J&K : Liberal media (and some overzealous RW) are finding a U-turn where none exists

On Aug 5, 2019, the Modi government made the decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Constitution, fully integrating Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of India. As for the curious artifice of demoting a state into a union territory, Amit Shah clarified that this was a strictly temporary measure. You can watch this, on video from Aug 5, 2019 itself.

When the time is right, Jammu and Kashmir will get back statehood. It’s common sense, as well as the only democratic and fair thing to do. In the years past, I do not remember anyone, BJP supporter or otherwise, complain about Jammu and Kashmir being a state. The objection was to special status, which allowed the J&K legislature to overrule laws passed by our Parliament.

So why was J&K turned into a union territory on Aug 5, 2019? Because of the exceptional circumstances and the fear of large scale violence. To tackle the potentially explosive situation, the center would need to temporarily assume control of all the organs of the state. There was a messaging component as well. When you have a child throwing a tantrum, one way to tackle is to take the child’s favorite toy and place it on the upper most shelf. The demand for special status of J&K was similarly childish and unreasonable. Almost everyone else in this country lives in some state or the other and nobody sees this as unfair. What was this boast of Article 370 being some kind of precious crown for J&K? No, you can’t have special status. The bluff has been called. When the child stops throwing a tantrum, they can have their toy back. That’s statehood, to be returned at the right time.

Now, some may object to people of an entire region, or at least their political leaders, being compared to children. Well, when adults demand special status for no reason, that’s the definition of being a child, and a pampered one at that. Only a kid would run to their mom asking to be hugged and told that they are “special.” Adults know that nobody is special and that’s perfectly okay.

Around two years hence, tempers have cooled and the consultations have begun. We have already had one round of elections, for the so called District Development Councils (DDCs). Now it is time for delimitation of constituencies in the Assembly, and talks with state leaders so that J&K can be reborn as a state, fully integrated into the Union of India, same as Karnataka or Jharkhand.

So they came, they were (presumably) offered tea, they clicked a photograph and they left. I am failing to see why this image caused so much heartburn among the BJP’s online supporters.

I understand the liberal commentary on this. They are desperate, eager to paint everything as a “humiliating U-turn” by Modi. I skimmed their reactions online, trying to understand exactly which concession they are celebrating. Is it that Amit Shah is no longer referring to these people as “Gupkar Gang,” as he did before DDC polls? Seriously, is that everything?

I mean, have these people ever witnessed politicians take jibes at each other during an Indian election? If we get into the history of who said what, well … Let’s just not finish that thought. It’s better that way.

Anyway, those who were called Gupkar Gang seem to have readily brushed off the insult and moved on. They are hard-boiled politicians and know how to take things in stride. The only people who have not moved on are liberals in the media who took offense on behalf of the so called Gupkar Gang! In their mind, this photograph is an apology, a humiliating U-turn. Yes, it is whatever helps them sleep at night.

I was less able to understand the reaction from some of the BJP’s core constituency and all the disappointment they seemed to feel. For all my effort, I could not identify an actual concession that the Prime Minister made. There is going to be delimitation, then statehood and then elections. No hard deadlines given, just a promise of doing things at the right time. Exactly like it was promised on Aug 5, 2019.

On the contrary, I find the J&K politicians much changed. They have been chastened by spending long periods in custody, long enough to reflect and get real. That’s why Omar Abdullah now says there is no point asking the Modi government to restore Article 370. He says this is now a legal fight in the Supreme Court. That’s just another way of saying he knows there is nothing he can do. You should have seen Rajdeep’s face when Omar Abdullah said as much.

In fact, the ‘gang’ itself has fallen apart. Mehbooba Mufti has taken a more hardline stance, reflecting the views of her core constituency. In other words, both the PDP and the NC have realized that elections are coming. So they better get back to being enemies. Getting back Article 370 is an impossible dream. They better take what they can get. For that, they must compete, not cooperate.

For decades, the leaders of the Kashmir region dared the government in Delhi to remove Article 370. They arrogantly used to say that this is the bridge that connects Kashmir to the rest of India. If India drops the special status, the consequences will be too heavy for India to handle.

None of that happened. The Central government clamped down and got it all done in a single fell swoop. There were protests, but no widespread violence. Nothing unmanageable at all. In retrospect, those who kept up this empty boast for 70 years turned out to be the biggest enemies of the people of Kashmir. If they had not conjured up wild visions of large scale violence, the Central government perhaps would not have proceeded with such extreme caution in Aug 2019. There would have been no need for such a painful communications shutdown. Sensible people in Kashmir need to question their leaders about this. Without the empty boast of valley politicians, the transition would have been totally painless.

Now it’s done. Statehood for Jammu and Kashmir is on its way. They will get their toy back. It was theirs anyway.

Wokeness is not a social revolution, it is a religion imposed by the ruling class

A couple of months ago, an elderly Asian woman was attacked brutally in broad daylight near Times Square in New York City. The attacker was carrying a knife. He kicked her to the ground, beat her and stomped on her, and shouted anti-Asian slurs. It is the kind of senseless criminal act that would make anyone very angry. In today’s woke environment, so aware of issues of race and gender, there was no way the public would let this slide. Somebody had to be held accountable.

Somebody was. Two doormen who worked in the building next to the sidewalk, who saw the assault but did nothing, were fired from their jobs. Nice.

But wait a second. Crime is surging in New York City, with shootings up over 86% year on year. In late 2019, New York passed a new state law that opened the prisons and brought thousands of criminals out on the street. The man who assaulted this elderly Asian woman should never have been walking free. He had been convicted of stabbing his own mother to death back in 2002. So why not hold the Governor of New York accountable for this incident as well as the crime surge in general?

Are you kidding me? That’s not how things are supposed to work any more. The Governor has power. That’s why the woke movement has nothing to say to him. In fact, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York has been accused of sending Covid patients into nursing homes for the elderly, resulting in thousands of deaths. His aides then admitted to hiding this data from the Federal Government. In addition, the governor has been accused of sexual harassment by at least ten women. Would that be enough for the woke crowd to get him out of office?

Of course not. Governor Andrew Cuomo has power. That’s why he still has a job while those two doormen, likely minimum wage earners, are out on the streets, looking for a new way to feed their families.

As woke culture takes over America and tries to take over the world, pay close attention to who exactly its targets are. In 2010, Joe Biden gave a touching eulogy at the funeral of Senator Robert Byrd, an ex-organizer for the Ku Klux Klan. Sounds like the kind of thing that would get people canceled right away. But Biden isn’t most people. On the other hand, a mid-level TV actor was canceled last month because the internet uncovered that when she was 19 years old in 1999, she had participated in a local pageant that had been started by someone who used to be in the KKK in the late 1800s. They ‘exposed’ her by pulling out the original newspaper article from the year 1878. And to think she almost got away with being such a racist! Thank goodness for the internet vigilantes, right?

The defenders of woke culture argue that this is just accountability culture. Like the anti-colonial movements, the civil rights movements, the old feminist movement or the gay rights movement, they say they are in the business of making the world better. But if they were fighting systemic injustice, wouldn’t they start by challenging the most powerful instead of digging up ten year old tweets of everyday people?

If we want to dig up the past, why not talk about the role of say the New York Times in covering up the holocaust? In 1934, the NYT bureau chief in Berlin reported that he had concluded from conducting interviews that the Jews were actually gaining weight in Nazi concentration camps. He was talking about the concentration camp at Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen, where 100,000 people eventually perished. Is the New York Times canceled yet? Of course not. Because the New York Times is the vehicle for delivering the fatwas of woke culture to the masses.

We know that Vatican City itself was a gift from Mussolini in return for the Pope legitimizing the Fascist regime. Think about all the allegations of child sexual exploitation against the Catholic Church, from all over the world. Think about the role of the Church in suppressing the rights of women and gay people everywhere. Is the Pope canceled yet? Of course not. Joe Biden is a devout Catholic. When he became President, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal carried articles hoping that the two men, one a religious authority and the other a temporal one, would lead America and the world to light.

This is what makes woke culture different from the social movements of the past. It comes from above and not below. It does not challenge power, rather it is an instrument of power. Its aim is to keep the little people terrified and in line.

Think about how social movements usually come about. A small group of people, who think ahead of their time, identify an injustice and begin to agitate for change. In the beginning, they face frustration and ridicule. But they keep at it, trying to spread awareness. The establishment fights back, trying to resist change. Progress is slow but it happens bit by bit. As they say, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

In contrast, does it ever feel like woke culture is progressing so fast that you can’t keep up? You think you are up to speed, but then you learn suddenly that a word you said today was already banned as of 18:00 hrs yesterday. You thought ‘mother’ was harmless enough, until you learned that you should have said ‘birthing parent’ all along.

Unlike with social movements, the establishment is always one step ahead of you. Big Government and Big Academia manufacture and mandate woke culture much faster than you can learn to use it. Big corporations are much more woke than you are. Does it ever surprise you how corporations which squeeze workers and small businesses, corporations that tore up the third world and bought up politicians in the first world, always seem to care more about people’s sentiments than you do?

But, most importantly, does all of this ever wear you down? Sooner or later, you are bound to realize that the safest course is to shut up altogether, for fear of committing any of the million speech crimes and thought crimes out there. The list grows constantly. The internet lynchmobs pick out random people and make examples out of them. The message is in the randomness. If they went after powerful people, you would not have to worry so much, because you know you are just an average Joe. That’s why they go after ordinary folks, average members of the herd. Today it was some middle class guy in a mid level town a thousand miles away. Tomorrow, it might be you. Better shut up.

Unlike with social movements, the establishment does not resist change. Rather, it is the establishment which prescribes the change. In fact, the establishment is the change. War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength. And the establishment is the change. And the year is 1984.

Could a “rolling ban” force big tech platforms to fall in line with Indian laws?

This week, Twitter locked the account of Ravi Shankar Prasad, the union minister for IT and Law, for several hours. The minister protested, but to no avail. The platform insists that American laws, as well as their own internal company policies, take precedence over Indian law.

Let us go beyond the finger pointing and the obvious partisan relish from some quarters at the plight of the minister. It is clear that India is facing a crisis of sovereignty. What if other multinational corporations operating in India similarly refused to follow Indian laws? What if foreign car manufacturers, laptop companies or fast food chains said tomorrow that they want to be governed by the laws of Japan, China or America?

The simple answer is that those other companies won’t ever say that. Because each of those businesses depend on maintaining physical infrastructure in India for their survival. If our ports are closed to their goods, or their factories or distribution outlets in India are shut down, they can no longer operate.

But this does not apply to foreign tech platforms, who service their users virtually. In real terms, these platforms do not need to be located ‘anywhere.’ This is the first reason that the Indian government is struggling to enforce our regulatory framework upon these companies. Imagine how hard it is already to enforce our tax laws because of small island countries that act as tax havens. Now think about companies that could exist anywhere on the internet landscape.

The second reason is that we have no obvious domestic alternatives to these tech platforms. When these companies first began growing organically in India around 2009, they were often welcomed as a breath of fresh air; forces for building a global digital utopia. They rejuvenated family ties across continents, magnified pro-democracy voices during the Arab Spring, broke down traditional barriers of class, privilege and territorial boundaries. The disruption phase was, as it always is, exhilarating. Generally speaking, they did so much good that nobody thought about the kind of power that we were handing over to non-state actors. Over the last decade, we have organized business, media and the economy around them. If we switch them off now, the internet goes dark.

The third reason is that public opinion on this issue has not matured yet. As long as people think of the current fight as an ego clash between ministers, babus and BJP on one side and a corporation on the other, there will never be enough public support for the government to take severe steps. Most people see these platforms as a value addition to their lives, that they appear to enjoy for “free.” They do not yet think about what they are paying in return, which is personal data.

The idea of property is dynamic, and it evolves constantly. For the ancient cave-dwellers, perhaps the only form of property would be the food they had gathered for the day. Then, we progressed to owning livestock, land, debt, money as coins and then paper and now digital. The concept of intellectual property was invented. We learned to own our ideas by means of a vast legal framework of patents, copyrights, trademarks and so on. We understand that we own the minerals in the ground and that nobody should be able to mine them for free. We have not yet realized the same about personal data and how profitable it is for those harvesting it.

Because people don’t realize this, foreign tech platforms are cheekily able to spin attempts at government regulation as attacks on free speech! And because users of these platforms don’t realize that they are in fact paying customers of a for-profit corporation, the argument often sticks. This is perverse. Imagine if the government was trying to shut down a fast food chain because it refuses to pay taxes. And there are people taking a moral stand in favor of that fast food chain because they think the restaurant serves free food!

There is a reason the government could act so decisively on the Tik Tok ban. People saw the Chinese Army on our borders. They recognized the danger immediately. When the government banned Chinese apps, it was overwhelmingly popular.

I do not want this to be only about problems, with no attempt even at a solution. So here is my suggestion. How about a “rolling ban” on tech platforms that do not comply; say on three days of the week, perhaps Monday, Wednesday and Friday?

The advantage of this approach is that it manages to impose a cost on tech platforms that are willful violators without actual censorship. People can still say whatever they want on any platform. Because we know for sure that after every Monday, there will be a Tuesday. There is no fear, just a bit of inconvenience.

This inconvenience opens up the field to Indian tech platforms who would like to compete. At the moment, there is no reason for a common user to shift from a foreign tech platform. Everyone they know is already on it. Where is the incentive to start afresh, that too with a product that is likely to offer a glitchy user experience, at least in the beginning? But if they can’t use the foreign platform three days a week, there is suddenly some convenience in switching to a domestic one.

Of course, people will get around such a ban by using internet proxies and other similar stuff. But, that’s okay. The ban does not even need to be enforced too strictly. Remember that only ordinary people are likely to use things like internet proxies. The terrifying power of Big Tech is not in what regular people are saying on these platforms. The problem is organized narrative pushing. As open and democratic as it may seem, the narrative is actually driven by a handful of institutional entities. It’s hard to enforce our IT rules against a tech company located somewhere abroad. But if access to one of these platforms is legally forbidden on say Mondays, no established Indian entity can post there on that day. Because the latter have to follow Indian laws.

In some ways, this idea is borrowed from Big Tech itself. These platforms rarely ever ban people altogether. Instead, they use temporary locks and suspensions as a way to get the behavioral changes they want. To beat them, we have to think like them.

How the New York Times ‘denied’ the holocaust and how the left has done the same to Hindus

How many ways are there to deny that something happened? The first way is to deny the facts of what happened on the ground. This, may be argued, is the dumb way. This, for instance, is what Pakistan does. They have concocted a number of myths to “prove” that Pakistan actually won the wars in 1947-48, in 1965, 1971 and in 1999. While such theories will always find a constituency among a small number of uninformed people, they will never be powerful enough to affect the course of global events.

The second way is deeper and more vicious. It is to take something that actually happened and then to deny the causes and the context in which it happened. Once you take a historical event and impose upon it your own made up explanation about the motives of those who made it happen, you might as well deny the event itself.

The classic example of the latter phenomenon is what happened after the American Civil War of 1861-65. Unable to deny the fact that the Confederates lost the war, the southern states set about on a program of elaborate deception. They argued that the cause of the Civil War was not slavery, but rights of states to decide their own laws. By imposing this revisionist approach, they managed to cast themselves as the real victims of the war. As a result, they denied rights to their black population; African Americans remained in de facto slavery and brutal racial segregation continued for another one hundred years.

As we can see, this second kind of denial is harder to beat, because it is more insidious. In the latter part of the twentieth century and thereafter, those who deny the holocaust outright have remained, and shall forever remain, a lunatic fringe group. And thank goodness for that. But what does one make of publications such as the New York Times, which had great influence in setting global public opinion, as well as shaping attitudes within corridors of power?

Unlike the lunatic fringe, the New York Times never denied the actual concentration camps, the gas chambers, the horrors that people suffered there, nor did it try to minimize the number of victims. Instead, as a matter of policy, the publication covered up the fact that the Nazis were targeting Jews specifically because they were Jews. In the New York Times version, the concentration camps were set up to persecute citizens of the various countries that the Nazis occupied, from Poland to France to Belarus and Ukraine. The Jewish identity of those being oppressed was left out. During the famous Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943, for instance, the New York Times covered it as citizens of Poland fighting back against the Nazis, rather than an act of the Jewish Resistance. This approach of the publication continued long after the war ended, even into the 1960s. They never denied the actual atrocities, just who specifically had been targeted and why.

Unfortunately, this is where the real world consequences begin. Once you deny the identity of who suffered in the holocaust and the two thousand years of anti-Semitism that led to it, you lose the context in which the Jewish people felt a need to have the State of Israel.

This is also where the comparisons with Indian history begin. Indian historians, almost all of them on the left, have put in tremendous effort into denying religious persecution, forced conversions and other atrocities on Hindus during centuries of Muslim rule. They have invented various rationalizations, such as arguing that destruction of Hindu temples by Muslim rulers was due to political reasons and not religious reasons. This is exactly what the New York Times did to the Jews, arguing that the Nazis were oppressing their political enemies, not ethnically cleansing a class of people.

In recent years, there has even been an attempt to revive the reputation of Aurangzeb, making him one of the gods in India’s secular pantheon.

Once you fall for this invented history, you lose all context. You no longer see the wounds that Hindu civilization has suffered, nor do you understand the trauma of Partition. You no longer understand why so many Hindus would seek comfort in symbolic restoration by rebuilding temples at Somnath and Ayodhya. You do not understand the demographic anxieties of those facing Bangladeshi infiltration in Assam, nor those of Hindus in border regions of Bengal. All through the last two years, the liberal elite kept arguing that Assam was united in ‘secular’ opposition to the CAA. The election results showed that the liberal belief was comprehensively wrong.

How did Assam become a BJP stronghold? How did millions of Hindu Bengalis switch to voting for BJP overnight? The people are trying to say something. Decrying them and their elected leaders as ‘fascists’ serves no purpose.

Once you fall for invented history, you begin to lose context in say Jammu and Kashmir. Again, the liberal elite, who borrow their worldview from left wing historians, have tried to paint that as a territorial dispute. Even more hardcore elements, acting in bad faith, have tried to explain what happened to Kashmiri Pandits in terms of class conflicts and social privilege. They insist on talking about Article 370 in terms of self-determination of a regional group, instead of a religious divide. This is literally the same as the approach of southern US states after the Civil War, where they made states’ rights a proxy for pushing slavery.

But the dispute in Jammu and Kashmir is grounded in religion. Pakistan understands it as such, which is why they refer to it as the unfinished business of Partition. The Pakistan backed terrorists in Kashmir see it as such. The Kashmiri Pandit victims have experienced it as such. And when an ordinary Indian Hindu sees the conflict in Kashmir, they worry about losing yet another piece of the traditional homeland.

Interestingly, the publisher of the New York Times from 1935 to 1961, at the time the paper covered up the nature of the holocaust, was Arthur H. Sulzberger, who was himself of Jewish origin. This is not as ironic as it sounds. Sulzberger’s priority was assimilation. And for that, if he had to deny the brutal consequences of anti-Semitism, he would do it. This is the same as the liberal elite pushing the myth of a happy Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb, in which the ancient prejudice against “idol-worshippers” finds no mention.

As a person of Jewish origin, Sulzberger worried that his opposition to Hitler would be seen as self-serving. Just as Indian liberals, most of them drawn from Hindu society, worry that acknowledging historical wrongs suffered by Hindus will serve the cause of majoritarianism. At the same time, the publisher of the New York Times was also an ardent anti-Zionist. This is much the same as Indian liberals obsessing with fighting the imagined consequences of Hindutva.

None of this is to say that one should enable a climate of prejudice today, nor to make groups of people turn against each other. Instead, to have real harmony, we must have open and honest conversations about the past and the present. Wiping out history through intellectual coercion is a crime.

Take the case of the infamous Aryan Invasion Theory. It has long been discredited and no professional historian will say that they believe it today. But if you examine more closely, you will uncover what was really done about that. The term “invasion” has been officially revised to “migration” but this new term now includes everything, from the plundering by Mahmud Ghazni to the Arab conquest of Sindh. And if the idol worshippers suffered after that, it was because of political reasons and not religious ones. In other words, they never actually got rid of the idea of “invasion,” they just made the term meaningless.

This way of denying history is more insidious. Because it has large scale consequences in real life, something that no lunatic fringe group of history deniers will ever achieve. Instead of denying the facts of history, they change the context in which it happened and the motivations of those involved. And in doing so, they manage to change everything that logically follows from that history.

BJP should not underestimate any opponent in 2024

It’s a bunch of regional leaders. Some of them are not even that. They are sub-regional leaders at best and some of them became a spent force a long time ago. Some of them are not leaders at all, like Javed Akhtar and bring with them only 5-6 votes, likely those of their family and close friends. It is difficult not to mock. And when you see Yashwant Sinha at the head of them, it is almost an invitation to do so.

But for reasons of safety, it is best for the BJP to take every potential threat for 2024 seriously.

Of late, the BJP has developed a distressing habit of elections slipping out of their grasp. I am not actually talking about Bengal. The TMC won the state by a landslide. I am talking about Maharashtra or Jharkhand. And in 2018, it was Karnataka, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Just a handful of votes here and there, such as keeping AJSU as an ally in Jharkhand, would have won them the election. I have written about this phenomenon before, of the BJP losing the art of “winning small.”

This is one sign of inflated ego. With Modi winning landslide majorities, the BJP and its supporters have become used to thinking in terms of big victories. In 2019, I think the BJP won over 50% of the vote in over half of India’s states. Yes, that is huge. But that cannot happen every time. Either you are in power or you are not. Ultimately, it does not make that much of a difference if you are in power with 3/4 majority or you have just 1 seat above the majority mark. Look at the Congress enjoying power in Maharashtra, acting like there was a Sonia Gandhi wave there. The people may have voted them down to the 4th position. But as much as it may bother the BJP to admit, they are powerless and miserable in Maharashtra with 100+ MLAs. Yes, the BJP is the only party since 1991 to win 100+ seats in Maharashtra, but who cares? See who is chilling out in Mantralaya…

There is still a lot of time to go before 2024, obviously. The BJP lost a lot of political capital in April-May during the second wave of Covid. But as I had guessed, they can gain a lot of it back from rapid vaccinations, which is happening now. I wrote yesterday about how BJP had the most perfect day in a long time. After being dumbfounded by the magnitude of the vaccinations on June 21, Congress made a wrong move getting its surrogates to chip away with relentless negativity. How could they not realize that 75 lakh vaccinations a day will become common by next month? And soon enough, it will be 1 crore plus each day.

Today they are trying to “debunk” 86 lakh vaccinations on one day. Saying look it went down to 50 lakh the next day. Two weeks later, they will “debunk” 1 crore vaccinations on one day, saying it went down to 75 lakh the next day. This is a losing battle. The only thing they can do is make themselves look more and more ridiculous.

But after experiences in Rajasthan, Maharashtra and so many states, the BJP should not take anyone lightly. Yes, I am at a loss to imagine who would vote for a coalition government of Sharad Pawar, Yashwant Sinha and Javed Akhtar. But what do I know? If the political developments since 2018 have proved anything, it is that you can’t take anything or anybody for granted.

Instead of mocking the so called “Rashtra Manch” the BJP needs to take them on aggressively. They need to make people wonder if they really want a government of Sharad Pawar, Yashwant Sinha and Javed Akhtar. Let Mamata Banerjee be the Prime Ministerial candidate. In fact, Didi’s ambitions can give wings to BJP in Bengal. If Mamata Banerjee goes out on a limb chasing her PM dreams for the next three years, she will have to leave day to day command of Bengal in the hands of the nephew. That’s when the mistakes are going to come.

80 lakh vaccinations : BJP needs more of days like this

After a long time, the BJP had an absolutely perfect day yesterday. Over 80 lakh vaccinations in one day left supporters celebrating and opponents fuming. The all important political constituency, those in the middle, seemed almost wholly to go with Modi. That is why folks like Ravish Kumar seemed so frustrated yesterday.

Let us dissect exactly what made the day so perfect. The first part was how it started. There was no big announcement, no bombast, no PR build up towards this day. The only thing people knew is that starting June 21 the Central government is taking charge of the vaccination program. They did not know what to expect. They did not what or how much of a difference this would make.

It is true that state governments had prepared targets for this day. Madhya Pradesh had set a target of 10 lakh, Uttar Pradesh had set a target of 6 lakh per day starting June 21. Gujarat was opening 400 vaccination centers all across Amdavad so that 1 lakh doses could be given in the city each day. This information was in the public domain, but only technically. It was mostly hidden in corners of various web portals. You would have to be a true news junkie to have known about these targets in advance. Because no major newspaper or news channel had a consolidated list. Most didn’t even mention it.

The ‘stealth’ feature of this operation was outstanding. Karnataka pulled a rabbit out of a hat with over 10 lakh vaccinations. The target must have been set internally at some level. If it was reported somewhere in advance, let me know.

This means opponents had no time to prepare their attacks. They were not mentally prepared to go on the offensive. They had woken up on Monday morning ready to begin their usual bellyaching about this or that. Rahul Gandhi began the day with an inane tweet about “It’s Yoga day, not hide behind Yoga day.” What was he even talking about? I have no idea.

But as the day progressed, the opponents realized that something big was happening. First they thought it would be 40 lakh vaccinations. By afternoon, the Cowin dashboard had gone way past that. People began speculating about whether it would go past 50 lakh. By 5 pm, we had exceeded that and the data was still pouring in. By evening… it was 60 lakh… by late evening 70 and the 75 lakh. By late night, it had crossed 80 lakh.

All day, the government kept people guessing and speculating. As if the government itself had no idea what would happen. On their part, the opponents did not know whether to ridicule or to applaud. They did not want to be seen as going against people when they are happy. They did not want to walk into the trap of applauding the government and therefore neutralizing themselves. This kept opponents off balance the whole day. Nobody was watching them. Everyone was watching the scoreboard.

One interesting feature was that NDA ruled states accounted for 70 percent of the vaccine doses given. Surely, there was some planning involved. The opposition and their media surrogates got no wind of it.

This is what an innings defeat for the critics looks like. By evening, the critics emerged, hissing and spitting venom. Ravish Kumar has been a shadow of himself lately. He had invested a lot of mental capital into the ‘farmer’ protest thing. Ever since that protest became an overall farce, he has not been able to get his rhythm back. Yesterday, when he came out cribbing about how 80 lakh vaccinations per day is too less compared to the Pulse Polio program, he just looked ridiculous. Incidentally, only a few weeks ago, when PM Modi had spoken about how the India of old would have to wait decades for vaccinations, Ravish Kumar had produced one of his self-satisfied monologues about why you can’t compare polio vaccination to Covid vaccination. Yesterday, Ravish Kumar just looked like he had worms in his brain.

Rahul Gandhi would have done well to stay quiet today and let the storm pass. That’s one of the basic rules of politics. Take cover and hold fast when your opponent is on a roll. But if he ever knew the basic rules of politics, he would not be Rahul Gandhi, would he? So he just had to go out there today and “expose” the Modi government with what he thought was a blistering address to the media. And again, he went down the rabbit hole of comparing Polio vaccination rates to Covid vaccinations.

Rahul Gandhi has done the BJP a favor, as usual. While we are all relieved about India finally being polio free, our record on polio eradication is disastrous to say the least. The US became polio free in 1979 and most of the developed world had eradicated the disease by the 1980s. By the turn of the century, most of Africa had done so as well, including Somalia by 2002. When India became polio free in 2011 (the official declaration came in 2014), we were the fourth last country in the world to do so. Behind us were only Nigeria (which became polio free in 2016) as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the disease is still ongoing. Suffice to say that this kind of record won’t impress anyone, let alone young India. For the last one year, Congress and its surrogates have been saturating social media with questions about why India is behind USA on this parameter or behind Canada, Norway or New Zealand on that parameter.

If Congress had stuck to the context free, unfair comparisons, it would have been better. Trust Rahul Gandhi to remind people of a time when India was in the bottom five in the world. And now Rahul and Sonia Gandhi have to answer for this.

What went wrong in Kerala?

When it comes to the Coronavirus, there is a lot of good news around, at least for the time being. Yesterday, the total number of fresh Covid cases in India fell below the 60,000 mark for the first time in 81 days, as opposed to nearly 90,000 recoveries. The nationwide recovery ratio has crossed 96%, showing that active cases now make up only a small fraction of those who contracted the disease. Additionally, the vaccination program has picked up, with some 38 lakh vaccine doses administered yesterday. The cumulative number of vaccine doses is now approaching 30 crore, roughly equal to the entire population of the United States.

But amid the good cheer, there is something that sticks out. The state of Kerala, with its tiny population of 3 crore people, now leads the country in daily new Covid cases. Over 20% of fresh new cases yesterday were from Kerala alone. And before anyone rushes in with the usual mythmaking about “Kerala model,” this is not because Kerala is testing more. If anything, Kerala is testing too little. In fact, Kerala’s test positivity rate is above 10%, which is frightening. For comparison, the nationwide test positivity rate yesterday was only 3.33%. The second wave is under control almost everywhere. Except Kerala.

How did it go so wrong for Kerala? And how did the terrible numbers for Kerala go almost unreported? Actually, the two things are connected.

First, let us agree this should not be happening in Kerala. At least Maharashtra had an excuse. Maharashtra has lots of densely populated, highly industrialized urban centers. People across the country flock to the state for a living. The same is true, even if to a lesser extent, for states such as Gujarat, Karnataka or Tamil Nadu. At least Uttar Pradesh and Bihar had an excuse. These are among India’s poorest and most backward states. The state governments there don’t have enough resources.

What is Kerala’s excuse? They are neither poor nor backward, nor would they ever admit to being so. Kerala has little manufacturing and no big urban centers. In fact, no city from Kerala appears even in the list of the 50 most populated cities in India. Additionally, Kerala has a famously high level of literacy, which should make it easy for the government to disseminate information effectively and create awareness. Kerala also leads the nation on various mythical parameters such as Human Development Index (HDI).

Then, there is the globally acclaimed Kerala healthcare model, driven by the vision of Shailaja “Teacher.” Oh, excuse me, did I say Shailaja Teacher? I actually meant to talk about the vision of the Chief Minister’s son in law Mohammad Riyas. Undoubtedly, it was Riyas’ foresight and guidance that was the real power behind the success of Kerala model. Why else would Pinarayi Vijayan drop Shailaja from the Cabinet and include his son in law as a minister? Over the decades, the contribution of sons, daughters, uncles, cousins, nephews, etc to India’s development should never be under-estimated.

The media won’t tell you about the failure of the Kerala model because it is mostly the media’s fault in the first place. In theory, the role of the media is to keep governments accountable. But what happens when media is so in love with the ruling party that they would never point out the slightest negative about a state? You get Kerala.

The media has always been soft on ‘secular’ ruled states. That’s why everyone ‘knows’ about the communal attack on an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad the other day, even though the incident had nothing to do with religion. But the decades of political violence in Bengal have never become an issue, not nationally and not even in Bengal. Jyoti Basu may have presided over 28,000 political murders during his first 20 years in power, but who cares? For that matter, who even knows? That’s liberal privilege.

By now, the public is used to this. They have even developed a certain amount of “herd immunity” against it. Despite all the media glorification of ‘secular’ parties and their many ‘youth icons,’ the BJP has consistently gained strength across the country for the last 30 years. Ironically, the media bias against BJP has often worked to the party’s strength. If there is a BJP government around, even a traffic jam can become national news. If you don’t believe me, see this. So BJP governments are under pressure to deliver simply to survive. This in turn leads to people voting for more BJP governments. Over a long period of time, lazy ‘secular’ regimes get voted out. This is how Congress went from a 200 minimum seat party to a 150 maximum seat party between 1977 and 2014. In the same time, the BJP went from a party of 2 seats to a 182 maximum seat party and now a 200 minimum seat party.

But all this breaks down when you have a pandemic. The virus cares neither for state lines nor party lines. In the fight against the pandemic, we are only as strong as our weakest link. And when the media makes up fake narratives to defend their ‘secular’ ideals, they put us all in danger.

A Maharashtra minister recently revealed that they would get calls from media persons urging them to reduce the number of tests so that the numbers from the state could be artificially reduced. The minister did not reveal the name(s) of the journalist(s) involved, but we would not be surprised if a lot of the media thinks like this. For them, the image of the ‘secular’ Maharashtra government must be protected at all cost, including that of the nation itself.

In fact, the second wave began in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. The data proves this beyond a doubt. If the media had done its job raising awareness in late March and early April, people would have started taking precautions right away. Think of the lives that could have been saved. Perhaps the lockdown could have been avoided, saving millions of livelihoods. But, politics got in the way. The media had to wait for the second wave to reach Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh. Once there were BJP governments to blame, the second wave began ‘officially’ on our TV screens. Then, you could pretend that BJP rallies in Bengal had spread the virus in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh a month ago. Another thing you could not talk about was the farmer unions’ protest acting as a super spreader in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab. Did you say there was a Kumbh Mela happening in Uttarakhand? Yes, that must definitely be to blame.

The liberal privilege is what sank Kerala. There wasn’t a BJP government or even a BJP MP or BJP MLA in sight who could be blamed. And thus, for day after day and week after week, Kerala got a pass. The state was even having an election. The fate of the last Communist government in India was in the balance. The media would protect them at all cost, even if it meant that every single Indian would get Covid.

Again, you know who doesn’t give a pass to people for being “liberal”? The Coronavirus. The CPI(M) won the election, the liberals celebrated, CPI(M) leaders distributed plum portfolios to their relatives and settled down to enjoy five more years of unending media praise. But the Coronavirus kept spreading.

And right now, even as India believes the second wave is behind us, the virus is still hiding in plain sight in one state. If the people of that state speak out, the media will remind them that they have the best literacy and the best HDI. And so they should never complain. But one of these days, the virus will start spreading again. It will perhaps make a stop in Bengaluru, where it could get noticed. But I am guessing the media will choose to wait strategically till it reaches Gujarat, for more effect. And the third wave begins “officially” when the spread reaches Uttar Pradesh. And then, it will all be the fault of “Gaumutra.”

How liberal privilege turns free speech into a farce in India

The other day, two young liberal activists walked out of Tihar jail to take their seats at the high table of the global elite. If you don’t already know their names, you soon will. Because they are on TV, in newspapers and soon enough international panels and award ceremonies. If you want to rise in society, you will need their approval.

The young women say they are victims and they might well be, like most of us in some way or the other. But that does not change the fact that these two individuals sit on top of mountains of liberal privilege, the beneficiaries of a system that values them and only people who think like them.

Where do the inequalities begin? Let’s start with the fact that these two individuals were defended in court by one of the country’s top most lawyers. A top lawyer going up against a mere prosecutor for the Delhi Police. Outside the court, their voice was amplified by an entire ecosystem of media, academia, activists and “fact-checkers” who analyzed every aspect of the charge sheet threadbare. If there is a way to get these two people the benefit of the doubt, or get them off on a technicality, it will be found.

Again, this is a good thing. We want people to have the best possible defense in court. Our legal maxim is innocent until proven guilty. Our society puts a premium on free speech and the right to free expression.

But the question is this. What made it possible for these two individuals to have this kind of defense? Did it follow from their fundamental rights as citizens of India? Or did it become possible because of their membership of a certain social class, open only to those who think in a certain way? If the recent churn over “privilege” in other democracies is anything to go by, without equity there is no justice.

If these two people had been say BJP or RSS workers in West Bengal, how would their story have turned out? Would there be people putting their faces on TV, newspapers and international panels? Would there be media reading through their charge sheets before local magistrates or top lawyers defending them in local courts?

Take the case of Trilochan Mahato, a BJP worker who was found hanging from a tree in West Bengal on May 30, 2018. He was just a boy, a mere eighteen years of age. On his shirt, they scribbled a chilling message that this is the punishment for joining BJP. Did his case become a national issue? Did a top lawyer show up to look after his case in the local court responsible for Khudigora village in West Bengal where his body was found? Were there people itching to ask the Bengal Chief Minister tough questions about the condition of democracy in her state? Of course not.

The difference is that of liberal privilege. Trilochan Mahato belonged to an ideology that has been marginalized and stigmatized by the global elite. So while he had rights in theory, those rights were not enforceable in any practical sense. Indeed, when it comes to violence against BJP workers in Bengal, the narrative builders visibly switch sides; from that of the dissenter to that of the state. During the recent post-poll violence, the official version of West Bengal police has become the only truth. It is being used to fact-check others!

This is not about going around in circles, pointing fingers at the other ideological camp. All governments in India and indeed governments everywhere, have always tried to suppress inconvenient speech. This is about pointing out that only one side has privilege, while the other does not.

If you look at the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, it is not about pointing fingers at white people, but at white privilege. What is white privilege after all? It does not mean that a white person cannot have a bad day. A white person might well get a raw deal from the system. However, the difference is that a white person gets a number of systemic advantages in society simply because of the color of their skin. They are perceived differently because of how they look. They find it easier to get the benefit of doubt. Their suffering is viewed as a national emergency.

On the other hand, the police officer who put his knee on George Floyd’s neck and pinned him to the ground thought he was stopping a criminal. Most likely, he had perceived Floyd to be dangerous simply because of the color of his skin. In previous situations of this nature, the public never protested and the police officers were never prosecuted. This is how systemic injustice works. Everyone has the same rights, but not everyone has the same access to those rights.

Liberal privilege is quite similar. And it is by no means limited to West Bengal. A BJP worker or anyone else perceived to be affiliated with Hindutva ideology is described in language that is passive at best and dehumanizing at worst. Even when their suffering is reported, the media describes them as “BJP worker” or such, putting their political identity ahead of their individual one. The media routinely used terms like “saffron brigade” or “Hindutva brigade,” emphasizing membership in some group that is made to sound vaguely dangerous.

Liberals however are always mentioned in the media by name, followed by a tag such as student, academic or poet or even dog lover. More often than not, these people would also be affiliated with some political organization, but that is never played up. This is how liberal activists become household names that everyone can remember. On the other hand, how many people can name a single person who perished in the fire in S-6 compartment of Sabarmati Express in Godhra on Feb 27, 2002?

All this creates an enabling environment where violation of the rights of one kind of people does not register in the public consciousness. It is much easier for everyday people to tune out of what happened to a “BJP worker” in an unnamed village in Bengal than the front page news, with photograph of a “soft spoken” liberal activist hugging her dog.

In order to have a fair society, everyone must have equal rights, not just in theory but also in practice. That’s the difference between equality and equity. The latter is just equality in operation. Without individuals of all ideologies enjoying the same presumption of innocence in both the eyes of society and the law, free speech in India shall remain a farce.

Why I don’t worry too much about a churn in Bengal BJP

So Mukul Roy left. Many others are looking to leave. Mamata Banerjee is on a rampage. After the 2019 jolt and her apparent weakness till 2021, she is solidifying her power again. Or at least it looks that way to a lot of people. You can find the naysayers everywhere, shaking their heads. Who will vote for the BJP again?

Calm down please and stop worrying. Let me tell you who will vote for BJP. The voters, who else?

After the peak optimism of the 2019-21 period, the last 2 months might feel like a letdown. In those two years, the BJP ranks were swelling every day. Every TMC MLA who had some reason to be unhappy with Mamata Banerjee walked in through the BJP’s open door. After all, there was a buzz about BJP in every street corner of Bengal.

Suddenly, the BJP offices look deserted and the silence hangs heavy. Those who came in are looking to leave. They are calling desperately on Mamata Banerjee, begging for terms of surrender. Is it all over?

Of course not. Because the state election is five years away. There is no better time for a churn. How could there not be a churn after such a big defeat? If anything, this churn is a sign that the party is still alive and kicking. If you look at the CPM or Congress in Bengal, you will see that they are going about with business as usual. Because they have ceased to exist.

I have always argued that a very successful paradigm for understanding political parties is to think of them as corporations. Imagine you work for a firm that is going up against another big firm for a very lucrative contract. You and your colleagues work long shifts, slog through nights and weekends to make it happen. But, the contract goes to the other firm.

What do you think happens next? You are severely disappointed, yes. But beyond that, what else? You grumble, you complain, you make excuses. You point fingers at the team leader. If you are the team leader, people point fingers at you. What if you had listened to this or that suggestion instead of dissing it? Someone says that appointing this or that person to a key position was a mistake. Some get up and are ready to leave the firm altogether, fancying a better future with the bigger firm. All normal human reactions.

That’s what is playing out in the Bengal BJP right now. There isn’t another big test until 2024 at the very least.

The 18 seat haul in 2019 was unexpected. Following this, the BJP thought it could storm in and sweep Bengal. It turns out the job is much more difficult than they thought. That’s okay. They have to put together a better, more cohesive strategy for next time. In fact, if there was no churn, no restructuring, they would be guaranteed to see the same result the next time.

So when the BJP ranks in Bengal were swelling 6 months ago, it may have felt like good news. But turns out it really was not. Because that strategy apparently does not work in Bengal. So now the BJP has learned its lesson, understood the real nature of the task and how difficult it is. Those who don’t have the stomach for the fight are going to leave. Would you rather have them stay and repeat the same failed old strategy?

This is by no means a blanket attack on those who have shifted parties. For that matter, voters change their preferences all the time. We never hold that against them. In fact, it’s what makes democracy work. Every voter who goes to the booth is solving a complex optimization problem in their head. Do I hate that party more than I like this one? I may like this party but it seems this party does not have a real chance of winning. So why not shift the vote to one that does? Those who moved parties are working through something very similar. They will each weigh their options and decide.

After a tense two years, the TMC is enjoying a great moment in the sun. Everyone wants to join them, which apparently proves that they are all powerful. But aren’t they falling for the same self deception that screwed over the BJP so royally in Bengal? Candidates don’t matter so much in Bengal, party affiliations do. The TMC proved this beyond all possible doubt in 2021. Then, why is it a big deal if some free floaters, who had migrated to BJP, float back to TMC ranks? At best they are taking with them their own vote; maybe also the votes of their spouses and a few close relatives.

Every party goes through a period of self-doubt, uncertainty and humiliation after losing an election. It happens only to those parties which have skin in the game. If you remember 2009, the BJP went through a period when it looked like the party had lost its way. It is from this churn, the samudra manthan if you will, that a new leader and a new strategy emerges. Some time in mid-2010, I remember P Chidambaram arrogantly said that the BJP would never come back to power again. Man, he had no idea…

Big Liberals, small hearts: By donating 80 vials of vaccine, America has proved to be the poorest country in the world

Do you remember when Western media and their native sepoys flew drones over cremation grounds in India? The images of funeral pyres were then lapped up by Western liberal newspapers, flashed on their front pages for the world to see. On the internet, the pictures were selling for Rs 23,000 per piece. For that kind of money, you could easily feed a poor family for a month. But feeding the addiction for third world misery was more important.

What was their excuse? Western liberals insist they are not enjoying our misery for free. They always leave behind generous tips for the less fortunate. The media coverage creates awareness. And after Western liberals have had their fill, they make (tax deductible) contributions to charity. After subtracting overhead, the “non-profits” donate the rest. There might be some “non-profit” intermediaries in the third world as well.

Anyway, where there are rich people, there are generally leftovers. This arrangement is insulting enough, but what do you make of this?

That’s the Embassy of the United States, boasting about donating 80 vials of vaccines to Trinidad and Tobago, a country of nearly 14 lakh people. Yes, 80 vials of vaccine. And they put it on Twitter so that the world would know.

Once upon a time, America freed the whole of Western Europe from Nazism. Some decades later, America freed the whole of Eastern Europe from Communism. Today, America has donated 80 vials of vaccine. Oh America, what a fall!

Read the language in that tweet carefully. It ends by saying, “We believe that every vaccine counts.” Yes, they not only made it a point to mention the tiny figure of 80 vials, they also rubbed in how valuable this gift would be for a poor country like Trinidad & Tobago. Every vaccine counts. Yeah, the people of the poor country better cherish this gift.

This is the great humanitarian Big Liberal administration of President Biden. Remember that our Indian media paraded our dead bodies and burning funeral pyres in front of liberals like these.

You want to see some real show of class? You can find it in the official response from the Government of Trinidad & Tobago, which read thus:

“Trinidad and Tobago received a gift of Pfizer vaccines from the United States on Saturday. .. We have been very fortunate to have received gifts of vaccines from different countries such as St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Barbados, Bermuda, the Republic of India, the People’s Republic of China and now the United States.”

Notice that the Trinidad & Tobago government did not wish to embarrass the United States by mentioning the ridiculously small number of 80 vials. A gift is a gift, no matter how much it is worth.

However, the Big Liberals who run the US Government weren’t looking to save face. They were looking to rub the third world status of Trinidad & Tobago in the faces of their people. It was the US Government which tweeted mentioning the 80 vials and reminding that “every vaccine counts.”

Notice how the statement from the Government of Trinidad & Tobago mentions India. Yes, we donated too, not some measly 80 vials like the richest country on earth did. India donated 40,000 doses. But then, India is run by the dreaded Hindu nationalists. Our backward pagan minds cannot grasp the nuances of Abrahamic notions of charity, I guess.

The idea of charity is a complicated one. Some time last year, the WHO created a Covax fund from which poor countries could draw money and vaccines for their people. Canada donated to this fund, and then a few months later, took half of it back. So if America’s liberal president made it a point to rudely toss a rupee coin at the face of a homeless person, Canada’s liberal Prime Minister put money in the bowl and grabbed half of it back. Incidentally, the other rich country to draw from the Covax pool was New Zealand, another model of Indian liberalism.

After Canada and New Zealand raided the pool, it seems the Covax fund came up with strict new eligibility requirements on which countries can draw from it. Because, apparently, the honor system does not work with Big Liberals.

Speaking of Indian liberals, the other day they were busy making fun of India for accepting a small gift from Kenya, delivered through the Red Cross. I should mention it was 12 tonnes of food, which is a lot more than the richest country in the world with its 80 vials of vaccine. But Indian liberals who take after their American and Canadian bosses, did not see it that way. India has taken food from an African country! For them, it was supposed to be Modi’s great shame.

Kenya is in Africa and Africans are supposed to be poor. And if you are poor, everyone knows that you cannot have a big heart. And if a friend who happens to be poor gives you a gift, you have fundamentally two options. Either you toss the gift into the trash and humiliate your friend for being poor. Or you accept the gift and live with the shame. That is Big Liberalism today.

When Sudama arrived with a gift of a few handfuls of rice for Shri Krishna, the king of Dwarka welcomed him by washing his feet with milk. It’s the Indian way. It’s the way our pagan minds work. I guess this is why India’s Hindu nationalists are so misunderstood in the world today. Our paradigm is just different.

By the way, dear Trinidad and Tobago, let me tell you about a small Indian tradition that may be of use to you. In India, when a neighbor sends over food, it is a tradition never to send back an empty bowl. So when you get those 80 vials, fill that box up with some gifts and send it back. Be generous, because you should know that you are donating to the poorest country in the world.