Obama in India! (updated)
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
This entry was posted on January 27, 2015 at 3:46 AM and is filed under Refugee. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
SATYAMSHOT
January 25, 2015 at 2:50 PM
Obama has been unlucky with the Taj Mahal. The last time around they couldn’t get the security done. This time the Saudi king did not cooperate!
LikeLike
January 25, 2015 at 8:01 PM
Was this necessary…after all she doesn’t wear Saris!!
“For First Lady Michella Obama, the weavers from Kashi have woven over 100 Benarasi sarees. Each of them is likely to cost anything between Rs 50,0000 to a few lakhs. “
LikeLike
January 25, 2015 at 8:08 PM
She was gifted only one Kadhua benarasi saree costing around 1.25 lakhs. I wish she was given one Kanjeevaram too.
LikeLike
January 25, 2015 at 8:13 PM
Sometimes I hate the hypocrisy behind all this. US denied Visa for so many years and now Obama is behaving as if nothing of that sort happened. Of course national interests do matter.
Kejriwal complaining that he was not invited. Last time he wanted to hold demonstrations during Republic Day.
I am feeling like Alice in wonderland.
LikeLike
January 25, 2015 at 9:24 PM
Saw video clipping of dinner and Manmohan Singh’s wife greeted Sonia Gandhi and there was no reaction or return greeting.
LikeLike
January 25, 2015 at 9:34 PM
didn’t see this but saw her at the dinner otherwise and yeah she was sitting there stone-faced.
LikeLike
January 25, 2015 at 8:22 PM
USA will never distance Pakistan in favour of India as it is strategically important for it just like India.
Once he returns, the true picture will emerge.
Next time the President of USA will be a different man or woman. I wish it is a woman.
LikeLike
January 26, 2015 at 3:22 AM
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/524881/chemistry-between-modi-obama-steals-show-on-day-1-of-us-presidents-visit-to-india.html
LikeLike
January 26, 2015 at 3:30 AM
The parade was the visual centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s three-day trip, a colorful mélange of modern-day military hardware, soldiers in traditional turbans and costumes riding camels, and a series of floats from myriad states capturing different aspects of India’s rich and complicated cultures. The invitation to Mr. Obama to attend in the position of honor was an important diplomatic gesture.
LikeLike
January 26, 2015 at 6:25 PM
I concur with your observation. Watching all of the festivities was very impressive let alone the ‘political’ tugs and jabs. Also felt Ms.O mightve dressed alittle more to the occassion. Nice dress but rather casual for the affair. All the details for the decorating was very painstaking it was well done. And the parade was the best. Not a huge fan of OB1 and wondering what we will have next. Hillary has her laterns lit I am sure. Its just a matter who the competition chooses and all the saber rattling.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 1:15 AM
http://www.ndtv.com/article/opinion/10-questions-modi-and-obama-should-have-been-asked-654166?pfrom=home-topstories
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 6:29 AM
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 6:31 AM
The states that do not have a BJP government, like W Bengal, Orissa, etc, were not allowed to take part in the parade.
This party led by a megalomaniac wearing a suit with his name woven in behave like they own India, and have inherited it as their property.
But I’m happy that all his huggings and holding hands and showing off his wardrobe to impress finally fell flat – after listening to Obama’s speech and finding out that the investment is much lower than what Modi via SBI gave away to Adani for mining.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 6:35 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/26/prime-minister-modi-wore-a-suit-that-takes-personalization-to-a-ridiculous-extreme/
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:08 AM
“And no, PM Modi wasn’t suddenly inspired by white tourists in kaftans which have ‘hare krishna hare ram’ or ‘om namah shivaya’ scribbled all over them. In fact, he just gave the world a glimpse of what ‘Make in India’ is all about. So a suit customized in India would have that extra personal touch, will be theft resistant and will never be mixed up with others’ clothes at the laundry – it will have your full name scribbled over to resemble stripes, if you blindly follow Modi.”
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:12 AM
I never doubted his megalomania. Indira was one as well. Just that she ruled for her clan, and he rules for his country. Bit subtle diff, thats all.
How else can a person from such humble origins climb to this summit. Do you think Obama is any less megalomanical? These guys have come from rock bottoms and shaken the established orders within their own countries. This could not have been achieved by both of them without absolute, un-waverable self-belief, and a dash of megalomania.
As for the pin-stripes, Obama has Michelle to give him better guidance. Poor Modi has the master tailorr at Jade Blue (Ahmedabad), who perhaps thought his tailoring skills would get a nice advertisement. And really, he did nothing much diff than what scores of our desis have done in the western limelight, ie they go totally overboard. Did u miss Amitabh at Cannes during the Gatsby promotions? It is a uniquely desi trait. So while the old wealthy Ratan Tata came dressed in traditional navy suit for the Rashtrapati Bhavan dinner, we got to see Anil Ambani in a velvet party suit! And many such “vibrant” colors donned by other businessmen to that even. Modi just followed the typical Indian trait, he just went a bit further without the advice of a fashionista wifey.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:25 AM
Better to name your suit to yourself than to name parks, stadiums, schools, universities, roads that Nehru-Gandhi family has done. To me THAT is meglomania. Not a fashion faux-pas!!!!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:27 AM
Dude, it takes guts to wear your name!
The Greek scholars had established the important correlation between leadership and power dressing. Dressing for the part, to command respect, to express empathy and solidarity with a cause, people or idea, are virtues of a true leader.
http://www.rediff.com/news/column/obama-india-dude-it-takes-guts-to-wear-your-name/20150127.htm
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:30 AM
The MSM has nothing that they can pick on. So they said the gajjar kaa halva served at the dinner table represented hindutava-vad. Now his clothes. I feel sorry for them. They could have done lot of service to the country by having same ‘high’ standards during Sonia’s rule.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:02 AM
Not sure if I would use the word ‘megalomania’ either way. If one uses it for a political leader one has to establish that there is a level of megalomania in that leader well beyond that of the average political leader. And I don’t think one could do this for either Obama or Modi. And yes I’d also agree that Modi’s is an extraordinary story in every sense. Here I think that one sometimes makes the mistake (I’ve seen it in very many contexts) of dismissing the political gifts of a political leader or whatever else might be singular about him or her because one does not share their ideology. But these are two very different things.
However I’d also add here that the whole ‘clan’ argument runs a bit hollow when applied completely selectively to the Gandhis or in the case of cinema to Abhishek Bachchan! It’s not an honest debate when one chooses just a couple of examples. For several reasons and some of which I shall repeat here:
1)If it’s a democracy and if people like ‘clans’ who are we to question this? Didn’t the voters know this when they voted for these people? Forget India, even in the US clans are so common at every level of government. A battle between Hillary and Jeb Bush (if he makes it) might be an ultimate battle of clans! But even at the Congressional level clans are a dime a dozen.
2)It’s also not honest to dismiss every Congress government of the past (irrespective of one’s political ideology) if one is going to use the same ‘democracy’ arguments for the current government. They were elected but so were those other governments. Whatever the economic of political decisions of those governments might have been clearly enough people supported them at the time. One can argue against them but not if one is otherwise invoking the democracy argument with the present govt. There’s something very shifty here. To inoculate the present govt against criticism of any sort including the ideological kind one says ‘hey the people voted for them’! But when one looks at the governments of the past one uses no such criterion and one gets to the ‘ideology’ itself. Right down to the absurdity of questioning some very titanic leaders.
3)India is soaked in the logic of ‘clans’. At every level of life from politics to the corporate world to cinema. Bollywood is such an extreme example of this where if you don’t belong to a clan you need not even apply! And we see the audience rewarding this structure before all else. Promising films with newcomers get almost no openings at all. Meanwhile every other star kid gets one in a half-decent project. Then there is the whole question of being ‘deserving’ introduced into the debate. This is another absurdity. In Deewar Shashi Kapoor is interviewing somewhere and he doesn’t get the job. Someone has put in a good word for another candidate, the manager there sheepishly says it’s his brother-in-law and that he’s ‘deserving’ of the job. What’s the problem here? You can start making meritocratic arguments after the ultimate nepotistic ones have been used to clear out the playing field! It’s irrelevant whether those who get in through nepotism are ‘deserving’ or not. The sin lies in the nepotism. That first step is what’s problematic. But we never any issues here. Rahul Gandhi can be attacked for being mediocre or whatever but belonging to that clan is the least of his problems. Or to rephrase it it’s a problem in the sense that in contemporary India a certain clan symbolism is considered problematic by many. But only in a very conveniently hypocritical way. So once you dismiss Rahul Gandhi you can celebrate how Sachin Pilot or whoever are much more ‘deserving’ as Congress leaders. But even leaving aside politics or cinema or the corporate world it happens everywhere else and in our own lives. We use influence, which includes the name of the family and our connections with friends and so forth, everywhere we can. What are we complaining about?
So again ideological arguments can always be had. But one should invent convenient ad hoc arguments that are blatantly dishonest. And I’d also reiterate the older point. One’s political gifts are a very different cup of tea from one’s ideology. But this cuts both ways. It is not a a ‘positive’ without qualification. So yes Obama has great political gifts but so did Hitler! It all depends on what one does with those gifts.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:24 AM
“However I’d also add here that the whole ‘clan’ argument runs a bit hollow when applied completely selectively to the Gandhis or in the case of cinema to Abhishek Bachchan”
‘satyam’ you should watch a recent exchange bet. Sonum and Rajkumar Rao, on Film Companion. I think Rao is hinting at Abhishek. I could be wrong.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:15 AM
“The lower castes, the chaiwala, is not expected to flaunt any any such personalization. He is not supposed to make any fashion statement, because look, he is an uncouth unshaven heathen who can’t speak English the way we do.”
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 7:45 AM
Re.-finally fell flat
this is what Aaptaards want, India to fail so that they can say Modi failed…..
One word for such people- Burrrn(OL) lagao thoda !!!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 4:33 PM
No. I want Modi to fail. He will.
Obama isn’t stupid. He seems to have done his homework about the riots instigated by Gunda Amit Shah, the ghar wapasi, the love jihad, the attacks on churches in Delhi etc
He even wasn’t fooled by all that display of women power in the parade. He must know about the state of less privileged women and the attempts of sadhavis and Sakshis turning them into child bearing machines when he talked of a country developing only when its women are treated well.
One AAPtard has him in jitters. Don’t forget his flop rally in Delhi a couple of weeks ago and now, at least Kiran Bedi is using Obama’s name in her speeches to ask for votes. LOL!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 4:36 PM
And here’s a poster with Obama’s face. LOL!!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 4:45 PM
As for wanting India to fail was Modi also wanting India to fail? Because he has signed what he was objecting to for years even as CM of GUjarat. What is this underhand behaviour?
Just as he got Mangalyan attributed to his vikasness he wants this to be taken as his achievement. Such cheating of people is going on with his total PR involvement.
$42billion was talked of but it turned out to be $4billion only.
Obama was such a contrast in personality and body language. What was that with Barrack Barrack by Modi, while Obama continued addressing him Mr PM, except once when he called him Modi?
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 5:16 PM
The ‘wanting India to fail’ argument is not a fair one anyway. All politicians (not just in India) are more than willing to have their countries suffer as they further their political ends. The people opposing Obama in the US aren’t exactly worried what this does to the US. Similarly the supporters in any camp also don’t mind very much about the national interest when their favorite parties aren’t in power.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 5:36 PM
sure and Obama supporters always said that Republicans would rather have the Nation fail just so Obama fails…
don’t understand how it is NOT a fair argument.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 5:50 PM
It’s not a fair argument if it’s introduced selectively. So I support the Dems but I don’t say they always act in the national interest. Republicans, specially the current crop are much worse, even so I wouldn’t say that every time the Dems do something they’re only doing it for the national interest. Sabotaging the other party even if it comes at the cost of damaging the country, damaging people’s lives, is one of the most common things in any democratic system. Luckily I’ve never been naive enough to believe otherwise. So the point again is.. when all of this is universally true why say that those who oppose Modi want the nation to fail or are willing to live with this when precisely Modi himself was also doing the very same when he was not in power, let alone others in the BJP. But complaining when say the Congress does it makes it sound as if the other side doesn’t do it at all. But if everyone does it we can take this complaint off the table! This is again like the dynastic argument I made earlier today. You can’t start seeing dynasty only with Rahul Gandhi. Similarly if you respect democracy also respect the will of the people when they vote for dynasts. Don’t just say ‘they elected Modi and we can’t question them’! Because you were willing to question ‘Italian Sonia’ for years when the same electorate voted to keep her in power. So again with all of this my only point is, let’s have some consistency.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 5:41 PM
Modi Govt. is 9 months old…. “Vikas” is expected anytime now !! LOL
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 5:40 PM
I can paste 10000 links to counter this Aaptard propaganda .
The biggest Gundas are Keju, Asootosh and Khaitaaan, they have kicked out the guy who founded the party and donated over 2 crores to the party.
Anyways not interested to debate with a anti Hindu person who with a lot of glee had said that he/she will be glad when Hindus are thrown out of USA.
Lage raho….
Meanwhile Modi- Amit Shah are marching forward with sabka saath, sabka vikas…..
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 11:44 AM
“What was that with Barrack Barrack by Modi, while Obama continued addressing him Mr PM, except once when he called him Modi?”
My Mom, who is currently visiting India, brought up the same thing when I talked to her this morning. She thought it was rather rude and disrespectful the way Modi (and apparently everyone else, like newscasters) referred to President Obama as “Barack”!
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 11:54 AM
Saying ‘Barack’ is just a way of announcing one is a friend. Someone like David Cameron does it all the time. He’s not the only one. What is true however is that normally the gesture is reciprocated. Or if it is one-sided it’s usually the US president doing it while the other side remains more ‘respectful’. Here it’s clear that Obama decided not to reciprocate. Of course he’s created more of a ruckus with his speech in certain political quarters by focusing on religious harmony and tolerance in one segment but also making the reference explicit by referring to Article 25!
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 11:59 AM
MODI is not your typical ‘convent-educated’, aristocracy-ridden arsehole like Mani Shankar Aiyar who would know all the nitty-gritties of the stiff upper-lip behavior..So when he mentions Barack, it should not be equated with what the red-necks in the US meant when they SPELLED out his name as Barack HUSSEIN Obama.
If the American media didn’t find any problems with Modi calling Barack Barack & Modi finally ‘consuming’ the saffronized Gajar Ka Halwa, we should let it be. Since the great libtard media in India is sharper than their counter-parts elsewhere, of course we would be expecting such wonderful analysis on topical subjects.
But yes, even if official folks on Modi’s entourage started calling him by first name, then it is not pardonable. They should know how to handle such official things..
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 1:22 PM
Did you listen to “Mann ki Baat”. I did for first bit. Modiji clearly referrs to meaning of Barrack. Also Modiji is much older and therefore it wouldn’t be appropriate for Barrack to call Modiji Narendra (while mispronouncing it royally). Modiji has a way of charming people, the true “athithi devo bhav”. There is also fine line between friendship and being cheap suck. Modiji is certainly not latter. His dress, his conduct more than shows that. This is the very reason, every Indian loves him (hindu-muslim alike). Because for once we can hold our head as Indians high. Unlike Madamji days when not a single dignitary came or was treated to anything!! Modiji ki Jai ho. We want more chaiwalas for sure, if the choice is between chaiwala and Italian-stupidity.
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 3:15 PM
I am about as big a critic of Modi as anybody, but I don’t think any offence was meant, nor any taken. The Indian media needs to loosen up!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 9:01 AM
POTUS and PM Narendra Modi Cite Shah Rukh Khan Line, am Honoured, He Says
All India | Edited by Deepshikha Ghosh | Updated: January 27, 2015 15:59 IST
NEW DELHI: US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi today borrowed a famous one-liner from Shah Rukh Khan film “Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge” that has attained cult status among millions in India.
President Obama first quoted the dialogue from the 1995 blockbuster while addressing 2,000 people at Delhi’s Siri Fort auditorium, where he talked about his previous visit in 2010 with wife Michelle Obama, and “dancing the Bhangra.”
“We were not able to schedule any dance on this visit. Senorita, bade bade deshon mein…you know what I mean,” the US president managed, grinning, as his audience cheered delightedly.
Shah Rukh Khan, who originally spoke those words, was also mentioned as President Obama stressed on the importance of religious freedom in India. “Every Indian should celebrate the success of Shah Rukh Khan, Mary Kom and Milkha Singh equally, not by colour of skin or worship,” he said.
Later, as the Obamas boarded Air Force One and left for Saudi Arabia this afternoon, PM Modi used the same dialogue in his goodbye tweets.
“Farewell @WhiteHouse! Your visit has taken India-USA ties to a new level & opened a new chapter. Wish you a safe journey,” he tweeted.
“As for the rainy day yesterday, as you yourself said @WhiteHouse today morning, Bade Bade Deshon Mein… :)” he said in another tweet, referring to the Republic Day parade that took place on Monday under a steady drizzle.
President Obama and Michelle Obama were seen holding umbrellas after they arrived to watch the parade at Rajpath.
Shah Rukh Khan responded to the American president’s comments in a tweet, “Proud 2 b part of the gender & religion equality speech of Pres. Obama. Sad he couldn’t do the Bhangra…next time Chaiyya Chaiyya for sure.”
The multiple references to the star and his film caused a minor storm on social media, especially among his fans, and #SRKprideofIndia soon became a trending topic.
“SRK Pride Of India !!!! Barack Obama Respects SRK,” tweeted Man Agarwal.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 9:49 AM
He takes some time to talk about religious harmony towards the end. Mentions SRK, Mary Kom and Milkha Singh in this context, about how such diversity must be celebrated. Speaks on this large topic of celebrating difference as well.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:13 AM
Sania Mirza, Amritraj brothers and our armed forces where the brave sikhs are everywhere. Obama was also hobnobbing with Hamid Ansari, our vice president.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:16 AM
How did Obama forgot our former sikh Prime Minister and our former Presidents beginning from Zakir Hussain to Abdul Kalam?
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:18 AM
forget
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:25 AM
He was just pointing out contemporary examples, especially ones highlighted by Bollywood. His speech writer learns about India through our movies.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:33 AM
” His speech writer learns about India through our movies.”
ROFLOL. I was thinking the same!! Old hindi movies. I met recently someone working at cash register at a store and she said she has watches this indian movie over and over again and loves the songs and the movie. I asked her which one? She couldn’t remember the name or couldn’t pronounce the name, so she immediately took out her smart phone, did a google search and showed me the movie. It was DDLJ! 😉
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:34 AM
The important message is, inspite of sporadic incidents, the talented do not get discriminated. India is too vibrant and too diversified and it will remain so. It will be difficult for ameicans to understand the complexity and simplicity of India.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:24 AM
Btw, what an inspiring speech. Classic Obama, and a lesson to every desi politician. Though, I did cringe at his praise of Pelosi..lol. Again, not sure what right wingers are upset about. He clearly mentions the rise of a chaiwallah, and the need for religious freedom. No one can argue those. Also, loved his personal admiration for Mahatma Gandhi, he seems to be very inspired by Gandhi. No lipservice here for sure, unlike pretty much every other Blanco politician from the West. Only the first Black President of the US can truely appreciate what Gandhi achieved.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:29 AM
In fairness I don’t think his references to religious pluralism were just the usual kind. They were certainly charged within that context. But this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. For all the great show the two have put on they belong to fundamentally different camps in terms of just about everything but especially their socio-political outlooks. Obama is assuredly close to the Nehruvian compact in these matters much as even economically he’d be far closer to a certain Scandinavian outlook (he’s even said certain things along these lines in the past.. of course these days and specially following the 2008 crash people seem to have acquired new respect for the Swedish model but that’s another matter). Still one can say that Modi and Obama could probably agree on the essentials of an economic partnerships but on other social issues they’re poles apart.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 1:41 PM
Just watched. Starts off as big brother, ends as a pastor. So-so. Not too impressed 😦
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:13 AM
http://www.rediff.com/news/column/obama-india-hamid-ansari-and-a-lament-for-patriotism/20150127.htm
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:51 AM
One can’t fault Obama here, because he is unaware of the definition of Secularism in India, according to which, Hindus are communal by default, while all minorities are secular by default, and anyone questioning secularism of Minorities gets branded Communal.
http://www.opindia.com/2015/01/obamas-anti-religious-discrimination-statement-becomes-anti-hindutva-sermon/
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:15 AM
Ha, the Right is up in arms about this! I’d seen some of this stuff before. Didn’t want to bring it up because it leads to unnecessary debates. I’ll just say this — the problem the Right has in India (much like the Right does in every other society) is with its own ‘majority’. There’s always a familiar structure in this narrative. The minorities together with the ‘liberal’ cross-sections of the majority undermining the nation! It’s one of the most stale formulas in the world. The Right in India is if anything a century late to this discourse. But leaving this aside there’s a serious slippage always practiced in these debates. The deliberate confusing of ‘Hindutva’ for ‘Hindu’. The two are completely different terms. What happens though (and again not only in Indian right-wing discourse) is that there is an attempt to make the former label stand in for the latter. Those who are ideological allies of this project see no distinction between the two labels, those who aren’t do. As long as you keep mixing up these terms you can keep using one or the other as and when the argument suits you. It’s the equivalent of calling anyone on the left a ‘commie’. I’d again reference Dev here. Om Puri is the Hindutva type, Bachchan simply isn’t. He’s a normative Hindu in the traditional mould. But even Modi understood (and this was part of his brilliance as a politician, if he were like many who appear online he wouldn’t have been PM!) this which is why he sold himself as a technocrat. In other words he understood that there were more Hindus like Bachchan in India than Om Puri (sticking to the Dev reference again). So even in his 31% vote share (or 38% adding the allies) and if you were then to reduce the number of Hindus who were in it for the technocratic message or who were in it for the economic nationalism message without subscribing at all to the regressive religiosity, communal message you’d get a considerably lower number than even 31%. This is how political coalitions are built, that’s fine but if one is going to insist that this is all about Hindutva one is quite frankly a fool. Narendra Modi though isn’t one! So contrary to the author’s view it is he who doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he wishes to have ‘Hindu’ mean the same as ‘Hindutva’. Again those who like the latter label refuse to allow for the greater set of the former. But that’s hardly Obama’s fault!
anyway I sense another long series of political tweets and links developing in this thread. I think we should all show some restraint. Yes this is a political thread but let’s keep it reasonable.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:19 AM
So basically the hindutva-vadi are practicing hindus whereas the ‘hindu’ according to you, the bachchan type in the movie Dev, are non-practicing hindus.
Anyhow, the west ‘educated’ types are jeolous that a lowly chaiwala, from ‘low’ caste is ruling them and popular on top of it!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:23 AM
The answer to this is obvious, I’ve given it before, could give it again but I’ve decided to stop responding to communalism-soaked functionally illiterate people like yourself. You’re lucky to even have the privilege to say something here. Which given your comments about me is perhaps more than I’d get if you had such a forum!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:05 AM
Some superb tweets by Geetika-
गीतिका @ggiittiikkaa
Pity that AAPistanis are RTing tweets of Pakistanis to ridicule their own Prime Minister. bewakufiyo’n ke jhonke, koi sarhad na inhe roke.
Khud ka naam tattoo karwa lo, toh kuch nahi…get your utensils engraved; buy monogrammed jewellery…no issues. Bas outrage karwa lo inse
Those advising to follow Obama’s “advice” about not splintering along the lines of religion, could extract only religion from his speech
What POTUS Obama reiterated today, is what PM Modi told earlier, remember, “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas”? But falls on deaf ears of Seculars
Only way to stop splintering on religion, is by introducing Uniform Civil Code and abolishing reservation on Religion lines…shall we?
And from the dias where Obama spoke of religious freedom, he proudly said he’s a Christian. Remember noise on “I’m a Hindu Nationalist”?
If one is only following MSM, s/he’d be convinced that Obama’s visit to India was only about: Modi Suit and Allow Religious Freedom.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:21 AM
But why doesn’t the BJP introduce that uniform civil code? They have the numbers in LOk Sabha. This was one of the articles of faith for them. As was 370. Which they ran away from in Kashmir. Forget this, Modi did not even say Vande mataram in his Srinagar speech, something that some otherwise pro-BJP folks noted at the time. Whatever one has blamed the Congress or Nehru for one can start changing. One has a majority. Alright the Rajya Sabha can still stall things but why not at least take that Lok Sabha vote?
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:28 AM
You responded!! just with so much hatred.
“I’ve decided to stop responding to communalism-soaked functionally illiterate people like yourself”
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:29 AM
Since I celebrate diversity (!) you are here as well.. but I won’t be responding to you in any other way..
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:30 AM
Haven’t read this but can get the gist
seems a relevant piece of work for quite a few subgroups of people (including some here)
The problem with those who have been ‘converted’ is that there’s this sense of a ‘buried past’, of originating from a ‘vaccum’
Leads to certain ‘tensions’, anxieties and some ‘paradoxes’..
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:34 AM
The past is always ‘invented’. The only question this is: how successful or strong is the ‘invention’? Much as all nations depend on nationalist fictions. But then it’s a question of how strong or weak that fiction is. Put differently there is no ‘natural’ nation in the world. Not one. They’re all artificial ones. The same goes for other questions of identity from religious to ethnic to linguistic and so on. Because such ‘commonality’ is always created by blanking out other kinds of difference, other histories, competing identities.
Naipaul should be handled with care though. Whether it’s this well-known book of his or his equally well-known ones on India (Area of Darkness, A Wounded Civilization, others) his writings have been controversial but they’re important nonetheless because they represent a certain kind of colonized view of things. One has to keep all of this in mind. No book or writer should be approached superficially for a collection of quotes. Nor should one do the ’15 min’ version of any writer. This too is dangerous. I personally have no taste for Naipaul in this kind of political non-fiction but I love some of the fiction. A House for Mr Biswas for example is extraordinary but also Naipaul quite often in his fiction is his own best response (to his non-fiction)!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 11:51 AM
“Satyam”–‘Truth’ shouldn’t be sacrificed at the altar of controversy avoidance
The ‘truth’ usually lies in the ‘past’–it’s good to ‘reflect on it…
Ps: Btw mine isn’t the ’15 min approach’ (though I make it sound so)
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 12:06 PM
You make it sound like 15 sec but let’s leave that aside..!
On the past it actually takes a great deal of courage to reflect on it and to unearth that which deconstructs all the fictions one is born into and that one with lives with..
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 12:04 PM
LOL, hilarious!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 2:09 PM
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 5:44 PM
I have to say that with the VP Ansari incident, I now kind of agree with the statement that the Muslims have to prove their Nationalism and the Hindus have to prove their secularism all the time.
Ansari sahib did not deserve this.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 5:57 PM
There is always a higher bar on a minority. This is what people don’t often understand. Even when there are politicians pandering to the minorities, even when there are institutional guarantees kept in place, all of these are still illustrative of that deeper problem. If one did not exist it wouldn’t have to be addressed. So for example there’s perennial debate on affirmative action in the US but if there wasn’t a problem why would one even need such a solution. So on and so forth. The problem is that these policies often create a degree of resentment on the other side. Blue collar white workers for instance who think blacks get the breaks they don’t. And I sympathize to a degree. It’s hard to explain to an ordinary person who’s never had anything to do with slavery or whatever why it is that he has to somehow lose opportunities to make up for the sins of the past or to redress certain structural imbalances in the system. But one has to risk this because without it you can never have the greater social cohesion that every democracy depends on. For instance in India if after having the worst kinds of caste politics for millennia if you suddenly get up one day and say that everyone is equal in the new Republic that won’t make everyone equal. One would still have to dismantle those coercive structures of the past, create those opportunities at every level. But again those who have not been so disadvantaged in a historical sense but who nonetheless struggle to make their lives and for their opportunities aren’t exactly impressed with this argument. It’s a very hard debate on either side.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 6:44 PM
Well in India poverty has nothing to do with religion or caste. It is every where. So in That sense you feel resentment that 50% of seats are not available for you and there is a talk of reservation in private sector. I have seen abject poverty in lower castes but have seen in upper castes as well. Within my college (some 15-20 years ago), general category needed to buy book (where most of the students were always short of money) and I saw many well off people but were in SC category getting books from library. The level of reservation in India has been very high after implementation of Mandal and politicians are not going to rescind as there would be backlash. Personally I am not against reservation but want only small amount like say 10-15% but tied with income. And there should be accountability. No one has asked politicians why it has not worked since independence when 3 generations have passed in every family. And the same politicians who support reservation balk if you want to talk about women reservation.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 6:50 PM
That’s true.. poverty is everywhere but still when it is tied to caste the problems multiply. Much as there are lots of poor white people in America but being poor and black is a different deal. Otherwise I don’t disagree with much of what you’re saying.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 7:17 PM
Put differently there are identity categories that transcend purely economic ones. For instance Eric Holder is one of the most influential people in the country. Yet he’s also someone who tells his son to behave in a certain way if the police stop him. Any number of influential blacks tell their kids the very same thing. Imagine what it must be for poor black kids. So while there are poor whites also for whom the economic challenges are the very same in the case of blacks there is this added layer of discrimination. In India similarly (and this is not to deny the massive strides taken over the last so many decades) the caste marker has been decisive for the most part. Now eventually there was a transfer of political power and so even when lower caste politicians are in power they start rewarding people from their own caste and vice versa. So there’s more competition today which has been the natural outgrowth of Indian democracy. But it’s still not a level playing field. One can’t reverse millennia of oppression so easily. And so while it is true that poverty is universal in India in one sense that doesn’t really contradict the point that one can be ‘poor + n’ where that ‘n’ then is a marker of one identity or the other. And I’m not even getting into the case of various tribals here who in many instances are doing worse than lower castes.
But then again economic categories are never neutral to begin with. Anywhere. They always conceal deeper histories, deeper identity conflicts and so on. You can go to most affluent American suburbs anywhere in America and find whites, hispanics, Indians, Japanese etc but not blacks. But you do raise the all-important question of women. Because this is often a much ignored category everywhere. for instance in 2008 my own hunch always was that the barrier for women was a bit higher than the one for blacks when it came to the presidency (i.e. in contemporary America). Even with Hillary Clinton you have a woman connected to the dynastic principle in some sense. She hasn’t exactly come out of nowhere.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 7:35 PM
Do we have some examples anywhere where Govt. efforts have made minority come to mainstream ?
The point is Govt. can do certain thing but it is the people who have to ultimately help themselves. Most of the success stories are always isolated and individual in nature.
How long do Govt. need to keep on doing things proactively?
Are Hispanics better or worse condition than blacks?
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 7:52 PM
Govt cannot solve every problem but without govt we wouldn’t get that far either or it would take forever. For example would we rather have civil rights laws or wait for people in the South to have a change of heart? The same goes for important legal decisions. If your child cannot go to the same school as someone else you might want govt to speed up the process! But I do agree that there is a trap here sometimes in that eventually a politics develops around these things that is based on just playing to the numbers and encouraging the stagnation beyond a point. In the Indian context at some point you have to stop jacking up the reservation numbers! And here a Derridean concept is very helpful. There are certain kinds of ‘infinite violence’ (slavery over the centuries, caste violence, etc) that cannot be addressed just by right policies because nothing can make up for those horrors. One has to move beyond them but at the same time one has to be sensitive to those who belong to those oppressed classes. At the same time I wouldn’t use the Hispanics analogy because they were never slaves. Again in that suburbs example I used you could say society has come a long way so that Indians and japanese and whites and whoever can live in the same places but there is a class commonality here. Those people very loosely belong to the same classes. Those who have access to a certain kind of education. With all this diversity you still don’t find blacks in these same suburbs. Because people like us or people from Japan didn’t come from the inner cities of those countries! We didn’t face centuries of slavery and what not. This is not even like the post-Holocaust Jewish generations because they were already a very educated set of people in their original environments. An enormous tragedy wiped them out and they came back and that’s extraordinary but they still had the tools for this. I do agree that this becomes a self-serving justification at some point. Ultimately one does have to move on. People stay mired in certain things and blame these histories. So this must certainly be considered. In the Indian context in many cases you have lower castes who were doing worse than certain kinds of economically depressed Muslims but who nonetheless did better than the latter over time. Again certain kinds of attitudes were also responsible for the latter not doing as well in those examples. So I do agree that it’s not just one thing.
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 6:09 PM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/meerut/UP-to-gift-couples-in-intercaste-marriages-Rs-50000/articleshow/46046914.cms
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 6:23 PM
This might create other problems. many men cynically marrying women of a different caste to get that money and then ill-treating them later. I understand the financial incentive and it’s certainly helpful in genuine cases but I fear some of these other consequences.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 6:51 PM
The fringe on both side (Hindu right, ultra secular) are very active on internet. They don’t lose any chance to show other side in bad view.
On Ansari, I don’t believe in symbolic gestures make you more/less patriotic. I can be saluting flag but doing all kind of corrupt things.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 7:23 PM
the problem is that when there aren’t real political debates in the ideological sense everything gets reduced to cultural politics. We see this in the West too. Even with such major global challenges, even with such important paradigm shifts economically and otherwise, politicians mostly say the same old things. The rest becomes about style and personality (greatly aided by our media age) and such cultural politics. Both right and left trade in this. And then it becomes about saluting flags and wearing pins on your jacket and calling people anti-national at the drop of a hat or suggesting they’re racists or whatever. But it’s not just about the politicians. It’s about the larger electorate as well. This kind of structure where you can engage in the same stale charges everyday or exchange them with those on the other side allows you to evade a certain responsibility. You never have to question yourself. It’s always about reacting to the other. In film terms if one star throws around fudged numbers and then if your own favorite does it and you’re questioned for it you can just point to the other star. In other words one doesn’t have a problem with fudged numbers, only when one star or the other does it. And we see this across the board. When you talk about quality films you are called snobbish and what not and then the moment your favorite star does a quality film (for a change!) you go to town with it. In all of these examples from politics to cinema the viewer or the voter refuses to make a choice. Constantly blaming the other is a way of avoiding responsibility.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 7:40 PM
The other day Sanjana was suggesting our younger generation has become more rabid; That is how I see India (and US as well). Is it because of older generation and things passed to younger generation or things around us (Internet, access to information..)? !
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 7:57 PM
I think it’s mostly the latter. Things get much more polarized with the online universe or the constant media battles elsewhere. We see this with Hindi movies. people always had their favorites and always argued against others but the kind of venom that you see expressed against other stars is new. because people occupy these forums all the time and it distorts their sense of reality. I know I’m probably not the best messenger for this message. Ha! Or on TV every cable news show is basically a shrill fight (on this score Ravish Kumar’s NDTV Hindi show is the best cable news show I’ve come across anywhere in the world.. he’s a model in so many ways and has justifiably won a number of awards.. unfortunately the example that is more common and gets the biggest ratings is the Arnab Goswami one). So whatever views are either way they become more and more exaggerated on each side. But there’s perhaps also something to the idea that even with much more exposure and so on we live in some ways in a more black and white world. Very little room for subtlety and depth anywhere. And this is true even where there is more political correctness. In fact the latter breeds its own fundamentalisms. There is one way or the other a much larger set of topics which are considered non-negotiable and where one has to take one kind of position. Anything else and people violently attack you. And again various media technologies encourage this.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:18 PM
http://www.hindustantimes.com/tabloid/the-real-story-behind-barack-obama-s-ddlj-quote/article1-1311025.aspx
Barack Obama, his speech writers and spin doctors have had some tough decisions to make these past few days. They watched films upon films from Bollywood and brainstormed whether ‘Barack Obama, naam to suna hi hoga’ sounded better than ‘Ek baar jo maine commitment kardi to main Pakistan ki bhi nahin sunta’.
They spent sleepless nights, googled the best punchlines in Hindi cinema and, unsatisfied with the answers, googled them again. They had a tough call to make after all. Narendra Modi threw the gauntlet at POTUS when at Madison Square Garden, with Hugh ‘Wolverine’ Jackman by his side; he said the most epic line of them all, “May the force be with you”.
Modi could have said, “Modi, Narendra Modi”, and sounded ineffective because he wasn’t wearing a tux. He could have said, “I am making you an offer, you can’t refuse,” and completely failed because he would not have sounded as if there’s a goat struck in his throat. Instead he chose a line that made the crowds go hysterical.
Obama was quite aware what he had signed up for when he accepted Modi’s invitation to visit India. The war of the punchlines and the rockstar treatment Modi got in the US was not far from his mind when he called Modi a ‘Bollywood star’ upon arriving in India.
Once upon a time, heads of state talked about policies and aid packages, strategies and state of nations. Now, they have to do all that and pepper it with pop references. So, Obama may tell us what binds the world’s largest and oldest democracies together, but he had to serve it with a dash of Shah Rukh and tie it all up with, maybe, some Aamir.
And, given his reputation as one of the world’s best orators, he needed to outdo Star Wars as well. So, if you saw Caucasian men and women in Delhi recently with red rimmed eyes who went around feverishly mumbling Bollywood dialogues, you now know who was pushing them.
Finally, the consensus was reached and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’s ‘Senorita, bade bade deshon mein…’ was decided. Just to add some je ne sais quoi, the President ended the dialogue with ‘you know what I mean’. We know sir, we exactly do.
Now that the pop reference was decided on, Obama must have worked hard on its delivery as well. That’s because even though he flubbed Swami Vivekananda’s name and Jai Hind during the address, he delivered the line with a practiced ease which will do Shah Rukh Khan proud.
A little bit of hamming and we could have been looking for an epithet – badshah, bhai, emperor… — that goes best with Obama.
But that’s a line of thought we better leave to the social media (Twitter is hard at work, see below for some suggestions), but as of now Obama has wowed India and the very active SRK fan network – in India and the US – is saying that this most decidedly makes the actor the biggest star in the globe.
But what about Modi vs Obama war of words? So, who is the best orator with most pop references ever? Oh, the jury is still out on that.
How Twitter reacted…
@GabbbarSingh: To repay Modi’s move to quote a Star Wars line, Barack Obama quotes a line from DDLJ – “Senorita, Bade bade shehro me…”
@priyal: He quoted DDLJ. Surely winning the next Filmfare Award for Lifetime Achievement #Obama
@chhabs: Seriously? #DDLJ? Who hell is advising @BarackObama? I didn’t vote for this guy twice so that he would become a #DDLJ fan!
@cyclopsee: Obama has just ensured that #DDLJ will run uninterrupted for another TWENTY years at the MarathaMandir.
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:19 PM
SRK kush hua!
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:29 PM
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/a-few-glitches-here-and-there-all-was-not-well-during-obama-s-india-visit/article1-1311270.aspx
Barack Obama’s trip to India was high on optics and symbolism and made headlines across the world, mainly for progress on the nuclear deal, but there are rumblings in the Indian establishment about a number of faux pas that threatened to mar it.
The banquet hosted by President Pranab Mukherjee for Obama — with 250 guests, the biggest-ever held at Rashtrapati Bhawan — had its share of glitches. Service was poor, and after the US leader finished his speech, glasses to raise a toast had to be rushed in as an afterthought, a cabinet minister told HT. Another dignitary at the event said that Obama was heard asking, “May I have a glass?”
Rashtrapati Bhawan officials were defensive, saying that they had received no complaints, but acknowledged: “There could have been delayed service in one or two tables as the Rashtrapati Bhawan has only one kitchen and pantry.”
LikeLike
January 27, 2015 at 10:42 PM
the ‘may I have a glass’ bit is on the video for that event.
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 11:55 AM
Some of the nice pictures are in a Pakistani paper:
http://www.dawn.com/news/1159573/obamas-visit-to-india-of-handshakes-and-hugs
LikeLike
January 28, 2015 at 1:29 PM
Michelle Obama navigates limits on women in Saudi Arabia
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/saudi-arabia-tuesday-jan-27-2015/article6829402.ece?homepage=true&utm_source=MostPopular&utm_medium=Homepage&utm_campaign=WidgetPromo
LikeLike
January 29, 2015 at 1:06 PM
LikeLike
January 31, 2015 at 8:06 PM
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/the-boy-the-obamas-wanted-to-meet-again/article6840605.ece?homepage=true&utm_source=MostPopular&utm_medium=Homepage&utm_campaign=WidgetPromo
The boy the Obamas wanted to meet again
LikeLike
February 5, 2015 at 12:34 PM
Obama Invokes India’s Example to Condemn Religious Intolerance
this after his reference to Article 25 in the Delhi speech..
but as always it’s a very interesting speech (he equates ‘faith’ with ‘doubt’).
LikeLike
February 5, 2015 at 12:42 PM
watch around the 1.07.45 mark here for a few mins, Indian reference comes up around the 1.10 mark:
LikeLike
February 5, 2015 at 2:47 PM
Abhijit Majumder @abhijitmajumder
For #Obama, no FDI in evangelism and conversions = religious intolerance. Gandhi would not have been shocked. He knew the West too well
Anuj Tandon @Anuj_Tandon
@abhijitmajumder Like Gandhi, Martin Luther King would have been devastated on state of racial intolerance in USA today
GhoseSpot @SandipGhose
#Obama’s has run out of subjects. Otherwise, immediately after returning from Saudi to talk of religious intolerance in India is a bit rich
If #Obama had a little more knowledge of modern Indian history – he’d know religious intolerance has reduced manifold since #Gandhi’s time
Seems after the US #StateDept clarification of his statement being “somewhat misconstrued”, #Obama was pulled up by the evangelists at home.
Wonder if anyone can beat Indian Media in the art of “selective quotation” twisted to suit their preferred POV. #Obama Quote
I wish some journo (@ndtv reporter there?) will ask #DalaiLama what he thinks of #Obama’s statement about “religious intolerance” in India.
Suhasini Haidar @suhasinih
Not sure if Obama noticed that HH DL lives in India because of its welcome and tolerance, not in the US
LikeLike
February 5, 2015 at 3:07 PM
Ha.. I’m having fun with this! Of course since Obama was being celebrated like god just a few days ago in Delhi it might be a bit late in the day to object! He waited till the end to get into Article 25 and here he is again with an Indian example! True, he mentioned other parts of the world too but the Indian example has truly needled the Right. Now it’s all about how he doesn’t know and what not. As I said I;m having fun!
LikeLike
February 5, 2015 at 9:04 PM
For one thing, there is religious freedom to talk about “our Lord” and “father” in this country and church in white house and openly. That religious freedom that we don’t have back there. Anyhow, it is easy to deflect by talking about crusade and past history of India where Hindus were persecuted but hard to talk about ISIS and face the music. POTUS is deflecting as usual.
LikeLike
February 5, 2015 at 9:07 PM
You haven’t seen the segment.. he mentions a number of examples.. talks about ISIL and their treatment of the yazidis and so on. Obama is far too articulate, far too careful, far too analytic to ever just do throwaway lines in these matters.
LikeLike
February 5, 2015 at 9:11 PM
There will be more fun in the coming days.
The god will fall further. He is trying to please too many lobbies.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 8:20 AM
“. Obama is far too articulate,”
Pata hai. Par he is not teaching or giving a lecture in a nobel acceptance speech. He needs to have PoA. In absence of it, big words are nice. He talk on Indian religious intolerance came after he met Sonia G. and Sonia must have told how Modi govt is giving hard time to conversions and they have dropped since Modi came to power.
Jokes apart: even though his speech is intellectual sounding, he is not logical. He quoted Dalai Lama and his greatness. So which country is Dalai Lama living for several decades? The couintry which is so “religiously intolerant”? Did USA or West give any protection to the jews when they were killed? Did India openly welcomed persecuted Jews THOUSANDS of years ago? And the zorastrians? And the Chinese during cultural revolutions? And the Tibetians? And the Hindus from Pakistan and Bangladesh? So WHO needs to learn from WHOM?
Obama’s speech was slap worthy for mentioning Mahatma Gandhi’s name in vain. As if by quoting Gandhi again and again, he is doing Ganga snan and absolving himself of all collective sins.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 12:51 AM
It is quite a hilarious situation that the so called ‘liberals’ are popping their champagne bottles open because the great Obama mentioned ‘India’s’ past [read – selective past] religious ‘intolerances’ in some speech somewhere on ‘US’ soil. [Note that – on the US soil – not when he and his sartorially-challenged wife visited SAUDI ARABIA to mourn the death of a ‘fascist’]. That the ‘liberals’ in India and the US are rejoicing such a ‘silly’, ‘hypocritical’ reference to India itself underlines the fact where such folks are coming from and how their machinery operates. So here’s a president that talks of intolerance in India and visits a place that is so much in consonance with America’s ‘freedoms’ and ‘pursuit of happyness’ & is a regime so considerate and kind that it lets a critic take rest for 2 weeks before flogging begins again so that he is ‘fit’ for getting flogged again [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/22/flogging-saudi-blogger-raif-badawi-postponed]: Or the fact that the President takes credit for raping the integrity of a country’s borders by unconstitutionally sending covert agents after ‘discovering’ that a terrorist – responsible for 10 years of misery for the United States—has been living right within 20 miles radius of a country’s top military garrison for more than 6 years, killing the terrorist, and then, pumping billions of dollars into the same country that harbored this terrorist and is responsible for ALL instability in the neighborhood!! This act really takes the cake embodying the carrot and carrot policy. Man, what a man of integrity this President and his administration is!!
The ‘liberals’ will of course come up with the invective that the entire Indian media and its consumers, the oft-cursed ‘middle-class’ [yes that horrific evil-personified middle-class that expects that the toilets in Indian Railways be cleaned so that one’s wife and kids don’t die of puke-overdose and that the trains run on time—because they are paying more than 30% of their hard-earned money to the ‘government’—and that they get their driver’s license without having to bribe the RTO louts: Of course, for this middle-class, SUCH things are more important than the lives of Muslims or Christians.] This has happened in Modi’s – oh sorry, Hitler’s – Germany before and this vulgarity will repeat in India, for SURE. After all, history is called history for a purpose. It is completely ‘unbiased’ and it repeats itself with a scientific accuracy that predicts ‘Hindu’ India is waiting in the wings to be the next Nazi Germany, or, worse, a Hindu Pakistan. What is it I hear? ‘Hindus’ standing in front of theaters in Gujarat supporting and demanding the release of Aamir Khan’s FANAA when the government decided to ban it because of Aamir’s dumb statements [when you jump into a dharna without even BOTHERING to study the history and the sides of an event – you are called dumb] against the Sardar Sarovar dam? Oh but these are not hopeful things! This is not actually the India that the boot-lickers of NYT’s editorial team, the likes of Pankaj Mishra and Arvind Adiga write about. Must be a lie for sure! So the fact that a movie that questions Hindu – the ‘majority’– religious practices and revels in underlining false equivalencies of a fraud God-man asking a man to take a trip to Himalayas to pray for the well-being of his wife with children being killed in cold-blood in schools for trying to read books mints record-breaking moolah is not really a sign of ‘tolerance’ or the thought-process of the ‘majority’ of a country.
Then the ‘liberals’ will ask – ‘Hey weren’t you the country that couldn’t even keep its pants on because the president of US was visiting? Now that he speaks negatively of you, you are up in arms against him?’ But what the supposed ‘liberals’ forget is the fact that India is a blind-worshipper of America. It will welcome Kim Kardashian, Sunny Leone, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and also a panda from DC’s zoo with the same fervor! It will welcome Joe Biden inspite of his 7-11 comment with the same shamelessness and euphoria that it welcomed Obama! It will welcome Obama inspite of what it witnessed during the 2012 debate: Of how he systematically kept naming India when it came to outsourcing and jobs being ‘stolen’ by Indians. What an irony! This man, the man who supposedly faced hardships because of his skin color, would keep harping on ‘key’ nomenclatures like ‘Indians’ when it came to Americans being laid off! Of course, the average immigration officer at the airport, the UPS Joe who is having a drink sitting beside an Indian at the bar, you know, that American who is so intelligent that he thinks Sikhs and Muslims are the same, would NEVER be the one to vent out his or her frustrations on the brown-skinned Indian ‘software’ guy! Would he be so ‘regressive’ that it would result in a Fergusson or a choke-gate? In 2014? Never!
Since DEV is often quoted here to drive home an ideology, let me also use the same film. There is a scene where Tejinder and Dev are having a drink and Dev retorts to Tejinder that his attitude and outlook would drive the minorities into the arms of extremists. It is tragically comic that in today’s times, the same statement could be reversed – that this constant badgering and equating the majority of a country, of its tolerance and intelligence-quotient with that of a Babu Bajrangi, would really drive them into the sword-brandishing brigade of majority extremists!
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 2:53 AM
Ha ha.. Dil ki bhadass nikaal li 🙂
Agree with last para. And I have said in past BJP didn’t rise in vacuum. But it is also true when people post Ansari picture in republic day drives Muslums in opposite direction. Sadly we are a divided lot like US, where we view everything with some filtering glass.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 3:17 AM
What a flow! I may not agree with An Jo but his language hits me like a ton of bricks or its standing right under Niagara Falls.
The liberals are also from the same middleclass which wants everything in some order. Which does not treat Obama like a god and neither that Panda from that American Zoo will get special treatment.
The liberals are not only exotic Shyam Benegal or Guha.
A very average person like me also think like them on many issues.
All said and done, I am an admirer of An Jo for his sheer skills of expression along with Satyam.
Carry on An Jo. It is sheer pleasure reading you.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 8:11 AM
Muah, Muah, Muah AJ. Kya baat hai. You hit the nail right on head and even silenced the ‘satyam’ or put him in coma.
On Obama: He is not a university professor to give out intellectual lecture. His job as POTUS is to that of a DOER and not giver of wise words of yoda. He doesn’t know what to do about this ISIL. I had a discussion with my british desi friend during london bombing. Who created Pakistan? Who is suffering now? What you sow, you reap. So too America will have to suffer out of its collective karma. Bhagvan will always have the last laugh.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 8:24 AM
On the writeup: every sentence was SO readable and interesting. This is mark of a true writer, that even the dumbest of reader should be able to follow the logic. Mahatma had that power in his writing which was simple and yet conveyed very complex ideas and values to person of common intellect. Sometimes high sounding lanaguage is khokhala, without any true idea.
AJ, I have always admired your writing.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 9:46 AM
Understanding Satyam means, understanding what he wants to say. Dumb people do not want to understand or because like frogs in the well, they do not want to come out of it.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 10:22 AM
yhea…satyam is like frog. He will not change his colors.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 8:53 AM
An Jo.. shouldn’t you be a little more upset with the govt that decided to lay out the red carpet of red carpets for Obama only to have these kinds of remarks directed at them by the end? If the Right is looking a little foolish at this point it’s not the fault of the liberals! Whether they’re jeering or not isn’t the point, it’s about all the things that were said by the PM, all the ways in which Obama was embraced (literally or otherwise), so on and so forth, which now makes it difficult to suddenly say that he’s hypocritical (I must say that I never realized before this that politicians could be hypocritical) or whatever. With respect to Saudi Arabia and everything else that you’ve pointed all this was already known wasn’t it? Even otherwise not sure what the outrage is all about. Being selective is also a gift that politicians have as do those who are fans of the same politicians!
Again even if I concede every single thing you’ve said your remarks would be better directed at the govt! Why was Modi throwing out a red carpet at all for any US leader come to think of it, when he was denied even a visa for so long? Pragmatic reasons? Sure! Well those very same apply to the US! In any case if Manmohan Singh had done all of this and had seen this sort of response you would have attacked him for doing so much for the US president.
On quoting Dev there is an incredible irony here. If Nihalani is doing anything in the film he’s launching a polemic against right-wing politics. His film more or less mirrors 2002, the references are too precise, the debates between the friends also makes it clear he’s opposing a normative Hindu religiosity to Hindutva. This is precisely what he was talking about. One might call him a liberal or whatever but there’s no room to fantasize about a reversal here (on Dev’s terms). No one is quoting Dev to advance an ideology. Nihalani is doing the job well enough on his own. It would require a particular kind of blindness to cite Dev of all films as example of something other than this!
But I get back to the central point. What’s your litany about? If I accept each one of your points are you saying he should never have been given this sort of welcome by Modi? On principled grounds?! well then you should be criticizing Modi! If not are you saying that these things, all these hypocrisies, only become issues once he starts criticizing the Indian govt? In which case your own position would be hypocritical because you would not be bothered by the hypocrisies, only the terms on which they came about!
I’d lastly add this bit about Fanaa. It’s unfortunate you’re trying to justify the ban. have you ever heard of a film being banned in the US because an actor took a political position? Whether the actor knows something about the matter or not is irrelevant The govt has no right to ban anything on these grounds. One cannot celebrate democracy at the very moment that one supports such authoritarianism.
Ultimately the problem is that whether one is a supporter of the Right or Left there is a certain kind of logic one should resist whereby there’s no version of any story where one’s side is ever to blame. It is always the other who is responsible in every case. I’ve said this before. Beyond a point we have to examine our own positions (devotions) in this sense. This doesn’t mean one cannot be a strong partisan of one position or the other but there should be some principles that underlie these and not the reverse. If I’m an Obama supporter this doesn’t mean that I either justify every single thing he does or I blame Republicans as being worse no matter how problematic some of his decisions might be. This becomes a game. Because then it means I don’t really have a principle except a sort of religious investment in Obama.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 9:13 AM
Now Obama criticised early Christianity for being brutal. And the republicans are taking offence!
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 3:20 PM
early Christianity being brutal? What about the modern one where they convert hundreds of thousands of hungrey ‘heathens’?!?!?! Conversion is also violence.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 6:38 PM
As has been the case increasingly and unfortunately on the blog, the most sensible comment is largely and conveniently met with the most silence. Thanks, Satyam.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 2:10 PM
AnJo , take a bow…..you the man !!
what a fantaboulas comment, ek jhatkey mein demolishes all the sickulars arguments. maza aa gaya !!
P.S.- Drinks on me, next time you are in Chicago !!
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 3:18 PM
ek do church news mein aaye nahi aur west upar-nachi ho gaya. Jab tak baat apney backyard mein nahi aati, yeh log ungli nahi uthathey. Maybe Israel should now come out against O’s dumb comments against India.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 5:05 AM
‘Hindus’ standing in front of theaters in Gujarat supporting and demanding the release of Aamir Khan’s FANAA when the government decided to ban it because of Aamir’s dumb statements [when you jump into a dharna without even BOTHERING to study the history and the sides of an event – you are called dumb] against the Sardar Sarovar dam?
An Jo, You are a very good observer and lucid writer but you seemed to have missed the bus by dragging Aamir unnecessarily in this issue. At the same time you have not done your homework properly as neither was Aamir dumb nor stupid as you make him out to be as there were 2 protests going on simultaneously, one was NBA and another was Bhopal Gas victims asking for justice and Aamir spent equal amount of time by talking to victims from both the protests. Second, Aamir did not say any thing against the dam but asked for the rehabilitation of those who got displaced in the process. And Sardar sarovar dam is not confined to Gujarat but covers M.P. and Rajasthan so to insinuate that Aamir went there with an ulterior motive against Modi is presumptuous and too imaginative. And check Aamir’s stance and several interviews after the umbrage took by BJP and its cadres, where he clearly says that he is not against the construction of dam but for the rehabilitation of displaced during the process and he was just reiterating what Supreme Court had already instructed to the state governments. I was certain that after massive vandalisation of theaters and hooliganism by BJP and its cadres, Aamir would bow down and back down from his stand, but he did not waver at all despite all this. And that was then when my respect for Aamir went several notches higher for him as a person. I hope you would be a tad careful before calling somebody stupid or dumb.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 12:22 PM
I have called him dumb – for his behavior at THAT particular moment in time. And being dumb means you are not manipulative or smart enough to have an ulterior motive! I have never said Aamir had an ulterior motive.
Aamir might have come back home and done lot of research after-wards. But he DID NOT sit on that dharna armed with a possession of knowledge and history regarding the subject. I have a fair-amount — not excellent by any means– of knowledge regarding what NBA is about and its ‘commitment’ to help deliver justice to lakhs of tribals that would have to be displaced from affected areas: Or to use alternative means of technology to solve the REAL problems of drought in Saurashtra, Kutch and other areas. There was a Grievance Redressal Authority set up to hear any grievances of the affected and displaced. Did he know about that? Had he studied that? Had he studied the previous petitions filed in the courts by the opposers of NBA? He hadn’t. He had very, very basic morning-tea-of-cuppa kind of knowledge about NBA at that time. And with that, he jumped onto the dharna – lending it unprecedented publicity with this status of film-star.
This is what irked the people of Gujarat – at least those who were emotionally and otherwise invested in the project. Without doing proper research, without listening or spending time with people from both sides, you jump onto one ill-equipped and through glamor, you provide it a kind of publicity that it would never even dream of otherwise! Not the fact by it-self that Aamir is supporting NBA..
And of course, the government did prove to be dumber by banning a movie that had ABSOLUTELY nothing to with the issue at hand except that it has an actor that decided more on impulses rather on some kind of research.
To contrast this, you can see the SAME Aamir Khan, discussing with a doctor who complained that the results and analyses about health-care mal-practice were wrong in SJ’s program Aamir countered him with the research his team had conducted and told him he would be glad to share the numbers and case-studies. [I had posted that video somewhere here]. Who wouldn’t be with Aamir Khan then?
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 4:07 PM
The problem with your stand is that you are making Aamir’s stand in the NBA issue as pro NBA, but he didn’t endorse NBA nor issue any comment against the construction of the dam, but simply said what he felt for the displaced people which was neither unfair nor wrong. Aamir also joined Anna Hazare during his fast at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi, i didn’t see any one from UPA taking offence for his participation. His comments were misconstrued as against Modi and against the increment in the height of the dam.
I do not think that he was unaware of repercussions following his stand in the issue, but it would become a national issue was beyond anybody’s imagination. Another fact that Fanaa was never officially banned in Gujarat but it was not screened due to fear and backlash from the BJP government and its cadres, who had vandalised some theaters showing RDB right after his stance in April 2006 and also warned theaters owners of dire consequences if they screened Fanaa. So it was not public which got outraged but ” BJP and ITS CADRES” as news channels were showing people watching Fanaa on pirated dvds on the same day of release in many parts of Gujarat and some even traveled to Mumbai to watch it in theater!! So to make it as if whole Gujarat became anti Aamir and anti Aamir movies is also another concoction to suit one’s own narrative.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 4:19 PM
http://www.rediff.com/movies/2006/may/25aamir1.htm
He said things about riots and followed it with seating with Medha Patkar. In democracy everyone is allowed to have an opinion but we are not thick skinned people; we take criticism n wrong way.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 4:58 PM
Aamir also spoke about imperialistic and hegemonic propensities of the British and Americans as well !! But he also went to Oscars 😉 .So what to infer from both these events that Aamir is anti Gora?? I think problem with Indians is that we tend to stereotype people based on their profession, so when people like Aamir, who are from movies or any other field, speak outside their profession, people treat them as if they have committed any crime, which is ludicrous. But ghettoisation has become a norm in India, so only Muslim are terrorists, BJP is anti muslim, Hindus are epitome of tolerance become dictum in aam aadmi’s lexicon.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 5:30 PM
MyselfAamir:
I think you are connecting dots that are not even there. So extending this act of Aamir to pre-conceived notions or ghettoisation of beliefs and opinions is far-fetched.
Aamir can have WHATEVER opinion he wants and can support whoever he wants. He can be an actor or a plumber or whoever. That’s not the question. To sit in a dharna with a group – with half-baked knowledge – when you KNOW that being a celebrity, this will lend high-octane publicity to one side of the cause while there are people with genuine explanations and research on the other sided is another thing. To expect that this would be just a half-day event where nobody would remember anything after the night would really be height of foolishness.
And as you yourself said, and Aamir admitted in later interviews, his sitting in the dharna was indeed impulsive. He ‘felt’ for the displaced and so he sat down? But did he think about if there were any counter-measures set up by the body to take care of displaced peoples? Did he know about them?
And Aamir went to Oscars in 2001/2. He started talking of American imperialism during 2004-2005, during the fag end of Mangal Pandey shoot.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 6:21 PM
You are not responding to a simple question but going in circle that Aamir can do what he deems fit, but at the same time put terms and conditions on his choices!! By the same logic PK should have been banned as it hurt the sentiments of many Hindus and Rajkumar Hirani and Aamir ought to have taken due care before making movie on such a sensitive topic affecting pan-India. Problem was the politicisation of the issue because Aamir was Muslim and had already condemned 2002 riots, so politicians connected those disjointed statements to further their agenda under the garb of Sardar Sarovar dam. If those who had any problem with Aamir espousing the cause could well have talked to him or persuaded him for his wrong stance, but what they did to showcase their muscle power by vandalising cinema halls and intimidating cinema hall owners not to screen the movie. So it was not Gujarati ASMITA at stake as you are making it out to be, but fascism in its full glory as power was at their disposal. Wasn’t it the duty of state government to look after law and order, but what they did was to frighten Aamir by tearing his posters and breaking coca-cola bottles!!
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 6:32 PM
I fully agree with Myselfaamir. Te crux of the matter is Aamir being a muslim and speaking against certain issues.
After speaking about american imperialism and british hegemony, he went to US and UK so many times and he was not intimidated by demonstrations or the governments did not deny him visas! that is what is called true democracy. His films were not met with hostility.
Some of the Indians have become so intolerant and they are making it a virtue.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 1:58 AM
You are not responding to a simple question but going in circle that Aamir can do what he deems fit, but at the same time put terms and conditions on his choices!***
I hope you can deduce from my writing, I HOPE, that the terms and conditions I put on his choices are that he arrive at those choices after SOME AMOUNT of deliberation or consideration: not questioning the CHOICE in itself. It is such a simple argument: knowing the glow of arc-lights, would it be a sensible thing to STUDY something before you decide to take some side? You can take WHATEVER side you want..How on God’s Earth would it have harmed Aamir if he had just said he would study the issue at hand and then issue a public or a press notification?
And you did not answer a SIMPLE QUESTION..was Aamir aware of Grievance Redressal Authority set up? Did he study its relevance? Was that something that was of value to the displaced people?
And then you launch into a tirade on ‘vandalism’. Huh? What the hell has vandalism got to do here? Those dumbos would have shattered glasses irrespective of the Aamir imbroglio!!! Right? According to you and your supporters, the BJP is a neo-Nazi party that would have made Hitler and Himmler proud…
Fascicm? Right. Never heard of it. I am walking around wearing a balaclava. Oh God! Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that some BJP extremists would indulge in glass-shattering!! What a big, unexpected shock for me!!!
I am as big a fan of Aamir as anybody here; the BIGGEST fan of Amitabh here – though I cannot write and am simply INCAPABLE of writing theses like Satyam on Bachchan. I speak from my gut — and by the way, it is, connected to my brain– so I will oppose Aamir or Bachchan on issues that I find troublesome.
What’s next? Gas chambers? Modi sending Muslims to Guantanamo Bay-esqe black-sites?
Let me know,, because I would love to hear those NYT Pulitzer prize-winning editorials or journalistic stories,,,
And then Satyam’s argument will be,,,why are you in the US? why couldn’t you study at Bharatidasan or BENARES HINDU UNIVERSITY if you are so proud of the RIGHT WING?
The answer is – no freaking ideology — just a simple green….
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 2:20 AM
With all the filth,muck, open drainages, open latrines, gutters, pollution, people can die easily. No need for gas chambers.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 4:45 AM
What aamir did with NBA –how does it merit so much discussion
Maybe what happened to the poor displaced people may merit it.
Seeing blind fans like myself aamir makes one wonder —
Aamir is just another flawed (maybe more) human like any other.
He’s just popular due to his profession and has above average script selection and lately has been on a roll due to planned strategising. All credit to aamir for that
But this insistence that aamir does no wrong or has done no wrong to the extent of defending him or cleaning the ground he walks in is wierd…
And this goes for all fans be it of bachchan or srk or anybody else..
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 8:05 AM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-criticized-for-remarks-on-ISIS-Christianity/articleshow/46145777.cms
Rush Limbaugh devoted a segment of his show to what he said were the president’s insults to the “whole gamut of Christians” and Twitter’s right wing piled on. Guests on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show spent 15 minutes airing objections to the president’s comments.
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 3:06 PM
skimmed bits–cant read lengthy writeups but seems annjo has “owned” the likes of “satyam” & “sanjana” above…
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 6:12 PM
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/nyt-editorial-slams-modi/article6866397.ece?homepage=true
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 8:19 PM
LikeLike
February 6, 2015 at 11:53 PM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/VHP-hits-back-at-Obama-calls-him-stooge-of-Church/articleshow/46151122.cms
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 4:10 AM
Satyam:
Firstly, thanks for your response. It for sure has enlightened me.
Now let’s get back to some basics. Firstly, you have completely mis-read my statement about FANAA. My point was that the great ‘liberals’ completely missed – or deliberately avoided ( I am ‘plagiarizing’ from NYT that has been posted by Sanjana or Munna) – the fact that even-though the Gujarat government banned an innocuous, stupid film like FANNA just because an impulsive, thought-challenged actor decided to sit his ass in a dharna without researching [ I am harsh on Aamir because he has come up with a ‘thoroughly-researched’ piece like SATYAMEV JAYATE [SJ] which he ‘uses’ to combat any questions asked by the aggrieved/accused party in SJ] both sides of the coin. It doesn’t matter what side of the debate you are on – but you got to be on the side AFTER studying. I was not at all endorsing the ban on FANAA. I am actually pained that you thought that I would endorse something like a ‘ban’ after you decided to publish my thoughts on HAIDER!! I was merely pointing to the sycophants of NYT and WP that there was a group of people – including HINDUS – that was standing in front of theaters in Ahmedabad and Surat protesting the ban on FANAA, and before or after that [ I forget the timeline}, Dholakia’s PARZANIAA. This is what negates the ‘concerns’ of the NYT editorial or the Wa Po’s ‘concerns’ about religious intolerance in India. It is unfortunate that you interpreted my thinking/writing as endorsing a ban on a movie that has absolutely nothing to do with a dam! Damn! Maybe it was my wording. I am not really comfortable with the English language thanks to the fact that I studied in a vernacular language .
Next, you say all my ‘angst/litany’ should actually be pointed against Modi and his government for shamelessly welcoming Obama and his crew when the American govt refused visa on the grounds that Modi over-saw a ‘pogrom’ [a favorite word of the liberals after ‘sex’] to eliminate Muslims in the state of Gujarat, and extending further, the country of India. Fair enough. Principally, yes: Modi and his government should have shown a middle-finger to Obama and his administration. They were selfish. But this begs the question: what is ‘preferable’? Modi and his government ‘succumbing’ to Obama who heads America – an ‘ideology’ far more equivalent in thought and execution to the idea of India — or Obama ‘succumbing’ to a government that endorses Badawai’s flogging? It is upto you Satyam to decide. It’s all about pragmatism, right? Or as KJO says, it is all about…….
Let me then come to my ‘fantasized’ quoting of DEV. I am completely on the same page as Nihalani is with the fact that DEV is actually the ritual-oriented guy when compared to Om’s Tejinder who is never even shown worshipping a ‘picture’ of a Hindu God who he has supposedly vowed to protect. I get that. My actual point in quoting that scene was that just as the minorities could/would be driven into the arms of extremist ideology thanks to a feeling of ‘abandonment’ and ‘suspicion’, those who are ‘centrist’ [ God, how I hate these groupisms] would be driven into the company of lunatics like Togadia or XYZ thanks to constant badgering. The word here is ‘badgering’ – not ‘threat.’ {I understand numbers very well. I make a living as a Statistician. I know that 80% of a country is always, and WILL REMAIN, a greater percentage than 20%. It is not about threat. It is about the ‘frustration’ of a majority community that finds itself finger-pointed, just because it happens to be a statistical majority!}
Why? Because there doesn’t seem to be any option as far as the sagely ‘liberals’ are concerned. To quote Bush:’ You are either with Modi or you aren’t!!’ Sounds familiar?
So, Modi welcomes a representative of the US Government – Obama – ‘shamelessly’ while that unyielding, epitome of honesty and principles – an unwavering Obama- cuts short his visit to Taj Mahal, to honor the elegy of a government that is kind enough to allow a flogging victim to recover – so that he/she can be recovered again for flogging! I get it. DEMOCRACY from India is not equivalent to DICTATORSHIP in Saudi Arabia. But then, why oppose my statement that there is a false equivalency in PK when a tokenism-laden scene regarding conversion and girl-child education is laid on par with almost 1 hour of Hindu ritual-opposing? Logical or otherwise is besides the matter.
For folks that voted Modi and BJP to power, it is not the fact that western-sanctioned authorities on ‘freedoms’ decide on the quality of electorate and pass ‘judgements’, it is actually the more painful fact that highly intelligent folks like you are unwilling to ‘divorce’ yourself from academic rigors like that of Nussbaum et al. I studied Nussbaum when I edited an educational journal and am quite familiar with her proclivities and politics. My basic premise is: I won’t even think for a second about showing a finger to Modi when I am convinced and find undoctored proof that he is covertly supporting lunatics on the right-wing: Are you willing to divorce yourself from the likes of Guha and Nussbaum and Doniger if, and ONLY IF, you discover that they are dishonest?
There are painful decisions that one has to live with. Extremely painful ones. Was Iraq a better place even-though Saddam and his tyrant sons didn’t hesitate for a minute to shove rods into dissenters’ intestines when compared to what is happening now in Iraq? NOBODY is safe in Iraq: women, men, eunuchs, gays, and lesbians. What is it one prefers? Would you still want to ‘stamp’ on the Iraqis the American ideas of freedoms or would you have the lesser casualty of Saddam ripping apart the small-intestines of 12 dissenters when compared to 12000 civilians being slaughtered by ISIS? What would you have?
India, its middle-class, was presented with an option: Either have a drug-addicted, half-wit person as the PM of India, or have a person, who has – arguably – a fine track record in ADMINISTRATION. What could one choose? Do you really wish to continue with a horrific situation where a fine, HONEST, gentleman, with stupendous educational credentials like that of Dr. Singh, come back from Davos, and report to a semi-literate person like Sonia ‘Gandhi’ regarding the proceedings and expenses incurred from the trip? Did the Indian polity throw up a better candidate? Did it? What should an average Indian Joe decide about? If you are kind and considerate enough to let an average American slide over the basic knowledge-deficiency that a Sikh and a Muslim are the same, why are you so harsh and demanding of an Indian middle-class person?
My basic argument regarding all these things is that there is a certain egotism – not referring to you in particular at all – in subscribing to the fact that a faith/practice, whatever one wants to name it in context,, called Hinduism [forget its past, its history – the academic ‘fact’ that there was never an ‘India’ or united ‘Hinduism’ when the Mughals invaded] that is sort of – sort of – threading a cloth of religious harmony in an extremely diverse country like India. Why is it so unacceptable?
I am in COMPLETE agreement with you and concur that DEMOCRACY is actually a barometer of how the minorities are treated. ABSOLUTELY. But are you in agreement that this has been possible in India – with wrinkles, warts, and pimples for sure — when analyzed with the rest of the world?
And again, I am not insulting your intelligence by saying that you do not understand the difference between politicized Hindutva and personal Hindutva. But, are you willing to concede that and take it further?
You have of course seen the results of by-polls and how BJP suffered? THAT is why I am not concerned. Because I place the idea of India, the thought-process of the ‘evil’ middle-class, above MODI and his party. MODI is just, for me, a means to an end. NOT the end.
Lastly but not the least, we are actually on the sane/same side of the divide – at least that’s what I think. But please do not insult yourself by placing yourself in the bracket of a liberal. You are far too compassionate and considerate to restrict yourself to the abusive adjective of a ‘liberal.’
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 6:12 AM
An Jo.. I think your english is perfectly fine..!
1)On Fanaa Aamir joined the Medha Patkar side. I think she knows her stuff (whether one agrees with her position or not). But on Aamir and even accepting that he didn’t learn enough about the problem without getting into it all I’m saying is that nothing justifies the ban. In other words, and repeating the analogy, if a US actor makes political statements usually one does not use the litmus test of knowledge, whether he or she actually knows the subject enough. I agree completely that it is more responsible to get informed first. On the NYT and so forth I don’t think anyone blames ‘Hindus’ in any blanket sense. But yes the media has these generalized labels. However the ‘errors’ in this sense sometimes work on both sides. In 2002 the Indian English language media would often refer to Gujarat as a pogrom while the NYT only ever called it ‘riots’. You can find such examples either way.
2)The point isn’t whether Modi prefers the US or the US prefers Saudi Arabia. There is a problem with framing things this way. The US is an ‘imperial’ power and as such gets into relationships with many bad actors around the world. Even while doing so it speaks the language of human rights and so forth. If you then try to establish a relationship with the US you must be ready for both sides of the deal. And if you’re not you shouldn’t get into the relationship. Before blaming liberals or whoever one should examine this. Secondly there’s a difference between establishing a relationship and going a bit crazy with it the way Modi has done. It would be hard to make the case that the choice was either this love fest or nothing!
3)The Dev argument is more or less (and I agree with this) that a certain political ideology built on a certain fantasy reading of history and politics enables such a state of affairs. The Dev reading would be that there is no symmetry between majority and minority in this sense. To even argue the opposite is to be like the Om Puri character. But it is an argument that every ‘majority’ (or portions of the majority) uses in every such situation. One only has to study the history of every comparable situation around the world and one will see how the same claims get repeated with mechanical regularity. So it’s not that the minorities have their frustrations and the majority has theirs. The latter is a fantasy. it’s like Republicans saying they want to take their country back and what not. A certain Right-wing politics routinely uses this kind of language in all kinds of situations ranging from Nazi Germany to contemporary USA. Despite all the differences the formula is very similar and in many cases the very same.
3)On Obama cutting short his visit since I have never been naive about the fact that no matter how much I like him at a variety of levels, that he is still the head of a ‘superpower’, I can’t say I was surprised. I never expected that once he got elected America would stop having relationships with kingdoms and dictators! This wouldn’t be my example when it comes to criticizing him. However I could think of many others. The problem again is that being a liberal and being hypocritical are not mutually exclusive. But this isn’t true for the Right either. This whole opposition between the ‘purity’ of the Right wing and the hypocrisy of the Left-wing is again an invention.
4)The problem with saying that if you find ‘evidence’ of Modi doing something or the other you’ll stop supporting him is that such kinds of ‘evidence’ is always improbable. Why? Because one raises the bar quite high. Is there going to be a recording with instructions from Modi saying ‘go do this’ or a document bearing his signature? I think (and with all due respect) one can develop a good conscience using such standards. But if we all stuck to them hardly anyone would ever be guilty. We can’t use such legalistic standards and specially not at the very moment when we praise the very same leaders from being absolutely in control, having total authority and so forth. Much as if one is considered to be an absolutely competent administrator one might wonder where that competence disappears when it’s about riots or reigning in the loonies and so on. One can’t have it both ways. Either one isn’t a strong enough or competent-enough leader or one enables all of this somehow. It can’t be both.
On your last few points I’ll leave those aside for the moment. I don’t agree with that point you’ve made on history and the Modi/Mamnohan Singh choice and so on, certainly not the way you’ve framed it, but all of this takes us somewhat far afield from those other things we’ve been debating. I’ll just say this for now — it is extremely dangerous to believe in ideas or labels without also looking at the various histories. These things have histories. The objection you raised against Aamir Khan on the Fanaa episode, that applies to all of us. We should all get informed and enough on the subjects we discuss.
I’ll just add this as a general point — often in arguing for the idea that an excess from the Right isn’t too bad because there are built-in mechanisms (within the State) to correct for this one in fact depends on the very same liberal ‘guarantees’ that one then castigates elsewhere. In other words every democracy is minimally an accomplishment of center-left politics where the Right has eventually been forced to come along. Those are the ideals governing every democracy (in this context it should be said that fascism too always belongs to democracy as a possible ‘excessive’ result.. people usually vote fascist parties in..). So even if one agrees with you that the Indian state is strong enough not to allow for certain excesses well that is an accomplishment of precisely its ‘Nehruvian’ apparatus.
Even more generally I see this problem sometimes where there are folks who are otherwise more liberally inclined (whether they know it or not) tend to turn Right in terms of their political orientation in a much more limited sense. This is different from someone being Right-wing through and through. However to my mind only the former position is naive. Because one confuses two different world views.
Thanks for the long response once again. I would have liked to be more comprehensive on some of the above points. Can’t quite do so at the moment for various reasons. But hopefully I’ve not been too unclear.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 8:43 AM
“Lastly but not the least, we are actually on the sane/same side of the divide …”
AJ…jo kar rahe ho woh jaldi, jaldi chodd kar politics join kar lo. You will make a fine one 😉 🙂
Diplomacy toh koi aap sey sikhey.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 5:07 AM
Seems the honeymoon is over between America and India.
Now like true husband and wife, the bickerings have started!
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 8:40 AM
“I am not really comfortable with the English language thanks to the fact that I studied in a vernacular language . ”
Dayum…I could never have guessed.
I personally think it is perfectly fine to ban anything (Fanaa included) if it saves lives and prevents riots; if it hurts sentiments; if it creates peace! If banning Satanic Verses will make people happy, let it be so. Those who want to read/see movie, they can always do so. There are other means. But that is just me in side of keeping peace. I even think now that certain newspapers shouldn’t publish certain cartoons (EVEN if those people are peace loving and will never ever kill or attack your offices). But THAT is just my viewpoint because the world is not lived by sane people at all times who would appreciate and deserve freedom of speech. In ideal world, I would rather have freedom of speech and peaceful protests and dharna. But I guess that would be ram-rajya and not happening.
On ‘hindutva’: We really need this ‘hindutva’. It was this very same ‘hindutva’ which gave panah to escaping jews, Sikhs, tibetians, zorastrians, Chinese, Once the hindus become minorities or lose their ‘hinduness’ or become powerless, see what would happen in India. it would be just another Pakistan or Iraq.
On Modi rolling red carpet to Barrack and all that kumbaya: it is called politics. Didn’t Musharraf and Modi have the same kumbaya, after Modi was elected? You can call your worst enemy, roll out red carpet, smile for camera and discuss whatever needs to be discussed behind closed door (“hey dude, you need to stop financing those terrorist if you really want peace in this region”).
Satyam picking on Modi-Barrack kumbaya is as silly as congress picking on the chaiwala having 250 kurtas. Just plain silly. And constantly saying “I am having fun at this”. How silly!!
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 10:10 AM
“And constantly saying “I am having fun at this”. How silly!!”
Today I am being sillier.. I’m just having fun with the Delhi elections! I’m sure ‘democracy’ will be celebrated as much now as it was in 2014 (even if it wasn’t for a decade before this or in some cases 60 years before it)!
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 1:07 PM
Here is B.Jindal
“”Let’s be honest here. Islam has a problem… Muslim leaders need to condemn anyone who commits these acts of violence and clearly state that these people are evil and are enemies of Islam. It’s not enough to simply condemn violence, they must stand up and loudly proclaim that these people are not martyrs who will receive a reward in the afterlife, and rather they are murderers who are going to hell. If they refuse to do that, then they’re part of the problem. There is no middle ground here”.:
Yes democracy is a problem Satyam. Watch this:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b29_1374350465
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 11:34 AM
Even if we take this argument that muslims and christians will outnumber hindus, what will be the better scenario? A muslim India that will become another Pakistan or a christian India that will become closer to America and Europe?
That will not happen as India has complicated equations and hindus will always be a sizable majority with most of the economic and political power in their hands.
So we can fearlessly practice secularism and liberalism which will make us look better in the eyes of the world.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 11:43 AM
I have a prediction to make.. a rather bold prediction.. before Muslims and Christians outnumber Hindus in India we will have entropy in the universe as an accomplished result. Hence there will be ‘nothing’ (in a manner of speaking) before that outnumbering is complete. Of course one learns through experience that facts and logic are the last things one should bring to a political debate where there are absurd myths on the other side!
On a related note some Christian groups and politicians associated with them are upset with Obama as well. How dare he suggest that Christianity has ever been associated with any kinds of violence? They’re all the same! No religion, no nationalistic grouping has ever done anything. It’s only those on the other side who of course in turn maintain the same innocence.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 1:16 PM
Outnumbering not even needed. We will have “no go zones” first. Like Kashmir is “no go zone” for the KPs. Watch below for other places in the world and get enlightened. :-).
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/22/inside-frances-sharia-no-go-zones/
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 1:19 PM
http://www.examiner.com/article/as-muslim-population-grows-what-can-happen-to-a-society
As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. (This is the case in: United States –0.6% Australia –1.5% Canada –1.9% China –1.8% Italy –1.5% Norway –1.8%)
At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. (This is happening in: Denmark — 2% Germany — 3.7% United Kingdom –2.7% Spain –4% Thailand –4.6%)
When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam, and results in uprisings and threats….. (Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections, in: Guyana –10% India — 13.4% Israel –16% Kenya — 10% Russia –15%)
After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in: Bangladesh –83% Egypt –90% Iran –98% Pakistan –97%
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 1:30 PM
LOL…wow. speaking of stupid…
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 1:26 PM
“On a related note some Christian groups and politicians associated with them are upset with Obama as well. How dare he suggest that Christianity has ever been associated with any kinds of violence?”
One such idiot here….
Fox’s Bolling: ‘Zero’ People Have Been Killed in the Name of Every Religion But Islam
by Josh Feldman | 12:41 pm, February 7th, 2015
Eric Bolling ended today’s Cashin’ In with his absolute disgust with President Obama‘s comments about the Crusades, claiming that exactly “zero” people have been killed in the name of every single religion outside of Islam.
Obama said at the National Prayer Breakfast this week that Christians shouldn’t get on a “high horse” about radical Islam because “terrible deeds” have been done in the name of Christianity too. He cited the Crusades and the Inquisition as two examples.
Conservatives objected to Obama’s invocation of these dark times in Christianity’s history while not addressing threats in the modern day––not hundreds of years ago––by radical Islamic terrorists.
Bolling said Obama not only crossed the line, but “pole-vaulted over the line,” and then made this claim:
“Reports say radical Muslim jihadists killed thousands of people in the past few months alone. And yet when you take Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever, their combined killings in the name of religion––well, that would be zero.”
He concluded that Obama’s comments were “deeply offensive to Christians” and he should apologize immediately.
These guys at Fox are really the stupidest, most idiotic clowns ever assembled on TV. Yet they still get the highest ratings. They have forced other news networks to drop down to their level and now journalism is as biased, sensationalized, and stupid as ever.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 1:27 PM
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-bolling-zero-people-have-been-killed-in-the-name-of-every-religion-but-islam/
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 1:05 PM
The “denial” and “inner conflict” & the “auto-strip”
“what will be the better scenario? A muslim India that will become another Pakistan or a christian India that will become closer to America and Europe?”
“a rather bold prediction.. before Muslims and Christians outnumber Hindus in India ..”
plz note the HIDDEN SUBCONSCIOUS LATENT & PERVERSE sentiment and thinking here…
the all-pevasive overemphasis and deep percolation of certain ‘religious’ connotations into the psyche
Sometimes all i do is to sit back & let folks ‘UNRAVEL” and “autoplay’ and usually it brings out more effective dividends than the painstakingly hardworkingly persuasive writeups of some above
(like poor annjo)
The REALITY is that mostly one doesnt NEED to ‘debate’ really..
“truth” peeks out ..
Without going in favor or against one or the other party–
i have TEASED out the important SEMINAL bits here
To add—i mentioned briefly about a certain “OMITTING” & “DENIAL” of histories and hence a sense of “originating from Vacuum” and the impending “conflict” and ‘sense of confusion”.
As i had pointed out earlier the likes of “satyam” and “sanjana” have REVEALED themselves to us in full glory ….
Many have just chosen to be silent ….the ‘tactful’ silence
THIS is that ‘conflict” my friends…. & no amount of “humour”, “tact’ and “creative writing” can mask it!
apex
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 2:39 PM
“People like “di” can choose to remain ignorant”
absolutely true. I really don’t want to know. I never watch any of those horrific videos coming out of Iraq and places. I rather be ‘ignorant’ of the evils of this world and stay in my non-violent, peaceful “bubble”.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 2:41 PM
Ok guys let’s end the political debates here. It’s getting out of hand and with some folks it’s hard to keep debates from becoming ugly. So I prefer to end all of it.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 2:59 PM
Sorry if I crossed a certain line (but I just posted some links to counter “di” and her, IMO, shallow posts)…I noticed you deleted those key comments and it is sad that you did. But I will respect your warning.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 3:24 PM
I know, I wasn’t referring to you. I’ve never had any issues with you. But Di let’s say loses control rather easily in these things and more than this starts coming up with some pretty ugly stuff that at least I find beyond the pale. Nonetheless in the interests of fairness I decided to let all comments stand unto a point and then delete others all at once. I’ve just for example let an Apex comment through (he’d posted it earlier) which is yet another example of his having gone off the deep end in all matters but again because it was part of that timeline I allowed it.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 5:02 PM
this from the Christian Science Monitor….
Obama criticized for ‘Crusades’ remark: What did he really mean?
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2015/0207/Obama-criticized-for-Crusades-remark-What-did-he-really-mean
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 5:53 PM
Christianity has had probably the most violent history of any religion. For lots of reasons. One of the principal ones being that the Church was also a political institution with enormous clout and therefore acted like a proper political force at very many points. But it wasn’t just the Crusades where all kinds of violence was encouraged by the Church. It was also colonialism (some of the darkest chapters of this history.. in S America for example) or slavery and so on where the Church quite often officially or unofficially sanctioned things. In fairness the first human rights activists or resistance to many of these things also emerged within these ranks in instances but institutionally the Church has had a great deal to answer for. But this is so for any religion. One religion having the most violent history doesn’t absolve any other because a certain set of political circumstances might enable one religion to be more violent than another. In Japan Buddhist temples often maintained armies, some of the worst excesses in WWII were committed by Japanese political and military figures who were also devout Zen Buddhists! Really, you can use any religion to justify anything but overlaying it with enough ideological justification. It’s not just religion of course. It’s about nationalism and ethnicity and what not. Humans can commit the worst crimes for any label. Those who believe otherwise just haven’t read their histories. Of course everyone gets offended rather easily when their religion or group is mentioned. From the Hindutva brigade in India to Christians in the US to Muslims to whoever. Everyone gets all holier-than-thou about this stuff. everyone tries to evade responsibility using the same formulas. ‘Hey we’re not as bad as ‘them’… ‘we’re more justified’ etc etc’. It’s extremely formulaic. People don’t believe this because they don’t know the histories. Which is why any critique must not be made on essentialist grounds. If Muslims do things or Christians do things or Hindus do things it’s not ‘because’ they are Muslims or Christians or Hindus but that they use that label to do certain things. Which doesn’t mean that no religion promotes such stuff (one must avoid these platitudes too.. every religion has plenty that’s disturbing depending on one’s perspective). Anyway got to run now!
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 11:08 PM
“Enough” political “debates”, already.
Can’t take any more of “Apex” as his “semenal” TRUTH and all the “other” LITTLE bits are hanging out. His “overpowering ” ANALYSIS is numbing the “mind”.
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 11:13 PM
LOL!
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 6:34 AM
hahaha
LikeLike
February 7, 2015 at 11:39 PM
I could only wish I could write this well with such ease and get my point across with ease also. I agree on every single thing you’ve said here.
And then this sentence is just (or at least should be) common sense:
“If Muslims do things or Christians do things or Hindus do things it’s not ‘because’ they are Muslims or Christians or Hindus but that they use that label to do certain things.”
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 12:21 PM
As for Delhi, a nice tight slap to the Modi momentum. Personally, i was really turned off with all his “Barrack” first name display of “langotiya yaari”, as well as that really ill-thought Modi-striped suit.
Jab aadmi hawa mein udne lag jaye, to thoda sa girna zaroori hai.
In any case, Kejri with 5 yrs in Delhi and Modi with 4+ yrs in All-India is the best combo one couldve expected. Caveat: Kejri shud not do his stupid dharnas anymore and concentrate on some stable solutions; AND Modi shud rein in all the right-wingers. Thats all.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 2:41 PM
The one significant danger for Kejrival is that while he and his party have been remarkable activists they don’t quite have the experience to run a govt and this matters even moreso when one has to assume that the Central govt won’t be eager to do them any favors and moreover will try to make life difficult for them (why would you strengthen your opponent even more?!). And Kejrival did not emerge within an established party (say Obama with the Dems) where even if fresh he could rely on certain entrenched institutions to keep the machinery running in various ways. So while I’m quite thrilled with his win I must say that the really tough work has only begun for him. Added to this the fact that ‘idealistic’ parties and politicians always ‘disappoint’ more by definition because their victories are often not seen as huge enough in the present and people develop an unrealistic sense of what’s possible based on the idealism and excessive promises of these very same campaigns. Kejrival is certainly an authentic politician with real political gifts. But he’ll need to be something more from this point onwards. On that note most of the AAP’s core is also the same way. Whether he can bring in experience from elsewhere in his govt remains to be seen.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 3:12 PM
Agreed on all counts. His inexperience and hubris let him down last time. Hopefully he has matured enough to tackle the local issues in a sane and stable manner.
Long ago on this blog I had commented that a top-down Modi and a bottom-up Kejri wudve been the ideal tandem. It seems to be coming true, as long as both find common ground to work together on all issues.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 3:34 PM
AAP vote bank has been lower middle and poor section of society. Many have come to fold for free/cheap electricity, water and basic amenities. In small run all this makes sense but in long run I don’t see it a sustainable agenda. AAP seems little more mature but they may resort to street politics if they find going tough. They haven’t backed down that Somnath Bharti was wrong in the raid on Africans. Govt is not run on hard drawn lines, you need to be flexible and more centralist. Election rhetoric and running Govt are two different beasts and inspire of your good attentions you may find going tough.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 10:44 AM
For what it’s worth, the AAP PAC (Political Affairs Committee) did convene a meeting with the sole purpose of expelling Somnath Bharti from the party, but the entire committee changed its mind after seeing all the video footage collected from various news channels.
This is the official party line and unless one sees the entire footage/evidence and comes to a different conclusion, there’s at least some reason to believe what they say…
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:01 AM
AA PAC had also vetted the two crores donations …kya hua ???
anyways have no intention of getting into this again..
have a nice day !!!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:21 AM
2 Crores?! What about the 2500 crores of unaccounted campaign funding in BJP coffers?
But hey, the AAP started corruption in India by taking 2 crores after checking the PAN number, the Registrar of Companies’ certificate and taking the money via a cheque from Axis Bank (which no doubt did a stellar job in checking the credentials) and also then uploading the details on their website.
The BJP took 2500 crores just to give AAP a taste of their own medicine!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 12:02 PM
Somnath Bharti was wrong. Africans may be selling drugs, or doing some illegal activities; But whatever happened was forceful and in western world invasion of privacy.
Judicial probe said police officials acted correctly and were reinstated:
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/congress-bjp-want-bharti-expelled-from-house-aap-silent/
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 12:41 PM
Perhaps he is guilty…I can’t say because I’ve not seen the entire evidence.
I choose to trust Arvind Kejriwal’s word on this, but I will no doubt change my stance if I’m convinced otherwise.
I’m a bit surprised that the BJP or the Congress and the media in tow, did not make Somnath Bharti’s raid a political issue.
The AAP was grilled about many issues, most of them frivolous (the laughable midnight hawala issue, Kejriwal’s anarchist comment etc) but no one tried to pin them down on this. Why?
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 12:51 PM
We are inherently racists/prejudiced. At drop of hat we call people chamar, chinki, madrasi , Kalaa, Gora:
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/bharti-a-folk-hero-in-khirki-extension/
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 3:52 AM
Well said.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 10:20 AM
For some fortuitous reason, I have been following the Delhi elections closely and to my mind this has been one of the most vicious and negative elections that I’ve ever seen. And when I say vicious and negative, I mean to implicate the BJP. They called Kejriwal all sorts of names – from Haraamkhor to chor to bunder or even a naxalite (the last one courtesy of the Prime Minister). Needless to say, it resulted in a self-goal.
The same arrogance, which was a hallmark of the elite class of the Congress (Kapil Sibbal comes to mind), the same haughtiness that characterised Sheila Dixit, who famously dismissed Kejriwal before the 2013 elections, only to lose against him, was on display…this time from the BJP. Whenever AAP discussed issues, the BJP threw up some cocked up charges. They questioned the AAP’s funding through a questionable faction that broke away from the AAP (some say, funded by the BJP) over the princely sum of 2 Crores, when they themselves give no account of over 2000 crores of their campaign funding.
They even questioned Kejriwal’s increase in personal income through his use of a Toyota Innova, ditching his previously owned Wagon-R! They brought out cartoons in newspapers where his family members were made part of the smear campaign. The twitter trolls went much further and even surpassed the AIB roast in terms of filth…it was all sickening. And in the end, to what effect?
Any self-respecting person, anyone with an iota of conscience, would have been disturbed by the BJP campaign. I can understand some concerns raised against AAP or even Arvind Kejriwal, but to see the real face of the BJP, unmasked and ugly to the core, one would be hard pressed to ever remotely support their agenda.
I’m actually very serious here. Anyone who supports the BJP, tacitly, is also supporting a culture of hooliganism, negative smear campaigns and nauseating arrogance. There is no beating around the bush on this issue at all.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 10:59 AM
LMAO, what a load of BS
Check out Aapotards like Vishal Dadlani’s udly, vicious tweets ( retweeted by Keju ) before May 16th……….always personal attacks on Modi calling him Murderer, Snooper, and all kinds of names.
When BJP gives them a taste of their own medicines the Aaptards are crying ..wah wah wah!
Typical spin in process !!!
Re.Any self-respecting person, anyone with an iota of conscience, would have been disturbed by the BJP campaign.
I think I am self respecting and have loads of conscience. Please spare us the sermons !!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:17 AM
Right, the BJP is the aggrieved party in all of this!
They are the ones who have been bullied into submission by the AAP!
Brilliant analysis…keep ’em coming!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:25 AM
Naa, no lage raho, absolutely no intention !!
Church, Shahi Immam, Jholawalas, Mamta, SP, JDU, Naxals, Out of work Marxist , Media , Aansootosh, Rajdeep, Paglika…
AAP sab (Miley Hue) lagey raho bhai !!!! LOL
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:35 AM
Hey, you forgot Obama from your list!
On a parting note (I know BJP supporters are still suffering after applying copious quantities of Burnol), here’s a fun fact:
AAP actually rejected Bukhari’s support…the BJP accepted Dera Sachcha Sauda’s support (both in Haryana and Delhi!).
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 12:06 PM
Saket is bangali. hint-wink-wink.
Waisey…theek hai. IITian and Chaiwala.
Good for the country!!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:34 AM
This is a strong comment Saket and I agree. I think it’s fairly easy to call out this stuff whether it’s the Congress that does it or the BJP or whoever. Even if one has issues with AAP it’s laughable to have them as a supporter of either of those two other parties. But more importantly there is this game where the BJP folks blamed Congress for years for all sorts of things and now that they’re in power and trying to Congress-ize themselves (let’s add Modi and Amit Shah eliminating any and all opposition even within the party to that list.. or anyone not completely beholden to them.. the old BJP generations are more or less being wiped out or demoted) and doing this sort of thing to AAP suddenly the same folks once more can only blame the ‘liberals’ for even bringing this up! I’ve repeated this point many times in the past and it’s a question to which I have yet to receive a satisfactory response. Is one’s devotion to a party such that it trumps all principle or is there some set of principles for which one will be willing to castigate one’s party and not keep relying on these alibis (‘they’ did it first, the liberals are against us.. etc etc)? So far I’ve only seen the former in evidence. It’s not just about the Congress or the BJP but the supporters of most parties. Ultimately it’s really about acquiring power, all these sanctimonious claims are really a means to an end. So it is with the supporters also. Since they can’t accept the obvious they choose the easier job of blaming the other side. In what universe of common sense and elementary ethics, and irrespective of whatever issues one might have with AAP or its leaders, can one possibly establish any kind of equivalence between them and the BJP? Specially as evidenced through this campaign. Tomorrow AAP might become problematic in the same way at which point they too should be questioned in the same way. But yeah these political debates, even if I too indulge in them quite often, are pointless in some ways. Because most responses are about such alibis. There is never any situation, any scenario where one holds one’s side guilty. This never happens. One then loses all moral authority to question anyone or anything else even if in the echo chamber of online blogs and sites one can find enough ‘like-minded’ folks to go on playing this game. Again this is not an anti-BJP response but the truth of your comment seems fairly obvious. And when you start off with that Congress reference it can hardly be said that you’re being biased.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:42 AM
Re.-Again this is not an anti-BJP response but the truth of your comment seems fairly obvious. And when you start off with that Congress reference it can hardly be said that you’re being biased.
LMAO !!! are you for real ????
His comment and subsequent responses are straight from the AAP Social media Spin cell.
I say openly that I support BJP and am biased. The comments are from an AAP member so own up.
My last on this.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:52 AM
yes but that’s like saying a Tea Party member is for the Tea Party and an Obama supporter is for Obama and somehow both are the same! The problem isn’t ‘bias’ but about whether one is coming up with a ‘fair’ comment or not. The Obama campaign destroyed Romney in the last election, they realized it was harder to run on their own record for a variety of reasons and they decided to take on the old strategy of destroying the opponent. Just because I’m an Obama supporter I don’t find it ‘impossible’ to see this, nor do I find it necessary to say ‘but hey look at what the Republicans were doing to Obama’!
‘Bias’ is not a problem. No one’s neutral but there can be some elementary fairness to the debate. Also just saying ‘bias’ runs this sort of risk — you could argue for Bachchan as a Bachchan fan and someone else could argue for Salman Khan and where would your logic lead? That someone both were comparable in some sense and that each supporter was equally biased hence the actual truth here was unknowable?!
Again one must distinguish an ideological position which can go hand-in-hand with a fair argument from a bias that is about supporting one’s side or preferences at all costs.
Finally I am never impressed with this ‘there are two sides’ logic. Just because there are two sides to a debate doesn’t mean they’re equally valid. Otherwise George Bush had as good a case to make for his invasion as the opposition did against it! I think it is precisely about choosing sides in every case but not in a mechanical way. Such choosing should come built-in with the ability to be self-critical and/or criticize one’s side/preference.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 1:55 PM
Is one’s devotion to a party such that it trumps all principle or is there some set of principles for which one will be willing to castigate one’s party and not keep relying on these alibis (‘they’ did it first, the liberals are against us.. etc etc)?
Absolutely agree!
Tomorrow AAP might become problematic in the same way at which point they too should be questioned in the same way. But yeah these political debates, even if I too indulge in them quite often, are pointless in some ways.
Again, agreed on all counts. I support AAP, I really do, but tomorrow if they turn out to be power-hungry and commit the same crimes, I’ll hopefully be the first one to question them.
Actually, I’ll make my situation even more clear. Given a choice between the Congress and Modi, I will choose the latter. I have my concerns regarding 2002, but I will still choose Modi. This is a reluctant choice, based on pragmatism and practicality. One may call me out over this, but I’ll point out it’s a ‘reluctant’ choice…not an unabashed one.
With AAP, from what I’ve seen and heard, at the moment, it’s a choice that I can make wholeheartedly. This doesn’t mean I will champion their cause no matter what, but they seem to be a party with the right intentions.
I know having right intentions isn’t always enough, but I quite like the way Arvind Kejriwal describes AAP as a solution-oriented party whenever he’s asked to define his ideology. Their economic policies are left of center, but in a country like India where growing inequality is a huge concern, it’s absolutely imperative to bridge the gap through such government policies.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 2:21 PM
When all the parties are evil, some choose the lesser evil.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 2:24 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/my-ironic-defense-of-bria_b_6645320.html
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 2:33 PM
LOL, good one!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 2:30 PM
The comments to that article are interesting.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:52 AM
My FB feed is filled with negative comments from both sides. Here is morning dose: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=648539161912514&fref=nf
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 12:29 PM
munna: If this is a response to my charge that BJP ran an excessive negative campaign in Delhi, then I’ll have to point out that none of the top AAP brass were remotely as negative. They responded to the charges leveled at them…never hurled them on their own.
The BJP top brass, in comparison, were vicious in their campaign. There’s absolutely no denying it. From Modi to Amit Shah, everyone had at least one unkind/insulting adjective reserved for Arvind Kejriwal!
People on facebook or twitter are a different breed. But I’ll be pretty shocked if the AAP brass encouraged trolling on social media!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 12:39 PM
The ‘viciousness’ is called politics. MSM was very vicious to Modi. Janta has a third eye. It can see who will deliver. For people living in Jhopadi, the work Kejri has done, he is bhagvan for them. So there. I am happy. Absolute power corrupts. It is good that there is some competition. It will keep the politicians ‘honest’. Hopefully they work for the country and janta and not fight with each other and waste our tax rupees.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 12:47 PM
The ‘viciousness’ is called politics.
Yeah but only one side was playing this game!
I’m reminded of Anil Kumble’s brilliant comment after the Sydney test of 2008 when the Indian team was undone by a series of umpiring howlers and aggressive (and intimidating) appealing by the Australians: “Only one team was playing with the spirit of the game, that’s all I can say!”
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 1:59 PM
You should watch bend it like beckham. 🙂
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 2:29 PM
Saket, Excellent comment encompassing the gamut of negativity, haughtiness, arrogance, condescending attitude of BJP to combat AAP has certainly been rejected by public in Delhi atleast ( taking the Exit Poll surveys). One could easily see the menace of dictatorship looming large as can be seen in the way BJP has been projecting Modi as the “ONLY SAVIOUR” of the nation in its campaign in each state neglecting the role of its state leadership and its cadres. State assemblies elections are being fought showing central government and leadership achievements putting aside state leaders and its cadres and their role as if Modi will be running the states by remote control (reminding me of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi duo) .
In Delhi election BJP and Modi were behaving as if people don’t vote for them, Delhi would be doomed and if BJP is voted to power, central government would provide the state government with every thing for the betterment of Delhi as if warning people that if they are not voted to power, support from central government would be hard to come by!! If this is not POWER KA NASHA, then what else is? I hope Arvind Kejrival will focus on administration than the gimmicks as it would be a very good sign for a healthy democracy. Without competition one tends to behaves as an aurocrate, with AAP, balance would keep their dictatorial proclivities at bay.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 4:53 PM
In Delhi election BJP and Modi were behaving as if people don’t vote for them, Delhi would be doomed and if BJP is voted to power, central government would provide the state government with every thing for the betterment of Delhi as if warning people that if they are not voted to power, support from central government would be hard to come by!!
Agreed! This is another typical scaremongering tactic, previously employed by the Congress. The BJP isn’t very ‘original’ in playing dirty politics.
The thing is, Kejriwal is quite clever in highlighting these things. The BJP would find itself in a media-driven soup if it creates impediments willingly, thanks to AAP.
Also agree with your larger point that the AAP should focus more on effective administration and learn from their previous misadventures. They would be foolish not to learn from their past mistakes. It’s actually a tougher challenge to rule with a clear mandate ,now that the buck only stops at your doorstep.
For the sake of democracy and ethical politics, I really hope AAP delivers in a big way! Whether they realize it or not, people of India need to be freed from the clutches of the Congress/BJP. The two parties are, in effect, two sides of the same coin. Choosing between the Congress and the BJP is never going to be a decision that makes one happy!
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 4:04 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments-on-the-dark-side-of-humanity-2015-2
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 5:15 PM
This is interesting:
http://news.rediff.com/commentary/2015/jan/28/in-obamas-pocket-on-india-trip-hanuman-idol/2d5b1c01b3058f2e7695879d1b0f4828
After Tom Brady super bowl win:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/patriots/2015/02/02/tom-brady-super-bowl-four-seattle-seahawks-joe-montana/22729895/
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 5:36 PM
Interesting indeed! Had no idea! On either count.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 5:41 PM
And you have VHP opposing him 🙂
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 9:14 AM
Why did he settle down on Hanuman out of the million Gods? Tired of marriage with Michelle already? Looking toward bachelorhood as an inspiration?
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:57 AM
it is old connection from his growing up in Indonesia and all..read his ‘autobiography’. Outside of India, even in non-hindu countries, Ganesha, Hanuman are ‘worshipped’ the way sportsman ‘worship’ a diety to remove obstacles. When Obama took office, his got overflowing gift of Hanuman statues from Indians. I wonder what his church/pastor thinks about that 😉
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 6:24 PM
The easiest way to lose votes is to rule. If public feels disenchanted, it always selects an alternative party even if it is weak or wicked. Ultimately the public is punished while the politicians are not. The people get what they deserve and then they start complaining.
LikeLike
February 8, 2015 at 6:39 PM
AAp will be relieved if they lose. It will be nightmarish for them if they win! Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:04 AM
Waisey some usual Sanjpects who are the first to jump and post links here on anything remotelyanti hindus—. are so silent on the unconditional apology given by AIB to the Bishop of Mumbai !!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:09 AM
Jaundiced eyes and diseased minds go together.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:11 AM
Like Spin and Narrative,,,,,,,,,
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:43 AM
Another Distorian…
Ramachandra Guha @Ram_Guha · 2h2 hours ago
In my last @ttindia column I referred to the PM as ‘semi-educated’. That was careless and in poor taste. Apologies to my readers.
Have grace to say sorry to PM. “@Ram_Guha: I referred to PM as ‘semi-educated’. That was careless & in poor taste. Apologies to my readers.”
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:44 AM
The response is from Kanchan Gupta…
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 6:50 PM
Will the PM apologize to Kejriwal? Why am I even asking this question?
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 6:54 PM
Now you have officially become an Aaptard, I have a policy of not engaging with them………GN
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 9:13 PM
The fake companies that are funding Kejri. Don’t pin too many hope on this one and treat him as some sort of mesaiah.
Hawala at Midnight: AVAM has a bone to pick with AAP as more skeletons tumble out:
As per document available with The Pioneer, the directors of four unknown non-operating companies — Goldmine Buildcon Private Limited, Skyline Metals & Alloy Private Limited, Infolance Software Solutions Limited, Sunvision Agencies Private Limited — who gave funds to AAP of Rs50 lakh each on the same day of April 5, 2014 midnight, are also directors of SKN Associates Limited, which has been declared a defaulter company by Department of Trade & Taxes of Delhi Government on December 18, 2013, 10 days prior to the formation of AAP Government in Delhi.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/city/avam-has-a-bone-to-pick-with-aap-as-more-skeletons-tumble-out.html
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 1:44 PM
http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/prices-of-brooms-nearly-double-in-delhi-heres-why-738277?pfrom=home-topstories
Prices of Brooms Nearly Double in Delhi. Here’s Why
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 5:56 PM
Did these guys ever watch Raghav Chadda and Khaitan and how they insulted the AVAM Guys on The Newshour , calling them Lallu-Panjus and telling Arnam to throw them out , calling them Sadak Chaap….What bloody Chutzpah !!!!
Now the Aaptards will say, well they deserved it …..and blah blah..
The truth is leke Bachchan said in Agneepath- yahan har koi apney sey kamzor ko maar key jeeta hai !!
If BJP has become arrogant , by al means punish them , they seem to be have been punished. But Delhi walalahs don’t know kee Shehar mein Circus aaney wala hai !!! LOL
P.S.- with the AIB guys shamelessly apologizing only to the Church …saarey key saarey jholawallahs bilkul chup baithey hain.
Imagine if they had apologized to VHP.
These guys would be screaming – MODIIIII !!!!!!!
What bloody Chutzpah !!!!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 6:41 PM
Chaliye aap ko asli ‘chutzpah’ dikha dete hain…
http://aajtak.intoday.in/story/we-killed-gandhi-will-murder-kejriwal-too-says-hindu-mahasabha-leader-swami-omji-1-798881.html
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 6:50 PM
Egggzactly— Modi should resign, like right NOW !!! Blow to Modi !!!
P.S.- I will be kind of Happy if Keju becomes the CM, the media will be focused on him, Modi jee sabka saath, sabka vikas kartey chalengey !!
Cry babies 31%, blow to Modi, kartey rahengey…….
Meanwhile Keju-
Bijlee- mein kya karoon, Haryana
Paanee- Mein kya karoon- Punjab
Makan- mein kya karoon- God
Wifi- main kya karoon- Aansootosh
Security- main kya karron- Attorney Bhartee
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 7:20 PM
*This* is your response to an article that quotes a nutcase closely aligned with the BJP, who just threatened to kill Kejriwal?
Wow! I mean, really wow.
You know what, I’m happy being labeled an ‘aaptard’ for all my life but I’d question my own sanity if such nutcases (I’m being very charitable here…they are bigots of the highest order!) were on my side.
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 6:47 PM
I haven’t seen the newshour debate that you mentioned…I will check it out, but since you quote Bachchan, I’m reminded of the muck that was thrown around by Khalid M on the great man.
What was Bachchan’s response? You have your answer!
And this is precisely how AAP responded to the BJP in Delhi!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 6:52 PM
Also re,- BJP being arrogant
The founder, financer / original member of AAP (Shanti Bhushan ) said that Keju has become arrogant and dictator !!!!
Uff the irony !!!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 7:04 PM
His son seems to be on fine terms with Kejriwal. Of course, anyone who even remotely criticizes Modi in the BJP today will be left to rot…but that’s a different story!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:20 PM
Looks like AAP tsunami!
LikeLike
February 9, 2015 at 11:36 PM
Simply amazing!
I was hoping for 50 seats, they are going to win 60 out of 70!
This can only imply that each and every segment of the electorate has voted for AAP. Astounding…
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 1:12 AM
Their Vote share surged from 30 to 33 to 54.
BJP – 33-46-33
Congress – 24.55-15.4-9
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 12:32 AM
Congratulations to the winners and sympathies for the losers. In bollywood terms blockbuster win. 300 crores plus.
Now the hard part is to rule.
Indian people love personalities. Congress has nothing to offer in this respect. Modi appealed to the middleclasses and hindus.
Arvind Kejriwal is typical aam aadmi living the life of a lower middleclass uppermiddleclass(trishanku) existence, approachable and has struck a chord. We needed this victory so that we can have a healthy democracy. To balance things out.
Hope BJP extends cooperation and Aap consolidates its victory with good governance.
Delhi people know that they wont get free bijli or water and they only want someone who can listen to them at all times. Not during elections only.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 12:48 AM
I think the way some people left AAP for greener pastures also was a factor. People hate betrayers and opportunists.
To those who support AAP, dont expect miracles overnight. Allow the newborn to standup and take steps. It will surely make mistakes and mistakes are part of learning process.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 1:05 AM
http://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/delhi-polls-bollywood-roasts-bjp-congress-on-twitter/article1-1315327.aspx
Hahahahahaha! Shazia Ilmi jumped from a life-boat to a sinking ship.
From one Varun Grover.
@RushdieExplains: It is now a statistical certainty that Delhi has more eve-teasers than Congress voters
Today, Delhi is giving BJP a roast. Chetan Bhagat.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 1:20 AM
Big Tsunami. Also BIG EXPECTATIONS.
Now all focus will shift from Modi to Kejri, and a never-ending media circus will start. Really hope both of them work together to create a long lasting PM-CM partnership for the betterment of India, starting with the betterment of Delhi.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 1:36 AM
Next good chance for AAP is in Punjab but it is still couple of years from now. If Congress doesn’t not do something drastic, most of its votes are going AAP way.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 2:39 AM
Congress is practically finished. Dynastic politics have been summarily rejected in all the elections since Dec 2013. Kicking out the Gandhi parivar is the first thing Congress needs to do in order to reverse their fortunes. Second, come back to earth and work for common people. But if they did the above two, they automatically become another AAP.
Same holds true for every other non-performing party out there. The JD/SP/TMC etc will make a monumental mistake if they think that the AAP victory is a repudiation of only the BJP. The BJP is the only credible opposition in WBengal, Bihar, UP etc. Unless an AAP asserts itself in those states, their junta will bring BJP to power in the coming elections, . Further, AAP will make a big mistake if they once again ditch Delhi and start wasting their energy in those states. AAP now needs to give a full five years to Delhi, and develop it into a model state/city for the entire nation. Then they can replicate the model all over the country.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 6:22 AM
67 seats is absolutely stunning! One of the most incredible political results I’ve seen and given Kejrival’s resignation after 49 days one of the most incredible turnarounds.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 6:42 AM
Congress zero and BJP three. Hahaha!
But something is baffling the way voters vote. When they were fed up with Congress, they turned to BJP in a massive way. When they didn’t find BJP that attractive enough, they went for AAP. When they are disillusioned once again, what will happen? Will it be Congress, BJP or splinter groups? It is like aaj bhindi, kal aaloo, parso gobi.
Hope AAP delivers and people wont look for another option so soon until incumbency takes its toll.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 7:05 AM
Sanjana: I don’t think the voters can be said to be disillusioned with the BJP: that IS how the media might be spinning it, but what has happened IMO is that the BJP share has remained intact (it’s only down ~1% according to NDTV), but the Congress and other-party shares has all gravitated to AAP in Delhi, leaving it with a stunning 54% of the vote (it’s almost unheard of for one party to poll this well in India; even the BJP in Gujarat or the Left in West Bengal never achieved this vote percentage). i.e. Rather than showing evaporation of the BJP vote base, it shows that a counter-consolidation around AAP has taken place in Delhi.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 7:12 AM
No, Qalandar…the BJP’s share is down by 13% from the 2014 LS polls held in Delhi. This despite the wealth, muscle power and the whole political machinery that was used to mobilize voters in this election. 120 MPs, more than 200 political rallies and the PM shouting from the rooftops resulted in 3 elected MLAs for the BJP!
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 7:13 AM
Saket: I was referring to the vote share versus the BJP’s vote share in the 2013 Delhi assembly elections…
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 7:18 AM
True, in 2013, all 3 parties had roughly equal voteshares of around 30%.
In the Lok Sabha elections, BJP gained 12% from the Congress voteshare. This time, the AAP gained 20% from the Congress voteshare. Both times the gainer party swept the elections.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 7:17 AM
Like footfall theory?
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 7:22 AM
For me AAP’s vote share is what is truly remarkable: seats don’t tell the whole story in an often fragmented polity like India (e.g. with 30-ish% of the vote you typically can form a government in UP, and many other states; with 40% of the vote you have a landslide; the BJP won 50ish% in Gujarat in the last state elections, and in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls won ~32% of the vote, and 39+% of the vote in seats that it contested, but well over half the seats), but to get over 50% of the popular vote is a striking result.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 7:36 AM
I think if vote share is taken into consideration even with single digit seats, BJP can get leader of opposition post which they denied to the UPA. See how fate changes!
There was a slogan Congress mukth Bharat.
Now NCP coined BJP mukth Bharat. Or it will be more appropriate to substitute Bharat with Delhi.
LikeLike
February 10, 2015 at 6:29 AM
KEJRIWALL ‘RAPES’ BJP/CONG IN DELHI!!
LikeLike
February 18, 2015 at 6:23 AM
Meanwhile, the NYT and Reza Aslan have finally passed Modi and his government with some ‘colors’. Theft becomes religious extremism in NYT…
Lekin bade bade liberal newspapers mein, aisi choti choti ‘bias’ chalte rehete hain…
http://m.firstpost.com/india/crying-wolf-narrative-delhi-church-attacks-flies-face-facts-2101105.html
LikeLike
February 18, 2015 at 6:44 AM
after the burning of a church and the vandalizing of four more just in Delhi over the span of a few months (I won’t get into what’s happen under the radar in places like Chattisgarh where for example and in addition to property damage of the same sort there is pressure in certain places to drop the word ‘Father’ and to use ‘Acharya’ instead) I wonder why anyone would think there’s anything strange going on! But it’s not about the NYT. I think this is one of the factors that contributed to making the Delhi result as total as it was for the other side. People sometimes don’t like it when I say it but there’s no majority in the Indian electorate for this kind of politics. Not just the Church stuff but all the garbage statements we’ve been hearing for months. This certainly wasn’t what the BJP was elected on. The vast bulk of the Indian electorate is still socially liberal though it can go to the Right from time to time if it’s about a certain economic nationalism and so forth. This is what the BJP ran on and won (at least with voters that wouldn’t normally be inclined to vote this way). The Delhi result might offer course correction for them in this sense. Certainly Modi has read the signs. He himself did not think this was just a theft which is why he summoned the chief of police after this incident. Now maybe it’s just a theft but after those other incidents it raises suspicions and justly. In any case Modi has found it necessary to respond where he didn’t after scores of incidents (also referring to his speech yesterday). Other than the Delhi election there’s nothing else that has happened in between!
LikeLike
February 18, 2015 at 8:15 AM
Jab india may hoi toh communalism, jab Washington state mai hoi toh vandalism
“Hindu temple vandalized in Washington State ”
http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/hindu-temple-vandalized-in-washington-state-115021700171_1.html
LikeLike
February 18, 2015 at 8:46 AM
this will assuredly be classified as a hate crime in fairly short order. Secondly whatever is or isn’t happening in the US it’s laughable to compare contemporary US with contemporary India in this regard. As for your other link this has been standard BJP rhetoric for months now. The Delhi result is there for everyone to see. Yesterday they also got mauled in two Bengal by-elections, a state where they’ve been making such a huge push. The PM himself has made a ‘Nehruvian’ speech (imagine!) to the Christian forum yesterday. Fortunately for India he’s a better politician than his supporters. Being a fanatic is one thing, winning elections another!
Someone like Arnab Goswami has been stirring up hysteria on what’s going on in the US. When MNIK depicted the US a certain way that was bull (even in the wake of 9/11 and despite some excessive incidents it wasn’t the way the film pretends it was), and now when this kind of stuff comes up, though it’s inexcusable (in the Alabama Sureshbhai Patel case not only is it appalling but the State is more or less burying everything in significant ways), and though Indians have suddenly woken up to this problem when they weren’t at all bothered when blacks were at the receiving end for so long (and still are), and though it is absolutely important to keep the bar high for the US, all of this still does not mean that there’s any comparison with India’s atrocious record in terms of how the police behave, what political parties do to stir up trouble, how riots and pogroms go unpunished, etc etc. The kind of thing that is being pointed out in the US probably happens hourly in India! One should of course condemn this sort of thing anywhere but this sanctimonious stuff coming from the likes of Arnab Goswami is just rabble-rousing and little more. All the Indian-Americans on his show themselves think his narrative is nonsense and I think all of us who live in the US know this (including some in the heart of the South!). So let’s be a little honest about all this.
LikeLike
February 18, 2015 at 12:29 PM
Arnab is the ultimate patriot. Or he considers himself so.
Arnab does not talk. He shouts.
Arnab makes Timesnow an avoidable channel and its better to turn to other news channels where there is less noise pollution.
Thunderstorms are things of the past. When Arnab thunders, it is like world is coming to an end.
He should be in parliament. He will be making monologues.
The ultimate shouter.
LikeLike
February 18, 2015 at 8:22 AM
“Beware of those branding all acts of vandalism as communal”
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/randomaccess/beware-of-those-branding-all-acts-of-vandalism-as-communal/
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 9:57 AM
Obama on Modi for Time’s 100:
http://time.com/3823155/narendra-modi-2015-time-100/
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 10:39 AM
Wah Narendra Wah!!!
Aside- Adarsh Liberals wondering – Yeh kya kiya President Obama jee sir !! lol
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 10:42 AM
No they’re actually wondering when Modiji will have tea with Masarat Alam..
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 10:46 AM
I know right..
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 10:48 AM
on another note.. ha!
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 10:50 AM
Ya this was really funny…….
clearly Aaj Kal- Burey Din for Adarsh Liberals …lol
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 10:52 AM
good days for the Bose family though.. they’re all on TV! And many of them have the most Anglicized accents possible. Panditji would have approved!
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 10:56 AM
Ha Ha, Personally I don’t think it reflects badly on Nehru.
There are many more much severe things that he did which for which he should be held accountable rather than snooping .
LikeLike
April 16, 2015 at 11:07 AM
Narendra Modi often quotes Swami Vivekananda in his speeches.
In Toronto on Wednesday, April 15, the prime minister cited a line from Kavi Pradeep. Yup, the poet who wrote the song that made one of his predecessors weep when Lata Mangeshkar sang that song after the 1962 war with China.
But it was not Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon, whose anniversary Modi commemorated in Mumbai last year that the PM mentioned.
It was a line from the song Dekh Tere Sansar Ki Haalat from the 1954 Hindi film Nastik: Kitna Badal Gaya Insaan.
‘There was a time when a bank official won’t even look up from his work when you went to the bank. Insaan badal gaya, bank wale bhi badle (Humans have changed and so have the bank officials),’ Modi said, referencing the song.
http://www.rediff.com/movies/report/the-famous-song-modi-cited-in-toronto/20150416.htm
LikeLike
April 18, 2015 at 4:10 PM
With Love From Barack Obama, a ‘Chadar’ for Ajmer Sharif
“It’s a historic day and a welcome moment. It’s the first gesture of extending spiritual greetings of peace to the Ajmer Dargah Sharif from a non-South Asian country’s head of state,” a pleased Haji Chishty, the 27th descendant of the saint, said while on a visit here for a function.
LikeLike
April 18, 2015 at 9:43 PM
Hillary has set precedent to contest for Presidentship and Michelle may also follow her example after a few years.
LikeLike
May 7, 2015 at 10:05 AM
TIME: As we are heading to the US political campaign, a lot of America’s political leaders are talking about the role that their faith plays and their views of themselves as leaders. Could you talk a little about what your faith of Hinduism means to you as India’s leader?
Modi: Religion and faith are very personal matters. So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the Constitution of India.
In fact, if I look at the definition of Hinduism, the Supreme Court of India has given a beautiful definition; it says that Hinduism is not a religion, it is actually a way of life.
If one looks at my own belief, I think I have grown up with these values which I mentioned earlier, that religion is a way of life. We also say ‘Vasudhaiv Kutumbkam’ – the entire world is one family, and respect for all religions. Those are the values I have grown up with.
Essentially the crux of Indian philosophy, the Hindu philosophy, is that all should be happy, all should be healthy, all should live life to the fullest. It is not something that is specific to a particular religion, or to a particular sect. It’s a philosophy, it’s a way of life which encompasses all societies.
And Hinduism is a religion with immense depth and vast diversity. For example, the one who does idol worship is a Hindu and one who hates idol worship can also be a Hindu.
TIME: Moving on to the US, the US-India relationship, President Obama has spoken very highly of you including on the Time 100 very recently. As you go transforming India, transforming the government as you say, how do you think the US should see you – as a partner, as an economic competitor? Would “Make in India” for example mean that jobs from the US would come here? So, the debate that we had on the service sector, would that not switch to manufacturing sector? How should the US see you?
Modi: I am extremely grateful to President Obama for the thoughtful and generous manner in which he has described me. What he has written in TIME magazine recently, I am also very grateful to him.
If I have to describe the India-US relationship in a single word, I will say we are natural allies. I think the relationship between India and US, and the two countries in themselves, have played an enormously important role and continue to play an important role in strengthening democratic values all over the world.
What should the India-US relationship be, what India can do for the US, what the US can do for India, I think that is a rather limited point of view to take. I think the way we should look at it is what India and the US can together do for the world. That is the perspective in which we approach our relationship with the United States.
LikeLike
May 7, 2015 at 10:13 AM
http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-government-report-critical-of-ghar-wapsi-campaign-759556
LikeLike
May 7, 2015 at 10:58 AM
Not sure what’s the point here..we are going to have Obama and ilk talk of citizenship and deport more Mexicans than even that almost red-neck Bush did..We are going to have morons like Ted Cruz who is in auto-pilot mode to set-up a clash of ‘civilizations’ with Iran and blast it out of the world map..We will have some lunatic BJPites talk of Hindu women mass-producing ‘boys’ with Baba Ramdev’s putrajeevak to counter Muslims’ ‘surge’ in population in India..
Apart from the fact that the US obvioulsy has better ‘correctional’ measures for systemic societal ills, I really don’t see an earth-shattering difference here..
We will have Obama singing paens to Modi in NYT and TIME and Nussbaum and Pankaj Mishra and the goddess of gas-bag writing Arundhati coming up with Outlook ejaculated essays on Modi’s Hitler-istic agenda..
We can go in in circles…
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/06/americas_ugly_whitesplaining_epidemic_baltimore_freddie_gray_and_the_medias_utter_cluelessness/
LikeLike
June 19, 2015 at 1:58 AM
LikeLike
June 19, 2015 at 2:16 PM
Thanks AnJo…. this should be great viewing , both of them are leaders and veterans in journalism,
LikeLike
June 22, 2015 at 4:04 AM
Also check out how fraudulently Nehru spoke about ARTICLE 370’s insertion from 35:00 mark in the above video..
LikeLike
June 22, 2015 at 1:54 PM
I saw both the videos . was a pleasure listening to Shourie as always , and yes I did like his Thapar interview as well ( before someone point me to that , LOL )
LikeLike
June 19, 2015 at 2:28 PM
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/gyhfub/democalypse-2016—white-house-don
LikeLike
July 7, 2015 at 12:41 PM
LOL.. they are back at it again..guess not much difference between the desi and Amreeki politicians..except for suit-boot mein aaya obama and miscellaneous…
http://www.rediff.com/business/report/tech-why-indian-it-firms-may-face-bigger-us-visa-hurdle-this-year/20150629.htm
LikeLike