BENGAL FAMINE OF 1943, AND A CRAZY BLOG

One Ajit Vadakayil has posted a blog on, among other subjects, on the Bengal Famine of 1943. The blog  at http://ajitvadakayil.blogspot.in/2011/09/amartya-sen-gets-nobel-prize-for.html?m=1 is such an enormous load of nonsense that I felt obliged to write something. Much of it is based on total misinformation or some half-digested facts. First of all, although I am Bengali, I am not a total admirer of Amartya Sen -- I rate him highly as an economist, but I thoroughly dislike his habit of poking his nose into every facet of life -- as if, just because he got a Nobel Prize, he knows everything. He doesn't, and moreover, he has lived abroad most of his life, so he has no way of knowing what happens here in India. In respect of the Bengal famine of 1943 I would much rather rely on the account of Ashok Mitra ICS, later Census Commissioner of India, who, as an SDO of a famine affected subdivision, had an insider's view of what caused the famine. According to him it was a policy of 'Denial and Evacuation', really a 'scorched earth' policy, followed by the British government in mortal fear of a Japanese takeover of Bengal, coupled with a terrible combination of a cyclone and Tsunami in a place called Kanthi in the present Purba Medinipur district of West Bengal. And the main person responsible, according to Mitra, is the half-crazed British governor of Bengal, Sir John Arthur Herbert, who was responsible for this cynical policy. Prime Minister Churchill, Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery and Viceroy Lord Linlithgow are primarily guilty of apathy and negligence. The blog contains a lot of other rot. Amartya Sen's first Hindu wife Nabaneeta Deb-Sen did not leave him because of his pro-Western views -- in fact she still sports his surname 'Sen' bears witness to the fact that it is not so. I know what caused their divorce, but I shall never make these domestic matters public. Ajit appears to be an anti-Semite, which is why he blames Rothschilds for all the ills of the world. The Rothschilds are powerful, but not that powerful. That Santiniketan, the ashram built by Rabindranath Tagore's father Debendranath,was built with opium money, or that Edwina Mountbatten was a Rothschild is pure baloney. He says Ramanujam, the mathematical genius, was "whisked off to England and then discarded like a curry leaf". Total rot. Ramanujam's talent was discovered not by any Indian, but by Hardy and Littlewood, two English mathematicians. What Ajit exhibits is called xenophobia, an irrational fear of everything foreign, in support of which he tries to marshal all this misinformation. The blog just teaches us what a lot of nonsense makes its rounds on the internet. One has got to be very,very careful.

MISDEEDS OF MOHANDAS GANDHI AND JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

@NirbhayasIndia and I had become involved in a lengthy debate on twitter about Mohandas Gandhi (I prefer to call him ‘Mohandas’ because of the proliferation of Gandhis lately, the admonition of  @NirbhayasIndia notwithstanding). It began with a debate on Mosques and Temples, and got on to a debate about Muslims and Islam. I said there were millions of very good Muslims, some of whom were my friends, but Islam has a problem: the concepts of ‘Kafir’ and ‘Jihad’, which do not permit idol-worshippers like me to live. Then this gentleman (or maybe a lady, no way to know his gender) began to lose his or her shirt and said that he or she (this is getting bothersome, so henceforth I shall assume masculine gender) doesn’t take lessons on Islam from me, because he takes it from Mohandas. I very humbly said that I take my lessons from the Qur’an and the Haadis (Traditions) and do not accept the politically correct views of Mohandas. Then the debate switched to Mohandas and also to Nehru, and he contended that since I was a lot shorter (he clarified it later as shorter in terms of stature, not centimeters) than both, I had no right to criticize them. At this point @a4ahlan joined in and quite sensibly suggested that the debate can go on. But the other person was incensed, and called me a fat Hindu fundamentalist. I was really astounded, because I am really fat (BMI 33.5) and how on earth did he get to know it? But I’m getting distracted. He dared me to name two persons in BJP who were anywhere near Mohandas and Nehru.

But first let me get on to the misdeeds of these two late lamented gentlemen.  Mohandas was a great mass leader, of that there is no doubt. The sway he had managed to get over his party was really enviable. But having said that he also did the following:

1. Supported the retrograde Khilafat Movement in the 1920s and supported the rabidly fundamentalist Ali Brothers. This is one of the factors which drove pork-eater Jinnah into the fundamentalist camp. Read Mohamedally Currim Chagla’s autobiography ‘Roses in December’ for more details on this.
2. There were two particularly horrible communal riots at this time, the Moplah rebellion of Malabar (Kerala) and the one in Kohat (now Pakistan), and several such in Dhaka (now Bangladesh). In every such Hindu-Muslim riots he took the side of Muslims in the hope that this will bring in Hindu-Muslim unity. The opposite happened. The Muslims became even more emboldened, and the climax was reached in the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946, directly engineered by the then Premier of Bengal, H.S.Suhrawardy.
3. He made no efforts to save Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru from the gallows, calling them misguided patriots.
4. He, on the advice of C. Rajagopalachari, in 1944 when all other Congress leaders were in jail, went and met Jinnah and practically conceded Pakistan.
5. He did not visit Calcutta after the Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946 in which an estimated 15,000 people were killed, for fear that he might be seen as favouring Hindus.
6. He elbowed out Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from the Presidency of the Congress at Tripuri in 1939 although the latter had won the presidency by election.
7. He did bizarre sexual experiments with young girls, his grand-nieces Abha and Monu Gandhi, by sleeping naked with them during his trip of Noakhali in East Bengal in 1946.

Who can measure up to Gandhi? Guruji Golwalkar, any day. Also Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyay. Guruji got charge of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh from the embryonic stage in which Dr. Hedgewar, the founder, had left it and built it up to become possibly the biggest voluntary organization in the WORLD! Gandhi inherited the Congress when all its great leaders– Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, Surendra Nath Banerjea, were dead or very old. C.R.Das also died shortly afterwards.

And Nehru? Who in the BJP would have made a better Prime Minister than Nehru?

I suggest Subodh Das.

But who is Subodh Das? Why, he is the person who makes tea at our BJP state office.

Isn’t this preposterous?

It is not. Read on.

Nehru had, in spite of having ruled India for seventeen years, and out of that having enjoyed practically unchallenged power over the nation for no less than fourteen years (1950-64, from Patel's death to his own), failed to address the problems of food deficit, population explosion, governmental corruption and illiteracy ; despite his great predilection for foreign affairs willfully acquiesced in the Chinese annexation of Tibet and removed what could have remained as a buffer state between the two countries, and could have effectively ruled out any Chinese aggression of the type that took place in 1962 ;  aided by his trusted friend Krishna Menon, turned India into a virtual Soviet satellite, and made enemies of all western nations ;  needlessly internationalised the Kashmir dispute ; taxed the nation to its gills, gave birth to a ‘Black Economy’, and frittered away all that tax money in creating a semi-Stalinist command economy based on state-owned heavy industries – real white elephants – that he fancifully called ‘temples of tomorrow’ ; and finally foisted a hereditary rule on the country and his party, the latter continuing to this day in the person of his Italian-born granddaughter-in-law.

Even during Patel's lifetime he had committed the incredible folly of calling off the Indian Army in Kashmir in 1948 when they were in hot pursuit of the fleeing Pakistani irregulars, and declaring a cease-fire unilaterally. He is believed to have done this because he believed Lord Mountbatten implicitly, much more than he did his own Generals, and it is on his advice that he did this. We need not go into the romantic aspect of this belief, that is to say the relationship between him and Lady Edwina Mountbatten – even without that the folly had been committed. There must be very few instances indeed in the history of mankind where a nation, about to taste victory in a war not of its doing, has acted in such an inexplicable manner. Had the army been allowed to chase the irregulars out of the hills of Kashmir on to the plains of Punjab - which they would have done in another forty-eight hours - the Pakistanis would have lost all the advantage of the heights, and probably there would have been no Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and no Kashmir problem today.

His abandonment of the Hindu refugees of East Bengal (or East Pakistan has not received a fraction of the publicity it deserved. The facts are as follows: Unlike in Punjab, there was no mass exchange of population between the two sides following partition of the province of Bengal in 1947. There was, however, considerable  pressure from the East Pakistani government on the Hindus in the form of forcible requisitioning of their properties, etc. Many well-to-do Muslims in West Bengal at this stage had also decided to move to Pakistan, and in the period between 1947-50 there was a lot of amicable exchange of property between the two Bengals. However, in February 1950 the East Pakistan government, led by its Chief Secretary Aziz Ahmed (described as ‘notoriously anti-Hindu’ by B.K.Nehru in his autobiography), started a pogrom against Hindus as a result of which more than 50,000 Hindus were killed, and an enormous number of women raped and property destroyed. Nehru showed unspeakable vacillation in dealing with this crisis, but ruled out an exchange of population on the Punjab model or military action against Pakistan when the same was proposed by his cabinet colleague Syama Prasad Mookerjee. Then he signed a pact with Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan whereby it was agreed that either country will look after its minorities and take back the displaced ones. Pakistan treated this pact as no better than toilet paper and continued its pogroms, though on a milder scale, against the Hindus. But Nehru pinned his personal prestige to the success of this pact, as a result of which he refused to take any action for the rehabilitation of the east Bengali Hindu refugees. Syama Prasad Mookerjee and K.C.Neogy, the two Bengali ministers in the central cabinet, resigned in protest against the pact. As an act of political naïveté few acts could compare with this pact – it could not have been unknown to Nehru that the Pakistan government had engineered this pogrom, yet he entrusted the safekeeping of the Hindus to the very same Pakistan government!    

Nehru’s role before independence in bringing about the partition of the country is also reprehensible. Maulana Azad’s remarks (Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom, Orient Longman, Madras, Complete Version, Reprinted 1993) on the man in the context of his press interview which gave Jinnah an opportunity to retract his acceptance of the Cabinet Mission proposals, are quite instructive in this regard. These details have been deleted from our history books by the so-called historians receiving largesse from Nehru’s government (read Arun Shourie’s  Eminent Historians, Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud, ASA, New Delhi, 1^st  Ed., 1998). Very briefly, what happened is this: in 1946 the British Cabinet sent a very high-powered team under the leadership of Lord Pethick-Lawrence to negotiate with Indian leaders (principally those of the Congress and the Muslim League) the modalities of granting independence to India. The team had talks with the leaders and came up with a plan in June 1946 which was called the ‘Grouping Plan’. The sum and substance of this plan was that India would remain one. There would be a weak centre with a few subjects such as currency, foreign affairs and communications, and the remaining powers would all vest in the provinces. The Congress accepted the plan and so did the Muslim League, though somewhat reluctantly. At that time Maulana Azad had just relinquished the presidency of the Congress in favour of Jawaharlal Nehru. However Nehru in a press conference held on July 10 in Bombay resiled from this position and declared that the Congress would enter the Constituent Assembly ‘completely unfettered by agreements and free to meet all situations as they arise’ ; and also that grouping of provinces, as proposed by the mission, will not work. Consequent upon this, the Muslim League on July 29 withdrew their acceptance of the Cabinet Mission proposals.

Maulana Azad has termed this act of Jawaharlal Nehru an ‘astonishing statement’ and “one of those unfortunate events that change the course of history”. He also deeply regretted that on April 26, 1946, while stepping down from the Presidency of the Congress he had issued a statement proposing the name of Jawaharlal Nehru as the next President of the Congress, and had appealed to all Congressmen that they should elect him unanimously. He called this the greatest blunder of his political life. He goes on to say that his second mistake was not supporting Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel who, had he become the Congress President, would never have committed the mistake Jawaharlal made, and which gave Jinnah the opportunity of sabotaging the Cabinet Mission plan. The book was first published in 1958, after his death, but in accordance with his wishes, thirty pages of the book were withheld, to be published thirty years later. In this part of the book he writes “Jawaharlal Nehru was one of my dearest friends and his contribution to India’s national life is second to none. I have nevertheless to say with regret that this was not the first time that he did immense harm to the national cause. He had committed an almost equal blunder in 1937 when the first elections were held under the Government of India Act 1935 when he refused to honour a pre-election understanding with the Muslim League. M.C.Chagla in his autobiography has also been critical of this terrible mistake of Nehru.

Together with withdrawal of acceptance of the Cabinet Mission proposals the Muslim League also announced that August 16, 1946 will be a day of ‘Direct Action’ by the League in support of Pakistan. No explanation was forthcoming as to what would constitute such ‘Direct Action’. This Direct Action eventually turned out to as bloodbath known as the The Great Calcutta Killings of 16-20 August 1946.

Another very astute and knowledgeable person who saw him at close range is the relatively unknown Benoy Mukhopadhyay, Chief Press Adviser and Registrar of Newspapers, Government of India, around 1947 and later Secretary, Press Council of India. Mukhopadhyay is known in Bengali literature by his pseudonym Jajabor, and is credited with writing the classics Drishtipat and Jhelum Nodir Tire.  In an interview to the Bangla fortnightly Desh, he has described Nehru as a 'Political Somnambulist', a person living in his own dreamland of political make-believe. He reminisces on the Nehru-coined slogan of the 1950s, 'Hindi-Chini bhai bhai' (Indians and Chinese are brothers) which culminated in the Chinese attacking India in 1962. The attack was preceded by frequent border incursions by the Chinese across the McMahon line, a fact that Nehru simply chose to ignore, because it did not fit in with his pre-set notions of Sino-Indian friendship. Mukhopadhyay describes Nehru as imagining 'secularism' (one of the most misused words in India) to be the panacea for all centrifugal and divisive tendencies. He chose to forget that there was such a thing as pan-Islamism, that Islam called upon all its followers to unite regardless of nationality, that Allahu Akbar was not merely a religious slogan but a political exhortation as well.

All his misdeeds could be forgiven if, with his untrammeled power and his foreign exchange reserves in the form of ‘sterling balance’ he could take the country forward economically. Alas, he did no such thing. He did not believe in the creation of wealth or the profit motive as being the driving engine behind economic development. Thus, a strange phenomenon was manifest: while countries like Germany, Japan, Singapore and South Korea (which, unlike India did not have a single building intact in their country in 1947) went ahead with development and raised themselves to the first world in no time, India was left languishing with its begging bowl in hand, forever a poor country. Meanwhile Nehru, who had become something like an international busybody, created a ‘Neutralist Bloc’ with Tito of Yugoslavia, Nkrumah of Ghana and Sukarno of Indonesia, while at the same time losing his credibility by adopting a duplicitous policy between the Suez crisis and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, both of which took place at around the same time in 1956.   

What more is there to say? I personally think Mohandas Gandhi’s greatest misdeed was choosing Nehru over Patel as the first Prime Minister of independent India. 

ISLAMIC TAKEOVER OF WEST BENGAL AND THE NORTHEAST

I am regularly on twitter, and a few days back I had tweeted two observations of mine: (a) That Muslims are buying real property in Kolkata and environs at a brisk pace, and often paying prices for them well above that prevailing in the market; and (b) That huge Mosques are springing up in remote corners of this state. I also observed, within the confines of twitter, that it would be extremely naïve, even dishonest, to suggest that there is no pattern behind this.

The response to these observations was quite large, even overwhelming. Two things stand out from these responses. First, a lot of people, including one in the real estate business, confirmed and reconfirmed my observations. Secondly, a number from Kerala confirmed that the same phenomenon was manifest in Kerala also in a big way. Interestingly, no one contended that it’s not happening, that there is no such phenomenon, that it is just a ‘communal’ fulmination on my part; nor, ‘so what’ if Muslims do take over? But then, those types are not among the 3000-plus who follow me on twitter.

Two observations, two important responses, and now two questions: Where is the money for purchasing all these properties and setting up all these mosques coming from? And whoever is spending this money: WHY is/are he/she/they doing it?

The first question is simple to answer. It is coming from Saudi Arabia. No other country (well, maybe Kuwait and Qatar, too) has the money to do all this. And most importantly, no other country has the MOTIVATION.

The second question, is equally simple – unless one has rendered oneself blind by the Nehruvian brand of secularism. The question WHY concerns the motivation  behind this. And that motivation can only be trying to turn a section of Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-ul-Islam. For those unfamiliar with the terms, the first means ‘Land of Strife’, in other words, where Islam has not been accepted by all and Islamists are busy doing Jihad to establish that rule. And the second, ‘Land of Peace’, where Islamic rule has established and therefore everyone is happy and peaceful. Now don’t you question what is happening in countries like Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, countries where practically everybody has accepted Islam, why Muslims there are killing one another – we’re all sure that is a different matter altogether, that there is American or other capitalist provocation behind all this. It is the duty of every Momin (ardent believer in Islam) to wage Jihad and convert  every bit of Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-ul-Islam. Now, this is important: Unbelievers are allowed to live in Dar-ul-Islam provided they are not idolaters. Jews and Christians are allowed to repair their churches and synagogues, but not erect any new church or synagogue; and in the existing ones no ostentation is permitted. In other words there is no question of any Hindu, Buddhist or Zoroastrian being allowed to live and worship in Dar-ul-Islam. A very good way to do all this is to acquire property in Dar-ul-Harb, and then kill, shoo away or, still, better, convert the unbelievers living there. This very process seems to be under way.

What is the process and how does it work? Several ways. First the straightforward way, where a Muslim appears on the scene and offers a price for a Hindu-owned property well above the market price. The Hindu cannot resist the temptation and sells it to him. In this way several properties in a locality are acquired by Muslims. Suddenly one sees a lot of skull-cap clad men and burqa-clad women where there were none before.

Then one of the properties is converted into a Waqf. Then a Mosque is built on that property. Then Muslims congregate there regularly. Azaan is read from that Mosque five times a day over a loudspeaker without caring for decibels, although neither the Quran nor any Haadis enjoin the use of loudspeakers for the purpose. The first Azaan is at some unearthly hour in the morning. Hindus cannot sleep – but then they are Hindus, so they grumble but do nothing else. Some, the more ‘secular’ among such Hindus even justify it as ‘minority rights’ and extol the virtues of early rising. One of two approach the local councillor, MLA or police, beginning their complaint with, “We fully accept the rights of Muslims to etc. etc. but….”.  The local councillor, MLA or police smile, tell them the same story about minority rights and extol the virtues of early rising.

Then a butcher shop selling beef is opened there. The sight of the carcasses and the yellowed fat glistening on the bodies of what used to be pavitra gomata disturb the Hindus. The smell of beef being cooked wafts all over the locality and enters the nostrils of Hindus. Young Muslim men, in lungis and banyans, or Black pyjama suits strut about, on foot and motorcycles. Occasionally they look at nubile Hindu girls, smile lewdly and sometimes scratch their privates. The Hindus, especially the fathers and brothers of the girls, are upset. But being Hindus, they grumble and do nothing else.

Then on Id day, a cow is slaughtered in full view of the Hindus. The blood runs down the roadside gutter and some of it collects in front of a choked gullypit. The stench of stale bovine blood is everywhere.

Now some of the Hindus begin to do something more than grumble. They put their property up for sale. They send their girls away to hostels or to relatives living in Hindu-majority areas. The property for sale is lapped up by Muslims at lucrative prices. Both sides are happy. The Hindus move out. The area becomes completely Muslimized.

There is a variant of this. The Muslims hunt through land records and discover lands which had been made Waqf in the ancient past, usually in the 1950s when a lot of Muslims moved to East Pakistan. Those lands were abandoned by the Muslims when they moved to Pakistan in the 1950s, and had been transacted.  The Muslims reclaim those Waqf lands. The administration is all help. Then the above cycle begins.

In this way the land is converted from Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-ul-Islam. Bit by bit, piece by piece. From an exclusively Hindu locality to an exclusively Muslim one. They elect a Muslim councilor, Muslim MLA. A Muslim MP is just one step away. The political parties all oblige. The Hindus all move out peacefully, one by one. And if somebody protests his or her protest is drowned in a din of ‘secularism’.

No one ever dreams of making a political issue out of this. After all, minority rights are a scared thing in a secular state, isn’t it? And every major political party (possibly with one exception) has its tongue hanging out for Muslim votes, which come in a block.

Then, when a chunk of territory is converted into Dar-ul-Islam, the time for overt action arrives. The ‘secular’, Hindu-led political parties are kicked out and virulent Islamist parties emerge. Parties like the Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP in Jammu and Kashmir, the IUML in Kerala,  

Badruddin Ajmal-led AUDF in Assam. Mullahs-turned-political leaders take centrestage. Leaders like Siddiqullah Chowdhury of West Bengal wait in the wings.

‘Secular’ political parties like Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, who are bending over backwards to get Muslim votes, and had gone overboard with measures like allowances for Imams and Muezzins and reservations for Muslims, now pull out all stops. They engineer anti-Hindu riots and openly help and encourage the rioters.

Some men among Hindus die, some women are raped. The remaining Hindus, highly ‘secular’, of the state couldn’t care less. It is no skin off their backs, just some unconfirmed reports of ‘some incidents of a communal nature’ somewhere in the outback. The media obliges. No news leaks out.

Is a communal, BJP-wala Tathagata Roy imagining all this? It has happened in Deganga, in Distt. North 24-Parganas, West Bengal, where Trinamool MP Haji Nurul Islam of Basirhat landed with a bunch of goons to loot Hindu property on 6^th September, 2010. It has happened in Gobra in Kolkata City in June 2010 where a small plot of land in a Hindu pocket was suddenly declared Waqf, and Muslims descended on it to offer Namaz. In the same Gobra, in October 2009 during Jagaddhatri Puja immersion Muslims attacked a procession and desecrated the idol of Devi Jagaddhatri. In Canning, in Distt South 24-Parganas, in February 2013 houses of Hindus were looted and burnt and Hindu idols were desecrated.

Another drama is played in West Bengal and Assam, simultaneously with the above described land grab operation. Between 1951 and 2011, the percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh / East Pakistan has gone down from 29% to about 9%. This is only natural, because Bangladesh / East Pakistan is a Muslim majority country, and there they will naturally persecute Hindus – what is so surprising about that? But, very interestingly, the percentage of Hindus in the Hindu-majority Indian state of West Bengal has also gone down – from 80% to 70%. In Assam it has gone down from 84% to less than 60%. Three districts in West Bengal, Eight in Assam, and even three in Bihar – Katihar, Araria and Kishangunj – have become or are about to become Muslim majority. And all this is due to Muslim infiltration from Bangladesh as well as greater procreation by Muslims.

The ultimate step is what happened to the Kashmiri Pandits in the Vale of Kashmir. They get driven out. The rest of the Hindus of the country do not care. What have we got to do with Kashmiri Pandits, they ask themselves? Bloody exclusivist lot, so proud of their good looks and fair complexion! Perhaps there were historical reasons! Perhaps they used to look down on the Muslims! Kashmir is so far away! Who cares, anyway?

West Bengal is the worst affected state. The major political parties, namely Trinamool Congress and CPI(M) have, as it were, conspired to do all this. But Mamata Banerjee has surpassed all in her brazenness. Can you imagine the Hindu Chief Minister of any other state donning an Islamic Hijab and pretending to offer Namaz, and the rest of the a state practically not batting an eyelid about it! There is consciousness about this in Assam. Kerala does not have a border with a Muslim-majority country. But in West Bengal – no consciousness, yes Muslim neighbour, and yes a Chief Minister with her tongue hanging out like Ma Kali for Muslim votes!

Is there time still left to correct all this? Maybe no, maybe just. THINK!

NO ONE KILLED BARUN BISWAS

This is a takeoff on 'No One Killed Jessica Lal', and for good reason. Barun Biswas is also another person whose death remains unexplained, will possibly forever remain unexplained. But let me explain.

Yesterday I got called to the popular 'Proti-Pokkho' Bengali TV debate hosted by ABP Ananda. I go there every so often, and no such visit so far has resulted in a blog. But yesterday was different.

When I entered the studio I noticed a quiet, self-effacing man sitting at one corner whom I had never seen before. He was later introduced by the anchor as Nandadulal Das, the secretary of Association for People's Democratic Rights (APDR), Chandpara Branch. Chandpara is a village close to the sub-divisional town of Bongaon in the North 24-Parganas District of West Bengal, very close to the Indo-Bangladesh international border. Close to this village there is another village called Sutia, right on the border. APDR is an NGO I do not have much respect for -- many of their functionaries are just busybodies  But this Nandadulal Das seemed different.

The story that he told, over and above what I knew of the murder of a person called Barun Biswas, literally made my hairs stand on end and prompted me to write this blog.

Like many other towns on this largely unprotected border, Sutia had become a hotbed of criminals. Two of these criminals, Bireswar Dhali and Susanta Chowdhury, started a regime of rape in this village around 2002. Some 80 women were raped or gangraped. The rapists used to move around openly, with impunity and with arms. Obviously this could not have gone on without the connivance of the police and local politicos. Then Barun Biswas stood up in protest and organized the affected villagers into a ‘Pratirodh Mancha’ (a platform for protest). He encouraged the affected women to file complaints with the police. As a result many of the criminals were arrested, convicted and jailed.

Barun used to move around carefully, with people accompanying him. But on 5^th July 2012 the criminals who were plotting his murder from behind the bars got a chance. He was shot in full view of the public at Gobardanga railway station. This much is public knowledge.

Now comes the part which Nandadulal told us, which he said he had investigated and found out.

It appears that Barun was far from dead when he fell on the platform. He was bleeding profusely and was surrounded by a huge crowd. But two known criminals, one Khotey and another were standing guard over him, shooing off anyone who tried to help, saying that the police had been summoned, and anyone who tried to touch the body would get involved in a police case. No one dared to do anything. Meanwhile Barun was constantly losing blood. In that state he tried to lift his cellphone, but he was too weak to do so. Some people rushed to the Station Master, asking him to contact the police. The Station master contacted the Government Railway Police (GRP) at Bongaon who said it was not within their jurisdiction. He then contacted the local police. Eventually an ambulance arrived, and Barun was lifted on to it. Khotey then caught hold of a passing motorcyclist, got onto the pillion seat and asked him to go to the hospital. While they were on their way there (this bit Nandadulal gathered from that motorcyclist, whose name he would not give), Khotey’s cellphone rang and he answered it. In answer to whoever was talking, Khotey answered “There is nothing to worry about. He’s been hit by a .303 bullet. He won’t live”.

Jyotipriya Mallik (Balu), the local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), who is also the Minister in charge of food in the state has refused to answer questions on the death.    

A FRUITFUL SEMINAR IN DELHI

Attended a very fruitful party seminar in Delhi ON 4-5 mAY 2013, which was addressed by leaders such as Advaniji, Dattatreya Hosabale, Shanta Kumar, etc. I spoke on the 'Interaction between Indian Religions and Semitic religions' and emphasized the essential difference between the two sets: that, while the former believes in the motto ‘we’ll mind our business, let them mind theirs’, or 'live and let live', and make no concerted effort to spread or proselytize, Christianity and Islam (not Judaism), by far presently the more dominant Semitic faiths are proselytizing religions to the hilt. They believe in conversion, and also believe that unless a person is converted he cannot be ‘saved’ – presumably from hell-fire. There have been tussles between Islam and Christianity on the one hand and Indian-origin faiths on the other, and some of the tussles have been bloody, and some very very bloody. This is history-absolutely incorrect to pretend that such bloody tussles never happened. However, I emphasized, that it is incorrect to equate the two proselytizing Semitic faiths, paint them with the same brush. This approach may give rise to costly mistakes. The interaction of faiths between Indian-origin faiths and Semitic faiths is required to be studied strictly separately for Islam and Christianity. 

The principal differences in approach of Christian and Islamic proselytization, according to my perception, are the following:
(a) Christianity has proselytized mostly by persuasion, which at times has included deceit or money; Islam, mostly by force.
(b) Their attitudes towards women are very different. 
(c) Christianity is not something immutable, and changes with time, which is a feature it shares with Indian faiths. Just as Hindus no longer practice suttee (widow-burning), likewise Christians do not burn heretics at the stakes as they did to Joan of Arc. However Islam is not only immutable, but takes pride in being so. The Hadith, or Islamic Traditions, are next only to the Qur’an in terms of sacredness to Muslims, and teach how the Prophet had acted, what he said, and what was done in his presence without his disapproval. Every devout Muslim is required to follow these Traditions. They contain provisions such as stoning to death for adultery – for which the punishment prescribed by the Indian Penal Code is only five years of imprisonment, and that too only for the male in case of adultery with a married woman. Adultery is not a criminal offence in most countries where Christianity is the dominant faith.
(d) Christianity does not imply internationalism, which Islam does (and interestingly, so does Communism). There is no Christian Jahan or Umma, and an Indian Christian, however devout, is not particularly upset by some Christian in some neighbouring country being killed or subjected to some injustice or some church being attacked. As everyone knows, this is not the case with Muslims – all the cases of anti-Hindu pogroms in Pakistan and Bangladesh have started with some real or imagined news about ‘Islam being in danger’ in India.

These are some of the features that have to be remembered while considering interaction. The entire point of my talk was to underscore the facts that (a) We have to live in India in amity among all religions (b) to do that it is necessary to put a stop to proselytization (c) it is incorrect to hide history and pretend everything has been smooth in this interaction and (d) the two Semitic religions will have to be looked at separately.

Good, fruitful seminar. Thanks to the organizer, our Legal Cell Chief Alok Kumarji 

RAHUL GANDHI ADDRESSING THE CII MEET - MY TAKE

Heard Rahul Gandhi out speaking to CII. First the good news. He is right in saying that India is a very complex country, there are no simple solutions. He is also right - at least so far - when he says that power has not devolved to the grassroots, with the result that MPs and MLAs have to think about things that ought to be thought of by the Pradhans. And he is right when he says the country lacks physical infrastructure, that we have to think exponentially rather than incrementally, and for it gives credit to the Green Revolution, the Telecom revolution, but understandably stops short of doing so to the Highway revolution launched by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Now the bad news. Lots of it.
Whoever wrote that speech for him did an awfully shoddy job, and it sounder shoddier when Rahul was reading from it at times without maintaining eye contact with the audience. It is full of ill-fitting metaphors, platitudes and some management jargon, and (this reminded me of the Communists) contains enunciation of a lot of problems, BUT NOT A SINGLE SOLUTION. He repeated his fascination with the Aam Aadmi which was manifest in his Kalavati speech in the Lok Sabha, this time talking about some poor workmen travelling from gorakhpur to Mumbai. He appreciated their optimism amidst squalour. He did not offer any solutions for their hopelessness.
The central theme of his speech appeared to be that India's strength will flow from its huge numbers, who are each working in their own way. His beehive analogy, with which he rubbished the elephant analogy, summed this up very adequately. He even said obviously trying to take (but failing) to take a dig a Modi, when he said "give one person the power to do something and he will fail: give it to the 1.2 billion people and it will be done immediately", or words to that effect.
All this is arguable, though at times sometimes dangerously vague and hazy. The question is, WHERE IS HIS ROLE IN ALL THIS? And if he honestly means what he repeatedly said, that Rahul Gandhi is irrelevant (sometimes bracketing poor Montek Singh Ahluwalia with him,)then it is possible he is speaking God's truth, but does he hold that the quality of LEADERSHIP IS ALSO IRRELEVANT? That the country does not need leadership or policy, or to use his analogy, it does not need a Queen Bee?
Apparently he does.
And for having vented so many of his ideas frankly and truthfully, he might be forgiven for the gaffe of calling Rani Laxmibai as 'Rani ki Jhansi'. It was at the very end of his speech, the poor fellow must have been tired and nervous. He was trying to run down Modi, by comparing him to the 'guy who comes charging on horseback'. It must have hurt him to think that no way he can be that guy, and that might have made him even more nervous. It happens to all of us.

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A ROUNDUP OF 2012 – DOUBLES AS A NEWSLETTER

Adds to my reputation as a procrastinator. It’s already 8^th January 2013.

So we have come to the end of yet another year. I am older by one year, that much further away from my birth, that much closer to my inevitable end. But the interesting thing is, I draw great comfort from the fact that I don’t know when and how that end is going to be. This is very different from normal human behaviour – at least middle-class behaviour – we draw comfort from certainties. Not in this case.

But enough of macabre thoughts. Let's see how the year went, what was and wasn't done, what should have been done or undone.

Right now, as most people who know me know, I’m wearing three hats: Politics, the profession of dispute resolution in construction contracts (called Arbitration for short, which is 90%, but not fully correct) and writing. The second is my bread and butter, the last gives me great pleasure, and the first – it provides me with the hill that I must climb, without which to climb I’d be miserable. I can write any time – it is a no-threat thing. I now know, at the risk of presuming upon fate, that I will continue to get cases to arbitrate upon or otherwise resolve. In any case the ones that I have will see me through for quite a few coming years. But politics! And doing BJP in West Bengal! Ah, that's some hill to climb.

Nobody would be interested in my profession, except to know what it is all about, and how did I chance upon it. Construction Contracts (big sums of money, a middling-size contract in India would nowadays be around Rs. 100 crores or a Billion rupees) generate disputes, and disputes require resolution. And resolution requires knowledge of both Engineering and Law, which, begging everybody's pardon and risking a reputation for conceit, doesn't grow on trees. I happened to get involved in one such when I was working for the Metro project and when  seeking a way out of government service. One night, when I was sitting on the balcony of the Metro quarters at 200X, it flashed upon me that this is something I could do. So I'm doing it, and not doing badly at all, touch wood.

But politics? But the point is not that. The point is, after a gap of two decades, things are again beginning to look good for the BJP in West Bengal.

Why do I say so? Several reasons. Consider:

1.     The CPI(M) have been out of power for more than a year and by now almost all the men who worked as their instruments of terror, having no brand loyalty, have faithfully moved to the Trinamool Congress. Otherwise, the situation obtaining at the end of 2011 still holds good. What is that situation?

(a)   First, the bulk of CPI(M) members had joined the party after it came to power in 1977. They know what it is like to ‘do CPI(M)’ while it is in power. Most of them don’t know how to struggle for power, and I suspect most of them don't want to know. because, unlike the Communists of earlier generation they are not ideologically indoctrinated. They were in CPI(M) because it was in power, and if it isn’t they’ll go to whoever is. As simple as that.

(b)  Secondly, leadership: the last two great leaders -- both absolute &%$#@&*$ -- were Jyoti Basu and Anil Biswas. Also, arguably, Subhas Chakraborty. With them dead, the ones that are left, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Biman Bose, are frankly, not much. They can’t nurse the party back to power. Nor can Shyamal Chakraborty, Suryakanta Misra or Shyamali Gupta, or for that matter Mridul Dey or Abhik Datta or anyone else.

(c)   And thirdly, the CPI(M) had grown so accustomed to winning elections by misuse of the government machinery and spreading terror that today, with both weapons gone, they are completely out of their depths.

2.     What about the party that’s in power? Fortunately for us, and very unfortunately for the people of the state, Trinamool Congress has smeared its own face with egg.

(a)   First of all, the party has no structure, and Mamata runs the party like her own personal fiefdom. There is no organization tree and nobody works under anybody else except Mamata. She is less afraid of losing power in the state than of losing her grip on the party. That’s why she sacrificed Kolkata Municipal Corporation in 2005, because she could not let Subrata Mukherjee, the Mayor, grow too big for his boots.

(b)  She has an incredibly jealous and suspicious nature – she won’t let any minister work independently or even well, for fear that that person may steal the thunder from her and loosen her grip. Good governance, thus, is out of the question. That is why she keeps second-rate or even third-rate people like Mukul Roy, Sobhan Chatterjee or Dola Sen close to her and better people like Subrata Mukherjee, Saugata Roy or Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay at arm’s length. This is why she had driven Subrata out of the party in 2005 because she thought that after his good performance as Mayor of Kolkata he might pose a threat to her. This even applies to bureaucrats – the transfer of Damayanti Sen after she began to crack the Park Street gang-rape is a case in point. I also suspect that since most of the accused were Muslims she must have told Damayanti to go easy on the case and Damayanti did not listen.

(c)   Then, she can’t take any criticism. An extreme example of this is is the arrest of Ambikesh Mahapatra for e-mailing a cartoon. She sincerely believes that since she has been able to dislodge the Left Front, she is now above criticism.

(d)  Her financial indiscretions are at some point of time going to come home to roost. When her Finance Minister says every now and then that he’s worried sick all the time about how to meet the salaries and pension payments at the end of the month, she merrily goes on distributing largesse, like grants to families of hooch-dead, grants to clubs, allowances for Imams and Muezzins, Dearness Allowance for State Government Employees, etc.

3.     So with CPI(M) discredited plus unable, and Trinamool fast on its way to being thoroughly discredited, who remains? The good old Congress? Ah, let’s not talk about them – even their central leadership don’t want them to win, would much rather have CPI(M) win, now that it is easier to make Karat see reason. That’s why the central leadership does not let a single leader emerge in the state, perpetuates the quarrels within the party, and doesn’t criticize the CPI(M). Apart from that their supporters and cadres are demoralized and their support base is decimated, at least in South Bengal. The Congress, no way.

             

So, as I said, for the state BJP it is now or never. therefore I have to work very hard.

Everything is fine on the family front. Anuradha is fine; so are my daughters Malini (Coco) and Madhura (Momo) both in the US of A; so are Coco's husband Kiran Rao and children, our dearest grandchildren, Surya and Uma and Momo's husband Ajinkya Khedekar. Thank God for everyone being well. However, my mother-in-law, Mrs. Arati Guha, a sprightly 86, living with us, sustained a fracture in her thigh-bone – the second one at the same location. She’s been operated upon, successfully, is back from hospital and is now recovering.

The year went pretty fast, as all years go these days – progressively faster, in fact. We made our annual trip to see our daughters in the US, and I along with a bunch of friends and a couple of relatives took off for a cruise to Alaska. Sailed from Seattle, called at Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway, and took bus trips around. Then got down at Victoria BC, saw the town, took the ferry to Vancouver and took a bus trip to the Canadian Rockies. Jasper, Banff, Lake Sulphur, Lake Louise, and a few more places. Dispersed from Calgary. Incredible. I have always l-o-v-e-d to travel – it appears God ordained that my dreams will come true, though a little late in the day. I wish Anuradha had accompanied me, but she preferred the company of her grandchildren.

  

My second book, a complete biography of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a man I have always immensely admired, has come out, and was released in Kolkata by Manishankar Mukerji (Shankar) and Justice Chittatosh Mookerjee; two months later it was released, with a Hindi translation, at Delhi by L.K.Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Kumar, Saha-Sarkaryavah.

So far so good. Can't complain. Let it stay this way – but of course it won't. Change is the law of life.

Happy New Year to everyone. May you all have a wonderful 2013.