SECULAR BADGE GOING CHEAP: SECULARISM IS DEAD

When I wrote the post "How to get the secular badge, no questions asked!", even I could not have foreseen the complete mockery of so-called secularism that has unfolded suddenly and dramatically in Orissa. The BJP and the BJD have been allies in the state for 11 years and their alliance has been one of the most successful and stable political alliances anywhere in the country.

All was seemingly going well between the two parties till yesterday when the unexpected 'Breaking News' tickers on all channels started saying that the alliance had split. Within the hour, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was seen putting all doubts to rest about the fate of his discussions with BJP MP Chandan Mitra. The BJD and BJP jointly fought the Lok Sabha polls in 1998, 1999 and 2004 and the assembly elections of 2000 and 2004. In both assembly polls, the BJD contested 84 seats and BJP 63. In the general elections, the BJD contested 12 seats and BJP nine. This time the BJD wanted to contest 25 more Assembly seats, in lieu of which the BJP wanted two extra Lok Sabha seats. That was not acceptable to the the BJD, seemingly flying high on its assessment that the popularity of the CM was at an all-time high.

The moment the alliance broke, Naveen Patnaik turned magically secular. It was only a few months back that he was being compared to Narendra Modi for his role in the atrocities on Christians in Kandhamal. There was no newspaper, TV channel or blog that did not tear him apart for encouraging fundamentalist Hindu groups and doing nothing whatsoever to protect Christians in the state. No one was willing to give him even an inch for anything that he or his government did to bring deep-rooted societal tensions under control. He was condemned as the worst face of communalism that India had seen in the last few years.

There is no doubt that many ordinary and truly secular Indians were genuinely upset with what they were told by the media and a galaxy of 'secular' Indian politicians about Naveen Patnaik. How were they to know that in India's political landscape a politician's character is determined solely on the basis of who he is sleeping with and not what he is doing? When Kalyan Singh, the destroyer of the Babri Masjid wore the secular jacket by joining hands with Mulayam Yadav on almost the same grounds that Patnaik left the BJP, perhaps it was only me who wrote about the hypocrisy of this secular-communal divide, a purely political creation in a field where every single party picks candidates and asks for votes on the basis of religion, part of religion or region. But, most people were willing to forgive Kalyan Singh because a lot of water had flown down the Saryu in the last 18 years.

But this unbelievable turnaround of the secular brigade in less than 24 hours after the BJP-BJD alliance broke is something that should leave no sane Indian in any doubt that India's politicians are capable of doing anything in their pursuit of political power. It tells the nation that values, ideologies, ethics - pick a few more good words of your choice - are no more than words to be dishonestly used to convince the voter to put them back into power again.

Who were the first to give a clean chit to Naveen Patnaik for all the communalism that he displayed as the CM? Indian communists. "It is a positive development. It is clear that the allies of NDA are learning lessons about BJP's communal politics out of their own experience," said CPI leader D Raja to unshackle Patnaik from all his communal crimes. So the moment he left the BJP, Patnaik left behind the responsibility for all that he was being blamed for just a couple of months back as CM of the state.

This is not all. Within 24 hours, the Left has not only extended support to the Patnaik government but has also entered into a pre-poll alliance with the BJD f0r the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections! When asked about this unholy turnaround, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury had no qualms in saying that they had always maintained that if the BJD leaves the BJP, they would join hands with it.

So was all this furore against the government for doing nothing to contain atrocities against Christians nothing but a cheap political ploy to con the minorities into voting against the BJD, as long as it was sleeping with someone else? Henceforth, notice that nothing wrong will be found by the secular parties with Patnaik's handling of the violence against Christians. The blame will conveniently be shifted to the district administration. Christian community leaders will also be quietly asked to get real and the media will pretend as if nothing had ever happened.

This is the reality of Indian politics today. Everything goes. And till it does not go my way, I will do everything I can to incite emotive voters against my opponents by making them believe all the falsehoods I utter, along with a few truths, against them. And, the moment they hop over to my side, I will absolve them of all sins without any shame whatsoever.

Get ready folks for even bigger shocks. What can be bigger than this, you might ask. Don't be surprised if after the elections, the Left and other sworn-to-secularism pretenders welcome Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena into the vanguard of the secular brigade with a genuinely warm hug. They will do that, have no doubt, if the arithmetic demands it.

The secular badge is going really cheap now. For politicians, secularism is dead already, bar the static. Your and my vote is getting more and more worthless by the day.
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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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DELHI BLASTS: BLAME PAK, BLAME ISI, GO HOME

Now it is the turn of Delhi. Five blasts in a span of 45 minutes starting 6:15 PM this evening have claimed 18 lives already, still counting.
The usual email of the Indian Mujahideen claiming responsibility for the attack has been received by the police. As per the email, Operation BAD(Bangalore Ahmedabad Delhi) is now complete. The pathetic blame game and talk of ‘intelligence failure’ has already begun.

One can safely predict the sequence of events that will follow.

The Home Minister will make a brief appearance and blame Pakistan directly or obliquely. The Minister of State for Home will be heard saying that the matter is being investigated and that the ISI has a hand in the attack. Minister Renuka Chaudhary will explain why domestic violence cannot be dealt with by normal laws, necessitating a tough new law, while stoutly defending the opposite stand taken by the government to deal with the unending violence unleashed by terrorists. The NSA, who has used his stint to mindlessly upgrade police ranks and increase the dysfunctional invasion of the IPS cadre into the para military forces, will probably remain silent. If he eventually does decide to waffle an answer, he will most likely say that there is credible evidence to show Pakistan’s involvement, and declare that the ISI needs to be destroyed, without knowing what that entails.

Mulayam Singh Yadav will be shown saying that there is no proof against the SIMI and that it is a secular organization. Lalu Prasad Yadav will echo his sentiments and ask for a ban on the RSS and the VHP also if the SIMI is banned. Ram Vilas Paswan will defend illegal Bangladeshi migrants saying that there is no evidence against the HUJI and that all Bangladeshi migrants should be made Indian citizens. Of course, no one will ask him as to why not a single Bangladeshi has been able to settle down in J&K while millions have created a dangerous security situation in many other parts in the rest of India. Sitaram Yechuri will eloquently justify the hypocritical position of India's commies against a stiffer law for terrorists while recommending exactly the opposite for drunken driving.

The BJP will chant its POTA mantra and blame the Congress for going soft on terror. It will the taunt the Congress that the only blast cases of the last few years that have been solved are those that took place in Modi’s Gujarat, while in other states the political leadership has failed because it is trying to appease the minorities. Finally, it will ask for the government’s resignation and ask for elections. Sushma Swaraj may actually declare once again that these blasts are a sinister conspiracy of the central government to delay the monsoon session of Parliament and divert the attention of the people who in reality are very unhappy with Indo-US Nuclear Deal.

The usual chat shows will be held in TV studios in the next few days with the same players, the same questions and the same answers. At these platforms, bleeding heart secularists will get the opportunity to voice their apprehension that the blasts may actually be the handiwork of Hindu terrorists belonging to the fringe groups of the Sangh Parivar. Selected Muslims will also be heard saying that Islam is a religion of peace which does not permit killing of innocent civilians.

After all this has been said, everyone will show ‘great resilience’ and get back to the beat of life as if nothing ever happened.

This is what has been happening for years. And nothing, actually nothing, has been done till now to proactively tackle this scourge that India has been facing for decades now. Why proactively? Precious little has been done even reactively. Not one of the anti-terror mechanisms that other countries have put in place have even been considered by India.

India simply does not have the courage to do what it needs to. Why? The prime reason, of course, is the politics of vote banks which frightens politicians who are in business solely to grab power, all means fair. Due to this, the entire government machinery has been hijacked by bureaucrats who in this country have become the real, permanent rulers. Systematically, they have infiltrated, captured and destroyed all institutions that matter in the matrix of power. And, they lack the integrity to step aside and let real professionals, and the best available minds, get into the system to make it responsive and dynamic.

What did the Americans do after 9/11? They did not let their bureaucrats and diplomats let them beat around the bush into doing nothing. They went into Afghanistan. What are they doing now? Having given Pakistan enough time and opportunity and money to tackle the Talibanis and Al Qaida elements operating in that country, the US has decided unilaterally to send its special forces into that country to do the job. Yes, we all know that Pakistan is a sovereign country. Yes, we all know that the US is violating its sovereignty. What else should it have done? Should it have kept helplessly swallowing Pakistani duplicity like India has done?

A few days back, a guest on CNN suggested that the US should use diplomatic efforts rather than sending its troops into Pakistan. The news reader promptly shot back saying that diplomacy will take a long time to yield results and that with US troops dying in attacks planned in Pakistani territory, that kind of time was not available to the US.

Even American news readers understand this elementary fact.

But for over two decades, India’s politicians, “policy makers”(generalist bureaucrats) and career diplomats have not grasped it even though more troops have been lost to terrorism than have been killed in all the wars that Independent India has fought. When your top leadership does not understand or chooses to ignore simple facts that stare you in the face, because its civil servants can see things in only terms of cadre supremacy, no response is possible. That is exactly what has happened. And no one wants to learn anything from the US where career bureaucrats and the police are nowhere in the top decision making hierarchy. In fact bureaucracy is almost abhorred by the leadership there.

So, be prepared for the usual and superficial media blitz for the next two days. Hear a lot of statements from India’s leaders blaming Pakistan and the ISI. And know that there is nothing more that they can do. Job done, they will just shake the dust off their hands, go home, and then get back to the petty politics of creating new divisions in India’s social fabric, only so that they can get a few additional votes in the next elections.
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3. India losing war on terror: The Prithviraj Chauhan Syndrome
4. Stiff law for drunken drivers not terrorists!

WHY TOUGH TERROR LAW WHEN ATTACKS DON'T STOP?

If there is one unimaginably absurd question that can be asked while a nation struggles to develop a meaningful strategy to combat terrorism, it is: why have a tough terror law when terror attacks could not be prevented even when such a law was in force earlier?

This question is actually not worth dignifying by discussion. But the problem is that it is not being asked by some illiterate, uninformed nobodies; the ones asking it are some rather famous media luminaries and, quite naturally, those politicians who have a less than honourable political stake in doing away with the earlier anti terror law in India, the Prevention of Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act(POTA).

Indian security forces have been battling terrorism in Kashmir for nearly two decades now. Nearly half a million men in uniform are fighting this battle, and thousands have died, while our armchair ‘intellectuals’ are comfortably enjoying the benefits of the economic boom that has kissed some Indians like them. Despite this massive deployment of forces, terrorist attacks continue unabated in Kashmir. Surely the perfect logic to withdraw forces from Kashmir a la POTA! But nobody except Pakistan demands that. Why? Because even the dullest and most intellectually dishonest of the lot know that the moment that is done, Kashmir becomes history for India.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, a law far tougher and much more prone to misuse than POTA has been used for decades by India to tackle insurgency in the North East; it is still in force in a few places there, despite long drawn protests by locals, particularly in Manipur. That Act has not stopped terror attacks there; why is nobody applying the same brainlessly bizarre logic to ask for it to be repealed too, like POTA has been? Because the North East does not figure even in the periphery of their thoughts; they are interested only in places and issues which gets them the limelight and some international exposure, even if they talk either like Pakistan does or like zombies and bimbettes from Mars!

Let us take an example with which the rootless variety of animated urban articulators and hijackers of real public opinion will be familiar. The swanky cars that they drive are getting equipped with increasingly sophisticated security systems to prevent theft. That does not stop thieves. Why, then, have those expensive anti theft systems installed in the first place?! Ask them this question and they will chide you for not having even the elementary understanding that the objective of such systems is to make it difficult for thieves to first steal and then get away without getting caught, even if they successfully overcome security gadgets meant to prevent theft.

That is how I got my car back, some them will tell you, thanks to the latest tracking system which told me exactly where the car was after it was stolen. Some thieves can disable the tracking system too. So, does the solution lie in reverting to the minimal security provided by the humble door and ignition key(a car's IPC) and prayers to God, or to develop better systems(its POTA plus) to make theft more difficult and tracking and recovery of a stolen car easier?

They all know the answer to that one. But talk POTA and they will use every disingenuous trick to fool you and take you off the track, including hijacking the question itself to a discussion on state terrorism! The IPC has a provision for giving capital punishment. That has not stopped people from murdering. Should we not do away with that too? And focus instead on the human side of murderers and adopt a really soft, humane approach towards them?

Look at the extent of dishonesty. The same guys who oppose tough anti terror measures are the shrillest in demanding tougher laws and supersonic processes to punish rapists almost before they have finished committing that heinous crime! Why, even the Parliamentary Standing Committee, headed by commie Sitaram Yechury has recommended a tough law for, yes, drunken driving!

These are the same lot of people who also demanded and got enacted very tough laws to punish errant husbands. They all know that those laws have proved to be perfect tools of blackmail and harassment exploited most dishonestly by many unscrupulous, educated, aware and often economically independent women, to extract huge amounts of money from, and do worse to, their spouses. And this even as most of the really harassed and helpless women continue to suffer as they always have.

Yet, none of these angels hovering protectively over terrorists who mercilessly kill innocent citizens, have raised a voice for doing away with these other tough laws despite them being blatantly misused(May be some of them have personally benefited!). It is only when the question is about fighting mass murderers that they miraculously remember and cite isolated incidents of misuse as one more reason for continuing with perhaps the most benign and ineffective laws in the world.

All of them know, for example, that if maximum punishment for murder was reduced to say six months imprisonment, many, many more people would commit the crime. The knowledge that they will be hanged if they killed someone naturally deters a huge number of people from committing the crime. A few will still do it. Society has to deal with them, not by arguing that the law is useless! But those who are programmed for whatever reason to favour the lesser punishment will put aside their native commonsense and say that there is no statistical evidence to support this elementary understanding! It is due to this very basic commonsense, and not statistics, that tougher laws for many crimes, including the ones mentioned above, have been supported and actively got put in place by them!

The government also realises that a tough law and other tough measures are needed to fight terrorism and insurgency. But, it is clever enough to put them in place only in areas where it can do so without hurting its electoral prospects. Where there is a danger of losing its vote bank, and that happens to be in the rest of India minus the remote North East as far as religious terrorism is concerned, the same government dishonestly argues that normal laws are sufficient, even as every other country afflicted by terrorism knows better and has done otherwise.

But, to deceive the nation, indeed the world, through carefully manipulated TV studio debates anchored by politically committed individuals and carefully selected moles to globally broadcast a falsified public opinion, the government repeatedly exposes its inability to rise above its narrow political greed and do what the most imperfect process of multi party democracy practiced in India has mandated it to: govern and protect India as a whole with integrity, responsibility and a profound sense of history.

It is indeed a sad commentary on the powerful but debilitating intellectual capital of this country in its war against terror that the question hotly being debated in the media for a few years now is about the justification for having tough terror laws only because terror attacks have not stopped. That I have to write this article on the subject is, to me, a demeaning experience, because the question reflects a disturbing level of dishonesty, even unacceptable disability, at the core of the political processes that determine India’s response to this unprecedented threat backed by powerful external forces.

The crystal clear answer to this question will have to be acknowledged one day when further pretense will no longer be possible. Till then, perhaps all you and I can do is to keep a count of the number of innocent men, women and children killed by terrorists and try to imagine how many of them could have been saved had this nation made it more difficult for these mass murderers to indulge wantonly in their mission of death in the name of and for the Almighty Allah.

The later this answer comes to our leaders, the more blood they will have on their hands.

STIFF LAW FOR DRUNKEN DRIVERS, NOT TERRORISTS

A couple of news items during the week will confuse and confound those who watch India as it struggles to meet the challenges it faces as a nation in an increasingly hostile environment.

India has once again been classified as one of the “world’s most terror-afflicted countries” by the US State Department in its annual report on terrorism. As per the report, 2,300 people were killed in India by terrorists in 2007, with terrorist activities, particularly of Islamic terrorist groups, targeting all parts of India. The report highlights once again the outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems which are most ill equipped to tackle this menace which is growing bigger and more dangerous by the day.

You would expect that this important report which serves to remind India of the dangers it faces would find prominent mention in the media. But no; both the print and visual media are obsessed with the inaugural Indian Premier League Cricket tournament, particularly the pretty and scantily clad cheerleaders and the Bollywood brigade glamorizing the sport in an unprecedented manner.

Surprisingly, one news item which has made the front pages of some newspapers is about stiff laws being proposed for drunken driving! Ever since motor vehicles started plying on roads, a few people have been driving them under the influence of alcohol and killing others accidentally due to the effects of inebriation. Now, as per the tough recommendations of Parliament’s standing committee, to deal with drunken driving, death due to drunken driving is to be treated as culpable homicide not amounting to murder (The Times of India, May 1, 2008).

On the face of it, the recommendations for stiffer laws for drunken driving make sense and have not come a day too soon. But considering that the chairman of the committee is the Communist leader Sitaram Yechury, there has to be a sub plot to the whole issue.

During the last few years, as India’s affluence and its media have grown at a blistering pace, a number of cases of death due to drunken driving by the rich and sometimes famous, or their children, have made great stories, what with witnesses and victims being paid large sums to protect the guilty. In fact, with such cases grabbing all the headlines, the many more deaths due to drunken driving by tired, poor, truck, bus and taxi drivers have gone almost completely unnoticed.

It is the killings by the drunken capitalists which seem to have energized Yechury and the commie brigade; no one bothered when the poor were killing the poor!

Again, while drunken deaths by the rich have propelled a recommendation to have stiffer laws, to act as a deterrent, Yechury and party have found no reason to formulate stiffer laws for terrorists who are waging war against the nation and are killing many innocent Indians in cold blood. As per former Punjab Police Chief KPS Gill, the overall conviction rate for all crimes in India is just 6.5 per cent, with the litigation process often extending to decades. More significantly, the conviction rates, under normal laws, for terrorist crimes in the regions afflicted by widespread terrorism would be less than 0.001 per cent, according to Gill. Yet, Indian law makers continue to justify the sorry state of affairs and say with a straight dishonest face that even when an anti-terror law was in place earlier, incidents of terrorism did not decrease! Then, pray, why recommend stiff laws for drunken driving?

Thanks to our law makers and weirdly 'guilty' media, in India you are much safer wantonly killing people with an AK 47 than being a rich man causing an accidental death while driving after one extra drink!

There was also a news item about the communist strongman Prakash Karat supporting the Maoists of Nepal in their demand that all treaties between India and Nepal should be re-negotiated. Karat wanted India to enter into ‘fair’ treaties with Nepal and also resolve its disputes with China through talks – as if India was threatening to invade China! Karat and Yechury have also been strongly against the proposed Indo-US nuclear agreement. The main reason, I suspect, is to keep their handlers in Beijing happy and to ensure that India does not acquire enough military muscle to make the Chinese think about consequences should they decide to attack India again sometime in the future.

Grotesque abuse of power has been the very essence of communism that has mercifully disappeared from the face of the earth, except India where it is still alive in its original purity only because it never got a chance to rule the nation and get properly unmasked. Communists all over the world drove their nations almost entirely in a drunken state, tanked totally with intolerant power. Yet, they remain unpunished and unrepentant for killing more people in the name of ideology than have been killed in all the wars fought in the world put together.

Communists in India too appear to be doing drunken driving, that too in reverse gear, to successfully ensure that the UPA government, gaspingly dependent on their few MPs, and the country remain stymied in their efforts to make India grow faster and stronger like the Chinese have.

China has sensible thrown communism completely out of the country, except in the name of its only political party. That is the secret of its stupendous success. The only way it seems that India can beat China is by exporting its pure communist leaders to that country!

Just visualize what Indian communists will do if somehow they get power in China.

First, they will apologize to Tibetans, Turks, Manchurians and other minorities living in 60 per cent of the landmass that constitutes present day China for annexing them. Then they will grant independence to these countries to free them from Han domination. Aksai Chin, the land where “not a blade of grass grows” will be honorably returned to India, with an apology for 1962. With Tibet free, China will have no border dispute with India. With peace prevailing all around, Indian commies will hack China’s defence expenditure and reduce the strength of its army. China will then join the exclusive club of weak, meek and inconsequential nations called NAM and helplessly bemoan the hegemony of the US. Westernization will be the next casualty. McDonald and other iconic American brands will be given marching orders and China will return to the Mao Tunic age, deglamourizing Brinda Karat with utmost insensitivity. Cycles will be in rage again. Finally, all those who oppose the return to ‘pure’ communism will be summarily exterminated, emulating the feats of heroes like Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot who killed untold millions without remorse!

Fortunately for the Chinese, such a scenario will never afflict them. That country has learnt the real lessons of communism. Even at the height of communist influence, it never, ever confused ideology with national interest. Now it is focused on “catching mice” rather than on the “colour of the cat”, to take the country to new, unprecedented heights! Indian communist type of communists have already been exterminated in that country. Such a lot are potent ‘force multipliers’ only when kept and activated in countries which are potential adversaries!

When is India going to take a leaf out of the book that the Chinese have mastered, and easily better it with a few creative ones of its own? Or are we going to keep re-enacting this sickening spectacle of focusing on the trivial and ignoring the critical, just to keep petty political turfs, and worse, warm and going?

This post was also published by reuters.com and Chicago Sun Times.

INDIA HIT BY COMMUNIST BIRD FLU

There seems to be absolutely no limit to the depths of falsehoods that Indian communists are willing to employ to convince the country that it should be wary of the hegemonic designs of the US. All this to ensure that India does not get the Nuclear Deal it has secured for itself after some real hard bargaining.

The latest in the series of blatant lies that any one other than Goebbles would hesitate to use, appears in the Hindustan Times of October 18, 2007, in the name of the suave, vocal and visible Left leader and Member of Indian Parliament, Sitaram Yechuri.

Yechuri starts by trying to mislead readers into believing in ‘the superiority of the socialist system in stretching the limits of human endeavor’. For this, he chooses the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, into space by the erstwhile Soviet Union, in Oct. 1957. Then, he tries to project that this launch was done by the Soviets ‘for the benefit of humanity as a whole and for achieving higher levels of civilizational advance’. Further, Yechuri goes on to list a whole lot of important technological advances that followed, incidentally all by the ‘inferior’ capitalist systems, which he claims would have been impossible but for the socialist Sputnik!

All this is to get to the main point of ‘proving’ that the US was the only villain who used this socialist scientific achievement to start a mindless nuclear cold war in space! In support of this canard this we have another ‘Yechurian truth’ that the Americans already had Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), when Spuntnik was launched, while the Soviets did not.

The lies are so dumb and shocking that one does not even know where to start their exposure. Nevertheless, let us first take the achievement of Sputnik’s launch. Yechuri has cleverly concealed the fact that rockets were first developed by Nazi Germany during Second World War; the famous V2 rockets that were used against England. Germany had also launched Project Amerika to develop long range missiles that could hit the US, but the War ended at their testing stage.

Then again, Yechuri forgets to mention that German scientists were taken to the Soviet Union after the War to help it develop missiles capable of hitting the US, which they did. The Germans also flew the first jet planes in the world. Surely Mr. Yechuri, these achievements should, by your own admission, prove the superiority of the Nazi system, and not the socialist one!

The lies now get more sordid. The first ICBM was launched by, yes, the Soviets, not Americans, on August 27, 1957 and it covered 7000 kms. It was designed to carry a 2.9 MT warhead weighing 5.4 tons up to a maximum of 8600 kms. Yechuri’s Sputnik for the benefit of humanity was launched in Oct. 1957, from the same ICBM rocket, modified. The American ICBM, Atlas, appeared only on July 19, 1958! So who carried the nuclear arms race to space? The US, Mr. Yechuri?

This is the historical lie sheet that Yechuri has used to launch a frontal attack on the US for its ‘renewed aggression…to use space as a theater to display its military might and browbeat the world’. Yet another bundle of pathetic lies taken out of the JNU bag of the Left to oppose the hegemonic designs of the US. This bag is no different from the bag carried by the many communist states which finally had to dump it along with the discredited ideology with which had they fooled and used their own people for far too long.

Also note that Yechuri simply does not want Indians to know that Russians went all out to bolster their military might to make themselves as one of the two dominant, if not the most dominant, powers of the world. That was a necessary nationalist, not ideological, response to a security situation and their appreciation of the Soviet Union's global role as a nation. Ideology was not allowed to interfere with and weaken national strength at any stage.

China too is a socialist state which drew ideological inspiration from Russia. But Yechuri wants to keep completely quiet about the fact that this did not cause its leaders to sing false praises of the Soviet Union as second best ‘apists’, who were content to play second fiddle as a nation of weaklings to their ideological ‘masters’. In the 60s, they even engaged the Russians in military skirmishes over a disputed border. Then, without any loss of national focus, they went on to build a formidable strategic military capability in such an aggressive manner that it is only a matter of time before they go ahead of the Russians.

That is why China’s President now talks confidently of China’s larger role of ‘ensuring peace in the world’.

Why is it that everything that China has done, or is doing, can never sound like hegemony to our Left? Why is it that the way China has almost consumed Tibet, befriended Pakistan, given training and support to Indian insurgents, made serous inroads into Myanmar, kept alive the border dispute with this country, and developed nuclear weapons and ICBMs, just does not trouble the Left of India?

What is the reason for this treason, I cannot call it anything else, by Indian communists? What compulsion makes men like Yechuri sound alarm bells hanging on filthy falsehoods whenever India takes even a small step to realize its true strategic station of near parity with China? With the Soviet Union gone, who else can India turn to achieve its goal but the US? Why does the Left forget that even when the Soviet Union was there, China did not hesitate to engage with the US, now its largest trading partner, in the furtherance of its supreme national interest?

Mr. Yechuri, you cannot indefinitely continue to con the nation into believing that your humiliating subservience to some countries and your aggressive stance detrimental to the interests of your own country has been, and is only because of an ideology which even they have discarded. Even real apes have more self respect.

Ronnen Sen was wrong. We are not being stalled by headless chickens. What the nation is facing is a serious attack by the most deadly strain of ideological bird flu, deviously camouflaged and smuggled into this country, by men whose very national identity is open to question.

Can India afford to allow itself to be harmed by such 'men'?

INDO-US NUCLEAR DEAL AND PETTY POLITICIANS

Reading the column by Sagarika Ghose in the Hindustan Times of today was a relief. http://hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/FullcoverageStoryPage.aspx?id=6f28ed56-37ac-478b-8be4-8479ba5552ecNucleardealimbroglio_Special&&Headline=No+power+to+the+people A dignified way of saying what needed to be said, without getting into the gutter, as it were.

Yechuri’s arguments in his column yesterday were nicely countered and the hollowness of the stance of the Left exposed effectively without abuse and without sounding like a lackey of the Congress. Ghose was dead right about the grim truth: India’s powerful are closet-monarchists whose contempt and scorn for the people is so deep-seated that they prefer to live in fortresses from where the public can barely be seen. I may add that it is not just the public that they barely see; even the country seems to disappear from view. Much like in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries when petty princes saw nothing beyond their fiefdoms and wound up giving India away to British traders for a song. Then, of course, there was no “India” politically to identify with as a nation. Now, even when a resurgent Indian state strives to move forward, politician-princes still insist on seeing only their short noses.

What is the ‘vision’ of the communists of the India of the future? Yechury says it is “championing of multi-polarity and its traditional leadership role of the developing countries”. That is all the communists can think of for a huge nation of 1.2 billion people. If Chinese communists had similar aspirations for their country in the 60’s and beyond, China would still have been struggling as a starving third world state of no global consequence. Fortunately, they were not Indian and clearly envisioned their country as a major global power, no less than the US, given their size, population and resources. Ideology was rightly placed well behind national interest. That is why China has reached where it has and that is why the US is willing to bend all rules to give India the deal in question. The irony is that it is the US which has had to think big for us. Our politicians simply are not equipped to understand power play beyond the petty political realm. The nuclear deal is less about energy and more about strategic military power. This is something which should really be engaging the attention of our princes, but they are too caught up in displaying their power of bringing governments down, no matter what the cost to the country.

What do you expect from learned and educated parliamentarians who want to bring down the defence budget simply because relations with Pakistan and China are improving at the moment? They are either blind to what China is striving for militarily and economically or simply do not understand what it takes to become a large nation of any consequence. That is why Yechuri’s vision of India is so pathetic. The BJP’s response is even more tragic. That party claims to be one for a strong India. Yet, embarrassing the government takes total precedence over the national interest it espouses loudly otherwise.

Unfortunately, all this is a consequence of the vicious street-level politics that has marked our parliamentary ‘mobocracy’ that some are actually proud of! Ghose is right. Our closet-monarchs need to be pulled out of their make-believe world and made to see the Nation first. Political parties and groupings need to remember the words of Chetwode: “The safety, honour and welfare of your country comes first always and every time”. The sooner they do the better because they really are the biggest drag in the march forward of the country they claim to represent.

Also read this post http://vinodksharma.blogspot.com/2007/08/sanghvi-journalist-on-hidden-payroll.html