2 Temples destroyed in West Bengal

January 4, 2003

The Anti-Hindu and pro-islamist Communist State Government of West Bengal demolish to Hindu Temples but leave a Mosque standing! Readers Notice the use of Hindutva Forces for simply defending and promoting Hindu Dharma in an Atheist state.

Keshav Das

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, JANUARY 03, 2003 11:44:41 PM ]

KOLKATA: The demolition of two illegal Kali temples on Jessore Road and the simultaneous failure of the state or the Centre to come clear on the status of the mosque inside the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose international airport, have come in handy for Hindutva forces. On December 28, the North 24-Parganas police helped clear a part of Jessore Road to widen it and link it to the Belghoria Expressway, which is under construction.

While doing so, two small temples, encroaching on government land, were demolished. “It is an obvious case of preferential treatment. The government is not worried about hurting Hindu sentiments but scared to hurt others,” said a state-level leader of the VHP in the city. The state government and the West Bengal minority commission seem to have played into the hands of the saffron brigade by passing the buck to the Centre whenever the question of the status of the mosque has come up.

State minority commission chairman K.M. Yusuf agreed the matter had become politicised. “The National Minorities Commission should be dealing with it. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board should be consulted. The mosque is over 100 years old and built before the airport was. It’s not an illegal structure like the temples which were encroaching. However, for obvious reasons I do not want to speak my mind on the matter,” he said. Immediately after the demolition of the two temples, two Bengali dailies, Anandabazar Patrika and Aajkal, took up diametrically opposite views on the subject. ABP on January 1 claimed that while temples were being demolished, an “illegal mosque” was being allowed to stand next to the runway. Aajkal argued that not touching the mosque was a ploy by the Centre to increase its Muslim vote bank.

It said by playing along, the state government was strengthening the hands of the Hindutva brigade. CPI state secretary Manju Majumdar says the two cases were different. “The temples were illegal, the mosque is not. In any case the ball is in the Centre’s court,” he said. Additional SP, Bidhannagar, Ajay Kumar Nand,who supervised the road-widening operations, agreed.

“The shrines have been removed but the structures were illegal and demolished. The law has to take its own course,” he said. He refused to comment on the mosque controversy. Writer Hossainur Rehman, however, believes the same rule should apply for everyone. “I see no reasons for this double standard. I strongly believe there should be a uniform civil law in this country. Nor do I believe in the theory of appeasement. Sadly that is what seems to be going on here,” he said.

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January 4, 2003

This has been going on for while now. Sadly few Hindu groups are doing anything about it. When Hindus protest the line is that he is "Extremist", "Communal" or "Nazi". You can imagine what the headlines would have been if the Mosque was also demolished!!! The muslims would be out on the streets of Calcutta! This reflects the sorry situation of the Hindus in their own motherland. The land of the ancient Rishis.

READ THIS:-

Building spree

Feb 15, 1998

West Bengal: The number of mosques in the districts on the border with Bangladesh has doubled since the demolition of the Babri Masjid

Few centenarians will be in such a robust state. The Al-Mahadus-Salafi mosque at Lalgola, a small town in Murshidabad district near the Bangladesh border, conceals its age thanks to the face-lift it got when the madrasa, the mosque's centre for Islamic studies, added two sprawling wings recently.

At Jangipur, also close to the border, the Nabab Jaigir mosque was a shambles not too long ago. Today people's jaws will drop if they see the amazing transformation it has undergone. Meanwhile the devout of Benipur village of Murshidabad, which too is in the vicinity of the border, are merrily building their fifth mosque.

Indeed, the faithful in the five districts bordering Bangladesh, Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia and North 24 Parganas, seem to be on a mosque-building spree. Before December 1992, when the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was pulled down, there were 325 mosques in the 27 police station areas adjacent to the border. A recent survey by a Central intelligence agency revealed that "more than 350" new mosques have come up in the area since then. And new madrasas as well. There were 47 of them in 11 police station areas before December 1992. Since then 10 new madrasas have sprung up in just five police station areas.

The Central and state governments have no clue why so many mosques and religious institutions are being built along the border. Nor have they tracked down the agencies which are ostensibly funding their construction and maintenance. But the intelligence agency knows one thing for sure: a liberal flow of funds from abroad, which it estimates at Rs 200 crore, is fuelling the frenzied building activity.

It is no secret that some of these institutions have become training centres for the fundamentalists. "We know they harbour smugglers and fanatics from across the border. But we cannot do anything because of political pressure," says a senior official in Murshidabad which is the only Muslim-majority district in the state. According to the survey, Murshidabad had the highest number of mosques before the Ayodhya incident: including 67 at Lalgola, 45 at Rani Nagar, 39 at Suti, 18 at Raghunathgunj and 17 at Bhagabangola. It was followed by Malda district where Kaliachak had eight mosques, Malda and English Bazar Station four each. In Nadia district, Karimpur led with 13 mosques and Tehatta had eight.

Post-Ayodhya the maximum number of mosques have come up in Malda district: at Baishnanagar (36), English Bazar (17), Kaliachak (10) and Malda (8). In Murshidabad district, 11 mosques were built in Suti, eight in Rani Nagar and two in Lalgola police station areas. Interestingly all the mosques and madrasas have come up within 15 kilometres from the international border.

While the sleuths suspect that funds for building most of the mosques have come from abroad, that is not true in the case of the Islipara mosque at Aurangabad. It was built by the owners of the local Pataka Bidi Company, which is the second largest such venture in the country. Though Islipara already had four mosques the owners of the company wanted to build another, alleged a local politician, to keep its 1,000-odd employees together and to prevent them from taking off under the pretext of offering prayers.

Caretakers of the new or renovated mosques say that funds have hardly been a problem. The Al-Mahadus-Salafi mosque at Lalgola, according to Abdul Khayyam, a former secretary of its madrasa, was built with aid from the Islamic Development Bank. "It had sanctioned a loan of $1 lakh in the mid-80s but the money could be utilised only now," he said. The expenditure of maintaining the madrasa, which enrols 55 children for a 12-year course in Islamic studies, comes to about Rs 2.5 lakh a year.

The money, says Khayyam, comes from "public donations". Ditto says Mumtaz Mondal when he was asked how the once-decrepit Nabab Jaigir mosque managed the dramatic turnaround. And at the High Road Para Mosque, the fifth in Benipur, senior madrasa teacher Moulvi Abdus Shakur says emphatically that the mosque was built with "public donations".

Who are the donors? "There are more than a hundred smugglers who operate near Benipur," says a local police officer. "They give funds so that they get shelter." Smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh is a lucrative business in Murshidabad district: unofficial estimates put the annual turnover at Rs 200 crore.

The politician-police-smuggler nexus is so strong here that government decisions are allegedly implemented only with their approval. It is also alleged that the politicians provide protection to the fundamentalists who in turn encourage infiltration. "The ulterior motive is to upset the demographic balance of the border districts," says a senior police officer of Murshidabad.

Obviously this has been going on for many years. According to a census report the highest rates of population growth during 1981-91 were registered in seven border districts: among them 24 Parganas (North and South) recorded 30.8 per cent, Nadia 29.8, Malda 29.6 and Murshidabad 28 per cent, when the state average was 24.5 per cent.

It is not just the smugglers and infiltrators who are benefiting. Most of these border districts elected Left Front candidates, especially Marxists, in the last assembly polls. Not surprisingly there are hardly any measures to tackle the infiltration and clear the doubts that are building up in the border districts.

www.the-week.com/98feb15/events1.htm