Chyayla!

Argument

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:28:00 +0000

On reading a Reuters report on arrest of two persons in Italy in connection with 26/11, I put this as my gmail and facebook status message:

According to Reuters, 26/11 attackers were GUNMEN.

Obviously I wanted to point out that Reuters desisted from using the word terrorists, which seemed weird. This generated a g-chat argument with a friend who works with Reuters. Below is the transcript.

Friend: kapil

you of all people should not put that up as ur status

dont u recognise the legal issue

me: what is the legal issue?

Friend: even the 9/11 guys were hijackers

not terrorisys

we never label anyone that

kasab hasnt been convicted yet

and no matter how strongly anyone feels, it isnt right to call him that until a court convicts him of that charge

me: that's putting too fine a point on it

Friend: it isnt

reuters has been sued over this internationally before

me: i see

who would sue here?

Let?

F: that isnt the point!!!!

it isnt right to call him that

until proven

can u call shiney a rapist

no, coz he hasnt been convicted yet

me: are, but then how do u call him gunman even?

F: same thumb rule

because he was seen with a gun!!! and he had a gun in his hand

but was it an act of terrorism??? that isnt proven

me: see, i will make distinction between branding kasab before conviction, and describing the attack

agreed, kasab should not be labled anything untill convicted

but when you refer to attack as "by ten gunmen", u doubt if it was act of terrorism

F: why cant you doubt it

just coz one guy storms a army base in us and guns down people

cant that also be an act of terrorism

how do u know what is terrorism and what isnt

how do u know until it is proven so?????

is simple as that

more gunmen means terrorism?? that isnt a valid point

me: there is a point,

but i deem it academic

F: well, no matter how academic, in journalism you cannot afford to be emotional

u hv to go by the thumb rule

me: i am not being emotional, i can even understand kasab's motivations.

all i am saying is if something is blatantly perceptible, lable it

F: i am sorry, "blatantly perceptible" is very subjective

to that 18 year old maid, it is "blatantly obvious" that shiny raped her

is that the sme case with everyone else in the world???

so it is wrong to label him that

same thing

Sent at 20:49 on Sunday

me: again i would say: we can spare kasab till the verdict, but the act itself, looking at magnitude, one could call it terrorist attack

now if u permit, i would put this exchange on blog.

F: yeah sure

but if you notice this is consistent reuters policy

me: perhaps

F: not perhaps

it is

me: i dont remember how they covered london metro bombing

F: let me fish out a link for u

but i am confident we didnt lable the people who carried out the attacks as terrorists until proven so

Sent at 20:53 on Sunday

F: http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36771820081128?sp=true

pl read the following

me: k

F: it mentions the london bombings, madrid and even 9/11

but no where is the word terrorism mentioned in association with them

me: fine

The Monk & The General

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:10:00 +0000

1.
In William Dalrymple's Nine Lives, a Tibetan refugee named Passang tells his lifestory.

Passang was born in Tibet 1936. His family kept yaks, as a child he took them to graze high up in the mountains near his village. At some point he was attracted to a monk's calling, he enrolled in a monastery.

While he was training to become a Buddhist monk, Chinese army rolled into Tibet. Thinking that the communists were bent on destroying Buddhism, he, alongwith others, decided to join armed resistance. He gave up the monk's vow of non-violence, picked up a gun, and left the monastery. When the army learnt about him, it reached his house. His mother could not tell them where he was, she was beaten several times. Within a few months she died.

Monks had resolved to fight, but they were no match for the army. One day, the Dalai Lama had to flee to India. Passang followed him. He became a refugee.

At first Indian government tried to resettle the refugees in various parts of the country. Passang was sent to a rehabilitation camp in Karnataka. But after 1962 war with China, Indian government decided to enlist Tibetans in the army, because they would have made good mountain fighters, being from high-altitude Tibet.

Passang joined the Indian army, thinking one day Indians would send him to Tibet, to fight the Chinese. But that never happened. Instead, in 1971, he and other Tibetan soliders were sent to
Bangladesh, to fight the Pakistani army. It tormented him: Pakistanis were not his enemies. He hadn't given up Ahimsa to fight war in Bangladesh. At heart he was still a monk.

He retired from army in 1984. All these years he hated everything Chinese, even the eateries.
But one day he listened to Dalai Lama, who said that hatred was the greatest enemy, not the Chinese.

Passang decided to remove the hatred from his heart. One day he saw an eatery, run by two Chinese-looking women. He went in, loved the food, and later talked to the women. The women told him that they were indeed from China. They fled after Mao's cultural revolution began, went to Honk Kong, Singapore, and ended up in India.

Passang has now returned to monk's life. He lives in Dharmasala.

2.
Passan't Bangladesh connection reminded me of General Shahbeg Singh.

When the turmoil within East Pakistan intensified, and refugees started pouring into west Bengal, Indian government started training Mukti Bahini, the East Pakistani secessionist movement. General Shahbeg Singh, an army officer, played important role in the training of Bahini. Then the war broke out, Pakistani army was encircled, and had to surrender. East Pakistan became independent. Shahbeg was decorated for his role.

But thereafter he faced allegations of financial impropriety. There was inquiry. He eventually quit (or was fired). Perhaps out of the resultant bitterness, he joined the Khalistan movement.
When Bhindranwale took over the Golden Temple, it was Shahbeg who prepared for the unavoidable confrontation with the Indian military. He fortified the temple, sandbagged strategic points, placed machine guns. He trained other terrorists. Therefore, operation Blue Star was not a cakewalk for the Indian army. It had to fight hard, and over 80 Indian soldiers/officers were killed.

Shabeg Singh was killed in the gun battle, along with Bhindranwale.

Page 5 Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:58:00 +0000

Times Of India today reports what Saamana has to say about Sena workers' attack on IBN office (Pg 5). Inset within is a box on "Times View".

The box says: The government's initial response to the vandalism...seems to refreshingly stern. But there needs to be sufficient political will....The government must not stop at acting against the foot soldiers; it needs to take similar deterrent action against the leaders who have instigated the vandals...The message must go out..."

Ah. My view: No one can disagree with you guys. But yesterday you put the first report on the attack on page two, below the fold. Only a small photograph of the vandalised office made the front page. You would have done better to put the original story on page one. Even today you could have put Times View on the front page. The message would have gone out in a better way, no?

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:33:00 +0000

Day after attack on IBN-Lokmat offices:

Would the Marathi media now boycott Shiv Sena? Perhaps a total boycott wouldn't be fair to the viewers/readers. I suggest less harsh retribution: newspapers can dump all Sena stories on inner pages, sans photographs, and cramp them in single columns. Channels can cut out the visuals.

This will hurt Sena. Bal Thackeray could afford to snub the media -- Marathi mediamen relished
his put-downs too. Not Uddhav. He can't rely only on his oratory, he needs media badly. Let's starve them of coverage till Sena apologises, and promises never to do this again.

No such boycott will come about, I am pretty sure. For such responses are born of self-pride. After the sell-out during Loksabha and Assembly elections, would there be left any?

He(ro)

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:43:00 +0000

After his stint as a child star, he went back to school but dropped out in high school. He became a choreographer before acting in -----. Describing his second avatar at 19, he says, “As a villain, I was called in when there was a rape required. I went from rape to comedy to loser to hero.” But by then Malayalam cinema had accepted him as a hero. By age 26, he’d done 100 films and even got cash registers ringing in Bollywood...

And I regret that so many of his films never got dubbed/remade in Hindi. There was this movie which I once caught on good old DD. (DD used to air regional films with subtitles on Sunday afternoons.) He plays a college professor, who encourages his students to enter into intercollegiate orchestra competition. Minutes before the event, college goons smash up the instrument-set. But he is around; he grabs the mike, and provides background score through finger tapping and breathing and whistling. Superb!

Who is he?

सचिनचे मराठी

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:38:00 +0000

सचिन (तेंडुलकरांचा) फार वाईट मराठी बोलतो. साहित्य सहवासमध्ये वाढलेला असूनही. काल आय बी एन लोकमतवर मुलाखत पाहिली. वाक्यामध्ये क्रियापद सोडून बाकी सारे शब्द इंग्रजी. (क्रियापद म्हणजे मराठीत verb, verb म्हणतात ते.) नमुना: "प्रत्येक individual ची match च्या आधी preparation करण्याची style different असते... (तरी या वाक्यात तीन मराठी शब्द आहेत.) याच्यापेक्षा कृपाशंकर सिंग अधिक फ्लूएन्ट मराठी बोलतो. (मधु कोडा प्रकरण उघडकीस आल्यापासून मराठीत काय, हिंदीतही बोलताना दिसत नाही ते सोडा.)

असे का व्हावे बरे? बहुधा बायको अमराठी असल्याचा परिणाम. आता मराठी तरुणांनी मराठी तरुणींशीच लग्न करावे असा फतवा राज ठाकरे यांनी काढावा...

Islamic Republic Of Denial

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:38:00 +0000

Nadeem F. Paracha writes in Dawn:

Here we have a university that was attacked by a psychotic suicide bomber who slaughtered and injured dozens of students so he could get his share of hooris in Paradise. The attack was then proudly owned by the Tekrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. And in its wake, we saw enraged students protesting against the Kerry-Lugar act? What a response!

...

But then, some would suggest that in a society like Pakistan, such idiosyncrasies should be swallowed as a norm. And I agree. What else can one expect from a society living in a curiously delusional state of denial, gleefully mistaking it as ‘patriotism’ and ‘concern.’ It seems no amount of proof will ever be enough to dent Pakistanis’ resolve to defend the unsubstantiated, wild theories that they so dearly hold in their rapidly shrinking heads.

Leave religion behind, guys. In the 600 A.D., it was great to have it, as an underpinning for the budding civilization in the deserts of Arabia. Now move on, confine it to prayers and festivals. It's 2009.

Very easy to say this. Nobody would listen.

End Before 2012?

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:26:00 +0000

MNS's latest agenda: bullying SBI over recruitment. (Only those domiciled in Maharashtra should be hired, is the demand.)

Shiv Sena's latest agenda: Putting sari on Kareena's bare back.

If this is Uddhav and company's idea of outdoing/upstaging Raj, may god save them. At this rate Sena's obit would be written sooner than 2012 -- when Mumbai corporation elections are due.

Sachin, Lata, and Bachchan

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0000

I don't understand why TOI is making celebrities from other walks of life talk about Sachin. Yesterday it was full-page Amitabh Bachchan. Today it is Lata Mangeshkar.

Celebrating Sachin, I can understand. People worship him. Recently he made 175, so this is the season of worship. Fine.

But why Bachchan and Mangeshkar? Firstly, both are not (known to be) cricket experts. Moreover, both are amongst the most boring interviewees in our country. Diplomatic to the core. You ask Amitabh about SRK and he says: he is a competent actor. If asked about Raj Thackeray, he will probably say Raj is a competent politician. And Lataji: once we (she and I) were talking about late O P Nayyar. Who, allegedly, hated her guts. She never sang for him.
She said to me: Oh, people say we had a quarrel, etc, but really there was nothing like that. We were good friends. It's just that I never got to sing for him.
Sure, I said, I believe you.

(Ok, ok. I have spoken to Lata only once, on the day Nayyar passed away. A telephonic talk. But she did say that.)

Competitive

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:21:00 +0000

Abu Azmi is the most pitiable guy in the world right now. First he got slapped by an MNS MLA. Now Shiv Sena, annoyed because MNS beat it to beating Azmi, wants to prove that it is the original slapper party. So it threatened to thrash Abu over his remark about Bal Thackeray. MNS goes one up: seeking to highjack Sena's cause, it has said it too idolizes Bal Thackeray, and would not hesitate to beat Azmi again if he dares insult the old man. Of course, MNS's threat sounds more credible at the moment.

In short: Two parties, which between them have lots of beatings and thrashings and breakings to their credit, are competing to bash Azmi.

Abu dear, run...

PS: MNS today apologised to the assembly for the ruckus during the oath-taking. It said there was no question of apologising to Azmi. This is like LeT saying it wants to apologize to the owners of Taj and Trident and Nariman House, but there is no question of apologizing to those who got killed inside these buildings.

Mata Enfield Bullet

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:57:00 +0000

From William Dalrymple's `Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India':

...Certainly on my travels around India for this book I found many worlds strangely colliding as the velocity of this process accelerates.

Outside Jodhpur, I visited a shrine and pilgrimage centre that has formed around an Enfield Bullet motorbike. Initially erected as a memorial to its owner, after the latter suffered a fatal crash, bike has now become a centre of pilgrimage, attracting pilgrims, especially devout truck drivers.

प्रति, श्री. कुमार केतकर

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:55:00 +0000

प्रति,

श्री. कुमार केतकर,

लोकसत्ता

केतकर साहेब,

आपला दैनिक लोकसत्तामधिल आजचा अबू आझमी यांना झालेल्या मारहाणीविषयीचा अग्रलेख आवडला.

बाकी दैनिकेही अग्रलेख छापतात, परन्तु ते अग्रलेख व्यक्तिमत्वहिन असतात. त्या दैनिकांच्या संपादकांप्रमाणेच. तुम्ही राज ठाकरे व

मनसे यांचा उत्तम समाचार घेतलात.

परन्तु प्रश्न असा पडतो कि राज ठाकरे हे व्यक्तिस्वातन्त्र्य, अहिंसा, लोकशाहीची शिस्त, राज्य

घटनेप्रती बांधिलकी, या गोष्टींना कस्पटासमान मानतात हे लोकसत्ताला याआधी कधी जाणवले नव्हते काय?

आत्तापर्यंत मनसेच्या छोट्या- छोट्या चळवळींना `मनसेचा दणका' असे संबोधून त्या पक्षाला उत्तेजन देण्याचे धोरण आपण का

स्वीकारले होते? राज ठाकरे यांची मनसे-प्रणीत हिंसक घटनांनंतरची सम्भावितासारखी निवेदने आपण छापलीत, तेव्हा त्याच्या जोडीला ठाकरे यांच्या युक्तिवादातील तर्कदुष्टपणावर बोट ठेवणारे लेख आपण का छापले नाहीत बरे?

बहुधा, मनसे हा शिवसेनेच्या मुळावर उठलेला पक्ष असल्याने त्याला उत्तेजन द्यावे असे तुमचे धोरण होते.

आता मनसे हा सवाई शिवसेना होत आहे. यापुढे मनसेचे लाड लोकसत्ता करणार नाही, अशी आशा आहे.

एक वाचक

In Assembly

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:05:00 +0000

MNS MLA slaps Abu Azmi on the floor of the assembly -- for taking oath in Hindi. And the peons and clerks in my office -- fellow Maharashtrians -- love it. "It was the right thing to do," is the consensus.

Congrats, Raj.

The incident also reminded me of what happened in East Pakistan assembly several decades ago. Deputy speaker of the house was lynched by rival party's MPs -- on the floor of the office. We are not there, yet.

Vande Mataram: 2

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:08:00 +0000

Reacting to the previous post, someone wrote:

I'd like to comment about your point (b). Mind you it's NOT the test of patriotism; but refusing to do it is a test of "unpatriotism" (sic). Take the case of saluting our national flag. If I salute it daily, and you don't find time to salute it even once a year, are you unpatriotic and I'm patriotic? NO. But when you say you'd NEVER salute our national flag, will you be considered patriotic? NO.

My definition of patriotism is this: To refrain from doing something that will harm the nation's interests, and also to refrain from not doing something that will harm the nation's interests. To me, not to pay taxes is unpatriotic. To waste natural resources is unpatriotic. Similarly (to adopt Tom Friedman's argument), to drive a petrol-guzzling SUV seems highly unpatriotic to me, because the money we spend on petrol enriches nations like Saudi Arabia which sponsor militant, intolerant variety of Islam.

When an Indian Muslim refuses to sing Vande Matarm, I get annoyed. I get hurt. There was a time when it even infuriated me. But does it harm nation's interests?

I rest my case.

Vande Mataram

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:21:00 +0000

Apropos Vande Mataram controversy:

(a) I don't believe that modern Muslim men and women care about what Deoband guys say about Vande Mataram. Or about anything, for that matter. Don't forget that in the recent times it was A. R. Rahman who set Vande Mataram to a new (and funky) tune (and sang it). Rahman is a devout Muslim. Deobad guys have once denounced the length of Sania Mirza's skirt. Does the good lady (no more single. sad.) care?

(b) Willingness to say Vande Mataram is too easy a test of patriotism. I am sure Madhu Koda sang it when he attended RSS shakhas as a teenager.

(c) Fatwa, as I understand, is not exactly a diktat. It's a ruling on a religion-related query/debate. If tomorrow somebody is to ask a Hindu scholar whether a Dalit can learn Sanskrit, answer has to be no; because that's what scriptures say. Does a Hindu commoner care nowadays about what scriptures say?

(d) There would be some Muslim nuts who would cite Deobad fatwa and refuse to sing Vande Mataram. Why bother about nuts? They are a source of humour.

(e) And if not for the nuts at Deoband, what would keep Uddhav Thackeray, VHP and assorted Hindu nationalists in business?

Between The Elections

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:17:00 +0000

In 2004, Ashok Chavan was worth Rs 11 crore. Now he is worth Rs 24 crore. (Says his election-time declaration.) Fair enough, in between he had become Maharashtra CM.

Ever heard of Dorjee Khandu? He is the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh. A Congress guy. During 2004 elections, he declared that he had three wives. His latest bio-data, circulated to media before his swearing-in last month, says that he has FOUR wives.

Ashokrao, eat your heart out.

Postscript: Polygamy is legal in Arunachal Pradesh.

Honest

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:24:00 +0000

"If money is not there, I will not be allowed to sit on CM's chair for one day": Madhu Koda, ex-Jharkhand CM. (Indian Express)

My (honest) man, Koda!

IE article also informs us that Koda joined RSS at the age of 12.

Just Woke Up

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:39:00 +0000

Anuvab Pai writes in TOI: ...An acquaintance wrote on her facebook wall: "Just woke up." It was early morning, thereby a normal act. Immediately, 20 of her friends commented with a thumbs up, saying they liked the update. One even added, without irony, "Good".

Fun. A couple of days ago, I came across an announcement on facebook which said that XX was in a relationship. That was in the morning. There were several congratulatory messages below it.
By evening, a new announcement: XX is single.

Decline

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:39:00 +0000

Who was the winner of Maharashtra Assembly elections? Congress-NCP? MNS? The democracy, as is fashionably said after every election in India?

All of them. But there was another winner: fourth pillar of the democracy. Most major Marathi newspapers, allegedly, offered "packages" to candidates for publishing reports of the campaign. Not just favourable reports, but any report. Those who weren't ready to pay, didn't get any coverage. Most candidates paid, says P. Sainath.

On reading Sainath's article, Govind Talwalkar (says Prahar), the legendary former editor of Maharashtra Times, wrote to a friend, saying that CBI needed to probe this.

What would CBI probe, Govindrao? Journalists are spineless, and readers stupid. Not a single senior Marathi journalist (exception: Kumar Ketkar) spoke out against this. (subject to correction.)

Narendra Bodke, a former journalist, recently wrote about how Marathi editors gradually lost their authority. He called it "the decline of the editors". I objected to the title, for I felt that it was over-dramatic.

Now I am tempted to borrow Bodke's title. This is a decline. RIP, Jambhekar, Agarkar, Atre. Marathi journalism has moved on.

Beauty In The Corridor of Power

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:02:00 +0000

You can run into beauty in most unexpected ways. I was at the Vidhan-Bhavan (state Assembly building) the other day. Congress MLA were to meet there, to elect the chief minister.

The building sucks. For one, the design is extremely dreary. I guess most buildings of the 60s are like that. There is no beauty, they look like concrete cakes in different geometrical shapes. Vidhan Bhavan also sucks because of the people who inhabit it: legislators and bureaucrats.

I was terribly bored. The meeting was underway, press wasn't allowed inside. What to do? I stepped into the circular outer corridor. And for the first time I took in (I've been to Vidhan Bhavan before this) the wallpapers lining it.

Wallpapers bear photographs of Ajanta - Ellora paintings and sculptures. One sculpture has a god -- Shiva, perhaps -- and his consort. The consort has wonderfully shaped breasts -- bare. God's hand goes around her back, and touches the rim of the breast gently.

Oh the erotic beauty of it! What were those times like when they could celebrate the nude beauty so openly? And do the current tenants of the building ever notice it?

Nightmare Arrives

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:49:00 +0000

Today's Loksatta reports:

Chandrapur, October 24: Perturbed by the massacre of 17 of their colleagues by naxalites on October 8, police have taken to thrashing the innocent villagers in the area. Some twenty villagers have been seriously injured in this torture- under- the- guise- of- questioning.

....One day before the massacre, naxalites had camped in the forest near the vilage of Murangal. Presuming that villagers must have been aware of it, police are summoning them to police station one by one, and beating them mercilessly.

....A 17-year-old boy was detained by police on October 17. Since then, nothing is known about his whereabouts.

So now the state, with the best of the intentions, has turned sinner. It is matching the brutality of naxalites. I don't imagine that sympathizers of naxalites among the villagers would be as hardened as professional criminals. It should be possible to get information from them -- if they have any -- through sustained grilling, without resorting to third degree.

But this won't happen. Police would get mad after every massacre of their colleagues. They would be impatient for information. Beating the hell out of a defenceless villager is so easy, and time-saving. Also, police would want to punish villagers, because Naxalites would be hard to get hands on. Someone must pay for killing police. And the victim of interrogation would be tempted to rat on other innocent men, to escape the next kick of jackboots in the guts.

Top officers won't interfere, they wouldn't identify with the 17-year-old boy whose only crime is that he lives in the area where naxalites operate. Top officers do not conduct interrogation themselves. They only want results, information. And do the naxalite leaders understand what villages in the red corridor have in store for them, now that state has vowed to take the battle to enemy's camp? Villagers happen to live in the enemy's camp. I don't think Maoist leadership cares about these villagers; it only cares about its own ideas of the world, of the revolution.

Nightmare, like the one Punjab lived through in the 80s, and Kashmir valley is still living through, has arrived in Dandakaranya.

Dear Rahul

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:40:00 +0000

Dear Rahul Gandhi,

I remember reading somewhere that you wanted to promote internal democracy in Congress.

Today, newly elected Cong MLAs of Maharashtra held a meeting. It was off-limits for media.

After half-an-hour, they came out. All they had done was to pass a resolution authorising your mother, alias High Command, to choose the next Chief Minister.

If you want to strengthen democracy within the party, why not start with asking these guys to pick the CM themselves? Barring Praniti Shinde (Chick! Looks like first-year college girl.
I am ready to overlook the foren accent.) and few other greenhorns, most of them are grown-up men and (very few) women. One of them -- S R Patil from Shirol -- is ninety!

What do you say?

Fuhrer In Bandra Bunker

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 07:40:00 +0000

"Maharashtrian minds have deadened": Bal Thackeray's paper says today. Why? Because Maharashtrians ditched Sena, and voted for MNS. I can understand the despair. Even Shivaji Park -- where Thackeray once held Marathi masses in thrall year after year -- is no more a Shiv Sena pocket borough. MNS candidate won there.

But this ranting: you ditched us, your minds are dead -- doesn't it remind one of Hitler's last days in the Berlin bunker? After leading Germany to destruction, he blamed the German people for reverses in the War. They were not dedicated enough, he reportedly said.

Of course, Thackeray, luckily, was not 1/100th as damaging as the Fuhrer. But he shares the mindset, to an extent.

Enjoy your beer, Balasaheb. And shut up.

Raja, Mhetre And We

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:12:00 +0000

Do our rulers have any sense of propriety in public life?

CBI yesterday raided the Department of Telecom office(s). It suspects that spectrum was sold cheap in 2008. Allegedly, there was no real competitive bidding; it was sold on "first come first served" basis. Raja was telecom minister then too. (Link to FT report here.)

It's not possible that Raja was not aware of the things happening under his nose. He doesn't claim so, instead he says that nothing hanky-panky happened in the sale.

Let's assume he is speaking the truth. Ministers are, as a rule, corrupt, but let's assume he is a noble exception. I don't expect a minister to resign merely in the face of allegations. Lal Bahadur Shastri once resigned as a railway minister over an accident; but he belonged to a different species of men.

But now CBI had conducted raids. And what is CBI? It is, as foreign papers say, "federal investigation agency". It's an arm of the "federal" government, just as Raja is a "federal" minister.

So an arm of the government, of which he is a part, suspects there was corruption, and still Raja says he need not resign. What do you call it? Irony doesn't describe it adequately. What message this will send out to outside world?

Postscript: This reminds me of Mhetre affair. In 2006, Siddharam Mhetre was minister of state for home in Maharashtra cabinet. (He lost in this election.)

D K Rao, gangster Chhota Rajan's henchman, was kept in Aurthur Road jail then. Police learnt that Rao had a cellphone, and he was in contact with Rajan and others from inside the jail. Instead of seizing the phone, police tapped it for three months.

The transcript of conversations -- several hundred pages of it -- was later produced in the court, as an evidence. It revealed that Rao knew Mhetre. In one chat-session with Rajan, Rao refers to a "meeting" at Mhetre's bungalow.

Under MCOCA, this was enough to chargesheet Mhetre. No such thing happened. In India, we don't expect that. But shouldn't the minister have at least resigned? No, said Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Chief Minister. "Nobody is guilty untill proven in the court," he said.

Hello? I said to myself on reading this. It was your prosecution that had presented this evidence. Did it put it before the court without believing it?

Papers put the story on Mhetre's underworld links on the front page, but no journalist ever put the aforesaid question to Vilasrao. Either they missed the twisted logic of his reply, or they did not want to inconvenience him.

Perhaps our society has lost the sense of propriety. Why blame the rulers?

Thackeray's 13

noreply@blogger.com (Kapil) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:32:00 +0000

Venerable Balasaheb Thackeray gave interview to Sudhir Gadgil a few days before the polls. Polls were on 13th, and the old man said: 13 is my lucky number. My grandson was born on 13th. Sena was founded on 13th. So I believe this 13th will bring us good results.

Sure enough. Nephew Raj's party bagged 13 seats.