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

A tale of two braggadocios cuckoos

One of the most common themes that joins populists of all hues is their ability to indulge in fact free bragging. They do it with aplomb and convince unthinking gullible with an élan and that's how throughout the history populist with authoritarian outlook have been able to ride to power only to indulge in wanton misuse. Present day world is awash with such populists holding and abusing power. The sustenance for continued power requires manufacture of the fictitious issues and crisis and pretense of having solved those problems that did not exist to the applause of the gullible followers and self-congratulations.

Modi and Trump exemplify classic cases of personae indulging in fact free hyperboles and patting themselves in the matter of every second sentence they utter. Modi erupted on the national scene of bragging since 2013 and in the process has run India almost into ruin. Trump on the other hand has been in business of bragging for a long time but was never considered anything more than a clown until he landed into the presidency of the United States. Ever-since assuming the office, the biggest achievement of Trump has been to concoct facts, things and crisis that don't exist. And then of course a daily dose unmitigated lies and bragging.

What happens when these two braggadocios cuckoos run into each other? The outcome will of course depend who happens to be the bigger braggart and as it turned out Trump chewed Modi like a chicken cartilage during his reality show like cabinet meeting. Modi, the braggart, has been bragging to the biggest braggart in world about the library he built in Afghanistan. Not only both Trump and Modi are braggarts who hate dealing with facts but they both also happen to be cuckoos.

-Rajiv Kumar

Iqbal Khandey

This morning I read the news about demise of Iqbal Khandey. That news with tinge sadness also brought back nostalgia of the days, which would be very hard for anyone to fathom in this age. I must have become acquainted with Iqbal around 1974 through an extended clan of Ganais of Mattan. I remained focused on friendship part of the familiarity rather than to understand complex relatedness of Ganais. Iqbal at that time was studying in Amar Singh College while I was in the Government Degree College Anantnag. He would frequently visit our college mainly to meet our common friend Gulzar Ganai, who as I understood was also closely related to him. One occasion that has stuck in my memory for the reasons that perhaps underscore the essence of those times was that we, Iqbal, Gulzar and I, were standing outside the main gate of the college in 1974 and wanted to go to the town in a horse driven ‘tonga’ as none of us was ready to undertake that journey of about two kilometers on foot. But there was a cache: the ‘tonga’ ride would cost 25 p per person but we three persons combined did not have 75 p on us. That was nothing out of ordinary; not having any money was a rule not an exception in those halcyon days. Somehow I salvaged us from the predicament when I spotted an acquaintance who borrowed me a weathered one rupee note and we merrily took a ‘tonga’ ride to the town.

In 1975 we both graduated from our colleges and joined the university. Iqbal went to the English department and I after certain detours ended up in Chemistry. We never interacted in the university and Iqbal didn’t stay there for a very long and left his masters course to pursue IAS, which he cleared after 1975. I always had perceived him as an academic not a bureaucrat, but then academia in those days, that too in Kashmir, was a kind of last resort for failed careers. I did later meet Iqbal on a few occasions subsequently. On the eve of the 1983 elections Kashmir, I together with Gulzar went to see Iqbal in his office. He was, at that time, the Deputy Commissioner Anantnag. He was in some meeting and it was a while when came out and the first thing he uttered was that the official machinery has been directed to intercede on behalf of and in favor the National Conference in polls, which the latter went on win with a thumping majority. Last time I met Iqbal was in 1992. Owing to my sabbatical trip to Germany and dislocation, the university had held back my salary for almost a year. Iqbal was by then a secretary of some important government department. I went to see him at his official residence in Jammu and he then walked with me to the residence of Ajit Kumar who at that time was secretary education department. It was during that short walk I realized the folly of having approached Iqbal for a personal matter. Not that there was any change in his demeanor; he was as usual courteous and affable. It was my personal aversion to everything bureaucratic.

On a day in 1974, Iqbal together with a few Ganais came to my place and he picked up ‘Summer of 1942’ book from my shelf to borrow and to never return. That was the point when I resolved to never ever lend a book come what may. And thanks to Iqbal, I can boast of a personal library of over a thousand books made several times over in different places in different countries. 

Iqbal was always fun with a nasal accent that belied steely resolve; he was deeply erudite with eclectic knowledge; despite everything, he was a romantic at heart.

Emergency-an historical perspective

I have been reading Coomi Kapoor's book on emergency published in 2015 and it has proved to be more revealing than I had bargained for, but not in the manner I had expected. That period remains strongly etched in my memories, and I always have considered that act of Indira Gandhi as completely unconstitutional and constituted an unnecessary subversion of the entire system. Nevertheless, Coomi Kapoor's book has forced me to rethink the entire issue through an historical perspective. In the aftermath of the declaration of the emergency and the excesses carried out under its name, the true causality  had become and remains obscure until this day. 

What no one talks and that book, between the lines, reveals is that crescendo of opposition agitation prior to the emergency and its organization was under the complete control of RSS. Coomi Kapoor herself had been associated with RSS in many manners. The book has a foreword written by Arun Jaitely, who only sometimes back wrote one of the most shallow accounts of that era. 

More importantly, most of the leading lights of opposition were guided by RSS. Indira Gandhi might have had a purpose in declaring that emergency but its operations were taken over by thuggish Sanjay Gandhi and his coterie of Punjabi mafia. And the outcome was a horrible period in the Indian history. Curiously, many of the leading persons from that mafia later became part of BJP.

Validation of Einstein at universal scale

In the span of last one month, three separate reports validated different aspects of Einstein's theories on universal scale. One study, published in Science on June 22, showed bending of light as predicted in General Relativity at a galactic scale using two distant galaxies. Another study, published in Nature on July 5, validated the equivalence principle of universal free-fall, from General Relativity, using a three star system, two dwarfs and a pulsar, about 4.2 light-years away. And finally a study, published in Nature Physics on July 16, and based on two-year data analysis of atmospheric neutrinos from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory failed to find a violation of Lorenz symmetry. Lorenz symmetry forms the basis of Special Theory of Relativity.

That actual vindication of Einstein might come from another report indicating that quantum field theory might after all not be explaining the entire reality and discovery of phenomenon expounding the transformation of quantum fuzziness to 'realism' might be close. Einstein never was comfortable with quantum uncertainty.

Votaire

Secularism embodies separation of the state and church and mutual non-interference. The concept developed in reaction to the excesses of the Catholic Church in middle ages. One of the main proponents of secularism was the enlightenment philosopher, Voltaire who spent last decade of his life crusading against the church. When Voltaire died in Paris on May 30, 1778, he was refused a Christian burial. It was after the revolution that triumphant French National Assembly in 1791 forced Louis XVI to recall his remains to the Pantheon. The dead ashes were escorted through Paris by a procession of 100,000 men and women and the funeral car had the words: "He gave the human a great impetus; he prepared us for freedom." Voltaire did not give democracy and he rather gave a cry to challenge the ideas that were forced down on people. But it was the Church against whom he reserved his ultimate wrath.

Quantum Weirdness

Quantum world is weird and that's an understatement. One of the theories explaining that weird world, called Copenhagen interpretation, shuns realism. Niels Bohr was the main proponent of that interpretation that made Einstein uncomfortable and spats between the two on the subject are legendary. As it turned it is clear until now that Einstein was incorrect. Another explanation for quantum mechanics was proposed by Hugh Everett in his PhD thesis, called Many-Worlds interpretation and was based on concept that myriad possibilities inherent in a quantum system each manifest in their own universe. That interpretation, summarily rejected by Niels Bohr, later made  comeback but not soon enough for Everett, who gave up the field and went on to work for Pentagon for the rest of his life.

Ironically, Einstein's discovery of photoelectric effect saved scientific world from ultraviolet catastrophe and laid foundation of quantum field. But it was Niels Bohr and others' interpretation that turned Einstein against the uncertainty of quantum mechanics and until the very end he never reconciled with it. In between he unsuccessfully tried to poke many holes into quantum interpretation, with one of the most famous being EPR thought experiment. EPR stands for Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen. Einstein remained convinced that quantum uncertainty indicates incomplete understanding of reality. Nevertheless, the field thrived with contributions from likes of Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac and later John Wheeler, Richard Feynman, John Stewart. It has been long since that experiments have proven quantum entanglement, what Einstein used to call 'spooky action at distance' and is explained without violating the speed of light paradigm.

It maybe pointed out we live in a quantum world, without fully knowing how it works. 

Lowest of low creeds

Every time something ludicrously horrible comes of Modi's mouth, people start feigning exasperation. The reality is that notwithstanding his high office and belief of his fanatics, the lowest of low creeds is what defines him and has been the hallmark of his infamous career in politics. 

Right at the time when he stormed into power in Delhi riding on mostly a fact-free campaign, William Dalrymple had written a longish article on Modi in the New Statesman tracing his roughshod ride through ranks of the Hindu fascist organization to become chief minister of Gujarat. According to Dalrymple, Vinod Mehta, the late editor of Outlook, described Modi as a bad news; Modi before before he assumed chief ministership in Gujarat used to visit Mehta with alleged incriminating material against his predecessor from his own party. It was his demeanor that alarmed Vinod Mehta. 

It didn't take long for the entire world to see that demeanor when Modi most unscrupulously went on air to seek revenge for the Godhra train burning incidence and used his office and position to fan pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat in following days and weeks. His low creed was at full display when he taunted hapless displaced victims of those riots unleashed by his henchmen with his total abetment. Years following the Gujarat riots of 2002 were marked by fake encounters, elimination of uncomfortable allies, false charges against opponents that were orchestrated by his most trusted accomplice, Amit Shah, who for all practical purposes became second most powerful person in the country. Amit Shah was Ratko Mladić to Radovan Karadžić. 

Throughout his election  campaign of 2014, Modi embarked on spilling outright lies to total mauling of history. His appeal was to the baser instincts of intolerance to bring to the forth the worst of the worsts with so-called Gujarat model nothing more than a charade to cover his real motive. The office of the prime minister far from making Modi a statesman has instead steeply diminished in purpose and reputation. His prime ministership marked a new beginning in India that country could have done without; it emboldened and reinforced the his fascist supporters to indulge into gruesome and grotesque acts of violence against Muslims in particular.

Throughout and predictably, his low creed remained in plain sight through his steadied silence, no matter how gruesome the act. Be it the bludgeoning of a human on the mere suspicion of beef consumption or hacking and burning of another human on the basis of so called love-jihad, the low creed of Modi became even lower. Only time, he like a chameleon feigns hurt is when news of gruesome India gets picked up in international media. That does not stop him from following some of the worst elements on Twitter. 

The worst from him came when in one of the most egregious and most likely illegal act he visited a collective punishment on the entire country through abrogation of 86 percent of the national currency in circulation. The overnight havoc hit the most vulnerable in the population that Steve Forbes called inhumane and Manmohan Singh termed as organized loot. Any other leader if forced to take such decision would be somber and explain to the people reasons. Again his low creed got better of him and he made fun of the suffering Indians while on an official trip to Japan.

One would think that people have seen the rock bottom of lowliness, only to see him crashing though another bottom to remind his deep seeped low creed. That moment came in just finished election in Gujarat, the state he ruled as the chief minister for more than a decade. The mere hint that he might lose one election sent him into downright gutter and he once again went freelancing fact free and outrightly dangerous lies.

The most bizarre moment came when Modi, the prime minister of India, insinuated that Manmohan, his sanguine predecessor had entered into a conspiracy with Pakistan to alter the outcome of the election in Gujarat. Basis of that downright stupid insinuation was a dinner party hosted by Mani Shankar for visiting former Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri. That diabolical bloviate from Modi was countered by a sharp rebuke from usually reticent Manmohan Singh and has been repudiated by the host himself and two of the invitees, Rahul Singh and M. K. Bhadrakumar, with latter calling the discussions at the dinner party as airy-nothings. That was a dinner party were likes of Modi never get invited but we can be assured of him falling through another rock bottom. 

If that was what a mere hint of loss in Gujarat did to the mental stability of Modi, we only need to imagine where a perceived loss at national level could send him. When election results from Gujarat come, there is already a big time loser, Narendra Modi.

-Rajiv Kumar

The existential crisis

India has entered a phase of an existential crisis; it's on a quintessential path to fascism. If the impending disaster comes to fruition, no demographic group will escape its trepidation. Specious protests and online campaigns will be insufficient to combat their concerted campaign in progress. They already are in the possession of highest echelons of power in the country and they will bring in the final shove once they get an overwhelming control of both houses of the parliament. When Indira Gandhi declared internal emergency, the press and judiciary acted as bulwark against authoritarianism of the time. And now India is straddling an abyss where fascism emanates from media and judiciary mostly endorses it; dissenters routinely get murdered.

But then the country signed itself to a virtual doom, the day Modi was elected prime minister with an unbridled majority. The harsh and bitter reality rather has been that the country elected him concisely for the reason of being an unapologetic bigot. Nevertheless, the manner and causes of his election have been rendered moot and futile; the culture of intolerance and rabidity under his watch has defied the worst fears that anyone had ever harbored before he became the prime minister. The political murders under his watch bring India close to nadir of its morality but then anyone who expected anything different would have been living in a fool's paradise. 

The real news reserved for the ardent supporters remains that once the forces of evil unleashed under the Modi regime are done with their hatred of imaginary enemies, they will turn on to the middle class, the very people who in their devotion for a strong leader put him in power. Fascism, once entrenched in a country will run its full course with many indiscriminate victims. It might be Muslims, progressives and intellectual, who are for now in the cross hair of those treachrous forces but with their increased power will come their need for invention of new enemies to keep their apparatus of destruction running. The fact that Modi is edging close to being exposed for the hollowness of his policies be it in the spheres of econmics or external affairs, makes those evil forces unleashed by him even more dangerous than they are already. Their think tanks are already running mock trials of bringing the consitution to its knees and pull down the entire democratic edifice.

They might very well attain their that ultimate aims on the backs of their passionate supporters who will be their ultimate fodders for running their devil's workshop. But then the people who let him get away with one of the most hideous schemes of so called demonetization deserve no better.