India Retold

Guest post by Sraboney Ghose

There once lived a bhadrolok named JB…You may have heard of him…

One day at a public rally many years ago, he said that if people followed him they would become diamonds amongst pebbles…The great state of Vengal would reach heights hitherto unknown…Instead of courting favour from the moneyed and powerful, he would protect the poor and the powerless…All resources and capital would be owned by ordinary workers, everybody would be equal…

By romanticizing poverty and the underdog, he managed to get a grip on the emotional core of the Vengali…

Thus the journey began…Droves of people followed JB, some voluntarily and others forcefully…They wandered for years while Vengal went from a thriving state to a wasteland…Party members could do anything they wanted to make a buck - after all, they were just making a living…From time to time, the great leader took breaks in America and England to get away from the power cuts, heat, filth, and sweaty workers…He sampled some of the best single malts on these breaks and always returned looking younger and fresher…

30 years on, as JB lay on his death bed in his mansion, an old man came to meet him…He said, “Babu, I heard you speak at the great rally and your words touched my heart…I followed you for all these years but my life is worse than it was then…My children are uneducated and jobless and the little parcel of land I had was taken away by the government and given to an industrialist…I believed in you, but now I’m a broken man…You haven’t delivered what you had promised.”

“But I have, my dear man, I promised you equality and I have given you exactly that…I have driven away the capitalists, ambitious and educated…We are a land of mediocre and unambitious have-nots now…And the best thing is, we all live in a wasteland.”

Saying this, he slowly shut his eyes and passed away to the nether world…

The Indian Republic is 60 today. The People's Republic of China was 60 last year. The two nations started their journeys almost at the same time and at almost the same levels of economic and social development.

India's revolution ended with the devolution of power while China's began after it. The results of the divergent paths taken by the two nations are too stark to be missed by anyone and ignored by India.

60 years down the line, China is unrecognisable. Today, it is a confident super power, proud of its ancient and unbroken civilisation and charging full steam ahead to displace the United States from its perch as the greatest power on earth. It is also in the vanguard of the process of restoring the balance of power that had shifted to the West from the East only a few hundred years ago.

India, despite its many achievements that have benefited primarily a minority of its huge population, is still, in many ways no different from the British India from which our freedom fighters freed us. Almost all instruments of governance remain colonial, as does the mindset of the elite. This is the small group that has perpetuated the lack of confidence in everything Indian that the British created and drilled incessantly to rule this nation as a superior race and culture.

This debilitating complex of accepting that we are second best is primarily what has led to India's under-performance and its failure to become the global powerhouse that it should have become by now.

Over two years back, I had written a post, 'Chak de India, second best means nothing', to highlight the need for us as a nation to realise that it was "not good enough to get the silver medal by trying to ‘Become America’. We have to start trying to ‘Beat America’, metaphorically speaking."

On this Republic Day, it is only befitting that I re-post it to remind ourselves that we as a nation can and must strive to be the best. That is only way India will ever be able to keep its all but forgotten 'tryst with destiny'.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Centuries of rule by invaders who came to this country both by land and sea, has left what seems to be an indelible impression on the psyche of the inhabitants of the Indian sub continent, irrespective of their religion or the country they belong to today.

First, we Indians saw invasions from across the Hindu Kush Mountains, which resulted in the invaders establishing their kingdoms almost all over the country. Most of these invaders, however, gradually adapted to the Indian way of life and were accepted and even assimilated as Indians, not foreigners. Some of their cultural influences were also absorbed, giving rise to uniquely Indian composite cultures.

Then came the invasions form the sea by the Portuguese, Dutch, French and the British. These were different to the extent that the Europeans, particularly the British who conquered the whole of India, never tried to acquire the ‘Indianness’ that the earlier invaders had, to be permanently accepted as an integral part of Indian society. On the contrary, they asserted their racial superiority on the basis of their white skin, and attempted to rule India as alien masters who were many notches above the ‘natives’, on almost all cultural, political and social parameters.

When the British were made to leave in 1947, unshackled India and Indians had the opportunity to once again realize their long suppressed potential and greatness that had ensured the survival of what is arguably the oldest living civilsation in the world. For that to happen, the first thing that needed to be done was to reawaken the realization that Indians were second to none and that so many invaders had been repeatedly attracted to this land simply because it offered them much more than what they could ever get in their own countries. India was the original El Dorado, the enchanting, flourishing, prosperous sub continent which beckoned, almost enticed, men from lesser lands.

That spirit and confidence had been kindled by Mahatma Gandhi, and its power and sophisticated simplicity gently blew the British away before they could realize what had hit them. That was the power which should have been fanned, protected and nurtured to make India great again.

Unfortunately, the first blow to that awakening was dealt by Partition, as some sections of society chose to give primacy to religion over the commonness of a shared past, ethnic bonds and cultural similarities. As I understand it now, they chose in a way to identify with their invaders over their countrymen, religion becoming the determining factor, the justification. Those Indians were unknowingly so happy to be ‘second best’ that they willingly shed their Indian souls and have ever since then been unsuccessfully trying to find a new one to call their own as Pakistanis. Bangladeshis were partially able to reclaim theirs in 1971, when they broke away from Pakistan.

In the India that remained India in 1947, perhaps Mahatma Gandhi would have been the guiding light as the nation awoke to meet its tryst with destiny. But he passed away a few months after Independence, leaving India in the hands of inexperienced leaders who were not blessed with his exceptional vision. When Gandhi was alive, their limitations were hidden in the glow of his guidance. But with the beacon gone, they proceeded to simply find the easiest available methods of governing Independent India. What better than the known and in place methods by which their colonial masters had governed them as their subjects?

Thus, every single organ and structure of colonial rule was left untouched and adopted gleefully almost in toto by the Indians who became the new masters, happy to enjoy and employ the very power they had fought against. Adoption of the British type parliamentary form of democracy completed the process. Colonial rule thus continues, without any break, to this day; only the skins have changed colour.

This complete adoption of the ways of the colonial rulers had a subtle but very powerfully debilitating impact on the collective psyche of India. It gradually began to seep into Indian minds that the British, their civilization, their language, their bureaucratic practices, their system of justice, their method of policing etc, were all superior to anything the Indians had ever done before the British came. It was almost as if our Indian rulers were telling us that we actually were no better than uncivilized aborigines before the Englishmen landed here. The loud message they conveyed with deathly silence was that India had nothing worthwhile to contribute to its own existence as a nation. Isn’t that exactly what the British were saying when they were here?

The only things Indian our rulers found worth adopting were the flag and a couple of symbols used by Emperor Ashoka, who lived before the Christian era began. That they did because there was no choice but to replace the Union Jack, the British crown and the Lions which were the omnipresent symbols of slavery. But, not one single structure or element of administration, governance, justice, or military was even considered for discarding.

Surprising isn’t it considering that before the Europeans landed here, there were many kingdoms and empires, many larger than most countries of Europe, which had successfully been administered for far longer periods than the British Empire lasted? In fact vast empires have flourished in India for thousands of years. Yet, our new rulers found nothing that any one of them ever did good enough to be adopted by Independent India.

So, we continue to have the colonial police and bureaucracy whose structure and attitude were designed for exhibiting the might and superiority of the Empire to subjugate inferior subjects, not move in step with fellow citizens. The military also continues to be in a time warp, giving blind precedence to its colonial history and traditions.

This seamless continuation of almost all elements of the Empire by brown men has generated a new class of ‘colonial’ Indians and is largely responsible for creating the two disconnected ‘Indias’, which are almost as removed from each other as the British were from natives.

Members of the First India, one would logically argue, should be in the vanguard of leading India’s revival as one of the great countries of the world; of leading Indians into again becoming the pioneers that they were in many diverse fields for thousands of years. Paradoxically, exceptions apart, they are the ones who are retarding India’s march, and they don’t even know it! If one looks hard, the situation is not much different from what it was during the Raj. Even then, citizens of a similar ‘First India’, happy with pompous titles and other forms of colonial ‘bribery’, were the main pillars of the Empire.

Then, as now, First Indians identified with foreigners who they thought were superior, and were content to copy their ways to be close and second best to them. What mattered then, as it seems even now, was that these Indians gloated at being above and ‘better’ than their fellow country men. That was the limit of their ambition. They had arrived.

That is perhaps why India has produced outstanding American citizens who have done their adopted country proud. ‘Fulfill your individual American Dream’; this is the magic mantra that is chanted the most by First Indians; this is what almost every educated urban Indian kid wants to achieve. See how the nation celebrates this dream when the feats of Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams and Bobby Jindal are blown up as if they are our national achievements?

Somewhere, we have lost the plot. We do not want to be reminded that such achievements are of the American nation, not of India, notwithstanding the fact that Americans who have migrated from India are involved. I don’t think you will find, say Germans, or other self respecting people going ballistic if someone originally form their country does something for the US as a US citizen.

We somehow do not seem to realize that by encouraging Indians to believe that the best they are capable of achieving is becoming great Americans, we are reinforcing the belief that Indians are still no better than second best and that they should not even strive for more.

Is it any surprise that the two most outstanding ‘world beaters’ that Independent India has produced do not come from this First India?

Lakshmi Mittal is the product of a Hindi medium school. Dhirubhai Ambani was truly from the Second India that, to First Indians, is somewhere else. In their formative years, they were never exposed to the ‘dream’ of becoming Americans. Fortunately for them, being second best was not the best and only option that they were subtly brainwashed into accepting.

There are many more such Indians who have dreamt of being world beaters and are trying to be so in their spheres. The Infosys pack led by Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani is another such example of Indians not debilitated by the ‘Be American’ slogan. Almost all are homegrown Indians who have been relatively insulated from the influence of First India.

Is it also a mere coincidence that the new lot of fearless, confident and aggressive members of the Indian Cricket team are all from small towns, largely untouched by the pervasive westernization afflicting and enfeebling the First Indians living mostly in the metros? Is it because, not having been psychologically defeated by the ‘Superior West’, even before they faced them on the battlefield, they are able to take their opponents on in a manner never displayed by their ‘soft predecessors’ (exceptions apart)? Why only cricket? See what poor boys from Delhi and Bhiwani (Haryana) have done in wrestling and boxing in the Beijing Olympics despite rudimentary facilities. How can one forget what the relatively affluent Abhinav Bindra has done with his rifle thanks to the pains taken and money spent by his family on his training.

Yes, First Indians will turn around and quote the achievements of Indira Nooyi, Rajat Gupta, Vikram Pandit, Fareed Zakaria etc, to name a few. Again, most of such Indians have been outstanding ‘Americans’, living out their personal dreams. I admire them as individuals, no doubt, but the issue that we as a nation have to address is larger.

Haven’t we seen many Indian students, who are not good enough to get into the IITs, IIMs and other top educational institutions in India, go to the US and excel there? Doesn’t that show that perhaps we have an even greater pool of unexploited talent within the country than the US which consciously makes up that critical deficiency by attracting it from around the world?

That nation is focused in its resolve to ensure its continuance as the strongest and most powerful nation in the world. It knows it wants to be the best and it knows best how to get the best to be the best.

Can a country ever be a world beater, when its cream is happy being second best? Is it not disgraceful for a nation of such intelligent people to not even collectively think of creating a country better than America?

With such an abundance of talent and resources, Independent India should have actually been racing to the top of the international heap in double quick time. It is no stranger to that spot. Long before other peoples were beginning to get civilized, India had attained unparalled heights of scientific and philosophical achievements, still living and some even unsurpassed to this day. The memory gene pool of that intellect is either lying relatively wasted or is being exploited by other nations.

It has been said by many that you don’t win the silver medal, you lose the gold. ‘Chak De India’ is the current clarion call which seems to have had an electrifying effect on Indian sportsmen to set new standards of excellence and go for nothing less than the gold, as it were.

It is time that as a nation we realized that it is not good enough to get the silver medal by trying to ‘Become America’. We have to start trying to ‘Beat America’, metaphorically speaking.

That is the motivational call that needs to be given to fire up this nation again. For that, the ills that beset the small but influential and debilitating lot of Indians belonging to First India have to be addressed holistically. They have to begin feeling the feeling that being second best means nothing. Only then can the march of Second India, the Real India, begin unimpeded in full earnest.

Chak De will truly begin to happen only when Indians start getting angry being second best.
'

Vir Sanghvi has written an interesting column in the Hindustan Times on some of his findings about netizens, based on his experience on Twitter and his own website. "At present, bloggers, visitors to websites and tweeters remain a curiosity for traditional media" he says, adding that the media is making a huge mistake by remaining blinkered and not according them the respect they get in the West.

Sanghvi then goes on to make two more extremely important observations, but fails to make the right deductions from them, for obvious reasons. "There is a growing revulsion over Islamic extremism and fundamentalism" which, he believes rightly, is less because it is anti-Muslim and more because the development is seen as regressive and anti-modern. He also thinks that there is "a hardcore of pro-BJP bloggers and tweeters" who vigorously defend the Sangh parivar, but almost no pro-Congress types who respond to them with equal ferocity.

Why are there no pro-Congress bloggers on the internet? Vir knows the answer but, as almost always, is not vir enough to admit it: There is no space left for them. Everything that they can think of and more is taken care of by mainstream journalists, some of whom whom often sound like official party spokesmen of the Congress party and, as some bloggers like to say, "family retainers" of the Gandhi family. With almost the entire media singing the Congress tune along myriad dimensions and swamping the nation with their enormous reach, there is almost nothing more pro-Congress left for bloggers to add; no one is going to read what he has already read or heard. They have, therefore, simply been put out of business by the likes of Vir Sanghvi, Barkha Dutt, Prannoy Roy, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Vinod Sharma (of HT, not me), Pankaj Vohra, N Ram, Shekhar Gupta; the list is almost endless.

These guys belong to the 'paid blogger' brigade of the old media that still has an unmatched reach in a nation where internet penetration is very low.

Thanks to long years of Congress rule during which Congress-friendly individuals infiltrated into, and took control of, most opinion-influencing organs and institutions that define and shape the Indian state, generations have grown up reading and hearing that the Congress way is the right way for India. Thanks to the media, that line is reinforced on a daily basis. There are strong shades of Gobbelesque propaganda in this, but this fact remains largely concealed thanks to the ability of its numerous protagonists to intelligently gather it cleverly under the 'liberal' umbrella. Their task is made even easier by the fact that people of this generation have a very short attention span. They do not have the time or inclination to look beyond the obvious, or farther than what they have grown up reading and watching at home and school.

That is one major reason why the BJP has failed to attract the millions of Indians who find Islamic extremism repugnant. It axiomatic that that these guys should also detest a political party that appears to be pandering to everything related to it solely to get to or retain power. But, thanks to the 24/7 pro-Congress and anti-BJP bombardment of the media, bolstered by media-magnified sporadic acts of some fringe elements of the Sangh Parivar who mindlessly relish competitive extremism that has few takers, their disgust with the Congress does not translate into trust of the BJP. That is primarily why the BJP's alternate view - political, historical and ideological - sets off the alarms in their minds, making rational analysis impossible.

The BJP is never going to be able to infiltrate the media, Congress-style, because, even if it comes to power, it is not going to have an uninterrupted run there with the kind of brute majority that the Congress enjoyed for decades. Given this scenario, barring one or two journalists of dubious loyalties, no honest pro-BJP and anti-Congress opinion is ever going to get prime media time and space. Even if someone's conscience nudges him/her that an alternate view should be given fair and prominent billing, the demands of business and personal advancement hurriedly bury the thought.

That, to a large extent, explains the rumour that Sanghvi mentions about the BJP employing "a small group of people to scour the net every day and to heckle all anti-BJP bloggers." Sagarika Ghose, who also regularly gets a dose from a number of such individuals on Twitter, has coined a new term, "Internet Hindus", for them and says they "are like swarms of bees. They come after you at any mention of Modi Muslims or Pakistan." To my simple mind, heckling in such manner is hardly a sound political strategy because, as we have seen earlier too, it has the effect of putting off many reasonable individuals. So, if these hecklers are actually in the employ of the BJP, then its strategists are either idiots or in the secret employ of the Congress.

Most likely the hecklers are ordinary BJP supporters who, having found a platform at last where their voices can also be heard by all, overreact immaturely to what they perceive is a biased and one-sided criticism of everything Hindu by media personalities. What those in the media forget is that the onslaught of these guys is nothing compared to what they will be greeted with if they use the exact same words when other faiths are involved. Or may be they do remember what happened to Rushdie, Taslima, Baba Ram Rahim Singh and many others; that is why they choose their words very carefully when they know they will get real vipers coming at them, and not tiny internet bees that cannot sting.

Is, then, the Congress really 'a clear loser on the net', as Vir Sanghvi wants you to unsuspectingly believe, with a twinge of sympathy for the GOP?

Who are the guys who have the largest number of followers on Twitter? Whose posts get thousands of hits? Apart from Shashi Tharoor and Bollywood stars, it is journalists like Sanghvi who have virtually taken over the net too. Should I, therefore, not deduce, a la Sanghvi, that the Congress party has employed them to pre-empt a sleeping, doping, clueless BJP from exploiting this truly free and democratic medium, the only one that it realistically can?

The truth is that 'Congress' bloggers of the old media have become internet bloggers too. They are the ones who have swamped the net, burying any early advantage that the BJP may have gained inadvertently with the help of individual early net birds. The Congress is the clear winner here too. It sure has a great team of tech-savvy analysts.

Sanghvi is moaning because on the net, particularly on Twitter, you can’t hide the rotten eggs that are thrown at you. There is no editor to put them away before anyone sees them. It is not easy for those used to pompously making their point in a paper or in a TV studio to take direct hits from ordinary mortals, often in real-time.

While it is natural for Sanghvi to gloat over the fact that, thanks to the heavy dose of previous exposure and Twitter, journos have quickly gained a huge footprint on the net too, what he has perhaps not yet adequately realised, like the rest of the 'blinkered' media, is that there is a danger here, a real one: an increasing number of Indians are going to get an unprecedented exposure to many more counter views too. Over time, this alone has the potential of unshackling more and more Indians from the carefully crafted and propagated pro-Congress agenda that has largely remained unchallenged till now. But hecklers - some of them, like Sanghvi, are actually hilarious at times - are not going to achieve much beyond forcing semantic modifications.

If the power of the net is to be successfully used to truly democratise, even liberate, India, the counterpoints - pun intended - must intellectually expose and defeat the dishonesty that has got into the very DNA of a large section of India's mainstream media, and cogently communicate alternate views honestly. Constructive criticism is also a very useful tool that can not only help widen knowledge and understanding, but can also, in some cases, lead to genuine introspection. Without taking any names, I must acknowledge that a heartening subtle change is already visible and can easily be seen by those who are willing to. But this is as yet too little and in too few individuals.

Together, these developments, if nurtured properly, can dissolve the growing apathy, even resignation, that is afflicting an increasing number of Indians, and harness it into the hope and involvement that is needed to build a new and truly modern but rooted India that is proud of itself. Now that you and I can make a difference, thanks to the new media, we must utilise this exciting opportunity to do our bit, no matter how little.

Picture: Indian Bloggers Nest
'

What a comedown for a man who received the Nobel Peace Prize a couple of years back for his efforts "to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." For someone who, as Chairman of the powerful Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had been raising what appeared to be genuine alarms over the disastrous effects of global warming, the allegations are damning. And the stink is familiar: he is corrupt and is making pots of money in many ingenious ways.

Rajendra Kumar Pachauri was the mastermind behind the thousand-page report on the dangers of global warming put out by the IPCC in 2007. Among other things, the report warned that Himalayan glaciers would most likely disappear by 2035, "perhaps sooner". That error, the "only one" as Pachauri puts it, to dishonestly underplay its gravity, and that too only after he realised that there was no option left but to admit, has been used by the West repeatedly to demand that India should take greater action to reduce its emissions.

Before the official admission came in from the IPCC that it had not followed "proper procedures" while reaching a conclusion that created a scare in India and rendered it vulnerable to pressure, Pachauri had lambasted a government of India report that had asserted that glaciers had not retreated abnormally, going to the extent of saying it was based on "voodoo science". Who was into voodoo all this time will be clear presently from the trail that led to inclusion of this claim in the IPCC report.

It all began in 1999 with a telephonic interview that Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a then little-known scientist then based in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, gave to the New Scientist, a popular science journal. Hasnain now says that he only told the interviewer that the "mass of glaciers will decline in 40 years" and that 2035 is their invention. The report in the magazine found its way into a WWF pamphlet which was the source quoted by the IPCC in its report.

In all these years, Hasnain never challenged the 2035 dateline attributed to him in any of the three publications, despite all the noise that it has been generating. On the contrary, as recently as last September, he was quoted in a story in The Globe and Mail as a person “who believes the Himalayas may be denuded of all snow and ice in as little as 20 years.” That's not all. In 10 years since that defining interview, Hasnain has acquired an impressive profile and many awards, including a Padma Shri. Surely, he would have been aware that the prognosis attributed to him was part of the IPCC report. Why, then, did he not only not bring it to the notice of Pachauri and the scientific community, but continue to make similar alarmist assertions?

Pachauri would have found Hasnain extremely useful for substantiating IPCC's case for raising even more funds for his very own The Energy and Research Institute (TERI). Is that why he appointed Hasnain as Senior Fellow in the institute? Is that why he mounted an aggressive defence of the 'Hasnain para' in the IPCC report till he found that there was no place to hide? As the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Jr. noted this week, “[T]his stinks … what we have here is a classic and unambiguous case of financial conflict of interest.”

There are many more serious allegations against Pachauri. In December 2009, Christopher Brooker and Richard North of The Telegraph, UK, reported raised questions about Dr Pachauri's involvement in many organisations that stand to benefit from IPCC's recommendations. According to them, Pachauri "has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations... these outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year." This was followed by another report this month about the dubious reporting of income by TERI Europe.

In India too, Pachauri's dealings are being questioned. "He seems to be failing to uphold standards of propriety in his professional dealings" says a report in India Today which brings out in detail how he has benefited from dealings with Public Sector giants like ONGC, IOC and NTPC, companies on whose boards he has been, through TERI which entered into business dealings with them. All these companies contribute heavily to green house emission, hastening climate change. In March 2008, ONGC and TERI floated a joint venture ONGC-TERI Biotech Ltd (OTBL), with TERI and ONGC holding 47% and 49% stake in it. The objective of the company is to undertake "large-scale application of microbial product oil zapper for clean-up of oil spills in farmers' fields and around oil installations and treatment of oily sludge hazardous hydrocarbon waste".

As per OBTL's website, the company already has an impressive client portfolio that includes Indian Oil, ONGC, Reliance, Oil India, Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. The company also says that it has a sound business plan chalked out. Pachauri is confident that it will clock a top line of $2.1 billion in three to four years. Since TERI has a 47% stake in the company, it stands to benefit enormously. Pachauri, however, maintains that there is no 'conflict of interest' involved. Former Minister of State for Petroleum, Santosh Gangwar, like most others, thought otherwise and had even complained against it to Petroleum Minister Deora.

Pachauri continues to maintain that he has not pocketed even a penny from his associations with a whole lot of companies and institutes. All the honoraria - and that has to be considerable - that he receives goes to TERI and "to its 'Light A Billion Lives' campaign for reaching solar power to people without electricity", he says. Sounds very noble and self-sacrificing. If indeed Pachauri has been and is giving away so much of his own money to a non-profit organisation for the good of India's poor, he should be proudly telling the whole world about it, disclosing the actual amount involved. Isn't his reticence odd, to say the least?

The Telegraph has an interesting explanation. Routing all that money to TERI not only enables Pachauri to conceal what he earns but also helps him avoid paying taxes on the income, which he then launders through TERI. That this allegation is not just a shot in the dark is supported by the fact that the accounts of TERI are not included in its annual reports. The salary that Pachauri draws from TERI is also not publicly disclosed.

No wonder then that after threatening to sue the daily, Pachauri now says "I don't want to stoop to the level of muck that some people are trying to create." The muck is in your face Mr Pachauri, and it is pretty dirty and it is sticking. You need to clear it. All that you have to do, if your conscience is clean, is to disclose your and TERI's earnings, the sources thereof, and the details of how all that money is being spent by the non-profit organisation you have been part of since 1981. If you and Hasnain and others like you really have nothing to hide, or be ashamed of, why the hesitation?
'

Amar Singh, Mulayam Yadav's Man Friday, has all but quit the Samajwadi Party (SP). Although he says it is for health reasons, no one is in any doubt that this development has its roots in the poor performance of the party in the last Lok Sabha elections, primarily because it failed to sew up an alliance with the Congress. Without Amar Singh and the Bollywood star power that he commands, it appears unlikely that the SP will ever be the force it was. Once voters sense that this boat is sinking, many will quickly hop over to the one that they believe can complete the journey.

Is, then, UP going the Congress way?

As early as in March 2008, when there were some signs of the Congress going back to the SP, the party it had dumped just before the Assembly elections in 2007, I had written that the only party that would gain from an alliance between the two would be the latter. The Prime Minister's determination to go through with the Indio-US Nuclear Deal, despite the opposition of the Left, meant that the Congress had no choice then but to embrace Mulayam Yadav. And he obliged, thanks in no small measure to Amar Singh who played a key role in ensuring that the the government won the Confidence Vote in the Lok Sabha.

For a short honeymoon period, the friendship between the two parties appeared unshakeable. But what Mulayam Yadav forgot was that with that one decision to share the bed of the Congress, he isolated himself from all his previous allies. All he was left with was a 'thank you' from the Congress and trust that gratitude would prevail over practical self-interest. The Congress too perhaps did not immediately realise that a real opportunity had opened up for it: there is no better way to defeat an opponent than by first isolating him.

In the event, the Congress eventually decided to take the only logical step available to it to rebuild itself in UP. Just before the Lok Sabha elections, it dumped the SP and decided to go it alone in the state. The results surprised every one, including the Congress, which was expecting a recovery over the long haul. Although there were various factors that led to its much improved performance, it drove home one basic lesson that it should never have lost sight of in the first place: an alliance with the either the BSP or the SP was not going to strengthen a very weak Congress.

Who could have imagined before May this year that the Congress, which had only around 8% of the vote share in the state, would emerge as one of the main contenders for power within such a short time? As things stand now, it is most likely that the the party will not only drastically improve its performance, it might even emerge as the single largest party in the next Assembly elections.

Amar Singh may shout and brag, but it is unlikely that he will ever be an independent player of any consequence in UP. At best he will be a spoiler in some constituencies. That is probably what he is going to leverage, to try and strike an attractive deal with the Congress at the right time.

There is a small window of opportunity here for the BJP too. But that party seems to be in utter disarray and hurtling towards where the Congress was a year ago. It has an almost impossible mountain to climb. Therefore, unless it puts in place new new leadership team which comes up with some refreshing and bold changes that can restore the almost completely destroyed credibility of the party among the people, it is likely to give a walk-over and watch from the sidelines the big fight that is likely to take place between the Congress and the BSP. If there is one lesson that the party needs to learn from its past experience and the manner in which the decision of the Congress to go it alone has dramatically altered the dynamics in its favour, it is that an alliance with Mayawati will be fatal. The only way it can rebuild itself is by going alone. With a little luck, the impact might be even be disruptive.

The third main player, Mayawati-led BSP, is in power now and has been doing well in the by polls. But, as we have seen earlier too, these results are not always replicated in the main polls. Mayawati will most likely hold on to her dalit base, at least till the next elections, even though Rahul Gandhi has been making concerted efforts to poach it with his well publicised night stays in dalit homes. But non-dalits are vulnerable. Muslim voters had migrated almost en bloc to the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, in what appears to have been a carefully coordinated strategy to defeat the BJP. With the SP now collapsing, they will most likely remain there, unless Mayawati can wean them with some dangerous promise that will only undermine her party in the long run.

Whichever way one looks at it, the one deduction that cannot be escaped is that everything is beginning to fall into place in favour of the Congress, not because of any wave generated by Rahul Gandhi, but because of extraneous developments that will result in even more voters gravitating towards it. UP may well see the return of Congress rule in the state after decades. Mayawati, who has a knack of surprising everyone, has a real challenge on her hands.
'

The more things change in India's corridors of power, the more they remain the same. If all those hours of live reporting of 26/11 and the thousands of candles lit by ordinary citizens have not been able to move India's rulers, what do you think will be the effect on the promoters of terror in Pakistan? Or on China?

The only politician at the Centre who was held accountable for 26/11, primarily because of his abysmal failure to do anything at all for nearly five years, was Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Remember how after every terror attack he used to blame Pakistan and the ISI, and consider his job done? Remember how he used to deflect attention from his unacceptable incompetence and incomprehension of the challenges of his job by saying that he had the "blessings of his leader" (Sonia Gandhi)? Remember how even as serial bomb blasts were rocking Delhi minutes away from him, he found time to change his clothes thrice in an hour? Remember how he tried justify not hanging Indian national Afzal Guru by linking it with India's request to Pakistan to not hang Indian national Sarabjit Singh?

Now that 26/11 has been completely forgotten and elections in Maharashtra won by the Congress, this gentleman has been rewarded for his loyalty to his leader with the plum post of Governor of Punjab so that he can spend his remaining years on this planet unrepentant and in luxury at the expense of the aam admi.

The other guilty man who should have himself resigned on moral grounds after 26/11 is National Security Advisor MK Narayanan. He did virtually nothing as India's NSA but waffle through his years on the job. Yes, the one thing that he did commit to doing on TV - and perhaps did - was carrying out a thorough review of Rahul Gandhi's security after three terrorists, who the nation was told planned to kidnap him, were arrested in Lucknow. Perhaps due to his age he was unable to remember that his primary job was to carry out such a review for India. This former Director of the IB should have been the best man to revamp India's virtually non-existent intelligence machinery. But, despite numerous trips to the US on state expense, things only got worse and accountability never, ever came into the equation. On the contrary, even though he was a stand-out non-performer at such a difficult time, not only did he not lose his job then, but has now been chosen to do in West Bengal what Patil is going to in Punjab.

The failures of these two top men responsible for India's security would have remained undiscovered had P Chidambaram not taken over as Home Minister and got down to the task with a focus, purpose, pace, intelligence and professionalism that has changed the dynamics almost completely in a year. It is he who is now trying to put together, among many other desperately needed changes, the much needed National Counter Terrorism Centre that these two gentlemen did not even think of for over five years. Though much remains to be done, no one is in any doubt any longer that the Patil and Narayanan were guilty of criminal neglect and incompetence of an order that would not have gone unpunished in any other responsible nation.

Since there has been no terror attack, except in Kashmir, for over a year now, it is easy to forget that India is at war. As Chidambaram said a few days back, the one thing we cannot afford is complacence. He is evidently the lone warrior out there in the government who understands what India is up against, and is doing something about it too. As per reports, the new NSA is likely to be either Shiv Shankar Menon, India's former Foreign Secretary of Sharm-el-Sheikh fame, or Shyam Sharan, another one from the same stable. Look at the joke. These guys know it in their bones that they are not qualified for the job. So, they are going to fit the job to suit them; the NSA will be now less about security, even though that is his precise job, and will act as the PM's think tank on foreign policy. MEA extension counter in a new office.

Does India have no one beyond the mentally static circle of career bureaucrats who have nothing new at all to bring to the table in this challenging job? Or does loyalty to individuals outweigh real, professional considerations that determine selection of persons to such posts in countries like the USA that place the nation first?

The Pakistanis are watching with glee. Not only have the guilty men of 26/11 and more been rewarded for their sycophancy, even the one who does not know how to draft a few lines properly is likely to be elevated. Worse, not a single official across the lower rungs of the hierarchy in various departments and organisations has been held accountable and penalised. How can they be when politicians, police officers and bureaucrats at the very top are actually being rewarded for failing the nation?

This is the perfect recipe for pushing a nation down the self-defeating and confidence-sapping slope of resigned acceptance that the only way to meet any threat to it is meek surrender. We may not understand what this mindset has done already and will do in future, but the Pakistanis and the Chinese smelled blood long back. That is why they have been chipping away wherever they can, for years. They know that a nation that is run like this will one day simply cave in behind a cloud of fraudulent but lofty and moralistic words. It is only a question of time. Unless they miscalculate and wake it up prematurely, like Laden did on 9/11. Let us pray they do, for there is little hope that anything less will.
'

India is enraged, and rightly so, at the claim of the Victorian Police Commissioner that Indian students are safer in Australia than in India. What happens in India does not entitle any other country to gloss over crimes committed against Indians living there. Particularly when such countries have an otherwise much lower crime rate. That having been said, can one deny that that safety of ordinary Indians in India is a serious issue to which scant attention has been paid by the state till now?

The Ruchika Gehrotra case is the latest in a series that has highlighted the brazen manner in which the rich and powerful, and those who represent the face of the state, can easily subvert the law and harass and hound those who do not have powerful connections, should they attempt to cross swords with them, no matter that they are right. Equally disturbing is the fact that even ordinary criminals can roam free if they grease the right palms of policemen and politicians.

As Kiran Bedi never tires of saying, the problem begins at the very first step of an aggrieved citizen's interaction with the police. Getting an FIR registered with the police can be a traumatising experience, and in many cases, it is not registered at all, for a host of reasons, one of which is to keep crime statistics artificially low. While that enables police officers to falsely claim that the law and order situation is good and that citizens are safe, it encourages criminals to keep committing more crimes, making ordinary Indians feel increasingly unsafe and cynical about the instruments of the state that are meant to do exactly the opposite.

About two years back, I had done a comparative analysis of statistics pertaining to the number and type of of prisoners in Indian and American prisons, and conviction rates. The startling findings showed that nearly all of those who run foul of the law in this country, and should find themselves in prison, simply get away. There are around one crore - yes the figure is right - criminals, big and small, who should be behind bars but are out there on the streets.

Such being the shocking state, can law abiding Indians be safe in India? Read on.
-------------------------------------------------------------
A recent study for the Pew Centre for the States in the US, released on February 28, 2007 has revealed that more than 1 in 100 adult Americans were in prison at the start of 2008. The US also has the distinction of having the largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2,319,258 people behind bars.

As per figures released by the India’s National Crimes and Records Bureau (NCRB), India had just 3,58,368 inmates in jails across the country as on December 31, 2005. The US, with a population which is one fourth of India’s over 1.2 billion, has almost six and a half times as many citizens in jail! India beats hollow even 36 European countries which have a combined total of 1.8 million prisoners. Only one in approximately 3345 Indians is in prison.

We should be thumping our chests with pride at these startling figures which can easily be interpreted to prove that Indians are the most law abiding people in the world and are an astounding 30 times more so than Americans! Should India not be, therefore, the safest place to live in and a really liberal, mature and free democracy, to be looked up to and emulated by even the US? If we further consider that only 1,08,572 inmates, 30.3 percent of the total lodged in various Indian jails, are convicts, the picture should become rosier thrice over.

Just over one lakh convicts in a country of 1,20,000 lakhs! Dream figures that any nation would be proud of. Why, then, is there a hushed silence? Why is nobody, means nobody, talking about this distinction that should be making us all feel safer and taller?

A close examination tells a completely different story.

As per NCRB figures, in 2005, 2,37,076 inmates, a whopping 66.2 per cent of those in Indian jails, were under trial prisoners. Of these, 27.9 percent were charged with murder. Of the one lakh convicts, 50.8 per cent were undergoing life imprisonment.

Why so few prisoners and even fewer convicts in India? Is it because Indians are very law abiding? Are all the newspapers and TV channels which are screaming full every day about rapes, murders, burglaries, kidnappings, corruption, and as many other crimes as you can think of, getting it all wrong? Are they just sensationalizing stray incidents to make the very rosy picture look black?

A comparative analysis of conviction rates of a few countries done by Neeta Kulkarni, a blogger, is revealing. According to her, Japan has a conviction rate of 99.97 per cent, China 98 percent and Russia around 90 percent. The conviction rate in the US is between 65 to 80 percent. Even the UK, whose colonial legal system we have poorly copied, has an overall conviction rate of 74 percent!

As per former Punjab Police Chief KPS Gill, the overall conviction rate for all crimes in India is just 6.5 per cent, with the litigation process often extending to decades. More significantly, the conviction rates, under normal laws, for terrorist crimes in the regions afflicted by widespread terrorism would be less than 0.001 per cent, according to Gill. Even under TADA, the erstwhile anti terrorist law, the conviction rate was a horrifyingly low of less than 2 per cent.

Ironically, that low conviction rate was one of the main arguments used to do away with TADA and POTA. Now, under normal laws, terrorists have a 99.999 per cent chance of escaping conviction for waging war against the country. India sure is a safe place, not for the law abiding citizen but for the ruthless criminal who kills innocent people. Can anyone really argue with Gill when he says about the doing away of anti terror laws: “If the inefficiency and incompetence of India’s criminal justice system are to be accepted as an argument against the existence of specific laws, we would have to throw the entire book of criminal statutes into the dust bin”?

What do all these facts tell us? In India, nearly all of those who run foul of law and should actually find themselves in jail are simply getting away.

This happens at every step of the system. At the first stage itself, if we use the US figures as a benchmark, with an average conviction rate of 70 per cent, over 75 per cent of criminals get ‘weeded out’ by bribing completely corrupt Indian policemen who let them go without even creating a record of their crimes. Going by figures of those in jail in the US and the assumption that Indians are at least as law abiding as the Americans - and the system there is relatively free from corruption – it is safe to conclude that almost one crore Indians who should be in prison today are free, having paid the police to let them go!

Of the few whose crimes are reluctantly registered by the police, nearly 94 per cent get away at subsequent stages by either bribing their way through the system or getting lawyers to beat the hopelessly lax provisions of law and escape conviction. That leaves the microscopic few who actually get convicted for their crimes; more than half of these are those who have committed the really serious and not too bribe-friendly crimes that merit at least a life sentence. A large proportion of the remaining about 50,000 in jail will, I am sure, have been convicted for quite serious crimes like rape, attempt to murder, armed burglary etc, the type of crimes which are really difficult for the police to cover up.

Think again. One crore criminals, big and small, who should be in jail are roaming our streets fearless and free. How many of them will feel encouraged to commit more crimes is anybody’s guess. Are law abiding Indians safe? Is this country a safe place for the ordinary citizen who is not connected to those who matter or the one who does not have money to buy protection or justice?

Delhi Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna was recently in the dock for saying that North Indians take pride in breaking the law. The quite damning figures and facts highlighted above reveal a very deep and almost terminal systemic failure of India’s police and justice system. What they tell is that the real law breakers that Khanna did not speak about are those who are supposed to be the custodians of law. And they go about this job with real pride and no remorse whatsoever.

Remember, some of the key players in the system, apart from the politicians, are from the elitist “steel frame” that the British had put in place. Yet, and perhaps that is why, no one talks about changing it for the better, even overhauling or doing away with it altogether. That is why little has improved since the British left 60 years ago. For milking more out of the system, however, there have been and will continue to be hundreds of truly creative ideas and jugaads.

Recently there was a side issue which did create a furore. In the US, against the overall figure of one in hundred, one in fifteen African American adults is in prison i.e. 6.7 percent of all African Americans are in jail. No one there is giving this huge disparity the kind of racial or communal tones that many in India are to the unreleased and politically motivated statistics of the Sachar committee on the comparative figures of Muslims in Indian prisons.

The figures are more than their population percentage but are not even close to those of African Americans. Yet, this has unleashed the predictable talk of anti Muslim bias etc, with the sole aim making petty political capital. Had someone analyzed this data along with the types of crimes for which Muslims are in jail and had it emerged that they beat the national average for, say, murders, rapes and other heinous crimes, I don’t think anyone would have gone around shouting that Muslims are all that.

In the US, they have put one in a hundred Americans in jail so that law abiding citizens can enjoy the fruits of freedom. That nation is not prepared to allow criminals and anti social elements to diminish the quality of life and the liberty of Americans. That is what good governance should be about. Here in India, good governance is not even a factor; petty politicking and corruption override almost everything else.

If things continue this way, the proportion of dangerous criminals roaming free in your neighbourhood may soon reach such levels that you and I may have to start openly paying protection money to them and even their uniformed brethren so that we are not harassed by competing elements earning their livelihood solely out of crime. Statistics suggest that crime may soon become the single largest employer. Those in the system will then become much richer than they are today. The parallel economy will also quietly become much, much bigger than it has ever been.

India will then truly be a great place to live in! At least for those who can afford to pay for their safety, guaranteed by criminals within the system and without!
'

Should anyone be surprised that after sweet-talking gullible Indian intellectuals and media stars into believing that he genuinely wanted friendship with India, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has bared his real Pakistani fangs? Reiterating his father-in-law's famous words that Pakistan would wage "a thousand-year war" over Kashmir which is "Pakistan's jugular vein", Zardari has warned India that this was a war of ideologies that would last for generations.

Is this mere rhetoric? Is Zardari making a noise just to please a constituency? Or is it, as by now should have been clear to even the most dumb-headed, a plain reiteration of a core reality that India has refused to recognise and deal with conclusively?

Zardari's statement comes a few days after the Prime Minister's Working Group on Kashmir - it hadn't met for over two years - submitted a report recommending greater autonomy for the state, and amidst reports that the government was talking quietly to separatist Kashmiri leaders to come up with some half-baked, surrender-based solution to bring peace back to the Valley.

In TV studio discussions following the submission of the report, mainstream Kashmiri politicians made it very clear, for the millionth time, that no real solution is possible unless Pakistan is made party to it. While some of them were airing the 'ideological', read communal, line that defines Pakistan's claim on Kashmir, others clearly had the reality of the situation on ground in mind, a reality that has taken deep roots, thanks to a confused and paralysed Indian leadership that reacts mechanically after every terror attack but has never given serious thought to putting Pakistan out of business in Kashmir.

A couple of days back, terrorists struck in the heart of Srinagar and engaged the security forces in a 20-hour gun battle. These two gunmen, like those of Mumbai 26/11, were in contact with their handlers in Pakistan. As per reports, this was not an isolated fidayeen attack. It was a part of a larger plan supported by the military to step up terror attacks in Kashmir. As many as 700 trained terrorists are waiting to stage more such and worse attacks. This may be to pressurise the US to pressurise India into giving fatal concessions on Kashmir. But, more fundamentally and enduringly, it is to warn India and Kashmiris that Pakistan will not let Kashmir slip away from its fingers, no matter what. Zardari was not shooting his mouth off.

Unfortunately, India's intellectuals and media lights have been hell-bent on leading India and Indians up just the path that Pakistan would want them to take. And it seems that they are not likely to give up their efforts anytime soon, no matter what Pakistan does or says to provoke India.

The latest in this manifestly carefully coordinated and well orchestrated strategy is what The Times of India unleashed on its unsuspecting readers on the first day of the new decade. On January 01, 2010, I was jolted when I looked at the Times of India. "Love Pakistan" were the two bold words in black that the management of the newspaper forced lakhs of Indians to stare at on its front page. A few pigeons flying above the explanatory print made the picture almost morbid.

Ostensibly, this was to tell India that the TOI and Pakistan's Jang Group were re-launching that completely worn-out 'people-to-people' -which people? - contact program in the form of "cross-border cultural interactions, business seminars, music and literary festivals and citizens meets" that would once again do little more than fill newspaper columns and entertain the well-heeled and well-protected in both countries. But TOI wanted all Indians to "Love Pakistan" already, barely a little more than a year after 26/11 and with no evidence whatsoever to show that the state of Pakistan had shed even a trace of its congenital hatred for India. Even then, well before Zardari's reality-check, to me those pigeons looked like innocent Indians being brought down by terrorists indoctrinated and trained by Pakistan, shouting 'Love Pakistan'.

This enervating disease of pretending that the DNA of the state of Pakistan will change if a few Indians and Pakistanis hug each other and enjoy a musical evening together, and that there is little more that India needs to do to protect itself and its citizens, had already cost India dear. This reality-defying belief is not limited to the TOI alone. It is endemic to the media that has got obsessed with creating emotional images padded with words that should find place in only mediocre works of fiction.

Karan Thapar, the otherwise terrorising interviewer, loses his fangs and even elementary commonsense when it comes to Pakistan. Last year, when he interviewed Pervez Musharraf, so fascinated was he by the latter's sartorial elegance that he completely failed to read the very dangerous statements that he made about more Kargils, Indian Muslims and the continuing role of the LeT, not just in Kashmir but in the rest of India. The same thing happened at the HT summit when he literally hand-held Zardari to make dove-like statements, and then asked India, in gushing-schoolboy fashion, to trust him.

Shekhar Gupta wants Indians to believe that helping Pakistan win its internal war on terror is in "India's supreme national interest". He also wants India to buy the preposterous argument that a strong Pakistan, the state that is waging an ideological war against that with the sole aim of winning it even of it takes generations, is in India's interest and that India must make whatever concessions are needed to strengthen the democratic government in that country.

It is beyond belief that India's so-called intellectuals keep finding absolutely non-existent grounds for beating Pakistan's drum and preventing India from doing anything that can put a decisive end to this existential threat that it has been confronting for decades now. Despite the fact that Pakistan has joined all the dots and left not no space for doubt about its intentions by its numerous acts, some of us want to keep pretending that Pakistan is the poor victim of terror and that once India gives in to its demands on Kashmir in a manner that is visible to ordinary Pakistanis, all will be well and TOI's campaign will then define the relationship between the two nations.

I may be wrong, but the more I see the manner in which India is refusing to take any logical steps to protect itself as it should and terminate this religious war-of-generations in this generation itself, the more I am convinced that this has less to do with Pakistan and more to do with harmful-to-India and potentially inflammatory manipulation of the dynamics of India's democracy, and the unbridled lust of its politicians to get to power in Delhi, no matter what the cost and damage to the nation.

In 1971, Indira Gandhi dismembered Pakistan. That should have, and to an extent did, put an end to this war that virtually defines Pakistan. But she lost in Shimla on trust what India's sons had won on the battlefield with blood. And now, nearly three decades later, a heavy price is still being paid for that lapse.

Surely, no one can disagree that such an ideological war can only be won by defeating the very ideology that is sustaining it. The Americans may not be going about the task in the best manner but they have understood that elementary truth. In India, on the other hand, what we are seeing is exactly the opposite; we are being told that this war can actually be won by trusting and strengthening the one who is fighting it against us.

Manifestly, there are powerful elements in India's political landscape who do not want Pakistan and, thereby, the idea behind it, to be defeated. These can only be those elements whose own strength and bargaining power is derived from the strength of Pakistan, not India. If there is no Pakistan, those who created it out of thin air will begin to look like small, obdurate men who were unable to stop living in the past, in another century and world. Even worse, those who are now trying to sustain it with the garb of jihad will show up for what they really are: uncivilised men fit to rule in an ignorant 15th century, not in an aware 21st. That will be a body blow from which recovery will be almost impossible and further decline precipitous.

It is evidently this group that has the ears of the present leadership of the Congress that has virtually no connect with India. It seems to have successfully managed to sell to it the story that if it does anything to weaken Pakistan, it will lose the votes of Indian Muslims. Conversely, Muslim votes - and electoral victory - can be its for the asking only if it props and helps hold together a Pakistan on the brink of collapse, no matter that it will mean shedding even more Indian blood to the ideology that is programmed to keep drawing it till its last breath. This group has also apparently convinced the leadership that Hindu votes and sentiments are irrelevant if they can be kept divided, that Hindu right is poisonous and that the only antidote to it is Muslim votes that can be delivered to it en bloc. For a 'small' price, of course.

That famous "maut ke saudagar" remark of Sonia Gandhi during the Gujarat elections of 2007, the Sachar and Ranganath Commissions, and the systematic media campaign that is attempting to psyche Indians into believing that no price is too high for gaining Pakistan's 'friendship', all appear to be a part of well-thought out election strategy prepared by the Congress think tank to ensure that it is well poised, with the help of Muslim votes, to thwart any challenge to it in the elections that are due to be held in 2014.

Had Indira Gandhi been alive today, would the TOI have dared to brazenly ask India to "Love Pakistan"? Would she have allowed Pakistan to regain its strength and will to mount and sustain the most serious and as yet unanswered challenge to India after Partition? Would she have let things come to this sorry pass where some individuals could gather the courage to even suggest that votes of some Indians could be ensured only if they were routed via Pakistan?

Something has gone seriously wrong somewhere. India's leaders after Indira have paid scant attention to an increasingly dangerous Pakistan and harmless-looking insects who are actually termites furiously at work below the surface. India has paid and is paying the price for this failure. And, as things stand now, it looks as if the scenario will get far worse before it begins to get any better. Be prepared for much bigger shocks in the build-up to elections 2014. A wave has to be generated. No matter what it takes.

Picture source: The Times of India
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Related reading:
1. A year after 26/11, calls for a strong Pakistan
2. Don't " beggar-my-buggering-neighbour"; strengthen him
3. Akbar turns Jinnah, asks for a Muslim state
4. Musharraf's shockers on terror, Kashmir and Indian Muslims

In the aftermath of two successive defeats faced by the BJP, there is much talk that India has changed and that Hindutva and Ram temple are no longer issues that excite Hindus. That is certainly true. But is it just the quest for a better life that now consumes Indians? Is everything that energised them in the nineties really not relevant any longer?

If we base our analysis on the faulty understanding that the Ram temple movement was no more than a communal, anti-Muslim upsurge, then everything else that follows not only prevents us from understanding the phenomenon in all its dimensions but also leads us to a wrong path for the future. Yes it did lead to the tragic and unacceptable demolition of the Babri Masjid. But, for most Hindus, was the movement really against mosques or Muslims? Absolutely not.

At one level, it was for reclamation of what many believe is the birthplace of Ram; in some form or the other, the agitation had been on for a very, very long time, much before the BJP and the Sangh parivar were even conceived. At another and more fundamental level, however, it was about values of governance.

Ram was the God whose name was always on the lips of Mahatma Gandhi. But no one can call him communal. Because for Gandhi, Ram represented a set of values to live by. That is what Ram has always meant to most Hindus too. That is one reason why, when Rajiv Gandhi gave Doordarshan the go ahead to telecast TV serial Ramayan in 1987, what followed was unprecedented and remains unsurpassed. The TV serial became so popular that the entire country used to come to a virtual halt on Sunday mornings as everyone who could gain access to a TV set stopped doing what they were to watch the story of Ram, even though they already knew much of it.

Arun Govil brought Ram in flesh and blood into the homes and hearts of Hindus across India like never before in India's history. It is due to this phenomenon, and not Advani's Rath Yatra or the Sangh Parivar's efforts, that the movement to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya gained the tremendous momentum that it did. The BJP benefitted only because it was seen to be in the vanguard of this energy. Rajiv Gandhi perhaps understood what was happening. I am convinced that had he remained alive and PM, he would have amicably resolved the issue with Muslim leaders and got a Ram temple built at the spot in question, without allowing the BJP to draw political mileage.

In the event, it was the BJP that reaped the benefit of the resurgence of Ram in Hindu homes and hearts. But where its leaders made a fundamental error was in believing that they could exploit the sentiments of people in name of Ram solely to get and keep political power. They clean forgot that Ram was really about values and ethics of governance. They did not remember that Mahatma Gandhi had worshipped Ram in word and deed.

In giving the BJP their votes, a vast majority of ordinary Hindus were not giving vent to anti-Muslim communal feelings. They were expressing a strong desire to see a fundamental change in the manner in which the country was being run; they were looking for a set of leaders who would bring into public life an honesty, transparency and compassion that they had not seen in decades under the rule of a corrupt, feudal and dynastic Congress party.

Had the BJP consciously built on that positive desire for change, it would have obliterated the then discredited Congress by now. In Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it even had the perfect leader behind whom that positive upsurge could have been built and strengthened. Unfortunately, soon after it tasted power, the party started morphing into another Congress.

When party President Bangaru Laxman was seen receiving Rs 1 lakh as a bribe on TV, the sacred bond of trust and expectation that people had reposed in the BJP was irreparably broken. It was as if Ram Himself had been sullied by the party. In one stroke, the difference between the BJP and the Congress was erased. Congress leaders had always been known to be dishonest; almost every Indian believed that Rajiv Gandhi had taken money from Bofors. But the Congress had never spoken of Ram or His values after Mahatma Gandhi's death; nor had it ever asked for votes to establish Ram Rajya.

It was the BJP that had generated the expectation that with its coming, Ram Rajya would become a reality. The onus, therefore, was on it to live up to its call and deliver. Failure to do so was always going to be viewed as a serious breach of faith. It failed and paid the price.

But has it learnt the right lesson, despite being rejected roundly? When it talks of return to ideology, does it really know what that means? Has it realised that people can be excited, incited, hypnotized, but only temporarily, to forget the reality of their daily lives by the force of religion? Has there been an awakening that the hypnosis has worn off and that many of its leaders, shorn of the glow of Vajpayee, have been seen for the petty, dishonest and greedy men they are? Does it still believe that their call to Ram or dharma is ever going to find the ears they seek?

Perhaps, there is still a belief that the practical and dirty craft of politics can somehow be married with Ram san His values. Perhaps the logic is that if the Congress can con, so can the BJP.

There is no other explanation for the series of disastrous moves that the BJP has made in the recent past. Picking of criminals and other undesirable candidates to fight elections, public courting of thoroughly corrupt individuals by its President Rajnath Singh, promotion of dynasties etc are all pointers to the reality that the BJP's cadre of committed workers and leaders has been overtaken by ambitious and amoral individuals who are in the game only for power and pelf.

Look at what it has done in Jharakhand. It dropped the clean Babulal Marandi before the elections and lost badly. But greed has so overtaken commonsense that is has snatched from the arms of the Congress and embraced Shibu Soren, convicted of murder last year and with several other serious charges pending, and made him Chief Minister. The argument is that he has been acquitted. Are Indians idiots? Don't we all know how the legal system works? What should be more important for a party whose mantra is Ram? Perception of the people or skill of lawyers who are known to boast, with results to show, that they can get murderers proved innocent?

The BJP is now indistinguishable from the Congress from which it used to claim it was different. It is no longer possible to determine where one ends and the other begins. But one huge difference remains. It is the BJP, and not the Congress, that chants the name of Ram. That is why if it is seen to be following in the footsteps of Ravan, it is going to be punished.

There is a Hindi proverb "Bagal mein chhuri, munh mein Ram Ram" - a dagger in the waist and Ram on the lips - to describe a dishonest, dangerous and untrustworthy person who fools others by pretending that he believes in the exalted values of Ram. The BJP is now that person. It thinks it can keep Soren and others like him with itself and yet fool people into voting for it in the name of Ram, ideology, Hindutva, whatever. This is nothing but a recipe for disaster. The sooner the party realises it and sheds those who are guiding it into this treacherous channel, the better. For the party and for India.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Related Reading:
1. The RSS surgery: Will it help revive BJP?
2. Is the BJP's warship headed for Alang?