Tuesday, December 25, 2018


Who’s afraid of the Statue of Unity?
It is not difficult to know why the prestigious Unity Statue built by Gujarat Government as a befitting memorial for Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel is reviled by political foes of the BJP. The man who made the Union of India possible merging 565 princely states together into a single political entity, and also was the first Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of India has few friends in the ecosystem created by the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was not happy even after usurping the Prime Ministership of the country. He continued to be wary of Sardar’s mass appeal and political clout, probably because he had ideas of a dynastic succession to him, and feared Sardar’s opposition.
The world’s tallest statue standing a 182-metre tall on a bend of the river Narmada in Gujarat was inaugurated on October 31 by the Prime Minister of India is therefore attacked by politicians of all hues opposed to the Narendra Modi government, and their acolytes in the media and even academia. Some call it an “irony cast in stone” perhaps alluding to the Sardar ordering a ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Congress party suddenly claims Patel was a Congress leader. Both these realities were not rebutted by the BJP or Prime Minister Modi, it may be noted. But Congress party forgot that Patel had to withdraw the ban on RSS following the Justice Kapur report absolving RSS of any role in the assassination of Gandhiji. This had also resulted in Patel being ironically described as a pro-RSS man by the butter-boys of the Nehrus (who had by then assumed the surname Gandhi) and the Muslim fundamentalists!
The third type of opposition to the Sardar Patel statue is for squandering on his image “an estimated at Rs 5,000 crore” which “could have been invested more profitably!” These people forget that the Congress installed statues of the Nehru-Gandhi’s all over the country as a vulgar and cheap way to remember the Nehru clan governments! What is the cost of the prime real estate in New Delhi where imposing mousoleums for their dead leaders have been built and maintained over past six decades? If the statue of Congress leader Vallabh Bhai Patel who banned the RSS is installed by the BJP government, it wasn’t obviously to claim he was their man; it was an apolitical tribute to the man who was a great Indian patriot.
It may be remembered that Statue of Unity project was first announced on 7 October 2010. A Statue of Unity Movement started to drive support for the construction of the statue, organising a Suraaj ("good governance") petition signed by around 20 million people which is considered as the world's largest petition! A marathon ‘Run for Unity’ was held on 15 December 2013 in places throughout India, and the statue’s Foundation stone was laid by Sri. Narendra Modi, then the Chief Minister of Gujarat on 31 October 2013, the 138th Birth Anniversary of Sardar Patel. It was not a political gimmick for the people of Gujarat to remember the great son of Gujarat. The statue was built on a Public Private Partnership model. Most of the money was raised by the Government of Gujarat. The Government of India had allotted 3 billion for the project in the budget from 2012 to 2016.
The world’s highest, the Statue of Unity is not only a tribute to the Iron Man of India, but also is the first such tourist attraction located in India and is termed ‘Pride of Nation’. A sense of patriotism and unity of India will be infused in the hearts and minds of the people who visit the Statue of Unity, estimated to remain as it is for a thousand years. According to media reports 2.79 lakh visitors went to see the statue in a month and its ticket sale generated Rs 6.38 crore in revenue. It implies that it will continue contributing to the national income of India through tourism for the next ten centuries.
Now let us examine a peculiar hostile reaction from overseas. Tory MP Peter Bone had recently made a bone-headed comment about the Statue of Unity. He said the project was “total nonsense”. “To take 1.1billion pounds in aid from us and then at the same time spend 330 million pounds on a statue is a total nonsense and it is the sort of thing that drives people mad!" he said.  The man’s unhinged crudity should not be ignored.
According to the admission of UK’s Department for International Development it had ended ‘traditional aid’ to India in 2015, though Britain continues to fund projects in India – it was £92.6million in 2017. These projects are their choice – for example, £14,000 (Rs 13.27 lakh) used to increase ‘religious tolerance among young people’ was obviously sought or suggested by the “Hindu Nationalist” government headed by Mr.Narendra Modi! Former President Pranab Mukherjee when he was the Finance Minister of India had stated in the Rajya Sabha that India did not want British any aid. "We do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development exercises (expenditure)." That was way back in 2012; today, India is the world’s fastest-growing economy, has sent a mission to Mars, boasts more billionaires than the UK and itself a net aid-giver.
I can’t figure out why the British are sulking over the Statue of Unity and what irks the British MP in particular. Are the progeny of people who came here and conquered us to make us civilised Christians envious of the former colony’s symbols of power? They couldn’t contain the anger and dismay when on November 14, 2008, the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Impact Probe analysed the subsurface debris and reported the presence of water ice! They were envious of our nuclear submarine as well!
If the boorish British MP looked back at the history of his country, he would realise his country wasn’t any “Great Britain” when India was doing much better economically. Their “greatness” came about from plundering the world. What ails Britain when they see their former colonies regaining in power and stature is that Britain understands its weak position in the comity of nations and psychologically unable to handle the situation thanks to the meaningless “Super Power” status and an unreasonable veto power in the UN! When they had the 159-feet tower clock Big Ben was built their capital was full of hideous slums and one part of the city with a tidal ditch running through it as the only source of drinking water! The world of poverty and poor houses novelist Dickens drew up in his several novels are unforgettable. The wealth came from employing slave labour and sucking colonies dry!
Economist Professor Utsa Patnaik (who taught at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, from 1973 until her retirement in 2010) has recently written a detailed analysis shows how India was reduced to penury by 190 years of the malign British Raj! According to her, the total drain from 1765 to 1938, compounded up to 2016, comes to £9.2 trillion; since $4.86 exchanged for £1 those days, this sum equals about $45 trillion- an amount to be larger than the cumulative 200-year GDP of Britain! Britain colonized India, a country geographically 20 times larger, and 20 times the population, was dominated by Britain with just about 40000 British officers and men. It was not without some truth that Gandhiji, in a moment of anger-induced humour said that if Indians spat in unison, we could drown the British occupying forces!
In this context, with respect to Mr.Peter Bone, I must say Aneurin Bevan was right about describing at least some of the Conservatives as “lower than vermin”. The last comment I wish to make on the subject is quoting what Anthony King in his book “Who Governs Britain?” writes about British Government: “since they cannot punch above their weight,..talk above it instead!” Let us shout to the goras “we don't, we don't, we don't care!”


Friday, November 30, 2018


The politics of Constitutional secularism

One of the “millionaire Marxists” from the South has sent to his friends and fellow-travellers a video-clip of his appeal to save the Constitution of India. I think it is the Left’s idea of using their “opinion leaders” to reach out to the public. Though he knows me, and we used to have regular WhatsApp wars on our conflicting views on socio-political and economic issues, he avoided directly mailing it to me; but sent it through a common friend.
Let us call him Qumar, as one of our North American friends would. In the beginning of the 2 minutes video Mr.Qumar quoting the Indian Constitution’s Pre-amble “We the people of India having solemnly resolved to constitute ourselves into a sovereign secular, socialist, democratic Republic” proclaims that “we cannot allow anyone to rob us of these basic rights!”
I was amused by our Communist friend’s new-found love for Indian Constitution and the “constitutional patriotism” (German: Verfassungspatriotismus) - the idea that political attachment ought to centre indirectly on certain politically correct norms, and certain select “values” and, or rather the procedural aspects of a liberal democratic constitution, dissimilar to nationalism which acquired horrible connotations following the Nazi variety in Germany! In its original German context of a forlorn hope for uniting the East and West Germanys, it meant that a people divided culturally and politically could perhaps re-unite only espousing the cause of common nationalism by saluting the constitution rather than an ideology or a cultural construct. It is an absurd concept in the Indian context unless you take seriously the rootless Indians who spent decades gazing at the USSR and since its collapse and are fervently gazing at China seeking inspiration for liberation!
Constitutional patriotism was a mechanism created in the absence of a shared history or culture, an alternative concept to create a sense of political belonging which India didn’t need! It is a cruel joke on the people of India that liberals are grappling to their souls with hoops of steel a couple of expressions inserted into the pre-amble of the Constitution during the Emergency as a ploy to hoodwink the minorities as though it was a special privilege for them! Remember, the Fundamental Rights in the Indian Constitution were suspended during the period when this hoax of “secularism” and “socialism” was introduced into the Constitution by the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution of India enacted in 1976. The Preamble asserting that India is a secular nation was rather strange since, neither India's constitution nor its laws defined the relationship between religion and state! Indira Gandhi and our Leftists never realised that the Indian Constitution flowed from the Indian nationalism, and not the other way around. So much for their sense of history, and sense of justice.
Till recently Indian Communists used to oppose the Constitution of India as an “Imperialist” one! They had in principle also forsaken nationalism since the Communism celebrated “internationalism” in its quest to conquer the whole world. Like pan-Islamic ideology, Communists hated borders of non-Communist nations they hoped to vanquish. Let us, for example, see how Jawaharlal Nehru, a Communist fellow-traveller had to say about them in 1957: “The whole communist creed, apart from economic contexts, seems to be based on hatred and violence”! T T Krishnamachari, Nehru’s finance minister addressing Communist members in the LS in August 29, 1957 said: “Every action you take, every meeting that you address, every crowd that you gather, you only want to divert not only the economy of the government, but the Constitution of the Country...” The Communists attacked the Gandhian Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodaan movement aimed at solving India’s land problem by inducing landlords to make charitable gifts of land to the poor because they thought it was a sop to smother the revolutionary ardour of the landless masses! How did their revolutionary ardour morph into “Constitutional patriotism”?
When did Indian Communists start respecting and loving the Constitution of India? I believe it is much like the Islamic Taquiyya, dissimulation of original intent by silence or omission to suit temporary needs. Their accommodation to work within the framework of the Indian Constitution is only tactical, like supporting Congress candidates to beat BJP in elections or putting up hard-core Muslim communalists and members of Christian bodies as own candidates to garner minority votes!
Did Indian Constitution become dear to the Leftists since it was amended to include “Secularism” and “socialism” in it? Do they think people don’t know how those words came in? The Constitution of India which the people of India gave themselves to, through the august body that drafted it – the Constituent Assembly didn’t mention in the Pre-amble or anywhere that India will be “secular”, or “socialist” though there was a general consensus that while the members agreed on the nature of the Indian state adhering to secular principles and socialist economic policy. But the Communists opposed it because Socialism as it was described by Karl Marx - dictatorship of the proletariat - cannot co-exist with parliamentary democracy which according to the Master was only bourgeois democracy! So the two words introduced into the Pre-amble made the Constitution of India sacrosanct for some people when the basic feature of the Constitution, namely, the Fundamental Rights was suspended? If this isn’t hypocritical and sanctimonious humbug, what is it?
Matters get out of hand when Comrade Qumar expands his idea of the sanctity of the Constitution they had all along reviled. “When Gauri Lankesh, Dhabolkar, Kalburgi and Pansare, are murdered, they are stabs on the Constitution...” (The 3 dozen or more murders of political opponents belonging to the RSS during Pinarayi Vijayan’s rule in Kerala are Constitutionally consecrated human sacrifices, I suppose!) Do we understand that there were exactly 4 murders since the Constitution of India came into effect, signifying that the Constitution of India was under attack? This assertion comes from people for whom violence becomes its own argument; for whom political change can’t come from debate or democracy, but only from physical force! The whole country knows that the Marxian left intellectual stream, deluded by its hegemonic status in the cultural map of their pocket-boroughs, panchayats or any local self-government bodies, or a State like Kerala they rule, forcibly deny space to diverse thoughts and icons. Fascists-style Leftist violence on those who disagree are on the rise on campuses and in the streets of towns and villages. In Universities like JNU or Jadavpur under Marxist student bodies, “there is no room for other voices” while they consider it their “democratic right” to allow incremental creep of their views into the liberal system! Marxist violence against their political opponents seems to have this imprimatur (licence) of what they consider to be politically right!
Apart from the words secularism and socialism, the entire text of the Indian Constitution is what Communists had Mr.Qumar’s love for and the eloquence about the Constitution of India reminds me of what George Orwell said about the political language of Communists – that it is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind...Their willing capitulation to Islamic mores, that too in the name of tolerance, multiculturalism, political correctness is an example!
Qumar is frothing at his mouth as he defends the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Sabarimala case, referring to the popular protests and the review petition accepted on file by the Apex Court as acts of affront to the judicial system! It may be observed that a review petition is presented before the S.C Justice in his chambers, usually during a lunch break, and more often than not decided within 5 minutes if there is no substantial basis for review in the petition. In the late 60s and 70s they were lashing out at the judiciary. Coming to the sanctity of the Supreme Court or other judicial orders, the Communists’ record while in Government at the States has been consistently viewing them as an obstruction to popular justice! There are several Supreme Court rulings ignored long after they have been made, the most glaring one being in Kerala by both Communist-led and Congress-led State governments in Kerala doing nothing to implement the Supreme Court order in the Tribal Land Alienation issue decades after it was made, and had also tried to introduce Ordinances and State laws to defeat the said order unsuccessfully, Why are the Commies anxious to implement an order post haste in the current pilgrim season when the devotees have en masse protested in the streets and contested it in the Court itself? It smacks disregard of Hindu religious sentiments, which is displayed by bringing to Sabarimala activist atheists belonging to religious beliefs that question Hindu belief system, and plain arrogance of sate power,
Communists claim that they are fighting for equality of male and female Swami Ayyappa devotees. What they have constantly fought for is a one-party society where the notion of individual freedom or human rights for all citizens is as alien as it is in North Korea, Cuba, or China, where democracy means no democratic election and where the despotism of one-party rule invariably ends in terror and death! Like all factions of radical Islam deny the concept of nationalism, and believe in reviving the Islamic nation as a single political entity governed by Islamic law, Communists of all hues deny the concept of nationalism in the hope of bringing all “states” together as a single political entity governed by Class War and the “Dictatorship of Proletariat”! People, popular will or popular sentiments have never had any place in Communist political system.
The world over, it is a feature of the Communists to bask in the comfort and security provided by the countries they live in and even as their sappers and miners plant explosives under their foundations. When England granted India freedom in 1947, the undivided Communist party (CPI) denounced the whole thing as a false freedom “yeh azadi jhooti hai” (B T Randive) and actually tried to instigate armed resurrections in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. But in 1950, after India became a Republic, Stalin decided that India under Nehru could be a potential ally in the Cold War where the Soviet Union and the US led two ideologically opposed camps that sought global domination. The CPI promptly discarded the idea of an armed overthrow of the Indian State and participated in the first Lok Sabha elections of 1951-52. Please note once again: the Marxists who accused others of being stooges of Imperial powers were in the habit of taking orders from Moscow. Now they look towards China for inspiration!
Communists consistently seek to undermine free speech by painting it as bullying or hate speech! (Why, you can’t get a “Letter to the Editor” published in The Hindu if it is against Communists or it supports the Modi Government! A Non-Communist cannot give a lecture in JNU or Jadavpur University!) Perhaps the biggest hate speeches or bullying had come from within their party, starting with the talk of class war! So Communist intolerance has to be accepted as a legitimate political platform! They have long shown that they have no scruples, no shame, when it comes to letting their platforms use anti-Indian/pro-Pakistani/pro-terrorist propaganda.
Is Hindu “majoritarianism” aggravating our religious differences making the rest of Indians less national/nationalist? Is there any majoritarian intimidation in the country, any signs of a breakdown in our national fabric to the extent sensationalised by our Comrade Qumar that the only way to survive as a sovereign secular, socialist, democratic country is for all of us to tangentially respect our Constitution as a sign of our patriotism? Are we to follow the example of the remaining Communist countries in the worlds that are obviously pathological societies, cesspools of hate, mediocrity and misogyny? Public policies in India have been based on “integration,” not on “assimilation,” and hammered into a “composite” culture as the Commies would like to have. Communists and their Leftist fellow-travellers look at the world through their ideological monocles and blame every imagined injustice in India on communalism. Then enters the Hindu terror construct. That propaganda is used to whip minority communities into a frenzy of anger and resentment against "Hindutva forces". The Congress and Communists under the grip of existential crisis from the onslaught of BJP are exploiting every opportunity to fan the flames of this resentment is made a political currency during elections. In fact it as clear as day light that the primary communalists in India now are Communists and other "minorities" and a minuscule number of Hindus like Qumar, either out of guilt or for ulterior motives believe that they benefit somehow by separating Indians in groups including caste and communal. They attack Hindu Nationalism as if it is a Fascist movement when it is just an ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation surpasses other individual or group interests, giving more importance to cultural unity including language and heritage. It is a universally recognized sentiment moulding public and private life and one of the great, if not the greatest, single determining factors of modern history. What holds together China now is its nationalism, not Communism/Socialism which is irrelevant as an ideology in modern China. What holds together Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam too are fierce nationalism! But then, the Indian Communists, Left’s standards, like its vision, are all double....

Next time Mr.Qumar goes to the US he must spend some time at The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, an organization that does valuable work documenting the crimes of communism, interestingly funded by Hungary, a former Communist country! It will help him get rid of the crude left-wing populism and identity politics which seek to play into the divisions within the Indian society.

  

Tuesday, July 10, 2018


In defence of Sushma Swaraj
I read with great admiration, and gratefulness an article written by BJP General Secretary Ram Madhavji in a recent issue of the Indian Express. It was a powerful and profound reaction to the trolling of Minister for External Affairs Ms.Sushma Swaraj by people who profess themselves as Prime Minister Mody’s supporters,  part of the BJP’s “core” voters, etc. The trolling against Ministry of External Affairs and the Minister gave the impression, perhaps inadvertently, that since Tanvi Seth and Mohammad Anas Siddiqui were an “inter-faith" (read Hindu-Muslim) couple they had to be personae non grata under this government! That is sacrilegious!  The language of obscenity, hate and worse, violence that was employed in our social media, against Sushmaji, a rspectable individual with a long record of service as a political worker, parliamentarian, Chief Minister and Union Minister was crass and condemnable. Some of the comments on social media were cruel and sexist. One last point is that the spurt of spontaneous reactions against her were mostly from women who profess to be from Prime Minister Modi’s support group, and the simultaneous and sudden appearance of some supporters to her from the Opposition camps looked like a multi-pronged campaign to bring her down, eventually making fissures in the BJP camp drawing her to the likes of the disgruntled Sinhas and Shourie!
A pro-Modi news website published an article saying Sushmaji was “played by the Left”, and she probably fell for the support from unexpected quarters! Mybe she was played by the Liberal-Left, in the context of the “secular” politicians and their friends in the media continuing to make the Prime Minister of India someone to hate, vesting him with a bogus and negative political identity as anti-minority, a crazed xenophobic bigot who will eventually drive away Muslims, Sushma Swaraj was under pressure to walk on egg-shells while performing her job! Modiji and his colleagues are damned if they act, and damned if they don't. In this context Sushmaji had taken decisions to dispel this pathological prognostics, even bending over backwards to be nice to the individuals from the minority communities having problems where her Ministry could help. This was considered by “hard-core Hindus” as the hated "secularism" and "appeasement", and opposed tooth and nail in the social media, without knowing that these were essentially self-gaols, which also negate the good intentions behind her deeds! In the case of the Passport of the inter-faith couple, as high an authority in the BJP (and RSS) as Shri.Ram Madavji had made the matters clear in an Indian Express op-Ed piece. Shushmaji was sinned against, not sinning! 
Facts of the case of the “inter-faith couple” show that Sushma Swaraj was deliberately brought under a cloud of largely invented omissions and misdeeds. I think Shushmaji is also a victim of the power paradox that generally affects her party - a situation where political dominance can, paradoxically, reduce the ruling party’s actual power to shape and guide society, among other things. Like the neo-cons in the US opposing Trump policies, a section of “Modi-Bhakts” are opposing the Modi Gvt. They would do well not to fetter Narendra Modi and colleagues by “ideological handcuffs”  in their own interest! Remember, Modiji campaigned and came to power not promising Hindu Raj, while many issues close to the "core" support group was in his agenda. I wish his so-called support group didn't give the forces in the Opposition camp grist for their propaganda mill alleging communal fanaticism against the Modi Government to deprive BJP of political legitimacy, and to undermine the PM’s authority, making even right decision appear devices to trick the minority voters, fiercely opposed by the voters on the other side of the political spectrum.
None of the hysteria and condemnation of Sushma Swaraj that has gone on these past couple of weeks wasn’t necessary. If there was goodwill and respect for the Prime Minister, the "Sushma Swaraj hatao" crowd could have sat down to analyse the situation as Sri.Ram Madhav did. But people deliberately chose to demonize Sushmaji as if denying everything she did for the country in the past, they were doing a service to Narendra Modi! You don’t measure government decisions by hysteria. Their hysteria does not reflect a higher understanding, morality, or sense of responsibility, rather certain ongoing project of malice and low ethics, astonishingly against own side!