In the Name of Democracy and Journalism

That there are opinionated journalists & publications is not a new thing in India or elsewhere. But some get so blinded in their hate for a particular party or person, they lose their sense of balance, when they write or speak of them.
One prime example is Ms. Rana Ayyub and her columns in DNA India  on 9th July on Amit Shah
There are infact two columns, as if one was not sufficient!

1. The importance of being Amit Shah 

Ms. Ayyub starts off in this column, mentioning an 'unnoticed piece of news' on the release of Abhay Chudasma on bail by the court in the Sohrabuddin encounter case. After a preamble on the infamy of this man, which is all hearsay, she jumps on to the arrest of Amit Shah in the same case, giving titbits on how pally both Chudasma & Shah were.  
That Chudasma was arrested in 2010, that he was in jail for 4 years  and was in a Mumbai jail & was granted bail by the Mumbai High court, along with 2 others, is of little consequence for furthering her diatribe. 
Now is it a crime, if a Home minister of a state knows his Police officers, with whom he interacts as it is his job?
That it is not for "The First Time" that a sitting minister has been arrested as she would like us to believe.
She goes in great details in the purported allegations of the CBI in its chargesheet against Chudasma none of which has been proven even after Chudasma was incarcerated.
Further without any evidence Ayyub calls Chudasma as a corrupt officer and as being mentored by Shah, whatever that means.
Now having badgered Chudasma, she links him up with Shah grandiosely stating " The reason we are discussing the case of this corrupt IPS officer is because it reveals a great deal about his mentor Amit Shah" What is that revelation, goes unsaid.
Now that she has made her case with that one insinuation, she goes ahead with her tirade against Shah. It is again in the same vain that she used to buttress her case against Chudasma.
Being made a minister in Modi's cabinet with multiple portfolios, the long winding story on Haren Pandya, all which read more like a crime thriller than a journalistic column. Every person known to Mr. Shah is either his chela, favourite, crony or somebody who has one or all of these epithets. Meandering on as how he is Modi's chela, favourite, crony....and then much more!!

2. A New low in Indian Politics 

Probably not happy with her first column or that she had not finished yet, she writes in this: 
The CBI court in Mumbai where the Sohrabuddin case is being heard, adjourned the case against Amit Shah, based on "excuse" as his "fate" was being sealed in Delhi! Really?!
Then she adds a snippet on the transfer of Justice Utpat of the Mumbai CBI court to Pune "before he could preside over Shahs discharge application" . Is it an insinuation against the High court of Maharashtra under whom the Judge is serving or a nudge nudge hint that this transfer happened on the saying of Shah?
Then her credentials of take up another few paragraphs,  to justify her rantings, which are rehashed versions of her earlier writings since her days in Tehleka. The unsubstantiated & unproven mudslinging  continues with the same bitterness that has not found any takers in the elections since 2005.
Suddenly with no connection to her earlier tirade, she bestows her pity on the poor ailing 89 years old Governor of Gujarat. If the Governor is ailing as she says, isn't it time for her to retire?

One fails to understand (A) What is the agenda? (b) What purpose do such columns serve? (c)  Are mindless allegations being cloaked as healthy criticism. 
Does this lady really think that the people who read are brainless, senseless morons?!! 

The Harebrained Tactics

The current spats of skirmishes, arson in Maharashtra and the killing of an innocent in Pune, have left all of us puzzled on why this & why now.

Maharashtra is under the rule of Cong + NCP combined for the last 15 years. No untoward incidents or large scale communal clashes have happened in this period. The opposition parties, especially Shivsena & MNS have done little to whip up communal frenzy as they are known to do, but have in fact desisted from during the elections to the Lok Sabha. Why suddenly this carpet bombing of incidents?

 Even the most critical political commentators would agree that the Mahayuti would spoil its chances of winning the coming state elections, by instigating communal clashes, when it has won 42 seats of the Loksabha without these tactics.

Why does a state government which was aware of a person called Dhanajay Desai, his outfit Hindu Rashtriya Sena (HRS), his antecedence, records of his past, keeps quite & does not make preventive arrests when trouble started in Pune over the FB postings? How could the mob roam around freely, threatening people openly, as is reported? Trouble started three days before, ending in the brutal killing of that boy and near fatal state of another few.

Clearly the congress led state government, with a Chankya like figure in Sharadji sahib guiding, was going slow with kid gloves, expecting to find some link between the HRS & BJP /RSS –SS. When a link could not be established, the Maharashtra Govt., reluctantly booked Desai under bailable clauses. Why was Desai and his goons not booked under MACOCA? Why was his outfit not banned?

Remember, this is the same Govt. of Maharashtra that locked up Hundreds of Muslims for ’93 & all other blasts in Mumbai & its surroundings, Sadhvi Pragya, Lt. Joshi and many others for Malegaon with a lexicon of Hindu terror thrown in & has the keys put away for years now.

If these are the parameters for handling communal issues, why are guys like Desai & co let free? The Pawar & co. have lost touch with the masses and communication world of today. They think propping up hate & fear mongers to create trouble would get them the votes as seculars who are there to protect minorities, then insinuate that these were BJP/RSS people, which would make BJP to lose popular mandate. If not for this brilliant strategy, why did Powerji in his speech, drag in the Central Govt. & BJP, by saying that these troubles have started since the advent of NDA in the centre, insinuating that somehow the election of NDA is the cause for the trouble in the state and not the lax security under his Home Minister. The fact that law and order is a state issue was conveniently forgotten! He just jumped the gun!

For precisely this reason, the BJP Central Govt. is holding the state responsible at an administrative level & asking questions at that level. The trap of trying to get a political response from BJP/SS has failed miserably.

Should politics go down to this level, just to gain power, obviously for the pelf of it and not for giving the people good governance? Are the stakes so high that a few deaths & a few rifts in communities, castes & religions are just collateral damages in the course of attaining Power?

Is it just a coincidence that these clashes have stopped since the sudden demise of Mr. Gopinath Munde, who was considered the next CM of Maharashtra & BJP has started looking weaker in Maharashtra?

Even the followup reporting on the issue has stopped!!

Time for the Politicos to understand and accept the Indian politics has a new paradigm & that Yeh Indian public sab jaanti hain. 

Secular India

At the end of his waiving the white flag article A missive to distraught liberals | Times of India Blogs , Dileep Padgaonkar tells his co liberals, “….we must not lower our vigil to ensure that casteist, communal, sexist, hyper-nationalist and regional chauvinist forces of all shades do not threaten the fundamental rights of citizens. These rights are the foundation on which rests the edifice of our Republic.” Now being an intelligent man, he conveniently drops the S word & replaces it with Liberals!!

Do we conclude that all those named above are not seculars, against whom Mr. Padgaonkar wants to keep vigil of the Republic along with the sepoys in his platoon?

A Secular as defined by Oxford is: “Not connected with religious or spiritual matters”

By this definition:

1.     Every person in any way connected to any religion becomes non secular. In short only an atheist can be termed as secular.

2.      Nations that can be called secular are the Communist Countries, which do not believe in religion. But then we are left with just a handful of such Countries.

Since the majority of Nations have religious freedom or are declared religious states, seculars as a community based on this definition are in a grave minority in the whole world.

India has been a Nation of religious worshippers with a spiritual heritance that has a history of Thousands of years; hence by no stretch of imagination can this Country be called secular based on this definition of secular.

But then, the way of life adopted by Indians is the Hindu way or Hinduism in colloquial terms. This way of life gives liberty for discussions, disagreements, acceptance for new thoughts and amalgamating them in the main discourse, including those which have come from lands afar.

India was one of the first Countries that has had people of all shades, religions in its land for centuries, living in harmony with each other for due to the ethos practiced by the natives.

Every community, religion that faced threat in their Country / region of birth, rushed to India as they found it to be the only place that they knew would accommodate and absorb them. Today we have Jews, Parsis, Siddis & innumerable explorers from Europe, Persia, and China etc.., who have settled here for centuries. Each one has continued to practice their faiths without fear or favor.

This is now an anti-thesis to the definition of Secular as described in the beginning.

Probably, this is the real definition of being secular and was established before the word was coined or came into popular usage. Ethos of which, are expressed as Sarva Dharma Samabhava  and Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb.

This definition of Secular is all inclusive whereas the oxford definition is all exclusive.

The Padgaonkar platoon should reorient their liberal & secular values to this definition and look at India from this prism instead of the Victorian value prism of secular. Remember this definition was coined to keep the church at bay. 

Person of Indian Origin

Two unconnected things happened in the recent past :

1.  One had the opportunity to fill the immigration form.

2. A thought read somewhere as to why BJP should bother about Muslim votes.

Each one of us who has travelled out of this Country has to fill in an immigration paper. One of the questions is about your origins. Invariably if you hold an Indian Passport, you tick the column PIO (Person of Indian Origin) unless you are a NRI (Non Resident Indian).

In both cases, you affirm your being an Indian. This way the immigration form gives a small window of thought for those who want a uniform India. The form doesn't ask about your religion, your caste, the region you come from etc...  The fault lines that political class keeps talking of and has been exploiting over the decades in the name of secularism.

This word secularism if removed from all its overt cosmetics just means how many Muslim candidates / vote share does one party have. The moment like the immigration form does, if one removes this column of religion the secularism myth vanishes.

The BJP has been the most highlighted party as a non-secular one & BJP in turn talks of those who espouse secularism as pseudo secularism.

Probably the reason why the Immigration form doesn’t have these columns is because the guy is once capable of going abroad he is beyond the need of categorization!! This is simply because the person has income enough to take a trip abroad for whatever reasons & these sub groupings are redundant.

Talking of the reservations given on the basis of caste / religion etc… is a sham is self evident when you end up giving reservations to the Jain community which is one of the most economically prosperous communities in the country!

Look at these reservations holistically. Anyone who comes under this category gets the benefits once he/she completes 10^th standard. Till then which school that person goes if at all he / she are able to go depends solely on the parent’s income and not based on their religion /cast.

Hence these reservations are of no meaning unless kids have parents who can sustain their education till the 10^th standard. The only avenue for economically weak parents, hell bent on giving their children education irrespective of their poor living standards are the Municipal / Government schools, conditions of whose would be a matter for another blog.

Hence providing basic education for kids to make them cross 10^th standard is entirely dependent on the income standards and has nothing to do with the parent’s religion caste etc…

The madrasas which the Muslim communities run for their kids are at best are for so called religious education & not for getting the kids into main stream education.  

It is at this stage comes the involvement of the Muslims & all those caught in the reservation sham have started thinking beyond these voting patterns.

The development pattern that Narendra Modi has been propagating is the best chance to break this stranglehold of Religion & Caste based reservation. When you have a sustained income levels coming from increased opportunities of earning, the reservation becomes irrelevant.  

It is for this reason that  one sees Modi talking all these years in Gujarat of 5 / 6 crore Guajarati’s which obviously includes people from all religions / castes / communities. He is now extrapolating this on the National scene by talking of 150 crore Indians. He is aware that one can’t leave out the underprivileged out of the growth story, if one wants a society where the gap between the haves & have-nots becomes dangerously unbridgeable.

That it was this economical development of Europe, North America & Japan which increasingly made religion irrelevant to a great extent. Living aside the fringe loonies, who would exist any ways.

That the BJP needs to engage this 10% of the population and bring them into mainstream is essential or else this would always remain a drag in the growth.  This also becomes important in case of the backward regions where extremism is playing havoc.

Can We Cast This Caste Out and every Indian have one identity P

India - The Banistan

I had not  heard of Wendy Doniger till yesterday, just as I had not heard of Sulman Rushdie till the Satanic Verses was banned nor of  James Laine, till the news of vandalizing of the Bhandarkar  Institute in Pune & the Maharashtra Government banned his book on Shivaji.

The common thread that educated me of all these beings was the ban on their works. But for that there would have been thousands like me in India who would not have been aware of the existence of these individuals and like those many other commoners like me would not have kindled an interest in what was the ban all about.

The latest ban became the last straw on the camel’s back so to say, for one to go and read at least about the bans and the reasons about it. In all instances it turns out that some handful of people of vague groups again of whom, you have never heard of, were the reason for the bans! None of these were mass protests like the ones we recently witnessed in Delhi during the Anna andolan or Nirbhay rape.

If you really look at it, how many in sheer numbers really read such books? None of these books if not banned would have given even a percentile competition to the Chetan Bhagat’s of this world. Then what makes a motley group of people to go around and impose their will on the rest & more importantly why do Governments of the day buckle under? What all this gives is bad press to the Government and the democratic values which they are supposed to hold up.

The only one who gain brownies & their 15 minutes of fame are these vague groups & their representatives who invariably have the so called hurt feelings of their community as their calling card.  

The only books  I have read of among all these now famous authors is Shalimar the Clown & one more by Mr. Rushdie.  Both were interesting reads. Since Rushdie’s banned book was more to do with Islam of which one has little or no knowledge, the viewpoints do not include him. But being a born Hindu & who is a faithful, one can talk of Hinduism or what one thinks it is.

Unlike Rushdie the other two authors are scholastic intellects, teaching Hinduism at well known Universities in America.  Having read reviews, extracts & gone thru some of their interviews, one can safely say that these two have been making a living out of studying Indian culture & Hinduism in particular & whatever has been written cannot be termed blasphemous.  At best one may disagree or call it a stupid interpretation.

The fact that Hinduism is an amalgamation of many thoughts, has evolved over the centuries & has survived for thousands of years is itself because of its readiness to absorb different views and ideas over the centuries. Even the Gita  has been interpreted and written about many authors over centuries and all those stay harmoniously on the book stands of those interested.

Much before the birth and advent of Christianity or Islam, one should not forget that Hinduism went through the Ashokan wave of Buddhism. Even after that, with a great deal of work by Adi Shankara, Hinduism has remained largely intact & flourished.

It would be of interest to read more about the current sensation on the University of Chicago web page on her and the links within.

The groups of people who go about propagating bans on things which they don’t agree upon are rightly described by Wendy Doniger herself in her article The Battle over Hindu History  

She says:

 “Some of the British, especially in the early colonial period, admired and celebrated the sensuality of Hinduism. Others, particularly but not only the later Protestant missionaries, despised what they regarded as Hindu excesses. Unfortunately, many educated Hindus took their cues from the second sort of Brit and became ashamed of the sensuous aspects of their own religion, aping the Victorians (who were, after all, very Victorian), becoming more Protestant than thou…”

It is exactly this mindset which has distorted Hinduism and radicalized many over the past century and people who are real believers are left confounded and confused of whether they should be proud of the Hindu Culture of the yore or should support this straight jacketed view of Hinduism these small groups purport.

One only hopes that this old vibrant culture of pluralism doesn’t denigrate in to a narrow rigid way of thought where it is either my way or the highway.   

The Curious Case of Anjali Damania

Last week an interview with Anjali Damania appeared in FirstPost wherein she declared that BJP was their (AAP) main rival & Congress was finished.

Both these statements were quite revealing. What is that makes her conclude that the Congress is finished? Finished in the State of Maharashtra or pan India? Does she include NCP also in this finished list?  Isn’t it the same Congress which is supporting the Government of AAP to which she currently belongs to? How is a finished Party supporting AAP? Or is it just a veil to cover her/ her party’s real agenda to shadow box BJP on behalf of Congress?

If one recalls, two years back Ms. Damania shot to fame over her exposes of the scam in irrigation dam projects in Maharashtra, the target seemed to be Corruption of the Congress – NCP Government & more specifically Mr. Ajit Pawar, nephew of Mr. Sharad Pawar.

During this time, Ms. Damania, being a member of IAC, was at pains to explain her father’s connection with RSS & how she was imbibed with RSS’s anti-corruption philosophy, trying to hint where her leanings where.

In the mean time two things came to light.

  Ms. Damania was not fighting any public cause but was trying save her 30-acre farm in the Kondivade village, purchased as an ‘agriculturist’ When the Kondhane dam project was announced, Ms. Damania got panicky about her investment. After a lot of water flowed in the river,  The Govt. of Maharashtra took back the land after it was exposed by the tehsildar of Karjat that the land was bought fraudulently. As it turned out she was not an agriculturist by any stretch of imagination. That she was a pathologist turned developer & the land was converted from Agriculture land to Non agriculture (NA) land and was sold to SVV Developers, of which Damania is a director!! The land was to be used for building private villas in the name of Alpine Village.

 That this could not be done without the principles of non corrupt ways being thrown out of the window doesn't need great insight.

2. The real expose of the scam came from the then Chief Engineer of the Water Resources Department and a member of the state level technical advisory committee, Mr. Vijay Pandhare and he supplied the documents on the larger scam taking place all over Maharashtra. Whereas Damania’s sole focus was the Kondhane dam & her protecting her business interests.   

Slowly the focus turned to how she approached Mr. Nitin Gadkari to take up the matter further & how he refused to take it up sighting his business relations with Mr. Sharad Pawar, the friendly media eagerly went into over drive coming out with the Purti holdings & its investments and how Gadkari’s driver and servants were directors etc… The connections between the irrigation scam,  Purti holdings & Gadkari though never got established!!  

The real issue of the Irrigation scam became more of a foot note than anything else in this whole drama. That today it is a matter almost forgotten is another story!

Curiously it is  Kirit Somaiya of the BJP who is persuing  the matter!!

One is not aware as to what happened to all the proof of corruption in the irrigation scam & what follow up action was taken by Ms. Damania & AAP. However Mr. Gadkari slapped defamation notice on Ms.  Damania.

Unfortunately all the good things that her father taught were never put to use by Damania during wheeling dealing.

The end result of all this Nitin Gadkari bashing, out of nowhere as it seemed then, ultimately led to Gadkari making way to Rajnath Singh as Party President. As it looks now the whole idea of the revelations of the irrigation scam was a big cloak used to get at the Nagpur strong man and thru him BJP into trouble along with Mr. Pawar & his NCP, which would keep both BJP & NCP in check & give more space to Congress in Maharashtra for its maneuverings.  One should not forget the parallel exposes that were taking place on the Adarsh society scam, putting a lot of Congress leaders in trouble at that time, including the then CM Ashok Chavan & the current Central Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde. This was one good attention diverter!!

As the Lok Sabha Election get nearer and nearer the true colours of AAP ka intentions become clearer and clearer. If Swami Agnivesh was the plan A of Congress, AAP is the plan B. One has to see if a plan C is also in place, looking at the way plan B is now getting exposed by the hour.

Aam –Admi & His Party

Like most of us, the Anna Hazare’s fast last year & the response to it was a great moment of déjà-vu.  Emergence of the political party as a fall out of this was viewed with interest & hope of a new style of politics not seen in this Country, at least after the Janata experiment in the late ‘70s.

Let me admit that at that point, I like all others was euphorically supported this formation. The euphoria led to the AAP winning a stunning election in the Delhi state elections.

In the build up to the formation of the party and ending with the election and then forming of its government lays an interesting path.

When the Anna fast started, except for Anna Hazare, Swami Agnivesh, Kiran Bedi & the Bhushan father & son duo, none others were known names including that of Arvind Kejriwal, Sisodia etc.  

 By the time the fast ended, with the Agnivesh expose thrown in between started the emergence of Arvind Kejriwal, regularly talking to the press along with Prashant Bhushan, with question marks of “Kejriwal who” on everyone’s mind. A slow build up of answers started coming up in the media to this question, more intensely so after the Agnivesh fiasco. The Aam Admi like me was fed with the information of his IAS-IIT background and the other good details. As the Delhi elections approached, the name of Yogendra Yadav well known to TV news watchers emerged & slowly the name of Prashant Bhushan & Shanti Bhushan started fading out.

When names of candidates were being announced we were introduced to names like Kumar Vishwas & Sisodia who started taking more & more media space. Now, neither Shanti Bhushan, Prashant Bhushan nor Yogendra Yadav were part of the candidates for the Delhi elections.

Slowly & steadily it was Arvind Kejriwal who all the way became synonymous with AAP! Rest all faded away in the background till the Government in Delhi was formed with the support of Congress.

It was during this period that one started wondering why Anna judiciously kept away from this. A simpleton as Digvijay Singh calls him? No!! It was that typical Indian dehati wisdom which sensed what was coming. Add to it the silence or ambivalence of Kiran Bedi & the picture becomes clear.

It was the Agnivesh plan ‘B’ that was in action!

Bedi who has enough support for her in the police, with her ears to the ground would have sensed this and passed on the information to Anna. Remember she & Gen. V.K.Singh were in Ralegan when the election & the results were happening.

As the list of corrupt comes out from a man who has already published enough allegations and has so much evidence, one wonders when the real action will happen, if at all it will!! Or are we to witness another Janata fiasco.