L K Advani's Mirage: Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
2009-06-29 13:20:00
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L K Advani has said that he
would undertake a countrywide tour to galvanize the party, which lost
in the recent general polls.
Talking to reporters here on Sunday, Advani said that he would
undertake the tour to rejuvenate the party after the upcoming budget
session of parliament.
BJP faces an uncertain future after a heavy election defeat, as its
mix of Hindu-revivalism and promise of strong governance failed to
convince its traditional middle-class base.
The BJP could not capitalise on problems such as price rises after
inflation hit nearly 13 percent last year, tens of millions of job
losses and a string of militant attacks, including the assault on
Mumbai in November.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has won 159 seats,
while the Congress-led UPA has won 261.(ANI)
...and I am Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
Advani ends Five-day Visit to Kodagu on Happy Note
Daijiworld Media Network - Madikeri (SP)
Madikeri, Jun 29: Opposition leader in the Lok Sabha and BJP national
leader L K Advani left Kodagu on the morning of Sunday June 28 after
spending five days at the Orange County Resort near Siddapur. He
arrived at the restaurant run by the Resort owner Rampur Kuttappan and
had break fast with his family members.
Advani was in a relaxed mood, had Idli, sandwiches and malt in the
morning before signing autographs for the fans. He and his family
members paid respects to the people congregated to see them off. On
behalf of the district administration, deputy commissioner Ashwath
Narayan Gowda and sub-divisional officer Akran Pasha offered flower
bouquets to Advani.
Speaking to reporters at the entry point to the Resort, Advani said he
was rejuvenated with the stay here and wanted the place to get more
fame so that more and more people would be able to enjoy this scenic
region. He apologized for the inconveniences if any his visit would
have caused for the people of the district. He said the memories of
his stay here will linger long in his memory.
MLA Appachu Ranjan and district BJP president M P Sunil Subramani
touched the feet of Advani couple and sought their blessings. At
around 9.30 am, Advani and his family left to Ramanagar in two cars.
bademiyansubhanallah
INDIA DIARY
By COOMI KAPOOR
Given that the BJP has 116 members in the Lok Sabha, and rules in
eight states, it can still play a key role in the national polity.
MORE than a month after it received a sound drubbing in the
parliamentary poll, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
is still struggling to put its own house in order.
The mutual recriminations and finger-pointing that inevitably followed
the surprisingly poor showing exposed the party’s organisational and
ideological fault lines.
The BJP, the principal opposition party, is now in search of new
leadership and new ideas, both of which it is finding hard to come by.
There are signs, however, that the leadership is keen to come out of
the mess it has been pushed into.
The recent two-day stock-taking session of its national executive in
New Delhi saw the party put a tight lid on public dissent and
dissidence.
There is a calibrated move to re-invent the BJP in the light of the
new reality.
Rejecting calls for either dumping the party’s ideological heritage in
favor of a modern, liberal entity or to go back to the hard-line pro-
Hindu, aggressive nationalism of its original incarnation, Jana Sangh,
the national executive plumped for the middle path.
Immediately after the stunning electoral loss, a war of words had
broken out between those who wanted the BJP to refashion itself as a
conservative party and those wanting it to become an ultra-right, pro-
Hindu party.
A section of the leadership and independent observers wanted the BJP
to sever ties with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the BJP’s chief
inspiration and ideological mentor, to become a liberal, right-of-
centre party.
Doubts over BJP’s ability to recover from its defeat grew further when
three of its top leaders publicly challenged the nomination of the
party leader in the Rajya Sabha (House of the States).
Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh, all three former
ministers in the Vajpayee government, pointedly blamed the leadership
for the party’s defeat, and demanded a threadbare discussion on its
causes.
Deliberations of the BJP national executive threatened to turn nasty
on the first day when Shourie was joined by Maneka Gandhi and a few
others in targeting those who had managed the party’s failed election
campaign.
But the old guard who had grown with the RSS-Jana Sangh-BJP managed to
blunt their attack, decrying public washing of dirty linen and
exhorting the faithful not to lose faith or confidence in the party’s
future.
The establishment in the BJP had beaten back the challenge. However,
it won’t be business as usual for the party.
For one, its leadership is too old to continue for much longer while
the new one is yet to mature. It has been a two-leader affair for the
BJP since its inception in 1980.
Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, now paralyzed by a stroke,
and his deputy, L.K. Advani, have steered the BJP all through, taking
turns as party president.
Even in the days of the Jana Sangh, the BJP’s progenitor, the duo was
the undisputed leader. But Advani is now 82 and must pass the baton as
it were to the next generation.
It was with the idea of grooming the next generation that he named the
well-to-do, 50-something lawyer Arun Jaitley as the leader of the
opposition in the Rajya Sabha, and Sushma Swaraj, 57, as his deputy in
the Lok Sabha.
Jaitley’s elevation clearly hurt seniors like Jaswant Singh, Yashwant
Sinha, Arun Shourie, etc.
Given that both Singh and Sinha are in their mid-70s, and Shourie in
his late 60s, it stands to reason that the BJP picks someone to groom
for the leadership role who has a couple of decades of active
political life to look forward to rather than investing in people
nearing retirement age.
The “lost generation” mounted a rearguard attack, but to no avail. The
trio were out-numbered in the national executive meeting.
Far more important, though, is the problem of BJP’s ideological
profile. The party can no longer expect to prosper by glorifying
ancient Hindu-India, harping on a common civil code, the abrogation of
the special status of Kashmir, etc.
In particular, with the emergence of new generations of voters who
have no memory of the bloody riots that preceded and followed the
division of the sub-continent in 1947, the party can only carry the
deadweight of anti-minorityism to its own disadvantage.
As an observer noted, the real problem of the BJP is not that the 15%
Muslims and 2% Christians shun it like the plague; the real problem is
that 80% of Hindus never voted – and thank God for that – as a
monolithic, single entity.
India has grown. There is a 300-million strong middle class which
abhors the idea of violence, riots, etc., while the other 700 million
plus aspire to improve their socio-economic lot.
Impressing voters with talk of regaining Hindu glory or about righting
the wrongs of history, is no longer a workable proposition.
The only way the BJP can grow is for it to consciously turn itself
into a modern party on the lines of the UK’s Conservatives or
Germany’s Christian Democrats.
Indeed, several speakers at the two-day meeting of the national
executive pointedly blamed Varun Gandhi’s rabidly anti-Muslim harangue
during his campaign for his own parliamentary seat for the electoral
debacle.
While Gandhi, son of the late Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of Indira
Gandhi and her chosen heir till his death in a copter crash in 1980,
won by a huge margin by polarizing the voters in his constituency, in
the rest of the country Muslims determinedly voted to ensure BJP’s
defeat.
Gandhi’s anti-Muslim tirade was repeatedly shown on national TV all
through the campaign.
However, given that the BJP has 116 members in the Lok Sabha, and
rules in eight states, the party is far from finished. Should it sort
out its leadership and ideological confusion, it is bound to play a
key role in the national polity.
As the second largest party, it has a key role to play both inside and
outside Parliament.
India being a young nation with two-thirds of its population below the
age of 35, BJP’s challenge is not only to groom young leaders but to
embrace a modern, liberal worldview which resonates with the people.
There are enough signs that the party has grasped the lessons of its
electoral loss at last.
bademiyansubhanallah
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cut to the heart of democracy
Aditya SinhaFirst Published : 28 Jun 2009 12:56:16 AM ISTLast
Updated :
There's a lot of hand-wringing in the newspapers over the fall-out in
the principal opposition party from its recent electoral
disappointment.
Both of the top BJP brass — Leader of Opposition L K Advani and party
president Rajnath Singh (both of whom demit office by year-end) — have
reaffirmed the party’s commitment to Hindutva, so that is one core
issue settled. It also quieted the dissidence, coming mainly from non-
RSS colleagues like Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Jaswant Singh,
and coming in the form of attacks on failed strategist Arun Jaitley.
Now that tempers have cooled, the 60-70 persons running the Sangh
Parivar will sit and mull the party’s loss. They will also think about
the new BJP president.
Media reports claim that Advani prefers Arun Jaitley as party
president and, who knows, that might be true; Advani himself has been
discreet. Such reports also mention in the same breath Jaitley’s
presence at Lord’s when India’s lost the cricket T20 title.
Such references are irrelevant though it would be preferable if
Jaitley focused more on cricket than on running a political party that
has some serious work ahead of it (it’s reportedly only because of
Jaitley’s insistence as head of Delhi’s cricket association that India
finally found a opening pair in Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir,
both Delhi players). In the media, where Jaitley has friends under
every rock, this is a minority opinion.
However, this has to be seen in the broa der context of a worrying
trend in Indian politics, and one that Advani opposed during the Lok
Sabha elections though his choice of rhetoric was apparently ill-
advised. This is the trend of politicians taking the Rajya Sabha route
to the highest executive positions.
It has been exacerbated by the tenures of H D Deve Gowda, I K Gujral
and now, Manmohan Singh. It has established in the minds of many an
aspirant that they need not get directly elected by the people in
order to become PM. It would not be surprising if Arun Jaitley fancies
himself as a BJP PM in the mould of A B Vajpayee.
Manmohan Singh, contrary to what the Congress party might argue, did
not win these elections, even if Sonia Gandhi repeatedly stated that
he was its candidate for PM.
If anyone won the elections, it was the Congress president and each of
her nominees in the winning constituencies. Politically, the winner
was probably Rahul Gandhi who trod his own path (he had the luxury of
doing so since dissent in the Congress party is equivalent to suicide)
in strategy and tactics.
One of the mother-son pair should be PM, if anyone. Or they should
have let the Congress parliamentary party elect its leader (it did,
but in a very Kim Il-Jong manner of voting for the pre-selected
leader).
That would have been better than Manmohan Singh, who in five years did
nothing except ram down our throats a nuclear deal, and bribe our
farmers and bureaucrats during the his government’s last year. He was
happy to be a proxy for Sonia Gandhi, and he did not mind the
administrative paralysis it engendered; in fact, many suspect he
preferred and even encouraged it, so that he could slip out of tough
political decisions that are ultimately a prime minister’s job.
Yes, granted that five years of the UPA was not a catastrophe; but we
wasted many opportunities to deal with deep problems facing the nation
and roll out new initiatives.
But this is to be expected from someone who seeks refuge in the safety
of the indissoluble Upper House (and that too, sent there from the
well-known Sikh heartland of Assam). Spend time with politicians, and
you will become aware of how fighting a Lok Sabha election — in the
heat and dust, having to meet throngs of voters (and answer their
questions), travelling into hamlets that are either physically or
economically distant from Lutyens’ Delhi — is a sobe ring experience
for any politician, even the most rabble-rousing ones. You become hard-
wired with that experience, and it becomes a part of every decision
you take, even if you are not conscious of it.
This is not to downgrade the membership of the Rajya Sabha, which
serves a variety of purposes in our parliamentary democracy. It is
supposed to be a House of Elders, meant to contribute invaluable
experience to our legislative life. Gopalaswamy Ayyengar saw it as a
dignified chamber where the passions of the day could be cooled down.
The Sarkaria Commission saw its import in giving the States’ concerns
equal voice in Parliament.
The 12 members the President nominates from the fields of art,
literature, science and social sciences, is a pointer to role of the
Rajya Sabha. These 12 members in theory represent India’s best minds,
and their input into our legislative debates can only add gravitas.
Their House, thus, is a sort of intellectual guide to the running of
the nation.
Unfortunately, over the past few years middle- class India has got it
in its head that India needs CEOs and technocrats to run the country,
not politicians (for which politicians must take some blame). This is
wrong: CEOs make good CEOs, and nothing else. Some keep saying that
Manmohan Singh is a great economist. He was, but 20 years ago; he is
now a 75-year-old who understands nothing of the modern confidence
trick called complex finance. It is like asking a 75-year-old engineer
to fix your laptop. He is merely stuck to a dogma that the American
capitalist system is the best. It might be worth emulating, but this
is something to be decided by a politician who returns to the
electorate and is thus alive to India’s changing dynamics.
Hence the objection to Jaitley possibly being made party president
once Rajnath Singh steps down. Jaitley let the party down in a big way
last year, when he declined to lead the BJP in the Delhi assembly
elections.
It is now an accepted fact that the BJP lost because V K Malhotra
turned off voters; the margins of victory were not particularly high.
Jaitley should have at least tried.
His plea of ill health moves no one, especially when his 81-year-old
leader is traversing the length and breadth of the country for votes.
In the Lok Sabha elections he again did not contest. If he thought
being a strategist exempted him, he should look at the Congress chief
strategists, both of whom contested Lok Sabha seats in UP and won. The
worst that could have happened to Jaitley is that he would have lost.
The trend of non-elected prime ministers has to stop. The BJP tried to
do that in a negative way during the last election campaign and proved
ineffectual. The party can help stop this trend in a positive way by
not making Arun Jaitley its president, till he gets electoral
legitimacy. It would be good for the BJP and for India in the long
run, though Manmohan Singh probably not take the hint, till he is
disposed of as undemocratically as he was appointed.
Aditya Sinha is the Editor-in-Chief of The New Indian Express and is
based in Chennai.
E-mail: edito...@epmltd.com
Sid Harth
Express News Service First Published : 29 Jun 2009 08:44:29 AM ISTLast
Updated :
MADIKERI: Opposition Leader in the Lok Sabha and former deputy prime
minister LK Advani returned to New Delhi from Kodagu after his six-day
stay in Orange County near Siddapura. He came to Bangalore by road on
Sunday morning with high security escort.
Leaving Orange County, he said, "I had a very nice time. The people
here treated us like their family members. I find this place very calm
and peaceful and am very happy to have stayed here." The police
protection and security was also appreciated by Advani and his family
members. Though the information of their arrival was given only two
days earlier, the resort made all arrangements promptly.
Advani spend most of his time watching TV, reading newspapers and
books.
His visit is seen as beneficial for Kodagu.
He met various leaders from the state and district, including the
special representative of Karnataka in New Delhi, V Dhanajay Kumar and
Rajya Sabha member Rajiv Chandrashekar.
Babitha and Sijo Anthony, who catered to Advani and his family, shared
their experiences with Express.
"We have seen people like Amitabh Bachchan, Kumaramangalam Birla and
other personalities from all walks of life for a decade. But we have
never come across a person like Advani who is so simple and humble in
his approach though he is a high-profile politician.” They added that
he never treated them like staff.
They said Advani brought a lot of books with him and read them and
spent most of the time with wife Kamala, who dislikes politics.
Advani also said since he wanted to spend time with his wife away from
politics, he opted for this place far from New Delhi.
They said he never spoke about politics during his stay. Advani gifted
them a signed copy of his autobiography 'My Life - My Country.'
bademiyansubhanallah
BJP reaffirms commitment to Ram temple
By ians on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
New Delhi, June 30, As its senior leaders met to discuss the Liberhan
Commission report that probed the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday reaffirmed its commitment to a
Ram temple on the site of the 16th century mosque in Ayodhya.
“There must be a constructive solution to the whole issue as Hindus
across the globe want a grand temple to be constructed at the disputed
site. The BJP also wishes that a temple is constructed there,” BJP
spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters here.
The Liberhan Commission probing the 1992 demolition of the Babri
Masjid submitted its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday,
17 years after it was formed.
The ancient mosque was demolished by radical Hindu groups on Dec 6,
1992, when BJP’s Kalyan Singh was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and
Congress’ P.V. Narasimha Rao was prime minister.
Amongst those questioned for the Dec 6, 1992 demolition were senior
leaders L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Vinay Katiyar, Kalyan Singh
as well as then BJP member and now Bharatiya Jan Shakti chief Uma
Bharati.
According to party insiders, several BJP leaders, including Sushma
Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, met at Advani’s residence to discuss the
possible fallout of the report.
“The contents of the report are not known as yet. Once it is tabled in
parliament, the BJP would come out with a proper, structured response.
No one knows about its content as yet,” Prasad said.
Asked about timing of the report, he said: “The report took 17 years.
As far as BJP leaders are concerned, a senior leader like L.K. Advani
was examined and cross examined for a period of more than a week while
he was the deputy prime minister of the country. Other prominent BJP
leaders had also deposed before the commission.”
Asked if the party wants the report to be tabled in parliament, he
said: “The country is entitled to know the contents of the report.”
Naming Advani, Joshi, Katiyar and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Ashok
Singhal, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said: “They were
all present at the time of demolition. They were all rejoicing and
shouted slogans ‘Ek Dhakka Aur Do’. The BJP has been the champion of
doublespeak.”
Criticising the Congress for blaming senior BJP leaders for the
demolition, Prasad said: “The report has not been made public yet and
the Congress reaction on it is utter rubbish. We condemn it
completely. Even before the report is placed in parliament, the
Congress has begun conspiracy.”
“Former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao had himself said they would
rebuild the Babri Masjid. The Congress accuses us of doublespeak; if
they have the courage they should rebuild the mosque and then it will
be cleared who indulges in doublespeak,” Prasad added.
Uma Bharati said the report had been completed during the tenure of
Atal Bihari Vajpayee. “All they needed was the finishing touch. But
they took six years in the finishing touch. I am surprised. So, I see
and smell a rat in it. And that is a political motive to collect the
Muslim votes.”
“I see a conspiracy in delaying the report and in the way it is being
politicised.”
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh said they would like to see the
contents of the report.
“We would like to see the contents of the report and then only we can
comment. The government is duty bound to submit the report in
parliament,” said RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav.
“It was a collective feeling which resulted in the demolition and no
individual can be blamed for it,” he added.
bademiyansubhanallah
Sunday, 05 Jul, 2009 | 01:01 PM PST |
So, is there life after democracy?
Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of
different systems of governance, and end with a somewhat prickly,
combative defence of democracy. It’s flawed, we say. It isn’t perfect,
but it’s better than everything else that’s on offer. Inevitably,
someone in the room will say: ‘Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Somalia . . . is that what you would prefer?’
Whether democracy should be the utopia that all ‘developing’ societies
aspire to be is a separate question altogether. (I think it should.
The early, idealistic phase can be quite heady.) The question about
life after democracy is addressed to those of us who already live in
democracies, or in countries that pretend to be democracies. It isn’t
meant to suggest that we lapse into older, discredited models of
totalitarian or authoritarian governance. It’s meant to suggest that
the system of representative democracy—too much representation, too
little democracy—needs some structural adjustment.
The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What
have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up?
When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens
when each of its institutions has metastasised into something
dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have
fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted
imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of
maximising profit? Is it possible to reverse this process? Can
something that has mutated go back to being what it used to be?
What we need today, for the sake of the survival of this planet, is
long-term vision. Can governments whose very survival depends on
immediate, extractive, short-term gain provide this? Could it be that
democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the
protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious
dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race? Could it
be that democracy is such a hit with modern humans precisely because
it mirrors our greatest folly— our nearsightedness? Our inability to
live entirely in the present (like most animals do) combined with our
inability to see very far into the future makes us strange in-between
creatures, neither beast nor prophet. Our amazing intelligence seems
to have outstripped our instinct for survival. We plunder the earth
hoping that accumulating material surplus will make up for the
profound, unfathomable thing that we have lost.
It would be conceit to pretend that the essays in this book provide
answers to any of these questions. They only demonstrate, in some
detail, the fact that it looks as though the beacon could be failing
and that democracy can perhaps no longer be relied upon to deliver the
justice and stability we once dreamed it would. All the essays were
written as urgent, public interventions at critical moments in India —
during the state-backed genocide of Muslims in Gujarat; just before
the date set for the hanging of Mohammad Afzal, the accused in the 13
December 2001 Parliament Attack; during US President George Bush’s
visit to India; during the mass uprising in Kashmir in the summer of
2008; after the 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Often they were not
just responses to events, they were responses to the responses.
Though many of them were written in anger, at moments when keeping
quiet became harder than saying something, the essays do have a common
thread. They’re not about unfortunate anomalies or aberrations in the
democratic process. They’re about the consequences of and the
corollaries to democracy; they’re about the fire in the ducts. I
should also say that they do not provide a panoramic overview. They’re
a detailed underview of specific events that I hoped would reveal some
of the ways in which democracy is practised in the world’s largest
democracy. (Or the world’s largest ‘demon-crazy’, as a Kashmiri
protestor on the streets of Srinagar once put it. His placard said:
‘Democracy without Justice=Demon Crazy.’)
As a writer, a fiction writer, I have often wondered whether the
attempt to always be precise, to try and get it all factually right
somehow reduces the epic scale of what is really going on. Does it
eventually mask a larger truth? I worry that I am allowing myself to
be railroaded into offering prosaic, factual precision when maybe what
we need is a feral howl, or the transformative power and real
precision of poetry. Something about the cunning, Brahmanical,
intricate, bureaucratic, file-bound, ‘apply-through-proper-channels’
nature of governance and subjugation in India seems to have made a
clerk out of me. My only excuse is to say that it takes odd tools to
uncover the maze of subterfuge and hypocrisy that cloaks the
callousness and the cold, calculated violence of the world’s favourite
new Superpower. Repression ‘through proper channels’ sometimes
engenders resistance ‘through proper channels’. As resistance goes
this isn’t enough, I know. But for now, it’s all I have. Perhaps
someday it will become the underpinning for poetry and for the feral
howl.
~
‘Listening to Grasshoppers’, the essay from which this collection
draws its title, was a lecture I gave in Istanbul in January 2008 on
the first anniversary of the assassination of the Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink. He was shot down on the street outside his office for
daring to raise a subject that is forbidden in Turkey—the 1915
genocide of Armenians in which more than one million people were
killed. My lecture was about the history of genocide and genocide
denial, and the old, almost organic relationship between ‘progress’
and genocide.
I have always been struck by the fact that the political party in
Turkey that carried out the Armenian genocide was called the Committee
for Union and Progress. Most of the essays in this collection are, in
fact, about the contemporary correlation between Union and Progress,
or, in today’s idiom, between Nationalism and Development—those
unimpeachable twin towers of modern, Free Market Democracy. Both of
these in their extreme form are, as we now know, encrypted with the
potential of bringing about ultimate, apocalyptic destruction (nuclear
war, climate change).
Though these essays were written between 2002 and 2008, the invisible
marker, the starting gun, is the year 1989, when in the rugged
mountains of Afghanistan capitalism won its long jihad against Soviet
Communism. (Of course, the wheel’s in spin again. Could it be that
those same mountains are now in the process of burying capitalism?
It’s too early to tell.) Within months of the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Indian government, once a
leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, performed a high-speed somersault
and aligned itself completely with the United States, monarch of the
new unipolar world.
The rules of the game changed suddenly and completely. Millions of
people who lived in remote villages and deep in the heart of untouched
forests, some of whom had never heard of Berlin or the Soviet Union,
could not have imagined how events that occurred in those faraway
places would affect their lives. The process of their dispossession
and displacement had already begun in the early 1950s, when India
opted for the Soviet-style development model in which huge steel
plants (Bhilai, Bokaro) and large dams (thousands of them) would
occupy the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy. The era of
Privatisation and Structural Adjustment accelerated that process at a
mind-numbing speed.
Today, words like ‘Progress’ and ‘Development’ have become
interchangeable with economic ‘Reforms’, Deregulation and
Privatisation. ‘Freedom’ has come to mean ‘choice’. It has less to do
with the human spirit than with different brands of deodorant.
‘Market’ no longer means a place where you go to buy provisions. The
‘Market’ is a de-territorialised space where faceless corporations do
business, including buying and selling ‘futures’. ‘Justice’ has come
to mean ‘human rights’ (and of those, as they say, ‘a few will do’).
This theft of language, this technique of usurping words and deploying
them like weapons, of using them to mask intent and to mean exactly
the opposite of what they have traditionally meant, has been one of
the most brilliant strategic victories of the Tsars of the new
dispensation. It has allowed them to marginalise their detractors,
deprive them of a language in which to voice their critique and
dismiss them as being ‘anti-progress’, ‘anti-development’, ‘anti-
reform’ and of course ‘anti-national’—negativists of the worst sort.
Talk about saving a river or protecting a forest and they say, ‘Don’t
you believe in Progress?’ To people whose land is being submerged by
dam reservoirs and whose homes are being bulldozed they say, ‘Do you
have an alternative development model?’ To those who believe that a
government is duty bound to provide people with basic education,
healthcare and social security, they say, ‘You’re against the Market.’
And who except a cretin could be against the Market?
To reclaim these stolen words requires explanations that are too
tedious for a world with a short attention span, and too expensive in
an era when Free Speech has become unaffordable for the poor. This
language heist may prove to be the keystone of our undoing.
Two decades of this kind of ‘Progress’ in India has created a vast
middle class punch drunk on sudden wealth and the sudden respect that
comes with it—and a much, much vaster, desperate underclass. Tens of
millions of people have been dispossessed and displaced from their
land by floods, droughts and desertification caused by indiscriminate
environmental engineering and massive infrastructural projects, dams,
mines and Special Economic Zones. All of them developed in the name of
the poor, but really meant to service the rising demands of the new
aristocracy.
The battle for land lies at the heart of the ‘Development’ debate.
Before he became India’s finance minister, P. Chidambaram was Enron’s
lawyer and member of the Board of Directors of Vedanta, a
multinational mining corporation that is currently devastating the
Niyamgiri hills in Orissa. Perhaps his career graph informed his world
view. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In an interview a year ago,
he said that his vision was to get 85 per cent of India’s population
to live in cities.[1] Realising this ‘vision’ would require social
engineering on an unimaginable scale. It would mean inducing, or
forcing, about five hundred million people to migrate from the
countryside into cities. That process is well under way and is quickly
turning India into a police state in which people who refuse to
surrender their land are being made to do so at gunpoint. Perhaps this
is what makes it so easy for P. Chidambaram to move so seamlessly from
being finance minister to being home minister. The portfolios are
separated only by an osmotic membrane. Underlying this nightmare
masquerading as ‘vision’ is the plan to free up vast tracts of land
and all of India’s natural resources, leaving them ripe for corporate
plunder. In effect, to reverse the post-Independence policy of Land
Reforms.
Already forests, mountains and water systems are being ravaged by
marauding multinational corporations, backed by a State that has lost
its moorings and is committing what can only be called ‘ecocide’. In
eastern India bauxite and iron ore mining is destroying whole
ecosystems, turning fertile land into desert. In the Himalayas
hundreds of high dams are being planned, the consequences of which can
only be catastrophic. In the plains, embankments built along rivers,
ostensibly to control floods, have led to rising river beds, causing
even more flooding, more waterlogging, more salinisation of
agricultural land and the destruction of livelihoods of millions of
people. Most of India’s holy rivers, including the Ganga, have been
turned into unholy drains that carry more sewage and industrial
effluent than water. Hardly a single river runs its course and meets
the ocean.
Based on the absurd notion that a river flowing into the sea is a
waste of water, the Supreme Court, in an act of unbelievable hubris,
has arbitrarily ordered that India’s rivers be interlinked, like a
mechanical water-supply system. Implementing this would mean
tunnelling through mountains and forests, altering natural contours
and drainage systems of river basins and destroying deltas and
estuaries. In other words, wrecking the ecology of the entire
subcontinent. (B.N. Kirpal, the judge who passed this order, joined
the Environmental Board of Coca-Cola after he retired. Nice touch!)
The regime of Free Market economic policies, administered by people
who are blissfully ignorant of the fate of civilizations that grew too
dependent on artificial irrigation, has led to a worrying shift in
cropping patterns. Sustainable food crops, suitable to local soil
conditions and micro-climates, have been replaced by water-guzzling,
hybrid and genetically modified ‘cash’ crops which, apart from being
wholly dependent on the market, are also heavily dependent on chemical
fertilizers, pesticides, canal irrigation and the indiscriminate
mining of ground water. As abused farmland, saturated with chemicals,
gradually becomes exhausted and infertile, agricultural input costs
rise, ensnaring small farmers in a debt trap. Over the last few years,
more than 180,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide.[2] While
state granaries are bursting with food, that eventually rots,
starvation and malnutrition approaching the same levels as in sub-
Saharan Africa stalk the land.[3] Truly the 9 per cent growth rate is
beginning to look like a downward spiral. The higher the rate of this
kind of growth, the worse the prognosis. Any oncologist will tell you
that.
It’s as though an ancient society, decaying under the weight of
feudalism and caste, was churned in a great machine. The churning has
ripped through the mesh of old inequalities, recalibrating some of
them but reinforcing most. Now the old society has curdled and
separated into a thin layer of thick cream—and a lot of water. The
cream is India’s ‘market’ of many million consumers (of cars, cell
phones, computers, Valentine’s Day greeting cards), the envy of
international business. The water is of little consequence. It can be
sloshed around, stored in holding ponds, and eventually drained away.
Or so they think, the men in suits. They didn’t bargain for the
violent civil war that has broken out in India’s heartland:
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and West Bengal.
~
Coming back to 1989. As if to illustrate the connection between
‘Union’ and ‘Progress’, at exactly the same time that the Congress
government was opening up India’s markets to international finance,
the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then in the opposition,
began its virulent campaign of Hindu nationalism (popularly known as
‘Hindutva’). In 1990, its leader, L.K. Advani, travelled across the
country whipping up hatred against Muslims and demanding that the
Babri Masjid, an old sixteenth-century mosque that stood on a disputed
site in Ayodhya, be demolished and a Ram Temple built in its place. In
1992, a mob, egged on by Advani, demolished the mosque. In early 1993,
a mob rampaged through Mumbai attacking Muslims, killing almost one
thousand people. As revenge, a series of bomb blasts ripped through
the city, killing about two hundred and fifty people.[4] Feeding off
the communal frenzy it had generated, the BJP, which had only two
seats in Parliament in 1984, defeated the Congress in 1998 and came to
power at the Centre.
It’s not a coincidence that the rise of Hindutva corresponded with the
historical moment when America substituted Communism with Islam as
it’s great enemy. The radical Islamist Mujahideen — whom President
Reagan once entertained in the White House and compared to America’s
Founding Fathers — suddenly began to be called terrorists. CNN’s live
broadcast of the 1990–91 Gulf War — Operation Desert Storm —made it to
elite drawing rooms in Indian cities, bringing with it the early
thrills of satellite TV. Almost simultaneously, the Indian Government,
once a staunch friend of the Palestinians, turned into Israel’s
‘natural ally’. Now India and Israel do joint military exercises,
share intelligence and probably exchange notes on how best to
administer occupied territories.
By 1998, when the BJP took office, the ‘Progress’ project of
Privatisation and Liberalisation was about eight years old. Though it
had campaigned vigorously against the economic reforms, saying they
were a process of ‘looting through liberalization’, once it came to
power the BJP embraced the Free Market enthusiastically and threw its
weight behind huge corporations like Enron. (In representative
democracies, once they’re elected, the peoples’ representatives are
free to break their promises and change their minds.)
Within weeks of taking office, the BJP conducted a series of
thermonuclear tests. Though India had thrown its hat into the nuclear
ring in 1975, politically, the 1998 nuclear tests were of a different
order altogether. The orgy of triumphant nationalism with which the
tests were greeted introduced a chilling new language of aggression
and hatred into mainstream public discourse. None of what was being
said was new, only that what was once considered unacceptable was
suddenly being celebrated. Since then, Hindu communalism and nuclear
nationalism, like corporate globalization, have vaulted over the
stated ideologies of political parties. The venom has been injected
straight into our bloodstream. It’s there now—in all its violence and
banality—for us to deal with in our daily lives, regardless of whether
the government at the centre calls itself ‘secular’ or not. The Muslim
community has seen a sharp decline in its fortunes and is now at the
bottom of the social pyramid, along with Dalits and Adivasis.[5]
Certain events that occur in the life of a nation have the effect of
parting the curtains and giving ordinary people a glimpse into the
future. The 1998 nuclear tests were one such. You didn’t need the gift
of prophecy to tell in which direction India was heading. This is an
excerpt from ‘The End of Imagination’, an essay (not in this
collection) that I wrote after the nuclear tests:
‘Explosion of Self-esteem’, ‘Road to Resurgence’, ‘A Moment of Pride’,
these were headlines in the papers in the days following the nuclear
tests . . . .
‘These are not just nuclear tests, they are nationalism tests,’ we
were repeatedly told.
This has been hammered home, over and over again. The bomb is India,
India is the bomb. Not just India, Hindu India. Therefore, be warned,
any criticism of it is not just anti-national, but anti-Hindu . . . .
This is one of the unexpected perks of having a nuclear bomb. Not only
can the government use it to threaten the enemy, it can use it to
declare war on its own people. Us . . . .
Why does it all seem so familiar? Is it because, even as you watch,
reality dissolves and seamlessly rushes forward into the silent, black-
and-white images from old films—scenes of people being hounded out of
their lives, rounded up and herded into camps? Of massacre, of mayhem,
of endless columns of broken people making their way to nowhere? Why
is there no soundtrack? Why is the hall so quiet? Have I been seeing
too many films? Am I mad? Or am I right? Could those images be the
inescapable culmination of what we have set into motion? Could our
future be rushing forward into our past? [6]
The Us I referred to were those of us who do not belong to — or
identify ourselves with — the ‘Hindu’ majority. By past, I was
referring to the Partition of India in 1947, when more than one
million Hindus and Muslims killed each other, and eight million became
refugees.
~
In February 2002, following the burning of a train coach in which
fifty-eight Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were burned alive,
the BJP government in Gujarat, led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi,
presided over a carefully planned genocide of Muslims in the state.
The Islamophobia generated all over the world by the 11 September 2001
attacks put the wind in their sails. The machinery of the state of
Gujarat stood by and watched while more than two thousand people [7]
were massacred. Women were gang-raped and burned alive. One hundred
and fifty thousand Muslims were driven from their homes. The community
was, and continues to be, ghettoised, socially and economically
ostracized. Gujarat has always been a communally tense state. There
had been riots before. But this was not a riot. It was a genocidal
massacre, and though the number of victims was insignificant compared
to the horror of say Rwanda, Sudan or the Congo, the Gujarat carnage
was designed as a public spectacle whose aims were unmistakable. It
was a public warning to Muslim citizens from the government of the
world’s favourite democracy.
After the carnage, Narendra Modi pressed for early elections. He was
returned to power with a mandate from the people of Gujarat. Five
years later he repeated his success: he is now serving a third term as
chief minister, widely appreciated by business houses for his faith in
the Free Market. To be fair to the people of Gujarat, the only
alternative they had to Narendra Modi’s brand of Hindutva (Nuclear),
was the Congress Party’s candidate, Shankarsinh Vaghela, a disgruntled
former BJP chief minister. All he had to offer was his own brand of
Hindutva (Lite & Muddled). Not surprisingly, it didn’t make the cut.
The Gujarat genocide is the subject of the first essay in this
collection, ‘Democracy: Who’s She When She’s at Home?’, written in May
2002 when murderous mobs still roamed the streets, killing and
intimidating Muslims. I have deliberately not updated the text of any
of the essays, because I thought it would be interesting to see how a
hard look at the systemic nature of what is going on often contains
within it a forecast of events that are still to come. So instead of
updating the essays, I’ve added new endnotes. For example, a paragraph
in the essay on the Gujarat genocide says:
Can we expect an anniversary celebration next year? Or will there be
someone else to hate by then? Alphabetically: Adivasis, Buddhists,
Christians, Dalits, Parsis, Sikhs? Those who wear jeans or speak
English or those who have thick lips or curly hair? We won’t have to
wait long.
Mobs led by Congress Party leaders had already slaughtered thousands
of Sikhs on the streets of Delhi in 1984, as revenge for the
assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Goons belonging
to the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu militia, had attacked an Australian
missionary, Graham Staines, and his two young sons, and burned them
alive in January 1999.8 By December 2007, attacks on Christians by
Hindu militias moved beyond stray incidents. In several states —
Gujarat, Karnataka, Orissa — Christians were attacked, churches
gutted. In Kandhamal, Orissa, at least sixteen Dalit and Adivasi
Christians were killed by ‘Hindu’ Dalits and Adivasis. [9] Tens of
thousands of Christians now live in refugee camps or hide in the
surrounding forests, afraid to venture out to tend their fields and
crops. Right now, ‘Hinduising’ Dalits and Adivasis, pitting them
against each other, as well as against Muslims and Maoists, is the
most important part of the Hindutva project. (Once again, it’s not a
coincidence that these communities live in forests and on mineral rich
lands which corporations have their eyes on and governments want
vacated. So the Hindutva ‘shivirs’ [camps], under the pretext of
bringing them into the ‘Hindu fold’, are a means of controlling
people.)
In December 2008, protected by the first-ever BJP government to come
to power in a southern state, Hindu vigilante mobs in Bangalore and
Mangalore—the hub of India’s IT industry—began to attack women who
wear jeans and Western clothes. [10] The threat is ongoing. Hindu
militias have vowed to turn Karnataka into another Gujarat. That the
BJP has struck roots in states like Karnataka and Gujarat, both
frontrunners in the globalization project, once again illustrates the
organic relationship between ‘Union’ and ‘Progress’. Or, if you like,
between Fascism and the Free Market.
In January 2009 that relationship was sealed with a kiss at a public
function. The CEOs of two of India’s biggest corporations, Ratan Tata
(of the Tata Group) and Mukesh Ambani (of Reliance Industries), while
accepting the Gujarat Garima—Pride of Gujarat—award, celebrated the
development policies of Narendra Modi, architect of the Gujarat
genocide, and warmly endorsed him as a future candidate for prime
minister.
~
As this book goes to press, the nearly two billion dollar 2009 General
Election has just been concluded. [11] That’s a lot more than the
budget of the US elections. According to some media reports the actual
amount that was spent is closer to ten billion dollars. [12] Where,
might one ask, does that kind of money come from?
The Congress and its Allies, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA),
have won a comfortable majority. Interestingly, more than 90 per cent
of the independent candidates who stood for elections lost. Clearly,
without sponsorship it’s hard to win an election. And independent
candidates cannot promise subsidised rice, free TVs and cash-for-
votes, those demeaning acts of vulgar charity that elections have been
reduced to. [13]
When you take a closer look at the calculus that underlies election
results, words like ‘comfortable’ and ‘majority’ turn out to be
deceptive, if not outright inaccurate. For instance, the actual share
of votes polled by the UPA in these elections works out to only 10.3
per cent of the country’s population! It’s interesting how the
cleverly layered mathematics of electoral democracy can turn a tiny
minority into a thumping mandate. [14] Anyway, be that as it may, the
point is that it will not be L.K. Advani, hate-monger incarnate, but
secular Dr Manmohan Singh, gentle architect of the market reforms, a
man who has never won an election in his life, who will be prime
minister of the world’s largest democracy for a second term.
In the run-up to the polls, there was absolute consensus across party
lines about the economic ‘reforms’. Govindacharya, formerly the chief
ideologue of the BJP, progenitor of the Ram Janamabhoomi movement,
sarcastically suggested that the Congress and BJP form a coalition.
[15] In some states they already have. In Chhattisgarh, for example,
the BJP runs the government and Congress politicians run the Salwa
Judum, a vicious government-backed ‘people’s’ militia. The Judum and
the government have formed a joint front against the Maoists in the
forests who are engaged in a deadly and often brutal armed struggle
against displacement and against land acquisition by corporations
waiting to set up steel factories and to begin mining iron ore, tin
and all the other wealth stashed below the forest floor. So, in
Chhattisgarh, we have the remarkable spectacle of the two biggest
political parties of India in an alliance against the Adivasis of
Dantewara, India’s poorest, most vulnerable people. Already 644
villages have been emptied. Fifty thousand people have moved into
Salwa Judum camps. Three hundred thousand are hiding in the forests
and are being called Maoist terrorists or sympathizers. The battle is
raging, and the corporations are waiting.
It is significant that India is one of the countries that blocked a
European move in the UN asking for an international probe into war
crimes that may have been committed by the government of Sri Lanka in
its recent offensive against the Tamil Tigers. [16] Governments in
this part of the world have taken note of Israel’s Gaza blueprint as a
good way of dealing with ‘terrorism’: keep the media out and close in
for the kill. That way they don’t have to worry too much about who’s a
‘terrorist’ and who isn’t. There may be a little flurry of
international outrage, but it goes away pretty quickly.
Things do not augur well for the forest-dwelling people of
Chhattisgarh.
Reassured by the sort of ‘constructive’ collaboration, the consensus
between political parties, few were more enthusiastic about the recent
general elections than some major corporate houses. They seem to have
realized that a democratic mandate can legitimize their pillaging in a
way that nothing else can. Several corporations ran extravagant
advertising campaigns on TV, some featuring Bollywood film stars
urging people, young and old, rich and poor, to go out and vote. Shops
and restaurants in Khan market, Delhi’s most tony market, offered
discounts to those whose index (voting) fingers were marked with
indelible ink. Democracy suddenly became the cool new way to be. You
know how it is: the Chinese do Sport, so they had the Olympics; India
does Democracy, so we had an election. Both are heavily sponsored, TV
friendly spectator sports.
The BBC commissioned a coach on a train — the India Election Special —
that took journalists from all over the world on a sightseeing tour to
witness the miracle of Indian elections. The train coach had a slogan
painted on it: Will India’s voters revive the World’s Fortunes? [17]
BBC (Hindi) had a poster up in a café near my home. It featured a
hundred dollar bill (with Ben Franklin) morphing into a 500 rupee note
(with Gandhi). It said: Kya India ka vote bachayega duniya ka note?
(Will India’s votes rescue the world’s currency notes?) In these
flagrant and unabashed ways an electorate has been turned into a
market, voters are seen as consumers, and democracy is being welded to
the Free Market. Ergo: those who cannot consume do not matter.
What does the victory of the UPA mean in this election? Obviously a
myriad things. The debate is wide open. Interpreting an Indian
election is about as exact a science as sorcery. Voting patterns are
intricately connected with local issues and caste and community
equations that vary, quite literally, from polling booth to polling
booth. There can be no reliable Big Conclusion. But here’s something
to think about.
In its time in office, in order to mitigate the devastation caused by
its economic policies the former Congress regime passed three
progressive (critics call them populist and controversial)
Parliamentary Acts. The Forest Rights Act (which gave forest dwellers
legal right to land and the traditional use of forest produce), the
Right to Information Act and, most important of all, the National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The NREGA guarantees every
rural family a hundred days of work (hard, manual labour) a year at
minimum wages. It amounts to an average of Rs 8000 (about $170) per
family per year. Enough for a good meal in a restaurant, including
wine and dessert. Imagine how hellish times must be for even that tiny
amount of money to come as a relief to millions of people who are
reeling under the impact of the precipitous loss of their lands and
their livelihoods. (Talk about crumbs from the high table. But then,
which one of us has the heart, or the right, to argue that no crumbs
are better than crumbs? Or, indeed, that no elections are better than
meaningless elections?) Implementing the NREGA, seeing that the crumbs
actually reach the people they’re meant for, has occupied all the time
and energy of some of India’s finest and most committed social
activists for the last several years. They have had to battle cartels
of corrupt government officers, power-brokers and middlemen. They have
faced threats and a fair amount of violence. One rural activist in
Jharkhand immolated himself in anger and frustration at the injustice
of it all.
Ironically, the NREGA only made it through Parliament because of
pressure brought to bear on the UPA government by the Left Front and,
it must be said, by Sonia Gandhi. It was passed despite tremendous
resistance from the mandarins of the Free Market within the Congress
Party. The Corporate Media was more or less unanimously hostile to the
Act. Needless to say, come election-time and the NREGA became one of
the main planks of the Congress Party’s election campaign. There’s
little doubt that the goodwill it generated amongst the very poor
translated into votes for the Congress. But now that the elections are
over, victory is being attributed to the very policies that the NREGA
was passed to mitigate! The Captains of Industry have lost no time in
claiming the ‘Peoples’ Mandate’ as their own. ‘It’s fast-forward for
markets’, the business papers crowed the morning after, ‘Vote [was]
for reforms, says India Inc’. [18]
There is an even greater irony: the Left Front, acting with the
duplicity that has become second nature to all parliamentary political
parties, took a sharp turn to the right. Even while it criticized the
government’s economic policies at the Centre, it tried to enforce
similar ones on its home turf in West Bengal. It announced that it was
going to build a chemical hub in the district of Nandigram, a
manufacturing unit for the Tata Nano in Singur, and a Jindal Steel
plant in the forests of Lalgarh in Purulia. It began to acquire land,
most of it fertile farmland, virtually at gunpoint. The massive,
militant uprisings that followed were put down with bullets and lathi
charges. Lumpen ‘Party’ militias ran amok among the protestors, raping
women and killing people. But eventually the combination of genuine
mass mobilisation and militancy worked. The people prevailed. They won
all three battles, and forced the government to back off. The Tatas
had to move the Nano project to Gujarat, that laboratory of fascism,
which offered a ‘good investment climate’. The Left Front was
decimated in the elections in West Bengal, something that had not
happened in thirty years.
The irony doesn’t end there. In a fiendishly clever sleight of hand,
the defeat of the Left is being attributed to its obstructionism and
anti-Development policies! ‘Corporate captains feel easy without
Left’, the papers said. [19] The stock market surged, looking forward
to ‘a summer of joy’. CEOs on TV channels celebrated the new
government’s ‘liberation’ from the Left. Hectoring news anchors have
announced that the UPA no longer has any excuse to prevaricate on
implementing Reforms, unless of course it has ‘closet Socialists’
hiding in its midst.
This is the wonderful thing about democracy. It can mean anything you
want it to mean.
The absence of a genuinely left-wing party in mainstream politics is
not something to celebrate. But the parliamentary Left has only itself
to blame for its humiliation. It’s not a tragedy that it has been cut
to size. Perhaps this will create the space for some truly progressive
politics.
For the sake of argument, let’s for a moment contemplate the absurd
and accept that India Inc and the Captains of Industry are right and
that India’s millions did in fact vote for the speeding up of market
‘reforms’. Is that good news or bad news? Should we be celebrating the
fact that millions of people who have something to teach the world,
who have another imagination, another world view and a more
sustainable way of life, have decided to embrace a discredited
ideology, one that has pushed this planet into a crisis from which it
may never recover?
What good will forest rights be when there are no forests? What good
will the Right to Information do if there is no redress for our
grievances? What good are rivers without water? What good are plains
without mountains to water and sustain them? It’s as though we’re
hurtling down a cliff in a bus without brakes and fighting over what
songs to sing.
‘Jai Ho!’ perhaps? [20]
~
For better or for worse, the 2009 elections seem to have ensured that
the ‘Progress’ project is up and running. However it would be a
serious mistake to believe that the ‘Union’ project has fallen by the
wayside.
As the 2009 election campaign unrolled, two things got saturation
coverage in the media. One was the 100,000 rupee (two thousand dollar)
‘people’s car’, the Tata Nano—the wagon for the volks—rolling out of
Modi’s Gujarat. (The sops and subsidies Modi gave the Tatas had a lot
to do with Ratan Tata’s warm endorsement of him.21) The other is the
hate speech of the BJP’s monstrous new debutant, Varun Gandhi (another
descendent of the Nehru dynasty), who makes even Narendra Modi sound
moderate and retiring. In a public speech Varun Gandhi called for
Muslims to be forcibly sterilised. ‘This will be known as a Hindu
bastion, no ***** Muslim dare raise his head here,’ he said, using a
derogatory word for someone who has been circumcised. ‘I don’t want a
single Muslim vote.’ [22]
Varun Gandhi is a modern politician, working the democratic system,
doing everything he can to create a majority and consolidate his vote
bank. A politician needs a vote bank, like a corporation needs a mass
market. Both need help from the mass media. Corporations buy that
help. Politicians must earn it. Some earn it by dint of hard work,
others with dangerous circus stunts. Varun Gandhi’s hate speech bought
him national headlines. His brief stint in prison (for violating the
Election Commission’s Code of Conduct), cut short by a court order,
made him an instant martyr. He was gently chastised for his
impetuousness by his party elders (on TV, for public consumption). But
then, in order to export his coarse appeal, he, like Narendra Modi,
was flown around in a chopper as a star campaigner for the BJP in
other constituencies.
Varun Gandhi won his election with a colossal margin. It makes you
wonder — are ‘the people’ always right? It is worrying to think what
lessons the BJP will draw from its few decisive victories and its many
decisive losses in this election. In several of the constituencies
where it has won, hate speech (and deed) have served it well. It still
remains by far the second largest political party, with a powerful
national presence, the only real challenge to the Congress. It will
certainly live to fight another day. The question is, will it turn the
burners up or down?
This said, it would be a travesty to lay all the blame for divisive
politics at the door of the BJP. Whether it’s nuclear tests, the
unsealing of the locks of the Babri Masjid, the culture of creating
fissures and pitting castes and communities against each other, or
passing retrograde laws, the Congress got there first and has never
been shy of keeping the ball in play. In the past, both parties have
used massacres to gain political mileage. Sometimes they feast off
them obliquely, sometimes they accuse each other of committing mass
murder. In this election, both the Congress and the BJP brazenly
fielded candidates believed to be involved in public lynching and mass
murder. At no point has either seen to it that the guilty are punished
or that justice is delivered. Despite their vicious public exchange of
accusations, so far they have colluded to protect one another from
real consequences.
Eventually the massacres get absorbed into the labyrinth of India’s
judicial system where they are left to bubble and ferment before being
trundled out as campaign material for the next election. You could say
it’s all a part of the fabric of Indian democracy. Hard to see from a
train window. Whether the new infusion of young blood into the
Congress will change the old Party’s methods of doing business remains
to be seen.
As will be obvious from the essays in this book, the hoary
institutions of Indian democracy—the judiciary, the police, the ‘free’
press and, of course, elections—far from working as a system of checks
and balances, quite often do the opposite. They provide each other
cover to promote the larger interests of Union and Progress. In the
process, they generate such confusion, such a cacophony, that voices
raised in warning just become part of the noise. And that only helps
to enhance the image of the tolerant, lumbering, colourful, somewhat
chaotic democracy. The chaos is real. But so is the consensus.
~
Speaking of consensus, there’s the small and ever-present matter of
Kashmir. When it comes to Kashmir the consensus in India is hard-core.
It cuts across every section of the establishment—including the media,
the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia and even Bollywood.
The war in the Kashmir valley is almost twenty years old now, and has
claimed about seventy thousand lives. Tens of thousands have been
tortured, several thousand have ‘disappeared’, women have been raped
and many thousands widowed. Half a million Indian troops patrol the
Kashmir valley, making it the most militarized zone in the world. (The
United States had about one hundred and sixty-five thousand active-
duty troops in Iraq at the height of its occupation.) The Indian army
now claims that it has, for the most part, crushed militancy in
Kashmir. Perhaps that’s true. But does military domination mean
victory?
How does a government that claims to be a democracy justify a military
occupation? By holding regular elections, of course. Elections in
Kashmir have had a long and fascinating past. The blatantly rigged
state election of 1987 was the immediate provocation for the armed
uprising that began in 1990. Since then elections have become a finely
honed instrument of the military occupation, a sinister playground for
India’s Deep State. Intelligence Agencies have created political
parties and decoy politicians, they have constructed and destroyed
political careers at will. It is they more than anyone else who decide
what the outcome of each election will be. After every election, the
Indian establishment declares that India has won a popular mandate
from the people of Kashmir.
In the summer of 2008, a dispute over land being allotted to the
Amarnath Shrine Board coalesced into a massive, nonviolent uprising.
Day after day, hundreds of thousands of people defied soldiers and
policemen — who fired straight into the crowds, killing scores of
people — and thronged the streets. From early morning to late in the
night, the city reverberated to chants of ‘Azadi! Azadi!’ (‘Freedom!
Freedom!’). Fruit sellers weighed fruit chanting, ‘Azadi! Azadi!’
Shopkeepers, doctors, houseboat owners, guides, weavers, carpet
sellers — everybody was out with placards, everybody shouted ‘Azadi!
Azadi!’ The protests went on for several days.
The protests were massive. They were democratic, and they were
nonviolent. For the first time in decades fissures appeared in
mainstream public opinion in India. [23] The Indian state panicked.
Unsure of how to deal with this mass civil disobedience, it ordered a
crackdown. It enforced the harshest curfew in recent memory with shoot-
at-sight orders. In effect, for days on end, it virtually caged
millions of people. The major pro-freedom leaders were placed under
house arrest, several others were jailed. House to house searches
culminated in the arrest of hundreds of people. The Jama Masjid was
closed for Friday prayers for an unprecedented seven weeks at a
stretch.
Once the rebellion was brought under control, the government did
something extraordinary—it announced elections in the state. Pro-
independence leaders called for a boycott. They were re-arrested.
Almost everybody believed the elections would become a huge
embarrassment for the Indian government. The security establishment
was convulsed with paranoia. Its elaborate network of spies, renegades
and embedded journalists began to buzz with renewed energy. No chances
were taken. (Even I, who had nothing to do with any what was going on,
was put under house arrest in Srinagar for two days.)
Calling for elections was a huge risk. But the gamble paid off. People
turned out to vote in droves. It was the biggest voter turnout since
the armed struggle began. It helped that the polls were scheduled so
that the first districts to vote were the most militarized even within
the Kashmir valley.
None of India’s analysts, journalists and psephologists cared to ask
why people who had only weeks ago risked everything, including bullets
and shoot-at-sight orders, should have suddenly changed their minds.
None of the high-profile scholars of the great festival of democracy —
who practically live in TV studios when there are elections in
mainland India, picking apart every forecast, exit poll and minor
percentile swing in the vote share—talked about what elections mean in
the presence of such a massive, year-round troop deployment. (An armed
soldier for every twenty civilians.) No one speculated about the
mystery of hundreds of unknown candidates who materialized out of
nowhere to represent political parties that had no previous presence
in the Kashmir valley. Where had they come from? Who was financing
them? No one was curious.
No one spoke about the curfew, the mass arrests, the lockdown of
constituencies that were going to poll. Not many talked about the fact
that campaigning politicians went out of their way to de-link ‘Azadi’
and the Kashmir dispute from elections, which they insisted were only
about municipal issues—roads, water, electricity. No one talked about
why people who have lived under a military occupation for decades—
where soldiers could barge into homes and whisk away people at any
time of the day or night—might need someone to listen to them, to take
up their cases, to represent them. [24]
The minute elections were over, the establishment and the mainstream
press declared victory (for India) once again. The most worrying
fallout was that in Kashmir, people began to parrot their colonizers’
view of themselves as a somewhat pathetic people who deserved what
they got. ‘Never trust a Kashmiri,’ several Kashmiris said to me.
‘We’re fickle and unreliable.’ Psychological warfare has been an
instrument of official policy in Kashmir. Its depredations over
decades — its attempt to destroy people’s self-esteem — are arguably
the worst aspect of the occupation.
But only weeks after the elections it was back to business as usual.
The protests and demands for Azadi and the summary killings by
security forces have begun again. Newspapers report that militancy is
on the rise.
Unsurprisingly, the poor turnout in the subsequent general elections
did not elicit much comment.
It’s enough to make you wonder whether there is any connection at all
between elections and democracy.
The trouble is that Kashmir sits on the fault lines of a region that
is awash in weapons and sliding into chaos. The Kashmiri freedom
struggle, with its crystal clear sentiment but fuzzy outlines, is
caught in the vortex of several dangerous and conflicting ideologies—
Indian Nationalism (corporate as well as ‘Hindu’, shading into
imperialism), Pakistani Nationalism (breaking down under the burden of
its own contradictions), US Imperialism (made impatient by a tanking
economy), and a resurgent medieval-Islamist Taliban (fast gaining
legitimacy, despite its insane brutality, because it is seen to be
resisting an occupation). Each of these ideologies is capable of a
ruthlessness that can range from genocide to nuclear war. Add Chinese
imperial ambitions, an aggressive, re-incarnated Russia, the huge
reserves of natural gas in the Caspian region and persistent whispers
about natural gas, oil and uranium reserves in Kashmir and Ladakh, and
you have the recipe for a new Cold War (which, like the last one, is
cold for some and hot for others).
In the midst of all this, Kashmir is set to become the conduit through
which the mayhem unfolding in Afghanistan and Pakistan spills into
India, where it will find purchase in the anger of the young among
India’s one hundred and fifty million Muslims who have been
brutalized, humiliated and marginalised. Notice has been given by the
series of terrorist strikes that culminated in the Mumbai attacks of
2008.
There is no doubt that the Kashmir dispute ranks right up there, along
with Palestine, as one of the oldest, most intractable disputes in the
world. That does not mean that it cannot be resolved. Only that the
solution will not be completely to the satisfaction of any one party,
one country or one ideology. Negotiators will have to be prepared to
deviate from the ‘party line’. Of course, we haven’t yet reached the
stage where the Government of India is even prepared to admit that
there’s a problem, let alone negotiate a solution. Right now it has no
reason to.
Internationally, its stocks are soaring. Its economy is still ticking
over, and while its neighbours deal with bloodshed, civil war,
concentration camps, refugees and army mutinies, India has just
concluded a beautiful election.
However, Demon-crazy can’t fool all the people all the time. India’s
temporary, shotgun solutions to the unrest in Kashmir (pardon the pun)
have magnified the problem and driven it deep into a place where it is
poisoning the aquifers.
~
Perhaps the story of the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in
the world, is the most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our
times. Thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been deployed
there, enduring chill winds and temperatures that dip to minus 40
Celsius. Of the hundreds who have died there, many have died just from
the cold—from frostbite and sunburn. The glacier has become a garbage
dump now, littered with the detritus of war, thousands of empty
artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice-axes, old boots, tents and
every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human beings
generate. The garbage remains intact, perfectly preserved at those icy
temperatures, a pristine monument to human folly. While the Indian and
Pakistani governments spend billions of dollars on weapons and the
logistics of high altitude warfare, the battlefield has begun to melt.
Right now, it has shrunk to about half its size. The melting has less
to do with the military standoff than with people far away, on the
other side of the world, living the good life. They’re good people who
believe in peace, free speech and human rights. They live in thriving
democracies whose governments sit on the UN Security Council and whose
economies depend heavily on the export of war and the sale of weapons
to countries like India and Pakistan. (And Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, the
Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan . . . it’s a long list.) The
glacial melt will cause severe floods in the subcontinent, and
eventually severe drought that will affect the lives of millions of
people. [25] That will give us even more reasons to fight. We’ll need
more weapons. Who knows, that sort of consumer confidence may be just
what the world needs to get over the current recession. Then everyone
in the thriving democracies will have an even better life—and the
glaciers will melt even faster.
~
While I read ‘Listening to Grasshoppers’ to a tense audience packed
into a university auditorium in Istanbul (tense because words like
unity, progress, genocide and Armenian tend to anger the Turkish
authorities when they are uttered close together), I could see Rakel
Dink, Hrant Dink’s widow, sitting in the front row, crying the whole
way through. When I finished, she hugged me and said, ‘We keep hoping.
Why do we keep hoping?’
We, she said. Not you.
The words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, sung so hauntingly by Abida Parveen,
came to me:
nahin nigah main manzil to justaju hi sahi
nahin wisaal mayassar to arzu hi sahi
I tried to translate them for her (sort of):
If dreams are thwarted, then yearning must take their place
If reunion is impossible, then longing must take its place
You see what I meant about poetry?
1. See P. Chidambaram’s interview to Shoma Chaudhury and Shantanu Guha
Ray, Tehelka, Vol. 5, Issue 21, 31 May 2008.
2. P. Sainath, ‘Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of
Suicides in History’, CounterPunch, 12 February 2009.
3. See United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), The State of Asia-
Pacific’s Children 2008 (May 2008). Report available online at:
http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_45086.html (accessed 29 March
2009).
4. For a detailed account of the Mumbai riots of 1993, see the Report
of the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission of Enquiry. Available online
at
http://www.sabrang.com/srikrish/sri%20main.htm (accessed 29 March
2009).
5. Sachar Committee Report, November 2006. Available online at
http://minorityaffairs.gov.in/newsite/sachar/sachar.asp
6. Arundhati Roy, ‘The End of Imagination’, in The Cost of Living (New
York: Modern Library, 1999), pp. 106–08.
7. See the Rejoinder Affidavit of the Citizens For Justice & Peace
through its president Vs The Dist. Collector, Ahmedabad & Ors . . .
Respondents in Writ Petition Civil 3770/2003. Rejoinder filed in
October 2006 http://www.cjponline.org/compensation/note.pdf.
8. See Celia W. Dugger, ‘India Orders Inquiry Into Missionary’s
Killing’, New York Times, 29 January 1999, p. A9.
9. See Angana Chatterji, ‘Hindutva’s Violent History’, Tehelka, 13
September 2008. See also Angana P. Chatterji, Violent Gods: Hindu
Nationalism in India’s Present; Narratives from Orissa (Gurgaon: Three
Essays Collective, 2009).
10. See Somini Sengupta, ‘Attack on Women at an Indian Bar Intensifies
a Clash of Cultures’, New York Times, 8 February 2009, p. A5.
11. ‘Lok Sabha Polls to Cost More Than US Presidential Poll’, Times of
India, 1 March 2009.
12. See Shantanu Guha Ray, ‘Offer Valid Till Votes Last’, Tehelka, 27
May 2009.
13. Election Commission of India. http://www.eci.nic.in
14. Of India’s population of 1000 million, the registered voter base
is 672 million. In 2009, only 356 million Indians voted, a turnout of
53 per cent. Of this the UPA vote share was approximately 33 per cent,
i.e., less than 120 million voted for the UPA.
http://eciresults.nic.in/frmPercentVotesPartyWiseChart.aspx
15. See ‘BJP, Congress should join hands, says Govindacharya’, Press
Trust of India, Indore, 15 May 2009.
16. See ‘India, Pak Unite to Block Anti-Lanka Move at UN’, Indian
Express, 28 May 2009
17. See ‘Journalism on Wheels’, photo by Rajeev Bhatt of BBC’s India
Election Special Train, The Hindu, 26 April 2009.
18. See ‘Vote for reforms, says India Inc’, Sunday Hindustan Times,
17 May 2009.
19. See ‘Corporate Captains feel easy without Left’, Sunday Hindustan
Times, 17 May 2009.
20. The theme song from the hit film Slumdog Millionaire, which was
bought by the Congress Party for its election campaign for a sum of Rs
1 crore ($200,000).
21. See Uday Khandeparkar, ‘Behind the Nano Hype’, Wall Street
Journal, 19 March 2009.
22. D.K. Singh, ‘“In logon ko pakad pakad ke nasbandi karana
padega”’ (‘These People Must Be Caught and Sterilized’), Indian
Express, 22
March 2009.
23. See Pratap Bhanu Mehta, ‘A Country in 40 Acres’, Indian Express, 6
August 2008. See also Vir Sanghvi, ‘Think the Unthinkable’, Hindustan
Times, 16 August 2008, and Swaminathan Iyer, ‘Pushing Kashmir towards
Pakistan’, Economic Times, 13 August 2008.
24. For an appraisal of the recently concluded elections in Jammu and
Kashmir, see Gautam Navlakha, ‘Jammu and Kashmir Elections: A Shift in
Equations’, and Rekha Chowdhary, ‘Separatist Sentiments and Deepening
of Democracy’, Economic and Political Weekly, 17–23 January 2009.
25. For a detailed report, see Rajeev Upadhyay, ‘The Melting of the
Siachen Glacier’, Current Science, 10 March 2009, pp. 646–48.
bademiyansubhanallah
6 Jul 2009, 0351 hrs IST, TNN
NEW DELHI: Congress deplored BJP leader L K Advani's recommendation
for returning to ballot papers rejecting electronic voting machines
(EVMs),
calling it both anti-technology and retrograde.
"By seeking a blanket abolition of EVMs, Advani proposes to take us
back to the dark ages in the 21st century," party spokesman Abhishek
Singhvi said.
He repudiated the Leader of Opposition's suspicion about the foolproof
performance of EVMs by claiming that it amounted to rejecting advanced
technology developed to rid the electoral system of rigging and
manipulations.
"While safeguards are always welcome, his attack on technology is
reprehensible," Singhvi said. He challenged Advani to produce evidence
about the EVMs malfunctioning. "Where is the evidence that elections
have been rigged?" he asked.
His party colleague Manish Tiwari accused the BJP leader of "taking
society backward". He said Advani's remarks against EVMs went against
the scientific temperament of the times. "It reminds one of the
Samajwadi Party's poll promise of abolishing computers," he said.
"It is unfortunate that the BJP veteran is casting doubts about the
technology that has made the election process error free and fast,"
Tiwari said.
Sid Harth
7 Jul 2009, 0000 hrs IST
The debate over electronic voting machines whipped up by senior BJP
leader L K Advani is based on spurious logic. Let's rewind to the past
when
paper ballots ruled the roost. Were elections foolproof then? Hardly.
Incidents of rigging ballot papers were alarmingly high. The business
of rigging was easy to conduct in the days of paper and manual
counting. The electoral process before the EVMs was a long drawn out
process that involved massive wasteful expenditure of paper and human
resources. Not to speak of time consumed.
Advani's call to revert to old-style paper ballots is merely an echo
of the unsubstantiated allegations made by state units of his party in
the wake of the 2009 Lok Sabha election losses. These leaders have
claimed that the EVMs were tampered to help the Congress in the
elections. It may not be mere coincidence that other parties backing
the BJP's claim like the CPM, RJD and the Telugu Desam were also
routed in the 2009 elections. It seems to be a case of sour grapes.
Of course, no machine is perfect. But how reasonable is the assumption
that thousands of EVMs across the country were fixed to suit a
particular party? Who rigged these machines, especially those in
states governed by non-Congress parties? Sure, if there are doubts
about the efficiency of the EVMs they need to be looked into and, if
necessary, the machines improved. The Election Commission has already
taken some steps in that direction. But to dump the whole system and
revert back to the tedious and time-consuming ballot papers will
require more evidence than currently available that EVMs don't work.
It is pointless to talk of smaller countries that have preferred the
paper ballot option. Indian elections are unique for the simple fact
that no democracy in the world has so many voters more than 700
million voters in the 2009 general elections. To want all their votes
to be cast on paper and then counted manually is going back in time.
Parties that have lost out in Lok Sabha elections may have made
convenient scapegoats out of EVMs to explain their poor performance.
Sid Harth
Too many “spokespersons” in BJP: Advani
7.07.09
Publicly criticising party colleagues for airing criticism of party
ideology and strategy to the media apparently after the LS poll
defeat, senior BJP leader L K Advani said the party seemed to have
“too many spokespersons”.
“The urge (among some party leaders) to see their names in newspapers …
to see their face on TV for a few seconds … Sometimes, I feel there
are too many spokespersons in our party,” Advani said at a function to
mark the birth anniversary of Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad
Mookherjee at New Delhi on Monday.
Several senior BJP leaders had spoken to news channels on the reasons
for the party’s poll defeat and letters written by some party leaders
discussing internal party matters and disagreements were leaked to the
media, leaving the party red faced.
Reminscing the sacrifices made by Mookherjee, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and
Atal Bihari Vajpayee to raise the party to its present state, Advani
said the party should take all precautions to avoid mistakes as it
negate these sacrifices.”
“Leaders like Mookherjee, Deen Dayal, and Vajpayee have raised this
party to this level… we should prevent little mistakes on our part
….”, he said.
Advani said the recent election loss should not dishearten BJP members
as the party had faced several “ups and downs” in the past. The party
still has 116 Lok Sabha MPs.
The Leader of the Opposition said all was not lost for BJP after
recent poll debacle. “The party has a bright future,” he claimed.
Advani told the audience that in his meeting with visiting Bhutanese
Prime Minister two days ago, the latter had asked him what went wrong
for BJP in Lok Sabha polls.
In reply, Advani said though his party had lost, its biggest
contribution over the years was turning Indian polity into a bi-polar
one by ending the monopoly of Congress.
Advani said the BJP should learn from Mookherjee who used to be ready
to give the party presidentship to whichever leader expressed his
desire for the post.
“Then it was a small party but due to the impressive talent of
Mookherjee people were attracted to it,” he said.
Reminding the present leadership of the lows that the party had faced
in the past but emerged with renewed vigour, Advani said, “When
Mookherjee died, for sometime many felt there is nothing left…”
The former Deputy Prime Minister said the death of Deen Dayal
Upadhyaya in 1967 soon after the Calicut conclave was another blow to
the party.
He also praised Vajpayee for his contribution in making BJP a strong
political party.
Popularity: 1% [?]
...and I am Sid harth
Sid Harth
Defamation of Religion is not Racism: says U.N. »
When The Saints Go Marching In
Meera Nanda
BJP has worked hard to create the impression that it is not pursuing
an aggressive Hindutva agenda in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. It has
made good governance, development and security its election plank, and
has promised to give us a majboot neta, nirnayak sarkar. Old Hindutva
favorites like the Ram temple, Ram Sethu and the much- beloved “cow
and its progeny” do make an appearance in the party’s manifesto, but
they are clubbed together under the unobjectionable idea of
“preserving our cultural heritage” and tacked at the very end.
But like a leopard can’t change its spots, the party of saffron can’t
turn saffron, green and white without losing its very reason for
being.
The truth is that in this election, the BJP has pursued a Hindu agenda
which, in the long run, may prove to be far more radical than the hot-
button issues that we are all familiar with. The new agenda can best
be described as Hindukaran of voters, that is, making voters vote as
Hindus First.
The work of Hindukaran is more subtle than the in-your-face Ram mandir
agitation of 1990s. It is taking place through yagnas, kathas and yoga-
shivirs held in temples, ashrams and public meetings, often presided
over by popular and supposedly a-political gurus and “saints” whose
spiritual discourses could well be lifted out of the writings of the
Sangh Parivar. In many of these meetings, people are urged to take an
oath to vote for the party that takes care of “Hindu interests.” This
is not very different from what happened in the United States in 2000
and 2004 when evangelical preachers used their pulpits to urge their
congregations to vote for the party of “traditional values,” whose
representative was none other than George W. Bush.
No one can predict just yet if this so-called Hindu vote bank will
come through for BJP. But whatever the outcome, election 2009 will be
remembered as the first time when a serious coordinated attempt was
made to create a Hindu vote bank. It is important, therefore, to
create a public record of this phenomenon.
A good place to start would be the letter L.K. Advani wrote to 1,000
sadhu-sants within days of days of releasing BJP’s election manifesto.
While the manifesto is lukewarm to Hindutva, Advani’s letter lays out
the red carpet for the saints to come marching straight into the
government. His letter promises to establish a permanent institutional
mechanism for consulting the holy men/women to “guide politics,
governance and other national affairs by the lofty ideals as enshrined
in the concept of Ram Rajya.” In addition, Advani reaffirmed the
promises made in the manifesto, namely, cleaning the Ganga, protecting
the Ram Sethu and the cows, promoting spiritual tourism, and giving
tax-exemption to all dharmic activities. So while the party promised
good governance to the yuppie “Friends of the BJP,” it offered faith-
based governance to its more traditional constituency.
Who are these raj-gurus-in-waiting that the BJP is so eagerly
courting? What role are they being asked to play in electoral
politics? This is where the plot begins to thicken.
The 1,000 sadhu-sants who received Advani’s pledge of allegiance were
chosen from a hand-picked list put together by VHP. While the complete
list remains a secret, we know that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Swami
Ramdev received the letter, as did many other members of Dharma Raksha
Manch, a VHP-managed forum that held its inaugural meeting in January
2009 in Mumbai.
Dharma Raksha Manch is the culmination of VHP’s dream of converting
the vast majority of Hindus who are religious into a Hindu vote bank.
The idea was first put forward in the 1980’s by Swami Chinmayananda,
and later taken up with great gusto by Praveen Togadia, the current
general secretary of VHP.
Creation of Hindu vote bank required a two-step action plan which was
hammered out in various dharam sansads held over the last five years
or so. Step One was to put forth a Hindu Charter of demands and get a
political party to formally accept it. Step Two called for organizing
grass-root campaigns in which at least 50,000 voters in each Lok Sabha
constitutency were to take an oath to vote for only that party that
accepts the Hindu Charter. The action plan also called for unleashing
the power of popular gurus and kathakars who have a mass following
among the moderate middle classes who may be turned off by communal
issues, but who may yet still be mobilized to vote for their “Hindu
interests” in say, propagation of yoga, cleaning the Ganga, preserving
the Ram Sethu, defeating “Islamic terrorism” etc.
The Sangh Parviar has executed this plan to the very last dot in this
election. In late January, VHP and RSS organized the Dharma Raksha
Manch in Mumbai which gave the pride of place to popular gurus
including Swami Ramdev, Rameshbhai Oza, Sadhavi Rithambara and Asaram
Bapu. In March, the Manch came out with an 11-point Hindu charter.
Within days, BJP announced that it had included all the 11 demands in
its manifesto. This was followed by Advani’s fawning letter to 1,000
sadhu-sants for which he won great praise from Swami Ramdev, Sri Sri
Ravi Shankar and other Sangh Parivar representatives.
All this set the stage for the Step Two. VHP’s Ashok Singhal declared
that since BJP is the only party that has accepted the demands of the
saints, the saints will henceforth “educate the voters by touring even
the remote villages to vote for the BJP.”
And that is precisely what the “saints” have been doing, especially in
the communally sensitive areas of Karnataka and Orissa. In mid-March,
Mangalore, the home-turf of Sri Ram Sene, saw a huge samajotsva ( a
social festival) organized by Dharma Raksha Vedike, with full support
from the state where participants were asked to take an oath to only
vote for pro-Hindu candidates/party (read BJP). As the elections
approached and public rallies became difficult to organize, oath-
taking moved inside temples: at least 100 yagnas were organized by
temples all across the state where the presiding priests administered
the oath to vote as Hindus. Yagnas were also the ritual of choice for
Ashok Sahu in Orissa, BJP’s candidate for Kandhamal, the site of anti-
Christian riots last year: before he was arrested (and released on
bail), Sahu went village to village conducting mahayagyas.
For their part, the supposedly a-political gurus have been on the same
page as the Dharma Raksah Manch. Swami Ramdev, for example, has
started his Bharat Swabhiman Andolan which has taken up BJP’s call for
100% voting and bringing back the Indian money stowed away in Swiss
banks. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has long been active in Hindutva causes
having to do with conversion and the state oversight of temples. These
gurus with mass appeal have been a major conduit for mainstreaming the
Hindutva agenda.
How effective has been this strategy of Hindukaran? We will know the
answer soon.
Meera Nanda is the acclaimed author of several books on the growth of
the Hindutva movement in India.
This article has appeared in The Telegraph.
bademiyansubhanallah
Be careful while appointing secretaries: Advani tells BJP MPs
Posted: Tuesday , Jul 07, 2009 at 2002 hrs
We've too many spokespersons these days, says Advani
BJP and Hindutva Do we follow the law ?Give this a thoughtRailway
budget
Senior BJP leader L K Advani cautioned his party MPs to be careful
while signing documents and appointing their personal secretaries as
any error on their part may cost the party dearly.
During the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting on Tuesday, Advani
reiterated his stand that new MPs should be careful as these were
critical times when individuals and political parties were looking for
opportunities to "show each other down".
"Advani told the party MPs that they should not come under such
influence. They should not sign any documents without verifying and
should also be careful in appointing personal secretaries. Last time
we suffered due to this," Deputy Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha
Sushma Swaraj told reporters in New Delhi.
Several BJP leaders in the last Lok Sabha were caught on camera taking
money in the cash-for-query scam, causing much embarrassment to the
party.
bademiyansubhanallah
Yojna Gusai
New Delhi
July 7: A day after accusing his own outfit of having "too many
spokespersons", Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and senior
BJP leader L.K. Advani on Tuesday asked party MPs and leaders to be
careful of their parliamentary conduct and in their selection of
personal assistants.
It was learnt that Mr Advani was annoyed with a section of senior
leaders for staying away from Parliament. The senior leaders missing
from Parliament and the BJP’s Parliamentary Party on Tuesday included
Dr Murli Manohar Joshi and Mr Jaswant Singh.
However, Mr Advani’s decision to accuse his own outfit of having "too
many spokesperons" has upset a string of senior leaders. In an attempt
to bring an end to the letter-writing and
addressing of grievances through the media, Mr Advani had said: "There
are some who cannot control the urge to see their names in newspapers
and their faces on television for a few seconds. It seems there are
too many spokespersons in the party."
Sources disclosed that Mr Advani was tacitly attacking leaders like Mr
Jaswant Singh, Dr M.M. Joshi, Mr Yashwant Sinha and Mr Arun Shourie.
Following the BJP’s defeat in the general election, all these leaders
had been writing letters to the party high command complaining about
various organisational issues, which also included the appointment of
Mr Arun Jaitley as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Ms
Sushma Swaraj as deputy leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
These leaders had also been holding press conferences and giving
interviews to private TV channels to air their views.
Mr Advani, who has been trying to strengthen his position in the
organisation by hand-picking trusted lieutenants for crucial posts,
has created a flutter among veteran party leaders.
A party functionary close to the Leader of the Opposition said Dr
Joshi had been tacitly targeting Mr Advani since the day the BJP lost
the polls. "Joshi wanted Advani to quit as Leader of the Opposition
and he declared his intention to the media," he said. He also accused
both Mr Jaswant Singh and Mr Yashwant Sinha of trying to "usurp
Advaniji’s" position.
Another party functionary maintained Mr Advani’s remarks "have not
merely upset the leaders, but will further deepen the crisis within
the BJP". It was also claimed by this section that by making such
"statements, Mr Advani was trying to consolidate his position within
the organisation and looking at the possibility of continuing as
Leader of the Opposition for quite some time".
and I am Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
New Delhi (PTI) the BJP on Wednesday wanted to know in the Lok Sabha
why the Government was not giving its consent to a proposal for
installing a memorial for freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in
the French city of Marseilles.
Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani sought to know the factual
position regarding a letter written by the Mayor of Marseilles
expressing willingness to install a memorial and whether the
government had any objection to such a move.
The issue was raised during Zero Hour by BJP member Gopinath Munde who
said 100 years ago on this day, Savarkar had escaped from a British
ship, which had docked near Marseilles, when he was being brought to
India after being arrested in London for his anti-British activities.
Savarkar swam across to the shore but was rearrested in Marseilles,
brought to India and imprisoned in the Celullar Jail in the Andamans.
Mr. Munde said the Marseilles Mayor had agreed to put up Savarkar's
statue and had written to the government for its consent but was yet
to receive a response.
Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V. Narayanasamy said the
government has taken note of the matter and he would bring the issue
to the notice of the External Affairs Ministry.
Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj and her other colleagues wanted the
government to reply to their concerns soon, saying today marked the
centenary of the incident "which shook the British empire".
bademiyansubhanallah
New Delhi (IANS): As the beleaguered Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
continues to be in a soul searching mode, veteran leader L.K. Advani
has come out with a list of do's and don'ts for newly elected MPs to
ensure that the party presents a united front.
"After the Lok Sabha elections, some leaders in the party have been
giving random statements to the media. This portrays a wrong image of
the party and spoils the reputation of some leaders. Therefore, to
control this, Advani ji has come out with some suggestions," BJP
leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Wednesday.
Speaking on the birth anniversary of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder
Shyama Prasad Mookerjee on Monday, Mr. Advani said there were too many
spokespersons in the party.
A day later, he met newly elected MPs in parliament and recommended
that they stay out of corporate wars and not ask questions in the
house on behalf of lobbyists.
MR. Advani also advised them to check every document before they
sign.
Asking them to be careful as these were critical times when individual
parties were looking for opportunities to "show each other down",
Advani further said that the MPs should thoroughly check the
background of private secretaries before hiring them.
bademiyansubhanallah
By Indo Asian News Service | 08 July 2009 | 1:24pm 0 Comment
New Delhi, July 8 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said
Wednesday that its leader L.K. Advani's admonition of senior
colleagues was aimed at curbing dissidence in the party still stunned
by its Lok Sabha defeat.
New Delhi, July 8 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said
Wednesday that its leader L.K. Advani's admonition of senior
colleagues was aimed at curbing dissidence in the party still stunned
by its Lok Sabha defeat.
BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said Advani's comments this
week followed unending infighting ever since the party lost the battle
for power in May.
'After the Lok Sabha elections, some leaders in the party have been
giving random statements to the media,' Naqvi told IANS, explaining
why Advani had gone public with what he said Monday and Tuesday.
'This portrays a wrong image of the party and spoils the reputation of
some leaders. Therefore, to control this, Advani has come out with
some suggestions,' Naqvi added.
Speaking at the birth anniversary of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder
Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Monday, Advani complained that there were too
many spokespersons in the BJP, seemingly eager to see their names in
the media.
Even as the BJP reeled under the impact of the statement, Advani told
newly elected MPs the next day that they should stay out of corporate
wars and not ask questions in the house on behalf of lobbyists.
Advani, who was BJP's prime ministerial candidate in the Lok Sabha
polls, also advised them to check every document before putting their
signatures.
Warning that these were critical times when individuals and political
parties were looking for opportunities to 'show each other down', he
asked MPs to thoroughly check the background of their private
secretaries.
BJP second leaders have been locked in an ugly war, criticising one
another publicly, ever since the party won only 116 seats in this
general election -- far below the 138 it got in 2004 and much below
what it thought it could win this time.
Since then, some party leaders have privately blamed Advani's
leadership and the absence of former prime minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee for the poor showing.
Other second rung leaders have blamed one another, shocking members
and supporters of the supposedly regimented BJP.
Some in the BJP feel that Advani's latest comments seek to reiterate
his authority over the country's second largest political party.
Copyright Indo-Asian News Service
bademiyansubhanallah
By Indo Asian News Service | 08 July 2009 | 2:20pm 0 Comment
Raipur, July 8 (IANS) Although he backtracked, Chhattisgarh's ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is still reeling under shock after MP
Baliram Kashyap threatened to break away from the party with 11
legislators if the poverty-hit Bastar region of the state is ignored
by the government.
Raipur, July 8 (IANS) Although he backtracked, Chhattisgarh's ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is still reeling under shock after MP
Baliram Kashyap threatened to break away from the party with 11
legislators if the poverty-hit Bastar region of the state is ignored
by the government.
Kashyap, 73, who represents Bastar in the Lok Sabha, withdrew his
statement after his remarks caused a stir in the party. He told Chief
Minister Raman Singh by phone that he was 'misquoted by media'.
Kashyap is a four-time MP from the mineral-rich but poverty-stricken
Bastar
region which comprises Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Kanker and
Bastar districts. The region has 12 assembly segment of which 11 are
held by the BJP.
The lawmaker's revolt threat was given at a private function in Bastar
last weekend in the presence of a few media personnel.
'We are stunned how a senior leader can talk openly of working against
his own party's government. Though he has denied making such
statements but everybody in the party knows what was reported by local
media quoting him was absolutely correct,' a senior state party leader
told IANS.
'If he has any issues with the government he can talk to the chief
minister directly or the state president or state unit general
secretary (organization) but he cannot embarrass the party,' the
leader said.
'We have decided not to carry the issue forward but have briefed the
central leadership about his unwelcome statement, as this came from a
senior party leader who has also been a state minister several times
in undivided Madhya Pradesh,' he said.
Kashyap in the past too has made controversial statements that
embarrass the party but some of his colleagues say that he just likes
'plain talk'.
In May Kashyap left the party bosses red faced when he said that
projecting L.K. Advani as the prime ministerial candidate was a
mistake and led to electoral reverses in the polls.
Copyright Indo-Asian News Service
...and I am Sid Harth
bademiyansubhanallah
demand CBI enquiry
Submitted by admin4 on 8 July 2009 - 11:55am. India News
By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
Ahmedabad: Even though a year has passed since the bodies of two minor
boys studying in the gurukul(residential school) run by Asaram Bapu
Ashram Trust was found in the waters of the river Sabarmati here,
investigators are clueless about the accused involved in the crime.
Meanwhile, NGO representatives and human rights activists say that
probe into the “mysterious death’’ of the boys is “total fraud’’ and
“aimed at misguiding’’ the people.
Activists’ reactions came following an affidavit submitted by the CID
(crime) before the Gujarat High Court recently.
CID (crime) probing into the episode has confessed in its affidavit
that black magic may have been practiced within the premises of the
ashram.
However, the affidavit said no evidence about the performance of black
magic had been found by the investigators so far.
In fact, the parents of the deceased boys – Praful Vaghela and
Shantilal Vaghela – had been alleging that their sons had been killed
in the black magic act by the ashramites but the police investigators
had not given any heed to them.
Vaghelas are demanding a probe by CBI, a federal agency, into the
episode as they are not satisfied with the investigations by the CID
(crime), a state government agency.
NGO Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM) representative Mukul Sinha, himself a
senior lawyer practicing in the Gujarat High Court, says: “CID (crime)
investigation is a fraud because no FIR has been registered either by
the local police or CID (crime) in the case’’.
Sinha says, “an investigation done without registering an FIR has no
legal teeth’’.
“I wonder what kind of investigation CID (crime) is doing without
having registered an FIR in the episode’’, he says.
“The developments since the incident took place in the first week of
July 2008 suggest that the police and state administration is not
taking genuine interest in the matter’’, points out Sinha, who has
been demanding a CBI probe from the very beginning and also filed a
PIL in the high court in this regard but his plea was rejected.
A 79-year-old architect-turned-activist P H Parmar, who has also filed
a PIL, seeking severe punishment to the accused in the “mysterious
death’’ of the boys, apprehends that the boys must have been killed
during the practice of black magic in the ashram premises. He faces
threats from Asaram’s disciples and has reported the matter to the
high court
The affidavit’s claims about black magic being practiced in the ashram
are based on the lie-detection test of three “shadhaks’(devotees)
carried out by the Gandhinagar-based Forensic Science Laboratory
(FSL).
Earlier, the disciples had concealed this fact during recording of
their statements. The disciples subjected to lie detection test are
Minketan Patra, Vikas Khemka and Uday Sanghani, official spokesman of
the ashram.
“The FSL, after concluding the test on the trio, submitted its report,
concluding that all the three persons, knew about the black magic
performed in the ashram. They were also aware of the activities
carried out at the ashram but they were concealing the same’’, CID
(crime) inspector H B Rajput said in the affidavit.
The investigator also told the court that the three disciples would
now be subjected to narco analysis test to cull out more information
about the black magic and the death of the two boys.
The bodies of the boys – Dipesh Vaghela and Abhishek Vaghela, both
aged between 5 and 7 years – were found in shallow waters of the river
Sabarmati flowing behind the Gurukul on July 5 last year. Some parts
of their bodies were also missing, giving credence to suspicion of
their being killed during black magic performance.
The state government had been accused of protecting the Ashram and its
officials as Sant Asaram Bapu enjoys close proximity with L K Advani.
Like Advani, Sant Asaram is also a Sindhi and Advani makes it a point
to visit Ashram whenever he comes to Ahmedabad.
Among other visitors to the Ashram include Minister of State for Home
(Gujarat) Amit Shah.
Asaram’s ashram is also facing several court cases in and outside
Gujarat pertaining to land grabbing.
bademiyansubhanallah
8 Jul 2009, 0452 hrs IST, ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: Senior BJP leader L K Advani on Tuesday cautioned his
party’s MPs against falling into the trap laid by corporate lobbyists
on asking
questions in Parliament. He also asked them to carefully scrutinise
the antecedents of people before enrolling them as their private
assistants (PAs).
With the damage inflicted on BJP’s image because of the involvement of
as many as six of its MPs in the cash-for-questions scam still fresh
in his mind, Mr Advani was constrained to advise his party’s newly-
elected Lok Sabha members to stay on guard so as to prevent a
repetition of the episode that caused immeasurable embarrassment to
the party.
A sting operation had, in December, 2005 caught 11 MPs — 10 belonging
to the Lok Sabha and one from the Rajya Sabha — accepting bribe for
raising questions in the two Houses. Of these, six belonged to BJP,
with BSP (3), Congress and RJD (one each) completing the list. The BJP
contingent included M K Patil, Y G Mahajan, Pradeep Gandhi, Suresh
Chandel, Chandra Pratap Singh (all members of the Lok Sabha) and
Chhatrapal Singh Lodha (Rajya Sabha).
The 11 MPs were subsequently stripped of their membership of the two
Houses after being found guilty of conduct “unethical and unbecoming”
of members of Parliament. The episode inflicted a severe dent on the
BJP’s credibility quotient.
Mr Advani used the BJP’s parliamentary wing’s meeting held here on
Tuesday to urge his party colleagues to prevent a repetition of that
episode.
“The country is going through an intense corporate war. Corporate
lobbyists are moving around the city scouting for MPs who could pose
questions in Parliament on their behalf. Don’t sign the questions
merely on somebody’s request,” Mr Advani told the parliamentary party
members. He also asked them not to induct anyone and everyone as a
member of their staff without checking their track-record. “Please
prepare your questions yourselves, and don’t leave the work to your
PAs,” he advised them.
Mr Advani told the gathering that the involvement of six BJP MPs in
the cash-for-questions scam had caused incalculable damage to the
party’s standing among the people at large.
bademiyansubhanallah
Ians July 8th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said
general election — far below the 138 it got in 2004 and much below
what it thought it could win this time.
Since then, some party leaders have privately blamed Advani’s
leadership and the absence of former prime minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee for the poor showing.
Other second rung leaders have blamed one another, shocking members
and supporters of the supposedly regimented BJP.
Some in the BJP feel that Advani’s latest comments seek to reiterate
his authority over the country’s second largest political party.
...and I am Sid harth
bademiyansubhanallah
Rajesh Sinha / DNAThursday, July 9, 2009 2:55 IST
New Delhi: Learning from its experience in the last Lok Sabha, when it
had to face embarrassment due to the inexperience of its young MPs,
the BJP has decided to hold an orientation/training programme for
party first-timers in the 15th Lok Sabha.
Several BJP MPs in the 14th Lok Sabha were caught in sting operations
to expose MP local area development scheme (MPLAD) and 'cash-for-
query' scams. It is another matter that the BJP had conducted a
similar training programme for MPs and their personal assistants (PAs)
in Thane, Maharashtra, in 2004 as well. This year's workshop, again in
Thane, will be in addition to the one being conducted by parliament.
Almost half the BJP MPs in the 15th Lok Sabha are first-timers and the
party is concerned about their conduct and performance. While the
programme is still about a month away, senior leader LK Advani has
been cautioning BJP MPs about the big bad world of politics in Delhi.
At a party meeting on Tuesday, he warned the MPs to stay away from
corporate wars and not become unwitting pawns and lobbyists for
business houses. He specifically asked them not to agree to ask
questions at the instance of business houses and told them to
carefully scrutinise the antecedents of people before enrolling them
as PAs.
Recommending an orientation programme for freshers, Advani spoke of
the lack of ethical conduct by several BJP members in the 14th Lok
Sabha, leading to many disqualifications. Six BJP MPs were
disqualified in the 'cash-for-questions' scandal and one in a human
trafficking case.
Earlier in June, Advani had asked the MPs to maintain "purity in
conduct". He told them that facilities such as official houses or cars
were for their own use and should not be sublet or rented out for
financial gains. This kind of behaviour sullies reputation, he said.
Advani said there were a lot of people in Delhi who try to establish
contact with MPs, particularly new ones, "and this usually begins with
sending cars to airports to receive or drop them". The attention gives
MPs an inflated sense of importance, Advani said, asking freshers to
be on guard.
bademiyansubhanallah
Neena Vyas
NEW DELHI: Unlike on budget days over the last five years, this time
on July 6 Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K. Advani
apparently did not invite the Bharatiya Janata Party team of “experts”
on economic affairs — Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh and Arun Shourie —
to discuss with him and other leaders what the party’s reaction to the
budget should be.
This has triggered speculation in the party that Mr. Advani tried to
sideline them as he was annoyed that their publicly expressed anger
through letters to the BJP chief and “notes’ that were leaked to the
media ahead of the national executive committee targeted him as well
as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley.
On July 6, the BJP gave the impression that the three leaders stayed
away from a meeting in Mr. Advani’s room in Parliament House, where
the party discussed and firmed up its reaction to the budget. It now
appears they were not invited to the meeting.
While Mr. Jaswant Singh was not in Delhi on the budget day — he had
gone to his village — Mr. Sinha and Mr. Shourie were in town and in
Parliament, some party leaders said. “They were not invited by Mr.
Advani, and, therefore, they did not come for that meeting.”
Later, however, when the party attempted to get them to come for a
media briefing, the request was turned down as they were not privy to
the party’s “line” on the budget.
The party has also decided that Murli Manohar Joshi will lead the
Opposition debate in the Lok Sabha, and S.S. Ahluwalia in the Rajya
Sabha. This announcement was made by the BJP deputy leader in the
Lower House, Sushma Swaraj, at Tuesday’s parliamentary party meeting,
thus indicating that Mr. Shourie will not lead the party’s charge in
the Upper House. She also indicated on Wednesday that Mr. Sinha might
be asked to be the lead speaker from the BJP on the Finance Bill.
bademiyansubhanallah
Posted: Saturday , Jul 18, 2009 at 1530 hrs
Single Her and single HimBJP and HindutvaDo we follow the law ?Give
this a thought Senior BJP leader LK Advani lamented that people
preferred Congress to BJP in the Lok Sabha polls even as he credited
his party with establishing a bipolar polity in the country.
"Election results have shown that the electorate preferred bigger
parties and rejected smaller ones. Only Congress and BJP won more than
100 seats...but people preferred Congress over BJP as we had little
presence in 150 seats spread across states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal," he said.
The Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha was addressing the National
Executive meeting of BJP's Scheduled Caste Front.
He said that by including all sections of the society, BJP can emerge
as the number one party in the country.
"In the last parliamentary elections, smaller parties with a strong
base in their respective states were hoping that they could form a
government at the Centre. But people rejected them and voted for two
big political parties," he said.
The BJP leader said the biggest achievement of his party was creation
of a bipolar polity in the country. "We ended the domination of
Congress...earlier, it was Congress versus various smaller parties,"
he added.
Advani said unlike some political parties who use certain sections of
the society as a vote bank, BJP believed in involving them in the
development of the country.
"Some parties may use an organisation of dacoits and robbers if it can
help gain more votes," he said, without naming any party.
Advani said "inclusive growth" of the country was not possible without
involving all sections of the society. "This is what we have been
taught by leaders like Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, Deen Dayal Upadhyay
and Atal Bihari Vajpayee."
He said real development meant that people from the SC and ST
community, rural youth and women reaped the benefits of growth.
The BJP leader reminded the audience that the party had its share of
ups and downs in its political history and cited its performance in
the 1984 Lok Sabha polls when the party bagged only two seats but took
its tally to 89 in the next general elections, he said.