Coverage of Orissa, Karnataka trouble

As we read this, one top Maoist leader has taken responsibility of killing Swami Laxmananda Saraswati [Link]. It can’t go more interesting than this: they don’t want government to do any investigation and are sending scapegoats to accept all the blames! Think how much exposed and globally embarrassed the missionaries will be if government carries out an honest investigation and finds out the role of Christian missionaries in his murder? And hence the acceptance…

Just when I wondered why only a single voice of condemnation is coming from all quarters and no one is caring to think about the root causes, I got to read this article. A very balanced one, asking us to think fairly at the times when we are busy being politically correct:

Coverage of Orissa, Karnataka trouble: Balanced approach wanting

All the reports and commentaries on the attacks in Orissa and Karnataka sidestep the original sin of extreme provocation and the consequential long-simmering discontent among the Hindus. Would such scurrilous observations about what is regarded as holy and sacred be tolerated by any community anywhere else in the world?

B. S. Raghavan; The Hindu Business Line, Sep 3, 2008

It is a hallowed principle of jurisprudence that justice should be even-handed, and both sides to a dispute must be given a full hearing before conclusions are drawn. The media coverage of the disturbances in both Orissa and Karnataka and the action taken by the Centre are so one-sided as to make any fair-minded person feel extremely worried.

I am not a practising Hindu, perform no rituals and have no religious hang-ups. Further, having worked directly under Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi for nine years (1961-9) as the secretary of the National Integration Council from its very inception, (besides my other duties in the Political Division of the Union Home Ministry), I have savoured from close quarters the spirit that animated the heroes of pre-Independence era. Hence, in sharing my uneasiness with readers, I have tried my best to rise above prejudices or preconceptions, and appraise events on the touchstone of fairplay and freedom from bias.

To anyone for whom the print and electronic media were the only sources of information, it would seem that Hindu fanatics, behaving like dreaded terrorists, had been making killing fields of both Orissa and Karnataka, by indulging in murderous attacks on Christian minorities, and the destruction of sacred religious places.

The emerging picture of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal (BD) — all subsumed under the pejorative rubric Sangh Parivar, or the Saffron Brigade (why not, by the same token, call the Congress the Quattrochi Brigade or the Left the Hammer-and-Sickle Brigade?) — is that, encouraged from behind the scenes by the communal ‘monster’, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), they are going on a ruthlessly violent spree, just to vent their hatred of minorities.

In short, the impression given is that swarms of totally insane thugs are on a rampage, without any provocation whatsoever, holding both States to ransom, and the State Governments, in open sympathy with them, have done little to prevent their excesses.

Not the best way

God knows there have been condemnable incidents, making innocent Christians fear for their lives. There can be no wishing away of the despicable and wilful desecration and destruction of places of worship in Kandhamal in Orissa and in some places, including Bangalore, in Karnataka. Certainly, any wanton resort to violence should be put down with an iron hand and peace and harmony among all sections of the people restored at all costs.

Only a dispassionate and disinterested inquiry can credibly establish whether in the particular cases of attacks on churches, the respective State Governments acted with due sense of urgency and concern for the well-being of the affected communities. Sending on a hurried visit some functionaries from the Home Ministry toeing the official line, unfamiliar with local conditions and listening to only the slanted version is not the best way of getting at the truth. Also, it must be remembered that it is, and will always be, a matter of judgment whether more or less could or should have been done by the State or Central authorities to enforce the law, round up the ruffians and quell the disturbances in any particular set of circumstances.

Such cases cannot be weighed on a fine scale. I say this having dealt with a number of instances of violent outbreaks and insurgency during my nine years in the Home Ministry and two years as Chief Secretary of a north-eastern State.

Journalists and columnists, enjoying the good fortune of never having to manage crisis situations, should, therefore, think many times before showering their verdicts on the happenings, and especially guard against saying or writing anything approaching character assassination. All the reports and commentaries on the disturbances in Orissa and Karnataka neatly sidestep the original sin and the consequential long-simmering discontent among the Hindus. They make it look as if the attackers, who were readily assumed to be members of the ‘Saffron Brigade’, were madly running amok without any justification.

Real cause ignored

Reams have been written and billions of sound bytes have gone on air describing in lurid detail all that has happened to the churches and the Christian community, with no equal space given for the real cause of all the trouble.

Swami Lakshmananda was a revered figure in Orissa who was engaged in service to the weaker and vulnerable sections of the population. Allegedly, the local Christian votaries of conversion saw him as a thorn in their flesh. Whatever that be, the fact was that some time ago, he was the victim of attack by a gang bent on doing away with him. Luckily, he escaped at that time, but his enemies had their way the second time.

The Centre could have set all speculation at rest if, with all the mighty and extensive intelligence and investigative machinery at its disposal, it had ascertained the truth behind the murders of the Swami and his associates and unhesitatingly named the desperadoes. Its own inability, or unwillingness, to expose the forces that were behind the killing should be taken to have contributed to the flare-up that followed in Kandhamal.

Extreme provocation

Similarly, as regards Mangalore and Bangalore, those who are quick to castigate the State Government gloss over the extreme provocation contained in an obnoxious pamphlet, Satya Darshini, in Kannada language, circulated in the name of an outfit called the New Life Church, scathingly denigrating Hindu gods and goddesses in the foulest of language.

Since all the manifestations of anger from the side of the so-called Saffron Brigade have been set out in graphic detail day after day, fairness in maintaining balance calls for revealing a few samples from the pamphlet to illustrate the revolting nature of its vilification of Hinduism:

“When the Trinity of Hinduism (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) are consumed by lust and anger, how can they liberate others? Their projection as Gods is nothing but a joke. (page 39).

“When Vishnu asked Brahma to commit a sin, he immediately did so. How can such an ‘evil Brahma’ be a Creator of this Universe? How is it possible for both the sinner and the entity that provoked the sin to be gods? (Page 39)

“God, please liberate the sinful people of India who are worshipping false Gods that believe in the pleasures of illicit relationships (Page 39).”

Perversity

I want to ask the holier-than-thou commentators to place their hands on their hearts and tell me whether such scurrilous observations about what is regarded as holy and sacred would be tolerated by any community anywhere in the world?

One need not even go as far as gods and goddesses: Suppose one’s wife or parents are the targets of such scatological stuff distributed far and wide? Would one smile it away? Or, suppose one exhibits in a public forum paintings of particular individuals and their kith and kin in the nude, will those individuals celebrate it as an ex-pression of artistic freedom?

Why, then, show this perverse support to sacrilege perpetrated against Hinduism alone and work overtime lambasting the spontaneous reaction of largely simple and pious people who are sustained in their quotidian hardships by their faith in their gods and goddesses? To me, somehow, it does not stand to reason or common sense.

There is yet another aspect of this perversity. It gives a handle to foreign governments and busybodies to bad-mouth India as a den of fanatical Hindus who love nothing better than being at the throats of persons of other faiths.

A country which rained death and destruction on Iraq by flaunting a tissue of lies, indulged in unspeakable atrocities in Abu Ghraib and for the last eight years, has kept Muslim detenus in Guantanamo Bay without trial, treating them worse than vermin, denies a visa to Narendra Modi to the resounding applause of self-styled secularists who do not realise the egregious nature of the insult to the entire nation.

In sum, the secularism as practised in the country is letting it down, besides polarising the population. It is time a body of persons reputed for their objectivity and erudition went into the meaning and implications of secularism and communalism.

Nehru set up a Committee in 1961 for this purpose under the chairmanship of Asoka Mehta, of which Indira Gandhi, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Prof Mujeeb were among the members.

Unfortunately, its labours were interrupted by the Chinese invasion of 1962, and it was wound up. Getting going from where it left off is eminently worthwhile.

Ref: The Hindu Business Line [Link]

The Godmother of India

Thanks a lot to all the members of the UPA, especially to Sonia Gandhi and Man Mohan Singh; now we have Shibu Soren as the Chief Minister of an Indian state.

Shibu Soren, held guilty of conspiracy, kidnapping and murder, was sentenced to life imprisonment and he was to give a fine of Rs 5 lakh as compensation to the widow and daughters of the diseased.

This is just the beginning of execution of the 'deals' that the government had to make in order to avoid an election year in 2008.

Wonderful days ahead...

[Link]

Three Men – Three Destinies…

One man standing who became the Tank Man…

Do you know who Tank Man was? Tank Man, or the Unknown Rebel, is the nickname of an anonymous man who became internationally famous when he was photographed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China.

Students were protesting against the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party and wanted democratic reforms. Govt had sent tanks to suppress the students’ movement. At that time, a fleet of tanks were moving towards the square where students were protesting. This man simply walked up to them, and stood in front of a column of 5 Chinese tanks and thus prevented their advance!

What happened to this Tank Man? He could have been one of the hundreds of students, workers, physicians, and children later found dead, shot in the back…

One man is enough… And one tank is not…

One man’s speech – and the after effects…

We all know about the famous speech of Omar Abdullah in the parliament during the trust vote for UPA. He had spoken about how he regreted once being part of the communal NDA/BJP and now he had decided to be with the secular force Congress. He also talked about how the Left parties who were against NDA/BJP then were now joining hands with the BJP.

There, along with wise words, he had also said this, referring to Amarnath land controversy: “Woh hamari zameen ka muddha tha. Hum apni zameen ke liye lade. Aur hum marte dum tak apni zameen ke liye ladhenge!” (That was an issue about our land. We fought for our land. And we will fight for our land till our death.)

(Meaning that the land of J&K is the land of the locals and any Govt of India has no right to take or use the land for any purpose like giving shelter to the outsider (non-Kashmiri) Indians who come there to visit the shrine)

After the speech, Mr. Abdullah says:
“Frankly, my speech was neither rehearsed nor designed to appease anyone. I just spoke what I felt. But to tell you the truth, I was very angry at not being given a chance to speak. I thought to myself that while people were openly talking about an MP being worth Rs 20-25 crore, here I was, not getting even 20 seconds to speak. It was a speech that I almost missed.

After that, I have been flooded with phone calls, letters and requests for interviews. Everyone in Kashmir, including some hard-liners in my own party, appreciated my speech. Yes, it was a moment that one cannot get even in a million years.”

“The National Conference took a stand that the land cannot be given away.” “My party is hoping that the people are fed up with six years of coalition rule and will give us a clear mandate. I am not even thinking of pre-election tie-ups right now.”

Latest: The video of his speech has been watched a record number of times and Mr. Abdullah plans to write a book on the events around his speech!

Politicians will make speeches. And will fall in love with them. And we Indians still think that those who speak well are good leaders. Like kabootars kept repeating: Shikari aayega, jaal bichhayega, dana dalega, usme fassna mat. But do we still keep getting trapped?

One man’s poem and the after effects…

Kuldeep Raj Dogra, in his mid-30s, was participating in a hunger strike at Jammu's Parade Ground. He decided to do something tragically dramatic: He consumed poison, stood up to read out a passionately patriotic poem he had penned, faltered and fell dead.

It was his way of registering his protest against Omar Abdullah's speech in Parliament... he was incensed by the National Conference leader's duplicity.

The police panicked. They forcibly took away Dogra's body to his hometown, Bisnah, 15 km from Jammu, and tried to cremate it using old tyres, kerosene oil and liquor. His widow Shilpi tried to prevent the cremation and raised a hue and cry. The police have been accused of insulting, abusing and assaulting Shilpi to silence her. But a huge crowd gathered and snatched Dogra's body from the police. It was taken to Jammu and the situation subsequently just went out of control. Since then, the Hindu intifada has gathered both force and speed.

Don’t you think we Indians can do it better than the Chinese? And in the mess of Kashmirs and Maharastras, can we still recognize our India?

Three Men – Three Destinies

Three men and three different destinies… The Man walking up to the Tanks – got a bullet in his back and is still anonymous, The Man talking his speech got a million appreciations and is a youth icon, and The Man who was a poet, got to drink poison…

Note: This piece quotes some portions from the following pages, with due acknowledgement and credit to the original articles: One man standing: Link1, Link2, One man’s speech: Link, One man’s poem Link.

UPA and Nuclear Deal

A no-brainer’s Analysis

The basic premises:

· Deal or no deal – Indian public was not ‘affected’ by the nuclear agreement.
· Indians wanted the government to survive, because they didn’t want frequent elections and hence the political instability.
· Indians wanted government to control rising prices (inflation) and would punish all those who play the game while the household compromise.

If UPA had lost the trust vote:

· Left parties would be villain – for playing politics for 4 years and then making the government fall on a non-issue.
· BJP would be a villain – for opposing the nuclear deal just for the sake of playing the role of a non-supportive opposition.
· Congress would gain – for it sacrificed the government for an issue which it believed was good for the nation – for it was defeated because the Left met the BJP in politics of opportunism.

Now that UPA won the trust vote:

· Everyone knows that they procured MPs in order to win votes.
· Everyone knows that they have a history of bribing MPs just to remain in power, after the JMM/Shibu Soren issue last time.
· Everyone knows that they can do anything to remain in power – and don’t have any ideology, however controversial the ideologies can be.

Things to watch for in coming times:

· How the corporate houses that sponsored the bribery of MPs get paid.
· How the government pushes its scheme of Caste based reservations in some new innovative places, apart from the old agenda of reservations in private companies.
· How the government manoeuvres the Setu Samudram project to start off, though it will never complete the project (some conflicts are made never to be solved, for perpetual political gains).
· How in order to control prices, the government destroys India’s industrial growth. How the mediocrity of policy planners would seek short term results at the cost of long term damage to economy.
· How a terrorist waiting for his execution will live more under the Indian hospitality.

Some positive things that Indians will realise:

· Indians will grow more disenchanted from the power politics.
· That the governments play with their hard earned money while their farmers have to commit suicides.
· That no matter how Harvard educated they come, politicians will remain politicians.
· That politics is a thing not worth discussing in blogs too :)

Majority Minority

Hearing from the horse’s mouth always helps. Therefore I believed it when my professor said: “Judges in the Supreme Court are no fools. They know very well which cases to delay and for how long. For example, the Ayodhya's Babri dispute will never be solved; because a verdict on either side will result in riots.” Being a practicing lawyer in the HC, he would know…

Now, take the stark contrast in the case of Ram Setu. Here, the government doesn’t think twice before saying that Ram didn’t exist, or that Ram himself destroyed the Setu, and goes on passing the verdict that it can’t be a national monument. Why? Because there won’t be communal riots against these statements?

When I read civics in school days, I wondered how the democratic setup of ‘rule by majority’ would be able to safeguard the interests of the minorities. Now I know. Big doesn’t mean strong.

It is much easier to mobilize the minority votes either in favor or against one political party. But to woo the majority is very difficult. Therefore, parties take shortcuts. One of my close friends who is a Christian, avoided any conflict and argument at any cost; he would just run away. It took me much time to understand his psychology. It may not be politically right to connect this to the fact that he hates the BJP and respects Sonia Gandhi, but this is what I could understand. Every minority group has a 'fear psychology'; it is in our basic nature. No government, however just can ever erase that fear by 100%. But to exploit it or not remains an ethical question that the parties have to face.

I was in Chhattisgarh for 2 years and saw one very good example of good administration. Very near to Raipur bus stand, stood an old Hanuman temple right in the middle of a big Chowk. They had widened the roads and the area had become very spacious and beautiful: but the temple was causing traffic jams. The government quickly built a beautiful temple at nearest safe distance, picked up the idol by a crane, established it with all the rituals and funfair: with all its humble respect. Troublemakers would still have cried and made that an issue: how could you touch my idol? But they didn’t. Why? Because the government treated their faith and feelings with respect and sincerity.

In the case of Ram Setu, the government doesn't have to worry about anything when it opens its mouth Ram. On Ayodhya’s Babri dispute, the same government won’t open its mouth. Irony? No. Politics.

In the short run, keeping the silence and not addressing the fundamental problems may sound like a good policy. It does manage to manage the peace. But it gives incentives to those who start believing that to be able to be heard, you have to make a riot. It is a fact that more number of innocent deaths have happened inside India due to terrorism than due to wars. The end line: the choice is not ours. At present, the state of politics in India seems to be going dumps.

Wait for the renaissance.