March 2016 Archives

The iPhone’s Been Hacked but the Game of High-Stakes Consumer Encryption Will Continue

The FBI comes out looking inept at best and malicious at worst in its showdown with Apple. The battle to decide how protecting national security and safeguarding citizen privacy will co-exist in the future moves to another day.

The stand-off with the FBI has now been postponed, pushing the battle of consumer encryption to another day. Credit: iPhoneDigital, CC BY 2.0/Flickr

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from the fallout of the San Bernardino terrorist incident, in which Apple has been heavily pressured into writing a backdoor into its own device, it’s that the folks over at the FBI would be absolutely terrible at poker.

Let’s go over the timeline: Apple’s stand-off with the FBI and the US Government started a little over five weeks ago after the Justice Department issued an order to the company, asking it to help the FBI in cracking into an iPhone 5C that had been used by the San Bernardino terrorist. Apple’s help was required, according to the FBI, because too many attempts at guessing the pass code could cause the device’s memory to be wiped completely – a quirky feature aimed at deterring thieves that can be switched on by any iPhone user.

Their request was therefore simple if troubling: Apple could help out by creating a new version of iOS (dubbed “govtOS”) that would remove the 10-passcode attempts feature along with a couple of other changes that would allow the FBI to brute force their way past the phone’s encryption.

This sort of technical manipulation, Apple CEO Tim Cook has declared, would be bad for US national security. “Once created,” he pointed out in a statement, “the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks – from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.” Which brings us back to the law enforcement agency’s gambit.

A month ago, FBI Director James Comey stood up before Congress and testified (under oath) that the FBI couldn’t hack into the phone, which is why they were demanding that Apple help out. Last week, the FBI declared that it could access the iPhone without Apple’s help; and that the judicial hearing, which would decide whether Apple should be forced to write a new version of iOS, could be suspended. On Tuesday, the agency announced that it had accessed the data on Farook’s iPhone.

There are two ways of viewing these series of developments, both of which depend on how much you trust the US Government and its law enforcement agencies.

One view is that the FBI was intent on making this case a precedent; a way of publicly upping the stakes so as to expand its powers of surveillance. After all, there’s no public sympathy for the privacy of a dead and convicted terrorist: a Pew Research poll pointed out that nearly 51% of Americans felt that Apple should be forced into helping out the FBI. Getting a judge to force Apple to create a backdoor for you while getting the opinion of the public behind you is too sweet of a move to pass up.

The other perspective is that the FBI was being honest from the beginning and that at the time of the first Congress hearing, it simply didn’t have any alternative methods of accessing Farook’s iPhone.

Unfortunately, both these views paint the FBI in an unfavourable light. In the first scenario, the FBI is an opportunist and a chicken. While the San Bernardino case initially captured the sympathy of the public, this slowly melted away after an outpouring of support from all quarters allowed Apple to win the public relations battle. In this scenario, it is likely that the FBI realised that it would lose the judicial appeal, thus prompting it to fold its cards and finally look at alternative ways of getting into the terrorist’s device.

In the second scenario, the FBI is simply inept at best and downright careless at worst. Rather than fully examining whether it could contact various zero-day exploit firms or jailbreakers, it decided to embark on a course of action that it knew would endanger public security, consumer privacy and weaken Apple’s encryption standards.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, the FBI and the US Government are simultaneously some of the worst and most powerful poker players in the world. Even if the FBI folds, as it may have done in this case, it gets all of its chips back and can play again any day without losing anything. Apple’s statement on Tuesday, which claims victory, signals as much. The FBI can try forcing Apple or any other technology company at the next opportune moment.

The India-BlackBerry case

The Apple versus FBI stand-off received global attention, with India being no different. Most newspapers – the Times of India, The Hindu, Financial Express, Business Standard, Indian Express – ran editorials that came out very strongly in Apple’s favour. The Economic Times was the sole paper that took an extremely pro-national security stance, running an editorial that was titled “Our sympathy is with the FBI in its tussle with Apple”.

And yet, it’s not as if India has never grappled with a similar problem. During 2010-2013, the Union Home Ministry and Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry (then called Research in Motion) locked horns over whether the government should have access to the encrypted traffic that passed through BlackBerry’s devices and its enterprise servers.

BlackBerry, like Apple, took the position that complying with the government’s orders would dilute the high security standards that its customers had come to expect. After much pressure and arm-twisting, accompanied by a rather sinister and veiled threat of banning the company from India, BlackBerry finally caved in 2013. During this time, however, BlackBerry didn’t exactly witness a huge outpouring of support from Indian stakeholders.

Take the Financial Express for instance. In an editorial titled ‘In a BlackBerry Storm’, published in 2010, the newspaper points out that the “real problem lies with the communications that are encrypted”. “Although the probability is low”, the editorial acknowledges, “in theory, a terrorist organisation could sign up for Enterprise [BlackBerry’s corporate software]”.

It caps it off by pointing out that the Indian government must upgrade its own technical capabilities and asking a little ominously: “Can we really believe that the governments of US and China, two of the most paranoid, would let BlackBerry off the hook that easily? Perhaps, but only if they possess superior decryption abilities.”

Contrast this to the paper’s editorial on the Apple versus FBI case, where it comes out swinging very strongly in favour of Apple, pointing out that if Apple succumbed to the FBI’s request, this would set a bad precedent. “That will truly be an Orwellian 1984,” the editorial notes. “Basically it is not whether Apple can comply but whether it should at all.”

Absolutist encryption

What explains the rather lacklustre response to BlackBerry and India when compared to the support expressed for Apple? While the eventual progression of the two cases became different, it’s mostly because the concepts of network security, surveillance and privacy have become increasingly tangled over the last decade. It has become extremely hard to view these as three separate concepts and tackle them, from a regulatory perspective, as different silos.

Ten years ago, governments could have, in theory, lawfully set up interception mechanisms at telecom companies in order to snoop on telephone calls or SMSs, without leaving a ‘backdoor’ that could be exploited by other malicious parties such as hackers and criminals. Today – with the centralisation of software, hardware and data in the form of the modern smartphone – it has become extremely difficult for governments to hack into an operating system or piece of software without leaving a door open for other actors to do the same.

Digital encryption therefore is absolutist in nature: if you are a supporter of smartphone and software encryption, you have to support it for everybody. You can’t have loopholes for the government alone to exploit. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Comey wants. At the FBI-Apple hearing before Congress, the FBI director pointed out: “Our job is simply to tell people there is a problem. If there are warrant-proof spaces in American life, what does that mean and what are the costs of that?”

Warrant-proof spaces have always existed though. Law enforcement agents can’t access the human mind after all. And yet it is in the nature of technology companies, especially Apple, to continue to construct these warrant-proof spaces. Privacy and security are competitive advantages in the marketplace now, as evidenced by Apple’s plans to create a new generation of phones that may be completely uncrackable.

This violent clash of opinions continues even in the fall-out of the San Bernardino case. For instance, after the FBI announced that it had found an alternative means of accessing Farook’s iPhone, civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation demanded that the FBI disclose the potential security vulnerability that it used in order to gain access to the terrorist’s device, so that Apple could patch it up in a future software update. The FBI on its part has, however, deemed it classified even as it maintains that the method it used could only be used on that one, specific iPhone.

Whose security and interests matter more here? That the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are given an easier job protecting national security? Or that security and privacy of millions of iPhone users, whose private and financial details are often located on their phones, is protected? While these questions haven’t been answered in the Apple-FBI showdown, this incident marks the first battle in deciding how national security and citizen privacy will co-exist in the future.

On the “Bharat Mata” Issue, Owaisi and Muslim Liberals Have Both Missed the Point

India’s pluralism is facing its biggest threat and this is the time for all progressive elements to come together

File picture of MIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi. Credit: PTI

When I first read the news about Asaduddin Owaisi’s speech at a public rally where he defiantly proclaimed that he would never raise the slogan “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” (Glory Be to Mother India) I winced. I knew that the speech would be covered extensively and would lead to enormous controversy. I winced also because the situation was very similar to one American Muslims had been through.

When an elite Imam with no grassroots presence declared in early December 2009 his grandiose plans to build a community center near the World Trade Tower site, he had no idea he would be offering Islamophobes like Pamela Geller a rallying cry. Exactly 10 months later on October 8, 2010, the New York Times published a piece describing how Imam Feisal Rauf’s plan had given Geller an issue to help coalesce different Islamophobic groups.

Geller’s hate mongering has helped usher in a climate of fear that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are exploiting today. Two weeks before Geller’s piece, I had told David Caruso of Associated Press and Anne Barnard of New York Times that had Imam Rauf consulted the Muslim community, he would have been advised the political climate in the country was not conducive to such an initiative; but now that the extremists were challenging the fundamental rights of Americans to build their place of worship, both the Muslim community and human rights groups were compelled to support the project.

I therefore winced and said out loudly “Oh no, not again,” as I read the news about Owaisi’s speech. Imam Rauf had no mass appeal, nor was Geller’s unholy alliance very organized, yet the Islamophobes were hugely successful on the issue of what they cunningly called ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ (it is more of a community center than a mosque and it was certainly not at ground zero). In comparison, the RSS with 6 million members is the largest and the most organized supremacist group in the world and Owaisi’s profile as a mass leader is well established. This controversy therefore has the potential to harm the Muslims and the pluralistic ethos of India much more than the harm done to US pluralism by the issue manufactured by Geller.

The progressives’ stance

In the US, the progressives always take the side of the discriminated-against minorities, even when the bogey of national security is used by the right wing. The civil rights groups are more organized than in India and the liberal media far more powerful. This is the reason that we have a Bernie Sanders here leading a different type of insurrection than the Trump/Cruz one. In India, many in the “secular camp” have already sadly put their bleeding foot in their mouth after having first shot it.

By agreeing to the demands of the Hindutva lobby to raise specific Hindu centric slogans and sing special Hindu-centric anthems as requirements of patriotism, they undermine the constitution. The founding fathers were wise and well-informed people who deliberated for years before drafting a great constitution. The constitution maintains and protects the pluralist ethos and the secular fabric of the nation. Many Indian secularists are anti-religion and those who have roots in the Muslim community are more so. The Muslim secularists are also under pressure to show that they are more anti-religion, for it was the Muslim community that had demanded the creation of Pakistan in the name of religion.

What the secularists fail to realize is that by getting on the slippery slope of creating new requirements for patriotism and citizenship, they strengthen the Hindu supremacists who wish to change India from a secular country to a Hindu nation. The secularists make such demands politically acceptable and this in turn leads to the expansion of the base of the BJP. The alienated and fearful Muslims turn in greater numbers to the Muslim-centric parties such as the Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen. The end result of getting on this slippery slope is that the leftists end up in a heap at the bottom of the slope after suffering electoral defeats. They start with the aim of combating what they think is Muslim obscurantism and end up strengthening Hindu supremacist and Muslim-centric political parties.

There would have been no controversy had Owaisi not raised the issue unnecessarily. The RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat had not demanded that Owaisi or indeed the Muslims should raise this slogan. He had initially planned to use this slogan to quash the nascent movement of the leftist students who were trying to organize against an increasingly authoritarian right-wing government. Asaduddin Owaisi is an astute politician as well as a lawyer. He ought to have known better.

He takes pride in his scholarship of the Constitution and the constitutional processes. His declaration, that he would not utter the slogan “Bharat Mata ki Jai” even under threat of life, appears to have generated exactly the controversy the proponents of the slogan wanted. They wanted to polarize the nation and rally the Hindu community around their saffron flag as well as create a schism among the Muslims, hoping that a significant portion of the Barelvi leadership will support the slogan. The RSS has also succeeded in putting the Congress and the Left on the defensive.

Machiavellian move

Fanning the slogan controversy is clearly a Machiavellian move by the RSS, the fountainhead of the Hindutva supremacist ideology. “Bharat Mata” does not refer just to the motherland but is generally understood to mean the embodiment of the motherland in the form of a Hindu goddess. By raising this issue just before crucial elections in India’s most populous state, the RSS is clearly laying a trap for the Muslim leadership. Owaisi has helped them lay it. While some Muslims say that he did so because he has a symbiotic relationship with the BJP, many think it was due to a lapse of judgment during a political speech. Still others blame his arrogance and lack of an inner circle of independent intellectuals and experts.

Irrespective of its etiology and motives, Owaisi’s stand will be supported by the organized Muslim religious leadership. This is not surprising as they are justifiably suspicious of the RSS attempting to impose Hindu hegemony over the country. They are also painfully aware that the “soft Hindutva” fronts have the same objective of weakening the constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, the only difference being that they pursue their goal through the “back door.” The Muslim leadership is aware that their stand will help BJP in the elections but they feel that they have no choice but to resist this precedence setting move of the RSS to impose Hindu culture on the Indian polity. They are angry at Owaisi for dragging their community and the nation into this trap but feel helpless.

Owaisi must be criticized for raising the issue of “Bharat Mata ki jai” unnecessarily and handing to BJP a potent issue to further polarize India. Owaisi leads a party whose support base is fanatically loyal to him. There was therefore no political need to “activate” or mobilize this base. He appears to have gotten carried away in the heat of a political speech. It’s also possible that like many autocrats he does not think much about the consequences of his statements. However, to say that Owaisi is in cahoots with the BJP to explain his immature statements is not borne out by his track record.

Under the circumstances, the self-declared progressives such as Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar ought to have reacted differently to the controversy generated by Owaisi’s needless stirring of the hornet’s nest. They could have used this opportunity to educate the country about the rising threat to its pluralist ethos from the Hindutva radicalism fostered by the Sangh Parivar. There is a lesson in this controversy for the “secular” and “progressive” elites. They should follow the lead of the JNU students instead of scoring petty points over Owaisi. On his part, Owaisi the politician and Owaisi the barrister should also become Owaisi the statesman.

The pluralist nature of Indian society is facing its gravest threat in history. The time is now for people of conscience, whether progressive or religious, to find common ground in safeguarding the freedom of millions of Indians and of their future generations. This is the true litmus test of patriotism.

Dr. Shaik Ubaid is a New York based neurologist and community organiser

Journalism as Genocide

Journalism demands detachment and objectivity that allows for dissent, disagreement and freedom of expression. In the absence of such ethics, it clears the ground for violence and does great disservice to the democratic way of life.

Credit: Surian Susay/flickr CC 2.0

In its 2003 verdict, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found Rwandan journalists Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza guilty of genocide, incitement to genocide, conspiracy and crimes against humanity. The case against Nahimana and Barayagwiza raised important questions regarding the role of the media and their social accountability. For the first time since Nuremberg trials, hate speech was prosecuted as a war crime. The judgment declared that the way the journalists had acted constituted “journalism as genocide”.

Words can kill

Rwandan cultural anthropologist Charles Mironko analysed confessions of a hundred genocide perpetrators. His work confirms the thesis that hate messages in the media had a direct effect on the dehumanisation of the population that was subject to persistent slander. Several months of this behaviour, in the absence of credible reporting, conditioned the population to hate, and kill.

Similarly the tribunal held that the media – both newspaper and radio – “relentlessly, targeted the Tutsi population for destruction” and portrayed them as a “political threat”. The hate media essentially became the background score to the state’s dispensation of arbitrary authority, and the journalist became both the petty sovereign of the state and useful idiots. In this, it used a line of reasoning similar to the Streicher case at Nuremberg, where Der Stürmer, a weekly tabloid-format Nazi newspaper, was found to have “injected into the minds of thousands of Germans a poison that caused them to support the National Socialist policy of Jewish persecution and extermination”.

Der Stürmer, like Kangura, its Rwandan equivalent, was filled with stories of slander, libel, smear campaigns, and fabricated stories. By journalistic standards, both publications were nothing more than substandard tabloids. Yet, they enjoyed enormous influence and support from leading public figures in various fields, political elites and other popular journalists. Both cultivated powerful patrons and moulded their audience into a controllable, incitable mob of puppets.

The behaviour of sections of the Indian media over the past few decades has an eerie similarity to the behaviour of Der Stürmer and Kangura in the run up to violence, ethnic killings and genocide.

The sinister parallels were evident in the 2002 Gujarat. A study by PUCL in 2002 found that two vernacular newspapers – in particular Gujarat Samachar and Sandesh – ran false stories, fabricated sensational headlines with the intention to “provoke, communalise and terrorise people”, which incited and encouraged Hindus to kill Muslims. Rather than perform the ethical duties that journalism demands, these papers published doctored material without evidence, and furthered arguments that incited violence. Sandesh featured a front-page headline on February 28, 2002, the day after the burning of a train in Godhra, “70 Hindus burnt alive in Godhra”, followed by another headline that proclaimed ““Khoon Ka Badla Khoon” (Avenge Blood with Blood). Eyewitnesses accounts from Naroda Patiya, scene of one of the worst massacres, describe mobs carrying weapons and copies of the Sandesh with the headline, “Khoon Ka Badla Khoon.” PUCL’s report on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi following the death of Indira Gandhi also reports the same slogan being shouted by the mob leading up to the killings.

Sandesh published fabricated reports that the breasts of two Hindu women had been sliced off by Muslim mobs. This new report led to sexual violence against Muslin women. The editor of the paper stated that “the information had been provided by the police” and refused to apologise, or print a retraction on the ground that “it was against the policy of the newspaper to carry out corrections and clarifications for previously published articles.” While the Press Council of India later reprimanded the newspapers, nothing was done to hold them accountable. Instead the then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi openly praised Sandesh for its work. During the course of events leading up to the Gujarat carnage and in its aftermath, the circulation of Sandesh rose considerably due to its pro-Hindutva stand.

The Gujarat riots are not an exception; it simply follows the trajectory of hate entrepreneurship practiced by some journalists and a section of the media. It has a genealogy starting from the Jabalpur riots in 1961, to the riots that consumed Aligarh; Ayodhya to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.

Democratic alibi

French historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien describes the behaviour by journalists in inciting hatred and violence as ‘the democratic alibi’. A democratic alibi divorces the question of ethics from the political, and employs the mechanisms of mass conditioning and mobilisation required to create group hatred. A democratic alibi is the precondition to riots, lynching, political trials, extrajudicial killings, military occupation and genocidal violence. Its legitimacy lies in the justification of collective violence either by the state or the mob, and begins by creating a dispensable enemy of the state – the “anti national”, “the secular”, “the minority”

An established pattern of presenting and commenting on the news transforms political debate into righteous passion against individuals and groups that disagree with the status quo. The targets of violence are marked with precision, taken as public hostages and accused of being enemies of the state. Later they explain what has to be done to this enemy. Through constant repetition, they construct a political, moral and historical alibi that eventually becomes the accepted truth. In this steady journey into the abyss of intolerance, journalists and news anchors become agents of the state and even annihilators of society. All the ingredients for conditioning a democratic alibi that existed in Nazi Germany and Rwanda exist in India today.

In the case of Gujarat and other instances, sections of the media were not only complicit in conditioning, inciting and producing the riot; they were also responsible for explaining, and interpreting the violence. They repeatedly justified the carnage as spontaneous mob violence, used language that neutralised “the horror and injustice of the subsequent violence”. Similarly in the case of the recent lynching in Nagaland of a Muslim man, Sayed Sarif Uddin Khan, on allegations of rape, there was a clear instance of misinformation and fabrication that amounted to incitement in the local media.

Road map to annihilation

Upon analysing witness testimonies from the Nuremberg, Yugoslavia and Rwanda trials, two things become increasingly clear. First, truthful reporting of facts, analytical investigation of issues, and a stand against violence by journalists in all these instances could have both changed the behaviour of the perpetrators, and in some instance even prevented the slaughter. Second, when airwaves become a platform for ideological, socio-religious-nationalist populism, there are clear roadmaps with milestones and perfected patterns of hate that lead to eventual violence and destruction of a society. Some of these milestones include:

The justification of massacres, violence and even mob justice against people and social groups because they are seen as “anti-national”, “cockroaches” and “pests”.
Defining what constitutes majority opinion, abandoning pluralism of opinion, and legitimising the views of the ‘majority people’ in whose name the journalist claim to speak.
The rules of criminal procedure are abandoned in favour of a trial by intentions and public opinion in which evidence is falsified, doctored and manipulated.
Public shaming, humiliation, administering public mob justice, painful corporal punishment in public, and forcing a group of people to wear identifiable markers.
Democratic culture (rule of law, due process, protection of minorities, and social justice) is considered as being ancillary to state power and its interest.
Journalistic propaganda constantly retreats to revisionist historical references, often edited to fit the narrative of victimisation suffered by the ‘majority’, that demands historical justice for the crimes of the past.

While the list enumerated above is a repetitive pattern of behaviour gathered from over hundred witness testimonies from Nuremberg to Rwanda, their relevance resonates for India today, as we are birthing a new dystopia of hate and bigotry. This list holds up a haunting mirror to the ugliness on display and the vileness employed by some Indian news channels, anchors and journalists. It is as much a war over the minds of the people, as it is a war to enact extra judicial and unconstitutional laws that encroach into and legislate the private lives of citizens. The absolute essence of this priming is the stamping out of pluralism in all its forms – pluralism of ideas, opinions, faiths, beliefs, memories, myths and even gods.

The reporting and editorialising of communal violence in cases like Gujarat are not isolated. It has to be seen through the editorial narratives broadcast in other incidents like the censorship and silencing of author Perumal Murgan, the arrest and custodial treatment of G.N. Saibaba, the notorious and dubious reporting on “love jihad”, the beef politics that led to the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq and others, the reporting of the death of Rohith Vemula and the JNU crackdown. In all these instances, some media commentary chose to perform the function of legitimising the ideology of the ruling government, its political projects and equated it to nationalism.

Recently, Sudhir Chaudhary, editor, Zee News, in an interview to Outlook magazine stated that: “It has become necessary for media houses to take a stand on certain issues. It has to be a nationalistic approach. That benefits the people of India. What do you call neutral and secular? No one is neutral anymore. I will pitch for a nationalistic reporting, …” He further states, “If you want to live in India and want the breakup of India, then why do you want to live here? Leave the country and go.”

What happens to journalism when it willingly wraps itself in a flag? To borrow from Adorno it facilitates a politics of murder and destruction.

While nationalism will continue to mediate many facets of our life, it cannot become the prism through which we understand the complexities of the world. Chaudhary, and many like him, hold immense power of persuasion, and present a position of unthinking hawkish nationalism that uncritically propagates a retreat to banal patriotism. This excludes the possibility of criticising the state and it’s political projects. Journalism is not the witch’s brew from Macbeth, and journalists cannot become the agents of chaos and conflict. Journalism demands detachment and objectivity that allows for dissent, disagreement and freedom of expression. In the absence of such ethics, it clears the ground for violence and does great disservice to the democratic way of life.

While handing down its judgment in the media trial, the ICTR rightly criminalised the hate speech of a powerful media against a vulnerable minority. The great fight for individual humanity against crimes by the state – and the journalists who defend it – has to begin with accountability. To rephrase what Rwandan journalist Thomas Kamilindi testified at the war crimes’ tribunal, how should we hold journalists accountable for their actions, and if need be prosecute them, if they knowingly caused harm, and incited violence. We must find a way to articulate and respond to such abuses of power without violating the principles of freedom, which are an indispensable cornerstone of democracy.

Suchitra Vijayan is a New York based Barrister, political analyst and a writer. She previously worked for both the War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She is currently working on her first book on the making of India’s political borders.

India Raises Doubts Over Alleged Spy’s “Confession”

The foreign ministry continues to refer to Kulbushan Jadhav as a “former Indian Naval officer” and believes his ‘confession’ to being an Indian spy was coached.

New Delhi: Alleging that he was coached to ‘confess’ to being an Indian spy in the video released by Pakistan, India has expressed concern about the well being of Kulbhushan Jadhav and has said that he could have been abducted from Iran.

The slickly-edited six-minute video was released at a joint press conference by Pakistan’s Information Minister Pervez Rashid and military spokesperson Asim Bajwa. Of course, most of the speaking was done by the latter.

In the statement issued a couple of hours after the press conference in Islamabad, the Ministry of External Affairs continues to refer to Jadhav as a “former Indian Naval officer”.

“We have seen a video released by Pakistani authorities of a former Indian Naval officer, doing business in Iran, who is in Pakistani custody under unexplained circumstances. The video has this individual making statements which have no basis in fact,” said the ministry.

Reports of Jadhav’s arrest first emerged on March 26. A day later, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhary summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale to convey a démarche, alleging that Jadhav was a “RAW officer”

India has expressed apprehension of Jadhav being forced to make a dictated statement under pressure. “That the individual claims to make the statements of his own free will not only challenges credulity but clearly indicates tutoring,” the MEA said.

The Indian foreign office pointed out that despite requests, Indian diplomats had still not been given access to Jadhav “under detention in a foreign country, as is the accepted international practice”.

“We are naturally concerned about his well-being in these circumstances,” the MEA press noted.

Rejecting the allegations that he was a “RAW officer” involved in “subversive activities,” India claimed that Pakistan had lured the businessman to its border.

“Our enquiries reveal that he apparently was being harassed while operating a legitimate business from Iran. While we probe this aspect further, his presence now in Pakistan raises questions, including the possibility of his abduction from Iran. This would become clear only if we are given consular access to him and we urge the Government of Pakistan to respond immediately to our request,” the MEA statement said.

Derailing progress in Pathankot probe

Former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal said Jadhav’s ‘confession’ could be discounted as it was made in custody and that the timing of the video release was aimed to “buttress Pakistan’s case of Indian interference in Balochistan”.

He added that it also “negated the progress in Pathankot”. The release of the video of the India ‘spy’ coincided with the wrapping up of the visit of Pakistan’s joint investigation team (JIT), which included an ISI official, to the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, which was attacked by six terrorists earlier this year.

“This (release) was perhaps a reflection of unhappiness in certain quarters of the establishment that Pakistan was forced to acknowledge that there was cross-border link in Pathankot for the first time,” Sibal told The Wire.

According to Sibal, another motive for the arrest and the public ‘confession’ could be to influence American opinion and smoothen the process of the sale of eight F-16 jets to Pakistan.

There seemed to be muted coverage about the visit of the Pakistan JIT to Pathankot on the websites of Pakistani media outlets, while Jadhav’s video ‘confession’ got top billing across all platforms.

The Indian opposition has been stringent in its criticism about the access given to the Pakistani team, even though the government had clarified that most parts of the base had been “visually barricaded”.

Outside the base, protesters from the Aam Aadmi Party carried black flags and shouted slogans against the JIT. The Congress said that the visit by JIT to the Pathankot base raised questions about “procedural propriety”.

Meanwhile, BJP President Amit Shah said the Pakistan JIT was only given limited access to the periphery.

“I agree that for the first time Pakistan has made serious efforts towards investigation. The results will be known after the investigation gets over,” Shah said during a media interaction in Kolkata.

The five-member Pakistan team will hold a second round of interaction with the National Investigation Agency on Wednesday, March 30, before they leave for home.

Earlier, Pakistan had sought to drag Iran into the quagmire. Bajwa had claimed that Pakistani army chief Raheel Sharif raised the matter of Indian spies using Iranian soil to conduct intelligence operations during his meeting with visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. But Rouhani had denied discussing any such matter with the Pakistani leadership.

Questionable timing

Former RAW chief Vikram Sood didn’t seem surprised about the current turn of events with the release of the video, which seem to have hit the chances of a revival of the bilateral dialogue process, at least in the short term.

“I knew nothing will come out from the peace talks,” he said.

Asked whether it will again spike the possibility of holding the much-postponed foreign-secretary-level talks in the near future, Sood said, “of course”.

Official sources acknowledge that the revival of the comprehensive bilateral dialogue through a meeting of the foreign secretaries does not seem to be the main priority of either neighbour any longer.

If the Pakistan government were also interested in foreign secretaries to meet soon, surely they would not have upped the ante and released this ‘confession’, sources noted.

For India, the immediate priority would be to analyse the information received from the JIT and to see if it “corroborates” with the details passed on by Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Nasir Khan Janjua to his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval.

Thereafter, India will assess whether Pakistan is also amenable to a reciprocal visit by NIA team.

Official sources said that there was no doubt that the atmosphere has been “vitiated” by the release of the video confession.

The meeting between Indian and Pakistan foreign ministers in Pokhara, Nepal, which took place less than a fortnight ago, now seems far in the past, given the disarray. At that time, Sartaj Aziz, foreign advisor to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, had hoped that Sharif and Prime Minister Narendra Modi would meet in Washington.

The bomb blast on Easter Sunday in Lahore and the continued siege by supporters of executed assassin Mumtaz Qadri in Islamabad has led Sharif to cancel his Washington trip.

Behind the scenes, Indian officials feel that the need for a distraction from the fraught domestic situation could have led Pakistan to suddenly bring Jadhav into the public gaze, three weeks after his arrest.

Ten Questions We Need to Ask About the Confession of an Alleged Indian Spy

The Pakistani side thinks it has scored a major diplomatic triumph by getting an Indian man to confess to espionage and subversion, the Indian side dismisses the charges as baseless. Where does the truth lie?

1. Kulbhushan Jadhav, the man accused by Pakistan of being an Indian spy, is in Pakistani custody and has made a confessional statement which the government of Pakistan released during a press conference. If his confession is to be taken at face value, he was arrested on March 3, 2016, 21 days before his arrest was officially announced by the home minister of Balochistan. His family says he has been incommunicado for at least three months so it is possible he has been in custody even longer. Is it reasonable to assume a confession under such circumstances could be given freely? Or is it likely the product of duress?

2. The truth of whether Jadhav spoke freely can only be ascertained if Indian diplomats are able to meet him. Article 36(1)(c) of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations says “consular officers shall have the right to visit a national of the sending state [i.e. India] who is in prison, custody or detention, to converse and correspond with him and to arrange for his legal representation. They shall also have the right to visit any national of the sending state who is in prison, custody or detention in their district in pursuance of a judgment.”

Though the Vienna Convention does not expressly say so, many states refuse to provide the sending state access to nationals accused of espionage. However, there is at least one instance – the 1980 Case Concerning United States Diplomatic And Consular Staff In Tehran – where the International Court of Justice ruled against a country (Iran) for violating Article 36 of the convention in a situation where the individuals arrested were charged with being spies.

The only explicit caveat in the Vienna Convention is that “consular officers shall refrain from taking action on behalf of a national who is in prison, custody or detention if he expressly opposes such action.” So far, there is nothing in what Jadhav has said to suggest he does not want Indian diplomats to act on his behalf. So why has Pakistan not agreed to give India access to its national?

3. Jadhav says several things in his confession which are at variance with the well-settled institutional practices of Indian intelligence agencies – and indeed the tradecraft of agencies worldwide, including Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. He says, for example, that he is still a serving Navy officer and will retire only in 2022. The Indian government on March 27 had said he had taken premature retirement from the navy and gone into business. The facts should not be very difficult to verify independently. However, a former RAW chief told The Wire, “The basic principle of all intelligence organisations is total deniability. Using a serving military officer in this way is totally counter to normal practice. Nobody does it. Why would we?” Serving officers doing intelligence work are normally deployed as military attaches, where they work under diplomatic cover under prescribed norms.

4. Jadhav says he got involved in intelligence work in 2002, after the attack on the Indian parliament:

“I commenced intelligence operations in 2003 and established a small business in Chabahar in Iran. As I was able to achieve undetected existence and visits to Karachi in 2003 and 2004 and having done some basic assignments within India for RAW, I was picked by RAW in 2013 end. Ever since I have been directing various activities in Balochistan and Karachi on behest of RAW.”

There are several strange aspects to this statement. Since he joined RAW (“was picked up by RAW) only in 2013 end, on which agency’s behalf was he working when he “established a small business in Chabahar in Iran”, travelling as far afield as Karachi on two occasions? If he was still in the Indian Navy, could this have been on behalf of naval intelligence? This is unlikely since the Directorate of Naval Intelligence does not have a remit to conduct offshore intelligence operations of this kind. Indeed, DNI officials are essentially desk-bound and work out of naval headquarters in Delhi. So if he was working on an intelligence assignment in Chabahar in 2003, he would likely have already joined the agency then and not 10 years later.

5. Jadhav says he had done “basic assignments within India for RAW” before he joined the agency. But RAW’s mandate is external intelligence and the agency does not conduct operations within the country. That mandate lies with the Intelligence Bureau. This part of Jadhav’s ‘confession’, then, is like an American national accused of espionage saying he had carried out CIA assignments within the US. Finally, given the rigid institutional structure of all government bodies – all one has to do is search for “R&AW” and “Central Administrative Tribunal” to realise the intelligence agency is hardly immune to the cadre and turf wars that plague every branch of the Indian state – how likely is it that a Navy man would be put in charge of “directing” the agency’s activities in Balochistan and Karachi?

6. Jadhav then confesses to trying to cross the border at Saravan in order to meet with Balochi separatists. Though he admits to using the cover name ‘Hussein Mubarak Patel’, he does not say why he carried an Indian passport issued in that name for what was meant to be an illegal border crossing. Intelligence officials say that of all the elements of the Jadhav story, this aspect remains the most peculiar. If RAW were to send an operative into Pakistan from Iran, “we would have either given him a Pakistani passport or used a third country passport, which is quite easy to arrange.” Former intelligence officials say carrying a passport from one’s own country on a clandestine mission is a violation of basic tradecraft.

7. While Jadhav says India was involved in terrorist activities in Pakistan that have “killed and maimed citizens” – the word he uses is “citizens” and not “civilians” – the confessional video made by the Pakistani authorities leaves this aspect vague and does not identify any particular incident, let alone terrorist incident, in which Indian intelligence agencies are allegedly involved. Does this mean the Pakistani side still lacks concrete information – and hence evidence – to sustain its charge that India is promoting terrorism against it?

8. While the Pakistani authorities are citing the videotaped confession as a major diplomatic coup, could it be that Jadhav deliberately littered his confession with tell-tale signs that he was being made to speak under duress? That might explain the institutional discrepancies which are manifest.

9. Of course, if Jadhav is who he says he is, said the former RAW chief, this incident provides an occasion for deep introspection on the part of those who conceived and ran such an operation on the Indian side. “I would never have undertaken such an operation, so full of all kinds of loopholes. If – and this is a big if – he does work for RAW, strict action should be taken those individuals who launched this kind of crazy op.”

10. From a diplomatic perspective, the timing of this incident raises a big question mark. Why did the Pakistani side choose to go public with the news of Jadhav’s arrest on the eve of the visit of the Pakistani joint investigation team to Pathankot? That visit, heralded as a first for the bilateral relationship, was seen as a major ice-breaker, one that would pave the way for high-level diplomatic engagement. Is there a calibrated attempt underway, presumably by the Pakistani military, to use the spy charge as a lever to slow down the resumption of dialogue?

Transcript of Kulbhushan Jadhav’s ‘Confession’

For the benefit of The Wire’s readers, we are providing a transcript of the ‘confessional’ video released by the Pakistani government on March 29 in which Kulbhushan Jadhav, the Indian man arrested on charges of being a spy, says he is a serving navy officer and an operative of the Research and Analysis Wing.

For the benefit of The Wire’s readers, we are providing a transcript of the ‘confessional’ video released by the Pakistani government on March 29 in which Kulbhushan Jadhav, the Indian man arrested on charges of being a spy, says he is a serving navy officer and an operative of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external intelligence agency. The Indian ministry of external affairs in a statement on Tuesday evening said the video “clearly indicates tutoring.”

TRANSCRIPT

I am Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav. Number 41558Z. I am a serving officer of the Indian Navy. I am from the engineering cadre of the Indian Navy and my cover name was Hussein Mubarak Patel, which I had taken for doing some intelligence gathering for the Indian government, agencies. I joined the National Defence Academy in 1987 and I subsequently joined the Indian Navy in 1991 and was commissioned into the Indian Navy and served in the Indian Navy till around 2001 December when the parliament attack occurred. And that is when I started contributing my services towards the gathering of information and intelligence within India.

I live in the city of Mumbai in India.

I am still a serving officer in the Indian Navy and will be due for retirement in 2022 as a commissioned officer in the Indian Navy.

After having completed 14 years of service by 2002, I commenced intelligence operations in 2003 and established a small business in Chabahar in Iran. As I was able to achieve undetected existence and visits to Karachi in 2003 and 2004 and having done some basic assignments within India for RAW, I was picked by RAW in 2013 end. Ever since I have been directing various activities in Balochistan and Karachi at the behest of RAW

(edit jump)

and deteriorating law and order in Karachi.

I was basically the man for Mr Anil Kumar Gupta who is the joint secretary, RAW, and his contacts in Pakistan, especially in the Baloch student organisation

My purpose was to hold meeting with Baloch insurgents and carry out activities with their collaboration. These activities have been of criminal nature, these have been of anti-national, matlab terrorist, leading in to the killing and maiming of Pakistani citizens also.

I realised during this process that RAW is involved in some activities related to the Baloch liberation movement within Pakistan and the region around it. There are finances which are led into Baloch movement through various contacts or various ways and means into the Baloch liberation and the various activities of these Baloch liberation and the RAW handlers go towards activities which are criminal, which are anti-national, which can lead to maiming or killing of people within Pakistan and mostly these activities were centred around what I have knowledge of, the ports of Gwadar, Pasni, Jeevani and various other installations which are around the coast, damaging to the various other installations which are in Balochistan.

So the activities seemed to be revolving around to create a criminal sort of a mindset within the Baloch liberation and lead to instability within Pakistan.

So in my pursuit towards achieving the set targets by my handler in RAW, I was trying to cross over into Pakistan from the Saravan border in Iran on 3rd March 2016 and was apprehended by the Pakistani authorities while on the Pakistani side.

And the main aim of this crossing over into Pakistan was to hold meeting with the BSN personnel in Balochistan for carrying out various activities which they were supposed to undertake and carrying backwards the messages which they had to deliver, backwards to the Indian agencies.

The main issues regarding this were that they were planning to conduct operations in the next immediate future, near future. That was to be discussed mainly.. That was the main aim of trying to come into Pakistan.

The moment that I realised that my intelligence operations have been compromised on my being detained in Pakistan, I revealed that I am an Indian naval officer.

And it is on mentioning that I am an Indian naval officer the total perception of the establishment of the Pakistani side changed and they treated me very honourably and with utmost respect and due regard and handled me subsequently in a more professional, proper courteous way.

They handled me in way that befits that of an officer.

Once I have realised that I have been compromised in my process of intelligence operations I decided to just end the mess that I have landed myself in. And just wanted to subsequently move on and cooperate with the authorities in removing the complication which I have landed myself and my family members into.

Whatever I am stating just now, it is the truth. It is not under any duress or pressure I am doing it. It is totally out of my own desire to mention and come clean out of this entire process which I have gone through in the last 14 years.

By Pushing Muslims to the Margins, Cruz and Trump Would Make the US Like Europe

Making it legitimate to think (and act) hatefully towards Muslims in America would do nothing more than marginalise them.

Source: Getty Images

Consider what the two Republican presidential candidates, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, are proposing in the aftermath of the Brussels attacks.

Cruz wants to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighbourhoods in America because that’s what’s required in “a neighbourhood where there is gang activity”.

Which gangs and which neighbourhoods could he possibly mean? The wealthy suburbs of Chicago, where American Muslim doctors have their palatial residences? Remember that immigrant American Muslims are “slightly more affluent and better educated than native-born Muslims,” according to the book Being Muslim in America, published by the US government’s Bureau of International Information Programs.

Remember too that 24% of all Muslims in America and 29% of immigrant Muslims have college degrees compared to 25% for the US general population. “Forty-one percent of all Muslim Americans and 45 percent of immigrant Muslims report annual household income levels of $50,000 or higher. This compares to the national average of 44 percent,” says Being Muslim in America.

So which neighbourhoods and gangs could Cruz mean? The ethnic pockets where Somalis, Bangladeshis, Bosnian and Pakistanis live just because those people happen to be Muslim? These are not ghettos and nothing like Molenbeek, the Brussels neighbourhood, where conditions are ripe for discontented Muslim youths to turn to radicalism. Molenbeek has long had a reputation for lawlessness, with high levels of petty crime — muggings, drug dealing and burglaries. Its new prominence as a haven for jihad-minded men is hardly a surprise.

Perhaps Cruz is imagining the same sort of situation in Muslim-dominant areas in the US? Which ones? Perhaps he means some Somali gang or the other in Minneapolis? I don’t know of any, but they must surely exist. But to describe them as ‘Muslim gangs’ would be like calling Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles ‘Catholic anti-nationals’.

In any case, was there “gang activity” in mass shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s neighbourhood in San Bernardino, California, before he set out with his equally disturbed wife to murder innocent people? What patrol could have picked up the increasingly deranged thoughts of an American-born-and-bred man who worked in the local country office and just happened to be Muslim?

Trump doesn’t want Cruz’s patrols (though he would support them “100 per cent”). He wants to keep Muslims out of America altogether because of the “hatred” they feel.

This is mad, bad and dangerous talk. Dangerous because it will excite Islamophobes and freelance agents of patriotism who believe that “homeland security” equates with being anti-Muslim.

It is profoundly unfair to demonise America’s Muslims. A 2011 Pew Research Centre poll found that the vast majority wanted to “adopt American customs”. Only 20% of those surveyed said they would prefer to “be distinct”. Half of the respondents said that many of their friends were non-Muslim and almost 80% rated their community as an “excellent” or “good” place to live.

In Europe, Muslims or coloured people generally would find it hard to say exactly the same and with quite so much enthusiasm. This, because Europe, unlike America, has not emerged from the melting-pot and visually different “foreigners” can remain separate for generations.

The UK, France, Belgium and other European countries struggle to integrate Muslims. Belgium has a particularly hard task because it has done so little to tie in its second-generation Muslim youths. The unemployment rate for Belgians of North and sub-Saharan African descent is between 40 and 50%. The Belgian establishment remains totally unrepresentative of the demographic change that has already occurred. The police is a case in point. Last year, the BBC reported that of Antwerp’s 2,600 police officers, only 22 are non-white.

So far, America has been very different in its treatment of — and response from — its Muslim community, which is estimated at anywhere between two and seven million (more likely the latter). This is, as President Barack Obama pointed out on Wednesday, in a rebuke to Cruz and Trump, part of what keeps America safe.

Making it legitimate to think (and act) hatefully towards Muslims in America would do nothing more than marginalise them. No one would be any the safer. Not the Muslim community. Not America.

Rashmee Roshan Lall is a senior journalist. She tweets @rashmeerl.

This article was originally published on www.rashmee.com, and is republished here with the permission of the author.

‘Resisting Codification of Muslim Personal Law is Denial of Muslim Women’s Constitutional Rights’

Activist Zakia Soman on recent comments by Justice B. Kemal Pasha, the patriarchal stranglehold on Islam and the need to codify Muslim personal law.

Justice B. Kemal Pasha. Credit: YouTube

Justice B. Kemal Pasha, a sitting judge of the Kerala high court, was recently in the spotlight for comments made at a seminar in Kozhikode organised by the Punarjani Charitable Trust, a women lawyers collective, and Nisa, a progressive Muslim women’s forum. He called for the reform of Muslim personal law, spoke against dowry and asked rhetorically why a Muslim woman could not have four husbands. The last remark in particular generated a controversy and was greeted with open hostility by a broad section of the Muslim clergy in Kerala.

To understand the uproar over his comments, The Wire spoke to Zakia Soman, co-founder of the Bharatiya Mahila Muslim Andolan (BMMA), a rights-based mass movement led by Muslim women. Soman places the judge’s remarks in context, explains why they can be deemed historic and exposes the patriarchal mindset of those attacking the judge. She also explains how the resistance to codification of Muslim personal law is a denial of the constitutional rights of Muslim women.

Justice Pasha’s comments, especially that a woman should be allowed to have four husbands, have come in for severe criticism. What is BMMA’s response?

The statement attributed to him – that a woman should have four husbands – has been converted into a headline by the media. But that’s not the point. He said a lot of substantive things. For example, he said that despite Quranic rights, Muslim women have not got justice as far as personal law is concerned. He spoke a major truth and we welcome it. He also called for a reform of Muslim personal law. When a sitting judge says this, that too male, it is important. In fact, it is historic. Every democratic person who believes in the constitution, and anyone who is a Muslim, and has read the Quran should support this. Islam considers men and women equal. The misinterpretations of the text, owing to patriarchal mindsets in the last 1400 years, have resulted in women being treated as second class human beings. Although there have been scholars who have written about men and women being equal in the Quran, few people, especially men, have publicly spoken for gender justice in Islam.

What kind of organisations are attacking Justice Pasha? Some of his opponents have even claimed that his views on divorce and maintenance echo those of the RSS.

They go after anyone who speaks of reform. They resort to personal attacks as in our case too, and anyone who talks about reform is an RSS stooge – there must be a limit to conspiracy theory!

As far as I know, these organisations include Samastha Kerala Jamiyathul Ulama, a body of male clerics from Kerala holding extremely conservative and patriarchal worldviews, despite Quranic injunctions on gender justice. They have a limited perspective on these issues, which is solely their own, and does not draw legitimacy from the Quran.

What gives them the power and legitimacy to spread their ideology?

They are self-appointed male custodians of religion. The religion of Islam has no place for intermediaries, institutionalised clergy or leadership; the rapport between a Muslim and Allah is direct. They also draw their legitimacy from the overall patriarchy prevalent in all faith communities.

These self-appointed custodians claim the sole right to speak on behalf of all Muslims and insist that they are the only arbiters of Islam; no change can happen without their will. The misinformation spread by them has led to a sense that men are superior to women in the Muslim community. This is absolutely untrue. Again, the Quran has to be read in the context of the time we are living in. For example, what was permission for polygamy at a given time in history cannot be stretched as a licence in modern day. Permission under certain circumstances with strict conditions is certainly not encouragement. Nowhere does the Quran encourage polygamy.

The stranglehold of patriarchy is visible in all faiths. Take the Sabarimala temple, the Shani Shingnapur temple or any other temple. They are run by temple trusts, but the respective deity cannot belong only to the trust. The god belongs to all devotees, who should have equal rights of access. But some people have appointed themselves trustees and administrators as in Sabarimala or the Haji Ali Shrine, and these orthodox men decide who will be included or barred, whether women and girls, those in the menstruating group, or Dalits.

Zakia Soman. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Conservative Muslim clergy frequently make statements that infringe on and curb the rights of Muslim women, whether with regard to divorce, education, work or inheritance. How important is it to codify Muslim personal law?

The long term solution is the codification of Muslim personal law within the Quranic framework. This is in consonance with the Indian constitution, which upholds the right of religious freedom through Article 25, 28, 29 and others. Different faiths, including religious minorities, have their respective family laws which are periodically amended. It is only Muslims whose family laws are from the British era, dating back to 1937 and 1939. They are highly incomplete and do not address questions on age of marriage, triple talaq, polygamy, inheritance, property rights and the custody of children.

If Muslim personal law is codified, would it prevent the likes of Samastha Kerala Jamiyathul Ulam, All India Muslim Personal Law Board and others from making anti-women statements publicly?

Yes, it will break the hegemony and stranglehold over the lives of ordinary women and men. Currently, Muslim personal law is open-ended and subjective since the British era legislation from which they stem is incomplete and silent on many issues. If a comprehensive law is written down and passed by parliament, their stranglehold will disappear. Muslim women will get justice since violators can be punished. Triple talaq and halalah, which are un-Islamic practices, would be banned. This is why orthodox forces are resisting the codification of Muslim personal law. In many Muslim countries where the personal law is codified, triple talaq is not a valid form of divorce.

The clergy claims that the source of personal law is Sharia, which is also stated by the 1937 Act. The meaning of Sharia is Islamic law. But where is it written down? Every maulvi or qazi has his own interpretation of Sharia, and all malpractices are passed off as Islamic. Qazis validate oral divorce, polygamy or halalah instead of pointing out their invalidity as per the Quran, since these are barbaric practices. It is high time the Muslim personal law is codified. BMMA has even prepared a draft law following consultations over five years.

Justice Pasha also said that it was unfair to oppose the Uniform Civil Code (UCC). BMMA has a different view on the UCC. Can you elaborate?

Jawaharlal Nehru and Ambedkar initially proposed the UCC as they were concerned about gender justice. They feared that the religious orthodoxy would not permit justice and equality for women despite the Constitution. The idea of the UCC was rejected as an attack on ancient Indian tradition and heritage largely by sadhus and sants of the day. The idea was dropped and the Hindu marriage and succession Acts were passed in the 1950s. Even Parsis and Christians, whose family laws were already existing, amended their laws from time to time. The right to personal laws based on religion is a constitutional entitlement that all communities have. Muslims are the only community who have been denied their legal rights, thanks to the opposition of patriarchal forces who have stonewalled any change in the area of personal law, and the government’s informal alliance with them. The most affected have been Muslim women who have been discriminated against and denied justice.

In the last decade, the UCC has been mired in so much politics. The Hindu right has revived the demand for a UCC, but have never brought a draft before the public. They are throwing it like a gauntlet. Do they mean to say that post-UCC, a Hindu marriage will take place without saptapadi, saat phera or kanyadan?

The UCC debate concerns all communities and not just Muslims. Our concern is legal justice and equality for Muslim women as guaranteed by both the Quran and the constitution.

How Astronomers Could Find the ‘Real’ Planet Krypton

Despite the small probabilities involved, the vast number of red dwarfs out there mean that the existence of a Krypton-like planet is still a possibility.

Planets orbiting a red dwarf, much like Krypton’s star Rao. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The search for exoplanets, worlds orbiting stars other than our own, has become a major field of research in the last decade – with nearly 2,000 such planets discovered to date. So the release of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice got me thinking: does Superman’s home planet of Krypton actually exist? Or at least a planet very much like it?

We don’t know a huge amount about Krypton. Since the very earliest Superman comic strips, it has been depicted as a rocky planet similar to Earth, but much older. In the film Man of Steel, it was said to be about 8.7 billion years old with intelligent life, Kryptonians, having existed for hundreds of thousands of years – comparable to the amount of time humans have existed on Earth.

Map of the planet Krypton from the Superman comics. Credit: WP:NFCC#4/wikimedia

Start with the red stars

In order to find Krypton, the first thing we’d need to do is identify its star, or at least its type. For a long time, all we knew was that, unlike the sun, Krypton’s star Rao is red. There are three classes of stars which are red in colour: red dwarfs, red giants and red super giants. While they are very different in size, their red colour tells us that they are some of the coolest stars in existence, with surface temperatures of only just over 3,200°C, about half that of the Sun.

Batman v. Superman. Credit: Naruto full fighters/YouTube

Red dwarfs are by far the most common stars – around 75% of the stars in the vicinity of the solar system are of this type. As the name suggests, they are quite small compared to the sun, being between 7.5% and 50% of the sun’s mass.

Meanwhile, our sun will one day become a red giant, as it runs out of its hydrogen fuel – ballooning in size so that it consumes the orbit of the Earth. But that’s nothing compared to a red supergiant – stars which would extend all the way out to the orbit of Saturn.

While depictions of Krypton’s star have varied between these three types over the years, what we see of Rao in Man of Steel points towards it being a red dwarf.

Destination LHS 2520

In 2012, it seemed that the matter was settled when astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was invited to choose Rao’s real location. He picked a star known as LHS 2520, a red dwarf star in the southern constellation of Corvus. Our searches for planets around this star have so far proved fruitless, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

To find an Earth-like exoplanet around a red dwarf star, a good approach would be to use the radial velocity method or the doppler technique, measuring the small movement a star makes as it responds to the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet.

So far, we only have a handful of data from this star, taken by the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS). This means that currently we can only rule out any orbiting gas giants, as those would be the only ones big enough to produce easily noticeable changes in the star’s velocity. A more detailed investigation, however, could still reveal a Krypton-like, rocky ‘super Earth’.

But even if that isn’t the case, our understanding of how planetary systems form out of clouds of gas, dust and rocks clumping together under gravity seems to suggest that there should always be more than one planet orbiting a star. So if we find one of Krypton’s brothers and sisters, perhaps with more observations we would be able to infer its existence.

To infinity and beyond

But if we fail to find any planets around LHS 2520, we can always look elsewhere. Luckily, searching for planets around red dwarf stars is a major area of research right now.

For instance, Pale Red Dot is an international campaign being coordinated by researchers in the UK searching for Earth-like planets around our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. The discovery of such a world essentially on our doorstop would be momentous, raising hopes that (with advances in space technology) we could one day visit it. The CARMENES project also will be looking at some 300 red dwarf stars over the next three years in search of Earth-like worlds.

Whether any of the worlds we find harbour life, intelligent or otherwise, is another hurdle to tackle – the conditions are likely to be very different from those on our own world. But despite the small probabilities involved, the vast number of red dwarfs out there mean that the existence of a Krypton-like planet is still a possibility.

Martin Archer is Space Plasma Physicist, Queen Mary University of London.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Hijacker of EgyptAir Flight Arrested After 7-Hour Drama

A man who hijacked an EgyptAir domestic flight to Larnaca, Cyprus on Tuesday morning has been arrested, a tweet put out by the airline’s official Twitter handle at 1725 IST announced, bringing to an end a seven-hour drama that officials say may not have been an act of political terrorism but the product of a domestic dispute.

Flight MS181 from Alexandria to Cairo International Airport was hijacked soon after it took off and forced to land at Larnaca airport by a man reportedly strapped with explosives on Tuesday morning. The Independent reported that the hijacker wanted to travel to Istanbul but decided on Cyprus due to a shortage of fuel.

What we know

Most Passengers Released: EgyptAir’s twitter account confirmed that negotiations with the hijacker resulted in the release of all passengers apart from the aircraft crew and several foreign national passengers. Egypt’s civil aviation minister announced that four crew members and three passengers remain on the plane. The nationalities of the passengers are known but are not yet being released for security reasons. Negotiations remain ongoing.

Hijacker Identity: The Cypriot ministry of foreign affairs has identified the hijacker as Seif El Din Mustafa. This was earlier reported by CNN in a tweet that described Mustafa as an Egyptian national. However, some confusion remains. It was previously believed that the hijacker was 27-year-old Ibrahim Samaha, a professor of veterinary medicine at Alexandria University who has since denied the claim.

Not Terrorism: The hijacking is not a terrorism related incident according to Cyprus president Nicos Anastasiades. Originally thought to be seeking asylum in Cyprus, the hijacker is now thought to have personal motives, demanding to speak to his ex-wife. It was reported that the Egyptian foreign ministry denounced the hijacker as ‘not a terrorist but an idiot’ but this has since been denied in a statement by the ministry’s spokesperson.

What we don’t know

Suicide Belt? Sherif Fathi, the Egyptian minister of aviation announced in a press conference that authorities were being cautious about the unconfirmed claim that the hijacker is wearing an explosive suicide vest. They are treating it ‘as if it is real’.

Number of Passengers? The exact number of passengers aboard the airbus 320 is unclear but the Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram reported that 81 passengers were on board at the time of the hijacking.

How? The circumstances of how the hijacking actually took place and the content of the negotiations are not known. This matter is of particular interest considering the recent security concerns surrounding Egyptian airports and the fact that this is the 8^th hijacking involving EgyptAir. It is yet to be revealed how the aviation authorities handled the negotiations concerning a suicide bomb threat.

Motive? The exact aims, demands and motives of the hijacker are yet to be understood. The motive is still being described as ‘personal’ in most accounts but unconfirmed reports from the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation via Reuters suggest a possible political demand: the release of female prisoners in Egypt.

Emergency Numbers

Emergency Call Center Within Egypt 0800 77 77 000

International +2 02 25989320-29

To follow the story here are some links:

Associated Press

Al-Ahram

EgyptAir’s twitter feed

Reuters