Death at the dance of insanity

 

Those who think Modi's boat has finally sunk and his coffin has been put into the ground might want to recall the events from his past. 

 

Those with strong recollections might recall the death, destruction, and destitution he caused and proudly presided over soon after becoming the chief minister in Gujarat. The callous and imperious manner in which he taunted hapless victims of the riots remains seared in memories. He went on to win election after election in the state and finally everywhere in India.

 

Not to forget the casual surreptitiousness with which he robbed people of their dignity and money in the name of demonetization in 2016. The Indian economy never recovered after that with complete decimation of the informal sector of businesses. He exulted on the miseries of the people begging for their own money. And for that, he was rewarded with a thumping win in the largest Indian state where a sadist monk, his alter ego, became the chief minister.

 

Perhaps, his cruelest act had been reserved for the poor village wretches, whom he turned into complete destitute within three hours. When he announced the 'strictest' lockdown globally, India had only 524 confirmed cases with COVID-19. A less insane leader would have used that time to prepare for the worst in the future. Then maniacs have no use for logic and reason. For Modi, it was the project megalomania. He had to match empty India with the developed world. Once again, he single-handedly destroyed the economy and made millions destitute. For that, he was handsomely rewarded with an election victory in Bihar. That was the place where most migrant workers returned in the aftermath of Modi's insanity. 

 

With patients gasping for breaths, dying for the lack of oxygen and hospitals, dead without a place for dignified final rites is the epitome of Modi's entire political career and persona. The fabric of the pluralistic society and liberal politics was given an open burial through the overt acts of the Modi regime. It would be foolhardy to call India still a democracy. Modi has turned India into an obscurantist country on the pyres of victims of his dance of the death.

Indulgences of liberals

Many tears have been shed at Pratap Bhanu Mehta's resignation from a so-called Indian ivy-league university in the past week or so. This morning in his weekly column for the Dawn, Jawed Naqvi had eluded a survey in the Caravan magazine on the clique of so-called liberal Indo-US academics who smoothened the edges for Modi in his run-up to power in Delhi through their approbative indulgences on Modi in the waning days of the UPA government. 

Pratap Bhanu Mehta was among those who thought that Modi's role in the 2002 pogroms in Gujarat was irrelevant to his natural place as the leader of the Indian nation. Then he was not alone in drooling at the prospect of Modi assuming the mantel. Shashi Tharoor, who couldn't do a day's proper job in the UPA government, would simply not shut up from singing paeans for Modi. Coming back to Pratap Bhanu Mehta and his brilliance, it is hard to think that he would be too small to remember Modi's role in creating and presiding over that mayhem in early spring of 2002. 

Modi's then demeanor was best described by Arundhati Roy as “the then chief minister of Gujarat appeared on TV in a saffron Kurta with a slash of vermilion on his forehead, and with cold, dead eyes ordered the burnt bodies of Hindu pilgrims be brought to Ahmedabad, the capital of the state, where they were put on display for the general public to pay their respect.” Then there was that phone call where Ahsan Jaffri tried to plead for help before Modi's goons put an end to the life of Jaffri and those who had come to seek shelter considering his stature as a politician. 

But for Pratap Bhanu Mehta and his liberal friends, it was time to consider Modi's past digressions as minor aberrations to be overlooked for the presumed good days ahead. Only if Pratap Bhanu Mehta had cared to listen to those chilling audios from the days of the 2002 riots with Modi taunting the hapless victims rendered homeless by his henchmen. Or, for that matter, didn't Modi run his government thereafter as an extortionist racket? Those murders of Ishrat Jahan, Hiren Pandya, or his henchman Amit Shah being charged and arrested as a home minister under Modi. 

The world has had many times rulers that turned out to be dastardly murderous, but examples of murderers being promoted as rulers by so-called intelligentsia are not many. Don't shed tears for people who expedited the advent of Modi to power. They share the blame for the mayhem that has happened ever since. -Rajiv Kumar

Universe

There are two mysterious things in the universe. Mysterious because we don't know what those are; the one is dark energy and the other is dark matter. Of the total energy/matter in the universe, the dark energy is about 67 percent and the dark matter about 28 percent, and the rest five percent constitutes the matter that we know. Does that mean we know five percent of the universe, the answer would be absolutely not? Then how do we know that dark matter and dark energy exist?

The existence of dark matter is inferred from its gravitational effect on the movement of stars and planets within most of the galaxies and the accelerated expansion of the universe is explained by a mysterious force termed dark energy. The term universe means the observable part, which is about 92 billion light-years across, and the parts beyond that will always remain out of reach because of expansion. Now the dark matter.

Ever-since it was hypothesized, search for the particles constituting the dark matter has been ongoing, with several candidates considered and discarded. The difficulty arises because whatever constitutes the dark matter, neither emits/absorbs light nor reacts with the known matter. The latest particles under consideration as a serious candidate for the dark matter are axions and underground detectors filled with xenon are looking for hints of the existence of such particles. 

The theoretical basis for axions is based on the charge-parity-time symmetry problem of the strong nuclear force that theorists believe can be explained by the existence of an additional field whose excitation would give axions. The name itself came from a detergent as it would clean up a nagging problem. It's a matter of time before axions as the dark matter particles are either confirmed or discarded. 

Fundamentally, it's only minuscule that we know, no matter what theists and atheists tend to believe.

Galactic scales

The solar system completes one revolution around the center of the Milky Way in 230 million years and that's called one galactic year. And according to that scale:

 

The universe originated 60 galactic years ago, 14 galactic hours after that the universe became  transparent with the release of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

 

Galaxies started forming 58 galactic years ago. Sun formed 22 galactic years ago and the earth 20 galactic years ago and the moon 160 galactic days after that.

 

Life on the earth started 15 galactic years ago, photosynthesis 14 galactic years ago, nucleus formation in living cells 11 galactic years ago, multicellular organisms 3 galactic years ago, plants on the land 2 galactic years ago, animals 1.5 galactic years ago, and dinosaurs went extinct 103 galactic days ago.

 

Modern humans evolved 7.5 galactic hours ago, human civilization started 27 galactic minutes ago, and an average human life is 12 galactic seconds.

 

Four galactic years from now the sun will be too hot to boil oceans and 22 galactic years from now it will have expanded to engulf the earth erasing the traces of any existence on the planet.

A derelict presidency ends in disgrace

 

A derelict President with a decrepit soul leaves office today.

 

Trump made 30,534 lies or false claims during his presidency, instituted a Muslim ban, called White Supremacists very fine people, African countries s***hole countries, remained obsequious towards dictators and tyrants while lashing out against democratic allies, refused to accept election results, incited a murderous mob to attack the capitol putting life of his own vice-president and that of members of the congress into jeopardy. 

 

He leaves as a despised person and universally acknowledged as the worst president in the history of the United States. 

 

The person replacing him, besides being complete antithesis of desiccated Trump, can quote James Joyce. Joe Biden is a humble person with full of compassion without a trace of malice.

~Rajiv Kumar

The year of the virus and absurdity

 

The year 2020 in history will always be synonymous with the pandemic that engulfed the entire world. From its humble beginnings in a market in Wuhan, the sub-microscopic virus ended up humbling the mighty of the world. It exposed the troughs and crests of human race. Scientific ingenuity to tackle the virus contrasted with basic destructive obscurantist instincts of the same human species. The virus did not drop out of a vacuum; a thoughtful few had been warning of impending catastrophes from viruses and bacteria. They did not worry about a nuclear holocaust or a meteor hurtling down from the sky. The disasters visiting humanity through plagues are more regular than those rare if not improbable events; the virus took over the world and defined everything in it.

Despite the virus or rather in many ways because of it, the voters in the United States rejected one of vilest person ever to occupy the presidential office. The election of Donald Trump as the US president will be a stain for that country to carry forever leaving it with weaker foundations than before that manipulative narcissist managed a hostile takeover to hollow out the hallowed institutions of the government. It was his response or rather non-response to the pandemic that he willfully allowed to ravage the entire country finally undid him. At least some consolation. Another four years of that racist charlatan would have certainly catastrophized the world. Good riddance for now.

On the other side of the globe, the virus besides creating havoc might have actually slowed another narcissistic from carrying out to culmination the process of Muslim disenfranchisement in India. Modi was all set to send undocumented Muslims in India to detention centers until the virus intervened. Nevertheless, he made up for that by having, cruelty and inhumanity visit the most vulnerable poor wretches of India as a way to dealing with the coronavirus in a complete disconnect with the reality. Then such people would not be megalomaniacs otherwise. The true absurdity was the manner Indians responded to his comic stupidity that now has crept into his appearance.

Americans did get rid to Trump in 2020, if Indians could perform a similar feat in 2050 that would still merit a commendation.

Until then a Happy 2021. The 2020 was for stoics.

A house for a god

On December 6, 1992, a horde went and demolished a historical edifice of Babri Masjid. Top echelons of BJP/RSS led the horde. In that melee on that infamous day hoodlums participating in the demolition molested women reporters. When one of the reporters complained to Vajpayee and Advani, they both laughed, offered her sweets and asked her to enjoy the day.

That day was not just of pulling down of the Babri Masjid, it sent the whole country into an infamy from which it never recovered. It created a class of hoodlums, who could not engage in living through any normal means and down the road, they became scaffolds of heinous structure of the Modi machinery. Godhra and the brutality unleashed in its aftermath in Gujarat had its origin to that infamous day. For Modi that was an opportunity to put the country on the road to bring further ruin. 

Those, who abetted and instigated the demolition of Babri Masjid never, faced a reckoning and instead their support among Hindus of India, transformed by hefty doses of mythology on national television, grew exponentially. The god instead of being a concept became a person, who needed to be sheltered in a temple at the exact spot where a heritage building had stood for centuries.

Even after pulling down the structure, they would not let go of the land because their god needed a magnificent structure on the stolen ground. The Allahabad High Court in its sanguineness indulged in a generosity and gave a part of the land to Muslims. Nevertheless, they wanted whole of it with Muslims conveniently shoved away. The Supreme Court of India agreed with them. Only those judges might be able to tell the applied jurisprudence, if any. With the aggressors and usurpers rewarded and the aggrieved party, the Muslims humored with a promise of a land somewhere far off, so as not to offend the god in the proposed grandeur temple. 

In addition, that original architect of the strife, Lal Advani still reports to the court investigating the demolition. Probably that court did not get a memo; the rule of law is no more the law of the land in India. These days it is easy to fall prey to sympathetic emotions towards Advani if one did not remember his cynical politics that changed India from a plural society to an openly parochial land and the trail of bloodshed he had left in the trail. 

That now all has become academic which despised scholars can use for their future theses and papers. Modi is all set to lay a foundation stone of the temple that would house their god. The Nepalese prime minister might have doused them by a claim that their god was actually a Nepalese. Given their current predicament with neighbors, in lieu of Modi's friendship with Trump, India might not be in a position to launch an attack on Nepal anytime soon. 

The day chosen for the foundation stone ceremony for the temple coincides with the day when India deprived Kashmiris the remnants of the autonomy and dismembered the state itself in 2019. That most certainly is not a coincidence rather an out loud message of Hindu hegemony.

India straddling hubristic abyss

On August 5, it will be exactly one year since India brazenly foisted a legal heist on the state of Jammu and Kashmir and its people to take away remnants of constitutionally guaranteed autonomy and the state itself broken into two inferior appendages. The Indian government played a legal sleight of hand, which without a judiciary rendered subservient by the Modi regime, would not stand a legal scrutiny in any land with a functional system. The article 370 of the Indian constitution had manifested the only link between the state and the union and had guaranteed autonomy to the state through restrictions on the powers of the union government. Modi government used article 367 to narrowly reinterpret the constitution to do away the requirement of the consent of the state constituent assembly, which did 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. The human made laws unlike laws that govern the nature can and are subject to capricious violations. History is fraught with lawless persons using power to subvert the rule law, flout norms, and established conventions.

Indian government rode roughshod to dismantle the state on the strength of its brute majority and brutal use of its security forces. Fearing popular revolt and reprisals, Indian government, in the preceding days, had surreptitiously reinforced its forces in Kashmir, which already had the dubious distinction of being the most militarized region in the world. One day prior to that fateful morning, they enforced an unprecedented clamp down with incarceration of the entire seven million inhabitants of Kashmir, who for next five months were deprived basic amenities and means of communications. People could not mourn the deaths of their loved ones nor could they pray in the traditional mosques. The arrest of 20 to 30 thousand people without any legal grounds compounded the forced endurance of dark winter months in complete isolation. Those arrested included the politicians who for decades had been running the charade for India. They even kept the former chief minister of the state, Farooq Abdullah incarcerated under an archaic public security act for over eight month and the highest court in India denied basic habeas corpus petition moved on his behalf. Even a year later, the outside communication in Kashmir remains at the mercy of the Indian authorities. Whether Kashmiris can travel outside India, depends at the whims of security control personnel at the Indian airports. 

The initial act of doing away the autonomy and dismemberment of the state was only a part of asserting Indian hegemony over the state; the real goal had always been turning Kashmir into a settlers’ colony. That operation began in earnest with appointment an inferior officer to preside over the new rudimentary union territory and exclusion of locals from policy making at all levels. Ever since, a spate of consequential executive orders without a semblance of legislative approval to temper the existing laws with impunity have become a norm with singular and ultimate goal of demographic engineering of the region.  

One of the most consequential rules included alterations in the requirements for being a permanent resident of the state, a law in place since the Dogra rule in the state-ironically, introduced at upon the pleadings of Kashmiri Hindus at that time fearing an influx from neighboring province of Punjab. With those alterations in place, the unrepresentative authorities started generous issuance of domicile certificates to anyone claiming to have lived in the place for 15 years and as per media reports that has minted over 30,000 new residents including many retired army personal. Barring a few restrictions, most of the jobs in Kashmir are now open for everyone from India with devastating economic consequences down the road. Coupled with those developments, plundering of the resources of the valley remains high on the agenda of the virtual colonial administration in Kashmir in the form of opening mining operations that could also bring in the ecological ruin to the pristine valley. That was always high on the Indian agenda where people of Kashmir do not figure much but a visible demonstration of Indian dominance does.

That could not be clearer than before with Indian government being hell bent on sending potentially COVID-19 infested pilgrims and laborers to Kashmir. The pilgrimage was conveniently cancelled and non-locals taken out of the state last year prior to removal of the state autonomy and start of incarceration of Kashmiris. With the pandemic enveloping the entire world and the conditions in India itself bordering on dire, the hubristic insistence on going ahead with pilgrimage and sending laborers to the valley can be only conceived as an act of bioterrorism being unleashed on Kashmir. That would mark an addition to the catalogue of atrocities that the population in the valley has endured under occupation. 

India might be running high after having dismembered and dominated Kashmir for now, the unfolding events portend unraveling of the shortsightedness of the Modi regime in the end. Besides its ludicrous response to the pandemic where projections indicate infected cases in India toping 3.5 million by October, the relations with countries in the immediate neighborhood are in total shambles. Indian parliamentarians might have jumped over one another to support the government in changing the status of the Jammu and Kashmir state, the changed status of Ladakh region and reclamation of Aksai Chin did stir the Chinese giant from its slumber. It declared its earlier agreements with India on un-demarcated border in the region as void and pushed its army further into the territory held by India. If the history of Sino-India war were any guide, India would be pricking China at its own peril. Then, acts carried under hubris and deceit come with an expiry date beyond which those only lead to ruin both nationally and internationally. Only if the Modi government had someone to understand the abyss that it straddling but some analyst pointed that India never had a government like this completely bereft of intellectual power.

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