Vaishakh Shuddha Panchami
By Francois Gautier
When Alan Paton wrote Cry The Beloved Country he was lamenting how the whites could devise, construct and implement race and colourbased social and economic injustices over the blacks in apartheidera South Africa. ‘Cry O my Beloved India’ could be very well applied to our politics, for things have gone to such a pitch of unfair, blatant and outrageousness that it baffles the mind. Yet neither the politicians, nor most of the press find anything wrong in it. Just a few examples: Varun Gandhi spent nearly three weeks in jail under the NSA, just because he said something that might be reprehensible.
But many mullahs spew fire and venom in their Friday discourse in numerous mosques in India — and none ever gets arrested, because riots would erupt immediately.
Sadhvi Pragnya, a Hindu woman monk, has been languishing in jail for months, even though no conclusive proof has been brought forward of her direct involvement in the Malegaon blasts case. Recently she was assaulted by a Muslim inmate at Byculla Jail and sustained injuries to her face, nose and neck. But you have the Islamist leader Abdul Nasser Madani, a prime accused in the Coimbatore bomb blasts, which cost the life of 60 people, who is standing for election in Kerala with the full backing of the CPI-M.
In Orissa, the police arrested the BJP candidate from Kandhamal constituency, Ashok Sahu, because he accused the church of using foreign money to induce innocent tribals to convert — which is a well documented fact, please read Tehelka’s cover story.
Yet terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab, who went on killing people as if he was strolling in a mall, is enjoying a royal life. The entire Arthur jail has been vacated for him. 11.000 pages of his indictment charges are going to be translated in Urdu, just because he has asked for it and the court has even sanctioned the absurdity of DNA tests to determine his age. The entire country wants him judged quickly and hanged, but to please a minority, the Congress is dithering.
In the same way, the President of India, who is pliant to the will of the Congress, will not allow Afzal Guru, who has committed treason against his own country, to be hanged, till elections are over, for fear of alienating the Muslim vote. Yet the Congress keeps telling us Indian Muslims are patriotic. Then, why should it fear losing its votes when it hangs a traitor? Nobody thought two times about hanging Godse.
The LTTE blew up Rajiv Gandhi in a totally senseless and cruel manner, just because he was on the verge of becoming PM again. But today, because of Tamil Nadu votes, Rajiv’s widow, Sonia, sent emissaries to Sri Lanka to pressure the government to effect a ceasefire just as it is about to wipe out the LTTE after 25 years of a bloody civil war. Does it make sense to you?
India is about equality and rising above castes; yet since 1947, politicians of this country, particularly the Congress, and later V P Singh, Mulayam Singh, or Lalu Prasad, have divided India along castes and religious lines.
But Mayawati tops them all: she gave a push to her prime ministerial aspirations, promising Scheduled Caste status to 16 more castes if she takes power at the Centre.
In India, you are supposed to be elected with Rs 10 lakh of white money. But everybody knows that to become an MP today, you need Rs 10 crore, as you have to boast of a hundred-car caravan when you go campaigning, hire private planes, helicopters, gift free saris, dhotis, televisions, cash even, more and more. So where do you get the balance in black money? From corrupt businessmen, from the mafia, from kickbacks.
The tragedy is that the Indian press does not play its role, because not many mainstream newspapers or television channels complained when Varun Gandhi was in jail, while Madani, a criminal who has the lives of 60 innocent people on his hands, was not only scot free, but was standing for MP with the full backing of a political party, whose leader just said that he would not refuse the post of Prime Minister.
The real problem is that India has been colonised for too long, contrary to China whose people remain proud of their culture and intensely nationalistic. It has resulted in a deep-rooted inferiority complex in the Indian psyche, where every intellectual is always looking towards the West for approval and Indians are so obsessed with having the western type of democracy, without adapting it to the Indian conditions.
The system has become so perverted that only radical surgery to remove the diseased parts will start the indispensable cleansing process.
Cry O my beloved India: look at what Thy children have done to Thee…
Source: publication.samachar.com
