Assassinated

With less than three weeks until Election Day, a big question is looming over the campaign for the White House, and it has nothing to do with the economic crisis or the caustic exchanges between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain over character and credentials. It is race.  

Finally! The Trump card lies bare on the table. The long awaited last weapon is drawn. This absentee ballot was sent out to voters in Rensselaer County in New York state, wonder how many such ballots will be out on November 4. The RACE Card is on, and the race can go only down from here. America’s national shame, political cannibalism and the Right Wing backlash has reached proportions and unchained beasts that put Barack Obama’s life itself at risk. 

Inside that 6% lead

Barack Obama leads John Mcain by 6 percentage points nationally, but political pundits and psephologists are shaving off nearly 2 percentage points off Obama’s lead because when the White Christian hits the polling booth on November 4th, an ancient fear is sure to sway atleast a few of them even if they deny it in surveys. USA is 75% white and 75% christian – if one out of ten have a secret agenda this fall, a black man with a muslim father may not just make it. Because in several battle ground states, the lead is a wafer thin 1-2%.

Inside the Bible Belt  

John McCain has an adopted Bangladeshi child, but when he ran against W in the 2000 Republican primaries, frantic early morning calls went out across the Bible Belt that said he had an ‘illegitimate child’. By the time McCain’s campaign reacted, South Carolina was lost. Republicans steal elections, like all right wing parties, and this time they’ll do it for McCain because Jeb Bush is not running.

When Blue state voters on the Atlantic coast gather at voting stations on November 4, frantic calls will go across the Bible belt which will tell the voter that Barack Hussein Obama is a muslim, that Barack Hussein Osama is a terrorist, that Saddam Hussein Obama is an Arab, that Black Hussein Osama has a white mother and a black father while in the Bible God taught the children of Israel not to intermarry , and that Barack Hussein Oblackmana is gay and his wife has aborted nine times. If that doesn’t work they’ll ask the voter “The United States of America is all that the White people have, should we have a BLACK President?”.

Inside the Whisper Campaign

Being the son of a white mother and a black father has come to symbolize Mr. Obama’s larger mysteries for many voters. When asked about his background, a substantial number of people interviewed said they believed his racial heritage was unclear, giving them another reason to vote against him.  

When an old woman told John McCain that she knew Barack was an Arab, he corrected her saying, Barack was not Arab. What if he is Arab?The Republican campaign asks the voters whether they know who the REAL Obama is? They make it a point to stress his middle name ‘Hussein’. News reports on the ‘internets’ suggest people shout back ‘Terrorist’ and some even go to the extent of “Kill Him”.

The below ad was issued by the Sacramento Republican Party

Inside the Market meltdown…

…lies the germs of political extremism.

It was the economic meltdown of Yugoslavia that gave us Slobodan Milosevic. It was the collapse of the Weimar Republic that vomited up Adolf Hitler. And it was the breakdown in czarist Russia that opened the door for Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Financial collapses lead to political extremism. The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class, glimpsed at John McCain rallies, presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash.

There are dangerous, armed, white supremacy groups who believe that if Obama is assasinated, USA changes forever – perhaps a small street level civil war in the end of which there will be a climate where not a Black, or a Latino or an Asian would even in their wildest dreams imagine running for President . It sure is possible. Otherwise mail me the next time a muslim becomes chief minister of Gujarat .

One of those lunatics could possibly pull it off, probably won’t. It is scarier still. Barack has the perhaps the highest security detail in the world when I’m writing this, the system protects him. But Kennedy was shot dead, his brother Kennedy was shot dead – and the only doubt is how much the system was involved.

The Frankenstein’s monsters released by religious racial bigots have a unique property of getting out their creators’ control. If that happens, it would make USA’s move into socialism, into United Socialist States of America a lot more bloodier and a hell lot painful.

Ariyaan Raja Mannan will succeed Thevan Rajamannan as the ‘Raja’ of the Mannan community in Idukki district. The 26-year-old ‘king’ is the 16th Raja of the community and is the youngest to ascend the throne. The selection is a complex process involving ‘psychic revelation’ and acceptance among the ‘Kaanis,’ leaders of various Mannan ‘kudis’ (villages) who play a pivotal role in the administration of the Mannan community, which follows the matrilineal system.

The uniqueness of this election is that, interested candidates can do nothing but pray for getting elected. Congress party did the same in Gujarat it seems, but that election works in a different way. I’m happy that Modi got re-elected. Otherwise we would have taken democracy for granted. A leader like Modi who relies on a high decibel message of development and xenophobic nationalism can be countered only by a strong ideological opposition which cuts through his message. Congress party in Gujarat lost, but the sad part is they lost it completely.

Did they really believe Sonia Gandhi won the 2004 elections for them? Is that why the elections became Sonia vs Modi, with Rahul to go with. Sonia and Rahul don’t win elections for you, YSR Reddy wins elections. Remember the undefeatable Babu Naidu (we all wanted him as our Chief Minister, didn’t we). YSR led a two year long mass campaign against Naidu, it was YSR’s mass appeal that gave Congress its 29 seats in Andhra. It was those 29 seats which re-wrote the national destiny in Delhi.

Every year is a 2004, but you need a leadership which braves the deccan heat in 2002 and 2003 taking out “Pada yatra” and “Jaitra Yatra” to the people, which taps into the anti-establishment mood. Sadly for the Congress there was no 2005 or 2006 in Gujarat, and Madam flying down and waving to the people does not change that. Chandrababu Naidu was not defeated on election day, Modis die by a thousand wounds.

and the best Birthday gift to Vajpayee, atleast now he can “show his face”

Modi asked the crowd, ”What should be done to a man who stored illegal arms and ammunition? You tell me what should have been done to Sohrabuddin?”

The crowd replied, ”Kill him, kill him”.

”Well, that is it. Do I have to take Sonia Gandhi’s permission to do this? Hang me if I have done anything wrong,” responded Modi.

Modi will possibly lose the elections, probably will not. But what do we do with the crowd. Isn’t that the real problem in Gujarat? Are we afraid to say that? I mean, face the horror?

In a completely unrelated development widely reported by almost all Malayalam dailies, Archbishop Joseph Mar Powathil has asked Christians in Kerala to send their children to Christian schools (read church run schools). I hope the Bishop hasn’t said this, else atleast he withdraws the remark. I’m not sure whether self respecting Hindus and Muslims in Kerala should stop sending their children to Christian schools. There is a limit to which the majority community will ignore the pastoral letters. After that don’t ask how Modis are created, because you are creating a crowd for him every sunday.

Otherwise lets go ahead and segregate schools for the Muslims, Christians, Nairs and Ezhavas. Then probably Kerala will reach that level Vivekananda once warned of in the near future.

NARENDRA MODI’s anger was palpable after the Godhra incident; he vowed revenge. Haresh Bhatt, the then national co-coordinator of the Bajrang Dal, was part of the meeting in which Narendra Modi told them they could do whatever they wanted for the next three days. After that, Bhatt says, “He asked us to stop and everything came to a halt.”RAJENDRA VYAS, the VHP’s Ahmedabad city president, was consoled by Modi, who said, “Rajendrabhai, calm yourself, everything will be taken care of.”

NOT ONLY DID THE MODI government allow the mob fury to continue unabated, it also tried to shelter the perpetrators from the law. Modi himself arranged for Babu Bajrangi, the prime accused in the Naroda Patiya case, to stay at Gujarat Bhavan in Mount Abu, and transferred two judges to help Bajrangi get bail

SINCE THE POLICE were in control all over Gujarat, Modi instructed them to side with the Hindus, thus giving the rioters a free hand for three days until pressure from higher quarters necessitated the calling in of the army

AFTER THE NARODA PATIYA carnage, the chief minister himself went to the site and acknowledged the efforts of the Chhara tribe, who were key participants in the massacre at Naroda Patiya

ARVIND PANDYA, government counsel, is convinced that Modi’s strong leadership made the post-Godhra carnage possible

The sheer breadth of yesterday’s Tehelka’s expose, spanning a good six months of investigative reporting is damning(to say the least). Full report here or a sample

Now, we have this Chief Minister who led a genocide. He is running again. If the Indian republic is so marinated in impotency sauce, any Chief Minister can be a Modi. What is the world’s next Super power gonna do about it?  Bol India Bol!

ICYAI the full, disturbing essay is here,

Nothing short of a massive social movement is required to cleanse the state of Gujarat.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again – Maya Angelou

A video

A few years back we faced our worst fears as a nation , today we are again a smug faced crowd hiding behind globalised cliches like Islamic terrorism and a global war on terror . This twenty minute video is a gentle reminder to wake up from our collective amnesia and realize the hell we were in and where we could return to.

The Making of a Muslim Terrorist (20 mins , worth it)

It is important for every nation to remember . Because races subjected to long term forgetfulness dont get a second chance on this earth.

An old essay

A Catholic nun from erstwhile Yugoslavia was cremated by an Indian man of cloth, in an Indian state known for its volatile Hindu population with full state honors accorded by a Communist government. As my clipping correctly reads, this can happen only in India and nowhere else in the world.

Checking client and peer queries on blue Monday mornings, thousands of miles away from Calcutta, my Inbox has Husseins ,Ramaswamies, Habiburs, Kennedies, Yudins, Lees, Romanowskies and the omnipresent Patels, Iyers and Nairs. Replying matter of fact to them without hurting their cultural sentiments or invading the personal zones do not add to my pains on the super highway where we build bridges for a living, because – I’ve maneuvered through flea infested fish markets with an Afghan foreignness at every corner, high decibel noises from Hindu temples and from atop minarets, born again recruiters hunting for new lambs to spread the great news, highly educated neighbours who have gleeful visions of blowing up temples, destroying mosques and yes, invading Pakistan across the Thar desert. Because, I’ve tasted the spicy Indian curry, Period.

Before we embark on the future of Indian secularism or how Indian secularism should be for what future has in it for India let us brush up our basics, it is a cliché, but the truth element in it rather overshadows its repetitiveness – India was, is and will be secular in its thought, philosophy and way of life. The one principal reason for this is the underlying thread of our existence that has been in the genome of every new idea born in this stretch from Garo-Khasi to the Rann of Kutch and from the Hindukush to Indian Ocean in the past four millennia – the continuing or Sanatana Dharma.

The Pancha Bhoota or nature worshippers who framed the early Vedas had this magnificent vision to build a multi-generational enterprise of thought rather than a one that gave great quarter to quarter results, fresh converts revenue or one that went around with tag lines to kill competition. Collaboration was the key word and the vision was simple; whichever way you perceive the truth, whatever names one call it, it is all the same – one truth. So when Vishnu and other Trimurtis came along they were welcomed with open arms, and then came Indra and his hordes of Devas, even God like people from blockbuster poems of the time entered the pantheon. Buddha, Christ, Mahavir, Mohammed, all the Babas, Gurus, everyone, everyone was invited. By the 2001 census this number reached thirty-four crores – around a third of the country’s population.

India is a philosophic country, it is our birthright to be outright philosophical and as mentioned above – our thought process gives a thumbs-up for that. The problem is with our social framework, which is rigid, in its apparent and hidden forms. The conflicts we have in India between people who worship any of the above thirty-four crore gods is due to the inherent flab accumulated in the Indian social framework through the years of invasion, persecution, mutually exclusive consolidation and in modern India, cowardly, shortsighted vote-bank politics and legislation. As we try to untie these knots in the Indian gnarl, the greatest advantage we have on our side will be the all-encompassing nature of our very basic mentation.

Indian secularism today is more or less about appeasement of interests rather than keeping the state, its manifestations and its actions away from any religious order. When eighty percentage of the population is Hindu, it is quite natural that the greater fight will be to keep the Hindu fundamentalist ideas from percolating into the national psyche and policymaking. This has happened even in the United States which is surely our best bet of what secularism should be, where currency issued by the government carries the “In God We Trust” tag and Southern states airports and bus-stations have welcome boards saying “Jesus Is the Only way” and the war cry of Air force recruits “Rock Sir”- referring to Peter’s Church.

Back to the Indian picture, let us accept the very fact that a lot more needs to be changed, a lot of baggage dumped and a lot of churning needs to be done to bring the Indian society anywhere near what the worlds strongest democracy is today. Why don’t we have a Uniform Civil Code? Why do we need to have different rules for different communities? The founders of our Constitution agreed to personal laws to give various communities time to evolve so that the particular community’s social practice comes close to the law of the land. Is it not high time we call a time out? Or do we need to wait for another fifty years of riots and discrimination.

Why should we allow Muslim men to marry four times, thereby letting poor Muslim women to rot and at the same time giving enough venom to Togadias and Ritambaras to hit out at the Indian Muslims and the Indian state. Many modern Muslim nations do not have this practice and by no chance they are a species near extinction. Mohammed had his own correct reasons to propound this based on the historical reality at his time. Times have changed, we better.

Is there any justification to the ban on cow slaughter other than appeasement of the Brahmanical Hindu community, what about hens, lambs and yes, fishes – being the first avatar of Vishnu and small Muslim foetuses and children slaughtered by the banks of Sabarmati.We need a ban on these also. Hindu piety has surely not ensured bovines a good life in India.

Tax exemption to Hindu undivided families is another funny legislation; the question being where is the Hindu undivided family. If the government had taken the rightful stand in Shah Bano, Hindu appeasement with Shilanyas wouldn’t have been needed, there wouldn’t have been any wind to sail the “Rath” from Somnath, there wouldn’t have been riots all the way, consolidation of militant Hindus wouldn’t have occurred, the Masjid would have stayed, Bombay blasts would have been avoided, Godhra wouldn’t have happened and every time we sing the national anthem our voices wouldn’t break or weaken between Sindh and Maratha.

Do we have any justification for subsidizing Haj.In that case we need to subsidize Catholics every time they want to go to Italy or Israel? This practice should stop once and for all. The havoc that Hindu festivals cause in localities around the country is inexplicable. Especially in crowded cities like Bombay and Calcutta. The blaring noises that come out of loudspeakers from wee hours of the morning to very late at night has nothing to do with devotion .The commercial element in it is naked and transparent too. The clogging of bottlenecks in arterial roads in cities by religious processions like Rath yatras during Navratri and Chadurdhi and for the Friday Namaz has less to do with religion and more an overt show of strength to the common man on what their bunch is capable of.

The rigid social framework will not mutate into a form that is good for the nation in course of time, rather the leniency we show towards these Hindus, Muslims and other groups will be exploited as what is happening now and the differential provisions become traits they identify themselves to. External pressure and path breaking legislations is the way, the legislature and the executive need to go hand in hand without cowardice to shake up the idle social matrix. Resistance will be there from bigots like Imam Bukharis and Singhals, personal law boards and the right wing Hindu groups. But there is no resistance that the Indian establishment cannot stand. Even if the considerations are political, they may loose the support of the hardliners but in turn the moderates in all these fundamentalist groups will be strengthened and there is the wishes and support of one sixth of the human race.

Start off with the Uniform civil code, hit them hard and without discrimination towards any particular group – rather hit everyone and let that be the order of the day. We can afford it. I’m not suggesting something new, this has happened many times before when the Hindu society was reformed and path-breaking laws were put in place.

Religion has always been a part of the Indian political discourse; even the Mahatma had used it several times. But when such discourse is filled with poison aimed at other communities and may in short or long term damage the texture of Indian polity, it should be checked. Even if a vicious speech by Balasaheb or Uma Bharti does not lead to riots, still it should be treated and brought to book with the same seriousness as is done in the United States, France and many other western democracies. There should be a check on these people and their activities and they need to be confronted at every chance possible till they get tired of the persecution from the government backed secular militia. This may sound like an extreme choice given the Indian reality. But even in India lessons can be learnt from the way Communist parties treat these religious fascists- both Muslim and Hindu, in Kerala and the climate of harmony resulting out of it. Surely there will be a dent in the vote bank but as Peter Drucker put it “A Cost for the future”.

We have the issues of extremist and at times terrorist Muslim forces in the country, but no threat is as big as the Hindu extremist forces that have spread into every nook and corner of our public space. The other groups can be contained by legislations and executive actions like in case of Sikh extremism in late eighties. But the Hindutva brigade will have to be treated differently. They have to be checked at every walk of life starting from education, media, literature, arts, business, food, clothing, and history. The list will be long.

The extremist forces will be there in Indian polity till religion exists amongst us. It will manifest itself in different political parties like Congress, BJP, Sena and the like. The secular forces will also be there to fight the bad guys. It’s the age-old struggle between good and bad for the basic right to live as equals in this land, the great unending struggle for dharma to win – the game of Mahabharata.

There are no hereditary claims to Indian secularism; it is an everyday struggle where parties may be on either side any given day. And whenever this secular democracy is toppled from her balance, the Indian people have a unique habit of going directly to the polling booth and setting the republic straight. Two summers before was just another instance. We are capable of doing that again by our-selves, to both the extremists and the pseudo-secularists. Perhaps, this is what we celebrate and call Independence.

Happy Birthday India.

Good Night and Good Luck !