Confessions of a BJP Supporter
Parag Vohra May 13, 2002
#1 Posted by slink on May 13, 2002 3:04:02 am
hey parag,
well worth the read.
while reading the first few paragraphs i was thinking of the letters we exchanged (how many parag vohras can there be on chowk?) and using them to try and keep my mind as open as possible (kinda risky with the 20 knot winds in karachi nowadays)...and i kept reading. the last paragraph, in particular the last couple of lines `i feel like one of those germans...` was particularly moving. how hard was it to write this?
shandana
well worth the read.
while reading the first few paragraphs i was thinking of the letters we exchanged (how many parag vohras can there be on chowk?) and using them to try and keep my mind as open as possible (kinda risky with the 20 knot winds in karachi nowadays)...and i kept reading. the last paragraph, in particular the last couple of lines `i feel like one of those germans...` was particularly moving. how hard was it to write this?
shandana
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#2 Posted by slink on May 13, 2002 3:04:16 am
hey parag,
well worth the read.
while reading the first few paragraphs i was thinking of the letters we exchanged (how many parag vohras can there be on chowk?) and using them to try and keep my mind as open as possible (kinda risky with the 20 knot winds in karachi nowadays)...and i kept reading. the last paragraph, in particular the last couple of lines `i feel like one of those germans...` was particularly moving. how hard was it to write this?
shandana
well worth the read.
while reading the first few paragraphs i was thinking of the letters we exchanged (how many parag vohras can there be on chowk?) and using them to try and keep my mind as open as possible (kinda risky with the 20 knot winds in karachi nowadays)...and i kept reading. the last paragraph, in particular the last couple of lines `i feel like one of those germans...` was particularly moving. how hard was it to write this?
shandana
#3 Posted by rsridhar on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
Parag,
Welcome to the club. I was also a supporter of BJP initially, mainly for steering the country away from the stupid Nehruvian economic policies. I liked BJP even more when it started wooing the NRIs, promised us dual citizenship and invited investments from many NRI entrepreuners.
Gujarat carnage, however, changed my opinion of BJP. It is trying to gain hindu votes by assaulting the very fabric of that nation viz secularism. If hindu-muslim riots break out all over India, India will cease to exist. BJP is a neo-nazi party, carefully hiding its real agenda behind the benign face of Vajpayee.
Sridhar
Welcome to the club. I was also a supporter of BJP initially, mainly for steering the country away from the stupid Nehruvian economic policies. I liked BJP even more when it started wooing the NRIs, promised us dual citizenship and invited investments from many NRI entrepreuners.
Gujarat carnage, however, changed my opinion of BJP. It is trying to gain hindu votes by assaulting the very fabric of that nation viz secularism. If hindu-muslim riots break out all over India, India will cease to exist. BJP is a neo-nazi party, carefully hiding its real agenda behind the benign face of Vajpayee.
Sridhar
#4 Posted by cutandpaste on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
Anglosphere: The stakes in India
By James C. Bennett
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
WASHINGTON, March 16 (UPI) -- Reader mail is one of the most interesting aspects of writing a column, as is the comment on the Web. The column in which I suggested that the characterization of the French as a pack of ``cheese-eating surrender monkeys`` was not literally and invariably true brought forth more mail than any other column, most of it vociferously insisting that I was too soft on the French. More interesting, although less voluminous, was the comment elicited by my recent column on India and the Anglosphere. Top Stories
• Grenade attack on Pakistani church kills 5
• Girding for war with Iraq
• Smaller, bloodier battles foreseen for U.S. troops
• Bush visits target five key Senate campaigns
• Hospitals feel pain of Mexico crossings
• Saudi schoolgirls` fire deaths decried
One commentator in particular took me to task for employing the Anglosphere analysis as a ``one size fits all`` analysis in which everything English is good. He then pointed out that many of India`s problems in fact stem from political and economic models imposed by or imported from Britain in the decades before and after independence.
This point is correct, in so far as it correctly identifies the source of much of India`s bureaucratic miasma. But it fatally misunderstands the Anglosphere perspective. It is neither Anglophilia nor Imperial nostalgia, as some imagine. Rather, it is a set of observations and conclusions about observable phenomena, leading to some working assumptions about strong civil societies in general, and a particular set of such civil societies, namely the English-speaking, Common Law-based societies that constitute the core of the Anglosphere.
It also does not assume that Anglo-Saxons and their memetic heirs are angels, Pope Gregory`s alleged pun to the contrary. In fact the peoples of the Anglosphere can screw up from time to time, sometimes spectacularly. The point about the Anglosphere and its institutions is that they seem to have gone through many of the traumas of modern times particularly early, and have evolved workable solutions to the problems in response.
Thus the commentator was right to imply that the English-speaking bureaucratic class in India that imported the prevailing political and economic ideas from 1930s England and retained them in India after Independence (and kept them long after they were discarded in England itself) have done no favor to India. In that sense the Anglosphere had failed India, at least in that iteration of the link.
What is now beginning to fade in memory is exactly how moribund large parts of the English business culture had become in its decades of relative decline. I can certainly recall some parts of the English business world I encountered in the late 1970s, in which I dealt with a collection of well-educated, well-mannered young men with no particular high expectations of the future, struggling to maintain the semblance of a middle-class life on an amazingly small salary even before considering the amazingly high taxes. Not surprisingly, initiative and entrepreneurship were not foremost qualities in this environment.
Several decades of deregulation, privatization, and competition have shaken up the British business world and have rendered it far more competitive, with resulting improvements in the gross domestic product and employment figures for the economy. However, India, which started from a far lower base point, has only begun the path of reform. Although its Anglosphere legacy has opened up the links to the high-technology world, it also, in the form of the dead hand of the economic ideas of the past century, has left a bad side of its legacy.
Reader Suman Palit, who also writes the very interesting Weblog The Kolkata Libertarian, makes the distinction between the Anglosphere and what he calls the ``Englishsphere`` -- the class of English-speaking bureaucrats and intellectuals in India who benefit from and maintain the bureaucratic-regulatory legacy of the last phase of British colonialism.
His characterization of Anglosphere vs. Englishsphere is exactly right. The Anglosphere is about more than English-language competence. The Englishsphere of India seems to be pretty much what many call the academic-bureaucratic class in the rest of the Anglosphere.
In the end, we must return to my point in the past column, that, having made the many links (far beyond the upper-class links he discusses) between India and the Anglosphere, the Anglo-Indian encounter started a process that nobody can now control, least of all the bureaucrats of the Englishsphere. I have no better idea of where it will ultimately lead than anybody else, but I suspect that the key will be the Indian diaspora in the Anglosphere and particularly the network of high-tech people between India and the diaspora.
If we are lucky it will create an interesting and positive fusion of the Indian cultures and the basic Anglosphere values of individualism, the strong civil society that individualism creates, and the advanced market economy and constitutional government that strong civil society enables.
If we are unlucky we will have an aggressive, nuclear-armed Hindu nationalist state, whose relations with its own religious minorities and its neighbors may be foreshadowed by the internal strife seen so vividly in the events of the past few weeks.
This suggests that the stakes in strengthening the Indo-Anglosphere ties may be high, and effort in this direction rewarding.
(You can reach James Bennett via e-mail at bennett@anglosphere.com )
By James C. Bennett
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
WASHINGTON, March 16 (UPI) -- Reader mail is one of the most interesting aspects of writing a column, as is the comment on the Web. The column in which I suggested that the characterization of the French as a pack of ``cheese-eating surrender monkeys`` was not literally and invariably true brought forth more mail than any other column, most of it vociferously insisting that I was too soft on the French. More interesting, although less voluminous, was the comment elicited by my recent column on India and the Anglosphere. Top Stories
• Grenade attack on Pakistani church kills 5
• Girding for war with Iraq
• Smaller, bloodier battles foreseen for U.S. troops
• Bush visits target five key Senate campaigns
• Hospitals feel pain of Mexico crossings
• Saudi schoolgirls` fire deaths decried
One commentator in particular took me to task for employing the Anglosphere analysis as a ``one size fits all`` analysis in which everything English is good. He then pointed out that many of India`s problems in fact stem from political and economic models imposed by or imported from Britain in the decades before and after independence.
This point is correct, in so far as it correctly identifies the source of much of India`s bureaucratic miasma. But it fatally misunderstands the Anglosphere perspective. It is neither Anglophilia nor Imperial nostalgia, as some imagine. Rather, it is a set of observations and conclusions about observable phenomena, leading to some working assumptions about strong civil societies in general, and a particular set of such civil societies, namely the English-speaking, Common Law-based societies that constitute the core of the Anglosphere.
It also does not assume that Anglo-Saxons and their memetic heirs are angels, Pope Gregory`s alleged pun to the contrary. In fact the peoples of the Anglosphere can screw up from time to time, sometimes spectacularly. The point about the Anglosphere and its institutions is that they seem to have gone through many of the traumas of modern times particularly early, and have evolved workable solutions to the problems in response.
Thus the commentator was right to imply that the English-speaking bureaucratic class in India that imported the prevailing political and economic ideas from 1930s England and retained them in India after Independence (and kept them long after they were discarded in England itself) have done no favor to India. In that sense the Anglosphere had failed India, at least in that iteration of the link.
What is now beginning to fade in memory is exactly how moribund large parts of the English business culture had become in its decades of relative decline. I can certainly recall some parts of the English business world I encountered in the late 1970s, in which I dealt with a collection of well-educated, well-mannered young men with no particular high expectations of the future, struggling to maintain the semblance of a middle-class life on an amazingly small salary even before considering the amazingly high taxes. Not surprisingly, initiative and entrepreneurship were not foremost qualities in this environment.
Several decades of deregulation, privatization, and competition have shaken up the British business world and have rendered it far more competitive, with resulting improvements in the gross domestic product and employment figures for the economy. However, India, which started from a far lower base point, has only begun the path of reform. Although its Anglosphere legacy has opened up the links to the high-technology world, it also, in the form of the dead hand of the economic ideas of the past century, has left a bad side of its legacy.
Reader Suman Palit, who also writes the very interesting Weblog The Kolkata Libertarian, makes the distinction between the Anglosphere and what he calls the ``Englishsphere`` -- the class of English-speaking bureaucrats and intellectuals in India who benefit from and maintain the bureaucratic-regulatory legacy of the last phase of British colonialism.
His characterization of Anglosphere vs. Englishsphere is exactly right. The Anglosphere is about more than English-language competence. The Englishsphere of India seems to be pretty much what many call the academic-bureaucratic class in the rest of the Anglosphere.
In the end, we must return to my point in the past column, that, having made the many links (far beyond the upper-class links he discusses) between India and the Anglosphere, the Anglo-Indian encounter started a process that nobody can now control, least of all the bureaucrats of the Englishsphere. I have no better idea of where it will ultimately lead than anybody else, but I suspect that the key will be the Indian diaspora in the Anglosphere and particularly the network of high-tech people between India and the diaspora.
If we are lucky it will create an interesting and positive fusion of the Indian cultures and the basic Anglosphere values of individualism, the strong civil society that individualism creates, and the advanced market economy and constitutional government that strong civil society enables.
If we are unlucky we will have an aggressive, nuclear-armed Hindu nationalist state, whose relations with its own religious minorities and its neighbors may be foreshadowed by the internal strife seen so vividly in the events of the past few weeks.
This suggests that the stakes in strengthening the Indo-Anglosphere ties may be high, and effort in this direction rewarding.
(You can reach James Bennett via e-mail at bennett@anglosphere.com )
#5 Posted by cutandpaste on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
Anglosphere: The stakes in India
By James C. Bennett
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
WASHINGTON, March 16 (UPI) -- Reader mail is one of the most interesting aspects of writing a column, as is the comment on the Web. The column in which I suggested that the characterization of the French as a pack of ``cheese-eating surrender monkeys`` was not literally and invariably true brought forth more mail than any other column, most of it vociferously insisting that I was too soft on the French. More interesting, although less voluminous, was the comment elicited by my recent column on India and the Anglosphere. Top
One commentator in particular took me to task for employing the Anglosphere analysis as a ``one size fits all`` analysis in which everything English is good. He then pointed out that many of India`s problems in fact stem from political and economic models imposed by or imported from Britain in the decades before and after independence.
This point is correct, in so far as it correctly identifies the source of much of India`s bureaucratic miasma. But it fatally misunderstands the Anglosphere perspective. It is neither Anglophilia nor Imperial nostalgia, as some imagine. Rather, it is a set of observations and conclusions about observable phenomena, leading to some working assumptions about strong civil societies in general, and a particular set of such civil societies, namely the English-speaking, Common Law-based societies that constitute the core of the Anglosphere.
It also does not assume that Anglo-Saxons and their memetic heirs are angels, Pope Gregory`s alleged pun to the contrary. In fact the peoples of the Anglosphere can screw up from time to time, sometimes spectacularly. The point about the Anglosphere and its institutions is that they seem to have gone through many of the traumas of modern times particularly early, and have evolved workable solutions to the problems in response.
Thus the commentator was right to imply that the English-speaking bureaucratic class in India that imported the prevailing political and economic ideas from 1930s England and retained them in India after Independence (and kept them long after they were discarded in England itself) have done no favor to India. In that sense the Anglosphere had failed India, at least in that iteration of the link.
What is now beginning to fade in memory is exactly how moribund large parts of the English business culture had become in its decades of relative decline. I can certainly recall some parts of the English business world I encountered in the late 1970s, in which I dealt with a collection of well-educated, well-mannered young men with no particular high expectations of the future, struggling to maintain the semblance of a middle-class life on an amazingly small salary even before considering the amazingly high taxes. Not surprisingly, initiative and entrepreneurship were not foremost qualities in this environment.
Several decades of deregulation, privatization, and competition have shaken up the British business world and have rendered it far more competitive, with resulting improvements in the gross domestic product and employment figures for the economy. However, India, which started from a far lower base point, has only begun the path of reform. Although its Anglosphere legacy has opened up the links to the high-technology world, it also, in the form of the dead hand of the economic ideas of the past century, has left a bad side of its legacy.
Reader Suman Palit, who also writes the very interesting Weblog The Kolkata Libertarian, makes the distinction between the Anglosphere and what he calls the ``Englishsphere`` -- the class of English-speaking bureaucrats and intellectuals in India who benefit from and maintain the bureaucratic-regulatory legacy of the last phase of British colonialism.
His characterization of Anglosphere vs. Englishsphere is exactly right. The Anglosphere is about more than English-language competence. The Englishsphere of India seems to be pretty much what many call the academic-bureaucratic class in the rest of the Anglosphere.
In the end, we must return to my point in the past column, that, having made the many links (far beyond the upper-class links he discusses) between India and the Anglosphere, the Anglo-Indian encounter started a process that nobody can now control, least of all the bureaucrats of the Englishsphere. I have no better idea of where it will ultimately lead than anybody else, but I suspect that the key will be the Indian diaspora in the Anglosphere and particularly the network of high-tech people between India and the diaspora.
If we are lucky it will create an interesting and positive fusion of the Indian cultures and the basic Anglosphere values of individualism, the strong civil society that individualism creates, and the advanced market economy and constitutional government that strong civil society enables.
If we are unlucky we will have an aggressive, nuclear-armed Hindu nationalist state, whose relations with its own religious minorities and its neighbors may be foreshadowed by the internal strife seen so vividly in the events of the past few weeks.
This suggests that the stakes in strengthening the Indo-Anglosphere ties may be high, and effort in this direction rewarding.
(You can reach James Bennett via e-mail at bennett@anglosphere.com )
By James C. Bennett
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
WASHINGTON, March 16 (UPI) -- Reader mail is one of the most interesting aspects of writing a column, as is the comment on the Web. The column in which I suggested that the characterization of the French as a pack of ``cheese-eating surrender monkeys`` was not literally and invariably true brought forth more mail than any other column, most of it vociferously insisting that I was too soft on the French. More interesting, although less voluminous, was the comment elicited by my recent column on India and the Anglosphere. Top
One commentator in particular took me to task for employing the Anglosphere analysis as a ``one size fits all`` analysis in which everything English is good. He then pointed out that many of India`s problems in fact stem from political and economic models imposed by or imported from Britain in the decades before and after independence.
This point is correct, in so far as it correctly identifies the source of much of India`s bureaucratic miasma. But it fatally misunderstands the Anglosphere perspective. It is neither Anglophilia nor Imperial nostalgia, as some imagine. Rather, it is a set of observations and conclusions about observable phenomena, leading to some working assumptions about strong civil societies in general, and a particular set of such civil societies, namely the English-speaking, Common Law-based societies that constitute the core of the Anglosphere.
It also does not assume that Anglo-Saxons and their memetic heirs are angels, Pope Gregory`s alleged pun to the contrary. In fact the peoples of the Anglosphere can screw up from time to time, sometimes spectacularly. The point about the Anglosphere and its institutions is that they seem to have gone through many of the traumas of modern times particularly early, and have evolved workable solutions to the problems in response.
Thus the commentator was right to imply that the English-speaking bureaucratic class in India that imported the prevailing political and economic ideas from 1930s England and retained them in India after Independence (and kept them long after they were discarded in England itself) have done no favor to India. In that sense the Anglosphere had failed India, at least in that iteration of the link.
What is now beginning to fade in memory is exactly how moribund large parts of the English business culture had become in its decades of relative decline. I can certainly recall some parts of the English business world I encountered in the late 1970s, in which I dealt with a collection of well-educated, well-mannered young men with no particular high expectations of the future, struggling to maintain the semblance of a middle-class life on an amazingly small salary even before considering the amazingly high taxes. Not surprisingly, initiative and entrepreneurship were not foremost qualities in this environment.
Several decades of deregulation, privatization, and competition have shaken up the British business world and have rendered it far more competitive, with resulting improvements in the gross domestic product and employment figures for the economy. However, India, which started from a far lower base point, has only begun the path of reform. Although its Anglosphere legacy has opened up the links to the high-technology world, it also, in the form of the dead hand of the economic ideas of the past century, has left a bad side of its legacy.
Reader Suman Palit, who also writes the very interesting Weblog The Kolkata Libertarian, makes the distinction between the Anglosphere and what he calls the ``Englishsphere`` -- the class of English-speaking bureaucrats and intellectuals in India who benefit from and maintain the bureaucratic-regulatory legacy of the last phase of British colonialism.
His characterization of Anglosphere vs. Englishsphere is exactly right. The Anglosphere is about more than English-language competence. The Englishsphere of India seems to be pretty much what many call the academic-bureaucratic class in the rest of the Anglosphere.
In the end, we must return to my point in the past column, that, having made the many links (far beyond the upper-class links he discusses) between India and the Anglosphere, the Anglo-Indian encounter started a process that nobody can now control, least of all the bureaucrats of the Englishsphere. I have no better idea of where it will ultimately lead than anybody else, but I suspect that the key will be the Indian diaspora in the Anglosphere and particularly the network of high-tech people between India and the diaspora.
If we are lucky it will create an interesting and positive fusion of the Indian cultures and the basic Anglosphere values of individualism, the strong civil society that individualism creates, and the advanced market economy and constitutional government that strong civil society enables.
If we are unlucky we will have an aggressive, nuclear-armed Hindu nationalist state, whose relations with its own religious minorities and its neighbors may be foreshadowed by the internal strife seen so vividly in the events of the past few weeks.
This suggests that the stakes in strengthening the Indo-Anglosphere ties may be high, and effort in this direction rewarding.
(You can reach James Bennett via e-mail at bennett@anglosphere.com )
#6 Posted by shammi on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
re: Parag:
This Hindutva fascist ideology needs to be stopped cold in its tracks. I was willing to overlook the fascist overtones of the BJP due to my disillusionment with the Congress party`s socialist, and license-raj economic agenda. That was a mistake, a BIG mistake. Today, Vajpayee`s greatest political ally is Sonia Gandhi. It is she alone who is keeping him in power. Had the Congress projected anybody else as a PM, many would have defected from the NDA to support the Congres..
This Hindutva fascist ideology needs to be stopped cold in its tracks. I was willing to overlook the fascist overtones of the BJP due to my disillusionment with the Congress party`s socialist, and license-raj economic agenda. That was a mistake, a BIG mistake. Today, Vajpayee`s greatest political ally is Sonia Gandhi. It is she alone who is keeping him in power. Had the Congress projected anybody else as a PM, many would have defected from the NDA to support the Congres..
#7 Posted by AAmir on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
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#8 Posted by HN on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
Parag,
This was an interesting piece. The change in the end is the unusual piece of ecidence which suggests an individual mind can shed ideology. Yes, there might be a hell lot of similar ``upper class Hindus`` who might be disillusioned with the BJP...but these one`s only react when their immediate self-interest is threatened. As in the anti-Mandal protests and also this opposition to ``pseudo-secularists.``
I was in Delhi in the thick of the Mandal riots, let me suffice it to say that me and a fellow trainee journalist of the Times School of Journalism clocked nearly 100 kilometres in Delhi every day of those damned riots to see who were the guys on the streets protesting.
In South Delhi, we were greeted by smart kids with the United colours of Benetton splashed across their ample chests who would stop us. They would paste stickers one which i vaguely remember as `` VP singh is like all men, high on promise and low on performance``...etc...
On the other hand...when we reached East Delhi, we had bunch of less smartly dressed lot asking us to get down and shout with them saying something like Brahman Kshtriya Hai Hai./..or whatever. After that they`d tell us which kaccha road to take because there were rival demonstrators on the main road.
Through both these instances our nascent ToI press cards helped us out. But tell you what...the most genuine rioteeer was a guy who was a mochi or shoemaker by profession, who wanted us in all earnetsness to lend him petrol from our bike`s tank to set fire to the Coffee House in Lakshmi Nagar!
Harish
This was an interesting piece. The change in the end is the unusual piece of ecidence which suggests an individual mind can shed ideology. Yes, there might be a hell lot of similar ``upper class Hindus`` who might be disillusioned with the BJP...but these one`s only react when their immediate self-interest is threatened. As in the anti-Mandal protests and also this opposition to ``pseudo-secularists.``
I was in Delhi in the thick of the Mandal riots, let me suffice it to say that me and a fellow trainee journalist of the Times School of Journalism clocked nearly 100 kilometres in Delhi every day of those damned riots to see who were the guys on the streets protesting.
In South Delhi, we were greeted by smart kids with the United colours of Benetton splashed across their ample chests who would stop us. They would paste stickers one which i vaguely remember as `` VP singh is like all men, high on promise and low on performance``...etc...
On the other hand...when we reached East Delhi, we had bunch of less smartly dressed lot asking us to get down and shout with them saying something like Brahman Kshtriya Hai Hai./..or whatever. After that they`d tell us which kaccha road to take because there were rival demonstrators on the main road.
Through both these instances our nascent ToI press cards helped us out. But tell you what...the most genuine rioteeer was a guy who was a mochi or shoemaker by profession, who wanted us in all earnetsness to lend him petrol from our bike`s tank to set fire to the Coffee House in Lakshmi Nagar!
Harish
#9 Posted by reason on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
Nice Article Parag. Very Well written .
Today , most of my friends are BJP supporters and they think BJP is going to make india a super power. i hope they come out of their illusions.
Today , most of my friends are BJP supporters and they think BJP is going to make india a super power. i hope they come out of their illusions.
#10 Posted by harimau on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
The fact is that BJP finds resonance not only among the Hindu middle class of India but also among those Indians who have migrated to the US. Most Hindus have concluded that India has been taking it on the chin from Pakistan for 50 years and are prepared to support any party that will stand up to Pakistan. Too bad that the Congress and the pinko-Communists of the 35 left-wing parties have given Indians no alternatives on the Right except the BJP. So don`t be surprised at how much money the BJP can raise from Indo-Americans.
There is absolutely no justification for downgrading India to a third-rate country (Yep, I said third-rate, not third-world) that has happened under some 40 years of misrule by Congress. The blighting of people`s minds, the creation of an entitlement society, and the manipulation of the laws to prevent any progress all stick in the craw of Indians who come out and see what the world has accomplished in the last 50 years. They are not going to put up with the sh!t that passes for ``progress`` in India all of which is anyway funded by the money sent in by expat Indians. The Bombay airport is an eyesore and Dharavi is a running sore on Bombay. Nobody cares to fix anything. These fcukers even attempted to slander and shut down the only good airline in the country (Jet Airways). So long as laws remain on the books that enable the politicians to extort money from businessmen, the country is not going to go anywhere.
Too bad for secularists that it is propagated by the Congress which is led by that female from Italy. When you have no credible spokespersons for your philosophy except a carpetbagging foreigners or toadies of Mao Tse Tung, even Lal Kishan Advani starts looking like a statesman.
There is absolutely no justification for downgrading India to a third-rate country (Yep, I said third-rate, not third-world) that has happened under some 40 years of misrule by Congress. The blighting of people`s minds, the creation of an entitlement society, and the manipulation of the laws to prevent any progress all stick in the craw of Indians who come out and see what the world has accomplished in the last 50 years. They are not going to put up with the sh!t that passes for ``progress`` in India all of which is anyway funded by the money sent in by expat Indians. The Bombay airport is an eyesore and Dharavi is a running sore on Bombay. Nobody cares to fix anything. These fcukers even attempted to slander and shut down the only good airline in the country (Jet Airways). So long as laws remain on the books that enable the politicians to extort money from businessmen, the country is not going to go anywhere.
Too bad for secularists that it is propagated by the Congress which is led by that female from Italy. When you have no credible spokespersons for your philosophy except a carpetbagging foreigners or toadies of Mao Tse Tung, even Lal Kishan Advani starts looking like a statesman.
#11 Posted by jagdeep on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
Hi Parag
Congratulations!
But there still seems to be a lot of implied blame on the actions of the socalled Muslim/‘secular’ leaders, for justifying support to the communal politics of the saffron brigade.
This is a line being taken by BJP leaders themselves. This can never be justified.
The narration of alleged actions/policies of Muslim/secular leaders are a good tool to show how wrong they are but does not in any way prove that support to the communal politics of the Sangh Parivar as a reaction can ever be justified.
But as they say ‘Deyr Aye drust aye’ - welcome to the fold
Congratulations!
But there still seems to be a lot of implied blame on the actions of the socalled Muslim/‘secular’ leaders, for justifying support to the communal politics of the saffron brigade.
This is a line being taken by BJP leaders themselves. This can never be justified.
The narration of alleged actions/policies of Muslim/secular leaders are a good tool to show how wrong they are but does not in any way prove that support to the communal politics of the Sangh Parivar as a reaction can ever be justified.
But as they say ‘Deyr Aye drust aye’ - welcome to the fold
#12 Posted by Romair on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
Very nice.
You are probably the most objective and straight-forward Indian interactor on this site (I wish there were more).
However, this is also quite scary. If someone who is objective can be caught in the BJP charisma, at some stage of their lives, then what hope is their for the non-objective Indians. The BJP will be able to recruit them without too much problem.
I have noticed a great change in the Indian attitudes on this site, since the Gujrat violence. I used to repeatedly quote from the BJP website and manifesto on the communal policies of the BJP, and most of the Indians would be quite defensive. I always found that quite odd, since the BJP manifesto openly stated they would tear down a mosque. I do not know of any govt in the world which states something similar in their manifesto.
The argument used by most communal govts., that represent a majority, is that their opposition is always catering to the minority. I have always found this argument to be quite strange. It can only make sense if the minority is much better off economically than the majority, as is the case with the Jewish population in the USA. How can it make sense when the minority is on a lower economic ladder than the majority, as is the case with the Indian Muslim population? If everything in India is (was) catered towards the Muslims, then why in the world are the Indian Muslims not in the same situation as American Jews?
The second part is that how could Indians have missed out on the fact that sooner or later there would be a Gujrat like situation. I had mentioned it again and again here, that something was bound to happen by Mar, 15. If someone like me, a person who has never visited India, could see it from so far away, then I don`t see how anyone inside India could not see it.
I think a multi-religious society like India has to completely get rid of the BJP. This doesn`t seem to be happening. I think after the next elections, the BJP will end up in the opposition. This will make the BJP even more dangerous than it is right now.
Based on the above, if the Congress comes into the power, it is assumed it caters unnecessarily to the Muslims. If the BJP comes into power, they start killing the Muslims. In such a situation, what options do the Indian Muslims have left? And why haven`t any of the more affluent Muslims like Premji and Shahrukh Khan made any comments about the Gujrat situation. I would be interested in your opinion.
You are probably the most objective and straight-forward Indian interactor on this site (I wish there were more).
However, this is also quite scary. If someone who is objective can be caught in the BJP charisma, at some stage of their lives, then what hope is their for the non-objective Indians. The BJP will be able to recruit them without too much problem.
I have noticed a great change in the Indian attitudes on this site, since the Gujrat violence. I used to repeatedly quote from the BJP website and manifesto on the communal policies of the BJP, and most of the Indians would be quite defensive. I always found that quite odd, since the BJP manifesto openly stated they would tear down a mosque. I do not know of any govt in the world which states something similar in their manifesto.
The argument used by most communal govts., that represent a majority, is that their opposition is always catering to the minority. I have always found this argument to be quite strange. It can only make sense if the minority is much better off economically than the majority, as is the case with the Jewish population in the USA. How can it make sense when the minority is on a lower economic ladder than the majority, as is the case with the Indian Muslim population? If everything in India is (was) catered towards the Muslims, then why in the world are the Indian Muslims not in the same situation as American Jews?
The second part is that how could Indians have missed out on the fact that sooner or later there would be a Gujrat like situation. I had mentioned it again and again here, that something was bound to happen by Mar, 15. If someone like me, a person who has never visited India, could see it from so far away, then I don`t see how anyone inside India could not see it.
I think a multi-religious society like India has to completely get rid of the BJP. This doesn`t seem to be happening. I think after the next elections, the BJP will end up in the opposition. This will make the BJP even more dangerous than it is right now.
Based on the above, if the Congress comes into the power, it is assumed it caters unnecessarily to the Muslims. If the BJP comes into power, they start killing the Muslims. In such a situation, what options do the Indian Muslims have left? And why haven`t any of the more affluent Muslims like Premji and Shahrukh Khan made any comments about the Gujrat situation. I would be interested in your opinion.
#13 Posted by tahmed321 on May 13, 2002 12:41:16 pm
Looks like the hindu extremists are learning from the muslim extremists. Extremists in both countries feed on the poverty that their elite does not see. For half a century the Governments in both countries have failed to address poverty in the past half-century. Now, time has run out. The horsemen of apocalypse are saddling up to ride in both nuclear armed countries, while the chant of hate-filled minds starts to rise in muslim madrassahs and is being matched in hindutva schools too!! God help the citizens of India and Pakistan. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/international/asia/13HIND.html
#14 Posted by sadna on May 13, 2002 1:44:35 pm
Stuka
Thanks, good writeup. btw, your name is a very nice-sounding one why don`t you use it more often :)?
Re Mulayam Singh Yadav, if I am not mistaken, he has not seen fit to visit Gujarat even once since the riots began. Neither have the Congress MPs made any significant effort to reach out to the riot-affectees. Ordinary Indians particularly Muslims are really ill-served by every shade of political class.
Another thing I find ironical is, after the BJP national government were toppled 2 times in 2odd years(97/99), it was Kargil in May-July 1999 that gave Vajpayee an opportunity to gain national stature, gave the Sonia vs Vajpayee personal factor an immediacy as never before and handed BJP its 3rd fighting chance at forming a national government in Dec 1999. If the upper middle class Hindus were so overwhelmingly supportive of BJP since Mandal and Mandir(89-91), why was it so difficult for BJP to get established in power is a question which puzzles me.
Re UP elections after Babri demolition, I think BJP was indeed reelected but with reduced strength and had to tie up with BSP and Mayawati to form government. In the recent polls, BJP came third. BJP has been getting its votebank arithmetic and rhetoric all wrong for UP, it seems very clear.
Re Gujarat and the BJP, I find this editorial very interesting. Perhaps someone from Maharashtra can say more about how accurate is this commentary on Maharashtra?
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/100402/detpla01.asp
PLATFORM: Gujarat is not Maharashtra
Sujata Anandan
Man-eater. That was what Bal Thackeray was called for years after his demagoguery sparked off and sustained the 1991-92 riots, the worst that Maharashtra and Mumbai had ever seen. But in recent days the title of man-eater surely goes to Narendra Modi. There is this oft-repeated presumption that Bal Thackeray came to power in Maharashtra after he generated and participated in the Mumbai riots.
It is this singular thought that is perhaps keeping the top BJP leadership from giving Modi the boot.
A look at the report of the Srikrishna Commission which probed the Mumbai riots should put things in perspective. Justice B.R. Srikrishna, while severely indicting Thackeray for the gruesome role he played during the mob-rule, also made no bones about the fact that the atmosphere was ripe for riots and that this atmosphere was created months in advance by L.K. Advani and his rath yatra. “Into this seething cauldron, like a general leading his troops, stepped Bal Thackeray,” stated Justice Srikrishna.
One must stress that the Srikrishna Commission was reluctantly set up by the Congress government of Sudhakarrao Naik under pressure from the Minority Commission in 1991. Until 1995, when the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance came to power on a hung verdict, the commission was a safety valve for Muslims in Mumbai who appeared before Justice Srikrishna day after day with their tales of horror.
However, by the time Manohar Joshi’s government abolished the commission midway through its hearings in 1995, the political landscape in Maharashtra had undergone a sea-change, not the least in respect of Muslim feelings towards Thackeray. The Sena chief found it very difficult to digest in the run up to the 1995 assembly elections that he may not receive a single Muslim vote. Yet, for weeks before the polls, the Urdu papers were full of letters that urged Muslims to consider that it might not be such a bad idea to plump for their ‘enemy’.
This was in the backdrop of the demolition of the Babri masjid. A wrangle between aik and the then Defence Minister, Sharad Pawar, led to a delay in calling out the army in Mumbai. Naik had been replaced by Pawar as Chief Minister soon after the riots were brought under control. (Unlike in Gujarat, they were controlled within a day of calling in the army in Mumbai.)
At several of his meetings with Muslim leaders prior to the elections, Pawar was repeatedly asked one question: Why is it that the government was prompt in arresting those marginally involved in the March 12 serial blasts but not those from the majority community who were clearly identified as perpetrators of the riots?
Muslims then reasoned that if they made a pact with the devil, at least Thackeray would show them some gratitude — whether or not he came to power. They took this bold step on the basis of their previous experience with municipal corporators belonging to the Shiv Sena. Many sainiks had even helped them get funds to repair their mosques. So they reasoned that the Sena could be a far more reliable protector of their interests than the Congress.
The Shiv Sena began to believe in the Muslim vote only after coming to power. At the counting, it was apparent that numerous pockets of minorities had voted for the Sena and this Muslim preference for a Hindu party could no longer be denied. It was a lesson well-learnt by Thackeray and he recognised that he had received a mandate primarily to maintain peace and communal harmony. There was not one Hindu-Muslim riot during the four-and-a-half years of Sena rule in Maharashtra.
Pawar was a universally hated figure and he was the glue that kept the Sena-BJP in power. It needs to be stressed that during the 1991-92 riots, the Sena had never come to power anywhere and the BJP had largely been ruling only in a couple of states for less than half a decade.
And even if the war between Naik and Pawar exacerbated the riots, theirs was more an error of omission than of commission. Justice Srikrishna, while exonerating Pawar, severely indicted Naik for being a “weak and vacillating chief minister”.
So it is unlikely that the Maharashtra example will work with Gujarat. First, there was no lack of governance in Maharashtra after the riots. (Never mind P.V. Narasimha Rao’s alleged role in the Babri demolition. At least Rao had the wisdom to recognise that his protégé Naik should go.) When bomb blasts rocked Mumbai a couple of months later, Pawar brought the city back to normal over a weekend.
Mumbai’s riots, moreover, were not a government-sponsored pogrom against the Muslims. They resulted from the desire of a party in opposition to score some brownie points against the Congress. The majority community combined with a weak governing leadership in the state and at the Centre. Those rulers were thrown out in no uncertain terms, despite stern action against policemen sympathetic to the Sena who looked the other way.
Gujarat is clearly different. It is a defeat waiting to happen to the BJP. After all, the wounds will still be fresh when there are elections next year. It is Narendra Modi who will be remembered as the man-eater. And it will be a reputation more enduring than Bal Thackeray’s.
Thanks, good writeup. btw, your name is a very nice-sounding one why don`t you use it more often :)?
Re Mulayam Singh Yadav, if I am not mistaken, he has not seen fit to visit Gujarat even once since the riots began. Neither have the Congress MPs made any significant effort to reach out to the riot-affectees. Ordinary Indians particularly Muslims are really ill-served by every shade of political class.
Another thing I find ironical is, after the BJP national government were toppled 2 times in 2odd years(97/99), it was Kargil in May-July 1999 that gave Vajpayee an opportunity to gain national stature, gave the Sonia vs Vajpayee personal factor an immediacy as never before and handed BJP its 3rd fighting chance at forming a national government in Dec 1999. If the upper middle class Hindus were so overwhelmingly supportive of BJP since Mandal and Mandir(89-91), why was it so difficult for BJP to get established in power is a question which puzzles me.
Re UP elections after Babri demolition, I think BJP was indeed reelected but with reduced strength and had to tie up with BSP and Mayawati to form government. In the recent polls, BJP came third. BJP has been getting its votebank arithmetic and rhetoric all wrong for UP, it seems very clear.
Re Gujarat and the BJP, I find this editorial very interesting. Perhaps someone from Maharashtra can say more about how accurate is this commentary on Maharashtra?
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/100402/detpla01.asp
PLATFORM: Gujarat is not Maharashtra
Sujata Anandan
Man-eater. That was what Bal Thackeray was called for years after his demagoguery sparked off and sustained the 1991-92 riots, the worst that Maharashtra and Mumbai had ever seen. But in recent days the title of man-eater surely goes to Narendra Modi. There is this oft-repeated presumption that Bal Thackeray came to power in Maharashtra after he generated and participated in the Mumbai riots.
It is this singular thought that is perhaps keeping the top BJP leadership from giving Modi the boot.
A look at the report of the Srikrishna Commission which probed the Mumbai riots should put things in perspective. Justice B.R. Srikrishna, while severely indicting Thackeray for the gruesome role he played during the mob-rule, also made no bones about the fact that the atmosphere was ripe for riots and that this atmosphere was created months in advance by L.K. Advani and his rath yatra. “Into this seething cauldron, like a general leading his troops, stepped Bal Thackeray,” stated Justice Srikrishna.
One must stress that the Srikrishna Commission was reluctantly set up by the Congress government of Sudhakarrao Naik under pressure from the Minority Commission in 1991. Until 1995, when the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance came to power on a hung verdict, the commission was a safety valve for Muslims in Mumbai who appeared before Justice Srikrishna day after day with their tales of horror.
However, by the time Manohar Joshi’s government abolished the commission midway through its hearings in 1995, the political landscape in Maharashtra had undergone a sea-change, not the least in respect of Muslim feelings towards Thackeray. The Sena chief found it very difficult to digest in the run up to the 1995 assembly elections that he may not receive a single Muslim vote. Yet, for weeks before the polls, the Urdu papers were full of letters that urged Muslims to consider that it might not be such a bad idea to plump for their ‘enemy’.
This was in the backdrop of the demolition of the Babri masjid. A wrangle between aik and the then Defence Minister, Sharad Pawar, led to a delay in calling out the army in Mumbai. Naik had been replaced by Pawar as Chief Minister soon after the riots were brought under control. (Unlike in Gujarat, they were controlled within a day of calling in the army in Mumbai.)
At several of his meetings with Muslim leaders prior to the elections, Pawar was repeatedly asked one question: Why is it that the government was prompt in arresting those marginally involved in the March 12 serial blasts but not those from the majority community who were clearly identified as perpetrators of the riots?
Muslims then reasoned that if they made a pact with the devil, at least Thackeray would show them some gratitude — whether or not he came to power. They took this bold step on the basis of their previous experience with municipal corporators belonging to the Shiv Sena. Many sainiks had even helped them get funds to repair their mosques. So they reasoned that the Sena could be a far more reliable protector of their interests than the Congress.
The Shiv Sena began to believe in the Muslim vote only after coming to power. At the counting, it was apparent that numerous pockets of minorities had voted for the Sena and this Muslim preference for a Hindu party could no longer be denied. It was a lesson well-learnt by Thackeray and he recognised that he had received a mandate primarily to maintain peace and communal harmony. There was not one Hindu-Muslim riot during the four-and-a-half years of Sena rule in Maharashtra.
Pawar was a universally hated figure and he was the glue that kept the Sena-BJP in power. It needs to be stressed that during the 1991-92 riots, the Sena had never come to power anywhere and the BJP had largely been ruling only in a couple of states for less than half a decade.
And even if the war between Naik and Pawar exacerbated the riots, theirs was more an error of omission than of commission. Justice Srikrishna, while exonerating Pawar, severely indicted Naik for being a “weak and vacillating chief minister”.
So it is unlikely that the Maharashtra example will work with Gujarat. First, there was no lack of governance in Maharashtra after the riots. (Never mind P.V. Narasimha Rao’s alleged role in the Babri demolition. At least Rao had the wisdom to recognise that his protégé Naik should go.) When bomb blasts rocked Mumbai a couple of months later, Pawar brought the city back to normal over a weekend.
Mumbai’s riots, moreover, were not a government-sponsored pogrom against the Muslims. They resulted from the desire of a party in opposition to score some brownie points against the Congress. The majority community combined with a weak governing leadership in the state and at the Centre. Those rulers were thrown out in no uncertain terms, despite stern action against policemen sympathetic to the Sena who looked the other way.
Gujarat is clearly different. It is a defeat waiting to happen to the BJP. After all, the wounds will still be fresh when there are elections next year. It is Narendra Modi who will be remembered as the man-eater. And it will be a reputation more enduring than Bal Thackeray’s.
#15 Posted by Urstruly on May 13, 2002 2:58:44 pm
Mr. Vohra
A good attempt at half truths. I hope you know that half truths are more self-destructive than the full white lies. I see that, recently, the genocide of Muslims in Gujrat have brought a slight change in the way the Hindus see themselves. I am pretty sure,however, that it has failed to bring any change in the way they see Indian Muslims and Pakistanis. Always keep one thing in mind that genocide in Gujrat is the effect and not the cause. The reason that it was caused has to components:
1. The systematic way in which Indian Government of not just BJP but even congress planted the seeds of hate agaisnt their own minority. This hate was watered cultivated, pruned, cultured and instititionized by the government and Indian media. Both Hindu extremists and secular elements are equally responsible for this hate which has resulted in the genocide.
2. The second component is the way Indian government and media projected Paksitan and Muslims throughout the world with hate and the bigotry. The idea was to isolate Paksitan and have it declared a terrorist state. Unfortunately, the only people who beleived in this propagande too much are the Hindus themselves. When you nurture hate against people of certain faith, just because their faith is different from that of yours, the result is Gujrat. Well c`mon a Hindu today most vhemently hates Arabs and Palestinians and has no reservations to express it. They might have a reason to hate Pakistan but what has Arabs done to Indians. An Indian would go as far as to sell his mother to work in Saudi Arabia-and millions do work in Arab states. Even Yasser Arafat asks for India`s help instead of Paksitan to help resolve the Palestinian issue. And yet Hindus hate them. Only a moron would not think that the Hindus actually hate Islam and Muslims. And we should not blame Hindus for this inherent hate. This inherent xenophobia is because of their religion. Hinduism is the only religion that gives xenophobia a divine mandate in the form of caste system. Anyone outside of ones caste is ``unacceptable``, what to talk of people of other religions. Historically, all religions have shown intolerance and bigotry towards other religions and people outside of their respective faiths; and that includes Islam. But if you look at all the religions of the world objectively, this historic record of intolerance is not because of the religions but because of the lack of religions. It happened because the followers of the respective religions did not act upon their own religions. Unfortunately, this does not apply to Hinduism. The Hindus are intolerant, prejudiced, xenophobes, and hate-mongers because of their religion. It is sad but it is true.
A good attempt at half truths. I hope you know that half truths are more self-destructive than the full white lies. I see that, recently, the genocide of Muslims in Gujrat have brought a slight change in the way the Hindus see themselves. I am pretty sure,however, that it has failed to bring any change in the way they see Indian Muslims and Pakistanis. Always keep one thing in mind that genocide in Gujrat is the effect and not the cause. The reason that it was caused has to components:
1. The systematic way in which Indian Government of not just BJP but even congress planted the seeds of hate agaisnt their own minority. This hate was watered cultivated, pruned, cultured and instititionized by the government and Indian media. Both Hindu extremists and secular elements are equally responsible for this hate which has resulted in the genocide.
2. The second component is the way Indian government and media projected Paksitan and Muslims throughout the world with hate and the bigotry. The idea was to isolate Paksitan and have it declared a terrorist state. Unfortunately, the only people who beleived in this propagande too much are the Hindus themselves. When you nurture hate against people of certain faith, just because their faith is different from that of yours, the result is Gujrat. Well c`mon a Hindu today most vhemently hates Arabs and Palestinians and has no reservations to express it. They might have a reason to hate Pakistan but what has Arabs done to Indians. An Indian would go as far as to sell his mother to work in Saudi Arabia-and millions do work in Arab states. Even Yasser Arafat asks for India`s help instead of Paksitan to help resolve the Palestinian issue. And yet Hindus hate them. Only a moron would not think that the Hindus actually hate Islam and Muslims. And we should not blame Hindus for this inherent hate. This inherent xenophobia is because of their religion. Hinduism is the only religion that gives xenophobia a divine mandate in the form of caste system. Anyone outside of ones caste is ``unacceptable``, what to talk of people of other religions. Historically, all religions have shown intolerance and bigotry towards other religions and people outside of their respective faiths; and that includes Islam. But if you look at all the religions of the world objectively, this historic record of intolerance is not because of the religions but because of the lack of religions. It happened because the followers of the respective religions did not act upon their own religions. Unfortunately, this does not apply to Hinduism. The Hindus are intolerant, prejudiced, xenophobes, and hate-mongers because of their religion. It is sad but it is true.
#16 Posted by rsaxena on May 13, 2002 8:26:01 pm
...yeah, screw BJP and Congress...
...let`s hire rudy giuliani to run india...or judging from all of mr. clinton`s recent trips to india and his appearances at indian events, perhaps he is interested in the job...
...let`s hire rudy giuliani to run india...or judging from all of mr. clinton`s recent trips to india and his appearances at indian events, perhaps he is interested in the job...
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