Srijan Foundation

Fanaticsm comes in different colors. SGPC and Badal have no love lost for the Dera chief, who has a mass following. His support helped Congress win quite a few seats in the last election. Akali Dal will not forget its loss. Clashes after attack on dera chief’s convoy

Extracts from Tribune
Vishal Joshi
Tribune News Service

Nilokheri (Karnal), February 2
     The controversial head of the Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, escaped unhurt in an attack after his convoy was “targeted with a powerful blast” on the GT Road here this afternoon. Sources told The Tribune that high-power explosive material like RDX might have been used in the attack.

     Forensic experts have reportedly found at least one detonator from the blast spot. The damage to vehicles clearly indicated that high-power explosives were used in the attack.

      Following the attack, dera followers staged a massive sit-in at the blast site and blocked the GT Road. The police had to divert the traffic off the GT Road. Reports of a heavy traffic jam near Indri were also received.

     The dera followers allegedly clashed with the police late in the evening and also damaged a few vehicles. The situation turned tense after a large number of dera followers, raising slogans against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal, reached the spot.

     Two vehicles belonging to the dera followers were badly damaged in the blast. According to the sources, there were more than 50 vehicles of followers in the dera chief’s convoy.

     “A police escort Gypsy was ahead of the convoy. The moment our black Scorpio overtook a truck, we heard a deafening sound of the blast. There was total chaos, but no one was seriously injured,” the spokesman added. He confirmed that the dera head was safe.

     Meanwhile, at least two persons were admitted to the trauma centre in Karnal tonight after the police allegedly fired rubber bullets to disperse the agitating dera followers.

     The protesters damaged several official vehicles. Smooth flow of traffic on the NH -1 was restored around 9.30 pm.

Fanaticsm comes in different colors. SGPC and Badal have no love lost for the Dera chief, who has a mass following. His support helped Congress win quite a few seats in the last election. Akali Dal will not forget its loss. Clashes after attack on dera chief’s convoy

Extracts from Tribune
Vishal Joshi
Tribune News Service

Nilokheri (Karnal), February 2
     The controversial head of the Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, escaped unhurt in an attack after his convoy was “targeted with a powerful blast” on the GT Road here this afternoon. Sources told The Tribune that high-power explosive material like RDX might have been used in the attack.

     Forensic experts have reportedly found at least one detonator from the blast spot. The damage to vehicles clearly indicated that high-power explosives were used in the attack.

      Following the attack, dera followers staged a massive sit-in at the blast site and blocked the GT Road. The police had to divert the traffic off the GT Road. Reports of a heavy traffic jam near Indri were also received.

     The dera followers allegedly clashed with the police late in the evening and also damaged a few vehicles. The situation turned tense after a large number of dera followers, raising slogans against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal, reached the spot.

     Two vehicles belonging to the dera followers were badly damaged in the blast. According to the sources, there were more than 50 vehicles of followers in the dera chief’s convoy.

     “A police escort Gypsy was ahead of the convoy. The moment our black Scorpio overtook a truck, we heard a deafening sound of the blast. There was total chaos, but no one was seriously injured,” the spokesman added. He confirmed that the dera head was safe.

     Meanwhile, at least two persons were admitted to the trauma centre in Karnal tonight after the police allegedly fired rubber bullets to disperse the agitating dera followers.

     The protesters damaged several official vehicles. Smooth flow of traffic on the NH -1 was restored around 9.30 pm.

Woman arrested for trying to rip Sikh’s turban at US restaurant
1 Feb 2008, 1534 hrs IST , PTI
 WASHINGTON: A New Jersey woman has been arrested on charges of bias intimidation and harassment after she tried to rip off a Sikh man’s turban at a restaurant.

“I could feel a hand pulling this off,” said 38-year-old Hansdip Singh Bindra, who was at the popular bar with a colleague just after midnight.

“Removing my turban in public is akin to giving me a strip search,” he said.

Police said Carrie Covello, 37, grabbed the turban while standing behind Bindra at the bar. She then apparently asked him, “Why are you wearing that on your head?”

“You’re out for an evening with colleagues and this is the last thing you’d expect” Bindra said, adding he had asked Covello if there was a problem.

“She said ‘Take it off, I don’t like it,’” Bindra was quoted as saying by media in US. Bindra alerted the bouncer and called the police, who arrested Covello on Wednesday.

Covello admitted to “touching” the turban, but told the police she was only joking and didn’t mean anything by it, police said.

Covello was charged with bias intimidation and harassment and the prosecutor’s office will ultimately determine if her actions at the bar were based on some kind of religious or ethnic bias.

Bindra, who was earlier involved in a 2003 religious bias lawsuit against Delta Airlines, said he wanted Covello to be prosecuted.

“If these people don’t face the consequences, this will happen over and over again,” he said.

Dave Carney, the owner of the restaurant, apologised for the incident and condemned Covello’s actions.

VJTI lecturer beaten over Shivaji poem

2 Feb 2008, 0157 hrs IST , TNN
     MUMBAI: It was meant to be a fun occasion for the teaching and non-teaching staff of the Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI). Instead, Friday evening’s get-together turned into a shocking affair, with activists of Shiv Sena’s labour wing thrashing a lecturer.

     Activists of Bharatiya Kamgar Sena assaulted lecturer Sanjay M G for reciting a poem with “objectionable content” against Shivaji during the annual get-together. The lecturer is also an office-bearer of the National Alliance for People’s Movements (NAPM). No police case has been registered.

    The institute had organised a get-together of all teaching and non-teaching staff members to promote team spirit. Several faculty members and non-teaching staff share light moments during this annual get-together.

     As the evening progressed, Sanjay recited a Marathi poem, “Mi Kadhi Risk Ghet Nahi” (I never take a risk). The poem, penned by Taliram (pen name), speaks about a man who reaches home after a day’s work and then gets high on alcohol. In his ramblings, the man imagines Shivaji Maharaj (portrait hung on a wall) smiling back at him. “Shivaji Maharaj is laughing loudly. Shivaji Maharaj is cooking. Shivaji Maharaj never takes risks.”

     As Sanjay completed reciting the poem, some union members of the college slapped him several times, said a faculty member who was present there.

     “Marathi is rich with its poetry and literature. Why did Sanjay have to recite this poem?” asked an infuriated member of the union.

    “Many staff members have been waiting for an opportunity to beat up Sanjay and this was an opportunity,” was what a senior faculty member had to say.

     Albert Pinto, secretary of the Bharatiya Kamgar Sena, and other members then met the institute director K G Narayankhedkar and demanded that Sanjay be suspended.

     Documentary filmmaker Anant Patwardhan, an old friend of Sanjay, said, “I absolutely condemn this incident. It is reflective of the growing intolerance in our society.

      What matters now is whether the state will take any action against the men who attacked Sanjay. It is about time that the police started taking these incidents seriously and did something to deter them

Teacher canes herself to mend ways of wards

Author: PTI Date: 31 Jan 2008

     Idukki: Setting a new precedent on teacher-pupil relations, the principal of a local school caned herself to extract a confession from a boy, who had stolen the prize money won by his school-mates in a sports meet.

     Meenakshikutty Amma of Model Residential School at Painavu here took the step after her initial request to the students to come clean on the matter did not bear fruit yesterday.

     As soon as the theft of money was reported, she convened a meeting of senior boys where she announced that she would beat herself as punishment until the culprit came forward and admitted his guilt.

     On doing so, the students pleaded with her not to punish herself for the mistake of others. The students even refused to disperse for lunch unless she stopped punishing herself.

      In the end, her “new model” of handling students paid off as one boy came forward admitting that he has taken the money.
     He also promised that he would never repeat the mistake.

     “I know that the students are basically innocent and they came from poor background. Their circumstances might have tempted them to do that and I am  sure that they would never repeat it again,” Meenakshikutty Amma told PTI.

      Bush beat booze with a little faith US President says spirituality helped him overcome addiction.

      We are no admirers of President Bush. He along with his cronies has caused immense damage to humanity, in the last three years. 

        But even this man has a quality that certainly draws admiration. He was addicted to alchohol, ie, he was an alchoholic. It is a terribly debilitating state that can lead to irreparable losses, of health, wealth, and most of all, the love of family.

      That he managed to get himself under control and become the President of United States, is nothing short of a miracle. His is a case for all those who have problems of addiction to alchohol, a case that bolsters courage confirms that one should Never Give up the fight  

      President George W. Bush is talking more openly about his old drinking habit, and offered perhaps his most pointed assessment yet by saying that the term “addiction” had applied to him.

     “Addiction is hard to overcome. As you might remember, I drank too much at one time in my life,” Bush said during a visit to the Jericho Program, a project of Episcopal Community Services of Maryland that helps former prisoners deal with problems such as drug addiction, finding jobs and reintegrating productively into society.

      “I understand addiction, and I understand how a changed heart can help you deal with addiction,” he said. “There’s some kind of commonality.”

      He explained how he had quit drinking. “First is to recognise that there is a higher power,” Bush said. “It helped me in my life. It helped me quit drinking.”
Bush grew unusually sombre as he related the similarities between himself and the men in the sketchy East Baltimore neighbourhood who are struggling to put their lives back together.

      “These are men who were, in some ways, lost, and lonely, and found love and redemption at Jericho,” Bush said. “Proud to be with you.” He hailed them for now being “reunited with their daughters.” “Girls love their dad, especially a redeemed dad,” said Bush, father of 26-year-old twins Jenna and Barbara.
The 61-year-old president decided to quit drinking the day after a particularly boozy 40th-birthday celebration — July 6, 1986.

      He has often credited both his Christian faith and vigorous exercise with giving him the discipline he needed to execute that decision and to keep to it since, with nonalcoholic beers the only indulgence he says he allows.
But when he was first running for president in 2000 and during his earlier years in office, Bush stuck to almost quaint code words when on the topic. He has never said publicly whether he was an alcoholic.

        As was typical, Bush said during a November 2000 news conference in which he admitted pleading guilty in 1976 to drunken driving that he “occasionally drank too much” as a younger man. He told an interviewer that same year that alcohol “was beginning to compete for my affections” before he quit.

      In September 2003, Bush was talking at a Houston community centre on the same topic he was on Tuesday — the value of federal support for religious charities that address societal ills.

      “I know firsthand what it takes to quit drinking, and it takes something other than a textbook or a manual,” he said.

      His checkered relationship with booze does come up frequently in his conversations, often as a joke or an aside. Bush is known to have said that the subject is never too far from his mind.

     Last year while travelling the country promoting ethanol created from biowaste as an alternative energy source, he’d often find himself in laboratories with beakers full of the alcohol-based substance. At a North Carolina plant, Bush held a container up to his nose for a mock sniff and then shook his head at the bemused reaction from his press corps. “I quit drinking in 1986,” he said, laughing.

     Bush’s words are likely to be welcome for those facing similar problems, coming from the most powerful man in the world.

      In December, Bush cited his experience with alcohol as he encouraged young recovering addicts visiting the White House to stick with their fight.

      “Your president made the same kind of choice and I had to quit drinking, and addiction competes for your affection.You fall in love with alcohol,” Bush said.
       John Schwarzlose, head of the Rancho Mirage, California-based Betty Ford Center, a substance abuse treatment hospital, said Bush’s new openness might well be inspirational to some.