MODI'S DOUBLE BLOW HITS WHERE IT HURTS

Ram Guha is deeply disturbed. Narendra Modi’s power punch at the recent India Today Conclave and a visit to Ahmedabad have hit him where it really hurts, and not for the reasons he has mentioned in the latest of his no-holds barred attacks on him. There can be no greater pain for a deceiving craftsman than to see his much praised creation of cleverly constructed falsehoods so graphically exposed for its worthlessness in front of his eyes so quickly.

Those who heard the Gujarat Chief Minister speak at the Conclave were, to their own surprise, wowed as they have never been in recent years. The man they heard and saw was no ordinary politician for whom ‘governance’ and ‘aam admi’ are mere words meant to be conveniently used to gain and enjoy power.

For the first time, perhaps, they saw a real leader, arguably the only one in India today, who deeply understands and has seamlessly integrated the needs, concerns and ambitions of a poor villager with the vision of a strong and prosperous India that can better the best. In rapt attention they listened, and spontaneously cheered, as Modi detailed his experiments with governance in Gujarat to convince them that India can be energised and transformed from the indifferent, diffident nation it is to a confident and focused one that can actualise its huge potential and make this century its own. In the process, without attacking anyone, Modi also made everyone acutely aware of the serious leadership and value deficit that is eating into India's entrails, even its soul.

Not surprisingly, it is Modi’s Mahatma Mandir that Guha has picked on to hit back at him. Guha simply is unable to accept the fact that Gandhi has been reinvented and his mass-movement strategy used with great success, not by the Congress party that remembers the Mahatma perfunctorily on October 02 every year, but by a man who comes from an ideological background that Guha has dexterously and viciously demonised in his many distortions of modern India’s history.

The Modi blow is double, because, lip service to Gandhi apart, both the Congress party and its ideological props like Ram Guha have projected Jawaharlal Nehru – dynasty’s dictates – as by far the tallest visionary, thinker and maker of modern India. They have successfully kept Gandhi trapped in goat milk and charkha and lion cloth and non-violence, none of which have contemporary resonance.

Modi has taken him out of that frozen-in-time cage and put him in territory that they have successfully been selling as Nehru’s alone. To make it even more unpalatable, Modi has symbolically named one of Nehru’s ‘temples of modern India’ that he has built after the Mahatma. This is blasphemy. Its implications are enormous. Modi has understood that for long and a horrified Guha has just been blown by it.

Gandhi and Nehru, as I understand from the little that I have read, heard and seen as an ordinary citizen, were poles apart along one critical dimension. Both were England-educated lawyers from privileged backgrounds, but only one of them made the real, internal transformation without which our freedom struggle could not have become the unstoppable, empowering mass movement it did. Nehru did little more than change his clothes to bask in Gandhi’s light. He never connected with the masses at the mental frequency and with the emotional intimacy that Gandhi did.

It was Nehru’s elitist disconnect that led him to surround himself with like-minded people and transplant and impose an economic ideology and perpetuate a model of governance that not only did not resonate with the people but spawned an enduring culture of sloth and indifference, one that established only an impersonal and imperious connect between the ordinary Indian and the state. In hindsight, it is evident that is the state that shackled the entrepreneurial and creative genius of ordinary Indians and led to the ‘Nehru’ rate of growth, the burden of which his advisers quickly and dishonestly passed on to India’s Hindu majority.

In Gujarat, Narendra Modi has removed many shackles and reinvented the existing tools and structures of governance that have failed elsewhere, to unleash the real ‘Hindu’ rate of growth that India failed to achieve for six decades. In short, in that state, he has demolished the myth that Guha and his ilk have created around Nehru. No wonder they are blind to his almost Gandhian lifestyle or his burning desire to see that India gets its second and real freedom. It burns them to see that that the tryst with destiny that Nehru spoke about is being given real shape and will be turned into reality by someone who is not only not from the dynasty but who, given a shot at India’s top job, will rewrite history and free India from the clutches of a self-serving elite that has done great harm to the country.

That is what hurts the Guhas of India. They have connected themselves to the world but have failed to connect to the India outside their cocoons. Worse, they do not even feel the need to. That is also what afflicts the dynasty they are promoting, one that has given them so much. That is why their borrowed, theoretical prescriptions for the poor and the marginalised do little to empower them in the real sense and bridge the yawning, demeaning gap.

Modi, on the other hand, has achieved the seemingly impossible, something that lowly Hindi/local language speaking Indians were not expected to even conceive, much less crystallise and deliver better than the best educated the Nehruvians have 'given' to India with an air of misplaced, sickening superiority. He has shown the audacity to dream and think big, real big, but not in the elitist and defeatist Nehruvian mould. He has understood the importance of linking the man in the village to the man on the moon, as it were, and, thanks to long years among the people as one of them, has found the right ways to deliver to him the dream that so far the Guhas of the world thought was meant only for a privileged few like them.

That is why Guha wants to take you to Sabarmati Ashram to see Gandhi. The leader of the aam admi of colonial India must remain there so that the aam admi of free India remains where he is without asking why. He must not know that had Gandhi been alive today, he would have been found not there but in Modi's Mahatma Mandir.

By putting Gandhi there, without saying so, Modi has taken Nehru out of the ruins of the modern temples that he built and sent him back to Anand Bhavan, the family mansion he never left, where he and the dynasty belong. How can such a 'megalomaniac' get anything but a gutter gore from a chuha like Guha?
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Related reading:
1. Delusions of intellect by Sandeep (Must read)
2. Will Modi accomplish his 'Mission Impossible'?
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GANDHI SPEAKS: LISTEN TO THE RARE RECORDING FOUND AFTER 60 YEARS

A rare recording of a speech made by Mahatma Gandhi in English has surfaced in Washington. The Mahatma, who studied Law in England, almost invariably spoke in Hindi or in his mother tongue, Gujarati. In fact, he was recorded speaking in English on only two occasions, in the 1930s and on April 02, 1947.

The historic speech that the Mahatma gave a few months before he was assassinated and only one day after he offered the post of Prime Minister of a United India to MA Jinnah, has been found in Washington. It has been lovingly preserved for 60 years by John Cosgrove, a former president of the National Press Club in the US capital, who discovered the significance of the recording during a chance encounter with Rajmohan Gandhi, Mahatma's grandson and biographer.

Alfred Wagg, a journalist, recorded the speech delivered in New Delhi to a conference of Asian leaders, and produced four 78 rpm LPs that included both Gandhi’s speech and Wagg’s own commentary. Very few people in the world have heard Gandhi’s own voice. Most have heard Ben Kingsley’s Gandhi-speak in the 1982 Richard Attenborough movie in which Ben played the Mahatma in an Oscar winning performance.

The Washington Post has released Wagg’s recording of Gandhi’s 1947 speech, accompanied by an article by Shankar Vedantam. This rare recording is now available to all those who want to hear Gandhi speaking on some issues which are as relevant to the world today as they were 61 years back. Listen to the Mahatma, to the purity, the power that his voice generates. After the audio, you may find it worthwhile going through the comments that have been posted on the site.

Go on, get the vibrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s voice and his message here.

GANDHI AND INDIA'S JANUS-FACED LEADERS

Today is Gandhi Jayanti. Today is the day for yet another TV screening of Richard Attenbourough's epic 1982 film "Gandhi", to remind us about what and who Mahatma Gandhi was. I wonder, though, whether anyone watches the film any more. There is cynicism all round. Forgotten are the values of truth and fearlessness that Gandhi practiced. In fact it is hard to believe that this country was born 61 years ago out of that idealism and political morality.

Today, our internal political processes are marked by an almost total absence of morality and truth while it is almost exactly the opposite when it comes to our dealing with other nations and the framing of our foreign policy. Why did this happen? Why has this great nation been emasculated by the hollowing of its core values? Why is Gandhi now little more than a face on currency notes?

Around this time last year, the military junta in Myanmar had ordered a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in that country. That had sparked a huge 'moral' debate, with many luminaries crying hoarse that India should stop dealing with the military government and support the protesting monks. They were all concerned that if India failed to take that high moral stand, the country's image in the comity of nations would be damaged. No one was interested in the demands of pragmatic national interest, which few understood, or the fact that the Chinese were ruthlessly making deep inroads into Myanmar and posing a serious security threat to India.

That debate had prompted me, on 2nd October, to write an article about India's Janus-faced political leaders. On this Gandhi Jayanti, I reproduce it below, because the issues discussed then remain relevant even today.
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If a distorted avatar of Janus, the two-faced Roman god lives somewhere, it is here in India. To be precise, he now resides in our political class.

Nowhere in the world can you find politicians making ‘morality’ the cornerstone of foreign policy while immorality is their guiding norm in determining internal political alignments and postures. Where morality is sorely needed, particularly when a nation claims inspiration from Gandhi, we have blatant immorality, and where pragmatism and national interest should be supreme, the same people turn Gandhian or Nehruvian.

Why this hypocrisy, this dichotomy? Perhaps it stems from our age old cultural trait of treating outsiders with courtesy and respect. This was strengthened by Mahatma Gandhi in his fight for India’s Independence, when he opposed the British with unparalleled dignity and respect and got them to leave the country, without rancor or humiliation. The Mahatma, though, never displayed any weakness or meekness in his fight for what was right. He simply chose a weapon based on Truth, a weapon which he thought was best suited to achieve the birthright of his countrymen to drive the British out of India.

For Gandhi, the principles of political and social behavior were the same for outsiders as well as Indians. They were rooted to morality and truth, the two cornerstones that had to be the basis of all political intercourse. More importantly, this meant also that there was no scope for any ‘weakness’, which led to a compromise, however small, with these principles. Unfortunately, Gandhi died rather quickly after Independence, before he could guide the emerging political class to internalize these principles in their new role as the rulers of the country.

Gandhi had once said: ‘I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor’. He had also said: ‘I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully’.

These telling words should have been the lodestones of our foreign policy. Unfortunately, the moment Nehru was clear of the shadow of Gandhi, he remembered only the non-violent part, forgetting completely that Gandhi’s morality also dictated that aggression had to be dealt with violence, if necessary. Cowardice was not an option for Gandhi. Nehru forgot that. In my previous posts, I have already labored over the disastrous consequences of Nehru’s inability to identify and protect India’s interest, even when faced with aggression from China and Pakistan.

Nehru, it appears, lived in his own fanciful Utopian world, oblivious to the hard realities of the rapidly changing international order, post Second World War. Rather than respond to aggression as Gandhi would have done, Nehru spent his energies in trying to grandiloquently project himself as a peace loving leader of global stature. So, we saw the spectacle of this huge country identifying itself with small countries of little significance on the global stage and creating the Non Aligned Movement, even when China next door was rapidly becoming the global power that its size dictated. Nehru was happy ‘cutting chai’ with Nasser and Tito and claiming a personal high ‘moral ground’ in the world, while camouflaging the cowardice that would have drawn Gandhi’s ire.

Great nations are marked by a wholesome degree of morality and honesty in their internal political processes, and pragmatic immorality in external dealings, when required, in national interest. India, on the other hand has this policy totally inverted. Why has this happened?

One, dynastic rule has ensured that Nehru’s warts, big ones, are made to look like pimples of pride. That is perhaps the main reason why the classified papers of the China War of 1962 have not yet been declassified and why the Henderson-Brooks report on this war has not been made public. That is also probably why most strategic analysts skim over many unpleasant facts. Survival is more important than anything else to them too.

Two, our politicians, exceptions apart, have an even lesser knowledge and understanding of international relations than Nehru did. Worse, they have simply no interest in this subject and are therefore content to play along with the weak, moralistic foreign policy that Nehru laid out. After all, such a policy not only makes them collectively look good in the international arena, it also means that they do not need to waste any time and effort over these matters which are of no immediate personal concern to them or to the political parties or groups they represent.

The only thing that really energizes our politicians are gutter fights for the petty political power they are desperate to physically experience and enjoy as individuals and parties, just as spoils of war are in a foreign land. They are now as far away from Gandhi’s beliefs and values as it can get. Morality is not even a factor any more as politicians of all parties willingly rip apart every single norm of civilized behavior in their unbridled greed and lust for perverse, personal political power. Hypocrisy, corruption and falsehoods have become so pervasive that they are not issues that disturb any longer or discussed any more except when politicians are throwing blame at each other and scoring pathetic political points in TV studios.

Mahatma Gandhi is now only a face frozen on currency notes and buried on the many ‘MG’ Roads that were meant to be reminders of his character, his fearlessness and his political morality. The Janus-faced politicians who rule this great nation now seem to have no time to see either Gandhi’s face or the national emblem on the soiled currency notes they hurriedly count with salivating glee.

ENDS AND MEANS: KILLING THE MAHATMA

“At the heart of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence, was his belief...that means and ends are inseparable, and that in fact the means themselves shape the ends. He believed unworthy means can never produce worthy ends.” These stirring words were spoken by Sonia Gandhi in the United Nations on October 02, 2007 on the occasion of the first observance of the international day of non-violence.

For Gandhi the Mahatma, these words were life and blood, part of the value system he thought he had successfully transmitted to his Congress party. For the Gandhis and most others who have actually ruled and are ruling Independent India, these words are dangerous mirrors, safely tucked away only to be taken out symbolically and ceremonially when there is little choice but to outwardly reclaim the original Gandhi.

For the Mahatma, means and ends were inseparable; for India’s leaders of today too they are so. But, while the original Gandhi believed that unworthy means can never produce worthy ends, leaders of today believe that all means are worthy if they produce the desired results; the worthiness or otherwise of the ends has also long ceased to be of any concern to them. And, the one end they all see to the exclusion of everything else, and are willing to do anything for, is power, that intoxicating, corrupting ambrosia that is more addictive than even heroin.

The withdrawal of support to the UPA government by the Left has opened up opportunities for small parties and independent MPs who know that the government will need almost the last available vote to win the Trust Vote in Parliament on July 22, 2008. “Horse Trading” has begun in right earnest to purchase the judgement of these individuals and parties about whether the deal is good for the country or not. The highest bidder will be able to get the bought to say without batting an eyelid that they think what they do purely on merit and in national interest.

The buying and selling of MPs has broken all previous records. When the Narasimha Rao government faced a similar situation, it was rumoured that certain MPs had been bought for Rs3 crores to vote for the government. This time, the going price started at Rs25 crores with counter bids from the opposite camp going up to Rs35 crores. These figures have not been plucked out of thin air. These have been quoted by responsible ‘leaders’ of political parties who know little more than hurling dirt at each other with consummate skill. They are all already so much covered with filth that a little more is not going to show. Even if it does, to most of them it is a badge of pride, a much flaunted display of the power and wealth that they have accumulated in this profession.

It is not just money that is changing hands. Ministerial berths, renaming of airports, promises of future alliances, pressures on ‘inimical’ industrial houses, hounding of political opponents, changes in government policy to benefit specific industrialists, and a lot more is the price that the government is almost dying to pay. For what? Just to stay on in power for a few months more.

What is happening openly day in and out in full media glare is nothing short of disgraceful. Is this the India for which those idealistic heroes fought to get the British out of India? Our heads should be hanging in shame. There are many silent citizens out there who are deeply distressed and sickened by this rot that has spread into every organ of the country’s polity. But, when they see politicians from all political parties come on TV and aggressively justify what they are doing, they are gripped by a feeling of helplessness, of frustration which turns into resigned apathy as they realise that the mythical silver lining is nowhere in sight.

When the Parliament was attacked by terrorists a few years back, government servants in the adjoining Central Secretariat all gathered to hear the gunshots. Many of them were then openly saying, even as the automatics were rattling the atmosphere, that it would be good if these MPs were killed by the terrorists. A little later when quiet descended and news trickled in that the dead did not include any MP, there was general disappointment. No government servant or otherwise well placed individual will ever come on camera and say such things, which is why the media missed out on the pulse of the common man. The fact is that even then, the stock of India’s politicians was very, very low, right under their very noses in the power corridors of Delhi.

Now that the political class has shown a new nadir to the whole world, the average Indian has lost complete respect for it. Yet, our politicians not only show no remorse for what they all are doing but continue to defend the indefensible with aggression. One politician who is a permanent fixture on TV channels in fact went to the extent of quoting Churchill about democracy being a game of numbers to justify the sordid dealings that are taking place. He even went on to say that the present system was the best available and asked the TV anchor to suggest a better one, if he had any.

Mahatma Gandhi is to be quoted only in rarefied and sterilised environments where there is no risk of practical implementation of his values and ideals. When it comes to the brass-tacks, however, he is to be kept safely in a secure inaccessible vault from where his voice has no chance of escaping. During times of crises/opportunity presented by the real danger of losing power, the ones to be remembered are criminals locked up in jails, erstwhile ‘dalals’ and others of equally dubious merit literally prostituting themselves to get the highest price for their ‘conscience’ and vote.

Indian democracy has become worse than ‘mockocracy’, a mockery of democracy. A few completely corrupt and fully saleable MPs have the power today to decide whether the nuclear deal that Dr Manmohan Singh signed after much deliberation and with utmost personal sincerity and integrity is in the nation’s interest. Is this the voice of the nation? Are these few, and the commies stuck with a disastrous ideology, hoest and competent enough to get the nation to take decisions of grave import? Is the nation safe with such elements running amock in Parliament and even in the government? Is this the real face of the will of the people that democracy is supposed to reflect accurately?

Forget the rogue elements who have hijacked the institution of democracy in this ‘game of numbers’. Are the leading leaders of major political parties any less culpable for allowing, even promoting this disgraceful spectacle? Who needs to be held to account first? Surely this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue. Who is going to stand up and speak with the integrity of a Mahatma Gandhi? Do I hear educated and empowered people sniggering that the Mahatma is to be eulogised but cannot be practically followed?

Is India not capable of producing an Obama, the African-American of Gandhian integrity and exceptional core values that the US has embraced? Are we going to keep throwing up worthless, self-centred tinsel time after time? Is this downward slide going to continue till it is rudely interrupted by a nation so completely fed up that it will finally cry out and force an alternative to put an abrupt end to this utterly disgraceful spectacle?

Who is the real killer of Mahatma Gandhi? Was it Nathuram Godse who took life out of his body due to an ideological clash or is it those who have effectively killed his spirit due to their personal ambition and greed, while pretending to be the protectors of his legacy?

Are you willing to say or do anything to get these so called leaders to wake up and see light before it is too late? Or is it already too late?
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Readers may like to read the following posts:

1. Democracy-Mockocracy-Revolution?
2. Purging Political Immorality: Jugaad or Revolution?

MAYAWATI: SPOILER OR SAVIOUR?

Mayawati’s hug of death is finally beginning to choke the Congress party.

Before reading on, please carefully go through what I had written way back in August last year. In the post entitled "Mayawati’s Hug of Death”, I had then itself warned about the dangers that the Congress party was being exposed to in accepting Mayawati’s warm and reassuring sisterly hug after she had won the UP elections. Despite the many unconcealed signs to the effect given out over the years by Mayawati and her mentor Kanshi Ram, the Congress kept getting sucked into her death trap. The article needs to be read in its entirety; there is little need to repeat what I have already stated there with some lucidity.

It has taken a very long time for the Congress to realize that Mayawati is quietly removing the ground from beneath its feet. The lady is now being dubbed, again incorrectly, by the Congress a “spoiler” outside UP where she is causing the defeat of many Congress candidates by luring away dalit voters from the Congress. Her base in these states being small presently, her candidates do not win but eat enough into the vote bank of the Congress to ensure that its candidates are defeated due to this splitting of votes.

The embrace of Mayawati, who spares no opportunity to threaten the emasculated Congress party that she will withdraw support to the government at the Centre if it does not toe her line (the Congress has given in every time so far, any surprise?), is at last beginning to be seen as what it always has been. Possibly the overwhelming need for instant gratification of the lust for power had blinded the party till now.

Maywati is not in the political arena to make or mar the fortunes of other parties. She is in the game to get to power at the Centre on her own. She is not putting up candidates in states other than UP to ‘spoil’ the chances of the candidates of other political parties, primarily the Congress. That is happening as a bye product of her strategy to build an all India base, like she did in UP, to eventually get enough MPs to be the Prime Minister entirely on her own steam. Yes, in the interim she will spare no effort to get a critical number of MPs to ensure that no other party or alliance can form a government on its own. With the BJP and the Congress being at the opposite ends of an irreconcilable ideological spectrum, she will inevitably be in the unique position of choosing her political mates entirely on her own terms, doling out crumbs to salivating nobodies whose sole objective of being in this game of politics is to find the shortest route to the ill-gotten spoils that power showers in complete abundance.

There has been a lot of debate lately about the prospects of Mayawati outside of UP. Most analysts have comfortingly concluded that she has virtually no base or organization in place in many states; regional aspirations and dynamics will ensure that she cannot make any headway; her new fangled alliance with Brahmins in UP is going to fall apart; dalits will soon be disenchanted with her as they realize that upper castes have benefited more from her etc. Were not they similarly dismissive when Kanshi Ram started out with the then hopelessly impossible idea of empowering dalits politically on their own rather than as fringe players in other political parties?

Forget BSP. Remember how even seasoned politicians had written off BJP in the not too distant past as an urban party of banias limited to pockets of North India? See how the party reinvented itself and where it is now? From almost nowhere, it has emerged a one of the two leading national parties in the country, the other being the Congress, of course!

Mayawati is going to do a BJP on the national political scene sooner than most of us would like to even contemplate.

Mahatma Gandhi had dreamt of the day when a dalit would be the Prime Minister of India. That dream could not have been in the limited political sense of a dalit physically occupying that chair like Dr Manmohan Singh is doing now. Mahatma Gandhi would have visualized proper empowerment of dalits in all walks of life as well as the in the political hierarchy. He would have wanted transfer of real power to the dalits and other long downtrodden sections of our society, culminating in a dalit getting to the top job on his own, not due to condescending charity or circumstantial compulsions.

Without doubt, Mahatma Gandhi would have envisioned this shift in the power balance to be spearheaded by his own party, the Congress, from whose ranks a dalit would rise to be PM. He could have never dreamt that this grand old political party would one day mutate into a family property, making the rise of anyone else impossible.

In a larger sense, Mayawati is giving shape to the Mahatma’s dream. A Mayawati could simply not have risen in the Congress. Paradoxically, after stridently talking only about dalits, she is mutating into echoing the very soul of the Congress party that Gandhi had dreamt about. To some Congressmen, she may be appearing to be the ‘spoiler’ of the party; in reality she may be well on the way to becoming the saviour of the party, both in spirit and on ground.

I do not know whether Mayawati has given thought to this possibility: For perhaps the first time since Independence, she is in the unique position of being able to cause a split in the Congress party, to lead the breakaway portion on to becoming the real party with the remaining rump withering away faster than anyone can even imagine now. Alternatively, of course it sounds fanciful and will not happen I know, Mayawati can be made the Congress President and projected as its Prime Ministerial candidate for the next elections! In one stroke, dalits, for long the cannon fodder of the Congress, will get the empowerment that Mahatma Gandhi had dreamt for them within the Congress and the Congress will come back to power with a thumping majority in the next general elections.

It is for Congressmen to decide whether they want to treat Mayawati as a ‘spoiler’ or start acknowledging the fact that she can indeed be the saviour of the Congress party. The choice they make may well determine whether they and their party survive or dissolve into oblivion.

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Readers may also like to read:

1. Mayawati and Dalit Power
2. Single and on a mission: India's alpha (ge)Ms.
3. Mayawati's hug of death
4. Is Modi BJP's answer to the Manmohan Mayawati challenge?
5. Looking for India's Obama in Harvard!

IT'S YESTERDAY ONCE MORE

The Congress party was formed in 1885 by A.O. Hume, a Scotsman, primarily to perpetuate the Empire and prevent another native uprising by permitting westernized and educated Indians to enjoy limited power and have some say in the running of the administration. Subsequently, but for the faction under Bal Gangadhar Tilak, which demanded self-rule, Congressmen were content to seek a dominion status for India under the British.

Enter the most remarkable, westernized, global Indian that India has ever produced, Mahatma Gandhi. With Gandhi’s entry the whole paradigm of struggle against the British changed. Reason: Gandhi not only got to the pulse of the nation quickly, he used his profound understanding of the British to beat them by adopting an innovative, indigenous method to which the masses resonated but which the British never fully understood till they were made to depart.

This was lateral thinking at its best. Lesson? To beat a much stronger opponent, you have to develop a tool which he has not thought of and which he cannot copy or develop a response to till your objective is achieved.

Cut to the India of 2007. The Indian National Congress is poised once again to go into the hands of an exciting (or is it excited?) bunch of westernized Indians with a global exposure to education and work. To cap it, most of those who matter are sons and daughters of senior Congress leaders of the previous generation. Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora, Jitendra Prasad, Sachin Pilot, Priya Dutt; all are pedigreed inheritors, raring to go on well oiled vehicles.

With such impressive credentials, why is there no excitement, hope or expectation among the masses? Why is there such cynicism about what this generation next of the Congress can achieve? Why did Rahul Gandhi’s high volt involvement in the UP elections lead to a decline in the vote share of the Congress?

The answer seems to partly lie in the two Indias that have been created after Independence. The young Congressmen of today belong to the first India, westernized, English speaking, affluent, and almost completely disconnected with the other original India of the masses; just like the Nehrus of yesteryears were, almost completely mentally enslaved by British superiority, till Gandhi appeared on the scene. Such leaders simply cannot fire the imagination and the civilizational and cultural pride of the real Indians of original India.

That is what the original Global Indian, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did. He made simple villagers realize that they were powerful enough to overthrow the mightiest empire of all time; that they were in fact culturally and morally superior to the white man despite all his swagger, sophistication and proclaimed racial superiority. How did he do it? By understanding and getting into the very soul of this ancient land and into the hearts and homes of ordinary Indians by living and talking like one of them. Not like most Congressmen before him who lived, dressed, spoke and thought like their English masters.

In the tumultuous process of driving the British out of India, a now forgotten but a critical and timeless management lesson that Gandhi taught was: You can’t beat them if you ape them. This is a pre-requisite even for any independent nation which aspires to move up the global hierarchy and sit as an equal on the table of the great nations of the world. It is equally applicable to any company which wants to be a global leader in its business.

Today’s global Indians of the Congress and the First India are doing exactly the opposite. They are subconsciously, if not blatantly, making it a point to prove to the other Indians that they are an inferior lot because they do not know English and have not seen the superior West, now epitomized by the US. Therefore, these Indians are not fit to enjoy the ‘Good Times’ which separate them from the First Indians who are enjoying being the new ‘colonial rulers’ of their own country. Once again, there is the same mental enslavement to the superiority of the West, which can only enfeeble those who pretend to be leaders of the land of Gandhi the Mahatma.

‘It’s yesterday once more’ sang The Carpenters not so long ago in celebration of the back again happy times. Like all Indians, I too want to sing a similar song for this country. History seems to be repeating itself. Only the Mahatma has yet to reappear, to enable Nehru’s great grandson and others like him to once again shed the hypocritical and superficial trapping of Khadi for something which cleanses and frees their souls of the intoxicating yoke which has them entrapped.

In the 21^st century, nobody cares about what they wear on the body; what matters to this great country is what their heart, soul and mind are clad in.

DEMOCRACY - MOCKOCRACY - REVOLUTION?

Much chest thumping has been and is being done over the fact that India is a Democracy. Democracy is the magic mantra by which all our failings are swept under a very dirty carpet. It is also the mantra which is used by all for lofty comparisons with other great but undemocratic nations which have and are clearly doing a much better job of taking their people and nations forward.

China has left us far, far behind on almost all parameters like economic growth, quality of life, eradication of poverty, generation of wealth, military strength, and a seat on the table of great nations of the world. And this, despite the fact that barely thirty five odd years back, both these nations were virtually at the same level on all these counts. Yet, we continue to delude ourselves into believing that we are above China because we have ‘democracy’. Our self esteem and national pride is not hurt by the chasm that China has effortlessly created, making India look like any other insignificant small nation it does not consider worthy of speaking about as anywhere near an equal.

As everybody never tires of saying, there are two ‘Indias’ in India. One India is of the English speaking and materially comfortable Indians, moving ahead at brisk pace now: The Shining India. Indians of this India, particularly the young and brash icons in most spheres, including the media, are living their personal ‘American Dream’, which places them individually as well as collectively in a position superior to Indians of the ‘Other India’. They are quite happy to be floating and gloating there. Feudalism and the caste system have not disappeared; they have just mutated and are now sophisticatedly practiced by these new ‘Upper Caste’ Indians. They smugly and with obscene pride identify themselves in terms of even tiny connections to the ‘superior’ West, which they think places them on a pedestal beyond the lowly Hindi/Regional language speaking Indians, whom they cannot identify with. For them alone, this democracy rocks.

The question that needs to be asked is: What is this democracy that we are so proud of? Does it even remotely resemble the responsible and responsive democracies of the nations from which we did a ‘cut and paste’ job after Independence? Has the expression of democracy here not been reduced for the 'Other Indians' just to the one free(that too not in all cases)act of casting of votes once in five years, to elect representatives who are repeatedly proving themselves to be petty individuals driven by fear and greed, above all else? Fear of losing the next elections and the greed of enjoying the spoils of office, when in power?

Has not our brand of democracy become more akin to ‘Mockocracy’, a mockery of the power to the people that is supposed to be its very basis? For those Shining Indians who still remember Hindi, hasn’t Indian democracy degenerated to the Hindi ‘mockocracy’, where most politicians are in the business only for the ‘mauka’ (opportunity) to make money and enjoy perverse power? Hasn’t the ‘Ram Rajya’ of Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams become a ‘Haram Rajya’?

Democracy has done little for the forgotten millions who subsist on a dollar a day or less. Their existence is remembered only at the time of casting of votes. If some of these unfortunate Indians were to experience the life being led by the poor in China, in the backdrop of the fact that a few years back they too were at the same level, they would either die of shock or come back and probably pick up a gun. Would they want the five-yearly experience of ‘democracy’ which has got them nothing or any other form of government which gives them the life the Chinese are living? The answer is a an unequivocal slap on our face.

Dissatisfaction with mockocracy is growing by the day. The signs are loud, but no one wants to notice; not the fear and greed driven politicians; not the shining Indians who are having a great time. Mass lynching of thieves and petty criminals, wanton destruction of public property at the slightest provocation, increasing naxal violence by the deprived, mass protests by aggrieved groups which bring the nation to a halt, instant and sometimes violent settlement of social disputes; these are all symbols of rising frustration among the masses, not yet galvanized by a tall leader in the mould of a Mao or a Gandhi. The moment such a unifying and incorruptible leader emerges, as he will, if things continue this way, this mockocracy will collapse faster than a pack of cards.

Communism collapsed dramatically in the West mainly because it failed to provide the promised economic and material benefits to the masses, while the capitalist world took giant leaps in doing so. Communism survived in China primarily because Deng Xiao Ping foresaw what communists in the West failed to, well before any serious rumbling took place in China. Thus, while the dictatorial rule of the Communist Party continues, communism as the economic ideology it was has been given a quiet burial. Intelligent evolution has prevented a bloody revolution, a revolution which could easily have seen China break up like the Soviet Union.

Are we headed for a revolution or will we find an evolutionary answer to this blot to the India of Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams, this mockery of the collective intelligence of the most ancient surviving culture and civilization?

Our endless ability to adapt and absorb has contributed in no small measure to our survival for thousands of years.The times now are different. It is the ‘Instant Age’, where information can be made available to more than a critical mass of people instantly.

Revolutionary reactions, when they come in future, will thus be sudden and almost with no clear early warning. The way our leaders continue to live in a different age, and the way elite Shining Indians are happy to live in their own little Americas, it will not be surprising if a violent revolutionary change occurs when least expected by them.

Is there another Mahatma out there to rush to our timely rescue?

JANUS IN THE LAND OF GANDHI

If a distorted avatar of Janus, the two-faced Roman god lives somewhere, it is here in India. To be precise, he now resides in our political class.

Nowhere in the world can you find politicians making ‘morality’ the cornerstone of foreign policy while immorality is their guiding norm in determining internal political alignments and postures. Where morality is sorely needed, particularly when a nation claims inspiration from Gandhi, we have blatant immorality, and where pragmatism and national interest should be supreme, the same people turn Gandhian or Nehruvian.

Why this hypocrisy, this dichotomy? Perhaps it stems from our age old cultural trait of treating outsiders with courtesy and respect. This was strengthened by Mahatma Gandhi in his fight for India’s Independence, when he opposed the British with unparalleled dignity and respect and got them to leave the country, without rancor or humiliation. The Mahatma, though, never displayed any weakness or meekness in his fight for what was right. He simply chose a weapon based on Truth, a weapon which he thought was best suited to achieve the birthright of his countrymen to drive the British out of India.

For Gandhi, the principles of political and social behavior were the same for outsiders as well as Indians. They were rooted to morality and truth, the two cornerstones that had to be the basis of all political intercourse. More importantly, this meant also that there was no scope for any ‘weakness’, which led to a compromise, however small, with these principles. Unfortunately, Gandhi died rather quickly after Independence, before he could guide the emerging political class to internalize these principles in their new role as the rulers of the country.

Gandhi had once said: ‘I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor’. He had also said: "I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully."

These telling words should have been the lodestones of our foreign policy. Unfortunately, the moment Nehru was clear of the shadow of Gandhi, he remembered only the non-violent part, forgetting completely that Gandhi’s morality also dictated that aggression had to be dealt with violence, if necessary. Cowardice was not an option for Gandhi. Nehru forgot that. In my previous posts, I have already labored over the disastrous consequences of Nehru’s inability to identify and protect India’s interest, even when faced with aggression from China and Pakistan.

Nehru, it appears, lived in his own fanciful Utopian world, oblivious to the hard realities of the rapidly changing international order, post Second World War. Rather than respond to aggression as Gandhi would have done, Nehru spent his energies in trying to grandiloquently project himself as a peace loving leader of global stature. So, we saw the spectacle of this huge country identifying itself with small countries of little significance on the global stage and creating the Non Aligned Movement, even when China next door was rapidly becoming the global power that its size dictated. Nehru was happy ‘cutting chai’ with Nasser and Tito and claiming a personal high ‘moral ground’ in the world, while camouflaging the cowardice that would have drawn Gandhi’s ire.

Great nations are marked by a wholesome degree of morality and honesty in their internal political processes, and pragmatic immorality in external dealings, when required, in national interest. India, on the other hand has this policy totally inverted. Why has this happened?

One, dynastic rule has ensured that Nehru’s warts, big ones, are made to look like pimples of pride. That is perhaps the main reason why the classified papers of the China War of 1962 have not yet been declassified and why the Henderson-Brooks report on this war has not been made public. That is also probably why most strategic analysts skim over many unpleasant facts. Survival is more important than anything else to them too.

Two, our politicians, exceptions apart, have an even lesser knowledge and understanding of international relations than Nehru did. Worse, they have simply no interest in this subject and are therefore content to play along with the weak, moralistic foreign policy that Nehru laid out. After all, such a policy not only makes them collectively look good in the international arena, it also means that they do not need to waste any time and effort over these matters which are of no immediate personal concern to them or to the political parties or groups they represent.

The only thing that really energizes our politicians are gutter fights for the petty political power they are desperate to physically experience and enjoy as individuals and parties, just as spoils of war are in a foreign land. They are now as far away from Gandhi’s beliefs and values as it can get. Morality is not even a factor any more as politicians of all parties willingly rip apart every single norm of civilized behavior in their unbridled greed and lust for perverse, personal political power. Hypocrisy, corruption and falsehoods have become so pervasive that they are not issues that disturb any longer or discussed any more except when politicians are throwing blame at each other and scoring pathetic political points in TV studios.

Mahatma Gandhi is now only a face frozen on currency notes and buried on the many ‘MG’ Roads that were meant to be reminders of his character, his fearlessness and his political morality. The Janus faced politicians who rule this great nation now seem to have no time to see either Gandhi’s face or the national emblem on the soiled currency notes they hurriedly count with salivating glee.