India belongs to NE Indians also

The northeast was again at a flashpoint. The British took about 100 years to integrate the north east into the Empire and that too loosely in the form of autonomous regions, and Indian government in its typically hypocritical brinkmanship, wants to accomplish  this through the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act).

In India, since most civilian systems are dysfunctional, the dependence on the army for solving a problem is quite natural. We believe, having called the army out of the barracks, the problem will get automatically solved.

Army is never a solution. It can maintain status quo or at best status quo ante, and temporarily freeze frame adversarial positions, but can never solve them. To solve a problem, statesmanship and political will are needed, which none of our governments exhibit.

The anniversary of the North London riots triggered by a cold blooded point blank shooting of a black Mark Duggan by the British police coincided with the London Olympics and hence got no attention. And the criminal consumerism, vandalism, bootlegging that colonies of London witnessed post the shooting of Duggan was seen by the whole world.

But the British government literally read the riot act. In less than one year, the rioters got sentenced. Mark my words, in less than one year. In India, in one year the investigation agencies will not even able to frame a charge sheet. The culprits were mostly blacks. The punishing committee was ironically chaired by an Indian origin person.

In such cases of looting and rioting, the max that you can sentence as per the British Law is about 3 to 4 months. But the accused on an average have been sentenced for 16-18 months. How and why? It is not about rioting, looting or vandalism, it is about challenging the state, and state retaliated. Those who will challenge authority, will not be spared. It is a message that the courts unambiguously sent.

And now you will see how the Maruti Udyog case will be handled. It will go on for years without conviction. Also the culprits responsible for the mass exodus of the NE Indians, one, may never get caught, and if they do, will never get punished.

I am for the freedom of speech and if facebooking is a modern method of expression, than I don’t want it to be gagged. But if the website is being used for anti-national activity, the managers should be jailed without bail. Do it once and then see the seriousness that it drives in for situations in the future. The British government tracked the inflammatory messages being propagated on FB and also tracked panic creating and rabble rousing tweets and detained the authors of them all. But the British can do it. The Americans can also do it. Because they love their country and we don’t. 

And the neo-intellectuals can debate no end to the detriment of communal harmony and national security.

Dont Hang Kasab

Ajmal Kasab’s sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court. And now the Congress has another opportunity to play the minority card. It will trigger the pardon, neither grant the pardon nor deny the pardon, and let a terrorist live on state dole and protection. But I can tell you Indian jail, for those other than VIPs are worse than death.

If you would hang Kasab, he will become a martyr, if you don’t, he will die before he will die. But it is here that the muslim leadership should stand up and condemn delay in hanging and blow the steam out of the governments minorityism card.

It is actually not about the government. It is about Indian hypocrisy, our falsehood and self serving nature. I don’t know from where we imbibed such virtues. I am still trying to figure and the moment I am able to, I will share with you.

We write no parking, but don’t mind parking right underneath that sign. We write no diving at the pool, but continue to dive. Our stop lines only mean stopping beyond the line. If you will stop at the line, maybe people will protest. For this attitude I blame the government. In their attitude they don’t display sincerity. They give you the impression, even if you don’t obey, there is a way.

Drive Decently Mr MLA........

Today, an Innova HR 26 AY 0585 overtook me very rashly from the wrong side, while I was enroute Pathways school, to ferry my kids back home.

I like to give my boys a ride whenever I can to and from school, as that is one time that I get to spend with them. I also enjoy the chatter that they exchange about their time at school. It takes me back to my school days, when my brother and I would be doing the same.

Coming to todays episode, firstly, it is a narrow and winding road to Pathways, as it goes up the Aravalis and due to rain damage and water logging, it becomes further constricted. Overtaking therefore is completely contraindicated.

This Innova paced on to my side, almost scraping my car and tried to either intimidate me with its screaming hooter or merely tried to declare a VIP’s primary right to traffic.

I don’t have a problem if politicians don a beacon even on their heads why only on cars and a hooter on their hind-quarters and strut around noisily. But when their strutting around compromises my safety or nudges or jostles me, or displaces me from my place of priority which I have earned, I will react.

And I did react. I did not have a hooter to match my adversaries’ but I honked like a maniac, till he heeded and stopped. On closer questioning of the driver on the mis-demeanor, it turned out to be a car of a Haryana MLA.

This is one of the perils of democracy or should I say one of its ailments. Such goon like politicians are thrown up by a purely democratic process. So as much as they are to blame for manipulating the system to go up, so is the electorate responsible for anointing them to their own long term detriment.

But curiously, besides the sticker of MLA, the car also had a sticker saying authorized for Red Light till 31/12/2012. I wonder if this was genuine.

As common people, we must resist such behavior, as not resisting will reinforce it. Why should I bother attitude will make this country even more unlivable than what it is today. But just a word of caution, today, political patronage sometimes conveys to its beneficiaries a sense of immunity. Whipping out a gun on the flimsiest grounds and killing innocents is a matter of pride for them.

We need a Chanakya or at least a Churchill

The need of the hours is a Chanakya. A true Chanakya not of the type of Pranab Mukherjee who is lauded as a Chanakya but works for a party or for a family, or may be the party and the family are one and the same thing. That being the case, India's future is but quite bleak.

But it will not be easy to produce an ideologue, a statesman, an academician, a strategist, an orator or a transitional leader like Chanakya. May be we could make do with a Churchill. A politician adept at statecraft, willy enough to control the wicked, high on personal integrity and probity, and the with the interest of the nation above all.

In fact I am getting more and more convinced we need a Indian reincarnation of Churchill. Someone, who is on the brink of jingoism when it comes to his country and its interests. Someone, who believes in the great role that India has played in the past and is destined to play in the future. Someone, who does not get weak in the knee when he is obliged to allude to the ancient Indian Civilization read “Hindu Civilization” for some merits or learnings. Someone, who is sagacious enough to differentiate secularism from minorityism.

Churchill believed, that post war Britain would be beacon of the Christian civilization. So much for the western worlds claims to secular credentials. 

Someone, who instinctively knows, which the 3 gravest problems were that India needs to address. Someone, who can protect the territorial integrity of the country as though it was his ancestral land any one inch of which he will part only upon his death.

Someone, whose speech is as powerful as Nehru or Atal Bihari or Churchill. Someone, who can charge and inspire contradicting ideologies and fighting factions into a unified goal of economic prosperity and military supremacy.

Whose Independence day speech keeps you awake and not lull you to sleep like Manmohan's speech does.

Spineless Nincompoops and Hitler Didi

Mamta Bannerji gets a farmer arrested for asking questions in her rally (sec 332/334), alleging he was a maoist. It was a professor earlier this year, who the police had detained on similar charges.

This is indeed the real India, but I thought this was not the metro India. I believed, such high handedness was not possible in metros. But politicians wielding the power that they do, it is quite possible.

The media once again snuggled with the underdog. Highlighted the high handedness of Didi and the concomitant public outrage secured the release of the farmer / bus conductor.

I sometimes feel we are a country of spineless nincompoops. There is a well-written law in the country. There are a host of educated people at the helm in the form of the civil servants who make the permanent executive, who are supposed to implement this well defined law in the country.

Why then do they obey whimsical and autocratic dictates of truant and corrupt politicians? Why does the commissioner of police not tell Mamata B, that the farmer cannot be arrested on such charges? Why does the police not tell the political masters trying to delay the arrest of Kanda, that he needs to be promptly arrested.

Why is that at the behest of a senior politician the police let the entire top brass of Union Carbide scoot out of the country?

Because we are all corrupt, we have misplaced public values (I here make a distinction with personal or social values ), and we are a bunch of spineless nincompoops, who can bend backwards to those who we believe are in places of authority.

While I was growing up, I always believed, women genetically and also by virtue of their role in society, would be more rational, tolerant, empathetic and kind in their handling of situations. But Bahenji, Indiraji, Soniaji, Amma and Didi, are all women and all quite ruthless, quite high-handed and also quite autocratic.

I too am a critic from the fringes, and from the little I understand of what plagues our country, I thing it is lack of love for it, and a lack of pride in ourselves, and a abjectly vague sense of duty. Two very simple ways of stemming this rot could be, re-instating a compulsory moral science class and making NCC compulsory till class 10 in schools.

Why Not Ramdev??

A section of the masses is supporting Ramdev. I don’t think Ramdev is a great yoga guru. But clearly he has made yoga popular. And imparted it a popularity that veterans like Aiyyangar could not.

Regardless, of yoga lineage, Ramdev has mass appeal and the cause he espouses has merit.

Once again the English media is going beserk. I have said this many times in the past. They bring clowns like Suhel Seth, English reaking of an  accent of upstarts and with material success gone into their heads, they become quite omnipotent. Mediocre caliber and they feel they can be universal commentators on all and sundry happening around them.

Ramdev brought in focus on black money. An issue that had been shoved under the carpet by one government after the other as doing so suited them all. And for bringing this focus Ramdev should be cheered and not challenged. The English speaking sanctimonious elite, have cornered plum positions for themselves at the cost of a constituency that is lower in its proficiency in English. And having done so, they feel they are in their right to criticize any person or movement that is "earthy". Which means that is unpretentious.

Madhu Trehan asks TV channels to boycott Ramdevs movement. She expects the media to expose Ramdev. In a democracy what matters?  The numbers. How do you put pressure on a government? By showing numbers. What then is wrong if Anna or Ramdev show numbers. When they dont show numbers, media starts lamenting loss of popular support. When they tom tom numbers, media and self appointed critics cry hoarse otherwise.

I am convinced about one thing. This English chatterati, couched in the comfort of their airconditioned homes, take such frivolously sanctimonious postions that they make a mockery of themselves, show complete lack of understanding of fundamental issues irking the people, and come to debate to appear elite and evolved with personal agendas cloaked in garb of make believe erudition and social wisdom.

It would be amply appropriate for Suhel to comment on Lakme Fashion week, and he may even make sense there, but he must decline invitations to panels that ponder on privileges of democracy. I also don't understand why Arnab should invite such people.

The Indian Caste System………..

One thing is clear. The Indian caste system is an enigma to the geopolitically and demographically Balkanized west and Europe in particular. The western scholars find the caste system so very intriguing that they spend a lot of time in delayering its complexity and getting to its kernel.

In its current form or even in the form that it was practiced a century ago, the complexity of caste system and its protean nature has always befuddled the western mind. One reason for this is, the western scholar wants to be a universal commentator on all cultures which is humanly not possible. He tries crash courses in cultures with the endeavor to understand, dissect and dissert on them, tries to objectively categorize facts, sets and subsets, with an objectivity that any evolutionary phenomenon would clearly defy.

Imagine, if an Indian or Chinese would try and document the evolution of the various sects of christanity, and try and fit every sect and cult in some corner of a 2x2 matrix. Fitting sects like the Mormons or Scientologists, the various other sects of Christians or some other cults like the Cargo Cult would not be simple for anyone who has not experienced the society from within and analyzed it from without.

But since the Indians and Chinese have never undertaken this lofty task of meandering the maze of western civilizational evolution and analyzing the western world, particularly with the abandon typical of mediocre scholarship with which the western world has always attempted to dissect the eastern one, the tortuousness of the task will never be well understood.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the term used for the “exterior castes” was “depressed”. This is how the British described the nether of the nether castes of south, whose shadow on the twice born Brahmins warranted purification.

When the British were in India, they spent a huge amount of money and equal amount of resource in getting a parameter of caste incorporated in the censuses. Well, equipped with this, it was simple to follow the policy of divide and rule.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, if you would ask a Sikh who he was, he would veritably say - Hindu. The British in their conniving trademark smartness which they called statecraft and I would call Machiavellian Statecraft, introduced Sikhs as a new feed in the censuses and forms of employment, and with ease created an new identity, and they granted on it a martial status (though the Sikhs had in their fold non martial castes also), something that the British to the hilt exploited till the terminal part of the their rule in India.

Similarly, an extremely scientific methodology was used to drive a wedge between the Hindus and Muslims. And Morley wired to Minto “ what you tell me about mohommedans is full of interest …………….and it has prevented them from any longer being representing the Indian Government as the ordinary case of bureaucracy versus the people” and the situation would not be seen as the British Government and the people of India, but as “Hindus versus Muslims”.

As an Indian, I really don’t understand why the caste system is so enigmatic for the westerner. If the South German is a better mechanic than the north, and French a better perfume maker, and Italians better tailors, and in Ukraine the Kozaks better warriors than the rest, then why is the caste system, the origin of which was in the division of labor, so enigmatic. So one would argue that these were not hereditary. But then the guilds once upon a time were indeed hereditary.

Whenever I am traveling in Europe, lot of educated European professionals inquire about the “Indian Caste system” and “arranged marriages”. Existence of caste system or social stratification is not so obvious in Europe and needs a discerning scholar to draw evolutionary parallels, but arranged marriages in Europe were happening till not too long ago.

The British also found the caste system intriguing, and wanted to use it to their advantage. If the country could be divided on caste and religion, their task of perpetuating a exploitationist rule would be that much simpler. And for this reason, they introduced caste in the censuses. Sometime I feel, if the French has colonized the country, the governance may have been poorer, but the effect of colonization may not have been so long lasting. The British, be it Israel or India or wherever they have been, have left bacterial strains which are all antibiotic resistant.    

               To be continued……………