Varsha Bhosle - RIP

[Harish]

My country, period.

I want to tell you a story about a British woman called Melita Sirnis. Melita was born in 1912 to an English mother and a Latvian father, a bookbinder who had once been part of the Leo Tolstoy-inspired anarchist/egalitarian movement. Politics was in the family's blood: Her mother was a member of the Co-operative Party; an aunt was one of the first female trade unionists of Britain. Naturally, they all were advocates of Peace. As Melita later said, "Ah yes, they were anti-war all along, the pair of them, father and mother. I suppose I absorbed some of that too."

Epic. Not one in a thousand can write as articulately and forcefully as this.

[Rishi]

RIP. She's had her tiffs with BRF too in those glory days. Have not heard such an fearless voice in the Indian columnati since.

[SSridhar]

Sounds like she was a BRF reader.
http://www.rediff.in/news/2003/apr/14varsha.htm
She makes reference to TFTAs here in the opening sentence. Now where in the world could she have learned that acronym from ...

Oh yeah, she was a regular here.

[Raja Ram]

It is indeed a tragic end to a brilliant mind! She was one of the few in the media who had the courage to write what she genuinely felt without resorting to niceties and bending her principles. While she was prolific and had a brilliant mind to go with it, her sometimes fiery passion would come in the way of articulating the cold logic of her argument and dilute the strength of the same in the din of her fury.

Like many others, I too read her articles in rediff. Most of the time she had the ability to see through the maze and grasp at the real issues. Occasionally she would let her passion and peeves get in the way of her articulation, but her mind was laser like in grasping the real issues.

Still she was a genuine Indian and thought and wrote about the revival of the idea of India. She was one of those who successfully broke the strongest shackle that Western and Middle Eastern world had over India - the one in our minds. She broke free and wrote fearlessly.

That is why it is difficult to relate to the personal demons in her mind and her struggle with it ending in such a tragic manner. My prayers to God to grant her the solace that she so lacked when she was alive!

[Chandragupta]

Extremely sad news. It's even sadder that the mother of this proud & staunch Hindu is moderating Surkshetra. Aak thoo.

[Raja Bose]

In remembrance of her in an age where our DDM are more interested in antics of Rahul Baba than the soldiers who protect our lives, one of the best articles written on the CIJWS (posting in full):

Back to School by Varsha Bhosle

Back to school...

We were in Mizoram last week. Not in the state capital, Aizawl, which has more cars per person than even Delhi, but in Vairengte, a "village" bordering the Cachar district of Assam. "Village" because it's nothing but ten-odd shanties perched on stilts on the drop-side of the road up the hill to the Counter Insurgency And Jungle Warfare School run by the Indian Army. Battalions which are inducted into any of the "seven sisters" -- the north-east states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura -- are trained here in the special requirements for countering insurgency in the area. More interestingly, selected officers, JCOs and NCOs, no matter where their posting, as well as men of the CRPF, BSF and Assam Rifles, besides "students" from foreign countries, are enrolled for an extensive course in basic as well as NE-specific CI operations.

However, a school is just a school -- it ain't quite a story. Unless it has functioned as the premier and only institution of its kind in the country for 30 years -- and hardly any reporter has heard of it, let alone visit it. Then, it becomes a scoop. When we got a whiff of it, our martial ears tingled; we put out feelers among our khakied friends, who said they had no clue what we were talking about. Sure that we were being rebuffed, we became Ophelia, and brightened only after a CIJWS officer exclaimed: "How did you hear about the school? Hardly anyone in the army itself knows of us!" He immediately launched into we-are-completely-transparent-nothing-is-classified blah blah, but the point is, training in CI ops hinges on research, analysis, strategy and tactics. And therein lies the sensitive nature of this lean and mean institution.

In 1967, Field Marshal SHFJ Manikshaw, then GOC Eastern Command, realised that the heavy casualties suffered by the security forces at the hands of insurgents in Nagaland and Mizoram were due to the lack of understanding -- climatic, geographical and psychological -- of the region and its peoples. Thus, on 1 May, 1970, the CIJWS was mid-wifed by Brig Mathew Thomas in Vairengte. The next year, when Mrs G and Sam were, hehehe, cleaving Pakistan, the school was reorganised as HQ Kilo Force -- its personnel actively took part in Op Jackpot -- and helped East Pakistan flower into Bangladesh. The then commandant (principal, in civilian terms), Brig Anand Sarup, was awarded the Maha Veer Chakra for his valour in the BD operation. But in 1972, the school reverted to its basic role of education. Bunkum. Today, instructors and trainees undertake CI ops and low intensity combat as and when required. Only, they call it "practicals." This makes CIJWS a "semi-field" area: not at the battle front, but not away, either.

Frankly, we were torn between giving you hard information about the school and being our usual giddy-headed self. We finally opted for the latter because any dolt can compile and relay data, and we are the Monet of painting impressions... Readers who squinted through our Y2K-on-LC series will be pleased to find that this article is be-Jewella-ed. The sainted editor believes we wanted to spare you the pain of deciphering our photographs; we merely needed someone to hold our sceptre when we doodled.

So where to begin? At the tarmac of Kumbhigram airport, where we were informed that neither had we landed in Silchar, nor was Silchar in Mizoram...? You see, like 95 per cent of those not of the NE, our knowledge about the Mongoloid states of India is just a little above zero. Turned out, Silchar is in Assam; Kumbhigram, also in Assam, is a good dusty hour-and-half away; and the NE does not mean spear-toting, er... slope-eyed people in glorious tribal shawls. Therefore, the first lesson we learnt from this adventure is: It's the negligence of the rest of India that has augmented, if not created, the unrest in the NE. Everything you know or want to know about insurgency is that of Kashmir's. But the trouble brewing incessantly in the NE is somehow not of much interest to us. We quickly turn the page after scanning headers spelling death datelined Dimapur. It's all so geographically far away from Chandigarh, Cochin or Chennai. Question is, why's it emotionally distant, too...?

We'll get to that by and by. First, we have to tell you about our latest guardian angel, JCO Farooq Ahmed, a Kashmiri from Poonch, who received a gallantry award on January 26 for dispatching three ULFA terrorists during a midnight encounter in Nalbari. The story is thrillingly gory but, sorry, we can't tell you because Chindu & Co will pounce on us. Point is, the men selected for CIJWS are those who fulfill certain qualitative requirements...

With that, we entered the grand portal of the school, motto: Fight The Guerrilla Like A Guerilla (faithfully pronounced "gorilla" by all). We dumped our bag in our room (conveniently close to the officers' mess), in a setting so arboreal that we forgot our assignment. But not for long: at 11 am sharp we were to report for a briefing to the commandant, Brig HS Nahal of the Jat Regiment. Briefing?? Moi...?

All of Mizoram is uniformly hilly; meaning, inclines everywhere; meaning, steep steps to navigate between one cabin and another. Meaning, not a single room did we enter without panting and sweating. And so we gasped to Col Sharma (officer General Staff, a dear man known throughout as GS), to be vetted before meeting the commandant. Oooh and what a specimen of dignity he turned out to be! We simply stared at this gracefully graying Sardar while we got a briefing on... GEOGRAPHY. Honest! With a map and laser indicator! We now know that primary jungles are the untouched ones, secondary are cut-and-grown, with thicker undergrowth; what alluvial soil is; what the composition of the terrain of Nagaland is; the climate of Mizoram (humidity 90 per cent, rains 8 months); the uses of bamboo; the flora, fauna, etc, etc. Oh gawwd, we were back in school...

Our eyes were just glazing over, and the brigadier said: "If the soldier does not know all this, how can he live off the land? There's now a change in the psyche of the terrorist -- he has become lazy; he prefers to be near townships. But he always retreats to the jungles, and we must know how to tackle him in his surroundings. Knowledge of the ground, knowing the lay of the land, is a force multiplier." Rambo!! We woke up. Perhaps the last time Indians fought as an army in a jungle was when Sam Manikshaw commanded a Sikh company in the Burma campaign in 1942. Insurgency and demands for secession have existed in NE since the late forties. Our friendly neighbours, China, Bangladesh and Myanmar, added no little fuel to the fire -- nor did our goodly pinkos. All of which necessitates the CIJWS.

The charter of the school is to act as a nodal agency ("look up the dictionary," was the curt clarification) for all CI ops in the NE. Courses include language familiarisation in Nagamese, Tangkhul, Assamese, and Manipuri dialects; area-specific history, and theatre-specific training. The school has eleven firing ranges for different scenarios: quick response shooting, urban shooting and pursuit, ambush, jungle lane shooting, chance encounter, mobile firing, etc. But, what does jungle warfare entail, exactly...?

To fight and win in the jungle is tough, both physically and mentally: Jungle operations test platoons to their limit since communications are rendered difficult. In 1941, the Japs prepared to capture Singapore with the help of a booklet titled, Read This Alone and You Can Win the War; it became the foundation for what's called TTP: tactics, techniques and procedures. It was, basically, drills and common-sense tips on how to survive in the jungle by studying its characteristics: Dense vegetation with limited visibility; heavy cross compartmentation; streams and rivers; heat and humidity; few roads; numerous tracks. It is in this theatre that students live and train. They have a time of their life when made to run the Mad Mathew Mile in minutes flat, and run it again if they can't -- often suckling leeches during the rains.

But were we interested in such huffing and puffing? Not! For no matter how crucial physical fitness is, we are a cerebral personage... We figured, if Nana Patekar was allowed to train in Belgaum as a commando for a film role, we'd be allowed to attend some classes. Our heart was set on Intelligence Collection, Covert Ops, and IED Awareness. Unfortunately, the thumb rule in military CI training is: Trust No One (unless it happens to be someone from Outlook, we suppose). So we made do with shimmying up to certain officers and wringing out we wanted, and thereby expanded other boundaries of our personality, too. It's called unconventional int collection.

But did GS need to be so cagey...? Ya. For instance, a lecture on the NSCN(I-M), the most powerful terrorist unit operational in entire NE, would also include an account of its known weaknesses and how they could be exploited. If that info leaked to its members, they'd plug the holes. So yes, it's sticky territory. Similarly, we aren't allowed to even describe the school's collection of defused IEDs since it could give ideas to budding murderers. Suffice to say, The Specialist doesn't seem an unrealistic movie anymore. What with the Internet and hi-tech communications, the nature of even rural insurgency has become very dynamic; the terrorist's modus operandi is changing everyday. Explosives may be concealed in hollow bamboos or may be solar-controlled. The molotov cocktail? We could make it in 10 minutes flat and without visiting a chemist (beware, Dilip!). The task before the army is indeed an onerous one.

We were pondering this as we climbed the 43rd step towards lunch and, well, missed the 44th. It was just a 3 feet drop off the concrete, but it was onto a slope and the momentum rolled us till we hit a thorny bush. Our pride, too, came up battered blue -- because it was witnessed by the ishgaadi head of the Courses Wing, Lt Col Harsh K Tiwari of JAK RIF. You see, earlier, it had been love at first word, and that was even before we learnt that the colonel was a commando, an NSG Black Cat, and Sena Medal winner: He had somehow decided that we were a responsible adult -- a novelty for us -- and trusted us with hair-raising tales, and so of course we fell. From the steps, too.

But is that all it takes to jive our amour? Rubbish! That night, when we were merry-making in the bar and being ribbed about civilian paunches, we retorted, "Big deal, even Harsh has a paunch." And Col Thakur, the gentlest soldier we've ever met, said, "Tiwari had a cancerous growth in his stomach. He was operated upon 4 times. But he opted to serve in field area." Our Old Monk gauge hit zero...

Next morning, we collared the commando. Reply, all interspersed with guffaws: "I didn't know I had it! One day I went to donate blood at the same hospital in which I had my stomach operation, and on the sheet I had to sign, the stupid doctor wrote 'pancreatic sarcoma.' Mujhe Rajesh Khanna ka Anand picture yaad aya. Remember that 'lymphosarcoma of the intestines'? Maine socha, yeh sarcoma kyun likha hai, bhai? Then I found out, they couldn't diagnose where it was and so hadn't told me. With each surgery, they found out more... Bas, main ghar baithh-ke bhi kya karta?"

Donate blood, too...??? *That* is the profile of the Indian soldier. Our soldier...

[Pranav]

Pranav, I have moved your post to the off-topic thread.
Thanks, ramana

[Raja Bose]

Another one from Varsha Bhosle. These articles are archived somewhere on BR IA site but couldn't find them.

A Time to Kill by Varsha Bhosle

Gruesomely colourful, huh? Neatly shot in the cheek... red plasma on khaki leaves. Typical of this shock-jock to begin an article in this fashion, you think? Well, learn to live with realities -- blood and gore is the unavoidable currency of all insurgency. This photograph hasn't been shot by Jewella; it's from the evidence files of the army's Counter Insurgency And Jungle Warfare School in Mizoram. When the body was searched, they found an undeveloped roll of film in one pocket. The following two photographs are from that roll and were probably shot by this dead terrorist.

Young boys -- not one seems to us to be over 19 years. The one on the rock is posing like he's modelling Dockers. In the other image, note the happy and carefree smile of the patka-ed lad gazing into the lens as two others share a laugh. They are so well-equipped that at first we thought they were jawans of the Naga Regiment. The other photographs from the roll -- we couldn't steal them all -- included interior shots of men, women and children gathered around these boys. The kind of scene in any ordinary household when a brother or nephew comes visiting after years abroad. Pictures of domestic excitement. Youths fiddling with the television, eating cake, hugging friends... Who knows how many of them are alive today. We pray, not even one. Heartless, you say...? Consider this:

Date Killed/Injured Method/Other Area/State
1 January ONGC pipeline blown Disangpani, Assam
5 January 7/10 jawans IED blast Imphal, Manipur
6 January 7/-- jawans IED, PLA women's wing Pungdongbam, Assam
8 January 5/6 civilians ATTF firing on jeep Khowai, West Tripura.
8 January 1/-- commando Shot dead by PLA Imphal East, Manipur
17 January 1/1 civilians 5 kidnapped by ATTF Khowai, West Tripura
17 January 15 houses torched Urbani, West Tripura
17 January 1/-- civilians 3 civilians kidnapped Amarpur, Tripura
18 January 5 civilians kidnapped Urabani, West Tripura
18 January 20 houses torched Urabani, West Tripura
19 January Rail track blasted Golaghat, Assam
1 February 1/-- JD-U man Shot dead Churchandpur, Manipur
6 February 1/-- civilian Shot dead Bishenpur, Manipur
7 February 3/5 civilians 3 kidnapped by NLFT Dalubari, Tripura
12 February 5/-- incl 2 jawans Firing Saji Tampak, Manipur
12 February 1/-- BSF jawan Shot dead Khopipung, Manipur
12 February 2/-- civilians Indiscriminate firing, NLFT South Tripura
17 February 2/-- policemen IED blast Nalbari , Assam
17 February 2/-- policemen Firing Dhubri, Assam
Also, between February 1 and 7, NLFT terrorists gang-raped at gunpoint 23 women and minor girls at Riabari village in south Tripura. The group had befriended the locals and was using the village as a safe hideout. The rapes were committed in front of the villagers, who dared not protest at their new, trigger-happy friends.

39 killed; 22 injured; 23 raped; 16 kidnapped; 35 houses torched -- in 48 days. These are not comprehensive, official figures but what we've gleaned from newspapers -- and we've surely missed quite a few items. Yet our heart should bleed for terrorists since they happen to be pasty-faced young boys...? Bullshit! And we'll tell you why. After Lt Col Tiwari, we met another officer, Col Shankar of JAK LI, in-charge of the Battalion Training Wing of CIJWS, whom we'd have happily followed around like a lamb. Not because he's the spittin' image of our brother and the resulting warmth we felt for him, but because he candidly answered questions which had less to do with BTW and more about the profile of the terrorist. (It's a pity that we can't reproduce a photograph of the colonel; both of us were puffing away so much that the film got fogged.)

Col Shankar, who has served many years in J&K, portrayed the NE ultra by contrasting him with that of the Valley: While the NW's is a foreigner, mostly Afghan or Paki, the NE's is a local and knows the land and its people. Kashmir's terrorists are, by and large, drugged; the NE's are alert and intelligent. There's an established women cadre of terrorists in the NE; there are few in the Valley. While there are hundreds of captured terrorists thronging Kashmir's jails (the deadliest of whom was kindly released by Mahatma Vajpayee), it's extremely difficult to nab the NE ultra -- he's quick and prefers to fight to death. The ultras from here are well-trained; all the seniors have been disciplined by the Burmese army.

There are far more cases of IED blasts in the NE than in the Valley -- the ultra is educated, uses the Internet for garnering information, disseminating propaganda, negotiating arms deals, and is familiar with hi-tech explosives. At the same time, he's replete with native skills and can devise deadly traps that can kill an elephant with nothing more than bamboos and vines. But, most ominously, with a history of 54 years of insurgency, the ultra has "understood us" -- he knows the pressures on the army and the limits imposed upon it by a democratic system. Thus, "we can't take him for granted."

The inherent characteristic of insurgency in the NE is its small-scale, low profile activities, with the main insurgent bases located across the IB, in camps in Myanmar, Bangladesh, China and Bhutan. Terrorist units infiltrate into India through inhospitable terrain, strike fast, and flee. Their ambushes -- 72 per cent of which are directed against the security forces -- are meticulously planned and ruthlessly executed. Such hit-and-run tactics of small units force a large deployment of defence forces to counter them. But simply being on the killing ground pays no dividends: Learning to operate in small teams, studying the patterns of the militants, establishing an intelligence network, knowing their traditional sanctuaries, maintaining the element of surprise, selecting the site for the counter ambush, observing the discipline of when exactly to open fire, knowing field and jungle craft well enough to remain undetected, and improvising within a given situation, is the kind of stuff that breaks an ambush. And it's this that's taught at the CIJWS as part of the pre-induction training.

And so we went to witness a drill where a convoy of 3 trucks would be attacked by "militants" from two flanks and the counter ambush would be watched by instructors. To tell you the truth, it didn't do anything for us: The truck drove through the marked stretch of road, the "militants" threw a few blank grenades and fired some blank rounds, soldiers crawled here and there and did likewise, the convoy drove off, the observers observed, and that was that. Of course, it would have been different if we'd been allowed to learn the theories behind the operation, or if our future depended upon knowing how to peer through bushes. Since it didn't, all we were interested in was the blank grenade: we thought it would make a splendid ornament for our dresser. But since the army must account for every bullet, we were refused...

Perhaps because we were obviously morose and had lost interest in the proceedings, we were given the opportunity of witnessing an actual IED blast. We perked up, entrusted our handbag to Farooq-sahab, stuffed our fingers in our shell-like ears, and stood some 25 ft away from the spot. Next thing we knew, we were on the tar and a huge column of black smoke was rising in the air. Honestly, the sound of an IED blast cannot be prepared for: "loud," "ear-shattering," can't begin to describe it. Even after anticipation, it still made our heart flutter for minutes later. We do not understand how people survive an unexpected explosion! Anyway, it was a good thing, for our sorry state brought us some attention from the young instructors: Cpt Rishi Khosla of Garhwal Rif, a capped Punju with 2 commendation medals; Cpt Luwangcha of our Maratha LI, a witty Mizo just in from J&K; and Maj TS Hothi of Jat Regiment, a gorgeous, turbaned Sikh. We chatted awhile and left -- had to prepare for rum time...

That evening was a particularly raucous one -- the senior officers had stayed away from the mess. We were irritating the heck out of the oh-so-politically-correct students when this frail young man in a jazzy pullover, a thick chain around his neck, and a haircut we could die for, walked in and asked us for a cigarette. We had no clue who he was but obliged, and he left. "Looked like he just stepped out of Delhi's discos! What's a trendoid doing in a place like this?" we muttered. Our bar-buddy replied, "Oh really! You should've seen him two months earlier. He lived in a filthy Pathani and had a beard up to here when he infiltrated the mujahideen. Got a commendation for it, too." Commendation...? Omigawd, it was Cpt Rishi Khosla! We dragged out the story:

"Information came in that Arifullah would be meeting his girlfriend in Srinagar's Nishat Garden one afternoon. Rishi and two others who were detailed to nab him sat with a hookah, keeping watch. The UG [army for "underground"] came and met the woman, but before the team could make a move, he saw and recognised the informant who was there to point him out. Arifullah got suspicious and ran for it. Rishi chased him over the slopes and bushes and caught up with him. UG drew a grenade and pulled out the pin, but Rishi was too close to him for the grenade to be safely thrown. And in that split second, Rishi leapt on him and tightly held the fist with the grenade closed. A struggle ensued aur dono liptey. Arifullah was hatta-katta and 6 ft tall, and yet Rishi managed to hold him off, keep his fist closed, and hit him on the head with the butt of his gun. UG went down, the rest of the team arrived, and grenade mein maachis laga di... Don't go by appearances; changing them is part of CI ops."

We were still marvelling about the power of mind over matter and what makes the Indian soldier such a force to reckon with, when in walked a gorgeous guy with another great haircut and said to us: "I'm trying to get Rishi to quit smoking and you're plying him with cigarettes..." Excuse me, do I know you?! "Hothi, ma'am." Rot! He's a Sardar! "Yes, ma'am, I'm still a Sardar. But I've cut my hair and am awaiting permission from the army to shed my turban and shave off my beard." Permission?? "For the id card. Or it will confuse security." But how in heaven's name could you do it?! "After a while the turban hurts my ears, I get a headache, and when I'm in the field, that makes me very irritable. That's not good for my men. My comfort is their comfort. So I had no choice but to discard it." Comrades before self... Nation before self...

When we got back and showed the photographs of the NE terrorists to a friend, he said, "It's pathetic; they're so young to kill and die! Soldiers are one face of the coin, terrorists are the other." And we recoiled in fury. Every person *has* a choice -- the choice to attack, destroy and murder innocents, and the choice to kill in defence. Men like Khosla and Hothi and the scores of soldiers we've met can in no way be compared to rapists, arsonists, pillagers and murderers. We realise that we land up telling you less about the NE and the CIJWS and more about the people who fascinated us. Point is, none of it would have existed if not for the human factor -- the individual who holds up and holds forth for us. He has always been and will always remain our primary refrain.

Photographs: Jewella C Miranda

Varsha Bhosle

[Satya_anveshi]

RIP Varsha ji.

[wig]

tragic that a daughter of the nation had to cut short life. i pray that the departed soul may rest in peace.

[Lalmohan]

very sad, i also corresponded with her. we were not always in agreement though! she didn't always have a high opinion of BRF, but her writing was refreshing

[Austin]

RIP Varsha

[KLNMurthy]

This is truly sad. I do not know why she is so depressed and why no one in the family could do something about it. Such a brilliant writer trying to commit suicide twice and in the end succeeding to take her life. RIP Varsha.

Her column about her mother is an eye-opener. Childhood trauma and abuse stays with a person all their life and causes deep-down psychological damage, often ends in tragedy. There is not much awareness of this in Indian society.

[KLNMurthy]

Extremely sad news. It's even sadder that the mother of this proud & staunch Hindu is moderating Surkshetra. Aak thoo.

Please spare a kind thought for Ashaji at this time.

[Supratik]

Knew her. RIP. Fearless and original.

[Suppiah]

Dont know her or read her columns but the death of any child when the mother is so old is most cruel..hope god gives Asha-tai the strength and courage..

[Atri]

Extremely sad news. It's even sadder that the mother of this proud & staunch Hindu is moderating Surkshetra. Aak thoo.

It is indeed puzzling.. That entire family has been staunch Savarkar supporters since days of Master Dinanath Mangeshkar, until today's generation. The sanskaras which VB displayed in her articles come from that source. It was indeed puzzling and this sentiment was spoken clearly by many people. AB doing what she's doing at the fag end of her life..

[merlin]

Used to enjoy reading her articles though I disagreed with some of them. A fearless writer who said what needed to be said. A tragic loss.

[member_23658]

I remember rushing to the computer room in the hostel after lectures and going to rediff.com for the sole purpose of checking if a Varsha Bhosle article was on. Thank you for those articles which so very lucidly, fearlessly and uncompromisngly articulated the Right viewpoint, and RIP...

[KJo]

I didn't know she was a member on BRF. Any of her posts still around?

[Sushupti]

Varsha Bhosle was a fearless warrior, and I shall miss her fierce, large heart
Rajeev Srinivasan's personal tribute to his late friend.
http://m.rediff.com/news/column/varsha- ... 121009.htm

[SBajwa]

RIP Varsha! I was a huge fan of Varsha through that period and would periodically check rediff for her articles.

It is a great loss! She was the top political journalist!!

[chaanakya]

RIP Varsha
May you attain Nirvana.

[Comer]

Sad to hear the news. In the nineties hers was the only right wing voice among cacophony of leftie crowd. It helped that most of her views fit into the sweet spot between center and right. If there is a phenomenon I would call myself a Varsha conservative/right winger.

[krisna]

Varsha Will Live On by Sandeep in his blog

An obituary is the mightiest writer’s block. And so this shan’t be an obituary. One writes obituaries to dead people. Varsha Bhosle will live forever. Her bodily death is, in the highest tradition of Sanatana Dharma, but a temporary station in an eternal journey. Speculations about the how and the wherefores of her suicide is the worst insult to one who did so much, so fiercely, and in such a short span, to defend, uphold, and propagate ancient Indian values.

Five years ago, I enquired if anybody remembered her. That question has been answered today—perversely , cruelly in the form of a nonstop deluge of obituaries and condolence tweets and news items online. It is both heartening and saddening. Heartening because it shows that there are hundreds of thousands of people who haven’t forgotten her—given the fact that she wrote at a time when the Internet was still in its infancy in India both in terms of reach and impact. Today, the overwhelming outpouring of grief over her death proves the truth that good work always has a way of spreading on its own and that no barrier is too strong to prevent its spread.

Varsha’s legacy is not so much her actual writing but the fact that she inspired an entire generation to—no, she pounded inspiration into an entire generation of Indians weaned on colonial and Marxist lies about their own country and its heritage. The fact that she did it by swimming against the popular current makes it exemplary. The fact that she did it with fearless audacity makes it truly spectacular. Pick up any random Varsha piece, you see these twin qualities jumping out at you.

She wasn’t afraid to take on anyone and was never apologetic—here’s a classic in which she tears into that bleeding-heart liberal/Marxist/humanist (label changes depending on the demands of the situation on hand) Dilip D’Souza, while shredding other pretenders like Anil Dharker along the way. Equally, she’d support even people painted in the darkest of colours if she found merit in what they said. And so, only a Varsha could write something like (underlined):

Pakistan, its namaaz-raising hands dipped in the blood of Hindus and Sikhs, began as an Islamic terrorist State and continues to live up to its foundational values. Take it from Balasaheb and me: nothing will emerge from the latest "hand of friendship." Unless, of course, it is Kargil II.

Few people could dare to take her on because she’d simply steamroll them with so many facts that even those who did even once retreated for good. The D name comes to mind even in this case. She did that with aplomb, unerringly, every single time with 100% success rate because she followed a dictum she claimed to adhere to: “I will not be controlled.”

Far too many writers have made pretensions to such a lofty claim but few have truly lived by it. The one name that immediately comes to mind is Christopher Hitchens. He can with reasonableness be compared to Varsha. Both wrote copiously. Both had a phenomenal volume of facts on a range of issues at their command. Both were unapologetic, brutal, and unforgiving. Both achieved excellence in a rare feat: elevating the use of abuse to an art form. From Varsha’s stable: pinko propaganda, Srikrishna Gita, Sunil Dutt’s psychobabble, Christian dork, Hajpayee, jholiwallas, raddiwalas…it’s pure delight to minds that have a sense of humour and the moral strength from which such abuse emanates and that which can sustain it.

And neither was it about politics all the time. In an extremely moving piece, here’s how Varsha Bhosle profiles her legendary mother and provides tidbits of glimpses into her own childhood and growing-up years. It is, like her other work, gutsy, truthful, and raw.

But back to her original forte. It goes without saying that Varsha was at her acidic best when she wrote about imperial ideologies like Islam, Christianity and Communism and in general, all anti-Hindu and anti-Indian forces. Needless, this endeared her to, and earned her an enormous fan following among Hindus. In a masterful and in many ways, prophetic series of articles, she warned us of the Balkanization of India way before Rajiv Malhotra’s groundbreaking Breaking India.

Years before Geert Wilders popularized it as an election issue, Varsha, in yet another brilliant piece, had unmasked the vile beast of multiculturalism for what it really is: stealth Islamism. In her typical missile-launch style, she says that multiculturalism is an “idiotic concept which only serves to divide a nation and add or aggravate communal strife.” More presciently, she questions:

Which American values can, even remotely, be called Islamic? Democracy? Freedom? Equality? Secularism? Gender equity? Freedom of thought? The right to free expression? The right to critique any holy cow? Does even one of these values exist in a single Islamic state…? Is even one of these values extended to all Muslim citizens of an Islamic state?…What would be the fate of Hindus working in Saudi Arabia if they should advocate the replacement of the word "Islamic" with "Islamic-Hindu" in all references to the kingdom’s heritage?

The reactions to her pieces were as swift as they played according to script. Extreme, far-Right, loony, fundamentalist, Hindutva…were applied to her by armchair pontificators sitting in their ivory-towers built on the foundations of spurious secularism. I’ve come to discern the actual meanings of such terminology. The list below tells you how to do it.

Extreme=The bitter truth
Far-Right=Rooted in nationalism
Loony=Unafraid
Fundamentalist=Truth-teller
Hindutva=Value-based

But Varsha was now writing in a medium that these intolerant professional labellers thought was a passing fad and have since paid for that folly. Varsha had built a huge legion of fans who fed on and relished her every piece. Ask me. My blog owes its existence and continuity to the likes of Varsha Bhosle. But Varsha paid the price—if you can call it that—for writing the way she wrote and for writing what she wrote. Rediff threw her out. Not the one to take it meekly, Varsha bludgeoned the head honcho himself:

Actually, you’ve got my so-called ploy all wrong. However, I don’t expect guys with your mentality to understand that.

You’ll be pleased to know that you ‘secularists’ have a successful and time-tested way of tackling free speech: I am no longer writing for Rediff since its top honcho, Ajit Balakrishnan (also involved with discredited SABRANG communications Communalism Combat , ), finds me ‘very inflammatory.’ That’s surely something to rejoice over. Yes, please do post my comments on your newsgroup.

Her crime was not so much that she routinely wrote the harsh truth about the multi-tentacled and mutually-sustaining toxic nexus of Islamists, Evangelists and Marxists but the fact that she exposed their latest do-gooder avatar in the form of NGOs. As her note indicates, this must’ve given the chills to Rediff’s top guy, Ajit Balakrishnan who was (is?) friends with such worthies as Teesta Setalvad.

And so when I read this shameless We will miss you Varsha crap that Rediff put out, supposedly mourning her, I wonder what exactly motivates these brazen pussies. To first kick her out and then violate her even in her death with gutter-level political correctness must take Congress-party level brazenness.

Varsha was unabashedly right of centre, but at the same time not for her the prescriptions of the Hindu Right. In this article, Good God! Thou ate beef?, she tore into the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s argument for banning beef…she took on the Islamists, but often did stop long enough to rebuke their Hindu counterparts as well…

To me, Varsha Bhosle is how Sanatana Dharma is: a living inspiration that is timeless.

A nice one.