not present as a pugnacious propagandist for the technology in the style of Norman Borlaug, that other Green Revolution scientist. For instance, the alternative title of Swaminathan’s Foundation is ‘The Centre for Research on Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development’. And traditional organic farming is researched there alongside genetic engineering which Swaminathan argues can assist organic agriculture. The Foundation is also at great pains to emphasise the need for technology development and dissemination to be ‘pro-nature, pro-poor, and pro-women’ in orientation. Similarly, Swaminathan and the Foundation promote the idea of ‘biovillages’, which combine IT and biotechnology with the rhetoric of village india, women’s empowerment etc.

This more sophisticated stance, together with Swaminathan’s “international status” as the scientist-hero who brought about India’s Green Revolution, has meant that biotechnology supporters have found him an attractive figure to involve in the promotion of GM crops both in India and beyond.

In UNDP’s highly controversial Human Development Report 2001, for instance, the Lead Author, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, in seeking to justify the report’s support for GM crops quotes Swaminathan. Swaminathan, in turn, quotes Ghandi on the need to remember the poor.

CONTROVERSIAL TRACK RECORD

In an article he was asked to provide for the report Swaminathan tells his readers how, ‘Genes have been transferred by scientists in India from Amaranthus to potato for improving protein quality and quantity’. This information is marked out in bold type. In fact, however, this GM potato has been shown to be little more than hype. Even Prof. C Kameswara Rao - a keen biotech supporter - has pointed out that it is ‘unlikely to see the light of the day in this decade’. According to Prof Rao, ‘I noticed that the potato used to make wafer chips in England has 6.0 to 6.5 per cent of protein, while that of the GE potato is only about 2.5 per cent. I do not understand how this dismal product could generate so much euphoria...’ (‘Dismal’ GM potato a decade away).

SHREWD POLITICAL OPERATOR

The answer to Rao’s question is simple. The fact that the GM potato is a locally-led and philanthropically directed project gives it the hallmarks of acceptability. This makes it a perfect poster child for promoting the technology. In a similar way, Swaminathan provides an acceptable face for GM crops in the Third World, creating a facade of an unthreatening, ecologically and socially sensitive biotechnology ‘domesticated’ to local conditions.

Just how credible Swaminathan and his promotion of a locally aware biotechnology really are remains open to question. His track record remains controversial and some, like Dr Claude Alvares of the Goa Institute, accuse him of being a shrewd political operator whose real strength lies in knowing how to get things done and how to adapt his rhetoric to create a veneer of public acceptability:

’At a Gandhi seminar, he will speak on Gandhi. At another meeting on appropriate technology, he will plump for organic manure. At a talk in London, he will speak on the necessity of chemical fertilizers. He will label slum dwellers “ecological refugees”, and advertise his career as a quest for “imparting an ecological basis to productivity improvement”. This, after presiding over, and indiscriminately furthering, one of the ecologically most devastating technologies of modern times - the [High Yielding Varieties] package of the Green Revolution”.

PUSHING INDIA DOWN

While Swaminathan is feted around the globe as the hero of India’s Green Revolution, the manner in which he achieved such prominence is much less well known. He did so, charges Alvares, in a way that has a parallel in India claiming credit for its conquest of space when it was riding piggyback on Soviet science and technology. Swaminathan imported borrowed science evolved in Mexico by Norman Borlaug and American interests. In taking India down this path, his critics say, he neglected high yielding indigenous varieties adapted to local conditions in favour of chemical and irrigation dependent varieties which have with time had adverse effects on both productivity and the environment, often with catastrophic consequences for India’s millions of small and marginal farmers.

INDIAN SCIENTISTS SUFFERED

It is also alleged that Swaminathan’s rise to prominence went hand in hand with the suppression of the work of Indian scientists who were making a case within the agricultural mainstream for less input-intensive farming.

One of these was Dr. R.H. Richharia who worked all his life to develop indigenous rice species and whose guiding principle was, ‘Your work is only valuable if it helps the poor farmers’. Richaria almost single-handedly put together a germplasm collection of over 20,000 rice varieties. Currently in the possession of the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University in Chhattisgarh; this collection was at the centre of a major controversy when Syngenta attempted to take it over under the guise of collaborative research, a move only thwarted by civil society pressures. Dr Richaria himself sees Swaminathan and his backers as being linked to both his removal from his post at the Central Rice Research Institute and attempts to gain control over his germplasm collection. Of the latter he says, ‘He was behind it all, because he held all the power... He was the all in all.’ (Crushed but not defeated).

FALSE CLAIMS

Perhaps most disturbingly, Swaminathan has been censured for making misleading scientific claims and has been linked to scandals involving the suicide of scientists at the institute from which he launched the Green Revolution. However, even these scandals, as we shall see, have had no serious adverse impact on Swaminathan’s career.

He is the recipient of almost every conceivable award - national and international. He has also been India’s Secretary for Agriculture (1980-81), the Director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (1966-72), the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (1972-80) and the International Rice Research Institute (1982-88), the Independent Chairman of the FAO Council (1981-85), and the President of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1984-90).

Swaminathan (born 1925) almost became a police officer, but a change of career path led to a Ph.D in genetics from Cambridge in 1952. By 1966, Swaminathan was Director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi. With help from the Rockefeller Foundation, he started importing large quantities of cross-bred wheat seed developed by Norman Borlaug in Mexico. Swaminathan disseminated these plants, which were far more tolerant of chemical fertilisers, in the Punjab. He would later marry this plant to an Indian variety. ‘Our history,’ he says, ‘changed from that time’.

MAGSAYSAY AWARD

Swaminathan’s apparent scientific successes were first acknowledged in 1971 with the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. This award set the precedent for a plethora of awards and honours in the years to come, including over 40 honorary doctorates from universities around the world and the World Food Prize in 1987.

As well as achieving a rapid dissemination of Norman Borlang’s dwarf strains of Mexican wheat, Swaminathan claimed to have developed a new wheat (Sharbati Sonora) by subjecting the Mexican parent lines of the Sonora variety to radiation. At a popular lecture in Delhi in 1967, Swaminathan claimed that Sharbati Sonora contained as much protein and lysine as milk. Dr. Claude Alvares takes up the story:

’In three subsequent papers he continued to claim a high lysine content. In 1967, Dr Y.P. Gupta, an Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) scientist, disputed the claim and said that the figures had been manipulated. A number of researchers from abroad also stated that the lysine content of Swaminathan’s wheat and that of the Mexican wheat did not differ in any significant content. Finally the Central International de Mejoramiento de Maizy Trigo (CIMMYT) itself reported in 1969 that there was no significant difference between Sonora and Sharbati Sonora.

Yet nine months after the CIMMYT report appeared, Swaminathan once again submitted the 1967 Food Industries paper to a short- lived journal called Plant Foods for Human Nutrition, in which he again claimed a value of two and half times the normal lysine value for Sharbati Sonora. Eight months later [in 1971], he was given the Magsaysay Award, for having “developed a wheat variety containing three per cent lysine”, and which, the Magsaysay Foundation claimed, “was now alleviating the deficiency of essential amino acids in the Indian diet so harmful particularly to brain development in young children.” Every word of the citation was false... The award, however, was instrumental in Swaminathan being made the director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)’.

SCIENTISTS SUICIDE

What brought the lysine scandal to public notice was the suicide in May 1972 of Dr. Vinod Shah, an agronomist at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. The IARI was where Swaminathan had launched his Green Revolution.

According to Bharat Dogra, a very senior and respected journalist in India who has researched Swaminathan and contemporary agricultural scientists for many years, Dr Shah had been repelled by the ‘glaring irregularities, victimisation, nepotism, bogus research, sycophancy’ he had found at the IARI. (Bharat Dogra, The Life and Work of Dr R.H. Richaria, p.99) Dr Shah’s death was not the only suicide by a scientist at the institute but ‘it attracted more attention partly because of his youth and partly because of the suicide note left behind by him in which he clearly explained the dishonesty and irregularities... which had disillusioned him so much.’ (Bharat Dogra, p.100).

It also emerged that Dr Shah had met with Swaminathan, the IARI’s Director, some time before he committed suicide. Following that meeting, he had stopped taking any food. His suicide note was addressed personally to Dr Swaminathan. It alleged, ‘A lot of unscientific data are collected to fit in your line of thinking.’ It also said, ‘A person with ideas and constructive scientific criticism is always victimised’. (Bharat Dogra, p.107).

SCIENTIFIC SCANDAL

An Achievement Audit Committee Report had already been critical of the ‘pompous or exaggerated statements made in IARI documents’ (Bharat Dogra, p.101) as well as of the generally poor quality of research at Swaminathan’s Institute - research which failed to meet the claims made for it. And the lysine content of Swaminathan’s wheat was not the only case of ‘blatantly dishonest research’ to come to light in the enquiries made following the allegations contained in Dr Shah’s suicide note. (Bharat Dogra, p.102).

A pulse variety known as Baisaki Moong was claimed to have achieved very high yields in IARI research in the late 60s and early 70s. However, enquiries showed that in trials around the country its performance had been nowhere near as good. In Punjab and Delhi, for instance, ‘the yields were only about half of those claimed to have been obtained in the IARI experiemnts’ (Bharat Dogra, p.102).

Claims relating to a super-nutritious maize developed at IARI also ‘became a major scientific scandal’. Initially the research had been credited with having developed ‘a new strain of maize with the protein content doubled and having nutritious value like milk’ It was even claimed that mothers were reporting that children fed on this maize were less irritable than milk-fed babies. ‘Subsequent experience revealed all such claims to be figments of imagination’. (Bharat Dogra, p.103).

The most serious accusations had come from Dr Y.P. Gupta of the Bio-Chemistry Division of the IARI. Gupta had worked on the lysine content of various wheat varieties and contested Swaminathan’s published data on the protein and lysine content of Sharbati Sonora from an early stage. Gupta specifically alleged that the figure for Sharbati Sonora’s parent plant had been deliberately reduced in a half-yearly report in order to make Sharbati Sonora appear in a more favourable light.

DR. Y.P. GUPTA VICTIMISED

After the circumstances surrounding Dr. Shah’s suicide had caused uproar in the Indian Parliament, the government had felt compelled to appoint an enquiry committee headed by the late Dr P.B. Gajendragadkar, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Dr Alvares takes up the story:

’The committee examined the charge of unjustified claims and ruled against Swaminathan... In 1974, the New Scientist published a detailed report on Swaminathan’s lysine falsehoods. Swaminathan survived the attack. Immediately after the Emergency, it was the Statesman in a detailed report dated May 17, 1977, that re-opened the entire debate. It was only on this occasion, for the first time since 1967, that Swaminathan admitted that the data concerning lysine was incorrect. Six years had passed since he had won the Magsaysay Award, which, if the citation was totally wrong, was improperly conferred.’

SCIENTIST HARASSED

Swaminathan tried to put down the scandal to an ‘analytical error’ which he said was the fault of one of his subordinates but, Dr. Alvares argues, there are other indicators that support a lack of ethics:

’One is his harassment of all those scientists who had exposed his claims on lysine in the first place. Within a year, for example, of questioning the data in 1967, Dr Y.P. Gupta’s students were taken away from him, he was denied promotions, his junior was selected to become his head, and his application for a Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) assignment was held back by the IARI till [after] the due date.’

It was only 15 years later that the Supreme Court of India was able to vindicate Y.P. Gupta. Dr Gupta, the court ruled, ‘has been the victim of unfair treatment’ and the court went on to describe the attitude of his employer as ‘unethical’. It also termed the action of the institute’s academic council, chaired by Swaminathan, as ‘callous’, ‘heartless’, and ‘shocking’. (The Great Gene Robbery)

However, none of this stopped Swaminathan becoming chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SACC). Then in 1982 he left India for the highly paid post of Director General of the Rockefeller- Foundation assisted International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), based at Los Banos in the Philippines. After seven years with IRRI, Swaminathan returned to India to devote his efforts to his M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).

SECOND GREEN REVOLUTION

The Foundation is now at the centre of Swaminathan’s promotion of India’s “Second Green Revolution”. Its conferences have provided platforms for the industry. In 2004, two events were organised at Madras to commemorate ‘the occasion of the International Year of Rice 2004’: a National Colloquium on Molecular Breeding and Shaping the Future of Rice, and a Forum on Biotechnology and the future of rice. Both events were dominated by panelists who favored the introduction of the GM seeds, like Golden Rice Network Coordinator and former Monsanto employee, Gerard Barry and William James Peacock of CSIRO. (GM supporters confronted in India).

An MSSRF event had also provided Gerard Barry with a PR platform four years earlier to promote Monsanto’s provision of royalty-free licenses for the development of ‘golden rice’, as well as the corporation’s willingness to open its rice-genome sequence database to researchers around the world. GM lobbyist C.S. Prakash was another speaker on that occasion. (Gene revolution may not feed all).

Critics like the New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst, Devinder Sharma, complain that the right lessons have not yet been learned from Swaminathan’s first Green Revolution before the second is being promoted. The Indian scientist and environmentalist, Vandana Shiva points out that the Green Revolution:

FARMERS SUICIDE

’has led to reduced genetic diversity, increased vulnerability to pests, soil erosion, water shortages, reduced soil fertility, micronutrient deficiencies, soil contamination, reduced availability of nutritious food crops for the local population, the displacement of vast numbers of small farmers from their land, rural impoverishment and increased tensions and conflicts. The beneficiaries have been the agrochemical industry, large petrochemical companies, manufacturers of agricultural machinery, dam builders and large landowners.’ (The Green Revolution in the Punjab).

And there have been high human costs from forcing the Green Revolution’s industrial farming model onto small and marginal farmers.

Writing in response to the news in summer 2004 that many hundreds of poor farmers had once again taken their own lives, often by drinking pesticides, Devinder Sharma noted, ‘the tragedy is that the human cost is entirely being borne by the farmers’.

The greatest irony, writes Sharma, is that ‘those who created the problem in the first instance are the ones who are being asked to provide the solutions.’ (Farm Genocide: The Killing Fields of the Green Revolution).

****************

DV Jan.16, 2005 p. 13: “Frauds parading as scientists: The famous case of M.S. Swaminathan”.

DV Aug.16, 2004 p.8: “Agriculture scientists’ conspiracy to turn India into Sahara desert?”

DV July 16, 2004 p.7: “Frauds of the notorious Father of India’s Green Revolution”.

DV July 1, 2004 p.27: “M.S. Swaminathan mystery needs a probe”.

***********************************************************************

Frauds ruling India

India abounds in frauds and the tallest of the titans is this Madras-based Tamil Iyer called M.S. Swaminathan, backed by a multi-million dollar foundation, out to destroy the little remaining agriculture through his bogus “Second Green Revolution”.

Nobody knows what happened to the US-promoted first Green Revolution. But we are now in for a second disaster.

In our book, India’s Intellectual Desert (DSA-1999), we have dealt with this master crook and many such frauds. But who bothers about our cry for honesty in this Brahminical wilderness in which the whole country is dominated and ruled by only frauds in almost every sector. Exceptions may be there but their silence make them a party to the fraud.

Those who care for justice and truth must also fight for it and die for it. Silent spectators are also culprits.

The Hindu nazi RSS English weekly, Organiser, (April 15, 1984) launched a full page attack on this fraud but today they are silent because Swaminthan is their jatwala.

Dalit Voice was the first in India to expose this fraud. Please go through the list of DV references published at the end of this research article — EDITOR.

Iran’s Institute for Political & International Studies (IPIS) is organising an international conference on

“Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision”

Tehran (Iran), Dec. 11 - 12, 2006

The word “Holocaust” which entered the political literature during the World War-II turned into one of the most important propaganda tools to politically justify the support for the Jews in the 20th century.

In the contemporary era Holocaust turned into a main factor to influence the history and even the destiny of certain nations. We believe that a suitable scientific and research opportunity and space should be provided for scholars and for those interested in exposing the hidden and open corners of this issue.

The conference coincides with the commemoration of the Human Rights Day.

The conference respects the Jewish religion and will try to bring different aspects of the subject into its consideration away from any propaganda or political orientation.

Scholars should send papers (typed in Word-2000) in either Persian, English or Arabic (one page, A4 size) explaining their scientific activities to our secretariat.

email: history@ipis.mof.ir

or send it by fax (+98-21) 2280 2649
before Oct.7, 2006.

All papers should reach before Nov.11, 2006.

Address: Shahid Bahonar (Niavaran) Street, Shahid Aghaei Street, (IPIS), Tehran, Iran.

website: www.ipis.ir

JIHAD

(The Holy War in Islam & its Legitimacy in the Quran)

Ayotullah Morteza Mutahhari

The condition for holy war is the aggressor should be oppressing a group of people and hence it becomes the duty of Muslims to defend and rescue them. If you do not, you are helping the oppressor who is against the oppressed.

Islam is always in favour of peace but it will support war against injustice and
oppression. If the opponent is not ready to co-exist in peace, you must wage a war. Jihad is not a war of aggression
but resistance against the aggressor. Jihad is launched as a defence
against aggression.

The book by an authority on Islam answers all questions on jihad including the one
raised by the Editor of Dalit Voice that Muslims of India are duty bound to launch a jihad against the oppressors
of India’s Mustadafeen, who are none other than its Untouchables, victims of Brahminism.

The book affectively answers those critics who say jihad is not part of Islam.

1998 pp.130 price not marked

Islamic Culture & Relations Organization
PO Box: 14155 - 6187, Tehran, Iran.

Photocopy available in DV office — Rs. 75.

Merit, My Foot

(Reply to Anti-Reservation Racists)

V.T. RAJSHEKAR

Dalit Sahitya Akademy
N0. 109 - 7th Cross
Palace Lower Orchards
Bangalore - 560 003, INDIA

email: dalitvoice@rediffmail.com , vtr@ndf.vsnl.net.in

website :www.dalitvoice.org

Ruthlessly exposing the myths of India’s upper caste (Hindu) “efficiency” and “merit’, this book ­— translated to every major Indian languages — is a stark account of the facts behind India’s biggest “controversy” that may well end up in a bloodbath. Intelligence is determined by environment and not by birth. Genetics, race, skin colour and caste are not the critical factors deciding the personality and performance of an individual. These are only bogeys floated by the upper castes to further enslave 85% of India’s Dalits, Backward Castes etc.

No society can make real progress unless there is equal opportunity for all. But in India, where sanctified racism is sanctioned by its caste-based Hindu religion, mere political “independence” is no solution to the myriad ills plaguing the masses. Any race has to be only between equals. Reservations are the only answer. Upper castes, who have been enjoying caste-based reservations for centuries, cannot stand even a few Dalits coming up now. The book is an eye-opener to democrats among upper castes.

V.T. Rajshekar is India’s noted journalist and author of about 100 books. Presently he is the Editor of Dalit Voice. He had to pay a heavy price for his original thinking on India’s social problems. He was arrested many times, passport impounded and two attempts on life. In a land steeped in prejudice and packed with jaundiced “intellectuals”, the author rises above petty minds to give a warning which saner sections can ignore only at the cost of a bloody caste war.

2006 pp.45 Rs. 30 (US $ 3)