Besieged

Mass exodus as CPM men lay villages to waste

Pioneer report from battle zone Nandigram

Hungry men, women and children, rendered homeless after CPI(M) cadre began to shoot and bomb their way into Nandigram this week, wailed in despair as the early winter fog lifted on Thursday morning. Having escaped the Marxist marauders with noting more than their lives, they cowered pitiably under whatever shelter they had found. Many were not so lucky: They have been spending the past many nights on the open sodden grounds of the local BMT High School.

Hundreds continued to arrive in an unending queue of vehicles of all sorts -- caught in a mass exodus, the likes of which this part of the country has probably not witnessed since the days of Partition.

Wives and children bade tearful farewells to husbands and fathers rushing back to the 'frontline' to take up positions against the invading CPI(M) cadre. A few km away, armed Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) members, who have been resisting acquisition of farmland since January, prepared for the last stand.

According to the Tehelka types, this is not truth. This doesn't merit frothy editorials or collective sighs at the demise of democracy.

' As it were I'd never had anything to do with the Congress'

Sure. All of a sudden senior Congress leaders, business bosses and controversial artists can't seem to get enough of Tehelka.

[All images linked directly from various Tehelka offshoots: Tehelka Foundation, Tehelka Art for Freedom Auction, Tehelka Critical Futures, Tehelka Edu Summit, Summit of the Powerless and various other mumbo jumbo. There is more, check out these websites.]

Incredible Bihar

Red Alert: India's Big Communist Threat

The communists are not content with making a mockery of an elected Government. The hypocrites won't even take it to the polls. Unelected members of the party have gatecrashed into the constitutional process.

Recently Mr. Karat came out with their global agenda. Read coverage by Offstumped and Sandeepweb.

This is about time the issue gets its due attention. Quite clearly the communists have no intention to respect the constitution. Communism rejects the idea of democratically elected Governments. We amended our constitution once and added socialism to our already long moniker. Perhaps another amendment is in order, just in case the commies manage to usurp power.

Even if they do come to power, what exactly do we get back in bargain? Do they even have a road map (aside from sending India back to medieval ages)? West Bengal has one of the worst PDS systems. Kerala ranks high in certain social indicators but the reasons could be very different. Recently there was a spate of farmer migration from Kerala to Karnataka.

Some people believe that the communists are above corruption. Well, think again.

AHMEDABAD: Ending days of politicking and speculation, Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad finally got its new director on Friday. Samir Barua, who is a professor at the institute, will succeed Bakul Dholakia.

Fifty-seven-year-old Barua, who will be the first alumnus of the premier B-school to become its director, pipped a number of candidates to the post. The race had hotted up with talks of Barua, who is the son-in-law of CPI strongman A B Bardhan, pitted against another high profile candidate, advisor to Union finance minister Parthasarthy Shome. [link]

Fake Stings and Secular Games

"Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth." Dr Joseph Goebbels

It was a gruesome riot.
Then it became a pogrom.
Then it graduated to genocide.
Hon'ble PM Manmohan Singh called it Holocaust.

Just a few days ago, Narendra Modi was invited to HT summit and then to Devil's Advocate. Modi was never a friend of the media. Why the sudden love?

The sting broke when Sonia Gandhi is in China, with her son and India's crown Prince Rahul Gandhi.

The PM made no statement.
Sonia is away.
Congress top brass made no statement.
Gujarat Congress leaders are strangely silent.

Why?

[Update 1]

Interesting newspaper headlines:
- Stung by riot expose, Modi blacks out cable TV
- After sting, Modi takes on media
- TV blackout: BJP writes to CEO for action against Collector
- Collector acted on his own, no order from Gujarat poll panel
- My orders misinterpreted: Ahmedabad collector
- TV blackout: Distribution of channels resumes

[Update 2]

So the Godhra train burning was not a kerosene stove accident? We never knew! Amazing story. At 7:30 AM abduction attempt on minority girl. At 8:00 AM an 800 - 1000 strong crowd is already pelting stones! Spontaneous, sure. But the riots that followed had been carefully and meticulously planned down to the minute detail.

Opinions of legal experts are flowing in faster than gushing water when a dam breaks. It should be clear to anyone with even vague familiarity of the law that none of this is admissible legal evidence. Of course this is assuming we have seen and read all there is to it. Much of it is third person accounts and vague recollections. The irrefutable proof implicating Modi is hearsay evidence at best. None received any first person directive from Modi, not only that, none of the people actually appear to have met Modi.

According to the law, audio is inadmissible while videography is allowed in the court of law. This is an important point. If a person is shown accepting money in a bribery sting, it is admissible. We don't know what would it take for criminal cases. Disjointed ramblings pieced together into grainy tapes have very little chance of passing muster in a court of law. The context is not known, neither are the issues they are talking about.

Of course, we still need a forensic expert to go to work on these tapes.

[Update 3]

Chandan Mitra has a column on The Pioneer questioning some of the claims of the sting-op, especially the time frame. Apart from lip-sync issues, it is disturbing that the videos provided contain very small portion of the actual transcript. It is questionable how faithful these transcripts are. We hope Tehelka knows what it's doing, because this will surely snowball into a full blown constitutional crisis.

The reaction of Congress has been bizarre, it fears Tehelka sting may favour Modi and that the center could not do anything more. Note that most of the noise is being made by Lalu. None of the Congress bigwigs have made any statement so far. The editorials have been beating around the bush. Why the pussyfooting? Isn't this a lifetime opportunity to bury the Hindutva forces?

The Prime Minister can not let the issue at rest. If he believes that the Gujarat riots were as serious as the holocaust and the sting has any credibility at all - he must initiate a constitutional process for the immediate ouster of Modi. Pakistani newspapers have gone to town on India's secular credentials. Middle-East papers can scarcely cover their dismay. This sting will have a strong impact on the Kashmir issue.

[Update 4: Comic relief]

The Tehelka expose on the Gujarat carnage was a "belated attempt" by the Narendra Modi government to boost his sagging image among the voters ahead of forthcoming state assembly elections, Union Textile Minister Shankarsinh Vaghela alleged on Saturday. "This was just an attempt to deflect public attention from the ongoing infighting within the Gujarat unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party," he added.

"It is more like a fake encounter, to build his own image as hardcore pro-Hindu and trying to revive Hinduism," the minister alleged. [link]

Now you heard everything.

[Update 5]

The sting has already claimed its first victim, in the form of Government counsel Arvind Pandya. Having cast aspersions on Justices Nanavati and Shah on record, he is potentially in violation of contempt laws. The story he gave will go down as one of the most absurd tales in the history of legal defense. He claimed that Aaj Tak had given him a script to read from, for a TV serial, in which his appearance was supposed to add a touch of reality.

Pandya should be jailed just for being stupid. On the other hand, this brings up an important point. While contempt laws are most Draconian in nature, if you so much as frown at a judge you are in contempt - criminal cases tend to overwhelmingly favor the perp. It will be hard to hang Bajrangi and the other assorted criminals on the basis of these tapes. This is where encounter killings prove to be especially useful.

Meanwhile, the case is slowly but surely gaining momentum. Rights activists are demanding that the Gujarat elections be called off. Pakistan has claimed the moral high ground and even invoked the Liaquat-Nehru pact. They will surely raise this issue in the UN with respect to the future of Kashmir.

What was a great opportunity for propaganda in 2002 is proving a little tricky now that Congress is in power. It does not help either that there are other open battlefields, notably with the Left. Since the tapes do not contain anything legally actionable against Modi, technically (or rather constitutionally) he can not be ousted. We are looking at legal hassles and intrigue like you have never seen before (think of the OBC quota case in SC and multiply it with the largest number you can think of). What will the PM do if the Muslims unite with a great show of force to demand Modi's ouster and refuse to back down? You have a civil war right there.

No matter the outcome of this case, the era of sting-ops may be over. Tehelka has pushed them a bit too far into the territory of fishing expeditions and beyond a reasonable level of objectivity and usefulness.

[Update 6: Sting premeditated]

Sankarshan Thakur kept reiterating on TV (when he was not busy rudely interrupting Chandan Mitra) that the sting had irrefutable evidence of Modi's involvement. That, in fact is the whole point of the sting, as RealityCheck pointed out in one of the best analysis of the situation so far.

Sankarshan claimed that Bajrangi had confessed that he had cut open a pregnant woman and pulled out the foetus. In fact Bajrangi had said that the FIR on him stated that he had cut open a pregnant woman (transcript does not mention foetus). This makes it the third version of the foetus story (the other version was supplied by none other than Arundhati Roy, when her distraught friend and an eye witness called her up to narrate the foetus brandishing incident). Then there was the issue of Ehsan Jafri. His post mortem stated that he had succumbed to bullet wounds - one of the stung claims he was cut up limb by limb. According to Sankarshan, the post mortem reports were also doctored.

Suddenly the whole of Tehelka team is acting all indignant and defensive. They even answered allegations against the sting on the Tehelka website. One of the editors, Shoma Chaudhury, put the casualty count at 2,500.

Remember that Bajrangi was a non-entity before the media made him a legend of Hindu bride reverse-abductions. This has been going on for a while, even Tehelka published long articles on him. This clearly proves that they knew very well what they were doing. They want to connect the riots to people as high in the party hierarchy as possible, ultimately leading to Modi.

They didn't just stumble upon evidence and hurriedly released it. The whole thing was likely engineered and meticulously planned. The questions were very carefully coined well in advance, not a dare devil reporter asking impromptu questions, making use of a windfall opportunity. Haresh Bhatt was extensively interviewed about preparations during the Babri Masjid issue. This was seamlessly merged into the post-Godhra riots. This has naturally spawned conspiracy theories, some by none other than Modi's chief detractor, ex-CM Mehta.

The public will likely parse the whole thing exactly the way Tehelka had intended it to be parsed, i.e. irrefutable evidence against Modi's involvement.

Today, a sessions court handed out verdicts against 11 rioters, which must seem like a joke in the backdrop of this expose. This sting will go very far - expect strong demonstration of Newton's third law here.

Two days after the Army Chief announced that infiltration from Pakistan has gone up, TIMES NOW has exclusive access to a secret Government document that shows that there has been a visible shift in Pakistan's Kashmir strategy.

According to this Intelligence Bureau report, there are three elements to this new game plan; the first is to shift the focus away from violence in the Kashmir Valley, to building up political support within Kashmir. There is also a clear design to extend violence to other parts of India outside of Kashmir. This has been accompanied by the setting up of alternative infiltration routes from neighbouring countries. The final part of this strategy is to expand the recruitment base of militants to the Middle East. [link]

Thanks at least in part to proponents of the revenge theory among our secular friends, the sting revelations will provide the moral backbone to the coming maelstrom.

[Update 7: NHRC to review Parzania movie footage]

The National Human Rights Commission has asked for a copy of the 2-hour duration Aaj Tak TV coverage of the sting, which incidentally shows generous amounts of the movie Parzania. Meanwhile it is not clear exactly how much raw footage Tehelka has, different versions put it at over 40 hours, 50 hours and around 60 hours.

Congress response to the sting remains muted - but nuanced. It has chosen to let its terriers do the barking while the top leaders are avoiding direct reference. Lalu is probably queering the pitch, additionally he is also stirring up the communal hornet's nest in Bihar. The coyness of Congress shouldn't fool you into thinking that they are not involved in the sting. Upon returning from China, Sonia bestowed the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration on one Prof. Bandukwalla. That sounds a bell? Well, that's where the sting started. This is too much of a coincidence.

As a matter of fact, the constant movie references for a purportedly genuine sting is quite disturbing. The men filmed are constantly being referred to as the cast of characters, Tehelka Editor Shoma Chaudhury chose a movie reference for the title of her column on HT. You will require some background in order to appreciate her column:

This and other genuine errors in recounting the details of the violence in Gujarat in no way alters the substance of what journalists, fact-finding missions, or writers like myself are saying. [link]

If you are scratching your head, maybe you should not read Shoma Chaudhury's piece. One wonders why would she need to pontificate so much, going way beyond the scope of the sting (and perhaps way beyond her intellectual depth) and questioning everything about our democracy. While steadfastly maintaining the sting was not political and merely investigative journalism aimed at securing justice for the victims, she ends up exhorting Hindus to vote against Modi.

The real faultline in India today is not between Hindus and Muslims. It is between Hindus and Hindus. If the Hindus of Gujarat are going to re-elect Modi after being confronted with visual proof of what he stands for, we have to aggressively reclaim what being Hindu means.

What started as irrefutable evidence to nail Modi thus ends up being a moral sermon. No mention of the actual evidence in the tapes or arguments to bolster the case. It's my way or the highway - if you don't believe in the sting, our democracy is flawed or you must be a communal Hindu.

Meanwhile the sting is steadily making its way into the jihadi fables, the ones used to recruit and radicalize impressionable youth to launch deadly terror attacks. If anything, the sting proved that the train fire was not an accident, yet the newspapers in Middle-East and Pakistan are qualifying it, while reporting the other part at face value:

NEW DELHI: The editor of Tehelka magazine said on Wednesday Muslims in India’s western state of Gujarat were being "hunted like rabbits". Hindu extremists had killed around 2,000 Muslims in three days after Sabarmati Express, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, was allegedly set on fire by Muslims at Godhra Railway Station. [link] [emphasis added]

With due respect to the Tehelka team, if they have scant knowledge of the Hindu religion, they are even more clueless about the other one. These are a set of people still in denial about 9/11 and other assorted acts of terror. They also believe in kinship. Tehelka afterall is part of the other camp. In that sense, the sting is an act of whistleblowing and must be true. But since the train fire was not officially accepted, no matter how much evidence you present, it will always be an accident or at worst, a divine act against non-believers.

Tehelka is selling briskly in the valley. The only question that Shoma Chaudhury must honestly confront and answer is that, is the sting worth more than the terrible cost of bloodshed that will surely follow?

[Update 8: Have sting, will travel]

Is ace Tehelka reporter and the chief protagonist of the sting operation Ashish Khetan now employed by Aaj-Tak? When did that happen? Must have been very recently, because Tarun Tejpal vehemently denied any connection with Aaj-Tak. This will add a sliver of credibility to Arvind Pandya's astonishing claims that he made earlier.

As expected, the HC didn't even entertain the demand to review the tapes, forget about taking any sort of legal action.

Meanwhile, the Tehelka team members are now folk heroes and are acting as such, writing columns, appearing on reality TV style shows and giving interviews. You have to read some of the stuff to believe it. The sting has assumed the status of urban legends now. Absent any forensic analysis and needless to say a critical examination of the raw unedited footage of indeterminate length, the Tehelka folks are laying it on thick and heavy. For instance, Prof. Bandukwala was mercilessly killed, according to none other than Ashish Khetan. Prof. Bandukwala made a mysterious reapearence very recently to accept the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration!

Likewise, Bajrangi had stated on the tapes that his FIR alleged that he had cut open a pregnant woman. This gradually became Bajrangi confessing his crime on tape. Finally we have Bajrangi actually gloating over a foetus ripped out of a mother's womb on live video!

This is what passes for truth in this country.

Just like the Narmada Dam movement, the Gujarat riots has become stuff of urban legends. A complete self-sustaining industry has formed around them. The true victims of the riots will never know the obscene amount of wealth made on their blood and bones by the media and secular vultures.

[Update 9: Frothy editorials]

Shoma Chaudhury and Sankarshan Thakur really need to take it easy.

Sample this:

A host of men go on national television and admit they have hacked and burnt and deformed other human beings — willfully, gleefully and confidently.

Really? They went on TV just like that? Willfully, gleefully and confidently?

But the eloquent visionary men who led us then pulled the country away from the madness of the Hindu fanatic and gifted us a nation that was sane and wise and inclusive. We could have gone another route. We could have been Pakistan.

Oh, thank God for small mercies!

Conspiracy is an idler's kaleidoscope, the more you turn the more new designs you see

Keep turning dude, the 'scope is all yours to turn till the cows home.

Meanwhile, a live example of "truth" being savaged can be seen here.

Tehelka also enlisted the help of intellectuals, as always to bolster their version of "truth". They interviewed none other than Shashi Tharoor.

Secondly, I could not believe that all the debate revolved around who ordered it, who condoned it, what political stuff is happening around it. What about the people who have said on camera that they did it? Setting aside the question of whose orders they were following, why is action not being taken immediately against people who are cheerfully, essentially admitting to being murderers? Why aren’t they in jail?

Amazing how similar this sounds to what RealityCheck said almost as soon as the "sting" broke.

Shashi Tharoor goes on to say what must be anathema to secular ears:

Tehelka: Is religious bigotry the only reason for riots?
Tharoor: Religious bigotry is often a flashpoint, but there are other factors. To a degree, there is the competition and contention for resources. People want a bigger share of the pie and they think that by depriving others they will be in a position to get more.

Also read this editorial piece by Rajdeep Sardesai. Are you thinking what we are thinking?

( to be continued ....)

Fake but accurate?

This is purportedly Babu Bajrangi speaking on record, unaware that a spycam is rolling, in the most recent Tehelka sting operation. There are obvious lip sync issues, not just a normal lag or lead throughout but entire segments where Bajrangi keeps speaking while the audio is silent or the other way around. According to an Op/Ed on the same issue there are over 40 hours of tape. We reserve our judgment till the entire recordings are turned over to the authorities. But we also remain profoundly skeptical.

It's pouring life sentences

Kanpur Riots, Coimbatore blasts, poetess murder, mistaken encounter killing ...

A lot of those sentenced deserved the noose but the political will is lacking. Our sentencing guideline requires a complete makeover. Between 14 years and meet your maker, there is a wide gulf waiting to be filled. The judges are taking the "rarest of rare" thingy a bit too literally.

Among all the news reports, which range from politically tinged to attempt at morbid humor, this one stood out:

Advocate by profession and a local Congress boss Pushpendra Singh Yadav, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the additional district court here in the post-Babri Masjid riot case, was seen waving and smiling at his fellow advocates. However, no sooner the verdict was announced, he was rushed to the district hospital on medical grounds.

A former Kanpur-dehat district bar association president, Pushpendra was accused of being part of the crowd which incited mobs into setting several Muslim houses in Govindnagar here on fire on December 10, 1992. Eleven people were charred to death in the arson. [link]

The Grand Wheat Scam

Vincent van Gogh's The Fields (Wheat Fields), thought to be one
of his last paintings is expected to fetch $28 million - $35 million
when it goes to auction later this year

So the people friendly Government wanted to curb inflation. Among other things, they refused to increase the minimum support price of wheat (the price at which food is purchased for the public distribution system from the farmers). Now, wheat farmers are hardly the capitalist pig types. Inflation impacts them too. Econ 101 ensured that while production went up, supply went South. What does the Government do? Import wheat at a price way more than the MSP the farmers had been demanding. Read in details about the scam in this Tehelka report. BJP has even published a booklet on the scam.

Wait! There is more. If this perversity in wheat-supply management was not enough, the wheat imported turned out to be of poor quality, cattle-feed grade.

CNN-IBN report on the inferior quality of wheat being imported for the poor has sent shock waves the country. Being imported at an exorbitant rates, the wheat is not even fit for animals to eat. What’s worse, its being imported at a very high price from Australia. CPM politburo member Brinda Karat, who has been leading a campaign against wheat import, congratulated CNN-IBN for exposing the quality of wheat being procured. [link]

Funny how this clueless career commie is actually congratulating a private news channel for unearthing information she was supposed to keep abreast of.

Worm-eaten, full of dirt, used as animal feed - this is the food for the poor, the red winter wheat imported from Australia. What is imported is actually the shell of the red winter wheat. It is not definitely the best kind of wheat available and is being given out through the public distribution system for the poorest, who can't afford to buy wheat from the market.

Says a local of Khandwa, Gulabo, "This wheat is very bad. We have never eaten it before and the children complain of indigestion.By the time we clean the grains, 14 kilos becomes just 11 kilos," says Kailash. [link]

Divested of all media spin, it leaves only two cards for the UPA Government to choose from: one says "massive scam", the other - "gross incompetence".

As if throwing the wheat supply out of gear was not enough, the Govenrment has now turned its focus on rice.

The paddy farmers of Haryana and Punjab are having sleepless nights for the last five days following the rice mill owners' refusal to make any purchase in mandis till the Central government lifts its ban on the export of superior varieties of rice.

In view of this tug of war between exporters and the government, heaps of paddy are lying unsold and farmers have to stay put at mandis to protect the produce till it is disposed of. These varieties shed about 15% to 25% of the price during the last one week when the ban was imposed. Maximum decline is noticed in Pusa-1121 variety, which is in great demand in the international market. Sham Sunder, a farmer, said he sold Pusa-1121 variety for Rs 2,100 per quintal last week but now its is not fetching more than Rs 1,500. [link]

So the Government tends to believe that by banning exports of high grade rice (usually way beyond the affordability of the aam aadmi anyway), they will increase the overall supply.

Not all politicians are so far removed from reality though.

Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal has asked the Centre to lift the ban on rice export as "the step was detrimental to the interests of the country’s farmers." In a letter to prime minister Manmohan Singh, the CM said the decision to this effect was not only anti-farmer but also against the basic principles of sound economic planning.

Badal sounded a word of caution that if the Centre continues to take such anti-farmer stance, the day was not very far off when the country would plunge into deep food crisis thereby, jeopardising national food security. The CM said if the Centre was unable to give remunerative minimum support price (MSP) to the farmers, it has no moral right to deny them the opportunity to export rice.

Badal urged both the prime minister and the Union agriculture minister to review the decision in the larger public interest because it would not only hamper the interests of the farming community, but also alienate them from producing paddy in future. [link]

Let us finish this post on a positive note, shall we? Well, as it happens, more than 75% of all food procured by the PDS gets stolen anyway. Why is this good news? Think about it.

India needs a right-wing TV channel

Narendra Modi walked out on Karan Thapar barely minutes into his appearence on the famous Devil's Advocate show. Interesting posts by RealityCheck and Offstumped on the topic.

The question is not whether Modi would be asked hardball questions, the question is at what point of time in the interview. Karan Thapar did not waste any time in small talk, coming to the point from the get go.

We thought it was very odd for Modi to agree to appear on Devil's Advocate. We don't get to see many other politicians who we would very much like to see in that chair. Is it possible that there was some sort of a deal that Karan Thapar wouldn't dwell on the controversial topics for long? Is that the reason Karan Thapar pounced on him from the very beginning so as to not to miss out on the opportunity? Did Modi walk out because CNN-IBN reneged on its promises? The last part of the interview was intriguing.

What India needs is a right-wing TV channel, not economically dependent on the ruling party and insulated from our oppressive media control policies. Ideological debates tinged with communal overtones will not get resolved anytime soon - but the public ought to know what's really going on in the country in the name of social justice.

Did you know?

People join hands outside the U.N. building in Bangkok October 17, 2007 to
commemorate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

We didn't know. Not much noise from our poor-friendly intellectuals or media.

Warm welcome for Benazir Bhutto

Shaken and stirred: Benazir Bhutto being rescued from a
truck after she narrowly escaped a deadly bomb attack in
Karachi which killed almost 150 people.

If you are curious about how a bomb blast scene looks like, you might want to checkout this Yahoo slideshow [warning: graphic images]. Indian media hasn't been too generous with these things in the recent past.

Are you feeling lucky?

It would be even worse if the chronic liar and hypocrite actually believed these things. This is the second time around PC has sent the market in tumbles with irresponsible remarks. The last time around it was about taxing inflows.

Will there be any investigation? Anyone cares?

These people have no policy direction. Perhaps years of misplaced belief in central planning has really brainwashed these dudes into believing that the stock market investors will be as gullible as the aam aadmi or as helpless as farmers who have nowhere else to run. The moral of the story is that, if you want to burst a bubble, you got to have the belly for it. Running around like headless chickens won't help, neither will appeals to the investor community. It is not a charity show.

Chidambaram said that he had asked market regulator, Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI), to take the opinion of foreign institutional investors before deciding on offshore derivatives.

The CNN-IBN headlines provided comic relief through the crash:
Govt teaches markets a lesson: play it safe
FM calms stock market jitters etc.

Mayawati featured on Newsweek: CNN-IBN reacts

Recently, Newsweek magazine featured a profile of Mayawati as part of a special report on women.

As we discussed before, Mayawati poses severe problems for Congress and by extension to those in the media and intellectual circle who are engaged in spreading the party's folklore.

As expected, CNN-IBN grudgingly covered the news. After breaking the story of the Newsweek coverage, the story runs through redundant details and then concludes with the following:

Her votebank is growing. So are the numbers of her critics. She is accused of betraying the bahujan ideology in the pursuit of power. People say she is sold out Ambedkar for the sake of ambition. It would be an irony indeed if the arrival of Mayawati the future prime minister, signaled the end of the Ambedkarite dream of social change.

Okay, quiz time. Who accused Mayawati of betraying the bahujan ideology? Any references? Is it just an opinion of the CNN-IBN editorial team? Which people say she sold out Ambedkar? Dalits? Upper-caste people? OBCs?

What exactly is the Ambedkarite dream of social change and why is Mayawati not working towards it? We need to know in objective terms, not through ghost stories.

Dr. Ambedkar wanted Dalit empowerment. He believed that unless Dalits attained political power, their lot would never improve. As a result, he refused to run on a Congress ticket, choosing to contest India's first election from a constituency in Bombay on his own platform. What did Congress do then? They put up a Dalit milkman against Dr. Ambedkar. Needless to say very unsavory rumors were spread. It was claimed that Dr. Ambedkar, being educated and rich himself couldn't possibly take care of Dalits. Yeah, only rich upper-caste members of Congress can take care of Dalits.

Dr. Ambedkar lost the election. Mawayati has avoided the trap so far.

Let Afzal hang Mr. Balkrishna

The secular vendetta on an alleged crime continues even as Hindu cops are given punitive transfer orders. The top cop has fallen, four other high ranking officers too were given marching orders.

This is a sad day for democracy. There were no enquiries set up to find out the truth, a CBI investigation is under way.

Meanwhile, the reaction of the people have taken a bizarre turn. Now even the West Bengal State Women’s Commission are being taken to task for not having been able to extract the "confession" Priyanka Todi was supposed to provide.

Meanwhile, bomb blasts are happening at such regular intervals that even right wing bloggers have stopped covering them. Bomb blasts have become a fact of life. Does anyone truly believe that we have the political will to investigate any minority at all?

The explosive political situation is being exploited to the hilt.

Mumbai: Dilshad Bohra has been making the rounds of Bombay High Court for the last year in the hope of getting justice in her fight against some influential relatives of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. And just when things had started looking up, case papers have mysteriously disappeared from the High Court premises.

"At the last moment when the case came up for hearing, the court told us that the case papers are missing. We were shocked. We kept looking at the judge and asking what happened!" says Bohra. [link]

Even as liberals in Calcutta hold daily candle light vigils etc., there is total silence on the issue of infiltration and the involvement of Bangladeshi elements in the bomb blasts.

Strangely, despite "Hindustan" being so inhospitable for minorities, thousands of folks from Bangladesh keep crossing into the country every month.

Perhaps the secular lynch mob can only be satiated if we let Afzal publicly hang Mr. Balkrishna at Chowringhee.

West Bengal Side Story

When they met, he was 30, she was perhaps 22. He was from a lower middle-class Muslim family. She is the daughter of a very rich businessman from Calcutta - a Hindu man. He was her graphics teacher, you might say a position of trust. Well, whaddya know, romance blossomed and they got secretly married. What followed was a month of intrigue and suspense. Popsy got upset. He got hold of Saurabh Ganguly's brother and through his CAB links met top cops of Calcutta. Allegedly, the cops harassed the newly wed couple (Priyanka had by then moved into the residence of her husband's family). They summoned them to Calcutta police headquarters a few times. Among other people used to try and influence the couple to separate was a Muslim politician from the area. There was even a showdown, when in a desperate bid, the girl's family paid a visit to the couple at the family residence of the groom and made threats.

Under mysterious circumstances, the woman agreed to return to her parents' home, in an apparent bid to convince the parents. After a week or so, her husband (the man in the picture) was found dead on the railway tracks.

This was enough to start a media blitzkrieg which shows no sign of abating and at the time of writing is snowballing into a huge political gambit. The theory goes as follows: rich Hindutva pop bumps off poor minority groom with the help of the corrupt (mostly Hindu) top cops of the city.

Unfortunately, this theory suffered a serious setback from the get go. When the human rights commission went to visit her (after she surfaced from a brief hiatus, apparently a family trip to Tirupati):

Priyanka Todi has gone silent. Not a word has been exchanged between her and her in-laws. And even as her mother-in-law tried to decipher her silence, Priyanka chose to speak to the human rights commission. Not saying what every one wanted to hear, saying she wants justice and she wants to be left alone. [link]

Priyanka said she was upset. More importantly, she didn't appear to particularly suspect her own parents. She also didn't allege harassment by cops. Certainly not what the media wanted to hear.

If CNN-IBN swallowed this setback, The Outlook magazine would have none of it. Now the victim received her share of blame for not helping them out with their political folklore:

But ever since she got to know of her husband's death, she has remained silent. She never visited her grieving in-laws, she never issued any statement to share their pain and sorrow and she has hardly behaved like a person in mourning. Does this mean she has been totally brainwashed by her parents and relatives? Or is it that she has suddenly become worldly-wise and realised that since her husband is no more, she'd rather choose the luxuries of life at her parent's place to the despair and plain living at her in-laws? [link]

This is the funniest piece we heard since Arundhati Roy was preaching Gandhi style abstinence.

and more:

Initially, Priyanka came across as a bold, decent and honest human being. It would be sad if we were to change our opinion of this lady. [ibid]

Well, you already did.

While the media is painting this as another of those timeless love stories that periodically get made into Bollywood movies, we remain skeptics. The age difference is a significant factor. There is more:

The CID bases its theory on the 'other woman' in Rizwanur's life. CID officers claim that Rizwanur wanted to meet this woman on September 21 and was driven to suicide when she did not turn up. [..] CID officers claim this 'important call' was made to the second woman, who stays near Ultadanga. 'He waited for her somewhere near Shyambazar Metro station for a long time and then called her up. From there he went to Belgachia Metro station,' the officer said. The CID, it seem, is bent on trying to prove that his failure to meet this ‘‘other woman’’ hurt him so badly that he went to the extent of committing suicide. [link]

Is it possible that Rizwanur was a playboy?

"I will not come to teach you from tomorrow." This was the last call Rizwanur Rahman made — minutes before his death — to one of his students, a girl in Class XII. CID made this startling claim on Monday, a day before Calcutta High Court is to rule on a petition by Rizwanur's family seeking a CBI probe into his mysterious death.

The call to the girl wasn't the only one Rizwanur made that day. CID says he talked to father-in-law Ashok Todi for four minutes. On Wednesday, Kolkata will learn how, why and under what circumstances Rizwanur met his end on the tracks near Patipukur railway bridge. [link]

The media is hellbent into making this into a Hindutva related issue, a communal issue. For the record, such love stories seem to always feature a Muslim groom and a Hindu bride. The other way around cases usually get dealt with much more swiftly.

CNN-IBN gives an example of another couple,

In the upmarket South Kolkata flat, Mudar and Shalini Patherya look like any other happily married couple getting set for their son's 9th birthday. But today, Rizwanur’s story has made them stop in their tracks. Because it could have happened to them too. In fact the script was pretty much the same. Mudar is Muslim. Shalini is a Marwari. She was 22 and Mudar 30, when they met. He was her journalism teacher and she his student. He earned just enough to get by. She was the daughter of a wealthy businessman. They fell in love and decided to marry. That was 15 years ago. [link]

Sare Jahan Se Accha

:D for Discrimination

All it takes to prove discrimination is an allegation. Our liberals are scouring every corner of the country to find alleged tales of discrimination. They found a case of discrimination at AIIMS. They even found communally insensitive behavior.

So far, tales of discrimination against the minority community in the private sector had eluded them. Well, they found one, in Guwahati!



A 39-year old female journalist wanted to switch careers to computers. She applied for the post of an academic counsellor in an IT company which was recruiting for its newly-opened Guwahati branch. According to her, she was subjected to gruelling interview sessions and was given every impression that she would be hired. Then comes the rude shock:

The issue, however, came up after I asked about when I would be receiving my appointment letter. In a clever move, they asked another Muslim lady who worked there and who dressed in jeans and kurta, to talk to me about removing my head covering. Meaning: my job was assured, subject to my removing my dupatta! I said there was absolutely no question of my doing so. I couldn’t compromise. And in any case, I failed to see any connection between my efficiency and skill levels and my wearing a headscarf. If it was their policy not to employ people wearing any sort of headgear, why did they select me in the first place?

Actually, it was not a clever move at all. A clever move would be not to call her in for an interview or reject her on technical grounds.

This episode led the person in question to conclude:

Discrimination against Muslims and other communities has always existed in India. Today it is more subtle and yet more pronounced. I’m not saying all non-Muslims are the same. There are Hindus who do not subscribe to the ideology of hate so typical of the Hindutva brigade. But the under-currents are strong. Who knows how many people are being denied jobs just because they happen to be Muslims?

Note that the direct conclusion is about denial of job. The fact is she wasn't denied a job, according to her own claim, she was "denied a job" for "not removing her dupatta". Not quite the same thing, is it?

Of course, if you were really objective, you would analyze data from the universe of white collar jobs. You would compare the proportion of applicants versus hired candidates at various education and skill levels. This sort of data does not exist in India.



Restricting ourselves to the basic issue of attire and workplace (she starts the article with the French ban on headscarves: AS A MUSLIM, I was outraged when I first read reports of the French government’s decision to ban the wearing of religious symbols, including headgear), it is easily seen that this can open up a pandora's box or should we say unveil an ugly territory no one would want to chart. Talking of France, did you know that wearing headscarves of any kind at public places is banned in Turkey?

Keep in mind that the job she applied for was that of a counsellor, i.e. a public facing job. There are thousands of men and women who wear various headgears and work in technical professions. Would a woman in headscarf be allowed to work as a receptionist in a Wipro office? Should men and women demand to wear religious attire in the following profession: swimsuit model, receptionist, air hostess, waitress?

Employers have a right to demand of their employees to wear certain type of dresses. Even Government employees are asked to wear uniforms, very unflattering ones at that. Is this a problem for conservatively dressed women? Don't think so. Even a basic image search reveals companies like Infosys allows very traditional dresses in the workplace and actually appears to be proud of that.





She connects this story with identity related issues, about how she is hounded with questions about her origin. This we can understand. This is the North East, where illegal immigration has been a huge issue. Unfortunately, she completely misplaces her blame. She should ask her local Rajya Sabha representative why is the Government not curbing the menace of infiltration which puts legitimate residents like her under a cloud of suspicion.

[Note: We wish Ms. Nazneen Hussain luck in her career switch].

Where does this put us?

More than 130 Muslim scholars from around the globe on Thursday called for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying "the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake". In an unprecedented letter to Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders, 138 Muslim scholars said finding common ground between the world's biggest faiths was not simply a matter for polite dialogue between religious leaders.

"If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace. With the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict between more than half of the world's inhabitants," the scholars wrote. "Our common future is at stake. The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake," they wrote, adding that Islam and Christianity already agreed that love of God and neighbour were the two most important commandments of their faiths. [link]

Careful with these reporters, Isabel

Isabel Guerrero is the newly minted World Bank Country Director for India. She hails from Chile and her experience is centered around Latin America.

In a recent interview, Tehelka Journalist Sankarshan Thakur did the number on her.

It is one thing to push the boundaries of journalism ethics in the context of local politics where rhetorics run high, quite another to play dirty tricks on a high official of an international agency.

Consider the headline: "Privatisation puts too much wealth in too few hands". It appears in quotes, giving the impression that it is a verbatim statement of Ms. Guerrero. Unfortunately, she never said anything like that in the interview. The closest she got was this:

We did push privatisation. I was myself part of the team that went to the former Soviet Union, post-collapse, and we all said privatisation is a very good way out. And then we realised that it was a mistake. First of all because there were no institutions in the post-collapse Soviet Union and we did not realise the importance of institutions. You don’t have the right governance, privatisation gets captured by a few and then you create inequalities.

Note that she mentioned privatization in the context of Soviet Union here. What she meant was that unless the right institutions are in place, privatization can lead to cronyism, this is not a new insight.

The whole interview runs pretty much like this. Sankarshan tries his level best to ask leading questions. The article twists her statements out of context and fits them into the Congress template of inclusive justice.

She keeps on saying that she does not have much domain knowledge about India. Her statements mostly relate to Latin America. Her comments on the correlation between income disparity and violence is added as a caption to an image of Naxals. But she has this to say:

ST: Very similar things are happening in India, in the Naxal belt.
IG: I don’t know that at all, I have just about arrived.

ST: In terms of the Bank and all its talk of inclusive development, there is a deep problem here…
IG: Is it as bad as what I told you about? [Ed. she is referring to the Latin American experience she had just narrated]

ST: It is quite bad. You have huge areas in which there is actually no government or police because they fear going there. There is inequity and poverty. There is a State-sponsored armed vigilante movement called Salva Judum, there is a civil war-like situation backed by the State.
IG: Is this linked to drugs? [Ed. She is that clueless about India yet]

This is travesty of journalism. This is worse than Stalinist era communist propaganda, far worse because it completely destroys the respect people are supposed to have for international institutions such as the World Bank. What is the point of feeding her with "Salva Judum", "civil war-like situation" etc.? Why didn't Sankarshan Thakur just say to her, look Ma'am, we have an election coming up. Could you please repeat parts of the Congress election manifesto?

ST: You think India is in the phase where inequality is increasing?
IG: Probably. I don’t know the numbers but that is my sense. Indians have to decide what they want to do about it. As I said you have a strong sense of solidarity and something should come out of this good thing.

We hope that sensible people take this issue up with the Indian board of journalism or something. If we let reporters do this sort of things with leaders of foreign nations, we will have a huge diplomatic issue on our hands.

Sankarshan Thakur tries his level best to put words into her mouth. But fortunately for us, India's latest World Bank Chief is quite sensible. She doesn't jump to conclusions. Hope something good comes out of her tenure.

ST: You think India’s heading that way: too many things with too few?
IG: I don’t know, I am too new here to say. You really need to know countries.

Ration Riots in West Bengal

Rizwanur Rehman, the man who was found dead on the railway tracks a while ago, has become the latest poster child of liberal activism in India. Unfortunately for the media and the intellectuals, this happened in Commie bastion West Bengal, which threw a huge spanner in the secular works. We can imagine the hand wringling in newspaper offices, "Hey Lord Ram, why didn't you make it happen in Gujarat? What have I done wrong? At least in MP please? I will make a goat sacrifice for Ma Kali." Unable to connect it to the usual theme, most op-eds are taking the businessman-politican-cop nexus track to vent their anger.

This is what has the commies scrambling for cover. After the initial bravura statements and declarations of stern action against cops (including the top cop of WB), the Commies don't want anything to do with a CBI investigation. This is where a Hindi speaking man from the rural heartland would scratch his "...."s and say, "Daal mein kuch kaala hai!"

CPM wants this issue to go away, buried deep so it can't be found again. Already embroiled by the Singur and Nandigram scandals, they do not want any more media attention. They are also extremely worried about people taking a cold hard look at the Sachar Commission report. As RealityCheck and many other bloggers have noted, Muslims tend to do very well in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala etc. at least as far as those statistics go. Their condition remains dismal in UP, Bihar, West Bengal etc.

The Commies in West Bengal do not want to open this pandora's box. CPM patriarch Jyoti Basu once famously said, there are no castes in West Bengal, only classes. He might as well have said the same thing about religion. The USP of CPM is deeply rooted in the class divide folklore. In that sense you could say WB politics lags the national politics by several decades.

This is where other political parties have unearthed a huge pot of gold. Already Mamata has started screaming about this.

Ironically, this issue has completely obscured another very grave issue that is unfolding in West Bengal. There is a full scale riot going on which speaks as much to the failure of the Public Distribution System as it does to the failed ideology of the West Bengal communists. Here we see a huge socialist experiment failing miserably in a communist state, and how so!

KOLKATA: Thirty years after land reforms and the start of Left rule in Bengal, the ration riots have exploded the myth of rural utopia. Rural Bengal is not a place where food is plenty and villagers never go to bed hungry. Rather, it is a place where rampant corruption and greed have eroded the pillars of the public distribution system. [link]

This is also interesting:

SURI/BEHRAMPORE: A ration dealer's son committed suicide in Birbhum, the third such incident in West Bengal in the wake of the ration riots that began last month, while incidents of attacks on ration dealers continued unabated in Birbhum and Murshidabad districts on Tuesday. [link]

Also, this:

The continuing violence prompted chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to appeal for peace. He asked people not to take the law into their hands and said the government had requested the Centre to increase rice, wheat and kerosene supplies. "Some people are deliberately trying to create trouble," he said. [link]

Another one:

Kolkata: A ration dealer's house and the office of the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) were set ablaze in Burdwan district of West Bengal yesterday in the continuing protests against alleged corruption in the public distribution system (PDS) and food grain hoarding that have claimed four lives. A group of people set on fire the house of ration shopkeeper Golam Mohammad at Nawabhat in Burdwan district, about 250km northwest of Kolkata, and as the mob left the area it torched the CPM office in the vicinity. [link]

Equal Opportunity?

A few weeks back, a case of police brutality was reported in Bihar. It almost became a national issue. As usual, this was followed by TV specials, angry responses from human rights commissions, fiery articles and editorials etc.

Now a new case has come to light.

NAWADA: Incidents of people taking law into their hand continued in Bihar with another suspected thief being lynched at Badahori in Nawada district.

A group of people caught hold of Amrik Rajbanshi and beat him to death after he and four others were suspected to have committed theft at a house, police said.

A case was registered against unknown persons. The incident came close on the heels of lynching of two kidnappers by angry residents at Mahnagani in West Champaran district on Sunday.

Earlier, two persons were beaten to death in Patna on suspicion of being robbers on September 21 and ten suspected thieves lynched in Vaishali district two days later.

A mob gouged out the eyes of three young men who had snatched away a motorcycle in Nawada district on September nine.

The wave of mob violence in the state started when a youth, who had allegedly snatched a woman's gold chain, was severely beaten up by a crowd and later tied to a motorcycle and dragged on the road by police in Bhagalpur district on August 28.

The last para in the report refers to the police brutality case mentioned in the beginning of the post. Come to think of it, had the police not got involved in that one and the public saw their justice through till the end (the way they see it fit in those parts), the man wouldn't have been alive.

In any case, no further details or analyses are available, newspapers are busy with the looming mid-term polls.

Funny mediamen

Socialist Magazine The Outlook staffers open a Champagne bottle,

capitalist style, on the eve of the magazine's 12th anniversary

Vinod Mehta has some gall. When the OBC quota scandal first broke out, his magazine published issue after issue on the plight of - get this, Dalits! The magazine's 12th anniversary gave him an opportunity to beat his own drums, double time. It is a piece worth reading from beginning to the end. For Mehta, India can never shine but clearly it doesn't prevent the sunshine of the capitalist God flooding the musty interiors of the Outlook office in the form of Rs. 20 per week subscriptions. Does he love praise? Yes, of course, as long as it is objective. Objectivity apparently also includes subterfuge, such as pulling the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting readers about the perhaps minor yet highly important difference between Dalits and OBCs.

Mehta gets nostalgic towards the end of the article. Clearly he is an enormously talented man and highly respected in the circle he belongs to. We don't begrudge Mehta's socialism. He is free to wag his tail whichever way he wants to. But we do reserve the right to analyze what he writes and publishes.

Cha Cha Cha? Disco? Retro? A new form of dance?
Vinod Mehta gets it on.

CNN-IBN's Rajdeep Sardesai declares war on BJP.

Suspension of disbelief

Newsflash: Congress is ready for the elections, so let's have them.

Senior Left leaders are claiming that Congress is forcing an election on the nation. Er, excuse me?

Anyway, such have been the ways of the left. Once upon a time Shri Tejpalji complained about the anal retentiveness of the left (this was a time the fiery journalist still had his sting).

In retrospect, we would take a constipated Left anyday. You don't want the stink they cause everytime they let it out.

CNN-IBN Reporters pawing Chinese woman on camera

CNN-IBN has sent a team of reporters to China who are video-blogging their trip. The reporters are being overly friendly with the unsuspecting Chinese women whenever they can. In this video, watch a reporter pawing the Chinese woman under the pretext of friendship. Also, they keep praising her looks.

The Other Minorities

There are an estimated 5000 Jewish people in India. As minorities go, you can't stretch the concept much further, in a nation of 1 billion people.

Unfortunately, they have little political voice. This is expected in a democracy where issues are settled by identity based horse trading. What is completely unexpected is the deep silence of the otherwise sensitive folks who go ballistic on any real or imaginary minority related issues.

The Jewish in India would be expected to stay under the radar, but we are seeing an alarming increase in veiled attacks against this community.

Leaders of India's Jewish community expressed outrage Sunday over a new line of bedspreads called "The Nazi Collection" from a Mumbai-based home furnishing company that used swastikas in its promotional material. The furnishing dealer said the name stands for "New Arrival Zone for India" and was not meant to be anti-Semitic. But Jewish groups said they would file a lawsuit against the company. [...]

Furnishing dealer Kapil Kumar Todi said he chose the name because "that's what came to my mind," according to the paper. "It really does not matter to me who feels bad about it," he said. Some Indians regard Hitler as just another historical figure and have little knowledge about the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed during World War II. [link]

Perhaps Shri Kapil Kumar Todi would not be so nonchalant if the offended group in question had been some other "minority" group. He is acting all innocent, but the "New Arrival Zone for India" is a bit of a stretch.

Last year too there was a new restaurant which was called the Hitler's Cross. Very appetizing name. This being Bombay, one can not help but speculate that rather than being serendipitous, these are really deliberate attempts at appealing to a particular customer segment.

How did you celebrate Gandhi Jayanti?

People did all sorts of things on this national holiday. Perhaps the kids had the most fun. They got to skip school and do their little costume parties. Some folks made speeches, some participated in rallies. Some celebrated it as International Non-Violence Day. JD(S) reneged on its promise to BJP. An ailing elephant called Arundhati died.

Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi reminded everyone that Congress had the first claim on Gandhi.

"The Congress is proud that it is inextricably involved with the GNP - Gandhi, Nehru and Patel - of India. There is no doubt that Gandhiji belongs to the world. He belongs to India. But first and foremost he belongs to the Congress."

On Gandhi Jayanti, NSUI (Congress Youth Wing), did a little Gandhigiri of their own:

Eight members of National Students Union of India (NSUI) were arrested on Monday following a complaint against them in Udhna police station for attacking and painting the face of Dinesh Chauhan black. Chauhan, vice-principal of R N Naik School, Udhna, was attacked by the NSUI members at the school while he was supervising in a classroom during mid-term exam. [..] The NSUI members attacked Chauhan accusing him of making derogatory remarks on minority students. [link]

It may be noted that recently Rahul Gandhi was appointed as the General Secretary of NSUI. In the light of recent developments, the allegations of derogatory remarks need to be suitably discounted.

But we liked this one best:

If, for many, the day before Gandhi Jayanti meant hectic preparations for functions, there were these Congress leaders in Bhesan taluka of Junagadh, who were busy with their booze party. However, an unidentified informer turned out to be a party pooper, as three Congress leaders and another person enjoying their party at the marketing yard office in Bhesan were nabbed by police on Monday night. Kirti Kamdar, 55 from Visavadar, taluka panchayat president Dhiru Bhuva, 53, Vrajlal Chaiya, 52, and Ahmedabad-based businessman Shailesh Dave, 40, were arrested by the police. [link]

We have no issues with this. We hate prohibition.

The one that got away

Have you heard about a movie called Amu? More likely not. But surely you know about Parzania? When the latter movie was released, the nation was gripped by Parzania frenzy, the media, blogosphere, our intellectuals - they simply couldn't stop talking about the movie. It was the one must see movie, the one movie in a lifetime, wonderfully acted, directed, edited, music directed ... indeed Parzania went on to win national awards.

Amu remained in obscurity, ostracized by our intellectuals.. Fortunately for director Shonali Bose, she received recognition from the Sikh Art and Film Foudation.

Scores of activists protested against the CBI on Sunday for dropping a case against senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Jagdish Tytler in connection with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The activists under the banner of All India Sikh Conference (AISC) staged a protest here and were prevented by police as they were marching towards the Prime Minister's house.

"The Supreme Court should take suo motu cognisance of the case and ask the CBI to reopen the anti-Sikh riot cases and give justice to 5000 Sikh families," president of AISC Gurcharan Singh Babbar said. [link]