Journalist Rubika Liyaquat, known for her tenacious attitude, has become the victim of radical Islamists yet again. The radicals found a ridiculous way to attack her for wearing makeup soon after she posted a photo of herself opening her fast inside the news studio.
Source: Twitter
However, the journalist gave a befitting reply to the Islamic fundamentalists in her own style. She came out stating that unlike some, she had been working in the studio and not resting at home in the name of fasting.
टाँग पर टाँग चढ़ा के लिपस्टिक लगा के,इतना सारा मेकअप करके इफ़्तार वो करता है जो सारा दिन अपने पैरों पर खड़ा रह कर मेहनत से स्टूडियों में काम करता है।वो तुम जैसे की तरह रोज़े की आड़ में काम चोरी नहीं करता।
जिस तरह अपनी शक्ल छुपाई है अक़्ल पर भी बुरक़ा डाल दिया है ठेकेदार ने https://t.co/3iSjlAXNGz
— Itz Aziz Mewati ابدول عزیز (@Itz_aziz__) May 26, 2019
Rubika was hounded even further when these elements dug out her old photo where she is seen posing with her Rakhi brother Nishant Chaturvedi, who is an editor at Aaj Tak. The trolls insinuated that her photo was against Islam.
Source: Twitter
Liyaquat hit back at the troll for attacking her for an old picture with her Rakhi brother reminding the radical Islamists that this is India and not Taliban. The handle that abused her later deleted the tweet.
सही तो ये होगा कि तुम्हारी माँ-बहन के सामने आकर तुम्हें इस्लाम का सही अर्थ समझाऊँ। ये हिंदुस्तान है तालीबान नहीं मेवाती।
नफ़रत में इतने अंधे हो गए हैं आपके समर्थक @INCIndia कि मेरे भाई के साथ मेरी तस्वीर बेहूदगी के साथ शेयर कर रहे हैं। https://t.co/0IhPct3jLE
Yashwant Deshmukh, the head of CVoter also condemned the attack on the journalist. He said that this Talibani mindset is incurable.
भाई बहन के स्नेह से ज़्यादा पवित्र क्या है दुनिया में ? राखी के दिन खींची फोटो पर जिसको धर्मिक दिक्कत होने लगे, उसे समझने की नहीं बल्कि इलाज़ की ज़रूरत है . @RubikaLiyaquat मेरी भी छोटी बहन है, और हम सभी को उसकी कामयाबी पर नाज़ है.
This is not the first time that a popular Muslim personality has been trolled and abused by radical Islamists. Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan was attacked by fundamentalists after he shared a photo of his son celebrating Ganapati Puja.
Similarly, TV actress Hina Khan was also targeted by Islamic fundamentalists who abused her for dressing inappropriately during Ramzan. Cricketer Irfan Pathan was also made a victim of trolling by fundamentalists for celebrating Rakshabandhan.
The Lok Sabha election results in West Bengal sent shock-waves across the country. Defying all expectations, the BJP registered a 40.25% vote-share in the state while the Left was reduced to a single digit vote-share. The saffron surge catapulted the BJP to 18 Lok Sabha seats while the TMC was reduced to 23 and the Left failed to even open its account.
The results are clearly indicative of the fact that for the first time in its history, Hindus in Bengal voted along religious lines rather than mere politics. And as the CSDS post-poll survey shows, there indeed was huge Hindu consolidation behind the BJP while Muslims rallied behind Mamata Banerjee.
Source: The Hindu
BJP’s vote-share among Hindus went up from 21% in 2014 to a whopping 57% while TMC’s decreased by 8 percentage points from 40 to 32 and the Left’s decreased by a massive 23 points from 29 to 6. It is also important to note that the BJP’s vote-share increased among every section of Hindus regardless of their caste. Upper Castes, OBCs, Dalits, Adivasis voted for the BJP in far greater numbers while the vote share of other parties dropped significantly. Therefore, it was a consolidation of Hindu votes transcending the barriers of caste, class and creed.
Consequently, TMC’s vote-share among Muslims went up from 40% in 2014 to 70% this year. Although BJP increased its vote-share from 2% to 4% as well, the direction of the wind is quite clear.
It is also symbolic of a certain fact. That the Left was not destroyed by Trinamool Congress, it was destroyed by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Until now, the Bengal electorate has voted on the basis of political ideologies but henceforth, as we have said earlier, they will be voting on the basis of their religious identity.
Going forward, we can expect even more Hindu consolidation towards the BJP and a simultaneous Muslim consolidation behind Trinamool. Under such circumstances, the ideology of the Left has no takers. The Left, for all means and purposes, is dead in Bengal for the foreseeable future.
After the stunning victory registered by Narendra Modi-led NDA which managed to get 354 Lok Sabha constituencies, 3 MLAs in West Bengal have switched sides to join the BJP. The three MLAs who joined the BJP on Tuesday are the TMC’s Shubhranshu Roy (Bijpur), and Tushar Kanti Bhattacharjee (Bishnupur) from Congress and the CPI(M)’s Debendra Nath Roy (Hemtabad). Shubhrangshu Roy was recently suspended for 6 years for demeaning the party. BJP’s Mukul Roy convened a presser to make the declaration.
Mamata Vs Modi Round 2: BJP’s Mukul Roy briefs media at BJP headquarters in Delhi. pic.twitter.com/bY8aaaii3v
In the presser, Roy declared BJP’s control over 3 municipalities after the councillors joined the BJP. The municipalities are- Kanchrapara, Halisahara and Naihati. The councillors from these municipalities who switched over to BJP are currently in Delhi. Mukul Roy welcomed the councillors and MLAs into the BJP fold. The ex-TMC MLAs chanted “Jai Shri Ram” soon after joining the BJP.
Ruby Chatterjee, TMC councillor from Garifa (West Bengal), ward no 6 says, “20 councillors are here in Delhi. We are not upset with Mamata ji but the recent victory of BJP in Bengal has influenced us to join the party. People are liking BJP as they are working for them.” pic.twitter.com/qpYCCmS4HF
One of the councillors, Ruby Chatterjee claimed that they aren’t upset with Mamata Banerjee but the recent victory of the BJP has influenced them to join the BJP as they are liking the way they work for the people.
Kailash Vijayvargiya of BJP has declined the allegations of horse trading and instead claimed that the MLAs and the councillors had a change of heart. Kailash further added that this is just the beginning.
The BJP made massive inroads in the state of West Bengal by winning 18 of the total 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state. It also increased its vote percentage from 17.5 per cent in 2014 to a stunning 40.5 per cent in the recently concluded General elections.
The resignation drama outlined by Congress President Rahul Gandhi to save himself from the embarrassment of losing miserably in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election is being taken quite seriously by his party loyalists and allies.
In the latest, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, came out in support of the party president saying that Rahul Gandhi is the best person to pull the Congress out of its predicament following the setback in the Lok Sabha polls. He furthered that his party is “alive and kicking” and it is too premature to write its obituary.
The Congress has no time to sit and lick its wounds as it must immediately pick itself up for the upcoming state elections, Tharoor told PTI.
Tharoor who said he was ready to be the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha if the post is offered to him opinioned that the Gandhi-Nehru family will continue to command “Great clout and respect” within the party, on the basis of the tremendous contributions it has made in shaping and guiding the party since Independence.
The former Union minister said Gandhi has led the party from the front and still has far more to offer to the party.
Though Tharoor has scored an electoral hat-trick by winning from the Thiruvananthapuram seat in the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress faced severe humiliation by bagging merely 52 seats of the 542 seats in the Lok Sabha.
After the Congress Party faced existential crisis following the Lok Sabha debacle, Rahul Gandhi had expressed his adamancy on resigning from his post of the party President.
Similar to the 2014 drama when after the poll drubbing, the then party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi had reportedly offered to resign from the post but the CWC had rejected their proposal, this year too Rahul Gandhi came up with a similar proposal in the CWC meeting convened recently.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC), however, rejected his resignation. Interestingly, the President of the Congress Working Committee is Rahul Gandhi himself.
Senior Congress leader, Verappa Moily, also, took to Twitter to support Rahul Gandhi’s post as Congress chief. Moily said that it was Rahul Gandhi who made the party relevant after its defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. He further added that there is no question of finding a person outside the family.
Moreover, Congress ally and the multi-crore fodder scam convict, Lalu Prasad Yadav, also spoke in support of Rahul Gandhi’s post as Congress chief, calling the resignation decision suicidal. He opinioned that as soon as a non-Nehru-Gandhi family member takes over the role, they would be painted as a ‘puppet’ by the BJP.
Further, the Youth Congress workers, taking the dynasty glorification to a whole new level had reportedly written letters in their own blood, urging Rahul Gandhi not to quit as the Party president.
However, reports state that Rahul Gandhi is still adamant on resigning from the party president post and to further discuss the issue another meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) has been called, later in the week.
A great cultural revolution is afoot in the country. When Narendra Modi returned to power with an even greater majority than in 2014, nearly every political commentator agreed it was not mere politics that was at play here, it also underlined a fundamental cultural shift in the country.
We are living in an age of chaos. People on the right of the political spectrum were jubilant over the cultural revolution that Narendra Modi is representative of. However, revolutions are messy affairs. Age old icons will be destroyed, ancient ones will be revitalized and new ones will emerge as a nation leapfrogs into the future.
Almost everyone on the Indian political right was salivating at the prospects of a cultural revolution under Narendra Modi. But revolutions are a chain of events that hardly anyone has any real control over. Incidents which under normal circumstances would be significant are buried under a pile of rubble while others which are insignificant in themselves have massive bearings on the future.
The events of the past couple of days is symbolic of all cultural revolutions. It is only during cultural revolutions that the incoherent rant of an actress who has largely been a failure initiates a chain of events that makes people wary of the impact it could have on the electoral prospects of their favoured political party in a particular state.
I am, of course, referring to the entire debate surrounding Raja Ram Mohan Roy. The debate was initially sparked by Payal Rohatgi, an actress who has developed a penchant for sharing pictures of herself on social media with words that are meant to appeal to the Hindu Right. In a video that she shared on Twitter, she described Sati as an act that was committed by women of her own volition and called Raja Ram Mohan Roy, hailed as the Bengali social reformer who abolished the practice of Sati, a Christian and a British stooge.
It sparked a massive debate with one popular account on social media eventually commenting that Raja Ram Mohan Roy was indeed a Christian while others called him a British stooge without commenting on Sati itself or voicing any support for Rohatgi. The consequence of it all was certain influential people from the Bengali community, among the ‘right-wing’ itself, interpreted it as an insult towards the whole community.
The idea then soon gained ground and numerous people, including non-Bengalis, took affront and endorsed the notion the criticism of Raja Ram Mohan Roy as disparaging the Bengali community itself. What has transpired since then could only be described as the social media equivalent of a massive bar fight. It is important then to separate the wheat from the chaff and dissect the actual points of disagreement without getting involved emotionally invested in the whole matter. Needless to say, a critique of a Bengali stalwart is not equivalent to criticizing the entire Bengali community.
We have to begin by placing Raja Ram Mohan Roy and his actions and words in their own proper context. The social reformer was born into an era when the British were taking control of Bengal. By the time he had grown up, they had taken complete control of the region by the end of the 18th Century. After centuries of dominance by Islamic regimes, the morale of Hindus in Bengal was at an all-time low.
As was the situation elsewhere, Hindus in the region suffered immensely under tyranny of Islamic rule. Therefore, when they were eventually vanquished by the Britishers, Hindus were quite grateful for it as the new rulers were quite benevolent when compared to what was before. Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s worldview was shaped greatly by these circumstances.
The inferiority complex that Roy suffered from is evident from his “Appeal to the Christian Public” as quoted by the well renowned and highly respected historian R.C. Majumder. In the Appeal, he laments the inability of the Hindus in Bengal to effectively resist the Islamic regimes while praising Sikhs and the Marathas for overthrowing the tyrants. In the end, he calls the Britishers’ victory over the Islamic tyrants as ‘Divine Providence’ for the ‘Natives of Bengal’.
Source: Sandeep Balakrishna (Twitter)
It is also true that Roy’s foundation of the Brahmo Samaj as a monotheistic creed was deeply inspired by Christianity. It appears almost obvious that he had indeed converted to the Unitarian sect of Christianity. He published a book ‘The Precepts of Jesus’ which drew great criticism from Baptist Missionaries.
— Sandeep Balakrishna 23 May Special (@dharmadispatch) May 28, 2019
Thus, there are three facets to Roy which his critics have gotten absolutely correct. One, he was very sympathetic to the British regime. Two, he was a Christian. Three, the foundation of the Brahmo Samaj was deeply inspired by the principles of Christianity.
However, things are rarely ever Black and White and usually much more complicated than they first appear. The same is the case with Roy. Thus, his actions and words require a much more nuanced evaluation.
Firstly, it was normal for Hindus of Bengal at that point of time to be sympathetic towards the British regime. After the horrors perpetrated by Islamic rulers, the British indeed appeared as great liberators. Secondly, as is quite evident, Roy, the very intelligent person that he was, suffered from a deep sense of inferiority complex and considered the Hindus in the region to be inferior to Marathas and Sikhs even, much less the British. Therefore, it is easy for us to speculate that he believed Hindus of Bengal could learn a great many things from the Britishers.
We can also speculate that Roy perceived the faith of Britishers to have played some part in their victory over Mughals.
Therefore, he appears to honestly believe that Bengal Hindus will benefit greatly if they at least emulated the faith of the Britishers if not convert entirely to Christianity. For an intellectual of that era, it was natural to hold these opinions. The soul of Bengal had been pillaged and raped by Islamic rulers for centuries, therefore, it can be considered quite normal for intellectuals to believe there was something intrinsically flawed with native Bengali culture itself that required a remedy.
Therefore, we have a situation where one side condemns the facts while the other the context. The fact of the matter is, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, for the good or bad, did have a profound impact on Bengal. We can also speculate that much after his demise when Hindus of Bengal started regaining their self-confidence, the Brahmo Samaj was readopted into the Hindu fold with modifications.
The hallmark of revolutions is the destruction of the revered icons it is directed against. Roy is an icon of the secular state, therefore, in the cultural revolution that is underway, his legacy will be dissected and debated and efforts will be made to cast him down from the pedestal he has been accorded. However, people who wish to do so must also respect the fact the circumstances Roy operated in and if they do manage to grasp it, perhaps they will not be able to respect him but at least they could let his legacy rest in peace.
It is also a fact that Sati acquired a perverse form in Bengal and had to be abolished by law. It won’t do much harm to credit Roy in this regard at least. There is great angst in the country currently, as is the norm with revolutions, perhaps, in due course of time we can give people their fair share of credit while being acutely aware of their shortcomings.
Roy is symbolic of an era when Hinduism was at one of its lowest ebbs in Bengal. Therefore, as a cultural stalwart, his opinions and works reflect that fact. It’s not merely a coincidence that Roy was succeeded by Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in the Bengali cultural sphere. Even Rabindranath Tagore, who is revered by the secular-liberal elite, quite clearly perceived Hinduism to be superior to Christianity and Islam. And they were eventually followed by rather dubious people after India gained its independence which is indicative of a certain fact.
Our cultural icons are reflective of the circumstances they lived in. Roy was symbolic of an era when the self-confidence of Hindus was destroyed and yet, he did make a profound positive contribution to Hindu society. Sri Aurobindo was reflective of a period when Hindus of Bengal had regained their self-respect and their confidence and were in the mood to conquer the world. Going forward, we ought to be careful and sympathetic in our evaluation of cultural stalwarts.
The debate surrounding Roy has also brought to the fore the numerous fissures within the ‘right-wing’ itself. Calls are being made to purge certain sections of it which are being labelled as ‘fringe’ and there’s considerable conflict underway.
It certainly appears that people who were excited about the prospects of a cultural revolution and even hungry for it did not quite assume that this is exactly what a revolution looks like. It perhaps ought to have been clear from the very beginning that the destruction of icons won’t be limited to Nehru and Gandhi alone. While it remains to be seen the fate that awaits the legacy of Roy, we can make safe speculations about the infighting within the Right.
Within the next five years, these battles will only become more frequent by the day with a temporary respite in between. The current debate was sparked by Payal Rohatgi, the next may be sparked by Kamal R Khan for all we know. One thing is for certain, the ‘purge’ is not happening and the debate cannot be silenced. The cat is out of the bag and it will be very difficult to put it back in.
Another interesting aspect of it is the fact that people ignoring the facts about Roy are largely those from the ‘Old Guard’ of the Right-Wing and those ignoring the context represent the ‘Young Guard’. It is symbolic of the direction our country is headed in. The ‘Old Guard’ may assume that it could silence the ‘Young Guard’ with their authority, however, that appears quite unlikely at this point.
The best outcome that one could hope for is a synthesis between the two factions. However, there is too much anger at this point for any such synthesis to occur. It is very well impossible to make credible speculations about the outcome of cultural revolutions, therefore we cannot say for certain how any of it ends. But one thing is for certain, things would get a lot messier before it remotely starts getting better.
Edit (6:27 pm, 28th May): An earlier version said that a popular history account on Twitter called Raja Ram Mohan Roy a British stooge. It has been corrected to say that others made that claim.
After the EVM hacking theory didn’t hold ground following the massive win of NDA in the Lok Sabha elections, a new theory has been tried to be floated by some sections of media to allege foul play in the elections. In an attempt to discredit the BJP led NDA’s win and to suggest that the elections were somehow rigged, now a conspiracy theory has emerged to allege that in many places, the number of total votes counted was more than the total number of votes polled on election day.
As a part of that mudslinging on the election process, propaganda portal NewsClick.in has published a report alleging that thousands of phantom votes are suspected in several Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar, UP, Delhi and MP. The website, which is a promoter of dubious Hate Crime Watch in association with FactChecker.in, says they analysed eight constituencies, where they found that excess votes recorded in these seats are more than the winning margin.
They have attached a table showing the numbers to prove that the actual votes counted during the counting are more than the total votes. But a cursory glance of the table will tell that they used some clever manipulations and selective inclusions and exclusions to arrive at the numbers they desired to obtain.
It may be noted that the report is authored by Chandan Nandy and Kashif Kakvi. Nandy earlier worked in Quint, where he had written several fake reports, which were later withdrawn by the portal.
First, while they claim that such discrepancies are more than the winning margin, their own data shows exactly one example of such incident, Jahanabad in Bihar, where the winning margin of 1751 is less than the alleged vote mismatch of 24,507. For all other seats in their example, they have mentioned winning margins like 4 lakh (Begusarai), 2.84 lakh (Patna Sahib) etc, which are far more than the vote difference of few thousand they have calculated. In the 8 examples NewsClick has cited, the winning margin in 7 of them is far more than the alleged discrepancy.
Second, while taking the counted votes, the propaganda portal used the total votes as shown in the Election Commission results site. But the EC is showing EVM votes and postal votes separately, and it is obvious that the postal votes will not be included in the votes polled on the election day. The polled votes should be compared with EVM votes, but they compared it with total votes including postal votes to claim that totally counted votes are more than the polled votes.
Third, they didn’t use actual votes polled in the constituencies, instead, they used polling percentage and used that to arrive at their own total polled votes. Note that they have labelled it as “Total polled votes should be…”, not “Total votes polled”. The polling percentages they have used to calculate the turnouts also do not match with ECI numbers. This means that the turnout numbers they have used are not correct, therefore their entire analysis is based on such incorrect data.
NewsClick data vs actual data
We have checked the actual numbers for the constituencies mentioned by NewsClick, and found that there are huge discrepancies between actual numbers and the numbers mentioned by them. The voter turnout numbers are available in the Voter Turnout mobile app, and the votes counted are available on the election results website. In the 8 seats, 2 of them, Jahanabad and Patna Sahib in Bihar went to poll in the 7th phase, and the Election Commission has not released final turnout figures this phase, so we are unable to verify the claims of NewsClick for these two seats.
Among the rest 6, there is absolutely no difference between the polled numbers shown in the App and the EVM counted numbers in three seats. In two, there are minor differences, where the counted numbers are actually slightly less than the turnout numbers, the differences being 572 for Begusarai and 190 for Farrukhabad. There is only one constituency in the eight where the official counted votes are more than the official turnout, 7,354 in Badaun, UP. In the report they have mentioned that there were 13,657 excess votes in Amethi, but as per official records, the difference is just 34.
Such minor discrepancies are most probably clerical errors, as ECI is still in the process of reconciliation of numbers. When media and opposition parties question the election process including the EVM, they overlook one major aspect of the system followed by Election Commission. The candidates and/or their authorised agents are always present in every step of the process, and they also need to put their signs and seals in those steps. After the end of polling, the total number of votes polled in a booth are recorded on Form 17C, and a copy of the same is mandatorily handed over to the respective polling agents of the candidates.
On the day of counting, the total votes shown in an EVM is always tallied with the number recorded on the Form 17C, which the Counting agents of the candidates also can match with the copy of the form provided on the polling day. Therefore, if there is any discrepancy between these numbers, Election officials take necessary steps as laid down in the law. After the counting is done for a booth, the results are noted down in part II of the Form 17C, where signatures of the Counting agents are obtained.
Official results are declared only after all these formalities are completed and the candidates of their authorised counting agents have accepted the results by putting their signatures. If there were any discrepancies, the Counting Agents of candidates would have raised it during the counting itself. To raise doubt about the election results by using such allegations is thus nothing but propaganda to question the credibility of the Indian election machinery.
Update: The report has been now deleted from the NewsClick website.
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, despite his loud rhetoric on the concocted Rafale scam and yelling ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ slogans managed to bag only 52 seats in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, while PM Modi-led BJP managed to bag a whopping 303 seats, and winning with an even larger mandate than 2014.
After the Lok Sabha debacle, the Congress President has reportedly been hell-bent on resigning as the party President.
Amidst all the ongoing theatrics, senior leader Veerappa Moily has, today, come out in support of Rahul Gandhi’s post as Congress chief.
Taking to Twitter, he said that it was Rahul Gandhi who made the party relevant after its defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. He further added that there is no question of finding a person outside the family.
In 2014, when everyone wrote off the INC, it was Rahul Gandhi who fought back and made INC relevant again. In 2019, he took on the right issues and cornered the BJP. He should continue to be INC president. We cannot afford not to have him in that position.
Reviving a party is a 5 year process, it a takes a leader like him to think long term and bring INC to its rightful position to serve the people of India. It’s not the question of finding a person outside the family. INC itself is one big family and he belongs to that family.
In another major development, the multi-crore fodder scam convict, Lalu Prasad Yadav, also spoke in support of Rahul Gandhi’s post as Congress chief calling the resignation decision ‘suicidal’. He stated that as soon as a non-Nehru-Gandhi family member takes over the role, they would be painted as a ‘puppet’ by the BJP. Lalu Prasad also blamed regional parties for not projecting Rahul Gandhi as a Prime Ministerial face as it was required to take on the BJP and Narendra Modi irrespective of the Opposition’s seat-share bargaining.
Similar to the 2014 drama when after the poll drubbing, when the then party president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi had reportedly offered to resign from the post but the CWC had rejected their proposal, this year too, Rahul Gandhi came up with a similar proposal in the CWC meeting convened after the election results.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC), however, rejected his resignation. After a massive defeat like this, one would imagine that the Congress party would understand the underlying message in the mandate and make some changes. However, the Congress Working Committee has “unanimously” decided that Rahul Gandhi will not take any responsibility for the humiliating defeat. Interestingly, the President of the Congress Working Committee is Rahul Gandhi himself.
Amidst all this, there were reports that the Youth Congress workers have gone a step ahead in their dynasty worship. They have reportedly written letters in their own blood, urging Rahul Gandhi not to quit as the Party president.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had recently blamed the loss on other Congress leaders saying that the party lost because the leaders did not chant ‘Chowkidaar chor hai’ along with Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul Gandhi, on his part, other than the drama of resignation, has asserted that there were other leaders of the party who put their sons above the party and hence, the party lost. Interestingly, the irony of this statement was lost on Rahul Gandhi.
However, if one is to believe the rumours, Rahul Gandhi is still adamant on resigning from the party president post and to further discuss the issue another meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) has been called for, later in the week.
Meanwhile, following the disaster Congress faced in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, many senior leaders like Madhya Pradesh’ Kamal Nath, Uttar Pradesh chief Raj Babbar, Niranjan Patnaik in Odisha, Assam’s Ripun Bora, Dr Ajoy Kumar from Jharkhand, and Punjab’s Sunil Jhakar have reportedly offered to resign from their posts.
The repetitive nature of media articles in a desperate bid to declare the coming of age of Rahul Gandhi reeks of a slave mentality.
It’s been a 15-year long wait for the Indian media. And the wait seems to be a perpetual and never-ending one – The declaration of coming of age of Rahul Gandhi. A man who will turn 49 next month is the subject matter of so many of these articles. That too a man who had it easy and got everything in a platter and presides over the destruction of his family firm – Congress.
While nobody would have cared less, what makes ignoring difficult is that his family firm is the second biggest political party in India which has to act like a credible opposition for a democracy to function. India has a lot at stake and this coming of age nonsense has been perpetrated far too long with hope and despair by sections of media. A mind of a man has an unlimited capacity for self-deception and nothing else proves it more than the indulgence of left-liberal media on Rahul Gandhi.
Sample this article from The Quint titled “Modi may win 2019 but Rahul Gandhi too has come of age as a neta”
As I went through this article, it prompted a google search.
What came up is an article from about a decade back (17-05-2009) in the Economic Times:- “Rahul Gandhi a coming of age”
As I scrolled back memory lanes and scrolled down on the search results, the prospect of having read so many “coming of age” articles of Rahul Gandhi made me worry. There are far too many of them hoping against hope of signs of maturity in a man who will touch 50-year-old mark next year.
The Indian Political system has changed massively over the period the leftist media waited for Rahul Gandhi to come up as a leader. BJP changed completely as does any other organization. We saw young blood coming up, new faces occupying positions of power, old timers making way for new ones. Many leaders emerging out of the electoral process, many getting irrelevant while some corrupt ones facing the heat in jail. The Congress party remained unchanged except their consistent decline all thanks to their wait for the only leader.
There is an infamous and historically false Macaulay speech which had caught the fancy of Indian minds and shared widely on social media. While Fake news and posts are not something new in Facebook, Whatsapp and other social media sites, this fake quote has sustained to influence thinking minds for a long time and made Macaulay a prominent name even among layman.
A fake quote attributed to Macaulay read
“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation”
The immense popularity of the post in all social media platforms probably piqued interest and an article emerged stating that the quote attributed to Macaulay was never made and it is just another fake news doing the rounds. It is FAKE NEWS but a popular one which continues to linger around in conversations despite being called out. The reality of slave mentality probably made the fake news believable and the quote viral. However, Macaulay and his supposed statements still continue to hold sway over Indian minds while historians agree that racist supremacy was a defining feature of the English mindset. A parallel racist inferiority complex resulting out of it may be the reason for the popularity of this idea as well as many of our western emulations existing in the society.
However, After finding so many Rahul Gandhi coming of age article which is, I am tempted to concoct my version of fake Macaulay’s statement:-
I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one youth who can come up as a leader. Such lack of talent, energy or youth in this country that I don’t think that this country can be led by anyone but the Gandhi family. And therefore I propose that we wait for Rahul Gandhi to come of age, however long it may take for we have to gift the throne to someone from the family itself. For if the Indians think that all that is Gandhi family is good and greater than their own sons and daughters, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what they want, a truly dominated nation.
Sometimes I wonder if the above fake note gets passed down to media persons from generation to generation just like the fake news on Macaulay’s statement spread among the English reading masses in India. India has moved on from this dynasty politics mindset and decisively so. Irrespective of the results, Rahul Gandhi is surely not occupying the Prime Ministers chair and neither is the nation waiting for him to come of age. The media may publish articles like those on a daily basis looking for signs of sensibility or maturity but nothing is going to change.
The nation has ousted Rahul Gandhi. With the thumping victory of PM Modi and Rahul’s Congress being reduced to a paltry 52 seats, the country has given a strong message. This election was about who will lead the opposition and not the government. The message in that respect is clear – it won’t be Rahul Gandhi. Congress leaders better consider ousting him for people have already ousted Congress and will look out for better alternatives as opposition leader by 2024. Rahul Gandhi is not coming of age nor becoming the Prime Minister.
Move aside, Divya Spandana, someone may soon dethrone you as Congress IT cell head. AIPC (All India Professionals’ Congress, a ‘professional wing of INC) member one Andria D’Souza has now blamed Prime Minister Modi for an incident of violence that took place in Pakistan.
AIPC member Andria D’Souza deleted her tweet asking PM Modi to take responsibility for an incident in Pakistan
Andria goes by the name ‘Ria’ on Twitter and quoted a tweet by Pakistani journalist Naila Inayat which reported communal tension in Pakistani town Phuladiyoon where a Hindu doctor was booked over alleged blasphemy charges. The Hindu doctor was accused of burning the Quran.
Ria, however, thought that Prime Minister Modi should be held accountable for this incident in Pakistan. Ria lashed out on PM Modi for the violence in Pakistan and wondered if this was the ‘sabka saath sabka vikas’ he had promised. She even wished the India which voted for Modi ‘good luck’. Again, the incident Ria is holding PM Modi accountable for did not really happen in India.
Twitterati, however, was thrilled that a Congress worker also harbours the same dream as his, the one that of ‘Akhand Bharat’ (undivided India).
Ria has already started looking at Pakistan as part of India. Thanks Ria
Andria D’Souza is an Indian Emirati actress who has acted in films like ‘Kamasutra 3D’ and ‘For Adults Only’ as well as Pakistani serial Maati. She is now associated with the Congress.
Update: Andria has deleted her tweet asking PM Modi to take responsibility for incident taking place in Pakistan but has not given any clarification either on the tweet or on deletion.
We are at a seminal moment in India’s history. The divide between Savarna and Dalits is closing.
These forces face existential danger. Hence, their attacks have grown sharper. I would place two articles in the Indian Express and The Hindu for readers’ attention. One is from the known-baiters Christophe Jaffrelot and Gilles Verniers. The other is a survey by The Hindu. Both articles work on the caste equations, fudging data to show only if Dalits had closed the ranks, BJP would’ve met its fate in 2019 General Elections. In essence, it’s a roadmap how to polarize Indian society in preparation for 2024 elections and beyond. Both articles have taken refuge under the umbrella of scientific surveys and peddled their agenda.
Jaffrelot-Verniers combine in Indian Express fire from the shoulders of SPINNER (Social Profile of the Indian National and Provincial Election Representatives) Project, undertaken by Trivedi Center for Political Data- Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). It concentrates on the “cow belt” or Hindi-belt which makes up nearly half of the MPs in our Parliament.
Jaffrelot and Verniers bemoan the erosion of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and consolidation of “suvaran” (Upper) caste. That the religious mobilization (read Hindus) has swamped OBC (read Dalits). The thrust of the article is: BJP and its upper caste are weighing down heavily and that Dalits are being divided into “jaatis (sub-castes).” The message: Dalits, watch out or you would be swallowed by Upper Castes. The agenda is the twain – Upper castes and Dalits—should never meet. INDIA MUST SINK.
The two sides are described thus: Upper caste (Brahmins, Rajputs) vs lower castes (Yadavs, Kurmis, Koeris, Jatavs). BJP has upper caste in its fold. Jatavs are with Mayawati and Yadavs with Akhilesh-Tejaswi fold in UP-Bihar. BJP has prevailed because it has worked on the layers of “jaatis” among the BSP-SP-RJD votebanks.
So BJP divided the Jatavs by working on the non-jatavs. It countered Yadavs by giving seats to “other OBCs”—non-Yadavs, non-Kurmis, non-Koeris, non-Lodhis, non-Gujjars–and still smaller OBC jaatis. I mean, is it some kind of video game?
Let me explain the absurdity of Jaffrelot-Verniers agenda. All political parties, including Left, have upper caste leaders. Haven’t they heard of Namboodripad and Jyoti Basu? Don’t they know that Narendra Modi himself is OBC? That Mamata Banerjee casts herself as a “Bengali-brahmin”? That Rahul Gandhi is a “Shiv-bhakt” what if he ran away to Wayanad in Kerala and sought a sanctuary among Muslim votes? Is BJP more communal than SP, BSP, RJD etc who harvest on the communal and casteist fields, hopefully no longer fertile? That Modi has been overwhelmingly voted for by Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) -46 out of 84 SC seats; 31 out of 47 ST seats.
Not a word on Modi’s connect with the masses, cutting across caste and communal lines (why even Muslims voted in larger number for BJP than in 2014). Not a word if GST, Demonetization, jobs and agrarian distress could have been drummed up issues. Not a word that Ujjawala, Ayushman, toilets, houses, loans, Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) etc might have been massive factors. So much so that no less than 91 per cent of Jat votes went to BJP and not to Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), for instance. But Jaffrelot-Verniers must stick to the agenda of looking at things from the Upper Caste vs Dalits prism.
The Hindu piece is termed as CSDS-Lok Niti-Post Poll Survey. It repeats more or less the same agenda. Their initial survey had highlighted the dissatisfaction with the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh. That people are unhappy with its MPs and MLAs, that the stray-cattle issue is epidemic. Now the upper caste-“jaati” social engineering has worked for the BJP. Easy isn’t it.
The fact is these forces wouldn’t like the country to go back to pro-Mandal days or pre-1990s era. Mandal Commission brought job reservations into vogue in 1990. It shifted the power equations, a new crop of backward class netas—Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Kanshi Ram etc—spawned all over the Hindi belt. The Hindu-Dalit rift was put on steroids, Bhimrao Ambedkar was dusted off the shelf, and these leaders and parties held the country on ransom.
Now Modi Magic has shattered the divide. A young and “New India”—most of them in their 20s—couldn’t care less on caste and communal lines. The mandate is as big as Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru’s (364 out of 489 seats) in the first General Elections in 1952! It should tell us all about the enormity of 2019 the results. Modi himself has given a new definition of caste identity: “There are only two castes: One of the poor and the other of those who want to alleviate poverty.”
That’s why it’s an existential crisis to a few. The Hindu gives its game away when it states in the last sentence: “The two parties (BSP-SP) need to rework their understanding of caste equations.” Shame that they are putting castes above the country.
(Post script: In the same edition, in its’ editorial page, The Hindu has a piece which berates Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad for concentrating on Yadav-centric politics which allowed lesser OBCs to fall in BJP’s lap. I mean these guys are something).
