After the students, it is now the turn of the Indian community as a whole. An Indian grocery shop worker is in hospital after getting blasted through the front window in an explosion triggered when three armed robbers set fire to the premises.

Police say three young males armed with knives entered the shop about 2100 hrs last night at Quakers Hill, in Sydney’s northwest.

They threatened Rajan Singh, the 33-year-old male employee and stole cash before setting the shop on fire and fleeing. The build-up of smoke and heat caused an explosion, blasting the employee out the front entrance and on to the footpath.

Although there are no racial overtones to the incident, but another employee lamented there are shops belonging to other communities but they are not attacked. He said the Indians are being targeted. The police officer investigating the incident speaking to a TV channel also ruled out any racial colour to the attack.

He sustained minor burns and smoke inhalation and was taken to Blacktown Hospital in a stable condition. Fire crews extinguished the blaze.

The burnt house of student Rajesh Kumar in Harris Park

In yet another case of violence towards the Indian community, a student suffered up to 30 per cent burns after a suspected petrol bomb was hurled at him in his home in Harris Park. The injuries could have been grave had his flat mate not shown the presence of mind and quickly grabbed a blanket and covered the burning boy with it.

Rajesh Kumar, 25, was sitting on his bed in the front room of his rented house when an unknown person threw what neighbours say was a small petrol bomb through his window just after 8pm. The explosion and subsequent fire left Mr. Kumar with burns to a third of his body.

A NSW Fire Brigades spokesman said Mr. Kumar’s flat mate Arminder Singh did the right thing when he grabbed a blanket and threw it over his friend, helping to extinguish the flames.

Mr. Singh, 33, said he was halfway between the laundry and kitchen when he heard the sound of smashing glass and his friend screaming. He and another flat mate, Chander Mohan, said they saw Mr. Kumar run out of his bedroom and out the front door with his back and arms on fire. Continue Reading

The Westmead house where Singhalese student were attacked on Sunday

As we passed by Alexendria Avenue in Westmead onMonday afternoon, we witnessed a huge police possee had surrounded a home and investigating the scene of a violent attack on some Sri Lankan students a night before. It is reported in Australian Media that at least five men forced their way into the Sinhalese students’ home in Alexandra Avenue at Westmead about midnight (AEST) on Sunday, report IST and agencies

They threw acid over a 22-year-old man, identified only as Jayasiri, leaving him severely burned and fighting for his life in Concord Hospital in an induced coma. They also doused 27-year-old Chathuika Weerasinghe in acid before stabbing him in the abdomen and breaking his ankle. Continue Reading

Thirty-four suspected asylum seekers, some in a critical condition with severe burns will be treated in Australian hospitals, reports AAP quoting the West Australian health department.

Puffin, an offshore oil rig, 740km west of Darwin is being used as a triage centre for the injured, which include a number of children. According to a report in Melbourne based South Asia Times, three refugees have died after the explosion on the boat they were travelling in. The asylum seekers are reportedly from Afghanistan.

Asylum seekers doused their boat in petrol before a fatal dawn explosion off the north-west Australian coast, West Australian Premier Colin Barnett says. Continue Reading

Around 300 overseas students, including Indians, were put into detention centres in Sydney and Melbourne in the past three years after found breaching Australian immigration laws.

According to a report in ‘The Australian’, it was revealed that in the last three years 299 overseas students were put into the detention centre in Sydney or Melbourne of which most were deported.

University, TAFE and secondary school students from 24 countries were detained and majority of them hailed from India, China, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Of the detainees, 207 were held for overstaying their visas, 30 for attendance breaches, 14 for failing their courses, seven for not starting their courses, four for withdrawing from their courses, one for a work breach and 36 for other reasons, the report said.

Senior psychology professor of University of Sydney Christopher Lennings said overseas students could be easily overwhelmed by conditions in Australia, leaving them vulnerable to breaches of migration law.

“People’s English is not as good, they get overwhelmed, have financial problems or illness. They get depressed and fail their studies, and next thing they know they are on a roller coaster and have lost control of their lives,” he said adding “The trauma period is within a few to 10 days, especially if they don’t know how long they would be incarcerated for.”

Students who have their visas cancelled — often for working more than 20 hours a week, for attending less than 80 per cent of scheduled contact hours, for unsatisfactory academic results, for completing a course early, deferring study or transferring to another provider — become unlawful non-citizens.

Once located, they are usually detained pending removal from Australia, granted a bridging visa or made to arrange their own departure. The report further said that a former Bangladeshi university student was detained for almost three years and one of the 27 Chinese nationals was detained for 371 days.

Universities Australia chief executive Glenn Withers said while illegal residency should be dealt with by deportation, these processes “should minimise the need for detention and ensure a proper allowance for associated refugee claims”.

National Liaison Committee President for the country’s 250,000 international students, Eric Pang, said it was “shocking to know that it’s such a big export industry for Australia, where students are treated as cash cows, yet others are receiving such harsh treatment in detention … If they overstay they should be deported.”

Student detainee advocate Milchaela Rost said she was appalled by the figures and Australia was the only country in the world to detain some full-fee-paying international students.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans recently announced that mandatory detention for over stayers and unlawful non-citizens would only apply in certain circumstances, such as where a person presents a risk to the community, or where there is repeated non-compliance.

A few years ago, the Imam of New York city had visited Sydney and he was given a public reception in the St. Mary’s Cathedral with the top brass of the government and police. It was a show of solidarity with the Imam because it was happening soon after the 9/11 terrorist attack. The intention of the NSW government was to make the Imam feel that Australia is a multicultural society and understands Islam and other religions. If the intention was to make the Australians understand different religions then St. Mary’s Cathedral was not the right place to do so.

Everything on that function appeared a sham, a political exercise to assuage the feelings of the Muslims following the attack. The government should have gone to the grass-roots and exchanged views on not only Islam but different religions as well.  The function, unfortunately, failed to serve either purpose.

This is exactly what is happening in India where terrorism has been actually prospering thanks to the shortsightedness of the politicians belonging to various political parties. These politicians need to look beyond narrow gains or community based politics and work for the betterment of the nation. This thought can surely help in containing terrorism.

Mahatma Gandhi once said if someone slaps you offer the other cheek to him. How long can he go on? Today, if could practice that even once by ignoring the terrorists, this can prove to be an effective weapon against these elements. No amount security or policing would be as effective as ignoring the terrorists can be. But if we retaliate then there is no end to the problem.

The support to this thought has come from a strange quarter — the Communist Party of India Marxist polit-buro member and my mate in the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Sitaram Yechury who has combined international political scene with that of India’s very well in an effort to find a solution to the ever-increasing malaise of terrorism.

Yechury writes in The Hindustan Times: “Terror continues to stalk the nation. In five days, 55 bombs were planted (of which, mercifully, 25 did not explode) in the three cities of Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Surat, leaving at least 53 dead. Even for a country that has brazened such terrorist attacks in the past 60 years, this has come as a shock. The country lost a Mahatma to terrorist bullets, a Prime Minister to those unleashed by Sikh terrorists; and a former Prime Minister assassinated by a suicide bomber. Innumerable lives are lost in attacks mounted by various outfits in the North-east, apart from those lost to Maoist insurgencies in various parts of the country.  This splurge of blood and mayhem is not just utterly condemnable but it is simply unacceptable.

Amidst the various speculations doing the rounds — including that these attacks were a retaliatory response or a ‘dry-run’ for something more horrendous in store — it was also suggested that the modus operandi was inspired by a Bollywood film. The bewildered script-writer, in turn, informed us that he was inspired by an Israeli army attack on a helpless Palestinian hospital in Nablus in January 2004, to ‘track down’ a bomber. The script-writer stated that he had merely “replaced the Israeli army with terrorists”.

Clearly, terrorism is the means to an end. It can, thus, never be fought by ignoring or obfuscating the end.  September 11, 2001, we are told, was an individual terrorist response to the State terrorism unleashed by US imperialism globally. The US military occupation of Iraq, we are told, is to contain such ‘individual terrorism’. Over a million Iraqis have lost their lives and over 6 million are refugees in their own country. In order to quell the natural resistance to such occupation, the US army has moved into Afghanistan pursuing the Taliban and is now knocking at the borders of Pakistan. However abhorrent and inhuman terrorism as a methodology is, it can never be combated or eliminated by ignoring the fundamental causes that have led to the invention of the ‘human bomb’.

For us in India, such terrorism needs to be combated and eliminated by intensifying all efforts, both at the administrative level by urgently beefing up our intelligence and security apparatus, and the political level by seeking a solution to real or perceived ‘injustice’ done to some sections.

At the administrative level, in the wake of the Kargil war, the then NDA government had set up a committee headed by former R&AW chief Girish Saxena that included the present National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan. This proposed a Multi-Agency Centre (Mac), the heart of India’s counter-terrorism efforts, and a Joint Task Force on Intelligence. These proposals were accepted without any modification in 2003 by the NDA Group of Ministers. Unfortunately, with L.K. Advani as Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, this was not taken seriously.

Five years down the line, as against the recommended additional 3,000 Intelligence Bureau personnel, only 1,400 posts have been sanctioned — mind you, not filled. As against the UN’s minimum norm of 222 policemen for every 100,000 people, the all-India average is 126. In many states, it’s even lower.

Clearly, all these have to be rectified on a war footing. However, the advance towards a political solution becomes well-nigh impossible if terrorism becomes an important input to advance the electoral ambitions of political parties. Advani’s strident calls for the resurrection of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (Pota) is a case in point. Selective amnesia seems to prevent Mr Advani from recollecting that when he was at the helm of affairs — when Pota adorned the statute books — terrorists attacked Parliament, the Red Fort, the Akshardham temple and the Raghunath temple twice. Clearly, it is not the inadequacy of law that is encouraging terrorism.  Sushma Swaraj’s outrageous remarks that the latest attacks in BJP-led states is a conspiracy against the party is also part of such an effort. No one had even remotely suggested that the attack on Parliament was a ‘distraction’ from the coffin scam that dogged the NDA government of that time. At the other end, ‘off the record’ leaks by the Establishment draw a parallel with ‘international terror attacks’ influencing national electoral results in some countries.  

The terrorist attack in Spain in March 2004 cost George Bush’s staunch ally, José María Aznar, dearly in the Spanish elections. Similarly, the terrorist attacks in April 2006 in Italy led to the defeat of the incumbent government. It is  also widely believed that the sudden spurt of activities by Muslim extremists in the run-up to the French presidential elections had influenced the outcome in 2007. All this is to suggest that such terror attacks in the BJP-ruled states are aimed at influencing the outcome of the forthcoming general elections.

The country can ill afford such cynical use of terror attacks to further political agendas. A combination of administrative and political approaches must be urgently undertaken by this government if it seeks to live up to the basis of its formation — strengthening secularism and protecting the social harmony of our country. The failure to do so will be judged by the people in the forthcoming general elections.

While there can be no compromise in combating terrorism and the unity and integrity of the country is non-negotiable, the proclivity to jump to conclusions in the absence of a thorough inquiry and investigation must be abandoned in the interests of the security of our people. In this context, recollect the film Fiza, which chillingly shows how terrorists are nurtured by prejudiced persecution.

Finally, while doing the utmost to combat and banish such terror and its perpetrators, the refusal to fall prey to the terrorists’ provocation is the surest way to defeat them. Terrorism fails when it is unable to provoke a backlash and foster anarchy.”

— Reference HT

It was exactly one year after she left the shores of Australia in June 2007 to exploit her talent, she believed she had, in the dream land called Bollywood that the Sydney girl Sanghmitra saw her dreams coming true when she signed her first film in the lead role ’Bhavnao Ko Smjho’.

Although had done small roles prior to this in ‘Aamir’, Idiot Box (to be released Aug/Sept) and some TV serials Haadsa (Zee TV), CID (on Sony), Kash-ma-kash Zindagi Ki (Doordarshan), Zindagi ke Rang (Pragya channel), Sunil Pal’s Bhavnao Ko Samjho is a great leap forward considering she has been there only for about a year.

‘Bhavnao Ko Samjho’ is Laughter Challenge winner Sunil Pal’s dream project featuring a record 54 comedians from India and Pakistan, including Johnny Lever, Raju Shrivastava, Ehsaan Qureshi, Navin Prabhakar and Sunil Pal himself as well as Sanghmitra has given comic performances in shows in Sydney, the notable being Hamare Padosi.

However, it is Sanghmitra’s second innings in the tinsel town as she had been a child star in veteran Director Lekh Tandon’s ‘Kahan se kahan tak’ in the late 90’s before doing two documentaries on AIDS awareness, a few serials on DD, Telefilm on DD in which she was the only live character and featured in over two dozen educational programmes of the NCERT. In fact, with Haadsa, she was back on Zee after a gap of 12 years. All this was possible due to the training she had in the National School of Drama’s summer camps for school children. The documentaries on AIDS awareness were shown on Australian TV’s SBS channel on the World AIDS Day. Her acting talent was spotted by her mother Shradha and immediately availed the coursed offered by the National School of Drama. Her dancing abilities were exploited by her principal in Delhi Public School and she was a regular at the school functions.

In Sydney, Sanghmitra had become a familiar face after she was regularly featured in ‘Curry Culture’ programme on TVS channel and Abhinay Theatre’s plays based on short stories by Chekhov. Sanghmitra studied Drama in her Year 12 in the school and is fluent in Hindi as well as western theatre.

Sanghmitra has performed at several social functions and received standing ovation after her performance at the Republic Day celebrations function in 2006. Sanghmitra is also a trained ramp model and organized first-ever ramp modeling contest and pageant in Sydney in 2003 which was followed by Mr. India Australia 2003, a pageant for the Indian youth of Sydney.

Back in Mumbai, Sanghmitra’s journey has not been different from any other newcomer. Auditions after auditions, she braved lewd remarks and lurid advances of some producers to make a humble beginning by doing a Punjabi music album and few serials. It was during one of the auditions at Anurag Kashyap’s studio that she was offered a small but significant role in Aamir and she grabbed it with both hands. This was followed by another small but central role in ‘Idiot Box’ in which she makes all characters dance to her tune.

Sanghmitra loves challenges and is undeterred by the various auditions she does almost every day. The auditions would go very well and her talent is appreciated but somehow she couldn’t fit into the requirements. She is determined to keep exploring with the hope that she might soon fit the requirements of a challenging role that would soar her into the category of ‘fine actors’.