RACE TO INDIA'S ELECTION:2014
SECTION - THIRTY- FOUR
MODISM IS SAVIOUR OF EXISTENTIAL HINDUTVA A LAST STEP FOR HOPE , SHORT OF FORCED DONNING OF ROBES TO "KESARIYAS"
Is Narendra Modi genuinely BJP?
As politics, as style, as message, Narendra Modi presents an ersatz version of the BJP. There is little that is civilisational about him. Worse still, he creates an artificial Swadeshi, without any sense of Swaraj
A civilisation is greater than the sum of its individual values and an election is bigger, more poignant than the sum of its candidates. As one watches the drama of the current election, one realises that each candidate represents a Weltanschauung, a world view. Mr. Rahul Gandhi represents the Congress in decline, Mr. Kejriwal, a new politics of possibility dignified as the AAP, and Mr. Narendra Modi plays the BJP. Watching reflectively, one realises that while he is an effective candidate, he is a poor representation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). I do not see this either as a naive or a Machiavellian statement. Anyone interested in politics should confront this possibility.
Tectonic shifts within the BJP
Let us begin by going down memory lane, watching a Vajpayee as Prime Minister. He is at ease with himself. There is a style, an affability, a grace about him. He recites poetry with a flair. He does not need a Prasoon Joshi or a Piyush Pandey to do it. He can think civilisationally with ease. Then, consider his organisational double, Mr. Lal Krishna Advani. He is a Vajpayee in corsets, stiffer, more ascetic, and intensely serious about life. For him, the BJP is a vocation. He is a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) exemplar. Vajpayee who is more accessible, represents a less procrustean view of the BJP. Mr. Vajpayee makes the BJP a more inviting and inclusive proposition.
Whether it is Mr. Vajpayee or Mr. Advani, one senses an authenticity to them. They smell, evoke the BJP. The very differences in styles seem to add the realism of difference. Oddly, when I watch Mr. Modi, I miss this authenticity of text and context. Is Mr. Modi, an authentic BJP text as message and performance, and does the BJP as a party, as a community, see him as that? The answer is worryingly ambiguous. If one wants to be generous one can say that he represents not the exemplary values or the leadership qualities of the BJP, but a lowest common denominator of the BJP.
The BJP is a framework of values, an organisational system, a style of politics, and a way of constructing social reality. As a parliamentary party, the BJP is seen as being more open-ended than the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or the RSS, and less coercive than the Bajrang Dal. When push comes to shove, the BJP, as a parliamentary, political fragment, seeks wider adjustment, compromise, unlike cadres or pressure groups which might be more ideological. The BJP has to be more discursive as a party, be more conversational politically and sound less like a catechism. Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani captured such a politics with grace and style. Mr. Narendra Modi sees the party as a necessary evil. No leader seems more hostile to his party than Mr. Modi. The party seems uneasy and even wary with him. Recent events indicate that the unease is a deep fault line.
Consider the fate of some of the classic leaders of the BJP, Mr. Jaswant Singh, Mr. Advani or Mr. Joshi. These leaders were almost exemplars of the style of the party. Yet, they also evoked a style of cosmopolitanism. They were literally the voice and the message of the party. Yet, the party dismisses them today, treating them as being irrelevant, like cultural strains to be rejected. When Mr. Jaswant Singh cried, or when Mr. Advani or Mr. Sudheendra Kulkarni talk of wider worlds, they are read as noise. Yet, suddenly, this wider cosmopolitanism seems unnecessary. The BJP as a mentality shrinks to a parochialism to guarantee electoral victory. The BJP seems to be back in some strange uniform. But it is not just strains in the party I am talking about.
A Party in Crisis
As politics, as style, as message, Mr. Modi presents an ersatz version of the BJP. There is little that is civilisational about him. Worse still, he creates an artificial Swadeshi, without any sense of Swaraj. Mr. Modi’s Swadeshi does not empower locality, it creates a politics of anxiety around security. He evokes paranoia insulting Mrs Sonia Gandhi as foreign and Italian which neither Mr. Advani nor Mr. Vajpayee would do.
He is leader of a nukkad not of a nation.
He behaves like a Bajrang Dal bully rather than a BJP leader ready for adjustments, coalitions or even a compromise necessary for an Indian idea of unity. The paradox of Mr. Modi is that he might criticise the Congress model of Federalism but adds little to the alchemy of unity and inclusiveness. Mr. Modi represents a reductionist, single strand of leadership which is un-Indian. A Vajpayee can reach out to the Opposition and talk easily to it. Mr. Modi suffers from an arid sibling rivalry which destroys a syncretic style of leadership. Mr. Modi can be diktat but never a conversation.
There is a deeper inadequacy to his politics. As a country, we need leaders who can win more than the next election. Our Prime Minister is not a winnable horse, which corporate or media punters can be happy about. A leadership has to think fifty, hundred, at least five hundred years into the future.
Mr. Modi offers little sense of the future, whether it is of craft, knowledge, agriculture or biotechnology. He has not a single significant line on an India of the future. Sadly, Mr. Modi might play a second rate mimic of Vivekananda and talk of the Parliament of religions at Chicago. But, Mr. Modi keeps thinking that his Parliament of Religions is Davos and a subsidiary at that.
He might look China in the eye but has no alternative vision to China.
Narendra Modi
A caricature of itself called Narendra Modi.
The least a Veer Savarkar, a Har Dayal, a Lajpat Rai or a Vivekananda would have done is to provide an alternative to the Chinese idea of autocratic growth. Yet, Mr. Modi becomes through behaviour and style, as a second rate mimicry of China. Worse still, Mr. Modi seems to caricature the BJP. As the BJP declines as a party, as the older generation of visionaries disappears, a party in crisis produces a caricature of itself called Narendra Modi.
Any writer who has a commitment to Parliament and party politics must recognise the importance of parties like the CPI(M), the BJP or even the Congress. We would have to invent them if they did not exist. Each represents a critical part of the history and imagination of Indian Politics. I want to emphasise this because my opposition to Mr. Modi was initially triggered by his authoritarianism and his responsibility for the riots and their cruel aftermath. Electoral politics and sanitised law cannot exonerate him. But by watching him grow in popularity, and listening to his message, I want to argue that Mr. Modi is dangerous to the BJP and its value frames. His narrowness hypothecates the BJP, politics and Indian society to a jingoism of nation-state and development.
There is a cultural backstage to Indian politics where small groups with a mix of ethical and religious perspectives seek to argue and discuss the future of Indian politics. One strain or strand of these groups includes people who would embody a sense of cultural politics. Some, in fact, many of them would be BJP influentials. I wonder how many of them would pick Mr. Modi as an exemplar. I was imagining whether a historian like Dharampal, a shrewd student of politics, would pick a Modi or see him as a straw man, an ersatz model of the BJP at a time where its political poverty cannot produce more than a mediocre leadership. Mr. Modi seems a solution of an RSS desperate for power rather than a BJP rethinking the possibilities of politics. Nagpur has fettered India for decades to come.
Let us not confuse contempt for the Congress as approval for the BJP.
Mr. Modi’s Neanderthal model of development in the age of sustainable and human development shows that Mr. Modi is an anachronism, dusted up and presented as technocratic model of development. It will not take long to prove that the Gujarat model of development and the Gujarat model of violence are part of one picture
I wish I was a politically curious fly on the wall listening to BJP leaders and workers thinking out private doubts about the public face of Mr. Modi. A psychoanalysis of the party reveals that there are deep fault lines in the party about Mr. Modi. A desperate RSS cannot paper over it for long by arguing that parliamentary success will erase organic doubts. I wish someone from the BJP would articulate this politics of doubt openly so that India and the BJP can be saved from an excruciating future
(Shiv Visvanathan is a professor at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy.)
COMMENT
THE FACT IS PHENOMENA "MODI" IS THE DIRECT PRODUCT OF SIXTY YEARS OF GROSS MIS- RULE OF INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS WHERE IN THE INDIAN PRIDE HAS BEEN PUSHED TO THE HISTORICAL NADIR IN EXISTING SCENERIO
"MODISM "
IS THE ONLY ANSWER & INDIA WILL GO FOR IT. IT IS THE TIME FOR "HINDUTVA" TO SURVIVE IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY INDIANS HAVE TO DON THE ROBE OF "KESARIYAS" MODI or NO MODI UNDER THE PRESENT SCENERIO THE RESULT WOULD STILL BE
"MODISIM"
SECTION - THIRTY- THREE
Why I Joined BJP
M J Akbar
.Anyone who speaks in public, whether master orator or ordinary word-shuffler, comes to a platform after some preparation. The one eventuality no one can quite prepare for is a crisis; and there is no crisis greater for an individual than a threat to one’s life. At that moment, the reaction is more likely to emerge from a heart than the head.
The bombs that began to burst at Narendra Modi’s Patliputra rally were aimed at the crowds, of course, but also at him. His instant response was to ask a powerful question to both Hindus and Muslims that went to the crux of the principal challenge before our nation, and included its solution as well. He asked these two great communities to choose: they could either fight each other, or together they could confront that shaming curse called poverty.
This placed everything in context and priority: we need peace in our country as an absolute fundamental necessity. This gives us the chance to rescue an economy that has been sent to hospital in the last decade before it sinks to a deathbed. The primary purpose of economic growth is to lift the poorest from their awful misery; and this can best be achieved only when every Indian, across differences of creed and caste, works hand in hand.
We either move together or we barely move at all. It was an incisive definition of inclusive growth. At a time when Modi could have been forgiven for being emotional, he was practical, clearly focused and determined to pursue an economic vision. This fit a pattern. In a speech on August 15 last year, he said that the religion of anyone in public service was the Constitution of India.
Acompilation of his views by Siddharth Mazumdar, released a few weeks ago, opens with this sentence: “The essence of secularism is that all religions are equal before the law.” It asserted that sarva darma sambhav was the philosophical magnet that united India from an ancient age.
But how do such principles accord with the fact of the Gujarat riots, which is a constant theme in all attacks on him? I raised questions at the time of the riots as much as any other journalist did. Paradoxically, these questions were answered over ten years by the UPA government There has never been, since independence, such intense scrutiny, or such absolute determination to trace guilt to a Chief Minister, as Modi faced from institutions loyal to the UPA government over two full terms.
Every relevant instrument of state was assigned the task of finding something, anything that could trace guilt to Modi. They could not.
The Supreme Court, which is above politics and parties, and which is our invaluable, independent guardian of the law and Constitution, undertook its own enquiries. Its first findings are in, and we know that the answer is exoneration. Moreover, there has been judicial accountability to an unprecedented degree in Gujarat. We are still waiting for justice in a hundred previous riots.
One suspects that only some politicians have a vested interest in the past during an election when Indians want to vote for their future. The young want a government that gives them jobs; parents want turn into food on the plate, into schools for their children, and into a horizon of hope.
When Modi talks of building a hundred new cities, they can see jobs and opportunity rise with every floor of a new township. One significant indicator of the public anger lies in a statistic: employment has grown, on an average, at only 2% in the past decade. If the rate was higher in the first five years of UPA, when the economy was faring better, then one assumes it must have sunk to less than 2% in the second UPA term. A nation that was soaring on achievement and hope has sunk into depression.
We need a national recovery
mission. Only someone who has
delivered can offer a credible
promise of leading such a critical
mission.
For those on the wrong side of 30 or 40, five years is just another passage in life. For those who are 20, five years is the difference between aspiration and despair. If a young person does not find a job in these five years, he or she begins to lose that vital energy which comes from self-confidence. If the young do not power the economy then the economy will be stuck in the quagmire of idle waste. There is only one way forward. And there is, among the visible choices, only one person best suited to lift the nation out of a septic swamp.
You know his name as well as I do.
"MODI"
SECTION - THIRTY- TWO
WINNABILITY QUESTION MARK
OF
MODI FROM " VARANASI "
In Varanasi, each of the Brahmin, Muslim, Patel and Vaishya communities number 2.5 lakh or more. If any two of these communities were to fully back one party, its candidate would be sure to win. PTI
FATE OF MODI WILL REST WITH THE ACUMEN OF CONGRESS IN THE SELECTION OF THEIR CANDIDATE AGAINST MODI
BECAUSE
Candidates from Varanasi must note:
you can only ever own half the city.
Candidates from Varanasi must note: you can only ever own half the city.
The city of Varanasi is more myth than reality. Some believe that it is balanced on the tip of Shankar’s trident. Because of this, the city is regarded as the ultimate destination to attain moksh (salvation) by some Hindus. However, Varanasi is also linked to great saints like Buddha, Kabir and Ravidas, all of whom criticised the vices of Hinduism.
If there is Manikarnika Ghat here, there is also Lahartara and Kabir Chaura — the place where Kabir was born and where he worked, claimed by both Hindus and Muslims. It was in Varanasi that Tulsidas composed Ramcharitmanas. It was here, in Sir Gobardhanpur, that the famous Dalit saint, Ravidas, was born. The city, which at first glance may seem homogeneous, is in fact a synthesis of opposites. It is a city of several internal contradictions.
It is said that whoever owns Varanasi only truly owns half of it.
“Banaras”,
the composition of the famous Hindi poet, Kedarnath Singh, brings out its various facets and nuances.
“If you see it unexpectedly/
Strange is its composition/
Half is in water/
Half is in prayer/
Half is in flowers/
Half is in corpse/
Half is in sleep/
Half is in shankh/
If you look carefully/
Half is there/
And half is not there”.
Candidates standing from Varanasi in the Lok Sabha elections should remember these lines.The ones who lose should remember that at least half of Varanasi is still theirs.
Muslims comprise a large section of the city’s population, numbering around 2.5 lakh. World famous for its harmonious cultural legacy, Varanasi is home to both Hindustani vocalist Girija Devi and the late shehnai maestro, Ustad Bismillah Khan. On the political front, Varanasi was where socialist leaders Jayaprakash Narayan and Raj Narain worked extensively. Post Independence, it was also the epicentre of the powerful communist movement that emerged in the Poorvanchal region.
The famous communist leader, Sarju Pandey, spent much time interacting with people in this city. Varanasi was also the native place of Kamalapati Tripathi, the one-time Brahmin face of the Congress. The entire city and much of UP ardently admired him. The “young turk”, Chandra Shekhar, who later became prime minister, was also strongly influenced by Varanasi.
Gradually, however, Varanasi became the fortress of the RSS, which gave it a predominantly Hindu image. In all general elections since 1991, the BJP candidate from Varanasi has won, except when the Congress’s Rajesh Mishra won in 2004.
In Varanasi, each of the Brahmin, Muslim, Patel and Vaishya communities number 2.5 lakh or more.
If any two of these communities were to fully back one party, its candidate would be sure to win. Narendra Modi has a good relationship with the Patel community, and the BJP has a strong rapport with the Brahmin and Vaishya communities. However, given that Arvind Kejriwal belongs to the Vaishya community, the Vaishyas, Muslims and other secular, communist and socialist forces, which are all strongly allied against Modi, might vote for him in large numbers.
Varanasi is also considered the political, cultural and economic capital of the 12 districts of Poorvanchal and the 10 Bhojpuri districts that lie on the border of UP and Bihar. The BJP believes that it can influence the Lok Sabha constituencies that fall in these 22 districts by fielding Modi from Varanasi. Indeed, if it is able to establish a connection, it could influence the entire Hindi belt, and perhaps get the numbers to form government. Being an important pilgrimage spot for the Hindus, Varanasi can easily be used to spread the political agenda of Hindutva.
However, these forces tend to overlook the fact that Varanasi is not merely a city but also the nerve centre of Poorvanchal. In opposition to the strategy of spreading Hindutva through Varanasi, SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has declared his intention to fight the upcoming election from Azamgarh. The Muslim population of Varanasi is scared to vote for Modi, and in this situation, the SP is trying to strengthen its Muslim and Yadav combine.
Additionally, the SP’s presence might sway the OBCs of Poorvanchal away from the BJP. The SP has a strong impact on 15 of the 32 Lok Sabha seats in the Poorvanchal region. However, one effect of this contest might be that the confrontation between the Hindutva and Muslim-SP forces will increase, which may convert the entire Hindi heartland into a tense region.
The writer is professor, G.B. Pant Social Science Institute,University of Allahabad
express@expressindia
SECTION - THIRTY- ONE
26 MARCH 2014
In 2014, Hindutva versus Caste
Varghese K. George
The question in this general election is whether Hindutva will triumph over caste. There are at least three factors clearly nudging politics towards Hindu consolidation
Of the numerous public appearances by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi over the last year or so, two have been strikingly inconceivable. Both happened in Kerala, often projected as a politically progressive State. In February 2014, Mr. Modi addressed a meeting of Pulayas, a Dalit community that has been for years a bedrock of support for the Communist parties. In April 2013, Mr. Modi was chief guest at the Sivagiri Mutt, founded by Kerala’s legendary social reformer, Sree Narayana Guru who led the backward Ezhava community to social awakening. The Ezhavas too have been largely supporters of the Left. At both the platforms — events separated by more than a year — Mr. Modi made a similar pitch. “Social untouchability may have ended, but political untouchability continues,” he said, referring to the continuing isolation that he faces from various quarters.
“The next decade will belong to the Dalits and the backwards,” he said, emphasising his own lower caste origins, at a rally in Muzaffarpur in Bihar on March 3. That event too was significant as he was sharing the stage with Lok Jansakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan, who returned to the saffron fold 12 years after he quit it over the Gujarat riots. And there is more to it. Dalit leader Udit Raj, who has been fashioning himself as the new age Ambedkar, joined the BJP. So did Mr. Ramkripal Yadav, who has for years been a shadow of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, a champion of backward class politics in Bihar.
The BJP’s efforts to overcome caste barriers in its project to create an overarching Hindu identity are showing signs of success, though it is still far from being a pan-Indian phenomenon. “Mr. Modi has broken the stranglehold of caste. The affinity of these Dalits and backward leaders for the BJP is a clear indication of his acceptance among them,” says Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan, BJP general secretary.
The issue of caste identity
Among the several factors that slowed down Hindutva politics in India, caste identity has been prominent. Politically empowered sections of the backwards and Dalits viewed the Sangh project of a unified Hindu society with suspicion, as its insistence on traditions implied sustenance of the hierarchical social structure that disadvantaged them. One of the most pronounced examples of this was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who concluded that Dalit emancipation would not be possible while they remained within the Hindu social order. In turn, Baba Saheb — portrayed with considerable fulmination in Arun Shourie’s book, Worshipping False Gods — has been a villain in the Sangh discourse. But in 2013, an article in the Organiser, the mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), portrayed the Dalit icon as someone who contributed to Hindu unity.
The Hindutva project tried a combination of aggressive integration, sometimes accommodating Sanskritising demands from below and constantly working on the fear of an “Other.” But until they hit upon the idea of replacing a mosque in Ayodhya with a temple, all of this could not gather enough strength for the BJP to win a majority in any region of India. But coinciding with the Ayodhya movement was also a great upsurge of backwards, triggered by the implementation of the Mandal Commission report. Subsequently, caste and religion alternated as the prime moving force of politics, depending on the particularities of the time and place, in parts of northern and western India. The BJP gained power in several States. But except in Gujarat, the debate has not been settled conclusively in favour of Hindutva.
The question, therefore, in this election is whether Hindutva will triumph over caste. There are at least three factors clearly nudging politics towards Hindu consolidation.
Debate on Muslim Reservation
Hindutva politics in Gujarat rode on violent anti-reservation agitations spearheaded by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in the 1980s. Though the agitation was against the reservation for backwards, the targets were Dalits. Almost immediately after the agitation, Hinduvta politics struck roots, co-opting vast sections of the lower castes into its fold, even as a rising portrayal of Muslims as the “other” unified them. But the trajectory in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that together elect 120 members of Parliament has been different, as strong backward politics suspected the RSS on the question of reservation and found Muslims as allies. Ironic as it is, quota politics is dividing them now. The lower castes see the demand for Muslim quotas as detrimental to their interests. The case for affirmative action for Muslims is strong, no doubt, but the politics over it has played out much to the advantage of the Hindutva project. A social coalition that has been a bulwark against Hindutva in U.P. and Bihar for the last two decades is showing signs of unravelling.
The Dalit participation in the Muzaffarnagar riots in U.P., and the numerous Yadav versus Muslim skirmishes in Bihar over the last two years have strained the solidarity among the poor and the disadvantaged. Lower caste movements that challenged caste structures have also had a streak of Sanskritising aspirations that seek a better place within the Hindu hierarchy. When the image of the “other” is clearer, this streak becomes prominent.
Willingness to Concede Leadership
The lower caste sympathy towards the Hindutva project has been matched by a willingness among the upper castes to be content under the leadership of the lower. The turning point was the 2005 Assembly election in Bihar, when the BJP-JD(U) alliance sought a mandate, with Mr. Nitish Kumar being declared as the chief ministerial candidate. Only six months prior to that, when the alliance vacillated over projecting him — because the upper caste segments were not comfortable with the idea of a backward caste CM — it could not win and there was no clear majority for any formation. In 2007, the upper castes voted for Dalit leader Ms. Mayawati in U.P. who won a clear majority, the first for any since the Ayodhya movement. In 2010, the rainbow caste coalition voted for Mr. Nitish Kumar again; in 2012, another variant of the coalition voted for backward caste leader Mr. Akhilesh Yadav in U.P.
This change in the upper caste attitude can dramatically turn round the fortunes of the BJP. The BJP has been responsive to the leadership ambitions of the backwards and Dalits, but the upper caste support to leaders such as Mr. Kalyan Singh and Ms. Uma Bharti has been tentative. “We have the so-called backwards and lower castes standing up and wanting to be counted as Hindus. Sangh has empowered them. Even the communist movements could not accommodate these sections of the society in their leadership,” says Mr. Ram Madhav, senior RSS leader. “In 1998, the BJP had 58 MPs who were SCs and STs, possibly the highest for any party ever as a proportion of its strength,” he says. With Mr. Modi at the helm and the change in upper caste attitudes, the Sangh’s efforts have got a major fillip.
Media-Propelled Popularity
A third factor that has developed over the last decade is the dramatic popularity achieved by several lower caste gurus, aided by the visual media. To cite two examples, both Swami Ramdev, who was born a Yadav in Haryana and Mata Amritanandamayi, born in a fisherman’s community in Kerala, have attained such a huge following that their caste origins have been eclipsed. TV evangelism, as opposed to scriptural Hinduism controlled by priests, has enrolled a large section of poorer and lower caste people into thinking as Hindus. This may be a rerun of how TV serial “Ramayan” contributed to the Ayodhya movement; and lower caste Hindu gurus are not unprecedented. What makes it all extremely potent is the context of a certain level of economic prosperity among the lower castes, media penetration and the Sangh propaganda.
The terms of engagement between the state and the poor, between the upper and the lower castes, and between Hindus and Muslims could change further in the emerging scenario. “Lalu and Mulayam had managed to command backward castes support with a the promise of share in power. Mr. Modi’s politics for backwards and Dalits is not based on doles and welfare schemes, but overall development,” says Mr. Pradhan.
varghese.g@thehindu.co.in
SECTION - THIRTY
Posted by
India Facts Staff
December 26, 2013
Assertion:
National spokesperson of the Congress party Sanjay Jha in a Tweet on 2 November 2013 claimed as follows:
.
Facts
Communal riots erupted in Gujarat after 59 innocent Kar Sevaks were burnt alive in the S-6 bogie of the Sabarmati Express on 27 February 2002. Chief Minister Narendra Modi imposed curfew on the same day and deployed police contingents in all the communally sensitive areas across Gujarat. On 1 March, he had already flown in the army, which staged flag marches in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot. For detailed information on the Gujarat Government’s action, head
see http://www.gujaratriots.com/index.php/2008/05/role-of-the-government-in-controlling-violence/
This apart, a news clipping dated 6 March 2002 from the Hindu reports as follows:
Mr. Modi visited relief camps housing the minorities and instructed the officials concerned to ensure supply of essential commodities. Doctors visited the camps to treat the injured for the first time today since the beginning of the violence. Some 30,000 people are being sheltered in 18 relief camps.
The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) in its report on the riots notes that
…Modi visited Gulbarg Society and Naroda Patia, which witnessed two of the worst massacres during the riots, and relief camps on March 5 and 6, 2002.
Therefore, it is clear from these facts that Narendra Modi did visit the riot victims in just about a week contrary to Sanjay Jha’s claim of 35 days.
Verdict
Given that this information is in the public domain and easily verifiable both on the Internet and offline, one wonders the basis of Sanjay Jha’s claim.
It appears that the only purpose of Sanjay Jha’s assertion is to mislead the public and is motivated by political animosity towards Narendra Modi. As the national spokesperson of a national political party which is heading the current Indian Government, Sanjay Jha’s statement is highly irresponsible.
IndiaFacts verdict: Sanjay Jha’s statement that Narendra Modi did not visit the Gujarat riot victims for 35 days exposes him to be an Incorrigible Liar.
- See more at: http://www.indiafacts.co.in/narendra-modi-didnt-visit-riot-victims-for-35-days/#sthash.VMR5w8v6.dpuf
ALSO VISIT TO SEE WHAT BLUE BLOODED COP OF INDIA HAS TO SAY
By
February 22, 2014.
The extraordinary material greed being displayed by India’s elites highlights profound moral degradation. It surfaces when concern for preserving the goose laying the golden eggs, if only to sustain future avarice, evaporates. This is what has been happening with much of India’s political, bureaucratic and economic elites. They have lost all sense of proportion about even the need to safeguard the nation, the estate they have largely usurped, for their own future offspring. The scale of the plunder that has been taking place has grievously undermined the very foundation of the fabled wealth of Bharat, the object of covetousness of invading looters for countless centuries.
The acquisition of gargantuan wealth has become the preoccupation of India’s elites, defying reason since it is unnecessary for even the most unwholesome luxury. Yet it guarantees the self-destruction of these very elites by diminishing the capacity of Indian society to sustain itself. Their greed has endangered the economy gravely and with it the security and integrity of the nation. The blame for this parlous situation lies with Sonia Gandhi, a grasping and ignorant foreigner, whose loyalty to the Indian nation, its people and culture is plainly faux. She is unconcerned because she does not value Indian civilisation and is incapable of the devotion to it the ordinary people of Bharat, its Hindus, instinctively feel.
The greed is really only for money and status because the thirst for political power is evidently only a means to attain them. No doubt a significant portion of the plunder is for electoral purposes, but it is the callous indifference towards the consequences of looting that appals. Besides, very little has been done with political power in the past decade to advance other goals. Even issues of vital importance to the nation have not been addressed, although pursuing them would not have militated against the personal interests of these elites. But a devastating act of betrayal has been committed by the UPA, which has been to preside over a massive, unseen surge in religious conversion, from Nepal in the foothills of the Himalayas to the south of India.
This is why no foreigner must ever again be allowed to enjoy the unbridled power Sonia Gandhi has wielded over the fate of India. All those around her are culpable, especially the incumbent President of India, but senior Congress politicians as well. They could have prevented her from seizing political power in India, but failed to do so. On the contrary, they have become co-conspirators in the unprecedented undermining of India. Legislation must now be enacted, as a matter of priority, to prevent the mendacious foreign spouses of stupid rulers from seizing the country again. This is a must and no resistance should be allowed, even if it requires a Constitutional amendment to permit a national referendum to implement it.
The manifold acts of criminality of India’s incumbent political elites are astonishing. They are complicit in almost every post-Godhra terrorist attack, which the terrorist bombers invariably cite as a major motivation for causing mayhem. Yet, these venal elites and their acolytes in the media continue to inflame Jihadi terror with the canard that that Narendra Modi and the people of Gujarat were responsible for genocide against Muslims. This fabrication was repeated recently by the UPA’s anointed heir despite the unequivocal rejection of the accusation by India’s Supreme Court. The dangerous vilification continues ad nauseam and has become a timeless cry espoused by India’s secular traitors to enjoin Jihad against India and its people.
Nor did the leaders of the UPA and their purchased media allies hesitate in conniving to damage India’s intelligence services by trying to ‘fix’ one of its most distinguished Intelligence Bureau officers. The ugly rationale was the vendetta against Narendra Modi because he threatens to bring their dreadful anti-national orgy to a close. Blatant incitement for his assassination also seems to be an option, by provoking Islamic terrorists to do their worst. Neither did the UPA government have any qualms about undermining India’s chief of army staff because the prime minister’s family had a candidate of its own to succeed him. The dismal affair concluded with the government revealing sensitive state secrets to embarrass the chief of staff.
Everything this lowly political order touches turns into dust, whether it is the US downgrading of India’s Director General of Civil Aviation or its Olympic organisation’s pathetic plight. The admixture of incompetence and arrogance exceeds the stench of a morgue. And the supporters of this dismal political dispensation in the media and what masquerades as Indian academia are mere street walkers. Their personal services are purchased for money. All the fluff of shrill, pretend-anglicised accents and lower second Oxbridge degrees should be laughed out of court. Treason must be viewed with more severe circumspection. Their intellectual and cultural pretensions are mere appendages in the attempt to subjugate India that has originated from abroad.
Malevolent European and US intellectual institutions are ultimately creatures of their governments and routinely serve their subversive political purposes of their State. Rabidly obnoxious texts emanating from Chicago and Harvard, etc., misrepresented as deep thought, are instruments of cultural aggression. They are intended to demoralise and infuse self-doubt in order to better overpower citizens of the target nation. Who says wartime propaganda cannot be conducted through the written word? India is veritably at war for its survival as an autonomous civilisation. The austere rules of warfare must apply against malicious attacks, whether political, military or cultural, against its integrity. The unsparing injunctions of the sacred Bhagavad-Gita, which apparently terrify Chicago University harridans, should be unleashed against foreign combatants.
During the past decade foreign conspirators have penetrated deep into the body politic and society of India although the process had begun a little earlier. A tsunami of money from abroad, Arab, Chinese and Western, has pretty much subverted India’s political life, as well as its journalists, academics, etc. Much of this illicit funding from abroad is camouflaged under the veil of human rights awards and other routine guises and takes the hawala route as well. In any case, knowledge of its provenance has not deterred traitorous recipients, some of whom have now joined the farcical drama that passes for politics in India.
Ford Foundation sponsored Magasaysay awardees, effectively foreign agents, having thwarted Baba Ramdev’s anti-corruption movement, with a diversionary one of their own, are working over time to prevent strong government emerging in India. The dubious AAP is now joined by another distraction, with the nomination of a certifiably insane opportunist as potential prime minister. Can India’s entire Islamic clergy now expect to be on the Government payroll, alongside the IAS and IPS? However, the most corrupt buffoons remain on the Left, gorged on the same Ford Foundation largesse and the hospitality of India’s sworn Pakistani and Chinese enemies. They are cheerfully calling for the dismantlement of the nation, to the chorus of freedom and human rights sonatas. In any respectable country they would have ended up behind bars or worse.
Moral degradation does not fall like rain from the skies, it must be fastidiously nurtured. The blame for it lies in the utter cupidity and intellectual mediocrity of Jawaharlal Nehru and his absurd political mentor. The banishment of all trace of Hindu sensibility, the life blood of Indian civilisation, from the public space, in favour of spurious toxic bile called Indian secularism, must be held responsible. In fact it is nothing of the kind since historic secularism was entirely a struggle against the ostensible fascism of the church in Europe. Secularism has no bearing on the cultural and social life of pluralist Hindu society, which did not control the State.
Indian secularism became instead a contemptible instrument of war against Hindus. It is systematically denying them their very socio-cultural identity, their history and their future. The absence of considered religious reflection removed essential restraints from Indian social and cultural life and imposed in its place gratuitous materialism and degraded sensuality. Without the divine, as Dostoevsky remarked, everything is permitted. This has been the malign gift of Nehruvian secularism to Indian society.
(Dr. Gautam Sen taught international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.)
SECTION - TWENTY NINE
SANTA KEJRIWAL PARACHUTES RIDING ON A BROOM
KEJRIWAL THE " X " FACTOR
SWARAJ (MEIN KAMPF OF INDIA)
BY
ARVIND KEJRIWAL
&
THE RULES OF THE BALL GAME CHANGES
Kejriwal’s Delhi Dharna – This is not anarchy, Mr Home Minister, This is Revolution
What we are witnessing in Delhi today is historic – for the first time since Independence a legitimate political party has refused to play by the rules that all political parties in India have battened on for sixty-five years; for the first time a State Government has taken on the Central Government at its own doorstep; for the first time a Chief Minister and his entire Cabinet are sitting in protest in their own capital; for the first time their own police force is ranged against them in their thousands.
The immediate reason for this may be the demand for the suspension of five police officials, but the actual reason is more basic, and fundamental to any democracy — accountability of the rulers to the ruled.
CHIEF MINISTER
Kejriwal fighting the Central Government on Delhi streets
The rulers are not just the politicians and the bureaucrats – they are also the larger constituency that benefits from the present status quo: the industrialists, the TV and news organisations, the “cognoscenti”, the “glitterati”, the South Delhi socialites, the “intelligentsia” that makes a nice living by appearing nightly on TV panel discussions: in short, all those who are comfortable with the status quo.
They have, with the assistance of disgruntled elements like Kiran Bedi and Captain Gopinath, unleashed a veritable barrage of abuse and condemnation against Kejriwal and his party over the last week, terming him a Dictator, Anarchist, Chief Protestor, Law-breaker and so on.
It is because they feel genuinely threatened by the forces that the AAP has unleashed, the ethical standards that it has prescribed and demonstrated, the personal examples that its leaders have shown. Because they know that if these paradigms become the norm of a new India then the sand castles that these privileged reside in shall come crumbling down in no time.
And so they accuse Kejriwal of not following prescribed conventions, protocol or procedure and thus encouraging anarchy. Let us look at just three of these alleged transgressions:
1. Law Minister Somnath Bharti asking for a meeting of judicial officers of Delhi. What is improper about this? Isn’t the judiciary a part of the government – funded, staffed, appointed by the state.
Yes, it is operationally independent of the government (as it should be) but it is certainly not a holy cow whose performance cannot be questioned, or monitored, by the people of this country through their elected representatives.
The judiciary is meant to serve the people, just as the bureaucracy is, and it cannot have internal accountability only. An elected government has to have the right to review its performance, especially given the pathetic state of the disposal of cases in courts.
In my view Mr. Bharti was within his rights to take a meeting of judicial officers to assess the shortcomings of the system (which is the first step to removing these shortcomings). Yes, he could have routed the request through the High Court, but this was a trivial error and certainly not the grievous violation that the media made it out to be.
To the contrary, the Law Minister should be lauded for his initiative in seeking to address the issue instead of washing his hands of it as ALL LAW MINISTERS OF THIS COUNTRY HAVE DONE SO FAR, as if the collapse of the judicial redressal system was no concern of the government!
