Passionate About India

Yes, it’s 20 years since Rajiv Gandhi’s death. And all my readers are very well aware that if there was one prime minister in my adult lifetime who ever made me feel proud as an Indian, it was him. I wish I could write this edit only on him, but I think many brilliant people, in Rajiv’s memory, have written on him in this issue; so my writing on him is of lesser importance – especially given the most likely fact that by the time this magazine reaches your hands, a huge and significant chapter in Indian politics would have come to an end. Yes, I am talking about the rule of CPM in Bengal. As far as all exit polls are concerned – except for some ludicrous CPM channel polls – it’s Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool party which is all set to sweep the polls in Bengal. In fact, if the leading channel is to be believed, then the current chief minister Budhdhadeb Bhattacharya is expected to lose too! So I think I can safely say it’s the end of CPM in Bengal. Or should I say the end of Stalinism in B...

ARINDAM CHAUDHURI ANALYSES HOW CPM MIGHT JUST ABOUT DO THE TRICK AGAIN, BUT THIS TIME ON THE BASIS OF A COMBINATION OF WELL PLANNED STRATEGIES AND PRO-POOR PROMISES! Lack of development, apathy towards the poor, scientifically implemented mass rigging, muscle power, murders, guns and goons... These have been the things that made the Leftist people of Bengal angry and furious, and made them think seriously of an alternative after decades. These are the things that made the people to come out and vote against CPM in the elections that have been happening of late, including the Parliamentary elections last year. Of course, that can’t take away the credit from Mamata Banerjee, who has been fearlessly taking the CPM head on! She felt the pulse of Bengal, had the courage and gave the alternative that Bengal was looking for. And it was only after the setback that the otherwise arrogant CPM leaders of Bengal received due to their loss in the general elections last year, that they really starte...

There is mayhem in Bengal. In fact, that’s been the other name of Bengal since years of CPM rule. Open a Bangla news channel and all one sees are murders after murders. All political murders. Complete unrest. And it is so unfortunate to see the interviews of the helpless relatives – they can but do absolutely nothing. Really, opening the TV channels is so disheartening. Not that the rest of India is far better. But what’s happening in Bengal is unbelievable and never seen before in any part of the country, including Bihar. The CPM government – seeing their end coming nearer – has gone berserk and increased their complete total gunda raj by many folds. In between all this mayhem, there are some other interesting developments. The old man who was the man behind the whole mess, Jyoti Basu, has suddenly decided to get more active issuing two requests! One, to the Congress Party to stop supporting the Trinamool Congress and start supporting them to preserve peace! He has also appealed to Co...

I write this not as my editorial, but as a protest to see if there are any listeners… because my blood boils in anger over the way another human being in the world’s largest democracy is being robbed of her freedom of speech. And the way everyone from the mainstream media to intelligentsia has maintained the conspiracy of silence! Taslima Nasreen, the author of famous books like Lajja and Dwikhandito (the book whose controversial passages landed her into trouble with various Muslim fundamentalist forces of West Bengal), has been under virtual house arrest in New Delhi, ever since West Bengal government decided to throw her out of Kolkata, her home for the last three years. Much like Salman Rushdie, she had dared to write about Prophet Mohammad’s wives in a questioning tone (which of course under mental trauma she asked her publishers to remove from her book about two months back). Unlike Hinduism, which has evolved as a religion, thanks to tens of reformers (can you imagine the days of...

Since the declaration of the state of emergency by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, the world has been much divided between those who have been advocating that only a dictatorial military regime can save Pakistan from becoming a failed state and those who claim that only democracy can revive Pakistan. This debate, no doubt, would persist for some time to come, but the issue at large is whether such dictatorial regimes eventually succeed in resurrecting a failing state. For most of the time in the 20th century, many such regimes, especially in Africa, came on the pretext of saving their countries from disaster. However noble their intentions might have been in the beginning, their sustained stay at the helm of affairs, eventually proved disastrous for their respective countries. To start with, let’s take the example of Sudan. Incidentally, this country has also been given the rank of numero uno in the recent ranking of failed states by The Foreign Policy magazine. Omar Hass...

As I watched with excitement the finals of Zee Sa Re Ga Ma, glued to the TV sets at a friend’s house, what struck me was the massive number of votes that each of the finalists got. It was a mind numbing figure that crossed a whopping 10,00,00,000!!! Yes! Those were over ten crore votes that were polled! While my friends debated with excitement at how Bengalis reaching the finals of any such show were bound to win due to the massive way they vote, I couldn’t help but wonder at the irony around the fact that these are the same Bengalis who allow their votes to be rigged election after election in West Bengal and allow muscle men to dominate and snatch away their rights to what Bengalis love doing most – vote and debate. After all, Bengal was amongst the first in the world to bring in communism through a democratic process. Though the situation is better in most other states, yet rigging and non-participation in the electoral process remain India’s biggest problems. It is because we belie...

Despite their unquestionably perfect ideology of an equitable State, unfortunately the communists world over have always been dictatorial. Dictatorship, though, is not the way Marx wanted his ideals to be propagated worldwide. However, for the communists, the typical formula has been to come to power by appealing to the humane instincts of mankind – by speaking of equality – and then retaining power through brutal force (though any good work done would’ve got every communist regime in the world back to power democratically as well). The story has been the same in West Bengal. Years ago, the great Maratha swadeshi leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale is believed to have said of this very State that “What Bengal thinks today India thinks tomorrow.” Yes, West Bengal boasts of the most intellectuals in this country thanks to years old tradition of literature, art and culture. She boasts of the three great Nobel laureates of India, Rabindranath Tagore, Mother Teresa and Amartya Sen as well as India...