Narendra Modi
Source: Dawn.com
By ADAM PLOWRIGHT and ANNIE BANERJI
AYODHYA: Some recoil at his name, while others still refuse to acknowledge his popularity. India’s Muslims have watched the rise of election front-runner Narendra Modi anxiously and are now united in their wariness.
Many of the worshippers at the Jama Masjid Terhi Bazaar mosque in Ayodhya, a kilometre from India’s most notorious religious flashpoint, were too young to remember the 1992 riots which left more than 2,000 people dead.
Not Mohammad Sagheer, a teenager at the time of India’s worst post-independence violence. “What could be worse than seeing Muslims being beaten up, cut up and burned to death?” he said.
The dispute in Ayodhya, which boiled over when zealots tore down a mosque believed to have been built over the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram, left deep scars but vaulted Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to national prominence.
The enduring sensitivity can be judged by the police presence today. Each visitor negotiates five layers of security as they proceed under caged walkways topped by razor wire to the shrine at the centre.
From watchtowers and gathered in groups, paramilitary police keep guard, automatic weapons at the ready.
It is a potent reminder of the consequences when religious tensions in one of the world’s most diverse countries, bound together by a secular and liberal constitution, are given vent.Now wrapped up in India’s famously inert legal system, the once-explosive dispute over ownership of the site has cooled in litigation.
“But if the BJP comes to power with a full-fledged majority, then the atmosphere will become a bit tense here,” warned Sagheer, now aged 36.
For long a central plank of its agenda, the BJP manifesto still contains a pledge to construct a Ram temple on the site of the old Babri Masjid mosque.
Although largely overlooked due to his association with a more recent religious conflagration — riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002 — Modi has links to this struggle too.
Quoting Hundustan Times
On one side is fiery frontrunner Narendra Modi, 63, a white-bearded Hindu nationalist who likes to be seen as a modern-day “monk with a mission”, according to biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
On the other is Rahul Gandhi, 43, the scion of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty who tops eligible bachelor lists and is known as the “reluctant prince” for his diffidence about assuming his family inheritance as leader of the ruling Congress party.
Modi, the hawkish conservative candidate for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, tipped to oust the scandal-tainted Congress in the polls starting April 7, reportedly walked away from a marriage arranged when he was a child.
He has never commented on the relationship, but the woman, 62-year-old retired school teacher Jashodaben, said recently that she didn’t “feel bad” that she has never been acknowledged.
“I know he is doing so due to destiny,” she told the Indian Express in February.
Reports say the marriage was never consummated and Modi went on to rise through the ranks of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) Hindu group which frowns on marriage for its senior cadres.
Modi, a strict vegetarian who says he “actually enjoys loneliness”, has made a virtue of his de facto single status, saying it will help him clean up India’s rampant corruption.
“I’ve no familial ties. Who would I ever try to benefit through corruption?” he told a rally, claiming only those free of filial ties can end what opponents charge are years of corrupt rule by the Congress party.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/elections2014/election-beat/no-first-lady-for-india-as-single-men-battle-for-pm-job/article1-1202862.aspx
Bukhari 9:84:57 narrated by Ikrima:”SOME ZANAIDIQA(ATHEISTS) WERE BROUGHT TO ALI AND HE BURNT THEM. THE NEWS OF THIS EVENT, REACHED IBN ‘ABBAS WHO SAID ‘IF I HAD BEEN IN HIS PLACE, I WOULD NOT HAVE BURNT THEM, AS ALLAH’S APOSTLE FORBADE IT SAYING, “DO NOT PUNISH ANYBODY WITH ALLAH’S PUNISHMENT(FIRE)”‘. I WOULD KILLED THEM ACCORDING TO THE STATEMENT OF ALLAH’S APOSTLE,”WHOEVER CHANGED HIS RELIGION, THEN KILL HIM”‘.
Khomeini;”KILLING IS A FORM OF MERCY BECAUSE IT RECTIFIES THE PERSON.SOMETIMES A PERSON CANNOT BE REFORMED UNLESS HE IS CUT UP AND BURNED. YOU MUST KILL, BURN AND LOCK UP THOSE IN OPPOSITION”.
No muhammadan should be afraid that Modi will give him allah’s special treat should he become the next prime minister of India or cry that such a thing was done in the past.