ASYLUM FOR ASSANGE

SUNNY THOMAS

Long at last, Julian Assange found a home! The celebrated Leak Journalist was hounded out of his own homeland and country after country slamming the door on him till Ecuador decided to grant him asylum. Some of his leaks were earth-shaking, contributing to transparency, while some were politically-motivated and suspect.

Assange is not a saint; nor is he considered for beatification. Driven by vain glory and self-aggrandizement, he became the self-appointed crusader on Mission Destruction – creative destruction if you may call so. The establishment of the capitalist world hated and feared him, and would have loved to get him fixed on charges fictitious or real. But the masses that have nothing to lose or nothing to hide look up to him as a messiah.

To believe or not to believe? This is the dilemma Wiki Leaks poses to its readers. Just because nine expose were found true, it does not logically follow that the tenth is true as well. Technology has not yet discovered a gadget to sift falsehood from truth – one of the original dilemmas of philosophers.

Just imagine all Assamese are given asylum in Bangalore and Mysore, after they are displaced from their homeland by the migrant Bangladeshis! Bangladesh has virtually annexed Assam by proxy, which is an eye-opener to the Chinese who failed to do so. The tide of sub-nationalism started in the late 1960s with Shiv Sena claimed that Maharashtra is for Maharashtrians! There was a sense of injury among Maharashtrians when they saw their girls were molested by immigrant youth in search of jobs. The cosmopolitan culture of Bombay (now Mumbai) bred Street Romeos, who are just freed from parental control. This led Marathi editor Atre suggesting a cultural organization to protect Maharashtrian girls from their predators. 

Balashib Thackeray, a brilliant cartoonist with political ambition, hijacked the idea. His musclemen intimidated the `outsiders’  by running riots in the early 1970s and finally settled down for what is rumoured as `protection money’ from hoteliers and business establishments of `outside’ origin. No one complained because the profit margins were still high in Bombay. It is well known that Bollywood actors have security network with connections to the underworld. But no one complained.

In Assam, with the emergence of ULFA, the story was repeated. 

`Outsiders’ (not just business establishments as in Maharashrta) paid protection money for the safety of their life and limbs. So there were parallel governments, one run by the duly elected, and the other run by the unduly elected mafia, both taxing the people.  

Mafia rule and fundamentalism thrive because they enjoy political patronage. The present Assam crisis is fundamentalist-engineered and hence one spectrum of politicians maintains an undignified silence. The same politicians will cry hoarse if the rival fundamentalist groups are fermenting trouble.  The net result is Bharat Mata is living in Refugee Camps!    

      

Jinnah died broken-hearted because Pakistan turned out to be the antithesis of what he had envisioned. What pierced Gandhiji’s soul was not Nathuram Godse’s bullet but India’s partition. No two men could empathise with each other better than Gandhi and Jinnah.

For a breed of brainless politicians, anybody who creates commotion is a leader. Look at the rousing reception that yoga guru Baba Ramdev got, as if they are pleading `Lead us kindly light!’ both Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev were enacting scripts written by others but with a political plot. A handful of corrupt people trying to eliminate corruption and people linked to black money wanting the Prime Minister to eliminate it are nothing more than television comedy shows! 

  

Either Advani is joking, or he is dead serious. A non-BJP PM to lead NDA, on the face value, is a cruel joke on Nitish Kumar, the most eligible bachelor to tie the knot. But when no party or alliance come anywhere near the stability mark, parliamentarians will have to look for a leader acceptable to both Congress and BJP, and UPA and NDA. Perhaps, the only one who qualifies the test is Nitish, who has the credential and credibility. 

Maybe Advani is playing the spoil sport, because Narendra Modi’s enemies are within the party more than without. The shrewd gamesman knows BJP’s chances are as bleak as that of Congress, at least for now. Maybe BJP would like to project Nitish as PM till the election and upset the apple cart later.    

In the ring are Nitish, however much he denies, and Modi who constantly attacks Manmohan Singh in the hope of turning it into an American model Presidential election. And of course Rahul Gandhi, because India is not UP. The outcome of a lawless state need not be a pointer to 2014. If C Chidambaram restores the confidence of the investors and take the economy to its buoyancy, there is no doubt that the voters will not look for an alternative.  

NOTE: Julian Paul Assange is an Australian editor, activist, political talk show host, computer programmer, publisher and journalist.

SAINA O SAINA!

SUNNY THOMAS

Hail Mary, full of strength! Famed are you among women. And famed is your Olympic bronze. Inspire us now and at all times. Amen! A short prayer for every Indian who watched the Summer Olympic 2012. Indeed Mary deserves the highest gallantry award for fighting for India against equally determined women but taller and stronger than her.

Gagan Narang won India’s first (bronze) medal for shooting (men’s 10 metres air rifles) and Vijay Kumar, the only silver the country has got, in shooting (men’s 25 m. rapid fire pistol). Saina Nehwal bagged bronze in badminton (women’s singles) and Mary Kom, bronze in wrestling (women’s flyweight). On the eve of Mary’s fight for silver, India’s most famous commentator, Boria Majumdar, commented that since she has not lost twice to the same opponent, Mary was all set to win silver, and even gold. In politics and sports, anything is possible. Millions of Indians shared the joy and the heartbreak that Mary went through.

But it was Saina, 22, who captured the nation’s imagination, like Boris Becker at 18 winning the Wimbledon Cup. She was the Young Sensation that Sachin Tendulkar was, playing against Pakistan at 18. Now she joins the rank of Kapil Dev, Sachin, Dravid and Dhoni, who have made the nation proud. And she shares pride of place in the nation’s Hall of Fame with the immortals like Father of the Nation, the First Prime Minister, the Iron Man of India, the Constitution Fathers, Prime Minister Durga Gandhi and others.  

Hats off to Vijay Kumar and Gagan Narang, who made Olympic history by their winning streaks. India sent 83 sports persons to compete in 13 events. What happened to Mahesh Bhupati and Rohan Bonnapa, who made headlines for the wrong reasons? What happened to the rest of the India Olympic entourage?  The government spent $48.1 million and $11 million came from private funding. Which means, over $14 million per medal ! indeed Bronze is Gold for India, considering the price at which our players fetched them.  

Look at the medal tally of some other nations:

United States      39      25     26     90

China                 37      24     19     80 

Great Britain       25      13     14     52 

Russia               12       21     23     56 

Korea                12         7      6     25 

Germany            10       16     11     37

To command the respect of the comity of nations, India must produce ace sports persons. America and China are global powers because they are more disciplined, more innovative and more goal-oriented. Generalizations could run into troubled waters but the obvious need not be overemphasized. As a nation, China is far ahead of us, in primary education, sports education, and in health care. Saying that it is the Blacks who win most of the medals has no merit as an argument because Blacks are Americans too!

Britain, of course, once ruled the world, and as a world power it has yielded place to other nations; yet it maintains a semblance of its past glory. The decline of Russia after the break up of the Soviet Union is understandable; but Korea’s leap ahead of Germany wins world admiration.

What are Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics? A quick glance at Olympic Games years will give us the answer:

Summer Olympics: 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 

Winter Olympics: 2002, 2006, 20010     

 

Faster, higher, stronger is the Olympic motto (Citius, Altius, Fortius). And you must be a schoolboy or a schoolgirl to remember that Olympic Games began in 776 B.C. The Olympic flag has five rings interconnected, to represent the five Continents, and one of the five colours – blue, yellow, black, green and red – is in every national flag. The flag was designed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1914.

Barbarians can never appreciate Olympics; they know only how to shoot and kill people who have done them no harm. In fact, Olympics and terrorism are the two faces of civilization – the noble and the hideous!

  

     

CRY MY BELOVED COUNTRY!

SUNNY THOMAS

The minister sat impudently as the inferno engulfed Tamil Nadu Express claiming over 30 lives. The same minister was smug when a girl was running desperately from compartment to compartment, fleeing from her rapist predators, while the whole train (Yeshwantpur-Mysore Express) watched the scene as if it were a live television show! The minister indeed deserves to be hanged but what about the spectators who feasted on the misfortunes of a fellow citizen? This is the tragedy of a civilization that once was a magnet of knowledge-seekers from across the world. (We are talking about the schools of Nalanda and Taxila where, according to the Chinese traveler Fa-Hien, thousands flocked seeking wisdom. 

What angers many Indians is the casual attitude of ministers to human tragedies, avoidable at all times but repeat themselves on the callousness of the powers that be. Who doesn’t know posting armed guards on trains – call them the Railway Protection Force though they protect none – prevents crime on trains? And who doesn’t know surprise safety checks alert the lethargic staff who are the main culprits behind most rail mishaps? Populism demands cheap rail travel which means not hiking the passenger fares, compromising on passenger safety. What follows is a tale of unmanned level crossing casualties, molestation and rape on running trains and sporadic infernos, besides superfast trains ramming into stationary locomotives. Garnering votes by opening new rail lines is another ploy of politicians who reduce a ministry into electoral calculus.

Last year, a girl who was the sole bread-winner of her ailing parents, was pushed out of a running train near Shornur (Kerala) by a gang of rapists. The failure of some employee to connect the iron plate between the two compartments caused the life of another girl who celebrated her birthday at home and was returning to her college hostel. The unsuspecting girl tread on the rubber cover of the iron plate that was not there while traversing from one compartment to the next and fell on the rail track below, her body cut into pieces by the running wheels. Railway horror stories abound but people, like the gleeful spectators of the train and the minister himself, have other things to worry about. So the exceptions become the general norm and the avoidable, the happening.   

     

The north and the northeast are groping in the dark. Let’s face it we consume more than we produce. Our upward moving middle class have tasted the goodies of lifestyle and now will stop short of nothing but total indulgence. Lifestyle multiplies power demand and our frustration; it has throttled our patience and to an extent our character, too. Lifestyle has turned all of us into demand machines, demanding all the time, demanding more and producing less. Soon we will demand more water, more food, more fuel, more housing, more parks, better infrastructure. What shall poor Manmohan Singh do? He must be waiting for 2014, to say good-buy to these ungrateful Indians!  

P Chidambaram must be the happy man of the Cabinet to get rid of Home for Finance, making him the key player for brightening the Congress chances for a hat-trick. Chidambaram did a good job in Home, notwithstanding the carnage of 75 BSF jawans. With lenient chief ministers who are Maoist sympathizers, no breakthrough can be made in fighting terrorists. Susheel Kumar Shinde must be thanking his stars for getting rid of his Power ministry at the hour of India’s worst power crisis. The PM knows nothing much can be expected of his Power minister and so wisely transferred him to Home. Shinde is basically a do-nothing man, who can don any portfolio and neatly fits into any ministry. But Veerappa Moily of all people has no reason to be grateful to his PM for shifting him to a crisis-ridden ministry. We all know the crisis will soon pass over and Power will be Moily’s forte.   

Olympic heartbreaks have started almost as soon as the games began. Olympics as they say is not everyone’s cup of tea. As a nation, we are not very sportive, but there are exceptionally good sportsmen and sportswomen in India, who have fought against all odds and babudom to reach there. Let’s us wish them good luck!