The ‘incestuous relationship’ between Congress and media
by FP Staff May 17, 2013

At the height of the drama last week over the resignation of Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, the media was abuzz with reports, evidently planted by sections within the Congress, suggesting that the credit for the resignations ought to go to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

According to these narratives, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was reluctant to let go of these ministers, and it needed Sonia Gandhi to exert her considerable political influence and dislodge the ministers who were proving a political liability to the Congress.

Many of these media reports were attributed to unidentified “sources” in the Congress, although a parallel, and much tamer, narrative was being trotted out by the official party spokeperson.

Some of these “source-based” reports went to bizarre lengths to weave conspiracy theories about the gongs-on in the Congress. One of the strands, which found much resonance in the mainstream media, was that it was in fact Mamnohan Singh’s wife Gursharan Kaur, who was acting on behalf of her politically meek husband and pushing for the retention of Ashwani Kumar and Bansal in the Ministry.

In this narrative, the so-called “Kaur group”, led by the Prime Minister’s wife, was taking on the “core group” within the Congress that owed its political allegiance to Sonia Gandhi. The suggestion that Gursharan Kaur, who has been scrupulous about avoiding the public space, would engage so blatantly in politicking on her husband’s behalf is laughable, of course, but it didn’t prevent the media from amplifying it.

Writing in Open magazine, Hartosh Singh Bal expresses wonderment that “an amiable woman who we rarely see in public” and who has been considered apolitical for much of the time that Manmohan Singh has been Prime Minister had been “suddenly transferred into the head of a group more powerful than Opus Dei.”

But the story gained legs largely because it was being pushed by a powerful corporate group, and was being amplified by journalists who are considered close to Finance Minister P Chidambaram, notes Bal.

In Bal’s reasoning, the fact that such conspiracy theories were being pushed out – and being taken seriously by the media – is the symptom of a malaise that afflicts the “incestuous” relationship between politicians and the media in general. And in particular, between second-rung Congress leaders and a pliant media.

The media gets, well, a bad press from time to time – and often times gets derivisely dismissed as “Paid Media”. Bal points to an ecosystem that blurs the lines of propriety that is disquieting.

“As far as some media organisations such as NDTV and Tehelka are concerned, their closeness to the Congress is no secret,” he writes. “Barkha Dutt’s role in the Radia Tapes did not seem to point to an individual act, but an institutional malaise.” That malaise manifests itself in other ways, as for instance when Sanjay Jha, who appears frequently on behalf of the Congres on television talk shows, holds workshops at NDTV (in his capacity as Executive Director of Dale Carnegie Training). Bal points out that in effect Jha holds these workshops for those very people who could be asking him questions on a prime-time evening show.

What happens at the level of individual reporters is even more incestuous, he adds. “Access (to power) requires give-and-take, and several reporters have developed an unhealthy proximity to a number of Congress leaders. In the durbar politics of the party, where it is necessary to strike down potential competitors, the media has played a vital role,” he reasons.

When the Radia Tapes scandal blew up in 2010, this incestuous relationship between politicians and journalists – and the clever manipulation of that relationship by corporate lobbyists – was comprehensively exposed. As Siddharth Varadarajan noted at that time, “…we see journalists and editors, who are meant to report and analyse what is going on objectively, offering to become couriers and stenographers and foot soldiers in the war one set of corporate fat cats is waging against another.”

The journalists who were liaising with Radia, he argued then, should have exposed her role (and the role of her principal clients) in trying to push for A Raja, who was seen even then as tainted, as Telecom Minister. Instead, they used her as a “source” for covering the DMK – and became complicit in Radia’s agenda by carrying messages to the Congress.

“But then,” wrote Varadarajan then, “Delhi is a hothouse of power, and proximity to power deadens one’s reflexes and weakens one’s nerves.” What Indian journalism needs, he added, more than anything else today is distance – from both politicians and industrialists.

Even three years later, it appears, that lesson has not been learnt.

Read Hartosh Singh Bal’s essay in Open magazine here, and Siddharth Varadarajan’s searing op-ed from 2010 here.

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/the-incestuous-relationship-between-congress-and-media-791851.html

Paintings by Alan Coulson
Rajat Gupta, left, who was indicted in the largest insider trading case in United States history, and Raj Rajaratnam.

May 17, 2013
Rajat Gupta’s Lust for Zeros
By ANITA RAGHAVAN

Late one Friday morning, Rajat Gupta was rushing through security at Philadelphia International Airport, carry-on in tow, when his cellphone rang. When Gupta heard from Goldman Sachs, on whose board he sat, it was often from its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein. But on this morning, it was Gregory K. Palm, his old Harvard Business School classmate and the bank’s general counsel, on the line. Palm sounded unusually serious. So Gupta asked if he could call him back from the other side of security.

When he did, Palm quickly made two odd disclosures. First, he told Gupta that he had arranged for a colleague to listen in on their conversation. Then he said, “We are representing the corporation, and not you.” Palm wanted to make sure that there was no doubt that this was not a privileged conversation. If the matter evolved into something bigger, their discussion could be handed over to law-enforcement officers.

As Gupta listened, Palm stuck to the script that he worked out beforehand. “What can you tell me about Raj Rajaratnam, and have you ever provided him with information about what we do?” he asked.

Of course Gupta knew Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire head of the Galleon Group hedge fund and No. 236 on the Forbes 400 list. He had worked with him on a number of projects since stepping down from the top job at McKinsey, the consulting giant, in 2003. But Rajaratnam’s name had turned radioactive since his arrest, on Oct. 16, 2009, for trading on closely guarded corporate information.

“What are you talking about?” Gupta asked, seemingly taken aback.

Palm explained that Goldman officials had come to believe Gupta may have provided Rajaratnam with crucial information about the firm. Ever cool, Gupta calmly denied that he had given Rajaratnam confidential information about Goldman. Then Gupta said that he and Rajaratnam had indeed been business partners on an investment fund called New Silk Route. Teaming up with Rajaratnam seemed to be his plan for a spectacular career finale — a bid not only to stay vital after stepping down from McKinsey but also to establish himself in the elite circle of billionaires, like the private-equity giant Henry Kravis, that made up his new coterie.

Gupta didn’t say all that to Palm, of course. Instead, he explained why it would have been ludicrous for him to give Rajaratnam information: the two had had a falling out over a soured $10 million investment. Gupta told Palm that he had hired accountants and lawyers and was planning to sue his former partner; he would have done so already, he said, were it not for Rajaratnam’s arrest. “Why would I help out someone with whom I had a dispute?” he asked rhetorically. He said he was happy to discuss the issue more, but he had to catch a flight to Boston.

Over the course of the day, Palm and Gupta had a number of follow-up conversations. In one, Palm recommended that Gupta get his own lawyer. Gupta eventually retained the renowned defense attorney Gary Naftalis — not out of any real concern, he would later say, but as a precautionary measure. Indeed, Gupta seemed so unconcerned with the call he received that Friday, Dec. 11, 2009, that he never even mentioned it to business associates.

It would take more than a year for them to learn of the depth of Gupta’s legal tangles. In March 2011, the S.E.C. charged him in the largest insider trading case in United States history. Months later, he was indicted on a charge of giving Rajaratnam, the subject of the investigation, inside information from two of the boards he sat on, Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble. Many remained incredulous, but in June 2012, Gupta was found guilty of conspiracy and securities fraud in connection to tips about Goldman — including Warren Buffett’s $5 billion investment in the bank during the financial crisis. Phone logs revealed that less than one minute after hanging up from the board call unveiling the Buffett deal, Gupta phoned Rajaratnam, who then bought nearly $35 million worth of Goldman stock. A federal judge called it “the functional equivalent of stabbing Goldman in the back.” Gupta was sentenced to two years in prison.

The 64-year-old Gupta, who remains free on appeal, has vigorously maintained his innocence. But even as his appeal is heard this week, the fundamental question behind his case remains a mystery. Why would one of the most revered C.E.O.’s of his generation, who retired with a fortune worth some $100 million, show such bad judgment? How could he get into business with a trader who was known for giving Super Bowl parties filled with scantily clad women. The confusion, a management consultant might suggest, may arise from looking at the problem from the wrong angle. What if Gupta, the adviser to presidents and executives, simply got played?

When Rajat Gupta first joined McKinsey, in 1973, it wasn’t unusual for consultants to make as much as investment bankers. But that began changing in the 1980s, when bankers started to sell an array of new products, like junk bonds, to corporate clients. By the ’90s, Wall Street analysts were pulling in millions each year.

Those heady times didn’t go unnoticed at McKinsey. In the late ’90s, young associates started leaving the firm, particularly for careers in start-up technology. Office gossip included one who had quit to join Akamai Technologies, the content-delivery network, and supposedly made about $80 million when the company went public. Offers were flowing into Gupta’s office too, but his wife, Anita, told a colleague he enjoyed the stature that came with his job. He could trade places with these young Wall Street guys and 20-something tech millionaires any day, but they could never trade places with him.

Gupta embodied the generation of Indians that the academic Vijay Prashad has called the “twice blessed” — those who benefited from both India’s independence in 1947 and the 1965 overturning of a United States law that had restricted Indian immigration to 100 people each year. Gupta was a boy in the 1950s, when the Indian Institutes of Technology were established to produce a new generation of engineers. After earning degrees from I.I.T. Delhi and Harvard Business School, he received a job offer at McKinsey during the rise of the corporate consulting industry. In 1994, when Gupta was only 45, he became the first Indian C.E.O. of a major American company. He “pioneered a new way of leveraging the firm’s intellectual capital,” recalls Jeffrey Skilling, his colleague from 1979 to 1990, who later went on to become the chief executive of Enron. “I think Rajat was a shoo-in for election to managing director, and frankly I don’t think anyone had a chance against him. He was that good,” wrote Skilling in an e-mail from federal prison in Littleton, Colo., where he is serving a 24-year sentence for his role in Enron’s collapse.

Gupta’s first two terms at the helm of McKinsey were extraordinary; he doubled the consulting staff, and revenue nearly tripled to $3.4 billion. But early into his third term, which started in the summer of 2000, the firm’s revenues plunged as the tech bubble burst. The senior partners’ annual financial awards took a huge hit. In mid-2003, humbled and restless, Gupta stepped down from the top job and began to plan his next moves. He wanted to burnish his legacy as a philanthropist and focused on charitable works tied to India, like the Indian School of Business, his pet cause. At the urging of Bill Clinton, he had already helped start the American India Foundation.

While Gupta departed McKinsey with a fortune, he was now mingling with a crowd that included Bill Gates, Henry Kravis and Henry M. Paulson Jr., then Goldman’s chief executive, with whom he traveled to Indonesia to see the Komodo dragons. For many of these men, $100 million was not rich; it was simply the price to play. If Gupta wanted to compete on the same level as Stephen A. Schwarzman, who would go on to give $100 million to the New York Public Library, or Sandy Weill, whom he knew from the Weill Cornell Medical College board, he had to be a billionaire.

In pre-Lehman New York, that goal didn’t seem unattainable for someone with Gupta’s connections. Bankers and private-equity founders, like Pete Peterson, were getting extraordinary paydays by taking their firms public. Speaking at Columbia University around this time, Gupta reflected on his new ambition. “When I look at myself, yeah, I am driven by money,” he said. “And when I live in this society, you know, you do get fairly materialistic, so I look at that. I am disappointed. I am probably more materialistic today than I was before, and I think money is very seductive.” He continued: “You have to watch out for it, because the more you have it, you get used to comforts, and you get used to, you know, big houses and vacation homes and going and doing whatever you want, and so it is very seductive. However much you say that you will not fall into the trap of it, you do fall into the trap of it.”

It was around this time, coincidentally, that Gupta started getting closer to Raj Rajaratnam. The son of a Singer Sewing Company executive, Rajaratnam, who is 55, did not have much in common with the “twice blessed” generation. He attended the same English boarding school as P. G. Wodehouse. At Wharton, he struck some students as rich and loudmouthed. But he inspired a group of loyal followers who, in 1997, after he had spent nearly 15 years on Wall Street, helped him cobble together about $350 million and set up shop in a cramped office on Lexington Avenue and 57th Street. Rajaratnam, whose most attractive feature was a wide, gaptoothed smile, seemed to relish his reputation as a player. In 1999, he invited about 300 clients and brokers to a blowout Christmas party headlined by Donna Summer. But he backed up the publicity stunts with phenomenal returns. That year, one of Galleon’s funds soared 93.2 percent. By 2001, investing in technology stocks like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, he had built Galleon into a $5 billion behemoth.

All hedge-fund managers strive for an edge — an extra something that will help their funds beat the market average. For years, Rajaratnam had been dogged by the rumors that he owed his edge to insights from a circle of corporate insiders who were paid to divulge proprietary information. Indeed, Rajaratnam had assembled a stable of carefully curated industry moles. His favorite targets were South Asians like himself. Despite the stereotype of South Asians as hardworking grinds who eschew the sharp-elbowed politicking of their American peers, Rajaratnam knew they could be every bit as competitive as anyone else on Wall Street. Many Indians in finance had worked since grade school to gain entrance into the cutthroat I.I.T. system — which was far harder to penetrate than Harvard — before even landing in America.

Even though he was from Sri Lanka, Rajaratnam made big gifts to Indian causes, and was a regular at exclusive Indian galas. He made his Indian informants feel so comfortable that they often sprinkled Hindi words like accha, or “O.K.,” into conversation. In India, where he would have been treated as an outsider, Rajaratnam’s approach would probably have fallen flat. But in the United States, such differences matter less. Rajaratnam made himself seem like one of them. “Raj sort of had a South Asian mafia,” recalled Gerald Fleming, a colleague from his pre-Galleon days. There were people he could call and “get, for a few companies, earnings to a penny.” Fleming recalled once sitting in Rajaratnam’s office when he logged a call to Advanced Micro Devices. After some time, Rajaratnam’s secretary came in and said that someone with an Indian-sounding name had returned the call. Rajaratnam picked up the phone, walked onto the trading floor and announced the profit figure. “And he was right,” Fleming said.

Rajaratnam was also an expert at preying on his sources’ weaknesses. His first major target was an Intel marketing executive named Roomy Khan. He caught her attention by mentioning that his wife, Asha, was a Punjabi Indian, like her. Then he reeled her in by promising a well-paying job at Galleon in return for early readings of revenue indicators at Intel and, later, tips about acquisitions, like the Blackstone Group’s bid to buy Hilton Hotels. (She found out about the latter from a South Asian Moody’s analyst, a roommate of her cousin’s.) Rajaratnam also persuaded his old Wharton School classmate Rajiv Goel, a perennially frustrated executive at Intel’s treasury department, to feed him information in exchange for introductions to his high-powered friends. Rajaratnam’s most prized recruit, however, was Anil Kumar, a former classmate from Wharton and a graduate of the I.I.T. system who worked as a technology consultant at McKinsey.

Kumar’s prickly manner had led to several career setbacks, including being passed over for the job of managing McKinsey’s India office. Rajaratnam shrewdly capitalized on his frustrations. When Kumar returned from India to McKinsey’s Silicon Valley office, Rajaratnam flattered him, asking lofty questions that the consultant readily answered. “I have all the brains, and you have all the billions,” Kumar was overheard saying to Rajaratnam. Feigning humility, Rajaratnam laughed right back. Then, one evening in the fall of 2003, as the two men were leaving a charity dinner in Manhattan, Rajaratnam pulled Kumar aside and offered him $500,000 a year to consult for Galleon. “You have such good knowledge that it is worth a lot of money,” he told him. Kumar, feeling underappreciated by his bosses at McKinsey, soon accepted. Then they found a way to pay him without ever tipping off McKinsey. Rajaratnam was now one step closer to the ultimate source of information — Kumar’s mentor, Rajat Gupta.

As he had with his other informants, Rajaratnam began the seduction of Gupta by playing on ethnic ties and indulging his new friend during a rare career lull. The two men had actually first become acquainted around 2000, when Rajaratnam gave generously to two of Gupta’s favorite Indian causes. But it was only after Gupta stepped down from the helm of McKinsey, with newfound time on his hands, that he began accepting Rajaratnam’s lunch invitations. The Galleon chief treated Gupta with a deference that bordered on obsequiousness; he often called him a South Asian “rock star” and praised his reach. “I think he can raise a billion dollars if he started Gupta & Company,” Rajaratnam once said.

That, of course, was exactly what Gupta wanted. In 2005, he and Ravi Trehan, an investor and friend, pitched Rajaratnam on buying a so-called fund of funds, which raises money from institutional and high-net-worth investors and then allocates it to different hedge funds. They were hoping that Rajaratnam could offer them $100 million as equity capital.

Rajaratnam heard them out but fixated on another idea. He persuaded them to help create a highly leveraged vehicle, with money from investment banks, that would invest in a smattering of funds and strategies, some run by Galleon and some run by Trehan’s firm, BroadStreet Group. The three partners would call their new entity Voyager Capital. But as Rajaratnam and Trehan focused on the nuts and bolts of Voyager, Gupta seemed taken with more grandiose concepts, like turning the fund into a platform on which to build an Asian merchant-banking business. It soon became clear that the former management-company C.E.O. wasn’t comfortable with the minute financial details that are essential to investors risking hundreds of millions of dollars on the markets.

From the start, Voyager was a project of Rajaratnam’s power. He put in $40 million, giving him an 80 percent stake in Voyager. Trehan, whose firm was behind Voyager’s clever structuring and generous credit terms, put up $5 million for a 10 percent stake. Gupta also put in $5 million. Gupta was originally supposed to receive a share of profits depending on the value that he brought through his connections. But Rajaratnam signaled that those connections were less valuable than his deep pockets. “What do I need him for?” he told Trehan.

Voyager was an instant success. By early 2006, three months after it was set up, shareholder equity rose to $58 million, a return of nearly 17 percent. But Rajaratnam began managing the fund as if it were his own, steering it to invest in Galleon’s funds rather than BroadStreet’s, reaping more of the management profits for himself. Trehan was livid. That March, Gupta and Trehan made their way to Rajaratnam’s headquarters on the 16th floor, where they were escorted to his office, which was strategically placed within earshot of the trading floor. Almost as soon as Trehan spoke, it became clear that Rajaratnam was in one of his “gorilla moods.” The behavior may have been calculated to force his hand; if Trehan pulled out, Galleon alone could receive those lucrative management fees. The argument escalated, and Trehan eventually declared that he no longer wanted to be part of the partnership. He marched out of the office and sold his stake in the fund soon after.

Gupta stayed. Few knew it at the time, but he and Rajaratnam were already hatching a plan that would initiate his second act in the investment business. Months earlier, Gupta confided in Kumar that he intended to partner with Rajaratnam on building a new fund, Taj Capital, that seemed to marry his twin goals of polishing his legacy and getting rich in the process. Taj Capital, which was planned to be as large as $2 billion, was going to focus on investing in South Asia. As talks progressed, Gupta became a fixture at Galleon’s sleek new offices on the 34th floor of 590 Madison, one of the most prestigious corporate addresses in Manhattan. Rajaratnam eventually suggested that Taj temporarily decamp to offices adjacent to Galleon’s trading floor. Later, when Gupta was considering exercising an option to buy another 5 percent stake in the Voyager fund, Rajaratnam lent him $5 million. He told an old McKinsey colleague, Marshall Lux, that his new partner was “one of the most outstanding hedge-fund managers and a very close friend.”

During their unlikely partnership, Gupta and Rajaratnam never quite behaved as close personal friends. Their families never socialized on weekends; Gupta was not a guest on the Kenyan safari that Rajaratnam treated 70 of his closest friends and family to for his 50th birthday. Their friendship, in some sense, was as transparent as it was confounding. Rajaratnam offered Gupta the chance to get rich, while Gupta, by virtue of his relationships with world leaders and C.E.O.’s like A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble, offered him unparalleled access to high-quality private information. What was notable, however, was how significantly Gupta came to rely on Rajaratnam and how the balance of power in their relationship subsequently changed. Gupta, once freed from corporate life, began to loosen his guard. And in an apparent effort to ingratiate himself to his new friend, their relationship took a dark turn.

One month after Gupta’s ascension to Goldman Sachs’s board, in November 2006, Rajaratnam began to squeeze his new partner. Gupta had recently helped facilitate a loan from Rajaratnam to his friend Ramesh Vangal, whose company was trying to buy an Indian bank. As Vangal dragged his feet on repaying the loan, Rajaratnam’s gorilla mood re-emerged. This time it was directed at Gupta. On Dec. 21, Rajaratnam sent him an angry e-mail that seemed to hold Gupta responsible for the missing funds. “Under the circumstances,” he wrote, “I am not able to meet you for lunch today.” The note was perfectly timed to threaten the former McKinsey director. Taj Capital, his foray into the investment game, was in the midst of incorporation. Any hiccup could scuttle the deal. “And I am canceling all further meetings for Taj Capital,” the e-mail continued. It was signed formally, “Raj Rajaratnam.” The money he was owed arrived within a matter of weeks.

Gupta now seemed fully under Rajaratnam’s sway. On March 12, 2007, Gupta, sitting comfortably in the Galleon offices, dialed into an audit-committee meeting of the Goldman Sachs board. The meeting previewed Goldman’s first-quarter profits, which were set to be unveiled the next day. About 25 minutes after Gupta hung up, Galleon bought $91 million of Goldman stock — an odd trade for a fund that typically invested in companies like Intel and Google. When Goldman posted better-than-expected earnings, Galleon made $2 million on the trade. Over the next year, in June 2008 and then in September and October 2008, Gupta called Rajaratnam following Goldman board meetings. Soon after, the phone records indicate, Galleon funds made market-winning trades worth millions of dollars.

During that time, on July 29, 2008, a month after attending a Goldman board meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, Gupta returned a call that Rajaratnam placed earlier. Rajaratnam had a meeting scheduled with the Goldman co-president Gary Cohn, and he had heard a rumor that Goldman might buy a commercial bank. “Have you heard anything along that line?” Rajaratnam asked.

“This was a big discussion at the board meeting,” Gupta replied.

For a few minutes, the two men discussed the possibilities before Gupta asked Rajaratnam if he had a second. Gupta, who had spent his entire career giving others professional counsel, needed some job advice himself. He had been approached about a job at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the venerable private-equity firm. “I wanted to get your straight opinion on whether . . . I should do this KKR thing,” Gupta said to him. “Do you really feel in the gut that, given everything, it’s a good thing to do?” Rajaratnam told him he would take it “in a heartbeat.” Hypothetically Gupta could still be of use: KKR, which buys and sells companies, is privy to all sorts of inside information.

Gupta accepted the offer and was ready to step down from the Goldman board because of the conflict of interest. Blankfein ultimately pressed him to stay on for a while longer to help Goldman weather the market meltdown, and soon after, on Sept. 23, a week after Lehman Brothers collapsed, Gupta found himself on what would be the most important conference call of his life. Warren Buffett was preparing to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs in return for a fat dividend. In order to accept the offer, Blankfein needed the approval of his board, and a conference call was hastily put together for 3:15 p.m. Gupta was originally going to be unable to make it, but a half-hour before it was set to begin, his secretary confirmed that he’d be there. At 3:55 p.m., almost immediately after Gupta hung up from the Goldman board call, his secretary connected him to Rajaratnam’s direct line. The two men spoke for about 35 seconds. Then, a couple of minutes later, a top lieutenant of Rajaratnam’s placed an order to buy about $31 million of Goldman stock. Another young trader scrambled to buy $12 million more. (Because of time constraints, Galleon ended up purchasing only $33 million.) Around 5:45 p.m., after the market closed, headlines of Buffett’s investment started streaming across Bloomberg News.

Gupta couldn’t have known as he was running through the Philadelphia airport more than a year later that he would indirectly become a person of interest to the S.E.C. The agency had begun investigating Rajaratnam in 2006, after a series of suspicious trades by his brother, Rengan (who is currently under indictment on charges of insider trading). Two years later, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan got approval to tap Rajaratnam’s cellphone, unleashing a gusher of incriminating calls. In the fall of 2008, after Rajaratnam mentioned a tip he got from a Goldman director, Gupta appeared in the middle of regulators’ radar.

A centerpiece of Gupta’s defense, which he mentioned to Palm in the airport, was that days before the Buffett call, he was supposedly stewing over $10 million that he had recently lost in the Voyager fund he shared with Rajaratnam. Gupta, who said he blamed Rajaratnam for the loss, was so stressed about it, his lawyers have said, that he even raised it with his daughter Geetanjali. Less than a month later, he shared the same concerns with Kumar, telling him that he felt Rajaratnam “had dropped the ball.”

In Gupta’s view, the dispute made any case against him a nonstarter. (As he told Palm: Why would he help out someone with whom he had a dispute?) Last May, a year after Rajaratnam was convicted of 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy and eventually sentenced to 11 years in prison, Gupta entered the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street confident that he would be acquitted. Despite wiring Rajaratnam’s phone for nine months, the government had no recordings of him directly tipping Rajaratnam on material nonpublic information. Naftalis, his lawyer, said that the evidence was circumstantial, based on the timing of events; his call to Rajaratnam on the day of the Buffett deal was merely a poorly timed check-in about a soured investment. Nevertheless, it took less than two days for the jury to convict Gupta on four of six counts of conspiracy and securities fraud. (He was convicted regarding calls about the Buffett investment and Goldman’s 2008 fourth-quarter earnings.) Tellingly, the jury acquitted Gupta of the charges that were not supported by wiretapped conversations. This week, his lawyers are expected to argue that those wiretapped conversations should have been inadmissible.

In the year since his conviction, Gupta has tried to maintain his life. In December, days after winning the right to stay free pending appeal, he visited friends in San Francisco. This spring, he took a couple of trips to his house on Palm Island, a wealthy enclave of Miami Beach. (Gupta recently set up residence in Florida, which would protect his home.) “The thing that has been missing most in his life is engagement,” said Anjan Chatterjee, an old friend from McKinsey. “Imagine a bullet train being stopped dead in its tracks with Superman on the other side.” Gupta spends most of his time holed up in his Westport, Conn., library overlooking the swimming pool. There, in the estate that once belonged to James Cash Penney, he sits alone working on his appeal.

One friend who recently visited him in Westport said that Gupta was “cautiously optimistic.” Gupta told him that his lawyer had an astonishing record, winning 80 percent of his cases. I asked this friend how Gupta explained the damning phone exchange with Rajaratnam in which the Galleon chief admitted that Kumar was moonlighting for him, receiving “a million dollars a year for literally doing nothing,” and Gupta replied, “He should sometimes say thank you for that.” He said that Gupta was a very busy man. “He’s a parallel processor,” he said, someone who habitually carries out a number of tasks at the same time. While he was speaking to Rajaratnam that day, he told me, Gupta was probably looking over his diary or his BlackBerry.

Whether Gupta’s charge is overturned or not, he will still be remembered as the dignified McKinsey managing director who fell down the money trap and under the spell of a boorish hedge-fund trader, a reality which, in his world, is almost as damning as the crime he stands accused of committing. At one point Gupta was convinced he would find a way to come back, salvage his tattered reputation and perhaps even rebuild his savings, which have taken a beating as his legal troubles have mounted. He thought he might be able to rehabilitate his brand as Martha Stewart had. Yet unlike Stewart, whose image as a domestic diva was far removed from her insider trading, Gupta had a reputation that was completely wrapped up in his. Even if he succeeds in overturning the conviction, his options at rehabilitation are limited. The S.E.C. is seeking to bar him from running a company and even working for an investment adviser. In a way, it is one of the few realities of his new life that he has embraced. “I don’t think Rajat aspires to be in the same room as Jamie Dimon anymore,” Chatterjee told me. “I don’t think he really cares.”

This article is adapted from “The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund,” to be published by Business Plus.

Anita Raghavan writes for The Times’s DealBook blog and Forbes.

Editor: Jon Kelly

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/rajat-guptas-lust-for-zeros/

 

Rajat Gupta’s Lust for Zeros

BY DEALBOOK

As Rajat Gupta’s appeal is scheduled to be heard next week, Anita Raghavan, a DealBook contributor, has examined the circumstances that led to his partnership with Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire head of the Galleon Group hedge fund.

“The fundamental question behind his case remains a mystery. Why would one of the most revered C.E.O.’s of his generation, who retired with a fortune worth some $100 million, show such bad judgment?” Ms. Raghavan writes in an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times magazine. “The confusion, a management consultant might suggest, may arise from looking at the problem from the wrong angle. What if Gupta, the adviser to presidents and executives, simply got played?”

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• Rajat Gupta’s Lust for Zeros (May 17, 2013)
• Complete Coverage: The Galleon Investigation

Mr. Gupta, a former chief of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and a former Goldman Sachs board member, may have ultimately been influenced by greed. “While Gupta departed McKinsey with a fortune, he was now mingling with a crowd that included Bill Gates, Henry Kravis and Henry M. Paulson Jr., then Goldman’s chief executive, with whom he traveled to Indonesia to see the Komodo dragons. For many of these men, $100 million was not rich; it was simply the price to play,” she writes, in an article adapted from the forthcoming book“The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund.”

Mr. Rajaratnam, for his part, knew how to exploit his connections and had “assembled a stable of carefully curated industry moles. His favorite targets were South Asians like himself. Despite the stereotype of South Asians as hardworking grinds who eschew the sharp-elbowed politicking of their American peers, Rajaratnam knew they could be every bit as competitive as anyone else on Wall Street.”

A jury ultimately found Mr. Gupta guilty in June 2012 of leaking confidential information about Goldman to Mr. Rajaratnam on three different occasions in 2008. He was also convicted on a conspiracy charge. He remains free on bail pending appeal.

“Whether Gupta’s charge is overturned or not, he will still be remembered as the dignified McKinsey managing director who fell down the money trap and under the spell of a boorish hedge-fund trader, a reality which, in his world, is almost as damning as the crime he stands accused of committing,” Ms. Raghavan writes.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/rajat-guptas-lust-for-zeros/

Comment:

Why does one, who has so much already, want even more? Greed, feeling of insecurity, compulsive acquisitive behavior or something in the charecter? None of these. He forgot his roots of dharma, of ethical behavior and social responsibility enshrined in what is called sreni-dharma. Sreni is the oldest corporate form in the world structured and in place well before the Roman corporate forms. Read on at http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/fiscal-policies-and-financial.html Fiscal policies and financial institutions should promote family-, jāti-, śreni-based social security institutions Embedded is this document Hindu social corporate form and sreni dharma (October 2011) http://www.docstoc.com/docs/98845220/Hindu-social-corporate-form-and-sreni-dharma-(October-2011). Overcome greed by getting involved in social projects to benefit the community. This is sreni-dharma.

Kalyanaraman

The Hindu;THE HINDU A view of the Brahmaputra River in Guwahati. File Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar

Published: May 17, 2013 20:34 IST | Updated: May 17, 2013 20:37 IST
Indian experts team on Brahmaputra in China ahead of Li’s visit

PTI

An Indian experts’ team is currently in China to review sharing of the Brahmaputra river data two days ahead of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to New Delhi during which India is expected to convey its concerns over the construction of three dams on the river by China.

According to officials, a senior delegation comprising, among others, Commissioner Brahmaputra and Barak, Narendra Kumar, is currently in China to conduct the review exercise.

Though the officials maintain that the Indian experts’ visit is part of an annual meeting to review the data of the water flow under the agreement between the two countries inked in 2008, its timing coincides with Mr. Li’s three-day visit to India starting May 19.

India has already conveyed its concern over the Chinese proposal to construct three more dams across the Brahmaputra during a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and newly-elected Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit in Durban in March.

India has said the proposal to construct dams at Dagu, Jiacha and Jiexu in Tibet would affect water flow to India, while China maintained that it was just run-off-the-river project that would not hold water.

The issue is again expected to figure in Mr. Li’s talks with Mr. Singh on Monday.

In view of the Chinese proposal for construction of three more dams, India has been pressing China to have either a water commission or an inter-governmental dialogue to deal with water issues as under the current Expert Level Mechanism (ELM), the two countries only share hydrological information (water level, discharge and rainfall) on Yaluzangbu/ Brahmaputra river in flood season.

The issue was also discussed during the recent China visit of External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid who said: “One important, modest but significant move that we have seen is our discussions on the trans-border rivers.”

He said the Chinese side at the highest level reaffirmed their intent to ensure that India’s downstream interests are not affected adversely in any way.

“They have heard us out very carefully about either enhancing the mandate of the existing arrangement that allows for sharing of flood time hydrological information, expanding that in order to cover some of our concerns, or look at a separate mechanism that would address our concerns,” the Minister said immediately after his return from Beijing last week.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/indian-experts-team-on-brahmaputra-in-china-ahead-of-lis-visit/article4724665.ece?css=print

All museums which indulge in exhibiting stolen antiquities should follow the example of Metropolitcan Museum of Art, NY and return suo moto, all such antiquities. Cases in point are the two Sarasvati pratimaa stolen and kept in British Museum. People of Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, India are maintaining an akhanda deepam in the empty niches of Sarasvati Temple where these pratimaa of Bhoja Raja's days belong. There are recent instances of stolen Nataraja and Sarasvati exhibited in Canberra Museum.

See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/australia-should-return-sarasvati.htmlAustralia should return the Sarasvati pratimaa to a Karnataka temple where she belongs

Time has come to mount an international campaign. Kalyanaraman
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/16/arts/design/from-jungle-to-museum-and-back.html?ref=design
May 15, 2013
Cambodia Presses U.S. Museums to Relinquish Antiquities
By TOM MASHBERG
Buoyed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s decision this month to return two stolen statues, Cambodia is asking other museums to examine any Khmer antiquities they acquired after 1970, when a 20-year period of civil war and genocide gave thieves free range to loot the country’s ancient temples.

“We are calling on all American museums and collectors, that if they have these statues unlawfully or illegally they should return them to Cambodia,” Ek Tha, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, the nation’s governing body, said this week. They “should follow the Metropolitan’s lead,” he added.

Hundreds of Cambodian antiquities are in American museums, as well as in the hands of foreign institutions and private collectors. Many were acquired after 1970 and lack paperwork showing how they left Cambodia.

Today, most museums have pledged not to collect items that lack a paper trail dating back to 1970, the year that a United Nations convention aimed at blocking illicit antiquities trafficking was adopted. Cambodian officials say they are particularly interested in statues they believe came from the same temple where the Met’s pair stood and are thought to have been taken illegally after 1970.

That thousand-year-old temple, called Prasat Chen, featured two narrative groupings of sculptures illustrating tales from Hindu epics. The groupings had about a dozen statues in all, and six of them have been traced to the United States.

Cambodia says the Denver Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, Calif., each have one statue connected to Prasat Chen. Two other statues, a pair of kneeling attendants that had flanked a doorway in the Met’s Southeast Asian galleries for two decades, are to be returned next month.

A sixth statue, which is the subject of a federal court case in New York, is held by Sotheby’s, which withdrew it from auction in 2011 after a complaint from Cambodia. The United States Justice Department is seeking to seize the statue on Cambodia’s behalf, but Sotheby’s officials say it was acquired legally by its owner.

The auction house said it does not believe the Met’s decision will affect its case. Experts say, however, that the return may create pressure on the other three museums to review the provenance of their statues.

“If other museums are confronted with the kind of evidence that the Met was provided, I believe the Met’s actions will serve as an appropriate example for them to follow,” said Stephen K. Urice, an associate professor and expert on cultural heritage and museum law at the University of Miami School of Law.

The Norton Simon Museum says it is cooperating with federal officials who inquired about its statue as part of their investigation into the provenance of the sculpture held by Sotheby’s.

Cambodian officials have yet to contact the Denver or Cleveland museums, but said they plan to. Spokesmen for those museums said they could not comment fully until an actual claim on their statues was made.

There has been no suggestion of impropriety on the part of any of the museums, nor have the museums acknowledged, as the Met has, that the items come from Prasat Chen and their provenance might be questionable. Many collectors of Khmer art say that their efforts and those of museums actually served to safeguard statues that might have been destroyed during Cambodia’s war years.

The Met’s decision came after two officials visited Cambodia and came away convinced that its items were looted from Prasat Chen, part of a vast complex in the jungle called Koh Ker. It was the seat of the Khmer empire from 928 to 944 but is now a remote collection of ruins surrounding a 120-foot pyramid about 200 miles northeast of Phnom Penh.

Eric Bourdonneau, an archaeologist and expert on Koh Ker with the French School of Asian Studies who works in Cambodia, said he made the connection to the Denver and Cleveland items in part after studying the remnants of the statues — bases and feet — at the temple. “It was deliberate destruction by modern looters whose spoils fed the art market,” he said.

Cambodians say the statues in Denver of the god Rama and in Cleveland of the monkey god Hanuman came from an ensemble that once depicted a fierce fracas between monkey kings as recounted in the Ramayana, a Hindu epic. The statue of the battling monkeys, Valin and Sugriva, is in a national museum in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

Kristy Bassuener, a spokeswoman for the Denver Art Museum, said the Rama statue was acquired in 1986 with money from several patrons. She said the museum does not have any other information about its provenance.

“The museum is committed to further research regarding the history and provenance of objects in its collection,” she said. “If the museum learns new facts related to this piece, I would be happy to share that information.”

Asked about the Hanuman’s provenance, David Franklin, director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, pointed to information on the museum’s Web site, which says the figure was acquired in 1982 with money from by the Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund.

“It is the museum’s policy not to discuss publicly the substance of these types of inquiries,” he added, “unless and until there is a definitive resolution.”

The fund did not respond to a request for comment.

Experts say the Norton Simon statue, known as the Bhima, or wrestler, comes from a second Prasat Chen grouping, about 200 feet away, that depicts his brawl with Duryodhana, as told in the Hindu epic the Mahabharata. The Duryodhana statue is now held by Sotheby’s.

The Met’s two statues represent brothers of Bhima who knelt in attendance during the fight. The Met’s statues were acquired in four pieces from donors 1987 to 1992. Those statues, plus the one from Sotheby’s, are known to have gone through a London art dealer, Spink & Son, in the early 1970s.

Cambodian officials say the broken pedestals of all those sculptures were left in the ground by the looters.

Norton Simon, who died in 1993, bought the Bhima in 1976 from a Madison Avenue Asian art dealer and gave it to the museum in 1980. “In more than three decades, the foundation’s ownership of the sculpture has never been questioned,” the museum said in a statement.

The Sotheby’s statue was shipped to New York in 2010 to be sold at auction by its Belgian owner, Decia Ruspoli di Poggio Suasa. Her husband, who has since died, acquired it in 1975 and Sotheby’s estimated its value to be $2 million to $3 million.

Experts on antiquities trafficking say teams of bandits used ox carts to trundle their trophies along jungle trails and into Thailand, 15 miles north, during Cambodia’s war years.

In their case against Sotheby’s, lawyers for the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York say the statue was one of many shipped illicitly from Bangkok to the United States and Europe after 1970.

Sotheby’s says the statue was legally purchased in good faith from a reputable London auction house in 1975 and it “denies knowledge that the Duryodhana statue was stolen.”

Cambodia’s secretary of state, Chan Tani, said the looting of Koh Ker is especially crushing because its style of statuary exists nowhere else.

“They are part of our soul as a nation,” he said, “and they were brutally stolen.”

Ralph Blumenthal contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/arts/design/cambodia-presses-us-museums-to-return-antiquities.html?pagewanted=all

Another foreigner as Editor Indian newspaper? Dr. Swamy's case demanding Indian citizenship for Editor is pending in Delhi HC.

See:

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/appointment-of-foreigner-as-editor.htmlAppointment of Foreigner as Editor, The Hindu, challenged in Delhi HC -- Dr. Subramanian Swamy.

Kalyanaraman

Mail & Guardian editor resigns
17 May 2013 12:49
Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes has resigned to join the Hindustan Times in New Delhi as its chief content and editorial officer.

He will leave at the end of September after nine years, half of them as editor, the weekly newspaper reported today.

“My time at the Mail & Guardian, both as a frontline reporter and as editor, has been the most fulfilling of my professional life,” he was quoted as saying on the M&G website.

He paid tribute to his colleagues in the newsroom, management, and the newspaper’s “wise and brave proprietor” Trevor Ncube. He said he was looking forward to putting what he had learnt at the M&G to work at his new job, in a new environment, and on a “very large scale”.

Ncube told the website he was sad to be losing Dawes, but was happy at the opportunity life had presented him, and said he departed with “full blessings and best wishes”.

“Working with Nic has been rewarding. Rarely do you find an excellent journalist who understands business and is also passionate about technology.

“Nic has such a beautiful mind and his intellectual leadership will be sorely missed in the newsroom and by the executive team.”

The paper will start identifying candidates to replace him.

As news broke, colleagues and followers on Twitter started tweeting congratulatory messages and tributes to Dawes.

- Sapa
http://www.citypress.co.za/news/mail-guardian-editor-resigns/

Brothers in Arms, misappropriating a fortune – the full version. Reliance Industries Ltd. & Reliance Communications Ltd. (July 18, 2011, 45 pages) – Neeraj Monga nmonga@veritascorp.com, varun raj vraj@veritascorp.com

Misappropriating a fortune.

Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs created the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) moniker in early 2000, igniting the world’s imagination to the potential riches available to brave investors in large emerging markets far way from North American climes. However, the economics of forecasting differs from
the nitty-gritty of investing, and therefore, international investors have suffered both politically (BP in Russia, Google Inc. in China) and financially (Yahoo Inc. and Softbank in China), and more recently, investors have taken a bath on Sino-Forest – a forestry company domiciled in Canada with operations in
China.

Then there is India, the land of the Taj Mahal, the Raj, Yoga, democracy and supposedly “rule of law”. The western media has been recently enamoured with the enormous wealth of Indian billionaires and a rapidly rising middle class with its insatiable needs, giving rise to the next great consumer economy of
the world. It is our contention that notwithstanding the many positives of a growing Indian economy, corporate governance, accounting standards and disclosure practices adopted by some of India’s prominent companies are questionable.

Reliance Communications Limited. (“Reliance”, the “Company” or “RCom”) is the poster child of everything that is wrong with corporate India, and irrespective of management’s assertions about “values” and “integrity” in
various annual reports, we find no credible evidence of either in its financial statements or those of its former parent, Reliance Industries Limited (“RIL”). Doubts about management’s integrity and the short shrift to shareholders arise right at inception, when the demerger from RIL was undertaken on August 31, 2005, and the Company was listed on Indian bourses on March 06, 2006. In the intervening period, ownership of promoters ballooned from 38.27% to 63% in RCom, under the guise of improving shareholder value and transparency1

We firmly believe that the 821,484,568 shares issued to management, as per the “Scheme of amalgamation and arrangement involving reorganization” (“Scheme”) of the group telecom business, as approved by the High Court of Bombay and Gujarat vide orders dated July 21st, 2006 and July 18th, 2006, should be nullified2

Read on…http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/5893933/2126339805/name/Veritas+-+RIL+RCom.pdf

FALLACY OF POLITICAL TOURISM IN PAK
Saturday, 18 May 2013 | Pioneer | in Oped

A lot of Indians are justifiably cheered by Nawaz Sharif’s return to power through an election which saw ordinary Pakistanis defy the Mullahs. But helping this new order with compromises on Kashmir and national identity would be a grave mistake

The problem with Indo-Pakistan relation is the deep rooted malaise in the mindset on both sides of theborder that cannot be ‘cured’ by merely increasing the exchange of heads of government visits or by stepping up the volumes of bilateral trade, or through the facilitation of dance&drama delegations, or of cricket tours. There must be concrete actions based on deep analysis of the malaise which could, sometime in the future, lead to cure.

Dr BR Ambedkar wrote in his Pakistan, Or Partition of India (New Delhi, 1975): The problem of Pakistan has given a headache to everyone, more so to me than to anybody else. I cannot help recalling with regret how much of my time it has consumed when so much of my other work of greater importance to me than this is held up for want of it. I therefore hope that this second edition will also be the last I trust that before it is exhausted either the question will be settled or withdrawn.

Fresh paradigm What is required is a mindset change. Pakistan may be technically a democracy, but is on the brink of Talibanisation. According to my information, the two largest parties, freshly re-elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML and Imran Khan’s PTI, are both controlled by Jamait E Islami, ISI and Taliban-compliant forces. Both leaders, in their desperation quest of power, sold their souls to them.

We in India have thus to fight this new Pakistani mindset of capitulation to Islamic fundamentalist forces, which forces have every intention to intrude into India to radicalise Indian Muslims. That means patriotic Indians would also need to simultaneously prepare for war while sweating for peace.

The first step we need to take is rectify the lack of a clear national identity at our end and build a more cohesive India. Without a conscious common acceptance of a national identity especially by Hindus and Muslims, we cannot effectively deal with this new Pakistan.

Let us not forget that from day one Pakistan has posed a serious existential problem for India, which is: Are we or are we not,Hindus and Muslims living in India, one nation? Pakistani mind is clear: Muslims constitute a separate nation.For Pakistan, Hindus and Muslims are two nations, and can never be one.

Because of the legacy of a woozy Nehru we have failed so far to find a basis for defining India’s identity that includes Hindus and other religious communities.

In the words of Dr Ambedkar: What the Hindus must show is that notwithstanding some differences, there are enough affinities between Hindus and Musalmans to constitute them into one nation, or, to use plain language, which make Muslims and Hindus long to belong together.

It is my view (supported by modern scientific study of genetics of Indians based on DNA research) Hindus and Muslims can develop heartfelt affinity only if Muslims accept publicly and with pride the truth and the scientific fact: that the ancestors of Muslims are Hindus. This is what genetic research reveals.

Such open acceptance by Muslims in India of a common ancestry could lead to both Hindus and Muslims regarding themselves as equal legatees of a continuing civilisation. Our national identity thus is: India is a land of Hindus and of those whose ancestors are Hindus.

In private many Muslims and Hindus do accept this fact, but in public they shy away from owning up this implied affinity for fear of the militant and jehadi sections which are likely place a reward on their head. The Mullah thinks that this acceptance and consequent affinity could lead to Muslims accepting Hindutva (Hinduness).

Distancing After 1857, a prominent Delhi Muslim cleric fearing being swallowed culturally by Hindus by proximity began propagating the “concept of distance” between Muslims and Hindus. This concept got mainstreamed among Muslim intellectuals and eventually to Pakistan. The Mullah today again thinks that insulating the Muslim in India is the only way to keep the community intact from dissolving under the quicksand of Hindutva.

Pakistan aids this effort by clandestinely canvassing the view that Muslims of India have descended from Ghori and Ghazni, and not from Hindus, thereby clouding the truth of our genetic affinity.

The Mullahs, with the backing of official Pakistan, urge the Muslims of India to be internationally oriented to the ummah. They ask Indian Muslims to support Islamic causes even if such support clashes with India’s national interests. Therefore a ‘business as usual’ policy toward Pakistan can only drive deeper the wedge in perceptions between Hindus and Muslims of each other in India. India’s attitude to Pakistan thus has got to recognise that cosmetic changes and political tourism will be so much water off a duck’s back since for Pakistan, its national security lies in ensuring that Hindus and Muslim affinity is poisoned and buried.

Therefore, before we in India have firewall ourselves against Pakistan’s insidious campaign or else each forward move would expose us to the danger of Hindu-Muslim alienation at home. If we look backwards, our relations with Pakistan has barely improved over the last 66 years, but the Muslim “internationalist conclave mindset” has become entrenched. Vote bank politics has worsened this trend.

Eternal conflict

Prophet Mohammed has decreed in Sira and Hadith, the holy texts the Sunnis accept as Allah’s hukum, that where Muslims are not constituted as a nation, (Dar ul Harb), they ought to strive for Dar ul Islam through all means possible.

That is why 500,000 Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs were driven out of the Kashmir Valley. It made no sense to drive out a totally non-violent community as the Kashmiri Pandits were except on the basis of the Prophet’s decree of converting Dar ul Harab into Dar ul Islam. Thus, the Mullahs in Srinagar declared: Kashmir must become a Caliphate.

We cannot accept any compromise on Kashmir because that will undo the concept of our national identity. We must resolve therefore that any peace with Pakistan can be only after the entire Kashmir including PoK is fully integrated with India under the Constitution. Relations with Pakistan should be put on a hold till then. In any case if India declines to discuss Kashmir, Pakistan will not want to normalise relations or even talk with India in the new dispensation in Islamabad.

The Taliban has in its publications called India the “unfinished chapter” of Islamic history. This exhibits the mindset of the Islamic hardliners who are increasing every day in numbers. In 2014, the US is likely to pull out from Afghanistan after an agreement with the Taliban that is presently being hammered out in Qatar. Thereafter, unless India or China or both intervene, Afghanistan will go under Taliban rule. Hence, talking with Pakistan on our core issues of concern such as handing over 26/11 terrorists charged with the crime, closing down terrorist training camps, stopping infiltration across LoC will not be addressed by a Talibanised Pakistan. Instead we have to prepare to meet the new situation to defend India’s integrity and security.

In other words, the bottom line in the current situation is that instead to extending the hand of friendship to the newly elected government which is a surrogate for the invisible government of Taliban, India should prepare for war while expressing readiness for an honourable peace.

Subramanian Swamy (The writer is a former union minister and president, Janata Party)
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/fallacy-of-political-tourism-in-pak.html#

Friday, May 17, 2013

VIEW: The Balochistan Hindus’ dilemma —Muhammad Akbar Notezai

Hindus have been richly contributing in Balochistan’s economic prosperity and development since pre-partition days

Historically, it is not clear in documents to assert how and when Hindus originally settled in Balochistan. But after having sat with Balochistan-based Baloch and Hindu historians and writers, all of them agree that Hindus have been living in Balochistan since time immemorial along with Buddhists. It is also said that in some parts of Balochistan paganism has been the religion of the scattered tribal people. However, Hindus ruled Balochistan before the invasion of the Arabs in 712 A.D.

In Balochistan, Hindus have two historical and famous sacred places that belong to ancient times. These two sacred places are the Hinglaj Shrine, which is located in Balochistan’s Lasbela District in a hilly track, and the other one is in Kalat town called Kali Devi, who is the consort of the god Shiva.

At the time of partition, religious riots were rampant in the subcontinent, but Hindus were living harmoniously and peacefully in the princely state of Balochistan, which was under the rule of the chief ruler of the Kalat state, Yar Muhammad Khan. He respected the indigenousness of the Hindu community. He had also given to Hindus economic and religious freedom in Balochistan. That is why the Hindu community did not leave Balochistan at the time of the partition because all their rights were safeguarded.

Hindus had also been living amicably with the Baloch and Pashtuns since the pre-partition days in Balochistan. But after the partition, due to religious uproar and turmoil, Hindus had to leave Balochistan’s Pashtun belt to settle in Baloch populated areas or migrate to India. In 1941, the Hindus’ population was 54,000 in Balochistan’s Pashtun belt, but soon it dwindled by 93 percent after 1947.

In contemporary times, one of the prominent Hindu intellectuals, Mr Sham Kumar, told this writer about the Hindus living in Baloch populated areas: “Hindus are now facing a situation worse in Baloch residing places than they had to face in the past living in Pashtun residing places because the Baloch elders, who would show great respect for their neighborhood Hindus, are no longer living in this world, or they have become very old.”

Hindus have been richly contributing in Balochistan’s economic prosperity and development since pre-partition days. They have built schools, libraries and hospitals in various parts of Balochistan. In Balochistan, many of the Hindus are educated. They have been offering services in health, education and other sectors. But it is profoundly shocking that Hindus are now living dangerously in Balochistan. They cannot even perform their religious practices freely due to the nightmarish situation where they interminably fear for their lives, faith, honour and property. Hindus, in spite of being Balochistan’s peaceful and largest minority, are running from their old ‘motherland’ to escape persecution, because their lives are in a precarious and worsened condition these days.

In Balochistan, it was the 1990s period that turned into a great conflagration for Hindus. After that, gradually the Hindus’ manifold problems, whether it was abduction, religious persecution, migration or killing, all of them have been intensifying. Externally and internally, many Hindu families have migrated to India, inside Pakistan to its largest city, Karachi, and interior Sindh. But unfortunately they are economically living a pathetic life in these places. There are many more Hindus who still utter the words ‘migration’ and ‘insecurity’ in Balochistan.

In Balochistan, except in Makran (Panjgur, Turbat and Gwadar), Hindus are living in all other Baloch populated districts. There has been mass migration from these districts of Balochistan: Kalat, Khuzdar, Quetta, Mastung, Lasbela, Hub, Nushki, Dalbandin. On the other hand, Dr Shah Muhammad Marri, the well-known Baloch historian, said: “Take the example of the Marri tribe. They are also migrating due to the law and order situation. This land has been burning for the last 30 years. It has become an inferno for all the castes. Same is the case with the Hindus, the Christians the Hazaras, the Baloch and the Pashtuns. All of them are migrating from pillar to post to find a safe place.”

Balochistan’s Minority Minister, Mr Basant Lal Gulshan, who is a Hindu, denied the reports of Hindus migrating from Balochistan. But a Hindu Doctor said under the condition of anonymity that there had been migration, even within his own family.

The government officials, on the other hand, also say that the majority of Hindus who have been migrating from Balochistan or the country are economically sound. They see a bright future for their children in India. But it is worth mentioning here that 90 percent of the Hindus of Balochistan are unsound economically. They cannot afford to leave their indigenous places and settle somewhere else, especially India. Moreover, a sane person or community would never give up their connections to their place of birth until or unless circumstances compel them.

In Balochistan, Hindus are also complainants about the mainstream media that their sufferings hardly and rarely get discussed. That is why they rely on private TV channels to bring to light their sufferings, because people at national and international level have very little information about them.

There have also been nearly 35 Hindus killed in the former dictator General Pervez Musharraf’s regime where he launched the fifth military operation against Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, the former chief minister Balochistan. Nawab Bugti used to keep the Hindu population in proximity to his legendary fort in Dera Bugti to safeguard them from criminal elements. That is why many Hindus, mainly women and children, were killed and sustained severe injuries in the assault against Nawab Bugti on March 17, 2005.

Additionally, in Balochistan, Hindus are considered low caste. They are treated unequally and as second grade citizens. They are living isolated lives in their separate localities. They do not have the right to vote. The standard of their children’s education is abysmal.

In previous times, the government could not have maintained its writ despite completing its five-year tenure. To a lesser extent, the last government would also be held responsible for the Hindus’ sufferings. That is why the incoming government should be civilised and democratically elected so that Hindus may find a solution to their tragic dilemma.

The writer is a columnist at Daily Balochistan Express, Quetta and blogs at thttp://www.akbarnotezai.wordpress.com. He can be reached at akbarnotezai@yahoo.comand on twitter @Akbar_notezai

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C05%5C17%5Cstory_17-5-2013_pg3_4

China’s Foreign Policy: Biang Biang Noodles!

AP File photo of Donghai Bridge Offshore Wind Farm, Shangai, China. Agency for Non-conventional Energy and Rural Technology (ANERT) is preparing to take up a wind monitoring study to identify potential offshore sites in Kerala.
Offshore wind farms to produce power for KeralaPublished: May 18, 2013 00:50 IST | Updated: May 18, 2013 00:50 IST
Green energy from blue sea

T. Nandakumar

A few years from now, wind farms located at sea could be churning out clean energy to feed the starved power grid in Kerala.

The Agency for Non-conventional Energy and Rural Technology (ANERT) is preparing to take up a wind monitoring study to identify potential offshore sites. The project is to be launched with the assistance of the Dutch government.

The Netherlands has made significant progress in harnessing wind as a renewable energy source. The country has set a target to build 6,000 MW of offshore wind power by 2020, mostly from the North Sea. During a recent discussion held with officials in Kerala, representatives of the Dutch government offered to collaborate in developing offshore wind farms.

ANERT director M. Jayaraju told The Hindu that the study would be followed by a pilot project, subject to a policy decision by the government. The project, he said, would be launched with the necessary safeguards to ensure that the offshore platforms did not interfere with fishing activities. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has identified the Kerala-Konkan coast as one of the potential sites for offshore wind farms in India.

Offshore wind farms are preferred because of the non-availability of land in densely populated coastal areas with high wind potential. The added efficiency of offshore wind power is another advantage over onshore wind turbines.

ANERT is also preparing to take up a wind-monitoring study to assess the potential for land-based wind farms in the coastal regions of the State. The study would be carried out at four locations with the help of the Centre for Wind Energy Technology (C-WET), a Chennai-based autonomous research and development institution under MNRE.

C.K. Chandrabose, Joint Technical Director, Wind Energy project, ANERT, said the year-long studies would generate real-time, on-site data on the wind potential of offshore and coastal regions in Kerala. The base data would be a crucial factor in attracting independent power producers to set up wind farms, he said.

ANERT is also gearing up to update the available wind monitoring data at potential sites on land. The total technically-feasible onshore wind potential of the State is estimated to be around 800 MW, limited to 17 locations in Palakkad, Idukki, and Thiruvananthapuram, where the wind speed is above 15 km/hr.

The main windy areas in the State are the eastern mountainous regions of Idukki district bordering Tamil Nadu and the elevated areas in the Palakkad gap. Ponmudi in Thiruvananthapuram is another potential site.

Mr. Chandrabose said monitoring stations equipped to generate wind data at a height of 80 metres had been installed at Kanjikode in Palakkad, Chelamala in Malappuram, and Pullikanam, Vandiperiyar and Kulathumedu in Idukki.

Meanwhile, two new wind farms, slated to come up soon at Kanjikode and Ramakkalmedu in Idukki will augment the State’s total installed capacity of wind energy. While the farm at the Kinfra Park in Kanjikode will add 22 MW, the one at Ramakkalmedu being set up by NTPC will add another 20 MW to the current installed capacity of 34 MW generated by KSEB at Kanjikode and independent power producers at Attappady and Ramakkalmedu.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/green-energy-from-blue-sea/article4725082.ece?css=print

The Collapse of Journalism and the Journalism of Collapse: From Royal, to Prophetic, to Apocalyptic

By Robert Jensen
Published: Friday 17 May 2013

For those who believe that a robust public-affairs journalism is essential for a society striving to be democratic, the 21st century has been characterized by bad news that keeps getting worse.

Whatever one’s evaluation of traditional advertising-supported news media (and I have been among its critics; more on that later), the unraveling of that business model has left us with fewer professional journalists who are being paid a living wage to do original reporting. It’s unrealistic to imagine that journalism can flourish without journalists who have the time and resources to do journalism.

For those who care about a robust human presence on the planet, the 21st century has been characterized by really bad news that keeps getting really, really worse.

Whatever one’s evaluation of high-energy/high-technology civilization (and I have been among its critics; more on that later), it’s now clear that we are hitting physical limits; we cannot expect to maintain contemporary levels of consumption that draw down the ecological capital of the planet at rates dramatically beyond replacement levels. It unrealistic to imagine that we can go on treating the planet as nothing more than a mine from which we extract and a landfill into which we dump.

We have no choice but to deal with the collapse of journalism, but we also should recognize the need for a journalism of collapse. Everyone understands that economic changes are forcing a refashioning of the journalism profession. It’s long past time for everyone to pay attention to how multiple, cascading ecological crises should be changing professional journalism’s mission in even more dramatic fashion.

It’s time for an apocalyptic journalism (that takes some explaining; a lot more on that later).

The Basics of Journalism: Ideals and Limitations

With the rapid expansion of journalistic-like material on the internet, it’s especially crucial to define “real” journalism. In a democratic system, ideally journalism is a critical, independent source of information, analysis, and the varied opinions needed by citizens who want to play a meaningful role in the formation of public policy. The key terms are “critical” and “independent”—to fulfill the promise of a free press, journalists must be willing to critique not only specific people and policies, but the systems out of which they emerge, and they must be as free as possible from constraining influences, both overt and subtle. Also included in that definition of journalism is an understanding of democracy—“a meaningful role in the formation of public policy”—as more than just lining up to vote in elections that offer competing sets of elites who represent roughly similar programs. Meaningful democracy involves meaningful participation.

This discussion will focus on what is typically called mainstream journalism, the corporate-commercial news media. These are the journalists who work for daily newspapers, broadcast and cable television, and the corporately owned platforms on the internet and other digital devices. Although there are many types of independent and alternative journalism of varying quality, the vast majority of Americans continue to receive the vast majority of their news from these mainstream sources, which are almost always organized as large corporations and funded primarily by advertising.

Right-wing politicians and commentators sometimes refer to the mainstream media as the “lamestream,” implying that journalists are comically incompetent and incapable of providing an accurate account of the world, likely due to a lack of understanding of conservative people and their ideas. While many elite journalists may be dismissive of the cultural values of conservatives, this critique ignores the key questions about journalism’s relationship to power. Focusing on the cultural politics of individual reporters and editors—pointing out that they tend to be less religious and more supportive of gay and women’s rights than the general public, for example—diverts attention from more crucial questions about how the institutional politics of corporate owners and managers shapes the news and keeps mainstream journalism within a centrist/right conventional wisdom.

The managers of commercial news organizations in the United States typically reject that claim by citing the unbreachable “firewall” between the journalistic and the business sides of the operation, which is supposed to allow journalists to pursue any story without interference from the corporate front office. This exchange I had with a newspaper editor captures the ideology: After listening to my summary of this critique of the U.S. commercial news media system, this editor (let’s call him Joe) told me proudly: “No one from corporate headquarters has ever called me to tell me what to run in my paper.” I asked Joe if it were possible that he simply had internalized the value system of the folks who run the corporation (and, by extension, the folks who run most of the world), and therefore they never needed to give him direct instructions. He rejected that, reasserting his independence from any force outside his newsroom.

I countered: “Let’s say, for the purposes of discussion, that you and I were equally capable journalists in terms of professional skills, that we were both reasonable candidates for the job of editor-in-chief that you hold. If we had both applied for the job, do you think your corporate bosses would have ever considered me for the position, given my politics? Would I, for even a second, have been seen by them to be a viable candidate for the job?”

Joe’s politics are pretty conventional, well within the range of mainstream Republicans and Democrats—he supports big business and U.S. supremacy in global politics and economics. I’m a critic of capitalism and U.S. foreign policy. On some political issues, Joe and I would agree, but we diverge sharply on these core questions of the nature of the economy and the state.

Joe pondered my question and conceded that I was right, that his bosses would never hire someone with my politics, no matter how qualified, to run one of their newspapers. The conversation trailed off, and we parted without resolving our differences. I would like to think my critique at least got Joe to question his platitudes, but I never saw any evidence of that. In his subsequent writing and public comments that I read and heard, Joe continued to assert that a news media system dominated by for-profit corporations was the best way to produce the critical, independent journalism that citizens in a democracy needed. Because he was in a position of some privilege and status, nothing compelled Joe to respond to my challenge.

Partly as a result of many such unproductive conversations, I continue to search for new ways to present a critique of mainstream journalism that might break through that ideological wall. In addition to thinking about alternatives to this traditional business model, we should confront the limitations of the corresponding professional model, with its status-quo-supportive ideology of neutrality, balance, and objectivity. Can we create conditions under which journalism—deeply critical and truly independent—can flourish in these trying times?

In this essay I want to try out theological concepts of the royal, prophetic, and apocalyptic traditions. Though journalism is a secular institution, religion can provide a helpful vocabulary. The use of these terms is not meant to imply support for any particular religious tradition, or for religion more generally, but only recognizes that the fundamental struggles of human history play out in religious and secular settings, and we can learn from all of that history. With a focus on the United States, I’ll drawn on the concepts as they understood in the dominant U.S. tradition of Judaism and Christianity.

Royal Journalism

Most of today’s mainstream corporate-commercial journalism—the work done by people such as Joe—is royal journalism, using the term “royal” not to describe a specific form of executive power but as a description of a system that centralizes authority and marginalizes the needs of ordinary people. The royal tradition describes ancient Israel, the Roman empire, European monarchs, or contemporary America—societies in which those with concentrated wealth and power can ignore the needs of the bulk of the population, societies where the wealthy and powerful offer platitudes about their beneficence as they pursue policies to enrich themselves.

In his books The Prophetic Imagination and The Practice of Prophetic Imagination, theologian Walter Brueggemann points out that this royal consciousness took hold after ancient Israel sank into disarray, when Solomon overturned Moses—affluence, oppressive social policy, and static religion replaced a God of liberation with one used to serve an empire. This consciousness develops not only in top leaders but throughout the privileged sectors, often filtering down to a wider public that accepts royal power. Brueggemann labels this a false consciousness: “The royal consciousness leads people to numbness, especially to numbness about death.”

The inclusion of the United States in a list of royalist societies may seem odd, given the democratic traditions of the country, but consider a nation that has been at war for more than a decade, in which economic inequality and the resulting suffering has dramatically deepened for the past four decades, in which climate change denial has increased as the evidence of the threat becomes undeniable. Brueggemann describes such a culture as one that is “competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing.”

Almost all mainstream corporate-commercial journalism is, in this sense, royal journalism. It is journalism without the imagination needed to move outside the framework created by the dominant systems of power. CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News all practice royal journalism. The New York Times is ground zero for royal journalism. Marking these institutions as royalist doesn’t mean that no good journalism ever emerges from them, or that they employ no journalists who are capable of challenging royal arrangements. Instead, the term recognizes that these institutions lack the imagination necessary to step outside of the royal consciousness on a regular basis. Over time, they add to the numbness rather than jolt people out of it.

The royal consciousness of our day is defined by unchallengeable commitments to a high-energy/high-technology worldview, within a hierarchical economy, run by an imperial nation-state. These technological, economic, and national fundamentalisms produce a certain kind of story about ourselves, which encourages the belief that we can have anything we want without obligations to other peoples or other living things, and that we deserve this. Brueggemann argues that this bolsters notions of “US exceptionalism that gives warrant to the usurpatious pursuit of commodities in the name of freedom, at the expense of the neighbor.”

If one believes royal arrangements are just and sustainable, then royal journalism could be defended. If the royal tradition is illegitimate, than a different journalism is necessary.

Prophetic Journalism

Given the multiple crises that existing political, economic, and social systems have generated, the ideals of journalism call for a prophetic journalism. The first step in defending that claim is to remember what real prophets are not: They are not people who predict the future or demand that others follow them in lockstep. In the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament, prophets are the figures who remind the people of the best of the tradition and point out how the people have strayed. In those traditions, using our prophetic imagination and speaking in a prophetic voice requires no special status in society, and no sense of being special. Claiming the prophetic tradition requires only honesty and courage.

When we strip away supernatural claims and delusions of grandeur, we can understand the prophetic as the calling out of injustice, the willingness not only to confront the abuses of the powerful but to acknowledge our own complicity. To speak prophetically requires us first to see honestly—both how our world is structured by systems that create unjust and unsustainable conditions, and how we who live in the privileged parts of the world are implicated in those systems. To speak prophetically is to refuse to shrink from what we discover or from our own place in these systems. We must confront the powers that be, and ourselves.

The Hebrew Bible offers us many models. Amos and Hosea, Jeremiah and Isaiah—all rejected the pursuit of wealth or power and argued for the centrality of kindness and justice. The prophets condemned corrupt leaders but also called out all those privileged people in society who had turned from the demands of justice, which the faith makes central to human life. In his analysis of these prophets, the scholar and activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel concluded:

Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption.

Critical of royal consciousness, Brueggemann argues that the task of those speaking prophetically is to “penetrate the numbness in order to face the body of death in which we are caught” and “penetrate despair so that new futures can be believed in and embraced by us.” He encourages preachers to think of themselves as “handler[s] of the prophetic tradition,” a job description that also applies to other intellectual professions, including journalism.

Brueggemann argues that this isn’t about intellectuals imposing their views and values on others, but about being willing to “connect the dots”:

Prophetic preaching does not put people in crisis. Rather it names and makes palpable the crisis already pulsing among us. When the dots are connected, it will require naming the defining sins among us of environmental abuse, neighborly disregard, long-term racism, self-indulgent consumerism, all the staples from those ancient truthtellers translated into our time and place.

None of this requires journalists to advocate for specific politicians, parties, or political programs; we don’t need journalists to become propagandists. Journalists should strive for real independence but not confuse that with an illusory neutrality that traps mainstream journalists within ideological boundaries defined by the powerful. Again, real independence means the ability to critique not just the worst abuses by the powerful within the systems, but to critique the systems themselves.

This prophetic calling is consistent with the aphorism many journalists claim as a shorthand mission statement: The purpose of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That phrase focuses on injustice within human societies, but what of the relationship of human beings to the larger living world? How should journalists understand their mission in that arena?

Ecological Realties

Let’s put analysis of journalism on hold and think about the larger world in which journalism operates. Journalistic ideals and norms should change as historical conditions change, and today that means facing tough questions about ecological sustainability.

There is considerable evidence to help us evaluate the health of the ecosphere on which our own lives depend, and an honest evaluation of that evidence leads to a disturbing conclusion: Life as we know it is almost over. That is, the high-energy/high-technology life that we in the affluent societies live is a dead-end. There is a growing realization that we have disrupted planetary forces in ways we cannot control and do not fully understand. We cannot predict the specific times and places where dramatic breakdowns will occur, but we can know that the living system on which we depend is breaking down.

Does that seem histrionic? Excessively alarmist? Look at any crucial measure of the health of the ecosphere in which we live—groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity—and the news is bad. Add to that the mother of all ecological crises—global warming, climate change, climate disruption—and it’s clear that we are creating a planet that cannot indefinitely support a large-scale human presence living this culture’s idea of the good life.

We also live in an oil-based world that is rapidly depleting the cheap and easily accessible oil, which means we face a huge reconfiguration of the infrastructure that undergirds our lives. Meanwhile, the desperation to avoid that reconfiguration has brought us to the era of “extreme energy” using even more dangerous and destructive technologies (hydrofracturing, deep-water drilling, mountain-top removal, tar sands extraction) to get at the remaining hydrocarbons.

Where we are heading? Off the rails? Into the wall? Over the cliff? Pick your favorite metaphor. Scientists these days are talking about tipping points and planetary boundaries, about how human activity is pushing the planet beyond its limits. Recently 22 top scientists in the prestigious journal Nature warned that humans likely are forcing a planetary-scale critical transition “with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience.” That means that “the biological resources we take for granted at present may be subject to rapid and unpredictable transformations within a few human generations.”

That means that we’re in trouble, not in some imaginary science-fiction future, but in our present reality. We can’t pretend all that’s needed is tinkering with existing systems to fix a few environmental problems; significant changes in how we live are required. No matter where any one of us sits in the social and economic hierarchies, there is no escape from the dislocations that will come with such changes. Money and power might insulate some from the most wrenching consequences of these shifts, but there is no permanent escape. We do not live in stable societies and no longer live on a stable planet. We may feel safe and secure in specific places at specific times, but it’s hard to believe in any safety and security in a collective sense.

In short, we live in apocalyptic times.

Apocalypse

To be clear: Speaking apocalyptically need not be limited to claims that the world will end on a guru’s timetable or according to some allegedly divine plan. Lots of apocalyptic visions—religious and secular—offer such certainty, imaging the replacement of a corrupt society by one structured on principles that will redeem humanity (or at least redeem those who sign onto the principles). But this need not be our only understanding of the term.

Most discussions of revelation and apocalypse in contemporary America focus on the Book of Revelation, also known as The Apocalypse of John, the final book of the Christian New Testament. The two terms are synonymous in their original meaning; “revelation” from Latin and “apocalypse” from Greek both mean a lifting of the veil, a disclosure of something hidden from most people, a coming to clarity. Many scholars interpret the Book of Revelation not as a set of predictions about the future but as a critique of the oppression of the empire of that day, Rome.

To speak apocalyptically, in this tradition, is first and foremost about deepening our understanding of the world, seeing through the obfuscations of people in power. In our propaganda-saturated world (think about the amount of advertising, public relations, and marketing that we are bombarded with daily), coming to that kind of clarity about the nature of the empires of our day is always a struggle, and that notion of revelation is more crucial than ever.

Thinking apocalyptically, coming to this clarity, will force us to confront crises that concentrated wealth and power create, and reflect on our role in these systems. Given the severity of the human assault on the ecosphere, compounded by the suffering and strife within the human family, honest apocalyptic thinking that is firmly grounded in a systematic evaluation of the state of the world is not only sensible but a moral obligation. Rather than thinking of revelation as divine delivery of a clear message about some fantastic future above, we can engage in an ongoing process of revelation that results from an honest struggle to understand, a process that requires a lot of effort.

Things are bad, systems are failing, and the status quo won’t last forever. Thinking apocalyptically in this fashion demands of us considerable courage and commitment. This process will not produce definitive answers but rather help us identify new directions.

Again, to be very clear: “Apocalypse” in this context does not mean lakes of fire, rivers of blood, or bodies lifted up to heaven. The shift from the prophetic to the apocalyptic can instead mark the point when hope in the viability of existing systems is no longer possible and we must think in dramatically new ways. Invoking the apocalyptic recognizes the end of something. It’s not about rapture but a rupture severe enough to change the nature of the whole game.

Apocalyptic Journalism

The prophetic imagination helps us analyze the historical moment we’re in, but it’s based on an implicit faith that the systems in which we live can be reshaped to stop the worst consequences of the royal consciousness, to shake off that numbness of death in time. What if that is no longer possible? Then it is time to think about what’s on the other side. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the more well-known voices in the prophetic tradition. But if the arc is now bending toward a quite different future, a different approach is needed.

Because no one can predict the future, these two approaches are not mutually exclusive; people should not be afraid to think prophetically and apocalyptically at the same time. We can simultaneously explore immediate changes in the existing systems and think about new systems.

Invoking the prophetic in the face of royal consciousness does not promise quick change and a carefree future, but it implies that a disastrous course can be corrected. But what if the justification for such hope evaporates? When prophetic warnings have not been heeded, what comes next? This is the time when an apocalyptic sensibility is needed.

Fred Guterl, the executive editor of Scientific American, models that spirit in his book The Fate of the Species. Though he describes himself on the “techno-optimistic side of the spectrum,” he does not shy away from a blunt discussion of the challenges humans face:

There’s no going back on our reliance on computers and high-tech medicine, agriculture, power generation, and so forth without causing vast human suffering—unless you want to contemplate reducing the world population by many billions of people. We have climbed out on a technological limb, and turning back is a disturbing option. We are dependent on our technology, yet our technology now presents the seeds of our own destruction. It’s a dilemma. I don’t pretend to have a way out. We should start by being aware of the problem.

I don’t share Guterl’s techno-optimism, but it strikes me as different from a technological fundamentalism (the quasi-religious belief that the use of advanced technology is always a good thing and that any problems caused by the unintended consequences of such technology can be remedied by more technology) that assumes that humans can invent themselves out of any problem. Guterl doesn’t deny the magnitude of the problems and recognizes the real possibility, perhaps even the inevitability, of massive social dislocation:

[W]e’re going to need the spirit with which these ideas were hatched to solve the problems we have created. Tossing aside technological optimism is not a realistic option. This doesn’t mean technology is going to save us. We may still be doomed. But without it, we are surely doomed.

Closer to my own assessment is James Lovelock, a Fellow of the Royal Society, whose work led to the detection of the widespread presence CFCs in the atmosphere. Most famous for his “Gaia hypothesis” that understands both the living and non-living parts of the earth as a complex system that can be thought of as a single organism, he suggests that we face these stark realities immediately:

The great party of the twentieth century is coming to an end, and unless we now start preparing our survival kit we will soon be just another species eking out an existence in the few remaining habitable regions. … We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia.

Anything that blocks us from looking honestly at reality, no matter how harsh the reality, must be rejected. It’s a lot to ask, of people and of journalists, to not only think about this, but put it at the center of our lives. What choice do we have? To borrow from one of 20th century America’s most honest writers, James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

That line is from an essay titled “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” about the struggles of artists to help a society, such as the white-supremacist America, face the depth of its pathology. Baldwin suggested that a great writer attempts “to tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more.” If we think of Baldwin as sounding a prophetic call, an apocalyptic invocation would be “to tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then all the rest of the truth, whether we can bear it or not.”

That task is difficult enough when people are relatively free to pursue inquiry without external constraints. Are the dominant corporate-commercial/advertising-supported media outlets likely to encourage journalists to pursue the projects that might lead to such questions? If not, the apocalyptic journalism we need is more likely to emerge from the margins, where people are not trapped by illusions of neutrality or concerned about professional status.

[INSERT HOPEFUL ENDING HERE]

That subhead is not an editing oversight. I wish there were an easy solution, an upbeat conclusion. I don’t have one. I’ve never heard anyone else articulate one. To face the world honestly at this moment in human history likely means giving up on easy and upbeat.

The apocalyptic tradition reminds us that the absence of hope does not have to leave us completely hopeless, that life is always at the same time about death, and then rejuvenation. If we don’t have easy, upbeat solutions and conclusions, we have the ability to keep telling stories of struggle. Our stories do not change the physical world, but they have the potential to change us. In that sense, the poet Muriel Rukeyser was right when she said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”

To think apocalyptically is not to give up on ourselves, but only to give up on the arrogant stories that we modern humans have been telling about ourselves. The royal must give way to the prophetic and the apocalyptic. The central story that power likes to tell—that the domination/subordination dynamic that structures so much of modern life is natural and inevitable—must give way to stories of dignity, solidarity, equality. We must resist not only the cruelty of repression but the seduction of comfort.

The best journalists in our tradition have seen themselves as responsible for telling stories about the struggle for social justice. Today, we can add stories about the struggle for ecological sustainability to that mission. Our hope for a decent future—indeed, any hope for even the idea of a future—depends on our ability to tell stories not of how humans have ruled the world but how we can live in the world.

Whether or not we like it, we are all apocalyptic now.

ABOUT ROBERT JENSEN


Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His latest books are Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue, and We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out, in print and on Kindle.

Jensen is also the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing” (Media Education Foundation, 2009), which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. An extended interview Jensen conducted with Osheroff is online.

Jensen can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online. To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go here. Twitter: @jensenrobertw.

2 comments on "The Collapse of Journalism and the Journalism of Collapse: From Royal, to Prophetic, to Apocalyptic"

WTDOWELL@GMAIL.COM

May 18, 2013 3:09am
As A. J. Liebling liked to point out, "The only free press is the one that you own." Luckily technology has made that a thousand times more possible today than it was during Liebling's time. The key to a powerful press, however, remains compelling content, and that has never been cheap.
One of the qualities of human beings is that they continuously try to game the system. Watergate showed the power of the press, and corporate America responded by buying the press and hiring its own spokespeople to run it. The main reason for the death of mainstream media today is not the internet, or Craig's list, it is simply that much of the mainstream press has little to say that the public really needs to know, or at least that it needs to know through the conventional media. The trend is for compelling content to survive while the daily flood of trivia no longer justifies paying for a newspaper.
I see the intensity of average people immersed in magazines like the New Yorker or the Atlantic, but do they really need to read Time or Newsweek?
Time, especially, is an example of the phenomenon. When Henry Luce started the magazine, he asked each writer he hired, how much the writer expected as a salary. Luce then doubled the amount.
He had a vision--he might have been reactionary or even crazy, but he made the magazine a magnet for talent. Time reached its greatest influence under Henry Grunwald, who was even more demanding, and just as committed to quality. Grunwald believed that the magazine could not survive without him. The business side of Time Warner believed that the magazine could not survive with him.
When Grunwald finally did retire, the magazine was eventually entrusted to Steve Ross, a former parking lot manager who had become filthy rich in Hollywood, and finally it went to the likes of Jerry Levin, a former cable TV guy who had risen to prominence through shameless marketing of himself and garbage TV. The putsch at Time eventually fired as many correspondents as possible and hired "reporter-researchers" in their place.
These were essentially interns who surfed the net for news and occupied the space previously held by journalists. It did not take a lot of imagination to see that Time's corporate guardians had decided that they were no longer interested in publishing. They had decided to milk the magazines for whatever they could get and invest the rest in cheap TV and what they hoped would become block buster movies.
Time Magazine did not die because of the internet. It was death by CEO and incompetent executive talent, or the lack of talent. Unprincipled, men without souls, who were more interested in skimming profits than real journalism. When the World Trade Center collapsed after the attack on 9/11, Time had to resort to a photo story. The managing editor of People Magazine surveyed the site of the tragedy. Time had previously closed its New York Bureau. New York, it had decided, was no longer a story, at least not one that it needed to provide for the public. One of TIME's publishers had previously remarked, "Our audience is not the public. It is the advertising agency account executive, and everyone knows that account execs don't read. They look at the photos, and if you put a column of text next to the photos, you are in." Maybe, but not for long.

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PIKEWICH

May 17, 2013 5:33pm
Great, wonderful, inspiring, sobering and right on. I would say scary, but I am tired of being told to be afraid. we will get nowhere that way.

What if we could regain control of a big chunk of established media?

This is the opportunity we have right now. We can to come together and buy a huge organization with an established audience.

As you have probably heard, the Tribune Company is for sale. It is a newspaper conglomerate that owns the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times among others. Right now the current bidders are the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch.

If the Koch brothers get it, it will be just another propaganda tool for their own interests which so far have proven very destructive for the rest of us and our planet.

Rupert Murdoch is under indictment for illegal phone tapping and bribing officials. No more needs to be said about him if he is familiar to you. If not please read up on his antics if you want a good jaw dropper.

Idiegogo has put together a plan that will make a third alternative available. We, lots of us (a heck of a lot of us) can buy this company and free it to do real journalism.

That would be huge.

If we succeed, we will be part owners, if we fail, we get our donations refunded.

Give it a look before you say no. Pass it to everyone you think would be on board if you see the potential of this as I do.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/free-the-press-buy-the-tribune-company

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http://www.nationofchange.org/collapse-journalism-and-journalism-collapse-royal-prophetic-apocalyptic-1368799018

The Review of Agrarian Studies is happy to present, for the first time, a multimedia feature. This is a field report of a different kind: the farm and other rural songs featured here are from a project to archive the songs of the Adivasi people of Odisha. Journal of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies, ISSN 2248-9002 Editor Vol. 2, No. 2 JULY-DECEMBER, 2012

http://www.ras.org.in/adivasi_songs_from_odisha

May 18, 2013
http://www.youtube.com/user/narendramodi?v=z2_cMN7jza0



5:51 pm: Central Government recently awarded States of India for good work done. Karnataka got 2 awards, Gujarat won 1, Chhattisgarh got 1. Even Sikkim won an award. But no Congress Government in all of India won even one award.

5:49 pm: Modi says he wishes Chhattisgarh should develop even beyond where Gujarat is currently. He wishes for a development-race among States of India.



5:46 pm: Modi say that when Raman Singh speaks, people become silent and take notes. Even Manmohan Singh takes notes. But when Raman Singh raises the Maoist problem, then Congress leaders fall silent.



5:43 pm: Modi asks if anyone in his audience if they trust Delhi. Would you send your daughter to Delhi today, Modi asks and is answered with NOs. Modi says vote-bank politics should be rejected.



5:41 pm: Modi says that the credit for Kerala's educational advancement goes to Narayan Guru of Shivgiri mutt. Congress should not claim the credit for all that is good about Kerala.

5:39 pm: Modi challenges Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on behalf of Raman Singh. He asks Manmohan to answer what he has done for Chhattisgarh and then hear what Raman Singh has done. Modi says Manmohan will lose the debate because he has not done anything.



5:37 pm: Congress had raised the 'garibi hatao' slogan 40 years ago. But has anything happened? Prices are still rising and Congress people refuse to be answerable.



5:36 pm: Modi asks the audience if they want those who are looting the nation to loot Chhattisgarh as well and is answered with resounding NOs. He says Congress can not be allowed to continue bringing ruin the nation.

5:34 pm: Modi says he has heard of money, jewellery being stolen. But Dr Manmohan Singh's Government has managed to steal coal also. Soon, Modi says, banks will have to announce that they have lockers available to store coal.



5:33 pm: Modi says his Congress friends are not willing to change. And therefore, the people are unwilling to give them power. Modi says he was informed a Congress leader openly admitted to being corrupt. Such shamelessness is typical to Congress.



5:31 pm: Chhattisgarh used to have irrigation issues but thanks to the Raman Singh Government, those issues are a thing of the past.

5:30 pm: Modi says he feels proud to be a friend of Raman Singh. When the entire nation drowned in darkness due to a power outage some time ago, only two States kept the lights on -- Chhattisgarh and Gujarat.



5:28 pm: Modi congratulates Dr Raman Singh's Government for achieving consistently high standards in governance in his State. He rules with love and humbleness. Modi tells the people of Chhattisgarh that they deserve the credit for such a state of affairs.



5:24 pm: When Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh split, both were under Congress rule. But no growth came to Chhattisgarh in the three years that followed. Modi recalls that he used to wonder that the dream of Chhattisgarh that Atal Bihari Vajpayee dreamt, would end bitterly. But it was the people of the State, who chose wisely and rejected Congress.

5:21 pm: Modi says when a ruler adopts developmental politics as his way of work, he also inspires confidence in his people. Modi calls Rajnandgaon the Kashi of Chhattisgarh.



5:18 pm: Modi says he has seen vote-bank politics take over national politics. The entire democratic process becomes a series of actions aimed at luring and strengthening vote banks.



5:16 pm: Modi says that there are Chief Ministers who have had to cancel their visits in parts of their own States because of crowds holding black flags. It is a rare Chief Minister who can attract crowds in spite of being in power for 10 years.



5:14 pm: Modi reminds his audience that he had once come to them for votes and had requested their support for a possible BJP Government. He says he is proud that there is a Chief Minister in India who accounts for his actions in the last 5 years to villagers all over Chhattisgarh.

5:12 pm: Narendra Modi takes to the stage to cries of 'Bharat mata kii jai!". He begins his address by thanking all present who have come to attend the event despite the blazing sun.



5:02 pm: Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh delivers the inaugural address, saying that the contribution of BJP Chief Ministers to the nation's economy cannot be ignored.



http://www.niticentral.com/2013/05/18/live-narendra-modi-at-chhattisgarh-79305.html
4:48 pm: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has arrived at the venue.

Let us see how the 2011 census pans out http://censusindia.gov.in/, hoping that Registrar General and Census Commissioner releases the latest census data on the concerns raised by RK Ohri.

Kalyanaraman 18 May 2013

Demographic coup of Islam: Agony of Hindu Civilisation
by R K Ohri on 31 Mar 2012 18 Comments

India faces a major demographic upheaval. The sharply rising Muslim numbers, both in absolute and percentage terms, and a corresponding decline in the population of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists has the potential to escalate fault-line conflicts and create a Lebanon-like situation. Data from the last six censuses held since 1951 suggests that in percentage terms there has been a relentless increase in the population of only one community, the Muslims; all other communities are in a declining mode. Since 1981, Muslim population growth has been in a fast forward mode, growing at almost 45% higher rate than Hindus and Christians. In terms of percentage, Sikh population has recorded the steepest decline since independence.


Census 2001 put the decadal growth rate of Muslims at around 36%, while Hindu growth rate declined from 23% to 20%. On the eve of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, an unseemly political controversy was manufactured by the government on the ground that since no census had taken place in J&K in 1991, the conclusions drawn in terms of Census 2001 data were faulty. This led to a very clumsy fudging of Census 2001, by omitting from the census 3.67 crore people living in Jammu & Kashmir and Assam, States having high Muslim population.


In 1981, no census could be held in Assam due to disturbed conditions, but that did not result in any political ruckus, nor was fudging of census data done at that time because no elections were due then. The most extraordinary aspect of this fudging of the population profile was the deletion with retrospective effect of population data of these two sensitive states from every Census held since 1961 - something never done before in any democratic country.


In a lucid article, professional demographers, late P.N. Mari Bhat and A.J. Francis Zavier, wrote that “the fertility of Muslims, which was about 10 per cent higher than that of Hindus before independence, is now 25 to 30 per cent higher than the Hindu rate”. This means the Muslim population is now growing at a rate nearly 45% higher than that of Hindus.


The authors added that the assertion in a section of English media that Census 2001 had revealed a higher reduction in the growth rate of Muslims than Hindus was incorrect. The decline in Hindu growth rate was higher at 12.2% as against 10.3% decline in Muslim growth. Fast growth of Muslim population, especially in non-Muslim countries, is a global phenomenon, they averred.


There is no truth in the assertion that higher Muslim fertility was due to poverty or illiteracy. Since
36% Muslims live in urban areas, as against only 26% Hindus, and as Muslims have a higher life expectancy at birth than Hindus, logically their fertility should have been lower than Hindus. But Muslim fertility continues to be higher despite their greater urbanization and lower incidence of infant and child mortality. Within 7-8 years, the gap between the longevity of Hindus and Muslims has widened to 3 years, i.e., 68 years for Muslims as against only 65 years for Hindus [National Family Health Survey of 2005-2006].


Acceptance of family planning by Muslims is lower at least by 25 percent than Hindus and other Indic communities. Late Mari Bhat and Francis Zavier highlighted the fact that in non-Muslim countries there is a general trend towards higher growth rate of Muslim populations.


According to the National Family Health Survey-2 of 1998-99, in Kerala where the literacy level of the two communities was almost equal (and due to large remittances from Gulf countries Muslims are economically better off than Hindus), the growth rate of Muslims remained much higher than Hindus by almost 45 percent. Analysis of Census 2001shows that on an average every Muslim woman is giving birth to at least one more child than her Hindu counterpart.


Indians must understand the mindboggling import of Statement 7 of Census 2001 Religion Data Report (page xlii) which gives the religion-wise breakup of children in the 0-6 year age group. It shows that the percentage of 0-6 year old Muslim cohorts (a term commonly used in demographic parlance) is 21% higher than Hindu cohorts. This gives Muslims an advantage of 7.6% over Hindus as and when these cohorts enter reproductive age, say roughly between 2012 and 2016.


This gives a vital clue to the demographic crisis likely to engulf India anytime after 2011 or latest by 2021. These 0-6 yrs old cohorts (enumerated in 2001) will become reproductively active between 2012 and 2016 and continue to reproduce for the next 30-40 years. With a 21% higher cohort population and at least 25 percent less acceptance of family planning, the growth in Muslim population during the next few decades is likely to become even more fast-paced.


The Census 2001 Religion Data Report further reveals that among all religious groups, the Muslim population of 0-6 year cohorts was highest at 18.7%. The lowest percentage was seen among Jains (10.6%) and Sikhs (12.8%). In coming years, the percentage increase in the population of these two religious groups, important components of Indic civilization, will be slower than the growth recorded in Census 2001, and their share in the population will decline further, possibly at a faster pace.


In terms of percentage increase, the biggest quantum jump in Muslim population in coming decades will occur in Haryana where the ratio of Muslim cohorts is almost 60% higher than Hindu cohorts! Next in descending order registering fast Muslim growth will be Assam, West Bengal, Uttaranchal, Delhi, Nagaland and Bihar.


A further analysis of 0-6 year cohorts’ data reveals that out of 35 States and Union Territories listed in Statement 7, the percentage of Muslim cohorts was higher than Hindu cohorts in as many as 31 States and UTs. The percentage of 0-6 year Hindu cohorts was marginally higher than Muslims only in Sikkim and Madhya Pradesh and the UTs of Daman & Diu and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. In coming decades, Muslim population will grow at a higher rate than that of Hindus in 31 States and Union Territories.


Statement 7 of Census 2001 Religion Data Report is self explanatory and vividly depicts the looming shadow of future demographic changes across India.


Trapped in a suicidal cult of political correctness, most Indian intellectuals refuse to understand the reasons which prompted former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to advise all British couples to opt for the 5 children norm. Incidentally, his wife Cherry Blair gave birth to their fourth child while her husband was Prime Minister. Indeed, in recent years many European countries have announced liberal cash bonuses to couples who opt for more children. Peter Costello, Australia's Chancellor of the Exchequer, urged every couple to have at least 3 children, preferably more – “one child for father, one for the mother and one for the country”.

Apprehensive of population growth in Indonesia, Peter Costello announced an incentive of 2000 Australian dollars for every child born after June 2004. Many keen observers of global population trends like Niall Ferguson, Bernard Lewis, Robert Costello, Bruce Bawer and Mark Steyn are alerting their countrymen to the threat posed by demographic changes to their civilisational values.

India has many bleeding heart liberals who will ask why this global panic? The answer is that in 1900, Muslims constituted only 12% of the world population; they grew to 18% in 1992-93 (when Huntington published his first thesis on clash of civilizations). Today Muslims constitute 24% of global population. Samuel Huntington pointed out that by 2025, they will constitute 30% of world population. [Source: Spangler, The Decline of the West].


According to some demographic estimates, Muslims might constitute 37% to 40% of world population by 2100 AD. In recent years the number of jihads worldwide has also multiplied; Thailand is the latest entrant to the growing list of jihadi conflict zones.


In India, the Hindu birth rate is fast approaching the European average. According to Census 2001, the decadal Total Fertility Rate of Hindus of Kolkata district (West Bengal) was barely 1.0%, much lower than the birth rates of Germany, Italy and Spain. In Kerala too the Hindu TFR at 1.64 is below the replacement level of 2.1in 2001.


Kerala has witnessed a massive increase in Muslim population from approx. 23,75,000 in 1951 to 78,64,000 in 2001. During the same period the population of Hindus grew from 83,48,000 to 1,79,2000, while that of Christians increased from 28,26,000 to 60,57,000. During the last five decades the Hindu percentage in Kerala’s population declined from 61.61 to 56.28, while that of Muslims rose from 17.53 to 24.70 percent. The percentage share of Christians declined from 20.86 in 1951 to 19.02 in 2001.


The Indian middle class and opinion makers must grasp the long term consequences of the demographic crisis. In a different context, while analyzing socio-economic aspects of Census 2001, demographer Ashish Bose estimated that in 49 districts Muslims already constitute more than 30% of the population. A back-of-the envelope calculation made in the light of Muslim growth rate in the last two decades shows that Muslims will attain majority status in all these 49 districts between 2091 and 2111, perhaps even earlier.

According to a study published by the Centre for Policy Studies, around 2061, the total Muslim population of the sub-continent (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, counted together) will exceed the total Hindu/ Sikh population. This could lead to a fierce struggle for supremacy in the sub-continent.


This is already visible in the chorus for more unmerited concessions for Muslims. The Sachar Committee admitted, perhaps unwittingly, that by 2101 Muslim population in India will be around 32 to 34 crores. It was 13.8 crores in 2001 and barely 3.77 crores in 1951.


In recent times, there have been strident demands by Muslim leaders for greater share in jobs and elected bodies. In 2006, Mohammad Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party called for carving a Muslim Pradesh out of Western UP, instead of a Harit Pradesh advocated by the Rashtriya Lok Dal.


A similar demand to create four or five Muslim-dominated enclaves was voiced by Dr. Omar Khalidi in an interview published in The Times of India, New Delhi, June 2004. He later wrote in The Radiance, mouthpiece of Jamaat-e Islami. He was assiduously following the roadmap for another partition of India. Advocating the creation of Muslim-dominated enclaves in the Mewat region of Haryana, certain parts of UP, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Dr. Khalidi demanded reservations for Muslims on the pattern of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.


The late Dr. Khalidi was in the forefront of the lobby seeking proportionate representation for Muslims in various services, especially in the defence services and para-military forces. He and G.M. Banatwala of the Muslim League are believed to have indirectly used the Sachar Committee as a medium to mount political pressure for seeking jobs for Muslims in proportion to their growing population in government departments, especially the defence and para-military forces, besides greater representation in Parliament and State legislatures.


Muslims are fully aware of their future empowerment through sharp growth in their numbers. Many have started pushing the claim to disproportionate political power in India. Sometime ago when Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi visited Aligarh Muslim University, a student asked him how soon he visualized a Muslim becoming Prime Minister of India. Obviously, the battle lines are being drawn for another politico-religious conflict in India.


In conclusion, it would be in order to recall late P.N. Mari Bhat and Francis Zavier’s analysis that the fertility of Muslims was about 10% higher than that of Hindus before independence and is now 25 to 30% higher than the Hindu rate. Hindus have lost considerable ground since 1947. Yet no Hindu political or spiritual leader has tried to rouse the millions of ill informed Hindus about the looming threat of demographic decimation of their ancient faith and civilisational values.


The writing on the wall is clear. The Christians of Europe and Hindus of India have pushed themselves to the edge of suicide by failure to understand the dynamics of demography in this age of adult suffrage. Russian demographers describe the rampant recourse to abortion by their countrymen in quest of the small family norm as ‘do it yourself genocide’.


The author is a retd. Inspector General of Police, Arunachal Pradesh
User Comments Post a Comment
The Extrimism is the driving force for islamization and conflict Religeous extrimism.is funded by Saudi Arabia and the gulf state. The problem is that the secular states allowe these countries to fund religeous extrimism. in their countries .Hindu India must stop these countries infiltrating.its society. India unfortunately is more interested in hegamonising its own neighbours at the instigation of the christians whilst the arabs are having a field day in its society and destabilising it. This unfortunately is the plight of Hindu India.
jan
March 31, 2012 Report Abuse
Said like a typical Indian,blame others for all your ills,like you are "ganga bathed".
observero
March 31, 2012 Report Abuse
Muslims around the world know only one thing, i.e. to have four wives and procreate. They don't bother whether they have the means to bring up their children. The day is not far off when India will be gobbled up by Indian and Pakistani muslims.
Srinivasan
April 01, 2012 Report Abuse
Alarming, at this rate it can be 50-50 ratio ffor Hindus and Muslims in India by 2100 AD. The problem is that while non-muslims go for family control and they understand the population havoc, atleast want to understand, the well read muslim would refuse to follow the norm, I can quote several instances of my friends regarding this...
Harish
April 01, 2012 Report Abuse
Overbreeding is not taking muslims anywhere.They should know.Islamic upsurge is floating on oil and not on over population.Once mankind finds alternative to oil, non Arab muslims would get integrated or reintegrated to local cultures. Islam will get truly redefined then. Till then let there be four wives and forty kids.OBL did that.Result is turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere.
Jitendra Desai
April 01, 2012 Report Abuse
Breaking of traditional joint family is one reason. Grand parents should try to provide the physical help required to bring up more than two children for their sons and daughters.
Many Hindus are also leaving the country in search of better lives abroad. They should return back to India.
The government has to implement family planning across the board to all sections of society.
Sujeet
April 01, 2012 Report Abuse
"Russian demographers describe the rampant recourse to abortion by their countrymen in quest of the small family norm as ‘do it yourself genocide’. "

Abortion is also rampant among Hindus.

What are Hindu organizations doing to make it illegal and prevent it?

The Dharmashastra's are clear in calling abortion as murder and advocate it only in cases where there is a serious threat to the mother's health.

Hindus are more interested in saving cows, street dogs than saving Hindu children, so need we blame others?

And the gov't will never implement family planning, so keep dreaming and keep committing demographic suicide in the name of family planning you morons.
Ranvir
April 01, 2012 Report Abuse
Why is it that even a year after the 2011 census, the religious demography of the Indian population has not been published? Does anyone any idea?
Nathan
April 01, 2012 Report Abuse
"The Extrimism is the driving force for islamization ..."

This kind of logic is the one that is destroying all infidel civilizations.

It is Islam that is the driving force.

When will these people learn?
SRINIVAS
April 02, 2012 Report Abuse
Excellent article. I am more feared towards rapidly dwindling Brahmin population. Even number of Brahmins doing Sandhyavandana or other barhmin rituals is decreasing more rapidly. I am of age 30 and as a brahmin decided to have at least 4 children, so that at least two of them can be dedicated for developing our culture and tradition of Brahmin and Veda. But the usual question from my parent or relatives will be How can they be nourished properly so as to enable them to do nation building tasks. I am seriously asking this question to you. If you have any answer then please reply me. Can I send them to different Barhmin schools where they can simultaneously learn Veda along with Maths and Science.
Subhendu
April 02, 2012 Report Abuse
Subhenda,that is the correct approach (pro active approach),hope the rest of the commentators follow suit instead of blaming others for the own short falls.
observer
April 02, 2012 Report Abuse
I appreciate the sentiments of Subhendu but it is time to forget all about he caste system in these dificult times for the Hindu identity of India. I am baffled that most Hindus (often well-to-do high caste Hindus) find it difficult to bring up more children, while the Muslims are willingly opting to have and bring up more children. Some change in attitude and also life style can help in bringing up one or two more
children. A lady in a Gurudwara I visited to speak on demography suggested that for Hindus and Sikhs it is desirable to have one more child than buying another car or motor cycle. She also advocated lesser expenses on marriages, ornaments and clothes and more expense on food for more children.
Ram
April 02, 2012 Report Abuse
Subhendu good to see a Hindu who is interested in doing something other than worthless ranting.

Don't let your dumb relatives brainwash you into family planning nonsense.

4 kids are not impossible, I know of Hindus with 5 or 6 kids who brought up their kids just fine. In Israel and the West the Orthodox Jews have 7-8 kids each and bring them up with better "nourishment" than most Indian kids.

How you ask, you have to cut down on consumerism and needless expenses, no cable tv for example. Try to grow veggies and other food stuff in your house instead of buying them, there are many other ways to cut down on expenses. Consumerism is destroying our families.

Family planning is a fraud thrust on Hindus by the anti Hindu Indian gov't.

If you are interested in meeting like minded folks, drop me an email at robzombie306@gmail.com
Ranvir
April 02, 2012 Report Abuse
"blaming others" - quote from observer. Note how Islam itself, through its defining text the Koran - "blames" Hindus (and other kafirs) for our very existence, and directs momins to destroy us -

As for the disbelievers, whether thou warn them or thou warn them not (2.6) Theirs will be an awful doom (2.7) the fire prepared for disbelievers, whose fuel is of men (2.24) they who disbelieve, and deny Our revelations, such are rightful owners of the Fire. They will abide therein (2.39).

The curse of Allah is on disbelievers (2.89). For disbelievers is a shameful doom (2.90). Allah (Himself) is an enemy to the disbelievers (2.98) only miscreants will disbelieve (2.99).

Lo! those who disbelieve, and die while they are disbelievers; on them is the curse of Allah and of angels and of men combined (2.161). The doom will not be lightened for them, neither will they be reprieved (2.162).

Yet of mankind are some who take unto themselves (objects of worship which they set as) rivals to Allah, loving them with a love like (that which is the due) of Allah (only).....Allah is severe in punishment (2.165).

The likeness of those who disbelieve (in relation to the messenger) is as the likeness of who who calleth that which heareth naught except a shout and cry. Deaf, dumb, blind, therefore they have no sense (2.171).

Warfare is ordained for you (2.216) a believing slave is better than an idolater (2.221).

Allah! There is no God save Him.....His throne includeth the heavens and the earth, and He is never weary of preserving them (2.255). He it is Who hath revealed unto thee (Muhammad) the Scripture wherein are clear revelations.....None knoweth its explanation save Allah (3.7). Whoso disbelieveth the revelations of Allah (will find that) lo! Allah is swift at reckoning (3.19).

Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allah unless (it be) that ye guard yourselves against them, taking (as it were) security (3.28). And whoso seeketh as religion other than the Surrender (to Allah) it will not be accepted from him, and he will be a loser in the Hereafter (3.85) on them rests the curse of Allah and of angels and of men combined (3.87). Their doom will not be lightened, neither will they be reprieved (3.88).

Lo! those who disbelieve, and die in disbelief.....Theirs will be a painful doom and they will have no helpers (3.91). Lo! ...those who disbelieve...are rightful owners of the Fire. They will abide therein (3.116).

O ye who believe! Take not for intimates others than your own folk (3.118). Allah may...blight the disbelievers (3.141). O ye who believe! If ye obey those who disbelieve...ye turn back as losers (3.149).

We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve because they ascribe unto Allah partners, for which no warrant hath been revealed. Their habitation is the Fire, and hapless the abode of the wrong-doers (3.151). And let those who disbelieve imagine that the rein We give them bodeth good unto their souls. We only give them rein that they may grow in sinfulness. And theirs will be a shameful doom (3.178). Hell is sufficient for (their) burning (4.55). Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment (4.56).


Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fight in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward (4.74). Those who believe do battle for the cause of Allah; and those who disbelieve do battle for the cause of idols. So fight the minions of the devil (4.76) Allah! There is no God save Him (4.87). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever you find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them (4.89).

Those of the believers who sit still...are not on an equality with those who strive in the way of Allah with their wealth and their lives (4.95) In truth the disbelievers are an open enemy to you (4.101).

O ye who believe! Choose not disbelievers for (your) friends in place of believers. Would ye give Allah a clear warrant against you? (4.144) And they who disbelieve and deny Our revelations, such are rightful owners of hell (5.10). As for those who disbelieve, lo! if all that is in the earth were theirs, and as much again therewith, to ransom them from the doom on the Day of Resurrection, it would not be accepted from them. Theirs will be a painful doom (5.36).

They will wish to come forth from the Fire, but they will not come forth from it. Theirs will be a lasting doom (5.37).

O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends.....He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them (5.51) But keep your duty to Allah if ye are true believers (5.57). Thou seest many of them making friends with those who disbelieve.....Allah will be wroth them and in the doom they will abide (5.80).

This day have I perfected your religion for you and completed My favour unto you, and have chosen for you as religion AL-ISLAM (5.3).** Unto Allah belongeth the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth and whatsoever is therein (5.120).

Follow thou not the whims of those who deny Our revelations, those who believe not in the Hereafter and deem (others) equal with their Lord (6.151). They are only the (true) believers whose hearts feel fear when Allah is mentioned, and when the revelations of Allah are recited unto them they increase their faith (8.2). Who establish worship (8.3). Those are they who are in truth believers (8.4) and cut the root of the disbelievers (8.7). I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite the necks and smite of them each finger (8.12)..

Whoso opposeth Allah and His messenger, (for him) lo! Allah is severe in punishment (8.13) for disbelievers is the torment of the Fire (8.14) and religion is all for Allah (8.39).

If thou couldst see how the angels receive those who disbelieve, smiting their faces and their backs and (saying): Taste the punishment of burning! (8.50). And let not those who disbelieve suppose they can outstrip (Allah's purpose). Lo! they cannot escape (8.59). Make ready for them all thou canst of (armed) force (8.60). O prophet! Exhort the followers to fight.....they (the disbelievers) are a folk without intelligence (8.65). It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land (8.67).

Freedom of obligation (is proclaimed) from Allah and His messenger toward those of the idolaters with whom ye have made a treaty (9.1). Give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom to those who disbelieve (9.3) slay the idolaters wherever ye find them (9.5). Fight them! Allah will chastise them at your hands, and He will lay them low and give you victory over them (9.14) idolaters.....their works are vain and in the Fire they will abide (9.17).

O ye who believe! Choose not your fathers nor your brethren for friends if they take pleasure in disbelief rather than faith. Whoso of you taketh them for friends, such are wrong-doers (9.23). O ye who believe! The idolaters only are unclean (9.28). Allah guideth not the disbelieving folk (9.37). O ye who believe! What aileth you that when it is said unto you: Go forth in the way of Allah, ye are bowed down to the ground with heaviness (9.38). If ye go not forth He will afflict you with a painful doom (9.39). Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah! (9.41) Allah promiseth…the disbelievers fire of hell for their abode. It will suffice them. Allah curseth them, and theirs is lasting torment (9.68).

O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers…Be harsh with them. Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey’s end (9.73). Lo! Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden will be theirs: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain (9.111). It is not for the Prophet, and those who believe, to pray for the forgiveness of idolaters even though they may be near of kin (to them) after it hath become clear that they are people of hell-fire (9.113). O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you (9.123). Nay, but Allah’s is the whole command…..As for those who disbelieve, disaster ceaseth not to strike them because of what they do, or it dwelleth near their home until the threat of Allah come to pass. Lo! Allah faileth not to keep the tryst (13.31). We have appointed hell a dungeon for disbelievers (17.8) and that those who believe not in the Hereafter, for them We have prepared a painful doom (17.10). See how We prefer one above another (17.21).

Set not up with Allah any other god (O man) lest thou sit down reproved, forsaken (17.22). Thy Lord hath decreed, that ye worship none save Him (17.23) And set not up with Allah any other god, lest thou be cast into hell (17.39). Lo! We have prepared for disbelievers Fire (18.30). Lo! We have prepared hell as a welcome for the disbelievers (19.103).


These twain (the believers and the disbelievers) are two opponents who contend concerning their Lord. But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down their heads (22.19). Whereby that which is in their bellies, and their skins too will be melted (22.20) And for them are hooked rods of iron (22.21). Whenever, in their anguish, they would go forth from thence they are driven back therein and (it is said unto them): Taste the doom of burning (22.22). So obey not the disbelievers, but strive against them with a great endeavour (25.52). Lo! Allah hath cursed the disbelievers, and hath prepared for them a flaming fire (33.64) Wherein they will abide for ever (33.65). So Allah punisheth …idolatrous men and idolatrous women (33.73).

Now when ye meet in battle those who disbelieve, then it is smiting of the necks until, when ye have routed them, then making fast of the bonds…That (is the ordinance). And if Allah willed, He could have punished them (without you) but (thus it is ordained) that He may try some of you by means of others (47.4). And those who disbelieve, perdition is for them (47.8). And as for him who believeth not in Allah and His messenger – Lo! We have prepared a flame for disbelievers (48.13). He it is Who hath sent Hismessenger with the guidance and the religion of truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religion (48.28). Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers (48.29). The (true) believers are those only who believe in Allah and His messenger and afterward doubt not, but strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah (49.25). Allah hath decreed: Lo! I verily shall conquer, I and My messengers (58.21).


And there hath arisen between us and you hostility and hate for ever until ye believe in Allah only (60.4). Lo! Allah loveth those who battle for His cause in ranks, as if they were a solid structure (61.4). He it is who hath sent His messenger with the guidance and the religion of truth, that He may make it conqueror of all religion however much idolaters may be averse (61.9). O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers…and be stern with them. Hell will be their home, a hapless journey’s end (66.9). Lo! We have prepared for disbelievers manacles and carcans and a raging fire (76.4). Those who disbelieve, among the People of the Scriptures and the idolaters, will abide in fire of hell. They are the worst of created beings (98.6).
Bharati
April 03, 2012 Report Abuse
This email was sent by the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ to authorities just 5 minutes before Ahmedabad bomb blast!

“… Here we are back – the Mujahideen of India – the terrorists on the disbelievers – the radicals of Islam – after our triumphant and successful assault at Jaipur, once again calling you all, who disbelieve in Allah and His Messenger Muhammad to accept Islam and bear witness that there is none to be worshipped except Allah, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. Accept Islam and save yourselves.

O Hindus! O disbelieving faithless Indians! Haven’t you still realized that the falsehood of your 33 crore dirty mud idols and the blasphemy of your deaf, dumb, mute idols are not at all going to save your necks, Insha-Allah, from being slaughtered?
We call you, O Hindus, O enemies of Allah, to take an honest stance with yourselves lest another attack of Ibn-e-Qasim sends shivers down your spines, lest another Ghauri shakes your foundations, and lest another Ghaznawi massacres you, proving your blood to be the cheapest of all mankind! Have you forgotten your history full of subjugation, humiliation, and insult? Or do you want us to repeat it again? Take heed before it is too late!
So wait! ……………. Await now……….! Wait only for five minutes from now! …. Wait for the Mujahideen and Fidayeen of Islam and stop them if you can – who will make you feel the terror of Jihad. Feel the havoc cast into your hearts by Allah, the Almighty, face His Dreadful Punishment, and suffer the results of fighting the Muslims and the Mujahideen. Await the anguish, agony, sorrow and pain. Await, only for 5 minutes, to feel the fear of death…”.
x
April 05, 2012 Report Abuse
The email from which x quotes is entirely in consonance with Koran injunctions also quoted above. Yes, indeed, Islam is all about love and peace.
Bharati
April 06, 2012 Report Abuse
Ambedkar while writting indian constitution had proposed that as per the population strength of a community they would get representation in lok sabha, rajya sabha and vidhan sabhas. This number would be fixed now and would not be changed. Being a dalit he knew muslims better than any body else because it is the dalits who converted into Islam and christianity mainly. But Nehru and other s mainly brahmins changed into reservation in jobs which has caused supreme court to ruled that no reservation in promotion. Nehru was flameboyant, spoke good english, womanised, spoke well, could scheme to get wrong accepted but was the worst statesman that India had. Mistakes committed by Nehru are bleeding India even today. Ambedkar was visionary, practical ,, worldly wise and more educated than Nehru. So were Sardar Ballave Bhai Patel and others who were able to give us integrated India.
surender patwal
August 18, 2012 Report Abuse
Ambedkar while writting indian constitution had proposed that as per the population strength of a community they would get representation in lok sabha, rajya sabha and vidhan sabhas. This number would be fixed now and would not be changed. Being a dalit he knew muslims better than any body else because it is the dalits who converted into Islam and christianity mainly. But Nehru and other s mainly brahmins changed into reservation in jobs which has caused supreme court to ruled that no reservation in promotion. Nehru was flameboyant, spoke good english, womanised, spoke well, could scheme to get wrong accepted but was the worst statesman that India had. Mistakes committed by Nehru are bleeding India even today. Ambedkar was visionary, practical ,, worldly wise and more educated than Nehru. So were Sardar Ballave Bhai Patel and others who were able to give us integrated India.
surender patwal
August 18, 2012
http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=2242

On reading Advani’s blog… -- Praveen Patil. Advaniji may laud sacking of Lehar Singh Siroya, but should listen to Praveen Patil if BJP has to win 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Kalyanaraman

On reading Advani’s blog…

By Praveen Patil on May 18, 2013

Dear Advaniji,

Sir, I have had the good fortune of attending more than a dozen of your public rallies across many cities and States over the last two decades; the latest being the one you addressed in the national college grounds of Bangalore in 2011 as part of your nationwide rath yatra against corruption. If you remember sir, in late 2011, when you addressed a mammoth rally of some 30 thousand odd people in Bangalore, it had started to rain heavily just as you began to speak. Organisers and BJP functionaries were worried that the people would rush out of the national college grounds to protect themselves from the wrath of the rain gods. But nothing of that sort happened on that day. People simply stood up and picked up the plastic chairs to raise them above their heads to shield themselves. They braved that incessant Bangalore rain to listen to you. That is how much the people of Bangalore and India loved you and respected you.

Exactly two decades ago, in 1991, you and Vajpayee ji addressed a huge rally in Mumbai where I was once again fortunate enough to be present. If you remember sir, the moment you faced the mike to speak out, there was an uproarious cry of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ from the gathered masses. Even though Vajpayee ji was known for his oratorical skills, a vast majority of the people in that gathering had come to listen to you, that is how much the people of Mumbai and India loved you and respected you.

Alas! Love and respect of the ordinary masses come with a sell-by date. Retirement at the peak is an art that Indians have rarely understood, thus we have a 40 something Sachin Tendulkar still wanting to play a game which has long moved past him. Advani ji, every day that you spend involved in active politics is costing you the love of a million of your fans / followers. Please ask yourself tonight after dinner, is the opium of active politics more important than the love and respect of ordinary Indians?

History is an unkindest of judges that human civilisation has bestowed upon us. History has no time for subtleties for it is devoid of human emotions and lacks the leisure of deciphering intentions. If history can be cruel enough to degrade the architect of Indian economic reforms into a modern day Nero who presided over the most corrupt regime India had ever seen, then history can be equally scathing to judge the father of modern India’s right-wing movement as just a faction leader of the BJP. This is how much time and tide have turned against you, sir.

Karnataka is the latest symptom of the disease

The BJP of Karnataka is not a disease sir, it is just the symptom of the underlying illness that the party is suffering from. Losing Karnataka is not the antidote for that disease as you have wrongly prescribed, in fact, the very opposite is true.

One of the last decisions that you, as the patriarch and guide, should take before quitting active politics is to assert that BJP is a political party and not a voluntary organisation. Sir, in a democracy, a political party exists to win elections and not to win TV studio debates or hash tag wars on Twitter. BJP is not RSS.

By choosing electoral defeat as a way forward to cure the perceived moral decline, you are committing a crime sir. It is a criminal act against the vast number of ordinary karyakartas of Karnataka who, by their sweat and blood, brought your party to power in south India. Pray, what are you telling these ordinary karyakartas? You are telling them that their sweat and blood was in vain, because you have decided to surrender the State to win a hollow moral victory over Congress/UPA in television studios!

Sir, you have always been politically correct in your utterances and actions over the decades. You have always addressed even your worst enemies with utmost respect. In fact, despite all her misdeeds and corruption, you have always addressed Sonia Gandhi as ‘Sonia ji’. Thus, to see you use a pejorative term of ‘Yeddi’ to address the former CM of Karnataka, was heart-breaking to say the least. Ask yourself sir, is this the way you would treat someone who has toiled hard for more than 4 decades to build your party in a south-Indian State, notwithstanding whatever differences you have developed lately? If the most vile and most corrupt ‘Sonia ji’ has acquired more respect in your political lexicon than the unwashed Yeddyurappa, then am afraid Indian Right has hit a new nadir.

The abolition of Jagirdari system and the Jan Sangh/BJP’s growth in Rajasthan is an inspiring tale indeed. But, sir, that is totally out of context to the Karnataka conundrum. What is more relevant to Karnataka is what happened in UP just a decade or so ago. The caste-matrix of Karnataka has its parallels in the muddy politics of UP and not in the royally majestic Rajasthan.

In Uttar Pradesh too, a section of upper caste BJP leaders decided to lose an election just to wrest the control of the party from Kalyan Singh. One election loss proved to be one too many, until today, when the BJP has been reduced to a bit player in the largest State.

If UP-isation of Karnataka is the solitary goal that BJP can aim at, then bringing back Yeddyurappa after a decade in wilderness, when he would be a spent force, is the ideal path to follow. Is this what you want to achieve Advani ji? Or do you believe that Anant Kumar ji will wake up one day and suddenly find himself the darling of Kannadigas by sheer magic? Let me remind you sir, that the possibility of the Kalraj Mishras and Lalji Tandons ever becoming mass leaders shrinks from 10 per cent to 3 per cent by the time it reaches the Anant Kumars and Prahlad Joshis, while traversing from UP to Karnataka.

Can the lies of the media beguile the patriarch?

For someone with such a legendary political acumen, it is surprising to note this new-found belief in unverified news reports churned by the usual suspects of Indian mainstream media. Sir, do you sincerely believe that Sonia Gandhi is acting against the corrupt Ministers of the UPA Government against the wishes of the PM? At the same time, you seem to believe that Yeddyurappa indulged in “unabashed corruption” as the CM of Karnataka!

Such callous statements by one of the founding fathers of the BJP leave not only the loyal karyakartas but us ordinary followers in complete disarray. When and how did you decide that Sonia-led Congress is fighting corruption, while BSY was the epitome of immorality?

Sir, you must pay a private visit to Bangalore, while you are at it, just take along any businessman well-versed with Bangalore’s realty scenario for a guided tour of the city and its surroundings. If you ever venture out to do so, you will get the real picture. You will find out that vast tracts of land belong to various politicians of many political parties. “SM Krishna’s son in law”, “Dharam Singh’s son”, “Deve Gowda’s relatives”, “Kumaraswamy” and even “Muttappa Rai” would be some of the names you will hear in this connection. The missing name will be that of “Yeddiyurappa and his sons or relatives”. That is the story that you have totally missed in your blind love for a certain Bangalore MP. The media and the intellectual brigade have either beguiled you with partial facts or you have deliberately chosen to remain blind.

Karnataka is not an exception sir, India is at stake here. Do we Indians deserve another UPA term, just so that you can play your moral one-upmanship? India is fed up with Congress and its non-governance, but please spare the country a moral lecture from Dilli and instead offer a winning alternative. If there is one thing and the only thing that you can do as your last act of nirvana, please liberate BJP from the clutches of Dilli. That should be the only lesson that BJP should learn from Karnataka, rest is all gloss.

Thank You,

A disheartened BJP supporter
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/05/18/on-reading-advanis-blog-79264.html

BJP sacks Karnataka treasurer for attack on Advani
PTI Bangalore, May 17, 2013

BJP has sacked the Treasurer of the Karnataka unit, Lehar Singh Siroya, for his attack on party stalwart L K Advani.

Siroya, an aide of former chief minister and Karnataka Janatha Paksha supremo B S Yeddyurappa, in an open letter had alleged that Advani had compromised on corruption whenever it suited him.

BJP state unit President Prahlad Joshi on Friday suspended him from the party with immediate effect and relieved him from the post of treasurer.

The party dismissed Siroya's allegations against Advani as "false" and "baseless".

First Published: 19:28 IST(17/5/2013) | Last Updated: 19:29 IST(17/5/2013)
http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/Bangalore/BJP-sacks-Karnataka-treasurer-for-attack-on-Advani/Article1-1061690.aspx

SBI wants one regulator for all lenders

A STAFF REPORTER, May 19, 2013

(From left) ICC president Rajiv Mundhra, Pratip Chaudhuri and RBI executive director Deepak Mohanty in Calcutta on Saturday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury Calcutta, May 18: The State Bank of India today urged the Reserve Bank of India to act as a uniform regulator for all lending agencies, particularly the housing finance companies against whom the bank is competing for retail customers in the home loan segment. “I see no justification of having a separate regulator. Perhaps the regulatory objectives would be better served if the RBI itself were to become the sole regulator for all lenders, including home loans,” SBI chairman Pratip Chaudhuri today said at an interactive session on banking organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. At present, housing finance companies such as HDFC, LIC Housing Finance, Housing and Urban Development Corporation (Hudco) and others are regulated by the National Housing Bank under the guidelines laid down in the National Housing Bank Act, 1987. Market observers feel that even as interest rates charged by banks are very close to that of housing finance companies, banks have a disadvantage because of its higher cost of borrowing. Banks have to mandatorily deposit a certain amount of cash reserve with the RBI. This may have prompted Chaudhuri to seek a common regulator. “The RBI has kept the CRR unchanged at 4 per cent and it creates a burden for banks as such deposits with the apex banker do not earn any interest,” a senior bank official told the Telegraph. “Unlike banks, housing finance companies are not mandated to park part of their deposits with the RBI as cash reserves. That is why even though the RBI has lowered its policy rates, many banks are reluctant to reduce their lending rates,” he added. Chaudhuri had on several occasions expressed his concerns about CRR and had even urged the regulator to abolish it. Further, with rising bad debts and higher provisioning, the net interest margins that depends upon the difference between lending and borrowing rates come under pressure. But why should the RBI heed the bank’s plea for unified rules? Chaudhuri said, “Banks currently have two-third of the home loan market (in the country).” He pointed out that the RBI had raised objections to the SBI’s dual rates on housing loan (tagged as teaser loans) introduced a few years back as it could lead to a subprime crisis similar to that of the US once customers are unable to afford higher EMIs as rates normalise. “If a bank offers a slightly lower rate in the initial years and higher rate in later years it is called a teaser loan and they are required to make provisions for it... but should similar rules not be applied for other players in the home loan market?” Chaudhuri asked. The SBI chief added that he has asked the regulator to lower the minimum tenure of deposits to three days from seven days to offer more short-term liquidity to borrowers. “Right now there are no daily investment instruments whereas we have a shadow banking sector offering investment options for one day,” Chaudhuri said. “The liquidity risk of a three-day deposit was not different from that of a seven-day deposit. But why make banks handicapped?” Shady schemes Chaudhuri said the RBI as well as Sebi should kick start public awareness campaigns for depositors on the risk of investing in shady deposit mobilising companies. The bank chief said the regulators should consider campaigns such as the Jago Grahak Jago or hallmark in gold so that when investors put in their money they are assured that such deposits are insured by the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation. Margin pressure Chaudhuri said the SBI would like to review its return on equity in overseas business as margins had come under pressure.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130519/jsp/business/story_16914688.jsp#.UZfsHqIwevc

HIMALAYAN BLUNDER STILL ON
Sunday, 19 May 2013 | Monika Chansoria

The Sino-Indian border standoff may be over, but the country needs to prepare itself for future. Its logistics preparedness, especially the road infrastructure in the western and north-eastern sector, remains poor even five decades after the 1962 war

India and China display a peculiar case of ‘constrained cooperation’ with economic convergence of interests tending to only artificially overlook prevailing strategic differences. The fact of the matter remains that it is these very divergences, of which the territorial and boundary dispute comes foremost, which hold the potential of upstaging ties at any given point. This was precisely demonstrated on April 15 when a platoon-strength contingent approximating 50 soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) crossed 19 km inside Indian-claimed territory in the Daulat Beg Oldi sector in eastern Ladakh and established their presence by pitching tent posts in the area, pushing India into a diplomatic and military tizzy.

Recurrence of strain in the India-China border areas has yet again established that Beijing keeps the border dispute alive as a tactical pressure point against India, despite the clamour in many quarters, including within India, that “all is well” in Sino-Indian bilateral ties. Through the latest Chinese intrusion, the new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping appears to be moving back to China’s known position during the 1960s when Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai stated in New Delhi that “there exists a relatively bigger dispute” in the Western Sector, and simultaneously seems inclined to test the waters of political decision-making in New Delhi.

Given that till date there is no mutually agreed upon LAC between the two countries, sporadic incidents of border transgressions appear to be a covert Chinese strategy of asserting its claims in the Western Sector, especially in north-eastern Ladakh. Similarly, in the Eastern Sector too, the LAC is not physically demarcated on the ground, including that on military maps. The Chinese reluctance, or for that matter refusal, to show its version of the LAC, points towards a larger dodgy ploy of progressively building up a case for its claims in eastern Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. This reminds one of the remnants of the India-China war, fought in October 1962, that left an indelible impression on the Indian psyche, shattering a myriad of myths and leaving room for nothing but guarded suspicion against the People’s Republic of China.

Examining the current status of India’s logistics preparedness, especially the road infrastructure in the western and north-eastern sector of the country, amplifies the belief that India still does not seem to be taking exigency of this aspect acutely. It is ironic that while India is gradually mastering development and deployment of complex long-range missile technology with reaches beyond the subcontinent, it has simply failed in getting its act together when it comes to construction and repairs of road infrastructure especially in sectors which are crucial from a national security point of view.

Having just returned from a road trip to Assam, further up to Arunachal Pradesh in the Northeast, I was aghast to see the status of the roads leading up to the border areas that India shares with China. More appallingly, this is the current state of affairs, when it has been more than five decades since the 1962 India-China war.

The initial part of the journey till Tezpur in Assam was reasonably alright, but the trying part began thereafter. The first major stretch lies from Tezpur to a village named Tenga in Arunachal Pradesh. Placed right on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border lies Bhalukpong — a quaint little township. On nearing Bhalukpong there is a particular stretch, which is a mockery in the name of being called a road. Measuring a mere eight km, it takes more than half-an-hour to cross this stretch and should be considered as the first warning to what awaits ahead.

On route towards reaching the border with China come picturesque villages and small townships, namely Bomdila, Dirang Valley and the Sela Pass situated at an altitude of 13,700 ft. The strategically located town of Tawang lies approximately 80 km from the Sela Pass. The topography here is such that predominant rains and heavy landslides through the year make the already muddied roads slushier. Despite knowing these realities, what catches the eye is the insufficient planning of the drainage system, witnessed all through the uphill climb till Tawang and beyond. Far worse, in many places there is a complete absence of drains which, in turn, messes up all construction/repair activity, whatever little is happening after all. Moreover, culverts, meant for allowing water to flow from under are either missing or remain perennially blocked.

In the name of providing employment to the local populace, it is outrageous to see a brazen neglect of the right to education of adolescent and even younger boys and girls who are seen breaking stones with small hammers. These hammers are suited for menial household work and are ill-suited for breaking stones swiftly. Decades having passed by, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), tasked with the construction and maintenance of the border roads, astonishingly, still seems to favour “hiring of some of its equipment... It does not make sense to have all the equipment.” No prizes for guessing that resultantly, the pace of the construction work has been preposterously slow.

The sense I got during the visit was that explanations for never-ending delays in commencement of construction/repair activity of roads was quick and extensive. Beginning with acquiring forest and wildlife department clearances and land acquisition, contractors unwilling to work in far-flung areas, frequent local strikes, damages caused due to heavy rains and the complications of working in high altitude terrain. While there is no denying that these issues do, in fact, pose grave challenges, the questions remain: How long can we afford to compromise national security in the garb of these pleas and more so, since how many decades has the pattern been continuing? An ostensible lack of road network in isolated border regions is perhaps the biggest challenge for troop movement and mobilisation and poses a grave threat to build up of forces in a given adverse eventuality.

Further on, the drive from Tawang further up to the Bumla Pass situated at nearly 15,000 ft is approximately 40 km and is perhaps the worst and most unpleasant of all. The present condition of roads can be gauged in that a distance of 100 km, which is ideally a three-hour drive in the high altitude terrain, currently takes more than six hours — something which is totally unacceptable and should be considered a wake-up call. On the other hand, standing at the Bumla Pass at the McMahon Line — forming the Sino-Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh according to India — a smooth, maintained, metal track road on the Chinese side further magnifies the dismal state of roads in India’s eastern sector.

In fact, the massive infrastructure and logistics build-up being undertaken by China in the Tibet Autonomous Region including national road and rail transport systems has enhanced the PLA’s land-based transport capabilities which shall double up as base support for China’s military. In particular, key civilian highway projects in Tibet comprises 41,000 km of road network, including five major highways and a number of subsidiary roads with an emphasis on trunk rail lines and inter-provincial highways linking the interior and coastal regions. More importantly, the construction works being carried out have military specifications; they will be turned over to the PLA in the event of a conflict.

There is still no clarity as to what were the gains that Indian diplomacy managed to extract out of the Chinese while resolving the latest standoff at Daulat Beg Oldi lasting three weeks. What did come out openly was the Indian announcement that both sides would pull back troops to their earlier positions along the LAC. This brings us to the moot point: Can India afford to give in to unfounded demands by China — of suspending infrastructure development activities in its own territory near the LAC? Has China ever offered an explanation for a blizzard in the name of infrastructure stack up in the Tibetan region adjoining India?

Rapid infrastructure development in Tibet has considerably upgraded China’s military force projection and application capability against India and improved its overall strategic and operational flexibility.

As far as India’s Border Roads Organisation is concerned, it aims at “providing backward Northeastern region, with a road communication network, to support its future development”. The statement provokes one to ask, what is it that the BRO has been able to change drastically in the past decades? It is high time that the BRO explains its lackadaisical approach and is made more accountable vis-à-vis strict timelines that need to be met. Moreover, there should be better coordination between the BRO roads and other special border area schemes in order to optimise effort and cost outlay.

Interestingly, claims made in Parliament averring that “BRO is developing 82 strategically important roads in the Northeast to double lane and class IX” are, most certainly, not visible on the ground — in fact, not even close to that. Perhaps a detailed sketch of every one of these “82 roads” along with the exact respective progress report would bring more clarity to the murky picture that unfortunately prevails today. The BRO provides non-specific statistics in the name of projects such as Arunank, Udayak and Vartak (with a budgetary provision of about `5,000 crore for projects a year). It has been declared that under the auspices of these projects 2,776 km of new roads and 150 permanent bridges have been constructed. Besides, 1,690 km of roads are under construction and another 2,134 km remain under maintenance. While speaking in the Lok Sabha in May 2012, Defence Minister AK Antony stated that the BRO maintained a road network of 11,672 km in the region.

More specifically, the 317.5-km-long stretch of road from Balipara in Assam to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh was said to be “under development and being upgraded to double-lane specifications”. Tall claims made by the BRO in 2012 — that “by 2014, you will see a marked difference across the borders... Combining both big and small schemes, we are working on more than 2,000 road projects (along the borders)” — can be termed as sheer travesty given that the situation on ground tells a different story altogether. It was stated by the BRO way back in 2008, “We have identified 3,400 km of roads along the border identified as critical... This comprises 61 roads and we plan to complete it in a time-bound manner by 2012.” Today, having nearly reached mid-2013, the objective is not even close to being achieved. The 2012 timeline has conveniently been pushed forward to 2016 — with a declaration in February 2013 that the Centre will earmark sufficient funds for the BRO to complete 44 of the 61 strategic roads along India’s borders by 2016.

The communications infrastructure on the ground in India’s isolated border areas is just a shade better than what it was more than six decades ago. Given the dreadful rate of road construction and repairs, this writer’s assessment is that it would be at least another decade by when India would be in a position to expect all strategically significant roads to become something that could be vouched for.

Despite confidence-building measures signed in 1993, 1996 and 2005, there has been an abject failure in bringing about any tangible breakthrough to the boundary impasse between Beijing and New Delhi and China’s brawny posturing is not easing the situation whatsoever. By pitching tents in territory held by India, Beijing has explicitly violated the above-mentioned agreements and, more alarmingly, sent the message that China can flash the offensive card and covertly notch up tensions in the Himalayas with India, at the time and place of its choosing. The answer lies in being better prepared, in which improvement of infrastructure logistics comes foremost. The country’s decision-making elite would now be expected to accord highest priority to political realism to deal with Beijing given that economic convergence and cooperation cannot take the liberty of jeopardising national interest and security.

Comment:

gaeshgadasalli • 8 hours ago
Unless India keeps its army ready to fight the untrustworthy Chinese, the Chinese will not behave. Take out all the benefits china gets by selling their cheap products in India and spend money to keep most advanced air force presence in the border areas. china should be made aware that any aggression will not taken lightly and china will facer dire consequences. India is not Tibet, let us tell them with force. India's ICBMS should be ready any time. An alliance with US or Israel may be a good idea.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/top-stories/himalayan-blunder-still-on.html

Book Review: Himalayan Blunder
BY SANDEEP – FEBRUARY 13, 2007
POSTED IN: INDIAN POLITICS, WAR ON COMMUNISM
Preface

Oct 20, 1959, Ladakh:

Havaldar Karam Singh and his 20-strong troop, doing their routine border patrolling rounds amid heavy snowfall. In an eyewink nine men in the patrol are buried dead under a hailstorm of bullets, and the rest including Karam Singh are taken prisoners. Courtesy the Chinese army. What stuns the Havaldar is not so much the unexpected onslaught as where it occurred: 40 kilometres right on this side of the border .


The Army Chief, General Thimmayya’s worst fears about China stood confirmed. When he confronted the powers that be and requested an immediate modernisation of the Armed Forces, and special attention to Chinese designs, V.K. Krishna Menon, the Defence Minister, analysed the problem differently. In his view, General Thimmayya was a soldier of the Raj era who was alarmed easily. Pakistan, not China was India’s “number one” enemy, he opined. The General’s response was interesting: I understand our Defence Minister’s perspective. I have regards for his ability but I’m aggrieved at his foolishness. One does not rank enemies as first, second and the rest. Perhaps, it is done in Communist politics; as an Army Chief, I do not rank enemies.

The General submitted his resignation when Menon’s interference breached tolerance. But a panic-stricken Nehru’s emotional entreaty charmed the General into withdrawing it. In Parliament however, Nehru rose in defence of Menon: I’ve spoken to General Thimmayya. He blows issues out of proportion. He has unnecessarily created a misunderstanding with Krishna Menon, a veteran diplomat. It is ridiculous to blame Menon for interference in the issue of promotions in the Armed Forces. Silly! I totally reject General Thimmayya’s allegations.



Himalayan Blunder

This rather lengthy recount is one of the several significant botches recorded in John P Dalvi’s Himalayan Blunder. The book is a Manual of War Failure, recommended reading for everybody who wants to know why exactly India lost the 1962 war with China.

It was banned almost immediately on its release, in 1969. I read the abridged Kannada translation by Ravi Belagere. Which kind of struck me as funny. And unfortunate that I had to read a translated version because the original in English is banned. The excerpts I’ve quoted in this post are my (re)translatations from Kannada. Funny, isn’t it? Happens only in India.

John Parashuram Dalvi was the Brigadier of the 7th Infantry formed to “fight” at the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), which is today’s Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Nagaland. His eyewitness account of the war, events that led to it, as well as his wonderful insights into the 1962 humiliation form Himalayan Blunder.

Dalvi recounts a chilling precursor to 1962. During his days in the Wellington Defence Services Staff College in 1950, he quotes a colleague and army veteran, Joe of British origin: Friends, leaders of your country have no foresight. They are mum about the Chinese invasion of Tibet. They don’t understand the reality that India’s backdoor has been broken down…. Boys! Take it from me. Some of you folks sitting here will fight with the Chinese army before you retire.

Foresight was least expected from Nehru who in those days hallucinated as the champion of world peace. Nehru’s stand on the invasion of Tibet was but a minor testimony to this: we don’t have any right to put our forces in Tibet irrespective of whether it is independent, or is part of China.

Starting around 1951, China began its silent preparations: it laid roads capable of transporting army vehicles (supporting something like 4 tonnes), made airstrips to land its combat aircraft, set up telephones and communication networks… In parallel, it began marching its troops into the region and even gobbled up parts of Aksai Chin territory belonging to India.

Meanwhile, Jawaharlal Nehru’s Hindi-Chini bhai bhai symphony had reached a crescendo. China played along–it had recently concluded a war with Korea and badly needed time and resources for what it had in mind.

Brigadier Dalvi narrates with heart-rending precision the betrayal of the political leadership at every step. However, the principal culprits responsible for our defeat stand out clearly: Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon, and General B.M. Kaul who Nehru had handpicked to lead the war efforts against China.

B.M. Kaul sitting in Delhi had no clue about the situation on the ground in Arunachal Pradesh. He had allowed himself to believe what–a mere month before the actual Chinese invasion–Nehru said: China is not a warmonger. They have a “minor border dispute” with us. Dhola Post was an unncessary outpost created at B.M. Kaul’s behest: it was an invitation to attack. Yet, on September 8 1962, when the first sparks of war flew, he was holidaying in Srinagar with his family. And he didn’t think it was important to cancel his vacation: after all, Pandit Nehru was abroad. B.M. Kaul finally landed at the spot on Oct 10, 1962. Says Dalvi,

We watched the platoon of Punjabis under Major Chaudary’s leadership march towards Yum Sola….General Kaul stood next to me, weighing the success of his first stratagem. The platoon’s strength including Major Chaudary was 51. They’d barely covered a few feet when the sky came apart. Around 800 Chinese, positioned at the bank of Nam ka Chu [river] and atop the Thagla mountain began showering bullets. The first round hurt Major Chaudary’s legs. The Punjabi Platoon retaliated furiously, and dismembered and wounded a few hundred Chinese. Six of our men died in the first round. But General Kaul’s enthusiasm didn’t wither. As our men readied themselves for the second round of assault, a huge swarm of Chinese troops descended. Major Chaudary yelled to General Kaul to save his men. Never the men to turn their back from battle, our Punjabi Platoon looked at us, helplessly. All of us, including General Kaul understood what that meant. Our men had run out of ammunition.

The courageous General who had roared reassuringly to the Indian public about teaching China a lesson, couldn’t stomach the reality he saw before him. Dalvi recounts Kaul’s true character.

My God! You’re right. China has prepared itself for a full-scale war. It’s each man for himself from now on. You’re in charge of your Brigade. This is not in my reach. Only a Brigadier can execute this kind of war.

And he turned and left, leaving Dalvi to helplessly watch the massacre of the whole platoon. Dalvi records several similar incidents where a grossly underprepared Indian army faced the Chinese who were superior to them in every single aspect. A most telling instance:

…. a soldier saluted me as I stepped into the bunker and said, “Sahib, look there! the enemy is on the opposite slope. They’re burning firewood to beat the cold.” I felt a slap of humiliation. This was one of the rare instances this happened in thousands of wars throughout history. Burning a fire at night is a sure invitation for the enemy to attack. But then, this enemy on the slopes of the Thagla mountain was confident: both of his strength and our sorry state. He knew for certain that we would not attack: we could not.

In his “final journey,” Dalvi pays pages of homage to every footsoldier, Major, signaller, Havaldar…small and big, who died defending the indefensible. And the reason? You can’t read this with a straight face:

The Chinese used the same war strategies in vogue for centuries but…. their guns were more modern, and their clothes were warmer than ours…. out there, away from the warm world, the October chill doesn’t descend from the skies; it climbs from the depths of the spinal cord. All our men had to wear were cotton clothes suited for summer, shoes which slide on snow… the only colour my men could see was the ash-white colour of death. A flash of sunlight was enough to blind them. This blindness caused several men to walk directly into the waiting arms of the enemy. My request for snow glasses was granted, all right, but when they arrived, the air-dropped bag dropped somewhere in the abyss-like crevices…

You need to read this book to believe the shamelessless of Nehru’s government, which failed to supply these unfortunate men with food. Towards the end, Dalvi and those that remained went without food for more than 48 hours.

We descended the Dhola mountain after the Chinese disappeared from sight. We gave up the final hope of even sighting a small tukdi (regiment) of our men. I descended rapidly out of a sheer will to live. The slope ended in a forest…the path was even tougher to navigate. Meanwhile, I had lost four of the eleven men following me. I reached a clearing, which then led to a small mud road. It was all over.

Dalvi had walked right into a full-fledged Chinese army camp. On October 22 1962, 9:22 A.M, John P. Dalvi was taken prisoner of war. He remained in Chinese custody from October 22 1962 till about May 1963. What’s more interesting is the aftermath.

We landed in Dum Dum airport in Calcutta on May 4 1963. We were received cordially, appropriately. But the silence there was disquieting. I realized later. We had to prove we weren’t brainwashed by Chinese ideology. We had to prove we were still loyal to India. My own army maintained a suspicious distance. The irony cannot be harsher: this treatment from a country, which for more than a decade had brainwashed itself into holding the Chinese baton wherever it went.

It is more apt to call the Indo-China War as the Battle of Thagla, the altar where Pandit Nehru sacrificed hundreds of unprepared, ill-equipped, and underfed Indian soldiers as the price of his ineptitude.

Small wonder, the book is banned in India. I wager that even if it was not banned, we’d never learn because Himalayan Blunder has simply proven its contemporary relevance in the sense of history repeating itself: notice today’s Chinese cheerleaders who occupy disproportionate clout in the UPA government. Yet none of us seem to pay heed to their misdeeds–from escalated Naxalism/Maoism to their shenanigans in Nepal.

By the way, the Battle of Thagla began on October 20, 1962 and lasted just over 3 hours, between 5 A.M and 8 A.M. An entire brigade was massacred.

Postscript: The book is very expensive to buy from Amazon.com. Dear reader, if you can get the original at around $20, I shall buy it from you. Leave a comment to let me know.

Cross-posted on Desicritics.


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About Sandeep
100 Comments
Francis Ouseph
Posted January 13, 2013 at 8:29 PM
That “Joe” was Lt. Gen Joe Lentaigne Commandant, Indian Army Staff College (1948-1955 ), Wellington, among other things. Also the 4th Division in NEFA was essentially deployed at brigade strength ( 7th Inf. brigade) Not that the Brits always got it right when it came to foreign policy; theirs was a disaster in Afghanistan, and still continues to be even after a couple of hundred years or so…

The HardCover version is available at flipkart from NATARAJ publishers for Rs. 302 only.
http://www.flipkart.com/himalayan-blunder-angry-truth-india-s-most-crushing-military-disaster/p/itmdyuznp5cc8gjw?pid=9788181581457&ref=99413fd3-4517-4913-9bf6-52bcd0b0b004&srno=s_1&otracker=from-search&query=himalayan%20blunder

Must read for all Indians. Buy the book in Hard Cover; your children and grand children also need to know the truth when they grow up !

tushar
Posted February 28, 2012 at 10:22 AM
I think this article would have some relevance on this thread…

Let’s celebrate memory of a true hero

On Tuesday, February 28, when all the newspapers and news channels would be busy covering the next phase of the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, there would be some attending the function at Imphal to commemorate the centenary of a true national hero — Maj Bob Ranenglao Khathing, who won NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh) back for us. …

…………..

The Governor sent a Dakota to pick him up from Tezpur and they flew to Delhi and went to see Prime Minister Nehru, who was livid.

“Who asked you to do this?” he vented his anger at the Governor. “I wish you had the good sense to consult me before you commissioned this colossal stupidity?” he mourned. “I want a complete black out on this incident,” he ordered the PMO. India acknowledged its control over NEFA only in 1954 when Bob’s men were replaced by Special Security Bureau.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/51142-let’s-celebrate-memory-of-a-true-hero.html

Pratham
Posted February 21, 2012 at 10:57 PM
I got a second hand book from a scrap dealer in pune for rs 20… cant tell you if its the first edition as no year of publishing…. The publisher is hind pocket books… The book is complete and unabriged…. It looks pretty old and there is also a list of there other books in the back with prices like rs 3 and rs 4… So im guessing its a very old edition( although in mint condition(well atleast the inner pages))…..

Nitin Kashyap
Posted February 6, 2012 at 12:15 AM
Hi All,

You can buy this book from “flipkart” at the below link:

http://www.flipkart.com/books/8181581458?_l=WAPgOBNQ7Fs0ECqmCjw8sQ–&_r=qVryN1KREE+yBuOmBk0pig–&ref=44737d28-19cd-4063-8b84-639ce99905d3

I have got this book in 277 INR which is very less compared to the price mentioned here on Amazon.

The book is a chilling story of all the miscalculation and failure of the government and how they disapproved the ground realities and made our soldiers a canon fodder for their (Politician’s) gains.

I recommend every Indian to read this book which explains the situations in which our soldiers are forced to fight without adequate food, cloth, ration and ammunition.

Only GOD knows what is going to happen with India. If these conditions prevails now (which is the case now), one should not be surprised of a repeat of 1962 war…

Madan Mohan Pandey(Retired)
Posted November 27, 2011 at 11:14 PM
Its heartening to read even as comments,I am since long searching this book in Mumbai book stalls,can any one tell where I can get it…..It is true that the Nehru was the Jaichand of India,he has given the wound to this country which is impossible to fill .Today’s problem led by any congress govt since independent it was only policy of congress .They divided the country and ruling. Even today it is visible any incursion in boundary by Chines or any other dispute,these congrese will pacify that,they do not want that thing should come and public anger may remove them from the scene of politics…so sorry state they only thing that Nehru,Rajiv and indra gandhi only did thing for this country..no other leader..actually it was blunder mistake of Gandhi..if Sadar patel were choosen for the leadership or even Jinna..it was better…Sala Nehru to Mounbetan ki Bibi ke chakkar me tha….Gaddar..????

vinay
Posted November 17, 2011 at 7:04 PM
This book is not banned. It was publishd earlier by Hind Pocket Books in 1969 in original English.

Plato
Posted November 6, 2011 at 12:12 AM
I remember reading this book as a freshman in college, when I received it as a prize for excelling in English. Later on, my uncle, who was, at that time, a Lt. Col. with the army, borrowed it from me & read it & told us that the book was true to the last word, for probably someone who was a part of that war, my uncle must have been right,. I have never felt absolutely any reason to disbelieve him. The politicians of India have done a lot to destroy India in more ways than one, ever since the independence of India.

venki
Posted September 10, 2011 at 4:15 PM
……………. First 1 i selute those warriears who attempt there maximum in the war . neharu was a horibble PM of india he always acted like a peace ambassador. to shown himself at international level . But But Finally we have 2 know that he F*** indian soldiers. mai kabhi us kamineka chahera dekt hu to dafhan se uthake fhir se goli marne ka man kart he.

madan
Posted August 21, 2011 at 11:17 PM
thanks for great review.. can you plz suggest me that where can i find the uncensored version of this book..

siddhartha mukherji
Posted July 18, 2011 at 7:35 PM
There is a theory on strategy which states “you should not make your plans based on the enemies intentions. You should make them on the basis of the enemies capabilities” . Intentions change on the drop of a hat. Intentions can also be misrepresented. Even if Nehru believed the “Hindi Chini bhai-bhai” axiom, he should have prepared the plans on the basis of the Chinese preparations. What a painful goof up! And the then Defense Minster, Mr. Krishna Menon was just his alter ego.

Earlier too, Mr. Nehru had stopped our advances to gain back lost territory in Kashmir; and taken the matter to the UN. Had he not done that, the controversy about Kasmir would have ended there and then. We are still paying the price for it.

I firmly believe that Mr. Nehru was after personal fame in the international arena. Good of the country was far from his thoughts. Sorry, but that’s how I feel.

Som
Posted June 6, 2011 at 4:38 PM
I have read this Kannada version translated by Ravi Belegere. Planning to read english version also.
After reading the book , i lost respect for Nehru.

I feel every India should have this book.

SANGAN PATIL
Posted May 15, 2011 at 4:42 PM
Am lucky among those who had read this book in kannada( not novel) at a single stretch, because I belong to karnataka. No body knows much about this war. Movies have been made on this war but they all look like joke of what happed that time. Even my father never agrees that Nehru died of VENERIAL SYPHILIS (a sexually transmitted disease) not because of war debacle( the way it has been put in public). Best way to hear the truth would be from a soldier leading from front, then why one should BAN THIS BOOK. Ample examples we get of people who fought wars of many types by shedding their blood but for for uncultured , uncivilized, currupt politicians of this BADNASEEB COUNTRY, a soldiers, for that matter any common mans life has always been very cheap. Every student, every citizen of this country should this book atlesat once in their lifetime, you will really feel PROUD OF OUR SOLDIERS, every kid wants to become a soldier to fight for this great country. What ever bad, worse to any extent, no matter how dirty the policy makers of this country behave their citizens, conduct with their soldiers, there is one real democritic institute, rather in the world, that can make things fall in order, that is “INDIAN ARMY, AND I FEEL PROUD TO SAY IT SO”

cricfan
Posted May 4, 2011 at 6:07 PM
On a side note, the black and white movie ‘Haqeeqat’ made soon after the war, remains to this day, one of the best war movies ever made anywhere – the final moments of that film are both chilling and tragic. The songs/ballads in that movie are out of the world. The kind-hearted Rafi has sung some of the best bhajans and patriotic songs.

varsha
Posted May 3, 2011 at 7:27 PM
v should be ashamed to celebrate Nehru’s birthday as children’s day

surak
Posted March 3, 2011 at 11:17 PM
A false statement of fact made honestly but carelessly ..evn i case f NEHARU also

manoj
Posted January 29, 2011 at 1:51 PM
hi everyone,

we suffered and humiliated due to our own flaws created by u me or anyone else. and still we failed to learn from past being true indians. wake up man!!! till the time u yourself will not stand to bring the alter in the comman mindset ,doom and devastation is highly expected in near future. JAI HIND jai Bharat.

Muralidhara B
Posted January 7, 2011 at 5:02 PM
Dear true Indians,

I read “The Himalayan Blunder” by Mr. John P Dalvi, this is translated to Kannada by Mr. Ravi belegere sir, when i was start to read in preface ravi sir given one word “if u believe and give respect to Nehru please dont read this book and give this book to child atleast he can understand the real and true leaders of the india” it amazing quote. Dear all indians we can become an Engineer, Doctor, IAS, KAS Etc, but first we sholud become an true Indian. instead of reading usless SMS and chating some useless things please read that book.

kalaivani
Posted November 17, 2010 at 12:41 AM
I fully agree with pangaean that there will be a time in the near future when India will be called the south western province of China. Our leaders are least bothered aboutnthe defence of our nation. All they do is mouth so much rubbish – just listen to what our foreign secretary and foreign minister mouth when Indians are attacked in Australia, our borders are fired upon and our soldiers killed in internal duties (- think Kashmir). Neither of them have any of the assertiveness that their Pakistani counterparts have. They give the impression that they dont care what happens to the country. All they want is their position and perks and to hell with the country.
This is the case with most politicians, all of whom are on the lookout to make a fast buck, even if it means sacrificing the soldier to shady defence deals. As long as they can get their kickbacks it doesnt matter if the guns/jets purchased are of inferior quality. After all their kids will never be out there in the front facing the enemy. They would probably holidaying in some exotic place spending their ill-gotten gains.
A truly sad state of affairs. Is there just anyone out there who might give a thought to our poor soldiers?

Naren
Posted November 2, 2010 at 5:25 PM
But even after all this, Indian leaders havent learnt anything nor is the general public able to do anything. Even now there are daily reports of how china is aggresively positioning against India (their inclusion of Arunachal in their maps, regular cyber attacks on Indian sites) and the Manmohan Singh govt is in denial.

Red Top
Posted October 23, 2010 at 1:01 PM
Defence.Finance,(Home..internal security ),EducationAtomic Energy ,Communications and Law etc are Ministries requiring loads of first hand experience.These must not be distributed as lolly-pops to UPA or NDA constituents as per their (M P ) STREENGTH in the parliament We have never had a real professional to head and guide the Defence Ministry.Our chiefs except for Thimmaya have never really stood up for their commitment to the national cause but dutifully carried out the orders receivedlest raising a voice might mean sacking like what Ferddie did to Bhagwat.A constitutional ammendment is needed to safe guard the posts like Chiefs,CJI, ELECTION Commissioner ,CBI Boss etc and also a ban on these gentlemen form being offered a post for 5 years after retirement.
Since you have to vote it is a difficult choice whether to vote for the kettle or the pot.
Jai Hind

Vivek
Posted October 11, 2010 at 11:36 AM
I have the english version of the Book I have just purchased the English one. U can contact me on my E-mail, if you would like to read the book.

Bimal Banerjee
Posted September 24, 2010 at 5:18 PM
Dear Friends,
It is just not one blunder, it is blunder after blunder that this Congress and its leaders have committed since independence till date ! But I do not blame them. It is the Indian masses who are to be blamed. Knowing all blunders, still they vote Congress in every election and that is what one should feel sorry for !

Thanks,

Babu
Posted September 4, 2010 at 10:14 PM
Hi!
It was really painfull when India Chaina war, I was to young. At that time I was quite sure that Mr Neheru was doing some sort of blunder. It is proved by Brg. Dalvi. One thing I veleive that no one can hide tru it will definately come out. After lerning all these thing then also we will never sudhru.

frankie fu
Posted August 22, 2010 at 2:24 PM
hi this is frankie fu from china, i think so far i am the only chinese comments here…..
i’ve run into this page when i am trying to find out some information about the book himalayan blunder;

though both indian and china govt. claim that it was the other one who firstly started the war in 1962 for propoganda reasons, i still believe it is the indian govt. actually started it, i am say so no because i am a chinese, but because the information/materials i find about this war.

it’s been half a centry after the borader conflict between our two countries, we should all be grateful for this peaceful 50 years.

anyway, cheers, for the peace.

P.S. i am amazed how many Indian young cares for their country and loves to find out the true history of their country, nowadays in china, most of young people dont care about the fate and history of their country, they are very much material, only cares for the money;

sanjeev
Posted August 12, 2010 at 4:00 PM
first i will thank to Mrs. Ravi beligare to traslate ‘HIMALAYAN BLUNDER’ to kannada. when i was reading this book my tears is get converted to blood because our soldier face many problem & dedicated there life to country mean while our politics intervensions are at lower level & they are least bother about country defence. lastly i would thank to JHON P DALAVI to write a book so that we are all know about real facts of history.

Sunil Sambtani
Posted July 27, 2010 at 2:05 PM
This book is a must read for all Army men and politicians who are in powerful positions in the government. This memoir should be taught in the Army curriculum and we as a Nation should take lessons from the mishaps of 1962. The worst part about this book is the political posturing of Nehru prior to the war…he actually announced in public that we shall “Throw out” the Chinese from our territory, this when our Army did not even have basic amenities like snow clothing and snow boots. We had no supply chain to these sensitive areas whilst the Chinese had well planned roads and airstrips in strategic locations along with modern ammunitions whilst our soldiers were still using the leftovers of WWII.

I hope that the people in charge of our Army and Government read this book and realize that National security and pride are way above personal ambitions and take the right steps when the need arises, as it will soon.

Indianloyalist
Posted July 10, 2010 at 7:15 PM
As a professional soldier I do wish to thank Sandeep for his efforts to reawaken younger Indians about the travails of the Indian Army in 1962 but your first assumption itself is wrong. The book can be found in all libraries of the Indian Army…it may have been banned for a few weeks but I read it in 1970, from an Army library. Secondly, Sandeep if you are really into military history then improve your knowledge about the Indian Army. It will make your reviews much more readable. There are too many jarring notes which are inconsistent. It is 7th Infantry Brigade and it is Joe Lentaigne you are referring to. However, I admire you for having taken so much interest in an aspect of which most Indians have very little knowledge. What you should do is to draw parallels to the situation today. The politician bureaucrat nexus continues to keep the army down and out. Nothing has changed because of the inherent fear of these people that the Indian Army has political ambitions. If they only cared to sit down and understand their own Army things would be so different.

roopa
Posted July 7, 2010 at 6:16 PM
Brigadier John Dalvi has not just reveled the extreme conditions in which our brave soldiers have to fight but also political illness of this country since from our independence.Being a foreigner joe was able to sense the chainese strategy when Tibet was attacked by chaina but our politicians were in deep sleep till the nth moment . Since from 1962 to till date I don’t think that things are improved in our politics( may be still worsen compared to those days). Major sanddep unnikrishnan, ashok kamte and many more brave soldiers are the victims of new era of coward war(terrorism) and same sicked politics. I read the book again & again and cried helplessly .
Till from 1962 to today chaina is the main threat to our country. In terms of technology chainese are so many steps ahead to us with their indigenous defense products. Hope our govt. learn something from the past and save our country from outside & inside enemies.

Capt S Dhwarakhanathan (Retd)
Posted June 21, 2010 at 9:18 PM
Truth is always bitter. Enemy does not break the backbone of the indian soldier its the politicians like krishna menon! Proof of 1947-48 and 1962 we have on our laps to bear even today.

Capt S Dhwarakhanathan (Retd)
Posted June 21, 2010 at 8:51 PM
Natraj publishers have the book!

S.Ravikumar
Posted June 16, 2010 at 10:51 AM
Politicians started spoiling our country right from independence, particularly congree. They are the one divided india and pakistan. Now still they are trying to divide many more for their own sack. In south, they handed over kutch to srilanka and not bothering about every day firing by Srilankan navy at our fisher men.Bhopal tragedy and safe passage for Anderson by Congress.
Encouraged moaist all most five states non caring future sitution.

sumeet bhat
Posted February 13, 2010 at 11:15 AM
though we consider pandit nehru as a great patriot, but i feel otherwise.his policies on accession of princely states, kashmir, his chinese policy iffel all were blunders.

m
Posted February 10, 2010 at 1:42 AM
Happy to buy book and send to you. But i am not in India

anup
Posted February 9, 2010 at 8:52 PM
Nehru sorry for the people of Assam and the Chinese advance 50kn from Tezpur
Nehru addressed the nation, in which he bade goodbye to Assam, saying ‘My heart goes out to the people of Assam’ is still a class act . Imagine our current PM Dr Manmohan making a similar statement today in Parliament…. his government would have to quit in no timw!

But not Nehru, for Nehru was the PM who could do wrong. Besides, what good was Assam for India… after all Nehru WAS sorry, wasn’t he?
Check: (i) http://www.navhindtimes.in/opinions/7063-bleeding-assam-cries-out-for-attention
(ii) http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/nov/11chin.htm

Besides, Gen Kaul ( who had no battle experience) was relative… and Nehru didn’t mind keeping things in the family…. so Kaul was allowed to mess up an Army’s efforts

Alok Sahai
Posted January 24, 2010 at 1:44 PM
Recently I confronted a friend of mine when very assertivrly he confimed that nothing has changed relatively since 1962 Indo-China humiliating war. same way we had ill dressed and equiped army during Kargil, and hopelessly trained police on 26/11 during Mumbai terror attach.

Shame on all of us,
We are becoming very insensitive as a proud nation,No one backs cowards, we need to fix our own issues. Nepal moved away from us to China.
We shall work to see that Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma join and become part of India, to start with. We have such traditional relationship with yellow race counties, we should have very special relationship with them. We need to have compulsory defence training for everyone for two years and one month evey tow years.
We need to be physically and mentally strong nation, we shall be able to take pride in our country, history.
It is never late.

kamal mathur
Posted January 8, 2010 at 10:59 PM
It is really distressing to see that our politicians, irrespective of their party affiliations are still not at all bothered about the Chinese threat. Our forces need better firepower, better aircraft ,better warships ,better equipment . But the Government is not in a hurry to buy them.They call it procedural delays. Why are there no procedural delays when a Chief Minister wants to buy the latest aircraft for himself/herself.Why are there no procedural delays when our politicians & babus have to go abroad on holidays in the garb of study tours.Why are there no procedural delays when our Netas indulge in gimmicks to get extra votes.It’s shameful ! It’s criminal negligence.It is high time that they start thinking about the country ,it’s integrity & security.

S.Ravikumar
Posted December 30, 2009 at 3:38 PM
Right from elementary level to college, all the text books showing our national leaders independence struggle and how they fought to get the freedom, but such kind of failures not mentioned in the records to safe guard their names and images not cares of Nation’s interest.
INDIRA GANDHI’S policies on security arrangement and plans to modernise the our defense system was really miracules and she was very stubborn on such issues.
After Indira Gandhi, no one else took a serious view on neighbour countries attitudes and their movements, since every one busy detaining their posts and fighting each other with in the parties, between the parties, between the religionity,casts, languages, water sharing issues and no one party having common goal on national security.

Ministers busy swalloing public money for their inevsestment in elections.
Even some higher defence officials and judges involving in money & land scam.
Police officials busy hunting of females like Ruchika and some of the political leaders escorting them.
Even public, them selves not united and care about nation, busy fighting to own a sepaerate states,districs,taluks and even at our home itself not united.

Slowly all the party leaders bringing their kin and kith to their posts. In the name of democarcy, imperialism ruling our nation.
Its not too late, still every one, particulalry politicians should care about our nation’s security interest rather than their own interest.
But still, we advertise that we are living together and we are united.
Let us see each other freindly manner and trust each other.We Indians are hard workers and intelligent in all the feilds but still lacking in unity. If we are through in this particular issue, no one can think to shake our precious nation.

jagan
Posted October 18, 2009 at 11:09 PM
it is so upsetting to read even a few excerpts. we can all get upset and be bitter on individuals. as an Indian we should be able to stand on our own two feet. as long as the politicians are only interested in looking after their own interests but not the national interests, I don’t think that there is going to be much change. if we look at our neighbours with better organised military it is unavoidable to note the different form of government. I begin to wonder if we deserve democracy

Arun
Posted September 30, 2009 at 5:23 PM
I personally feel after reading the book that if Indian Army or Indian Govt. had a task force to implement “What went wrong” and points raised in the book, then Indian ARMY can face any chinease threat.

Prashant
Posted September 23, 2009 at 3:35 PM
This shows clearly how nehru and its congress want to hide the truth.
1962 was a shame on INDIA but still we are able to learn lessons, we simly like to hide the truth.

Could not imagine how a PM could be so cowards ?
“A single blade of grass does not grow there” so…
Thats the importance given to the national security by nehru.
Basically he was fool.. when one of army’s senior officer was talking to him about modernization of army he replied “Who is going to attck us ? “.

My god can you all imagine.. he was thinking himself as a world leader and a nobel prize winner for world peace .

Now we could understand why jinnah, patel and so many leaders were not willing to make him as PM of independent INDIA.

abhishek
Posted September 19, 2009 at 2:28 AM
hey this book is not truly banned,i am reading its original english version by natraj publishers dehradun.

Raghu,
Posted September 17, 2009 at 10:15 AM
hi,

I read all you peoples comments and thanks for sandeep to translating it, It was an eye opening for me,
but i wonder being in a democratic country how can they ban a book, its like banning freedom of speech.

MAX
Posted September 16, 2009 at 6:22 PM
I just love these sentences:

“Dalvi recounts a chilling precursor to 1962. During his days in the Wellington Defence Services Staff College in 1950, he quotes a colleague and army veteran, Joe of British origin: Friends, leaders of your country have no foresight. They are mum about the Chinese invasion of Tibet. They don’t understand the reality that India’s backdoor has been broken down…. Boys! Take it from me. Some of you folks sitting here will fight with the Chinese army before you retire.”

How freaking dumb our politicians are… we’re peace loving people that’s OK! But we shouldn’t forget Shivaji Maharaj, Samrat Ashoka, Tipu Sultan, Rana Pratap, Netaji S C Bose were also children of their peace loving motherland, India.

MAX
Posted September 16, 2009 at 6:13 PM
Hey Vishal,

I think our soldiers’ are still living in 1962 era, ill-equipped and least infrastructure made in border areas; our army men use mule to transport food, ammunition etc. even in 2009 almost after 50 years of fist sino-indian war.

It proves that our Congress led govt. did not take any lesson from 1962′s massacre and so Foreign Minister says sino-indian border in world’s most peaceful border in this whole world. What a pity!

IAF’s #20 wing operational in north-east region uses Mig-21 (flying coffin) where their Chinese counterpart has AIDC F-CK-1 a 5th generation fighter aircraft product of China’s indigenous fighter project. Our Tejas LCA a 4.5 generation aircraft which is proposed to be replacement of Mig-21 still in paper. Did you see Chinese ammunition and PLA’s war accessories during joint exercise with Indian Army? I believe those were just glimpse of Chinese dragon power.

Vishal Raina
Posted September 16, 2009 at 2:05 PM
India should Retaliate to chinese incursions if they come inside to our border indian Army shuld warn them and if possible capture or Kill them then and there ,” Indian Politicians Playing with the Dignity of the Country”

Deepak
Posted September 10, 2009 at 10:33 AM
Hey the book is available on lancr publishers, follow the link
http://www.lancerpublishers.com/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=dalvi&osCsid=a1e2a98b6f5cf9ea29c281e91efc9346&x=6&y=2

Pavan
Posted September 7, 2009 at 1:56 PM
Very appropriate review.

The book seems to be available on flipkart now for Rs. 395/- Hope to buy it soon.

http://www.sandeepweb.com/2007/02/13/book-review-himalayan-blunder/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zspUy_QHKd4



A Chinese Threat to Afghan Buddhas - Op-Docs
TheNewYorkTimes

Published on Apr 25, 2013
In Afghanistan, a Chinese mining company threatens to destroy the remains of an ancient Buddhist city, which archaeologists are now racing to excavate.

Related article: http://nyti.ms/Y4Jv7U
Please visit http://nyti.ms/10dCYC0 in order to embed this video

OP-DOCS
‘A Chinese Threat to Afghan Buddhas’

China’s Threat to Afghan Buddhas: In Afghanistan, a Chinese mining company threatens to destroy the remains of an ancient Buddhist city, which archaeologists are now racing to excavate.
By BRENT E. HUFFMAN
Published: April 23, 2013

April 23, 2013
‘A Chinese Threat to Afghan Buddhas’
By BRENT E. HUFFMAN
When I first traveled to Afghanistan in 2004, I immediately fell in love with the country and its people, and I was optimistic that the young people in Kabul would soon have better lives. Yet my hopes dimmed as I learned about a revolving door of exploitation at the hands of the Russians, Americans and now the Chinese — who have begun mining Afghanistan’s plentiful natural resources and threatening priceless national heritage sites.

In 2007, the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation (M.C.C.) won the rights to mine copper at a site called Mes Aynak. Situated in volatile Logar Province, Mes Aynak is home to one of the world’s largest untapped copper deposits — worth more than $100 billion. Yet, as this Op-Doc video shows, the site also houses the astonishing remains of an ancient Buddhist city, which archaeologists are now racing to save. An international team has only until June to finish the excavations, which began in 2009. So far they have uncovered golden Buddhist statues, dozens of buildings and fragile Buddhist manuscripts buried within temples. Yet perhaps 90 percent of the site remains underground and unseen. To finish the job could take decades. In all likelihood, the destruction of the Buddhist sites will begin later this year. The Afghan government is letting this happen — it’s a tragedy that echoes the notorious destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan in 2001.

Yet, even after four trips to Afghanistan to report this story, it’s difficult for me to know for sure what will become of Mes Aynak. Recent repeated attempts to contact the M.C.C. to confirm the mining timeline for this story have gone unanswered. There is widespread corruption and virtually no government transparency in Afghanistan, and the M.C.C. contract has never been made public.

I have heard arguments in favor of the mining. The copper deal is the largest foreign investment and private business venture in Afghanistan’s history. There is hope among some Afghans that this Chinese deal will bring real and positive change to Afghanistan — jobs, infrastructure and money to help fuel economic growth. Some of the Buddhist artifacts are being rescued, and it’s possible that not all of the ancient sites will be destroyed by the mining.

But I worry that nothing positive will come from this mining project. I fear the mineral resource is being undervalued, that money will be lost to corruption in the Afghan ministries and that jobs at the mine will go to Chinese immigrants. Geologists tell me that, as a result of the open-pit style of mining, the site will most likely become so toxic that nothing can ever live there again. Money can come and go, but these precious historical artifacts will be gone forever.

Brent E. Huffman is a documentary filmmaker and assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He is expanding the material in this Op-Doc into a feature-length documentary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/opinion/a-chinese-threat-to-afghan-buddhas.html
Chinese Threat to Afghan Buddhas
Posted April 27, 2013 by Andrew Mersmann in Environment. Tagged: Afghan Buddhas, Chinese Mining, CHinese threat, New York Times.

This is tragic (video presented by New York Times). You would think we would learn by now, but I guess we are still infants when it comes to common sense…

http://changebydoing.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/chinese-threat-to-afghan-buddhas/

Top Comments



ryan flippin 3 weeks ago
Have the Chinese never heard of directional mining? Seems very silly to blow up an ancient structure more than 2000 years old.
Reply · 14


AlexanderMccarthey87 3 weeks ago
Nobody demolishes things like the chinese do.
Reply · 11

wilson lawson 6 days ago
The meek shall inherit the earth.....if that's OK with everyone else.
Everyone should ask themselves why that old Buddhist living space was vacated in the first place. It wasn't because they Chinese were looking for oil. It was because the marauding muslims invaded from the West and the south and slaughtered anyone they didn't like. And let's face it the muslims don't like much.
Reply · in playlist Featured Playlist 2013


Fearbasdlfrm 1 week ago
Feels like a dagger throught the heart.
Reply ·


Brent Huffman 2 weeks ago
For more information, please check out "The Buddhas of Aynak" on Facebook.
Reply · 2


aryany sabillon 2 weeks ago
Uu I ml l on b Czech m m NJ ji h y txt uno illl00 o 00 uh u jk k jk nómina
Reply ·


John Lee 2 weeks ago
99% of the Afghanistan's population are Islam, not Buddhist; maybe that has something to do with why the government don't care?
Reply ·


cuphrody Alphro 2 weeks ago
that is individual action they cant represent all Chinese people!
Reply ·


Shearattan 2 weeks ago
"The money that the Chinese have given our government will eventually vanish...and our history and our heritage will vanish with all this money." 3 billion dollars to a corrupt government is lint, especially compared to the 100 bill in profit the Chinese will make. But history is worth more than a billion, especially for the Afghans, who have seen every element of their country plundered in the last century.
Reply · 6

Lt Gen NS Malikformer Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Indian Army

Solution to J & K problem lies in New Delhi...By Lt Gen NS Malik Issue Net Edition | Date : 18 May , 2013

J&K is an integral part of India.  The only problem that can be called J&K Problem is the non- comprehension by India, its people and the government to this ultimate truth of its being the integral part of India and not distinct or separate entity in any way from the other states of India.  The problem that would remain to be settled then is the need to free the areas of J&K illegally occupied by Pakistan and China.  Once this fact is understood and fully comprehended by us, all else will fall in place.

It is proposed to discuss this very complex and muddled up situation, erroneously called “The Jammu & Kashmir Problem”, as under:

•         Strategic Importance of J&K
•         The Problem and its historic Mishandling
•         Solution

Strategic Importance of J&K 

J&K forms the head of the Indian sub continent, and has been the traditional  trade route of Central and South Asia to the East and Tibet, generally called the ‘Silk Route’.  It is bounded by more countries than any other state of India;  in the North East with Tibet, and further North with Xinjiang province of China, in the North West with the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan, in the West with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and further South with Punjab of Pakistan. This geographic layout is strategically so important that no power of the world wants to remain away from the area, as it gives them access to the sensitive areas of the neighbouring countries.. Its high mountains provide strategic depth and domination over the surrounding area. For hundreds of years in the past, the Russian, Persian, Chinese, Tibetan and the British Indian empires, sought the passes of this region to dominate each other. The region rests along “the ancient axis of Asia” where South, Central and East Asia converge and, since time immemorial, has been the gateway for both India and China to Central Asia.

The maps below show the geo strategic location and its dominating position.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir consists of  two  parts, one that is with India and the other that is under the occupation of Pakistan and China.  The part with India  consists of  three regions: Jammu, the Kashmir valley and Ladakh.  While the Kashmir valley is famous for its beautiful mountainous landscape, Jammu’s numerous shrines attract tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims every year. Ladakh, is renowned for its remote mountain beauty and Buddhist culture. The illegally occupied part of J&K by Pakistan is in two parts, Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (the so called Azad Kashmir by Pakistan) and Gilgit- Baltistan(GB) (earlier called the Northern Areas).  China is in possession of Akshai Chin and the Shaksgam valley illegally ceded by Pakistan to China in 1963.

The “high roof of the world” , the Gilgit-Baltistan and the Ladakh region of the pre-independence  state of Jammu and Kashmir  is geo- strategically very  important. This region lies between the high Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountain ranges to its north and the Western Himalayas to its immediate south, with  the Kashmir Vale and the Jammu region further South.  The strategic importance of J&K can be understood from the fact that China is spending huge sums to build infrastructure through highways connecting Tibet to Xinjiang through the Chinese occupied Akshai Chin plateau, and Xinjiang to Pakistan via the Karakorum highway through the Kunzreb pass.  This highway then connects Gwadar port on the Arabian sea, giving warm water port and access to the Indian Ocean to China.  Its importance can be visualized in that China trade can avoid the bottleneck of Malacca straits as also cuts down turn round to the interior provinces of China.  China is now in de facto control of the GB area.  It is believed to have deployed more than ten thousand troops for the purpose of developing infrastructure in the area.  It is also believed that Pakistan is to lease the GB area to China for 50 years under the pretext of developing the area.
The strategic importance of J&K thus can be understood that now we face two enemies on our borders at a point where we are the weakest and have the maximum to lose, having already lost nearly 50% of the erstwhile J&K princely state through aggression by Pakistan in 1947 and then China in the 50s and 1962.Strategic importance of J&K is also to be understood from the point of view of strategic and valuable mineral deposits in the area, particularly in the GB and Ladakh area.  It is surmised that GB area is rich in uranium deposits, besides  great potential of hydro electric works.

It is unfortunate that the government of India took this area to be “Where not a blade of grass grows”  That is where lies the problem, not understanding the Strategic Importance and correctly relating it to National Security.  We have thus been so manoeuvred that we face two enemies on our most vulnerable area with the least developed infrastructure, with the result that to thwart the design of these two hyenas on our door step, we find ourselves sandwiched with extremely poor logistics backing.  Today we are faced with a situation in Daulat Beg Oldie Area with Chinese having entered 19 Km into our territory and claiming it as theirs.  We are face to face with disaster awaiting us as the only logistics backing with us is an airstrip at DBO with no worthwhile  land route from Leh onwards.  And even upto Leh we are dependent on the fair weather route via Zojila pass.  The alternate route from Manali to Upsi in Ladakh is still waiting the Rohtang pass tunnel to be built

The Problem and its historic Mishandling

The problem of J&K can be summarized under the  heads; J&K called ‘disputed territory’ ‘Article 370’, the ‘over dominance of Kashmir  over the other areas’ and ‘Political indifference’ at the State and Centre government

Disputed Territory      UN resolution of 1948, which is cited by most adversaries of India, deals only with the aggression by Pakistan and not its accession to India. Accession is legal in every way and cannot be disputed.  Similarly the so called “Two Nation Theory”, under whose umbrella Pakistan was formed,  applied only to British ruled India and not the princely states, and hence a state being Muslim majority did not disqualify it from joining Indian Union.  In the same context, referendum in J&K is illegal as it was not agreed by Muslim League to hold referendum in princely states but left to their rulers to accede to India or Pakistan, contiguity being a criteria for the same.  Thus the only dispute that remains is the vacation of the aggression by Pakistan and the areas illegally ceded to China by Pakistan  Government of India has to thus base its relations with Pakistan and China on that theme

Article 370    This is a self imposed gridlock that gives  no advantage to India internationally, or to the state internally.  Internationally this shows that J&K is different and not a part of India and any country can raise the status of J&K in international fora, as very often done by Islamic countries.  As for  internally for the state of J&K itself, it puts it at a disadvantage in development and other fields, as private financiers are not keen to invest there due to the restrictions of ownership.  Besides, psychologically its people find themselves at a disadvantage when working in other parts of India.  Article 370 and the policy followed through its propagation is the most glaring example of appeasement of the national minority of Muslims  and the subjugation of the state minority of Hindus.  No nation can have two laws and rules for national citizenship.  On the other side in the illegal POK and GB, Pakistan has been encouraging its Punjabi Wahabi elements to settle in and control the area.  Its demographic profile is totally altered.

Over dominance of Kashmir     One of the myths that needs to be broken is that “Kashmir is J&K”, because it is actually only a small part of it – 7% to be exact of the J&K Princely state and about 15% of the J&K with India. Even the saying that “From Kashmir to Kanyakumari”  is not correctly worded because Kashmir is not the Northernmost part of India; Ladakh is. And as per the official Indian map, Gilgit and Aksai Chin are the Northernmost parts, none of these being part of Kashmir.  Even ‘Azad Kashmir’ PoK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) is not Kashmir. In the same way the Kashmiri Muslim is not in majority in J&K, when we take non Kashmiri Muslims in the other parts of J&K into account, from Ladakh and Jammu region.  In fact Indian Army’s advance into present POK in 1948 was said to have been halted on the advice of Sheikh Abdullah to Pandit  Jwaharlal  Nehru that the areas beyond were not Kashmiris.  And yet J&K politics is all centered round Kashmir and the Kashmiris.  All Chief Ministers have been Kashmiri with bulk of the state and national funding being spent on Kashmir valley.   The other two parts, Jammu and Ladakh have a grievance on that and rightly so.  Ladakh has been demanding Union territory status and Jammu as separate state. 

The misfortune is that in all this fight we forget the other two parts of J&K, namely POK and GB.  Today they are raising their voice to ask India to liberate them and fight for their human rights that have been denied to them by Pakistan.  The only symbolic gesture India makes is to keep a few vacant seats in their name in the state assembly.  This is sheer tokenism and nothing more.  Their demand that as the elections can not be held in POK & GB, some of them should be nominated and allowed to put across the problems of these areas, as also raise these in international fora.  They also demand that their children should be given reservation in schools and institutions of higher learning in J&K as rightfully they are citizens of J&K living under the heels of Pakistan army.

The other part, Aksai Chin and the Shaksgam valley illegally occupied by China is not even considered by us in any discussion within or with the Chinese.  Our thrust remains to demarcate the border in this area.  The areas thus conceded is over 38,000 Sq Km in Aksai Chin and nearly 5,000 Sq Km in Shaksgam Valley.

 

Political Indifference at the State and Centre Government    

Somehow the impression is gaining ground that the State and Centre are not very keen to bring the problem under control.  It is voiced by many experts that it suits the State government, whichever party in power, to continue providing tacit and covert support to the separatists,  jehadi and the Pak supported elements, and milk the centre for resources.  Scapegoats are easily found to pass on the blame for non governance and inaction.  Security forces and the AFSPA is easily exploited for this.  No firm action is taken against the separatists, who espouse their cause freely and indulge in nefarious activities within and abroad.  Terrorism and violence is treated as the right of the people to indulge in.  As Pakistan is considered a party to the dispute, its political interference, terrorist acts and inciting people to violence is taken as legitimate right of Pakistan.  We fail to perceive this as the first battle by Pakistan to the ultimate jehadi war in India.  We have failed to assert our right to ‘hot pursuit’, to strike at training camps across the border  and to block all propaganda and contacts that spread discontent.  Here we are not only a ‘soft state’ but a ‘failed state’ that refuses to protect its legitimate national rights. 

The historic Blunders  of J&K Problem                                                                                               J&K has been one series of monumental blunders by Indian government.  First we let Lord Mountbatten to unilaterally write to Maharaja Hari Singh for a referendum later when no such condition was desired by him, or stipulated in the ‘Accession Treaty’  We  stopped the advance of Indian army to liberate POK and GB areas in 1948 and instead took the matter to the UN.  The western powers were just looking for such an opportunity to have a say in the most strategic area that dominated the underbelly of China and USSR

To declare special status under a special article 370 of the constitution, thereby making J&K psychologically and physically different and separate, thus hindering its effective integration into the Indian Union

Recognition of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet in 1950 and withdrawal of our military posts from Lhasa and Yatung were to bring China on to our northern borders  and open up another front to guard. But that was not the end of this flawed China policy, we indulged in daydreaming of Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai and neglected our defence.  Result was the shameful debacle of 1962.  It has rightly been called the ‘Himalayan Blunder’  But the most shameful act was the acceptance of the ceasefire, unilaterally declared by the Chinese, and not preparing to fight back.  After all nations have suffered tactical reverses, but they did not necessarily become strategic defeats.  During WWII British army was down and out at Dunkirk and had to evacuate European main land, but it came back after four years to defeat the Germans.  Similarly Singapur was lost in 1942, but the British Indian Army went back and defeated the Japanese.  Why have we accepted the 1962 debacle as final and never even lay claim to our lost land from the aggressor.  If on the Republic Day in 1963, instead of weeping over our tactical defeat and singing “Aye Mere Watan ke logo , jara aankh mein bhar lo pani’  we had roused the nation and sung Netaji Subhash Bose INA song of “Kadam kadam barhai ja, Khushi ke geet gaye ja, Yeh  jindgi hai kom ki, tu Kom par mitae ja”, perhaps we would have been a different nation today

In 1965 Pakistan was emboldened after having acquired latest arms and ammunition from the USA under the Baghdad Pact (later CENTO) and seen the state of Indian army devastated by the Chinese in 1962 to take advantage of the historic opportunity and launched ‘Operation Gibraltor’ to liberate J&K and later captured some areas of Chhamb Jaurian in Jammu region. Indian Army fought back ‘ with whatever they had’ and managed to blunt the Pakistan offensive in Punjab and Jammu region.  Our major achievement was in the Kashmir sector where we captured Haji Pir Pass that links Uri and Poonch. Unfortunately India gave it back to Pakistan at the Tashkent meet.  The army calls it ”A War won on the battlefield but lost on the negotiating table”

1971 is a glorious chapter in the annals of Indian military history.  We created history by liberating a nation and decisively defeating the Pakistan army on the battlefield, capturing 93,000 PWs.  No greater victory could be asked for. Alas, we squandered the victory at Shimla where Indira Gandhi fell to the false promises of smooth talking ZA Bhutto, and the old story repeated itself.  We won the war on the battlefield, but lost it on the negotiating table.

In 1974 our scientists did India proud by making the bomb and demonstrating it at Pokhran.  Alas, we again fell under the threat of USA and disassembled all the infrastructure for the same, but having alerted Pakistan who went all out to acquire the bomb through any means. He succeeded in making one in 1985, while we remained without one for a much longer period.  Under the threat of the bomb, Pakistan was able to put Punjab on fire and later J&K.  Our much stronger armed forces now were immediately unable to react to this new kind of warfare that had surfaced in the subcontinent.  Fortunately in 1998 India got a government that looked to the security of the nation first and all else later, under the leadership of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee.  We reasserted ourselves at Pokhran II.

Solution                                                                                                                                               

Solution lies in the words and teachings of our ancient sages and Rishis. Swami Vivekananda said that “Shakti” is the power that builds the nation and without it the nation is enslaved.  He asked, ‘Why is it that our country is the weakest- because ‘Shakti’ is held in dishonor here’  This he had said over a century ago, but unfortunately, it is true even today. ‘Shakti means national power to influence events in the interest of the nation.  This Shakti flows out of economic strength, social harmony, people educated and dedicated to national cause, and most importantly  military strength.  However, the crucial element of the national ‘Shakti’ is the national leadership that is able to harness all this power and bring it to bear in national  interest.

The strategic solution lies in breaking the unholy nexus between China and Pakistan by, firstly vigorously claiming POK and GB areas, supporting the population to fight the occupation forces, and by breaking the China link to the Arabian sea through Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and Balochistan.  The democratic voice of Pakhtoons for Pakhtoonistan encompassing areas South and East of defunct Durand line must be supported.  Similarly the human rights violations, in fact genocide,  of the Baloch people struggle for democracy in their province must be taken up at international arena and supported

Conclusion    

As a veteran,  I feel saddened when I find that the leadership pays no heed to the security of our  nation.  Jammu & Kashmir has been the hunting ground of both, China and Pakistan and we have treated it as a dispute and an internal law and order problem.  I do not advocate war as the only solution.  But with the changing dimensions of warfare ranging from nuclear, cyber, space to proxy war, we need to devise new ways and means to be one step ahead of the enemy. Pakistan has been at war with India since Oct 1947, and China since 1950 when it occupied Tibet, yet we failed to recognize the enemy and his modus operandi on both fronts. In between active war operations, they carry on proxy war with ‘thousand cuts’, supporting insurgency in J&K and the North East   Mao tse Tung said that ‘Diplomacy flows out of the barrel of a gun’ In this ‘Dog eat dog’ world, it is no good making diplomatic overtures and resting on assurances on paper that are not worth the paper they are written on.

How many times Pakistan has made promises and never kept them. How the Chinese have been treating us and claiming Arunachal Pradesh and all Aksai Chin. Their intentions are clear, only we fail to see it that way, with the result that today India is widely perceived as being unable to handle external or internal challenges ranging from terrorism sponsored by Pakistan. being snubbed by Maldives, leave alone dealing with an assertive China, which has no qualms in blocking India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and undermining India’s influence in Asia  The answer lies in building friendship bridges across Asia Pacific region with Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, USA and other smaller countries by extending economic and military help to them.  Besides, India must not accept China intrusion into J&K or any other area passively, but must counter with well planned and calibrated Indian moves along the border into tactically and strategically sensitive areas to China at the time of our choosing.  The latest intrusion into Depsang valley in Ladakh is a very clever move by China. It wants to bargain for a settlement in Aksai Chin but keep Arunachal Pradesh open.  The solution does not lie in negotiating border settlement in the West alone, as that will seal the fate of Aksai Chin for ever, leaving India no bargaining power in the North East

So how long shall we keep living in fools’ paradise.  Awake my countrymen, your country is threatened, both externally and internally, and unfortunately your so called democratically elected government at present is fast asleep, content in its ‘appeasement policy’ internally and externally.  Unless a country is militarily strong, no one will respect you, and all the economic gains will be for someone else to enjoy. Let not history of the past seven hundred years repeat itself.

 

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/solution-to-j-k-problem-lies-in-new-delhi/

In an audit, CAG has pointed out that Vodafone has not paid spectrum usage charges in all those circles where it is providing 3G services in tie-ups with Idea and Airtel.

CAG audit finds Vodafone not paying for spectrum
TNN | May 19, 2013, 02.01 AM IST

NEW DELHI: Telecom giant Vodafone has been accused by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India of not paying hundreds of crores in spectrum usage charges to the government while providing 3G services across most parts of India.

Since May 2010, when Vodafone won 3G spectrum in some of the 22 circles, it has been providing 3G services across most parts of the country.

Wherever it didn't win 3G spectrum, Vodafone has entered into an agreement with Airtel and Idea to provide 3G services. 3G services being provided by private telecom companies in circles where they didn't get the spectrum is presently under the Supreme Court's scanner. Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have over 12 million 3G users among them. Of which Vodafone has over 2.5 million users.

In an audit para sent to the department of telecom (DoT) recently, CAG has pointed out that Vodafone has not paid spectrum usage charges in all those circles where it is providing 3G services in tie-ups with Idea and Airtel.

The period — between September 2010 and March 2013 — is when Vodafone has not paid the spectrum usage charges at 3G rates in circles where they don't hold 3G spectrum, the CAG audit para has said. Whereas in the 10 circles where Vodafone had won 3G spectrum it has been paying spectrum usage charges at the 3G rate.

By not paying the spectrum usage charges—ranging from 3% to 8% of the adjusted gross revenue of a service-provider—at the 3G spectrum rate, Vodafone has caused the government exchequer loss of few hundreds of crores, the CAG has alleged.

If the mandated 300% penalty is imposed on Vodafone, the government's gain would run into several hundreds of crores, according to sources who have perused the CAG query sent to the DoT. The DoT has yet not replied to the queries, sources said.

On the contrary, both Airtel and Idea have paid up spectrum usage charges for all the circles where they are providing 3G services.

The adjusted gross revenue of a service-provider is estimated after some mandatory charges such as deduction of service tax, and the spectrum usage charges due to the government are estimated based on the rest of the total revenue.

The fresh allegations in the telecom sector comes at a time when the SC is hearing a case over the way the three companies have gone about making an arrangement among themselves to provide 3G services in circles where each of them didn't have 3G spectrum. DoT had ordered the companies to stop the practice, while imposing fines on them.

The apex court has asked the companies not to add any more 3G subscribers in circles where they don't have own 3G spectrum. The government-controlled Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has accused the three companies of forming a cartel in 2010 while bidding for 3G spectrum.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/CAG-audit-finds-Vodafone-not-paying-for-spectrum/articleshow/20128749.cms