The ties that (still) bind: the enduring tendrils of the British Empire

The Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast will set the scene for a year of challenges for this grouping of nations.
AAP

Julianne Schultz, Griffith University

This piece is republished with permission from Commonwealth Now, the 59th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis on the relevance of the Commonwealth of Nations in today’s geopolitical landscape.

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Twelve years after William the Conqueror sailed across what’s now known as the English Channel to invade England, kill the king and claim the crown in 1066, he constructed the Tower of London.

Defiant locals viewed the stone tower, built into the remnants of the city’s Roman wall, as a symbol of the oppression of the continental regime. For the new monarch it was an important defensive hold on the north bank of the Thames, a useful place for temporary retreat if needed.

Over the following millennia the tower, more than any other building, has represented the power of the throne: a palace, treasury, public-record office, mint, menagerie and, most famously, a prison – the place where opponents were imprisoned and, sometimes, executed.

Now it has more than a touch of Disneyland – a World Heritage site visited by nearly 3 million people a year, and home to the crown jewels, the most glittering embodiment of a former empire.

Sentiment, glamour, heritage and power are a heady mix, and over the past decade the tower has gone from being a dour embodiment of imperial might to the place that one in ten of those who come to the second-most-visited city in the world pay to see.

It is one of six historic Royal Palaces, a royal charity with commercial and political clout. This was symbolised most compellingly in 2014 when the precinct was covered with nearly 1 million red ceramic poppies – one for each of the 888,246 British and Commonwealth soldiers killed in the first world war.

The unexpected and overwhelming success of Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, and subsequent sale of each flower, presented the challenge of success for the tower’s management. What next could match this achievement?

In 2017, I was a member of a group of international cultural leaders invited to meet with the tower’s executive to brainstorm new ideas that could help continue this success. We were a diverse group of artists and administrators from many countries.

Those from the former colonies – South Africa, Uganda, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia – had plenty of suggestions:

• include the history of the empire (those jewels…)

• invite artists from the Commonwealth to create and present works that engage with history

• provide new points of connection with the City of London, and with local communities in East London – many of whom trace their heritage to lands once ruled by Britannia.

The initial reaction was swift and somewhat unexpected. “What has that got to do with the tower?” one executive asked, his face revealing his genuine astonishment.

To those of us from the former colonies, who had grown up in places named for long-forgotten monarchs and were quickly discovering how much we had in common, it was straightforward. The empire had been built in the name of, and to the benefit of, the Crown. In country after country, on five continents, when independence was granted or won, the royals presided and then departed.

By the end of the day, it seemed there was a polite hint that this unexpected idea might possibly be something that might be considered – maybe. None of us left the meeting thinking it was likely the tower would include a more robust representation of the legacy of empire anytime soon, let alone attempt to reconcile what had been done in the name of the Crown.

As those who opposed William the Conqueror had learnt, like their successors in far-flung lands who were later subjected to British rule: to the victor goes the spoils.

In 2014, the Tower of London precinct was covered with nearly 1 million red ceramic poppies.
Reuters/Toby Melville

A changed power balance

We are so accustomed to hearing about American exceptionalism that British exceptionalism is rarely discussed. But, as the epigenetic precursor of the American condition, it deserves consideration. It may help make sense of the Brexit vote, which mystifies those not steeped in centuries of British myth-making and its resurgent Europe-as-other drumbeat over the past two decades.

It did not take long after the narrow vote to leave the European Union was declared in June 2015 before a new phrase intruded into public discussion.

Seventy years after the war that marked the end of the British Empire, a quaint, ahistorical notion emerged. In the jargon of the day, it was time for the Commonwealth to become Empire 2.0: a sphere of influence with one-third of the world’s population, one-fifth of global trade, and the dominant global language.

It did not take long before British political leaders were invoking this revival, reciting Rudyard Kipling on journeys abroad, conjuring a nostalgic vision of a wealthy mother country enriched by trade with the former colonies.

No-one bothered to ask whether this vision was shared by the independent states that had once been part of an empire. When they did, the answer was unexpected. The power balance had changed – trade with Europe, China and the US were more important.

If there is a moment that marks the end of the British Empire it was when the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed out of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour at midnight on June 30, 1997, on her last voyage. Charles, Prince of Wales, was there to oversee the handover to China, or what he called “the great Chinese takeaway”, with accompanying displays of military might and unlikely promises of “one country with two systems”.

On the flight back to London, Charles wrote in his diary that Prime Minister Tony Blair:

… understands only too well the identity problem that Britain has with the loss of an empire and an inability to know what to do next. Introspection, cynicism and criticism seem to have become the order of the day and clearly he recognises the need to find ways of overcoming apathy and loss of self-belief by finding a fresh national direction.

Charles was surprised to realise that he was seated in business class, and the Labour politicians were on the lower deck of the British Airways jumbo in first class:

Such is the end of empire, I sighed to myself.

Two decades later, as the Empire 2.0 dream gained some traction in Britain, Chinese President Xi Jinping celebrated the anniversary of the handover by stressing the overwhelming importance of China being “one country”.

At that moment it was unequivocally clear that power and influence had moved east. Beijing was now the emerging global epicentre.

China under Xi Jinping is emerging as the global epicentre.
Reuters/Damir Sagolj

The decline of British exceptionalism

The creation in the 1960s of what was called the “New Commonwealth” was an example of British exceptionalism.

The New Commonwealth was conceived as a progressive league of nations with some shared history, values, institutions and language, which came into its own as negotiated settlements and bloody wars of independence in the former colonies concluded in the years after the second world war. Never before had a fallen empire found such an ingenious way to hold on to influence.

The New Commonwealth marked the beginning of a grand experiment. It extended rights and recognised the connection of people from beyond the eight nations that founded the Commonwealth in 1949, to those from former colonies in the rest of the world.

During the years of Empire, the “mother country” had a special appeal, and people gravitated to the “green and pleasant land” in the north Atlantic to study and work.

As the Commonwealth grew, more people came from equatorial lands to work and live in British cities. As novelist Zadie Smith reflected:

… to have been raised in London, with, say, Pakistani Muslims in the house next door, Indian Hindus downstairs, and Latvian Jews across the street, is thought of, by others, as evidence of a specific historical social experiment …

Of course, as a child I did not realise that the life I was living was considered in any way provisional or experimental by others: I thought it was just life. And when I wrote a novel about the London I grew up in, I further did not realise that by describing an environment in which people from different places lived relatively peaceably side by side, I was “championing” a situation that was in fact on trial and whose conditions could suddenly be revoked.

Britain changed as a result. But when it joined the Common Market in 1973, the hard work of interrogating and reconciling the past was pushed aside, before a settled understanding of the legacy of empire could be fully realised.

Britain’s leap into Europe cast countries – including Australia and New Zealand – adrift, like teenagers thrown out of home before they were ready. They found new partners and geographic destinies, and the past was buffed with nostalgia.

The ‘New Commonwealth’ marked the beginning of a grand experiment.
Reuters/Andrew Winning

What now for the Commonwealth?

The history of the Commonwealth during the period from 1973 to 2015, when Britain shifted focus to Europe – and its four freedoms of movement of people, goods, services and capital – is an interesting story of redefinition, shifting power relations and emerging values.

During those decades, the Commonwealth of Nations and its London-based secretariat pursued, with varying degrees of persuasiveness, an increasingly human-rights-focused agenda: educating, empowering, encouraging the rule of law and sustainability, excluding countries that stepped beyond acceptable norms.

As time went on, the Commonwealth seemed to make less sense. Surveys suggested it was a relic from another age – today, only 16 of the 52 member countries retain the Queen as head of state. The Commonwealth Games endured as an important international sporting fixture, but royal tours became less frequent and the once relatively free movement of people between the former colonies became more complicated.

Expert groups were appointed to test the continuing relevance of the institution in the face of public “indifference”. They recommended reforms to ensure the Commonwealth of Nations might continue to exercise geopolitical and cultural influence.

The tensions between the Global North, and its focus on human rights, and the Global South, which resented any hint of imperialism, took a toll on its legitimacy.

After the underwhelming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth in 2011, The Economist took the advocates of what was to become Empire 2.0 to task.

Talk of the Commonwealth forming the dynamic, like-minded, free-trading core of a new British global network for prosperity is, to use the technical term, cobblers. The Commonwealth is many things: a talking shop, a useful place to exchange best practice on everything from education for girls to fighting malaria, an occasionally effective forum for putting pressure on regimes to clean up their governance or face the embarrassment of suspension. But it is also seriously dysfunctional.

Following negotiations, a new Commonwealth Charter was signed by the Queen, as head of the organisation, in March 2013. Designed to give new meaning to an institution crafted for another era, it restates democratic and independent values and notes:

… that in an era of changing economic circumstances and uncertainty, new trade and economic patterns, unprecedented threats to peace and security, and a surge in popular demands for democracy, human rights and broadened economic opportunities, the potential of and need for the Commonwealth – as a compelling force for good and as an effective network for co-operation and for promoting development – has never been greater.

The resilience of the new charter and the commitment of member countries to “mutual respect, inclusiveness, transparency, accountability, legitimacy and responsiveness” will be tested in 2018. The Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast will set the scene, with an inclusive, competitive, people-to-people exchange, followed by the People’s Forum of civil society groups, and then CHOGM in London in April 2018.

These meetings will consider the many challenges of creating a robust multilateral organisation that represents most of the world’s poorest, most populous and youthful countries, against the uncertain backdrop of succession planning for the new head of the Commonwealth.

Despite the added complication of Brexit negotiations and the nostalgic attachment to past glory, the prospect of Commonwealth becoming Empire 2.0 remains, as The Economist suggested, “cobblers”.

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You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition here.

Julianne Schultz, Founding Editor of Griffith REVIEW; Professor, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Shadow minister Katy Gallagher was British when she nominated for 2016 election

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Labor frontbencher Katy Gallagher can expect to be referred to the High Court after the release of senators’ citizenship declarations on Monday confirmed the ACT senator was a British citizen when she nominated for the 2016 election.

But she says she will not refer herself to the court because her legal advice was that she had taken all the steps required of her before she nominated – even though her renunciation of foreign citizenship wasn’t registered until later.

The declarations of all senators were posted online on Monday. House of Representatives MPs must produce their declarations by Tuesday morning; these will be made public within a day or so.

Gallagher, who entered the Senate via a casual vacancy during the previous term, is one of several Labor MPs likely to be referred to the court, as the citizenship crisis turns on the opposition.

The government has indicated it will refer Labor MPs who had not had their renunciations confirmed by nomination day. In these cases, the MPs took steps to renounce foreign citizenship and will argue they did all that was required.

Others likely to be referred are Justine Keay, who holds the Tasmanian seat of Braddon, and Josh Wilson, the member for Fremantle in Western Australia.

Susan Lamb, the member for Longman in Queensland, has also been targeted by the government, although her case is more complicated. She has said the British Home Office questioned whether she held citizenship to renounce, and asked for more paperwork which she could not supply.

The government says Labor should refer any of its own people whose status is in doubt. Labor has attacked the threat to refer Labor MPs but it is not disclosing what position it will ultimately take.

Sydney University constitutional expert Anne Twomey says Labor will need the court to take a liberal rather than a strict legal interpretation of the Constitution if it is to avoid byelections in its seats.

She said the ALP would have a “reasonable case” to argue in the court. But it was hard to predict how the decisions would go because there had been mixed messages.

In the 1992 Sykes v. Cleary case the court had indicated a nominee only had to take the reasonable steps within their power to renounce their dual citizenship.

But in remarks the court had made in one of the recent cases, its reference to reasonable steps was in the context of circumstances where the other country would not acknowledge renunciation. It was unclear whether this was because the court was now taking a stricter view of the test or whether it would uphold the authority of the Cleary case, Twomey said.

She said the court might also take a different view where a candidate had purposely delayed initiating action to renounce, from a case where they had been chosen late in the piece and then acted with all speed.

Keay has admitted waiting some time after she was advised by the Labor party to divest herself of her British citizenship. She has said: “I delayed it – it’s one of those things with the citizenship I knew I could never get it back”.

She told the Burnie Advocate: “If I didn’t get elected I can’t get my citizenship back and for me, it was a very personal thing”, saying it was the last tangible connection with her father.

On the other hand Wilson – who replaced another candidate at the last minute – was only endorsed by his party on May 12, 2016, for the July 2 election, and completed the renunciation paperwork the same day.

Early in the citizenship crisis Bill Shorten repeatedly declared publicly the opposition was confident that none of its MPs would be vulnerable, saying it had a comprehensive vetting process. More recently Labor has become nervous.

Shorten’s concern was clear to Malcolm Turnbull when they met some weeks ago about the citizenship crisis, which has now claimed victims across the political spectrum – although so far no Labor MPs.

The Nick Xenophon Team’s sole lower house member, Rebekha Sharkie, who holds Mayo in South Australia, is also facing referral. She too did not get her renunciation formalised before nomination.

It is not known whether there are further lower house MPs with possible dual citizenship at the time of nomination. Turnbull said at the weekend he was confident there were not any more Coalition MPs who had been dual citizens.

The declarations of senators indicated that several had been dual citizens in the last parliament before getting their affairs in order for the election.

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/hdjfk-7dce11?from=site&skin=1&share=1&fonts=Helvetica&auto=0&download=0

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

New citizenship bombshell – Senate President Stephen Parry may be British

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The government has been thrown into a fresh crisis, with Senate President Stephen Parry announcing he may be a dual British citizen as a result of his father having been born in the UK.

Parry’s bombshell comes after Friday’s High Court decision knocked two Nationals ministers, Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash, out of parliament, triggering a byelection in Joyce’s New England seat.

Attorney-General George Brandis, asked on Sunday whether he could provide an assurance there were no other Coalition MPs sitting in parliament who were foreign citizens, told Sky: “I have absolutely no reason to believe that there are”.

Parry, a senator from Tasmania, is the first Liberal to be caught in the dual citizenship debacle.

He said in a statement issued late on Tuesday that he had examined his situation after Friday’s court decision which gave “absolute clarity” about Section 44 of the Constitution.

Parry did not explain why he did not check his citizenship earlier, notably when Nash announced she had British citizenship via her Scottish father.

Parry has now sought clarification from the UK government. He said if he were found to be a British citizen he would resign from parliament without waiting for the outcome of any referral to the High Court because “I believe the High Court has made it abundantly clear what action is required”.

Parry said his father was born in the UK and moved to Australia as a boy in 1951. “He married my mother in 1960 and I was born that same year in Burnie. I have always regarded my late father as Australian, particularly as he undertook his national service and participated as a member of the Australian Army Reserve and voted in every Australian election since adulthood.”

He said he wrote to the British Home Office on Monday to seek clarity. “This was the first opportunity to do so since the High Court ruling,” he said. The Home Office had sought further details from him on Tuesday, which he had provided, and he was waiting for a response.

“Depending upon the outcome, I may seek further legal advice before reporting back to the Senate.”

Even if Parry quit parliament before a High Court ruling on his eligibility to have been elected, the court would need to clarify his status to determine whether the vacancy would be filled by a countback or a casual vacancy, with the Liberal Party choosing the candidate.

The next candidate on the ticket in a countback would be former Liberal senator Richard Colbeck, who was pushed down the ticket at the 2016 election in a factional power play involving fellow Tasmanian Eric Abetz.

Colbeck, a former minister, scotched any suggestion that if he were elected in a recount he would resign to allow Parry to return. He told The Conversation he was waiting to see what the situation was but if the seat came to him “I’d take it in a heartbeat”. He added that his parents and grandparents were born in Australia.

Abetz said in a statement he was shocked by the Parry news. “Senator Parry has a long and distinguished career of service to the people of Tasmania and Australia. If he is found ineligible, his departure would be a huge loss and I am hopeful that any advice from the United Kingdom will allow him to remain in the Senate.”

Parry, who turned 57 on Tuesday, has been Senate president since July 2014. He was elected at the 2004 election, entering the Senate in 2005. He is a former policeman and a former funeral director.

In his maiden speech he told parliament: “I am a descendant of the First Fleet convicts who arrived on January 26, 1788, onboard the ships the Scarborough and the Prince of Wales.”

Brandis told a news conference on Tuesday that Parry had first informed him of his situation on Monday morning. “Evidently, before the High Court’s decision, it wasn’t something that he’d appreciated may be problematic for him and we still don’t know whether it is problematic until the inquiries, which he has initiated of the UK Home Office, have been completed,” Brandis said. He said Parry expected an answer in the next day or so.

Brandis continued to fend off calls for an audit of all MPs. “If anybody wants to make an allegation that a member of parliament was not duly elected because of Section 44 or for any other issue for that matter, then let them make that allegation.

“But in relation to the government members, and also others including the two Green senators, people have acted honourably, they have come forward as soon as they’ve identified they may have a problem,” he said.

Brandis said the issue of Section 44 of the Constitution, prohibiting dual citizens being elected, needed to be dealt with “one way or another”.

“It may be the issue can be dealt with legislatively without putting the public to a referendum,” he said.

“Where 51% of people either were born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas, it sits oddly with the notion of a multicultural democracy that operation of Section 44 as we now understand from the High Court could potentially disqualify millions of Australians from standing for parliament.”

Acting Labor leader Tanya Plibersek said it was “extraordinary that the president of the Senate – who oversaw several High Court referrals – did not reflect on his own eligibility until just days ago”.

“Malcolm Turnbull must tell Australians whether he knew there were doubts over senator Parry’s eligibility,” she said.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale renewed his call for a comprehensive audit of MPs’ citizenship status.

Turnbull, who is in Israel for the Beersheba commemoration, was asked (before the Parry story broke publicly): “Do you ever feel you’ve had enough? You’d just like to – it’s all been too much? You’ve just had enough of the whole political scene?”

He replied: “I have never had more fun in my life”.

Postscript

Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly has told the ABC’s Lateline there should be a comprehensive audit; he suggested it should be done by the Australian Electoral Commission.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

New shock rocks government: Nationals’ deputy Fiona Nash a dual British citizen

Fiona Nash made a statement to the Senate just before it rose on Thursday night for a fornight’s break.
Lukas Coch/AAP

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The government has been hit with another bombshell in the citizenship crisis, with the deputy leader of the Nationals, Fiona Nash, found to have dual British nationality.

Nash made a statement to the Senate just before it rose on Thursday night for a fornight’s break. Her case will be referred to the High Court when parliament resumes on September 4.

This means that both the Nationals’ leader, Barnaby Joyce, and his deputy will be before the High Court to determine whether they are ineligible to sit under Section 44 (i) of the Constitution, as will the Nationals’ former cabinet minister Matt Canavan. The section bans people with dual citizenship being elected.

Coming as soon as parliament met on Monday and just as it adjourned on Thursday, the Joyce and Nash statements respectively bookended a disastrous week for the Turnbull government.

Like Joyce and unlike Canavan, Nash, who is minister for regional development, will stay in cabinet, and will also remain deputy leader, while the court considers her position.

Nash told the Senate that after Joyce’s statement on his dual New Zealand citizenship, she sought advice from the UK Home Office. By Monday evening she was told a caseworker there believed she was a British citizen by descent through her Scottish-born father.

Her mother was born in Australia and was an Australian citizen; her father was born in Scotland in 1927. Her father died nine years ago, and her mother five years ago.

“I was born in Sydney in 1965. My parents divorced when I was eight and my mother raised me. I had very little contact with my father throughout his life,” Nash said.

“Growing up, my parents always told me that I was not a dual citizen. My understanding since early childhood was that in order to be a dual British citizen, I would need to apply for it.”

She said an internet search revealed a host of websites saying that having a Scottish-born father allowed a person to apply for citizenship, while mentioning nothing about automatic citizenship by descent.

She said the government had sought legal advice from the UK about her situation. This had been received on Thursday, and had been considered by a committee of cabinet late Thursday. Advice had been received from the solicitor-general shortly before she spoke.

“I have just met with the prime minister and am taking this opportunity to make the Senate aware at the earliest possible opportunity of the position,” Nash said.

She said that on the basis of the solicitor-general’s advice, Malcolm Turnbull “has indicated to me that he sees no reason for me to stand aside from my portfolio responsibilities.”

Labor greeted Nash’s stated timeframe with some scepticism.

Senator Katy Gallagher, manager of opposition business in the Senate, said as Nash had admitted, she’d “known since Monday that she was a dual citizen, yet waited until one minute before the Senate rose for a two-week break to inform the parliament. This is simply not good enough.”

She said Turnbull needed to explain why he was holding Joyce and now Nash to a lesser standard than Canavan, and not requiring them to stand down.

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/hu9ay-6f0803?from=site&skin=1&share=1&fonts=Helvetica&auto=0&download=0

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Falkland Islands: Islanders Want to Overwhelmingly Remain British

The link below is to an article with the latest news concerning the Falkland Islanders wish to remain British.

For more visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/13/falkland-islanders-belong-britain-argentina-honour

Falkland Islands: Vote to Remain British Overwhelming – Who Were the Other Three?

The link below is to an article reporting on the vote to remain British in the Falkland Islands. However, it appears three voted otherwise – who were these three and what were they thinking lol?

For more visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/mar/12/falkland-islands-referendum-votes-yes

Taliban on the Attack in Afghanistan

The Taliban have moved onto the offensive in Afghanistan with a massive co-ordinated attack. Embassies in Kabul have been targeted, including the British, German, Russian and US embassies, as well as the Afghan Parliament and the NATO headquarters. There are also attacks on other sites in the city. The attacks have been going on now for at least two hours and are continuing.

It is not just Kabul that is under attack, there are attacks also in the cities of Jalalabad, Pul-e-Alam and Gardez.

For more, visit:
– http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/taliban-attack-afghan-capital-3-other-cities-1.3661714
– http://www.euronews.com/newswires/1483048-multiple-attacks-on-kabul-taliban-claims-spring-offensive/

Australia: Report Names Australia as the 5th Most Influential Nation in the World

An article in a British magazine has name Australia as the 5th most influential nation in the world and heaped praise on Kevin Rudd. A nice little article for Australia Day.

For more visit:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/elections/british-political-magazine-gives-foreign-minister-rudd-ringing-praise/story-fnbsqt8f-1226253861237

Christian in India Suffers Miscarriage in Hindu Extremist Attack

Four pastors also injured in Karnataka, hub of anti-Christian persecution.

NEW DELHI, October 13 (CDN) — Police in a south Indian state known for turning hostile to minority Christians in recent years have arrested two suspected Hindu nationalists for beating four pastors and striking the wife of one of them in the stomach, killing her unborn child.

The attack took place at a Christian gathering in a private Christian school to celebrate the birth of Mahatma Gandhi on Oct. 2 in Chintamani, in Karnataka state’s Kolar district, reported the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC).

About 40 people barged into New Public School during the concluding prayer that morning and began selectively beating the pastors and Kejiya Fernandes, wife of one identified only as Pastor Fernandes. Chintamani police arrived but the attack went on, and when it ended at noon officers took the Christians to the station instead of arresting the attackers.

Denied medical attention, the injured Christians were released at 7:30 p.m. only after Kejiya Fernandes began to bleed profusely, GCIC reported. She and her husband later received hospital treatment, where she lost the baby she had been carrying for four months, according to GCIC.

Pastor Fernandes received an injury to his ear. The three other victims, identified only as pastors Robert, Muthu and Kenny, all ministered in a local independent church.

Of the 12 suspects named in the police complaint, two were arrested the same day, and the rest are absconding, said attorney Jeeva Prakash, who is associated with the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s (EFI) advocacy department.

The police complaint against the 12 includes “causing death of quick unborn child by act amounting to culpable homicide” (Section 316 of the Indian Penal Code), and “intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace” (Section 504). No charges related to defiling a religious place or gathering or creating communal conflict were included.

All the accused are residents of Chintamani city and suspected to be associated with Hindu nationalist groups.

The attack was reportedly carried out to avenge an alleged insult to Hindu gods during the Christian gathering, with the accused also having filed a police complaint, added Prakash, who visited the area and the Christian victims this week.

The complaint against the Christians was for “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs” (Section 295-a), and, strangely, Section 324 for “voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means,” among other charges.

The Christians were not arrested, as a court granted them anticipatory bail.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whose birthday the Christians were celebrating, was friends with Christian missionaries during British rule and taught religious tolerance. The acclaimed Hindu, India’s greatest political and spiritual leader, was killed in 1948 by Nathuram Godse, who was allegedly influenced by the ideology of the Hindu extremist conglomerate Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

For the last three years, Karnataka has been seen as the hub of Christian persecution in India. Of the more than 152 attacks on Christians in 2009, 86 were reported in Karnataka, according to the EFI.

This year, too, Karnataka is likely to top anti-Christian attacks. According to the GCIC, at least 47 attacks on Christians in the state had been reported as of Sept. 26. Persecution of Christians in Karnataka increased particularly after the August 2008 anti-Christian mayhem in eastern Orissa state, where Maoists killed a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader but Hindu extremists wrongly blamed it on local Christians.

The attacks in Orissa’s Kandhamal district killed more than 100 people and burned 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions.

While Hindu nationalists had targeted and were working in Karnataka for close to two decades, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to sole power in the state for the first time in the history of independent India in May 2008. Prior to that, the BJP ruled in coalition with a local party, the Janata Dal-Secular, for 20 months.

It is believed that the victory of the BJP – and later the violence in Orissa, which was also ruled by a coalition that included the BJP – emboldened Hindu extremists, who now enjoy greater impunity due to the party’s incumbency.

Despite the high incidence of persecution of minorities in Karnataka, BJP leaders deny it, alleging complaint are the result of a political conspiracy of opposition parties.

There are a little more than 1 million Christians in Karnataka, where the total population is more than 52 million, mostly Hindus.

 

SIDEBAR

India Briefs: Recent Incidents of Persecution

Karnataka, India, October 13 (Compass Direct News) – Hindu extremists belonging to the Bajrang Dal on Oct. 3 stormed into a Christian worship service, beat those attending and confiscated Bibles in Emarakuntte village, Kolar district. The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) reported that nearly 25 extremists barged into the house of a Christian identified only as Manjunath, where Pastor Daniel Shankar was leading Sunday worship. Verbally abusing those present and falsely accusing them of forcible conversion, the extremists dragged them out and photographed them. Pastor Shankar managed to escape. Police arrived – after the extremists called them – and confiscated the Bibles and a vehicle belonging to the pastor. A GCIC coordinator told Compass that Shankar, accompanied by area pastors, went to the police station the next day, and officers made him give a written statement that he would stop Christian activities in the village. Only then were the Bibles and vehicle returned. No worship was held on Sunday (Oct. 10).

Karnataka – Police on Sept. 5 detained a pastor after Hindu nationalist extremists registered a false complaint of forcible conversion in Doni village, Gadag district. The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) reported that at 8:30 p.m. nearly 100 extremists belonging to the Hindu extremist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh stormed the worship of an Indian Pentecostal Church at the home of a Christian identified only as Nagaraj. A GCIC coordinator told Compass that the extremists repeatedly slapped Pastor Mallikarjuna Sangalad, dragged him outside and tore his shirt. They also tore up a few Bibles of those in the congregation. The extremists called Mundargi police, who arrived at the spot and took Pastor Sangalad to the police station as the slogan-shouting extremists followed. Police questioned the pastor for over two hours and warned him against leading services. With GCIC intervention Sangalad was released at around 11 p.m. without being charged, but he was forced to sign a statement that he would not conduct services at Nagaraj’s home.

Karnataka – Police on Sept. 3 stopped worship and falsely accused a pastor of forcible conversion, threatening to jail Christians if they continued religious activities in Ganeshgudi village. A Global Council of Indian Christians coordinator told Compass that Ramnagar police Sub-Inspector Babu Madhar, acting on an anonymous accusation of forcible conversion, disrupted worship and threatened Calvary Fellowship Prayer Centre Pastor P.R. Jose as nearly 40 congregants of the house church looked on. The sub-inspector warned the Christians against worshipping there and told Pastor Jose to shut down the church or be arrested. On Sept. 4, however, Madhar returned to the house and informed Pastor Jose that they could continue worship services.

Report from Compass Direct News

Sterilize the unfit says British professor David Marsland

The mentally and morally “unfit” should be sterilized, Professor David Marsland, a sociologist and health expert, said this weekend. The professor made the remarks on the BBC radio program Iconoclasts, which advertises itself as the place to “think the unthinkable,” reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

Pro-life advocates and disability rights campaigners have responded by saying that Marsland’s proposed system is a straightforward throwback to the coercive eugenics practices of the past.

Marsland, Emeritus Scholar of Sociology and Health Sciences at Brunel University, London and Professorial Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Buckingham, told the BBC that “permanent sterilization” is the solution to child neglect and abuse.

“Children are abused or grossly neglected by a very small minority of inadequate parents.” Such parents, he said, are not distinguished by “disadvantage, poverty or exploitation,” he said, but by “a number or moral and mental inadequacies” caused by “serious mental defect,” “chronic mental illness” and drug addiction and alcoholism.

“Short of lifetime incarceration,” he said, the solution is “permanent sterilization.”

The debate, chaired by the BBC’s Edward Stourton, was held in response to a request by a local council in the West Midlands that wanted to force contraception on a 29-year-old woman who members of the council judged was mentally incapable of making decisions about childrearing. The judge in the case refused to permit it, saying such a decision would “raise profound questions about state intervention in private and family life.”

Children whose parents are alcoholics or drug addicts can be rescued from abusive situations, but, Marlsand said, “Why should we allow further predictable victims to be harmed by the same perpetrators? Here too, sterilization provides a dependable answer.”

He dismissed possible objections based on human rights, saying that “Rights is a grossly overused and fundamentally incoherent concept … Neither philosophers nor political activists can agree on the nature of human rights or on their extent.”

Complaints that court-ordered sterilization could be abused “should be ignored,” he added. “This argument would inhibit any and every action of social defense.”

Brian Clowes, director of research for Human Life International (HLI), told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that in his view Professor Marsland is just one more in a long line of eugenicists who want to solve human problems by erasing the humans who have them. Clowes compared Marsland to Lothrop Stoddard and Margaret Sanger, prominent early 20th century eugenicists who promoted contraception and sterilization for blacks, Catholics, the poor and the mentally ill and disabled whom they classified as “human weeds.”

He told LSN, “It does not seem to occur to Marsland that most severe child abuse is committed by people he might consider ‘perfectly normal,’ people like his elitist friends and neighbors.”

“Most frightening of all,” he said, “is Marsland’s dismissal of human rights. In essence, he is saying people have no rights whatsoever, because there is no universal agreement on what those rights actually are.”

The program, which aired on Saturday, August 28, also featured a professor of ethics and philosophy at Oxford, who expressed concern about Marland’s proposal, saying, “There are serious problems about who makes the decisions, and abuses.” Janet Radcliffe Richards, a Professor of Practical Philosophy at Oxford, continued, “I would dispute the argument that this is for the sake of the children.

“It’s curious case that if the child doesn’t exist, it can’t be harmed. And to say that it would be better for the child not to exist, you need to be able to say that its life is worse than nothing. Now I think that’s a difficult thing to do because most people are glad they exist.”

But Radcliffe Richards refused to reject categorically the notion of forced sterilization as a solution to social problems. She said there “is a really serious argument” about the “cost to the rest of society of allowing people to have children when you can pretty strongly predict that those children are going to be a nuisance.”

Marsland’s remarks also drew a response from Alison Davis, head of the campaign group No Less Human, who rejected his entire argument, saying that compulsory sterilization would itself be “an abuse of some of the most vulnerable people in society.”

Marsland’s closing comments, Davis said, were indicative of his anti-human perspective. In those remarks he said that nothing in the discussion had changed his mind, and that the reduction of births would be desirable since “there are too many people anyway.”

Davis commented, “As a disabled person myself I find his comments offensive, degrading and eugenic in content.

“The BBC is supposed to stand against prejudicial comments against any minority group. As such it is against it’s own code of conduct, as well as a breach of basic human decency, to broadcast such inflammatory and ableist views.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph