Kadva Sach

About NDTV's love for a Pakistani pilot

2011-08-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

This is with regards to an NDTV show on the 10th of August, 2011 where they showed in patronizing light a Pakistani Air Force Pilot who had right after the war in 1965 shot down a plane ferrying ex Gujarat CM Balwant Rai Mehta and IAF flying ace Jehangir Engineer. All because he showed up to apologize to the daughter of Jehangir Engineer. The full interview is here (click).

The take home points from the entire video are:

1) The aircraft that was shot down was presumed to be a military aircraft by the PAF pilot.

2) The aircraft had strayed into Pakistani territory.

3) The PAF pilot just carried out his duty. He did not know who was inside the aircraft shot down.

4) Twist in the narrative at 10:30 where the aircraft path is clearly shown on the map to be within international borders and said to be by the PAF as 'considered on a recce mission to open a new war front.'

5) The pilot did not come out on his own to give the condolence, but was prompted by IAF Air Marshall Mehta giving a condolence to shooting down a PAF flying ace.

6) Another twist at 28:00 minutes that the pilot knew it was a civilian aircraft.

7) There seems to have been no attempt of a verbal communication between PAF sabres and the plane that was shot down.

8) NDTV was a bit too eager to absolve the PAF pilot and did not bring an official IAF person who could have criticized the story. The whole talk was unfair with one side bringing the PAF story and the other side being old women who had moved on with their lives. A layman might be misled to think that the PAF version is the true version of the story.

And the juice of the e-mail by the 'gentleman' to the daughter of the Indian pilot is as follows:

"I had to execute the order of my controller, Mrs. Singh. It all happened in the line of duty. I did not play foul. But the unfortunate loss of precious lives, no matter how it happens, hurts each human and I am no exception. I feel sorry for you, your family and the other seven families who lost their dearest ones."

A counter to this story is floating on e-mail, which is as follows:

"Death in Enemy Action

My father is a retired Indian Air Force (Wing Commander). He knows first hand the true story of the death of the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Balwant Rai Mehta. My father, then Sqn Ldr BC Roy was the commanding officer of the only Air Force unit, which was a lone Radar unit at Bhuj during the Rann of Kutch operations, September 1965 India - Pakistan war.

After watching NDTV programme 46 years after the war, rubbished the sequence and circumstance in which the Pakistan Air Force pilot Flying Officer Qais Hussein was compelled to shoot down the Beechcraft that was ferrying the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Balwant Rai Mehta along with his wife. It was being piloted by none other than ace retd Indian Air Force pilot Jehangir Engineer. This is what my father had to say:

1. Beechcraft takes off from Tata Chemicals, Mithapur. It was being piloted by former ace IAF officer pilot Jehangir Engineer and on board was the then serving Chief Minister of Gujarat Balwant Rai Mehta along with his wife and journalists, on 19th September 1965.

2. The movement of the Chief Minister was well publicised in newspapers, including advertisements. The Pakistan (is) knew of his movement all along.

3. Two Sabres from Pakistan chased the plane, twenty kilometers deep into Indian territory from international border and wanted to hijack this aircraft. They asked the plane to follow them to their airbase. The Pak Air Force knew all along that the Beechcraft was being flown by none other than the ace IAF pilot Jehangir Engineer, ferrying the then Gujarat Chief Minister and wife. Pakistan wanted to take them along as their prisoners which would certainly have been a great prize catch indeed.

4. While being escorted Jehangir Engineer, whose younger brother Group Captain Ronnie Engineer was then the Station Commander in Pune Airbase and another was Air Vice Marshal (famous Engineer brothers of IAF), could not let the Pak Air Force do this to them. He found a patch of land within Indian territory at Rann of Kutch. He ducked and wanted to force land the aircraft to save the Chief Minister from the two enemy Sabre jets.

5. The Sabres were totally merciless and pumped bullets, killing the pilot, the chief minister, his wife and other passengers on board, even though the pilot had waggled his wings, indicating it to be civilian aircraft, thereby Pakistan Air Force violated an important international treaty, by shooting down a civilian aircraft killing unarmed innocent people including a lady.

Somik Ranjan Roy, Salt Lake, Kolkata."

We thus see that the take home points derived from the NDTV show have been completely refuted by this counter mail. At the same time, NDTV does not do a follow up on what the PAF pilot said when he went back to Pakistan, which ought to be shocking to people who would like to think that not all Pakistanis are the same. Which reminds me of this great quote by the great Greek playwright Sophocles:

"A lie never lives to be old."

Another Spectrum Scam

2011-02-07T04:50:00.000-08:00

Before the 2G scam be traced back to its progenitors, another spectrum scam is up:

"The S-band spectrum, which is part of the Devas-ISRO deal, is extremely valuable for mobile broadband services, in terms of usage as well as money. The frequency, also known as 2.5 Ghz band, is globally used for providing mobile broadband services using fourth generation technologies such as WiMax and Long Term Evolution (LTE).

This frequency band is unique because it has a substantial amount of spectrum (190 MHz) that can be put to use for mobile services. All other spectrum bands up to 3.5 GHz include significantly smaller amounts of spectrum for terrestrial mobile communication, or are not available.

In India, of the 190 Mhz, the Department of Space was given 150 Mhz — 30 years ago — for Broadcast Satellite Service and Mobile Satellite Service. Twenty Mhz was recently given to Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd for offering broadband spectrum. BSNL and MTNL were asked to pay Rs. 12,847 crore for their 20 Mhz. But Devas is getting access to 70 Mhz in the same band for just over Rs. 1,000 crore."

As you can see, the same principle as in 2G scam has been applied over here, with an even larger amount lost to the state exchequer. I wonder if we will see Kapil Sibal saying that the loss in this scam is also 0.

Sharia Banking: Preparing a 2nd line of defence.

2011-02-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

Much has already been said about Sharia Banking, about whether it is right or wrong. Besides all that philosophizing, what is required now, after the acceptance of that form of banking by the Kerala high court, is that people should be able to vote with their checkbooks against that type of banking (a second line of defence after initial petitions to the high court against that banking have failed). This post is supposed to attack at some of the aspects of Islamic banking towards these purposes.

1) The first aspect that needs some treatment is the so called Islamic nature of the banking. This is for the Muslims who would consider banking there considering it to be a halaal type of bank as compared to the Kafir's banks. The Quranic verses that the so called Sharia banking and the role of loans and debts is supposed to be based on are as follows[1]:

Al Baqarah (2:275) : "God hath permitted trade and forbidden usury. Those who after receiving direction from their Lord, desist, shall be pardoned for the past; their case is for God (to judge); but those who repeat (the offence) are companions of the Fire: They will abide therein [forever]."

Al Baqarah (2:276): "Allah does not bless usury, and He causes charitable deeds to prosper, and Allah does not love any ungrateful sinner."

Al Baqarah (2:278): "O you who believe! Be careful of (your duty to) Allah and reliquish what remains [due] from usury, if you are believers."

Al Baqarah (2:280): "If the debtor is in a difficulty, grant him time Till it is easy for him to repay. But if ye remit it by way of charity that is best for you if ye only knew."

Al Nisa (4:161): "And their taking usury though indeed they were forbidden it and their devouring the property of people falsely, and We have prepared for the unbelievers from among them a painful chastisement."

Ar Rum (30-39): "And whatever you lay out as usury, so that it may increase in the property of men, it shall not increase with Allah; and whatever you give in charity, desiring Allah's pleasure - it is these [persons] that shall get manifold."

Note that in no passage is there anything about interest free banking. The word 'riba' in Arabic that appears in these verses is meant for usury (interest above the socially acceptable rate [8]) and not for interest. To say that Sharia banking is based on the Quran is thus one fraud. Besides, why should only the weak in the society look to be Sharia compliant, while the rich don't have to do anything?

2) A note to those who think that Sharia banking is interest free banking. Just have a look at the people who control the Sharia banks. Are they into philanthropy or are they businessmen? If they are businessmen, then it is obvious that they would not support a business model that would make losses at the very outset of it. From what then does a banking model derive means of sustenance, but the interest it charges? The owners of Islamic banks are billionaires and are among the richest men in the world [2,3]. That cannot happen on a faulty business model. Besides, this also lines the pockets of imams (Sharia advisers that okay transactions as Islamic) and lawyers who are trying to Islamicize just about anything in this world and who function as parts of the Sharia banking machinery.

3) Exotic terminology used in Sharia banking products viz: Mudraba [4], Musharaka [5], Murabaha [6] and Ijara [7] can be used to mask interest rates once the ball starts rolling in favor of Sharia Banking. As can be seen from the definitions of the terms, none of this expressly rule out the prospect of cheating the customer. What's more, the sanction of religion will make these tools more impervious to change and inspection than secular terms as interest. This gives real hope as a long lasting funding opportunity for Islamic fundamentalists and people seeking to expand Islamic objectives. It would be interesting to see how profit margins to banks will differ between using these new tools and contemporary ones, especially after the schemes have had initial success. It would also be interesting to see how Kerala implements these tools as many of these techniques fly against regulatory rules in India [10].

4) Considering the low ignition point of many Muslims and their tendency to ignite on mullah's sermons, it will be very tempting for governments to do bailouts of these banks [9], institutionalized favoritism for Muslims being a factor or not. Already in the case of Kerala it is the KSIDC (Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation) that has implemented the banking system. No prizes for guessing whose money gets used in the process. To prevent that after the banks fail, a whole new initiative will have to be undertaken, something for which we do not have the space to discuss here.

5) By advocating a separate pool of religion based social utilities, this will go to the already existing distinction of religious lines, which exists in the form of madrassahs, missionary schools and health centres and will continue pandering to minority votebank. What initially might act as an alternate form of banking [10] will become the form of banking as governments will continue to subsidize it for the minority votebank. Some logic behind the pitch for KSIDC implementing the scheme is to serve a conduit of investment of petrodollars. We have already seen impacts of some such conduits carried out discreetly [11].

Watch this space for more when the scheme is in full flow.

References:
[1] : "Chasing a Mirage: Tragic illusion of an Islamic state" by Tarek Fataha
[2] : Forbes report in October 2007 on wealth of muslim ruling dynasties
[3] : Islamic banking rises on oil wealth: NYT report by Wayne Arnold.
[4] : Google definition of Mudarabah
[5] : Google definition of Musharakah
[6] : Google definition of Murabaha
[7] : Google definition of Ijara
[8] : "Islamic Banking: A $300 billion deception" by Muhammad Saleem
[9] : "Religious Banking is here" by Barbarindian
[10] Islamic Banking in India by Amit Malviya
[11] Petrodollars, Wahabism and India's waning liberal ethos by B Shantanu.

Seeta Temple in Sri Lanka

2010-09-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

While India faces difficulty in erecting one site for the Ramayana, the Sri Lankan government easily allowed space for a Seeta Temple to come up in the compound of a Buddhist temple. Check link. (click)

Besides, note the yearning for India as the mainland and the numerous sites preserved. If not on the mainland, it seems that Hinduism will survive elsewhere.

Azim Premji on the CWG 2010 games

2010-08-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro has something to say about the games. That they are a wasteful expenditure:

Excerpt:

"The capital already boasts of some of India's best infrastructure. Instead of spending crores to widen Delhi's roads, should we not prioritize building roads and schools in Bihar where none exist in the first place? If we have Rs 500 crore to spare, should we use it to build basic sports facilities in thousands of government schools, or should we spend it all on renovating one stadium?

In real terms, such choices are not all that easy to make. For instance, it is important for our cities to have great infrastructure, and money spent on a metropolis like Delhi will in turn catalyse our national economy. Our leaders have to constantly juggle and prioritize among many equally deserving needs, and it is not as if they are uninformed or wrongly intentioned. Over the last decade, the Indian government has taken important strides in social welfare and inclusive development. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan are but two examples. However, it is not enough to have specific schemes such as the NREGA. Rather, equity and inclusion considerations must underlie each and every policy decision. Let me suggest that all public policy must recognize that GDP growth is meaningless if it does not uplift the most underprivileged of our country.

How can we forget that for Rs 28,000 crore we could have established primary schools and health centres in tens of thousands of villages? Can we ignore this splurge the next time a malnourished child looks at us in the eye?

At times like these, it will serve our leaders well to recall Gandhiji's talisman: "Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?"

(click)

The case of Manorama Devi and CBI complicity

2010-07-31T13:11:00.001-07:00

This video from one of Guj CM Narendra Modi's recent speeches shows another case of CBI mishandling. It's about one Manorama Devi from Manipur in Ahmedabad (click). I am translating a related excerpt.

"After a month of the Ishrat Jehan event, there was an incident related to Manorama Devi in Manipur. There was a woman in Manipur named Manorama Devi. At her home, some Police forced themselves in. She was killed, but her killing was described as an encounter and dismissed by the CBI. This case was so serious, that even today in our country, when any mom or sister steps out of the home, they are very careful about how their saree is worn. But the women in Manipur were so angry, that 200 nude women in Manipur took a march against CBI and the GoI to get justice for Manorama Devi. CBI did nothing for her."

The following is the complete video in Hindi.

Witness of the Sohrabuddin plot.

2010-07-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

And so, it turns out that the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case that has recently ensnared Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah was a plot and has been witnessed by ex-congress MLA Yatin Oza (click).

"From the last 20 years, the Congress has not been able to penetrate Gujarat. So, by using the CBI as a puppet, and using a criminal that has 60 legal cases filed against him, who are you crying for? who are you crying for? When you talked about the Best Bakery case, I agree with Shaktibhai's statement, that innocents have been murdered. Innocents have been consumed in the communal riots. But they were not like the person who has had 60 cases filed against him, from whose home there have been found 40 AK 47s. This is Congress party's attempt to endanger Gujarat. And the conspiracy to do this has been worked on in Ahmed Patel's bungalow since 3 years. I am a witness to this. The whole legal brain behind this has been worked in Ahmed Patel's bungalow at 23 Wellington Crescent. I was in Congress then, and I know of this whole affair.

Shaktibhai: It would be good if you don't make an attempt.

Yatinbhai: Of what attempt are you talking about?

Shaktibhai: Don't try to slur Ahmed Patel's name in this.

Yatinbhai (Speaking at the same time as Shaktibhai) : The whole conspiracy has been hatched at his bungalow.

Shaktibhai: Ok I will give you an answer.

Reporter: Shaktiji what do you say? Give him an answer that as he mentions that the whole conspiracy was hatched at Ahmed Patel's house, we will get to that after the break."

Savarkar's execution in the case of Gandhi's murder.

2010-07-25T18:43:00.000-07:00

Just finished "The Men who killed Gandhi" by Manohar Malgonkar. The following is an excerpt from the book that deals with Savarkar's execution in the case.

Starts from Page 281:

But many years later on 16 June 1983, the Poona newspaper Kal edited by S.R. Date, published a report on the subject, which was later reprinted in a volume published by the Savarkar Memorial Committee on 16 Feb 89. I quote excerpts from it. It purports to report something that Savarkar's counsel at the trial, L.B. (Annasahen) Bhopatkar, a Poona Lawyer, had revealed to his friends after he returned to Poona from Delhi in January 1949, after the Red Fort trial was over, and Savarkar found 'Not Guilty'.

While in Delhi for the trial, Bhopatkar had been put up in the Hindu Mahasabha office. Bhopatkar had found it a little puzzling that while specific charges had been made against all the other accused, there was no specific charge against his client. He was pondering about his defence strategy when one morning he was told that he was wanted on the telephone, so he went up to the room in which the telephone was kept, picked up the receiver and identified himself. His caller was Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, who merely said; "Please meet me this evening at the sixth milestone on the Mathura road, "Please meet me this evening at the sixth milestone on the Mathura road, " but before Bhopatkar could say anything more, put down the receiver.

That evening, when Bhopatkar had himself driven to the place indicated he found Ambedkar already waiting. He motioned to Bhopatkar to get into his car which he, Ambedkar himself was driving. A few minutes later, he stopped the car and told Bhopatkar: There is no real charge against your client; quite worthless evidence has been concocted. Several members of the cabinet were strongly against it, but to no avail. Even Sardar Patel could not go against these orders. But, take it from me, there just is no case. You will win." Who... Jawaharlal Nehru?... But why?

They had arrested Savarkar even though they did not possess sufficient evidence to do so. To be sure, the mass of papers seized from his house had yielded scores of letters from Nathuram and half a dozen from Apte, but these were disappointingly innocuous. All that they did was to establish the fact that Nathuram and Apte knew Savarkar and held him in great esteem. But this in itself was not enough to satisfy a magistrate that a prima facie case existed so that he could issue a warrant.

This, however, was no more than a technicality, and they got over it by arresting him under the Preventive Detention Act - one of the most malignant pieces of legislation with which the British had armed themselves while they ruled India. Even though Indian politicians of all shades of opinion had persistently condemned the British for this Act, the Congress had been in no hurry to repeal it after the British had gone. Under its provisions Savarkar was initially held 'as a detenu'. After that they proceeded to build up evidence against him that would enable them to change his detention into arrest, wth what would be called 'retrospective effect'.

Ends at page 285.

Epilogue: This is the Congress party that is in power in India right now. When given a chance, it will be ever willing to uproot any kind of opposition while in power. Will the people of India learn from history, and stand up to save the present Mahatmas from the Congress? This post is to show an example of what the Party can do, and to use history as a warning to the coming template of the future.

On the bhopal disaster judgement

2010-06-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

Pratap Bhanu Mehta in IE on the SC letting us all down in the Bhopal disaster judgement:

An excerpt:

The verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy has caused considerable outrage. It seems to provide little recompense to the victims, and little assurance to the public at large that the legal system is up to protecting us from the risks that make us all vulnerable. Perhaps there will be learning from this case, but I doubt any Indian has any more confidence that the legal system can protect us from catastrophic risk than we did twenty years ago.

Follow the rest at: click

Jaziya on Amarnath Yatra: Furthering the Islamist cause

2010-05-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

Presenting specially for Omar Abdullah Fans who can't seem to get these two lines in Delhi out of their heads:

"I am a Muslim and I am an Indian..." and, "not even an inch of land will be given,"

Nancy Kaul puts it bluntly in her latest column:

Also note Radha Rajan's comment at the end of the column. Something for people to probe and inquire about:

Other than the governor who are the other members of the Sri Amarnath Shrine Board?Are they good hindus or government stooges? Why are they silent on this issue. How are these members of the shrine board appointed - by the governor, by the chief minister or by the center? This money belonging to the Amarnath Shrine Board, what is the source of this money? Is this money donated by Hindus, is it money offered by bhaktas as religious act during the pilgrimage or is it state or central government money? Who gave the governor authority to misuse this temple money for this bullshit called sufi jamboree? Hindu temples and Hindu money is baap ka maal??

About the police state that we have become

2010-05-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

An article by Arun Jaitley in IE:

Congress ‘Rajneeti’, cut & paste

An excerpt is below:

It is uncertain how well Prakash Jha’s film Rajneeti will be received by the audience. However, the Congress Party doesn’t seem to be pleased with the film in its original form. Besides the censor board and the appellate tribunal, a pre-censor viewing was undertaken by three representatives of the Congress party — Tom Vadakkan, Pankaj Sharma and Sanjeev Bhargava. The film was threatened with an “Adult” certification which would obviously have significantly reduced the commercial prospects of the film. It is only after the film-maker accepted the deletions suggested by the Congress party representatives that the film has been cleared with a “U/A” certification.

Hindu History Website: Animators requested

2010-05-09T17:34:00.000-07:00

A friend is pursuing outside his 9 - 5 workday schedule a project for a hindu history website. Some of you might have seen this video before:

It seems that the project has hit a roadblock and some serious delays. The author for the site needs somebody who can do animations to recreate battle scenes.

People who can help, drop a line below.

PM's bungling in Thimpu & carrots of the Pakistani FM.

2010-05-08T23:32:00.000-07:00

A scathing insightful article by Hari Om on our honorary PM's bungling in Thimpu. (click)

Of the entire article, the part that caught my eye is the following:

“It’s time for India to make up its mind whether it wants to engage or not. Engagement is the only way forward…We need to go beyond a handshake…It is time for India to move forward and stop demonizing Pakistan…We have had enough of exchanges of pleasantries, including the ones at Washington at the beginning of April this year (Manmohan Singh and Gilani had two brief encounters in April in Washington where both of them had gone to attend the Nuclear Security Summit)... We have to accept terrorism is a common challenge. It’s not us and you, it’s a collective effort… Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is willing to normalize ties with Pakistan but he is held back by his fellow Congress members...,” Qureshi told reporters, besides much else."

Notice the bolded line. This is classical diplomatic speak by the Pakistani Foreign Minister. When traders (experienced myself and seen the tactic employed on others) confront a formidable opponent, they single out the weak person in the opponent's camp, and heap praise on him while demonising the others. The Paki FM has played a similar stroke. It remains to be seen how far PM saab is taken in by such romances, and how far the thirst for the next Nobel Peace prize has got into him.

As a side note, I wonder for how much longer will we not employ home made tactics of dealing with enemies, while our opponents will display the very same attributes that we require to survive & conquer in this world.

The Godhra incident, what actually happened?

2010-03-15T20:52:00.000-07:00

After the recent summons from SIT for Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, it may interest some to refresh their memory of what happened at Godhra. The following is a friend's research, of the history of the Godhra incident.

On Feb 27

The Godhra massacre occurred on February 27 at 8 AM. At 8:30 AM –Chief Minister Narendra Modi- then in Ahmedabad- was informed about the carnage. Modi then went to visit Godhra. Modi visited the railway platform-and here gave ‘shoot-at-sight’ orders.

The Hindu in its issue dated 28 February 2002 reported that-

“The Chief Minister Narendra Modi gave shoot-at-sight orders in Godhra”.

The same day (Feb 28)- The Times of India reported in a report titled

“Shoot-at-sight orders, curfew in Godhra” -

“The Gujarat government imposed an indefinite curfew and issued shoot-at-sight orders in Godhra after 57 people were killed and several injured when a mob set the Sabarmati express on fire." The Tribune also reported this.

All English dailies the next reported this- and websites like rediff.com also reported this- and so did many foreign newspapers.

The Daily Breeze- a US newspaper- reported on 28 February-

“Fearing the attack would ignite sectarian riots, Indian officials immediately stepped up security across this vast, religiously divided nation. The prime minister urged Hindus not to retaliate.”

The same day- the website rediff.com also reported that the state government had taken all precautions and tightened security to prevent riots.

After this- Narendra Modi returned to Ahmedabad in the evening. On his return to Ahmedabad- 827 people were arrested as a preventive measure. Narendra Modi said this in an interview to India Today weekly dated 18 March 2002- and this is on official records. India Today dated 18 March 2002 also says that preventive arrests were made on Feb 27- without giving the number.

The same day-on February 27- the Gujarat government deployed the entire police force of 70,000 in Gujarat- as per the report of The Hindustan Times dated 28 February 2002- in view of the apprehension that riots may break out in retaliation of burning down of Hindu pilgrims at Godhra.

The Telegraph of UK in its issue of 28th February also reported that more than 70,000 security men had been deployed in Gujarat on 27 February. These foreign dailies also reported that security had not only been tightened in Gujarat- but also in all places with sizable Muslim population in India- on 27 February.

The same day-on February 27- the Gujarat government deployed the Rapid Action Force in Ahmedabad and other sensitive areas and the Centre sent in the CRPF personnel.

This was reported by The Indian Express in its report dated 28 February 2002. The English daily Mid-Day also reported both these things in its issue of 28 Feb.

The Hindu- also reported on Feb 28 that-

“(On Feb 27) The state government has appealed to the people to maintain peace… The Home Minister said the Government was taking necessary steps to ensure that the disturbances did not spread during the bandh tomorrow (i.e. Feb 28).” This was reported by many newspapers on 28 February.

As per information put up on the site www.indianembassy.org -the state also requested for additional forces from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Two companies of Maharashtra Reserve Police Force arrived and were deployed in Surat.

On Feb 28

India Today's report dated 18 March 2002 gives following information:

1- Entire police force of Ahmedabad was deployed on Feb 28–total 6000- out of which only 1500 were armed. The size of the mobs was unprecedented on Feb 28 and the police forces were woefully short.
2- Even though Rapid Action Force was deployed- it too could not prevent the violence.
3- Ahmedabad police received 3500 calls on Feb 28- against an average of 200.
4- Ahmedabad Fire Brigade- which has the capacity to handle 100 calls received 400 calls on that day.
5- The statement of the then Ahmedabad Police Commissioner P.C. Pande also shows that the situation was out of control.

The leading most English daily from South India- The Hindu reported on 1st March 2002- covering events of 28 February –

“The Army units, frantically called by the Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, as the situation seemed to slip out of hand, started arriving in Ahmedabad and are likely to be deployed in the city on Friday.(i.e. 1st March 2002)”

India Today (11 March 2002- covering events till Feb 28)reported on February 28 itself that the Army had been called into Gujarat and that the Chief Minister was caught in a difficult situation.

The police fired 1,000 rounds on Feb 28. A total of 10 Hindus were shot dead in police firing in Ahmedabad alone- and 26 were injured. These are official government figures- and also can be seen from the report of The Hindu- dated 1 March 2002-

“At least 30 others were killed in police firing, stabbing and other incidents in different parts of the city while the casualty in other cities and towns in the State was put at over 50…

Till evening, police fired 46 rounds in Ahmedabad, in which at least 10 persons were believed to have been killed.”

The Indian Express and The Hindu both reported on 1st March 2002 itself that Army units started arriving in Ahmedabad on the night of Feb 28. They reached so quickly that these dailies had time to report their arrival and publish it the next day. Indian Express also reported George Fernandes' arrival at 1:00 am in the morning of 1st March- in its issue of 1st March itself.

The Indian Express in its online edition of Feb 28 reported at 4:29 PM that 1,000 paramilitary forces are being desptached to Gujarat- on Narendra Modi's request.

CURFEW WAS PLACED IN 26 TOWNS AND CITIES ON FEB 28 ITSELF- as per the reports of all newspapers the next day. The Hindu reported on 1st march 2002-

"An indefinite curfew has been clamped in 26 cities and towns in the State, including parts of Ahmedabad, Surat, Baroda, Rajkot, Nadiad, Anand and Kaira in addition to the indefinite curfew in force in Godhra since Wednesday.”

On 1st March

On the next day- i.e. 1st March 2002- the Army staged a flag march in Ahmedabad at 11:30 AM. The Hindu reported on 2nd March 2002-

“The Army began flag marches in the worst-affected areas of Ahmedabad, Baroda, Rajkot and Godhra cities and the `shoot at sight’ order was extended to all 34 curfew-bound cities and towns in Gujarat”. The title of the report itself was- “Shoot orders in many Gujarat towns, toll over 200”.

The Indian Express reported on 2nd March-

“The police, its credibility lowest than ever, tried to salvage its reputation intervening in some clashes by opening fire. Twenty were killed in police firing across the state, 12 in Ahmedabad. (On 1st March 2002)”

On 1st March 2002- the Police saved 2,500 Muslims from certain death when they were attacked by 8,000 armed tribals in Sanjeli, a town in North Gujarat. This was reported by weekly India Today in its issue dated 22 April 2002.

On March 2

On the third day of the riots- i.e. 2nd March 2002- the police shotdead 47 people in Gujarat- including 19 in Ahmedabad- as per the report of The Hindu dated 3rd March 2002. The Hindu reported-

“Even while claiming that the situation was improving, Mr. Modi said the police fired at least 1,031 rounds in different parts of the State since last night besides bursting 1,614 teargas shells to disperse violent mobs. While 19 people were killed in police firing in Ahmedabad and eight in Godhra, six people were killed in police firing in Baroda, five in Anand, three each in Mehsana and Gandhinagar, two in Kaira and one in Bhavnagar.”

The same day- The Indian Express reported- “(One 2nd March)The toll went up to over 450 as police recovered more bodies and 77 more people were killed either in police or Army firing”.

India Today dated 22 April 2002 says-

"In the carnage that ensued after the February 27 Godhra killings, 8,000 armed tribals descended on the town of 8,000 in the tribal heartland of Dahod district (i.e. Sanjeli). Bows, stones and gunshots rained on the fleeing Muslims, killing 15. Police intervention meant another 2,500 were spared a savage death … In an identical display of insanity, around 7,000 armed tribals marched into Bodeli town in Chotte-Udepur tribal area of Vadodara district intent on massacring the Muslims who had taken shelter there after being driven out of the neighbouring villages. While hundreds were saved by the police, Vadodara District Collector Bhagyesh Jha and other senior officers were fired upon by tribals as they tried to rescue the trapped Muslims.

Tragedy was also averted by the police and army at Viramgam town near Ahmedabad where over 15,000 Hindus, mostly armed OBC Thakores, burnt 250 Muslim houses…”

The website www.indianembassy.org seems to be an official site of the Indian Embassy in USA. It says-

“In Mora village of Panchmahal district, SDM, Mamlatdar and police rushed to the spot where the crowd was gathered, dispersed the crowd and saved the lives of 400 people by shifting them to a safe place.

On receipt of information on 3rd March 2002 a madarsa in

Asoj, in Vagodia,Vadodara district was likely to be attacked, nearly 40 persons including 22 children were evacuated to a safe place.

On the night of 2/3 March 2002, in Dahod, the police escorted over 2000 persons belonging to minority community to a safe place, rescuing them from the mob that had gathered from surrounding 28 villages.

In Surat city, protection was provided to about 60 persons and mosque in Nana Varacha area.

On receipt of information that some women and children were trapped in a mosque, Surat police escorted them to a safe place.

On receipt of information that 100 persons were trapped near Rita society opposite Yateem Khana Jain Mandir, the police immediately rushed there and dispersed the mob, but found no persons trapped inside. Surat police immediately provided protection requested for by 12-15 houses of Muslims near Khoja Masjid.”

Police records and figures given by the Union Home Ministry as well as figures given by weekly India Today in its issue dated 18 March 2002 reveal that as many as 98 people were killed in the first three days in police firing.

As per official government figures given to B P Singhal-whp wrote in an article in Organsier dated 9 October 2005-

"The truth is that the total number of riot-related accused that came to light in entire Gujarat was 25,486 (17,489 Hindus and 7,997 Muslims). The efficiency of the Police can be gauged from the fact that out of the above mentioned number, as many as 25,204 accused were arrested- out of which 17,348 were Hindus and 7,856 were Muslims. The police in Gujarat was therefore not sleeping at any time.

The maximum number of relief camps opened up during riots was 159. At a given point of time the figure varied as certain camps were closed down and certain new camps were opened up. As on 5.3.2002, out of the 98 refugee/relief camps opened, 85 were for Muslims while 13 were for Hindus… On the other hand, there was a contrast of night and day in the versions of riots as projected by the national English media as against the sharply contrasting versions appearing in the local Gujarati papers of all hues…”

Until 18 April 2002-more Hindus were killed in police firing than Muslims. As per the Telegraph dated 21 April 2002- as on 6 April 2002- 77 Hindus were killed in police firing out od\f total 126 killed in police firing by then. The final figures are 77 Hindus and 93 Muslims- because after 3rd March 2002- riots were almost all started by Muslims.

How 'Mossad' killing could have come straight from the pages of a thriller

2010-02-18T04:18:00.000-08:00

For url: click

The assassination could have come from a Frederick Forsyth page-turner.
Timed down to the last second and carried out with chilling effect, it involved many of Mossad's tried and trusted props.

The team wore disguises such as wigs and fake beards, communicated via seemingly untraceable mobile phones, and employed a method of killing so clinically precise that they left no clue behind them.
But they overlooked one factor: in security-obsessed Dubai almost nothing escapes the Big Brother eye of security cameras.

The Dubai police have collated hours of footage revealing the hit squad's every movement, from the moment they strolled nonchalantly up to the immigration desk and presented their cloned passports. A remarkable 27-minute composite of this action has now been released, and it may yet prove the team's undoing.

The target of the Mossad assassination squad was Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, senior commander of the Palestinian paramilitary group Hamas, a man who had topped their hit-list for more than 20 years since his alleged involvement in the killing of two Israeli soldiers.
According to Israeli intelligence, their burly 48-year-old arch-enemy was travelling to Dubai to buy weapons from Iranian arms suppliers; the task was to eliminate him before he could seal the deal.

The video footage picks up the agents as they fly into Dubai on January 19, just 19 hours before the hit is carried out. First to arrive are two agents travelling on passports in the names of Michael Bodenheimer and James Leonard Clarke. With their shaven heads, stubbly beards and swarthy complexions they look decidedly un-European, but their documents state they are German and British.

They are followed by a slim, attractive woman who appears to be in her late 30s or early 40s, and uses the name Gail Folliard. Sporting fashionably round sunglasses, she is accompanied by 'Irishman' Kevin Daveron, arriving on Air France flight 526 from Paris.

Al-Mabhouh enters the lift with a member of hotel staff. Two Mossad agents follow disguised in tennis outfits

All four take a taxi to their hotel. Folliard grins at the desk clerk as she checks in. As the hours and minutes to murder tick away, she is seen flouncing around a luxury shopping mall, apparently without a care in the world, and returning to the hotel laden with carrier bags.
She even smiles flirtatiously and tosses her brown pony-tail towards her co-assassins, before she dons a wig and reappears with her hair in a thick, centre-parted bob.

Throughout the afternoon, the others fly in. Technical surveillance has shown that they never made direct phone calls to one another. Instead they dialled into a communications centre based in Austria using highly encrypted cyphers.
The task of the first wave is surveillance, and they change their appearance accordingly. When next we see Kevin Daveron, for example, he, too, is wearing a thickly-quiffed wig and is completely unrecognisable from the bald, stubbled man we saw before.
At 3.20pm we get the first glimpse of the victim as he goes through customs. Members of the surveillance team trail him from the airport to the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel.

The victim is shown to his room by the hotel staff member, apparently unaware he is still under surveillance by the 'tennis player' agents
When he takes the mirrored lift to the second floor of the four-storey building a pair wearing designer tennis outfits and carrying racquets slide in beside him, like extras in a cheap spy movie.

For a hunted guerilla fighter, however, al-Mabhouh appears extraordinarily lax about his security, and does not notice them, even though they are stout and look distinctly unsporty.
He remain oblivious even when one of the 'tennis players' follows him along the corridor and watches him open the black-painted door to his room, number 230.

As he settles into the room, with its 42in TV, well- stocked fridge, sunken brown sofa and tasteful cream decor, the assassins are making their final preparations.
The execution is carried out by four assassins working in pairs. They are all square- shouldered men in their prime.
Target: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh
The first two are seen entering the lift to the second floor. One, wearing a white baseball cap, slaps his colleague's back reassuringly as they make their way to al-Mabhouh's room.
Seven minutes later, the other two appear, one carrying a hold-all and the other with a rucksack over his shoulder.
Shortly after 8pm, when the hotel's staff have left the floor for the evening, they enter the room and make the kill.
At 8.46pm, their grim task completed, the four assassins are filmed again making their way down in the lift.

The CCTV footage shows the execution team leaving the hotel, now dressed as if they were going to play golf. Within two hours, the entire squad are on separate flights out of Dubai.
There was to be another twist: the following day, when al-Mabhouh failed to respond to calls from reception and house-keeping, his door was found to be locked from the inside.

Police believe the killers gained entry either by reprogramming the hotel's locking device with some sophisticated electronic gadgetry, or, more prosaically, by posing as hotel staff members and simply knocking on the door.
Yet neither of these explanations solves the most baffling mystery - how did the killers leave the room when the security chain was fastened inside the door?
Maybe, in the coming days, the answer will emerge.

Perhaps, too, we will learn the real identities of the 'British' assassins. Given the track record of the ruthless Israeli secret services, however, one doubts that they will ever be brought to account.

A Monica Lewinsky moment

2010-02-07T09:18:00.000-08:00

"There are weeks when I find myself defeated by all efforts to analyse Indian politics. This is one of them. The political events of the week gone by made little sense to me. But, since upon my humble shoulders rests the heavy burden of trying in this limited space to analyse concisely the political developments of the moment, may I say that India appears to be in the throes of a Monica Lewinsky moment. The reference is not to sexual hanky-panky in the corridors of power but to that time when the Americans were in endless thrall to their President’s sexual escapades while Osama bin Laden was steadily preparing for 9/11. It is my considered opinion that something equally bizarre is going on in India with a tawdry sideshow taking centrestage when we should be paying close attention to the jihadi convention next door."

It's simple: India doesn't want to see its citizens harmed

2010-02-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

"In a few elegant words, Tharoor cut to the heart of the issue and it is worth quoting him in full: ''For an Indian mother to hear that her son has been assaulted in Australia, it little matters to her whether he was assaulted because of his race, or because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because he was the wrong colour or the wrong height, or was carrying an iPod. She doesn't want her son to be assaulted.
''It's a very common human feeling and that's essentially what this is all about.''"

Nitin garg's death.

2010-01-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

This category of posts will be dedicated to the Aussies and their antics. Following video says there are 5 attacks a day in Aussieland against Indians. Aussie authorities of course say it is 'presumptous' to assume a racist connotation behind the attacks.

From the editor's desk.

2010-01-10T11:35:00.000-08:00

Folks,

Since I have been in hibernation for a long time, and this site has missed a lot of action, you would find some old articles posted here for a brief period of time. Please bear with me.

LAC is receding.

2010-01-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

India has lost 'substantial' land to China: Report

PTI | New Delhi

The area along Line of Actual Control with China has "shrunk" over a period of time and India has lost "substantial" amount of land in the last two decades, says an official report.

Read the rest at: click

Peter Bowbrick on Famine

2009-09-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

Refuting Amartya Sen's theories. An excerpt follows:

"Amartya Sen has produced a theory that nearly all famines are not due to a decline in food availability, but rather to an increase in consumption by one group of the population which means that less is available to other groups, who starve. In Poverty and Famines he attacked a straw man of a Food Availability Decline (FAD) theory to justify his own entitlement theory. He produced a large amount of evidence, mainly from the Bengal famine of 1943 to support this. His Nobel Prize was granted mainly for this theory and theory built on it.
It takes a few minutes with a calculator to show that Sen’s theory cannot be correct: it is just not physically possible for one group to eat so much that most of the population goes hungry and millions of people starve. The figures on population, food consumption etc that you need to do the calculation yourself with are to be found here Statistics for you to check with

This means that there must be something wrong with the large amount of evidence that he produced to support his theory. And it is simple enough to check all his evidence against his sources and find that he systematically misstated the facts to support his theory. If his theory is wrong and has been applied, millions of people have starved unnecessarily.

The misstatements are meticulously documented in my papers which are on this web site. Neither Amartya Sen nor anybody else has challenged me on these, though they have had ample opportunity. The documents which Sen cited are extremely difficult to obtain - the Government of India at the time had reason to limit circulation to the minimum. This would explain why nobody checked his citations."

Lauding Japan for Sanskrit conference, Hindus ask for restoring Sanskrit to its rightful place

2009-09-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

Hindus have applauded Japan’s Kyoto University for hosting prestigious World Sanskrit Conference, which concluded on September five.

Acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, while lauding Kyoto University, strongly criticized India Government for not doing enough for Sanskrit promotion. Sanskrit should be restored to its rightful place and needed to be brought to the mainstream and hidden scientific truths in ancient Sanskrit literature should be brought to light, Zed pointed out.

Jointly organized by International Association of Sanskrit Studies, Kyoto University, Association for the Study of the History of Indian Thought, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Mitsubishi Foundation, etc.; this five-day 14th World Sanskrit Conference covered a wide variety of topics, including: Vedas, linguistics, epics and Puranas, Agamas and Tantras, vyakarana, scientific literature, ritual studies, yoga, Parsi Sanskrit, Sanskrit law, Mahabharata, Yogin versus Vedāntin, Sanskrit riddles, Sāṃkhya thought, dharma, Kashmir Saivism, Solar and lunar lines in the Sanskrit epics, miscarriage in āyurvedic literature, relationship between God and the world, etc. Muneo Tokunaga chaired the organizing committee, while renowned Sanskrit scholars from all over the world participated, including: Masato Fujii, Jared Klein, James Fitzgerald, Shingo Einoo, George Cardona, Yigal Bronner, Takanobu Takahashi, Dominik Wujastyk, Karin Preisendanz, Akira Saito, Nalini Balbir, Mark Siderits, Noel Sheth, Yasuke Ikari, Hans Bakker, Patrick Olivelle, Axel Michaels, Masaaki Hattori, etc. Previous such conferences were held in Edinburg (United Kingdom, 2006), Helsinki (Finland, 2003), Torino (Italy, 2000).

Zed, who is president or Universal Society of Hinduism, asked India Government to do much more for the development, propagation, encouragement and promotion of Sanskrit in India and the world, which was essential for the development of India and preservation of its cultural heritage. Sanskrit also provided the theoretical foundation of ancient sciences.

Rajan Zed stressed that Indian Government should establish a world-level national library of Sanskrit besides Sanskrit libraries in each state; make Sanskrit available as a subject in all secondary, under-graduate, graduate, and doctoral schools in India; provide Sanskrit teachers’ training courses in all the states; enrich manuscripts collections; publish rare manuscripts; provide easily accessible distance learning courses for learners world over; coordinate the Sanskrit research done around the globe; frequently organize world level research conferences; provide generous funding for research projects; etc.

Besides Hindu scriptures, a vast amount of Buddhist and Jain scriptures were also written in Sanskrit, which is known as “the language of the gods”. According to tradition, self-born God created Sanskrit, which is everlasting and divine. Sanskrit has a close relationship with other classical languages like Latin, Greek, French, German, etc.

--
Hat Tip: Mohan Gowda

Jinnah was Shiva the Destroyer - Jairam Ramesh

2009-09-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

Union Minister and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh waded into the controversy over M A Jinnah by comparing the Pakistan founder to one of the Hindu trinity of pantheons -- Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

In an apparent reference to expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh's praise of Jinnah and the support he got from some party leaders, Ramesh said BJP "does not have much love for Jinnah but it hates Jawaharlal Nehru and the hatred for Nehru has transformed into love Jinnah".

He said Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Jinnah were the "Brahma (creator), Vishnu (provider) and Shiva (destroyer) of undivided India".

"Who were the Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva of undivided India? Brahma was Mahatma Gandhi, Vishnu was Jawaharlal Nehru and Shiva was Jinnah", Ramesh told reporters in Bhopal.

(link)

Mohan Bhagwat's speech in Ahmedabad.

2009-09-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

(Link)

Sam Pitroda on Liberal Arts education in India

2009-09-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

Sam Pitroda, chairman of India's National Knowledge Commission, believes the United States' model of a liberal arts education is applicable in the revamping of higher education in India and that such a model is very much in the works.

He noted during a conference on Higher Education Policies in India, China and the United States, "We recognised early that too much focus on engineering and medical education has created a situation in India where liberal arts really did not get the kind of attention it deserved."

Pitroda said, "A good liberal arts education is important to produce leaders. India has now begun to recognizse that we need not only world class engineering education, we also need world-class liberal arts education."

"And, we agreed that the model we have in (University of) Chicago or Harvard is a model that we need to look at, but it needs to be Indianised -- it has to be of a local context," he said.

Later, in an interview with rediff.com, Pitroda elaborated, "Liberal arts is very critical to provide long-term leadership since there is a vacuum of leadership at many levels in India."

Thus, he said it's imperative to have such an education in the higher education curricula "whether it's understanding of psychology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, economics -- all these subjects that really have not gotten the kind of attention they deserve in India."

"You just can't produce leaders by just producing mathematicians and scientists and engineers and doctors," he argued, and reiterated, "India needs leaders at many, many levels. We need leaders all over. We need leaders in education, leaders in science, leaders in industry, leaders in NGOs, leaders in government, leaders at district level, leaders at state level, leaders for youth."

Consequently, Pitroda said, "Liberal arts is very important for that kind of effort in our producing effective leadership in India, which is sorely lacking."

He also assailed the naysayers who were skeptical about partnerships with foreign institutions in terms of alleviating India's standard of higher education and asserted that their fears and concerns, about contamination of Indian ethos by Western concepts, were highly misplaced.

"There is always the fear in the beginning whenever these things happen -- whenever you open new systems there are all kinds of fears. But the point is, we need to open our systems systematically in a manner which is in the long run beneficial to India," he said.

Pitroda argued, "We can't have a closed system if we are going to be a major global player -- education has also got to be opened up. It has got to be opened up in a manner which is suitable to us."

He also pooh-poohed the growing concern among alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management that American universities and colleges, which have been setting up shop in India, are luring the top faculty at IITs and IIMs with better compensation, thus diluting the quality of education in these premier institutions.

These alumni have also said the fact there has been no review of the compensation system for faculty at the IITs and IIMs was compounding the problem. The bureaucracy in India, they argued, did not want compensation for the faculty to be greater than their own, leading to this impasse.

Thus, they have called for some deregulation so that there can be a revamping of this system.

Pitroda told rediff.com, "It is already happening. The professors are well compensated now. If you look at our Knowledge Commission portal, you'll fund that all of these things have been addressed and it is happening slowly but surely -- the pay scale of professors in India today is pretty good compared to what it used to be not even three years ago."

Pitroda said, "One of the most important things we did recently is pass the bill for Right to Education, which is the most prominent bill and nobody even noticed it. It's the first Right to Education Bill in the history of India."

"And, we are also doing a bill on higher education and these will incorporate a lot of the reforms we have called for in the Knowledge Commission regarding a lot of the things you referred to and it's already in the works," he added.

(link)

Radha Rajan on Jaswant's expulsion

2009-08-20T22:59:00.001-07:00

(Link) Also read Sandhya Jain's column on the same (link)
Whoever plotted to derail the BJP’s chintan baithak was an expert on human psychology, had an unerring aim and loads of experience in destabilizing a given situation. In a flawlessly crafted plot, what should actually have been the denouement of the prolonged intra-party homicidal infighting within the BJP, turned, as if with a conjurer’s sleight of hand, into a face-off between the BJP and the RSS. Not a small trick this.

Between 1997 and 2004 when the BJP was in power in Delhi, power brokers controlling the minds of guileless leaders in the RSS (guilelessness is not a virtue in any leadership), and who enjoyed free and unchecked access to the homes and offices of the BJP leadership, persuaded the RSS to accept serious deficiencies and erosions in character within the BJP with equanimity; the logic being - power corrupts, but this must be seen as occupational hazard, and after all, the BJP is giving the RSS a soft-landing in Indian polity. No one in the RSS stopped this gentleman in his tracks then, to ask why the RSS needed a soft landing.

It is not within the purview of this column to go into details about the consequences of the RSS lowering the bar for the BJP, but the end result was that the RSS leadership during that period did little to stop the rapid descent of the BJP from the superior heights of party-with-a-difference to Congress clone. Ideological relativism was condoned as inevitable trade-off for this political soft-landing.

In what proved to be an intellectually and practically counter-productive exercise, the RSS did not correct and even encouraged the ordinary swayamsevaks and seasoned pracharaks, the notion that power corrupts; and because this is being proved by the BJP, let us stick to man-making activities in the social, educational, medical and economic sectors. Let us abjure politics, bury our heads in the sand, hope the BJP will go away. The results of one decade of RSS short-sightedness is there for all to see.

Hindu tradition has proved that the Viswamitra attitude that power corrupts, money corrupts and women corrupt is not the way to Brahmagyaana; and closing our eyes, ears, minds and mouth is not the sadhana towards becoming a Brahmarishi. The human mind, by its very nature is susceptible to influences; RSS man-making then must actually be mind-making of those who enter the challenging arena of politics. If Krishna is mistakenly referred to as a bhogi, then Janaka was a yogi; both lived in the thick of politics, both accepted the trappings of power with equanimity, and both lived their lives doing only politics. The bhogi was only the veneer; the mind was yogic. This has been amply proved in our ithihasas by king after king after king. RSS mind-making of man must lead Viswamitra towards becoming a Janaka or a Srikrishna.

The new Sarsanghachalak, both in his public address in Chennai on 16 August and in his interview to an English news channel on 18 August, when he declared that the RSS intended to influence national affairs and also asked for the immediate end to infighting and instability within the BJP, signalled the reversal of the decades-long RSS policy of playing ostrich. The Sarsanghachalak’s perfectly timed public address in Chennai and the interview to the news channel was intended to set the agenda for the BJP’s chintan baithak in Shimla – to put an end to the fratricidal war inside the party which led the BJP to its second electoral debacle and its complete rout.

Ending the self-destructive infighting was the first measure which alone would have made all other corrective measures possible. The fratricidal war had to end if the BJP had to sit down to analyzing why it lost the elections. An honest post-mortem, as things stand, is not possible given the fact that every leader has his daggers out to stick it into his own bete noire in the guise of apportioning blame. The BJP no longer has the comfort of a supine RSS leadership politely looking the other way, enthralled with the notion of soft-landing; it was confronting a man who meant business. Shri Mohan Bhagwat declared in the interview that he expected the BJP leadership to put an end to the infighting and the instability “immediately. It has to stop”.

The Sarsanghachalak also indicated that he expected the chintan baithak to enable the BJP to take stock of its failures and make amends, to restore its value system which made it a party with a difference. Implied in this veiled directive was that if heads had to roll, then heads will have to roll.

Contrary to motivated and planted stories in news channels that Jaswant Singh was removed under RSS orders, it was to subvert the agenda that the RSS Sarsanghachalak had set for the BJP’s chintan baithak that Jaswant Singh was removed in the completely graceless and needlessly dramatic manner. Someone in the BJP did not want a determined RSS altering the status quo; did not want any change in the power hierarchy, did not want introspection, did not want the causes for electoral defeat to be nailed and for blame to be laid at deserving doors. Some one wanted the RSS to be discouraged from having a say in the politics of the nation; someone wanted the RSS to stick to man-making in the social sector.

Jaswant Singh’s head rolled for all the wrong reasons. For Shri Ravishankar Prasad, the spokesperson of the BJP to pass it off as punishment for violation of a sacred ideological principle is farcical and foolish beyond belief. Had that been the case, then Shri Advani’s head ought to have rolled earlier for the same offence; Ms. Sushma Swaraj’s head ought to have rolled for calling the Ramjanmabhumi issue an encashed cheque; and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi for refusing to build the temple because “the BJP is not a construction company” should have been expelled just as promptly. Is not the Ramjanmabhumi an ideological issue too, and is not Advani as guilty of the same offence as Jaswant Singh?

Jaswant Singh was the bali ka bakra. His head had to roll, but his head ought to have rolled for different reasons, and along with seven other heads. For those targeting the RSS and determined to keep the RSS out of politics, sacrificing Jaswant Singh was like sacrificing a pawn to get at the Knight or the Bishop or even the Rook (these are called ‘pieces’ in the game of chess). The RSS and the decent elements in the BJP must understand that the brain which can sacrifice a pawn to get after a piece, will sacrifice the piece to get at the Queen. When the Queen falls, the fall of the King is only a matter of time.

The Sarsanghachalak must begin to understand the rudiments of playing chess.

India easy to break up: Chinese Strategist

2009-08-12T11:48:00.001-07:00

A Beijing strategist has advocated that China should help divide India.

China should support factions of the Assamese, Kashmiris and Tamilians and break-up India into 20-30 independent nation-states like Europe and eradicate the caste system, suggests an unsigned article posted on the Beijing website of a Chinese military think-tank.

“If China takes a little action, the so-called Great Indian Federation can be broken up,” said the article posted on August 8, coinciding with the 13th round of India-China border dispute talks in New Delhi.

It was posted on the website of the China International Institute for Strategic Studies, and signed by a writer who has taken the nom de plume “Strategy.”

Chinese strategists and the media regularly express scepticism over India’s domestic stability, but it is rare to hear the Chinese advocate an active policy of helping split up India.

The only time the Chinese are known to have supported insurgencies in India was in the northeast just after 1962.

“The write-up could not have been published without the permission of the Chinese authorities, but it is sure that Beijing will wash its hands out of this if the matter is taken up with it by New Delhi,” wrote DS Rajan, Director of the Chennai Centre for China Studies, in a translation summarising the Chinese article on the centre’s website.

“Panic towards such outbursts will be a mistake, but ignoring them will prove to be costly for India,” Rajan wrote.

The strategist said Beijing’s China-centric Asia policy provides for splitting India and recovering 90,000 sq km of territory in southern Tibet.

He also suggested that China ally with Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan, support the United Liberation Front of Asom to attain an independent Assam, and encourage Bangladesh toward the independence of West Bengal.

The target audience is the leadership within China, where some influential are known to be frustrated over the delay in resolving the border dispute.

“Sino-Indian relations are in general sound. Both sides are keen to solve the border issue,” Rajan told HT. “Some strategists are bringing out their comments mainly for the Chinese audience.”

In June, Beijing’s state-run newspaper, the Global Times, wrote an editorial that said India feels superior to China because of its “advanced political system” but faces a ‘disappointing’ and ‘unstable’ domestic situation compared to China.

In response to the article, the Ministry of External Affairs said: “The article in question appears to be an expression of individual opinion and does not accord with the officially stated position of China on India-China relations conveyed to us on several occasions, including at the highest level, most recently by the State Councillor Dai Bingguo during his visit to India.”

“We continue to maintain that opinions and assessment on the state of India-China relations should be expressed after careful judgement based on the long-term interests of building a stable relationship between the two countries,” the MEA added.

Premvir Das: INS Arihant - a watershed moment

2009-07-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

(Link)

India's first nuclear submarine will be a key component of our total defence capability.

There are moments that are more definable than others, the watershed points in life, whether of a nation, an institution or an individual. One such moment, whose time should actually have come earlier, came to the Indian Navy with the launch of our own nuclear-powered submarine, INS Arihant, in Visakhapatnam on July 26, by the Prime Minister. There have been other such events in the sixty-year lifespan of the Indian Navy, induction of the cruiser INS Delhi in 1953, being the first, followed in succession by others. The acquisition of the aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, in 1961, made the young Service a ‘blue water’ force, the only regional country to have that claim. Inductions of the first submarine, INS Kalvari in 1967 and of the Missile Boats (which were to wreak havoc on Karachi on December 4, 1971) in 1968, were others. Not to be left behind, was the switch of maritime air surveillance aircraft from the IAF to the Navy in the late 1970s which made the seagoing force a self-sufficient entity. To this list can be added the acquisition of INS Viraat in 1987, making us a ‘two aircraft carrier Navy’, the lease of the nuclear-powered submarine, INS Chakra in 1988 and, arguably, the induction of INS Jalashva (formerly USS Trenton) a few years ago which has enabled credible assistance to be provided in the region during natural calamities such as the tsunami of 2004. All of these and, of course, many other milestones in afloat as well as shore support facilities have made the Indian Navy the leading regional maritime power that it is. To this impressive list must now be added the launch of INS Arihant.

It was over two decades ago that we embarked on a project termed the ATV, or Advanced Technology Vessel. As far back as the mid-1970s, a small unit called Project 932 was constituted under a Commander rank officer under the aegis of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE)—its task: to develop feasibility of a small reactor which could fit within a submarine hull. This project moved slowly and with mixed results, with less than enthusiastic support from the Navy’s hierarchy. In 1980, it nearly came to a dead halt. An officer working in the project, not a nuclear reactor engineer but one who had acquired deep knowledge in this field on his own, persuaded the then Navy Chief that the DAE design was seriously flawed. The matter was taken up with the then Scientific Adviser in the Ministry of Defence, Dr Raja Ramanna — a distinguished nuclear scientist himself — but without resolution. The result was that the 932, already on slow march, ground to a halt. The officer who had questioned the design being developed left the Navy and, whilst en route to the US, was arrested at the airport for possessing highly classified literature which later turned out to be all in the public domain. He spent some years in prison, argued his own case before the court and was acquitted, with strictures passed against the DAE.

It was not until the mid-1980s that the concept was revived as the ATV Project, this time under the Department of Defence Research and Development (DRDO). By 1989, a full-fledged organisation had been put in place with outlying units at Kalpakkam (under DAE for reactor design) and Hyderabad (for developing auxiliaries and systems). We then entered into an agreement with Russia for developmental and design assistance for a nuclear-powered submarine. From then to now has been a long journey of two decades with many ups and downs but with some very substantial long-term gains. Indigenous participation — especially of private sector companies, Larsen and Toubro and Walchand, to name only two — has been very encouraging. Aside from the reactor, we now have manufacturers who can build and weld submarine hull sections which can stand pressures at great depths. Capacity to build pipes and cables, compressors and air conditioning machinery, pumps, gear boxes and generators, all strengthened for underwater operations has been created within the country. To this should be added interfacing of electronic systems from several sources—no easy task. So, there is much to be proud of and little to moan about the delay as the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) can be expected to do. The larger vision is, perhaps correctly, not part of his duty or responsibility; in any event, there is no accountability.

It has been excitedly proclaimed by some in the media that India now has a triad of nuclear weapon delivery capability, the land and air elements being in place already. Nothing can be farther from the reality. Some trials of a rocket launch from a fixed underwater platform have reportedly been carried out but these do not translate themselves into an on-board capability. That will also come at some time in the future but that moment is not now. An underwater vertical launch system is about the most sophisticated and complex weapon and it is not going to happen anytime soon. For the present, a few years are needed to prove the platform and its systems, first on the surface in harbour, then on the surface at sea and finally, under water, progressively at increasing depths. All along there will be need for corrections and modifications. The nuclear reactor itself has to be made ‘critical’. So, there is need to move slowly with full regard to safety and without getting hustled by those sections who know not what they say. The fact that a leased nuclear submarine of the Russian Akula class will be operational with the Navy very soon should be a confidence-generating feature of the plan.

INS Arihant will, happily, not be a ‘one alone’ thing. Reports have it that the government has sanctioned at least three submarines of this type already. Nuclear-powered submarines capable of launching long-range ballistic missiles are strategic, not tactical, weapons. In the global strategic equations from which India cannot remain excluded for very long, they will be an important component of our total national power. It is a moment of satisfaction for every Indian, not just those who go to sea. The launch of INS Arihant is, undoubtedly, a watershed not just for the Indian Navy, but for the nation.

The author is a former Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command

A task unaccomplished.

2009-07-29T10:42:00.001-07:00

(This note was written by Sri Aurobindo a hundred years ago. His words have always carried a deep insight which relates to the future. )

A Task Unaccomplished

Sri Aurobindo
__________________________

__________________________________________

THERE is no question so vital to the future of this nation as the spirit in which we are to set about the regeneration of our national life. Either India is rising again to fulfil the function for which her past national life and development seem to have prepared her, a leader of thought and faith, a defender of spiritual truth and experience destined to correct the conclusions of materialistic Science by the higher Science of which she hasthe secret and in that power to influence the world’s civilisation, or she is rising as a faithful pupil of Europe, a follower of methods and ideas borrowed from the West, a copyist of English politics and society. In the one case her aspiration must be great, her faith unshakable, her efforts and sacrifices such as to command the admiration of the world; in the other no such greatness of soul is needed or possible;—a cautious, slowand gradual progress involving no extraordinary effort and no unusual sacrifices is sufficient for an end so small. In the one case her destiny is to be a great nation remoulding and leading the civilisation of the world, in the other it is to be a subordinate part of the British Empire sharing in the social life, the political privileges, the intellectual ideals and attainments of the Anglo-Celtic race. These are the two ideals before us, and an ideal is not mere breath, it is a thing compelling which determines the spirit of our action and often fixes the method.

No policy can be successful which does not take into view the end to be attained and the amount and nature of the effort needed to effect it. The leader of industry who enters on a commercial enterprise, first looks at the magnitude of his field and intended output and equips himself with capital and plant accordingly, and even if he cannot commence at once on the scale of his ideal he holds it in view himself, puts it before the public in issuing his prospectus and estimating the capital necessary, and all the practical steps he takes are conceived in the light of his original aspiration and ordered towards its achievement. So it is with the political ventures of a nation. To place before himself a great object and then to shrink in the name of expediency from the expenditure and sacrifice called for in its pursuit is not prudence but ineptitude. If you will be prudent, be prudent from the beginning. Fix your object low and creep towards it.

But if you fix your object in the skies, it will not do to crawl on the ground and because your eyes are sometimes lifted towards the ideal imagine you are progressing while you murmur to those behind, “Yes, yes, our ideal is in the skies because that is the place for ideals, but we are on the ground and the ground is our proper place of motion. Let us creep, let us creep.” Such inconsistency will only dishearten the nation, unnerve its strength and confuse its intelligence. You must either bring down your ideal to the ground or find wings or aeroplane to lift you to the skies. There is no middle course. We believe that this nation is one which has developed itself in the past on spiritual lines under the inspiration of a destiny which is now coming to fulfilment.

The peculiar seclusion in which it was able to develop its individual temperament, knowledge and ideas;—the manner in which the streams of the world poured in upon and were absorbed by the calm ocean of Indian spiritual life, recalling the great image in the Gita,— even as the waters flow into the great tranquil and immeasurable ocean, and the ocean is not perturbed;—the persistence with which peculiar and original forms of society, religion and philosophical thought were protected from disintegration up till the destined moment;—the deferring of that disintegration until the whole world outside had arrived at the point when the great Indian ideal which these forms enshrined could embrace all that it yet needed for its perfect self-expression, and be itself embraced by an age starved by materialism and yearning for a higher knowledge;—the sudden return of India upon itself at a time when all that was peculiarly Indian seemed to wear upon it the irrevocable death-sentence passed on all things that in the human evolution are no longer needed;—the miraculous uprising and transformation of weakness into strength brought about by that return;—all this seems to us to be not fortuitous and accidental but inevitable and preordained in the decrees of an over-ruling Providence. The rationalist looks on such beliefs and aspirations as mysticism and jargon. When confronted with the truths of Hinduism, the experience of deep thinkers and the choice spirits of the race through thousands of years, he shouts “Mysticism, mysticism!” and thinks he has conquered. To him there is order, development, progress, evolution, enlightenment in the history of Europe, but the past of India is an unsightly mass of superstition and ignorance best torn out of the book of human life. These thousands of years of our thought and aspiration are a period of the least importance to us and the true history of our progress only begins with the advent of European education! The rest is a confused nightmare or a mere barren lapse of time preparing nothing and leading to nothing. This tone is still vocal in the organs of the now declining school of the nineteenth century some of which preserve their influence in the provinces where the balance in the struggle between the past and the future has not inclined decidedly in favour of the latter.

In Bengal it is still represented by an undercurrent of the old weakness and the old want of faith which struggles occasionally to establish itself by a false appearance of philosophical weight and wisdom. It cannot really believe that this is a movement with a divine force within and a mighty future before it. The only force it sees is the resentment against the Partition which in its view is enough to explain everything that has happened, the only future it envisages is reform and the reversal of the Partition. Recently, however, the gospel of Nationalism has made so much way that the organs of this school in Bengal have accepted many of its conclusions and their writings are coloured by its leading ideas. But the fundamental idea of the movement as a divine manifestation purposing to raise up the nation not only for its own fulfilment in India but for the work and service of the world and therefore sure of its fulfilment, therefore independent of individuals and superior to vicissitudes and difficulties, is one which they cannot yet grasp. It is a sentiment which has been growing upon us as the movement progressed, but it has not yet been sufficiently put forward by the organs of Nationalism itself, partly because the old idea of separating religion from politics lingered, partly because the human aspects of the Nationalist faith had to be established before we could rise to the divine. But that divine aspect has to be established if we are to have the faith and greatness of soul which can alone help us in the tremendous developments the signs of the time portend.

There is plenty of weakness still lingering in the land and we cannot allow it to take shelter under the cry of expediency and rationality and seek to kill the faith and force that has been born in the hearts of the young. The Karmayogin has taken its stand on the rock of religion and its first object will be to combat these reactionary tendencies and lead the nation forward into the fuller light for which the Bande Mataram and other organs of the new faith only prepared. The gospel of Nationalism has not yet been fully preached; its most inspiring tenets have yet to be established not only by the eloquence of the orator and inspiration of the prophet but by the arguments of the logician, the appeal to experience of the statesman and the harmonising generalisations of the scientist.

Sri Aurobindo
(July 1909)

On the way down - 3

2009-07-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

Check previous posts part 1 & 2

How the party whithers away.

The fundamental reason

This is the crucial factor: the decision to reform or not has come to vest in the hands of the very persons who will be finished were the reform to take place — recall the two examples we encountered at the beginning: the civil service that stymies every commission’s recommendations, and the legislators who do not rectify the manifest lacuna in the law which allows those convicted of murder to continue as members. Hence the paradox: the stronger that the leader and his circle appear, the weaker the organisation.

Factions mushroom

As ‘power’ now flows solely from the Leader, factions sprout even within this circle — tiny though it is — around him. All the more so because the only glue now is lucre, pelf. The courtiers are now an ever-changing kaleidoscope of ‘tactical alliances’: three join, get the fourth; then two of the three join and get the first. To each, the nearest neighbour is the greatest enemy. At every turn, each of the sudden allies prides himself on being clever, he preens himself on being successful. In fact, even as they succeed against each other, they are undermining the esteem of the people and the workers of the party itself for the circle as well as the leader who presides over it.

The leader frowns, but inwardly foments the factions; at the least, he does not scotch them. As each subaltern jostles to be closer to him, he feels important, indeed he feels indispensable — “They are not yet mature enough to manage on their own.” He preens himself as arbiter, as the dispenser of favour and frown.

But the jostling, the ever-shifting alliances and ruptures among the courtiers break through the curtains of the court. Three consequences follow. The character of the leader is soon evident to all: that he is the one who is fomenting factions, that he is the one who is playing favourites. Second, the courtiers defame each other successively: soon enough, people know enough about each of them to believe the worst of all of them. Third, both because the leader has been seen for what he is and because each of the subalterns has shown himself to be but a schemer and plotter, the whole — the so-called party — loses the esteem of the people.

As factions fight, as subalterns spread stories about each other, the leader moans, “The party was never like this... When we began, we toiled without any expectation at all that we would ever be in power. We just toiled. Today, everyone expects rewards, office, perks. The simplicity of our leader of the time, his utter selflessness, his humility...And this business of factions, and backbiting — it was unheard of.”

Each time he invokes that distant leader, he reminds the listeners how far he has himself come from that sainted person. He reminds listeners how, under his direct stewardship, the party has been converted from being a crusade to becoming an instrument for his aggrandisement and that of his chosen handful.

The slide accelerates

Cleverness in the leader produces cunning and deviousness among his henchmen. Cleverness, cunning, deviousness at the top produce feigned loyalty among followers. The followers stick to the party only in the expectation that their chance to grab the goodies will also come one day. But as the party suffers successive defeats, that prospect recedes. Seeing that this is not the vehicle to lucre that they had imagined, the followers lose enthusiasm. Chunks break away. To other parties — where, of course, the same sequence is in progress.

That the same sequence is being enacted in other parties makes it that much more difficult to arrest it in this party. The rival party is fielding a criminal. Only a more audacious, a more resourceful criminal can defeat him. As winning the requisite numbers is all, those who urge that tickets be given only to persons of integrity and competence are easily shoved aside as unpractical ‘idealists’ — in the very party that had been founded and nurtured by idealists, the word becomes a pejorative.

Such adoption of what is common to others is triply harmful to a party that grew out of a movement, that has sworn fidelity to ideals. To start with, it loses its claim to being different from the others. Next, its culture, its very character changes. And third, if by chance and for reasons that have little to do with its new character, it wins, its members are not able to handle the complex tasks of governance — any more than those ‘boors in office’ were able to manage the states they founded after destroying Rome.

These accidental victories, however, have consequences for the party itself also. The victories come about from time to time, for reasons that are independent of the drift in the party — the strength in an area of the candidates as individuals, the particularly perfidious conduct of opponents. But the consequence is that the leader and his coterie feel vindicated in their ways. Those who had been warning of what will befall the party should it continue in the direction it has been proceeding are now even more easily put down as the perpetual whiners, the disgruntled, frustrated alarmists, the congenital pessimists.

Even as the party wins the odd contest, it continues to lose that vital intangible — esteem among the people. It is seen as being more and more like any other conglomeration. Every memory of the movement from which it had originated, every memory of its original leaders only reinforces this inference. The party no longer claims that it is different from the others. On the contrary, the other parties hurl that erstwhile claim at it — as a taunt.

The party which was a movement has become routine. Routinisation robs every abhiyaan it launches of meaning. It dwarfs everyone. How true the lesson that historians hold out:

“Early Roman history has been described as the history of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. In the later Empire it took an extraordinary man to do anything at all except carry on a routine; and, as the Empire had devoted itself for centuries to the breeding and training of ordinary men, the extraordinary men of its last ages — Stilicho, Aetius, and their like — were increasingly drawn from the Barbarian world.”*

But the other parties are enacting the same sequence. They don’t have any extraordinary men either that this party may swear in. Yet something has to be done to shore up its fortunes. The party knows its own too well. They have been around, and have not brought victory. Those in rival parties may not be extraordinary, but they have the attraction of being in other parties. The party, therefore, inducts persons who are like members and leaders of the parties it has hitherto denounced. Better still, it inducts persons who are still members and leaders of those parties. To little avail. The entrants are seen as turncoats. That the party’s claim to being different is fake is reinforced. Those who have served it loyally for decades are incensed.

The clever spinners

The leader, cocooned, does not notice the ground slipping away, in part because he is by now surrounded by clever courtiers. The moment a victory turns up, they are able to produce a dozen reasons to show that it is due to the leader, and, incidentally, themselves. The moment a defeat occurs, they are able to produce two dozen reasons to prove that it is due to others. And another score why the defeat is due to special, transient, exceptional, local circumstances, and, therefore, is no cause for worry.

The party’s electoral losses resume. They accelerate. Fewer and fewer new recruits join the organisation. Those who join, join for reasons other than the ideas and ideals for which that party or organisation once stood — they do so, for instance, in the belief that doing so will get them jobs, posts, contracts.

The leader and his circle could easily see the portent, if only they would. Are only the already-converted coming to our meetings? Are they coming spontaneously, or do wehave to bus them? How many uncommitted, new listeners are coming to our meetings? Indeed, the leader and his circle do not have to go even that far. They just have to look only at their own diaries: how many persons outside our circle have we met in the last week? But they don’t see. The organisation is busy talking to itself. Those within the circle are busy knifing each other. And the leader? He is enveloped in an impenetrable fog of self-satisfaction: the day’s photo-opportunity, the day’s conclave, the day’s meeting of the ‘core group’, the day’s meeting of ‘office-bearers’, the day’s meeting of ‘allies’ — what a fulfilling day...

The party stops hearing those outside the party. The leader stops hearing those outside his circle — of weak men and henchmen.

Many factors continue to obscure the fact that the ground is shifting from underneath the party. For a while, to cite one factor, the ‘core constituency’ continues to support it: out of habit; out of loyalty to the old ideals; out of an obstinate consistency. But the leader and his circle reassure themselves, “Our core constituency is intact.”

They draw an operational inference: in the belief that doing so will solidify the support of this core constituency, they reinforce earlier slogans so as to demonstrate that they remain committed to their original ideology. But each time they proclaim the slogans, they remind listeners — all the more so, this core constituency as it remains truly committed to what those slogans had promised — that, when they had the opportunity, they did nothing for those promises to materialise. Regurgitating the slogans thus does little to mobilise the core constituency. On the other hand, it consolidates the opponents. And another thing has happened in the meantime: a host of new elements have entered the arena — for instance, the young. Each time the leader and his coterie proclaim those old slogans — ‘socialism’ of the Congress; ‘Hindutva’ of the BJP; ‘Marxism-Leninism’ of the assorted Communists — they remind these new entrants that they and their party are an obsolete bunch. And then, suddenly, one day, a day like any other, that ‘core constituency’ also walks away.

Kafirs and apostates

At each turn, well-wishers counsel reform, they counsel that the party change course. But by now the leader is the party, most certainly in his eyes. Therefore, he takes every suggestion to be a rebuke, an assault on him personally for conducting the affairs of the party as he has been conducting them. When the suggestion-which-is-censure comes from an outsider, the leader rejects it as the ranting of a kafir, of one who has never believed, who has never committed himself to the cause. When it comes from one who undeniably has been part of the crusade, the leader dismisses it as being the rant of a murtad, an apostate — as the rant of one ‘who has crossed the barricade’. His reflex is to insulate himself even more into an even tighter circle.

The leader whose example used to be the goad; whose mere presence induced attention; whose glance, whose whispered suggestion used to ensure compliance, he now stands on office, on rank, on the years he has spent ‘in the service of the party’. He demands respect — a sure sign that he no longer commands it. Another sign, a sure one that what, in the infinitely vaster context of civilisations, Arnold Toynbee had called ‘the creative minority’ — the small group that brought the civilisation into being, and presided over its flourishing — has become ‘the dominant minority’ — the small group that chokes, and presides over the ultimate disintegration of the civilisation.

The circle becomes tighter and more and more homogenous, more and more subservient and sycophantic.

As the leader and his cohorts move within this ever-narrower circle, they see less and less of what is going on without the circle, they hear less and less. This blindness and loss of hearing are brought about all the more swiftly the more hierarchical is the organisation — for the greater the respect for hierarchy, the more the leader and his circle are not just looked up to, they are venerated, they are treated as oracles, as paragons of virtue and dedication; and the more disciplined the organisation is — for the more disciplined it is, the less do subordinates speak the whole truth to their seniors, the less they think for themselves: “Sir, hamare yahaan to soochnaa aayi, sochnaa band,” a stalwart once explained to me.

On the way down - 2

2009-07-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

Check previous post for part 1

Ideology recast

After the others on whom blame may be pinned are exhausted, the leader and his circle turn on the ideals on which, on the ‘ideology’ for the realisation of which the movement had commenced and the party had been founded. So, one day they lunge for a ‘hard’ formulation — to win back the ‘core constituency’, they reason. The next, they lunge for a ‘soft’ formulation; one day they are stressing ‘our religion’, the next ‘our culture’; one day it is ‘return to basics’, the next ‘changing with the times’; one day they are declaring their faith in our history castigating persecutors of the past and their current heirs and apparitions, the next they are swearing by inclusiveness and geography¿ One day it is ‘reforms’, the next ‘Reforms with a human face’... One day it is ‘peasants’, the next ‘workers’, the third the inclusive ‘toiling masses’. And they are never short of quotations from the original leaders to justify each twist.

What the leader and his speechwriters convince themselves are sparkling new formulations, are, in fact, just clichés. “The party stands for a strong and prosperous India” — but which party doesn’t? “The party will make the 21st century, India’s century” — but which party says it won’t? Can one not go on adding to that declaration, and it would be just as acceptable? “The party stands for a strong and prosperous India, an India at peace with itself and the world”? “The party stands for a strong and prosperous India, an India at peace with itself and the world, an India in which no one goes to bed hungry”? “The party stands for a strong and prosperous India, an India at peace with itself and the world, an India in which no one goes to bed hungry, one in which the benefits of growth are shared by all”?

The leader and his circle convince themselves that they are making their party current, that, by the new formulation, they are going to attract new chunks. In fact, they convince the people at large that they believe in nothing; that their proclamations have all along been just opportunism dressed up; that they have no core — there is nothing that they will desist from doing if they see some advantage to themselves in doing it, that there are several things that just must be done but which they will not do lest some slight, momentary disadvantage befall them.

The people put no store by the words of these persons. They want to know, “Can this lot bring these goals to fruition any better than the other lot? Is the leader, are members of his circle living these ideals?” The ideas and ideology of this lot, rather the ideas on which, the ideals for the attainment of which this lot was founded no longer permeate or radiate into those who are outside the party or organisation. Even when they accept those ideas and ideals, those outside strain to hide their original source. Recall the net effect of the innumerable gurus and organisations that have been speaking for Hinduism in the last fifty years, or Marxism-Leninism and social justice for that matter: how well the words of Toynbee fit those who, almost furtively, live Hinduism today or do their bit for a more just society — “Under these sinister auspices, such selective mimesis [imitation, adoption] as occurs takes place on the barbarians’ own initiative [in our context, on that of those outside the party or organisation]. They show their initiative in imitating those elements which they accept in a manner which will disguise the disgraceful source of what has been imitated.”*

Character changes, relations are transformed

By such twists and turns, the leader and his circle, far from inducting new adherents, discredit ideology itself; they turn people off even the talk of ideals. Another factor smothers ideals and ideology. The movement became a party. That party has since become a mere electoral machine. But as general standards deteriorate, the party has to ‘adjust’; it has to effect ‘compromises’. The sole object is to attain office. And the sole criterion for that is numbers. Hence, winnability is all. Whoever can win a seat, be he a criminal or blackguard who has just deserted from the rival camp, is the one whom the party fields. Three consequences follow at once and inevitably. First, the proclamations of the party — ideals, ideology — reek more and more of hypocrisy. Second, the people at large see that this party is no different from any other. Third, and this is what has the deepest consequences for the future, the character of the party changes forever. Everyone above and below comes to rely on the clever strategist, on the deceitful, for he leads them to victories. Either that clever person or someone even more deceitful rises to the top. Gandhiji’s warning comes true — “An organisation that relies on rogues to do its work shall soon have rogues at its helm.”

But the transformation doesn’t stop there. Indeed, it has just begun. For the character of the one who has wrested the top stamps itself on the entire organisation, on every level of the entire organisation. His very ‘success’ legitimises ambition, greed, intrigue, double-dealing. “If he doesn’t have what it takes to capture even a party,” the thesis runs, “if he doesn’t have enough fire in his belly to capture even a party, how in hell is he going to lead the party to capture the country?” Ambition, greed, intrigue legitimised, every one becomes every one’s rival. Every one comes to suspect every one. That irreplaceable adhesive — Ibn Khaldun’s ‘group spirit’ — is rent asunder.

Both relationships — the one of the leader with his circle, as well as that of members of the circle with each other — are transformed. Every relationship is now pure and simple barter. The leader seeks out not colleagues but clients, not partners but dependents, not associates but instruments. He uses the henchmen, of course. But they also use him. They are nobodies without him. But with him, even with the rumour that they are close to him, they can strut around, and rake in the perks. They strain to be useful to the leader: helping one relative of his out of a difficulty, helping another relative set up a business... The leader demurs, “Is this really right?” They say what he wants to hear: “But why should he suffer just because he is your son?” The leader allows himself to be persuaded, after making sure that everyone has seen him hesitate. They now have him entangled into those “interlocking webs of mutual complicity.” He is as dependent on them, as they on him. Recall the cow-and-calf symbol of the Congress[I], and what the then chief minister of Haryana, Bansi Lal said during the Emergency, after he had helped ram through Sanjay’s Maruti plant, “Jab bachchda mere haath mein hai, gayiyaa kahaan jaayegi?”

But, of course, henchmen don’t just work to ingratiate themselves with the leader. They use their proximity to him to seize spoils for themselves. Indeed, in the organisation — and the more ‘disciplined’ and hierarchical the organisation, the more certain this is — they are the ones who are liable to make a grab for the riches because, even if evidence were to erupt in the public domain, the leader is least likely to act against them. They are the ones he is certain to shield.

What had begun as a relationship of devotees who had gravitated to an idol, of persons who had gravitated to the leader because he was devoted to a mission, because he personified ideals, becomes a purely transactional relationship. The first to erode is reverence for the leader. Next, the fear of him. That has but to happen and anarchy breaks out in the organisation, a free-for-all. The leader lectures, he admonishes, he threatens ‘disciplinary action’. Members listen. They even make a show of cowering. And resume their skirmishes. The leader wrings his hands, “The party was never like this...Nobody listens... Indiscipline...” Even as he does so, he is externalising the state of affairs — as if he himself has nothing to do with what has come about.

The Zulu proverb

As relatives and henchmen acquire properties on the sly, as they run businesses benami, the party loses its ability to fight the rulers. The leader knows, the henchmen know that the rulers know. So, they take up ‘issues’, but never push them to the point where the rulers will be really inconvenienced. As the Zulu proverb has it, “A dog with a bone in its mouth, can’t bark”.

Indeed, they go farther. They cultivate links sub rosa with opponents, in particular with rulers. They say this is so as to give the country ‘a constructive alternative’. In fact, it is for getting a few crumbs from the rulers’ table, at the least to keep out of trouble. Rulers readily flatter them by making a show of paying attention, they readily steer a few contracts their way — and thereby gain control over the very party that was to watch over them. The sequence weakens the leader vis a vis the rulers. It weakens him as much within the party: no leader who is crooked can straighten others.

The henchmen

These henchmen become the leader’s eyes and ears. Indeed, his ‘reference group’, they function as the pliable conscience he now wants. They feast off him when he is in office. They dissuade him from quitting when he clearly should. Truth be told, that takes less doing than one might imagine: at such turns, the leader is only waiting to be ‘persuaded’. They pander to his vanity exactly as Ibn Khaldun describes: by heightening the pretences of authority around him, even as they rake up the fruits for themselves.

But the henchmen don’t try just to be useful to the leader. Their power, their indispensability depends on making the leader feel insecure. So, they are always conjuring up news of conspiracies. They are forever isolating the leader — sowing doubts in the leader’s mind about one and all, in particular about his former comrades.

It is not that the leader never sees the cost these henchmen are bringing upon him. From time to time, evidence bursts forth that makes the continuance of some one of the henchmen completely untenable. The clamour against him becomes so insistent that the leader is brought to the brink of sending him away. Quite apart from the danger that exiling one who knows so much may entail, the leader is easily persuaded to hold his hand: “But they are not after me. Their real target is you. The moment you show that you can be pressurised, they will come after you” — recall the time it took for Indira Gandhi to act against Antulay; recall how Rajiv hung on to Ottavio Quattrochi.

The ordinary members watch with dismay as the sway of these henchmen envelops the leader, and, just as much, as their pillage begins to discredit the party. But at this stage they shiver at doing anything: they do not speak out; they do not collect evidence. They wait for something to turn up. They wait for someone else to expose and nail the henchmen: Ibn Insha was right, Haq achcha, iske liye Koi aur mare, to aur achcha

They wait for the leader to do something — “At least in his own interest.” Of course, the leader does nothing. He is immersed in his interests of the moment, and, the henchmen are useful agents.

Precisely because his failure to act against the henchman who is causing him so much avoidable trouble makes him seem weak, the leader just has to act against others: to show that he is strong, that he will not tolerate “indiscipline”, that he can and will quell “insubordination”. He lashes out — naturally at persons outside his circle. What were mere suggestions from them are projected as criticism; what was criticism merely to arrest the decline is projected as disloyalty. Everyone sees through the vehemence: everyone sees that the leader has an elastic ruler — a long one for his cabal, his instruments, a much shorter one for others.

The transformation cannot be hidden from the people any more than a grating cough. The group begins to lose legitimacy. Constitution? What Constitution? One norm after another, one rule after another is set aside. The so-called constitution of the party provides that posts — every post at every level — be filled by elections. In fact, at each level, each gathering hails the leader, and ‘unanimously resolves’ to leave the choice of office-bearers to him.

The party hierarchy comes to consist entirely of nominees — of the leader, and of those who, for the moment, have managed to insinuate themselves into the good books of the leader. Tickets have to be distributed for the forthcoming elections? The ‘state leaders’ — nominees all — ‘recommend’ some names. Neither the leader nor his nominees in the central organs have any system of independent verification. Lobbying, insinuation, come to count more than analysis; collateral ‘persuasion’ more than evidence; bargaining more than deliberation. The nominees don’t do well? There was dhaandali in the selection of candidates, someone shouts. He is smeared with motives, drowned with innuendo.

Meetings follow meetings. In each, ritual replaces substance. But the rituals, the routine are not for nothing. The ritual — the same “state-wise” reporting — is a device: a device to dodge the issues that are on everyone’s mind. Abhiyaans follow abhiyaans. They too become just routine.

The losses mount. Calls for honest examination. For accountability. The leader and his circle swing into action. They galvanise their nominees in the states. “No, no. We can’t afford any witch-hunts,” these nominees of nominees declaim. “Elections are coming up in our state. Inquiry-shinquiry will cause all sorts of mud to be hurled. The media will be full of it. Our chances will be destroyed.”

As further losses occur, an inquiry to fix responsibility is at last instituted. But who is to inquire? The leader and his circle — who, after all, are responsible for all the decisions that have led the organisation to this pass — are the ones who alone can decide. They pick from among themselves, or, if the façade of ‘independence’, of ‘objectivity’ has to be maintained, their weak men and henchmen.

The inquiry never sees the light of day. In any case, no reform that may have resulted from the inquiry is ever visible. Perhaps for good reason: in all probability, each inquiry has concluded that no individual was responsible. The shortcomings were ‘systemic’!

On the way down.. Part 1

2009-07-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

A three part series by Arun Shourie introspecting the ills in Indian politics..

Four instances, two questions.

•Indira Gandhi is able to block the implementation of the Allahabad High Court judgement by changing — with retrospective effect no less — the law under which it held her guilty of corrupt electoral practices;

•Rajiv Gandhi is able to use his control over three-quarters of the House to block all inquiry into Bofors.

Do these instances testify to the strength of Mrs. Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi? Or to the weakness of the political system?

•Scores and scores of committees and commissions have been set up to reform the civil services; the services have continued exactly as they have been.

•Subsection 3 of Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act lists a number of grave crimes, and provides that if a person is convicted for any of them, he shall be disqualified for six years, and, if he is imprisoned, for a further six years after his release. The next subsection reduces this provision to a nullity. It provides, “Notwithstanding anything [in the earlier subsections] a disqualification shall not, in the case of a person who on the date of conviction is a member of Parliament or the legislature of a state, take effect until three months have elapsed from that date or, if within that period an appeal or application for revision is brought in respect of the conviction or sentence, until that appeal or application is disposed by the court.” The result? In August 2008, four persons come straight from Tihar jail to participate in the confidence vote in the Lok Sabha —persons who are serving life sentences, as they have been held guilty of murder!

How does a gaping crater of this magnitude in the law continue? How are civil services and legislators able to ward off reform so successfully?

Birth to senility

A movement, an organisation is originally inspired by an ideal: to undo what is wrong, to establish what is right.

Whether it triumphs or fails in its initial objective, over the years it becomes a political party.

At its inception, the party too is impelled by ideals. The crusade from which it has taken birth is still vivid, the idealists who led the movement, who then founded it and toiled to raise it are a living presence. Propelled by these memories, the party seeks to change the order, it wants to recast the polity of course, but more: it wants to recast society into the ideals to attain which it has been formed.

Over time, it forsakes this idealism, and becomes a mere electoral machine.

Soon, it putrefies into a machine that fails to win even elections.

Members become increasingly anxious: after all, if the party continues its decline, they tell each other, it isn’t just that the ideals which are its very reason for existence will not be attained, that the transformation for which they have been striving will not come about; but also, their personal fortunes will evaporate. They run from leader to leader, urging reform, a return to ideals. Their efforts go nowhere. The party does not reform. It does not die. It just goes on falling to pieces.

Why does this degeneration take place? Why do efforts to arrest its decline come to naught? By what symptoms may we know that a particular organisation is on its way down?

In one of the greatest works of history, Ibn Khaldun chronicled the founding, rise, decline and eventual disintegration of dynasties. In the introduction to that work, The Muqaddimah, he set out the patterns he had deduced: the abandonment of the austerities of the desert for the luxury and ease of settled courts; the waning of the “group spirit”; the culture of cunning and intrigue within palaces that replaces the valour of open battle... We have but to tweak the conclusions a little and we have the reasons on account of which our political parties moulder and waste away. And that should not surprise us. After all, so many of them are collections around dynasties; so many of them are gangs around individuals; so many of them are — at all levels, from their central offices to their local branches —parties of four/five persons for the projection of four/five persons. Not just the conclusions of Ibn Khaldun, the very words ring true as we see the parties deteriorate and eventually crumble.*

Two suggestions about reading this updated version. Do not rush through it. I have kept examples to a minimum: after a paragraph, recall the examples you know from your own personal experience that fit the words. Second, you will miss the point entirely if you think, “Oh, this is about the BJP... Oh, this is about the Congress...” Instead of concluding that I am out to convey some “hidden meanings” and trying to figure these out, think of your own party or organisation, the party or organisation that you know best, from the inside — the Congress, the BJP, the Communist parties, the regional parties: Telugu Desam, the DMK, the BSP, the AGP. It is then that you will get the point of the updating, namely that the symptoms are true of all our political parties today.

Hence, our real problem: there is nowhere to turn for an alternative.

The orientation, and its consequences

Our system, indeed our society is heavily oriented towards the state. He who occupies offices of state at the moment, receives deference, he is surrounded by hangers-on, by pelf; he gets the opportunity, if he is so inclined, to rake in money: in a word, as they say in Punjab, “the usual pump and show.”

Hence, when the party acquires office, its leading figures acquire all this: deference, pelf, the opportunity to rake in money. As they commence to use these, five things happen:

•Even if they are personally honest, the principals in the government are implicated by association: they have the clear duty as well as the clear opportunity to put an end to the doings of their juniors; they do not do so — this is enough to put them in the position in which, when the evidence of wrong-doing erupts, they have only one option: to defend their colleague. And there is a ready rationalisation for doing so: “How can we desert our colleague when he is trouble?” Suddenly “loyalty” acquires a new meaning: it does not mean loyalty to those pristine ideals; it comes to mean sticking by the colleague — the very one who has departed from those ideals.

•That robs, first, the leaders; then the government; and therefore, the party of its claim that it is different, that is inspired by ideals, that it is in politics not for power and pelf but to recast governance and society in those ideals.

•Being in government is far more exciting than staying back in the organisation: for those still committed to the ideals that had originally enthused the movement and organisation, being in government affords an incomparable opportunity to translate those ideals into practice; for those who are impelled now by other goals — money, “power”, pelf — remaining in the backwaters of the organisation is anathema. Hence the “best and brightest” rush into government. Whether the government as a whole does well because of the few who are still dedicated to ideals or not, the party certainly languishes.

•A distance develops — first between adherents who are still inspired by those ideals and those who have forsaken the ideals; then between the leaders — who are in office and are visibly enjoying the perquisites of office — and the followers; the latter now ask, “These fellows came to office because of us; they have their bungalows, they have their cars with laal batties; what have we got?”

•And distance develops even sooner between the principal leaders themselves: portfolios, size of offices, the ear of the ultimate boss, money — everything becomes a trigger. Comrades become colleagues; colleagues become competitors, rivals. But, in a sense, these spoils can all be managed. That one principal gets more of one thing can be made up by the other being enabled to get more of another. But there is one thing which really is a zero-sum magnitude: prominence. As there is only one front page, if one of the principals is splashed across it, by definition the others are excluded. Distance becomes envy; envy becomes jealousy; jealousy becomes venom. You can see the transformation in the very faces of the principals.

Even by themselves, just these features are enough to cause the party to begin losing its vitality as even an electoral machine.

The leader and his circle

But the leader has done more to weaken the machine. The more power is vested in him, the less secure he feels. Hence, exactly as Ibn Khaldun wrote about the choice of wazirs and successors, in choosing his circle, the leader’s concern is to choose the ones who will least threaten him, who will best advance his dynasty, who will best secure and perpetuate his position — that is, he chooses weak men and henchmen, not ones who will best advance the ideals for which the organisation had been founded. The weaker the man, the more compromised he is, the more dependent he is on the leader. The more unscrupulous the henchman, the more ruthless he will be on the leader’s behalf. Weakness, vulnerability, unscrupulousness become qualifications.

The arrangement works when the going is good. No one now is strong enough to harm the leader. But no one is strong enough — in the sense vital in a democracy, that is of having legitimacy, of commanding esteem — to help him when a crisis erupts.

But there is an even more consequential change: ideals, the commitment to higher objectives, for the interests of the group as a whole, these are restraints, they are the banks that enable a river to flow. When these are replaced by the interests of an individual and his little circle, the only glue that binds - followers to the organisation as much as members of this circle to the leader — is the prospect of spoils. Pillage commences. Legitimacy begins to dwindle.

The leader and his henchmen are unable to stem the decline. Enervated by luxury, by pelf, capable now only of giving directions to others, they are no longer able to toil in the field. They give out calls: “All workers shall hold dharnas at district headquarters against price rise...” “The abhiyaan against the corruption of this government shall be taken to every village, to every hamlet¿” A few desultory meetings are organised. People are bussed in. The abhiyaan disappears as a rivulet in the desert. No one even notices that it has been abandoned. At best, the leader sets out to repeat the performance that had once secured attention — the “struggle”, the fast-unto-death-between-meals, the yatra. But you can’t make the soufflé rise twice: the very fact that nothing was done after the first performance, robs the repeat of all credibility. Some ‘emergency’ is invoked to give up the performance midway.

The leader convenes meetings of his ‘core group’, the ‘working committee’, the politburo. Members of these private coteries hold further meetings with their own private core groups.

Everyone but the ‘core group’

The factor most responsible for the rout has been the state to which the leader and his circle have reduced the party as an organisation, but that is the one factor which the leader and his cohorts will not admit into the discourse. Is the party seen as, is it in fact different from the others? Are its candidates any different? Is every unit of the party not riddled with factionalism? That these are the reasons for the setback is manifest to all. But the leader and his circle would have none of them — for that would immediately raise further questions. The party is no longer different from others? Who has allowed the party to sink to this level where it cannot be distinguished from the very parties it has been denouncing? The candidates are no better than those of the rivals? Who has selected the candidates? Factionalism has been allowed to continue? Each state faction has a line to some ringleader in the central cabal? Who has allowed the factionalism to fester and swell?

They blame others — the rival party; the third party that has stolen their vote; the accidental reason on account of which a section whose vote was to have split got consolidated; the youth; the middle class; the poor who voted on money, the rich who did not vote; the holidays on account of which so many went out of town; the disenchantment with the party’s ally in one state, the absence of an ally in the other; the anti-incumbency factor against us in this state, the advantage that the rival party had in the adjacent state of being in office and thereby being able to use the state machinery; the ‘shameless’ use of money and muscle by the rival... In a word, everyone and everything other than themselves.

Congress chief Rita Bahuguna slanders Mayawati

2009-07-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

Bloating with the spurious victory in the recently concluded General Election 2009, arrogant Congress workers have been on a rampage from assaulting a Bank Manager to denying the people of Jharkhand a new government by not dissolving the assembly and again renewing President's rule in the state. Things weren't any different before elections either when Culture Ministry under Christian Ms. Ambika Soni submitted a despicable and slanderous affidavit in the Supreme Court questioning the existence of Hindu Gods and hence, the Religion. Just before the elections, sitting Congress MP Rajesh Mishra was caught on camera paying money to Muslim rioters who attacked Hindus in Varanasi on holy Hindu festival of Holi. Or when Imran Kidwai, Chairman of the All India Congress Minority Cell made an Anti-Hindu hate speech in Chandigarh.

Imraan Kidwai, chairman of the All India Congress Community, Minority Cell, said that if he had the power, he would issue a fatwa asking Muslims to abstain from joining the BJP. He said the Congress had never tried to change the Muslim personnel law.

Or when Andhra Pradesh's Congress chief Dharmapuri Sriniwas made Anti-Hindu violent hate speech in order to communally polarize the vote bank. It can be read here, here and here.

"I am ready to cut off my head for the sake of Muslims. If any hand is raised against Muslims, that hand will be chopped off," said Srinivas.

Now joining the long list is Uttar Pradesh's Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi who has made some really vicious and slanderous remarks against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Mayawati is known for her Anti-Hindu and Pro-Buddhist nonsecular stand just as Congress is known for its Muslim Rightist ideology. In return of the slanderous attack, it is being alleged that BSP workers burned down Ms. Rita's house.

This just shows the culture and standard of these political parties. Mr. Varun Feroz Gandhi was made a scapegoat during the elections by these very pseudo-secular parties in order to play their own communal divisive politics. But even if he did make those alleged comments, he was a novice in politics unlike Ms. Rita Bahuguna who is seasoned politician and keeping in Monarchic Nepotist tradition of Congress, she is the daughter of a previous Congress member Mr. Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna who was also Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in late 1970s. So she should have known better before making such vitriolic speech. In a way its good that this happened. It brings out the true face of these politicians.

Following is an excerpt from the transcript of the hate speech that Ms. Bahuguna made:
हो जाए तेरा बलात्कार...मैं दे दूंगी एक करोड़

बुधवार को प्रदेश के मुरादाबाद शहर में कांग्रेस की एक रैली को संबोधित करते हुए रीता बहुगुणा ने कहा था कि किसी के साथ बलात्कार हो जाता है तो मायावती २५ हजार रुपए देती हैं। रीता ने दो बलात्कार और एक मर्डर का जिक्र करते हुए कहा कि मायावती ने किसी को २५ हजार रुपए तो किसी को ७५ हजार रुपए दिया। लेकिन रीता बहुगुणा यहां भी नहीं रुकीं और कह डाला कि मैं कहती हूं तो कह दो कि हो जाए तेरा बलात्कार, मैं दे दूंगा एक करोड़।

'हो जाए तेरा बलात्कार तो १ करोड़ दूं'

रीता बहुगुणा ने कहा, "किसी के साथ बलात्कार हो जाता है, तो मायावती २५ हजार रुपए देती हैं। एक बलात्कार और एक मर्डर पर उन्होंने एक को २५ हजार और एक को ७५ हजार रुपए दिए। मैं कहती हूं तो कह दो कि हो जाए तेरा बलात्कार, मैं दे दूंगा एक करोड़।"

Rita Bahuguna Trash Talk

The BSP government recently had distributed Rs 25,000 each to Dalit rape victims. Joshi, during her address in Moradabad on Wednesday had said, "Mayawati's government spent 5 lakh rupees on helicopter rides for the DCP to go and see these girls. But the victims were paid a paltry sum of Rs 25,000 each. The Dalit women should throw the money back at Mayavati’s face. When Mayavati gets raped, I will pay her Rs 1 crore."

UP Cong chief in jail after remark

Joshi reportedly said: “The Dalit women should throw the money back at Mayavati’s face. The money is too little and the police officer who comes in a helicopter to pay the amount is spending more. When Mayavati gets raped, I will pay her Rs 1 crore.”

Congress chief of largest state hate speech
http://satyabhashnam.blogspot.com/2009/07/rita-bahuguna-mayawati-hatespeech.html

A leading politician of the governing Congress Party was arrested Thursday and her house set on fire by activists after critics say she suggested that a rival leader be raped so she could better understand the plight of rape victims. Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the party’s chief in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said her comments about Chief Minister Mayawati — who uses only one name — were taken out of context. Speaking about the increase in rapes in Uttar Pradesh, she cited a few cases in which rape victims were paid $520 in compensation. Ms. Joshi said the women should “throw the money at Mayawati’s face and tell her, ‘You should also be raped, and I will give you 10 million rupees,’ ” about $210,000.

Indian politician arrested over rape comments

In her speech Joshi criticised the Uttar Pradesh government for paying Dalits who had suffered rape compensation of just 25,000 rupees (£315). "I had simply sought to draw the people's attention to the fact that Mayawati's dole of 25,000 rupees to every Dalit rape victim was quite ironical as the state police chief was spending lakhs [hundreds of thousands] on the helicopter ride that he undertakes to hand over that paltry amount to the victim," she said.

Indo-Pak statement lets down martys of 26/11

2009-07-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

by B. Raman

While assessing the meeting of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh President Asif Ali Zardari Pakistan at Yekaterinburg in Russia, I had said: 'Manmohan Singh is not a man of confrontation. He took the decision to freeze the composite dialogue mainly because of the fears of a likely adverse impact on the voting in the recently-held elections if he did not take a seemingly hard line against Pakistan. Now that the Congress-led coalition has come back to power -- with the Congress improving its own individual position in the Lok Sabha -- -he is unlikely to feel the need for maintaining the present hardline position on the composite dialogue. At this time, when winds of change for the better seem to be blowing towards India from Washington, DC, Manmohan Singh would find it difficult to reject suggestions from the US for a political gesture to the government in Islamabad by way of a resumption of the composite dialogue. The question is no longer whether it will be resumed, but when and how it will be projected to save the faces of both India and Pakistan.'

In the context of this assessment made on June 19, Thursday's development during Singh's meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani at the margins of the Non-Aligned Movement summit at Sharm-El-Sheikh in Egypt did not come as a surprise. I do feel upset not so much by the reported agreement of Manmohan Singh that 'India was ready to discuss all issues with Pakistan, including all outstanding issues' as by the phraseology relating to terrorism in the joint statement, which would enable Pakistan once again to wriggle out of any negative consequences arising from its involvement in the Mumbai strike of November 26, 2008.

The relevant question is not whether Pakistan is against terrorism. All Pakistani leaders had said that they are against terrorism. But, not one of them had ever agreed that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, which carried out the Mumbai outrage, is a terrorist organisation. Even the Pakistani judiciary has already pronounced that the Zardari government has not been able to produce any evidence linking the LeT or the Jamaat-ud-Dawa with any terrorist movement. The Lahore court judgment of June 6, 2009, explaining the decision to release JUD chief Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed from house arrest, clearly said as reported by the Daily Times: 'About the Dawa leaders' involvement in the Mumbai attacks, the bench observed that not a single document had been brought on the record that Dawa or the petitioners were involved in the said incident. There was no evidence that the petitioners had any links with Al Qaeda or any terrorist movement.'

The oral observations made earlier this week in the Pakistan Supreme Court by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury during the preliminary arguments on the appeals sought to be filed by the Punjab and the federal governments against Sayeed's release made more or less similar observations and expressed considerable scepticism over the case against Sayeed and the JUD.

When senior judges of the Lahore high court and the Supreme Court have already expressed their scepticism in open court over Indian allegations of the involvement of the JUD, the political wing of the LeT, in the Mumbai attack, to expect that justice will be done to the memory of the 166 persons killed in Mumbai -- 123 Indian civilians, 25 foreign civilians and 18 brave personnel of the security forces -- by the LeT terrorists as promised by the Pakistani co-operation against terrorism will be naivete of a very high order comparable to the naivete of Neville Chamberlain, predecessor of Winston Churchill as the British prime minister.

I would have been at least satisfied if the two prime ministers had specifically stated that the countries would co-operate against the LeT instead of just saying that the two countries would co-operate against terrorism. If the prime minister's advisers had properly briefed him before his meeting with Gilani, they would have drawn his attention to the following facts:

While even Pervez Musharraf the LeT for some months after the December 2001, attack on the Indian Parliament, Zardari has till today not banned the JUD, the post-2001 moniker of the LeT.

Zardari and his advisers have been saying that they had to act against Sayeed and his associates because of the declaration of the anti-terrorism committee of the UN Security Council that the JUD is a terrorist organisation and not because they had any independent evidence against it. It was on these grounds that Sayeed was ordered to be released.

Not a single reference to the LeT. Not a single reference to its continuing terrorist infrastructure. And, we have provided dignity to Pakistan's baseless allegations against Baloch freedom-fighters by agreeing to make a reference to Balochistan in the joint statement in the context of terrorism by indirectly bringing on record in an official statement Pakistan's projection of the late Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and other Baloch leaders as terrorists. Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed is not a terrorist, but Bugti and other Baloch leaders were or are.That has been Pakistan's contention and we have let this figure in the joint statement.

This agreement, which seeks to whitewash years of Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism against Indian civilians and security forces, will make all those who died at the hands of the terrorists shed tears in heaven.

India's e-elections rigged?

2009-07-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

By Janmajeyan

NEW DELHI: Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla is sitting over a major scandal of a possible massive rigging of elections by manipulation of software of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

But for the charge levelled by a former Delhi chief secretary five years senior to him in the IAS cadre, Chawla would have rejected such claims of rigging.

Omesh Saigal, a 1964 batch IAS officer of the Union Territory, stunned him with a presentation to force him to order an inquiry into any possibility of such a rigging. Chawla is himself a Union Territory cadre IAS of 1969 batch.

Deputy Election Commissioner Balakrishnan has been asked to conduct the inquiry on the basis of a report handed over by Saigal to the CEC, with a software he got developed to show how the elections can be rigged.

Saigal, who is an IIT alumni, has demanded an urgent check of the programme that runs the EVMs used in elections since 2004. He demonstrated with his software that its manipulation ensured that one has to just key in a certain code number and that will ensure every fifth vote cast in a particular polling booth goes in favour of a certain candidate.

He got interested to find out truth about a score of news reports in Press and on the net about candidates and parties expressing suspicion about the EVMs not recording the votes correctly as he wanted to ascertain whether these EVMs meet the standard of national integrity or safeguards the sanctity of the democracy.

In his letter to the CEC, Saigal alleged that the software written onto the EVMs has never been checked by the Election Commission ever since these machines were manufactured more than 6-7 years back.

His contention is that the EC merely relied on the certificates supplied by the manufacturers, the government-run BEL and ECIL. He alleged that these government firms had subcontracted private parties who actually provided these certificates.

“A public software audit of these machines from time to time, especially after and before an election, was a must to retain the credibility of the elections,” Saigal affirmed, demanding that for the sake of transparency names and ownerships of these private companies must be disclosed as also the details of the factories where they were actually manufactured.

The records retained in the factories must also be immediately taken over by the Commission to prevent any tampering and to facilitate an audit, he said.

He also pointed out how, after nearly two years of deliberation, Germany’s Supreme Court ruled last March that e-voting was unconstitutional because the average citizen could not be expected to understand the exact steps involved in the recording and tallying of votes. Earlier, Ireland had given up E-voting for similar reasons.

In the US too, after considerable controversy the Federal Election Commission has come up in 2005 with detailed voting system guidelines which run into more than 400 pages. Saigal said it is noteworthy that not any of the safeguards mentioned in these guidelines is in place in India.

Saigal said he had gone into all the safeguards built into the E-voting system in India with the help of former colleagues and IT experts and finds it both ‘possible and plausible’ to rig these machines and get a crooked result.

He says if the credibility of the electoral process is to be ensured, pre- and post-election checks of the software now fused onto the chips of the EVMs is a must.

It is not that all the 10 lakh and odd machines used in the poll need to be checked. If we take only those booths where one of the candidates has received 75 per cent of the votes and in constituencies where the margin of the winner is less than 15,000, not more than 7000-odd machines will need to be checked.

Saigal argues in his report that “if we cannot do this we must revert to the paper ballot.” The need for a fair, free and transparent polling system transcends any reasons anyone may have to the contrary, he added.
Saigal says he organised a mock poll on a laptop to demonstrate how the results can be scewed by inserting a numerical code which is so simple. Just press F2, followed by the number of the favoured candidate. The demo showed that this code can be keyed in at any stage, even at the time of the poll by any voter.

Those who attended the mock exercise included Ms Asa Das, retired Secretary, Government of India, K F Fabian, retired IFS officer and former ambassador, Ravi Kathpalia, ex-controller general of accounts, and S K Agnihotri and Dr Krishan Saigal, retired former chief secretaries of Assam.

Saigal says at first glance, it does appear that there are adequate safeguards in place, as is mentioned in the FAQs on the Election Commission website, Returning Officers manual and details given in the website of the manufacturer, BEL.

He, however, asserts in his letter to CEC that there are huge gaps in the safeguards. “Take the assurance of the manufacturer that ‘Programme codes once written and fused in this OTPROM (One Time Programmable Read Only Memory) cannot be read back or altered by anyone including the manufacturer’.

Does this mean that even the Election Commission, when it received the machines, did not check and has not checked since whether the programme fused in by the manufacturer did not have a secret code as a string like the one that we have prepared, Saigal asked.

“If, as it seems, the EC it relying on the certificate given by the manufacturer, we have no protection whatsoever against the manufacturer itself preparing a program like the one prepared by the undersigned and fusing it onto the chip/circuit board,” he affirms.

Once the election process begins, the EC claims total transparency in all its actions. First of all the machines are taken out of storage and sent to the Districts. Thereafter, according to a Govt of India website, ‘….these machines are checked only by the engineers of the two PSUs before each election…..’

Saigal says it is not clear what this ‘checking’ is all about and whether these ‘engineers’ are under the control of the EC. They use some ‘equipment’ to prepare the machine by removing the result of the previous election and do not tamper or check the software chip in any way, the EC claims.

“If this is all they do, why they need to come at all: surely the result could be deleted by simply pressing a button, which any official of EC could do! It is like you and me calling on Microsoft engineers to come in every time we need to permanently delete some program from our desktops!”

The EC claims that among the safeguards is the fact that randomisation is done at many levels so that it is impossible to find out which particular machine will go to which particular booth. Moreover, the order in which candidates are going to be listed in the electoral roll is known only a few days before the poll; so it is not possible for someone to rig the EVM’s software to favour a particular candidate.

Saigal, however, contests it. He says it is easy to say that randomisation will be of no help if the software is tricked. As for the fact that order of candidates is decided only a few days before the poll, with a specially prepared software the poll can be rigged at the time of the poll by any voter, he points out.

“No, these safeguards are mere cosmetics; what we really need is a fool-proof method of checking whether the software in any/all machines has been corrupted through lapse of time or deliberate tampering or was so corrupted in the first place,” the former Delhi chief secretary added.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

NEW DELHI: The Indian Election Commission (EC) could be sitting on a major election-rigging scandal, following a presentation on Fridayshowing how the software used in the electronic voting machines(EVMs) can be manipulated.

Omesh Saigal, an engineering graduate and former Delhi chief secretary, stunned the EC with a presentation showing that the software used in the EVMs can be manipulated to favour a particular party or candidate. Following the presentation, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Navin Chawla ordered an inquiry into the possibility of such rigging during the recently concluded elections in India and Indian-held Kashmir (IHK).

Deputy Election Commissioner Balakrishnan was asked to conduct the inquiry on the basis of a report handed over by Saigal to the CEC, along with the software he had developed to show how the e-voting machines could be rigged.

Saigal, who is an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi alumni, demanded an urgent check of the programme that runs the EVMs used in elections since 2004. The demonstration showed that after just keying in a certain code, the EVMs put every fifth vote in favour of a certain candidate. In his letter to the CEC, Saigal alleged that the EVM software had not been checked by the EC since the machines were manufactured more than 6 to 7 years ago.

His argued that the EC merely relied on the certificates provided by the manufacturers, the government-run Bharat Electronics Limited(BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). He alleged that the two firms had subcontracted private parties who actually provided the certificates.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\074\story 4-7-2009 pg 7 4

http://janamejayan.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/india’s-e-elections-rigged/

http://sites.google.com/site/hindunew/electronic-voting-machines

Islam, Christainity and Communism in a war with Hinduism

2009-07-09T15:46:00.000-07:00

A seminar by Radha Rajan. Must watch for the remaining 'true Hindus' of the world. Also passover to some 'dhimmis'.. perhaps some might get awake..

Savarkar Jayanti: A track of his actions

2009-06-17T03:39:00.001-07:00

Subject: "Veer Savarkar Jayanti - 28th May"

Veer Savarkar

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, commonly known as Swatantryaveer Savarkar was a fearless freedom fighter, social reformer, writer, dramatist, poet, historian, political leader and philosopher. He remains largely unknown to the masses because of the vicious propaganda against him and misunderstanding around him that has been created over several decades. This website attempts to bring the life, thought, actions and relevance of Savarkar before a global audience.
Veer Savarkar - A legend

The first political leader to daringly set Absolute Political Independence as India's goal (1900).
The first Indian political leader to daringly perform a bonfire of foreign (English) clothes (1905).
The first Indian to organize a revolutionary movement for India's Independence on an international level (1906).
The first Indian law student who was not called to the English Bar despite having passed his examination and observed the necessary formalities, for his activities to seek India's freedom from the British (1909).
The only Indian leader whose arrest in London caused legal difficulties for British Courts and whose case is still referred to in the interpretations of the Fugitive Offenders Act and the Habeas Corpus (Rex Vs Governor of Brixton Prison, ex-parte Savarkar)
The first Indian historian whose book on the 1857 War of Independence was proscribed by British Authorities in India even before its publication. The Governor General had asked the Postmaster General to confiscate copies of the book six months before the book was officially banned (1909).
The first political prisoner whose daring escape and arrest on French soil became a cause celebre in the International Court of Justice at The Hague. This case was mentioned in many International Treaties at that time (1910).
The first graduate whose degree was withdrawn by an Indian University for striving for India's freedom (1911).
The first poet in the world who, deprived of pen and paper, composed his poems and then wrote them on the prison walls with thorns and nails, memorized ten thousand lines of his poetry for years and later transmitted them to India through his fellow-prisoners who also memorized these lines.
The first revolutionary leader who within less than 10 years gave a death-blow to the practice of untouchability in the remote district of Ratnagiri while being interned there.
The first Indian leader who successfully started -
A Ganeshotsava open to all Hindus including ex-untouchables (1930).
Interdining ceremonies of all Hindus including ex-untouchables (1931).
"Patitpavan Mandir", open to all Hindus including ex-untouchables (22 February 1931).
A cafe open to all Hindus including ex-untouchables (01 May 1933).
The first political prisoner in the world who was sentenced to Transportation for Life twice, a sentence unparalled in the history of the British Empire.
The first political leader to embrace death voluntarily by way of Atma Samarpan in the highest tradition of Yoga (1966).

Chronology Of Savarkar's Life

28 May 1883 - Born in Bhagur, a tiny village in Dist. Nasik, Maharashtra
1892 - Lost his mother Radhabai
1898 - Took an oath before the family deity to conduct armed revolt against British Rule
09 Sep 1898 - Lost his father Damodarpant

01 Jan 1900 - Founded Mitra Mela, a secret revolutionary society
01 Mar 1901 - Married Yamuna (Mai)

19 Dec 1901 - Passed Matriculation examination

24 Jan 1902 - Joined Fergusson College, Pune

May 1904 - Founded Abhinav Bharat - A revolutionary organisation

Nov 1905 - Organised the first public bonfire of foreign clothes in Pune

Dec 1905 - Passed B.A. examination

June 1906 - Left for London
10 May 1907 - Celebrated Golden Jubilee of Indian War of Independence 1857 in London

June 1907 - Wrote the book “Joseph Mazzini” which was later published by Babarao Savarkar
1908 - Wrote 'Indian War of Independence 1857'. It was secretly published in Holland

May 1909 - Passed Bar-at-Law examination, but granting of permission to practice was denied
01 July 1909 - Madanlal Dhingra shot dead Curzon Wyllie in London

24 Oct 1909 - Vijayadashmi celebrated under the Chairmanship of Gandhi at India House, London

13 Mar 1910 - Arrested on arrival in London from Paris

08 Jul 1910 - Epic escape through the port hole of SS Morea while being taken to India
24 Dec 1910 - Awarded Transportation for Life

31 Jan 1911 - Awarded Transportation for Life for the second time, the only person in the history of the British Empire to have received it twice

04 Jul 1911 - Entered the Cellular Jail, Andamans

April 1919 - Yesuvahini, the wife of his elder brother passed away

21 May 1921 - Both brothers brought back to the Indian mainland
1921-1923 - Lodged at Alipore and Ratnagiri Jails

06 Jan 1924 - Released from Yerawada Prison and interned in Ratnagiri on condition that he would not participate in politics
07 Jan 1925 - Daughter Prabhat was born

10 Jan 1925 - A new weekly “Shraddhanand” launched in memory of Swami Shraddhanandji of Arya Samaj

Mar 1925 - Dr. Hedgewar, who was to found the RSS later, met Savarkar

01 Mar 1927 - Gandhi called on Savarkar at Ratnagiri

17 Mar 1928 - Son Vishwas was born

16 Nov 1930 - First interdining organized as a part of social reform campaign

Feb 1931 - Instrumental in establishment of Patitpavan Mandir open to all Hindus

25 Feb 1931 - Presided over Bombay Presidency Untouchability Eradication Conference

26 Apr 1931 - Chairman of the Somvanshi Mahar Parishad in the premises of Patitpavan Mandir

17 Sep 1931 - Arranged programmes such as keertan by a person belonging to the bhangi caste, interdining of 75 ladies as a part of social reform campaign
22 Sep 1931 - Prince of Nepal, Hem Bahadur Samsher Singh called on Savarkar

10 May 1937 - Unconditional release from internment at Ratnagiri

10 Dec 1937 - Elected as President of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha at its 19th Session at Karnavati (Ahmedabad) and continued to be re-elected President for the next seven years

15 Apr 1938 - Elected as President of Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

01 Feb 1939 - Started unarmed resistance against the Nizam of Bhaganagar (Hyderabad)

22 Jun 1941 - Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose called on Savarkar

25 Dec 1941 - Bhagalpur struggle

May 1943 - Public felicitations on the occasion of 61st birth anniversary

14 Aug 1943 - University of Nagpur conferred Honorary D.Litt. on Savarkar

05 Nov 1943 - Elected president of Marathi Natya Sammelan at Sangli

16 Mar 1945 - Elder brother Babarao passed away

19 Apr 1945 - Presided over All India Princely States Hindu Sabha Conference at Baroda (Gujarat)

08 May 1945 - Daughter Prabhat married at Pune

Apr 1946 - Bombay Government lifted ban on Savarkar’s literature

15 Aug 1947 - Hoisted both Bhagwa and Tricolour Flags on Savarkar Sadanto celebrate India's independence

05 Feb 1948 - Arrested under the Preventive Detention Act after Gandhi's murder

10 Feb 1949 - Acquitted in Gandhi Murder Trial

19 Oct 1949 - Youngest brother Dr. Narayanrao Savarkar passed away

Dec 1949 - Inaugurated Calcutta session of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha

04 Apr 1950 - Was arrested and detained in Belgaum jail on the eve of arrival of Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali in Delhi

May 1952 - Public function held at Pune to announce the dissolution of Abhinav Bharat, the revolutionary society having achieved its aim of freeing India

Feb 1955 - Presided over Silver Jubilee celebrations of Patitpavan Mandir at Ratnagiri

23 Jul 1955 - Was the Chief Speaker at Lokmanya Tilak Centenary Celebrations in Pune

10 Nov 1957 - Main speaker at the Centenary Celebrations of the Indian War of Independence 1857 held in New Delhi

28 May 1958 - Accorded a civic reception by Greater Bombay Municipal Corporation on the occasion of his Diamond Jubilee

08 Oct 1959 - University of Pune conferred honorary D. Litt. at his residence

24 Dec 1960 - Mrityunjay Divas celebration - a day set down for the release of Savarkar after completing the sentences of two Transportation for Life

15 Apr 1962 - Sri Prakash, Governor of Bombay called upon Savarkar at his residence to pay his respects

29 May 1963 - Hospitalized for a fracture in the leg

08 Nov 1963 - Savarkar’s wife Yamuna passed away

Sep 1965 - Taken seriously ill

01 Feb 1966 - Takes a decision to fast unto death

26 Feb 1966 - 10.30 a.m., at the age of 83, Savarkar left his mortal coil

27 Feb 1966 - Cremation at the electric crematorium, the final salute given by 2500 uniformed swayamsevaks of the RSS and millions of admirers across the country

VANDE MATRAM......!!

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's story..

2009-06-17T03:37:00.001-07:00

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

When I finally admitted to myself that I was an unbeliever, it was because I simply couldn’t pretend any longer that I believed. Leaving Allah was a long and painful process for me, and I tried to resist it for as long as I could. All my life I had wanted to be a good Muslim woman, who had learned to submit to God—which in practice meant the rule of my brother, my father, and later my husband.

When I was a child, I had a child’s revulsion against injustice. I could not understand why Allah, if he were truly merciful and all-powerful, would tolerate and indeed require that I stand behind my brother at prayer and obey his whims, or that the courts should consider my statements to be inherently less valid than his. But shame and obedience had been drilled into me from my earliest years. I obeyed my parents, my clan, and my religious teachers, and I felt ashamed that by my questioning I seemed to be betraying them.

As I became a teenager, my rebellion grew. It was not yet a revolt against Islam. Who was I to contest Allah? But I did feel constricted by my family and our Somali clan, where family honor was the overriding value, and seemed principally to reside in the control, sale, and transfer of girls’ virginity. Reading Western books—even trashy romance novels—gave me a vision of an astounding alternative universe where girls had choices.

Still, I struggled to conform. I voluntarily robed in a black hijab that covered my body from head to toe. I tried to pray five times a day and to obey the countless strictures of the Koran and the Hadith. I did so mostly because I was afraid of Hell. The Koran lists Hell’s torments in vivid detail: sores, boiling water, peeling skin, burning flesh, dissolving bowels. An everlasting fire burns you forever for as your flesh chars and your juices boil, you form a new skin. Every preacher I encountered hammered more mesmerizing details onto this nightmarish tableau. It was genuinely terrifying.

Ultimately, I think, it was books, and boys, that saved me. No matter how hard I tried to submit to Allah’s will, I still felt desire—sexual desire, urgent and real, which even the vision of Hellfire could not suppress. It made me ashamed to feel that way, but when my father told me he was marrying me off to a stranger, I realized that I could not accept being locked forever into the bed of a man who left me cold.

I escaped. I ended up in Holland. With the help of many benevolent Dutch people, I managed to gain confidence that I had a future outside my clan. I decided to study political science, to discover why Muslim societies—Allah’s societies—were poor and violent, while the countries of the despised infidels were wealthy and peaceful. I was still a Muslim in those days. I had no intention of criticizing Allah’s will, only to discover what had gone so very wrong.

It was at university that I gradually lost my faith. The ideas and the facts that I encountered there were thrilling and powerful, but they also clashed horribly with the vision of the world with which I had grown up. At first, when the cognitive dissonance became too strong, I would try to shove these issues to the back of my mind. The ideas of Spinoza and Freud, Darwin and Locke and Mill, were indisputably true, but so was the Koran; and I vowed to one day resolve these differences. In the meantime, I could not make myself stop reading. I knew the argument was a weak one, but I told myself that Allah is in favor of knowledge.

The pleasures and anonymity of life in the clan-less West were almost as beguiling as the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers. Quite soon after I arrived in Holland, I replaced my Muslim dress with jeans. I avoided socializing with other Somalis first, and then with other Muslims—they preached to me about fear of the Hereafter and warned that I was damned. Years later, I drank my first glass of wine and had a boyfriend. No bold of Hellfire burned me; chaos did not ensue. To pacify my mind, I adopted an attitude of “negotiating” with Allah: I told myself these were small sins, which hurt no one; surly God would not mind too much.

Then the Twin Towers were toppled in the name of Allah and his prophet, and I felt that I must chose sides. Osama bin Laden’s justification of the attacks was more consistent with the content of the Koran and the Sunna than the chorus of Muslim officials and Western wishful thinkers who denied every link between the bloodshed and Islam. Did I, as a Muslim, support bin Laden’s act of “worship”? Did I feel it was what God commanded? And if not, was I a Muslim?

I picked up a book—The Atheist Manifesto by Herman Philipse, who later became a great friend. I began reading it, marveling at the clarity and naughtiness of its author. But I really didn’t have to. Just looking at it, just wanting to read it—that already meant I doubted. Before I ‘d read four pages, I realized that I had left Allah behind years ago. I was an atheist. An apostate. An infidel. I looked in a mirror and said out loud, in Somali, “I don’t believe in God.”

I felt relief. There was no pain but a real clarity. The long process of seeing the flaws in my belief structure, and carefully tip-toeing around the frayed edges as parts of it were torn out piece by piece—all that was over. The ever-present prospect of Hellfire lifted, and my horizon seemed broader. God, Satan, angels: these were all figments of human imagination, mechanisms to impose the will of the powerful on the weak. From now on I could step firmly on the ground that was under my feet and navigate based on my own reason and self-respect. My moral compass was within myself, not in the pages of a sacred book.

In the next few months, I began going to museums, I needed to see ruins and mummies and old dead people, to look at the reality of the bones and to absorb the realization that, when I die, I will become just a bunch of bones. Some of them were five hundred million years old, I noted; if it took Allah longer than that to raise the dead, the prospect of his retribution for my lifetime of enjoyment seemed distinctly less plausible.

I was on a psychological mission to accept living without a God, which means accepting that I give my life its own meaning. I was looking for a deeper sense of morality. In Islam you are Allah’s slave; you submit, which means that ideally you are devoid of personal will. You are not a free individual. You behave well because you fear Hell, which is really a form of blackmail—you have no personal ethic.

Now I told myself that we, as human individuals, are our own guides to good and evil. We must think for ourselves; we are responsible for own morality. I arrived at the conclusion that I couldn’t be honest with others unless I was honest with myself. I wanted to comply with the goals of religion—which are to be a better and more generous person—without suppressing my will and forcing it to obey an intricate and inhumanly detailed web of rules. I had lied many times in my life, but now, I told myself, that was over: I had had enough of lying.

After I wrote my memoir, Infidel (published in the United States in 2007), I did a book tour in the United States. I found that interviewers from the Heartland often asked if I had considered adopting the message of Jesus Christ. The idea seems to be that I should shop for a better, more humane religion than Islam, rather than taking refuge in unbelief. A religion of talking serpents and heavenly gardens? I usually respond that I suffer from hay fever. The Christian take on Hellfire seems less dramatic than the Muslim vision, which I grew up with, but Christian magical thinking appeals to me no more than my grandmother’s angels and dijins.

The only position that leaves no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

Adventures of Chacha Nehru

2009-06-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

A compilation I made of S.R. Goel's experiences of former PM Jawaharlal Nehru from ch. 9 of his book: How I became a Hindu.

1) "There was a thunderous applause as Pandit Nehru came up on the rostrum, greeted the people with folded hands, and was formally introduce,d by a local Congress leader. But the next thing I saw made me rub my eyes. The great man had become red in the face, turned to his left, and planted a slap smack on the face of the same leader who was standing near the mike. The mike had failed. Pandit Nehru was gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice as if something terrible had happened. Meanwhile the mike started functioning again so that he could be heard all over the place. He was saying: "Dilli ki Congress ke karkun kamine hain, razil hain, namaqul hain. Maine kyatti bar inse kaha hai ke intizam nahin kar sakte to mujhe mat bulaya karo, par ye sunte hi nahin (the leaders of the Congress in Delhi are lowbred, mean, and mindless people. I have told them time and again not to invite me if they cannot make proper arrangements. But they pay no heed)." There was pin drop silence for a moment The next moment there was another thunderous applause. The Gandhi capped man sitting next to me offered comment "Panditji is famous for his temper. And people like him all the more that way." I turned towards the rostrum. The face of Congress leader who had been slapped was bathed in smiles as if he had won some coveted prize.

This was a new experience for me. I had attended many public meetings in my village, at my district headquarters, and in Delhi. I had never witnessed such wild behaviour on a public platform. Of course, those other speakers were not so big as this one. Was it the way the big ones behaved? I wondered. I found it difficult to admire a man who had not only shouted at but also slapped someone who was placed lower than him in life, and who was in no position to hit back. And that too for no fault of the victim. Even as a young boy, I had nothing but contempt for bullies..."

2) "..The great man was profusely garlanded as soon as he appeared on the rostrum. He repeated his greetings to the people with folded hands. But as he moved towards the mike, there was some commotion at one corner of the gathering. Someone told me that workers in one of the cotton mills in Delhi had gone on strike, and were seeking Pandit Nehru's support for their demands. I thought the workers were being unseemly. They had chosen a wrong time and a wrong place for presenting their case. The nation was in the midst of a crisis . This was no occasion to pester a national leader with petty local problems. I also gathered that the Communists were at the back of the commotion. To hell with the Communists, I said.

But as I turned towards the rostrum again, what I saw was far more unseemly. Pandit Nehru was trying to get free of the grip in which he was being held by several Congress leaders who had thrown their hands round his arms and waist. He was being prevented from jumping down, and running towards the far corner in which the commotion had arisen. He seemed to be unaware of the crowd sitting inbetween. One moment he was moving forward, and the next moment he was being pulled back. And all the time, he was shouting at the top of his voice. The mike reported him as saying, "Dekhna chahta hun in kaminon ko main. Bata dena chahta hun inko ke main kon hun. Inki ye gandi harkaten main qatai bardasht nahin kar sakta (I want to have a look at these lowbred people. I want to tell them who I am. I cannot tolerate this dirty behaviour on their part)." The commotion died down. The Congress leaders released their hold on him. Suddenly, he straightened up as if he was going to get out of his boots. He stretched his right hand, full and upwards, and shouted, "Main ek shandar admi hun (I am a man of some stature)." The crowd was clapping wildly, and continuously.

His speech that day was totally incoherent. It seemed as if he was talking to himself rather than addressing a rally. He kept on withdrawing in the next sentence what he had said in an earlier one. One moment he was denouncing the British as "a stone sitting on our breast". Next moment he was bubbling with sympathy for the cause of freedom and progress being defended by the Soviet Union. He was all for a fight to the finish so far as British imperialism was concerned. But at the same time he warned the people against coming in the way of the war effort. It was difficult to make out as to where he stood. I will not comment on the language he was speaking. I found it as shabby as on the earlier occasion..."

3) "...Much worse came after the meeting dispersed. He descended from the rostrum and started moving towards the gate where I was standing. Congress volunteers had formed a cordon round him. But as the people rushed forward and tried to touch his feet, he pushed away the volunteers and started looking after himself. He was slapping with both his hands and kicking with both his feet the people who came near him. He was wearing full boots. Some of his fans must have been badly hurt. I thought he had no business to treat his people in this cruel manner. After all, they were only trying to show their devotion to him in the only way they had learnt from their tradition.

A few days earlier, I had been to the Harijan Basti in North Delhi, where Mahatma Gandhi was staying. I had sat at his feet for more than an hour, without anyone trying to drive me out of the small cottage. He had made all of us laugh heartily as he tried to coax some rich men into giving him money for the Harijan cause, in amounts larger then those they had offered initially. Evening came, and he proceeded towards the prayer meeting. Volunteers had thrown a rope cordon round him. But people could not be held back. They rushed from every side, and crawled under the cordon to reach his feet. He stopped walking, and stood looking helpless. His face was beaming with love. He said in a husky voice, "Budha hun, mar jaunga. Jakar beth jaun to pachhi sir se pair tak chhu lena (I am old. I will die. Let me get there and sit down. Then you can touch me from head to foot)."

I compared the behaviour of the two great national leaders when faced with crowds of their people. I could not help concluding that while Mahatma Gandhi was a son of the soil, at home in the midst of his people, Pandit Nehru was a Brown Sahib who loved to see the people crowd his meetings but who despised their culture. He looked like an alien who had strayed into a strange land. Whatever I saw or came to know of Pandit Nehru subsequently confirmed this conclusion. I will mention only one more instance...."

4) "..I happened to be in Delhi towards the end of 1947 or in early 1948, and went to see my journalist friend from America. As I have mentioned, he had left Calcutta for Delhi soon after India became free. As I sat down with him in the Coffee House, he said, " Sita, who does this man think.he is? Almighty God?" I asked him, " Who? What has happened?" He told me the story of some Sadhus who had sat down on an indefinite fast near Pandit Nehru's residence in New Delhi, and were seeking an assurance from him that cow slaughter would be stopped now that the beef eating British had departed. My friend said, "I had gone there to take some pictures, and gather a report. American readers love such stories from India. But what I saw was a horror for me. As I was talking to one of the Sadus who knew some English, this man rushed out of his house accompanied by his sister, Mrs. Pandit. Both of them were shouting something in Hindi. The poor Sadus were taken by surprise, and stood up. This man slapped the Sadu who had moved forward with folded hands. His sister did the same. They were saying something which sounded pretty harsh. Then both of them turned back, and disappeared as fast as they had come. The Sadus did not utter so much as a word in protest, not even after the duo had left. They had taken it all as if it was the normal thing." I observed, "But in the case of Pandit Nehru, it is the normal thing. He has been slapping and kicking people all his life." He concluded, "I do not know the norm in your country. In my country, if the President so much as shouts on a citizen, he will have to go. We take it from no bastard, no matter how big he happens to be." I kept quiet...."

Epilogue: "Now that I have read Pandit Nehru's writings and speechs extensively, and know of the policies he followed, I can say with full confidence that this incurable bully was an incurable coward as well. One has only to piece together his behaviour pattern in different contexts, and towards different people. One can see quite clearly that at the time that he was crawling and cringing before Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League, he was being high and mighty with the Hindu Mahasabha and its leaders. Later on, he was thundering against the RSS, and at the same time crawling before the Communists in India and abroad who were lambasting him as a running dog of American imperialism. He could never help licking the boot that kicked him, while heaping humiliations on those who were in no position to hit back, or who did not know how to tell him his place."

Flatterings:
"..By the time I returned to Delhi in May 1957, Pandit Nehru was at the zenith of his power and prestige, in India and abroad. The Second Five Year Plan, patterned after the Soviet model, had been launched with great fanfare as the harbinger of a socialist era in India's history. The Americans had plumped for the Chester Bowles line that Nehru's "New India" was a great experiment in "democratic development" in contrast to the totalitarian path chosen by Red China. But these were minor compliments to the "greatest Indian after Asoka and Akbar". What he himself prized above everything else was his image as "the custodian of world peace". A sycophant press in India and a fellow travelling one abroad, had built him up into larger than life size. I found it difficult to believe my ears when I heard it again and again, and from people in long pants, that "but for the presence of Panditji at this critical juncture in human history, the two big powers will blow the earth to bits in an atomic holocaust". There was hardly a speech in public meetings or scholarly seminars which did not begin with the words, "as our beloved Prime Minister, the apostle of world peace, has pointed out...".."

Impotent West rages at Lanka..

2009-06-17T03:28:00.000-07:00

Kanchan Gupta

In the early-1990s when gunbattles between terrorists and security forces were a commonplace occurrence in Jammu & Kashmir, a British newspaper ran a bizarre story. If memory serves me right, it was The Independent which, in a ‘special’ despatch, probably filed from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, reported how Indian Army jawans would drape themselves in white sheets and descend on remote villages after nightfall. Poor, terrified Kashmiris, convinced that they were being attacked by ‘ghosts’, would either die of shock or lose their mental equilibrium. I don’t remember the exact details, but I think there was some mention of the less fortunate being shot dead in cold blood.

In those days the Anglo-American media merrily concocted grim stories of human rights violations by the Indian state, many of them fed by a certain Robin Raphel who had been appointed America’s official busybody for South Asia by President Bill Clinton. The terrorists, separatists and assorted Islamists in the Valley hero-worshipped her while human rights organisations tripped over each other to produce gory reports which Ms Raphel would then cite to denigrate India. I recall receiving a glossy report published by Amnesty International on ‘extrajudicial killings’ in the Kashmir Valley by the Indian Army. The cover showed a distraught, dishevelled woman wailing over a grave and the caption said, “A Kashmiri widow grieves for her husband killed by the Indian Army” — or words to that effect. A friend in London alerted me that it was a con job; friends in the Government helped track down the origin of the cover photograph: It had been shot at the grave of a peer in south India, a visit to which is believed to cure lunatics of their lunacy. There was no e-mail those days, so a fax was sent to Amnesty International seeking its comment. There was no response. The Pioneer ran a story pointing out the inaccuracy and raising questions about the contents between the misleading covers. It was subsequently picked up by other newspapers and news services. Amnesty International put out a long statement, insisting that the cover was ‘only illustrative’ and the contents of the report were ‘correct’. But nobody, barring the Anglo-American media, bothered to take note of it.

Years later there was the Chittisinghpora massacre in Anantnag district of Jammu & Kashmir on March 20, 2000. Dressed in Indian Army fatigues, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorists killed 36 Sikhs. One of the killers, Mohammad Suhail Malik of Sialkot in Pakistan, told Barry Bearak of the New York Times that he was ‘directed’ by the LeT to carry out the massacre. Suhail Malik is a nephew of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the chief terrorist of LeT who now heads Jamaat-ud-Dawa’h and has just been rewarded by the Lahore High Court for masterminding last November’s fidayeen attack on Mumbai. The overwhelming evidence about the LeT’s involvement in the Chittisinghpora massacre was ignored by the Anglo-American media which insisted the killings were the handiwork of the Indian Army. This absurd claim was bolstered by fifth columnists amidst us, including a travel writer fascinated by something as banal as ‘butter chicken’ (I must shame-facedly admit that it was me who encouraged him to become a writer and gave him his first byline in the Pioneer), who wrote long essays and scathing articles denouncing India in the Anglo-American media while exonerating the LeT and its patrons in Pakistan.

These stories come to mind as I read horrifying accounts of how the Sri Lankan Army ‘killed’ 20,000 or more Tamil civilians in the concluding days of the war it waged against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, one of the most dreaded terrorist organisations in the world to which goes the credit of inventing the ‘suicide belt’ and popularising the ‘human bomb’ as a weapon of mass terror. Had it not been for the LTTE and its ruthless chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran, jihad minus suicide bombers would have been less blood-curdlingly spectacular. Ever since its formation in 1976, the LTTE excelled in mindless slaughter and running a Pol Pot-like regime with the help of sophisticated arms and limitless funds. Prabhakaran ran every possible racket — from drug trafficking to human trafficking, from extortion to appropriation — to fund his terrorist enterprise. He deployed women to blow themselves up and kill high profile targets, including Rajiv Gandhi; he forcibly inducted children into his army to be used as cannon fodder. In the end, he got his just desserts. Tamils and Sinhalese are celebrating their liberation from the fear of man-eating Tigers.

The Americans have got nowhere with their three-trillion-dollar war on terror. The Sri Lankans have demonstrated that all it takes is conviction and determination to destroy terror root and branch. The mighty West looks impotent when compared to a tiny island nation which has won a spectacular victory. Is this why the Anglo-American media has unleashed a virulent campaign of calumny against Sri Lanka, accusing its Army of genocide? The Times of London has published a story alleging at least 20,000 civilians have been killed by the Sri Lankan Army. This is thrice the figure claimed by busybodies of the UN. There is a clamour among ‘liberal’ democracies in Europe that the Sri Lankan Government should be tried for ‘war crimes’. The US is strangely silent. Colombo says no more than 3,000 to 5,000 civilians, who were used as a ‘human shield’ by Prabhakaran and his men, have been killed, nearly all of them in LTTE fire. Collateral damage is inevitable in the war on terror, or else Afghan civilians would not die during Nato operations and Pakistanis would not be killed in American drone attacks.

Here are some facts which perhaps explain the rush to shed tears for the LTTE and concoct outlandish stories about the Sri Lankan Army blasting its way through with heavy mortar in a densely-populated area. Over the decades Tamils from Sri Lanka with pronounced LTTE connections have been provided with ‘political asylum’ in countries like Britain, Canada and the US. The Tamil diaspora is now estimated to be 1.2 million strong. The Tamils are financially well-off and have access to politicians whom they fund. In the UK, Germany, Canada, the US and smaller European countries they command a sizeable vote-share (300,000 voters in Canada can swing results in several constituencies). With the LTTE gone, the rackets many of them ran on behalf of Prabhakaran will now be adversely affected. Hence their raucous protest and impressive rallies.

As for the sanctimonious Anglo-American media, any story that paints the former colonies in the bleakest of colours is worth publishing on the front page. The media-generated outrage would suggest that only Whites have the right to wage war on terror. Racism doesn’t exist only in Australia.

Nurturing India's Soft Power is the Best Antidote to Racial Discrimination

2009-06-17T03:27:00.000-07:00

NRIs have not paid sufficient importance to developing an assertive identity
nor have they used India's growing soft power to their advantage

Bharatiya Pragna (June 2009)

It is appalling to see the withdrawal symptoms of many Indians in Australia, in the wake of the continuing racial attacks. The solutions being offered by many students on community helplines 'to avoid racial attacks' makes you feel that they have fallen prey to the Stockholm Syndrome of sympathising with the bully.

Here is a list of such defeatist Dos & Don'ts submitted by Indian students to avoid racial attacks. All of them smack of the same slavish attitude towards the attackers and betray gross ignorance of their own fundamental human rights:

· Anurag Gangwar, who graduated from the University of South Australia in 2006 writes, "Always remember: You are the one who came to 'Their' land. Try to mix up with them and understand their culture. 'They' will not come looking for you to start friendship… Never discuss cricket with your colleagues. Aussies can never accept that their team is not doing well and will release their anger in some form or the other. If they discuss cricket with you show your neutral only attitude. So next if you find out that Australian cricket team loses to Indian cricket team (which won't be a surprise any more!) then keep your excitement to yourself. Never criticize their team for not playing well, mind you!"

· "Most Indian international students don't know basic manners. They shout loudly in public in Hindi or some other language. They pick their nose in public. They play Bollywood songs loudly on their phone speakers while on trains thinking everyone else wants to hear it too etc. They don't realise such behaviour is considered very bad manners here." – Karthik, Melbourne

· "When one comes to a foreign land as students, one should leave the Indian way of life behind and be ready to adopt the lifestyle of the country one goes to. If you have come to Australia, adjust to the Australian way of life instead of hoping that Australians will adjust to your Indian lifestyle. Also the basic minimum is to know how to speak English properly." - Yatin Sony, Melbourne

Is there any wonder then that Indian students who nurture such a defeatist mindset are the prime targets for racial attacks? Instead of standing up to the bullies in unison, the whole community seems to be bending over backwards to accommodate the white supremacists. It is only in the late 18th century that European settlements commenced on Australian mainland. There is no reason why the European whites should consider themselves more native to Australia than the Indian immigrants today.

How many Australian or other international students who come to India, for example, think of changing their dress code or not speaking in English or not discussing cricket during their stay here, in order not to offend the natives? Why is it that we do not hear frequently of such racial attacks against the Chinese or Middle Eastern students studying in America or Australia?

NRIs in general and Hindus in particular continue to harbour colonial residues which prevent them from asserting their identity clearly. We react only when the situation takes an alarming turn and our anguish cools off as the symptoms fade, without ever finding a lasting solution to the problem.

This is what happened with the Kashmiri Pandits too. They reacted en masse when the Amarnath Yatra controversy erupted but their emotions fizzled out soon and they went back to voting for the Congress party in the recent elections, the party which is primarily responsible for their plight today. Hindus all over the world react in a similar pattern.

It is true that the global economic recession has added fuel to the fire with the whites feeling more insecure in competition with the Indian graduates. And this is only likely to aggravate in the coming months.

Also, in the post 9/11 scenario of global religious conflict, the whites do not perceive much difference between the Islamists and the Indians. This is yet another failure of Hindu emigrants, who have always shied away from asserting their religious identity as Hindus in foreign countries.

To end racial discrimination against Indian students, whether in Australia or in America, what we need is a consistent and clear headed attempt to define and build the Indian identity instead of trying to erase it or compromise it as we have done all these decades by encouraging that ignominious 'South Asian' tag which the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have used to their advantage.

Here are some immediate action points which could help us crush the hydra of racism which is spreading its tentacles in countries where there is a significant Indian presence:

1. The role of the Indian government in safeguarding the interests of the Indian Diaspora cannot be overemphasized. Does the Manmohan Singh government have the skill or the will to achieve this? Why can't the government of India seek an independent inquiry into the racial attacks in Australia, under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR)? The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is primarily responsible for looking into violation of human rights against individuals and communities, particularly against cases of racial discrimination. The website of the UNHCHR which I just browsed through does not even make a mention of the attacks on the Indian students in Australia! Such apathy can only be blamed on the Indian government which is busy enjoying the spoils of power won after the recent Lok Sabha elections. The new external affairs minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is busy mouthing his concerns to TV channels to build his image, instead of issuing a stern demarche to the Australian ambassador demanding clear action to end the racist attacks.

2. The Indian Diaspora must build an NGO to safeguard its human rights, provide legal assistance to victims of racial discrimination and lobby with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Australia is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and is bound by international human rights law to take steps to end racial discrimination against Indian students.

3. Document each and every case of racial discrimination against Indians, not just physical attacks which we are witnessing today. For example, do Indians have freedom to practice their religion & faith? Do they have equal opportunities in education and employment? Are they allowed to participate freely in the social and cultural life of the people? Such documentation of violations can go a long way in building a strong case against racial discrimination against Indians. Individual cases can be filed with UNHCHR which can help in building international opinion against the offending countries.

4. Make every effort to exploit India's soft power to create a positive image for the Diaspora. India's soft power grows out of our cultural influence, which is the most powerful weapon we have in comparison to any other country. The world community must perceive the Indian community's unique cultural traits – tolerance, social capital and devotion to education & hard work, which are the traits an ideal minority in a multicultural society is expected to nurture.

5. The Indian embassies in foreign countries have a duty to educate every Indian immigrant about his /her rights as well as the laws and cultural finesse of the country to which they migrate, through a systematic and compulsory orientation programme. This will facilitate a smoother integration of the Indian immigrants into the native culture and prevent them from becoming awkward misfits.

6. Finally, stand up to the bully; behave as a self-respecting Indian should, as a representative and a cultural ambassador of a country that is known for its history of racial tolerance. Compromise only when your freedom is infringing upon the rightful freedom of others and not merely to placate the racists.
– Pramod Kumar

Q & A about Indian money in Switzerland.

2009-04-21T13:09:00.001-07:00

Arun Shourie Posted online: Tuesday , Apr 21, 2009 at 0134 hrs

Stupefied by the string of endorsements across the country of the demand that the money looted from India must be brought back, the Congress has tied itself in knots. Its spokesmen — led, as will be clear from the arguments they have advanced, by four lawyers — have given five reactions:

• •Why is Advani taking up this matter now, on the eve of elections?

• •The G-20 meeting was not the proper forum for taking up the issue.

• There is doubt about the figures.

• •Why did the BJP government replace FERA with FEMA, and thereby make the offences compoundable?

• •Is Advani not unwittingly alerting those with illegal money abroad to spirit it away from Switzerland to other tax havens?

• •What was the NDA doing when it was in office? In any case there is doubt about the figures.

•The reactions betray panic as even the littlest reflection would have shown the “arguments” to be indefensible. Let us consider them one by one.

•Why is Advani taking up this matter now, on the eve of elections?

The fact, of course, is that Advani took up the matter with the prime minister in April last year. He wrote to Manmohan Singh soon after it became known that the German government had obtained names of persons who had stashed money in the LGT Bank in Lichtenstein. The reply from the then-finance minister P. Chidambram showed that the government intended to do little except go through the pretence of taking some steps. Soon thereafter, we were alarmed to learn that a senior official of the finance ministry had written to the then Indian ambassador in Germany not to press the Germans for release of the names of Indians in the list that they had obtained from Lichtenstein — lest the Germans take offence and conclude that they were being pressurised and their bona fides were being questioned! [This information was later confirmed by the report filed by Amitabh Ranjan in The Indian Express of March 31, 2009]. Subsequently, we took up the matter in Parliament too. And yet the evasion, “Why now?”

•The G-20 meeting was not the proper forum for taking up the issue.

This customarily self-serving rationalisation was put out by one of the Congress party’s lawyers and spokesmen. At this very time the party was trying to insinuate that, actually, the PM had taken up the matter at the G-20 summit. As its spokesmen could not point to any statement he made either at the summit or the subsequent press meet, they drew solace from a passing reference he had made at Gordon Brown’s dinner.

In any case, if the G-20 summit was not the right forum for taking up this matter, how is it that in the communiqué that the G-20 leaders issued on April 2, 2009, in paragraph 15, entitled, “Strengthening the Financial System,” they pledged”to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens. We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information”? Were they also, in the view of the Congress party, acting inappropriately when they made such a strong commitment in their communiqué at the summit?

And recall that no sooner had they issued the threat of imposing sanctions that countries which had been blacklisted by the OECD that very day began declaring that they would indeed sign up on the agreement to exchange tax information, and that includes evasion.

•In any case, there is doubt about the figures.

As is its custom, the Congress is trying to cover up the basic question of the money which has been looted from India and is lying in tax havens, by raising questions about the precision of figures and estimates. This is exactly the kind of legalisms with which persons like P. Chidambaram and other legitimisers were fielded to cover up the loot from Bofors. In its paper, “Overview of the OECD’s Work on International Tax Evasion,” the OECD itself lists studies that state that there are $1.7 trillion to $11.5 trillion which are today parked in tax havens. This OECD paper has been widely reported in the Indian press. The basic point is: even if the amounts are just a few scores of billion dollars and not one and a half trillion dollars, why should they not be brought back to India? And the fact is that other countries, much smaller countries with no superpower pretensions, have succeeded in getting their money back. Even as of last October, when the OECD released its paper, little Ireland had succeeded in recovering almost a billion Euros through an investigation into offshore banks.

Given that even small countries like Ireland have got money back, is it not a shame, is it not an outrage that, as of yesterday, 18 April, 2009, The Times of India, should be quoting the Swiss ambassador to India saying that so far, the Swiss government has received no request — not even a request — from the Indian government?

The real question is different: can the money looted from India be brought back to the country when the attitude of the government continues to be as determinedly inactive?

Can the government which allowed Ottavio Quattrochi to take his money out of banks —where it was lying frozen on court orders — be trusted to bring back the loot that is lying in Swiss banks and other tax havens? Can the government which prostituted the CBI so that he may get away from Argentina be trusted to bring the loot back?

Why did the BJP government replace FERA with FEMA, and thereby make the offences compoundable?

Again, the Congress is relying on the short memory of its audience. The fact of the matter is that no one had been pressing more for the replacement of the harsh provisions of FERA than the Congress itself. The changes were being contemplated since 1996. The demand for doing away with the harsh provisions came to a crescendo during the VP Singh government when FERA came to be used for interrogating captains of industry — like Mr. S.L. Kirloskar — under harsh circumstances. As news reports of that period themselves indicate, FEMA which was approved by the government in July 1998, was on the lines of a draft which had been prepared under the leadership of the preceding finance minister, P. Chidambaram. Even today, if you go to the Rediff website and turn to their dispatch of 25 July, 1998, on “FEMA, Money Bills: Cabinet nods, Parliament’s turn next,” you will read, “The Bills were broadly on the lines of a draft prepared under the leadership of then Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambram.”

In any event, there is no mystery about the reasons on account of which the law was changed. They are well set out in the following passage:

“Until recently, we had a law known as the Foreign Exchange (Regulation) Act. Its object was to conserve and augment the forex reserves of the country. The way to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions. Like many well-intentioned laws, FERA paved the way to disaster. FERA created a flourishing black market in foreign exchange. It brought into the economic lexicon the word ‘Hawala’. Illegal forex transactions became the fuel for the growth of crime syndicates with trans-border connections...FERA also became a tool of oppression. Successive governments persisted with FERA and added COFFEPOSA and SAFEMA. International markets do not respect draconian laws that run counter to common sense. India’s reserves, far from being augmented, dwindled at an alarming rate...Mercifully, FERA was buried finally on May 31, 2000.”

When and where was this written? In an article that appeared The Indian Express on 25 August 2002. Who wrote the article? None other than P. Chidambaram!

•Is Advani not unwittingly alerting those with illegal money abroad to spirit it away from Switzerland to other tax havens?

Another clever little statement by yet another clever lawyer of the Congress party! Would the looters who have stashed away money in tax havens from India still need to be alerted after Germany got the names from Lichtenstein as long ago as last year? Would they still need to be alerted after Germany offered to furnish the names to governments that asked for the names? Would they still need to be alerted after the United States got the names from the leading bank of Switzerland, UBS in February this year, and got it to submit to paying a fine of $ 800 million to boot? Would they still need to be alerted after the G-20 leaders, including Manmohan Singh as the Congress would like to remind us, declared their determination to get the tax havens to disgorge the names? But such is the confusion in the Congress party and such the brilliance of its lawyers that all it can do is to seek to deflect the nation-wide demand for getting the loot back from tax havens by such witticisms!

•What was the NDA doing when it was in office? In any case there is doubt about the figures.

Leaders of the Congress party would be better advised to ask, “During that very period, what was the Congress party doing, what were its lawyers and leaders doing, to thwart the efforts of the NDA Government to uncover the names of persons who had looted the country even on defence deals like Bofors?” But even if the NDA had done nothing — whether on terrorism or money abroad — is that any reason for not hurrying to avail of the unique opportunity that has arisen now?

Even while replacing FERA with FEMA, the NDA government made sure that it would have an additional two years to file prosecutions under FERA. And it filed as many as 2000 cases against those who were under investigation before FERA lapsed. The reason for doing so, a reason that is well known to lawyers in the Congress party, was that, when a prosecution is filed it is adjudicated according to the law which prevailed at the time at which the case was filed. These are the very cases which the Congress did not pursue later.

The fact is that it is now that the unique opportunity has arisen to get the loot back: Germany has succeeded in getting the names; the US has succeeded in getting the names; the G-20 leaders have pledged themselves to ensure the end of bank secrecy; countries that had hitherto refused to share the requisite information are pledging to do so — within a week of their names being published by OECD in the list of countries that were dragging their feet on the question, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Philippines and Uruguay pledged to enter into the relevant agreements.

Conclusion

There is a real fight ahead: a fight in the national interest, a fight that will have to be waged doggedly to get the names from the tax havens and to get the amounts back to India — as tax havens will not easily part with their route to lucre. And not all countries will be eager to wage the fight — so many rulers in Africa, in Latin America, to say nothing of the princelings of China — will be loath to see the fight succeed. So, determination and leadership will be required of India, and persistence, and forging alliances with civil society in Europe and elsewhere.

Nor are bilateral agreements any substitute to multilateral pressure. With close to seventy tax havens, decades will pass before agreements are concluded with each haven, even as money is spirited from the haven that has signed up to the one that is holding out. As has been correctly emphasised, a consensus is already emerging across the country. Leaders outside the political realm, parties such as the CPM, SP, BSP, JD(U), AIADMK have all demanded that the government act energetically to get the names from the tax havens and to get back the amounts. Instead of quibbling, the Congress would be well-advised to endorse the consensus, and act on it. Not joining secular forces on even so secular an issue?!

link

Gujarat Riots Myth Busted..

2009-04-15T01:03:00.001-07:00

Abraham Thomas | New Delhi

FRONT PAGE | Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The so-called human rights activist, Teesta Setalvad — who paraded the Gujarat riot victims before the Supreme Court and claimed they had been denied justice — suffered embarrassment on Monday after a Special Investigation Team (SIT) gave sufficient grounds for the apex court to doubt the authenticity of incidents highlighted by her NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace.

The SIT, headed by former CBI Director RK Raghavan along with former DGP CB Satpathy and three senior IPS officers — Geetha Johri, Shivanand Jha and Ashish Bhatia — had been entrusted with the enquiry into post-Godhra riot incidents in Godhra, Gulbarg Society, Naroda Gaon, Naroda Patiya and Sardarpura.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for the State, read out portions of the report that refuted the petitioner’s charge of the State’s complicity in the riots.

Pointing out a specific instance, the SIT report stated how the evidence of 22 witnesses was “suspect” owing to the identical submissions made in their affidavits submitted to the court. On enquiry, the SIT found that all the 22 affidavits were drafted, typed and printed from the same computer, giving sufficient grounds to believe they were “tutored”. When the SIT questioned those who signed the affidavits, it was shocked to learn that these complainants were not even aware of the incidents.

Referring to another instance that exposed the Citizens for Justice and Peace’s much ‘trumpeted’ charges, Rohtagi said the SIT investigation found untrue allegation about a gangrape of a pregnant woman Kauser Bano, whose stomach was allegedly pierced by sword and her foetus killed.

Even the instance of dumping of bodies into a well at Naroda Patiya and a charge of the police allegedly shielding accused persons in murder of a British national was found to be untrue, Rohtagi said.

Firing a salvo at the NGO, Rohtagi said, “ It is clear from the report that the horrendous allegations made by the NGO were false. Cyclostyled affidavits were supplied by a social activist and the allegations made in them were untrue,” he added, with an obvious reference to Setalvad.

The NGO’s counsel Aparna Bhatt objected to such comments being made on the strength of the report, which had also added several persons as accused in the case. Refusing to be drawn into the slanging match between the opposing parties, the Bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat said, “In riot cases, more the delay, there is likelihood of falsity creeping in. So, there should be a designated court to fast track the trials.”

The court asked the State Government, petitioners and amicus curiae senior advocate Harish Salve to suggest recommendations on these lines. Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium, appearing for the Centre, suggested selection of public prosecutors on consultation from the SIT. Salve informed the court that the matter would be taken up with the SIT. Based on a suggestion by another NGO petitioner counsel Indira Jaising to evolve a witness protection system, Salve assured that the same would also be discussed in the light of the sensitivity attached to the case. The bunch of petitions was posted for further hearing after next week.

hat tip: Sachin Gupta and S Kalyanaraman

Sonia Gandhi in Action...

2009-04-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

Advani demands apology from Sonia

The next government should send her back to Luciana; she has Italian passport to facilitate this transport.

Kalyan

Monday, 13 April 2009

Smt. Sonia Gandhi’s statement that “We are in greater danger from people inside our country than from foreign terrorists entering India” is dangerous and irresponsible. BJP demands her apology for this slanderous statement. We challenge her to a public debate on this issue.

My attention has been drawn to a highly objectionable speech by Congress president Smt. Sonia Gandhi at an election rally in support of her party’s candidate in Khunti (Jharkhand) on April 11.

The Statesman newspaper has reported:

KHUNTI, April 11: Congress president and Rae Bareilly MP, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, made veiled attacks on the BJP, but stopped short of naming the party, in an election rally in Khunti, Jharkhand today….“We are in greater danger from people inside our country than from foreign terrorists entering India. There are those in our country who always try to divide people on lines of religion, caste and creed. Communalism is a bigger threat to India than terrorism. Parties who divide the people on narrow lines of religion by putting on masks of desh prem (patriotism) are only weakening the country from the inside,” said Mrs Gandhi.

The Times of India has reported:

“Without naming any party or leader, Sonia said some of the political parties in the country have been trying to divide the nation in the name of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. "These people wear masks of patriotism but are actually engaged in weakening the nation for petty political gains," she said and added the country is not under the threat of terrorists coming from outside but the risk is emerging from within".

I am aghast by the Congress president’s thought that “We are in greater danger from people inside our country than from foreign terrorists entering India” or that “the country is not under the threat of terrorists coming from outside but the risk is emerging from within".

I have seen all the previous Congress presidents in action right since the first general elections in 1952. Not one of them ever characterized that a threat to India’s security coming from outside was less dangerous than the one emerging from within.

Since the advent of terrorism in India in the early 1980s, there was broad unanimity in India’s political class, shared by the BJP, Congress and many other parties, that this menace has its origin across the border and was indeed a form of “proxy war” by Pakistan. There was also broad understanding that Pakistan, through its ISI, had resorted to this proxy war against India because it had failed to achieve its objective through conventional wars in 1948, 1965 and 1971. Apart from the bomb blasts in various places in India, the two most warlike terrorist attacks by terrorists based and trained in Pakistan were the assault on Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001 and the horrific events of 26/11 last year in Mumbai.

Indeed, in the aftermath of 26/11 my party supported the UPA government when it belatedly introduced two-anti-terror legislations, after having scrapped POTA in 2004. Speaking in Parliament, I said that India’s entire political class should sink internal differences and stand as one in the face of an external attack.

No nationalist Indian would ever belittle this threat of cross-border terrorism by saying that there is a greater danger emerging from “people inside our country”. Obiously Soniaji is ignorant even about the tradition of her senior party leaders in this regard. Both Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri lauded the contribution of the Jana Sangh and RSS to the national effort during the 1962 and 1965 wars. Panditji actually had an RSS contingent participate in the Republic Day Parade of 1963.

Although Smt. Gandhi did not take the name of the BJP, it is obvious that the Congress president was attacking the BJP, not only questioning our patriotism but also making hurling a worse charge. She should publicly apologies for this slanderous statement. I challenge her to join us in a debate on this issue by being specific in telling the nation that the BJP poses a bigger threat to India’s security and unity than the terrorists coming from outside. Let the people of India decide.

If she is unwilling to join the debate, I urge Smt. Gandhi to desist from making such irresponsible statements. I recall here that during the campaign for the 2004 parliamentary elections, she had raised the so-called “Coffingate” matter and leveled the wild charge that the NDA government had made money in the purchase of coffins meant for the martyrs of the Indian Army. In its five years in office, the UPA government was unable to prove the allegation.

* * *

Congress deserves punishment, not a second innings; 3rd and 4th Fronts are irrelevant; BJP-led NDA is the only alternative

In three days from now, Indian voters will participate in the first phase of polling in the elections to 15th Lok Sabha. In exactly a month from now, on May 13, the fifth and last phase of polling will be over. It is becoming clearer by the day that the main contest for forming the next government in New Delhi is between the BJP-led NDA (which is the only cohesive pre-poll alliance at the national level) and the Congress (whose own UPA alliance has disintegrated).

The so-called Third Front and Fourth Front are irrelevant as far as forming the next government on their own under their leadership. They are opportunist platforms, having neither a common platform nor a common leader. The CPI(M) is trying to be active in both to hide its own growing irrelevance. The people of India know that a 3rd Front or 4th Front government would be disastrous.

The contrast between the NDA and its rivals is stark. At no place are constituents of our alliance fighting against each other. On the other hand, parties which are still part of the UPA government are contesting against each other. Some have openly stated that Dr. Manmohan Singh is a prime ministerial candidate of the Congress party, and not theirs. Some have shared election platforms with Third Front parties.

What emerges from the disarray in the UPA government is that the Congress has failed to keep its alliance together and that its failure is principally because its allies think that the Congress is untrustworthy. This being the case, the handicap that the Congress is facing is two-fold. Firstly, it carries the enormous burden of anti-incumbency due to the UPA government’s failures and betrayals on multiple fronts (price rise, joblessness, plight of farmers, and failure to tackle terrorism). Secondly, it has lost the faith of its own allies.

The first handicap has earned the Congress popular anger across the country. The second has earned the Congress its allies’ distrust. The growing mood in India is that the Congress deserves punishment, not a second innings.

Therefore, I am convinced that the defeat of the Congress is certain. The only alternative before the electorate to form a government at the Centre, committed to the principles of GOOD GOVERNANCE, DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY, is the BJP-led NDA. I appeal to the voters, including those in Kerala, to give a clear and decisive mandate to the BJP and its allies in the NDA so that the next government in New Delhi is strong, stable and capable of effectively facing the challenges before the nation, both internal and external.

* * *

I heartily congratulate the Indian Hockey Team for winning the Azlan Shah Cup.

Here are the actual news reports cited above, taken from the Internet editions of
The Statesman and The Times of India

The Statesman
11 April 2009

KHUNTI, April 11: Congress president and Rae Bareilly MP, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, made veiled attacks on the BJP, but stopped short of naming the party, in an election rally in Khunti, Jharkhand today. Mrs Gandhi was in Khunti to campaign in favour of party candidate and Simdega MLA, Mr Niel Tirkey.

“We are in greater danger from people inside our country than from foreign terrorists entering India. There are those in our country who always try to divide people on lines of religion, caste and creed. Communalism is a bigger threat to India than terrorism. Parties who divide the people on narrow lines of religion by putting on masks of desh prem (patriotism) are only weakening the country from the inside,” said Mrs Gandhi.

Khunti constituency in Jharkhand is witnessing a tough political battle between the BJP heavyweight candidate and former union minister Mr Karia Munda, and Mr Niel Trikey of the Congress. This is Mr Trikey's first Lok Sabha nomination, following the party's decision to replace the sitting candidate Ms Suhila Kerketta.

Mrs Gandhi urged the youth of Khunti to ensure 100 per cent turnout on polling day. “Today, only you ~ the youth ~ can change the future of the country. You will be making the call tomorrow. Please vote with an open mind and for the best alternative,” she said.

Showcasing the Congress party’s achievements during UPA rule, Mrs Gandhi urged the voters to cast their ballots in favour of the Congress and ensure Dr Manmohan Singh’s candidature as the next PM.

“The Congress-led government was, and will be, the best alternative for the country. We have come up with the NREGA and the loan waiver schemes for the farmers. More than 31 per cent of Dalits and 26 per cent of Advasis have benefited from these schemes. We think that a strong and stable government under Dr Manmohan Singh will ensure better prospects for the country in the future,” declared Mrs Gandhi.

The Congress president later addressed another election rally in Chatra, in favour of the party candidate Mr Dhiraj Prasad Sahu. Mr Sahu is pitted against heavyweights Mr Inder Singh Namdhari and Mr Dhirendra Agrawal ~ both Independent candidates. Mr Nagmani of the RJD and Mr Arun Yadav of the JD-U enjoy a well rooted support base in Chatra.

The Times of India
12 Apr 2009

KHUNTI: "Violence is not a solution to any problem. The youth who have lost direction should join the mainstream and help government execute development projects even in the remotest corners," UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi said at an election rally here on Saturday in an obvious reference to Maoists even while police were engaged in an encounter with the ultra-leftists in the forests, some 40 km away.

Five CRPF jawans were killed in the encounter that continued even after Sonia ended her speech at the Kutchery ground.

Sonia, in her short speech, called upon people to vote the Manmohan Singh government to power again so that issues like social disparity could be addressed in a better way. "Only a stable and efficient government led by Congress can provide lasting solutions to people's problems," she said.

The Congress leader enumerated the achievements of UPA government during its five years of rule. "NREGA gave jobs to over 4 crore villagers and checked migration to towns," she said and added even in these times of market meltdown, the Indian economy has remained largely unaffected because of the visionary policies of the Manmohan Singh government.

Without naming any party or leader, Sonia said some of the political parties in the country have been trying to divide the nation in the name of Hindus, Muslims and Christians. "These people wear masks of patriotism but are actually engaged in weakening the nation for petty political gains," she said and added the country is not under the threat of terrorists coming from outside but the risk is emerging from within".

Sonia called upon the youth to exercise their franchise carefully. "The onus is on the large population of first-time voters and of those below 35 years to give a stable and efficient government to the country," she said.

She hailed the local Tana Bhagats for their efforts to spread the message of Congress in the region since olden times.

Sonia was accompanied by state Congress president Pradeep Balmuchu, Congress' Khunti candidate Niyel Tirkey and K Keshav Rao, incharge of party's affairs in the state.

Communal 10 rupee coin

2009-04-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

Please see attached new 10 rupee coin issued by GOI with a double cross on one side. It is the same story again as was the case a couple of years ago with 2 rupee coin. It seems the protest by Hindu organizations had no effect on this "Islam-embracing, Christianity-coveting & Hindu-hating" UPA government.

This is Sonia Congress brand secularism!!

===============================================
RBI is ready to issue a new bimetallic 10 Rupee coin for circulation. The look: The obverse side has the lion capitol with numeral 10 and year of manufacture. On reverse side, a double Christian cross with a dot in each pellet of cross and denomination written in Hindi and English around. This design has been prepaed by National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. The outer side metal is Nickel-Bronze and the inner side metal is Ferrous Steel. The weight of the coin would be 8 grams and the diameter would be 28 mm. The coins are being minted at mainly Noida and Mumbai mint. The coins worth Rs.70 million was already stored in its stock till August 2008.

Link:

Moment of the Moderniser

2009-04-13T22:58:00.003-07:00

Prabhu Chawla

March 27, 2009

The man with a walrus moustache, framed and garlanded, is a customary backdrop to any stage show by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Now that Mohanrao Bhagwat has taken centrestage as the new boss (sarsanghchalak) of RSS, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the founding patriarch of the Sangh Parivar, seems to have got a true inheritor.

They may be two Brahmins from Maharashtra, united by the shape of their moustache and the sweep of their vision about a Hindu Rashtra, but Bhagwat refuses to be a throwback to history. The 58-year-old bachelor from Chandrapur, born 10 years after the death of Hedgewar, is the 21st Century face of an organisation that has often been accused of being steeped in a mythological make-believe.

His new role as a moderniser (a word that doesn’t sit well with the image his organisation has acquired in urban India) is daunting, for he has to strike a fine balance between the challenges of future and the burden of heritage. When the generational shift took place in Nagpur on March 21, it was pretty evident that Bhagwat wanted to be different. The meeting began with Bhagwat’s request that, after nine years as general secretary, he would like to pass the baton to someone else.

But before the veteran pracharak M.G. Vaidya could start the election process, K.S. Sudarshan, the outgoing sarsanghchalak, intervened. He said: “My memory is failing. Recently I was unable to recognise the photograph of Mangal Singh who died after serving as our cook at the RSS headquarters for over 50 years.

The Bhagwat effect

A non-interventionist, Bhagwat lets BJP and VHP leaders manage their affairs so that the RSS will not be blamed for their failures. Unlike Sudarshan, he has never been a political coordinator.

A smart networker, he has initiated dialogue with other spiritual leaders like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Baba Ramdev whom he has accepted as important members of the wider Hindu Family.Accepts that there is no singular way of championing the Hindu cause.

As general secretary, he promoted young volunteers at every level. The average age of pracharaks at district level has been reduced from 50 to 35-40 and those above 70 have been withdrawn from the field.

He has never made a hate speech or attacked other religions.

He prefers powerpoint presentations at important meetings.

Recently, I met Swami Vishwesh Tirth and he advised me to speak less. My responsibility requires me to study more and more but I can’t do that due to my poor health. I want to transfer my responsibilities as sarsanghchalak to Mohanrao Bhagwatji.” Then he vacated his seat and Bhagwat, after touching the feet of Sudarshan and other elders, took over.

His first appointment itself spoke a lot about the man. Many expected Suresh Soni, who works as a coordinator between RSS and BJP, would succeed him as general secretary. Bhagwat’s choice for the second-incommand and general secretary was Suresh (Bhaiyaji) Joshi.

It was a smooth transition at Nagpur where the old and the interventionist gave way to a new generation that puts culture above politics. Was it that the new boss didn’t want too much “coordination” between the Sangh and the party? Not surprising as he is the highest apostle of non-intervention.

Bhagwat thinks the BJP— or for that matter any other front organisation— should be left to its own devices. (His predecessor, though, was fond of giving sagely advice to leaders like L.K. Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.) Still, he wanted the pracharaks to be familiar with other family members like the BJP, VHP, ABVP and BMS. Under his initiative, some pracharaks were given six-month internships in these organisations. The RSS for him is essentially a cultural organisation with a social responsibility.

Bhagwat’s life so far has been a perfect blend of idealism and pragmatism. Born on September 11, 1950, in a Karhade Brahmin family in Chandrapur, Maharashtra, he began his career as a veterinary officer. His father, Madhukar Rao Bhagwat, was a close associate of Hedgewar and M.S. Golwalkar, the second sarsanghchalak.

After spending five years as a pracharak in Gujarat, Bhagwat pére did something rarely heard of in the upper echelons of RSS: he got married and began a new life as an advocate. The son, though, would not be deviated from his path by such temptations. Bhagwat became a pracharak during the Emergency in 1975 and he has remained a strict disciplinarian ever since. At a meeting of state pracharaks, he said, “Our focus must be on quality, not on quantity.”

Quantity matters in the RSS, and Bhagwat is entitled to take credit for making the Parivar bigger. Look at the numbers: 43,905 shakhas (drills) are held daily at 30,015 venues; weekly shakhas at 4,964 and monthly shakhas at 4,507 places. The RSS has over 2,800 full-time pracharaks. And it has 58 front groups representing sections as varied as youth, teachers, Dalits, women, labour, students, and even overseas Indians.

There is one for Muslims as well: The Muslim Rashtriya Manch, which wants to send out the message that “every Muslim is not a fanatic”. Presiding over such an extended Parivar, Bhagwat has the mandate to be the final arbiter of “family values”. Will those values be in harmony with the spirit of the modern times? Or, will they make the existing cultural fault-lines more glaring? He has to kill so many stereotypes before he can play out the script of modernisation within the organisation.

He will have to disown and neutralise the army of rabble-rousers and demonisers who continue to manufacture enemies of the socalled Hindu Rashtra. The lathi-wielding cultural Gestapos running amok or the trident-waving demolishers atop a mosque are not images compatible with Bhagwat’s message of change. He has to redeem Hindutva from the politics of hate. He has to make it culturally and socially acceptable. And it has to be a time of introspection as well. RSS is an organisation which has produced leaders like Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Vajpayee, Advani and Nanaji Deshmukh. Today it is only capable of offering us an atrocity like a Pravin Togadia or others who can only divide the mind of India.

He may not consider the pub-going girls of Mangalore particularly modern, but he doesn’t endorse the violent enforcement of culture either. Though he says that the socalled Hindu terrorism is an “illusionary and self-contradictory lie” created by “Hindu-hating political forces” desperate for votes, he is believed to be unhappy about some fringe Hindu groups taking the terror route. And some of his reforms are even sartorial.

Till 10 years ago, it was mandatory for the swayamsevaks to wear a uniform of khaki shorts and white shirts while attending the daily shakha. No longer. The uniform is compulsory only on special occasions. The new dress code is called “supravesh” (all white); it could be anything, even kurta-pyjama or dhoti and shirt. He was very much instrumental in recognising the importance of caste leaders in expanding the RSS’ base.

He doesn’t make a virtue out of rigidity masquerading as consistency. Following Advani’s controversial statement on “secular”Jinnah, Bhagwat was the first to tell the RSS top brass that they should take on the BJP leader. Three years later, the same Bhagwat realised that there was no better alternative than Advani to lead the BJP. So he himself went to meet Advani to announce that he was once again acceptable to the RSS.

A great admirer of Gandhi, he was the one who took the initiative in bringing Scheduled Castes and Tribes into the RSS fold. In one of the speeches he delivered after becoming the general secretary, he didn’t mention the name of Hindutva icon Veer Savarkar even once but Gandhi was a recurring hero. An agitated Savarkar supporter went to Bhagwat and complained. Bhagwat, always polite, apologised first and then took on the challenger: “But tell me whether you appreciate Gandhi’s contribution to society despite his mistakes.” The challenger just walked away in silence, most likely as a wiser man. And his soon-tobe-launched programme called Gau-Gram Sankarshan Yatra (a cow-protection journey across the villages) too is inspired by Gandhi.

Bhagwat, a Reader’s Digest junkie and a regular watcher of History and National Geographic channels, ended his speech in Nagpur with a call for facing up to new challenges: “Let all of us strive to expand and consolidate still further our already existing nationwide network to enable our society to effectively respond to all the challenges it is facing, by adopting appropriate strategies and techniques”.

What are Bhagwat’s strategies and techniques to keep RSS relevant as a cultural organisation? He certainly requires techniques other than powerpoint presentations (of which he is a new convert) and the emphasis on youth power (of which he is a tireless promoter). He needs a message that is in tune with the ideas and aspirations of 21st Century India where a brotherhood based on religion still evokes fear, no matter what the religion is called. “You can change everything , except our core belief in a Hindu Rashtra”, he says.

If such a civilisational definition of India makes some Indians the excluded others, the challenges of the man who aspires to be the moderniser become all the more daunting. It also provides Mohanrao Bhagwat an opportunity to become the Great Reconciler.

Chinese threat looms large

2009-03-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

G Parthasarathy

While India received overwhelming international sympathy and support during the 26/11 terrorist outrage, the Chinese reaction was one of almost unbridled glee, while backing Pakistani protestations of innocence. The state-run China Institute of Contemporary International Relations claimed that the terrorists who carried out the attack came from India. Moreover, even as the terrorist strike was on, yet another Chinese ‘scholar’ gleefully noted: “The Mumbai attack exposed the internal weakness of India, a power that is otherwise raising its status both in the region and in the world”. Not to be outdone, the Foreign Ministry-run China Institute of Strategic Studies warned: “China can firmly support Pakistan in the event of war”, adding: “While Pakistan can benefit from its military cooperation with China while fighting India, the People’s Republic of China may have the option of resorting to a strategic military action in Southern Tibet (Arunachal Pradesh), to thoroughly liberate the people there”.

Rather than condemning the terrorists and their supporters, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang urged India and Pakistan to “maintain calm” and investigate the “cause” of the terror attack jointly. The visiting Chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Tariq Majid was received like a state dignitary by Chinese leaders, with promises of support on weapons supplies ranging from fighter aircraft to frigates. The Chinese then got into the diplomatic act, purporting to show that they were actually Good Samaritans seeking to promote peace and reconciliation between India and Pakistan. The rising star in China’s diplomatic hierarchy, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, visited Islamabad and met the Pakistani leadership, including the ubiquitous Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani. Rather than asking Pakistan to curb the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba Mr Yafei stressed the need for Pakistan and India to address “outstanding issues through dialogue and cooperation”. Shortly thereafter Mr Yafei landed up in Delhi, again with the object of demonstrating to the world that China had urged ‘restraint’ on India and promoted India-Pakistan dialogue. Mercifully, for once, our pusillanimous mandarins signalled that we did not need China’s purported ‘good offices’ in dealing with the fallout of 26/11.

Just as China was becoming a net importer of oil in 1993, Gen Zhao Nanqui, a senior official of China’s People’s Liberation Army proclaimed: “We can no longer accept the Indian Ocean as an ocean of the Indians”. Another naval analyst Mr Zhang Ming recently proclaimed that the islands of India’s Andaman and Nicobar archipelago could be used as a metal chain to block Chinese access to the Straits of Malacca. China has used such arguments to boost its naval presence in the Indian Ocean. Adopting a ‘string of pearls’ strategy to encircle and contain India in the Indian Ocean, it has acquired base facilities at Gwadar and Pasni in the Makran coast of Pakistan, virtually at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It is building a fuelling station in the port of Hambantota in southern Sri Lanka, a container facility with naval and commercial access in Chittagong, and linking its Yunnan province to the Indian Ocean through Myanmar. It has gone as far as Mauritius and Maldives for securing a strategic presence, with promises of massive economic assistance to these countries. China has also planned its most ambitious project in the Indian Ocean, proposing a canal access across the Isthmus of Krai in Thailand, linking the Indian Ocean to its Pacific coast.

China has reinforced these measures by sending its first naval expeditionary force spearheaded by two destroyers into the Indian Ocean, purportedly to deal with piracy off the coast of Somalia. A Chinese fleet last entered the India Ocean in the 15th century, when an expeditionary force under Admiral Zheng He sailed across the Indian Ocean to Calicut, Muscat, Maldives and Mogadishu. President Hu Jintao’s China appears desirous of reviving the imperial ambitions of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty! As China strengthens its Navy acquiring aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, India will soon find that unless it combines the boosting of its maritime muscle with imaginative diplomacy in its Indian Ocean neighbourhood and on China’s Pacific shores, it will be strategically marginalised and outflanked by an assertive and expansionist Beijing, which appears bent on exploiting the high costs of imperial overreach by the Americans in recent years. Given the manner in which China has joined hands with Pakistan to sabotage India’s quest for permanent membership of the UN Security Council and the devious role it played in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to undermine moves to end global nuclear sanctions against India, we should have no doubt that ‘strategic containment’ of India will remain the cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy in the foreseeable future.

New Delhi should also have no doubt that China will exploit the American economic downturn and the pro-Chinese views of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to get the Americans to revert to the policies of the Nixon, Carter and Clinton presidencies and to make common cause with China on issues like nuclear non-proliferation, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and even on Afghanistan and Pakistan, while undermining Indian interests. Echoing the Pakistani line, China’s Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, recently suggested that for the United States to deal with problems in Afghanistan, it should not merely involve itself in the Afghanistan problem and the Pakistan problem but also in the ‘India-Pakistan problem’. Ms Hillary Clinton has characterised the US-China relationship as the “most important bilateral relationship in the world in this century”. Her visit to China was followed almost immediately by the visit to Beijing of a senior Pentagon official, who joyously proclaimed the resumption of defence ties with Beijing.

The Bush Administration had an overarching strategic vision of its relations with India, premised on New Delhi’s pivotal role in confronting terrorism, safeguarding the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean, and in promoting strategic stability in Asia. But with election around the corner and the UPA Government in a lame duck mode, Washington, DC, is unlikely to take any interest in fashioning a larger vision for India-US relations. The challenge we face in coming months is how we can pursue our interests in the aftermath of the 26/11 carnage without making the India-US relationship predominantly determined by developments on our western border. The decision to curb outsourcing by the Obama Administration, without any prior consultations, manifests an American propensity to act unilaterally and peremptorily on issues of vital interest to India.

link

Money now needs politics at its beck and call.

2009-03-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

MJ Akbar

The last sms on my mobile as I left Delhi was from a friend who has been watching cricket — on the field, not in the drawing room — for more than four decades. His sms was either a cry from the heart or a joke, or possibly a cry from the heart disguised as a joke. It will be safe, he wrote, to conduct the IPL tournament during the elections as almost all the criminals in India will be busy contesting the polls.

Without dissecting the pleasantry with the heavy scalpel of bombast, consider this: If there was a vote on whether the IPL tournament should be postponed or the elections, which way would the electorate go? Why miss out on a contest of skill and transparency when all we get in return is a murky game where a tribe of varied characters spend dubious money in a process that may not even declare a clear victor? At least the T-20 rules do not permit indecision.

To be fair, democratic politics always needed money as a part-time servant. Unfortunately, the dependency has been reversed. Money now needs politics at its beck and call.

The most powerful people in India used to be elected politicians and members of the institutionalised bureaucracy. They were not well paid. Salaries have improved of late, but are nowhere near private sector scales. However, authority was a proud compensation. There was some vicarious pleasure in seeing the fattest of cats meow piteously before a Minister and purr before a joint secretary. Ministers would not deign to give appointments too readily.

But equations have changed. Money has become an independent power. Ministers now seek appointments from fatcats in the guise of socialising. The business-politics nexus is now celebrated over pleasant evenings. Businessmen expect and get decisions tweaked to suit their interests as a price of their contribution to the political kitty. If there is nothing called a free lunch there is nothing called a free general election either.

Uncertainty over results has fuelled inflationary pressures. The present Government purchased an extra year of life by buying MPs during the nuclear deal debate. The current talk in New Delhi is that the next Government may need a hirepurchase system from inception.

If neither the BJP nor the Congress has enough seats to provide a stable core to the next coalition, New Delhi could well become, at least temporarily, the most exciting auction house in the world.

Mr Manmohan Singh is said to have despaired privately of the amount of leeway he had to give his Ministers, both in his party and among his partners, to keep his Government afloat. But he did nothing about it. I wish I was able to use, at this point, a hapless pun and note that there was no check on cheques. But politicians do not deal in cheques. All transactions are in cash.

A friend has suggested a solution. The only way to kill, or maul, this chequeless corruption is to demonetise all bank notes above 100 rupees. His point, and a valid one, is that if the American economy did not need a currency note above 100 dollars, why should the Indian economy? All high-value transactions would be by either credit card or bank transfers. High denomination notes had been introduced to facilitate the cash-driven black economy.

The argument demands attention. Sudden demonetisation would, for a start, bring down the circulation of black money since you would have to explain to the authorities how you came into possession of the cash you wanted to exchange for new legal tender. Additionally, bribes in crores would become more inconvenient. You would need trucks for transport and godowns as private safety vaults.

Why do I think there will be no takers for such logic?

Corruption has become a devilishly tangled knot. There is no option except Alexander’s system. You cannot untie its strands. You have to cut with a slash of the sword.

The odour of crime pervades over all systems but the definition of crime changes. The whole of America is currently enraged at the unthinking greed of the executives of American International Group, the biggest culprit in the financial meltdown. It has decided to pay $165 million in bonuses to executives primarily responsible for the massive mismanagement. The company survives only because it has been gifted $ 182.5 billion of taxpayers’ money. The House of Representatives has approved legislation that would impose a 90 per cent sur-tax on the bonuses. The Senate could get more punitive. All America believes this to be a crime.

And so it is. But it is, to resort to an oxymoron, a legal crime. The bonuses were part of a contract and all payments will be by cheque, which is why they can be taxed.

The greed in Delhi is within the safety zone of privacy. There is no tax on Indian corruption.

Our notes proudly flaunt the image of Mahatma Gandhi. Is this the highest form of insult to the Mahatma?

At least Mr Vijay Mallya bought the Gandhi memorabilia with a cheque. There is, I know, an incendiary and possibly unacceptable sms doing the rounds: Gandhi’s samadhi will now read ‘Hey Rum’, and he will be known as the Old Monk who walks with an air hostess on either side. But I suspect that the old saint in heaven must be blessing Mr Mallya with a toothless grin. At least the money was white, not black.

Link

New Agencies for political change.

2009-03-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

Swapan Dasgupta

Over the past fortnight, I have observed an unlikely scene in the bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi that is home to the BJP “war room” for the General Election. Each evening, a group of young men and women sit together on the lawns discussing the details of their intervention in the ongoing festival of democracy.

Dressed in business suits and smart casuals, they are unlike most of the “youth leaders” you encounter in the offices of political parties. Most of them are young professionals working in the private sector. Most aren’t even members of the BJP and neither do they have any record of involvement in student politics. Some have taken leave from their jobs and others have put aside a few hours in the evening for the campaign.

I met the winner of a leadership talent search organised by a leading media house. He is planning to join the party. One of the runners-up has joined the party in Gujarat. I also observed a meeting of a group of professionals who have come together under the banner of the Friends of the BJP, and have organised very impressive hall meetings in Mumbai.

Many party old-timers have sniggered at these youngsters. “How many votes will they bring in?” is a question often asked. The answer is simple: Very few.

The class these people come from complains the most but votes the least. They are often referred to as the Non-voting Classes. During the Assembly election in Karnataka last summer, I noticed that most of the young techies in the IT sector were disinclined to either vote or take notice of the election. Someone remarked that their minds were on a different election: The presidential primaries in the US. It was, however, very different in the Gujarat Assembly election of December 2007. There, I observed a significant degree of youth participation in politics. Narendra Modi’s rallies were reminiscent of rock concerts.

The belief that it is a waste of time to pander to a small group of people who don’t as yet have the ability to garner bloc votes for a party may be based on expediency. I also think, it is a very short-sighted view.

For a party a General Election fulfills many functions. The main task, of course, is to win votes and seats and play a meaningful role in the decision-making structure. But there is a larger “nation building” function. A General Election is occasion for political parties to seek out and nurture talent.

In the past, student activism on campuses was the breeding ground for politicians. Those who are at the helm of affairs in the BJP today were thrown up by the JP movement and the struggle against the Emergency. The rung below came to prominence through involvement in the Ayodhya movement. Today, student activism is either dead or mired in disreputable controversy. Being more career-minded than preceding generations, today’s youth are disinclined to waste their time in student politics. They want to get ahead in life. This does not mean they have shut their minds to politics. People are willing to get involved if they are inspired, believe they can make a contribution and if political parties can provide them a wholesome environment. They may, at best, perceive themselves as political activists — who could, in time, graduate to becoming politicians; they don’t see themselves as a stereotypical neta.

To build on the future, political parties must undergo a mindset change. It is important that they perceive a difference between activism and netagiri. It has become customary for all political functionaries to see themselves as “leaders”. They even start dressing up and behaving like one. The media adds to the problem by describing every tinpot operator as “leader” when it is common knowledge that most of these “leaders” are incapable of organising even a significant violation of Section 144.

Once it is recognised that every politician need not be a leader, many opportunities open up. Politics being inextricably linked to governance and public policy, most “leaders” suffer from colossal ignorance of issues that need to be addressed by politicians. The preoccupation of politicians is to be a good social worker — facilitate school admissions, ensure a bed in Government hospitals, secure a transfer, pressure the authorities to provide civic amenities etc.

Important as these issues are, they focus on the little picture. But so time consuming and exasperating is the process that most politicians lose sight of the big picture. Most important, the voter doesn’t as yet make a distinction between a corporator, MLA and MP. This, in turn, makes it difficult for political parties to apply different yardsticks for different posts. The main casualty is the politician who is temperamentally incapable of also being a hustler and busybody.

The future of these bright young people who are dipping their toes in the muddy waters of politics really depends on the extent to which the system as a whole can distinguish between the levels of politics. For starters, however, political parties can do their utmost of making them an agency of desired change. But this can’t happen unless there is a systematic process of moral cleansing — ridding parties of fixers, racketeers and dunderheads.

Politicians must set an example. They have to be aware and sensitive. But, above all, they must have a fierce sense of right and wrong. Only then do they graduate to becoming leaders. And only then will politics become appetising.

link

Varun was harsh, but so is truth

2009-03-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

Kanchan Gupta

The media-driven furore over what is being described as Mr Varun Gandhi’s ‘hate speech’ deserves to be countered with matching crudity: If he is ‘communal’, then his critics are biased against Hindus. Nothing else explains why newspapers and 24x7 news channels should twist the entire issue out of context and plaster it all over their front pages and feature it on prime time news bulletins, while ignoring the basic rule of responsible journalism — facts are sacred, opinion is free.

Since the facts have been swamped by jaundiced opinion, it would be in order to place them on record. Mr Varun Gandhi, son of Ms Maneka Gandhi and the late Sanjay Gandhi, is an articulate young man who will be contesting the coming Lok Sabha election from Pilibhit constituency in Uttar Pradesh as a BJP candidate. As a prelude to his election campaign — he is yet to file his nomination papers — he visited the constituency, till now represented by Ms Maneka Gandhi, for what is known as ‘jan sampark’, or mass contact, meetings to familiarise himself with the voters and vice-versa. This is a legitimate exercise. Over March 6 and 8, he addressed a series of meetings.

On March 16th, a CD mysteriously surfaced in the offices of news channels, which was promptly aired without any effort being made to verify the authenticity of its contents. The CD contained audio-visual snippets of what Mr Gandhi is alleged to have said during a community meeting (as opposed to an ‘election rally’) at Barkheda on March 7. The aired version of the recording showed Mr Gandhi as saying:

“This is not the (Congress’s election symbol) ‘hand’, this is the hand of the ‘lotus’ (the BJP’s symbol). It will cut the throat of (derogatory reference to Muslims) after the elections… Varun Gandhi will cut… Cut that hand, cut it… cut it… Go to your villages and give the call that all Hindus must unite to save this area from becoming Pakistan… Is it not true… that if (a woman) is asked her name and she says Bimla Devi, she is told we’ll see, we’ll think (about giving Government aid), give us Rs 5,000 first… But if her name is Saira Bano or whatever begum Hukum Begum… I don't even know… These people have such scary-sounding names… Karimullah, Mazharullah… If you ever encountered them at night, you’d be scared… I have a sister… there was a pamphlet with pictures of all the candidates… so this child told me, ‘I didn't know that Osama bin Laden is contesting from your area’. I told her, ‘America couldn’t get Osama, but Varun Gandhi is going to get a lot of people after the elections’.”

There were subsequent reports in media that at an earlier public meeting, on March 6 at Dalchand, Mr Gandhi was equally ‘communal’. He was accused of telling his audience, “Agar kisi galat tatv ke aadmi ne kisi Hindu pe haath uthaaya ya Hindu’on ke upar yeh samajh key ki yeh kamzor hain, unke peechey koi nahi hai... Hindu’on ke upar haath uthaaya, main Gita ki kasam khaake kehta hoon ki main us haath ko kaat daaloong (If some wrong elements lift a hand against Hindus, or think Hindus are weak, there is nobody behind them, then I swear on the Bhagavad Gita that I will cut off that hand).” He ended his speeches with “Jai Sri Ram” and to thunderous applause.

But did Mr Gandhi really say all this? Yes, by his own admission, he did say most of it. But not quite the way it has been presented by the media, and definitely not the way the alleged recording purports it to be. A simple analysis of the recording contained in the CD, which was strangely circulated after more than a week, shows that it has 17 ‘cuts’; that the sound level dips to low resolution, and there is heavy echo at the crucial point where he allegedly makes a derogatory reference to Muslims. Each of the quotes have been clearly taken out of context.

As for his call that “all Hindus must unite to save this area from becoming Pakistan”, that a Hindu woman would find it difficult to get Government aid, his reference to Osama bin Laden look-alikes, his pledge to stand by Hindus against ‘galat tatv ke aadmi’, and his swearing by the Bhagavad Gita, there is really little to cavil against. ‘Secular’ State Governments have been prompt in taking their cue from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ‘Muslims first’ policy. Newspapers in the forefront of the bash Varun campaign have reported how Muslim victims of last year’s flood were lavished with aid while others were left to fend for themselves. Mr Ram Vilas Paswan would address election meetings accompanied by an Osama bin Laden look-alike till the man, Maulana Meraj Khalid Noor, dumped him for Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav for reasons that do not merit elaboration. Mr Gandhi was addressing a community gathering, not an election rally; he felt the people of Barkheda and Dalchand needed to be reassured that he would protect their interests; and, he spoke the truth rather bluntly, perhaps too harshly.

Before we go into the reason why he said what he is now being pilloried for, here are two questions for you to ponder over: Are we now living in such dreadful times that we cannot mention the Bhagavad Gita in public discourse lest we be condemned as ‘communal’ by newspapers and news channels which couldn’t stop pointing out, ever so admiringly and approvingly — some would say ecstatically — that Mr Barack Hussein Obama took his oath of office by placing his left hand on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible? And, is it now an unpardonable offence to say ‘Jai Sri Ram’?

Anybody who has any knowledge of Pilibhit knows that Hindus in that district — in fact, all over what is referred to as Rohilkhand — are increasingly feeling under siege. The district stretches along India’s border with Nepal. Mirza Dilshad Beg, the Nepali politician who fronted for Dawood Ibrahim and was on the payroll of Pakistan’s ISI, regularly used the Pilibhit route to funnel fake currency into India and supply arms and explosives to terrorists. Beg may be dead, murdered by his ilk in 1998, but the supply chain remains undisrupted. Thousands of cows are smuggled across the border to be slaughtered; cow slaughter in Pilibhit and adjacent districts is now a common phenomenon with the administration loath to take any action.

In recent months, there have been instances of Hindu women being molested and raped. This point has been disputed by the Indian Express which says there are no police records to prove it. Yet, on umpteen occasions the newspaper has, as have others, pointed out how the police in rural India refuse to register cases of rape, how families are terrorised into not pressing charges, and how the fear of social stigma forces victims of rape and their families to keep silent.

The ‘secular’ media hasn’t heard of Sonu Kashyap who was murdered on October 21 last year. “Five unidentified Muslims” were accused of murdering him. The administration did nothing. On October 23, anger turned into street protests, led by a former BJP legislator and Minister, Mr Ram Saran Verma. He was promptly arrested and since then has been detained under the National Security Act. Beesalpur police station in-charge Pervez Miyan brazenly defends the continued detention of Mr Verma.

The Indian Express, however, is not alone. The Times of India’s online edition had two ads promoting itimes, its social networking group: ‘Snub Varun Gandhi’ and ‘Join Sanjay Dutt fan club’. It would appear that in this wondrous land of ours, where rules are being increasingly set by a dissolute media, it is now politically correct to be a fan of a man who has been held guilty of aiding the terrorists who bombed Mumbai in 1993. NDTV began by referring to Mr Gandhi’s “speech”, and then switched over to “hate speech”. Who’s to tell our ‘secular’ media it is horribly wrong? Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

link

Secular anti-nationalism vs. Cultural Nationalism

2009-03-17T04:52:00.001-07:00

By: V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.

I have just finished reading masterpiece of a book titled "INDIA A Cultural Decline or Revival"? by Bharat Gupt. The so-called educated people in India-usually pseudo-secular Indians with Western Education-take it for granted that Independence from the British Rule also ushered an era of cultural and social freedom in India. Bharat Gupt in this beautifully conceived and written book has carefully examined as to whether this is true or whether a dark age of cultural decline and barbarism descended on India after Independence.

To quote the brilliant words of Bharat Gupt from his preface: "It is further imagined that in spite of its poverty, India is admired by the richer nations of the West as a culturally evolved nation. This self-congratulation, lingering from the euphoric days of our freedom struggle, sounds now like the thunder on distant mountains shedding not a glimmer of hope on our present lives. For most of us our memory is enough to be a lived-through account of the cultural decline that set in barely within a decade after freedom. Any analysis is sufficient to counter the smug belief, still fostered in schools and political speeches about the superiority of our culture, once voiced in Iqbal"s song, "Saare Jahaan se acchaa Hindustan hamaaraa". Very insidiously this rhyme nurses a misplaced conviction that while many other ancient civilizations were wiped out in time, India alone is indestructible.... The song takes special pride in stating that while the Greek and Roman civilizations, the so-called predecessors of the West, lost to ravages of time, Indian civilization alone remains immortal".

According to Bharat Gupt such headiness was excusable during the struggle for freedom but is hardly justified after half a century of self-misrule. Our name and significance (naam-o-nishaan) are now "under gradual but marked erosion, fading faster than anything witnessed in the last millennium". The ravages of technology are greater than even those perpetrated by Islamic misrule for more than thousand years. Bharat Gupt argues and proves with force that in every sphere of life it is now obvious that India has not been able "to internalise European technology to march its own civilization concepts, the foreign techno-kaayaa into its traditional dharma-kaayaa".

Bharat Gupt, Reader (Associate Professor) in English, at the College of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi, holds two Master"s degrees, one from St. Stephen"s College, Delhi and another from Toronto. He did his doctoral research at the M.S. University of Baroda. His Doctoral Dissertation was on "A Comparison of Greek and Indian Dramatic Theories as given in the Poetics and the Natyasastra". Bharat Gupt was taught Sitar and Surbahar by Pandit Uma Shankar Mishra and musicology and classics by Acarya Brhaspati. Trained both in modern and traditional educational systems, he is also on the Visiting Faculty of National School of Drama, Delhi. For his interest in media studies he was awarded a fellowship to work at the McLuhan Program, University of Toronto. Author of several research articles, he has presented many papers at various international seminars. He has also published critical editions and translations of ancient Indian books on music and drama (Natyasastra, Chapter 28: Ancient Scales of Indian Music, Natyasastra, Chapter 17: A Critique of Theatrical Polyglossia., Natyasastra, Chapters 29 - 36, and Dibbuk).

In a breezy manner, in his preface, Bharat Gupt has traced the process of cultural and spiritual decline of India after Independence from decade to decade. He argues that after Independence, each passing decade, excepting perhaps the first (1947-1957), ushered in an uncomfortable, dislocating and deranging change. Only the decade of the 1950s was characterised by hope and optimism, within India, and as well in the minds of her well wishers in India and abroad. She was expected to perform by leaps as a developing nation by the international community. The optimism of this decade was symbolised by our first Prime Minister, called "Chaachaa Nehru" by his sycophants who spent his every Birthday, November 14, with school children as a State ritual. He projected the expectation that the nation was going to grow big and strong like its children. To quote the caustic words of Bharat Gupt "Every year in the capital of the reborn nation, international exhibitions connected its people to the big and small nations of the world. Perhaps in the fifties only the country like its kids and their Chaachaa could smile hopefully".

In the sixties, things continued to take some shape as schools and colleges expanded. "Temples of modern India" - a term coined by Nehru to describe the New Factories and Dams-gave employment to many. Yet the less lucky but more enterprising started moving away to far off lands in large numbers. The present prosperous lot of the Indian diaspora in North America and Europe left the country at this time. By now the stagnation in the economic growth of Socialist Order imposed upon the country in a dictatorial manner began to extract its price. Nevertheless, on account of strong nationalism, in spite of strong bullying by China in 1962 and a grievous injury by Pakistan in 1965, India was able to defend most of its territory and reaffirm its identity.

The seventies, in their first half, witnessed another triumph of nationalism when "Indira Gandhi played midwife to the birth of Bangladesh terminating a horrendous genocide of the Bangla Muslims and Hindus by the Punjabi Muslim army of West Pakistan. But giddy from her success, Indira Gandhi unheedingly consolidated the Socialist agenda to prune it of all liberal intellectual and democratic vitality that Nehru would not have liked to disappear". By the mid seventies, darker days set in. Indira Gandhi introduced emergency. External support to terrorism and internal regional factionalism cast their net around the nation. As Bharat Gupt puts it, "Both were promoted under many garbs by a pernicious propaganda masterminded in the bastions of Western subversive agencies and academics as well. To contain the politically centrifugal forces, Indira Gandhi, flushed with her earlier success, made the pendulum of State governance swing from the dictatorial Socialism at the Centre to conspiratorial manipulations in the regions, thus seriously eroding democracy".

The period from 1970 to 1980 was marked by a great illusion of all at the Left of Centre. They imagined that Socialism could be poured from the top like flowing river waters and that changes at the grassroots would automatically follow. This kind of make-believe Socialism created a class of corrupt and unscrupulous politicians who acquired total control over national wealth and perpetuated a licence-permit-control-quota Raj that killed personal enterprise and initiative, while very little from the State percolated to the poor.

Bharat Gupt rightly concludes that on the cultural front, in the name of Secularism, religious regression was promoted not only among minorities, but more so in the Hindu majority. Under the shadow of nurturing parochial minions for Centrist manipulations, regional outfits were promoted to such an extent that they went out of control. By the end of the decade in 1980, both the Socialist State and Nationalism came to be discredited.

The period from 1980 to 1990 was marked by the escalation of terrorist wars, caste polarisation and withering of Socialist State that revealed the himalayan corruption operating beneath. A proxy war against us was started by Pakistan in Punjab and Kashmir. A section of Indian policy-makers from Tamilnadu, started sympathising with the terrorist and separatist outfit of LTTE in Sri Lanka. But the final blunder of sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to eliminate LTTE was beyond belief and gave a severe blow to nationalism. The consolidation of the middle castes, which had acquired enough economic muscle to translate their cultural identity into a political clout, was subverted by cheap politicians like V P Singh, "under the impact of Western notions of ethnicity and compensatory discrimination under the garb of affirmative action for the so called OTHER BACKWARD CLASSES". Thus V P Singh gave a deathblow to the process of integration of Hindu society. The slogan of "social justice" has become another name for Social stagnation riding rough on the backs of the lowest castes. Reiteration of the caste identities has subverted Indian Nationalism. Every political party, for a handful of votes or a momentary alliance, pampers the regional, religious, or caste identities.

Thus Bharat Gupt rightly concludes that the new millennium has opened with glaring entropy in the Indian political system and social institutions. The ruling elite of legislators and bureaucrats is unable to handle even every day governance let alone crisis situations that are routine as sunrise. National interest seems to have been totally sacrificed at the altar of power struggle and corruption. In such a scenario there is a temptation to throw cultural matters into the background and focus on enforcement of law and defence of national territory. As Bharat Gupt brilliantly puts it: "But this is not an age of territorial invasions. It is the age of cultural invasion and subversion. Political territories are altered after the cultural landscape has been reordered from within. There are three distinct forces that have at present laid a strong siege of India after the Cold War and the fall of her politically supportive though hardly economically beneficial ally, namely the Soviet Union. They are, COMMERCIAL GLOBALISM, JEHADI ISLAM AND EVANLEGICAL CHRISTIANITY. India needs a new leadership to counter these three. This requires strategies born of a cool and analytical mind and least of all an emotional retaliation of the momentary kind that seems to be the fashion of the day".

Bharat Gupt is indeed a renaissance man in every sense of the word. He clearly brings out the fact that the levelling down of the first rate, the excellent, and the noble has been a very crucial part of the destruction of our national life after our Independence. Destruction of cultural history has proceeded, step by step, with the destruction of all the traditional, social, cultural and familial institutions in our ancient country. Bharat Gupt"s brilliant book brings to my mind the following words of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888):

"Culture is nothing but sweetness and light. Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that as been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human sprit".

In the Mahabharata there is a shloka, which was perhaps incorporated into later day classical texts. The meaning and message of the shloka can be summarised as follows: "Give up the individual for the family, the family for the habitat, the habitat for land. But for the Aatman, give up the whole earth". According to Bharat Gupt this shloka offers a Neeti or practical ethics for organising a humane social order that provides as much for the single person as for its larger units. In the above shloka, Eka, Kula, Graama, Janapada, Prithvee and Aatman make up the mental and terrestrial shelves for the inner and outer being of an individual in the cultural context in Indian terms. Bharat Gupt brilliantly observes that the changes that have taken place in these areas can and do index the decline or revival in cultural life.

The same conceptual framework can also be seen in a verse in the Panchatantra. The Panchatantra, was originally a canonical collection of Sanskrit (Hindu) as well as Pali (Buddhist) animal fables in verse and prose. The original Sanskrit text, now long lost, and which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BC, is attributed to Vishnu Sarma. However, based as it is on older oral traditions, it illustrates, for the benefit of princes who may succeed to a throne, the central Hindu principles of Raja niti (political science) through an inter-woven series of colorful animal tales.

Based on the framework of a verse in the Panchatantra, Bharat Gupt"s book has been divided into six parts: Eka (person), Kula (family), Graama (habitat), Janapada (land), Prithvee (earth), and Aatman (self). Eka is the individual, male or female that makes up the unit of cultural consciousness and the fulcrum of creative ability. Bharat Gupt says that if the Eka breaks either due to a hostile social environment or due to lack of inner ethical or moral strength, the social order that depends upon individuals will also collapse. The same disastrous result will follow if the individual is unable to give up one"s selfish interest for the larger unit of kula (family), the kula (family) for Graama (habitat), the Graama (habitat) for Janapaada (regional kingdom/political unit/nation) and the Janapaada (land) for Prithvee (earth) and all material interests of the earth for the Aatman (self). According to Bharat Gupt the mode of this non-selfish action varies with time and place but as a principle of action it is none other than what Socrates called the Supreme Good (ton agathon) and what the Indian philosophers have called DHARMA.

Bharat Gupt has divided his book into six sections based on the Panchatantra framework referred to above. He says that he has chosen the six terms in the Panchatantra as they "not only define the Indian cultural experience more accurately than the Western categories like the "individual", "society", "nation" and the "global order". The ancient Janapaada was neither synonymous with the modern nation state or raashtra, nor with the present day provinces of a nation state. It was a local cultural space with community governance that enforced a moral and financial discipline that mattered much more for a person than the distant court of a de jure Emperor or the de facto Emperor. In the age of nationalism and globalisation in India, it has been virtually replaced for the time being by the nation state and will be further replaced by a newer entity".

Bharat Gupt states with conviction that beneath the present "regional states" and the nation state of India, the Janapaada is still very much alive as a cultural force that has a pervasive influence on the behaviour of the rural India. With telling effect, Bharat Gupt observes that Janapaada as a cultural force offers eventoday the rural Indian a sustenance through festivals, dress and cuisine, colour and designs that are more rewarding than the "week-end" is to metro-Indian. The six categories - Eka, kula, Graama, Janapaada, Prithvee and Aatma-seem more natural not only to understand the Indian identity of the past, but also to develop a healthier framework for personal, social and cosmic organisation for the future. As Bharat Gupt puts it "More than anything else, as indicated in the verse from the Mahabharata, they provide a well tested way (marga/pantha) to progress from the PERSONAL TO THE UNIVERSAL".

In Part I of his book Bharat Gupt deals with Eka: The Uprooted Individual in five chapters. After August 15, 1947, modernity came to be concretised in India as "print culture managed space in which the symbolic and imaginative were replaced by functional reality". A great change of attitude towards the very value of ancient and sacred ritual set in after Independence. In the State manipulated intellectually enervating climate that prevailed during Nehru"s rule, reality and truth came to be defined in Newtonian terms of European Physical Sciences. Rationality was reduced to a sterile scientific positivism which in its turn was hyped as "scientific temperament". Bharat Gupt declares that this state sponsored scientific temperament was privileged as a curative for the earlier "non scientific Hindu vision" of the Universe. Bharat Gupt laments the fact that this fascination for "scientific temperament" did not take into account the post-classical developments in Physics and their profound implications for philosophy and Hindu vedanta. Thus not only were some of the most rigorous and original Hindu traditions of native reasoning disregarded, even the latest views of modern science were blatantly ignored. Nehru was the leader of this anti-Hindu movement.

Thus Bharat Gupt gives a very just estimate of the petrified adolescence of Nehru in these words: "As a result, modernity in India, to this day remains a 19th century construct weighed down by notions that Nehru imbibed in his days in Eaton and Cambridge ossified in his adulthood into a Fabian atheism that he foisted upon the Indian educational system being the First Prime Minister".

In the name of development of a "scientific temperament" and "scientific temper", that the whole of India was de-Hinduised in a systematic manner by government after Independence. Bharat Gupt highlights the following facts to illustrate this point of view:

a. Replacement of the Vedic Model of Purusha as Angin with Angas by the Guttenberg-Newtonian Model of objectivity. All Hindu ritual was conceived as a sacred way of asserting a complete unity of the individual with the Universe. There is a great difference between this age-old Vedic method of performing an act before the Universe which is witnessed by the community, the Gods and the demi-Gods alike and the modern method of doing an act as a private action not witnessed by anybody. The first is ritual (Savana/Anushtaaanalsatra) while the second is personal consumption or "eating" alone (bhukthi). The first was the prescribed (Vaidha)way of life in traditional India and the second a forbidden (Nishidda) way. With the rise of Western individualism, the second has become esteemed and normal while the first is viewed as backward, abnormal and even suspect.

b. Replacement of Orality with Writing Philosophies and beliefs of a society depend on its educational system and the technology of their transmission and dissemination. Right from the dawn of history India used the aural as the main mode of knowledge preservation, although plastic, graphic and symbolic methods were not lacking. Right from the days of Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization, writing was kept subsidiary to oral composition. Now-a-days, there is an irrational and wrong presumption that Indian elevation of orality was caused by ignorance of writing.

As Bharat Gupt puts it "This is again based on the prejudice that graphicity once achieved can never allow orality to dominate. Hence the presumption that the Sarasvati-Sindhu script once lost, the very concept of a script was forgotten till reintroduced into India by the Greek and the Phoenician influences. The truth seems otherwise. ORALITY, which was comprehensive enough to be a combination of speech (vaacika), gesture (angika), mental concentration (saattvika) and symbolic dress (ahaarya) was preferred to other technologies of preservation as a cultural choice. This kind of orality keeps thought, speech and action in a unity for performance in education, arts, rituals and life in general. Whatever is to be done may thus be done by mind, speech and body (manasaa, vaacaa, karmanaa) together".

This paradigm has operated on all aspects of Indian life. Hence the role of writing was made supportive not performative in our culture. This paradigm also patterned India"s educational systems. These systems have been destroyed in a systematic manner by Government and Nehru acting together in post-Independent India.

In my view, after Indian Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru promoted his concept of false nationhood under the label of "secularism". According to this concept, all the people who happen to reside on the soil of India form a nation, whether he follows the culture of this country or not, whether he is loyal to this country or not. It does not matter if the state-aided minorities dismiss the time-honoured culture of this country "Sanatana Dharma" as abominable and as a path of the Devil. Thus in a mischievous way Nehru turned the concept of nationhood into a soulless geographic entity and bade good-bye to the established principles of nationhood founded on emotional unity and all that it implies. According to this Nehru"s notion (a dead substitute for a live Hindu nation), Hindus of India in absolute majority have to lose the inheritance of their traditional homeland. Nehru used his political might to propagate this soulless philosophy and this became the corner stone of all his policies that proved to be disastrous for the Hindus of India.

Bharat Gupt seems to tell us that the seat of knowledge is in the head; of wisdom, in the heart. We are sure to judge wrong if we do not feel right. Reading his highly sensitive and revealing book with never sagging zest and delight, I am reminded of what the great Greek Poet and Writer Aeschylus (524-454 BC) said in his Agamemnon in 458 BC:
"Wisdom Comes alone through suffering"

Bharat Gupt vividly brings out the saga of suffering undergone by him in the context of cultural degradation that is taking place in a ruthless manner in the disgusting India of today.

With the advent of British Rule, they ushered in the new technology of print that played havoc with the systems of oral transmission, which was the basis of Indian (Hindu) culture. Two fundamental prejudices were established by the Europeans and the colonial State in British India while assessing the value of Indian cultural products. One was that as a technology of communication, orality was inferior, inaccurate and untruthful. The second was that the content of the Indian cultural messages of oral traditions was heathen and erroneous. Thus for the print oriented English vision of the Universe, orality was synonymous with pagan ritual. This wrong perception became more pronounced under the anti-Hindu and anti-national secular educational system established by Nehru and his Congress party in post-Independent India. As Bharat Gupt puts it, "...the best way to declare one"s Indian modernity is still to condemn ritual as deceit. This censure pervades not only the speeches of chest thumping social reformers, writers, poets, academics and journalists but just about anybody who is anxious to be called a citizen of his times. The habit stays strong".

In this context he quotes the "adolescent" (my perception!) and "infantile" (my assessment!) observations of Khushwant Singh about Kumbha Mela of 2001 "I fear crowds.... I have met people who had been to such pilgrimages: they looked very pleased with themselves. But I did not notice any changes for the better in them. If they were prone to lying, cheating, back biting, scandal-mongering, using bad language before they left for their holy cities or reverse, they came back and resumed lying, cheating, back biting, scandal-mongering and using bad language". Bharat Gupt dismisses this assessment of Khushwant Singh by saying that this is the stock response of the ENLIGHTENMENT FANATICS of the NEHRUVIAN GENERATION.
I cannot help quoting the rapier-like words of Bharat Gupt here: "They are out to denigrate ritual of any kind in the style of the British Utilitarians and Fabian Socialists. The malady is not restricted to the English medium expression but pervades a good deal of writing in Indian languages. Tomes can be found on elevating Kabir"s verses against Saguna upaasanaa and sundry cultural bureaucrats have lavishly rewarded musicians singing such showpiece bhajans (pseudo-secular songs-these words mine!) thronging to which is a hallmark of progressive spirituality".

Then Bharat Gupt goes on to expose the layer upon layer fraud and hypocrisy of the so-called progressives. While they condemn the rituals of Hindu religion (though they choose to remain silent on the rituals of Islam and Christianity!), they celebrate the rituals of a secular State like Parades, Prizes, Ceremonies and Celebrity parties with untiring addiction. Nehru set the example for this "progressive hypocrisy" by willing in his Last Testament that his ashes be not consigned to the Ganges after a traditional Hindu cremation but to be taken in air and released all over India. Bharat Gupt concludes in the manner of a Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): "It is doubtful if what Nehru lost in the poetry of Mantras was gained by that grandiose ritual.... Nothing reveals the duplicity of "scientific temper" devotees shared and promoted by the government of India than the show of ritual obsequity at the "samaadhis" or memorial shrines for the Indian Prime Ministers that stand in a long line at the banks of Yamuna in Delhi. Samadhi burial sites have been made for Hindu saints or Muslim Sufis in India but never for KINGS.... The Indian ritual of cremation, unlike for other Indo-European ancients, contradicts the creation of a memorial building".

Bharat Gupt scientifically argues and proves that ritual is transformation and not repetition. The rightly conducted traditional ritual brings about a change in the doer"s mental state, which is predictable, well tried, and permanent and not merely an autosuggestion or a hallucination. Right from Vedic times, controlling the mind in the entirety of its thoughts and feelings has been demonstrated and regularly applied in India in various fields like the Arts, Inter-personal Relationships, Social work and spiritual pursuits. Very unfortunately, modern consumerism infesting Capitalist Societies or Marxist States, use the same principles of mind control for serving the commercial interests of greedy business corporations or tyrannical bureaucracies.

Bharat Gupt argues that under the cultural onslaught of Islam and Christianity, Hinduism has undergone a special phenomenon, which he calls as the "COMMANDMENT-ALISATION OF HINDUISM". In India this trend continues even today because of the fact that the Anglophonic ruling class has stayed under the sway of Neo-colonialism. Most of the deep rooted prejudices against Hinduism that were in the fore-front among the Islamic and Christian peoples when they first came into contact with Hinduism centuries ago, continue to prevail to this day. Against this background Bharat Gupt states with clarity that: "Hinduism now needs to strongly resist this commandment-alisation of Hinduism in order to save its original genius. It also means restoration of the unity of thought, speech and action which was broken by the other-worldly religiosity (loka-paraangamukha Bhakti), Euro-modernity, Protestant, Catholic and Islamic iconoclasm, and Gandhian dryness/rasaheenataa, but is found as the ambrosiac kernel in the universe of pagan rituals".

What needs to be done is to revive the activity of the informed and conscious rituals and karma yogas. The modern illiterate average urban Hindu is often heard saying, "I believe in God, but I don"t go to temples, I don"t believe in rituals". He is also under the mistaken impression and even delusion that all that old stuff called Dhyaana, bhajan, daana, sevaa etc. is all part and parcel of ritual to be duly discarded! According to Bharat Gupt this is the illusion fostered by the print culture and the bookish education of the Macaulay-Nehru era!

In my view, the chapter on Education without Art must be prescribed as a compulsory text for the first year students in all our Teacher Training Colleges in India. Bharat Gupt makes a frontal attack on the Sahitya Academy, the Lalit Kala Academy and the Sangeet Natak Academy and their boorish, pusillanimous and niggardly approach towards the recognition and promotion of Literature, Art and Fine Arts. Our business corporations are no better as they have not woken up to the idea that the mercantile world has a duty towards arts. They are not even aware that the Vaishyas of yore were no less patrons of the arts than the Kings.

I fully endorse the view of Bharat Gupt: "The biggest prejudice against the arts in India has been generated by its modern educational system that inculcates a diametrically opposite attitude to their worth as posited in the traditional Indian psyche. So-called makers of modern India assiduously preserved the schooling system left by the British even after August 15, 1947 and only allowed the American educational jargon (propagated mostly by P L 480 money financed Professors!) to modify the shape and size of text books leaving the content untouched. They have also maintained the hegemony of the printed word, the paper exercise book and the written examination over all other means of instruction and evaluation. Reading print and reproducing it in examinations remains the hallmark of our educational methodology".

Our modernists have been so enamoured of it that they are scared to consider another method, such as vocal expression, capacity to conduct reliable work projects, teaching of junior students by senior students and so forth. Consequently in our traditional educational system and great ancient culture where the spoken word, intonation and gesture, signs, symbols and rituals had been developed as superb media of communication for thousands of years, we now have mere reading, cramming and reproducing as the only method of passing routine examination from nursery classes to the IAS. Bharat Gupt gives this biting verdict: "If the arts, except for music that still rests upon traditional training and Hindu ethos, have not touched great heights in free India, the sin lies at the doors of our Education Ministers".

The following are the important points made by Bharat Gupt on the decadent system of education we are having in India today:

1. Under the impact of Nehruvian scientific rationalism, the government agencies responsible for making policy, curriculum as well as textbooks, like the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) have been promoting a wooden version of science. There is an excessive emphasis on mugging "objective facts" about the physical world instead of imparting the skill of inductive logic. Consequently our allopathic Doctors have generally no dialogue with Ayurvedic or Unani Practioners, very few legal luminaries have any acquaintance with ancient codified or customary laws, and very few physicists have studied ancient astronomy or music. Thus the dichotomy between art and science, ancient and modern, is made complete.

2. The challenge before the Indian Policy Makers is how to create educational TV channels that provide attractive alternatives to crass commercialism. So far there is no thinking about it as the Indian political and intellectual elite is too colonised to depart from Western models of development.

3. A concerted effort needs to be made to re-instate the arts as a creative, therapeutic and moral force in our educational system, print and electronic media. In our schools, the arts should be among the main subjects of study and not mere extra-curricular activities.

I fully agree with the view of Bharat Gupt: "When will we stop thinking of art as a handmaid of business, diplomacy, or infotainment and recognise it as an elevating experience that distinguishes humans from animals?"

"Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it", so wrote Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) in his famous novel "Siddhartha" in 1923. Bharat Gupt is endeavouring to show that wisdom can also be communicated with telling effect.
"Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body". -Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) Bharat Gupt in a Chapter titled "Shelving a Heritage, Sanskrit from Macaulay to M-Tv" quotes the great Sanskrit poet Bhartrihari who

nearly 2000 years ago commented on the Indian scene: "Intellectuals are engaged in envious quarrels, rulers are intoxicated by arrogance, the people are burdened with lack of education and so Good Speech is weak and emaciated" (boddhaaro matsaragrstaah prabhavah smayadooshitaal Abodhopahataashcanye jeernamange subhaashtitam ).Of course there have been repeated moments of darkness in our history. Vexatious mornings of needless and fruitless debates in the shameful Indian Parliament over the pseudo-secular riddle whether it is secular or communal to perform sarasvati vandana, are not the first such spells of darkness. Bharat Gupt brilliantly sums up "Else the lines of Bhartrihari as given above would not seem to be so contemporary".

Bhartrihari could make do with the word subhaashtitam, which means "Good Speech". Good Speech was accepted in his time as a synonym for "learning", "knowledge", "vani", "vak", or even "sarasvati". In Bhartrihari"s India, there obtained enough poetic taste to personify or deify speech, music or wealth. Many centuries after Bhartrihari, Turkish, Mongol, Afghan and Mogul Rulers enthralled themselves by patronising court musicians singing Sanskrit and brijabhasha songs in praises of Sarsavati, Naad or Shabda. But all this was before the 19th century when "Enlightenment" came to us and we were bitten by the bug of secularist iconoclasm.

A great uproar was created a few years ago when in a conference of Education Ministers of the various provinces, an invocation song in praise of Sarasvati was sung. This was viewed as a preferential treatment to a Hindu Goddess. I agree with Bharat Gupt when he declares that Indian Secularism has taken the form of turning away from one"s own heritage and disregarding the spiritual and ethical commitments that ancient and medieval vehicles of all religions and cultures symbolize. Sanskrit is the biggest casualty under secularist milieu. In actual practice, secularism now means wallowing in easy consumerism of the day and neglecting religious and cultural values. That is why we have the disruptive and not additive protests by the secularists. Unfortunately, the anti-religious approach of the State Policy has resulted in hurting us deeper.

Saxon English or Norman English is not belittled in England. Ancient French is not belittled in France. Latin is not belittled in Italy. Hebrew is not belittled in Israel. India alone excels in belittling its classical heritage and classical Sanskrit language as both are codified as belonging to a dead "Hindu past". This classification began during the British colonial period and very unfortunately this tradition was not only continued but also enriched by Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress successors in Office for 60 years after Independence till today.

There is no doubt that a few English and European Orientalists of British India contributed to the discovery of the East by the West. At the same time Macaulay forged for India an education system which had little place, not only for Sanskrit literature, but for all the traditional arts and sciences like music, poetry, dance, theatre and painting, Ayurveda, Rasaayan, Jyothisha, Metrics etc. This dichotomy continues even today. On the one hand we have Indologists, South Asian Experts, Asian Anthropologists, (White, Brown, Black and Yellow, native and foreign) who would like a special treatment, almost protectionist, to be given to Indian native cultures; and on the other hand we have the socialists, rationalists, scientificists, pluralists and globalists assured of the auto-built resilience and auto-generative capacity of native Indian cultures. Bharat Gupt observes with sardonic wit and wisdom: "But neither side thinks that a formal educative system should have any role to play in the formation of culture. For them, as for Macaulay, culture can be extra-curricular. Indeed, it could be so for the English colonisers who did not require culture for clerical/babu-work". Nehru and his anti-Hindu successors of Independent India also wanted only clerks and babus for their administration and governance in post Independent India.

We have to give Sanskrit its due place in Indian education. It is not just a matter of giving concession to a particular language. It is the task of using 5000 years of all the textual wealth produced in this sub-continent. I endorse the view of Bharat Gupt that all who believe that these texts, the bulk being in Sanskrit, are not required for maintenance of cultural identity have little knowledge of civilizational rise and decline in history. Is it not a matter of national disgrace that the fundamentally anti-Hindu Jawaharlal Nehru University did not have a Sanskrit Department till 2002 although it boasted of having known Marxists and Islamic Historians on its faculty?

Bharat Gupt says that Sanskrit can happily be revived by enhancing the present day utility of ancient and medieval texts. The aim should be of bringing them in original and translation into the curriculum at all levels from school to college. This means a revision of the present curriculum and expansion of resources for inter-disciplinary participation.

The Chapter titled "Conversion: Sin or Sincerity?" is a fascinating chapter which brings out the ground level truths rooted in reality about conversion and evangelical agenda. Many clichés about conversion are kept alive by vested interests that prevent a proper evaluation of the evangelical agenda. The foremost cliché being that conversion controversy is not a religious issue but a vote-catching device. It is projected as a Hindu Conservative Right versus Progressive Left confrontation. As Bharat Gupt puts it in a clinching manner: "But the whole of India today knows that proselytisation is not a battle for votes, but a battle for souls with a long history of cultural beliefs and behaviour patterns that goes far beyond the smaller fortunes of the Nehru or the Sangh Parivar".

Bharat Gupt also demolishes the theory that conversion is the shortest, sweetest and surest way of achieving social equality. He makes it clear that caste has little to do with conversion. No Muslim or Christian convert of low caste forgoes his caste and gains a status of even workable equality with upper caste Christians or Muslims. If it were so, Churches of all denominations would not be demanding reservation for Christians on caste basis. The truth is that the motive to become Muslim or Christian was seldom freedom from caste hierarchy. For vast populations it is always either force or allurement of economic uplift. In a caustic manner, Bharat Gupt observes: "For stray individuals, it has been anything from philosophy to sex".

The most important chapter is titled "Bring Back the Teacher". Bharat Gupt rightly states that for almost a millennium, India maintained a system of higher education, which was availed of by many neighbouring civilizations, including China. This traditional system, of Guru and Gurukul,centered entirely on the teacher and his direct relationship with his disciples. It was rigourous and demanding and yet flexible. It used emotional ties to create long-term obligations and accountability. In spite of its hierarchy, it had an admiration for the individual excellence (pratibhaa) on the basis of which sometimes very young persons were elevated as Head-Teachers or Acharyas. Recognition of merit and talent is a phenomenon that seems to have disappeared in modern India. In the traditional system, the teacher was a free decision maker in his realm. He was trusted and left alone.

Western pedagogy brought in two major changes. It not only brought in print technology to replace the oral Indian tradition (method), it also removed the teacher from the centre and brought in the academic administrator. This colonial tradition has been institutionalized after our Independence. From appointments of Vice Chancellors and promotions of teachers, setting admission policies and student fees, the functioning of the Universities have fallen exclusively into the hands of political lobbies.

Against this dirty background, Bharat Gupt makes out a strong case for decontrolling education. To quote his beautiful words in this context: "The first step towards freeing higher education is to establish that the State is obliged to support but not to define education. Neither legislators nor administrators are trained to select and appoint educators or to prescribe the content of education. The powers of mass persuasion, once the domain of the intellectual class, are being used in the name of democracy by the legislature. The intellectual class must now free value and opinion making institutions from the clutches of legislators. The philosopher must check the King".

The sensitiveness, the range, the acuity, the profundity of perception and intuition that we see in Bharat Gupt"s book puts him quite apart from, if not, above all the writers of today. The extraordinary gifts-large and varied-displayed by Bharat Gupt makes him a great literary artist. By "artist" I do not mean that he is a laborious planner and polisher. What I mean is that he is greatly gifted as an artist, that he possesses a most delicate and most passionate sensibility allied to a native power of written eloquence and living vivid language-a faculty that has become a rare phenomenon today. His is essentially an art of spontaneity, of fresh quick-flowing untiring creativeness. His most eloquent and faultless pages in this book seem to come as easily to him as those, which are most careless. The most precious thing about this book is that Bharat Gupt gives his unique vital experience.

India today presents a general picture of cultural, ethical and spiritual malnutrition if not starvation. Vast sections of our population have lost all touch with the strengthening, invigorating and purifying spiritual traditions of our timeless culture. This is bad enough. This is sad enough. But what is worse and sadder still is that we have also failed to get ourselves ethically and spiritually re-nourished and re-strengthened by our own consciously chosen socio-political actions, consequent upon the attainment of our Independence as a free nation during the last five decades. The current malady in our society, if allowed to grow unchecked and uncontrolled, will only lead this country to an irretrievable chaos, turmoil and confusion.

PDP against national anthem

2009-03-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Link:

Jammu & Kashmir Governor NN Vohra on Wednesday could not wind up his maiden address to the joint session of the newly elected 11th Assembly with customary ‘Jai Hind’, nor police band stationed outside the Central Hall of the State Legislature building could play the National Anthem, as the main Opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) disrupted the Governor’s address by frequently chanting slogans of withdrawal of troops from the State and revocation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Minutes after the Governor entered the Central Hall of the tastefully decorated State Legislature building to address the joint session he departed from the scene “unceremoniously” without completing his address.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, embarrassed by his arch rivals, could not see off Governor even as he rushed out of the hall. Later, he headed straight to his office chamber, holding his newly acquired executive leather bag tightly in his left hand.

The ruckus started inside the Central Hall soon after BJP legislature party leader Chaman Lal Gupta attracted Governor’s attention by saying that the august gathering he was going to address had not been judiciously constituted.

Gupta, clad in dogra turban, said, “In Jammu region 21 lakh people voted during 2008 Assembly poll and elected 37 MLAs whereas in Kashmir only 16 lakh people participated in polling and still they elected 46 public representatives”.

Capitalism beyond the crisis.

2009-03-15T06:24:00.000-07:00

A piece by Amartya Sen. Check the following excerpt:

"2008 was a year of crises. First, we had a food crisis, particularly threatening to poor consumers, especially in Africa. Along with that came a record increase in oil prices, threatening all oil-importing countries. Finally, rather suddenly in the fall, came the global economic downturn, and it is now gathering speed at a frightening rate. The year 2009 seems likely to offer a sharp intensification of the downturn, and many economists are anticipating a full-scale depression, perhaps even one as large as in the 1930s. While substantial fortunes have suffered steep declines, the people most affected are those who were already worst off.

The question that arises most forcefully now concerns the nature of capitalism and whether it needs to be changed. Some defenders of unfettered capitalism who resist change are convinced that capitalism is being blamed too much for short-term economic problems—problems they variously attribute to bad governance (for example by the Bush administration) and the bad behavior of some individuals (or what John McCain described during the presidential campaign as "the greed of Wall Street"). Others do, however, see truly serious defects in the existing economic arrangements and want to reform them, looking for an alternative approach that is increasingly being called "new capitalism.""

Read the following at: click. While Rajeev has his opinion on this, I'll leave you up to judge your own.

S Swamy specials on Rahul Gandhi.

2009-03-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

My contribution to the elections.. spreading awareness and helping people choose the right candidate. Enjoy!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Shivaji Jayanti Special

2009-03-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

Change Anti-Hindu NCERT syllabus neglecting Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj and glorifying Mughal’

Today is birth Anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj is a principle of effulgence, rather a divine inspiration. He is certainly not human, he is God. In fact he is a Primal God who took birth in a divine and pure culture.

HJS salutes Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj on His Birth Anniversary!

http://www.hindujagruti.org/hinduism/national-icons/shivaji-maharaj/

But what is Central Government’ NCERT gift to Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj ?

• In the text book of NCERT for Standard 7 ‘Our Past – ll’ there are only 5 lines on Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
• 60 pages given to Mughal’s history and Mughal rulers who made the Hindus slaves.
• Not even a single photo of valorous Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj is printed. The place for the photograph is left blank.
• While the photos of atrocious, tyrannical Muslim kings, Babar and his descendants starting from 700 AD are printed.
• No mention of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaja’s ‘Hindavi Swarajya’ but it is just mentioned as ‘local government’.
• No mention at all of Maharana Pratap who had fought with Mughal sacrificed the leisure of royal palace and used to sleep on the grass like ordinary people.

For more info. about the NCERT books controversy click on the link below….

http://www.hindujagruti.org/activities/campaigns/national/ncert-textbook-controversy/

'O great warrior Shivaji Maharaj, forgive us for your such mention through distorted Indian History and now grant us strength to fight with these Modern ‘Mughals’ and re-write the real Indian History'

Be real follower of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj by changing syllabus prepared by Modern Mughal in NCERT.

Participate In Hindu Janajagruti Samiti's Statewide agitations today, Falgun Krushna Trutiya, 13 march 2009

Mumbai

Venue - Near statue of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Shivaji Park, Dadar, Mumbai
Time – 4 pm to 5.30 pm

Ambarnath, Thane

Venue – Near statue of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Shivaji Chauk
Time – 6 pm to 7.30 pm

Yavatmal

Venue – In front of District collector office
Time – 2 pm to 5 pm

Raigad, Pune and Vardha agitations already over.
For any question write to pravakta@hindujagruti.org

Kashi ki Kala Jati, Mathurame Masjid Hoti, Agar Shivaji n hote to Sunnat Hoti Sabaki - Poet Bhushan

Jay Bhavani, Jay Shivaji !

Hat tip: Sachin Gupta.

About lawyers of Madras High Court.

2009-02-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

Check this excerpt from Vijayvaani:

"The lawlessness bordering on terrorism inside Court Hall 3 of the Madras High Court on 17 February 2009, and the violent clashes that erupted on the 19th in the campus between a section of lawyers and the police which lasted for over three hours, is rooted not just in caste, the all-time handy whipping boy for anti-Hindu and non-Hindu secularists and Dravidian ‘Tamils’, but also in the religion of the warring castes.

The time has come to break the studied silence of the Secularists and the Dravidians on the issue. Meanwhile, the rowdiness and sheer goondaism of the lawyers of Tamil Nadu as of this moment remains unabated as they continue to rampage across cities and towns vandalising shops, buildings, and police property, and threatening policemen and officers on duty. This section of lawyer-rowdies has not spared police housing quarters either. The Tamil Nadu Government has now issued shoot-at-sight orders to the police. It had no other option.

The Tamil Nadu Assembly on the 20th evicted MLAs belonging to the AIADMK, the PMK, MDMK, the CPI and CPI (M) from the House; the Speaker of the Assembly had earlier refused to allow them to raise the issue in the House or discuss it. While the political position of the Opposition, taking a uni-dimensional view of the complex problem by roundly condemning only the police force for the violence was predictable and along expected lines, the statement of former Chief Minister and AIADMK general secretary Ms. Jayalalithaa would have been laughable had the issue not been so serious, with far-reaching consequences.

Asking the Center to impose Article 356 in the State, Ms. Jayalalithaa also made the preposterous demand that a state of Emergency be declared in Tamil Nadu. She justified her demand on the ground, “This incident proves that the Tamil Nadu police have now become a violent force.” Ms. Jayalalithaa may think the people of Tamil Nadu have short memories, but it was she who ran Tamil Nadu like a police state in the wake of the arrest and immoral incarceration of the venerable Peethathipathi of the Kanchi matham to brutally quell all protests and demonstrations against her.

In the recent past, barely three months ago, on 13 November 2008, Ms. Jayalalithaa had castigated the State Government and the very same “violent” police force for their “inaction” and for being mute spectators when a group of scheduled caste students of the Madras Law College mounted a murderous attack against caste Hindu students inside the college campus under the very eyes of the police who were stationed outside the college; the police cannot enter educational institutions (like they cannot enter our courts) unless summoned by the head of the institution, the Dean or the Principal. Ms. Jayalalithaa faulted the police force for not entering the college campus despite being witness to the life-threatening attack. The police was damned then because it didn’t. The police force is damned today because it did.

The cause for the Law College clashes in November 2008 was overtly political and projected as a caste conflict, but the real cause for the homicidal attack was covert and religious. Unless the silence on this sensitive issue is broken and the truth spoken loud and clear, the poison that is coursing within the Tamil Nadu Bar and Judiciary, emaciating and wasting this important body, cannot be identified and neutralised; and this bodes very ill for democracy which ultimately rests on the character of the judges. Judges, let us recall, emerge only from among the ranks of lawyers; the Tamil Nadu pool contributing to the nation’s total tally of judges is today contaminated. Politically motivated or politically expedient diagnosis of this malaise will not check, much less cure, the disease..."

And the rest over here: click