India Retold

During the Commonwealth Games, many parts of Delhi began to look 'world class'. That was not because of the many flyovers, the Games Village, the sporting facilities or the potted plants that visitors saw, but because of what they did not: dogs, beggars and jhuggis. Stray dogs and beggars, being portable, were banished from Delhi while the ugly jhuggis were banished from sight by giant billboards. Basically we wanted to make-believe that if something ain't visible, it don't exist.

Dogs and beggars have returned and jhuggis are back in full view. No one is upset because everyone has been seeing them all since they were born. But, yesterday, something else came back into view, something that we thought did not exist because it hasn't been visible for a long time. So when the Honourable Supreme Court decided to show it, some of us took off against what they believe is is a very regressive and oh-so-desi expression that is insensitive to the dignity of a woman etc.

The Apex Court, to put it briefly, has put long-term live-in relationships at par with marriage in so far as the right of a woman to claim maintenance is concerned. It goes without saying that parameters of such a relationship need to be well defined. To my mind that is what the court has done too. But in doing so, it has put in front of our faces the long forgotten word "keep", and found itself at the receiving end.

I simply fail to understand why women should be so incensed with the use of this word. Indira Jaisingh says in Hindi it means 'Rakhail' and, therefore, is "male chauvinist and derogatory," and that in the 21st century the Supreme Court should not use words like these! Will keeps stop being kept if they are called, say, "paid pleasure providers"? Will beggars stop begging if they are called "donation-seekers" or something like that?

A live-in relationship is one where two people live together full-time as equal partners and engage socially as a couple too. Sex is not a paid-for commodity and the relationship subsists due to mutual consent, not due to the obligation of one party to accept demands of the other in exchange for compensation asked for and given. For alimony, therefore, a live-in woman gets the rights of a wife.

Who is a keep? A person who is paid by another for providing exclusive sexual services to him. One who receives money for such services from more than one client is called a whore, hooker, prostitute, sex worker, call girl etc. Since 'fidelity' is expected from a keep till her services are required, she is often provided shelter too, among other things. To put it bluntly, a keep is a one-man-at-a-time hooker.

Has this practice stopped? Or has it merely acquired an acceptability and respectability not associated with the word because of the background keeps of olden times came from, and because the West has made the deal glamorous, even aspirational? We know, for example, that Hugh Hefner's teen twin keeps -- and many others like them -- were called his girl friends.

Is that why willing toys of the rich of today, some in the business because of monetary greed, not need -- and a few others -- are enraged because, all of a sudden, sexy billboards have been removed and they are being exposed to and made to look at a reality they had put out of their consciousness? Is that not why we as a people don’t like movies like Slumdog Millionaire because they force us to see the filth of the slums that have become invisible to us even though we pass by them every day? Is it not because we want to continue to live in denial by whitewashing what we need to wash?

Times have changed. Today many women are independent and rich. They too can afford to keep -- and some do I believe -- male keeps. What should we call them? Boyfriends? Is that going to make them any different? Or will it help them too to be given the status and entitlements that are due to a husband, including alimony, from their keepers?!

To keep or not to keep the word keep is the question. A rose by any other name remains a rose. Some will argue that saying 'shit' in English is not the same as saying it in Hindi and that 'keep' falls in the latter category. Should we put up the billboards again?
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Two things stand out in the front page of The Times of India of October 20, 2010. One is the boast of Robert Vadra that he can "definitely win an election from anywhere" and the second is that his "exclusive" interview has been given top billing by the newspaper.

Businessman Vadra's cockiness does not come as a surprise, nor does the fact that one of India's leading newspapers has chosen to put him on the pedestal it has. Both obscenities tell a tale of a steepening decline that, if not reversed, will inevitably lead to the demise of India's democracy.

The shocking Commonwealth Games loot and the sordid drama in Karnataka have, yet again, brought to fore the reality that politics is now almost wholly about business. And business in India, as we all know, is about keeping the money in the family. The ownership virus has, therefore, spread deep into politics, with dynasties, big and small, sprouting everywhere.

The Nehru-Gandhi family, supposedly steeped in modern, liberal values, started the slide that has now become an avalanche of sorts across India. If Laloo Yadav is promoting his son and Bal Thackeray his grandson, it has nothing to do with Biharis, Marathi manoos, Indians or India. It is only about protecting and enhancing family wealth 'for generations to come,' as Amitabh Bachchan's says in the Binani Cement ad. The cadre-based BJP, late to the dynastic party, is making amends. Only the communists remain unaffected by the dynastic disease, but in their case rigour mortis has already set in.

There is no better recent example of this rot than Jagan Reddy who, thanks to the active help of his Chief Minister father YSR Reddy, has become easily the fastest growing businessman ever in India, with his Income Tax jumping from Rs 2.92 lakhs in financial year 2008-09 to an unbelievable Rs 84 crores for the first six months of the current financial year. Note that this is the 'white' component of his income. Considering the fact that bribes are mostly paid in cash, one can safely conclude that in the six years that YSR was CM, the father-son duo successfully plundered Andhra Pradesh like no one ever has. Yet, no questions have been asked, no sting operation done, no inquiries ordered. In fact the sole inquiry that had to be ordered against one of YSR Reddy's principal 'financiers', Ramalinga Raju, only because he could not cook the books of Satyam any longer, has, not surprisingly, run aground and is not likely to unearth anything against YSR or any other politician.

With politics proving to be such a risk-free, even though criminal, route to astronomical riches in super quick time, how can India remain the democracy that its founding fathers wanted it to be? It has to become an oligarchy. Of plunderers.

What we are witnessing now is the shaking out of ordinary Indians from the top rungs of power and wealth. It began slowly with Indira Gandhi, but, with the economy expanding rapidly and the corruption and plunder becoming badges of honour to brandish and brag about without even the tinge of fear of getting caught and put behind bars, it has gathered a momentum that no one would have imagined a few years ago. This sorry development could not have taken place without the active involvement and support of the liberal media that have embraced colonially-seeded social norms, repelled the egalitarian values that they were meant to imbibe, and joined the plunder party that, as watchdogs, they are supposed to bust. That is why a Vadra figures where he does, in the manner that has. That is why colossal corruption is winked at in the manner that it is and buried where it should never be.

The new rajas, big and small, are taking control of India, not as benevolent rulers in the mould of the Ram that Mahatma Gandhi wanted them to, but as daring, no-limits, no-conscience robbers. Elections have become tools to enhance the hold and power of dynasties. The naive poor are being bought with TVs, cycles, goats etc that you and I pay for. Thanks to the arithmetic of elections, the Muslim community has been reduced to a nautch girl, as it were, to be lured into their beds at election time, again with your money and mine.

Whore-ism is the new synonym of secularism, plunder of politics. What we call democracy is now increasingly of and for dynasties. In the new order, the 'by' people can only be subjects, not sovereigns.
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Related reading:
1. Elections 2009: Dynasties empowered, not youth
2. Women's Bill: Empowering gharanas not women
3. The more Rahul's Congress changes, the more it's the same

"Let the Games begin." With these words of President Pratibha Patil, the Delhi Commonwealth Games, surrounded by the thick fog of corruption, began. Three hours and a spectacular Opening Ceremony later, the heavy clouds of doubt about its success had vanished and even the most die hard pessimists had become ecstatic believers.

When the near-flawless Games concluded two weeks later, the fireworks that lit up Delhi's sky symbolised the jubilation in Indian hearts that had been more than doubled by the unexpected record haul of medals by unsung India's sportsmen who had been almost forgotten before the Games began. Indian chests puffed with pride as the whole world applauded India for delivering 'world class' games.

"Let the inquires begin", said Dr Manmohan Singh immediately after, keeping his promise that those guilty of corruption -- nay loot -- would not be spared. There was much joy then too, and the media went hammer, tongs and gongs after Suresh Kalmadi, Chairman of the Organising Committee, the only guy against whom an inquiry has been ordered, report to be submitted in three months. In the din of the cheering that has followed, few have seen through the elaborate smokescreen that is being created to protect everyone else, particularly Urban Development Minister Jaipal Reddy, Sports Minister MS Gill and, above all, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

Let's get a few facts straight. The overall budget of the Games, most of it for developing the infrastructure of Delhi, was around Rs 70,000 crores. Of this, Suresh Kalmadi was allotted a mere 1,600 crores, as his job was to simply run the Games after all stadiums and the Games Village, built under the watch of others, were handed over to him. Other spent nearly 50 times what he did, almost 98% of the total expenditure was incurred by them. But, inexplicably, no one is now talking about the massive cost overruns and loot there.

Kalmadi is manifestly guilty of corruption; no one has forgotten the stories about expensive toilet papers etc and the dubious contracts that were awarded by his team. For his many apparent acts of commission, he must be punished swiftly. There is little doubt that he will be too, but only politically. He is a political light weight who can be dispensed with, if not forever, at least till we forget, and that will be pretty soon. I don't believe any charge that can send him to prison will be allowed to stick. If Kalmadi sings, many will be singed. So, like it happens all the time, nothing will happen to nail him legally.

Kalmadi has become the fall guy, the dirty shirt that is being used to show how white the shirts of others are. Yesterday he was snubbed by the PM, a personally honest man, and today Sonia Gandhi has done the same. He is out of all photo frames, as if his mere presence will make others guilty of corruption too. The guy with the smallest budgetary outlay and, therefore, the least 'take' is being torn apart so that the big fish, without the knowledge and blessings of whom the Great Delhi Loot would not have been possible, can not only be sheltered and saved but also made to emerge smelling good.

The whitewashing of Sheila Dikshit has begun in right earnest with NDTV running a full interview with her and Barkha Dutt praising her for tucking in her saree to get Kalmadi's dirty Games Village cleaned up, even though Tejinder Khanna, Delhi's Lt Governor says she doesn't deserve the credit, all conveniently forgetting that it was the unprecedented rains that miraculously stopped just in time and saved the day for India. It is evident that Shiela Dikshit cannot be allowed to go under for corruption. Political power in India's capital and seven Lok Sabha seats are at stake, at the very least. When you add the ripple-effect and the fact that her indictment will translate into that of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi too, you know that the media is going to work overtime to make sure that India will get to see only to that part of her saree that is spotlessly white.

Gill and Reddy have already been forgotten. Mani Shankar Aiyar, the man who slept over CWG files for years when he was Sports Minister, thereby facilitating the last minute ballooning of the budget and the attendant loot, has been rewarded for his efforts with a dubious Rajya Sabha seat even though he lost in the Lok Sabha elections. Rahul Gandhi, who refused to follow in the footsteps of his father and take charge of the Games, and who cleverly kept totally away from it, is basking in the praise being showered on him for imperiously allowing everyone to rob this nation; no blame can stick to him because he did nothing.

The inquiries have barely begun. But, already there is a feeling of Déjà Vu. You can feel it in your bones that not one 'Dilli ka Thug' is going to caught and punished. At best a petty official or two will be booked for deviating from procedure. Kalmadi will at worst fade into opulent anonymity. The books will remain cooked, ignoble intentions and criminal acts concealed. Our complicit media will soon say 'cut' and move on to something else that will distract India's attention and cover Congress' 'cuts'. And India will soon bid for an even bigger gold mine: Olympics.
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Before Mumbai was attacked on 26/11, the response of the government every time terrorists struck used to be sickeningly identical and helpless. Home Minister Shivraj Patil would blame Pakistan, his deputy would say that the hand of the ISI was visible, the NSA would either remain silent or would waffle that there was credible evidence of Pakistan's involvement and declare that the LeT needed to be destroyed. Their job, they believed, ended there; in blaming Pakistan they had achieved a victory for India. Not surprisingly, nothing whatsoever was done by them for five long years to strengthen India's intelligence and security apparatus or to deter Pakistan from prosecuting its proxy war.

After 26/11, P Chidambaram woke up a comatose Home Ministry and set in motion badly needed reforms and organisational changes that should have been put in place decades back. But, he seems to be the lone ranger in a paralysed foreign policy and national security establishment that seems to be determined to pursue just the dream course that Pakistan would like India to till its objectives are achieved.

The net result of this continuing inertia and muddle is that Pakistan has come to believe, rightly, that India's leaders are utterly weak and mortally afraid of holding Pakistan to account for any hostile offensive action including an open limited war like the one Musharraf unleashed in Kargil in 1999.

It may be recalled that immediately after 26/11, Pakistan had denied that those involved in the attack were Pakistanis. Later, when confronted with the evidence provided by Kasab and the Americans, and rattled and worried about India's response, in unison they all -- leaders, experts, journalists -- started saying that they were non-state actors, rogue elements of the ISI, and that Pakistan itself was a victim of terror.

Our guys then, noises apart, happily latched onto the 'rogue elements' lie because it saved their face more than Pakistan's; it provided them with just the excuse they were looking for to avoid disturbing the comfortable status quo they had spent a lifetime protecting and promoting. They were keen to get back to kebabs and conversation -- familiar terrain, so what it if meaningless and totally unlikely to yield anything to India's advantage? The net result was disasters, first at Sharm-el-Sheikh where Pakistan turned the tables on them by getting them to talk about Baluchistan, and later at Islamabad where Foreign Minister SM Krishna was publicly humiliated and 26/11 was successfully converted into a non-event.

This is what I had written a few months back: "A vital fact that seems to have escaped most of us that there is no space for "rogue elements" in any military; they are summarily and severely punished because any challenge to the laid down rules, roles and leaders cannot be accepted under any circumstances. If soldiers start breaking rank, the very foundations of a military organisation and its command and control structure are destroyed, and it ceases to be an effective instrument of war. So, we have to be very clear that wherever the involvement of the ISI is revealed, it has to be of the organisation, not individuals. There is no room for buying Pakistan's argument that some rogue soldiers have acted on their own. It is simply not possible, except in a rare case, nipped with swift punishment. Has anyone ever heard of that happening in Pakistan, ever?"

The latest revelation that the Interpol has issued a Red Corner Notice for two serving Majors of the Pakistan Army for their involvement in 26/11 confirms this. Let us also remember that this is only the tip of the huge iceberg of deceit that Pakistan has been able to successfully conceal -- or was it allowed to by the Indian establishment that knew about it all along?-- for years about the complete involvement of its military, including the ISI, in terror operations against India in Kashmir and elsewhere. The needle of culpability points right to the top of the military pyramid.

For those in the Indian establishment still willing to give Pakistan the benefit of doubt or, worse, intent on making Indians believe that things are much better than they are, someone with a sharp sense of the weak minds of Indian leaders has removed even the fig leaf. Once again.

Last year, Musharraf had Karan Thapar -- trapped in his own limited and distorted view, script and agenda -- so distracted by his sartorial elegance that even though he made some terribly shocking statements about Kargil, terror and role of the LeT, along with state of Pakistan, in protecting the interests of Indian Muslims -- not Kashmiri Muslims mind you -- that the latter simply was not able to even acknowledge anything offensive Musharraf was saying. To make matters worse, no one in the Indian establishment too made any noise at all, despite the fact it was a former President who had made such provocative policy statements.

Emboldened, Musharraf now says -- overlook lame subsequent denials -- that Pakistan has trained terrorists to fight against India in Kashmir, that he has no regrets for the Kargil intrusion by Pakistan's military. He also says that the LeT, a Pakistani Punjabi terror outfit that launched the 26/11 attack, is rightly fighting for the 'freedom' of Kashmiris. His justification, openly stated, is that since India is not prepared to resolve the Kashmir dispute in a peaceful manner (in the manner that Pakistan wants it to, one must add), Pakistan has a right to promote its own interest.

Now that is a crystal clear statement of intent that Pakistan has and will use all means available, including war, to settle Kashmir in its favour when an opportunity presents itself or can be created by its military establishment. Fear gone, the gloves are off. Musharraf is mocking and daring India's leaders, indeed the whole nation, to stop Pakistan, if they have the balls. And what has been the response of those looking after our foreign policy? The same 'We-always-knew-it' yelp, as if that is a Daisy Cutter that will flatten and deter Pakistan's leaders from doing what they have been for decades.

Musharraf is not wrong when he says that Pakistan won Kargil. Lt Gen Krishna Pal is right when he says that India lost that war. Having driven the Pakistanis out of Indian territory at a speed that no one initially expected, India failed to make Pakistan pay for its misadventure by not moving into, say, Gilgit-Baltistan, so as to get it to the negotiating table on its knees. On the contrary, after Musharraf seized power, Vajpayee legitimised Kargil and gave on a platter to Musharraf the victory his troops had failed to, by agreeing to give concessions that no Indian Prime Minister had ever even thought of. The attacker was rewarded, the attack justified.

If the whole of Kashmir is a dispute, then POK and the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan are as up for grabs for India as the Valley is for Pakistan. If Pakistan says its proxy and hot wars to wrest the Valley are justified, then it automatically gives India a licence to use the same means to reclaim parts of the state under Pakistani occupation. But India has not even whispered this counter, much less think about giving it concrete shape, if only with the limited objective of getting Pakistan off the Valley's back for good.

India's war against Pakistan over Kashmir is not going to be won by India in the Valley; it has to be won elsewhere. The US is not going to win it for us, nor is our tremulous response to Pakistan's continuing aggression. Pakistan, as should be now clear to everyone, cannot, will not, stop doing what it has been to get India on it knees. Emboldened by India's cowardice, it has now stopped even pretending otherwise. It has to be made to stop. Our so-called 'nuanced responses' befitting 'big, serious nations that do not run foreign policy for cheap thrills' -- which practically has meant doing nothing to create even a ripple in the disadvantageous-to-India statu quo -- have not yielded any dividend thus far, will not yield any in future too.

After 9/11 the US did not talk nuance. More recently, despite the fact that supplies for its troops in Afghanistan go through Pakistan, it has made it clear to its leaders that "all bets are off" if there is another terror attack on the US." Our netas, babus and diffident generals need to awaken to the fact that there is only one language that Pakistani generals, as also their civilian leaders who talk and behave like tribal chieftains, speak and understand. They are not hiding their 'Pak' intentions. The communication mismatch is at our end. The onus to remove it is on us. India is under attack, not Pakistan.

I too have something to say to add to the debate that has begun in the wake of the Ayodhya verdict which, in sum, accepts the core Hindu claim over the garb griha where idols of Ram Lalla are presently installed, and respects the fact that a mosque stood over the disputed land for centuries.

The verdict has surprised everyone because they were all expecting a judgment that would lead to Hindus being asked to remove the idols. That is perhaps why the media was tasked to prepare Hindus to accept the expected verdict, by coining catchy slogans like "India has moved on," "India first" etc. The poorly camouflaged idea of the campaign seemed to be to create a division between ordinary, disinterested Hindus and strident Hindu religious and political groups so that adequate pressure could be brought to bear upon the latter to compel them to accept the verdict as well as blunt their efforts to mobilise Hindu opinion to thwart any move to shift the idols. So isolated, it was thought, such groups could then be conclusively defeated by berating them 24/7 as the 'lunatic fringe' etc, and the land handed over to Muslims after tempers had cooled down.

This strategy was, undoubtedly, formulated by non-Hindus who have little connect with and understanding of the religion of their birth, and the feelings of the hundreds of millions whose faith remains unshaken despite centuries of oppression and even ridicule.

Can the idol of Ram Lalla really be shifted from the sanctum sanctorum? When asked this question during a TV debate, Najeeb Jung did not take more than a second to say: "impossible".

This is the central point that has escaped attention of the 'secular' brigade. That is why some of them are busy trashing the verdict on all kinds of specious grounds and spewing venom that can only lead to communal polarisation and violence, something that will politically harm only the Congress, the very party they believe they are trying to protect. Why have they missed the core? In my view, it is primarily because they are looking at the dispute in narrow contemporary political and electoral terms alone.

The movement to reclaim what many Hindus believe is the birthplace of Ram has a near-unbroken history almost ever since Babar built the mosque in 1528. Whenever an opportunity has presented itself as a result of the decline/fall of Muslim rule, Hindus have attempted to re-claim the janmasthan. According to some accounts even Shri Guru Gobind Singh and the Marathas were connected to it. 'Secular' records from the time the British conquered Avadh are also available, the most famous being the 1886 ruling of British judge who euphemistically observed: "It is most unfortunate that a mosque should have been built on a land specially held sacred by Hindus." One can imagine what he would have said and ruled had the land been sacred to Christians.

Unfortunately, present day secularists have tried to re-invent this centuries-old deeply religious movement to suit their ideological and political predilections. As a result of their efforts and the falsification and sanitisation of India's history by historians hungry for government favours and global recognition, many young Indians are being misled into believing that the Hindu view is a primarily a political creation of the Sangh Parivar while the Muslim one is religious; the faith of Muslims is being hurt, not that of Hindus! What better example can there be of this grotesque distortion than that of Vir Sanghvi who wants India to believe that "Ayodhya movement was a farce designed to win votes for a declining BJP by focusing on a Ram Janmabhoomi which few of us had ever heard of."

It is mostly due to this belittling, even dismissing of the history of the struggle and faith of Hindus and its reduction to a petty electoral fight that positions of some Muslims have hardened over time and an amicable solution has not been found.

Thankfully, all the three judges of the Allahabad High Court did not lose sight of the larger canvas, most of which lies outside the small window that some analysts have been expending all their energies in. They have individually recognised in their own way that the garb griha has been, is and will remain almost as sacred to many Hindus as the Kaaba is to Muslims. That being so, there is no way that any mortal court can order removal of idols of Ram Lalla from there and expect the order to be carried out. If anyone thinks the Supreme Court will do it and Hindus will simply forget the history they know and the sacrifices that many generations have made over centuries, then he is only setting the stage for destroying the very secularism he is trying to build on a false base.

Secular historians would do well to remember that, despite their efforts, Hindus have not and will not forget the wounds of history, even though they have moved on more than we patronisingly give them credit for. As Madhu Trehan said during a TV debate recently, thousands of temples were destroyed by Muslim invaders who built mosques over what she called "sacred Hindu space". Evidence is available and visible even to the unlettered everywhere. But, barring tiny voices, Hindus of Free India have, on the whole, healed their wounds on their own. No one is asking for the return of all such places whose real estate value alone will run into many lakh crore rupees. The Parliament, representing the voice of the Hindu majority, has also shown great magnanimity and given the healing touch by unilaterally freezing the status of all places of worship as on August 15, 1947.

Muslims really have little to give or fear.
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That is why I am among those who believe that the wise and pragmatic Ayodhya verdict offers a real opportunity to Hindus and Muslims to close an unpleasant chapter of India's history and push ahead together in the real sense. Isolhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifated voices proclaiming triumph or crying defeat will always be there in any society. Rather than maliciously use them as excuses to prolong the agony of both communities and create fresh fissures, we should ignore them and use the base provided by the truly learned judges to truly "move on".
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Readers may also like to read:
1. Ayodhya: a matter of faith
2. Is India not free yet?
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