Indo-UK News and Discussion - April 2013

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 14 May 2014 11:07

Jhujar wrote:
Haresh wrote: I have never heard of that.
They have plenty of non-white staff at Kew where the National Archives are located.
I think Kaushal Guru was removed, stopped from studying few papers regarding the Brit colonization of India.

They dont do it very obviously. But the first line of defence is between UK academics or non-Uk academics. Second, relevance of your research area, ityadi. There are a thousand methods of obstructing someone if they want to. Usually they are very protective of anything they consider - not surprisingly - to be potentially affecting relations with "friendly countries" - euphemism taken to mean that there are skeletons HMG doesnt want to uncover in public. Exact same language used by GOI. Then again they will clamp down on anyone excavating leads to trails of destruction of evidence/records etc.

Haresh · Post by **Haresh** » 14 May 2014 13:02

brihaspati,

I do recall seeing something on BR about Colonial records in Kenya being disposed of, and orders being issued that the documents were only to be handled by British citizens of "european heritage"

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 14 May 2014 14:58

^^^ yes, the old 'awkward silence' if the topic of imperial repression is raised...

btw - recently a bbc programme on the EIC was very forthright in the central role of the EIC in precipitating famine and disaster in bengal shortly after clive's ascendency, no sugar coating of the devastation caused and no attempts to justify it - fingers pointed very definitely at the power structures. makes a good change

also, a new action series is in production about an english merchant who is trying to open up in india in the 1700's who is up against the big bad evil EIC who are being portrayed as a cross between the CIA/Spectre/Mafia/Opus Dei/ityaadi/uber villians. will keep an eye out for this and see how it portrays the past. it will be interesting to see how this evolves

Haresh · Post by **Haresh** » 14 May 2014 17:17

Haresh wrote:They totally lost contact with India and all things Indian when they went to Fiji. I think they are from the Bihar region.

Sorry that should be Trinidad, not Fiji.

Haresh · Post by **Haresh** » 14 May 2014 17:21

India election 2014: Narendra Modi is not the ogre he’s been made out to be
India’s opposition leader could yet unite Hindus, Muslims and anti-corruption campaigners

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... to-be.html

One of the comments is:

kumar >tedsanityville • an hour agoT

"These are the fears injected by the Congress party which hasn't worked till now.
rumour is that the Congress party is really planning large scale riots to displace Modi."

Do you think this would happen, would congress really instigate riots to discredit the man Modi?

Also is the politcal situation in India being discussed on BR? I haven't seen a thread.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 23 May 2014 12:01

Massive defeats for Labour and the Tories to the anti-EU UKIP party in local elections. Much ridiculed Nigel Farrage ,the "looney eyed" leader has scored historic victories in local elections.

Local elections 2014: Ukip makes major gains as Labour takes Tory flagship Hammersmith and Fulham
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 22318.html

The Tories and Labour alike were reeling today from a series of defeats at the hands of Ukip in early results from the local council elections.

Nigel Farage’s party shrugged off a campaign blighted by revelations over the views of some of its candidates to pick up seats in Conservative and Labour heartlands.

It scored stunning successes in Essex, gaining 11 seats in Basildon to end Tory control of its town hall, which Labour had hoped to win, and made steady gains in the nearby councils of Castle Point and Southend-on-Sea.

The party also had a decisive impact in Thurrock by picking up five council seats and depriving Labour of overall control. The result was a particular setback for Ed Miliband as the parliamentary constituency in the Essex town is a key target for Labour at next year’s general election.

Across the Thames estuary, the Conservatives were ousted from control of Maidstone in Kent following four Ukip gains.

Ukip also polled strongly in the South Yorkshire authority of Rotherham, once a Labour stronghold, where it won ten seats. The Ukip surge also thwarted Labour’s hopes of winning Swindon, where the Conservatives increased their majority, and Tamworth.

There was bad news as well for the Liberal Democrats who lost control of Portsmouth after Ukip gained six seats on the council.

Labour is expected to draw some comfort from results in London, where it has gained control of Hammersmith and Fulham, previously a flagship Tory authority, and is expected to win Croydon and Tower Hamlets.

Ukip director of communications Patrick O'Flynn said he believed the party would secure more than 100 council seats.

It is also expected to make huge gains in the results of elections to the European Parliament, which will be announced on Sunday.

Labour sources had indicated that the party might win 200 seats on a good night, but senior MP Emily Thornberry said she expected the figure to be “around 150”.

A senior Labour source acknowledged that Ukip's rise had “some impact” on Ed Miliband's party but claimed it was “looking as though there has been a big Tory/Lib Dem collapse”.

But there was criticism of Labour's performance from Eurosceptic MP Graham Stringer, who told the BBC: “We have not done as well as we should have done in both the presentation of our policies and the organisation of the campaign.”

Labour former minister David Lammy said he would have liked to see the party make gains in places like Swindon.

He claimed voters had been “swallowing” Ukip's message on immigration and Europe.

Mr Lammy told Sky News: “There's no doubt about it, Ukip are biting into parts of Labour's working-class vote.”

But Tory MPs Douglas Carswell, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Bone called for the Conservatives and Ukip to work together in 2015 to ensure a referendum on Europe.

Mr Rees-Mogg told the BBC: “In a first-past-the-post system, if they don't get

those votes into one pot, then both those sides end up losing.”

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 23 May 2014 12:07

The Modi factor syndrome what?

Local elections: Ukip delivers first tremors of political earthquake[/b

Local elections: Ukip delivers first tremors of political earthquake
Nigel Farage weakens Labour's grip in north as Tories lose control of flagship councils and Lib Dem vote collapses

Patrick Wintour, Nicholas Watt, Rowena Mason and Helen Pidd
theguardian.com, Friday 23 May 2014

Ukip has delivered the first tremors of the political earthquake promised by Nigel Farage as the party weakened Labour's grip in its northern heartlands and caused the Conservatives to lose control of at least eight flagship councils.

Labour pulled off coups by winning David Cameron's favourite London council, Hammersmith and Fulham, as well as Merton and Cambridge. But outside the capital, it struggled to make expected gains in key targets such as Swindon, Walsall, Tamworth and Portsmouth, while losing Thurrock to no overall control because of a surge in Ukip votes.

Farage also ate into Conservative strongholds, causing the party to lose control of eight councils, including Maidstone, Southend-on-Sea, Castle Point, Basildon and Brentwood – the constituency of the local government secretary, Eric Pickles.

By 7am on Friday, with more than 100 of the 172 councils up for election in England and Northern Ireland still to declare, the Tories had lost 102 seats, Labour had gained 94, the Lib Dems had lost 83, Ukip had gained 86, the Greens had gained one and other parties were up seven.

The results of the European parliament elections, which also took place on Thursday, will be announced on Sunday but the swell in votes for Ukip indicated it is likely to be a close-run contest with Labour for first place.

The biggest collapse in the share of the vote for the local elections appeared to be for the Liberal Democrats, who lost Portsmouth council and looked set to lose Kingston to no overall control.

Ukip did not appear to have broken through in London, where it was polling in single digits, but the party experienced a huge surge to more than a third of the vote across some wards in Essex and big cities including Birmingham and Hull, where it previously had little or no presence. In Rotherham, Ukip is the official opposition after winning 10 seats and ousting several prominent Labour councillors including the deputy leader of the council.

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, said it was a "very good night" as the party was now making an "imprint" in local government. He said the Ukip "fox" was now in the "Westminster hen house".
Wakeup call for Labour
Ed Miliband in Bloxwich Ed Miliband campaigning in Bloxwich leisure centre, Walsall. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The early results indicated Ed Miliband would face intense criticism over the next 48 hours, including over his personal performance and his appeal to working-class voters. The inquest is likely to focus on whether his campaign strategists realised early enough that Ukip posed a threat to Labour as much as to the Conservatives.

Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary and Labour election co-ordinator, insisted there were "grounds for optimism" in key target seats and that the party was well-placed to win the general election.

But the night was described as a wake-up call for the main political parties by John Healey, Labour MP for Wentworth and Dearne.

"People are angry. They are saying they aren't hearing enough of what they feel in what we politicians are saying," he said. "For me today was compounded when I was out knocking on doors and one man, a lifelong Labour voter, said to me: 'John, I'm voting for Ukip today. You all need a kicking.'"

In Labour target seats further south and east, such as Portsmouth, a strong Ukip vote was destroying the party's hopes of making more than 400 council gains.

The leader of the Labour group in Portsmouth, John Ferrett, said Ukip's performance was "causing mayhem". The party also suffered a major blow in a key election battleground after the Conservatives held on to Swindon council, days after Miliband embarrassingly failed to recognise the name of the party's group leader in the borough.

But the man in question, Jim Grant, insisted Miliband's gaffe had not had an impact on Labour's disappointing showing in the Wiltshire town.

"That's a big media event. I don't think it has affected what has happened here. I'm a big fan of Ed but we have all got to work harder to get our message across."

Labour had hoped that the council would at least slip into no overall control. In fact, the Tories ended up with 30 seats to Labour's 23 and the Lib Dems' four.

Both the Conservatives and Labour will have to think deeply about whether they can win back the Ukip vote, with some rightwing Tory backbenchers urging Cameron to think how they can reunite the centre-right through some form of Ukip-Tory pact.

The Labour MP Graham Stringer, a longstanding critic of party leaders, issued a savage attack on the quality of the Labour campaign, saying it was "unforgivably unprofessional", and asked why his aides had been unable to tell Miliband the price of bread.
Liberal Democrat wipeout
Clegg votes in Sheffield Nick Clegg on his way to vote in the elections in Sheffield. Photograph: John Giles/PA

The Lib Dems were also braced for a poor performance, in a sign of how the burden of pain is being shared across Westminster. The business secretary, Vince Cable, admitted it was going to be a difficult night for the junior party in the coalition.

He said the Lib Dems would take a "kicking" for being in government as he appeared to distance himself from Nick Clegg by saying the party leader had decided to focus the Lib Dem campaign on the EU. Speaking on Sky News, the business secretary said: "The party leader took the gamble of fighting a European election on the issue of Europe, which is a very unusual thing to do in the UK. We'll see."

Cable said that all the main parties would suffer poor results. But he added: "We are in government. We take a kicking for the things that government does that are unpopular. It does reflect on us."

He said he had not been comfortable about forming a coalition with the Tories. "We put personal preferences aside and deal with it professionally … We have done massive things in government. We have risen to the challenge."

One longstanding critic of Clegg, the former Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik, called for him to go as the very first results showed the party's vote had collapsed, even though it was holding some wards in Lib Dem constituencies in Birmingham and Redcar.

Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem international development minister, said Ukip's "stunning success" was a protest at the dissembling of the political class. She added: "We are so guarded and so on message that we have lost our humanity. We are the whipping boy of the coalition."
Tories look towards Newark byelection
David Cameron and his wife Samantha. David Cameron and his wife Samantha. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Cameron, once thought likely to face the most turbulent backbench response of the three party leaders, was increasingly confident that the Conservatives would not turn in on themselves, but would instead focus on winning the Newark byelection on 5 June, caused by the resignation of the former Tory MP Patrick Mercer, in an attempt to show that the Ukip bubble could be burst.

But the prime minister will have to endure the possibility that Ukip will be able to claim on Sunday night that it has achieved its main political objective of winning the poll in the European parliamentary elections.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 24 May 2014 06:20

Foot and Mouth disease hits Britain again! The deadly disease which seems to afflict in particular members of the British royal family has struck again in deadly fashion."Charlie Boy" while on a jaunt to the US put both feet in his mouth,comparing Russian pres.Putin with Hitler,forgetting his own family's true name,"Battenberg" and its intimate ties mitt der Fuhrer ja? Read on!

Russia Today hits back at Prince Charles' Putin-Hitler comparison: 'If anyone knows real Nazis it’s the Royal Family'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 26524.html

A Russian news programme has launched a scathing attack on the British Royal Family after Prince Charles compared Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine to those of Adolf Hitler during the Second World War.

The Kremlin-backed Russia Today (RT) suggested that the Royal Family should look at their own Nazi connections before disparaging the Russian leader.

Senior political correspondent Anissa Naouai said: “Russia has asked for an explanation although I'm not sure why because if anyone knows real Nazis it’s the Royal Family.”

The news anchor then proceeded to lead viewers through a somewhat bizarre family tree, highlighting links between the Windsors and Nazi figures.

Ms Naouai began with the wife of Edward VIII - the Queen’s uncle - saying that Wallis Simpson “hung out with Hitler”, before noting that the Duke of Edinburgh’s sister, Sophie, was married to an SS officer.

She then offered up photographs of Prince Harry dressed up as a Nazi while attending a fancy dress party in 2005 – a move that landed him in hot water back in the UK.

Ms Naouai conceded: “The Royal Family should take a look at their ties before Putin and Charles meet in a couple of weeks to commemorate defeating Nazis in World War Two. That could be awkward.”

The English-language news channel has been accused of peddling pro-Russian propaganda. Last month US Secretary of State John Kerry described it as a “propaganda bullhorn” over its coverage of the Ukraine crisis.

Prince Charles faced widespread criticism both at home and abroad after he reportedly said “and now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler” during a visit to Museum of Immigration in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Tuesday.

He made the remark to Marienne Ferguson, a former Polish war refugee who fled the Nazis.

The alleged comments follow Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, a move that was widely condemned by the West, who declared a referendum on absorbing the Black Sea peninsula illegitimate and illegal.

The Foreign Office said Thursday that one of its senior officials had met Russia's deputy ambassador, Alexander Kramarenko, who had sought an explanation of Charles's remarks.

Mr Kramarenko had earlier told a news conference: “If these words were truly spoken, then without doubt, they do not reflect well on the future British monarch.

“We view the use of the Western press by members of the British royal family to spread the propaganda campaign against Russia on a pressing issue - that is, the situation in Ukraine - as unacceptable, outrageous and low,” he said.

A spokesperson for Clarence House said it would not comment on private conversations but stressed: “The Prince of Wales would not seek to make a public political statement during a private conversation.”

The Prince is due to meet with President Putin next month to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014 ... ing-gaffes

Prince Charles's Putin and Hitler comparison is latest in string of gaffes
The prince has ruffled feathers in China, the US and the UAE in the past, creating headaches for his staff and diplomats alike

Caroline Davies
theguardian.com, Wednesday 21 May 2014

Prince Charles
Prince Charles's comments come just over a fortnight before he is due to meet Vladimir Putin at the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings. Photograph: Paul Chiasson/AP

Prince Charles's aides can hardly have expected camera crews camped outside Clarence House when they waved him off to Canada on the latest of his official overseas tours.

But as their boss's unguarded remarks to a Jewish museum volunteer in Halifax, Nova Scotia - in which he allegedly compared the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to Adolf Hitler - reverberated on Wednesday, staff 3,000 miles away at his London residence were busy firefighting.

At such times, and there have been several in the 45 years since his Caernarfon investiture as Prince of Wales, the stock response is: "We do not comment on private conversations."

Given the inflammatory nature of his perceived wading into such a sensitive international issue, however, aides seemed compelled to further clarify: "But we would like to stress that the Prince of Wales would not seek to make a public political statement during a private conversation."

And there's the rub. The prince may not seek to, but he has history when it comes to diplomatic gaffes.

When, on his way back from witnessing the 1997 Hong Kong handover, he described China's ageing leaders "appalling old waxworks", he risked undoing all the benefit imbued by his mother's historic and hugely successful state visit to the People's Republic a decade earlier.

His 3,000-word handwritten dispatch, entitled The Great Chinese Takeaway, was written on the plane and circulated to friends. It exposed his views on the "ridiculous rigmarole" and "awful Soviet-style display" of goose-stepping Chinese soldiers. For good measure, he also bemoaned his uncomfortable club class seat on the British Airways 747 transporting the British contingent back to the UK, and described his indignation at discovering that others, including Edward Heath, Douglas Hurd and Robin Cook were "ensconced in First Class immediately below us".

"Such is the end of Empire," he lamented.

These private views inevitably found their way into the public domain courtesy of a Sunday newspaper in 2006, just days after the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, made a state visit to Britain. Three months later, at the opening of a new Madame Tussauds in Shanghai, the lack of a waxwork Charles from the happy royal group was conspicious.

The Halifax incident highlights the vexed question of just how private the prince's conversations are on official engagements representing the British government.

He was shown around the Museum of Immigration in Halifax by Marienne Ferguson, 78, who told him how she fled to Canada with her family shortly before the Nazis annexed Gdansk in 1939. After the meeting she reportedly said: "The prince said: 'And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.'"

Later she expressed surprise that such a "little remark" had made "such a big uproar". Past experience alone should have taught the prince that such comments rarely remain private, and as future monarch great care must be taken.

The royal correspondents' lot is to trail in the wake of the heir to the throne as he gladhands his way around the planet, and access to those he has just spoken to is usually facilitated. Picking up such stories is the bread-and-butter of royal tour coverage, for which journalists pay hefty prices for airfares and hotels to provide the oxygen of publicity necessary to keep the institution of royalty afloat.

In the United Arab Emirates in 2007, it was McDonald's that attracted the prince's ire, as he told a nutritionist at a diabetes centre that banning the fast food outlets was "key". The company registered its disappointment, adding that other royals had "probably got a more up-to-date picture of us".

In 2010 he attracted criticism for expressing strong opinions on a multimillion-pound plan for Chelsea Barracks in London, telling the prime minister of Qatar, who was chair of the developers, that his heart sank when he saw Lord Rogers' modernist glass and steel design. It was unhelpful timing, with Qatar about to provide the UK with more than 20% of its gas needs, and the Queen due to open a new liquified natural gas terminal in south Wales.

The prince's 2004 visit to Washington was his first to the US in seven years. The long gap, the Guardian was informed by a source at the time, was on the advice of the Foreign Office as he was known to have strong pro-Palestinian views and had been privately critical of US policy in the Middle East conflict.

The Queen has mastered the art of small talk. "Have you come far?' and "what do you do?' are staples. No one should expect this crusader prince to confine himself to inanity, but judgment is still called for.

Next month, he and Putin will both be in France along with Allied leaders including the Queen to commemorate the 70th anniversay of the D-day landings. If the two were due to meet, it seems unlikely now. The timing of his remarks was badly chosen, according to the Russian daily Moskovsy Komsomolets. They risked "triggering an international scandal and complicating the already clouded relations between Great Britain and Russia," it wrote.

panduranghari · Post by **panduranghari** » 26 May 2014 03:37

Lalmohan wrote:^^^ yes, the old 'awkward silence' if the topic of imperial repression is raised...

btw - recently a bbc programme on the EIC was very forthright in the central role of the EIC in precipitating famine and disaster in bengal shortly after clive's ascendency, no sugar coating of the devastation caused and no attempts to justify it - fingers pointed very definitely at the power structures. makes a good change

also, a new action series is in production about an english merchant who is trying to open up in india in the 1700's who is up against the big bad evil EIC who are being portrayed as a cross between the CIA/Spectre/Mafia/Opus Dei/ityaadi/uber villians. will keep an eye out for this and see how it portrays the past. it will be interesting to see how this evolves

Lalmullah

If you watch it again, you will see it differently. They blamed a 'few' evangelicals,a 'few' bad businessmen and a'few' rotten soldiers. The documentary was incorrect portrayal of the truth.

Please spend some time and read this

http://www.infinityfoundation.com/manda ... ameset.htm

A small bit I quote here

All this British archival material (most of which is presented or referred to in the Collected Writings) mostly dwells on certain aspects of India as seen and understood then by the British. The material falls broadly within three areas:

The first relates to descriptions of India, its physical landscape, the manners of its people in certain regions, their public life, festivals, cultural life and institutions, the nature and extent of Indian agricultural and industrial production, and Indian sciences and technologies.

The second pertains to the continuing British-Indian encounter, especially from around the British occupation of Arcot in 1748 to about 1858. Then the encounter is again visible from about 1875, and with its high and low spots, continues till 1947 when India got divided into India and Pakistan, and the British-created institutions and functions were taken over by their own governments.

The third begins with the unfolding of British designs and policy pertaining to India in Britain in the 1680s and thereafter, and their visible implementation and imposition on India from around 1750. The origins of these designs and policies remain mainly in Britain till the very end, while their implementation is in India, and in the areas governed in India's name from the China seas in the East to St. Helena in the West.

It would be helpful at this stage to know how this huge and very detailed archival record was indeed created. For this purpose, a little background relating to the governance of India during English colonial rule is absolutely necessary.

It is conventional doctrine (taught in most history books) that from 1600 to around 1748 the British East India Company (E.I.Co.) established itself largely in the coastal towns and cities of India, declared these places as fort towns and called them factories, i.e. store houses for trade, with the requisite military establishments. From 1748, the E.I.Co. is said to have gradually involved itself in the conquering of India and till 1858 at least was considered to be solely responsible for the plunder and violence associated with the conquest. We are further told that it is only because the British were disturbed by the company's misrule, which resulted in the great Indian Mutiny of 1857-58 - that they decided to establish direct rule in India and though governance of India was placed under the charge of a cabinet minister, named the secretary of state for India, an arrangement that eventually continued till 1947.

It is true that an E.I.Co. was established in Britain through the grant of a charter in 1600, and that it had adventurer plunderers in its ranks. But, according to Dharampal, it altogether functioned on its own. From the beginning, company had the full support of British naval forces expansion drive, and often of British state military forces as well. Also, from the beginning, the E.I.Co. contributed substantial sums (in millions of pounds sterling) to the British government treasury and also advanced amounts at low interest to the British state. From time to time, it received directions from state authorities and at times certain of its affairs were under the charge of British naval commanders who received instructions directly from the British King or the British Admiralty. It is these directions and communications that comprise the earlier archival records.

One such major case involving official supervision was the final British encounter with Admiral Kanohji Angrey of Maharashtra around 1754. The British state felt that he was a great challenge to British expansion and had to be somehow eliminated. There would have been scores of such instances between when the E.I.Co. originated and 1750, when it began to assume the role of a conqueror and sovereign.

From 1750 onwards, more and more instructions from the British were conveyed through various channels to the E.I.Co. After the British domination of Bengal from 1757 onwards, Robert Clive - a 'heaven born General' according to Lord Chatham, virtual ruler of the British then - wrote to Britain that India could only be governed directly by the British state and not any company. This and other similar advice was deliberated up some years leading to the Regulating Act of 1773 by which British state appointed the Governor General and his Council, and 11 years later, to the 1784 Act, which established a Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India, with a President and 6 members, one of whom in the early stages was none other than the British Prime Minister. The Commissioners then were the rulers of India. All instructions of any kind to any department of state in India, or to its three Presidencies, were cleared by them in detail (word by word, comma by comma).

Once these were final, the job of the Court of the E.I. Co. was to send these to India under the signature of their Chairman and members. Besides, a separate channel of communication was opened between the President of the Board of Commissioners and the British Governor General in India (as also with the Governors of the Presidencies), which at times even over-rode certain formal instructions conveyed through the company. The instructions in certain departments were prepared by the Board of Commissioners themselves, the signature of the Chairman of the Company obtained, and the matter sent to India from the Board's office itself. It is this arrangement, which prevailed till 1858. The change in 1858 was in fact only a change in nomenclature: the President of the Board was now the Secretary of State for India. (Thus, the E.I.Co. as such became wholly redundant in the ruling of India, or areas in its vicinity i.e., from the China seas to St. Helena, from 1813 onwards, if not from much earlier. According to Dharampal, this clarification needs to sink deep not only into Indian minds, but, into the minds of the world historical community too).

Thus, details of every occurrence in India, which came to the notice of British authority had to be communicated, at least till 1858, to London in order to obtain instructions or the approval of London on the individual issue. The British archival record therefore informs us of each and every such event.

So, if one wanted to have knowledge in any detail of the society and life of India before British dominance, the obvious thing to do was to carefully peruse these British-generated archives. This Dharampal now did. He did not have much of an income. There was also a family to support. But notwithstanding all this, he became a regular visitor to the India Office and the British Museum. Photocopying required money. Oftentimes, old manuscripts could not be photocopied. So he copied them in long hand, page after page, millions of words, day after day. Thereafter, he would have the copied notes typed. He thus retrieved and accumulated thousands of pages of information from the archival record. When he returned to India, his most prized possession was these notes, which filled several large trunks and suitcases.

It is not that others had not consulted these very records before. Dozens had. They missed the overall picture largely because they saw the material in fragments, for a particular piece of research, over a month or a year or two. Dharampal, in contrast, gave it the benefit of decades. His mind retained ever detail of what he read with uncanny sharpness. That is how eventually he got the whole picture.

This picture that emerged from the total archival record was nothing short of stunning. Contrary to what millions of us were taught in our school text-books, it indicated the existence functioning society, extremely competent in the arts and science of its day. Its interactive grasp over its immediate natural environment was undisputed; in fact, it demanded praise. This reflected in both agricultural and industrial production. We know today that till around 1750, together with the Chinese, our areas were producing some 73% of the total world industrial production, and even till 1830, what both these economies produced still amounted to 60% of world industrial production. Even a moderately fertile area like that of Chengalpattu (Tamilnadu) our paddy production in a substantial area of its lands around 1760-70 amounted to some 5-6 tons per hectare, which equals the production of paddy per hectare in present day Japan - the current world high. A vast educational set-up -- based on a school in every village - looked after the requirements of learning of masses of young people.

Did your blood not boil when that Bengali teacher was so condescending of Indic languages but was going gaga about Englees? Even my wife who rarely bothers expressing opinions, was shocked and really really annoyed about what she said.

That essay quoted needs to be drilled into our heads through every history text book.

pankajs · Post by **pankajs** » 30 May 2014 18:16

The Independent ‏@Independent 1h

Posted in a park in Tower Hamlets, London http://ind.pn/1tWmm3j pic.twitter.com/mxnk55wK2a

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 02 Jun 2014 07:36

Britain Lurches

gunjur · Post by **gunjur** » 02 Jun 2014 10:26

Apologies if already posted.

Drugs? Prostitution? They Are Part of GDP Too, U.K. Says

Sex please — we're British.

Britain's Office of National Statistics said prostitution and the import, manufacture and consumption of illegal drugs will be counted when making the government's quarterly calculations of gross domestic product.

The statistics agency said Friday some of these activities are legal in certain European Union countries, and comparable figures are needed. All member states need the same standard because they are used to assess a member state's contribution to the EU budget.

"As economies develop and evolve, so do the statistics we use to measure them," said Joe Grice, the ONS's chief economic adviser. "These improvements are going on across the world and we are working with our partners in Europe and the wider world on the same agenda."

At the moment, the only illegal activities included in GDP are estimates on alcohol and tobacco smuggling.

The ONS said that the new estimates would add approximately 10 billion pounds ($16.7 billion) to the level of GDP in 2009. That said, it remains a very small portion of Britain's overall GDP, which now stands at 1.5 trillion pounds.

Nonetheless, calculations may prove challenging. To measure prostitution, statisticians will have to tabulate up the value of things like brothel rental, condom sales, makeup and the clothing of sex workers.

For illegal drugs, the ONS will examine production and sales of crack cocaine, powder cocaine, heroin, cannabis, ecstasy and amphetamines. Growing drugs will be classed as "production," buying them for home use, "expenditure," while selling them as "income".

So now brits are "pimping up" their economy in such a manner. Very sad day for "white man's civilizational burden" whereby "opening" to others so as to stand up.

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 02 Jun 2014 12:37

Panduranghari - thx, I only saw last 20 mins so missed the parts you refer to
Will try to watch it again

Haresh · Post by **Haresh** » 02 Jun 2014 14:57

abhishek_sharma wrote:Britain Lurches

This lurch to the Right is happening throughout the world.
The political left have ideas which quite frankly are wishy washy pie in the sky nonsense.
The left is led by people who are a privilaged elite.

I do not know a great deal about Indian politics and I would never get actively involved.
However I am glad Mr Modi is the PM. The few Congress types I have met were, over privilaged, arrogant, ignorant, not very intelligent snobs with a sense of entitlement. They all professed to be "socialists" and "Left leaning", they were members of a incompetent elite, totally removed from the lives of ordinary people. So convinced that they had all the big ideas and were so clever and morally superior. They had never done a days work in their lazy lives and had got jobs based on their families connections. Their incompetence and stupidity was regularly covered up

Just like British and european and American left wingers/liberals.

David Milliband got on very well with Rahul Gandhi when he visited India. They are just like each other, never done a real days work in thier lives, privilaged and rich. The Millibands each live in a house worth £1.5 million. How can someone like that know what the ordinary worker feels like?

I heard the jibe made by mani shanker ayier regarding Mr Modi being a tea seller. What a snob selling tea is just a business, Mr Modi ran a business and he has done well. What has ms ayer ever done?
Also I have read ms ayer made comments to the effect "in the USA freedom means the right to be rude to your social superiors" I hate snobs with a passion.

What do rahul gandhi and his sister priyanka actually do for a living, what are their academic qualifications?

The lurch to the right will continue, people are fed up with the sanctamoniuos BS from the left.

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 02 Jun 2014 22:38

Yes but right of center is different at different places. In India it is mostly cultural but in Europe it is something else - mass killing under swastik symbol for example by hitler.

On the other hand, lurching to the right is treated with highest philosophical and rhetorical literature, without wondering about how can this occur in first world countries, where are moral keepers and NGOs, is Christian majority really secular, is the rise of right - coincidentally- occurring with other factors like economic problems and push towards Russia, and so on and so forth.

However sky would fall only in India if the so called right makes a single step that goes against their own calculations and judged as not bad enough only.

Shreeman · Post by **Shreeman** » 04 Jun 2014 09:50

hooman rights , on eve of june 4, 25th of all things.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 11 Jun 2014 19:05

Matthew Norman
Tuesday 10 June 2014
What precisely are 'British values'?
If they are the same as the Coalition’s, does that mean CCTV cameras in class and lessons in bashing the poor?

Human existence is plagued with questions of such opacity that no amount of time and effort can penetrate them. Some are cosmological (what came before the Big Bang?) and some theological (who made God?), while other shrivelled old chestnuts lie at the weightier end of the inquisitive spectrum. What was Alf Ramsey thinking, in the 1970 World Cup quarter final, when he took Bobby Charlton off against West Germany? And if it truly is all about nature rather than nurture, as I have asked Profs Steve Jones and Richard Dawkins time and again without reply, how in the name of sanity did we go from Sigmund, via Clement, to Matthew Freud in only three generations?

Of all the myriad unanswerables that torment the curious mind, however, few feel as far out of reach as this. What, beyond possession of a passport, does it mean to be British? Or put another way, what precisely are “British values”? The question has been debated for decades in a variety of contexts, but if anyone ever offered a convincing reply it evaded me.

So it is with an uncontainable sense of excitement that we may at last anticipate the resolution of the riddle. The Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is presumably about to educate us. In a typically peremptory response to Ofsted’s report about the alleged “Trojan Horse” infiltration of Birmingham schools by Islamists, Govey has mandated the proselytising of “British values” in every primary and secondary school. Where until now it was a requirement that “British values” be respected, they will henceforth be actively promoted.

Well, it sounds splendid enough on first hearing, this notion of curtailing the spread of rigid religious orthodoxy with a little nattering about tolerance and decency and fair play, and whatever other shards of 1950s Boy’s Own idealism constitute “Britishness” in the minds of Mr Gove and his cabinet colleagues. Yet rigorous commitment to the truth will compel him to balance all the amorphous blethering with specific reference to what modern British values actually appear, on the hard evidence, to be.

As one of our most influential surviving neo-conservatives - a fervent supporter of the neo-colonial wars embarked on by his idol Mr Tony Blair - Govey regards the invasion of sovereign Muslim states, the destruction of their infrastructures and the slaughter of their civilians as a moral imperative – under the sanitising banner of collateral damage. Seldom bashful when it comes to conflating his personal beliefs with a curriculum, will he want post-imperial aggression in Muslim lands to be taught to Muslim students as a British value?

Mr Gove has spent these last four years eloquently defending the government drive to restrict welfare spending in response to the economic catastrophe. If this belief that it is the severely disabled who should pay the price for the sins of reckless, overprotected bankers is a British value, will a celebration of this reverse Robin Hoodery be chalked up on Birmingham blackboards? Will a picture of those spikes erected in the doorway of a plush London apartment block, to keep the homeless from resting there, feature in the British Values Primer, alongside photographs of vans driving through London suburbs bearing placards inviting immigrants to go home?

If one core British value has typified the last decade above all others, it is of course blanket faith in blanket surveillance. Rather than try to enthuse students about state-sponsored snooping on digital communications, the way to express this value and prepare children for adult life would be to put CCTV cameras and microphones in every classroom and playground.

Ultimately, in so far as the phrase means anything, the story of “British values” over the last 35 years is of how immaculately they have coalesced, politically and culturally, with American values. The primacy of individualism over collectivism, the supremacy of the barely tempered free market over responsible capitalism, the erosion of workers’ rights and exponential increase in the wealth of the wealthiest, greedy and corrupt politicians, and the torture or collusion in torture of those presumed to be innocent. Britain has gazed longingly across the Atlantic and been bedazzled by the very worst of the United States.

The very best of it, which inevitably has been blithely ignored, lies in the Constitution. The First Amendment not only guarantees freedom of speech and religion. By formally ring-fencing the state from religion, it effectively forbids prayer or any other form of religious partisanship in state schools. Even though none of the ‘Trojan Horse’ schools were faith-based, it is clear that importing the First Amendment is the simplest solution to this problem. If Mr Gove legislated to outlaw religious affiliation, whatever the religion, from state education, he would take a useful first step towards resolving the mystery by giving us one tangible British value to be proud of.

For football enthusiasts,what indeed was Sir Alf thinking,or what was he smoking when he took off Bobby Charlton,England's star player and goal scorer,early in the second half (like taking Pele or Maradona off!) when England were 2-0 up against Germany in the Mexico World Cup.Germany equalised in the last minute and won in extra time.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 12 Jun 2014 06:26

"BRITISH VALUES"

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 12 Jun 2014 18:16

abhishek_sharma wrote:"BRITISH VALUES"

Reminds of abuse of Hinduism within USA classrooms, where Hindu kinds just have to deal with it. The weird course materials is actually authorized so teaching that would be actually education.

Rony · Post by **Rony** » 14 Jun 2014 23:47

Remembering India’s Forgotten Holocaust

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 15 Jun 2014 03:17

The establishment doing everything possible to derail Scottish Independence.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 35799.html
Scottish independence campaigner claims MI5 is leading dirty tricks campaign

A veteran campaigner for Scottish independence has accused so-called cybernats who subjected author JK Rowling to a tirade of internet abuse of “opening the door” to a possible MI5 dirty tricks campaign to scupper a Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum.

Former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars claimed it was “naïve” to think that the security forces were not involved in seeking to influence the outcome of September’s ballot which could see the break-up of the UK.

He told The Independent that he was personally aware of one secret agent having arrived in Glasgow.

Mr Sillars said that those who posted the abusive comments – including one sent from a hacked charity Twitter feed - viciously lambasting Ms Rowling for her £1m donation to pro-union Better Together this week had meant to harm the independence cause. “I don’t know who did. Somebody did it that is inimical to the yes campaign,” he said.

This week a special advisor to First Minister Alex Salmond was forced to apologise after he made false claims about a mother-of-two who spoke at a Better Together rally. Clare Lally was later targeted by what she described as “keyboard warriors” who attacked her on social media.

In an open letter to cybernats, whom he described as “useful idiots” – the phrase deployed by Lenin to describe propagandists for a cause they did not understand - Mr Sillars said that online smears and insults had delivered a publicity coup for supporters of the status quo.

“Are you so naive, that you never think that perhaps MI5 and special branch are taking a role in this campaign? As their function is protection of the British State, they would not be doing their jobs if they were not. There was, and probably still is, a section in MI5 that dealt with the Scottish national movement, headed by Stella Rimington, who became Director General in 1992, and is now Dame Stella,” he wrote.

Mr Sillars also claimed that during the failed 1979 devolution vote, the US Consul in Edinburgh was “from the CIA stable”.

He added: “That was for a weak assembly, do you think that they will not be more engaged now that independence is on the agenda? Has it ever crossed your mind that by conducting a campaign of abuse, which plays into the hands of the No media, you are opening the Yes side to a dirty tricks campaign?”

Speaking later, Mr Sillars, who said he had worked with the security services during his political career, said: ”I know there was an MI5 guy arrived in Glasgow. I won’t tell you how or why I know it. I know when he came.”

He added that continuing internet abuse meant: “You open the door to MI5 to take a role that we wouldn’t know about and wouldn’t be able to identify.”

A spokesperson for Yes Scotland said: ‘We are not aware of the matters Mr Sillars refers to, and these are his own views.”

Yesterday First Minister Alex Salmond said pro-union comments made by Hillary Clinton which mirrored those of President Obama would boost the Yes vote

Mrs Clinton, a former US Secretary of State told BBC2’s Newsnight: “I would hate to have you lose Scotland” describing a split from Westminster as a “loss for both sides”.

Mr Salmond said: "I suspect that insofar as it is influential, it is helpful to the Yes side.

"I don't know if Hillary or the president of the United States are familiar with the Scottish word thrawn. It doesn't mean stubborn, it basically means Scots don't like being told what to do.”

A Better Together spokesperson said: "The paranoia of the nationalists is reaching ridiculous levels now. They should stop blaming everybody else for their failing campaign."

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 15 Jun 2014 15:15

The Orwellian state is with us alive and kicking.

Secret prisons, drone bases, surveillance stations, offices where extraordinary rendition is planned: Trevor Paglen takes pictures of the places that the American and British governments don’t want you to know even exist

Secret state: Trevor Paglen documents the hidden world of governmental surveillance, from drone bases to "black sites"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 36376.html

As anyone who has worked there knows, Kabul is a tough place, redeemed by the charm of the people and the abundance of cheap taxis. But Trevor Paglen had trouble finding a taxi driver willing and able to take him where he wanted to go: north-east out of the city along an old back road reputed to be so dangerous – even by Afghan standards – that it had seen no regular traffic for more than 30 years.

Finally he succeeded in digging out an old man who had been driving a cab since before the Soviet invasion. "We started driving and we left the city behind and we're out in the sticks," he recalls, "and we end up in a traffic jam – not cars but goats. And we wait for the goats to go by and we see the shepherd, this very old man, traditional Afghan clothes, big beard, exactly what you'd picture in your head. But he's wearing a baseball hat.

"The shepherd finally turns to look at us in the car – and on that baseball cap are the letters KBR. It stands for Kellogg Brown and Root – a company that was a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Dick Cheney was on the board of. The local goatherd is wearing a Dick Cheney baseball cap!" It was the final clue he needed that this particular bad road was the right road. There in the distance, behind a high cream wall and coiled razor wire, was what Paglen was looking for: the nondescript structures of what he says he is "99.999 per cent sure" is the place they call the Salt Pit: a never-before-identified-or-photographed secret CIA prison.

Trevor Paglen is an artist of a very particular kind. His principal tool is the camera, and most of his works are photographs, but the reason they are considered to be art – the reason, for example, that this bland photo, three feet wide by two feet high, showing the outer wall and the interior roof outline of the Salt Pit, with a dun-coloured Afghan hill behind it, sells for $20,000 – is because of the arduous, painstaking, sometimes dangerous path that culminated in pressing the shutter; and because it reveals something that the most powerful state in history has done everything in its power to keep secret.

Since he was a postgraduate geography student at UCLA 10 years ago, Paglen has dedicated himself to a very 21st-century challenge: seeing and recording what our political masters do everything in their power to render secret and invisible.

Above our heads more than 200 secret American surveillance satellites constantly orbit the Earth: with the help of fanatical amateur astronomers who track their courses, Paglen has photographed them. A secret air force base deep in the desert outside Las Vegas is the control centre for the US's huge fleet of drones: Paglen has photographed these tiny dots hurtling through the Nevada skies. To carry out the extraordinary rendition programme which was one of President George W Bush's answers to the 9/11 attacks, seizing suspects from the streets and spiriting them off to countries relaxed about torture, the CIA created numerous front companies: grinding through flight records and using the methods of a private detective, Paglen identified them, visiting and covertly photographing their offices and managers. The men and women who carried out the rendition programme were equipped with fake identities: Paglen has made a collection of these people's unconvincing and fluctuating signatures, "people," as he puts it, "who don't exist because they're in the business of disappearing other people".

National Reconnaissance Office Ground Station, New Mexico National Reconnaissance Office Ground Station, New Mexico (Trevor Paglen)
It sounds like the work-in-progress of an extraordinarily determined investigative journalist. But while the dogged tracking of a Seymour Hersh will culminate in a 5,000-word piece for The New Yorker, blowing the lid off, say, alleged American plans to seize control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons or the origin of the sarin used in the Syrian civil war, Paglen is not interested in such narratives. Not that he is uninterested: he describes the extraordinary rendition programme, for example, as "incredibly evil", and has worked closely with human-rights activists. But rather than a charge sheet of the guilty men or calls for government action or popular insurrection, he presents us with a succession of enigmatic images: boring suburban offices, middle-aged men getting into American cars, shimmering lines in the sky, aircraft waiting to take off.

The new project that brings him to Britain is in line with this, though it is also prettier than most of his work. A photograph more than 60 metres wide which will stretch the entire length of the platform of Gloucester Road Underground station – home of the Art on the Underground programme – shows an idyllic expanse of rolling north York moors. And there, nestling among the folds of the hills are the massed giant golfballs of the vast RAF Fylingdales surveillance station, jointly operated with the US.

Given the existence of bitter and determined enemies, what's wrong with having secret facilities to keep a close eye on them?

"I think mass surveillance is a bad idea because a surveillance society is one in which people understand that they are constantly monitored," Paglen says, "and when people understand that they are constantly monitored they are more conformist, they are less willing to take up controversial positions, and that kind of mass conformity is incompatible with democracy.

"The second reason is that mass surveillance creates a dramatic power imbalance between citizens and government. In a democracy the citizens are supposed to have all the power and the government is supposed to be the means by which the citizens exercise that power. But when you have a surveillance state, the state has all the power and citizens have very little. In a democratic society you should have a state with maximum transparency and maximum civil liberties for citizens. But in a surveillance state the exact opposite is true."

N5177C at Gold Coast Terminal, Las Vegas. The plane is one of those used to shuttle people to work at classified military installations in the Nevada desert N5177C at Gold Coast Terminal, Las Vegas. The plane is one of those used to shuttle people to work at classified military installations in the Nevada desert (Trevor Paglen)
Paglen's project is political but it is also philosophical: he is trying to show us the world, k not as the media present it but as it is. And that is a world in which official secrecy has never been so well entrenched, ubiquitous, or extravagantly well funded.

"I'm trying to push perception as far as I can," he says, "so we can create a vantage point to look back at ourselves with very different kinds of eyes – fresh eyes, if you will." He is trying to show us, he says, "the historical moment that we are living in."

The secret world, the shadow of the world as we know it, has of course been with us for as long as human beings have organised themselves in societies. But the attacks on America, cruelly exposing the failings and limitations of the intelligence agencies, produced a bonanza of funding never before seen: the "black budget" of the US defence department, for example, has more than tripled since George W Bush became president and, according to information released by Edward Snowden, was $52bn in 2012. The secret world's shadow is today far bigger and blacker than ever before – and by definition, we the public, whether in the US or the rest of the world, know next to nothing about it.

"Secrecy," Paglen says, "is a way of doing things, of trying to organise human activities, and it has political, economic, legal, cultural aspects. It is a way of trying to do things whose goal is invisibility, silence, obscurity."

The Salt Pit, previously secret CIA prison, north-east of Kabul, Afghanistan The Salt Pit, previously secret CIA prison, north-east of Kabul, Afghanistan (Trevor Paglen)
So how do we go about trying to see this secret world which, as he says, "operates according to a very different logic from a democratic state"? One analogy Paglen uses is with the attempts of scientists to see the dark matter of which most of the universe is composed. By definition it cannot be seen, but its existence can be inferred by the influence it exerts on the visible universe: the way, for example, that in 2012 the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way bent the progress of a huge passing gas cloud out of shape before finally swallowing it.

But Paglen's task is actually easier than that. "[The secret state] is never completely efficient," he points out, "because stuff in the world tends to reflect light: it's visible. You can't build a secret aircraft in an invisible factory with ghost workers. What I'm trying to do is to get a glimpse into the secret state that surrounds us all the time but that we have not trained ourselves to see very well." He says he has never been arrested doing his work and he is extremely careful not to break any laws, "though of course I am stopped fairly regularly by police and military personnel. I'm calm, tell them what I'm doing, and we work it out."

Paglen's fascination with this world goes back to his childhood: his father was an air-force ophthalmologist and he travelled the world with his family, visiting bases that were often involved in secret missions. As a teenager, he says, "I'd go out drinking with special forces guys… they could never say where they were coming from or what they were doing."

Then while he was working on his geography PhD at Berkeley – back in the days before Google Earth – he was studying US prisons. "I wanted to see where these prisons were, what was around them, why they were in the places they were… When I was going through these archives, I would notice places where the images had been taken out. I started to realise they were not there because some of these military installations are not supposed to be out there. I decided it was incredible to have a blank spot on the map in this information age… I wanted to fill them in and it took off from there. Initially I went into UFO and conspiracy theories, but I quickly realised that there was something much more at stake here.

Hide and seek: the tiny dots visible in this image is a Reaper drone Hide and seek: the tiny dots visible in this image is a Reaper drone (Trevor Paglen)
"The war on terror was getting started and I very early on got the sense that these blank spots on the map were somehow paradigmatic of something that was happening politically." As the World Trade Center smouldered, Vice-President Dick Cheney announced that the nation would have to engage its "dark side" to find the culprits. "We've got to spend time in the shadows," he said. "It's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective." Paglen had his cue.

In his quest to unveil a world committed to staying hidden, his most bizarre discovery was that America's secret soldiers and airmen wear distinctive uniform patches like regular servicemen, and many of them give broad hints about their work. In his tireless fashion, he tracked them down. Later he was amused to discover that I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World, the book in which he collected the images, had become a bestseller among the special forces themselves. "Apparently all of them have that book in their office now," he laughs.

In contrast to the dreary world of the secret bases and prisons, here the secret forces let rip. The images on the patches include a wizard shooting lightning bolts from his staff, dragons dropping bombs, and skunks firing laser beams. One of the more sinister has the Latin tag Oderint Dum Metuant: "Let them hate as long as they fear".

There is a frightening jauntiness about the patches, which express the esprit de corps of a world sure of its hold on our politicians, confident that those who pick up the huge tab will never know anything about it; equally sure, one might say, that they are doing their patriotic duty.

Something of the same smugness pervades the huge photograph about to be exhibited at Gloucester Road Tube station. "It's a very traditional British landscape image," Paglen says. "I looked at a lot of Constable while I was thinking of how to put the image together. What you have is a classical British landscape, rolling hills and little stone houses… The surveillance base is just another element in the landscape."

'An English Landscape (American Surveillance Base near Harrogate, Yorkshire)' by Trevor Paglen, commissioned by TfL's Art on the Underground, will be unveiled at Gloucester Road station, London, on Thursday

Shreeman · Post by **Shreeman** » 15 Jun 2014 18:45

For comparison with the coverage of the DK incident.

Rony · Post by **Rony** » 18 Jun 2014 18:35

Operation ‘Polo’ and Impact & Ramifications on India’s First Kashmir War

Before coming to Hyderabad and Kashmir, Britain’s ‘post war’ compulsions need to be recapitulated. Despite emerging victorious, five years of gruelling war had sapped Britain financially; apropos, whatever visages of Pax Britannica she still harboured had to be (finally) laid to rest. War ravaged Britain was constrained to scuttle her liabilities, i.e. her global empire, including the jewel in the crown – India, the keystone of her Asian empire. Concurrently, after Stalin’s crushing defeat on Nazi Germany and his expansion into Europe, Soviet Russia had emerged as the new and ‘larger than life’ adversary. A vicious Cold War had already erupted and World War Three was expected to break out at any time between the former allies. Cutting to the bone, the competition was over oil, the ‘liquid gold,’ as control over the ‘wells of power’ not only yielded enormous economic power, but also fuelled the war machines of the new imperialists. Energy rich Gulf and the Middle East being the immediate spoils and since the Soviet shadow over the Gulf loomed large, the threat was clear and present.

Lord Wavell, India’s penultimate Viceroy, was the one to give practical shape to Mr. Churchill’s brainchild and it was he who transformed England’s economic liability of the times into a strategic opportunity. By fructifying the creation of Pakistan, he ensured that a bulwark against Soviet expansionism was finally put in place. With this strategic masterstroke, he also ensured Britain’s post-war strategic relevance for the new superpower – the USA, as it created the possibility for the use of military bases in Pakistan (Peshawar and Karachi); located on the flank of the Soviet Union, which were invaluable for retaining control over the Gulf. At the same time, creation of Pakistan also counter-balanced a potentially powerful India, whose support to the Soviet bloc due to the socialist leanings of her leadership could not be relied upon. The creation of a ‘credible’ Pakistan, therefore, was therefore England’s strategic requirement and Lord Mountbatten who replaced Wavell and then presided over the division of India and guided (sic) India through the Kashmir war was candid in admitting: “Having created it (Pakistan), its survival had to be ensured.”

The Princely State of Kashmir being a part of their new creation was essential, as without Kashmir, or at least the parts she went on to annex, Pakistan’s heartland (Rawalpindi) remained vulnerable to a swift Trans-Jhelum offensive. Since English leaning during the Kashmir war are well-documented, they do not merit to be recounted. However, it needs to be pointed out that the impasse over Hyderabad’s refusal to accede to India, offered yet another way for the English to facilitate Pakistan’s war in Kashmir. By ensuring Indian deployment around the state, the English mandarins entrenched in South Block weaved a web of despondency and managed to balance the Indo-Pak force ratios in Kashmir. The upshot was that though Hyderabad was eventually liberated (after Lord Mountbatten had demitted office), ten months of diffused operational focus contributed largely to India’s inability to wrest the advantage in Kashmir.

manju · Post by **manju** » 18 Jun 2014 19:34

Haresh wrote:Jarita,

Thanks for that it was very interesting.
My Grandfather was a labourer in Fiji and my wifes family are five generations removed from their Indian roots. They totally lost contact with India and all things Indian when they went to Fiji. I think they are from the Bihar region.

My side of the family via my grand father and father kept our connections with India. I know exactly where we are from in Punjab. My father & mother were born in Punjab.

Quite a few years ago in 1995 I met some Fijian Indians in Vancouver who my father knew from his years there. They have all prospered and done well.

A sad saga but most of them did well in the end.

Two brothers were my foot ball mates in Bengaluru. Am still in touch with them. Around 2008 they obtained Indian citizenship... They have lived here for sometime and they run a photo studio. Am not sure about how long they are their parents were in Fiji..

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 22 Jun 2014 05:16

Blowback.Britain fears hundreds of jihadi fighters have returned to Britain from Syria and now Iraq has exploded thanks to ISIS.
Syria civil war: MI6 fears the Jihadist enemy within
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 54429.html

Fighters returning from Syria will ‘inevitably’ pose domestic threat, warns counter-terrorist report

Hundreds of veteran fighters from Syria and Iraq are already back in Britain, among them radicalised jihadists intent on mounting terror attacks. And British intelligence services face an “impossible” task in trying to track them, a leading security expert warned last night.

The grim warning from Richard Barrett, the former head of counter-terrorism at MI6, who spent more than a decade tracking the Taliban for the United Nations, comes amid escalating fears over the threat posed by returning foreign fighters from the twin conflicts. Mr Barrett estimated that “possibly up to 300 people have come back to the UK” already.

The scale of the threat is placing an impossible burden on British intelligence, he said. “If you imagine what it would cost to really look at 300 people in depth, clearly it would be completely impossible to do that, probably impossible even at a third of that number.”

Further evidence of the British links with jihadists in Iraq emerged yesterday with confirmation that gap-year student Nasser Muthana, 20, from Cardiff, was one of a number of Britons who feature in a film posted online to recruit fighters. In the propaganda film, the medical student says: “Oh you who believe, answer the call of Allah and his messenger when he calls you …. What gives you life is jihad.”

In the video, released by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis), he speaks of the “brothers” he fights alongside. Two other men who claim to be British – along with two Australians – also feature in the film, titled: “There is no life without jihad.”

His father, Ahmed Muthana, 57, claimed he had no idea his son had gone to Syria and thought he had gone to Shrewsbury seven months ago. One of his other sons, 17-year-old Aseel, is also in Syria.

“I wish they would come back,” said Mr Muthana. “They are in the wrong hands. I don’t know why they would have done this. They are very good boys. We had no problems, nothing.”

His sons are among hundreds of Britons currently fighting in Syria. “The resources of the police and security service are stretched in two ways, firstly in terms of numbers and secondly in terms of knowing who these people are. I think they will focus on those people they do know and find out who they contact and stay in touch with on their return,” said Mr Barrett.

Speaking before a presentation on jihadist foreign fighters that he will give at the Quilliam Foundation think tank this week, he warned: “With this whole business in Syria, although there is no linear projection from foreign fighters to domestic terrorists, it’s inevitable that a number will fall into this category.”

Mr Barrett is co-author of a new report, released this month, which states that the Syrian war “is likely to be an incubator for a new generation of terrorists” and reveals that more than 12,000 foreign fighters have gone to Syria since the war began. That is more than the 10,000 who went to Afghanistan during the decade-long jihad against Russian occupation. One in four foreign fighters in Syria is from the West – part of a global phenomenon, with fighters from more than 80 countries represented on the battlefield.

Yet the number is greater than official estimates which, the report says, tend to “underestimate the true numbers because would-be foreign fighters who wish to keep their activities secret have little trouble in getting to Syria without anyone knowing, and while there can conceal their identities”.

The authors suggest that one in nine foreign fighters could become domestic terrorists. If this ratio is applied to the current estimates of fighters in Syria, the conflict there will have already spawned more than 1,300 terrorists – dozens of whom are British.

“Even countries with relatively large resources to devote to returning fighters from Syria face difficulties. For example, by the end of April 2014, the French authorities were almost overwhelmed,” the report adds.

It cites the importance in securing the support of the communities that fighters return to, both for “successful reintegration” and for “identifying them and sorting out which of them may pose the greatest threat”.

Around 500 people from Britain have joined the ranks of Isis, and tracking British jihadists fighting in Syria is now the top priority for British intelligence, it emerged yesterday. The Syrian jihad is part of a wider movement across the Middle East, which has seen Iraq plunged into turmoil, and US President Barack Obama send hundreds of special forces “advisers” to help the Iraqi government “take the fight to the terrorists”.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, revealed his fear that jihadist fighters will return to “attack us here at home in the United Kingdom”. Speaking during Prime Minister’s Questions last week, he said that insurgents in other countries must be dealt with, or the “problems will come back and hit us at home”.

Five Syria-linked groups, including Isis, were added to the government’s list of banned organisations by the Security minister, James Brokenshire, on Thursday. “Syria is the number one destination for jihadists anywhere in the world,” he said. “Proscription sends a strong message that terrorist activity is not tolerated wherever it happens.”

In a bid to stem the flow of Britons to Syria, prompted by fears that people will return radicalised, the Government is discouraging people from travelling on aid missions. “Whilst we are not trying to criminalise genuine humanitarian efforts, we do advise against all travel to Syria,” added Mr Brokenshire.

Senior military figures share the concerns of politicians. “Militant jihadism” is the biggest threat facing the world today, according to General Lord David Richards, former Chief of Defence Staff. A “global response” is needed to deal with the threat, he said during an evidence session before the commons defence select committee last week. “This is way beyond Britain. I would say that our political leaders – British and other key leaders – need to decide whether it is the risk I perceive it to be, and if so, they need to pull their fingers out and start doing something about it.”

PS:Brits have to thank Mr.Tony B.Liar for having sowed the "wind of terror" ,thanks to his lies that justified the illegal invasion of Iraq and the inevitable results of now "reaping the whirlwind".

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 24 Jun 2014 09:07

Perfidious Albion!
This is truly a dark secret,but exposes British hypocrisy spread around the globe even in recent times.How Britain supported slavery,by helping the Cinfederate states secretly.

Britain saw "huge advantages" in the break-up of the the USA.So too did it see in the break-up of India! In fact,a veteran US analysts ,Norman Freidman said that Kashmir was a "cancer" planted into Independent India.
The same strategy was seen in Sri Lanka in the Eelam War,where the West wanted the breakup of Lanka and the creation of Eelam,with which they could destabilise India,encouraging separatism in TNadu.Norway played an insidious part in attempting to get the Lankan state to agree to a de-facto Eelam in the island.ABV put his foot down when the LTTE wanted the Sea Tigers to be declared an "international navy",the thin end of the wedge!

Historians reveal secrets of UK gun-running which lengthened the American civil war by two years
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 57937.html

David Keys
Monday 23 June 2014

New historical and archaeological research is shining an embarrassing light on one of the darkest periods of British foreign policy.

Investigations by a leading Scottish maritime historian have succeeded, for the first time, in locating the main secret British headquarters of the American Civil War Confederate government’s transatlantic gun-running operation.

Other research, carried out over the past decade, has revealed the extraordinary extent to which substantial sections of Britain’s business elite were working with impunity to help the slave-owning southern states win the Civil War – despite the fact that Britain was officially neutral and had outlawed slavery almost 30 years earlier.

What’s more, in the Bristol Channel, the remnants of one of the Confederate gun-runners – the 395 ton Matilda – has been tentatively identified on the seabed off the coast of the island of Lundy.

The Iona 2 Gun-Runner
1 of 7

Three other confederate wrecks had already been identified in British waters – off the west coast of Scotland, off Liverpool and in the Bristol Channel.

In total some 200 vessels were purpose-built or upgraded on Clydeside, in Liverpool or in London for the Confederate states – and hundreds of thousands of guns (including heavy artillery) were manufactured in Birmingham, Newcastle and near London for the Confederate Army.

The entirely illegal, but tacitly British-Government-approved pro-Confederate gun-running operation is thought to have lengthened the American Civil War by up to two years – and to have therefore cost as many as 400,000 American lives.

“The identification of the Confederacy’s main secret gun-running headquarters should serve to highlight the role played by key elements of the British business elite in helping the slave-owning states in the American Civil War,” said maritime historian Dr Eric Graham of Edinburgh University.

“The clandestine headquarters was established just 32 miles by railway from Clydeside because it was the big shipbuilding magnates there who were being contracted to build or upgrade more than half of the two hundred vessels supplied to the Confederacy by UK shipyards.”

“It demonstrates that Britain’s neutrality was, in reality, a complete sham,” said Dr Graham, the author of a major book on the Civil War gun-runners, Clyde Built: The Blockade Runners of the American Civil War.

Bridge of Allan is located north of Stirling in Scotland Bridge of Allan is located north of Stirling in Scotland

The guns were shipped from Britain to the British crown colonies of Bermuda and the Bahamas on board commercial cargo vessels. But from Bermuda and the Bahamian port of Nassau, they were carried by 300 high-speed gun-running vessels - mainly shallow-draught paddle-steamers - two thirds of which had been purpose-built or adapted for the job in British shipyards.

Today none of these blockade runners survives above water – but of those that were wrecked or sunk, a number have been identified off the US and UK coasts.

Indeed, English Heritage has just turned one of the gun-runner wrecks, the 80m Iona 2, which sank in a storm off the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel in 1864, into an underwater tourist attraction. An official scuba diving trail, complete with suitably waterproof guide books for use underwater, has been officially launched around the vessel – and its illicit "dark heritage" status will undoubtedly make it all the more intriguing.

“This dive trail - English Heritage's fifth underwater tourist trail for protected wrecks to open since 2009 – is an important historical reminder of a part that Britain played in the American Civil War,” said English Heritage maritime archaeologist Terry Newman. A leading UK archaeological consultancy, Wessex Archaeology, has been monitoring the condition of the wreck on behalf of English Heritage.

James Bulloch of the Confederate States Navy was one of the senior Confederate agents based in Bridge of Allan. He was the principal procurement agent in Europe for the Confederate Navy James Bulloch of the Confederate States Navy was one of the senior Confederate agents based in Bridge of Allan. He was the principal procurement agent in Europe for the Confederate Navy

Three other Confederate wrecks around Britain’s coastline are the Iona 1, which collided with another ship and sank in the Clyde in 1862, the Lellia, which went down in a storm off Liverpool with the loss of 47 lives in 1865, and the Matilda, which sank in dense fog in the Bristol Channel in 1864.

The newly discovered main secret UK headquarters of the blockade-busting operation was a still extant mansion in the quiet and secluded Stirlingshire village of Bridge of Allan. At any one time, it housed around 10 Confederate agents who held their planning meetings there – and used it as a base from which they could visit top shipbuilding magnates and others on Clydeside and "test drive" vessels to assess their speed.

They seem to have located their headquarters in the countryside so as to avoid the attentions of the various detective agencies which had been appointed by the US Federal government to track them down. However, their wish for rural anonymity did not prevent some of the southern agents from wearing “big hats and smoking large cigars” – key clues which, in early 1864, led the amateur sleuths of the anti-slavery Dundee Ladies’ Emancipation Society to realize who they were – and to inform the US consul in Dundee accordingly. After much pressure had been exerted by the US on the British Government, the exposure of the secret headquarters led a year later to the British preventing the export of a giant, potentially game-changing 130m armoured warship - and four other warships - to the Confederate Navy.

Other research into the Confederate blockade-busting operation, currently being carried out by a Manchester-based historian, is revealing how the Confederate network extended over many different parts of Britain.

Researcher Gerald Hayes is piecing together the previously unstudied details of a complex of more than half a dozen blockade-busting companies based in Liverpool and London and their relationship with other Confederate sympathizers – including pro-Confederacy MPs at Westminster.

Britain was split down the middle in its attitude to the American Civil War. The left, many liberals and much of the working class was pro-US and anti-Confederate – mainly because of the South’s pro-slavery stance. But many Tories and much of the business sector were actively pro-Confederate, as there were considerable fortunes to be made from supplying guns, uniforms, medicines, textiles and even food to the south.

Geopolitically, the British government saw the USA as a growing challenge to its global domination – especially in terms of merchant marine carrying capacity. The British also feared US expansionism and potential US-originating threats to Canada and British colonies in the Caribbean.

“Economically Britain saw huge advantages in the break-up of the United States. It saw the American South as a source of raw cotton – and as a market for manufacturing goods, whereas it saw the North as an industrial competitor which sought to use protectionist policies to exclude Britain from American markets,” said Dr. Graham.

Has its policies ever changed? In recent time Tony BLIar was the co-architect with Dubya and his gang including Cheney and co.,to invade Iraq,being broken up now,all for OIL.We know for how long the Kashmir conflict has simmered,erupted time and again. Now a Nobel prize winner is being drafted in to "punish" little Lanka for daring to exterminate the western supported fuhrer of the LTTE Prabhakaran.responsible for assassinating Rajiv.His assassination served Western interests very well,as it saw India retreat from pro-activism in the IOR and the entry of none other than Snake-oil Singh,arch US quisling!

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 26 Jun 2014 04:37

Cameron is in the doghouse after criticism from the trial judge in the Murodoch media massive illegal phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Britain.Cameron hired Coulson as his personal "attack dog" ignoring good advice,which has now come back to haunt him.he was quick to dump and condemn Coulson even before the trial was ove.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/25/1
David Cameron's judgment in the dock after phone-hacking case
Trial judge directs anger at prime minister's comments on Andy Coulson, while Labour claims he ignored warnings

Xcpt:

David Cameron's judgment over phone hacking was under scrutiny for a second day as Labour suggested he had wilfully ignored repeated high-level warnings about Andy Coulson's appointment to Downing Street in 2010.

Criticism of the prime minister was compounded when a judge rebuked Cameron for potentially prejudicing the final phase of the phone-hacking trial by prematurely branding Coulson a liar before all the verdicts on his former spin doctor – found guilty on Tuesday of conspiracy to hack phones – had been reached.

Labour suggested that Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary in 2010, had been among those concerned at Coulson's appointment – a charge No 10 would only respond to by pointing to evidence given by Lord O'Donnell to the Leveson inquiry that he had not been involved in the appointment of Coulson.

At prime minister's questions, Cameron came under attack from Ed Miliband for wilful negligence and claimed the prime minister "will always be remembered as the first ever occupant of his office who brought a criminal into the heart of Downing Street".

Tony BLIar is not spared either,for preferring to sympathise with the sultry accused red-head Ms.Brooks,instead of the family of a murdered schoolgirl.

Hacking trial: Milly Dowler's sister blasts Tony Blair for offering support to Rebekah Brooks
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 62741.html

vina · Post by **vina** » 26 Jun 2014 11:41

Hmm. BBC says that in Scotland the other parts of UK are already being called as rUK i.e. rest of UK. If Scotland goes separate, do they become fUK ? Time to rename the thread as Indo-fUK News and Discussion thread?

Anand K · Post by **Anand K** » 26 Jun 2014 14:42

Phone-hacking trial was officially about crime; but in reality, it was about power

kancha · Post by **kancha** » 26 Jun 2014 17:01

Why Britain's Armed Forces are Shrinking?

More Britons joint the jihad in Syria last year than those who joined the Army reserves

Cosmo_R · Post by **Cosmo_R** » 26 Jun 2014 17:06

Haresh wrote:Jarita,

Thanks for that it was very interesting.
My Grandfather was a labourer in Fiji and my wifes family are five generations removed from their Indian roots. They totally lost contact with India and all things Indian when they went to Fiji. I think they are from the Bihar region.

My side of the family via my grand father and father kept our connections with India. I know exactly where we are from in Punjab. My father & mother were born in Punjab.

Quite a few years ago in 1995 I met some Fijian Indians in Vancouver who my father knew from his years there. They have all prospered and done well.

A sad saga but most of them did well in the end.

I lived and went to school (in Hindi) in Fiji circa 1953. Still remember a lot.

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 26 Jun 2014 21:31

kancha wrote:Why Britain's Armed Forces are Shrinking?

More Britons joint the jihad in Syria last year than those who joined the Army reserves

Probably because the stuff that briturd DNA is made of: Loot, plunder and mass murder. The place that used to do it was the "armed forces", now jihad is the easiest way to satiate the requirements of the dna. Hope they get everything they deserve from the coming blow back. They deserve every bit (and more) of it.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 26 Jun 2014 22:55

YUK= Yesterday's UK

member_22733 · Post by **member_22733** » 26 Jun 2014 23:50

I am no expert on the subject but I dont think that Scotts would free themselves from the tentacles of the English Hydra. They wont be treated very nice (kicked out of EU/cannot use the pound sterling) etc if they do. Plus there are heavily interconnected networks between Scotts and English that is not that easy to let go (from both sides).

Even if they do break away, it will only be symbolic.

Paul · Post by **Paul** » 27 Jun 2014 00:28

deleted

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 27 Jun 2014 03:39

Breaking away, even if it is smbolic, would be a great blow to UK's H&D and will bring them several notches down. They would have to punch even higher (than their weight) which is unlikely. If the breakup happens they will lose whatever legitimacy they have in holding a permanent membership position in Security Council.

pralay · Post by **pralay** » 27 Jun 2014 08:32

UKstan now training more jihadis than soldiers

The only problem, is since 2012, the trained strength of the Army reserve has flatlined. The MoD now says recruitment processes have improved. But even so, between April 2013 to April 2014, the number of trained reservists increased by just 170 people.

That means, by a rough estimate, more British people have travelled out to join Isis in Iraq and Syria than helped bulk up our own reservist force last year. That’s an estimated 400 to 500 jihadists, by the way.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 28 Jun 2014 10:28

UK edges closer to an EU exit as Cameron crushed in bid to block Jean-Claude Juncker's leadership
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 68749.html

Britain took another step towards the EU exit door tonight as David Cameron warned that Jean-Claude Juncker’s appointment to the top job in Brussels would make it harder to persuade the public to remain in the 28-nation bloc.

Mr Cameron’s stark warning came after he suffered a humiliating defeat in his lonely battle to stop the veteran federalist becoming president of the European Commission. At a Brussels summit, EU leaders voted 26-2 to nominate Mr Juncker after Mr Cameron demanded an unprecedented formal vote on a post traditionally settled by consensus. Hungary's Viktor Orban was the only leader to back the Prime Minister.

Asked if the crushing setback had taken the UK closer to an EU exit, Mr Cameron told a press conference: “The job has got harder of keeping Britain in a reformed Europe. The stakes are higher. Do I think it is an impossible job? No.”

The Prime Minister insisted he still believed the British national interest would be served by him recommending an “in” vote in the in/out referendum he has promised in 2017. But after his embarrassing diplomatic defeat, he is under mounting pressure from Eurosceptic Conservative MPs to say he is prepared to urge an “out” vote - and moved one step closer to that today.

Mr Cameron described Mr Juncker’s appointment as a “serious mistake” and said it was a “bad day for Europe,” which had taken a “big step backwards”. But he argued: “This is going to be a long, tough fight and frankly sometimes you have to be prepared to lose a battle in order to win a war.”

He insisted the summit had taken some small steps in the right direction – by promising to address Britain’s concerns about the need for reform and to review the guiding EU principle of “ever closer union”. The 28 leaders also agreed to rethink the process for choosing the next European Commission head in five years time amid concern about a “power grab” by the European Parliament. Mr Juncker, the former Luxembourg Prime Minister dubbed “the career insider of Brussels” by Mr Cameron was the “lead candidate” of the Parliament’s biggest political group.

During the summit, Mr Cameron warned his fellow leaders they could “live to regret” the appointment. He explained later that a future “lead candidate” could have views that some leaders would find unacceptable – such as not standing up for the Baltic States and favouring Russia over countries in Eastern Europe.

Mr Cameron’s uncompromising stance over Mr Juncker has strained his relations with some of his natural allies, including Germany’s Angela Merkel. He hoped other leaders will now take his renegotiation demands more seriously because he had “stuck to my guns” in the battle over the Commission post.

But some leaders gave a different version of the summit’s conclusions. Francois Hollande, the French President, said: “David Cameron spoke about the major interest of a country that could slip away from the EU: we can understand this political domestic issue, but at the same time there is no such thing as a veto. in Europe we need to learn to live together in the framework of rules and treaties, there's no other way.”

Ms Merkel, the German Chancellor, said: “I have every interest in having the UK continue to be a member of the EU. The UK always has to take that decision itself but from a European perspective and a German perspective, I think this is most important and this is what I'm going to work on. We have shown very clearly that we are ready to address British concerns.”

Alexander Stubb, the Finnish Prime Minister, said British voters should "wake up and smell the coffee" about the benefits of EU membership, rather than threaten to quit the 28-nation bloc.

There was stinging criticism from other countries about the way Mr Cameron had campaigned against Mr Juncker. “It was noisy and counter-productive,” a diplomat from one natural UK ally said. “If he had sat on his hands, things could have been different.”

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said: “On Europe, David Cameron has now become a toxic Prime Minister. He cannot stand up for Britain's national interest because when he supports something, he drives our allies away."

John Redwood, the Eurosceptic former Tory Cabinet minister, said: “If the rest of the EU continue to be so unsympathetic to UK requirements, more UK voters will draw their own conclusions about the desirability of our continued membership.”

Mats Persson, director of the Open Europe think tank, said: “The Juncker episode is clearly a substantial defeat for David Cameron, and without remedy, increases the risk of Brexit [from the EU]. However, it is far from the end of the story for sweeping European reform."

Mr Juncker, whose appointment has to be rubber-stamped by the European Parliament, was seen drinking in a Brussels bar shortly before his nomination was confirmed by the 28 leaders. He said he was “proud and honoured” to receive their backing.

Britain left out in the cold by her EU partners.Divorce on the cards? It appears that Camoron is more worried about UKIP and Farrage winning the next election than the EU!

kish · Post by **kish** » 29 Jun 2014 13:33

Another atrocity committed by "Asian men". But, i love how racist-mail hides the religious identity of the "Asian men".
Calling these rapists "Asian men" is a insult to whole of Asia, but it seems like Asia doesn't care about Brits.
It in-fact encourages more "Asian men" to think white girls are their right-hand possession.

Police hunting for group of 'Asian men' who took a 17-year-old girl into woods and gang-raped her

A teenage girl was gang-raped by a group of Asian men in a wooded area, police have said.

The 17-year-old victim met a group of men in Slough, Berkshire yesterday evening.

The girl went to an off-licence with one of the group and continued to a residential street, where they were joined by four men in a small silver hatchback