Cry, the Beloved Country

``For the past two years I have been trying to wake you up and alert you of what you now call demon. Alas! it took 100`s of innocent lives in Gujrat to make you realize that the threat is with in and not with out. ``

Wow! A man of action.

Idiot.

`Admitting that its expulsion of thousands of Muslims overnight from the northern Jaffna peninsula in 1990 was an unjustifiable ``political blunder``, the LTTE has promised to re-settle them in their original habitations as soon as normalcy is restored in Sri Lanka.`

http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=50147

Rsidhar,

I agree with your post. I hate those fools myself.

Tahmed321,

Still splitting hair I see.

Tsk tsk I will never understand people like you ... tell me something.. if `Unity` `Faith` and `Discipline` is what we need, why should I try to be MORE original and come up with new words with the same meaning? You are a Budha who wants to split hairs.

Just because Jinnah said it first and it is Pakistan`s National Motto doesn`t mean, now using it is `Played out` or `uncool`... You keep harping back to the Quran and Islam every other minute ... may I ask you has that book and that Faith not been played out yet?

First you tried to make a stupid joke. Then you tried to accuse me of `thinking only in terms of Pakistan` and now you have gone a full circle and are pissed off that I used Pakistan`s National slogan of Unity Faith and Discipline (which we have NEVER implemented). Unity in our Nation, Faith in ourselves, and Discipline in our Ranks are the three GOLDEN principles which we still haven`t implemented, and they should be repeated as oft as possible till they are implemented. It is ok if we mention, ahimsa Satyagraha and Ram Rajya, but oh no... Unity faith and discipline is Taboo... Wonderful ...



God save PAKISTAN and Indeed Islam from people like you, who can only give Sermons of the sort, and do nothing else... and who love to criticize people like myself unnecessarily.

-YLH

tahmed,

Instead of calling me an Idiot... look at yourself, and your attitude... Nothing that I said had anything `idiotic` but you are a senile Budha.

And by the way, Urstruly copied my `phrase` `Senile Old man`... with which I addressed you after you went beserk with your accusations on another board.

Ask him.

-YLH

PS: What next.. are you going to repeat your daddyo`s darshan of your one true God in ashram?

ylh;

``..you are a senile Budha. ..``

and you chant the mantra of `unity`, even as you insult and revile others? Huh? What sort of logic is that?

ylh #52 You write ``Urstruly copied my `phrase` `Senile Old man`... ``

No he did not. I should know, since I am the senile old man in question!! You are adding insult to injury by defaming poor urstruly as a rip off after having stolen his creative efforts. If you claim otherwise, then identify the post you wrote and the one urstruly wrote, and then come back and we can talk. Otherwise, judgement for patent rights goes to Urstruly!! And you stand forever disgraced before all on chowk pirating urstruly`s literary efforts!! Have you know shame? No concern for the feelings of urstruly??

On a more positive note, I see you made an effort to come up with something original, and replaced ``old man`` with ``budha``. Great job! I am proud of you, great-great grandson (this is how we budha`s speak when we try to encourage young people to improve themselves).

shammi #54 I swear if I read ylh one more time parroting ``unity, faith, discipline`` or ``pakistan zindabad`` or anything like that, I think I am going to become a senile budha anyway. :-)

Senile Budhay,

My god, you are senile Budha with the stunted emotional and mental growth of an 11 year old..

Here is the Post...

http://www.chowk.com/bin/showr.cgi?f=rsiddiqui_feb2202&n=00#reply302

`makes me conclude that you are an obsessed senile old man with nothing better to do but to bother me`

It was published on March 7th, way before Urstruly used it for you.. maybe he too was original in it for you are what you.. no harm in calling the Spade a spade.

I don`t know why wishing my country a long and prosperous life and saying `Unity Faith and Discipline` is so bothersome for you... Why does it sting you like a Bee?

What is wrong with those two statements?

Ok... lets see. how about Discipline, Unity, Belief ? or Itehad, Imaan, Tanzeem, since Jinnah didn`t say it in Urdu. If not please take out a thesaurus, and give me alternative words for them?

Or how about we just forget Unity, Faith and discipline and get down, smoke some pot and sing

`Raghpati Radhav Raja Ram`... how about that .. will that get you off my back?

-YLH

I wonder why my wishes for my country, and reaffirmation of the principles of Unity in the Nation, Faith in ourselves, and Discipline in our ranks would upset a senile Budha so much.

I don`t agree with Kuldip Nayar about what he says wrt Pakistan relations(which ought to have no place in this article anyway), but on eveything else in my opinion, he is on the mark.

http://www.dailystarnews.com/200204/06/n2040602.htm#BODY3
The lost leader

Kuldip Nayar, writes from New Delhi

Vajpayee is getting less and less convincing as days go by. The defeat of the BJP, first in Punjab, then in UP and now in Delhi, is the defeat of those forces which Vajpayee resisted first and accepted later. He can still recover lost ground by confronting the fundamentalists.

Sometimes I feel as if he is traversing a path which is not to his liking but does so because he has no better alternative. He will be surprised to find the support he has once he steps out from the beaten track.

Dear Reader, I am looking for Atal Behari Vajpayee, the person whom I have known -- or at least I had thought so -- for nearly 35 years. He was liberal, open and by no stretch of the imagination pro-Hindutva. He and LK Advani represented two different streams of thought -- Vajpayee shunning the hard line while Advani associating himself, overtly or covertly, with Hindu chauvinist forces.

I felt unhappy whenever Vajpayee stood at attention at the RSS parades for the sanchalaks to prove that he was as obedient to them as any other in their ranks. Still I believed that his approach towards the RSS was more realistic than real. Sometimes he would himself say that he was a swayamsevak. I too wondered whether he was only a mukut, as an RSS ideologue nce said, behind which was an embodiment of saffronised thoughts. I rationalised that he did not believe in the RSS philosophy and went along because of his past association.

I did not like his leaving the Janata, a product of the struggle against the emergency, preferring links with the RSS to a party with pluralistic ethos. When he joined the BJP I was confident that he would carry his liberal thoughts wherever he went.

I recall when he visited London in 1990 -- I was then India`s High Commissioner to the UK -- Advani`s rath yatra to Ayodhya was in progress. I asked Vajpayee somewhat sarcastically why he had come here when the rath yatra was on in India. He said: ``Those who are Ram bhakt (devotees), have gone to Ayodhya but those who are desh bhakt, have come to London.`` The reaction was so spontaneous and so transparent that there was no doubt where his heart was.

I know of a stage in his political career when he wondered whether he fitted into the BJP. I believed that he was the right man in the wrong party and that he would change one day.

But I find him changing and tilting towards the saffron forces. I can understand the pressures exerted on him within the party. I can understand his isolation. I can understand his exasperation. But I cannot understand his giving up without joining battle. He is the same Vajpayee who had picked up the phone and had told the then Gujarat chief minister Keshubhai Patel to drop the anti-conversion bill.

I feel sorry for Vajpayee when he seeks temporary solutions to the situations he should fight against. His stand that there should be either a settlement between the two communities over the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute or a court verdict is commendable. But it showed him in a poor light when he compromised with the Vishwa Hindu Parisahad (VHP) at Ayodhya, even though he averted the confrontation.

Sending a civil servant from the PMO for receiving the two `shilas` (stones), which would be used in the construction of the temple, is nothing by itself. But the VHP has interpreted it differently. It has asked the two stones to be placed on the 67-acre land around the disputed site. He should have been firm from the beginning and sent a no-nonsense message. But he wilted. Earlier, he used to stand out in the Sangh parivar crowd. Now it is becoming increasingly difficult to spot him there. Vajpayee the man has become Vajhpayee the mukut.

Vajpayee`s antennas were so sensitive at one time that he would know where to go to pacify people. Now they don`t seem that sensitive. Or how do you explain that he postponed his visit to Ahmedabad for five weeks? That some consideration weighed with him is evident. But this itself indicates a change. He was unsparing in his criticism of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and the authorities when he went to Gujarat. But when he summoned Modi to New Delhi, he was lenient. He was a chief minister who had miserably failed to cope with the situation, even if the allegations of his complicity were wrong. And here was the Prime Minister who did not utter even a word of criticism in the open. The PMO was at pains at that time to tell the media in private that Modi was put on the mat. Maybe, he was.

The horrified public, particularly the Muslims, expected the removal of Modi, or at least an open reprimand of a person who neither protected their lives, nor their property, let alone their dignity. Vajpayee must be naïve if he has not seen through the pattern in the pre-planned rioting. Modi would have been a chastened person if he had been taken to task in the first instance. He reportedly asked Hindus the other day to ``protest.`` No wonder, another round of disturbances took place. A Hindu girl was stripped and killed because she was married to a Muslim and a Hindu woman was murdered for having saved Muslims. Even if Modi is sacked now, the blot will remain.

A bit of the old Vajpayee flitted before my eyes when at the launching of a book, he said it would be better to keep one`s distance from the kind of Hindutva which was being practised by some. He was critical of Hindu fundamentalism.

But there he stopped. This is his problem these days. He stops where he should begin. His government has taken no action against the VHP or its other militant wing, the Bajrang Dal. The Prevention of Terrorist Ordinance (POTO) has been made into an Act. What for? No communalist has been detained. One person recently interned was Yasin Malik of the Hurriyat Conference in Kashmir. He should be tried in the open court if the government has firm evidence. The invocation of POTO raises serious doubts.

Still the same Vajpayee asked the Gujarat government to stop the VHP`s provocative plan to carry the ashes (asthi) of the Godhra carnage victims in a procession throughout the country. Like Advani`s rath yatra, it would have ignited communal passions all over.

Vajpayee`s stint as the Janata Dal foreign minister was so accommodative that till today it is remembered in Pakistan as the golden period of relations between the two countries. He talked of soft borders although Morarji Desai, Prime Minister at that time, nipped the move in the bud, saying that the softening of the borders would mean an influx of spies.

Today, Vajpayee is intractable. It is understandable that after the bus journey to Lahore, he felt he had been stabbed in the back when Kargil was forcibly occupied by Pakistan. It is also understandable that Pakistan`s continued cross-border terrorism does not allow him to withdraw the forces from the front. Still just as he has made gestures to Islamabad through the visit of Information Minister Sushma Swaraj and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman KC Pant, Vajpayee should restore the train, bus and plane services. Without people-to-people contact, the problems will remain insurmountable because the governments of both countries lack the will to solve them.

Whether in the context of people-to-people contact between India and Pakistan or attitude to the Hindutva forces, Vajpayee is getting less and less convincing as days go by.

The defeat of the BJP, first in Punjab, then in UP and now in Delhi, is the defeat of those forces which Vajpayee resisted first and accepted later. He can still recover lost ground by confronting the fundamentalists.

Sometimes I feel as if he is traversing a path which is not to his liking but does so because he has no better alternative. He will be surprised to find the support he has once he steps out from the beaten track.

Dear reader, please tell him that. I seem to have lost him.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/060402/detNAT07.asp

Shocked IAS man quits service
Poornima Joshi
(New Delhi, April 5)

``Numbed with disgust and horror, I return from Gujarat ten days after the terror and massacre that convulsed the state. My heart is sickened, my soul wearied, my shoulders aching with the burdens of guilt and shame,`` wrote Harsh Mander days after planned attacks were carried out on Muslims in Gujarat.

Mander was a serving IAS officer on deputation to ActionAid as its country director when he shared his anguish with thousands of others. His guilt, at least the bit that stemmed from being part of a government that presided over the massacre, is probably a little less now. Mander has resigned from the IAS.

He doesn`t want to talk about it. Doesn`t want the media to make a martyr out of him. ``Yes, I have resigned,`` he says, ``but, please, I don`t wish to talk about these things.`` He is still sickened by the killings. ``People are still being burnt alive. It is sickening,`` he said.

Mander belongs to the 1980 batch. He graduated in economics from St Stephen`s in 1975 and started doing his masters in sociology in Delhi School of Economics. However, Mander left it to join the Social Work and Research Centre, Tilonia. In 1980, he joined the IAS.

{{India signs on as Southeast Asia watchdog

BANGALORE - The proposed India-United States joint patrolling of the sea lanes along the Straits of Malacca represents not only a new high in cooperation between the two countries, but also signals India`s emergence as a key player in the region.

The proposal put forward by the US some months back has been approved by India`s Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), highly placed sources in the Indian government have said.}}

http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/DD05Df01.html

ylh,

The ``Senile Buddha`` is too NICE a guy to say this: So I will say it by using your own disresctful ,abusive way of talking to people like tahmed, who uses impeccable manners even to people who offend him.

Mind you, in addition to being abusive & disrespectful, I`m also profane & obscene...so sue me..

You are a narcicisstic jerk, who thinks he is a legend (in his own mind). Its not espousing your ideology, thats annoying. Its the WAY you say it.

Its like a horny little jerk coming to Chowk with a HUGE erection & masterbating his statements all over the rest of us. Then we all have to duck for cover, lest we get showered upon by your..er, ``COME``....

Charming logic from the RSS:

Every Citizen of India is a Hindu: RSS

http://in.news.yahoo.com/020406/52/1ks7g.html

re:Reply #: 58

sadna,

Someone called ABV a ``status quo``st. He does not like to change status quo. This makes him indecisive. He is also at the end of his political career. I see only bad times for BJP. This may mean, people like LKA will try to bring back the Hindutva agenda and start some new controversies to get back the support of hardcore hindus that they think they lost in the past few years. There is a tough fight ahead. If ABV cannot decide where he belongs, he should step down gracefully. Modi is a culprit. I am shocked he is still holding office after all that happened.

Sridhar

Re: Abdul Kalam`s speech

Here is Kalam`s speech i had promised i would paste: Mr. APJ Abdul Kalaam`s speech in Hyderabad

Quote: I have three visions for India. In 3000 years of our history people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds. From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history and tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because we respect the freedom of others. That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM. I believe that India got its first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of independence. It is this freedom that we must protect and nurture and build on. If we are not free, no one will respect us.



My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT. For fifty years we have been a developing nation. It is time we see ourselves as a developed nation. We are among top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have 10 percent growth rate in most areas. Our poverty levels are falling. Our achievements are being globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as a developed nation, self-reliant and self-assured. Isn`t this incorrect?

I have a THIRD vision. India must stand up to the world. Because I believe that unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us.

Only strength respects strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an economic power. Both must go hand-in-hand. My good fortune was to have worked with three great minds. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of space, Professor Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him and Dr.Brahm Prakash, father of nuclear material. I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and consider this the great opportunity of my life.

I see four milestones in my career:

ONE: Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was given the opportunity to be the project director for India`s first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3.

The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very important role in my life of Scientist.

TWO: After my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance to be the part of India`s missile program. It was my second bliss when Agni met its mission requirements in 1994.

THREE: The Dept. of Atomic Energy and DRDO had this tremendous partnership in the recent nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13. This was the third bliss.

The joy of participating with my team in these nuclear tests and proving to the world that India can make it, that we are no longer a developing nation but one of them. It made me feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we have now developed for Agni a re-entry structure, for which we have developed this new material. A very light material called carbon-carbon.

FOUR: One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light that he took me to his hospital and showed me his patients. There were these little girls and boys with heavy metallic calipers weighing over three Kg each, dragging their feet around. He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients. In three weeks, we made these Floor reaction Orthosis 300 gram calipers and took them to the orthopedic center. The children didn`t

believe their eyes. From dragging around a three kg. load on their legs, they could now move around! Their parents had tears in their eyes. That was my fourth bliss!

Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation.

We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them.

Why? We are the first in milk production. We are number one in Remote sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat.

We are the second largest producer of rice. Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.

I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place.

The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert land

into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news. In India we only read about death, sickness,

terrorism, crime. Why are we so NEGATIVE?

Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign TVs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology.

Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?

I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is: She replied: I want to live in a developed India. For her, you and I will have to build this developed India. You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation. Allow me to come back with vengeance.

Got 10 minutes for your country?

YOU say that our government is inefficient.

YOU say that our laws are too old.

YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.

YOU say that the phones don`t work, the railways are a joke, the airline is the worst in the world, mail never reach their destination.

YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.

YOU say, say and say.

What do YOU do about it? Take a person on his way to Singapore. Give him a name YOURS. Give him a face - YOURS. YOU walk out of the airport and

you are at your International best. In Singapore you don`t throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground Links as they are. You pay $5 (approx. Rs.60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5PM and 8 PM. YOU comeback to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity.

In Singapore you don`t say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn`t dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai. YOU would not dare to go out without

your head covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs.650) a month to, ``see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else.`` YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 kmph) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, ``Jaanta hai sala main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so`s son. Take your two bucks and get lost.`` YOU wouldn`t chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand.

Why don`t YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo? Why don`t YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country why cannot you be the same here in India.

Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipal commissioner of Bombay Mr.Tinaikar had a point to make. ``Rich people`s dogs are walked on the streets to leave their affluent droppings all over the place,`` he said.

``And then the same people turn around to criticize and blame the authorities for infficiency and dirty pavements. What do they expect the officers to do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feels the pressure in his bowels?

In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job.

Same in Japan. Will the Indian citizen do that here?`` He`s right.

We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms. We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity. This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public.

When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? ``It`s the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons` rights to a dowry.`` So who`s going to change the system? What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbors, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU.

When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr.Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand. Or we leave the country and run away. Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England. When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money. End of Quote.



The article is highly thought provacative, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one`s conscience too. Let us stay united, despite our religious, caste and other differences. There is a Tamil saying ``Onru erunthal undu vazhvu`` meaning ``if we stay together, we can survive``.

Sridhar