India drops five places, to 105th out of 127 countries surveyed, in the latest 2008 UNESCO’s ‘Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report’
The world’s 25 million Sikhs ought to recognize the Sikh statistical genocide which is taking place in India and counter it vociferously
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, January 09, 2008 - While the Mumbai Stock Market Index has zoomed past the 21, 000 mark, making a few Banias very rich, UNESCO’s recently released ‘Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2008’, paints a grim picture of India’s masses and its’ literacy situation - largest number of illiterates in the world. In that 2008 report, UNESCO has ranked India 105th out of 127 countries surveyed as compared to India’s standing of 100th out of 129 countries surveyed in 2007 – a drop of five points in performance in just one year. There goes the ‘Incredible India’ slogan that the current United Progressive Alliance (Manmohan Singh) government never tires of eulogizing. Some future for India’s billion plus population!The 2008 UNESCO report on education is based on six defined EFA goals. They were:- 1. Expanding and improving comprehensive childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children; 2. Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to free and compulsory primary education of good quality; 3. Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills program; 4. Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for adults; 5. Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and achieving gender equality in education by 2015; and 6. Improving all aspects of quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy and essential life skills.
According to the above mentioned UNESCO’s ‘Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2008’ there are over 774 million illiterate people in the world. Of them, three quarters live in 15 countries, including eight high-population countries, namely Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan. Significantly, India has the largest number of illiterate people, a whopping 35 per cent of the total. Even the phony 2001 India census, in which the numbers were doctored (specially the literacy rate which was shown as having shot up from 44% in 1981 to 65% in 2001, despite a 20% increase in India’s population in that period – an unprecedented record improvement in education ever witnessed in any country in the history of the world) by the then BJP coalition government which was trying to put a shine to the ‘Shining India’ slogan. The Neo-Nazi BJP obviously believes in Hitler’s ‘big lie’ theory, spelled out in ‘Mein Kampf’ that, “The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” Despite the shenanigans the doctored 2001 census had to admit that there were nearly 300 million illiterates in India in 2001. The actual figure on the ground was more like 600 million illiterates in India.
The shenanigans of the Indian Census Commission also proved the wisdom of a famous line from the 1924 Autobiography of the great American writer, Samuel Langhorne, who used to write under the Pen name of Mark Twain. The line reads, "There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics." We have taken the liberty here of adding a few words to that famous line, by Mark Twain, in a left hand tribute to the Indian Census 2001 which should read, "There are three kinds of lies -- lies, damned lies and the 2001 Indian Census and it's statistics".
The above mentioned infamous 2001 India Census is of special interest to Sikhs as it was doctored, by the then Neo-Nazi BJP (Vajpayee) government to, emasculate the minorities and put a ‘shine’ on the then ‘Shining India’ slogan. The 2001 Census is also remembered by the 25 million strong Sikh nation (22 million captive in India and 3 million FREE in the diaspora) for the ‘statistical genocide’ of over three million Sikhs – who disappeared from India’s census figures. This genocide of statistics was challenged in this column, dated 8 September 2004, which was headlined, “Over three million Sikhs disappear from India’s census count,” which can be read by clicking at the following link: (> /home/khalistancalling/2004/september08.aspx <) This column had, some readers might still remember, trashed the 2001 India census in the following words:- “The Indian Census Commission released an obviously doctored and phony report in New Delhi, on Monday, on population numbers of religious groups in India. The Report, cooked up by BJP appointed Census Commission 'Babus', claims a Sikh population of 19 million, instead of 22 million - three million Sikhs just disappeared. It also claims that, during the decade 1991-2001, the Sikhs showed one of the lowest growth rate in India of 18.2%, 'due to infertility' - implying Sikh males have become sterile. The doctored 2001 census is infamous for the fact that three million Sikhs disappeared from India’s census count with the object of making the Sikhs majority a minority in Indian occupied Punjab. The other side of the conspiracy 'coin' is that the total Sikh population of India has been made to statistically 'slow march' backwards. The Sikh population which has now dropped in the Indian Census books to nineteen million (19, 215, 730) - Rural Sikhs 14, 106, 481 & Urban Sikhs 5, 109, 249, according to India's census 2001. The object is obvious. The rulers want to make the muscular Sikhs a minority in their Punjab homeland whose river water resources are coveted by non-riparian Hindu-majority states of Rajasthan and Haryana. The Christians in India are shown by the Census report to now number more than the Sikhs, at 24 million Christians, Buddhists number 7.9 million, Jains 4.2 million and those following ‘Other’ religions and persuasions are numbered at 6.6 million.”
The September 8, 2004, Khalistan Calling went on to say that, “For a profile (breakdown) of the Sikh community in India, in different states, as the BJP appointed 'Babus' of the Census of India-2001 want us to see it. That doctored Census of India chart says that there are a little over nineteen million (19, 215, 730 Sikhs; Urban-5. 109, 249 and Rural-14,106, 481). Sikhs in India of which total the Punjab, the Sikh Homeland, the Census people say, has a little over fourteen million (14, 592,387) Sikhs. The non-riparian Hindu majority state of Haryana is next and has one million one hundred seventy thousand six hundred and sixty two Sikhs (1, 170. 662: 5.5% of the state's population); Rajasthan is next with eight hundred eighteen thousand four hundred and twenty Sikhs (818, 420: 1.4% of the states population); Utter Pradesh (U.P.) is next with six huundred seventy eight thousand and fifty nine (678, 059: 0.4% of the population of the state); Delhi's Sikh population, the Census people claim, has shrunk to five hundred fifty five six hundred and two Sikhs (555, 602: 4% of Delhi's population); Maharashtra has 215, 337 Sikhs; the new state of Uttaranchel has 212, 025 Sikhs; Jammu & Kashmir has 207, 154 Sikhs; Madhya Pradesh has 150, 772 Sikhs; and Chandigarh has 145, 175 Sikhs who make up 16% of the city's population. One million six hundred forty thousand and seven hundred and ninty nine Sikhs live in the remaining states and territories with six (just six) Sikhs domiciled in remote Lakshadweep Islands in the Arabian Sea off Kerala.”
The September 8, 2004, Khalistan Calling, ridiculing the 2001 India Census, had pointed out that, “In Indian occupied Punjab, out of a total population of twenty four million three hundred and fifty eight thousand nine hundred and ninety nine (Total 24, 358, 999: Rural-16, 096, 488; Urban-8, 262, 571), the Sikh community, the Census 'Babus' say, now numbers ONLY 14, 592, 387 ( Rural-11, 567, 437; Urban-3, 024, 950). Non-Sikh urbanites in the Punjab - who numbered less than half of the Sikh urbanites a few years ago - have overtaken the Sikh urban population with a total of 5, 237, 521. Even the Non-Sikh rural population numbers for Punjab show a similar pattern. The non-Sikh rural population has zoomed to nearly five million (4, 529, 051 to be exact) from next to nothing three decades ago thanks to the Indian government sponsored 'Bihari invasion' which has given an opportunity for the Census Bureau 'Babus' to cook the non-Sikh figures for Punjab.”
According to the Encyclopedia Britanica - Book of the Year, 2003 - quoted in The World Almanac and Book of Facts-2004 published by the New York Times (ISBN 0-88687-911-6: page 612) there are nearly twenty three million (22, 961, 000) Sikhs just in Asia alone including India. This exposes the phony figures for Sikhs in India put out by the Indian Census. If one were to believe the Indian census-2001 figures, there are nineteen million two hundred fifteen thousand seven hundred and thirty (19, 215, 730) Sikhs in India. That means, that after subtracting the India census's Sikh total in India from the Asia total of the more reliable Encyclopedis Brittanica-2003, there are three million seven hundred forty five thousand and two hundred seventy (3, 745, 270) Sikhs living outside India in the rest of Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Pakistan, the Gulf and Iran et al. We all know that is not true as the Asian Sikhs number in the thousands not in millions.
Abusing the integrity of India's Census-2001 is a part of a broader tendency in the Brahmin-caste dominated Indian ruling elite toward eliminating civil liberties and scapegoating minorities. It is an aggressive effort to impose a unified sense of Hindu-fundamentalist nationhood on one of the world's most culturally diverse - over a thousand languages and scores of religions - caste-ridden, socially intolerant and religiously divided societies. This imposition is reducing India (in which we Sikhs have been captive since 1947, when Imperial Britain left the subcontinent in haste) to the 'deepest depths of tyranny and despotism', to use the presciently 1930 words of that great statesman the late Mr. Winston Churchill when he described post-independence India.
We Sikhs, specially of the three million strong prosperous and FREE Sikh diaspora, MUST redouble our efforts to counter the genocide of statistics which has targeted the 25 million strong Sikh nation – three million FREE in the diaspora and twenty two million held captive, behind the barbed-wire Indian ‘Berlin Wall’ inside Indian occupied Punjab. For survival of our people, all Sikhs MUST work for a sovereign buffer state of Khalistan stretching from the Jumna river on the East to the Pakistan border on the West, Kashmir on the North and China on the North East which would act as a bridge of commerce and peace between South and Central Asia and Western China and South Asia. The very survival of the Sikh nation, its religion, its culture and its holy shrines depends on how the three million strong prosperous Sikh diaspora acts.