Amidst growing India-UAE ties, Sangh Parivar seeks to promote Hindu culture in Arab land

News Network
February 13, 2024

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who last month opened the doors to a controversial Ayodhya temple in India where a centuries-old mosque once stood, is all set to inaugurate another Hindu religious site this week— in the Arab land. 

The pink sandstone temple in the United Arab Emirates has been built on a 27-acre plot granted on lease by President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for as long as “the sun shines.” In an election year, the imposing edifice offers Modi a headline-grabbing opportunity to portray himself as a global leader with the ability to draw big foreign investments.

Interestingly, Indian expatriate Hindus are the third largest Religious group in the UAE and constitute around 6.6%-15% of the population in the nation. 

Most of the Hindu diaspora in UAE are Indian, especially from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, and Punjab. The other Hindus are from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan.

Meanwhile, the Sangh Parivar (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates), which has been trying to promote Hindu culture in Arab land for decades through Indian expats, has seized the opportunity of growing friendship between the rulers of two countries to achieve its goals.

Investment pledges or memorandums of understanding between the two countries are expected to be announced during Modi’s visit. The prime minister will also address more than 40,000 people from the South Asian nation in a stadium in Abu Dhabi on February 13.

It’s a unique mix of religion, politics and money. Throngs of people waving flags gathered to greet the UAE president, known as MBZ, as he was welcomed by Modi at the airport of his home state Gujarat last month.

While Islam is the UAE’s state religion, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has long had a strained relationship with India’s Muslim population. Still, Emirati officials said there is a growing appreciation in Abu Dhabi of India’s rising geopolitical importance as well as its position as the world’s fastest growing major economy. That would make it strategically important for the UAE to navigate around any differences in opinion with New Delhi, they said.

Modi has said that MBZ is like a brother to him, Brahmaviharidas Swami, the Hindu priest heading the temple said on a zoom call, standing in front of the site clad in saffron robes. “The relationship between India and the region has never been stronger.”

There are big business considerations. India is one of the largest customers of Middle Eastern oil. The country is also buying more liquefied natural gas from the region.

Meanwhile, sovereign wealth funds in the UAE and other parts of the Gulf have emerged as prominent investors in the South Asian nation. Royal Group — the private investment firm of UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — has long had an affinity for India, with executives there calling it the potential growth engine of the coming decade. In recent days, his artificial intelligence firm set up a new entity called G42 India Enterprises Holding RSC Ltd. within Abu Dhabi Global Market, filings show.

The UAE is weighing provisional pledges to invest as much as $50 billion in India, its second-largest trading partner, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News last year. While it’s unclear if all those investments will ultimately come through and when any agreements might be announced, they would offer Modi another opportunity showcase the international ties.

“These funds are coming into India not as an assistance but on a bet that India will do really well over the next few decades,” said Rajeev Misra, an Indian-born financier, who has over the years been entrusted with billions of dollars from Middle Eastern funds. “To tap this golden opportunity a system has to be put into place in India, which can guide the money to the right opportunities.”

Close Connections

Politically, the countries have grown closer in recent years. Modi’s latest visit will mark his seventh trip to the Gulf nation since he took over as prime minister in 2014. The last Indian premier to visit the UAE before him was Indira Gandhi in 1981.

In 2021, the Gulf nation helped broker a peace deal between India and Pakistan. More recently, the UAE was one of the countries invited to join the BRICS bloc, of which India is a part. Modi is increasingly being courted by global leaders, including US President Joe Biden.

“Both UAE and India stand to gain economically and geopolitically from the close relationship built over the recent years,” said Thomas Mathew, a New Delhi-based retired bureaucrat and international relations analyst. “The US and western bloc is also pushing to strengthen the bond as it helps in containing China which has ambitions in the region.”

Other Middle Eastern countries have also looked to strengthen ties with India. Saudi Arabia announced its intention to invest $100 billion in the country in 2019 and during a September visit Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed ways to quicken the implementation of those plans.

The UAE and India have historically enjoyed close ties. A third of the Gulf country’s population hails from India and Dubai counts Indians as among the top buyers of real estate in the city. The UAE was expected to be the top destination for migrating high net worth Indians in 2023, according to immigration firm Henley & Partners.

Billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani are among India’s wealthy to have made big investments in the Middle Eastern country. In turn, they’ve also managed to draw funding from state-backed entities in the region.

Against this backdrop, the treatment of Muslims in the country is an issue that “Abu Dhabi should voice behind closed doors,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati academic. “It’s not enough to encroach on the broader economic ties, security partnerships and overall national interest.”

To be sure, many of the pledges or MOUs from Middle Eastern countries remain promises and limited amounts have actually reached Indian shores so far.

Other big plans for deepening ties have also been slow to take off on the ground. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor — a project that envisages building new rail links across the Arabian peninsula — was intended to further strengthen the relationship between the countries.

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News Network
November 17,2024

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An Israeli airstrike on the office of Syria’s Baath party in Lebanon’s capital Beirut has killed the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah's Media Relations Officer, Mohammad Afif, reports say.

Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) reported that the Israeli raid struck the Ba'ath party’s building in central Beirut district of Ras Al-Naba'a on Sunday, adding that the strike was an attempt to assassinate the leader of the resistance media front.

According to Baath Secretary-General Ali Hijazi, Afif was having a meeting in the Baath Party headquarters when Israel carried out the attack.

"Afif did not fight with weapons and did not lead a military unit in Hezbollah. Rather, he led a media unit," he said.

Reuters, Sky News, Al Jazeera and a number of Henrew-language media reported that Afif was killed in the Israeli strike.

However, Hezbollah has not yet confirmed Afif’s death or whether he was present at the site or not.

Earlier, the Lebanese Health Ministry said at least one person was killed and three others injured after an Israeli strike targeted a central district in Beirut.

Lebanon's al-Mayadeen television network reported that five people were killed in the attack.

The latest development came after Afif said Hezbollah was behind the Caesarea operation and targeting Netanyahu’s home during a speech at the Ghobeiry area in the southern suburbs of Beirut on October 22.

This was the second assassination attempt on Afif in the last two months, after he survived an attack on the Hezbollah media relations office several weeks ago.

Israel launched a ground assault and massive air campaign against Lebanon in late September after a year of exchanging fire across the Lebanese border in parallel with the Gaza war.

At least 3,287 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon over the past year, with the vast majority in the past seven weeks. Another 14,222 have been wounded, mostly women and children.

In response to the ongoing aggression, the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has been staging hundreds of retaliatory strikes against the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli forces trying to advance on southern Lebanese areas.

The movement has vowed to sustain its strikes until the regime ends the escalation.

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News Network
November 13,2024

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Beirut: The Israeli army on Tuesday continued to launch attacks against civilians in Lebanon, targeting them in several areas without prior evacuation warnings.

However, 13 airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs in the space of only three hours were preceded by evacuation warnings.

The attacks caused no injuries but resulted in widespread destruction of residential buildings and commercial, medical and educational centers.

The airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Bekaa region, reaching Akkar in Lebanon’s far north, erased any hope of a near-term ceasefire settlement.

The strikes were accompanied by an announcement on Israel’s Channel 14 that “the Israeli army has expanded its operations in southern Lebanon to areas it had not reached since the beginning of the ground operation.”

About 50 days have passed since Israel intensified its hostile operations in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. The death toll from these confrontations and attacks has passed 3,200, with more than 14,000 wounded.

For the first time, an airstrike targeted a mountainous area between Baalchmay and Aabadiyeh on the road leading to Aley, destroying a building housing displaced people.

The mayor of Baalchmay, Adham Al-Danaf, confirmed that “the airstrike targeted a residential building in the Dhour Aabadiyeh area.”

The initial toll from the Ministry of Health showed “five people killed and two injured.”

The raids that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs for the first time in the morning, unlike nightly raids before, caused huge destruction. Those who evacuated their homes after Israeli warnings, used their phones to record the collapse of empty buildings in Sfeir, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abed, Mrayjeh, Laylaki and Hadath.

Israeli warplanes also targeted Tyre, where a strike on a building killed three people and injured many others, while a raid on Tefahta killed a man identified as Kifah Khalil and his family.

Attacks were widespread, with Yater and Zebqine subject to artillery shelling, a civilian being killed in Hermel, and further attacks on Bouday and an area between the towns of Srifa and Arsoun.

A raid on the town of Siddiqin killed two people and injured several others, while an attack on the Mechref farm led to one fatality and multiple injuries.

The search for those missing after an Israeli raid on the town of Ain Yaacoub in Akkar, in the northernmost part of Lebanon, continued until dawn.

During the operation, 14 bodies were retrieved, identified as those of residents displaced from the town of Arabsalim in the Iqlim Al-Tuffah area of the south, along with members of a Syrian family, a mother and three of her children. Additionally, there were 10 people in critical condition.

The targeted residence belongs to a Lebanese citizen, Hussein Hashim, who is reported to be a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

An airstrike on the town of Saksakiyeh in the Sidon region on Monday night resulted in yet another tragedy.

It appeared that the intended target was the Shoumer family, who just days before lost Hussein Amin Shoumer and his two sisters in a drone strike near Al-Awali River.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued additional evacuation warnings for towns in the southern region along the Litani River, which, according to estimates from the mayors, are currently 90 percent uninhabited.

In the meantime, Hezbollah announced its continued efforts to “combat the intrusions of Israeli forces and to strike military installations and towns in the north.”

Hezbollah said in a statement that it confronted “an Israeli Hermes 450 drone in the airspace of Nabatieh and forced it to leave Lebanese airspace.”

The party also announced that it targeted “Kfar Blum settlement with a rocket salvo.”

On the Israeli side, air raid sirens sounded in areas of Upper and Western Galilee and in the town of Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings.

The Israeli army confirmed that “a drone exploded in Nesher, east of Haifa, without activating the air raid sirens,” and that “a drone launched from Lebanon crashed into a school in Gesher HaZiv, north of Nahariya.”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported the Israeli military’s assessment regarding Hezbollah’s military strength, claiming that the group currently possesses approximately 100 precision missiles, thousands of artillery shells, and hundreds of rockets. Additionally, it was highlighted that “there are around 200 Lebanese towns that remain unvisited.”

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News Network
November 10,2024

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government has warned that disciplinary action will be taken against those officials who change the land mutation records and serve eviction notices to farmers under the Waqf Act.

In a letter, the Revenue Department Principal Secretary Rajender Kumar Kataria reminded all regional commissioners and deputy commissioners in the districts that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently had a meeting following complaints about certain land properties being made in favour of the Karnataka Board of Waqfs.

In the meeting it was decided that all the directions issued previously by any government office or authority to change the mutation records has been withdrawn, the letter said.

It added that all the notices served in the past have also been withdrawn and no action should be taken against the farmers who are cultivating on the said land.

On the directions of the chief minister, the previous letters and the latest reminders served on November 7 to the farmers and land owners have been withdraw, the letter said.

"The officials who served reminder-2 despite the chief minister's direction will face appropriate disciplinary action," Kataria said in his letter.

He said he has been instructed to strictly implement the chief minister's direction.

The fresh direction was issued in poll-bound Karnataka, where bypolls to three crucial assembly segments are due on November 13.

Some farmers in Honwad village in Vijayapura in north Karnataka had alleged last month that they were served eviction notices as the Waqf Board claimed rights over it.

Subsequently, complaints started in pouring in from some other parts of the state.

BJP leader Tejasvi Surya on October 25 alleged that Karnataka Waqf Minister B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan directed the deputy commissioners and revenue officials to register lands in favour of the Waqf Board within 15 days, which resulted in confusion.

On Surya's request, the Chairman of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, Jagdambika Pal visited Karnataka on November 7 and met farmers in Hubballi, Vijayapura and Belagavi districts who had alleged that their lands were marked as Waqf properties.

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