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The jilebi-wala who     cried 'wolf' That dreaded TINA       factor Ayodhya: a symbol of       exploitation Déjà vu, all over again Without tinder,     sparks are useless

Red in the face

The crumbling of the hilariously named "People's Front," thanks to the BJP's machinations and Mulayam's volte face on the Presidential candidature, is right at the top of my Glee chart. Our pinkos are like weather forecasters: they just can't get it right. Day after day, they make their announcements -- "Very soon you will see massive agitations by the peasantry specially in the rural areas against the new economic policies being pursued by the Centre... We know it. We are in the field. We have fought and defeated them many times and we know how to defeat them" (H S Surjeet, March 25) -- and demand that we heed them. And day after day, said announcements fall flat on their face. The People's Front, neither of or for the people, nor a front, lies dear and departed, heeheehee!

The happy revolutionary family is, once again, busy doing what it does best -- rub against the grain of the majority of Indians. One would be hard pressed to come across a single person in a whole day who's gloomy about the prospect of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam as President! But the pinkos don't know that. They live in a cave amongst their own ilk and are clueless of the feelings of the "outsiders," whom they dismiss as the "upwardly mobile middle class" (when issues involve economics and defence), or "the rabble" (religious matters).

It's a pattern as olden as their Presidential candidate: When dear Adolf launched Operation Barbarrosa against the USSR in 1941, the CPI declared World War II to be a "people's war," requiring our commies to become pals of the British and oppose not only the Azad Hind but also the Quit India movement. This line was adopted not on any understanding of the situation in the country, but on Stalin's diktats. Later, in keeping with another beloved element from the Red Book of Gobbledygook, they indulged in "revisionism" and "revaluated" the Indian national movement and "reassessed" the roles of its leaders. Naturally, none will admit that it was just a tactic to help them inch their way onto the elusive mainstream political platform -- elusive because the people's love for Netaji and Gandhiji kept the Leftists out.

In any case, the pinkos' "revisionism" is never accompanied by an appraisal of the rudiments of their ideology: Failed and irrelevant stances are simply "reconsidered" and then regretted. And so, on to the next "historic blunder." Just as when they supported the British and behaved irresponsibly towards the nation, their current activities have highlighted their irrelevance to the needs of Indian politics and the wishes of the people. I won't be surprised if, a decade from now, we'll hear of a "revaluation" of the achievements of Dr Kalam. As George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

It's called "tunnel vision." Pinkos are blind to the reality around them and obsessed with one particular idea: In India, they call it "secularism." The rest of us recognise this drive and drivel as anti-nationalism fed by a hatred of Hinduism itself and the desire to break up the polity into tiny, more easily exploitable pieces. Therefore, anybody who stands between India and balkanisation is promptly labelled a fascist-communalist-force that must be defeated. Including Dr Kalam.

Don't believe me? Sweetheart, the smear campaign has already begun! Here are a few nuggets by some of the most objective and detached analysts ever to grace op-ed pages -- Praful Bidwai, Amulya Ganguli and Seema Mustafa:

• Kalam has many outlandish ideas, including combining the occult with hardcore science, powering airliners with nuclear fission, and putting "bio-implants" into "deficient" brains. But in common with "the Advani thesis" is his abiding faith in the military-industrial complex as the motor of progress.
• Dogged advocacy of militarisation is the sole public face of Kalam, an engineer-turned-manager, wrongly called a "scientist" by sections of the media which go into a paroxysm each time a missile is test-flown.
  
• But Kalam may be too much of the RSS's "poster-boy Muslim"
  
• And what is the image of a nationalist Muslim as represented by Kalam? A man who swears by the nuclear bomb, who has no reservations about military conflict and who is not a religious, or overtly practicing Muslim.
  
• He is also a vegetarian and a bachelor "like us" as the VHP just declared.
  
• It was imperative to counter the BJP propaganda that it was supportive of Muslims (of the bomb variety?)
  
• According to him... "it would require a strong, highly-willed nation" to decide on building the missiles. By adopting this simple-minded macho attitude, Kalam relegated virtually all the world, except the Big Five, into the category of weak-willed nations. But it isn't ICBMs alone which make a country "strong."
  
• But it has to be remembered that however thrilled Kalam may have been with his big bang, it made a mess of India's finely crafted nuclear policy.

Can't guess which line belongs to which "secularist," right? Well, that's one symptom of their tunnel-vision malady.

If truth be told, I was least interested in the Presidency thing. Articles 74 and 74(1) of the Constitution ensure that the Prez remains a rubber-stamp: He can act only on the advice of the Cabinet, and is bound to act in every case on the advice of the Cabinet. Thank god for that. Or imagine the havoc that our current Prez could have caused. To refresh your memories:

• "...he gave an inexcusably long rope to Ms Sonia Gandhi to muster a majority in support of her claim to prime ministership, and allowed himself to appear party to the dubious efforts to somehow install a non-BJP government" - Sandhya Jain, The Pioneer of July 6, 1999.

• "It's an interesting thought, isn't it, that if it had not been for some needless activism on the part of the President of India, our war-weary country may not have been facing yet another general election... [now] we find Rashtrapati Bhavan fancying itself an expert on something as complicated as the telecom policy" - Tavleen Singh, India Today of August 2, 1999.

• "Congressman KR Narayanan, alias President of India, has been at his favourite pastime yet again - hurling vitriolic barbs at the BJP-led coalition in the capital." Arvind Lavakare, rediff.com of February 6, 2001

It was clear that the BJP would never retain the "working President." And I didn't give a damn which party would choose whom -- as long as it wasn't someone like Zail Singh, who'd said he would happily sweep Mrs G's courtyard. In fact, I was disgusted that the BJP, like the Congress, had used sectarian politics for the Presidency, and would cause a productive man like Dr Kalam to be reduced to a figurehead. But that was before the plight of the pinkos, heeheehee!

The commies are not really a laughing matter. The implications of their intrigues are always severe and, sooner or later, warp our lives; they are why India is still a sub-middling power in the global field. No, I'm not exaggerating. A country advances when its intelligentsia first absorbs how some nations became great, how others faded into insignificance, how businesses and institutions succeeded, and then goads the people onto the path to power. But, when a country's opinion-making bodies are completely swamped by a bunch fixated on an ideology booted out of its native land, it can take only one step forward, propelled by its pragmatists, and three back, weighed down by these regressive life forms and the trade unions and reservation policies they strengthen.

The USSR conked out. (The CPI-M's Prakash Karat promptly declared: "There is no need to be pessimistic about the future of Marxism, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union. The apparent triumph of Capitalism is a passing phase.") China, all but in name, abandoned Marxism. But India... we've been lifted to Himalayan heights by the bureaucratic structure that Chairman Nehru institutionalised, the socialism that Nehruvians sustain, and the ceaseless obstructions by commies in all things nationalistic. Result: we are forced to buy arms from even tiny Serbia...

In May 1998, when India went nuclear, the Communist Party of China roared its disapproval of the tests, which "will harm peace and stability in South Asia." As with the Moscow diktat of 1941, our "pacifists" followed suit. We never heard a peep out of them when China tested its nukes one after another in the 1990s. (China conducted its 45th nuclear test in July 1996 and only then signed the CTBT.) They did not counter China when it surreptitiously nuclearised Pakistan. Does China alone have the right to go nuclear in Asia...? To the Red mind, obviously. And hence this rage against the BJP and APJ.

So they come up with one pathetic argument after another against our nukes -- the one most brandished being, a country cannot become powerful until it's economically robust. Though there's immense truth in that contention, it also reveals the pinkos' ingrained habit of ignoring history: A powerful economy bereft of a powerful defence system has never existed for long. India, with bountiful natural resources, had established a trade route even with the ancient Romans. Over a long period of time, the indigenous people of this land had become rich and prosperous. Which led to repeated invasions by foreigners. Due to the lack of an organised and integrated self-defence, this country succumbed to invaders and remained a slave for centuries. One product of which is the associated mentality that persists to date. And hence the slighting of the man who enhanced India's defence system.

Now, if you think that all pacifists are not card-carrying pinkos or don't lean heavily towards Communism, you'd be dead wrong. On August 6, 1998 -- Hiroshima Day -- our "pacifists" organised a nation-wide protest against the "BJP's" nukes (in apostrophes because, like the next President, the nukes are only India's). Let me reel off the names of the frontline marchers; you'll recognise names from recent anti-national, anti-Hindu irritations: N Ram, Admiral L Ramdas, H S Surjeet, Rajinder Sachhar, Prabhat Patnaik, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sankho Ghosh, Mrinal Sen, Nirmala Deshpande, Romila Thapar, A B Bardhan, Prakash Karat, Arundhati Roy, Kuldip Nayyar, Rajam Krishnan, Vimal Ranadive, N M Sundaram, T S Rangarajan, Senthilnathan, A Rangarajan, Ahilya Rangnekar, Mahendra Singh, Saeed Ahmed, Sitaram Yechury, Raghu Thakur, Medha Patkar, Professor A P Shukla, K N Panniker...

Point to note: Nirmala Deshpande is a Gandhian. Just as Captain Lakshmi Sehgal, mother of the CPI-M's Subhashini Ali, is better known as an INA officer.

Then there's the other aspect to the rejection of APJ. Ever since the 1974 Pokhran explosion, no central government, including V P Singh's United Fools, objected to the making of the bomb. In fact, Comrades Namboodripad, Jyoti Basu, Rajeshwara Rao and Achyut Menon had welcomed it -- no doubt, based of an "assessment" of that time. However, in 1998, the same front condemned it. For, 'twas the communal-divisive-fundie-force who done it. This aspect is the pinko's version of secularism, which dictates that anything touched by the Sangh Parivar is evil. From the insinuations of Bidwai & Co, APJ now becomes a Hindutvawadi, an intellectual nincompoop, an academic neophyte and Dr Strangelove, all rolled into one. That should work wonders on the Muslim boys whom APJ inspired...

As per the Red Book of Gobbledygook, the hub of the commies' faith is a "dialectical" outlook on life and politics. Meaning, there's no such thing as objective truth or morality. There is only "progress" toward the goals of socialism as espoused by approved "theoreticians" at a given time. Meaning, any activity can be considered righteous in the name of pinko "progress," provided they conduct it themselves. This is why the leftists, with the support of an international network of groupies, were able to liquidate over a 100 million people (which figure is "progressively" being augmented by the MCC, PWG, Naxals and like campers). Neither Hindutva nor APJ's nukes has done that.

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