MAYAWATI'S NATIONAL INSECURITY ACT

This is a strange nation. With stranger leaders. For almost five years, till 26/11 to be precise, the government argued against a stringent law to deal with terrorists who kill innocent people on the plea that ordinary laws were sufficient to deal with terrorism. No one was prepared to listen that all nations affected by terror had put in place stringent anti-terror mechanisms. Only a few individuals let out that the real reason for the stance was that such a law might be misused by the police. It was safer to allow innocent people to keep getting killed than risk losing the votes of a minority community.

Maharashtra and Delhi have their own anti terror law, the MCOCA. All the "Hindu" terrorists arrested for the Malegaon blast are being tried under this anti-terror law. But, MCOCA has not been used by the Congress government of Delhi in the case of the Indian Mujahideen terrorists involved in the September 13 serial blasts in Delhi ostensibly because such laws had become contentious for being misused against minorities.

The strangest development of all is that all those who have been crying hoarse about the human rights of terrorists and demanding that they be tried like ordinary criminals under the IPC and the CrPC etc alone, have not opened their mouth against perhaps the gravest misuse of law since the dark days of the Emergency. Mayawati has slapped the draconian Nationa Security Act (NSA) against Varun Gandhi for making that by now famous hate speech. Under the NSA, no judicial review can be sought for three months.

This means that for making a political speech, however despicable, a candidate has been silenced behind the bars for perhaps the whole duration of the election campaign by a political rival who is engaged in a ferocious electoral fight to win power in Delhi. The silence of the Congress and the Election Commission to this brazen misuse of a law that is meant to be used only when there is a threat to the nation is ominous.

This time it might be Varun Gandhi who is the victim. But, theoretically, it is now possible for anyone to lock up political opponents in the middle of their election campaigns. The slogan of Mayawati's BSP has changed now but if some of her supporters raise the BSP's original slogan at a rally that she addresses in a state ruled by her opponents, she can be put in jail under the NSA by them. "Tilak, tarazu aur talwar, inko maaro jootey chaar" (Hit Brahmins, Kshatrias and Vaishyas with shoes). Is not this original battle cry of the BSP provocative enough for the NSA to be invoked, going by the precedent that Mayawati has set?

In one hasty step taken out of political panic, Mayawati has turned the NSA into a "National Insecurity Act". Worried by the possible loss of her voters to the BJP, she has pulled the NSA out of the bag to poach Mulayam Yadav's Muslim vote bank. By locking up Varun Gandhi, she is trying to tell Muslims that they can trust her to act tough against anyone who speaks against them. This move may well backfire and prove to be just the issue that the BJP needs to reclaim the voters of UP that had deserted the party.

Notwithstanding what the political fallout is, what should concern all politicians and citizens is that this dangerous misuse of the NSA will open a Pandora's box that will make a complete mockery of the process of law. It is everyone's duty to ensure that politicians do not turn the NSA into a tool of petty political vendetta.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. The Varun fiasco: Congress scores another self goal
2. The Varun sting: who is not playing the communal card?
3. Rahul, Varun and the politcs of hate
4. Say sorry to India Varun

LAHORE UNDER ATTACK, PAKISTAN UNDER SIEGE

Terrorists have struck in the very heart of Pakistan once again, this time even more dramatically and more purposefully than when they had attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team on March 03, 2009. Wearing police uniforms, around 20 heavily armed terrorists attacked the Police Training Centre in Manawan area of Lahore this morning, killing at least 12 and wounding 70 others.

As per reports coming in as this is being written, the terrorists have taken control of the centre and are holding 800 policemen hostage. Attack helicopters are circling the sky, the city has been placed under curfew, armoured carriers have moved in and the Special Action Group of the Army is preparing to launch an assault to eliminate them and free the hostages. Almost seven hours since the attack was launched, firing is still on, one terrorist has been killed and a couple of them have been injured. This time, the terrorists are clearly digging in for a long fight to the bitter end. The similarities with what happened in Mumbai on November 26, 2008 are striking.

Pakistan is under attack. From within. Just a couple of days after President Barack Obama said that "Al Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within", unidentified jihadis have graphically demonstrated that the threat they pose is real and that the American President has his finger on the button about the danger that Pakistan faces to its very existence in its present form. Pakistani President Zardari has been saying for long that his country is in danger of being taken over by the Taliban. But his country has so got used to being in a state of denial since 1947 that it has simply lost the capacity to honestly accept the reality that has steadily hollowed the state from within and brought it to the brink of collapse.

When terrorists attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team, to me it was clear that the message of their attack was beyond the obvious and was far more dangerous and fundamental than was immediately apparent. Expectedly, Pakistan relapsed into a denial mode and there were even allegations that India was behind the attack. Certain that Radical Islam was now aiming for the very heart of Pakistan, for the state of Pakistan itself, I had then anticipated that the attack on the Sri Lankan team would be followed by a graduated increase in attacks on "un-Islamic" symbols like cinema halls, music shops, girls not fully covered up etc. to convert Punjab and Sindh also into fully Islamic territories. With the Taliban already less than 150 kms from Islamabad and operating with relative ease even in other parts of Pakistan, the danger was too stark to be dismissed.

Today's attack on the most visible symbol of the law and order machinery of the Pakistani state in the heart of Punjab province which itself is the heart of Pakistan shows that the Islamists are in a real hurry to devour the whole nation. Worse, the ease with which they have planned and executed this attack and the previous one proves that their tentacles have already spread deep and wide, including within many organs of the establishment. That is a disturbing fact that has to be faced squarely by not only sane elements in Pakistan but also the US and India. Only then can the challenge of radical Islamists be successfully countered.

The Americans say that the ISI is continuing to help the Taliban fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan by giving them money, supplies and strategic planning guidance. If the ISI is double-crossing the Americans so blatantly, is anyone under any illusion as to what it would be doing with terrorist groups that it has spawned to take on India? Why do you think there was such a coordinated effort to deny any involvement of Pakistan in the Mumbai terror attack till there was no choice but to admit it? Why do you think even after the admission that part of the conspiracy was hatched in Pakistan, the trail has gone cold? Why do you think that after the cosmetic arrests of a few Lashkar-e-Toiba leaders in the wake of Mumbai 26/11, the outfit is continuing its activities as vigorously as ever, as the recent encounter in Kashmir in which 17 terrorists were killed shows?

The fact that the ISI is able to do operate unchecked against both the Americans and the Indians without any fear of the state should leave no one in any doubt that support for its covert operations has the blessings at the highest echelons in the Pakistani military establishment. General Pervez Kiyani was heading the ISI under Musharraf before he took over as Army Chief from him. If he does not know how the ISI operates and what it is up to then who will? Musharraf himself has repeatedly being saying that it is the ISI and the Army that all but define the state of Pakistan. Need anything more be said? If both of them do not know what is happening in the ground beneath their feet, then it is either a shameless lie or Pakistan is inexorably headed into a dark, dangerous abyss.

Lahore is under siege. Jinnah's Pakistan is under attack. Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik says that this is an attack on the sovereignty of Pakistan. He believes that the elements operating in Afghanistan are most likely behind this attack. The Taliban have dramatically arrived in the heart of a seemingly helpless Pakistan much before any one thought they would. They could not have reached there in this manner without a measure of local support and the help and guidance of a section of the establishment.

This leads straight to the deduction that it is not the Pashtuns alone who have come under the influence of radical, Wahhabi Islam and the Al Qaida which is its most visible, militant face. There are many Punjabis too who have crossed over ideologically. They are the ones who are using the structures of the establishment that they are part of to destroy it and replace it with the set up that they had put in place in Afghanistan after the Soviets were driven out of that country.

What happened in Afghanistan earlier led to 9/11. What is happening in a nuclear Pakistan has frightening implications for the whole world, should Radical Islamists succeed in overrunning the remaining parts of the country, its heartland. The Americans already know that the Al Qaida and the Taliban are thriving in the Western parts of Pakistan. That is one reason why President Barack Obama has said that Pakistan is central to America's war in Afghanistan.

Today's attack in Lahore is a clear sign that Radical Islamists have moved into Pakistan's core. America's war on terror has now all but spread physically to the whole of Pakistan. More ominously, its enemy must soon include the ISI and will eventually include a significant chunk of Pakistan's military leadership, if not its rank and file. Fighting and defeating such elements who are part of and often indistinguishable from the liberal elements that define the state of Pakistan is not going to be easy. Nor is this war going to be short.

The the future of the whole world is inextricably linked to the drama of death that has been unleashed by the Al Qaida and similar Islamists who want to establish the rule of their version of Islam over Pakistan and the whole world. This is the one "world war" in which defeat is not an option, no matter what the cost.

UPDATE

Pakistani security forces have succeeded in ending the siege 8 hours and 40 minutes after it began. One terrorist has been killed, three have blown themselves up and one, believed to be a Pashtun, has been captured. The injured are being screened to find out if there is any terrorist among them. The interior Minister of Pakistan says that the attack was carried out by the Taliban.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Zakaria's Afghan strategy: salvage or surrender?
2. India needs to ready itself for a post-Pakistan scenario
3. All cylinders on fire, where is Pakistan heading?
4. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same terror coin
5. Attack on Sri Lankan cricketers: no room for pretence now

THE VARUN FIASCO: CONGRESS SCORES ANOTHER SELF GOAL

For the last one week, the media have done little other than talk about Varun Gandhi in the context of a "hate speech" that he gave in Pilibhit. After saturating the nation with visuals of those speeches, which Varun says were doctored, countless unidirectional debates in TV studios and columns by media luminaries in leading newspapers, they thought they had got Varun Gandhi by his unmentionables, the BJP on the back foot and all Muslim votes in the bag of the Congress or other "secular" parties that are pitted against the BJP. The fatal blow, everyone thought, was the Chawla-tainted Election Commission hastily issuing an unprecedented advisory to the BJP to not field Varun as its candidate.

"Varun Gandhi must not be allowed to get away". That was the shrill refrain of all who thought they had a winner for the Congress and the other Gandhis, at last.

But, the script seems to have gone horribly wrong. As always, the media and, possibly, the SWOT analysts of the Congress have forgotten that democracy involves real people and not the elite who live in Delhi and frequent TV studios. The party has for long been paying a very heavy price for getting disconnected from the people and becoming dependent on a vocal and seemingly knowledgeable few who dominate the media space and little else.

The Varun sting is further proof that the Congress in now totally dependant on communal arithmetic rather than a genuine connect with the masses to win political power. The muted and almost zero reactions of Mulayam Yadav and Mayawati to this sting operation should have woken the media and Congress to the danger that their massive campaign could backfire badly. But, they were so caught up in the excitement of having got a "brahmastra" to beat the BJP with that they never even considered that possibility.

Mulayam Yadav has been courting Muslims openly for years, going even to the extent of saying that the seditious SIMI was a secular organisation. Indeed, the "secular" Mulayam Yadav has built his party solely on the basis of Muslim and Yadav vote banks. That has necessarily involved ignoring the interests of all Hindus except Yadavs. So, he is fully alive to the electoral danger of giving too much air to what Varun Gandhi has said. Mayawati has built her party on the strength of Hindu dalits and, of late, brahmins. She too knows that she will be hit hard if she is deserted en masse by brahmins and by some dalits who get swayed by emotions based on ground reality.

The Congress, on the other hand, has lost almost all voters in UP and Bihar, and has absolutely no clue about what it needs to do win them back. With that total disconnect, is it any wonder that the party has come to rely on the opinion of the same half a dozen or so faces that are seen in all TV studios and the "voice of the people" being projected in cleverly manipulated elitist chat shows? That blunder, coupled with the killer Tehelka sting just before the Gujarat assembly elections contributed in no small measure to the decimation of the Congress in Gujarat and the rise and rise of Narendra Modi. And that is what it appears is happening with Varun Gandhi too.

A bit too late, the media and the Congress have woken up to the horror that their blitz has backfired badly. The tables have been turned on them most unexpectedly. Their "hate campaign" against the BJP and Varun Gandhi has apparently achieved the exact opposite result. So, now they are crying that the BJP is doing nothing but a "drama" by letting Varun Gandhi surrender and court arrest in Pilibhit rather than apply for extension of anticipatory bail in the Supreme Court. They are also accusing the BJP for trying to gain political mileage out of the incident and for making Varun Gandhi a hero. Conveniently forgotten is the fact that it was the Congress and a politically aligned media, not the BJP, that had been shouting hoarse for over a week to get such mileage for the Congress and make a villain of Varun!

The unending media drama has electrified the atmosphere in Pilibhit in a manner that no one in Delhi ever thought it could. Thousands of supporters of Varun Gandhi who have descended on the town gave Varun Gandhi a hero's welcome as he arrived a couple of hours back to surrender before the local court. Even though they all have violated Section 144, Mayawati has been intelligent enough to keep the police away, not wanting to make any personal contribution to Varun Gandhi's spiking popularity at her party's expense. He has quietly been remanded to judicial custody till Monday and the police have taken him into custody.

Before he surrendered, Varun Gandhi spoke briefly to his supporters. Defiant as ever, he said: "I am ready to take whatever steps are necessary to fight for the people...I believe in my principles and am willing to fight for them. I am not going to back off...If by my going to jail people get strength to fight for their rights I am ready to go to jail".

"I am not going to back off". This is not the kind of response any one of those who had planned the sting down to the last detail would have even dreamt of. Earlier too, Varun had taken everyone by surprise by saying: "I am a proud Gandhi, a proud Hindu and a proud Indian in equal measure". When was the last time a Hindu from his kind of background was heard being proud, not apologetic, of his religion? That refrain was always identified with Indians of other religions, many of whom have routinely been putting their religious identity ahead of their national one, without ever being called communal.

Varun Gandhi, whether we like it or not, has been unwittingly catapulted to national limelight by a media and a party out of tune with the India outside of Lutyen's Delhi. He has arrived, as they say, and has already carved a niche for himself. That is something that his cousin Rahul Gandhi has not been able to do at all, despite being at the very top of the heap in the Congress for seven years, with a very supportive media that have spared no efforts to project him as the energetic voice of India's youth.

Varun Gandhi's unexpectedly strident response to the sting and the support that the BJP has given him indicates that the CDs were actually tampered with in the 19 most incriminating places that Varun says they were. That will take years to prove, given our slow legal system. Knowing that, the media and the Congress had calculated that countless replays of those portions on TV along with relentless and vicious condemnation in the media would be enough to critically damage the BJP and negatively force Muslims into voting for the Congress across the country. All that they saw were two sitting ducks waiting to be killed with one stone. Only fools let such opportunities slip. Or so they thought.

The way in which the whole sting operation has been turned on its head by Varun Gandhi, now christened Saffron Gandhi by the media, is nothing less than a double whammy for the Congress, a nightmare that it would have easily foreseen had it had its ear to the ground, or learnt its lesson from Tehelka. But, like always, it remains tuned only to a supportive media living in the same bubble in Delhi and has forgotten that real democracy is quite different from designer democracy. Is it any wonder, therefore, that it has scored another avoidable self goal?

How costly this is going to prove to the party will be known only on May 16, 2009. Wait with bated breath.




-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. The Varun sting: who is not playing the communal card?
2. Can the Congress stem its slide?
3. Rahul, Varun and the politcs of hate

RAHUL, VARUN AND THE POLITICS OF HATE

Varun Gandhi has become the star attraction/repulsion of the ongoing election campaign, thanks to a couple of speeches that he made in his parliamentary constituency, inciting the "majority community" against the "minority community". That it was the London School of Economics educated great grandson of Nehru who took such a communally provocative line to garner votes is something that has stunned everyone. Not surprisingly, reactions have been extreme, forcing Varun Gandhi to go into hiding till the wind blows over.

Yesterday, however, Varun Gandhi ran into his estranged cousins and a few others at a private function. This is what transpired at that off-the-record, "mythical" gathering:

Varun: I swear on the Gita that I will cut the hand that is raised against Hindus.

RS Prasad: We dissociate ourselves from your remarks, even though many of us privately admire you for saying what we always wanted to but did not have the guts to say.

Anonymous: The Saudis will love this; this is just the kind of punishment they enjoy giving!

Abhishek Singhvi: Your association with communal BJP proves that you are a Gandhi by accidental birth; only Rahul was planned!

Amar Singh: Your statement is totally communal. BJP is a communal party that should be banned. India is a secular country. We need to protect and promote truly secular organisations like SIMI which believe that real secularism will be ushered in only when India becomes an Islamic state governed totally by the Sharia.

Bal Thackeray: I love this Gandhi; he's different!

Varun: Thank you uncle, I was beginning to feel orphaned...

RS Prasad: Don't feel so low, you will remain our candidate and are also going to be our star campaigner!

Abhishek Singhvi: BJP's double-speak and communal mindset stands exposed.

Varun: I am a proud Gandhi, a proud Hindu and a proud Indian in equal measure.

Abhishek Singhvi: A Gandhi saying that he is a proud Hindu is bad news for the Congress that has always believed in courting only minorities.

Priyanka: You should read the Gita.

Varun: Why? You think I don't know which one of us represents the Kauravs and which one the Pandavs?

Priyanka: I was actually thinking about Kandhari...

Varun: Be sure it is not my mom.

Rahul: But it was BJP's Foreign Minister who took terrorists to Kandahar. I didn't know there was a lady by that name too.

Varun: You mean you haven't read the Gita?

Rahul: I am blind to religion.

Varun: Only Hindu religion?

Rahul: You should not carry anger and hatred.

Varun: Yes I know. It was all love that drove me and my mom out of the Gandhi household after my father died.

Rajdeep Sardesai: You cannot be allowed to get away for making a hate speech. Only terrorists "who have no religion" and hardened criminals are allowed that privilege.

Varun: But the CD is doctored. I stand for Hindus. Hindutva is not against anybody. (Inaudibly) Except perhaps Muslims.

Rajdeep Sardesai: Does it matter? You are a political novice from LSE and yet you have stolen everybody's thunder.

Varun: But I was "truthfully" commenting on the atmosphere in Pilibhit...so what if I got a bit carried away? Remember Rahul also once spoke about one Kalawati and everybody thought he was taking a dig at Mayawati?

Rajdeep Sardesai: You are going to make CNN-IBN's poll predictions look even more rigged than they are. The Congress may now get no seats in UP except those of your aunt and cousin.

Varun: That is exactly what I want. I am the real Gandhi.

Rajdeep Sardesai: How dare you spoil our private party? I will not let you steal the crown of my Crown Prince. An example needs to be set to uphold the highest ideals of dynastic secularism that your great grandfather espoused.

Varun: But what about the situation in Pilibhit?

Barkha Dutt: Total freedom for minorities to say and do what they like is what defines India's secularism. Raising a voice against them is rank communalism and simply cannot be tolerated.

Varun: But you never gave that sort of freedom to that poor blogger who wrote only a couple of harmless sentences against you.

Barkha Dutt: I am Barkha Dutt. My name may sound Hindu, but I am an atheist and have no time for imaginary gods like Ram. So, I too am a minority and hence cannot be criticised. Why do you think people call me Burkha?

Varun: Jai Sri Ram! You don't believe in Ram?

Barkha Dutt: I believe that to survive in this competitive world, prayers to Ram or any such mythical character are not going to help. One has just to know how to ram one's point home. And, the only real Rahm I know is Barack Obama's brilliant Chief of Staff. I can say "Jai Ho" only to him.

Varun: Is your saying that Ram is mythical not reflective of your "hate" towards Hindu religion?

Barkha Dutt: That is what we have always been taught in our secular educational institutions; Hindu gods are mythical, they never existed. Why pick on me? Karunanidhi says your Ram was a drunkard. And he is right. Only a drunkard or the communal BJP can claim that Adam's Bridge was built by monkeys for Ram!

Naveen Chawla: It pays to remain loyal to real, living gods and goddesses who can ram their way through and put you where you want to be despite stiff opposition from Ram's followers!

Varun: Why did you not give me even a hearing before finding me guilty?

Naveen Chawla: Someone told me that you were going to take away even the remaining 1% voters still with the Congress in UP. The Election Commission, therefore, had no choice but to hastily put out the unprecedented advice that you should not be allowed to contest the elections.

Varun: But that is blatant partisanship; the EC is a constitutional body that is supposed to be neutral.

Naveen Chawla: I can't be an ungrateful backstabber like Laloo Yadav, can I?

Varun: Remember you were my father's Man Friday during the Emergency?

Naveen Chawla: I'm still with the Family. You and your mom are ones who opted out, not me.

Varun: Why did you not issue the same advisory for Mukhtar Ansari?

Rajdeep Sardesai: Err...an alert media had told him that Allahabad High Court was going to bar him from contesting.

Varun: What about Atiq Ahmed?

Amar Singh: He has only been charge sheeted for innumerable heinous crimes including murder. Nothing has been proved against him. He has not been convicted yet for any of them. How can Chawla issue an advisory against such an innocent soul till the courts give a judgment?

Abhishek Singhvi: Or the Congress High Command asks him to.

Varun: What about Sanjay Dutt, Mohd Azharuddin, Pappu Yadav...

Rahul: Chawla has been made CEC to ensure holding of "fair" elections. He is not meant to stall them or to let any party do anything that puts the Congress at a disadvantage. If he starts advising bans like you are suggesting, there will be hardly any "powerful" candidates left to fight the elections!

Varun: But that is totally unfair to me.

Rahul: Before you lost your cool and made that famous speech, you should have remembered that there are still some people who will listen to only one Gandhi. And that is clearly not you.

Varun: This is not that 'panja'(hand) of the Congress. This is the hand of the Lotus...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also like to read the following similar type of posts:
1. Azhar, Sanjay, Crime and politics
2. Political debates: the Slumdog effect!
3. What will Raj target next to 'take out' Pakistan?
4. Gilani, Durrani, Kiyani, Biryani and the Butcher!
5. The 'BIG' war between Mukesh and Anil!

CAN THE CONGRESS STEM ITS SLIDE?

The unending media cacophony over the Varun Gandhi "hate" CDs has made it appear as if the only choice that voters have in the forthcoming elections is between voting to power a "communal" BJP that is trying to divide the country by preaching/supporting hatred against Muslims and a "secular" Congress that is fighting against it. And, the message being rammed home through every possible trick in the book is that they must reject the former because the only party that can be trusted to maintain communal harmony across the country is the Indian National Congress. "Vote for Congress" is the call being given in unison by India's mainstream media whose political agenda has never been a big secret.

The Grand Old Party is today less than one third of what it was for a very long time after India's Independence. Despite solid media support, it continues to shrink and is set to replace the Left as the perennial pan-India rump that cannot rule on its own but has enough nuisance value in a fractured political landscape. Why is the party not able to stem the decline?

Arguably, one reason for this is that the Congress has morphed into a personality based party, just like most smaller regional parties that have mushroomed in the last couple of decades. It is no longer the party of the masses with a galaxy of tall leaders closely connected to and respected by people across the country. It is now effectively a vehicle for the protection and promotion of one branch of the Nehru-Gandhi family represented by Rahul Gandhi and overseen by Sonia Gandhi. The sole objective of a powerful coterie, aided by the media, is to ensure that any challenge to the leadership of this Gandhi is crushed before it becomes even a small threat.

When the only leader of a party is unable to be make any defining personal impact on the people even after being in business for seven long years, the party has to keep sliding downhill, and is. Unfortunately, no one in the Congress is tall enough to look in the mirror and begin the process of getting the party back to it roots, and re-establish its links with the people in every village and town of India. Till that happens, if at all, no amount of favourable media coverage is going to be of any real help.

The other major reason for the party finding itself in a mess is that it has deliberately chosen to ignore "Hindus" completely. May be it has been encouraged to do so because there really is no pan-India "Hindu" identity that prevails over the more immediate identities of caste, language and region. Experience has shown that Hindus can easily be divided along innumerable dimensions that cancel each other out electorally.

That is why from the ruins of the Congress have emerged only small "Hindu" parties identifying with and promoting the cause of tiny and somewhat homogeneous blocks of Hindus like Yadavs, dalits, Telegus, Maharashtrians, Assamese etc. There is only one party that speaks of and for all Hindus, 80% of India's population, across the whole of India rather than along fragmented dimensions. This is the only party that, as of now, poses a threat to the Congress; indeed it is its only competitor.

Why have so many small "Hindu" parties come up at the expense of the Congress? The party has clearly failed to meet the aspirations of the Hindus and protect their interests. So, Hindus are increasingly gravitating towards small parties that promise to look after the interests of specific caste and classes or towards the BJP that talks of protecting them as a whole. The Congress can do business with all these parties to form some sort of a government at the centre but cannot do so with the BJP which is the only party that can challenge it nationally at present.

Therefore, the Congress has embarked upon a disastrous policy to remain in the reckoning. Its strategy has two pillars. The first is to ensure that Muslims, who cannot be electorally fragmented like Hindus, continue to view the Congress as their only real friend and vote for it. The second is to ensure that fragmented Hindu voters do not de-fragment towards the BJP. That is why the Congress has to relentlessly try and prove that being pro-Hindu is the same as being anti-Muslim.

As part of its Muslim strategy, the Congress has to ignore even the most provocative and disturbing of developments related to the Muslim community and con the nation into believing that all is well, even when there is disturbing evidence to show that it is not. That is why POTA is removed and the nation is told for five years that existing laws are sufficient to deal with terrorism and that terrorism has no religion, even when innocent people continue to die in terror attacks. That is why there are no convictions of any terrorists who know that they can easily get away after killing innocent people. That is why the Prime Minister says that minorities have a first right on the resources of this nation. That is why there is immediate capitulation to unreasonable demands made by fundamentalists. That is why the creeping Talibanisation of Muslim society is ignored.

In pursuance of the second leg of its strategy, Hindu frustration with this minority-attracting-cum-majority-marginalising strategy is countered not by doing anything for Hindus but by making them feel that anyone speaking for them as a whole is communal and divisive. And that he is actually using that call not for Hindus but against innocent Muslims and, occasionally, Christians. The media play a huge role in propagating and perpetuating this negative strategy which sometimes pays political dividends but more often than not backfires very badly.

It may be recalled that just before the Gujarat elections, an unprecedented media frenzy was unleashed against Narendra Modi. The Delhi based SWOT analysts of the Congress manifestly had even got a Tehelka sting done to prove that Narendra Modi was personally responsible for the 2002 Gujarat riots. Then itself I had warned that it would backfire because it was clear that the Congress was completely out of touch with the reality on ground. It was that very disconnect that prompted Sonia Gandhi to make the most communal statement in the whole election campaign when she called Modi a "maut ka saudagar" (merchant of death).

The general idea, as any child could understand, was to ensure that all Muslims would vote for the Congress and that a sufficiently large number of Hindus would turn to the Congress not because they were for the party but because they would be psyched into hating Modi and voting against him. In the event, Tehelka unwittingly succeeded only in killing the conspiracy theory that the train was set on fire in Godhra by Modi's men as part of pre-planned strategy to incite the subsequent riots, and Sonia Gandhi helped Modi romp home to an unprecedented victory.

Remember the Malegaon blasts? After Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Lt Col Shrikant Prasad Purohit were arrested for that one blast, the media went bonkers about the danger that India faced from "Hindu terror". Thrown away were earlier chants that terror had no religion; for over a month Indians were told that the real danger that India faced was from "Hindu terror" whose roots lay in the BJP. Forgotten completely was Islamic terrorism - the proxy war that Pakistan has launched against India - that the nation had been facing for years. That one blast was all that was needed for Team Congress to discover dangerous "Hindu terror" and proclaim that Sadhvi Pragya was India's Osama Bin Laden and the BJP and the Sangh Parivar its Al Qaida!

The terror attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008, jolted everyone rudely back to reality. There was no longer any place for the Congress to hide; "Hindu terror" vanished as dramatically as it had appeared. POTA came back within days in the form of a modified UAPA and the government had no choice but to start making empty threatening noises of war to assuage the anger of a people they had been trying to lead up the wrong terror path treacherously. Five years of shouting that a stringent law was not needed to deal with terror, only to get Muslim votes, was forgotten in a flash after the realisation dawned that the bitter truth could no longer be hidden.

Soon enough, one incident in Mangalore in which some fringe Hindu elements beat up a few girls and boys drinking in a pub was the next flimsy excuse that the Congress and the media picked to re-start its "Hate BJP" campaign and make people forget Mumbai 26/11. This time it was Tehelka again, through it reporter Nisha Susan, that launched the famous Pink Chaddi Campaign against the moral policing of the Sangh Parivar. Once again, the Congress targeted the Hindu vote through a saturated negative media campaign. No one bothered to find out what the real situation was in the city and the state and almost no one reported that there was an underlying anger at boys of one community mixing with girls of other communities while girls of their own community were strictly denied that freedom.

The Varun Gandhi episode is the latest incident in this series that the Congress has used to get the Hindu vote solely by highlighting the wrong that the BJP has done, not the right that the Congress has. There is no doubt that even the words that Varun Gandhi has himself admitted to using are unacceptable and that he needs to apologise to the country. But, as always, the media has again got into that shrill mode and is sparing no effort whatsoever to influence Hindus to vote against the BJP, by psyching them into believing that by voting for the BJP, they will be voting for only communal hatred and divide.

As always, no one wants to even mention that Varun Gandhi has not spoken in a vacuum. No one wants to acknowledge that there probably are serious communal fissures in Pilibhit that need to be addressed. No one want to even whisper that Muslims are at least partly responsible for creating the communal divide that has got the young, educated and aware Gandhi agitated enough to react, though in a manner that needs to be condemned roundly.

The "secular" brigade thinks it has got a timely winner of an issue that it can milk to death electorally. Varun Gandhi, it believes, has given it just the stick it needed beat the BJP with. It has not struck anyone that though some people in the metros and in the blogosphere are buying that line, there just might be many more out there whose fears and apprehensions about aggressive Muslim communalism might actually be re-kindled sufficiently enough to get them to the voting booth to say so.

The experience of Gujarat has been totally forgotten by Team Congress; no one has his ear to the ground. That is why, thanks to a disconnected and hypocritical media, this really young Gandhi who is fighting his first election at the age of 29, has become the star of this election, hate him for spewing poison or love him for speaking the truth. Nobody knows how this is going to impact the electoral outcome.

Notwithstanding what happens in these elections, the question that the Congress really needs to ask itself is whether its two-pronged strategy is going to help the dying party revive itself. Over the years, it has paid a very heavy price for taking India's Hindus for granted. Wherever and whenever they have got a chance, Hindus have deserted the party in favour of even rag-tag outfits that promise to look after their interests. Yet, the Congress has not realised its folly. It may sleep with all small and seemingly non-threatening, non-BJP outfits that are taking away its voters, just to remain in power, but that is not going to make it any stronger. It may unleash a negative campaign against the seemingly threatening BJP to get negative Hindu votes, but that is not going to help it get or retain many over the long run either.

Sometimes it appears that the Congress party has forgotten that there is an India beyond Lutyen's Delhi and outside of TV studios. That is probably why it has not realised that by continuing to follow the strategy that it has till now, not only is it not only not going to stem its slide but it faces a real long-term risk of being eliminated from the political landscape altogether.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Tehelka unearths a Prime Minister
2. Hindu terror at last; thank God!
3. India's Osama and Al Qaida found: banish them!
4. Mumba11/26: wake up to Islamic terror, this is just the beginning
5. Valentine's Day: it's chaddi vs langot!
6. The Varun sting: who is not playing the communal card?

THE CONGRESS 'LASHKAR' IS STANDING STILL, BUT SURROUNDED

Laloo Prasad Yadav has done a Chow En Lai on Sonia Gandhi. Quite like the Chinese Prime Minister who kept saying "Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai" (Indians and Chinese are brothers) to an unsuspecting Nehru till the Chinese attacked and routed India in the heights of the Himalayas, Laloo Yadav has shocked the Congress. While the Chinese PM stopped chanting that mantra of deceit after he had shown Nehru his place, Laloo Yadav continues to swear loyalty to Sonia Gandhi even after stabbing her brazenly in the chest. That is obviously only because he wants to stay on as the minister of that "soney ki chidiya" (sparrow of gold), Indian Railways, till the very last day.

A few days back, old rivals Laloo Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, ganged up and divided Bihar among themselves, leaving the Congress fuming and crying with only three seats out of the 40 that Bihar sends to the Lok Sabha. Although the Congress had won only four seats in the last elections and had done nothing to re-build its base in the last five years, this was one humiliation that the national party just could not swallow. So, the party made empty threats of contesting more seats in the hope that Laloo would give it a few more face-saving seats.

But Laloo Yadav and Paswan are not straight blokes who will cut their own feet to prove their proclaimed "loyalty". They know too well that the stakes in these elections are high and post-poll possibilities endless. No matter what the surveys say about the prospects of the Congress, it is evident that they can sense that the party is in serious decline and is likely to emerge considerably weakened, if not mauled, after the elections. When the king's lashkar (elephant) is surrounded in battle, smart allies know that the best time to negotiate treacherous deals that keep them secure and make them more powerful, is before it falls, not after.

So, in response to the threat of the Congress that it will contest in 37 seats, Laloo Yadav has hit back saying that he will put up candidates even in the three constituencies that he has left for the Congress. In addition, he has announced that he will campaign for Mulayam Singh Yadav in UP. It may be recalled that Mulayam Yadav's alliance with the Congress had fallen through earlier and his party is putting up candidates in 74 of the 80 constituencies in the state.

The fallout of the humiliation of the Congress in Bihar has taken it toll in Jharkhand too. Stung by Laloo Yadav and Paswan, the Congress hastily broke off its alliance with them in that state and announced an alliance with the JMM there. In a tit-for-tat response, the two parties announced a seat sharing arrangement, leaving only two seats for Laloo Yadav and none for Paswan. But, before that news could sink in, JMM leader Durga Soren broke off the alliance and vowed to contest all 14 seats, saying " Congress has betrayed us".

In the cow belt, the Congress lashkar has been all but felled. In Uttarakhand, which sends five MPs, the party is in a direct fight with the BJP and will at best win one seat. Thus, out of the 139 seats that these four states represent in the Lok Sabha, the Congress tally will most likely remain in single digits as against 18 projected by a Times of India survey. More importantly, there will be no seats in the names of its pre-poll allies, against 14 projected by the same survey.

Mulayam Yadav and Laloo Yadav both realise that Mayawati is likely to be the strongest claimant for the post of PM should she get more seats than the former. So, while swearing undying loyalty to Sonia Gandhi, Laloo Yadav has decided to campaign for Mulayam Yadav so that the latter emerges at the top of the heap in UP. It is probably for this reason that Mulayam Yadav was not willing to leave more than 17 seats for the Congress, something that was not acceptable to that party. Although the alliance has failed, Mulayam Yadav, like Laloo, has left the door slightly ajar for the Congress by not putting up candidates against it in six constituencies, including those of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Clearly, like Mayawati, he too wants to get into a position where he can get the Congress to support him as the next PM.

The case of Sharad Pawar is almost identical. He too has smelled blood, as has the Shiv Sena which wants to see him, a Maharashtrian, as the next PM. With the state sending 48 MPs, the combined bid of both the NCP and the Shiv Sena for the top job for Pawar may well be formidable. No matter that they are in opposite camps now.

The unending Indian Premier League (IPL) saga, to my mind, has a serious political angle. The NCP and Congress have not yet been able to finalise a seat-sharing arrangement in Maharashtra; the IPL too has not yet been cleared. While BJP ruled states are willing to host matches, Congress ruled states are posing one hurdle after another on security grounds. It is not a coincidence that Sharad Pawar is also the boss of the BCCI, and the IPL tournament is worth a few thousand crore rupees.

The Congress does not trust Sharad Pawar and is wary of his ambitions. There seems to be a strong link between the finalisation of the seat-sharing arrangement between the two parties and the iterinary of the IPL. That is why there is now talk of shifting the tournament to South Africa. Sharad Pawar has a political surprise up his sleeve no doubt, a surprise that he will spring only after the IPL is cleared, or after the elections. The Congress knows that too; that may be why the government is delaying the IPL clearance till Pawar inks a formal alliance.

Flash. News is just coming in that the IPL will be held overseas: Is the war between the Congress and Sharad Pawar set to escalate?

Unfortunately, the Congress seems to using bullying tactics that are founded on an increasing weakness on ground. These are not going to get it even one additional seat. It is actually not in a position to negotiate with any of its allies across the country because they all know how weak it is now. Be it politics or war, you can negotiate only on the basis of strength and not as a weakling seeking reward for good past behaviour or some such thing. Chou En Lai rammed home that lesson in 1962 and Laloo has done so now. But, clearly, it remains unlearned by the Congress party whether it is dealing with China, Pakistan or politicians within the country.

Sensing that a historic shift is under way, and that there is much that she can salvage from the crumbling ruins of the once mighty Congress party, Mayawati kicked off her election campaign from Left stronghold Kerala yesterday. At a rally in Thiruvanathapuram, she not only did not make any mention of the Third Front but said that she would try to form the next government on her own and undo the anti-people policies pursued during the last 61 years.

The Congress Lashkar is standing still. But it has been surrounded from all sides. If Pawar too does a Laloo, as the outcome of the IPL drama indicates he might, then expect that the momentum generated by the trail of events over the last few months will lead to the Congress facing an unprecedented rout almost all across the nation. It is not just smart politicians who can spot a sinking ship; even the common man can. The only people who invariably fail to spot a negative wave are pollsters. Perhaps they are missing out this time too.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Marginalisation of Congress gathers momentum
2. It's a two-horse race to Race Course Road
3. Mayawati's hug of death

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?


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Say sorry to India Varun
2. Will the Congress do better without Sonia and Rahul?

SAY SORRY TO INDIA VARUN

What Varun Gandhi has said in his "hate speeches" is something that has come as a shock to a lot of us. He is now saying that one of those speeches has been doctored and that he did not use certain words attributed to him. But, there is no escaping the fact that even what he has said by his own admission is bad enough.

There is no need to counter-argue, as some are doing, that Muslim leaders routinely make hate speeches which are not reported by the media, that AR Antulay has not been censured for his anti-national statements after Mumbai 26/11 , that the open interference of the Church and other religious organisations in the selection of candidates and politics in general in Kerala and elsewhere is a naked display of communal politics etc. No matter what the "justification" to blunt the vituperative sting in what Varun Gandhi has said, it simply cannot be condoned.

Varun Gandhi is no street-side goonda who knows only the language of abuse and hate. He is not an illiterate buffoon pitch-forked into a situation that he is not equipped to handle. He is not an unintelligent young man who does not know what he can say and what he must not. He is the grandson of Indira Gandhi and the son of a sophisticated and westernised Sikh lady who has been a minister herself. Like his cousin Rahul Gandhi, he knows what it is like at the very top of the heap. That is why his descent to 'nukkad' type of speeches to energise Hindus to vote for him is not acceptable at all.

Hearing him read out his prepared statement in Delhi, after things had come to a boil, and his follow-up impromptu interviews to journalists of various channels, one got a sense that Varun Gandhi was a man who could easily field tough questions thrown at him with ease. He also emerged as a confident young man with real leadership potential. If one were to ignore the content of his speeches for just a moment, it is also apparent that he can effectively communicate with his audience and get his message across to them effectively. The same, as everyone knows by now, cannot be said about his better known cousin who, despite having been on the job for seven years, has just not been able to connect to the people he wants to lead.

Yes, it cannot be denied that that the media do not even want to look at the fact Varun Gandhi has not spoken out of context, simply because they will then stand exposed for being silent about disturbing developments that any fair and objective media should have been highlighting all along. It is transparently clear that in his constituency, a large number of Hindus are feeling insecure and that a series of disturbing communal incidents have taken place over time to make them feel so. There is, thus, a real background which Varun Gandhi has tried to exploit to consolidate the Hindu vote in his favour, quite like the Congress party, Mulayam Yadav, Laloo Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, the Left and others who have openly trying to do with respect to the Muslim vote for years now, all in the name of secularism.

That is where the justification for what he has said ends.

The words that he has used and the manner in which he has spoken of Muslims is simply not acceptable from any political leader, much less a modern and educated young man with his kind of background. He has every right to say that he is a proud Hindu and is "not apologetic about it" (like many from similar backgrounds are), and that he believes in "inclusive" Hindutva as he understands it. No one can say that he is saying anything wrong when he says that he is a "Gandhi, a Hindu and an Indian in equal measure" and that "India is a big country with a big heart" where there is space for all.

The problem is that he did not remember any of this when he was making those election speeches. Then, he was no less than a rabble-rouser who was openly inciting communal hatred to exploit what he believed was aggressive communalism to which everyone had been turning a blind eye for long. This kind of communal rhetoric may be commonplace in India's neighbourhood; indeed it defines the very nationhood of some of our neighbours who were once part of this country. But, in a secular and democratic India, there is simply no place for it.

Varun Gandhi is a young man who is just starting his political career. Notwithstanding the motivation of those who carried out this sting operation to record his speeches, he has not begun well. He has to learn how to keep his emotions and tongue under control, no matter what the provocation, and not lose sight of the bigger picture and the secular ethos of the culture of this land. And to atone for what he has already said, it is necessary for him to apologise to all Indians. His party also needs to visibly admonish him and warn other candidates to strictly adhere to laid down guidelines.







---------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. The Varun sting: who is not playing the communal card?
2. Will Congress do better without Sonia and Rahul?
3. It's a two-horse race to Race Course Road
4. Marginalisation of Congress gathers momentum

MARGINALISATION OF CONGRESS GATHERS MOMENTUM

After failing to get new seasonal friend Samajwadi Party to allow it to contest in more than 17 of the 80 seats in UP, the Congress had to swallow the humiliation of being given just 14 of the 42 seats in West Bengal in its seat sharing arrangement with Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress. In fact some of the the seats allotted to it were won by the Left by huge margins in the last Lok Sabha elections. The Congress, therefore, may find it difficult to increase its present tally of six seats, which was the whole idea behind strengthening Mamata Banerjee through a pre-poll alliance.

The unkindest cut of all has, however, come from two trusted allies of the Congress whose leaders are senior minister's in the Congress-led UPA government. Laloo Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, rattled by the performance of Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister of Bihar, have today announced a seat sharing arrangement in the state. Laloo's RJD will contest 25 seats, down one from last time while Paswan's LJP will contest 12, up four. This means that the two strongmen of Bihar have left just three seats for the Congress, undoubtedly from constituencies from where it will find it difficult to emerge victorious. The Congress was demanding six seats, but its demand has been summarily dismissed.

If the performance of the Congress in the Bhadohi assembly constituency of UP where it got just over 2000 votes (1% vote share) is any indication, the Congress is set to be wiped out in UP and Bihar. As it is, it is contesting in only 24 seats on its own in UP and probably three in Bihar. So, if out of the 120 MPs that these two states send to the Lok Sabha, the Congress manages to retain the two seats of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and a couple more at best, it is difficult to see how the party is going to lead any non-BJP alliance that may be in a position to form the government after these elections

When you own friends and partners start treating you dismissively as a non-player, it is never a good sign. Add to that the manner in which Naveen Patnaik's defection from the NDA has energised the Third Front and Mayawati in particular, and only the most optimistic supporters of the Congress will see it emerging from the elections without its strength seriously eroded.

The marginalisation of the Congress will gather even more momentum in the coming days in other states too. The real fight, as I had said in my previous post, is going to be between Mayawati and the BJP, even though it is not yet apparent to most. Keep watching this space.

IT'S A TWO-HORSE RACE TO RACE COURSE ROAD

Forget about all pre-poll surveys that have recently been carried out and the projections made by them about the outcome of the forthcoming general elections. They are already out of date. The whole electoral scenario has changed dramatically, but no one has either seen it yet or everyone wants to pretend that he hasn't. The change not ordinary, nor is it temporary. It has quietly been in the making for some years now and would have taken some more time to be visible to all. But, one event has radically altered that time-frame.

Tomorrow is already here today.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat has been unusually enthused by Patnaik's most unexpected decision which has breathed life into the till now non-existent Third Front. Suddenly this motley group of marginal and small parties that are presently not aligned to either the BJP-led NDA or the Congress-led UPA finds that it may well be in a position to form the government with the help of elements of the NDA or the UPA, rather than vanishing into the group that emerges stronger. There is new energy in the parties that have cobbled together this alternative to the BJP and the Congress.

Prakash Karat did not know how prophetic his words were going to be when he said that Patnaik's decision to part company with the BJP was going to be the "game-changer" in these elections. It is going to change the game certainly, but not in the manner in which Karat thinks it is going to.

Perhaps even the BJP has not realised that Naveen Patnaik's sudden turn is the blessing it was looking for and is the one miracle that will get the NDA within striking distance of the magic figure of 272 MPs needed to form the government. Naveen Patnaik himself would not have dreamt that by parting company with its ally of 11 years he would become the catalyst that is going to so dramatically pre-pone the manifestation of the fundamental change already under way in the Indian political landscape.

This general election has now become a contest between Mayawati and Advani. No, I have not gone out of my mind, as you will presently discover much to your surprise. This election was not meant be seeing this contest; the fight between the BJP and the BSP was scheduled for 2014 at the earliest. But, Naveen Patnaik has changed all that.

In the 2007 assembly elections in UP, no one, except perhaps Sagarika Ghose, had given Mayawati any chance of winning and that too on her own steam alone. But when the election results came in, her BSP had an absolute majority and the Congress, despite the high-profile induction of Rahul Gandhi as its star campaigner, emerged even weaker, with just around 8% of the vote share. Mayawati had done the impossible. This is what I had written then itself:

The UP election signals a tectonic, historical shift in the societal power matrix of Hindu society. And who has Mayawati to thank, among others for seeing and grabbing the opportunity? Mr Mandal, of course, milked to death by completely opportunistic and dishonest politicians thinking they can fool the masses, simply to grab power in the next election....And, it has taken a Hindi speaking "uncultured" Dalit lady to understand the hidden, but obvious now, ramifications of Mandal...So when Mayawati, a Dalit, untouchables still in parts of India, asks Brahmins to vote for her and tells them with conviction that they do not have to go begging to anyone to get their due, it touches their raw nerve, and they willingly turn thousands of years of rigid social hierarchy upside down to seek empowerment and justice from a dalit. Mayawati has envisioned and achieved something which no politician thought she could.

After the stunning success in UP, Mayawati started earnestly to expand her base in other parts of India and put up candidates in the assembly elections that followed. Although the BSP had virtually no organisational base in most other states and no real local leaders too, Mayawati succeeded in pulling in a sufficient number of dalit voters from the Congress due to which the Congress lost in a number of constituencies across the country. The BSP did not win too because of its small base then but its presence damaged the Congress almost exclusively. That led to the Congress dubbing her a "spoiler", not realising that she was not in the political arena to make or mar the fortunes of other parties but to get to power at the Centre on her own.

Mayawati has not been putting up candidates in states other than UP to ‘spoil’ the chances of the Congress. That has been happening as a by-product of her strategy to build an all India base, like she did in UP, to eventually get enough MPs to become the Prime Minister almost entirely on her own steam. There is little doubt that Mayawati will get to South Block as the head of a truly national party that she is in the process of transforming the BSP into, in due course of time, perhaps by the next elections or the one after that. But she is in a hurry and is not willing to give up just because she does not have the numbers now.

Those who have any doubts about her openly stated ambition may recall that during the Trust Vote on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal in July 2008, there was a moment when it appeared that the government would be defeated. From nowhere, Mayawati, with just 17 MPs emerged as the almost undisputed leader of the entire non-BJP opposition, ready to take over from Dr Manmohan Singh had he lost the vote. With the entire opposition behind her, she was sure that she would be able to prevail upon the BJP to support the government of the "daughter of a dalit".

Naveen Patnaik has, unwittingly, provided Mayawati with an even better a more visible opportunity on which she has time to work on. She has apparently caught on to it in a flash while others are still stuck in the linear equation that sees the BJP's chances of winning almost completely jeopardised. That is why everyone has missed the significance of Mayawati's statement on March 15, 2009, that the BSP will fight the elections all alone and will not enter into any pre-poll alliance with anybody. This statement made just before she hosted a dinner for the leaders of the National Front is going to fundamentally impact the outcome of the election.

There should be little doubt in anyone's mind that unless Mayawati suffers serious reverses, there is no one else who she will allow to head a National Front government. Others can make all the noise they want to but that is the only way she will play the game and without her 35 to 50 MPs no National Front Government is possible. Mayawati is not one to let an opportunity go. On the contrary, she creates one where no one else can spot it. Therefore, with that issue summarily out of the way, she is now going to play a devastating "spoiler" for the Congress all over India.

By now, she has spread her wings even into the South where she held a number of successful rallies recently. Her candidates are not going to win many seats outside of UP even in these elections. But by choosing to fight alone, she has made her long term intention of emerging as a true national party absolutely clear. And there is little that anyone can do to stop her.

But what is of immediate significance is that dalits will be now more charged than ever before because they can see that there is a real chance of seeing a dalit Prime Minister emerge after this election itself. So, there are going to be many more desertions of dalit voters from the Congress to the BSP than anyone would even like to imagine now. That will hit the Congress very hard and cost it many seats, the exact number depending on local factors and the smartness of its opponents.

The scenario fits in perfectly with Mayawati's immediate as well as long term strategy. If the Congress and its allies fall well short of striking distance of the half-way mark which they cannot cover without the support of Mayawati, then the Congress will have no choice but to support a Mayawati-led government. So a poor performance by the Congress is what Mayawati wants and that is what she is going to try and ensure in all constituencies where the dalit vote can make that crucial difference between victory and defeat for the Congress.

Ironically, in many such constituencies the Congress will wind up losing to the BJP. So, the BJP will end up emerging stronger and will most likely put up a performance better than it did last time. BJP strategists need to get their data sheets out in a hurry so that they can identify and focus on such constituencies to ensure that the Congress does lose. That is where there is a dilemma for Mayawati. If the BJP-led NDA gets too close to the magic figure then she will miss the bus. Therefore, the best case scenario for her is a weakened Congress that is left with no choice but to support her as PM and a BJP that does not become strong enough to beat her to that mark.

Naveen Patnaik has turned the election on its head and all but ensured the defeat of the Congress. This scenario was going to unfold in the coming years in any case but is already upon us. Increasingly, the Congress and the BSP are targetting the same voters. In fact it would not be incorrect to say that the BSP is the Congress party with a dalit face. The growth of the BSP, therefore, has been and will be in proportion to the decline of the Congress. And, the way things are going, more and more dalits will desert the Congress for the BSP and will hasten the former's marginalisation.

Posturing apart, this election has now become a two-horse race between Mayawati and Advani, between the BSP and the BJP. The rest are going to be little more than the supporting cast. At this point it is difficult to say which of the two will emerge the winner. So, when you go out there to cast your vote, remember that your vote is going to directly or indirectly help in deciding whether it will be Mayawati or LK Advani who will be the next occupant of 7 Race Course Road.

This post has also been published by Chicago Sun Times
---------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Will the Congress do better without Sonia and Rahul?
2. The cleansing battle for Delhi begins
3. Mayawati: spoiler or saviour?
4. Mayawati's hug of death
5. Mayawati and dalit power

PAKISTAN'S LONG MARCH TO CHAOS CONTINUES

Nawaz Sharif and, as per some reports, his brother Shahbaz Sharif have been put under house arrest by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari in a desperate effort to ensure that the Long March that the duo had started does not bring the country's capital to a halt. This long march will, in all likelihood, end in some sort of a compromise settlement between Nawaz Sharif and Zardari. Notwithstanding how it plays out, the harsh fact that cannot be escaped is that this standoff will strengthen and hasten the long march of the Taliban to Islamabad and the rest of Pakistan.

One would have expected that in the wake of the terror attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, all moderate mainstream politicians would come together to face the challenge that Pakistan faces from the Islamic radicals who have already overrun large parts of the country. That is what they had done after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and to remove Gen Musharraf as President. But no, they seem to have learnt no lessons from the mess they have been making right since the creation of the country. That feudal, tribal mindset is too deeply ingrained.

Zardari has been candidly admitting that his country is afflicted by the cancer of terrorism and that it is in danger of being run over by the Taliban. When the President of a country is alive to the grave danger his country faces, a reminder of which was graphically given in the Lahore terror attack, then it is but natural to expect that he will show a sense of responsibility and an understanding of his role as President in these difficult times whose reverberations are likely to be felt for a very long time. Unfortunately, he has not only been unable to shake free of the politics of blatant deceit that got him to the President's office but has now got into a war of petty political vendetta against the very Nawaz Sharif with whom had joined hands earlier.

The immediate provocation to the present crisis is the decision of the Musharraf-appointed judges of the Supreme Court to declare Nawaz Sharif ineligible to contest elections and also declare null and void the election of his younger brother, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, leading to the fall of his government and imposition of Governor's rule. There are reports that the Army, taking advantage of the situation, is planning to stage a coup. But, that possibility is remote, notwithstanding the noises that are emanating from different quarters.

For one, the current fight is between two of Pakistan's most powerful politicians and not between the military and the civilian government. Things have not deteriorated between Zardari and Kiyani to the extent they had between Musharraf and Sharif in the backdrop of Musharraf's misadventure in Kargil without keeping Sharif in the loop. In fact, it appears that even otherwise Gen Kiyani is already calling the shots. Imran Khan had said as much a few days back. The present crisis has made the General's position even stronger. Secondly, the US is now monitoring Pakistan closely almost in real-time, and holds all the cards too, with Pakistan now an economic basket case and with US forces in Afghanistan. Therefore, Kiyani cannot afford to take over unless the US gives him a green signal which it is not going to, at least for now.

Zardari has clearly bitten more than he can chew. But, given his great manipulation skills, it is inconceivable that he would have precipitated such a crisis unless he was dead sure of the support of the US. Such dangerous games cannot be played without very strong anchors. One thing needs to be understood: Zardari, no matter how dishonest he may be, is clearly a "dove" among hawks. In a sea of Punjabis, he is the face of a moderate Sindh. For the US, he is therefore the one valuable asset that it would not like to lose in its efforts to contain hard line and pro-Taliban elements in the Pakistani establishment, including its military.

That is the main reason why there will no coup in Pakistan, at least in the near future. That is also why, unless this crisis takes an unexpectedly dramatic turn, Zardari is not going to lose his job. That is perhaps why he has dug in his heels. He will give in, there is no doubt, but will not "surrender" to the pressure tactics of Nawaz Sharif. Also, both will agree to a deal brokered not between them but for them by Washington. Hillary Clinton has already spoken to both the warring 'lords'; Richard Holbrooke has been on the ball too, for quite sometime.

So, where is Pakistan already? On the one side, the Taliban are less than 90 miles from Islamabad, with a demonstrated capability to strike at will anywhere in the Pakistan still under the control of the federal government. On the other side is the United States, which has appropriated the role of a "super-government" that is the final arbiter of all important internal affairs of the country. A truly united and independent Pakistan has already passed into history. That Pakistan exists only in the minds of those who foolishly think that a few nukes, the ISI and a large military are enough to define nation-state of Pakistan and mark its independence.

A solution to the present crisis will be found. There is no choice. Pakistani leaders may not realise how high the stakes are and how foolishly they are ruining their country, but the US does, at least partially. It will keep Zardari in business for the foreseeable future and will accommodate the Sharif brothers too. No matter what the solution, no matter who loses more face or less, the stark fact is that this crisis will further erode the credibility of the Pakistani state and of its mainstream non-Islamic institutions, including democracy.

This is just what the radical Islamists in the Army, the ISI and other institutions of the state want. They are simply not programmed to live in peace with themselves and with Pakistan's size. They want to usurp Afghanistan and Kashmir, destroy India and be in the vanguard of the jehad that seeks to establish Islamic rule over the whole world. They want the US out of Afghanistan, for which they will try every trick in the book to force it to cut a deal with the artificially created "good" Taliban, as Fareed Zakaria calls the 'benign' elements who he believes want to wantonly behead people within Pakistan only and cause no harm to the US and others.

Pakistan's Long March to chaos continues unchecked. Whichever way one looks at it, one cannot shake the feeling that events are all moving towards an inevitable and bloody climax that will profoundly impact the future of the whole world. India needs to ready itself for the developments which will effect it, both before and after that flashpoint. For that, its leaders will have to do more than mindlessly keep saying that India is "worried" about the developments in that country and parroting that "a strong and stable Pakistan" is essential for the region.

UPDATE

The crisis has blown over. Nawaz Sharif has won. Zardari has given in. After a late night meeting between Army Chief Kiyani and Prime Minister Gilani, the government has ordered the reinstatement of former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Chaudhary and other judges who were sacked by Musharraf. He will take charge on March 21. Section 144 has also been lifted and arrested activists are being released. The disqualification of Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif by the court will be reviewed. The Long March has been called off by a jubilant Sharif. The Army, as I had assessed, has remained in the barracks.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Zakaria's Afghanistan strategy: salvage or surrender?
2. All cylinders on fire: where is Pakistan heading?
3. Attack on Sri Lankan cricketers: no room for pretence now