The cold, dead heart of the State

As the cold gets really biting and dangerous -especially at night - an old homeless man tries to cosy up in the stately corridors of the posh Connaught Place, Delhi.

 

The Indian state just went through a mad, drunken orgy of spending where it burned up (allegedly) 70000 crores (700,000 million!)of yours and mine hard earned rupees on Commonwealth Games(sure gives a poignant turn to the word 'Commonwealth'). A large part of it is supposed to have been wasted and looted. Actually for me all of it was wasted. And all looted.

But not a penny for this poor chap-

India is run by looters and thieves and there is not a thing a honest person can do except kill himself.

Earth Hours attack Delhi

Earth Hours, aka power cuts, have been attacking Delhi these last few days. There is something karmic about it –when the weather is at it’s sweltering, humid worst, then as sure as the demon Rahu was killed by the Sudarshana Chakra of Lord Vishnu(who was in the form of a beautiful woman, Mohini), the lights will go out. Often for several hours, just to twist the knife.

The authorities, as usual, are at their accountable best-

Delhi suffers but discoms deny outages

Only in a post-modern, relativistic world can one deny that which is right in front of one’s eyes.

But Sheila Dixit is smiling somewhere in the 24/7 air-conditioned comfort of the wunderland where the lights never dim. She loves Earth Hours, you know –good for our moral uplift.

I have a few ideas for her moral uplift –but they are unprintable.

India: soft-tyranny

Well said!

Is there any doubt which is the case here in India?
We live in soft-tyranny that goes under the camouflage of democracy.

(via Instapundit)

Somebody arrest someone! -or Is India a free country anymore?

Hard to call ours a free country when things like this happen with a depressing regularity-

Editor arrested for 'outraging Muslims'

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The editor and publisher of a major Indian newspaper have been arrested for "hurting the religious feelings" of Muslims after they reprinted an article from The Independent. Ravindra Kumar and Anand Sinha, the editor and publisher of the Kolkata-based English daily The Statesman, appeared in court yesterday charged under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code which forbids "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings".

Sections of central Kolkata have been paralysed by protests for much of the past week after The Statesman republished an article by The Independent's columnist Johann Hari. Titled "Why should I respect oppressive religions?", the piece was originally printed in The Independent on 28 January. In it, Hari said he believed the right to criticise any religion was being eroded around the world.

The Statesman, a highly respected liberal English-language daily, reprinted the article on 5 February, causing a major backlash among a small group of Muslims who felt that the piece slighted the Prophet Mohamed and insulted their religion. Peaceful protests were held outside The Statesman's offices at the weekend but by Monday, demonstrations had turned violent. Angry crowds began blocking roads, attacking police and calling for the arrest of the article's author and the newspaper's publisher and editor. On Monday and Tuesday police used baton charges to try to disperse crowds and more than 70 protesters were arrested.

I am deeply offended by what has been done to my country by our political looter class and the religious fundamentalists, both feeding off each other.

Did you hear - I am offended! My sensibilities are offended! My deepest convictions have been disrespected!

Therefore I demand that someone be arrested immediately!

Or does that require violent mob on the streets -peaceful people(freedom loving liberals like myself and I suppose millions others) can have their sensibilities offended all day long without a peep from our rulers.

Some sensibilities, it is obvious, are more equal than others.


Update - there is an excellent post on this at dancewithshadows

There is a reason why this site - dancewithshadows - does not publish very many articles about religion. Any religion. Because if I do that, I am left with two options. Get thrashed by some group, or get thrown behind bars. And as this is a simple news and features site, and we do not make enough money to afford a lawyer to get me out, it is a losing battle which would just see me spending weeks or months taking a crap in a dirty crapper while my cell-mates watch.

In a way, it is hilarious that the protests by Muslim groups in Kolkata actually prove the point Johann Hari made - that you can’t criticise religions now, and freedom to do so have been eroded.

Read the whole thing.

(emphasis mine)

In India politicians commit murder in all but name

This is as good as murder-

Ambala : The nationwide protests by the VHP over the Amarnath land row have claimed the lives of innocent civilians who were denied crucial medical aid due to the disruption of normal life by the protestors. Shocking apathy displayed by VHP Protestors in cities like Ambala and Kanpur claimed the life of more than one.

A 60 year old heart patient in Ambala suffered a massive attack early this morning - but as his son's efforts to take him to a hospital were in vain- crucial time lost as he couldn't get his father urgent medical help due to the protests. Similar is the case in Kanpur- where a 22 year old boy who got accidentally electrocuted died after his family could not rush him to a hospital. Protestors refused to allow the family to pass the blockade- resulting in the death of the youth.

At around 9:00 am 60 year old Gaindaram complained of chest pain. Immediately, his son rushed him out of the house- hoping to get him to a hospital. However, it was not to be. At about 10 km from Ambala, on the Mullana-Ambala road the vehicle in which they were travelling was stopped by protestors. The heart patient’s son pleaded with the VHP protestors to let their auto go but his pleadings went unheard. Gaindaram's condition worsens, but the protestors refuse to let son cross the blockade. Finally, Gaindaram dies in his son's arm and he was declared dead upon arrival at Saket hospital in Ambala.

---------------------------------------------

The protestors of various organizations, including VHP and BJP, did not allow the ambulance to move ahead despite requests from those accompanying the victim in the vehicle; the sources said adding that lack of timely medical aid resulted in the old man's death.

---------------------------------------------

This of course not the first time politics over a crisis has claimed innocent lives. In August last year (2007) - a traffic jam stood between a 4 yr old boy Rahul and life saving medical treatment. It was two political parties Congress and the BJP in Shimla blocked roads in a spat of their own. The child's mother made desperate pleas to let her son’s ambulance pass. But they fell on deaf ears. She lost her son to political posturing.

Read the whole thing.

A question -what is the state going to do about it
answer -nothing
Another question -will anybody be arrested and punished?
answer -don't be stupid

The same venal set of people who care not a fig about the life of innocents run the Indian state also. A change of government in India simply means one gang of goons in place of another.

Here political fortunes are made on the blood of the common people. Remember this when the ugly mug of some political hack or minister appears on TV preening about his/her concern for the common man.

Mahatma Gandhi once sounded like Sharon Stone

Mahatma Gandhi once sounded just like Sharon Stone. On 15 January 1934, at 2:21 pm IST, there was a massive earthquake of magnitude 8.3 on the Richter scale on the Bihar-Nepal border.

Gandhi in a public statement declared provocatively that the earthquake is divine retribution for India's sin in upholding untouchability.

Amaresh Mishra opens my third eye and piques my sixth sense

(Update - On Amaresh Mishra's theories about the Mumbai terrorist attacks, see here.)

In an article by Amaresh Mishra, this opened my third eye and piqued my sixth sense-

Gujjar turbulence owed a lot to their nomadic status and the British attempt to settle them as peaceful land revenue paying peasantry. During the Mughal era, Gujjars were known for their entrepreneurial role — they not only exchanged milk and other commodities but also guarded the trade routes of North India. The colonial-British State, keen to turn every rural element into a peasant, did not understand the community’s entrepreneurial role. So after 1857, the British classified the Gujjars (and around 150 other Indian communities) as ‘criminal tribes’ through the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871. In this move, communities that had fought for Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1857 were openly targeted. Several other forces like the Pardhis of Vidarbha and the Dhangars and the Ramoshi-Berads of Maharashtra and Karnataka also suffered. Most of them were warrior-nomads or warrior-hunters of the Mughal and Maratha era. During the colonial era, basic human rights were denied to these communities. They were literally given an ‘anti-social’ tag. Their position became worse than that of many Dalit communities in the country.

Let me reprise -according to Mishra, the British promulgated the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871

1) to turn every rural element into a peasant

2) to target communities that had fought for Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1857

3) for no other reason, since none is mentioned.

I wonder if there might just possibly have been some other reason, some teenie-weenie fact that some of these tribes actually had a history of being involved in crime over generations-

Each gang developed its own specialty. The Kabutri Nats, famed for their beautiful women, operated as dancing troupes: while the women danced, the men and children frisked the audience. The Bauriahs became confidence men: disguised as sadus (holy men), they duped pious Hindus into parting with their hoarded valuables. The Barwars specialized in brazen daylight thievery, expelled members who stooped to night operations. The nomadic Panjaros rustled cattle. The Harnis forced their women into prostitution and rolled the customers; when the heat was on, they usually beat it disguised as fakirs, often taking a leper along to scare off the curious.

The Ramoosics, also panderers, had a side interest in a bungalow-protection racket. The Bhamptas were railroad thieves. Their favorite trick, best performed on a crowded train, was to frighten a baby, slide to the floor to comfort it, and meanwhile slit open the baggage of the other passengers. The Kolis impersonated cops: descending on a village, they would arrest the village constable on some phony charge, then strip the village. Other groups became counterfeiters, moonshiners, muggers. Children learned crime at their mother's knee. Some tribes pressed a silver rupee, fastened to a piece of string, into a newborn child's throat, where it would form a pocket which, when the child grew up, provided a hiding place for stolen coins and jewels.

And was revenge the only or even the most dominant motive of those eeevil Firangs*(from the same link)-

How to Reform Them? The British liquidated the Thugs, a group of professional murderers who contributed a word to the English language. But the others they decided to recognize as a sort of criminal caste. Under the Criminal Tribes Act (1871), the more notorious groups were segregated in special settlements. All their members had to register at the age of 14, whether or not they had been personally guilty of a crime, faced special penalties, much more severe than those for ordinary offenders.

Later, criminal tribesmen were given a chance to reform. Many settlements were placed in the care of the Salvation Army, various missions and philanthropic organizations. Children were sent to school, taught useful trades.

Me, I am rubbing my eyes furiously. Surely those children eating imperialists could never hold such ideals as reform, sending children to school and teaching the 'criminal tribes' useful trades in their dead cold hearts(oh wait, they had no hearts)? Surely, Mishraji, that cannot be true. I must read it again just to believe that I have read it-

Later, criminal tribesmen were given a chance to reform. Many settlements were placed in the care of the Salvation Army, various missions and philanthropic organizations. Children were sent to school, taught useful trades.

And-

This work was carried on after India became independent. Last week(in 1952-ed.) the state of Uttar Pradesh, following the example of Bombay and Madras, repealed the Criminal Tribes Act, thus freeing all but a small percentage of India's criminal tribesmen from their semi-prison existence.

The authorities were under no illusion that they had abolished the tribes' preference for ancestral occupations; but with the stigma of hereditary crime removed, they hoped to convince the tribes eventually that crime does not pay.

Whaaaatt's that again!!! But wasn't it only the very naughty racist imperialist British who were convinced of "the tribes' preference for (criminal)ancestral occupations"? No wonder then that the independent Indian state passed a very similar law-

In a retrograde step, in 1959, new laws in the form of the Habitual Offenders Act were introduced in various states. Even whilst eschewing branding people of certain communities ‘born criminals’, these Acts retained many of the provisions of the Criminal Tribes Act such as registration, restrictions on movement, and incarceration in ‘corrective settlements’ earmarked for ‘habitual offenders’. The bias against nomads lingered, as is apparent in the way the Acts enjoined the government to look at whether a person’s occupation was “conducive to an honest and settled way of life… not merely a pretence for the purpose of facilitating commission of offences,” while exercising its power to restrict the movement of the person. The police routinely used theHabitual Offenders Act against members of nomadic and denotified communities.

And how dare top Indian politicians speak of cracking down on the 'criminal tribes', even decades later? What are they, as racist as the British or do they hold a grudge against those who carried water for Bahadur Shah Zafar? Hasn't Mishraji told them that there is no such thing as the 'criminal tribes'?-

Bansi Lal orders crackdown on `criminal' tribes

Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal has ordered a crackdown on the `criminal' tribes - the Bawarias, Pardis and Sansis. During a visit to the sector-17, Gurgaon residence of Sudhir and Kiran Lal, the couple who were clubbed to death by suspected Bawaria assailants four days ago, Bansi Lal ordered that these criminal tribes be flushed out of Haryana.

What?! "criminal tribes be flushed out"! Just like the eeeeeeeeeeeeevil Englanders used to do? No, that cannot be true in free India fifty years after independence!


********
Ok, enough of sarcasm. Now the conclusion-
This is what our media and 'scholars' do everyday -rewrite history to suit their pre-determined narratives.

(For those who think my sense of time has gone bonkers-how could Amaresh Mishra, whose book came out in 2008 have gone back in time to 1999,the date of the above article, and lectured Bansi Lal: to them I say -
Mishraji is carrying such a weight of history on his patriotic shoulders enlightening us all that he bloody well should have figured out how!)


Note 1-
Amaresh Misra is the author of War of Civilisations: India AD 1857 in which he claims that the British killed 10 million in 10 years(has a jingle like ring to it) after 1857 out of revenge. This astonishing claim is disputed by many experts, including this lady here who asks-

How have historians missed these tens of millions of Indians killed? Which regiments did the killing? Where are the War Office orders authorising the killings? Where are these operations found in the various regimental histories/ histories of the British Army in India?

Note 2-
Criminal Tribes Act, 1871 may be read here(pdf).

Update-
A sample of Mishraji's powerful intellect-

He(Amaresh Mishra) blamed terrorism in India on the growing Indo-Israel relationship and India’s pro-West policies.

(emphasis mine)



*The colorful Indian language translator-
firangi - White skinned foreigner, often a term of derision among anti-colonial, subaltern study types

Sitaram Yechuriji, come take away all these loonies

E Gawd! There they go again. The American administration has kicked our Pavlovian media dogs in the balls again. For several hours now they(the allegedly 'news' channels) have been bleating about how Bush is now blaming India and China for the rise in oil prices after blaming our emiciated populace for the food crisis earlier(that was was the first kick). So we are now told that Bush has come up with this unique theory that on one else believes in: in fact Sitaram Yechury called America insane for suggesting that India and China might be, um...connected to the rise in price of of oil.

That means no rest for me. No time to ogle at generous female forms on the wilder side of the net. Now I will have to put on my SuperBlogger pyjama suit and get to work. So here goes.


Yechuriji, bring in a large van from the nearest lunatic asylum, for these people will be climbing aboard along with Bush-



Meghnad Desai, The Times of India, 1 May 2008-

The oil price rise is driven almost entirely by China's demand and the chaotic politics of Nigeria and Venezuela.

Mark Shenk at Livemint(a Hindustan Times publication), Apr 21 2008-

Traffic jams in Beijing and air conditioners in Dubai are replacing US highways and suburbs as the driver of global oil prices.

China, India, Russia and West Asia for the first time will consume more crude oil than the US, burning 20.67 million barrels a day this year, an increase of 4.4%, according to the International Energy Agency, or IEA, in Paris. US demand will contract 2% to 20.38 million barrels daily, IEA says.

Kiran Kabtta, TNN(Times of India),28 Apr, 2008-

Nevertheless, the overall demand for crude oil continues to grow, especially in large, emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil, as well as West Asian countries.

Manas Chakravarty and Mobis Philipose at Livemint, Apr 18 2008-

Although world growth may be slowing, growth in countries such as China and India continues to remain robust and it’s the demand from these countries that’s going to keep commodity prices high.

Moira Herbst, BusinessWeek, August 3, 2007-

Unlike in previous periods, the main driver in the recent price boost is not a war, a hurricane, or the machinations of OPEC, but rather robust global economic growth, say analysts. The U.S. economy has remained solid, despite jitters in the stock market. China and India are surging, while most of Europe is strong.

ExpressIndia(from the Indian Express group), January 21, 2008-

Voracious demand for oil, iron ore and other commodities to build roads, sewage systems, and office buildings - especially in the booming economies of China and India – will also help sustain the region through any US slowdown.

Rick Newman, USA Today,March 10, 2008

Although I doubt that this is as important as other factors driving up the price of oil—such as strong growth in parts of the world such as China and India.

Another important issue is that in a lot of countries, like India, China, Indonesia, and some Arab countries, the price of oil and gasoline is subsidized, to keep the domestic price low, usually to prevent social unrest. That matters because if oil prices were allowed to be set at market prices, demand would fall, and so would prices. So demand in those places is artificially high.

Jad Mouawad, The International Herald Tribune, April 28, 2008-

At the same time, oil consumption keeps expanding at a faster clip than production. Demand is forecast to increase this year by 1.2 million barrels a day, to 87.2 million barrels a day. Consumption has actually fallen a bit in theUnited States, the world's biggest consumer, as the country grapples with an economic slowdown.

But that drop is being offset by growth in other countries. World consumption is projected to rise 35 percent, to around 115 million barrels a day, in the next two decades. Most of the growth will come from China, India and oil-producing countries in the Middle East, where retail fuel prices are subsidized, encouraging wasteful consumption.

And to go back to food prices :

The United Nations, November 3 2007-

The price rises are a result of record oil prices, US farmers switching out of cereals to grow biofuel crops, extreme weather and growing demand from countries India and China, the UN said yesterday

8 Sep 2007, 0200 hrs IST,Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN-

A massive purchase of nearly 800,000 tonnes of wheat by India at record prices earlier this week has added to what agricultural experts are calling the great wheat panic of 2007. Wheat prices had already reached record levels ahead of the Indian move, thanks to falling or stagnating production in many countries — blamed on poor weather and crop diversion — and growing population.

Jean Ziegler,The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food , April 28, 2008-

"There are four main causes that everyone is talking about: biofuels, increased demand in China and India, higher oil prices and global warming. But the real cause is that for decades there has not been proper investment for years in local agriculture in developing countries."

Rajeev Deshpande,TNN, 4 May 2008-

And diversion of foodgrain for bio-fuels in countries like Brazil and US has happened at a time when better incomes are driving demand in economies like India and China. All this, just as years of neglect in modernising agriculture and improving yields suddenly caught up with India making it a nation that imports food.

Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute,February 26, 2008-

Much of the blame has been put on the transfer of land and grains to the production of biofuel. But its impact has been outweighed by the sharp growth in demand from a new middle class in China and India for meat and other foods, which were previously viewed as luxuries.“The fundamental cause is high income growth,” said Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Please bring a really large van, Yechuriji, and take away all these loonies but do drive carefully -remember, the United Nations will be at the back .


(emphasis mine)

A holy immersion in black waters.

On the banks of the Yamuna, the river that flows through the city of Delhi.
Occassion- immersion of something called 'khetri', or "or the earthen pot in which grass is grown during the holy Navratri for praying to Goddess Vaishno".

The water is very dark, almost black.



Here the river catches the fading evening light. The children who live in settlements near the bank are eager to make some money. They usually ask 15 or 20 rupees to take the plant some way into the river and dive into the dirty water and let the plant go.


River children. Interestingly, while this is a Hindu tradition, the children doing the immersion seemed to be mostly muslims.


Note-The above link takes you to someone not pleased with this custom or the state of the river.