The unfolding nightmarish scenarios

The inevitability is already there. After mid May it is very likely a man, who acts, speaks and appears like a criminal, will head the largest democracy in the world. Although he tried hard to camouflage his rabidity under a cloak of so called progress and development but his dagger keeps slipping out into the open. Then his incorrigible henchmen are always there to rain on his parade with one telling his opponents to migrate to Pakistan and another one asked Muslims not to venture into the Hindu areas. Yet another topped by declaring destruction of Pakistan after ascension of the man to power, who incidentally was on the stage at the time, grinning I guess, at least mentally. 

If that scenario wasn't nightmarish enough, then one just needs to ruminate about the people who will be manning the impending Modi regime. There is that Amit Shah, his racketeer in chief in Gujarat, who besides having been recently banished from campaigning, excelled in arranging fake encounters. Though the pliant election commission rescinded its ban, lest revenge be too hard once elections are over. Shah's name prominently figured in Ishrat Jahan Ara murder case and many others until he was sent by his Fuehrer to manipulate India's largest state for him through rampant bigotry and communalism. Then that one-man train wreck, the ex-army chief cannot be discounted either, who for the first time in the history of India scared an elected government through what tantamount to staging of a coup. His raison d'être was that the government of the day did not accept his manipulation of the date of his birth and let him continue to in the office for another two years. But then his roguishness was all over the place and his softness for hinduvta did not long come into open. If nothing else, there will always be the shadow of one of the most sinister persons ever to set foot on this planet. The agenda of Subramaniam Swami besides demolition of all mosques in India includes disenfranchising those Muslims who fail to declare their Hindu ancestry. Nobody can discount Yoga swindler either, least for the comic absurdity of those pretenders.

Then there are mainstream leaders of the party still to be counted who apparently attained the stature of statesmen once Modi became their leader. Bigotry of Advanis, Joshis, Jaitleys and others pale in comparison to his acolytes and Modi himself. Otherwise the damage they did to Indian polity during their time in the government was enormous. It took poor Arjun Singh an entire term from 2004 to 2009 to undo the damage done to educational syllabi by Murli Manohar Joshi and his accomplices at human resources ministry during that period when those right wing fanatics were in power. During their earlier term they were not only sinister but also proved to be contemptuously incompetents. The fiasco during the handling of hijacking and those foolishly immature statements of Advani remain ever refreshing to remember. And now elevation of a man who presided over and abetted killings in Gujarat to the top leadership position has provided credibility to his incompetently sinister colleagues.

One would think nightmare ends there but it doesn't. As of now Modi is debarred from entering the US.   That ban will go away if in a nightmarish scenario he really become Prime Minister, as business takes precedence over human rights. But that doesn't mean that a literal Damocles sword will not hang over his head whenever he ventures abroad, Europe in particular. Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni even during her time in the government avoided Europe due to warrants issued by a London court. And the arrest of Pinochet during his visit to London does not bode well for you know whom!

Ascendancy of tyrant

One is given to believe that the outcome of the upcoming Indian elections is already a forgone conclusion and ascendancy of Narendra Modi to power a fait accompli. At least that is the perception being spread by corporate controlled Indian media that revels in mediocrity. Curiously, that would constitute a remarkable turn of events. Given his direct and indirect culpability in the crimes committed in 2002, Modi should have long before disappeared from political scenario. For long last he should have been doing his time in a shared cell with his former protégé Maya Kodnani for his crimes of omission and commission against humanity. Instead he is crisscrossing the country spreading untruths and regularly mauling history; back in Gujarat his henchmen in the meanwhile continue to indulge in thuggish skullduggery.

The exoneration by Indian courts of Modi for his role in mayhem of 2002, that left thousands dead and irretrievably scarred minorities in Gujarat, does not in any way prove his innocent. Rather in a curious way represents falling in line of judiciary with ominous trend of the time heralding triumph of unreason and bigotry. Given the spread of viciousness it is does not come as surprise that people fighting for or demanding justice for the victims of Modi regime of terror during those riots should now find themselves charged as criminals. Albert Camus couldn’t have been more apt when he wrote, “On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence-through a curious transposition peculiar to our times-it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself”. In this case the happenings are not abstract concepts but factual happenings.

Teesta Setalvad while seeking justice for Zakia Jafry is being hounded by the state machinery of Gujarat headed by none other than Narendra Modi. Zakaia Jafri’s husband Ehsan Jafri a former member of Indian parliament was hacked to death by a mob of thugs guided by official voter lists during those riots. Modi never uttered a single word of remorse for any of those heinous crimes committed under his watch and instead a systematic harassment and victimization of his opponents and those seeking justice has ensued to this day.

What has become one of the tragic in a series of ironies is the fact it is not the so-called progress model but it is rather his role and unambiguously criminal stance during and following riots in 2002 that has captured the imagination of increasingly communal and bigoted Indian middle class. Modi’s arrival on the national scene is not the beginning rather it signals the culmination of the process of thorough infiltration of every strata of society by the forces that are intolerant and visualize India in a light compatible with the vision of communal figures from days of Hindu Mahasabha. Tactics of intimidation used by the supporters of Modi in dealing with opponents represent a leaf out of a fascist book.

One might remember the worst tyrants in the history came to power through elections and massive popular support of their people. Modi seems to be displaying all the symptoms of making of a worst tyrant. When an outspoken critic of Modi, a former editor of The Hindu newspaper Siddharth Varadarajan was indirectly threatened, not much was left to imagine. Modi will not come to power because people who will vote for him are tired of corruption. No because they are the ones who are corrupt; they are the ones who go to any lengths to avoid taxes; they are the ones who benefit from corrupt India. For them Modi brings them a vision of Hindu India. Alas they forget when everybody has been dealt with, the forces of tyrant will turn on them. Recently Pranay Gupte quoted poem “First they came” by the pastor Martin Niemoller on Jewish holocaust:

First they came for the Communists


And I did not speak out


Because I was not a Communist


Then they came for the Socialists


And I did not speak out
Because

I was not a Socialist


Then they came for the trade unionists


And I did not speak out


Because I was not a trade unionist


Then they came for the Jews


And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew


Then they came for me


And there was no one left

To speak out for me

-Rajiv Kumar

The Ukrainian crisis

For anybody to understand Ukrainian crisis outside the frenzied brouhaha generated by partisan media is essential to understand the associated history and geography. Henri Kissinger, who was national security asdvisor and Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, has given an informed and reasoned argument in this article (link provided) 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html.

The argument put forward by Dr. Kissinger is a breath of fresh air compared to noise being made by people who are running the world affairs in Washington and elsewhere.

-Rajiv Kumar

Proselytism and happenstance

I had been standing in front of that old stand at Maulana Azad Road and I pulled out my ringing phone out of my pocket. I panicked when I saw that it was not my phone; it was rather my long discarded ancient Sony Ericsson handset from pre-smart phone era and apparently still functional.Another wave of confusion had me wondering me about fate of my current phone. Had I lost it? While dealing with and coming terms with those confusions, I realized that I still needed to answer the thing that was incessantly ringing. It was in the midst of that mental turmoil I pressed the button on that forsaken handset and no sooner had brought it close to my ear I heard Yasmin yelling at the other end. “Where the hell are you, rascal”. That was how she usually would start her conversation and that time couldn’t have been an exception. While I was trying to conjure a plausible answer that would render further yelling futile or I wish propitiously it might even subdue. I tried to give her my location at that time but I confusingly found that I am no longer at the place where I was. I was now standing almost opposite to the Palladium cinema with my back towards that hip stationary shop a couple of shops away from the corner of the junction leading to Court road. I had not used any of the lanes connecting Maulana Azad Road to reach my current spot; I would have remembered of that big textbook shop in one of those lanes, where I would stop at the slightest excuse during my days at the University. With phone still held close to my ear and trying to mumble an answer I felt that only probable explanation for my being at the new location would be a star trek transporter. Perhaps I was not enough bewildered that while still answering the phone I felt a soft endearing arm slid from behind encircling my neck; I felt a soft female form pressing against my back and then there were lips close to my other ear whispering amorous words. I couldn’t understand the words in my state of utter confusion but I figured out that words were in Dutch. Her blonde hair was hanging up to her and now my shoulders. And before I could gather myself and contemplate a response I felt dragged towards an alley in the Court road and now I was facing Jameel, who had instantly launched a sermon on morality and started berating my deviousness. I had more than I could manage already I was not ready for an attempted proselytism from a person whose vision of the world had most often had me asphyxiating. Probably it was that suffocation that woke me from my sleep and it was 5.30 in the morning. I knew even if I went to sleep again I would encounter incorrigible Jameel again who ruined my happenstance with an unknown Dutch woman forever.

A march of the cowards

With every passing day a web of outright lies and subtle untruths, deception and demagoguery is thickening around a person who by law of any civilized land on this planet should have been long before disqualified from electoral politics and put in a prison for the overt and covert crimes committed by him during and post 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. Most of the gushing acolytes of Narendra Modi wear themselves out by repeatedly reciting the mantra that courts never found him guilty. What about Maya Kodnani who happened to be a close aide of Modi and has been convicted for orchestrating murder and mayhem? What about those on the record diabolical statements of Modi during those dark days when hundreds of innocents were being murdered and thousands were sent to the camps? And did any of his supporters bothered to know the fate of the officials who had courage to tell truth about Modi who is now trying pose himself a born again messiah? And did he ever even remotely subject himself a luxury of being remorseful for the loss and destruction of lives under his watch? 

Instead of any contrition he has embarked on the same ugly trail of deception, conceit and lies to become head of the government of the whole country. The most disconcerting feature that has marked his campaign of usurpation is the unleashing of utter lies and use of communal politics without any consideration  for any ethics or principles or proprietaries. The abominable campaign being conducted by Modi is not another run of the mill electoral practice, it is rather based on the tactic of spreading and repeating falsehood as used by fascists all over the world. With a scant respect for the facts, his campaign has been playing havoc with historical facts. Nevertheless, in reality Modi and his supporters can be nothing but bunch of cowards. 

Modi and the Hindu extremist organization to which he belongs have always believed in ideology that is diametrically opposite to that of Mahatma Gandhi and for that very reason Gandhi was murdered in a plot hatched by people adhering to that ideology of hinduvta. Following the murder of Gandhi, head quarters of their organizations had scenes of jubilation. And Modi is product of that ideology. If he were not a coward he would have campaigned on the platform of ideology that killed Gandhi. Instead he is shamelessly trying to own Gandhi. Had Gandhi not died on that thirtieth January of 1948, he would certainly have died during the 2002 riots in Gujrat and most certainly after listening to distortion of everything that Mahatma ever stood. All Modi and his bunch have now embarked is nothing but a march of the cowards and the irony is that they might even succeed.
-Rajiv Kumar

March to the end and a journey to fanaticism

It would appear from the media frenzy that Narendra Modi already is the prime minister of India. Even though the elections are still a few months away. The media seems to be lapping every single word uttered by that man. It would be a right time to do a kind of preliminary analysis of this dark phenomena and its potential consequences. The only plausible reason behind so-called appeal of Modi is his unambiguously notorious role in not only not stopping those 2002 riots in Gujrat but rather fanning those riots through his diabolical utterances and through criminal abdication of his duty as the chief executive of that province. And to this day he never uttered a single word of regret. That directly appeals the Hindu middle-classes who through sinister propaganda have come to percieve themselves as victims of a conspiracy hatched by minorities in particular Muslims. Otherwise, the Modi developmental model peddled by corporate media is nothing more than a charade. 

The real power behind the rise of Modi is dichotomous. The one branch belongs to corporate houses and they importantly control media, which is the reason for an all out build up of a farcical profile. Big corporates and businesses would be the one to gain enormously, should Modi and his party come to power. The minority rights and welfare of poor sections of the society are never part of their calculus. This joins with the perceived victim-hood of Hindu middle-classes who while sitting in their air-conditioned living rooms keep concomitantly pondering at their plight and curse poor of the country for stealing their prosperity and wishing unthinkable for the politicians for helping poor. That is the reason for them a small time corruption by politicians is more sinful than the loot by corporates.

The second power that has coalesced around Modi is that of hinduvta forces, though at some levels it intersects with the first one. The governing philosophy of those forces is utterly deranged and dangerous. As has been said by scholars, these forces do not believe in democracy and rather have always been admirers of fascism and Nazi socialism. Modi has risen from the ranks of these very obnoxiously sinister organizations. Their parent organization is the one whose member plotted, executed and celebrated the murder of Gandhi, who was also a Hindu but not their kind of Hindu. Nothing could be more reviling than Modi going through a pantomime of garlanding a statue of Gandhi. Modi stands and does or has done everything contrary to what Gandhi ever stood for, nothing more could have denigrated the memory of Gandhi than that farce. 

If Modi does at all come to power, it will be for India a march to the end. It can't be coincidence that all those who preach bigotry should join him on this journey to fanaticism.

-Rajiv Kumar

The elections in Pakistan

The elections in Pakistan marked many firsts for that country that culminated in Nawaz Sharif’s party getting the largest mandate. Last time Nawaz Sharif got into power, it was with an overwhelming majority and despite that three years later he was bundled out of office through a military take over under General Musharraf. The period starting from the late eighties and throughout the nineties was defined by an intense rivalry between him and Benazir Bhutto. Each was elected twice and removed from the office mid-way through their terms. Both had one common factor binding them and that was both governed Pakistan as badly as anybody could imagine. It was said that she doesn’t listenand he doesn’t understand. Nawaz Sharif came into politics as a protégé of Zia-ul-Haq and after the death of the late dictator he came into his own with his strong base in politics and business in Punjab. In his second time as the prime minister with a two-thirds of parliamentary majority he started to put his markon judicial and military appointments. That is when he replaced Jahangir Karamat as army chief with his nemesis Parvez Musharraf. It was a reenactment of appointment of Zia-ul-Haq to the post by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Parvez Musharraf stuck to power until his forced removal in 2008 with Benazir Bhuttohaving been assassinated during electioneering. The real triumph of theelections in Pakistan has been the democratic process itself and remarkable success of party lead by Imran Khan in general and in particular in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, which saw total decimation of National Awami Party of the descendants of Ghaffar Khan. Anybody disappointed with the process and outcome should have seen a picture of General Kayani casting his vote. Those are the kind of incremental changes that are lasting;revolutions on the other hand, most of the time, turn out to be short-lived. The task facing new government including the controlling of drones raining from the sky could hardly be termed envious.

The day India sullied itself again

On February 9, 2013 at eight in the morning, the Indian state executed Mohammed Afzal Guru for his involvement in an attack on the parliament in 2002. The Indian police had him implicated within three days of the attack. Based on only circumstantial evidence, with not a single eyewitness, Mohammed Afzal was sentenced to death by a trial court. The Supreme Court, in the words of the court itself, ‘to satisfy the collective conscience’, upheld that sentence eventually. To put meaning into it would read that they decided to put a human being to death without conclusive evidence to satiate the blood lust of the Indian nation.

The basic tenet of any law states that a person can only be convicted for any crime based on evidence beyond reasonable doubt. The evidence in the case of Mohammed Afzal did certainly not meet those criteria of beyond reasonable doubt. Mohammed Afzal did not at any stage have a proper legal representation, which justices of the Supreme Court chose to ignore.  Perhaps for those justices it is more important to take cognizance of the press reports detailing who slipped on the road to a pilgrimage than the proper representation of an innocent being charged with a crime that could invoke death penalty.

Almost eight years after the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, Mohammed Afzal Guru was executed in the prison conveniently ignoring all the proper conventions and decencies. By their own admittance, the authorities allegedly informed his family only by a speed post; but the family learnt about the execution only through news. The family has even been denied to carry out last rites for the deceased executed by the Indian state to satisfy collective conscience.

It couldn’t have got more appalling than to see people actually celebrate the execution. Communalists and secularists, capitalists and socialists were all seen to be jubilant. Only if they would care to know that those are the symptoms of a fascist state in making. The police in Delhi outsourced its duties to the thugs of saffron brigade and actually facilitated them in physically beating those who tried to protest peacefully against the execution of Mohammed Afzal by the Indian state.

And if Indians still think that one day Kashmiris can be won over, the Indian state nailed the last nail in the coffin of that hope by cold bloodedly executing Mohammed Afzal against all evidences.  Should the Indian state or its people be under the impression that people of Kashmir can be coerced into submission through gross revulsive tactics, they better read history. All that happened in the execution of Mohammed Afzal was that India sullied itself again.

 -Rajiv Kumar

And then they talk about conscience

On that December night when those inhuman barbarians were brutalizing a young girl and her companion, the Indian capital Delhi went about its business in oblivion. They were driven around the city for two hours; they could driven them anywhere even close to colonial government quarters of the capital, where the inhabitants still live in Raj era. And then the victims were thrown out on the road naked and almost dead and spectacularly, not a single passerby came to help them. People stopped and gawked at them and left. Even final advent of police personal didn't help much, because they got bogged down in feudal dispute over the turf. One victim had to help another into a vehicle. The young victim has already departed this world and now the remaining victim has tried to tell the real story and as it happens he is the only who actually knows what happened. And instead of some soul searching, the thugs of Delhi police are lining up to deny the account of that night by the only surviving witness. They moved quickly to file charges against the news channel that conducted the interview. Only if they had moved that night that quickly. The only thing that one learns from this barbaric incident is that nobody comes out unblemished. Public apathy was in complete synchronization with disgusting disinterest of the entire political class. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a man with mentality of a petty bureaucrat that measures everything in terms of stock exchange numbers and growths per quarter, was at his pathetic best. The public apathy, until something triggered a stream of protests, has it origin in induced desensitization. When somebody would mention rape of women in Kashmir by Indian armed forces, those very members of the public would just snigger. The ex-army man, who had temerity to participate in the protests, has been on the record, viciously undermining gruesome Pathribal murders. And importantly, have those protests enlightened the residents of Delhi about the plight of Soni Suri. The unfortunate victim was brutalized by hardened thugs but those who brutalized Soni Suri have been awarded gallantry medals. And then they talk about conscience!

-Rajiv Kumar

Modi and his apologists

Those Indians, who never stop fawning at anything their beloved leader Narendra Modi does, can hardly be in a state, for the lack of reasoning, to understand that creating a park or making a highway does not make a leader. It would be too much to ask them if they ever bothered to see a parallel between Modi and a European dictator.  He, besides, building autobahns also presided over the holocaust that eliminated over six million Jews.  In 2002, Modi presided over a holocaust of his own in Gujrat and the passage of time can in no way dilute or lessen those deliberate acts of omission and commission. It is sheer travesty to see that he instead of facing law for his crimes against humanity should be poised to win another term as a Chief Minister in Gujrat. Notwithstanding, endorsements from those phony industrialists, whose morals are never spoilt by anything other than money making, Modi will never be remembered for anything other than an abettor of the worst communal violence that resulted not only in killing of thousands of Muslims but sending rest to the ghettos.  He presided over and directly abetted in causing the worst communal mayhem in Gujrat. Conviction of Maya Kodnani, a close ally and a minister in his government hardly leaves any doubt about involvement of Modi himself in crimes committed during those riots. It is not only the crimes per se but a thuggish manner that he and acolytes went after people who implicated him in those horrendous acts. He may run away for now and he may have his apologists in abundance, but in all probability at the end he will never escape from the sins of letting humans burnt alive. They never escape and Modi and his ilk will also not. Neither did Milošević, Karadžić and Mladić.