Absolute Khuswant- Khuswant Singh, in his own words, with malice towards one and all

Absolute Khuswant                                                                                                  01 April 2014

Khuswant Singh, in his own words, with malice towards one and all

ON SEX

2009, On the couch with Koel

I have a dirty mind. I see a woman and think what would she be like in bed. Don’t take that seriously. But I’m not the only one. It does cross every man’s mind.

ON POLITICS

1983, INDIA TODAY

I did not say Maneka was Sanjay Gandhi’s successor. There’s a lot to her. When driven to it, she can be like Durga on a tiger.

1999, INDIA TODAY

I was the only Indian to criticize Bhindranwale. I called him a homicidal maniac when I was in The Hindustan Times, And he threatened to finish us all.

ON LIFE

1999, INDIA TODAY

The only secret (to long life) is to acquire long lived parents. My father died at 90 holding a glass of Scotch and my mother at 94 had one last request. Her voice was feeble but she said, ‘whisky’. The doctor said, chalo, give it.

ON WRITING

2009, On the Couch with Koel

I don’t write anymore. I was a bad lawyer, a second rate diplomat and third rate teacher. Somehow I got better when scribbling. I write a lot of rubbish but it gets published.

ON DEATH

1983, INDIA TODAY

I have no respect for the dead just because they are dead. I don’t see how just because a person has died he has acquitted some sort of sanctity.

2011, THE TIMES OF INDIA

Years ago, I’d written my own epitaph: Here lied one who spared neither man or God/Waste not your tears on his, he was a sod/Writing nasty things he regarded as great fun/Thanks the Lord he is dead, the son of a gun.  

The Fact File Namo Namo

Never again: odisha CM rules out pact with BJP

Odisha chief minister and Biju Janta Dal boss Naveen Patnaik has ruled out any tie up with the Narendra Modi-let Bharatiya janata party after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

AMU fraternity unites against BJP

Modifying Public Opinion

·        Many intellectual organization associated with the AMU have formed teams that are trying to spread awareness among the masses about the political battle ahead.

·        AMU is home to several out station students and many are setting out for their homes in Bihar and east UP to shape opinion in their community.

·        These are the first elections in which corporate houses are directly involved and Narendra Modi is their choice. The Gujarat model of development does not include the minorities and the gulf between the rich and poor is widening, says Jamal Ansari.

Raman Singh, not Modi, BJP’s best bet to woo tribals

Chattisgarh Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders believe chief minister Raman Singh’s  governance record, not Narendra Modi factor, would finally help the party win over tribal voters.

Maya slams Modi, says India will see spike in riots if he becomes PM

In a scathing attack on Narendra Modi, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawation Thursday said that the country would be torn asunder by riots on communal and caste lines if he became the prime minister.  

Solution to corruption: Stay single! – Says “Shobha De”

Solution to corruption: Stay single! – Says “Shobha De”

Narendra Modi sure has some unique solutions to offer India. The latest one is by far the most amusing. Modi declared with a straight face that being a non-family man, he has no incentive to be corrupt! Thereby implying, family breeds corruption. Errr…. Shouldn’t the same idiotic argument be used to excuse bachelor boy Rahul Gandhi as well? I really don’t know what Modi was thinking when he made that outrageous remark. It is not just misogynistic, but also misleading and mischievous.

To begin with, according to reliable sources, there is a Mrs Narendra Modi tucked away somewhere. Which makes Modi a bachelor by choice, and in legal terms. To the best of everone’s knowledge, he has not fathered any children. So far. He says the absence of such emotionally binging ties makes him the right candidate for the top job, since he can devote himself better to work for the people and the country.

So, if you want to succeed as a neta stay single and marry politics. If you want the country to be corruption free, vote for brahmacharis. And spinsters.

Assuming he makes it to the gaddi, will Modi form his cabinet on the basis of his new found theory? Will he carefully weed out married candidates and reserve sensitive portfolios for single people?

It is a pity that Modi has chosen to link marital status to corruption and temptation. This sends an awful message to those married who may be thinking of getting into politics at some point in their lives. Particularly, if the party of their choice is the BJP. Will they postpone having children? Or hide their families? Will singledom-by-choice become the new political badge to flaunt? One wishes Narendra Modi has taken a more serious/responsible position on corruption and actually presented his agenda to tackle it head on.

POINTS TO PONDER

Modi-isms are often more difficult to understand than the intricacies of economics. Take, for instance, Narendra Modi’s recent analogy between women’s safety and price rise. “If Congress mahashay (Rahul Gandhi) is worried about women’s safety, they (the UPA) have to bring down price rise,” he said.  ‘They had promised to bring down inflation in 100 days. Did it happen? Children go to bed hungry and mothers weep. Delhi has become the rape capital of India. Yet, the Congress did nothing to ensure safety of women. You could have brought smiles on the faces of our mothers and sisters by tackling price rise.” What Modi meant by his words, even his supporters don’t know. 

The Fact File : India votes 2014

India votes 2014                                                                             19 Mar 2014

In its attempt to make friends and influence a broad section of voters, the RSS has rehashed the old rhetoric of everyone living in India being a Hindu by definition.

The RSS foray into politics has not been sudden; in fact, it began soon after the BJP lost the Lok Sabha elections in 2009. The gradual decline of party veteran  L.K. Advani, the appointment of Nitin Gadkari as BJP president and, more recently, the selection of Modi as the party’s prime ministerial candidate were all stage-managed by the RSS. “The RSS involvement does not need a confirmation at a Press conference,” said a senior BJP leader.

A part of the reason for the RSS involvement appears to be the loathing for the “political style of doing things”. Sources say there was a rising perception among the RSS cadres that the BJP has lost its ideological moorings and become akin to the Congress. It is this view that has led to the RSS tightening its hold on the BJP. Sources say even finer points like “who will be placed on which side of Modi in posters” are now cleared by the RSS.

For the past six months, RSS leaders in UP have been working to plug holes in the BJP’s poll strategy. Sources say Modi is likely to visit 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state before the polls. The RSS head quarters in Nagpur in Maharashtra has also suggested that Modi contest from UP. Among the constituencies being screened for Modi are Lucknow, Faizabad, Varanasi and Allahabad. As of now, Lucknow and Faizabad are said to be the favorites.

The Sangh has different strategies for different regions of the state but the macro effort would be to bag as many seats as possible for the BJP. The focus is on youth and backward castes,” said Bansal, who is assisting Amit Shah, Modi’s man Friday who is in charge of the campaign in UP.

The RSS is trying to lure the backward castes by organizing “social justice meeting” across the state and by projecting Modi’s backward community credentials. In the past two months, the BJP has inducted more than a dozen leaders from the backward castes, which constitute 35 percent of state’s population.

RSS is strategizing, planning dictating, directing even up to the lowest level. BJP and its leadership is just reduced to an off shoort of the main body RSS. 

The Fact File Pretender To Patel’s Legacy

            The Fact File                                   15 March2014

Pretender To Patel’s Legacy

Modi wants a statue for him but buries his idea of India

The Idea of India is thrilling because it captures the country’s heterogeneity, encapsulates every period of its history and focuses on fulfilling the aspirations of more than a billion people. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was among those who laid the foundation of this very idea of India. Essential to Patel’s idea of India was democratic polity and pluralistic society.

The RSS’s idea of India on the other hand is the complete antithesis of Patel’s.This can best be understood by reading some of the statements of MS Golwalkar (RSS’s second sarsanghchalak), during whose reign Narendra Modi was a pracharak. Golwalkar  believed, as stated in ‘We, or  Our nation Defined’, that non-Hindus of Hindustan must be “wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment-not even citizens’ rights.”

The government, with Patel as home minister, promptly banned RSS on February 4, 1948. Some argue that it was Patel who lifted the ban on RSS, but conveniently forget that this was done on certain strict conditions in July, 1949. Central to this agreement was that “RSS should adopt a written and published constitution, restrict itself to culture, forswear violence and secrecy, profess loyalty to India’s flag and Constitution and provide for a democratic organization.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated a museum honouring Patel. The construction of the museum, conceptualized by the Sardar Patel Memorial Society and supported by the government, was made possible by generous donations from the people of Gujarat. The Modi-let Gujarat government did not contribute a single rupee to the cause.

One of the most important police institutes-National Police Academy-was established under Congress rule and is names ‘Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy.

Congress associated Patel’s name with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation building in 1956. It was the same Congress which associated Sardar’s name with the Narmada dam project that is Gujarat’s lifeline. Congress also named Ahmedabad airport after Sardar Saheb.

Apart from the fundamentally different ideology. Patel’s style of administration is also intrinsically dissimilar to Modi’s. It is known to one and all that Gujarat’s CM believes in one-man rule and an autocratic style of functioning. Patel was believer in collective leadership.

Pretenders to Patel’s legacy should introspect. They should avoid being ignorant of history and economical in telling the truth. If they do desire to emulate Patel, they should do so in a holistic manner and look at what the Sardar dedicated his life to- a united India, which has space for everyone, irrespective of caste, creed, language, ethnicity and, most importantly, religion.

Extract of an article  general secretary of Congress party): Digvijay Singh TOI 13 March 2014

Racism, Our Dirty Secret

                                                                                                                              12/13 March 2014

Racism, Our Dirty Secret   

Prejudice based on one’s regional origins is deep-seated among Indians, including the police.

As a Nation, we are hardwired to see racial prejudice only where Indians are victims and where ‘white people’ are perpetrators. But racism against Indians by Indians thrives. And neither is it confined to the attitudinal behavior of ‘mainland Indians’ towards ‘northeasterners’, the latter also capable of their very own brand of xenophobia.

For the ‘social mindset’ to change, the law must first treat’ and be seen treating, crimes including non-racist crimes against northeast Indians seriously. It is how law enforcers deal with cases in which ethnic or racial minorities are victims and complainants that will determine whether India confines itself to benign discrimination. Until then, constitutional exceptions will continue to prove a shameful rule.

Adopted from TOI 10 Feb 2014

Modi believes in my way or highway

Referring to the recent win of congress’s student wing NSUI in the Gujarat University Student Union elections, he said, “Gujarat NSUI has taught a lesson to those believing in ‘my way or the highway’. The people believing in ‘my way or the highway’ have reduced Keshubhai Patel and LK Adwani to the status of trophies. They are now treating these people like trophies that have been won.” Babbar was addressing an NSUI convention here.

Raj Babbar on NaMo TOI 7 Mar 2014

Politics and its many shades of grey

Yes, I am talking about AAP. The party raised the hopes of a large number of Indians, but quickly dashed them.They did help identify a great problem –corruption- but the means used to fix the problem were superficial. Sometimes, they were even in conflict with other important moral values in a society such as decorum, stability, respect for rules and patience. No matter how deep and genuine your pain, society seldom allows violation of law, order and process to fix it on a regular basis.

Chetan bhagat TOI 9 Mar 2014

Farrukh Abdulla:

The country has to stop giving electricity for free. It is like giving them cocaine once people get addicted to it, you can’t stop it. After every five years (election time) have to just double the dose of cocaine.

Shadi ke side effect (A Movie) what Navjot Siddu said during the commentary in Asia cup “It is like Ice cream made of  “rh[kh gjh fepZ ” which you sip slowly. Farhan Akhtar was in the commentators’ box.

Chest Thumping

56 inch chest. This is political chest thumping at its most ridiculous. What would happen if a woman candidate were to speak of her ‘D’ cup. Shobha De on NaMo thumping his chest

ftUnxh thus dk uke gS] ftUnxh ft+Unkfnyh dk uke gS] eqnkZ fny Hkh D;k [kkd ft;k djrs gSA

The fact file: The world shouldn’t decide what Afghanistan needs

The Fact File

The world shouldn’t decide what Afghanistan needs                       04 March 2014

Environmental degradation is usually associated with mindless development and uncontrolled consumerism. But Prince Mostapha Zeher, director-general of Afghanistan’s national Environmental Protection Agency, gives a said glimpse of the environmental stress that war inflicted on the proud mountains of his homeland. Excerpts from an interview:

Climate change and Afghanistan-one does not usually associate the two.

Some say climate change is a fabrication to grab money. I challenge all those to come and see the ravages. The Pamirs and the Hindu Kush are in peril. The glaciers recede further each summer. We began seeing these changes in the 1960s and maintained meticulous records till 1989. There was an interruption till 2012. Now, we again have records, and they show the changes.

Please elaborate on the impact on the local people.

With glaciers receding, there is greater interaction between wild yaks and mountain sheep and livestock, because of which the latter are susceptible to disease. Snow leopards follow wild grazers to lower slopes and make away with livestock.

How did war aggravate matters?

During 35 years of civil war, environment preservation was not on any agenda. Nature, too, decided to be particularly harsh and there were constant droughts between 1996 and 2002. Once, 5 per cent of Afghanistan was forested, today only 2 per cent is. We had 72 varieties of grape. Neglect, cordite and uranium has left only eight varieties. Of the 105 varieties of citrus fruits, only 18 are available. The crimson red of pomegranates has faded to a pale pink. There is urban stress with local migrations.

What is the solution?

Afghanistan needs to decide for itself what is needs. When the world decided what Afghan people needed, it led to disaster, we cannot repeat that mistake.

What is the most important requirement for Afghanistan in rebuilding its ecology?

Building public awareness. For this we need departments of environmental studies in universities. TERI (India) played an important role in Kabul University, next are Heart and Jalalabad. We have great expectations from India as it has kept all its pledges towards us.  Nineteen

Adopted from ‘THE WEEK’ dated 23 Feb 2014

Comment:-  Environment and development and rival to each other. We are faced with a very big challenge; progress and development are getting derailed. Exploding population is a serious threat. Are we really serious?