India admits hundreds of Kashmiris died in their custody

More than 330 people have died while in police custody in Indian-controlled Kashmir over the past 18 years, official figures revealed today.

A police investigation found a further 111 people had disappeared from cells with no further information on what had happened to them.

Human rights groups believe government forces could be behind far more disappearances, claiming up to 10,000 people have gone missing since 1989.

India has an estimated 700,000 soldiers stationed in the disputed Himalayan region in an effort to combat groups fighting for independence.

The Jammu-Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society said today the police figures were likely to be the tip of the iceberg.

The group said 178 Kashmiris had died in police custody in the past five years alone. A further 239 had disappeared after being taken by government forces.

Pervez Imroz, a spokesman for the coalition, said: “It’s anybody’s guess how brutal security apparatus with a sweeping policy of catch and kill would have been in early 90s.”

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I love you (and the soil you’re standing on)

What strikes me most about Bollywood movies is how the hero’s love for the female lead is intertwined with his love for his homeland (India). Loving one entails loving the other.

The Average Man

Yes, we lost a Test. Yes, the umpiring was horrendous. Yes, the charges against Harbhajan Singh might not hold up in a court of law. But do we have to go overboard like this? One television channel dragged out Harbhajan’s mother, that expert on racial slurs and leg-before appeals, to share her thoughts with us.

How do we drop so quickly into us-and-them mode? The media paranoia feeds itself. If one channel demands an apology from Australia, another displays greater patriotism by asking for the Test result to be nullified. Pundits push themselves to the head of a gathering trend. Or, if they are [Navjot] Sidhu, suggest that Indian bowlers should kick the umpires as they approach the wicket to bowl. If this is what a Test player feels, what of the regular effigy-burners and professional naysayers?

That mythical creature, the Average Man, wants the team to return home, we are told. Politicians speak for the Man in the Street (who is there because politicians, in their rush to defend the millionaires abroad, have omitted to build a house for him).

“This is not about cricket,” Sidhu thunders, “This is about national honour.” The President-elect of the ICC, Sharad Pawar, is upset. This is not something trivial like farmers committing suicide, which he can ignore in his other avatar as the Minister of Agriculture. This is the real thing. The BCCI runs the ICC and the media run the BCCI.

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The Times discovers something shocking about religious believers

They want to convert you to their religious beliefs and are utterly convinced their own beliefs are “the truth” whereas others are false.

Shocking, I know.

A Muslim group that wants to open a giant £100 million mosque in London has set its sights on “winning the whole of Britain to Islam”.

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Norfolk gets paid for this? Perhaps there was a lot more truth to Farangi’s attack on journalists than I first realised.

What next? The Pope is still preaching Catholicism? Marxists still write about class struggle? Evangelical missionaries seek to save souls for Christ? (See more discussion on this story by Indigo Jo.)

Norfolk namechecks Yoginder Sikand, a writer whose work I am familiar with. Sikand was editor of the now defunct Qalandar e-magazine. He is the author of a work on the madrassas of the subcontinent, Bastion of the Believers : Madrasas and Islamic Education in India. Some of his writings can be found at the Indian Muslims website. Sikand also has a piece on Deobandis published in Pakistan’s The Daily Times back in 2005.