“They threatened me, they tried to buy me, they suggested I was a bad mother for neglecting my other children and for taking my infant daughter with me to wait endlessly in front of police stations and the courts, they spread rumours about my motives, they harassed me, they raised false charges against me – they wanted me to give up. But I never stopped asking “Where is my son?”
–Parveena Ahangar
Just happened across this 2017 post about Modi’s use of yoga to serve Hindutva ideology & the persecution of Muslims in India & Kashmir.
June 21, 2017
This is the third International Yoga Day, declared by the UN in December 2014 after a campaign by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi–probably as a way to remove the stench of disrepute from his involvement in the 2002 pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat.
For Yoga Day 2017, Modi chose to lead asanas in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to teach Indians to “yoke body, mind, & soul,” as he said in a speech to thousands assembled in the rally ground. The choice of venue isn’t because Yogi Adityanath is known for facility with yoga asanas–because the guy is more unhinged than yoked–but because he is a rabid Hindutva nationalist also involved in violence against Muslims & Christians.
In 2015, the Indian government attempted to make Yoga Day compulsory, at least for schoolchildren. Muslim organizations objected because in yoga there is an asana sequence called Surya Namaskara or Sun Salutations bowing to the Sun God & as a monotheistic religion, Muslims bow only to Allah. Our man Adityanath supported compulsory Yoga Day saying those who don’t agree can “leave Hindustan” & those who oppose Surya Namaskara should drown themselves in the sea.
Adityanath is a polarizing figure renowned for demonizing & inciting hatred & aggression particularly against Muslims. He proposed installing statues of goddesses & gods in every mosque, is a supporter of Trump’s Muslim ban, & most egregiously incited Hindus to drag Muslim women from their graves to rape their corpses.
So if Modi hoped Yoga Day would remove the stench of pogroms, his choice of leading the event with Adityanath shows he has a political agenda yoked to the persecution of Muslims & to advancing extremist rightwing nationalism. He can stick that downward facing dog where the sun don’t shine.
Photo is Modi leading Yoga Day in Lucknow. Appropriately, he looks more flatulent than yoked.
“Jihad is to struggle. Greater Jihad is to struggle against ourselves to be better humans and lesser Jihad is to struggle to fight against corruption. My Greater Jihad is to ensure that I never support oppression against anyone for my sense of “nationalism” or any religious or familial ties. And my lesser Jihad is to stand with the oppressed people today regardless of their background, and to speak where they are being silenced.”
–Waqar Nadeem Rajput clarifies the beautiful Islamic concept of Jihad so distorted & misrepresented to serve Islamophobic ‘war on terror’ ideology
One cannot even imagine the stress that Kashmiris are living under cut off from each other, from medical care, from their loved ones outside Kashmir. The stress that children, the elderly, the infirm, those pregnant must feel is beyond imagination. There’s a barbarism to this lockdown & the presence of nearly one-million soldiers that can only be called genocide.
#StandWithKashmiris
Modi is making me famous. Anyone want my autograph? Being banned by the Modi regime is an honorific worth having. Let me say it again, put that on my tombstone. It is an honor to #StandWithKashmir.
https://thewire.in/government/kashmir-twitter-modi-government-takedown-orders-transparency?
I’m so sorry for the long delay but events in Kashmir have taken my energies. I will attempt to catch up with my blog in the next few days.