Social Scientologist Dipankar Gupta's Advice For Gujarat Congress

This seems to be the season for celebrities to shower advice on the Congress party. In my previous post I tried understanding why ‘Shekhar Gupta is doctoring and nursing the Congress’. Rajdeep Sardesai in an article, “Insider, Outsider” laments  on Pranab Mukherjee never getting his due from the Congress because others have to be kept at bay. Another one, “Telling the wrong story” is what catches my attention though. It is written by Social Scientologist Dipankar Gupta. Alright, let me explain. This Gupta, a former professor with JNU, the coffee shop of communists, is supposedly a social scientist. My understanding was that social scientists do a lot of work on the ground with people on various issues to arrive at conclusions. But Social Scientologists in India are now a cult group that simply work on a pre-set body of beliefs and rituals created by fiction and fantasy. The supposed religion of Scientologyis described as a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard. It would have been unheard of but for prominent celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta being its followers. Scientology is also a very very secretive cult. Therefore, rather than being referred to as scientists who deal with facts, the term scientologists is more appropriate for people like Dipankar Gupta who write largely with no first hand research. After all, FAITH, is the key.

So Dipankar Gupta (DG) is his article in TOI “Telling the wrong story” (Quotes in blue) wonders why the Congress isn’t telling the right story. He writes: “Is the Congress afraid of winning in Gujarat? Nothing else explains why it lets Narendra Modi tom-tom development when it should have been the Congress banging the drums. The economic achievements of governments before Modi's read like an award citation, but too much secularism has since led the Congress astray. Instead of showcasing its past performance to regain Gujarat, it is obsessed with nailing Modi as a communalist-in-chief. Naturally, it is not getting anywhere fast”. Interesting, “too much secularism”? I give that much to DG, secularism has almost become synonymous with anti-development. It has come to represent pandering and appeasement and nothing more.

After those opening lines DG then goes on to reel off a healthy dose of statistics to reveal why Gujarat was a poster-boy for development even before Modi. I quite agree and have always maintained that Gujarat has been economically progressive historically and traditionally. As a state it has done far better on most fronts than a huge majority of states in India even before Modi. DG only fails in his reasoning why Congress is unable to counter NaMo. That is because he fails to understand the people of Gujarat. The most important ingredient in political and electoral battles is the public. As a social scientologist DG has completely failed to read the minds of the Gujjus. That’s the reason all the statistics and economic indexes he uses become academic nonsense for a Congress revival.

The story of Congress in Gujarat cannot be written without a mention of its divisive politics in the state. The one theory that most epitomises its deeply divisive tactic that meant to divide a ‘secular’ society has to be the one by former CM Madhavsinh Solanki. His KHAM theory is as much a Secular laboratory as the Hindutva laboratory that Gujarat is often called. KHAM stands for Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi & Muslim. The Congress believed creating and strengthening such vote-banks would keep them in power for good. Well, vote-bank politics is a traditional tactic for the Congress. To support that tactic the Congress also sprinkled its strategy with an abundance of reservations and subsidies. Surprised? Well that is still the strategy in most states for the ‘secular’ parties. DG perhaps overlooks an important turning point in the history of Gujarat.

In 1985 the Madhavsinh Solanki announced reservation policies which resulted in agitations and riots throughout the state. These went on for months and then suddenly turned into communal riots. A majority of people believe that the Congress turned it into communal riots to deflect the reservations issue. The Hindus in Gujarat believed they were at the receiving end of all social mishaps. Reservations, communal riots, subsidies etc. These are emotive issues and not the statistical nonsense that DG reduces the discussion to. And he’s supposed to be a social scientologist!  If one Congress leader can be held singularly responsible for the party’s sinking in Gujarat, it has to be Madhavsinh Solanki. And what’s his reward? He gets to be a minister in the Central Govt. later on.

Now, having all along fought their elections on fake ‘secularism’, garibi-hatao, aam-aadmi, reservations, caste and community divisions, minorities appeasement, subsidies and so on can the Congress suddenly jump to ‘Development’ as an electoral strategy? I am surprised someone as educated as DG cannot see the irony. By his own logic Gujarat was already on a development path, what the Gujaratis didn’t want was the other nonsense that the Congress party fought elections on. Get that DG?

DG goes on to write: “Now that Gujarat's economy is all grown up and good-looking, the Congress should admit its responsibility and submit to a paternity test. What is there to hide? Hefty anti-saffron helpings, on their own, will not do. With a stomach full of that stuff, the Congress can hardly catch up with Modi. In fact, Jawaharlal Nehru taught us that secularism does not win elections, development does. Why then is the Congress doing its best to come second-best by gagging its record of the 1990s? In politics, as in sports, winning is not everything, it is the only thing”. Well DG you and other colleagues of yours in the social club and the media are the ones who brought the Congress to such a miserable shape. Peddling lies only helps so much. Fighting elections by calling Modi a mass murderer, calling him communal and anti-muslim does not resonate with Gujaratis. The Congress hoped to benefit by permanently tagging Modi with the 2002 riots and with the support of corrupt NGOs, social clubbers and the media hoped to win elections. A first start would be to admit that this strategy has failed.Another first would be to admit that Jawaharlal Nehru did to India what Congress has mostly done to Gujarat.

Another important aspect in politics and society is not just about being a minister, winning elections or about the Chief Minister. It is about leadership. I repeat what I wrote in a previous post: "What a leader does for followers is..turn anxiety into confidence. They’ve always done that throughout time and in every different society and situation. When leaders lead well, it’s because they’re able to rally people to a better future and make people spirited when they were previously anxious." This is what NaMo provided to a state in a time of severe strife and anxiety brought about by the 2001 earthquake followed by the 2002 riots. Maybe yes, he would have played a communal card since he is and will remain a politician. So why did the secular card repeatedly fail then?

Another important issue that DG overlooks is that the Congress now wants to campaign against NaMo on issues of corruption for the 2012 elections. Would you believe that DG? Where’s your advice on that? You might find a lot to hurl at Modi but corruption can be related to Modi as much as Sarah Palin sees Russia from her lawns. An issue that DG does not acknowledge is that if Gujarat managed to make giant strides under Modi it is actually because of absence of or negligible corruption in the system and elimination of the red tape.

Another wrong example that DG draws on is that of Dhirubhai Ambani: “Most recently, Mukesh Ambani praised Narendra Modi for putting Gujarat on the world map. He seems to have forgotten that his father, and Reliance, prospered in Gujarat well before Modi properly entered politics”. Dhirubhai’s success is in no way connected with Congress rule in Gujarat before Modi. Dhirubhai was a Gujju and his first venture in textiles was when Gujarat was still the Manchester of India. It is state where labour unrest was minimal. DG might like to know that once public giant IPCL used to proudly put up a sign at its entrance that said to the effect “Since inception no strikes at IPCL”.  Reliance is now a stake-holder in IPCL and it still doesn’t see strikes. If the Sardar Sarovar project was started much before Modi he is credited with speeding up the canals and bringing the Narmada water to various parts of Gujarat, including Ahmedabad. The dam is only half the achievement, bringing water to the parched cities and villages counts for a lot more. Much of Gujarat was drought-prone, that’s a situation laid to rest in a very large measure.

While his sympathy for the Congress may not be misplaced, social scientologists like DG sometimes use the most spurious arguments as logic. In a discussion with Rajdeep Sardesai on Subramanian Swamy’s controversial article in DNA and the subsequent petition for his dismissal by some Harvard constituents, this is what DG had to say: “If anybody goes to teach summer school in Harvard he is obviously not top of the pops”! Well, I reserve my opinion on the professors of JNU but if DG really wants to revive the Congress in Gujarat he must sacrifice scientology and embrace facts.

Media's Complete Loss Of Decency

The three-day  Sadbhavana Missionof Narendra Modi ended on September 19 with a rousing speech that sought to set new directions for governance, equality and national policies. The mainstream media had no option to be there. After all, no matter how much hatred they continue to heap on him, Modi simply stands tall where leadership and governance are concerned. It also helps that he is a great orator. But make no mistake, the MSM wasn’t there to just cover the event. It was there to see if any more muck can be raised against Modi and to remind him that in the ‘supreme court of the media’ he has already been declared guilty of crimes. Much of the transactions at the Sadbhavana event were live and will also be available to read in newspapers, magazines and online pages for quite some time. So let’s try and understand the orchestration to disrupt the event by the media and other charlatans. Mine is not to discuss the merits/de-merits of the event or its political impact but to understand the orchestrated campaign of hate from some in the media and some activists.

Here’s a tweet from @shammybawejafrom September 16 (She is Harinder Baweja, Editor Investigations of Headlines Today):  “Off to Guj for Modis sadhbhavna. Remorse and legal justice needed for 1984 and 2002. Fast track justice, not cong bjp fast wars”.

Well, one would have thought like others she too would land up at the Gujarat University grounds but where does she land up? Naroda Patiya, a site of mob violence and killing in the 2002 riots. Hmmm, so what was cooking? In the morning of September 17 Mallika Sarabhai, another crusader for justice, suddenly summons a presser and accuses Narendra Modi of having bribed her lawyers to scuttle her PIL on the post-Godhra riots. The crusader-come-lately, Sanjiv Bhatt, backs up her allegations as being true. Then later she too lands up at Naroda Patiya. A small group of people, riot victims, are organised to protest and march for justice by Mukul Sinha, a lawyer. So, by strange co-incidence, Mallika, Mukul and Baweja all turn up at Naroda Patiya. Headlines Today was the only channel telecasting live from the site. The protestors were also carrying printed pamphlets that must have been organised overnight. Ordinarily, there would be nothing wrong in such protests except for the timing. Mallika could have made her allegations and led these protests many times over in the last few months but she did not. But the objective was simple – to rekindle and continue the hate-NaMo campaign during the Sadbhavana event.

And that was trigger enough for NDTV, CNN-IBN, Headlines Today and others to start their chorus of abuse without even verifying the accusations made by Mallika. So let’s deal with the the lies of Mallika Sarabhai. This report based on comments by her own lawyers should be enough to nail her filthy lies.

From TOI: “Lawyers who appeared for…Mallika Sarabhai in the SCourt in 2002 for her PIL on the post-Godhra riots denied her allegation that bribes were paid to her advocates by the Narendra Modi government to derail the petition…….Advocate Mahesh Agrawala, the counsel who filed the writ petition number 221 of 2002 in the SC with Sarabhai as the petitioner, said it was "totally false that any money was ever paid to us by anyone to do anything or not do something relating to the petition. No money was ever paid to us and we did the case free of cost. Moreover, her case was argued on April 15, 2002, by senior advocate P Chidambaram before a bench headed by the CJI and comprising Justices Shivraj V Patil and H K Sema. The court had admitted the petition, issued notices to the Centre and Gujarat government and allowed early listing,"…….Agrawala said, "She got the relief she wanted on the very first day of hearing. It is unfortunate that after nine years, she is making the allegation about payment of money, which is patently false."

So the TV channels had a blast with the lies of Mallika Sarabhai. And if lies are on the menu can Teesta Setalvad be left out? Naturally, this washing machine of justice was back on TV all through the last three days hurling abuses and spreading untruths once again. Acts for which she was awarded with a Padmashri, of course. And where else to go but on the channel that has been the worldwide platform for the lies against Narendra Modi and about the Gujarat riots, NDTV. It is widely believed that the only channel that Narendra Modi refused an interview to is NDTV. Barkha Dutt herself laments that the CM would not entertain her. There’s a good reason too. Anyone who knows well enough that NDTV and, in particular, Barkha Dutt has carried out a systematic campaign of calumny about Gujarat and Modi wouldn’t trust that channel to be honest or relate to facts.

Long before the Gujarat riots Teesta Setalvad was funded by the Congress, CPM, CPI and others to campaign and carry out ads against the BJP during the 1999 election campaign. She had asked for and received funds from these political parties for her campaign. And she did advertise and campaign against the BJP in her magazine ‘Communal Combat’. Therefore, the lie that Teesta is a ‘social’ or ‘rights’ activist is one of the greatest lies peddled by the media. She is clearly a political activist and her political persuasion and motivation is cunningly suppressed by NDTV and other channels.

Teesta’s campaign against the BJP in 1999 failed as the BJP+NDA returned to power. Naturally, the investments that the Congress made in her had to be recovered somehow. Come the unfortunate Gujarat riots and Teesta had to deliver her pound of flesh. She creates the CJP in April 2002 after the riots have calmed. What followed was the most extraordinary campaign of untruths, fake affidavits, rumour mongering – all gleefully accepted and churned out by the media crooks. How much money has poured into her CJP is not public knowledge. Even the SC had pulled her up for trying to internationalise Modi as a criminal by writing to the UN.

In my post “SC exposes the media’s clean shit” I have detailed the lies that Suzy Roy deliberately peddled about the riots. In case of Teesta her lies were exposed by the SIT itself. All the ‘copy-cat’ affidavits she engineered for the riot victims now stand thoroughly exposed. Her own former colleagues have also nailed her lies. Imagine, this washing machine of justice has twice sought anticipatory bail, something more common among politicians. Her organisation, Citizens for Justice and Peace, parades as an NGO while clearly being a political organisation. However, this campaign of lies did pay off in some way, coupled with many other reasons. The NDA lost power in 2004 and the Congress+UPA came to power. Rewarding Barkha Dutt, Teesta Setalvad (and also Rajdeep Sardesai) immediately would be a dead give-away. So a few years later all three were awarded the Padmashri. But every time Narendra Modi is in the news, these washing machines unfailingly get back into action.

Reading motives or even words where there were none, the MSM uniformly talked about NaMo’s PM ambitions. They sought an apology from him when their attempts to nail him legally haven’t produced anything so far. Interpreted Nitish Kumar’s absence from the Sadbhavana event as a snub and for that reason the event is not supported by all. They even employed fake tweets or manipulated them to heap further abuse. During the event CNBC-TV18 even carried a full interview with Teesta in its programme “Beautiful People”. Hahhaaa, that’s an irony and, mind you, I am not talking about her looks.

The Sadbhavana event can be criticised on many other fronts but that wasn’t the case. The entire narrative was built on continuing the hate-Modi campaign. Every media celeb that talked to Modi had not one question to ask about the development model of Modi. Not one had any question of how Gujarat coped with the historic problem of water shortages. Not one talked about the girl-child education campaign in Gujarat. Not one talked about how Gujarat grew without frivolous subsidies. Not one talked about how Gujarat got around to building such great roads and highways. Not one talked about how Gujarat manages to provide uninterrupted power supply. Not one talked about reasons why industrialists are thrilled to set up businesses in Gujarat. Nothing! Whether Modi gained by the event or not, time will tell. But one outcome has been clearly established. The media’s complete loss of decency, respect for facts and truth, and further erosion in their already low credibility. Modi was giving interviews to all and sundry and if Barkha Dutt feels snubbed by not getting her chance that should tell her how low her image and credibility has sunk. An interview with Modi would have given her some redemption, but I doubt that is ever going to happen.

For all the campaigns against Modi the same crooks are yet to even find what is wrong with Sonia Gandhi, her illness, her treatment, her whereabouts. NDTV has even comically reported her return to India at least 4 or 5 times. And I doubt they still know where Sonia is. Never mind that. But this mainstream media is hurtling towards greater decimation. The social network is already delivering it a severe blow. The online netizens have become a watchdog over the media in absence of an independent body. And if that isn’t enough, there is Wikileaks exposing all the information that the media may have covered up or suppressed.

The future of Narendra Modi doesn’t exactly concern me enormously as much as it concerns the media crooks. They live in fear that his rise to the top may completely destroy whatever is left of their credibility. Whatever else, but there is one thing that these crooks can learn from NaMo. In all this campaign of calumny he has conducted himself in a dignified manner and never shot back at any of his detractors. They called the Sadbhavana event a political stunt or gimmick. NaMo is a politician and the event IS political – what is so wrong about it? That is what politicians are supposed to do – mobilise political views and directions. Modi has successfully done that in at least one thing – ‘vote bank politics will not pay in the future’. The media even tried to make a big issue of Modi not wearing the muslim skull cap offered to him by a visitor. Here is the best response I found on Twitter to that by @Pari500: “…and Maulana says 'refusal of the cap is an insult to Islam', really? Now we know the honour of islam rests SOLELY on Modi's head!”

Here is an interesting observation by The Economist: “The biggest shift is that journalism is no longer the exclusive preserve of journalists. Ordinary people are playing a more active role in the news system, along with a host of technology firms, news start-ups and not-for-profit groups. Social media are certainly not a fad, and their impact is only just beginning to be felt. “It’s everywhere and it’s going to be even more everywhere,” says Arianna Huffington. Successful media organisations will be the ones that accept this new reality. They need to reorient themselves towards serving readers rather than advertisers, embrace social features and collaboration, get off political and moral high horses and stop trying to erect barriers around journalism to protect their position. The digital future of news has much in common with its chaotic, ink-stained past.”

If ever Bill Gates made a business error, the biggest one has to be his refusal or failure to see the potential of the Internet when it came about. Since that failure, his company has only been playing catch up. Google now reports that India will add 200Mn more net users by 2014. That’s a good sign for the nation but a serious warning for the MSM. If they don’t see the writing on the wall the social network will grow to a level that will make them obsolete where news and debates are concerned. The loss of credibility has already come about.. the best they can do is to attempt restoration of some decency and respect for facts and truth.

SC Exposes Media's Clean Shit

In 1999, after losing a no-confidence motion by one vote, the BJP+NDAcame back to power after mid-term polls. It was a result that no doubt shocked the Congress and its ‘secular’ allies. The BJP victory was probably also helped by the Kargil war. That war produced a new media hero of sorts – Barkha Dutt. The StarNews team of Prannoy Roy, Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai had gained prominence during that time. People still believed what the media said. Then came Kandahar. The extra-ordinary hysteria and emotions that the trio whipped up during the hijack drama on TV was unbelievable. Relatives of the hostages were flung on to the screens. The distress, chest-beating, wailing and abusing of the minsters was a precursor of sorts. Some of us suspected that the media was not doing this on their own. There are still suspicions that many of the relatives of the hijack victims were instigated by both the Congress and the Left and the media to humiliate the NDA with abundant aid from this media trio. So even today after every terror attack Kandahar creeps into discussions. That episode was the one where paid media started to go downhill.

On the morning of March 1, 2002 if you had walked the streets of the relatively posh western parts of Ahmedabad you wouldn’t believe what had happened while you were sleeping. You could see shops and restaurants that were burned overnight. All these shops had such names – Bhagyoday, Kabir, National and so on – all belonged to muslims, and this was a predominantly Hindu area. While there was property damage there was no report of people being killed in the area. Even residents of Ahmedabad had no idea of the scale of the riots that were going on. And then suddenly on the scene bursts Barkha Dutt and then Rajdeep Sardesai (both with Starnews then) and some more.

Hour after hour after hour we hear the most horrific stories of mass killings all over the state. In cities, towns, villages and even on highways. Words like mass murder, genocide, pogrom start to gain currency in some quarters. Were there terrible killings? You bet, some of it very horrible. But the kind of dramatic and hysterical reporting on TV was no more news reporting. It was almost fanning the flames. So much so that in some areas some TV channels had to be shut down to contain the provocation. As in the case of war, even in an unfortunate communal riot such as this, ‘truth’ is the first casualty. The numbers-killed story was generously sprinkled with imagination of people being raped, foetuses ripped and more by the media. I can safely say that the response to the Godhra train burning was spontaneous. The Gulbarg case which has become prominent because of the widow of Ehsan Jafri, killed by mobs, were attacks by mobs that would have been difficult to handle by any police force given that many other parts of Ahmedabad were equally badly affected. For all this to make one man singularly responsible could not have been anything but an agenda driven media. This agenda had to be surely backed by political forces and extraordinary influx of funds. This is where the witch hunt of Narendra Modi started. Lies, lies and more lies have been peddled by the media since then. The best example is of Suzanne Arundhati Roy who oozed brilliant lies.

Writing about the Gujarat riots, Suzy Roy had this to say (Outlook, May 6,2002).

A mob surrounded the house of ex-Congress MP Iqbal Ehsan Jaffri. His phone calls to the director-general of police, the police commissioner, the chief secretary, the additional chief secretary (home) were ignored. The mobile police vans around his house did not intervene. The mob broke into the house. They stripped his daughters and burnt them alive. Then they beheaded Jaffri and dismembered him.

The description is graphic; the veracity of the incident taken almost for granted coming from a writer of Arundhati Roy's reputation. But, alas, that's where we make the mistake. Fame and honesty are not interlinked as the following paragraph clearly indicates.

Jaffri was killed in the riots but his daughters were neither 'stripped' nor 'burnt alive.' T.A. Jafri, his son, in a front-page interview titled Nobody knew my father's house was the target (Asian Age, May 2, Delhi edition), says, "among my brothers and sisters, I am the only one living in India. And I am the eldest in the family. My sister and brother live in the US. I am 40 years old and I have been born and brought up in Ahmedabad. So if Ehsan Jaffri had only one daughter (singular) who was safe and sound in the US, where did Roy get her facts about not one, but daughters (plural) being stripped and burnt? Was it the fantasy of a writer's mind? Or was it willful deceit aimed at maligning her ideological adversaries?

Arundhati Roy did apologise for her mistake in a letter published in Outlook May 27, 2002. Could this have been a genuine mistake, one is tempted to ask? But when such 'mistakes' occur periodically, the chances of them being accidental appear remote. They appear to be in fact calculated machinations aimed at achieving a specific goal as the following incident further proves. In the same article, Roy claims.

"Last night a friend from Baroda called. Weeping. It took her fifteen minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn't very complicated. Only that Sayeeda, a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved 'OM' on her forehead."

Disturbed by the thought of such a ghastly act, Balbir Punj (a BJP MP) had this matter investigated. In Outlook (Jul 08, 2002) he wrote. Shocked by this despicable 'incident,' I got in touch with the Gujarat Government. The police investigations revealed that no such case, involving someone called Sayeeda, had been reported either in urban or rural Baroda. Subsequently, the police sought Roy's help to identify the victim and seek access to witnesses who could lead them to those guilty of this crime. But the police got no cooperation. Instead, Roy, through her lawyer, replied that the police had no power to issue summons. Why is she hedging behind technical excuses? So when asked to prove her allegations, Arundhati Roy developed cold feet; definitely not the attitude of a crusader for truth.

Despite the lies being exposed, Suzy Roy continues to be hosted as a crusader by our media. For such absolutely blatant and deliberate lies no journalist would have survived in any mature and honest media. Such liars can expect to grow in the Indian media. On TV Rajdeep and Barkha continued their blitzkrieg against Modi, while the likes of Vir Sanghvi called him a ‘mass murderer’ in print. I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that the degeneration of TV news owes a great debt to both Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai. You could call them the leaders of the moral decay.

Now, after the riots calmed, out of nowhere came up another crusader. Someone called Teesta Setalvad, I had never heard of her before, she arrives on the scene with her NGO called Citizens for Justice and Peace. This NGO was created in April 2002, according to their website, to fight for justice for the riot victims. Hmmm! Suddenly, there was a flurry of affidavits being filed in the courts supported by Teesta’s group, flurry of FIRs being filed, complaints of lack of facilities at refugee camps. All this seemed noble till Teesta started appearing more often on TV channels. By now the newly born NDTV, CNN-IBN were already neck deep in targeting Narendra Modi at every opportunity. The discussions shifted from justice for the victims to singularly implicate Modi and somehow hang him. The Zahira case, the Best Bakery case, shifting of cases outside Gujarat, were all systematic effort at tarnishing Modi’s image and implying there can be no justice in Gujarat. Mind you, not one of these channels or journalists ever talked about justice for those who were burned to death on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra. Never mind!

Modi had then won the elections in December 2002. This was another blow to the media and the Congress. So later, Teesta and her cronies approach the Supreme Court and the SC also sets up an SIT to investigate. This year around 30 people are convicted for the Godhra killing of Hindu Kar sevaks. Contrary to expectations of the media and the Congress the SIT nails the lies of Teesta Setalvad and exposes her fake affidavits. Many witnesses back out from their original affidavit or testimony. In 2007, suddenly, Mrs.Zakia Jafri, widow of Ehsan Jafri finds evidence that some 60 officers of the state, including Narendra Modi, had conspired to engineer the riots and have her husband killed. This had to be the strangest concoction of a theory that came years after the investigation into the riots had started. The Gujarat High Court did not accept her petition finding no merit in it. That is how the Gulbarg case landed in the Supreme Court. Needless to say, her petition was obviously backed by Teesta Setalvad.

Despite the literary classic of ‘Maut ka Saudagar’ used by Sonia Gandhi, BJP wins the election again in 2007. As in the case of Suzy Roy, the media continued to host the tainted Teesta on their shows to support the malicious campaign against Narendra Modi. In the course of time Gujarat started gaining prominence because of development, investments and universal recognition of Narendra Modi’s performance on governance. So what happens? The Congress throws up a new hero, Sanjiv Bhatt, and more affidavits are filed in the SC.

Two of the prominent campaigners against Narendra Modi, Teesta Setalvadand Harsh Mander, go on to to a stage where they get to influence national policies and laws. They become part of a team, the NAC, that would draft the viciousCommunal Violence Bill. Every step of the way these voices, along with nation-dividers like Digvijay Singh were given the biggest space in the media. If anyone remotely appreciated or associated with the work of Narendra Modi they were ripped apart. Ghulam Vastanvi and Amitabh Bachchan were fair targets for the Congress and the media.

The vicious anti-Modi industry is a mixed bag of media crooks, NGOs and politicians. A heady cocktail if you like and the only thing we don’t know about these liars is who funds them and to what extent they were funded. The misdeeds of the ‘cash-for-votes’ scam exposed Rajdeep Sardesai for what he is. But the final evidence of Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi being well entrenched in Congress persuasions was exposed by Radiagate. There was no place left to hide.

What the media did not anticipate in 2002 was another form of media. In 2002 the internet was just about growing in India, mobile phones usage was going up. There was no Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. The law takes time to catch up, but the social media doesn’t. In the absence of social network there was really no challenge to the corrupt media. The Congress was in power and they had a field day. Rajdeep, Barkha, Sagarika, Vir Sangvi, Prannoy Roy had established themselves as the most powerful force after the govt. One should recall a prominent editor once boasting that he “was the second most powerful man in India after the PM”. Naturally, the media believed the case against Narendra Modi was already rested. They had signed, sealed and delivered the judgement. He was guilty, he was a mass murderer and should be put away. The advent of the social network was a challenge the mainstream media did not calculate. Writers, bloggers, websites, tweeters, youtubers all started exposing the lies of the media.

The make-up and mask of Chachi 420 wasn’t meant to last forever. Like bad make-up, the media’s lies came crashing on September 12, 2011. The Supreme Court simply directed Zakia Jaffri to approach the lower court with her petition. Effectively, there was no significant evidence in her petition to pronounce any indictment of Modi or to warrant a probe against him by the SC. The SC also informed that it would not monitor the case further. The media crooks didn’t know which way to look. All the years of carefully crafted hate, lie-mongering had come undone in a single stroke. So, as in the case of many other verdicts, the media now even questions the wisdom of learned judges of the SC.

The media’s campaign against Modi shouldn’t be seen as a stand-alone case. The cottage industry of hatred has coloured every national issue. Be it terrorism, riots, communal harmony, civil rights. In all cases the media has mostly been on the wrong side of justice. Suddenly, new terms were being searched for  “clean-chit”, “relief”, “breather” to describe the SC verdict on Modi. And just as they called the Ayodhya verdict a “panchayat” judgement this time the crooks called the SC verdict overlooking the “moral” aspect of the Modi issue. So when a media campaign fails the legal measure, they invoke the moral measure.

Politicians in India are not reputed to have great moral standards. It’s the media that has become the gutter and the drain. That tainted journalists like Barkha Dutt continue in their jobs is a feature you may not find in the media of any other democracy. The ones who should be accused and found guilty of moral failure and more are Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Vir Sanghvi, Suzy Roy and many more. The list is too long. The bigger danger is that there could be darker forces funding and handling a media that never fails to honk its independence. Next time any of these media celebs talk about morals, imagine them naked and see how full of shit they are.

From Kandahar to 26/11, from 1984 to 2002, from Ayodhya to Ahmedabad, I maintain that the current media is the greatest danger to Indian democracy. I don’t think Modi is debating whether it’s a clean chit or not. But the Supreme Court of India has clearly exposed the media’s clean shit.

Right-Wing Fantasy Journalists

Tavleen Singh is a prominent journalist and sometimes also appears on TV discussion panels. Here are excerpts (in blue) from an article “The enemies within” in the Afternoon Despatch & Courier (July 28, 2011). The excerpts are produced in a rearranged order and not in the same way as they appear in her article: 

A TELEVISION show may seem like an odd place to make a profound political discovery but this is what happened to me last week. I agreed to appear on Nidhi Razdan’s show, left, right and centre……. So on Monday of last week she decided that the two most compelling subjects were the corruption charges that currently surround the chief minister of Karnataka and, more puzzlingly, the lessons India can learn from the massacre in Norway.  Her guests in the NDTV studio in Delhi included Nirmala Sitaraman, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s spokeswoman, Shoma Chaudhury, editor of Tehelka and a British journalist of bleeding hearted liberal disposition. I was in a studio in Mumbai listening to the discussion on an earphone and participating when Nidhi gave me the chance to intervene

It was when we got to the second topic of the day that I found myself horrified by the discussion that went on in the NDTV studio in Delhi. Nidhi led it by saying that Anders Behring Breivik represented right wing terrorism and that this was something we needed to deal with in India as well. By this she meant Hindutva terrorism and within minutes she had everyone, including the spokesperson of the BJP, agreeing that all terrorism was bad and that it should not be linked to any religion.

One has come to expect NDTV to be a mouthpiece for the Congress and the Left. Nidhi Razdan does not attempt to camouflage anything. That Shoma Chaudhury or the foreign journalists that NDTV usually invites follow NDTV’s line of discourse is also not surprising. The surprise is always the unusual eloquence with which journalists who claim to be right-thinking also try to camouflage the truth. Tavleen Singh here has attempted a clarification in writing which she could not get the chance to do on TV. But try and recall all the BJP spokespersons, the Swapan Dasguptas, the Kanchan Guptas and their likes and you will find them doing the same thing. On one hand they will claim to be critical of the left and the media delusions but when they do appear on TV, they become the very spokespersons they criticise. Seriously, terror has no religion? Whether it’s a BJP spokesperson, or Swapan Dasgupta or Kanchan Gupta or any other so called right-thinking journalist, you will find them all agreeing. What exactly is the reason for such doublespeak? Let’s read a bit more from Tavleen Singh:

In the cause of the jihad against India these groups have killed hundreds of innocent Indians in temples, bazaars, hotels and even hospitals. Does this compare with the two or three terrorist incidents we have seen that involved Hindu terrorists? Yet, not only do our leftist intellectuals make this comparison but so do important politicians. The Home Minister said last week that he thought the BJP was targeting him in the 2G spectrum scam only because he was investigating acts of terrorism that involved leading members of the RSS. As for Rahul Gandhi’s mentor, Digvijay Singh, he has hinted on more than one occasion that he believes that it was the RSS who organized the attack on Mumbai.

Shoma of Tehelka then went into a passionate dirge about ‘innocent’ Muslim boys rotting in Indian jails and about how only when it came to jihadi acts of violence was an act of terror linked to religion. The consensus among Nidhi’s panelists was that Hindutva terrorism was  more of a threat to India than Islamist terrorism with the British journalist pointed out that someone as clever and informed as Rahul Gandhi had informed the American ambassador, as reported by Wikileaks, that he was more worried about majority communalism in India than about any threats from across the border.

In vain did I try pointing out that the reason why jihadi terrorism was linked to Islam was because it was the terrorists who called themselves holy warriors for Islam. In vain did I try reminding my fellow panelists that the jihadi groups committing acts of violence in India were created by the ISI and that this meant that they had the might of the Pakistani army behind them. Nidhi’s panelists, led by the very verbose Shoma, were convinced that ‘saffron’ terror as it has come to be known was the biggest threat to India. While listening to them I realized, more than ever before, that India’s biggest enemies are Indian opinion makers and our leftist intellectuals.

I have already stated many times over that the biggest threat to Indian democracy is from the media crooks. But Tavleen Singh has got it only half right. The opinion makers are not just leftist intellectuals but also the right wing or centre-right intellectuals and journalists. Except for routinely condemning statements made by Rahul Gandhi or Digvijay Singh I have yet to come across a single journalist who has clearly stood up and asked the government to acknowledge Islamic or Jihadi terror. The reason? Most of these journalists are now freelancers who have to depend on the likes of NDTV and CNN-IBN for survival. You cannot be foolish enough to bite the hand that feeds you. The US government does not talk about China’s human rights anymore and you can guess why. One will recall that it was a college student that had the courage to ask Barack Obama about Jihadi terror. And he managed to give a vague, twisted reply.

After I appeared on Nidhi’s show I received a small floodgate of tweets from twitterers who had seen the show asking if I knew where Tehelka got its funding from. I do not and nor do I care to speculate but what I will say is that most of Tehelka’s investigative journalism seems designed to prove that India is as failed a state as Pakistan and that Indian democracy is mostly a sham. It is a viewpoint that is beginning to get on my last nerve.

It is now being revealed that NDTV, CNN-IBN and HT got lucrative media contracts from the CWG organisers. So it’s natural that they were initially low key on the scams related to CWG when reporting it. Who was the one making the loudest noise about CWG? TimesNow, of course! And why? If the Times group had got the media contracts they had bid for it appears unlikely they would have gone after the CWG scams with the same vigour as they did in July-August last year and continued ever since. They would have been too busy then promoting a rosy picture about the games and the CWG organising committee. Are the right-thinking journalists any different?

There are a few stray journalists who care to state things as they are or as they see it. When it comes to confronting the central government with the truth about terrorism I doubt there are too many journalists, left right or centre, who want to take the risk. The main job of these journalists still is to be largely politically correct. In the recent case of TimesNow’s Arnab Goswami kicking and screaming over cops being targeted by Narendra Modi, not one journalist has managed to find the courage to stand up and write or talk about the deluge of nonsense that Arnab is attempting to spread. The only clarification to come was from Jaynarayan Vyas of the Gujarat government itself.

In principle all terrorism is bad. It does not take an Einstein to discover that. The question here is to acknowledge and respond to the biggest terror threat that confronts us. The government and the media would have you believe it is Hindu communalism. Unfortunately, there are only a few, like Subramanian Swamy, to confront it.

It is also in this context that a one-man party like Subramanian Swamy is leading an extraordinary fight against corruption and against Islamic terror. And he is not really a journalist. Those journalists who pretend to stand up for fairness and straight talk are the most misleading ones. You know the government stooges, the leftists when you see them in print or on TV but the really misleading ones are the right wing fantasy journalists. They are the ones giving credence to the chorus of ‘terrorism has no religion’. This ends up with polls like the ones CNN-IBN is currently doing to merely reiterate that falsehood.

Sanjiv Bhatt In Arnab's Kangaroo Court

I had already suggested ‘Padma Shri awaits Sanjiv Bhatt’. I guess that is not enough so a higher award for this courageous cop may be in order. If Teesta Setalvad got embroiled in fake cases of her own affidavits the media needed a new hero against Narendra Modi. Well, looks like they’ve found one.

On August 9 evening Arnab Goswami scooped an interview with Sanjiv Bhatt. The first round had Arnab questioning Bhatt about his hobnobbing with Congress leaders, getting Blackberry from them, emails that were exchanged and so on. The hilarious part came a little later in the evening at 9pm on Arnab’s Newshour when he again had Sanjiv Bhatt and a panel to discuss the suspension of Bhatt by the Gujarat government or to be more specific Narendra Modi as media would insinuate. Sanjiv Bhatt came to the discussions with his lawyer Iqbal Syed. With his lawyer? Yes! That’s right, hahahhaa!

‘Hello Arnab, you know me, now meet my lawyer please’! Isn’t that nice? Now what else would Arnab want for his Kangaroo court? Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai must be writhing in anger that they couldn’t manage to do this on their channels. The lynch mob isn't out there on the streets anymore, it's there on TV channels in the form of news anchors.

Imagine, a supposedly honest cop, a whistleblower, possessing great regard for truth and his own convictions turns up at a TV panel discussion with his lawyer. And Bhatt has made a statement these are desperate measures (his suspension) by a desperate government. Bravo! By now the Congress spokespeople are all over the place. Ambika Soni stated “everybody knows what is happening in Gujarat”. Yes we do, it is that terrible police state where all freedoms have been suspended and it’s a state where there is virtual emergency. Of course, in case you missed it, the tainted Teesta Setalvad got her chance to be on TV again and shooting off her mouth.

Okay, all that is fine. Now, if you even remotely know anything about Narendra Modi you would also know that he is one of the shrewdest politicians around. He is not so dumb as to not estimate that actions such as those against Sanjiv Bhatt (and lately one against Rahul Sharma) wouldn’t invite accusations of vendetta politics. That he would be accused of hounding a cop who has filed an affidavit against him in the SC. That this would give the Congress and all the sickular media channels to again start hurling abuses at him. Is Narendra Modi that silly? Well, even if there is some grain of truth in the vendetta part I doubt he is nervous (as Arnab implies) and I also doubt if there is any legal loop-hole in the actions against Sanjiv Bhatt or Rahul Sharma.

Now, apart from being the CM of Gujarat and knowing well the Congress would use the issue to sidetrack many other issues would Modi be silly enough to undertake these actions? I doubt. This is also given the fact that Congress at the centre is in shambles over various issues of corruption and wrong doings. NaMo would hardly hand them an issue on a platter in such a situation.But the media thinks he desperately would.

In another case of fake encounters it was made out that Modi was a mass murder, ‘maut ka saudagar’. In an article today this is what S. Gurumurthy wrote in the Indian Express:

“That State (Gujarat) is the least sinner in fake encounters, just one in a hundred. Yet, its leader is vilified as ‘Mauth Ka Saudagar’ [merchant of death]. So, the selected State’s leader is the target, not fake encounters as evil. The State selected? Needs no guess. It is Gujarat, certified as the best governed, most prosperous. The leader targeted? Needs no mention. Narendra Modi, known as the cleanest, also the ablest. The National Human Rights Commission’s list of 440 fake encounters from 2002 to 2007 under inquest shows the share of Gujarat as just 5, almost the lowest. Uttar Pradesh tops the list with 231, followed by Rajasthan 33, Maharashtra 31, Delhi 26, Andhra Pradesh 22, Uttaranchal 19, Assam 12, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka 10 each, Tamil Nadu 9, West Bengal 8, Bihar and Haryana 6 each. More. At 7.25 am, on 8.8.2011, the NewX channel reported a further 120 fake encounter deaths in UP after 2007!

Yet,from 2006, the ‘secular’ media has been obsessed with, not the most guilty in encounter sins, but the least — Gujarat; and with only one of the 440 encounters — of Syed Sohrabuddin in Gujarat, none from the rest. Baying for Modi’s scalp, the media relentlessly pursued Sohrabuddin’s case, charged Gujarat with killing him [and his wife, Kausar Bi] only because of his religion. It made Sohrabuddin the poster boy of secularism, insisted on CBI probe to cover Amit Shah, Gujarat Home Minister then, and Modi himself. The judiciary too chose for CBI probe only Sohrabuddin’s case out of the 440 encounters. Later when CBI misused the court mandate, resorted to patent illegalities to fix Shah and target Gujarat and Modi, the media even seemed relieved. Interrogatories to ‘secular’ media on its role in the Sohrabuddin case are overdue. Here are some.Did the media even hint that, like Sohrabuddin’s in Gujarat, there were 435 other encounters outside, being inquired into by NHRC? No. And did it ever ask for CBI probe into them? No.”

There is a universal principle that Arnab Goswami, Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai would do well to remember. IT IS USUALLY THE LOSER THAT GOES TO THE MEDIA. Check up history, check-up businesses and the principle will hold true. Teesta Setalvad talked about truth and justice for a long time. Now we know where she comes from and what her actions were. In much a similar fashion Sanjiv Bhatt talks about truth and justice.

In all the shrill noise that Arnab Goswami and others make not one, I repeat not one, has bothered to ask if the charges against Bhatt are true or accurate. If he has indeed been playing truant and is on illegitimate leave for 10 months. If those accusations are true then all this bullshit by Bhatt, Arnab and others will not wash.

I tend to call such people ‘washing machines of justice’ that wash nothing. These assholes don’t seem to realise that the more nails they drive in to Modi’s imaginary coffin the more popular he becomes. What next? Now are people going to bring their mom and dad to TV panel discussions? Arnab Goswami only exemplified what our media already is. TimesNow, NDTV, CNN-IBN, Headlines Today and some more are truly the real lynch mob in their own Kangaroo Courts.