Many, especially people in Delhi, saw this coming. In a way, it is good. Or as someone mentioned, it was inevitable. Just like how it was important to defeat UPA at the height of their powers and ego trip in 2014, equally, it had become important and necessary to defeat the politics of Arvind Kejriwal. He was thinking that a mini-version of BJP's politics was the strategy to go by. He repeatedly projected himself as the better version of BJP's divisive politics – as if he could hate Muslims but continue to also provide free public services. At every step of the way in recent times, he projected himself as more religious and narrowminded than the BJP. He even avoided supporting his own Muslim legislator and rallied against admitting children of migrants in schools. Forget about his actions concerning Shaheen Bagh and CAA. And of course, he had grown hubris that he could not be defeated in Delhi and had gotten too comfortable which politicians should never be made to feel for the public's own good.

That said, it is concerning what replaces Kejriwal now and UPA then. But again, it also tells the options the public is provided. How they try to avoid the devil and how they eventually give up and choose an open devil rather than the masked monster who hides its claws.

Silver lining wise, Kejriwal is a shrewd politician, unlike Rahul and others. Despite this defeat, he in past has repeatedly shown he knows how to fight the BJP on their turf by twisting and turning the designs to suit him better. Now that he has lost his fiefdom, he has nothing more to lose or concentrate his focus on. BJP can no longer create problems in the capital and keep him engaged. Add to it, unlike the old Kejriwal, this one will have his men in the assembly and parliament who can speak and tomtom his message. If he is up to it, and in all likelihood he will be, he's going to be a hard and harsh thorn in BJP's path from here on.

Congratulations to all, we are in for good times. Politics in India is going to be a good show from now on.

P.S. It is a good time here to remember how the BJP using all sorts of powers and agencies including the courts, almost paralysed Kejriwal's government from working. At the start of his government, Kejriwal using ACB had initiated corruption investigations against Ambani and other heavyweights. Modi government to stop this, passed a fresh law pulling ACB from the control of the Delhi government. Delhi Police was already under Modi government so he was left with nothing to fight corruption and other misdoings. Later on, a new LG was appointed who would refuse to pass any bills and files Kejriwal signed including transfers of officials. Even door-to-door ration and government services were stopped. Kejriwal still found ways to work around these blockers. Then one by one his closest allies and later himself were arrested and kept behind bars. All the cases against his MLAs eventually fizzled out, and nothing could be proved in court but by the time cases could be finished and clean chit was given, his ministers would have spent years (two, three etc) in prison. While it is always hard to pinpoint why people unseat someone and crown another and many times there are always multiple reasons for how people vote, in Delhi's case, voters might just have gotten frustrated as well from this constant tussle. It's not like they could not see how Modi halted Kejriwal on each step he took.

#delhi #politics #arvindkejriwal #narendramodi #bjp #aap #elections

There was a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir (what is the new name after dividing the state into three parts?). I can see some of you who don't otherwise post “political” opinions about it. Honestly, I'm happy to see all of you sticking your neck out. I'm not suggesting I know better but do you know what terrorism or terrorists mean? Forget dictionary meaning or legal definition. In your head, what does it mean? Is it terrorism when a section of people in Manipur are mercilessly killed, their houses are burnt, women approach police and police hand them to a mob from the majority community and later videos of them being paraded go viral; Is that terrorism? There's murder, burning, rapes and still, it doesn't sound like terrorism. Why is it? Is it because the media is not calling it so? Or because so many of you are not posting “I condemn terrorists rampaging havoc in Manipur”?

Okay. Okay. Manipur is too much stressful. Probably it'll harm your mental health if you start knowing about Manipur. Forget it then.

How about that man in uniform on the train taking his service gun and shooting Muslims while chanting religious and political slogans, is that terrorism? Why do we still not refer to him as a terrorist? We went so far as to call him mental! Not terrorist. He killed people, and chanted religious and political slogans but somehow for you and so many others, his wasn't an act of terror. We know terrorism is bad and terrorists are bad guys. But what exactly is terrorism? And who are terrorists? Should people have to topple a bus to be named terrorists? Should the violence happen in Jammu and Kashmir for it to be termed as terrorism? Like Jats in Haryana or Rajasthan can remove railway tracks while demanding reservations but we don't refer to them as terrorists but a Kashmiri pelting a pebble at an Indian army gunman is definitely termed a terrorist. Perhaps where violence takes place has to do with the definition in your head. If so… Have you heard of Kunan Poshspora where Indian armed forces carried out mass rapes? Have you heard of that girl in the northeast who had gun wounds in her private regions and traces of semen? Oh, wait! We don't refer to men in uniform as terrorists. They have the legal right to kill and maybe rapes are also allowed under AFSPA. I don't know but I have never heard an armyman tried for it. So who is a terrorist then? My head hurts trying to think about the answer. It appears you all have some clarity on the subject. Unlike me, you don't post regularly. Perhaps your lives are important, you all have life and you all are busy. Once in a while something happens and it shakes you so much that you leave out your “I'm not political” rule and post political opinion. Maybe Palestine is too far for you to bother about but Jammu and Kashmir is a piece of land that belongs to you. I'm still trying to think about how your brain works. What motivates it and why.

On a separate note, I'll not force myself to post any such things. Terrorists will do what they do and are known to do, rapists will rape, thieves will steal, robbers will rob and scammers will scam. It's what they do. It's the job of the media to inform us when so and so happens. And it is the job of the government, and administration to first, stop such things from happening and second, if in case they happen then to investigate, catch and punish the perpetrators. I believe ordinary citizens and people in positions of influence must speak out when people in power aka govt do not do their job. For example, Kashmir is the world's most militarised region. What does that mean? It has the highest ratio of citizens to gunmen. Kashmir is also directly ruled by the Modi govt. Modi hasn't conducted elections there since he divided the state into three regions. Only recently a vehicle full of ammunition was rammed into an army base causing huge damage and embarrassment. How did such a vehicle with such large quantities of arms go past multiple army checkposts? Were army men involved with terrorists to aid them in committing such a heinous crime? We didn't bother to ask Modi these questions and he didn't bother to inform us anyway. We don't know what happened. Then recently some fraud from Gujarat claimed he was close to Modi and was visiting all sensitive army regions. In fact, he was taken around by Indian army officials. What kind of security does the Indian army have? What sort of verification procedures. No one asked, and no one answered. Modi demonetised and created havoc with the Indian economy but told us it broke the backbone of terrorism in Kashmir. There was the abrogation of article 370 defended on the same lines. So how's it still happening? Who is letting it happen? Is the Indian army incompetent? Or is Modi not letting them function? Do you want Modi to answer these questions or do you want to forget and wait until it repeats?

Here's a bit of truth. The reason why you post this is because it aligns with your politics. You're political. No one's apolitical. Your endgame is demonising a community. You're not bothered about lives lost. If you did, you would have spoken about Manipur, or about multiple Muslims murdered on Indian streets and video-graphed. A cabinet minister nonetheless went and garlanded convicts of lynching cases. Don't forget. Or when the rapists of Bilkis Bano were released by the Modi govt just before the Gujarat elections. Hindu organisations welcomed them with garlands and honoured them on a stage. Nice photographs. See. You're not bothered about rapes and deaths of people. You don't care who was killed in Jammu and Kashmir. You have a carefully curated politics in your head. You know it's awful. That's why you want to pretend apolitical about other matters where posting about it does not align with your politics. But here, you have to post. You don't want to lose the chance to dehumanise a community. Subtle huh?

I'm not suggesting you should not post. Please do. But also invest some time into thinking why are you bothering to post about it. Are you trying to inform your followers? Why? Is it because the media is not covering it? It actually is. Media didn't cover Manipur, Brijbhushan, Prajwal Devanna etc., but then you kept quiet. So why are you posting? Are you feeling sad? You are against terrorism and you want to tell it to your followers? What kind of followers do you have that think anyone would be in favour of terrorism? Aren't we all against violence, rape, child marriages, slavery etc? Are you trying to say yes? But read again, it doesn't appear like you are against rape and murder, right? That's what perplexes me.

#terrorism #politics #socialmedia #JammuKashmir

Ayodhya Temple As Of Today. Courtesy: Newslaundry.com

I was just on a call with my distant neighbour who after the regular round of questions asked me if I had received the Ram-Mandir-Rice (akshata). For those who haven’t and don’t know about what’s going on, people associated with BJP-RSS have been going door-to-door and distributing some posters related to the new temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh along with some colourful uncooked-unbroken-rice in tiny plastic pack (hardly 20 gram).

Akshata basically consists of uncooked un-broken pieces of rice which is mixed with turmeric. It is sometimes used to bless bride and groom during weddings. Akshata is also sprinkled during other auspicious ceremonies. When Akshata is offered to a deity, it is believed to be the finest offering that a devotee can make. Akshata is believed to be equal to offering clothes, jewelry, food, or any other offering. Akshata is usually thrown over the head of the devotees during pujas and during functions like marriage and other auspicious events. 

The akshata attract the subtle frequencies of five principal deity namely Shiv, Shakti, Shri Ram, Shri Krishna and Shri Ganesh. Akshata is the central point of puja plate. If the rice grains used for preparing Akshatas are broken then their capacity to attract the principles of higher deities is automatically reduced. When the akshtas are offered to a deity the energy of the deity is transferred in it and favourable vibrations are generated in akshatas.  — Hinduism StackExchange

There is a lot that’s wrong in the above description but since all this is a matter of faith, let’s go ahead with it. Or just ask any Hindu person around you what ‘Akshata’ is. If the above description is right then how come RSS-BJP members have akshata even before the inauguration of the temple?

Returning back to my phone call.

I answered in the affirmative. I was then told to add some more grains to this 20-gram ‘akshata’ and prepare some sweet dish out of this mixture and have it. I was also told to take two to three grains from the 20-gram packet and wrap them in a piece of paper after writing ‘Shri Ram’ thrice over it and to keep this paper in my cupboard/locker.

Where is all this coming from? Who tells them? And even if someone does, how come people believe in this nonsense?

I have seen so many religious celebrations in my life. Never once am I aware of ‘akshata’ being used as this. In fact, unlike what that description claims, ‘akshata’ from the floor is just swept away like any other dirt. Few do collect it separately. At my place, since we have a river in the vicinity, they throw this rice in the water the next morning. I don’t know what people in cities do.

***

Let’s talk about this new temple now, shall we?

The temple will be inaugurated on Jan 22, 2024. The temple is not complete yet. By most estimates it would take at least two more years for its completion. Why so much hurry then? There’s a general election this year. By all predictions, RSS-BJP is going to sweep that election. Temple inauguration and these foot soldiers going door-to-door is merely to ensure it.

There have been many instances of people close to RSS-BJP profiting from temple construction. For one such example, read this:

It’s a prime property of 890 sq meters, a piece of land where the grand Ram temple complex will soon come up. Until February this year, it belonged to a mahant, Devendra Prasadacharya. On February 20, one Deep Narayan bought the land — gata number 135 — from the mahant for Rs 20 lakh.

Narayan is the nephew of Rishikesh Upadhyaya, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader who is the mayor of Ayodhya. Land records accessed by Newslaundry show that three months later, on May 11, Narayan sold the property to the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust, set up by the Narendra Modi government to oversee the temple’s construction, for Rs 2.5 crore.   — Ayodhya: Whose Land Is It Anyway?

Forget questioning people in power over this loot, none in big media even bothered to report on this. I would be surprised if you wondered why.

I would not mention people, mostly poor, whose houses were demolished to make space for a grand home to lord Ram. By now I have completely understood how there is no value to a poor man’s life and livelihood. For instance, the government of Madhya Pradesh demolished the house of a Muslim person for spitting on a Hindu religious procession. He was jailed too. But in court it was found that no such incident had taken place. Police had made two people (police’s “witnesses” ) sign on blank papers. They denied seeing any such spitting incident in court. But did any of us ask what of that poor man’s demolished house now? No. Again, the media didn’t see it worth covering. It would puncture the popular narrative now, won’t it?

The domed structure was a 464-year-old mosque believed to have been constructed by or at the instruction of the Mughal emperor Babur. Babri Masjid, the lone structure of significance to Muslims in the area, stood surrounded by holy buildings built by Hindus later — Manas Bhawan, Sita Rasoi and Ram Katha Kunj Sagar. The mosque had existed for centuries and Muslims offered namaz there. Soon after independence, in December 1949, Hindus discreetly installed an idol of the deity Ram Lalla under the central dome, persisting with their claim that the plot on which Babri Masjid stood was the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama.

The conundrum had begun. Who should get the land title, Hindus or Muslims? The case travelled for years through the judicial labyrinth until finally, on November 9 this year, the Supreme Court gave away the title to Hindus.

It took the five judges who decided the case to travel back in time to 300 BC to explain why the land “probably” belonged to Hindus. The court categorically said towards the beginning of its 1,045-page judgement: “The court does not decide title on the basis of faith or belief but on the basis of evidence…The law must stand apart from political contestations over history, ideology and religion.’’ Yet, it ended up doing just that. It went on to rule that Hindus had a stronger claim to the title because of their belief.  — Ayodhya verdict: A conundrum of fact, fiction and faith

The idol of Ram was placed inside the mosque in 1949 — which VHP and Sangh claimed had miraculously appeared that night; but it is not this idol that the new temple will have. The Temple trust had arranged a fashion show of probable idols and chose one from the lot (Voting on Lord Ram Lalla’s idol today, temple trust to select best among three designs). Turns out, the new temple trust does not believe in miracles. Some scientific temperament there. Good for them.

Away from all this noise, I keep wondering, what if there was no mosque in Ayodhya, how would they then choose Ram’s place of birth? Before the British started spreading the rumour of the mosque being that place, so many temples to Ram in Ayodhya claimed that theirs was the spot at which their lord was born. In this context, it is a good time to rewind and remember how Hinduism as a religion was born under British rule as a reaction to Islam. What we today refer to as Hinduism was historically called or known as Brahmanvaad/Brahmanism/vedic-brahmanism etc. No one identified as Hindu before the British started holding provincial elections or census. How do you for instance digest the fact that the Vedas, the books that Hindus use to bolster their claim to state how old their religion is, does not mention Ram or for that matter any god that is worshiped today?

While temples are highly regarded today in Hinduism, our own old religious books disrespect them and write of them in poor light. Vishnu Smriti for instance “says that Vedic recitation should not be carried out ‘in a temple, in a cemetery, at a crossroads, or on a road.’ Placing a temple next to a cemetery is telling. Ritual specialists associated with temples were called devalaka. They were despised by the authors of Dharmashastras. The devalaka is listed among those who should not be invited to an ancestral offering (shraddha), Manu listing them between physicians and butchers.”

From my own limited reading, I have understood this much: Before Aryans migrated to what we today refer to as India, there were already people here. Harappans for one example. And they had their own beliefs and gods (don’t know how they viewed them and what they called them). For instance, Nataraja (who we today view as a form of Shiva) is imported from Harappans. Vedas were written by Aryans. These were the books that informed us about Brahman and their importance. Basically, those who wrote these books were Brahmans and they were superior in all kinds, had all rights and could not receive any punishment as per these books. They were, as per these books, mediators between god and people. Which god? The ones mentioned in the books they had written. They tried to enrol indigenous people into their religion but could not find great success. Another point to note here is how all these Vedic rituals involved large-scale offerings to gods which were impossible for common folk to undertake. All rituals required Brahman's help in invoking gods. These gods could not be prayed to on your own like we are familiar today. Side note: Vedas and early books mention meat eating including beef. In fact, brahmans themselves were extreme beef eaters. I’m not saying it, Ambedkar did. He wrote a detailed paper on this bit of history using Vedas and other scriptures. So in essence, it is not even Ambedkar saying Hindus were beef-eaters but Hindu books themselves. But then the question arises, why did we abandon beef-eating? The answer in all likelihood lies in Buddhism. There was a time when Buddhism and Jainism spread far and wide in India. People started enrolling in hordes. Many kingdoms in the north adopted Buddhism and in the south, they embraced Jainism. This left Brahmans staring at an existential crisis. Their whole thesis relied on them being superior to others in the caste pyramid but what would happen when no one remained under the bottom part of the pyramid? And so began the writing of Puranas and the invention of the very many gods. While some were invented from thin air, many were local gods prayed to by non-aryan locals who were given Vedic makeovers. And so gradually vedic gods whom local people refused to adopt were abandoned in favor of Puranic gods. It is these gods that we continue to pray today. People hated large rituals and yagnyaas where mass slaughter of animals used to take place and in reaction were flocking to Buddhism. To counter this, it seems Brahmans themselves abandoned eating beef. And went a step further by creating stories of bovine’s divinity. What was once the food of Brahman was now converted into a divine entity. It was a method employed to survive. And temples which were once decried bad were now embraced wholeheartedly because by now Buddhists had started to build large structures of their own.

This is the only explanation that answers why Hindus have so many gods, how two people who pray to two separate gods and who on varied occasions are even unaware of each other's gods could still claim to be part of a single religious entity.

This is also why caste is always defended in myriad ways since it is at the heart of the Hindu religion’s existence. Only for the sake of caste was this religion created or put more sordidly, to protect the superior position of Brahmans or upper caste over everyone else.

***

The four shankaracharyas have said that they will not attend the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22.

The shankaracharyas head the four Hindu mathas (monasteries) — in Dwarka (Gujarat), Joshimath (Uttarakhand), Puri (Odisha), and Sringeri (Karnataka) — that are believed to have been founded by the eighth-century religious scholar and philosopher Adi Shankara.

(Adi Shankara is one of the most important figures in Hinduism)

‘Can’t go against our Dharma Shastra’: Shankaracharyas to not attend Ram temple inauguration — ‘We cannot remain silent now and must say that it is a bad idea to inaugurate an incomplete temple and install the idol of the god there’

“The temple belongs to the Ramanand sect, and not to the Sanyasis, not to Shaiva or Shakta.” —  Champat Rai, general secretary of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust

So does Ram belong to Hinduism? Does Shankaracharyas belong to Hinduism? Is the answer to both of these questions the same? Then, what is Champat Rai saying above? Why is he hinting that this new temple does not belong to all Hindus? If he is out-of-line (that seems to be the only argument which could keep both Ram and Shankaracharya in Hinduism) then why have Hindus not been outraged, why have they not asked for Champat Rai’s removal? It’s not like Hindus are a tolerant lot — that’s not the image Modi-years have presented. Didn’t the same lot that took down Babri Masjid murder the original pujari of Ramjanmbhoomi Temple who destroyed VHP, RSS, and Advani’s arguments and condemned the Rath Yatra which killed thousands?

Let me repeat myself. It has now become impossible to project Hindus as peaceful lot. Or Hinduism as the religion of peace, harmony or love. Modi years have ensured that much. Modi years have done to Hinduism what ISIS/Taliban did to Islam. Mind you, Muslims could wash off taints of Taliban/ISIS from them but how will Hindus wash off RSS and Modi who are defended and bolstered by ordinary masses day in and day out. Unlike Taliban, RSS-BJP-Modi are not fringes. They are as mainstream as anything could be. Voted twice. The first vote was despite Gujarat 2002 and Babri Masjid demolition or because of these very facts. And so this is our reality now. We have to live with it. There is no running away from this taint anymore.

***

If you have reached here, do consider reading the below piece.

Shining example: What Golden Temple can teach Hindutva warriors using Ayodhya to whip up hatred: The shrine in Amritsar offers a lesson in how opposing narratives can coexist in harmony.

#Politics #Religion #Hinduism #NarendraModi #India

You have to read stories from Kashmir. We are every day sold this lie by our media and govt that Kashmir is peaceful, its people are happy but not once do we let them speak on camera and voice their opinions. We recently snatched their statehood from them, we divided their state into three parts, we jailed their political leaders and their journalists for no particular crime of theirs. We jailed them simply on the assumption that they might commit crimes. This was imperialism, the kind we fought against when the British were the imperialist forces. And I say we because we voted this govt to power, it's we who find exalted meaning in a piece of cloth, more meaning than lives of thousands of humans we are going to affect, we find collective meaning in a piece of land than people living on it for generations, even long before this piece of land got its present name and form.

We have never let these people speak out and inform us of what they want. Each time they sneak somehow and find a way to speak out, we rush with our pellet guns, army tanks, gunmen and barbed wires to silence them. Then our media overwhelms us with boys throwing stones. But they don't show who they are throwing stones at. It is at gunmen who they see as aliens on their lands. Would you not object to gunmen if they were to invite themselves into your house and order their wills on you? Occasionally, also violate the bodies of people you know and love? Or make them disappear. I guess you will object to these excesses and violence. I guess you will want no such gunmen in your house. I will then call you a separatist because you're not playing along with my whims. That's what we are doing with Kashmiris. We think we are cultured, more sophisticated and they are savages who need to be cultured just like the British did with their colonies. But the truth of the matter is, Kashmiris are better than us. They fare better on most human indexes, even better than the national average and our most well to do states (or thought to be well to do's). Jammu and Kashmir ranked third out of 22 States in terms of life expectancy. Kerala is at the top and UP at the bottom. It is eighth in terms of poverty rate, 10th in terms of infant mortality rate. The Human Development Index is a collective index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators. Jammu and Kashmir’s Human Development Index stands at 0.68, higher than even States like Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Indians are sold this lie that Kashmir is so bad and underdeveloped that its people need saving by New Delhi which is pure deceit to morph and cover the colonist thought and Hindu Nationalist bigotry. Moreover, if Indians looked at Kashmir and probably learnt few things, and emulated them in their states, maybe their lives will turn better.

Some history from New York Times

At the time of the partition, the British agreed to divide their former colony into two countries: Pakistan, with a Muslim majority, and India, with a Hindu majority. Both nations covet Kashmir, which is Muslim majority, and occupy portions of it with military forces. For decades, an uneasy stalemate has prevailed, broken by occasional military incursions, terrorist attacks and police crackdowns. But on Monday, the Indian government decided to permanently incorporate the territory it controls into the rest of India. The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked Article 370 of the Indian constitution, a 70-year-old provision that had given autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the Hindu-majority area of Jammu and the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. The government also introduced a bill to strip the region of statehood and divide it into two parts, both under direct control of the central government. Article 370 was added to the Indian constitution shortly after the partition of British India to give autonomy to the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Article 370 says that it can only be abrogated with the consent of the legislative body that drafted the state constitution. That body dissolved itself in 1957, and India's Supreme Court ruled last year that Article 370 is therefore a permanent part of the constitution.

Meaning, Indian government not just walked over a constitutional promise but also went against the wisdom of the highest court of the land. How is that not imperialistic?

Reuters image

Sedition cases were filed against most of our freedom fighters by the then govt of Great Britain since our freedom fighters wanted to overthrow the empire's hold over the subcontinent. All of them were separatists in their own right since they wanted to cut and declare themselves independent from the British crown. They were all dissenters who did not agree with the version of state and boundary of what was then the British empire. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who died on September 1st, was our separatist leader. He was Kashmir's tallest pro-freedom leader. He did not agree with New Delhi's version of the truth. He did not believe in our idea of a nation. And he dissented. For many years, he even participated in our democracy. He was elected as an MLA for three terms by Kashmiris which means there were enough Indian citizens who believed in his version of the truth. SAS Geelani ‘was elected again in the 1987 assembly election in Kashmir, which the Indian government was accused of rigging and which triggered an armed militancy in the region. As the militancy grew, Geelani resigned his seat, in 1989. He became opposed to any participation in Indian democracy, believing it to be a sham—a stand he maintained until his death.’ Geelani was 18 when the partition took place. In the early days of the republic, he was an admirer of the secular Indian republic. His views changed drastically over the years to writing 'India Go Back' on his wall in recent years. It isn't just Geelani who revolted against New Delhi's version, it is so many Indian citizens who stood by him that disagreed with the ways and beliefs of New Delhi. He was right or wrong, we can have our opinions but in the end, it was his version of the truth and he fought as long as he lived for his truth, and so many Kashmiris rallied behind him. And what did he desire? Geelani all his life advocated for the Kashmiri peoples’ right to self-determination; his personal choice being Pakistan in whose flag his body was wrapped as per his last wishes. “My wish would be to merge with Pakistan but if people Kashmir choose Independent Kashmir, I would be happy. But if people choose India, I would prefer to leave Kashmir,” Shahid Tantray wrote in Caravan. SAS Geelani snubbed leaders of both nations when it came to his stance for Kashmiri self-determination. He never compromised on that. He did not once take arms but for more than a decade now, we kept him confined to his house, we converted his house into a prison, we confined him to sparse movements and interactions using arms, army tanks, gunmen and barbed wires. On the night of his death, 'seven hundred personnel had been deployed to only 500 square meters in Hyderpora, around Geelani’s home.' His relatives weren't allowed to his house, to see him one last time, to pay their respects, journalists were not allowed to cover the sham that was his forced burial by New Delhi's gunmen. These relatives and journalists did not have guns on them, they were unarmed in contrast to the gunmen on New Delhi's payroll. “Meanwhile, angered at having been kept from Geelani’s funeral and with the imposed restrictions, protestors gathered in various areas in the city, such as in downtown Srinagar in the Nawa Bazaar area in old Srinagar. Some pelted stones. The security forces fired teargas shells and pellet guns at the protesting civilians. On the evening of 3 September, a teenager sustained pellet injuries across his face and body after security forces opened fire at protestors in downtown Srinagar.” Stones against teargas and pellet guns. And why are they picking stones? After what? Who is making them pick stones? What sort of desperation and frustration must it be that they pick stones knowing fully well that they are picking stones against a group of men with arms, arms they know they will fire, men with pellet guns they know have blinded their people in the past, guns that might now blind and mutilate them? Just pause and think.

A little after midnight on the intervening night of 1 and 2 September, security forces gathered locals at a graveyard in Hyderpora, a few minutes from Geelani’s home, to dig a grave for him. Geelani’s son Naseem said that the police forcefully buried Geelani here, against his final wishes. He said the police broke down the door of Geelani’s home and forced the family to hand over the body. The police later denied forcibly burying him. Image and caption courtesy of Caravan Magazine

We were least interested in dialogue, talks and democratic means. When and where it mattered most, we abandoned democratic means for colonist muscle and firepower. Omar Abdullah, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and his father and former Union Minister Farooq Abdullah have consistently blamed Geelani for bloodshed and militancy in Kashmir, these two leaders have been voices of New Delhi in Jammu & Kashmir and yet recently when the time came, Indian govt even arrested those that supported New Delhi in thick and thin including these two leaders. This is true not just of Kashmir but also of Manipur and the north-east and red regions of India wherever people have disagreed with New Delhi's version of the truth, we have sent gunmen and modern firepower to deal with dissenters. No dialogue. Irom Sharmila was on fast for sixteen years. Did we engage with her? No. And what was she asking? For removal of gunmen from her homeland, removal of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 that applies to just the seven states and grants security forces the power to search properties without a warrant, and to arrest people, and to use deadly force if there is “reasonable suspicion” that a person is acting against the state. A similar law exists in J&K too. And when did she start protesting? After the 2 November 2000 Malom Massacre in which ten civilians were shot and killed while waiting at a bus stop by gunmen on New Delhi's payroll. The victims included Leisangbam Ibetombi, a 62-year-old woman, and 18-year-old Sinam Chandramani, a 1998 National Bravery Award winner. We just don't engage with dissenters. Look at how we are dealing with protesting farmers who are not even an hour's distance from Prime Minister's residence. Forget Prime Minister, not even his cabinet minister has gone and spoken with farmers so far. And they have been in Delhi since September last year. That is New Delhi's commitment to democracy and engagement with its citizens who disagree with its version of the truth. And most of us do not care because so far our beliefs have always been in sync with New Delhi. We dilly-dally sometimes and spank New Delhi with our comments but when it matters, we cover ourselves in the glorified piece of cloth called tricolour and start parroting the words that are certain to please the bosses in New Delhi.

Many misunderstand democracy as the government of all the people it governs, it isn't; democracy is a rule by the majority that derives its legitimacy and is tested on the basis of how it treats its minority. And that test, we are increasingly failing each passing day.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani being disallowed from moving out of his home in Srinagar. Photograph by Umer Asif from Kashmir Walla

Read More:

The night that Kashmir’s Syed Ali Shah Geelani died

Final moments of Geelani: a broken door, resisting family, and chaos

2010 profile of SAS Geelani – The Man Who Says No To New Delhi

#Kashmir #India #Independence #Death #loss #Freedom #NarendraModi #politics

I don’t know where to begin, how or even if I should begin on this at all, but here I’m.

It is 12:24 pm now. The date is 11 November 2020.

Only an hour or so ago I left for the market on my sister’s ladybird bicycle to fetch some fish and a packet of curd for mum. On my way, I noticed the cycle’s tires had less air in them so I stopped at the cycle-repair shop on my way and got both tires filled with air. Paid him and left for the market. On the way I thought I should get the curd first and then fetch fish so I decided to cycle past the fish-market to the curd shop. Between fish market and the shop lies police station and there were two cops opposite to the station with their masks on — I mention this because I have seen them mostly without their masks before — so this needed saying. So I knew that they were on guard for people without masks. And I was one of them. My mask was lying in the cycle basket as is always when I’m cycling. I don’t see any point of wearing a mask while riding a bicycle or while running alone by the beach or just when I’m by myself. But I always make sure I wear a mask when I'm before a shop-front, at market or at any crowded place. My friends no how paranoid I'm about this and they joke about it all the time when I frown about their carelessness. In case of cycling and running it isn’t just the bare-bone logic but also how it is dangerous to wear masks while performing breathing-heavy activities. It can in fact be fatal to wear masks while cycling or running. With such sound reasoning behind me, I calmed myself and kept cycling without bothering about the policeman ahead. It is no mystery by now what must have happened at this point because if it was anything otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this post.

The policeman asked me to stop. He must be in his forties. I noticed he was wearing his mask properly covering both his nose and mouth — another anomaly hard to miss. I stopped. He directed me to the police station. I tried to ask why but he insisted, rather curtly without listening to anything that I had to say, that I walk with my cycle to the station entrance. I sensed trouble but I was still confident that policemen will understand and honour my reasoning. I know, going by the track record of police from across the country that’s a fallacy but still, I wanted to believe otherwise.

A lady inspector was sitting on a chair with a receipt book on a table before her who asked me to pay the fine. I reasoned I was riding a bicycle and that I immediately wore the mask when I was stopped. I wasn’t let to talk any further. Another policeman came and shouted that I have to wear it all the time. I tried to tell him how it is advisable not to wear masks while exercising or cycling, and also that it could prove fatal. Again, before I could finish, the policeman who first directed me to the station entrance called me inside to meet the PSI (Police Superintendent). I followed. We stood outside his room whose door was open. He was on his phone.

Some background here.

I have been to this police station couple of times in past. For my passport verification, I have visited this station some four or so times owing to “sir is out on duty, come another time”. But on two such occasions they made me stay there because I was then studying computer science and could also type in Kannada — I helped them in typing few of their papers. And when sir did arrive, the inspector handling my passport verification papers told me how before being on duty here in Karwar, their sir was in Bhatkal and people would pay him so and so amount for their passport verification. I was in no hurry to get my passport and to make matters worse, was high on idealism so just told him, ‘sir this is Karwar and not Bhatkal, I won’t pay anything to anyone for carrying out their duty.’ I also told reminded him how passport office pays police by each application to carry out this paperwork. So they weren't doing anything out of courtesy rather it was their duty. He said my application might not move smoothly to which I said that’s fine. I can wait. Then the PSI asked us not to travel abroad, serve India and Indian interests — the whole brain drain speech. I received my passport anyway after few weeks. Against all the fears that he had created in my head, I faced no further delays or issues in receiving my passport. But I’m aware of a friend who faced a great number of hurdles to get his passport done because he refused to pay bribe to police officers (not at this station but a different one under Karnataka state itself).

Next, I was at this station over an RTI application I had filed with District Commissioner. I had first visited the police station requesting an FIR to be written against a neighbor for obscenity and nuisance. This individual’s brother was a retired police officer (different station but under Karnataka state). They refused to file an FIR so I filed an RTI query with district commissioner who directed it to the station asking why it wasn’t filed. They did act after this but let the individual off real quickly. Things continued as they were for us.

Then I visited twice recently and once before this very PSI. I have seen him surrounded by people wearing masks while himself wearing none.

So all in all, I’ve been to this place and I’ve stood outside this very door. Not that they will remember any of these instances or me for many like me visit police station on daily basis. And anyway, I’m too poor and unimportant to be remembered by the cops. PSI has already started shouting at me but I’m not able to make out what he’s trying to convey by this shouting. I try to explain him with a calm voice that, sir I was riding a bicycle and it’s pretty hard to cycle wearing a mask. He shouts me down. I tell him that he is raising his voice unnecessarily and that he shouldn’t do so because I haven’t done anything to be talked this way. At no time am I allowed to complete my sentences. Please note that howsoever many times I must have visited this police station, I still get tensed and frightened around police officers or any gunmen for that matter, just like millions of others. Should we be frightened around them? Heck, not. They exist to help and serve us. They exist to make our lives better and worth living but news after news after news they have proved just otherwise. And even in my personal experiences and those of my near ones, they have just acted like cops from the newspapers. They enjoy unchecked and unaccounted power, and act with utmost impunity. How many citizens are in jails today because police have filed cases against them without basis in facts or evidence? And then citizens have to fight it out in courts — none of it comes easy or cheap. Who has such resources at their disposal or time to invest? We know of people who have spent 23 or so years in jails only to be cleared by courts of all charges and pronounce them innocent. They spend their prime years in jail because police frames them. Why? Simply because they can and they easily get away with all this. The PSI reminds me this when I tell him that law doesn’t say I should wear a mask while riding a bicycle. He shouts again — are you teaching me law now? I can show you what law is and can do! And the inspector standing beside him asks me if I want to go to courts. PSI says I have to wear mask whenever I step out of the house. To this, I tell him he can get me a vehicle if he wants me to wear a mask even while on the move. He shouts me down. This shouting and me trying to open my mouth to reason out continues for a while. He asks me to pay the fine and just leave. Inspector takes me outside to the table. I note what the receipt reads. It doesn’t talk about the mask anywhere. The receipt is regarding smoking cigarettes and tobacco-related offences. I ask them I’ll pay the fine if I was given a receipt that said ‘fined for not wearing mask while riding bicycle’. The lady inspector shouts now. I want to ask them why are they all shouting for everything but I don’t. At this point, someone asks the policeman who first directed me to the police station to take my cycle. He goes to it and checks if I had locked it. I quickly run towards it and ask him not to take away my bicycle. The inspector hits my chin with his elbow when I touch my bicycle. I’m guessing this wasn’t intentional but only he would know that. At this point, another inspector, young and if I’m right, from siddhi community comes and takes me back near the table. He signals the lady inspector and she vacates her seat which he occupies now. He points me to the handwritten text on the receipt which reads “Karnataka epidemic disease ordinance-2020”. Lady inspector mentions something about googling and I tell her that the ordinance/act doesn’t mention anywhere about wearing masks while cycling. At this point I have seen a Muslim youth being pulled into the station, I assume, for not wearing mask as well. He probably said “kya hai ye faltugiri” (what is this nonsense) to which policeman was telling him that he’ll show him the faltugiri. I’m slowly realizing the danger and threat to my life. How wrong everything could go from here. I just want to leave this place. I want to agree to a crime under “cigarette and tobacco products (ban on advertisements, sale, distribution and production) Act of 2003” which I did not commit. For a fleeting second, I think of Jayaraj and Beniks from Tamilnadu — I’m aware of the saintly treatment I’m receiving in comparison to theirs, I think of many confessions that police retrieve from ‘criminals’ — the entire train of thoughts is unsettling. My legs have started to shake at this point. I don’t want them to see my trembling legs so I try to lean on the pillar but I’m frightened lest they do not like my leaning on a pillar before them. For the last time, I ask them to write on receipt — fined for riding a bicycle without a mask — which they, of course, reject and shout at me again. The young inspector is furious even. No one by their demeanour or language is reassuring or approachable. You don’t want yourself to be at this place. You don’t want to visit this place. This is like walking into a cave filled with hungry hyenas. And so I pay the fine and walk out with receipt. I’m frustrated, angry but also relaxed a bit. My legs are still shaking though. I search for my cycle which I find parked at a different location than where I had left it. I take it and ride away — with the mask on. I can’t breathe easily from inside but I can breathe still. This is better than standing inside that cave of hyenas. I collect the curd packets from a shop and cycle my way back to the market with the mask on but am still looking over from my shoulders. I’m checking if anyone from the station is still following me or if they’re looking at me. I see no one.

I’m surrounded by fisher-women and loads and loads of fish in the market. But I can no more sense myself being here. I’m just going from line to line without looking at the fishes. They’re shouting at me, asking me to buy from them. Different kind of shouting. Their body language is warm and assuring. I still cannot warm up to their calls. I buy something reluctantly because I have come to buy fish. This was the fish I told mum I won’t buy today because we have been having it for many days now. I just want to cycle away from the police station. I’m feared now walking to the parking lot outside the market, worried whether my cycle would still be there. I have seen videos of police from Delhi and UP smashing vehicles of the general public in vengeance. That cycle means so much to me. I’m relaxed to see it still standing where I had parked it.

In a far-away parallel universe if anyone thinks policemen meant well, that they were only doing their duty to safeguard people’s lives and was only trying to contain the spread of virus and such, let me break that castle of lies. Just some weeks ago, on the day of Dussehra, the same police station permitted a Dussehra procession that saw a crowd of more than a thousand in gathering and in procession, all in shoulder-to-shoulder vicinity. All these people were allowed to do so without masks, and I say allowed because there were twenty or so policemen including the PSI with the crowd marching a length of two kilometres. Oh yes, many policemen including the PSI weren’t wearing their mask themselves — sorry, some of them were wearing it on their necks, their faces and noses, unlike today, were exposed. On that day, temple committee members were shouting at anyone who took their phone out to record this glorious procession. You can guess as much who must have directed them to do so. Conspicuously, there was a policeman with a camera recording everyone and everything. He would climb the adjoining walls etc to better capture everyone. Not just this, the temple was open and in full action on nine days of Navratri with daily puja, auction and everything. All these events attracted crowds and a police constable would be present inside the temple while these things were happening. So no, this extraction of fines from common citizens isn’t to stop the spread of the virus. This is to drive fear into our heart, make us submissive to the state and authority, and of course to loot common men’s already meagre resources.

Justice in India is a cruel joke. People spend decades in jails only to be acquitted by courts later on but who can return them their life back? And what happens to policemen who file these false cases? Nothing. They just go on to their next victim. When the state machinery isn’t accountable for their crimes, how can one say the law is equal for all? A Kerala journalist gets arrested by UP police while on his way to report on Hathras incident, people go to Supreme Court on this matter but court tells them to go to lower court but the same court cancels its vacation time to hear Arnab Goswami’s bail plea. Goswami, of course, deserves bail, heck, everyone deserves bail until they are pronounced guilty by courts. Like Arnab Goswami’s lawyer Harish Salve said, the rule is Bail, not Jail. But sadly, tribal rights activists, human rights activists, those that stood against this govt, scores of Muslims and Dalits are spending years and years in jail without even going to trial. Our courts, even the Supreme court shows no urgency for their liberty and life. Father Stan Swamy requested for sipper and straw to drink water as he suffers from Parkinson’s and his hands shake; what did the court do? It gave him the next date. Would heavens had fallen if he was allowed to have a sipper to drink water from? (Harish Salve in defence of Goswami’s bail said in court — Will heavens fall if the man is released on ad interim bail?)

Law enforcement is depressingly bizarre today. Police can pick up a random individual from the street or college and charge him for terrorism or bomb blast and make him spend 23 years in jail. They aren’t accountable for their shoddy, and on most occasions, utterly criminal jobs. Law enforcement should not be this easy. Right now state enjoys the obscene amount of power to charge anyone with anything and run wild with it without a shred of accountability. This obscenity called law is captured beautifully in Cardinal Richelieu’s quote —“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” It shouldn’t be this way. “I actually think that law enforcement should be difficult,” Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signal and security expert said in an interview. He further added, “And I think it should actually be possible to break the law.” In a sound democracy, citizens should have more and more power over the state. But instead, we have the state accumulating more and more power over its citizens. And as that happens, we start to move away from democracy to autocracy. Each frivolous case by the state against its citizens is a brick in an under-construction castle to a despotic regime. The doom is arriving, it is on its way. And no, it isn’t arriving because I was taken to the police station for not wearing a mask while riding a bicycle but because many see no wrong in the police’s behaviour in these cases. And states derive their power from the silence of their citizens. We give them this power, this abundance of power to destroy and bulldoze our ant holes and lives.

Wear mask now, yes, even while riding bicycles and such. Else you will be shown what law is and what it can do.

This whole incident occurred at Chittakula Police station of Karwar, Karnataka Above cartoon is Suhail’s last cartoon posted to social media before Kashmir’s internet was shut down.

#politics #police #injustice #brutality #masks #coronavirus #pandemic #karnataka #India

Monsoons evaded Maharashtra in 1992. In a country where even today agriculture is largely dependent on rains, this naturally made people distraught then. In this helplessness, blankness, in this void came Maharashtra governor's appeal other rather a dictate. On a particular day at 11 am, people were to collectively pray. Authorities jumped in to enforce the governor's appeal. Directions were announced left, right and centre. And pray people did. Newspapers were awash with pictures of people praying for relief from imminent danger, ordinary people to district collectors to workers. Everyone obliged. If WhatsApp University existed then, I'm sure it's double degree holders would churn out theories of how collective prayer would kindle the kundalini and force gods of rain to bring showers upon them. And we will all be sharing these forwards because why not?!

Fast forward to 2020 and coronavirus. Modi came on national television, and like the big boss from that horrible show, gave task after task to his subjects and his subjects duly complied. First, they came into the balcony and beat their thalis at 11 am, then they came out to light days at 9 pm, all the while generating theories after theories of how these actions will beat corona black and blue. None of those has of course born fruit, they never were meant to be anyway. India stands with the top five worst affected countries as of today. 

In both cases, there were discussions about why this was wrong. But in 2020, nobody invoked the constitution or shouted superstition like it was done in 1992. Sadly, Narendra Dabholkar who spearheaded opposition against such a dictate by then governor is no more with us; he was murdered by right-wing for speaking against superstitions while on his morning walk. In 1992, the reason for drought was not the absence of rains alone. Maharashtra uses its water with zero planning and in extremely unscientific ways. Do I need to mention multiple sugar mills and water-guzzling sugarcane crop that's grown everywhere even today in Maharashtra? The disaster was not natural but man-made. So solutions were to be man-made too. But of course, praying at 11 am and thereby giving an impression of something was done was far easy and way convenient than exploring and implementing real solutions. 2020 is no different. Our government failed to prepare itself when it had examples of successful and failed countries to follow by. India was not the first country to be affected by a coronavirus. At every step of the way, we had countries which had faced worse and also those that recovered from it. We deliberately choose to look away and not learn. And when the time was up and the storm was at the door, the emperor suggested, for his subjects to turn to superstition. And we did. Not for a moment did we pause and asked why? Or how was this going to help in any way? We did not question the first and so we were given the next task. This sequence of events did not start with thali-banging though. The dice of subservience was thrown way back in 2016. Demonetisation was the pilot for many of these things. The way we embraced and defended demonetisation had signalled to the highest offices what kind of brains their subjects had.

One of the fundamental duties listed by the Indian Constitution includes the exhortation to cultivate a scientific temper. The Constitution upholds scientific temper as a guiding principle for society and the new education policy calls for the inculcation of scientific thinking. Was there any scientific or rational reasoning behind 11 am praying in 1992? Or now with thali and diya? You bet not. Then why does the state, people in government, who are all required to uphold scientific temper, discarded it and asked its citizens to embrace unscientific garbage? The answer isn't too hard if one used their rational brains. Because it is easier to ask citizens to pray, bang thalis or light diyas. What are the alternatives? In 1992, then the state was required to institute an expert committee to study water usage patterns, suggest changes and implement those changes. We have so many committee reports now. And successive govt bodies have failed to implement them. Of course, in Maharashtra, there is all-powerful sugar-mills lobby and dealing with it requires an amount of political will. Then to get farmers on-board, make them stop what they are growing and help them switch to different crops requires thorough planning and grit as well. But those are the required solutions. No amount of praying, no god will help Maharashtra save itself from becoming a desert if it did not act on the ground. Less said about coronavirus and how thali-banging has helped to contain the virus the better. Our graph is only climbing up. There is no flattening of the curve happening soon except if we start fudging the data which we have already started doing here and there.

Governments won't change by themselves. It is easy for them to control a population that is god-fearing and superstitious. It is us that need to change and cultivate scientific temper and rationality. That is the only way which will enable us to question our governments, their nonsense, and thereby progress this strange democracy further. Right now, sadly, we are sliding into an abyss with no bottom.

P. S. Thali-banging and diya-lighting apart from being superstitious had political capital riding on them too. They were also aimed at strengthening the unquestioning relationship between the leader and the governed. #coronavirus #science #scientifictemper #atheism #superstition #rationality #india #narendramodi #politics #covid19 #constitution

There are 6,653 cases of COVID-19 in India as of 9 April 11:45 PM. And this is despite India testing the least. And our government is broadcasting these comparative low numbers as some sort of success. Think of this. If India had not tested anyone at all then India would have had zero SARS-CoV-2 positive cases. And the gullible public would have bought even that as the success of their God Modi. People are yet to realise or do not want to indulge in a thought that goes against great leader's image how the 'low number of recorded cases across the country might be a result of the government's strict guidelines on who can be tested.' The number of cases in India right now is dreary low compared to the world at large but even these numbers are not being managed respectfully. Doctors in India are facing a shortage of PPEs so much so that according to a Reuters report, PPE shortages are forcing some doctors to use raincoats and motorbike helmets. If doctors are facing this, it is not hard to think the kind of risk hospital staff, ambulance drivers and others in the health sector are up against. Least said about the number of beds and doctor to people ratio the better.

China alerted the world of a new virus outbreak way back in December 2019. The first case of coronavirus was reported in India at the end of January 2020. Rahul Gandhi, yes that 'joker' and 'fool' alerted the government of India about the coronavirus threat on February 12. News channels and even Health Minister of India (himself a doctor by profession) made fun of Mr Gandhi and even threatened him.

According to the All India Drug Action Network, the need for coveralls, for instance, could rise to 500,000 per day. “Indian manufacturers were urging the government to stock up materials since early February, and to impose anti-profiteering measures. Yet by the time an order was received, the price of the components required to make ply masks had gone up “from 250 per kg to 3,000 per kg,” Sanjiiiv Relhan, the chairman of the Preventive Wear Manufacturer Association of India, told local media.

Somewhere late in February Prime Minister Narendra Modi arranged a huge Trump rally in a Gujarat stadium with packed crowds. Just before this, there were state elections in Delhi which despite all possible efforts by BJP's war machinery, including Modi and Amit Shah, BJP had to face a humiliating defeat. Among many of its candidates who lost was Kapil Mishra who later incited a mob (by threatening anti-CAA protesters with Delhi police in the background) leading to state-sponsored pogrom aided by Delhi police and of course, Prime Minister and Home Minister Amit Shah, who by not speaking a word for three days bought rioters their essential time to burn the capital.

As late as March 5, Health Minister of India Dr Harshvardhan was taking potshots at Rahul Gandhi saying Mr Gandhi “obviously 'knows' better than WHO which is saying there is no need to panic” and how “India DOES have a robust healthcare system which is being appreciated globally. Rahul Gandhi do you know what's happening around the world?” Globally, it was havoc. We by now had news from Italy, South Korea, Spain, and of course China. Everything pointed at danger. And yet we chose to look the other way. 

The first two weeks were devoted to toppling the Congress government in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and installing a BJP government in its place. On March 11 the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a pandemic. Two days later, on March 13, the health ministry said that corona “is not a health emergency” - Arundhati Roy

After all this, the Indian govt started to act on Coronavirus outbreak. But the way India dealt with the outbreak is different from how the rest of the world is fighting. Prime Minister at the time of writing this, addressed the nation thrice. Once to ask his flock of sheep (that is an entire citizenry which has left its brain in freezers) to bang their plates from balconies, next to announce a 21-day lockdown which was as sudden as demonetisation was leading to huge reverse migration of migrant labourers from metros to their villages. Some of them walked for days as there was no transport provided to them, unlike free airlines that brought NRIs from coronavirus affected countries into India. Then came the financial package which had as many holes as the number of wounds it tried to patch. And finally, Prime Minister again showed up to ask citizens to switch off their lights for 9 minutes at 9 pm and light candles and oil lamps which they dutifully did. Some even went on to light firecrackers causing fire-incidents which resulted in the burning of their houses, some arranged rallies with burning torches reminding people of American ultra-right. News channels on the night of 9-pm-9-minutes went absolute bonkers. We were told how collective lighting of lamps will kill the demon of coronavirus, how Modi is leading from the front and other wonderful things that will come from this exercise. What news channels haven't told them is, and Prime Minister knowingly forgets to address in his Kim-Jong style appearances is, by not testing enough we are only letting the virus spread more because, in absence of tests, people who are affected but not showing symptoms keep roaming around, meeting people and spreading infection, our doctors and hospital staff are catching virus too because they don't have adequate PPEs. There are already hospitals that themselves have become hotspots for viruses, some even have to close themselves because one of the doctor from hospital tested positive. Remember, we already have fewer hospitals. The only reason why we have fewer positives is that because we are testing less. If you only tested say, hundred people, you will at maximum get a hundred positives. So the comparison of US and Italy's lakhs of positives with Indias thousands is flawed. India is not fighting to contain the virus but fighting, rather briskly and at huge risk, to contain the numbers to save the image of its version of Kim-Jong-Un. We must understand, the virus does not care for any of this, it does not care how you stood in balconies clapping for your docs, it does not care you lit candles, it only cares how fast and efficiently it can spread, which is, its natural and evolutionary instinct.

India is not fighting to contain the virus but fighting, rather briskly and at huge risk, to contain the numbers to save the image of its version of Kim-Jong-Un. We must understand, the virus does not care for any of this, it does not care how you stood in balconies clapping for your docs, it does not care you lit candles, it only cares how fast and efficiently it can spread, which is, its natural and evolutionary instinct.

Prime Minister also hosted video conferences, one with state leaders - much required. And one with media bosses asking them to focus on positives and not indulge in the negatives. You must read the Caravan report to understand how they all followed this guideline. And then Mr Modi spoke with sportspersons. He is yet to speak with doctors, other medical professionals, scientists and other people who are fighting this pandemic from the front. We shall wait for that.

Many doctors, nurses and other medical staff who are at the forefront of the country's fight against the Covid-19 pandemic have reportedly contracted the virus. Health workers say lack of “proper” protective gear has exposed them to the perils of their profession and made them susceptible to the viral attack. - TOI

If that's what government has been doing, what are Indians busy at? 

Indians are known to abide by the word of their god leader, so as expected they came out other day and banged their plates. Next, they switched off their lights and lit candles/diyas for complete 9 minutes. Do these things get doctors and health workers what they need? Absolutely no. Then what do they do? They instil a sense of purpose into docile public who have been locked behind their doors. We all want to participate, we all like being useful, and in this exercise, when you are banging plate or lighting a candle, you know who has asked you to do it, you associate your action with Mr Modi - what does that do - it gives each one who's banging plates a feeling that Modi is working. When you look from your balcony and see people doing something in unison, when you open your TV and hear anchors say 'look what Modi has got people to do', you instantly connect. Add to it Modi's electric persona. We all like attention and Mr Modi's attention? What can be more orgasmic? Have you walked into a village and watched how they speak about Modi - it's like they have seen some kind of God. Watching Modi speak to them via these addresses to the nation is like watching Ramayana on Doordarshan in its heydays when streets used to all go empty. People are happy that they are following Modi's orders, they are so happy to be told to do something by their dear leader.

This is the second national gimmick, the first one was to bang pots and pans before the lockdown. This comes after the horrendous experience of lakhs of migrant labourers who were forced to walk back home, in the absence of food or wages in the cities. The images of the migrant workers resulted in a PR disaster for Narendra Modi, who has been busy using coronavirus crisis for his PR - such as unnecessarily setting up a fund called PM CARES when there was already a fund for people to contribute to. At 9pm on 5 April, when people light a lamp, Narendra Modi will be demonstrating that he's still the popular leader people have faith and trust in. After all, they are following his commands. This will help him overcome the damage to his image caused by the migrant labour fiasco. In short, this is a political show of strength. What it won't do, is that it won't tell us why the export of protective gear for doctors were allowed till as recently as 19 March, or why the government did nothing all of January and February to prepare for what was coming, by scaling up the resources for testing, isolation centres, ventilators and other medical infrastructure. – Shivam Vij

Contrast all this with Manmohan Singh who silently fought Swine flu (H1N1) influenza. 2009 outbreak of Swine flu, like COVID-19 now, was declared a pandemic by WHO. Soon after the outbreak of flu in the US and Mexico, the government of India started screening of people coming from affected countries at airports leading to the detection of first positive on 13th May at Hyderabad airport. In a year since that first detection, 1035 people lost their lives. There was lockdown in some areas too which was by and large detested then. The outbreak was contained successfully and silently. Manmohan Singh did not appear on our TV screens, the doctor didn't ask his citizens to bang plates or light candles. His lockdown did not result in a reverse migration of migrant population. Nobody remembers Dr Singh now for he did not assign his citizens daily tasks so they could remember Singh as someone who worked - his work was invisible from public eyes. He worked because that's what he was elected for, that's what Prime Ministers are supposed to do. There is no greatness in a Prime Minister fighting for his nation. That's the very job he has been voted to perform. There is nothing extraordinary in auto driver riding his auto, policeman doing policing, software developers coding, armymen patrolling the borders or Prime Minister fighting a pandemic - that is exactly what their work demands from them. If an auto driver refuses to ride his auto to a specific place, if a policeman refuses to register a FIR, if an army man ties a civilian onto his jeep and parades him on-road or a Prime Minister who pronounces decisions on TV without ample thought and preparations resulting into hazardous migration and collapse of the economy then that should concern us all for they are not supposed to do such things. That's against their job description. The banging of plates and clapping was copied from France and Italy where it was organic. Their leaders did not ask them to do all these activities. Their people did them on their own, by their own free will. They didn't bang plates thinking collective sound of it will somehow discourage the virus in its mission - they weren't driven by any such pseudoscience. They purely did so to appreciate the doctors who were passing by. We need to pay more attention to our actions. We are now ruled by decree. And I know words have meanings, to rule and to govern are two different things. Democracies are governed but India, the largest democracy, is no more governed. It is ruled, by decree.

What is sadder, sadder than our rulers and people full of unscientific nonsense, are those driven by hate. Across the world, the virus is bringing people closer to each other. Exes are texting their old partners, old friends are catching up on conference calls, all in all, the entire world seems to forget its differences and is helping each other. China has sent help to Italy, Cuba against which European powers for long had sanctions is sending its doctors and help to fight the virus. Not just people but even global powers have come together in fighting this pandemic. They understand how the virus does not understand national boundaries, how it does not care which god we pray to or if we visit a temple or mosque or church. But India, the largest democracy, so to call, is busy fighting multiple fights along with the virus that's fast-spreading.

Before the lockdown was in place, there were reports from multiple supermarkets in cities, of everyday people of mainland India calling everyday people of north-eastern-India as 'corona'. One of my friend from the US who was in Delhi was also called corona by some locals there. He is Vietnamese-American. If racism was not enough, we are now down to bigotry. There was a gathering in Delhi's Nizamuddin area by a Muslim group attended by some Muslim foreigners, some of them later tested positive. The event took place on March 13, long before Modi came on tv to announce the lockdown but Delhi govt had already issued an advisory against the gathering of people. As cases of infected started to rise across India and their links to those who attended the Delhi event started to surface, TV media lost its shit. The media that until then had difficulty reporting on an unfamiliar virus got its mojo back. They had finally got what they were good at broadcasting. An event at a Muslim place of worship, attended by men wearing skull caps and having a strong Muslim name which they all made sure they explained to their audience. They didn't just explain what happened but also portrayed as if Muslims had come together to spread the virus across length and breadth of India. To help the narrative, WhatsApp was full of old and out-of-context videos of Muslim men spreading the disease. There were men with white caps licking their spoons and utensils (to spread the virus), a fruit vendor licking his fruits. All this resulting in Hindus advising fellow Hindus to not talk and meet with Muslims, not to buy from Muslims, the same old demand of their social and economic boycott.

What happened at Nizamuddin should not have happened. Delhi Police has released a video claiming they warned organisers against organising such a gathering. They should not have gathered. But did they know they had someone infected among them? No. Would they have congregated knowing someone infected was about to participate as well? Absolutely no. Everyone loves their life. Everyone wants to live. Then why did they congregate despite there being enough talk about the virus and social distancing? Why did people, and by reports, around 40,000 continued to visit Tirupati-Tirumala shrine days after Nizamuddin gathering of March 13? People were flocking Shirdi too. Chief Minister of UP, Ajay Singh Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath visited Ram Lalla temple of Ayodhya in a group too. I'm sure Mr Bisht cares about his life and so do those who went to Tirupati. State ministers of Telangana participated in Ram Navami celebrations which were held after Nizamuddin gathering outrage on tv and social media. Did the ministers not know about the virus? Have they not heard about social distancing? They had. Did they care less about their life? Absolutely negative. Then why did all these people (and scores of others that I did not mention) venture out? What are we missing here?

When Kanika Kapoor episode had broken out, our tv channels ostracized her, there was a whole campaign to vilify her. She was called with worse epithets. None of us seems to understand and especially our media, that nobody, no one is interested or desiring to catch the virus. And those that get affected, whose tests reveal they are positive, even if they desire to spread it to others, they cannot do so for they are immediately sent into quarantine. Tests are only conducted if govt believes they need to be tested, and they only believe if they have suspicion and those that it suspects already spend a day or two before tests being done. They don't even get to visit their homes before moving into quarantine. People from Nizamuddin gathering who were tested positive, the primary contacts from who it spread, they entered India via our secure airports. Were they not checked? They were. We tested them for temperature. Those fancy machines which authorities hold onto your head like guns, the ones you’ve seen on news channels and those that WhatsApp University had made people believe are COVID-19 testing machines, sad to break it down to you, they are not. They are similar to our old thermometers. These people were allowed to leave the airport because they didn't have symptoms and our procedure says no-symptoms-no-corona-no-test. If we had kept everyone who came from affected countries in isolation or just anyone who came in was kept in 14 days isolation, then we wouldn't have Nizamuddin incident and if we were keeping those who travelled into India since at least February into mandatory govt monitored quarantine centres, much of the outbreak as it stands today would not exist. Right now, we are taking over hotels and turning them into isolation centres. Right now, we need so many isolation rooms. Then, we would have required less. But anyway, this is not to say people who gathered at Nizamuddin didn't do any wrong. They did. And so did those that gathered at a funeral in Morena.

A man in Madhya Pradesh's Morena district, who had a foreign-travel history, has tested positive for coronavirus — days after he organised a funeral feast for 1,500 people. Eleven of his family members have also tested positive for the deadly virus. The man, identified as Suresh, works as a waiter in Dubai. He came to Morena on March 17. The function took place on March 20. As many as 26,000 people have been put under quarantine. - WION news

Nizamuddin event occurred on March 13. Above one long after that. I don't see any difference between these two except that one is a Muslim event and another Hindu event. You know how media portrayed one event while another didn't even make it to tv news. What we also forget, and our news channels deliberately miss, is how Maharashtra govt and its police did not permit Tablighi Jamaat to hold a similar event in Mumbai. Delhi police and other authorities have a lot to answer too.

Manisha Pande and Meghnad doing a great job of TV Newsance

This still leaves out the primary question - Why were these people continuing to gather despite being warned? Everyone knows there exists a virus that originated somewhere in China and is infecting people across the world. Everyone also knows about celebrities and TV channels advising everyone to frequently wash their hands and also maintain social distance from people around. And yet, we have people placing theirs and others life in danger by carelessly loitering around like this. But again, why? Did Suresh want to spread the virus? He came from Dubai. Was he paid by some Sheikh in Dubai to spread the virus and destroy India? Damn no. They were all careless because they did not understand or were never made to understand what a virus outbreak means. How does a virus spread, what does this virus do, what is the difference between this virus and other viruses, how different is this flu caused by SARS-Cov-2 from other cases of flu? How does washing hands help? Why should we maintain social distancing? No one has cared to explain any of this. We are expecting people to blindly follow all these orders like any other government laws. We have empowered police to enforce these 'laws'. And they have gone on to beat people mercilessly not even sparing doctors going to their duties. We want to keep people safe not by informing them but by showing them fear. That is not how it works. People are treating lockdown like seatbelt signs. People in villages come out on the main road in the evening because that's when the police come for their rounds. They wait for the police to show up so they could run to into their homes. On some days when police don't show up, you can see the disappointment on their faces. Do you think these people don't watch tv? They do. They are not following because they still don't think it's necessary. Fifty years ago, people would not run to the doctor if someone was bitten by a snake but now they do. What has changed? Awareness. They now know treating snake bites with leaves from the forest is taking chance with life. Instead, Science and doctors have more proven medicines. We need to explain to the public what this virus is, how it started, how they are so many viruses around us, what is special about this virus and how washing hands and keeping distance from people help. Only and only then will we see voluntary action. We need people's support and cooperation, not their subservience. We have not lost our brains completely yet. Tomorrow, if Modi asked people to hold live electric wires in each hand because it definitely will kill the coronavirus, which sure it will, but they won't. We still have not given up on our thinking, not yet. There is still some thinking that we do. We just need to be mindful of our just-light-the-diya-what-worse-will-happen attitude. We need more and more of science and reasoning among us. More and more of science. Less and less of taking orders without questions.

Here's some reading list:

From Bats to Human Lungs, the Evolution of a Coronavirus

How Does the Coronavirus Behave Inside a Patient?

Show Me the Science - Why Wash Your Hands?

In case you also needed science behind hand-washing.

#India #coronavirus #covid19 #science #pandemic #news #politics #china #italy #NarendraModi

53 people have lost their lives in the Delhi riots. You have heard this already. But do you see the problem here? Riot? Was it really a riot? Is it a riot if the state machinery and police take sides; forget keeping silent while mobs went on a rampage but Delhi police took stones in their own hands and threw them at the other side, they directed and aided one side of the mob (as if there was another side anyway), they climbed and destroyed CCTV cameras. Yes, police did all this. It’s all on record. There are videos after videos that prove all this. How then can we call it a riot? It was a pogrom. As Rana Ayyub called, state-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom. Let’s call it what it was. Now that we have settled on the calling business, let’s get on to our language. The 53 dead bodies, actually in some cases, there were no bodies, only a limb which police would not give permission to even DNA test, had both Hindu and Muslim names. And because there were dead bodies from both the sides, we are told it was both-sided violence. Like a cricket match where you fix a date and then come prepared on the scheduled date to hit fours and sixes? An equal opportunity contest is how one person put it to me. But really? Then why are dead bodies so disproportionate? Is it because Hindu men are disproportionately stronger than Muslim men? If so, what is “Hindu Khatre mein hain” all about? A cleverly masterminded political strategy to make the majority feel threatened by the minority? Why only Muslim places of worship were torched and desecrated? Why only the Quran has been burnt and its pages are torn down? Why was it that only Hindu mob got to climb a pillar of a mosque and place a saffron flag (considered Hindu flag) on it? What problem did Muslim men have in climbing a pillar of a temple? Is it that their legs are weak, unlike Hindu men who could so easily climb atop the minaret of a mosque? Or is it that Muslims did not come prepared with their own flags? Did no one inform them that there’s going to be a match on a certain date? Are you getting what I’m saying? Actually, I don’t care what you get and what you don’t. I want to say it because what is being said on TV, on online by influential faces makes no sense. For weeks unless Coronavirus happened on tv, we were busy showing Tahir Hussain and Shahrukh, and family of Ankit who was killed in this pogrom, so much so that, it was feeling as if it was not Hindu men but Muslim men colluded with Delhi police and not slogans of “Jai Shri Ram” but “Allah Hu Akbar” that echoed in Delhi for three days. WhatsApp and social media were then flooded with pictures of Tahir Hussain’s terrace. In all this, nobody cared to question Delhi police on its disastrous flip-flop.

The Delhi Police on Tuesday confirmed that they had rescued suspended Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain from his home in North East Delhi on February 24, when the region was hit by violence due to communal clashes between supporters and opponents of the Citizenship Act. Additional Commissioner of Police Ajit Kumar Singla confirmed this to media personnel on Tuesday. “On February 24, around 11 pm to midnight, some people told us that a councillor is stuck and feeling insecure. He was then rescued,” Singla said. However, about an hour later, news agency ANI put out a clarification, citing Delhi Police officials, that Hussain “did not require rescuing” that night. “News of the councillor being stuck was received by police, upon investigation, it was found the councillor was safe in his house,” ANI cited unidentified officials as saying.

In hours, a man was turned from victim to perpetrator. We sure love swift justice, don’t we?

While videos of rioters and Delhi police were making rounds, a set of people were also urging everyone to maintain peace. Suspiciously though, they wanted people like Rana Ayyub to not speak and disturb the peace. She was on channels after channels (mostly international media as our media was too feared to give her airtime) calling out our use of words among other things. What is this request for peace anyway? We are told Prime Minister has tweeted and asked to maintain peace. What does that mean? While Delhi burnt for two days, the same Prime Minister was giggling, waving hands and bear-hugging Donald Trump. I know problems of whataboutery but why did he not tweet then? Did he not have the time? Or did he not wanted to? And even if he had tweeted, what difference would it have made? The people who comprised the mob, do you think they would have stopped? You and I might fall for Modi’s odd-and-even statesmanship but they know him rather too well. They know what he means when he says something and what he means not, they know exactly what he wants from them. We are fools not to see it through. It has been there before our eyes all this time. We have just been choosing to ignore it. We have been choosing to look the other way. We have forgotten Gujarat 2002, they have not. They know who Modi is. If the man indeed wanted peace, why did he not act on Anurag Thakur for his hate speech that resulted in a shooter who walked in front of Delhi police and shot a bullet at the anti-CAA crowd? If Prime Minister of India wanted peace and not riots and deaths, why did he not immediately sack and act against Kapil Mishra who threatened the peaceful protesters? Why was Delhi police standing behind him when he was giving this threat? Why did Prime Minister not act against his Home Minister under whom comes Delhi police? We are too feared to answer these questions. Some of us, especially TV channels, look at them, they won’t even dare to ask these questions. The answer is, he did not want to stop this. Mr Modi wanted this. Look at his politics. It is full of hate and spreading fear. How did you (or I) expect him to behave any differently? We created him. He is a product of our own making. We told ourselves what he was not. We told he was this progressive statesmanlike figure. Was he though? And where did that idea came from? It came from his PR exercise.

…the media should have been alert to the doublespeak of, and the division of labour in, Hindutva forces. A speech in the hinterland might demonise Muslims; one at a media summit in Delhi might focus on inclusive growth and democracy. A speech made by Modi is not binding on Adityanath, then a member of parliament from Gorakhpur and today the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, whose repugnantly communal comments in the Lok Sabha, just a few weeks after the speech, did not ruffle the prime minister’s feathers. Following 2002, Modi could not catch a break from the stigma of the anti-Muslim pogrom he had overseen as chief minister of Gujarat. Yet by April 2014, the academician Ashutosh Varshney was writing that “Anti-Muslim rhetoric has been missing in Modi’s campaign. Instead, he has concentrated on governance and development.” That simply was not true. Varshney must have missed Modi’s attempt to whip up communal passions with speeches about the “pink revolution,” a reference to cattle slaughter; missed Adityanath on the dais where a BJP man recommended exhuming Muslim women’s corpses in order to rape them; missed Amit Shah exhorting Jats to “take revenge” on Muslims in Muzaffarnagar, where the two communities had clashed violently in 2013. Modi’s smash-hit 2014 election campaign, led by advertising stars from Ogilvy & Mather and McCann Worldgroup, was so successful at this kind of erasure that Business Today ran a case study of it in June 2014. “Marketing gurus cite the examples of Cadbury, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola that battled problems relating to brand-taint,” the article said. “Cadbury had fought its way out of a controversy related to worms in its chocolates while the two beverages giants faced allegations of pesticides in their colas … Not so long so, the words that could have been used to describe Modi were authoritarian, megalomaniac and communal.” By the time of the election, the words imprinted in the public imagination were “strong” and “decisive.” Repeated cattle- and caste-related lynchings, beginning early in his first term, failed to evoke any comment from Modi. Since the mandate had vapourised his communal record and recast him as an economic messiah, many liberal commentators deflected blame to what they insisted were “fringe elements.” Meanwhile, the union minister Mahesh Sharma draped the coffin of a beef-related murder accused in the national flag, and his cabinet colleague Jayant Sinha met another set of Hindutva criminals with garlands. Modi eventually issued a late, half-hearted censure of cow vigilantes. He followed it up by appointing Adityanath — a communal leader with a private militia at his disposal, who faced scores of cases for things including rioting and attempt to murder — as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. It took wilful naïveté to say, as an India Today news anchor tweeted, “Give him a chance.” Few liberals disagree with the view that the BJP has enslaved and destroyed every institution, from the Reserve Bank of India to the Central Bureau of Investigation to the judiciary to the press to our universities. We have watched it coddle rioters who demand a film ban and marchers who support rapists, but crack down on Kashmiris. We have seen it call college kids “anti-nationals,” and put a target on dissenters’ backs. We have had five years of regressive anti-intellectualism, fake news and fudged data; of crony capitalism and poor economic management; of relentless chipping away at Gandhian and Nehruvian legacies; and of increasing Hindutva aggression. As recently as the 2019 campaign, Modi was making divisive remarks, flouting the Election Commission’s code of conduct and seeking votes in the name of the armed forces. On the one hand he whipped up fear about “terrorism,” on the other he gave a ticket to Pragya Thakur, who is an accused in the Malegaon bomb blast and a champion of Mohandas Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse. There is no discernible distance between the centre and the so-called fringe. It is nothing short of horrifying that Amit Shah is now the country’s home minister, responsible for maintaining domestic peace. Besides the fake encounters, Shah has been accused of using the state machinery to spy on a woman for Modi, in a scandal known as Snoopgate; he has called Muslim immigrants “termites”; and has referred to journalists and writers as “breaking India forces” and “the tukde tukde gang.” But on the website of the Observer Research Foundation, a Reliance-funded think tank, Sushant Sareen wrote: “The team comprising of Home Minister Amit Shah, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the NSA Ajit Doval is something of a security dream-team.” It is equally horrifying that Pragya Thakur sits in parliament, as does her fellow MP Pratap Sarangi, who was the Odisha convenor of the Bajrang Dal when the missionary Graham Staines and his children were burned alive, and who faces several serious criminal charges. The Indian Express, however, chose to fete him for his — wait for it — simple lifestyle. – Mitali Saran, “Worms in the Chocolate”

PRs can achieve wonders. One must read Noam Chomsky on how to manufacture consent. That’s another thing Modi has done. In his “We value hard work not Harvard” way, he and his minions have pushed India into anti-intellectualism. Science has got sidetracked, reading is no more fashionable. And why would it be? If more and more people read Arundhati Roy, Chomsky, Orwell or Snowden, less and less are their chances of supporting this government and RSS’s grand old Nazi project. If you, for instance, read Orwell’s Animal Farm, you would understand most of the games this government is playing with its citizens. If you read Roy’s My Seditious Heart, you’ll see through the maze of power and corporate greed that is sucking this nation and world at large. Nothing that Modi and his minions are doing is new and not that it is hidden from everyone. It is just that those who see through his plan are immediately branded anti-national and worse so you don’t read or listen to them. They want you to close your minds and you have without much of their efforts obliged. That is precisely why you believe and approve of Telangana police’s action on rape and murder of a 26-year-old veterinary doctor and refuse to entertain any divergent thought. You have closed the part of your brain that indulged in logic. They have simplified things for you. They tell you what is right and wrong, and you believe them. They tell you what to do and you act accordingly. Why else did you stand in demonetization queue without a question?

It is not just obeisance that we have normalised ourselves in but rape too. Ask anyone on the street if they support the rape of women. I’m certain everyone would say they do not, even the Modi supporters. But Mr Modi, their god, follows more than a dozen people on twitter who everyday tweet rape threats and abuses to women. You might say, he follows so many and might not be aware of these minions everyday tweeting hate. Probably yes, I mean yes, if he was any other person which he is not. He replies to tweets, he wishes people on birthdays and does crazy things on social media. In one RTI, it was even revealed that the two accounts are operated by Mr Modi personally. Oh wait, forget social media. These men, who tweet rape threats, they aren’t just normal people. Modi met these people in person. Some of them have pictures of Prime Minister shaking hands with them. Yes, the same prime minister who was busy not to be able to meet farmers from Tamilnadu who were in Delhi protesting for weeks met twitter trolls. You should read Swati Chaturvedi’s wonderful book on these trolls to understand how organized this trolling business is, how they are paid to abuse and give rape threats. Yes, the rape threats that land into mentions of popular female Indian voices are paid for by the ruling party of the largest democracy. We all know it and yet we support this party and the two men at the helm of its affairs. We despise rape or so we say and yet we support men who have institutionalized rape threats; in a way, on online at least, rape has been normalised, thanks to one party and its supporters. Yes, you might not like this, but you are part of this progress. You have helped this country develop to this stage. If we are discussing citizenship of millions of people today, of their future as citizens of this republic and not becoming a superpower, which was our dream just some years ago and honestly it didn’t felt impossible back then, it is all because of you dear supporter of this bigoted government.

Modi was first elected in May 2014. Do you remember your TV screens some months before that mammoth victory then? Do you remember Anna agitation that swept our imagination thanks to 24*7 coverage of it on our tv screens and mobile solidarity protests across the nation? It gave an impression that if there was one thing Indians despised a lot then that was corruption but is it though? We have seen Rafale scam (similar scam took down Rajiv Gandhi govt), Yes Bank is fresh in memory while PNB is forgotten by everyone except their depositors. There is Maharashtra scholarship scam, Adani, Essar, Reliance are accused of Rs 290 billion scam in one coal-related matter, Reliance Jio scectrum rigging case to name a few. TMC even released A to Z of NDA scams. And yet we think Modi is incorruptible. Even though his government has not acted on any of the scams by his own party and its partners, we don’t attach the word corrupt to Modi govt. Or even if we know they are, we don’t care, which makes one think that the crowds that despised corruption around 2014 were not really worried about corruption but rather were motivated to bring Modi and takedown Congress. It was a political gambit and not a fight to rid the nation of corruption. Let’s not say what it was not.

We have seen institution after institution failing us. RBI under Raghuram Rajan opposed demonetization making Modi government to not extend his tenure and instead have a new governor who agreed for the Tughlaqi act that destroyed Indian Economy as nothing else had in recent memory. It achieved none of the stated objectives, not one. Almost, the entire currency in the market came back. Now if secret objectives were dead bodies, destroyed rural economy, staggering profits for Paytm, etc., then they were achieved. Also, while many had difficulty exchanging their currency, Rs 3,118.51 crore was deposited into 11 Gujarat banks linked to Amit Shah, all within five days of demonic exercise. Now try to imagine what were you doing in those first five days after that fateful night when god Modi came onto TV screens. But you will still find his supporters counting demonetization as one of the successes of Modi government. Ask how and they will not stand for the dialogue.

Courts until a few years ago had a semblance of justice written over them. If not justice, they at least seemed rational and logical. You could expect how their judgements would go. After all, what’s justice if not logical and humane? Ayodhya Judgement proved just how wrong we were. And now, the same Chief Justice who gave a clean chit to Modi in Rafale without hearing, delivered absurd Ayodhya judgement that said Hindus did wrong by placing idols and desecrating mosque but hey, take the land and build the temple for which you destroyed the mosque, and of course who can forget his interventions with regards to Kashmir and horse-trading of MLAs/MPs, that same man has been gifted Rajya Sabha seat. Parliament and Courts should maintain distance from each other, have separation of concerns because it is court’s job to watch over parliament but former CJI wants to bring ‘coherence’, he wants to bring them closer, which is exactly how founding fathers wanted them not to function as. Police can’t make friendships with the criminals and say it wants to bring the two closer and have coherence — for what?

We have almost forgotten the murders of Kalburgi, Pansare, Dabholkar and Lankesh by right-wing fundamentalists. Their deaths have been successfully washed out from public memory. How was this achieved? And who does this achievement benefit? You know as much as myself how far investigations into their murders have reached. We have seen media houses being silenced, editors being sacked, reporters hounded for their reports and if that wasn’t enough, this government has also instituted a 200 member team to watch how media reports on Modi and Shah, and then they call you in case they don’t like your work. People are not realizing how damaging this is for the health of their democracy. If you are not informed of your government’s wrongdoing then you would think it is doing no wrong and government will continue to do what has become everyday slaughter of this republic which just years ago was dreaming about being a superpower, the world looked up to it in awe over the success of its democracy, and citizens hoped we were moving onto becoming a beacon of hope and something beautiful. What have we come to doing now? Thanks to channels like Zee News, majority Hindus now hate Muslims more than ever. That channel has shown doctored videos to demean individuals, to gather public opinion against a public university and help you-know-who. People still watch it. Why? Is it because whatever hate that channel peddles provides a mark of approval for your own inbuilt hate? Constantly manufactured lies and fake news serves the purpose of reassuring people again and again how the hate they harbour in them is justified. Just at the moment when you start to harbour doubt in the regime, they send you one more video or post that injects some more drug to keep you hating for some more time. The stock isn’t going empty any time soon. It is, after all, powered by Sensodyne, Polycab, Super Shakti, Amity University, Century Ply, Maruti Suzuki, Wonder Cement and Somany tiles. As long as you watch the tv, support these brands and they support these channels, the hate industry will continue to flourish.

This can go on and on. There is no end to things that we have normalised to support Modi and his men. There is no end to things that we say we have issues with and yet despite this government and its supporters doing exactly that, we continue to support them. This government and party that you support has men who have been accused of rape and also murder of victim’s relatives, people who have looted public money, those who garlanded men that lynched, ministers who attended rallies in support of the rapists, those that follow trolls that give rape threats (not just Modi but even his ministers follow these trolls), Ajay Singh Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath not only gave hate speech but when a case was filed against him, he gave orders to withdraw case against himself, Modi and his partner from Gujarat, Home Minister Shah revel in hate speech. How can one say he is against rape, murders, hate speech, bigotry, lawlessness when they support Modi and his men? It cannot be both ways. You either support rape or you don’t.

Forget Rs. 3000 crore wasted on a statue when that could have been spent on hospitals and education institutes and tribals that have to give up their land for the same project, Modi government has decided to launch a Rs 12,000-crore project to improve road connectivity to the four revered Hindu pilgrimage sites in Uttarakhand. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the construction of the Char Dham Mahamarg on December 27, 2016, as a tribute to those who died in the 2013 Kedarnath disaster. As of January 2019, as many as 25,300 trees have been cut and 373 hectares of forestland diverted for Char Dham Mahamarg. This does not involve trees lost in landslides caused due to road widening exercise which have become common in fragile hilly tracks as this exercise progresses. This also involves huge human cost but I will ignore that since that’s what I have learnt from demonetization. Development of a nation requires dead bodies. I get it. Now if you say you care about the environment and people’s livelihoods and yet support this government, who are you trying to fool here?

The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau has carefully left out data on mob lynchings. Data hiding and number fudging have become a national sport now. This helps in creating chaos with unofficial data release and leaks which are later discarded by one set of panellists on tv creating confusion in minds of citizens over what to believe and what not to. That is how we have forgotten lynching cases which according to The Quint since 2015 stands at 115 deaths now. The thing with numbers is, they no more excite us. Numbers wipe out the faces and families of the dead, their life, livelihood and sorrows. And our inhumane, dastardly involvement in these deaths. Here, let Arundhati Roy describe you one such murder which, one must remember, happened in daylight, was captured on camera and had voyeur crowd looking at the scene of a crime. It stood there, in awe and jubilation.

The lynching of Tabrez Ansari illustrates just how broken the ship is, and how deep the rot. Lynching is a public performance of ritualised murder, in which a man or woman is killed to remind their community that it lives at the mercy of the mob. And that the police, the law, the government, as well as the good people in their homes, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, who go to work and take care of their families, are friends of the mob. Tabrez was lynched this June. He was an orphan, raised by his uncles in the state of Jharkhand. As a teenager, he went away to the city of Pune, where he found a job as a welder. When he turned 22, he returned home to get married. Soon after his wedding to eighteen-year-old Shahista, Tabrez was caught by a mob, tied to a lamppost, beaten for hours and forced to chant the new Hindu war cry, “Jai Shri Ram!”—Victory to Lord Ram! The police eventually took Tabrez into custody, but refused to allow his distraught family and young bride to take him to the hospital. Instead they accused him of being a thief, and produced him before a magistrate, who sent him back to custody. He died four days later.

How did we let all this pass? When did we get ourselves normalised with such open hate and daylight murders? And then we shout Pakistan is killing Hindus? Which Hindus and where? We are speculating Pakistan is killing Hindus while we are here, openly killing Muslims — on the street and in our trains. We are not even hiding their dead bodies. Some of these bigoted murders and violence was shot on camera for public viewing. Did that agitate us? No. In fact, we reelected the same people who sat on these murders. People, who did not act on the perpetrators. How should anyone believe that Indians are peaceful or that Indians abhor killings? On the contrary, it appears we very much enjoy public floggings. What did we do about Dalit floggings from Una? Nothing. We successfully forgot. We succeeded in erasing these violent images from public memory. That is us. The sick, demented, contagious disease of the human race.

It is important how and what information is served to us. For instance, the ‘Howdy Modi’ event in America was attended by fifty thousand people including President Trump but what our news channels did not show were thousands of people protesting outside the stadium. In absence of such information you tend to think there is no opposition to Mr Modi and it also makes you hide your own doubt or inconvenience with the regime. We are herd animals. Many of us don’t express ourselves when we see or in this case perceive (thanks to our media) how everyone else is thinking otherwise.

Last five years have made us go through tragedy after tragedy. We have seen and done unimaginable things. For instance, do you think we would have stood in line without questions if Manmohan Singh had announced demonetization? I’m sure the doctor wouldn’t have done such a horrible thing but in case he had, would we stand in line like sheep and pay our obeisance? Were people not on streets when gas prices were above Rs. 400 and Rupee was at 64 per dollar? A gas cylinder today costs well above Rs. 800 and dollar to rupee is well above 75. Economically and socially, we are looking only downwards and yet this government enjoys huge support. How does one explain that except saying that Modi was elected for his divisive agenda? This government was elected to pursue the Nazi project of RSS. There is no other explanation. So let’s be clear of who we are and who we are supporting and what our unquestioned support means. Let’s not tell ourselves otherwise. Stop lying and deceiving others and yourself. We are infected. As Arundhati Roy said, this is our version of the coronavirus. We are sick.

Coronavirus can be kept at a distance by drinking cow piss (gaumutra for the initiated) but try it at your own risk for one BJP worker who had it at a gaumutra drinking party got sick and needed to be admitted into a hospital. News channels are saying, good news, Coronavirus infected have been cured in Jaipur hospital — Modi’s India has shown the world the way. But wait, didn’t first cure case from India come from Kerala? Also, as of 21 March, 91,133 have been recovered from COVID-19 worldwide. Home Minister Shah in Parliament says Delhi riots were stopped in 36 hours so let’s thank Delhi police. That is, of course, a lie, for gunshots and fire were still seen after 36 hours. What to do? Home Minister is allowed to lie in Parliament all the while our state symbol, Ashoka emblem continues to have Satyamev Jayate (Truth Alone Triumphs) engraved under it. Also, the Delhi police participated in the pogrom (oops! Riots). They, if wanted, could have stopped the riots before they had even begun. They simply did not want them to stop. It’s like appreciating a murderer, who killed eleven people, for stopping his count at eleven and not moving to the twelfth body. “I stopped my gun from shooting the twelfth man” Slow claps

We are indeed sick. Our language, our hearts, our minds, our politics, the way we perceive things, the way we look at people, the way we think, the things we read, the things that we watch, our sources of information, people who are to safeguard us, our avenues to seek justice, everything and everyone has been infected. We have become sick. And unless we see ourselves, we acknowledge the virus residing in us, the thing that has made a home in our body-politic, we won’t get out of this puddle. We have run too far for patches and band-aids to work now. Just look at our conversations, our language and our attitude; Nothing that we do, the way we talk and the way we listen right now is inspiring any confidence. We might find momentary solace through patches but the real cure will need far greater strength. And nothing that we are doing right now suggests we are ready for it.

#Politics #Hindu #Islam #Hate #fakenews #AmitShah #NarendraModi #BJP #Delhi #Pogrom #Violence #India

53 people have lost their lives in the Delhi riots. You have heard this already. But do you see the problem here? Riot? Was it really a riot? Is it a riot if the state machinery and police take sides; forget keeping silent while mobs went on a rampage but Delhi police took stones in their own hands and threw them at the other side, they directed and aided one side of the mob (as if there was another side anyway), they climbed and destroyed CCTV cameras. Yes, police did all this. It’s all on record. There are videos after videos that prove all this. How then can we call it a riot? It was a pogrom. As Rana Ayyub called, state-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom. Let’s call it what it was. Now that we have settled on the calling business, let’s get on to our language. The 53 dead bodies, actually in some cases, there were no bodies, only a limb which police would not give permission to even DNA test, had both Hindu and Muslim names. And because there were dead bodies from both the sides, we are told it was both-sided violence. Like a cricket match where you fix a date and then come prepared on the scheduled date to hit fours and sixes? An equal opportunity contest is how one person put it to me. But really? Then why are dead bodies so disproportionate? Is it because Hindu men are disproportionately stronger than Muslim men? If so, what is “Hindu Khatre mein hain” all about? A cleverly masterminded political strategy to make the majority feel threatened by the minority? Why only Muslim places of worship were torched and desecrated? Why only the Quran has been burnt and its pages are torn down? Why was it that only Hindu mob got to climb a pillar of a mosque and place a saffron flag (considered Hindu flag) on it? What problem did Muslim men have in climbing a pillar of a temple? Is it that their legs are weak, unlike Hindu men who could so easily climb atop the minaret of a mosque? Or is it that Muslims did not come prepared with their own flags? Did no one inform them that there’s going to be a match on a certain date? Are you getting what I’m saying? Actually, I don’t care what you get and what you don’t. I want to say it because what is being said on TV, on online by influential faces makes no sense. For weeks unless Coronavirus happened on tv, we were busy showing Tahir Hussain and Shahrukh, and family of Ankit who was killed in this pogrom, so much so that, it was feeling as if it was not Hindu men but Muslim men colluded with Delhi police and not slogans of “Jai Shri Ram” but “Allah Hu Akbar” that echoed in Delhi for three days. WhatsApp and social media were then flooded with pictures of Tahir Hussain’s terrace. In all this, nobody cared to question Delhi police on its disastrous flip-flop.

The Delhi Police on Tuesday confirmed that they had rescued suspended Aam Aadmi Party councillor Tahir Hussain from his home in North East Delhi on February 24, when the region was hit by violence due to communal clashes between supporters and opponents of the Citizenship Act. Additional Commissioner of Police Ajit Kumar Singla confirmed this to media personnel on Tuesday. “On February 24, around 11 pm to midnight, some people told us that a councillor is stuck and feeling insecure. He was then rescued,” Singla said. However, about an hour later, news agency ANI put out a clarification, citing Delhi Police officials, that Hussain “did not require rescuing” that night. “News of the councillor being stuck was received by police, upon investigation, it was found the councillor was safe in his house,” ANI cited unidentified officials as saying.

In hours, a man was turned from victim to perpetrator. We sure love swift justice, don’t we?

While videos of rioters and Delhi police were making rounds, a set of people were also urging everyone to maintain peace. Suspiciously though, they wanted people like Rana Ayyub to not speak and disturb the peace. She was on channels after channels (mostly international media as our media was too feared to give her airtime) calling out our use of words among other things. What is this request for peace anyway? We are told Prime Minister has tweeted and asked to maintain peace. What does that mean? While Delhi burnt for two days, the same Prime Minister was giggling, waving hands and bear-hugging Donald Trump. I know problems of whataboutery but why did he not tweet then? Did he not have the time? Or did he not wanted to? And even if he had tweeted, what difference would it have made? The people who comprised the mob, do you think they would have stopped? You and I might fall for Modi’s odd-and-even statesmanship but they know him rather too well. They know what he means when he says something and what he means not, they know exactly what he wants from them. We are fools not to see it through. It has been there before our eyes all this time. We have just been choosing to ignore it. We have been choosing to look the other way. We have forgotten Gujarat 2002, they have not. They know who Modi is. If the man indeed wanted peace, why did he not act on Anurag Thakur for his hate speech that resulted in a shooter who walked in front of Delhi police and shot a bullet at the anti-CAA crowd? If Prime Minister of India wanted peace and not riots and deaths, why did he not immediately sack and act against Kapil Mishra who threatened the peaceful protesters? Why was Delhi police standing behind him when he was giving this threat? Why did Prime Minister not act against his Home Minister under whom comes Delhi police? We are too feared to answer these questions. Some of us, especially TV channels, look at them, they won’t even dare to ask these questions. The answer is, he did not want to stop this. Mr Modi wanted this. Look at his politics. It is full of hate and spreading fear. How did you (or I) expect him to behave any differently? We created him. He is a product of our own making. We told ourselves what he was not. We told he was this progressive statesmanlike figure. Was he though? And where did that idea came from? It came from his PR exercise.

…the media should have been alert to the doublespeak of, and the division of labour in, Hindutva forces. A speech in the hinterland might demonise Muslims; one at a media summit in Delhi might focus on inclusive growth and democracy. A speech made by Modi is not binding on Adityanath, then a member of parliament from Gorakhpur and today the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, whose repugnantly communal comments in the Lok Sabha, just a few weeks after the speech, did not ruffle the prime minister’s feathers. Following 2002, Modi could not catch a break from the stigma of the anti-Muslim pogrom he had overseen as chief minister of Gujarat. Yet by April 2014, the academician Ashutosh Varshney was writing that “Anti-Muslim rhetoric has been missing in Modi’s campaign. Instead, he has concentrated on governance and development.” That simply was not true. Varshney must have missed Modi’s attempt to whip up communal passions with speeches about the “pink revolution,” a reference to cattle slaughter; missed Adityanath on the dais where a BJP man recommended exhuming Muslim women’s corpses in order to rape them; missed Amit Shah exhorting Jats to “take revenge” on Muslims in Muzaffarnagar, where the two communities had clashed violently in 2013. Modi’s smash-hit 2014 election campaign, led by advertising stars from Ogilvy & Mather and McCann Worldgroup, was so successful at this kind of erasure that Business Today ran a case study of it in June 2014. “Marketing gurus cite the examples of Cadbury, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola that battled problems relating to brand-taint,” the article said. “Cadbury had fought its way out of a controversy related to worms in its chocolates while the two beverages giants faced allegations of pesticides in their colas … Not so long so, the words that could have been used to describe Modi were authoritarian, megalomaniac and communal.” By the time of the election, the words imprinted in the public imagination were “strong” and “decisive.” Repeated cattle- and caste-related lynchings, beginning early in his first term, failed to evoke any comment from Modi. Since the mandate had vapourised his communal record and recast him as an economic messiah, many liberal commentators deflected blame to what they insisted were “fringe elements.” Meanwhile, the union minister Mahesh Sharma draped the coffin of a beef-related murder accused in the national flag, and his cabinet colleague Jayant Sinha met another set of Hindutva criminals with garlands. Modi eventually issued a late, half-hearted censure of cow vigilantes. He followed it up by appointing Adityanath — a communal leader with a private militia at his disposal, who faced scores of cases for things including rioting and attempt to murder — as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. It took wilful naïveté to say, as an India Today news anchor tweeted, “Give him a chance.” Few liberals disagree with the view that the BJP has enslaved and destroyed every institution, from the Reserve Bank of India to the Central Bureau of Investigation to the judiciary to the press to our universities. We have watched it coddle rioters who demand a film ban and marchers who support rapists, but crack down on Kashmiris. We have seen it call college kids “anti-nationals,” and put a target on dissenters’ backs. We have had five years of regressive anti-intellectualism, fake news and fudged data; of crony capitalism and poor economic management; of relentless chipping away at Gandhian and Nehruvian legacies; and of increasing Hindutva aggression. As recently as the 2019 campaign, Modi was making divisive remarks, flouting the Election Commission’s code of conduct and seeking votes in the name of the armed forces. On the one hand he whipped up fear about “terrorism,” on the other he gave a ticket to Pragya Thakur, who is an accused in the Malegaon bomb blast and a champion of Mohandas Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse. There is no discernible distance between the centre and the so-called fringe. It is nothing short of horrifying that Amit Shah is now the country’s home minister, responsible for maintaining domestic peace. Besides the fake encounters, Shah has been accused of using the state machinery to spy on a woman for Modi, in a scandal known as Snoopgate; he has called Muslim immigrants “termites”; and has referred to journalists and writers as “breaking India forces” and “the tukde tukde gang.” But on the website of the Observer Research Foundation, a Reliance-funded think tank, Sushant Sareen wrote: “The team comprising of Home Minister Amit Shah, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the NSA Ajit Doval is something of a security dream-team.” It is equally horrifying that Pragya Thakur sits in parliament, as does her fellow MP Pratap Sarangi, who was the Odisha convenor of the Bajrang Dal when the missionary Graham Staines and his children were burned alive, and who faces several serious criminal charges. The Indian Express, however, chose to fete him for his — wait for it — simple lifestyle. – Mitali Saran, “Worms in the Chocolate”

PRs can achieve wonders. One must read Noam Chomsky on how to manufacture consent. That’s another thing Modi has done. In his “We value hard work not Harvard” way, he and his minions have pushed India into anti-intellectualism. Science has got sidetracked, reading is no more fashionable. And why would it be? If more and more people read Arundhati Roy, Chomsky, Orwell or Snowden, less and less are their chances of supporting this government and RSS’s grand old Nazi project. If you, for instance, read Orwell’s Animal Farm, you would understand most of the games this government is playing with its citizens. If you read Roy’s My Seditious Heart, you’ll see through the maze of power and corporate greed that is sucking this nation and world at large. Nothing that Modi and his minions are doing is new and not that it is hidden from everyone. It is just that those who see through his plan are immediately branded anti-national and worse so you don’t read or listen to them. They want you to close your minds and you have without much of their efforts obliged. That is precisely why you believe and approve of Telangana police’s action on rape and murder of a 26-year-old veterinary doctor and refuse to entertain any divergent thought. You have closed the part of your brain that indulged in logic. They have simplified things for you. They tell you what is right and wrong, and you believe them. They tell you what to do and you act accordingly. Why else did you stand in demonetization queue without a question?

It is not just obeisance that we have normalised ourselves in but rape too. Ask anyone on the street if they support the rape of women. I’m certain everyone would say they do not, even the Modi supporters. But Mr Modi, their god, follows more than a dozen people on twitter who everyday tweet rape threats and abuses to women. You might say, he follows so many and might not be aware of these minions everyday tweeting hate. Probably yes, I mean yes, if he was any other person which he is not. He replies to tweets, he wishes people on birthdays and does crazy things on social media. In one RTI, it was even revealed that the two accounts are operated by Mr Modi personally. Oh wait, forget social media. These men, who tweet rape threats, they aren’t just normal people. Modi met these people in person. Some of them have pictures of Prime Minister shaking hands with them. Yes, the same prime minister who was busy not to be able to meet farmers from Tamilnadu who were in Delhi protesting for weeks met twitter trolls. You should read Swati Chaturvedi’s wonderful book on these trolls to understand how organized this trolling business is, how they are paid to abuse and give rape threats. Yes, the rape threats that land into mentions of popular female Indian voices are paid for by the ruling party of the largest democracy. We all know it and yet we support this party and the two men at the helm of its affairs. We despise rape or so we say and yet we support men who have institutionalized rape threats; in a way, on online at least, rape has been normalised, thanks to one party and its supporters. Yes, you might not like this, but you are part of this progress. You have helped this country develop to this stage. If we are discussing citizenship of millions of people today, of their future as citizens of this republic and not becoming a superpower, which was our dream just some years ago and honestly it didn’t felt impossible back then, it is all because of you dear supporter of this bigoted government.

Modi was first elected in May 2014. Do you remember your TV screens some months before that mammoth victory then? Do you remember Anna agitation that swept our imagination thanks to 24*7 coverage of it on our tv screens and mobile solidarity protests across the nation? It gave an impression that if there was one thing Indians despised a lot then that was corruption but is it though? We have seen Rafale scam (similar scam took down Rajiv Gandhi govt), Yes Bank is fresh in memory while PNB is forgotten by everyone except their depositors. There is Maharashtra scholarship scam, Adani, Essar, Reliance are accused of Rs 290 billion scam in one coal-related matter, Reliance Jio scectrum rigging case to name a few. TMC even released A to Z of NDA scams. And yet we think Modi is incorruptible. Even though his government has not acted on any of the scams by his own party and its partners, we don’t attach the word corrupt to Modi govt. Or even if we know they are, we don’t care, which makes one think that the crowds that despised corruption around 2014 were not really worried about corruption but rather were motivated to bring Modi and takedown Congress. It was a political gambit and not a fight to rid the nation of corruption. Let’s not say what it was not.

We have seen institution after institution failing us. RBI under Raghuram Rajan opposed demonetization making Modi government to not extend his tenure and instead have a new governor who agreed for the Tughlaqi act that destroyed Indian Economy as nothing else had in recent memory. It achieved none of the stated objectives, not one. Almost, the entire currency in the market came back. Now if secret objectives were dead bodies, destroyed rural economy, staggering profits for Paytm, etc., then they were achieved. Also, while many had difficulty exchanging their currency, Rs 3,118.51 crore was deposited into 11 Gujarat banks linked to Amit Shah, all within five days of demonic exercise. Now try to imagine what were you doing in those first five days after that fateful night when god Modi came onto TV screens. But you will still find his supporters counting demonetization as one of the successes of Modi government. Ask how and they will not stand for the dialogue.

Courts until a few years ago had a semblance of justice written over them. If not justice, they at least seemed rational and logical. You could expect how their judgements would go. After all, what’s justice if not logical and humane? Ayodhya Judgement proved just how wrong we were. And now, the same Chief Justice who gave a clean chit to Modi in Rafale without hearing, delivered absurd Ayodhya judgement that said Hindus did wrong by placing idols and desecrating mosque but hey, take the land and build the temple for which you destroyed the mosque, and of course who can forget his interventions with regards to Kashmir and horse-trading of MLAs/MPs, that same man has been gifted Rajya Sabha seat. Parliament and Courts should maintain distance from each other, have separation of concerns because it is court’s job to watch over parliament but former CJI wants to bring ‘coherence’, he wants to bring them closer, which is exactly how founding fathers wanted them not to function as. Police can’t make friendships with the criminals and say it wants to bring the two closer and have coherence — for what?

We have almost forgotten the murders of Kalburgi, Pansare, Dabholkar and Lankesh by right-wing fundamentalists. Their deaths have been successfully washed out from public memory. How was this achieved? And who does this achievement benefit? You know as much as myself how far investigations into their murders have reached. We have seen media houses being silenced, editors being sacked, reporters hounded for their reports and if that wasn’t enough, this government has also instituted a 200 member team to watch how media reports on Modi and Shah, and then they call you in case they don’t like your work. People are not realizing how damaging this is for the health of their democracy. If you are not informed of your government’s wrongdoing then you would think it is doing no wrong and government will continue to do what has become everyday slaughter of this republic which just years ago was dreaming about being a superpower, the world looked up to it in awe over the success of its democracy, and citizens hoped we were moving onto becoming a beacon of hope and something beautiful. What have we come to doing now? Thanks to channels like Zee News, majority Hindus now hate Muslims more than ever. That channel has shown doctored videos to demean individuals, to gather public opinion against a public university and help you-know-who. People still watch it. Why? Is it because whatever hate that channel peddles provides a mark of approval for your own inbuilt hate? Constantly manufactured lies and fake news serves the purpose of reassuring people again and again how the hate they harbour in them is justified. Just at the moment when you start to harbour doubt in the regime, they send you one more video or post that injects some more drug to keep you hating for some more time. The stock isn’t going empty any time soon. It is, after all, powered by Sensodyne, Polycab, Super Shakti, Amity University, Century Ply, Maruti Suzuki, Wonder Cement and Somany tiles. As long as you watch the tv, support these brands and they support these channels, the hate industry will continue to flourish.

This can go on and on. There is no end to things that we have normalised to support Modi and his men. There is no end to things that we say we have issues with and yet despite this government and its supporters doing exactly that, we continue to support them. This government and party that you support has men who have been accused of rape and also murder of victim’s relatives, people who have looted public money, those who garlanded men that lynched, ministers who attended rallies in support of the rapists, those that follow trolls that give rape threats (not just Modi but even his ministers follow these trolls), Ajay Singh Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath not only gave hate speech but when a case was filed against him, he gave orders to withdraw case against himself, Modi and his partner from Gujarat, Home Minister Shah revel in hate speech. How can one say he is against rape, murders, hate speech, bigotry, lawlessness when they support Modi and his men? It cannot be both ways. You either support rape or you don’t.

Forget Rs. 3000 crore wasted on a statue when that could have been spent on hospitals and education institutes and tribals that have to give up their land for the same project, Modi government has decided to launch a Rs 12,000-crore project to improve road connectivity to the four revered Hindu pilgrimage sites in Uttarakhand. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the construction of the Char Dham Mahamarg on December 27, 2016, as a tribute to those who died in the 2013 Kedarnath disaster. As of January 2019, as many as 25,300 trees have been cut and 373 hectares of forestland diverted for Char Dham Mahamarg. This does not involve trees lost in landslides caused due to road widening exercise which have become common in fragile hilly tracks as this exercise progresses. This also involves huge human cost but I will ignore that since that’s what I have learnt from demonetization. Development of a nation requires dead bodies. I get it. Now if you say you care about the environment and people’s livelihoods and yet support this government, who are you trying to fool here?

The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau has carefully left out data on mob lynchings. Data hiding and number fudging have become a national sport now. This helps in creating chaos with unofficial data release and leaks which are later discarded by one set of panellists on tv creating confusion in minds of citizens over what to believe and what not to. That is how we have forgotten lynching cases which according to The Quint since 2015 stands at 115 deaths now. The thing with numbers is, they no more excite us. Numbers wipe out the faces and families of the dead, their life, livelihood and sorrows. And our inhumane, dastardly involvement in these deaths. Here, let Arundhati Roy describe you one such murder which, one must remember, happened in daylight, was captured on camera and had voyeur crowd looking at the scene of a crime. It stood there, in awe and jubilation.

The lynching of Tabrez Ansari illustrates just how broken the ship is, and how deep the rot. Lynching is a public performance of ritualised murder, in which a man or woman is killed to remind their community that it lives at the mercy of the mob. And that the police, the law, the government, as well as the good people in their homes, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, who go to work and take care of their families, are friends of the mob. Tabrez was lynched this June. He was an orphan, raised by his uncles in the state of Jharkhand. As a teenager, he went away to the city of Pune, where he found a job as a welder. When he turned 22, he returned home to get married. Soon after his wedding to eighteen-year-old Shahista, Tabrez was caught by a mob, tied to a lamppost, beaten for hours and forced to chant the new Hindu war cry, “Jai Shri Ram!”—Victory to Lord Ram! The police eventually took Tabrez into custody, but refused to allow his distraught family and young bride to take him to the hospital. Instead they accused him of being a thief, and produced him before a magistrate, who sent him back to custody. He died four days later.

How did we let all this pass? When did we get ourselves normalised with such open hate and daylight murders? And then we shout Pakistan is killing Hindus? Which Hindus and where? We are speculating Pakistan is killing Hindus while we are here, openly killing Muslims — on the street and in our trains. We are not even hiding their dead bodies. Some of these bigoted murders and violence was shot on camera for public viewing. Did that agitate us? No. In fact, we reelected the same people who sat on these murders. People, who did not act on the perpetrators. How should anyone believe that Indians are peaceful or that Indians abhor killings? On the contrary, it appears we very much enjoy public floggings. What did we do about Dalit floggings from Una? Nothing. We successfully forgot. We succeeded in erasing these violent images from public memory. That is us. The sick, demented, contagious disease of the human race.

It is important how and what information is served to us. For instance, the ‘Howdy Modi’ event in America was attended by fifty thousand people including President Trump but what our news channels did not show were thousands of people protesting outside the stadium. In absence of such information you tend to think there is no opposition to Mr Modi and it also makes you hide your own doubt or inconvenience with the regime. We are herd animals. Many of us don’t express ourselves when we see or in this case perceive (thanks to our media) how everyone else is thinking otherwise.

Last five years have made us go through tragedy after tragedy. We have seen and done unimaginable things. For instance, do you think we would have stood in line without questions if Manmohan Singh had announced demonetization? I’m sure the doctor wouldn’t have done such a horrible thing but in case he had, would we stand in line like sheep and pay our obeisance? Were people not on streets when gas prices were above Rs. 400 and Rupee was at 64 per dollar? A gas cylinder today costs well above Rs. 800 and dollar to rupee is well above 75. Economically and socially, we are looking only downwards and yet this government enjoys huge support. How does one explain that except saying that Modi was elected for his divisive agenda? This government was elected to pursue the Nazi project of RSS. There is no other explanation. So let’s be clear of who we are and who we are supporting and what our unquestioned support means. Let’s not tell ourselves otherwise. Stop lying and deceiving others and yourself. We are infected. As Arundhati Roy said, this is our version of the coronavirus. We are sick.

Coronavirus can be kept at a distance by drinking cow piss (gaumutra for the initiated) but try it at your own risk for one BJP worker who had it at a gaumutra drinking party got sick and needed to be admitted into a hospital. News channels are saying, good news, Coronavirus infected have been cured in Jaipur hospital — Modi’s India has shown the world the way. But wait, didn’t first cure case from India come from Kerala? Also, as of 21 March, 91,133 have been recovered from COVID-19 worldwide. Home Minister Shah in Parliament says Delhi riots were stopped in 36 hours so let’s thank Delhi police. That is, of course, a lie, for gunshots and fire were still seen after 36 hours. What to do? Home Minister is allowed to lie in Parliament all the while our state symbol, Ashoka emblem continues to have Satyamev Jayate (Truth Alone Triumphs) engraved under it. Also, the Delhi police participated in the pogrom (oops! Riots). They, if wanted, could have stopped the riots before they had even begun. They simply did not want them to stop. It’s like appreciating a murderer, who killed eleven people, for stopping his count at eleven and not moving to the twelfth body. “I stopped my gun from shooting the twelfth man” Slow claps

We are indeed sick. Our language, our hearts, our minds, our politics, the way we perceive things, the way we look at people, the way we think, the things we read, the things that we watch, our sources of information, people who are to safeguard us, our avenues to seek justice, everything and everyone has been infected. We have become sick. And unless we see ourselves, we acknowledge the virus residing in us, the thing that has made a home in our body-politic, we won’t get out of this puddle. We have run too far for patches and band-aids to work now. Just look at our conversations, our language and our attitude; Nothing that we do, the way we talk and the way we listen right now is inspiring any confidence. We might find momentary solace through patches but the real cure will need far greater strength. And nothing that we are doing right now suggests we are ready for it.

#Politics #Hindu #Islam #Hate #fakenews #AmitShah #NarendraModi #BJP #Delhi #Pogrom #Violence #India

The long-awaited, more than twenty years, Ayodhya Judgement is here. Before we dwell on the same, ever wondered why people go to the courts? Why they spend on lawyers, on their travels to court? After all, all they do is present arguments from each side which they could do before a sarpanch in a village or that old man in Khaap panchayat or a mutual friend — just anyone but the judge in a court. Why walk to a court? What is it that you expect from a court that you do not expect from other avenues. Why do we say we have to respect the decisions of the court? After all, the people giving verdicts are people like us too. They go through similar lives as we do. They breathe the same air, drink the same water, eat the same food. Why then do we expect them to deliver judgements on our problems and also respect their pronouncements? Is it because we believe that they are impartial, that they rely on facts and facts alone and not on emotions and beliefs and pressures of the society? That they will listen to all sides and then make their judgements based on all that they have heard? Understanding why we head to courts is very important. There are reasons why we do it. One of that reason is trust, to believe that justice would be done come whatever and whoever. That is why even a person belonging to a minority or lower caste goes to a judge belonging to the majority religion or upper-caste without any inhibition. They all go expecting a just verdict. In that count, the courts should not only provide justice but it should also be seen and felt that justice was being done.

Before heading straight to the Ayodhya verdict, do you remember that on 6 December 1992 a Mosque, an Islamic religious place called Babri Masjid was demolished by a crowd (they like to call themselves ‘kar-sevaks’)? You probably do but more like a GQ question that Amitabh Bachchan might ask in KBC, not like a fact that was so primordial for this case. In fact, the whole case and the popular conversation started from that demolition (although the first case was filed as far back as in 1855). Some also believe that multiple bomb blasts, religious riots etc were spiralled from this event as well. But forget that speculation (?). Do you know that in the violence that followed after this demolition some 2000 plus people lost their lives? Add to it the 900 from the Mumbai riots. Ah, the figures you might say. How many of us care to imagine that many bodies, brutally twisted, some even raped (again brutally) and worse? How many of us can imagine the things their families must have gone through? Actually, no. The good people who came with swords and fireballs were kind in most of the situations to burn the entire families. Even they had some heart you see. Don’t worry, I won’t go into minor details of the rape of pregnant women or people being burnt alive. Let us now move on. Wait, wait, wait. Do you remember the multiple cases of Muslim youth who would be picked up by different law enforcement agencies over terrorism charges, some even lifted straight from colleges and put into jail only to be released by courts. Now and then courts do deliver justice you see. That’s probably why minorities still go to them. But do you also know that they were released after spending twenty-five years in jail? Some after seventeen or eleven. Try to imagine if you can. How must that have felt like — for those in jail and to their families? “Why do these Mullahs and saabs pick guns? Look at other religions, how they live peacefully!” Sure sure there are also Hindus who had to rot in jail and then released after years in prisons with “not guilty” verdict. But have you tried to write the number of such cases side by side with the percentage of the population of both sides and also check under what pretext and suspicions and on the basis they were lifted from their homes or workplaces or colleges? You would see how both do not add up and clearly, there is a difference. Anyway, let us go to the verdict now. Shall we?

The Supreme Court delivered not just a unanimous judgement but also anonymous one (that’s a first I believe). The judgement itself is 1045 pages long. Warning: I have not read it myself. Nor have the people who wrote opinion pieces on the judgement day or the day after, probably even the ones who are giving gyaan on TV even today. Court mentioned few things which we all now know was part of that judgement, which is that the central place was once stood the masjid up until December 6, 1992, is now given to the Ram Mandir party, a temple is to be built there for which a trust is to be established (court said this), Masjid party is to be allocated 5-acre land (who will allocate and when is not known) in Ayodhya but this would nowhere be close to the disputed site (court did not use this specific line but given they have reserved around 67 acres for the temple, it is all but evident). That is the verdict. For a moment, close your eyes, try to be impartial, forget your religion and gods. Can you do it? Try. Think of the facts from demolition to this verdict. Is this the decision you will arrive at? Remember why courts exist and why people go to courts? Factor all that in. Do not let yourself be under any pressure — courts aren’t supposed to deliver any judgement under any influence or pressure. You are to say ‘meow’ in such a case. Judges recuse themselves in such scenarios where they are under pressure (think of all judges who recused in Bhima-Koregaon case) or if there is a conflict of interest (Justice Mishra apparently thinks otherwise). Let us see what other things did the court say. First, it said the placing of the idol of Ram Lalla in 1949 was illegal and amounts to desecration of the mosque. Second, the demolition of the mosque in 1992 was a negation of rule of law. I know what is scratching some readers’ mind? What about Babur? That Muslim ruler who destroyed a Hindu temple? Well, the court said who built it was insignificant and then it also refused to entertain the proposition that Mosque was built by demolishing the ancient Hindu temple or on ruins of Hindu temple. Here’s how Indian Express folks summed it in their podcast,

“Court does not say in as many words that it was a temple. In fact, they only say in one instance that underlying structure could have been a temple… with inscriptions in Devanagiri script… but categorically refuse to say whether the temple was destroyed to build Babri Masjid or built on ruins. They say the ASI evidence (which Hindu party used to claim Masjid was built on temple) is inconclusive.”

By the way, Parliament had passed a law in 1991 to protect and honour the religious character of places of worship as they obtained on August 15, 1947 — The day India, more precisely the Democratic Republic of India, came into being, the very day independent India was born.

You have more information now. Close your eyes again, be a devil’s advocate and imagine. Try. Does the final verdict make sense now? Remember your math classes on logic where ‘a’ lead to ‘b’ and ‘b’ lead to ‘c’ and therefore ‘a’ lead to ‘c’? And if anything contradicted then the whole final proof would fall off? Well, looks like none of the judges attended those classes. How else does saying placing of idols as illegal, saying demolition of mosque as illegal along with categorically declining to believe Masjid was built on temple sum up to arrive at a decision where you vindicate (as said by Advani, one of the men who led the kar sevaks to demolish the mosque in 1992) those who demolished that structure (the act that you call illegal)? They demanded to build a temple on that site and now you have given them the legal permission to do so despite saying what they did was wrong. This is like handing over the rape victim to her rapist after proving the rape charges and using strong words to describe how bad the act of raping was. Sorry to make such a comparison. Dear judges, if you are reading, stop writing that contempt notice. I already apologize but really?

A popular maxim from the English court says that “Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.” And dear lords, the Ayodhya Judgement for all its televised glory, does not provide a feeling of justice being done. Now some might say I’m disrespecting the verdict. Actually, I’m not. I have all the respect for our courts which they hardly deserve (Read Loya death and as recent as Mishra’s Reliance judgement — they call it Land Acquisition judgement — and conflict of interest charges — I would suggest people who’re interested to read to pick Arun Shourie’s wonderful book on fallacies of judiciary — “Anita Gets Bail”). I just refuse to accept this judgement blindly. I cannot accept something that does not fit into logic. Some judgements do not make sense to experts of the law but this one fails to make sense even to a layman like myself. A judgement should answer the questions and not raise more questions then what were present in the beginning when they began to deliberate.

That was long, wasn’t it?

Now forget all that. For a moment, think that everyone accepted this judgement including myself, what are the implications of this judgement? After all, we all know that our courts deliver judgements also by taking references from old judgements. One of the trivial and extraordinary features of this judgement is its basis on faith and belief. Now, this might blow some people’s mind. Remember what the court said about Masjid on top of temple argument? Well, the reason it gave to handover primary land to Hindu party was faith and belief; that Hindus for ages have believed that Ram was born there (they say in Ayodhya. Why then the Mosque be not built at its original site and temple be built anywhere else in Ayodhya like Masjid is now being told to? Unanswered.) The primary part of the judgement is based not on facts. Ram Mandir gets to be built, a grand one thanks to this judgement which was based on belief and faith. Not facts. Imagine this judgement had arrived before Child marriage and Sati were widely practised. Won’t people be able to argue taking reference of this judgement that Hindus have been believing in child marriages and Sati for ages so they be allowed to continue their practice; after all, it is their belief and faith? This judgement opens so much because we in India believe (and have faith) on so many weird stuff.

So this judgement in the long-run has not brought the closure but opened so much in so many ways that we are looking at something that no one currently can fathom. On top of it, to my mind, our court has lost further credibility, belief and faith in its functioning and authority as an apostle of justice. Pray tell us, if you do not belong to the majority who hold the reigns of power in almost every sphere, would you go to courts now? With what hope? Side fact: Judges now get plump government jobs the moment they retire from their judgeship. I’m not making that up.

All said and done, maintain peace. Have faith in the system. In courts, in executive, in the police, army and of course, in our dear politicians. Or so you are told to by the very people who once climbed on the chariot, who went on the stage or arranged the grand rath-yatra — all that culminated in the demolition of Babri Masjid. The very people are now asking you, the victims of their acts, to maintain peace. Maintain peace you must though, however, agitated and disappointed you are, maintain peace you should for your life hangs on it, for they are also in power now. The police and army — the gunmen in all different colours — move on their directions now. And thanks to Aadhaar, they now know where you stay, who are you talking to, what are you talking and where are you buying your things from. Maintain peace, what else can you do anyway!

P.S. Few hours after the judgement was out, I wrote this on Social Media,

True & brave judgement would have been that which rebuked both parties, discomforted them both and given orders to build a secular structure probably a mammoth university that focused on studying theology, art and of course science. This isn’t a progressive judgement. That’s all. This judgement is not taking us forward. This judgement, to my mind at least, does not inspire confidence or respect in judiciary nor Indian secularism. Now keep calm, and get back to your work. Let those who fight over religion and religious structures quarrel – you find your peace. And ask your govt for things that will take your life forward. Ask them for hospitals, schools and universities, better roads and livable environment.

Not that I expected judges will do something so radical but I wished. But what I was pretty sure the judges will do was to come out with a judgement that I may agree or not, but the one that made logical sense. This one at least to me makes no sense. #india #politics #courts #hindu #muslim #religion #justice