India against its liar-in-chief

The past months in Indian politics have proved to be an eon; suddenly the all conquering and all-powerful Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has been reduced to his pitiable caricature. The tidal wave against him was accurately captured by a headline in the Asia Times, “Indians rise up against their liar-in-chief”. Only last May, Modi had led his party to an unprecedented second consecutive victory in elections to the Indian parliament. It is now easier to state that with that benefit of hindsight that the thumping majority mandated to him in the last election had in it scripted his downfall as that victory had come laced with an unbridled hubris.

 

The second term also marked the formalization of a central role for his lieutenant of undisputedly dubious character, the Amit Shah, who until then had been operating outside the government as the president of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). Once inside the government the duo of Modi-Shah, of Gujarat mayhems of 2002 fame wasted no time in embarking on social engineering on a diverse Indian society. They were emboldened by the fact they could muster hitherto denied majority in the upper house of the Indian parliament through increased BJP numbers and cravenness of many members of the opposition parties.

 

Their first assault was reserved for Kashmir, the only Muslim majority state in the India union with a disputed status. Shah piloted a bill in the Indian parliament and through a quintessential legal sleight of hand neutralized the article 370 of the Indian constitution, which had guaranteed the autonomous status to the state. The Indian government even went ahead and dismembered the state and reduced it into two inferior appendages of the union government. Together with that act the Indian government unleashed an unprecedented repressive regime in Kashmir involving indiscriminate arrests, tortures, complete isolation of the local population and deprivation of access to communications, health services, education and in the process inflicting a lasting damage on the local economy for nefarious reasons or un-reasons. Kashmir and its status as the Muslim majority state had always stuck as a sore point for the Hinduvta ideology driven Modi government.

 

While act on Kashmir drew sharp condemnation with pronounced denunciation from International media, the Indian population for most part remained ambivalent, disingenuously combining their disapproval with their profusions for the integrity of India. It might be added that the Indian excesses in Kashmir had predated the Modi government in India. Indians didn’t realize at that time, for Modi-Shah, Kashmir was just start of an experiment on social engineering, they had to move on to their next targets, the Indian Muslims. Once again it was Amit Shah in his avatar as the union interior minister introduced a bill called Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) that was duly approved by the both houses of the parliament and rubber stamped into an act by the Indian president, despite illegality, immorality and obnoxiousness written all over it.

 

Innocuous sounding act made provisions that persecuted persons from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh can be made Indian citizens provided they are not Muslims. Indian constitution has the word ‘secularism’ in its preamble and the other articles of the constitution clearly state that there can be no discrimination on the basis of religious affiliation. The ominousness of the act becomes accentuated when read together with the intended national register for citizens (NRC). With a law already in place that declares that all non-Muslims are by default Indian citizens, onus falls on 1.7 million Indian Muslims to prove their citizenship. Ultimate aim remains for them to make Muslims second-class citizens or more like after passage of Nuremberg laws, Nazis had declared Jews while still subjects of the German state were no longer citizens with full rights.   

 

That perhaps proved a line crossed too far by the Indian government and for the first time a revolt erupted against the Indian government. Only time will tell how far that revolt can stem the creeping viciousness that Modi led government has wrought on the Indian society and played havoc with every Indian institution that had been vanguards for maintenance of rule of law. Those institutions be it of judiciary, education, finance, social sciences have been subjected to frontal attacks by Modi government with fundamental aim of debunking all checks and balances in order to foster an agenda of divisiveness and hatred. Nothing else can exemplify better than a morally bankrupt and indisputably illegal Indian Supreme Court ruling on the land dispute involving Babri Masjid, where those who in contravention of law indulged in demolition were rewarded with the land. But then that was a part of in progress anti-Muslim agenda.

 

While in its first term the Modi government due to constrained majority in the upper house of the parliament could not start tinkering legally with the social fabric of the country, it didn’t mean they did not act. Instead Modi outsourced that task to the army of his hoodlums. That is when people were lynched for eating beef or transporting cattle or for simply being Muslims. Intellectuals, who caused inconvenience or questioned their motives were either killed or arrested on flimsy pretexts. Big question remains why would anyone be surprised with what has happened or is happening under a government led by Narendra Modi with a life long record of deceit and hatred.

 

It would also be foolish for forget origin of Modi from the cauldron of communalism, bigotry and hatred. His ascent in Gujarat as the chief minister was through deceit and chicanery and his continuation was predicated on the killings of over two thousand Muslims under his watch in the riots that he instigated and then withheld deployment of security forces. Amit Shah, while a state minister in Gujarat under Modi was arrested on the charges of extortion, kidnapping and murder. Those are the people now shepherding India, whom people in the last elections voted with gusto for that very reason. Otherwise, the economy that they had promised never materialized or rather the Modi government has run Indian economy into mud and Indian reputation all over the world at its nadir.

 

While the revolt that has started against the thuggish government in its attempt to alter the basic character of country has many promises but it would be foolhardy to discount the machinations of rogues like Modi and Shah. Within the global context these are strange times with demagogues and rogues holding power in place far afar. Maybe 2020 brings in the much needed course correction! 

-Rajiv Kumar

Background of Babri Masjid dispute and expectations

It was on 22nd December 1949 when thugs of Hindu Mahasabha, following a conceited plan succeeded in planting an idol in the Babri Masjid in Ayodhaya. Through thoroughly duplicitous mechanics in connivance with a partisan district magistrate and an ambivalent congress government led by Gobind Ballabh Pant, they created a semblance of a dispute, when there was none. 

The structure had a been a mosque for centuries and it never was a temple; it was never disputed. The temple was located outside the mosque and both existed in complete harmony for centuries, though the lunatics of hinduvta always made attempts to take over the structure at different times. 

But on that night they sent Abhiram Das into the mosque with an idol when guarded by a compliant policeman and next morning they created a mass frenzy by pretending a miracle. They executed their nefarious act after hatching that plan for years. 

Then they waited another forty years  before thugs led by Advani and company launched a final assault on that historical monument and brought it down along with it the social fabric of the society. India must feel safe now, as those who planned that deceit in 1949 and created mayhem in 1992 are now ruling the country.

And then there was the Allahabad High Court judgement:

Gloating over one issue has never been so nuanced. Nevertheless, the court verdict on Babri Masjid enchanted almost all, though the motives and reasons being different. It was being shrouded under the adulation of wise, just, appropriate and enlightened, as it ordered the site be divided between the litigating parties and everything over to the next round for grinding in the Supreme Court. 

Was the verdict wise, just, appropriate and enlightened? What about those who perpetrated the horrendous crime by organizing mobs and inciting them into frenzied pulling down of the historical monument through deceit and stealth? 

The structure may or may not have been built at the site of a pre-existing temple but when thugs went to work on that dark day of Indian history it was a monument they pulled down along with pride of once tolerant and secular country. 

Do they get to build the temple at the site and feel vindicated for not only pulling down an edifice but also for bringing down the entire fabric of the society for once and all? 

What happens to those law enforcement officials whose dereliction of duty on that dark December 6, 1992 caused mayhem on that day and the days and years to follow? Does anybody remember that the despicable violence in Gujarat was a consequence of the demolition through an incitement that is anathema to Hindu tolerance and way of life? 

How about the dissenting judge who thought mosque was built against tenets of Islam? What were the clinching evidences or was the judgment allegiance driven like the notion of native origin of Aryans? And most importantly, what about those thuggish leaders who participated in planning the mayhem for whom the divinity had only one meaning? Do they get to celebrate their acts of unpardonable commissions? 

Will it be likes of Advanis, Katiyars and Tagodias, who in reality should be behind the bars, leading the construction of temple at the site granted by the court? For years before and after committing the crime against the entire Indian nation, they had been operating on a single agenda of converting the psyche of Indian masses through doses of religious intolerance. And succeed, they did. That brought them closer to the power and they used that to hilt through rewriting history and playing havoc with the psyche of Hindu middle classes while maintaining the façades of occasional farce tolerance. 

The judgment had left nothing to gloat and in effect reflected the creeping decadence and deep abyss where the criminal perpetrators get a feeling of vindication and seekers of justice even hesitate to express dissent for the fear of retribution.

That was still a time of some hope that now stands completely obliterated under the regressive Modi regime. Lest anyone expect a just decision from the Supreme Court of India that in recent times on Kashmir even deigned to hear habeas corpus petition, a very foundation of a civil society. India is already groping in darks with vultures ruling the roost.

Soulless democracies

Democracies in the West took a long time to brew and evolve with foundations based on oeuvre of philosophical underpinnings with many convulsions and wrong starts and restarts before being established firmly. Even after centuries of those traditions, the established democracies become lacking upon challenges from lawless groups and individuals and require unstinted vigil and firmness of institutions to withstand those vagaries. Those democratic ideals when transposed to the third world remain complete in letter but seem to be utterly devoid of spirit, which uniquely gets lost in transport. India, which is dubbed as the world’s largest democracy is perhaps a paradigm of a governing system only in letter, utterly devoid of a democratic soul where the rule of law is recklessly used for creating lawlessness and enforcing domination by its majority.

 

Nothing exemplifies that better than the manner India has used or rather misused its laws to collectively punish the over 7 million population of Kashmir for defying its hegemony.  Since August 5, 2019 when the Indian government in a unilateral illegal move dismembered the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the entire population of the valley has been under a siege cut off from the outside world and without access to basic amenities like healthcare, education and communication. There is an incessant arbitrariness including indiscriminate arrests aimed at intimidation of the population for submission to the whims of Hindu majoritarian government of the Prime Minister Modi. While the government has bandied out the number of those arrested between one and three thousand, Pervez Imroz of the Coalition of Civil Liberties in Kashmir has put the number of those arrested up to 20-30 thousands. Indiscriminately arrested persons range from politicians of the so-called mainstream parties who until the other day had been running Indian show in Kashmir to under-aged children. Those rampant detentions in both rural and urban areas happen without due any process or record.

 

The current Indian government may have exceeded all limits in its devious use of rule of law to intimidate the entire population of Kashmir without any provocation; yet all successive Indian governments, right from the time when the state entered into a temporary accession with the Indian union in 1947, have used legal processes to punish the dissenting political entities in Kashmir without any compunctions. Sheikh Abdullah, the first Prime Minister of the state, who was instrumental in aligning of Kashmir with India, was duly discarded, arrested in 1953 and subsequently slapped with so-called Kashmir conspiracy case, which was duly dropped as a matter of political expediency. The different governments might have surreptitiously eroded the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the state; the legal protections under the Indian constitution never became available in Kashmir. Even Kashmiris tried in Indian courts have been treated peculiarly with most famous case being that of Afzal Guru who as per the Supreme Court itself for lack of hard evidence was handed over the death sentence to satisfy the collective conscious of the country.           

 

That sentence, itself revulsive and against legal norms, paled in comparison to the manner in which Afzal Guru was executed in 2013 in complete secrecy without even the decency of notifying his family. His family in Kashmir received a letter in post two days after his execution. Kashmiri politicians and activists throughout have been victims of Machiavellian machinations of different Indian agencies with different cases slapped against them in attempts to tame and make them toe the Indian line. The former chief of an Indian spy agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Amar Singh Daulat, had detailed in his memoirs the sordid games India played in Kashmir to maintain Indian control.  India throughout ran Kashmir through its intelligence and other agencies notwithstanding the veneer of an orchestrated political charade. Modi government since its start in 2014 has turned those agencies into potent weapons of vengeance to be used against Kashmiri separatist leadership even before the fateful August 5, 2019. 

 

Indian government and its agencies, shielded from the fact that the top Indian court has deviously refused to heed the habeas corpus law, have put separatist leadership including octogenarian Syed Ali Shah Geelani in Kashmir in a state of permanent incarceration for almost eternity. The Supreme Court even refused to entertain the habeas corpus petition filed against the arrest of Farooq Abdullah after the government invoked infamous public safety act (PSA), a decision called palpably wrong by the noted jurist A. G. Noorani. Those legal luxuries of habeas corpus are beyond the reach of Kashmiris incarcerated without any formal arrest and are political thorns in the eyes of the Indian government. It is the case of a younger separatist leader, Yasin Malik that has taken an ominous portent with Indian intelligence agency having drudged out a three decade old case against him.

 

Although the cases in courts in India move notoriously slow except when political expediency hastens the judicial velocity. As was the case with Sanjiv Bhatt, a dismissed police officer in Gujarat who had vocally implicated Modi, the then chief minister in the state at the time of infamous riots against Muslims in 2002. From his arrest, to framing of a murder case against him and to sentencing to a life imprisonment, everything happened in a virtual blink. Similarly from a usual arrest of Yasin Malik under the public safety act to booking by the Indian National Agency and his lodging in the Tihar jail in a three old decade case has all the hallmarks of revengeful ill intentions of the Indian state. While the Indian government since August 5, 2019, has humiliated the mainstream politicians in Kashmir, it is for the separatist leaders like Yasin Malik, who from the start refused to accept the Indian occupation of Kashmir, that it must be devising an expedient legal methodology to do away the inconvenience without a due process. That luxury of due process has never been afforded to Kashmiris by India while smothering their aspirations and now the entity of the state as well at the altar of a majoritarian dominance.

 

 

A Continued Saga of Betrayal in Kashmir: an update

Kashmir was locked up on the night of August 4, 2019, cut out from the world and turned into one big prison guarded by over 700,000 Indian troops reinforced significantly preceding that fateful August 5, 2019 when it took Amit Shah, the Indian union home minister, a little over seven minutes to strip away the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the state and dissolution of the state itself and turning it into two inferior appendages of the Indian federal government. The move was duly rubber stamped by both houses of the Indian parliament aided by significant defections from the ranks of opposition parties, and the myopic people of the country fed on the diet of narrow rabid Hindu nationalism went on celebratory dizziness.

 

Days and weeks before, in Kashmir there was a foreboding sense of an intrigue in works. Sending additional troops to an already the most militarized zone in the world and ominous evacuation of all non-locals, tourists, pilgrims, students, and laborers didn’t make sense unless one where to imagine the worst. All those assurances by the state governor, prior to the day, like all promises made by Indian representatives in Kashmir from the inception, turned out to be patently dishonest, deceptive and out-rightly false. Deception has throughout defined the Indian behavior towards Kashmir right from the time when the then ruler of the state was forced to sign an instrument of accession with the Indian union in 1947 that allowed Indian forces to enter Kashmir. The instrument of accession had provided for explicitly temporary provisions of very limited relationship between the state and the Indian Union subject to a final status to be decided by the people through a referendum.

 

That temporary accession was forced in the wake of tribal raid on the state mainly in reaction to the inhumane ethnic cleansing in Jammu province at the instigation of the Dogra ruler of the state that changed the demography to the disadvantage of Muslims of the region. The article 370 of the Indian constitution manifests the only link between the state and the union, with former having its own separate constitution. Extension of Indian laws, beyond those agreed, over the state or any change to the article 370 would require an approval by the state constituent assembly that had dissolved itself in 1958. Though, successive Indians governments through legal deception played havoc with that autonomy of the state but none had been foolhardy until the rabid rightwing Modi government. They through their historically steeped ignorant arrogance and a contrived vision of a Hindu India seem to have followed the dictum ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ to indulge in a legal heist without being aware of the ultimate costs of that sheer stupidity.

 

The article 370 and autonomy guaranteed to the state through it, entitled “Temporary provisions with respect to the State of Jammu and Kashmir” restricts powers of the Indian government over the state. To overcome those limitations, the Indian government played legal sleight of so many hands that those moves would not stand the legal scrutiny, if the Indian institutions including the judiciary had not been hollowed out by the Modi regime. They used article 367 to narrowly reinterpret the constitution with respect to the state to do away the requirement of the consent of the state constituent assembly, which does not exist, to make article 370 inoperative through the subsection (3) using the governor as the state authority for consent, despite being an appointee and representative of the union government and not of the state.

 

Had the government been confident about what its representatives have been blurting out since August 5, 2019 that the measures were for the benefit of the people, then why would be entire population of Kashmir incarcerated and that legal fraud forced down the throats through high-handed measures aimed at intimidation? A few basic facts merit unbiased perusal with one fundamental being that the act of accession never ever attained credence, acceptance, or legitimacy within Kashmir, which coupled with an ugly haste for dominance and forced assimilation only hardened local attitudes against the Indian state and its true intention. The first major inflection point came when the Indian government embarked on its first illegal measure in Kashmir. On August 9, 1953, Sheikh Abdullah, the then prime minister of the state was dismissed on the orders of the Indian government through the office of the head of the state. That besides an act of betrayal and deception also lacked any legal sanctity. After his dismissal, Sheikh Abdullah spent next twenty years in and out of various prisons; the Indian rule since then in the state had all but consistency of an orchestrated charade.

 

The staged democracy in the state was maintained through liberal dole outs, predetermined phantom elections using Indian intelligence agencies as major conduits, which to keep things under control bribed, and propped local politicians and then spied on them. The state politicians maintaining charade for India were handsomely compensated but never trusted. Successors of Sheikh Abdullah after his 1953 dismissal ran state through allegiances, patronages and brutality and Indian governments surreptitiously instigated the overt and covert process of erosion of the autonomy of the state through salami tactics of one at a time. All those acts of duplicity on the part of Indian government did nothing but harden the attitudes of the local population that perceived those measures as acts of aggression against the people. Nevertheless, it would be still some time before the state descended into all engulfing violence that consumed all sections of the society. That would take a few more acts of arrogant stupidity on part of the successive Indian governments.

 

Through changed geopolitics in early 1970s, Sheikh Abdullah entered into an agreement with the union government of Indira Gandhi that brought him back to power in the state, an act that latently tarnished his legacy forever. Indian government after having learned nothing from its recurrent misdeeds repeated what would turn out to be a humongous blunder with consequences that would result in destructions and deaths. After the death of Sheikh Abdullah in 1982, his son Farooq Abdullah became the chief minister of the state who won a big mandate in the elections that he had called in the following year. It was at that point when nationalists in India started calling for the dismissal of Farooq Abdullah government. Indira Gandhi obliged them by sending to the state a divisive figure, Jagmohan as the governor. He wasted no time in engineering defections from the ruling party in the state and installed an illicit government and subsequently assumed full powers once that puppet alliance failed.

 

The ill-fated installation of Jagmohan as governor not only disrupted the politics of the state when it barely had started to look pseudo-normal but he also damaged the basic fabric of the society in Kashmir. Despite all political upheavals, syncretic traditions in Kashmir, which made the place unique, never lost their sheen. Jagmohan in his capacity as governor through selective communal patronages played a big role in disruption of that fabric of harmony leading to further alienation of the local population. Further disaster came through ill-fated alignment of Farooq Abdullah, leader of the National Conference and the then Indian ruling party Congress in the state elections of 1987 that doomed the place to an eternal violence. Farooq Abdullah an inherently weak politician, given to an easy life, was loath to hard political fight; thus, to remain in power he chose to align himself with the national ruling party despite knowing the intrinsic hatred that people harbored for India. Anticipating the looming defeat at the hands of opposition Muslim United Front, the ruling coalition resorted to massive rigging in the elections that included incarceration and torture of representatives of the opposition party. That act of deliberate heinousness brought in the violence and disaster in Kashmir that no one would have ever imagined.

 

Some vested groups try to portray that Kashmir fell to Islamic violence but nothing could be farther from truth. The militancy took over Kashmir because of Indian blighted myopia. Left to no other recourse, youth in Kashmir were left with no choice but to pick up guns to fight Indian tyranny. Pakistan did provide arms and logistic support, which would come at a cost. Kashmir, thereafter, was never same again. At the very start of the violent rebellion 1989, the Indian state proved to be utterly clueless and fragile, it collapsed to a degree that it failed to provide stability or security to anyone. The most disastrous response from the Indian government came through reappointment of Jagmohan as the state governor in January 1990 with complete charge as the state government had resigned in protest. Jagmohan, true to his distorted beliefs, started his term by unleashing brutality through security forces with use of live ammunitions on protesting masses that resulted in several massacres until even the Indian government had enough. Nevertheless, Kashmir remained engulfed in a near-war in 1990s with causalities running into tens of thousands. The acts of brutalities were committed without any compunction and Kashmiris subjected to continuous subjugation by Indian security forces with documented catalogues of tortures, excesses, extrajudicial murders, forced disappearances, rapes committed against the civilian population.

 

The Indian government once again started charade of electoral politics in late 1990s using brutal tactics to force people into participation but it never even deigned to seriously address the issues that had caused lost times and lives. The struggle against Indian domination in Kashmir gradually changed from armed insurrection to peaceful unarmed protest. But Indian security forces maintained their vehement unreformed brutal zeal in dealing with unarmed protestors. That was apparent to the entire world in 2008, 2010 and again in 2016. Brutality in 2016 marked a new low, the Indian security forces introduced use of pellet guns to quell peaceful riots that has left protestors maimed and blinded; despite, the apparent heinousness of deploying such weaponry against unarmed civilians, Indian authorities have refused even to contemplate any discontinuation.  

 

Politics took a curious turn in 2014 when the Peoples Democratic Party entered into a coalition with the rabid communal party of Modi to form the state government only to be ditched by the latter when time was ripe to play another fraud on Kashmir. Armed with a bigger majority than before in the Indian elections of 2019, the Modi government has done away with legal niceties. The human made laws unlike laws that govern the nature can and are subject to capricious violations when lawless persons become in-charge. Modi steeped in the fundamentalism of extreme right wing ideology was never going to bothered by constitutional restrictions. To overcome legal restrictions, Modi and his wily protégé Amit Shah have coopted the Hindu population to smother the rule of law. The constitutional coup by the Indian government vis-a-vis Kashmir far from culmination rather marks the first step of their cherished mission of humiliating and subjugating the population of Kashmir into submission for having ‘denied’ the inalienable of India over the province or specifically right over the lands and lakes of that pristine valley.

 

If past more than 40 days are any indication that mission is already in progress. Where in the world would be incarceration of the entire people an acceptable norm and to have them deny the right to access to the outside world, health care, or even the right to mourn their dead? Politicians, lawyers, labor leaders, activists and even journalists doing jobs have been subjected to indiscriminate incarcerations, with many shifted to hostile prisons outside the state. Every move of the people is being scripted to the detail, with Imams in local mosques being told the sermon they could or could not use. Those living outside Kashmir are desperate to know the welfare of their folks back home and the reckless statements from imprudent Indian officials only add to those desperations and strain credulity. The state governor is said to have stated on record that only terrorists use internet and mobile phones. The truth is in their hearts they have actually declared all Kashmiris as terrorists; how else can they explain mass incarceration and denial of basic rights even to the people who until very recently ran show for India in Kashmir? They did not spare 81 year Farooq Abdullah, who until the other day would shout his Indian-ness.

 

The challenge remains for Kashmiris how to counter the legal fraud that India committed in Kashmir? The only silver lining, though very thin and faded, is that the excessive hubris of the Indian government has once again pushed Kashmir and its perennial abuse by India on to the world stage. International media to the considerable consternation in Indian circles is relentlessly covering the Indian moral bankruptcy and its brutal inhumane lock up of the entire Kashmiri population. Now would be the time to maintain that coverage through continued exposure of Indian excesses and its dubious propaganda. India might try to portray a hunky-dory picture of Kashmir nothing can be farther from truth. Besides inhumane treatment of the people, the Indian actions have destroyed the economy of Kashmir and jeopardized livelihoods. If those are not acts of brutality then what else those could be?

 

Rajiv Kumar

Continued saga of deception in Kashmir

Kashmir was locked up on the night of August 4, 2019, cut out from the world and turned into one big prison guarded by over 700,000 Indian troops reinforced significantly in the days preceding that fateful August 5, 2019 when it took Amit Shah, the union home minister, a little over seven minutes to strip away the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the state and dissolution of the state itself and turning into two inferior appendages of the Indian federal government. The move was duly rubber stamped by both houses of the Indian parliament aided by significant defections from the ranks of opposition parties, and the myopic people of the country fed on the diet of narrow rabid Hindu nationalism went on celebratory dizziness.

Days and weeks before, in Kashmir there was a foreboding sense of an intrigue in works. Sending additional troops to an already the most militarized zone in the world and ominous evacuation of all non-locals, tourists, pilgrims, students, and laborers didn’t make sense unless one where to imagine the worst. All those assurances by the state governor, prior to the day, like all promises made by Indian representatives in Kashmir from the inception, turned out to be patently dishonest, deceptive and out-rightly false. Deception has throughout defined the Indian behavior towards Kashmir right from the time when the then ruler of the state was forced to sign an instrument of accession with the Indian union in 1947 that allowed Indian forces to enter Kashmir. The instrument of accession had provided for explicitly temporary provisions of very limited relationship between the state and the Indian Union subject to a final status to be decided by the people through a referendum.

That temporary accession forced in the wake tribal raid on the state mainly in reaction to the inhumane ethnic cleansing in Jammu province at the instigation of the Dogra ruler of the state that changed the demography to the disadvantage of Muslims of the region. The article 370 of the Indian constitution manifests the only link between the state and the union, with former having its own separate constitution. Extension of Indian laws, beyond that agreed, over the state or any change to the article 370 would require an approval by the state constituent assembly. Though, successive Indians governments through legal deception played havoc with that autonomy of the state but none had been foolhardy until the rabid rightwing Modi government. They through their historically steep ignorant arrogance and a contrived vision of a Hindu India seem to have followed the dictum ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’ to indulge in a legal heist without being aware of the ultimate costs of that sheer stupidity.

The article 370 and autonomy guaranteed to the state through it, entitled “Temporary provisions with respect to the State of Jammu and Kashmir” restricts powers of the Indian government over the state. To overcome those limitations, the Indian government played legal sleight of so many hands that those moves would not stand the legal scrutiny, if the Indian institutions including judiciary had not been hollowed out by the Modi regime. They used article 367 to narrowly reinterpret the constitution with respect to the state to do away the requirement of the consent of the state constituent assembly, which does not exist, to make article 370 inoperative through subsection (3) using the governor as the state authority for consent, despite being an appointee and representative of the union government and not of the state.

Had the government been confident about what its representatives have been blurting out since August 5, 2019 that the measures were for the benefit of the people, then why would be entire population of Kashmir incarcerated and that legal fraud forced down the throats through high-handed measures aimed at intimidation? A few basic facts merit unbiased perusal with one fundamental being that the act of accession never ever attained credence, acceptance, or legitimacy within Kashmir, which coupled with an ugly haste for dominance and forced assimilation only hardened local attitudes against the Indian state and its true intention. The first major inflection point came when the Indian government embarked on the first illegal measure in Kashmir. On August 9, 1953, Sheikh Abdullah, the then prime minister of the state was dismissed on the orders of Indian government through the office of the head of the state. That besides an act of betrayal and deception also lacked any legal sanctity. After his dismissal, Sheikh Abdullah spent next twenty years in and out of various prisons; the Indian rule since then in the state had all but consistency of an orchestrated charade.

The staged democracy in the state was maintained through liberal dole outs, predetermined phantom elections using Indian intelligence agencies as major conduits, which to keep things under control bribed, and propped local politicians and then spied on them. The state politicians maintaining charade for India were handsomely compensated but never trusted. Successors of Sheikh Abdullah after 1953 dismissal ran state through allegiances, patronages and brutality and Indian governments surreptitiously instigated the overt and covert process of erosion of the autonomy of the state through salami tactics of one at a time. All those acts of duplicity on the part of Indian government did not nothing but harden the attitudes of the local population that perceived those measures as nothing but act of aggressions against people. Nevertheless, it would be still some time before state descended into all engulfing violence that consumed all sections of the society.  That would take a few more acts of arrogance stupidity on the part of successive Indian governments.

Through changed geopolitics in early 1970s, Sheikh Abdullah entered into an agreement with the union government of Indira Gandhi that brought him back to power in the state, an act that tarnished his legacy forever. Indian government after having learned nothing from its recurrent misdeeds repeated what would turn out to be a humongous blunder with consequences that would result in destructions and deaths. After the death of Sheikh Abdullah in 1982, his son Farooq Abdullah became the chief minister of the state who won a big mandate in the elections that he called in the following year. It was at that point when nationalist in India started for calling for dismissal of Farooq Abdullah government. Indira Gandhi obliged them by sending to the state a devise figure, Jagmohan as the governor. He was wasted no time in engineering defections from the ruling party in the state and installed an illicit government and subsequently assumed full powers once that puppet alliance failed.

The ill-fated installation of Jagmohan as governor not only disrupted the politics of the state when it barely had started to look normal but he also damaged the basic fabric of the society in Kashmir. Despite all political upheavals, syncretic traditions in Kashmir, which made place unique, never lost their sheen. Jagmohan in his capacity as governor through selective communal patronages played a big role in disruption of that fabric of harmony leading to further alienation of the local population. Further disaster came through ill-fated alignment of Farooq Abdullah lead National Conference and Indian ruling party Congress in the state elections of 1987 that doomed the state to an eternal violence. Farooq Abdullah an inherently weak politician, given to an easy life, was loath to hard political fight; thus, to remain in power he chose to align himself with the national ruling party despite knowing the intrinsic hatred that people harbored for India. Anticipating the looming defeat at the hands of opposition Muslim United Front, the ruling coalition resorted to massive rigging in elections that included incarceration and torture of representatives from the opposition party. That act of deliberate heinousness brought in the violence and disaster in Kashmir that no one would have ever imagined.

Some vested groups try to portray that Kashmir fell to Islamic violence but nothing could be farther from truth. The militancy took over Kashmir because of Indian blighted myopia. Left to no other recourse, youth in Kashmir were left with no choice but to pick up guns to fight Indian tyranny. Pakistan did provide arms and logistic support, which would come at a cost. Kashmir, thereafter, was never same again. At the very start of the violent rebellion 1989, the Indian state proved to be utterly clueless and fragile, it collapsed to a degree that it failed to provide stability or security to anyone. The most disastrous response from the Indian government came through reappointment of Jagmohan as the state governor in January 1990 with complete charge as the state government resigned in protest. Jagmohan, true to his distorted beliefs, started his term by unleashing brutality through security forces by use live ammunitions on protesting masses that resulted in several massacres until even the Indian government had enough. Nevertheless, Kashmir remained engulfed in a near-war in 1990s with causalities running into tens of thousands. The acts of brutalities were committed without any compunction and Kashmiris subjected to continuous subjugation by Indian security forces with documented catalogues of tortures, excesses, extrajudicial murders, forced disappearances committed against civilian population.

The Indian government once again started charade of electoral politics in late 1990s using brutal tactics to force people into participation but it never even deigned to seriously address the issues that had caused lost times and lives. The struggle against Indian domination in Kashmir gradually changed from armed insurrection to peaceful unarmed protest. But Indian security forces maintained their vehement unreformed brutal zeal in dealing with unarmed protestors. That was apparent to the entire world in 2008, 2010 and again in 2016. Brutality in 2016 marked a new low, the Indian security forces introduced use of pellet guns to quell peaceful riots that has left protestors maimed and blinded; despite, the apparent heinousness of deploying such weaponry against unarmed civilians, Indian authorities have refused even to contemplate any discontinuation.  

Politics took a curious turn in 2016 when Peoples Democratic Party entered into coalition with rabid communal party of Modi to form the state government only to be ditched by the latter when time was ripe to play another fraud on Kashmir. Armed with a bigger majority than before in the Indian elections of 2019, the Modi government has done away with legal niceties. The human made laws unlike laws that govern the nature can and are subject to capricious violations when lawless persons become in charge. Modi steeped in the fundamentalism of extreme right wing ideology was never going to bothered by constitutional restrictions. To overcome legal restrictions, Modi and his wily protégé Amit Shah have coopted the Hindu population to smother the rule of law.  The constitutional coup by the Indian government vis-a-vis Kashmir far from culmination rather marks the first step of their cherished mission of humiliating and subjugating the population of Kashmir into submission for having the inalienable of India over the province or specifically right over the lands and lakes of that pristine valley.

If past 35 days are any indication that mission is already in progress. Where in the world would be incarceration of the entire people an acceptable norm and to have them deny the right to access to outside world, health care, or even the right to mourn their dead? Politicians, lawyers, labor leaders, activists and even journalists doing jobs have subjected indiscriminate incarcerations, with many shifted to hostile prisons outside the state. Every move of the people is being scripted to the detail, with Imams in local mosques being told the sermon they could or could not use. Those living outside Kashmir are desperate to know the welfare of their folks back home and the reckless statements from imprudent Indian officials only add to those desperations and strain credulity. The state governor is said to have stated on record that only terrorists use internet and mobile phones. The truth is in their hearts they have actually declared all Kashmiris terrorist; how else can they explain mass incarceration and denial of basic rights even to the people who until very recently ran show for India in Kashmir?

The challenge remains for Kashmiris how to counter the legal fraud that India committed in Kashmir? The only silver lining, though very thin and faded, is that the excessive hubris of Indian government has once again pushed Kashmir and its perennial abuse by India on to the world stage. The coverage against the Indian moral bankruptcy and its brutal inhumane lock up of the entire Kashmiri population is being covered by international media to the considerable heartburns in Indian circles. Now would the time to maintain that coverage through relentless exposure of Indian excesses and its dubious propaganda. India might try to portray a hunky-dory picture of Kashmir nothing can be farther from truth. Besides inhumane treatment of the people, the Indian actions have destroyed the economy of Kashmir and jeopardized livelihoods. If those are not acts of brutality then what else those could be?

-Rajiv Kumar 

       

 

 

 

 

    

Parochial road to destruction

Prior to August 5, 2019 there was a foreboding of an intrigue at work in Kashmir. Thousands of extra security personnel were being deployed to a place that is already one of the most heavily militarized zones in the world. That coupled with selective tweezing out of all non-Kashmiris, tourists, pilgrims, students, and laborers alike added to the uneasiness among the locals, notwithstanding the assurances of the state Governor. He along with the other minions of his administration, with the state being under president’s rule, kept on reiterating that people should not pay any attention to the ‘alleged’ rumors until that morning when the union Home Minister announced the stripping away not only the constitutionally enshrined autonomy but also doing away with the entity of the state and reducing it into two emerging entities as the appendages of the federal government.

 

It is difficult to know but not hard to imagine the reaction of the population in Kashmir, whose incarceration started on the eve of that fateful day and they remain in that condition to this day, stripped of not only their autonomy and the state but also their connections to the outside world. Reports coming out from the place suggest elaborate security procedures have resulted in redrawing of the zones with the generous use of concertina wires minimizing the local interactions. Virtually people have been forced to suspend their biology till the administration hopes them to accept the fait accompli. While it is painful to imagine the sufferings of those requiring immediate medical attentions, such conditions in general lead increased stress levels in general population.

 

Kashmir had been under virtual siege starting in 1989 after decades of myopic policies of the Indian establishment. As I personally remember, those days as a faculty member in Kashmir University, every waking hour would be characterized by a gnawing pit in the stomach and a wish that India had not so messed up the place. Since then Kashmir had seen marked increases in the cases with psychiatric and mental health issues that must have only aggravated under the current conditions of incarceration and isolation. The Lancet, one of the premier medical journals in the world has raised the concerns about the consequences of fear and uncertainty in Kashmir in an editorial in its latest issue. In the editorial the issue of over 50 000 deaths since the start of insurgency since 1989, besides the gross human rights violations by state security forces and armed groups including sexual violence, enforced disappearances and acts of terrorism have also been raised. The immediate concern remains the well being of the people currently held in complete incommunicado, irrespective of the political leanings, which must be further lending to the helplessness and stress.

 

In a related development, another reputed medical journal, the BMJ in its editorial has raised similar concerns about medical emergencies in Kashmir based on a letter from 18 physicians across the India who have warned that the grim situation ‘had led to a blatant denial of the right to healthcare.’ They also raised concerns about the consequences of the total unending clampdown. The Lancet has earlier also waded into the issues of health and safety in conflict zones around the world. It famously published seminal studies on the adverse health consequences of the Iraq war, where it showed precisely death of at least 116 903 Iraqi non-combatants and more than 4800 coalition forces over 8-year course. It was somehow reaction to the editorial on Kashmir situation that drew an illogical response from Indian medical fraternity including its premier body, the Indian Medical Association that penned a letter to the editor “withdrawing its esteem of the Lancet”.

 

Scientists objecting to facts presented in a scientific journal on the basis of nationalist tribal political leanings not only represent a disappointing trend but a downright dangerous one. History is fraught with examples when scientists shook forsake their learnings and scientific truths for the sake of nationalism and identity politics only to lend to eventual disasters. Scientific facts are not bound by tribal and nationalist sensibilities; the nations that understand those simple facts are those who forge ahead with inclusive welfare of the society. Parochialism only ensures a road to destruction.

Rajiv Kumar 

'The others' in Fascism

The first principle of fascism is to make people 'the others'. 'The others' can try no matter how hard and ingratiate themselves but 'the others' can never become them. If they start considering 'the others' as them, then the entire fascist project will flounder. Invented crisis and siege are what fuel their fascism.

In Kashmir, the fascists didn't have problem with avowed separatists, They were already designated enemies. it was the loyalists whose proximity was contentious so they had to make them 'the others' and told loudly that they will never be them. Where was the problem? It's their religion that made even loyalists 'the others'.

Things should have been clear when a highly erudite, civilized and cultured patriot like Hamid Ansari was made 'the other'. Loyalists in Kashmir were just small fries.

Hannah Arendt could have explained it better.

A fascist makover

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 officials who dared to stand up to him, ultimately conned overtly communal population of the country to put him power at the center and brazenly used that power to empower worst of the worst and played havoc with education and research with precedent given to obscurantism; inflicted the pain on the most vulnerable through cruel and ill intentional demonetization; damaged reputation of the country through hair brained policies in managing external affairs; almost started a war against nuclear powered neighboring country for which masses fed on mescaline of crude nationalism rewarded him with even bigger mandate; then he went to use that affirmation to emasculate Kashmir by decimating it into an inferior status and incarcerating the entire population, separatists and nationalists alike, in a naked aggressive attempt to humiliate and subjugate it under majority as a step on the road to make the entire country a one nation state that never existed in a text book template to give the country a fascist makeover in which he co-opted his willing enablers who have gladly forsaken any sign of humanity and civility and instead donned the uniform of naked crudeness and aggression. Anything for fascism.

Legal fraud in Kashmir

Preceding August 5, 2019 that will add to the burgeoning catalogue of dark days in Kashmir, there was a foreboding sense of an intrigue in works. Sending of additional troops to an already the most militarized zone in the world and more ominously the very selective evacuation of tourists from everywhere in Kashmir in midst of a pilgrimage season didn’t make sense unless one were to imagine the worst. And with stripping away of not only the autonomy enshrined in the Indian constitution but also the entity of the state, what the extremist right wing Indian government did was worse than the worst. 

Armed even with a bigger majority than before in the elections of May 2019, the Modi government went around surreptitiously to commit a legal fraud to render the article 370 of the Indian constitution that governed the relations between the union and state and article 35a that protected the state from alien incursions through purchase and employments ineffective. They went even one step further by decreeing the nullification of the existence of the state itself by its bifurcation into two and downgrading the status of the two emerging entities into that of appendages of the federal government. All this was done after incarcerating the entire population of Kashmir through strictest enforced curfew by armed to the teeth Indian security forces supplemented by concertina wires. People in Kashmir have been forced to suspend their biology till India consolidates its grip on the region.

Prior to the day when the Indian government issued that draconian decree and presented to the Indian parliament for rubber stamping, a kind of fatalism had taken hold in Kashmir. People in general refused to contemplate such a possibility as they believed too much, which now turned to be a completely misplaced, in the provisions of the Indian constitution. The truth has been that the successive Indian governments have used those very constitutional provisions to strip away the autonomy and freedoms using salami tactics of one at a time. The adherence to constitutional guarantees and rule of laws are subject to the very acceptance by the people who are in power. Those human made laws unlike laws of nature can and are subject to capricious violations if lawless persons become in charge.

Modi steeped in the fundamentalism of extreme right wing ideology was never going to be the one bothered by constitutional restrictions. To overcome those legal limitations, Modi and his wily protégé Amit Shah coopted the Hindu population of the country into  the project of smothering the rule of law. The announcement of the decision about abrogation of the Jammu and Kashmir as an entity was greeted by celebrations by the Hindu majority. Even the opposition parties in the parliament barring a few individual exceptions were tepid in their objections to the changes that were  brought in by the government. The opposition parties actually saw defections from their ranks as some figures rushed in to congratulate the government for the measures to strangulate the entire population of Kashmir.

The constitutional coup by the Indian government vis-a-vis Kashmir far from being a culmination rather marks the first step of their cherished mission of humiliating and subjugating the population of Kashmir into submission for having defied the inalienable right of India over the province or specifically right over the lands and lakes of that pristine valley. Their next logical step would be to jig electoral boundaries to give an ascendency to Jammu region over Kashmir followed by attainment of a majority for the Hindu right wing in the assembly of now an inferior territory to be ruled directly by diktats from the Indian capital. In historical terms, the step is akin to arrest of Yusuf Shah Chak instead of being treated sovereign by the Mughal Emperor Akbar. Since that time Kashmir has been unable to throw off the yolk of foreign occupation-domination.

Modi, Shah and Kashmir

Ascension or rather re-ascension of Modi and Shah, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic doppelgänger, has caused unlikely flutters at the unlikeliest of places. In Kashmir, suddenly both separatists and collaborators have come together in fawning of the criminal duo in the Delhi durbar. The paeans seem to be flowing uninterrupted and the two of them, who in a civil world would be spending their time in hard labor wearing prison outfits, are being praised for their vision and virility. The scene has a feeling of been taken straight from A Tale of Two Cities, where Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! 

On the collaborator front that boy wonder Omar Abdullah, over the objections of his own father, seems to be leering a stitch up with Modi-Shah. One wonders how early the amnesia strikes the shameless tribe, otherwise that dimwit would remember the humiliation that visited Muftis after their Faustian bargain with Modi. What could be more discomfiting than the people shunning the funeral of Mufti Sayeed in his own home? Or is that Omar Abdullah doesn’t want too many attendees if and when his father leaves this world? One could never be sure about the devilish plans of a progeny. 

Why would suddenly separatists start seeing light in that thuggish duo, who essentially captured the throne in Delhi based on the atrocities unleashed on Muslims in Gujarat during riots of 2002? And Amit Shah as the state home minister was put in jail for orchestrating stage managed encounters. But then we do live in a post truth world or else we have crossed an alternate dimension and no one told me about that, but about one thing I am absolutely sure, Modi and Shah will have nothing but malice towards Kashmir. Sooner that hard fact is understood, better it would be for all concerned.

Dark cave and a monster

Just before the Indian election results were out on May 23, 2019, there was a spurt of articles in international media highlighting the true nature of Modi’s personality, divisive and polarizing, given to hyperboles, with an intrinsic hatred for anything intellectual, unapologetic Hindu nationalist, with scant respect of either truth or decency. It was not that international media had suddenly turned against Modi but rather analyses were based on observations of the person who built his entire life on total deceptions where his frequent claims to contradictory version of his own life didn’t add up to a logical truth. But given that in the five years of his first term he multiple times obliterated the borders between myth and history, unintentionally or intentionally distorted the history and historical figures, it hardly surprises anyone that he would add layers to his arid life built on tunnel vision that would not add up. 

While it would be hard to not acknowledge the gargantuan scale of his win yet it would be, at the same time, hard not to understand the power of his singularly divisive agenda of fear and hatred, inculcation of victim hood in Hindu psyche and priming it for retribution against what they call as a millennium of foreign domination, in relegating the real issues of governance to the background. From north to south and east to west, people voted for Modi for creation of a Hindu nation and assigning his massive victory to anything else simply doesn’t count, it’s an out loud message to minorities and dissenters that notion of an inclusive India had gone far too long. 

The image of Modi as savior of Hindu didn’t built up in last five years of his rule. The foundation of that image was laid when he went on air on that fateful day of the Godhra train burning and demanded charred bodies brought back to the state capital of his Gujarat; then he let hell loose on the Muslims of the state in the following days. The camps set up for the escaping Muslims were out loudly described by Modi as children producing factories and Hindus of the state roared in approval and the rest of the country’s majority people took a notice of him. From that point on it was a potent mix of business and ultra Hinduism.

His dominant government in Delhi since 2014 might have not fulfilled many of the promises, but he didn’t waver in his vision of division and cruelty. He maintained a steadied silence when his followers embarked on lynchings and killings overtly on the basis of religion; he unleashed a down right economic cruelty when he made 86 percent of people’s money redundant and famously made fun of it. Steve Forbes called that act as awful and immoral but nothing Modi ever did could be termed as Moral. How many people can forget a desperate call by Ahsan Jaffry to Modi when Hindu marauders attacked the Muslim dominated area during the 2002 riots in Gujarat only to be taunted? The only issue on which Modi remained steadfast in past years was to show the minorities their place and to strangulate all institutions of secularism, turn education and history into farce, fill scientific conferences with sessions on mythology.

The people voted in overwhelming numbers through the breadth and length for Modi, as a brilliant analyst called, they bought his vision of Hinduism hook, line and stinker; anyone trying to cloak it with a patina of vision probably doesn’t understand the term visionary. Nehru was a visionary, who built the edifice of democracy in a country full of contradictions yet didn’t become an autocrat. India might survive another five years of total domination of Modi, it will emerge a different place with scathed minorities. Five years is a long time and given his propensity for bluster and awol at the time of attacks on minorities, the country for now is headed  into a dark cave without knowing where it does end. Those from the majority who voted for Modi with gusto should not get too complacent, strong men need to feed their egos and find scapegoats for failures and never hesitate to turn their hoodlums  on anyone. It’s like you created a Frankenstein’s monster.

Exit polls of hatred

It is likely that those exit polls were mere wishes of the bootlicking media or perhaps an exercise in enriching themselves through stock market manipulation. On the latter account, the international situation might have rained on their aspirations.

But one cannot discount the possibility of those exit polls being true. One just has to imagine the ramification of that reality. This was not an election where sinister motives were cloaked under a blanket of progress and inclusiveness.

Communalism of the worst kind was in open display; the hatred particularly against Muslims was the theme of the entire campaign. Maligning of history and progressive historical figures remained foremost on their agenda.

If Modi wins that means Indians will have voted for that unhinged hate and bigotry without any excuse. Not that they voted for anything else in 2014. Lest they forget, the worst dictator in the history was approved by his people repeatedly for his zealousness for violence against the vulnerable. That didn't stop from him from ending ignominiously.

Unraveling of a malevolent clown

Modi has lost his mind or to put in simple terms, he has become mad; he’s behaving on the campaign trail like a panic stricken barmy nut. The most crucial phases of the current elections are almost; the question is why all of a sudden he has become so pathetic? Not that he was not always pathetic but there’s a symptom in his rantings that alternate with his self-pitying groveling. That has all of a sudden become a comic spectacle.

At this point, it wouldn’t matter much whether he wins as everyone has witnessed him into turning a complete lunatic. The metamorphosis of Modi from an authoritarian kook to a raving lunatic remains a mystery or perhaps not or maybe he knows something that we don’t; maybe the truth is about to catch up with him and five years of deceitful fudging of economic data were not enough to save him from falling in an abyss. Truth be told, he dragged everyone into the abyss with him. Surprise remains, why everyone is surprised?

Didn’t he use deceit to evict his predecessor to become the chief minister in Gujrat? Didn’t he incite and preside over genocide in the aftermath of Ghodra tragedy and didn’t he create an atmosphere of fear and terror during his time in Gujrat? Didn’t as the prime minister in last five years usher in an ambience of hate and criminality? Didn’t he choose to not utter a word when his followers unleashed lynching in the name of cow? Didn’t he remain silent when intellectuals opposed to him were murdered? Then, surprise to what end? We might as well enjoy the spectacle of his mental unraveling; the malevolent clown might yet win to continue his vision of hatred and deceit.           

Low life cretin

It was in June 2017, Modi attended the St. Petersburg International Forum meeting and for that occasion, Megyn Kelly from NBC was there to interview Vladimir Putin. During the course of that meeting, at one point  Putin, Modi and Kelly were walking together. Modi started drooling like a louche at flamingly blonde Megyn Kelly and told her, with a shamelessly grinning open mouth with all yellowish dark teeth, suitable for an underworld thug, that he had seen her profile picture with an umbrella on Twitter. Megyn Kelly responded with a characteristic nonchalance, "Oh really! Are you on Twitter?" Modi with his foolishly still open grinning shook his head in affirmative in manner of a famished dog being offered a bone. 

One would assume him from that incident him to be a docilely anodyne but foolish person but in reality Modi throughout has been a sinister human with a dark soul without a trace of any compassion, who manipulated himself into power through unethical machinations and unbound duplicity. It's his record in the government throughout and in particular as prime minister that reflects on his lowliness as a human being. His every action has been aimed to spread in hurt in the most vulnerable sections of the society. 

However, the worst in him comes from the fear of losing power and being voted out of power. And for that reason the electioneering brings out his inner darkness in him. No depth is too deep for him. Last time, fearing loss in Gujarat, he spread canard that the former prime minister, his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, a saintly scholar was hatching a conspiracy with Pakistan to win those elections.

Fresh in the midst of the current elections, he once against stooped that low that any human being would find it gross. Fearing loss to Rahul Gandhi, he resorted to attack his dead father. Rajiv Gandhi was blown to pieces by a Sri Lankan terrorist during an election campaign in 1991. But then Modi had also called Sonia Gandhi a Congress widow and characterized Rahul and Priyanka as autistics. Surprise is not that Modi acts like an ugly cretin, the unfathomable facts remains that there exists people who support such a creepy cretin. 

How do such people get themselves up in the morning and look into a mirror and not think of Akhlaq and Pehlu Khan, who were lynched by very thugs of Modi and who never uttered a word of remorse? Those were not the only people killed during the five years of Modi. There remains a long catalogue of heinousness that will grow in his next term. 

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