Some days  prior tro the  end of the campaigning for the second phase of the Gujarat Assembly elections, the Cambridge–educated Mani Shankar Aiyer  made a rather grievously ill-timed faux pas—one that played directly as grist to t he Modi-mill of  lachrymose  breast-beating  about his allegedly targeted persona.

How much of factor this may have been in the actual loss of the Congress is hard to quantify, but a factor it did become.

On the heels of this occurrence  came another comment, no faux pas th is time, from the newly-minted Congressman, Alpesh Thakore; asked in a leading sort of way in a press interaction whether Aiyer might have said what he had said about PM Narendra Modi in order to help the Bharatiya Janata Party, Alpesh promptly assented to this mischievous suggestion  from the reporter, offering to say that Aiyer had indeed been a fifth columnist, and that earlier as well, in 2014, Mani Shankar had made a comment about Modi which had likewise helped him unleash a campaign.

For someone who has known Aiyer over a long period of time, been attentive to his long career in politics and in the Congress Party, and read his work, all the above makes for a painful context.

While it is true that Aiyer has a fetish about Cambridge and needs to acknowledge that those who have not had the good fortune to go to Cambridge may also be worthwhile people, it is an abomination to think that he would ever be of the same colour as the Sangh Parivar, or the least inclined to help its shenanigans. 

Indeed, often his verbal excesses  repeatedly underline his intense aversion to the Sangh and his unbending allegiance to  Nehruvian secularism.  One has no hesitation is saying that  after all scions of every political party cross over to the Sangh, Mani  Shankar would be the last man standing his ground.  To then hear such a man of indubitable ideological integrity so casually maligned by a neophyte in politics is acutely distressing, although not even Aiyer’s worst enemies are likely to be taken in by the cavalier Alpesh Thakore comment.

It seems to us that the new Congress President may consider doing two conjoint things: have a heart to heart with the already contrite Mani Shankar, and revoke his suspension from the Party, and, concomitantly, advise Thakore to  consult with authorized spokespersons of  the party before venturing on observations that  are ill-informed and inexcusable.

One of the examples that Rahul Gandhi has set during the Gujarat campaign is to speak with responsible and truthful decorum in the public arena. This example is worthy of emulation by all Congress persons and all politicians. This includes Mani Shanker Aiyer who, scintillating intellectual that he is, sometimes forgets that he doubles up as a  politician and thus must learn to couch his contempt in language that is politic rather than offensively in-your-face.

The post The Virtues of Holding One’s Tongue appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Photo credit: Indian Express

While Donald Trump forges ahead to be the world’s most powerful CEO and then to keep the world’s Muslims from entering America, India’s own Sangh Parivar “trains” its young  saffron shirts to do one better—namely to prepare, rifle and lathi in hand, against our own Muslim Indians.

Last week saw a clutch of Bajrang Dal fasios in fierce drill to ward off possible attacks from an enemy who was represented as a man with a beard and wearing an unmistakable Muslim skull cap.

Noticeably, the target was not sporting either a Pakistani or an ISIL flag, leaving one in no doubt that Muslims in general and our own Muslims in particular were meant to be the enemy. Had the target been terrorists or terrorism, surely the additional symbols would have been imperative to the purpose of representation; and one might have expected to see not only saffronite warriors but perhaps a pluralist group of Indian citizens setting shoulder to the patriotic wheel.

When quizzed about the event — which has now thankfully drawn legal notice from the local authorities in Uttar Pradesh where elections are due in six to eight months (whereby hangs the true tale of the Sangh’s predictable resort to communal polarisation ahead of time) — spokespersons of the Parivar have been saying how routine an exercise such a thing is; after all, such “self-defensive” drills are habitually imparted in schools and colleges, don’t we know. 
 
Indeed we do, but in none of those habitual exercises is a bearded man with a skull cap shown to be the enemy. To put the matter starkly: suppose for a moment that such a drill were to be performed by some Madrassa-going young Muslims, showing the target to be a man with a vermillion mark on the forehead, what might the Sangh have said.

What clearly should have worried the mighty BJP-led government at the Centre is the inference that its own young satraps do not trust it to protect them from the Muslims of Ayodhya and Uttar Pradesh.  Not so; because more than you or I the mighty Central government knows for sure what these shenanigans are about and why they are necessary to the Sangh’s   burning desire to capture Uttar Pradesh, come the elections. Do remember that in the elections just concluded in five states, the BJP could only win one — a wholly expected change of government after a 15-year-long stint by the Congress in power. Much as that “victory” is sought to be peddled as a globe-shaking triumph, the reality is that the supposedly defunct Congress has won both a larger share of the vote across the five states, and a considerably larger number of Assembly seats. 

And the further bleak prospect of, in all likelihood, having no success in the forthcoming elections to the Punjab, Uttarkhand, Uttar Pradesh and, cuttingly, Gujarat Assemblies. Note that in the last state mentioned the Congress recently swept to victory in some 80 percent of seats in local elections.

Not having brought the least redress to the people at large, tall promises in the 2014 elections notwithstanding, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Sangh that now rules it with an iron fist has one done-to-death recourse, namely, to give out the call for the “nationalistic” Hindu nation to keep the swarm of skull caps and beards at bay, or else all may be lost.

Fortunately, this wretchedly destructive gimmick has been yielding fewer and fewer dividends and it is to be hoped that the coming year will see a saner politics gather sufficient force to defeat the Sangh’s cynically divisive and potentially violent tactics — all of which, don’t we know, is marketed under the rubric of “nationalism.”

A hope must also go out to the United States of America that either Hillary Clinton or the inspiring Bernie Sanders will put paid to the Trumpet that blares doom for politics of reason and universal human values.

Look where you will, and the world seems to be teetering on the edge of that burning lake of fire. Do not forget either that 100,000 Jihadis worldwide remain committed to cast the rest of the recalcitrant world into that lake — a reality that can hardly be met through the politics of imitation.
 

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There is a spot upon the earth
Where people stand firm and true
On behalf of those the Fat Cat shuns—
It’s called JNU.
 
The Fat Cat marshals violent hordes,
Enforcement winks assent;
The truth—it sneaks from subterfuge.
The mask of tyranny is rent.
 
The Fat Cat does not questions like.
He pushes them under the flag;
The camouflage does not suffice
To lock people in the bag.
 
Coming days will surely tell
The fake from the noble passion—
Do flags and heroes or little people
Make up the real nation.
———————————-

Blasphemy or Sedition

We are a continent of choice,
You are free to choose either one—
Speak freely of god or man,
And pick blasphemy or sedition.
 
Be not your hate of our kind
But deriving from atrocity,
You invite either sedition
Or embrace blasphemy.
 
Our hates are nationalist—
Yours dangerously just;
Should you insist to disagree,
Well, l we destroy you must.
 
God is that we think is god,
And State is what suits us best;
Refusing either postulate—
The police will have to do the rest.
 
 

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