Tuesday, April 7, 2015

PREMCHAND's "BOODHI KAKKI & "ADVANI" BJP's GRAND OLD MAN

SOURCE:
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/old-man-begone-modis-humiliation-advani-unkind-may-backfire-2187601.html

         PREMCHAND's "BOODHI KAKKI"
                                          &
           BJP's GRAND OLD MAN "ADVANI"

       Old man begone! Modi’s humiliation of           Advani is unkind and may backfire

Premchand (Hindi: प्रेमचंद, Urdu: منشی پریم چند), (July 31, 1880 -- October 8, 1936) was a famous writer of modern Hindi-Urdu literature.
Premchand is one of the most celebrated writers of the Indian subcontinent,[1] and is regarded as one of the foremost Hindi-Urdu writers of the early twentieth century.[2] A novel writer, story writer and dramatist, he has been referred to as the "Upanyas Samrat" ("Emperor of Novels") by some Hindi writers.
Dhanpat Rai Srivastava being Premchand's original name,began writing under the pen name "Nawab Rai".
He switched to the name "Premchand" after his short story collection Soz-e-Watan was banned by
the British administration. He is also known as "Munshi Premchand", Munshi being a honorary prefix.
Premchand's works include more than a dozen novels, around 250 short stories, several essays and
translations of a number of foreign literary works into Hindi.

By Sandipan Sharma

Apr 7, 2015

Atal, Advani, Kamal Nishan, Maang Raha Hai Hindustan.

Lal Kishanchand Advani, the inspiration behind this slogan from the 90s, will be wondering how ruthless politics can be. Forget Hindustan, today even the Kamal (Lotus) party doesn’t want Advani.

Over the past few weeks, Advani was humiliated several times. At the BJP’s conclave past week, the party’s margdarshak (guide) was reduced to a mookdarshak (silent spectator). For the first time in the history of the BJP, the conclave ended without the mandatory Advani sermon. (He had skipped the 2013 meet in Goa).

LK Advani. AP

Then, on Monday, as the BJP turned 36, Advani was not invited to the celebrations in Delhi. Like Murali Manohar Joshi, one of the founding members of the party,
Advani was forced to sulk at home as Amit Shah recounted their glorious contribution to the party’s ‘illustrious history’.

In an ironic twist to another popular slogan,
Atal, Advani, Murali Manohar, Bhajapa Ki Ye Teen Dharohar, the party’s heritage was consigned to history on a historic day. A party that boasts of shuchita, sanskar and Bharatiyata, committed the distinctly un-Bharatiya sin of locking away the family elder

(Premchand’s poignant story Boodhi Kaki immediately comes to mind) while everyone else was celebrating.

Since Advani has not spoken in public, or updated his blog, it is difficult to know how he will be feeling, or why he was ignored.

“Is this the BJP’s sanskar, is this the Ram Rajya I had planned to establish with my rath yatras?” he may be wondering.

OR

will he be commiserating with Shahjahan, who was dethroned, marginalized, humiliated and locked up by his successor?

The latest twist in Advani’s parable, frankly, was unexpected. Till a few weeks ago, the BJP looked like a happy, cultured ‘Hum Saath, Saath Hain’
type family with Advani as the respected, satiated, happy patriarch who was paraded by the family for photo-ops at every opportune occasion.

In March, Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Advani and Joshi made a pretty picture as they stood together in Srinagar, celebrating the first saffron government in a state where its founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee died during his battle with Article 370. In Srinagar, on that winter morning, it seemed apart from the ideological compromise, Modi had struck a workable compromise also with his mentor.

But again, there is rumbling in India’s first Parivar.
It is difficult to understand why the reigning Moghuls of the BJP will want to treat Advani as Shahjahan.

He is knocking on the door of 90s, has lost his voice in the party, his loyal followers have either changed camp or have become silent and the throne and the crown sits safely on the successor’s head. What does Advani have left with him that his successors wish to take away? Why is he being pushed further when there is not even an inch left in Advani’s cramped corner? What does Modi gain by almost egging Advani to speak out against him in public?

also see

One of the theories is that Advani has become to Modi and Shah what Prashant Bhushan had become to Arvind Kejriwal: a cantankerous preacher. According to NDTV, the BJP did not let Advani speak at the conclave because “its leaders were wary” of being told by Advani about what is wrong with the party. He was reportedly advised to get his speech vetted by the high-command, a diktat that was unacceptable to the man who once raised the temperature of the entire country with his rousing rhetoric.

Perhaps, as Kejriwal has demonstrated with greater crudity and ruthlessness, politicians despise thinkers and talkers who behave like self-anointed moral compasses for a party. When in power, everybody prefers a ‘yes man’, a follower. Carping critics and conscience keepers are unacceptable irritants, avoidable distractions. Unfortunately, Advani is well past that stage where his personality could have undergone metamorphoses.

‘Saugandh Ram Ki Khate Hain, Mandir Wahin Baneyenge,’

Advani had vowed then. Now, his detractors seem to have taken the vow of not letting Advani speak, neither wahin (Goa) nor closer home in Delhi.

Advani appears as helpless as the disputed structure the kar sevaks had demolished in Ayodhya.

There is very little he can do as kar sevaks (in Indian political lexicon the term implies people who work against somebody) in the BJP demolish his legend. He can’t revolt, he can’t resist, and since he has eaten his own words so many times in the past, he can’t even speak up for fear of not being taken seriously.

Advani has slipped into irrelevance.

For his detractors, this can be schadenfreude; a deserved punishment for using brute force for dismantling history. But one can’t help feeling sorry for the old man. Advani is, after all, not just an ordinary founding member of the BJP. But for him and his yatras, the BJP will have perhaps taken decades to grow from a party with just two seats in 1984 to 88 five years later.
Advani gave the party its distinct Hindutva edge. His ideology and rhetoric created the climate for the rise of hardliners like Modi, nurtured successors to the throne of ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ Advani once occupied.

Yes, Hindustan rejected Advani. But at least the Kamal could have been a little more grateful to the man who was once its most visible Nishan.

Backgrounders: The Islamic State

SOURCE:
http://www.cfr.org/iraq/islamic-state/p14811?cid=nlc-dailybrief-daily_news_brief--link24-20150407&sp_mid=48391511&sp_rid=YmN2YXN1bmRocmFAaG90bWFpbC5jb20S1

CFR Backgrounders



                         The Islamic State
                                       By
                              Zachary Laub,

April 1, 2015

Introduction

The self-proclaimed Islamic State is a militant movement that has conquered territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, where it has made a bid to establish a state in territories that encompass some six and a half million residents. Though spawned by al-Qaeda’s Iraq franchise, it split with Osama bin Laden’s organization and evolved to not just employ terrorist and insurgent tactics, but the more conventional ones of an organized militia.

In June 2014, after seizing territories in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, including the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, the Islamic State proclaimed itself a caliphate, claiming exclusive political and theological authority over the world’s Muslims. Its state-building project, however, has been characterized more by extreme violence than institution building. Beheadings of Western hostages and other provocative acts, circulated by well-produced videos and social media, spurred calls in the United States and Europe for military intervention, while mass violence against local civilians, justified by references to the Prophet Mohammed’s early followers, has been a tool for cementing territorial control. Widely publicized battlefield successes have attracted thousands of foreign recruits, a particular concern of Western intelligence.

The United States has led an air campaign in Iraq and Syria to try to roll back the Islamic State’s advances. Iraqi national security forces have allied with Shia militias to push it back on the ground. Meanwhile, militant groups from North and West Africa to South Asia have professed allegiance to the Islamic State.

What are the Islamic State's origins?

The group that calls itself the Islamic State can trace its lineage to the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003. The Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi aligned his Jama’at al-Tawhidw’al-Jihad with al-Qaeda, making it al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Zarqawi’s organization took aim at U.S. forces (PDF) theirinternational allies, and local collaborators. It sought to draw the United States into a sectarian civil war by attacking Shias and their holy sites, including the Imam al-Askari shrine, in 2006, and
provoking them to retaliate against Sunnis.

Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. airstrike that year.

The emergence of the U.S.-backed Awakening, or Sons

of Iraq, coalitions further weakened AQI as Sunni

tribesmen reconciled with Prime Minister Nouri al-

Maliki’s Shia-led government.Zarqawi’s successors

rebranded AQI as the Islamic State ofIraq and later, the

Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS),referring to a

territory that roughly corresponds withthe Levant,

reflecting broadened ambitions as the 2011 uprising

inSyria created opportunities for AQI to expand.

The group isknown to its followers as il-Dawla

(“the State”) and itsArabic-speaking detractors as

Daesh, the Arabic equivalent of ISIS.

The Islamic State’s current leader, the self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, spent time in U.S.-run prisons in Iraq. Cells organized in them, along with remnants of Saddam Hussein’s ousted secular-nationalist Ba’ath party, make up some of the Islamic State’s ranks.

How has the Islamic State expanded?

Sunni disenfranchisement in both Iraq and Syria created a vacuum that the Islamic State has exploited. In Iraq, a Sunni minority was sidelined from national politics after the United States ousted Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003. In Syria, a civil war erupted in 2011 pitting the ruling minority Alawites, a Shia offshoot, against the primarily Sunni opposition, spawning sectarian violence.

In Iraq, Maliki cemented his own power as U.S. forces pulled out in 2010 by practicing what was largely denounced as a divisive politics that excluded Sunni political rivals and gave Shias disproportionate benefits.

The Awakening councils effectively came to an end as Maliki rejected the inclusion of many of their militiamen in the security forces, an integration process advocated by U.S. forces, and arrested some of its leaders. In 2013, the security forces put down broad-based protests, contributing to the Sunni community’s sense of persecution.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper estimated in February 2015 that more than thirteen thousand foreign fighters joined Sunni Arab antigovernment extremist groups, including the Islamic State, in Syria.

Maliki purged the officer corps of potential rivals. Combined with desertion and corruption, this contributed to the Iraqi military’s collapse as Islamic State militants overran Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June 2014.

Syria’s 2011 uprising helped in the Islamic State’s expansion. Some analysts have even described a tacit nonaggression pact between Islamic State militants and Bashar al-Assad regime, with each focused on fighting the main anti government opposition forces for territorial control. As extremists came to dominate territory in Syria’s north and east and overran more moderate forces, Assad claimed it validated his argument that only his government could mount an effective opposition to “terrorists”—a term he has applied to opposition forces of all stripes.

The northern Syrian city of Raqqa is often cited as the Islamic State’s de facto capital. There, the group has established some new institutions (e.g., judicial, police, economic) and coopted others (e.g., education, health, and infrastructure) to provide residents a modicum of services and consolidate its control over the population.

After rapid expansion through Iraq in much of 2014, the Islamic State seemed to run up against its limits as it pushed up against majority Kurdish and Sunni Arab regions, where it faced greater resistance from Iraqi forces and local populations along with U.S.-led air strikes. Its militants have failed to advance on Baghdad or the Kurdish capital, Erbil, and lost a considerable amount of territory to Iraqi-government-aligned forces by early 2015.

What is the Islamic State's relationship with al-Qaeda?

The group became an al-Qaeda franchise by 2004 but has since broken with bin Laden’s organization and become rivals. The split reflects strategic and ideological differences. In Syria, the groups compete for power and recruits among many militant forces.

Al-Qaeda focused on attacking the United States and its Western allies, whom it held responsible for bolstering Arab regimes it considered apostate, like those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. For bin Laden, the establishment of a caliphate was the end goal—but one that was generations off.

In 2005, bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri castigated AQI’s Zarqawi for indiscriminately attacking civilians, particularly Shias. Zawahiri believed that such violence would alienate Sunnis from their project—a concern borne out by the success of the Awakening movement.

A more thorough rupture came after the start of Syria’s uprising. Baghdadi publicly rebuffed the private ruling of Zawahiri, who had succeeded bin Laden as al-Qaeda’s chief, that the emergent Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, remain independent, and Baghdadi’s organization restricted to Iraq. Since then, the two groups have at times fought one another on the Syrian battlefield.

How is the Islamic State financed?

Oil extraction constitutes the Islamic State’s largest source of income. The group is estimated to produce forty-four thousand barrels a day from Syrian wells and four thousand barrels a day from Iraqi ones. The group then sells the crude to truckers and middlemen, netting an estimated $1 to $3 million a day. By selling well below market price, traders are incentivized to take on the risk of such black-market deals. The oil-starved Assad regime, Turks, and Iraqi Kurds—all putative enemies of the Islamic State—are rumored to be among its customers.

The Islamic State is believed to extort businesses in Mosul, netting upwards of $8 million a month. Christians who have not fled the city face an additional tax levied on religious minorities. Protection rackets bring in revenue while building the allegiance of some tribesmen. Exploitation of natural resources and trafficking in antiquities also contribute to the Islamic State’s coffers.

Ransom payments have provided the Islamic States upwards of $20 million in 2014, including large sums for kidnapped European journalists and other captives, according to the U.S. Treasury. The United States maintains a no-concessions policy, at odds with its European counterparts.

The Islamic State pays its fighters monthly wages estimated to be upwards of $350, more than rival rebel groups or the Iraqi government offer, and as much as five times what is earned by ordinary Syrians in territory controlled by the Islamic State.

Does the Islamic State pose a threat beyond Iraq and Syria?

The Islamic State group’s claim to be a caliphate has raised concerns that its ambitions to capture and administer territory have no geographic limits. Militants in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan have taken up the Islamic State’s trappings and sworn allegiance to Baghdadi. It is unclear, however, whether these self-proclaimed provinces of the Islamic State should be considered true outposts of Baghdadi’s organization, or rather, local militants looking to capitalize on the Islamic State’s notoreity as they compete with rival groups in local contests for power.

The conflicts in Syria and Iraq have attracted foreign fighters by the thousands. Middle Eastern and Western intelligence agencies have raised concern that their citizens who have joined the fighting in Iraq and Syria will become radicalized and then use their passports to carry out attacks in their home countries. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper estimated in February 2015 that more than thirteen thousand foreign fighters joined Sunni Arab antigovernment extremist groups, including the Islamic State, in Syria, and that more than 3,400 of more than twenty thousand foreign Sunni militants hailed from Western countries. (Estimates of the group’s total forces range from around thirty thousand to more than a hundred thousand.)

Another concern is Turkey’s five-hundred-mile border with Syria, through which foreign fighters have entered and exited the conflict. Turkey kept its border open as it sought the overthrow of Assad. But as the Islamic State crowded out other armed opposition groups and came up to the Turkish border, international pressure mounted for Turkey to seal the border. In September 2014, the UN Security Council mandated that states take measures to restrict the transit of foreign fighters (PDF).
Some analysts believe the threat of foreign fighters returning home to launch attacks is inflated. By March 2015, only two attacks on Western soil had been linked to the Islamic State; they may have been carried out by sympathetic “lone wolves” rather than sanctioned by the leadership.

What is U.S. strategy vis-à-vis the Islamic State?

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has assembled a coalition of some sixty countries to “degrade and ultimately defeat” the Islamic State. The U.S.-led coalition includes the European Union and several Sunni Arab states.

In Iraq, the United States has deployed nearly three thousand uniformed personnel, armed the KRG paramilitary (the peshmerga), and led airstrikes against Islamic State forces. As of early March 2015, the coalition had carried out nearly 1,500 airstrikes, 70 percent from U.S. forces. Meanwhile, Shia militias have done much of the fighting on the ground, making up for the hollowed-out Iraqi army. Militias backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are playing a critical role in Iraq’s March 2015 push to oust Islamic State forces from Tikrit. Another militia involved in the fight against the Islamic State is loyal to the nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army battled U.S.-led forces early in the occupation.

The Obama administration insisted that Maliki step down and be replaced by a less polarizing politician as a condition of military assistance. His successor, Haider al-Abadi, pledged to practice more inclusive politics and bring Shia militias aligned with Iraqi security forces under the state’s control. But rights groups allege that these militias have evicted, disappeared, and killed residents of Sunni and mixed neighborhoods in the wake of operations to root out Islamic State militants.

Acknowledging these abuses, Sadr temporarily froze his militia.
Though opposition to Islamic State advances would seem to put Washington and Tehran on the same side, both sides have downplayed the possibility of tactical coordination in Iraq. Military measures that Sunnis perceive as bolstering hostile regimes could backfire, driving members of the community to cooperate with the Islamic State. The United States has also carried out air strikes in Syria in a bid to roll back Islamic State territorial gains. The United States does not have a fighting partner on the ground there, while political efforts to end the broader civil war (international negotiations and, more recently, a UN-backed effort to broker local cease-fires) have failed.

Some critics in Washington argue that the Obama administration’s failure to follow through on its rhetorical support for rebel forces in Syria with training and arms put them at a disadvantage against both Shia pro-government elements like Hezbollah and Sunni extremist groups, which grew strong with the support of Tehran and deep-pocketed Gulf donors, respectively.

In September 2014, the U.S. Congress authorized the Pentagon to train and equip “appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition” to attack Islamic State forces—but not the Assad regime and its allies. In early 2015, the United States began its program to train five thousand troops a year for three years.

Some critics of the train-and-equip mission have called it too small and slow to change the battlefield balance. Also problematic, argues CFR Fellow Micah Zenko, is that the Obama administration has not articulated if and how it will commit U.S. forces to protect these groups if they come under attack by the Islamic State or pro-regime fighters.

Additional Resources

Cole Bunzel examines the Islamic State’s ideology in a Brookings Institution paper.
The UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria reports on developments in areas inaccessible to most Western journalists.

Graeme Wood examines the Islamic state’s religious beliefs, motivations, and strategy in the Atlantic.
Peter Harling, of the International Crisis Group, and the Economist’s Sarah Birke argue that a strategy centered on air strikes may, perversely, bolster the very conditions that gave rise to the Islamic State.

Counterterrorism strategies that beat back al-Qaeda make a poor model for defeating the Islamic State, Audrey Kurth Cronin writes in Foreign Affairs.

The Brookings Institution’s Daniel L. Byman and Jeremy Shapiro assess the threat of foreign fighters attacking the United States and Europe.

Monday, April 6, 2015

"Armata :- THE WORLD'S FIFTH GENERATION DEADLIEST TANK ?

Source: http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/putins-new-wunderwaffe-the-worlds-deadliest-tank/

"Armata :-

THE WORLD'S FIFTH GENERATION DEADLIEST TANK ?

QUANTUM JUMP FROM SECOND GENERATION TANKS EXISTING IN THE WORLD TO FIFTH GENERATION IS BOUND TO CHANGE THE FUTURE BATTLE FIELDS & HOW THE BATTLES WILL BE FOUGHT

Putin’s New 'Wunderwaffe': The World’s Deadliest Tank?

By

Franz-Stefan Gady

Putin’s New 'Wunderwaffe': The World’s Deadliest Tank?

Image Credit: You Tube Still Shot

Why tankers in the West should be worried about Moscow’s new armor.

April 02, 2015

116 Comments

Russia will display its newest tank during the Victory Day Parade in Moscow’s Red Square on May 9 this year. 20 units of the world’s first series-produced third generation main battle tank, designated T-14 and based upon the new “Armata” universal chassis system, have recently been delivered to the Russian Armed Forces for training purposes.

By 2020, Uralvagonzavod (UVZ), the largest main battle tank manufacturer in the world, plans to produce 2,300 T-14 Armata models. According to media reports, large deliveries of the tank (around 500 per year) will start in 2017. In total, the Russian Land Forces are scheduled to receive a batch of 32 Armata main battle tanks this year.

The Russian military intends to replace 70 percent of its tank corps with the new tracked vehicle, replacing the older T-72 and T-90 main battle tanks – both of which were also produced by UVZ. The Russian military envisions the universal chassis system as a platform for as many as 13 different tracked vehicles, including a self-propelled artillery platform, an armored military engineering vehicle, and an armored personal carrier.

What are the tank’s technical specifications? According to the Foreign Military Studies Office (FSMO) based at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas:

The tank’s main armament is the 2A82 125-mm smoothbore cannon, capable of firing high-powered munitions,including armor-piercing discarding sabot, guided missile, shaped-charge, and other types of munitions. The T-14 is equipped with the Chelyabinsk A-85-3A X-diesel engine capable of producing up to 1500 hp. It also has a tank information control system (TICS) that monitors all assemblies and components, diagnoses malfunctions, and controls onboard systems.

The muzzle energy of the 2A82 123-mm smoothbore cannon is greater than that of the German Leopard-2 Rheinmetall 120 mm gun, according to media reports. The tank also boasts fully automated ammunition loading and completely computerized targeting systems.
The FSMO report continues:

The T-14 tank will be equipped with an adjustable suspension capable of adapting to varying relief, terrain type, and vehicle speed, resulting in increased speed while moving in columns, as well as over rugged terrain. The suspension system will also alleviate crew fatigue, while assisting the fire control system to deliver accurate fire while on the move.

The article also notes that, “[u]nlike previous Soviet/Russian vehicles, crew safety (survivability) and comfort appear to be a concern. The crew is in an armored capsule that is somewhat roomy compared to other Soviet/Russian tanks.”

According to RT, “the tank’s turret will also carry a 30 mm sub-caliber ranging gun to deal with various targets, including low-flying aerial targets, such as attack planes and helicopters. A 12.5 mm turret-mounted heavy machine gun is reportedly capable of taking out incoming projectiles, such as anti-tank missiles. It’s capable of neutralizing shells approaching at speeds of up to 3,000 meters per second.”

What makes Russia’s new main battle tank so special?

First, the active defense system deserves special attention. It is an individual anti-missile and anti-projectile tank defense system, supposedly capable of intercepting any type of anti-tank ammunition.
“It defends the vehicle from strikes, including those from the air. Thus, even the most modern Apache helicopter will not have a 100 percent chance of destroying a T-14 with its missiles. Active defense is situated along the entire perimeter of the turret at various levels, which ensures complete protection of the tank’s most important elements,” according to the FSMO report.

Second, the location of the crew is also quite unique for a Russian tank (as is the vehicles unmanned remotely controlled turret):

The crew of three men is located in an armored capsule in the forward portion of the hull. According to the specialists, the forward projection has multilayered, combined armor protection which can withstand a direct hit of any type of rounds which exist today, [including] sub-caliber and cumulative rounds.

The German weekly Der Stern notes about the T-14 Armata:

An absolutely new main battle tank is certainly not something most of the world’s exiting armies can boast about. The German Leopard-2 tank was developed 35 years ago, just like the American M1 Abrams. The existing versions of the western tanks feature many improvements, but the basic characteristics do not differ much from the original. The Armata is the first genuinely new [tank] construction since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Foreign Military Studies Office further underlines:

In order to appreciate the real design and technological breakthrough of the Russian tank builders, a rather recent, but classified story should be remembered. It turned out that it is more difficult to design and manufacture a truly new tank than a new aircraft. Fifth-generation fighters are already flying, but only second-generation tanks are in the inventories throughout the entire world. So the Armata will become the first series-produced third-generation tank (although there are those who will dare to list it as fifth generation).

Of course, all of these reports have to be taken with a grain of salt, and until the tank has been thoroughly examined in action, we will know very little about its genuine capabilities.

Topics

Asia Defense

Tags

Armata

Armata Universal Combat Platform

main battle tank

Moscow

Moscow May Day Parade 2015

President Vladimir Putin

Russia

T-14

Uralvagonzavod

Welcome to the Imperial City: Modi Sarkar's Bizarre Proposal to Rename Delhi

SOURCE:
http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/welcome-to-the-imperial-city-modi-sarkars-bizarre-proposal-to-rename-delhi/ar-AAatel6

Welcome to the Imperial City: Modi Sarkar's Bizarre Proposal to Rename Delhi

British socialite and politician Nancy Astor may have been a bit of a maverick but she was not much off the mark when she said, "The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything... or nothing.''

One was reminded of Astor's warning on reading that the Modi Government, in a rush to "change everything'', now plans to junk even Delhi's historical name for no obvious pressing reason.

And,it will have not one, but two names.

One for Lutyens' New Delhi (home to ministers, senior civil servants, diplomats, and fashionable hotels), and another for the 400-year-old Mughal-era walled city that generations of Delhites grew up calling Old Delhi.

If the move goes through, New Delhi will be rechristened as the "Imperial City of Delhi", and Old Delhi as the "Imperial City of Shahjehnabad".

Of course, Delhi is not the first city facing the threat of an abrupt name-change. It will join a long list of major cities - Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Pune - which have been renamed for various reasons. But renaming the national Capital is in a different league altogether.

At this point, you might like to know the reason behind this unprovoked rebranding exercise. For, unlike in the case of other cities which have been through this, there has been no public demand or campaign to rename Delhi on ethnic or nationalistic grounds. Even prickly foreign investors - the great invisible elephant at the heart of every government decision these days-are perfectly OK doing business with good old Delhi.

So, what's going on?

Well, it seems that the government has suddenly discovered that the old name is not sexy enough to attract Western tourists. "Imperial'', it believes, would do the trick. A notion has gone round that London taxi drivers and New York pensioners, scouring for a sunny tourist destination over Christmas holidays, would find the charms of an "Imperial" tag more irresistible.

"Honey, we're heading for the Imperial City of Delhi this winter...Damn the Bahamas and the beaches of Bali".

BABUGIRI or CHAMCHAGIRI

The bureaucratic brains behind the move have also convinced themselves that harking back to Delhi's imperial past would persuade UNESCO to grant it the status of a heritage city which, it hopes, would in turn boost international tourism.

The Hindu quoted official sources as saying that the idea "has been mooted with an eye on the efforts to earn 'Heritage tag' from UNESCO''.

( GRANTING HERITAGE TAG TO DELHI WILL BE AS RIDICULOUS AS GRANTING "NOBEL PRIZE" or BHARAT RATNA TO "MAHATMA GANDHI" )
-Vasundhra

"The nomination dossier, seeking Heritage tag for Lutyens' zone sent to UNESCO names the area as Imperial City of New Delhi. Similarly, the Walled City of Delhi is named in the dossier as the Imperial City of Shahjehanabad. In order to weed out any inconsistency when the UNESCO team is going through the verification process, a request has been made to the (Delhi Development) Authority to rename these areas, an official said," the paper reported.

The problem is that UNESCO has very stringent rules for determining whether a city qualifies for the Heritage tag and a city's name is not one of them. Havana, Rome and Timbuktu didn't have to sex up their nomenclature to earn the status of World Heritage cities. They qualified because they met UNESCO's ten-point guidelines for what a Heritage City should be like.

I am not sure if Delhi's bureaucracy has read the rules carefully.

If it had, it might have thought twice before taking the plunge.

UNESCO demands that in order to qualify for inclusion in the World Heritage List, a city /site must be of "outstanding universal value"; "represent a masterpiece of human creative genius"; "bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared"; " be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape..." ; "contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance"; "contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity..."

These are only a few of the criteria, and at first glance it doesn't seem that Delhi fits any of these.

A motley collection of indifferently-maintained tourist sites doesn't add up to World Heritage. If old buildings and monuments were enough to get the nod, Mumbai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Jaipur - even Varanasi - would be more suitable candidates than Delhi, especially, the Lutyens' zone which over the years has got cluttered with ugly skyscrapers clashing with Lutyens' original low-rise design.
The once-majestic colonnaded Connaught Place is now a dump-sleazy, filthy, unsafe, surrounded by shabby office tower blocks and reeking of decay.

Old Delhi has a better claim but most of its historical sites and places of cultural interest are a mess. Delhi's famous poet Mirza Ghalib's "haveli'' in Ballimaranwas a godown when I last saw it; and

the grave of another of its great poets Zauq was bulldozed to build a "URINAL" on it!

The shameful reality is that Delhi has done a poor job of looking after its heritage, and a city which has such little sense of history and treats its cultural legacy with such contempt doesn't deserve a heritage status.

Meanwhile, a word about this mania for renaming. Which always reminds me of Stalinist-era revisionism. Now, we all know that our Prime Minister has a thing for rebranding. But, renaming Planning Commission and schemes he doesn't like is one thing while renaming the country's capital city without a good solid reason is quite another.

It is not unknown for governments to rename their capital cities as the Chinese did switching from Peking to Beijing; or even for a country to reinvent itself -Ceylon/Sri Lanka; Burma/Myanmar; Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe etc. But these changes were prompted by historical reasons - decolonisation, partition, secession, and splits and mergers caused by civil wars.

None of this applies to Delhi. And what a name to go for! Democratic India's national capital to be known as "Imperial City''. It's a city where less fanatically nationalistic administrations than Narendra Modi's have worked overtime to erase reminders of its colonial past by Indianising British street names. And now a proud Hindu nationalist comes along and wants to put "Imperial'' back into Delhi.

More appropriate would be to restore to it its ancient name, Indraprastha, a sort of "ghar wapsi". At least it would be more authentic (calling it Imperial City sounds as tacky as that school in Meerut which calls itself Oxford English-medium school), and gel well with the prevailing nostalgia for ancient India, and its miracles.

But, really, the whole idea is absurd. As Americans like to say, "don't fix it, if it ain't broke". And New Delhi is doing fine, thank you.