2019 : The importance of micro allies

I wasn’t particularly worried when TDP left NDA. I was more worried when the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) threatened to leave NDA. Fortunately, it seems Amit Shah had a talk with them and got them back on board.

Because SBSP, a party you may never have heard of, is a “micro ally.”  And to me, micro allies are special. For several reasons. First, they are fully aware of their limitations vis-a-vis a huge party like BJP. This means that their demands are usually small. The second thing is that micro allies help set the narrative at the hyperlocal level and win “marginal seats.”

The BJP learned a sharp lesson in Gorakhpur. Besides voter turnout, what turned the tide against the BJP is the fact that the SP candidate was from the little known “Nishad Party.” I doubt that anyone outside Uttar Pradesh would even have heard of this little organization. But with 2-3 lakh Nishads in Gorakhpur, it probably made all the difference.

This is one of the reasons I think Modi should make a direct invitation to the winning SP candidate from Gorakhpur to join BJP, along with merging the Nishad Party. For this unknown MP from a near unknown party, this would be the moment of his lifetime : An invitation from Modi ji himself. It would also create a very favorable buzz for the BJP among the backward classes in Uttar Pradesh.

The big parties, like TDP and possibly the BJD and AIADMK or some other group from Tamil Nadu, can always be wooed post elections. The thing with micro allies is that they have nothing to offer post elections, because they generally haven’t won any seats. But if the BJP allies with them pre-election, it can corner a few thousand extra votes per constituency which could make all the difference in the headline numbers post 2019.

Let me give you a quick run down of who the micro allies are. I have already mentioned SBSP in Uttar Pradesh. There is also Apna Dal, with which the BJP seems to have acquired some level of comfort, including a rapport with its leader Anupriya Patel.

In Bihar, there are LJP and RLSP, although I suspect they would likely bristle at that description, especially Paswan’s LJP. But they bring important segments of votes to the table and the BJP must do what it can to hold on to them. The big issue in Bihar will be to convince Nitish Kumar to accommodate these micro allies from the JDU’s seat share rather than the BJP’s.

In Jharkhand, the BJP has a micro ally you may never have heard of : AJSU or All Jharkhand Students Union. As much as I dislike them and their opportunism, the BJP cannot afford to let go of AJSU, especially considering that JMM, Cong and JVM-P are preparing a Mahagathbandhan.

I won’t call the AGP in Assam a micro ally, but they know what they are.

In Haryana, there is another party : the HJC(BL) that the BJP did have on board during 2014. To ring fence the seats in Haryana, the BJP will probably have to woo them back. One can always dump them later, before Assembly Elections.

We now come to Maharashtra, where the BJP has incurred a serious loss in the form of Swabhimani Paksha. That’s Raju Shetty’s party. They may have only one MP, but their influence among farmers is much more. At the moment, Raju Shetty has gone back to UPA. This is one man the BJP needs to get back.

Maharashtra, in particular, because of the hyperlocal nature of politics in the state, is full of such parties. There is the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi, which the BJP has wooed to its side. You will see the utility of the BVA when the BJP wins the Lok Sabha bypoll from Palghar later this year. There is, of course, also the RPI(A). The good thing about these parties is that you can often ally with them without having to offer actual Lok Sabha seats. Often, the entire party is the fiefdom of one local chieftain and his/her few friends. You give that person a Rajya Sabha seat and all his/her votes are yours for the taking.

I have come to the most controversial part of this article. There is one more micro ally the BJP needs, a micro-ally who could seal 2019 for Modi. If only she will agree to be seen as a micro-ally. If not, a medium micro ally, in a class of her own.

Mayawati.

She has 0 seats in the Lok Sabha. Her Assembly strength is down to 15 or so (after a couple of defections) and her party coffers are bone dry. In Uttar Pradesh, the idea should always have been to squeeze BSP to nothing … and then make Mayawati an offer she can’t refuse.

Let’s see : every small “Dalit Party” across India now has a deal with BJP. Udit Raj and his Justice Party have merged into BJP. The LJP and RPI(A) are partners. Why not Mayawati?

If I were Amit Shah, I would be bargaining with Mayawati right now. The thing that stands in between is Mayawati’s massive ego. But if she can bow to SP, why not BJP? Politics is the art of the possible. There are a lot of ways to appease her ego. If she wants, the BJP can offer to create a NEDA like platform for Dalit leadership within NDA and give Mayawati the lead.

Let’s see. Mayawati has NEVER done well in Lok Sabha elections. Her best ever score is 19 seats. Why can’t the BJP give her ten Lok Sabha seats, a Rajya Sabha seat for Mayawati herself and some kind of special Dalit leadership platform for her to lead? If that is not enough, surely Amit Shah knows that the BSP leadership accepts several other forms of incentives. The BJP has plenty of that and the BSP has very little.

Bengal riots have shown Indian media at its lowest

For India’s cheap, partisan and soulless media, there could be no lower point than the Bengal riots. I mean, for the last several days, we have had reports filtering out of Bengal of horrifying communal violence, a police officer getting his hand chopped off and more.

All this while, Mamata Banerjee has been in Delhi, pulling a deliberate Nero act.

Mamata Banerjee met Arun Shourie, Shatrughan Sinha and Yashwant Sinha in #Delhi; TMC MP Derek O'Brien also present. pic.twitter.com/4bo1L1Qys1

— ANI (@ANI) March 28, 2018

No, she is not even on some official state government business, some kind of investor summit, etc. Even if she were on some official business, the rioting in Bengal should have called for her to return and administer the situation in Raniganj. You know, do her job.

But Mamata Banerjee has chosen to employ no facade, to make no excuse.

There she is, all smiles as she lobbies members of the political class both big and small, for her PM ambitions.

And she can get away with this because she knows that in India, our cheap, filthy and dishonest media will allow her to get away with anything. As long as she carries the ‘secular’ tag.

You know the other day I wrote a long piece on Bengal, giving numerous anecdotes about the history of political violence in the state. When the piece was posted on Opindia, some people were furious at me because I didn’t include a mention of the Jyoti Basu’s government murdered some 1200 Gurkhas in Bengal.

I looked it up. It was an incident from 1986. A blood massacre. But I had never heard of it.

How could I have? Because our media and popular discourse does such an excellent job of burying the crimes of ‘secularism’ that you never really find out these this stuff except by some big coincidence.

And just like the media buried the crimes of Jyoti Basu, it will bury the crimes of Mamata Banerjee. So she can go on the party circuit in Delhi while Bengal burns and no one will ever say anything. She will always remain the wonderful and benevolent Mamata Didi.

I don’t blame Mamata Banerjee that much for taking advantage of the prevailing political paradigm that we have created in the country. She is just taking advantage of the situation that we Hindus have let develop for 70 years. It’s a benefit available to every secular leader : you can put on the worst show of insensitivity possible; you can mock poor farmers by offering to piss in their ponds during drought and you will still be a “farmers’ leader.” You can loot the treasury, steal from the poorest and weakest in India’s state, get multiple convictions for it and you will still be a “social justice leader.” And of course you can preside over the worst riots and come out squeaky clean with a Bharat Ratna at the end of it.

Just don’t be seen with the evil RSS/BJP, if you do that our media will send you to hell for an angry tweet.

Mark my words, the popular backlash to Mamata Didi is a gathering storm. At this moment, Didi is showing more arrogance in Bengal than even the CPI(M) ever did.  And that’s really saying something.

Cambridge Analytica scam has left liberals nowhere to hide

Simple words.

And with these words, the entire Indian liberal campaign of lies, rumors, insinuations and propaganda should have come crashing down. One truth to beat them all.

How many times over the last four years do you remember some smug liberal, some academic water carrier of Sonia Gandhi, accusing “Bhakts” of believing in “Whatsapp History?” Journalists, intellectuals, academics, all of them united in opposing the scourge of “fake news,” which they say is the mainstay of the BJP regime.

If only people knew the “truth,” they say, the ruling BJP would have no place to hide. So, a string of news websites mushrooms across the internet, all of them speaking in exactly the same voice, spewing the exact same talking points. Every slimy character out there suddenly has the money and resources to start a “fact-checking website” that is heavily promoted both by traditional publications and the new left wing digital media.

One serial fraudster, who has been in and out of jail for blackmailing people with fake videos, made a fake RTI. Got arrested and went to jail…again. When he came out on bail, this career criminal sat down for an interview with one of these websites, where he was introduced as a “senior journalist.” So what about the forgery? They put a spin on it saying he might have been trying to protect a source…

So what else was the new left wing digital media engaged in? Digging out small time BJP functionaries who may have gotten this or that photograph wrong. Ah, there … there goes the secretary of the IT cell of the XYZ morcha of some BJP district committee in Haryana. He/she has shared this pic about violence in Bengal which happens to be wrong. Let’s ignore the riot in Bengal and expose him/her.

Meanwhile, their side is possibly engaged with Cambridge Analytica, using social media to steal people’s private information so that they can be targeted with carefully tailored doses of fake news.

While liberals on Twitter rail about smalltime trolls doing propaganda, their side is likely using big money to manufacture big fake news. For every citizen, a personal profile to be created by stealing data from their social media presence. Then, every one is to be matched with a customized packet of fake news to influence their voting behavior.

And all this time, they were telling us that Aadhar is way too much. When you tell them that people are already sharing every minute detail about their personal lives on social media, they have the technical excuse ready. They say Aadhar is compulsory, whereas social media participation is voluntary. When you point out that this is a distinction in principle with no difference to the outcome, they don’t care.

Your privacy is dead anyway once you get on Facebook. This privately owned, foreign company already has a minute by minute record of your life.  You might as well give the Government of India your name, date of birth and fingerprints.

No, they insist. Never.

So what do they have to say now? Turns out that this data was actually being stolen without our knowledge. Possibly to serve the electoral interests of a lazy crown prince.

The writing was already on the wall the day the Cambridge Analytica story broke across the world but liberals in India were quiet as scared children. If they had even the slightest excuse to link Narendra Modi to Cambridge Analytica, they would have pounced upon him instantly.

But they had a fairly clear idea of who Cambridge Analytica was working for and so they were silent. The whole “Destroy Aadhar” crowd didn’t give a damn about loss of privacy as long as it served the anti-BJP agenda. The only reason they were against Aadhar is that Modi had made it a cornerstone of its policy. Plus, a class that had feasted for 60 years on the corruption had an instinctive problem with any anti-corruption measure.

So days passed and no one in the Indian media and/or intelligentsia had anything to say about Cambridge Analytica. Perhaps another case of “tyranny of distance.”  Until the BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad decided to hold a press conference and demand answers. When the Congress deleted its app the other day, it was fairly clear that they knew the game was up.

Let me make this clear : every single pronouncement from every liberal is now in doubt. Remember the coordianted “Has Rahul come of age?” campaigns? Remember the delirious liberals cheering on caste agitations in every corner of the country or sharing pictures of footwear supposedly worn by farmers? Every single one of those posts is now under a cloud. How many of them were acting on orders of Cambridge Analytica?

This morning, in a corner of Youtube, I saw a video posted by one sour faced ex-TV anchor who saw his best days back when the Dynasty and Doordarshan were ruling the country. Now he works for one of these sinister left wing propaganda sites I was talking about. He was spewing bile against the “Namo app,” hoping to scare people.

Ha! Too late uncle, too late. Cambridge Analytica has already spilled the beans.  Your lies are past their sell by date. Find something else to do. Kyunki, gali gali mein shor hai, tumhara malik data chor hai… 

 

Welcome to Bengal, where blood has flowed like water

 

Over the weekend, the Ram Navami celebrations in Bengal descended into mayhem of murder and rioting. As per reports, a policeman got his hand chopped off.

Brutal!

I do not know the specific facts of this situation. This article is not about that. Rather this article is about the reaction on social media to the violence in Bengal. Not surprisingly, most people on social media were angry and disturbed about the situation.

This article is about dissecting that sentiment. Sadly, there are some truths about Bengal that people from outside the state need to know. I am sorry I don’t have good news to deliver.

Broadly speaking, the reaction on social media contained the following two themes:

(1) A sense of outrage over the violence in Bengal.

(2) A sense of shock over the violence in Bengal.

Now, the outrage part I totally agree with. But the shock part. I wish I could share in your sentiment.

To a Bengali, here is what your shock and surprise over political violence in Bengal sounds like : You sound like someone who has landed in Europe in 1944 and is surprised to see so much violence around. Did you not know there was a World War raging since 1939?

So this article is intended as a primer for those from outside Bengal. The state of West Bengal hasn’t caught fire *now*, it has been burning for decades. You just didn’t know about it. Because the establishment could never find a way to blame BJP and Hindutva groups for Bengal’s political violence, they never told you about it.

But now that BJP has become a force to reckon with in Bengal, I expect you to hear more and more about the state in the coming days.

So, here is a short list of stories of political violence from Bengal that you never heard because the establishment media hid it from you. Read on if you dare.

In 1997, on the floor of West Bengal Assembly, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, then the Home Minister in the state, admitted that there had been 28,000 political murders between 1977-1996.

Shocked? We are just getting started.

That’s 1500 political murders a year or about 4 political dissenters that were murdered per day. Per day.

In Bengal, dissent was not just dangerous. In Bengal, dissent was death itself. The consequence of “dissent” was not getting trolled on Facebook or Twitter, followed by a instant celebrity status on the Thinkfest circuit. Dissent meant death.

You just never heard of it. Because for media and intellectuals and academics, there was no BJP to blame in Bengal until now. The river of blood had to be ignored.

Did I say ‘blood?’  My mistake.

In many cases there was no blood. A former CPIM MP disclosed that Pinarayi Vijayan, now the Hon. CM of Kerala,  had once exhorted his comrades to adopt the ‘Bengal model.’

The ‘Bengal model’ consisted of picking up political dissenters and burying them alive with a sack of salt. See? No blood!

Sometimes, of course, there was blood. That is when the comrades would enter the house of a political rival, cut their bodies open and then make their mother eat the rice soaked in the blood of her sons.

I warned you before. The story of Bengal is not to be read by the faint of heart.

There is this famous landmark in Calcutta called “Bijon Setu.” I know it well. As a child I would cross it often when we went to Calcutta for summer vacations at my grandmother’s house.

As an adult, I learned about what had happened at Bijon Setu. One fine morning in 1982, seventeen people (monks and nuns of the Ananda Marga sect) were burned alive on that big bridge in Calcutta in broad daylight. No arrest was ever made, of course.

How many such famous landmarks in Calcutta and the rest of Bengal are witness to forgotten massacres?

Here’s another. You may have heard of Jadavpur University. A great institution. Pride of all Bengalis. But you may not have heard the name Gopal Sen. He was one of the Vice-Chancellors of the university. One time he took a stand against an examination boycott called by Communist students.

Vice-Chancellor Gopal Sen was murdered, then and there, right on the campus of Jadavpur University.

Now you know why I am never fooled by liberal claims that Communist students at JNU are harmless children. Because I have been to Bengal.

I must apologize. I shouldn’t imply that Communists murdered the VC of Jadavpur University. Despite the murder happening on a well populated campus, there were absolutely no witnesses and no leads for the police. It remains a complete and total mystery who murdered the Vice Chancellor in front of literally hundreds of people.

In 1993, there was a protest march to the famous Writers’ Building in Calcutta, home of the State Secretariat. There, right in the heart of Calcutta, the police opened fire and 13 people were killed on the spot. Mamata Banerjee must remember this incident rather well. After all, she was the one leading the procession.

This is the level of political violence that has been the norm in Bengal. Sometimes dissenters were buried alive, some times they were murdered and their blood was fed to their mothers. Sometimes, as in Marichjhapi, thousands of people were rounded up on an island in the Sunderbans, cut off from food and water for weeks and then armed police would march in, massacre everybody and throw their bodies into the surrounding water.

Feeling numb yet? Just remember that all these big intellectuals and media houses, who track the minute to minute availability of Tunday Kabab in local Lucknow restaurants, never told you these stories.

Welcome to Bengal, where blood is cheaper than water.

And by the way, still feeling angry about that Lenin statue in Tripura? It goes without saying that what happens in Tripura is a corollary of Bengal politics.

My appeal to you is to stand up and question these intellectuals and the deliberate, dishonest silence they have maintained all these years. Take Rajdeep Sardesai, a well-known master of “political context.” He says that you don’t need to cover with intensity the murder of Bajrang Dal worker Prashant Poojary in Karnataka in 2015 because the murder had a “political context.” Go ask him whether the fall of Lenin statue in Tripura can be similarly “contextualized” and forgotten.

These people that were ruthlessly massacred in Bengal were your fellow citizens. Their stories deserve to be heard. And I dare say their stories deserve to be heard before we worry about a statue. Ask those who claim to be doing the “Journalism of Courage” why the story of political violence in Bengal was never a part of the ‘national mainstream’ until now.

For me, one of the most ironic moments was this recent bit on ABP News. In this, both the ABP news reporter and the anchor in the studio are worried that BJP’s Sunil Deodhar might be making unfounded baseless allegations about a skeleton being found in Manik Sarkar’s house back in 2005.

Which is weird, because the discovery of the skeleton was never in dispute; it was an accepted fact as reported by the Telegraph here. This is even more ironic when you realize that ABP group actually owns The Telegraph.

So what happened? Why was ABP News wondering whether the discovery of the skeleton was a baseless allegation?

I’ll tell you what most likely happened. Neither the ABP anchor nor the ABP reporter could believe that such an explosive piece of news could have remained practically unknown for so many years. A skeleton, allegedly that of a minor girl, found in a Chief Minister’s house? No way that media would have ignored such a piece of news.

Indeed, our news media is compromised to such an extent that even the individuals in the media can sometimes fail to imagine how corrupt it is.

How should Hindus react to images of Ram being beaten with slippers?

Over the last few days, pictures such as these have been doing the rounds on social media :

Images of Shri Ram being beaten with slippers, allegedly by “Periyarist groups” in Tamil Nadu.

Mainstream media has been mostly silent on this matter. Even social media has not seen any visible churn. Quite possibly, the thinking in both social media and mainstream media is as follows : we know that Hindus are always passive, we all know Hindus will do nothing about it, so why waste time talking about it? Let them do whatever they want.

One is tempted to ask if the reaction would have been similar had this been a matter of insult to religious feelings of Muslims or Christians. Or for that matter, an insult to a Communist god such as Lenin. If you live in India, you know the answer to that question.

This Ram Navami, let us ask the question: so what should Hindus do? How should they react?

First of all, let me say that the lack of violent reaction says something fundamentally good about the Hindu community. There were no riots, no Hindus blowing up suicide belts, murdering cartoonists or flying planes into buildings. It is a reminder that the credit for (relatively) free democratic culture lies almost exclusively with Hindus.

There are communities in this country for which mainstream media has to make excuses after they have managed to murder somebody possibly for saying Vande Mataram or Bharat Mata ki Jai. Whether they lock up people in a railway coach and burn them alive or behead a young lover on the public street in Delhi, the media is left doing the messy cleanup task for them. As much as I resent the media for its double standards, I wouldn’t want the Hindu community to become like that. Violence should *never* be an option. Never ever.

Back to the question : So how should Hindus react?

Let me explain by telling you a fable that I heard as a child and you may have too. There was once a very poisonous snake, who lived under a large tree in the center of a village. Because the snake was very deadly and bit anyone who came near, people were scared of even setting foot in the area.

One day, a Sadhu Maharaj who was traveling to Varanasi, happened to sit down under the tree for some rest. Immediately the snake came out of its hole and told the sadhu: “You made a mistake by sitting down under my tree. I will bite you now. Get ready to die.”

“But why?” the sadhu asked, “Why do you bite anyone who sits under your tree?”

“Because that is how I defend my home,” the snake answered.

“Look how much misery you have caused to people of this village. You are committing a very grave sin, my son,” the sadhu explained.

The snake listened. “I shall not bite anyone from now onwards,” he promised the holy man. The sadhu went on his way.

Months later, when the Sadhu Maharaj was returning from Varanasi, he stopped again at the same village, sat down under the tree and called to the snake.

“My son, where are you?” he asked.

“In here,” the snake replied weakly. He was feeble and dying.

“Who did this to you?” the sadhu asked.

“You!” the snake replied, “You told me not to defend myself. Now see how they have beaten and tortured me. You are to blame for my death.”

“I never asked you to stop defending yourself.”

“You did! You told me never to bite anyone.”

“Yes. I told you never to bite anyone because it is a sin. But did I ever tell you not to rise up and spread your hood?”

We Hindus have to learn from this story. Violence is wrong. But that does not mean we are helpless. There are one billion Hindus in this country. If united, we make up a voting bloc that would make any politician weak in his knees.

Remember Gujarat? Those who once said that Muslims have the first right to India’s resources were running from temple to temple showing off their supposed Hinduness. At one point, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala was under so much mental stress that he blurted out that Rahul ji is not just a Hindu, but a “janeudhari Hindu.” Why the Congress Party is implying that being a “janeudhari” is somehow superior to being an average Hindu is something left for them to answer.

But in the Congress Party’s desperate, disoriented reactions  in Gujarat you can see the power of Hindus at 50% consolidation. Imagine what the political landscape of this nation would look like at 100% consolidation.

Images of Shri Ram being beaten with slippers? Yes, we Hindus can prevent this from happening. We just need to rise up and spread our hood.

Why are regional parties paying tributes to Sonia Gandhi in RS polls?

In the old days, we would wait with much excitement for the special afternoon movie that Doordarshan would choose to show on Independence Day. I remember that one time the movie chosen for the occasion was Krantiveer, with Nana Patekar playing the lead role. In the climax of the movie, he delivers a rousing speech to a crowd of people moments before he is scheduled to be hanged, in a manner only Nana Patekar could have.

I still remember some of the lines from that speech (rough paraphrase) : “When God looks at all of us from the sky, what does he think? He remembers that he had made human beings to be wonderful and intelligent creatures. But what does he see? He sees all of us on our knees, crawling like insects. Have some shame.”

Somehow the latest round of Rajya Sabha polls happened to remind me of these lines from Krantiveer. In democracy, the people are supreme, they occupy the position of God. People elected their representatives to stand up for them. But what do the people see? They see a political class that is on its knees, crawling before the power of the Congress establishment.

Indeed, from Bengal to Jharkhand, why are regional parties rushing to offer Rajya Sabha seats to the Congress Party? The Rajya Sabha is the Council of States. A Rajya Sabha berth is a great honor, an expression of trust on part of the states in our federal system.

Today when Congress is at its lowest ebb, when people in almost every state have rejected Congress, have you thought why there are tributes still pouring in from all corners for Queen Sonia Gandhi?

No, this is hardly a case of the losing parties ganging up against the BJP because it happens to be the front runner. The BJP spent long years in the opposition. Do you remember parties lining up to offer free rides to the BJP?

No, of course not. Because these Rajya Sabha seats are tributes from the political class to Queen Sonia Gandhi. Because our entire system, from neta to bureaucrat and from  patrakar to intellectual, is beholden to the Congress Party. And yes, the … is beholden to the Congress as well; I can’t name them for fear of being in contempt.

The Congress may not have a lot of seats right now, but it has the immense power to lease out its ecosystem to anyone who pays the tribute.  The Congress Party’s lawyers will defend in court every single land grab, every dodgy coal or spectrum allocation that you have ever indulged in. Its media Pidis will wash your stains in the court of public opinion.

Do you have a political pitch that benefits from turning community X against community Y and based on Breaking India in general? The Congress can give you its party historians who will prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the feud between the two communities goes back several thousand years. Want to be a ‘free speech activist’ and/or a ‘youth icon?’ Do you fancy yourself going to corporate ‘Thinkfests’ and rubbing shoulders with the high and mighty of society? The Congress can get you in the door in no time.

This is why they always crawl before Congress establishment.

If you are a BJP supporter, congratulations. You are one of the few with a backbone to stand up and speak against this establishment. The BJP is basically the only party across the length and breadth of this vast nation with the gall to take the Congress Party head on.

They say that BJP supporters are on the backfoot, they say that Narendra Modi is now on the “backfoot.”

Yeah, maybe they are on the backfoot. But at least they are standing on their own two feet. Stand up and be counted. Do not take a step back.

Lingayat gambit will give ZERO dividends to Siddaramaiah

Predictions are always a dangerous game. But over at least two decades of watching Indian elections, I have come to believe in certain “laws” regarding voting behavior.

For example, one of my firm beliefs is that no election in one state ever influences an election in another state. So, all the talk of “momentum” in state elections is simply bogus. State elections are very strongly local. In December 2012, even as Modi mania was beginning to take off, Himachal Pradesh still went its own way and brought Congress back to power. Modi’s big third win in Gujarat did absolutely nothing for BJP fortunes in Karnataka in 2013.

And when Modi wave was picking up everywhere, BJP swept Madhya Pradesh but barely limped past the finish line in Chhattisgarh.  Ultimately people do what they want for their own state; they might have some attitude changes looking at other verdicts in other states, but it does not affect their voting choices on election day.

Another law that I firmly believe in is what I like to call the “Four Year Law.” Basically voters judge a government by its first four years of work. If they are unhappy at the end of four years and anti-incumbency has set in, nothing will work against it.

Many governments have tried last minute gambits to win elections. I would be eager to know if there is a single example of these tricks working with the electorate.

The biggest example was when the Congress hurriedly announced the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh somewhere in 2013. At that time, there was genuine fear among the right wing that the Congress might get a thumbs up from the grateful people of Telangana. Big FAIL.

There were several other attempts the Congress made that could have been game changers had they come earlier in the UPA-II term. For example, the Food Security Bill. There was this big dramatic scene of a visibly unwell Sonia Gandhi, barely able to stand or speak, sustaining herself on will power on the floor of Parliament because she has the dream of a “hunger free India.”

Powerful image you have to admit. But by then it was already August of 2013, well beyond the four year limit. So no luck for the Congress there.

Things in the North East are not so well known, but I will give you an example from late 2016 and early 2017. The Congress CM of Manipur created a bunch of new districts, a strategic attempt to set the state on fire with Naga vs Meetei tribal rivalry. The state duly burned for two whole months. But the BJP still won.

The BJP itself has often been on the wrong side of the same four year law. One old example I will give you is that of Rajnath Singh, then CM of Uttar Pradesh, annoucing reservation for “extreme backwards” right before the election of 2002. People laughed it off. The BJP came third in the state election that year.

You could put Akhilesh into the same category. After four years of misrule, Mulayam and Akhilesh stage a big drama of son revolting against his father. There was big talk of how Akhilesh had set off a wave in his favor and cast away all the incumbency burden along with uncle Shivpal Yadav. For weeks, the war in the Yadav family and the praise of young rebel Akhilesh dominated the news cycle. The SP couldn’t fool anyone with their wishful thinking.

Down south, Siddaramaiah is going to fall to exactly the same four year rule. He is enthused right now, thinking that he has pulled off some sort of master stroke. There’s no question of it. Voters cannot be fooled by a decision made with one month to go before the election.

It’s over for Siddaramaiah already. If anything, this last minute decision shows his despair. He can announce any quota, or any reservation or any special status he wants now. Many governments, in their last few months of power, in desperate times have announced many such quotas. You know the Congress announced 5% reservation for Marathas just before Maharashtra polls in 2014. Nothing came of it. If anything, panicked governments that announce reservations a few days before polls have a near 100% record of losing.

The BJP so far has played the Lingayat issue exactly the way it should be played. One of the advantages of being in the opposition is that you can afford to take a vague stand on any issue. I don’t think Chandrababu Naidu ever cleared his position on the division of Andhra Pradesh, but voters forgave him for it. Because he was in the opposition.

On a side note, perhaps Naidu himself is a believer in my “four year law.” Observe how he raised the noise over special status with around 14 months to go for the election, staying just within the four year limit 🙂

The real headache for the BJP on the Lingayat issue is what happens after the election and BJP comes to power. Once again, the Congress has sowed a divide and run away, leaving the BJP to bear the brunt of the flames.

39 Indians massacred by those who had ‘no religion’

I am outraged. I am so angry that I might lead a padyatra right to Parliament and demand the resignation of Narendra Modi. As long as the media are coming. Wait, I think I will stop and share some of my opinions at a corporate sponsored liberal media “Thinkfest” first.

Why did Modi government wait so long before announcing that the 39 Indians who disappeared in Mosul four years ago are dead? Why did it have to give ‘false hope’ to their family members? Granted that a formal announcement of a person’s death from the Government of India would have several legal consequences. Their property could be legally inherited by their heirs and successors. Their surviving spouses would be free to remarry. Insurance companies might have to pay. Why should this prevent the government from making a formal announcement on the basis of hearsay?

And now that we have evidence of their deaths, I am even more angry. Just like Zakka Jacob, I want to know why the government cannot solve murder cases from four years ago that happened in a foreign land when it was under control of a terrorist organization with which we have no diplomatic ties. Do we need such a helpless government?

But above all, I want my outrage to occupy your entire mindspace when you think about this event. Because I need you to think about every aspect of this case other than the religion of those who massacred these 39 innocent people. That would be terribly inconvenient to the narrative I am pushing.

Believe me, your time is better spent inspecting the religion of semen filled balloons.

The worldwide taboo against any criticism of Muslims is now so universal that we all take it for granted. Only last week, reports tumbled out about Telford, a sleep little British town, where nearly 1000 young girls may have been sexually abused over decades by predominantly ‘peaceful’ gangs. Multiple pregnancies and abortions of underage girls, children being gangraped several times in a day. One grandfather allegedly ran a ‘rape house’ where men queued up to have sex with minor girls, with some sex slaves being picked up even outside police stations.

What is shocking is that the Telford case is no longer surprising. Rather, it is something of a ‘new normal.’ Telford joins Rotherham, Rochdale and other small British towns in being centers of organized child rape by ‘peaceful’ gangs.  For decades, police and social workers were scared to mention the issue lest they be accused of “Islamophobia.”

So what if five hundred women were sexually assaulted on New Year’s Day in front of the Main Railway Station in the German Metropolis of Cologne? A terrified liberal media carried official response from the police the next day that New Year celebrations had passed off peacefully. Perhaps there was some ironic wordplay in their official statement, but that was about as much as media and government institutions in the modern democratic world will dare to go.

Remember when Donald Trump was universally mocked by European leaders for saying that Europe has ‘no-go zones’? Well, German Chancellor Angela Merkel just admitted that last month. Although they would not have been too happy about it, Merkel’s words were reported by the New York Times, by The Washington Post and by ABC News.

Wait!

Not any more. Soon after Merkel’s words were reported, some Orwellian hand appeared and all three reports were taken down. You can find the NYT and ABC reports on the Internet Archive here  and  here. Unfortunately, The Washington Post report does not seem to have been captured by the Internet Archive, but you can read the keywords in the now broken link, just above The Washington Post’s now ironic sounding slogan : “Democracy dies in darkness.”

So, if you feel frustrated that the liberal ecosystem is suppressing your voice, don’t feel so bad. Germany’s Chancellor can’t make herself heard either. Liberal Big Brother controls everything.

Relax and smile because Liberal Big Brother is watching you. Think of the face of Liberal Big Brother as the friendly, smiling eyes of suave, urban, educated Sadiq Khan for instance, the mayor of London.

Here he is, raising awareness about the scourge of online hate speech.

Never mind that Sadiq Khan used to consult on the legal defence of Zacarias Moussoui, a French Muslim now serving a life sentence in the United States. His crime? Nothing much. Just being the “20th hijacker” for the 9/11 attacks, picked up by police while undergoing flight training in Minnesota. No big deal, really.

#Lingayat : Congress begins ‘Bharat ke tukde’

Let me start with a thought experiment. Suppose you are somebody who wants Hinduism wiped out of India. What would you do?

There are 1 billion Hindus in India. Even if you are a monster like Hitler or Stalin, you learn from history that violence will not serve your goal.

The solution is simple. Your goal is to wipe out Hinduism, not individual Hindus. You erase their cultural memory, wipe out their history and reprogram their minds the way you want. It is all done cleanly and bloodlessly and does not leave a mark.

One such template comes from Australia. In the middle of the last century, white Australians, the descendants of European settlers, were faced with a similar problem. Their stated goal was to build a “White Australia.” The question was what to do with the Australian aboriginal people, who had been living on the continent long before the Europeans arrived. You can ban immigration from non-white countries, but what do you do with the colored people who were already there and had been living there long before your ancestors arrived?

The answer they came up with was the infamous “child removal policy.” The Australian government started taking aboriginal children, essentially by force, and placing them under care of the church. This gave rise to the so called “stolen generations,” children who would grow up with no memory of their cultural origins and would slowly be digested by the wider white society.

If you are noticing similarities with the objectives of colonized education in India, you are probably right. Ever wondered why the Lutyens types say stuff that nobody else can relate to? They were specially bred that way, in a special atmosphere that made sure they did not grow up to be like the rest of us.

The real booster shot was delivered by Sonia Gandhi, using the Right to Education (RTE) Act of 2009. The law was packaged superbly, as a socialist measure to give poor children access to high quality education. The real sting was in its tail : it’s real objective was to impose an additional burden on Hindu institutions. Because the Act did not apply to institutions run by the so called “minorities,” it’s real effect was to put Hindu administered institutions at a competitive disadvantage.

Schools run by Hindus could get some amount of reimbursement from the government for the economic burden being imposed on them. But the amounts of these reimbursements were to be set arbitrarily by the government and even then the reimbursement processed was designed deliberately to be a bureaucratic nightmare. In many cases, as in Karnataka, the state governments either did not release any funds or planned to stop reimbursements altogether.

These are not flaws in the process. This was part of the design.

The ultimate objective : to make it unsustainable for Hindu institutions to exist … and ultimately unsustainable to be a Hindu in India.

The trap was set. Their first catch came yesterday :

The Lingayats are now a “religion” and most importantly, a “minority.” They are now safe from the jaws of RTE.

This was their first catch, but surely this will not be their last. Across the length and breadth of India, more and more “religions” will be identified, until there is nobody left as a Hindu.

Sonia Gandhi’s dream is taking shape. It has been 9 years of waiting for the first catch. In civilizational terms, nine years is nothing. In a matter of a few decades, India will be wiped clean of Hinduism.

This balkanized view of India appears also in the words of Winston Churchill, a European imperialist known for his hatred for Hindus. Churchill once said that India is a mere geographical expression, no more a single country than the Equator.

The British always envisioned that India would fall apart the moment they left. Because India was supposed to be a bundle of contradictions, with no single consciousness. This view was inherited by our elite thinkers who were true colonial subjects. The “idea of India” was always the view that there is no India at all. And with the actions of the Karnataka government yesterday, their dream is one step closer to reality.

 

 

 

Why has BJP betrayed its own in Darbhanga?

Most readers of this blog will know that I am not fond of Nitish Kumar. I don’t trust the man at all. With many key NDA allies looking to ditch Modi, I bet a lot of people are wondering if Nitish is about to make a U-turn as well.

This time, I am fairly confident it won’t happen. Nitish simply can’t make another U-turn. It would be political suicide. Over their first 8 years of ruling Bihar together, Nitish and BJP brought real development to the state. In doing so, Nitish built up an image that towered above everyone else.

Then, he made his first mistake. Turning away from Modi at the exact moment the Modi wave was taking off. After the 2014 election, he could have humbly accepted his mistake, invited the BJP back in and sealed his position as Bihar CM. Instead he did the “unthinkable” and went and allied with Lalu, resulting in a win that gave every Indian liberal the  renewed hope of “Achche Din.” In those days of Nov 2015, the memories of 10 years of looting must have been fresh in the minds of liberals.

Side note : Lalu just got convicted in a fourth corruption case today. Remind the liberals to sing more praise tonight for their great social justice messiah.

Then, last year, Nitish turned his back on Lalu. While I am sure most people welcomed a Nitish+Modi combo above a Lalu+Nitish alliance, this third U-turn in 5 years cost Nitish a large amount of credibility. Possibly for the first time in Bihar.

Nitish is trapped now. If he tries to make another U-turn now, the JDU vote will totally collapse. He will become a running joke in Bihar.

We have seen arithmetic works and for what its worth, BJP has trapped Nitish now. He can’t leave now.

So, that’s sealed. BJP has trapped Nitish. This means that the NDA is sure of a minimum of 30 seats out of the 40 in Bihar. Likely more.

But the counter question is : has Nitish trapped BJP?

Not in terms of votes. But in terms of ideologies.

Isn’t it the second that really matters?

Let’s face our own hypocrisy here. A man … a BJP supporter was murdered in Darbhanga in the most foul manner. He was beheaded. All because he dared to name a little crossing after Narendra Modi whom we support so much.

Yet, it is none other than our own Sushil Modi who has been on a warpath telling everyone to backoff. Telling everyone that it was just a land dispute. What a horrifying betrayal of BJP workers. Can we really expect BJP workers to fight on the ground if the leaders are happy to stab them on the back to please Nitish Kumar?

I am grateful to Giriraj Singh for coming out and speaking for justice for this murdered BJP worker.

Let us face our hypocrisy here : if the Deputy CM of some other party had tried to cover up the brutal murder of a BJP worker, we would have gone nuts on social media.

The question is whether we value our own.

After the Sushil Modi fiasco, what is the RSS/BJP supposed to tell the party worker in Kerala who risks his life every single day? That if he gets murdered tomorrow by some bloodthirsty Commie, the party is open to the possibility of ignoring his murder if politically convenient?

Take Lalu Yadav. He claims to be the big messiah of Yadavs. Yet what has Lalu ever done for any Yadav except the ones in his own family? Did Mayawati’s money garlands make the Dalits of Uttar Pradesh any richer? Congress party has been fighting “for the poor” for 70 years … no one has benefited more from keeping people in poverty. And Muslims, whom secular parties appease most, have remained at the bottom of all economic ladders.

Is BJP headed the same way? If the party cannot stand up even for the loyal worker murdered in Darbhanga, then what is left?