Saket Suryesh's Blog, page 3

The Post-Truth in Indian Media- Delhi Pollution and Hindustan Times

 

"Before mass leaders seize the power to fit realities to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it."                        - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
As Delhi descends into the breathless chamber of smoke and dust another year, Delhi CM releases another tranche of full-page advertisements, and some would say, using them, buys the headlines of the newspapers in which those advertisements appear. The air quality hovers between bad and worse, as the silly anti-Deepavali order of Supreme Courts mock the powers-that-be, as Deepawali still is a month ahead. When I looked at the Hindustan Times today (NCR Edition, 18.10,2020), I am reminded of the above quote by Hannah Arendt. 
An unscrupulous politician like Arvind Kejriwal is defined in the quote above, a politician who stood behind Tahir Hussain, a man charged with conspiring to create Delhi riots in which more than 50 lives were lost, a man who out of political compulsions refused to call in Delhi Police to clear the foreign nationals in Tablighi event throwing Delhi and much of India into the dark spiral of Covid deaths (around 6000 Deaths in Delhi alone). He is a man lacking any sense of morality and too confident of his ability to fool people. And he has succeeded riding on a compliant media and the greed of the electorate, must have emboldened him. 
Today's newspaper explains the phenomenon called as post-truth. Pollution is too serious a matter and impacts the next generation. One would expect a national daily to discuss and debate on it, obviously. But look at the snapshot above and the language. When one is staring at a pollution of such proportions, from where should the discussion begin. Obviously from the bigger cause and looking at the failures in tacking it and then the steps needed to plug those gaps. Now there is a thin line between truth and lie and propaganda stands right on that line. There are two pieces of news on the same page (there is one advertisement of Kejriwal, the full-page advertisement talking about switching off the vehicles at traffic junctions is on another page). On this page alone (shared snapshot), the bolder, most prominent headline is -  22% of city's PM2.5 due to stubble burning. 
There are many who actually skim through the headlines. If you are one such person, you are likely assume that the biggest cause of Delhi pollution is Stubble burning. If you are a neutral, apolitical person, you will curse the states around Delhi (UP and Haryana - BJP ruled and Punjab- Congress ruled). You will possibly sympathize with the Delhi Chief Minister too and shed a tear or two for the helpless but well-intentioned leader while coughing your way to the editorial (editorial too mildly touches the brazen and kind of proud failure of Congress ruled Government in Punjab, blackmailing the Union on the matter of life and death of NCR residents). 
Let is stick to this page. What should be common journalistic wisdom and propriety?  To focus on the major cause. A report dated January 10th 2020, quoted the research done by researchers from the University of Surrey confirming that the local sources of pollution such as traffic, construction and domestic heating contribute the most to Delhi Pollution. But the Media will not talk about these cause. Earlier, the media presented Hindu festival of Deepavali and fireworks as the major culprit. They were able to manipulate the public opinion with schools asking students to take oath to avoid fireworks and eventually got the judiciary pass an order banning Diwali. Now, while the whole of North India rose to oppose the Judicial activism while trying to ban age-old tradition of Jallikattu , unfortunately, the northern Indian Hindu disgust and dejection at Diwail ban had little resonance down south, and riding on public opinion built over the years, Diwali was banned. Some may say why is firework necessary in Diwali. I say it is never about the older religious people. It is always about creating a sense of boredom and disenchantment in the younger lot towards the Hindu festivals. With fun and frolic taken out of Holi and Diwali, Hindu Indian kids will be left with Halloween to celebrate. Here is the data of pollution on account of Diwali. Here is the data from research, quoted by BBC.com



As we can see, the overall impact of Diwali fireworks on Delhi pollution, at best was fleeting. Still Diwali was attacked because they could attack it. All the power of all the animal lovers of the world could not bring out a ban on public slaughter of animals in the name of religious belief. That said, it was AAP went about asking schools to run oath ceremonies asking students to take oath to totally stop burning fireworks. The law authorities zealously went around filing FIR on those who dared to light up fireworks on Diwali as per traditions. The BJP Government lamely followed the propaganda path paved by the wokes of AAP and Congress who feel much but know little. Now coming back to the today's report, the smaller corner of the same page has been given to the Press Conference by BJP Spokesperson, Ms. Nupur Sharma. The headline says-  "BJP attacks AAP Says Govt. not doing enough to check the toxic air in capital."

While the headline of first headline appears factual, the second headline brings forth two points:- BJP is making a political charge- BJP is being belligerent at the time of crisis for the citizen. 
Could it have been framed in a different way (forget the prominence of positioning and font size)? "BJP points out to the AAP Govt. failure in addressing the larger causes of pollution." "Quoting IIT Kanpur studies, BJP corners AAP for politicizing the pollution""BJP brings attention to AAP government on major causes of Delhi pollution, citing IIT Kanpur study." "BJP exposes AAP's diversionary tactics on Delhi Pollution with research data."  
The fact of the matter is the chief contributor of Delhi pollution is Road dust (38%), Vehicles (20%) and domestic sources (12%) as per study conducted by IIT Kanpur. To act on these top contributor, Delhi Government under Arvind Kejriwal did not need any support from Punjab, UP or Haryana Government.

It also did not need harebrained schemes like Odd-Even scheme . All that the scheme did was a radio and print campaign which fooled people, gave Arvind Kejriwal more and more visibility, created an impression among the people that he was working for the good of people and brought little solace to the society. It was like someone climbing up and down a coconut tree and the media dancing around the tree, video-tapping the event as if it was great act of public service. In 2017, Delhi government collected Rs 787 Crores as Environment Cess and ZERO amount was spent out of it to make any effort to address the major causes of pollution in Delhi (buses, signal-free roads etc.). Shutting down the Engines at the signal halts is common sense, but it is not some Government scheme for which Arvind Government ought to spend money in full-page advertisements. What the government needs to do is to create better ways of traffic movement to reduce pollution from sources which contribute 58% (38% on account of road dust and 20% on account of Vehicular traffic). 
But such is the shamelessness of this PR driven government that it goes to the courts and claim to have no money to contribute towards RRTS (which would reduce both road dust and vehicular pollution apart from the Western and Eastern Peripheral roads constructed by the Central Government with help from UP and Haryana Governments). While in neighboring Noida, UP Government under Yogi Adityanath utilized the lockdown with thin vehicular movement and higher availability of Migrant labors (pushed out of Delhi by Arvind Kejriwal Government, the same government which could not touch the foreigners in Nizamuddin) to aggressively work on the roads projects, here is where Delhi Government on notorious Ashram Signal currently stands (report dated 7th of October, 2020)(The posters thanking Arvind Kejriwal for making Ashram Signal signal-free came up last October). 
 Coming to the RRTS, Supreme Court Appointed -EPCA (Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority) had to suggest that the AAP Government should utilize Rs 1106 Crores it was sitting on (as on Feb 2019) watching Delhi kids and Citizens suffering under horrible pollution year after year, to meet its share of Rs. 1138 Crores from Environment Compensation Charge, after Kejriwal Government claimed it had no money to pay its share of RRTS (attacking the factors causing 58% pollution in Delhi). UP government has already made relevant allocations and given necessary approvals. 
I am aghast at the shamelessness with which media protects, defends and mollycoddles Arvind Kejriwal after episode after episodes of his misgovernance and administrative failures on Pollution (even if we leave the communal disharmony and COVID in Delhi under him out of it). While Kejriwal pounces at UP, Haryana, Punjab Government, Santa clause, Tomara Dynasty and Chauhanas for Delhi woes, it is high time that UP government sends him the bill for contributing 58% pollution to unsuspecting UP and Haryana people in NCR on account of his incompetence and unwillingness to work. Why should Noida, Faridabad and Gurugram suffer for the ambitions of megalomaniac municipal commissioner with national dreams? To handle the largest contributor to Delhi pollution, another important aspect was to create parallel Public transport systems. Apart from Delhi Metro, a very efficient system (thankfully created under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Madanlal Khurana and Sheila Dikshit before the Anarchist appeared on the scene), Delhi has failed miserably on this. In 1998, the Supreme Court directed the Delhi Government to increase the bus strength to 10000 (the population of Delhi has since grown and the borders too have expanded). This requirement has since been increased to 12000. Increasing the bus fleet in Delhi has been on AAP manifesto in both the elections it won. As on November 2019, this requirement was further revised to 15000 buses. The way things stand, Delhi has 5500 buses under the able leadership of IIT educated CM of Delhi. Oftentimes, one would say, what is lacking is not education, rather empathy. There is pronounced cynicism in AAP politics and that is in vulgar display in the national capital.
For Aam Aadmi Party, every tragedy is an opportunity for PR and self-promotions. They do not care about the value of human losses. By manipulating media and social media, Arvind Kejriwal, a media creation himself has turned the democracy on its head. As Jurgen Habermas wrote:
"The 'Post-Truth' democracy would no longer be a democracy"

Book Review- A New Idea of India- by Harsh Madhusudan and Rajeev Mantri

 

Before I get down to reviewing this book- A New Idea of India- by Hash Madhusudan and Rajeev Mantri, I must confess that I stopped reading intellectual books claiming to have the recipe of success for the individual, the society, the nation and the world at large, long time back. The intellectuals intimidate me, their theories bore me. Most of the thinkers appear to me like mercenaries waiting and watching the successful trend to adopt them. They will pick already successful cases, build a theory around them and then trot it around as if they were themselves responsible for those successes. That said, I picked this book with a sense of old intimidation. A serious book on contemporary politics, society and economics with recommendatory and laudatory notes from almost ten leading intellectuals from both sides of ideological divide with a hard cover- the book came to me courtesy Indic Academy.

It is a general refrain that one should not judge a book by its cover. Now, here is one book which one can safely judge from the cover. The cover is beautifully designed with the backdrop of original copy of Indian Constitution, adorned with the paintings based on Hindu mythology. Those who pretended to be defended the Constitution a few months back while resolving to wipe out the traditional symbols of Hindu Dharma would not believe the original constitution to carry pictures from Ramayana and Mahabharata. The Constitution of India represents the time when India, that is Bharat, bruised, battered and fractured into pieces by the fanatics. This was a time when a parliament balanced between the left and the right, within and without the party in power, Congress. To counter the leftist leanings of Nehru, we had a strong force of Patel and the balance resulted in a Constitution. However, with the demise of Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad- the Right in the ruling dispensation lost its mooring. As the Congress devolved into an often despotic dynasty over the next half century, the Right was relegated to a corner as the Nehruvian idea overwhelmed the entire nation from Intellectual discourse to economic direction to judicial and political positioning. It is this idea which left-leaning intellectuals called 'The Idea of India' which they felt suddenly came under danger as the masses annoyed with dishonest rhetoric and widespread corruption voted the supposedly right wing, BJP under Narendra Modi came into power.

This tendency to fix a wide and diverse nation as India under the singular idea of Nehru's socialism, minority appeasement and majority shaming is what has frustrated the nation which spend decades standing in queues to get something as basic as a Two-Wheeler or a phone connectivity. The leftist intellectual elite which has comfortably ensconced itself in an ecosystem built over the years still is neither able to understand the political change in 2014 nor is able to tolerate it. They had painstakingly built a gargantuan statue of Nehru, overshadowing not only any diverse political opinion (represented the reality of Nehru as a politician, quickly ensuring that after the demise of Sardar Patel, every dissenting voice from Acharya Kriplani to KM Munshi was shown the door), rather the nation itself. India, which had prided itself historically as a custodian of cultural and ideological diversity was quickly reduced into what Sanjeev Sanyal mentions in the foreword as various shades of Left- the Nehruvian left, the Marxist left, the Lohiaist Left, the Lodhi Road Left and so on. Nehru's idea of an embarrassed and accidental Hinduism, built around Godse pushed the Majority community of India to a corner, to keep its head down in an eternal shame of assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, and work without ever speaking out, without ever being noticed. Having eliminated any competing voices, the elite intellectuals painted the Nehru's socialist-secularist idea as the singular concept which authoritatively defined India as 'the' idea of India. It is out of the frustration from this fanatic control over narrative that this book has emerged. This reminds me of Nietzsche's famous quote- 

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." 

Such complete was the control of Nehruvian narrative on intellectual landscape of India that, in this book authors point out, that even the failure of Nehru's economic policies were blamed on the ancient Hindu culture when Economist Raj Krishna termed snail-paced growth of Indian economy as Hindu Rate of Growth and not a Nehru rate of growth. The book raises many such critical points analyzed in the course of study which we often tend to overlook because we have thus been conditioned by the media which has been taking side with the political force which till 2014 was considered as inevitable and because the public memory is short. The noise of narratives often cloud our understanding of things pushed to the populace innocently by the intellectually. There is huge noise since 2014 about a conspiracy to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra as if it is against the idea of a multi-faith society. The authors here begins with Savarkar's idea of a Hindu Rashtra in which every citizen would enjoy same rights and will be governed by identical laws irrespective of his or her caste, creed or religion. Taking from the definition of Dharma as a mode of life or Code of Conduct, the writer contends that India being a Hindu Rashtra can never become a theocratic state quoting BJP Patriarch Shri LK Advani who said that a Hindu Rashtra and a Secular State are virtually synonymous. 

Unlike the narrative created by the vested intellectual interests claiming that India as a nation was formed only after 1947 (actually a claim contested by Nehru himself), the writers quote Ernest Renan where he wrote- 

"The nation, like the individual, is the outcome of a long past of efforts, sacrifices and devotions."

Such a definition goes against the intellectual tribe which claimed India as a nation to be an entity entirely formed by Nehru and therefore ought to remain forever in debt with Nehru and his brand of politics and by implication to remain eternally obligated to these intellectuals. In spite of all evidences to the contrary, why these intellectuals are hell-bent at erasing the history of India is also well explained with Tom Sowell's quote taken from his essay "Intellectual and the Society" –

"The only test for most intellectuals is whether other intellectuals go along with them…Intellectuals have no accountability to anybody but their own community."

This explains the relative silence with which the sins of communal crimes of the past governments have been whitewashed. How many even remember Indira Gandhi's statement on Nellie Massacre wherein when questioned about the delay in calling in the Central Forces (Assam was under President's rule), famously said- "One has to let such events take their own course before stepping in." The lies have been spoken so often to us as a nation that we have started believing then to be truth. Authors painstakingly go to primary sources, substantiate their claims and back their theory with official records. Take for instance the usual attack on the Right wing by the LGBTQ activists who have been cunningly taught by the media that it is the so-called Hindutva forces which have been opposing their just liberation. It never came into common public notice that the three petitioners opposing the decriminalization of Section 377 were Apostolic Alliance of Churches, the Utkal Christian Council and Trust God Ministries. All India Muslim Personal Law Board opposed it calling it against Indian values and culture. Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind in a statement said that Homosexuality is against nature, religion and cultural values of India. It should not be allowed. In contrast RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said in 2018,

"Everyone is a part of society. How they are, they are, accept people for what they are. Society has changed. It is important that society prepares itself so people do not feel isolated."

The leftist myth-making ability is so subtle and is supported by international forces is so strong that still editorials are written with the sole objective of making the woke population believe that the Hindutva forces stand for orthodoxy on the LGBTQ issues against the liberal Islamist and Christian mobs. Another eye-opener is the narrative built around Rajiv Gandhi as the force behind Indian Mobile revolution. In 1987, the World Bank funded the DoT and urged the government to push for cellular revolution in India. Sam Pitroda who happily took the title of Father of India's telecom revolution, undeservedly, blocked it, being overcommitted to CDOT's chosen path of fixed line. He went to the media arguing that luxury car phones were obscene in a nation where people were starving. Between 1989 and 1999, tele-density of India barely changed from 0.6 percent to 2.8 percent. However, the actual game changer, writers contend was the 1999 National Telecom Policy which resulted in 15 percent tele-density by 2010. It is also a given fact that both BSNL and AirIndia slipped into red under the stewardship of Congress and it is also a story almost never told to the people.

This book is a lonely but firm voice of the truth. It stands out for its spirit of search and speaking out what has long been stifled. Authors diligently delve into various realms, from Education (exposing the myth of minority education as hallmark of secularism- say St. Stephens offering 40% reservation for 2% of population based on their religious faith even after being funded by tax payers who a majorly from other religion), into the area of Judicial activism and even the matter of judicial appointments, economic principles and the shadowy politics of secularism (Secular state paying salaries to Muslim clerics out of taxes largely collected from competing faith). In fact the success of the book is that when you close it, it leaves you hungry for more reading. I wish the authors decide to dedicate one book to each of the sections they cover. Time has come for the lies to be called out and for the truth to be told. This book should not be recommended reading. It should be mandatory reading for those who care about the country. We must explore the truth, find the truth, know the truth and face the truth, because as Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) said- "There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." We cannot allow ourselves to be fooled any longer. 

The book is available for sale at Amazon.

पुस्तक समीक्षा - मैं मुन्ना हूँ - लेखक - मनीष श्रीवास्तव

 

जिसप्रकार वनस्पति घी डालडा होताहै, जैसे प्रतिलिपि ज़ेरॉक्सहोती है, मनीष श्रीवास्तवजी श्रीमान जी होते हैं।कम लोगों को पाठकों काइतना स्नेह प्राप्त होता है, जोउनके कृतित्व एवं लेखन सेआगे निकल जाता है।इसका कारण उनके लेखनमें  सत्यका प्रतिबिम्ब परिलक्षित होना होता हैजो पाठक ने उनकेव्यक्तित्व में देखा सुनाहो। लेखन मेरी दृष्टिमें वह माध्यम होताहै जिसके द्वारा अपने सत्य कोवह कपोल कल्पना काआवरण पहना कर सार्वजनिककर देता है औरआत्मा को एक पिशाचके बोझ से मुक्तकर पाता है। कलमके माध्यम से लेखक वहकहने का साहस जुटापाता है जिसे अन्यथावह संभवतः न कह पाए।जबकोई कृति यह करपाती है तो वहन केवल लेखक कीआत्मा के पिशाच हटातीहै वरन पाठक कीआत्मा के धागों परलगी गिरहें भी खोल देतीहै और उसके मानसको मुक्त कर देती है।  इसदृष्टि से मनीष कीयह पुस्तक "मैं मुन्ना हूँ" अपने दायित्व का पूर्णता सेनिर्वाह करती है।

हमारासबका जीवन एक दूसरेसे भिन्न होता है, परन्तुकहीं प्रत्येक जीवनधारा के अंतर मेंजो तरंगे बहती हैं वेसामान ही होती हैं।हम जन्म लेते हैं, समाज में अपना स्थानबनाने का प्रयास करतेहैं, प्रेम में पड़ते हैं, प्रेम से बाहर भीगिरते हैं। हम जीवनमें अपना उद्देश्य खोजतेहैं, कुछ मित्र पातेहैं जो हमें हमारेउद्देश्य के निकट लेजाते हैं।  वहींहम कुछ ऐसे लोगोंसे भी मिलते हैंजो हमारे पैरों को लौह श्रृंखलाओंसे बाँध देते हैं।हमारा जीवन इन्हीं दोशक्तियों के मध्य केसंघर्ष की कथा है।

लगभगसाढ़े तीन सौ पृष्ठोंकी यह कहानी, कथानायकमुन्ना के साथ साथचलती है।  मुन्ना, पाँच वर्ष का मुन्ना, शोषण का  शिकारहोता है उस आयुमें जब उसे इसकाअर्थ भी नहीं समझआता। एक बालक कैसेएक अनगिनत रिश्तों के धागों सेबंध कर, उन रिश्तोके तनाव से गढ़ाऔर यदि वे रिश्तेकहीं भी उचित तारतम्यसे भटकते हैं तो कैसेएक टूटे हुए वयस्कका निर्माण कर देते हैंइस की एक कथाहै यह उपन्यास। कहानीछोटे शहरों की है, कस्बायीपरिवेश की पृष्ठभूमि परउकेरी गयी है। आगराका एक बालक स्वयंशारीरिक प्रताड़ना का शिकार होकर, कृष्ण-रूप में एकचरित्र को अपने जीवनमें पाता है जबसोहन -संजू को भाई-बहन के संबंधों कोभी कलंकित होते हुए पाताहै, और जब उसकेचारों ओर का संसारखंड खंड हो करटूट था, किन्नू उसकाहाथ थामता है और एकसामान्य बालक के कैशोर्यकी, यौवन की कथालिखने योग्य बना देता है।कृष्ण एक बार औरकेशव बन कर काठमांडूमें मुन्ना की रक्षा कोआते हैं।  कहानीमें छोटे शहरों काबड़ा प्रेम युवाओं को बड़ा आनंददेने वाला हैं, घटनाएँवास्तविकता के निकट हैं।मेरी समझ में घटनाएँबहुत सी हैं इसकथा में।

एक कहानी में अनेक कहानियाँमनीष जी के उपन्यासमें पहले भी रहीहैं, और बहुत सारेपात्र एवं घटनाएँ। अपनेअंतिम चरण में सन्दर्भलेखक के निकट होतेजाते हैं, अनेक प्रेमप्रसंगों से होते हुए, मोरपंखी से मानसी सेनैना।  कथाके प्रारम्भ में एकत्रित कालेबादलों का तिमिर उपन्यासके अंत तक छटनेलगता है। लेखक मेरेबहुत प्रिय हैं एवं विषयजो उन्होंने उठाया बहुत ही संवेदनशीलएवं परिपक्व है। ऐसे कठिनविषय का कहीं भीफिसल जाना बहुत संभवथा परन्तु मनीष को साधुवादजो उन्होंने साहस एवं संवरणके मध्य एक उत्तमसंतुलन बनाये रखा।  मनीषके पहले उपन्यास कीभाँति राजनीति एवं समसामयिक क्लेशसे कथा को दूररखा गया है एवंबाल यौन शोषण कोकेंद्र में रख करलिखा गया है। एकव्यक्ति के जीवन मेंरिश्तों का महत्त्व एवंसंबंधों की हर टूटतीईंट के साथ टूटतेव्यक्ति की कहानी है।किसी समाज के लिएउसका सबसे भेद्य, संवेदनशीलएवं मूल्यवान वर्ग उसके बालक-बालिका होते हैं एवंआज के बालक हीकल के समाज एवंराष्ट्र का निर्माण करतेहैं। आवश्यक है कि उन्हेंउसी दृष्टि से सुरक्षा एवंस्नेह प्रदान किया जाए। सुमित्रानंदन पंत जी कीपंक्तियाँ थीं  -

 

'यहशैशव का सरल हासहै, सहसा उर सेहै आ जाता ,

यह उषा का नवविकास है, जो रजको है रजत बनाता।'

 

इसीशैशव की सुरक्षा कीपरिकल्पना को लेकर औरखण्डित होते शैशव केमूक क्रंदन को स्वर देतायह उपन्यास है। मेरा क्लेशउपन्यास के अंतिम चरणोंमें अलग दिशा मेंजाना और कुछ भागोंमें देवनागरी का परित्याग हैजो पाठन के वेगको बीच में कुछरोक सा देता है।यह मेरा अपना मतहो सकता है, क्योंकिसंभवतः दोनों के कारण कथाआधुनिक पाठकों को अधिक प्रियएवं रोचक लगे। अपनेउद्देश्य एवं सन्देश केलिए उपन्यास पढ़ा जाना चाहिए। 

पुस्तकनोशन प्रेस(https://notionpress.com/read/main-mun...) औरअमेज़न पर उपलब्ध है। 

Movie Review- Dil Bechara

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“Done to death by slanderous tongues Was the Hero that here lies. Death in guerdon of her wrongs Gives her fame which never dies.”
              Claudio reads the epitaph of Hero, Much Ado about Nothing, Shakespeare. I did write the eulogy for Sushant Singh Rajput, the young actor who recently died at a young age under strange and suspicious circumstances. This is not a eulogy for him. This is a review of his last movie, Dil Bechara .  I am not a movie reviewer. I have rarely, if ever, reviewed any movie (maybe, one or two, here and there). I am, though, an avid movie watcher. I am a writer. So I write not because my kitchen runs on it. I write because I just saw the movie and I also saw the reviews, for instance, one by famous movie reviewer Komal Nahata in Filminformation.com . He writes, “Suprotim Sengupta’s adapted story and screenplay (with additional screenplay by Shashank Khaitan) are not half as good as they ought to have been. The drama which unfolds looks contrived as not many scenes have the desired impact. Although the story is emotional, the sentiments often don’t touch the audience’s heart.” I would not have minded this at all, had I not read his review of Karan Johar’s Student of the Year .  This is what he had written on SOTY- “It may have traces of 3 Idiots, Dil Chahta Hai and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar but elemen­ts from these films have been so intelligently incorporated that the audience doesn’t mind the inspirations as what is served to them is a masala fare full of fun and frolic.” The person who finds this brilliant adaptation not half as good as the original found the brainless torture in the name of a movie as so intelligently copied that he decides that the audience would not mind the inspirations. The only reason audiences coming out of the movie theatre after watching SOTY might not have told him was possibly because they must have been in a state of shock at the mindless mess and the torturous theatre that they had to bear for around three hours. His other complain about the movie is that it is depressing. For a seasoned movie reviewer, he totally missed the point. The movie was supposed to be depressing. If the audiences were to come out laughing from a movie which is not only a love story, rather delves deep into the deeper questions of life, love and longingness, that would have defeated the purpose. Many say that the quality of movies have went downhill possibly because the trend of having a writer write the story before the movie is made has gone almost extinct. The loss of intellectual depth has been a gain of frivolous fakeness in the stories.  The feelings are fraud and stories are without depth. Unfortunately, the critics, who are in mutually dependent relationships hail such heartless stories.It is again the old culprit, nepotism, and a small circle of entitled elites which is to be blamed. There is a group of baba logs, who have studied in fancy schools and vacationed in exotic locales all their lives and they have no clue about the subtle, many-layered human emotions. They feel in trends and love as per fashion. When the person making the movie has seen the worst of human crisis in missing a foreign vacation or turning late at a five-star party, you cannot expect him to make a movie like Kaagaz ke phool which speaks of struggle, sensitivity, pain and pathos. These movies offer no vent to human sufferings of the masses and provide no hope to those running on a very short supply of optimism. This movie wins there. The movie stays focused on the human side in the movie, the props, the college, the imported concept of annual prom, a gay professor fit in as a caricature, promiscuous professors, seductresses in chiffons posing as chemistry teacher are nowhere to be seen.There is a young kid, Kizzie Basu, played by Sanjana Sanghi, is endearing at the first sight. She is actually like a young kid, who is angry with the fate which seems to have shortchanged her. Suffering with Thyroid Cancer, she moves about with her portable oxygen cylinder. Having shifted from Jambia, she struggles to come to terms with her life which stares at an early and uncertain end. An only child, she is much loved by her family. The affection also is subtle, nothing overboard like the father buying the latest Car in the town to his daughter. The film walks a narrow path between being a documentary of helpless poverty and distasteful affluence. The family is middle-class, father, Saswata Chatterjee, who brilliantly portrays his only daughter dissolving in her despair. Her mother, Swastika Mukherjee, so beautiful, so real, trying hard to maintain the usual demeanor of a disciplinarian mother in the most unusual circumstance.               And in these circumstances, walks in Sushant Rajput, as a bubbly boy, who also suffering with Cancer. The girl is awestruck by Sushant’s love for life, however short it might be. With love in sight, she is able to wade off the shadows of death approaching her and from self-pity moves to a happier state of life. Those who have been in love, know that oftentimes, love is not looking at each other. Love is rather about looking out at the world together with eyes full of hopes. I have, very early in life, at a young age, made a visit to the hospital with a risk of never being able to be back out of it. At that time, in that ICU, against the scary sounds of those medical equipment, I remember holding hand of my newly-wedded wife and thinking not about each other, but about our offspring, if only I could survive then. Love always dreams and love always tried to get. Anything else is communion of taste, friendliness of nature, but love wants to look ahead. What if one has nothing to look ahead at? It is commendable that Supratim Sengupta, the writer, does not let the story fall into being a tearjerker or a stupidly predictable love story. The story flows at a philosophical level, but never gets serious enough to bore the audience. There are many dimensions to one’s life and the film remains aware of it. I particularly, remember the scene where suddenly faced with a short span of living love that the doomed couple has been granted, scared and sad, they embrace each other in Paris, and the girl blurts out- “What will happen to the mother-father? And to you?” When life is limited, one is not limited in the affection. It does not flow in one direction. It goes towards all the world, to the beloved and to the parents equally. The movie ends and the sweet, little girl in spectacles remains with you. And Immanuel Raj Kumar who limps on one leg out of the story, remains with his heel dug deep, in the hearts of the audience forever, with those young eyes, holding a tear and a twinkle together.
I loved this movie, reminded me of Ankhiyon ke Jharokhon Se. I had cried watching that, and almost cried watching this, taking due care that my daughter should not catch me crying. As I said earlier, I am not a movie reviewer. I watched this movie with great hesitation looking at the other reviews. I did not want to be disappointed with the departed. But I am glad I did. 
And to those who still haven’t mended there ways and still speak with slanderous tongues, I end, again with Shakespeare in Julius Caesar- You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then to mourn him? O Judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reasons bear with me.

That Evil Ignorance- Rahul Gandhi and his Everyday Questions

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt, American President 1901-1909
Rahul Gandhi  has again asked as question as to why the Soldiers martyred in the cowardly attack of the Chinese in the Galwan Valley did not carry weapons (ignoring that the treaty signed by India in 1993 and 1996 prevented that), alluding to either incompetence of soldiers or the intentions of their superiors. Rahul Gandhi is a readily excitable and curious young man. It is probably because of this very reason that he remains a young man even after spending half a century on this planet. He is not concerned about responsibility and not bothered about the truth, his own or other people’s. When it comes to China, his enthusiasm knows no bound. His interest in China is not new and is not specific to this Government. He has always been very interested in China. While under his leadership Congress has slipped into the category of one of the most hated political party, even replacing the Communists who was so hated even by his great grandfather under whose leadership the party was banned and party worker were even shot at in cold-blood in a Chennai prison; he seems to be building Congress which was hitherto called Indian National Congress into some kind of international mafia, with offices in Turkey and such places. We don't know if Rahul Gandhi is targeting to become the next Caliph through his Turkey office. 
Rahul Gandhi was very excited when the Chinese Army was in an eyeball-to-eyeball contact with the Indian Army at Doklam. Thankfully that episode passed off without any loss of life as the Chinese, once they realized that Indian Army under the new Government with much attention and support from the government lacked neither intent or the courage. Now, this crisis in Galwan Valley with China has given the old Rahul Gandhi with his new wavy hairstyle a new lease of life as he has presented himself before the people with his supremely cynical and infinitely stupid questions. “Why did the Chinese attack Indian Soldiers?” asks the prince. Valid question, but he must know the answer as well. They Chinese attacked because they are frustrated. They are frustrated that while building all the infrastructure on their side of the Line of Actual Control, they had seen that on Indian side there was scant development as the leadership under UPA was possibly busy working out the cuts and commissions for the first family. Now suddenly in last three years they find bridges being built, railroads to the border posts, airfields being constructed, and roads being built in difficult border terrain. To make things worse even new generation Aircrafts are being procured in three decades even after much roadblock from Rahul Gandhi and his party. Even the Supreme Court says there is no corruption in the deal and suddenly the Chinese are staring at an India they find stranger.
I do not know as many things as Rahul Gandhi does. After all, Rahul Gandhi has been to China in 2007 and eventually the whole family was in China in 2008 to sign some kind of MoU with the Chinese Communist Party, terms negotiated with Xi Jinping, who is now the lifetime President of China and some say is under pressure after mishandling of COVID Crisis (assuming it is not a part of biological warfare by the Chinese). Why would an Indian Political party which intends to fight and hopefully, win elections in India want to increase influence in China or say Turkey (Congress opened its office in Turkey days after Turkey took an aggressively Anti-India stand in the UN). The new release said that the office will ensure improve bilateral relation between India and Turkey. Since Independence, even the Party in power has been kept out by the Governments of the day out of Foreign relations parlay, but Congress has in a bold step made lobbying for foreign power an open and accepted art. No wonder, Rahul Gandhi wants to know. Wayanad MP has reason to seek information from Narendra Modi Government on what it is planning to do with the Chinese. After all, that could be a part of the lobbying agreement his party had signed with Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping. No wonder, Rahul is so excited and is asking questions every day. But should we not ask that when Rahul Gandhi is not in power and not head of even the notionally principal opposition party, he wants to know everything, but why he was so silent when he was not only a part of Government, rather was influential enough to be tearing off the ordinances approved by the then Prime Minister. His party has claimed that India has ceded 60 kms of Indian Territory. They must be taking inference from their rule. In 2013, a report submitted by National Security Advisory Board to the PMO claimed that China occupied around 640 Kms by frequent incursions, over the period of few months. They must have presumed that old ways must be prevailing even now and decided to attack the present government. National security has never been an issue for this man whose nationality has also been under cloud. He might have in 2013 felt that losing territory must be a part of MoU his party had signed with CCP, as an effort to improve bilateral relation. I do not know what Constitution says about private political parties getting into formal engagements with foreign parties to better or worsen international relations of India. Maybe, Rahul had good intentions and he simply was following his great grandfather’s track as far as handing over the territory to foreign adversaries is concerned, in order to win over foreign press. Didn’t under Nehru India announced in 1954 that it will support China on Tibet even before the negotiations began and waived off payment China was supposed to make towards the handing over of India assets (Telephone, telegraph and such) in Tibet as a goodwill gesture?Rahul Gandhi has so many questions, but as the citizen of India, I have only one- Do we have to live with such an opposition in India? On a day when we have lost Twenty bravehearts defending our boundaries, do we need this forever-adolescent middle-aged man with shady credentials and wavy-gelled hair to come question if they ceded the territory? I don’t even want to ever ask him about the 680 Kilometers his Government ceded to China and Siachen his Government wanted to cede to China. I wanted to only ask him if he even understand the meaning of basic human decency? Not that Rahul Gandhi would ever pause to think about what is doing to the moral of India and Indian army. He and his gang of sycophants will call this buffoonery another one of his arrivals in Indian politics. After all, as Napoleon said- "In politics, stupidity is not a handicap." It is however for us as citizens to decide the kind of politics we want to see in our country.  

The Myth of Mughal Greatness- Socio-Economic Analysis

Ye imaarat o Maqabir ye fasilein ye hisaar, Mutlaq-ul-hukm shahanshahon ki azmat ke sutoon; Seena-e-dahar ke nasoor hain kohna nasoor, Jazb hain unmein tere mere ajdaad ka khoon. 
                       – Sahir Ludhianvi
(Maqabir- Graves, hisaar- Fortress, Mutlaq-ul-hukm- Sovereign, azmat- Greatness, sutoon- Pillars, Seena-e-dahar-The chest of the world, kohna- Ancient, Azdaad- Ancestors)
The above couplet from Sahir’s famous Nazm, Taj Mahal, loosely translates as below:
“These grand graves, and these high-walls of the majestic fortresses, Are the pillars of the brutal majesty of the sovereign dictators.  These gaping wounds are the ancient wounds on the breast of the world, Mingled with the ugly pus and the oozing bloods of our common ancestors.”
In today’s world where the intellectual mind stands divided on communal lines with even daughters of noted Urdu poets like Munawwar Rana proudly declaring first to be a Muslim and then to be an India, it is no wonder that these couplets of Sahir, a proud secularist India remain buried in the oblivion. While the Nazm, Taj Mahal, became popular, to me these two couplets stand apart in their scathing and brutal honesty. Today, more than ever, when riding on the crafty and cunning Communist re-telling of Indian history, there is a growing tendency to recreate the myth of Mughal majesty, it is important for people to read, understand and acknowledge the pain and truth in Sahir’s words. This is one rare poem which goes back into the history, when the Mughals looked at the Indians, those converted and not yet converted to Islam, with equal distrust, disgust and disdain. There were far too many people in India, the most populous land on the Earth even then, for all of them to be converted to Islam. The Mughals were often far too busy to manage their empire amid overwhelming number of people of different faiths who were so different from them. The wars with the remnants of earlier Islamic Sultanate and Hindu kings continued, while the Mughals tried to neutralize the antipathy against the foreign invaders by aligning with Hindu kinds. Even the Mughals would not have known that someday, they will be projected as great Secularists merely because they established alliances with Hindu kings out of political expediency. Equally surprised they would be to know, if they were to know, that the descendants of the same people they had treated with disdain and whom they converted to Islam under duress, will hail them as an epitome of greatness, long after they were gone, resurrecting the Mughals as some Motif of Muslim Identity, incongruent and inconsistent with their National Identity and history as Indians. We need to see things in the right perspective. At the time of Mughals, or even before the Mughals when Islam first made entry into India, around Seven Hundred years after it came into existence and nudged at the Hindu borders; the business in the Indian subcontinent went about as usual. The Mughals were no more and no less secular than the Afghans before them. Even the most secular of them, Akbar, while he married in the families of Hindu Kings, it was mostly out of political expediency. History does not tell us of any of the offspring of Hindu wives of Akbar who was raised as a Hindu. Akbar did not raise any of his descendants as a Hindu and in two generation will give rise to the most fanatic Emperor India had ever seen in Aurangzeb. The fact is that religion was less of a political tool even under Akbar when they were constantly fighting the co-religionists, the Afghans for supremacy in India. While Aurangzeb was a fanatic Sunni, Humayun, when he sought help from the King of Persia, claimed to have faith in Shiaism. More than anything, the Mughals were fanatic Timurides.Akbar, the greatest among the Mughals, is often equated with Emperor Ashoka. John S Hoyland and SN Bannerjee do not agree with this comparison. In their editorial introduction to ‘The Commentary of Father Monserrate’ , they write, “Akbar’s greed for conquest and glory and his lack of sincerity form a marked contrast to Ashoka’s paternal rule, genuine self-control and spiritual ambition. They add that ‘the old notion that Akbar was a near-approximation to Plato’s philosopher king has been dissipated by modern researches. Akbar remains a personality full of contradictions. His philosophical wanderings were secular, he grants lands to the Sikhs, abolishes Jaziya, builds relationships through marriages with the Rajputs. A great deal of these initiatives had to do with Akbar’s desire to bring some stability to his newly-established Muslim empire in an overwhelmingly Hindu land. Let us stick to the falsehood of great economic shape of India under the Mughals. It is true that India, as a nation, was quite rich by the time British stepped into India. But the three things they looked for – Spices, Indigo and Textiles- were industries based on the skill and land of India. It had precious little to do with the state. The Emperor was rich, richest Monarch on the face of this Earth. But there was no just distribution of wealth. There was almost no middle-class and the society was split between the extremely rich and severely poor. The myth of India being rich as society under the Mughals is as big as India being totally under the Mughals. Even at the time of death of Akbar, Vijaynagar, Deccan, Khandesh, Ahmadnagar, Bidar and Bijaipur were independent, towards the south, so was the region in North-East. A quick glimpse into Indian History, objectively, without interference of the partisan parties gives a different picture than what those who somehow feel that Mughal greatness is equivalent to Muslim greatness and in some way is a justification of Islamic supremacy. Let us look at Maddison’s The World Economy- A Millennial Perspective. In the First Century AD, India’s share in the Global GDP was 32.9% which went down to 28.9% in 1000 AD. When the Mughals arrived, in 1500 AD, it went further down to 24.5% and at the end of Akbar’s rule, in 1600 AD it was 22.6%. The slow decline under the Mughals ended at 16% of Global GDP in the year 1820 AD. Looking at things from Individual prosperity perspective, the Per Capita GDP remained almost stagnant during Mughal period, with USD 550 in the year 1500 AD, unchanged in year 1700 and reducing further to 533 $ in the year 1820 AD. In comparison, Per capita GDP for the British was 762 USD in 1500, and 2121 USD in 1820 AD (at 1994 rate of USD). This was the state of individual wealth at the time when the Mughal Emperor would sit on a throne worth Millions of Dollars.
The relationship between the Hindu masses of India and the Mughals remained that of the Conquered and the Conqueror. The welfare schemes were minimal. The irrigated land constituted around 5% of the land. Maddison writes that ‘there was little motive to improve the landed property. Mughal officials needed high incomes because they had many dependents to support. They maintained polygamous households with vast retinues of slaves and servants. This lack of initiative to create revenue sources apart from regressive taxations which appeared more like security money extracted by the warlords could possibly explain the quick crumbling down of the Mughal empire and subsequent poor state of landless Muslims with the decline of Mughal empire. Maddison called this a system of warlord predators leading to wasteful use of resources coming down from the tradition of the nomadic societies which created Islam in Arabia and the Ottoman Empire.
Far from the Utopian world of secularism under Islamic rulers projected by the Islamists and leftist historians alike, as Maddison says, under the Mughals, Muslims were the ruling elite in India from the 13th Century until the British take over. Bernier writes that the Mughals were even then (17thCentury) were foreigner in India. Among the Nobles in Mughal courts, 70% above the rank of 500 were Foreigners (Turks, Persians and Afghans). Of the remaining 30% who were Indians, more than 50% were Muslims. Even in Akbar’s court, which with revocation of Jaziya- a tax exclusively on Hindus, as charge for practicing a non-Islamic faith, was one of the better period under the Islamic rule, in 40 years of rule, Akbar only appointed Twenty-One Hindus above 500, out of these 21, 17 were Rajputs, One was Brahmin (Birbal), two Khatris (Todarmal and his son), and one unknown. The larger masses of Indian population had no say, no stakes to play in Mughal rule. Taxation was oppressive. Unlike earlier Hindu kings whose taxation as per Hindu books was limited at One-Sixth ( History of Mediaeval Hindu India by Ck Vaidya quoting Hiuen Tsang) , Akbar took 1/3rdof the Produce as taxes. It was only slightly better than Delhi Sultanate period when taxes were half the produce for the Hindus.
With little attempt to involve the masses and totally dependent on taxes as protection money, the Mughal empire quickly collapsed under its own weight when the Pre-Akbar intolerant practices came in. Continuing to be disconnected from the people, the Emperors continued to indulge in their decadent luxuries. Shahjahaan who is said to build Taj Mahal, as per Badshaahnama by Abdul Hamid Lahori ordered demolition of 70 Temples in Benaras. After the great famine of 1629-1632 which killed Millions in Gujrat, the Emperor was busy building his famous Throne in 1634 AD, adorned with the diamonds and rubies valued Rupees Two Crores then, Jewels worth Eighty Six Lakhs, with Twelve Emerald Columns. The cost of construction of the throne came to be One Crore, over a period of Seven Years. Majlisu-s-Salatin of Muhammad Shah Hanafi mentions the revenue of Hindustan (collected by the Mughals) as Six Arbs and Thirty Crore Dams (One Arb being equalt to 100 Crores, and A Hundred Crore Dam equal to Two Crore Fifty Lakh Rupees). The much-touted symbol of love, Taj Mahal, also turns out anything but that (Sahir’s poem above refers to that). It is nothing more than a narcissist and self-indulgent memory of Shah Jahaan’s second and most favorite wife, Aliya Begum or Mumtaj Mahal, who died at the age of Forty, having birthed Eight Sons and Six Daughters to the Emperor.  
Then came the repressive empire of Aurangzeb. Miraat-i-Aalam of Bakhtawar Khan mentions the policies of Aurangzeb when he writes that Hindu writers have been entirely excluded from holding Public offices and all the worshipping places of these infidels and the great temples have been destroyed in a manner which excites astonishment. A firman of 1679 orders to restart the campaign to demolish Hindu temples. On 2nd of April, 1679 Jaziya was imposed on the Hindus. The opposition to the same was met with releasing elephants on the protesting crowds. An Imperial order dated 10th of April, 1665, imposed Custom duty on all material imported for re-sale at 5% for the Hindus and 2.5% for the Muslims. This collection was considered as Zakaat only to be used on the welfare of Muslims. Another order dated 9th of May, 1667, changed this to 0% for Muslims and 10% for the Hindus. Manucci notes that many Hindus who were unable to pay converted to Islam. An order in March, 1695, forbade all Hindus except Rajputs to ride Palkis, horses or Elephants. Carrying of Arms was prohibited for the Hindus. Shivaji wrote a passionate letter asking Aurangzeb to stop harassing Hindus, trying to tell the fanatic Emperor that Hindus and Muslims both should be treated similarly. His letter is ignored, paving way for huge discontent which waited for the empire to weaken a little. With the death of Aurangzeb, the Jats, the Marathas all rise in rebellion. The weakened Mughal forces harassed everywhere. The queens have to run away from Red Fort in disguise to Loni. After attack of Bajirao on Delhi in 1737 and later the complete plunder under Nadir Shah in 1739, the fate of Mughals, deprived of power and money to maintain forces, and isolated from the Hindu population around them, was sealed. It would take centuries for India to become Independent and for Islamist forces, not satisfied with the Partition of this great land to come under the flag of a cynical opposition and Communist politics to resurrect a fake history of secular Mughals. The emperors did not look at themselves as a forefront of a campaign to destroy a civilization. As many have written, they considered themselves foreign warlords only. Much has been written about Bahadurshah Zafar leading Indian Freedom Struggle, the fact remains that he was forced to lead the rebels only reluctantly and tried to disown them in front of the British immediately thereafter. The attempt here is not to prove if Mughals were all good or all bad. It is merely to establish that in spite of administrative principles left behind by Sher Shah Suri, the Mughals, in general, did not govern well and treated India as a foreigner war lord would. How the Mughal Empire and once the richest Monarch fell into bankruptcy and not one tear was shed for him is a story for another day. The matter under consideration right now is that Mughals were neither great rulers nor were they secularists competing with Nehru. It is also to remind us what Sahir wrote, that it wasn’t the Hindus alone who suffered under the Mughals, rather the same riches which modern Muslims boast about where created by a shared suffering inflicted on the ancestors of both Hindus and Muslims, many of latter might have been former then.   

The Martial Hindu And Why Shivaji is not Taught to Us?

We have been taught, largely since independence, a Hindu needs to be docile, fearful and timid. If a Hindu is anything like valiant, proud or assertive, he should be ashamed of himself, else he or she will be likened with a Godse and called a terrorist. This tendency took more shape during a decade of UPA regime under the Sonia Gandhi. Not much protest came about as we have largely accepted this caricature of a Hindu who can not have it in him to hit back. As No-Go areas began springing in the society, under the influence of Wahaabism supported by a power lobby which worked at two levels- the obvious, which was the Congress and the subtle, which was the Communists; taught by Marxist historians, Hindus slowly and slowly began believing that the Hindu race had no trace of Martial strength in it. There cannot be a bigger lie than this. 
It is true that Hindus were not culturally and historically inclined to be in a state of perpetual war readiness, Hindus were no cowards, as history shows us. Hindus did not go out to conquer the foreign lands, mostly because on the North and West, the lands were not so welcoming, geographically. India itself was full of fertile lands, abundant resources and possibly unlike Deserts of Middle-East pushing men to fight and move eastwards never was a reason. A long, conspiratorial, mild-conditioning has led us to believe that when the Islamic invaders raided India, India stood like scared deer in a corner. It ignores the fact that the march for global rule of Alexander was stopped in India only. Reasons have been given that the Army was about to rebel as they were feeling homesick, but they are mostly part of writings of historians on Alexander's side. One ignores that the soldiers might have been feeling homesick much earlier as well, but Alexander was winning kingdoms and had something to offer to them, to placate their frustrated longing for home. 
In his book Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars, it is well-argued by Koenraad Elst in his essay Hindu Fearlessness through Ages. He begins quoting a provocative statement by Mahatma Gandhi, which he made in 1924 in Young India. Gandhi wrote- 
"The Muslim is a bully. The Hindu a coward."
Koenraad so beautifully contests this rather absurd claim. This idea of fake cowardice builds on itself, as you shrink, ceding space after space, until the time it slowly penetrates your veins and in real life, start being apologetic about your thoughts and opinion. The problem with this kind of forced humility is that it is not honest and it surfaces in extreme positions. It is therefore very pertinent that the truth be told to our coming generation so that they gain the lost pride in our history. Koenraad than explains how all the bravery of Pakistan's Islamic Army went in thin air the moment India's largely Hindu army descended in Bangladesh. He also goes back into the history, to explain what is taught to us as a sudden flood of invaders and immediate falling on the knees of the Hindus of India is so erroneous. He goes back to the first attack on India in 646 AD right after Islam was born and the failure of it. 
We look at the history of Islamic invasion of India. Chachnama mentions that three simultaneous attacks were made at Thane, Bharuch and Debal respectively by the Governor of Oman, and he ended up losing his brother in Debal. The first major battle between Hindu and Islamic forces happened in 644 as Battle of Rasil, in which Hindu Rai King Rai Rasil had to cede space and go back to Indus. Both the armies retreated and it seems more like a raid. Another Hindu tribe of the area, Zunbils were defeated in 653. In 698 another Islamic Army clashed with the Zunbis (Sun worshipers) and was defeated. In 700AD an army led by Ibn-Al ash' ath attempted conquer the Zunbis but failed. During the time of Umayyad rule under Muawiyah, the expansions were again pushed. King Chach of Sindh sent his army and the Islamic forces under Haris b Marrah was annihilated. By 670 AD, the Islamic armies were completely pushed back into Arab lands. The Shah of Iran sent Muhammad Bin Qasim in 710 AD and Raja Dahir lost this battle. However, the city of Brahmanabad (Masur) was quickly recaptured and Jai Singh, the son of Raja Dahir became the King. The next wave of Arab invaders in 725AD was repelled by Gurjara king, Silkula and finally defeated by Bappa Raval and Nagabhatta I, near Ujjain. Mahmud Ghazni defeated Jaipala in 1031 and conquered Punjab for good. The conquest of whole of India remained a far dream, 400 Years after the Islamic expansion started with the Prophet, who doubled as Military General and the Emperor too. To bring home the contrast, in 12 years rule of Caliph Utthman Ibn Affan, Armenia, Cyprus and Iran fell; between passing away of Prophet Mohammad, in 632 AD and 642 AD, in 10 years, Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia fell and Spain fell in 70 years.  The Mughals at the height of their power only ruled mostly over northern part of India and even within that, a large part through independent rulers as their vassals. 
When Aurangzeb decided to go back to the role of Islamic crusader, Shivaji had become a force to reckon with in southern India. Such was the valor of Shivaji that once again the pushback of Hindu India will go up to the banks of Attock. While reading Jadunath Sarcar 's Shivaji and His Times , it becomes amply clear that why Shivaji was largely left as a caricature of grandness or reduced to a footnote. The instance of Afzal Khan- Shivaji encounter is particularly telling. When starting for the campaign, Afzal Khan boasted that he will capture Shivaji. With 10000 Soldiers and horses, he reaches Wai and halts there for months. He tries to get help from local Marathas and even gets it from Khandoji Khopde and Kanhoji Jedhe. He then sends Krishnaji Bhaskar to Shivaji with a conciliatory note assuring to use his influence to confirm Konkan and other forts to Shivaji. 
Krishnaji Bhaskar hints about the betrayal that Afzal Khan planned for him. Gopinath Pant escorts Krishnaji back to Afzal Khan's court. Meeting was set up below the fort of Pratapgarh. Shivaji, brave and unmoved by the definite danger, dresses up for the great moment. Under his tunic, he puts on an armour, below the turban places a steel cap. In his left hand is concealed a set of Steel Claws (Baghnakha), under his right sleeve, a thin, sharp dagger- the Scorpion (Bichhuwa). He is accompanied by Jiv Mahala and Shambhuji Kavji, each carrying two swords and a shield. Afzalkhan still scared of Shivaji starts with escort of a thousand musketeers from his camp at Village Par. Gopinath Pant objects to it, saying this will scare Shivaji and the deal will be off. So he leaves the troop a little distance and goes with two soldiers, and a famous swordsman Sayyid Banda. Shivaji demands that Sayyid Banda be moved from the tent. Shiva mounts the platform and bows to Afzal. Afzal embraces Shiva and tries to choke him, at the same time he draws his long straight-bladed dagger and struck at the side of Shiva. The hidden armor saves Shiva. Shiva quickly recovers, presses his left arm around Khan's waist and tears open his bowels with steel claws. Then he drives Bichhuwa in the side of the Khan. Khan falls calling for help. Sayyid Banda tries to intercept Shivaji. Shivaji takes a rapier from from Jiv Mahala and fights back. Jiv Mahala cuts the right arm of Banda and kills him. Bearers try to take away Afzal Khan in the Palki, Shambhuji Kavji, cuts the head of Afzal Khan. The details are gory and violent. But this was the moment which turned the history and paved the way for Shivaji to become Hindu Hriday Samrat, or the Chhatrapati King of Hindus, a rebel against the sword of Islam held by Aurangzeb. The narrative of Ahimsa Parmo Dharma is thrown at Hindus always, while hiding away the massage of Gita. Shivaji's story is that of bravery and grit, or practicality and valor. It is a story we all Indians should know. It is important for both Hindus and Muslims to read it. It removes the stupid stereotypes created by the leftists to push their agenda of communal division.  
If we look at later days too, Ram Prasad Bismil or Azaad, there was never a lack of courage. There was of course, a principled courage. It might sound revivalist from the perspective of modern thought which has taken it upon itself to keep the hindus perpetually afraid, timid and apologetic. But it is very important that this fake narrative is opposed since friendship is possible only among the equals. A principled Arya Samaji Bismil needs a proud Muslim Ashfaq to respect him and an Ashfaq would not become a trusted comrade to a man lesser than Bismil. Once that happens, the ghettos, the no-go zones will go away. As they say, for two men to have integrated relationship, it is important that one of the two men is not cut to his knees. And in that only a secure and prosperous India can live. Only in acknowledging and accepting individual identity can we decide to consciously merge it into the larger super-communal identity of Nationalism.    

Book Review #1 - Shivaji and His Times- Jadunath Sarcar- CoronaCurfew

The Corona scare is there and there seems to be no other solution to fight it off than to avoid the spreading of it. This is 22nd of March, 2020 and India has gone into shutdown till this scare subsides. I fear, living through it will be as difficult as will be coming out of this. 
However, I have decided to use this time to look after health of the body, and mind. Reading forms major part of the second aspect. I have decided to share the reviews of what I read for the larger people. This is day 1, with Jadunath Sarcar's - Shivaji and His Times. 

Born on 10th of December, 1870, Shri Jadunath Sarcar was a scholar of unequaled brilliance. In 1891, he graduated in English, topper in MA and taught at Presidency College, Calcutta (now Kolkata) and later at BHU. He wrote this book Shivaji and his Times in 1919.  
The great thing about this book is that it stays away from the narrative building mode of writing history, as is the wont of later day Marxist historians and even of some Rightist writers. By his own admission, Sarcar rejected the adulatory and near-fictional writings of 19th century like Chitnis Bakhar and Shiva Digvijay. He rather uses extensively to cross-verify the claims with the British and Portuguese sources which were more factual, given the fact that as the Indian political world collapse under the weight of Cruel imperial force of Aurangzeb as he went around like mad demon stamping on the soul of Hinduism, a faith followed by the majority of population he ruled over, the foreigners took a ring-side bipartisan view of the situation. 
This makes this book exceptionally important. His praises of Shivaji aren't adulatory, his evaluation unconcerned with the public opinion. The story starts with the birth of Shivaji to a Noble under he Adilshahi rule, Shahji Bhonsale, on 10th of April, 1627, at Shivneri fort. Writer details the geographical and economic details of the area, connecting it beautifully with the spartan life of the Maratha people (as evident in the fact that even at the height of Maratha power, extending till Attock in Afghanistan, the palaces were modest wooden structures back home in Pune). The lack of avenues of agricultural occupation, due to hard lands, soldiering was a preferred profession, as JN Sarcar writes, Strong muscles and stout hearts found greater rewards and a higher position by serving in the armies of the mighty monarchies of the central plateau. He sums up the Maratha character quoting Huen Tsang- The inhabitants are proud-spirited and warlike, grateful for favors and revengeful for wrongs, self-sacrificing towards supplicants in distress and sanguinary to death with any who treated them insultingly.
Although Sarcar concedes that constant harassment at the hands of Muslim rulers did not leave the purity of soul as was seen by the Chinese pilgrim, still the basic character remained same, in terms of activity, courage, self-reliance, self-respect and love of equality. Economically, the Maratha society was not so split in terms of the poor and the rich, as it was in the North, in Delhi and Awadh. Hindu society was transforming and embracing various castes and classes as is evident from the religious teachers of those times - Tukaram (1568), Ramdas (1608), Vaman Pandit (1636) and Eknath(1528). 
Jadunath Sarcar calls the biggest weakness of Maratha race, who he calls, Indian Spartans, is their lack of business acumen. There are issues with dates in the sources, which Shri Sarcar admits. The common date considered for Shivaji's birth is 19th February, 1930. However, writer does not agree with this date, and goes with 10th of April, 1927, as mentioned in the diaries of Maratha secretaries. Another point he bases his reasoning on is the fact that Shahji Bhonsle left Jijabai, Shivaji's mother in 1930, and took second wife, Tukabai Mohite. Therefore, he makes the inference that by then Shivaji was already an infant of three years of age. In 1936, Shivaji was moved to Pune under the guardianship of an Administrator of Shahji, Dadaji Kond-dev. 
Jadunath Sarcar explains the Maval society in great detail- the Deshmukh, of Shivaji's caste, the Brahmins as administrators and the Kayathas as clerks and correspondents (Prabhus). This Maval country on the Western Ghat, Sarcar contends is the cradle of Shivaji's ascent to power. From this region, Shivaji got his best comrades like Yesaji Kank, Baji Pesalkar and of course, legendary, Tanhaji Malusare and Suryaji. 
Dadaji died in 1647 when Shivaji was 20 years of age, having united the 12 Mavals under Shivaji, having entered Shivapur to arbitrate on some land dispute. Hindus were depressed as a state policy in the state of Bijapur (Basatin-i-Salatin) and this was leading to isolation of Hindus in the region. Shivaji began his active life early in 1646 as a Ninteen year old, capturing Torna fort, the first victory. He then builds his first fort, the Raigad fort. Then came Chakan, Baramati and Indapur to his fold. 
In 1648, Shahji Bhonsle is arrested and brought in chains to Bijapur by Adil Shah. Shivaji reaches out to Mughal Prince, Murad Baksh. With the mediation of Sharza Khan and Randaula Khan, Shahji is released. Shivaji between then and 1650, captures the fort of Purandar,  and in 1656, after relative lull, captures the fort of Javali. Javali was under More family, under the Bijapur Sultan, headed by Chandra Rao. The first attack was made by Raghunath Ballal Korde, where Chandra Rao and his brother Surya Rao were killed. Javali falls to Shivaji on 15th January, 1656. Another officer, the Diwan, Hanumant Rao More, rallied opposition to Shivaji and was later killed. Chandra Rao's friend, Pratap Rao fled and came later into picture when he assisted Afzal Khan during his famed campaign against Shivaji. 
The book covers in great details the setbacks faced by Shivaji, the loss of his forts, his impossible resurgence again from that setback, the incidence of Shaista Khan who was attacked by a small team led by Shivaji, which ended with loss of fingers physically and a face, figuratively in the Mughal court. Then there is a very detailed account of Afzal Khan affair where it is clearly settled that had Shivaji not killed Afzal, he would have murdered Shivaji. Sarcar writes rubbishing the later historians claiming that the murder of Afzal Khan was an act of treachery on the part of Shivaji. He writes- Sabhasad (1694) and Malkare (1750) at least cannot be suspected of any design to whitewash their hero's character by falsifying history. In saying that Afzal struck the first blow, they truly record in a genuine old tradition and not a modern nationalist invention. Sarcar also mentions the legend around the time about Afzal Khan having killed his 63 wives before leaving to meet Shivaji. He mentions the famed encounter in detail- Shiva mounted the raised platform and bowed to Afzal. The Khan rose from his seat, advanced a few steps and opened his arms to receive Shiva in his embrace. Suddenly Afzal tightened his clasp and held Shiva's neck fast in his left arm with an iron grip, while with his right hand he drew a right hand he drew his long straight-bladed dagger and struck the side of Shiva. This was a turning point, not only in the history of Shivaji, rather also in the history of India, as we know it today. It was not the time for moral heroism, it was a time for ruthless survival. And when we look back at it, Shivaji, turned the history back from a point where we might have been all set to lose our cultural roots to the ancient India as a civilization. The depth of details bring in a strange sense of realism to the stories we have only read as fiction. It is a must read for all lovers of India history. This is a version untainted by politics.         

Netaji in Congress

The way history of India has been written post-independence, it is rare to find post-independence historian to write anything praiseworthy about any freedom-fighter who is not from the clan which appropriated India as its fiefdom. If Nehru is to be considered as the protagonist of India freedom story, not only Bose, Patel, Bismil, Savarkar, anyone who was not Nehru will be what in literary terms is called a foil. Not much has been written after independence from non-Nehru perspective. Congress, before independence, for a long time, before it became a privately-held entity under Gandhi, was more of an amalgamation of floating ideologies than a political party. The way strong personalities interacted and struggled with each other would make an interesting study, though very less has been written on it. Writing on internal politics of the Indian National Congress has been studiously avoided by the later day scholars for the fear of offending the ruling royals of the Congress. These idols of independent India do not come out winner in the face of illuminating intellect of Tilak, non-negotiable nationalism of Bose or uncompromising courage of Bismil. Let us look at the stint of Subhas Chandra Bose in Congress, strangulated and stifled as it might have been for him.  
Within Congress, the contrast could not have been deeper and the competitive streak could not have been more defined than that between Bose and Nehru. Both were of same age, and from similar aristocratic background. Bose, unlike other great leaders, did not suffer the lack of pedigree when placed next to Nehru. In reality, Bose with his scholarly background, Civil services selection stood an inch over Nehru, who at least till that time was still struggling to find a way out of the shadow of a successful and rich Father.
              Gandhi was a great leader, unified India, and played the great game of mixing religion with politics, thereby appealing to the masses with a mystic appeal. Still, the fact remains that Gandhi had pronounced dictatorial tendencies. As the party became more and more dependent on Gandhi for direction, and even survival, he became more and more adamant about imposing his will over the party. Nehru too started as a rebel young son to a rich friend of Gandhi committed to communism, but with his internal contradictions of character, he was quickly tamed by Gandhi.
Subhas and Nehru started as friends, Subhash appreciative of the sway Nehru held in the Congress and over Gandhi. Looking forward to enlist support of Nehru, who Bose considered his fellow comrade in the path of complete independence, he wrote on 4th of March, 1936- “you are the only one to whom we can look up for leading the Congress in a progressive direction. Moreover, your position is unique, and I think even Mahatma Gandhi will be more accommodating towards you than towards anybody else.” By then, Nehru has already served as Congress President once, in 1929-30 and was up for second tenure. Gandhi’s affection towards Nehru was well-known. Right after Nehru’s first presidency of Congress, Sitaramaiyya had quoted Young Indian and mentioned Gandhi as Nehru’s foster father. (His father Motilalji gave him pride and prejudice. His foster father Gandhi gave him his prudence). Bose by then was pretty disheartened by the dithering of Congress on the matter of Independence of India. In his book “Fundamental Questions of Indian Revolution” Netaji writes, “ In December 1928, a resolution was passed by the Congress by 1300 to 900 Votes, which put back the clock by definitely committing the Congress to the acceptance of dominion status…The resolution of Calcutta Congress gave the British Government one year’s time within which they could offer Dominion status to India. By 1936, Bose was quite disenchanted with the Congress under Gandhi and hoped to get help from Nehru in reigniting the fire of independence.
However, on 29thof January, 1939, Subhash Bose was appointed the president of Congress, having defeated Pattabhi Sitaramaiya, 1580 to 1377 Votes. Gandhi, dropping all the pretense of neutrality than declared that Sitaramaiyya’s defeat is my defeat. The old guard and Gandhi loyalists got to work almost immediately blocking the newly-appointed President at every step. Possibly it was due to the disenchantment with the leadership of Nehru-Gandhi that Bose decided to himself step in. Nehru had lost his initial vigor for independence and socialism ever since he was handed over the Congress Presidency in 1929 and later in 1936-37. Sitaramaiyya mentions that in all these years, Netaji largely kept to himself and maintained a bipartisan position on most matters. He writes that only towards the end of September, 1938 it came to notice that Subhas babu was keen to become President of Congress at Tripuri. Gandhi was keen to have Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as the next president and in his absence, Sitaramaiyya was his second choice. However, later Maulana withdrew and the contest was between Sitaramaiyya and Subhas.
The declaration of Gandhi claiming Sitaramaiyya’s loss as his own created unrest in the rank and file of the Congress. Immediately after, in Tripuri Congress a resolution was brought in by Shri Govind Ballabh Pant, supported by 160 signatories stating “The committee declares its firm adherence to the fundamental policies of the Congress which have governed its programme in the past years under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi and is definitely of the opinion that there should be no break in these policies and they should continue to govern the Congress policies in future. This diluted the powers of appointed President, leaving Bose with nor room to give any new direction to the organization. The resolution went further and stated, “.. the fact that Mahatma Gandhi alone can lead the Congress and the country to victory during such crisis, the Committee regards it as imperative that the Congress Executive should command his implicit confidence and requests the President to nominate Working Committee in accordance with the wishes of Gandhiji”. Not one to take things lying down, Bose wrote to Gandhiji. Subhas wrote to Gandhi on 25th March, 1939- “What exactly is the position of President? Article XV of the Congress Constitution confers certain powers on the President in the matter of appointing the Working committee.”
  Stifled and crippled as a notional president, Subhash Bose resigned later that year in September, 1939.  Subhas had also fell apart from Nehru by this time. On 28th March, 1939, He wrote to Nehru, “I may tell you that since the Presidential election, you have done more to lower me in the estimation of the public than all the twelve ex-members of the Working Committee put together.” Here is made that famous remark on Nehru and his commitment to socialism. He wrote, “You are in the habit of proclaiming that you stand by yourself and represent nobody else and that you are not attached to any party. At the same time you call yourself a Socialist- sometimes a full-blooded Socialist. How a socialist can be an individualist as you regard yourself, beats me. The one is anti-thesis of the other.”That his assessment was true is confirmed in a self-portrait written by Nehru anonymously. Nehru wrote in Modern Review, November, 1939 “Men like Jawaharlal with all their capacity for great and good work are unsafe in a democracy. A little twist and Jawaharlal might turn a dictator sweeping aside the paraphernalia of a slow-moving democracy. Jawaharlal is certainly not a fascist either by conviction or temperament. He is far too much of an aristocrat for the crudity and vulgarity of fascism. And yet he has the makings of a dictator in him. His overmastering desire to get things done, to sweep away what he dislikes and build anew, will hardly brook for long the slow process of democracy.” These dictatorial tendencies came into play much later in full when he took over as the Prime Minister of India, turning himself into a singular power center between the Government and the Party.               On refusing the follow the party line, after resigning as the President of AICC, in the month of August same year, Bose was disqualified as President of Bengal’s Provincial Congress Committee as well for three years on the charges of indiscipline. Free from the limitations of Party policies and politics, Bose went in for an open challenge to the British rule. On 19th March, 1940- he presided in an All India Anti-Compromise Conference at Ramgarh Bihar organized by Swami Sahajanand Saraswati where he expressed his anguish at the compromising nature of the Congress- “As soon as the war began, Mahatma Gandhi proceeded to Shimla without caring to consult the Congress Working Committee and informed HE the Viceroy that he was in favor of rendering unconditional help to Great Britain in the prosecution of war. ”



He organized protest against the fake narrative of the British claiming that around 160 British were pushed into a small room by Nawab Sirajuddaula where many died. This was based on the accounts of General Holwell. Netaji was arrested on 2nd of July, 1940. He went on hunger strike in captivity and was later released in November, 1940. All this while he continued to urge the Congress to launch Civil disobedience. On May20th, 1940, Nehru made a statement that Launching a civil disobedience at a time when Britain is engaged in life and death struggle would be an act derogatory to India’s honour. Mahatma also refused to join in claiming that he did not want to win independence from the ruins of Britain. Netaji escaped and fled India in January, 1941, later to emerge as the Commander-in-Chief of Azad Hind Fauz, an audacious attempt to liberate India from the colonial rule with Military means. While the mission itself failed, the failed fire did carry enough cinders to ignite the fires of Sailor mutiny during the Quit India movement, the following year. Protests in support of INA in Kolkata saw the death of 40 in Police firing and that in Mumbai of 23.  Pattabhi Sitaramayya brilliantly captures the difference between Gandhi and Bose when he writes- “With Gandhi Means are Ends. With Subhas Ends are Means. They were two polar opposites. Gandhi is moved by instincts. Subhash was guided by reason.”               Subhas’s struggle while within Congress was a statement against the highly personalized high-command structure and dictatorial grip Gandhi held over Congress amid all the pretense of democracy. While there are many theories of whether or not Bose survived the plane crash on 18th of August, 1945, what Netaji meant to India is captured in the words of Pattabhi Sitaramayya, who writes- “There is widely felt disinclination to believe this story of Subhas babu’s death, which is traced to Japanese sources. His position after the conclusion of the war has become a matter of anxious enquiry all around. If he was dead, this anxiety would be submerged by the flood tide of sorrow that overcame the country. If he was alive, the halo around this mystic would become deeper and brighter.”

Riots in the Name of Anti CAA Protests, Ambedkar and Grammar of Anarchy

“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.” – Leon TrotskySo said the thinker and writer who put his intellectual heft behind the communist revolution in Russia. When we look at the protests against the citizenship amendment act (CAA) across the country, we wonder if there is any single argument which justifies the end these anarchist protests seek. Under the leadership of Aam Aadmi Party, which took a cue from the West Bengal’s TMC rule, the National Capital of Delhi stands like an isolated island of anarchy, cut-off from the relatively peaceful UP and Haryana. As the lawmakers like Amanatullah Khan of AAP in Jamia build fake narratives to create riotous mobs, an ugly spectacle of unscrupulous and immoral politics is for everyone to see. Delhi Government puts to use Waqf Board money to fight legal case for those convicted of violence in Delhi and other states; in West Bengal, Mamata Bannerjee government assures compensation to those who died in police action against the rioters in another state from state exchequer twice what she offered to the martyrs of Uri. As the events are unfolding, even the pretense of legitimacy which the lobby of intellectuals tried to create around these riots is gone. The government of West Bengal which holds the responsibility of Law and Order is covertly and overtly supported the large-scale violence in the state in the name of opposing an act passed through due constitutional process from both the houses of parliament and vetted by the Honorable President of India. Aided by a conniving media which is no longer content to report about the politics, rather wants to define the politics of India, the elected Government of a state entrusted with the responsibility of keeping the citizens of the state safe, has become an active participant in a violent protest against an act which it is duty-bound to implement in their state. A weak opposition gives the media an opportunity to indulge itself with the role of a self-appointed guardian of democracy, creating one absolutely immoral system in which journalists, even those holding the grand-sounding title of chairman of Editors’ Guild of India, have no qualms in calling the second defeat of Congress a personal loss and to conspire openly for a quick change of regime. This explains the silence of the guild on a journalist Rizwan who was about to be burned down by the rioters in UP but the same guild going ballistic on the alleged insult of a shady journalist.              This mindless violence in the name of upholding secularism and opposing a law that does not in any way touches the citizenship of Indian citizen, rather offers some relaxations to the non-Muslim minorities trying to escape persecution in Muslim states who have arrived in India before 2014, in terms of reducing the term of naturalization from the current 6 Years to 5 Years. The way Islamists in the garb of secularism and democracy have responded to the cause of those unfortunate Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists of the three Islamic nation has taken off the garb off the face. It has been much hyped as a student’s movement standing against a fascist regime. In the end we find that the protests have come from two staunchly communist universities namely, JNU and Jadhavpur University apart from Muslim-run Institutions like Jamia Millia, Aligarh Muslim University. Protests by small groups in some other Institutes have also been reported, but those can honestly not be termed as students of the university as a whole protesting. To keep things in perspective, these three four largely Muslim universities (yes, the defenders of democracy and sentinels of secularism reserve 50% of their seats reserved for Muslims and decline dalit reservations even while being funded by the state which funds them from a secular fund of Hindu-majority nation), form a minuscule percentage of a total of 821 Universities recognized under the UGC of India. I wonder if protests by Islamist-Communist combine in 4 Universities can be considered as a representative of Student’s voice in 821 Universities.               As the violence of West Bengal was followed by Violence in Jamia, and then by AMU, and wanton violence in Gujarat, Kanpur, Muradabad and other Muslim-dominated areas, the masks were quickly down. The anti-idol-worship Nazm of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, quickly gave way to the Quranic chants of La-Ilaahi-il-Allah and ­Naara-i-Taqbeer, the masks quickly dropped down. As the investigations in Jamia now tell us that the fake ID cards were being issued months in advance to allow for the rioters to come and hide in the JNU campus, we know CAA is just an excuse. It is just a way of demonstrating religious supremacy. Many are not happy that the eternal embarrassment which the power that be placed on the Hindus is now chipping off. The left (when I say left, I mean Congress as well, since the two have long since become one) has no option. A discredited ideology which has no takers in the real world, faced with ever depleting foot soldiers, trying to fill up the ranks with rabid Islamists and fanatic Muslims trying to hide their designs of religious crusades with grand words of intellectual even though impractical communism. The incongruence of a progressive thought and regressive violent religious ideology unveiled too quickly as Shehla Rashid, a fanatic Islamist and an ex-Communist charged the left of trying to forcefully grab the Muslim movement. Not that it was secret to any one on the ground. The protest which invariably happen in Muslim-majority areas and in Islam-dominated universities fools no one with the posters of Gandhi and Ambedkar. The Dalit Ambedkarites mean for the Islamists nothing more than what they themselves mean to the communists- expendable idiots. The target is not the state, not the act. Their target is Hindu renaissance. The way a Hindu identity is intermingled with the national identity of Bharat, a resurgence of Hindu faith whether you suffix it with a ‘Tva’ or ‘ism’, puts a spanner in the plan of Balkanization of India. This is not acceptable to the leftists or the Islamists.               Having run out of the secular arguments, they protestors were quick to bring in the Dalit story in the context of something which started a fortnight back pretending to be a Dada Sahab Phalke but ended quickly being Dada Kondke, a caricature, nothing else. Ambedkar quotes were quickly brought in to render legitimacy to the anarchists holding cities under siege. I am sure if Dr. Ambedkar was alive today, he would disown all those who forget that the biggest beneficiary of CAA will be those left-out Dalit Hindus and Christians of Pakistan who were kept there by the first Prime Minister of Pakistan ostensibly to clean the toilets. Not that the Jamia students who refuse to offer reservation to Dalits in Jamia would have a view of Dalits any better than Liaquat Ali Khan. But it is important to call that out. It is also important to bring out the words of Ambedkar on so-called legitimate protests against an act approved through the due constitutional process.
              Some have shared selectively quoted Ambedkar’s Grammar of Anarchy where he warned of the threats of Bhakti. They forget that the term Bhakt was derisively used for the supporters of Narendra Modi only after 2014 elections. When Ambedkar wrote this warning, he wrote it with reference to the hero-worshippers of Nehru family. It is funny that the same people are now quoting Dr. Ambedkar. This speech of Ambedkar is particularly interesting and if it were up to me, I would make it mandatory reading for all college-going kids. In the same speech Ambedkar writes about the Communists, who have of late took the mantle of defender of constitution- “The condemnation of the Constitution largely comes from two quarters, the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. Why do they condemn the Constitution? Is it because it is really a bad Constitution? I venture to say ‘no’. The Communist Party want a Constitution based upon the principle of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. They condemn the Constitution because it is based upon parliamentary democracy. The Socialists want two things. The first thing they want is that if they come in power, the Constitution must give them the freedom to nationalize or socialize all private property without payment of compensation. The second thing that the Socialists want is that the Fundamental Rights mentioned in the Constitution must be absolute and without any limitations so that if their Party fails to come into power, they would have the unfettered freedom not merely to criticize, but also to overthrow the State.”
Many claim that forcefully squatting on the public spaces, inconveniencing the people is a legitimate way of protest. They quote Gandhi claiming that Gandhi also did so. They forget that in those days India was ruled by a foreign power, and there was no such thing as free judiciary which have been kinder to them than it has been to most common people, opening courts at the midnights. Here is what Ambedkar said on such protests in the same speech. “The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.” So the next time a moustached man who runs his politics of violence in the name of Ambedkar tells you to pick up a stone to throw or tells you to go burn a bus, read out this speech of Ambedkar to him. And join hands with the rest of India to welcome your Dalit Hindu brothers escaping a theocratic regime which refuses to accept any religion except one.  There is nothing in the end of this violence, which even Trotsky will find remotely justifiable. Many things are passed these days in the name of dissent, for instance an elected state government using state assembly put in place to implement laws passed by the Parliament denouncing the same laws. The parties in Kerala did not come together in a public place to oppose CAA, they used the house which is supposed to implement the laws to oppose an Act already approved by the President of India. Do not let them fool you. They threatened bloodbath when the lost power the first time. This whole grammar of Anarchy is as per their plan. If it was not CAA, it would be something else. We need to watch out for it. This is what Ambedkar also said.