Month: July 2018

‘No Confidence’ Motion – The Road Ahead….

By Mark Tully former BBC correspondent in India).

This Post, forwarded by a friend is only REBLOGGED by me. I did not write it, but agree with it. Hope it is really by Tully.

Mark Tully, India’s true friend

I am going to stick my neck out to predict that the (recent) ill conceived ‘No Confidence Motion’ (in Lok Sabha) is going to be the point, which is going to be looked back at, as the turning point for the end of the Gandhis’ influence and corrupt ecosystem.

Rahul Gandhi will never ever be the PM, or even be in a position to be king maker. Not ever.

Sonia Gandhi will not fight the 2019 general elections now. The debacle, telecast live the whole day, with the highest ever viewership, has put paid to her ability to bribe her way to power. It has shattered once and for all her illusions and mirage of being untouchable under all circumstances.

The stance and ruthlessness of the PM in tearing her and her progeny to bits, is not the polite attacks of yore. It is a clear bugle call that he cares two hoots for her ecosystem or her supposed control on power.

He has finally shed his diffidence to take on these arrogant snobbish dimwits head on, with no quarter to be given to her Lutyen’s Delhi Darbaris and their supposed ability to manipulate levers of power.

So, what are NaMo options ahead to tackle these erstwhile royalty. He is going to make sure Deepak Misra gets an extension of 2 years by amending the retirement age, which will ease the pressure of Lutyen’s Delhi Darbar crowd to approach SC for relief against the government. Also, it will put the Ram Mandir issue on fast track with resolution closer to the general elections for maximum impact.

We can now hope to see an amendment to the SPG act, which assures lifelong security at public expense to the Gandhis & their progeny. With Sonia Gandhi not fighting elections in 2019, her time in 10 Janpath will be over.

Even if Rahul Gandhi wins the next elections (which now is a big huge IF), he will probably be heading a party with less seats than 44. NaMo will shunt him out of his Akbar Road residence and his sister out of Lodi Road residence. That will signal their sorry plight in the power counting one and for all, to everyone to see.

Today’s debacle is going to have a far reaching impact on acceptability of Congress, with the Gandhis as effective partners in an bid to unite opposition. Even though it now seems to be a pipe dream for opposition to present a united front in coming election season. Except maybe in UP, where SP & BSP face possible annihilation if they don’t come together. Congress of course is not even a contender in UP.

Madhya Pradesh may see BSP making compromises with BJP as today’s debacle makes Congress a poor support base.

Today’s debacle has changed the political fortunes of the Gandhis for the worse. They don’t face any challenge to their hold over the Congress as the top supposed leadership of this party is only filled with yes men and royal darbans of the Gandhis, but the effects on the bottom rung will accelerate their complete demise from the political scene.

And without effective bottom cadres, the only way to stay relevant is to throw money to instigate riots, something they have already been doing for the last few years. A short term strategy with even more short term effects but assured long term destruction. And that time is NOW.

So what did NaMo actually achieve today? He essentially called out the empress and the prince as naked. There is now no going back to the illusions of splendour for them anymore.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.

(Though fluent in Hindi, Mark Tully is a Britisher by birth and a friend and well-wisher of indua, where he settled down. I have no way to confirm if it is really by him or a fake news.)

An American Who Loved India

IMG-20180724-WA0016.jpg
An American who loved India

THERE ARE THOUSANDS of Indians who feel the United States if America is a land of opportunity, excellence and promise of great future; the land they love and adopt as their own.

There were also some British, like C. F. Andrews, Dr. Annie Besant and Sister Nivedita who identified with India and admired its ancient culture spirituality and wisdom.

Very few may be knowing that a British Nobel Prize winner in science Dr. J. B. S. Haldane, famous for his neo-Darwinism, chose to be an Indian citizen and settled down in Orissa at Bhubaneswar.

In mid-60s I ran into him at Nagpur railway station, clad in Khadi and looking for, of all things, a paan shop. He obviously liked paan – an Indian condiment with betel leaves and, sometimes, chewing tobacco. 

But Americans who loved India and identified with this country are fewer (but not unknown). I could only recall the American wife of MP and Janata leader the late Piloo Mody.

Then I learnt of Sharon Lowen, an Odissi dancer, trained since 1975 by Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. She has, according to Wikipedia, performed and choreographed for Indian films and television and presented hundreds of concerts throughout India. 

images.jpegBorn in Detroit,USA, she learnt ballot and other  Western dance forms, puppetry and theatre. Michigan University graduate and Masters courses on South Asian studies aroused her interest in Indian culture and dance. She came to Indian and studied Odissi and other classical dances.She  wrote two books – ‘The Dancing Phenomenon: Kelucharan Mohapatra, Odissi‘ a book on her guru and ‘Performing Arts of India: Development and Spread Acrtoss the Globe’.  It was due to her efforts that the West came to know of Indian dance forms, especially Odissi. 

Yesterday was her birthday, according to a friend.who recalled how she became popular with a Telugu film ‘Swarna Kamalam’ and danced in several other films too, But what impressed him more was the fact that she became totally Indian, always wearing a saree and a bindi on her forehead. He said her expressions when dancing to songs in Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Odiya and even Sanskrit showed perfect understanding of the song’s meaning and love for India and its culture.

She says though America is her mother, India is her foster-mother. And there is always a greater attachment to one who brings you up.

Ex-PM ‘s Price For Son’s Power

The man who became India’s Prime Minister during the post-Emergency Janata rule, HD Devegowda, is the first (hopefully the only) leader to support the Congress move to have as India’s next Prime Minister Rahul Gandhi, the grandson of Indira Gandhi who had imposed Emergency and jailed thousands of Indians.

That does not come as a surprise as Rahul’s Congress is supporting the Chief Ministership of Kumaraswamy, Devegowda’s son, though his party JDS won the LOWEST position in Karnataka Assembly election.

The parallel between his choice as PM and Rahul’s candidature is significant. Devegowda’s became the compromise candidate just to keep out a Brahmin, Ramakrishna Hegde and Rahul alias Pappu (by his own admission) to keep out an allegedly Brahminical party, the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The announcement by Devegowda is nothing more than an admission that he was prepared to pay any price for Congress support to keep his son in power.

That Rahul running the country may be a disaster, that he himself has been anti-Congress for decades does not matter to him.

Both stand for dynasty rule.

Any price for power is the real motto of all Indian political parties, almost all of them headed by dynasties.

Pappu’s Puppy Love — And Wicked Wink

“YOU CALL ME PAPPU but I don’t hate you,” Congress chief Rahul Gandhi is said to have told Prime Minister Modi yesterday during the ‘no confidence’ motion in Lok Sabha which his party spearheaded.

He did that after walking up to the PM from the Opposition benches and hugging him.

A very noble act indeed, reinforcing the theory that political differences should not degenerate into personal enmity – a sentiment I reiterated in a blog weeks ago.

Then he gave himself away by facing the House and winking. This was one more case of the Congress self-goals. The wicked wink not only proved that the hug was NOT an act of affection or love, but a childlike statement that he meant the opposite.

Children often cross their fingers or wink when they say the opposite of what they mean. So he not only said he was Pappu but also proved he was childish.

The act, which drew a reprimand from the motherly Speaker of Lok Sabha, amounts to a self-goal as it exposes his hatred and childishness.

And it also raises a question: When did Modi call him Pappu? I don’t recall a single speech in which the PM did that or spoke of anything other than political differences. In fact he never failed to greet Rahul and his mother Sonia on their birthdays. He congratulated the party when it won in Karnataka.

If anyone heard him call Rahul Pappu in public, please say when and where, with a video as proof.

If Rahul did get called Pappu by many it was because of his own statements and acts like visits to Bangkok (known more for sex tourism) for meditation, talking of a potato making machine or not knowing rudiments of farming and now admitting publicly that he is known as Pappu.

Making self-goals appears to be the primary qualification for being in Congress: calling Modi a chaiwala, asking Pakistan to help remove him, saying a video by a staffer cost 30 ‘lambs’ (lakhs), or presuming that he meant Renuka Choudary laughed like Surphanaka in Ramayana when, in fact, he did not say it at all. Many more can be listed.

Rahul Gandhi, with all these acts, did prove that he would certainly be the Prime Minister soon, perhaps in 2019.

We only get the rulers we deserve.

Can We Cast Caste Away?

A Marathi poem by Praveen Vaidya puts the focus on India’s worst and biggest of all problems – casteism.

CASTE IS NOT CELEAR

The old statue was broken, damaged; it was clear it was desecreted, a protest , all set, was dropped reason: statue’s caste was not clear

The rape shocked everyone, but no help; action there was none no protest, none supported her as her caste was not clear

Exploited, her own life she ended; both for and against many tried politics; but no action was there as her caste was not clear

The book was shocking but none asked if it was true or just fiction, no protest, no slogan we could hear as the author’s caste was not clear

Finally, don’t stop action on caste consideration,. instead, away you cast considering caste

जात कळली नव्हती

चौकातील पुतळा थोडा तुटला होता
जरासा फुटला होता..
झाली होती त्याची विटंबना
मोर्चेकरीही तयार होते..
दंग्यांची मात्र सुरुवात झाली नव्हती
कारण अजूनही पुतळ्याची..
जात कळली नव्हती

बलात्कारी पीडिता किंचाळत होती
अत्याचाराचा न्याय मागत होती..
जनता नेहमी सारखच फक्त बघत होती
मदत करणारच होतो हो आम्ही..
पण अजूनही पीडितेची ..
जात कळली नव्हती

छळलं होत त्याला व्यवस्थेनं
म्हणून त्यानं आत्महत्या केली होती..
ठरतील आता त्याचे समर्थक-विरोधक
सोबत होईल राजकारणही
मग हि शांतता कसली..
कारण अजूनही मरणाऱ्याची ..
जात कळली नव्हती

वाचलेलं पुस्तक अन त्यातला गाभा
कळलेला इतिहास आणि त्यातले संदर्भ
खर मानाव कि खोट
तेच उमगत नव्हतं..
कारण अजूनही लिहिणाऱ्याची ..
जात कळली नव्हती

शेवटी एवढंच..
जात कळत नाही म्हणून
माणसं टाळू नका
जाती अंता साठी..
जातीचा अंत पाहू नका

—-प्रविण वैद्य

Time To Shut Up?

WORDPRRSS SHUT ME out of my own blog on laptop asking for a decade-old passwornd. I could not get the ‘title’ page to write on.

I found, however, that the WP app on my smartphone enabled me to keep writing. I could resume the blog; I felt I was really ‘unstoppable’.

It was a miracle of technology and though too old to master it, I clung to it desperately.

Writing on phone in a train or plane with auto-‘correct’ changing correct words into meaningless gibberish, has however added to the problems of failing sight and memory.

Though I found quite a few blogs written in poor language and with mistakes of grammar, too many typos in my posts worried me. After all I lived for the last 60 years on writing.

But along with technology habits also changed. Reading has beome out of fashion and Google the repository of all knowledge. S

o you need not have any background or information. You just Google for it when needed.

It all comes back to the basic issue of old, outdated, worn-out brains still thinking they have some knowledge (from just being alive for too long, which they confuse with experience) to pass on to the new generation.

It is not easy for ‘old foggies’ to accept the truth that it is no virtue in being ‘unstoppale‘ just by being alive just on borrowed time, having ‘outlived their utility‘, an expression one of my ex-editors was fond of (and which, I argued then, meant it was time for them to die).

He was right. And luckily he is dead.

I am not that lucky..

Rahul is Congress, Indira was India

Congress personified

RAHUL GANDHI’S TWEET saying “I am Congress” might have reminded many of his grandmother Indira Ganhi’s Emergency-days campaign (by her sycophants, apparently at her instance), that “Indira is India”.

That no individual is indispensible, the party is above the leader and the nation above party is what any sane person would agree with.

And yet, in most developing countries individuals have been using their power to make it seem that they alone mattered more than everything. Once in power they tend to retain power for all time by hook or crook (often by the latter).

The tendency to be liftetime rulers, common in tribal African nations, seems to have spread now to China and Russia, reminiscent of ancient kingdoms ruled by autocratic kings

Congressmen, obviously, believe that Indira Gandhi can be succeeded only by Rajiv though he had no political background, Rajiv by Sonia though a foreigner, not experienced and unwilling and Sonia by son Rahul though he was unfit and more of a comic figure.

In fact a senior Congress leader Mani (neech admi) Shankar (uchai wala) Iyer deckared there could only be two persons considered for party Presidentship – the mother is the son. Despite overt wooing of Muslim vote banks, the grandson of Feroze was deckared to be a “Janevudhari” Brahmin (wearing sacred thread) though no thread ceremony (Upanayan) was held.

Had Rahul refused the sycophants would have unhesitatingly opted for his sister Priyanka and if she thought going to beauty parlours was more important than the strenuous job of being PM, they would have found great talents in her son or daughter. If they too preferred playing to the hard job of PM, Congressmen would not hesitate to enthrone the family’s dog which, miraculously, they would find far superior to any of their own selves.

Even those who believed in the dynastic rule of kings would not have been such great believers in dynasty. All because every one of them belong to some caste and are bound by caste rivalries while the Indira dynasty had to no caste as Nehru’s daughter Indira married Feroze, either a Parsi or, as some say, a Muslim.

And these casteists, who demand reservations for Dalit (low caste) Christians and Muslims (who claim to be casteless), call Bhariya Janata Party communal!

All parties with dynastic leaders now join hands with the Congress.

(Written on phone in Georgia, USA)

Is ‘Education’ English?

Hima – Top in running, not English

SOME PEOPLE troll others just to get attention, because media, social or otherwise, notice negativity more than positive words.

When Hima Das won a gold medal for running in World Athletics and was interviewed on camera, the girl from a village in Assam spoke in broken English. The Athletic Federation of India, commended her for her spirit and commitment despite her being not so fluent in English.

Then came some trolls slamming AFI for insulting the athlete for not being fluent in English. Huma herself took no offence and defended AFI.

It did not matter to the trollers that the girl, as Prime Minister Modi said, brought tears of joy to everyone who felt he/she was an Indian.

It was a running race, not an English exam. And she made us all proud.

The incident brought into focus the way most people equate education with mastery over English. If you don’t know English, you are looked down upon – you are considered rustic and uneducated – a ‘gavar’ – uncivilized, uncouth.

Decades ago as a cub reporter, I recall interviewing a highly paid UN expert from Japan who did not know any English.In sharp contrast was the way the sons and daughters of Lalu Yadav, the Bihar leader, tried to show off by replying in English to questions in Hindi in a TV interview.

And they are from the family of a leader who deliberately speaks rustic tongue and claims to be a follower of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia.

Also crowding my mind were memories of many interactions with ‘doctorsaheb’ (as Lohia was called) in which he would shun English as the common man in India did not know it, though he was one of the best speakers of English in Indian politics (anyone who read ‘Wheel of History‘ or ‘Interval in Politics’ by him would know it). Yet, doubtful of a teenager’s ability to translate his Hindi correctly for my English daily, he would dictate to me in English. He was not dogmatic – language was only a means of communication.

This practice of equating English skills with education is deprecable. It has become fashionable for all who want to be considered modern, civilized and polished, to speak in English.

And thinking in English has its flip side. A friend used to say that when a person is being discussed and he/she comes you wish him well, saying ‘Sau saal jio’ (live a hundred years) in any Indian language but abuse as devil (think of the devil and.,.) in English.

It is the propensity to flaunt mastery over English words that made Sashi (Cattle class) Tharoor join the group of Congress leaders scoring self-goals for that party – like Mani (neech admi) Shankar (chaIwala) Aiyer, Renuka (HaHaHa) Choudary and Digvijay (Diggy RaJa) Singh.

Wait for Tharoor to dig out some old obscure, flamboyant, word for that syndrome – unless you already think it should be ‘Pappuism’

(Written on phone)

Lessons Dug Out From The Thailand Cave

Not just the boys, several lessons also came out from the Thai rescue

THE WHOLE WORLD was following with abated breath the admirable efforts to save 13 Thailand boys stuck in a cave,

At that very time, 35 people died in Mumbai due to potholes left by the civic authorities unrepaired and not a single head rolled.

No one even resigned.

The very first rain of the season has caused devastation but it failed to teach us the lessons which the Thai disaster did. Some of them are:

1) The identity of none of the children been divulged.

2) Their families were not hounded by TV channels for stupid exclusive interviews about how they felt.

3) The government did not glorify itself for the great steps it was taking.

4) The opposition did not politicise the issue and blame the government for failures, real and imaginary.

What if this happened in India? As a social media postings put it, Indian media would have tried to outdo each other in interviewing officials and even the cave bats and showing sordid pictures of hungry kids.

The Congress would have blamed BJP on Arnab Goswami show, with idiots like Kumar Ketkar and Danish Ali putting the blame on RSS.

The post says all search engines and Google would have been flooded with queries on the caste and religion of trapped boys.

“With Rubbish Kumar harping on this and the Behenji claiming that”, the TV debates would have “just raised the noise levels without saying anything of substance.”

A “Manuwadi Conspiracy” theory would have been evolved saying all the efforts were because all the boys were of high caste.

A feminist would have claimed that had the victims been girls no such rescue efforts would have been made.

“The football coach involved would have been crucified after media trial and his family home would’ve been picketed by grandparents who are still students in JNU”

Elon Musk would have signed a deal with India Government to provide a submarine to rescue the boys.

The doctors treating the boys would have been beaten black and blue for dereliction of duty.

The anonymous post points out that not only was it done quietly without fanfare but there were many others who helped quietly. For example:

— a nearby shop owner selling oxygen cylinders gave as many as required for free.
— a Muslim woman cooked halal food for Muslim divers on all the days.
— a laundry owner washed all the rescuers’ clothes for free all the days.
— nearby people brought food in the required quantities.
— farmers of a village nearby readily agreed to their fields being inundated with water pumped out of the cave and lost an entire year’s farm produce willingly.

— water pump operators then pumped the water out of then their fields voluntarily.
— divers came from all over the world..
It was pointed out that different people in different civilizations behave differently on such occasions.

The quality of people becomes evident from these actions.