India on the War path?

[SQ8]

The bigger issues that underline this war mongering have nothing to do with the occasional young man going about and shooting five or six other young men. There is a not so rosy economic outlook due to the drastic and as yet unproven reforms coupled with an increasing population-an understated horde of economic immigrants &refugees to the east, and a general sense of encirclement by the billion better educated,better skilled and more motivated competing population to the north.

So while the fascists in power may seem to have more rudimentary idealistic motivation; the truth is the rapprochement with Burma has nothing to do with Muslim genocide being a favorite venting fantasy of the current crop of Indian rulers, but rather a prodding by the Indian diplomatic “establishment” to reduce Chinese influence to its east. The same goes with the current plans for war with Pakistan as these have little to do with earlier belligerence and more to do with a resurgence of Pakistani capacity to harass India backed up by a fairly likely Chinese economic “shield” which gives a sense of immunity.
@Joe Shearer

 

[CriticalThought]

The bigger issues that underline this war mongering have nothing to do with the occasional young man going about and shooting five or six other young men. There is a not so rosy economic outlook due to the drastic and as yet unproven reforms coupled with an increasing population-an understated horde of economic immigrants &refugees to the east, and a general sense of encirclement by the billion better educated,better skilled and more motivated competing population to the north.

So while the fascists in power may seem to have more rudimentary idealistic motivation; the truth is the rapprochement with Burma has nothing to do with Muslim genocide being a favorite venting fantasy of the current crop of Indian rulers, but rather a prodding by the Indian diplomatic “establishment” to reduce Chinese influence to its east. The same goes with the current plans for war with Pakistan as these have little to do with earlier belligerence and more to do with a resurgence of Pakistani capacity to harass India backed up by a fairly likely Chinese economic “shield” which gives a sense of immunity.
@Joe Shearer

Sir, let's not forget Khawaja Asif's recent visit during which the Americans pointed out that at least some Indians view us in the rear view mirror, thus strongly hinting that it's all about China. Obviously with American backing. The Indians, through a combination of hate and delusion see America's China containment policy as the perfect opportunity to jump on the band wagon and snub their arch rival. Current Indian belligerence is opportunism at its most crass pettiness. It would serve them well, if the element of self-delusion wasn't so strong.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Muhammad bin Qasim defeated the Hindu ruler of what’s now southern Pakistan in 712 AD. From that point onwards, Muslims have gradually and completely ruled India till 1857. It’s actually more than 1000 years. But then you are a victim of Hindu Nationalism despite your feign attempts on this forum to pass off as someone above nationalism. Thanks for fooling some members. But you don’t fool me.

Oh, I have no intentions of improving on a job that is already well-executed. Your post was probably intended for @third eye, but you have addressed it to me. I must inform you that I consider myself collateral damage.

 

[Joe Shearer]

The bigger issues that underline this war mongering have nothing to do with the occasional young man going about and shooting five or six other young men. There is a not so rosy economic outlook due to the drastic and as yet unproven reforms coupled with an increasing population-an understated horde of economic immigrants &refugees to the east, and a general sense of encirclement by the billion better educated,better skilled and more motivated competing population to the north.

So while the fascists in power may seem to have more rudimentary idealistic motivation; the truth is the rapprochement with Burma has nothing to do with Muslim genocide being a favorite venting fantasy of the current crop of Indian rulers, but rather a prodding by the Indian diplomatic “establishment” to reduce Chinese influence to its east. The same goes with the current plans for war with Pakistan as these have little to do with earlier belligerence and more to do with a resurgence of Pakistani capacity to harass India backed up by a fairly likely Chinese economic “shield” which gives a sense of immunity.
@Joe Shearer

Although I am by now familiar with the insight that you bring to a subject, this post has almost frightening prescience. I call it prescience because it goes beyond the immediate time horizon.

Part of what follows is in italics; these are the parts in which the reality of your first paragraph are explored. I am sorry for the incoherence of my response, but for the first time, somebody has touched on some very raw nerves, and it is difficult to refrain from what amounts to a rant.

In recent months, due partly to the frustration of my experience teaching in a management school, and realising to my dismay that we were teaching techniques and theories to a group of young people completely unable to relate it to their future work environment, it has seemed increasingly urgent to move into basic skills development in the larger mass of the population: to train plumbers, electricians, carpenters, masons, cooks, waiters, or, on the distaff side, beauticians, housekeeping staff, tailors, and the like. There is a list of some 15 skills that have a regular demand, and that can no longer be met by traditional methods of apprentice-like imparting of skills. In order to plan the effort, it was necessary to look at the raw statistics. They are frightening.

13 million Indians enter the work force - become eligible to work for their living - each year. 8 million never get jobs. 5 million do, of them a little over 750,000 in the organised sector, with more or less legal pay and health and long service benefits as defined by law, while the remaining 4.25 millions work in the unorganised sector, more or less on a day to day basis. This has led to significant shifts of place of work for thousands of people; almost all jobs in the hospitality industry in Hyderabad, in the Telugu heartland, surrounded by large masses of unemployed or underemployed Telangana or Andhra citizens, are held by Odiyas. There is a minority of others from the east, Bengalis and Assamese, and a yet smaller portion from Darjeeling, Shillong, and Aizawl: Gorkhas, Khasis and Jaintias and Mizos. The market for Telangana people is further west; they have either given up the battle or moved to Mumbai and then on into the 'Gelf'. There are smaller streams from the south and the north; Malayalis are ubiquitous, and we have been getting more and more Kashmiris in the job applicants hordes, along with the usual Punjabis and Haryanvis and Bhaiyas, who really settle into the Delhi conurbation or make a big move to Bengaluru.

We are in the middle of the swelling of the young population that should have been our demographic dividend, and there are no jobs for them.

Jobs in the east and everywhere in India in the unskilled labour segment are under threat from Bangladeshis. The debates that go on in PDF are utterly futile; an interested enquirer just has to step across and speak to a member of a construction crew to get in touch with reality.

Demographic pressure from the east is increasing. From Odisha onwards to the east, there is tremendous pressure on the jobs front, the rural economy is no longer able to hold its population, there is rapid and large scale urbanisation, and the slums are filling up with people who have to survive on a daily basis. And in all this, Indians have to compete desperately hard with a mass who have even fewer jobs to keep them where they are born.

This present lot of politicians came to power on the back of the job-seeker, completely let down by a venal UPA II led by a dynast clinging on to power on the votes of small town embezzlers of public funds, raised by their social affiliations to political office. It is said that to move the gains of tweaks in the telecommunications policy, the main beneficiary physically moved currency in several chartered flights of small planes, down to his home state.

To underwrite your third element, that of a huge and disciplined and accomplished workforce 'in possession' of the jobs, as I look around my room, the objects of Chinese origin, from my mobile phone to pillows to plastic laundry basket to waste paper basket, are everywhere.

When you looked at the relationship with Pakistan, there is an increasing sense of frustration at the continued harrassing terror attacks in Kashmir - action in the rest of India is somewhat contained - and the sense of encirclement. Pakistan now seems in the street to be increasingly buoyed up by the Chinese successor to the huge and looming American presence that kept the Pakistani state intact these past seventy years. Worse still, this replacement big brother is far more sorted than the Americans ever wear, and has been making precisely those moves that position more and more threats to our existence.

Finally, the question of ideology.

I have mixed feelings about your relative minimisation of ideology in the proceedings. The hard core of those who have come to power represent the intellectual equivalent of what used to be called by the left the lumpenproletariat - a lumpenintelligentsia, if you will. They are surrounded by a thin veneer of apparently educated bigots and casteists, or to speak with greater precision, those who are willing to sacrifice some of the more egregious side-effects of caste prejudices in order to achieve a stronger bond uniting a larger part of the population against the rest of the population. The utter idiocy and fundamental divisiveness of this programme does not seem to strike them.

But that is not the problem. The problem is that this lot came to office and discovered that they simply lacked the skills that earlier politicians had acquired - more by osmosis than by serious intellectual effort, it would seem, judging by the specimens on display - to govern. Public policy determined by the earlier shibboleths had tangential impact; the mind-numbing stupidity of the right was in public display. That explains why they took key programmes and policies of the previous regime, made a huge row about discarding the corruption that went with it - the current fulminations by the prime minister is intended to detach the corruption associated with earlier policy from the very useful policies themselves - and tarted these up to claim them as their own. Much as they did with the independence movement, kidnapping personalities like Patel and Bose in a desperate attempt at providing themselves with a legacy that never existed.

It is the unconscious element, or the less-understood element in Indian decision-making that is a menace today. These shallow personalities are reacting to immediate impulses and forming a policy out of responses to the cheers and to the cat-calling. And here is where the Pakistani inclination to deal with complicated situations at the level of schoolboys cheering their house during a soccer match creates a situation. We are locked in confrontation, and in this atmosphere, anything can happen. I wish my daughter had never returned to India.

 

[Ryuzaki]

If you watch what is happening around the world and especially in Washington,war with Pakistan is definitely coming very soon.And it will be the final war b/w India and Pakistan.

 

[pothead]

Much as they did with the independence movement, kidnapping personalities like Patel and Bose in a desperate attempt at providing themselves with a legacy that never existed.

How delightfully Tragic sir.

Patel & Bose, two of the most tallest leaders of our independence, ignored and confined to dustbins of history by Congress.
Care to explain what Congress did to their legacy until BJP started promoting them? That Nehru would give himself and that Indira would give herself Bharatha rathna before Patel never rattled you? Bose was not even worthy of mention for these frauds.

That a single family has appropriated the legacy of our independence has not rattled one single Indian intellectual. That there are tens of thousands of roads, building, schemes named after one single family while completely erasing the others from our history has not rattled one single Indian intellectual.

When BJP tries to give the other tall leaders their due, they are blamed for appropriation?! So, One side WON'T recognize these tall leaders and you will take pot shots at the other side giving them their due? - Sounds fair to you sir?

Let me tell you what appropriation of leaders would look like.
Imagine if Narendra Modi changed his name to Narendra Gandhi, sired a son and named him Rajiv Gandhi....
oh wait, I think I recall this happening, can anyone refresh my memory please? Anyone?
The greatest and most blatant appropriation of a leader happened right in front of the eyes of this nation. You are a microcosm of all the so called rationalist intellectuals, hence explain to us how you let a family get away with this appropriation of Gandhi's name?
How is it the Guhas of this world never found their voice to stand to these frauds and ask them 'How did you lot become Gandhi's?'

The intellectuals of India are either complicit or worse silent, enabling a single family get away appropriating our nation & all you lot did was stand on the side and clap gleefully.

I could ask you to explain your silence (by you I mean the silence of the so called liberal intellectuals) but then I know the answer already - you would pretend to not represent congress/Gandhi's & hence are not responsible to answer.
A very convenient way to not answer the issue and enable these frauds to continue destroying India. I would rather debate with people who are complicit, at least they need to answer. The silent types would pretend to be neutral, not answer, only to demand answers from the other side contrarian to your beliefs.

For many of us the current dispensation is the hope we has been searching for more than decade. for few people, it has been a 70 years wait.
Finally we have some one in power, who can look at these frauds masquerading as intellectuals in their eyes and tell then 'You are Frauds' and don't give a damn about what they think. Instead the current dispensation is concentrating on the ones who really matter - people like us who voice was throttled for 70 years.

That some one would bring Patel & Bose to score points is the most unkindest cut, not to me/us but to these great leaders of our independence, who if not for opposition would have been confined to the dustbins of our history by the 'Gandhi's'.

 

[Śakra]

Indians just want to shake their turban

 

[SQ8]

How delightfully Tragic sir.

Patel & Bose, two of the most tallest leaders of our independence, ignored and confined to dustbins of history by Congress.
Care to explain what Congress did to their legacy until BJP started promoting them? That Nehru would give himself and that Indira would give herself Bharatha rathna before Patel never rattled you? Bose was not even worthy of mention for these frauds.

That a single family has appropriated the legacy of our independence has not rattled one single Indian intellectual. That there are tens of thousands of roads, building, schemes named after one single family while completely erasing the others from our history has not rattled one single Indian intellectual.

When BJP tries to give the other tall leaders their due, they are blamed for appropriation?! So, One side WON'T recognize these tall leaders and you will take pot shots at the other side giving them their due? - Sounds fair to you sir?

Let me tell you what appropriation of leaders would look like.
Imagine if Narendra Modi changed his name to Narendra Gandhi, sired a son and named him Rajiv Gandhi....
oh wait, I think I recall this happening, can anyone refresh my memory please? Anyone?
The greatest and most blatant appropriation of a leader happened right in front of the eyes of this nation. You are a microcosm of all the so called rationalist intellectuals, hence explain to us how you let a family get away with this appropriation of Gandhi's name?
How is it the Guhas of this world never found their voice to stand to these frauds and ask them 'How did you lot become Gandhi's?'

The intellectuals of India are either complicit or worse silent, enabling a single family get away appropriating our nation & all you lot did was stand on the side and clap gleefully.

I could ask you to explain your silence (by you I mean the silence of the so called liberal intellectuals) but then I know the answer already - you would pretend to not represent congress/Gandhi's & hence are not responsible to answer.
A very convenient way to not answer the issue and enable these frauds to continue destroying India. I would rather debate with people who are complicit, at least they need to answer. The silent types would pretend to be neutral, not answer, only to demand answers from the other side contrarian to your beliefs.

For many of us the current dispensation is the hope we has been searching for more than decade. For many of us it's 70 years wait.
Finally we have some one in power, who can look at these frauds masquerading as intellectuals in their eyes and tell then 'You are Frauds' and don't give a damn about what they think. Instead they are concentrating on the ones who really matter - people like us who voice was throttled for 70 years.

That some one would bring Patel & Bose to score points is the most unkindest cut, not to me/us but to these great leaders of our independence, who if not for opposition would have been confined to the dustbins of our history by the 'Gandhi's'.

Your response is as typical of the cheerleader for a movement you believe in as any by lumping his ideals with the opposition you can fathom.

To quote H.L Mencken
“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. ”

Regardless of how many times the various governments of India may have celebrated Bose or Bhagat, there is always room to convince the plain masses that the sun has never been seen setting in the west until it was pointed out to them today.

Ironically, both @Joe Shearer and I are vehemently opposed to very idea of political dynasty which you both in utter ignorance and sense of insecurity attach both liberalism & socioeconomic analysis to be a part of. In essence you do embody exactly the utter English literate but generally ignorant young Indian Joe talks about; being produced out of the factory of 2-4 year “degree” programs who are going to face an increasingly scarce job market for what you desire and no ability to perform any of the espoused menial tasks taught to yiu by the system you are a product of. You not taught research as much as references, loghorrea of data over precision of information and given an ingrained sense of “rat race” insecurity that inhibits your very world view.

What Joe & I mourn aren’t the Gandhis or their rather spurious inheritance of bloodlibe, but the value for intellectualism associated with past leadership. Forget the Gandhis or liberalism or sickular and all the other reactionary terms your impotent mind has been indoctrinated to spout on cue; the fact remains true that on a level of both knowledge & intellect- The BJP of Vajpayee & his cabinet are to this current crop of leadership what Human beings are to the venerable Langoor.

It is that sanity and far sightedness we mourn most, not drone like followers such as yourselves who could not even be bothered to remember the many authors and commentators past from all walks in India- including the dreaded liberals & the oppressive Congress Party

 

[pothead]

Your response is as typical of the cheerleader for a movement you believe in as any by lumping his ideals with the opposition you can fathom.

To quote H.L Mencken
“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. ”

Regardless of how many times the various governments of India may have celebrated Bose or Bhagat, there is always room to convince the plain masses that the sun has never been seen setting in the west until it was pointed out to them today.

Ironically, both @Joe Shearer and I are vehemently opposed to very idea of political dynasty which you both in utter ignorance and sense of insecurity attach both liberalism & socioeconomic analysis to be a part of. In essence you do embody exactly the utter English literate but generally ignorant young Indian Joe talks about; being produced out of the factory of 2-4 year “degree” programs who are going to face an increasingly scarce job market for what you desire and no ability to perform any of the espoused menial tasks taught to yiu by the system you are a product of. You not taught research as much as references, loghorrea of data over precision of information and given an ingrained sense of “rat race” insecurity that inhibits your very world view.

What Joe & I mourn aren’t the Gandhis or their rather spurious inheritance of bloodlibe, but the value for intellectualism associated with past leadership. Forget the Gandhis or liberalism or sickular and all the other reactionary terms your impotent mind has been indoctrinated to spout on cue; the fact remains true that on a level of both knowledge & intellect- The BJP of Vajpayee & his cabinet are to this current crop of leadership what Human beings are to the venerable Langoor.

It is that sanity and far sightedness we mourn most, not drone like followers such as yourselves who could not even be bothered to remember the many authors and commentators past from all walks in India- including the dreaded liberals & the oppressive Congress Party

You have already labelled your ideological opponents as Langoors.
Sir, who is the demagogue here?

Point of my post is the lip service, which you very aptly have done here against the dynasty VS the vehement opposition to Hindu parties, which many times borders on insanity.

Even your own post paid lip service to the one family which ruled India for 50+ years, who frankly are responsible for 90% of all the ills of India but choose to call a 3 year old govt Langoors - Where is your balance sir?

That the liberals of India would hug the party that over rode SC decision to scrap Triple talaq 30 years back is a slap to your logic sir.

I don't deny the shortcomings of current disposition in power. What I take umbrage is the duplicity is dealing with kid gloves of one side that has largely ruled India for most time. the Passe they get is stunning.

And don't worry about my degree or the menial tasks I have been performing in the field of Human services for over a decade now. These are irrelevant and frankly below your dignity to engage in discussion.

 

[Joe Shearer]

How delightfully Tragic sir.

The delight is entirely yours. You will not even begin to understand the legacy that you have lost, or, more accurately, spurned. And it is emphatically not the legacy of the Congress; it is the legacy of two generations of people who sought to build a polity of some moral substance and worth.

Oscar has already cut your argument into strips, and I shall not add to the havoc. Instead, let me address your points at the level at which you apparently find your greatest comfort.

Patel & Bose, two of the most tallest leaders of our independence, ignored and confined to dustbins of history by Congress.

Bracketing them as appropriated legacies and bracketing them as Congress members is pretty ignorant to start with.

Patel was a Gandhi loyalist to the end of his life, long after Gandhi's assassination. He was right wing in the sense that he had no difficulty in living within social conditions of his time, he was Hindu leading, he was authoritarian in some aspects, and took to force when he needed to, he was pragmatic and settled for conditions that could be created then and there, and gave up gazing deep into the future in favour of action here and now. He was no reactionary, in spite of Nehru's attacks on him from time to time. It was he who banned the RSS; it was he, acting independently again, exercising his judgement, who lifted the ban on the strict promise of the Sarsanghchalak to refrain from politics, a promise that the RSS promptly broke, soon after Patel's death, in exactly the same manner and using the same methods that we despise Hafez Saeed for using, putting up front organisations entirely staffed by members of the original organisation that did the work that they were themselves banned from doing.

He gave up his claims to leadership of the party, consequently, of the nation, due to Gandhi's firm belief that Nehru was a better leader. On the whole, Gandhi was right; Patel was a great administrator, but lacked the charisma and the ability to attract people's loyalty, the ability to act as the iconic leader that was needed for those early, turbulent years. For better or for worse, it was as well; the older man did not survive independence for long. Losing Nehru in 1964 was destabilising; losing him in 1950 would have been catastrophic. Given that after so many years in politics, the BJP still cannot produce a full team of capable and competent administrators, given that at that time, the Sangh Parivar still had its older, Neanderthal leaders, given that the Congress party had the hearts and minds of the people, given that the stabilising influence of the Supreme Court had not been felt to its present, stalwart extent, given that the loyalty and stability of the Indian Army had not yet been on display and found to be solid, we could not have afforded the risk of giving another party the reins of power.

Bose is another cup of tea altogether. If he had come to power through whatever means, it would have been a bad day for India. He had so much of the fascist in his make-up that for him to create an inclusive nation with space for dissent and for free speech would have failed utterly. He was hated within the Congress, and only the extreme minority of Bengali Hindus who feared being swamped by Bengali Muslims supported him. Please remember that at that time, there were formidable stalwarts within the Bengali Muslim community. Sher-e-Bangal Fazlul Haq towered over the others, but gradually others, especially Husseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, came up and surpassed him, thanks to the support and influence of the British administrators for anybody who came up to oppose the Krishak Praja Party.

After his rift with the Congress, did he join the other great right-wing Bengali Hindu leader, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee? He didn't; he struck out on his own independent line, that was, over the years, based as it was on the maxim that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', increasing close to the Fascists, to the Nazis and finally, to the Japanese Imperialists. This was the period when he was chummy with those who were lining up Indian POWs, blindfolding and placing them in lines and practising their sharp-shooting on helpless prisoners.

It is not that Congress claimed him and BJP co-opted him and that was a larcenous act. It was that he was a powerful, militaristic and fascistic influence on national politics, that his politics and philosophy were - mildly and modestly speaking - muddled beyond repair, and the Congress paid its homage to a great leader and turned away. It was flotsam that the BJP salvaged, not jetsam.

Care to explain what Congress did to their legacy until BJP started promoting them? That Nehru would give himself and that Indira would give herself Bharatha rathna before Patel never rattled you? Bose was not even worthy of mention for these frauds.

I think both Nehru and Indira Gandhi deserved the Bharat Ratna far more than this leader. You call them frauds; I say that you have got all your knowledge from the web and from your grandmother's tales, and do not deserve the right to comment on them.

That a single family has appropriated the legacy of our independence has not rattled one single Indian intellectual. That there are tens of thousands of roads, building, schemes named after one single family while completely erasing the others from our history has not rattled one single Indian intellectual.

1. Nobody, anywhere, has linked our independence movement to a single family. That is a figment of your ill-educated imagination.
2. NOT ONE road, building or scheme is named after one single family. EACH of these is named after a member of the family that contributed in ways that the Sangh Parivar will strive mightily to do for another century. I name them: Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Feroze Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. The last named was pushed into fame and glory due to his doting mother and elder brother, both of whom were guilty of promoting the memory of a beastly individual. That does not take away from the achievements of others of the family in the movement. Nor is there any shortage of memorials to other individuals who worked for independence. Your facts are distorted.
3. Only a totally illiterate viewer of our own history like you could have made a statement such as '....completely erasing the others from our history....'. This is possible only because a breed of technically trained individuals has come into the world knowing nothing about the independence struggle, and have drawn their knowledge of modern Indian history from the web-sites of the Sangh Parivar, and after having been gullible enough to take those fairy tales as the truth. Our history books, those read by us who have actually studied history, and not just glanced through pages of lying propaganda, are full of those who together formed the leadership, the middle levels and the front ranks of the independence movement. It is to cover their guilty compliance with the British and their singular detachment from the independence movement. It is to cover their open treachery that the RSS goes through these paroxysms of hero worship. Only it's too late now.

When BJP tries to give the other tall leaders their due, they are blamed for appropriation?! So, One side WON'T recognize these tall leaders and you will take pot shots at the other side giving them their due? - Sounds fair to you sir?

Sounds very fair. The BJP is making a naked attempt to create a back-story for itself, claiming that Patel reflected all their own thoughts, that he was, in effect, a member of the Sangh Parivar even before the Sangh Parivar was fully formed. Therefore, a crypto-BJP leader, undiscovered because the BJP itself was formed decades later, but in heart and soul nevertheless a tall-standing eminent member of the Sangh Parivar, dedicated even at that early stage to the downfall of the ruling family.

Let me tell you what appropriation of leaders would look like.
Imagine if Narendra Modi changed his name to Narendra Gandhi, sired a son and named him Rajiv Gandhi....
oh wait, I think I recall this happening, can anyone refresh my memory please? Anyone?
The greatest and most blatant appropriation of a leader happened right in front of the eyes of this nation. You are a microcosm of all the so called rationalist intellectuals, hence explain to us how you let a family get away with this appropriation of Gandhi's name?
How is it the Guhas of this world never found their voice to stand to these frauds and ask them 'How did you lot become Gandhi's?'

Because it is completely fictitious. For a smart-alec who crows from the rooftops his devotion to fact, this is a disastrous and all-too-revealing slip. What you have described occurred only within the pages of propagandising web-sites.

The intellectuals of India are either complicit or worse silent, enabling a single family get away appropriating our nation & all you lot did was stand on the side and clap gleefully.

They are neither complicit nor silent; they lived through these events, some of them, they were familiar with the protagonists, others among them, and they took the trouble to determine the facts, as far as the balance were concerned. It is the illiterates and party-line imbibing Sanghis who are beneath contempt.

There are members of this forum who can tell you chapter and verse about the man from whom Indira Nehru took her married name, and there are literally thousands who can inform you that between a Gujarati speaking Kutchhi bania and a Gujarati speaking Parsi, there was nothing in common beyond a name shared. Just like my service with, first, Rusi Mody and Minoo Mody. Or were they also members of the Sangh Parivar because they shared your great leader's name?

I could ask you to explain your silence (by you I mean the silence of the so called liberal intellectuals) but then I know the answer already - you would pretend to not represent congress/Gandhi's & hence are not responsible to answer.

I do not know whom you define as liberal intellectuals, and do not particularly care. You have descended so far into the gutter that your opinion has no value to any decent person. But as for silence, there is no point in responding to incoherent, irrelevant animal noises; it is not a communication that requires a response. Most of what you have related comes from the lowest layer of Sanghi smear campaigns, that have been contradicted by the knowledgeable time and again, but that corrupts the virgin intellects of most of the young people who have received technical training, can speak English and write it, and therefore mistakenly think that they are educated. What answer is needed to a statement that the Moon is made of green cheese? Where would one start?

A very convenient way to not answer the issue and enable these frauds to continue destroying India. I would rather debate with people who are complicit, at least they need to answer. The silent types would pretend to be neutral, not answer, only to demand answers from the other side contrarian to your beliefs.

As has been pointed out, there is no need, no justification for replying to nonsense. First read up on your subject, not on the web, but in properly written texts.

For many of us the current dispensation is the hope we has been searching for more than decade. for few people, it has been a 70 years wait.

It is sad to read these pompous and ill-founded vapourings.

Finally we have some one in power, who can look at these frauds masquerading as intellectuals in their eyes and tell then 'You are Frauds' and don't give a damn about what they think. Instead the current dispensation is concentrating on the ones who really matter - people like us who voice was throttled for 70 years.

Is it not a curious coincidence that all those who are now termed frauds are those who have pointed to murderous riots in which that someone in power was complicit, to corruption of the police force to serve the partisan interests of one party, to the misuse of the police to run an extortion racket that milked money from businessmen in the name of protection from non-existent Pakistani terrorists or Indian extremists, that sought to cover its actions by the cold-blooded extra-judicial execution of unarmed men and women, including women whose only crime was to be in the company of their husband who had been selected for execution?

That some one would bring Patel & Bose to score points is the most unkindest cut, not to me/us but to these great leaders of our independence, who if not for opposition would have been confined to the dustbins of our history by the 'Gandhi's'.

Oh you poor dears, pining for your voice through - how many general elections? - decades and decades of deprivation of the rightful power that should have been yours, ignored and set aside, like the famous economist currently head of the ersatz Planning Commission who could not get a PhD thesis to pursue, or like the civil servant who became Finance Minister, and now thinks that the country stares sure economic ruin in the face, or like the renowned newspaper editor and author of many Islamophobic pieces of trash, who now thinks, like his former colleague, that the present dispensation is nothing but the Congress plus a cow.

When was it that you found that these were great leaders of our independence? And when did you discover that the Gandhi called the Mahatma was not related to the Gandhis of our times?

Your response is as typical of the cheerleader for a movement you believe in as any by lumping his ideals with the opposition you can fathom.

To quote H.L Mencken
“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. ”

Regardless of how many times the various governments of India may have celebrated Bose or Bhagat, there is always room to convince the plain masses that the sun has never been seen setting in the west until it was pointed out to them today.

Ironically, both @Joe Shearer and I are vehemently opposed to very idea of political dynasty which you both in utter ignorance and sense of insecurity attach both liberalism & socioeconomic analysis to be a part of. In essence you do embody exactly the utter English literate but generally ignorant young Indian Joe talks about; being produced out of the factory of 2-4 year “degree” programs who are going to face an increasingly scarce job market for what you desire and no ability to perform any of the espoused menial tasks taught to yiu by the system you are a product of. You not taught research as much as references, loghorrea of data over precision of information and given an ingrained sense of “rat race” insecurity that inhibits your very world view.

What Joe & I mourn aren’t the Gandhis or their rather spurious inheritance of bloodlibe, but the value for intellectualism associated with past leadership. Forget the Gandhis or liberalism or sickular and all the other reactionary terms your impotent mind has been indoctrinated to spout on cue; the fact remains true that on a level of both knowledge & intellect- The BJP of Vajpayee & his cabinet are to this current crop of leadership what Human beings are to the venerable Langoor.

It is that sanity and far sightedness we mourn most, not drone like followers such as yourselves who could not even be bothered to remember the many authors and commentators past from all walks in India- including the dreaded liberals & the oppressive Congress Party

@Oscar

I write this in tribute. Your post could serve as my intellectual vade mecum; I had hoped in the past that our views largely coincided, but this explicit post goes far beyond those hopes.

Very sincere thanks for the clear and polished articulation of the faction of the decent.

My salutes, Sir.

@jbgt90

Please read #98; in fact, go through the thread. This is why it is clear that I have to follow my own judgement; that post could be framed on my wall as my political and sociological credo. I hope you understand my standpoint now.

@anant_s
@AUSTERLITZ
@Levina
@MilSpec
@nair
@scorpionx

 

[pothead]

The delight is entirely yours. You will not even begin to understand the legacy that you have lost, or, more accurately, spurned. And it is emphatically not the legacy of the Congress; it is the legacy of two generations of people who sought to build a polity of some moral substance and worth.

Oscar has already cut your argument into strips, and I shall not add to the havoc. Instead, let me address your points at the level of the drain in which you apparently find your greatest comfort of ambience.



Bracketing them as appropriated legacies and bracketing them as Congress members is pretty ignorant to start with.

Patel was a Gandhi loyalist to the end of his life, long after Gandhi's assassination. He was right wing in the sense that he had no difficulty in living within social conditions of his time, he was Hindu leading, he was authoritarian in some aspects, and took to force when he needed to, he was pragmatic and settled for conditions that could be created then and there, and gave up gazing deep into the future in favour of action here and now. He was no reactionary, in spite of Nehru's attacks on him from time to time. It was he who banned the RSS; it was he, acting independently again, exercising his judgement, who lifted the ban on the strict promise of the Sarsanghchalak to refrain from politics, a promise that the RSS promptly broke, soon after Patel's death, in exactly the same manner and using the same methods that we despise Hafez Saeed for using, putting up front organisations entirely staffed by members of the original organisation that did the work that they were themselves banned from doing.

He gave up his claims to leadership of the party, consequently, of the nation, due to Gandhi's firm belief that Nehru was a better leader. On the whole, Gandhi was right; Patel was a great administrator, but lacked the charisma and the ability to attract people's loyalty, the ability to act as the iconic leader that was needed for those early, turbulent years. For better or for worse, it was as well; the older man did not survive independence for long. Losing Nehru in 1964 was destabilising; losing him in 1950 would have been catastrophic. Given that after so many years in politics, the BJP still cannot produce a full team of capable and competent administrators, given that at that time, the Sangh Parivar still had its older, Neanderthal leaders, given that the Congress party had the hearts and minds of the people, given that the stabilising influence of the Supreme Court had not been felt to its present, stalwart extent, given that the loyalty and stability of the Indian Army had not yet been on display and found to be solid, we could not have afforded the risk of giving another party the reins of power.

Bose is another cup of tea altogether. If he had come to power through whatever means, it would have been a bad day for India. He had so much of the fascist in his make-up that for him to create an inclusive nation with space for dissent and for free speech would have failed utterly. He was hated within the Congress, and only the extreme minority of Bengali Hindus who feared being swamped by Bengali Muslims supported him. Please remember that at that time, there were formidable stalwarts within the Bengali Muslim community. Sher-e-Bangal Fazlul Haq towered over the others, but gradually others, especially Husseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, came up and surpassed him, thanks to the support and influence of the British administrators for anybody who came up to oppose the Krishak Praja Party.

After his rift with the Congress, did he join the other great right-wing Bengali Hindu leader, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee? He didn't; he struck out on his own independent line, that was, over the years, based as it was on the maxim that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', increasing close to the Fascists, to the Nazis and finally, to the Japanese Imperialists. This was the period when he was chummy with those who were lining up Indian POWs, blindfolding and placing them in lines and practising their sharp-shooting on helpless prisoners.

It is not that Congress claimed him and BJP co-opted him and that was a larcenous act. It was that he was a powerful, militaristic and fascistic influence on national politics, that his politics and philosophy were - mildly and modestly speaking - muddled beyond repair, and the Congress paid its homage to a great leader and turned away. It was flotsam that the BJP salvaged, not jetsam.



I think both Nehru and Indira Gandhi deserved the Bharat Ratna far more than this leader. You call them frauds; I say that you have got all your knowledge from the web and from your grandmother's tales, and do not deserve the right to comment on them.

1. Nobody, anywhere, has linked our independence movement to a single family. That is a figment of your ill-educated imagination.
2. NOT ONE road, building or scheme is named after one single family. EACH of these is named after a member of the family that contributed in ways that the Sangh Parivar will strive mightily to do for another century. I name them: Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Feroze Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. The last named was pushed into fame and glory due to his doting mother and elder brother, both of whom were guilty of promoting the memory of a beastly individual. That does not take away from the achievements of others of the family in the movement. Nor is there any shortage of memorials to other individuals who worked for independence. Your facts are distorted.
3. Only a totally illiterate goon like you could have made a statement such as '....completely erasing the others from our history....'. This is possible only because a breed of technically trained individuals has come into the world knowing nothing about the independence struggle, and have drawn their knowledge of modern Indian history from the web-sites of the Sangh Parivar, and after having been gullible enough to take those fairy tales as the truth. Our history books, those read by us who have actually studied history, and not just glanced through pages of lying propaganda, are full of those who together formed the leadership, the middle levels and the front ranks of the independence movement. It is to cover their guilty compliance with the British and their singular detachment from the independence movement. It is to cover their open treachery that the RSS goes through these paroxysms of hero worship. Only it's too late now.

Sounds very fair. The BJP is making a naked attempt to create a back-story for itself, claiming that Patel reflected all their own thoughts, that he was, in effect, a member of the Sangh Parivar even before the Sangh Parivar was fully formed. Therefore, a crypto-BJP leader, undiscovered because the BJP itself was formed decades later, but in heart and soul nevertheless a tall-standing eminent member of the Sangh Parivar, dedicated even at that early stage to the downfall of the ruling family.



Because it is completely fictitious. For a smart-alec who crows from the rooftops his devotion to fact, this is a disastrous and all-too-revealing slip. What you have described occurred only within the pages of propagandising web-sites.



They are neither complicit nor silent; they lived through these events, some of them, they were familiar with the protagonists, others among them, and they took the trouble to determine the facts, as far as the balance were concerned. It is the illiterates and party-line imbibing Sanghis like you who are beneath contempt.

There are members of this forum who can tell you chapter and verse about the man from whom Indira Nehru took her married name, and there are literally thousands who can inform you that between a Gujarati speaking Kutchhi bania and a Gujarati speaking Parsi, there was nothing in common beyond a name shared. Just like my service with, first, Rusi Mody and Minoo Mody. Or were they also members of the Sangh Parivar because they shared your great leader's name?



I do not know whom you define as liberal intellectuals, and do not particularly care. You have descended so far into the gutter that your opinion has no value to any decent person. But as for silence, there is no point in responding to the braying of an ***; it is not a communication that requires a response. Most of what you have related comes from the lowest layer of Sanghi smear campaigns, that have been contradicted by the knowledgeable time and again, but that corrupts the virgin intellects of most of the young people who have received technical training, can speak English and write it, and therefore mistakenly think that they are educated. What answer is needed to a statement that the Moon is made of green cheese? Where would one start?



As has been pointed out, there is no need, no justification for replying to nonsense. First read up on your subject, not on the web, but in properly written texts.



It is sad to read these pompous and ill-founded vapourings.



Is it not a curious coincidence that all those who are now termed frauds are those who have pointed to murderous riots in which that someone in power was complicit, to corruption of the police force to serve the partisan interests of one party, to the misuse of the police to run an extortion racket that milked money from businessmen in the name of protection from non-existent Pakistani terrorists or Indian extremists, that sought to cover its actions by the cold-blooded extra-judicial execution of unarmed men and women, including women whose only crime was to be in the company of their husband who had been selected for execution?



Oh you poor dears, pining for your voice through - how many general elections? - decades and decades of deprivation of the rightful power that should have been yours, ignored and set aside, like the famous economist currently head of the ersatz Planning Commission who could not get a PhD thesis to pursue, or like the civil servant who became Finance Minister, and now thinks that the country stares sure economic ruin in the face, or like the renowned newspaper editor and author of many Islamophobic pieces of trash, who now thinks, like his former colleague, that the present dispensation is nothing but the Congress plus a cow.

When was it that you found that these were great leaders of our independence? And when did you discover that the Gandhi called the Mahatma was not related to the Gandhis of our times?



@Oscar

I write this in tribute. Your post could serve as my intellectual vade mecum; I had hoped in the past that our views largely coincided, but this explicit post goes far beyond those hopes.

Very sincere thanks for the clear and polished articulation of the faction of the decent.

My salutes, Sir.

@jbgt90

Please read #98; in fact, go through the thread. This is why it is clear that I have to follow my own judgement; that post could be framed on my wall as my political and sociological credo. I hope you understand my standpoint now.

@anant_s
@AUSTERLITZ
@Levina
@MilSpec
@nair
@scorpionx

Sir,

Patel was elected as PM by the constitution of that time. Gandhi had no business to usurp the very system we fought hard to set up.
Know what we call people who do that?

Anyway, the attack is now getting personal.
All I say is that people who shout tolerance and FOE are the same people who abuse 'us' when we put forth our point of view.

The tag team debated me, instead of the points I raised. Sir, what's the point of education when one lacks basic tenets of debate or discourse? How is lack of civility in a debate acceptable? If we lack civility and respect for each other in debate, will there ever be a debate? And yet we wonder why we fight instead of debating!!
You are my elder and you should be setting an example debating the issues than the person.

It's not like religious fights are new in India, it's not like unemployment is new in India, it's not like we had no caste tensions. yet, the banal position of attributing the ills to one section and giving free pass to the people who were in power for 50+ years of the last 70 years is disgusting.

Anyone coming into the forums, reading our posts can make out who the fascist is and who is the one trying to debate.

This probably represents how a large section of us.

Good day to you sir.

 

[SQ8]

You have already labelled your ideological opponents as Langoors.
Sir, who is the demagogue here?

Point of my post is the lip service, which you very aptly have done here against the dynasty VS the vehement opposition to Hindu parties, which many times borders on insanity.

Even your own post paid lip service to the one family which ruled India for 50+ years, who frankly are responsible for 90% of all the ills of India but choose to call a 3 year old govt Langoors - Where is your balance sir?

That the liberals of India would hug the party that over rode SC decision to scrap Triple talaq 30 years back is a slap to your logic sir.

I don't deny the shortcomings of current disposition in power. What I take umbrage is the duplicity is dealing with kid gloves of one side that has largely ruled India for most time. the Passe they get is stunning.

And don't worry about my degree or the menial tasks I have been performing in the field of Human services for over a decade now. These are irrelevant and frankly below your dignity to engage in discussion.

You are resorting to strawman arguments which is exactly what you have been taught, along with skimming over key words as quickly as possible so that you may replicate the response to the "question" as quickly as possible - much as you would do so in an assessment in an institution that values quick recall & replication of data as much and as fast as possible- not your fault but surely your disadvantage.

So let me tell you what you missed in that post you were so eager to reply to as quickly as possible, in a format that will be more familiar to your senses attuned to skimming through bullet points before an examination.

1.I am not sure you fathom the definition of the term lip service - otherwise you would not used it in this context - far be it for me to even explain the term demagogue to you. If one does Lip service it is usually taken in a dishonest context regarding the targeted party - no one who actually read my post and has anything other than x->y interpretation of English grammar would see Lip service in it.

2. Strawman arguments that all hinge on the indoctrination you received : Congress is "gabbar" and a source for all evil, Modi & current Sanghis are opposing them in Ramgarh(India) - all typical & time tested political tactics to provide a desire for safety(from whatever fears that can be thrown at you) and a path to gain it via the most common persona & emotion that resonates with Indian middle & poor classes since its inception - the underdog role.

3. Why is this need for "justice", essentially this is another indoctrination technique that focuses once more on the insecurities created by a perception of one side responsible for all the injustice. I have no dog in this fight and no love for Congress or BJP - I personally hate dynasties so clearly you have no leg to stand on regarding a side. But what you have been taught is to immediately go back to the state of the aggrieved and the underdog story, the idea that your "safe zone" is finally possible due to these people.
Let me give it to you straight, this "safe zone" BS has been fed to EVERY undecided or ignorant voter since the earliest days of democracy - "We are the ones to speak for your right, the ignored, the wronged " etc etc?
Congress used it against the British, the Muslim league used it against the Congress and every Indian politician from the shores of Malabar to the smoggy streets of Dehli uses it. They know what your immediate fears are and will sell that ultimate solution elixir to you. You really think any of the Nehruvian Dynasty ever truly cared about your Grand Parents or Parents as an individual? They could not give a rats arse, and neither does Modi about you. However, the Nehru's(I do not really acknowledge them as Gandhis) knew that for their own prosperity as a family and for the land they felt attachment to, they needed drones to give them power to accomplish their goals and the same goes on today; you are political capital to be accrued that is then spent against opponents and state institutions to get things done the way a Leader wants.

It rings true with you because you like all plain non-thinking folk adhere so tightly to the hierarchy of Maslow's pyramid that ensuring the "safety" of your needs is priority one and logic takes a backseat to it. But because your "needs" and "safety" are now shown to you at the end of the rainbow by your leader, you are willing to defend his every diktat, repeat his very tangents at his predecessors, or gulp his every communal vileness in an effort to not let go of that rainbow.

So I'll repeat again, I could not care less for congress or mongrels or gopis and yogis as long as they are qualified, sane and mentally equipped to be worthy of the office; capable of seeing beyond their basic survival.
It is the same I wish for my country as well which has sadly not been the case since 1951.

@Joe Shearer , Suggest you tell your daughter to make as much money as possible and buy an Island - this is now my life goal as well. I have no interest to put my family in the path of the killing fields that exist now or to come; and come they shall- Call it eschatology, prophecy or delusion; mankind is entering another reactive time and it wont be pretty.

 

[SorryNotSorry]

The delight is entirely yours. You will not even begin to understand the legacy that you have lost, or, more accurately, spurned. And it is emphatically not the legacy of the Congress; it is the legacy of two generations of people who sought to build a polity of some moral substance and worth.

Oscar has already cut your argument into strips, and I shall not add to the havoc. Instead, let me address your points at the level of the drain in which you apparently find your greatest comfort of ambience.



Bracketing them as appropriated legacies and bracketing them as Congress members is pretty ignorant to start with.

Patel was a Gandhi loyalist to the end of his life, long after Gandhi's assassination. He was right wing in the sense that he had no difficulty in living within social conditions of his time, he was Hindu leading, he was authoritarian in some aspects, and took to force when he needed to, he was pragmatic and settled for conditions that could be created then and there, and gave up gazing deep into the future in favour of action here and now. He was no reactionary, in spite of Nehru's attacks on him from time to time. It was he who banned the RSS; it was he, acting independently again, exercising his judgement, who lifted the ban on the strict promise of the Sarsanghchalak to refrain from politics, a promise that the RSS promptly broke, soon after Patel's death, in exactly the same manner and using the same methods that we despise Hafez Saeed for using, putting up front organisations entirely staffed by members of the original organisation that did the work that they were themselves banned from doing.

He gave up his claims to leadership of the party, consequently, of the nation, due to Gandhi's firm belief that Nehru was a better leader. On the whole, Gandhi was right; Patel was a great administrator, but lacked the charisma and the ability to attract people's loyalty, the ability to act as the iconic leader that was needed for those early, turbulent years. For better or for worse, it was as well; the older man did not survive independence for long. Losing Nehru in 1964 was destabilising; losing him in 1950 would have been catastrophic. Given that after so many years in politics, the BJP still cannot produce a full team of capable and competent administrators, given that at that time, the Sangh Parivar still had its older, Neanderthal leaders, given that the Congress party had the hearts and minds of the people, given that the stabilising influence of the Supreme Court had not been felt to its present, stalwart extent, given that the loyalty and stability of the Indian Army had not yet been on display and found to be solid, we could not have afforded the risk of giving another party the reins of power.

Bose is another cup of tea altogether. If he had come to power through whatever means, it would have been a bad day for India. He had so much of the fascist in his make-up that for him to create an inclusive nation with space for dissent and for free speech would have failed utterly. He was hated within the Congress, and only the extreme minority of Bengali Hindus who feared being swamped by Bengali Muslims supported him. Please remember that at that time, there were formidable stalwarts within the Bengali Muslim community. Sher-e-Bangal Fazlul Haq towered over the others, but gradually others, especially Husseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, came up and surpassed him, thanks to the support and influence of the British administrators for anybody who came up to oppose the Krishak Praja Party.

After his rift with the Congress, did he join the other great right-wing Bengali Hindu leader, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee? He didn't; he struck out on his own independent line, that was, over the years, based as it was on the maxim that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', increasing close to the Fascists, to the Nazis and finally, to the Japanese Imperialists. This was the period when he was chummy with those who were lining up Indian POWs, blindfolding and placing them in lines and practising their sharp-shooting on helpless prisoners.

It is not that Congress claimed him and BJP co-opted him and that was a larcenous act. It was that he was a powerful, militaristic and fascistic influence on national politics, that his politics and philosophy were - mildly and modestly speaking - muddled beyond repair, and the Congress paid its homage to a great leader and turned away. It was flotsam that the BJP salvaged, not jetsam.



I think both Nehru and Indira Gandhi deserved the Bharat Ratna far more than this leader. You call them frauds; I say that you have got all your knowledge from the web and from your grandmother's tales, and do not deserve the right to comment on them.

1. Nobody, anywhere, has linked our independence movement to a single family. That is a figment of your ill-educated imagination.
2. NOT ONE road, building or scheme is named after one single family. EACH of these is named after a member of the family that contributed in ways that the Sangh Parivar will strive mightily to do for another century. I name them: Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Feroze Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. The last named was pushed into fame and glory due to his doting mother and elder brother, both of whom were guilty of promoting the memory of a beastly individual. That does not take away from the achievements of others of the family in the movement. Nor is there any shortage of memorials to other individuals who worked for independence. Your facts are distorted.
3. Only a totally illiterate goon like you could have made a statement such as '....completely erasing the others from our history....'. This is possible only because a breed of technically trained individuals has come into the world knowing nothing about the independence struggle, and have drawn their knowledge of modern Indian history from the web-sites of the Sangh Parivar, and after having been gullible enough to take those fairy tales as the truth. Our history books, those read by us who have actually studied history, and not just glanced through pages of lying propaganda, are full of those who together formed the leadership, the middle levels and the front ranks of the independence movement. It is to cover their guilty compliance with the British and their singular detachment from the independence movement. It is to cover their open treachery that the RSS goes through these paroxysms of hero worship. Only it's too late now.

Sounds very fair. The BJP is making a naked attempt to create a back-story for itself, claiming that Patel reflected all their own thoughts, that he was, in effect, a member of the Sangh Parivar even before the Sangh Parivar was fully formed. Therefore, a crypto-BJP leader, undiscovered because the BJP itself was formed decades later, but in heart and soul nevertheless a tall-standing eminent member of the Sangh Parivar, dedicated even at that early stage to the downfall of the ruling family.



Because it is completely fictitious. For a smart-alec who crows from the rooftops his devotion to fact, this is a disastrous and all-too-revealing slip. What you have described occurred only within the pages of propagandising web-sites.



They are neither complicit nor silent; they lived through these events, some of them, they were familiar with the protagonists, others among them, and they took the trouble to determine the facts, as far as the balance were concerned. It is the illiterates and party-line imbibing Sanghis like you who are beneath contempt.

There are members of this forum who can tell you chapter and verse about the man from whom Indira Nehru took her married name, and there are literally thousands who can inform you that between a Gujarati speaking Kutchhi bania and a Gujarati speaking Parsi, there was nothing in common beyond a name shared. Just like my service with, first, Rusi Mody and Minoo Mody. Or were they also members of the Sangh Parivar because they shared your great leader's name?



I do not know whom you define as liberal intellectuals, and do not particularly care. You have descended so far into the gutter that your opinion has no value to any decent person. But as for silence, there is no point in responding to the braying of an ***; it is not a communication that requires a response. Most of what you have related comes from the lowest layer of Sanghi smear campaigns, that have been contradicted by the knowledgeable time and again, but that corrupts the virgin intellects of most of the young people who have received technical training, can speak English and write it, and therefore mistakenly think that they are educated. What answer is needed to a statement that the Moon is made of green cheese? Where would one start?



As has been pointed out, there is no need, no justification for replying to nonsense. First read up on your subject, not on the web, but in properly written texts.



It is sad to read these pompous and ill-founded vapourings.



Is it not a curious coincidence that all those who are now termed frauds are those who have pointed to murderous riots in which that someone in power was complicit, to corruption of the police force to serve the partisan interests of one party, to the misuse of the police to run an extortion racket that milked money from businessmen in the name of protection from non-existent Pakistani terrorists or Indian extremists, that sought to cover its actions by the cold-blooded extra-judicial execution of unarmed men and women, including women whose only crime was to be in the company of their husband who had been selected for execution?



Oh you poor dears, pining for your voice through - how many general elections? - decades and decades of deprivation of the rightful power that should have been yours, ignored and set aside, like the famous economist currently head of the ersatz Planning Commission who could not get a PhD thesis to pursue, or like the civil servant who became Finance Minister, and now thinks that the country stares sure economic ruin in the face, or like the renowned newspaper editor and author of many Islamophobic pieces of trash, who now thinks, like his former colleague, that the present dispensation is nothing but the Congress plus a cow.

When was it that you found that these were great leaders of our independence? And when did you discover that the Gandhi called the Mahatma was not related to the Gandhis of our times?



@Oscar

I write this in tribute. Your post could serve as my intellectual vade mecum; I had hoped in the past that our views largely coincided, but this explicit post goes far beyond those hopes.

Very sincere thanks for the clear and polished articulation of the faction of the decent.

My salutes, Sir.

@jbgt90

Please read #98; in fact, go through the thread. This is why it is clear that I have to follow my own judgement; that post could be framed on my wall as my political and sociological credo. I hope you understand my standpoint now.

@anant_s
@AUSTERLITZ
@Levina
@MilSpec
@nair
@scorpionx

If I had the positive/ negative rating ability I would have rated this post both.
Positive for it's matter, and negative for the lowly insults you splashed around.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Sir,

Patel was elected as PM by the constitution of that time. Gandhi had no business to usurp the ver
y system we fought hard to set up.
Know what we call people who do that?

Anyway, the attack is now getting personal.
All I say is that people who shout tolerance and FOE are the same people who abuse 'us' when we put forth our point of view.

Anyone coming into the forums, reading our posts can make out who the fascist is and who is the one trying to debate.

Good day to you sir.

When you have completed reading up to the level of an undergraduate in the liberal arts, do feel free to unleash these polemics. Until then, please refrain from personal attacks on those who are dead and gone, and on comment on matters that you neither know nor can get to know. If Patel chose to follow the lead of one he revered, how does your thought come into the picture? And how does it matter what you, in your infinite wisdom, choose to call one of the major influences in the independence movement?

Your point of view, speaking in a generic sense, insofar as it abuses our existing constitution, as it devalues one set of citizens for belonging to a particular religion, another set for not having been born into the right caste, a third for their presumption in claiming for themselves equal rights as the superior gender, is not a point of view that is legitimate. Whatever you wish to speak about that does not seek to replace our constitution with a naked display of mass power dependent purely on the voting power of the majority (social at places, religious in other places) is fair; your personal attacks on those gone is not something that is exempted from prosecution under the freedom of expression defence.

I am bluntly calling you a fascist and a supporter of fascists; do you have the straightforward honesty to express your views, rather than doing a Uriah Heep on us? And putting out false facts and expecting a discussion that first wades through the authenticity of these and then addresses the substantive issues raised is not a debate; it reduces to a commission of enquiry. I am not paid to educate net-kiddies; I teach as a profession.

If I had the positive/ negative rating ability I would have rated this post both.
Positive for it's matter, and negative for the lowly insults you splashed around.

Point out the 'lowly insults' and I will eliminate them, if you have been fair. Immediately. And I will expect you to acknowledge that action.

 

[pothead]

You are resorting to strawman arguments which is exactly what you have been taught, along with skimming over key words as quickly as possible so that you may replicate the response to the "question" as quickly as possible - much as you would do so in an assessment in an institution that values quick recall & replication of data as much and as fast as possible- not your fault but surely your disadvantage.

So let me tell you what you missed in that post you were so eager to reply to as quickly as possible, in a format that will be more familiar to your senses attuned to skimming through bullet points before an examination.

1.I am not sure you fathom the definition of the term lip service - otherwise you would not used it in this context - far be it for me to even explain the term demagogue to you. If one does Lip service it is usually taken in a dishonest context regarding the targeted party - no one who actually read my post and has anything other than x->y interpretation of English grammar would see Lip service in it.

2. Strawman arguments that all hinge on the indoctrination you received : Congress is "gabbar" and a source for all evil, Modi & current Sanghis are opposing them in Ramgarh(India) - all typical & time tested political tactics to provide a desire for safety(from whatever fears that can be thrown at you) and a path to gain it via the most common persona & emotion that resonates with Indian middle & poor classes since its inception - the underdog role.

3. Why is this need for "justice", essentially this is another indoctrination technique that focuses once more on the insecurities created by a perception of one side responsible for all the injustice. I have no dog in this fight and no love for Congress or BJP - I personally hate dynasties so clearly you have no leg to stand on regarding a side. But what you have been taught is to immediately go back to the state of the aggrieved and the underdog story, the idea that your "safe zone" is finally possible due to these people.
Let me give it to you straight, this "safe zone" BS has been fed to EVERY undecided or ignorant voter since the earliest days of democracy - "We are the ones to speak for your right, the ignored, the wronged " etc etc?
Congress used it against the British, the Muslim league used it against the Congress and every Indian politician from the shores of Malabar to the smoggy streets of Dehli uses it. They know what your immediate fears are and will sell that ultimate solution elixir to you. You really think any of the Nehruvian Dynasty ever truly cared about your Grand Parents or Parents as an individual? They could not give a rats arse, and neither does Modi about you. However, the Nehru's(I do not really acknowledge them as Gandhis) knew that for their own prosperity as a family and for the land they felt attachment to, they needed drones to give them power to accomplish their goals and the same goes on today; you are political capital to be accrued that is then spent against opponents and state institutions to get things done the way a Leader wants.

It rings true with you because you like all plain non-thinking folk adhere so tightly to the hierarchy of Maslow's pyramid that ensuring the "safety" of your needs is priority one and logic takes a backseat to it. But because your "needs" and "safety" are now shown to you at the end of the rainbow by your leader, you are willing to defend his every diktat, repeat his very tangents at his predecessors, or gulp his every communal vileness in an effort to not let go of that rainbow.

So I'll repeat again, I could not care less for congress or mongrels or gopis and yogis as long as they are qualified, sane and mentally equipped to be worthy of the office; capable of seeing beyond their basic survival.
It is the same I wish for my country as well which has sadly not been the case since 1951.

@Joe Shearer , Suggest you tell your daughter to make as much money as possible and buy an Island - this is now my life goal as well. I have no interest to put my family in the path of the killing fields that exist now or to come; and come they shall- Call it eschatology, prophecy or delusion; mankind is entering another reactive time and it wont be pretty.

Sir, I don't skim anything.
I have been reading literature of any kind since I could read.
I loved hardy boys at one point, in high school was inspired enough by Douglas Bader's autobiography to make a go joining armed forces.
At uni, it was mostly biographies of politicians who later on I realized as pompous clowns trumpeting themselves. Now, I just read fiction. Loved Steven Erikson. Should try him, he makes some neat observations about civilization from anthropological POV.

First, thx for making an effort to address my post. Sincerely appreciate it since the last personal attack on me kind of shook me.

1. the lip service was not targeted at you. It was more towards the intellectuals of India. in the context of debate, I should have been more clearer in terms of who the players I am addressing are.

2. Agreed. I am sure if BJP finds a better way for electoral success, they might take it and that probably is what Congress would do if they find political oblivion. BJP serves my interests at the moment. It's not always about religion or caste. It is also about other things. For example, Vande maatharam was an important part of our freedom movement. It holds high degree of sentimental value to a lot of Indians. When there is only party defending the song and rest of the parties are not, there is little choice. Is BJP supporting Vande maathram for genuine needs or for political gains is moot, since they are the only national party supporting it. Few more similar examples can be made.

3. Completely agree with you. That's why I find it strange that Indian intellectuals have the bat for only one party. My question is NOT about BJP or Congress. Like I mentioned, both have their negatives and positives. BUT an intellectual or a rationalist is one who is supposed to raise above the party and be partisan. the lack of partisanship is what I am questioning. Again, the question is not pointed at you or Joe. It's pointed at the self proclaimed intellectuals and rationalists of India.

Is BJP communal? Yes, of course it is. It supports Hindus openly. Point is, all political parties of India are communal. Can anyone show me one party in India which is NOT communal? This debate in India that one party is communal and others are secular is big bogus. ALL parties are communal and all parties are casteist.
Again, my question is to the intellectuals who KNOW this fact and pretend otherwise.