India Retold

Men are often put through fire by the Gods. Ordinary men are consumed or burnt by it; a chosen few emerge from it cleansed, purified and strengthened, and rise to meet the great demands that Destiny has penned for them.

The life-chart of Narendra Modi seems to have been scripted elsewhere. Right from childhood, this brahmachari leader who has been most inspired by Swami Vivekananda, has tread a path uncommon among and with the common masses. At 17, Modi left his home, penniless, and went to the Himalayas in search of the Supreme Truth. For two years he was incommunicado, and when he returned, he joined the RSS which subsequently made his services available to the BJP.

On October 7, 2001, Modi was unexpectedly made Chief Minister of Gujarat, less than 10 months after a devastating earthquake had killed 20,000 people and destroyed 400,000 homes, and when the economy of the state was sinking and growth was stagnant. This was his first ever assignment in any government, and at a difficult time. Little did he know then that in less than five months, Gujarat would be engulfed in horrific communal violence, one that would be exploited relentlessly, remorselessly, endlessly to target, tarnish and terminate him politically, even physically.

A greenhorn administrator who was still on the first steps of the ladder of learning the ropes of his job – he did not have the benefit of imbibing knowledge from his family --Modi did, in my view, based on records available, a better job in controlling the riots and taking on the rioters than any other Chief Minister or Prime Minister had ever done before him. This is not the place to labour on what he did or did not do or what he could or should have done and did not; that will only deflect from the main thrust of my argument.

I am not being cynical or disrespectful of those who died or suffered in Godhra and the riots that followed. But I do believe that along an extremely significant dimension – the kind that destiny show its hand in – 2002 was actually a blessing for Narendra Modi.

When pushed into the pit of calumny, hounded day in and out, condemned for everything and praised for nothing, most men crack. They lose control of themselves and interest in their jobs, and soon become forgotten or hated chapters of history or corners of memory. Men of destiny – and they appear only ever so rarely – on the other hand, take the daunting, seemingly impossible challenge head on, activate and energise their full potential to rise and go on to achieve what they would never have been able to in the placid but enervating routine and red tape that dulls even the sharpest minds.

That is precisely what Narendra Modi has done. While India has languished and regressed and lost hope, he has worked tirelessly and furiously to take Gujarat to unscaled heights with an integrity and at a pace that, as per the accepted logic of the few who have benefitted obscenely disproportionately from graft and drift, is simply not possible in a democracy. Even more significantly – and this is where his irreplaceable ground-level experience with and empathy for the people has proved to be invaluable – he has, in the process, discovered that there is much wrong in the manner in which India has been governed, and that there is an entirely different model of politics and governance that needs to be put in place so that every Indian, irrespective of caste and religion, can reap the benefits of India’s growth and rise which can and should be much higher than has been achieved till now.

Those who ask Modi the politician to unambiguously apologise for 2002 – so that they can then say ‘gotcha’ -- obviously are either not connected or educated enough to see the silent and rigorous penance that has gone into what Modi the man has achieved in Gujarat during the last 10 years. Caught in their narrow prisms of politics, power, pelf and perfidy, they cannot fathom that a fakir-like leader – no family to propagate, no lavish life-style to sustain, no desire to make and hoard/hide money – is doing things differently because he thinks differently and is energised by different values that are nobler and higher than theirs.

Modi has a dream. For India. And that dream is big. It is a dream we should have dreamt before 1947 and started working to achieve on 15 August of that year. On that day, Nehru did speak of India’s tryst with destiny. But, in hindsight it is evident that he was not equipped to fulfill that tryst; the words meant for the world were big, the dream meant for India was not. That set the "happy-to-be-second-best" tone for India, one that can still be heard through the static of the rot that has grown around it.

It has taken 64 years for a leader to realise that the root cause of many of India’s problems is that it does not dream big, ask: “Why can’t we dream like China, Europe or America?” and hit: “Sapne nahin hain toh sankalp kaise hoga, aur sankalp nahin to jodne ki iccha kaise hogi.” (Not translatable by me without unacceptable loss of energy)

Almost exactly two years back, when fresh assaults had been launched against Modi by an embedded media masquerading as free, I was not sure whether he would be able to survive the remorseless and fanatic attacks, and lead his party in the 2014 elections to victory. At that time even to me it seemed to be “Mission Impossible.”

Then I was not sure whether destiny was playing the pivotal role; now I have no doubt it is. The Supreme Court judgement sending back all cases against Modi to the trial court and discontinuation of their monitoring by it has opened the magic door that the entire might of the Indian state had tried to keep closed and hang him on, knowing very well what its opening meant.

Suddenly, what seemed impossible till a few days back, now seems to be the only real possibility. Bar the never-ending shouting, Modi has passed Destiny's fire test. His 'Mission Impossible' is on its way to becoming 'Mission Accomplished.'
---------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. The almost prescient post that I wrote two years back, when I knew much less than I do now, is reproduced below.

WILL MODI ACCOMPLISH HIS 'MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?'

The stature of a leader can often be accurately determined not by observing the effusive praise showered on him by his die-hard supporters but by carefully examining the vicious attacks launched against him by his die-harder detractors. By that measure, there can be no two opinions that Narendra Modi is the BJP's tallest leader by many miles, and has been so for some time now.

Pretences apart, no one knows this better than the Congress party. Even more importantly, that party also knows that it has no weapon to counter him, and that if he ever gets to that chair in Delhi, governance will take centre-stage in a manner that will most likely marginalise the Congress nationally in almost the same manner as it has in Gujarat.

Let us tackle the ghost of 2002 straightaway. Those riots in Gujarat were not the first in India, nor are they going to be the last. If one goes by statistics, many more Sikhs and Muslims have been killed in Congress-ruled states and in Delhi, and plenty of its Neros have played more than the fiddle, often deliberately. But, not a single one of them, Rajiv Gandhi included, has been subject to the kind of calumny that Modi has faced and will continue to face.

Let us get one more thing straight: this onslaught has little to do with 2002; it has everything to do with the fear that the Congress has no answer to Modi along any other dimension. He is scrupulously honest; he does not fake austerity - he lives it; he has shown that a clear-headed leader can deliver good governance even with the existing system; he has put Gujarat on an unprecedented path of explosive and inclusive economic growth; he has no family to promote and is manifestly devoted selflessly to his state and its people; he cannot be corrupted and does not tolerate those who can be.

The culture of governance that Modi has put in place in Gujarat is almost the exact opposite of the culture of unbridled corruption and sycophancy that the Congress party has spawned during its long years of reign at the Centre and the states. Things have reached a stage where corruption at the highest political and bureaucratic levels has become institutionalised as an entitlement. The whole nation knows that these guys are becoming rich by foul means alone. Such systems and laws have been put in place that it is almost impossible to catch anyone, and even if caught, little can be done. Terrorists and corrupt leaders cannot find a better environment where they can so fearlessly go about their business of destroying a nation from within.

In such a scenario, if leader emerges who is honest as well as intolerant of the nonsense that has been passing off as sense for decades, the people of this country will have before them, for the first time ever, the real alternative that they have been looking for but have been unable to find. The BJP's decline at the national level has, in no small measure, to do with its embracing of the corrupt and hollow value system that India associates with the Congress. That is why in states where its Chief Ministers are focused on governance and probity, the party remains strong.

The results of the recent Assembly by-polls bear this out. Within months of its morale-sapping defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has done surprisingly well, unlike the communists whose downhill ride has only accelerated after the Lok Sabha debacle. In MP, the BJP has wrested on seat from the Congress which has retained one. In Uttarakhand, it has wrested the lone seat from the Congress.

But it is in Gujarat that the results have dramatically defined once again what the Congress and its "Bhaare ke tattoos" (hired ponies) in the "intelligentsia", media and other powerful organs, who have benefitted disproportionately due to Congress rule, are mortally afraid of. Of the seven seats that went to the polls, six were held by the Congress. Now it has just two while the BJP's tally has gone from one to five. This result has come in despite Modi not campaigning in any constituency personally.

No matter what anyone might say, it is difficult to believe that magistrate Tamang accidentally released his report on the Ishrat Jahan killing just before the polls. It is also difficult to believe that the media coincidentally went into hyper-excited overdrive to claim Modi's head because of a fake encounter killing by Gujarat police. But what must shock every Indian's conscience is the fact that sections of the media and the Congress were willing to go to the extent of sleeping with the LeT only to discredit Modi. It needs to be mentioned that the LeT is a Pakistani terror outfit that is waging war against India with the full patronage of the Pakistani establishment, and has already killed thousands of innocent Indians. It also executed Mumbai 26/11. Sleeping with this enemy of India is only one small step short of giving it a "supari" for Modi.

Does this shock you? It must. But remember, this has happened in India's history even earlier. The British, for example, would have found the going very difficult had India's selfish and myopic kings not sided with them only to defeat other Indian kings. Now too, do you not similarly hear Indians who find Pakistan and Pakistanis more friendly and "Just Like Us" than they do their political opponents? Do you not hear them talk about giving disastrous concessions to Pakistan on Kashmir, possibly in the fond hope that it will prevent future loss of votes due to terrorism? Did they even react to the exposure by the SIT of Teesta Setalvad, their award-winning loud voice, for cooking up tales of macabre and wanton killings, and tutoring and threatening witnesses to fraudulently portray Modi and Hindus at large as cold-blooded rapists and murderers?

Personally, like everyone else, I do not know how guilty Narendra Modi is or Rajiv Gandhi was for the killings in Gujarat and Delhi respectively. Unlike some sponsored fellow Indians, I am not going to pass judgment on Modi like they have and tell the whole world that he is a mass murderer. They have a lot to lose personally if Modi comes to power in Delhi; I have nothing to gain or lose, except as an Indian citizen. Like them, I also know that Modi will most likely prove to be the best Prime Minister India has ever had, not for Hindus but all Indians. Like them, I also believe that Modi as PM will bring about a paradigm shift in the manner that this country is governed. Like them, I also know that it will be the death knell for many of them. That is why they have to do everything they can to destroy him before he gets to Delhi.

Since they cannot find any chink in his armour at all, they have to keep 2002 alive, no matter what, till he is brought down.

The next Lok Sabha elections, barring unforeseen developments, will be held in 2014. Four and a half years is a very long time. The misfired cacophony over Ishrat Jahan is a clear indicator that there is no limit that Modi's political opponents and their henchmen will not cross to ensure that he is not the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate in that election. The stakes are so high that there will, without an iota of doubt, be very serious attempts to physically eliminate him if nothing sticks in the manner that his opponents want.

Whether you like Narendra Modi or not, do not underestimate what he is up against. Will he be able to survive this remorseless, fanatic onslaught, as he has till now, and lead his party in the 2014 elections?

If there was ever a 'Mission Impossible' for Modi to accomplish, it is this.
'

It is not Sonia Gandhi alone who has returned to a changed India after spending five weeks at an undisclosed location for an unknown surgery. Lal Krishna Advani too is in the same boat, despite having been in Delhi all the time.

Whether Sonia Gandhi will be allowed to see the clear writing on the wall by the wall of advisors who have kept her insulated from the people for all these years, will only be known in the days and months, not years, to come. But there is clear evidence that Advani’s advisors are hell bent on guiding him into cuckoo land.

The grand old man of the Bharatiya Janata Party, manifestly enthused by the unexpected popular upsurge against UPA's corruption, -- and sensing an early collapse of Sonia’s government-- wants to drive his Rath into it, in the hope that he will be able to capture the imagination of the people once again, and ride on the tidal wave that Anna has generated, to 7 Race Course Road, at long last.

Perhaps he needs a badly needed reality check, to finally realise that he is Mr. Rip Wan Winkle waking up in a new, restless India, impatient with and unaccepting of the ways and intentions of politicians, and the slow pace at which most of them are delivering less than satisfactory results. No longer can Indians be fooled with worn out clichés and excuses; dramatically better results of good, clean governance are there for all to see in some states, and there is no place for the rest to hide. Series of scams have only heightened the culpability of the corrupt and the inefficient focused on making quick mega bucks.

Advani is a pillar of the old guard, of continuation of the old ways, of status quo -- anti-change. Ironically, that is precisely what a man half his age also symbolises, despite perfunctory and half-baked noises to the contrary. That is mainly why Rahul Gandhi has failed to enthuse India despite seven years of perhaps the most sustained and carefully calibrated media campaign to project him as a modern youth icon, as the great new hope for India. Neither Advani nor Rahul have anything new to offer to India; neither of them carry the credibility that is needed to carry the masses with conviction. For different reasons, both are trapped in and bound to the past, both have skeletons on their backs.

Surprisingly, it has taken a 73 year old man to awaken We The People -- the youth, the poor and even the privileged -- to the realisation that politicians across the spectrum are retarding India’s growth. Army man and Gandhian Anna Hazare has most unexpectedly emerged from a small village in Maharashtra to shake Delhi’s politicians like no has since 1947, like no politician thought was possible before August 16, 2011. In 13 days flat, he has forever changed India, and there is no going back. Unless, of course, Anna’s advisors too fall prey to inducements of different kinds and corrupt the purity of the energy that he has generated and spread across India.

The stench of corruption emanates from all parties. The Congress smells the foulest because it is in power and also because its government, micro-managed by a paranoid Sonia Gandhi, has broken all records of plunder with an air of arrogance and shamelessness that has sent shudders down India’s spine. The BJP too now looks no better than a clone of the Congress. Its dramatics in Jharkhand, Karnataka and Uttarakhand have been as bad as those of the Congress anywhere. The manner in which its central leadership has scored self-goals repeatedly and made the party look even worse than an exposed Congress, has not escaped attention of the people.

In this light, for Advani to undertake a a rath yatra against corruption is akin to a corrupt man protesting against his own corruption! That he has manifestly been motivated to do so by the caucus that has his ear exposes another yawning hole in BJP’s armour: it has no other leader who believes he/she can connect to the people and carry them along his/her rath, much less to the voting booth – the real reason for the nautanki no one is going to buy any longer.

Does anyone believe Sonia Gandhi when she says she will fight corruption? Similarly, it seems they don't believe Sushma Swaraj or Arun Jaitley, BJP's self-appointed prime contenders for the Prime Minister’s chair. The duo tested their ability to convince and lead people in two popular causes they thought they would be able to: protest against price-rise and the Tiranga Yatra to Lal Chowk. They know they cannot connect and that people will most likely boo them should they lead a copy-cat anti-corruption campaign. Hence they have put Advani’s head on the block; if he succeeds, they get the spoils; if he fails, the brickbats will be his alone. Win-win.

Yes, some surveys show that there is a huge swing away from the Congress. But Advani should not mistake it as a swing for the BJP. The swing is for real change, not for BJP, not for continuation of the old ways, no matter which political party is in power. If people are punishing Congress today, they will doubly and even more swiftly punish BJP tomorrow if it continues to remain no more than ‘B’ team of the Congress.

Advani needs to realise that the wind of the anti-corruption movement is in Anna’s sails, not his. He is only becoming a fall guy for BJP’s self-goal scoring, self-centered caucus. People of Anna’s India are not going to vote for Advani as PM now. They are yearning for change; he represents stasis. He will, therefore, do well to put his personal ambitions aside, call off his Vyarth Yatra and deploy his energies to get his party rid of dead wood and worse.
'

Well before Change arrives, discrete signs of the impending tumult start appearing, with increasing frequency and magnitude. Unfortunately, it is often in hindsight that seemingly stray straws are seen for what they really are: pearls on one string.

In 1947, we inherited -- and have persisted with -- 19th century colonial laws, administration, judiciary, police and other institutions of governance. In 1950, we gave ourselves a constitution that promised democracy to the people, but through a copy-pasted model that was developed over centuries by and for a tiny, almost-unitary, and culturally very different society for itself.

In sum, for creating an India of tomorrow, we placed our trust in instruments of yesterday.

The constitution has held till now, as have the electoral process and other institutions of state. And this achievement, more than anything else, is being used by those who have most benefitted from it to resist sorely needed changes which will, and must, pull them down from the colonial perches they seamlessly slid into after Independence.

Ironically, the Change that is threatening them was actually unleashed by them to shape public opinion and discourse to suit their requirements.

The completely unexpected and unprecedented support that Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption has generated contains some extremely important lessons, some of which I had discussed in the previous post. Perhaps the most fundamental message that the hundreds of thousands of young men and women out on the streets today are conveying is that they are no longer ready to wait indefinitely for politicians to deliver on issues that affect them directly, and are ready to force Change, if required.

Supremacy of Parliament and sanctity of the electoral process are the two arguments that opponents of Change offer to deride this upsurge, if not uprising. MPs are elected by the people to frame laws, win elections if you have a problem with what they are doing: this is their standard line.

Unfortunately for them, this is not 1947 or 1950, when a long oppressed, diffident people, led by outstanding, unelected leaders, were elated with the first flushes of freedom. The world has changed beyond imagination in the last six decades, and two generations later, the youth are not timorous like their grand parents -- they have as direct a memory of colonial rule as they have of other periods long past – and they see leaders of today as plunderers disinterested in, and disconnected from, them.

But above all, the most profound change that is driving the Change we are beginning to experience is the information revolution. 850 million mobile phones and a rapidly growing access to the internet have ushered in a social media revolution whose impact and power is re-writing the rules of democracy itself.

There were huge expectations when visual media was freed of government control. People were fed up of tightly controlled government manipulation of news and discussions, and were excited by the prospect of getting ‘real’ news from a free media. Daily voting on questions picked and debated by various news channels empowered them for the first time beyond the ballot box, and gave them a sense of participation like they had never experienced. Every day they got a real idea of the views of a significant section the population on live issues.

Politicians quickly realised that they could use free media by a mix of inducements and threats to shape and distort public opinion enough to alter voting choices of a critical numbers, to change defeat into victory. The people would never get to know, they reckoned, that it was almost DD all over again, without the give-away logo.

Tehelka's sting operation of 2001 and the Pink Chaddi drama of 2009 were two politically motivated campaigns that successfully achieved their objectives of damaging the BJP, and underlined the enormous power of the visual media in influencing, even determining, electoral outcomes.

Media business in India has been slave to the government of the day, and is now even more so, because the stakes are higher than ever before, making paid news and worse extremely lucrative. Media is, therefore, as status quo loving as politicians. The Anna phenomenon would have been successfully discredited and buried by it had a new 'media moghul’ not burst upon the scene from nowhere and fundamentally altered the rules of the information and opinion-making game.

Almost a crore and a half missed calls to Anna’s anti-corruption team, crores of sms messages exchanged about Anna and his anti-corruption campaign, and a free, informed, unbiased debate by well-informed netizens -- 21st century, often-ahead-of-the-curve reporters and opinion makers whom people trust – are the prime drivers of the revolution that we are seeing at Ramlila Maidan and all over the country.

The media – honorable exceptions apart – is being compelled to cover Anna; for the first time, it is following, not leading a campaign. Even more importantly, for the first time, people are not being influenced by the propaganda regularly unleashed by ‘experts’ and shallow, opinionated anchors who have held sway till now: the fast-growing web of social media is their new voice, one that will only grow louder. In fact so stung are some media stars by the almost brutal manner in which they have been sidelined, and their ‘Radia’ agenda lit up, that they have refused to cover this unfolding of history from Ground Zero right outside their doorstep.

What we are seeing on the streets is, at one level, the largest ever ‘opinion poll’ or survey ever conducted in India on an issue. Till now, the media was setting the agenda, quoting votes, blogs, tweets etc. of a few thousand – sometimes ever creating false handles to fake results/trends – to tell a believing India as to what its 'real' opinion was on various socio-political issues. Aided by unprecedented connectivity, Anna and his team have snatched that initiative from the middlemen-messengers by reaching people direct with their message.

Elections are a lot less about issues than they are about arithmetic. That is why politicians have become so arrogant and dismissive of the people. They have gamed this deeply flawed process to near-perfection by dividing themselves and voters along every usable fault line. This has effectively removed people from the process of governance and turned them into subjects who, even if they vent their anger after five years, can do little more than choose from among the small pool of the ruling elite that has realised that it can keep doing what it wants to, till election time, and that an election loss is temporary; no matter what they do, their opponents will do no better, and a helpless minority of voters will swing back and give them one more chance.

It is this effective disenfranchisement of the people that emboldened the government to do what it did to Anna Hazare in April, to Baba Ramdev in June and again to Anna now. It is this dis-empowerment that people are revolting against. It is this Change that politicians are either unable to grasp or unwilling to submit to.

The age of real-time connectivity and dissemination of information is here. And it is not one-way. A citizen with a mobile phone or an internet connection is no longer a passive, isolated recipient of news; he is also a creator and disseminator of it. He is an independent, one-man media house. He is not going to wait for five years to express his opinion through a vote that, for 65 years, has not addressed issues that touch him. He is not going to accept the argument that a ‘supreme’ Parliament is the private property of a few hundred individuals between elections.

These are ideas and instruments that were developed in, and were suited to, the age of pigeon carriers, horse-driven carriages and ships powered by oars and wind, by societies tentatively breaking free of the clutches of absolute monarchy. In 21st century, politicians cannot hide behind them and deny to people the power that should be theirs in a democracy. People have a right to demand day-to-day accountability from the people they have chosen to govern their nation. Thanks to technology, they now can.

Anna's movement may be crushed again by politicians. But what is of real significance is that, for the first time, people have come together, and experienced and expressed their power, without latching onto a political leader or party. They will come back again and again, stronger, better organised. If politicians do not learn, at some point they will turn violent too, with unpredictable results.

The days of treating a distorted democracy like a fixed-term dictatorship are over. Change is here. The sooner our politicians get a fix on this, the better.
'

Anna is everywhere. Everyone has something to say about him. And almost no one has read the anti-corruption Jan Lok Pal Bill (JLPB) they are supporting or savaging. The debate, therefore, is, for most part, along the same ideological, political, religious and social fault lines that emerge in their ugliness whenever any contentious issue comes to the fore.

This time, however, another participant has entered the arena. And he is not another op-ed writer or a member of a handpicked studio audience taking part in a motivated and tightly controlled discussion. He is -- many differ—the real “We the People.”

Why has Anna Hazare, a soldier and a Gandhian who was barely known beyond Maharashtra till April this year, so caught the imagination of the people?

We are possibly witnessing and are part of a rare moment when a core issue has got the just the right amount of Oxygen it needs, in the form of a spotless leader who can keep it aflame without burning down everything and also not let those who have successfully extinguished it in the past do so again. In such moments history is made; in such moments events occur that seemed impossible just a few days back; in such moments cynics, critics and collaborators are swept by a Tsunami in their pajamas.

Government corruption is an issue that has touched almost every one -- even the destitute -- who has had some contact with someone from the government. Yes, we have all paid bribes at some point of time; some of us have even taken them.

Is, then, this unprecedented outpouring of support for Anna’s war against corruption a reflection of our hypocrisy, as some are suggesting with naked derision? Or has Anna struck a deeper chord in the collective consciousness of India because of the kind of man he is being seen as, because of the very Spartan life he has lived, because of the energy that only a spiritually cleansed ascetic karma yogi can emit?

Is Anna awakening a set of values that we as a people had forgotten, resigned as we were to the rot of corruption because, till April this year, there was not even a ray of hope that things would ever improve? Is Anna giving vent to a primordial anger, even curse, that has been long buried in us against our elected representatives who have not only failed us but mocked us by their increasingly obscene abuse of power and a plunder, nay rape, of their motherland, the one they, for good reason, flinch from calling Bharat Mata anymore?

Never before has India so spontaneously rallied together like this against its rulers – and that includes politicians presently in opposition – since they they took on the British. Now, as then, collaborators of the regime who have benefitted from it are staying loyal to their masters, aided by vocal and visible ideologues obsessed with alien theoretic constructs that sound very impressive but work very poorly, if at all, in India's civilisational and cultural cauldron. Like then, arrogant and disconnected rulers are confident they can once again beat back the surge by deceit.

In April 2011, Congress leaders easily succeeded in diffusing the situation when they broke Anna Hazare’s protest with a last-minute personal appeal from Sonia Gandhi that led Anna and his team to believe that she was on the side of those fighting the most brazen plunder India has ever seen, under her protective eye and pallu. In June, again they managed a repeat, this time with brutal force against sleeping men, women and children, after leading Baba Ramdev up the same path and agreeing to most of his demands, only to break them with lathis, and completely forget them thereafter.

This is the third time Sonia’s lieutenants tried the same trick. But this time, the people, prepared for their deceit, have not let them get away. The old cliché about not being able to fool all the people all the time has caught up with them, and they have nowhere to hide. The sordid drama of Anna’s arrest and release has not shown the government’s ineptitude in the absence of Sonia Gandhi but the determination of a people who refused to let it suppress their voice against its arrogance and high-handedness again.

The action has since shifted to Ramlila Maidan, where Anna has continued his fast, and spread like a prairie fire to cities, towns and villages across the length and breadth of India. As the flames are leaping higher and higher, so are voices against Anna and his team, most from usual suspects and a few from most unexpected quarters. But that is only to be expected, and their fury is only going to increase. Till it is consumed in the non-violent flames that Anna has fanned or till it suppresses and extinguishing them, one more time.

Parts of the JLPB may be flawed. But all of those who have read it – and also have real experience of the working of the government – know in their hearts that, at the core, the bill attacks a significant dimension of an enormous problem with the focus and sincerity needed to deal with it. Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, the two brains behind the bill, have detailed insider information about the functioning of the well-oiled machine of government corruption and, therefore, know well the right instruments that are needed to tackle it.

On the other hand, the government’s Lok Pal Bill, drafted by the likes of Kapil Sibal – more need not be said – is, 64 years after Independence and 42 years after it was first mooted, an instrument designed to actually encourage corruption, making prosecution virtually impossible, particularly of big ticket offenders like ministers, politicians and bureaucrats. Every one knows that the real, almost unbridgeable gap between Anna's team and the Sonia's government is of intentions, not provisions of the two bills. Therefore, no one out there with any sense is buying the government’s line anymore.

Anna has undoubtedly roused the people from some sort of a deep slumber. It cannot be an accident that since he has started fasting, there has not been even one murder or rape in India’s rape capital, Delhi. A collective catharsis is taking place; people are again connecting with the Law of Karma, shaken from a Kumbhkaran-like sleep by Anna’s chants of ‘Vande Matram,’ and ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai.’ Non-Hindus too have been similarly inspired by his Gandhian-type secularism, his motivational call ‘Inquilab Zindabad,’ and his powerful evocation of the sacrifices of Bhagat Singh, Raj Guru and Sukhdev. This is inclusive secularism at its pristine best.

The protests are growing, the crowds are swelling, the writing is on the wall. Yet, it is quite possible that those who have mastered the art of tricking and disempowering people by gaming the electoral process and converting it into a cynical game of numbers by dividing people along every conceivable and possible dimension, are not reading it right even now, and may once again succeed in suppressing this uprising, this Second War of Independence, as Anna calls it, with some justification. It is possible that some of them may again enjoy wine like they did after Baba Ramdev was bundled out of Delhi by the police.

If that happens, politicians would do well to remember that the non-violent fuse that Anna, Baba Ramdev, Kejriwal, Bedi, others and 'We The People' have lit is burning rapidly, and getting shorter. The bomb of corruption that politicians have fashioned is now simply too big to be wished away. It has to be burst. Politicians will do well to heed to Anna's fatherly warning that carries the energy of a true Gandhian and India's youth; it is not to be trifled with, and they should to do it before it blows in their face and unleashes destructive energies that may be very difficult to control. They owe at least this to India.
'

The whitewash, sa’fai’, of the damning Faigate revelations that have sinister implications for India, both internally and in its responses to Pakistan, has begun. And, as expected, the usual suspects are at it.

Prannoy Roy and Barkha Dutt’s NDTV, chastened by "guilt-tweets" of Ms. Dutt before and after the Radia tapes rash hit and claimed her, continuing histrionics notwithstanding, has chosen to remain silent lest it is unable to pull its smelly foot out of its mouth subsequently. Their burden has been taken on by two old friends of the channel, the publicly exposed Vir Sanghvi and the yet to be Shekhar Gupta.

Vir Sanghvi, now reduced to writing on the net, the very medium he derided at the peak of his wholly "paid" arrogance, has written another Radia piece “ dressed up” to look as a pat in the back for India, but meant to exonerate his many corrupt liberal friends who have been found to be anti-national as well. If you read the whole piece, you will find that Sanghvi has been unsparing in exposing the well-known game plan of Pakistan – which, let us be clear, means the ISI, which in turn means Pakistan’s Army Chief – for Kashmir which, as he brings out, India has been been warning the world about.

Yet, Mr. Sanghvi wants us to believe that the real issue about Faigate is that Ghulam Nabi Fai's organisation, the Kashmir American Council, was “created by the Pakistani state to con Americans!” You don’t expect men of Vir Sanghvi’s integrity to tell us why the ISI wanted to con the Americans over Kashmir. Because if he does that then he knows he cannot conjure the lame and disgraceful defence that he offers, in just a couple of lines, for Indian liberals and peaceniks, among them Justice Sachar, author of the infamous Sachar Commision report, who were regulars at Fai’s Kashmir conferences that were micro-managed by the sinister ISI. They, he claims, were unaware of Fai’s sources of funding and whitewashes their culpability by saying: “it is sad and unfortunate that they were duped into lending legitimacy to an ISI-sponsored initiative.”

The Editor of Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta, has, for once, beaten Vir Sanghvi and conjured an even more absurd defence of the indefensible, but one that some of those caught will try to employ to escape the accusation of committing plain treason.

Gupta rubbishes Sanghvi's line that those who enjoyed Fai’s hospitality were unaware that he was a Pak/ISI agent. This is what he says of Fai: “But all of it, the injured air of Kashmiri victimhood, and Americanised English would not fool you about who he exactly was, and what precisely he was after. He was a Pakistani lobbyist for “their” Kashmir cause, leading a very cleverly constructed over ground support base for the malevolent movement that was picking strength in the early nineties. You would have to be utterly nuts, delusional or smoking some awful prohibited substance to not figure this out. Would you have known he was funded by the ISI? Again, you had to be from another planet to believe anything else.”

As every donkey and his son knows, Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is driven wholly by the military and its outstanding covert operations outfit, the ISI, that has been fermenting trouble in the Valley and other parts of India for a long, long time. That is the reason why Gupta has abandoned the unaware line. But, he also knows that sleeping with the ISI is an unforgivable act of treason, soaked in blood. So, he bails out the likes of Justice Sachar and many others yet to be exposed by inventing a high moral ground where none can be: “A more honest — and morally totally convincing — answer would have been the straight one. That as an intellectual or, in case of some, as a civil society activist, you were fully within your rights to go and speak at any forum, even if it was funded or organised by the Pakistanis and that just the fact of accepting a free ticket and a tiny per diem would not have compromised your integrity.”

As I understand this bizarre argument, it is perfectly fine for well-known Indians who are representing India to lend respectability and credence to, and bolster the ant-India position of the ISI on Kashmir across the world, knowing fully well that it is one over which three wars have been fought and over which a proxy war is still on. So, by the same logic, Indians should also be at liberty to go to Kashmir and physically fight ISI’s war against India, or do the same in other parts of India by carrying out a terror attacks and killing innocent people.

A war is fought more in the minds than on the battlefield. How can any sane man argue that while Indian foot soldiers of the ISI (a wing of Pakistan's military) are guilty and should be hanged, those who are knowingly furthering its hostile-to-India cause and its war across the globe are not only innocent but have a right to do so?

But Gupta has the the nerve to say that it is entirely irrelevant as to “who accepted Fai’s free tickets and hospitality, knowingly or unknowingly.” Perhaps Gupta no longer needs such petty perks. But, the same gentleman, knowing what he does about the military’s vice-like grip over Pakistan's India policy, was among the first to articulate, and repeatedly, after 26/11 that India should actually strengthen Pakistan and give to it concessions over Kashmir and other issues to “enhance the power and credibility” of Pakistan’s government, one that even prints fake Indian currency in its mints. Then I had imagined that he was writing the nonsense he was because someone in the corridors of power that he lives in had asked him to. Now the picture is getting frightening.

For India, what Faigate means to the Americans is, at one level, peripheral. It is undoubtedly a cog in the big picture, but for us the immediate and extremely worrying concern is that it is the tip of a very large ISI iceberg that is attacking India at all levels in pursuance of the Pakistan military’s single-point objective of bleeding India to death through a thousand cuts.

What the likes of Shekhar Gupta and Vir Sanghvi will not speak of are the scary logical deductions that must come first to the minds of all analysts as a result of Fai exposure as an ISI agent. The simple fact is the Fai was used by the ISI to defeat India internationally in so far as its position on Kashmir is concerned. And it spent millions of dollars over the counter and -- there can be little doubt -- many more below it, to get Indians to help it win this small but integral part of its existential war against India. The real war is being fought and will be fought on ground in India, including Kashmir. Does it take rocket science to understand that ISI must have been spending a thousand times more here, at every possible level, starting from sleeper cells to the media, academia, think tanks, babudom, and India’s political leadership, right up to and including 10 Janpath?

Rahul Gandhi’s assessment, shared with an American, – no electoral politics there – that Hindu terror posed a bigger threat to India than Pak-sponsored terror, is irrefutable proof that – notwithstanding his limited intelligence and grasp – even the future Prime Minister of India (as some believe) is being deliberately misguided by his trusted advisers. This cannot be a coincidence. The ISI has penetrated even his innermost circle.

While one can accept that the daily front paging of Hindu terror is essentially driven by the compulsions of vote-bank politics, it cannot be an accident that the whole mainstream mind-space has become irrationally pro-Pakistan during the last few years.

Sonia Gandhi has appointed the lawyer who defended ISI’s front organisation SIMI, the mother of the Indian Mujahideen who have carried out many terror attacks, as India’s Law Minister. She has also filled the NAC with hate-filled activists of very dubious antecedents and got a former bureaucrat who has given SIMI a de facto clean chit to draft the pernicious Communal Violence Bill that emasculates Hindus and puts the reins of determining culpability of individuals and all state organs, including the military, in the hands of unelected representatives from minority communities, in so far as Hindu-Muslim tensions (let's cut pretences) are concerned.

Seen in isolation, as indeed, liberals and ISI agents want us to, the many steps being taken by Sonia’s government and NAC seem innocuous, even harmless. But when viewed holistically, one cannot miss the fact that there is a method behind it all. Liberals and peaceniks and Hindu-haters are all pushing the “Break-India” agenda of the ISI.

The labyrinth of terror of which Fai was a part runs deep in India and many of these guys who have virtually been dictating India’s policies along all dimensions with regard to Pakistan and, by extension, Indian Muslims, who the ISI has been trying to turn into its assets, are central players in it, many willing, aware. That is why the hushed silence. That is why these fraudulent defences.

“ISI has more freedom of opinion than us.” This tweet unknowingly sums up the picture that India’s traitors have helped paint. They are many, they are powerful, they are dangerous, they have vested interests. And they have already begun the Big Cover Up. They may have much at stake, but India has much more. So, they have to be taken on by the state, by each one of us. The sa’fai’ under way must be exposed, and pressure put on the government to uncover and remove all termites who have gnawed deep into India, right to the doors of Sonia Gandhi who seems to have got caught in a trap of her own making.

The purge has to be ruthless and untouched by any political or personal considerations. This is the real lesson of Faigate.
'