India’s BJP and the Right Wing Nationalist Government of Narenda Modi

In Search of India’s Soul: From Mughals to Modi Episode 1

Directed by Bruno Rosso (Al Jazeera) 2020

Film Review

In this documentary series, writer and journalist Aatish Taseer returns to his country of birth, to investigate increasing vigilante violence by Hindus against Indian Muslims.

India’s current 1.25 billion population breaks down into 1 billion Hindus, 200 million Muslims and 50 million members of other faiths (mainly Sikh, Buddhist and Christian). When India obtained independence from Britain in 1947, it was divided into Pakistan, which adopted Islam as its official religion, and India, remained a secular state. Many Muslims born in British-occupied India emigrated to Pakistan. However many remained.The last three decades has seen the rise of Hindu nationalism, which helped bring right wing Hindu nationalist party BJP and Narenda Modi to power in 2014. Many analysts believe Modi is deliberately stoking anti-Muslim sentiment, just as Trump stoked anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiment to win votes in the US.

In Part 1, Taseer mainly investigates the vigilante attacks by Hindu nationalists against Muslim cow herdsmen and traders (at present cattle is a big export for India, even though cows are sacred in the Hindu religion). Although numerous Muslims have been killed in the attacks, no perpetrators have been convicted as yet.  When the Congress party recently replaced the BJP in the state of Rajasthan, the new government passed an anti-lynching law and launched an appeal against the acquittal of six Hindu nationalists in a high-profile murder case.

At least half of the film is devoted to Taseer’s efforts to understand the intensity of the anger Hindus feel towards Muslims they have lived alongside for 500 years. Most of the Hindus he interviews blame historical atrocities by Emperor Barbur, founder of the Mughal Empire. He and the sixth Mughul emperor Aurangzeb destroyed many Hindu temples to force Hindus to convert to Islam.

An Indian psychiatrist Taseer interviews a psychiatrist who points out that India was under continuous occupation (first by Mughal and then by the British) between 1526 and 1947.  He blames the ongoing racial hatred on intergenerational trauma stemming from colonization.

Yemeni Assassinations: Prelude to Western Oil War

Yemen: The Last Lunch

Al Jazeera (2019)

Film Review

This documentary concerns the 1977 assassination of North Yemen president Ibrahim al-Hamdi. The latter, who came to power in a 1974 bloodless coup, was working on reuniting North and South Yemen, as well as reducing the country’s dependence on Saudi Arabia.

Prior to World War I, Yemen was divided between the British and Ottoman empires. North Yemen achieved independence in 1972, South Yemen in 1967. With a Marxist government, the latter had close ties to the Soviet Union.

Owing to lack of evidence, no charges were ever laid for al-Hamdi’s murder. Al-Hamdi had received advanced warnings that his military chief of staff Ahmad bin Hussein al-Ghashmi was planning to assassinate him. Al-Hamdi, who regarded al-Ghashmi as his closest friend, dismissed them.

Bodyguards last saw Al-Hamdi and his brother alive entering al-Ghashmi’s home for lunch on October 11, 1977. Hours later their bodies were found in a remote location along with the bodies of two French prostitutes/spies. According to French intelligence records, al-Ghashmi recruited the two French women to discredit al-Hamdi. Both French and US intelligence files blame Saudi Arabia for the assassination.

In addition to al-Ghashmi, long time president Ali Abdullah Saleh, Saudi Arabia and tribal leaders who opposed Yemeni reunification are also considered potential suspects.

At the time Saudi Arabia, which still views Yemen as a Saudi colony, openly opposed al-Hamdi’s presidency and policies.*

Al-Ghashmi, who assumed the presidency after Al Hamdi’s murder, would also be assassinated eight months later. Saleh, who succeeded him, openly blamed Saudi Arabia for al-Hamdi’s death.

Saleh’s 33 year presidency would end in 1990 when he, too, was assassinated. This was the same year North and South Yemen were unified (until South Yemen seceded in 1994).

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*In her new book The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil, Charlote Dennett suggests Yemen’s oil reserves exceed those of the entire Persian Gulf

Israel Independence and the Forced Eviction of 700,000 Palestinians

Al-Naqba: The Palestinian Catastrophe Part 4

Al Jazeera (2013)

Film Review

Zionist leaders proclaimed the independent state of Israel on May 14, 1948, the day British occupation of Palestine ended (see Brits Look On as Jewish Terrorists Ransack Palestinian Villages). By July, more than 400,000 Palestinians had been forcibly evicted from their homes. This final episode of the Al-Nakba documentary includes poignant testimony from Palestinian refugees whose families lived in the open for months without access to food or water. One man describes his mother feeding the family a mixture of hay, oil and onions.

The Swedish mediator the UN appointed to negotiate a peace settlement called the plight of Palestinian refugees a humanitarian disaster. He also put forward a peace proposal granting Palestinian refugees the right of return and was promptly assassinated by the Stern Gang.*

By the end of 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians had been driven from their homes. Despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for Israel to guarantee their right to return to their villages, Ralph Bunche, the new UN mediator omitted this requirement from the separate peace agreements he negotiated between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria in early 1949.

Based on these peace accords, the West Bank of the Jordan River was annexed to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt. In this way, Israel succeeded in their goal of totally erasing Palestine from history. The European and US media fully colluded in this endeavor.

In the end, only 15% of Palestine’s 1.3 million Arabs were allowed to remain within Israel’s borders. Owing to its strong link with the Vatican, the Arab population of Nazareth was allowed to remain.

Israel offered Christian and Druze Arabs the right to remain in Galilee. Instead, standing in  solidarity with Muslim neighbors who had been evicted, they opted to emigrate.

At present six million Palestinian refugees (and their descendants) live outside Israel. Two million if them still reside in desperate conditions in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. Approximately 8.3 million live in Israel proper (1.8 million) or the Israeli occupied West Bank (4.5 million ) and Gaza (2 million).

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*The Stern Gang was a prominent Jewish terrorist/paramilitary organization formed during the British occupation of Palestine. See1947: British Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine

1947-1948: Brits Look On as Jewish Terrorists Ransack 274 Palestinian Villages

Al-Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe Part 3

Al Jazeera (2013)

Film Review

Once the UK announced its intention (in February 1947 – see 1947: British Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine ) to end its occupation, the UN Security Council voted to partition Palestine –  granting 56% of country to Jewish settlers (who represented 5.5% of the population) and 44% to the indigenous Arabs (who comprised 94.5% of the population). There is documentary evidence that the Truman administration used a combination of bribery and “pressure” (unfavorable aid or trade consequences) to swing the UN vote in favor of partition.

By 1947 the combined forces of the Jewish paramilitary (terrorist) groups had reached 40,000 and begun a campaign of systematic ethnic cleansing (which paramilitary leader and future prime minister David Ben-Gurion documents in his diary). By May 14, 1948, the day British troops withdrew from Palestine, half of the country’s 548 villages had already been evacuated and taken over by Jewish terrorists.

Jewish paramilitary forces typically employed a strategy of shelling Palestinian cities and villages from three sides, while leaving an single open corridor for civilians to flee. Any Palestinians who stayed to defend their homes were slaughtered or transferred to detention camps. British troops and police looked on without intervening.

In several instances Jewish terrorist forces imitated their Nazi persecutors in Europe by forcing Palestinians to dig their own mass graves before shooting them.

The remaining Palestinian resistance desperately sought assistance from Arab League nations in defending their homeland. Surrounding Arab countries amassed roughly 24,000 troops to defend Palestine. In addition to being poorly equipped and trained,* they had no unified command. Jordan, the only country with a strong, well-equipped military, made a secret deal with the Jewish forces not to support the Palestinians.

In contrast, Palestine’s Greek orthodox churches assisted by offering sanctuary to both Christian and Muslim Palestinians fleeing Jewish violence. The Jewish gangs, refusing to honor the age-old custom of sacred spaces and sanctuary, responded by seizing and killing teenager Palestinians until the adults agreed to surrender.

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*When British troops marched out of Palestine, they left nearly all their heavy military equipment behind for the use of of the Jewish paramilitaries.