Friday, November 23, 2012

Kasab and the Superpower truth

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of four years, Ajmal Kasab, the last surviving terrorist of the 26 Nov 2008 attack on Mumbai was hanged.
In the four years that he was incarcerated in Arthur Road jail in Mumbai, he had become the most infamous figure in the country in recent times. People were angered by the agonizingly slow trial that went on, the comic sequence of India submitting proofs to Pakistan and Pakistan rejecting them as expected, the insane amount of taxpayer’s money spent in keeping him safe and sound and cosy and the endless wait on the mercy petition (a fact shocking in itself as he was not an Indian citizen) sent by his counsel to the President. The frustration at this helpless situation increased day by day, and it felt Ajmal Kasab was spitting on India for every subsequent day added  to his life , knowing that he was a part of the squad who ensured that more than a hundred odd families never feel fulfillment in their lives again.
But as a realistic person, I would like to thank this vile creature.
He has effectively demolished the myth of India being a superpower. And its better that we abandon this delusion too for our own good.
A superpower is not a sitting duck for terrorists.
A superpower does not show apathy in combating threats to its security, due to excuses like world opinion and hurting religious sentiments.
A superpower does not mean a society who doesn’t have even the vaguest idea of national interest nor places national security even in littlest of its priorities.
A superpower’s backlash is not like opening a soda bottle, which generates a little fizz and goes flat in a few seconds. It keeps its desire for revenge and salvaging pride alive, like embers beneath a seemingly cold film of ash.
A superpower doesn’t have “leaders” who are like Alice in Wonderland where their country’s interests are concerned, who don’t have any desire to make their country a superpower but merely some pathetic reasons to call it as one.
USA, Israel and Russia attack their enemies with missiles, rockets, fighter planes, helicopters, drones, howitzers, tanks , rifles, blockades, embargos….
India attacks its enemies with off spin, leg spin, yorkers, inswingers, straight drive, square cut, cover drives….Or when they get more serious, a scathing attack with dossiers is launched.
Countries like Russia and Israel never negotiate with terrorists. One only has to read about IDF’ s Entebbe operation (1976) and the way Russia ended the Moscow theatre siege 2002) or Beslan school siege (2005). India was made to look like a weakling during the Kandhahar highjacking (1999) and forced to release Maulana Masood Azhar, who at the time of writing, continues to wreak havoc.
On one hand , Navy Seals enter Pakistani territory and gun down Osama Bin Laden in full view of the world, Israel ruthlessly eliminates Palestinian terrorists without caring for world opinion. Russia destroys without mercy all the Chechen terrorists it can, without caring for hurting anyone’s sentiments as national interest is paramount.
India on the other hand has to wait for four years to discreetly execute a brainwashed footsoldier who has been proven guilty long ago and had long ago outlived his utility and was kept alive for questionable reasons. And after that the govt portrays itself to have “sent out a strong message” of destroying terrorism, treating its very delayed elimination of a small fry, a mere cog in the scary apparatus of global Islamic terrorism, as the ultimate victory on terror. It is indeed a shamefully pathetic condition that shows exactly as to why India keeps on becoming the target of terrorism frequently and why it has stopped invoking any fear even for Sri Lanka, forget Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Its very easy to blame the political establishment for this pitiable condition. The terrorist attack of 26/11/2008 would have been over in a few minutes had the police had assault rifles and decent Kevlar jackets, and there would be no need to call the paramilitary or the army. Or in worst case, a day if there had been NSG hubs near every metro instead of just being in Manesar. Or had there been leaders in place of just jokers. That they don’t have a concrete plan to fight terrorism and don’t even have the willingness to do so, that disaster management in India only comprises of three words “call the army”.That we don’t even have the mini versions of Navy Seals, Spetsnaz or even Kidon and hence we have to call the army for everything because anyone less may it be police or paramilitary, is too ill equipped to handle such a problem  .But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
It is the situation that has risen due to a weak society.
A society made up of of honourless, spineless people are  harbor no feeling of anger or desire for vendetta for the insults heaped on them. Even if they do get angry, it lasts only a while and they revert back to the same ways of apathy and bring the same people to power who were guilty of the pathetic state . A society which cannot rise beyond selfishness and hence elects fixers in the name of leaders.
A society made of shamelessly weak creatures who put on a false sense of optimism or indulge in escapism whenever dangers confront them, who don’t have the guts to call their enemy and enemy and instead indulge in war of words and sloganeering, which disappears as soon as some average wailer (who have to be called as Sufi singers in a politically correct world) or a cricket team (cash strapped) arrives from across the border.
A society for which is made of ungrateful people who only remember their soldiers only when in trouble, of hypocrite armchair intellectuals who talk of everyone’s interest except that of their own country, who are more worried about the terrorist’s human rights than that of their victims, foreign & criminal funded so called news channels whose coverage helps the enemy more than the country’s defenders and utterly escapist overrated morons (called artistes/artists  in a politically correct world) who live in ivory towers and are only interested in Aman ki Asha (which infact is Amanullah screwing the hell out of Asha).
But above all, a society which is content in being a crowd of bickering factions rather than being a nation, a mob into which someone has thrown a few gold coins and they are all scratching at each other to get those gold coins, conveniently forgetting that ten thousand Kasab clones are ever ready across the border, waiting for a good opportunity to spill rivers of blood again by shooting through this thoughtless mass of people.
Superpower? First develop a national character and some self respect. And after that, think about eliminating the masterminds instead of rejoicing on killing one of the innumerable rabid dogs. Rest will follow.


Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Gulabi Chacha

Dear Gulabi Chacha,

Again comes your birthday, childrens day as we call it, because apparently only you loved children. Its another matter that there are many others who did something concrete to justify their love of children. All you did was play with some carefully selected spick and span children on republic day. But you did pretty little for your beloved children Chacha, starting with the criminal neglect of elementary education in favour of higher education institutes even though it’s the former which has to be given the highest importance in any sane society, because afterall it was the priority of the masses you were a world away from since your childhood in the opulent Swaraj Bhawan and Anand Bhawan. Hence we still have a fifth of our population illiterate even today and we still remain one of the worst places for a child to grow up. One wonders why your birthday is celebrated as children’s day. What is one supposed to tell one’s child on the meaning of this day? To sell the country for one’s selfish motives? To ignore reality in favour of flowery dreams which blinds everyone to dangers? Or to hold debauchery and hedonism paramount to all the other qualities? As far as the humble writer is concerned, he will prefer remaining childless than to have children who will grow up to emulate your example.

Freedom fighter is what we are taught to call you. Although, like your mentor, you were placed in the most comfortable accomodations during your jail terms, where you had the luxury and comfort to distort and mutilate India's history beyond anyone's wildest dreams.You called this discovery of morbidity as discovery of India. Nowhere can blatant falsification like Aryan invasion theory or painting a rosy picture of the barbarian hordes be called as history but in a corrupt society. This pulp fiction, which can only be hailed by the very delusional or the very treacherous, confirms that there are two kinds of history-the real one and the official one.

 You would not  had a snowball's chance in hell of a political career had you not been Barrister Motilal Nehru's son, whose money the Congress needed, the party that you would quickly convert into your fiefdom two decades later. Nor would you have been even considered as a leader had not Mr Gandhi endorsed you feverently. Fate was kind to a person, who hardly passed any exam in Cambridge nor did an honest day's work in his life, to be besotted with the title of Pandit. Your presence in the freedom struggle is not a lot more than photo ops with Gandhi & Co, a few eloquent speeches that you made to the crowds and a few sessions that you presided, thanks to Mr Gandhi. It was him, who promoted you always, ultimately over the capable Sardar Patel, which saw you become the prime minister of independent India. Nevertheless, in this capacity you had all the opportunity of becoming the greatest leader a country can have. Instead, you built an administrative structure that had nothing Indian in it, which instead is a ghastly mixture of the Soviet regime and the British Raj, systems which were made to oppress and were the farthest from the upliftment of the common man. Rightly you have been called as the last Englishman to rule India.

You did not have the slightest capability to quell the partition bloodbath or pressurize the Muslim league to reduce their influence, and looked towards the British for all matters in running the state. All you cared was the new throne of India, the opulent lifestyle unsuited to the head of state of a then poor country, playing into the hands of Lord Mountbatten, whom you depended on in running the matters of the soon to be vivisected land and showing more than just love for his better half (Afterall, Gulabo was a bigger priority than governance). Nero’s example looks pale in comparison. It was not a tryst with destiny that we entered into, but a tryst with infamy, shame and suicide. You even tried to scuttle Sardar Patel’s plan of capturing Hyderabad with force from the murderous Razzakars of the Nizam, which thankfully for us went through and hence we have Hyderabad and 537 other principalities as the part of our country today. One shudders to think what would have happened if you had retained the home ministry during 1947-50. Sardar Patel’s warnings about China were ignored and every effort was made to undermine him. After his death in Dec 1950, the road for the left to dominate the Congress was open, which continues till today.

The Indian Army was on the verge of wiping out the entire presence of Pakistan from Kashmir when you, on Lord Mountbatten’s advice declared ceasefire and carried the Kashmir question to UN, thereby becoming the only stellar example of a head of state in the world who stopped the war that he was winning. Afterall, you had to prove yourself as a worthy disciple of Mr Gandhi, who not very long before this had gone on a hunger strike to death in order to award Rs 550 million to Pakistan which it gleefully used to build its forces. India remains forever grateful to you for your handling of the Kashmir issue.

No lessons were taken from this attack by the newly formed state of Pakistan. The modernization of the Indian armed forces was given the least importance throughout the 1950’s by you and your crony communist defence minister Mr VK Menon. All that was in your mind was the greatness of your Soviet idols like the humanitarian Josef Stalin and the new danger of Mao’s China. You went as far as renouncing the chance of India getting a permanent security council seat in the UN in favour of China, even though it had occupied Tibet the same year. So much for your foreign policy. All the intentions of China to usurp Indian territory was ignored because Panchsheel and Non Aligned movement (A beggar party which ridiculously continues even today and it is interesting to note that none of the non aligned countries ever stood by India in any of its numerous hours of need) were more important. China attacked on Oct 1962. Our troops fought valiantly, but they were found to be lacking in necessary support,and war cannot be won by bravery alone. When China finally withdrew a month later, India was left bloodied, 5000 of its brave troops lost and thousands of miles of its territory under Chinese occupation, an infamy which will forever haunt us. If you had had any foresight  about India’s security I 1947, you wouldn’t have had to cry to “Ae mere wata ke logo” in 1962. A Himalayan blunder by a blundering “leadership”. Mercifully, weren’t around when Pakistan attacked in 1965, or its borders would have started after Rajasthan.
  
Your pathological love and fascination for Communism and its greatest practioner ,the Soviet Union and later on Red China, was boundless. Since your short visit there in 1927,you were so much taken in by their planned economy that you became a proto communist yourself, wanting to make India a mirror image of it. You even called communism the most humane system, conveniently ignoring the rivers of blood, the mass purges and liquidations and the depraved living standards of people there. Even after the massive de-Stalinization done by Khruschev from 1954 onwards did not cause your deification for Stalin to diminish, regardless of the details of the great purge and similar crimes against humanity coming to light. No efforts were spared to make India a Soviet style socialist state masquerading as a democratic nation. Communist literature and funds flowed like torrents in the country and it had a devastating effect which is felt even today with more than a fourth of the country suffering from the red menace. Indian academic system became dominated by communists, who have henceforth poisoned generations of students with their utter drivel, the effects of which can be seen till today in the hordes of rootless middle class youngsters devoid of any nationalism who have nothing but contempt for their culture and slavish admiration for everything foreign. It was a fitting tribute to you that the University named after you We continue to have textbooks printed by leftist “intellectuals” that paint India’s history as the history of its invaders and reduce the national heroes to a paragraph, or malign them or obliterate their record altogether.

Your brand of socialism did what any form of socialism does- distributing wealth without creating it . But the problem with socialism is that you soon run out of other people's money. When you stifle production, how can you expect growth? When you limit capacity, how can you expect quality to develop? Your leftist worshippers scoffingly call this as "Hindu rate of growth" whereas in reality, it was "Nehruvian rate of growth". How much of national wealth has been thrown to the dogs in the name of socialism, populism, public sector and five year plans is unfathomable. It has made the difference between India's villages looking like little heavens and wastelands. Your beloved daughter continued with these ghastly policies, which made it impossible for an honest man to do business in this country, as licenses were only obtained after money was passed around the government officials who mattered. Even today, an unscrupulous businessman has all the friends in the local authorities while the efficient one has the government agencies hounding him till he either shuts shop or moves to a place where he is harassed less.

Nehruvian Socialism's damage to India was more psychological than monetary. It has rewarded ineptitude and punished efficiency. It has encouraged more and more sections of the economy to become non performing and believe that any section of the society doing well, owes them a living. A government job still remains a dream preferable to being a professional as it makes ample provisions even for the coming generation. This legacy of yours continues to bleed us, put millions and millions of dollars of national resources into the gutters called public sector enterprises, five year plans, a soviet legacy which still survives even two decades after Soviet Union’s demise. Also survives is the immense void between the haves and have-nots, between the all powerful bureaucrats and the puny common man, which again is a reminder of the nightmarish existence of a common man in a communist regime where he is nobody , someone whose entire life can be decided at the whims and fancies of the local party boss or a commissar. The same system was established in India, the local party boss replaced by the MLA/MP and the commissar replaced by the Indian bureaucrat. And they together continue to suck the country dry and make any sort of an honest decent life impossible.
Do I need say anything about Nehruvian Secularism? Its another name for blatant appeasement, where Urdu is termed more Indian than Sanskrit, where Mahmud is a hero and Shivaji a robber,where towns have names like Ghaziabad, where any mention of the name “Hindu” or its glory is a sign for the rabid dogs of secularism to bark their hearts out and any talk of weeding the undesirable elements causes the same dogs to yelp in pain because their darlings will be persecuted?
 You are called as the architect of India by your sycophants and macaulite followers, and I have to agree with them. Only you can be the architect of a dystopia where any kind of thought on national interest is deemed extremist and treason is tolerated in the name of secularism and progressivism. Afterall, when the biggest hedonist imaginable gives a slogan of Aaram Haram Hai (Rest is Forbidden), it speaks volumes about the hypocrite, cowardly and escapist society he is a product of, which can only produce abominations in the name of leadership, which is busy singing “Chhodo Kal ki Baatein, ki baat purani (Forget yesterday’s events, they are old) as it has no vision, neither about itself nor knows who are its friends and who its enemies, nor has any desire to learn from history to avoid repeating the same follies in future. All it knows in the name of solving its issues is to pretend that there aren’t any issues at all.
Have a good Birthday, Gulabi Chacha, while we wallow here in the mess created by your likes, which we richly deserve.


One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest- Review

One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest (1975)
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Louise Flecher, Brad Dourif, Danny DeVito, Will Sampson, William Harding, Christopher Lloyd
Director: Milos Foreman
Set in an unnamed Oregon town in 1963, the setting of the film is the town’s mental institution. The opening scene shows the admitting of  38 year old Randle Mc Murphy (Jack Nicholson), a criminal serving a sentence for statutory rape of a minor, due to insanity, which the viewer quickly realizes, is faked by him in order to avoid a longer jail sentence. The doctor incharge is not convinced and he commits him to one of the wards for observation till the insanity is proved or disproved. His fellow patients in the ward include Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), a 30 year old stammering  suicidal nervous wreck who has a deathly fear of his mother, Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassik), a timid man prone to childish temper fits,the delusional Martini (Danny DeVito) ,Dale Harding (William Redfield) a well educated paranoid,  the morbid and profane Max Taber (Christopher Lloyd), Jim Sefelt (William Duell) and finally, “Chief “ Bromden (Will Sampson), a gigantic native American who is presumed deaf & mute, whose been there for almost two decades.
The institution is run by the domineering Nurse Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher),who keeps the patients severely under control by the means of mind numbing routine and therapy sessions, that McMurphy soon discovers, are actually humiliation sessions, where the patients are made to tell their personal problems presumably in order for resolving them through consensus, but instead it only causes them to break down and fight rabidly with each other. McMurphy at first enjoys thoroughly but his smile fades as he sees Nurse Ratched smiling triumphantly, looking at the squabbling patients.
McMurphy also discovers that the patients fear Ratched and cannot do anything which is disagreeable for her (the exception is Chief, who being deaf & mute is excused from these sessions). Their fear of her is stronger than their desire to get cured in order to return to the outside world. He realizes that Nurse Ratched’s therapy sessions and the institution’s schedule are designed more to keep the patients docile and under control than curing them. Her complete control only means that her superiors approve of her methods.
McMurphy quickly becomes the dominant and most troublesome patient in the ward by his complete disregard for authority and rules, like gambling in the ante room and smoking and swearing loudly, refusing to take medication. He begins challenging Ratched whenever possible.He once tries convincing her for allowing the patients  to watch a baseball game on TV instead of  listening to the routine monotonous music. She refuses. McMurphy in defiance, stands in front of the switched off television screen and starts shouting an imaginary commentary of a baseball game which causes the other patients to disrupt the entire ward.
He also bonds with the patients by the means of basketball game, this causes the otherwise withdrawn Chief to silently admire him. In his most daring move, he wrests control of the bus meant to take the patients on a tour, herds his fellow patients aboard, picks up his prostitute girlfriend Candy (Marya Small) on the way and on reaching the shore, takes them all fishing in a boat after  tricking its captain. The patients have a time of their lives till the authorities finally arrive.This is one of the only two outdoors scene in the entire film, and it makes the viewer feel the brief freedom that the patients enjoy in the open sea, away from the claustrophobic environment.
This causes the hospital to tighten its restrictions on McMurphy and it even considers sending him back to jail.  McMurphy learns a startling fact: The hospital holds the power to detain him, Billy and Chief indefinitely. All the other patients in the ward, except the very hard cases, are voluntarily committed and can leave anytime, but they don’t. During one of the discussion session, Cheswick gets out of control and McMurphy and Chief get into a fist fight with the guards. All are sent for electrotherapy. While waiting for his turn, McMurphy learns to his delight, that Chief has only been pretending to be deaf & mute all this time to avoid attention. Upon his therapy, he returns with a stone face and jerky movements much to the shock of his ward, but then suddenly reanimates to everyone’s joy that this was just one of his pranks.
That same night, he decides that he has had enough and decides to escape, as he  cannot risk being sent back to prison. He asks Chief to come with him, but he declines, stating his fear of the world. He calls Candy and another girl, asking them to smuggle liquor with them. They sneak in, and McMurphy even ropes in the warden in the liquor party involving the patients, which quickly leads to the dismantling of the entire ward.
McMurphy then starts bidding all the patients farewell and sees that Billy is the most emotional to see him go. He decides, in his last act of infamy, to have Candy spend a night with Billy, and the two retire into an adjoining room. McMurphy and the other patients then, unluckily for them, fall asleep owing to the combined effects of alcohol and the daily medication.
Nurse Ratched and the orderlies arrive in the morning to find the ward wrecked completely. All the patients are summoned. McMurphy and Chief are held back as they try to make a quick getaway. She is enraged to find a half dressed Billy with Candy, who for the first time faces her confidently without stammering. Ratched ,using her usual weapon against him, threatens that she will tell his mother about it. Billy reverts to his old stammering and nervous self, begging the nurse not to do something like that. She calmly  has the orderlies lock him up in a room. Billy, unable to control his nervous breakdown, kills himself with a pair of scissors. McMurphy is devastated and viciously attacks Nurse Ratched when she tells the patients that “they should get on with their routine”. He nearly strangles her to death before being knocked down by the orderlies and taken away.
The film then moves many days ahead. The ante room is shown with the patients playing their usual card games, with all kinds of rumours flying around about McMurphy, ranging from he has been subdued like a lamb to he has escaped. The Chief listens curiously. Nurse Ratched is shown smiling weakly, just a shadow of her former self.
Late that night, as others sleep, McMurphy is brought in by a couple of orderlies and laid on his bed. Chief rushes over to him and whispers that they escape right away. Getting no response, the Chief tries lifting him up and is horrified to find out that he has been lobotomized (Lobotomy: Severing the nerves that connect the right hemisphere of the brain with the left. It was a cruel way used in the earlier times to subdue difficult mental cases). Chief decides that he cannot leave his friend in such a pitiful existence to be seen by the other patients as a symbol of Nurse Ratched’s victory. He suffocates McMurphy to death before the others wake up. He then smashes the window of the ward by a heavy slab and escapes, just as dawn breaks.
Based on Ken Kesey’s novel of the same name, the film swept all the major Academy awards, including best actor (Nicholson), actress(Fletcher), director (Foreman) and film. The only one to lose out was Brad Dourif.
Jack Nicholson makes Randle McMurphy an unforgettable character. He is the soul of this film, and he plays the anti authoritarian, rebellious, crazy and unpredictable character to perfection. His transformation from a selfish repeated offender looking for an easy way out to a person who eventually pays the ultimate price for his caring for his fellow inmates (he gets quite a few chances to escape, and he chooses not to everytime, in order to help his newfound friends, thereby sealing his own fate)  is marvelous.His performance is a lesson for any aspiring actor and a treat for any admirer of cinema.
Louise Fletcher brilliantly plays one of most coldest villains in film history. As Nurse Ratched, she personifies the system, which drives everyone crazy in the guise of benifitting them. Of the supporting cast, Brad Dourif as Billy Babbit, is the best as the tragically fragile young man whose life is cruelly snuffed out of him. Small but significant performances are given by Christopher Lloyd , William Redding . Will Samspson as Chief Bromden is impressive.
The word milestone is not used very often in cinema, and rarer is still a film that lives upto the tag, like this one. Czech director Milos Foreman adapts the novel with a few minor changes for the screen (in the novel, Chief Bromden is the narrator and all the other inmates escape in the end).The story uses the context of a mental institution to portray the never ending and largely hopeless struggle of the individual against the establishment. It shows , without any flowery promises that this results in the certain destruction of the individual or the section fighting it, but it has to be  carried on for the hope of change. The film ends in McMurphy’s defeat and destruction, but he also ends up shrinking Ratched into a mere mortal from someone who looks invincible. Out of the two people whose life he changes, Billy meets a sad end, but Chief Bromden lives upto the hope sowed in him by the doomed McMurphy, thereby signifying a little change that has been acheived. Though some criticisms might be made for portraying the inmates as someone McMurphy can use to carry out his adventures, it is by a far excusable in this otherwise flawless film.As someone who escaped from erstwhile Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring in 1968 (Soviet Union’s crackdown of anti communist forces in that country), Foreman surely pours his understanding of fighting a totalitarian establishment into the film beautifully. The largely interior settings depicting the mental ward and the robotic movements and compliance of the patients to the numbing schedule depicts the establishment’s total domination of the individual is a contrast to the final scene of the film which shows the dawn breaking through the smashed window from which Chief Bromden escapes to an uncertain but welcome future.
What would you choose?


Sunday, November 18, 2012

Tiger


An era ends today, by the demise of Balasaheb Thackeray, undoubtedly the most influential, popular and controversial figure in anyone’s recent memory in India .

Political acumen came both by inheritance and by profession to him, the former as the son of Keshav “Prabodhankar” Thackeray and the latter as cartoonist which he always has been at heart from the age of twenty. His father famously declared when Shiv Sena was formed in 1966, that he now dedicates  his son to Maharashtra. Balasaheb  did more than just live upto the words of his father, who was instrumental in the  Samyukta Maharashtra movement, (which called for a united Maharashtra inclusive of Mumbai, Konkan, Western Maharashtra, Vidarbha and Marathwada regions but exclusive of Gujarat), a dream which finally was realized in 1960. Starting out initially as a leader who was dedicated to the cause of the Marathi Manoos, he quickly took the Hindu cause to his heart, sadly being the only leader in the political scenario to fearlessly address Hindu causes when India’s politics has made appeasement its raison d’etre (You might be proud of being Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali or Gujarati, but remember, until you don’t establish your identity as a Hindu, you will nevr be able to live a life of  self respect). Another quality of his which made him rarest of the rare in Indian politics plagued with hypocrisy and double standards , was his complete lack of political correctness and double speak and his fearless views which made him both a hero and a villain, depending on whose perspective he was viewed from (What is in my heart is in my mouth . My words are shot like a bullet and I do not care if truth hurts anyone).

The popular media and the popular culture and public opinion that spawns from it has painted him in the most satanic colours possible, as some sort of a bloodthirsty psychopath like figure who could speak nothing but hate speeches (The Washington Post had once described him as “the man who rules Bombay the way Al Capone ruled Chicago — through fear and intimidation”) .In a world blighted by political correctness and self denial, truth automatically becomes the biggest hate speech.

The so called civilized viewers and adherents of popular media who never lose an opportunity to malign him and swear by the spirit of Mumbai and the freedom it gives to them forget conveniently that without Balasaheb, Mumbai would neither have spirit nor it would be free. They perhaps do not know that Balasaheb started his journey towards prominence by destroying the power of the Communist trade unions that dominated the mills which were the backbone of the city in the 1960s and 70s, thereby having Mumbai continue as the financial capital of the country instead of becoming another Kolkata. In the post Babri demolition riots, when the city was at the mercy of jehadi mobs, it was the Shiv Sena and not the police which saved the city from certain massacre by taking the attack ruthlessly to the attackers themselves. But for him, Dawood & Co would still have been here dictating terms instead of having to flee to Dubai and Karachi. 

It was him who brought India to the world entertainment map when he encouraged Michael Jackson to have a concert in Mumbai in 1996, when some international artist coming to India was unthinkable. During its four-and-a-half-year stint(1995-99), the Shiv Sena government renamed Bombay to Mumbai and started various infrastructure projects like the Krishna Valley Irrigatiion Project and the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. It also built 56 flyovers in Mumbai and started the slum redevelopment scheme. 

Where else would you find a public figure in India who had all the opportunities to come to power and retain it forever, yet preferred to remain out of power because he did not compromise with his ideals and form third rate alliances with third rate people for coming to power and neither did took part in vote bank politics and casteism, both of which he hated. He never resorted to minority appeasement, even at the cost of not winning election when his party lost his power in 1999.The EC banned him for five years for his speeches and editorials in Jan 1993 in Saamna where he urged Hindus to pick up arms to defend themselves (the same commission ignores anti hindu speeches made by the likes of MIM and many SP leaders).Some examples:-

A Saamna editorial ahead of the demolition of the Babri Masjid said “How does your Shiv Sainik appear as he is marching towards Ayodhya? Like the roaring lion spreading terror, with the gait of an intoxicated elephant, like the assault of a rhino which reduces to powder a rocky mountain, like the manoeuvres of a leopard: our infinite blessings to these Hindu warriors who are marching towards Ayodhya”.

Or after the March 1993 Mumbai bombings which killed 250 people, he openly called for all anti national elements among the Muslims to be thrown out ofthe country, since the bombings were funded by Muslim expats and carried out by in the muslims in India. His definition of anti-national Muslims included “those who fired crackers of victory whenever Pakistan defeated India in cricket ”. 

Or hen Kashmiri separatists declared that there would be no more Amarnath yatras, Thackeray shut them up with one sentence “Then there would be no Hajj through Maharashtra.”

The seculars surely cried for his head when they read this but they had remained silent when lakhs of Kashmiri pundits were forced out of their homeland by Pakistan backed militiants. While the rest of the political parties looked away because KPs did not form a vote bank and the seculars remained silent as Hindu lives have no value, it was this extremist Balasaheb who opened the doors for them by making the govt of Maharashtra create quotas for them in all the educational institutes across the state when the J&K govt itself was treating them like a pariah. 700000 KPs benefitted from this, something which the bleeding heart media will never highlight in its quest to glorify the Kashmiri separatists. A few years earlier during the 1984 anti Sikh riots , he had declared and ensured that no Congress goon would be able raise a hand on a Sikh in Maharashtra. Today, when he is no more, gurudwaras across Mumbai are open for lodging of people travelling from length and breadth of the state and country to attend his funeral.

He never budged from his ideals even at the cost of losing votes. In 1991 Chhagan Bhujbal defected to the join the Congress as he did not agree with Thackeray’s opposition to the Mandal commission and the provision of reservations for the OBCs.With his exit, the Sena lost a chunk of its OBC votes. Any other leader in any other party would have lost no time in backing a populist move like this. But not him.

His vehement opposition to any kind of ties with Pakistan unless it ends cross border terrorism has been legendary, which made him an infamous figure in Pakistan as well. 

He was easily the best orator in the last fifty years, and there was no one like him who could raise the populace to action without being an elected representative.

To those who say that he did not do anything for the people outside Maharashtra, I wish to ask what have the likes of  Gandhi family done for the constituencies of Phulpur, Rae Bareilly and Amethi? 

How can a person like him who has fought the caste menace all his life be a bigot but the numerous politicians who have built their careers on caste identities and caste vote banks be secular?

 How can a Shivsena that smashes the jehadi underworld be a threat to India but secular parties that give citizenship to Bangladeshi illegals, a glory? 

The writer did not agree with a lot of his view points but in his opinion, one Balasaheb Thackeray who calls for the destruction Pakistan during Kargil war is better  than one hundred Nitish Kumars who go across to Pakistan and praise it to gain some brownie points of secularism. An extremist Shiv Sena that always runs to the rescue and volunteer work in case of a terrorist attack and natural disaster is anyday prerferable to a secular Congress that fattens up terrorists and criminals in five star jails and sucks the blood of the common man.

The roar will never be heard again in Shivaji park. Mumbai will take time to come to the terms that the towering personality which was a part of its life for fifty years is no more.You were certainly a giant among the khadi clad pygmies, Sir, a welcome change from the pathetic Gandhian buffoonery that we have become used to. May your legacy live and inspire..

Jai Hind Jai Maharashtra.


Saturday, November 17, 2012

Pro Life?


“This is a catholic country”.
With these five words from the doctors, Savita Halanappavar’s fate was sealed in the Dublin hospital where she was admitted in the last week of Oct 2012.  Suffering from severe back pain, she was discovered to suffer a miscarriage of her 17 week pregnancy. Yet , every doctor who came to check her told her that as long as the foetal heart beat was present, the abortion could not be carried out because of the country’s catholic beleifs . It did not matter to the doctors that Savita was neither Irish by birth or citizenship nor Catholic ,nor the foetus couldn’t have been revived by any means.The supreme court of Ireland had already ruled in the favour of terminating the pregnancy in case of any danger to the mother’s life in 1992 (a ruling which had not been implemented by the subsequent Irish governments).The 31 year old Indian dentist withered in agony for four days and by the time the remains of the foetus were removed, it was too late. Septicemia had set in and the blood poisoning rendered various internal organs useless. She breathed her last on Oct 2012. At the time of writing, the Irish embassy in India has assured of an impartial probe to be carried out.
Before blaming the Republic of Ireland, one has to take into account that if there were a few medics of mayhem, there were also hundreds and thousands of Irish citizens who protested strongly for this unpardonable death of a foreigner in their country. It was therefore, poor taste on the part of a few imminent panelists on an Indian news channel to give the colour of racism to it. Nothing can be farther from the truth. This is not about being Hindu or a Christian or a European or an Asian.
This is about the damage caused by organized religious code which in a few countries, vehemently refuses to adapt itself to the modern world. The unfortunate Savita happened to be in one of them. And if the  Irish doctors applied these parameters to a Hindu woman who was not a citizen that led to her death, what must have happened to countless Catholic Irishwomen in the name of upholding the “word of god”? And how many more women are in danger if these archaic laws are not relaxed?
The Vatican has always reiterated its opposition to abortion and even contraception because it interferes with “God’s will”. Missionaries too toe their parent organization’s line, the most famous of them, the Albanian nun popularly known as Mother Teresa talked about outrightly banning both abortion and contraception (The likes of her saw poverty and suffering as god’s will too instead of scourges which must be eradicated. A senior Republican politician had said that even pregnancy caused by rape is god’s will, a comment which was rightly condemned wholeheartedly in his own country. In all of the largely Christian western world the debate between pro choice and pro life continues unabated.
Since the last two centuries, the hold of every church has diminished over its adherents. Young people across western world are by and large living their lives as contrary as possible to what the church has been preaching for nearly two millennia. The church’s views on putting an end to contraception, abortion, women working, divorce and even homosexuality find hardly any takers among the young today. Add to that the various child abuse cases around the world involving priests happening every now and then, and the picture becomes even murkier.
While it is true that feminism has brought forth untold horrors in the name of free thought and progressivism like promiscuity and misoandry , the biggest damage done by it has been the break up of the family system and the blatant misuse of the pro choice argument . It is not at all rare to find the so called progressive woman in western societies who kills her unborn child due to her desire of a free life without family obligations, her career or simply because the pregnancy is a result of one of her numerous adventures. These are the very women who are the most cacophonic and vocal about “a woman has a right over her body and she can do whatever she pleases with it”. A woman does have a right over her body, but to use this as an excuse for a promiscuous lifestyle is disgusting beyond comparison. Aborting an unborn child just in order to have a “free” life or just because it is a result of a fling is nothing less than slaughter.
On the other hand, the talk of pro life has no meaning if it endangers the life of the to be mother due to birth complications or condemns a victim of rape to go ahead and have the child which would remind her of the trauma every moment from thereon. It also has no  meaning when it discourages the use of contraceptives as it is seen in the poverty stuck abnormally large families across many conservative societies around the world. It is often sad to see  incurable patients living a life worse than death because pro life does not allow the termination of life in these cases.
It is upto the society to decide whether religious views and laws are more important than their safety or their very lives. When someone’s well being or safety is made subservient to some code of conduct, then the time has come for self introspection by every individual in that community as it is an indication that something is seriously wrong with it.
Pro life argument is meaningless if it endangers or denigrates one life in the favour of a dim possibility that the other life might sustain.  That would just be a pro existence argument. Pro life just doesn’t mean in favour of not letting something  perish. A real pro life philosophy will mean that everyone has a right to a free, healthy and dignified life, where no one would be subservient to any self appointed representatives of morality and ethics. Freedom that costs life is not freedom at all, but a life which costs freedom isn’t a life at all either.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Devo bhava?

Our culture's unique outlook allows a person to discover and depict the divine in his/her own way as it holds that god is but the reality that surrounds us all and one can have n number of manifestations of it. One has to discover one’s  god within oneself instead of imagining it as a super cosmic, scary entity and separating it from its creation altogether which leads to a very material and utilitarian view of life. So it also encourages to see god in every person or living thing around oneself, in one’s elders like teachers and also one’s parents.

Our culture has always placed parents on a high pedestal (maatr devo bhava, pitr devo bhava – mother is god, father is god), primarily because they are the ones who are the reason for everything  to do with us, right from being the reason of us coming into the world to the person we will be eventually. Being compared to the divine is our culture’s way of showing gratitude to the wonderful being that is the parent, but many a times, this can be hard on both the offspring and the parent.

Children believe that their parents are perfect, flawless beings who can do no wrong. Boys want a girl just like their mother, girls want a man who is like their father. It is ingrained into them that come what may, their parents can never be wrong or do wrong. To contradict them or to even think that they can be wrong is a sin because afterall, they are “gods”, and the children have to be forever indebted to them for the very reason that the mother has bore them in her womb and the father has put his very existence in supporting them. They have to obey every command of their parents and follow them unquestioningly. The children on their part are shattered when they discover that  their idols are the very same lowly common folk which they see and loathe all the time. In case the parent in question does something which is unacceptable in a civilized society or which is a criminal act, it can make them lose faith in themselves and even the humanity.

In all this crowd of pious platitudes and moral self righteousness, what really needs to be explained to the children is that parents too, like everyone else are human beings and they are not immune to the temptations and weaknesses, just like other people. What needs to be underlined to them here is that nothing in the world is perfect, least of all human beings, and mostly it is the imperfection which makes us unique and beautiful in a way. Just like the parents have accepted them the way they are, the children too need to realize that they must accept the parents with all their faults. After all, may it be any parent, he or she has the same limitations which any other human has. Deification of a parent has the unhealthy effect of the child having unrealistic expectations from them which leads to a grudge when most of them are not met, may it be not being able to afford something for them which the parents of their peers are able to easily (XYZ’s dad has brought him a bike, why can’t you?)  or not being able to bring them up in a way which they think is right when they reach adulthood (Why did you make me opt for this stream? Why couldn’t you afford to put me in so or so college/institution?) . Children have to understand that parents don’t owe them luxuries nor are they there to cater to their whims or fancies, and they certainly don’t owe them a living as a lot of them are delusional enough to believe (My didn’t help me set up, he didn’t put a word to his contacts to help me get started).

Parents on their part, need to realize that children are not their second chance in life and that one can’t have a “made to order” or a “custom made” offspring (Maybe sometime in our already scary looking future, but not today). They are not display articles, which have to be shown around in social events (You know, he scored 90% in so and so exam, he’s got an admission in xxx or he’s a xxx in xxx company). They aren’t some factory made material that have to be standardized and compared to others (XYZ has scored so many marks in his exams. He also is in his school’s debating team. Why can’t you do the same?). They aren’t hired workers who have to be chided for underperformance for what has been spent on them (we have got you everything you need and what you want. Why can’t you score more marks than XYZ or have dreams of becoming an engineer like WXY? How can you think of becoming a musician when it is our dream that you become a doctor?). Parents must understand that their children did not ask them to help them come into this world. It is them, who have for their own will and liking brought them into this world and from the moment that the children open their eyes, it is their duty to put their whole and soul in nurturing them and making a worthwhile person out of them,(just like it is the children’s duty to be grateful and being good to their parents). It is a thankless and the most pious work in the world, and no one forced them to do it but they themselves have set forth to do it, and must face the consequences, good or bad, with a humble heart.

The concept of maatr devo bhava, pitr devo bhava seems like an outdated bookish adage in an increasingly materialistic society where parents treat their children as their meal ticket/second  chance in life/ controlled machine cum display piece which can be bragged about and children treat their parents as nothing more than an ATM machine. People who blame the young generation for being useless and depraved forget that who raised them in the first place. When the adults have made the world full of greed, lust and perversion, it is nothing but hypocrisy and delusion to expect goodness from the children who, from the moment of stepping out of the house are embraced by the decadence which their parents’ generation has helped create and thrived in.

How can one relate the parents to the divine who ingrain their own pettiness in their children, bring them up with a display mindset and materialistic attitude, don’t buy them any book but fill the house with tabloids, who themselves see nothing other than cheap television shows and third rate films, who squabble all day in front of their children on the flimsiest of issues, who have but empty and inflated words to say in case of moral education but no action to follow it and most important who bring up children to become adults who feel at comfort in continuing the same ways that are the bane of the society today?

One does not need to deify their parents in order to love or respect them. All is needed is to accept that parents and children are god’s gift to each other, the former who are great inspite of their blemishes and imperfections and being grateful for the efforts that they put to the best of their limited abilities in raising their children and the latter because of the unique beauty in each one of them. If there is any complaint that the children have towards the parents from it should be rectified not by lamentations but trying to do a better job when they assume the role of parents when their time comes.