Category Archives: Right watch

Government, Refugee crisis, Right watch

Immigrant Detention Centres in India – need for transparency: Paresh Hate

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Guest post by PARESH HATE

From what knowledge we have so far, it seems clear that the issue of citizenship and migration in South Asia is not any less complicated or politically charged than in Global North. Assam Accord and National Registry of Citizenship were already polarizing individuals across the political spectrum.  The demonisation of Bangladeshi immigrants continues throughout the country. But the entering of BJP in Assam politics has complicated the matter even further. Beyond the stories of deportation and violence at the border between India and Bangladesh, now we are also witnessing a rise of detention centres all over India which has put the lives of many migrants effectively into a state of limbo where they are designated for deportation but do not know when they will meet this fate.

Continue reading Immigrant Detention Centres in India – need for transparency: Paresh Hate →

Government, Politics, Right watch

EC Misleads Public With Bogus RTI Reply on VVPAT Count: Poonam Agarwal

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Evidence mounts of something extremely rotten in the state of India and the recent Lok Sabha elections.

We have raised this question on Kafila for a while now, see The Massive Mandate and Open Letter to Election Commission of India by civil servants, the serious charges in which have been met with total silence.

Now POONAM AGARWAL writes in The Quint, which has been investigating the issue for some time.

The current state of India’s Election Commission (EC) raises doubts about its transparency and fairness, especially when we find that it is misleading the public in its RTI replies.

The EC was constituted in 1950 to conduct free and fair elections, and was established as an autonomous body solely so that it can work independently. Is that what it’s doing?

The Quint filed an RTI seeking information and documents on the VVPAT count data during the Lok Sabha elections 2019. In reply, the EC refused to share the documents on the grounds that the VVPAT data is not available with the Commission (which means, at the EC headquarters in Delhi).

Here’s How the EC Is Misleading Citizens.

Read the full article at The Quint.

 

Debates, Government, Politics, Right watch

मोदीनामा : हिंदुत्व का उन्माद

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मई 2019 में नरेंद्र मोदी के नेतृत्व में हिंदुत्ववादी दक्षिणपंथी भारतीय जनता पार्टी ने शानदार चुनावी जीत हासिल की।

यह जीत सामान्य समझ को धता बताती है – जीवन और आजीविका जैसी आधारभूत बातें इस चुनाव का मुद्दा क्यों नहीं बन पाईं? ऐसा क्यों है कि सामान्य और सभ्य लोगों के लिए भी

हिंदुत्व के ठेकेदारों की गुंडागर्दी बेमानी हो गई? क्यों एक आक्रामक और मर्दवादी कट्टरवाद हमारे समाज के लिए सामान्य सी बात हो गई है? ऐसा क्यों है कि बेहद जरूरी मुद्दे आज गैरजरूरी हो गए हैं?

ये सवाल चुनावी समीकरणों और जोड़-तोड़ से कहीं आगे और गहरे हैं। असल में मोदी और भाजपा ने सिर्फ चुनावी नक्शों को ही नहीं बदला है बल्कि सामाजिकं मानदंडों के तोड़-फोड़ की भी शुरूआत कर दी है।

यह किताब प्रधानमंत्री के तौर पर मोदी के पिछले पांच वर्षों की यात्रा को देखते हुए आने वाले पांच वर्षों के लिए एक चेतावनी है।

978-81-940778-5-5

LeftWord Books, New Delhi, 2019

Language: Hindi, 131 pages, 5.5″ x 8.5″

Price INR 195.00 Book Club Price INR 137

(https://mayday.leftword.com/catalog/product/view/id/21471)

SUBHASH GATADE
Subhash Gatade is a left activist and author. He is the author of Charvak ke Vaaris (Hindi, 2018), Ambedkar ani Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (Marathi, 2016), Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India (2011) and The Saffron Condition (2011). His writings for children include Pahad Se Uncha Aadmi (2010).

Feminism, Politics, Right watch

The Politics of Piety in Naya Pakistan: Afiya Zia

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Guest Post by AFIYA ZIA

A year ago, Pakistan’s national elections brought in a new government led by the Pakistan Tehreeq e Insaf (PTI) and headed by the former-cricketer-turned politician, Imran Khan. Khan had been drifting in the political wilderness for 22 years, waiting for providence to appoint him Prime Minister. As the 2018 elections loomed, this was not looking possible. However, a series of legal cases of corruption started being levelled against the serving PM, Nawaz Sharif, and efforts were made to atrophy others from the major parties of the PML-N and PPP (who had signed the ‘charter of democracy’ to prevent military intervention in civilian governance). The methods of these moves made it clear that the ‘establishment’ was betting on a new horse. Khan was not taking any risks though.

Six months before the national election, he entered marriage for the third time (with no less controversy than his previous marriages) to Bushra Maneka who was also his spiritual guide or pirni. A mother and a grandmother, there was speculation that Bushra divorced her husband for the higher cause of marrying the PM-in-waiting. In the days prior to the summer election, Khan performed Umrah in Mecca with Bushra, and was seen prostrating at a shrine in Pakistan and accessorised with rosaries and amulets in preparation for the polls.

Continue reading The Politics of Piety in Naya Pakistan: Afiya Zia →

Culture, Debates, Decolonizing Theory, Identities, Images, Religion, Right watch

Against Aachaaram: Srinarayana Guru

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The excerpt below is translated by DARSHAN SUBRAMANIAM. The note that follows is by J Devika.

Continue reading Against Aachaaram: Srinarayana Guru →

Culture, Debates, Decolonizing Theory, Education, Identities, Religion, Right watch

Against Aachaaram: A Dossier from Malayalam – Announcement

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This is to announce a new series of postings I will be doing, relating to aachaaram in Kerala.

Aachaaram is loosely translated as ‘customary practices’ or ‘customary rituals’, but in 19th century Malayali society, it referred to a massive, inter-connected, all-pervading web of practices, rituals, and ideas which bolstered the domination of the upper-castes — in Kerala’s context, this meant the Brahmin-sudra nexus — over the lower castes. It touched the most intimate and personal aspects of a person’s life; through it,  the allegiances and the labour of lower caste communities were extracted to benefit the upper castes. The lower-caste assertions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries here, through which modern democracy became a possibility at all, were directed against this web. Aachaaram, however, survived this phase through shrinking its spatial presence to savarna homes and temples; later, after the re-consolidation of brahmin-sudra power, towards the end of the 20th century, the rise of spiritual capitalism had led to aacharam’s resurrection as the vehicle of gendered savarna power — and as the provider of opening gambits for the Hindu fundamentalists — in Kerala .

In this series, I will post translations of selections/excerpts from the writings of the critics of aachaaram from early 20th century Kerala, with short reflections on each for the present. The many different readings of Hinduism that arose in that period when the Brahmin-sudra nexus was thrown into confusion, as well as the many different dreams of social liberation from different parts of the world that entered Malayali society then — from C Krishnan’s Buddhism to Marxism — produced powerful critical exposures that revealed aachaaram to be nothing but a vehicle and instrument of the power of certain groups over others. The effort made by these voices to point to the danger that it posed to a dream of a just society was largely ignored by the mainstream, especially the mainstream left.

The first of these is an excerpt from a conversation between the well-known social revolutionary, the avarna-born seer, spiritual leader, and philosopher, Srinarayana Guru and his disciples in which the annual pilgrimage to Sivagiri was planned, which I will post separately.

 

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Law, Mirror Worlds, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Will India Remember Dadri’s Akhlaq, as Germany Recalls Victims of Nazi Barbarism?

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The German acceptance for stolpersteine plaques helps them honour victims of Nazism. One wonders if it will ever be possible to take up similar projects in this part of South Asia.

Germany Recalls Victims of Nazi Barbarism

Hier Wohnte Bernhard Marx

JB 1897

Deportiert 20.07.1942

Minsk

Ermordet 24.07.1942

‘Here lived Bernhard Marx

Year of Birth 1897

Deported 20.07.1942

Minsk

Assassinated 24.07.1942’

It was while walking past a desolate street in Bonn that we stumbled upon some brass plates on which the names of the members of a family were engraved. The name Bernhard, supposedly the head of this family, was engraved on the first plate, followed by three to his right: Erna Marx Geb Hartman, (born 1899), Helena (1929) and Julie (1938).

This was an ill-fated Jewish family from Bonn, deported to the dreaded Minsk concentration—rather extermination—camp that was brutally murdered just four days after they got there. The youngest, Julie was barely four when she died.

Estimates of how many died in this camp over a period of two years vary but at least 65000, mainly Jews, perished there until it was liberated by the Soviet forces.

The young researcher who was our host and guide to the city said that the brass plaques, raised on stone, are called stolpersteine. Stolper means to stumble in German and steine means stone. The idea behind erecting stolpersteine is to raise awareness about events that took place in the late thirties and early forties in this region, when millions of innocent people—Jews, Romas, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and political dissidents—were sent to the gas chambers or brutally killed by the Nazi regime.

( Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/India-Remember-Dadri-Akhlaq-Germany-Victims-Nazi-Barbarism)

Centre watch, Culture, Debates, Government, Media politics, Politics, Right watch

Modinama : Issues That Did Not Matter

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In May 2019, the party of the Hindu Right, Bharatiya Janata Party, under Narendra Modi, won a spectacular electoral victory.

The victory seemed to defy common sense – why did conversations of life and livelihood not dominate the election? Why did the thuggery of the Hindutva vigilantes seem inconsequential to vast numbers of ordinary, decent people? Why is an aggressive, masculine fundamentalism so normalized in our society today?

In other words, why didn’t the issues that matter, seem to matter? The question goes deeper than electoral arithmetic. It asks if Modi and the BJP have not only changed the electoral map, but also begun to corrode social norms.

This book, based on Modi’s first five years as prime minister, is a warning for the next five.

SUBHASH GATADE

Subhash Gatade is a left activist and author. He is the author of Charvak ke Vaaris (Hindi, 2018), Ambedkar ani Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (Marathi, 2016), Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India (2011) and The Saffron Condition (2011). His writings for children include Pahad Se Uncha Aadmi (2010).

978-81-934666-9-8

LeftWord Books, New Delhi, 2019

Language: English

128 pages, 5.5″ x 8.5″

Price INR 195.00 Book Club Price INR 137.00

(https://mayday.leftword.com/catalog/product/view/id/21450)

 

Culture, Right watch

Why I Celebrate the Wedding of Nusrat Jahan: Zakia Soman

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Guest post by ZAKIA SOMAN 

The wedding of Nusrat Jahan the TMC MP to Nikhil Jain is refreshing news. It is heartening to see two young Indians from different faith backgrounds uniting and celebrating their marriage in the times of religious hate and division.

The mixing of politics and religion has led to a climate where marrying a person from another faith has become extremely difficult specially for young people. The case of Hadiya may have been highlighted in the media but it is certainly not the only instance where a couple had to undergo tremendous hardships for falling in love. The self-appointed guardians of religion who seem omnipresent in family, community, police, judiciary, government, media would walk great lengths to prevent inter-faith marriages from taking place. Continue reading Why I Celebrate the Wedding of Nusrat Jahan: Zakia Soman →

Government, Politics, Right watch

Lok Sabha Elections 2019 – Calling the Election Commission to account: Statement by retired civil servants, veterans, academics and concerned citizens

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Letter to the Election Commission of India written by 64 former civil servants, endorsed by 83 veterans, academics and other concerned citizens.

Shri Sunil Arora, Chief Election Commissioner, Shri Ashok Lavasa,  Election Commissioner, and Shri Sushil Chandra, Election Commissioner.

Election Commission of India.

Sirs,

Serious Irregularities in the Conduct of General Elections, 2019  

  • We are a group of former civil servants that takes up, from time to time, matters of exceptional national interest, seeking to remind our cherished democratic institutions of their responsibility to uphold the lofty ideals of the Constitution. We write to you today to draw your attention to the several very troubling and still unexplained issues pertaining to the conduct of the General Elections, 2019, by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
  • From time to time, the media has reported on various irregularities in the conduct of the 2019 General Elections. While we accept that not every media report is accurate or true, the ECI’s non-rebuttal of an untrue or inaccurate story leaves the public to draw its own conclusion: that the ECI has no valid explanation to offer. The mere dismissal of the allegations as baseless, without an explanation as to why they should be so considered, is unsatisfactory. As the custodian of the most precious commodity in a democracy – the people’s mandate – it is your duty to be transparent, and accountable to the Constitution and the people of India. Continue reading Lok Sabha Elections 2019 – Calling the Election Commission to account: Statement by retired civil servants, veterans, academics and concerned citizens →
Culture, Debates, Movements, Politics, Right watch

Gujarat Today Could be What ‘Hindu Rashtra’ Will Look Like for Dalits

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The recent spate of attacks on dalits in the state is an indicator of the fact that the unfolding project of RSS’s Hindu Rashtra has entered a new phase where the community is being construed as the ‘new other’.

Hindu Rashtra

When I was born, I was not a child

I was a dream, a dream of revolt

that my mother, oppressed for thousands of years,

dreamt.

Still it is untouched in my eyes

Covered with wrinkles of thousand years, her face

her eyes, two lakes overflowing with tears

have watered my body….

– Sahil Parmar (Noted Gujarati Poet)

 

‘You are Welcome to Enter … Village of Hindu Rashtra’!

It was around two decades ago that headlines in a few national newspapers reported the ‘arrival’ of Hindu Rashtra in parts of Gujarat. A few inquisitive journalists had even displayed photographs detailing the nascent phenomenon then.

The shock generated by the news died down in a short while.

Hardly anybody then could have a premonition that it won’t take much time for the idea of Hindu Rashtra to gain wider acceptability across India with a commonsense gaining ground rather getting consolidated where religious minorities were increasingly understood as ‘the other’.

Could it be said that the recent spate of attacks on dalits — leading to at least three deaths in the past one month in the same state, coupled with growing instances of life of insecurity of many concerning their lives or their continued deprivation by the dominant castes, is an indicator of the fact that the unfolding project of Hindu Rashtra has entered a new phase where dalits are being construed as the ‘new other’, one who could wreck the project of ‘Hindu Unity’ from within.

Perhaps it is too early to draw any such conclusion, but portents are there for everyone to see.

( Read the full article here : https://www.newsclick.in/Hindu-Rashtra-Gujarat-BJP-RSS-Dalits)

Debates, Education, Right watch

Draft New Education Policy 2019 through a Gender and Sexuality Lens

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Recommendations on Draft New Education Policy (DNEP) by a collective of women’s groups, queer groups, NGOs, students, and academics working in the field of gender, sexuality and education.

We, a collective of women’s groups, queer groups, NGOs, students, and academics working in the field of gender, sexuality and education, across India strongly recommend and reiterate that for all the recommendations given here, the policy and thereafter, the Government of India and State Governments must ensure that there is a proactive strengthening of democracy within educational institutions. The right to expression, liberty, equality and diversity are rights enshrined in the Constitution of India. We welcome that the DNEP 2019 as it states that it will promote constitutional values in education. However, for the implementation of this objective, changes in the content of the curriculum will not suffice. Constitutional values must be protected in the processes and institutional structures of schools and higher education bodies.

We commend the policy for introducing the following provisions:

  1. DNEP 2019 addresses the issue of early childhood education, especially the timely recommendation of making Years 3 to 8 as a foundational stage. This becomes critical as early education and experiences are the most formative in a child’s life, and a holistic pre-school education continues well beyond traditional schooling years.
  2. It is the first policy to uphold the Honourable Supreme Court’s 2014 directives around transgender inclusion in education.
  3. The policy has taken cognizance of many children who continue to dropout at different levels, and the even more serious problem of enrolled children not attending school regularly.
  4. It seeks to strengthen departments/ centres of education at universities.

Having said this, the subsequent list of recommendations is laid down to strengthen the DNEP 2019 from the lens of gender and sexuality, especially for the most marginalised communities. We feel that gender and sexuality related rights could only be ensured if there is a larger enabling environment, in which diversity of thought and practices are respected. These, we feel, would be critical in developing a robust educational policy for the country, which would address the fundamental intersectionalities that individuals and communities face in their lives. Continue reading Draft New Education Policy 2019 through a Gender and Sexuality Lens →

Law, Politics, Right watch

Standing up for those who stood with us – Statement of support for Lawyers Collective

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We, the undersigned concerned citizens, are extremely perturbed at the increasing tendency of the Government, through its agencies, to use excessive power to curb the voice of the people, which is the very essence of democracy.

The work of Lawyer’s Collective in general and that of Indira Jaising and Anand Grover in particular, has contributed to changing the lives not just of individuals but of citizens of a democratic republic. They have not only represented the rights of individuals and communities such as slum dwellers, workers, trade unions, prisoners, SC/ST associations, Bhopal Gas tragedy victims, women, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities as lawyers, but have also contributed immensely to the discourse of human rights and state accountability as public intellectuals.

Continue reading Standing up for those who stood with us – Statement of support for Lawyers Collective →

Debates, Education, Right watch

Draft New Education Policy 2019 – Mass Feedback Campaign: Better Universities

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In support of the campaign launched by BETTER UNIVERSITIES.

The Government of India has finally unveiled the much-awaited draft of the National Educational Policy (NEP) 2019, and with that, has come a host of new issues to address and engage with.

To access a copy of the draft, please click here.

Here is the full point by point critique made of the Draft NEP by Better Universities, that anybody concerned about education in India should read very carefully.

At the end you will find the link that will take you the campaign for mass feedback on the NEP.

Response to the Draft National Education Policy 2019

Most significant point in my opinion:

What is even more damning is that the appointments to all statutory bodies in the higher education sector will have to be made by the RSA – and must, by default, await the nod of the Prime Minister. It is unambiguously stated that appointees to the NHERA, HEGC, NRF, NAAC and all other standard-setting bodies must report to the RSA and thus be beholden to the infirmities of political will and favour. Needless to say, this amounts to the NEP’s unashamed surrender to ruling party intervention and an effective imagining of higher education as subservient to political interests. Autonomy is shown the door, both structurally and ideologically – despite the Draft making a shrill pitch for it through the previous chapters.

Introduction

While the former HRD minister’s message (included in the Draft policy) congratulates the exercise as evolving “path breaking reforms” based on the “foundational pillars of Access, Equity, Quality, Affordability and Accountability”, the higher education sector is instead coming under greater political control and contributing to wider inequities with respect to institutional inputs and outcomes. Even the employment goals envisioned by the curricular reforms proposed in the Draft policy might produce greater job insecurities among students coming into higher education from across different social and economic backgrounds. Continue reading Draft New Education Policy 2019 – Mass Feedback Campaign: Better Universities →

Culture, Debates, Feminism, Right watch

The politics of Hindutva and its erotic charge: Jaya Sharma

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Guest post by JAYA SHARMA

In the post election bewilderment that continues to grip us, might it be that we are asking the wrong questions?

The questions are by now familiar. How can it be that a Pragya Thakur wins and an Atishi loses? How can it be that demonetization doesn’t translate into loss of votes? How can it be that the party under whom lynching of Dalits and Muslims becomes a norm gets re-elected? How can it be that hatred for the other wins over humanity?

In response, journalists, political scientists and writers have pointed out that our assumptions related to the significance of macro economic indicators, caste-based voting patterns, among other things, were faulty. But the questions still remain,  including the big one: why did facts and logic lose so dramatically?

Might it be that the bewilderment continues because there is a glaring blind spot in the way in which we understand politics? Might it be that facts and logic were never the only driving force? I will argue here that in order to understand the recent election results and the power of Hindu Nationalism more broadly, we need the lens of the psyche. The play of desire and the erotic is key to understanding politics and dipping into our own sex and love lives can help us see this.  ‘The personal is political’ mantra can come to the rescue in the bewilderment that we feel today.  In making this argument I will draw upon research that I have undertaken for a book that I am in the process of writing called Fantasy Frames: Sex, Love and Indian Politics, to be published later this year. Continue reading The politics of Hindutva and its erotic charge: Jaya Sharma →

Government, Politics, Right watch

Update on “tally mismatch” in 2019 Lok Sabha Elections: Ravi Nair

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In an earlier post  we made note of the serious matter of unaccounted movement of EVMs in private vehicles in different parts of the country and the mismatch between the ECI figures for voter turnout and EVM votes cast, neither of which the EC has satisfactorily explained until today.

Now in a detailed analysis in NewsClick, Ravi Nair points out that even three weeks after the last phase of the election, ECI is yet to publish the “final data”, and whatever it has put out till now is “provisional numbers”.  More worryingly, Nair points out that when glaring anomalies came into the public domain, ECI not only deleted the uploaded data from both Suvidha Portal and its main website, but also issued a release to say that whatever was published was “the provisional voter turnout data”, which was “tentative”.

However, the ECI never bothered to answer the fundamental questions: How did it announce winners based on these “provisional” and “tentative” data? How did the automated counting of votes polled in EVMs become “tentative”?

Read Ravi Nair’s article “ECI’s stance on data discrepancies: No right to question?” on NewsClick here.

Government, Politics, Right watch

The “massive mandate” of 2019 and the role of the Election Commission

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Caution: Long read!

This is the elephant in the room, is it not? Was this “massive mandate” of the Lok Sabha elections 2019, the result of a free and fair election? Should we continue to discuss this outcome – the scale of the BJP victory, the numbers of seats, the margins by which seats were won – through political analysis alone?

Rather, has not political analysis of the election become inevitably deeply influenced by these margins and these numbers of seats, by the scale of the sweep?  In other words, the analysis is of necessity post facto, assuming that these seats have actually been won fairly, and therefore represent the views of the electorate.

I found very revealing a story by two Reuters journalists who covered rural North India extensively.  Mayank Bhardwaj and Rajendra Jadhav ruminate on how they could have gone so wrong in assessing the mood of the electorate. Although they say they never thought Modi would lose this election, it looked certain that he would return with a reduced majority. There was nothing  they heard and observed on the ground that suggested the actual outcome. They conclude that next time they will travel even more, push their respondents harder, “be more aware of our limitations.”

Many seasoned journalists have the same sense of shock. But what if they were not wrong after all?

Continue reading The “massive mandate” of 2019 and the role of the Election Commission →

Culture, Debates, Government, Politics, Right watch

Arming Children, Securing a Future?

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By distributing knives to meritorious children, organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha, are trying to give religious legitimacy to what is essentially a political use of faith.

Hindu Mahasabha distributing knives to children

Image courtesy: Twitter

What does an organisation do when it wants to congratulate meritorious students who have excelled in exams?

Reward them with some gifts, say, books, and (if finances allow) give them scholarships or laptops to facilitate their further studies. Definitely not gift them knives.

Well, Pooja Shakuni Pandey, the national secretary of Hindu Mahasabha, who had been making news for controversial reasons for more than a year, exactly did this on Savarkar Jayanti. This mathematics professor made it clear that she was not much interested in how they study further or what they wanted to become. With this knife distribution programme, along with a copy of Bhagwad Gita, she wanted to ‘create Hindu soldiers out of these children’ and it was basically a “[s]tep to motivate Hindus and empower them, especially the younger generation, with knives to protect themselves.”

( Read the complete text here : https://www.newsclick.in/Hindu-Mahasabha-Distributing-Knives-Meritorious-Children-Political-Use-of-Religion)

Culture, Government, Politics, Right watch

Modi 2.0: Majoritarianism Normalised?

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This election verdict will have vital ramifications for democracy’s onward journey for decades together, and silencing and further invisibilisation of religious minorities would be its logical outcome.

minorities in india

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”  — – Gramsci

A journalist friends’ prophesy has finally come true.

The day India launched ‘surgical strikes’ across the border supposedly to avenge the Pulwama terror attack, this friend immediately sent a message on a WhatsApp group that Narendra Modi has ensured himself a second term. He stood his ground despite few heated exchanges on the group from Left leaning friends.

In the coming days, this not so expected debacle of the secular camp and the surge of the Hindutva Supremacist camp in newer areas and communities would be further analysed/debated/discussed from various angles. It will be debated why despite the caution expressed by the likes of Amartya Sen, who had concluded how India has taken “a quantum jump in wrong direction since 2014”; how despite being cautioned by leading scholars, intellectuals, scientists of our times that the  very idea of India is at stake in the elections, the people in general did not pay any heed to their appeals and have resolved to continue the journey with a renewed frenzy in the same direction or have fully supposedly embraced this idea of ‘New India’ jettisoning the old one. Remember, not only has the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) been able to garner more seats than last time but its vote share has also increased more than 5%.

(Read the full text here : https://www.newsclick.in/Minorities-India-Silenced-Modi-Reelection-BJP-Majoritarianism-RSS)

Bad ideas, Government, Images, Law, Politics, Religion, Right watch

Modi’s Meditation ‘Tour’

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The art of legitimising religiosity in a secular country and live happily ever after.

Modi in KedarnathReligion is regarded by the common people as true, by wise people as false and by the rulers as useful. — Seneca (4 BC-AD65)

A picture is worth a thousand words.

An outgoing Prime Minister of the ‘world’s biggest democracy’ seen meditating under the glare of cameras in a cave specially opened for the occasion and with a dress stitched for the event, conveys many things simultaneously.

First and foremost, it tells us that the present incumbent to the post would at least be remembered for his varied sartorial tastes among the galaxy of PMs who headed the republic earlier. It appears that either all the others lacked the sense to dress for the occasion or found it a mundane job not befitting the post and the responsibilities they held then. Continue reading Modi’s Meditation ‘Tour’ →