Brown Pundits

The old colonial masters (of divide and rule) have a quiet word of advice for the tsu-Namo. 

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.”

Swire admitted that Modi’s “enormous victory” took Britain by surprise.

“Our initial analysis was that Modi will do extremely well. But in the
initial stages of the elections, his support looked strong though
lacking in some parts of India. However the sheer size of the mandate
has caught us by surprise. It’s been a unanimous victory,” Swire said.

Talking about the debacle of the Congress party, Swire said “The
Congress has been in power for a long time. Political parties get tired.
Indians wanted change and they showed that in overwhelming numbers.” He added that since BJP has now got the majority “a single party government is always ideal”.

Swire said, “It’s almost in over three decades that India will have a single party government which is always ideal.” He added, “A decisive election is always good. We went into coalition
in Britain because we did not get a majority and our country was on dire
economic states. We are fighting the elections and intend to win by a
large margin as a single party government is ideally better.”

In March 2013, Swire had met Modi in Ahmedabad to sign a 20-year deal to supply liquefied natural gas to Gujarat.

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 Desam Party wants a re-think on Hyderabad. They have won 9 out of 24 assembly seats in Greater Hyderabad zone and plan to call for Hyderabad to be recognized as an Union Territory (and as a shared capital of two states). We feel that this is an eminently fair demand and should have been considered right from the beginning (except that Congress would not get any political benefits by doing the right thing). This would help create a sense of assurance of minorities against an aggressive, expressive majority.

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 TDP coming to power in
Seemandhra and BJP getting a thumping majority at the Centre have upset
KCR’s calculations as he was expecting a YSR Congress Party government
in the residuary Andhra Pradesh and a hung Parliament, in which case he
had planned to work in tandem with the YSRCP, experts said.

And
with TDP keeping its stocks even in Telangana has only queered the
pitch further for KCR who has asked his trusted Telangana vanguard, the
Telangana Political Joint Action Committee (TJAC) to meet on Monday and
prepare for some post-bifurcation drama. “The TDP-BJP combine is a cause
of concern as there are many loopholes in the AP State Reorganization
Act, which they might try to tinker with. We are ready to fight it out
in the eventuality of any restrictions imposed on the status of
Hyderabad. And we will back the state government headed by TRS to fight
against the Centre,” said M Kodandaram, TJAC chairman, a day before the
crucial meeting.

Senior TRS leaders said they are wary of the
TDP influence in Telangana as apart from winning Seemandhra, Naidu’s
flock has a strong hold on Hyderabad after winning as many as 9 Assembly
segments of the 24 in Greater Hyderabad.

“We definitely are
concerned about the fact that the party like TDP is in alliance with the
BJP ruling at the Centre. Even people of Telangana are apprehensive
that the Centre might behave in partisan manner. But, we hope the Modi
government would be magnanimous,” said K Kavitha, KCR’s daughter and
newly-elected MP from Nizamabad.

While she said her party was
ready to fight it out in the event of the Centre’s decision going
against the interest of Telangana, Kavitha called upon the Telangana TDP
MPs to ensure their party does not make any such move. “The TDP MLAs
have a great responsibility in this context. They must make sure the TDP
will not act against the interest of the people of Telangana,” Kavitha
added.

But constitution experts do point out that loopholes in
the AP State Reorganization Act 2014, might just get the Centre to seek
fresh amendments and make Hyderabad a Union Territory.

According to K V Dhananjaya, a senior Supreme Court counsel, there is no
provision under the Constitution to extend the status of common capital
to Hyderabad without making it a Union Territory (UT). “If it is
proposed that Hyderabad should act as a common capital to the newly
carved out states, it should be designated as a Union Territory.
Currently, there are seven UTs in India and a new entry at Number eight
will have to be made in the name of Hyderabad,” Dhananjaya said.

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

Pakistan is the sanctuary for the now precarious millennia old Islamic tradition while our brethren Muslim Indians will cower in their ghettos waiting while their special privileges (special status for Kashmir, Muslim family law) steadily erode to eventually become the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Pakistan for pity’s sake should enact a right of return for all Urdu-speakers & perhaps settle them in the failed city of Gwadar?

Unlike his country-man and the “leading thinker of the world” Arundhati Roy, Thalekkara (TK) Arun is a pragmatic leftist. He is also a big-time fan of Sonia Gandhi and the Nehruvian parampara. He is stead-fast in his conviction that Congress is the natural ruling party of India because of its secular character.

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/
….
regards

Normally we would expect the Haramis to laugh out loud in response. Here we have a fiercely ideological force which remains true to its mission as it enslaves 200+ Christian girls and demonstrates tremendous operational smarts by hoodwinking the Nigerian forces. A few more poorly equipped, low on morale forces from the neighbors should not make the tiniest difference. Plus even fewer “western observers,” NGO types in counseling positions. Finally the liberal shock troops that will always stand up in support of the forces of intolerance.

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.

Western nations will provide technical
expertise and training to the new regional African effort against the
extreme Islamists.

“Boko Haram is no longer a local terror
group. It is clearly operating as an al-Qaida operation” in central
Africa, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said while speaking at a
summit hosted by French President Hollande in Paris yesterday.

“We have shown our commitment for a regional approach. Without West
African countries coming together we will not be able to crush these
terrorists,” he said amid criticism that his government has done enough
to rescue the schoolgirls abducted last month.

Jonathan said Nigeria has deployed 20,000 troops, aircraft and intelligence sources in areas where Boko Haram is active. “The major challenge that we have faced in our search and rescue
operation so far has been the deluge of misinformation about the
whereabouts of the girls and the circumstances of their disappearance,”
the president said.

Last month, Boko Haram abducted 223
schoolgirls in northeastern Nigeria, where it is based. It released a
video earlier last week showing over 100 of the girls and offering an
exchange for prisoners.

President Jonathan has ruled out negotiations over their possible release, officials say.

Boko Haram’s guerrilla campaign has claimed 12,000 lives, with 8,000
people injured since 2009, Jonathan said at the summit which brought
together Presidents of west African countries of Benin, Cameroon, Niger
and Chad.

Hollande said the “global and regional action plan”
to face the challenge posed by Boko Haram involved “coordinating
intelligence, sharing information … border surveillance, a military
presence notably around Lake Chad and the capacity to intervene in case
of danger”.

Hollande called Boko Haram a “major threat to West
and Central Africa”, and said it had links with al-Qaida’s North-
African arm and “other terrorist organizations”.

Speaking at a press conference, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya said: “We are here to declare war on Boko Haram”. “There is determination to tackle this situation head on … to launch a
war, a total war on Boko Haram,” Chad’s President Idriss Deby said.  Representatives from the UK, US and EU also took part in the Paris meeting.

Nigeria will coordinate patrols, pool intelligence and exchange weapons
and human trafficking information with Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger,
according to the agreement reached at the summit.

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

What a difference an year makes. Still Tehelka should do a re-interview of the “community leaders” – Salman Husain, Arshad Madani, Mohammed Adeeb, Zahid Ali Khan, and others – cited below to see what wonderful strategies they have cooked up to counter-act the mighty Tsu-Namo. We hope it works better than the miserable single point action plan they had devised for this election.

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

Well we respectfully disagree, but then this is Jim O’Neill, former head of Goldman Sachs, so what do we know? Proof (if it is ever required) that Modi’s victory is a victory for Wall Street and Dalal Street. Pankaj Mishra has got a juicy new quote (which will make his articles even more pleasurable to read). Its a win win situation!!!

…..
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party
and its allies won about 61 percent of seats in parliament as voters
punished the Congress party-led coalition for slowing growth, graft and
Asia’s second-fastest inflation.  

If Modi pursues the anti-corruption
policies he’s promised, India has the potential to grow about 10 percent
annually for the next 20 years, according to Jim O’Neill, former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

“This is the most positive development in India in 30 years,” O’Neill, who coined the acronym BRIC, referring to Brazil, India, Russia
and China, said at the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference in Las Vegas
yesterday. Modi’s victory is a “massive, massive positive” for the
nation, he said. 
….

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-16/modi-victory-spurs-optimism-india-economy-will-lead-bric-rebound.html
…..

regards

At the end it was one phone call from the leader of the free world, a liberal with impeccable qualifications, which settled the score. Indeed it can be argued that in a nightmare scenario, it is democracy which has defeated the liberals (not to forget, Modi won three elections in Gujarat as well).

The bitter truth is that there is no vote bank for liberal ideologies. The liberals know this very well. This is why many liberals are fond of Stalin and Mao, because like mushrooms they can prosper only in an un-democratic, mandarin governed, national akademy kind of environment toiling under the benevolent gaze of a dictator. Alternatively there are the pale-faced humanities departments in the West which aim to exclude people with a diversity of opinions (read conservative, religious) using the sword of tenure (which is now thankfully disappearing).

India, as a number of wise people have observed, looks right now as a mirror image of Pakistan. Well that is not quite true, the Army does not rule India (but it has a veto). About five thousand Hindus per year are reportedly leaving Pakistan for India, there is no such (not yet) migration of muslims from India to Pakistan. Also, India does not have the death penalty for blasphemy (and no votes for this), and to the extent there is an intolerant hammer, it is deployed equally in favor of conservative Muslims and Hindus (ex-communication of Salman Rushdie, Tasleema Nasreen and MF Husain, all of them muslims).

What is certainly true is that Indian muslims have (temporarily) lost their voice and the power of their vote (due to the peculiarities of the first-past-the-post system). This goes against the promise that a great man had made during Partition I, that muslims will be kings in Pakistan and king-makers in India. Again it can be argued that while this strategy has served some muslims very well, for the majority of the population of the sub-continent, dividing communities (and inciting sectarian hatred) for short-term gain has not worked out so well. There are no saints and all groups have indulged in (state-sponsored, community sponsored) genocide.  

If liberal groups such as the CAG want to gain more popular support for their get-Modi cause (and it is no doubt a very good cause), they should find a stronger voice in condemning the atrocities of Direct Action Day which illuminated the path of winning hearts and minds through polarization of people who have co-existed for centuries. 

A
single phone call that went out from the White House to Prime
Minister-designate Narendra Modi close to midnight on Friday erased
nearly a decade of stigma that Washington had heaped on the BJP leader,
ostensibly for his role in not quickly containing the communal riots in
Gujarat in 2002.

The conversation between President Obama and
“candidate” Modi, as the White House characterized him, was short and
to-the-point. After congratulating him for leading the BJP to victory in
the general election, Obama pointedly invited him to visit Washington
to advance bilateral ties between the two countries, which were too
important to be allowed to drift.

The President noted, the
White House said later in a read-out of the call, that he looks forward
to working closely with Modi to fulfill the “extraordinary promise” of
the US-India strategic partnership. Modi evidently agreed, and the
readout said “they agreed to continue expanding and deepening the
wide-ranging cooperation between our two democracies.”

There
was no mention of visas, boycotts, or a decade of Washington’s
blacklisting of Modi aggravated repeatedly by what one enraged BJP
factotum described as “dim-witted lower officials with little idea of
political and diplomatic realities.” Underpinning the phone-call was the
US desire to ‘reset’ ties with Modi, while recognizing that the
stupendous majority the Indian electorate had lavished on him trumped
any human rights campaign a small left-wing clique had mounted against
him, with the prospect of holding US-India ties hostage in its wake.

In fact, officials pointed out that President Obama went a step further
than the State Department in reaching out to Prime Minister designate
Modi, inviting him to Washington DC, when he could well have said he
looked forward to meeting him in the days to come — as they possibly
could in various multi-lateral fora over the next few months. But
clearly, the White House is ahead of the curve compared to the
bureaucracy-driven State Department when it comes to pressing the reset
button.

In fact, the State Department continued to be
“rule-bound” in its approach and language even after the White House
outreach. “The Prime Minister of India will be welcomed to the United
States. As head of government, Mr Modi would be eligible for an A-1
visa,” spokesperson Jen Psaki said in a statement that implicitly
suggested that as an individual, Modi could still be persona non-grata.

That impression was strengthened by the reaction from human rights
clique that has campaigned against Modi in the US, including a so-called
Coalition Against Genocide. “CAG has been in the forefront of
maintaining the US visa ban on Modi, and we are proud of having stood up
for truth and justice,” a CAG spokesperson said, adding that “A
possible visit to the US by Modi on a diplomatic visa, in his capacity
as the Prime Minister does not negate the earlier ban and the fact that
he is culpable for the egregious and systematic human rights abuses.”

But for now, the Indian electorate has forced Washington’s hand.
“Congrats to @narendramodi and BJP. Look forward to working
w/you/growing shared prosperity/security w/world’s largest democracy,”
tweeted secretary of State John Kerry, tagging the PM-designate even as
the scale of Modi’s victory became clear. As far as BJP and Modi
supporters are concerned, he also needed to tag his minions in the state
department.

……….

regards