Conman

The man, who used disingenuous schemes to oust his predecessor from his own party and then used his office to foment, ignite and incite the worst riots against Muslims in the country went on to use that notoriety to tighten the stranglehold on the state in parallel with running a mafia like government indulging in extrajudicial methods to eliminate any potential rivals or to implicate the official who dared to stand up to him, ultimately conned overtly communalized population of the country to put him power at the center and that power he brazenly used to empower the worst of the worst in the country and in worst of the cases played havoc with education and research with precedent given to obscurantism; inflicted the pain on the most vulnerable through misguided and ill intentioned demonetization; damaged reputation of the country through hair brained policies in managing external affairs; almost started a war against nuclear powered neighboring country; he’s out there once more making attempts to get re-elected, which given gullibility of electorate could very well happen. That’s the story of the conman, Modi and that’s the story of India heading into oblivion.

To the brink and back

The two countries India and Pakistan armed with nuclear arsenal almost went to war and then returned from the brink; the danger might not be yet completely over. Or maybe be it will never be. The circumstances that triggered those crisis emanated from a suicidal detonation on a main highway in Kashmir that killed over forty Indian security personnel, which involved Adil Ahmed Dar in his late and the vehicle that he rammed into a convoy was laced with huge amounts of explosives. 

That attack sent shock through the entire region followed by nationalist hysteria throughout the India with calls for boycott of Kashmiris and launch of hostilities towards Pakistan. The Indian reaction was predicated on the inference about culpability of Kashmiri with abetment and support from Pakistan. That all started within a time span that would be under any normal circumstances and in saner societies considered too short for acquisition of any irrefutable evidence to make a leap of accusation on Pakistan. But then India under current political dispensation can neither be considered normal nor rationale. 

And rationality never formed any part of Indian thinking in dealing with Kashmir. It would be foolhardy to overlook the background of the person who committed the suicide attack on the Indian security convoy in the first place. He belonged to a region in Kashmir that has been embroiled in a virtual war, particularly since India under Modi embarked on what it called a 'muscular policy'. And almost like all Kashmiris, had been a victim of excesses perpetrated by Indian security forces in the region that could be in various forms ranging from every day humiliations to outright tortures.  

To be continued....

Rajiv Kumar