Modi 2.0: Thoughts on the version debate

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BJP, Featured, Gujarat, India, Narendra Modi, PM

Even before he ascended to power in May 2014, political pundits had been debating if Narendra Modi as Prime Minister would be different from what he was as Chief Minister of Gujarat. Since then experts have been queuing up to offer their assessment of the man, who was once, a pariah on the global political map. Today however, he seems to be much revered.

Liberals in India and abroad have decried Modi and his brand of politics for years. They have charged him with having presided over a government that is alleged to have looked the other way when thousands of Muslim minorities in his state of Gujarat were being massacred by Hindu mobs. Modi however, ascended to power in New Delhi despite the liberal opposition.

Orlando Attack: Guns and radical Islam

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Democracy, Featured, Gun Control, ISIS, Islam, Muslims, Orlando, Radicalisation, Sunnis, Terrorism, United States, Wahhabi, World

If it was not for the call that Omar Mir Seddique Mateen made to 911 during the attack at the gay nightclub in Orlando on early Sunday to pledge his allegiance to ISIS and mention the Boston Marathon bombers, this mass killing would more or less have been debated as another one of those gun violence that has created a bloody culture of mass shootings in the US. This debate, which today centers around the ISIS and radical Islam would have veered around to the need for greater gun control.

Unfortunate and ghastly as the incident is, the gun lobby in the United States must thank this mass murderer for having made that call to 911.

Although the question has veered away from the need for gun control in the US, this deadliest incident of mass shooting and worst terror attack since 9/11 in the country raises a very important question.

Gun violence in the US has mostly been incidents of  psychological disorders, accidental deaths, suicides and domestic violence that has resulted in deadly carnage in the streets. However, this incident at the gay nightclub in Orlando raises a new dimension to the problem that the US faces.

Danger to Liberal India

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Gurcharan Das, Hindutva, Idea of India, India, liberalism

One cannot but agree with Gurcharan Das when he argues that “Arrogant liberals are doing a big disservice to liberalism.” (Sunday Times of India, June 12, 2016).

As Das says, “arrogance of the secular liberal is not only morally wrong, it is bad electoral strategy. If the Congress or the Left parties want to convertbtge voter to a liberal ideology, they will not succeed by the sort of contemptuous and dismissive talk…” I believe that Das is completely right on this point. Much of the Hindu majority who ended up siding with Hindutva because of the arrogance of the liberal left. Somewhere along the line liberalism came to be identified with the left. We forget that the left is an equally bigoted ideology as is right-wing Hindutva. Both ideologies exist on the extremes – the left on one and right on the other.
If India has to survive, the liberal ideology has to survive. At present the survival of the liberal ideology looks difficult. The greatest challenge it faces is not from the right wing Hindutva, but from unaccommodating  liberals themselves.
Liberal India will not suvive if India’s liberals refuse to defend the right of all thoughts and ideological perspectives to survive.

India’s NSG bid: The China Challenge

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Barack Obama, China, India, Narendra Modi, NSG, Nuclear, US

The euphoria around Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bonhomie with U.S. President Barack Obama may not be unfounded. Experts believe that the U.S., considering the carrot of building a nuclear power plant in Andhra Pradesh, may make an all out effort to tame China’s opposition to India’s NSG membership.
However, the fact remains that each of these countries, be it U.S., China or India will act in terms of their national self interest. Considering this fact it will not be surprising if China pulls out a rabbit from its hat at the last moment. China’s affiliations to a Pakistan cannot be discounted.
That pleasing Pakistan serves China’s self-interest much more than agreeing to India’s demand is a fact that cannot be ignored.

Indo-Pak Relations: Need for political consensus

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BJP, Congress, India, Pakistan, Politics

The challenge to solving India Pakistan relations is the lack of consensus among major political parties who have one after the other assumed power in New Delhi. Despite the fact that a full-fledged war with Pakistan is a remote possibility, political leaderships keep threatening it to achieve political mileage. Like it or not the only way forward is peace oriented dialogue and yet, neither the Congress nor the BJP has been able to forge this much needed consensus on how to deal with Pakistan.

Featured Image: Courtesy Flickr under CC by Jyoti Prakash Bhattacharjee 

Kalasha Kottu

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Alleppey, Assembly Elections 2016, Campaigning, Changanassery, Drumbeats, Elections, Kerala, Politics, Sloganeering

Kalasha Kottu – the chaotic sloganeering and mesmerizing drumbeats on the last day of campaigning by political parties for the Kerala Assembly elections 2016 on State Highway 11 popularly known as AC road from Alappuzha (Alleppey) to Changanassery.

What impressed me was that all the three political coalitions – the United Democratic Front (UDF), the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Left Democratic Front (LDF) faced off aganist each other in an highly charged campaign environment shouting slogans and beating drums. Luckly there were not clashes and the handful of police and paramilitary personal around were busy ushering traffic. As I stood there, my ear drums ached but the spirit of democracy was something that I just couldn’t miss recording.

Limits of our thought

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India, Nathuram Godse, Rohit Vemula, University of Hyderabad, Yakub Memon

On 3 August 2015 Rohith Vemula and four other Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) activists at the University of Hyderabad dared to question the death penalty that was awarded to Yakub Memon, a convict in 1993 Mumbai (Bombay) bombings in which 257 people were killed. He also condemned the ABVP attack on the screening of the documentary ‘Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai’ in Delhi University. Rohit’s mistake was that he wanted to be a free thinker.

He thought that the death penalty for Yakub Memon was unjustified. But rather ironically, in free India, he did not have the freedom to hold that view. There are several in India who think like him. But for Rohit, he dared to be part of a group who decided to question the decison and voice their protest.

Do we live in a country where we cannot question anyone or anything. Anyone who dares to think beyond the line of official thought is now being labelled and castigated. Rohit was one among them who decided that he had to question offical belief.

Were Yakub Memon, or for that matter Afzal Guru actually terrorists. The courts in their wisdom have ruled so. For us to question the wisdom of the courts may not be proper but to be able to debate it, is what lies at the essense of our freedom. That is what Rohit believed in and attempted to practice. And that is where is crossed the line set for us by the manufacturered spirit of nationalism. If Rohit Vemula is guilty on the count of nationalism how about those who glorify Nathuram Godse, for wasn’t it the same courts that convicted him. I wonder!

Freelancing and the Social Media booby-trap

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Blogging, Facebook, Freelance, Google+, LinkedIn, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Twitter, Writing

Search any site on freelancing tips and you will definitely find several articles that speak about the importance and advantages of aggressive networking in the virtual world of social media. Undoubtedly for today’s freelancers social media provides on the best and cheapest means for finding contacts, networking with them and communicating with potential audiences (both clients and customers).

Your circle on Google+, your connections in LinkedIn, your friends on Facebook or your followers on Twitter can do wonders for your profile. Clients could check you up on social media before assigning you work. The more the merrier, seems to be the principle that guides us today, as the social media juggernaut ploughs along.

Rajdeep Sardesai was right in confronting Modi’s Cheerleaders & Hecklers

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Attack, BJP, Modi, Rajdeep Sardesai, US

There is a lot being written on the Internet about pro-Modi crowds heckling senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai outside Madison Square Garden in New York just before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was about the deliver his address to non-resident Indians settled in the US on  September, 28, 2014. Being a freelance journalist/writer myself, must admit that I am a fan of Rajdeep Sardesai and his journalistic work and being a thinking human being feel it is my responsibility to express my thoughts about the incident.

Freedom at Midnight: A Fairy Tale Account of Indian Independence

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Books, British Empire, Dominique Lapierre, Favourite, Featured, Freedom at Midnight, Independence, India, Larry Collins, Must Read, Pakistan, Partition

“A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”

These are the historic words of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India from his famous speech, Tryst with Destiny which he delivered to the Constituent Assembly on August 14, 1947 (the eve of India’s independence).

Nehru was right; such moments come rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new. The fall of the Berlin Wall; collapse of the Soviet Union and the Arab Spring are such epoch events when the world stepped out from the old into the new.