2019 General Elections News and Discussion

[Singha]

A hinduphobic crude attempt to marry rakta charitra and gully boy by adding all symbols and sounds hindus consider holy

[disha]

No need to give much air time to Ribeiro. He is retired and is entitled to his opinions. He is almost 90 years old.

Question is who is he writing for?

Is it the US State Dept. Is US State Dept is activating its assets? For example Kancha Illaiah has been called an intellectual and is being fete'd.

[Suraj]

Please make copies of the video and screenshots and use them well. Things are unraveling fast enough that these are ‘you just dropped the World Cup, mate’ Steve Waugh like moments .

Such ads mocking the piety of a pious people suggests the INC camp have been entirely taken over by their urban naxal brigade and the shrewder political types have lost control of their internal narrative .

[UlanBatori]

No need to give much air time to Ribeiro. He is retired and is entitled to his opinions. He is almost 90 years old.
Question is who is he writing for?
Is it the US State Dept. Is US State Dept is activating its assets? For example Kancha Illaiah has been called an intellectual and is being fete'd.

Nothing Yoo Ess. This came on WhatsApp sewage feed from relatives. With caveat that it was "for the younger generation who may not be aware" of all the great things done by INC over the past 60+ years. (that was to pre-empt the missiles..)

OTOH the great Indian Nationalists of India-Abored are at their backstabbing meanest, AGAIN. There needs to be a real instructive jhapad, I have seen just too much from these sh1ts.

[pandyan]

Don't want to sound melodramatic but curse of an innocent woman brings down empires.

Whole epic of Silippadikaram is about how the sea rose up to fulfill Kannagi's curse on Madurai.

To chide Sadvi Pragya is to deny our culture and heritage.

+1. small correction saar...Kannagi's wrath/curse burnt madurai

[Primus]

Times Now interview of NM live now on you tube.

For me the most poignant moment in this entire interview was when NaMo is pouring the tea for the journalists and says 'Ismein meri mastery hai' with a laugh. In one sentence he reveals his humility and his character. What a man! Proud to be an Indian with a leader like this.

Around 8.44 into the video I believe.

[vsunder]

^^^ Bhagawathi in Kerala is none other than Kannagi. The principal Bhagavathi temple is at Koganallur where Kannagi is supposed to have attained salvation, or at least the realization that she was an incarnation of Bhadrakali.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodungall ... thy_Temple

Bhagavathi temples are found all over Kerala and Bhagavathi worship is done in most communities with ceremonies where someone gets possessed and through the so-called oracle she informs the family paying for the elaborate ritual of deficiencies in their devotion and her grace. These are elaborate and expensive rituals lasting over some days. A few of these ceremonies are on youtube

More or less a similar story exists in Dakshin Kannada: the Siri myth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Siri

Siri too has been elevated to the status of a goddess all over Coastal Karnataka, with an elaborate possession ritual. Siri worship transcends across so-called caste lines.

The finest article written in English documenting the Siri ritual is by Peter Klaus, former professor of anthroplogy at Cal. State University, Hayward. Peter was a good friend of mine and did yeoman work documenting folklore in numerous field trips to Dakshin Kannada and in bringing to the attention of people world wide the rich culture to be found in coastal Karnataka. To his great credit he was fluent in Tulu and collected many songs sung by women when planting paddy, where the Siri story and other stories are sung to make the work go lighter. An extremely modest and soft spoken man, I recall pleasantly the many times I met him in Fall 1987, when I was at Berkeley at the MSRI. He made several trips to see me from a busy schedule as chairman of the Anthropology deptt. at Cal. State, Hayward, and the many lunches we had together where he would patiently explain and regale me with stories of bygone times. He passed away in Dec 2018. He wrote many papers and books, including a collection of folk tales from all over India. This is his paper on the Siri myth

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3773206?se ... b_contents


The collection of Folk tales:

https://www.amazon.com/Folktales-India- ... 0226040836

His obituary:

https://www.newskarnataka.com/mangalore ... is-no-more

[ramana]

Ten years ago these tweets would be considered CT and members warned and banned!

https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/sta ... 01346?s=19

[sidp]

Ten years ago these tweets would be considered CT and members warned and banned!

https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/sta ... 01346?s=19

One small man Tukaram spoiled the grandeur plans of many bigwigs. India is forever indebted to him. His sacrifice to catch Kasab alive is a watershed moment in our history.

[ramana]

We should lobby for his being awarded Ashoka Chakra.

[V_Raman]

Modi's report card in his own words, man speaks extempore better than anyone I know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4u_OgExD5o

NaMo is a combination of Cliesthenes, Hober Mallow, and Octavian for India!

[JE Menon]

Hello people,

I've got an article out on Opindia which looks at the parallel with the emergence/spread of Christianity in Europe and comparing it with the situation in India today as we head into a crucial election from an historic perspective. There are many underlying currents which people will sense and recognise while reading the article, while I have not explicitly stated them. That was my intention, to make people think.

I know it is tacky to ask for tweeting, facebooking, and spreading by any means necessary within your networks, but I'm still asking because I truly believe that we are at a civilizational inflextion point. So please read it, and please spread it.

https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/indias- ... ilisation/

[negi]

^ Brave piece , well written . Now I am no grammar nazi and don't mind pingrezi when written with disdain it deserves but yours is a formal piece you might want to fix some typos 'Although the people of the Dharmic civilization has been at similar' .

[nandakumar]

Hello people,

I've got an article out on Opindia which looks at the parallel with the emergence/spread of Christianity in Europe and comparing it with the situation in India today as we head into a crucial election from an historic perspective. There are many underlying currents which people will sense and recognise while reading the article, while I have not explicitly stated them. That was my intention, to make people think.

I know it is tacky to ask for tweeting, facebooking, and spreading by any means necessary within your networks, but I'm still asking because I truly believe that we are at a civilizational inflextion point. So please read it, and please spread it.

https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/indias- ... ilisation/

I remember the sign you have mentioned in the opening para. It also happens to be the Madras Christian College insignia. It is not quite the cross. It is shaped more like an iron piece used to anchor ships in berth. Something like the image in the link below.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=ht ... 5ykl5UDPdM

[Mukesh.Kumar]

Hello people,

I've got an article out on Opindia which looks at the parallel with the emergence/spread of Christianity in Europe and comparing it with the situation in India today as we head into a crucial election from an historic perspective. There are many underlying currents which people will sense and recognise while reading the article, while I have not explicitly stated them. That was my intention, to make people think.

I know it is tacky to ask for tweeting, facebooking, and spreading by any means necessary within your networks, but I'm still asking because I truly believe that we are at a civilizational inflextion point. So please read it, and please spread it.

https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/indias- ... ilisation/

Jai sir, great article. Thought provoking. Something all of us think about but because of our social and educational conditioning, we are all afraid to speak out openly. At least this will increase the momentum of our opening our eyes.

Sharing it. Thank you sir.

[Mukesh.Kumar]

Dr Praveen Patil
@5Forty3
Stating this purely on numbers.
Despite all the reports of rigging, booth capturing and intimidation tactics by TMC

BJP has swept the first 2 phases of Bengal. Each and every seat, by considerable margin! #BOOM

(Shyama Prasad Mukherjee must be smiling somewhere)

Mukesh.Kumar Ji :

Sir i don't know. When i see the kind of reports being shown on TV of both capturing in WB.


Lets forget WB. BJP will have top win it from rest of country.

Mukesh.Kumar Ji :
Pardon me - please - for my correcting the URL Link.

Thanks in Advance

Cheers

Thank you sir. Was typing from the phone. Did not see it till much later.

[chetak]

No need to give much air time to Ribeiro. He is retired and is entitled to his opinions. He is almost 90 years old.

Question is who is he writing for?

Is it the US State Dept. Is US State Dept is activating its assets? For example Kancha Illaiah has been called an intellectual and is being fete'd.

don't know why folks are fooled by communal bigots like ribeiro and another cop in dilli who mouths off in the same way.

He and others of his ilk reaped benefits by their silence during their service but their true colors are what you see before you now.

They were always like this.

FFNGOs are behind the scene puppeteers in this kind of propaganda by high profile and gullible bigots and they usually have official backing, especially in the US and europe. Two ex IN chiefs are also among other such seasonal bigoted meṇḍaks (मेंडक) who chirp on FFNGO commands and benefit from the chirping.

[Manish_Sharma]

Unfortunate are those who aren't listening to Yugpurush Modi's BADMER, RAJASTHAN Bhaashan.

1.) Congi supported karnataka CM says hungry poor youth go to army. I was celebrating Deepawali in Himalayan with soldiers an aged Sainik Sardar ji with white beard came to me Breaking discipline and said "saheb I have a request , I am about to retire in few months, so please send me to the most hottest part of border, I dont want to retire just like this or send me to the most dangerous terrorist place, I want to do more before retiring...
Arrey Sainiks don't join for roti But to die for matrubhumi.... what's the aukaat of CM in front of them, what's the even Prime Minister in front of that? Nothing "

2. Tejas was kept in cold storage for many years deliberately by Congis, we revived its production, best rifle in the world will be produced in Desh. Bulletproof jackets were not given to army by congis, we are producing it and supplying to army.

PLEASE PLEASE LISTEN AND SPREAD.

[JE Menon]

>>Now I am no grammar nazi and don't mind pingrezi when written with disdain it deserves but yours is a formal piece you might want to fix some typos 'Although the people of the Dharmic civilization has been at similar' .

Thanks for the kind words, and for pointing out the grammatical error. I can't change it myself unfortunately, as it is not a "myvoice" piece, but an Opindia mainsite article. I will try and get Opindia to do it.

[Nishn]

Objections surfacing on RG from Waynad, Kerala too now re. his citizenship, qualification, his former company Back Ops Ltd in the UK and his name. He's had Vinci in his last name. His Doctorate and other foreign qualifications are supposedly under Rahul Vinci. The boy's got to sort this out fairly soon or else the INC President will be benched for this game.

[KL Dubey]

Phase 3 coming up. Several things of interest on the "Super Tuesday" (115 seats):

- how strongholds like GJ and North KA are doing

- how are tried and tested alliances working in MH and BH

- will lotus bloom in KL, and in how many places

- will the momentum continue in WB and OR

- northeast polling will be complete, what is the overall picture in these 25 seats

[JE Menon]

>>I remember the sign you have mentioned in the opening para. It also happens to be the Madras Christian College insignia. It is not quite the cross. It is shaped more like an iron piece used to anchor ships in berth.

Thanks for noticing that point boss. In fact, I know exactly what the symbol was - just wanted to not get people distracted. It was the Chi Ro (pronounced "He Row"). These are the symbols of the Greek alphabet which stand for "X" (pronounced He) and "R" pronounced Row. These, in Greek, are the first two letters of the name Christos (from which Christ is derived). Christos means in Greek the anointed one. He was called that because Jesus, a Jew, proclaimed himself the messiah as many Jewish apocalyptic figures had done in his time and before him. The word "messiah" in Hebrew, is translated precisely as Christos in Greek. And that is why he is known as Christ now, which basically derives straight from the Hebrew word messiah into English as Christ, via Greek.

Note, however, that he was also known widely as Messiah, a Hebrew word, which got corrupted in its travels and is widely used in the sub-continent as "Masih" - a common surname, or even first name in many cases, for Christians on the Indian-subcontinent. Now, many of these people only had a tradition of one name in the past, or were what are now referred to as "Dalits" or "Lower Castes" and they were only referred to by one name. Their adoption of Masih as a surname was something of a small social rebellion, I suspect, plus an addition of legitimacy within the group of early converts in the sub-continent.

The actual Chi Ro sign is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Rho

Further discussions on this may continue in the The impact of Christianity and Evangelism thread...in order to not disrupt the election festival.

[KL Dubey]

Objections surfacing on RG from Waynad, Kerala too now re. his citizenship, qualification, his former company Back Ops Ltd in the UK and his name. He's had Vinci in his last name. His Doctorate and other foreign qualifications are supposedly under Rahul Vinci. The boy's got to sort this out fairly soon or else the INC President will be benched for this game.

https://zeenews.india.com/lok-sabha-gen ... 97523.html

It seems the NDA candidate in Wayanad (from the BDJS) has filed a formal complaint with EC. This becomes very interesting now, since Wayanad is polling on Apr 23 and it looks like the electoral officer must take an immediate decision.

Amit Shah is playing every card at the right time and with full force!

[sanjayc]

Objections surfacing on RG from Waynad, Kerala too now re. his citizenship, qualification, his former company Back Ops Ltd in the UK and his name. He's had Vinci in his last name. His Doctorate and other foreign qualifications are supposedly under Rahul Vinci. The boy's got to sort this out fairly soon or else the INC President will be benched for this game.

Looks like it is common for children of VIPs in Western universities to be given new names for security purposes

[Lilo]

Raul Vinci is not the issue his citizenship is the issue - Rahul will claim that he changed his name in the 90's during his study in UK due to the threat surrounding him after Rajiv's death as was being spun in this rag Telegraph
https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/br ... wRiN2KSw49

Anyway why we need to sort this out ?
Let it hang & Rahul ji must contest from both seats with that confusion over his citizenship hanging over his head.

It will be a tremendous loss to the nation if Rahul ji is divested off the Congress president status as a fallout from this citizenship row.

[KL Dubey]

Anyway why we need to sort this out ? Let it hang & Rahul ji must contest from both seats with that confusion over his citizenship hanging over his head.It will be a tremendous loss to the nation if Rahul ji is divested off the Congress president status as a fallout from this citizenship row.

While that may or may not be true, the complaints are already with the EC now. Furthermore, Dr. Swamy is on this, and is unlikely to let go.

Subramanian Swamy
‏
Verified account

@Swamy39

The real question for tomorrow is if a Returning Officer will have the nerve to reject Buddhu’s nomination form. Of course there will a an election petition if he does not

[schinnas]

If Pappu gets disqualified, it would be spun as Modi pasand EC doing injustice to Pappu and many gullible will fall for it thanks to durbari media.

It's best that he contest the elections with questions raised over his commitment to India and he loses Amethi.

[chetak]

If Pappu gets disqualified, it would be spun as Modi pasand EC doing injustice to Pappu and many gullible will fall for it thanks to durbari media.

It's best that he contest the elections with questions raised over his commitment to India and he loses Amethi.

The issue was raised in some ethics or privileges committee in parliament and pappu refused to clarify and LKA choose not to follow it up for reasons best known to himself.

let pappu answer now along with the proof.

was the relentless hounding of modi by the congis, their lapdog presstitutes and the venal lootyens goondas for over a decade on the godhra issue, and even after the SC acquited him of all charges, not much worse than this??

Have people forgotten so quickly?? was that justified??

[UlanBatori]

Hello people,
I've got an article out on Opindia which looks at the parallel with the emergence/spread of Christianity in Europe and comparing it with the situation in India today as we head into a crucial election from an historic perspective. There are many underlying currents which people will sense and recognise while reading the article, while I have not explicitly stated them. That was my intention, to make people think.
I know it is tacky to ask for tweeting, facebooking, and spreading by any means necessary within your networks, but I'm still asking because I truly believe that we are at a civilizational inflextion point. So please read it, and please spread it.
https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/indias- ... ilisation/

Wow!

[ragupta]

Raul Vinci is not the issue his citizenship is the issue - Rahul will claim that he changed his name in the 90's during his study in UK due to the threat surrounding him after Rajiv's death as was being spun in this rag Telegraph
https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/br ... wRiN2KSw49

Anyway why we need to sort this out ?
Let it hang & Rahul ji must contest from both seats with that confusion over his citizenship hanging over his head.

It will be a tremendous loss to the nation if Rahul ji is divested off the Congress president status as a fallout from this citizenship row.

I disagree, he should join a circus or a comedy show, no loss of entertainment for Indians.

[Manish_Sharma]

Raul Vinci is not the issue his citizenship is the issue - ....

My deep conspiracy theory is that staring on inevitable defeat, familia itself is behind raising of this issue...

Remember on 16 May 2014 , Manmohan-Sonia govt defeated by Modi results out 3 days back. Suddenly SuSw raised the issue of priyanka having multiple DIN numbers, immediately MMS govt put a token penalty on her and matter was finished. If SuSw was really with BJP and against Familia and Congis , shouldn't he have waited another 10 days until Modi had taken Shapath? I think all the attack susw does against familia is a controlled explosion to prevent any harm coming to familia legally.

[Mukhi]

There is a chance SuSw is a Jaichand as he has done it to ABVP government.

But, I had a personal encounter with someone, an old gentlemen ans his daughter (cant remember names) at the Air India Lounge in Delhi, who knew him personally. Had 4 hour wait so we talked at length and the person vouched for SuSw for all anti Gandhi Family as genuine effort. Ever since, has followed him closely.

I must say, there are times where things he does makes no sense or raises doubt in my mind about his loyalty. And I also think, it’s also possible that Modi / Shah duo has kept him in check pretty well.

All and all, SuSw has proven helpful to India and Hinduism more then anything else.

[Prem Kumar]

Dr. Swamy raised the Raul Vinci citizenship issue at least 5 years ago. Its not an election gimmick. LKA is sitting on it because he is pissed with Modi for not making him President (Modi let the inquiry against LKA continue on the Babri demolition case).

Am happy that Amit Shah and Modi at least played that card now. The average junta wouldn't have known about Raul's crookery otherwise

[Manish_Sharma]

Had 4 hour wait so we talked at length and the person vouched for SuSw for all anti Gandhi Family as genuine effort.

Mukhi ji I used to be a big supporter of SuSw myself.

But my eyes were opened by Lilo Ji's posts on bharatganrajya.com, regarding how nehrus (moti & jawahar) were made hero by british by giving huge coverage to their cases.... for freedom fighters, same way deepak sai & susw are being made heroes, while BJP & RSS villains. I urge you to read them, they are big eye openers.

[JE Menon]

Wow!

Thanks UB, it appears you have not received my email earlier (than the post). Do spread it on all UBNN channels.

[chetak]

This is why it is so very important that Modi comes back for the second term

BTW, everything that folks at BRF have been saying for years is being lucidly corroborated by this gentleman who taught for twenty years at the LSE.



The unravelling of India

The unravelling of India

India is descending rapidly towards a denouement that will end its two-generation old self- congratulatory superficial phase of domestic mismanagement, by a largely clueless domestic elite.

Gautam Sen, 20-04-2019

“Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism”

Sri Aurobindo

Introduction

Countries and empires unravel all the time. The reasons why they do are varied and fascinating but history is replete with the reality of grand political orders and empires disintegrating. The mighty Romans, the Persians, the Ottomans and the British empires all collapsed due to long term processes of erosion and myriad contingent factors that accompanied their eventual downfall. Now, even one of the most formidable of them, the mighty British empire, is threatened with internal implosion in the final redoubt of territories that the English first conquered and absorbed, namely, Ireland and Scotland.

In recent times, the Soviet empire of satellites collapsed in chaos, Russia itself now threatened with humiliating subordination to the victorious Western powers. It is cornered by deadly NATO missile encampments on its western border and reduced to seeking succour from an imploding Jihadi state in order to secure its eastern perimeter. The end of Russia’s superpower status has prompted a renewed Western scramble to subdue areas of the world that the Cold war stalemate allowed to function in a form of quasi self-rule. The immediate factors that account for a specific intervention are unimportant, but the underlying motivation is unambiguous. It is mostly about security calculations and access to resources though the ease of seizing control of countries ruled by weak regimes makes the temptation irresistible, many in Africa prime examples of the predicament.

In the particular case of Venezuela, a monumentally incompetent populist regime ensured that its vast oil resources would attract the attention of its imperious powerful neighbour and that dismal drama is unfolding duly. The Middle East, a theatre of powerful Cold War rivalries, has prompted bloody and unforgiving imperial intervention at unconscionable human cost. Alegria was secured two decades ago by resort to cynical subterfuge that facilitated mass slaughter, blamed on Islamic radicalism when its major sponsor was the comprador regime. When such a regime has outlived its capacity to serve foreign masters and its own plundering has bankrupted the country, popular revolts against it are smartly finessed to implant a renewed comprador relationship. Egypt is a case study of the process and Libya a particularly egregious example of competition for spoils as well among the foreign interests themselves, with France, as usual, demonstrating new levels of shameless venality to gain a place for itself in the sun.

India’s unfolding predicament

China remains immune to such a fate, for the present, though potential economic crisis and consequent internal political upheaval may well create opportunities for foreign intervention. By contrast, India is descending rapidly towards a denouement that will end its two-generation old self- congratulatory superficial phase of domestic mismanagement, by a largely clueless domestic elite. A significant aspect of the unfolding drama that will likely end in the formal political break-up of the Indian Union, in its present form, is the indifference to the situation of a self-satisfied political and bureaucratic elite. Ordinary citizens are also not conscious because no effort has been made to mobilise them by an elite oblivious to the peril that could liquidate their country, possibly within two generations. As an aside, it may be noted that the intellectual elite of India is irrelevant because state patronage has ensured its mediocrity and most think-tanks are retirement homes for self-serving bureaucrats and senior armed forces’ officers. The most prominent and best-funded among the latter are financed by international foundations with close ties to foreign chancelleries and intelligence agencies. And the Indian media has already been unashamedly subverted by foreign interests to accelerate India’s liquidation.

The critical issue of identity informs the ability of a national political elite to govern the nation and maintain its political autonomy. It is a sense of collective and individual self-identity as the stakeholders of nationhood that is vital. And that derives from a multiplicity of complex socio-political processes that unite the diverse constituents who comprise a large country like India. Do the elites of different parts of the country have an acute sense of a shared national destiny that overrides other sources of fidelity like region, language and religion? In the case of India, there is considerable room for doubt and an equal conviction that any such sense of collective identity and destiny are ebbing in its contemporary political elites. The imperatives of competition for political power have produced an inexorable spiral of divisions that accentuates the lowest common denominator of parochialism to achieve political power and the considerable loaves and fishes of office that Indian political life offers. And each regional political grouping mines deeper into the well springs of parochial loathing of the Other to outwit its rivals and incite the local population further with resentments.

A corollary of the dire situation above is the succumbing of the nerve centres of national governance to instrumental foreign intervention that has instilled divided loyalties within India’s bureaucratic and political elite. Their vulnerability to cultural and intellectual brainwashing is accompanied by an even more dangerous yielding to lucrative opportunities abroad. Virtually no segment of the higher reaches of India’s political and bureaucratic circles has escaped the temptation of foreign funding for the education of their offspring abroad. And the ownership of US green cards by relatives and queues for them of large segments of the same political and bureaucratic cohort amounts to personal capitulation to foreign cajoleries. The situation transcends political divides in India despite superficial appearances to the contrary of supposed nationalist loyalties.

Situation on ground zero

India is also an incredibly porous society despite all the earnest talk of the reach of government security agencies, whose intensity of focus is intermittent rather than systematic. National agencies also spend disproportionate effort and resources catering to the whims of the political class, spying on their opponents while a particular dispensation is in power and ensuring their personal comfort and security. In addition, Indian political parties are infiltrated by foreign intelligence agencies on a shocking scale, some pretty much funded and directed by hostile countries abroad. And the principal platform for national entertainment, its film industry, is deracine on a scale that only highlights the moral bankruptcy of a nation which has allowed itself to become a willing accomplice to emotional enslavement by its historic tormentors.

In the past two decades of globalisation, India has opened itself to rampant subversion owing to significantly increased foreign consular footprint, apt to meddle without hindrance or let. It is also a given that foreign correspondents are almost without exception intelligence assets of their home country. Foreign-funded NGOs have become a dominant feature of Indian society as well, using their local agents to pursue goals inimical to the integrity of the country, with aggressive self-confidence. The Indian judiciary, including its highest levels, has become an eager handmaiden of this egregious intrusion into many aspects of national life. It responds with alacrity to the cynical intervention of hostile foreign-funded NGOs, often of evangelical provenance, impacting Indian society with brutal contempt. Apparently, India’s judiciary has been overawed by overweening intellectual violence originating abroad. The higher judiciary has been reduced to passing incoherent euphoric judicial homilies consonant with dismantling its own society, brick by brick. Alarmingly, an extraordinarily divisive piece of proposed legislation to impose judicial remedy on a whole raft of day-to-day human differences in society that will deepen divisions among Indians along numerous axes, contrived by an Oxford academic, was tabled in the Indian parliament by an especially suspect member.

The war of ideas

The intellectual and perceptual framework of Indian society, always fragile and largely colonial in its origin has lost the incipient post-independence desire to find an authentic voice located within itself and consistent with defined national goals. India’s dominant intellectual class has been pretty much absorbed into the global nexus of imperial dominion that unavoidably moulds its untermenschen collaborators. Almost without exception, India’s intellectual entrepreneurs abroad are unequivocally anchored in supposedly superior enlightened local values of Western societies in which they operate and make a living. Their estrangement with India is unfailingly consistent in their hostility towards it and articulates, in the final analysis, the interests of imperialist machinations. The ease with which a majority abandoned Leftist pretensions, once the Soviet experiment ended and the Chinese communist party exhibited all the textbook attributes of classical fascism, is astonishing. The intellectual entrepreneurs abroad quickly adopted biddable handwringing over human rights issues, soon followed by a descent into total moral and political degradation with apologetics for the historic Jihadi wary cry of ‘Islam in danger’!

Once the garb of felicitous language and aesthetic pretensions are shorn, what the arguments posited by them insist on is the unviability of India’s own allegedly irredeemable traditions and, as a corollary, an implied need to have a trafficked world-view imposed on it, forcibly if necessary. Tragically, India’s mediocre and insecure domestic intellectual life has been comprehensively poisoned by the outpouring of spleen from the portals of privileged academic institutions abroad, where this Indian-origin cohort enjoys the comforts of a very good life. These institutions abroad wield instruments of intellectual subversion and facilitate genocide by providing the rationale and justification for it (as they did recently over Iraq). Unfortunately, they can, in the bargain, also transform the life of a hapless native toiling in an obscure mofussil town by a single invitation to a seminar abroad. Yet, glitzy social science and humanities faculties abroad in institutions like Oxbridge, LSE, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and Chicago, are firmly integrated into the national purpose of their own societies, including its imperialist goals of domination and conquest.

India’s political failings

By and large, all Indian political parties have ignored the difficult task of nation building that requires mobilising the majority on the basis of values with which they can identify, their history, culture and traditions. On the contrary, these have always been assaulted mercilessly and continue to be derided and mocked by forces seeking the break-up of India, with the help of their myriad sepoys at home and abroad. The crucial dimension of this assault is to portray the entire history of the civilisation as the product of racist conquerors who created a false religious order to perpetuate themselves through caste primacy. As a result, the entire ancient canon and objects of worship are deemed repellent and the traditional projection of the struggle of every civilisation between the forces of evil and good is inverted. Thus, the divine Rama and Durga are denounced as tyrants and the objects of their divine antipathy portrayed as deserving veneration. Most of this abuse originates from evangelical sources, much practiced in the black arts of defamation and mass killings. Their domination of elite Indian education and the media has turned the egregious abuse into the legitimate common currency of discourse within Indian society. But it is the Indian state itself that has allowed the accelerating liquidation of the nation, over which it presides, to gather momentum through its own complicity in treasonous activity. The reason is not far to seek since there are immediate short-term advantages in ignoring such persistent assault.

Lacking a felt sense of common identity that would need to derive from their shared sense of identity as a people and their common struggles against invaders, Indians are impaled on a form of self-destructive selfhood that ensures and deepens both vertical fissures along caste lines and horizontal ones of region, language, etc. The seriousness of the situation seems to escape many Indians, preoccupied with daily life and a political and bureaucratic elite primarily concerned with its own survival and petty individual advancement. National policies and indeed, of late, constitutional propriety are in doubt, with much of the Northeast rejecting imperative policies and other states thwarting criminal investigations decreed by the highest legitimate authorities of the Indian Union. And a veritable tsunami of foreign infiltration, facilitated by regional political parties, has already changed the demography of West Bengal and Assam. Other parts of the country like J&K barely function as a part of the nation, with entire populations ethnically cleansed through violence and the perpetrators only held in check by a massive security presence. Inexplicably, the state at the centre appears willing to surrender the entire region to secession by itself sponsoring demographic transformation of the remaining part of the region that had escaped the worst of the violence sponsored by neighbouring Pakistan.

Modus vivendi of breaking India

A sense of the kind of break up that might overtake India can be inferred from the pattern of evangelist-sponsored menaces being repeated by domestic politicians themselves. The idea of a southern federation of Christian states seems to have penetrated the popular political imagination, occurring in the backdrop of the effective expulsion of the bulk of the Brahmin population from southern states like Tamil Nadu. And massive conversion to Christianity, which has spread openly along the entire Andhra coastal belt, portends serious consequences though the secession of the south is likely to be, in the first instance, a common goal of Islam and Christianity. A parallel phenomenon has also occurred in West Bengal with the decimation of the intellectual and literate middle class during several decades of supposed communist rule beholden to the Muslim peasantry and the mosques which can mobilise them to enforce their demands; and its toxic fallout is amply evident today. The weakening reach and authority of the centre is the historic phenomenon that threatens to disrupt the Indian Union, as it did Mughal India earlier and other dominant territorial rulers of the remote past.

Conclusion

One constant feature of foreign-inspired intervention against the Indian Union since independence has always been to attack and attempt to weaken central rule. Observers mesmerised by immediate political events and the cut-and-thrust of daily struggles are unable to grasp the sheer scale of foreign intervention to diminish central power and authority in India. Two episodes universally misunderstood in India illustrate this corporeal reality. The first is the Naxalite revolt that originated with debates over revisionism but was ultimately a reflection of the embittered Sino-Soviet dispute and their associated border clashes. By that time the US and China had become collaborators against the Soviet Union and Maoism became a pawn to disrupt a perceived revisionist Indian CPM, supposedly still dominated by pro-Soviet elements. This was common goal shared by China and the US, vastly reinforced by India’s invasion of East Pakistan in 1971 that provoked them both enormously and fuelled a desire to create havoc in the border state of West Bengal. The second episode was a US conspiracy to disrupt Mrs Indira Gandhi’s rule, as threatened by Henry Kissinger himself because of her intervention in East Pakistan, by strangling India’s rail transportation network; subsequently celebrated as some sort of heroic instance of civil disobedience! It had extraordinary echoes to the modus operandi used earlier by Henry Kissinger in 1973 to overthrow and murder Salvador Allende of Chile by organising a trucker’s strike. The declaration of the Indian Emergency by Mrs Indira Gandhi was mostly the outcome of entrapment, contributing to her own downfall and, ultimately, assassination. It had precipitated the adoption of oppressive autocratic policies that reinforced the downward spiral of India’s internal divisions.

Yet there are glimpses of a different India emerging, with a growing urban population more committed to the idea of nationhood, pragmatic in its interests and less parochial. They are imagining a nation fashioned by themselves, without any help from the political class or India’s educational system, often inspired by incomplete and imperfect animated discussion of heroic ideas over the Internet. Yet it is a race against time and which forces will prevail remains to be seen. On the one hand, powerful, well-resourced foreign agencies and their local collaborators perceive mounting opportunities to cleave the Indian Union into broken sovereignties, frequently facilitated by a passive or complicit Indian state. On the other, there is a subterranean, popular urbanised churning that is becoming inchoately loyal to the promise of a united and economically successful nation that also espouses some kind of cultural authenticity. The ongoing current national general elections of 2019 will be a major factor determining which of the two political currents will have the opportunity to consolidate and dictate the fate of an ancient civilisation fighting for its survival.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article.

Gautam Sen
Dr. Gautam Sen taught international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science for over two decades

[Ardeshir]

Hello people,

I've got an article out on Opindia which looks at the parallel with the emergence/spread of Christianity in Europe and comparing it with the situation in India today as we head into a crucial election from an historic perspective. There are many underlying currents which people will sense and recognise while reading the article, while I have not explicitly stated them. That was my intention, to make people think.

I know it is tacky to ask for tweeting, facebooking, and spreading by any means necessary within your networks, but I'm still asking because I truly believe that we are at a civilizational inflextion point. So please read it, and please spread it.

https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/indias- ... ilisation/

Thank you for this, truly a wonderful piece. A few years ago, I was similarly reading about the destruction of native religions in Latin America. Terrifying to see the parallels in India. However, at least in this day and age, Indics are fighting back.

[KLNMurthy]

If Pappu gets disqualified, it would be spun as Modi pasand EC doing injustice to Pappu and many gullible will fall for it thanks to durbari media.

It's best that he contest the elections with questions raised over his commitment to India and he loses Amethi.

The game here should be what is called "hardball" in the US slang--we play strictly according to rules but never hold back any attack based on courtesy or a concern for maintaining a reputation as "good guys." The petition from the NDA candidate is very precise and clear-cut. To me, it leaves no scope for any ambiguity or judgment call on the part of the EC, they have to call for the supporting documentation and affidavits from Rahul Gandhi.

If the EC is transparent in stating the reason for its decisions, there will be no question of being Modi-pasand. At least, the kind of people who will raise such questions will be those who will find something or other to detract from Modi's victory, assuming he wins.

[Ashokk]

Congress In Revolt As Workers Protest Against Shatrughan Sinha's Patna Sahib Candidature Outside Party Headquarters

In visuals, it could be seen how Congress workers were protesting against their own candidate after he reached party headquarters in Patna for being absent during his term from his own sitting constituency.

[IndraD]

ground report from UP is that SP-BSP arithmetic vote transfer has not happened at many places.
SP-RLD have transferred votes to BJP candidates at places
Behen ji is fuming and wld avenge in remaining rounds
https://twitter.com/ANINewsUP/status/11 ... 0385266688