The Metaphysics of the Political Imagination: Narendra Modi, the Indian Intellectual and the 2014 Elections

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

A noted Indian "sociologist" in a center page article in the Hindu (April 5, 2014) has made some bold and superficially interesting speculations abort the brand of politics Narendra Modi represents.  I wonder why such eminent sociologists do not subject the Congress Party and its mascot, Sonia Gandhi to the same kind of rigorous scrutiny as many of his conclusions can with equal justification be extended to the Congress. In politics style matters as much as substance and when Indian intellectuals train their guns on one individual and suddenly find his ideological soul mates like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and l K Advani more authentic than Narendra Modi from a "civilization" point of view, then we know that something is seriously wrong about the logic behind such ideologically constructed posturing. Until not that long ago, Indian middle class intellectuals, particularly the tele intellectuals of the JNU breed were articulating  their wisdom in terms of sound bytes aired on NDTV which   drove home just one point: the BJP and its politics is a threat to the "secular" values of the country and by default must support the Congress party. The intellectuals found it both prudent and professionally rewarding to mouth the empty slogans of "secularism" and "inclusion", the stock in trade of high political discourse in India/.

The JNU brand of tele intellectuals were never enamored of the politics of the BPJ and if they start discovering  virtues in Atal ji and Advani ji it can only mean that any kind of rhetoric is justified when it comes to Modi bashing. All the three leaders named above share a common vision of an India that is strong, free from corruption and can hold its head high in the high table of world politics. Unlike the intellectuals who hog prime time television in India, Modi does not seek the approbation or approval of the western world. It does not matter whether Economist endorses Narendra Modi. However, the intellectuals like the author of the center page article referred to, thrive on signets of professional recognition from the Western media and institutions. This particular intellectual was opposed to the nuclear policy of India, and throughout  his long and distinguished career has not criticized USA for the slaughter in World War II  or the repeated acts of armed aggression all over the world. Yet when it comes to India they will pose as if they are the civilizational strength of India lies in its ability to produce publicists like themselves.As far as Narendra Modi is concerned his public rhetoric is civilized and yes, his language is strong and effective but does not degenerate into gutter rhetoric like Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her Congress courtiers. Why does this man not take the Congress woman to task for making public discourse so  vulgar and coarse.

As a sociologists, the writer must be aware that in terms of social inclusion as empirically measured by voting percentages and seats won, the BJP scores much higher than it rival the Congress. At least in North India, most of the SC reserved seats and ST seats have been won by the BJP and there is no use in taking recourse to the Marxist line that such figures only represents false consciousness on the part of the "subaltern" classes. At the end of the day the tele intellectual is always right and facts be damnned. Why let facts and empirically verifiable date come in the way of a politically correct and rewarding statement. The intellectual goes on to gratuitously advive the BJP   to be more "discursive" more "conversational". The discursive space in Indian politics is hogged by the Congress and its academic bandwagon who have monopolized public space in the name of secularism and nationalism. If they want to suggest that the hysterical style of ranting against electoral adversaries like the way Sonia, Rahul and other members of the First Family, the Royal Dynasty represents discursive expanse and a conversational style of politics, I am afraid that people will not accept. The electorate sees the shrill hysterical ranting of the Congress as hate mongering and it is time that the soft intellectuals like the author of the center page article recognize the political style of the dynastic fascists as divisive and fraudulent

To harp on Jaswant Singh has become fashionable. Suddenly the opponents of Narendra Modi have rediscovered the virtues of Jaswant Singh after his rebellion. But the same class of tele intellectuals were berating him until the other day for the views on Partition and his analysis that Congress too was responsible for the Partition and do In need to remind my readers of what they said about Jaswant Singh when the then NDA Government released the Taliban prisoners in exchange for the passengers of the Indian Airlines flight which was hijacked to Kabul. I agree Indians do not have a sense of History, but if "sociologists" who write about the civilizational strengths of the BJP should choose tom ignore recent events then it is not oversight but deliberate distortion for political purposes. Is there anything "civilizational" about Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi. If Narendra Modi is faulted for not being "civilizational" them I wonder if the hate filled rhetoric of the First Family is civilizational.

It is obvious that the writer has not followed the Campaign of Narendra Modi and therefore is unaware of the reasons why he resonates all around the country. He is not an "ersatz"version of the BJP as the writer inelegantly puts it, but rather one who has crafted his political message keeping the complex realities of an ever changing India. The fact is that Narendra Modi has jettisoned the old style identity politics and has changed the terms within which India debates its future. And "sociologists" of course are livid as he has out did them in their own game. He has crafted a message of social and economic development based on the principle that the State has to ensure that the basic structure within which resource transfers and nation building takes place is in tune by and large with the aspirations of the people. And he has successfully sold the argument that the economic downturn in India is linked to the massive and egregious corruption under the congress. What is offensive or objectionable about this fundamental message. Governemnts will be voted in and voted out not on the basis of real and invented identities but on the grounds of performance as seen by the common man. I do not see anything alarming in all this and wish the author had used the resources of his mind to reflect on the conditions prevailing all over the country. The sense of gloom and doom are there in the eyes of eveyone except the starry eyed wonder struck sociologists of JNU.

The upcoming elections will mark a decisive turning point in the history of India. Under Narendra Modi, India will be able to stand and take strides towards improving its economy, living standards and social harmony all of which were ruthlessly compromised during the past 10 years.

This writer can say that Dharampal will certainly endorse Narendra Modi.

A Comma in a Sentence by R Gopalakrishnan: A Review

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 Books written by captains of Industry, Trade and those managing the commanding heights of India's elite institutions make drab reading for two reasons. First, there is little reflection of the history and politics of the time and their navel gazing obsession makes poor autobiography. Second, there is little insight into the momentous almost tectonic events that reshaped society right in their own life time and men write about their lives as if History has had no role to play. The book under discussion is guilty of both these major aberrations and i felt disappointed having read what seemed as an insightful peep into a high caste Brahmin household from the middle of the nineteenth century till the late twentieth century. Though there are a string of interesting anecdotes to liven up the narrative, the book is too obsessed about the "achievements" of the author and there is little reflection on the life and times behind the individual. I think Indians write poor autobiographies because they  are totally ignorant of the challenges of History.

The narrative deals with the family of an Iyengar land holding clan which lived in the Kaveri delta.  There is absolutely no awareness about the historical situation or condition that enabled the Vadakalai Iyengar family to emerge as powerful landed aristocracy of the region. Gopalkrishnan's attempt at placing his lineage in an overall historical context is pathetic. He recounts the (1) Vellore Mutiny and (2) the 1857 Mutiny as if his ancestors were aware of these events and were in a position to seize the historical and political import of these events. I seriously doubt the ability  of Ranga to ruminate on these events in the manner in which Gopalakrishanan has done in his book. Bogus historical recollections like the ones that he offers are not a substitute for reflections on men, events and circumstances. In a traditional Brahmin household the chronological span of memory does not extend beyond three generations and even here the memory is underpinned by the ritual demands placed by the Shradha ritual. Instead of inventing fictive conversations which fly in the face of what we know about the historical knowledge and insight of brahmins, it would be far better if Goplakrishnan had stuck to facts. What was life in the agrahara like? What were the inner tensions between different branches of the family? How were marriages arranged? Did brahmin women in the agrahara have friendship or liaisons with men outside the neighborhood?  These questions are not unimportant, as every Brahmin family has anecdotal information about girls running away with men and never reunited with their families ever again. In most cases, as indeed has happened in the case of my Gandfather's elder sister, there is no mention about the woman ever again in the household. In short, women who chose to assert their individual freedom are written out of the family narrative. I am raising these questions to underscore the partial and incomplete nature of Gopalkrihshna's narrative.

The book is an unabashed celebration of the life and achievements of the author. Obviously, the author and his children have doen well and the marker of their status the fact that many of them have advanced degrees from American Universities. But a more important question is skirted. Obviously when the author was growing up, the anti-brahmin, "rationalist" Dravidian Movement was on the rampage in the Tamil region. Like the Jews in Nazi Germany, the Brahmins were targeted by the Dravidian Movement in the most senseless manner. I remember my grandmother telling me that she as a young girl she was set upon by thugs near the Parthasarthi Temple in Madras who were obviously motivated by the hateful fascist ideology of the dravidian movement. I wonder why it has become necessary for men like Gopalakrishnan to blank out the horrid realities of Brahmin life in Tamil country. The migration to USA has saved many of them but what about those still lift in the Belly of the Beast.

As an extended portrayal of the life of a corporate boxwallah this book is adequate. But anyone interested in gaining insight into Brahmanical life and culture will be disappointed./

Obama and his Crimean Misadventure: Russian has genuine interests in the region

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Western powers have once more started behaving like cold warriors, provoking Russia and hiding their aggression in a cloak of Democracy and Human Rights, a sanctimonious combination of realpolitik and ideological assertion. Nothing typifies this new conduct of the European Union and USA than the crisis over Russian involvement in the Ukraine and the subsequent merger of Crimea with the Russian Federation. People who rail against Russia seem to have forgotten recent history. It was in the Siege of Sebastipol  that Florence Nightingale earned her name and it was the same Crimean war that provided the occasion for bad poetry as well: we are all familiar with the Charge of the Light Brigade by England's poet laureate, Lord Tennyson. I am only recalling these facts to underscore the historical context of the recent events. Russia has had a presence in the Crimean Peninsula right from the waning years of the Ottoman Empire and the West always tried to thwart the legitimate interests of Russia. Now Vladmir Putin has succeeded and revered the  long imposed isolation of Crimea from Russia. In fact during the Soviet Era, Crimea was handed over to Ukraine for only administrative convenience.

Barack Obama, of course, has stated that the West will not recognize the "annexation" of Crimea.  Russia held a Referendum in which 96% of the people of the region voted for merger with Russia. Further, where was International Law that Obama and his allies talk now, when they bomber Serbia, imposed the UDI on Kossovo, and shat about the armed invasion of Iraq in defiance of the international community as represented by the UN. Russia has now followed the example of USA and her allies. There is yet another serious problem. When the Soviet leader Gorbochev allowed the unification of East and West Germany,he was given a solemn assurance by the US President that NATO will not be expanded to cover Eastern Europe. The collapse of USSR and the rise of USA as an imperial, post-Soviet power meant that the temptation to ring the erstwhile territories of USSR with military bases was too strong to be ignored and the expansion of the NATO into the territories of the Warsaw Pact nations is really at the heart of the problem.

The President of Ukariane, Viktor Yanukovitch who was duly elected and a legitimate ruler was overthrown by street mobs of rampaging neo-nazis armed and encouraged by the European Union. The overthrow of a legitimate government by rioters is always a cause of concern but not for Obama and his Merry men. Snipers who killed nearly 100 people during the course of the anti Yanukovich protests are now hailed as great freedom fighters. Russia should have intervened militarily and stopped the mayhem on the street of Kiev, but Putin held his horses.In all fairness, Russia cannot allow its security to be permanently jeopardised by Ukaraine and the EU. Yet, Vladmir Putin showed remarkable statesmanship and restraint. The fear of Ukraine joining NATO is all to real to be ignored and the European Union is following the the Nazi policy of expansion by invoking the rhetoric of Democracy and Human Rights, rhetoric that hides the war crimes of USA in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ukraine during world war II set a horrible example of collaboration with the Nazis and the same forces are being harnessed now to legitimize Western intervention. More than one million jews were killed in Ukraine during the War and men like Stepan Bandera were really Nazis not nationalists. The Russian leadership is aware of the potential for Ukraine to divide on its east-west axis with the Russian majority eastern part joining the Russian federation and the western part becoming a rump member of the NATO. Given this volotile scenario, Vladmir Putin took steps to protect the vital national interests of Russia. The merger of Crimea with Russia and the eventualbreakup of the independent state of Ukaraine can be blamed on the misguded policy of the EU of encouraing the neo-nazi natioanlists.

Obama and the European Union has imposed 'sanctions" on Russian leaders. The world should also impose sanctions on American politicians for the crimes that country is comitting in different parts of the world.

The Well of Sorrows at Ajnala, PUnjab: History Rediscovered, Martyrdom Reinvented

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The ghosts of Punjab's bloodied past has the uncanny habit of raising up at the most inopportune time. History has to be accounted for and airbrushing inconvenient truths of the past may work in the short run, but finally History will have the last laugh. Just at the very moment that the Congress Party in India thought that it had exorcized the ghosts of the state sponsored pogrom which the party organized in 1984 after one of their leaders was killed, came the revelation that Indira Gandhi has sought the aid of the British Government in helping her draw up the plans for the attack on the Holiest of Holy shrines of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple at Amritsar. The discovery of the letters relating to this episode in India's recent past is bound to have a decisive impact on the Sikh vote in the Punjab. The British Prime Minister for reason best known to him came to the city of Amritsar and apologized for the "Jalianwallah Bagh Massacre" of 1919. One more ghost from the past seemingly laid to rest. Now just as things were beginning to quieten down, the discovery of the Well containing the bones of the soldiers who were summarily executed in 1857 has been uncovered not far from Amritsar, a place known as Ajnala. For some reason the Well was known as Kalion ka Kuan or the Well of the Blacks and now there is a clamor for the name to be changed to Shidon ki Kuan or the Well of Martyrs.

The picture given alongside shows some of the bones discovered during the course of a week long excavation at the local Gurudwara in which the well was located. Under nearly ten feet of soil the bones had been buried. More than 5000 bone fragments, 89 skulls, traces of clothing, metal coins and other artifacts were uncovered. The Congress Party ever eager to appropriate the past to its own political purposes sought through Amrinder Singh to have the place declared a monument to the Heroes of 1857 a proposal which was rightly shot down by the Akalis. The Akali position that the Sikhs were not involved in the Revolt of 1857, of course, raises the even more historically troubling question about the role of the Sikhs in the suppression of the Mutiny in 1858 along with the Madras Fusiliers under General James Smith Neill.

The Sepoys of the 26th Native Infantry who were stationed at Mia Mir Cantonment near Lahore revolted and headed towards Amritsar. The Deputy Commissioner of the town, Fredrick Cooper, had his European and "loyal" troops march against the rebels and a large number of them were killed. Around 282 men were captured and later killed and the bones discovered seem to be the remains of the rebels. The immediate provocation for the brutal suppression and summary execution of the 26th Native Infantry was due to the murder of their commanding officer, Major Spencer. 

The documents given above are from the Parliamentary Papers pertaining to the Revolt of 1857. The statement of Lt. Governor of the Province, Sir R Montgomery shows that the British Government was aware of the illegal and brutal suppression of the rebels and were also aware of the illegal manner in which the 282 were executed. One more ghost from the past

The 2014 Parliamentary Elections in India: A look at the Campaign and the trends

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The Election Commission of India has announced the Poll Schedule and the upcoming 2014 Elections will be the longest and the most hard fought in Indian electoral history. Spread over a month, the 9 phases in which the Elections have been divided, are designed to move security forces around the country so that ;aw and order can be maintained. I expect this particular election to be violent as the Indian National Congress is facing the prospect of losing power and it is encouraging its storm troopers to disrupt the polls. Part of the strategy has been outsources to the AAM ADMI PARTY which has already started attacking BJP election offices and is threatening to  unleash unbridled violence as part of its campaign. Unfortunately, the rapid decline of the Congress  has made the AAP the only visible symbol of the social constituency which once supported the Congress at least in the urban pockets of northern India. The BJP and the Congress have attacked each other with guston and verve and of course, the Congress has used its courtiers to hurl the worst kind of abuses at the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate: Narendra Modi. Mani Shankar Iyer, a Cambridge educated factotum of the ruling dynasty mocked Modi by calling his a "chai wallah" and the Foreign Minister of India Salman Kurshid even used the word "impotent" to describe Modi, words that have outraged the Indian public. The rhetorical assault launched by the Congress Party is directly proportional to the slide in iys electoral fortunes. The BJP, on the other hand, has maintained studied silence and has not responded in kind.

The real reasons for the ease with which the NDA led by the BJP is hurtling towards victory are to be seen in the changing character of the Indian electorate. India is a young country in terms of its demography and the first time voters represent an aspirational  India which want better jobs, education, health and civic infrastructure. This group is not into the old style identity politics by which political parties played one caste against the other and cobbled up a majority. Modi has taken young India by storm as he connects successfully with the young by his vision of a vibrant India in which modern Industry and Infrastructure will usher in a better life syle and improve the living standards of the people. He has successfully demonstrated the efficacy of his model of development in Gujarat. Business confidence will certainly improve and much needed Foreign Investment will start flowing once the corruption infested Congress regime is unsaddled. Apart for the young voters and the issue of corruption, there are other issues that are playing out in the minds of the voter. There is a perception that India's standing among the major nations of the world has falled during the watch of the UPA II. The lack of respect for Indian concerns and the manner in whcih USA treated a senior diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, did not go down well in India. The electorate is angry that the dignity of an Indian woman, a diplomat and a representative of India was slighted is so egregious a manner. On the foreign policy front, Modi who attacked Pakistan for its barbarity in killing Indian soldiers and by drawing pointed attention to the frequent incursions into India by China, Modi has signaled that the image of a soft India will be contested. The Economy is in shambles and only Gujarat is showing double digit growth figures. The UPA regime tried to fudge poverty figures and derive propaganda by making it appear that its flagship schemes like the rural income schemes have made a difference to the lives of millions. The truth is that the schemes like the rest of the UPA was riddled with corruption and very little actually reached the people.

Political mismanagement has  also helped the NDA. The Congress for purely electoral  gain decided to divide the state of Andhra Pradesh and hoped that the formation of Telengana will ensure a substantial win in the Telengana region. Even here the electoral gain is not for the Congress but the local ally and the BJP. The unseemly politics over the release of the killers of Rajiv Gandhi has paid put the chances of a Congress revival in Tamil Nadu. Senior leaders like the discredited P Chidambaram have no where to go. Even in the 2009 General Elections, Chidmabaram was actually defeated in the Sivagangai parliamentary election but got himself declared elected by fraud and this time he will be defeated if he stands anywhere in Tamil Nadu.

The BJP is coasting to a target of around 230 to 249 seats at the moment. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which together contribute 120 seats the BJP is likely to win around 80 and set the stage for Narendra Modi;s appointment as Prime Minister of India. Both these politically crucial states are in the hands of regional satraps who have failed in the onerous task of governance. UP has seen nearly 250 riots during the past few months and the regime of the Samajwadi party has only given a thumbs up to law breakers known in local parlance as "goondas". Nitish Kumar broke his alliance with the BJP hoping to tie up with the Congress but that has fallen through and in the upcoming election he will bite the dust.

By the time Mid May 2014 arrives India will have a new government and the election of Narendra Modi looks certain.

The Hindus: An Altyernative History by Wendy Doniger: Why it deserves to be banned

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Ever since Edward Said postulated the enduring link between western/ white scholarship and economic and cultural hegemony the world  has been sensitive to the fact that it is West which is capable of representing the non White societies and civilizations and in the process make the rest of the world accept the categories of thought and analytical models as "academic" discourse. I need not state the obvious" It is not possible for any non western civilization except China, to study, dissect, analyze and represent the Western world. Intellectual products are also representations of domination and hegemony, except that the Western World pretends that its constructions and representations of the non western world stem from its inherent intellectual strength: objective analysis, historical method, social sensitivity and the like. Any attempt by the non western world to turn these tools of analysis on the west itself is generally shrugged off as polemical and unworthy of academic respectability. In short, the non white world cannot represent itself, it has to be represented only by white scholars and academics. It does not matter at all that these academics are pursuing an ideological goal in which western hegemony is beyond the margins of debate.

It is against this background that wer have to see the book which has been at the centre of a major controversy in India. Wendy Doniger who sported the Irish O'Flaretty some years back when I met her at the campus of the University of Hawaii when I was a student there, has published a think volume entitled, The Hindus: An Alternative History. A little known social organization called Sikha Bachao Andolan has succeeded in making Penguin Books, her publisher pulp the volumes of this text and withdraw the book from circulation. Earlier there was Laine's book on Shivaji which suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Congress Party and its fringe elements in Maharashtra. Stanley Wolpert's Ten Hours to Rama was officially banned in India though the other books including Wendy's have not been banned. Therefore the state cannot be blamed for the tribulations of this book. In a soft state like India which has been made even more soft by corruption and mal administration, the state cannot be relied upon to protect the dignity of the Indian Civilization. Private groups have to come forward and defend India.

Wendy Doniger writes in an offensive manner about India and its civilization. What she has written is not History and to call the work an "alternative history" is just a rhetorical flourish.Revered Indian heroes and religious icons are subjected to unbridled attack in the name of academic study. I canmot understand how a woman like Wendy Doniger can write about Goddess Durga in a demeaning manner. Being a Jew perhaps a lapsed Jew, Doniger need not revere Indian Gods and Goddesses but she does not have the right to belittle them or speak in a tone and tenor that devalues the spiritual value of these icons. India is an idea that is animated by the images of these gods and goddesses and Wendy has no right to humiliate a civilization whcih has lasted for three thousand years.

Unfortunately India is not China and no American will take liberties with China. And India too is changing and it no longer regards the Westerner as having an inalienable right to demean his religion, society and culture.
                                                      I am extremely disappointed in the response of some of our prominent intellectuals who have come out in open defence of the book and have taken Penguin to task for not standing up to the  organization which succeeded in forcing the publishers to withdraw the book. I personally bought a copy of this book after the controversy broke out and am not sure if Penguin Books are really sincere about their offer to withdraw and pulp the copies of Wendy's book. Will any Western country including USA tolerate a scurrilous attack on their civilization in the name of acadelmic freedom. India has a coupe of centuries to go before it can even think of taking on the West on its own turf. Till then we have to defend our culture.

Telengana Issue stokes violence in the Indian Parliament

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The Indian Parliament was rocked by unprecedented violence today over the vexed question of the division of the state of Andhra Pradesh by carving out the state of Telengana from the existing state of Andhra Pradesh. The Indian Constitution defines India as a Union of States and it is perhaps not quite legal for the Congress Party to separate Telengana from Andhra Pradesh when the state assembly rejected the resolution authorising the division. The Congress regime for reasons of gaining some electoral advantage decided to table the bill for the separation of Telengana from Andhra Pradesh in the Indian parliament. The Leader of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj, has stated that there was no discussion with the Prime Minister over the introduction of the bill. Without a concensus the Congress decided to table the bill and pandemonium broke out.

The historical background of the demand for separate Telengana goes back to the heady days after Independence when Nehru decided to constitute the States Reorganization Commission in order the created linguistic states as the basic bulding blocks of the federal polity of India. In hind sight it is clear that the linguistic division of states that valorized language as the major marker of identity was a huge mistake as it has led to identity politics on a scale that is both complex and self destructive. Andhra Pradesh as irony would have it took the lead as it was the 90 day fast unto death by Potti Sriramalu which hastened the process of the creation of lingusitic states. The Telengana region which essentially consisted of the Nizam's dominions wanted to maintain its unique identity even as early as the 1950s and the region;s leaders made impassioned pleas for the preservation of what they though were the unique features of Telengana regional identity and pride. Nehru, the doddering and dithering man that he was gave the assurance that Telengan could opt out of the union with Andhra if it so desired. Just as this man made a mess in Kashmir, he was really responsible for this controversy too. Successive Congress regimes have won elections by pandering to regional aspirations and after the victory precious little was done. In the 2009 General Elections, the state of Andhra Pradesh was responsible for the return of the UPA as 33 Congress MPs were returned to the Lok sabha. Many of us feel that Andhra by voting the Congress is now paying a heavy price for its sin.

After promising statehood to the people of Telengana the Union Home mInister, P Chidambaram made an announcement on 9th December 2009 that the "process for the creation of the new state " would be set in motion. This announcement galvanized the people of the other two region of Andhra Prodesh, the Coastal region and Rayalseema. Stiff opposition was mounted in both these regions and the Central Government bought some time by setting up the Sri Krihna Committee to study the whole question whether the new state was viable or not. Sri Krishna recommended that division should  be the last option. The region of Telengana has suffered from economic backwardness and though there are hydro electic plants on the Krishna, the benefit does not accrue to the people of the region. The capital city, Hyderabad which attracted a lot of capital from the coastal region emerged as a modern and vibrant urban area with the Computer/ Soft ware firms, Central Government educational and research institutions  and offices. The money made in coastal Andhra Pradesh was invested in Hyderabad. Kurnool could have been developed as an alternate city/ capital but the emphasis was on Hyderabad.

The rise of a street smart politician, K Chandrasekar Rao and the party that he established faught the 2009 elections on the plank of separate Telengana and he could win only 2 seats out of 17 in the region. The failure to win a respectable number of seats clearly implied the rejection of the separate Telengana, but the Congress for its own cynical reasons decided to forge an alliance with the TRS and announced the intention of creating a separate state. The real issue here was the insecurity of the Congress whose performance was just deplarable. By dividing the state and merging the TRS with the Congress, the leaders of the Congress hoped to gain some safe electoral seats.

This morning when the bill was introduced in Parliament, the MPs from the coastal region and from Rayalseema created an unprecedented pandemonium in the Lok Sabha. One Congress MP Rajagopal even brought a knife into the Parliament and MPs attacked each other with paper weights and pulled out mikes. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha one Meira Kumar was forced to adjourn the house.

Now people are asking the question: Who is responsible for the mess. The Congress Party MPs were the main perpetrators of the violence as they felt that with the creation of a separate state of Telengana their political future would be doomed. Coastal Andhra hjas invested heavily in Telengana and there was pressure put on the central governemnt to protect the investments by making Hyderabad a Union Territory, a plea that was rejected by the TRS. The BJP which supports the creation of Telengana does not want to help the Congress get the credit for the creation of the new state nad hence has distanced itself from the whole issue. The BJP seems to say to the Congress" You created the mess now you clean it up. The violence and disruption caused by the Congress Party  by its thoughtless move to create a new state so as to get a few seats in the next parliament shows the depths to which the dynastic fascists can descend. Only the people of Andhra are suffering.

TRANQUEBAR: NEW STUDIES AND PERSPECTIVES

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Trnaquebar--Whose History? Transnational Cultural Heritage in a Former Danish Trading
Colony in South India

Helle Jorgensen
New Delhi, Orient Black Swan, 2014

Cultural Encounters in India: The Local Co-workers of the Tranquebar Mission 18th and 19th Centuries 

Heike Liebau
New Delhi, Social Science Press 2014

The recent changes in historiographical fashion has left its mark on these two books. The post colonial obsession with identity, ideology and self-refashioning has contributed to the gradual erasure of colonialism as a violent and at times racist attack on the cultures of non- White peoples. Post colonial nostalgia and the distance from the colonial past has made some of the more comfortable Europeans look back at the past of their societies with a certain degree of pride and conscious self awareness. Tranquebar, a small trading post of the Danish East India Company on the East Coast of India, better known as the Coromandel coast, has had a checkered  past; after the Napoleonic wars, the Danes essentially lost control over the trading post leaving a murky legacy of Christian evangelism, Slaving, Textile Trade and the most celebrated of all, the Printing Press. Print culture started in Traquebar and though there is some evidence to suggest that Serampore near Calcutta may have had an earlier start, the legacy of Tranquebar lives on both in popular memory and in scholarly texts.

In the first book, Helle Jorgensen looks at the interaction between the local population of Tranquebar and foreign tourists from Northern Europe who flood the place. Tranquebar has been the subject of a major experiment in restoration and conservation of the colonial buildings and tourists from Europe perceive a connect between their own subjective selves and the remote outpost of European settlement in Asia. Remarkably, the author seems to suggest that the presence of the old style European colonial buildings in the settlement are a boon to the local people whose economy revolves around catering to those tourists.  Partly an ethnographic study and partly an extended reflection on the meaning and significance of heritage and its conservation, this book completely ignores the Indian perspective. While India no longer frets and fumes at European colonialism as a new generation which has come of age in the post Independence period does not regard the eighteenth and nineteenth century past with great trepidation. However, it is utterly condescending to write as if the local context does not matter at all. Worse, in the name of heritage and tourism, the past cannot be whitewashed and made palatable.

The second book is a more substantial contribution and it explores the relationship between the Lutheran Mission and its leadership in Tranquebar and the Tamil population it apparently ministered. Bartholmaus Ziegenbalg, the Protestant missionary is the subject of an excellent biography by B Singh. He is rightly remembered in India as the man who introduced Print and thereby brought about a revolution in the social and cultural history of India. He studies Tamil and within a couple of years of his stay was able to write psalms  and catechisms or prayer books in simple Tamil for the people living in the hinterland of Tranquebar. His papers preserved at Halle  give us a picture of a man driven by a deep and abiding faith in religion who did not forget his European identity throughout his stay in India. While the contemporary Jesuits went native and adopted Indian dress and customs, Ziegenbalg was always attired in the frock coat and top hat.  He established a school where children were taught and even a factory for making paper. The site of this factory is unfortunately lost. He eventually dies in Tranquebar and is buried in the cemetry of the Zion Church which he built and consecrated.  The book gives details of the relationship with other Christian missions in the region such as SPCK. The issue of caste and identity cannot be wished away as many of the early converts came from the Vellala peasant background and eventually the other castes joined the Church raising issues which the Christian Church both Catholic and Protestant have not resolved until this day.

Both these books are significant contributions to the study of the early colonial past of Southern India.

Tranquebar

The Fort facing the Coromandel Coast

Chinese Porcelain from Tranquebar

Danish Historical Documents

 The Zion Church built by Ziegenbalg

The Restored mansion of the Governor

The Election Campaign and the Prospects of a stable Government in India: May 2014

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Election Campaign for the 2014 General Elections in India have started. All the major parties have started their run up for the elections with the BJP under Narendra Modi leading the pack. A few week back it appeared that the BJP was heading for a 300+ seats in the LOK SABHA. Now a new uncertain factor has entered. A clutch of regional parties like the BJD, the JD (U), the AIADMK and a number of smaller parties with limited electoral prospects have entered into an alliance of sorts, styling themselves, the Federal Front. From what we have been able to gather, this new front is only a rehashing of the Third Front whose stated objective is to maintain a equal distance from both the Congress and the BJP. However, in the name of fighting "communal" forces the Third Front can be expected to side with the Congress should there be a fractured verdict. The ease with which the Congress is able to muster support against the BJP makes the task of the National Campaign of the BJP that much more arduous. The anti BJP and anti Congress public stance will last till the elections as the regional parties do not want to share the responsibilty for the criminal acts of monumental corruption which has gone on under the Congress. The so called Federal Front expects the Congress to prop up its Government just to keep the BJP out. Since this game stands exposed let us now turn our attention to the BJP Campaign.

Narendra Modi has had a series of very successful rallies/ In Meerut, Gokarkpur and Kolkatta Narendra Modi addressed massive rallies. If the turn out in these rallies is any indication of ground reality, then we can rest assured that the BJP will sail through to victory. However, Indian politics is neither that simple nor predictable, In all these rallies Narendra Modi addressed a litany of local issues and was able to link them with major national questions: insecurity due to increased terrorist activities and the UPA;s lackluster handling of them, the massive price rise which has sapped the people and of course the monumental corruption have all been brought to the attention of the people. The issue of governance has now taken centre stage and India seems to be moving away from the old style identity politics to embrace a more inclusive and purposeful vision of politics. Narendra Modi worls his magic with the crowds and has the Congress really alarmed as the Congress does not have a single leader of stature who can conncet with the people. In most rallies the crowd was arounf 400,000 to 500,000 and is a huge figure even by Indian standards.

The BJP campaign strategy is three fold. First, it is selling the Gujarat model of economic development as one of successful developmement. In spite of obstacles placed on its path, Gujart has been able to notch up growth figures of 8 to 9% annually and the infrastructure in the state is almost of western standards. In all the rallies, Narendra Modi drove home the point: bijali, sadak, pani--electricity, roads and drinking water. Secondly, the BJP has successfully targeted the Congress and its top brass for Corruption. The 2G Spectrum Scandal, the Coalgate scandal and more recently the Westland Helicopter Scandal has landed the Congress in an unenviable situation and has made feeble attempts to deflect the charge, Now the impression has gained ground that the Corruption of the Congress is the one single factor that inhibits developemt and Narendra Modi and his Government may be guilty of unconventional politics, but corruption is not one of his weak points. None of the other state governments can match that record. Finally, the focus has now shifted from 2002 Riots in Gujarat to the Congress sponsored massacre of 1984 when the Congress party organized a massive pogrom of killing Sikhs when one of their leaders was eliminated. And for this shift of focus, the BJP has to thank bloggers like this one who relentlessly kept the 1984 in the public eye and of course, the rather inane and meaningless remarks of the dynastic mascot, Rahul Gandhi.

All national surveys show the BJP and its allies in the NDA reaching a figure of around 225+ out of 242 and the Congress Party may not cross even into three digit numbers/ The Federal Front is expected to do well and if it reaches around 200 or so then the Congress will extend support and encourage it to form thr next regime. However, the people of India are aware of the dangers of a fractured mandate and this time around we can expect a decisive mandate. The Congress party has started floundering. Its leader Sonia Gandhi's statements about the BJP have evoked hostile response and the Telengana issue has already started snowballing into a huge problem for the Congress. The ham handed manner in which Chidambaram as Home Minister handled the whole Telengana issue so that he could get a safe MP seat from Telngana has come back to haunt the Congress.

As usual let me end by making the prediction that BJP will emerge as the largest pre poll block in the next Lok Sabha.

Sunanda Pushkar and the Indian Political Elite: Tweets of a Death Foretold

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of the Union Minister for Education, Dr Sashi Tharoor, was found dead in a holel room in New Delhi on January 17th 2014. The events preceding her death are extremely important. Apparently she discovered an Affair between Tharoor and a Pakistani woman, Mehr Tarar. Tharoor had saved the name of this woman on his mobile under the gender bending name of Harish. On the flight from Trivandrum to New Delhi this couple had a public spat after which she took her husband's mobile and made public the emails between the woman in Pakistan and Tharoor. Inn her last and final tweet she made a threat which her death a few hours later can be interpreted in different ways: I have taken the blame for this man's IPL crimes  and I am not willing to take anything "lying down"/ In the same tweet she discloses that Mehr Tarar was an ISI agent.

The reference to the IPL could trigger the memory of the scandal in 2010 when the Kochi Tusker IPL franchise was allotted to Sunanda Pushkar as "sweat equity". This scandal came to light because Lalit Modi, the IPL honcho tweeted about it and Tharoor was forced to quit his post as the MoS for External Affairs. Soon thereafter the two married and Sunanda Pushkar shifted to Delhi from Dubai. This woman has been quite unfortunate in the men she chose to have in her life. She divorced her first husband within week of her marriage and married his friend Sajith Menon who was the father of her 21 year old son, Shiv Menon. She then married Sahshi Tharoor who is close to the record of Henry VIII as far as matrimonial statistics is concerned. The relationship fell apart under the twin strains of Tharoor's serial infidelity and the stressses and strains of being a Miniter in a fractious UPA regime. In fact on the day she dies, her husband was attedning the special AICC Session in which Rahul Gandhi was all but nominated for the post of PM in the unlikely event of the dynastic fascists coming to power.

The Police investigation was certainly full of unexpected surprises. Though the Family of Tahroor and Sunanda were both interested in floating the theory that the lady died due to a fatal mixture of "wrong medication, stress and exhaustion". the autopsy revealed that her death was caused by poisoning.  And the examination of the viscera has also more or less confirmed that she died due to induced poisoning. And to make matters worse, the autopsy revealed injury marks all over the body of Sunanda, evidence of either domestic violence or a scuffle with her killers.  The Indian Media jhas been very lukewarm in the way this crime was handled. Taroor enjoys a good rapport with the English speaking media because he is said to be a noted writer, scholar and an internationally acclaimed diplomat. While the petty affair of the woman who was being protected on the request of her father by the Gujarat Police resulted in the Congress regime trying to embarrass the Hon'ble Chief Minister of Gujarat by ordering a Judicial Inquiry, there is no attempt to find the truth of the death of Sunanda. It is entirely another matter that the Government of India could not find even a single judge to head the Inquiry it ordered.

There are a number of unanswered questions:
1, What do the injury marks on her body indicate?
2  Is there any truth in the allegation made by Sunanda that Mehr Tarar is an ISI agent
3. Why was the woman who was obviously ill left alone and unsupervised in a hotel room>
4  Why is the family keen to stop the Investigation and close the case as an "accidental death".

The people of Trivandrum voted for Tharoor and he has brought only scandal and shame upon them. Hopefully next time around they will atone for their mistake.

The Challenge of the AAM ADMI PARTY; How to confront the Great White Hope of Indian Politics

A  look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Urban India is witnessing a novel political phenomenon: the rise and rise of the Aam Admi Party. The anti corruption movement launched by Anna Hazare was accompanied by a surge of civil society activism against corruption in India and the victory of the Aam Admi Party can be traced directly to the political consciousness roused by the movement of Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare. While the former supports the BJP under Hon'ble Narendra Modi as the political alternative, Anna Hazare decided to remain apolitical. His chosen disciple Arvind Khejriwal decided to break away and form a political party (the AAP) which rolled to power with the support of the Congress party and is now the ruling party in Delhi. It is time to assess the strengths of this new force and try to evaluate its impact on the 2014 Elections to the Lok Sabha. The BJP can ignore the AAP only at its own risk and must take steps to counter its appeal.

Until the victory of the AAP it was generally held that the BJP will emerge victorious in the 2014 General Elevtions with Narendra Modi as the next Prime Minister. Now the picture is not that sanguine. primarily due to the politics of the Aam Admi Party. Led by a former Indian Revenue Officer, Shri Arvind Khejriwal (around 45 tyars old). the AAP seized control over the reins of Government in Delhi after the BJP declined to form the Government. The BJP won 32 seats, a few seats short of an absolute majority. The AAP after declaring publicly that it will not seek the support of the Congress, a party with a national notoriety for Crime, Corruption and Communalism, had no problem in getting the support of the Congress which is extending crucial support from outside the Government to sustain the Government. This arrangement is neither politically valid nor an ethical one as both Parties snipe at each other all the time and yet the Congress voted in favor of the APP in the Delhi assembly a few days back. I do not think this arrangement will last beyond a couple of months as the Congress will be badly dented if the AAP succeeds.

Arvind Kejriwal played to the gallery like a pro. He rode a metro train to the Capital to take the vote of Office at Delhi's Ram Lila Grounds where he sat on dharna along with his mentor. Such a populiost gesture went down well with the people who love to see their "High Officials" appear ordinary. What is forgotten is the fact that to keep the pretence of Arvind Khejriwal's pro poor image huge public expenditure was incurred in order to secure the metro route. A mere gesture, a nod in the direction of the common man, a supreme act of condescension is taken as proof of the simplicity and honesty of Arvind Khejriwal. Let us give him his moment.

The policy initiatives taken by the AAP even before it secured a vote of confidence is proof of the absolute disregard for the public exchequer. Announcing subsidies to the tune of 3, 500 crore rupees, the electricity bills of the consumers in New Delhi got some relief. However, the long term solution to the problem of energy pricing lies not in subsidies but in augmented power generation and the AAP has no clue as to what to do. Arvind Khejriwal is a mechanical engineer trained in IIT, Kharaghpur in West Bengal and he may have some idea of the problems inherent in his solutions.

The political phenomenon called the AAP is new to Indian politics. For long the political discourse has been dominated by issues of personality and identity. The AAP has shifted the discourse to issues concerning the common man: water, electricity, public safety, and corruption. The shift to a non identity based politics is welcome. However, it was Narendra Modi who shifted the emphasis on Governance rather than identity. The appeal of this new kid on the block to the post 1990's generation is obvious. Liberalism initiated by Narashima Rao in the 1990's has spawned a whole generation whose politics is shaped by live issues concerning everyday life and problems. The network created by the AAP during the heady days of the Anna Agitation paid huge dividents. The AAP was able to articulate the problems of the people of small neighbourhoods because it had a dedicated cadres working here. This networked interaction with localities using GIS and other sophisticated tools of analysis makes the AAP a viable force/ The bJP will do well to invest more tiem amnd energy in drawing out local issues spread over 532 Parliamentary consituencies instead of banking entirely on the charisma of Hon'ble Narendra Modi.

On balance, the AAP is certainly a new force but its alliance with the Congress will spell its doom.

QUEEN KETEVAN'S BONES DISCOVERED AND IDENTIFIED; A CATHEDRAL IN OLD GOA HELD HER BONES

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Georgia, a tiny Christian kingdom, lying on the border of the expanding and fiercely Shia Safavid Empire, was conquered by Shah Abbas I the Safavid ruler snd the captured queen was brought in chains to Isfahan where according to Augustinian sources she was imprisoned for 11 years. Shah Abbas i gave her the unenviable choice between death or life in his harem and the valiant queen chose martyrdom. Her son Teimuraz, for whose safety and protection, the Queen offered herself as hostage to the Safavid emperor, composed a hagiographical  text, The Book and Passion of Queen Ketevan and after the Independence of Georgia from the Soviet Union Queen Ketevan has been reinvented as a heroic, national symbol and has become the symbol of nationhood, a role that the deeply religious and spiritual Queen Ketevan would have found both repugnant and distasteful. The horrific torture inflicted on the Queen which include tearing her eyes out with red hot pincers, cutting parts of her body and breaking evey limb before she ultimately died was witnessed by some Augutinian friars who secretly took her body for burial to Goa which was part of the Portuguese empire. The seventeenth century records speak of the interment of her bones near the window of the transept of the great Cathedral built by the Augustinian order in Goa, now a UNESCO world heritage site. Since the Independence of Georgia the Archaeological Survey of India has been carrying out excavations at the site in order to identify the bones of the queen who was canonized in the nineteenth century. The Queen was martyred in 1624 and a few years later her bones were taken out of Persia.

 The image on the right is a nineteenth century representation of the Queen. Fortunately for historians there is a great deal of contemporary evidence relating to the burial of the queen in the Cathedral at Goa. However it was only from 1989 that Indian archaeologists started looking in earnest for the bones. The interest taken by the ASI stemmed from the political and diplomatic pressure put on India bu Georgia. Is is necessary for the bones of the martyred Queen to be returned to Georgia just to serve the political and ideological needs of the Government in power there. Edward Shevardnadze was the politician who initiated the search for the bones. In 1994 a stone reliquary was found embedded in the wall of the transept and had the windows survived the closest would have been the second window and since that discovery there has been a great deal of public interest over this relic. The Archaeological Survey of India only identified it as the bones, perhaps of a woman and it bore unmistakable marks of great trauma. The Georgians were convinced that it was the bone of their Great Queen Ketevan and they carried the relic to Tiblis where it was received with all the honour due to a Head of State. In the rewriting of History which will inevitable result when the past gets so heavily encrusted with the ideological demands of the presnt, will be forgotten one inconvenient truth: Queen Ketevan had invited Shah Abas I to invade and help her son get the throne and wanted the Safavids to guarantee the security of her son. That however does not justify or mitigate the horrible death she was bore.

The tower of the Augustinian Cathedral where the relics were found

In a stunning new development, Indian scientists were able to confirm the remains of the queen by extracting the mitochondrial DNA and comparing it with the descendants of the queen in Georgia. Since mtDNA is passed only along the female line, this confirmation is almost accurate and we know that the Queen did not have an identical twin. The Uib strand in the DNA sequence is not found in the Indian population but is statistically very pronounced in the Georgian population.

The identification of this relic is indeed a remarkable instance of how important the skills of a historian are in the reconstruction of the past.

The Devyani Khobragade Affair" What should be Indian's response

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Americans seem to have overreached themselves. In a relatively minor matter in which there are conflicting interpretations of the Vienna Convention, USA chose to behave in a most disgusting and barbaric manner. A young woman diplomat of India, posted as the Deputy Consul General at New York was arrested while she was dropping her  daughter at school, handcuffed, taken to a police station where a cavity search was carried out, the young woman stripped and longed in prison along with drug addicts and hookers. The way in which USA treated this woman diplomat even by American standards is appalling and this scandal has escalated into  a full blown diplomatic row between the two countries.

Let us get the facts first. The Indian Government has a policy of allowing its diplomats to engage a "housemaid" or help from India and the person so engages is given a passport and usually a part of the wage is credited into an Indian account so that the family back in India can be supported. The earlier generation of Indian diplomats used to take their sisters, mothers and other relatives as :servants: and their was no problem, However, in recent years there has been a decline in the practice of relatives doubling as "servants" and diplomats engage domestic help from India and the Government allows some semi official recognition to this practice which I agree is open to abuse. The young diplomat in question Dr Devyani Khobragade engaged a woman, Sangeeta Richards and took her to USA as a domestic help in 2012. In November 2012 this woman Sangeetsa disappeared and has remained an illegal alien in the USA ever since. The diplomat reported the matter to her Government and a case was registered by the Government of India and the Metropolitan Magistrate of Delhi issued a non bailable warrant against Sangeeta Richard. There is a valid extradition treaty between India and USa and hence this country expected USA to trace Sangeeta and return her to face Indian law.

When matters were at this stage, USA acted unilaterally. Instead of locating the illegal alien on US soil, Dr Devyani Khobragade was picked up ans subjected to the barbaric treatment, thai I have described in my first paragraph.   What are the charges against the diplomat. She is accuse of not payin her domestic help the minimum American wage. This is a surprising and disingenuous   charge because the American Embassy in New Delhi which issued the visa to Sangeeta knew that the Indian diplomat cannot afford to pay the wage required as that would exceed the salary of the diplomat. Moreover there is also the payment of a ceratin percntage of the salary in India to support the child and husband of Sangeeta. The matter came to light when the woman applied for the notorious Green Card.

Has Dr Devyani Khobragade broken any law. The terms and condition of the contract between her and Sangeeta is set out in detail in the visa application and so no rule was broken. Even if there was a minor infraction certainly srtip searching a young Indian woman and cavity search are certainly egregious instances of calculated barbarism. What is particularly galling is the role of two NRIs (Non Resident Indians), preet Brar and Nisha Desai. The first has made it his business to prosecute Indians icons in the USA and by doing so is trying to establish his credentials in the USA that he is loyal. A loyalty test that requires such obnoxious practices like what was done to the young lady is cheap and vulgar to say the least, but Indians like Preet Brar are expected to comply. The other individual is the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia appointed by Hussein Obama. And as an Indian woman at least in terms of origins she has to prove to her master that she does not give any favor to Indians. In fact no special favor is expected or required. India expects the Geneva Convention on Consular Ofocers to be followed. The inverse racism of these two Indians aggravated the situation and India is outraged. I strongly condemn the USA for the humiliation it imposed on our diplomat, a mother, a woman and an Indian.

Now I will come to the other side of the story. India has not been sending representatives who can project India's culture and interests in a meaningful way. The reason why India got all exited over this affair is not outrage over the way an Indian woman diplomat was treated but the underlying identity politics involved. Meira Kumar, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Sunil Shinde the Police Minister of India refused to meet a visting Congressional Delegation citing the treatment meted out to the woman. The victim happens to be a "dalit" and dalit identity politics came into play. Not just that the way in which the husband and child of Sangeeta were treated in India does not do credit to Indian claim that there is rule of law just as the US behvious discredits the notion that USA has rule of law. India has retaliated by withdrawing all facilities granted to the US diplomats and there is every reason to believe that homosexual American diplomats who brought a live in companion on diplomatic visa will be expelled, The woman happened to be a dalit and so politically can play the dalit card. However there have been sevral instances of US misbehaviour with visiting Indian dignitaries" George Fernades and A P J Abdul Kalam were stip searched and both these men found the expreince so humiliating that they kept quiet. Strobe Tablott brought out the facts in his book. I am one of those who believes that there is no need for the special relationship with USA.

And to make matters worse the father of this diplomat, Uttam Khobragade got a flat for himself in the Adarsh Society which was sret up to build houses for Kargil soldiers and martyrs. So karmic justice finally works its miracles.

COOLIE WOMAN: THE ODYSSEY OF INDENTURE, by Gaiutra Bahadur

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

India after the abolition of Slavery in 1834 became the largest supplier of involuntary labor called the Indenture System. The historians who have worked on this theme in the immediate flush of decolonization found another robust reason to lampoon India: its oppressive "caste system" and the inherent poverty of India forced men and women to immigrate and seek fortunes overseas. This POLLYANNA  view is enshrined in the scholarly writing and a moral equivalence is established between the slaving countries like USA, Britain, France and Portugal with India. The book under review is a welcome departure form these trends. Hugh Tinker even called Indenture a "new kind of slavery". Gaiutra Bahadur, the great grand daughter of a coolie woman from Bihar, Sujaria, has traced the history of Indenture in Guyana the erstwhile British Guinea, and she has done a speendid job

There is a certain duplicity in the way in which India as a society looks upon the descendents of the indentured coolies. V S Naipaul, the great writer is appropriated as a great Indian who has made India proud in spite of the horrendous history of indenture. The recognition given to Pravasi Bharathi, or People of Indian Origin is meant to celebrate the bond with the great "motherland". However, the Indians who worked on the tea plantations of Sri Lanka are denied that recognition and whatever sympathy the Tamils of Sri Lanka enjoy here in India is reserved for the Jaffna Tamils, the high caste Tamils. Gaiutra Bahadur's book is refreshing only because it eschews such contrived identities and is a harrowing narrative of Indenture from the woman's point of view. Sujaria sailed from Calcutta in 1903 when she was foor months pregnent and there is no trace of a man accompanying her and the author's grand father is born on board the HMS Clyde. Sujaria a single woman made good for herself and in the process accumulated around 2 husbands including a high caste Thakur and all the men in her life seemed to have maintained cordial relations both with her and her children born to different men on the Plantation where she worked.

The labour and its discipline on the Plantation  was severe and many of the labour practices institutionalized in the sugar plantations were hold overs from the era of slavery, the Peculiar Institution as the Americans called it; flogging, branding, whipping, jail terms, extra work etc. Given the harsh condition and also the fact that women were relatively scarce, coolie women unlike their Indian counterparts enjoyed a degree of empowerment that came with choice. Sexual jealousies were rampant and "wife murders" were not that unusual.

The book documents in great detail the several instances of violence on the Plantations. The book is written well and is a moving testimony to the horrors of indenture written with rare sensitivity. The author has even traced the Pass issued to Sujaria and this shows that the System of Indenture was based on the bureaucratic principle of rule of records and classification.

The Assemby Elections in India: The Prospects of the Congress and the BJP

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Assembly Polls in the five states--Rajastan, Chatiisghar, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi  and Mizoram--will soon be over and it is time to look at the possibilities or rather the chances of the two parties. For the BJP this is a make or break election as the Prime Ministerial candidate, Sri Narendra Modi was the chief campaigner in all the state save Mizoram. Any adverse result would be interpretted as a reflection on his electoral appeal and so also the case with the dynastic fascists, the Congress party. The Congress fielded Shri Rahul Gandhi as their main campaigner and once the ballot boxes are open the country will know the mood of the electorate. This election campaign was characterized by extremely low rhetoric from both sides and especially from the Congress party. The Congress "crown prince" Rahul Gandhi the inheritor of the family throne hurled abuses like "Chor" (thief), "lootere" (looters) and his mother, the Italian born Sonia, not to be out done referred to the BJP as "poison". Such rhetoric will hardly enthuse the voter and as we begin the run up to the 2014 Parliamentary Elections we expect the Congress to out do itself in the rhetorical sphere. The BJP responded to these flourishes of inspired invective with a sobriquet that caught the goat of the Congress Party: Shezada or Mughal Prince. Of course the title was used by Narendra Modi to address Rahul Gandhi who is also called Amul Baby by the Indian political class.

In Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia ran a well organized campaign and was able to connect with the electorate on the twin issue of mis governance and corruption. The Dynastic Fascists appointed, Ashok Ghelot as their Chief Minister and his Cabinet was plagued with serious issue of crime and corruption from the word "go". The involvement of his cabinet colleague in the murder of a dalit woman who was also involved with another congress man threatened the regime as both the Gujjars and the dalits started distancing themselves from the Congress Party. The Congress started wooing the jats, the notoriously fickle and]self serving caste, by promising a 5% reservation in Government jobs. However, it is unlikely that this strategy will make much of a difference except in the Bharatpur region. The Congress went to town about its social welfare schemes,  but the schemes introduced were badly executed and ended up alienating more people. It is certain that the BJP will form the next Government under Vasundhara Raje Scindia.

In Madyha Pradesh, the Government of Shiraj Chuhan was a corrupt and infested with elements which were thriving off the Government contracts. The Timber Mafia has acquired a stranglehold over the state and people are aware of it. However, the Congress party with its internal factionalism and conflicts over ticket distribution was not able to put up a credible fight. The  senior congressman Dig Vijaya Singha was sideleined and the arc lights were on Jyotie Scindia, the son of Madhav Rao Sindhia and the nephew of Vijaya Raje. The price rise, inflation and the price of onions all came into paly in this election. The BJP was able to recover lost ground as Narendra Modi campaigned extensively in the state and the BJP is likely to come to power with a fairly good majority, but it will see a  drop in seats.

In Delhi the BJP changed its Chief Ministerial candidate mid way through the polls. Vijay Goel was repalced by Dr Harsh Vardhan Singh, a physician with a fairly good reputation as far as Indian politicians go. The Capital has seen a contest between the Congress and the BJP. This time with the entry of the AAM ADMI PARTY  of Arvins Khejriwal there is a triangular contest. The two major parties are both crying foul saying that the AAP is playing the spoiler and the BJP very effectively countered the influence of the AAP by asking people not tom waste their votes. It is likely that the BJP will win the state but the unfortunate presence of the AAP will make Government formation a trifle difficult. I would not be surprised if the AA{ splits after tjhe polls as the party is run on autocratic grounds with Arvind and Sissodia dominating the show.

In Chatiisghar, the massacre of May 2013 oeganized by a powerful faction within the Congress Party has made the job of the Congress Party extremely difficult. The Party tried to blame the BJP for the massacre and elicit sympathy, but the electorate in India knows exactly who was behind the attacks. Ajoit Jogi ran a lack lustree camapign and Dr Raman Singh will reemerge the victor.

In the elections the level of campaigning, especially byn the Congress Party fell to an all time low. Yet with all the negative campaign and personal attacks on Narendra Modi, the bJP will do well. 

Tehelka, Tarun Tejpal and the Quality of Indian Journalism

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Regular readers of the Indian press would certainly recognize the name, Tehelka. Rabidly pro western in it political and editorial stance and vehemently pro Congress in its ideological orientation, Tehelka acqired a degree of notoriety when it launched what is called a sting operation against Bangaru Laxman, the President of the BJP, a party which is contesting the Congress all over the country. Though the President of the BJP was not holding any public office, nor was he in any fiduciary sense   in a capacity to influence decisions in the defense ministry during the NDA rule, the sting operation caught the President accepting one hundred thousand rupees from the Tehelka journalist who secretly filmed this. The Congress went to town proclaiming the "corruption and venality" of the BJP led Government. Never mind that there was no bribe paid and it was perfectly legal to accept party contributions, the BJP abandoned any defense of the President and he was sentenced to a jail term which he served. 

Tehelka is a new kind of ideologically driven, headline grabbing electronic journalistic venture. It specializes in uncovering scams, scandals and other goings on in BJP ruled on BJP friendly states.  Tarun Tejpal the aging Editor and his second in command a woman called Shoma Choudhary are well known faces in the country's English news channels and whenever they appear they very predictable give of the Congress spiel and refuse to subject the drivel they espouse to any critical scrutiny. Even though it was known that the sting operation against the President of the BJP was illegal the successive Congress regimes continued to prosecute the dalit President of the BJP. On almost all majot controversies such as the Gujarat Riots of 2002 and the more recent episode of a woman who perhaps came under police surveillance in Gujarat for extra legal reasons, Tarun and his cohort Shoma were at their shrillest on television channels like NDTV another Congress friendly news channel.

Tehelka seems to be a front for a number of illegal companies which are funding this news organization. Though the ostensible owner of Tehelka is a Bengali MP from Mamtha Banerjee's TMC, Tarun Tejpal and his family are the dejure owners as nearly 19% of the shares are owned by Tejpal, giving him effective control over the day to day functioning of the news organizations. The holding companies of Tehelka even managed to get unsecured loans to the tune of 1,400 crores which invited the strong sanction of the regulator, SEBI. The balance sheet of Tehelka and its associated companies are not available for public scrutiny and this itself shows that the Company was involved in many shady and dubious, perhaps even illegal activite. It may even turn out that some of the illegal wealth of Congress politicians may be parked in Tehelka.

Tarun Tejpal is in the news for attempting to rape a female employee of his when the International Film Festival was held in Goa recently. Apparently he cornered her in the life of the five star hotel where he and his staff were staying and abused her sexually. When the girl complained to the "Managing Editor" a woman called Shoma Choudhary also from Kolkatta, she made it appear as if the whole affair was consensual and that the woman was making a fuss over nothing. Tejpal magnanimously offered to take leave from the editorial duties and both the man and his woman felt that the ends of justice had been met. In India, there is growing intolerance toward sexual harassment and exploitation and the words of Nancy Poweel mean nothing as she is not aware of the reality of India today. The outrage against Tarun Tejpal and his "Managing Editor" Shoma Choudhary resulted in the Goa police registering  a case of rape against Tejpal.The mananagment of Tehelka is putting a lot of pressure on the young girl not to cooperate with the Police in its investigatioon and this is the way the"flag bearer" of the so called secular liberalism behaves in India.

The Congress is trying to shield its journalistic hit man with all the power at its command. The Minister of the Congress regime whom we jocularly refer to as the Dr Goebbels of the Regime, the Minister for Mis information and Propaganda, the voluble Manish Tewari has not said a word about this incident in public. Obviously the regime would like the uproar to quieten and then offer him some plum assignemnts like membership of the Prasar Bharati Board. The ammended Rape laws that have been passed allow for procecution even if the woman does not file a written compalint. So the ends of justice may yet be met.

This episode only shows that blackmailing journalists like Tarun Tejpal are predatory sexual perverts and like Rathore and Kanda need to be in jail.

The Massacre of the Sikhs by the Congress Party in 1984: Memory and History, Helium, a Novel

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Helium
Jaspreet Singh
Bloomsbury, 2013

Violence is a part of History and the Nation States of today prefer to erase violence, especially collective and concentrated acts of demonic destruction of life from the pages of History. India is not an exception. In the West, the Holocaust is passed off as a Nazi aberration with the ordinary Germans participating only as innocent bystanders and this version history sits quite comfortably with the ideological and political realities of the Cold War and post Cold War geo political environment. In India too, there has been a denial of violence as a factor in the collective existence of India. The "Secular" scholars wax rather eloquently about the "Idea of India" which they associate with Jawaharlal Nehru ignoring the fact the he oversaw the largest mass killing in the history of the Indian subcontinent when the political leadership of the Congress and Lord Mountbatten decided to bring forward the date of Indian Independence from 1948 without bothering to prepere for the enormous tragedy that was to unfold. We may not ever know the numbers, but a figure of 3 million killed or displaced on both sides of the border is certainly possible, making the birth of the so called democratic republic of India one of the most bloodstained in the twentieth century. Yet the acolytes of Nehru pretend that Nehru and his Interim Government cannot be blamed.

The "communal factor" and the "comunalism" in Indian politics is one thmeme that plays itself out in Indian historiography without any theoretical or empirical understanding. The framing of the political issues either prior tpo Partition or Post Partition (I deliberately do not use the world Independence) as "communal" or "secular" is a game that began with the Congress when it participated in the 1937 Elections in the United Provinces and other parts of British India under the Government of India Act of 1935. The Congress did not win a single seat earmarked for the Muslims though it presented itself as a "secular" and the only organization that represented all sections of the Indian population. Instead of introspecting and trying to comprehend the alienation of the Muslim population the Congress did what it always does best: it created a bogey man so that it could use the bogeyman to frighten the Muslims into supporting the Congress. From 1937 after the Congress failed to win even a single seat and when the Muslim League swept all the Muslim seats thereby exposing the fact that the Congress did not enjoy the support of the muslim minority, the Congress leadership particularly Nehru and his "progressive" faction within the Congress started virulently attacking the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtrtiya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) and converted the political discourse on the future of India as a common homeland for both Muslims and Hindus into one of conflicting religious identities.  The more stridently Nehru lambasted the so called Hindu organizations whose strength was very poor amidst the electorate, the more aggressively Jinnah put forth his case for Pakistan. The fact is that the failure of Congress leadership and its cynical use of a non existing threat to garner support of the Muslim minority resulted in strengthening the march toward Partition. To this of course, we can add the folly of the resignation from the Minstires in 1939 anf the 1942 Movement. This rehearsal of history is needed to set the stage for the most horrendous act of violence committed by the Congress party in Novemnber 1984 when it organized the killing of Sikhs in different parts of Northern India and the capital, New Delhi on  a scale that even the Germans would have found amazing.

The failure to confront the real the structural underpinnings of violence in modern India, meant that the country could live in denial and pretend that violence did not exist in India in any organized sense. The fact is that the Congress party, particularly in Northern India had begun to use violence as an instrument of political mobilization even in the pre partition days. Gyanendra Pandey and other historians conflate all acts of political violence as "communal violence" thereby giving the Congress party the benefit of doubt. 

In 1984 soonn after BBC announced the death of Indira Gandhi at the hands of Beant Singh and Satwant Singh her two Sikh bodyguards, the leadership of the Congress party in New Delhi decided to take vengence. Rajiv Gandhi famously justified the violence saying , "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes". For three whole days rampaging mobs of Congressmen went from house to house looking for Sikhs. They were armed with a database of names and addresses inn the form of telehone directories and electoral rolls. Whereever Sikh men were found, the Congressmen cut their beards and hair and doused them with petrol and burnt them alive. What was worse is that successive Congress Governments abetted the crime by destroying evidence and impeding investigation. Not a single man was convicted though it is well known thta H K L Bhagat, Lalith Maken, Arjun Das, Sajjan Kumar, and Jagdish Tytler were all involved in the killings. In several of them were even appointed ministers.

The novel, Helium which we are reviewing is a classic inn its own right. It is a work of fiction but fiction is only the form because it explores the dark savagery of 1984. Violence is often the starting point of great works of literature of which Primo Levi's works come to mind. Jaspreet Singh too has done just that. He is a memory keeper, a conscience keeper, a record keeper and above all a Historian who uses his novel to memorialize the unthinkable and verbalize the pain and suffering of countless victims. As one who has also relentlessly worked to keep the memory of 1984 alive, I salute Jaspreet Singh and have no hesitation in saying that this is one of the best novels ever written on a difficult and contentious theme. The acolytes of the Congress Party and the apologists of 1984 want to deflect blame and undermine memory by drawing a false parallel with 2002. 1984 like the holocaust is a unique event. and cannot be that easily domesticated in categories of ordinary experience.

The story revolves around the son of a Delhi IPS officer who perhaps under political compulsions looks away when a Sikh Professor at IIT is killed. Raj carries the burden of the guilt of his father and much later in life meets Nelly Kaur, the widow of the Professor who has collected the documentary and visual evidence of the horrors of 1984 in an archive in Simla. The memory of dark deeds committed even in the soft glow of political and ideological consensus can devastate a human being and this novel explores that aspect in detail.

Lastly: In these so called post colonial times when History is seen as a "discourse" without any contact with a reality, we need novelists like Jaspreet Singh who use the craft of the historian to document the horrors of the past as sirens warning the future about the devils lurking within us.And History has to be retrieved, recorded and remembered.

International Seminar on India-US Cooperation:a ADefining Partenrship of the 21st Century

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

I am not much of a seminarist. I find the  the academic pretensions a trifle too irritating  and I am particularly wary of those that deal with the problems of today as if history and the past have had no role in creating the problems and feel that in the study of International Relations, the academic discipline of History must play a vital role. There are two reasons for saying this: India does not have an indigenous tradition of Historiography and therefore has no tradition of diplomacy and statecraft. The last theory of statecraft that emanated from India was Kautilya's Mandala Theory of Kingship and Statecraft which goes back to the Mauryan perid. Unlike the great civilization of China, India did not practice the craft of writing History. The second reason is more practical. India got its political freedom in 1947 when three great empires disintegrated" the British Empire, the Japanese co prosperity sphere and the the French Empire. The disintegration of these large imperial entities was accompanied by the rise of two ideologically antagonistic empires: the American and the Soviet empires. USA was able to co-opt the defeated Europeans into a NATO military alliance and the Soviets created the Warsaw Pact as a counterbalance. In a discussion on the emerging challenges before the India in the 21st Century, particularly with regard to its relationship with USA, the only world hegemon in the contemporary scenario, I expect these historical trends to be debated so that we understand the historical context of India;s diplomacy vis a vis USA. I do not want to use the word Statecraft because there is no long term planning or goals in the conduct of Indian foreign policy. In a International Seminar in a University situated in Pondicherry these perspectives were raised only by me, a historian and not a "political scientist".

The Seminar was inaugurated by the Vice Chancellor of Pondicherry University Dr. Chandra Krishnamurthy who in her Presidential Address dealt with the major themes of the Seminar. The former Vice Chancellor of the University dr V T Patil gave  a sound overview of the challenges facing India and went on to add rather gratuitously that China will be a major threat to India. This hostility toward China which is the signature of the India political and academic community is what I would like to challenge. Almost all the speakers including Professor Vijayalakshmi from JNU maintained that China is a major threat to India. This kind of ideological framing of an important issue before the Nation without an iota of critical application of mind does enormous damage to Indian foreign policy with regard to China with which India has had 2,000 years of peaceful coexistence. I met mr D S Rajan a China expert who seemed more forthright on China said that the shadow of 1962 has not lifted. The Indian foreign policy experts play up the threat from China in order to justify India;s deadly embrace of the strategic vision of USA which wants to use India as cannon fodder against China.

The Vice Chancellor inaugurating the Seminar along with Dr V T Patil, the former VC

The Seminar was organized by Professor N K Jha and his colleagues in the Department of Politics and International Studies. My observation which I made repeatedly was that China is not a threat to India and USA will not abandon its special relationship with Pakistan in order to build better ties with India. Nobody even mentioned that USA did not allow access to the American terrorist David Coleman Headley who was one of the masterminds of the 26/11/2008 massacre in Mumbai.

As George Santayana said those who forget History are condemned to relive it.