A nighttime drive down Al Waab Street toward the harbor in Doha, Qatar, puts one literally in the spotlight of what some are calling "one of the biggest cases of public counterfeiting in the history of design." That's what officials at the Spanish industrial design firm Santa & Cole think, anyway. They're the firm that designed the streetlights shining down on drivers along this roughly 10-kilometer stretch of road. Problem is, the 920 streetlights lining that roadway are alleged copies.
It may not be the biggest case of counterfeiting in the history of design, but it's likely the biggest in the history of streetlights.
Towering up and leaning over the street like splayed chopsticks, the streetlights are almost exact replicas of Santa & Cole's "Latina" streetlights, designed by architect Beth Galí and installed on streetscapes from Spain to Italy to the Netherlands. Qatar could have been another official entry on that list. In late 2005, Santa & Cole were invited to present a lighting design for transforming Al Waab Street ahead of Doha's hosting of the 2006 Asian Games. Those designs were then allegedly taken by the State public works authority, Ashghal, and sent to another firm to more affordably replicate the lights Santa & Cole had proposed.
Santa & Cole and Galí are so upset about the breach of intellectual property that they've launched an online campaign about the alleged counterfeit, QatarFakes.com. An extensive and document-rich timeline of the entire process is detailed on the site.
Despite a Cease and Desist letter [PDF], numerous attempts to negotiate, and an attempted arbitration through the World Intellectual Property Organization of the United Nations, the streetlights still stand in Doha.
Santa & Cole argues that the poorly built streetlights are not only a breach of intellectual property rights, but also create a negative impression of their design.
Officials in Qatar have declined to participate in any negotiations or arbitration related to the streetlights. With little recourse, Galí has filed a lawsuit against the State of Qatar with courts in Barcelona, which has the support of Santa & Cole, the Barcelona Center for Design and the Design For All Foundation. She calls the whole ordeal "a large-scale forgery case that is threatening the creativity of professionals and European companies." She's hoping the lawsuit will put an end to this years-long battle. For now, drivers in Doha will continue to navigate Al Waab Street under the glow of these controversial streetlights.
A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.
The clergyman prefered not to lodge a complaint with the police and told an acquaintance that he was used to being spat at by Jews. Many Jerusalem clergy have been subjected to abuse of this kind. For the most part, they ignore it but sometimes they cannot.
On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop's 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.
Both were questioned by police and the yeshiva student will be brought to trial. The Jerusalem District Court has meanwhile banned the student from approaching the Old City for 75 days.
But the Armenians are far from satisfied by the police action and say this sort of thing has been going on for years. Archbishop Nourhan Manougian says he expects the education minister to say something.
"When there is an attack against Jews anywhere in the world, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don't they take harsher measures?" he asks.
According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, "as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country."
Rossing says there are certain common characeristics from the point of view of time and location to the incidents. He points to the fact that there are more incidents in areas where Jews and Christians mingle, such as the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City and the Jaffa Gate.
There are an increased number at certain times of year, such as during the Purim holiday."I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday," he says.
Former adviser to the mayor on Christian affairs, Shmuel Evyatar, describes the situation as "a huge disgrace." He says most of the instigators are yeshiva students studying in the Old City who view the Christian religion with disdain.
"I'm sure the phenomenon would end as soon as rabbis and well-known educators denounce it. In practice, rabbis of yeshivas ignore or even encourage it," he says.
Evyatar says he himself was spat at while walking with a Serbian bishop in the Jewish quarter, near his home. "A group of yeshiva students spat at us and their teacher just stood by and watched."
Jerusalem municipal officials said they are aware of the problem but it has to be dealt with by the police. Shmuel Ben-Ruby, the police spokesman, said they had only two complaints from Christians in the past two years. He said that, in both cases, the culprits were caught and punished.
He said the police deploy an inordinately high number of patrols andspecial technology in the Old City and its surroundings in an attempt to keep order.
Historic and culturally important landmarks are being destroyed to make way for luxury hotels and malls, reports Jerome Taylor
Behind closed doors – in places where the religious police cannot listen in – residents of Mecca are beginning to refer to their city as Las Vegas, and the moniker is not a compliment.
Over the past 10 years the holiest site in Islam has undergone a huge transformation, one that has divided opinion among Muslims all over the world.
Once a dusty desert town struggling to cope with the ever-increasing number of pilgrims arriving for the annual Hajj, the city now soars above its surroundings with a glittering array of skyscrapers, shopping malls and luxury hotels.
To the al-Saud monarchy, Mecca is their vision of the future – a steel and concrete metropolis built on the proceeds of enormous oil wealth that showcases their national pride.
Yet growing numbers of citizens, particularly those living in the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, have looked on aghast as the nation's archaeological heritage is trampled under a construction mania backed by hardline clerics who preach against the preservation of their own heritage. Mecca, once a place where the Prophet Mohamed insisted all Muslims would be equal, has become a playground for the rich, critics say, where naked capitalism has usurped spirituality as the city's raison d'être.
Few are willing to discuss their fears openly because of the risks associated with criticising official policy in the authoritarian kingdom. And, with the exceptions of Turkey and Iran, fellow Muslim nations have largely held their tongues for fear of of a diplomatic fallout and restrictions on their citizens' pilgrimage visas. Western archaeologists are silent out of fear that the few sites they are allowed access to will be closed to them.
But a number of prominent Saudi archaeologists and historians are speaking up in the belief that the opportunity to save Saudi Arabia's remaining historical sites is closing fast.
"No one has the balls to stand up and condemn this cultural vandalism," says Dr Irfan al-Alawi who, as executive director of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, has fought in vain to protect his country's historical sites. "We have already lost 400-500 sites. I just hope it's not too late to turn things around."
Sami Angawi, a renowned Saudi expert on the region's Islamic architecture, is equally concerned. "This is an absolute contradiction to the nature of Mecca and the sacredness of the house of God," he told the Reuters news agency earlier this year. "Both [Mecca and Medina] are historically almost finished. You do not find anything except skyscrapers."
Dr Alawi's most pressing concern is the planned £690m expansion of the Grand Mosque, the most sacred site in Islam which contains the Kaaba – the black stone cube built by Ibrahim (Abraham) that Muslims face when they pray.
Construction officially began earlier this month with the country's Justice Minister, Mohammed al-Eissa, exclaiming that the project would respect "the sacredness and glory of the location, which calls for the highest care and attention of the servants or Islam and Muslims".
The 400,000 square metre development is being built to accommodate an extra 1.2 million pilgrims each year and will turn the Grand Mosque into the largest religious structure in the world. But the Islamic Heritage Foundation has compiled a list of key historical sites that they believe are now at risk from the ongoing development of Mecca, including the old Ottoman and Abbasi sections of the Grand Mosque, the house where the Prophet Mohamed was born and the house where his paternal uncle Hamza grew up.
There is little argument that Mecca and Medina desperately need infrastructure development. Twelve million pilgrims visit the cities every year with the numbers expected to increase to 17 million by 2025.
But critics fear that the desire to expand the pilgrimage sites has allowed the authorities to ride roughshod over the area's cultural heritage. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of Mecca's millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades alone.
The destruction has been aided by Wahabism, the austere interpretation of Islam that has served as the kingdom's official religion ever since the al-Sauds rose to power across the Arabian Peninsula in the 19th century.
In the eyes of Wahabis, historical sites and shrines encourage "shirq" – the sin of idolatry or polytheism – and should be destroyed. When the al-Saud tribes swept through Mecca in the 1920s, the first thing they did was lay waste to cemeteries holding many of Islam's important figures. They have been destroying the country's heritage ever since. Of the three sites the Saudis have allowed the UN to designate World Heritage Sites, none are related to Islam.
Those circling the Kaaba only need to look skywards to see the latest example of the Saudi monarchy's insatiable appetite for architectural bling. At 1,972ft, the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, opened earlier this year, soars over the surrounding Grand Mosque, part of an enormous development of skyscrapers that will house five-star hotels for the minority of pilgrims rich enough to afford them.
To build the skyscraper city, the authorities dynamited an entire mountain and the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress that lay on top of it. At the other end of the Grand Mosque complex, the house of the Prophet's first wife Khadijah has been turned into a toilet block. The fate of the house he was born in is uncertain. Also planned for demolition are the Grand Mosque's Ottoman columns which dare to contain the names of the Prophet's companions, something hardline Wahabis detest.
For ordinary Meccans living in the mainly Ottoman-era town houses that make up much of what remains of the old city, development often means the loss of their family home.
Non-Muslims cannot visit Mecca and Medina, but The Independent was able to interview a number of citizens who expressed discontent over the way their town was changing. One young woman whose father recently had his house bulldozed described how her family was still waiting for compensation. "There was very little warning; they just came and told him that the house had to be bulldozed," she said.
Another Meccan added: "If a prince of a member of the royal family wants to extend his palace he just does it. No one talks about it in public though. There's such a climate of fear."
Dr Alawi hopes the international community will finally begin to wake up to what is happening in the cradle of Islam. "We would never allow someone to destroy the Pyramids, so why are we letting Islam's history disappear?"
Under Threat
Bayt al-Mawlid
When the Wahabis took Mecca in the 1920s they destroyed the dome on top of the house where the Prophet Mohammed was born. It was thenused as a cattle market before being turned into a library after a campaign by Meccans. There are concerns that the expansion of the Grand Mosque will destroy it once more. The site has never been excavated by archaeologists.
Ottoman and Abasi columns of the Grand Mosque
Slated for demolition as part of the Grand Mosque expansion, these intricately carved columns date back to the 17th century and are the oldest surviving sections of Islam's holiest site. Much to the chagrin of Wahabis, they are inscribed with the names of the Prophet's companions. Ottomon Mecca is now rapidly disappearing
Al-Masjid al-Nawabi
For many years, hardline Wahabi clerics have had their sites set on the 15th century green dome that rests above the tomb holding the Prophet, Abu Bakr and Umar in Medina. The mosque is regarded as the second holiest site in Islam. Wahabis, however, believe marked graves are idolatrous. A pamphlet published in 2007 by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, endorsed by Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, stated that "the green dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet's Masjid".
Jabal al-Nour
A mountain outside Mecca where Mohammed received his first Koranic revelations. The Prophet used to spend long spells in a cave called Hira. The cave is particularly popular among South Asian pilgrims who have carved steps up to its entrance and adorned the walls with graffiti. Religious hardliners are keen to dissuade pilgrims from congregating there and have mooted the idea of removing the steps and even destroying the mountain altogether.
Honour killing is back on the headlines. I have come across several stories of honour killings, not just in the developing world, but one also in the UK! So here goes something on them. Mind you I’m giving details of very few incidents here, the ones which hit the headlines, god knows how many more have gone unreported. I don’t think that the actual figure of honour killing is available with anyone, neither is there any authority at the national or provincial level to monitor the act and collect the details in every country. The numbers are only collected from police and media reports. But what about the cases that go unreported?
Honour killing is a compoundable offence in which the parties -- accused and victim family -- can reach a compromise and settle the issue. As the accused of the honour killing is often a family member -- father, brother or husband -- of the victim, he easily earns pardon by the kin of the victim or the complainant. In such killings, parents should pursue the case, but as both the victim and accused were related, the killer gains an advantage.
Palestine Let me begin with Palestine. To the shock of all, the man killed slit the throat of his wife in the market, in front of all. Why? Just because she sought divorce from her abusive husband of 10 years!
In 2012, 12 women were killed by relatives, including three in "family honour" cases. Those include suspected adultery and similar cases. The new addition is a man killing his wife brutally in the market. Nancy Zaboun, a 27-year-old mother of three, was reportedly regularly beaten by her 32-year-old husband Shadi Abedallah, at times so severely that she had to be hospitalized. Even then, Abedallah was never arrested, police only made him sign pledges that he would stop beating his wife. And what’s even more surprising is the fact that Abedallah himself is a former police officer and he killed her after attending a hearing in her divorce case.
Women might have scored some breakthroughs in traditional Palestinian society in recent years, including gaining a greater role in public life, but tribal laws still remain strong, and violence against women is generally viewed by police as an internal family matter.
The case might have reverberated across Palestinian society because of the brutality of the attack, but violence against women is overlooked here, as in other parts of the Arab world, and women's rights activists say abusive husbands are rarely punished.
On July 18, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) released a statement, which said a 19-year-old girl was murdered overnight in a refugee camp in Gaza City by her brother and father in an apparent "honour killing". “The body of the girl, identified only by the initials "WMQ," arrived at the city's Shifa Hospital at approximately 2:00 am (2300 GMT on Tuesday),” The Egyptian Gazettereported. "Palestinian police spokesman Major Ayman Batniji told PCHR that police opened an investigation immediately and arrested her father and her brother who both confessed to committing the crime in the context of 'family honour'," it said.
Honour killings, in which a family member murders a relative who is perceived to have ruined the family's reputation, occur periodically in the Palestinian territories.
Last year, following the murder of a woman in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas pledged to amend a decades-old law under which those citing "honour" as a defence could expect to receive a jail sentence of no more than six months.
India: Honour killings are not new to India. They have been on the headlines very often. On July 14, a man was murdered for falling in love with an upper caste girl. Elango was murdered by a gang of men who opposed his falling in love with Selvalakshmi, 18, a dominant caste girl in Erode. Selvalakshmi’s brother Saravanan, who wanted to save the ‘honour’ of the family, arranged his friends to ‘finish off’ Elango, a dalit. His friends brought Elango to Muneerpallam secretly and killed him. Now Saravanan’s gang has been put behind bars. Selvalakshmi is depressed and sees no hope for her future. “This is not an isolated case. Many Elangos and Selvalakshmis are facing threat from their families for marrying out of their caste,” reportedThe Asian Age.
A local court of Badaun in Lucknow on July 30 awarded death penalty to seven members of a family for killing a couple in Fareedpur village in May 2006. The police, in its investigation, found that Deen Dayal and Aneeta, both in their early twenties, had been victims of ‘honour killing’. All those convicted belonged to the girl’s family and included her father Nathu.
A local court in Sonipat in Haryana on August 1 awarded life imprisonment to a woman and her two sons for killing her 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old niece in the name of honour. Chanchal and her cousin Raj Kumari were killed after their grandmother caught them with their 16-year-old cousin around two years back. The judge also slapped Rs 10,000 fine each on the convicts -- Vidya Devi, Kumari's mother, Chand Varma and Suraj Varma, reportedThe Times of India. They would undergo an additional 10-month imprisonment if they fail to pay the fine. A police officer said the "affair'' infuriated Vidya and her two sons, who took the girls to a secluded place and strangled them to death. They then threw their bodies into a canal near Badwasni village in Sonipat on June 26, 2010.
Pakistan: Earlier in Pakistan, the honour killings were mostly isolated to northern Sindh, southern Punjab and some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan in Pakistan, but now the capital police are registering cases regularly especially in its rural areas, reportedDawn. At least six incidents of honour killings were reported over the last two-and-a-half months in the country.
On July 3, a man was found dead from a nullah at G-11/2. The victim, Mohammad Bashir, and his cousin Ahsanullah, natives of district Kohat, persuaded two local girls to elope with them and did a court marriage a year back. A Jirga -- a tribal assembly of elders -- was called which barred the couple from entering the village. In response, the couple migrated to Islamabad and started living at Merabadi in Golra. On July 13, the victim received a call on his mobile from his in-laws and immediately left the house. Later, he was found strangled in the nullah.
On July 6, a man killed his wife and her alleged paramour in the area of Shahzad town. Later, the accused, who escaped from the spot after the killing, surrendered to the police. The accused told the police that when he returned home on July 6, he found his bedroom locked from the inside, but his wife was in the kitchen. Later, he found a man inside his bedroom and lost his temper and killed the duo. He further claimed that around a month ago, he had returned home and found his bedroom locked. Later, his wife opened it and he saw the man escaping from another door. He rebuked his wife over her illicit relation with the man and in response she left the house. A week later, she returned on his insistence, but did not abandon the illicit relationship.
On July 19, a man killed his sister ‘MB’, 19, on pretext of “honour” at his house in Kirpa. The victim’s family was trying to convince her to marry a man of their choice, but she repeatedly refused. When asked for the reason, she disclosed that she had married secretly. Over the disclosure, her brother killed her with a pistol and escaped. Later, the victim’s father lodged a complaint against his son and the police registered a murder case.
Afghanistan: An Afghan man killed his two teenage daughters when they returned home four days after running away with a man in a southern village, police said on July 19. The father, who shot the girls, has been detained on murder charges in Nad Ali district in the southern province of Helmand, a hotbed of the Taliban insurgency, provincial police spokesman Farid Ahmad Farhang told AFP. “He killed two of his daughters. His daughters had run away with a young man four days ago. When they returned home their father killed them,” Farhang said. Police have issued an arrest warrant for the young man, who is said to be working as an interpreter with NATO forces in the southern province, reportedThe Nation.
So-called “honour killing” is a common practice in Afghanistan. The Taliban recently publicly executed a young woman in a village near Kabul after she was accused of adultery. The execution was widely condemned internationally after a shocking video of the killing surfaced in Afghan media. It showed a crowd cheering as a man shot the woman with a rifle.
The UK: It is not that only developing countries and Muslim-dominated countries are haunted by honour killings, it happens even in the developed countries, even in the West, even in the UK! A jury in the UK has begun considering its verdicts in the trial of a couple accused of murdering of their daughter because they believed she brought “shame on the family”, reportedThe Independent. Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and his wife Farzana, 49, of Liverpool Road, Warrington, Cheshire, are alleged to have suffocated their 17-year-old daughter Shafilea with a plastic bag. The 10-week trial heard evidence from Shafilea's sister Alesha, who claimed that she and the rest of her siblings witnessed the murder at the family home. Taxi driver Ahmed denies murder, saying Shafilea ran away from home in the middle of the night and he never saw her again. Farzana also denies murder but told the told the jury she saw her husband beat her eldest child and she believes he killed her. Study on honour killings: Worldwide, most honour killings take place in Muslim countries -- Pakistan, in particular. But the northern parts of Hindu-majority India also are plagued by the phenomenon. Official estimates suggest at least 1,000 honour killings take place in each country every year. The actual numbers likely are many times that. As Phyllis Chesler and Nathan Bloom wrote in the Summer 2012 edition of the Middle East Quarterly, “honor killing is the premeditated murder of a relative (usually a young woman) who has allegedly impugned the honor of her family.”
In the case of Pakistani honour killings, the researchers found, three motives prevailed: punishment for “illicit relationships” (often involving a woman who elopes with a mate of her own choosing); “contamination by association” (in which family member are killed for the moral sins of their sister or daughter); and “immoral character,” in which the woman or girl (the average victim age is 22) is punished for going unveiled, or otherwise flouting the standards of dour piety expected of Muslim women in backwards societies.
In Indian honour killings, these factors sometimes are present. But the dominant motivation is something entirely different: caste. This difference in honour-killing motivation is tied to a difference in the murder-sanctioning decision-making process. In Pakistan, the killings are embarked upon as small-scale family conspiracies. In India, on the other hand, caste-based councils called khap panchatays explicitly order the killings -- despite the fact that inter-caste and intra-gotra marriage has been legal in India for over half a century.
The difference in Indian/Pakistani honour-killing motivations also leads to another striking statistical gap between the two nations: “In 40% of the cases, Indian Hindus murdered men, while Pakistani Muslims murdered men only 14% of the time in Pakistan,” the authors reported. “The higher percentage of male victims in India underscores the fact that Hindu honor killings are more often about caste purity than sexual purity. While sexual purity is traditionally a female responsibility, the religious mandate to maintain strict boundaries between castes is an obligation for all Hindus, both male and female.”
From a policy-making perspective, this analysis suggests that there is more hope in India than in Pakistan for eliminating the practice of honour killing.
India has unambiguously denounced honour killings and is keen to crack down on the khap panchayats’ stubborn grip on popular attitudes in northern India. In particular, a bill drafted in 2011 stipulates that: “It shall be unlawful for any group of persons to gather, assemble or congregate with the… intention to deliberate, declare on, or condemn any marriage or relationship such as marriage between two persons of majority age in the locality concerned on the basis that such conduct or relationship has dishonored the caste or community or religion of all or some of the persons forming part of the assembly or the family or the people of the locality concerned.” Unfortunately, the fate of the legislation remains uncertain -- because the khap panchayats still have political sway.
In Pakistan, the situation is worse, because national authorities don’t even control large swathes of their own country’s northern borderlands -- let alone the murderous intra-familial dynamics of the tribes that inhabit these areas.
Political Islam also is a complicating factor in Pakistan. Like the Hindu faith, Islam provides no explicit religious justification for honour killings. Yet the perceived imperative of “protecting” Muslim women from the “impurities” of the West has become wrapped up with the Islamist political project, and so has blurred into a quasi-religious justification for honour killings.
In 2009, the authors note, “Pakistan’s National Assembly passed the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, which strengthened legal protections against domestic violence for women and children. However, the Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body charged with assessing whether laws are consistent with Islamic injunctions, issued a statement saying the bill ‘would fan unending family feuds and push up divorce rates.’ After this, the bill was held up in the Pakistani senate and allowed to lapse.”
Moreover: “Under Sharia-based provisions of Pakistan’s judicial system, murderers can buy a pardon by paying blood money (dyad) to the victim’s family. Since the family of honor killing victims are nearly always sympathetic to the honor killer as well as complicit to some degree, getting a pardon is usually just a formality. Women’s rights organizations in Pakistan have pressed parliament to disallow the practice of blood money in honor killing cases, but conservative Islamist groups have blocked the needed legislation.”
From a strictly Western point of view, the most interesting conclusion from the Chesler/Bloom study is this: Pakistani immigrants to the West sometimes bring the seeds of a deadly honour culture with them, while Indian immigrants typically do not.
That is because the belief that a family’s honour lives and dies with the perceived chastity and obedience of its female members is deeply culturally ingrained in Pakistan, and often survives for decades, even on Western soil. On the other hand, Indians who emigrate to the West also leave behind the khap panchayats, and the codes of caste behaviour they enforce. (To my knowledge, certainly, there are no khap panchayat in Brampton or Mississauga -- at least, none that issue murder decrees.)
Media Mogul Oprah Winfreyis in the headlines again, not to say for the bad reasons! People haven’t forgotten that she was in India, for the first time, in January to shoot an India special for Oprah's Next Chapter. The series was aired on Discovery Channel and its affiliate TLC - The Lifestyle Channel - over the weekend. So what? There lies the crux of the story. Winfrey's negative take on India in the show has been largely criticized.
During her visit, Winfrey visited a Mumbai slum, the Jaipur Literary Festival, where she taped an interaction with noted writer Deepak Chopra, a widow’s home in North India, rounding off with a must-see trip to the Taj Mahal. The episode also filmed Winfrey spending time with families, from the slum-dwelling poor to millionaires, including being escorted by Indian film icon Amitabh Bachchan and his family to a glamorous Bollywood party hosted in her honour by leading Mumbai socialite Parmeshwar Godrej.
Watching the show – yes, I must admit, her talk shows are addictive and I often end up watching some of them, compromising with some hours of my sleep -- I was shocked to see her take on India and Indians.
She was guided through a slum in Mumbai by Gregory David Roberts, the author of Shantaram, and went to meet a family of five. She was surprised to see the family – parents and three children – living in a 10x10ft room. She was surprised to see the whole family living in a small space. But what was most shocking was she asked the children how they could live in such a “tiny” room and actually wanted to know, “Don’t you feel it’s too cramped?” She asked the, if they were happy living in such a small place. Maybe the children, who are happily living with their parents, might have wondered why she’s asking such a foolish question! Not enough of her queries, she asked the father if “he was happy and satisfied”, which made the man to get tears in his eyes. All he said was he wished he could earn more and provide for a more comfortable life for his children. Adding to the woes, Winfrey didn’t keep quiet, after making the man weep in front of his family, she said that she knows how awful it is for children to see their father weep!
In fact, she looked for a shower head in the toilet and was amazed to hear that the family bathed with a bucket! She was astonished by the fact that all their clothes fit onto a small shelf. Why didn’t she ask the family how they enjoyed the big LCD TV that adorned their walls? Had she mentioned about the TV, maybe it would have killed the whole purpose of her visit to the slum, to their house. The painful story would have been marred by the mention of the TV! When their older daughter told Oprah that she’d like to go to London to study further, Oprah played her role as American ambassador. She said: “No. Come to America, it’s a lovely country. It’s the best.”
After visiting the slum, she visited a rich joint family, which was dressed in full Indian regalia, in Mumbai. They served her a meal in silver plates and bowls. She looked at the food and asked one of the family members, “So I hear some people in India STILL eat with their hands”. I felt like screaming at her ignorance or maybe arrogance… Which Indian will not get angry at her question? I wondered if people in the US eat pizzas, burgers, sandwiches and tacos using forks and knives, or I don’t know if they have some other cutlery for them!
Another generalization she did when she told her viewers, “ALL women in India live with their mothers-in-law and extended family.” Where did she get this impression from? Everybody living with mothers-in-law and extended family? God knows and she knows…
Then, decked in Tarun Tahiliani’s designer saree, she headed towards Bachchan family. There she met the family and saw Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan’s child and said the baby was “lit from within”. Sorry, I couldn’t understand what she meant by that!
Later, she went to the party thrown in her honour by billionaire socialite Parmeshwar Godrej. She wondered at the paparazzi outside the Bachchan home, which is quite impressive on any given day. AT the party, she said hi, hello to Priyanka Chopra, Shiamak Dawar, Anil Kapoor and other Bollywood stars. She interrogated A.R. Raman – sorry, that how she called him, Raman not Rahman! She talked to him about how “even he lives with his mother and whether he loves his wife who he had an arranged marriage with”.
Leading news channel CNN-IBN posted an “open letter” to Oprah Winfrey from an Indian who eats with her hand” on its website penned by Rituparna Chatterjee. The letter read: “Oprah, your comment about eating with the hand is really not that big a deal to us; we are used to gross Western ignorance regarding our ancient country. But as a responsible public figure about to air a show that will be beamed across the world, you should have done your homework. Using our hands to eat is a well established tradition and a fact none of us are ashamed of. Our economic distinction has nothing to do with it. A millionaire here eats the same way a pauper does. You have been to Asian nations. You should know that.”
Questioning Winfrey's motives, Chatterjee added, “Poverty is an inseparable part of India, you say, and seek out the human stories that make the grind bearable. But which India have you come looking for? The one that shops at state-of-the-art supermarkets and vacations abroad or the one whining about their misery in tiny holes of homes with LCD televisions on the walls? The India that scrapes by with $200 a month but sends its children to subsidized government schools to pick up fluent English? The India of your press information - fascinating, with its many-headed goddesses and grimy, naked children playing by roadside hovels - or the India of the future - an economic superpower that looms large outside the range of an average American's myopic vision?”
A critique of the show by online news site Firstpost.com writer Rajyasree Sen described the two-episode series as “myopic, unaware, ignorant and gauche. This was Middle America at its best worst”.
Winfrey's tour of a Mumbai slum, where she met a family of five living in a cramped room, was also criticised by Rajyasree Sen. She said: “And the slum is where Oprah’s 'oh-my-god-how wonderfully-pathetically-quaint-to-be-so-poor' avatar stepped out in full glory. .. Now I’m not surprised that Oprah was surprised to see an entire family living in such tiny quarters. Although I’m sure she could find cramped ghettos in the U.S... She did look for a shower head in the toilet and seem amazed to hear they bathed with a bucket. And she marveled at how all their clothes fit onto a small shelf. She pointedly avoided any mention of the massive LCD TV which adorned their wall. That would have killed the sob story. When their older daughter told Oprah that she’d like to go to London to study further, Oprah also played her role as American ambassador to the hilt and said, “No. Come to America, it’s a lovely country. It’s the best”.”
Another leading newspaper group Dainik Bhaskar posted the headline “Snobbish Oprah Mocks India” and said: “In a typical American snooty style, the talk show queen tried to portray a superficial ‘sob story’. Oprah was anything but a good guest when she went around the small room interrogating the family members about their ‘poor’ living style and ‘miserly’ living.” In its coverage of how the show got a “thumbs down”, India Real Time – not to forget it’s the Wall Street Journal's India-specific blog -- said: “The smell of incense (tick), the sari fitting (tick), the aspirations of slum dwellers (tick), and the glitz of Bollywood (tick). Let’s not forget arranged marriages and the fact that Indians, even rich ones, “still” eat with their hands (tick, tick). India as Westerners imagine it, one stereotype at a time.”
On the other hand, a few of the many online comments to the India Real Time story supported Winfrey's coverage of India's reality. “The views Oprah presented are cliched BUT TRUE! I am an Indian who lives in the U.S... To many middle and upper class families, the India Oprah presents simply does not exist. I was shocked to speak to members of my family and they denied that people are dying of malnutrition and starvation below their very ivory towers,” said a post by RJ.
Some even say that Oprah showed what’s reality and there’s nothing wrong in what she did. “Oprah showed what she saw in India. What’s wrong with that? If we can’t clean up our act, then we have no business feeling offended,” said another post by Esh.
Is it something to do with how India and Indians are projected after Slumdog Millionaire? Maybe, who knows? Many people in the West think India is filled with slums and Indians have been stereotyped like that everywhere. “Since the time Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, Indians have been stereotyped everywhere like that. Whenever I’ve met someone, they do mention Slumdog Millionaire, as if every Indian was that. For many in Europe, India is what is shown in Bollywood movies, women are sexy, wearing short skirts and barely covered bodies and couples sing and dance around trees and in public areas. They are not able to differentiate the real life from movies. The most common stereotype in Europe about India is that there are a lot of people in India dying or dead on the streets. Many are scared to visit India, just because there are too many people,” said a post by Gajendra K.
So I’m not the only one who’s criticizing Oprah’s take on India, a whole lot of Indians are also of the same opinion.
Love Jihad has once again hits the headlines and this time it’s in Kerala. The Christian community in Kerala has reportedly expressed its concern about love jihad and according to the Global Council of Indian Christians, it has “victimized” 2,868 women so far.
The latest case of love jihad involves a Christian woman from Kochi, who left her husband and married the driver of a school bus. Later, she was arrested for allegedly supplying SIM cards to Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Thadiyantavide Nazir, who is currently in prison.
Dr Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, said that Deepa Cheriyan converted to Islam and changed her name to Shahina. Deepa, whose husband works in the Middle East, had an affair with Naushad, who was working as a driver.
Dr George believes that Deepa, like many others, is a victim of love jihad. This issue even piqued US interest. The US diplomats in their report from Chennai consulate said: "Both Hindu and Christian groups have expressed fear and outrage at the 'plot', while Muslim groups have felt the need to defend their co-religionists against the conspiracy theorists".
In a cable sent in February last year mentioned that though the ongoing police investigations in south India had cast doubt on the existence of a "love jihad", the recurring assertion of its existence, despite contrary evidence demonstrates the suspicion and intolerance that exist among some of the region's religious communities.
The report also said: “The Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance of the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council had reported that there had been 2,868 female victims of love jihad in Kerala between 2006 and 2009. The panel had made several recommendations to parents through its newsletter, including a recommendation to monitor children's cellphones and computers, so that they can be better prepared to fight the phenomenon and resist charming young Muslim men involved in the scheme.”
The cable, as disclosed by WikiLeaks, said that Sajan George was convinced that “there was a concerted effort in south India by some Muslim men to get Christian women to fall in love with them in order to convert them”.
The Kerala high court had also taken note of the matter and had asked the police to investigate the cases of two college-going girls. The two girls were allegedly forced to convert to Islam after they married Muslim men.
Police in Kerala said that in most cases of love jihad, the victims were merely used as pawns in criminal activities. Many of the victims had no idea what they were getting into and often got into lured by the young men.
Added to all this, a controversial poster, warning against Muslim youth marrying and converting Hindu girls, appeared in the premises of the BJP headquarters in New Delhi. What’s surprising is the fact that the poster gave the instances of Bollywood actors Aamir Khan and Said Ali Khan who had married Hindu women, had children and then went for a divorce.
"Wake up Hindus, wake up. Beware of Love Jihad," the poster warned, appealing to people to report such incidents, and provided an e-mail address and a mobile-phone number.
Though the poster was later removed from the BJP office, it was allegedly put up by the radical Hindu outfit Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena, but advertised a group called the Anti-Love Jihad Front. Remember which is this Sena? Yes, rightly guessed. It’s the same outfit whose members had allegedly assaulted Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan some months ago and had protested against writer Arundhati Roy for their views on Kashmir!
Ok, let me come back to the term “Love Jihad”. It is also called as “Romeo Jihad”. It is an alleged activity under which some young Muslim boys and men reportedly target college girls belonging to non-Muslim communities for conversion to Islam by feigning love! While similar activities have been reported elsewhere, the term has been widely used to describe the activity in India.
Reports of similar activities have emerged from Pakistan, where Hindu and Sikh girls were targeted, and the United Kingdom. Targeted sexual offences and forced conversions of Hindu and Sikh girls was not a new phenomenon in the UK, said Ashish Joshio from Media Monitoring group. "This has been going on for decades in the UK. Young Muslim men have been boasting about seducing the Kaffir (unbeliever) women. The Hindu and the Sikh communities must be commended for showing both restraint and maturity under such provocation," he said.
Police in the UK are even working with universities to clamp down on "aggressive conversions" during which girls are beaten up and forced to abandon university courses. The problem was most common in cities such as Birmingham, Leeds and Bradford, while London universities had “at least two or three cases” each.
Why would Muslim boys target non-Muslim girls? Ramesh Kallidai, from the Hindu Forum of Britain, estimated hundreds of girls had been targeted, with some reports of Muslim boys being offered £5,000 “commissions”. The National Union of Students said it did not want to discriminate against Muslims but agreed some extremists were causing concern. They have managed to infiltrate Brunel University in West London, Bedfordshire University, Sheffield Hallam University and Manchester Metropolitan University, according to a Muslim charity.
Coming back to India, this activity has raised concerns in various Hindu and Christian organisations. On the other hand, Muslim organisations in Kerala have denied that any such activity is true.
When some parts of the country were worried about this issue, investigations were conducted in 2009 in Kerala and Karnataka and the reports said that there were no such activities in the country.
In January 2012, Kerala police declared that Love Jihad was "[a] campaign with no substance" and brought legal proceeding against the website hindujagruti.org for "spreading religious hatred and false propaganda". What more to say, the issue successfully garnered the international attention.
Organisations and people alleged that love jihad was conducted in Kerala and Managalore, and Kerala Catholic Bishops Council claimed that up to 4,500 girls in Kerala have been targeted, whereas Hindu Janajagruti Samiti claimed that 30,000 girls have been converted in Karnataka alone. Not just that, even general secretary of Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana said that there had been reports in Narayaneeya communities of love jihad attempts.
This activity, rather say the very term, became popular in September 2009, when the reports of two women from Pathanamthitta in Kerala were forced to convert to Islam after being lured by two Muslim men "feigning love". Initially, the women said their conversion was voluntary. However, subsequently - they were staying with their parents in the interim period on the court's orders - they claimed they were abducted and coerced to convert. The two men were reported to be members of Campus Front, a student outfit of the Popular Front of India, a conglomerate of Muslim organisations that is alleged to be engaged in radicalizing Muslims in south India.
What’s noteworthy is the fact that Christians, who have been in the crosshairs of the Hindu right-wing for their offer of "inducements" to convert Hindus to Christianity, have joined hands with Hindu right-wing organisations against the love jihadis!
When police have declined any such activity in the country, why are parents so scared? There’s a reason for this. Traditionally, marriages have been arranged by parents and this trend is slowly changing. Youngsters are increasingly choosing their own partners. They sometimes choose a partner who is from a different caste or sub-caste or sometimes different religion altogether. When parents don’t agree for such a mix marriage, youngsters don’t even think of convincing them, they defy rules, they defy parents and just elope to marry the person whom they have chosen as partner. Maybe it is this fear of losing control over their children which makes parents to get worried.
Why only non-Muslim parents are worried? There’s yet another reason for this. Muslim parents confine their daughters to homes or put them under a burqa. But non-Muslim parents have no other go but to keep themselves busy policing their daughters or thinking up of new ways and means to control them. Whatever it is, the issue is not going to die that sooner.
Pan Chunyan was grabbed from her grocery store when she was almost eight months pregnant with her third child. Men working for a local official locked her up with two other women, and four days later brought her to a hospital and forced her to put her thumbprint on a document saying she had agreed to an abortion. A nurse injected her with a drug.
“After I got the shot, all the thugs disappeared,” Ms. Pan, 31, said in a telephone interview from her home in the southeastern province of Fujian. “My family was with me again. I cried and hoped the baby would survive.”
But after hours of labor, the baby was born dead on April 8, “black and blue all over,” Ms. Pan said.
Recent reports of women being coerced into late-term abortions by local officials have thrust China’s population control policy into the spotlight and ignited an outcry among policy advisers and scholars who are seeking to push central officials to fundamentally change or repeal a law that penalizes families for having more than one child. Pressure to alter the policy is building on other fronts as well, as economists say that China’s aging population and dwindling pool of young, cheap labor will be a significant factor in slowing the nation’s economic growth rate.
“An aging working population is resulting in a labor shortage, a less innovative and less energetic economy, and a more difficult path to industrial upgrading,” said He Yafu, a demographics analyst. China’s population of 1.3 billion is the world’s largest, and the central government still seems focused on limiting that number through the one-child policy, Mr. He said. Abolishing the one-child policy, though, might not be enough to bring the birthrate up to a “healthy” level because of other factors, he said.
Beyond debate about the law itself, critics say that enforcement of the policy leads to widespread abuses, including forced abortions, because many local governments reward or penalize officials based on how well they keep down the population.
Judging from the talk on microblogs across China and articles in state-run newspapers on forced-abortion cases, the one-child policy is being questioned more widely than in recent years. Last month it came under sharp criticism from a group of scholars and policy advisers at a forum at Peking University co-organized by the National Bureau of Statistics to discuss the results of the 2010 census. Scholars at the meeting were outraged by the plight of Feng Jianmei, a victim of a forced late-term abortion in early June whose case became widely known after photographs of her dead 7-month-old fetus were posted on the Internet by a relative.
“I think the right to have children is the right of a citizen,” said Zhan Zhongle, a law professor at Peking University who has sent a petition signed by scholars and business executives to the National People’s Congress urging its members to repeal the law.
Officials have made changes to the policy over the years, and by one estimate there are now at least 22 ways in which parents can qualify for exceptions to the law. But the majority of adults remain bound by it, and there is no sign its repeal is in the works. The National People’s Congress, largely a rubber-stamp legislature, is unlikely to take up Mr. Zhan’s petition without support from the top levels of the Communist Party.
Still, some former officials and scholars instrumental in helping to formulate the original policy were at the forum, raising hopes among longtime critics that the concerns would be heard among members of the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
The diplomatic crisis in the spring over Chen Guangcheng has also brought more attention to the policy. Mr. Chen, a self-taught lawyer who recently escaped from house arrest and left for New York, is perhaps the most famous advocate for women who are forced to undergo sterilization and abortion; his work incurred the wrath of local officials, and the central government ignored his persecution in Shandong Province.
There are no reliable estimates on the number of forced sterilizations and abortions, but it does not seem to be as rampant as it was a decade or two ago. Still, the recent cases show overzealous enforcement of the one-child policy remains a problem. Xinhua, the state news agency, has reported that forcing pregnant women who are in their third trimester to abort is illegal.
Besides the concerns of lawyers and human rights advocates, economists and business executives have expressed anxiety about the impact of a slowing population growth rate on the economy. Liang Jianzhang, a well-known executive with a doctoral degree in economics from Stanford University, and Li Jianxin, a demographer at Peking University, have estimated that by 2040, the number of Chinese older than 60 would be 411 million, up from 171 million today. The working population — people between the ages of 20 and 60 — would drop to 696 million from 817 million today.
The 2010 national census shows that the average birthrate for a Chinese household is 1.181; it is lower in cities and higher in rural areas. There have been some studies, including a long-term experiment in a county in Shanxi Province where the family planning law was suspended, that show that families would not have many more children even if the law were abolished. Scholars say the reasons are rapid modernization and a mass movement toward urban areas — parents often say they cannot afford to have more than one or perhaps two children. This means not only that the one-child policy may no longer be necessary, but also that its repeal would not necessarily benefit the economy.
While more debate may be under way, the family planning commission itself continues to stand behind the one-child policy. It held a semiannual work conference on Thursday and posted a statement on its Web site afterward that praised the policy as having helped avoid 400 million births since it was put in place in 1980.
Starting in the 1980s, local officials who failed to meet a set standard of controlling population growth were generally penalized in their evaluations for promotion, no matter how well they did in other categories.
Mayling Birney, a scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science who is studying the evaluation system, said many local officials say the population control quota remains among the so-called one-veto criteria for promotion and is about as significant a goal as maintaining stability or growing the local economy. “This pressure really comes from the higher government,” she said. “The actions of lower officials are very much driven by how higher officials are rewarding and punishing them.”
Some township government Web sites that give a breakdown of goals for officials list population control as a priority. In a survey Dr. Birney conducted last year, some officials said they could be given a warning, fined or even removed from office if they did not meet family planning targets.
Such is the case in Daji Township, said Ms. Pan, the woman forced to have the late-term abortion in April.
Ms. Pan, a resident of Daji, said Ma Yuyao, the head of the township’s family planning commission, “scores points for promotion” by keeping the population down. Many parents ready to pay the fine of $7,200 for a third child are still coerced or forced into having abortions to make sure targets are met, Ms. Pan said. (Daji is a rural area, and couples there are apparently allowed two children without penalty.)
Ms. Pan’s husband, Wu Liangjie, said the couple gave Mr. Ma $8,700, as he had demanded, but Mr. Ma still ordered the abortion.
Mr. Ma could not be reached for comment. A woman answering the telephone at the township government office said officials had no comment.
Mr. Wu traveled to Beijing several weeks ago to seek the advice of lawyers on filing a lawsuit. But in the last week, neither he nor Ms. Pan have answered their cellphones, raising suspicions that officials from Daji may have intimidated them.
Ms. Pan said earlier that men had begun following her after photographs of her in the hospital were posted by sympathizers on the Internet.
As for the future, she said she and her husband did not plan to try having another child again.
“We both feel like we almost died,” Ms. Pan said, “or lost half of our lives.”
