Friday, November 24, 2017

An Indian Roorback
There is an American political phenomenon called a “roorback” which is a false and damaging report circulated for political effect during an election campaign. In the American context it has been always about a certain candidate. In India, a larger democracy, it’s scope has been widened to hurt a political party, a false report about some alleged corruption based on no evidence and contrived statistics circulated in the final days of Gujarat election campaign, timed for climactic effect when in the heat of the campaign the victim will not be able to expose the fraud before the voters go to the polls. The current controversy cropped up suddenly from the “emergency purchase” of 36 French Rafale Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft. The Indian Air Force requires 42 fighter squadrons to achieve optimal capability, and was falling short of this. The proposal to buy 126 fighter aircraft was mooted during Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. During 2000-2012 the fleet had declined to 34 squadrons due to obsolescence. The RFP for procurement of 126 MMRCA was issued in 2007, but the final decision to order got delayed for another 10 years till the recent decision to buy 36 of them in a fly-away condition,
The Modi government insists that it got significantly better terms than those quoted in the original bid under UPA, with a total reported saving of more than 1600 million Euros (350 million Euros on the cost of aircraft with a further reported saving on weapons, allied maintenance and training package amounting to a around 1300 million Euros or Rs 12,600 crores). According to the Government, the present IGA was signed purely between two sovereign governments and no private individual, firm or entity was involved in the process from the Indian side. Under the current agreement, the 36 Rafale jets procurement offset proposal supports the 'Make In India' initiative of the Indian Government through Article 12 of the IGA. The Offset proposal also includes provisions for transfer of sophisticated design technology which is meaningfully superior to the licence manufacturing on offer in the earlier discussions by the UPA government. Dassault states that they will facilitate the implementation of 'Make In India' by the industrial supplier notably through offsets for 50% value of the supply protocol. 

It is not financially prudent to negotiate for “transfer of technology” when the “emergency procurement” deal is only for 36 Rafale jets in fly-away condition, and when the capability of the PSU Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is highly suspect in the manufacture of sophisticated jets according to such a technology transfer. Technology transfer has been so far a mirage, resulting only in a huge fee for an agreement which so far has not initiated any serious manufacturing activity, except some “modification” for the MIG fighters, and none for the Dassault Mirage2000, the original deal for which when signed, the “intention to proceed” contract was for an initial order of 40 aircraft for outright purchase in fly-away condition and an option to produce another 110 aircraft in Hindustan Aeronautics Limited with total technology transfer. We dropped that MoU and proceeded to contract MIG 29, at the cost of Rs.91Cr per piece, much less than the Mirage 2000’s. In 2011,the UPA government had signed a Rs 10,947-crore contract to upgrade its entire fleet of 51 Mirage 2000 fighters to extend the life of ageing fighters - acquired in the late '70s and early '80s by another 15 years – nearly 215Cr a piece! Remember, the Cost of the new aircraft to IAF was about Rs.130Cr.
Those who sat on the Dassault Rafale deal for 13 long years and have also a record of kick-backs in every possible defence deal have no right to pick holes in the Raffale deal! The HDW submarines deal, the Bofors Howitzers deal, the Scorpene-class submarines deal worth US$ 6 billion with Thales, France, Choppergate involving purchase of AgustaWestland “VIP helicopters”(bribes to be paid out, divided as "AF" €6 million, "BUR" €8.4 million, "Pol" €6 million and "AP" €3 million”), and so on. Take the single largest procurement of an aircraft carrier for Indian Navy, considered also the biggest “military industrial nightmare”: Originally built as Baku and commissioned in 1987, the carrier served with the Soviet Navy and later with the Russian Navy as Admiral Gorshkov and was decommissioned in 1996, and was bought in 2004 by the NDA government, for free, but the refit to cost Rs 4,881.67Cr (USD 974). After several hikes under threat from Russia, the price was increased to USD 2.35 in 2010.  The CAG criticised the fact that the ship rechristened as INS Vikramaditya was a second-hand warship with a limited life-span, 60% costlier than a new one! Retired Admiral Nadkarni noted that a Spanish yard could build such a ship for about Rs 3,000 crore, and the Koreans would modify a merchant ship to a utility carrier with a flattop for Rs 500 crore and deliver it in 18 months! As with all our defence contracts with Russia which had consistently suffered delays and cost overruns, the ship completed sea trials in July 2013 and aviation trials in September 2013 and joined the Indian Navy  on 16 Nov 2013 at a total cost of Rs.19141Cr (USD3 billion) almost 4 times the original price at which it was contracted!  Meanwhile, Commodore Sukhjinder Singh, a Naval Officer supervising the refit of the carrier as the principal director for the project was discharged from service for his “moments of indiscretion” on job!

A “national” newspaper with a Leftist agenda had published a report a couple of weeks back, in which it quotes “sources” telling it that India has already informed the French that “not a single” Rafale will be bought in flyaway mode they will be built in the Dhirubhai Ambani Aerospace Park, run by Reliance Aerospace Ltd and Dassault Aviation in the Mihan Special Economic Zone in Nagpur! If Dassault Aviation in their commercial wisdom sets up a joint venture with Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence, the Government of India has no business to mind it, because it is not a part of any offset contract which incidentally, is yet to be negotiated!

The Congress party tried to make a case against the Modi Government’s deal saying that there is no mention of “transfer of technology "USSR allowed India the manufacture of the MiG-21 under licence, but since 1963, all told, 205 MiG-21FL were built in India, of which only 196 were built entirely in India before obsolescence caught up with it! It was the delay in signing an agreement for the Rafale fighters during A K Antony’s tenure as MoD that forced the Indian Air Force to use its MiG-21 Bison with a high rate of crashes. (More than 170 IAF pilots were killed in MIG-21 crashes for which the Russian Ambassador to India Alexander Kadakin blamed use of spare parts bought from unauthorised sources!) Having realised the fallacy of local manufacture, the IAF opted for the expensive modifications and refitting of the old Russian fighter jets. The 1980s decision to purchase  the French Mirage-2000 “state-of-the-art” 110-150 jets was done by IndiraG, who was also MoD then, under wraps reduced to just 50 units on account of its high cost. What happened to the deal involving “transfer of technology” clause under which the French would assist in setting up the props for the eventual, manufacture of 70 of the aircraft in HAL's Bangalore set-up could be easily guessed! One of the most virulent critics of Modi administration has pointed out that “A.K. Antony, our most risk-averse, most anti-US defence minister since 1991, ended up buying more from the US, and directly, on government-to-government basis and off-the-shelf (C-130s, C-17s, P-8Is) than in our entire independent history.” He blames the former rulers for painting the country into such a corner, weakening its strategic posture, and eventually leading the present government to make possibly a $5 billion purchase off-the-shelf in a wartime-like haste, while paying kind of backhanded compliment to Narendra Modi for his decision to order Rafale jets off-the-shelf as wise and brave, like a senior doctor risking immediate surgery to save a deteriorating patient. 

Since the historic 2014 elections that made the BJP the largest party capable of forming the Central Government on its own, shrank the Congress party to less than 50 seats in the Lok Sabha, and took away the CP(I)M’s status as a “national party”, decimated the once powerful caste combination in the north India, the Opposition parties have been running like headless chicken. Narendra Modi had won elections by removing the issues of religious and caste distinctions as well as the regional politics and replacing them an agenda of development, and corruption-free governance. In the last three and a half years, neither the Opposition nor a controversy-driven and hostile media were able to raise serious questions about any corruption by either the Union Government or the BJP-run State Governments. So they have been left with silly and concocted stories of a “hate speech” by a Sangh Parivar leader here, a skirmish involving Gourakshaks there, and generally about Fascist “intolerance” in the country without any substantial issue that concerned common people! In Kerala it was accusing the Prime Minister of defaming the people of Kerala; the last campaigns were closed with ineffectual propaganda full of wild allegations against the palpably transparent ant-corruption policy, the Demonetisation.

The Congress Vice President RahulG, who is yet to find something sensible to speak about anything or against the BJP and Modi government now alleges that he had information about "personal corruption" involving Modi! He had threatened earlier that he will present the “explosive” stuff in the Parliament, but didn’t speak about the Demonetisation about which he now finds corruption, ignoring that when Prashant Bushan went to the Supreme Court with the request for a probe, the Apex court threw it out of the window, saying it was all unsubstantiated allegations. The latest trick employed by the Congress and other Opposition parties is to plant kick-back stories in web magazines and insignificant players in the media about the purchase of Rafale fighter jets from France. The Wire, a Leftist magazine is in the forefront of the calumny against Narendra Modi and his government. It is already in a defamation case for spreading false news about BJP President Amit Shah’s son Jay. These people are trying to turn the table against BJP in the Gujarat election, trying to sabotage the Party’s and it’s leaders’ reputation as corruption-free. I am sure they will draw a blank again, and suspect this time around, it will be a very costly gambit for them!



Sunday, November 19, 2017

MOODY's HELPS MODI?
An article in a web magazine called  COUNTERVIEW today has an article that says the higher Sovereign rating given to India by the international credit rating agency Moody’s and the earlier good reports by the World Bank and IMF are as a result of Modi's top Gujarat babus in PMO lobbying  with Washington institutes, quoting an un-namd “ Insider”. the ‘Counterview’ article is yet more proof that left-wingers who struggle with economics and basic analytics have to now rely on low-grade gossips and that facts are never an obstacle when they still try to advance a certain “required” narrative.

A credit rating is a measure of the credit worthiness of a borrowing entity, whether a sovereign or a company. It is a tag that tells a potential lender how likely it is that the borrower will default on payments. I am no financial expert but I suppose India’s credit rating going up by one notch to Baa2 from the earlier Baa3, simply indicates that the rating agency believes India’s credit worthiness has improved since it last conducted a review. (China’s rating was also downgraded earlier this year to A1 from Aa3, citing risks from soaring debts. Russia is at Ba1 among BRICS countries) It will mean a lowering of the risk premium that India will have to pay; and that means India can now command a lower interest rate for the debt that it issues. If you had watched the investment climate in the country during the last year, you would have seen FIIs making more investments in debts than equities thanks to the better interest rates following lower inflation. This trend will possibly be reversed now. That is no earth-shaking news, for the Opposition politicians to cry foul! When people are upset about someone says something nice about our country, it shows up the protestor’s complete alienation!
It is known that international monetary and financial systems like the World Bank and the IMF routinely monitor the economic and financial policies of member countries. This activity is known as surveillance and facilitates international co-operation. The responsibilities of IMF and World Bank had changed for many years from those of guardian to those of overseer of members’ policies. Their reports and the ratings help capital markets and credit risk management professionals worldwide to respond to an evolving global marketplace with confidence. There may be lobbying of sorts to project the policy perspectives of the countries to encourage better understanding by their Boards of Directors so that the image of the countries is not tarnished if not enhance. Indian (Modi) government too has the right to be heard with respect and minus the usual intellectual condescension. The writer thinks that some top bureaucrats from the Gujarat cadre, currently in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) must have lobbied with World Bank, Moody's and Pew, for ensuring a sharp image makeover of Modi ahead of the Gujarat elections because last year these bodies didn’t show India under Modi in good light is being irresponsible to the level of an unthinking rage and hatred for the Modi Government. Has the author heard Keynes’ comment “When facts change I change my opinions. What do you do?”
“An insider in Gujarat government told me” seems to be the ultimate political kryptonite this author could produce! It will be another damp squib, I assure you! Since the run-up to the general election of 2014, we are witnessing a growing gulf between what the electorate thinks and how a small intellectual elite in India as well as abroad perceive happenings in India! We saw how little the coloured reports by a small coterie of agenda-driven journalists influenced the outcome in UP or in the various municipal and local bodies elections in different States! I will not be surprised if the outcome of the Himachal and Gujarat elections aren’t different! Perhaps it is that fear which makes some Opposition leaders and journalists make a hue and cry about Moody’s higher Sovereign rating for India. Next in line will be better ratings for Indian Companies. Moody's have revised outlook for three Indian public sector banks to stable from negative, and appreciated the capital infusion plan for the PSU banks is a significant credit positive for them public Moody's. Outlook for Indian banking system was stable in August 2017.
I think the higher rating puts Modi Government in a “watched-pot situation” for making calculated and calibrated steps forward to implement fiscal, financial, land and labour market reforms in the days ahead. Moody’s one-notch rating upgrade is a bet that India will contain public debt. The upgrade is a recognition of the fact that India continues to follow a path of fiscal prudence. Moody’s acknowledge that many a Modi reform remain at the design phase, while believing that those implemented to date will advance the government’s objective of improving the business climate, enhancing productivity, stimulating foreign and domestic investment, and ultimately fostering strong and sustainable growth. Government alone cannot achieve much. The people, including those in the Opposition camps too have a role in development efforts of the regime. It is here that the expression “power paradox” comes to my mind: a situation where political dominance can, paradoxically, reduce the ruling party’s actual power to shape and guide society and economy! It is sad because here is a PM who inaugurated a great unburdening on issues of religious and caste differences and regional politics with an agenda for development of all, treated as an enemy of the people! There appears to be a new thought process and propagation of it in the Opposition ranks in which reason dies, ideas go unchallenged and become axiomatic and eventually beliefs!
The sure sign of the death of reason and even discretion and intelligence is the flood of obscenities flowing into the Facebook page of the hapless Australian Cricketer Tom Moody, for helping Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a higher credit rating for India!










Saturday, November 4, 2017

Intolerance debate: Reply to Soli Sorabji
Reading Mr.Sol Sorabji’s article “A duty to be tolerant”(The Indian Express, Nov.1, 2017) I was reminded of the “9 LEGAL METHODS LAWYERS COULD USE TO DEFEND DISNEY VILLAINS” on MTV website. Sorabji indeed is surrounded by a “mysterious halo” of supreme confidence as a former chief law officer of the Government of India and an eminently successful lawyer. For a while I suspected he was engaging in a repugnant, dishonourable scare tactic with an eye on the coming elections in Gujarat and HP, or rather engaged to do that; not worth our respect! No! He is not like any of the Chancery legal professionals in Bleak House, sinister villains, shysters, or “narrow, mean, ignorant pettifoggers.” Soli Sorabji is a Parsi, and a thorough gentleman, and a man of great erudition. He can’t be looked at as a avocat des crapules (“villain’s lawyer”) defending indefensible positions! I have always thought that like Dickens’ Tulkinghorn Soli has no life outside of the law; and “never converses when not professionally consulted”; and not politically allied!
Then what’s his case? Sorabji postulates that in contemporary India, the rise of intolerance is alarming. Dissent is smothered and self-censorship takes its place, endangering democracy itself. He pontificates on the duties of Indian citizens and connects immediately to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (UDHR) that recognises a vital link between human rights and duties in its Article 29. (I must point out that the majority of the UNHRC member-states do not represent democracies!) From there it is a straight jump to the “the painful reality that one cannot effectively exercise fundamental rights nor perform fundamental duties unless tolerance is prevalent in society.” So his premise is the threat or practice of intolerance in India that is Bharat.
I am a seventy-year old living in India till date, a reasonably educated, “tolerant” citizen of India. I read newspapers and watch news and panel discussions on TV channels routinely. And my own, and also that of a group senior citizens like me who sit and discuss everything under the sun during the evenings, thought that while some atrocities are taking place in this vast country, and are mainly dissected and discussed for the benefit of television rating points for survival of the respective Channels in their business. At times we have felt that the Opposition parties, in their “existential crisis” in the “Modified” politics, economics and governance of the country since 2014, are creating a scare and "defaming" the country, deliberately creating a propaganda of intolerance. In this vast country, how many incidents of “intolerance” have been reported in the mainstream media which is largely hostile to the present regime? I would say they are statistically negligent considering the population as well.
The strange argument by the Opposition parties and the “intellectuals” backing them is that if a case is filed against an author for writing a book with views unacceptable to a majority of Indians, that is “intolerance” of “freedom of expression”! The judiciary or the police are approached when there are statutes that support the issue opposed; right? Although the right to peacefully protest is enshrined in the Constitution, there is no constitutional or other legal right to commit criminal acts to make a point.
The law imposes on government (through police) an affirmative obligation to take all reasonable steps to protect the speaker’s right to speak, the audience’s right to hear and the protesters’ right to protest. Has this “due process” ceased to exist in India or is it thriving?
COW PROTECTION comes from the Directive in the Article 48, Soli! If you go by the principles of democracy, if the tradition, the rituals, the faith and the religion of the majority (Hindus, 80% still!) should settle matters strongly! How come Islam, that came from Arabia, has cow-killing as a "religious" injunction? Xian/Muslim invaders-cum-proselytizers to killing and eating cow obviously to spite the Hindus who were conquered in their own land. Being a lawyer Mr.Sorabji is aware that there were anti-Cow slaughter laws in as many States before Modi government came. Congress spokesperson Digvijay Singh was heard labouring hard during Bihar Assembly elections to remind people that it was mostly Congress governments that had banned cow slaughter in about 24 states, including Bihar, way back in 1955 when the BJP was not even formed! So cow protection statutes are fine; but implementation is communal, and a mark of “intolerance”?
Hate Speech: The “liberal-Left” institutes speech codes to prevent what is generally called “hate speech” which is a perverse tactic to marginalize, and exclude, the speech and ideology of those with whom liberals and Leftists do not agree, those individuals who express ideas that offend their peculiar world-view and sensibility. I must remind Mr.Sorabji that the opposite of everything is truly not hate; but indifference; and it could be worse!
Do you remember Jyoti Basu, banning the exhibition of the movie Taurus in a Kolkatta film festival saying "such movies should not even be made"? That was PC to comrades! So was use of a bit of a Tagore poem in an ad, crying out sacrilege! Can you publish anything against Communist icons, living or long-dead, in Kerala? So the elite progressives give respectable cover to the worst prejudices of the era, not that they believed in them, but to rabble-rouse!
Do you think demonetisation was an example of Modi’s intolerance; intolerance towards the rich, Soli? Many cried that it was “looting” people’s money! Even a Supreme Court judge predicted “riots’ in the wake of demonetisation, but nothing happened even when a third of the currencies in circulation evaporated and cash for daily transaction was not available. People did experience some pain for a few months. Wasn’t it unbelievable the way people had extended support to the government? That showed Indians “tolerate” anything reasonable!
Didn’t we “tolerate” 10-15000 participating in the funeral prayers for Yakub Memon, supporters of certain ‘cause’, a belief that Yakub was a holy warrior of sorts, who was unjustly hanged by Hindu India? Don’t we tolerate who burst crackers and distribute sweets to celebrate Pakistan’s victory over India in Cricket, amid chanting of “Pakistan Zindabad”? Haven’t we tolerated the Maoists, Naxalites, Jamaat-e-Islami, various militant and violence prone Muslim fundamental outfits and Communists of all hues misuse of the tools of democracy to destroy democracy?
What I see at work in these situations is the long established “secular” narrative in which endemic Hindu communalism accounts for all the ills that afflicts religious minorities in India. Let me ask you, Soli, does the miniscule community of Parsis, with their disproportionate wealth, positions, and glory in comparison with others, feel “intolerance” too? Success being a sin against fellow beings, Parsis should have certainly faced persecution from less successful and poor Hindus!
After promoting "secularism" for over six decades why do we have more frictions in the Indian society than even before Independence? If credit must go to the Congress governments for keeping Muslims an unsuccessful and inassimilable minority and almost automatic electoral fodder for 6 decades, remember they were able to accomplish only with the help of their butterboys/girls in the media. Majority’s voices are marginalized, disregarded, denounced as hate speech, unworthy of being part of an ongoing, vigorous debate in the nation's ‘marketplace of ideas’. Mainstream media, some of them proven “paid media”, defame, demean, and libel “Hindutva forces”. In the midst of the saturation coverage of the intolerant Gowrakshak’s (because it involved Sangh Parivar!) few seem to pay attention to the fact that in Kerala s many as 120 BJP-RSS workers were murdered by CPIM activists for just being Sangh Parivar members, and that Kerala is ruled by LDF!
There is no “Islamophobic” political culture in India and except a lunatic fringe everybody feels embarrassed and ashamed to blame Muslim community for terror! Some of us are ‘sorry-for-being Hindu’ apologists to be “secular”! India is not just Babari Masjid .It was a Shia Mosque, and Sunnis who burn Holy Koran in Shia mosques are at the forefront of war on Hindutva vaadis who want to have Ram Temple restored where they believe, with concrete evidence backing that belief, a Ram Temple existed! Heaven is not going to fall if the vast majority of Indians who feel for it are given their temple and have them build a grand mosque nearby! The acid test of secularism that Muslims and Christians have to take in ‘Hindu India’ is just this: will they be tolerant to the extent they accept Hindu religious beliefs on an equal footing with their own! Pundits were J&K’s litmus test concerning religious freedom; and Kashmiri Muslims who have a long history of inciting violence and hate against Hindus and Sikhs failed that! Terrorist groups are tangled up with dubious IUML and Muslim interests in Kerala and elsewhere in the country. Terrorism isn't always about blowing up buildings or killing people. It can also consist of activity intended to frighten, demoralize, or neutralize the nation’s defences, destroy communal harmony—in other words, a variety of psychological warfare against “others”.
Hindus have been happy to live their lives without bothering about Faiths of others. Their scriptures accommodate other faiths are different paths to the God! We are not talking about “monopoly of truth and wisdom”! The erudite Sorabji isn’t ignorant not to know of the Christian “REPLACEMENT THEORY/SUPERCESSIONISM” which has  been a significant concern of interfaith relations activists; he is being deliberately naive! Why are Christians, Muslims (and atheists too) waging war on beliefs that mean nothing to them? Life in India showcases the magnanimity and largesse of an Indian (Hindu) society that doesn’t riot every time Jihadis and their local supporters cause terror; or when proselytising pastors and moulvis distribute pamphlets calling Hindu deities demons, or speaking in public conventions to that effect. Please go to Kerala, Soli, the entire stretch of the road to the Hindu pilgrim route to Sabarimala temple are plastered on either side with the terrible punishments in Hell for those who do not believe in Christ! Hindus tolerate it! It is in this context I think the precondition for getting protection under the Freedom of Religion clause of the Constitution should be whether the objectionable order/situations amounted to a substantial burden on the exercise of their faith.

To those who cry hoarse for an “inclusive society”, yes indeed. But remember, the next phase is integration. Let the thieves, thugs, mountebanks, and experts in manipulation, often described as “political technologists” and “social engineers”, understand that integration has to be based on what unites us, rather than what drives us apart; drawing on culturally centripetal national loyalties too. The country can survive policy and personality disputes. It cannot thrive in the corrosive atmosphere of rigid judgment about character and motives of a ruling party or an elected leader, Modi.

Lawyers who defend notorious criminals/terrorists require a mental leap to overcome the near-universal presumption of guilt for the defendant. Does Mr.Sorabji imply that violent activities, call to destroy the country, for its vivisection, dishonouring national symbols, denigrating faith of nearly 80% of the population of the nation, etc. constitute legitimate contributions to public discourse? Brother, I wonder how tolerance becomes a virtue and peace is possible when others are belligerent, also believe that tolerance, justice, diversity etc only apply to positions and people whose views are consistent with their own, or other than Hindus?  What are we expected to teach enemies of our system, enemies of our Country? That they can do anything to us and we’ll turn the other cheek?

I am anguished and astonished about Mr.Sorabji’s call to the media to “preach” messages considering the reality that in the current television debates outrage matters more than reason! They are also busy to cultivate a curious kind of identity politics which is deliberately structured and restricted to delegitimize and silence Hindus, Hindutva and the NDA government. If social justice and progress is in the perpetual conflict of identity politics with an intangible, exaggerated Hindu supremacy, then social progress will depend on the minorities decimating Hindus. That would be political condemnable repression, impossible in the free political marketplace of democracy.

Mr.Sorabji is borrowing from the second part of American jurist, SC Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr’ s judgement the sombre view that “the principle of free thought -  not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate - was sacred!” I prefer his earlier judgement that defined in 1919 the limits of free speech by noting that the law did not protect someone “falsely shouting fire in a theatre” because Soli is doing precisely that for reasons best known to him. Soli could have eschewed the thinly disguised polarizing vernacular of a political opponent of the present government and taken the role of a transcendent representative of Indian intellectuals whose case he seems to be arguing. Mr.Sorabji’s article in the Indian Express, for me shows the perils of intellectual arrogance in dealing with explosive social issues. The heap of jargon-filled abuse of people on the “other side” who happen to be in the majority now is unfortunately trite and untrue, though written by one of the powerful judicial minds in the country. As a lawyer, Soli must be aware that "misrepresentation of facts is an ingredient in the constitution of cheating" according to an Indian High Court! So he is cheating a whole people and Mother India, besides cheating those who choose to read what you wrote!

Though I personally feel, under the current Indian conditions, Aristotle was right to say that “tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society” and we Hindus may have to conduct an “agonizing reappraisal” about the kind of secularism Mr.Soli Sorabji supports. However, whatever intolerant ‘secularists’, sanctimonious leftists and self-righteous liberals think of Modi-led India, freedom of thought, expression and speech, though circumscribed by restrictive laws, cannot be and shall not be removed from public domain in India: mainly because they are consistent or aligned to the values in our cultural template which is essentially Hindu!