Desicritics Author: Apollo

The Ugly Briton

Apollo — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 08:54:24 EDT

If there is one trait that sets apart a Briton from the rest of the human species then it must definitely be a head still frozen in the permafrost of that last ice age that might somehow explain their chilling insensitivity to appreciate and respect the point of view and sensibilities of others.

One hundred and fifty years after the Indian soldiers employed by the armies of the East India Company, along with a large part of the Indian population revolted against the British for precisely that reason, the Brits seem to have not yet learned their lesson and now their descendants have arrived in India to "commemorate" the "bravery" of their ancestors by being just as haughty and insensitive as their forefathers had been.

That rebellion happened exactly one hundred years after the Battle of Plassey gave the British East India Company a foothold in the eastern region of India in what is now the country of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. From there, over a period of several decades they steadily expanded their hold over the rest of the country on the backs of mostly Indian soldiers led by an exclusively White class of officers.

The Indian soldiers tolerated routine discrimination by the British for over a hundred years. They were denied promotions and avenues of career growth, , humiliated daily and forced to fight against and commit atrocities against their own people. It finally got too much to bear for the Indian soldiers and finally they had had enough. The soldiers raised the banner of revolt in the summer of 1857 when they felt that the Brits had gone too far and for six months fought valiantly and nearly brought an end to the British rule in India.

But this revolution unlike the American one a century earlier on the other side of the world again against the same British insensitivity lacked the ideological fortitude and the vision that had powered it and slowly it wilted away, the tide turned and the British were able to again use the divergent self(ish)-interests of different Indian players and playing one off against the other managed to resert their control again.

When they finally gained the upper hand, the revenge the British extracted against the people of those regions which were at the forefront of the rebellion was horrific. Whole villages and cities were reduced to rivers of blood for nearly a year after the uprising was put down the British shot, hung, raped and pillaged the countryside with gay abandon and some of the very men whose memory these Brits have arrived to "commemorate" were neck deep involved in what can only be termed as one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed.

These Britons, schooled as they are since childhood in the dubious theory of the "White man's burden" simply don't get it. They are unable to or unwilling to come to terms with their gruesome past and the reality that the British Empire was like any other empire in history. It was an enterprise of loot, pillage and oppression.

The only enterprise of the British empire was to fill the coffers of the elite of England with the wealth snatched from the rest of the world. If only the British group realised that they would be here not to "commemorate" the ghoulish acts of their forefathers but to build bridges of understanding with a people that their ancestors had once wronged.

To remind us painfully that when the Brits left India physically they left behind their sock puppets and intellectual blowtards, a slave dynasty of sorts in charge whose descendants are now just like their forebears, are groveling for the sake of their pale skinned masters.

There was even an effort made by some of these Macaulay’s schoolchildren to pass it off as some kind of “joint commemoration”. If these worthies had actually noticed these people where only commemorating Indian soldiers who fought for the British side and they were in no way commemorating any of the mutineers who had rebelled against their ancestors.

If they still think otherwise, can they name any efforts made by this group to reach out to someone on the Indian side- perhaps one of the descendants of those who fought on the other side? Maybe some Indian organization to arrange joint commemorations? Did they ever make statements saying that this was a great tragedy for both sides and they are here to reach out to the other side? Did they ever admit and at least express regret for the genocidal crime committed against innocent civilians by their ancestors in the aftermath of the defeat of the revolt?

On the contrary, one heard rhetoric expressing that they thought what their ancestors did was not only good for Britain but also for India!

''I have enormous admiration for what he did and what all the brits who fought and lived here did. They believed that it was a good thing for Britain and even for India. Though we have retreated and gone India survives as how a democratic system should work,'' said Mark Havelock Allan, Descendant, Sir Henry Havelock.

Another fellow said that in his opinion it was not a war against British imperialism but a war between the mutineers on one side and the British, supported by the majority of the Indians on the other side!

''This wasn't a war between English and Indians , it was war between the English and a majority of the population of the subcontinent versus the mutineers,'' said Roy Trustram Eve, Former Solider, Kings Royal Rifles Corps.

Another woman, a descendant of another ghoul who rampaged through Jhansi during that time, said

''So many people say that they were racist, they were not, they were class ridden. We believe that we behaved well, we were not cruel or beastly,'' said Delma Vernon, Descendant, Sir Hugh Rose.

So much for so-called "joint commemoration".

This was the general attitude displayed by this group who even tried to present a Plaque "commemorating" the genocidal acts of a certain British regiment that participated in that war.

An UP government official correctly said that while this shameless group could go ahead and pray at the graves of their so called "great" ancestors no public commemorations or speeches would be allowed.

P.S. The latest news is that the group has cancelled its plans and are returning home. The Incredible Beeb as usual is making a big song and dance about a member of the group visiting his ancestor's grave "defying" all the protestors. Implying that he risked his life and limb to do so. In reality the guy just walked into the Lucknow residency and no one stopped him!

As reflected in the words of the UP state official, no Indian has anything against this bunch visiting and praying at their ancestors' graves. only that they should be doing their "commemoration" in the UK and not here.

Where Is Your Outrage This Time, Comrades?

Apollo — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 01:17:33 EDT

This week saw three events in quick succession involving India's accursed communists. The first was the beastly act in Nandigram in West Bengal where the communists are in power and, using the machinery of the state, butchered the common man in the dozens with all the accompanying claptrap: gaudy red rhetoric that it was for their own good in true classical Soviet-Chinese-Khmer Rouge style.

The next was in Chhattisgarh where another more "purer" and virulent strain of the same gutter virus, this one known to toxicologists as the 'Naxalite (Maoist)' strain murdered more than 50 policemen in cold blood because they were agents of the state.

And of course there's the one involving the more domesticated, scotch and soda sipping, suave, but always obstructive and a no do-gooder "mainstream" political outfit, which this time contented itself by "merely trying" to assault and manhandle a minister of the Union government in the very heart of Indian democracy - the hall of the parliament itself!

As repulsive and disgusting as the above incidents are, the response of the so called watchdog of democracy, the mainstream media and the self appointed "secular" conscience keepers of the country, the "intellectuals", assorted NGO's and the ~~human~~ terrorist rights mafia is even more disgusting. Their one line excuse on behalf of their comrades for each one of the above incidents - It is the other guy's fault.

For each and every one of the above heinous criminal acts they have not the usual burst of outrage and condemnation, screaming banner headlines, 24/7 blanket TV news coverage and candle light vigils for the victims but only lame excuses trying to cover for their fellow comrades on the field with blood on their hands.

According to them the Nandigram massacre happened because it was somehow the fault of the victims themselves who had barricaded the village and supposedly attacked the police; the Chhattisgarh massacre happened because again it was the fault of the victims, socio-economic reasons blah, blah, blah, a moth-eaten theory that somehow never seems to hold good for our next door neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh .

These two countries must certainly fit the classical communist caricature of an elite dominated, oppressive, exploitative society better than secular, democratic, multicultural India with all its faults and yet never see any kind of similar naxalite activity. And of course the shameful Parliament incident happened because it was the fault of the Union minister himself who along with his cabinet colleagues from a particular southern state were being partial towards their own state and hence deserved the sound thrashing he almost got and so on and on.

This stench of hypocrisy by the mainstream media and the leftist "intellectual" clique is so overpowering that one of their own while commenting on the subject of Nandigram asked, Imagine what would have happened if even one person happened to die in a police firing in Gujarat? Of course, needless to say that all hell would have broken loose by now.

Even so, on the other hand if instead of 50 policemen being murdered by the Naxalites, the police had killed or captured 50 naxalites in the very same opposition party ruled state of Chhattisgarh, there would have been an unholy outcry by now by the ~~human~~ terrorist rights mafia, the media and the "intellectual" clique with all the real and trumped up allegations of human rights abuses, civilians being targeted and obviously with the accompanying preaching that all contentious issues must be solved by negotiations.

This of course does not hold good when they themselves have a contentious issue to discuss with an union minister - then it is fine to throw away the peacenik facade to the winds and beat him up or in the case of some defenceless villagers, start shooting at random.

Here is another former leftist ideologue with a mild conscience attack who seems to have realised the dangers of left wing extremism but is reluctant to offend his comrades lest they declare him an apostate from the cult of Marxism and ostracize him from their scotch and soda parties where they, in a patronizing tone, discuss the plight of the hundreds of millions of people with no access to clean drinking water even after 60 years of ~~faithfully pursuing socialist policies~~ Independence.

So he tries a humorous route by dragging in their favourite strawman into the room, the Hindutva monster, shadow boxes him repeatedly while at the same time trying to get at his real target, his fellow leftist clique who in his own words "speak of the need to 'contextualize Naxalite violence', where 'contextualize' really means excuse or explain away."

In my last column, I wrote of how Indian intellectuals rightly charge the RSS with promoting instability in 1947-8, yet gloss over the contemporaneous attacks on the Indian state by the Communists. One hopes, and trusts, that they will not make the same mistake this time around. Thus far, writers and scholars have been in the vanguard of the struggle against Hindutva. Yet it does not appear that they have yet recognized Maoism for what it is -- a comparable threat to the noble idea of India upheld by the makers of our nation, by the likes of Tagore, Gandhi, Nehru, and Ambedkar.

A promising start but then he himself gets into the same act of trying to "contextualize" or "excuse and explain away" his fellow comrades actions.

The reason intellectuals are often less than even-handed in their treatment of the two kinds of extremism is that the left-wing kind presumes to speak for the poor. Hitler and the Hindutva brigade wear their brutality and bigotry on their sleeve. On the other hand, Stalin and the Naxalites claim to be acting on behalf of the oppressed. This allows them to exercise a kind of blackmail -- plagued by middle-class guilt, intellectuals are loath to criticize those who are at least living with the poor.

Notice him still shadow boxing the Hindutva monster even going to the extent of comparing it to Hitler while actually trying to explain that his fellow comrades "reluctance" to criticize the Naxalites is because they are "living with the poor". What an hypocrisy of the worst kind!

Or is it that he is loathe to admit that his fellow urban "intellectual" comrades and the Naxalite terrorists share the same "ideals" but only differ in the means to be used to arrive at the same shared Utopian goal?

p.s Video of the aftermath of the Nandigram Massacre.

The Implications Of China's Burgeoning Military Spending

Apollo — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:12:45 EDT

China has in the last one month officially hiked its defense spending by 17.5% to about $45 billion this year. Many security analysts across the world estimate that the actual spending is at least 2 to 3 times more than that totalling nearly $100 billion per year.That makes China the third largest defense spender in the world this year after the US and Russia/(or Japan)* with a budget equal to nearly one-fifth of the US defense budget and nearly six times that of India's total defense spending.

So, what are China's long term and short term plans with this spending increase? The short term plan is to hike the salaries of the PLA personnel by upto 20% and check the signs of discontent that are said to be brewing within the PLA ranks about the low wages that have not kept pace with China's rapidly expanding economy and the resultant increase in the cost of living.

The long term plan is to make sure that there is a firm foundation by 2010 for the planned second level of modernization to begin from 2010 onwards and lasting upto 2020 by when China plans to transform its forces from largely manpower based armies designed for the battlefields of the 20th century to smaller but highly technological forces capable of engaging hi-tech adversaries in short duration, high intensity conflicts.

To that end, China is investing in big ticket programs to build advanced nuclear attack and ballistic submarines, Designing and building its first Aircraft Carrier and working on improving the range and accuracy of its missile arsenal which includes ICBMs, MRBMs and Submarine based ballistic missiles.It also recently unveiled its new indigenously built J-10 Multi role fighter aircraft and in January it conducted an ASAT test by blowing up an old weather satellite of its own in low earth orbit sparking widespread international condemnation.

Many Western analysts are under the impression that the rapid buildup of the Chinese forces is aimed at making sure that Taiwan does not declare independence. While this is largely true, it will be a fallacy on our part to assume that the dragon is doing nothing much at its tail end.

India-Defence had an article about a year and half ago about unprecedented Chinese military buildup in the Tibetan plateau against India. This threat speculation has by now materialised. The Qinghai-Tibet railway is complete upto Lhasa and is now being expanded to the Nepal Border coming very close to and pointing like a dagger to India's vulnerable Chicken neck area near the Sikkim-Nepal-Bangladesh-Bhutan junction.This will enable China to attempt to slice off India's North-east from its mainland in case of conflict leaving the Indian forces in that region stranded and in peace time flood Indian markets with cheap Chinese goods made by forced prison labour.

On the West, China has built a fully metallic highway capable of carrying Battle tanks, Armoured personnel carriers and other heavy equipment linking Lhasa to Urumqi and Kashgar at its frontier with Central Asia. It has also setup a listening post in Aksai Chin. India-defence says that the Indian response of upgrading the Daulat Beg Oldi outpost in Ladakh with advanced communication equipment is not adequate because the PLA is capable of deploying upto two divisions on the Ladakh front at short notice taking advantage of the Lhasa-Kashgar highway.

Also China has built two new helipads that can support four helicopter squadrons and also has by now completed building two new airstrips to bolster the PLAAF. And also it has completed deploying twenty MRBMs and 60 short range missiles aimed at Indian cities in the North like Srinagar, Delhi, Chandigarh, Shimla and also many other vital military installations in the area.

And if all this was not enough China is already expanding its presence around the Indian peninsula. According to Navy Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta.

"China we believe is shaping the maritime battle field in the region. It is making friends at the right places.If you don't have the capability to operate in those waters, for a length of time, then you need friends who will support your cause, when the time comes, so definitely China is doing that, as there are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and down below Africa. So it is a known fact that we are ringed by states, which may have a favourable disposition towards China. They are looking 20 years ahead."

And in such a disquieting scenario the current Indian government in its infinite "wisdom" has decided to keep the Indian defence spending largely flat in this year's budget leading to concerns among many analysts that it is too little for a country like India with two hostile neighbours straddling almost its entire length of Western and northern frontiers and at the same time facing serious problems with so many failed or failing states around it.

* The Final figures for Military spending in 2007 will be available only in 2008 at the end of the financial year.

Indian Languages And Caste Prejudice

Apollo — Wed, 7 Mar 2007 00:09:29 EST

It's a sad truth that the Dalits have historically suffered a lot because of the caste based prejudice against them. Everyone agrees that this legacy remains a shameful blot on our society as a whole. Nevertheless it is disingenuous for any one, no matter how aggrieved they feel, to make up some baseless theories not grounded in facts.

One such example is this interview of a Dalit activist and Ex-Naxalite member Mr Chandra Bhan Prasad. He claims that Indian languages carry the legacy of centuries of caste prejudice within them and hence the Dalits should give up all the Indian languages and adopt English instead.

Perhaps Mr Prasad has not yet realised that if one extends his own theory, even the English language will be found to carry the legacies of slavery, genocide, colonialism and racism within it. Or perhaps he feels that since all that happened to someone else like the native Americans, black Africans or Australian aborigines, one can conveniently overlook it.

In Hindi, to greet somebody we say pranam. The person bows down and there is a body coordination like folding hands and bowing down of the head when he or she says pranam.
According to Indian tradition, Dalits don't have the right to receive pranam . Because the receiver of the pranam had the right to bless, so Dalits never received pranams. In response, the person responds with 'khush raho (be happy).

I want to emphasis the fact that how Indian languages - be it Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil or Malayalam - all of them carry the legacy of caste. But if you replace Hindi or Tamil by English you will greet by saying 'good morning.' The other person will respond saying 'good morning'. Both will look into the eyes and equality is established.

If that was even remotely true then surely Blacks, native Americans and Australian aborigines would have attained equal rights centuries before in their own societies. But sadly that has not been the case even to this day. One has to understand that language whether it is English, Chinese, Zulu, Hindi or whatever is merely a means of expression. It does not have an existence on its own and hence blaming it for the crimes of its speakers is wrong.

There are too many caste-based abuses in India. People say chori-chamari na karna. (Don't steal like the chamars, who are the lowest caste amongst the Dalits). In the countryside these abuses are quite common, even now. "I'll make you a bhangi(sweeper caste)!" - is quite often used as a threat.
In Hindi films and television serials they have slightly modified these age-old abuses. They now say chori-chakari na karna. It hurts us. Analyse it with a little sensitivity. These abuses are meant for us only; it reflects the mindset of Indians.

In that case even the English language has racist epithets for nearly every ethnic and religious group in the world. So would he advise all those affected groups to follow his example and give up speaking English? That they should cut themselves off from all the opportunities for advancement it offers in today's world, which he himself goes on to describe in the rest of the interview.

When you speak English it so happens that you dress up differently. I get invited to parties and when I speak in English people talk differently and are even ready to listen to me.
What I speak, if spoken in Hindi, doesn't make an impact at all. I am dismissed but if I say the same things in English, I am heard and applauded. Also, you may have noticed that English-speaking people tend to wear suits and matching shoes. Better dressing elevates your position and makes you heard.

If he had instead made a case that more and more Dalits should aim to get higher education and move up the social ladder and for that a good, fluent working knowledge of English is most essential in today's world, he would have made better sense than by baselessly claiming that all Indian languages are vehicles of caste prejudice and hence should be shunned entirely.

Barkha Dutt on the Freedom of Speech

Apollo — Thu, 4 Jan 2007 00:03:48 EST

Barkha Dutt, in her ~~rant~~ op-ed piece in Hindustan Times titled Everyman's Story on 30 Dec 2006 writes about her views on the New Media, whose rise to prominence was also celebrated by the Time Magazine at the end of 2006 by terming it and everyone involved with it as its Person of the Year.

She starts her article with the obligatory platitudes to the "faceless multitudes" who according to her are now taking interest in the collection and dissemination of information and are also making their opinion on various issues of public interest known.

And then she goes on to make a startling claim that "popular opinion is often bigoted, blasphemous and banal". But neglects to mention from whose viewpoint that is so.

Surprisingly, she a prominent journalist who owes her job to the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech, seems to plump for censorship when she says,

Thankfully, we can screen and censor these messages most of the time (except when they are going on 'live').

Before one wonders what's going on, she makes it clear where she is coming from,

Even so, there is always the danger that majority opinion can steamroll enlightened thought, and we, in the media, must be mindful of that.

So this is where the mask slips off. She is fine with the concept of freedom of speech as long as it gives her and people like her, who share her views the right to freedom of speech. The moment someone with an opposing viewpoint comes forward, somehow that same freedom of speech is not so sacrosanct for her anymore.

But the agonising question which has exercised even the greatest of great minds for millenia is who gets to decide who is "enlightened" and who is not. Is it the tenured bureaucrat sitting in Shastri Bhavan, the politician, the media anchor in the studio, the various upholders of public morality who demand censorship of movies, books, plays and festivities which they do not like?

How is her view any different from that of the many authoritarian governments across the world who regularly censor the media and restrict access to the Internet by giving the same reasons that she is espousing- i.e., to uphold public morality or to moderate and mediate public opinion which according to them might be "bigoted", "blasphemous" and "banal"?

She is on a very slippery slope here and probably knows it, which is why she then tries to make her case by ranting against a now defunct blog called Warfornews, which had a bunch of her fellow professional journalists who published leaked e-mails and publicised office gossip from the news media, and tries to extrapolate it to include all the bloggers from various backgrounds and blogging on almost every other topic under the sun in the same tent, which is much more ludicrous than it seems.

She thus fails in her misguided attempt to strike a blow against Liberty. Her inane logic and reasoning fails to convince that freedom of speech should have 'caveats' introduced by a bunch of "enlightened thinkers". This is a line of reasoning which very soon leads to subsequent censorship and oppression in the name of the common good, public morality and/or mediation- The control of the masses by the "enlightened few".

The Muslim Demography Of India: Sachar Committee Report

Apollo — Wed, 6 Dec 2006 14:46:26 EST

The full text of the Sachar Committee report is available for download here. The Committee was setup by the UPA government on March 9th, 2005 to study the Socio-Economic and Educational status of the Muslims in India. It was headed by Justice Rajender Sachar and had six other members Shri Sayyid Hamid, Dr T.K. Ooman, Shri M.A. Basith, Dr Akhtar Majeed, Dr Abu Saleh Shariff and Dr Rakesh Basant.

The Sachar committee report has a whole chapter dedicated to the politically controversial issue of Muslim demographic trends in India.The relevant pages in the document are from Page no 48 to 68.

The report says that according to the 2001 census the Muslim population in the country was enumerated at 138 Million. The report estimates that as of 2006 it must have crossed 150 Million people.

The report confirms that Muslims have higher population growth rates and higher fertility rates than the rest of the population even when adjusted to regional variations such as the North(with a higher population growth rates) or south(with near replacement level growth rates). In both instances the Muslim Population growth rate is slightly higher than that of the other Socio-religious communities in the said region.

The report also says that Muslims have the most favourable child sex ratio among all Socio-religious communities in the country. An average of 986 females to every 1000 males compared to 927/1000 for the general population.

They have a lower rate of Infant mortality compared to the rest of the population but paradoxically have a higher incidence of child under-nourishment cases.

Muslims have a younger age profile compared to the general population.

The Muslim Population has for historical reasons a more urban profile than the rest of the population. According to the 2001 census 35.7% of the Muslim population was urban compared to 27.8% for the overall population.

Spatial distribution- Numerically, the majority of the Muslims in India are living in four states UP, Bihar, West Bengal and Maharashtra which had at least ten million Muslims each. UP has the largest Muslim population in India with 22% of India's Muslims living there according to the 2001 census i.e., around 30 million people.The other states with a significant Muslim population are Kerala, AP, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir and Karnataka with a population of between five to ten million Muslims each. Rajasthan, Gujarat, MP, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu have a Muslim population of between 3 to 5 million each. Delhi, Haryana and Uttaranchal have one to two million each.

With regard to the district wise distribution.The report says that of the 593 districts in India only 20 had a Muslim majority. Of them 9 are predominantly Muslim, i.e., with over 75% Muslim population; these include Lakshadweep and eight districts in Jammu & Kashmir. The other 11 districts have between 50 to 75% Muslim population.These districts are six from Assam, two from J&K, and one each from WB, Bihar and Kerala. Numerically about 13% of India's Muslims i.e., nearly 18 Million people lived in these districts.

A further 38 districts had a significant Muslim population of between 25% to 50%. These were distributed in a number of states as follows. UP- 12, WB- 5, Kerala- 5, Assam- 4, Bihar- 3, Jharkhand- 2, Delhi- 2, and one each in AP, Haryana, J&K, Uttaranchal and Pondicherry. Numerically these districts accounted for 22% of the Muslim population i.e., around 30 Million people.

In about 182 districts the Muslim population was between 10 to 25% of the population. These districts accounted for nearly 47% of the Muslim Population i.e.., around 65 Million people.

So of the 593 districts in India, 240 districts with a significant Muslim population of at least 10% and above have nearly 82% of India's Muslim population, i.e., nearly 113 Million people. A further 77 districts have most of the remaining share of 18% i.e., nearly 25 million.

Demographic processes- The report considers population change as a product of three processes- Mortality, Fertility and Migration.

Mortality- The report says that the Muslim child mortality in both indicators i.e., IMR(Infant mortality rate) and U5MR (Under five mortality rate) is lower than the average of the overall population. The report attributes it to probably higher levels of urbanisation among Indian Muslims and points out that within urban areas the Muslim child mortality rates is closer to the average mortality rates prevalent in urban India.

Fertility- The report endorses the various surveys such as NFHS-1, NFHS-2 and the Census which shows higher than average TFR(Total Fertility Rates) for Muslims when compared to the overall population. The TFR for Muslims is supposedly higher by 0.7 to 1 percentage point than the average for the rest of the population. Also other measures of fertility such as CBR(crude birth rate) is also higher at 30.8 compared to 25.9 for the total population. But the report stresses that the overall trend since the past two decades has been a decline in fertility rate among all religious groups including the Muslims. It shows that in the southern states where population growth rates are lower than the north the TFR for Muslims stands at 2.5 to 2.8 quite close to the prevailing population growth rates in the South of the country.

The report also says that the use of contraception is widely prevalent among Muslims but to a lesser degree than the average for the overall population. In contraceptive prevalence rate there is a supposed gap of 10% between the Muslims and the average. The report also says that reversible methods of contraception are more favoured by Muslim couples rather than non-reversible methods such as sterilisation. As per the report at least one third of the Muslim couples were reported to be using some sort of contraception.

Migration- The report says that the contribution of Migration to the growth differential has been very small. It stresses that much of the population growth can be explained with respect to the higher fertility rates and lower child mortality rates among Muslims and the perception that there has been considerable 'international migration' (an euphemism for illegal Bangladeshi immigration) of Muslims into India is not correct. But it does not give any stats to prove its case that the widespread illegal Bangladeshi immigration into India has been as inconsequential as it claims it to be.

Future growth prospects- The report expects the Muslim population growth to reach replacement levels i.e., a TFR of 2.1 during the decade of the 2040's with a overall population around 320-340 million in a total population of 1.7 to 1.8 billion. The Muslim population then according to the report would comprise nearly 19% of the total population from the current 13%.A jump of 6 percentage points.

The report says that this is due to a number of factors such as higher TFR's, lower child mortality rates, and a better than average child sex ratio among Muslims which would mean that the Muslim population growth would start to plateau around 10-15 years after it has for other social and religious communities in the country.

The report also tries to answer the question of whether and if so when will the Muslim population become the largest group.The report largely discounts the possibility of this happening within the Indian union. But it goes on to add that by 2050 in the area of pre-partition India (i.e., including Pakistan & Bangladesh) the combined population of Muslims and Christians together would be close to the 50% mark in comparison to the Indian religionists (i.e., Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Others).

In conclusion the report succeeds in putting a lot of issues related to the Muslim demographic trends in India in perspective. It is always better to have hard data, any data even if poorly compiled and analysed rather than depend on just perception as always is the case in India.

But there are some issues that the report tries to play down. One is that of illegal Bangladeshi immigration.It tries to dismiss it as inconsequential but all reports on the ground point out that this has been anything but inconsequential. This is one point where the report smacks of partisanship.Since this report was commissioned by the UPA and the perception is that many of the UPA partners and comrades depend on the votes of these illegal immigrants to get elected. This line take by the Sachar report on this sensitive issue only throws a question mark on its credibility as an objective source of Information in this regard.

The other is the sleight of hand where it suddenly introduces some unknown "source" and says that according to it the combined Muslim and Christian population of South Asia would cross 50% around 2050. Where did it get this piece of gem from? Did it also go through the census records of all the SAARC countries? or Did it just quote some random UN report? Why does it not offer its "source" so that it can be fully scrutinised?

And again this report does not consider the prospect that many people from neighbouring countries could 'migrate' to India for better economic prospects thereby making many of the conclusions drawn by this report redundant. Many of the districts in the North East, WB and other parts of India could well see a significant demographic shift because of 'International immigration' (illegal Bangladeshi immigration) and what if some of these regions are radicalised? How would that affect the National security situation in the decades ahead?

What is Bengalooru? Ab Dilli Door Nahin!

Apollo — Sat, 4 Nov 2006 11:36:09 EST

The latest casualty in the name change mania that is raging across the country since the last decade is Bangalore along with 10 other cities in the state of Karnataka. Henceforth Bangalore will be called as Bengalooru alongside Mysore- Mysooru, Mangalore- Mangalooru, Shimoga- Shivamogga, Belgaum- Belagavi, Gulbarga- Kalburgi, Hubli- Hubbali, Hospet- Hosapete, Chikamaglur- Chikkamagalooru, Bellary- Ballary and Tumkur- Tumakooru.

Before Bangalore became Bengalooru the country saw Trivandrum becoming Thiruvanthapuram along with 7 other cities in Kerala whose names were also changed at the same time, Bombay becoming Mumbai, Madras becoming Chennai and Calcutta becoming Kolkata.

The reason why this is being done NOW is because of those damned Brits. They ruled this country for nearly 190 years(1757-1947) and yet never developed the intrinsic tongue muscles necessary to pronounce tongue twisters like Bendakaaloru, Mahisasurahuru, Mumbadevi etc.... and hence they following the wisdom of that age old proverb which says When you cannot do as the Romans do when in Rome, make the Romans do what you want to do and sneakily pulled down all the signboards at the middle of the night and changed the names of many places to suit their own stiff inanimate tongue.

But on the positive side the Brits did find a way to enjoy the searing hot Indian curry and pickles with a fire extinguisher at hand and an ambulance parked outside. They also wisely replaced toilet paper in their loos with a water hose like the locals just to be on the safer side.

So the main question here is how long before someone gets a brainwave about renaming the capital city of India, Delhi as Dilli, the Hindi pronunciation of the name? Not very long i suppose. With a increasingly besieged, failing and incompetent left wing UPA Government at the center it won't be long before the tinkering heads at the UPA currently busy with trying to tinker with all the laws, norms and the constitution and coming up against the stonewall of a disapproving supreme court and an increasingly irate Indian people might try its hand at a little bit of chauvinism itself perhaps at a date closer to the General Elections scheduled to be held now a couple of years away in 2009 to improve its dwindling chances at the polls.

Bangalore VIP Kids Cause Fracas

Apollo — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 00:14:37 EST

The hottest news out of Bangalore right now is the fracas involving two VIP kids. This particular bunch especially in our socialist mai baap sarkar-run country has an uncanny knack of getting into trouble and, as usual, their "illustrious" parents are always around to cover up and clean up after them with an impotent police force looking the other way, always ready to fudge the books in the hope of pleasing their masters and getting a quickie promotion and a plum posting of their choice where they can line their pockets with full gusto.

Adam Bidappa, son of the "illustrious" fashion designer Prasad Bidappa, supposedly beat up a cop who either threatned or bad mouthed him and the employees of Hotel Empire allegedly beat up the grandson of the "humble farmer" who threatned and badmouthed them. Both incidents seem to have happened in the dead of the night when the sane, "respectable" people of the IT-powered Garden City have gone home either to sleep or to surf porn.

Before we go any further, let me stress that there are no saints in this drama. There is no need to feel sorry for anyone here. Kindly save your pity for some deserving, hard working, honest, god fearing people on Mother Earth.

Last evening I was in Church street - yes, the same one on which that Hotel Empire is located. I saw a couple of policemen fully armed and looking dangerous with a .303 flung behind one of the cop's back serving and protecting us in their own way. Mind you they have no guts to take on a 19-year old kid driving around a Swiss hummer without a license just because he is the son of the current CM of Karnataka and grandson of the former PM of India. They had instead picked on someone their own size, a bunch of college kids in a run down Maruti 800 who perhaps did not have influential dads who could get them out of a tight spot. I doubt very much whether they would have touched them if they were in a Swiss hummer instead.

The latest news is that the police are trying to cover up the Nikhil Gowda incident but have arrested Adam Bidappa. The Bangalore Police might be one of the most lazy, incompetent police forces in the country, corrupt from head to toe, but they also are quite politically savvy. They know the CM's son/former PM's grandson is out of bounds but Adam, a mere fashion designer's son, is fair game at least until some VIP makes that filmi phone call and says Let him go with the promise, of course, a plum posting of their choice with ample opportunity to line their pockets.

Oh! how did we miss this one? There is one more incident involving, yes, another VIP kid, this one a former CM's relative. Full cover up ... oops ... "investigation" is underway.

The Mangalore Riots - What Really Happened

Apollo — Sun, 8 Oct 2006 09:44:52 EDT

The coastal city of Mangalore located nearly 300 kms to the West of Bangalore on the Konkan coast of Karnataka has seen nearly 3 days of intense riots.

The trouble erupted On October 4th at around 9 P.M. Some Bajrang Dal activists learnt that a van was illegally transporting cattle to the slaughterhouse in Kudroli and were waiting to intercept the Vehicle.

But contrary to what is being wrongly reported by the irresponsible media like Reuters, PTI etc., they never actually intercepted it.

Events leading upto the Riots

This particular van met with an accident enroute inside city limits with a Toyota Qualis, a Mahindra Bolero and two autorickshaws and then sped away in case of rash driving. The number of the van was noted by the driver of the Bolero vehicle. The incident occurred between Lady hill and Lalbagh area. From there, the Bolero van chased the 407 van right up to Kudroli.

The driver of the tempo meanwhile thought the Bolero was following him in the pretext of attacking the van for transporting cattle and in fear he informed his associates at Kudroli. Upon learning this, a group of men armed with weapons came to the rescue of the tempo driver and attacked two vehicles parked on the street. They also started pelting stones at the nearby shops and the mob that had gathered.

Later that night, the Chief of the Bajrang Dal, Vinaya L. Shetty, called for a Mangalore Bandh on the next day i.e., Oct 5, 2006 to protest this incident.

On October 5th, following the bundh call given by Bajrang Dal activists, most parts of the city remained closed. Buses were stopped, tires were burnt on the road and traffic was disrupted near Ekkur and Kottara.Stone pelting incidents also were reported from Farangipet areas.

On October 6th, the Police issued shoot at sight orders after many incidents of rioting, stone throwing and arson which showed no signs of abating.

On October 7th, there were incidents of stabbing and even a shameful incident of burning of an ambulance.

Mr M.P. Prakash, the JD(S) Home minister of Karnataka, blamed the banned outfit SIMI, and in particular a son of a sitting Congress MLA from the area for fomenting the violence.The role of some Hindu groups too has been suspected, he added.

As of now Mangalore and its surrounding areas are still tense, the curfew was relaxed for two hours in the morning today but the night curfew is still on.

This incident again shows the media in poor light. Instead of playing a constructive role they are trying to fan the communal flames by their irresponsible and biased reporting.

The Times of India Anti-Blog Rant: Mainstream Media Returns the Compliments

Apollo — Mon, 2 Oct 2006 09:36:57 EDT

Enough is enough. The mainstream media has been watching its credibility being taken to the cleaners by bloggers and they have had enough.

They have decided to hit back with an indignant rant of their own. And this one comes straight from the venerable Times of India, the largest selling English language tabloid in India, also known popularly and affectionately as ToI(let) paper.

The first salvo goes like this: How dare you criticise us?

Bloggers claim in their hifalutin tones that they want to give a voice to the voiceless and replace the newspapers with their journalism.

I never heard anyone saying this except perhaps PajamasMedia. It is mostly because the media has allowed itself to be whored by the special interest groups. It is covering up or twisting facts that are inconvenient, and is basically shying away from speaking the truth as it is fearing that they could be targetted by the lynch mobs (hint).

Learning and mastering good journalism is tough.

Agreed. Maybe that is why ToI(let) paper has decided to take the easy way out. It has become a scandal sheet with pictures of half-naked or almost naked ladies in its supplements, editorials which can be purchased at a price, planted stories and loony left-wing propoganda. It seems to be catering to the lowest common denominator and that approach seems to be working with increasing circulation.

You learn it in libraries, on flooded streets, in front of a rioting mob, in the middle of crossfire between a militia and a military, in war trenches, in the corridors of power and in the hamlets of deprivation. Sometimes, a reporter walks for miles in an area ravaged by a tsunami to get one quote from the man hanging on to a tree for a week. Bloggers don't have to worry about such inane things. They can learn history and politics from google. They can get their "facts from newspapers" and then slam them with their half-baked opinions.

This sounds like a lame excuse. The "good journalists" feel free to slam and pontificate at everyone and anyone. They project themselves as the Know-It-All types. They feel free to criticize the politicians, the bureaucrats, the police, the students, the corporations, the doctors, the engineers without ever flipping through even one textbook of anatomy or ever passing a tough engineering exam; without ever knowing how it is to stand in front of a patient whose life or death is in your hands and you have to get it right in 30 seconds or less; without ever knowing how it is to design and build a apartment which can safely house thousands. So why this whining when now they themselves are being held to account? And by the way, my dear journo, please do try google. It is a much better source than Karl Marx to get to know the world better and thanks to Google News we can get our "facts" from any newspaper/media source/BLOG in the world.

The second salvo is to say that the bloggers are not really humanoids.

Everyone has a story to tell, but everyone is not a natural-born storyteller. Everyone has a right to an opinion, but a lot of people confuse it with meaningless fuming and ranting. Everyone has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege.

Example:

... the pace at which the blogosphere is getting cramped with half-wits, religious maniacs, failed writers, sociopaths and cold-blooded killers, is scary. They all scream so loudly that those talking sense have to drop their decibel levels. Every 10 minutes, some three million new bloggers invade the WWW with a vengeance. It looks like revenge of the amateur who dreams of becoming a reporter. And that's a cause for concern. The editorial content - uncontrolled and unregulated - has made it free for all: In the UK, PayPerPost and Bloggers Republic offer such opinions that would invite legal suits in a newspaper; the US marines are using myspace.com for giving a positive spin to their stories from Iraq, and in Canada, an "angel of death" wrote a blog before shooting at 20 people. Forget wrong grammar and bad spellings, bloggers are now writing murders on the web.

Now I would call the above paragraph an example of meaningless fuming and ranting, and the abuse of privilege of the right to be stupid and make an ass of oneself. So stupidity is not the exclusive preserve of the bloggers; it seems to afflict the rabble rousers of the mainstream media too.

And then the third salvo is to attack the credibility of the bloggers themselves.

But the smart people in the corporate world have realised the uses of these mercenaries. They are looking for bloggers who are interested in being paid. Eager to make quick bucks, many have already boarded the train of paid bloggers, blowing away their claims of citizen-generated media, free from the restrictions of top-down "old media". Since there is no accountability and no audit, we don't really know which blogger is being paid by whom to spin what kind of "truth" on the web.

This columnist himself has made the claim that every 10 minutes three million bloggers invade the Web. A great exaggeration; thankfully I don't depend on ToI(let) paper to get my "facts". According to Technorati there are 55 million plus blogs and there are a wide variety of people who blog. It is not like you can just setup you blog and people just flood in. That might happen if you are already a celebrity but for the rest it is a hard slog to build credibilty and readers over a period of time. If your content, any content, is not good then you simply lose readers. It is democracy at its best unlike the mainstream media where you have no choice but listen to the meaningless fuming and ranting and abuse of the privilege of the right to be stupid of a select few reminscient of an Orwellian "Ministry of Truth".

And to give the devil its due - I think the mainstream media does a great job in bringing the news as it happens across the world. But the problem is when they try to mix up facts with their own fiction or project their own bias on it or better still they want to impose or push their opinions down people's throats. People are not idiots - many of them are subject experts and they are able to interpret some things better than a journalist who is largely a "generalist".

For a bunch of people who owe their jobs to the constitutional guarantee of Freedom of Speech they should welcome all shades of opinion and even criticism of themselves rather than get indignant when they are held to account. Shobhan has got it wrong when he says,

It has clicked with people in the West as there is some distrust of large media networks, particularly television, that fails to distinguish between a bike accident on the road and a big war devastating a country. In the West, blogs have become an outlet for the rage that people are no longer allowed to express in the actual world. But, in India, with a booming and vibrant media, journalism without an editorial process is a dangerous trend.

The Indian media too has lost its credibility as much as the western media. Nobody believes their spin not even their own members.