Aaja Nachle! Wait!

Aaja Nachle, which is supposed to be Madhuri Dixit's comeback vehicle etc. etc., has been banned in UP by the Mayawati Government. A nationwide ban is in the works, although there is a possibility of a compromise, a la Taslima Nasreen. All this because of a single allegedly casteist line in the movie's title song.

As far as we could tell, the offensive line was this:

Mohale mein kaise mara mar hai
Bole mochi bhi khud ko sonar hai

The lyrics are as atrocious as the transcript from where we got the above. A loose translation:

There is hullabaloo in the neighborhood
The cobbler is claiming to be a goldsmith

This is somewhat surprising, it would be a stretch to call the line casteist. Traditionally a lot of leather workers could be Dalits (since caste Hindus would not have anything to do with leather), but a large percentage are also Muslims and sometimes MBCs. In any case, the reference here is to the vocation and not to the caste - one of the sad facts of the complexities in the caste system.

Needless to say, the media is calling it Mayawati's ban, but there is more to it. As we have mentioned several times before, the establishment is trying their level best to destroy Mayawati's stronghold on Dalits. The common line of attack is to hold her to a fictitious standard of Ambedkarism, i.e. pure dogma. For instance, while covering the Gujarat riots, a CNN-IBN program showed a Dalit MLA praising Modi. The reporter concluded that by supporting Modi the MLA was letting Ambedkar down!

The second line of attack is to create numerous law and order problems. SP has staged N-number of protests in UP, reducing the state to a permanent state of anarchy. Even the recent blasts are suspect, the only blasts in which a domestic group claimed responsibility. Mayawati responded to this by chastising the IPS officers very strongly.

Rumor has it that the Samajwadi Party with the sponsorship of Congress is causing all these troubles. A certain vote bank is acting as facilitators.

The movie ban is a third line of attack. Mayawati's strength is also her biggest vulnerability, she must of necessity show the largest bleeding heart for reasons of political expediency. As you can see above, to pick out that line from a noisy Bollywood caper requires some doing. The issue was first brought to light by the Indian Justice party - a known collaborator of Congress. Mayawati was appraised of the situation and she stayed neutral, asking her advisers to watch the movie and pass a verdict. When the verdict came out as guilty, her hand was forced.

The ban shows Mayawati in somewhat poor light while staving off some pressure from the Taslima Nasreen controversy. A grand strategic maneuver, if there was any.

One of Samajwadi Party's innumerable protests
in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. This is
supposed to be a secular protest by pensioners.

This gotta be a first

Angry Congress workers on Wednesday smashed window panes and broke furniture at the party office for the second consecutive day after a former city mayor was denied a ticket to contest the Assembly elections. Supporters of Himmat Singh Patel also tore posters of Congress leaders at the Gujarat house, city office of the state Pradesh Congress Committee here, party sources claimed.

They said Patel had sought a ticket from Rakhiyal seat. Earlier in the day, Congress workers owing allegiance to two other leaders were involved in a scuffle at the Ahmedabad Collectorate where they had gone to file nominations. Even on Tuesday, supporters of Congress leaders who were denied party tickets had smashed few window panes and wooden panels at Gujarat House. [link]

They wrecked their own party office! Reminds you of street dogs fighting over a bone.

Mr. Karunanidhi! How ironical!

It took a lot of courage for the Indian diaspora in Malaysia take to the streets in such large numbers. Perhaps their true condition led them to this desperation.

Malay police used tear gas and water cannons on a 10,000 strong rally on Sunday. Over 200 ethnic Indians were detained for their protest, demanding equal rights. Meanwhile, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmed Badawi warned that he may invoke a security law, allowing indefinite detention without trial to halt street demonstrations.

But a Tamil minister in Malaysia has called the protests a farce. Samy Vellu, The President of the Malaysian Indian Congress denied he was out of touch with the increasingly agitated Indians in Malaysia. "They are just levelling unfounded excuses in order to popularise themselves. I considered them. They are not fighting for the Indians. They are fighting to create a problem,” said Vellu. [link]

It does not look likely that this incident will have any significant impact on Malaysian politics.

Interestingly, the protesters were not demanding special rights or even quotas. As a matter of fact, they were just calling for an end to discrimination and scaling down of some of the privileges enjoyed by the ethnic Malay-Muslim majority.

Karunanidhi made a feeble protest and an appeal to the PM. He didn't write a poem though. We recommend a very fine book for Mr. Karunanidhi, written by Amitabh Ghosh. To paraphrase an immortal line from the book: Minority love is not transitive. One may love his minorities, without his love being reciprocated elsewhere. Just a few months ago Mr. Karunanidhi had announced a 3.5% hard quota for the relatively affluent ethnic Muslim community in Tamil Nadu.

The most bizarre part

November 25th is the designated international day for the elimination of violence against women. For some reason, not much was heard from our intellectuals, who usually celebrate such auspicious moments such as international puppy day, international save whale day etc.

You may also have come across this piece of news, which incidentally didn't find a lot of space in Indian newspapers. Well, with due sympathies to the victim, this is what struck us most about the incident:

Last year a 19-year-old woman in the eastern town of Qatif appealed against a sentence of 90 lashes for the crime of khulwa (seclusion) with a man who was not related to her. Her lawyer argued that meeting a former friend in a shopping-centre car park, to retrieve a photo of herself that she feared would upset her fiancé, was scarcely so grave an offence. Moreover, this “crime” was far outweighed by the fact that the two friends had been interrupted by seven youths, who abducted them at knife-point and allegedly gang-raped both of them, repeatedly. [from The Economist]

The newspaper does not say whether all the seven perps took a fancy on the man too or only some of them. Please note that certain types of sexual orientation is punishable by death in those countries. The seven men have been sentenced to prison terms. The conclusion is extremely disturbing.

This is nothing new, unusual and cruel punishment of rape victims keep getting reported from that part of the globe quite frequently. Our Government is in fact seriously contemplating enacting a law, barring uneducated women below 30 from emigrating to those countries. A sad fact for our collective conscience that we can not provide meaningful employment to so many aspiring people. Maybe socialism will work someday, who knows. We remain hopeful.

Didn't see it coming, did you?

Quota politics does it again and again and again .....

Opinion Poll: Should Sagarika Ghose be asked to leave India?

No, this is not a poser, this is a serious and sincere question. A lot of people hate Sagarika Ghose (for the record, we don't). There is a bonafide Sagarika Ghose hate group on Orkut. So, whether you are allowed to stay in the country becomes a matter of public opinion?

Yeah, yeah, we know. She is a citizen and Taslima is not. But since when did citizenship become an issue anyway? We have MPs whose citizenship is suspect. We also have ..... well, never mind.

You could argue that the opinion poll is merely an open minded discussion. Sorry, no dice. Would you have an opinion poll on the validity of female infanticide? How about Sati? Being a mainstream channel, CNN-IBN can not conduct an opinion poll which borders on contempt of the constitution, leave aside basic humanity and decorum. Taslima Nasreen (unlike millions of her fellow countrymen), is a legally permitted resident of India. You simply can not question her stay, till the time the Government voids her visa.

Welfare of the family

Security Risk?

An apartment in Bombay sells for Rs. 34 crores. A socialist sheds tears. Articles and editorials follow. The usual stuff, in a country where hundreds of millions go hungry, this is outrageous. Must enact more laws. The long hand of social justice must reach out. The Government knows best. The Government, the only one, most merciful.

Recently, a 2,000-odd-square-foot flat in Mumbai sold for a reportedly record-breaking Rs 34 crore to a private individual. Almost at the same time, the Congress party headquarters in New Delhi were shifted from Akbar Road to a plot, on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg, the market value of which is some Rs 100 crore but which was handed over to the Congress for Rs 2 crore.

The different pricing mechanisms used in each case, Mumbai and New Delhi (the first based on free market forces, the second on state patronage), exemplifies the huge difference, the deep chasm between the private citizens of this country and any element of the sarkar that we have elected to govern us. [link]

As we noted before, the mammaries of the welfare state never failed to squirt milk in the right direction. For every law, there are five hundred exceptions (just like our constitution is basically a series of amendments, no rules - just exceptions). These exceptions direct the process of social justice with better precision than NASA's spacecrafts.

Generals might rule the roost across the border but here they are steadily getting downgraded. Robert Vadra may figure on the list of VIPs exempt from security checks at airports but the army, navy and IAF chiefs are simply not considered important enough to be granted this privilege. "(But) ministry of civil aviation and Bureau of Civil Aviation Security have stated that according exemption to service chiefs will lead to similar demands from some other authorities," added Antony. The minister's answer, of course, left the armed forces disappointed. "It's ridiculous. This means the people entrusted with the security of the nation, the service chiefs, cannot be trusted," said a senior officer. [link]

The Secular Party's election symbol then

The Secular Party's election symbol, now

Industrialization in West Bengal: Nandigram and beyond

Have you heard of Mahabharat Motors? How about the Xenitis Group of companies? Amar brand of PCs and peripherals? Arjun brand motorcycles, Xpression range of bikes? Well, these are the new age industrial entities coming up in West Bengal, based on the SEZ model. Among these, only the Amar PCs and peripherals are in production, with a revenue of several hundred crores. The rest are in planning phase.

Mahabharat motors has a Chinese partner, Zongshen, while Xenitis will tie up with Guangzhou Motors to produce the Xpression range of motorbikes. An interesting diversification for a PC manufacturer in the latter case.

But the common thread in all these cases (apart from the Communist Government of West Bengal, of course), is the Indonesian conglomerate - Salim Group. Salim group seems to have an insatiable appetite for land.

Surely there is nothing wrong with this, maybe we are just too paranoid. But just the above scenario gives us very uneasy feelings. This feeling is compounded by the astonishing claims by secular intellectuals in the aftermath of the Nandigram fiasco.

So, let's put this into perspective, as comrade Brinda Karat would say.

A shady Muslim company from an Islamic theocratic nation
+
Mostly Muslim victims of land grab
+
Communist cadres of unknown religion
= Soft Hindutva.

Meanwhile, comrade Mrs. Karat spun a very interesting theory in her Devil's advocate interview. According to her, before the cadres recaptured Nandigram, about 3,500 people (mostly Muslims and Dalits) had been driven out by the Maoists. Apparently these are still living in camps. Where did these people come from? Before January this year, Nandigram was a nice quaint little village, no reports of any faction planning to evict any other group. As soon as the SEZ was announced, there were huge protests. Then the first round of violence happened in March. Buddha backtracked and said there would not be an SEZ any more. November saw the second flare up.

Something does not add up here. It is quite likely that the commies have propped up illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in order to add a moral spin to their tale.

The King and the Commie

Watch the Spanish King put the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to his place in what must be one the most ironical moments in world politics. Hugo kept on interrupting the Spanish Prime Minister, rather rudely, and insisted on calling the previous Spanish leader a fascist. The Spanish PM retorted by saying that Azner had been elected by a democratic process. But the boorish Hugo just wouldn't let go, until the Spanish king asked him to shut up. Watch Chavez sulk like a grounded school kid.

Meanwhile Hugo is showing all signs of turning out to be a fascist-communist leader. He is hell bent on turning Venezuela into a banana republic. A massive constitutional amendment is on the cards. This issue has already led to violent protests in Venezuela and brutal Police action against students.

When he is not hyperventilating against the capitalistic evil forces, Hugo Chavez is seen in the company of such illustrious world leaders such as Ahmedinejad of Iran and Fidel Castro of Cuba. Hugo is a serious threat to world stability.

Rain rain go away, little Ahmed wants to play

Massive cyclone claims thousands in Bnagladesh. Vulnerable parts of India were mercifully spared. Once again, like the great Bihar/Bangladesh floods, completely ignored by media. Other important events such as the coronation of India's crown prince is going on.

Okasa? WTF?

A mysterious man called Okasa, clean incidentless apprehension of alleged perps and their immediate confession about "foreign" hand. Add three identical green towel wrapped heads in the video. A real kidnapping or hoax?

Buddha 1, Buddha 2

When the Taliban destroyed two Buddhist statues in Afghanistan in the spring of 2001, there was an international outcry. But similar incidents are now occurring in northwest Pakistan, where radical Islamists recently blew up a sculpture of Buddha in broad daylight. [link]

The cracks were more prominent in the state's socio-intellectual conscience. Bengal's intelligentsia, which has always been a Left bastion, hit the streets and compared Bhattacharjee to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

“People were peacefully protesting when they were fired at by the CPM cadres. An 11-year-old boy was shot in his head. He’s okay now but he can't go home since his home in ashes,” renowned director-actress Aparna Sen said. [link]

When a nation of freeloaders meets credit culture....

... the result sometimes is not pretty.

Meet the media's latest flogging horse: ICICI bank!

So, the story goes as follows. An honest to God hardworking individual took out a personal car loan. He paid 26 installments, all on time. Then it happened. His financial situation took a turn for the worse. He defaulted on two payments. Just two! Imagine that! All hell broke loose. His car got repossessed and sold.

If you asked the man on the street, nine out of ten times you would hear choice expletives about the bank. Turn the question on its head and ask the same man, how would he like to get defaulted on a loan from him? Chances are he will give you a funny look. How dare you!

Granted that these financial institutions are sometimes using questionable tactics to recover loans. It is also true that even the Police are sometimes hand in glove with the banks, thus grossly abusing their power. However, it is alarming how no one is raising a basic question. Can a bank morally expect its loans to be paid on time? The answer should be a resounding yes.

Yet the media is exploiting popular sentiments by projecting images of money lenders who operate in the unorganized sector. The "victims" of ICICI bank are nothing like the hapless rural debtors who have no choice. Usually these are urban area folks who could not manage their finances well. Quite frequently these people are scam artists or live way beyond their means.

There are three reasons why this is happening. First and foremost, India is hardly an isolated example of financial institutions using goondas to recover loans. Consumers in emerging economies simply do not have enough credit history. There have been credit card crisis in almost all emerging countries - South Korea, Taiwan - you name it. All these countries have resorted to strong arm tactics and perhaps still do. Secondly, silly Government regulations and lack of infrastructure prevents financial institutes from recovering money using legal means. If a bank were to fight out every case of loan default in an Indian court of law, it might as well pack up and leave. Third and perhaps most significant for India, banks are obligated to make politically mandated non-performing loans to certain vote banks. This puts pressure on banks to increase their recovery rates in areas where they can. After all, personal finance remains a cut-throat business. As a side point, lack of infrastructure and institutional support actually prevents these banks to reach out to rural customers, the type who easily fall prey to loan sharks.

In a nation weaned on entitlement for generations, banks like ICICI seem like an ocean, free for the dipping by one and all. People tend to consider bank loan defaults like a victimless crime. If you enjoy a good or service, you got to pay for it. If your future finances are not reasonably secure, you could always take out a loan default insurance. Better still, take the public transport, while you work out a way to make more mullah.

Of course there is a far more sinister side to all this hoopla about ICICI bank while various money lenders in the country continue to use inhuman methods to recoup their loans, such as slavery, bondage etc. A brief look at the history of ICICI bank reveals that this is a professionally run institution, meaning it is not managed by a family. This bank has emerged as the top commercial bank in the country. As a matter of fact, ICICI bank has quite a few women in their top leadership. However, the success of the bank may prove to be its downfall. The political establishment is beginning to discover ways to seek rent from this new windfall. The media is just acting as cheerleaders to a process by which the fortunes of this institution will finally fall into the hands of the only kind of business that survives in socialist India, namely a family run conglomerate.

Meet Achmed

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.