The Implications of Scandalmania

Indian "elite media" have been so engrossed in the obsessive coverage of corruption allegations that no one has had the time to reflect on what exactly is happening. Here are a few of the implications that people should think about:

1. Someone in the Intelligence Establishment is leaking like a sieve. Kejriwal is a jhoolahwalla ditz who couldn't walk and chew pan at the same time, much less unearth the stuff he is revealing. Subramaniam Swamy is smart but he too is being fed the information he publicizes. Where the information is coming from should be a matter of urgent speculation in view of the second implication:   
2. Somebody wants to delegitimize and destabilize the Indian political system. It goes beyond wanting the UPA out in mid-term polls. Whoever is spreading the muck wants the country leaderless.
3. Our "elite" media seem to be following a destroy-India script almost with glee. Headlines Today is way out front in that regard. It led the clumsy charge against Salman Khurshid, and after he rebutted the charges, went into a five hour paroxysm during which it did little more than urge his dismissal from the cabinet. HT was clearly trying to prevent Khurshid's elevation to the Foreign Minister's job.      

What does all this point to? We have to look at the world situation to understand.

With China on the skids (the recent "good news" from Beijing is unbelievable), the big guns of the multi-trillion dollar global black market want a place to invest their money free of bothersome things like environmental standards and social impact. They want India in the charge of a man dishonest enough to boast of "good governance" in the face of riot and death under his watch and a minister in prison for contributing to it. Hence London's sudden "normalization of relations" with Narendra Modi, followed by an India Today cover story pumping him up.

Why would our "elite media" cooperate in preparing the country for the rapists?

Consider who controls them.  

Headlines Today/India Today is under Aroon Purie, a bean counter trained in Britain who got into journalism to provide business for the large printing press set up in Delhi by his secretive "financier" father in partnership with "Lord Thompson of Fleet," the British newspaper magnate.

The patriarch of the Jain family that owns the  Times of India group also got rich wheeling and dealing under the British. He got into journalism after his father-in-law was sent to prison by India's first independent government for embezzling the funds used to buy the flagship newspaper.

The NDTV organization is owned by Prannoy Roy, also a British-trained accountant, whose father worked for a UK multinational corporation and married an Englishwoman. NDTV got its start as a news program for Doordarshan which sued Roy after it went commercial. (It is interesting that Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy is Prannoy's cousin.)

If the owners of our "elite" media are loyal to any country it is the one that controls the global black market.

 What of the Intelligence Establishment leak?

My guess is that some high-level suit has been suborned from abroad or has political ambitions and is trying to manipulate his own political ascent by destroying those who stand in the way. Whatever the cause, the current situation has highlighted the need for our Intelligence agencies to have a constitutional framework and systems for external oversight and internal accountability. 

Prashant Bhushan Assault

The shameful assault on Prashant Bhushan by thugs from the Sri Ram Sene has been condemned around the country, but our political class should be aware that it too stands heavily indicted in the criminal incident.

The anger that drove the attack on Bhushan must be seen as an indication of our political failure, not only in containing and defusing it, but in the inability to forge an ironclad national consensus on Kashmir.

What Bhushan said about Kashmir -- that India should dismantle all its defensive measures and submit to a plebiscite -- cannot be looked upon merely as an issue of free speech. That is so because Kashmir is not an issue merely of territory or "self-determination."

The British destroyed millions of Indian lives to split the country on communal lines, and deliberately created the dispute over Kashmir to keep South Asia permanently at war. Our defence of Kashmir is not just of territory but of the idea of India. To declare otherwise is not just to ignore the tremendous sacrifice of Indian blood and treasure to protect and preserve that idea, it is to open up the country yet again to brutal foreign manipulation and control.

For make no mistake about it. When British proxies like Bhushan and Arundhati Roy speak so blithely about India giving up Kashmir, they are opening up the rest of the country to new rounds of communal warfare that will certainly destroy our democratic system and our way of life.

We can condemn the Sri Ram Sene for its tactics but we must acknowledge the legitimacy of its anger. It is time the rest of us felt it too.