Shiva and his Gans

On a cold December morning we made our way through the labyrinth of narrow lanes  that lead up to the Kashi Viswanath temple from the hallowed Ghats of Banaras. Behind us the sun was just peeping through the thick mist that hung over the mighty Ganga.  Streets where humans and cows usually jostle each other for the right of the way, wore a deserted look. The oldest living city in the world was still waking up.

The only people giving us company besides the ubiquitous Bengali Tourists were the tall dark hooded figures conspicuous in Khakhi Green. Such heavy security inside a temple seemed odd.  However I did not give them much thought,  for suddenly before us stood the Kashi Viswanath temple with it’s majestic Golden dome looming large over the numerous small temples surrounding it. We stepped through the narrow entrance into the Sanctum Sanctorum.  With folded hands and bent heads we stood before  the God of Gods .

Once outside, it took me a few moments to regain my composure, to be jolted out of the sublime ecstasy into the harsh world of reality. A few feet away from the present day temple stood a gigantic Mosque with a few remains of the demolished original Temple structure still visible beneath it. The crowd of pilgrims which had now started to build up , kept casting surreptitious glances at the original temple site. The premises of one of the holiest shrines of Hindus looked more like a Border check post, with a thirty feet high barbed wire fencing separating the two structures.

The gun wielding security men who surrounded the temple caught my attention again. At that moment a strange thought came to mind. These security men, it seemed were Shiva’s modern Day Gans .They attend to our lord night and day, in the biting cold and scorching summers from the Gangetic plains of Banaras to the lofty Mountains of Amarnath. They ensure that no AURANZEB of this century can dare to harm any of Shiv’s abodes while he resides within and answers our prayers.

Har Har Mahadev

Deja Vu – Mumbai Bleeds, UPA Bungles!!!

Digi Raja does it again. While the country was still coming to terms with the grievous human tragedy caused by the barbaric act of Islamic Fundamentalism, Digvijay Singh rubbed salt into the wounds by saying that “ the involvement of Hindu Nationalist organizations could not be ruled out”.The Guru's statement came after his “Chela”, Rahul Gandhi put his foot into his mouth claiming that the government had stopped 99 percent of terror attacks since 26/11.

Gandhi's gaffe speaks volumes of his much touted education and possibly explains why he was shown the door by Cambridge. Under severe criticism for not participating in a single debate on matters of national importance in his 6 years as MP , the Prime Minister in waiting grabbed the first available opportunity and made a fool of himself .

Rahul's mentor Digvijay is a class apart. His each statement redefines the level to which a political party can stoop for vote bank politics. Last time when Mumbai had bled, Digvijay had belittled the sacrifices of martyr Hemant Karkare. This time he went a step further and disputed the affiliations of the perpetrators themselves. His comments were totally uncalled for as they not only show the country in poor light , but also weakens India's stand against Pakistan on the international stage. Unfortunately for the  Congress , Digvijay’s antics have badly boomeranged. Battered by unprecedented corruption, shaken by relentless terror attacks and bearing the brunt of rocketing inflation, the last thing the common man needed was an Insensitive politician playing the muslim card over the dead bodies of 21 innocent people.

The government hasn’t fared much better than the party. Our  prime minsiter always cuts a sorry figure when “exceptional circumstances “ force him to come out of his shell and face the media. Every terror attack is followed by the same statement “ The perpetrators will be brought to justice” .The alacrity with which Kasab is being brought to justice inspires great confidence in  government's intensions of handling terror.

Desperate measures call for desperate actions. The government has to give up it's “week knee approach” to terrorism if the blood shed has to stop.The government has to realize that Islamic terrorism is no longer just an external threat  because Islamic fundamentalism has become endemic within the country .Implementation of Uniform Civil Code should go a long way in tackling this growing menace.  Tough laws like POTA are needed for tackling the internal threat. Intelligence needs to be beefed up and  huge conventional armed forces should give way to tactical squads trained in Guerilla warfare

As far as external state sponsored terror is concerned, the government can do better than submitting an incorrect list of most wanteds to Pakistan. India has to look up to the way Isreal has gone about in dealing with Hamas and other fundamentalist groups. The time has come to take the bull by the horns.

PS: If you have managed to read through the post you might want to read Subramaniyan Swamy's views on this issue:

Babagiri vs Dadagiri

It was on the 4 th of June,1989, that armored vehicles of People's Liberation army  rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen  square and brutally crushed the protests for democracy. Exactly 22 years later, the ghosts of Tiananmen came back to haunt the worlds' largest democracy. Paramilitary and police personnel scooped down on unsuspecting Sadhus, sleeping women and frightened kids at the iconic Ramlila Miadan and unleashed such brutality that had not been witnessed even during the dark days of Emergency. Though the two incidents vastly differ in magnitude, they are  similar in intent, both being  acts of unbridled oppression by unscrupulous political regimes drunk on power.

Buoyed by the stupendous success of Anna Hazare's crusade against corruption, Baba Ramdev had launched a satyagrah to pressurize the government into bringing back the billions stashed in tax havens .His detractors claim that his aim was to overshadow Anna's movement so that he may establish himself as the face of civil society. However the truth is that he has been vociferously campaigning against black money for years. After Anna's movement he just found the right time to press up the ante and go for an all out war against the government,

Under the leadership of possibly the weakest prime minister ever, the government made a mockery of the situation. The congress party and it's government struck a discordant note, with the party crying foul when four of it's most senior ministers gave a red carpet welcome to Baba in New Delhi. It seems that the four ministers overcompensated after being reprimanded by their “Madame” for mollycoddling the saffron clad Baba. Or perhaps the whole clampdown was orchestrated by their “Madame“herself who was trying to emulate her Mother in Law.

Either ways the government has played into Baba Ramdev 's hands ,who having probably clocked more hours on the screen than all the Khans of Bolywood combined, has made sure that the current fiasco beats any reality show in the TRP ratings. His antics of jumping off the dais and hiding in women’s clothes, coupled with the shocking images of police firing teargas amidst scared women and crying children running helter-skelter, have had their desired effects. The Ravanlila enacted by the police at the Ramlila Maidan has shaken the nation out of slumber, onto the streets.

Even the BJP which was still smarting from the shell shackling it had received in the last polls and was groping for issues, has seized this opportunity of championing the cause of a saffron clad Baba with both hands. Amidst all this fiasco, the aam admi can just hope that the core issues of Corruption and black money are not put on the backburner. As far as the grand old party is concerned, with characters like Sibbal and Digvijay at the helm and with a spineless PM being remote controlled by his peremptory Madame, the party is at a risk of fading into political oblivion in the next general elections.

Hazar Hazares

The Gandhian Anna Hazare's crusade against rampant corruption prevailing in the bureaucratic and political circles of the country, has evoked a response that has stunned the three pillars of our democracy, the media and possibly even the civil society itself. Within a week of the launch of the Jantar-Mantar dharna, the central government was on its knees, and it gave in to the demands of the civil society.

In the euphoria that ensued, some columnists and observers claimed that Hazare's revolution had even surpassed the JP movement of the 70s.The JP movement , I am told, had the youth quitting jobs and universities and sacrificing their lives in response to the Jail bharo calls of the socialist leaders. Hazare's movement in contrast involved facebook virtual events, signature campaigns on online forums and RDB candle light marches. While the JP movement shook the mighty Indira Gandhi, Hazare's movement targeted a government that was led by possibly the weakest PM ever , a government that was already in shambles thanks to ministers like Raja and Pawar.

Hazare's movement might be against what JP movement was all about: “A democratically Elected government”. While there is no denying the fact that the country is in a dire need of a revolution against corruption, the Jan Lok Pal bill proposed by Hazare will change the administrative setup in a manner that is too serious for the bill to be drafted and passed in two months time. At a time when the judiciary seems to be losing credibility, when the armed forces, considered once to be epitomes of patriotism and integrity, have been tainted , and when a politician whose future lies in the hands of Jan Janrdhan is neck deep in corruption, the idea that the many members of the independent Lokpal appointed at the state and central levels, will be Lord Rama personified seems to be naïve.

Morever, who has given the authority to a father-son duo and a retired Judge to decide the future of a country of a more than billion people? Lets be honest, the support on facebook and the candle light marches was an emotional response of the netsavy youth who was already buoyed by the world cup win and was looking for ways to vent out its anger against the corrupt practices of the Manmohan Singh government.Still a vast majority of Indians are undoubtedly unaware of the proposals of the Jan Lokpal bill.

I am not at all against “the fight against corruption”. We have reached a point where the country has to take a radical initiative to reign in corruption.I am just concerned that when we can't find three “spotless clean” Hazares to draft the bill,where will we find Hazar Hazares, who as members of Lokpal will cleanse the country of corruption.

Should he have walked off??

On a sultry summer afternoon, the Chepauk crowd watched in stunned silence as the Master trudged back to the pavilion. Braving the oppressive heat, the thirty thousand strong crowd had come to witness the much anticipated ton of tons. Instead they were treated to a display of integrity, that makes the little man so big in stature.

However by walking off in the referral age, Sachin seems to have opened the Pandora's Box. The jury is out on the Ricky Ponting brand of cricketers who insist on waiting for the umpire’s decision.

However let us give cricket a break and move on to the other hot topic that is jostling with cricket for the prime time slot on  news channels. The  embattled Manmohan Singh government is facing a fresh barrage of corruption charges. However Manmohan Singh the batsman cum captain refuses to walk off, despite being stumped on many occasions in the political arena. Instead, he is taking refuge under the referral system of Indian democracy-”The General Elections”. He believes that his General Elections victory in 2009 is a "not out" decision by the third umpire.

However, like the cricket referrals, the elections too are not devoid of flaws. In spite of clear indictment in innumerable scams, the incumbent Prime Minister may yet again crawl to a majority, thanks to coalition politics. Also, while a bad referral decision in cricket may cost a match, our country will loose thousands of crores of the taxpayers’ money if this Manmohan Singh government remains in the office.

 Manmohan Singh, like Sachin Tendulkar has long been venerated for being a man of impeccable integrity. However his obdurate justifications of all the scams and the shielding of the scam tainted ministers have done his reputation no good. It is hard to believe that one of the sharpest brains in the country was unaware of the thousands of crores being siphoned off under his very nose. How could he be ignorant of the crores being paid to MPs to protect his government.

Still, all is not lost for him. The Rajas and Kalmadis of his government will provide him enough opportunities to walk off the political pitch without waiting for the decision to be referred to the Indian Public. I hope that next time Dr Singh will take a leaf out of Sachin's book and will leave the political arena to the Ricky Pontings of Indian politics.

Dhoni Bashing: Justified??

I felt so shattered by India's heart breaking loss to South Africa that I missed my early morning flight to Mumbai :P. However, while I am waiting at the airport for the next available flight,I would like to use this opportunity to finally make a foray into blogging. Needless to say , no topic would be better for my debute than " Dhoni Bashing":The country's favorite pastime.

Many of the questions that are being raised over Dhoni's captaincy have no merit.

1)He is being criticized for his timing of the batting powerplay with experts suggesting that he should have taken it when Sachin and Gambhir were going great guns. Well, he did take it when both the batsmen were on the crease. The batsmen were the ones who made a mess of it.

2)We all seem to have gone berserk over Nehra being chosen for the last over. Over the years Nehra has proved himself to be the best Indian Bowler in death overs, having won many crucial matches. An inside edge to the boundary wasn’t his fault. A spinner like Bhajji would have been smashed in the last over.

3)The shuffling of batting order. A couple of big hits from unpredictable Pathan's blade and I wouldn't be writing this blog.

I wonder how Dhoni Manages to evoke such mixed feelings of love and hatred in the Indian Public. One day he is decorated with titles like 'Captain Cool ' and 'The Most Successful Indian Captain', the next day his house is pelted. The Australians call this 'tall poppy syndrome'. When a poppy plant grows too tall, they lop its head off.


I feel that the Indian public see themselves in the “Plumber's son turned Millionare”. The average Indian draws inspiration from the Middle Class boy who redefined success and dreams of emulating him. At the same time, subdued in some corner of their heart is a feeling of envy for the one among us who now plays in Millions. We vent out this envy on Dhoni when India looses and we are jolted out of our dreams, back into the harsh reality.

I know my views won't go down well with most of the readers(Incase any one reads this in the first place :) ).But a bit of honest introspection with a cool mind and you will realize that my blog is not just a Mumbo-Jumbo.