TWITTER WARS: OLD MEDIA VS NEW

There is a new watch dog in town. Its bark may be small but its bite is big. 140 characters can and do pack a real punch, particularly when both sides are at each other at the same time, in near real-time.

India's old media, the traditional watch dog that many believe has become the pet dog of at least some of those it is meant to watch, is under scrutiny like it has never been. Journalists, long used to writing columns in isolation or imperiously holding centre stage in studios, with those invited taking great care to not annoy them by holding a mirror, have been hit by the unforgiving Twitter gale that has rattled some of them so much that they, the loudest proponents of freedom of speech, the staunchest opponents of any code of conduct for themselves, have begun to cry that the unfettered freedom that the net provides to everyone should be restrained.

There is no doubt that, as is to be naturally expected in any genuinely free environment, there are some individuals on Twitter and the net who tend to get more than abusive or create mischief. That is a hazard that has to be accepted by those who volunteer to be on Twitter to enrich themselves by engaging in a two-way interaction with thousands of others from a wide spectrum of the society. Here they cannot herd in a carefully chosen audience or abruptly shut out or ignore those who change the terms of debate and uproot them from their comfort zones. This is not proving to be easy for some of India's leading journalists who have been rattled by strident criticism, day in and out, 24/7.

For the first time ever, not only have they become subjects of microscopic public scrutiny, but are also not in a position to hide from the whole world the unrestrained views of those who find them wanting, even dishonest. This new experience, dramatically different from the ones they face in real life, where no one wants to put his hand into their beehives, is making them mad.

The first journalist who vented his frustration was the pompous Vir Sanghvi who, in his characteristic abusive style, branded many bloggers and tweeters as "sad losers who escape their pathetic little lives by abusing other people on the net." Soon, rattled perhaps by criticism of what many believe are demeaning, obsequious pro-Family views that he tries to sell as objective analysis, he accused them of being pro-BJP while lamenting the fact that there were few pro-Congress bloggers to respond to them with equal ferocity. Sagarika Ghose, to everyone's surprise, then set Twitter on fire, not with her much practiced smile, but by vitriol of the worst kind that exposed the ugly canines behind the charming façade, the class condescension beneath the egalitarian pretence. Twitter-world had got its Queen of Hate, the queen bee who attracted swarms of bees to deliver not honey but venom of the kind she thought she alone had the right to spew from her perch as the wife of perhaps India's wealthiest and most ambitious corporate journalist.

Corporatisation of the media has created a new breed of journalists who have become immensely rich in double-quick time. The jhola wallas have become 'suitcase' wallas. Rajdeep Sardesai, for example, has already made himself worth a few hundred crore rupees legally (See pages 51/370 and 112/370). One can imagine how some others might be doing. Let us not even get into the vast ocean of paid news that had probably once prompted Kapil Sibal, if I remember correctly, to tell a journalist on TV that some of his tribe too had stashed money in Swiss banks. That is why, while they all shout that judges and politicians should declare their legally declared 'white' assets, none of them wants the same disclosure norms applied to them. Perhaps they know what that will do to their hollow claims of objectivity, impartiality and honesty, and middle class pretensions.

The new Sultans and Spouses of the media - arrogant, intolerant, patronising - are fuming because they are being questioned, interrogated, probed, exposed, by ordinary guys who they want to summarily dismiss just because they are much below their material station, but cannot. So, they are hitting back in the only manner they have been employing successfully in sanitised studios and out-of-reach news offices: put their attackers on the defensive by accusing and abusing them viciously, and showering praise on members of their own fraternity who are groveling for crumbs.

The liberal mask has been violently thrown away along with the much quoted Voltaire; they were meant to be used only to justify their own right to offend and insult. Now that they are on the receiving end, they are discovering that the bite is actually unbearable. Now had this pain led to some sort of a realisation that they need to first exercise restraint and treat people with dignity, the ongoing Twitter war would have ended. But, the arrogance of money, power and reach has seeped into their very souls. They are not going to back off just because a few unseen guys on Twitter are forcing them to look within; there are far too many known and powerful faces in the real world who are going to keep them from falling off their fake pedestals.

That is why this call for some sort of code of conduct to be imposed - they won't use the word - on those who follow them on Twitter and say what they feel and not what they get paid to vomit. I hope that does not happen. Just as readers of news papers and viewers of TV do not have to read and watch what they don't want, those on the net, including Twitter, have the same freedom. If some journalists of the old media can't take the heat, too bad; they should get off Twitter, stop browsing the net and get back into their bubbles, professional and social. The new media, growing bigger and more powerful with every passing day, will not miss them at all.

For those interested in checking out Twitter Wars themselves, a look at the tweets on the pages of the following individuals (in alphabetical order) will make for a good start:

• Barkha Dutt
  
• Kanchan Gupta
• Rajdeep Sardesai
• Sagarika Ghose (w/o Rajdeep, for those who don't know)
• Swapan Dasgupta
• Vinod Sharma (that's me)

Related reading: New media: is the Congress really a 'loser' already?

NEW MEDIA: IS CONGRESS REALLY A 'LOSER' ALREADY?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture: Indian Bloggers Nest
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LEADERSHIP VACUUM AT THE HT SUMMIT

If a picture can say what a thousand words can't, this is one of them.

Taken at the recent Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi and given top billing across six columns on a page that bore the heading "Vision 2020", in the paper of November 01, 2009, it tells a story that is quite different from the one that the man who got it published wanted to.

Seen in the picture are two leader role models chosen by HT, Bollywood actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan. And guess who is in the middle? A certain mediocre journalist who is known more for his powerful connections and unconcealed political affiliation than for any insightful work that he has churned out in his long and understandably successful career. His strategic presence in the picture should also tell you something about the media that you always wanted to know but did not know whom to ask.

To me this picture symbolises, more than anything else, the existing and emerging leadership vacuum in this country. It also depicts the central role that the media is playing, as asked to perhaps, to deflect the attention of the nation from it. What better way to opiate Indians than with the help of a glamorous Bollywood couple?

Will anyone be surprised if HT has actually been paid handsomely for this seemingly free publicity ahead of Kareena and Saif's forthcoming film?

Here is a shot of the photo as it appeared in HT:

POLITICALLY MILKING 'MUMBAI'

The Mumbai controversy is back to the fore again, ostensibly due to what Raj Thackeray did to Karan Johar. Now no civilised person will support that open display, yet again, of goondagardi, but let us also accept that a large portion of the blame for everything unpleasant that has happened after Bombay became Mumbai must go to a few westernised Indians and the media they populate.

Had Bombay been renamed by a Congress government, you can be sure that not one of them would have uttered a word. Did you hear anyone say anything about the proposed Rs 350 crore Shivaji Memorial or the naming of the Sea Link after Rajiv Gandhi? Has anyone ever protested about almost half the prominent landmarks/institutions etc in Delhi being named after four members of one family? Is that wholesale re-naming not destroying the character of that great and ancient city? Why has the arrogant dadagiri of the Congress party not been visible to the media for fifty years?

Why is it only when a non-Congress government does something that knives magically appear from nowhere in the hands of the usual suspects who dominate powerful sections of the media? Is it an accident that with elections due in a couple of days in Maharashtra, they are out again in full force?

Today morning, there was a column by Vir Sanghvi in the Hindustan Times on the Bombay/Mumbai issue. In perfect tandem - and not for the first time - Barkha Dutt did her 'We the People' show at prime time in the evening about whether Mumbai is losing its cosmopolitan character. The unstated motive in both cases seemed the same: make sure that those who read/watch them go back convinced that it is a very bad idea to vote for anyone but the Congress.

In the previous column that Sanghvi had written in May last year to convince Indians that Bombay was the original name of the city, he had used such warped logic that I was forced to write a post to counter it. In today's column, he has wisely dumped that argument, but has still made the absurd statement that while in other places, the change in name is cultural, in Bombay/Mumbai "it is violently political"! How is the renaming of everything after one family cultural? How much have people like him who have been stridently opposing the renaming of Bombay and insisting on calling it 'Bombay' contributed to the hardening of stands, leading to violence? Had they kept shut like they have in all other cases, would such a non-issue have continued to occupy so much of media and public space?

I am re-posting below the post that I had written in response to Vir Sanghvi's column last year. You will be surprised to learn that the British often arrogantly mutilated the names of many Indian towns and cities. Very few remember that now because correct spellings and pronunciations were quietly adopted immediately after Independence in most cases.

Bombay was one of the few exceptions. However, since many original inhabitants of Mumbai believed that the name of the city, or the place where the city came up, was originally Mumbai, it was finally renamed in 1996, 49 years after Independence.

Thirteen years later, some people are still hell bent on politically milking 'Mumbai'.
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Vir Sanghvi’s argument in the Hindustan Times of May 17, 2008, that the name ‘Bombay’ was of British origin and had no Indian reference point pre-dating the British came as a surprise. Karan Thapar also made a somewhat similar argument in the same paper on June 07, 2008. He, in fact, included Madras and Calcutta also in the list. Both these gentlemen seem to be perturbed by the ‘Indianisation’ of almost the last vestiges of the Raj in the renaming of Bombay to what many believe is its original name, Mumbai. Surprisingly, there was no such emotional outcry when Connaught Place and Connaught Circus in Delhi(still not called by its original name, Dilli or Dehli) were renamed after Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, even though their original names had no Indian roots at all and they were built from a scratch by the British.

Gujaratis and other Indians have always called Bombay ‘Mumbai’ and ‘Bambai’ respectively, long before the city got its present name formally. One always thought that Bombay was another British corruption of an Indian name till one read Sanghvi’s column. If he is to be believed, “Indians have a tradition of corrupting city names when we use them in different languages” like the Gujaratis have done in case of Mumbai and Amdavaad(Ahmedabad). He is right about the tonal variations in different regions but is wrong in deducing that these corruptions de-link names from their roots.

Amritsar, for example, is pronounced ‘Ambarsar’ by even residents of the town but that does not mean that they don’t know what the name actually means. Similarly, Jalandhar is not pronounced by Punjabis the way it should be in Sanskrit, but that does not mean that its meaning and origin is lost or changed. Yervada, Zilla and Yogi are all pronounced starting with a ‘J’ across large parts of the country. Similarly, Sagarika is pronounced ‘Shagoreeka’ in Bengali; Vinod Sharma will be Beenod Sarma in many states, but there is no doubt about what they mean and where they come from.

Gujaratis are among the oldest residents of Mumbai. If they have always got the ‘bai’ part of the name of the city right, there is no reason to believe that they were not able to pronounce the ‘Bom’ part correctly and therefore twisted it to ‘Mum’. Thus, if Gujaratis have always called Bombay ‘Mumbai’ as Sanghvi says, it almost proves the fact that the British corrupted the original name of a village called Mumbai to Bombay rather than the other way round! Outsiders who came into the city when the corrupted Bombay was its established British name, seem to have further corrupted the already corrupted ‘Bom’ to ‘Bam’ and taken the ‘bai’ part from the locals.

Bombay is not an isolated case of the corruption of the names of Indian cities by the British. Most people have forgotten that Kanpur was called ‘Cawnpore’ by the British. There was no city at that spot too before the British built a huge military station after getting the place in 1801. Prior to that, the small town/village that existed there was variously called Karnapur(after Karna of Mahabharat) or Kanhapur/Kanhiyapur(after Lord Krishna). There was also a Kohna village in the area. Whatever the prevalent name when the British took control of it, they promptly proceeded to corrupt it to an almost unrecognisable Cawnpore.

The British had a penchant for naming roads and streets after their kings, queens, princess, and other dignitaries in all the cities that they built on or around existing villages/towns. But for the cities themselves, they invariably stuck to the original names, thoroughly corrupted, of course. Very few towns were given non-Indian names. These were only those which were built from a scratch in a previously uninhabited area. Dalhousie, Abottabad, McLeodganj, Robertganj, Marghareta, Mussourie etc are few examples which readily come to mind. In all other cases, they stuck to the then prevalent local names.

The names of Calcutta and Madras cannot also be traced to any colonial roots. Logically, they would have been named after local settlements or villages there. The British wouldn’t have even dreamt during those early years that they would actually become the unquestioned rulers of this huge landmass one day. Nor would they have dreamt that they would build such large cities on those spots. Their achievements far exceeded their initial plans and expectations when they set camp in these and the other great cities and towns that they built. Had it been otherwise, or had they stayed longer, they probably would have followed the Mughal example in re-naming some existing great cities. Remember how at the peak of their power they arrogantly ignored the indigenous names of Mount Everest and named the world’s highest mountain after a British Surveyor General of India?

Bombay and Cawnpore are not the only examples of wholesale corruption of the names of Indian cities and places. Nor was the corruption limited to names of cities only. Everyone knows how river Ganga was corrupted to ‘Ganges’. That is not all, Narmada was mutilated to ‘Nerbudda’, Yamuna to ‘Jumna’ and Satluj river became, hold your breath, ‘Sutledge’ ! Names of individuals were also similarly corrupted. Karim Bhai became ‘Currimboy’ and Mohammad became ‘Mahomed’. Of course, who does not know that Lord Jagannath has become something else altogether in the dictionary as ‘Juggernaut’.

Examples of arrogant mutilation of names of Indian people, places and things are endless. But, for now, let us stick to the corruption of the names of Indian cities. A few examples of the way Indian cities were spelt during the Raj by the British are being reproduced below. Try and pinpoint which cities/places these are today. Some answers will be easy while a few may fox you! The really well known ones like Trivandrum, Tanjore, Pondicherry, Trichur etc have been deliberately not included in the list.

1. Allyeghur 2. Bagput 3. Bolundshahur 4. Bundlekund 5. Dacca 6. Deyra Dhoon 7. Guzerat 8. Kurnaul 9. Futtegurh 10. Hurrianah 11. Jansie 12. Jaudpore 13. Jeypore 14. Jubbulpore 15. Loodianah 16. Oojein 17. Oudh 18. Raneegunge 19. Saugor 20. Scinde 21.Sreenugger 22.Terree 23. Umballah

Answers:-

1. Aligarh 2. Baghpat 3. Bulandshahar 4. Bundelkhand 5. Dhaka 6. Dehra Dun 7. Gujarat 8. Karnal 9. Fatehgarh 10. Haryana 11. Jhansi 12. Jodhpur 13. Jaipur 14. Jabalpur 15.Ludhiana 16. Ujjain 17. Avadh 18. Raniganj 19. Sagar 20. Sindh 21. Sringar 22. Tehri 23. Ambala

How many did you get right, if you are an Indian reading this?

Okay, here are a few more. I have not been able to link them to any known present cities and towns, and they are not from the time of the Indus valley civilisation! Got any ideas?

1. Erinpora 2. Googairah 3. Lullutpore 4. Mundesore 5. Puddakottah 6. Segombe 7. Segowle

Some of you might be thinking that many of these spellings may have been made up by me or picked out of some obscure source which has little credibility. It needs, therefore, to be mentioned that these spellings are out of as authentic a Raj document as you can get. They are from ‘ The Post Office of India and its History’ by Geoffrey Clarke, ICS.

I can already hear some prominent voices, particularly in the English media, asking that we should revert to the Raj spellings and even pronunciations for these cities too! After all, they will argue again, there were no cities in these places too before the British came and built them! An increasing number of them as it is find it very difficult to pronounce Indian names the way they used to when they were growing up, and now spend long hours to better even the Brits at their mutilation. Proud Indians.

The Raj is dead, so we think; long lives the Raj.
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Readers may also read: Remembering Rajiv: Congress is worse than Mayawati
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AFTER 62 YEARS, THE RAJ IS BACK IN A NEW AVATAR

Jawahar Lal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, will always be remembered for giving the priceless gift of democracy to India. The first general elections of 1952 marked India's real break from not only from its colonial past but also from the long rule of its many rajas and nawabs. For the first ever time in India's history, its citizens exercised the their power to choose and discard their rulers through the power of their vote. In effect, Nehru made ordinary Indians the real sovereigns of this nation.

That is what it would have been today had Nehru not allowed his paternal feelings to overtake his better senses, to plant the seeds of a new Indian "Raj". When he chose to groom his daughter Indira Gandhi to rise and wield disproportionate power in the Congress party in his lifetime, just because she was his daughter, he unknowingly struck the first death-blow to the then fledgling democracy and paved the way for new "princely states" to rise and flourish again in free India.

62 years after the British left and 59 years after India became a democratic republic, the Raj is back, in a new avatar.

At the national level, democracy died within the Congress party many years ago when Nehru's daughter formalised dynastic succession and placed the Nehru-Gandhi family above and beyond the party and even the nation. Her declaration of Emergency in 1975 to hold on to the PM's chair despite a court order striking down her election, her promoting her son Sanjay and, after his death, Rajiv, to succeed her, struck a knife into the very heart of the democratic process. In two strokes, she converted her family into the new Royal Family of India and turned the Congress party into a pliant tool whose sole purpose was to keep it in pole position, no matter what. What Nehru had started, Indira completed.

That tradition is now so firmly in place that hardly any one questions this blatant subversion of democracy these days. On the contrary we have countless courtiers who keep reminding us every single day that it is the divine right of the Gandhis to rule India and that the rest of over a billion people must not only accept that fact without murmur but also be grateful for it.

The recently held Lok Sabha elections have, not surprisingly, thrown up the often overlooked fall-out of the dynastic tradition put in place by the Gandhis. That cancer has, as it had to, spread to the whole nation now. For once, Vir Sanghvi has got disturbed by this development. Of course, thanks to long years of supplication to the Gandhis, he still is not able to see them as the fountainhead and foremost perpetrators of this debilitating turn. Nevertheless, despite all his limitations, he has made a beginning, no matter how late.

In a column in the Hindustan Times of May 31, 2009, Sanghvi laments the fact that a disturbing proportion of the newly-appointed ministers were born into political families. This dynastic trend, he notes, is not limited to the Congress party alone and rightly says that once politics becomes entirely a family business, it will become even more disconnected from the people. "Family dominated politics is a closed shop...true democracy is replaced by a kind of feudalism in which the peasants are given the right to choose between various aristocrats. The peasants can never enter the ruling class because the wrong blood flows in their veins", Sanghvi observes ominously, and quotes Neerja Choudhary to warn that if things continue like this, "within five years we would become a self-perpetuating dynastic elite".

Is this development sudden? Have we all not seen it coming for a long time? When the self-appointed Royal Family of India has been practicing this for decades and even aggressively promoting smaller princely families within the Congress party, is it any surprise that this cancer has now spread to the whole polity, save the Left and, to some degree, the BJP?

Despite this staring-in-your-face evidence, Vir Sanghvi cannot bring himself to criticise the pre-eminent position that Rahul Gandhi occupies due to his birth alone. On the contrary, he praises him for trying to "democratise entry into the Congress" and says that if he "can make Indian politics more representative, less dependent on dynasty and more open to those with talent", it will be watershed in our history. Read that again. How can Rahul make it "less dependent on dynasty"?

A parasitic creeper that has a huge tree in deathly embrace cannot be killed by lopping off a few of its branches. That will not save the host, in this case India's democracy. The parasite has to be pulled out of its very roots and burnt. You cannot place one family and one prince above all scrutiny and expect that the rest will agree to become commoners without a whimper. Who gave tickets to all these family politicians who are now on the verge of swamping the Congress? Who has now given ministerial berths to them? Can any one argue with their hand on their heart that Sonia Gandhi favours family dynasties while Rahul wants "peasants" as ministers?

This so-called "democracy" that Rahul Gandhi is ushering into the Congress is no more than a variant of the democratic sham that the British had introduced to humor and inflate the egos of a few Indians, and then use them to perpetuate their Raj. Rahul's exercise similarly places him and his family on a pedestal completely beyond reach of everyone else. It also does not upset the pecking order of other political princes lower down the order. All that is does is that it allows a few "peasants" to compete with each other to reach somewhat higher positions where they can become more visible to the Crown Prince who can then pick a few of them every now and then and give them an entry into the exclusive club of lower placed dynastic families. By doing so, he hopes to earn their everlasting gratitude and, at the same time, keep the existing minor royal families on their toes and within their limits.

The other ugly aspect that has come to the forefront in this election is that it has attracted a large number of very rich individuals who have fought and even won elections. This is the lot that missed the first dynastic wave and has now decided to start one of its own. They have the means to buy entry into any political party. Once inside, not only will they multiply their riches many times faster, now that politics has become big business, but will also be able to start their own lineage.

The political club is, therefore, already all but closed to ordinary people. Democracy, which is meant to empower people, has become the handmaiden of a privileged few. Till August 15, 1947, India had one ruling family that was based in London and hundreds of princely states who "ruled" over large parts of the country under British suzerainty or paramountcy. 62 years on, the wheel has nearly turned full circle. India again has one ruling family, based in Delhi, and many smaller princely families ruling various states and/or sharing the central pie through 543 "princes" chosen democratically by the peasants of India.

If one goes by the Rahul mania that is being created by the media and the dynastic character of the Union council of ministers, there is little doubt that India is sliding inexorably into the vice-like grip of a self-perpetuating dynastic clique. The way things are heading, there is no way Indians can democratically empower themselves like the Americans did last year when they sent a certain Barack Obama, a half-black from nowhere, into the White House.

Obama represents real democracy at its best. For an Obama to happen in India, all routes that lead to and perpetuate dynastic rule have to be ruthlessly cut. The rot started from the very top and it is only from there that its elimination has to begin. Cosmetic tinkering will yield no result. If Rahul Gandhi is actually serious about undoing the damage that his ancestors have done to the democratic process within the Congress and without, he has to totally remove himself and his family from the political landscape of the nation. He cannot talk of democracy while smothering it at the same time with his dynastic pre-eminence that is beyond the pale of examination. All those who overlook this basic truth which stares the nation in the face are just passing time and being plain dishonest.

Look at the irony. At a time when Nepal has removed its king and Bhutan's king has started the process of handing power over to the people, India has accelerated its regressive descent into dynastic Raj. And in the vanguard of this decay is India's supposedly liberal and modern media, and its so-called intelligentsia.

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BABA RAGA BECOMES A SYMPHONY

When your icon tastes success, however small and for whatever reason, after five long years, it is very difficult to control your emotions. All the frustration that had remained bottled up for so long gushes out uncontrollably from every orifice, transformed into perfumed words of praise. Ah what a relief! Thank you Rahul, you say following a deep breath, we thought this day would never come.

11 additional seats and a 6% rise in vote share in UP has sent the geysers shooting. And this is only the beginning. If it was Quick Gun Murugan Vir Sanghvi who beat every one to the discovery of the genius that lay carefully concealed in Rahul baba for 39 long years, thanks to that solitary "brilliant" move, it is now his good friend Barkha Dutt who is uncovering the "big winner" in him for pushing to travel solo "in the badlands Uttar Pradesh" and for "winning the Hindi heartland" for his party! With an 18% vote share? Did he not go solo in 2007 too? And has the Congress not done as well, even better, in many other states, about which no one is talking?

The contribution of the Prime Minister to the victory of the Congress is not only being ignored, he is even being belittled by sections of the media. What else can you say when a headline says: "When Gandhis let PM take centrestage", at his swearing in ceremony? Dr Manmohan Singh, after being sworn in PM for the second time, this time on the people's vote, must still be shown as subservient to the Gandhis and not allowed to bask for a moment in even his share of the shine of victory.

News has also just come in Rahul baba has once again refused to join the cabinet, as expected. When he had first refused the PM's offer last year, a leading Congress-leaning editor had justified it by saying that as a minister Rahul would have got "hidden behind" files and lost contact with the people! Some, in fact had gone to the extent of saying that he was not hankering for power and was making a sacrifice for the party. This time too, the reason given is that he wants to concentrate on building the organisation. But this time, the pretences are off. Barkha Dutt makes no bones about what is coming next when she says that he has taken the right decision because "it's the more grounded way to climb to the top". Decipher that!

To me it was always clear that Rahul Gandhi would never join Dr Manmohan's government for two reasons. First and most important is that unspoken arrogance that does not permit him to serve under someone who is his family's appointee/employee, and is there solely to keep the top chair safe for him. The last and only time a Gandhi did that in the government was four decades ago. The second is that while it is very difficult to quantify organisational failure and pin blame on him if things don’t go right, as a minister he will be in full public glare and his performance will be under a microscope. That is an unacceptable risk, because unlike when you are the PM, blame for poor performance cannot be passed on by you as a minister, and that too an all-powerful one like him, to another politician or bureaucrat. And considering some unbelievable statements that he has made that betray a very superficial understanding and average intellect, you can be sure that he will be found wanting, with nowhere to hide.

A caption on CNN-IBN said it all this morning: "Rahul revamping cabinet". He is not going to be there but his lieutenants - "Rahul Sena" - consisting of young second generation politicians like Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitendra Prasada etc are being inducted. "Rahul's stamp is bound to remain with the way the government and the party function" said a news reader on the channel. The ever grateful Veerappa Moily, now a minister after being gagged following Rahul Gandhi's famous interview, has also publicly said on the very first day after joining Dt Manmohan Singh's cabinet that Rahul will lead the Congress as PM for the next elections.

Baba raga is getting louder with each passing day. It is, in fact, already beginning to sound like a symphony being played by an orchestra whose conductor has miraculously reappeared after a long time. Enjoy the music. And ignore the well suppressed jarring notes in the background, at least for now. There is little else that you can do!
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THE KANDAHAR HIJACK: WHY IS THE BJP DEFENSIVE?

Jaswant Singh's "Mission Kandahar" has become the weakest point of the BJP's claim that the NDA government was tough on terror when it was in power earlier. It also makes hollow its promise of a similar toughness if it get back to power again. For the last few years, almost every single TV anchor, media star, analyst and politician has beaten the BJP with the Kandahar stick. And Advani has not helped his government's cause by claiming that he, as Home Minister, was not aware that the Foreign Minister was going to Kandahar with the terrorists. Vir Sanghvi has, in fact, gone to the extent of saying that it is "shameful that the BJP should use ‘tough on terror’ as a campaigning slogan".

Frankly, I find it surprising that this should have ever become an issue at all. Worse, I cannot believe that the strategists of the BJP have not been able to find the right answer to kill the issue, and keep appearing red-faced whenever it is raked up. And these days, with the election heat peaking, almost everyone is on the flight to Kandahar, and the BJP has been grounded. Rahul Gandhi has even gone to the extent of blaming LK Advani for buckling under pressure.

Why did Jaswant Singh go to Kandahar? Was it to escort terrorists, as is being dishonestly insinuated? Would he have gone there had Indian Airlines flight IC-814 with 154 hostages not been parked on the runway at Kandahar surrounded by heavily armed Taliban? India's Foreign Minister went there solely to ensure that the exchange deal was honoured by the Taliban. Considering the situation in Afghanistan then and the fact that the Taliban had no scruples whatsoever, it may well have happened that after the three terrorists were handed over to them, they might still not have released the passengers and made additional demands.

With 150 families and the now critical media and politicians then hounding the government to get the hostages back at any cost, would any government have been left with any choice but to trade terrorists? Particularly after a similar capitulation earlier to secure the release of Rubiya Sayed, daughter of India's then Home Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayed?

The only issue in the whole drama is whether Jaswant Singh should have gone to Kandahar or sent a bureaucrat instead. That can be debated till the cows come home.

But the simple answer to that question is that India's Foreign Minister did not show cowardice by "escorting" terrorists but displayed immense courage by flying down himself to that extremely hostile and dangerous place to ensure that the Taliban could not further delay the release of the hostages under some pretext or the other. There was a real possibility of that happening had an official gone to Kandahar to see the agreed deal finally through.

Major Jaswant Singh put himself in the firing line to take on-the-spot decisions, had the Taliban shown treachery. His presence probably stumped them and their Pakistani masters; they would never have expected that India's Foreign Minister himself would get to the spot to scuttle their plans. He could have been taken hostage too; the Taliban were capable of doing anything, as we all know. It is due to the exemplary courage shown by him that all hostages were released and brought safely back to India.

Is this incident something that the NDA should be ashamed of? Would any other government have done any better? Would any other Foreign Minister or SPG/NSG protected politician exposed himself to such personal risk for the sake of 154 Indians? Let us get real.

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THE VARUN STING: WHO IS NOT PLAYING THE COMMUNAL CARD?

Rajdeep Sardesai, the CNN-IBN father of the Varun Gandhi sting, has written a column, "The other great-grandson", in the Hindustan Times today, saying that "we must not allow Varun to get away". Seemingly stung by the fact that the grandson of Indira Gandhi has joined the opposite political and ideological camp, Sardesai appears to be one of those many "liberals" who want to ensure that this potent family challenge to Rahul Gandhi is crushed at the very first step. That is why, the points raised by Varun Gandhi in his defence about the communal situation in Pilibhit have been summarily dismissed by him in one line: "With a substantial Muslim population, Pilibhit has a history of communal trouble". That is it.

So, what Rajdeep Sardesai is telling the nation is that wherever there is a substantial Muslim population, communal trouble should be accepted as a reality by the nation and nothing can be done about it. Speaking about it is communal; keeping quiet and letting things deteriorate is proof that you are secular.

Varun Gandhi has given out some details of the "provocative and communal" incidents that have taken place in his parliamentary constituency and the environment that prevails there:

• Slaughtered remains of cows have been found in various homes
• Thousands and thousands of people from the Hindu community have been placed under arrest under the NSA
• Three temples have been vandalised in the block where he is supposed to have given that speech
• Village pradhans have been threatened daily
• Quota shop owners have had their quotas cancelled
• There is widespread fear that arms are being smuggled into ghettos in this sensitive border area to be used against India
• The Hindu community is in a siege in its own country

No one can deny that, if true, these are pretty serious developments. If false, then Varun Gandhi should be exposed for being a liar too, in addition to being a hate-mongerer. But, no one in the media has spoken about them at all. Rajdeep Sardesai, in fact, touches upon only one issue in his column: "If Varun today seeks to revive the cow slaughter issue, it should be seen in a specific historic context". He, in fact goes on to obliquely justify cow slaughter saying that in 1930, before the country was partitioned, "resolutions moved in the Central Legislative Assembly to ban cow slaughter had sparked off violence in the region". So, as per Sardesai, the intense Hindu sensitivity to cow slaughter must be slaughtered so that Muslims do not resort to violence. Perhaps the beef-eating Sardesai does not know or does not care that Hindus have been protesting against the killing of cows for centuries.

Not surprisingly, Sardesai and his channel CNN-IBN are totally silent on all the other points raised by Varun Gandhi, giving rise to the belief that there is truth in what he is saying. Their one-point agenda is clear: ensure that that Varun Gandhi poses no challenge politically to Rahul Gandhi, India's Crown Prince, as Rajdeep Sardesai always calls him on his channel and in his columns. That is why Tom Vadakkan dismisses Varun's claim of being a real Gandhi by saying that there are millions of Indians with that surname, while Abhishek Manu Singhvi calls Varun's, not Rahul's, Gandhi tag a mere "accident of birth"!

Vir Sanghvi is widely known to be close to the Gandhi family and the Congress party as a result. I wonder what he will have to say about this controversy. But, he is perhaps the only mainstream media personality who has so far spoken out against what is is increasingly beginning to look like the raj of fanatic Mullahs in the guise of secularism. In a column titled "Stand up to the mullahs" in the Hindustan Times of February 21, 2009, he says bluntly but truthfully "The real reason we give in to Islamic fanatics is...cowardice." Is it any surprise that former ISI chief Hamid Gul also feels the same way about India's response to the proxy war that his country has unleashed on this country?

Sanghvi believes that the fanatics "have identified the cowardice at the heart of our liberalism". What Sanghvi does not say but a lot of people know is that in addition to cowardice, they have also identified the utter dishonesty at the heart of our secular politics. It is a combination of both that gets TV channels like CNN-IBN to become part of political conspiracies to promote politicians and political parties in such a blatantly one-sided manner.

Is this selective pillorying of anyone who speaks for Hindus secularism? Is this relentless baying for the blood of Varun Gandhi really the voice of a truly liberal and impartial media and polity?

There is no doubt that Varun Gandhi went over the top in uttering a couple of words for which he must apologise and be admonished by his party. But, is Varun alone in playing the communal card as his vociferous critics are alleging? Are those who are willfully completely silent about the aggressive communalism of fanatics that provoked him into making those speeches not guilty of playing an even more dangerous communal card?


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THE ANTULAY BETRAYAL

The sordid saga continues. The PM has not accepted Minorities Minister AR Antulay's resignation, the Congress party has not been able to decide on the action that should be taken against him and Digvijay Singh has added to the confusion by backing him.

It may be recalled that when the Parliament was united in discussing the NIA and UAPA bills post Mumbai 11/26, Antulay was making an allegation in the premises of the Parliament House suggesting that ATS Chief Hemant Karkare's death was the result of an 'inside job'. That preposterous allegation, and its timing, had led to vociferous demands for his resignation. The Congress too was quick to distance itself from his allegation, with party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi making the party's stand clear within hours. It was then widely expected that Antulay would be not only be asked to apologise but would also lose his job.

More than four days have passed but nothing has happened. Instead of aplogising, Antulay has dug his heels in and justified his allegation that supports the allegation that Pakistan has been making since November 26, 2008, that 'Hindu Zionists' were responsible for Mumbai 11/26. His statement has not only been picked up by Pakistan to make the case that what it had been saying all along was right, it has also led to some Muslim organisations in India voicing their support to this absurd conspiracy theory. There is a growing chorus within the community that the Hindu right was actually responsible for Karkare's death due to his investigation into the role and dimensions of Hindu terror in the Malegaon blast in September 2008.

Whom has AR Antulay really betrayed by his calculated outburst timed to cause maximum damage to the position taken by the Union Cabinet of which is a member?

Antulay has been in politics for 60 years. He has been repeatedly elected by a secular electorate in a constituency that has only 8% Muslims. Yet, no one is talking about that constituency. Vir Sanghvi believes that Antulay's rhetoric is aimed at "pleasing his Muslim constituency" whose credibility he has damaged. Barkha Dutt, in an even more strident vein, berates him for betraying "his own people", Muslims.

With that one damning statement, Dutt has dealt a devastating blow to secularism and communalised the most secular space in India's politics, as has Vir Sanghvi to a lesser extent. The unstated admission that all non-Muslims who cast a secular vote to elect Muslims are irrelevant "outsiders" is grave indeed. Perhaps that is exactly what Antulay has always believed himself despite the more than half a century of support that they have given to him "as one of their own".

Political leader Antulay's real "own people" are those secular Indians of all faiths who have put him where he is today, and on whose behalf alone he is entitled to speak. After 60 years of riding on their shoulders, and while still representing them, he cannot just ditch them without remorse and stake claim to represent a "Muslim constituency", and speak in the voice of those who have the blood of Mumbai 11/26 on their hands.

See the hollowness of the 'secularism' that some of us trumpet? No one is shedding any tears for the secular people of his constituency that Antulay has actually betrayed. Some of them like Dutt are dismayed that as a Minister and MP he has pushed his own community (Muslims) on the defensive and into a corner of clarifications yet again. Worse, they believe that he owes them "better than to stereotype them in the worst manner possible".

As far as our staunch secularists are concerned concerned, Antulay obviously owes nothing to the lakhs of non-Muslims who have got him where he is today. His sudden transformation from a secular leader to a communal one is perfectly justifiable. The only mistake he has made is that he has said something that, in their disconnected view, has let down those who have suddenly emerged as his "his own people".

May be that is why he continues to be in the Cabinet of Ministers.
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11/26 AND THE IMPOTENCE OF INDIA'S "MUDDLED CLASS"

Mumbai 11/26 has triggered a long overdue avalanche of anger in English speaking urban Indians. It is as if the dam of lies that India's English media had built deviously to con them into believing that India faces little danger from Pakistan sponsored terrorism has collapsed. Anyone with any intelligence should have known that it had to, but some of India's leading TV personalities and columnists thought that their construct of falsehoods would hold. To them, pursuit of a motivated and disconnected socio-political agenda was more important than the security of the nation and the lives of ordinary, faceless Indians who were getting killed with sickening regularity in places that they visited imperiously only when there was a story to report.

Vir Sanghvi is a mediocre journalist who regularly spews out politically motivated columns and disconnected-from-real-India gibberish in the Hindustan Times. I had stopped commenting on his clever columns because some people thought that there was a personal axe to grind. But, his column in the Hindustan Times of December 7, 2008, has compelled me to write about certain basic misconceptions that are being promoted even after 11/26, and some issues which are again being hijacked by those who live in ivory towers that don't seem to be located in real India.

The 11/26 attacks on institutions which mean the world to the South Mumbai elite have finally got them angry. Before these attacks, many ordinary Indians had been angry for a long time. But, to the elite of Delhi and Mumbai - the ones who assault the whole nation ad nauseum through the media, their private turf - that anger was either invisible or was dismissed as a reaction of the lunatic fringe of the Hindu right. This growing anger was condemned and dismissed as the propaganda of the Sangh Parivar that was out to destroy the social fabric of this country by blaming Muslims for all terror attacks.

The arrest of a few Hindu radicals for one blast on a motorcycle in Malegaon was all that this lot needed to scream endlessly about 'Hindu Terror', with some going to extent of calling Sadhvi Pragya India's Osama bin Laden and the Sangh Parivar its Al Qaida. Pakistan sponsored terrorism was completely forgotten and the media went berserk in its efforts to mislead the nation that the only danger it faced was from the BJP. It takes no intelligence to deduce that all this was done to influence ordinary Indians into forgetting the reality that they had been facing for decades so that they would vote for the Congress, the preferred party of the media.

It has taken an attack on the icons of Mumbai's elite for Sanghvi to wake up and admit that terrorists have the audacity "to walk into our greatest city and shoot people at will - and we are unable to do anything about it".

Vir Sanghvi identifies with the anger that his 'middle class' has felt after the Mumbai terror attack but is unhappy that it has become 'misdirected'. And, according to him, that has happened due to the 'impotence' of this class. The middle class, he says, is politically irrelevant because illiterate Indians who have the same voting rights as those belonging to this class are the only ones who have the numbers to bring down a government.

"The middle class...can write articles (like this one) or clog TV channels but we can never bring down a government", says Sanghvi, expressing his own impotent rage now that the Mumbai bombers have destroyed the whole structure that he and his friends had carefully constructed over the years through the media.

I have never understood how the likes of Prannoy Roy, Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Vir Sanghvi and the like can say that they are from the middle class. Are they deliberately playing a cruel joke on India's huge real middle class that does not travel business class or stay in five star hotels, and that generally does not identify with their value system? Or are they carelessly using the term to pretend that they are in touch with, and are the voice of, the teeming millions who travel by trains and buses and stay in budget hotels, even when they know fully well that they are not?

These few people are not India's middle class, not even close. They are India's "muddled class".

Many individuals from this very small lot are farther away from real India and real Indians than even the British were when they ruled India. They have foggy ideas about the societal dynamics that energise various sections of Indian society, and they don't really care. Happy they are in their own isolated world that they have successfully insulated from the real India that the rest of us inhabit.

Despite this serious, almost fatal disconnect, they are the ones who control the powerful media. They are the ones who influence public opinion from this platform. They think it is their birthright to dictate the national agenda. And they do all they can to protect and further their own interests and ideologies, before anything else. As far as they are concerned, as Vir Sanghvi admits, remaining Indians are all illiterate.

India's real middle class is not impotent, nor is it politically irrelevant. This large section of India's population has the voice and the power to bring down a government, particularly in the present environment when the margins of victory are mostly narrow. This educated, not illiterate, class has been angry for a long time. Its anger had for long been successfully suppressed by the "muddled class". Thanks to the Terrible Ten who came in from the sea, and the internet which has sidelined mainstream media like never before, that anger is now overflowing. And it is going to show its power in the coming elections.

It is this anger of the real middle class that in now making Vir Sanghvi's "muddled class" realise that it actually is quite impotent. It can no longer confuse "illiterate" Indians into denying reality and voting on the basis of misinformation and falsehoods fed to them 24/7. It can no longer control India's political destiny by manipulating the media and projecting false heroes.

No matter how hard Barkha Dutt tries now to push through her political agenda and promote her friends, no one is going to believe South Mumbai MP Milind Deora, son of Union Minister Murli Deora, when he says for the cameras that he is ashamed of India's politicians. Why did it take an attack on Taj hotel to make him 'see' what he has been blind to for decades?

Similarly, when Vir Sanghvi, after relentlessly promoting the Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi family for decades, suddenly says that "Indian politics is a squalid, corrupt family business", without pointing his pen where he should, he only exposes his intellectual dishonesty and lack of integrity. Had this luminescence glowed with honesty much earlier in India's "muddled class", 11/26 may well have been avoided. And India may not have been almost asphyxiated by dynastic politics and a completely unaccountable colonial bureaucracy.

11/26 may well prove to be a blessing in disguise for India. 11/26 may well turn out to be that defining moment that empowered India's real middle class and its "illiterate" millions to take the destiny of the country into their own hands. 11/26 may well be remembered as the provocation that compelled India to finally react by potent action rather than impotent words to defeat the proxy war that Pakistan launched decades back in pursuance of its national objective of bleeding India to death through a thousand cuts.

The "muddled class" will oppose any response that may expose them to any danger and harm. That cowardly and selfish stance has already cost India heavy. "Covert operations and better intelligence" is what Vir Sanghvi is suggesting even now, knowing only too well that ISI sponsored and rogue jehadis will never be defeated and crushed by these airy-fairy methods. If this suggestion is due to ignorance of the dimensions of the threat that India is facing, the lack of knowledge is shocking. If it is to keep his class out of the harm's way that it was till 11/26, it is unpardonable.

Perhaps Sanghvi can see the writing on the wall; perhaps that is why he laments the impotence that India's "muddled class" is experiencing for the first time ever.
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CANDLES AND BLAME-GAMES WON'T STOP AK47S

Yesterday, there were great displays of solidarity for the victims of Mumbai 11/26 across India. Thousands of Indians got together to light candles in memory of those who lost their lives in the most audacious and daring terror attack ever on India by Islamic jehadis from Pakistan. There was anger too; anger against politicians, the police and Pakistan. But, at the end of it all, it appeared that Indians, like always, had forgotten the attack and had moved back to their old pastime of fighting with each other rather than fighting the enemy who is getting bolder and more destructive with each passing day.

Even as the whole nation is almost united in its anger against Pakistan, India's commies, as always, are not able to get themselves to move beyond blaming the BJP. That they had extra-national loyalties to China was widely known, but that they would win anti-India hawks in Pakistanis too is something that no one would have ever believed, had it not been for ex-ISI chief General Hamid Gul's advice to the government of India to listen to the commies' convenient-to-Pakistan views and stop playing 'lackeys' to the US.

Sitaram Yechury, the suave commie whose columns appear regularly in the Hindustan Times, has repeatedly displayed a sickening ability to lie through his teeth to pursue his almost anti-national agenda through his columns, a few of which I have previously commented on. Writing in the paper today, he did not have a word to say against Pakistan or suggest any action plan to tackle the scourge of terror unleashed by that country. His main prescription for facing the challenge? India must invoke an obscure UN resolution passed after 9/11 which obliges all countries to deny "safe havens to those who finance, plan, support or commit terrorist acts". Of course, in what must be music to the ears of Hamid Gul and the ISI, he virtually projects his favourite whipping boy, the BJP, as a greater threat to India than Pakistan, and then goes on to say that "any cynical effort to draw political mileage and electoral dividends by perpetuating a communal divide can only give a further lease of life to such anti-national terrorists"!

In short, what Yechuri and a few of his ilk are saying is that if India has to stop those Pakistani AK47s from claiming more lives, it needs to start and win a war against one of the two principal political parties of this country. There is no need to even look towards Pakistan. Once the BJP is removed from the scene, Pakistan's Islamic terrorists, whose sole aim to claim the whole of India for Islam, will come by boats to Mumbai with flowers and 'Thank You' cards!

Acrimonious mud-slinging has also begun between various organs of the government. Despite a monumental intelligence and police failure, not one officer belonging to the IPS, the cadre which controls all police and intelligence outfits in the country, has been sacked. Similarly, not one IAS officer out of the many controlling the Home Ministry has been fired. Under intense public pressure, the government has finally sacked three politicians.

India's Naval Chief, Sureesh Mehta, reacting to suggestions that the Navy did not act on vague intelligence inputs, has lashed out the media for helping the terrorists by giving out crucial bits of information live. He has specially targetted Barkha Dutt, not just for her role in the attack on Mumbai but for a similar irresponsibility during Kargil that led to the death of three soldiers. Dutt's friend and mediocre journalist Vir Sanghvi, not surprisingly, has come out all guns blazing in her support, berating Mehta for "shamefully rehashing old, discredited lies about the media" and questioning his leadership due to which, according to him, terrorists came to Mumbai so easily.

As if all this was not bad enough, there are also the usual suspects who warn against even thinking of a military response against Pakistan. They want India to 'win the trust' of Pakistan's democratic leaders, poor guys themselves suffering from terrorism, and strengthen their hands so that they can reign in Islamic terrorists there! These guys have obviously just emerged from a time machine that had got stuck two decades back. There was democracy in Pakistan earlier too, under Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, but terrorism was only promoted, not suppressed. Why? Because, terror is a tool Pakistan has deliberately created and deployed to defeat India by inflicting on it 'a thousand cuts'. Why this basic fact has been ignored repeatedly to our peril is something that is hard to understand.

The only change now is that the Frankenstein of terror wants to establish pure Islamic rule in Pakistan too. That is why there have been attacks on Pakistani leaders who are supporting the US. But - and this is the most important part which is being foolishly overlooked - as far as India is concerned, there is no confusion at all: they are all one. That is why Talibanis currently fighting Pakistani Army in FATA have offered their men and suicide bombers to fight alongside that Army if war breaks out with India.

Two decades of talks, toothless diplomacy, restraint after Kargil and mobilisation of the Army after the terror attack on Parliament have yielded no result whatsoever. On the contrary, they have emboldened strong elements in and outside the Pakistani establishment to keep raising the terror bar gradually and increase the frequency of attacks. They know by now that India has put its testicles in deep freeze and that this country, enfeebled to the point of impotence by security-illiterate media, bureaucrats and politicians, is just not going take them out.

"Tough" diplomatic measures that are being suggested again for the nth time mean nothing at all unless the other guy knows that there is a bite behind the bark. Forget the bite, we are afraid even to bark. We are a nuclear power and a much bigger conventional military power than Pakistan. That has not stopped that country from doing what it has been in Kashmir and elsewhere in India, culminating in 11/26. Why are we afraid to respond in self defence? Are we going to allow Pakistan to bleed us to death slowly by inflicting on us a thousand cuts or are we going to at least now show the necessary national resolve needed to give them a credible, practical glimpse of the unacceptable costs and damages that they will face if they do not stop this nonsense?

Exercise of the nuclear option by Pakistan is not as easy as it sounds because of the decimating response that India is capable of giving. Short of that threshold, therefore, there is plenty that can be done to degrade and destroy jehadi elements and their masters in that country. We cannot just keep sitting back and hoping that they will be scared into stopping their merchants of death by mere "tough talk".

It is only one week since 11/26 and we have already forgotten. Petty and almost anti-national political blame-games are back. Pakistan is virtually out of the public frame. What more can those guys ask for? They are already laughing their guts out at our foolishness and fear, and are taunting us openly even on Indian television. Emboldened by our pathetic and hopelessly divided response, they must already be planning an even 'bigger and better' attack than the one that hit Mumbai. Considering that we still have learnt nothing, don't be surprised if that attack materialises much faster than we even want to think now.

We can keep holding candles all our life. That will not make Pakistan's agents of death put their 'candles' away. We light our candles to mourn and remember; they light their candles to make us mourn and not forget. If we want to stop this unending run of lighting candles of mourning, we have to stop fighting with each other and go out there and put out those who hold those candles of death and those who make them hold them. Unless we do that, there will many, many more occasions to show solidarity and helpless anger with the candles terrorists want us to keep lighting till their ideology finally puts them all out.
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INDIA'S OSAMA AND AL QAIDA FOUND; BANISH THEM!

The Great Indian Obama Hunt has begun in right earnest. Although every one knows that there is no Indian Obama anywhere on the political horizon, it has not deterred many of us from looking for a desi version in every corner of the country.

But forget Obama. Someone has already found India's Osama and its very own Al Qaida.

Sample this: "The only difference between Osama and Pragya is that the former is unlikely to contest an election in the future." As far this gentleman is concerned, democracy has become dangerous now, just because Sadhvi Pragya is certain to win if she fights. "If charges against Sadhvi Pragya Singh have yet to be proved in a court of law, even Osama has yet not been indicted by any court of law anywhere in the world; just as Osama hides in the impregnable mountains of Afghanistan, Pragya hides behind the the fig leaf of the democratic 'will of the people'". For him, courts are meaningless and democracy is acceptable only if people he approves are elected; if not, people's mandate is flawed.

If Sadhvi Pragya is India's Osama, is it difficult to pinpoint India's Al Qaida? SIMI? That is a secular outfit, stupid. LeT/HUJI? They are not Indian and there is no 'proof' that they have ever done anything wrong. According to this gentleman, India's Al Qaida is actually the BJP and its Sangh Parivar. It even draws inspiration from the likes of Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda who according to him "encouraged and promoted the idea of retaliatory violence" in the name of Hindu nationalism. That makes them terrorists too. Hindu terror is not new at all!

All the these sick distortions and worse have not been plucked out of some obscure fundamentalist or extremist literature 'seized' by India's discredited police in a fake raid on a 'Muslim' terrorist hideout. These occupy the the pride of place in the Hindustan Times of November 24, 2008 and are there for the whole world to see. One Jyotirmoy Sharma, a professor of Political Science at the University of Hyderabad, is the author of this editorial in the paper. Considering the venom that this gentleman has spewed, he needs truckloads of flowers and Munnabhai in attendance for a long, long time. Unless, of course, this column is a literary 'supari'.

One does not know whether some others have also accepted similar 'suparis'. But this column, read in conjunction with the headline that the same paper carried only a day earlier, does raise serious doubts. "There is a bit of India in every Pakistani..." screamed the bold front page headline, quoting Pakistan President Zardari speaking at the HT summit. The way this and other statements of Zardari about shared bloodlines, the possibility of doing away with passports, and the promise of "no-first-nuclear-strike" was lapped up and applauded by the the usual suspects is amazing! No one wanted to even whisper that the he was clearly not a President in the know; he was a President who did not know. Memories of Kargil and Pakistan's proxy war that has claimed thousands of Indian lives were completely forgotten by a gushing intelligentsia and the media who want to keep lulling the country into believing that Pakistan has nothing but the good of India in its breakaway Islamic heart.

It was only a couple of days back that I written about how thankful some of our 'intellectuals', political analysts and secular political parties were for the involvement of Hindus in the Malegaon blast, their first ever after decades of Pakistan sponsored terrorism. I had then thought that better sense would prevail and this nonsense would stop soon. But, it is clear that I was wrong. Just one blast was all that they all had been waiting for since forever so that they could start yelling about about 'Hindu terror' non-stop till their own ear drums burst.

I had long back stopped reacting to Vir Sanghvi's columns in the Hindustan Times. I intend to continue exercising that restraint, having said enough already. But, I must point to you his column on Hindu terror in the Hindustan Times of November 23, 2008, the same day that the Zardari headline appeared. If you have been reading him regularly, you will find it difficult to fully go through the familiar construction in furtherance of a barely unconcealed political agenda. If you are new to him, keep all your faculties fully alive to spot his clever little tricks.

Read also the editorial in the same paper of November 24, 2008 and you will not fail to miss the motivated agenda in action again. Considering the sort of venom that they have all being spewing for the last month or so, a stranger to India will not be wrong in concluding that the BJP is the most hated political party in India and the Congress is going to be back with a bang after the next elections.

If these gentlemen and a few more like them are to be believed, Pakistan is India's best friend and the Sangh parivar its worst enemy; the ISI is secular, as Mulayam Yadav has always said, and the VHP seditious; India faces grave danger from Hindu terror after just one blast while Islamic terrorism that the whole world is talking about and that has claimed thousands of lives is a myth promoted by the India's Hindu Al Qaida.

Zardari says that there that there is a bit of India in every Pakistani. His 'secular' Indian friends say that those who talk of Hindutva are India's Al Qaida. If that is true, there is a very simple solution to all the dangers that the sub continent faces from Hindu terror. Let Pakistan get all of India - that is what Pakistanis really want in any case. And banish all members of the Hindu Al Qaida and those who support it to the impregnable mountains of Afghanistan where the original Osama is hiding, to establish their Hindu rashtra there if they can. After this is accomplished, secularism will no longer be in danger in India. It can't be in danger after it ceases to exist, can it?

Once Pakistan's and the SIMI's objective of establishing an Islamic state in the whole of India is thus achieved without any bloodshed, peace will prevail and Zardari will become the President of the Islamic Republic of India. And when the next HT summit is held in the new Islamic republic, the the Sanghvis, Sharmas and Thapars of the old, secular India will still be found applauding him. But via satellite from London/New York. Unless they take on new names!

This post has also been published by Chicago Sun Times
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WAS MUMBAI BOMBAY OR WAS BOMBAY MUMBAI?

Vir Sanghvi’s argument in the Hindustan Times of May 17, 2008, that the name ‘Bombay’ was of British origin and had no Indian reference point pre-dating the British came as a surprise. Karan Thapar also made a somewhat similar argument in the same paper on June 07, 2008. He, in fact, included Madras and Calcutta also in the list. Both these gentlemen seem to be perturbed by the ‘Indianisation’ of almost the last vestiges of the Raj in the renaming of Bombay to what many believe is its original name, Mumbai. Surprisingly, there was no such emotional outcry when Connaught Place and Connaught Circus in Delhi(still not called by its original name, Dilli or Dehli) were renamed after Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, even though their original names had no Indian roots at all and they were built from a scratch by the British.

Gujaratis and other Indians have always called Bombay ‘Mumbai’ and ‘Bambai’ respectively, long before the city got its present name formally. One always thought that Bombay was another British corruption of an Indian name till one read Sanghvi’s column. If he is to be believed, “Indians have a tradition of corrupting city names when we use them in different languages” like the Gujaratis have done in case of Mumbai and Amdavaad(Ahmedabad). He is right about the tonal variations in different regions but is wrong in deducing that these corruptions de-link names from their roots.

Amritsar, for example, is pronounced ‘Ambarsar’ by even residents of the town but that does not mean that they don’t know what the name actually means. Similarly, Jalandhar is not pronounced by Punjabis the way it should be in Sanskrit, but that does not mean that its meaning and origin is lost or changed. Yervada, Zilla and Yogi are all pronounced starting with a ‘J’ across large parts of the country. Similarly, Sagarika is pronounced ‘Shagoreeka’ in Bengali; Vinod Sharma will be Beenod Sarma in many states, but there is no doubt about what they mean and where they come from.

Gujaratis are among the oldest residents of Mumbai. If they have always got the ‘bai’ part of the name of the city right, there is no reason to believe that they were not able to pronounce the ‘Bom’ part correctly and therefore twisted it to ‘Mum’. Thus, if Gujaratis have always called Bombay ‘Mumbai’ as Sanghvi says, it almost proves the fact that the British corrupted the original name of a village called Mumbai to Bombay rather than the other way round! Outsiders who came into the city when the corrupted Bombay was its established British name, seem to have further corrupted the already corrupted ‘Bom’ to ‘Bam’ and taken the ‘bai’ part from the locals.

Bombay is not an isolated case of the corruption of the names of Indian cities by the British. Most people have forgotten that Kanpur was called ‘Cawnpore’ by the British. There was no city at that spot too before the British built a huge military station after getting the place in 1801. Prior to that, the small town/village that existed there was variously called Karnapur(after Karna of Mahabharat) or Kanhapur/Kanhiyapur(after Lord Krishna). There was also a Kohna village in the area. Whatever the prevalent name when the British took control of it, they promptly proceeded to corrupt it to an almost unrecognisable Cawnpore.

The British had a penchant for naming roads and streets after their kings, queens, princess, and other dignitaries in all the cities that they built on or around existing villages/towns. But for the cities themselves, they invariably stuck to the original names, thoroughly corrupted, of course. Very few towns were given non-Indian names. These were only those which were built from a scratch in a previously uninhabited area. Dalhousie, Abottabad, McLeodganj, Robertganj, Marghareta, Mussourie etc are few examples which readily come to mind. In all other cases, they stuck to the then prevalent local names.

The names of Calcutta and Madras cannot also be traced to any colonial roots. Logically, they would have been named after local settlements or villages there. The British wouldn’t have even dreamt during those early years that they would actually become the unquestioned rulers of this huge landmass one day. Nor would they have dreamt that they would build such large cities on those spots. Their achievements far exceeded their initial plans and expectations when they set camp in these and the other great cities and towns that they built. Had it been otherwise, or had they stayed longer, they probably would have followed the Mughal example in re-naming some existing great cities. Remember how at the peak of their power they arrogantly ignored the indigenous names of Mount Everest and named the world’s highest mountain after a British Surveyor General of India?

Bombay and Cawnpore are not the only examples of wholesale corruption of the names of Indian cities and places. Nor was the corruption limited to names of cities only. Everyone knows how river Ganga was corrupted to ‘Ganges’. That is not all, Narmada was mutilated to ‘Nerbudda’, Yamuna to ‘Jumna’ and Satluj river became, hold your breath, ‘Sutledge’ ! Names of individuals were also similarly corrupted. Karim Bhai became ‘Currimboy’ and Mohammad became ‘Mahomed’. Of course, who does not know that Lord Jagannath has become something else altogether in the dictionary as ‘Juggernaut’.

Examples of arrogant mutilation of names of Indian people, places and things are endless. But, for now, let us stick to the corruption of the names of Indian cities. A few examples of the way Indian cities were spelt during the Raj by the British are being reproduced below. Try and pinpoint which cities/places these are today. Some answers will be easy while a few may fox you! The really well known ones like Trivandrum, Tanjore, Pondicherry, Trichur etc have been deliberately not included in the list.

1. Allyeghur 2. Bagput 3. Bolundshahur 4. Bundlekund 5. Dacca 6. Deyra Dhoon
7. Guzerat 8. Kurnaul 9. Futtegurh 10. Hurrianah 11. Jansie 12. Jaudpore
13. Jeypore 14. Jubbulpore 15. Loodianah 16. Oojein 17. Oudh 18. Raneegunge
19. Saugor 20. Scinde 21.Sreenugger 22.Terree 23. Umballah

Answers:-

1. Aligarh 2. Baghpat 3. Bulandshahar 4. Bundelkhand 5. Dhaka 6. Dehra Dun
7. Gujarat 8. Karnal 9. Fatehgarh 10. Haryana 11. Jhansi 12. Jodhpur
13. Jaipur 14. Jabalpur 15.Ludhiana 16. Ujjain 17. Avadh 18. Raniganj
19. Sagar 20. Sindh 21. Sringar 22. Tehri 23. Ambala

How many did you get right, if you are an Indian reading this?

Okay, here are a few more. I have not been able to link them to any known present cities and towns, and they are not from the time of the Indus valley civilisation! Got any ideas?

1. Erinpora 2. Googairah 3. Lullutpore 4. Mundesore 5. Puddakottah
6. Segombe 7. Segowle

Some of you might be thinking that many of these spellings may have been made up by me or picked out of some obscure source which has little credibility. It needs, therefore, to be mentioned that these spellings are out of as authentic a Raj document as you can get. They are from ‘ The Post Office of India and its History’ by Geoffrey Clarke, ICS.

I can already hear some prominent voices, particularly in the English media, asking that we should revert to the Raj spellings and even pronunciations for these cities too! After all, they will argue again , there were no cities in these places too before the British came and built them! An increasing number of them as it is find it very difficult to pronounce Indian names the way they used to when they were growing up, and now spend long hours to better even the Brits at their mutilation. Proud Indians.

The Raj is dead, so we think; long lives the Raj.

This post was also published by reuters.com