Month: May 2014

You know this more clearly than
anyone else that in the 2014 election, voters voted, in the main, for
Modi or against Modi. It was a case of “Is Narendra Modi the country’s
best guardian — desh ka rakhvala — or is he not?” The BJP has won
the seats it has because you captured the imagination of 31 per cent of
our people (your vote share) as the nation’s best guardian, in fact, as
its saviour. It has also to be noted that 69 per cent of the voters did
not see you as their rakhvala. They also disagreed on what, actually, constitutes our desh. And this — the concept of desh —
is where, Mr. Modi, the Constitution of India, upon the authority of
which you are entering the office of Prime Minister, matters. I urge you
to revisit the idea of desh.

……


Link: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/an-open-letter-to-narendra-modi/article6022900.ece
…….

regards

In brief: switch off the religious  talk (it has served its purpose), now concentrate on the economics. We are cautiously hopeful that this will be the case, though we cant be sure. Some weapons (polarizing people for material gain) are too good to be left unused. Also, there are too many elections to be won down the road, starting with the most important ones in Uttar Pradesh and in Bihar.

That brings us back to how exactly it was possible for the British empire to rule India for two centuries with (mostly) enthusiastic native support. The divide and rule policy worked because Indians were hugely divided to begin with. It only required a few subtle tricks to raise the issue of sub-nationalism(s) which diluted the case for freedom from the British (they were just standing by in order to protect the minorities from the majority).

It would seem that the only divide in India worth talking about is the Hindu-Muslim divide or the Upper caste – OBC – Dalit one. Not so. There is huge on-going acrimony between Hindu Bengalis and Hindu Nepalis over formation of a new state in Darjeeling. In Telengana, the fight is between Telegu speakers (mostly Hindu) from two regions (Andhra, Telengana). The fight over water between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is probably more bitter (if it was possible) than between India and Pakistan.

There is however an advantage in reducing every problem to a Hindu: Muslim issue- advantage for the Hindus. Given the demographics in India/South Asia and also in the west – Gujaratis are 45% of all Indians in the UK and close to 50% in the USA – and taking geo-politics into account, the Hindus will lose a few battles but win the war.  

Take a trivial example (not so for many millions of fans). The top three cricketing powers- India, UK and Australia have now joined hands to ensure that all power is concentrated in their hands. This sort of OPEC cartel like behavior should be normally unacceptable (especially for people who are supposedly from democratic traditions). But it looks as if all the small countries are sort of OK with this arrangement (money talks). So what is the chance of Pakistan getting a fair shake from this gang? Will any of the highly talented Pakistani players ever get to play for IPL (where you can earn real money)? Will the ban on playing international cricket inside Pakistan be ever lifted? Some people will say that this is what payback looks like – if people are prepared to live by the sword, then they should be prepared to die by it as well. But amidst all this back-stabbing a beautiful game is lost and that is a real tragedy.

Moving on to larger issues on the global stage, it is quite true that Hindus (and Jews) are not considered a threat by the people who are in charge- the West and now China. And while the Islamic civilization is certainly a formidable super-power (by the numbers as well by wealth), it will not be able to shake-off a pincer attack from the two dominant power centers, as is about to happen in Nigeria.
……………….
Britain’s
foreign minister for India Hugo Swire has said India’s new Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest challenge will be to prove “that he is
the prime minister of the whole of India and of people of all faiths”.

Calling Modi “a man we can surely do business with”, Swire said, “Modi
will have to silence critics and shrug off the anti-secular image. By
the numbers it is clear that Modi has been voted into office by people
of all faiths and religions in the biggest ever electoral exercise in
the world. He has now the enormous task of being a leader for every
faith.”

He said, “I have met Modi a few times in India. He has now the enormous
task to translate the magic of Gujarat to the rest of India and bring
it back to the growth rates of 1990s. If he can do so India will be in a
very good place. Britain is home to 1.5 million Indian diaspora of
which 45% are Gujaratis. They will be following the election results
very closely.”

…….
Link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/UK-minister-Modi-will-have-to-shrug-off-anti-secular-image/articleshow/35316374.cms
…..
regards

The Telegu Rashtriya Samity (TRS), the new ruling party of Telengana are in a fix. If they oppose too strongly then the BJP will strangle them by withholding funds from the center (BJP is a partner of the TDP).

This is another reason India should aim for maximum decentralization as soon as possible and proportional representation for voting. Both are secular demands and both will achieve the desired protection of minorities – in this case Telegu speaking people (from Andhra) from the majoritarian impulses of Telegu speaking people (from Telengana).  

We are mostly used to Hindu-Muslim divisions (and talking about it) but the above problem (which seems incomprehensible to an outsider) packs a lethal punch as well.
…..Worried
at the growing bonhomie between the TDP and BJP and fearing that the
new government at the Centre might try to impose restrictions on the
status of Hyderabad, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K
Chandrasekhar Rao has reportedly asked TJAC to prepare for another
struggle, albeit a different kind this time around.

Sources
close to KCR say the TRS president has “credible information” about TDP
president N Chandrababu Naidu trying to prevail upon New Delhi to make
Hyderabad either a permanent common capital for Seemandhra and
Telangana, or give it a Union Territory status, neither of which is
acceptable to the pink party.

The Telangana BJP unit too is watching the developments with
apprehension and party leaders hoped that Narendra Modi would not be
prevailed upon by any anti-Telangana elements. “The TDP might try to do
its bit and be a spoilsport in Telangana. But we are sure that Modi will
not be get carried away when it comes to protecting the interest of
Telangana,” said G Kishan Reddy, Telangana BJP president.

……
Link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/lok-sabha-elections-2014/news/TRS-fears-Naidu-will-tinker-with-Hyderabad-status/articleshow/35318842.cms
…..

regards

As is clear from his response below, Arun is not prone to “sky is falling” hysterics, he knows that insulting his countrymen by calling them neo-Hindus is unlikely to win any hearts and minds, and he makes a clear case for liberals (and the media) to be calm and vigilant.

A convincing read for un-biased, neutral people (the majority) mostly because Arun’s biases are very well known. Respect where it is due.
……

……
Link: http://liveblogs.indiatimes.com/cursor/when-the-polity-swings-right/
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regards

The operations are yet to start and already there are pre-emptive complaints from the liberal brigade about “Afghanistan in Nigeria.”

But on careful reading of the situation we see that the Haramis have indeed made a dreadful mistake which they will come to repent very much. 
….As the summit took place, reports emerged about the latest apparent Boko Haram attack, this one in Cameroon. Hollande said one Cameroonian soldier was killed in the Friday night
attack against Chinese nationals in northern Cameroon, which is known as
a stronghold for the Islamic extremists. Ten Chinese nationals are missing after the attack, a Chinese official said.    

….
The Chicoms killed upwards of 40 million of their own countrymen but they will not stand for kidnapping of 10 citizens by islamists. 

It is our considered opinion that Islamist forces will dominate the world (minus the West and East Asia) because of the sheer power of ideology and the unlimited petro-dollars at their disposal. Even parts of Europe will come under islamic domination (as it was the case a few centuries ago). But the problem with confident people is that they tend to over-reach. And China does make a nice target due to its horrible human rights record in Xinjiang.

A fight between Islamists and Chicoms will be something massive, may be something even larger than the horrors faced in World War II (and we really really hope not to see it happen and live through it). But it may be inevitable. 
………………
Nigeria
and four neighboring countries have declared a “total war” on Boko
Haram saying the dreaded Islamist militant group holding over 220
schoolgirls must be crushed as it had become a “regional al-Qaida” that
threatened all of them.

Under a “global and regional action
plan” firmed up to face the challenge posed by Boko Haram, the
governments of Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, Niger and Chad will share
intelligence and border surveillance in the hunt for the girls still
held by the militants.

France, the
United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union “will
coordinate their support for this regional cooperation” through
technical expertise, training programs and support for border-area
management programmes, a summit statement said.

……
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/17/us-nigerian-violence-summit
…..

regards

BTW one side-effect of a BJP sweep has been that the only most communal minded muslim parties/individuals have won as well and will be starkly prominent in the new parliament. There is the in-famous Asaduddin Owaisi of AIMIM (Hyderabad), Sirajuddin and Badruddin Ajmal of AIUDF (Barpeta and Dhubri, Axom), and E Ahamed and ET Mohammed Bashir of IUML (Malappuram and Ponnani, Kerala).

This is what full blown polarization looks like and it has not happened in one day. We will be accused of simplifying but 2014 happened because of three massively bad judgement calls made 30 years ago by the “secular” Rajiv Gandhi. 
 ……..
In 1985, prime minister Rajiv Gandhi gave in to the Muslim zealots in
the Shah Bano affair. Overruling a secular court’s decision that
repudiated wife Shah Bano was entitled to alimony from her ex-husband,
he enacted a law abolishing the alimony provision in conformity with the
Sharia. 

Only months later, Rajiv restored the balance by giving the Hindus
something as well: he ordered the locks on the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri
Masjid in Ayodhya removed. Until then, a priest had been permitted to
perform puja once a year for the idols installed there in 1949. Now, all
Hindus were given access to what they consider the birthplace of Rama,
the prince posthumously deified as an incarnation of Vishnu.

..
Rajiv Gandhi had a huge majority and enormous good-will behind him. Yet he went ahead and appeased (conservative) muslims by denying justice to an old, infirm widow (Shah Bano). Next, he counter-appeased the (conservative) Hindus by opening the locks of Babri Masjid. Last but not the least, there was no justice to be had for the Sikhs of Trilokpuri, Delhi and elsewhere who were murdered in broad daylight.

End result: you have a Hindu-Sikh-Jain-Buddhist alliance voting for the BJP (and a fair amount of muslims as well). Congress sinks from 415 seats in 1984 to only 44 in 2014. BJP rises from 2 seats in 1984 to 286 seats in 2014 (and 340 as an alliance). Justice in its own way has been achieved, but there have been countless number of victims on the way. Will the decent, fair-minded Rahul Gandhi have the guts to face the truth and apologize to the nation for these acts of treachery? If not, bye bye for good.

……..

India’s Muslims, goes the conventional wisdom,
are a votebank. That bank is now working aggressively towards becoming the
central bank of Indian politics with a view to dominating its future political
currency. If conversations, events and initiatives of the past four weeks are
an indicator, Muslim social and political organisations as well as prominent Muslims
have evolved a one-point agenda: to deny the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
strongman Narendra Modi a shot at becoming
India’s prime minister after the 16th General Election that is due in a year.
Their tactic: defeat the BJP and its potential allies in every Lok Sabha
constituency where the Muslim vote can sway the result.

…
“Narendra Modi is the No. 1 enemy of
India’s Muslims,” says Salman Hussain, a fiery
Islamic scholar who teaches at one of India’s most influential Islamic
seminaries, the 19th-century Darul Uloom Nadwatul, at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh.
“If Modi becomes prime minister, more Muslims
will be massacred, more mosques demolished.” While that may be rabble-rousing
at its worst, there is no denying that the anti-Modi sentiment among India’s
nearly 180 million Muslims has deepened since a cry went up
in the BJP last month to name Modi the party’s top prospect for the Lok Sabha
election.

…
“The BJP is fundamentally an anti- Muslim party and Modi proved that with
his role in the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat,”
says Arshad Madani, who leads a faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, an
influential sociopolitical organisation of clerics. Five months after Modi
became chief minister, more than 2,000 Muslims
died in February-March 2002 in violence by Hindu zealots of the BJP-RSS after a
train fire killed 57 Hindu passengers. “Muslims
know that if the BJP comes to power, their troubles will worsen.”

…
Indeed, the chant of Modi-as-PM that shot up in decibels at an all-India
meet of the BJP in New Delhi in early March set the cat among the pigeons.
Until then, the Muslim electorate across India was widely disenchanted with
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) for unkept promises in its nine-year-rule. They were
miffed as the UPA has failed to introduce reservations for them in jobs and
educational institutions, a pre-election promise. They were also angered by the
sudden hanging in February of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri who had been on death row
for years after being convicted as a conspirator in the 2001 Parliament attack.

….
Muslim leaders have long slammed the Congress
for what they see as its failure to improve the Muslims’
lot after a panel led by former Delhi High Court Chief Justice Rajinder Sachar
reported in 2006 that Muslims were one of India’s most
neglected social groups in terms of education, employment, poverty and health.

But with Modi’s name to the fore, the foremost concern among Muslims
now is to stop the BJP from returning to power in New Delhi at any cost.

….
From Lucknow in the north to Hyderabad in the south and Kolkata in the east,
the dominant discourse among the Muslim community is as follows: coalition
governments that have run India unbroken since 1996 will continue as the norm.
Over the past 14 years, the BJP and the Congress
party have led two coalition governments each. Whichever of the two parties
wins more seats at the next General Election would team up with the floaters to
notch a majority and form the government.

….
Except for those political parties that are direct opponents of the Congress
in their regions and would, therefore, never join hands with it, or the
Communists who would never pair up with the Hindu sectarian BJP, all other
regional parties are capable of going either way. Hence, Muslims
should vote against the BJP, its allies and the fence-sitters who fail to
unequivocally clarify before the elections that they would have no truck with
the BJP.

…
“Wherever a party’s relationship with the BJP is suspect, it would lose the
Muslim vote,” says psephologist Yogendra Yadav, who has joined the recently
launched anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party. Says Ilyas: “The Muslim is no more
attached to any one party. He now votes tactically to defeat the BJP and this
is how it will be in 2014.”

….
Muslim leaders reckon the community’s vote can make and unmake pretenders to
100-150 Lok Sabha seats. These seats are not to be confused with those that Muslims
win. Today, there are only 30 Muslims in the Lok Sabha, just 5.5
percent of its 543 seats. As per the 2011 Census, Muslims
are nearly 15 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people. But although Muslims
in the Lok Sabha are barely a third of their share in the population, their arc
of electoral influence is far greater. In 35 seats, they number around one in
three voters or more. In 38 other seats, Muslims
are 21-30 percent of the electorate. If the 145 seats where they are 11-20
percent are added to this, Muslim voters have the ability to influence the
outcome in a whopping 218 seats.

…
Ironically, until now, the Muslim vote has been most effective where it is
around 10 percent of the electorate, big enough to sway the result in a
multi-cornered contest by going all in for a single candidate, but too small to
raise alarm in the BJP or its allies to trigger attempts at a
counter-polarisation of non-Muslim votes. On the other hand, wherever their
numbers are 20 percent and above, Muslim votes have mostly been ineffective
because of a multiplicity of Muslim candidates divvying up their support, often
handing victory to the BJP on a platter.

…
Muslims have shortlisted Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar and West Bengal as their key battleground
states because their results would most impact who leads the next government:
the Congress or the BJP. Next in importance
for the Muslims are Andhra Pradesh, Assam,
Maharashtra and Karnataka, where the more seats in the kitty of the Congress
the less likely would be the BJP’s chances to form the government.  
……..
Indeed, the
selection of the primary battleground states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is
based on their experience of coalition politics since 1998, when the BJP formed
its first stable national government heading a multi-party coalition with Atal
Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister. The key to the BJP’s victories in the 1998
and 1999 Lok Sabha elections lay in its wins in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. These
back-to-back victories jolted the Muslims, who are around 20 percent in
these states’ overall population.

….
Chastened, the Muslims voted tactically in Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, giving the BJP fewer seats and
bringing the UPA to power. Although the BJP did better in 2009 in Bihar due to
its alliance with Janata Dal (United), which virtually wiped out Lalu Prasad
Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, it still fared poorly in Uttar Pradesh, thanks to
the voting by Muslims there that gave the UPA a second
term.

…
Indeed, the Muslim vote has dictated the last two poll cycles in Uttar
Pradesh. In the 2007 Assembly polls, Muslims
massed behind the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP),
giving it a clear majority, ending 15 years of unstable coalition politics. In
2012, Muslims deserted the BSP
leader, Chief Minister Mayawati, turning to the Samajwadi Party (SP) and
providing it with a majority. “Eight out of 10 Muslims
voted for the SP,” says Rajya Sabha MP Mohammad Adeeb from Uttar Pradesh, an
independent who campaigned with SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav last
year, but now accuses him of turning his back on the Muslims.
“They won because of the Muslims.”

…
Muslims leaders say Uttar Pradesh Chief
Minister Akhilesh Yadav, the eldest son of Mulayam, has failed their community,
which comprises a whopping 40 million of the state’s nearly 200 million people.
Dozens of incidents of sectarian violence have caused a loss of Muslim life and
property across Uttar Pradesh. While the SP promised to free Muslim youths
arrested earlier for their alleged roles in terror plots, no such action has
yet been taken. The state government has also stonewalled calls to disclose the
contents of an independent inquiry it commissioned into the disputed arrests of
the youths.

….
In just two weeks in March, four public meetings focusing exclusively on
the Muslims were called at Lucknow, three of
them bringing out tens of thousands of Muslims
on the streets. While one meeting, on 2 March, was directly called by Mulayam,
he also occupied centre-stage at another rally that Arshad Madani of Jamiat
Ulema- e-Hind called on 17 March.

….
On the same day, the Congress party’s Muslim face, External
Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, who hails from Uttar Pradesh and once headed
the party’s state unit, descended on Lucknow at a town hall sort of meeting
with Muslims, exhorting them to break free
from the SP’s grip. Earlier, on 3 March, MP Adeeb led a huge rally of Muslims
jointly with the Communists to demand that Muslims
arrested in terror cases be released. “Muslims
in Uttar Pradesh have the capacity to make and unmake national governments,” he
says. At that rally, the Muslims hooted Ashok Vajpayee, the SP
candidate from Lucknow for the 2014 polls, and refused to let him speak.

….
Of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, Muslims
number over 20 percent of the electorate in two dozen seats in west Uttar
Pradesh, including Bareilly, Badaun, Pilibhit, Rampur, Sambhal, Amroha, Meerut,
Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Bijnor, Amroha and Moradabad. In east Uttar Pradesh,
Muslims
play a decisive role in at least eight seats — Azamgarh, Bahraich, Gonda,
Srawasti, Varanasi, Domariyaganj, Gonda and Balrampur.

….
In states other than Uttar Pradesh where the Muslim voters may be willing to
go against the Congress, Modi is haemorraging support
from the allies of the BJP. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has crafted a political
miracle by fetching up Muslim votes even for the BJP because it was aligned
with him in two Assembly elections. In the 2009 Lok Sabha election, his JD(U)
won 20 of the state’s 40 seats and the BJP 12. But his aversion to Modi’s name
is now legion. Says Yogendra Yadav: “For three years, Nitish has been telling
the Muslims of his state that ‘when you vote
for me, you vote for me’.” Adds MP Adeeb: “Nitish knows that if he backs Modi,
the Muslim voters in Bihar will quickly move en masse to Lalu.”

…
Indeed, Yogendra Yadav believes that West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, too,
would need to clarify her position on the possibility of backing the BJP in
forming the next government at the Centre to her state’s 27 percent Muslim
population. “She will have to do something before the Lok Sabha election, which
would make her position clear vis-à-vis Modi,” he says. The Muslim voters’
disenchantment with the 34-year Communist rule contributed in no small measure
to bringing Banerjee to power in the state in 2011.

…
For the same reason, Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik, once a BJP partner, and
former Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu, who was a kingmaker in the BJP-led
coalition government of 1999 but has been in political wilderness since losing
power in the state in 2004, are keeping miles away from the BJP.

…
“Although the BJP has no presence in Andhra Pradesh, no party here can dare
to openly align with it now that Modi’s name has come up,” says Zahid Ali Khan
of Hyderabad, a veteran activist and editor of a leading Urdu daily newspaper,
Siyasat.

…
That, in effect, is true of virtually all political parties in the country
wherever the Muslim votes count. The sprawling residence of India’s prime
minister at New Delhi’s upscale 7, Race Course Road, may well turn out so near
and yet so far for Narendra Modi.
……..
Link: http://www.tehelka.com/the-modi-card-and-the-muslim-ace/
…….

regards