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Congress’ Communism & Empress SoniaG’s Upkeep
Cho Ramaswamy’s Tuglaq (the protagonist in the eponymous movie) says, ‘It is not possible to make the poor rich. Therefore make the rich poor and all will be equal!’ It is an unstated dictum of the communist proletariat. The communist elite (vlasti in Russian) had a different take on Marxist philosophy as George Orwell so vividly depicted in his Animal Farm. Irrespective of how they live, quite often the vlasti echo the proletarian edict, more to show that their heart is in the right place rather than because of an ardent belief that ‘all men should be equal’. Therefore it is no surprise to hear Mani Sankar Aiyar often cavil about Antilia, Mukesh Ambani’s 27-floor residence in Mumbai’s southern suburbs. Flaunting his knowledge of the Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality of wealth distribution) he often cites Antilia as an example of the deep chasm that exists between the … Read entire article »
Why should a secular nation have minority reservations?
Thanks to the Congress party’s unrelenting pursuit of vote bank politics the issue of reservations for minorities in jobs and educational institutions is back in the news. Designed as a ploy to regain a foothold in UP (as a key to capturing power at the centre in 2014), it carved out a 4.5% sub-quota for minorities (primarily Muslims) in the 27% reservation provided for OBCs. In its vulgar greed to capture power at any cost it conveniently forgot the sequence of events, beginning with the creation of separate electorates based on religious lines in the 1930s, which eventually led to the partition of the country. The creation of separate electorates was precisely based on the same logic and for the same reasons that the government now seeks to create reservations for Muslims. As … Read entire article »
Lies, damn lies and reporting Gujarat
When it comes to reporting on ‘Gujarat 2002’, the media has not only a different idiom and different sets of moral and ethical standards to be applied to different people, but demands a totally different jurisprudence! Thus the edict, ‘the law takes its own course’ does not apply to Gujarat riots cases. The judiciary must take media’s word for it and convict all accused in the cases and more importantly Narendra Modi. According to the secular media the ends of justice would be met if and only if Narendra Modi is jailed for life, irrespective of whether there is any evidence to prove his culpability or not. On the other hand, a Sanjeev Bhatt under investigation for crimes like illegal confinement of people, extortion and murder is a national icon only because he squeals on Narendra Modi, no … Read entire article »
Lessons for all from Election 2012
“The one-eyed mollusc on the ocean floor and I have the same knowledge of the universe.” – Aldous Huxley (This could only be a rough approximation of what the great scientist had said of his knowledge of the universe as it is quoted from memory and may not be an exact reproduction.) If Huxley had the humility to confess the limitations of his knowledge of the universe, our psephologists and television presenters should be humbled by hubris – at least in hindsight – for getting half of it wrong in their predictions of Election 2012. After all the number crunching, panel discussions and marathon debates, for most of them it was a story of hits and misses. TheCongress (Indian National Congress) did not surge as predicted and the BJP was not relegated to the … Read entire article »
Federalism and National Security
No one can deny that the US has greater federalism than most nations and more certainly than India. Each of its fifty states is fiercely independent and zealously guards its turf. The US also has the strongest anti-terror laws in the world and sees no contradiction between federalism and national security. In the aftermath of a rare terrorist attack on US soil in September 2001, the US administration strengthened its intelligence gathering organs. The enactment of the PATRIOT Act in 2001 was the first step. In fact ‘PATRIOT’ is acronym for ‘Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism’. This was followed by enacting the Homeland Security Act in 2002. The objective of these acts is to collect, collate and process intelligence and prevent terror related activities. The upshot … Read entire article »
Kashmiri Pandits: A Forsaken Minority
Another anniversary of the exodus that made the Kashmiri Pandits orphans of history stared at us on January 19. The Pandits, were uprooted from their home and hearth and cast about as refugees in their own homeland. The tragedy and tribulations that befell this unfortunate community for the last twenty two years include some of the most heart-rending stories. Theirs is a story of humanitarian disaster of unprecedented magnitude, but strangely, had gone unnoticed by the rest of the world and more importantly by their own countrymen here in India. As K.P.S. Gill, former police chief of Punjab who rid his state of separatist militancy put it, “[...] one of the reasons for the apathy [of the rest of the world] could be the non-violent nature of the community itself.” … Read entire article »
Book Review: A worm’s-eye view of ‘The Statesman’ & ‘Times of India’
Book Review: “JS & The Times of my life – a worm’s-eye view of Indian Journalism” - Suraiaya, Jug. (2011). Chennai. Tranquebar Press, Westland Ltd. Pages: x + 340. Price Rs: 495. What is the role of the media in reflecting public thought? Should it merely reflect or attempt to shape it? Should it or should it not play the role of an Ombudsman in exposing venality and corruption in public life? If Arun shouries’s debut as a journalist at Indian Express provided some answers to these unremitting questions, there are others who differed with him. Girilal Jain of the ‘Times of India’ described him and others of his ilk at the Indian Express as the ‘Galahads of the press’. If we suspected that for the ‘Times of India’ the issue was more of … Read entire article »
Gujarat riots and the ‘secular’ Galahads of justice!
‘The law will take its course’ is an oft heard cliché, when politicians explain away the misdeeds of their comrades-in-arms. But political discourse in India has a new norm for Hindus and Hindu organisations in general and Narendra Modi in particular. When it comes to Narendra Modi, the law can not take its course; should not take its course. It has to instantly convict him and send him to jail. The norms of jurisprudence do not apply to him. The inhuman burning of 59 Karsevaks do not matter to the secular jihads. The 254 Hindus killed in the riots as against 790 Muslims do not count. The fact that the number of Hindus arrested, 27, 901, was almost four times the number of Muslims (7,651) detained during the post-Godhra riots is of … Read entire article »
Enemies of the State or ‘Gandhians with guns’?
By a strange twist of irony, as a review ‘Hello, Bastar’, Rahul Pandita’s ‘untold story of India’s Maosist movement’ was being written, television channels across the country were celebrating Anna Hazare’s Gandhian victory over the might of the Indian state. It is difficult to comment whether the phrase ‘Gandhians with Guns’ was coined with extreme cynicism, or extreme irreverence (to the original Satyägrahi) or extreme facetiousness. Be that as it may, it has become a paradigm – not so much to describe the enemies of the state for whom ‘political power flows from the barrel of a gun’ – but to describe the mindset of ‘mischievous Cadillac communist[s]’, to quote Bharat Karnad’s mordant phrase, who hate the very democratic institutions that gave them the freedom to rant and rave. Why is … Read entire article »
‘Chanakya’s Chant’ – An intelligent man’s guide to governance and foreign policy!
Had Chānakya been a Western philosopher (like Plato or Aristotle), history probably would have treated him with much more respect. His Arthaśāstra is easily the Earth‘s first treatise on statecraft, which dealt with economy and governance, foreign policy and war strategy. Indian history, written first by the aliens and then by the left-liberal crowd, with its obsession with a nebulous ‘composite culture’, has not done justice to the great political-philosopher. Westerners, in their ineffable arrogance, used to refer to Chānakya as the Indian Machiavelli although the former preceded him by about two millennia. Writing a novel steeped in history is no easy task, because the author has to balance historical accuracy with an engaging plot. Ashwin Sanghi’s Chānakya’s Chant is a fascinating saga of two Chānakyas, the original political-philosopher of the … Read entire article »
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