Democracy imperilled

Sandeep B

The arrest of Hari Prasad, a technologist whose research helped prove beyond doubt that Indian EVMs are vulnerable to fraud, sends out a dangerous signal: That anybody who challenges the Central Election Commission runs the danger of persecution and prosecution in our democracy

Voting and freedom in a democracy are inseparable. Voting stands right at the top as one of the important ways people exercise their freedom to choose who they want to entrust with running their lives. Voting is what gives a Government the authority to govern and this authority must ideally be based on virtuous principles. Those who vote perform their duty in the fullest sense when they thoroughly understand exactly what the person they’re voting for truly represents. While this is not true of an average voter anywhere in the world today, there are thousands of such well-aware voters.

Which is why the election process is sacrosanct in strong democracies. Which is also why the Election Commission of India is a quasi-judicial constitutional body with sweeping powers that are binding even on the President. Which is also why it is insulated from the executive. But in practice, it has been infected with the same decay of political meddling that plagues most institutions in this country.

A recent instance of this malaise is the arrest of Mr Hari Prasad, technical coordinator and a key resource person of an independent citizens’ forum, VeTA. The organisation describes its purpose as “promoting Verifiability, Transparency and Accountability in Indian elections”.

Mr Prasad is a technologist with expertise in electronic voting machines, now the de facto method of voting in Indian elections. He collaborated with a team headed by Mr Alex Halderman, a Computer Science professor at Michigan University and Mr Rop Gonggrijp, a security researcher from the Netherlands, on a project that involved detailed technical analysis of Indian EVMs. Their studies yielded conclusive, scientific proof that EVMs could easily be tampered with. They conducted several demonstrations across major Indian cities showing how EVMs could be rigged.

On August 17, 2009, the EC invited them for a similar demonstration and laid illogical conditions under which the demonstration was to be done. What followed is detailed in the lucid Democracy at Risk (GVL Narasimha Rao, VeTa), also available as a downloadable book in pdf format (www.indianevm.com).

Mr Halderman captures the sequence of events that followed after February 2010 “when an anonymous source approached Hari and offered a (EVM) machine for him to study. This source requested anonymity and we have honoured this request. We have every reason to believe that the source had lawful access to the machine and made it available for scientific study as a matter of conscience, out of concern over potential security problems.” The team used this EVM to demonstrate on a TV channel how it could easily be tampered with. In the first week of August, the police visited Mr Prasad and recorded a statement about this EVM he had used.

And then, suddenly on August 21, he was arrested on a bizarre charge — that of stealing an EVM from Maharashtra. In his text message, Mr Prasad says, “I am not worried or scared at all by these tricks from the EC. I came to know that because of tremendous pressure, police had no other option than to arrest me. Our new CEC is positive in resolving EVM vulnerabilities but it seems even he came under pressure to change his stance from what he promised us on August 10.”

The episode clearly reeks of intimidation by the EC or whoever directed the arrest. As Mr Rao’s book shows, the EC has been obstinate in its stand that EVMs are “foolproof”, “perfect” and “tamper-free” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary across the world. Mr Halderman, Mr Prasad, et al have shown that by embedding a Bluetooth (wireless technology) device, it’s possible to manipulate the EVM using remote devices like a mobile phone.

The book painstakingly explains this and other methods of manipulation. Ideally, India should’ve followed suit — or ordered deeper inquiry — when the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Ireland banned EVMs because they were “easy to falsify,” risked eavesdropping” and “lacked transparency”. What’s worse is that Indian EVMs leave no trail — there is no mechanism to track suspected election fraud.

The EC’s obstinacy thus defies reason. On one hand, the EC insists that EVMs are impregnable. So there should really be no reason to not let the researchers examine the machine. What or who is it scared of? Indeed, if it were transparent, it should’ve actually facilitated Mr Prasad and team to expose any vulnerability in the EVMs. That would’ve restored our faith in the health of our democratic institutions. Instead, Mr PV Indiresan issued an outlandish analogy equating a call for a scientific inquiry into EVMs with testing the chastity of Sita. This only helps deepen suspicions about foul play in the issue.

The UPA reached a new low in 2009 when it bulldozed the appointment of Mr Navin Chawla as Chief Election Commissioner who the Shah Commission report “declared as unfit to hold any public office which demands an attitude of fair play and consideration for others.” And now the arrest of Mr Prasad has again sent an ugly signal. Is it safe to conclude that ordinary citizens will be persecuted for seeking the truth? Ironically, on August 9, the Cabinet passed the Whistleblower Bill, but who should people turn to when the state’s institutions themselves begin to look like agents of intimidation? The current CEC, Mr SY Quraishi, must come clean immediately on this shameful affair. The country has a right to know whether the EC is a body of the Constitution or just an arm of a political party.

Tampering of EVMs is a serious issue with potential to shatter the foundations of democracy. The logical end of this will mean that only one party gets to wield power forever. If the voting process is subverted, it won’t be long before national interest will be equated with a particular political party’s interest — it harks back to a black era when “India was Indira”.

Mr Prasad’s arrest also shows how many of our fundamental freedoms are slowly being taken away without our knowledge. Equally, it’s ironical that the state is virtually powerless against a dangerous man like Abdul Nasser Madani but swoops down on an individual who asked uncomfortable questions concerning national interest.

However, it’s heartening to see the groundswell of support that has emerged across the country for Mr Prasad. Petitions, Internet groups, blogs and articles have strongly condemned the strong-arm tactics of the EC. VeTA has also indicated approaching the Supreme Court for a “renewed legal battle”. This news has already attracted international attention with people comparing this with the Florida EVM fiasco. It’s a huge blot on India’s image in the world, which regards our elections as reasonably “fair and free”. The EC needs to urgently show complete transparency with regard to this episode — admitting that the EVMs are flawed is not a personal insult to the EC.

This issue is in many ways a good test of the saying about eternal vigilance and is an opportunity to prove Ambrose Pierce wrong when he said that voting is “the instrument and symbol of a free man’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.”

Tags: CEC, Daily Pioneer, Democracy, Election Commission, Elections, EVM Tampering, Flawed EVMs, Freedoms, Hari Prasad Arrest, Insecure UPA, My Oped in Pioneer, Pioneer, Published Writing, Voting

Rajatarangini first begun by Kalhana and then continued by Jonraj records that Zul Qadir Khan (Dulchu?) was an early Turkish Tatar (or Tartar) who raided Kashmir with a savage horde of about 70000 barbarians. His plunder lasted eight months and when he was done, it left behind rivers of blood of thousands of massacred Hindus, expansive swathes of burnt crops, razed towns, and death and destruction. That one plunder turned the Paradise into a wasteland. Dulchu would’ve stayed on if not for the severe winter that foiled his plans. He took with him about 50000 kaffir men, women, and children to sell them in the lucrative slave markets in Turkistan (the Central Asian regions lying between Siberia on the north; Tibet, modern day Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran on the south; the Gobi Desert on the east; and the Caspian Sea on the west). However, a terrible blizzard ensued when he was crossing Devsar Pass and he perished with his entire army and captives. The place was subsequently known as Bata Sagan meaning “the death oven of Brahmins.”

This pretty much marks the beginning of the first genocide-cum-exodus of Kashmiri Brahmins or Pandits in their own homeland. This incredible site records seven such exoduses. Aside, it doesn’t make for easy reading. Line after line of cold prose records the horrid massacres of a peace-loving and innocent people who had attained collossal heights in culture, arts, and learning.

The kings of a state that had successfully nixed Mohammad Ghaznavid’s incursions twice so harshly that he didn’t cast his eyes in that direction ever again eventually succumbed to repeated attacks from barbaric Muslim armies. The decisive turn came with the Tibetan/Buddhist Rinchan Shah who converted to Islam so he could get the throne. He lasted only three years after which the Shamiri dynasty ruled for over 200 years. “Pure” Islam bared all its intolerant fangs under the fourth ruler of the dynasty, Sikander who was honoured with But-Shikan (iconoclast). Sikander bulldozed almost all Hindu temples in the state. He ordered the bodies of the slain Hindus to be thrown into the Dal lake not before cutting their sacred threads off their bodies and burning them. This yielded him a grand harvest of seven maunds (1 maund=37.3 Kgs) of sacred thread. Today, this place is known as But-mazar (or Batta Mazar) or grave of Brahmins. Kaffirs had two choice: to convert to Islam or die. Several Brahmin families fled to the Panchal range as refugees. A large percentage of present-day Kashmiri Pandits are their descendants.

The story of Kashmir ever since was an unending nightmare of atrocities on Hindus by successive Muslim rulers except for a brief respite by Akbar. Jahangir described the place as a “heaven on earth” and promptly did his bit to destroy Hindu temples and impose Jeziya. Shah Jahan was a worthy successor. Bernier, the historian describes that “the doors and pillars were found in some of the idol temples demolished by Shah Jehan and it is impossible to estimate their value.” He also lauded Kwaja Mam, an underling who looted Pandit Mahadeo’s house and set it afire. Aurangzeb, the role model of Indian secularism needs special mention. His reign saw the carefully-chosen appointment of 14 of the vilest and cruelest subedars and governors to Kashmir. Iftekar stands tallest among these. Thousands converted at the point of the sword and thousands still fled to Delhi and settled in today’s Sitaram Bazaar. Incidentally, an unconfirmed story has it that Jawaharlal Nehru’s wedding procession came all the way from Allahabad to Sitaram Bazaar to get his marriage solemnized. Meanwhile, the Aurangzeb-Iftekar duo had made life hell for Kashmir Pandits who sent a strong delegation to the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur. Moved by their plight, he met Aurangzeb who received him well but deceived him and in the end, had his throat slit. Guru Tegh Bahadur’s foul murder was also one of the major incidents that shook Aurangzeb’s empire really badly. Post-Aurangzeb, Ahamad Shah Abdali, the Afghan marauder quickly gobbled up whatever remained of the Mughal empire. But that only opened a new chapter of even worse atrocities on the Kashmir Pandits. Here’s a sample:

Mir Muquim Kanth and Khwaja Zahir Didamari, two prominent Muslim leaders of Kashmir, were responsible for inducing Ahmad Shah Abdali to invade Kashmir to bring it under his hegemony. Accepting the invitation, Abdali despatched a strong army of Afghans under Abdullah Khan Ishk Aqasi (1753) to reduce Kashmir. The local resistance offered by Qasim’s commander could not stand the Afghan onslaught and Ishk Aqasi established the rule of Afghans in Kashmir. He proved a scourge for the Kashmirians. He indulged in a spree of loot, plunder and murder to amass wealth. Writes PNK Bamzai, “Rude was the shock that the Kashmirians got when they witnessed the first acts of barbarity at the hands of their new masters.” The Afghans maintained their suzerainty over Kashmir for a period of sixty-seven years. They were absolutely ignorant, barbarous, cruel and inhuman. Their atrocities on the Kashmirian Hindus beat all previous records. They inflicted brutalities even on the Muslims. They plundered the houses of the rich as well as the poor. Anybody resisting or complaining would be straight-away put to sword. Their methods of torture and persecution were absolutely brutal and inhuman. Mir Muquim Kanth…harassed and persecuted the Kashmirian Hindus. He was hand in glove with Ishk Aqasi, who, in the wake of his victory, let loose a reign of terror. The houses of the Hindus were looted and pillaged. Huge fines were imposed on them. Any Hindu audacious enough not to pay the fines was brutally murdered. Having failed to withstand the brutal torture of the Afghans, the Kashmirian Hindus started migrating to safer zones in the neighbourhood of Kashmir. Mir Muquim Kanth proved to be their worst persecutor.

Peace returned in about 1819 when Diwan Mohakam Chand, a general of Maharaja Ranjit Singh decisively routed the Afghans and brought Kashmir under the sway of the Sikh empire. In other words, about one thousand hundred years had elapsed before Kashmir again witnessed some strong and real Hindu rule. After Ranjit Singh, it eventually passed on to the British.

And then we cut to the present.

A Pandit Screws His Own Homeland

This lengthy history was necessary because this precisely is what the perverts in the media, intellectuals, and academia want the nation to forget. There’s no real difference between the Kashmiri Pandits who fled to the Panchal range to escape Sikander’s atrocities and the Pandits of our time who live like refugees in their own homeland and are otherwise scattered across the globe. Equally, there’s no change in the ideology that motivated Sikander and continues to motivate Allah’s worthies in Kashmir and their counterparts across the border.

The facade behind the “complexities involved” in settling the Kashmir dispute is just an exercise in national deception because it hides an important fact: the all-pervasive cluelessness of the Pandit who screwed his own homeland. Towards the end of the first Indo-Pak war it was clear that Pakistan had been outnumbered, outgunned, and outmanoeuvred in every sector it fought Pakistan in. But the rose-sporting arch-angel of Peace who was out on a mission to prove to the world his nobility, called for a unilateral ceasefire. This Brown Sahib true to his nature, was a champion of several firsts. He was the first Prime Minister ever to call for a ceasefire in a war India would’ve won if he didn’t have the wet dream of seeing himself being crowned as the Champion of World Peace. And it is this that our worthies want to push under the carpet by spinning fantastic yarns. I don’t blame Maharaja Hari Singh’s deep distrust of Nehru. Here’s more reading material if you’re interested. And we know what’s happened ever since till the ’90s when Pakistan declared an open Jihad in Kashmir.

Kashmir began to re-bleed in a big way. Re-bleed because let’s not forget the 1000-plus years of Muslim rule. And what was common again? History revisited innocent Kashmiri Pandits. This time, the number was greater, the time span shorter. Within a decade, Kashmir was ethnically cleansed of Hindus. Five hundred thousand Hindus were killed and/or driven out because they were Hindus. Also recall that in the first Indo-Pak war, the Pakistani irregulars and soldiers alike killed large numbers of Hindus. The new century saw the extension of this Jihad to Jammu. In an old post I termed the Amarnath issue as a phenomenon out to steadily make Hindus the second-class citizens in India–Jihad again. Two years later, it’s only gotten worse. The question then to ask is: why didn’t we witness any Amarnath-like social disruption even five years ago? The obvious answer lies in changed demographics and/or accumulation of more power and influence by the Religion of Peace.

Proud Stonepelters and their Media Mollycoddlers

The media, which had maintained that “Kashmir belongs to India no matter what” has today changed the tune to “grant autonomy to Kashmir.” It’s no surprise that it toes the line of a certain secular party on all things of anti-national importance. The Indian media is blessed with great clairvoyance. It runs well-placed pieces and posts heart-rending pictures of the heartless Indian army gunning down innocent Kashmiri Muslims. A few weeks later, the Prime Minister announces that he’s ready to give autonomy to Kashmir.

From an angel of peace who created the Kashmir problem to a Puppet Prime Minister extraordinaire, we’ve come a full circle. And all it took for Dr.Gentle to issue that nauseous statement was several days of relentless stone-pelting by freedom-loving Kashmiri Muslim youth. A certain courageous paper known for Peeping Tom journalism ran a mile-long article that basically says the following:

• Kashmir has never had any Hindus
• We stand for pacifism and peace
• We hate to be called Indians
• Indian soldiers are basically poor villagers who languish under the Indian state as much as we do

And then another truth-pursuing channel invites a known India-baiter who threatens a Kashmiri Pandit live on TV. Meanwhile, the Kashmiri Pandits who take out protests in Delhi are caned by the cops whose chain of command finally ends with Dr. Gentle who has just gone on record announcing the possibility of granting autonomy to Kashmir. Wait. But nobody needs to talk about the Pandits–Kashmir is more or less completely Muslim. And so what Pakistan couldn’t achieve by force in 1947-48 is being given to it by India on a platter because Dr.Gentle hates stones.

Our well-fed journos and liberals are only too happy to lend their voice in support of giving away Kashmir. Tomorrow, it could be Kerala, which is showing tremendous promise of becoming the Kashmir of the South.

Plight of the Pandits

To be fair, all the hard work, organization and dogged determination of the Kashmiri Pandits are slowly paying off. For the first time, the protests in Delhi left a mark that (we hope) won’t be ignored. Media reports, independent reporters, bloggers, and the Internet are also pretty reliable indicators of the support that’s built up in their favour. But it’s not enough for a people who’ve pretty much been at the receiving end of untold misery for centuries. The only parallel I see is in the plight of the Jews till Israel was formed.

The Shape of Things to Come

Azad Kashmir then, is not about freedom for Kashmiris. It’s the freedom to make Kashmir an Islamic state, which will become a satellite state of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Granting autonomy to Kashmir in any form simply means the Indian state has accepted defeat at the feet of Pakistan’s Jihad machine. We already have a foretaste of the Islamic Republic of Kashmir.

Sikhs in the Kashmir Valley have received anonymous letters from Islamic militants asking them to either embrace Islam and join the protests against civilian killings or pack up and leave the Valley. The 60,000-strong Sikh community is the single largest minority group in the Valley.

There. The future dhimmis have already been identified. It doesn’t matter that the double-dealer Geelani has “reassured” the Sikhs. Only the secular party believes the likes of Geelani.

The Way Out

The past offers several solutions to current problems. Guru Tegh Bahadur is one such example who laid the foundation for the destruction of the Mughal empire. This man moved to tears by the plight of Kashmiri Pandits living far away invited death upon himself. The idea, old-fashioned and emotional by today’s standards is eternal. He had recognized the cultural unity of India in his own way and sacrificed himself to preserve that. That set off a wave of revolt starting with his own son and successor, Guru Gobind Singh, and then the Rajputs, Chattrasal, and Shivaji. Equally, Ranjit Singh who liberated Kashmir from bloodthirsty Muslim rulers was wise to realize the consequences of unchecked Muslim power. He never allowed any Muslim chieftain–big and small–to grow beyond his boots and as V Nalwa records, he kept a tight watch on the Muslim clergy. Mullahs were “not looked upon kindly as they were known to fan fanaticism.” [Hari Singh Nalwa - Champion of Khalsaji].

Which brings us back to the one word that’s been made dirty by the secular establishment: nationalism. It was the same word that gave us political freedom from the British. Surrendering Kashmir is surrendering that freedom. It’s still not too late.

Tags: Commentary, History, History of India, History of Kashmir, Indian History, Indian Politics, Indian Secularism, Islam, Islam Watch, Islamic Terrorism, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jihad in Kashmir, Jihad Watch, Kashmir, Kashmir Pandits, Media Watch, Nehru, Pakistan Watch, Politics, Pseudosecularism Hall of Shame, Secularism

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended the construction of a proposed mosque near Ground Zero, saying that it must be allowed to proceed because the government “should not be in the business of picking” one religion over another.

Fair enough. But the trouble begins when he expounds further.

“I think it’s fair to say if somebody was going to try, on that piece of property, to build a church or a synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming…”

A mosque, Mr. Bloomberg, is not the same as a temple or a church or a synagogue. Unless you live atop Mt. Everest, you’d surely know that a mosque represents one of the most visible, living, and everyday symbols of Islamic exclusivism. Ever seen a non-skull-cap-wearing guy enter a mosque? Hell! Ever seen any Muslim woman enter a mosque? A church or a synagogue in the US represents no such exclusivity because, admit it, Christianity today has been pretty much defanged in the West. Apart from a fanatical and loony minority, nobody really takes the Prophetic claims of the Only God and his only son, Jesus seriously. On the other hand, 99% of the devout guys who pray at the mosque take the words of the Imams and Mullahs very seriously and your guess is as good as mine as to what these guys say.

But Mr. Bloomberg is on a different trip. He says the opposition to building that mosque violates “the essence of America” because

What is great about America and particularly New York is we welcome everybody, and if we are so afraid of something like this, what does that say about us? Democracy is stronger than this. You know the ability to practice your religion was one of the real reasons America was founded

There’s a reason for this fear. And no, democracy is not stronger than Islam, which believes in the strength of brute force. Democracy rests on dialogue and peaceful dissent. More importantly, democracy is mostly about majority vote. What’s going to happen, Mr. Bloomberg, when Islam gets those majority votes? Majority votes will help make new laws and get existing laws changed. Look at your country just 20 years ago. Since when did your restaurants, and food courts begin to sport halaal meat served here signages? And what law mandates that these establishments sport those signages? And what is going to happen if (shudder!) such a thing is made into a law? Oh! and Pakistan is a democracy. I bet you want to live there.

Mr. Bloomberg, have you ever thought about why the proposed mosque is proposed to be built on that site, which is witness to one of the most spectacular Jihads of this century? Robert Spencer provides the answer that every student of history knows already:

The placement of mosques throughout Islamic history has been an expression of conquest and superiority over non-Muslims. Muslims built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in order to proclaim Islam’s superiority to Judaism. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was built over the Church of St. John the Baptist, and the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople was converted into a mosque, to express the superiority of Islam over Christianity. Historian Sita Ram Goel has estimated that over 2,000 mosques in India were built on the sites of Hindu temples for the same reason…The Twin Towers, after all, were the symbol of America’s economic power. Placing a mosque by the site of their destruction (at the hands of Islamic jihadists) symbolizes the taming of that power.

He correctly dissects the doublespeak of Feisal Abdul Rauf, one of the main initiators of the mosque’s proposed construction as

The possibility of deception cannot here be ruled out, given that Abdul Rauf has a history of making smooth statements that appear to endorse American principles and values, when on closer examination he is upholding Sharia law, denigrating freedom of speech, and advocating against anti-terror measures.

In other words, Taqqiya. But no, Mr.Bloomberg is a politician and he only does what politicians are known to do. Which is pretty rich because starting from a 2-bit Imam and Mullah in a remote corner of a third-rated Islamic tyranny right up to Bin Laden, every Islamic fanatic goes on record swearing the destruction or conversion of America. And each time, the upholders of noble principles of democracy sound like weak apologetics for these Imams instead of taking these threats seriously. Pretty much like how European leaders behaved when Hitler openly spoke of a Nazi rule/world conquest.

Mr. Bloomberg, we all know it’s impossible for you to think deeply, to study and understand the ideology at work behind such vile and dangerous efforts but don’t insult the deaths of your own countrymen. Remember, you’re allowing the structure to stand on their graves–a structure inside which the ideology that caused their deaths will be hammered into the brains of the “faithful.”

You’ll do well to read up on a guy called Babar…

Tags: Al Qaida, America Shouldn’t allow the Mosque at Ground Zero, Bloomberg, New York Mayor, Commentary, Ground Zero, Islam Watch, Islamic Terror, Jihad, Jihad Watch, Mosque at Ground Zero, New York Ground Zero Mosque, September 2001, US, USA

As is their wont, the “criticism” that continues to emanate from professional Bhyrappa-baiters is centered mostly around the following themes:

• It is an attack on the concept of feminism/gender equality.
• Only the bindi/mangalsutra-wearing women aka traditional Indian women are “real” women and it therefore reaffirms SL Bhyrappa as a writer who upholds regressive values.
• Its lays extreme and unnecessary focus on extra marital relationships.
• There was really no need to write such a novel.

We don’t need to attach any weightage to these baiters because…well, because we know the script. However, it’s not untrue that Kavalu has disappointed even his most ardent fans and admirers who feel let down for many different reasons as we shall see.

Kavalu is first and foremost a novel, a literary work that needs to be analyzed as such. Things like theme, issues, feminism etcetra are merely incidental because it transcends issues and remains utterly faithful to the author’s oft-repeated dictum about his views on literature: a quest for truth, a strumming of the strings of the most fundamental impulses of human nature, and a conscious divorce from isms. This is one of the reasons why his works haven’t enjoyed quality criticism. An age of formulaic and agenda-based literature yields a similar harvest of literary criticism and critics. And plain laziness and lack of imagination to appreciate quality literature, a fact that Bernard Shaw condemned about 100 years ago:

THE rest of the story need not be shown in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of “happy endings” to misfit all stories. [Sequel to Pygmalion, 1916]

Although it’s arguable, Kavalu has no central “theme.” It explores a range of human impulses by placing its chief protagonists in specific situations set in a specific spacio-temporal and cultural context. These contexts assume special importance to understand the essence of Kavalu. The behaviour, attitudes, and responses to specific situations of the six principal characters of the novel make sense only in the contemporary cultural context of India.

Kavalu is a treatise of sorts on the decayed Indian family values that we see today everywhere. Although traditional Indian values still exist in tiny, fragmented pockets, they’ve been largely obliterated in urban India in which the novel’s characters are placed. This decay as the novel shows, is just another facet of the overall decline of values in the society. The novel’s focus is a deep examination of the age-old and still-widely-held idea of marriage-as-an-institution. When you read it, you can’t help but question this idea: is marriage really an institution anymore or is it simply a contract that you can end at will. Or, as we are witnessing, a contract that you can end at a whim. Or the fact that we’ve come to this pass in India where it was a sacred, dharmic institution. And the next inevitable question that accompanies this: why have we come to this pass?

What began about 30 years ago as a movement (honourable, genuine and justified in many cases) for gender equality has today metamorphosed into an untamed monster armed with the power of law. The culprit here, again, is a blind and crude import of Western feminist ideas. A few months ago, I wrote this about the brand of “feminism” that has spread it octopus-like tentacles across our cities:

…our intellectually-vacuous thinkers imported the worst of Western feminism into India and superimposed it on to the Indian society. Western feminism arose out of a genuine need in those societies—for example, women were denied voting rights till the 1960s, about 50 years ere now. Also, oppression of women in those societies was also one of the outcomes of the industrial revolution, which in its early days, spawned a ruthless form of exploitative capitalism. However, India was a victim of the industrial revolution. Indian women suffered no such oppression. Besides, the status of Indian women as worship-worthy was still secure, and was handed down over a few thousand years. Indian women had such models as Gargi, Maitreyi, Arundhati, and Draupadi to look up to while their Western sisters had none. A poor Joan of Arc or a Hypatia who were put to death. Today, a Mata Amritanandamayi is worshipped by men and women with equal devotion. When I last heard, she didn’t go about preaching Mallika Sarabhai-brand of female equality

The two chief female protagonists of Kavalu, Mangala and Ila in their own ways, stand as excellent examples of this development. Mangala represents a classic example of what happens when spurious feminism is mixed with naked manipulation. She seduces Jayakumar without seducing him and marries him through legal coercion. “Legal coercion” is the precise term to describe her act of unleashing a pack of ultra-fiery feminists headed by a Supreme Court-status feminist lawyer. Post-marriage, she demands her “legal right” to get sex from him and sets out to systemmatically wreck his life. Mangala’s character development is a must-study for every serious student of literature. Equipped basically with a very sick mind fed on a heady diet of academic indoctrination of misplaced feminism and garnished with third-rate feminist literature, she sees sexual connotations in a father’s affection for his mentally-challenged teenage daughter. Ila, her professor in college provides the said academic indoctrination. Mangala’s defining character trait is a severe intolerance of other people’s happiness. She is willing to accept any indignity if that provides her an avenue to manipulate her way up the food chain of materialism. She lets herself be used by a powerful businesswoman as an object of sexual pleasure. Her consent to sleep with Jayakumar, her boss, before she legally coerced to marry, stems from the same impulse. Her legal coercion doesn’t end there. She quotes the law when he refuses to have sex with her post-marriage and tops her previous record by putting him behind bars because he hit her. Yet, the extreme provocation from her side escapes her: “I’ve read Freud. I know your “love” for your daughter: you love the thrill of feeling a fourteen year old girl’s ripe, young breasts against you” followed by taunts about his manhood.

Mangala’s repeated invocation of the law to get away with patently manipulative and evil impulses simply shows, among others, these:

• The nature of the law that enables, encourages, sustains, and even rewards these impulses.
• The obvious heedlessness of the makers of such laws.
• The defeat of the original intent and purpose of the law–i.e. to protect a wife against the atrocities of the husband and his family.
• The boomerang effect of the law. In the name of protecting the wife, the law victimizes other female members of the family–the mother in law and sister in law.

The law in question happens to be the dreaded Section 498 of the Indian Penal Code. As to what it does, I’ll simply point you to this. This raises an even more vital question: to what extent should a free, civil society allow the law to interfere in the private lives of individuals? More fundamentally, what exactly is the function, nay, justification for laws to even exist? This seemingly absurd question arises in the mind when the author opens the gates to deeper inquiry on many things we’ve come to accept as normal. The old lawyer who counsels Jayakumar says, “Justice and law are entirely different things. Law doesn’t guarantee justice. Even the judges are powerless here–they cannot rule what is not in the law. The current practice is to squeeze as much (money) as you can.”

The picture that emerges is both disturbing and dangerous: we’ve mindlessly created a system that empowers Mangalas whose tendencies have been given ideological justification by the likes of Ila and provided with fangs by the law. While Mangala has absolutely no redeeming qualities, Ila, her lecturer in college, is a committed feminist in every sense. Her feminist convictions are solidified during her years as a postgrad student in England. When she returns, she seeks to impose those ideas in a society that’s entirely a different universe. Ila symbolizes the adage about every problem looking like a nail to a person armed with a hammer. An English lecturer, she manages to “detect” injustice to women in every work of literature–past and present. She preaches free sex to her students in a society much to the delight of her male students who’re only happy if their female classmates buy into the idea. Mangala buys in and has sex with Prabhakar, has an abortion, and then he vanishes before emerging again after she marries Jayakumar, and resumes where he had left off. Ila refuses to join her husband, Vinay Chandra when he’s transferred to Delhi because she thinks it lowers her dignity as a woman who has a mind of her own, career aspirations, etcetra. She embarks on an affair with a powerful minister, which ends disastrously for her. Ila’s character is exemplary for her conviction and fealty to her feminist ideas. She preaches what she practices but both her preaching and practice are distant from the reality of her cultural context. She never realizes this fact despite her own daughter’s disavowal of everything she stands for. Ila’s conviction that feminism is about truly liberating a woman from all bonds she sees as imposed by a male-dominated society doesn’t resonate with Sujaya. When the eighteen year old Sujaya questions her liaisons with the minister, Ila says her daughter has no claim over her personal life. In turn, she says Sujaya is allowed the same freedom and privacy on the condition that she must have protected sex. Sujaya’s conclusive reply is a slap on the face of Ila’s convictions: “I’m leaving you to go and live in the hostel precisely because I don’t want your kind of freedom.” Ila fails to not just fathom her daughter’s reaction but really, fails to understand her daughter as a person. And it is easy to see why: people who blindly albeit sincerely ahdere to an ideology are blinkered by the very ideology and live their lives in denial and seek to blame other people and factors rather than introspect. Ila blames her husband for “weaning” her daughter away from her by poisoning her mind against the mother.

If this sounds like a wholly one-sided view of gender equality and feminism, it isn’t. Perhaps no other contemporary author has managed to create memorable and lasting female characters as SL Bhyrappa has done: Nanjamma (Grihabhanga), Satyabhama (Daatu), Chandrika (Saartha), Thayavva (Tabbaliyu Neenaade Magane), Savithri (Saakshi), Ramkumari (Mandra), and Lakshmi (Aavarana) are not mere characters; they stand out as entire value systems. In Kavalu we find Vaijayanthi, Jayakumar’s deceased (first) wife and towers over him by the sheer force of her immense personal strength. She helps him build his business, makes his home and provides support to him in every way–from taking over administrative tasks at work to supervising the construction of their house to doing the interiors to instilling values in the daughter. Jayakumar recollects her personality, “a pleasant face that radiated love and warmth and gave the comfort and security that every man needs from his woman” and “not like Mangala who is forever battle-ready.” Which raises an important issue: how can we rescue the Indian family system as we know it from the clutches of the entire discourse on feminism/gender equality, which is based on rights? Any discourse based on rights carries with it a seed of conflict. And so it is with the clamour of feminists that has resulted today in largescale wreckage of families across the country. In the last 12 years, an estimated 170000 men have killed themselves unable to bear the harassment meted out by their wives armed with the dreaded IPC Section 498. And eligible bachelors now fear marriage. A discourse based only on rights is a product of ego, a concept alien to Indian ethos, which is based on duty. Indian values emphasized the need to shed ego because the sages who laid down our system of values realized that contentment and ego are antithetical. Those who talk about the Constitution-guaranteed fundamental rights of a citizen never talk about the same Constitution, which also lays down fundamental duties. Leading a duty-bound life implies sacrificing large portions of the ego. A law enacted on the basis of a rights discourse therefore ends up feeding the ego. The consequence, to repeat, is the industrial-scale societal destruction that continues to occur. Like most things in life, love and trust and respect in a marriage need to be earned, and to earn something, one needs to sacrifice something. When these things are demanded as a right, things fall apart. While Vijayanthi exemplifies the former ideals, Mangala epitomises the latter vices of character. Which make us question another widely-held assumption: that education/literacy inculcates decency and values. The characters of Jayakumar’s mother and Dyavakka, his loyal female servant show this quite powerfully. Dyvakka knows her place in the household and sticks with Jayakumar through his journey from prosperity to misery. She becomes more than a mother to Jayakumar’s daughter when Jayakumar is jailed for a few months. Jayakumar’s mother is another powerful character who emerges very late in the novel. A gutsy woman, she speaks on the strength of the values she’s found through living a hard life. Her moment of glory is when she visits her older son and daughter-in-law, responsible for sending her to jail on a fabricated charge: “You won’t understand this. He’s my son and he needs me now.” This is the other side of a rights discourse, which knows only punishment, but ignores the possibility of the moral courage it takes to forgive.

The male protagonists in Kavalu are pretty much weak and have no real depth of character. Jayakumar is a naive but hardworking and decent person who lacks courage to counter his exploitation in his own home and is powerless to stop his downfall. He gives in to his sexual impulses in a weak moment and spends the rest of his life regretting it. He finds sexual pleasure with call girls and when he’s jailed, he fails to brazen it out like others arrested with him do. In many ways, he’s a symbol of the New Emasculated Urban Indian Male while Vinay Chandra is the smart and sophisticated urban Indian male who doesn’t hesitate to manipulate to get what he wants though he’s not crooked by nature. He is deeply attached to his daughter and sets aside time to ensure that he’s always there for her. He doesn’t openly show the fact that he’s unhappy with Ila but uses his transfer to Delhi as a convenient opportunity to separate from her. He makes it sound like it’s her decision to stay separate. Vinay Chandra’s firm conviction in strong family values and his rustic background keeps him attached to his family back in the village. He wills his share of land to his poor brother and bears the hospitalization costs of his sister-in-law. His conviction makes him perpetuate these values across generations. He forges a warm bond between Sujaya and Satish, his brother’s son. Over time, the cousins become fiercely protective of each other and become mutual support systems. The other male protagonist Nachiketa, Jayakumar’s elder sister’s son, endures the travails of his own follies. As an impulsive young man, he migrates to the US, and first lives-in with a White woman who walks out of the live-in arrangement. He then falls for an older woman, divorced with two children. She traps him in a marriage and finally grants him “freedom” after stripping him of everything he has. In the end, Nachiketa returns to India in a quest to rebuild his life.

The male characters are symbolic of what’s happening to urban Indian men. They are no longer the “men of the house.” The first sign of assertiveness earns them the “brute” label, which now invites the wrath of Section 498 among other, similar laws. Their commitment to parents earns them the “mama’s boy” label while their acceptance of the wife’s whims gets them the “henpecked” tag. Whatever way you look at it, the urban Indian male’s life is a lifelong journey on the proverbial razor’s edge.

Despite this near-total breakdown of family life, Kavalu provides hope. Each of the men in the novel rebuild their shattered lives in their own way with the emotional support of the family and relatives. Jayakumar finds an avenue to heal his past by thinking about a consulting assignment and by tending more to his daughter. His mother and sister and Nachiketa stand by him while Nachiketa tries to redeem himself by marrying Puttakka, Jayakumar’s mentally-challenged daughter. Though a far-from-ideal marriage by conventional norms, he realizes that she possesses all the qualities that makes a marriage work: unqualified love and care and acceptance. However, the best sign of hope is that which emanates from our children. The highpoint of Kavalu is the email that Sujaya writes to Satish sharing her thoughts and concerns and fears about relationships and ends it with a touching request: “will you find such a groom for me?” In many ways, that email captures the essence of the entire work.

SL Bhyrappa’s talent for concealing dhwani, or suggestion, is brilliant as ever. The names of Ila and Mangala resonate with a range of possibilities. Ila, meaning “Earth” is significant because in the Indian context, Earth is regarded as Mother, sacred and worship-worthy because she gives life, supports, sustains, tolerates, endures, and forgives. In the novel, Ila’s personality is defined by a steadfast devotion to self-interest in the garb of individuality and freedom. Mangala, which means “auspicious” carries a similar undertone of suggestion: she unleashes a relentless torrent of misery from the moment she steps into Jayakumar’s life and home. Equally, SL Bhyrappa’s unparalleled mastery over the technique of unraveling the tale largely by delving into the minds of the characters remains intact in Kavalu. He’s one of the finest practitioners of maintaining aesthetic distance: characters tell the story, the author merely records them. The episode of minister’s wife–a crude, raw, and ferocious woman–who abuses Ila is one of the best illustrations of said aesthetic distance.

Kavalu is not one of SL Bhyrappa’s major works and rightly so. A novel that depicts a society populated by pusillanimous people cannot be profound. The India of today cannot produce towering personalities–any such personalities that still exist belong to an earlier era. At best, the today’s India can produce good and decent people: the office-going, festival-celebrating, law-fearing, pilgrimage-going and family-photo variety. Despite these limitations, Kavalu emerges as a work that will force you to ask tough and disturbing questions. Part of the reason why even SL Bhyrappa’s loyal readers and fans have felt “let down” by Kavalu is because it peeks into the reality of their own lives. This reality doesn’t necessarily need to be negative: ask people to introspect honestly and expect the obvious reactions of denial and defensiveness. Kavalu does this unlike all his other works, which deal with largely impersonal themes. It doesn’t have the epic sweep of Thantu, Parva, or Daatu or the unfathomable depth of feeling of Mandra or the intricate churning of fundamental philosophies of life in Sakshi. It is in many ways a canvas on which the author has simply drawn an outline: the reader needs to create the picture according to his/her own mental makeup, character, imagination, erudition, and experience. Whether an everlasting work of art emerges or a Hussainesque aberration ensues depends on the reader.

Tags: Bhyrappa, Book Review, Book Review: Kavalu, Cleft, Dr. SL Bhyrappa, Fiction, Indian Family Life, Indian Society, Indian Values, Kannada Novel, Kannada Novel: Kavalu, Kavalu, Literature, New Book by SL Bhyrappa, New Novel by SL Bhyrappa, Section 498, SL Bhyrappa

…a fake saint who fucked her way to fame and survives, in spite of her complete lack of talent, because her crude scolding warms the heart of old British lefties who love it when their tame Indian slaves get up on their hind legs to denounce the bloody Americans, who oppress the world so much less skillfully than they used to…Roy’s real argument, the one which makes her so beloved of the grumpy old Brits, is much simpler: ha ha on you upstart Americans.

My piece is not about the Verbal Terrorist but mark those underlined words. Also mark these words from the same piece.

The Americans put [the British] guys out of an Empire-managing job, and they will never forgive that or lose their conviction that the world was oppressed far better under the Union Jack than the Stars and Stripes…If what went around ever actually came around, Roy and her sponsors would not exist — because if ever a culture inflicted horrors on the world, it was Victorian Britain. Yet no divine lightning ever struck that lucky, bloodstained Empire.

Now read these lines.

Next year marks the hundredth anniversary of one of the most extraordinary events in our history, the Delhi Durbar of 1911.
In the Indian capital’s vast Coronation Park, more than half a million people watched as every prince, nobleman and senior official in the subcontinent paid their respects to their new King-Emperor. At that moment, resplendent in his coronation robes and wearing the diamond-studded, 34-ounce Imperial Crown of India, George V could never have imagined that one day a British prime minister would be talking of his ‘humility’ — not his pride — in Britain’s relationship with India….Yet when David Cameron travelled from Istanbul to India this week, he came perilously close to resembling the Uriah Heep of international diplomacy, forever telling his hosts how very humble he was.
Surrounded by the relics of the greatest empire-builders in history, from the Romans and Byzantines to the Ottomans and the Mughals, he seemed oddly ill at ease, as though embarrassed by the thought that Britain once eclipsed them all…

The date was 1942, the speaker — it should hardly need saying — was the great Winston Churchill. ‘I am proud,’ Churchill said, ‘to be a member of that vast Commonwealth and society of nations and communities gathered in and around the ancient British monarchy, without which the good cause might well have perished from the face of the earth. ‘Here we are, and here we stand, a veritable rock of salvation in this drifting world.’

Those words still have the power to evoke tears of pride. Yet it is no easier to imagine Mr Cameron saying them than it is to imagine him telling Brussels to clean up its corruption or telling the United States Senate where to stick its demagogic criticisms of BP.

The author, one Mr. Dominic Sandbrook (whether he’s Leftist or no doesn’t really matter in this case) accurately fits John Dolan’s characterization of the grumpy old Brits.

Mr. Sandbrook’s yearning for some vintage imperialist ass-kicking of the bloody natives drips throughout the piece from the word go. From lapsing into lamenting raptures over the forever-lost glories that George V enjoyed right up to being thrilled by the arch-imperialist Churchill, he rightly sheds those tears of pride.

The dreaded “patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel” was coined perhaps to represent writers like Mr. Sandbrook his article shows and as we shall see. His “patriotism” and his rousing call for present-day Brits to keep alive the memories of those kickass days entails these:

• Painting Britain in nothing but the most hallowed hues
• Sweeping glaring atrocities under the carpet as you know, this happens. A few badly-behaved boys, etc.
• Blurring the lines between fairytale and history
• Indulging in the “who threw the most number of stones at the peaceful neighbour’s apple tree?” game.

He begins with this flawed and arrogant but eminently sensible premise for there’s no other way the rest of his zealot-like piece would stand.

Ever since the Sixties, politicians have found it easier to run down our country, and to criticise the largest and most prosperous empire the world has ever known, than to stand up for Britain. By and large, of course, historical apologies are meaningless.

Right. And that’s precisely why there’s still so much ill-will among former colonies and elsewhere between historical rivals. The innate human nature to avenge past insults won’t go away permanently but a heartfelt apology does help the “healing” process. But Mr. Sandbrook speaks like a true colonizer but couches it in different words: “historical apologies are meaningless.” No wait, he actually says it like it is:

But while there is nothing wrong with showing a little humility, apologising for our history is the last thing a prime minister should be doing…

You deserved to be colonized and we aren’t obliged to apologize. Now. Or never. Then he explains why.

Modern-day India, after all, is a success story built on sturdy Anglo-Saxon foundations. Now the world’s second-fastestgrowing economy, it would probably not even exist as a unified state were it not for the legacy of British rule.

Oh absolutely, old chum! The 4800 years before the British took over didn’t exist. The Anglo-Saxons carved India out from clay. It’s rich for someone who speaks about foundations to conveniently forget the fact that it was the sturdy Anglo-Saxons that came begging to Jahangir’s court after realizing how costly it was to wage wars on the seas with their own European neighbours. While we’re at it, would Mr. Sandbrook mention how exactly Kanhoji Angre repeatedly licked these sturdy Anglo-Saxons to dust? It never ceases to amuse me how people who came to India as trader-supplicants, in less than 200 years, “realized” they were “superior” to the “natives?” I use the word “supplicant” very carefully because at the time the East India Company first set foot in India, we had no dearth for nations offering to be trade partners. And today, there exist Mr. Sandbrooks of the world who continue to harbour such poppy-induced delusions. Thankfully he stopped short of saying “One world under the Union Jack.”

Sure. It wouldn’t exist as a unified state in the sense of nation states as we know it but what about India’s cultural unity that sustained it for the same 4800 years and helped it withstand a prolonged Muslim onslaught? No. Mr. Sandbrook’s zealous patriotism allows him to only see the India that the British “rescued” from these horrors:

It was the British, let us not forget, who outlawed Indian slavery, infanticide and the horrendous practice of suttee, whereby widows were burned to death on their husband’s funeral pyre.

That’s a new one. Indian slavery! One would want to ask how Mr.Sandbrook defines this term or show us exactly one instance of “Indian slavery.” On outlawing infanticide, it’s no thanks to the British but largely the Indian reformers who persuaded the government to outlaw it. Also note the spelling of “sati.” Nothing like the good ol’ “suttee” eh? While I do cringe at Sati, let’s not forget the era we’re talking about. The whole “liberation from Sati” like the “evil caste system” is exaggerated. Sati was by and large a voluntary practice by the wife. Sati and Jauhar are in many ways synonymous, a practice that held death preferable to dishonour. Perhaps Mr. Sandbrook would like to read accounts of how Indian widows were fair game for Brit officers. Patriotism is fine but Mr. Sandbrook, don’t make it this easy for us to point out your abysmal knowledge of history.

It was the British, too, who introduced to India the rule of the common law, parliamentary democracy and, perhaps above all, the English language — the greatest asset for any country in today’s globalised marketplace.

Ah yes! The British, the Saviours of India. According to Mr. Sandbrook, India was a lawless land before the advent of Delivering Masters. And K.P. Jayaswal was wrote fiction in his solid Hindu Polity that painstakingly shows the existence of an advanced, a more cultured form of democracy during as early as the Rg Vedic period. On English language, I think it’s both a curse and a good thing to happen. If Mr. Sandbrook thinks the sole value of any language is its economic potential, I can feel only pity for him.

And then he turns his imperial sight upon another facet of British benevolence.

Of course, British rule had blunders, cruelties and prejudices. And yet, by comparison with the other great empires, from the Romans and the Persians to the French, the Dutch and the Spanish, Britain’s empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law.

This is what I meant by throwing stones at the peaceful neighbour’s apple tree. The British rule killed only ten but the vile French and the rest killed twenty six. To twist Shakespeare’s words, there’s a kindness to his mercilessness. And then Mr.Sandbrook rattles off a list of horrific atrocities perpetrated by the French, Dutch, and Belgians. Once again, our poor chum’s history fails him. Let’s look at some illustrative episodes that characterize the beacon of tolerance, and decency:

• The Brit-made Bengal famine as recent as 67 years ago: this act of supreme decency wiped out 4 million people in a year in just the Bengal region (that includes today’s Bangladesh).
• A certain W.S. Lily says this “During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone, the year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress, 5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted, a region twice the size of Wales, one-fourth of the population perished in the famine of 1816-77.”
• And then we have the Mother of All Famines, the Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770, again an act of extreme benignity that killed 10 million Indians.

In a way Mr.Sandbrook is right. The French and the rest were bloody and brutal. The kindly Brits had perfected the art of bloodless murder on an industrial scale. As to how this bloodlessness translated in reality, we turn to W.S. Lily’s words again:

…as I rode out on horseback, morning after morning, I passed crowds of wandering skeletons, and saw human corpses by the roadside, unburied, uncared for, and half devoured by dogs and vultures; how, sadder sight still, children, ‘the joy of the world,’ as the old Greeks deemed, had become its ineffable sorrow, and were forsaken by the very women who had borne them, wolfish hunger killing even the maternal instinct. Those children, their bright eyes shining from hollow sockets, their nesh utterly wasted away, and only gristle and sinew and cold shivering skin remaining, their heads mere skulls, their puny frames full of loathsome diseases, engendered by the starvation in which they had been conceived and born and nurtured they haunt me still.

THIS Mr.Sandbrook, is the cost of India’s current economic successes that you attribute to the English language. Besides, Indians weren’t really enamoured with the English language. It was forced upon us, an outcome of the same beacon of decency. Your imperial British government made it impossible for Indians to earn a living as government or even private employees without first learning English. They had few options given that your industrial revolution ruined most of our traditional occupations. Oh, and of course, as Mr. Sandbrook says, there were some bad boys in the fold. Does a General Dyer remind you of something?

And then, in a fit of exuberance Mr. Sandbrook entertains us to some comic relief.

The Raj survived not at the point of a bayonet, but thanks to the enthusiastic co-operation of thousands of ordinary Indians, who relished the order that their colonial partners had brought to a subcontinent torn apart by religious and ethnic conflict.

Even 5-year olds don’t believe in fairytales anymore, Mr. Sandbrook and you’re trying to pass this off as history? But then, isn’t this the blanket that warms up your freezing winter nights, my dear Indians? Here was a nation of disorderly and lawless barbarians, who the moment they saw the British, opened their arms, bowed down their heads and mortgaged their brains and freedom to the Bringers of Order. This line incidentally, reminds me of secular and Islamic version of Indian history, which says India was a land of darkness before Islam’s advent. Please substitute as appropriate.

Story upon story.

And it is no accident, either, that uniquely among the great world empires, British rule carried within it the seeds of its own dissolution. For quite apart from the roads and railways, the bridges and ports and institutions of law and order, Britain bequeathed a much more precious legacy to its colonies: the idea of liberty. We often forget, for instance, that Gandhi was the beneficiary of British tolerance and a British education, studying law at University College London and training for the Bar in the imperial capital.

Oh sure! “Seeds of its own dissolution” is a very noble to say after the dissolution. During its imperialistic days, this line went by the sun never sets on the British Empire. Wisdom in hindsight so amazingly sets everything right. The idea of liberty, Mr.Sandbrook was developed in far profounder ways and much earlier in time in India than your Empire-yearning sensibilities can hope to comprehend. Let’s just say that the “revolt” of 1857 was exactly that: the first war of Indian Independence, the war to liberate India. On Gandhi’s education, note the undisguised condescension: “beneficiary of British tolerance and education.” No siree! It wasn’t that. Gandhi and the rest were allowed to study law, etc because the British hoped that they’d return to India and work for Her Majesty’s Government. What was that about “British in all but skin colour” that Maculay said? Or does Mr. Sandbrook want us to believe that Gandhi’s “inner call” to fight for India’s freedom came precisely because of his law education in England?

Continuing to bleed his patriotic heart on the delicate subject of dissolution, he says,

On top of all that, there has never been a case in history of an empire dissolving so swiftly, smoothly and — yes — peacefully as the British Empire did in the Fifties and Sixties.

Oh absolutely and how very selectively! But the words you’re looking for are quickly, hastily, and bloodily. Why did you select only the Fifties and the Sixties, Mr.Sandbrook? And why did you leave India out given that your article was provoked by Mr.Cameron’s India visit and his disgraceful manner of conduct here? Why do you shy away from mentioning the bloody Indian Partition, a permanent blot on your nation’s Imperial Soul? Why do you refrain from mentioning that almost every former British colony is in a state of turmoil till this day?

Then, the Imperialism-yearner returns to bash a succession of post-colonial Prime Ministers.

The tragedy, though, is that instead of taking pride in their achievements, British politicians of the day recoiled from the simple patriotism that burned within their predecessors.

That’s because they’re not you, Mr.Sandbrook as we shall soon see. What burned in those predecessors’ hearts was sheer arrogance of power that they mistook for patriotism. The same Churchill that you quote with fierce pride in prose choked with nostalgic tears made his hatred of Indians quite apparent.

The Bengal Famine and its aftermath for the debilitated Bengal population consumed its victims over several years in the case of complete British inaction through most of 1943 or insufficient subsequent action. Churchill had a confessed hatred for Indians and during the famine he opposed the humanitarian attempts of people such as the Prime Minister of Canada, Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy General Wavell…

And in a sudden deviation into a semblance of sense, Mr.Sandbrook writes,

Our mongrel language has become the planet’s lingua franca; our scientists and engineers, such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, have a worldclass reputation. Our national sport has become the world’s favourite game; even our popular culture, from James Bond to J.K. Rowling, delights billions from Boston to Beijing. We have no need to apologise for giving the world Shakespeare and Dickens, Newton and Darwin.

Broadly agree and yes, Shakespeare and JK Rowling continue to delight and enthrall natives as much as others around the world. And these are definitely things that you–and England–need to be patriotic about. But that wasn’t what your rant was about. Was it, Mr.Sandbrook?

The character of a nation is determined by what it takes pride in. A country that defines patriotism as a celebration of its military might is essentially asking its people to worship, encourage, and long for wanton, unprovoked violence. Mr.Sandbrook takes a regressive step backward and actually declaims any apology for past violence! Perhaps he speaks from the luxury of someone who’s never been at the receiving end of imperialism. The brief list of horrors I presented earlier is just a fraction of the larger damage that British imperialism wreaked on an ancient civilization. Among others, British rule systematically and permanently destroyed native traditions, language, social fabric, art, culture, and ways of life that were preserved despite 800 years of Islamic rule. And the worst: it alienated Indians from themselves. In a sense, the author of this piece could be someone named Sen, Mishra, Roy, Chatterjee, or Dasgupta and it’d still read the same.

Tags: Britain, British Conquest of India, British History, British Imperialism, Commentary, Dominic Sandbrook, England, English, Great Britain, History, Imperialism, India, Indian History, Patriotism

The Empire State Building is defending itself against what it says are “hateful words and messages” being generated over its refusal to honor Mother Teresa on Aug. 26 by bathing the tower in blue and white on what would have been her 100th birthday.

All condemn the Empire State Building as the Satan Incarnate of our age.

Understandably, the Satan’s uncompromising refusal to bathe the Building in Teresaesque Holy Blue and White Light has left the minions led by the retard extraodinaire Bill Donohue, frothing uncontrollably at the mouth. He has piled garbage upon garbage.

The rally is being held to protest the decision by Anthony Malkin, the owner of the storied building, to deny a tribute to Mother Teresa: our request to have the towers shine blue and white, the colors of her congregation, on August 26th, the 100th anniversary of her birthday, was originally denied without explanation, and was later denied on appeal by invoking a “policy” that prohibits honoring religious individuals or institutions. If this were in fact true, then (a) they would have said so from the beginning (instead they told me the application looked fine), and (b) they would not have honored Cardinal O’Connor when he died; Pope John Paul II when he died; the Salvation Army; and Rev. Martin Luther King.

To which the straightforward, entirely logical, and faithful-to-the-principles-of-free-speech response is:

As to whether Malkin Holdings is being consistent in its policy, Bronstein added, “It’s irrelevant if it’s inconsistent. They have a right to do what they want.”

In other words, the Empire State Building is not public property. But nothing stops God’s messenger who is hellbent (oops! I just said “hell”) on rallying larger and larger flocks of fools the faithful to bully the neo-Satan into submission. As to the reason why Teresa’s birth centenary is so important, he says:

Mother Teresa was a champion of the culture of life. Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which address women contemplating an abortion, are very much in keeping with her mission. So are programs like Project Rachel: they work with women who have had an abortion.

“The culture of life” is pretty apt to describe everything that “Mother” (and now “Saint”) Teresa symbolizes. Myther Teresa is a more accurate term for this, which has endured for longer than it was ever worth. The deeds of the deceased “champion of the culture of life” can very briefly be summed up thus:

• Sided with dictators
• Took money from known swindlers of public money
• Failed to return such money that she had received as donation
• Didn’t submit any account of the bountiful donations she received
• Didn’t really care for the “sick” and “dying” but used their condition as an opportunity to convert them to Christianity.

For a sickening blow-by-blow account of this incredible Christian zealot’s life and deeds, I refer you to Hitchens’ masterly The Missionary Position and this book available online for free. That said, it’s fairly easy to create a myth but tougher to propagate and sustain them for decades. In Myther Teresa’s case, we need to thank Malcolm Muggeridge–once a witty and incisive satirist who turned loony later in life–for unleashing this gentle fundamentalist upon the world. But for him, she’d have probably remained one of those obscure Western nuns toiling to “spread God’s message in poverty-ridden India.” Hitchens’ book conclusively shows her to be a dangerous, blind fundamentalist that knew no reason, dispensed with even the most basic ethics and had no pity for the poor she claimed to heal and rescue.

…a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: “Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?” She replied: “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”

The Myther Teresa was not limited to India, which has traditionally opened its unsuspecting hearts to even the vilest charlatan posing as a Godman/saint. A past President of the United States was conned charmed into giving her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And we can’t forget the gigantic media spectacle that ensued at her death attainment of Heaven. It just goes to show that one of the defining characteristics of a myth is that it’s both gender and nationality-neutral. Nothing else can explain the almost zero-outrage expressed by the public in the United States in response to this:

…a letter written to Mother Teresa by the man prosecuting the case against [Charles] Keating, Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles Paul Turley….Mr. Turley pointed out to Mother Teresa that Keating was on trial for stealing more than $250 million from over 17,000 investors in his business…Mr.Turley expresses his opinion that “[n]o church, no charity, no organization should allow itself to be used as a salve for the conscience of the criminal” and suggests:
“Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience? I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the ‘indulgence’ he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it! If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession.”

To its credit, the West hasn’t hesitated to call Myther Teresa’s bluff at regular intervals with Hitchens being the most vocal critic. However, India hasn’t really woken up to the nightmare that she was. This sample shows how the funds that Myther’s Missionaries of Charity collected for “rebuilding” Latur simply vanished. And this one draws up a neat balance sheet of her Economics with Truth. And while you’re at it, google for the Ghoul of Calcutta.

I could’ve cut down on the number of references but I included them to show the widespread and enormous information that exists on the Internet alone on the not-so-holy side of the Myther. And yet the teeming millions of even educated, and “thinking” folks persist in believing Teresa as a Saint, a kind of perverse tribute to the power of myth. Little wonder that the likes of the rabid Bill Donohue thrive, the man who made it to the delicious Most Loathsome People list twice.

To his credit, Anthony Malkin, owner of the Empire State Building must be commended for sticking firmly to his stand and condemning the fanatical Donohue’s antics as “hateful words and messages.” More power to Malkin if he doesn’t submit to Donohue’s Teresa-induced peaceful hooliganism. August 26 is the Myther’s Birthday.

Postscript: For whatever it’s worth, a Facebook group has been created to show solidarity with the Empire State Building’s decision. Join it or whatever.

Tags: Anthony Malkin, Bill Donohue, Catholic League, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Christian Conversion, Christian Fundamentalism, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Empire State Building, Empire State Building Refuses Bill Donohue, Fraud Mother Teresa, Ghoul of Calcutta, India, Malcolm Muggeridge, Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa, Mother Theresa, Myth of Mother Teresa, Myther Teresa, Saint Teresa, Teresa, United States, Commentary

But then, as two new books on the strange history of yoga in America show, even the most esoteric and ancient spiritual tradition mutates weirdly when it meets a modern culture pursuing happiness with ever diverse means.

We have a case where the authors of both the books have gotten it wrong because Mishra bases his entire column on these books. Either that or Mishra is being his usual misguided-missile self: misreading, and misleading.

As I’ve shown in an earlier post, Yoga has been badly mauled today. To call it esoteric is, well, a Mishraesque concoction. In addition, the mutation that Mishra mentions is no mutation: the American culture, which needs newer fads to feed itself doesn’t need anything to mutate. What Americans follow in the name of Yoga is neither the pursuit of happiness nor Yoga. It’s not even fitness. It’s just a fad.

After meandering for sometime with a few quotes from the book, Mishra proclaims that

Still, this conflation of yoga with the Kama Sutra — India’s most famous exports to the West prior to information technology — would have startled not only its Brahman practitioners in the Himalayas or along the Ganges but also the sages of Walden and Concord who first embraced Indian ideas of nondualism, the indivisibility of mind and matter, and the essential oneness of the universe.

Mishra would have us believe that only Brahmins (Brahmans/Brahmanas) practice Yoga in the Himalayas. We’d like him to show us some evidence as to the non-existence of people of other castes who practice Yoga in the Himalayas or along the Ganges. To address his “conflation” bit, anybody with even the basic theoretical knowledge of both Kama Sutra and Yoga would call Mishra’s bluff. The end of both Yoga and Kama Sutra is Moksha. In other words, you cannot view any concept of Hindu philosophy in isolation. Remember, it’s the West that interpreted the Kama Sutra as a Sex manual, the author of which was a celibate. What does that tell you, Mishra?

Turning his attention to the second book, Pankaj Mishra drops these precious pearls:

The earliest Indian vendors of spirituality, like Swami Vivekananda, who lectured on Hinduism at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, looked down on the asanas, or poses, of hatha yoga as a defective path to yoga’s goal: the union of the individual self with the divine Self.

Isn’t it interesting how he reduces Swami Vivekananda to a mere “vendor of spirituality?” Given Mishra’s stellar record it is entirely possible that:

a) He has read Swami Vivekananda’s works in full or in sufficient depth.
b) He feels highly elevated by showing the world that Swami Vivekananda was “after all a human being like you and me.”
c) Both a & b

Because it’s superfluous to comment on the secret workings of Mishra’s mind vis a vis Swami Vivekananda, let’s find out for ourselves what Swami Vivekananda said about Hatha Yoga.

But the main part of the activity will lie along the spinal column, so that the one thing necessary for the posture is to hold the spinal column free, sitting erect, holding the three parts — the chest, neck, and head — in a straight line. Let the whole weight of the body be supported by the ribs, and then you have an easy natural postures with the spine straight. You will easily see that you cannot think very high thoughts with the chest in. This portion of the Yoga is a little similar to the Hatha-Yoga which deals entirely with the physical body, its aim being to make the physical body very strong. We have nothing to do with it here, because its practices are very difficult, and cannot be learned in a day, and, after all, do not lead to much spiritual growth. Many of these practices you will find in Delsarte and other teachers, such as placing the body in different postures, but the object in these is physical…The result of this branch of Yoga is to make men live long; health is the chief idea, the one goal of the Hatha-Yogi. He is determined not to fall sick, and he never does. He lives long; a hundred years is nothing to him; he is quite young and fresh when he is 150, without one hair turned grey. But that is all. A banyan tree lives sometimes 5000 years, but it is a banyan tree and nothing more. So, if a man lives long, he is only a healthy animal. One or two ordinary lessons of the Hatha-Yogis are very useful. For instance, some of you will find it a good thing for headaches to drink cold water through the nose as soon as you get up in the morning; the whole day your brain will be nice and cool, and you will never catch cold. It is very easy to do; put your nose into the water, draw it up through the nostrils and make a pump action in the throat.

Please spot a single syllable in this paragraph that shows the Swami “looking down on the asanas” and calling them a “defective path to Yoga’s goal.” If anything, the Swami clearly says that Hatha Yoga is beyond the ambit of his current focus (Raja Yoga). He neither recommends it nor condemns it conclusively. If anything, he actually recommmends taking a few lessons from Hatha Yoga. Mr. Mishra, words have meanings: “to look down upon” means “belittle, condemn.” Clever phraseology fools no one.

After hurriedly dumping Swami Vivekananda, Mishra rambles on, paragraph after paragraph resembling a Quoteathon interspersed with tidbits of his own “commentary.” He says nothing we already don’t know: the Hippies and the new-age guys completely tarnished Yoga…blah blah blah…Yoga is now equated (he says “demoted”) with fitness…more blah blah blah…middle class America made it hugely popular in the ’90s and so on until he gets to this:

But such a fetish of the “authentic” assumes that people in the country of yoga’s origin have upheld a timeless and unchanging yoga rather than practicing what Wendy Doniger, the distinguished historian of Hinduism, calls the world’s greatest “have your rice cake and eat it” religion.

Note the barely-disguised tone that, addressed to Americans, says: listen guys, don’t get worked up. You know, it’s ok, it’s just the so-called puritans that berate your Yoga. Back home in India, they’re equally screwed up. Even they don’t know what real Yoga is. And lo! who does he quote? The High Priestess of Chicago School of Indology, who has left us no record of calling Christianity “have your wine and drink it” religion. We’ll examine this in a bit when we get to what Mishra says next:

It was in India that the tradition of Tantrism first exalted the human body as the source of this-worldly liberation.

Really? And what evidence does Mishra give in support? Nothing. Nobody. The importance of the physical body as a vehicle for spiritual liberation was emphasized in the Vedas as I’ve briefly shown in the past. And further, writes Mishra,

The generation of semi-Westernized Indians who brought about the renaissance of yoga in the early 20th century were themselves syncretists, combining ideas from both East and West. Even the physical aspects that dominate yoga today are partly reimports from the West. T. Krishnamacharya (the South Indian teacher of Indra Devi), B. K. S. Iyengar and K. Pattabhi Jois borrowed from gymnastic postures introduced to India by British colonialists.

Again, Mishra doesn’t care to explain what the curious beast called “syncretist” is. Interestingly, he calls B.K.S Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois as Yoga teachers while elsewhere in his article, he takes pains to explain what “true” Yoga is:

…yoga, which in India, the country of its origin, is identified as one of the six main schools of classical philosophy as well as a form of intellectual training, ethical behavior, meditation, alternative medicine and physical culture. (The Sanskrit word itself means “union,” of the individual self with the cosmic Self.)

Mishra needs to make up his mind: either his understanding of Yoga is incorrect or BKSI and Pattabhi Jois are real Yoga gurus. Either way, Mishra contradicts himself.

In the end, Pankaj Mishra does what’s best known for: writing ultra-long pieces that serve as the perfect vehicles to confound, contradict, dismiss, mislead, and generally tax the brain to the utmost. In this case, the reader will take away this message about the “essence” of Yoga–that it’s all about prolonged lovemaking, nonstop bedroom athletics, deeper orgasms, oral sex, and “have your rice cake and eat it.” Perhaps this is Pankaj Mishra’s way of venting his anger against everything that was denied to him.

Tags: Commentary, Hinduism, India, Indian Philosophy, Pankaj Mishra, Politics, US, Wendy Doniger, Yoga, Yoga in the US

Radical Islamic outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) is aiming to convert Kerala into a Muslim majority state in the next 20 years, Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said here Saturday.

“For achieving that goal, the outfit is pumping money to attract youth and give them weapons. They also try to convert youth from other communities and persuade them to marry Muslim girls,” Achuthanandan told reporters here.

Quite a revelation.

The ever-awake cynic in me questions the context, circumstances, and timing of this thoroughly unsecular (Note: to be distinguished from “Pseudosecular” and other variants thereof) revelation. It isn’t like on the morning of July 25 he had this startling wake up call. Going by the record of his party, there are at least three factors at play:

• The Christian stealth lobby that is both pissed off and shaken at the brazen cutting off of the lecturer’s hand.
• The Left, which has seen massive erosion of its vote bank in West Bengal, is desperate to preserve its other traditional stronghold.
• The prospect that the Islamic threat is, you know, actually real in Kerala and that time is fast running out.

Giving due credence to the last factor, the first two prospects seem more likely to have elicited this bold statement from a sitting, secular Chief Minister of a revolutionary party. His boldness doesn’t end there. Read this.

The chief minister said the outfit [Popular Front of India] tried to create a clean image by organising freedom parades on independence day.
Various district administrations have already banned the parade organised by the PFI every Aug 15, he said.

This in a state with a hoary record of appeasing even known terror-enablers like Madani. The PFI has spread its tentacles to a peace-loving city like Bangalore by organizing “justice” and “social harmony” rallies from time to time. Among others, here’s a partial list of luminaries who have lent their fair names to its “cause.” One such recent “cause” was a protest against the anti-Cow slaughter bill that was passed by the Karnataka Assembly.

CK Jaffer Sharief, journalist Gauri Lankesh, DS spokesman and MLC YSV Dattha (Deve Gowda’s sidekick), Prof Rahmath Tarikere, Girish Karnad, and U R Ananthamurthy (surprise!).

Now that some of their own naughty boys have chopped off the lecturer’s hand and invited the wrath of the Kerala Chief Minister, will these luminaries stand up and disown their errant boys? These worthies who, at the mention of “BJP,” instantly jump up in indignant self-righteousness like monkeys whose bottoms have been singed, have remained mum for over 3 weeks.

Back to Achyutanandan who seems to have also discovered “Love Jihad” here:

The chief minister was responding to a question whether the ongoing crackdown would not prove counterproductive. Achuthanandan’s statement also points an accusing finger at the PFI for encouraging ‘love jihad’, something the organisation has been vehemently denying.

Perhaps Achyutanandan only needs to get a count of Love Jihad cases in Kerala. And while he’s at it, it’ll be good to ask him the reason for the studied closure of all his five senses when similar Soldiers of Allah went on a rampage converting, threatening, and killing innocent Hindus in Kerala. Or the reason RSS workers in Kerala need to walk around inconspicously, almost in fear because their identity will well mean amputation and/or death and the police would just “close the case.” Didn’t it occur to him that these cases were also part of Islamizing Kerala in the next N years? Or isn’t the life of Hindus worth anything given there are 800 million of them? This is one of the reasons for my said cynicism. A Marad massacre attracts little attention in the political and media circles. A perfunctory case is filed and blissfully forgotten ever after while the chopping of a lecturer’s hand elicits tremendous pressure from the (gasp!) Chief Minister in less than 3 weeks. The reason is anybody’s guess.

As I said in my earlier post,

Communist governments in India are powerless to counter the brutal forces that teaming up with Islamists inevitably unleashes. What was once a mere electoral/rhetorical gimmick is today an evil that is both indispensable and a force that they cannot fight against–like riding the tiger and all that.

Riding the tiger begins rather innocently. Here’s an example of how it works. Look no further than Martha Nussabaum who provides a loathsome sample of how to intellectually masturbate to the vilest affront to human dignity. Her 83472983743298 lines of tedious prose and self-defined “premises” are meant to “show” why banning the Burqa is a bad idea because the ban is “utterly unacceptable in a society committed to equal liberty.” She’s an academic superstar and I’m sure she’s aware of the consequences of this kind of “argument” but she does it anyway. In a line, the consequence: it plays directly into the hands of the Mullahs who are more than delighted to have a “white” “educated” woman on their side. See! Your own Phd women say what we’re saying: that the place of a woman is in the kitchen and bedroom and behind the Burqa. Apply the Nussbaum Principle in every other case: Satanic Verses, Danish cartoons, Halaal meat, allowing the Muslim Personal Law to exist as a parallel law, and you have the perfect recipe for creating an atmosphere where people’s hands are chopped off in broad daylight. Successive governments in Kerala did this and now they’re only facing its logical consequences.

However, the political climate being what it is, the Kerala Home Minister’s statement only shows he’s not in a hurry to learn:

Meanwhile, Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said here that the police were trying to find out whether the PFI was a reincarnation of the banned SIMI.

“The organisation was trying to attract Muslim youths towards the path of terrorism. However, a majority are not following them. The state government’s policy was not to harass or victimise the Muslim community in the name of the ongoing investigations as the Opposition had alleged,”

One wonders why, if the majority of Muslims wasn’t following the PFI/SIMI, the Home Minister felt compelled to give this justification: “The state government’s policy was not to harass or victimise the Muslim community.” Will the appeasement ever have an end other than gory?

Tags: Achyutanandan, Commentary, India, Indian Politics, Indian Secularism, Islam, Islamic Terror, Islam-Watch, Jihad, Kerala, Kerala Politics, Kerala-Islamic Terror Lab, Love Jihad, Media Watch, P T Joseph, P T Joseph Hand Chopped Off, Pseudosecularism, Pseudosecularism Hall of Shame, Secularism, Terrorism, War on Communism

…a college lecturer, T J Joseph, was attacked by some unidentified men who [...] waylaid their vehicle and pulled out the lecturer, after bursting explosives to create a scare. While Joseph was being attacked, his mother and sister were warned not to step out of the vehicle. The gang fled the scene after severing his right hand.

The well-educated, professionally-successful, newly-prosperous, noble-cause-supporting, resort-going, and eco-tourist urban middle crowd has blissfully closed his/her eyes to the Islamic underbelly that lies beneath the bourgeoning tourism industry of Kerala.

Lecturer T J Joseph’s “crime” was to frame this question in the BCom exams.

The question paper, for an internal degree exam in March, contained a text taken from an article written by P T Kunjumuhammed, a director of several award-winning films and former CPI(M) legislator.

Referring to his film Garshom, Kunjumuhammed explained in the article that the thread for a scene in the movie, in which the protagonist speaks to God, was picked from his own experience about a madman who used to speak to God. While reproducing the conversation as a passage for punctuation, Joseph replaced the mad man with Muhammed, thus making it seem like a dialogue between God and Muhammed.

The question paper in the original Malayalam can be viewed here.

It’s a miracle that poor T J Joseph is still alive, presently nursing his wounds after a marathon 15-hour surgery. Needless, Muslim organizations of all hues condemned this “heinous” act etc but, the subtext is clear: Joseph deserved this for insulting the Prophet.

Protesting against the question paper, Muslim organisations, particularly the Popular Front of India and Jamaat-e-Islami, had said it was an insult to Prophet Muhammed.

But of course, the Prophet’s name must be mentioned in nothing except the most profound, flattering, and reverential tones. Anything less is an insult deemed fit for Talibanesque punishment by self-appointed guardians of Islam. To be sure, Kerala currently teems with such self-appointed guardians. And this state of affairs is only the logical outcome–given the nature of forces at play–of what transpired over the past few decades.

The rampant Islamization and all its attendant hooliganism-at-will remains a timebomb waiting to explode. Kerala lost the plot the day communists established their stranglehold in the state and perpetuated it with hook and mostly crook. Following the grand dream of establishing Red Paradise in India, it teamed up with Christists and Islamists to “fight” the common enemy, the Hindus the result of which we’re witnessing today. While it once commanded huge majorities, the Left in Kerala has begun to depend heavily on the support of all kinds of thugs and declared terror-enablers to form a government and stay in power. This includes teaming up with the Kerala Muslim League, the direct descendant of the same Muslim League that said, less than 100 years ago, that Muslims couldn’t stay in a Hindu-dominated country and sliced off that portion of India that is Pakistan today. Then there’s Abdul Nasser Madani, the man allegedly behind the 1998 Coimbatore serial blasts, the 2008 Bangalore blasts, is suspected of having links with LeT, and has served prison for 8 years, booked for sedition. This man heads the PDP, which has an alliance with the ruling LDF. Kerala has today become God’s own laboratory of Islamic terror. The SATP website provides us this intelligence (I provide just a sample below):

[March 17, Kannur & Ernakulam] 185 people from Kerala were reportedly selected by the LeT and provided preliminary training at camps conducted in various centres. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the terror link to Kerala obtained this information from three Kashmiri youngsters, identified as Fiyaz Ahammed (26), Sajad Ahammed Reshi alias Hanzulla and Shabbir Ahammed Tali alias Abu Saquib (20). These three youngsters took part in the terror camp organised by the LeT in Kupwara and Dorusa forest areas in Kashmir during October 2008, along with a five-member team from Kerala. The Lashkar camp had 17 members, including seven Pakistanis and three Kashmiris. Yasin, Fayaz, Shakeer alias Rahim and Fayiz who were killed in encounters with the Police in Kashmir and Abdul Jabbar, who had escaped the scene, constituted the militants’ team sent from Kerala to Kashmir. “The Malayalis joined the camp in the second week of September. Shakeer alias Rahim was their leader. He could speak Urdu,” said Fiaz Ahammed. Shabbir Ahammed Tali told the Police that 180 more youngsters were waiting in Kerala after the preliminary training to join the Jihad. “One Ustad had indoctrinated them,” said Tali.

[Feb 27, Kottayam] Two suspected Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) cadres, identified as Shibili and Hafeez Hussain, who were arrested for reportedly attending a secret training camp held by the outfit in 2007, were remanded to a 15-day judicial custody. About 40 cases were pending against the duo in various parts of the country, including in Gujarat, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Malegaon in Maharashtra. Nearly 40 SIMI cadres had participated in the camp for about three days, the Police mentioned, adding that till date, ten cadres were arrested in this connection.

I don’t need to separately comment on the extent of penetration and network these worthies have managed to establish.

To be sure, Kerala is not alone. It has its “sister” state, West Bengal for company, where the Communist government has both teamed up with the Islamists and allowed massive influxes of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants. This influx has almost overnight, altered the demographics of several towns bordering Bangladesh. The conclusive fact being that Communist governments in India are powerless to counter the brutal forces that teaming up with Islamists inevitably unleashes. What was once a mere electoral/rhetorical gimmick is today an evil that is both indispensable and a force that they cannot fight against–like riding the tiger and all that.

T J Joseph’s case, like those Love Jihad cases, wouldn’t have received such widespread media coverage if not for the powerful Christian lobby. It would’ve gone the way of the Marad massacre and numerous other Love Jihad cases where victims were Hindu girls–buried in an obscure column on Page 5. T J Joseph had apologized on an earlier occasion for “insulting” the Prophet but this time around, some extra-devout servant of the Prophet had decided enough was enough. Despite this coverage, it is anybody’s guess which direction this case will head. The fact that Christian fundamentalists like John Dayal, all the way up to Ratzinger..err..the Holy See have pressed the self-mute button shows the Muslims have bet their money on what has historically worked for them: brute force. Fear of death is infinitely more potent than fear of God.

The same applies to the cocktail-sipping and self-righteous secular protest-mongers. Why aren’t they courageously taking up cudgels on behalf of poor T J Joseph like they did on behalf of Qatar’s newest star citizen? Where’s that fire that they once directed against the French President because he said disgusting things about the oh-so-chic burqa? Given all this evidence, why aren’t they calling Kerala as the Islamic terror laboratory the way they labelled Gujarat as the “Hindutva” laboratory? Will Sagarika Ghose stand up and condemn these barbarians as “sullying the fair name of the Religion of Peace” the way she routinely chastises Hindutva fanatics (sic) for “appropriating the fair name of Hinduism?”

However, I apportion a large part of the blame on the expanding middle and upper middle class for blissfully closing its eyes to the reality terror show unfolding before our eyes almost on a daily basis. How did we come to this pass where this class places higher priority over distributing panties to a third-rate, & small-time wannabe politician over being watchful about the more real dangers that it faces? What will it take for them to wake up? A family member’s hand similarly chopped off?

Our apathy will cost us dearly.

Tags: Commentary, India, Indian Politics, Indian Secularism, Islam, Islamic Terror, Islam-Watch, Jihad, Kerala, Kerala Politics, Kerala-Islamic Terror Lab, Love Jihad, Media Watch, P T Joseph, P T Joseph Hand Chopped Off, Pseudosecularism, Pseudosecularism Hall of Shame, Secularism, Terrorism, War on Communism

Jnanpith awardee U.R. Ananthamurthy on Wednesday warned the Bharatiya Janata Party Government that the controversial anti-cow slaughter Bill…

The anti-cow slaughter Bill issue is not new. Karnataka Chief Minister Yeddyurappa who had mooted this a few months ago had put it on hold only to revive it now. As it is wont to, tremendous empty shrillery has issued from the usual quarters. But let’s see the list of who’s who who’re against the anti-cow slaughter Bill.

Back then, the Congress party had made the perfunctory noises strictly following the dictum of “we will oppose anything that the BJP tables no matter how noble or worthy it maybe.” And then the Congress party pretty much left it at that. But Deve Gowda Inc wielded the “slaughter cows” baton ferociously. Which is rather interesting but unsurprising. He’s known to traverse any murky depth to achieve his ends but he has on several occasions advertised his deep faith in rituals, havans, and yagnas and has himself donated a few hundred cows (Godaanam) in his lifetime. And it is anybody’s guess that he doesn’t eat beef. However, he’s a practising prosti..err..politician so I guess it’s okay.

Which brings us to said secularist damage-dealers. Girish Karnad and U R Ananthamurthy, both hallowed members of this blog’s Hall of Shame. Let’s see their “objections” to the anti-cow slaughter Bill.

…anti-cow slaughter Bill, if implemented, would discourage farmers from rearing cattle and lead to a shortage of milk…Mr. Ananthamurthy said the piece of legislation, which had been passed in the Assembly, was “communal in intent and anti-farmer in consequence”… Playwright Girish Karnad said he opposed the Bill as it deprived citizens the freedom to choose their food. “As long as their choice of food is not affecting others, why should its (the food) consumption been prohibited?” Mr Karnad sought to know.

URA needs to urgently examine his logical faculties. The last I heard, farmers here don’t earn their livelihood by slaughtering cows. If anything, they, like millions of other Hindus, revere and worship the cow as Mother Goddess. Only aged cows and other cattle are sold off after which nobody knows what happens to them. Girish Karnad does have a valid point which we shall soon examine.

The intent of this post isn’t to support or oppose the Bill but to lay on the table the kind of mischief that our well-known worthies are raking up in its name.

Cow slaughter has become hugely controversial because over the years, it has morphed into a manufactured controversy–a non-issue made into an issue. Also because the cow is held sacred by millions of Hindus. That brings up the question of appeasing members of one religion, a democracy has to remain religion-neutral etc. Or if the state does ban cow slaughter, it needs to also ban the slaughter of pigs to, you know, balance things out. I do subscribe to the view that the government has no business legislating stuff like food habits of people. However, here’s the thing: there is such a thing as local traditions, customs, and a shared cultural consciousness over millennia, which keeps a country united. The cow is one such symbol of this cultural unity in India and you cannot equate that with the pig. Most Hindus don’t eat beef because they hold the cow as their Mother if not as a Goddess. However, Muslims don’t worship the pig–Mohammad (PBUH, yeah, I wanna live) prohibited eating pork on the grounds of hygiene–you know, the pig eats pretty much everything including excreta. Also, like most things, abstention from eating beef is not a strictly-enforced religious sanction in Hinduism. You don’t get penalized for eating beef. Yet majority of Hindus don’t eat beef because the stimulus stems from within. But then, religion is a subject of intense and endless debate which ends in nothing but heated exchanges and foul moods.

However, if you look at the cow in terms of economics things begin to get clearer. There’s a reason Hindus call the cow the Kamadhenu (the giver of all that we desire). Like the coconut tree, there’s no part of a cow that cannot be utilized for economic gain. From being employed in the fields to transportation to diary purposes to using its dung as manure to using dried dung as a disinfectant to using its hide (after death) for leather and its horns as musical instruments, the cow is useful both during its lifespan and after its death. Little wonder then that a predominantly agrarian India treats cows with such reverence. It feeds families. Compare the investment required to maintain cattle for these purposes versus the investment required to rear cattle purely for the purpose of using its meat as food. And there’re additional costs of processing the meat of the slaughtered cattle.

Our Jnanapith-award-winner duo has neither time nor inclination to examine this, nay, any issue with the seriousness it deserves. Their hoary proclamations are just refined versions of Deve Gowda’s political pamphleteering. The last I heard, there was exactly no “spontaneous mass uprising” against this Bill in Karnataka. That includes Muslims. Apolitical–or the “layman” Muslims didn’t raise a din against the anti-cow slaughter Bill. Yet, the prominent and fast-fading stars crowding Karnataka’s secular galaxy have begun to holler like somebody yanked their underwear off. For the record, almost all states have banned cow slaughter and this ban has happened during the secular party’s rule. Why don’t our left..err..right-thinking secular intellectuals “reopen the case” and subject it to the same intense scrutiny they’re now doing here?

“Gandhian principles” ranks high among the several garbs that URA and Girish Karnad wear and shed as the occasion befits. But cow slaughter and Gandhi don’t go well together in this case. Hence the well-oiled intellects of Jnanapith #6 and #7 completely refrain from mentioning the fact that Mahatma Gandhi abhorred cow slaughter and sought its ban rather passionately. Jnanapith #6 and #7 on various occasions have also championed that chic cause now very much in vogue: saving the environment. A few years ago, Jnanapith #7 spearheaded a public rally to “save Cubbon park’s green lung space from being demolished to make place for Legislators’ homes” while Jnanapith #6 lent his fair name to save the “precious ecology of the Western Ghats.” Saving the environment includes saving animals. It follows that the bleeding hearts of these secular luminaries really bleeds for the mute animals. But then, the cow is an animal, too. Did I just mention “hypocrisy?” On yet another stage, URA dons the robe of the Preserver of Local, Folk and Native Traditions. As a long-time remote controller of Ninasam, he has managed to inject communist/socialist poison into the veins of at least two generations in the garb of preserving rural and/or folk tradition. He should know more than anybody that cow-worship and the tradition of reciting stories and puranas (mythology) honoring the cow is an inseparable part of the rural tradition.

Actually there’s a simpler method: does URA or Girish Karnad have the guts to procure beef in any village in Karnataka?

But as we see, the real issue here is the “communal” intent of this Bill, cows be damned. Had a Prohibition of Slaughter of Pigs Bill been passed, the perverse intellect of these muck-rakers would’ve still managed to find something communal in it. A common hatred for the BJP unites the worst of scum who are otherwise engaged in petty feuds with each other. Actually, issues like this are what keeps these out-of-job “litterateurs” in business. More photo-ops. Wider media coverage. Renewed invitations to seminars and conferences. Free publicity. Taxpayer Money. The likes of URA and Karnad are truly made of sterner mettle because ordinary mortals would cringe to appear in public after being shamed just once. But then these eminences have super Phds in self-deception. Only, their self-deception has inflicted grievous wounds on the society.

I’d love to attend that public meeting on the 28th. The last time Girish Karnad championed a similar courageous, society-saving mission in Bababudangiri alias Datta Peeta, much fun ensued.

Tags: Anti-BJP, Anti-Cow Slaughter Bill, Communal, Communalism, Cow, Cow Slaughter, Girish Karnad, Hindu, India, Indian Philosophy, Indian Politics, Indian Secularism, Karnataka Politics, Local Traditions, Pseudosecularism, Pseudo-Secularism Hall of Shame, Secular, Secularism, Secularists, U R Ananthamurthy, UR Ananthamurthy, URA