India Retold

The sample size, many will argue on both sides of the divide, is small and the methodology questionable. But, if a couple of startling findings of a recent Chatham House survey on Kashmir done by Robert W. Bradnock, a scholar from London's Kings College, are correct, then, if you see through the obvious, they are the game-changers that India has been desperately looking for to find a lasting solution to the problem that has bedeviled it for decades.

Let us start with the one extremely significant myth that those dealing with the Kashmir problem have always known but ignored probably because they did not know how to adequately capitalise on it. Kashmir is an artificial state, most of which was sold to Gulab Singh by the British for Rs 75 lakhs. On the Indian side, 'Kashmir' is limited to the the Valley where ethnic Kashmiris live. They have nothing in common with people living in the Jammu and Ladakh divisions. On the Pakistani side, there are hardly any ethnic Kashmiris. The Gilgit-Baltistan area is no longer part of Kashmir and is administered directly by Pakistan. The Shaksgam tract was ceded by it to China in 1963. What remains of 'Kashmir' there is a narrow strip of land that Pakistan calls Azad Kashmir even though it has 99% ethnic Punjabi population.

The general perception in India, however, is that one people have been divided by the LoC and they want to be re-united. The Chatham House survey once again confirms that there is virtually no such division: only 8% of the respondents claimed to have "friends or relatives on either side of the LoC." Relatives alone will be far less if we factor an average friend-to-relative ratio. Yet, Kashmiri separatists and Pakistan have been cleverly trying to steam-roll India into making the LoC irrelevant on the ground, among others, that divided 'Kashmiris' must be reunited. And India has been buying that story which is designed solely to give Pakistan a real stake in the Indian part of Kashmir.

The Chatham House survey too flirts with the same idea to deduce that 58% of the people of the state are prepared to accept LoC as a permanent border. "Which, if any, of these, comes closest to your idea about the Line of Control as a permanent border between India and Pakistan?" Not only is this question leading, one of the options is also almost the same that ethnic Kashmiris and Pakistanis are pursuing aggressively for reasons that have little to do with ethnicity. Besides, it also brings out the deep divide that exists between people living in the Jammu and Kashmir divisions. But the most unexpeted response is from Muslim majority Punch and Rajouri districts where almost all the respondents say that they want the LoC to be converted into the border in its current form. No one from there wants to join Pakistan, no one wants Independence and virtually no one wants to join India too. Figure that! Clearly, these people are simply not enthused by the demands for Independence and and free movement across the LoC being made by Pakistan-sponsored ethnic Kashmiris of the Valley, even though they follow the same religion.

The Times of India has also highlighted that 58% of the respondents want the LoC to be turned into a permanent border and that many favour free movement of people and goods across it. Given the direction in which talks have been proceeding with Pakistan till now, India's policy makers too are probably going to use these figures to justify a deal with Pakistan on the lines that President Musharraf -- the man had his ears to the ground -- almost succeeded in trapping India into signing.

What these figures tell me is exactly the opposite.

By far the most unexpected and defining finding of the survey is that only 2% 'Kashmiris' on the Indian side want to join Pakistan. And even these few are ethnic Kashmiri Muslims only. No non-ethnic Kashmiri, irrespective of religion, wants Pakistan. Even among ethnic Kashmiris, only 7% of the respondents in Badgam, 6% in Srinagar and 2% each in Baramulla and Anantnag want to join that country. This must come as a huge shock for Pakistan, whose single most important national objective -- obsession to be precise -- for the last six decades has been to claim the whole of Kashmir for itself. For India, it cannot but be the music that it has always wanted hear instead of the gunshots it has been.

Despite 26/11 and, more importantly, Pakistan's response after that horror, many analysts in India have been arguing that a strong and stable Pakistan is in India's interest and that India must make whatever concessions are needed to strengthen it and help it win its war on terror "in its supreme national interest." In one blow that they did not see coming, not-so-educated and rather poorly informed ordinary Kashmiris have felled them and made them look foolish, to say the least.

Why have even Kashmiri Muslims overwhelmingly rejected Pakistan despite decades of religious fundamentalism and militancy inspired, funded and controlled by Pakistan? It is because they can see what Pakistan has made of itself and the kind of life that they can expect if they become part of a country that is at war within, a weak and violent nation that has no future to offer to them, that might turn their Valley into another Afghanistan, that might itself not remain on the map for long? Would the survey have thrown up the same result had Pakistan been a relatively peaceful and economically strong nation with a future? Does anyone ever back a weak horse, particularly when its longevity is in serious doubt? The previous Dalai Lama, for example, had proclaimed that Tibet was an independent country at a time when China was weak and British India strong. Had the balance between free India and China remained unaltered, would the present Dalai Lama have overturned that stance and accepted that Tibet is a part of China and confined the disagreement only to the quantum of autonomy?

An alert and strategy-conscious India would have realised early on that a sure way of dealing with and settling Kashmir in its favour was by ensuring that Pakistan was kept relatively weak and incapable of posing a challenge to it. Had that policy been consciously and proactively pursued, perhaps the problem would have solved itself many decades ago and there would have been no wars and no militancy over it; a punitive punch or two to keep Pakistan in its boots would have sufficed. But we mindlessly allowed a much smaller nation to aspire for and even achieve near parity and then confidently employ force to try and settle the issue in its favour on more than one occasion. That is what is happening right now too, and that is what manifestly forcing India's leaders to ready the nation for a capitulation on the negotiating table.

It is India's great fortune that the destructive path that an over-ambitious Pakistan chose to achieve its strategic objectives vis-à-vis India and Afghanistan have fortuitously made it the most dangerous place on earth and so brought it to the brink of ruin that even Kashmiri Muslims, to grab whose land it has spent billions and lost thousands of its citizens, have rejected it almost completely.

Two straightforward deductions flow immediately from this jackpot of a finding for India, the first of which is the big game-changer.

One, Pakistan need no longer be made a party to any decision that India makes about the Indian part of Kashmir. Under any circumstance, including a flare-up in violence. Kashmiri separatists can keep saying that no decision is possible unless Pakistan is involved; no entry must be given to it in any form whatsoever. How this fundamental change in strategy is to be packaged and given effect on ground is a matter of detail that is for diplomats in South Block to work on.

Two, India needs to overtly and covertly work to ensure that Pakistan gets weaker, even fragmented along ethnic lines. Let us not forget that while ethnic Kashmiris have rejected Pakistan, they have still not dropped their demand for independence though not in the manner that Pakistan ever visualised. That is because they believe that Pakistan is still strong enough to pressurise India through militancy to grant them that, if not fully, at least in substantial measure. That will empower them to keep playing clever, with both countries remaining interested. But once Pakistan goes under, their demand of independence and everything else directly associated with it will also evaporate, and pretty quickly, just as the demand for joining up with Pakistan has.

Already, even among Kashmiri Muslims, more want to join India than Pakistan. It is only their overwhelming demand for independence that has skewed the figures to show that only 28% of all people on the Indian side want to join India. Although 43% of the total population say they would vote for independence, in only five out of eighteen districts is there a majority preference for the independence. People of Punch and Rajouri have rejected all three options but want the LoC to be made a permanent border. That can only happen if they remain where they are now: in India. So, effectively, those wanting to stay on in India are already a large number. These heartening figures make it clear that the task before India, to increase the number of those opting for India substantially, is actually easier than it appears from sensational news reports and the enormous amount of fuel given for free to ethnic Kashmiri separatists by the media. The numbers will grow rapidly as India grows rich and powerful, but only if Pakistan moves in the opposite direction and an unbridgeable gap between the two nations is created and sustained.

The key, thus, is Pakistan, but not anymore in the manner that it has been trying to project itself as. There can no longer any doubt that a weak, disunited Pakistan -- even a no-Pakistan -- is in India's supreme long-term interest. For a host of reasons that have been discusses thread bare by many analysts, Pakistan will remain hostile to India as a state as long as it does not break free of the ideology that led to its creation and that sustains its identity and existence as a nation. That is not going to happen any time soon. On the contrary, given the tsunami of intolerant and violent Islamic extremism that is getting perilously close to its jugular, things are likely to only get worse. Therefore, even without Kashmir, any wish for a strong Pakistan in its present avatar is like a death-kiss for India.

Should, however, India choose to ignore the findings of the Chatham House survey and give to Pakistan the very oxygen it is seeking, by signing a sell-out type of deal that Musharraf had thought up, in 'good faith', it will be committing an unforced blunder of Himalayan proportions. That will also shut the door of opportunity that has been opened up for India unexpectedly by Bradnock. One hopes that this time sense will prevail over sentiment and bravery over buzdili.

Related reading: Kashmir Deal: Solution or surrender?

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Further Reading (Illuminating):
1. Vikram Sood: Can Pakistan Survive?
2. Pakistan Watch: The fraudulent theory of non-state actors: Parts 1 2 3

"Rahul is still not ready." This is the only headline that emerged from yesterday's press conference called by Dr Manmohan Singh himself after four long years. All the rest that he said had already been read and heard before; it was like a 78 rpm record being played on an old handle-driven HMV -- pun intended -- player. Yet, not one of the channels or newspapers or experts who dissected the Prime Minister's words and body language had the courage and, in some cases, the honesty to acknowledge this plain truth in plain words.

"I have been given this task (Prime Ministership). It is still unfinished. Till I finish the tasks there is no question of retirement." This statement of the PM has been widely quoted. Seen in isolation, it indicates that age and a heart surgery have not in any way diminished Dr Singh's enthusiasm for both his chair and his job. But, the moment you juxtapose it with how he responded to the inevitable question about vacating the seat for the known heir, it takes on a different meaning altogether. On the question of Rahul Gandhi joining the cabinet so that he can get some sorely needed on-the-job experience before he ascends the throne, this is what the PM said: “Rahul is very qualified to hold a cabinet post. I have discussed it with him on a number of occasions. He has always been reluctant to give a positive answer. He says he has duties to perform in reviving the Congress party. He is doing a good job. As and when (he is) ready, he will be a very appropriate addition to the cabinet."

Is there any doubt about what Dr Manmohan Singh told the nation as straight as he could? Rahul is not ready even now to take up ministerial responsibilities. Reason? He has party duties to perform! Is that not crap? It has been a tradition with the dynasty to hold on to the posts of the PM and President of the Congress party since the times of Indira Gandhi. Currently, Rahul's mother holds the latter post. With the party securely in the hands of the Family, surely handling a ministry and certain party responsibilities should not be a daunting task, particularly for someone who does not face competition from any one else within the Congress. But, after nearly a decade in active politics he still can't multi-task?

What about Rahul taking over as PM? Even the normally dour Prime Minister could not conceal a chuckle: "Let me say I sometimes feel that younger people should take over. As and when the Congress party makes that judgement, I will be happy to make place for anybody chosen by the party."

These three statements read together have given to the general public, for the first time perhaps, a couple of extremely significant answers. First, Dr Manmohan Singh is not going to step down for any pretenders who might be harbouring secret ambitions to become PM. Second, he will make way for Rahul Gandhi whenever Sonia Gandhi asks him to, but is dead sure that there is no danger of that happening: Rahul is simply not ready to take over as the Prime Minister of India.

Does this surprise you? It would only if you have been buying into gushing praises that some leading journalists, particularly those familiar with the fine art of lobbying, have been showering on him for virtually no fathomable reason except perhaps the benefits and threats that they perceive/receive from the Gandhi name. In the history of independent India no one has been built up so intensively for so long by the media which is now more powerful than ever before as far as influencing, even distorting, public opinion is concerned. Despite that, if the desired effect has not been achieved, there is a problem that is being concealed from India.

It has been forgotten that there was an orchestrated campaign to project Rahul Gandhi as PM even during the last Lok Sabha elections. But, in the end, Sonia Gandhi chose Dr Manmohan Singh again and he led the party to victory. Why did that happen? Rahul himself backed out saying that he was not yet ready for the top slot. A year down the line, the situation remains unchanged.

What will happen in 2014? Dr Manmohan Singh will, in all likelihood, not opt for another term. So, Rahul has to get ready before that, or Sonia will have to find another Manmohan who will allow the Family to rule by proxy - have the cake and eat it too - without being accountable for what the government does. Another Manmohan is not visible and the experience of the banished PV Narasimha Rao is still fresh in memory.

That is why the 2012 elections of UP are going to prove to be a watershed in more ways than one in the history of free India. Not only will they impact the future of Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party but, he way things are unfolding, will create new social fissures and re-open old wounds. Sonia Gandhi, as we all know, cannot have as good an understanding of the history, the rhythm, the pain and the soul of India as, say, her mother-in-law did. In her isolated castle, she has manifestly been led to believe by her handlers/advisors that the only way for the Congress to conquer UP again is by polarising Muslim votes in its favour and ensuring that Hindu votes remains divided; many Hindus will vote Congress in any case.

This naked communal agenda is being clothed and sold as 'inclusive politics' by the party and its troopers in the media. The details of this strategy will unfold over the next two years and will be addressed separately. For, now you must read two previous posts, "Akbar turns Jinnah, asks for Muslim state" and "Who can protect India's secularism, Congress or BJP?" to get an idea of where we are headed on this path. In addition, expect an all-out political war to be unleashed by the Congress on its opponents. Mayawati and Mulayam may suddenly find CBI cases against them coming back to life; the latter might even be compelled to enter into an alliance with the Congress on demeaning terms to ensure that victory does not elude Rahul.

If the Congress manages to win or even nearly win UP based on this strategy, the credit will all be given to Rahul Gandhi and he will then either take over as PM or, as I suspect, will be still kept off the spotlight of scrutiny, and projected as the party's untested Prime Ministerial candidate in 2014. If the Congress wins that election, he will get at least five years in office and the Congress an uninterrupted 15. That appears to be the game plan.

In 2009, Rahul said was not ready to be PM. In 2010, the PM says he is not. These are not insignificant statements to be ignored. There is obviously a real fear that Rahul has a serious ability gap that cannot be concealed by dimples, fair skin, the English language so worshipped by some, the stamp of royalty and fake praises of obsequious courtiers in the party and the media. If after all these years he is not ready to take on the responsibility -- the power and perks he has -- that is his to take, the question that begs to be asked is: will he ever be? What do you think?
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Related reading: Rahul: from dud to genius in two hours
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Perhaps it is just a meaningless coincidence that an Air India Express Boeing 737 overshot the runway at Mangalore, killing 158 Indians, just as the United Progressive Alliance government was completing one year in office in its second consecutive term. But if you read the tea leaves, as it were, you might see a picture, a pattern cannot be wished away.

For the last six years, Air India has been toyed with and all but destroyed by whimsical decisions, unpardonable mismanagement and even commandeering of aircraft by Praful Patel's IPL-employed daughter. It all started with Patel changing the livery of Indian Airlines, only to merge it with Air India before the paint had dried on the aircraft, necessitating another expensive change.

Evidently no has noticed that while the new livery that adorned the tail of each plane of Indian Airlines depicted a rising sun, in the new albatross named Air India, the sun appears to be setting. May be another meaningless coincidence. But, it is common knowledge that ever since the merger of the two state-owned airlines took place amidst protests and warnings, the health of the airline started by the legendary JRD Tata has deteriorated as rapidly as the health of the minister and the babus responsible for ruining it has improved.

The airline is now saddled with losses of Rs 5,000 crores and a debt burden of Rs 12,000 crores. The government can't/won't sell it but will keep pouring thousands of crores of tax payers' money onto the black hole just because politicians and babus won't let go their diamond mine, helped unwittingly by the Left that continues to see things from an obsolete and defective prism that has unerringly shown a distorted picture all over the world. As a result, the whole airline has skidded off its runway and is lying broken and burning and dying in a ditch.

Those killed in the Mangalore crash were primarily bread winners who were forced to work under very difficult conditions in the Gulf only because their own country had failed to provide them with work opportunities that would have enabled them to earn even half of what they could elsewhere. One can easily blame the Left, particularly of Kerala, for this, but if one looks around, conditions in the BIMARU and other states which have been governed for decades by the Congress party are little different, in some cases worse.

Yet, as the UPA completes one year, its cheerleaders are out in force in TV studios, some going to the extent of praising Rahul Gandhi for effecting "direct transfer of wealth to the poor." Don't miss the condescending stink of insult emanating from the word 'wealth'. It consists of 100 days employment per year under NREGA at Rs 100 a day; you can add sundry schemes like farm loan waiver etc to complete this 'wealth' portfolio. So disconnected have the wealthy become from the poor that they imperiously think mere survival money is wealth for those wretched brothers of theirs who can barely manage a meal a day. Such being their concern for the left-behind-Indians, it is not surprising that there is virtually no direct effort to pull them up and out. The facile argument is that if the economy continues to grow at eight percent and above, in a few years the trickle-down effect will automatically radically alter their lives: the government need not do anything.

As we all know, employment is also linked to education. That is another area in which the state has failed miserably. Now there is much talk of the right to education being given to all Indians, but there is no clear road map yet on how to implement it in a meaningful manner and how to end the education apartheid that has created two nations within one. Kapil Sibal has got the right idea but since has never been touched by a government school, a handicap shared by most if not all his advisors, it may well happen that while expensive world class education will become more easily accessible to those who can pay for it, for the aam admi, things will remain just the same. And flights to the Gulf and elsewhere will continue to remain full

Politicians, babus and many of their cheerleaders in the media have already seceded from the state-run education and even employment system in this country. They have ensured that their children have access to the best schools and colleges within the country and in the West, and prime job opportunities across the globe thereafter. If some do come back, it is primarily because their families have created better opportunities for them here itself. They do not know what deprivation means and many see it for the first time in movies like Slumdog Millionaire, even though they drive past those slums every day. That is why with only votes in mind - nothing else - they come up with schemes that will earn the gratitude of fellow Indians living in sub-human conditions, but will do little to improve their skills, their knowledge, their employability.

Providing education and jobs requires a lot of hard work, compassion and commitment on part of political leaders and officials. Since they collectively have failed to show all these in sufficient measure for decades, they have chosen to buy their way through reservations, ignoring the fact that in the process they are dividing the society along more and more fault lines. Since even reservations are not enough to fill the huge employment gap, they are now simply giving petty cash doles to the poor for doing virtually nothing and, in the process, transferring real wealth to the already wealthy and corrupt.

Is the enormous sink called NREGA going to do anything at all to pull either the country or its people on to a different level in even a hundred years? All those mud walls and works will keep collapsing and will be rebuilt time and again. And everything and everyone will remain where they are. Those who can will keep escaping to the Gulf out of sheer compulsion. And some of them will never make it back home.

If this is the imagination with which India of the 21st century is going to be governed by those who have done and seen the best in the world, then there is a reason to worry, not rejoice.

When a leader does not do what he required to, what he must, at the right time, then the plane that he is flying misses its landing and is sometimes prematurely consumed by fate. Our leaders have already made a series of serious errors over the last six decades. But, rather than learn anything from them, they are only making bigger ones of the same type. And this applies to all parties and almost all leaders; exceptions can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Yes, cheerleaders have to cheer every shot of their team -- their jobs, their wealth, their rewards, their awards depend on how well they wriggle their backsides -- primarily because a match is on and the opponents' morale has to be destroyed. But they need also to realise that if this plane that is being shaken and rattled by huge self-created air pockets goes down, there will be no teams left. Time to apply the brakes of serious honesty and integrity. India is in real danger of overshooting its runway.
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Related reading:
1. Cast off comfort of caste
2. Khaoists: Plundering India's future
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The Great Caste Census Debate is on. Many of those who have an opinion on it have been almost untouched by the realities of caste in their own lives. So, before I start expressing mine, here is an admission: I have been personally touched by it, but only a little. I have not faced discrimination, but have seen others who have. I must also reveal right here that I vehemently oppose the move to carry out a caste based census. If you have have a closed mind in favour of the what I believe will be a long term disaster, read no further.

Till VP Singh unleashed Mandal in 1990, all I knew was that I was a Brahmin. I knew little about other castes except the shudras whom I had seen as a child carrying human excreta on their heads. I had also then heard that they were not be touched physically, were not allowed inside homes and that no social interaction whatsoever was permissible with them. But, I also heard that sex with shudra women was not only not prohibited but was to indulged in as it protected one against leprosy; they were untouchable too but not when needed for sex. Unlike some of us who have witnessed or heard about these and similar stories of caste discrimination from family or friends, I am strongly against any division or discrimination on the basis of one's birth. To me people of all castes are equal. I abhor any caste discrimination and believe that this has been the one single feature of Hinduism in practice that has sapped the religion of its vitality and one that clashes with the very basis of Sanatan Dharm: Vasudev Kutumbakam - the whole world is one family.

The sudden decision of the government to agree to a limited caste based census that will count the number of OBCs, in addition to SCs and STs, manifestly as a result of a petty and immediate political trade-off with the two powerful Yadavs, Lalu and Mulayam, has, not surprisingly, raised a storm, but only a small one considering that a fundamental, irreversible change is going to be unleashed on the people of India. Defenders and opponents of the move are, as happens most of the time, playing with words, history, political expediency, even caste affiliation, to support their arguments, some of which are absurd, even illogical.

Among the many who have written on the subject, I have picked the views of five, three of whom support caste census. It is an arbitrary selection but I think it broadly covers the main points that have been made in the media and elsewhere. Of course, as you would have guessed by now, I am going to use their arguments to support my own view. That may look like a devious and indolent way of going about this task. But, is there a better way for the millions of us who are not well versed with subject but want to know whether this move is in India's interest? So, here goes.

"The decision to, in principle, enumerate caste in the Census is a monumental travesty," says Pratap Bhanu Mehta."The premise of enumeration is that we can never escape caste. The state has legitimised the principle that we will always be our caste." This is the fundamental point which is being lost sight of by those who say casually that since caste is a reality, the census only recognises it. The harsh truth is that caste based enumeration is only going to play into the hands of those for whom "social justice is endless stratagem to assert the power of compulsory group identity, rather than finding the means to escape it." "In the name of breaking open prisons, they imprison us even more... caste census is the basis for a self-destructive politics...mobilisation will take place only along caste lines."

Barkha Dutt believes that caste based politics has become "a short-cut for quota propaganda...‘equality’ has become a political euphemism for perpetuating reservations," and adds with good effect the unpleasant fact that "reservations, as we all know by now, are the perfect way for a State to abdicate its responsibility to its poorer citizens — substituting real deliverables with ineffective largesse"

The tall architects of our constitution recognised that the India of the future had to free itself of the caste chains that had had tied it for long. As Dutt notes in her piece, even Dr BR Ambedkar had asked “How can a people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation?” However, they also recognised the social burden that had been borne primarily by dalits and tribals for thousands of years. Therefore, with a view to eradicate it, they incorporated reservations for dalits and tribals as a temporary measure only, to speed up their empowerment. They were fully alive to to the fact that permanent reservations on the basis of caste would only perpetuate age old divisions and prejudices in society.

Unfortunately for India, the arithmetic of elections combined with the absence of tall leaders with a similar vision for India has ensured that not only have reservations for dalits become all but permanent, we now have reservations for OBCs - implemented out of the blue for petty political gain by VP Singh without any demand from anyone and without consulting anyone either. That move not only almost manufactured a demand but has also given rise to more demands on similar grounds.

Yogendra Yadav's defence of caste census starts where the objections of Mehta end. Yadav cleverly skirts them. "What about objections on grounds of principles? There is an understandable unease about giving caste primacy in public life. But it is unclear how counting of the OBCs is in this respect qualitatively different from counting the SCs and the STs. We have done this for more than half a century." So, the OBC in Yadav tells the nation that just because we have deviated from the original vision of ushering in a modern, 'casteless' society, it is perfectly fine if we screw up this foundational principle even more by counting OBCs too. He agrees that this will have the effect of making caste boundaries even more rigid but, unlike Mehta and like the two powerful Yadav politicians who have forced the issue, he is more concerned about short-term gain for some rather than the long term damage to India: "It is true that official enumeration of any category tends to solidify its boundaries a little more than would be the case otherwise. But this subtle and long-term cost has to be weighed against the most evident and short and long term cost of official non-recognition of categories that everyone operates with."

Yadav also dexterously side-steps the next logical question about a full caste census by saying that although there are good arguments in its favour, "we may not be ready for it at this stage of the current census operations and national deliberations". In a subsequent rejoinder to Mehta's article, Yadav changes even this view and opposes a count of all castes on the "question of principles" which he fails to elaborate. Mr Yadav, if "politicians have always had access to caste-community composition of their constituencies" then where is the need for a formal census for OBCs at all and what can be the objection to counting the remaining castes too? Also, were there any "national deliberations" before Lalu and Mulayam blackmailed the government almost overnight to agree to an OBC count? Should such a count not have been done before VP Singh sprang the forgotten Mandal report on an unsuspecting nation?

Yadav would also like us to believe that once caste "is allowed normal play, it achieves partial success, is made to run against other divisions and ends up either redefining itself or building alliances or simply exhausting itself. The spectre of caste disappears when it is treated as a routine fact of politics." Has he already forgotten how the spectre of caste has only grown since the OBCs were given reservation and is now in danger of going almost viral across religions? He also knows well that no matter how prosperous and empowered a caste becomes, it will keep enjoying the benefits of reservations; an entitlement once given has not been and cannot be withdrawn. Some people can really travel in search of justifications for a view point. Also, built into in Yadav's stance is his acceptance of the danger that reservations will become irreversible, that India will remain divided by caste forever. That is, if anything, a scary thought.

Cleverly, Yadav also tries to present opposition to this increasing division of India socially and politically along caste identification as an unfounded fear harboured by liberals who are far removed from caste. Why should he even mention that what is being done is also exactly the opposite of what our founding fathers had visualised? Why should he remind us that for hundreds of years social reformers and spiritual leaders have been trying to remove the sting and stigma of caste from society because they realised that it is a social phenomenon that has hung for long over society like a curse? He surely knows that even they have succeeded only partially. Yet he wants us to accept his argument that caste might actually disappear if it is allowed to have its normal play! Will anyone in his senses believe that Laloo Yadav and Mulayam Yadav were motivated by such lofty considerations when they ambushed the UPA and held it and India to ransom in full public view in broad daylight? They have not pushed for a caste census to cast off the comfort of caste that they are enjoying.

Sagarika Ghose mirrors the dilemma in the minds of most untouched-by-caste educated Indians about the need for having a casteless society and a caste census at the same time. "Should caste matter to a modern Indian? Of course it shouldn’t. Yet, whether we like it or not, caste is still a defining category. Unless we all understand and study caste, we will never be able to fight it or develop a genuinely anti-caste mindset." Ghose wants to study caste to fight and eradicate it. Her vision of India is in the right place. But she has allowed herself to be trapped into believing that a caste census is only going to help us "know the enemy". Counting numbers and studying are not synonymous. There is a touch of naiveté in her reasoning that "a caste census should not be seen as simply a political instrument designed to secure quotas." What else is it being seen as by those who are asking for it? In fact it is going to be seen as much more and put to much worse uses by our politicians who are already milking caste and other identities increasingly to divide and marshal Indians, but not as Indians, to acquire disproportionate political clout that our flawed model of democracy enables them to. But, like many others who have been taken completely by surprise by the sudden move to have a caste census, she too has been seduced by the specious argument that not having such a census equals denial of the existence of caste. "If we continue to act as if caste does not exist, or deny its existence, we would be failing to do battle with one of the most urgent social inequalities of our time."

The most perplexing and, to my uneducated mind, bizarre argument in favour of the census has been put forth by Shiv Vishvanathan. And that hits you only after you read the last paragraph. Concludes Vishvanathan: "Let us face it, the great reform movements of India were not the modernist, communist, socialist or liberal democrats. The great reform movement was the Bhakti tradition. Nanak, Kabir, Mirabai did more to dent caste than the 'Communist Manifesto'. Once one realizes the wisdom and potential of this, the ironies of caste become more obvious." I can’t think of a better argument against any political move that solidifies caste boundaries once again, much less from a sociologist who knows that "caste can be a procrustean entity" and that "it is the protean nature of caste, its adaptability and inventiveness that we have to grasp." But he does precisely the opposite and casts his vote in favour of a caste count, knowing fully well how our politicians are going to utilise whatever data is thrown up. "One has to move caste from its locus in a moral economy to location in a political economy," he says. I can't figure the logic.

More than 500 years ago, when caste boundaries were extremely rigid and defined and limited almost all aspects of life, Guru Nanak, Kabir and others spoke up against the caste system and asked their followers to shun it completely. The Golden Temple in Amritsar was built with entrances on four sides to signify, among other things, that God's abode was open to all the four varnas without any discrimination, that they were all equal in His eyes. These Gurus and saints did not know that centuries later in an independent India, so-called modern and educated Indians would reconstruct the very walls they had tried to demolish and push people back into their rigid caste identities, giving fallacious, even dangerous justifications. For some of the 'justifiers', honesty is a useless, ornamental appendage that they remove whenever political expediency demands that of them. That is one reason why India has got into a vortex driven by conscience-free considerations of the moment without a care for the price that will have to paid by the nation.

What "realities" of caste are we talking of glibly now only to enable dishonest and devious politicians count their sheep so that they can shepherd and exploit them for their narrow, immediate gains? Why are we forgetting the teachings of our gurus and saints who saw the evils of the caste system? Why are we shutting our eyes to the wisdom and vision of the founding fathers of this nation who dreamt of an India liberated at last from the clutches Of caste? Why are we allowing dishonest political midgets, including and particularly ones with high IQ and higher education, to ruin the future, the idea of this nation just so that they can hang on to power, so that some of them can plunder India for a little longer?

Castes are not going to disappear if they are not counted. But if the count is done, as now is almost certain, they are going to re-appear in the socio-political fabric of India in a disruptive, divisive, destructive manner that will strike at the very idea of India as a modern, progressive and, above all, united nation ready to take its place among the great nations of the world in the 21st century. The price of moving back in time just for the benefit of those who see not India but their own little clans, castes and religions is going to be heavy and its effects long lasting. India cannot afford such an enormous mistake. It is time to for us to look forward and build a new India that is ready for tomorrow, and not recreate one that needs to be consigned decisively to the pages of history.
'

Pramod Muthalik is in the news again. This time for allegedly demanding Rs 60 lakhs for staging riots across Karnataka. A little over a year back too he had hit the headlines after members of his Ram Sene beat up some boys and girls who were having a good time in a pub in Mangalore.

This self-proclaimed defender of the Hindu faith needs to be dealt with severely, and an example set. On this score there is little scope for disagreement. The government of Karnataka --"BJP's Karnataka" as the media likes to call it, to subtly influence minds against the party -- needs to show resolve and demonstrate to the nation that Muthalik and his goons are not sleeping with leaders of the BJP as many allege.

But, hang on. The story is not a simple one of the good guys and the bad, both easily identifiable. There is a serious twist here. The good guys, who are self-proclaimed defenders of secularism, are also not what they appear to be. They are manifestly hit men who are executing one more deadly mission for an undisclosed consideration.

The 'good' guys are from Tehelka, India's premier sting outfit that also publishes a weekly, and that bolted into prominence in 2001 with that famous hidden camera clip of the then BJP President Bangaru Laxman receiving a Rs one lakh bribe from journalists posing to be defence dealers. Till then India had not seen the likes of YSR Reddy, Madhu Koda, Shashi Tharoor etc and, above all, the Telecom Raja who, as per a tweet, steals not in rupees but in percentage of GDP! That is why all hell broke loose in the media then. Laxman lost his job within a day and the BJP power in the election that followed. A job well done.

In 2007, Tehelka came up with what the Congress thought was another winner in Gujarat. Its sting operation showed various BJP leaders talking about and instigating the 2002 riots that followed the burning of a railway coach carrying Kar Sevaks at Godhra. Unfortunately, it could find nothing whatsoever to nail Narendra Modi. Even more importantly, the sting inadvertently put to death the canard that was being spread by some political parties that the Godhra incident was an accident and that the riots that followed were pre-planned by Modi. The outcome, naturally, was exactly the opposite of what Tehelka was tasked to ensure: Modi won.

In 2009, a few months before the general elections, Tehelka was in action again though not through a sting. This time it was its journalist Nisha Susan who started the Pink Chaddi Campaign to collect and send panties to Muthalik for the above mentioned Mangalore pub incident. Needless to add, the entire media went ballistic and for many days it appeared as if the biggest challenge that India was facing was not from terrorism that had claimed many lives but from Muthalik who was against girls going to and drinking in pubs. How many votes it cost the BJP will never be known, but the party's performance in the elections was disastrous.

Now it is Muthalik again, caught asking for Rs 60 lakhs by Tehelka's camera.

The Congress has been in power since 2004. During this period, many a scandal has surfaced, rivetted the nation's attention and then mysteriously disappeared, without any proof having been found to nail anyone. Many opposition leaders have also been hounded on some serious corruption charges. All kinds of allegations have been made against them but the CBI, after snapping at them like a ferocious Rottweiler, has invariably turned into a docile Labrador at politically critical moments. No wonder BJP President Nitin Gadkari could find no better 'muhavra' to describe the condition of some opposition leaders, leading to, as the Times of India put it so well, howls of protest!

Corruption is now a reality on an unprecedented scale at the highest echelons of the government. But do we hear even a whimper? On the contrary, Barkha Dutt says she has become shock-proof to it. What that means and what that says about the integrity levels of journalists is not difficult to figure. What is of even greater significance, shocking in fact, is that Tehelka has not done a single sting on any Congress minister or senior party leader, much less on a scale and at the level that it did against the NDA government. In six long years. Even during these years, it has focused primarily on the BJP and outfits whose deeds can spoil the image of that party.

Can this be a mere coincidence? Or is there something more to it? Tarun Tejpal is the editor of Tehelka. As a journalist, he should have learnt how to at least pretend to be politically neutral. He did that too for a long time. But the victory of the Congress party in 2009 apparently gave him so much of personal joy, for reasons not yet known, that he could not control himself from writing a demeaning open letter in praise of Sonia Gandhi. I had written a post on it then itself. The same is reproduced below. Read it and them decide what Tehelka is and what kind of media rot it represents.

Muthalik is bad, no doubt. But, as you will soon find, Tehelka is ugly.
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Last year, some of us were surprised when someone who once wanted to become the Secretary General of the United Nations wrote in glowing praise of Sonia Gandhi. No one was in any doubt then that Shashi Tharoor was using Time magazine to bend over in such a manner only because he saw in it a fail-safe ticket to get into the Congress party and then into the government. And that is precisely what has happened with his appointment as a junior minister in India's Foreign Office.

While Tharoor's objective was clearly visible and somewhat justifiable too, considering the culture of the Congress party, how does one explain the unbelievably despicable level to which a journalist famous for passing off his sordid and politically motivated sting operations as exercises in public morality, has sunk to in his lowly endeavour to endear himself to, yes, Sonia Gandhi? In perhaps a first for Indian journalists - and that is saying a lot considering the lot we have - Tarun J Tejpal, editor of Tehelka, has crossed every possible red line that separates journalism and political sycophancy.

In an open letter “to the unlikely woman whose tenacity in staying the course changed the contours of Indian politics”, this paragon of secularism not only belittles India's many gods but lays obscene praise at her feet, including her famous 'renunciation' of the PM's post, by - hold your breath - crediting it to Tenth Commandment (Though shall not covet) of the "extra god" that he says she has brought along with her from Italy! Quoting Mathew's exhortation in 10:7, he lays bare his deeply ingrained religious and political hatred for the "devils", "the bigots who divide us" and the ones "who have taken a fourth of our dominions".

He does not stop here. Craftily, he even roots for dynastic rule and Rahul Gandhi: "No doubt with the help of your extra god, you have done a fine job of bringing up your son. He has humility, decorum, diligence, and he takes the long and inclusive view. We do not like the idea of dynasty, but we abhor the idea of divisiveness more". And then he drops the inevitable big bombshell, not wanting to take even the slightest risk of being found wanting along any dimension: "And yes, as I bid you speed and strength, with the extra god by your side, may I make a final plea. You have given us of yourself, and of your son. Now will you kindly also give unto us your luminous daughter"!

Now you know why this angel of morality and ethics and values and integrity lay silent for the five years that the Congress was in power. Now you know why no sting operation that could taint the government in any manner was done by Tehelka. Tejpal was not alone in this deceit. You would have noticed that it was only after the elections that the media suddenly started openly talking about "wet/ATM" ministries where big money had been made by ministers; DMK was also openly called "Delhi Money for Karunanidhi" and roundly criticised for becoming a family business, conveniently forgetting that the Congress was exactly that in Delhi. Why was everyone quiet for five years while DMK ministers were allegedly looting their ministries openly? Why the noise after the elections? It does not take great imagination to understand that the media brought all the muck into public glare only to embarrass the DMK and pressure it to give up its demands for all these lucrative ministries again! Poor Congressmen couldn't be made to suffer for another five years in "dry" ministries, could they?

Make any amount of money, loot the nation, do anything, but don't do anything that annoys or harms mommy. That is the credo that seems to be guiding the likes of Tejpal. Saving Sonia is more important than saving India. Cut that bullshit of the devil that you want India to see elsewhere, Tejpal; we can see him in you.

Remember how Tehelka did the original sting when the BJP was in power and crowed about its dishonest party President who was filmed receiving Rs 1 lakh in cash? Remember how Defence Minister George Fernandes, an absolutely honest man, was hounded by the Congress for corruption without even a shred of evidence except that some money was paid by Tejpal's flunkies to Jaya Jaitley in his residence? Remember how just before the Assembly elections in Gujarat, Tehelka did another sting on Narendra Modi solely to ensure that the Congress party won? Who can forget the recent Pink Chaddi campaign launched by one of Tejpal's reporters to bring the Congress back on track in Karnataka? I will not be surprised if that sting on Varun Gandhi was also done by Tejpal, to literally force Muslims into the arms of the Congress in UP. As is well known now, that did happen. Of course credit for that has, expectedly, been given to the genius of Rahul Gandhi.

Doing sting operations is a costly and time consuming affair, particularly if they are aimed at getting stunning political rewards for your political masters. Many, many stings have to be done before you get the kind of dramatic result that you are looking for in just one of them. One can only imagine the kind of effort that Tejpal's Tehelka hounds must have put in over the years to bring windfall gains for the Congress party, while pretending to be on a great unbiased and selfless national mission. No prizes for guessing where the huge funding and possibly more could have come from, for long years.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal has exposed the rampant corruption that is prevalent in India's media. Apparently nothing comes for free. If you want coverage, you have to pay for it. And in the many cases where the media are closely aligned to a particular party, if you have a contrary view, you may not be covered even if you pay. The problem must be really serious if the WSJ sees "reporters, editors and newspaper owners holding the democratic process to ransom." That is why Paul Beckett is compelled to observe that a "corrupt press is both symptom and perpetrator of a rotten democracy".

Tarun Tejpal manifestly represents all that is rotten and stinking in India's media. Unfortunately he is not alone. There are many smug faces you can see out there, some hiding behind beards like him, who appear to be using the same route to riches and power. Recently in a TV discussion about Indian money in Swiss banks, Kapil Sibal, if my memory serves me right, told off a clever TV anchor that there were people even from the media who had parked ill-gotten money there. The problem is clearly far more serious than the glimpse that has been given in the WSJ.

When Shashi Tharoor sucks up to Sonia, everyone knows that like a seasoned bureaucrat, he is using that powerful, even if demeaning, tool to get rehabilitated respectably in India. But when a hardcore journalist like Tejpal crosses every single boundary of self-respect and honesty to do so, you have to question his motive.

Has this lick ass article been written out of gratitude for an overdose of Swiss fragrance received for a job well done or is it another you-pay-I-write job? Whatever it be, there is little doubt that it is a very loud signal that India's media and its democracy are far more rotten than ordinary Indians suspect.
'

When two nations attempt to settle through talks a six decade old dispute over a territory that one of them says "runs in the blood" of its citizens, that they have fought wars over and with a proxy war still on, a fair and enduring outcome is possible only if both remain equally grounded to the core realities that have determined claims and responses till now and that will continue to shape them in future too.

Unfortunately, on the Indian side there is a certain loss of focus accompanied by an almost escapist romanticism, a refusal to see the dark clouds that have always been circling the sun that they can see now. Perhaps the pressure generated by decades of terrorism is telling. Whatever be the reason, it cannot be denied that that many of India's analysts and policy makers are now increasingly inclined to take the easy, early, least disruptive way out of the many problems that confront India, without allowing possible long term repercussions to trouble them unduly.

Some of us clearly seem to have have forgotten that Pakistan was created solely on the basis of religion and that its claim over J&K is also based on religion alone, as is the demand for merger of the whole state with Pakistan/independence that ethnic Kashmiris living in the tiny valley of Kashmir have been making for decades. Secular India has somehow collectively moulded itself to pretend that the problem is primarily political in nature and that, as far as India is concerned, it should not view any solution through the prism of religion.

It is largely due to this elitist, even rootless, aversion to accepting and facing the communal soul of the problem, that Pakistan is well on its way to getting India to agree to a camel-in-the-tent deal that is not only not going to lead to peace but is, without doubt, going to create serious difficulties for India in the long run.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir is the problem. It is not satisfied with the part of the state that it already has. It wants the whole of it and has repeatedly demonstrated its unshakable resolve by trying to take it by use of force. Recognising that, under the present circumstances, it is not in a position to accomplish the objective that has driven it and its people for so many years by waging war, Pakistan now wants to achieve it through negotiations that are aimed at getting India to allow it to start making inroads into the Indian part of Kashmir. The logic is straightforward: once the basic principle of Pakistan's claim over the whole state is formally accepted in this manner by India, and a door opened by it that cannot subsequently be shut, Pakistan will then force India to yield more and more till it is all but evicted from the whole state.

Former Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri claimed recently that India and Pakistan were just a signature away from an accord on Kashmir in 2007. Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, on the other hand, in an interview to Karan Thapar last year, had revealed that a number of critical of details had still to be worked on before it could be concluded that an agreement was ready. Be that as it may, it is generally accepted that the deal involved demilitarisation along the LOC and within the state on both sides, maximum self-governance, free movement of Kashmiris within the whole state with their IDs, and some sort of joint mechanism comprising Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris on both sides of the LOC to oversee self-governance and other issues.

The “somewhat artificial in composition” princely state of Jammu and Kashmir came into existence in 1846 when the British sold most of the area included in the state to Gulab Singh for Rs 75 lakhs. In 1947, the then Maharaja of the state, with the support of the ethnic Kashmiri Muslim leader Sheikh Abdullah, decided to join India rather than Pakistan. The price that Abdullah successfully extracted from Pandit Nehru for this decision was the holding of a plebiscite and inclusion of Article 370 in the Indian constitution. These two steps, among many others, converted the state into a virtual Sheikhdom of the Abdullahs and ethnic Kashmiri Muslims.

In 1956, India was reorganised on a linguistic basis and all erstwhile princely states ceased to exist. Had the same principle been extended to J&K, it would have been reorganised into at least three states/union territories: Kashmiri speaking Kashmir Valley, Dogri, Rajasthani and Punjabi speaking Jammu, and Ladakh. But this was not done because such a reorganisation would have also been broadly along religious lines and, most significantly, left just the tiny Kashmir Valley under the control of Kashmiri Muslims who have nothing in common with people living in other parts of the only remaining unnatural state of India.

Paradoxically, Pakistan did exactly the opposite, giving precedence to ethnicity over religion to completely reshape the portion of the state that it had captured in 1948, and slice it surgically into three parts. The 72,496 sq km Gilgit-Baltistan area, the largest part of the state that was always administered directly by Pakistan, was was officially granted full autonomy in 2009. It is not a part of the original state. In 1963, Pakistan also unilaterally ceded the 5,800 sq km Shaksgam tract to China.

What Pakistan now calls Azad Kashmir (AK) is a narrow 13,297 sq km strip that is 400 km long, with a width varying from 16 to 64 km. What is extremely significant is that AK has 99 per cent ethnic Punjabi population comprising of Gujjars, Rajputs, Jats etc. These people have no linguistic, cultural or genetic affinity to the few ethnic Kashmiris, who are of Dardic origin, living there or in the Valley. AK, therefore, has as little claim to being called part of Kashmir as the parts that Pakistan has severed from the part of the original state under its control. It takes little intelligence to deduce that Pakistan has chosen to name this tiny tract Azad Kashmir only so that it can use it to pursue its claim over the part of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir that is with India.

With this background, we can better look at some of the implications and ramifications of the agreement that India and Pakistan were close to signing in 2007, and that might be almost identical to the one that Manmohan Singh seems to be in a hurry to sign to 'create history' in his lifetime, unmindful of the fact that history will be created but not of the type he has in mind.

• What constitutes J&K? Considering what Pakistan has done to its part of the state, will an agreement between India and Pakistan apply only to the almost microscopic AK part? Will Pakistan revert to Azad Kashmir the Northern Areas that it has amalgamated into Pakistan, or has India meekly resigned to this decapitation? Will an agreement also not tantamount to India giving de facto recognition to Pakistan's ceding of Shaksgam to China? No answers to these important questions can be traced in the public domain. But what is even more disturbing is that virtually no one is even asking them in India. This could well mean that India has tacitly accepted Pakistan's position. If so, that in itself is such a huge surrender that it is beyond understanding that India has so quietly lost forever even the pretence of a bargaining position over a huge area, not to mention the right to reclaim it for India should an opportune moment present itself, as it just might at some point of time. Who knows?
  
• Making LOC irrelevant. Given the different ethnicities of various regions of the state, there can be little doubt that the so-called free movement across the LOC will eventually be a predominantly one-way movement from tiny AK into not only the slightly bigger Valley but the whole of the huge state. Considering what happened to Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, non-Muslims from the Indian side will not only feel discouraged to travel to the Pakistan side of the LOC, but will also, one way or another, be prevented from doing so by fundamentalists there. Movement across LOC will be permitted on ID cards. India has Article 370 in place, so there will be almost no cases of false ID cards being issued to non-state subjects by the state government. On the Pakistani side, however, there is no similar restriction and Punjabis who dominate AK are little different from those from Punjab province, from where many more many have settled there after 1947. Given that Pakistan's real objective is to amalgamate J&K into Pakistan, what we will see is planned settlement over time of such people in parts of Jammu province where they can relatively easily merge with locals. Non-Muslims in the state will become even more marginalised than they are now. Terrorists will also drive them out from more and more far flung areas and close in on towns and cities over time.
  
• Joint Control.This is a misnomer. It will be nothing less than ceding control to Pakistan. On ground, control of Kashmir Valley has already been ceded involuntarily along many significant dimensions by India. The joint control mechanism will spread that span to Jammu and Ladakh regions too. Representatives of AK, Indian Kashmir, Pakistan and India will form part of this mechanism. Effectively, three out of four of these groups will be under Pakistan control ab initio. India will also, undoubtedly, be pressured to place religion-blind, 'secular' representatives in the body from its side. Need more be said? With such a body monitoring self-government, one can be sure that demands for more and more areas of governance to be liberated of Indian (notionally Pakistani too) control will be made, militants on call to drive home the point: that is how Pakistan will complete creeping acquisition of not just the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley but the rest of the state too.
• Demilitarisation. Demilitarisation of AK is virtually meaningless from the Indian point of view as there will no gain to India there along any dimension. It is the demilitarisation of the Indian side that will have devastating short and long term consequences. Almost immediately, thanks partly to joint control, the writ of the Indian state will become less than notional in the Muslim Kashmir Valley. Without a bullet being fired, the situation will become worse than it was in the early Nineties when Pakistani currency was openly used in parts of the Valley, and people had set their watches to Pakistan Time. The writ of militants - non-state actors if you like - will run unchecked over vast swathes. Coupled with free trans-LOC movement, it will also result in more and more areas being cleansed of Hindus with ease, often undetected, in a re-run of what happened to Kashmiri Pandits. After 20 years of fighting terrorists and after losing the lives of thousands of sons of India, its leaders will have done no more than quietly lay down arms and set the clock back to 1989, worse to follow.
  

Whichever way one looks at it, there is little doubt that Musharraf, the focused commando who never lost sight of his objective, nearly achieved on the negotiating table what he failed to in Kargil, what his proxy warriors failed to in the Valley. His successors have taken off from there and are driving a willing Manmohan Singh to sign where he could not in 2007.

Make no mistake: there is going to be no gain to India whatsoever from an agreement of the kind that Musharraf almost ambushed Indian leaders into signing. If 2010 is the result of the blunder that Indira Gandhi was lulled into making by a clever ZA Bhutto in 1972, be sure that 40 years down the line, the Musharraf trap is going to create an even more dangerous and intractable situation for India, unless of course, the matter is settled by a war before that.

Let us not be carried away by voices in India imagining that after the deal is through, the LOC will be magically converted into something like the non-existent borders in the European Community, with people moving freely and happily across as civilised human beings who are nicely settled and at peace with each other and the world. We must know that such voices are either ignorant of the realities of religion and history or are pretending to be so, to lull Indians into believing that once the LOC goes, Kashmir will become Europe. If such trust and love is absent across the settled international border that divides India and Pakistan, how can it blossom in an area that one desperately wants to snatch from the other? Put another way, if the two countries can make their borders like the European ones, will the LOC not dissolve on its own? Why has that not happened till now? Why is Pakistan arm twisting India into starting the other way round?

Does everyone in India's establishment not know the answers to these questions?

Is there anything, anything at all, to suggest that the establishment that controls Pakistan has abandoned its long-term objective of bleeding India through a thousand cuts, of waging a thousand year war against India? Have we already forgotten what happened in Mumbai in November 2008? Have not Pakistan's leaders, not militants, spoken subsequently of LeT's role beyond Kashmir, in the rest of India? Are we so dumb as to believe that the moment an agreement is signed over Kashmir, LeT and other terror outfits will disappear and not, in fact, claim victory and, aided by Pakistan's military, take terror to the next dimension to tell the world that Kashmiris are not satisfied with the concessions India has made and want more?

Most of us do not believe that as a nation we can be that dumb. But the direction in which things are moving and the almost total absence of public debate, even outrage, at the above proposals suggests that while some of us may be feigning blindness, some actually are, while most of the remaining are, if anything, apathetic. If that is correct, then we deserve the surrender that our leaders are pushing to get for us in the garb of a solution. That is not going to get us peace. Or honour.
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Related reading:
1. Indo-Pak talks: 'Nobel' thoughts
1. No price is too high, just 'love Pakistan'
2. A year after 26/11, calls for a strong Pakistan
3. Don't " beggar-my-buggering-neighbour", make him bigger
4. Musharraf's shockers on terror, Kashmir and Indian Muslims
5. The world is changing; Talibani mindset is not
'

An admission: this is a rather torpid post, the spiritlessness, the tiredness induced not by any physical ailment but by a sapping despondency and a sense of hopelessness about the speed at which India seems to be hurtling towards some sort of disaster, social upheaval, coup, even revolution, whose outcome one cannot even begin to visualise at this moment in time.

I have written many posts on the cancer of corruption that is eating into the vitals of this country. But to an outsider like me, as more and more layers of the rotten onion become visible, the bottom of the pit seems to get that much farther. What I had once thought was the Nadir, appears now to be just the shallow end of the stinking pool in which members of almost every single organ of the state - politicians, babus, judiciary, police - are splashing merrily along with that so-called watchdog, the media, that now appears to be in the vanguard of The Great Indian Robbery.

I simply do not have the heart, the enthusiasm, to pen another article with the passion and detail that I have earlier. Those who have the time and inclination may go through some of the older ones, links provided at the end of this post. But the matter is so grave that I cannot shut what I am seeing out of my mind altogether and remain no more than a passive, mute spectator and, thereby, a party to this plunder of India.

As we sit in the comforts of homes and theoretically debate, unaffected and from a safe distance, whether India faces a grave threat from Maoists whose writ already runs in varying degrees in 160 districts across eight states, we forget to notice that the real darkness, the real danger is right where each one of us is, in every corner of the country, and that most of us are actually responsible for it, one way or another. Just saying that lifts a burden off my soul and makes me feel good about myself. But, it does nothing to lessen the increasing and already unbearable load that we have placed on the soul of India.

We are the Khaoists, the incorrigibly corrupt, the shameless plunderers, the reckless looters who are hollowing this country from within. With gay abandon, as though it is our birthright. Many of us will, naturally, not admit publicly to being Khaoists, but as even a fool knows, only eunuchs and men of extraordinary virtue and character can stay away from the pleasures of a harem if they live there. Both are hard to spot these days. Many of the rest of us are India's shame. We are pushing India into an abyss at a furious pace because we are in a tearing hurry to catapult to riches with the nation's wealth, the money that should have fed, clothed, educated and empowered more than half of India's population that is still mired in the grime of inhuman poverty because of our unbridled, unprincipled ambition and greed that does not think before snatching a morsel from a hungry mouth, that conveniently shuts its eyes when it sees another doing so out of fear that it may spoil our party, disrupt our good life. Not one of us is blameless here.

I am feeling enervated. So I will leave you to go through some words of a few of those who live in and/or are fully cognizant of what goes on in the Khaoist's core. Make sense of what they are trying to say - and hide - and then decide for yourself whether there is hope yet, whether anyone can pull India out of this vortex at all before it is too late.

• Barkha Dutt. As a political journalist, I have to confess, that I am almost shock-proof when it comes to the entrenched corruption of many of our netas and the deals they strike to keep the wheels churning.
• Rajdeep Sardesai. We live in the age of institutionalised corruption. From politicians to judges, from senior bureaucrats to policemen, from corporate tycoons to petty officials, everyone it seems has a price... ‘paid news’ is not an overnight phenomenon that began with election ‘packages’... A political candidate who pays for favourable media coverage is not guaranteed victory, a corporate house through a ‘private treaty’ is almost guaranteed lasting immunity against journalistic ‘objectivity’...has led to a near-total breakdown of rules and standards.
• Tavleen Singh. At some point around the end of the eighties...everyone seemed to suddenly want to be in politics...the lure was filthy lucre. Indian politics had become the quickest way to make a fast buck...jewels from Cartier and Bvlgari, watches from Piaget and Patek Phillipe and handbags and shoes that cost more than an MP earns in a year.. grand mansions and hugely expensive vehicles... some travel only in private aircraft. The real money disappears into various corporate efforts that on the surface can look very legitimate. In almost every political household these days, there is at least one ‘corporate prodigy’... who thrives in the cloistered boundaries of crony capitalism...The sums we are talking of are so huge that they are beyond calculation.
• Shekhar Gupta. Like conquerors of the past, India’s politicians love to rule, and plunder cities... In older times, cities attracted conquering hordes who wanted to sack them for their riches. Now, in democracies, the political class knows that while their votes lie in the countryside, the real money sits in the cities and their real estate...If the new Andhra can get over the loss of Hyderabad, use what it gets in compensation and its own enterprise to build a new capital city...its politicians will figure soon enough that the money-making opportunity a new city offers is much greater than an old metro nearing saturation, howsoever energetic.
• Sagarika Ghose. (on Twitter) sad truth is media is too tied to advertising. That's why when it cos to corporates our lips are mostly sealed. not a good business model. profession has become terribly degraded. am very disillusioned! i joined in early 90s when press still meaningful.
  

Are Barkha Dutt and others really "shock-proof" to corruption? Their silence and thereby complicity applies only to corruption at the highest levels where the sums involved "are beyond calculation." Where petty officials and petty amounts are involved, where a cop taking a Rs 100 bribe is concerned, these guys aggressively carry out sting operations and confidently con the nation into believing that they are sparing no efforts to expose corruption and clean up the rot. Why this Janus-faced approach? Can they even begin to claim that they have remained "temptation-proof", not just for big bucks but entry into the inner circle of India's most powerful - and corrupt - politicians, whose reflected power enables them to almost 'terrorise' those on the lower rungs of political ladder with an arrogance that you will not see anywhere else in the civilised world?

Is it surprising that Shashi Tharoor can stand in the Lok Sabha and say with a straight face that it is ideals that brought him back to India after over three decades abroad and a failed attempt to become UN Secretary General, and despite the stench of corruption and nepotism emanating from him in the IPL scandal? Is it surprising that politicians are saying that the media, babus and judges rank much higher than them when it comes to graft? As the hastily buried and till now not denied allegation about the manner in which Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi negotiated to get the current Raja of corruption the telecom portfolio indicates, and as is also evident from what you have read above, at the very top, corrupt politicians and journalists are like Siamese twins. Had it been otherwise, corruption would not have become the uncontrollable bush fire that it has.

I can say no more. I know this is a poor, illogical, abrupt way to end an article. Perhaps I should take a break and come back to finish it with a flourish. But why? Why should I pretend to be "shock-proof" to this pervasive rot and close this piece too with detached objectivity, when my mind is filled with a numbing mixture of revulsion, anger and helplessness at what Khaoists have done and are doing to my country, the way they are plundering its future to make their own? I think it will be best if your comments complete this unfinished story, if possible with hope.
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Previous related posts:
1. Shashi Tharoor: making a 'difference'
2. Politics and media: a new nadir
3. ND Tiwari: much more than a sex scandal
4. Covering up the mother of all corruption scandals
5. Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous poverty
6. Sink sting operations that stink
7. Capital punishment, not gain, for the corrupt
8. Corrupt, colonial India faces volcano
9. As long as there is aloo corrupt will be Laloo
10. Modi and Reddy: the choice is clear
11. Maytas: truth inverted, greed is king
12. 1000 times President's salary for India's babus
13. Tarun Tejpal: extra God and the Devil
14. Wake up (poem)
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