Indian sources will be required to worship the dynasty, but what comeback?! By 1991 RG had been checkmated. Economic fundamentals had deteriorated throughout his administration. Militarily, the IPKF had withdrawn, which was a setback to dynastic megalomania similar to America's Vietnam moment.ramana wrote:vera_k, RG's comeback showed that the dynasty was re-emerging. Please do look at things with open mind and not CT this and that.
India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
It took only 7 years for the assertiveness to come back - 1998. That seems hardly a 'setback' as a result of removing RG.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
^^
Note I mean that RG coming back to power would have been a setback, as failed policies would have continued. It needed new blood to come to the fore to get India to change course.
Note I mean that RG coming back to power would have been a setback, as failed policies would have continued. It needed new blood to come to the fore to get India to change course.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Ramana, I think there was something more specific to this message. Something about certain types of initiatives to consolidate India's near abroad, being susceptible to hijack and blowback at the severest level... therefore Inda shouldn't attempt to manage such initiatives.
Consider Mujib-ur-Rehman and Mukti Bahini in 1970-71. Consider Lhendup Dorji, Sikkim, 1975.
Now consider Sri Lanka (and for that matter, also Bhindranwale) in 1979-84.
Have you ever wondered why (this is very key) there was no Liberation Tigers of Panun Kashmir movement in the 1990s? No Liberation Tigers of Balwaristan or Baluchistan for that matter? No Liberation Tigers of Nepal to counter and overwhelm the Maoist proxies of China?
A lesson was learned about brown man knowing his place. Let's leave it at that.
Consider Mujib-ur-Rehman and Mukti Bahini in 1970-71. Consider Lhendup Dorji, Sikkim, 1975.
Now consider Sri Lanka (and for that matter, also Bhindranwale) in 1979-84.
Have you ever wondered why (this is very key) there was no Liberation Tigers of Panun Kashmir movement in the 1990s? No Liberation Tigers of Balwaristan or Baluchistan for that matter? No Liberation Tigers of Nepal to counter and overwhelm the Maoist proxies of China?
A lesson was learned about brown man knowing his place. Let's leave it at that.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Ramana,ramana wrote:vera_k, RG's comeback showed that the dynasty was re-emerging. Please do look at things with open mind and not CT this and that.
Last ten years almost every CT has come true.
Every terrorist group against India has strong outside backers.
Every Zaid Hamid type also essentially says the same thing. Ignore the media and use an "open mind" and you'll see RAW/CIA/Mossad behind everything bad in TSP.
Once you agree with that fundamental approach of suspending disbelief and ignoring the need for minimal evidence, everything fits into that theory.
Occam's razor should be used and it says that if it walks like and CT and talks like a CT, then it is a CT.
Unless someone can show evidence of any US or Western connection to RG's assassination, then claiming so is just nonsense, with all due respect.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
^^^ There will hardly be websites outlining involvement of western agencies. Things like this need to be deduced through motivation and ultimate benefit.
Check out this blog write-up which talks about RG's assassination. Also keep in mind that the LTTE could have acted as a mercenary group getting in return weapons, support etc. There is no shortage of terrorist groups doing that.
http://indianintelligence2009.blogspot.com/
Check out this blog write-up which talks about RG's assassination. Also keep in mind that the LTTE could have acted as a mercenary group getting in return weapons, support etc. There is no shortage of terrorist groups doing that.
http://indianintelligence2009.blogspot.com/
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
^^^ What the hell - the post has simply disappeared.
Well here it is
Monday, September 21, 2009
Playing with a nation’s choices
Part 1 : Three funerals and a wedding
Prologue
I was part of various analysis teams of Indian intelligence agencies during the 80’s and 90’s and now live a anonymous life in a distant land. What I am going to propagate over a 3 part series in the next few days might seem very farfetched and even fantastic to most people and many conspiracy theorists might gleefully accept it as vindication for whatever they have been screaming from rooftops for quite some time now. My attempt though is neither to please any one nor to prove someone else wrong or right; it is just to come out with the truth as we perceived it. Most of the theory that I am going to put forward in part 1 is the work of us 5 people in 1991 while analyzing all the intelligence inputs over the years in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. We in the intelligence parlays termed it as “the Rajiv brief”. Most conclusions that we had come up with were unanimous and unequivocal. I must hasten to add that many parts of this so called “the Rajiv brief” were also part of an earlier analysis done in the mid 80’s by another team investigating the conspiracy angle to Mrs Indira Gandhi’s death. Theoretic overlapping in terms of evidences, intelligence briefings and logical conclusions between these two analysis reports might be common, but there are also significant points of divergence in both of these reports and since I have been privy to both I would suggest that the number of points of convergence between both sets of analysis far outnumber the differences. Sometime in the middle of 1992 we were suddenly asked to debunk the whole theory and change our line of thinking by powers that be, and we had to let go of a “very strong” case that we were building then. Of the core group of 5 analysts who were working on that case, 3 are no more (all died of normal causes) and 2 of us are still living anonymously without being in touch with each other. This is my attempt (after almost 2 decades) to complete “the Rajiv brief” and take it to its logical conclusion with the benefit of hindsight. I must warn though, that this is at the end of the day, just a theory based on intelligence inputs and field analysis built on a very plausible premise. It is an attempt to fill in the blanks between the “if’s” and “buts” of history with the luxury of retrospective intelligence.
The Theory: Five people four scenarios and three events
Mrs Sonia Gandhi is today the most powerful person in India and probably one of the most powerful women on earth. Elections 2009 have only reinforced her power. How did she end up becoming the most powerful person in India? This is the story of that ascendancy. Five people, four scenarios and three events stood between Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her destiny. Over the next few pages I am going to explain those scenarios through the eyes of a former intelligence analyst.
Scenario 1: The Rajiv-Sonia marriage
At the outset there is nothing more than just another love story to Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s romance with Miss Antonia Albina Maino in the mid 1960’s. Any suggestion that there were characters in the Cambridge university campus that not only hooked them up but also nurtured the famous romance is too farfetched. But having said that, let us consider some of the London tabloid reports of that time which variously suggested Rajiv was “constantly influenced” by a couple of students of European origin (I would not take names and let researchers do some hard work) and that at least one of those students was later absorbed by the Vatican’s intelligence wing. It would also be farfetched to speculate on Indian intelligence requesting the help of MI5 to analyze the Rajiv-Sonia romance, at least am not aware of any such report ever being filed. All these rumours and theories have done their rounds in the intelligence quarters of Delhi, especially during 1991-1992, but then we are rushing ahead of time so we shall deal with that later. I would now present as to what intelligence agencies actually did, which was very little, and let people draw their own conclusion.
Background
Post World War 1, Turin was a hub of political activity. Communism was at its peak in Europe and many left leaning socialist organizations were dabbling with the Marxist ideology and as a counter balance to that the fascist forces were emerging as an attractive alternative to many Catholics of Italy, and Turin was no exception. The small village of Orbassano near Turin mainly composed of orthodox Roman Catholic families and they all dreaded the arrival of communists on their shores and decided to join hands with the fascists lead by Mussolini. Paolo Maino was one of them. Indian intelligence gathering techniques are never given their due credit, but we have done some first rate jobs which have never been acknowledged and Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s background check was one of them. It was found that after the end of Second World War when many fascists were purged, Paolo Maino was protected by the church and no less than the Vatican itself intervened in his case and all papers pertaining to him were there by transferred to the Vatican! It was furthermore established that one of the more mysterious uncles of Paolo Maino worked for the super secret intelligence organization of the Vatican, the Opus Dei. Paolo was a construction contractor and had little savings; he could not entirely afford the educational and other expenses of his children. This mysterious uncle; who was working for the Opus Dei and whose name had been deleted from all the intelligence files; sponsored Antonio Albina Maino’s education in Cambridge in the 1960’s.
During her stay in Cambridge Miss Antonio took an “unusually high degree” of interest in the activities of groups concerning students of Indian Diaspora much before she met Rajiv. In fact, their first meeting took place in the presence of other Indian origin students and not in a Greek cafe as widely reported later. But throughout all of this she continued her association with the church and its activities and was in constant touch with “certain sections of the Vatican” which were previously also associated with the fascists. When Indian intelligence officials later questioned one of Miss Antonio’s close associates during her stay in the Cambridge, he described her relationship with the Vatican as akin to “umbilical cord”. All of these titbits were filed by many field officers of various intelligence agencies over a period of years but most analysts in the intelligence parlays of India termed them as “innocent” at worst and “needs evaluation” at best. Of course one can always concede that the analysts of that era lack the luxury of retrospective analysis as we do have now, there was definitely some lax attitude shown by these analysts in trying to decipher these events. Thus one day in 1968, after 3 odd years of courtship Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and Miss Antonio Maino; the daughter of former Fascist soldier, Paolo Maino; were married in Delhi. Miss Maino then became Mrs Sonia Gandhi for all intentions and purposes and the stepping stone to her destiny was covered with roses.
Scenario 2: Event 1, June 23rd 1980
The first player in the political theatre to have been eliminated and also the most important first link to the series of events that led to the present dispensation in the corridors of Delhi. Circumstantial evidence in the June 23rd 1980 Sanjay Gandhi air crash near Safdarjung airport points to foul play but let’s not get sucked into those futile arguments that have been raging ever since. Just suffice it to say that the single-member enquiry commission headed by Mr M L Jain which was formed to study the circumstances that lead to the plane crash has never submitted any report what so ever to the government in 3 decades. Now isn’t that fishy?
Background
Anybody who is aware of the 70’s brand of politics in India would know that Sanjay was the most important political centre, around whom most of the power was concentrated and dispensed with. Many even believed that Sanjay wielded more power than Indira Gandhi herself. It thus became pertinent for most intelligence agencies concerned with India’s affairs to have a thick case file about Sanjay Gandhi and his activities. There were some widely debunked theories of the junior Gandhi leaning towards CIA and Mrs Gandhi not being in agreement with his ideas, I do not know the origin or the veracities of these hypotheses so I would not make any comment either to encourage or discourage them. The 1960’s and 70’s Delhi was a hub of international espionage (like any other capital of any other country) because most intelligence agencies (including CIA & KGB) of that era depended on HUMINT or human intelligence officers to gather intelligence rather than satellites and drones of today. Every other day there would be speculation in the media circles of a certain politician or a certain bureaucrat working in tandem with a certain foreign intelligence agency; I would be lying if I claimed that all these speculations were wrong, in fact there were quite a few surprises in the “official” list that the Indian intelligence agencies maintained, but that is a completely different subject altogether. Coming back to Sanjay Gandhi and the interest that he generated in foreign as well as Indian intelligence circles, one thing is clear, he never worked or had any relationship with any of the foreign intelligence agencies and that much I can vouch for, but the same cannot be said about his continuous indulgence and interference with the local intelligence agencies. He always used and had his men in various wings of Indian intelligence agencies. Amidst all of this originated the “Russian hypothesis”.
There is no agreement as to when the real “Russian hypothesis” came into being, some argue that just prior to emergency in 1975 the Soviets sponsored this study because they had prior intelligence that emergency would be imposed on India, while still others argue that its origin was sometime during the Morarji Desai regime. I for one tend to agree with the former because it is a known fact that Soviets were consulted by Mrs Gandhi about emergency. Another reason to support the 1975 theory is that a secret meeting of the dreaded VKR had taken place in Delhi in the summer of 1975 (VKR = Voennaya Kontra Razvedka) and it had baffled many Indian intelligence officials as to why VKR (Russian counter intelligence wing) would meet in India. After the imposition of emergency and the awareness about Mrs Gandhi’s soviet consultation, intelligence circles widely accepted the theory of VKR meeting in Delhi as a part of that Indo-Soviet collaboration on emergency until the emergence of the “Russian hypothesis” and the eventual demise of Mr. Sanjay Gandhi. KGB had strong presence in Delhi and across India in the 70’s and many left-leaning analysts openly and covertly co-operated with KGB and other Russian intelligence agencies. One such “analyst” was part of the team that had produced the “Russian hypothesis” and he later (in 1979) leaked parts of that document to Indian intelligence and that is how the jigsaw puzzle was cracked. In the hypothesis it was concluded that Mr Sanjay Gandhi was west leaning and a capitalist and would eventually side with the CIA, although there was no universal agreement about these conclusions amongst the team that had produced the “Russian hypothesis” most of them did agree to some extent of those conclusions. It was our belief that the Soviets had decided not to take any action, mainly because of the fact that it was unlikely of KGB and even more unlikely in the case of VKR to remain quiet for more than a few months after having reached a conclusion. This is when Opus Dei comes into picture. It is a well known fact that Opus Dei and parts of Russian intelligence had always collaborated on certain matters. Exactly how or when did Opus Dei come into the possession of “Russian hypothesis” is merely in the realm of speculation but what is incontrovertible is that the Vatican intelligence did have enormous influence on Josef Stavinoha, the man who was heading VKR at that time and thus KGB in active collaboration with Opus Dei decided to act on the “Russian hypothesis” sometime in March 1980. As a direct result of that, June 23rd 1980 happened as an accident.
Continuum
After the sudden demise of Mr Sanjay Gandhi, there was the question of two other people, the very political wife Mrs Maneka Gandhi and son Mr Varun Gandhi which had to be dealt with by the Gandhi family. While there is no denying the fact that Mrs Indira Gandhi and her daughter in law Mrs Maneka Gandhi had a less than cordial relationship (which was more accentuated after the arrival of Rajiv’s family, as per some household sources of the family) and usually had typical “saas-bahu” war of turfs, but what is also irrefutable is the fact that Mr Varun Gandhi was Mrs Gandhi’s favourite grandson and she simply doted on him. What exactly transpired and who facilitated the events are all debates of speculation for the tabloid media, but one thing is certain, both the widowed mother and son were completely sidelined and almost ceased to exist as far as the Gandhi family is concerned after ceremoniously being thrown out of the Prime Minister’s residence.
Scenario 3: 1984, the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi
It was one of those events in the young life of a nation that can be termed as a defining moment in history. At the outset it was a clear case of Khalistani fundamentalists avenging operation blue-star, but there were many characters at the periphery and many events preceding it which raised many an eyebrow in the intelligence communities of the world. This was also that one colossal event that catapulted the young Mr Rajiv Gandhi, a novice in politics, to the highest seat of power in South Asia and Mrs Sonia Gandhi was now the next in the line of succession by the virtue of being his wife.
Background
It is a historically well known fact that the Khalistan movement was nurtured by ISI and certain elements in Pakistan. Also well recorded are the initial reactions of some western countries like Canada who almost directly hobnobbed with the Sikh separatist leaders only to abandon them when the movement became increasingly violent. Tacit support of US and British intelligence agencies to the Khalistan intelligentsia was also much speculated upon those days. But what was a lesser known fact in the media and a matter of puzzling debates in the intelligence circles was the interest shown by the Vatican in the Khalistan movement. In 1980-81 Vatican had an open channel of discussions with certain groups of the so called “intellectuals” who were known sympathisers of the Sikh separatist movements. This interest and interactions continued well into the early 80’s and were explained as the “right of Vatican to have an interest in other religious organizations”. At the height of Khalistan movement just after operation Blue Star, many reliable Indian intelligence sources had given “definitive” information about Opus Dei funding parts of operations of Sikh separatists outside India!
After operation Blue Star there were many intelligence inputs about the threat to Mrs Gandhi’s life including some specific inputs about people in the core inner circle of Mrs Gandhi’s security system being vulnerable. Yet no action was taken, why? The assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi was a massive intelligence failure to say the least and yet no major enquiry was ordered to decipher the conspiracy theory, why? Sections of KGB and other Russian intelligence agencies had given a specific timeframe regarding “action” and yet their advice went unheeded, why? Soviet sources, in informal briefings had warned about certain western intelligence agencies being in cahoots with Sikh separatists and yet those warnings were disregarded, why?
A part of the answer to those questions can be explained as plain incompetence as usual. May be one can also argue that we now have the power of hindsight which we lacked then. But definitely there is a part of the answer to that question which is more complex and only takes my theory forward to its logical conclusion. It is not as if we did nothing, security experts and Intelligence aficionados gave at least 2 formal specific presentations to Mrs Gandhi on 2 different occasions about the need to re-haul the entire security apparatus around her. But on both these occasions apart from Mrs Gandhi’s nonchalance we met with the biggest resistance from one particular member of her core team. He was a very powerful member of what was then known to the media as “kitchen cabinet” and had also been described as a “power broker of the highest degree” by many media houses and visiting dignitaries. There was no reason to suspect any mal-intentions in him, as he was also known to be very close to Mr Rajiv Gandhi (unlike some members of the “kitchen cabinet” who had a turf war with the junior Gandhi). Post assassination there was a bit of a stir in the media about the same gentleman followed by hush-hush events. We in the intelligence were also surprised to know about his strong linkages with certain Western intelligence agencies. Nothing really happened after that for quite some time and Mr Rajiv Gandhi only restored the same gentleman back in his team with full honours and the whole episode was laid to rest. But the biggest revelation to the intelligence wings came a little later (and was not accorded much importance at that time). Unlike media perceptions that the said gentleman belonged to the Rajiv Gandhi coterie and to the “kitchen cabinet”, he actually owed both his positions and his re-instatement into the inner circles of power after the assassination of Mrs Gandhi to a certain Mrs Sonia Gandhi!
Scenario 4: 1991, the assassination of Mr Rajiv Gandhi
When Mr Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur on 21st May 1991, it did come as a shock to the intelligence community in India but it would be false to suggest that we had absolutely no clue about it. Tamil Tigers animosity towards Mr Rajiv Gandhi was by no means a universally accepted fact in the intelligence circles and yet there were “elements” in the establishment who had assessed the risk factors from time to time. Many analysts had pointed out way back in 1985 (when Rajiv first tried to establish channels to tigers) the unpredictable nature of the leadership of LTTE and their perceived closeness to “certain” European and Western intelligence agencies. Mr Rajiv Gandhi was more influenced by a section of foreign policy analysts and he paid little heed to whatever little reservations the Indian intelligence agencies had vis-à-vis Tamil Tigers. I must confess that intelligence community in India did not really cover themselves in glory in this whole episode, because it might come as a surprise to most readers to know that we had threat perception for Mr Rajiv Gandhi from many other quarters like Sikh separatists, Islamic (Pakistani funded) militant groups, Chinese sponsored mercenaries and even rogue KGB agents, but had very few inputs and analysis about Tamil Tigers! That was a grave error to say the least. Due to myriad intelligence inputs and even more complex analysis the enquiry following the assassination was mired in many ideas and was muddled in too many complexities.
Background
The Rajiv Gandhi era was defined by two major geo-political changes in India and South Asia;
•· Pakistan’s involvement with separatist groups in Kashmir and the birth of Islamic terrorism in the valley
•· India’s direct mediation in Sri Lanka vis-à-vis Tamil issue
Both these geo-political affairs in South Asia had linkages to Western intelligence agencies at some point or other. It is a well known fact that CIA did help Kashmiri terror outfits in the initial years ostensibly to decrease Soviet influence in the region and also because US intelligence establishments were day dreaming about controlling all forms of Islamic extremist organisations from Afghanistan and Central Asia to the Middle-East and Western Africa. The results of those ill-fated forays have been disastrous as we have seen today, but that is a different story for some other time. Lesser known fact is the support to LTTE by many European intelligence agencies including MI5 & NIS (Norwegian Intelligence Service). Thus, although Mr Rajiv Gandhi considered Mr Vellupali Prabhakaran as a personal friend, the LTTE leader was more under the influence of many other intelligence organisations than India which should have been his natural ally. If the Western intelligence agencies wanted to eliminate Mr Rajiv Gandhi (for whatever myriad reasons) they had 2 very plausible ways to achieve their hit; Islamic Terror outfits in Kashmir and LTTE; apart from many other difficult options. LTTE having assassinated Mr Rajiv Gandhi unilaterally can be ruled out for all practical purposes as it was too much under the influence and control of many agencies and also it would have needed a thorough assurance that its own organization would not be eliminated following the assassination. Mr Prabhakaran, whatever else he was, was a practical man with very sensible ideas to survive for a long term struggle for Tamil Elam. He would have realized at the very outset that eliminating Mr Rajiv Gandhi could become an existential threat to LTTE itself. He had the precedence of the Khalistan movement being crushed following Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the might of IPKF, which had almost managed to destroy about 80% of LTTE.
Mr Prabhakaran apart from being Tamil was also a catholic and there is a theory that the Vatican had helped LTTE in the initial phases to establish a “catholic” land in the Northern parts of Sri Lanka independent of the “Buddhist” Sinhalese regime. I have many intelligence inputs to confirm these linkages between the Vatican and the LTTE. Norway which had always played a role in the Sri Lankan peace process had a commanding influence over LTTE, especially over the northern faction of LTTE comprising Prabhakaran and co. Norwegian intelligence or NIS had not only given financial assistance but also had provided military training and logistical support to many northern LTTE command groups. I must state here that the western part of LTTE led by Karuna and co was less under the influence of these organisations and was more open to collaboration with India. There was also an unconfirmed report that Karuna was against the whole plot to assassinate Mr Rajiv Gandhi and had even tried in vain to contact Indian intelligence agencies about the impending attack. NIS and other Scandinavian intelligence agencies in the 80’s and early 90’s were also heavily under the influence of Opus Dei and other intelligence establishments of the Vatican. There were many reasons for this, primary being the fact Norway’s borders with Soviet Russia and the Opus Dei’s final plans to liberate the orthodox Russian church from the communists. Finally, we have very strong intelligence inputs about NIS having given the final order of a “hit” on Mr Rajiv Gandhi and also the requisite assurance of “no-attack” from India on LTTE in any eventuality. Thus Prabhakaran decided to assassinate Mr Rajiv Gandhi despite internal opposition and many apprehensions. What is even more curious was the timing of attack (which was also a pre-condition by the Norwegian controllers of LTTE as per many intercepts of Russian intelligence revealed to India much later). It was as if someone wanted to influence the ensuing general elections in India by assassinating a tall leader (they had the precedent of 1985 elections following Mrs Gandhi’s killing). But, they only partly succeeded in that as congress could not get a majority on its own which was partially due to the fact that a part of those elections were held before the event and partially due to the changed political scenario of India in the beginning of the 90’s.
The Analysis
After the assassination many intelligence teams were working on many number of theories and officially SIT (special investigation team) was formed to fast track the whole process and at least theoretically all these intelligence teams were supposed to be working under the aegis of the SIT. We were a group of 5 analysts working on the conspiracy angle (there were other groups of people also working on many conspiracy theories) leading up to the assassination. This is when we first stumbled upon the theory of the Vatican’s interest in India’s 1st family (the Gandhi family), which was earlier researched by a team previously working on the killing of senior Mrs Gandhi. Layer by layer we were gathering all the previous inputs and seemingly farfetched hypothesises put forward by many people in the past. Most of the inputs that I have talked about till now throughout this paper (part 1) were discovered and analysed during those 6 months when we worked together in that team. Mr P. V. Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister of India then and he had made it a point to get all the reports on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case delivered to him directly (with no intermediaries) at regular intervals. I remember it correctly, when we had sent our detailed analysis report with all the relevant intelligence inputs to the PMO on a Thursday afternoon. The report contained all the various theories that we had suggested but we had not reached any conclusions.
The first time it’s a chance, the second time it’s a coincidence and the third time it’s a pattern. I guess it was just a matter of time before we would reach the conclusion that the sole beneficiary of all these scenarios and events was the one and only Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the widow of Mr Rajiv Gandhi. How 3 events (assassination & “unnatural” deaths of the three Gandhis) and the 4 scenarios involving 5 people who were either eliminated or completely sidelined leading to the final destiny of Mrs Sonia Gandhi is really a fascinating story. On Monday morning our team was dismantled, we were asked to work on another theory of CIA’s involvement with the LTTE and about understanding the financial structuring of the Tamil Tigers and we were told in no uncertain terms to abandon our “farfetched” theories and to work on more “realistic” aspects that would provide more tangible results.
After that we never mentioned about “the Rajiv brief” or about what had happened in those 6 months. But I have been keeping track of events since then. One important loophole about the theory as explained till now would be the reluctance of Mrs Sonia Gandhi to accept the position of power after the 1991 elections. I would like to deal with the post Rajiv era in part 2 when I will hopefully explain all of those issues. I have formulated my own set of theories and have reached my own conclusions, but they will be elaborated upon in the next 2 parts of this treatise.
Well here it is
Monday, September 21, 2009
Playing with a nation’s choices
Part 1 : Three funerals and a wedding
Prologue
I was part of various analysis teams of Indian intelligence agencies during the 80’s and 90’s and now live a anonymous life in a distant land. What I am going to propagate over a 3 part series in the next few days might seem very farfetched and even fantastic to most people and many conspiracy theorists might gleefully accept it as vindication for whatever they have been screaming from rooftops for quite some time now. My attempt though is neither to please any one nor to prove someone else wrong or right; it is just to come out with the truth as we perceived it. Most of the theory that I am going to put forward in part 1 is the work of us 5 people in 1991 while analyzing all the intelligence inputs over the years in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. We in the intelligence parlays termed it as “the Rajiv brief”. Most conclusions that we had come up with were unanimous and unequivocal. I must hasten to add that many parts of this so called “the Rajiv brief” were also part of an earlier analysis done in the mid 80’s by another team investigating the conspiracy angle to Mrs Indira Gandhi’s death. Theoretic overlapping in terms of evidences, intelligence briefings and logical conclusions between these two analysis reports might be common, but there are also significant points of divergence in both of these reports and since I have been privy to both I would suggest that the number of points of convergence between both sets of analysis far outnumber the differences. Sometime in the middle of 1992 we were suddenly asked to debunk the whole theory and change our line of thinking by powers that be, and we had to let go of a “very strong” case that we were building then. Of the core group of 5 analysts who were working on that case, 3 are no more (all died of normal causes) and 2 of us are still living anonymously without being in touch with each other. This is my attempt (after almost 2 decades) to complete “the Rajiv brief” and take it to its logical conclusion with the benefit of hindsight. I must warn though, that this is at the end of the day, just a theory based on intelligence inputs and field analysis built on a very plausible premise. It is an attempt to fill in the blanks between the “if’s” and “buts” of history with the luxury of retrospective intelligence.
The Theory: Five people four scenarios and three events
Mrs Sonia Gandhi is today the most powerful person in India and probably one of the most powerful women on earth. Elections 2009 have only reinforced her power. How did she end up becoming the most powerful person in India? This is the story of that ascendancy. Five people, four scenarios and three events stood between Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her destiny. Over the next few pages I am going to explain those scenarios through the eyes of a former intelligence analyst.
Scenario 1: The Rajiv-Sonia marriage
At the outset there is nothing more than just another love story to Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s romance with Miss Antonia Albina Maino in the mid 1960’s. Any suggestion that there were characters in the Cambridge university campus that not only hooked them up but also nurtured the famous romance is too farfetched. But having said that, let us consider some of the London tabloid reports of that time which variously suggested Rajiv was “constantly influenced” by a couple of students of European origin (I would not take names and let researchers do some hard work) and that at least one of those students was later absorbed by the Vatican’s intelligence wing. It would also be farfetched to speculate on Indian intelligence requesting the help of MI5 to analyze the Rajiv-Sonia romance, at least am not aware of any such report ever being filed. All these rumours and theories have done their rounds in the intelligence quarters of Delhi, especially during 1991-1992, but then we are rushing ahead of time so we shall deal with that later. I would now present as to what intelligence agencies actually did, which was very little, and let people draw their own conclusion.
Background
Post World War 1, Turin was a hub of political activity. Communism was at its peak in Europe and many left leaning socialist organizations were dabbling with the Marxist ideology and as a counter balance to that the fascist forces were emerging as an attractive alternative to many Catholics of Italy, and Turin was no exception. The small village of Orbassano near Turin mainly composed of orthodox Roman Catholic families and they all dreaded the arrival of communists on their shores and decided to join hands with the fascists lead by Mussolini. Paolo Maino was one of them. Indian intelligence gathering techniques are never given their due credit, but we have done some first rate jobs which have never been acknowledged and Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s background check was one of them. It was found that after the end of Second World War when many fascists were purged, Paolo Maino was protected by the church and no less than the Vatican itself intervened in his case and all papers pertaining to him were there by transferred to the Vatican! It was furthermore established that one of the more mysterious uncles of Paolo Maino worked for the super secret intelligence organization of the Vatican, the Opus Dei. Paolo was a construction contractor and had little savings; he could not entirely afford the educational and other expenses of his children. This mysterious uncle; who was working for the Opus Dei and whose name had been deleted from all the intelligence files; sponsored Antonio Albina Maino’s education in Cambridge in the 1960’s.
During her stay in Cambridge Miss Antonio took an “unusually high degree” of interest in the activities of groups concerning students of Indian Diaspora much before she met Rajiv. In fact, their first meeting took place in the presence of other Indian origin students and not in a Greek cafe as widely reported later. But throughout all of this she continued her association with the church and its activities and was in constant touch with “certain sections of the Vatican” which were previously also associated with the fascists. When Indian intelligence officials later questioned one of Miss Antonio’s close associates during her stay in the Cambridge, he described her relationship with the Vatican as akin to “umbilical cord”. All of these titbits were filed by many field officers of various intelligence agencies over a period of years but most analysts in the intelligence parlays of India termed them as “innocent” at worst and “needs evaluation” at best. Of course one can always concede that the analysts of that era lack the luxury of retrospective analysis as we do have now, there was definitely some lax attitude shown by these analysts in trying to decipher these events. Thus one day in 1968, after 3 odd years of courtship Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and Miss Antonio Maino; the daughter of former Fascist soldier, Paolo Maino; were married in Delhi. Miss Maino then became Mrs Sonia Gandhi for all intentions and purposes and the stepping stone to her destiny was covered with roses.
Scenario 2: Event 1, June 23rd 1980
The first player in the political theatre to have been eliminated and also the most important first link to the series of events that led to the present dispensation in the corridors of Delhi. Circumstantial evidence in the June 23rd 1980 Sanjay Gandhi air crash near Safdarjung airport points to foul play but let’s not get sucked into those futile arguments that have been raging ever since. Just suffice it to say that the single-member enquiry commission headed by Mr M L Jain which was formed to study the circumstances that lead to the plane crash has never submitted any report what so ever to the government in 3 decades. Now isn’t that fishy?
Background
Anybody who is aware of the 70’s brand of politics in India would know that Sanjay was the most important political centre, around whom most of the power was concentrated and dispensed with. Many even believed that Sanjay wielded more power than Indira Gandhi herself. It thus became pertinent for most intelligence agencies concerned with India’s affairs to have a thick case file about Sanjay Gandhi and his activities. There were some widely debunked theories of the junior Gandhi leaning towards CIA and Mrs Gandhi not being in agreement with his ideas, I do not know the origin or the veracities of these hypotheses so I would not make any comment either to encourage or discourage them. The 1960’s and 70’s Delhi was a hub of international espionage (like any other capital of any other country) because most intelligence agencies (including CIA & KGB) of that era depended on HUMINT or human intelligence officers to gather intelligence rather than satellites and drones of today. Every other day there would be speculation in the media circles of a certain politician or a certain bureaucrat working in tandem with a certain foreign intelligence agency; I would be lying if I claimed that all these speculations were wrong, in fact there were quite a few surprises in the “official” list that the Indian intelligence agencies maintained, but that is a completely different subject altogether. Coming back to Sanjay Gandhi and the interest that he generated in foreign as well as Indian intelligence circles, one thing is clear, he never worked or had any relationship with any of the foreign intelligence agencies and that much I can vouch for, but the same cannot be said about his continuous indulgence and interference with the local intelligence agencies. He always used and had his men in various wings of Indian intelligence agencies. Amidst all of this originated the “Russian hypothesis”.
There is no agreement as to when the real “Russian hypothesis” came into being, some argue that just prior to emergency in 1975 the Soviets sponsored this study because they had prior intelligence that emergency would be imposed on India, while still others argue that its origin was sometime during the Morarji Desai regime. I for one tend to agree with the former because it is a known fact that Soviets were consulted by Mrs Gandhi about emergency. Another reason to support the 1975 theory is that a secret meeting of the dreaded VKR had taken place in Delhi in the summer of 1975 (VKR = Voennaya Kontra Razvedka) and it had baffled many Indian intelligence officials as to why VKR (Russian counter intelligence wing) would meet in India. After the imposition of emergency and the awareness about Mrs Gandhi’s soviet consultation, intelligence circles widely accepted the theory of VKR meeting in Delhi as a part of that Indo-Soviet collaboration on emergency until the emergence of the “Russian hypothesis” and the eventual demise of Mr. Sanjay Gandhi. KGB had strong presence in Delhi and across India in the 70’s and many left-leaning analysts openly and covertly co-operated with KGB and other Russian intelligence agencies. One such “analyst” was part of the team that had produced the “Russian hypothesis” and he later (in 1979) leaked parts of that document to Indian intelligence and that is how the jigsaw puzzle was cracked. In the hypothesis it was concluded that Mr Sanjay Gandhi was west leaning and a capitalist and would eventually side with the CIA, although there was no universal agreement about these conclusions amongst the team that had produced the “Russian hypothesis” most of them did agree to some extent of those conclusions. It was our belief that the Soviets had decided not to take any action, mainly because of the fact that it was unlikely of KGB and even more unlikely in the case of VKR to remain quiet for more than a few months after having reached a conclusion. This is when Opus Dei comes into picture. It is a well known fact that Opus Dei and parts of Russian intelligence had always collaborated on certain matters. Exactly how or when did Opus Dei come into the possession of “Russian hypothesis” is merely in the realm of speculation but what is incontrovertible is that the Vatican intelligence did have enormous influence on Josef Stavinoha, the man who was heading VKR at that time and thus KGB in active collaboration with Opus Dei decided to act on the “Russian hypothesis” sometime in March 1980. As a direct result of that, June 23rd 1980 happened as an accident.
Continuum
After the sudden demise of Mr Sanjay Gandhi, there was the question of two other people, the very political wife Mrs Maneka Gandhi and son Mr Varun Gandhi which had to be dealt with by the Gandhi family. While there is no denying the fact that Mrs Indira Gandhi and her daughter in law Mrs Maneka Gandhi had a less than cordial relationship (which was more accentuated after the arrival of Rajiv’s family, as per some household sources of the family) and usually had typical “saas-bahu” war of turfs, but what is also irrefutable is the fact that Mr Varun Gandhi was Mrs Gandhi’s favourite grandson and she simply doted on him. What exactly transpired and who facilitated the events are all debates of speculation for the tabloid media, but one thing is certain, both the widowed mother and son were completely sidelined and almost ceased to exist as far as the Gandhi family is concerned after ceremoniously being thrown out of the Prime Minister’s residence.
Scenario 3: 1984, the assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi
It was one of those events in the young life of a nation that can be termed as a defining moment in history. At the outset it was a clear case of Khalistani fundamentalists avenging operation blue-star, but there were many characters at the periphery and many events preceding it which raised many an eyebrow in the intelligence communities of the world. This was also that one colossal event that catapulted the young Mr Rajiv Gandhi, a novice in politics, to the highest seat of power in South Asia and Mrs Sonia Gandhi was now the next in the line of succession by the virtue of being his wife.
Background
It is a historically well known fact that the Khalistan movement was nurtured by ISI and certain elements in Pakistan. Also well recorded are the initial reactions of some western countries like Canada who almost directly hobnobbed with the Sikh separatist leaders only to abandon them when the movement became increasingly violent. Tacit support of US and British intelligence agencies to the Khalistan intelligentsia was also much speculated upon those days. But what was a lesser known fact in the media and a matter of puzzling debates in the intelligence circles was the interest shown by the Vatican in the Khalistan movement. In 1980-81 Vatican had an open channel of discussions with certain groups of the so called “intellectuals” who were known sympathisers of the Sikh separatist movements. This interest and interactions continued well into the early 80’s and were explained as the “right of Vatican to have an interest in other religious organizations”. At the height of Khalistan movement just after operation Blue Star, many reliable Indian intelligence sources had given “definitive” information about Opus Dei funding parts of operations of Sikh separatists outside India!
After operation Blue Star there were many intelligence inputs about the threat to Mrs Gandhi’s life including some specific inputs about people in the core inner circle of Mrs Gandhi’s security system being vulnerable. Yet no action was taken, why? The assassination of Mrs Indira Gandhi was a massive intelligence failure to say the least and yet no major enquiry was ordered to decipher the conspiracy theory, why? Sections of KGB and other Russian intelligence agencies had given a specific timeframe regarding “action” and yet their advice went unheeded, why? Soviet sources, in informal briefings had warned about certain western intelligence agencies being in cahoots with Sikh separatists and yet those warnings were disregarded, why?
A part of the answer to those questions can be explained as plain incompetence as usual. May be one can also argue that we now have the power of hindsight which we lacked then. But definitely there is a part of the answer to that question which is more complex and only takes my theory forward to its logical conclusion. It is not as if we did nothing, security experts and Intelligence aficionados gave at least 2 formal specific presentations to Mrs Gandhi on 2 different occasions about the need to re-haul the entire security apparatus around her. But on both these occasions apart from Mrs Gandhi’s nonchalance we met with the biggest resistance from one particular member of her core team. He was a very powerful member of what was then known to the media as “kitchen cabinet” and had also been described as a “power broker of the highest degree” by many media houses and visiting dignitaries. There was no reason to suspect any mal-intentions in him, as he was also known to be very close to Mr Rajiv Gandhi (unlike some members of the “kitchen cabinet” who had a turf war with the junior Gandhi). Post assassination there was a bit of a stir in the media about the same gentleman followed by hush-hush events. We in the intelligence were also surprised to know about his strong linkages with certain Western intelligence agencies. Nothing really happened after that for quite some time and Mr Rajiv Gandhi only restored the same gentleman back in his team with full honours and the whole episode was laid to rest. But the biggest revelation to the intelligence wings came a little later (and was not accorded much importance at that time). Unlike media perceptions that the said gentleman belonged to the Rajiv Gandhi coterie and to the “kitchen cabinet”, he actually owed both his positions and his re-instatement into the inner circles of power after the assassination of Mrs Gandhi to a certain Mrs Sonia Gandhi!
Scenario 4: 1991, the assassination of Mr Rajiv Gandhi
When Mr Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur on 21st May 1991, it did come as a shock to the intelligence community in India but it would be false to suggest that we had absolutely no clue about it. Tamil Tigers animosity towards Mr Rajiv Gandhi was by no means a universally accepted fact in the intelligence circles and yet there were “elements” in the establishment who had assessed the risk factors from time to time. Many analysts had pointed out way back in 1985 (when Rajiv first tried to establish channels to tigers) the unpredictable nature of the leadership of LTTE and their perceived closeness to “certain” European and Western intelligence agencies. Mr Rajiv Gandhi was more influenced by a section of foreign policy analysts and he paid little heed to whatever little reservations the Indian intelligence agencies had vis-à-vis Tamil Tigers. I must confess that intelligence community in India did not really cover themselves in glory in this whole episode, because it might come as a surprise to most readers to know that we had threat perception for Mr Rajiv Gandhi from many other quarters like Sikh separatists, Islamic (Pakistani funded) militant groups, Chinese sponsored mercenaries and even rogue KGB agents, but had very few inputs and analysis about Tamil Tigers! That was a grave error to say the least. Due to myriad intelligence inputs and even more complex analysis the enquiry following the assassination was mired in many ideas and was muddled in too many complexities.
Background
The Rajiv Gandhi era was defined by two major geo-political changes in India and South Asia;
•· Pakistan’s involvement with separatist groups in Kashmir and the birth of Islamic terrorism in the valley
•· India’s direct mediation in Sri Lanka vis-à-vis Tamil issue
Both these geo-political affairs in South Asia had linkages to Western intelligence agencies at some point or other. It is a well known fact that CIA did help Kashmiri terror outfits in the initial years ostensibly to decrease Soviet influence in the region and also because US intelligence establishments were day dreaming about controlling all forms of Islamic extremist organisations from Afghanistan and Central Asia to the Middle-East and Western Africa. The results of those ill-fated forays have been disastrous as we have seen today, but that is a different story for some other time. Lesser known fact is the support to LTTE by many European intelligence agencies including MI5 & NIS (Norwegian Intelligence Service). Thus, although Mr Rajiv Gandhi considered Mr Vellupali Prabhakaran as a personal friend, the LTTE leader was more under the influence of many other intelligence organisations than India which should have been his natural ally. If the Western intelligence agencies wanted to eliminate Mr Rajiv Gandhi (for whatever myriad reasons) they had 2 very plausible ways to achieve their hit; Islamic Terror outfits in Kashmir and LTTE; apart from many other difficult options. LTTE having assassinated Mr Rajiv Gandhi unilaterally can be ruled out for all practical purposes as it was too much under the influence and control of many agencies and also it would have needed a thorough assurance that its own organization would not be eliminated following the assassination. Mr Prabhakaran, whatever else he was, was a practical man with very sensible ideas to survive for a long term struggle for Tamil Elam. He would have realized at the very outset that eliminating Mr Rajiv Gandhi could become an existential threat to LTTE itself. He had the precedence of the Khalistan movement being crushed following Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the might of IPKF, which had almost managed to destroy about 80% of LTTE.
Mr Prabhakaran apart from being Tamil was also a catholic and there is a theory that the Vatican had helped LTTE in the initial phases to establish a “catholic” land in the Northern parts of Sri Lanka independent of the “Buddhist” Sinhalese regime. I have many intelligence inputs to confirm these linkages between the Vatican and the LTTE. Norway which had always played a role in the Sri Lankan peace process had a commanding influence over LTTE, especially over the northern faction of LTTE comprising Prabhakaran and co. Norwegian intelligence or NIS had not only given financial assistance but also had provided military training and logistical support to many northern LTTE command groups. I must state here that the western part of LTTE led by Karuna and co was less under the influence of these organisations and was more open to collaboration with India. There was also an unconfirmed report that Karuna was against the whole plot to assassinate Mr Rajiv Gandhi and had even tried in vain to contact Indian intelligence agencies about the impending attack. NIS and other Scandinavian intelligence agencies in the 80’s and early 90’s were also heavily under the influence of Opus Dei and other intelligence establishments of the Vatican. There were many reasons for this, primary being the fact Norway’s borders with Soviet Russia and the Opus Dei’s final plans to liberate the orthodox Russian church from the communists. Finally, we have very strong intelligence inputs about NIS having given the final order of a “hit” on Mr Rajiv Gandhi and also the requisite assurance of “no-attack” from India on LTTE in any eventuality. Thus Prabhakaran decided to assassinate Mr Rajiv Gandhi despite internal opposition and many apprehensions. What is even more curious was the timing of attack (which was also a pre-condition by the Norwegian controllers of LTTE as per many intercepts of Russian intelligence revealed to India much later). It was as if someone wanted to influence the ensuing general elections in India by assassinating a tall leader (they had the precedent of 1985 elections following Mrs Gandhi’s killing). But, they only partly succeeded in that as congress could not get a majority on its own which was partially due to the fact that a part of those elections were held before the event and partially due to the changed political scenario of India in the beginning of the 90’s.
The Analysis
After the assassination many intelligence teams were working on many number of theories and officially SIT (special investigation team) was formed to fast track the whole process and at least theoretically all these intelligence teams were supposed to be working under the aegis of the SIT. We were a group of 5 analysts working on the conspiracy angle (there were other groups of people also working on many conspiracy theories) leading up to the assassination. This is when we first stumbled upon the theory of the Vatican’s interest in India’s 1st family (the Gandhi family), which was earlier researched by a team previously working on the killing of senior Mrs Gandhi. Layer by layer we were gathering all the previous inputs and seemingly farfetched hypothesises put forward by many people in the past. Most of the inputs that I have talked about till now throughout this paper (part 1) were discovered and analysed during those 6 months when we worked together in that team. Mr P. V. Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister of India then and he had made it a point to get all the reports on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case delivered to him directly (with no intermediaries) at regular intervals. I remember it correctly, when we had sent our detailed analysis report with all the relevant intelligence inputs to the PMO on a Thursday afternoon. The report contained all the various theories that we had suggested but we had not reached any conclusions.
The first time it’s a chance, the second time it’s a coincidence and the third time it’s a pattern. I guess it was just a matter of time before we would reach the conclusion that the sole beneficiary of all these scenarios and events was the one and only Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the widow of Mr Rajiv Gandhi. How 3 events (assassination & “unnatural” deaths of the three Gandhis) and the 4 scenarios involving 5 people who were either eliminated or completely sidelined leading to the final destiny of Mrs Sonia Gandhi is really a fascinating story. On Monday morning our team was dismantled, we were asked to work on another theory of CIA’s involvement with the LTTE and about understanding the financial structuring of the Tamil Tigers and we were told in no uncertain terms to abandon our “farfetched” theories and to work on more “realistic” aspects that would provide more tangible results.
After that we never mentioned about “the Rajiv brief” or about what had happened in those 6 months. But I have been keeping track of events since then. One important loophole about the theory as explained till now would be the reluctance of Mrs Sonia Gandhi to accept the position of power after the 1991 elections. I would like to deal with the post Rajiv era in part 2 when I will hopefully explain all of those issues. I have formulated my own set of theories and have reached my own conclusions, but they will be elaborated upon in the next 2 parts of this treatise.
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abhishek_sharma
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Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
>> it might come as a surprise to most readers to know that we had threat perception for Mr Rajiv Gandhi from many other quarters like Sikh separatists, Islamic (Pakistani funded) militant groups, Chinese sponsored mercenaries and even rogue KGB agents, but had very few inputs and analysis about Tamil Tigers!
It comes as a surprise because it is wrong. According to B. Raman, RAW/IB had inputs about danger to Rajiv Gandhi's life from LTTE.
It comes as a surprise because it is wrong. According to B. Raman, RAW/IB had inputs about danger to Rajiv Gandhi's life from LTTE.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
I agree with everything you say. Just wanted to point out that the CIA rumour comes based on intercepts from a call from SE Asia to LTTE VP. I cant remember the precise thing but it had something to do with the CIA or US Embassy asking for a meeting with VP. It formed part of the report on his murder. Again the report was pretty vague on who the call originated from - people assume the report was hinting at CIA behind that call for meeting VP.Rangudu wrote: Ramana,
Every Zaid Hamid type also essentially says the same thing. Ignore the media and use an "open mind" and you'll see RAW/CIA/Mossad behind everything bad in TSP.
Once you agree with that fundamental approach of suspending disbelief and ignoring the need for minimal evidence, everything fits into that theory.
Occam's razor should be used and it says that if it walks like and CT and talks like a CT, then it is a CT.
Unless someone can show evidence of any US or Western connection to RG's assassination, then claiming so is just nonsense, with all due respect.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
shyamd ji,
Again, what you say is less than the minimum to even theorize about US hand. That same standard if applied to 26/11 would then lend credibility to Digvijaya type jokers' theories on Hemant Karkare and "Saffron terror" bogey. In this same forum we have torn to shreds the likes of Christine Fair for linking India to the Baloch struggle.
Again, what you say is less than the minimum to even theorize about US hand. That same standard if applied to 26/11 would then lend credibility to Digvijaya type jokers' theories on Hemant Karkare and "Saffron terror" bogey. In this same forum we have torn to shreds the likes of Christine Fair for linking India to the Baloch struggle.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Sir, I don't dispute what you are saying at all and I agree with you. Just saying where that rumour comes from. I know some on this thread know what I am referring to. To help the discussion could they please post a report or evidence from the report - I think B Raman mayhaves talked about it in one of his articles.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
I will repat it again.
None of the 'non state actors' or the so called terrorist groups in the sub continent will target a big value leader of any country in the region without the backing of major powers such as UK, USA or USSR/Russia. There is no way they can plan it and not allow it to be sniffed by these countries.
None of the 'non state actors' or the so called terrorist groups in the sub continent will target a big value leader of any country in the region without the backing of major powers such as UK, USA or USSR/Russia. There is no way they can plan it and not allow it to be sniffed by these countries.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
What country targetted Benazir Bhutto?
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Acharya, to be fair, even the Indian intelligence agencies did not sniff out the brewing assassinations of IG and RG. Do you think foreign intelligence agencies had better penetration, at such high levels, than our own on the ground?
Vera_k, BB hadn't been the head of state of Pakistan for more than a decade when the ISI and Musharraf had her killed. Not really comparable.
Vera_k, BB hadn't been the head of state of Pakistan for more than a decade when the ISI and Musharraf had her killed. Not really comparable.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
^^
BB was trying to be the next PM of Pakistan, same as how RG was campaigning to be PM of India. Obvious answer as to who killed RG would be PVNR. MMS can be ruled out, since the dynasty trusts him.
BB was trying to be the next PM of Pakistan, same as how RG was campaigning to be PM of India. Obvious answer as to who killed RG would be PVNR. MMS can be ruled out, since the dynasty trusts him.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
You are all wrong. Death rays from Mars are responsible for the assassinations of key Indian, TSPian and other regional leaders. The trigger may have been pulled by locals but the puppetteer is in another planet. Those who ask for proof simply cannot understand the conspiracy or they too have been subverted. The only way to avoid being caught in this trap is to wear one of these.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Vera_k: The earlier comment was really stating that if killing of RG was to put India in a shell it did not last long. Vajpayee blasted the bomb within 7 years. Who knows if he would have taken such a step if he had regained power - most likely have been tackling domestic issues and other fissures that he himself and Weepy Singh had hoisted on the coutnry.It took only 7 years for the assertiveness to come back - 1998. That seems hardly a 'setback' as a result of removing RG.{/quote]
vera_k wrote:^^
Note I mean that RG coming back to power would have been a setback, as failed policies would have continued. It needed new blood to come to the fore to get India to change course.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
RG did say he would revisit the test option if elected. This was in run up to the elections in 1991. Before the elections he did constitute a committee to look as econ reforms headed by PVNR.
And ABV is not INC. So his deciding to test is not same as Congress.
And ABV is not INC. So his deciding to test is not same as Congress.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
I think there was a discussion of this before on BRF. the calculations of the outside forces which might have backed RG's killing, ultimately failed. the major, biggest miscalculation by external hands, internal ambitious politicians, and the surviving remnants of the Nehru family (Sonia), was the underestimation of PVNR. I don't think any of them really understood that PV could be so shrewd and subversive. this is where their calculations failed. and to top it all off, the biggest changes in post-'47 India happened under his guidance and the Nehru clan had no hand in it. this is the reason why the dynasty has not officially been able to take "control" yet. the biggest changes of this generation were unleashed and maintained for a full term (5 years) by a non-dynasty character, who ended up setting a precedent that was unprecedented (first PM outside the Nehru clan to finish a full term). the very presence and completion of term by Narasimha Rao has unleashed forces that have made it impossible for Nehru clan to officially claim the power since then.
in that sense, if the idea was to fast track Sonia's path to power, all the hands which had a 'hand' in RG's death failed. from 1991 to 2004, in that interim 13 year period (which is how long it took for Sonia to eventually rise to power), Narasimha Rao and Vajpayee gave a shock reset to Indian geopolitics. and the clock can't be turned back. no matter what Sonia & Co do, they can't undo the things that were done in those 13 years.
in that sense, if the idea was to fast track Sonia's path to power, all the hands which had a 'hand' in RG's death failed. from 1991 to 2004, in that interim 13 year period (which is how long it took for Sonia to eventually rise to power), Narasimha Rao and Vajpayee gave a shock reset to Indian geopolitics. and the clock can't be turned back. no matter what Sonia & Co do, they can't undo the things that were done in those 13 years.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Not sure about that. RG was campaigning to be PM, but let's remember he was already very powerful at the time; the Chandrashekhar govt. was completely dependent on his outside support to stay in power.vera_k wrote:^^
BB was trying to be the next PM of Pakistan, same as how RG was campaigning to be PM of India. Obvious answer as to who killed RG would be PVNR. MMS can be ruled out, since the dynasty trusts him.
By contrast, BB was returning to Pakistan after 10 years of exile, and no direct experience as a power-broker in the radically altered post 9.11 political landscape of Pakistan. When she left in 1996, the Taliban were unanimous heroes in Pakistan, and seen as potentially friendly even by many Americans (they were invited to US to discuss the Unocal pipeline during the Clinton years, and Robin Raphel's contact group continued to represent their interests in Washington through much of the Clinton presidency.) When BB came back it was post Lal Masjid days.
And most importantly, India is not Pakistan; for all her faults, India does not assassinate political candidates in a democratic election.
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Altair
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Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Americans had a thing for Indira and her family. There was an American who used to visit Karunanidhi and his ilk very often during 1990. They all could be involved or they were just visiting to have idly sambhar with K.Acharya wrote:I will repat it again.
None of the 'non state actors' or the so called terrorist groups in the sub continent will target a big value leader of any country in the region without the backing of major powers such as UK, USA or USSR/Russia. There is no way they can plan it and not allow it to be sniffed by these countries.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Swami Vivekananda's influence on shaping American thought and ideas
Acharya, Can you post details of the 1920s book on impact of yoga on US?
Now we understand Wendy's children's assault on Ramakrishna!MY SWEET LORD The swami Vivekananda, the Bengali monk who brought yoga to the United States, meditating in London, in 1896.
By the late 1960s, the most famous writer in America had become a recluse, having forsaken his dazzling career. Nevertheless, J.D. Salinger often came to Manhattan, staying at his parents' sprawling apartment on Park Avenue and 91st Street. While he no longer visited with his editors at "The New Yorker," he was keen to spend time with his spiritual teacher, Swami Nikhilananda, the founder of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, located, then as now, in a townhouse just three blocks away, at 17 East 94th Street.
Though the iconic author of "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Franny and Zooey" published his last story in 1965, he did not stop writing. From the early 1950s onward, he maintained a lively correspondence with several Vedanta monks and fellow devotees.
After all, the central, guiding light of Salinger's spiritual quest was the teachings of Vivekananda, the Calcutta-born monk who popularized Vedanta and yoga in the West at the end of the 19th century.
These days yoga is offered up in classes and studios that have become as ubiquitous as Starbucks. Vivekananda would have been puzzled, if not somewhat alarmed. "As soon as I think of myself as a little body," he warned, "I want to preserve it, protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies. Then you and I become separate." For Vivekananda, who established the first ever Vedanta Center, in Manhattan in 1896, yoga meant just one thing: "the realization of God."
Photos: The Spiritual Teacher
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY/HULTON ARCHIVE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; ILYA EFIMOVICH REPIN/GETT Y IMAGES; POPPERFOTO/GETT Y IMAGES; SSPL/GETTY IMAGES
After an initial dalliance in the late 1940s with Zen—a spiritual path without a God—Salinger discovered Vedanta, which he found infinitely more consoling. "Unlike Zen," Salinger's biographer, Kenneth Slawenski, points out, "Vedanta offered a path to a personal relationship with God…[and] a promise that he could obtain a cure for his depression….and find God, and through God, peace."
Finding peace would, however, be a lifelong battle. In 1975, Salinger wrote to another monk at the New York City center about his own daily struggle, citing a text of the eighth-century Indian mystic Shankara as a cautionary tale: "In the forest-tract of sense pleasures there prowls a huge tiger called the mind. Let good people who have a longing for Liberation never go there." Salinger wrote, "I suspect that nothing is truer than that," confessing despondently, "and yet I allow myself to be mauled by that old tiger almost every wakeful minute of my life."
It was his daily mauling by the "huge tiger" and his dreaded depressions that led Salinger to abandon his literary ambitions in favor of spiritual ones. Salinger—who appears to have had a nervous breakdown of sorts upon his return from the gruesome front lines of World War II—subscribed to Vivekananda's view of the mind as a drunken monkey who is stung by a scorpion and then consumed by a demon. At the same time, Vivekananda promised hope and solace—writing that the "same mind, when subdued and controlled, becomes a most trusted friend and helper, guaranteeing peace and happiness." It was precisely the consolation that Salinger so desperately sought. And by 1965 he was ready to renounce his once gritty pursuit of literary celebrity.
Although all but forgotten by America's 20 million would-be yoginis, clad in their finest Lululemon, Vivekananda was the Bengali monk who introduced the word "yoga" into the national conversation. In 1893, outfitted in a red, flowing turban and yellow robes belted by a scarlet sash, he had delivered a show-stopping speech in Chicago. The event was the tony Parliament of Religions, which had been convened as a spiritual complement to the World's Fair, showcasing the industrial and technological achievements of the age.
On its opening day, September 11, Vivekananda, who appeared to be meditating onstage, was summoned to speak and did so without notes. "Sisters and Brothers of America," he began, in a sonorous voice tinged with "a delightful slight Irish brogue," according to one listener, attributable to his Trinity College–educated professor in India. "It fills my heart with joy unspeakable..."
Then something unprecedented happened, presaging the phenomenon decades later that greeted the Beatles (one of whom, George Harrison, would become a lifelong Vivekananda devotee). The previously sedate crowd of 4,000-plus attendees rose to their feet and wildly cheered the visiting monk, who, having never before addressed a large gathering, was as shocked as his audience. "I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world," he responded, flushed with emotion. "I thank you in the name of the mother of religions, and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects."
Annie Besant, a British Theosophist and a conference delegate, described Vivekananda's impact, writing that he was "a striking figure, clad in yellow and orange, shining like the sun of India in the midst of the heavy atmosphere of Chicago…a lion head, piercing eyes, mobile lips, movements swift and abrupt." The Parliament, she said, was "enraptured; the huge multitude hung upon his words." When he was done, the convocation rose again and cheered him even more thunderously. Another delegate described "scores of women walking over the benches to get near to him," prompting one wag to crack wise that if the 30-year-old Vivekananda "can resist that onslaught, [he is] indeed a god."
"No doubt the vast majority of those present hardly knew why they had been so powerfully moved," Christopher Isherwood wrote a half century later, surmising that a "strange kind of subconscious telepathy" had infected the hall, beginning with Vivekananda's first words, which have resonated, for some, long after. Asked about the origins of "My Sweet Lord," George Harrison replied that "the song really came from Swami Vivekananda, who said, 'If there is a God, we must see him. And if there is a soul, we must perceive it.' "
The teachings of Vedanta are rooted in the Vedas, ancient scriptures going back several thousand years that also inform Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. The Vedic texts of the Upanishads enshrine a core belief that God is within and without—that the divine is everywhere. The Bhagavad Gita (Song of God) is another sacred text or gospel, whereas Hinduism is actually a coinage popularized by Vivekananda to describe a faith of diverse and myriad beliefs.
Vivekananda's genius was to simplify Vedantic thought to a few accessible teachings that Westerners found irresistible. God was not the capricious tyrant in the heavens avowed by Bible-thumpers, but rather a power that resided in the human heart. "Each soul is potentially divine," he promised. "The goal is to manifest that divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal." And to close the deal for the fence-sitters, he punched up Vedanta's embrace of other faiths and their prophets. Christ and Buddha were incarnations of the divine, he said, no less than Krishna and his own teacher, Ramakrishna.
“'He is the most brilliant wise man,' Leo Tolstoy waxed. 'It is doubtful another man has ever risen above this selfless, spiritual meditation.'”
Although Vivekananda was a Western-educated intellectual of encyclopedic erudition, "the descendant of 50 generations of lawyers," as he would say, Ramakrishna was for all intents and purposes illiterate. Born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay, Ramakrishna had not an iota of interest in schooling beyond the study of scripture and prayer. Fortunately, that amply met the job requirements of his post as a priest at the Dakshineswar Kali Temple. According to numerous firsthand, contemporaneous accounts, Ramakrishna—who is revered as a saint in much of India and as an avatar by many—spent a good deal of his short life in samadhi, or an ecstatic state. On a daily basis, sitting or standing, he was often observed slipping into a transported state that he described as "God consciousness," existing with neither food nor sleep. He died in 1886 at age 50.
Though Ramakrishna spoke in a village idiom, invoking homespun local parables, word about the "Bengali saint" spread through the chattering classes of India in the 1870s like a monsoon. Many who flocked to him—and declared him a divine incarnation—were educated as lawyers, doctors and engineers and were often the graduates of British-run Christian schools. His closest and most influential disciple, however, was Vivekananda (born Narendranath Datta in 1863 to an affluent family), whom he charged with carrying the message of Vedanta to the world.
Certainly, a smattering of Eastern thought had already traveled to the West before Vivekananda's arrival in the U.S. In the 1820s, Ralph Waldo Emerson had snared a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and found himself enchanted. "I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita," Emerson wrote in his journal in 1831. The Gita would inform his Transcendentalist essays, in which he wrote of the "Over-Soul," that part of the individual that is one with the universe—invoking the Vedantic precepts of the Atman and Brahman. (In a tidy historical twist, one of Emerson's relatives, Ellen Waldo, became a devotee of Vivekananda, and faithfully transcribed the dictated text of his first book, "Raja Yoga," in 1895.)
Emerson's student and fellow Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau, would study Indian thought even more avidly and crafted his own practice—living as a secular monk, as it were, by Walden Pond. In 1875, Walt Whitman was given a copy of the Gita as a Christmas gift, and it is heard unmistakably in "Leaves of Grass" in lines such as "I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots." Though the two never met, Vivekananda hailed Whitman as "the Sannyasin of America."
The Academy, however, was a bit slower to embrace Eastern thought and literature. It wasn't until after an electrifying lecture by Vivekananda at Harvard's Graduate Philosophical Club on March 25, 1896, that Eastern Philosophy departments became a staple at Ivy League colleges.
Fascinated by the erudite and polyglot monk—who could pass an entire day sitting motionless in silent meditation—the esteemed philosopher William James roped in many of his colleagues, students and friends to attend Vivekananda's Harvard lecture. They were not disappointed. "The theory of evolution, and prana [energy] and akasa [space] is exactly what your modern science has," their exotic visitor blithely informed them. Nor were they unamused. When asked, "Swami, what do you think about food and breathing?" he replied, "I am for both." The evening ended with the turbaned monk, "dressed in rich dark red robes," receiving an offer to chair Harvard's new department. Columbia University promptly made its own bid for Vivekananda—who declined both, noting his vows of renunciation.
At a dinner party in his honor the following night, William James and Vivekananda scurried off to a corner by themselves, where they were observed nattering away until midnight. The next morning, James sent word inviting him to dinner at his own home that evening. And over the next week, James would dash into Boston to hear his other lectures.
"He has evidently swept Professor James off his feet," wrote a Harvard colleague. Indeed, the eminent scholar was deferential to a fault with his newfound Bengali friend, referring to him as Master. More important, in his seminal book "The Varieties of Religious Experience," James relied upon Vivekananda's "Raja Yoga," a treatise on the discipline of meditation practice from which he quoted extensively: "All the different steps in yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the superconscious state, or samadhi."
Unbeknownst to him, Vivekananda had hit the piñata of influence: James was arguably the country's premier intellectual. And it hardly hurt that his brother was the master novelist Henry James.
Along with the James brothers, a half dozen socially prominent and wealthy women immeasurably facilitated the visiting monk—who not infrequently encountered some racism on his U.S. lecture tours. Sara Bull in Cambridge, Josephine MacLeod in New York City, and Margaret Noble in London would set up salons and avidly spread the word—and even followed him to India. With the vast contacts and shrewd networking of these women, his talks in Cambridge and Manhattan became standing-room-only affairs attended by the cognoscenti of the day, assorted seekers, and all manner of movers and shakers—from Gertrude Stein, one of James's students, to John D. Rockefeller. Blessed with "the power of personality," as Henry James would say, Vivekananda was the ideal missionary to pitch the message of Vedanta.
During his lifetime, Vivekananda had another enthusiast in Leo Tolstoy, the titan of Russian letters. "He is the most brilliant wise man," Tolstoy gushed after devouring "Raja Yoga" in 1896 in a single sitting and reporting it to be "most remarkable… [and] I have received much instruction. The precept of what the true 'I' of a man is, is excellent…Yesterday, I read Vivekananda the whole day."
Not long before his death, Tolstoy was still waxing about Vivekananda. "It is doubtful in this age that another man has ever risen above this selfless, spiritual meditation."
Tolstoy and Vivekananda never met, but the opera diva Emma Calvé and the great tragedienne Sarah Bernhardt sought him out and became his lifelong friends.
“Scores of women walked over benches to get near him, prompting one wag to crack, if Vivekananda 'can resist that onslaught, then he is indeed a god.'”
Bernhardt, in fact, introduced him to the electromagnetic scientist Nikola Tesla, who was struck by Vivekananda's knowledge of physics. Both recognized they had been pondering the same thesis on energy—in different languages. Vivekananda was keenly interested in the science supporting meditation, and Tesla would cite the monk's contributions in his pioneering research of electricity. "Mr. Tesla was charmed to hear about the Vedantic prana and akasha and the kalpas [time]," Vivekananda wrote to a friend. "He thinks he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy. I am to go to see him next week to get this mathematical demonstration. In that case Vedantic cosmology will be placed on the surest of foundations." For the monk from Calcutta, there were no inconsistencies between science, evolution and religious belief. Faith, he wrote, must be based upon direct experience, not religious platitudes.
More presciently, he warned that India would remain a vanquished, impoverished land until it "elevated" the status of women. And while he admonished Westerners for their preoccupation with the material and the physical, he famously advised a sickly young devotee to toughen himself with athletics: "You will be nearer to heaven playing football than studying the Bhagavad Gita."
Vivekananda's influence bloomed well into the mid-20th century, infusing the work of Mahatma Gandhi, Carl Jung, George Santayana, Jane Addams, Joseph Campbell and Henry Miller, among assorted luminaries. And then he seemed to go into eclipse in the West. American baby boomers—more disposed to "doing" than "being"—have opted for "hot yoga" classes over meditation. At some point, perhaps in the 1980s, an ancient, profoundly antimaterialist teaching had morphed into a fitness cult with expensive accessories.
Moreover, a few American academics have recently taken to scrutinizing Vivekananda and Ramakrishna through a Freudian prism, offering up speculative theories of sexual repression. In turn their critics respond that the two titans from Calcutta are incomprehensible via simplistic Freudian prisms. To understand the unconditional celibacy of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, they argue, requires fluency in 19th-century Bengali and a decidedly non-Western paradigm.
Supporting this view were Christopher Isherwood and his friend Aldous Huxley, who wrote the introduction to the 1942 English-language edition of "The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna," a firsthand account (originally published in India in 1898) described by Huxley as "the most profound and subtle utterances about the nature of Ultimate Reality." Nikhilananda, Salinger's guru, did the translation, with assistance from Huxley, Joseph Campbell and Margaret Wilson, the daughter of the late president.
Huxley and Isherwood were introduced to Vedanta in the Hollywood Hills in the late 1930s by their countryman, the writer Gerald Heard. In a fitting counterpart to the New York Center, the Hollywood Vedanta society was likewise run by a scholarly and charismatic monk, Prabhavananda, who initiated the English trio of writers.
Like Nikhilananda, Prabhavananda was a magnet for the intelligentsia, and his lectures often attracted the likes of Igor Stravinsky, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and W. Somerset Maugham (and led to his writing "The Razor's Edge"). Inspired by Isherwood—who briefly lived at the center as a monk—Greta Garbo asked if she too might move in. Told that a monastery accepts only men, Garbo became testy. "That doesn't matter!" she thumped. "I'll put on trousers."
Henry Miller, who made headlines with his torrid and banned "Tropic of Cancer," visited with Prabhavananda at the Hollywood center, devoured a small library of Vedanta books and settled down in Big Sur in 1944. Throughout his memoir, "The Air Conditioned Nightmare," Miller invokes Vivekananda as the great sage of the modern age and the consummate messenger to rescue the West from spiritual bankruptcy.
Isherwood's commitment to Vedanta, like Salinger's, was unswerving and lifelong. Over the next 20 years, he co-translated with Prabhavananda the Bhagavad Gita, Patanjali's "Yoga Aphorisms" and Shankara's "Crest Jewel of Discrimination," and was the author of several books and tracts on Vivekananda and Ramakrishna.
Huxley, however, in his final years turned over his spiritual quest to his second wife, Laura, and pharmaceuticals—an unequivocal no-no among Vedantins. Believing he had found a shortcut to samadhi, the great man had his wife inject him with LSD on his deathbed. "Aldous was the most brilliant man I ever met," sighed one monk, "but he lacked discrimination."
Of all the literary lions captivated by Vivekananda and Vedanta, J.D. Salinger perhaps made the fullest commitment and sacrifices. In 1952, Salinger exhorted his British publisher to pick up the English rights of the Gospel, calling it "the religious book of the century."
At the peak of his fame in 1961, Salinger delivered a warmly inscribed copy of "Franny and Zooey," which is saturated in Vedantic thought and references, to his guru Nikhilananda, who by then had formally initiated him as a devotee. Salinger confided to Nikhilananda that he intentionally left a trail of Vedantic clues throughout his work from "Franny and Zooey" onward, hoping to entice readers into deeper study.
The two men often met at the 94th Street center, where they would discuss the spiritual challenges of renunciation. Salinger would also embark on "personal retreats" at the Vedanta center in Thousand Island Park in the St. Lawrence River. There he would stay in the cottage where Vivekananda had lived and held retreats in the late 1890s.
In January 1963, at the New York celebration of Vivekananda's 100th birthday—presided over by the secretary-general of the United Nations, U Thant—Salinger sat front and center at the banquet table. A few weeks later, he published "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction," two exquisitely wrought novellas in which the suicide of Seymour, arguably Salinger's alter ego, is the catalyzing event. "I have been reading a miscellany of Vedanta all day," begins one entry in Seymour's diary in "Raise High." In Seymour, the narrator declares, "I tend to regard myself as a fourth-class Karma Yogini, with perhaps a little Jnana Yoga thrown in to spice up the pot."
In Salinger's last published work, "Hapworth 16, 1924," in 1965 in "The New Yorker," Seymour bursts into a manic tribute to Vivekananda. "Raja-Yoga and Bhakti-Yoga, two heartrending, handy, quite tiny volumes, are perfect for the pockets of any average, mobile boys our age, by Vivekananda of India."
And then America's beloved novelist stopped publishing. "Name and fame," eschewed by Ramakrishna, no longer was the ticket for the increasingly hermetic Salinger. His ferocious literary ambition was now supplanted by what appears to have been a diligent, albeit eccentric, spiritual quest for the next four decades—until his death in 2010.
While Salinger is depicted by many chroniclers and contemporaries as an ornery crank, four letters, approved by Salinger's estate for use by the New York Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, suggest a man of singular devotion and renunciation: "I read a bit from the Gita every morning before I get out of bed," he wrote to Nikhilananda's successor swami at the New York center in 1975.
Salinger also conducted a long correspondence with Marie Louise Burke, who compiled a six-volume history of Vivekananda's visits to the West. Burke was as serious a seeker as Salinger and as devoted as a nun: Indeed, she took the monastic name Sister Gargi. Nevertheless, the nervous, sometimes paranoid Salinger fretted that she might profit from their letters. Unfortunately, Burke proved her fidelity to her friend by burning them.
In between his two treks to the West, Vivekananda returned to India and founded the Ramakrishna Order as both a monastery and a service mission. Today it is among the largest philanthropic organizations in India—providing food, medical assistance and disaster relief to millions. His prescription for his countrymen, however, who had been demoralized by colonialism, was to borrow a page from the West, he said, and instill itself with the "can do" spirit of Americans. "Strength! Strength is my religion!" he exhorted. "Religion is not for the weak!"
India has scheduled a yearlong party to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Vivekananda's birth, beginning on January 12, 2013. There will be plenty of readings of his four texts on yoga as a spiritual discipline. Nine volumes chronicle his talks, writings and ruminations, from screeds against child marriage to Milton's "Paradise Lost" to his pet goats and ducks. But if there were a single takeaway line that boils down his teachings to one spiritual bullet point, it would be "You are not your body." This might be bad news for the yoga-mat crowd. The good news for beleaguered souls like Salinger was Vivekananda's corollary: "You are not your mind."
In a 1972 letter to the ailing Nikhilananda in the last year of his life, Salinger seemed to be saying as much.
"I sometimes wish that the East had deigned to concentrate some small part of its immeasurable genius to the petty art of science of keeping the body well and fit. Between extreme indifference to the body and the most extreme and zealous attention to it (Hatha Yoga), there seems to be no useful middle ground whatever."
Salinger went on to express his gratitude to the man who had guided him out of his "long dark night." "It may be that reading to a devoted group from the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna is all you do now, as you say, but I imagine the students who are lucky enough to hear you read from the Gospel would put the matter rather differently. Meaning that I've forgotten many worthy and important things in my life, but I have never forgotten the way you used to read from, and interpret, the Upanishads, up at Thousand Island Park."
By then, Salinger had not published in some time. Nor would he again. Nor did he seem to miss it.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... z1r2rpX3za
Acharya, Can you post details of the 1920s book on impact of yoga on US?
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
A time for India to stand up and be counted
The two-cornered contest for the top job in the World Bank is an opportunity for India to objectively assess which person is the right choice.
The World Bank is at a turning point, and India has a major voice in deciding its future. The serious candidates (Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria and Dr. Jim Yong Kim of the United States) present the 180 countries who sit on the Board of the World Bank with a clear choice between visions of the World Bank.
Two visions
Vision One is the World Bank as a full-service development institution that provides loans and grants and development advice to promote economic development through capable administration that allows governments to carry out their core functions — economic management, law and order, education, infrastructure, regulation and environmental management. This is the role that the Bank has played over decades in India and a role that continues to evolve as India's financial capacity grows and its development needs change. This is similar for other growing countries — during my time as World Bank Country Director for Brazil, the Bank's focus was that of a partner assisting Brazil address what now-President Dilma Roussef defined as “helping address the paradigmatic challenges” (which included finding a balance between development and conservation in the Amazon, building a platform for inclusive growth in the poor northeast and modernising the public sector). To lead an institution with this vision, the qualifications for the President are clear: exposure to the breadth of development issues in a wide variety of countries, experience in setting economic and financial policy, and experience in managing a multi-cultural large organisation.
Vision Two is that of the World Bank as an aid agency implementing the vision of “the anointed” in rich countries. In the U.S. this means the vision of domestic charities, which care little about or are hostile to economic growth but see development as being focused on health rights for the poorest, and see NGOs as the central delivery mechanism for these services. This vision is manifest in the appointment of the Administrator of USAID – a young physician whose main working experience is in the Gates Foundation — who champions the social sectors, and who opposes a role for USAID in critical areas like infrastructure development.
The candidates
The beauty of the contest for the President of the World Bank is that there are two serious candidates, one aligning with each of these visions. On the one hand is Minister Ngozi, who is the former Foreign Minister and also former number two in the World Bank, a woman with deep experience throughout the developing world, who is widely respected for her courage and demonstrated capability in diplomacy, strategy and management.
On the other hand is the U.S. nominee, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, an academic physician who has done fine work on complex medical issues (like tuberculosis) and who helped found an NGO which gets funds from rich people to help address the health needs of the poor in Haiti and Rwanda. Aside from his first five years in Korea, he has not lived in a developing country, has no experience in development issues in countries which have grown out of poverty, has no experience in finance, economics, business or regulation, and has a world view (as shown in Dying for Growth, his only published non-medical work) that economic growth leads to more poverty. His writings and work show no interest in the road followed by countries that have escaped from poverty (like his native Korea), and no grasp of the development choices by these countries.
President Obama is sending Dr. Kim on a road trip to seven countries, including India. If India is to be true to its claimed and proper role in the world, it will (a) define the qualifications it sees as necessary for the job (b) objectively assess Minister Ngozi and Dr Kim against these qualifications. If this process is followed, the outcome is obvious. In the words of fellow Harvard Professor and former World Bank economist Lant Pritchett “(Kim's nomination) is an embarrassment to the U.S. You cannot with a straight face say this person is the most qualified to lead the World Bank.” However, there is no doubt that the Obama administration, which will not want the embarrassment of facing accusations of “who lost the World Bank?” in an election year, will strong-arm countries into acquiescing with its frivolous choice. This is a time for India to stand up and be counted.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a ... epage=true
The two-cornered contest for the top job in the World Bank is an opportunity for India to objectively assess which person is the right choice.
The World Bank is at a turning point, and India has a major voice in deciding its future. The serious candidates (Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria and Dr. Jim Yong Kim of the United States) present the 180 countries who sit on the Board of the World Bank with a clear choice between visions of the World Bank.
Two visions
Vision One is the World Bank as a full-service development institution that provides loans and grants and development advice to promote economic development through capable administration that allows governments to carry out their core functions — economic management, law and order, education, infrastructure, regulation and environmental management. This is the role that the Bank has played over decades in India and a role that continues to evolve as India's financial capacity grows and its development needs change. This is similar for other growing countries — during my time as World Bank Country Director for Brazil, the Bank's focus was that of a partner assisting Brazil address what now-President Dilma Roussef defined as “helping address the paradigmatic challenges” (which included finding a balance between development and conservation in the Amazon, building a platform for inclusive growth in the poor northeast and modernising the public sector). To lead an institution with this vision, the qualifications for the President are clear: exposure to the breadth of development issues in a wide variety of countries, experience in setting economic and financial policy, and experience in managing a multi-cultural large organisation.
Vision Two is that of the World Bank as an aid agency implementing the vision of “the anointed” in rich countries. In the U.S. this means the vision of domestic charities, which care little about or are hostile to economic growth but see development as being focused on health rights for the poorest, and see NGOs as the central delivery mechanism for these services. This vision is manifest in the appointment of the Administrator of USAID – a young physician whose main working experience is in the Gates Foundation — who champions the social sectors, and who opposes a role for USAID in critical areas like infrastructure development.
The candidates
The beauty of the contest for the President of the World Bank is that there are two serious candidates, one aligning with each of these visions. On the one hand is Minister Ngozi, who is the former Foreign Minister and also former number two in the World Bank, a woman with deep experience throughout the developing world, who is widely respected for her courage and demonstrated capability in diplomacy, strategy and management.
On the other hand is the U.S. nominee, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, an academic physician who has done fine work on complex medical issues (like tuberculosis) and who helped found an NGO which gets funds from rich people to help address the health needs of the poor in Haiti and Rwanda. Aside from his first five years in Korea, he has not lived in a developing country, has no experience in development issues in countries which have grown out of poverty, has no experience in finance, economics, business or regulation, and has a world view (as shown in Dying for Growth, his only published non-medical work) that economic growth leads to more poverty. His writings and work show no interest in the road followed by countries that have escaped from poverty (like his native Korea), and no grasp of the development choices by these countries.
President Obama is sending Dr. Kim on a road trip to seven countries, including India. If India is to be true to its claimed and proper role in the world, it will (a) define the qualifications it sees as necessary for the job (b) objectively assess Minister Ngozi and Dr Kim against these qualifications. If this process is followed, the outcome is obvious. In the words of fellow Harvard Professor and former World Bank economist Lant Pritchett “(Kim's nomination) is an embarrassment to the U.S. You cannot with a straight face say this person is the most qualified to lead the World Bank.” However, there is no doubt that the Obama administration, which will not want the embarrassment of facing accusations of “who lost the World Bank?” in an election year, will strong-arm countries into acquiescing with its frivolous choice. This is a time for India to stand up and be counted.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a ... epage=true
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
This diplomat's analysis in the following post is what I was referring to: http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 0#p1263970Rangudu wrote:CRS,
What diplomat? I've never heard that story before. I trust your words but is there any link?
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Rawalpindi: One of Pakistan's most notorious extremists mocked the United States during a defiant media conference close to the country's military headquarters on Wednesday, a day after the US slapped a $10 million bounty on him.
"I am here, I am visible. America should give that reward money to me," said Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, referring to the fact that the bounty was given to a man whose whereabouts are not a mystery. "I will be in Lahore tomorrow. America can contact me whenever it wants to."
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Lol! This is good for us, let the US work harder to win our support. India can now say - you are not pushing TSP hard enough.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... Saeed.htmlThe decision to name Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, on the US State Department's wanted list has provoked an angry reaction in Pakistan where even liberal commentators fear Washington is acting without proof in order to cosy up to arch-rival India.
I find it very very hard to believe that there isn't any evidence against this loser despite all the cutting edge surveillance technology? Its a joke.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
^^^ liberal pakistani commentators fear there is no evidence, everyone else already knows
and the LPC's have to fear that because if they say anything else to the contrary, the ISI press wing will come and pay them a nocturnal visit to accompany them on a tour of punjabi canal banks and sluice gates
and the LPC's have to fear that because if they say anything else to the contrary, the ISI press wing will come and pay them a nocturnal visit to accompany them on a tour of punjabi canal banks and sluice gates
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
When doing educated surmise one needs different metrics of truth than "provable in a courtroom." fear of "sounding like ziad hamid" should not keep us from intelligent speculation.Rangudu wrote:
Ramana,
Every Zaid Hamid type also essentially says the same thing. Ignore the media and use an "open mind" and you'll see RAW/CIA/Mossad behind everything bad in TSP.
Once you agree with that fundamental approach of suspending disbelief and ignoring the need for minimal evidence, everything fits into that theory.
Occam's razor should be used and it says that if it walks like and CT and talks like a CT, then it is a CT.
Unless someone can show evidence of any US or Western connection to RG's assassination, then claiming so is just nonsense, with all due respect.
One element is corroborative behavioral evidence. Ziad has none for his allegations against India. But Unkil and proxies have been active supporters of Tigers, Khalistanis, etc.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Again, in real life, all reasoning has to be done in the face of uncertainty. We should surely qualify our assertions with uncertainty parameters, be generally skeptical, and beware of facile conclusions. But generating fear of sounding like a known dubious actor is the way to mental paralysis.Rangudu wrote:shyamd ji,
Again, what you say is less than the minimum to even theorize about US hand. That same standard if applied to 26/11 would then lend credibility to Digvijaya type jokers' theories on Hemant Karkare and "Saffron terror" bogey. In this same forum we have torn to shreds the likes of Christine Fair for linking India to the Baloch struggle.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
That is too broad and easily challenged. Big powers don't have infinite freedom to choose and locals don't have zero freedom to choose.Acharya wrote:I will repat it again.
None of the 'non state actors' or the so called terrorist groups in the sub continent will target a big value leader of any country in the region without the backing of major powers such as UK, USA or USSR/Russia. There is no way they can plan it and not allow it to be sniffed by these countries.
Instead talk about the presence of big powers, and the need to take their role into account when constructing hypotheses.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
KLN Murthy,
Please point out what "uncertainty parameters" were used in the aforementioned conspiracy theories, or where any element of skepticism was discernable.
Where did I say that the standard of evidence should be sufficient to be "provable in a courtroom"? So please don't put words in my mouth, thank you.
I'd rather be categorized as suffering from mental paralysis than to make bullshit claims with nonexistent supporting facts. And yes, claiming that Rajiv Gandhi's murder was orchestrated by Western intel IS about as valid as any of Zaid Hamid's theories.
Please point out what "uncertainty parameters" were used in the aforementioned conspiracy theories, or where any element of skepticism was discernable.
Where did I say that the standard of evidence should be sufficient to be "provable in a courtroom"? So please don't put words in my mouth, thank you.
I'd rather be categorized as suffering from mental paralysis than to make bullshit claims with nonexistent supporting facts. And yes, claiming that Rajiv Gandhi's murder was orchestrated by Western intel IS about as valid as any of Zaid Hamid's theories.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
This was a callow and moronic step by US. Rapidly becoming pak for the course.Garooda wrote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... Saeed.htmlThe decision to name Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, on the US State Department's wanted list has provoked an angry reaction in Pakistan where even liberal commentators fear Washington is acting without proof in order to cosy up to arch-rival India.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Rangudu, agreed that loose statements were being made. And I wasn't intending to suggest you laid down courtroom standards, the quotes were to call out the concept. Sorry for the messy writing.Rangudu wrote:KLN Murthy,
Please point out what "uncertainty parameters" were used in the aforementioned conspiracy theories, or where any element of skepticism was discernable.
Where did I say that the standard of evidence should be sufficient to be "provable in a courtroom"? So please don't put words in my mouth, thank you.
I'd rather be categorized as suffering from mental paralysis than to make bullshit claims with nonexistent supporting facts. And yes, claiming that Rajiv Gandhi's murder was orchestrated by Western intel IS about as valid as any of Zaid Hamid's theories.
Personally I don't think it is all that far fetched to speculate that US had a hand in RG killing. There is past history of US indulging in such acts, enough to be an m.o. and there is corroborative behavioral evidence in case of LTTE.
Skepticism is fine, but this kind of discussion has to be bracketed more narrowly than, "This is exactly what happened" vs. "only a shady idiot would say that."
We are not in a position to know whether CIA sat in a room with LTTE to plot RG killing. I think such things are done--if done--more by nudging and steering.
Last edited by KLNMurthy on 05 Apr 2012 20:29, edited 1 time in total.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
MSM and Journalism has been dead for a long time globallyIt feels like Zakaria is delivering gotus message in the backdrop of recent US objections to India buying oil from Iran. Somebody should ask for a clarification as to what he means by US and India having common enemies.
CNN is one such outlet just like any other in the US or India. Ofcourse he is a mouthpiece and he is very obvious with the message as per what originated the remark Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Rangudu, I enjoy your posts as a rule but this is unfortunate. You are just using bullying tactics to shut down a line of informed speculation.Rangudu wrote:You are all wrong. Death rays from Mars are responsible for the assassinations of key Indian, TSPian and other regional leaders. The trigger may have been pulled by locals but the puppetteer is in another planet. Those who ask for proof simply cannot understand the conspiracy or they too have been subverted. The only way to avoid being caught in this trap is to wear one of these.
People and organizations exhibit habitual modus operandi. It is standard practice for US to kill problematic foreign leaders for its benefit by leveraging local conditions. Not that they do it every time, even mafia doesn't always kill every rival. That doesn't mean we don't look for a signature. The RG case prima facie fits the US pattern. Beyond that, only an investigation can tell, and that is unlikely.
People may have made loose statements about this but it is ignorant or mischievous to demand proof of US complicity in the actual event when you know that no one here is in a position to produce it.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
superb article. nice demolition of entire careers built around a malignant fantasy. "requires fluency in 19th-century Bengali and a decidedly non-Western paradigm"--absolutely.ramana wrote:Swami Vivekananda's influence on shaping American thought and ideas
Now we understand Wendy's children's assault on Ramakrishna!
...
Moreover, a few American academics have recently taken to scrutinizing Vivekananda and Ramakrishna through a Freudian prism, offering up speculative theories of sexual repression. In turn their critics respond that the two titans from Calcutta are incomprehensible via simplistic Freudian prisms. To understand the unconditional celibacy of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, they argue, requires fluency in 19th-century Bengali and a decidedly non-Western paradigm.
...
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... z1r2rpX3za
Acharya, Can you post details of the 1920s book on impact of yoga on US?
the author anticipated my own part-time research into this phenomenon (and its unanticipated effect 12 time zones away). glad the whole article's come out in the WSJ when it has. lots of nice historical pointers.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Since people are speculating on RG assasination,I will say this loud and clear.Its possible that US/Britain 'might have had a hand' but theres not a shred of evidence and it will be ridiculed as a CT.
If even they had a hand,the question to be asked is this-what induced prabhakarans to take that suicidal and fateful step,what was the US/British influence in LTTE,how did they acquire such influence,what was the local support in TN and why that existed.
There are so many factors here.Prabhakaran is dead.The Eezham diaspora is based in West.I dont think key players(if they were involved ) in TN are going to confess.The truth,if any,cannot be unearthed.It has to emerge(if there is indeed something) only by providential intervention.IMHO,this is a futile discussion.
If even they had a hand,the question to be asked is this-what induced prabhakarans to take that suicidal and fateful step,what was the US/British influence in LTTE,how did they acquire such influence,what was the local support in TN and why that existed.
There are so many factors here.Prabhakaran is dead.The Eezham diaspora is based in West.I dont think key players(if they were involved ) in TN are going to confess.The truth,if any,cannot be unearthed.It has to emerge(if there is indeed something) only by providential intervention.IMHO,this is a futile discussion.
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Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
^^^Ramana garu, thank you for posting the very nice article on Vivekananda.
Re: India-US Strategic News and Discussion
Prolly sponsored to score some brownie points in India as a US Ambassador? Prolly a indirect method of injecting the idea of free speech the american style in India where generally the msm, comedians and entertainers alike are not at a complete liberty as their industry counterparts in US? Just a guess. Comedy to me is the way to get serious. However not every country allows comedians/talk show hosts to express their political/cultural viewpoints the way it does on US.Kati wrote:State Dept's 'Chai' strategy.............what do you guys think of this?
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/04/144688443 ... r-to-india
Otherwise, entertainers constantly go on tours around the world including from Bollywood
Except Bollywood have private sponsors (most of the time). The message of peace and harmony is pretty much used by majority of the entertainers just to be politically correct and avoid denial of entry if their message is misunderstood by the masses of the country where they're performing. I wouldn't pay much attention to it. I just think its a waste of tax payers money and nothing more. After all, what would you think the comedians might achieve in India where beaurcracy is the most complex (even worst than US).