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The Making of the Indian National Flag

August 14, 2012, 11:55 pm
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Visiting Myanmar\'s Threatened Rohingyas

By ROBERT MACKEY

Despite official obstacles barring most observers and aid workers from western Myanmar, two months after dozens were killed in sectarian clashes and tens of thousands of Muslims were forced from their homes into “resettlement camps,” a television crew from Britain's Channel 4 News managed to report from the region on Tuesday.

As my colleague Thomas Fuller reported in June, Myanmar declared a state of emergency that month after violence between the Buddhist majority and a minority Muslim population known as Rohingyas swept Rakhine State, along the border with Bangladesh. The rape and murder of a Buddhist woman in May led to revenge attacks on the Rohingya community which was blamed for the crime. In the following weeks, up to 60,000 Rohingyas were driven from their homes and a whole section of the regional capital Sittwe was burned to the ground.

The British crew managed to film at a camp for displaced Rohingyas out side Sittwe, and also interviewed Buddhists in the town who claimed, implausibly, that the Muslims had set their own homes on fire. The Buddhists also complained to the reporters that the United Nations and international aid groups are biased in favor of the Muslims.

Myanmar denies citizenship to the entire community of about 800,000 Rohingyas, on the disputed theory that their ancestors arrived in the country after the start of British colonial rule in the 19th century, and the government even proposed expelling them en masse last month. That has led some Rohingyas to try to find refuge across the border in Bangladesh.

According to Moshahida Sultana Ritu, an economist at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh who wrote a New York Times opinion piece on the crisis in July, fears of an influx of refugees “have aroused anti-Rohingya sentiment among some Bangladeshis, and initially Bangladesh's government tried to force the refugees back without assisting them.”< /p>

Ms. Sultana Ritu also accused Myanmar's government of using its security forces “to burn houses, kill men and evict Rohingyas from their villages.” The attack on the Rohingyas, the professor charged, “is not sectarian violence; it is state-supported ethnic cleansing.”



Science Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh Dies at 67

August 14, 2012, 12:08 pm
By NEHA THIRANI

Vilasrao Deshmukh, the minister for science and technology and a former Maharashtra chief minister, died of multiple organ failure in Chennai on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Deshmukh, 67, had been suffering from liver cancer over the past six months.

Last Monday, he was flown from Mumbai to Global Health City Hospital in Chennai, where he was to undergo a liver transplant operation. However, doctors said that his vital parameters were not stable enough for the surgery.

“All members of Deshmukh family including Vilasrao's wife, Vaishali, son Amit, Riteish and Dheeraj were by his side when the end came at about 1:40 p.m.,” Mr. Deshmukh's brother Diliprao Deshmukh told The Economic Times on Tuesday.

The funeral is to be held Wednesday afternoon in Mr. Deshmukh's home village of Babhalgaon.

Mr. Deshmukh's rapid rise in politics, from a grass-roots politician to a central government minister, was well known. He was born in Babhalgaon, a small village in the Latur district of Maharashtra, on May 26, 1945. He left his village to study in Pune, where he graduated from M.E.S. Abasaheb Garware College and went on to study law at I.L.S. Law College.

He returned to his village to enter politics in 1974 and became sarpanch, or head of the village council. From there he navigated his way through Maharashtra politics to become a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in 1980 and again in 1985 and 1990.

Mr. Deshmukh, often described as a Congress loyalist, faced opposition both from within the Congress Party and other quarters, and his path to the post of chief minister was lined with obstacles. In 1999, he was finally elected as chief minister of Maharashtra and was re-elected in 2004.

His terms as chief minister were not without controversies. He was accused of giving land clearances in violation of environmental regulations to the Adarsh housing society in Mumbai. He also faced severe criticism for visiting the Taj Mahal Hotel after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 with his actor son, Riteish, and the filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma. The outcry forced him to resign, after which he moved to New Delhi.

Once in New Delhi, Mr. Deshmukh was named the minister for heavy industries and public enterprises. Later he became the minister for rural development. In July 2011, he became the minister of science and technology and the minister of earth sciences.

While his career saw many ups and downs, the Indian media called him “a political craftsman adept at turning challenges into opportunities.”

Mr. Deshmukh has been described as an “affable man, always with a smile,” one who had an uncanny ability for public speaking. He had often voiced his desire to take his home state Maharashtra to great heights, saying that he dreamed of making Mumbai into a Shanghai.

The death of Mr. Deshmukh, who was well respected in political circles, drew an outpouring of tributes. “Mr. Deshmukh was a trusted colleague and an able administrator who worked at panchayat, state and central levels with admirable dedication,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in his condolence message.

Prithviraj Chavan, chief minister of Maharashtra, said, “Indian politics has lost a very able leader. I personally feel the loss of a dear friend. His rise from a village sarpanch to a Union minister is an inspiring story.”



Image of the Day: August 14

August 14, 2012, 11:30 am
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

American Roots of the Indian Independence Movement

By NARESH FERNANDES

In June 1916, an Indian living in California wrote a letter to The New York Times emphasizing how profoundly Indians in the United States had been influenced by the political values of their adoptive country.

“Residence in the U.S. has not made [Indians]…who returned home ‘imbued with revolutionary ideas' but it has made them republicans.” He added, “The whole country has been stirred by their vision of a United States of India.”

The writer of the letter was Ram Chandra, the editor of Hindustan Gadar, the newspaper of the San Francisco-based Gadar Party. The party took its name from the Urdu word for “mutiny” or “revolt.” (The word is sometimes transliterated as “Ghadar.”) In its inaugural issue in November 1913, the newspaper had stated the party's intentions clearly: “To bring about a rising…because the people can no longer bear the oppression and tyranny practiced under English rule.†

Most of the members of the Gadar Party were Punjabi, though their sympathizers were drawn from across India. Many of them had served in the British army or police services in places like Hong Kong and Shanghai and had moved to the United States to work as farm laborers or on building the railroads. A few were students at U.S. universities.

As India celebrates the 65th anniversary of its independence from Britain, the role of the Gadar Party and other Indians in the United States in helping the cause is garnering increased attention. Some of the new work is the result of African-American scholars examining the influence of the Indian struggle for freedom on the U.S. civil rights movement. Long before Martin Luther King began to study Gandhi's works, African-American groups had established links with visiting Indian freedom fighters. Among them was Lala Lajpat Rai, who spent five years starting in 1915 as a political exile in the Unit ed States. He counted W.E.B. Du Bois among his friends, and also met with Booker T. Washington.

Other research into the subject represents the growing Indian-American community's attempt to prove that its history in the United States is longer and more nuanced than is commonly known. These include a recent book by the historian Maia Ramnath, “Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire.”

Another initiative in this direction is the South Asian American Digital Archive, which was founded in Philadelphia in 2008 “to document and provide access to the diverse and relatively unknown stories of South Asian Americans.” Its collections chronicle a wide range of community experiences, and include several documents and photographs that throw light on the links between Indian-Americans and the Indian independence struggle.

“Historians will undoubtedly debate the legacy of the Gadar Party's co ntributions to the overall freedom struggle for years to come,” said Samip Mallick, 31, the archive's executive director, in an e-mail interview with India Ink. “But, symbolically, it is a really unique, extraordinary and inspiring story. The story of the Gadar Party is the story of a new immigrant population advocating for their own political enfranchisement, both through their support for decolonization around the world as well as through their fight for civil rights in their new home country.”

Here are excerpts from that interview:

How did the Gadar Party influence India's freedom struggle?

The Hindustan Gadar Party started off as a San Francisco-based anti-colonial political organization, which advocated the complete independence of India from British rule. The specifics of its founding are slightly murky, but it's clear that in 1913, a group of activists based on the Pacific Coast, including Har Dayal and Sohan Singh Bhakna, were organizing migra nt laborers (most of whom were Punjabi Sikhs) and helped found what would later be known as the Gadar Party, its aim being the overthrow of British colonial rule of India through revolutionary means. The Gadar Party published a newspaper titled Gadr in Urdu, followed by a Gurmukhi editions and apparently Gujarati editions. Copies of the newspaper as well as the party's pamphlets were disseminated throughout the world, including Japan, China, Hong Kong, Burma and the Philippines, and eventually Gadar bases sprung up in those areas, as well. Gadar leaders also often wrote of the mistreatment of Indian immigrants in the U.S., which tells us that this was more than simply a nationalist organization.

The Gadar Party received considerable support from the German Foreign Office, which arranged funds and armaments in a plot to incite a pan-Indian revolution (later known as the “Annie Larsen affair”) in 1915. The conspiracy was discovered by British and American intelligenc e, and led to the Hindu-German Conspiracy Trial of 1917, in which 29 party members were convicted in the District Court in San Francisco.

The Gadar Party continued to exist after the trial, and in 1920 began to publish the Independent Hindustan, a journal containing editorials, essays and news items relating to the global movement for Indian independence. In 1923, the party began to publish The United States of India, for several years. The full runs of these publications are available online through our Web site.

Which other organizations in the U.S. supported Indian independence?

Alongside the Gadar Party was the India Home Rule League based in New York, founded by Lala Lajpat Rai, which advocated “home rule” for India. The I.H.R.L. produced a monthly journal from 1918 onward titled Young India. When Lajpat Rai left the U.S. in 1919, the editorship duties were handed off to Jabez T. Sunderland, a Unitarian minister who was a close associate of Rai and a longtime advocate for Indian independence. Another critical organization was Friends of Freedom for India, which was closely associated with the Gadar Party and led by Agnes Smedley and Sailendranath Ghose. Their mission, according to its own membership ads, was “to maintain the right of asylum for political refugees from India” and “to present the case for the independence of India.”

Incidentally, all three groups â€" the Gadar Party, the I.H.R.L., and the F.F.I. â€" enjoyed support from Irish nationalists, and published articles from Irish/Irish-American supporters. Other supporters of Indian freedom who traveled and lectured in the U.S. include Rabindranath Tagore, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Ram Manohar Lohia and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.

What was the U.S. government's position on the Indian freedom struggle?

This is a pretty complex question, but it seems that before WWI, the U.S. government took a formal position of neutrality whenever possible, even while maintaining surveillance on the activities of Indians in the U.S. who advocated for independence. A few key American political figures like William Jennings Bryan, a member of the Anti-Imperialist league, wrote against British rule in India (Bryan's 1906 essay “British Rule in India” was actually reprinted and circulated by the Gadar Party), but this wasn't official state policy by any means. During WWI, the U.S. worked with British authorities to crack down the activity of Indian revolutionaries in the U.S., on the grounds that the Gadar radicals' relationship with the German government was a violation of the neutrality laws. This resulted in the Hindu-German Conspiracy case of 1917.

Advocates for India's freedom made much of President Woodrow Wilson's “Fourteen Points” speech during WWI, which called for “a free, open-minded, and impartial adjustment of all colonial claims,” seeing this as a step forward towards decolonization and publishing p raise for the president in Young India and various Gadar pamphlets. But even while most knew Wilson didn't have India at the forefront of his mind when making such a claim, as historian Erez Manela puts it in “The Wilsonian Moment,” Wilson's claim became part of their “rhetorical arsenal” for independence.

What explains the recent spurt of books about the links between Indians in the U.S. and the freedom movement?

Part of the reason is that connections are being drawn between Asian-American Studies and what has traditionally been known as “area studies.” Also, transnational or diaspora studies, once seen as a footnote, has given us new focal points for examining the history of the freedom movement in India. The frame for analysis isn't so nationally bound anymore.

However, while it is true that there are a number of new academic works on the Gadar Party and transnational involvement in the freedom struggle, there has been ongoing interest for ma ny years in keeping these histories alive, beginning with even those who were themselves involved in the freedom struggle and worried that the tremendous sacrifices they made fighting for India's independence would be forgotten and lost to history.

In 1953, writing from Mexico City, former Gadar Party member Pandurang Khankoje wrote to Bhagwan Singh Gyanee, asking the past leader for information to keep the story of Gadar alive. “People in India are anxious to know about you all,” Khankhoje said. “We are getting old and the history of our movement should not get lost.”

In the U.S. there have been a number of individuals, including T.S. Sibia, Jane Singh, Ved Prakash Vatuk, Irene Joshi, and others who have independently researched and worked to raise awareness about these important histories. There have also been organizations formed such as the Hindustan Gadar Party Memorial Committee to draw public attention to and publicly commemorate these histories. O ne of their major efforts was for the dedication of the building at 5 Wood Street in San Francisco as Gadar Memorial Hall, which is now owned and operated by the Indian Consular Office.

What is unique now, from the perspective of our work, is the opportunity provided by the digital medium to unify and provide universal access to dispersed archival materials in a way that was completely unimaginable even five or 10 years ago.

How did the South Asian American Digital Archive go about collecting its materials?

Materials in the archive come to us generally in two ways. First are the materials that are held by individuals in their private collections. These are materials that have been collected over the years related to an individual's family history or their own lives. Materials such as these would often stay in the basement or attic where they are kept and the important stories contained within these materials would not be widely shared. We work closely with such individuals to provide digital access to photographs, letters, journals and other such objects through our website while the original copies remain with their current owner.

Second are materials in institutions or archival repositories around the country. Few materials related to South Asian Americans are included in existing archives. For the vast majority of repositories, materials related to our community fall outside the scope of their collecting efforts. The materials that are available in archives are spread widely in collections across the country, making it difficult even for individual researchers to find the materials they need for their work and especially difficult for members of the community to access them. We have collaborated with a number of institutions to provide digital access to materials in their collections that are relevant to South Asian American history, but that may have otherwise been overlooked.

An example of such a collaboration is with the University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which has a series of correspondence between Har Dayal, one of the leaders of the Gadar Party, and his close friend Van Wyck Brooks as part of their collection of Brooks's papers. Collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania allowed us to provide digital access to these letters and allow users anywhere in the world to read Har Dayal's words in his own hand for the very first time.

Naresh Fernandes is a freelance journalist who lives in Mumbai. He is a Poiesis fellow at New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge. He is the author of “Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age.“



Men Join Gods in Kolkata\'s Statuary

By SEAN MCLAIN

For at least two centuries, residents of Kolkata have come to Kumartuli to purchase idols made of clay from a man named Paul.

The Paul family is an institution in Kumartuli, the historic potter's enclave in northern Kolkata. Kumartuli gets its name from kumbhokar, the word for terra cotta pottery makers, and tuli means collective. Many of the 150 or so sculptors here are named Paul, and most are related.

Now, the Pauls of Kumartuli are finding new demand for their services making sculptures and busts of famous Indians. “Demand for these statues has doubled in the past five years,” said Badal Chandra Paul.

For five generations, the 76-year-old sculptor and his forefathers have made idols of the gods and goddesses for the many pujas, or festivals, celebrated in West Bengal. Now, however, Mr. Paul and many of his fellow Kumartuli sculptors are becoming famous for their sculptures and b usts of Indian historical and political figures.

“People used to think Kumartuli only did Durga thakurs,” said Mr. Paul, referring to the traditional idol displayed during Durga puja, depicting the goddess astride a lion slaying the buffalo demon, Mohishashur. “Slowly, after we held a few exhibitions of our work, people are realizing that we do more than idols.”

In his workshop on Rabindra Road, sample plaster busts line the walls like a pantheon of Indian freedom fighters, politicians, philosophers and holy men.

Amal Paul, 40, the son of the elder Mr. Paul, was molding a foot-tall statue of Sri Ramakrishna, a famous Indian mystic, out of clay. The work was commissioned by a private ashram.

“Most of our orders are from private parties, but we also get orders from the government and political parties,” he said.

On the floor lay a large plaster model of Rabindranath Tagore's head, which will eventually be cast in bronze as part of a 12 -foot-tall statue of the famous Bengali poet and writer. When finished, it will adorn the front lawns of the Bidhan Nagar municipality building, a township on the outskirts of Kolkata.

“They've given me seven months to make the statue,” said the younger Mr. Paul. “It is not going to be enough. We're going to need 1,500 kilograms of metal.”

It is also not going to be cheap. The going rate for bronze statues is 150,000 rupees ($2,700) per foot, he said. Previous orders have included a statue of Prafulla Chandra Roy, a famous Bengali scientist, and the state's first chief minister, for the state's finance department.

Political statues have always been popular in Kolkata, said Tanmay Banerjee, an assistant professor of modeling and sculpture at the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata, once known as Calcutta. “The culture of erecting statues of political figures originates from the British Raj,” he said.

When Kolkata was the second c ity of the British empire, India's colonial rulers dotted the city with monstrous lifelike statues of the leading figures of the Raj, like the viceroy George Nathaniel Curzon and King George. “That tradition still lives on,” said Professor Banerjee.

Instead of viceroys, however, statues of Bengali revolutionaries dominate Kolkata's public spaces, like Surya Sen, Khudiram Bose and Subhas Chandra Bose, better known as Netaji. Many now sit on plinths previously occupied by statues of colonial leaders. The figures are usually composed with arms outstretched or staring confidently into the horizon.

The penchant the state government showed for this style of grandiose and anatomical sculpture has also influenced private tastes, said Professor Banerjee.

“These political statues are like memorials,” he said, likening it to secular versions of the idols in Kumartuli. “This is the worship of the ordinary man: that is the culture of Calcutta.”

Ajay Ja in, who owns a shop on Rabindra Road, said political statues are a big business. “I sell 80 to 100 statues a year of dead political figures,” he said. Prices range from 25,000 to 50,000 rupees for a marble bust.

In addition to the 7- to12-foot statues commissioned by the state government, smaller busts are purchased by private individuals and neighborhood associations to decorate homes and street corners.

But Mr. Jain said the fastest-growing portion of his sculpture business was not likenesses of famous people, but rather deceased parents. “After their parents die, many people living in villages have busts made and put them up in their house,” he said.

Badal Chandra Paul said he was experiencing the same demand for busts of deceased relatives. He was working on a seven-foot-tall bronze statue of Gulab Chand Yadav, the recently deceased elder brother of the former chief minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav. The work had been commissioned by the dece ased Mr. Yadav's son, and was to be completed in time for the anniversary of Mr. Yadav's death.

“Demand for a subject's statue peaks around the birth or death anniversary of the subject,” said Mr. Jain.

In some cases, the popularity of a figure waxes and wanes with political fortunes.

“I expected people to want busts of Jyoti Basu on his birthday,” which is on July 8, said Mr. Jain. Mr. Basu, who died in January 2010, was a member of the Indian Independence Movement, a founding member of the country's Communist Party and West Bengal's longest serving chief minister. All of which, Mr. Jain thought, would create massive demand for his likeness in bronze or marble.

“No one has yet asked for one,” said Mr. Jain.

The state elections in West Bengal in 2011 ended 34 years of uninterrupted Communist rule in West Bengal, which Mr. Jain believes influenced the lack of orders for statues of Mr. Basu.

Mr. Paul did have one order for a seve n-foot-tall Basu statue, but the person never took delivery of the finished product. “It was commissioned by a member of the Congress Party,” said Mr. Paul. “That caused a lot of controversy.”

The statue now sits on a narrow ledge along the roof on the alley side of the shop, hidden behind a statue of Swami Vivekananda, a famous Hindu monk and philosopher. No one has come inquiring about another Jyoti Basu statue, but the shop keeps it just in case and as an example of its work.

Fans of Mr. Basu may indeed be waiting for the Communist Party's fortunes to turn before placing their orders. “Orders for Marx and Lenin are also down by a lot,” said Mr. Paul.

Meanwhile, orders for statues of Mr. Tagore and Mr. Vivekananda are surging, in part due to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's penchant for the famous men, but also because they are uncontroversial.

“Vivekananda is the most popular,” said Mr. Paul. “He had no political leani ngs; everyone liked him. He's a safe bet to put in a neighborhood.”



\'Paan\' Stains Dot the Sidewalks of Queens

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“On a stroll through the busy streets of Jackson Heights, Queens, Sahadev Poudel kept gesturing at the ground with disgust,” Nicholas Hirshon wrote in The New York Times. “He stopped on the sidewalks in front of sari boutiques and Indian grocery stores, pointing out stains that looked like dried blood.”

At a dollar each, “paan has become a popular after-dinner treat” in Jackson Heights, Mr. Hirshon wrote. Made by “folding dried fruits, nuts and pastes into a betel leaf,” a member of the pepper family, paan “looses its flavor in a matter of minutes,” he wrote.

To the chagrin of Jackson Heights shopkeepers, “some passers-by spit half-chewed betel leaves and saliva onto the sidewalks, just as they did in their native countries,” he wrote.

Spitting in public carries a fine of at least $200, said Alexandra Waldhorn, a spokeswoman for the health d epartment. But shop owners say they have never seen anyone receive a violation.

Once paan spittle hits the sidewalk, the city does not come to wash it away. Kathy Dawkins, a spokeswoman for the Sanitation Department, said it did not remove stains, paan or otherwise, from sidewalks. But she promised that the city would “pay closer attention” to the issue.

The stains regularly set off debates in Jackson Heights, which attracts visitors from a mix of paan-chewing countries like Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Many are quick to lay the blame for the ubiquitous blemishes on any nationality but their own. Older immigrants privately scold newcomers for clinging to the bad habits of their homeland.

Read the full article.

Is this problem simply a culture clash, or should South Asians stop spitting out paan at home as well? Write to us in the comments section below.



Indian Gods Begging Devotion

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Near the beginning of her show ‘Being Becoming,' the Bharata Natyam dancer Malini Srinivasan sits behind translucent red fabric and adorns herself,” Brian Seibert of The New York Times wrote in a review of the dancer's show, part of the New York International Fringe Festival.

The five dances of the 75-minute performance “are tied together by the theme of transformation: a devotee's seeking to become one with the object of her devotion, a dancer's disappearing into a character,” Mr. Seibert wrote.

Read the full review.



From Nalli Nihari to Malpua, Mumbai Offers Hearty Ramadan Fare

By NEHA THIRANI

There is never a better time to be a meat eater in Mumbai than the month of Ramadan, when streets come alive with delectable aromas in the evening as Muslims prepare to break their fast.

Traditionally called iftar, the evening meal is partaken after sunset. Many Muslim families break the fast at home with dates, fruits, tea, meat and sweetmeats. India Ink's Mumbai bureau set out on a rather more ambitious iftar, visiting some of the most popular restaurants to break the Ramadan fast, widely referred to as Ramzan in India.

We started at Shalimar, a local favorite in Mumbai's Bhendi Bazaar neighborhood, a bustling commercial area, lined with street side stalls and shops selling everything from electronics to antiques. On this particular evening, there was a rather large goat parked promisingly at the entrance of the restaurant, while customers streamed past nonchalantly. Famous for its kebabs and North Indian cuisine, Shalimar draws crowds from all over the city for its mouth-watering biryani.

We ordered the raan biryani, which is a slow-cooked preparation of rice with a whole leg of lamb. The biryani was par excellence, fragrant and flavorful, without being exceedingly spicy. We also tried the chicken tikka kebab, though it was dry and paled in comparison to the biryani. A word of caution: bring a large group so you can sample many dishes because the portions are generous. Our waiter looked terribly disappointed with our meager appetites.

Just next door to Shalimar is the Noor Mohammadi Hotel, an unassuming eatery frequented by the likes of the tabla maestro Zakir Hussain and the Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt. At the entrance, hovering over an oversized griddle was a man grilling shammi kebabs, a patty made out of ground beef flavored with green chiles. We promptly ordered some and were not disappointed; the kebab was succulent and delicious.

Nex t we moved on to the restaurant's speciality, nalli nihari, a Ramadan specialty, a curry of beef or mutton slow cooked on a charcoal fire through the night and eaten in the morning before the fast begins. Served with warm khameeri roti, a flaky leavened bread that is deep fried, and a pickle made of chopped ginger and green chiles, this dish is not for the fainthearted. The rich, tender meat swims in a spicy gravy laced with fat and melts in your mouth. A few bites of the rich nihari here and we were ready to call it a night.

But we persevered. No Ramadan food trail is complete without a visit to Mohammed Ali Road. Here, as you approach the unmistakable green minarets of Minara Masjid, the narrow, crowded and brightly lit lanes are lined with vendors selling charcoal-grilled meats and sweets.

We stepped into the rather deceptively named Chinese -n-Grill near the mosque, famous among Mumbai's foodies for its grilled kebabs. The extensive menu had many Indian Chine se dishes and said that the owners had only introduced Indian cuisine as an afterthought because of popular demand. However, none of the other patrons in the restaurant there, Indian or otherwise, appeared to have ordered anything remotely Chinese.

We decided to stick to the Indian food, as well, and ordered the seekh kebab, a dish made of charcoal grilled minced meat (in this case lamb), and tangdi kebab, chicken drumsticks laced with spices. Both were serviceable but hardly anything to write home about. The chicken was a bit on the dry side and the lamb seekh could have used more seasoning.

And just when our stomachs were about to give way, we ended the night at the famed Suleiman Usman Mithaiwala, a stand situated at the base of Minara Masjid. Specializing in Ramadan sweetmeats, the store is best known for its “firni,” a creamy dessert made of rice and milk that resembles rice pudding. It also comes in mango and saffron flavors.

Also excellent was th e malpua, a milk-based pancake fried in ghee and dipped in sugar syrup and served with rabri, a rich milk-based sweet. Like the biryani at the beginning of our evening, this dish is best shared with a half a dozen friends and family members because it's just that big.

Previously: Hyderabad's Charm Found in Ramadan Delights, Feasting After Fasts in the Streets of Old Delhi.

Do you have a restaurant or stall to recommend for the best Ramadan dishes? Tell us in the comments section below.



After Bullets Fly in Texas, a Soldier\'s Wartime Training Is Needed at Home

August 13, 2012, 11:31 pm
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Rigo Cisneros A neighbor in College Station, Tex., took video showing the police as they approached a gunman's home. “If you move, you are dead,” an officer yelled.

When a gun battle between police and a man armed with an assault rifle broke out on a street close to the Texas A&M campus on Monday, most nearby residents took cover. Rigo Cisneros reached for his smartphone.

As bullets whizzed and officers fell with gunshot wounds, Mr. Cisneros, an Army medic with one tour of duty in Afghanistan, crept from his home across the street toward the firefight, snapping pictures and taking video.

And then, when the shoot ing stopped and the police moved in on the home of the gunman, Mr. Cisneros, 40, called out to the officers:

“You got an ambulance here yet?” he asked. “I'm a medic.”

He asked for permission to approach and assist, and received it. It was an opportunity to put his military training to use in the war zone that briefly erupted on his own block.

He first attended to Brian Bachmann, 41, a Brazos County constable. Mr. Bachmann was gravely wounded with a gunshot to the chest.

“I heard gurgling sounds,” Mr. Cisneros said when reached by telephone later. “He was on the ground for 10 minutes, and there was no motion at all.”

Mr. Cisneros said he could feel no pulse. He performed CPR.

When medics arrived, Mr. Cisneros turned his attention to the shooter, whom police identified as Thomas Caffall, 35. He had been shot multiple times and was handcuffed, pale and bleeding on his front lawn. But he was conscious and aware enough to compre hend what he had done.

“Could you please tell the person I shot I'm sorry,” Mr. Cisneros said Mr. Caffall had told him.

Mr. Caffall later succumbed to his wounds, as did Mr. Bachmann, the constable. A passerby, Chris Northcliff, 43, also died of his gunshot wounds, the police said. Three other police officers and a 55-year-old woman were injured.

According to local news agencies, Mr. Bachmann became constable in January 2011 after winning an election the previous November. In Texas, constables are elected officials who serve as bailiffs in the local Justice of the Peace Court system. They also perform duties similar to those of sheriff's deputies and police officers.

The Eagle, a local newspaper, said in a November 2010 article about the election that Mr. Bachmann was married with two children. Before becoming constable, he served 17 years with the Brazos County Sheriff's Office, joining it as a patrol officer, the paper said.

Police said th at Mr. Bachmann and other police officers had gone to the residence on Monday with an eviction notice, but provided few other details about the shooting or Mr. Caffall.

When reached by telephone on Monday, several of Mr. Caffall's relatives declined to comment. A local NBC affiliate reported that Mr. Caffall's stepfather, Richard Weaver, when reached by telephone, had described him as “crazy as hell.”

“At one point, we were afraid that he was going to come up here and do something to his mother and me,” he was quoted as saying, adding that Mr. Caffall had quit his job nine months ago.

On his Facebook page, Mr. Caffall described himself as divorced and Christian.

“I am pulling a cross between Forrest Gump and Jack Kerouac (without the drugs),” he wrote. “I'm on the road, permanently.”

He had photos of several weapons on the page, including an assault rifle pictured in its box with two banana-shaped ammunition clips and an instruct ion manual for a Czech-made SA Vz.58 rifle that he wrote had cost $799. Also pictured was what he described as a Mosin Nagant rifle, a weapon once made in the Soviet Union, complete with bayonet and two boxes of ammunition.

“I'll be at the gun range as much as I can,” he said in the caption to one photo.

He also included a photo of his dog, Lucy.



Grisly Scene After Syrian Rebel Victory Caught on Video

By ROBERT MACKEY

Supporters of the Syrian uprising were reminded on Monday that having their revolution documented in such detail online can be a mixed blessing, as video appeared to show rebel fighters hurling dead soldiers off the roof of a building after a recent battle.

The grisly celebration last month in the northern town of al-Bab can be seen in extremely graphic video recorded as bodies thudded to the ground and observers rushed in for a closer look. (Before viewing the distressing clip, readers must click past a warning from the video-sharing site.)

Graphic video said to have been recorded last month in the Syrian town of al-Bab, where rebels seized control of a government building and dropped the bodies of soldiers they had killed off a roof.

A Syrian activist in al-Bab, Barry Abdul Latif, told The Los Angeles Times via Skype that the video was recorded three weeks ag o outside the local post office, after rebels killed five members of the security forces holed up there. “There were snipers on the roof of the post office,” he said. “Finally the rebels managed to storm the post office and threw explosive devices and the five snipers were killed. Then the rebels threw the bodies from the roof.”

The images surfaced at the same time as other clips, said to show summary executions of prisoners by rebel fighters, enraged some supporters of the uprising.

Although gunshots can be heard on the soundtrack of the video before some of the bodies were thrown off the rooftop, Mr. Latif insisted that the men were killed in battle, but criticized the mistreatment of the bodies in a series of updates posted on Twitter on Monday - and translated into English by another activist who writes as @NuffSilence.

In another update posted on his @Barry_Albab feed, Mr. Latif said that activists in the town had collected the bodies dropped outside the post office and given them proper Muslim burials.

As the Washington Post correspondent Liz Sly reported from al-Bab last month, the town, 30 miles northeast of Aleppo, in a patch of rural territory along the Turkish border now under rebel control, joined the armed uprising only three months ago.

In video said to have been recorded during a protest in April, protesters carrying a coffin chanted “Peaceful! Peaceful!” as they passed members of the security forces on rooftops in al-Bab.

Activists in the town told Ms. Sly that local men took up arms in May, after the security forces opened fire on a demonstration for the first time, killing seven protesters. They seized control of most of al-Bab on July 18.

After a 24-hour battle, residents told the Washington Post reporter, a Free Syrian Army fighter finally took out a sniper's nest on the roof of the post office building with a rocket-propelled gr enade. A widely seen video of that rocket strike appeared to show a soldier blown into the air by the force of the blast.

Video said to have been recorded on July 19 in al-Bab as a sniper's nest on the roof of the local post office was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Video apparently recorded on the roof of the post office building later that day, showing rebel fighters taking control and very graphic close-ups of the mangled bodies of dead soldiers, was posted on an al-Bab opposition Facebook page.

Mr. Latif told The Lede via Twitter on Monday that he did not know who had recorded the video of the bodies being flung off the roof that day and was puzzled as to why it had appeared online now.

In another conversation on the social network, the activist who writes as @NuffSilence speculated that the clip was probably passed from phone to phone until it reached a supporter of President Bashar al-A ssad. As The Lede reported last year, several graphic video clips showing the bodies of dead protesters or rebels being abused by Syrian government soldiers have followed a similar path, eventually being acquired and posted online by opposition activists.

While the politics of the anonymous video blogger who uploaded the clip to an account registered in Lebanon on Saturday remain unknown, the video was quickly copied and re-uploaded by an Assad supporter who added the description: “Turkey-sponsored FSA terrorists a/k/a Freedom Fighters a/k/a Al Qaeda, throwing bodies of slain policemen who were protecting the government post office building in al-Bab.”

Given that several opposition activists have been urging restraint on the rebel Free Syrian Army, and instantly condemned the video from al-Bab on Twitter, it also seems possible that the clip might have been posted online now by a government opponent who was horrified by the scene.

Efforts to hold the Free Syrian Army accountable might be complicated by the informal nature of the rebel network. Ms. Sly reported from al-Bab last month that 15 different groups have taken up arms there since May. While they “collectively describe themselves as part of the Free Syrian Army,” she wrote, “they have no formal contact with the army's leadership, based in southern Turkey.”



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