Is INDIA heading towards another EMERGENCY ???

This blog comes from nowhere, I had not planned to write this……………...

I am reading about ‘Operation Blue Star’ since past few months; to dig out the truth of that time, I am reading about the political environment which prevailed during that period of time. To that, what got my attention is - State of Emergency in India (1975 – 76).  I never heard about it before, so this is the time to know about it, and I turned on my Google driver. The outcome of ‘the know how’ of this event is very strange and you must also think about it.….

The Congress Party of India has been historically associated with the Indian politics from the budding independence movement so are the charges of corruption and miss-trust on the congress party. In 1966 after the death of Lal Bahdur Shastri, Indira Gandhi (daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru), was selected as the President of the Indian National Congress Party. In 1966 Mrs. Gandhi defeated Moraji Desai to become the fifth Prime Minister of India and the first woman to hold that position.

From the early 1970s onwards, pervasive discontent shook India: large sections of the population came out in demonstrations against rising prices, fall in the supply of essential commodities, unemployment, and more importantly, corruption in government administration. These protests reached a crescendo in 1974, with students leading the agitations and giving them an organized shape. The Gujarat state government ruled by Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party was forced to resign that year. Mrs. Gandhi realized that she was losing her hold, and was threatened by a political crisis. The threat became imminent when the Allahabad high court (from where Indira Gandhi won in the parliamentary election in 1971), declared her election invalid on corruption charges. The high court judgment barred her from holding the office of prime minister, but granted a stay for 20 days – to allow her party to choose another leader (since the Congress party still enjoyed a majority in the Indian parliament).

Unable to find a competent successor, Mrs. Gandhi, appealed for “complete and absolute” stay and she was granted a “conditional stay”.  This decision gave rise to outcries of opposition from the opposition that she should resign.  Strikes by labour and trade unions, student unions and government unions swept across the country. In response, the authority of the maintenance of Internal Security Act was used to arrest more than a hundred people on June 26th who opposed Mrs. Gandhi and her party.  A proclamation of Emergency was issued by President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, on the advice of Prime Minister Gandhi.

The powers given to the Central Government under this form of emergency virtually have no limits. Civil Liberties were suspended and the government introduced a mandatory birth control program. The government of India banned four major religious, political and revolutionary parties and 22 associated parties with them. An amendment to the Representation of the People Act was drafted to clear Indira Gandhi from the Allahabad high court ruling. At least 50,000 or more people had been jailed in India in first 3 months of Emergency. At last Emergency was withdrawn on March 21^st 1977 after a period of 21 months.

Now what I am thinking is – High corruption, Rising Prices, Black Money, Rupees downslide, Squeezing Economy, government’s dictatorship & wrong policies and the Public Unrest are the terms which are presently clouding India. Same reasons coupled with many wrong decisions by Indira Gandhi led to that phase of emergency in 1975. Presently the only difference is that Mrs. Sonia Gandhi is driving India from the back seat instead of Prime Minister's position rest everything is ditto same and I don’t think there is any such gutsy judiciary left in India who can charge the corrupt politicians. So, the mango people are just left to wait and watch, let’s see where it is heading? Moreover, Anna Hazare movement and his arrest, Lathi Charge during Baba Ramdev Protests, other happenings with all the socialists & RTI activists and other public protests…………

Is INDIA heading towards another EMERGENCY ?

I am not sure, but my intuition says – something big is going to happen before 2014 elections….. Keep your fingers crossed

In the land of the NAZI'S

BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Porsche………

As a Mechanical Engineer and a lover of the Mean Machines these must be the words which should come to my mind on the name of The Federal Republic of Germany or it should be Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Karl Diesel………But there is some fancy about the name or I don’t know what; NAZI’S is the word which comes to my mind at first.

I was super excited about my three months official trip to Germany, but my enthu. was bitten hard first by the official delays to the trip and then after reaching Germany the sleepy town Offenbach (A small town near Frankfurt, where my company’s head office is situated) punched out all my remaining excitement. Cherry on the top; it rained throughout the weekend and drained down my plans of roaming around the bustling streets of Frankfurt.

Nothing much to do rather than watching TV (which majorly runs German channels) or reading something….. I choose the later, OK now, no rewards for guessing what I am reading; yes about German history, particularly about Hitler and Nazi’s movement. Earlier also when I was in Seoul I started reading about Adolf Hitler, but now I can’t recall why I stopped in-between and went on to reading about M.K. Gandhi (I don’t use Mahatma or Bapu for him as most Indians used to prefix it with; anyways that’s another topic I will tslk about some other day).  So, I was talking about Nazi’s.

First thing I read on the internet about Germany is that it is world's fourth largest economy by nominal GDP and the fifth largest by purchasing power parity and the second largest exporter and third largest importer of goods. I know it’s a developed country but still….. Amazing figures….. Anyways lets move on to the history…….

The strangest and funniest part of the NAZI history is its formation itself, you must read about it – In 1919 Anton Drexler founded DAP – German Workers Party; his party had strong nationalistic views and was anti-Semitic. The party had been looked as a potential socialist threat by the armed forces so they sent a police spy to investigate the impending danger, and the spy is none other then – ADOLF HITLER. In few months he became so fascinated by the party’s politics that he became an active participant in every event of the party and soon he rose to the top and named his party as Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party). The term Nazi was an acronym formed from the first syllable of National and the second syllable of SoZialist. And the other strange thing about Hitler which I got to know few years back is that he is not even a German, he was an Austrian.

The earlier manifesto of 25 points by NAZI Party, which I read on the internet, seems to be all right except 1 or 2 demands. But somehow at some point of time it went all wrong. The Nazi’s advocated the supremacy of the claimed Aryan master race over all other races. They claimed that the development of humanity depends on the Aryans and the Jews are the greatest threat to the Aryan race and led to the human holocaust specially Jews.

Hitler's foreign and domestic policies had the goal of seizing space for his people. He directed the invasion of Poland in September 1939, leading to the outbreak of World War II. Under Hitler's rule, in 1941 German forces occupied most of Europe and North Africa. By 1943, Hitler's erratic military decisions led to escalating defeats. In 1945 the Allied armies successfully invaded Germany. By then Hitler's supremacist and racially motivated policies had resulted in the systematic murder of eleven million people, including an estimated six million Jews (one million Jewish children, two million Jewish women and three million Jewish men).

In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. On 30 April 1945, two days later, the two committed suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army.

The basis for Hitler’s extreme hatred for Jews are still not clear, historians had given different reasons for it from ordinary prejudices to some relate it to the Germany’s defeat in World War-1* caused by Jews.

Presently I am reading Mein Kampf (My Struggle) a book by Adolf Hitler. He wrote the book while imprisoned after his failed putsch in Munich in November 1923. It’s a lengthy book (450 Pages), hope I will finish it soon and then will definitely let you guys know what are my findings about Hitler and his fundamentals.

* I don’t know anything about World War-1; will read about it some day.

Satyamev Jayate - A cynical Praise

“I am no one to bring change or resolve any issues. One person cannot improve this or give solution. The only solution is each and every one of us should say ‘I WILL NOT DO THAT’”

Sunday 6^th May I was travelling, so I missed the first episode of Satyamev Jayate. Even if I was at home, I am not sure I would have watched this much hyped show, as I know Mr. Perfect is a great business personal and a perfect Marketer. So this hype and the suspense about the concept of the show were created by the perfect marketer mind. Even after the show went on air and everybody praised it, as of my cynical nature I did not watch it until……..

This Sunday I was free at home, and as Mr. Perfect says in one of the promos ‘Sunday, khoob soyiye….9 baje tak…. 10 baje tak…. Fir to main aa hi raha hun, aap ko jagane…. 11 baje’. I woke up at around 10 in the morning and was still lazing around when Neiha stopped her remote buzzing at Star Plus. And I was glued to the screen till the time Amir Khan said ByeBye, not only that I even watched previous episode on Youtube.

Aamir Khan has done it. The perfectionist has indeed proved why he is called so!

Obviously the show is about TRPs but at the same time it’s a sincere effort that makes people hope and gives people the audacity to stand up against the unsocial practices. As commoners share their real life experiences on the show, Amir unravels their emotional pain and uncovers truth that the society is ignorant of. What I saw in the show is the truth. The truth that lives alongside us all…

In this episode Aamir talked about the horrible reality of child sexual abuse, an alarming and frightening truth. The research has shown that as many as 53 percent of the children are sexually abused. The touching part of the show is when the people who went through the ordeal narrate their stories. The opening episode showed agonized mothers who braving all odds gave birth to the female child; they shared their petrifying experiences on national TV. The show is an eye opener, people like me who thought that female foeticide is predominately practiced by the uneducated class and in the rural region; will surely get shock on the findings.

It’s not as if these issues haven’t been touched upon in TV programmes. Even Amir Khan has done such awareness oriented projects on big screen; ‘Taare Zameen Par’, ‘Peepli Live’, ‘Rang de Basanti’….. all these films put across a social message. But, content wise 'Satyamev Jayate' is quite different; the show narrated real life stories and relied completely on facts. One couldn’t stop himself to admire the sort of research that they had put into the subject.

The most impressive part is the efforts done by the perfectionist to come forward and do his part to help the nation to overcome such evils. Each week they will select a different NGO to help address the issue discussed on Satyamev Jayate. In partnership with Axis Bank, they invite the public to join in and help.

BRAVO AAMIR!

P.S. Hope it will not end in being just another talk show

FUn on the RUn

Last week, it’s been a long travel from Patiala to Gurgaon, for 300Kms it took me 11 hours. The bus I was traveling had a break down near karnal, and we made to wait for hours to get it operational. Had nothing much to do so I was wandering here and there on the road in dark surroundings when my eye balls stuck at a quote written behind our bus ‘Sarr na rees kar’ – Don’t be jealous, follow me.

I was little surprised because usually such quotes are found written on trucks and the funny part was what this bus wanted others to follow. That quote took me to a roll down the memory track. One of my friends had a serious accident while she was trying to read a long quote written behind a truck; the truck suddenly put on brakes and she rammed her activa in it. Later on she told me she had a habit of reading quotes written on vehicles, quite funny but from that day onward even I try to read all the quotes written on trucks and other vehicles.

I tried to re-collect such quotes. The most common one is the same that was written on our bus ‘Sarr na rees kar’ there are few more which are quite famous in india like

‘buri nazar vale tera bhi bhala’

‘nazran layenga jutti khayenga’

‘Uddi chal morniye’

And my favorite is ‘Main bada ho ke truck banunga’ which I read written behind a ‘Tata 407’ a mini truck.

Not only these truck valas but even the NHAI – National Highway Authority of India is quite innovative in chalking out quotes for the road safety.

‘Speed is a knife that cuts life’

‘Be Mr. Late than Late Mr.’

BRO – Border Road Organization, a unit of Indian army which deals with construction of roads which lead to Indian borders, is also pioneering in this regard; their quotes are even more sensual. Few of them I found very interesting which I read during my Leh-Ladakh visit.

‘Be gentle on my curves’

‘Don’t be a gama, in the land of Lama’

‘I am curvaceous, be slow’

‘Darling, I like you. But not your speed’

It’s been more than two hours I was running through my memory lane and counted numerous such quotes; but our bus was still not in favor of moving forward, so I decided to move on with another options – a lift from a bike then to a local bus for Karnal then got a bus to Delhi, waited at ISBT for an hour and then got a bus for Gurgaon that too jam packed; at last I reached my destination at around 2:00 in the morning. A hectic journey but my love for the quotes continued during that tough voyage also.

Try it out, I am sure you will enjoy it and it will definitely make your boring bus journeys bit interesting.

Chalo Haste Hain

‘Zindagi itni bhi asaan nahi k koi chain se jee jaye, magar itni bhi mushkil nahi ke koi bina afsos mar jaye’

‘Da for Diary’ the play which Rommy planned to watch to kill the laziness of Sunday afternoon and we four accompanied him in his brave decision. But instead of killing our laziness it loaded us with more boredom which we removed from our shoulders with a good evening stroll in CP afterwards. I somehow managed to survive the torturous play  but you can better ask Neiha, who I think took full advantage of the AC facilities of the auditorium and slept peacefully during half of the show or you can ask Ashish who asked ‘kina time ho geya yaar’ around 5-6 times during the one and half hour play.

The play started on a lighter note from two school children’s daily life. They took on diary writing while taking example of Anne Frank tragedy writing (A Jewish girl who wrote a diary about her experiences while in the hideouts during the world war-2, which became quite famous when her father published it in 1947 after Anne’s death). The best thing of the play was the performances by the 3 leads of the play who played multiple characters. And the worst thing was that the theme and plot of the story was not clear, it went up-down on the topics of happiness & tragedies. But till the very end of the show we didn’t get to know about the moral of the story, what they wanted to convey. Whether it’s about spreading happiness or it’s about tragedies of life. Let aside the moral of the play, it was not at all entertaining.

As the people say ‘There is always something to learn from everyone and everything’. The theme song of the play ‘Chalo Haste Hain’ was pretty good, that’s different if the play being a comedy play still unable to make us giggle. With this song they tried to pull out laughter from the tragedies, though unsuccessfully (But at-least they tried, so we can also). And the second thing is the dialogue which was repeated twice in the play ‘Zindagi itni bhi asaan nahi k koi chain se jee jaye, magar itni bhi kushkil nahi ke koi bina afsos mar jaye’ (Life is not that easy that one can live with a complete peace, but it’s not that difficult also to do suicide without any sadness’). I am sure this will be helpful to motivate at least some of them who try to finish this god’s gift on their own.

All in all the play was not that bad for the first time experience. Oh, sorry I forgot to mention one more thing which we learned from there…

Pooooo…….!!!!!!!

Mann Jeete Jag Jeet - (conquer your mind & conquer the world)

(Radha Swami Beas philosophy, based on the teachings of mystics from all religions, has had its main centre near the river Beas since 1891. Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), with centres located worldwide, is a registered non-profit, charitable society, independent of any political or commercial affiliations. 'Radha Swami' means 'lord of the soul’, and ‘satsang’ describes a group that seeks truth) 

It was my second visit to the place. Previously I had a brief trip; even then I attended the satsang as I wanted to experience it. This time we had good time but as we reached the place late night at around 3:30AM so it was almost impossible to wake-up early; but our dear friend and host has different plan. So, we were up at 8:00 O’clock and ready for the Satsang.  

First of all I will give all praises to the administration staff of the dera. The infrastructure- roads, flats, play-grounds and above all the discipline; everything was just great. I wonder if the people roaming around were the same Indians who use to litter around, spitting all over, who seldom obeys road rules, who likes honking like if they are competing in a rock show. But here in dera you will feel like you are in some other part of the world but definitely not in India.

On normal Sunday’s thousands of people come to listen audio records of the satsang, but on the day of our visit the crowd was huge, in hundred thousands. Then I got to know the reason behind this massive gathering; Baba Gurinder Singh the present head of the dera was there that day. People came there from miles just for a glance of their spiritual guru. We also reached the Satsang venue after going through needless, over hyped security checks. Huge crowd in that gigantic ‘pandal’ but still pin drop silence. Again and again I was forced to pinch sure my-self ‘yes, I am in India only and this is Indian crowd’.

As Baba Gurinder Singh entered the pandal and took his seat on the extra high stage, every one bowed their head to the spiritual guru, most of them bowed to the projector screen. As the pandal was vast so there were so many projector screens installed for the people to have a close look at their mentor. I didn’t bow to him, you can call it my stubbornness but honestly speaking I didn’t find that divine or spiritual look in him. That radiance, that peace was not present at his face. He didn’t seem to be from that league.

Baba ji started from ‘Mann jeete jag jeet – conquer your mind & conquer the world’ and elaborated few more gurmukhi stanzas. One thing which I heard from almost every baba but none of them follow was, repeated here also. ‘Don’t bow to me to my photographs or sculptures, don’t compare us with god. But the ideologies and the work of the dear baba don’t go well with his words. People do the same things and no body stops them as if those words are not meant to be followed. In a dera which is so well organized and disciplined, these small wordings are not at all followed, this doesn’t go smooth in my mind. Infact, in every nook and corner of the dera, whether its langar hall or flats or other buildings almost every wall is crowned with the pictures of the Baba and his successors. You will not find even a single picture or wordings of any religious books in the dera.

I don’t think that an hour lecture can change anybody in particular. There were thousands of people in the satsang and I can say only few of them follow the right path taught by the Baba. Let aside common public even the baba’s are not following their high wordings.

The Dera vicinity is increasing at a rapid rate; even the boundary walls are made mobile, so that it can easily be moved to the new position whenever the area expands. The strange thing is, the dera authorities regularly announce to the followers that don’t buy any property in 5-6 KMs reach of dera, because as the Dera expands it will cause inconvenience to them. My question is what about the inconvenience caused by the dera expansion to the other people who live in near by villages? Or the dera does not care about the non-followers, or is it not inconvenient to those people to relocate. And why the dera needs expansion when it already has so much of land? And what about the words ‘non-profit & charitable’ which they use for their society?

There are number of property disputes going on between the dera and the common people. Few of them I know personally, and you can find many others on the internet. And it’s not only in Beas, but in other cities and countries also. One such case which floated on newspapers few years back is of Mohali Industrial Area satsang land which Amrinder Singh (then Chief Minister of Punjab) wants to acquire for developing Industrial corriodor and he offered another land to RSSB which obviously was rejected. Why? RSSB can’t relocate for the development of the country but yes, it can relocate people just for the expansion of the Dera.

Some RSSB devotees might feel that it's wrong to post such criticism, but it’s just what I felt and it’s my view only.

Consider it; ignore it. Your choice……!!!!!

PS: No need to acquire acres of land, just conquer your mind – “Mann jeete jag jeet”

Rang De Basanti

While getting ready for the office in the morning I watched TV news channels for almost an hour. The headlines were ‘Sachin is not retiring yet’, ‘CAG report on Coal scam was false’, ‘Asia cup went to Pakistan’ Bla Bla Bla…… Not even single news about the great Martyrs Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev. Yes, it’s 23^rd March today; 81 years ago these brave freedom fighters sacrificed their life for the country, for us. But it seems, we Indians don’t even bother to remember those pure souls.

This reminds me of an event which occurred few years ago. 23^rd March 2006, our college organized a debate on the topic ‘India needs Bhagat Singh or Gandhi’. That day was celebrated as ‘Rang de Basanti’ day. First I thought to participate in it, but because of my shy nature or you can say my laziness somehow I didn’t participate. But I decided to attend that debate, before that I had not been to any such event, as a pure mechanical engineering students we kept our distance from every such thing related to study.

Before going there I was sure that votes will go in favor of Bhagat Singh, may be its because I am a great fan of him. But what I found there was totally different. Out of 17 participants only 5 were in favor of Bhagat Singh and the rest were in favor of Gandhi. I was completely shocked not because they didn’t think like me but because they didn’t know the ideology of the Revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh, Chandershekhar, Kartar singh Sarabha. 

Why blame these young students for not knowing about those Revolutionaries when there were many great personalities like M.K.Gandhi who totally misunderstood these freedom fighters. No doubt M.K.Gandhi did lots good for Indian freedom, but he did a big mistake in understanding Bhagat Singh and his thoughts. You will be clear about this once you study the history records of past conversations of Mr. Gandhi with Irwin & others about the Delhi pact and many more.

I think he (M.K.Gandhi) was not a thorough patriot as Bhagat Singh and his comarades, but a great politician, more precisely a kathputli of politics played by other congress leaders like Jawahar Lal Nehru. I don’t think that Politics and Patriotism can go side by side. These are totally different traits. May be there are people who wouldn’t agree to me. Actually I am also not clear about it.

I am not clear about the words Politician and patriot. Can a Patriot be a politician???? Yes’ of course  if the person’s like Bhagat Singh were given a chance to lead a nation they definitely would have been gone a long way to bring their nation not only nation the whole of  the mankind to a level which any human life deserve.

The problem with me and every youth of India is whenever we hear the word ‘politics’ a negative image comes out in front of us automatically. This is not our fault, infact we are seeing and hearing about all these stories of our bad politicians from our childhood. I know there are few good one also. But those few good things of few good politicians are buried down under many bad things of many bad politicians. There are many many negative things about India and Indian system but the need of the time is to find solutions of these problems. Everybody is worried about these problems but no body is concerned. The one’s who are concerned they are also not doing anything or can’t do anything.

India can only hope to get some good politicians in future. It’s tough but may be the one’s with ideologies of Bhagat Singh. In my view India needs Bhagat Singh now, it’s been more than 60 years but there is nothing fruitful by the so called Gandhiism Politics.