What to do With Markandey Katju

Former Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju has become like the drooling, farting idiot who embarrasses all polite company, and there’s no point in condemning him (as the Rajya Sabha just did), for calling Mahatma Gandhi a “British agent” and Netaji Subhas Bose a Japanese one.

Predictably, his response to the action has been buffoonish, and nothing is to be gained by any arm of the government trying to change his behavior.

However, there should be action – perhaps a “sense of the house” resolution in parliament – taking note of Katju’s statements that indicate a seriously impaired judgment and urging a review of all his major decisions on the Bench.

The resolution should cite statements made when he was a sitting judge -- in one he said black money offenders should be hanged -- and others since his retirement asserting that  “90 per cent of Indians are idiots,” and that Gay relationships are “humbug and nonsense”.

His comparison of Indian to European history and his pontifications on the nature of economic development can be adduced as further proof of an extremely confused mind.  

Finally, the house should express sympathy for Katju's advanced senility and note the need for vigilance on the part of care givers to ensure that he does not hurt himself or others as the condition worsens.

BBC Rape Film Widely Seen as Hypocrisy

The BBC production India’s Daughter has been generally seen in the country as “a fake film” (to quote Nirbhaya’s male friend who was with her that fateful night and suffered a fearful beating).

"The documentary is unbalanced as the victim's viewpoint is missing,” Avanindra Pandey told IBN Live. “The facts are hidden and the content is fake.”

Supporting the government’s decision to ban the film, he said “the documentary is far from truth."

As with almost every Indian who has watched the film, he found the jailhouse interview with the rapist offensive.

"A controversy was created unnecessarily and was sensationalized,” he told IBN. “The documentary made fun of emotions and questioned the law and order situation in our country."

Leslee Udwin, the movie’s director has dodged that charge in numerous interviews.

For instance, in answer to a specific question about that by The Hindu she complimented Prime Minister Modi and then added, “All I wanted was to say to the world is that India led by example, now follow India’s lead. This was the point of my film and campaign.”

She has also sought to pass herself off as the “world-renowned” winner of “a British Oscar” and thus presumably beyond question.

In the same grand vein she has pushed the rather maniacal notion that by banning her film India “committed international suicide.”

Indian feminists have generally not taken too kindly to the “White woman’s burden of rape in India” and even usually conservative voices have noted the hypocrisy of the whole exercise.

One retired diplomat circulated reports from the British Press that on average there were about 35 rapes a week in London taxi cabs.

Caveat Emptor: Regular Customer

Since coming back to India after four decades abroad I've been consistently surprised by a particular element of the business ethic here: as a regular customer at an establishment I am almost always more likely to be swindled or inconsiderately treated.

This is not because of any rudeness or lack of consideration on my part, for I am invariably polite and bend over backward not to be demanding.

On the contrary, I think it is because I am that way; familiarity seems to breed contempt.

The latest example is a small Panjim hole in the wall (SRS Businesspoint), where I have been paying my monthly television and phone recharge bills.

A Rs500 payment on 2 March for television service was not credited and I found out when my set went dead on Sunday.

A Rs.200 payment on the 7th for the phone has yet to be credited.

No explanations, and calls to the service providers reveal there is no recourse.

I have stopped going to a bigger company, Magsons Supermarket, where I used to spend several thousand every week because for some inexplicable reason, some of the clerks became almost bellicose.

These are just two examples.

I am tempted to lay this phenomenon at the door of my bete noire, rogue members of the Intelligence Bureau, whose noses I have put out of joint with my calls for the agency to be brought under constitutional controls.

They have engaged in considerable petty -- and not so petty -- harassment in the past, but to make an accusation without any proof would be invidious.

P.S: The day after I wrote this post it occurred to me that my experience could reflect a non-economic behavior pattern: extortion by some policing authority.

Recently a couple of Goa plain clothes police officers were hauled up for extorting money from tourists, who they thought powerless to resist.

This points to a danger of abuse in our intelligence agencies requiring internal vigilance arrangements; the power to force cooperation in gathering information could easily be corrupted into extortion of benefits.

In Pakistan, the ISI has developed into a major economic player by using its powers of extortion, and the same could happen here.

If it does, we're in a completely different ball game, with the entire democratic system under threat.   

Why the UN Has Been Such a Failure

The UN’s main man on the environment, Achim Steiner, has just provided monumentally bad advice to government policy makers.

Speaking in Cairo on 4 March at the opening of the biennial African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, Steiner asserted that the “only insurance against climate change impacts is ambitious global mitigation action” combined “with large-scale, rapidly increasing and predictable funding for adaptation.”

If anything is clear from the UN’s 45-year record of trying to deal with the problems of the human environment, it is that “mitigation action” is completely useless unless we deal with the destructive economic forces driving a multifaceted global crisis.

The UN has been unable to say so because the major industrial countries are in thrall to mega corporations that profit hugely from ignoring environmental concerns.

They ensured UN inaction by putting a Canadian oilman in charge of the first World Conference on the Environment (Stockholm, 1972), and making him the first head of the new Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Under his direction UNEP studied problems and identified causes but never ever hinted at the need for wholesale redirection of the world economy, the only thing that can stop our slide to disaster.

UNEP's stock in trade became international agreements to deal with negative impacts.

Meanwhile, another part of the UN that did try to negotiate a Code of Conduct for corporations was quietly wound up.

This lack of cojones is not just on environmental matters.

Even more glaring is the example of the UN Security Council, which has never been able to undertake its primary task of disarming the world and building a global security system because its five veto-wielding “Permanent Members” are the world’s largest arms producers and their elites profit hugely from war.

Less known but even more venal is the organization’s failure to deal with the enormously violent crime wave that has washed around the world since the 1960s.

Analyses show that drug trafficking has been its primary driver and that it now funds all other forms of organized crime, including “Islamic terrorism.”

But the UN has pussy-footed around the matter because Britain’s primary industry, banking, is neck-deep in laundering drug money.

None of this is secret. Books and expert analyses provide the sordid details in ample measure.

But getting from expert analyses to public policy has been impossible because the Cold War empowered a fascist apparatus in major countries that constrains politicians and the Press even in the freest of societies.

Revealing detail: The New Yorker, as genteel a publication as ever graced the rough and ready world of journalism, now has an encrypted system to receive material from whistle blowers.

What the BBC Rape Movie is Really About

Our agony aunts in the media and politics beating their breasts about the BBC documentary on Nirbhaya are getting worked up about all the wrong issues.

The movie is not about the terrible attitudes of Indian men, having us “look in the mirror” as a society, or the BBC trying to “understand rape.”

It is just another example of Brits raping India.

They've been doing it for so long its probably second nature (for other examples see here and here), and it is accomplished now with such consummate control over Indian proxies and poodles that if it were the obedience trials at a dog show one would be inclined to give up a round of applause.

As the British rape other nations with "interests" in mind (overview), the Nirbhaya documentary has aim and purpose.

It is meant to keep control of Brand India, a long-standing effort that began early in the colonial era.

During colonial times they controlled India's global image with distorted "histories," talk of Thugee, Sati and Bengali Babus.

Now they do it with suborned novelists (the "Indian" Booker Prize winners), movies (most recently, Slumdog Millionaire and Midnight's Children), and "journalists" (see here).

The fact that in all the earnest baying on television no one even hints at any of these aspects shows just how deeply India is still afflicted by the corruption and lack of character that made colonial rule possible.

The problem, of course, is not just in the media.

Our Home Minister’s claim that he was not aware a British journalist had interviewed a high security prisoner in Tihar jail is alarming.

Did our intelligence agencies report nothing?

If not, that is an even greater cause for worry.

The BJP government can shuffle a good bit of blame onto those in the UPA government who gave permission for the Tihar jail interview (Chidambaram?), but with the BBC journalist coming and going numerous times to New Delhi, and with an Indian co-producer, the project was surely no secret.

The question that needs answering is why so many people kept the lid on this scandal so long. 

Someone in Delhi should make another documentary on who knew what was happening and when.

I would be glad to contribute to the research and script.

On the "Hindu Perspective"

My post about Neeraj Pandey's obnoxiously anti-Muslim movie “Baby” brought an accusation from a reader that I did not have a suitably Hindu “perspective.”

That raises the question, “What is the Hindu perspective?”

One answer lies in the attitudes that Hinduism has promoted throughout its millennial course.

Hinduism began with our ancient rishis compiling the lore of India’s diverse tribes into the Vedas, thus creating a work all could venerate.

That allowed the tribes to stop their endemic conflicts and settle into interdependent castes.

Intense discussions (Upanishads) then drew from the Vedas the concepts that lie at the heart of Hindu belief.

Primarily, the rishis conceived of a universal spirit, Brahman (one who strengthens).

Brahman is manifest as the Sanatana Dharma (Eternal Law) holding all Creation in control.

The philosophic implication of that belief is expressed in Vasudeva kutumbhakam (God’s family). It is the basis of India’s unity in diversity and constitutes the fundamental Hindu perspective.

Another important contributor to the Hindu perspective is the confidence that comes from an acute age-old capacity to understand and meet the challenges facing our society.

The Vedas settled warring tribes into castes.

The Upanishads anchored the resulting peace in a profound philosophy of family relationships.

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata made that wisdom available to everyman/woman.

When superstition and ignorance blocked understanding of the Dharma the Buddha cleansed it.

When Buddhism lost its reforming zeal, Adi Sankara energized and brought back the old faith,

When caste and invasive Islam caused deep fissures in society, Kabir and Guru Nanak initiated the healing that developed into the modern Indian renaissance of Chatrapati Shivaji, Rammohun Roy, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi.

That progression makes one thing very clear: Hinduism has never been a blind faith. We have always studied problems, debated issues and come up with insightful and creative solutions.

Our failure to do that in the depths of the Kali Yuga is the primary reason why India fell victim to foreign invaders over the last two millennia.

Now, as we recover from that period, it is critically important that Hindus retrieve their traditional capacity to understand and meet the numerous challenges facing Indian society.

This blog has warned at great length about the greatest danger we face at present, the British campaign, with much help from Indian mass media proxies, to cloud our understanding of issues.

An important part of that campaign has been aimed at poisoning Hindu-Muslim relations.

The creation of Pakistan with its permanent siren call to jihad has, of course, done a great deal of work in that direction already, and if Hindu understanding is to defeat British intentions we must re-examine what actually happened.

To that end, the following section looks at the origin and development of “Islamic terrorism.”

“Islamic Terrorism”

There is no denying that Islam has an enormously violent history, but no more so than Christianity. Since their founding nearly seven centuries apart both religions have been almost ceaselessly at war within their own realms, and, since the 7th Century, with each other.

However, when Christian colonial expansion began in the 15th Century Islam was a generally quiescent faith with an Ottoman Caliph in Istanbul ruling most of what is now called the Middle East, and Persia (encompassing modern Iran, Iraq and a number of adjoining areas), presiding over most of the world's Shia.

The transformation of Islam from that torpor to its current jihadist frenzy is almost entirely due to British policy.

It involved the creation of three States (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Israel), and the promotion of the violent Muslim Brotherhood as the fount of “Islamic terrorism.”

The Brotherhood had its first mosque paid for by the British in the colonized “Suez Canal Zone” of Egypt, and its initial use was against anyone threatening British assets or allies anywhere in the Middle East.

The Cold War made it a tool against Communists and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made it the source of a “Mujaheddin” army that became Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In that progression, the three British-created States had a key role.

Saudi Arabia came into existence before World War I when the British found in Kuwait the 16-year old scion of the former ruling family of Riyadh and sponsored him to take it back from Ottoman rule. The Saudis brought with them to power the violently extremist Wahhabi sect, long considered “Haram” by mainstream Islam.

What the British did to create Pakistan is fairly well known, so I will not dwell on the details; suffice it to say, they used murderous violence to support the Hindu and Muslim proxies who actually ripped India apart.

Pakistan emerged as a failed State and has remained one with the support of enormous amounts of aid from Saudi Arabia and the West; in return it has become their handy drug dealing rent-a-terrorist supplier, hitting not just India but Afghanistan, Russia, all of Central Asia, Uighur China and South East Asia.

Britain’s record in Palestine – later Israel – is unequaled in treachery.

After getting command of the territory through a League of Nations Mandate, it allowed unrestricted Jewish immigration from Europe, ostensibly to create a "Jewish Homeland." It then sponsored Arab terrorism against Jews. During WW II a “Jewish Brigade” in the British Army shaped the core of the Israeli Self Defence Force that beat back invading Arab armies in 1948.

One thing important to note about this whole scene is that the Arabs, who had not ruled themselves for over 800 years, were manipulated at every turn by Britain and France.

After WW I, when London and Paris created a number of new countries in the former Ottoman territories, they consistently arranged for political instability.

In Sunni majority Syria they gave power to the Shia; in Shia majority Iraq they empowered the Sunni. France created Lebanon to give power to Christians. With British prompting, Saudi Arabia took the territory containing Mecca and Medina, vaulting Wahhabi Islam to unprecedented global influence.

In surveying this history it is important to note that the Muslim populations of the Middle East and Pakistan have been the worst victims of “Islamic terrorism.” They have shed the most blood, lost the most resources and suffered the worst political manipulations.

An Indian Perspective

There can be no “Hindu perspective” in dealing with this situation for several reasons.

First and most important, our entire tradition depends upon each person being free to accept God in any form and worship in any way; those are matters decided by individual karma in which no one else can interfere. Sri Krishna says explicitly in the Bhagavad Gita: “do not disturb the faith of another. No matter to whom a person bows, he bows to me.”

Beyond the question of religion is that of politics, and there too is a strong argument not to strive for a “Hindu perspective.” Indian Muslim perceptions of their co-religionists elsewhere are likely to be far more acute, and it would be silly for Indian policy not to benefit from that.

If we want to help steer the world out of its current vortex of “Islamic terrorism,” it is essential that Muslims be part of the Indian team. They already are in the Ministry of External Affairs, but we need greater cultural heft in what is now purely policy.

It is only when Muslims in Pakistan see Indian Islam as a viable political alternative that we can wash back the blood-dimmed tide that Britain drowned us in; only in such circumstances can Arabs and Jews exchange Salaams and Shaloms in the Middle East and mean it.

The Weight of History

To foresee Hindu-Muslim unity as the foundation of India is hardly visionary. Guru Nanak set off the modern Indian renaissance five centuries ago by declaring “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim;” his first disciples (Sikhs), were drawn from both religions and all castes.

He was, in fact, making a formal statement of what had become part of life. In the centuries since Islam's entry into India Hindu and Muslim kings never stopped fighting each other; but they made liberal use of soldiers of both faiths.

One of the greatest of Indian national heroes, Chatrapati Shivaji, now celebrated as an icon of Hindu resistance to Mughal rule, endowed and prayed at Sufi shrines and employed Muslims at every level in his armies.

Perhaps nothing exemplifies the easy interfaith coexistence of those times as Netaji Palkar, one of his commanders who joined the Mughal army, converted to Islam and spent ten years fighting the Afghan tribes under the name of Quli Mohammed Khan; after that he returned without fuss to Hinduism and Shivaji's service.

The Mughals meanwhile were equally tolerant. Akbar’s main general was his former enemy, Man Singh. After Akbar the Mughals were by blood as Indian as alien, and culturally they were entirely indigenous. Aurangzeb, the most intolerant of them, endowed Hindu temples even as he destroyed others.

As British colonial rule spread over India, the resistance was nowhere divided along communal lines.

Tipu Sultan exemplified that unity: all his top commanders were Hindus and his capital took its name from the Vishnu temple of Sri Ranga Patnam which he endowed and prayed at. Tipu was finally defeated and his stronghold taken after a Persian Islamic scholar he had favored opened a door in the outer wall to British forces. Tipu's body was found under several others, all Hindus who had died to prevent the British from taking and desecrating it. The great Sultan remains a living memory: last November a mass rally at Haveri in Karnataka celebrated the 264th Tipu Jayanthi.

The British poisoned that long and liberal tradition. It is up to modern Indians of all faiths to reclaim our national heritage.

Baby, How Not to Fight Terrorism

If there is a sudden surge in Indian youth heading for Syria to join the Islamic State, the credit must go not only to Pakistan’s ISI but to those in "Bollywood" who will do anything for money.

The richest of Indian actors, Shahrukh Khan, planted the idea of the victimhood of an entire community with his mantra “I am a Muslim and not a terrorist.”

Now “Baby,” an abomination of a movie directed by Neeraj Pandey and starring Akshay Kumar, has provided a great deal of fodder for terrorist recruiters.

The movie is a fascist wet dream that glorifies brutal “anti-terrorist” activity, all of it directed at Muslims. 

Torture and violence are shown as the only effective way to get results.

Our muscular hero tortures a rogue Indian agent – a Muslim of course – to get the location of a bomb about to go off; he gets the information after arranging for the man’s parents, wife and child to be taken to the targeted mall.

He slips a plastic bag over the head of a Muslim leader – labelled as an ISI agent – and brings him near death to get the location of a terrorist.

He even administers a roundhouse slap when a minister’s PA (religion unknown) says Indian agents are bound to die in the fight against terrorism.

The movie-makers lay on with a trowel the association of terrorism with Islam.

No hint here of the brainless Hindus who have taken the jihadist route, or of the strong possibility that a rogue element of our intelligence apparatus enabled the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

A former Mumbai Police chief has made a strong case for that in the book “Who Killed Karkare?”

And a recently published New York Times investigation turned up considerable evidence that British and Indian intelligence agencies took no action after collecting credible information on the impending attack. Indian intelligence ignored a specific warning from the Americans about an attack on the Taj.

This is hardly surprising.

As I have noted in many earlier posts (see here, here and here), Britain is behind the whole “Islamic terrorism” phenomenon, using it for political manipulation and to promote its drug trafficking interests.

It is only reasonable to expect that in addition to creating the ISI in Pakistan as its proxy Britain has also corrupted parts of Indian intelligence to do its work.

Thankfully, our anti-terrorist modus operandi seems to be taking those realities into account: according to The Hindu, the Intelligence Bureau was kept completely out of the loop on the operation last December to intercept a Pakistani “fishing boat” that blew up before it could be boarded.

Since then, there has been talk of setting up a completely new domestic intelligence service.

If that happens, I hope decision makers in Delhi will do it within a constitutional framework, establish adequate safeguards against abuse of Indian citizens, and make the agency accountable to parliament.

With venal brain-dead “Bollywood” figures promoting fascism, we need strong institutional protections in place.