Tuesday 28 January 2014

A Frank Letter to Frankly Speaking Rahul Gandhi


Dear Mr. Rahul Gandhi,

It must have come as a real surprise to you that I am addressing you by your acquired family name (as your family name by birth was Raul Vinci) instead of calling you “Pappu”, as this nation lovingly calls you. However, watching your frank interview with Arnab Gos...wami yesterday, I for once is in a dilemma whether to admire you or pity on you for your this bold act of 80 long minutes though not that the nation was expecting something significantly different. Actually watching you during the interview reminded me of the famous “Balatkar” speech of Chatur Lingum in the popular movie “3 idiots”. Your party and it’s so called leaders have been systematically trying to convince this nation for last 10 years that you are it’s only hope and future Prime Minister even though whenever you have opened your mouth in public, it’s increasingly looking like “Peechle dus saal se apne nirantar iss desh ki balatkar pe balatkar kiye ja rahe hai”. Now after your interview yesterday, you have reinforced this belief even more that you simply lack what it takes to lead both the party and the nation. Today we are seeing that spokespersons of your party alongwith some journalists like Kumar Ketkar, Vinod Mehta etc. are getting emotional and trying to defend you for your brave performance though they realize that they are trying to defend the indefensible. You are being hailed as a visionary, honest, sincere and astute leader by them knowing very well that the Congress party always projects failure as success and that is what you have managed to do for yourself. It is perhaps the greatest tragedy for this nation to get a political leader and an aspiring Prime Ministers like you, whose utterances or silence on various important issues facing the nation, makes me wonder if we really deserved somebody as pathetic as you. I have a feeling that you have a born defect that you can’t even coherently put together any thought or idea even in your mind. But that a person with such incurable defect is being accepted and projected by the oldest political party in this country as the supreme leader and Prime Minister in waiting, demonstrates the level of flaw in the DNA of some of our own countrymen, who are leaders, supporters or sympathisers of Congress party. You are kind enough to give us a lot of entertainment at your and your party’s expense. People of this nation have come to accept that you can’t say anything intelligent and ready to trash your utterances, which are hailed by your party men as visionary comments. Only the dynasty worshiping, corrupt & criminal congress leaders, supporters and sympathizers still believe that there is a hidden wisdom in your speeches and comments. I just want to refresh your memory with some of your such so called startling “out of box (or mind?)” comments in the not so distant past:-

1. Politics is in your shirt, in your pant.
2. Poverty is just a state of mind. It does not mean the scarcity of food, money or material things. If one possesses self-confidence, then one can overcome poverty.
3. In India, we have a concept of caste. If one belongs to a backward caste and wants to attain success then one need an escape velocity of Jupiter to attain that success.
4. China is referred to as the ‘dragon’ and India as an ‘elephant’. But we are not an elephant, we are a ‘beehive’.
5. Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken.
6. We will stop 99 per cent of the attacks. But one per cent of attacks might get through and that is what I am saying.
7. Hindu extremism is a bigger threat to India than the Lashkar-e-Toiba.
8. 7 out of 10 youths in Punjab take to drugs.
9. India is the Saudi Arabia of 21st century.
10. If India is a computer, the Congress is its default programme.

Finally after 10 years, your party and the public relation company it has just engaged for your image makeover decided that you need to do a TV interview in one of the leading and most watched serious news channel. But they had over confidence in their own ability to convert a donkey into a horse overnight by training and memorising you a pre prepared script with some seemingly serious words and phrases. You had memorised all the answers to questions your trainers could think of. But a super intelligent and experienced journalist like Arnab Goswami had other ideas. He asked routine questions in a pointed manner and insisted on specific and detailed answers. He was not in a mood to allow you to attain “escape velocity” from any of his questions and repeated his questions till droplets of sweat appeared on your forehead and you stopped looking at his eyes. But I have only sympathy for you as the experienced political leaders and media managers of your party should have realized your limitations, watching your performance over last 10 years. Apart from the fact of your birth in the Nehru-Gandhi family, how you are qualified to lead the Congress party, can’t be convincingly explained by any member of your party. Such demeaning flattery of someone who has so far failed to distinguish himself in any field of human activity was sure to back fire at some point and expose the bankruptcy of idea in Congress party. It was a clueless exercise for a clueless pretend-politician.

Let’s start with your education. You told during the interview that you are an M.Phil. However, there is nothing in your utterances that would even vaguely suggest that you had gone through some form of higher education. But nothing is wrong with that. You don't need a great IQ to be in Indian politics and I don't believe that formal graduation has anything to do with anyone's wisdom or character. But this is where you are a handicap. The least I would expect of a future Prime Minister is wisdom and character. But that you have neither wisdom nor character is beyond any doubt of anybody, who is watching your acts and words over the last 10 years.

You said that Congress unlike BJP doesn't believe that power should be centred on one person (read Modi). So what do you want - that the power should only be centred on one Nehru-Gandhi family? You said in the interview that “I am absolutely against the concept of dynasty, anybody who knows me knows that and understands that”. I am sure Rahul, you don’t expect this nation to take you seriously on that, else how can you explain the nowhere seen phenomenon that in a democratic country during 66 years of its independence, power is in the hands of four generations of a single family? If that is not a dynastic monarchy, then what is it? Though your words on any day have the power to change Govt. ordinance or policy decisions like number of subsidized gas cylinders, still you and your party is reluctant to openly declare that you are the Prime Ministerial candidate only to protect you from taking responsibility in the event of a loss in the coming elections. But while answering questions on this topic you evade a direct reply taking cover under tradition and constitution forgetting completely that on several instances earlier your great grandfather, grand mother and father were declared PM candidate much before elections. Even the current PM was also declared as candidate much before the 2009 elections. So you want to enjoy unlimited power without accountability. It’s God sent that you came forward for this interview, as it’s now clear to the voters of this nation that Rahul Gandhi is not a "Reluctant Prince”, he is a "Redundant Prince".

Rahul, you talked about empowering people a 100 times in 10 minutes yet you have failed to empower the Prime Minister from your own party in last 10 years. You say that you believe in democracy, in opening up the system, in RTI and giving power to the people. We are a parliamentary democracy and here everyone has to believe in democratic institutions, transparency and empowering people including women. So what’s new in what you are saying? You said that you want to change the system but which alternative system do you have in mind? You just throw phrases but never convincingly able to elaborate them. It has been fashionable for Congress to coin slogans like “Garibi Hatao”, “Congress Ke Haath, Aam Aadmi ke Saath”, “Ho Raha Hai Bharat Nirman” and so on, when the greatest gift to the nation by the party has been corruption, criminalization of politics and mis governance. Corruption in every form possible- from politics, to businesses, to bureaucracy, to even Commonwealth Games - nothing has been spared and scares resources of the nation have been allowed to be plundered. For every question, you hid behind the excuse of RTI, women empowerment or opening up of the system to more youngsters. You were asked about price rise and you answered about women empowerment. You were just randomly putting some words together while framing replies without listening or trying to understand any of the questions. The answers were clearly unconvincing. You declare that you have tremendous belief in inclusivity. But in all the States where your party is in power, communal tension is palpable because it believes in the appeasement of particular caste or religion for vote bank politics masquerading as inclusiveness. Its idea of secularism has chained the nation into shackles so much so that it has prevented from taking effective steps against terrorism and enemy nations and has left the citizens at the mercy of separatists and religious fundamentalists.

To counter the increasing popularity of Narendra Modi, you and your party try to impose falsehood and propaganda on the citizens of this country and divide them in the name of religion and spread vendetta politics, projecting it as secularism. While repeatedly flogging your only issue of 2002 Gujarat riots, you conveniently forget your party’s direct involvement in the genocide of thousands of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984. Though photographs and testimony are available of Congress leaders, leading the mobs while massacring thousands of innocent, unarmed Sikhs, nowhere the police fired a single bullet or arrested even one person. Cases were not registered and investigated. A Commission of Inquiry was constituted which came with a sham report. The Judge heading the Commission was subsequently made a Congress Party Member of the Rajya Sabha. Justice evades the victims till today inspite of irrefutable proofs available but instead of punishing the culprits, they have been rewarded with ministership and other Govt. favours. But though in Gujarat thousands of people were arrested, police fired at several places killing almost 300 rioters from both communities, you still blame Modi & BJP of complicity in the riots. Thousands of prosecutions were filed and hundreds of people have been sentenced so far. The Chief Minister personally went through several inquiries including the Supreme Court constituted and monitored SIT and no evidence was found against him. Even when Supreme Court exonerated Modi, you still say that he is a mass murderer but when your father casually approved the 1984 riots saying that when a big tree falls, the earth shakes, you don’t find him to be a murderer. You said that Modi is responsible for 2002 riots as he was the CM but by the same logic don’t find it appropriate to accept that your father was responsible for 1984 riots as he was the PM. Every time Congress tries to dig a grave for Narendra Modi, Rahul- you have jumped into it. And still all those die-hard fans of Rahul Gandhi must be jumping with joy to hear from you that you are not scared of Narendra Modi. No doubt that Congress is spending Rs.500 Cr to prepare a star campaigner in you for the BJP.

If you are complaining that the political system in Congress so far was not transparent, fair & just and therefore you are in the process of changing the same, can you also answer whose fault was it? Who was heading Congress most of the time in its history of 66 years after India’s independence? How long do you think you can fool people of this nation and continue your dynastic rule?

Today it’s evident that your spokespersons & media management team is clueless as to how to defend your comments and project you as Prime Minister for 2014 and their frustration is in the open. Hence they are trying to suppress everybody, who shows any strength of conviction to expose your intellectual bankruptcy and hypocrisy of your party. This is Rahul Gandhi for the Congress that wants to thrust upon India a leader bereft of vision and knowledge about the nation’s history, economy, politics or culture. Each time you speak in public, you remove all doubts about your utter unsuitability for the job of PM. Your TV debut has left nobody in doubt that giving another chance to the Congress party in the next Lok Sabha election will be akin to committing suicide. If you were to become the next Prime Minister, the red beacon that you will get for your vehicle, will be called “LOL batti”. A grateful nation is thanking you today that with your this interview you have finished whatever little chance Congress party had of winning the 2014 general election.

Yours Sincerely,
A Mango Man

Sunday 19 January 2014

A Tragedy of Our History, We Love to Forget…

Today is the 24th anniversary of the worst genocide that India had seen since independence – 24 years ago on the intervening night between 19th January and 20th January 1990, death was what a whole community of about 500,000 population faced and hundreds  of them  were killed, hounded and eventually the whole community was thrown out of their homes of thousands of years.  Yes, I am referring to the genocide and ethnic cleaning of the Kashmiri Pandits in the Kashmir valley, perpetrated by Islamic terrorists and widely supported by the local Muslim majority population.
 
In late 1989 – “Aftab”, a local Urdu newspaper, publishes a press release issued by Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami to wage jihad for Jammu & Kashmir's secession from India and accession to Pakistan, asking all Hindus to leave. Another local paper, “Al Safa”, repeated this expulsion order. In the following months, there were near chaos in the Kashmir valley with Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference Govt.  abdicating all responsibilities of the State. Masked men run amok, waving Kalashnikovs, shooting,  killing Hindus and shouting anti-India slogans. Inflammatory speeches were made from the pulpits of mosques, using public address systems meant for calling the faithful to prayers. A terrifying fear psychosis griped the Kashmiri Pandits as walls were plastered with posters and handbills, summarily ordering all Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code and forced people to reset their clocks to Pakistan Standard Time. Shops, business establishments and homes of Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley with a recorded cultural and civilisation history dating back to 5,000 years, were marked out. Notices were pasted on doors of their houses, asking the occupants to leave Kashmir or face death. In villages and towns across the Kashmir valley, terrorist hit lists were floating around with  names of Kashmiri Pandits. With no government worth its name, the administration collapsed and disappeared  and the police nowhere to be seen, despondency set in. On 19th of January, the administration imposed curfew in the valley but throughout the day, Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists used public address systems at mosques to exhort people to defy curfew and take to the streets. Masked men were firing from their Kalashnikovs marching openly in the streets terrorising Pandits, who by then, had locked themselves in their homes. As evening fell, the exhortations became louder and shriller. Three taped slogans were repeatedly played the whole night from mosques-  'Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-O-Akbar kehna hai' (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-O-Akbar), 'Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa' (What do we want here? Rule of Shariah), 'Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san' (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men). By then 300 Hindu men and women, nearly all of them Kashmiri Pandits, had been slaughtered including the brutal murder of Pandit Tika Lal Taploo, noted lawyer and BJP national executive member, by the JKLF in Srinagar. Soon after that, Justice N K Ganju of the Srinagar high court was shot dead, Pandit Sarwanand Premi - 80-year-old poet, and his son were kidnapped, tortured, their eyes gouged out and hanged to death, Lassa Koul, the then Director of Doordarshan Kendra, Srinagar was shot dead. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was gang-raped and then beaten to death. Another woman was abducted, raped and sliced into bits and pieces at a sawmill. Since then as many as 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits had to flee their home and hearth and been reduced to living the lives of refugees in their own country. Two-thirds of them are camping in Jammu and the rest in Delhi and in other Indian cities. Many of them, once prosperous and proud of their rich heritage, now live in grovelling poverty.  During the last 24 long years, we have seen a generation passed away withering in the hopes to go back to their homes in the valley and die peacefully in their homeland. This generation that lived the prime of their life in the serene valley had to live their twilight years in horrendous conditions prevalent in uninhabitable refugee camps. They had to suffer the humiliation of being refugee in their own land and still not recognised by their Government and other so-called human rights organisations. During the same time, another generation has born in-exile and grown up without seeing the land from where their parents fled to escape the brutalities of Islamic terrorism, a land they dare not return to, although that land still remains a part of their country. They are acutely aware of the atrocities their fathers and forefathers had faced at the hands of Islamic terrorism and what it means to lose a homeland.
 
But even after 24 years of this tragedy, on this day neither Rahul Gandhi nor Arvind Kejriwal nor Mulayam Singh Yadav nor Mayabati nor Nitish Kumar nor Lalu Yadav nor Sarad Pawar nor Karunanidhi nor any of the communist leaders or their political parties could find time to remember this humongous tragedy and show solidarity with the Kashmiri Pandits & meet them to share their grief. It was only Narendra Modi whom the so called secular political parties or the media, never tires to call communal, went to meet them in their camps and showed solidarity as well as determination to send them back to their homes. Not surprising, as this community of Kashmiri Pandits don’t determine winners or losers in any election and also are not backed by Fatwa following, fundamentalist, jihadi  religious zealots. Therefore, these  so called secular politicians and their parties, who were competing with each other for appeasing the Muslim community when 4000 people were displaced during Muzaffarnagar riot can conveniently afford to forget some 400,000 of their country men,  who are living as refugees for last 24 years in their own country of origin. An entire population have been uprooted from the land of their ancestors and left to fend for themselves as a weak-kneed Indian state shamelessly panders to Islamic terrorists and separatists who claim they are the final arbiters of Jammu & Kashmir's destiny. A part of India's cultural heritage has been destroyed, a chapter of India's civilisation history has been erased. Had this tragedy occurred elsewhere in Hindu majority India and had the victims been Muslims, the same Govt. and vote hungry political parties backed by pseudo secular  historians, intellectuals and media would have described it as 'ethnic cleansing' and 'genocide.'  They would have made films with horror-inducing titles and  filed cases after cases in the Supreme Court of India. The Govt. also would have constituted judicial commissions after commissions and SITs.  Our media would have demonstrated remarkable rage in reporting the smallest detail. But, this tragedy has occurred in Muslim majority Kashmir valley  and the victims are all Hindus, that too Pandits. What has been lost and erased is part of India's Hindu culture and civilisation. Therefore, the govt. can afford to make  bold, blatantly false statements that the Kashmiri Pandits had "migrated on their own" and their 'displacement is self-imposed'.  The National Human Rights Commission, after a sham of an inquiry, refuses to concede that what had happened is 'genocide' or 'ethnic cleansing,' though facts add up to no less than that, never mind that 400,000 lives have been destroyed. And that there is no room for plural society in highly Islamised Kashmir valley. And, our  jhola-wallah brigade of secular activists rudely turn up their noses to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits- Hindu sorrow inflicted by Islamic terror, stinks.
 
Today, on the 24th  anniversary of the forced flight of Kashmiri Pandits, do we have the heart and mind to look back at India's wretched history of secular politics and consider the terrible price the nation has paid at the altar of appeasement because the Indian State has and continues to, toe the line of least resistance. Did any Muslim Group ever condemned the mass genocide of Kashmiri Pandits? Which incident took place first-  Babri Masjid, Godhra or Kashmiri Pandit’s  genocide? Why Hindus can’t retaliate for any incident  & why Muslims create so much of fuss even if one Muslim is killed, that too even if he were a proven terrorist? On every 6th  December- media, pseudo secular intellectuals and political parties celebrate black day but today after 24 years why does no secular political leader has the guts to speak about Kashmiri Pandits? What is even more unfortunate is the fact that a man-made calamity of such a huge scale has not been given the same media coverage and not aroused the same public sentiment as the Babri Masjid demolition, Godhra riot (though they conveniently forget the train burning which killed dozens of Kar Sevaks which triggered the riot) or the recent Muzaffarnagar riots have.  It is ironic that not a single judicial enquiry commission has ever been set up to investigate the exodus and killings of Kashmiri Pandits. The killers have not been punished and rather they are roaming freely in Kashmir and have many supporters in the valley. The root cause of all problem of India is these so called pseudo-secular intellectuals, historians, politicians and the highly biased media. They are like those people in history who cheated their own people and allowed Md. Ghauri’s or British in this country. Truth is stranger than fiction.