Showing posts with label BJP. Show all posts

The day a U S couple got arrested for Kissing!


Few Americans know that there still is a Connecticut law in force in Hartford, which states It is illegal for a man to kiss his wife on Sunday. At least one American couple couldn't believe itself when the pair were hurled in to a police vehicle  for kissing in public on a Sunday!

This bewildered couple was not in Hartford but was visiting Kerala, an Indian State which takes great pride in calling itself  God’s Own Country, where laws written by Gods are still Gospel truth.

In fact the local police chief, who happened to be a lady, was simply enforcing an Indian law which makes it illegal for anyone to kiss in public on any day, when the couple, unaware of the local law, kissed before a camera at the request of a journalist who was covering an unusual event.

Anti Kiss of Life protesters being chased by police.
The event which was christened as Protest By Kissing was organised by a Facebook group called Kiss of Love, exemplifies the Indian struggle to catch up with  modernity. This unusual protest by breaking an age old law was a public reaction to the high handed puritanical moral policing of the BJP of Prime Minister Modi, whose members had ransacked a local hotel for allowing its customers to kiss and romance.

The unusual media coverage the event received in India and the way the whole episode sort of fissile out show the double standard on morality most Indians can’t shed despite the progress the country has achieved.

Though initiated by a group of people with progressive views on liberty and freedom of speech and expression active on social media, the movement soon gained political overtones inevitable in one of the politically conscious states of India.

The  puritanical moral policing was an act of the BJP, backed by India’s Hindu religious fundamentalists, who aim to grab the power from the Congress party who currently govern Kerala.
On the other hand, Kerala’s communists who are constantly fighting off the BJP has seen a political opportunity.

The result was that the Kiss of love event which was organised to be held peacefully was opposed and disturbed by various organisations under all of these political set ups, forcing the police to remove the handful of the participants even though the government did not intent to enforce the law.

The disruption by the political parties were organised with an eye on the coming election so as to position themselves on the right side of the kissing divide. But it clearly demonstrates the hypocrisy of a society which wants to align itself with the  free and liberal outside world.

Though this was an isolated incident which occurred in Kerala, a state  politically and socially ahead of rest of the country, the approach of the BJP which has succeeded in grabbing power at the national level by unifying and concentrating the votes of the Hindus who form the majority, in holding on to the archaic social set up of India is what worries the progressive minded in India.
New York Times cartoon on the success of Indian Mars Mission.

Incidentally this was reflected in a cartoon by the New York times on the occasion of the success of India’s Mars mission, which lead to widespread protests and  eventual apology from the paper.
Kiss of Love Facebook Group.


Meanwhile, the Kiss of Love brigade of Kerala has actually claimed success of their movement and promised to regroup and continue their efforts to change the social attitude of their countrymen  regarding freedom to love and expression of love. 

Did fighting Indian corruption rob Sonia Gandhi’s UPA of victory in the 2014 election?

Amid all that euphoria of the massive election victory of the BJP, when the whole world was impatiently watching the steps of its would be Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, what captured the attention of the media was a  bizarre thanks giving meeting organised by it.


Several senior leaders of the BJP who won the recent election assembled to felicitate Baba Ramdev, who was conspicuously absent from the meet and media glare, who helped them win the election by his  blessings, which were more mundane than divine.

However the party can neither acknowledge nor felicitate the sources of the massive funds behind its campaign so openly, though someday somehow favours will have to be returned. For now, one Indian, who set out to expose and prevent corruption in India is languishing in the Tiharjail.

Arvind Kejeriwal and his AAP were broke even before he found he had no money to bail himself out. He had acknowledged long time back that his party had no funds to take on the NDA and the UPA in the parliamentary election, a political reality glaring at him he refused to see before setting out on his mission.

Hello India, Welcome to the Club of Religious Governance!

Let us face it, the Indian parliament election of 2014 has clearly enrolled India among the countries ruled by their religious  majority  where all other religions have only a minority status.

The Bharathiya Janata Party, a party widely perceived to be  based on Hindu Ideology and agenda of Hindutwa has won a landslide victory in the election of 2014, the results of which were announced today. The party has won a clear majority Of 283 seats and their National Democratic Alliance a total of 337 seats.

It would hardly be of concern if the massive majority was spread across the country because landslides in politics are nothing to write home about.

It is the localisation of the un opposed power of the BJP, as is clear from the CNN IBN graphic which changes the nature of governance of India.
With Narendra Modi's Victory, India chooses to go back to the Power of One http://ibnlive.in.com/home_america.html

There are no representation of opposition in several  states in India, which comprise a large chunk of the Indian population concentrated on an equally large part of the Indian land mass. It is as if India has been physically divided again.

Friday, May 16, 2014
Posted by Unknown

Why Does Its Manifesto Make Not Just the BJP but Everyone Else Too So Nervous?

BJP has finally released a Manifesto on the election day. The Congress party and others have questioned the delay and BJP has come with enough plausible explanations which have been ridiculed by various opponents.

As one congress leader put it, If the BJP can’t take out a Manifesto in time how are they going to manage the country’s affairs?

But  the real reason for the BJP to be so defensive and nervous about publishing its manifesto well before the start of the election instead of putting it off till the last moment is in the Manifesto itself.

Perhaps the simplest of explanation is that with the reference to Ayodhya and Article 370, the BJP Manifesto resembles the proverbial Wolf in Sheep’s clothing.

The BJP was not sure if, for the one billion voters of India, it will look anything but a dressed up version of the old wolf they have shunned twice. The party obviously didn’t want to scare them away by the inevitable media exposure, scrutiny and debate the Manifesto would have generated in the crucial weeks before the election.

Monday, April 07, 2014
Posted by Unknown

Can India’s Antony Be Its Next Dark Horse Prime Minister?


Let me say this, I barely know A.K Antony except that we both hail from ‘God’s Own Country’, the little piece of beautiful land on the tip of the Indian Peninsula, the marvellous beauty of which  is preserved by its  anti development politics.

Not a political analysts by any stretch of Imagination; for that matter not even someone who lives anymore in the country, there are no pretences of erudition either in this. As a common man whose eyes and ears are not shut to the abundance of information incessantly pouring on to the a screen in front of me, I simply exert my fundamental right to venture a wild guess of my own.

In fact It is Antony’s own words during a recent campaign which points to this inevitability.

Criticising the  Marxist Communist Party, his main political opposition in Kerala, Antony has predicted that the CPM will be forced to support the UPA , the ruling  alliance  to form the next government, as they did in 2004.

The CPM  has not only vehemently denied this, but is strongly harping on the wishful idea of a “Third Font”, a political salad bowl of nuts, leaves and weeds, hardly palatable to the Indian masses.

Indians are fed up such exotic diet, meted out to them by several coalitions who only unite to fight and wither away in the past, lacking common ideology, purpose or will to govern.

The current “Third Front” so far remains merely as a photo session, with raised and clutched hands of as many leaders of regional parties as the number of those who want to be the Prime Minister of India, which has become a ridiculous icon of the fast crumbling idea of the Union of India.

Nevertheless, manifestation of  a political Phobia against the Bharathiya Janata Party,  which has unite the scattered opposition in the past, is in its highest pitch this time, thanks to a brazen and aggressive campaign of BJP’s self appointed prime ministerial candidate Modi himself.

If this manifested in the previous two elections as a force to prevent the BJP, a party with a hidden Hindutwa agenda to push minorities to second class, this time it is working as a formidable force to prevent a dictatorial Modi from grabbing the Prime Ministerial chair of India.  

Abetted by such concerns within the country’s minorities and even within the BJP itself, various anti Modi campaigns  by various forces, especially by the newly formed Aam Admi Party of Arvind Kejeriwal, can end up with the Third Front  grabbing a significant number of parliamentary seats, despite various opinion polls predicting otherwise.

Moreover, the gap between the results of opinion polls and political reality in Indian parliamentary election (different from the state elections influenced by local and regional forces), could be wider, given the massive financial influence exerted on the Indian media ahead of this year’s election.

All these factors can add up to a situation quite similar to 2004, as being claimed by Antony, perhaps less rosier than what is hoped by Rahul Gandhi, his party’s vice president and its potential nominee for the position of the Prime Minister.

Given the extreme and publicised ambitions of each of the leaders of the Third Front to become the PM, it is unlikely that they can agree upon one, especially if the combined strength is likely to be less than that of the UPA.

It  will also be not entirely unrealistic to expect  the two lady Chief Ministers to keep themselves out of the front, certainly due to the presence of their arch enemies and in any case as none of their male counterparts will concede them the coveted position of the Prime Minister.

In such a scenario, the combined determination of  everyone to Keep Modi out of power, for the good of the nation and their own political survival can crystallise in to a support of Sonia Gandhi’s UPA in forming the next government.

Rahul Gandhi, the vice president of  the Congress Party is will be , at best a very reluctant Prime Minister, who will much prefer to be its ideologist and party builder till at least another election.

In any case, Rahul Gandhi, who has taken the brunt of the political rhetoric and criticism from each of the leaders of the Front, (Remember Amul Baby?) is not someone, the elderly Prime Ministerial aspirants of the front will accept without some heart burn and loss of face.

That is where A K Antony and his stature within the party and his consensus building talents will come to the aid of all Modi haters, perhaps as a silver lining on the dark clouds the next election threaten to bring over the great nation of India.  

If that happens, the leaders of the CPM which Antony NOW says will have no choice but to support the UPA,  will be more than happy to support him, even forgetting the party ideology.

Many of them, after all,  are his compatriots  from God’s Own Country.


Sunday, April 06, 2014
Posted by Unknown

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