Gandhi and Savarkar

If you flip a coin then there equal probability of getting heads or tails. So, if there are two sides even to trivial matter like coin flipping then, why can’t there be two ways of attaining independence? Pretty long shot to compare coin flipping to independence struggle but as the Mr. Savarkar controversy continue to rage I realized that Savarkar hating is much more than just dirty politics. I am not concerned about Mani Shankar Aiyar because he is one of the pathetic creatures who always grow on the side wall of sewage pipe. But even Mr. Nehru was a Savarkar hater and we can certainly say that Mr. M. K. Gandhi wasn’t in much favor of Mr. Savarkar. I do not understand the reason behind it.

Let’s put it this way. Mr. Savarkar was staunch nationalist, indeed a Hindu nationalist. He loved his country more than his life and worked relentlessly to achieve independence. He been to jail numerous jail and one thing is sure that his jail terms were not like pleasure trips, as in case of Gandhi’s jail terms. A normal human being would break down if he were in Savarkar shoes. But only because of strong will power and fierce nationalism, Savarkar survived. I am not going in Mr. Savarkars life here. And I am not comparing Gandhi or Savarkar here. But my point is that only difference between them is there thinking line regarding to Independence struggle.

Gandhi was fanatically non violent, while for Savarkar, violence is necessary if situation demands. If Savarkar was proponent of Hindutva ideology then same can be said about Gandhi. Gandhi used to call himself Sanatan Hindu. Both of them were against Hindu untouchabilty and both of them wanted to revive Hinduism. Again, Gandhi wanted to do that peacefully and Savarkars approach was more masculine. Masculine in the sense, he wanted young men to be physically strong.

Given all these things what is reason behind all these generations of Savarkar hating? Gandhi didn’t like Savarkars way of struggle but he accepted it because according to him it a ‘different’ way to achieve independence. So why can’t all these Savarkar hating people understand this?

One argument is that he plotted to kill Gandhi, which is completely false. It was proven even in Indian court. Another argument is that he collaborated with British government. But all he did is to ask youth to join Army, so that they will gain access to arms and ammunition. And if situation arises then they will be able to fight with British army. What is wrong in that? It was a pragmatic move. And didn’t Gandhi stop Asahakaar movement of 1921 only because mob killed British soldiers. One can say that Gandhi was more concerned about British soldiers than Indian people. He wanted to British people to leave India in such a way that Indian people will continue to love British Empire! Isn’t this a criminal statement liable to treason? I mean India was raped by British people and millions people were dying due to hunger and poverty and here is Mr. Gandhi, who wanted Indian people to love British Empire.

I think for people like Nehru, it was just impossible to understand a person like Mr. Savarkars. He was too bright, too intelligent and too pragmatic for them. Continuing Savarkar bashing proves that the short sightedness, dumbness, selfishness of Mr. Nehru continues to this date.

Mani "Dog" Aiyar !

There was a huge controversy in India, when our petroleum minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar worked hard to remove a plaque in Andaman jails. The plaque lauded the efforts of V. D. Savarkar towards freedom movement. I am not sure what petroleum ministry has to do with the state affairs of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, but the argument of Mr. Aiyar is that Mr. Savarkar was not a freedom fighter and he in fact collaborated with British government. So strange to hear from a man, who besides being a staunch communist, is an anti-national, a traitor himself.
During his student days in England, he actively participated in collecting money for Communist Party of China. The glitch is that, he was collecting money during Indo-China war! According to him, India attacked china and therefore china is a victim.
Later on when he was trying to get in Indian Foreign Service (IFS), his ‘nationalist’ efforts became big issue. Even Mr. Nehru, a staunch anti-Savarkar himself, couldn’t digest what Mr. Aiyar did in England. Finally, Mr. Aiyar had to give an assurance letter, negating his earlier acts.
Bravo! Mr. Aiyar! How unfortunate is India that we have ministers like him.

Turkey and Head-Scarf

In Turkey, women who are attending college or in government service are not supposed to wear purdah or head scarf. Even a senator is not supposed to do so. There was this documentary about a Senator in Turkish parliament who wore head scarf and landed herself in the controversy. Surprisingly, the document was anti-establishment and pro-head scarf.

Confused !

"Responsible for, or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom"

This is the reason behind denying visa to Mr. Narendra Modi. Ok, granted that Mr. Modi did what he, as a public servant, should not have done. But US does not gain any higher moral ground. The attempt to appease Muslim minority in US and in other countries can be described at best as pathetic and at worst as a classic act of double standard.

How come Saudi price travel to US, when the religious rights of minorities are heavily slashed in Saudi? No one is allowed to follow any religion except Marxist ideology in China. Hey, I have strong intuition that there is some tampering going on related to religious freedom in china. There is Sharia law in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and bunch of other Arab countries that grossly mistreat minorities in those countries. How about that? And host of Taliban officials traveled to US in 1999. I do not believe that Taliban were democratic, secular and compassionate people who respected rights of minorities.

Help me out here, I am kind of confused.

All is well, who have oil well !

The recent act of rejecting US VISA to Mr. Narendra Modi is latest act of appeasing Muslim community. Ostensibly, it came from a country which is at war with terrorism, an Islamic terrorism to be precise and it captured one of the biggest Islamic country in the world. But I am not concerned with this. What hits me like a bullet is that throughout the world, if you see a little deep, then you would notice that almost all the problems has some relation with Islam. And at the same time almost all the countries are trying to woo Islamic community. How strange! I will furbish few evidences to support my argument.

Let us begin with India. It has almost 11% of its population Muslim. Though India had been battling with many problems like poverty, litracy etc, this one problem, the problem of “minority” is best publicized. And though India had been quite successful with host of its problem, the supposedly ill treatment towards minorities, particularly towards Muslims is considered as a black mark to Indian progress report. Wait a minute! What does it mean by ill treatment? Muslims have separate civil laws under Indian constitution, the same constitution which supposed to proclaim that all citizens are equal. So, for example Muslims can marry multiple times, while for people of other religion it is a crime. According to Outlook magazine, almost 90% of the riots are initiated by Muslims. I mean reason behind Gujrat riots was train burning, wasn’t it? There is a government subsidiary for Haj pilgrimage, nothing like that exists for Man-Sarovar yatra! They have special status in Kashmir and plus they get protection from Media even though they carried Hindu genocide in Kashmir in 1989. All the Islamic atrocities are erased from government textbook and guess what Mughal period is considered as golden period of Indian history even though “great” Akbar killed 200,000 Rajput at Chittor.

The list of such things is unlimited.

Let’s think about United Kingdome. I am not that conversant with its internal policies towards Muslim, but the picture that emerges from newspapers is quite bleak. Majority of the Muslim population is from Pakistan (Mirpuris) and Bangladesh. It is reported that most of the terrorist funding goes through London now. (Even Gaddafi stated this after 9/11)The finesbury mosque is infamous because of the inflammatory speech of its Imam’s and visits paid by number of known terrorist. Yeh! I know Mosque is open for everyone and it is place to worship but it is surely more than conincidence that many of the notorious and known terrorists have visited that mosque. Even Mohammad Atta had visited that mosque. Three years ago Britain encountered its first riots between Muslims and Whites in Bradford. Still, Britain is lenient about the VISA procedure towards Muslims.

US is battling with same problem. The Islamic population is increasing in alarming rate. Newark, Washington and Chicago area have more than 70 Islamic centers. It is believed that Mosque in Bronx had collected money that ultimately ended in Mohammad Atta’s bank balance. Similar things can been witnessed in Denmark, France and Germany and host of other European countries. But all of these countries persist with their appeasement policies towards Muslims.

Muslims are still labeled as persecuted. Though they are cause of problems in most of the cases, they still project themselves as victimized mainly by Israel, US, and by India, Britain etc and etc. Someone may think that, there is a concrete effort by Islamic community and Media throughout the world to project such image, but it is absurd as fighting between Islamic countries are legendry. Then there is only one explanation left that is that rest of the world is playing fool.

These Arab countries have made absolutely no contribution to the development of the world in any sense. No science, no math, no Arts, no trade strategies, absolutely nothing, All they have is oil, which is nature given. They can’t even drill their own oil; they need Americans and Britishers to do that.

Well! Didn’t I just answer my main questions? They have oil and they are playing their oil card well. Everybody needs oil so everybody has to appease Muslims everywhere. Mr. Modi, you worked really hard to make you state 2nd most industrialized state in India and one of the richest and literate too but too bad, you do not have oil beneath your soil.

'Superpower' India Inc !

Whether India will be super power or not is not a new question. It has been in public mindset since Mr. Nehru gave tryst with dynasty speech on Independence Day. But it is hard to define the word superpower. Do we mean that we want to militarily strong like USA? Or do we mean, given ‘peaceful’ nature of Indians, that roti, kapada aur makaan as the ultimate goal of our nation. And what is the probability of achieving this goal considering current situation of Indian state and its political class?

In any case, I sincerely believe that we need at least another 100 years to achieve these goals. It is just impossible to see India as a superpower nation by 2050, forget about 2020. It is a very slow process and we have to connect lot of dots to form exact picture of developed and strong India. The process is definitely underway but there are few issues we have deal with before proclaiming that India is on its way to ‘superpowerdom’. In this column I am trying to pin point three points which is making the task of making India a superpower almost impossible at this moment.

The most important thing needed for any nation to advance on development chart is best human resource. And at the same time it is necessary to manage that human capital. USA become superpower and continues to hold that position only because they attract best talent from every possible corner of the world and then manage them to perfection. India is blessed with one of the top most human capital in the world but unfortunately it is squandering this wealth by pure mismanagement. The success of Non Resident Indians in US and in other countries prove this point and shows us that if we could garner our home grown brain for development of India then the result would be stupendous. But our uneducated, short sighted and extremely corrupt political class on both national and state government level thinks other way.
I am not concerned about lack Research and Development in India. We do not have huge reservoir of money for continuous R&D as in US. But mismanagement here means, not giving talented people a fair chance. The extremely aggressive reservation policies are not only making our top notch brain fly from India but it is actually hampering development of Indian society in education sector. A society can make progress only on merit basis. Nepotism and favoritism are curses to the development. But vote bank policies are making the task of giving fair treatment to suitable people impossible.

The other important thing that is necessary for any country to become superpower is that its political class should be aware of potential energy of a country and deep in conscious the political and administrative class should think that India can be superpower. And then they should be able to install this faith and confidence in their country in general populace. Basically, citizens and ruling class both should have attitude that they have ability to become great and their superpower status will benefit world. British people used to think that they are actually “helping” Indian people rather than ruling them and same is with US citizen in case of Iraq. But the political class is so busy in playing dirty politics to keep themselves in power they do not have time to think about future of India. The burgeoning corruption in all possible spheres of administration is making the task of overall development like infrastructure of country impossible.

India is a lot different than any of the western country. We have very long history and highly developed culture. The way Indians work and think is different than western countries. So, developmental plans should be tailored according to the necessities and conditions of this country. Blindly aping the economic policies of western countries will not be good in long run. Sadly, that is what we are doing at this moment. Right from the film making (barring few efforts!) to the economic policies all we do is to copy what US does. Sure, capitalism is a better way of development but capitalism by US way is sure shot way of suicide. With deteriorating public health and complete crash of family structure, even US policy makers are grappling to find out way to deal with these problems in their current capitalistic model. Do we need to go through all this before we realize that, it is not what we wanted? Worsening public health post 1990 economic boom gives us glimpse of what is stored ahead if we continue to go down the US capitalistic way.

Though becoming superpower is a highly desirable growth, actually achieving it is a very hard task. I do not mean to sound pessimistic here. The achievements of India in last 50 years or so are worth applause. The literacy drive had stupendous success. Within fifty years we produced one of the top class universities of the world. The success of students passing from this university speaks volumes of its education institutional success. But we are talking about being a superpower here. It will give us power to impose our will on other nation and our decision will have decisive effects in world politics. Again, it is extremely ardent task. And I believe we need 100 years to overcome all the problems.

Peace through cricket !

Every time there is India-Pakistan match, almost all newspapers start talking about mushrooming peace between two countries. I just fail to understand how sports, especially cricket will bring peace between two countries that are at the two ends of a spectrum virtually on each and every issue. Granted that India and Pakistan were same country before 1947 and share same history. I believe that it’s the same blood that runs through Indians and Pakistanis. But in last 50 years or so one country progressed or at least striving hard to progress on every possible front while its counterpart has whirled down to the path of self-destruction. Let me give two examples.

Out of last 60 years Pakistan had been under dictatorship for more than 30 years. Pakistani army has prevailing say in all the decision related to Pakistani foreign policy. Kargil war was essentially waged by Pakistani army without knowledge or consent of its political class. And when they were battered by Indian army the army overthrew civilian government and established itself as a ruler again. None of such thing ever happened in India. Except, during the brief period of emergency India had unblemished record of flourishing democracy. Even during democracy Army kept itself out of politics.

Pakistan is founded on basis of Islam, which for theoretically and practically does not believe in peaceful co-existence with other religions. Pakistan managed to wipe out almost entire Hindu minority population from Pakistan. The percentage of Pakistani Hindus fell drastically from around 10% to 12% in 1947 to meager 1% in 2000. The report published in The Week magazine about the treatment given to Pakistani Hindus by Muslim zamindars is more than disturbing. Take the example of cricket teams. In last 60 years Pakistani cricket team had only two Hindu players, Danish Kaneria and Anil Dalpat, While Indian cricket team had host of luminaries from minority community.

Such kind of comparisons can go on and on and on. But each comparison will reach same conclusion that Pakistan is diametrically opposite to what India is or what India stands for. Pakistan had been striving hard to dislodge India in every possible way. First was Punjab then was Kashmir and now North-east. They attacked India four times but were dusted down every time. Instead of wasting their energy money and time on India, if Pakistani government or for matter of fact Pakistani populace had used that energy in building their own country then Pakistan would have been in much better position.

The prospect of peace with Pakistan is nothing but mirage. Thinking of cricket as a possible way to achieve peace is sheer foolishness. Last time the visit of Pakistani team was followed by unnecessary but audacious invasion of Kargil by Pakistanis. And the cost was 1000 young Indian lives. I hope Indians still remember the bravery and deaths of those soldiers.