INDIA RAMPS UP SECURITY FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY

TERROR ALERT PROMPTS ALL-ROUND
SECURITY FOR I-DAY CELEBRATIONS IN INDIA

New Delhi (AFP) - India's prime minister says his government will take the strictest possible action against wrongdoers in a series of corruption scandals facing his government.  Manmohan Singh made the comments Monday from the ramparts of a 17th century fort during a speech marking the 64th anniversary of India's independence from British rule.  Police and soldiers were out in force across India on Monday as security was ramped up for Independence Day celebrations held in the shadow of blasts last month in Mumbai which killed 26 people.  A senior home ministry official said security measures were being increased in New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata, as well as Mumbai, where police are probing the July 13 bombs.  The three coordinated explosions killed 26 and injured 130, but no group claimed responsibility and detectives have struggled to unearth who was behind the attack.  Indian President Pratibha Patil in her customary address on the eve of Independence Day called for heightened vigilance against militant attacks. 

“The attack in Mumbai last month is yet another grim reminder of the destruction that can be caused by terrorism,” she said in a nationwide broadcast on Sunday evening.  “We need to be ever-vigilant, to fight this menace which is a global phenomenon,” the president added.  The Press Trust of India (PTI) said thousands of police personnel were deployed in the national capital ahead of the celebrations, which mark India’s independence from British rule on August 15, 1947.  Heavily-armed commandos backed by snipers and rapid-action squads will guard the 16th-century Red Fort in the crowded centre of Delhi where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will make his annual speech.  PTI reported “an impregnable ground-to-air security apparatus” was in place around the event.  Security was also raised in insurgency-hit Kashmir and India’s seven restive northeastern states including Manipur, where several separatist groups have asked people to boycott Monday’s celebrations.

Police have made elaborate security arrangements for the Independence Day celebrations today in India, with around 80,000 cops and over 20 companies of paramilitary forces being deployed in the capital.  Officials said they were keeping an eye on the markets as terrorist groups like the Indian Mujahideen had targeted these areas in the past.  After 64 years of independence, due to the prevalence of materialistic way of thinking which exists in most of the countries, Indian society are facing dominance of the western culture.  Day by day the influence of foreign culture is increasing in India.  

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

In the long and difficult struggle to gain independence for India, Mahatma Gandhi encountered many set-backs. ... Gandhi had always said that real independence for India was not just to become free from British rule. It was also to become free of British culture and industrial way of life and to re-establish the traditional Indian village-based culture which he had always struggled for. He saw India’s destiny as different from that of the West:  “I feel that India’s mission is different from that of others. India is fitted for religious supremacy of the world. There is no parallel in the world for the process of purification that this country has voluntarily undergone. India is the land of duty, not the land of enjoyment.”  Consequently he foresaw disaster if India were to try in her new-found independence to imitate or compete with the West.  “European civilization is no doubt suited for the Europeans but it will mean ruin for India, if we endeavour to copy it.”

Ranchor Prime (Śripad Ranchor Dasa) :
“Hinduism & Ecology” Chapter Eight: “Village Economics”
Friends of Vrindavan (FOV) -  Published by Cassell and WWF UK
http://www.fov.org.uk/hinduism/hinduism.html
http://www.fov.org.uk/aims/aims.html