Trevor Phillips, born in the UK, brought up in Guyana, married to a Parsi woman from India, has received both name and fame from the race relations industry. He cherishes to claim that he was the Chairman of Equality and Human Rights Commission. He also brags about being “20 years ago Chair of the Runnymede Trust”.
Sadly, he has become (or rather he was always) untrustworthy and opportunist. In a long article in The Sunday Times magazine (dated 10th April), he has written extensively on, “What do British Muslims really think?”
Based on the ICM survey, he has opined about how many Muslims expect their wives to be obedient (39%), how many of them would like to have more than one wife (31%), how many would support Sharia law in the UK (23%), how many condemn (79%) or sympathise (5%) with people who take part in stoning those who commit adultery, how many agree or disagree with homosexuality (52%), as well as how many report terror activities (very few) within their community?
He has been very well guarded on such sensitive subjects and one can understand – why?
Eight out of 10 Muslims in the UK say they are happy living here. They feel British because their family life, their children's future, economic security aren't that different from most other people. Freedom to practise their religion in any way they see deem fit is also preferred by British Muslims.
But all of a sudden in that article, he writes, “In the Indian subcontinent Muslims are subject to Hindu persecution.”
Trevor Phillips, of all the people, should know India very well. Such an irresponsible statement from him is a total lie and is highly provocative. Does he know how many Indian Presidents, Cabinet Ministers, Chief Justices of High Courts and Supreme Court, High Commissioners, Ambassadors, Chairmen of Election Commission, State Ministers, Defence Services Generals hail from the Muslim community? Amongst the Indian businessmen, industrialists, philanthropists, in sports, in Bollywood there are so many of them from the Muslim community (they have been listed separately in this issue).
Maulana Mahmood Madani, leader of the Jamiat Ulema-I-Hind, in an interview to Rediff.com, had said: “I want to say only one thing: Indian Muslims have no better place to live than India. We are Indians not by chance, but by choice. Our ancestors had a chance to go to a State which is now Islamic (Pakistan), but they chose to stay back in that State which was not Islamic. We know that this State (India) cannot be a State of Islam, but still we preferred to live in India. So this is our country and we are its stakeholders. And there is no place that is better for us than India.”
Trevor Phillips should study carefully the situation in India. He should accept that 80% of population of India who are Hindus believe in secularism and democracy and they respect the Constitution and that's why Indian Muslims are playing more and more important role in all walks of life.
Trevor Phillips needs to be told this truth.
Srinivasa Ramanujan on the screen
The story of the Srinivasa Ramanujan, a clerk in the Madras port, who turned out to be a mathematical genius of the first order is one that defies imagination. But thanks to the superbly researched book by the American author Robert Kanigel, ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity,’ Ramanujan’s emergence from obscurity to stellar status, through trial and tribulation, was made available to available to a wider public. The inevitable next step was to bring Kanigel’s narrative to the cinema and a still wider audience with a general release in the UK last weekend. Raising money for the venture was no easy task but the myriad obstacles were slowly surmounted, largely due to the determined efforts of a number of eminent individuals, foremost of whom was the present of the Royal Society, Professor Venkataraman Ramakrishnan. The present Master of Trinity College, Gregory Winter and the members of the college governing council gave instant permission for parts of the film to be shot on location. American Professor Ken Ono, an authority on Ramanujan’s work, was consultant on the film
The story begins with the arrival of a letter from Ramanujan to Trinity College Fellow, G.H. Hardy, then a world renowned mathematician. It was accompanied by sets of mathematical theorems, some known, others new and daringly original. Hardy recognized the hand of genius behind the work. Ramanujan encountered racial prejudice but his sheer brilliance brought these walls tumbling down. Hardy, his mentor and collaborator, stood by him through thick and thin. Ramanujan was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1918, then of Trinity College. Struck down by TB, he returned to India in 1919, dying a year later in Madras in April 1920, aged 32.
The cinematic venture, with the iconic Jeremy Irons playing G.H. Hardy and Dev Patel Ramanujan, was made possible by the collaboration of Trinity College, Cambridge, the Royal Society in London and Warner Brothers in the United States. It was perhaps appropriate that the President of the Royal Society Professor Venkataraman Ramakrishan was, like Ramanujan, born in Tamil Nadu, in his case in 1952. He was knighted by the Queen in 2012.
Professor Ramakrishnan, speaking at a reception, before the first showing of this impressive movie, said: ‘You are about to see a movie that is rather romantic in a sense – it is about a self-taught genius….who takes this unusual step and makes the a connection with one of the most famous mathematicians in the world who happened to be in Trinity College, Cambridge, at the time. And the very fact that they would connect is such an unlikely story that if we had invented it, it would have been thought implausible. But it actually happened.’
It says a great deal for British culture that its self-correcting mechanisms have been so creatively transformative, that old attitudes and prejudices can be cast aside as new formations emerge. Of few countries can this be said.
Indian cricket board in spat with Supreme Court
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has long been a law unto itself. Its previous president K. Srinivasan was finally ejected through an arduous process requiring an enquiry into the affairs of the BCCI. A new President Manohar Shashank has taken charge but there is little transparency in its mode of functioning. The BCCI appoints commentators on the television networks with a gagging order that the appointees cannot question any board decision, be it administrative or selection of a player. Thus, when the Nagpur Test wicket against South Africa was viewed abroad as a disgrace – the match ended in less than three days – Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri defended the playing surface. In the recent World Twenty/20 tournament Gavaskar may have said something about a player that reflected on the selectors’ judgment. This is, at best an educated guess. But secrecy breeds a whirligig of rumour and speculation.
Ex-cricketers doing time in the hugely financial zone of newspaper columnists fell over themselves praising the extraordinary talent of the Indian team and the near certainty that it would carry off the coveted trophy. That didn’t happen, and deservedly so. The West Indies were the best all-round side with the heaviest guns, as Carlos Braithwaite demonstrated with such flair and power in the final over against England.
For all the media hype, India was represented by one authentic genius in Virat Kohli and ten journeymen. Thanks to Kohli’s derring-do, India got as far as the semi-final, where they lost to West Indies. That Lendl Simmons was given three lives was the responsibility of India’s bowlers and fielders. At the international level, teams make their own luck. To have ridden to glory on the back of a solitary genius would have been a travesty. Columnists would have gone into overdrive with praise for all and sundry. Weaknesses would have been glossed over and the show would have gone on regardless. Defeat, hopefully, may lead to introspection – and the opportunity of the young guns in the wings to showcase their talent.
