Your riot was worse than mine

http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/31/stories/2010033157731000.htm

When double standards take charge, it is the victims of communal violence who suffer, be they the Sikhs of Delhi, the Muslims of Gujarat or the Pandits of Kashmir.

India's polity has an unerring taste for the irrelevant. That is why the controversy over a sitting Chief Minister being summoned to answer questions about mass murder has made way for an unseemly debate about the morality of an ageing actor. After his embarrassing, nine-hour appearance before the Special Investigation Team, one would have thought Narendra Modi presented a large enough target. Instead, the Congress has chosen to launch a full-throated campaign against Amitabh Bachchan for choosing to become a brand ambassador for tourism in Mr. Modi's State. The party has accused the Bollywood superstar of being indifferent to allegations of State complicity in the massacre of Muslims which took place there in 2002. And it has started boycotting him in a manner that is as crude and mean-spirited as it is ineffective and pointless. Thanks to this, the mass media are today discussing Big B rather than the Little Men whose role the SIT is now investigating.

As can be expected, the Gujarat Chief Minister is thrilled. The spotlight which was earlier on him is now being trained elsewhere. Instead of being forced to rally others to his own defence, Mr. Modi has happily mounted the barricades on behalf of Mr. Bachchan. In keeping with his party's fondness for technology and Islamophobia, he has blogged that the actor's critics are ‘Talibans of untouchability'.

If Mr. Bachchan is guilty of overlooking mass violence today, it is because equally illustrious gentlemen, including some industrialists, did the same when they declared Mr. Modi prime ministerial material. For that matter, the actor himself has done this sort of thing before. In his movies, Mr. Bachchan was a crusader for the underdog. In real life, he is attracted to the kind of powerful men he once fought on the big screen. His fans have a right to feel cheated. Political parties, especially the Congress, do not have that right.

The party finds fault with him for representing Gujarat in the wake of 2002. But in 1984, barely weeks after the blood in the streets of Delhi had dried, the actor accepted a Congress ticket for Allahabad and got elected to Parliament. “As a brand ambassador does he endorse or condemn the mass murder in Gujarat?” Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari asked the other day, adding: “It is high time Amitabh Bachchan came out and said what his position on [the] Gujarat riots is.” Despite the party having ‘apologised' for its role in the massacre of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi's assassination, I doubt Mr. Tiwari or any other Congress spokesman will ever ask Mr. Bachchan what his position on the Delhi riots was or is.

But if the Congress prefers to forget the history of 1984, the BJP and its leaders act as if history ended that year. In their telling, 2002 either didn't happen or pales in comparison with what preceded it. And so begins the sordid exercise of weighing the suffering of victims and, worse, of playing the plight of one set against another. Mention the suffering of the Muslims of Gujarat and the BJP will start talking about the plight of the Pandits, driven by terrorism from their homes in the Kashmir Valley in 1989 and 1990. Try talking about the injustice done to the Sikhs of Delhi and the Congress will insist on speaking only of Gujarat. And the minute the microphones in the studio are switched off, the politicians are quite happy to forget about the shared travails of all victims.

The reality is that the Delhi and Gujarat massacres are part of the same excavated site, an integral part of the archaeology of the Indian state. Eighteen years separate 2002 from 1984. Eighteen is normally the age a human being is considered to have become an adult. Inhumanity also seems to take 18 years to fully mature. In an act of conception which lasted four bloody days, something inhuman was spawned on the streets of Delhi in 1984; by 2002, it had fully matured. Paternity for the ‘riot system' belongs to both the Congress and the BJP, even if the sangh parivar managed to improve upon the technologies of mass violence. Both knew how to mobilise mobs. Both knew how to get the police to turn the other way. Both knew how to fix criminal cases. Both knew what language to speak, even if one set of leaders spoke of a ‘big tree falling' and the other paraphrased Newton. Both had the luxury of not being asked difficult questions by criminal investigators. Until now.

There is one school of thought that Mr. Modi's summons and interrogation have come eight years too late. There is a lot of merit in that point of view. But the reality is that the call for a leader to render account for mass crimes committed on his watch comes 18 years too late. Veteran journalist Tavleen Singh said recently that if Rajiv Gandhi had been interrogated in 1984 about what happened to the Sikhs, Gujarat would not have happened. She is right. Had the courts and the entire edifice of the Indian state not failed the victims of 1984, many, many politicians, police officers and officials would have gone behind bars. Had that happened then, every leader would have been forced to think a hundred times about the legal consequences of instigating mass violence or allowing mobs to go on the rampage.

The debates on Mr. Modi over the past two weeks have been so incredibly divisive because neither the Congress nor the BJP is interested in a discussion on systemic remedies. Justice is about punishing individuals, rehabilitating victims and dismantling the infrastructure of communal terrorism. But our biggest parties want nothing to do with any of that. Gujarat 2002 should go unpunished because Delhi 1984 never saw justice, says the BJP. ‘No SIT ever interrogated Rajiv Gandhi so why is Mr. Modi now being interrogated?' is the party's self-serving refrain. On its part, the Congress is unwilling to incorporate in the draft Communal Violence Bill clear-cut legal provisions that could deter politicians and policemen from again abusing their power as they did in 1984 and 2002.

One of the questions the SIT was expected to ask Mr. Modi during his interrogation on March 27 was what exactly he said when Ehsan Jaffrey called him up on February 28, 2002, asking for help. The question is important because soon after the former MP put down the telephone, he was killed by a mob along with 58 other innocent people. I have no idea whether that question was put to Mr. Modi, let alone what his answer was. But when the same question was put to Jai Narayan Vyas, official spokesman of Mr. Modi's government, in a televised debate a few days ago, the answer was atrocious. Ehsan Jaffrey had been a Congress MP, said Mr. Vyas. “So I demand to know what the Congress party did to help him.”

There was, of course, nothing the Congress could have done to save the doomed member then. The BJP was in power in both Gujarat and the Centre. But the party has a chance to do something now: Pass a law with real teeth. It's been more than a quarter-of-a-century since a big tree came crashing down upon us. It is time for the earth to stop shaking.

True skill

By Paulo Coelho

The yogi Raman was a true master of the art of archery. One morning, he invited his favourite disciple to watch a display of his skill. The disciple had seen this more than a hundred times before, but he nevertheless obeyed his teacher. They went into the wood beside the monastery and when they reached a magnificent oak tree, Raman took a flower which he had tucked in his collar and placed it on one of the branches.

He then opened his bag and took out three objects: his splendid bow made of precious wood, an arrow and a white handkerchief embroidered with lilacs.

The yogi positioned himself one hundred paces from the spot where he had placed the flower. Facing his target, he asked his disciple to blindfold him with the embroidered handkerchief.

The disciple did as his teacher requested.

‘How often have you seen me practise the noble and ancient sport of archery?’ Raman asked him.

‘Every day,’ replied his disciple. ‘And you have always managed to hit the rose from three hundred paces away.’

With his eyes covered by the handkerchief, the yogi Raman placed his feet firmly on the ground, drew back the bowstring with all his might – aiming at the rose placed on one of the branches of the oak tree – and then released the arrow.

The arrow whistled through the air, but it did not even hit the tree, missing the target by an embarrassingly wide margin.

‘Did I hit it?’ said Raman, removing the handkerchief from his eyes.

‘No, you missed completely,’ replied the disciple. ‘I thought you were going to demonstrate to me the power of thought and your ability to perform magic.’

‘I have just taught you the most important lesson about the power of thought,’ replied Raman. ‘When you want something, concentrate only on that: no one will ever hit a target they cannot see.’

Find Success by Doing the Things You Dislike

As I think of the struggles many people go through, I am reminded of a powerful quote by Albert E. N. Gray:

The successful person has the habit of doing things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.

If you are someone who has to make important changes in your life, you may want to ponder on this idea. What are the things you know you have to do but are avoiding? If you were to discipline yourself and create a plan for doing those things, would you find positive, even breakthrough rewards?

In my case, I know when I’m trying to avoid doing something, I eventually see that I’ve paid an even higher price by avoidance. For example, when I’ve neglect my health by not eating right, exercising, or getting enough sleep because I find it hard to stick to a disciplined regiment, I have found myself feeling sluggish and not doing my best work. When I finally subordinate my dislikes to the strength of my purpose, things turn around.

Identify something you are avoiding and make a promise that you will do it. Make a promise and keep it. Subordinate the things you dislike doing to your greater purpose. The more you do this, the more strength you will build—and the more success you will find.

- Stephan Covey

Garfield - Bachlers

Garfield - Dunno

Power diet for quick weight loss RAVNEET KAUR

There is a famous saying that Health is Wealth and Healthy mind lives in a  healthy body.  But today most of the people find it difficult to reduce their weight and are becoming more prone to Blood Pressure, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes and the core reason behind this is Obesity.  In this fast moving life we do not get much time to spare for physical exercise so in such a situation a healthy and nutritious diet can solve the purpose.  Early Morning  Start your day with lemon juice and honey in lukewarm water; this helps your body to get rid of harmful acids produced by the body.  Breakfast  Choose any one or two from the following options  Egg white omelet (2) + 2 slices of brown bread,  Milk (Skimmed Milk) +Cornflakes/ Oats /Wheat bran  Fruit salad / Sprouts.  Vegetable Poha / Upma  Skimmed milk cottage cheese + Brown Bread  Pre Lunch  Take black coffee before the afternoon meal this helps in boosting metabolism.  Lunch  Boiled / Roasted Chicken/ Soyabean (200 grams) +Brown Rice (1/2 plate) / Chapatti (1)  Boiled Dal +salad + Brown Rice (1/2 plate) / Chapatti (1-2)  Take Probiotic curd (100grams) as it helps in digestion.  Vegetable Daliya  Evening  Take some citrus fruits to satisfy the hunger pangs in the evening,  Green tea with two Marie Lite biscuit  Boiled Channa  Dinner  Choose any one or two from the following options  Boiled Soybean Nutrela/ soup + salad,  Boiled Egg White (3) + Vegetable clear soup  Chicken or Tuna salad.  Boiled Dal  Vegetable Daliya  Pre Bed –time  150 -200 ml of skimmed milk.  Beside the above diet keep in mind the following points-  • Avoid heavy dinner; maintain at least 3 to 4 hours of gap between meal and sleep.  • Replace cold drinks with coconut water, vegetable soup or butter milk  • Drink at least 2 to 3 liters of water everyday  • Fibre is excellent for weight loss , so consume more of raw vegetables and fruits  • All carbs are not bad; avoid simple carbs like sugar, sweet and processed food.  • Never skip meals.  • Avoid Bakery products.  • Replace Chicken Tikka with Chicken Salami  • Avoid taking water along with the meal.  .  Follow the above mentioned points for 6 days in a week and once in a week please your taste buds with one meal of your choice but don’t forget only one. Try to take out some time for physical exercises at least thrice a week  Pursue the above mentioned rules and fit in your old clothes again but don’t forget the results may vary from person to person and don’t try to bully your body.  (With inputs from Yogaditya Singh Rawal, fitness trainer and Pinki, dietician))

Using natural materials to capture the nature.

by Alastair Heseltine

Gulaal Review

Myself - * * * 

Mayank Shekhar - The film suggests that whichever political set-up replaces the one that exists, the power of corruption (or the corruption of power) will ensure that we’re just as we were, if not worse. It’s the end of revolution. The thought is deeply depressing; the film, almost equally a delight.

Calvin - Mom

Calvin - Inside Outside

Garfield 13.03.2009

Sparrow Landing

Penguin books - Ad campaign

Cool advertisement campaign for Penguin books, where the idea should be “there is nothing else when you start reading books”. Click to see the larger versions.

Shekhar Gupta - The chatteranti

Dec 06, 2008

You’d be surprised to realise how it is much more likely you would get away with saying something entirely facetious and silly, but get into trouble when you try making a serious, sincere point. That, at least, has been the story of my life. At a series of public functions in Pakistan several years ago, I said Pakistan was in many ways as imperfect a dictatorship asIndia was an imperfect democracy: the central argument being that just as India had not been able to accord all its citizens all the freedoms that a democracy of this quality should have, Pakistan had not quite been able to deny their people all the freedoms that a classical dictatorship should have. That is why a reasonably free media functioned even under Musharraf, an Indian editor was able to say rude things at the launch of a newspaper (by now the widely respected Daily Times) and there was a reasonably independent judiciary; not the kind of things you would see in Saddam’s Iraq, Ahmedinejad’s Iran, or even China and Saudi Arabia.

It instantly got me in trouble. The NDA was in power then and the attack came from saffron blogs and pro-BJP columnists on well-known websites. It was as if this Indian editor had gone to Pakistan and given his country a bad name by finding faults with its democracy and merits in Pakistan’s dictatorship. What is happening right now, after theTerror attacks, and particularly in Mumbai and among our upper classes has to be seen in that context.

The Pakistanis, over the past year, have braved bullets, assassinations and dictatorial persecution to throw out a general and give themselves at least half a democracy. Whatever happens on Pakistan’s western flank and in its fundamentalist underbelly, the basic instinct of its elites, intellectual and social, its media and professional classes is to seek to strengthen their very fragile democracy, and to seek more of it. God knows, they have reasons to hate their politicians. But they have also checked out the generals for four decades and, wiser for that experience, have no intention of returning to their embrace. And exactly at the same time, the same classes in India have turned themselves into a lynch mob against the political class and, by implication, the whole democracy. The one institution the Pakistani elites are suspicious of is their military. The one institution Indian elites respect and adore today is their military. You’d wonder just what is going on.

Since TV chat shows, SMS and chain emails have become the main forum of our domestic debate and political discourse among the upper crust, it is safe to go by the evidence of what you see and read there. Any number of illiterate emails and SMSes now float around, not merely cursing politicians, but spreading utter falsehoods about the Constitution and laws. There is one, for example, that says that our Constitution (article 49-O, it specifically says) entitles us to go to a polling booth and say we do not want to vote for anyone, and if the number of such votes is higher than votes polled by the leading candidate, the election will be set aside and nobody will be elected. So that is the way to fix the political class which, realising that, has kept that article under wraps. Now most of us passed our class X Civics a long time ago, and God alone knows how, so let’s not question anybody’s knowledge of our Constitution. But none of the thousands of very well-educated, rich, successful, respectable people through whom this silly mail has passed and been forwarded, have bothered to check that venerable document. For, if they did, at least one myth would have been set at rest: Article 49 deals with something very important, but it is not the right of negative vote, but the protection of our monuments. Similar, stupid, flippant and dangerous mythologies continue to be built: that we spend more on the SPG than on the NSG, the implication being that we value the lives of our prime minister and president more than those of ordinary citizens. Nobody checked the facts, probably because if they turn out different, they may demolish the entire hypothesis. Why let facts come in the way of holy indignation?

So the same leading lights of Mumbai’s genteel classes, who never shed a tear when nearly 600 Mumbaikars lost their lives in several terrorist attacks, now walk around with candles because the threat has moved beyond local trains to rocking coffee shops and bars — incidentally, they still do not bother to light a candle in front of the CST station where more lives were lost than at both the hotels put together. More than the hypocrisy, however, it is the message they send out to their countrymen that is worthy of mention: that the political class has failed us, so please do not vote (“those who come in through our vote are more dangerous than those who come through the boat”), or exercise that right of non-vote, however mythical may it be. The virus of Mumbai’s elites seems to have even been caught by the creative classes; the latest Amul hoarding exhorts the “real” terrorist to show up, and has a neta surrounded by black cats. We have had several leading film and creative personalities demand that Pakistan, or at least its terror camps, be carpet-bombed. And on Thursday night Kabir Bedi declared on NDTV in his grave baritone that “we” have “incontrovertible” evidence of “ISI, Lashkar and Jaish” involvement and should start attacking them inside Pakistan. After all, he said, that is what the Americans are doing in Waziristan, etc, and what can the Pakistanis do except protest feebly? Further, he suggested that we learn from Mossad and carry out “targeted assassinations” of the bad guys in Pakistan. How much peace that strategy bought Israel over the decades is not a question that this intellectual of the sixties would ponder over much. In fact the only really sexy idea to come out of all this rage is that we should stop paying taxes. Great idea, but must it be confined to Mumbaikars alone? Don’t the rest of us also have issues with our government?

To be fair, it is easy to see where this rage is coming from. These attacks have brought terror to the doorstep of the classes which had long divorced and insulated themselves from our very system of politics and governance. Over the years as our governance has declined, or failed to keep pace with our society or economy, all of us learnt to become individual, sovereign republics. We send our children to private schools, get treatment only in private hospitals, have our own security in gated communities, never need to use public transport, even own our own diesel gensets to produce power, and in many parts of the country, arrange our own water supply, either through our own borewells or tankers. Then we suddenly get hit in one area — physical safety, law and order — which is still entirely in the hands of the government. Knowing how thick-skinned our politicians are, and believing all the most horrible stereotypes about them, we see no possibility of changing them. So we now look for desperate measures: compulsory military training, conscription, NSG for every city. The armed forces, we say, are the only institution that can bring about this change. Pakistan has been owned by its army since its creation and see how much worse its law and order is, how the country suffers from daily terror attacks by its own, and how large swathes of its territory are nothing but extension campuses of its most notable contribution to the modern world: a university of jihad.

Yes, our governance sucks. But the solution for the upper crust now is not to secede from it as well. Law and order is not public health, Government schooling or power supply. The whites in South Africa tried doing that and it did not work. The racist governments of the past liberally gave them automatic weapons and some of the richest homes around Johannesburg used to carry signs that said: trespassers will be shot. But it did not buy them more security. Their homes just became bunkers, or high security prisons in which they locked themselves up.

The solution lies in returning to the “system”, and challenging and changing it from within. Just as the poorer and the middle classes do around the country. As a story by Vandita Mishra in this paper’s Friday edition showed, even in these times of anger and cynicism more and more Indians are coming out to vote. They do not love their politicians, they usually vote them out. But they do it by using the power of the vote, not by disowning it. Or, look at it another way: we, in our little charmed circle, can vent our rage on chat shows and in cyberspace. But the children of our farmers and working classes will always be there, to vote out bad governments on polling day, and to get into uniforms — khaki, olive-green or black — and risk their lives fighting terrorists for our sake.

Shekhar Gupta

sg@expressindia.com

Swaminathan Aiyar - Ambani needs to learn from Deveshwar

The skills of Reliance Industries in 'managing' the investment climate are legendary. Why, then, has it grossly mismanaged the political economy of its retail foray? Traditional agricultural markets have several layers of intermediaries, who prosper at the expense of the farmer and consumer. Eliminating intermediaries and linking the farmer directly to retail means the farmer can earn much more, while leaving a profit for the retailer. Reliance has adopted this 'farm-to-fork' strategy. It wants to be world No 1 in all fields it enters. So, it aims to invest Rs 25,000 crore by 2011 in retail, with sales of possibly Rs 100,000 crore. This includes Reliance Fresh stores to sell agricultural produce. Reliance plans to create half a million jobs directly and one million indirectly in retail. It trumpets this as a win-win strategy for farmers and consumers. Reliance Fresh started rolling out stores from November 2006 on an unprecedented scale. But this has been halted by agitations by traders, shopkeepers and NGOs in several states. Reliance Fresh has been forced to close its shops in UP after violent agitations. It also faced protests in Jharkhand and Orissa, but so far the state governments have kept the peace."

Indian Television Hall Of Fame

• Pranav Roy
• Siddhartha basu
• Ekta Kapoor
• Gajendra Singh
• Harsha Bhogale
• Shekhar Suman

Manzil

Ek meel ke patthar ko apani manzil ki talaash hai..

My successes and my defeats..

I always take my successes and my defeats as my utmost private matter. But there are people who are greatly affected by that & i always ignore this fact

End of life !!

Jin logon mein zindagi ka samana karne ki taqat nahin hoti,
woh maut ko gale lagane ki himmat kahaan se juta lete hein?

Zindagi..

Yeh zindagi rukey to kuchh kadam hum khud bhi chalen!!