Confirmed desi victims of the London bombings (via DBS):

Bank worker Shahara Islam, 20, was travelling towards Liverpool Street on the Tube on her way to work at [Angel station]. She is British, of Bengali origin. The family are practising Muslims. Her uncle Nazmul Hasan, 25, said: “We are absolutely desperate. Her father has broken down several times but has spent hours at all the hospitals searching for her. “The bizarre thing is that I missed a call from her at 9.45am yesterday, approximately an hour after the explosion (near Liverpool Street) went off.” [Link]

Her mother Romena is riddled with guilt because she insisted her daughter should go to work on that fateful day even though she was a little reluctant. Shahera wanted to take the day off because she had an appointment with her dentist in the afternoon. [Link]

… Islam… was a model Muslim and attended the mosque every Friday. [Link]

Shyanuja Parathasangary, 30, has not been seen by her parents since she left the home they share in Kensal Rise on Thursday morning to go to work. Her mother, Ruth, said she boarded a train at Kensal Green at 8.55am and arrived at Euston station at 9.08am. Mrs Parathasangary believes her daughter may have then got on the route 30 bus to take her to work at the Royal Mail offices in Alder Street. She said: “She did not say anything when she left, she just gave me a sweet smile.” [Link]

Still unconfirmed:

IT worker Neetu Jain, 38, is also feared dead in the No 30 blast. She had been evacuated from Euston station and caught a bus. She made a mobile call 10 minutes before the explosion. Her Muslim boyfriend Gous Ali, 32, said: “Neetu is a very spiritual, down-to-earth, loving person and she would not hurt anybody. Her family are of Indian origin but she is British and she embraces all faiths and cultures. I am a Muslim but nowhere in the Islam of the Koran does it say that this is acceptable…” [Link]

Jain apparently narrowly escaped a subway bomb only to succumb to the bus bomb:

It is ironic that the 37-year-old computer analyst, who could not take the tube as she was evacuated from the Euston Tube Station, decided to take a bus. She never reached her office. [Link]

Here are photos of all the missing.

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Months ago Manish wrote about the ethnic slur “Paki.” In Britain this is the slur of choice when referring to all people of South Asian ethnicity. Brace yourselves. SM tipster Prem Khalon has been sending us the latest news clippings on the London bomb blasts. From the Timesonline:

Four friends from northern England have changed the face of terrorism by carrying out the suicide bombings that brought carnage to London last week.

It emerged last night that, for the first time in Western Europe, suicide bombers have been recruited for attacks. Security forces are coming to terms with the realisation that young Britons are prepared to die for their militant cause.

Three of the men lived in Leeds and the immediate fear is that members of a terrorist cell linked to the city are planning further strikes. The mastermind behind the attacks and the bombmaker are both still thought to be at large.

The man who planted the bomb at Edgware Road was named last night as Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, the married father of an eight-month-old baby, who is believed to have come from the Leeds area.

Two other terrorists were Hasib Hussain, 19, who bombed the bus in Tavistock Square, of Colenso Mount, Leeds, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, the Aldgate bomber, who lived at Colwyn Road, Leeds.

Police are still trying to identify the fourth, whose remains are believed to be in the bombed Tube train carriage on the Piccadilly Line. It is thought that he comes from Luton.

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Time Magazine Asia wonders if the saffronists are losing their influence in India and if the hope for peace is turning the people off to their message:

If India and Pakistan are to make peace, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noted a few days ago, people have to want it. An attack by six suspected Muslim militants on a contested religious site at Ayodhya in northern India triggered protests last week, as Hindus marched in New Delhi shouting “Down, down Pakistan!” and forced roads and shops to close across the country. Police used water cannons to disperse demonstrators and arrested some 3,000 people. “I have always maintained that we need to carry public opinion to make a success of the peace process,” Singh warned as he appealed for calm. “Anything that comes in the way of public opinion—and certainly these incidents, if they get repeated—has the potential to disrupt the peace process.”

The potential, yes. But not, as used to be the case, the probability. Despite the attack and ensuing protests—far from the worst India has seen—the mood on both sides of the border finally seems to be moving beyond a half-century of confrontation. Today, Indians and Pakistanis meet as friends in business, on movie screens and on the cricket pitch. And in contrast to the murderous outrage that used to follow suspected Islamic attacks on Indian soil, there were no reports of reprisals against Muslims in India last week.

Many ascribe this relative amity to the fading appeal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party that won general elections in 1997 and 1998.

As if on cue, The RSS has delivered its promised message to BJP president L.K. Advani. The Hindu reports:

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Monday delivered its promised stern message to the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership, especially the president L.K. Advani, that it would not tolerate any deviation from its ideology or any “ideological erosion”.

Party sources said the message was unambiguous: No deviation would be allowed from the Sangh ideology and Mr. Advani should go for having shaken the very foundations of those beliefs with his Jinnah formulation during his Pakistan visit. It was now for the BJP to act.

Despite pressure from the RSS till late in the night, Mr. Advani did not oblige it with his resignation.

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The “B” word continues its reign of terror. Across the pond, the tally thus far:

• One serious injury
• One gurudwara in Kent set on fire
• Three attacks on mosques in east London and Bristol
• Four arson attacks on mosques (Leeds, Belvedere, Telford and Birkenhead)
• 19 windows smashed at the mosque in east London
• Bottles thrown at the windows of a gurudwara in south London
• Arson in Southall, reported at the home of an Asian family

Then there was the poor Asian woman from Middlesex who, on the day of the bombings, recognized the unmistakable scent of petroleum while “liquid” dripped down her door. Remind me to add “attempted arson” to the bullet points above.

Commander Brian Paddick, a senior spokesperson for the police had this to say:

“We have had a number of incidents of hate crime, racially and religiously motivated offences, and we take these types of offences very, very seriously,” he told reporters.

So the good guys are on the case. But whose case are they on? When I first posted about vandalized mosques and gurudwaras, a fast and furious comment thread decayed in to race-baiting madness. The flames have been put out, but a remaining comment makes me shake my head.

We don’t actually know that the gurudwara attack was fomented by white people, do we? For all we know it could have been Hindus, but this board is full of remarks about British and American skinheads, etc., which simply assume the racial identity of the evil-doers.

Right. Except I don’t have to assume Jack when I repeatedly read facts like this:

The same day, five white men were arrested after bottles were thrown at the windows of a gurdwara in south London.

Maybe they were white Hindus. One can never be sure. Continue reading →

Suketu Mehta provides his take on the outsourcing debate in Tuesday’s New York Times:

The outsourcing debate seems to have mutated into a contest between the country of my birth and the country of my nationality. Of course I feel a loyalty to America: it gave my parents a new life and my sons were born here. I have a vested interest in seeing America prosper. But I am here because the country of my ancestors didn’t understand the changing world; it couldn’t change its technology and its philosophy and its notions of social mobility fast enough to fight off the European colonists, who won not so much with the might of advanced weaponry as with the clear logical philosophy of the Enlightenment. Their systems of thinking conquered our own. So, since independence, Indians have had to learn; we have had to slog for long hours in the classroom while the children of other countries went out to play.

When I moved to Queens, in New York City, at the age of 14, I found myself, for the first time in my life, considered good at math. In Bombay, math was my worst subject, and I regularly found my place near the bottom of the class rankings in that rigorous subject. But in my American school, so low were their standards that I was – to my parents’ disbelief – near the top of the class. It was the same in English and, unexpectedly, in American history, for my school in Bombay included a detailed study of the American Revolution. My American school curriculum had, of course, almost nothing on the subcontinent’s freedom struggle. I was mercilessly bullied during the 1979-80 hostage crisis, because my classmates couldn’t tell the difference between Iran and India. If I were now to move with my family to India, my children – who go to one of the best private schools in New York – would have to take remedial math and science courses to get into a good school in Bombay.

Outsourcing is sure to be an issue in the midterm elections next year, even more so than the last Presidential election. The Democrats shamelessly pander to their base while the Republicans avoid the issue like the plague. Nobody bothers to admit that fixing our education system is the best way to prevent the “problem” in the first place. Mehta describes that the “logical philosophy of the Enlightenment” that allowed Europeans to dominate in the first place is now being ignored by them. He beautifully points out that turnabout is only fair:

There is a perverse hypocrisy about the whole jobs debate, especially in Europe. The colonial powers invaded countries like India and China, pillaged them of their treasures and commodities and made sure their industries weren’t allowed to develop, so they would stay impoverished and unable to compete. Then the imperialists complained when the destitute people of the former colonies came to their shores to clean their toilets and dig their sewers; they complained when later generations came to earn high wages as doctors and engineers; and now they’re complaining when their jobs are being lost to children of the empire who are working harder than they are. My grandfather was once confronted by an elderly Englishman in a London park who asked, “Why are you here?” My grandfather responded, “We are the creditors.” We are here because you were there.

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, just a day after the city jubilantly reacted to winning the 2012 Olympic games. Explosions in the Tube, a.k.a. London’s subway system and on a signature red, double-decker bus murdered dozens while leaving hundreds injured. The death toll has climbed to 38 50. Responsible: the “Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe”.

The BBC discovered a brief statement claiming ownership of the horrific attacks; I’ll never understand how the words “God”, “merciful”, “compassionate” and “peace” can be used right before a proud admission of guilt.

Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist Crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

Sick, sick, sick. Blessed raid? Does anyone else want to cry?

A shaken Tony Blair left the G8 summit to attend to his city. Here’s what he had to say:

“They are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us, to frighten us out of doing the things that we want to do,” he said in a televised statement from Downing Street.

They “should not and they must not succeed,” he said.

“We know that these people act in the name of Islam but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people who abhor those who do this every bit as much as we do,” he added.

Indeed, there is much concern about vigilantes exacting revenge and undermining the safety of Muslims in England. Muslim Association of Britain president Ahmed Sheikh is especially worried about women who wear headscarves. Sheik advised that they limit their travel due to their visibility. Apparently, there has been an upward trend of attacks on Muslim women on buses recently. I had no idea. Continue reading →

If it weren’t for the rash of “punishing the victim” stories of late, this story would seem just plain medieval. But with that thoroughly depressing context, I suppose it’s just sadly bittersweet – Primitive justice: Father killed for raping daughter –

Manju was raped by her father, Rajvir repeatedly for the last 6 months and even though her mother and brothers knew about it, they were helpless. …Fed up with this daily abuse, one evening when Rajvir dragged Manju into a room, her mother called her uncles for help. The mother however, could not have anticipated what happened next. In a bid to protect Manju’s honour, the uncles beat Rajvir to death. …The police have arrested both men on charges of murder and booked them under IPC section 302…In a country where it takes years to solve a rape case and where the rapist often goes scot free, this was an instance where the victim’s family took the law into their own hands and meted out what they called justice.

Sigh. Continue reading →