For most people. Some still don't get it. Never will.Anand K wrote:Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20 I guess.
LONDON: It may be a case of history repeating itself as the defence company at the heart of parliamentary queries over Britain's involvement in Operation Blue Star is none other than Agusta-Westland, which recently lost out on a lucrative contract to supply helicopters to India over allegations of corruption.
Britain's opposition labour MP Tom Watson, responsible for publicising recently declassified documents that imply British collusion in planning Operation Blue Star 30 years ago, asked British Prime Minister David Cameron to directly question the ministers in charge at the time under former prime minister Margaret Thatcher if help was offered to India in order to secure a helicopter deal for the firm.
"On his Amritsar inquiry, instead of ordering the civil servant to investigate, why does the Prime Minister not just ask Lords Geoffrey Howe and Leon Brittan what they agreed with Margaret Thatcher and whether it had anything to do with the Westland helicopter deal at the time," Watson said in the House of Commons yesterday.
Cameron, who has instructed his Cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood to inquire into Britain's role, if any, in the 1984 operation, dismissed any link with defence deals as a "conspiracy theory".
"I fear that the honourable gentleman might have gone a conspiracy theory too fast on this one. Look, it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened, and that is why I have asked the Cabinet secretary to lead this review," Cameron said in the House of Commons.
"He will establish this urgently and establish the facts. The process is underway. I want it to be fast; I want it to find out the truth; and the findings will be made public," he said.
"I remember and will never forget my visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. It is one of the most beautiful and serene places anywhere on this planet, and what happened at Amritsar 30 years ago led to a tragic loss of life," Cameron said, reminiscing his last year's India visit.
"It remains a source of deep pain to Sikhs everywhere. Prime Minister Singh, in my view, was absolutely right to apologise for what has happened, and I completely understand the concerns that these papers raise, so let us wait for the outcome of the review by Jeremy Heywood," he said.
Cameron yesterday appeared to downplay the likelihood of an inquiry finding evidence that Britain was to blame for the operation.
"I do not want to prejudge the outcome, but I would note that, so far, it has not found any evidence to contradict the insistence by senior Indian army commanders responsible at the time that, on the responsibility for this, it was planned and carried out solely by the Indian army. It is important to put that, but we do need an inquiry, so that we can get to the bottom of this," he said.
Besides letters dating back to February 1984 that indicate Britain's Special Air Service (SAS) commanders may have been involved in training Indian officials for Operation Blue Star, the recently released documents by the National Archives have a series of correspondence linked to the lucrative sale of defence equipment to India.
A background briefing document describes India as "a large and growing market for both commercial and defence sales. British exports in 1983 exceeded 800 million pounds and since 1975 India has bought British defence equipment worth over 1.25 billion pounds."
Some of the letters exchanged between Thatcher and her trade and industry minister Norman Tebbit shed light on the role the British government had played in securing a deal for the Indian government to acquire 21 AgustaWestland helicopters using 50 million pounds of British aid money.
These aircraft were intended for the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) at the time and included a promise to acquire more later for VIP use, similar to the deal recently cancelled by the Indian government.
"The Minister of Overseas Development points out that there is a weak developmental case for the proposal; he is sceptical of the commercial case; but he notes that there are some important political considerations which have to be taken into account," reads a confidential note addressed to Thatcher.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140117/j ... tjd2PbNdEIPaul’s power
From Peter Ricketts, private secretary to the foreign secretary, to Coles, private secretary at 10 Downing Street on January 19, 1984: “Dr (Seyid) Muhammad has been High Commissioner since September 1980. He will depart on 12 February. Although Dr Muhammad’s contribution to the development of India-British relations has been limited (and somewhat overshadowed by the private efforts of Mr Swraj Paul), relations with India during his time in London have been excellent.”
The assessment reflects a joke that had done the rounds then: Paul was the “higher commissioner”.
Karan M wrote:Haresh, fair points but the Khalistanis had undertaken a huge reign of terror throughout Punjab. So a military response was all but inevitable.
Hindus, were targeted en masse. So were Sikhs who were deemed as not being pro Khalistan. I grew up in that era and remember trucks/buses being stopped and Hindus being massacred every other day. It was a pretty bad time. Also, the Golden Temple was fortified with the help of a disgruntled ex IA General and Bhindranwale had taken to walking around with an arrow in his hand, and rumors were rife that he and his folks were going to deify him as a version of the revered Guru
He was not going to walk out with any delegation talking to him or otherwise.
Granted a direct assault was not the best idea, perhaps a siege would have worked better. But its 20/20.
Also, when the IA entered the temple, reports noted they found many captives & the details were purposely hidden/ not spread around, to prevent further deterioration of the communal situation.
I would take a lot of the claims about massacres etc that occurred with a pinch of salt.
Basically, the Khalistanis had free space to conduct their Propaganda, with the willing assistance of many western "academics", HR "agencies" and others. And the ham handed Indian establishment did not do enough to counter the narrative.
A constant sense of victimhood, an inflated list of claims re: their success etc is a constant in their claims. They neither admit nor take any cognizance of how they brutalized all others in their pursuit of power. Many folks noted that they were so drunk with power that their depredations became so extreme that finally the public started supporting the SecFor.
chaanakya wrote:Of course they were shot by Khalistani Militants who had help up civilian hostages and did not allow them to leave despite Army Announcement
There were two other things that made the Thugs particularly unpleasant. One was the scale of their killing: Sleeman’s grandson estimated that over the centuries they had committed more than one million murders. (More realistic estimates now put the figure at somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000.) One single Thug named Buhram apparently confessed to more than 900 murders.
Moreover, Sleeman said, their crimes were not simply murders, they were acts of devotion to the goddess Kali, the many-armed, black-faced Hindu goddess of death and destruction, who wore a necklace of severed heads. She fed off the blood of their victims. To compound the litany of horror, Sleeman claimed that some Thug gangs were actively protected by local princes in return for a share of their spoils.
ne can see exactly why Sleeman’s writings caught the imagination of the British. In the fervid atmosphere of the evangelical 1830s, the Thugs became a byword for the dark, fascinating strangeness of the East – of the evils and moral redundancy of Hinduism, and the corruptness of the Indian ruling class. In 1839, Confessions of a Thug, a now unreadable Gothic novel by another former Indian hand, Philip Meadows Taylor, which drew closely on Sleeman’s writings, became an instant bestseller. Queen Victoria was apparently a fan.
One striking thing about these early accounts was that they retained a sliver of almost admiring fascination for the Thugs: Sleeman described them as remorseless killers but loyal and devoted family men. One gang leader, Feringhea, was portrayed as a prince among Thugs, irresistibly attractive and dangerous. Meadows Taylor based his protagonist on Feringhea, having him describe his life as a Thug in a tone of pride as well as horror.
The extent to which these stories penetrated Victorian Britain can be seen in the way that a series of garrottings and muggings in London in the 1860s conjured a widespread and entirely unjustified panic that Thugs had arrived in Britain. Sinister Indian cults began to turn up in other novels, for example in Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone.
Over subsequent decades the word gradually lost its Eastern connotations. Now and again, though, the old colonial meaning would reassert itself: in the 1939 film Gunga Din, where the Thugs appeared as monstrous religious fanatics and rebels against the Raj; in John Masters’ 1959 novel, The Deceivers, based on the character and writings of Sleeman; and in the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where they were a crazed underground death cult bent on world domination through human sacrifice. The Indian government deemed the script so racist, it refused to allow filming in India. It was shot in Sri Lanka instead.
This write up is so darn racist and full of stupid colonial assumptions which clearly have not changed though Britain is turning into a dump and India is cleaning up the dump that British made when they were in India.In Hindustani “thug” originally meant not murderer, but trickster or con man. It was undeniable that they had appeared at a moment when the East India Company, then ruling large parts of India in the name of the British government, had been very keen to find justifications for its continued and ever-extending presence in India, and that their lurid story perfectly illustrated why India needed the British and their civilising influence.
Secrets held for 400 years! I wonder what these files hold 
600,000 dossiersThe foreign ministry only publicly admitted the existence of the so-called "special collection" of some 600,000 dossiers in 2011, when an historian came across a 45-year-old memo that referred to it.
Must have been ancestors of Sir Humphrey Appleby 
Northern Ireland Christians force cancellation of comedy based on Bible
Play is pulled from schedule of Newtownabbey theatre after calls for ban from DUP politicians
Christians have forced the cancellation of play at a Northern Ireland theatre because it supposedly mocks the Bible, it has emerged.
The irreverent comedy The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged) has been pulled from the schedule of the Theatre at the Mill in Newtownabbey on the northern outskirts of Belfast.
Evangelical Christian politicians from the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) called for the play to be banned from the theatre, which is run by unionist-dominated Newtownabbey borough council.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company was due to start its latest UK tour by presenting the show at the venue in Co Antrim on 29 and 30 January.
But the Theatre at the Mill confirmed on Thursday that the two planned performances had been cancelled and said refunds would be available from its box office.
The Democratic Unionist councillor Billy Ball had called for the play to be banned because it would cause offence to Christians.
"For Christians, the Bible is the infallible word of God and it's not something to be made fun of. These people are treating something sacred with irreverence and disrespect," he said.
But the theatre group behind the production pointed out that they had taken the show to Jerusalem recently and had had no problems staging it, nor were there any protests from the Israeli authorities.
Before the cancellation on Thursday, Dave Naylor, the play's producer, had said: "Maybe Councillor Ball should come and see our show before denouncing it as unholy. But he'd better be quick as all his comments have done is increase ticket sales."
The drama company's production poses questions in the play such as: "Did Adam and Eve have navels? Did Moses really look like Charlton Heston?"
In its promotion for the play, the company adds: "Whether you are Catholic or Protestant, Muslim or Jew, atheist or Jedi, you will be tickled by the RSC's romp through old-time religion."
The evangelical Christian wing of the DUP has a long history of trying to ban works of art, films, exhibitions and dramas that it regards as blasphemous or offensive. DUP-controlled councils have banned Monty Python's Life of Brian and even barred the Electric Light Orchestra from playing a concert in a Ballymena-council-controlled leisure centre because the band were staging the gig on a Sunday.
The DUP also pioneered protests against the first sex shops to open in Northern Ireland during the 1980s. Outside one sex shop that had opened in the future first minister Peter Robinson's East Belfast constituency, DUP activists held up placards calling on passing motorists to "bump your horn for decency".
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... CMP=twt_gu
The UK media is in full overdrive in tarnishing India. The Daily Mail and other tabloids have on average 3 stories per week, sometimes more that show India in a bad light. The stories of rape appear regularly. The recent gang rape of a tribal woman was reported as being "ordered by a court", they did not mention that it was a panchayat kangaroo court. The great british public believes that this is an official court.panduranghari wrote:This write up is so darn racist and full of stupid colonial assumptions which clearly have not changed though Britain is turning into a dump and India is cleaning up the dump that British made when they were in India.
Haresh, you may want to ponder this situation a bit more. The terrorists were trained in Pakistan. How could they have been organized by Congress? Or are you saying that Indira Gandhi whose administration was in power when India broke Pakistan into two, was actually a friend of Pakistan? These two events seem hard to reconcile.Haresh wrote:I remember the massacres of Hindu bus passengers as well, people being dragged off buses and murdered. .....
In my experience it hasn't poisoned relations between the Sikh and Hindu communities in the UK (so have the Hindus forgiven, yet the Sikhs hang on?). I always point out to any khalistani's I may meet, that the massacres were instigated, organised and carried out by congress.
.Vivek wrote:The terrorists were trained in Pakistan.
I don't think most Hindus have any anger whatsoever towards the Sikhs. If the Sikhs are still carrying misplaced anger towards the Hindus, then only the truth (about the whole cast of terrorist states) can wash the anger out. There is as usual a total lack of effort from the government in educating the public and directing the anger to the appropriate cast of characters (countries).The Sikhs need to forgive the Hindus and the Hindus need to forgive the Sikhs
Vice-chancellors of British universities have blamed the David Cameron government’s immigration policy and the accompanying rhetoric for a major drop in the number of “extremely important” Indian students coming to British universities. ( and who are the major beneficiaries??)
Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia and a leading figure in the discourse on international students and the government's student visa policy, told HT today that he was “deeply concerned” by the latest figures that showed the major drop of Indian students.
“I am deeply concerned by the latest figures but, regrettably, not at all surprised; the words of a Home Secretary spoken in the House of Commons take only seconds to reach the newspapers of India and have the potential to do untold damage to long-established and cherished relationships”, he said.
I don't think it is wise to generalise like this.rgsrini wrote: If the Sikhs are still carrying misplaced anger towards the Hindus
+1Vivek K wrote:Haresh, that is very common. Hindus and Sikhs are brothers. We need the brotherhood to grow again.
Well that explains why the UK's advice was not utilized.rgsrini wrote:^^UK was on of the terrorist states, fanning the flames of Khalistan, training the terrorists and arming them. I suspect that if UK had offered advise to India, it may be to misguide India and also understand India's strategies (to pass on to the terrorists) , and to ensure that India fails. Sorry! it is not easy to trust the UK, considering the history.
Good stuff and hope it continues. I think the British and Aussie education systems are the biggest ripoffs. Charge phirst world prices for so-so education and then dont even permit students (mostly) to recoup their expenses by working locally in proper jobs for an extended period (as they have limited work visas and all sorts of issues in granting them).chaanakya wrote:Let us talk what is really hurting them rather then dead Khalistanis
Drop in Indian students: British VC hits out at visa policy
Vice-chancellors of British universities have blamed the David Cameron government’s immigration policy and the accompanying rhetoric for a major drop in the number of “extremely important” Indian students coming to British universities. ( and who are the major beneficiaries??)
Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia and a leading figure in the discourse on international students and the government's student visa policy, told HT today that he was “deeply concerned” by the latest figures that showed the major drop of Indian students.
“I am deeply concerned by the latest figures but, regrettably, not at all surprised; the words of a Home Secretary spoken in the House of Commons take only seconds to reach the newspapers of India and have the potential to do untold damage to long-established and cherished relationships”, he said.
Well, judging by their human output (I mean by the students who studied there) they don't come across as anything special versus even some of the Tier 2 Indian ones (at least in the non science areas, like Business). At best, they offer bragging rights. In engg., the US schools appear to be better funded & upto date. E&E in one US school I know, was hard. Another guy who studied (well) in a similar program in UK is not that well versed.matrimc wrote:Karan: Some Aussie and most UK instis are quite good, IMHO.