War room

While Barack Obama is busy formulating an Af-Pak policy, we are busy in melting-point informatics and "my brother Rahul will become PM one day"
kind of family employment schemes. The Prime Minister "revealed" to a group of journalists that he had decided to resign if the nuclear deal with the US was not passed in Parliament. To fulfil his "kasam" to Washington, he silently saw the lawmakers' highest body turn into a mandi.

For him, his "kasam" was more important than the "maryada" of his nation's parliament.

I wish he had honoured in the same way his "kasam" to the Indian people – the oath he took while taking the office of Prime Minister, that bound him to protecting the lives of his people and giving a government that treated all citizens equally.

Pota was removed to please Muslims. A special reservation scheme was implemented at Aligarh Muslim University to have seats for a particular religious group reserved.
The Planning Commission allocated Rs 3,000 crore for minority (read Muslim) development schemes and banks were directed to give loans to the minorities at a special consideration. To address Kashmiri Muslim "sentiments", Afzal's hanging was delayed till the next government is formed. Ram Sethu was brutally assaulted and Rama's existence was denied – all before the eyes of Mr Nice and Dr Decent. Not a single word was spoken to address the sentiments of Hindus.

He kept a studied silence seeing the butchers of 1984 being protected and promoted as party candidates for Lok Sabha elections till a shoe throw compelled the leader to delist them.

So much for his "kasam" to provide impartial governance.

The "kasam" to protect the people and safeguard the honour of soldiers was "fulfilled" in such a manner that soldiers returned their war decorations and had to demonstrate like pariahs at Jantar Mantar. The government was busy decorating the liars and voices of terrorists.

And now, there is a controversy regarding a story sourced to the Special Investigating Tribunal blaming certain NGOs for cooking up ghastly stories of barbarism, which, the report says, never occurred. The person who has been charged having helped file such "cooked up" stories became a darling of the secular media noises in Delhi who would present her stories like a constitutional tribunal's report.

There is a contradiction which is further confusing as SIT is still silent on it. For the sake of justice and fair play, the truth must be investigated and the honour of the people, whichever side they might belong to, be restored. If the Kausar Bi story was filed truthfully, the criminals must be hanged in public along with the perpetrators of Godhra. But if it was a fabrication, the "writer" must be punished because if a mind can cook up such ghastly scenes, what will be the difference between what Kasab and his gang did in Mumbai and what these pen-pushers of the secular chill club do to India and her people? A writer more known in London wrote a story as spine chilling as was the Godhra fire. It read, "A mob surrounded the house of former Congress MP Iqbal Ehsan Jaffri. His phone calls to the Director-General of Police, the Police Commissioner, the Chief Secretary, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) were ignored. The mobile police vans around his house did not intervene. The mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters and burned them alive. Then they beheaded Ehsan Jaffri and dismembered him. Of course it’s only a coincidence that Jaffri was a trenchant critic of Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, during his campaign for the Rajkot Assembly by-election in February.'(Arundhati Roy’s article, Outlook, dated 6 May 2002).

Ehsaan was killed but the rest of the story was false for which Roy had to apologize. A people traumatized, painted black all over the globe, their character mutilated and just an apology?

And who were those killed in the Godhra train who never got a line from these "chroniclers of human tragedies"?

Just waste paper?

Read what the Union minister of state for home, Shriprakash Jaiswal, who belongs to the Congress, told Parliament on May 11, 2005: "790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed in the riots, 2,548 people were injured and 223 people were missing."

Who were those killed in Gujarat riots along with Muslims?

Just dirt?

The hate-Hindu cartel represents the hate of Ghaznis and Ghauris. They survive on the funds given to them by Congress-Communist groups and state powers controlled by them. Their social acceptability and glamour is enhanced by "praise for each other" societies. And Mr Nice and Dr Decent pats them with state awards.

Amid cacophony and intemperate language laced with shoe throws, criminals and convicted actors are having a field day canvassing for their parties and though a mature and stable democracy we pretend to be, the first casualty in this situation has been decency in public debate.

The poll scene has turned the nation into a war room. The last 62 years have witnessed our motherland's vivisection, a million people killed, 1.25 lakh sq km of land illegally occupied by aliens, massacres by Pakistani marauders in Mirpur and in Bihar by Maoist terror outfits, the jeep purchase scandal in 1948, a humiliation like 1962 when ordnance factories were ordered to make coffee machines instead on rifles, the Nagarwala mystery, the submarine scandal, wheat import commissions, farmers' suicides, forced exile of Kashmiri Hindus and desecration of more than 172 temples. The list is ever-growing amid inspiring stories of Indian people’s perseverance and achievements.

Isn't it time we rose above fault lines, gave a chance to an India that would make every Indian of every denomination, faith, colour and creed an equally proud partner? Can't we think and vote on issues that overpower religious, caste-based and parochial concerns? Will this war room kind of atmosphere result in a decisive mandate?

(The author is director of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation)

Falling standards

Pakistan Times:
Lahore 03 March 2009: In the worst ever performance by their home grown and trained terrorists, all the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team members left Pakistan shore alive. Govt officials expressed concerns about this as it would tarnish the image of Pakistan as a breeding ground of terrorism and their credibility to produce world class terrorists has taken a beating. Govt asked the PSU (Public Sector Units) terrorists groups to improve the training standards and urged the terrorists to take their training and careers seriously.

Prime Minister later during dinner with the participating terrorists chided them mildly that they cannot waste tax payers/US federal Aid money like this. He was particularly harsh on the terrorist who threw under the bus (carrying cricketers), the grenade which did not detonate. Prime Minister worried that this did not do any good to his plans of changing Pakistan National game from Cricket (which anyway is having its natural death) to Hand Grenade Throwing. He felt that this was the best bet for Pakistan's aspiration for an Olympic Gold Medal. He urged erstwhile Pakistan cricket bowlers – Shoaib Akhtar and others, who are famous for throwing instead of bowling, to take up coaching terrorists on grenade throwing as their cricket careers are finished now…