THIS is election time. That means freedom to damn one'sopponents, claim for oneself virtues one never possessed, buy space in newspapers in obvious acts of self-aggrandisement and talk endlessly of secularism that had lost its pristine meaning and significance aeons ago. Politics has been reduced to family. Deve Gowda calls his party the Janata Dal (Secular). He would have been more accurate if he had called it Gowda Dal or, better still, Gutter Dal, because that is what it is. M. Karunanidhi, leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam calls Shri Ram a drunkard and gets away with it. He has upheld his status as anti-Aryan, whatever that is. In similar poor taste he sings praise of S.P. Thamilchelvam, a slain leader of Sri Lanka'sLiberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), noted for its despicable record of blatant terrorism. That only leads one to think that Karunanidhi has neither karuna, one nationalist nidhi, a fact that the Congress refuses to acknowledge knowing full well that he commands 15 Lok Sabha seats invaluable to the UPA.
The CPI(M) obviously has not heard of the break-up of the Soviet Union or the calculated move of China towards silent capitalism and is short-sighted in vision and antedeluvian in purpose. The Congress has no leaders worth mentioning and has turned into a sick joke. The anointing of Rahul Gandhi as the heir-apparent to succeed Mamma to the throne makes one feel like throwing up. That, obviously, was the sole aim of calling a one-day meeting of the AICC at Delhi. The Congress has become a party of spineless sycophants. The sole aim of the party seems the enticement of the Muslim vote. First, it set up an Urdu channel, one more among Doordarshan'smultiple channels and then it widely advertised that the same has been turned into a channel round-the-clock, with an eye on the largely Muslim voter in north India.
Then we hear that Tehelka, in its demeaning way, has been successful in wringing out of the mouths of the enemies of Gujarat'sChief Minister how it was he who prodded Hindus communalists into killing innocent Muslims following the Godhra outrage. One TV channel went out of its way to play the Tehelka tapes several times to damn not only the Chief Minister of Gujarat, but the BJP as well, all, no doubt sponsored.
In today'sworld, the Indian media, whether print or electronic, seems purchaseable. Any media, with even the slightest self-respect, would have also truthfully recalled the 1984 massacre of Sikhs, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, so fully documented by two writers, Harvinder Singh Phoolka, a senior advocate practicing in Delhi and Manoj Mitta a well-known journalist in their book When a Tree Shook Delhi. More Sikhs were killed in Delhi in the first week of November 1984 than all the Muslims killed all over Gujarat, a truth that has been wrapped up in secrecy.
Out of 2,933 Sikhs killed in Delhi?the non-official figures put those killed as over 3,000?in that one short period, 1,234 were killed in East Delhi alone. Though more than half of those killings took place on November 1, only twenty six were arrested in East Delhi on that fateful day but the significant thing is that all those arrested were Sikhs and NOT Congress-supported thugs. To be truthful, what happened was not just killings: it was genocide, wholesale massacre. In Block 32, Trilokpuri, barely ten kilometers from the police headquarters of India'scapital, 400 Sikhs were killed, going by the official death toll calculated by the R.K.Ahooja Committee, three years after the carnage!
According to a journalist, Rahul Bedi, the street of Block 32 was ?littered with limbs of human bodies, hairs and charred bodies? and ?it was not even possible to walk, without stepping upon the limbs of dead bodies?. The authors write: ?The affidavits filed by victims (of the massacre) shed light on the manner in which the massacre was organised by Congress leader and then executed with the collusion of the police?. Reading about the atrocities committed by Congress Hindus?all of them, no doubt, secular?makes one weep. Their leaders are not unknown personalities. Mentioned are names of H.K.L.Bhagat, Jagdish Tyler, Sajjan Kumar and Dharam Das Shastri. Why is the Indian media?both print and electronic?shy of reviewing this book?
Let us face it: it is fear, rampant, over-riding fear. More individual cruelties?Sikhs being dragged into the streets and burnt alive, yes, alive?more rapes of innocent Sikh women were committed in that one week following Indira Gandhi'sassassination than in all of Gujarat. And this is not hearsay. The truth is recorded not just by the Kusum Lata Mittal Committee, but also by the Jain Aggarwal Committee, the R.K.Ahooja Committee, the aborted Ved Marwah Committee and the affidavits recorded by the Misra Commission and the Nanavati Commission, both of which, incidentally, have been accused in some quarters of skirting the issue of why there was delay in summoning the Armed Forces. Fear of the Congress stalks the land. Caution is the word. That is how Madam'sparty takes care of aam admi. There is no sense of shame, no attrition, no understanding of values, and a Congress leader has the cheek to address a United Nations General Assembly on Gandhian values. There is no need to mention what has happened and what is still happening in Nandigram, in Communist-led West Bengal where the land is soaked in the blood of innocents and the Governor of the State, Gopal Gandhi, felt compelled to describe the situation as a mini civil war. And how right he was Nandigram is not the only instance of state terrorism. The media pretends not to have heard of Singur and Kalinga Nagar. But how can Congress whose own hands are soaked in red blood, criticise Buddhadev Bhattacharya or even Karat, when the Leftist support is needed to carry out the 123 Agreement? This is politics at its meanest.
It is hard to understand why the BJP, too, should have anything to do with an unprincipled character called Deva Gowda who has brought shame to India with his treacherous tactics and endless greed. India is sliding into a whirlpool of mud. There is more to life than power. The BJP would win more public acceptance if it puts politics behind it, as Yadiyurappa has done and give the gift of humanism to a long-suffering people which neither the Congress or its allies are capable of and the less said about Mayavati and her Bhujan Samaj Party, the better. To her casteism is everything and she makes no bones about it.
We have become a nation of sycophants and self-deceptionists. Ugly face is showing everywhere whether at Nandigram, an hastily conducted AICC meeting, at Lucknow under BSP rule or at Bangalore, where shameless men are ruling the roost, and the nation is made to hang its head in shame, as well. Never has there been a greater need to throw these aspirants to power into the gathering dustbin of history than now.
Ugly face is showing everywhere whether at Nandigram, an hastily conducted AICC meeting, at Lucknow under BSP rule or at Bangalore, where shameless men are ruling the roost, and the nation is made to hang its head in shame, as well. Never has there been a greater need to throw these aspirants to power into the gathering dustbin of history than now.
