Monday 30 November 2015

       SITARAM YETCHURY IN THE RAJYASABHA                        ON NOV 26, '15

Hear one of our most erudite speakers, Sitaram Yetchury,  speak in the Rajya Sabha on Nov 26, '15, on the occassion of theso called 'Constitution Day'.

He lucidly exxplains why Nov 26 is not the Constitution adoption day, but Jan 26 was the day the Constituion was passed and adopted. 

He redicules the BJP for inventing the day and doing event management. to find relevance in the Nations struggle for independence by worming their way through such event.

He brought out that in a despatch from Delhi, the British authorities in In dia sent a report to UK Govt during the Quit India movement, stating that the RSS were law abiding and cooprative.

He brought out that Jan Sangh, the predecessor of BJP, was created by four prominent RSS leaders convincing Shyama Prassad Mukherjee, an ertwhile Congree Minister, to form a political party, after the ban on RSS, imposed by Sardar Patel.

Yetchury has quoted Golwalkar, the second president of RSS and reverred by its members as their Guru, from page 35 of the latter's seminal work, 'We Our Nation Defined' first published in 1939 by Bharat Publications, Nagpur, "What is the meaning of Swaraj? Swa means 'Hum'; hum kaun haen? hum Hindu haen". Golwalkar has further added, "Only a Hindu has the right to live in India".  In another quote, referring to the third Reich, Gowalkar says, "To keep the race pure Hitler purged the Jews, We have a good lesson to learn and profit by". 

About BJP's antics, Yetchury said, "Usually, a victor flips, but here the victor is trying to rewrite history".

He also quoted Dr Ambedkar, "Without /equality, there cannot freternity; without equality and freternity, there can be no liberty".

Listen-in to the whole speech. It will change your way of looking at the present Govt.

WHAT IS THIS CONSTITUTION FOUNDATION DAY? - SITARAM YETCHURY

Sunday 29 November 2015

THE ARROGANCE OF SAFFRON ON THE SLEEVES
During the five years of UPA II, all groups of the Sangh Parivar, with saffron on their sleeves,  with arrogance seeping out from every pore in their bodies and every syllable of their spoken word, pulled all stops to –
·            ensure that the Parliament became non-functional, force path breaking bills  to gather dust and justify their consistent antinational activities by shamelessly proclaiming that in a democracy, it was a legitimate weapon to be used by an opposition;
·            ensure that while they did everything to murder democracy, the National media played an ambivalent role, in  stark contrast to the shrill voices of every anchor on the National TV Channels and every editor in the print media, castigating the Congress opposition as anti National and playing a petty game of revenge politics;
·            sanctimoniously proclaim to the World that the Govt of the day was a NPA, (Non-Performing Asset) and no FDI should be made;
·            blacken all their opponents with the tar of corruption, demanding resignations at the sniff of an accusation of corruption or wrong deeds, many of them simply manufactured); (resignation of the rly minister, Pawan Bansal);
·            launch personal attacks on every important member of the opposition to destroy their personal credibility; (land scam charge against Robert Wadra);
·            indulge in much chest beating, perfidious drama and perpetuation of Natwarlal-type acts, to sanctimoniously announce that they were lily white  and different, (na khayenge, na khanedenge);
·            usher-in achche-din by bringing-in an estimated one trillion US dollars worth of black money back to the Country, within 100 days of coming to power, (just like Raja Saheb VP Singh, of the Janata days) and deposit Rs 15 lakhs into the  jana-dhan account of every citizen of this Country;
·            bring-in ache din through accelerated development, (sab ka saath, sab ka vikas), ala Gujrat model;
·            bring down the prices of the essential commodities like onions; potatoes, tomatoes and pulses.
·            make the majority community believe that their entitlements, given away to the minority communities by the Govt of the day, would be restored and simultaneously tell the minorities that they would be given an equitable share.
As against all that they said and did in the last five years of the previous regime and still continue to behave in the same puerile manner, what they have achieved is –
·            mad cow disease all over the Country; riots, murders, arson and bad mouthing in the name of the cow;
·            an all-out effort to saffronise the Country, by tampering with every National Institution, be it historical, educational, media, social or legal, bowing to every diktat of the Sangh Parivar (registered social organisations), even invite them to the restricted and hallowed precincts of the seat of the Govt and have senior ministers and bureaucrats give them briefing on the goings on; the Official Secrets Act be damned;
·            an all pervading air of intolerance; dictating what everyone, be he/she be from  any community, should wear, say, see, do, eat and drink, even in the privacy of their own homes; egging brothers, sisters, friends and neighbours, to be at each-others’ throats;
·            scare in the air, with universal wonderment, ‘who is the next target’;
·            utter debasement of the political discourse, when the highest executive of the Govt goes around the Country and the World, badmouthing his opponents in public speeches to huge paid audiences;
·            no signs of achche-din; despite putting out cooked-up figures, the common man has started to sing, ‘laota do hamen, hamaare bure din’, evident from the drubbing the saffron combine received in Delhi, Bihar and lately at Ratlam, in their stronghold state of Madhya Pradesh, despite pouring-in billions of Rs to the election effort;
·            no visible development and no sign of ‘sab ka saath, sab ka vikas’;
·            sky rocketing, never before reached, prices of all basic essential commodities of the poor; onion, potato, tomato, the pulses;
·            acquiring a picture of being ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’;
·            branding any one criticising the Govt or its head as anti National, being one who was bringing down the image of the Country in the eyes of the World;
·            breaking almost every promise made during the last Lok Sabha elections, even the solemn ones, made to the retired soldiers, (Veterans); later declaring the promises to be  ‘chunavi jumla’;
·            debasing, dishonouring and defrauding the pride of the Nation, its defenders, it soldiers, by taking away their legitimate rights and letting the Veteran Soldiers rot on the streets of the Country for the last nearly six months; Chappan Chaati had enough time to roam the Worls, country hopping, but not enough to cross the street to Jantar Mantar to talk to the retired soldiers, the erstwhile defenders of the Nation, many of whom gave their lives defending the integrity of the Nation, through five wars;
·            practising the intricate British art of divide and rule, which they learn well during the freedom struggle, when they often acted as the lackeys of the former rulers;
·            talking in split tongues, spin-doctoring the wide gap between their ‘kathni’ and ‘karni’. 
It is disgusting to see the arrogance and the sanctimonious manner of the Saffronites, justifying every wrong word or deed of their leaders and their minions, be it branding every Muslim opponent of their policies as a Pakistani, asking Muslims to go to Pakistan, commiting sacrilege on an entire community by proclaiming to the erstwhile first citizen of the Country, late Abdul Kalam to be  a good man despite being a Muslim, branding any one criticising the Govt’s policies as being pathologically opposed to its leader and therefore, anti National. 
My research has yet to determine when and how the cow became a holy being. Do any of our Vedas, Upanishads, the Vedanta, the Gita say so. Whom was Vajasravasa giving away his old and infirm cows to ? To the Rishis and Munis he used to invite annually, as some would have us believe. In any case, what would a sanyasi do with worldly goods? Was he, then, donating his cows to a ‘Gaushala’? 
My research has also failed to determine lineage, (who, when and where), of the phrase, ‘Hindu Rashtra’. Does the word ‘Hindu’, find mention in any of the above referred sashtras? In our almost 10,000 years of our known history, we did not even know the word, till a Muslim Persia coined it and suddenly ‘Bharat’ became a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. Why do we have to be ‘Hindus’? Why not ‘Bharatiyas’ or in English ‘Indians’. 
I can only  laugh at the desperately comical effort of the Parivar to establish that Sanatani Aryans belonged to this sub-continent and were not invaders from outsiders, when no one has ever said that they were invaders. History says that hey were settlers, who once settled, drowned the then culture and heritage with their brand of rituals. The Sangh terms all such work the works as foreign inspired to glorify the Arian race. I have always invited their attention to the magnum opus of our very own Bal Gngadhar Tilak, ‘Arctic Home of the Vedas’, where he has traced the journey of the Arians from the Arctic to the Indian sub-continent. 
It is atrociously comical to hear a loser, who is being allowed to masquerade as the Munshi of the National Govt, calling internationally acclaimed and universally respected scientists, artists, authors, economists and sociologists as communists, unable to bear the massive majority with which the Saffronites were mandated by a the then adoring public, and their ‘reward wapasi’ as a conspired and structured revolt against a democratically elected govt. 
Since the Saffronites do not have universally venerated icons of their own, they have usurped and resurrected a few of the tallest Congress icons from the past, like Sardar Patel and Baba Saheb Ambedakr, while simultaneously leaving no stones unturned to denigrate and dishonour two of the  tallest of all leaders from the Nehru-Gandhi family. A concerted effort is underway to dishonour, defame and abuse the Architest of modern India, Jawahar Lal Nehru and the only man amongst men, Indira Gandhi, the one who was called ‘Durga’ by the tallest of their own, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. 
The extent of the desperation of the Saffronites to pull down Congress icons of the past can be gauged by a perfidious story presently under circulation which claims to have revealed the secret of how Indira Nehru became a Gandhi. The revealed story goes like this : While her father was busy earning his bread in the freedom struggle, a bored Indira, fell in love with a certain ‘Khan’, settled in England and got secretly married to him. On coming to know about it, Nehru asked the Khan to take the name of ‘Feroze Gandhi’ and get publicly married to Indira. The propagators of the story could not bother that Feroze Gandhi’s Parsi family are from Mumbai and the descendants still live there and that during the life time of Rajiv, had a much publicised reunion with him at Mumbai. 
Every incidence of Saffron terror is dismissed by the Saffronites as an isolated minor incident and the blame for that is deflected to the respective State Govts, on the ground that law and order within the State is the responsibility of the State Govt. The incidents that happen in the saffron ruled states, are given quiet burial. 
The last of the previous Govts at the Centre was literally booted out by the ‘Janata’ due to the then pervading sense of an all encompassing corruption. The Saffronites went around the whole World with a band of drummers, calling it ‘Scam Sarkar’. 
While painting the then Govt blue and black, the Saffronites never considered that the Nation was being shamed. All that mattered was their all consuming urge to win the next elections. The nomination of their PM candidate was a classic case of political chicanery, authored by the Head of the Parivar. A benefactor who literally picked him up from the streets to endow him with the thrown of a State, saved him from the ire of the then PM and being sacked, was back stabbed to oblivion in a ruthless manner and turned into a ‘has been’ along with all his supporters The electorate got dead convinced and finally, on the wings of fanciful dreams woven by the Chappan Chaati, with the help of tons of Goebblian lies carried through his Anthonian oratory and superlative acting on public stages, the Nation gave him a massive mandate. It did not matter if the candidate was a lamp post! 
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. 
Today, the Govt with a difference is mired in a number of cases of corruption, in almost every State where the Saffron rules. Even at the hitherto untouched Centre. From the CM and his family in Rajasthan to the CM and his family in MP to the CM and his family in Chattisgargh. The story is the same. Scams, scams and scams. Whereas Chavan in Maharashtra was made to step down by the Congress on mere suspicion, (He still remains uncharged), all the aforementioned are still firmly ensconced in their posts. A diktat is issued from the office of a central minister to certain Corporate Houses to financially support his niece to set up her business and the Govt and its leader do not even miss a beat.   
No sense of shame. ‘na khayenge, na khane deyenge’ has been given the ‘visarjan’ in the mighty Ganga to eventually drown in the Bay of Bangal. 
Look where the Country stands today - on the thresh-hold of a steep slide to the bowels of anarchy. 
A few of my best friends tell me not to write like this, lest I draw the attention and ire of the Saffronites. 
My reply to my well wishers : 
“I have but one life; I do not want to die more than once and that moment is ordained by God Almighty, the Creator and Lord of the Universe. I fear no human, nay, no living being”. 
I will NOT leave my Country, I was born here, I will die here but NO, I will NOT be buried here, nor will my body be burnt here;  it is donated to humanity, for whatever its worth.  In death do I seek immortality, a step behind Nachiketa. 
During the run up to the last Parliamentary elections, in an e-mail circle of Army War Veterans, I was just one of the two dissenting voices, amongst a cacophony of chants for the great man, the Chappan Chaati. One fine day, one of my good friends in that circle told me, “Oh! Shut up you Johnny Dhar”. I did, but not before giving them my parting warning, 
“You all will live to regret”. 
It is part of written record. Many have regretted since then, sooner than expected, but ‘Ab pachtae ka hot hae, jab chidia jug gaee khet”. 
We have to bear this farcically arrogant Govt till the next Lok Sabha elections in 2019. I empathise and sympathise with you my Country. I am one with you.
Jai Bharat

Friday 27 November 2015

BE FREE TO QUESTION INDIA’S IMPERFECTIONS
Laila Tyabji:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laila_Tyabji)
New Delhi 26 Nov 15 | 06:20 PM  
Never in my 68 years have I thought for even a millisecond of living anywhere else except India. Not even when, in the wake of the Ayodhya agitation, I received a stream of poisonous hate mails and a packet of turds (in a mithai box!!) I love the multi-layered multiplicity of India, its synergies & paradoxes, its many diverging & converging cultural streams, its colour & chaos, the hit-and-miss jugaad of past and present, malls and mandirs, East and West; its unexpected but inherent certainties.... In any case, good or bad, it is MY country.
So it feels strange to be told, when I critically question any aspect, that I should go live somewhere else - Pakistan for instance. I am utterly amazed that Aamir Khan's confession of momentary vulnerability should be termed a "moral offence" by no less a person than MJ Akbar! I used to so admire the reasoned clarity of his writing.
I have always over-used adjectives. My English teacher would red-pencil an acerbic commentary. A rebuke I secretly courted was "oxymoron". I loved its sound as well as its meaning - two adjectives contradicting each other.
These days I am being turned into an oxymoron myself! "Indian Muslim" is an identity increasingly open to suspicion by self-proclaimed 'patriots'; one's own patriotism needing constant justification plus a certificate that one doesn't eat beef or critique the nation.
That a well-known Sadhvi can dub Shahrukh Khan a Pakistani agent and not be arrested for libel, instead accruing a trail of approving social media comments, or the Culture Minister awards A P J Abdul Kalam the accolade of being a good man "despite being a Muslim", is not exactly a comfortable feeling. That someone can be lynched to death for having meat in his fridge is even more eerie.
I love India and intend to live & die here, but I also want to be able to freely question its imperfections. Just as I have the freedom to say that Islam has been hijacked by a gang of demonic and utterly vile hoodlums and that the rest of us Muslims seem helpless to combat this evil. One's religion should have absolutely nothing to do with freedom of speech. Nor should 'tolerance' play a part in this equation.
'Intolerance' is a horrible word, even more horrible in practice. But 'tolerance' is only marginally better. I don't want to be 'tolerated' in condescending, rather grudging acceptance - as if I (and other minorities) were something not very nice that won't go away! I want my being here to be taken for granted. I feel an integral part of this nation, and I want everyone else to think so too. 'Tolerance' implies you can just about exist as long as you don't step out of line. An attitude typified by the Haryana Chief Minister's comment that Muslims can stay in India as long as they don't eat beef! I think we need to do better for our minorities, be they Muslims, Christians, Dalits, transsexuals, tribal, women in mini-skirts, people with same-sex partners, artists flying fanciful Styrofoam cows in the sky. None of us want to be 'tolerated'. We want to be ourselves. It's not a favour - its our constitutional right.
It's not that prejudice didn't exist before. Even in the sanitised bastions where Chetan Bhagat claims we phoney liberals are bred - boarding school, an English-speaking upper middle-class home, life as a design professional in Delhi, my work with craftspeople and DASTKAR, there was the occasional blip - landlords reluctant to rent one a barsati, overheard jokes about the violence, randy attitude, and breeding capacity of Muslims, the aforesaid box of turds.... These occasional infelicities were counterbalanced by great warmth and acceptance by most. These days, such crude generalisations, generally born of ignorance, seem to have hardened into a dividing of lines. An 'us' and 'them', escalating into violence as well as words - and given full licence. A tacit assumption that being a minority means being acquiescent and silent. There are new social media fatwas – young school kids sending chain WhatsApp messages urging their friends to boycott Shahrukh Khan films because he's a "Bad Man"; a lakh offered to slap Aamir Khan. Urdu writers being whitewashed from the curriculum.
In 1947, my father, then a serving member of the ICS, wrote in a letter to my grandfather:
“You will I am sure not be surprised to hear that I have elected to remain in India (Hindustan) & not to go over to Pakistan. I am absolutely opposed to the Muslim League ideology & mentality & it would have been a gross betrayal of all my ideals & hopes if I threw them over for the tempting posts that they are offering to Muslim officers who propose to get themselves transferred there."
My father later told me that one of his abiding sadness was how few of his Hindu colleagues understood why he didn't opt for Pakistan - a country supposedly made for Muslims. For him, and the rest of our extended family, it was inconceivable they exchange the eclectic vibrance of India for the claustrophobia of an Islamic state.
68 years later, it still seems difficult for many to understand that, Christians or Muslims. Aamir Khan or an Aam Admi, most of us are just thoroughly ordinary Indians, seeking happiness, sanity and security like everyone else, while retaining our own voice. Why can't we all simply 'adjust' to each other and the cultural baggage we each carry - just as we do in our over-crowded trains and buses; amicably negotiating awkward tin trunks, crying babies, and strangely wrapped parcels; miraculously bonding over our tiffins.
And yes –
All you Trolls, please stop twittering every time we try to course-correct India - it's ours as well.
Breathes There the Man
With Soul So Dead
Sir Walter Scott
I am reproducing this poem by one of the greatest Scottish Bards, because I had heard Amir Khan and countless other Khans, reciting it in elocution contests in their schools. (I too did and won), This is the diet we all have grown up with……Samuel
I
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

II
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band,
That knits me to thy rugged strand!
Still as I view each well-known scene,
Think what is now, and what hath been,
Seems as, to me of all bereft,
Sole friends thy woods and streams were left;
And thus I love them better still,
Even in extremity of ill.
By Yarrow's streams still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither'd cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot Stone,
Though there, forgotten and alone,
The Bard may draw his parting groan.
WHY I HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH SANGHIS, (ALMOST)
It seems a substantial number amongst us think highly of the Sangh Parivar, its aims and aspirations. It is for these sympathisers and emphasisers that I write this piece for.
The foremost goal of the Parivar was, is and will remain, 'Hindu Rashtra'.
No ‘one’ definition has ever been given to this Phrase. Various wings of the Parivar speak with different tongues, making a cacophony of shrill voices. Their remarks, followed up with actions by a large number of members of the Parivar, however, unequivocally proclaim what they mean by the Term, ‘Hindu Rashtra’. They invariably relate their vision of expectations on customs and culture of the Nation as a whole to conform to the beliefs, customs and traditions of what they call ‘Hindu Religion’.
I have earlier shared my thoughts on the issue, on our fb page and individually too, with a number of my friends outside it. I will request my today's target readers to search it out and read each of them carefully.
History cannot be changed.
Only the ‘Kattar Panthies’ have tried to do so over centuries but, each time, failed miserably. History is replete with examples of such attempts, from the repeated Islamic invasions of the Indian sub-continent, accompanied with mass scale destruction of temples, loot and arson to the long spells of Muslim and Christian rules, to the destruction of priceless heritage in Af-Pak by the Taliban-AlQaida to the ongoing destruction again of priceless heritage in Syria. Amongst all this carnage, Bharat stands out as the lone sentinel of a specially blended cultural ethos, all its own, which has helped its heritage to survive all the depredations of centuries.
History cannot also be distorted and rewritten.
I find the desperate struggle of the Parivar to rewrite History behind the disputable writings of a few authors of recent times to prove that Aryans did not arrive in India from outside the sub-continent. They have labelled all authors who wrote about the arrival of Aryans from outside the sub-continent as lackeys of the British, even though the Brits are not of Aryan race. The Germans are and they have written extensively on the migration of the Aryans. What did they stand to gain by establishing kinship with the Indo-Aryans?
Do they also wish to call Bal Gangadhar Tilak  also as a Brit lackey for writing his magnum opus, ‘The Arctic Home In the Vedas’, tracing the movement of the Aryans all the way from the Arctic?
That the preamble to the Nation's Constitution was amended vide Artcle 42, is history which has stood the test of time for some decades.
Even though I have my personal views on the issue of the 42nd amendment, I find the Parivar’s all out efforts to remove the word, ‘Secular’ from the Indian jargon to be laughable, in view of the fact that they themselves proclaim ‘Secularism’ to be the very soul of the Indian Ethos.
The Parivar has started calling all opponents as ‘Pseudo Secularists’. I have yet to find anyone who could define me the phrase, 'Pseudo-Secularism', coined by the Parivar and presently being aggressively used as a missile aimed at all those who oppose their communal agenda.
There is a determined effort by the Parivar to redefine 'Secularism', well defined in all English dictionaries, which, without exception explain it as representing independence from religion.
There is another ‘hauwa’, introduced by the Parivar, by starting a new debate on ‘Dharma’ Vs ‘Pantha’, while debating the ‘nirpekshata’, ehshrined in the Constitution. Parivar says ‘Dharma’ means ‘Religion’. Geeta defines ‘Dharma’ as related to ‘Karma’.
The Parivar wants to have their way over even Shree Madbhagwat Geeta!!!
The meaning of religion, as contained in all dictionaries is not what I personally subscribe to. To me, religion is everything Godly. Religion is, therefore, the practise of Godly (Read Goodly), behaviour, (Both in words and action), by each one of us, just as the Gita describes.  It, then, becomes a person’s personal equation with God, our creator, including the Universe. No Pandit, Maulvi or Priest can come in between the two. The religion of all humans, thus, becomes one, which can be defined as : Human's relationship with the Creator.
The religious path, which all of us must traverse, is a very lonely path. We are bound to fall many a time. That is unimportant. What IS important is that each time we fall, we get up brush-off the dust and resume our journey towards Him, till we can, in full consciousness say
I AM THAT I AM.
Of course, each one of us may have different manner of traversing the same path, but since the exercise is about an inward journey, it does not affect others. In this sense, the religion of every human on this Earth is the same : 'Personal relationship with that one God, creator of this Universe'.
I am a Christian, but that is not my religion.
My friend Rajesh is a Hin du and he thinks it to be his religion, but it is not. Another friend of mine Kabir is a Muslim and he thinks his religion is that but it is not. these are all our respective communities, to which we belong. As I have said before, every living being needs association with a community. One without it, tends to be 'irritable' at the best and a rogue, (just like the lone rogue elephant!), at the worst. Not for nothing did they say, 'No man is an island'; unless of course, one has renounced the World, and become a sanyasi, in search of truth :

"Bala, darp, kamam, lobham, krodham, parigramham,
                            vimucha, nirmamah, shanto, bhuaaye, kalpate"

Once he finds the truth, he too needs to establish association with those still seeking the truth and communicate with them.
What then are the so called 'Religions' of the World?
Every living being, from insects to humans is communal, in the sense that we live in our own communities. White ant does not live with red ants. Crows don't live with pigeons. Lions do not live with tigers. So are we humans. We live in our own communities, but for these to exist cohesively, there must be a common form of going around, a common belief 'System' and certain rules and regulations. There cannot be place for disbelievers in the 'System'. there cannot be a place for independents within the 'System'.
For a Country as diverse as India, the Word, 'Secular' takes added meaning. It must mean that each community is free to practise its 'System' freely and must be free to invite others to join their ‘System’, by own free choice.
The conflict between the Muslims and members of other 'Systems' is as old as Mohammed's propagation of his teachings, often through use of force. There is no Majority Muslim country in this world where rule of law is not governed by the Quran and Sharia. There are a number of countries, which became Muslim majority countries over a period of time and the moment that happened, they were, without exception, declared as Muslim states. That does not mean that India too must follow suit and declare 'Hinduism' as the State religion or the State as a 'Hindu Rashtra'. The Nation has survived over thousands of years, through Muslim/Christian rule and has remained 'Secular'.
I have no doubt in my mind that no one but no one must be allowed to use the 'System' to subvert the 'System'; use the 'Secular' freedom within the Country to subvert the Nation. For that to happen, we have to ensure that the demographic equations are not allowed to be changed drastically. 'Ghar wapsi', Movement against 'Love Jihad' are not the answers.
The 'State' must have the gumption to enact and enforce laws limiting the demographic growth rates of sections of its citizens. It is in this light that the importance of a Common Civil Code can be seen and realised. For every issue that affects the Nation as a whole, we must have a common civil code. The formula of 'Secularism' cannot be misused to oppose a common civil code, because we are Indians first and then members of a 'System', within the Nation.
The word 'Hindu' is non-existant in our Sahshtras. It is a word coined by a Muslim Persia, to denote people living on the other side of River Sindhu, just because of their inability to pronounce a particular letter. Why call for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’? Why not a ‘Bharat Rashtra’?
Our Nation is a nation of ancient Heritage as old as 10,000 years, as per Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Let's preserve that heritage, rather than destroy it. Of all the wonderful things that have been passed on to us from ancient times, the one foremost is :
"Vishwam Kutumbkam".
If the Sangh can spell out the definition of their concept of 'Hindu Rashtra' as above, I will become a 'Sangi' myself. till then, my criticism will remain valid.

Thx for reading it. God bless all of us.

Thursday 26 November 2015

THE PATHETICALLY SUICIDAL DRAMA AROUND OROP
I joined the band wagon of the agitation just when it was getting to warm up. Till before that, I was lost in a world of my own, engrossed in multifarious activities, one of which was struggling to complete a two year MBA, (Finance), at my ripe old age. My entry on to the stage was accidental, due to a CCed letter by a course mate. I was, willy-nilly, just sucked into the ongoing day to day acts.
I had, however, not bargained for the plot building up to a series of climaxes, almost on a daily basis, not just due to the Govt, but by those Heroes amongst us enacting on the National stage, a few of them just for a slice of the limelight.
I have not kept records, but if my failing memory serves me right, the stage started to take shape when the threatened agitation started getting postponed, again and again on the fortnightly promises of the Govt from Feb to May this year. It was a series of climax-anti-climax-climax-anti-climax, on and on.
While the Govt was cunningly stage managing the puppetry, we Veterans were practising brinkmanship of our own. A course mate of mine was removed from his post, on grounds of inaction, mismanagement of funds and alleged surreptitious sympathy with the Govt’s stand. He retorted by refusing to hand over the accounts. UFESM was born but soon came unstuck and became UUFESM(Un-United Front).
A section of us suddenly found merit with the Govt’s stand, probably by those still harbouring infallible belief in the legitimised reincarnation of Natwarlal, the modern day personality of the Hitlerian Goebbels, the hard core Sanghi, that master dramatis-personae , the Anthonyan orator who spins a web of lies over mass audiences, the Madari with his hordes of Jambhuras, making promises galore and leaving his chamchas to later scorn at the masses for believing his ‘Chunavi Jumlas’.  The cowardly Chappan Chaati who dares his opponents with hordes of fanatics lurking by his side.
I have an unenvianble task of stating my take on the issue, through the maze of many a take, some written by my course mates and friends of the same Corps as I. But state shall I, without malice, in view of the latest very visible thrust to split the movement wide open, to the advantage of the unrelenting Govt, hell bent to demoralise the soldier into abject submission.
When I took my PMR in 1988, my pension was fixed at around 5,000.00. It is now more than 10 times, despite the lack of OROP. Yet we have slandered the previous govts, mostly Congress, for not sanctioning OROP to us Veterans and neglecting our welfare. Some of us are now prepared to gather crumbs under the table, saying, “OK, agreed, it is not OROP, but something is better than nothing”.
My Sisters, Brothers and Friends of Bharat, tell me, are you satisfied with your Soldiers gathering crumbs under the table of the ‘Pradhan Sevakturned Pradhan Ruler’? Are we, the Defenders of our Nation, not entitled to our much deserved ‘Honour and Dignity’?
I have been steadfastly urging the leaders of our movement to stop harping only on OROP, for our struggle is NOT just for money, but for the 'Restoration of the Soldiers’ lost Honour and Dignity', so ruthlessly, steadfastly, deliberately and often cunningly, snatched away, bit by bit, by all the previous govts, just so that they would have the soldier crawling at the dirty & soiled booted feet of their Political Masters and their frontmen, the Bureaucrats. Sanction of OROP  is the first tiny step towards that goal. We have much more lost pride to regain, many more snatched entitlements to be restored.
To understand the gravity of the situation, My Sisters, Brothers and Friends, you have to know the real plight of the Soldier.
Are you aware that a Soldier, (Sepoy), highly skilled and trained to kill the Enemy and not be killed, is graded by our politicians and bureaucrats even below their chaprasis?
Are you aware that civil servants, while enjoying the comfort of their air conditioned offices and homes, pushing only pens often not even for the mandatory 8 hrs a day, within 14 years, automatically rise to a rank and grade of pay where an officer soldier can only aspire to struggle through an acutely pyramidical hierarchy by the dint of his 24x7, day and night toil, sweat and blood in the battle fields and heights of Siachin, in not less than 33 years. Trust me, I had gone through this grind with pride, for almost 26 yrs.
Is that acceptable to you my Sisters, Brothers and Friends?
Are you aware that every civil servant can automatically rise to the level of a joint secretary and retire with the highest salary and pension that all civil servants are entitled to, while a soldier in the ranks, (Nearly 50%), has to compulsorily retire with a service of 15 yrs at an age of 35 yrs and that 95% of the soldiers, (All ranks), have to retire before reaching that magical level of joint secretary, a level that every civil servant can elevate himself to, blindfolded ?
Are you aware that most of the civilised democratic countries of the world, honour their soldiers by giving them at least 10% edge on their civilian counterparts and follow it up with a substantively generous rehabilitation programme at the cost of the tax pair they defend.
About equalisation of pension, a few of us, including some friends of mine, are saying, “What’s the difference between 1 yr and 5 yrs or even 10 yrs, the difference is marginal”.  They are also saying, “What if the PMRs have been excluded?” These spokes-people forget that our struggle is NOT for a few Rs here and there, but for the Honour and Dignity of the Soldier. The descendants of Raghukul, whose motto is, “Pran jae, par vachan na jaye”, are now saying, “It’s your fault that you believed our ‘Chunawi Jumlas’”.
We have asked before and we ask again : 
What if the Soldier, in the times of war or internal unrest, turns around and tells the Sevaks turned Rulers, “It’s your fault you believed my ‘Naukari Jumla’ to be a 'Solemn Oath' to defend the Nation with my life”? If the Soldier is not expected to say so, then how can the 'Chappan Chaati' term a solemn promise he made to the same Soldiers, (On the back of which he got elected with a massive majority), as his ‘Chunawi Jumla’ ?
Tell us, my Sisters, Brothers and Friends, can a Nation survive such a treachery?
In our glorious Bharat, we have a Chappan Chaati who proclaims to the Nation, "I have to rob the poor", to throw crumbs at the Defenders of the Nation.
Do you, my Sisters, Brothers and Friends, accept such a statement ?
Are you aware that this chest thumping Govt is in the process of taking away whatever vestige of honour and dignity is left with the Soldier, by paying its civil servants more Extreme Discomfort Allowance for just being in the State of Assam than the Soldiers braving the Enemy at the extremes of Siachin, with temperatures plumeting to minus 50 degrees C and heights rising to 17,000 ft? 
Incidentally, our highest post, highest in the World, is at 20,000 ft, where none of these suited, booted blokes have ever gone even in their dreams.
At the end, I can only quote what the soldiers at Kohima, during the WWII, wrote as they died defending the Nation :

“Tell them that for their tomorrow, we gave our today”. 

My tail piece is the famous line from what a famous Indian proclaimed centuries before : 
“A Nation which does not know how to honour its Soldiers, has no right to exist”.
The signs are already there : 
Brothers and sisters defiling and debasing each other, through threats arson, rape, riots and targetted murders; brothers at the throats of brothers; friends turning foes at the drop of a hat; neighbours turning on neighbours; prices of essential commodities sky jetting, (Tur daal @ Rs220/Kg; Onions @ Rs80/Kg; Tomatoes @ Rs80/Kg), despite a saving of US$80 billion in the Crude import bill.
Tell us Oh! our Sisters, Brothers and Friends of this great Nation called Bharat : 
Will you let this ‘Jumla sarkar’, led by a dogmatic, self-illusioned, chest beating Chappan Chaati, Pradhan Sevak’ turned ‘Pradhan Dictator’, lead our Great Nation to its doom and destruction.