During the meeting, the FBI has given some information about Rana and Headley and also assured the Indian probe agencies that they will share more of it as the interrogations of the two progress.

Indian agencies have sought all the details of Headley’s links with filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son Rahul, gym instructor Vilas Varak, some diplomats and business personalities who were allegedly misused by the terror suspect, sources said.

Headley and Pakistan-born Rana were arrested by the FBI n Chicago last month for allegedly plotting terror strikes in Denmark and India. However, Rana’s advocate had denied the allegations made against his client.

The first batch of the FBI officers arrived on Sunday and some more are expected to come for holding talks with officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and central security agencies in the national capital, they said. The NIA, probing the case, has already recorded statements of various people including Varak during which he told the investigators about the activities of Headley.

The US terror suspect had changed his name to Headley from Daood Gilani in 2006 to avoid suspicion. The probe agency wanted to undertake detailed questioning of Headley and Rana and a team from New Delhi had gone to the US earlier this month.

But the Indian probe agencies were denied access to the terror suspects by US authorities because of legal necessities.

The visit of the FBI team comes in the wake of a high-level meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President Barak Obama in Washington last week.

National Security Adviser M K Narayanan had said that President Obama has told the Prime Minister that he would be sending a high-level FBI team to India within a week with “all details”. (www.indianexpress.com)

Opening BJP’s defence on the report which has indicted a number of its leaders, party chief Rajnath Singh said in the Lok Sabha that the Liberhan Commission report was “a bundle of grave errors” and its intent appeared to be “pre-decided” and aimed at “character assassination” of certain political leaders and parties.

The Commission has reached “bizarre” conclusions, he said during the debate and took strong objection to the adverse comments made against former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and senior leaders L K Advani and M M Joshi.

He said the report was “not unbiased” and said it was a “political document of character assassinations” as legal criteria for indictment had been ignored.

“Whatever happened on December 6, 1992, was a result of public anger. There was no mosque at the site since 1936,” he said, amid repeated disruptions caused by objections from Congress and some other parties like Samajwadi Party.

“The Liberhan Commission report is a bundle of several errors….even after spending 17 years it has not been able to bring out the truth,” he said.

During the 17 years, Justice Liberhan or anybody else from the Commission had not visited Ayodhya even once, Singh said and likened him to Sanjay, an aide of Mahabharat’s Dhrithrastra, who had a special vision and could give a blow-by-blow account of the Kurukshetra war without being there. “Who is that Dhrithrastra,” he asked.

Singh said the indictment of Vajpayee and other BJP leaders was not based on facts but assumptions and the commission seemed to be “pre-decided” on whom to blame for the demolition and has thus reached “bizarre” conclusions.

Hitting out at the Commission for describing Vajpayee as “psuedo-secular”, he said even Nehru had praised the BJP leader and Rao used to see him as a political guru.

“The report is totally baseless, prejudiced and is a deliberate attempt to target some persons and political parties,” he charged.

“Building a Ram temple is not just religious justice, but also national justice. BJP reaffirms its commitment to build Ram Temple at the same site. When BJP, which was part of NDA, was in power, it could not deliver on its promise despite trying its best,” the BJP said.

He insisted that no ‘namaz’ had been performed at the disputed structure since 1934 and the doors of the structure were opened for Hindus for ‘puja’ of the Ram Lala in 1949.

Hitting back at the Congress, he said then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had gone to have ‘darshan’ of Devraha Baba on November 6, 1989, before elections and had a meeting for 40 minutes. “The government should state what did they talk for 40 minutes,” he said.

As Singh spoke about the events preceding December 6, 1992, Home Minister P Chidambaram intervened saying the issue of ‘namaz’ or ‘puja’ being conducted at the disputed structure in Ayodhya could not be discussed in Parliament as the matter was sub-judice.

“Whether namaz or puja was being conducted is part of the title suit. We are not here to debate a title suit. It is sub-judice and cannot be debated in this House,” he said, adding that the debate should confine to the Liberhan report.

Chidambaram, who is expected to reply to the debate on Tuesday, said the Liberhan Commission was appointed only to “go into the circumstances leading to the demolition” so as to find out who demolished the structure.

Agreeing with Chidambaram, Speaker Meria Kumar said the members should be conscious of the fact that the matter is sub-judice and their statements should not prejudice the title suit. She asked the members to confine to the report.

At this, Murli Manohar Joshi (BJP) said the point was raised by the party to highlight inaccuracies. But Singh contended that as the matter was in courts, there was no point debating the report at all.

Defending the then Kalyan Singh government in UP, Singh said the Congress had in 1945 given a strong commitment not to allow country’s partition but failed to keep the promise.

“Why questions are now being raised about Kalyan Singh’s assurance to the Supreme Court on not allowing any damage to the disputed structure,” he posed. (Source: Indian Express)

According to Maulana Shafiq Ahmed Al Qasmi, an organiser of the conference, the provocation occurred two months ago in Saharanpur when a new outfit, the Rashtrawadi Maha Sabha, threatened to burn an effigy of Dar ul Uloom if the Deoband seminary did not withdraw a fatwa asking its students not to sing Vande Mataram. Since the month of Ramzan was on, the seminary’s and Jamiat’s response was postponed till November 1, when the conference was scheduled, and the resolution was passed here.

However, there are other theories. The rival Jamiat, headed by Maulana Arshad Madani (Mehmud Madani’s uncle), alleges that the resolution is part of a conspiracy to create communal tension, instigated by Americans who had met the Mehmud faction in July.

“With each one vying to prove himself the better Muslim, both uncle and nephew have forgotten the Jamiat’s glorious tradition of participation in the freedom movement, of which Vande Mataram was an inseparable part,” rues reformist Asghar Ali Engineer. “This resolution has eclipsed the very purpose of the conference to condemn terrorism.”

Engineer points out that the nationalistic paean has always been politicised (see box)-he recalls that the controversy over it had helped both the Muslim League (which refused to sing it) and the Shiv Sena (which insisted on it) win seats in the 1974 BMC election. He himself finds the song unobjectionable. “Vande Mataram means `I pay my respects to the motherland. Even if you translate it as `I bow to my motherland, what objection can there be to doing so?” he asks. “The Mughals made courtiers bow to them and perform sajda (respectfully lowering and then lifting your hand to your forehead repeatedly). Why was this not condemned as un-Islamic? Simply because the emperor had power! In fact, Islamic scholar Mujaddid Alf Sani had objected to this practice in Jehangir’s time, only to be thrown into prison.”

Writer Sajid Rashid recalls singing Allama Iqbal’s Naya Shivala in his Urdu school, a song which contains the lines Patthar ki mooraton mein samjhaa hai tu khudaa hai/ Khaak-e-watan ka mujh ko har zarraa devtaa hai (You think that God resides in the stone idols/ Each speck of the motherland is God to me.) “Ulema of every sect consider Iqbal to be a devout Muslim. Why is there no furore against this well-known song?” asks Sajid. Interestingly, the Pakistani national anthem has a line that says, `Blessed be the sacred land’.

And then, of course, there’s the devout A R Rahman’s iconic rendition of Vande Mataram, which has the words Ma tujhe salaam. “Why is there no fatwa against Rahman?” asks activist Feroze Mithiborewala.

Engineer and Sajid both point to the multiplicity of Islamic beliefs in India. “The Deobandis consider even singing salaams to Prophet Mohammed’s glory as haraam, says Sajid. “But most Indian Muslims do not.” Adds Engineer, “The Deobandis cannot impose their Islam on all Indian Muslims.”

The real problem with Vande Mataram comes with the RSS slogan Is desh mein rahna hoga to Vande Mataram kahna hoga. This slogan, used in every RSS/Shiv Sena campaign, and part of every communal riot, kept cropping up during the Srikrishna Commission hearings into the 1992-’93 riots. Policemen deposing before the Commission were amazed that they should even be asked why they had not taken action against those mouthing the belligerent slogan-significantly, so were their lawyers as well as the counsel for the government. It was left to Justice Srikrishna to point out that laying down conditions of residence on any citizen, let alone a community, by another group was not just communal but also fascist.

The point is reiterated by Engineer. “Under compulsion, I won’t sing it to prove my patriotism,” he says. And adds, “And if ordered not to by any fatwa, I will sing it to assert my freedom of choice.” (Thanks: Times of India)

“The National Government generally respected religious freedom in practice; however, some state and local governments imposed limits on this freedom,” the State Department said on Monday in its Congressionally mandated annual report on International Religions Freedom.

“Although the vast majority of citizens of every religious group lived in peaceful coexistence, some organized societal attacks against minority religious groups occurred,” the report said alleging “the state police and enforcement agencies often did not act swiftly to effectively counter such attacks.”

Releasing the report covering 198 countries, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hoped it “will encourage existing religious freedom movements around the world and promote dialogue among governments and within societies.”

The report said the phrase “generally respected” signifies that the government attempted to protect religious freedom in the fullest sense and was “thus the highest level of respect for religious freedom assigned” by it.

Religious extremists, it noted, committed numerous terrorist attacks throughout India, including the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai that targeted luxury hotels, a crowded railway station, a Jewish centre, a hospital, and restaurants.

The report noted 40 persons died and 134 were injured as “violence erupted in August 2008 in Orissa after individuals affiliated with left-wing Maoist extremists killed a Hindu religious leader in Kandhamal, one of the country’s poorest districts.”

“Although most victims were Christians, the underlying causes that led to the violence have complex ethnic, economic, religious, and political roots related to land ownership and government-reserved employment and educational benefits,” it said.

Numerous cases were in the courts, including cases in connection with the 2002 Gujarat violence, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, and more recent attacks against Christians, the State Department report noted.

But “some extremists continued to view ineffective investigation and prosecution of attacks as a signal that they could commit such violence with impunity.”

“In general, India’s democratic system, open society, independent legal institutions, vibrant civil society, and press all provided mechanisms to address violations of religious freedom when they did occur,” the report said.

Listing “improvements and positive developments” in the year ended June 30, the report said, “In India, “Government officials responded to a number of new and previous violent events, helping to prevent communal violence and providing relief and rehabilitation packages for victims and their families.”

“Efforts at ecumenical understanding brought religious leaders together to defuse religious tensions,” it said noting, “in the aftermath of the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist strikes, religious leaders of all communities condemned the attacks and issued statements to maintain communal harmony.” (www.ibnlive.com)