INDIA RAPED!

BY SUNNY THOMAS

‘If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake?’ Who said this, India’s own Home Secretary! India is being raped everyday by bureaucrats who are contemptuous of hapless rape victims, and laud the Delhi police whose criminal lethargy caused the rape in a moving bus in the first place, and whose inept handling of the student crowd forms the worst case study in police mismanagement. Any demand for justice should begin with replacing the Home Secretary and the Police Commissioner to send the right message.  

Dr Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister for Multinationals and Foreign Direct Investors, whose welfare and profitability he is duty-bound to protect. Rape is a purely domestic phenomenon, and a rape here and a rape there do not make economic sense, and are not even statistics. So don’t expect the Prime Minister to be unduly alarmed and, in all probability, this rape would have passed on as another rape. 

Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde who was projected as the  ‘Man of the Match’ by our television channels in the Ajmal Kasab hanging is preoccupied with brightening his Pakistani counterpart’s image in India, presumably for better neighbourly relationship. In the diplomatic world, nothing is more futile than holding a dialogue with Pakistan, as dialogue after dialogue proves it.  They provide no more than photo ops (opportunities) for television channels.  

The extreme cruelty with which the girl was raped and a metal rod inserted in her private parts damaging her intestine leaves no room for debate on capital punishment. The crime reminds one of a medieval mindset demanding barbaric punishment. The appointment of Justice J S Verma to head the Judicial Commission to look into the whole gamut of rape and the conduct of the police gives hope of a fair trial. 

Had  the student leaders sought an appointment with the President and presented him a charter of demands while the crowd peacefully demonstrated at India Gate, events would have moved more meaningfully. The attempt undeniably was to bypass the PM to approach the President, giving clearly the evidence of an ideological bent of mind. As street politics is becoming the popular brand of every agitator, care must be taken by the organisers not to let others hijack the agitation for their propaganda. If the first day’s demonstration was peaceful , the second day’s demonstration turned into an agitation with some publicity-hungry desperados bringing thousands of their followers for a battle.  History has shown again and again that all popular movements end up in the hands of the unscrupulous, turning a noble cause into a subaltern orgy.  

Some ideologues want to keep alive the climate of agitation till the next general election. The Anna Hazare movement fizzled out; Arvind Kejriwal is on a holiday; and they want the students to continue the agitation as long as the fire in the belly lasts. How long will it lasts is anybody’s guess. The television editors who called the Anna Hazare Movement a spontaneous one is now calling the student demonstration, too, a spontaneous movement  – nothing is farther from the truth. Racing constantly against time and other television channels, they court spontaneity and constantly err on the side of the truth. They interpret news in a labyrinth of assumptions and presumptions that do not represent the ground reality. You need to watch several channels to get a picture of the ground reality.  

The redeeming feature of the student demonstration is that it has shaken up the rapist – the scam-tainted politician, the contemptuous bureaucrat, the trigger-happy cop, the power-brokers and middlemen looting the nation. These are the true rapists who deserve capital punishment. Hang them along with the rapists of the girl in the moving bus so that democracy is made safe! 

            

SHOOT GUNMAN SHOOT!

BY SUNNY THOMAS

The real tragedy in the Connecticut shootout, in which 20 school children below 10 and eight others, including the Principal, died is that it could happen again next week. The tragedy has a script, written by an Invisible Hand, as it unfolds: after killing his mother, Adam Lanza, the assailant, went to his Alma Mater, Sandy Hook Elementary School, to finish his ignoble mission. 

Unless America addresses the root-cause that triggered this tragedy – the gun culture and the alienation of the individual from the mainstream – Connecticut will be re-enacted not only in the other states but the rest of the world which America leads by example.  

When President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 followed by two other assassinations in two years – that of his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, and the civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King – the stage was set for abolishing guns in private hands. That did not happen because the Americans who mattered thought it their inalienable right, like the freedom of the Press, to own a gun as status symbol. It is not the poor and lowly middle class Americans who want the gun but the rich and the powerful. But democratic lobbying, which is the art of manipulating the media, makes it look as though every American is clamouring for his fundamental right to own and shoot at will – the ultimate in freedom! 

The intriguing thing about the gun is that if you don’t control the gun, the gun will control you. If America does not control the gun, the gun will control America. That Adam Lanza  came from a broken family is only part of the story. His mom, Nancy Lanza, had a true passion – a passion for guns – which is well known in the neighbourhood where she lived. She had acquired several types of guns and  proudly displayed them to her visitors. No one knew how she earned her living but she was affable to strangers and even generous.   

That’s not all. She took her children religiously to shooting ranges near Newtown, a suburb of New York city, where a community of gun enthusiasts lived. There she taught them the art of shooting (butchering)  – just in case – knowing little she herself would be her son’s first victim. She enjoyed visiting the bar and displaying her bravado, and that’s the kind of life she set before her children as example.  Her older son Ryan had left her and is living alone. 

After the gun culture comes the money culture, the cult that worships money. Crass materialism that destroys the very foundation of society can only lead to mass alienation as is happening in the affluent society. ‘Greed is God,’ said Gordon Gecko, the god of the Wall Street. 

‘I create nothing. But I own. We make rules. War, peace, famine, upheaval. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you are not knave enough to think that we are living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market. And you are a part of it. Stick around pal, I’ve got a lot to teach you.’ 

We live under the spell of Wall Street and Walmart – and we are willing to change ourselves to the plastic culture they impose on us! Plastic money, plastic heart, plastic desires! Life is a big shopping binge, and when we go burst, we booze, buy a gun and shoot! Soon our seared conscience will ask, Whose children are they, any way? 

  

(Courtesy: globalmediaschool.com)

  

 

MODI OR GANDHI?

BY SUNNY THOMAS

The other day, a television editor asked me in right earnest, Whom do you like to see as the next Prime Minister, Narendra Modi or Rahul Gandhi?  

I am very clear about what I want in life – not even once have I asked my wife, What do I want? 

I said emphatically, Robert Vadra or Nitin Gadkariji. 

Why? The editor persisted. 

Robert Vadra can provide one DLF house for every Indian. 

And Nitin Gadkari?  

Nitin Gadkariji can make every Indian a Director in his company, even if it is a dubious one.  

The Indian Parliament is ever in an uproar. Every MP and every Minister wants to be seen on television. Instead of historic sessions, we now have histrionic sessions, and our television editors are makers of (virtual) reality.  

The remarkable thing about Sushma Swaraj is that she always wins! The Sushma folklore is full of the victories she won for herself and her party. In 1999, she won a convincing moral victory from Chikmagalur, though Sonia Gandhi snatched away the real victory.    

The climax of the FDI drama in Parliament was the moral vistory of Sushma Swaraj as she herself admitted! But few realised it is the moral victory of her party for 2014, as the voting pattern indicates. Some called the M&M game played by Maya and Mulayam as a game of hypocrisy. It is a game of alignment that will decide who will be India’s next Prime Minister. 

BJP has lost its Vajpayee advantage of fielding a candidate who is most acceptable to most of his countrymen. By projecting someone who is adept at name calling and degrading campaign rhetoric, the party is ensuring its moral victory for 2014. In their anxiety to create history, some television channels have already placed Narendra Modi in PMO, with allies, like Jayalalithaa and Naveen, and party MPs queing in for plumb Cabinet posts.   

The battle lines are already drawn for 2014, with Mulayam, Maya and Mamata reluctant to be seen even voting with Modi party for fear of losing their votebanks. To be counted, the Invisible Party of India, the Marxists, should merge with BJP and play a constructive role.   

To avoid lies getting into your nervous system, one must skilfully use the remote when you spot a politician on television channel. Some channels air live (political) animal shows and the most excruciating part of it is the vulgar female smiles while the debate is on. For three consecutive years, the students of The Times School of Journalism voted CNN-IBN as the Most Professional Channel, and if there is ever a Cerebral Channel for cerebral panel discussion, it is Headlines Today. NDTV 24x7 is the anscestral home one loves to visit; and for instant energy and revitalisation, one should go to Times Now. 

 Congress seldom takes a holiday from scams and BJP from scam-mongering. But they are bedfellows growing fond of each other by every passing day. Don’t be surprised if you find Robert Vadra and Nitin Gadkheriji playing chess or drinking champagne near some mango groove of DLF Enclave.  

There is nothing Catholic about abortion. Nor is stupidity purely Irish. Law makers universally are stupid, not because they lack intelligence but because it is humanly impossible to envision every situation the law may have to deal with. It is compounded by the stupidity of doctors, the stupidity of the police, the stupidity of the interpreters of the law. And finally when someone has to be blamed, blame it on the Catholic Church that believes human life is God-given and hence sacred. We don’t need a court verdict to figure out what transpired: the doctors do not want to be caught on the wrong side of the law, nor were proactive enough to take instant remedial measures. At the hands of human ineptitude, the law meant to protect the sanctity of human life turned out to be a hapless instrument to snuff out human life!  

AJMAL KASAB’S JOURNEY

SUNNY THOMAS

The tragedy of Ajmal Kasab lay not in what he did but in what he believed. He was brainwashed into believing that by killing innocent people who have done him no harm, he could go to heaven! The greater tragedy is there are hundreds of Ajmal Kasabs willing to cross the border to go to heaven. The story of traumatized lives – traumatized for life – that cannot be told in words is only an episode of the tragic drama, plotted and scripted in Pakistan but enacted on our soil.  

At the moment, there are 40 to 50 terror training camps operating between Muzaffarabad and Lahore.  They are waiting for American troops to go so that another wave of terror can be enacted. Terror training is a three-tier operation: The recruitment camps indoctrinate for the first 30 days, then the arms training camp imparts perfect training not only in AK 47 but also in radio telephony and navigation, and finally the launching campus give them strategic lessons ready to use. 

The world is about to witness a cherubic army, who look like angels but are demons incarnate, raining terror on cities, strategic installations, and crowded public places. Al-Qaeda’s appetite for children is well documented. A recent video showing five-year-old children with assault rifles and handguns outraged the sensitivities of the civilized world. It was filmed at one of the terror training camps in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region by East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).  

Most of the children are forcibly recruited – abducted from school, on streets, or at home – or are driven by crushing poverty. Orphans of jihadis come with a vengeance to avenge the spilling of their fathers’ blood. Death factories have trained over 5000 Pakistani children as suicide bombers, some of them as young as eight years.  

ETIM has been fighting to create an independent Islamic state in China’s northwest Xinjiang region. Already, they have committed over 200 acts of terrorism, only some of which have been reported in the media. And they have been sending jihadis to fight alongside al-Qaeda and Taliban. According to German intelligence, the five suspects charged with the bombing plot in Frankfurt are trained in Waziristan.   

The latest news of child combatants comes from Syria. In a horrific example of demonic cruelty, a 12-year-old boy in Yemen was asked to deliver a gift package to his father. When the father opened the door, the bomb inside the package exploded, killing the father who was an outspoken critic of terrorism and the boy. A child rights activist explains that children can be recruited at far lower costs and it is enough to tell them they will go to Paradise if they die!

      

The militants are better informed and strategically placed in the Afghan-Pakistan border that the Pakistani army is often helpless. Remember, the attack on Pakistan’s nuclear installations came when news reached Al- Qaeda that the army was preparing for a military operation in North Waziristan! 

The legend has it that when Raja Jamboo Lochan saw a tiger and a goat drinking water side by side in a pond, he decided to build a city, which was named after him but was corrupted and called Jammu instead of Jamboo. So it was where the strong and the weak lived peacefully for centuries. Mythologically speaking, Kashmir used to be a huge lake, which over centuries got drained into the ever deepening Baramulla-Khadiniyar gorge.

  

It would have been hard for anyone living in Kashmir just a couple of decades ago to imagine that their Paradise on earth, known for its unique culture and communal harmony, would be reduced to a theatre of operation for the militants! Conversely, it would be straining one’s imagination for anyone living in Kashmir today to be told there was once a Paradise called Kashmir!   

How did human civilization come to this sorry pass? When education that enlightens and technology that enriches remain the exclusive domain of the rich, and the poor are left high and dry – as nations and individuals – it is inevitable that `barbarians’ would destroy civilization. The Roman Empire was brought down by barbarians. The New Empire, too, could be brought down by `barbarians’, if sensible leaders do not come forward to reach out to the have-nots in their billions. It is possible that some lunatic could blow up the planet because he believed that by doing so he could go to heaven!