Sonia Gandhi and the Coming of Age of the Indian Nation

Ref sadna #54

What has happened to you?

Just about a year ago, you were one of the hand-wringing apologetic Hindus.

re:#54 by sadna
Let me butt in here and give my 10 cents worth.
India claims itself to be a secular nation. Its constitution proclaims it to be so. There are constitutional guarantees for the minorities. Just as there is nothing like a ``touch of pregnancy`` (a woman is either pregnant or she is not), there is nothing like a ``touch of secularism``. If u are not secular, you join the club that has countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and a surfeit of Islamic countries and yes, Pakistan too.
Pak never claimed itself to be a secular nation. Hence, if jehandis kill kafirs and their mullahs and the crowd applauds, we have to just say ``what else can we expect from the Pakis? They are not secular any way.``. NOt so with India. India`s very existence rests on the tripod of secularism, democracy and socialism (with an increasing share of free market nowadays). It is the nature of the beast. If India says it is secular, it bloody well act like one or else it has no respect in this world. I think even BJP now realizes this after the recent defeat.
Namada Dam has displaced a number of poor people from their ancient roots. Again, India being a democracy, u hear a lot of noise and some dedicated social activists are involved. The full ramifications of 3 Gorges will be known in years to come. As always, China keeps everything under wraps and u will only hear the good story first.
Mangla dam? I think this is a big issue in Pakistan. What makes u think Pakis are OK with this dam?
Sridhar

dost-mittar #53
Some more hatemongering questions for `liberals` Indian and Pakistani :

Why is jihadi violence and Maoist violence acceptable as `politics by other means` but Hindutva violence not acceptable as `politics by other means`?

Why are the Three Gorges, Kalabagh, Mangala etc dams just fine, but the Narmada dam is not fine?

More Muslims have died in state-sponsored jihad, killed and killers(perhaps by a factor of 10 even 100 if you count Afghanistan) than Muslims were killed in Gujarat. So why the selective outrage?

sadna:
``And the fact that I point it out makes me an extremist Hindu, thats a given.. ``

no, just a ``hatemongerer``! :)

Ref nb #48

[I was in India over Holi and couldn`t go to Varanasi because I was warned it wasn`t safe. I do believe I should be able to visit what is a holy city to me without having to worry about being assaulted or kidnapped.]

I think you should have attempted to visit Haji Ali in Bombay, the Nagore Dargah in Tamil Nadu or the dargahs in Ajmer or Delhi. You would have encountered no security or safety issues. That is the true face of secularism. Expect more secularism in the future.

That makes sense; I thought ``he`s doing well for an 80 year old!!!``
I meant that we need to work out for ourselves what a Hindu identity is. Everyone thinks they have they answer, whether it be Rushdie or Vinod Mehta or Sushma Swaraj.
I remember the VP Singh years, I was a schoolgirl then, and we were all so hopeful, but it all unravelled in months. I believe very strongly that he is to blame not only for the new casteism in India, but for the whole Mandir/Masjid issue (not that Rajiv`s Shah Bano judgment and the opportunism of the RSS feeding into a genuine emotion helped).
Let me explain about Varanasi. On our last trip, there was a BSP rally, which led to certain unpleasant experiences(maybe it was because ``our`` car belonged to a very prominent Congressman and the driver was recognised). Besides, I was also warned that it was now dirtier than ever-saying something for Varanasi! In spite of that, it does have its own magic, don`t you think?

dost-mittar
Well by self-abnegating, I did not mean rejecting religious identity, I meant taking oneself at everyone else`s cr_ppy evaluation.

For example, on the subject of `liberals`, look at this contrast between aar-paar. Because we are Hindu, we are extremists if we express our wish not to have a foreign-born Prime Minister.

Because they are Muslim, they get to support military rule, without losing a tiniest bit of their liberal shine. huh?

So what if on one hand the favored military arrests every viable politician and on the other hand, the favored military`s extremist bedfellows continue killing people and fomenting civil war in three countries(at last count)- as they have done for years.

These liberals are Muslim, so despite all this their celebrated liberalism is quite unassailable. Had they been Hindu instead..

And the fact that I point it out makes me an extremist Hindu, thats a given..

nb:
Rest easy. I am younger than Manmohan Singh. It is just that I left DSE as a student before he joined it as a professor. Happy? :)

``I think establishing a Hindu identity-or identities, given the pluralistic nature of Hinduism-is important-in our own mind.``

I am not sure if I understand your above statement. Re. Yadavs. A most unfortunate development in India, in my opinion, over the past two decades has been the castification of politics. I was and, to some extent, continue to be an admirer of V.P. Singh whom I (and perhaps only I) consider to be the intiator of economic reforms in India. But he also, in my opinion, is to be blamed for this curse of casteism in the Indian body politic. He did so as PM to fight his own supporter, Devi Lal, who was creating trouble for him with his jat caste-based politics. Instead of dealing with him head-on with the unique support of the CPM and BJP that he enjoyed at that time, he chose to divide the whole Hindu society through the `mandalisation` of politics. The BJP, which was at that time trying to expand its mainly upper-caste hindu base was then faced with a dilemma. It could either oppose Mandal report and seal its own fate among the lower castes or to unite the hindus on some potent issue, such as the Ayodhya temple. As the cliche goes, it answered VP`s Mandal with its own Kamandal, namely, the armies of sadhus brought in support of the Ayodhya temple.
But VP Singh and his protege, such as Laloo and Mulayam, have continued with their dangerous experiment of social engineering. The attempt has been to convert the Hindu majority into a aggregate of minorities - yadavs, dalits, upper castes, etc., etc. I think that the more these worthies try to do that, the more they will encourage BJP to divide the society along hindus-versus-others and try to convert a broad-minded plural identity into a homogeneous religious identity like those of some other religions, which will be sad in my opinion.
Re. holi, it so happens that I was in Varanasi just a day before Holi and did not notice any problem.

So, dost-mittar saheb, with great respect (it was a shock to hear you`re actually older than Mnmohan Singh, though I have gathered overe my time on chowk that you`re no spring chicken), are you not a self-abnegating Hindu anymore? I don`t mean to be sarcastic. I think establishing a Hindu identity-or identities, given the pluralistic nature of Hinduism-is important-in our own mind. Even more so now when the RSS and VHP are coming out and saying Vajpayee didn`t do enough for Hindus, which is why he lost. Maybe there is some truth in that, not that he didn`t do enough (no government does enough for anyone) but that he didn`t appeal enough to the baser instinct of the Hindu on the basis of their religion, as against Laloo, Mayawati and Mulayam appealing to the baser instinct of the so-called backward castes and Dalits.
Where is the cut-off?
Sorry if I seem obsessed with the Yadavs, but for me they epitomise all that has gone wrong in the Hindi belt. For those of us with memories, even the Mandir issue would not have arisen without them. I was in India over Holi and couldn`t go to Varanasi because I was warned it wasn`t safe. I do believe I should be able to visit what is a holy city to me without having to worry about being assaulted or kidnapped.

To all those Pakistanis who find Sonia’s foreign origin issue a reflection on India’s non-democratic nature

I wish to know that if :

Jamima Khan becomes the leader of the ruling party in Pakistan (if democracy comes to Pakistan that is) and then Jamima Khan wishes to become the Prime Minister, would she be accepted by the Paki people or the other political Muslim groups???

Then,

Will Pakistanis let Pakistan have a Hindu President and a Christian Prime Minister?


Answer is obvious but......

39 by Humsab on May 21, 2004 5:31am PT
# 36

What is this Hindu mentality and where is your logic? ......The mandate you are talking about came from the same majority Hindu population. Learn to differentiate between people and political party. In any case this whole episode has no reflection on Indian Democracy.

By the way is it possible that your soft corner for foriegners is because you people are taught to admire your conquerers and hate yourself?

Regards

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Humsab


If some fanatic Hindus retaliate excessively to the burning of 50 Hindus in the hands of muslims and resort to extreme means then Pakis say..all hindus are like that

If Hindus go on to have a muslim president then that is no proof of their secularism...no word there
If Hindus with other, go ahead and vote against a ruling Hindu party, then that is no proof of their secular minds

It was their secular/tolerant nature because of which they let all foreigners rule them and convert them and they are the ones who are slapped again and again for being secular.


Hindus are just sick and tired of proving their ages-old secular nature to these descendents/coward converts of Mughal conquerers, these citizens of a holy land of Islamic state of Pakistan

dost-mittar #43
Quite true, I did have them in mind too. And why unfair? Pakistanis are as responsible for their own mindsets as are Indians.

# 36 by teshah

+++++
I was shocked personally but relieved also of the doubt I had in my mind about the political sagacity of the Quaide Azam in rejecting the offer of prime ministership of India by Congress if he forgoes the demand for Pakistan.
+++++

teshah is overstating the sagacity of ``the Quaide Azam``.

Separate electorates and the Pakistan Movement in British India were all predicated on the argument that one-man one-vote democracy is unsuitable for a pluralistic society like pre-partition India.

Shrill complaints against the ``tyranny of the majority`` was the foundation of the Pakistan Movement. But it is as ironic as it is apt, that in post-partition era, Jinnah`s Pakistan continued to be plagued by the very same premises that gave it birth, namely, that one man one-vote democracy is unsuitable for a pluralistic society.

The ruling elite in West Pakistan which had once inveighed against the Hindu majority in pre-partition India, found themselves inveighing against the Hindu-tainted majority of East Pakistan. ``Separate Electorates`` and ``Parity`` were the neo-shibboleths to neutralize the majority voters in East Pakistan from having a significant say in Pakistan`s affairs.

Pakistan`s ruling elite could not live under the ``tyrannjy of the majority``. So even in independent Pakistan it took to insisting on living under ``tyranny of the minority``!!!

Today, it is Pakistan`s military that has emerged as the crown jewel of Pakistan`s ruling minority.

Regardless of what teshah might claim, many a Pakistani journalist has been drawing the attention of readers of mainstream Pakistani newspapers to India`s democracy as an edifice worthy of replication in Pakistan. Here`s a typical example:

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_22-5-2004_pg3_2

Daily Times, Lahore, Pakistan
Saturday, May 22, 2004

A remarkable election
By Abbas Rashid

..... it is not a mean achievement for democracy in India that it now has persons belonging to minority communities occupying the two highest offices: the prime minister is a Sikh and the president is a Muslim. .....

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teshah will do well to recall that Pakistan`s lawmakers have expressly saddled the country with laws that prohibit non-Muslims from occupying the high public offices of the country.

Abbas Rashid went on to write, ``Undoubtedly, India deserves to celebrate a mature political transition and the strengthening of its democracy.``

Here are a few more comments from the Pakistan Press:

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-5-2004_pg3_2

Daily Times, Pakistan
Friday, May 21, 2004

The political transition in India

..... The right lesson to be drawn from India`s election is that sensible economic management pays but arrogance and bigotry does not. And, above all, that we should have faith in the good sense of the common man exercised via the power of the vote.

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http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/may2004-daily/18-05-2004/oped/o4.htm

The News, Karachi, Pakistan
Tuesday May 18, 2004-- Rabi-ul-Awwal 27, 1425 A.H.

India`s elections and us
By Inayatullah
pacade@brain.net.pk

..... ..... The India elections - the smooth transfer of political power and the way democracy works in our neighbouring country, should jolt us into a serious and sincere review of how we have messed up our institutions, the administration and the society. .....

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_18-5-2004_pg3_6

The Daily Times, Pakistan
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

The great Indian shift
By Rashed Rahman

..... The relatively peaceful huge election exercise (minor incidents of violence notwithstanding) and the peaceful transfer of power have once again demonstrated the strength of Indian democracy, irrespective of warts and all. .....

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http://www.dawn.com/2004/05/16/ed.htm

DAWN, Karachi, Pakistan
16 May 2004 Sunday 25 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

EDITORIAL
Neighbourhood pointers

..... the intense electoral exercise that our next-door neighbour, facing many of the same problems as us, has just gone through holds several lessons for us. First and foremost of course is that this was India`s 14th general election since independence; we had no national poll until 1970, and since then have had eight elections.

Even this number does not represent democratic progression because of the abrupt dismissal of governments and assemblies, and also because some electoral exercises were tainted by rigging. .....

..... Yet the overall outcome of a general election has never been in dispute, and has been accepted with grace by the losers. .....

..... Even Bangladesh might soon begin to rival us in terms of continuity and endurance of the political and democratic process. Is a comparison with Bangladesh, which was once a part of us, also injudicious? .....

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http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

DAWN, Karachi, Pakistan
21 May 2004 Friday 01 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

Triumph of pragmatism
By Ayaz Amir

..... Every villager in Pakistan knows the story of the farmer who went to a village festival (mela) and there lost his blanket. Looking everywhere for it and not finding it, he said the whole purpose of the mela was to steal his blanket.

Pakistanis can be forgiven for thinking that the whole purpose of holding the Indian elections was to heap scorn on Pakistan. There was nothing unusual about Atal Behari Vajpayee conceding defeat when it became obvious that his party was trailing the Congress. This is what happens in every parliamentary democracy and this was not the first time it was happening in India.

But for Pakistanis this normal exercise was thoroughly amazing. Conditioned to the marvels of military rule, the idea of a peaceful transfer of power after an election, no one crying foul and everyone accepting the result, seemed so alien and unbelievable. They were not slow to express their wonder.

As if this first shock to Pakistani sensibilities wasn`t enough, a second was administered when Mrs Sonia Gandhi declined the prime ministership, passing the mantle instead to Manmohan Singh (honoured son of Chakwal). It doesn`t happen this way in India and it certainly doesn`t in Pakistan.

Consider the grace and dignity Mrs Sonia Gandhi has shown. Consider her measured words, no empty rhetoric (Ms Bhutto please note), no verbosity. Compare this with the desire for eternal power evident in Islamabad and it is tempting to conclude that the Pakistani political class and leadership are simply incapable of getting it right about the country`s affairs.

Like all his military predecessors Gen Musharraf thinks he is saving Pakistan. A bit of Sonian renunciation, or call it Sonian wisdom, should do him a world of good.

The political situation here is so poised that if Musharraf overcomes his fears and settles for democracy, the genuine thing rather than the fake currency we have to soil our hands with, he stands to gain the most. .....

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http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/20040514.htm

DAWN, Karachi, Pakistan
14 May 2004 Friday 23 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

We don`t get it, do we?
By Ayaz Amir

India goes to the polls and the world notices. Pakistan plunges into another exercise in authoritarian management and the world notices but through jaundiced eyes. Are we so dumb that the comparison escapes us? .....

..... In India, if Pakistanis haven`t noticed, the chief election commissioner is the chief election commissioner. Apart from his mistress, if he has one, no one dare meddle in his affairs. In Pakistan the election commission gyrates to orders from above. Do I divulge a state secret? Everyone here knows this to be true.

When will we wake up? When will we learn? When will it dawn on us that it is not India`s size, population, tourism or IT industry making us look small but Indian democracy? Figure this out how you will, this is how the chips fall.

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http://jang.com.pk/thenews/may2004-daily/21-05-2004/oped/o1.htm

The News, Karachi, Pakistan
Friday May 21, 2004-- Rabi-us-Sani 01, 1425 A.H.

The failure of our democracy
By Shafqat Mahmood
smahmood@lhr.comsats.net.pk

The success of Indian democracy is a huge blow to the ego. One feels self-conscious, almost ashamed at the ease with which the Indians manage free and fair elections and transfer of power. We, on the other hand, are still ruled by a General fifty-six years after independence and in the twenty first century. Our elections are almost never free
and transfer of power right from the start has been anything but smooth. What accounts for this? What is so inherently wrong in our system or psyche that does not allow democracy to take root or flourish? .....

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sadna#40:
``For inhabitants of the country overflowing with liberals on our west, only a self-abnegating Hindu is not a extremist/supremacist. This holds true across the whole spectrum of liberals from Naqshbandi to Najam Sethi.``

It is quite unfair of you to blame the liberals on our west. This was the same concept used by the Nehruvian secularists and our western liberal friends are just sticking to the old definition. I know! I lived through that period and was one of them myself once.

nb #40
``Anyway, just by being a Gandhi, the stain of being General Gul`s granddaughter will wash off, she will be more Indian than me, and if I question that, I`m a Hindu supremacist. ``

Understand that Hindu = extremist/supremacist/hegemonist by definition. Add to this that Muslim = liberal by definition, hence being anti-Hindu is liberalism.

For inhabitants of the country overflowing with liberals on our west, only a self-abnegating Hindu is not a extremist/supremacist. This holds true across the whole spectrum of liberals from Naqshbandi to Najam Sethi.

Welcome awaits India`s PM in Pakistani birthplace

By Tahir Ikram

GAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - The people of Gah in Pakistan have a good feeling about Manmohan Singh.

He may have left more than 60 years ago, but this native son has become India`s prime minister-elect.

``I am very happy a son of our village is going to be the prime minister of India,`` said Raja Gulsher, a farmer who served in the medical corp during the 1965 war, one of three fought with India since Partition in 1947.

``If any of the air and water in this place has had an effect on him, he will strike a friendship with Pakistan.``

In a quirky happenstance, both leaders of the nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan were born in what is now enemy territory.

Pakistan`s President Pervez Musharraf was born in Delhi.

Both men carry memories of those tumultuous times when the subcontinent was divided, millions of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus were killed, and Pakistan was created.

Singh has pledged to work with Musharraf to put decades of enmity between their now nuclear-armed nations behind them.

Gulsher said he knows it won`t be easy for Singh.

``We know his constraints. Even then I am sure he will maintain friendship with us. If he comes to our village I`ll be the first to welcome him.``

The pace of life in this rural backwater some 80 km southwest of Islamabad hasn`t changed much since Singh was raised here in the 1930s.

Traffic races over the nearby motorway, but there is no road from it to Gah. Women still draw water by hand from the wells, where Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs of a bygone era once filled their pitchers from separate pools.

They have electricity these days, and some have televisions.

But the modern world makes few intrusions among the mud walled homes or down the narrow uneven lanes of this community of less than two thousand people and their cattle, sheep and goats.

What has changed now is that everyone is a Muslim.

PRIMARY SCHOOL

When Singh attended the government primary school in the late 1930s, Hindus and Sikhs accounted for about half of Gah`s population.

``We used to live without any problem. We used to help each other,`` said Mohammad Khan about relations between Muslims and Hindus. ``They were half of the population. We used to play together, we used to fight together, we used to study together.``

Khan was serving with the British Indian Army in Malaysia in August, 1947 when independence came, and recalls raising a Pakistan flag, while a Christian soldier hoisted India`s tricolour.

Memories of Partition in Gah were less proud.

Baz Khan was 12 years old.

``I was grazing cattle when people came running towards me saying the village has been attacked. I could see smoke and fire coming out of the village.``

Muslims from other villages had attacked Hindu and Sikh households. Some Muslims from Gah, Khan says, gave shelter to their Hindu and Sikh neighbours.

Manmohan Singh`s father moved his family from Gah some years earlier and and during the upheaval of Partition, the dried fruit merchant moved to Amritsar.

Memories in Gah have faded.

Ahmed Khan can`t remember attending class with the young Manmohan Singh, though the school register shows they were contemporaries.

But Khan, while tilling his field under the scorching sun with temperatures soaring above 40 Celsius, said he was proud of the fact today.

``It`s a matter of great happiness. I would want him to be prime minister of India and he should come and visit his village,`` Ahmed Khan told Reuters.

Farmer Mohammad Ashraf at first didn`t remember any Manmohan Singh either.

But asked if he knew a son of Gurmukh Singh Kohli, Ashraf`s seventy-year-old wrinkled face broke into a grin.

``Oh, you mean little Mohna.``

He has no idea what happened to little Mohna after 1941.

``I failed class four, and he passed, after that I don`t know where he went.``

Singh`s new address is 7, Racecourse Road, New Delhi, official residence of the Prime Minister of India. It`s a long way from Gah.