POLICE BRUTALITY ON USA; BARACK OBAMA HAS MADE LIFE DIFFICULT FOR THE BLACKS IN USA

Horror stories emanating from USA do not shock us anymore. We have come to expect drive by shootings, mall massacres, school yard killings and the like. In India we have our own share of horrors so there is no comparison. However, the Police in India in spite of the occasional instance of violence is much better behaved than in USA. The cases of "fake encounters"that spring up from time to time are due to the inherent flaws in the judicial system with its dependence on procedure and witnesses, that sometime the Law and Order Machinery takes recourse to eliminating the violent criminals. It stands to reason that no one would like to give evidence in a court of law about the violent acts committed by a dreaded gangster. The police in India are now armed only with a fiberglass truncheons and are issued weapons only on the direct order of the Superintendent of Police and he too can issue weapons only on the instructions of the District Collector. I am not saying that the police are totally under the control of the civil district administration, but I can state with some authority that it would be impossible for the Police to getaway with the kind of violence which was visited upon the town of Ferguson, Missouri, USA. Darren Wilson, a white policeman shot and killed Michael Brown a young black man who was apparently walking with his friend Johnson. The attack seems to have been unprovoked as Michael Brown raised his hand the moment Darren Wilson asked him to surrender. The police officer kept firing at the young unarmed youth and he died after being hit by 3 bullets on his chest. It is surprising that the policeman shot the youth on his chest when in most parts of the world the police are asked to shoot at the lege to prevent the fugitive from escaping. In this particular instance, the young man was not a fugitive and was unarmed. The pictures that I have placed on the side of this blog may appear to be a picture from a war zone. Men in body armour,. armed with 5.56 mm short barreled rifles which are both automatic and semi automatic depending on the configuration used, and with a few pouched of ammunition around their waist. We can also see a sniper armed with a telescope keeping an eye from a building. All these men have the authority to kill and the American establishment does not order judicial probes as do our government. I remember that a great scholar of South east Asian Archaeology, Dr Roxanne Brown was killed in prison solely on the unfounded suspicion of being involved in a art case. I am giving these examples only to show that in spite of the situation in India with its crude theatrics and corrupt officialdom, something like what happened in Ferguson, USA is well near impossible. Arming the police with military equipment is against any principle of civilian governance. The police can carry weapons but its use must be strictly controlled. In USA the police carry arms and can open fire in self defence. And if self defence is claimed, there is no argument because it is assumed that everyone is armed and dangerous. The police are expected to open fire first and then engage. This kind of training has led to the unavoidable tragedy in Missouri. Like their counterparts in India, the US police are not above inventing a "narrative" to justify the deed. In the case of the killing of Michael Brown, the Ferguson Police Department has released video footage to suggest that Brown was involved in a hold up in a convenience store. What did he allegedly steal, : a few cigars. In any even, the Officer Wilson was unaware of the hold up when he shot the young man dead. A few months back the Trayvom Martin killing took place and Barack Obama made a grand statement that he could have been Trayon and the hooded jacket became for a brief moment in time the preferred attire of protest. I have a larger issue at hand. The election of Barack Obama in which blacks voted overwhelmningly for Obama is the real reason for the violence against Blacks/. Now White Liberals feel that they have moved to a "post racial" society and no longer feel embarassed by the fact that USA os deeply dividded on racial grounds. The recession has seen the household income of Balcks decline and added to that is the structural discrimination faced by balck men in particular. Obama has done nothing to help his own folks.

ISRAEL'S WAR CRIMES IN THE GAZA STRIP; THE WORLD MUST TAKE NOTE AND CONDEMN THE KILLINGS

The State of Israel owes its origin to the crimes of the Europeans, the Germans who massacred around 6 million Jews during the last two years of the Second World War. Of course this horrendous crime had to be expiated and the Americans and the British made the Palestinians pay for the crimes of their fellow white men. Israel is fast losing the sympathy it has rightly won for its several outstanding achievements: its civic programme, its educational institutions, its fairly successful practice of democracy. However, in its treatment of the displaced Palestinians, Israel is showing its true colours. Even John Kerry, the US Secretary of State in an unguarded moment called Israel an Apartheid State. one in which racial discrimination is legally enforced. The Arabs living in the territories are treated as second class citizens with limited access to education, employment or health. And the Right Wing parties like the Likud are further aggravating the situation by opposing the two state solution. The cycles of violence unleashed by Israel as retaliation for the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers from one of the settlements that has sprung up in the occupied territories is both disproportionate and beyond the limits of civilized state conduct. Without unleashing such fire power against the people of the Gaza Strip, Israel could have dealt with the crisis in a more balanced manner. In any event, the Israelis too extracted their revenge when they killed a young boy, by beating him and burying him alive. The silence from the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, the President of USA, Barack Obama is disquieting. Both Obama and Kerry are not willing to even condemn  the aerial attacks on Palestinian civilians.

The Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel and the Israeli media justifies the full blooded attack on unarmed civilians by saying that Hamas deserves to be punished for firing rockets. It must be stated that Hamas rockets have not caused a single casualty in Israel while in the current round of bloodletting, the Israelis have killed 166 Palestinians and wounded more than 1000 civilians. It appears that the motive behind this state sponsored massacre is to weaken the resolve of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip who are supporters of the Hamas. Therefore the killing of civilians is part of a strategy pursued by Israel and if the Bosnian Serbs can be tried for killing Muslims during the Balkan Crisis of the 1990s. by the same logic the Israeli political leadership is also culpable. The Arab League, the organization of autocratic Oil Rich state which legitimized the invasion of Iraq and Libya are keeping quiet. Saudi Arabia which is usually very eloquent on issues dealing with Muslim affairs is keeping a deathly silence over this entire issue. It appears that the Arab world has decided to allow Israel to solve the Palestinian Question like Hitler solved or attempted to solve the Jewish Question. The UN has lost its legitimacy before the entire world due to its inability to prevent USA from invading Iraq in 2003 and most people now believe that UN is just a facade behind which the white nations hide to carry out their atrocities on non white people. Unfortunately the discourse on Palestine centers around the muslim identity of the people forgetting the fact that a considerable number of them are Christians.

In 2009 when Israel invaded Gaza Strip it killed more than  hundred people and wounded around 1, 500. With this kind of violence unfolding can the World be silent.  

"The Case for Books": Reading in the Digital Age

Reading has become increasingly dependent on technology. The book under review by the celebrated historian Professor Robert Darnton is an interesting analysis of the ways in which the advent of digital technology has changed the reading practices of people. The joy of reading the printed book cannot be experienced by one reading the most thrilling novel on kindle. The sight and smell of a book is a delightful experience and only those who savour the joy of reading can understand what we lose by shifting to the digital mode.


Robert Darnton, the historian who gave us such classics of Cultural History as The Business of the Enlightenment, The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History, has been a prolificwriter who has published extensively on topics such as Censorship in the Ancien Regime and the attempts made by the Bourbons to police the literary world on the eve of the French Revolution. His approach to the subject essentially derived from the pioneering work of Lucien Febvre who wrote the Coming of the Book, an early attempt at book history. Since then, thanks largely to the efforts of Robert Darnton and Elizabeth Eisenstein, the history of print and the cultural impact of print has emerged as an important area of study, Robert Chartier contributed to the field and he brought "reading practices" to the fore. In a printed book, the codex, the eye is trained to move from left to right and the page is taken in as a unit. In the case of the Old Scrolls which had to be held in the left hand and unscrolled by the right, reading was limited to at best a short paragraph or so. The emergence of Printing made possible a rapid and almost instantaneous dissemination of texts creating the first pre digital Information Revolution. Ann Blair has been writing about how the scholars in the early modern age coped with the explosion of information brought about by print technology. In Too Much to Know Blair has documented the difficult beginning of scholarly apparatus which culminated in the humanists of the sixteenth century inventing the Footnote as a central metaphor of critical historiography as Anthony Grafton has documented in an interesting book.

The Case for Books is an excellent study of the importance of books in the cultural landscape of the civilized world.

Narendra Modi: India's New Prime Minister Leadership and Vision

For the first time in India's electoral history, a single individual has been able to overcome the inherent contradictions of a complex electoral system which makes it difficult for any one candidate to emerge victorious as the first past the winning post system imposes its own conditions. And for Narendra Modi to prevail in the face of this hugely complex electoral system and surge toward the 285+ mark makes us stop to think, ponder and reflect. He has clocked 300,000 kilometers of travel by road, rail and air. He has addressed nearly 500 rallies all over the country and had participated in over 4600 gatherings called "chai pe chercha". An Indian version of a Tea Party. The hard work has paid off and the BJP and its Allies in the NDA are poised to form the next Government in India. Narendra Modi was born on 17th September 1950 in a family which belonged to the OBC section of Indian society. Modi himself did not present himself as an OBC leader as his strategy involved the emphasis on development rather than identity. It was only when the Congress party insulted his politics by calling it "low level" politics (neech rajniti) that Modi decided to hit back and turned a barb into an emphatic endorsement of his vision. Priyanka Gandhi made sweeping and rather crude remarks against Modi and that turned the tide in his favor into a flood.Having shot her mouth about Modi's "low politics", Priyanka and the dynastic fascists tried to mend the damage but it was too late. She came across as an arrogant woman insulting a self made man. Narendra Modi spent his formative years in the RSS . The RSS, a nationalist and patriotic organization has always remained the bete noire of the Indian establishment because it was the only politcal force which opposed the Nehruvian Plan of Partition of India. The Congress made ,made what Nehru called the "tryst with destiny" but that tryst was predicated upon the unity of India not division. Because the RSS opposed Partition, Nehru and his cohorts labelled it "communal" and when Gandhi was murdered in January 1948, Jawarlal Nehru tried his best to implicate the RSS in the killing. Three National Commissions of Inquiry have exonerated the RSS and yet the Congress and its allies always rake up the past in order to undermine the organization. Narendra Modi came under the influence of Vakil Sahib and owes his world view and personality to him. It was Inamdar who encouraged Modi to study and he graduated with a B A degree in political science from the University of Delhi and later took his M A again in political science from South Gujarat University. Right form an early age Narendra Modi has remained a voracious reader with a formidable memory. During his long years as Prachark of the RSS, Narendra Modi stunned people by his accurate recall of names and events from times past. An incredible capacity to juggle with the nitty gritty of organizational details and a dedicationto the mission and vision of the RSS ensured Narendra Modi's transition from a Pracharak to the General Secretary of the BJP during the years when L K Advani was the President. As General Secretary of the Party, Narendra Modi realised the importance of the newly emergent technologies, particularly the Computer and has always shown a willing ness to harness technology for political purposes. In the recently concluded Parliamentary Polls, Narendra Modi successfully integrated Information Technology, GIS and the Internet to propel the BJP forward. All his meeting and rallies took place well within the limits of the Code of Conduct of the Election Commission of India.He adhered to the time limit and there were days when he addressed a rally in North East India in the morning, a rally in South India in the afternoon and another in Western India all on the same day,. Few politicians have put themselves through such a grueling task. Even before setting off in the morning his Research Staff would have prepared the dossier for the next days rally. Even Generals planning a campaign or war hardly show such dedication to detail. The new Government will have a completely new policy on almost all the important social and economic issues of the country. Massive funding on projects like the MNREGA, the flag ship scheme of the UPA will not be undertaken and the emphasis will shift to infrastructure. Investment in Roads, Ports and Railways can be expected to increase together with greater emphasis on Primary Education. Social Welfare will be targeted keeping real poverty levels in view and there will be less salience on identity issues. The hyped statements of the Congress that a Modi victory will lead to chaos will prove to be empty rhetoric. Even with the Muslim population, the Modi Governemnt will be fair. Since the narrative has changed from identity to development, social temperature will remain normal. I would not be surprised if new high speed trains are introduced between the different major metros. On the foreign policy front, the strategic embrace of the USA will be reconsidered as it is not in India's interest. Modi has always been an admirer of China and will try to bring about good relations with China. The confrontational policy will not continue and Modi will walk the extra mile to remain on friendly terms with China. With USA the relationship will remain normal, but the special bond between UPA leaders and USA will not be there.India under Modi will not strut about on the international stage as there are great challenges here in India. With Israel there will be excellent ties and normal relations will continue with the Middle Eastern countries. With Iran, the stalled Gas Pipe Line project will be revived. As far as the neighborhood is concerned, India will retain its predominance and will not follow a policy of letting the tail wag the dog. On the economic front, the Current Account Deficit will engage the attention of the Government. Investment climate will certainly improve. Corruption will not be totally eliminated, but Narendra Modi is known for his integrity and his zero tolerance for mis government and corruption. After 10 years of stagnation< India will at last have a Government

which will work.

Thse pictures show the different facets of Narendra Modi.

The French Medievalist,Jacques Le Goff: A Tribute

When the twentieth century looks back on its past and tries to locate the intellectuals who strove to make sense of the past in a meaningful way, then the names of Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, E J Hobsbawm, Georges Duby and Jacques Le Goff will crop up. With the exception of Hobsbawm all the others belonged to a school of historical thought, reflection and method which is generally referred to as the Annales School. While there is considerable disagreement between different historians on the themes, approaches and methods of writing history, all the leading members of the Annales School shared an ecumenical view of History one that skirted the primacy of the Nation State as the main motor or engine of History. Right from the days of Ranke the emergence of the Nation State was seen as the teleos of history, the end result of the long drawn struggle between Church and State and the religious conflicts which split Christendom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hegel even made the Nation State the informing ideal of History and the historical process. The wonton and savage destruction of a whole civilization in the battlefields of Somme, Ypres and Flanders during World War I raised questions in the minds of Historians about the validity of the nation state as the container of the historical process. From the ruins of World War I emerged a new way of looking at the past. Marc Bloch and his friend and collaborator Lucien Febvre founded a journal in 1929 in which they espoused a Historiography unhinged from the political and ideological demands of the Nation State. The Annales remained a journal devoted to the study of History not as a mere narrative of events, the dance of kings, queens and their courtiers on the stage of History, but as problems posed as questions--histoire problematique. The death of Jacques Le Goff on April 1, 2014 brings an end to one of the most creative epochs of European medieval historiography. Born on January 1st 1924, Jacques Le Goff succeeded Fernand Braudel as the directeur of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales in 1972 and devoted most of his research energy to the uncovering of the deep structures of culture and ideology, the carapace within which society functions. The early Annales historians stresses the role of agrarian organizations and March Bloch famously demonstrated that the Open Field system emerged in southern France with the gradual end of serfdom. Using the maps of the Revolutionary period, Bloch was able to uncover the earlier patterns of farming and field organization. Under Jacques Le Goff, the Annales turned its attention to what the French called mentalites, the structures of thought and behavior informing social life. In books such as Time Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, The Birth of Purgatory, The Medieval Imagination and several such contributions Le Goff vastl;y extended the domain of medieval history. Understanding the medieval world in its totality remained the inspiring ideal of Le Goff. A great historian is no more. This blogger lives works and teaches in India, far away from the land of Le Goff. I have read his work with passion and I write these words as a tribute to a Historian who will forever remain an inspiration.

Obama and His Crimean Misadventure: Russia has legitimate interests in the region

The Western powers have once more started behaving like cold warriors, provoking Russia and hiding their aggression in a cloak of Democracy and Human Rights, a sanctimonious combination of realpolitik and ideological assertion. Nothing typifies this new conduct of the European Union and USA than the crisis over Russian involvement in the Ukraine and the subsequent merger of Crimea with the Russian Federation. People who rail against Russia seem to have forgotten recent history. It was in the Siege of Sebastipol that Florence Nightingale earned her name and it was the same Crimean war that provided the occasion for bad poetry as well: we are all familiar with the Charge of the Light Brigade by England's poet laureate, Lord Tennyson. I am only recalling these facts to underscore the historical context of the recent events. Russia has had a presence in the Crimean Peninsula right from the waning years of the Ottoman Empire and the West always tried to thwart the legitimate interests of Russia. Now Vladmir Putin has succeeded and revered the long imposed isolation of Crimea from Russia. In fact during the Soviet Era, Crimea was handed over to Ukraine for only administrative convenience. Barack Obama, of course, has stated that the West will not recognize the "annexation" of Crimea. Russia held a Referendum in which 96% of the people of the region voted for merger with Russia. Further, where was International Law that Obama and his allies talk now, when they bomber Serbia, imposed the UDI on Kossovo, and shat about the armed invasion of Iraq in defiance of the international community as represented by the UN. Russia has now followed the example of USA and her allies. There is yet another serious problem. When the Soviet leader Gorbochev allowed the unification of East and West Germany,he was given a solemn assurance by the US President that NATO will not be expanded to cover Eastern Europe. The collapse of USSR and the rise of USA as an imperial, post-Soviet power meant that the temptation to ring the erstwhile territories of USSR with military bases was too strong to be ignored and the expansion of the NATO into the territories of the Warsaw Pact nations is really at the heart of the problem. The President of Ukariane, Viktor Yanukovitch who was duly elected and a legitimate ruler was overthrown by street mobs of rampaging neo-nazis armed and encouraged by the European Union. The overthrow of a legitimate government by rioters is always a cause of concern but not for Obama and his Merry men. Snipers who killed nearly 100 people during the course of the anti Yanukovich protests are now hailed as great freedom fighters. Russia should have intervened militarily and stopped the mayhem on the street of Kiev, but Putin held his horses.In all fairness, Russia cannot allow its security to be permanently jeopardised by Ukaraine and the EU. Yet, Vladmir Putin showed remarkable statesmanship and restraint. The fear of Ukraine joining NATO is all to real to be ignored and the European Union is following the the Nazi policy of expansion by invoking the rhetoric of Democracy and Human Rights, rhetoric that hides the war crimes of USA in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ukraine during world war II set a horrible example of collaboration with the Nazis and the same forces are being harnessed now to legitimize Western intervention. More than one million jews were killed in Ukraine during the War and men like Stepan Bandera were really Nazis not nationalists. The Russian leadership is aware of the potential for Ukraine to divide on its east-west axis with the Russian majority eastern part joining the Russian federation and the western part becoming a rump member of the NATO. Given this volotile scenario, Vladmir Putin took steps to protect the vital national interests of Russia. The merger of Crimea with Russia and the eventualbreakup of the independent state of Ukaraine can be blamed on the misguded policy of the EU of encouraing the neo-nazi natioanlists.

The Metaphysics of the Political Imagination: Why Shiv Vishwanathan is wrong about Modi

A noted Indian "sociologist" in a center page article in the Hindu (April 5, 2014) has made some bold and superficially interesting speculations abort the brand of politics Narendra Modi represents. I wonder why such eminent sociologists do not subject the Congress Party and its mascot, Sonia Gandhi to the same kind of rigorous scrutiny as many of his conclusions can with equal justification be extended to the Congress. In politics style matters as much as substance and when Indian intellectuals train their guns on one individual and suddenly find his ideological soul mates like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and l K Advani more authentic than Narendra Modi from a "civilization" point of view, then we know that something is seriously wrong about the logic behind such ideologically constructed posturing. Until not that long ago, Indian middle class intellectuals, particularly the tele intellectuals of the JNU breed were articulating their wisdom in terms of sound bytes aired on NDTV which drove home just one point: the BJP and its politics is a threat to the "secular" values of the country and by default must support the Congress party. The intellectuals found it both prudent and professionally rewarding to mouth the empty slogans of "secularism" and "inclusion", the stock in trade of high political discourse in India/. As a sociologists, the writer must be aware that in terms of social inclusion as empirically measured by voting percentages and seats won, the BJP scores much higher than it rival the Congress. At least in North India, most of the SC reserved seats and ST seats have been won by the BJP and there is no use in taking recourse to the Marxist line that such figures only represents false consciousness on the part of the "subaltern" classes. At the end of the day the tele intellectual is always right and facts be damnned. Why let facts and empirically verifiable date come in the way of a politically correct and rewarding statement. The intellectual goes on to gratuitously advive the BJP to be more "discursive" more "conversational". The discursive space in Indian politics is hogged by the Congress and its academic bandwagon who have monopolized public space in the name of secularism and nationalism. If they want to suggest that the hysterical style of ranting against electoral adversaries like the way Sonia, Rahul and other members of the First Family, the Royal Dynasty represents discursive expanse and a conversational style of politics, I am afraid that people will not accept. The electorate sees the shrill hysterical ranting of the Congress as hate mongering and it is time that the soft intellectuals like the author of the center page article recognize the political style of the dynastic fascists as divisive and fraudulent To harp on Jaswant Singh has become fashionable. Suddenly the opponents of Narendra Modi have rediscovered the virtues of Jaswant Singh after his rebellion. But the same class of tele intellectuals were berating him until the other day for the views on Partition and his analysis that Congress too was responsible for the Partition and do In need to remind my readers of what they said about Jaswant Singh when the then NDA Government released the Taliban prisoners in exchange for the passengers of the Indian Airlines flight which was hijacked to Kabul. I agree Indians do not have a sense of History, but if "sociologists" who write about the civilizational strengths of the BJP should choose tom ignore recent events then it is not oversight but deliberate distortion for political purposes. Is there anything "civilizational" about Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi. If Narendra Modi is faulted for not being "civilizational" them I wonder if the hate filled rhetoric of the First Family is civilizational. It is obvious that the writer has not followed the Campaign of Narendra Modi and therefore is unaware of the reasons why he resonates all around the country. He is not an "ersatz"version of the BJP as the writer inelegantly puts it, but rather one who has crafted his political message keeping the complex realities of an ever changing India. The fact is that Narendra Modi has jettisoned the old style identity politics and has changed the terms within which India debates its future. And "sociologists" of course are livid as he has out did them in their own game. He has crafted a message of social and economic development based on the principle that the State has to ensure that the basic structure within which resource transfers and nation building takes place is in tune by and large with the aspirations of the people. And he has successfully sold the argument that the economic downturn in India is linked to the massive and egregious corruption under the congress. What is offensive or objectionable about this fundamental message. Governemnts will be voted in and voted out not on the basis of real and invented identities but on the grounds of performance as seen by the common man. I do not see anything alarming in all this and wish the author had used the resources of his mind to reflect on the conditions prevailing all over the country. The sense of gloom and doom are there in the eyes of eveyone except the starry eyed wonder struck sociologists of JNU. The upcoming elections will mark a decisive turning point in the history of India. Under Narendra Modi, India will be able to stand and take strides towards improving its economy, living standards and social harmony all of which were ruthlessly compromised during the past 10 years.

QUEEN KETEVAN'S BONES DISCOVERED AND IDENTIFIED IN INDIA

Georgia, a tiny Christian kingdom, lying on the border of the expanding and fiercely Shia Safavid Empire, was conquered by Shah Abbas I the Safavid ruler snd the captured queen was brought in chains to Isfahan where according to Augustinian sources she was imprisoned for 11 years. Shah Abbas i gave her the unenviable choice between death or life in his harem and the valiant queen chose martyrdom. Her son Teimuraz, for whose safety and protection, the Queen offered herself as hostage to the Safavid emperor, composed a hagiographical text, The Book and Passion of Queen Ketevan and after the Independence of Georgia from the Soviet Union Queen Ketevan has been reinvented as a heroic, national symbol and has become the symbol of nationhood, a role that the deeply religious and spiritual Queen Ketevan would have found both repugnant and distasteful. The horrific torture inflicted on the Queen which include tearing her eyes out with red hot pincers, cutting parts of her body and breaking evey limb before she ultimately died was witnessed by some Augutinian friars who secretly took her body for burial to Goa which was part of the Portuguese empire. The seventeenth century records speak of the interment of her bones near the window of the transept of the great Cathedral built by the Augustinian order in Goa, now a UNESCO world heritage site. Since the Independence of Georgia the Archaeological Survey of India has been carrying out excavations at the site in order to identify the bones of the queen who was canonized in the nineteenth century. The Queen was martyred in 1624 and a few years later her bones were taken out of Persia. Georgia was an early victim of the geopolitical struggles of its day: wedged between the expanding Ottoman Empire and the Duchy of Muscovy, the son of Ketevan tried to play one against the otehr hoping to keep the Safavids out og Georgia. This high risk game required resources which he did not have and his Court was too divided and there were factions tugging in different directions.

The image on the right is a nineteenth century representation of the Queen. Fortunately for historians there is a great deal of contemporary evidence relating to the burial of the queen in the Cathedral at Goa. However it was only from 1989 that Indian archaeologists started looking in earnest for the bones. The interest taken by the ASI stemmed from the political and diplomatic pressure put on India bu Georgia. Is is necessary for the bones of the martyred Queen to be returned to Georgia just to serve the political and ideological needs of the Government in power there. Edward Shevardnadze was the politician who initiated the search for the bones. In 1994 a stone reliquary was found embedded in the wall of the transept and had the windows survived the closest would have been the second window and since that discovery there has been a great deal of public interest over this relic. The Archaeological Survey of India only identified it as the bones, perhaps of a woman and it bore unmistakable marks of great trauma. The Georgians were convinced that it was the bone of their Great Queen Ketevan and they carried the relic to Tiblis where it was received with all the honour due to a Head of State. In the rewriting of History which will inevitable result when the past gets so heavily encrusted with the ideological demands of the presnt, will be forgotten one inconvenient truth: Queen Ketevan had invited Shah Abas I to invade and help her son get the throne and wanted the Safavids to guarantee the security of her son. That however does not justify or mitigate the horrible death she was bore.

The tower of the Augustinian Cathedral where the relics were found In a stunning new development, Indian scientists were able to confirm the remains of the queen by extracting the mitochondrial DNA and comparing it with the descendants of the queen in Georgia. Since mtDNA is passed only along the female line, this confirmation is almost accurate and we know that the Queen did not have an identical twin. The Uib strand in the DNA sequence is not found in the Indian population but is statistically very pronounced in the Georgian population. The identification of this relic is indeed a remarkable instance of how important the skills of a historian are in the reconstruction of the past. Forgotten in all this is a crucial historical issue. Though the Roam Catholic Church claimed Queen Ketevan as its own and canonized her, the fact is she remained steadfast unto the last a beleiver in the Georgian Orthodox Church.

TARUN TEJPAL, TEHEKKA AND THE ROT IN INDIA'S SO CALLED FREE MEDIA

Regular readers of the Indian press would certainly recognize the name, Tehelka. Rabidly pro western in it political and editorial stance and vehemently pro Congress in its ideological orientation, Tehelka acqired a degree of notoriety when it launched what is called a sting operation against Bangaru Laxman, the President of the BJP, a party which is contesting the Congress all over the country. Though the President of the BJP was not holding any public office, nor was he in any fiduciary sense in a capacity to influence decisions in the defense ministry during the NDA rule, the sting operation caught the President accepting one hundred thousand rupees from the Tehelka journalist who secretly filmed this. The Congress went to town proclaiming the "corruption and venality" of the BJP led Government. Never mind that there was no bribe paid and it was perfectly legal to accept party contributions, the BJP abandoned any defense of the President and he was sentenced to a jail term which he served. Tehelka is a new kind of ideologically driven, headline grabbing electronic journalistic venture. It specializes in uncovering scams, scandals and other goings on in BJP ruled on BJP friendly states. Tarun Tejpal the aging Editor and his second in command a woman called Shoma Choudhary are well known faces in the country's English news channels and whenever they appear they very predictable give of the Congress spiel and refuse to subject the drivel they espouse to any critical scrutiny. Even though it was known that the sting operation against the President of the BJP was illegal the successive Congress regimes continued to prosecute the dalit President of the BJP. On almost all majot controversies such as the Gujarat Riots of 2002 and the more recent episode of a woman who perhaps came under police surveillance in Gujarat for extra legal reasons, Tarun and his cohort Shoma were at their shrillest on television channels like NDTV another Congress friendly news channel. Tehelka seems to be a front for a number of illegal companies which are funding this news organization. Though the ostensible owner of Tehelka is a Bengali MP from Mamtha Banerjee's TMC, Tarun Tejpal and his family are the dejure owners as nearly 19% of the shares are owned by Tejpal, giving him effective control over the day to day functioning of the news organizations. The holding companies of Tehelka even managed to get unsecured loans to the tune of 1,400 crores which invited the strong sanction of the regulator, SEBI. The balance sheet of Tehelka and its associated companies are not available for public scrutiny and this itself shows that the Company was involved in many shady and dubious, perhaps even illegal activite. It may even turn out that some of the illegal wealth of Congress politicians may be parked in Tehelka. Tarun Tejpal is in the news for attempting to rape a female employee of his when the International Film Festival was held in Goa recently. Apparently he cornered her in the life of the five star hotel where he and his staff were staying and abused her sexually. When the girl complained to the "Managing Editor" a woman called Shoma Choudhary also from Kolkatta, she made it appear as if the whole affair was consensual and that the woman was making a fuss over nothing. Tejpal magnanimously offered to take leave from the editorial duties and both the man and his woman felt that the ends of justice had been met. In India, there is growing intolerance toward sexual harassment and exploitation and the words of Nancy Poweel mean nothing as she is not aware of the reality of India today. The outrage against Tarun Tejpal and his "Managing Editor" Shoma Choudhary resulted in the Goa police registering a case of rape against Tejpal.The mananagment of Tehelka is putting a lot of pressure on the young girl not to cooperate with the Police in its investigatioon and this is the way the"flag bearer" of the so called secular liberalism behaves in India. The Congress is trying to shield its journalistic hit man with all the power at its command. The Minister of the Congress regime whom we jocularly refer to as the Dr Goebbels of the Regime, the Minister for Mis information and Propaganda, the voluble Manish Tewari has not said a word about this incident in public. Obviously the regime would like the uproar to quieten and then offer him some plum assignemnts like membership of the Prasar Bharati Board. The ammended Rape laws that have been passed allow for procecution even if the woman does not file a written compalint. So the ends of justice may yet be met. Theren is little investigative journalism in India in the American or even the British sense. Blackmail is the name of the game and it is time for a serious rethink on the direction the so called free media is taking. Sting Operations do not constitute investigative journalism and the fact that all the media houses are under the control of corporates is worrisome.

BOB< THE STREET CAT: LOVE AND REDEMPTION

The little book by James Bowen, A Street Cat named Bob is a remarkable tale of love, hope and redemption. The author James Bowen, a drug addict and in the jargon of British social welfare office, a substance abuser, finds a large ginger cat near his dwelling. The adventures of this duo occupies most of the book. The author has fallen through the cracks of western society and has ended on the streets of London without a job and little skill,l which can translate into dependable employment. So "busking" for a living is the only career choice that available. The Cat and James set out by tube to Coventry Garden where James has a designated spot busking, playing music for voluntary donations. Since panhandling is forbidden by law in most western counties, busking invites little attention from the law, provided of course there it is done in a designated place and there is no complaint of anticancer James earns at best little more than what was essential to keep .his nose out of trouble. Petty theft and drug addiction were already on his record and James now has a cat to feed and support. The bond between the two develops into a stable and mutually enriching relationship and now James Bowen had a purpose to his life, something he never had earlier. His life settled down to a routine of busking in London and the petty quarrels and jealousies his success and the attention paid to Bob his cat evoked amongst the other derelicts on the streets of London is brought out well. The love between the two transforms Bob from a drug addict to a more responsible human being and the book also documents the reconciliation between James and his mother who after her marriage to Nick seems to have drifted away from James. The spiritual anchor of Jmaes' life is Bob and he gradually helps him find his feet again.

For most readers, the tale of Bob and James may sound surreal. Can a street cat make sucha huge difference to a person's life. As someone who has seen and experienced the rougher side of life, I can say that animals do bring a strange kind of unconditional love to their relationship with their owners that is really unsettling at times. James Bowen was down and out in London, barely eking out a bare living by busking in the posh areas of Londan, loving from day to day, taking life one day at a time and when Bob entered his life all that changed. He had a purpose to live anf that made all the difference. Life Richard Parker in the Life of Pi, who became Pi's spiritual anchor in the Pacific Ocean, Bob was to James. I liked this book immensely and I too am fond of animals and so read the book with interest. The message of redemption comes out strongly in the book.

New Light on Indian Relations with Tibet: The perfidy of L N Nehru

The Indian Government has always pretended to follow a "principled" policy towards Tibet. One the one hand it recognizes the fact that Tibet is an integral part of China and on the other provided space for the Dalai Lama to indulge his fancy for high decibel diplomacy and publicity and China rightly objects to this dual policy. Based on perfidy and exercised through duplicity this policy has stood in the way of realizing the full potential of Indo-Chinese relations. The two form the very heart of Asian civilizations and there is at least 2,550 years of peaceful history behind the civilizational ties between India and China. Unfortunately, successive Congress regimes have built their foreign policy on instinctive hostility toward China, rather than exploring the threads that bind these two giant neighbors together. And in following this policy, the Government of India starting with the first Prime Minister, Jawarhar Lal Nehru were essentially following the colonial policy enunciated by the British Government in order to keep China under constant threat. The greatest failure of Nehru lies in his wooden headed pursuit of an aggressive China policy without taking into consideration the alternatives. Today as we survey the landscape, we find China standing at the very doorstep of economic powerhouse and India is facing a bleak future because of the inherent stasis created by a corrupt political class and corruption. Documents recently discovered in the National Archives of India clearly prove that in the 1940;s even as the country was facing the massive onslaught of the Japanese Empire, the then British Government was instrumental in supplying arms and ammunition to the Dalai Lama and his followers in China.The 11 year old "Dalai Lama" neither had the wit nor the education to understand what the English secret services were up to and after Independence Jawahar Lal Nehru continued the same policy while publicly proclaiming the homilies of "panch sheel". The Revolutionary Government of China obviously saw through this grand pantomime. Therefore the prime responsibility for the border conflict in 1962 rests with the Government of India and its misguided policies and perspectives. The Political Officer looking after Tibet and Sikkhim in the waning years of the Raj, Mr A J Hopkinson put up a note to his superiors asking for funds to equip a brigade level force in Tibetr with 2 and 3 inch mortars, sten guns, machinme guns and Bren machine pistols. The Memorandum of MAY 29, 1947 WHICH IS FOUND IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF iNDIA (FRONTLINE AUGUST 23, 2013) contains a reproduction of this important document. The officials were certain that this policy of sending arms will be vigourously contested by the Chinese Government and even Chiak Kai Shek did not acquiesce in this wrong and anti Chinese policy.The programme of arming the "peace loving" monks of Tibet began soon after the Francis Younghusband expedition to Tibet and picked up momentum after the Revolution of 1911. Even after Independence when the departure of the British should have induced fresh thinking, the policy of arming the Tibetans continued. In October 1947, Sam Manekshaw, then a Lt Col. approved the transfer of weapons and 1,484,000 rounds of aminutions to Tibet. it is likely that Britain wanted a foothold in Tibet in order to exert pressure on China both with regards to Kowloon and Hong Kong. Independent Indfa did not have any such strategic objective and why was Jawarlal Nehru so utterly foolish and shortsighted.

The Mid Day Meal Tragedy in Bihar: Callousness and Corruption

Two days dack, in a village Chapra located 65 kilometers from the capital Patna 25 schoolg children all below the age of 11 died after having taken their mid day meals in school. In India, the mid day meal is a major incentive for families from poorer sections of society to send their children to school. Origally conceived in the Southern state of Tamil Nadu by the Cheif Minister M G Ram,achandran, the mid day meal program caught on and even in the mis governed states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar this welfare scheme is presently underway. The fiances for the scheme are part of the state budget and the school appoints a cook and an attender to run the mid day meal programme. However, in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh there is massive corruption even in this scheme. In fact Bihar has the dubious distinction of having had a Chief Minister, laloo Prasad Yadava who was caught taking the money ear marked for animal welfare. The now infamous Fodder Scam is reaching its final stages in the courts and will end up convicting laloo Prasad Yadava. Even athug like this Laloo Prasad was not able to kill all the 347 witnesses. The current Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, a past master in the old style identity politics rode to power on the strength of a very fragile social coalition consisting of intermediate caste, landed caste and the higher castes. After taking over the reins of government for the second time, Nitish Kumar began to feel the weight of his victory, but interpreted it as an endorsement of his personal "charisma". And this wrong and ill conceived notion was his undoing. The tragedy in Bihar took place only because of mis governance. The last 2 years the state administration has been paralyzed due to national ambitions of Nitish Kumar. Ever since he declared his opposition to the Prime Ministerial candidature of Honnourable Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar regime has been floundering. Corruption, mal administration, scams and scandals have become the order of the day. The death of the 22 school children is a testimony to the plight of Bihar under Nitish Kumar. The shocking facts have emerged from the news reports. The food itmes for preparing the noon meals were sourced from the shop of the husband of the Head Mistress of the school, a man who as it turns out is an activist of the Rasshtrya Janata dal whose leader is the fodder scam accused, :Laloo Prasad Yadava. The shameless state government sought to shift the blame to the RJD by implying that the RJD wasbehind the tragedy in order to undermine the regime of Nitish Kumar. The level to which politics has sunk in India can be understood from the fact that the Government refuses to see the tragedy as one caused by itts own failures, but is quick to see political conspiracies everywhere. Corruption in the mid day meal scheme is the real factor. Even after the children took ill, it took over six hours for the children to be shited to the Primary Health Centre and there there was no nurse or doctor and there were no drips to provide immediate releif. This sate of affairs prevailing in Bihar is a national shame and people must realise that identity politics will lead to the grave as it did for the 22 children The World Bank and the IMF have given loans, soft loans to Bihar but the utilization of these loans is so poor that the international funding agencies are now wary of giving loans to Bihar. The country as a whole has slid backwards under the rule of the Congress Party and its allies and if India needs better Governence it must vote for change..

Caste and Indian political parties

The recent decision of the Allahabad High Court banning "caste rallies" is a welcome step for two reasons. First, the Indian voter being a caste oriented individual finds himself unable to resist the pull and pressures of caste lobbies. Second, the social scientists in India have taken whole sale the post colonial theories which revolve around identity, identity formation and political mobilization on identity lines. What is shocking is that in the Indian context Identity politics is being seen as a sign of democratic functioning without understanding the divisive and violent role played by identity politics. Democracy in India has degenerated into a numerical game, a mere arithmetic of assembling caste voting blocks for one or the other alliance. In fact voters in India do not have much of a choice since ideology is underplayed and caste factors dominate the electoral battle. And after the promulgation of the Mandal Report the backward castes and the political parties associated with them have come to dominate the landscape and the language of post colonial social science legitimizes such politics. Cast based rallies are not only the basis of political mobilization but also an important marker of the strength of a political party and a very important bargaining chip in the distribution of tickets for the elections. In Tamil Nadu the caste based political parties like the DMK and the PMK openly indulge in violence in order to firm up political support. In the name of democracy violence is unleashed against an unsuspecting electorate and the people have no protection from criminals who have come to dominate the political space. The Allahabad High Court has taken a small step in the right direction and already the political parties have begun to make threatening noises. In Uttar Pradesh, as in Tamil Nadu, caste based politics dominates. The Samajwadi Party with its Yadava support base and the BSP with its dalit and more particularly the Jatav support base are openly indulging is violence against each other. Uttar Prasesh and Bihar are in the grip of caste mania and violence is now reaching alarming proportions. It is against this background that the Allahabad high court has issued its decision banning caste rallies. All political parties with the exception of the Communists and the BJP have condemned the Allahabad High Court order on the ground that it is an infringement of democratic right of free expression. The Supreme Court of India has taken another giant step towards cleaning up the political sewage in India. It is a shocking statistics that 40% of Indian MPs and MLAs are criminals and even after being convicted continue to occupy positions of power on the strength of the "appeal" process or the most ridiculous instrument of Indian jurisprudence "anticipatory stay". With the present judgement criminals who have been convicted cannot contest elections or occupy elected office. This is a welcome sign of things changing. The criminals who run India are unlikely to yield ground that easily and will try their best to undo the two judgements. I hope that they do not succeed.

The Way of the Knife: CIA and its secrets

One of the many myths surrounding USA is that it is a great power, a bulwark of liberty in a sea of tyranny. This self serving ideologically laced self representation of USA has made people, especially historians and analysts, ignore certain important aspects of the political and institutional conduct of US. In India, the tele intellectuals of JNU and other leading Universities are only too willing to buy American self ratiocination as the hegemonic weight of post colonial theories seriously impedes our intellectuals from seeing reality from behind the fog of illusions created by American propaganda. India has to learn lessons from the USA, if it wants to be a hard state. Unfortunately the cold comfort of being a soft state gingerly side stepping all important political and security questions is too attractive a prospect for our "intellectuals" to lose. So they continue to mouth the platitudes taught to them by American establishment. A case in point is the controversy over Martha Nussbaum. There are enough morally obnoxious events happening in the USa for this white woman to fret and fume over. But she will issue "fawas" against Narendra Modi and her shrill rhetoric is magnified by Indian intellectuals ever eager to be seen on the same page as the Gucci and Benetton of the American academia. It is in this context that Mark Mazetti's The Way of the Knife is an eyeopener. This book deals with the policies and strategies pursued by the USA in its war against Islamic fundamentalism. What is so striking is the close coordination between the Military and the civilian leadership especially in the fields of espionage and "special operations" US speak for targeted assassinations. Right from the Administration of George W Bush the CIA was involved in an active chase for Islamic militants in Iraq, Somalia, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan, The hunt had started even before 9/11. The CIA and its method of working is given in some detail. In India we have seen the absolute incompetence of IB and RAW to achieve any national goal. RAW operatives must read this book to get a first hand account of the ethos prevailing in the intelligence community in USA. First of all the Americans rightly think that Intelligence is not the domain for policemen and detectives. Somehow there is a false notion prevailing in India that political and strategic intelligence can be left to policemen. This is like leaving open hear surgery to the chief nurse in the cardiac ward. It is high time India understood that Intelligence is a highly specialized field of expertise and policemen are just not adequate for the job. Another point worth noting is the integrity with which field operatives do their job. They do not white wash reports or tailor them for the political basses. The only instance when this was done was during the WMD crisis when the CIA operatives or eather the outsources espionage hacks filled exaggerated reports. In India the RAW and the IB put up reports with both eyes firmly fixed on the next promotion or the needs of their bosses. Americans usually claim that their Government follows Rule of Law. By and large one can agree with this statement at a very general level just as I will say with utter confidence that in India we have rule of outlaws like Laloo, Mulayam, Karunanidhi and slum dog politicians like them. However, when dealing with grey areas the US Government outsources its policy of inflicting violence. Blackwater is a case in point, Whenever dirty work of killing people or whisking them away for "serious interrogation" read Git Mo treatment, then Blackwater fills the bill. The American tax payer pays heavily so that his President and his Cabinet can deny "criminal culpability" for the actions Black Water carries out. Even in an Outlaw State like India, this kind of deniablity is not possible. The political opposition will not allow the Government to get away with callous, calculated mursder as is done in the USA and Mark Mazzetti has documented several instances of such dubious behavior. The book makes fascinating reading and is written in a racy, page turner sort of style which makes the book more interesting than John Le Carr's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. However, the author like all Americans is a bit squeamish when it comes to drone warfare. He hints that there are questions about the legality of such attacks but does not explicitly state that US policy is illega. However, the author has provided enough instances to show that the much vaunted drone warfare has caused huge causalities. In Somalia and in Afghanistan drone attacks has led to more than 5,000 deaths and the body count is rising. I like the book and I reccomed this book to all those interested in US policies in our part of the Globe

The Importance of Being Narendra Modi

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books The elevation of the Hon'ble Narendra Modi to head the election campaign for the 2014 General Elections was not unexpected. The BJP has seen in the Chief Minister a new kind of leader, one who has the largest appeal in a country where the majority of the population is less than 30 years of age. The demographics of the electorate dictates the choice of a campaign strategist who can connect with the younger sections of the population. Another important point. After fomenting "identity politics" based on confessional sects, the country particularly the Muslims were willing to give the Congress party its thumbs up by default. The Congress party had learned the art of whipping up minority fears for its own dynastic purposes. The happy fallout of the Jaswant Singh controversy has been that it has led to a rethinking about the role of the Congress in the tragedy of Partition and many are now willing to concede that the Congress too was complicit in the tragedy. Minority fears also revolve around the unsettled and ongoing controversy of the role of the Congress Party and its leadership in the anti-Sikh Massacre of 1894. One happy consequence of all these developments is that the Congress propaganda of being a party which protects minority interests has been questioned. The changing nature of Indian society and demography has led to VIRTUAL REJECTION OF POLITICS OF the "old kind". The cobbling together of caste groups, vested interests and sundry other sodalities into a combination that can hurl a candidate across the winning post and in the first past the winning post system this strategy was often successful. The only exception to this general rule was the 1977 election which was a referendum on the Congress Party imposed Emergency. The 2014 Elections is showing every sign of snowballing into a referendum on the Congress and its performance. The series of scandals involving powerful congressmen like P Chidambaram and Pawan Bansal, regional allies like the DMK and the rest has made the entire country restive. Indians have come to accept a fair degree of corruption as then price for democracy, unlike China where the Confucian ethics curbs the predatory instincts. However the rising crime graph and the impunity with which the Congress dealt with the question of accountability has outraged the nation and so the 2014 Election will be fought on the issue of governance and accountability. The Chief Minister of Gujarat, Hon;ble Narendra Modi has been able to articulate a vision of politics which the young find highly inspirational. He has turned politics over to Economics and has made development the sole criterion for political legitimacy. In this, Modi is essentially following the East Asian and China model which placed salience on develpment. The growth rate of Gujarat over the past decade has been virtually in the double digits and even the hostile Indian print media has had to acknowledge the vast improvement in the economy of Gujaratt. There are however questions of inclusion which still remain. We must say that only after the economy has grown can one address the issue of inclusion. The ideologues of the Congress and their cohorts in the Indian "social science" establishment have raised questions about the "inclusive" nature of Gujarat's growth story. What these ideologues fail to grasp is that over the last decade Gujarat has become almost a developed state and all social indices are positive. It is against this background that Narendra Modi began to draw attention. The people of India, particularly the young want better lives for themselves, better education and better living standards and are convinced that the old style of identity politics favored by the Congress is not taking the country anywhere except toward crime and corruption. The schemes launched by the Gujarat Government if replicate on a national scale will lead to tremendous progress. Governance in GujarAT IS FREE FROM THE MALAISE OF CORRUPTION. hON.BLE nAREDRA MODI is perhaps the only chief minister who does not face charges of corruption and financial maleficence. And the people of India want to give this new kind of politics a chance. The BJP like any Indian political party is full of factions. L K Advani has virtually disassociated himself from the leadership of Shri Modi, This is unfortunate as Advani is a tall leader and well respected within the party and outside. I have great respect for L K Advani and I think that he is too great a man to let the clouds of today rain out the prospects for a better India. However Modi has a toough job ahead of him. Being the chairman of the Election Committee he would need to interact with state level leaders who are aligned to various factions and the defeat of the party in Karnataka must have led to the realization that factionalism is self defeating. Modi must quickly develop a line of command which reports directly to him and not to the faction bosses. The 2014 Elections will be fought on the issue of governance and corruption and Modi has demonstrated success in both.

The Naxalite Attck in Chatisghar: Is the Congress responsible for political violence in India

The Naxalite Movement has created a state within a state in India and with the eroding legitimacy of the Indian state based on the 1947 Settlement it is time to ask the fundamental question: Is the Indian political class of which the criminal organization called the Congress party is the preeminent example the main and fundamental cause for the cycle of violence. During the course of the last 60 years the dynastic fascists have ruined India by foisting a corrupt political culture in which courtiers masquerade as politicians. Every institution of the land, the Parliament, the steel frame of the bureaucracy, the constitutional bodies like the CVC and investigative agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI have been perverted to serve the cause of the dynastic fascists. The Indi9an constitution does not advocate a dynastic sate and the criminal CONGRESS PARTY HAS CONVERTED THE POLITICAL PROCESS into manipulated endorsement of dynastic rule. Unfortunately the other political parties like the BJP and the Communists play along without realizing the fact that dynastic fascism is the root cause of political and administrative corruption in India. The present regime of ManMohan Singh is floundering in the ocean of corruption on a monumental scale of which the Coal Allocation Scandal and the @G Spectrum Scandal have caused a loss of nearly 15% of the GDP.If India did not have this parasitical political class it would be a very rich country indeed. It is against this background that the violence against the Congressman unleashed by the Maoists in Chatiisghar has to be viewed. The Congress Party always speaks in two voices on all major issues and hence there is no consensus in India on any issue. All criminology parties will unite in the name of fighting communslism without understanding that the bogey of ":communalism" was created by Nehru in order to defelct attention from the Congress complicity in enforcing the Partition of the Country and since then the artificial fears of "majority" rule has been cleverly used to fragment Indian electorate into pliable voting blocks. The BJP unfortunately plays along with the Congress without realizing that the political futre of India lies only in the demise and extinction of political forces like the Congress. In Punjab the Congress sided with the Sikh militants and lent support to Bhindrenwale, in Sri Lanka the Congress Government of Indira Gandhi armed and trained the LTTE and in Assam, the Congress is in direct cahoots with the ULFA and uses the militancy in order to intimidate the other parties including the BJP. Therefore for the Congress leadership to say that the attack on the "Parivarthan Yatra" is an attack on the "democratic process" is both false and disingenuous. The Congress has been using Dig Vijaya Singha to discredit any attempt at reigning in jehadi inspired terrorism. Now when it has to face the consequences of its own misguiged policies to cries out as if "Democracy" is in danger. The dynastic fascists re the biggest threat to democracy in India not the Naxalite Movement. Unfortunately, establishment figures like Ramachandra Guha fail to emphasis the obvious link between Congress double speak and the culture of violence unleashed by that party. Now the people are responding in kind. Another example of the double speak is the patronage given to the anti naxalite militia, the Salwa Jadum founded by Mahendra Karma who was killed in the attack recently. The petition of Ramachandra Guha made the Supreme Court oder the disbanding of the Salwa Jadum while the Naxalite movement did not get any adverese notice from the Court. The ideologues like Arunditti Roy and Ramchandra Guha denounced in very strong language the violence of the Salwa Jadum but were certainly not too vehemnet in teir criticism of the Naxalite. In fact Arunditti Roy even calls them "Gandhians with Guns". In fact the Congress patronage of the Salwa Judam made this anti naxalite movement into a major force in the so called anti naxalite movement. The Congress trumpeted its Operation Green HUnt" after the Dantewada Incident but as is always the case with the Congress it lacks both the skill and the expertise to do anything excet corruption. Operation Green Hunt degenerated into a tribal killing movement and this engendered more support for the anti Congress Naxalite Movement. If the Naxalite target the Congress and other criminal political forces the p[eople of India will not give a whit. It was Karma, a Congressman who created and launched the anti tribal militia and the naxalites took him out in a ruthless amnner. Jairam Ramesh the "intellectual" face of the dynastic fascists publically humiliated Mahendra Karma in the rally signalling the Congress no longer found Karma useful and therefore expendable. The result the brutal killing of this Congress tribal political leader. The Congress Party itself is responsible for the killing not the state Government under Dr Raman Singh. The Home Ministry guidelines are very clear that in Naxalite liberated areas the conventional political parties should not move in large convoys. The convoy of nearly 40 cars was struck by well trained and armed militants. As was the case with the Rajiv Gandhi rally in which Rajiv Gandhi was eliminated by his political rivals the LTTE, in which the participation of Congress insiders is still suspected. in the case of the present attack the route of the convoy was changed at the last moment and this led to the attack. In other words the congress men themselves were responsible for the brutality. Had the route not been changed then the attack may not have taken pl;ace. Do we care about what happened. I think the Indian nation does not care for the fate of its politicians. V C Shukla was the Information and Broadcasting Minister during the Emergency and that says it all. The BJP must not go overt board in condemning the attack as the Congressmen invited the attack on themselves.

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.

DELHI UNIVERSITY'S FOUR YEAR UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMME; WHY THE FUSS

Indian academics need some issue to scream their throats off. A few years back it was the Ayodhya question, then it was the Godhra issue and now the four year degree programme. I am amazed at the tenacity with which they enter the public domain and start screaming about issue over which they have just not applied their limited minds. I cannot say that they oppose innovative schemes just for the sake of sounding the bugle of war. Rather it is an identity issue. To be taken seriously as an "academic' one must reinforce his/her credentials by staking out positions which are then amplified as they move form one opinion maker to another. Soon we have a cacophony of noises and the real issue gets submerged. Unfortunately these opinion makers and academics have very close links with the ruling establishment and any voice of dissent is branded "sfforization". Thus India has intellectuals whose only claim on public indulgence is the capacity to stray from one noisy issue to another without waiting to think of the consequences. The same is true of the 4 year degree programme introduced by the University ofDelhi. These public intellectuals who rail against this new innovation are well aware of the fact that all over the world the undergraduate degree is of 4 years duration. India is not able to make the cut to the Shanghai list o9r the Times list only because there is a serious disconnect between undergraduate and graduate programmes. Even in USA the undergraduate degree is of 4 years length. Indians wanting to go to the USA for their post graduate education are now expected to have an MA degree which is recognized as the equivalent of the 4 year degree course. Delhi University is only falling in line with global norms. The cacophony has already started. This morning's Hindu published from Chennai carried a center page article by a tele intellectual from that bastion of intellectual and social snobbery, JNU, in which the author has stated that the 4 year undergraduate programme is an error both in letter and spirit. She finds fault with the courses termed bridge courses which have been introduced in order to make the students competitive on the job front. It is highly elitist to say that the University should be concerned only with knowledge and not the job market. These privileged academics unlike those of us struggling in less well endowed universities do not have to bother about the first generation learners and their concern for the education of "dalits" is just that, notional and theoretical. The courses suggested and introduced by the University will go a long way in helping the stu dents get jobs in an ever shrinking job market especially after the introduction of the Mandal reservations for the OBCs who are both politically and economically well off. The major criticism seems to be that procedures were not followed. If the Academic Council and the due procedures were to be followed no innovation can ever be introduced as vested interests will organize themselves with such vigour that the Vice Chancellor will look foolish. I think the University of Delhi has done the student community a great favor and the UGC must ensure that the rest of the country follow