Beyond A Boundry by C L R James: The Horror of Match Fixing in India

The recent expose has of course, shocked everyone. Each time a juicy scandal breaks out and the heart wrenching dirges that are sung about betrayal reminds me of the famous line in Casablanca when the police officer says, "I am shocked that gambling in goin on here" even as he pockets his earnings. Sreesanth has been caught largely because he is an outsider and a marginal member of the Indian test team. In fact, right from the time of Kapil Dev Indian cricket has been bedeviled by allegations of match fixing and Mohammad Azuruddin the Hon'ble member of thew Congress Party and an MP to boot from Rampur, UP was even convicted of match fixing. Unfortunately, the man went on to become an MP and thus prove to the whole country that even if you are caught in a scandal the political class is above common consideration of decency, loyalty to country and dignity. In fact Indian cricket is a mirror of contemporary India in which fixers of every kind, colour and shape thrive. Just see the shenanigans of the Congress Party over the Coalgate Scandal and the involvement of the Law Minister in the whole affair. Cricket has had a rich and colurful history. Ranjit Singh documented his life in cricket in the Jubilee Book of Cricket. India unfortunately has not produced a single historian who has been able to write the history of the game as a reflection of social, political and cultural trends. The last great cricketer which India had was Gundappa Vishwanath, a stylish batsman who displayed both verve and style on the wicket. Now we have corrupt clowns masquerading as national icons and the decline began, yes, with Sachin Tedulkar. The clamour for giving his a "Bharat Ratna" is indeed obscene. Beyond a Boundry by C L R James is one of the best books on cricket that I have ever read. I have read Neville Cardus and the like but James is able to interweave the history of cricket in the West Indies with social history. The racist society of Jamaica and Trinidad did not allow the blacks, the descendents of slaves who worked on the sugar plantations any venue for social mobility. C L R James write the history of west Indian cricket as a social history of the blacks trying to assert their identity in the face of intense institutional racism and marginalization. Obviously with such a history, you are not going to see match fixing and and like. Every lover of cricket must read this book. In India, the game of Criket has become both commerilised and politisized. Consequently the game has started attracting the wrong kind of people. C L R James talks about men with passion for the game who played the game for one of the 5 clubs of the islands in order to assert their dignity and identiry. No wonder the West Indians are not caught in the web of scandal unlike their cohorts in India

Autonomy for the CBI; Why the misue of the CBI by the Congress Party must stop

The observations of the Supreme Court of India that the CBI is a "caged parrot" mimicking its master,s voice has resulted in a debate in Indian liberal circles. As usual the India liberal will always jump to extreme conclusion. The "policeman" cannot be "autonomous" screamed one well heeled liberal as if the Supreme Court mandated an unaccountable CBI. The issue here is the rampant misuse of the Government investigative agencies for partisan political purposes. The Income Tax Department, the Intelligence Bureau, the Enforcement Directorate, the CBI and scores of other Central and State agencies are being misused almost on a daily basis for either protecting political clients or harassing political opponents. Consequently Rule of Law has succumbed to the Rule of Outlaws and the Supreme Court is only attempting to set right the balance. The Indian liberals abet in the crimes of the Establishment of staking extreme positions which results in the existing aberration in institutions go unchecked. The ease with which they jump up and down ranting and raving about a "police state" in case the CBI is insulated from political control shows that the liberals actually want the current misuse of the CBI to continue. The other favorite ploy of the Liberals is to see "communal" conspiracies in any attempt at improving governance: the result once again is status quo. The Congress Party has been misusing the CBI right from Independence. The investigation carried out by the CBI in cases involving high level criminals has always been lackadaisical. An example may be give; The investigations in to the Nagarwala Case in which all the prime accused were killed including the magistrate who conducted the trial still haunts the pages of history. The Investigation into the 1984 riots against the Sikhs organized by the Congress Party has drawn the ire of the courts repeatedly. The main problem with the CBI is that it calibrates its policy to the political demands of the Congress Party. I must say that the BJP did not abuse the CBI in this shameless manner when Hon'ble Lal Kishen Advani was the Deputy PM and Home Minister. Unfortunately given the ideological blinkers of the Indian liberals they are unable to see that the abuse of the CBI is the original sin of the Congress Party which the other major party of governance did not commit. The use or rather abuse of the CBI to coerce political allies and associates is yet another problem. See how the Taj Corridor case is progressing according to the co operation or otherwise of Mayawati. The CBI is now going slow on Laloo Prasad Yadava and the other Yadava, Mulayam Singh Yadava because of political compulsion and see the alacrity with which it raided the house of the DMK rougue Stalin just days after the withdrawal of support by the DMK. What the Supreme Court is trying to do is to insulate the CBI from such abuse. The Supreme Court is not mandaing a police state and the Indian liberals by raising this bogey are actually playing to the Congress Gallery,

Sajjan Kumar, the Dynastic Fascist Party and the 1984Massacre:Why India cannot forget

he news that Sajjan Kumar, the senior Congress leader from De3lhi has been acquitted as come as a rude shock to many of us who have been following the 1984 Massacre Case. To recapitulate: On November 1st after Indiara Gandhi was eliminated by two Sikh bodyguards, masquerading gangs of Congressmen aided and abetted by the highest political functionaries including her son, Rajiv Gandhi went on a murderous rampage alll across Delhi and killed Sikhs in retaliation and revenge. The Sikh President of India, Zail Singh and his Home Minister Narashima Rao were silenbt spectators when Sikhs were pulled out of their homes and petrol thrown on them and set ablaze in full public view. The police were instructed to keep quiet and even Sikh policemen were attacked. The complicity of the Governmenbt of India was all to clear and the more notorious killers like Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar were even give tickets by the Congress Party and they went on to become MPs and one of them even became a Cabinet Minister of the dynastic fascist party. Nearly 29 years later, the Sikhs are still awaiting justice and not a single Congressman has been convicted. The police were instructed not to file the FIRs and the Sikh survivors approached the Courts and in the case of Jagdish Tytler the CBi even closed the case on the ground that there is no evidence against him. This is the same CBI which rushes to show its interim report to the outlaw Minister Ashwini Kumar on the coal gate scam. The closure was contested and last month the Delhi High Court gave the order that Tytler can be prosecuted. Sajjan Kumar another notorious killer from the dynastic fascist party, the Congress, the darling of the Indian middle class. The criminal investigation procedures were all subverted in order to shield the criminals and in this the Congress Party should be made accountable in every manner for abetting the crime of 1984. By making a Sikh the Prime Minister behind whose back the dynastic fascists amass wealth, does not absolve the Congress of its barbarism. The Government of India under successive Congress regimes adopted a set of 3 strategies in order to shield the criminals of 1984. First, it deliberately filled wrong details about the lo9cation and events leading to the c crime and in some cases even fabricated names which could be easily proven to be wrong so as discredit the victims of the crime. The second strategy was to question the wrong people and then say that no witnesses could be found. The Sikhs like most Indians have a set of common names. If the witness is named Jasbir Singh, the CBI would get a statement from the wrong Jasbir Singh and produce it in the court. The third was the good old Congress method: intimidation and physical threat. The acquittal of Sajjan Singh is a blot on the entire judicial system. The case must be reopened and the criminals punished. Due to the fact that several decades have passed and many of the witnesses and the corroborative evidence destroyed, the words of the Witness must be taken as the truth, just as was done in the Eichman Trial. The Criminal procedure and its code is being misued to shield the dynastic fascists from the punishment due to them and this must stop if India is to be regarded as a civilized country with rule of law.