(“There will be a Gujarat-like situation in Rajasthan if the State Government did not stop its ‘appeasement of Muslims’ and ‘anti-Hindu’ policies.”
– Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, former Rajasthan chief minister, Gangapur on 23 April, The Hindu, 30 April 2002)

The elections for the post of the President of India have rather opened up a free for all what is known in colloquial Hindi as Khula Khel Farrukhabadi. The saffron sympathetic journos in the media have rather taken upon themselves the onerous task of excavating the past of the UPA candidate for the post Ms Pratibha Patil. Days in and days out we are being bombarded with stories laced with usual melodrama about alleged acts of omission and commission on part of the presidential nominee of UPA.

Continue reading Can The Real Shekhawat Ever Stand Up ? →

(…A report prepared by one of the national secretaries of the BJP Mr Prabhat Jha analysing the election results to UP, ( Bhaskar, 12 June 2007) provide enough proof of the pathetic situation in which the party itself finds today. This report would be presented before the national executive meeting of the BJP to be held in last week of June and much fireworks are expected there…) Media personnel bearing sympathy with the Hindutva cause – who are in decisive positions at various levels – have an uncanny ability of deflecting the attention of the public from the pathetic situation in which the Sangh Parivar finds itself today – morally as well as organisationally.May it be the Parivar‘s sermonising on Character building going tatters a la the Babubhai Kataras or the Bangaru Laxmans or the Dileep Judeos, or the Party with a difference tag becoming a joke of the decade or the ‘disciplined’ infighting at various levels becoming a public spectacle, these pen/bytepushers make feverish attempts to maintain the aura intact. Of course there are moments when it is next to impossible for them to push the real issues under the carpet or present a rosy picture of the disorientation in which the parent formation and its affiliated organisation find themselves today. Interestingly recent results to byelections in different states or assembly elections to UP and Goa have helped brought the issue to the fore. And the world at large is finding that the countdown has finally begun for Political Hindutva – the ideology of hatred and exclusion formulated by the Savarkars and Golwalkars. Continue reading Hardline Hindutva : On The Wane ? →

Truth is finally out.

People who had a faint glimmer of hope about Kausar Bi’s whereabouts finally know that she is no more. As the counsel for the Gujarat government himself admitted before the Supreme Court, she was killed, burnt and her ashes were thrown in some field. But it does not throw light on the fact that who killed her ?

It appears that Gujarat government wants to buy time to divulge the information. But the CID report filed by Ms Geeta Johri is very clear on this aspect.The interim report of the IG (CID) Geeta Johri – who investigated the case as per instruction from the Supreme Courst – know that Kausarbi was personally strangulated to death by D.H.Vanjara in the very presence of his wife and son (Bhaskar, 28 th April 2007).
Imagine the head of the Anti Terrorism Squad, who till the other day functioned as DIG killing an innocent woman and using his position to cover up the crime.

As things stand today the story of the encounter killing of Soharabuddin Sheikh in cold blood, followed by similar killing of his friend Tulsiram Prajapati and later his own wife Kausar Bi is getting murkier everyday. Continue reading Fake Killing(s) : People As Trophies →

The demolition of a mosque which housed a madarsa also, is still fresh in the minds of Samshad Begum Anarbi.She had built the structure singlehandedly with some help from community members as well. In fact, the idea was to build a mosque and a madrasa where people could pray and young children could study Arabic. The whole structure was built on a government land, which came under the Twenty Point Programme.

On February 24, last year the Savordem panchayat issued a notice in which they stated that the structure is illegal and would be demolished within seven days. Samshad Anarbi immediately approached the directorate of Panchayats and could manage to get a stay order from it. When the locals learnt about it, they attacked the building at night and demolished the structure.

Continue reading Goa: Communal Tinderbox Waiting To Explode? →

He was known as ‘guruji’ (revered teacher). I find that at least in some vernacular papers he is being referred to as ‘shreeguruji’. The addition of shree to his title guruji makes him nearly sacred, an avatar of sorts. Within the Maharashtrian context this has an additional meaning or signification. Mystic gurus are often referred to as ‘shreeguruji’. You can see thus that there has been rather subtle glorification of Golwalkar, the new appellation making him stand a little above the human level.

GPD (March 25, 2006, EPW GPD, An Occasion for RSS)

I
It is said that masses have very short memories. For them it is easy to send today’s icon into oblivion without much hair splitting or it is still easier for them to hail yesterday’s monster as today’s development man.
But do classes or their intellectuals also suffer from similar amnesia? Looking at the important role played by them in the running of the society/state it is expected that they appear different. A recent writeup by one of the think-tanks of the right (Sudhindra Kulkarni, who also happened to be a ‘ghost writer’ for the ex deputy PM and was supposedly responsible for the ‘iron leaders’ speech at Jinnah Mausoleum) in the Sunday Express (11 th Feb 20007) belies this expectation. One could also decipher that it is a deliberate ploy by the writer to obfuscate things. It is equally possible that he is trying to present his wishful thinking as in-depth analysis before the masses.

Continue reading Golwalkar Guruji : Super Human Or Less Than Human →

What was common between the itinerary of Ashok Singhal, International President of Vishwa Hindu Parishad; Major General Bharat Keshar Singh, President of Vishwa Hindu Mahasangh; the Shankaracharya of Puri Nishalananda, Jagadguru Madhwacharya Shri Vishesh Teerth ( Udupi), Jagadguru Ramananandacharya Vasudevacharya and Subramaniam Swamy during the last week of December. Interestingly all of them were part of a three day Virat Hindu Mahasammelan (22-24 th Dec 2006) held at Gorakhpur, UP which was formally organised to deliberate on the ‘Challenges Before Hinduism’.

Of course the way the deliberations unfolded it was clear to even a layperson that it had nothing to do with challenges before Hinduism – neither of the spiritual or the temporal kind – rather it was a gathering to chalk out a political programme couched in religious parlance to further the agenda of Hindutva – the strategy of the political Hinduism.

An important feature of this Mahasammelan was that it was organised parallel to the National Executive Meeting of the BJP at Lucknow.Interestingly while the media was more focussed on the deliberations of the National Executive meeting or was busy reporting about intraparty squabbles , not many people even deemed it necessary to report or comment on this massive gathering of people in the heart of Eastern UP which was rather queering the pitch for the new battles lying ahead before Hindutva.And the moving force behind this jamboree of non-descript Sadhus or Hindutva politicos was a young BJP MP Yogi Adityanath from Gorakhpur who also happens to be the anointed successor to the Goraksha Peeth based in Gorakhpur itself.
Continue reading How Adityanath Wants To Do A Modi ? →

It was rather an unusual type of protest on the streets of Malegaon. But hardly anyone outside the town could even know about it. Protesters donned same kind of hoods which police places on the heads of arrested criminals. They also wore black bands around their arms in a show of protest against official attempts to portray the victims as terrorists. But neither any of those ‘breaking news channels’ nor any of those citizen journos, deemed it necessary to at least report the incident.
The venue for the sit-ins were those very spots which had witnessed bomb blasts on 8 th September – namely Bara Kabristan and Hamidia mosque- where around forty innocent people breathed their last and hundreds of people got injured. (Ref : The Milli Gazette, 1-15 December 2006)

Of course, the unique sit-in was part of the ongoing protest campaign by the townspeople. In fact, the city observed a complete bandh on the 14 th November as part of its protest against the attitude of the police and authorities. It was a day when Chief Minister of Maharashtra Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, came to visit the town to lay the foundation stone of a hospital. People very well knew that if the hospital would have come up as scheduled, many innocent lives could have been saved on that fateful day.
Continue reading Malegaon Bomb Blasts : Need for a Fresh Probe →