Month: August 2020

Since morning, the Bombay Stock Exchange has already cracked 600 points. This, on a day, when global markets are mostly in the green, some of them up as much as 1%.

The nervousness is understandable. Nobody really knows what will happen at 5:30 pm today.

Our markets have been zooming upwards for the last several months, as with other markets across the world. They were zooming until Friday. But the day has finally arrived. There’s no running away from the day of reckoning. The only thing that makes sense is to book profits and hope.

Hope that we don’t see an utter disaster.

How much the idea of the word “disaster” has changed in times of Coronavirus. If the GDP print for today comes out to be -10%, the markets will go crazy tomorrow. What a world we live in where 10% contraction is “good news”!

Even at -15%, the market is bound to cheer the news. Only if it gets below -20%, there will be shockwaves. The old Chinese curse could not be more relevant or more ironic today: may you live in interesting times.

The median forecast is for -18% or so, with the most optimistic being SBI Research at -16%. I think the most pessimistic is CARE or ICRA, one of them having penciled in 25% contraction for this quarter.

There are many remarks here. First, there is the jaw dropping range of 10% in the economists’ predictions. Rarely have I seen this range to be more than 1 or 1.5%. That this range has extended to 10% shows that everyone is shooting in the dark. And for once, I am cutting the economists some slack. The situation is truly unprecedented.

How unprecedented? No better way to understand than this graph of UK GDP growth that shows what kind of stuff the world is facing.

Look carefully at this graph. See the tiny red bits poking down around 2008? That is supposed to be the “Great Recession.” Now look at the big red line at the extreme right. No, it’s not a border of the image. It’s an actual red line, showing the decline of the UK economy in the last quarter. It makes every other bar, growth or contraction, look tiny and irrelevant by comparison. It’s so big that they literally had to rescale the graph.

This is what we are facing. There is no comparison available to anything else. When we say unprecedented, we truly mean unprecedented. It is so unprecedented, we need a new word for unprecedented.

While there is so much disagreement about Q1 figures, it is somewhat reassuring to note that there is a reasonable consensus emerging around the number for the whole year. The prediction is for a 5-7% contraction.

Since we all know that both Q1 and Q2 will show negative growth, we are now certain that India has entered a period of recession.

This made me curious about our economic history. Have we been in a recession before? When? Turns out, we have. Thrice. Those were FY58, FY66 and FY80. You might be curious about what caused those recessions. Quite embarrassingly, all three were due to drastic failures of monsoon. Even in 1980, pretty much all of India worked and lived hand to mouth in the agriculture sector. Sustenance agriculture, mind you. When the rains fail, famine comes to the land. Like we read in Panchatantra stories.

India’s journey in the last 30 years has not been perfect, but we sure do live in a much better country today.

Ironically, in this recession, it is the agricultural economy that is sparkling most of all! I read projections that tractor sales might increase by double digit percentages in August. One of the few bright spots.

Let’s fasten our seat belts and wait for 5:30 pm. We’ll see what happens.

Generally speaking, the world does not like to give enough (or any) credit to India’s ancient Hindu civilization. In fact, the dominant intellectual class spends a lot of energy trying to belittle, ridicule and minimize the scientific achievements of ancient India. As with almost anything else connected to the Hindus.

As Indian Hindus enter a bold new phase of self-assertion, it is our duty to challenge this unfair narrative. But it is not easy to break the existing monopoly. They are not just going to roll over and give us our place in the world. The empire will strike back. They have the advantage. They know how to win and they will use every bit of it.

The least we can do is not fall into the traps they set for us. One of these traps is called “Vedic Mathematics.”

This might make you defensive. As a Hindu, you are probably used to all sorts of jibes from the dominant left. You have probably been dismayed at how they insist that Hindu numerals should be called “Hindu-Arabic numerals” and nowadays just “Arabic numerals.” So why am I dissing Vedic Mathematics? Am I trying to join the leftist intellectual cartel by piling on Hindus?

Let me explain, in a simple question and answer format.

Q. Are you saying that ancient India did not make significant contributions to mathematics?

A. Not at all. Ancient India contributed vigorously to mathematics. Several of the most foundational mathematical devices, famous theorems, etc were discovered in India hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years before they were known in the West. We should demand that school textbooks should recognize this and give credit to ancient Hindu mathematicians. Such as with the so called Pythagoras theorem, which was known in India long before Pythagoras. This change should happen not just in Indian textbooks but in textbooks across the world.

Q. Then why are you dismissing Vedic mathematics?

A. Because “Vedic mathematics” has nothing to do ancient Indian mathematics. In fact, it is not even mathematics.

Q. Then what is Vedic mathematics?

A. It is a brand name, like “Kentucky Fried Chicken” or “Hero cycles.” Somebody in the 1960s came up with a bunch of techniques for faster mental calculations in basic arithmetic. They branded it as “Vedic mathematics.” That’s all.

Believing that Vedic mathematics has something to do with Vedas or mathematics is like taking any other brand name literally. Would you think that anybody who rides “Hero cycles” is a “hero”? Or do you think that Gillette’s “Mach 3” razor can be used for travelling at 3 times the speed of sound?

Q. Why do you call Vedic mathematics a trap?

A. Today, Vedic Mathematics has become a trap used by the left. Because of the brand name, a lot of Hindus have honestly come to believe that it has something to do with the glory of ancient India. So in any discussion on ancient Indian contributions to science, the topic of “Vedic Mathematics” always comes up, sooner or later. The left pounces on it and uses this to discredit all the legitimate demands for recognition.

As long as the myth of “Vedic mathematics” endures, the left has the perfect excuse to deny intellectual legitimacy to all demands from Hindus.

Q. Why did you say that Vedic math is not mathematics?

A. As mentioned before, the so called “Vedic math” is a collection of calculation techniques in basic arithmetic. A lot of people confuse doing calculations with doing mathematics. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding is often reinforced by movies and popular culture. Including the recent one on Shakuntala Devi. The media repeatedly called her a “world renowned mathematician.” While the ability to perform incredibly fast mental calculations is very impressive, like Sachin Tendulkar scoring a century of centuries, it is not mathematics.

Q. Are you trying to stereotype the Hindu right as gullible or misinformed?

A. Not at all. Nobody has a monopoly on pseudoscience. In fact, some of the worst attacks on science, including mathematics, have come from the far left. Start with the feminists who said that calculus is rape manual (not kidding … look it up). I have also written about how left wing outlets such as the Huffington Post are happy to believe in ancient airplanes, as long as you say that a Muslim invented them.

In fact, you could go to the official website of the CPIM right now and read an incredibly foolish essay in which the physics of black holes is accused of being anti-working class. If you want to check out this and other pseudo-scientific howlers from the “intellectual” left, you can read my article here.

Did you know that in the 1950s, the Communist Politburo declared that genetics is “bourgeois pseudoscience”? Around 3000 biologists were sent to Soviet prison camps for the “crime” of believing in evolution. Several were even executed. I’m not kidding. Check it out. You probably never heard this story because the Communists were clever enough to get the historians on their side. They covered their tracks.

So why am I so concerned about the Hindu right getting entangled with this thing called Vedic math? Because, it is an unfair battle. The strong and the weak play by different rules.

In the intellectual sphere, the left has all the power right now. They can afford to make all sorts of bizarre claims and get away with it. When William Dalrymple talks about the “miraculously undecayed body” of Francis Xavier after several hundred years, he can get away with it. His powerful friends will protect him from all form of mockery. Did you know that the eminent feminist who declared calculus a rape manual is a tenured professor at UCLA? She is a revered cultural hero on the left and keeps winning more and more prestigious awards every year. Facts don’t matter when you are on the dominant side.

When you don’t have privilege, it’s a different story. You get one thing wrong and they will destroy you. They will pulverize you. In fact, that’s what they are always waiting for.

The opposition is up in arms. How will Indian students appear for exams such as JEE and NEET in the middle of a pandemic? Does the government not care about the students? Better to postpone the exams, they say.

Now if you click on the link I gave you, which is from The Indian Express, you might be surprised to see that the date on the article is Jan 8, 2020. That is well before we were all scared of the Coronavirus. Back on Jan 8, 2020, the WHO and its Chinese masters were still denying that the virus could jump from person to person. So what is going on? Well, this:

Indeed, the opposition trade unions called for a Bharat Bandh on Jan 8 this year. How will candidates reach the exam venue if public transport comes to a halt on the day of the exams or the day just before the exams? If you were a student taking these exams, how would you feel?

The opposition didn’t care. Instead, they wanted the JEE Exams postponed. Eventually, the NET exams were delayed, but JEE exams were not. Imagine what the students went through. Imagine years of preparation for an exam that can change your life. And when you are going to the exam venue, some lazy comrade with no future is blocking your train or bus. How would you feel?

Who were all these trade unions that wanted JEE exam postponed? Not just the comrades. There was also the INTUC, the trade union backed by the Indian National Congress. Thank you Sonia ji! Just because your son flunked his exam last year and no amount of preparation will get him through, did you want the hardworking JEE candidates to lose out on their life changing opportunity?

Speaking of last year, check this out.

The Indian Express report above was from Jan 8, 2020. This Times of India report is from Jan 8, 2019, exactly one year before that. Indeed, every year the JEE Mains are held around Jan 8. And every year the opposition is ready with a Bharat Bandh to block their path.

Every year, lakhs of young students go out to take the JEE Exams, trying to reap the harvest for years of hard work. Every year, like a plague of locusts, the comrades descend on them.

The only saving grace is that the opposition simply does not have the kind of ground level support needed to make their Bandhs work. They had claimed 25 crore workers would take part in the strike. But like production quotas in the erstwhile Soviet Union, these were on paper only.

Again, imagine you are on your way to take an exam that could change your life. You have spent years preparing for it. You have spent many nights dreaming about all the great things you could do with your life once you clear the exam. And now there is a comrade blocking your path. A lazy Communist who contributes nothing to society. They cannot succeed in life. They don’t want you to succeed in life.

The comrades couldn’t mobilize the 25 crore people in Jan 2020. Or in Jan 2019 for that matter. This time, they have placed their hopes on a pandemic to try and stop students from succeeding.

They don’t care about students or their safety. They just can’t bear to see anyone succeed in life.

Hey, maybe Communism is a pandemic… Pass it on.

By now, everyone knows what happened with the book Delhi Riots 2020: The Untold Story. The book was about to be published … and then it wasn’t. Some powerful liberals objected; the Orwellian machine of global liberalism began to turn. And Bloomsbury appeared to buckle under pressure. This being the internet age, the book went on to gain amazing publicity and vitalized a smaller Indian publisher. It will now be published by Garuda Prakashan, which will reap both the goodwill and the profits from this now sure shot bestseller.

It doesn’t matter, the liberals argue. They argue that the book has been denied the “prestige” of a publisher like Bloomsbury. And that’s all they care about. They are happy.

The Hindu right also has something to celebrate. The “banned” book has now attained cult status. It’s reach will now be wider than anyone could have imagined.

In some sense, there is no better way to understand the feudal mentality of the modern liberal. The liberal is more concerned with protecting the sanctity of their cocktail circuit than touching base with the masses. They are convinced that nothing outside their little circuit matters. Because it doesn’t have “prestige.” According to them, who cares if the potential readership of the book has just expanded by a factor of ten? As long as nobody they know reads the book, it doesn’t exist…

Contrary to the popular myth, ostriches do not actually bury their heads in sand. But liberals surely do.

By now, a lot of outrage has appeared on social media and Hindu right wing platforms on the issue of this book. The dangers of cancel culture and the threat to freedom of expression have been mentioned repeatedly. I want to make a slightly different point, which I found to be most chilling.

The liberal outrage around the book was focused on Kapil Mishra. Why? Did Kapil Mishra write the book?

Now Bloomsbury did not give a detailed official explanation for their action and so we can’t be absolutely certain. So we will have to opt for a reasonable guess. Now, it is almost always bad when you are trying to get a book removed. But there are levels of intolerance and this one appears to be the worst (and most frightening).

(1) It is bad if you demand that a book be unpublished because you don’t like its contents. Or its cover, or title. But that does not seem to have happened here. The liberal outrage mob clearly hadn’t read the book.

(2) It is even worse if you demand that a book be unpublished because you don’t like the author. But in all that the outrage mob was saying, I found hardly any criticism of the authors themselves.

(3) If not the content of the book, if not even the author, who were the liberals outraging against? They were criticizing Kapil Mishra! It is absolutely worst of all if you demand that a book be unpublished because of who the author happened to meet (or planned to meet!)

That is a whole new level of intolerance. It’s not even ad hominem : the classic fallacy where you attack a person instead of their argument. It’s worse than that. It is attacking an argument based on your view of other people that this person happens to know! This is so bad that there isn’t even a term for this fallacy.

The consequences are absolutely frightening. If you appear with someone on a public platform and powerful people don’t like those you appeared with, your books are going to be banned? Seriously?

One of the authors of the book was an advocate at the Supreme Court. The other two were professors at Delhi University. One legal mind and two academic ones. But their book was unpublished because others don’t like who the authors were meeting with? Again, seriously?

They talk about slippery slope, but we are already in the abyss here.

So what is the correct level of “purity” to maintain? Big Liberal won’t answer this question and deliberately so. Acts like these are as much a message to their own minions as to their ideological opponents. They want to keep the standards vague. They want to keep their minions in perpetual state of fear, always stopping reflexively at the threshold of any dangerous thought. Orwell called it “crimestop” : the mind shuts down before it thoughtcrime happens.

If you tell them exactly where the lines are, they will start playing around freely within the lines. If you don’t tell them where the line is, the minions will be absolutely terrified all the time. They will only move in dense packs, crowd towards the center and never experiment. Not even slightly.

Because Big Liberal is watching you.

The good news is that Big Liberal is totally blind to the weakness in their own system. Nobody on their cocktail circuit dares to point it out. And they don’t think anyone else matters. So they don’t know.

Here’s the thing about liberals who are gloating about the denial of “prestige” to the book. They have forgotten where their prestige comes from. They have forgotten that left liberal privilege in those circles was a crumb tossed before them from the table of Nehruvian power. They have fooled themselves into buying their own propaganda about left wing intellectual superiority.

Their “prestige” came from the people. People voted for a certain political party for generations. And that party patronized them and made them “prestigious.” Without that power source, they are nothing.

Well, people of India have changed their political preferences. The power source has been turned off. With the political power changing hands, the “prestige” will change hands too. Matter of time.

The ostrich is not dumb enough to bury its head in sand. But liberals surely are.

Right now, there is a major debate in the country about when to hold nationwide competitive exams such as NEET and JEE. There are good points on both sides. On the one hand, there are definite risks with holding exams in the time of pandemic. On the other hand, how long can we postpone exams? Should we let young people simply waste one of their most productive years? Striking a balance will involve some difficult choices.

But wait! Someone else wants to get involved in this debate. Someone all the way from a distant European country close to where Santa Claus comes from.

Imagine if you were having an argument with your partner about the family finances. Say about how much to invest in fixed deposits and how much in mutual funds. Both of you make excellent points weighing the risks and the rewards. Obviously, there is no clear winner.

Then suddenly, there is a knock on the door. A complete stranger shows up and says that they are very passionate about supporting one of you. You would be puzzled. You would wonder: why does this stranger care so much?

So keep aside for a moment which side you support in the exam debate. The question is : why is Greta Thunberg so passionate about this?

When Greta posted this tweet yesterday, some people welcomed it. Others accused her of being ignorant or patronizing towards India. However, to get to the heart of this, one has to understand who, or rather what, Greta Thunberg is.

Greta Thunberg is not an individual who tweets on whims. She is a billion dollar brand. Her face and name are capable of raising millions of dollars for any cause. A lot of thought from a large, well paid and highly professional team goes into every venture which is backed by the brand.

Think about it: if big oil or big banks were tweeting about postponing exams in India, would you accuse them of being ignorant or patronizing? Not at all. You would be curious how the matter impacts their bottomline.

So the question is: why is a big brand like Greta Thunberg picking up the matter of NEET & JEE exam dates in India? How does it impact their bottomline? That suggests there is big money in the picture here. How did that happen?

Why is big money getting involved in a matter such as this? Probably because big interests want to destabilize India in every possible way. It’s simple really. The exams are highly competitive. A very small fraction will make it through. What if those who fail are made to blame Modi instead of themselves?

This is subversion 101 and it works. The anti-CAA protests spread like a rash across many college campuses. Someone wants to provoke the youth on a large scale and that someone has a lot of money. The same goes for abrogation of Article 370. Never have we seen top global newspapers on such a direct vilification campaign against India. Then, a “riot” at the exact moment when the US President landed in India. It is promptly labelled a pogrom by intellectuals all over the world. In perfect coordination, they all scream : Nazi! Nazi! Nazi!

Then, the Galwan Valley clash happens in mid-June. The next day the New York Times digs up a line from Amit Shah speaking about Article 370 in Aug 2019 and claims that India provoked China. Between Aug 5, 2019 and June 15, 2020, every global media outlet produced reams of reports about Article 370 and Amit Shah but nobody said there was a China angle anywhere. Did they just happen to figure out the China angle on the night of the clash? Or were they ordered (paid) to figure it out that night?

All this began with PM Modi’s second term, right when many would have concluded that BJP rule is here to stay, perhaps indefinitely.

How do we inoculate ourselves against foreign intervention? The key lies in realizing that Greta Thunberg or the New York Times are no different from a for profit corporation. And corporations only care about their bottomline. I am not saying that’s bad. Corporations have done a lot of good in this world. I am just saying that we all know what corporations want. And we protect our interests accordingly. A corporation may want us to drink 10 liters of their fizzy sugary drink per day. We know better. We watch their ads but we also watch out for ourselves. Not everything we see in an advertisement is bad: there are plenty of useful things that are advertised. We just know that we have to be conscious consumers.

The danger is when we don’t realize that something is an ad, or that something is a corporation. Like the New York Times. It’s a corporation. But it doesn’t “feel” that way. We are more inclined to think about the New York Times as a group of people with ideas. Even those who think the New York Times has an anti-India agenda are still ascribing emotion to them. One has to realize that NYT is a corporate machine. It does not feel love, hate or prejudice. It has no biases. It only has a bottomline.

Something similar with Greta Thunberg. It is essentially a corporate brand. It has no emotions, no prejudices, no friends and no enemies.

Someone has turned these corporate machines: from the New York Times to Greta Thunberg to churn out stuff that undermines the Govt of India. That someone has a lot of money. We don’t know who it is, but they don’t wish us well. That’s for sure.

I thought of writing this post yesterday. For a fleeting moment, it did seem like there would be some kind of revolt in the Congress. Rahul’s alleged remark…which never happened if you ask Rahul and definitely happened if you ask the biggest Congress chamchas in media … seemed like it would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. After a lifetime of serving like loyal dogs, they get disowned by their master?

But for some reason, I decided not to write. I had to wait till the end of the day. The internalized slave mentality of Congress “leaders” would surface sooner or later, I suspected.

It took only a few hours. By some accounts, less than an hour. The media Pidis were scolded and blamed for the remark. The political Pidis recanted their words and have been grovelling ever since. The scene is pathetic to watch. What a condition for the main opposition in the world’s largest democracy.

Sonia Gandhi continues as Congress President. What’s new?

Anyway, the rest of this post is in the realm of pure speculation. One that is highly unlikely to ever happen. I just want to have the fun of imagining: what would Congress without Gandhis look like?

I know there are jokes going around about BJP supporters more intent on Rahul as president than even Congress supporters. I received some of these on Whatsapp and these are hilarious. But, believe it or not, I personally think Congress would be even worse off without a Gandhi at the helm.

It’s not just a matter of who would replace the Gandhis at the top. It is also a matter of what would replace the Gandhis at the top.

I’m talking about ideology. All politicians have the capacity to be hypocritical. But even hypocrisy cannot exist in a complete vacuum. You need to have something … anything to hold out before the people … as your official ideology. Something that gets your supporters fired up from social media all the way to the polling booth.

For Congress, what is that ideology? Till now it was loyalty to the Gandhis. If you take the Gandhis out of the picture, try to show how a politician would complete the following sentence

“I joined Congress because ….“

S/he has literally nothing to say. Not even something to lie about. Even Lalu’s RJD has some kind of pitch. You can frame your decision to join RJD in terms of some social justice/caste rhetoric. But Congress? What?

The Congress’ problem is more than just leadership. There is a problem of absence of ideology.

Again, I am not saying politicians are deeply ideological or morally committed. I am merely saying they need to assert that they are ideological. Just for appearance sake. With the Gandhis out of picture, they don’t have anything to assert even.

Ironically, as much as Rahul’s presence benefits BJP, I think his absence would benefit BJP even more. Because then the Congress would have no choice but to accept that it is a loose coalition of regional leaders. And the party really would break up.

I did a quick addition of Lok Sabha seats in states where Congress has some relevance and came up with a figure of 175 or so (I counted partially relevant in Maharashtra and Assam). If there is an anti-incumbency wave some day, the Congress could win over 100 of these. That is enough to stay in contention for the Prime Minister’s post.

But if the party breaks up, the chance of any splinter group reaching even 30 seats becomes remotely small. It is not often appreciated how hard it is to win even an extremely small number of Lok Sabha seats.

Try this: list out all political parties existing today that have ever won 30 seats. You could almost count them on fingers of one hand: BJP, Congress, SP, TMC, CPM and ADMK. I do not think the DMK has ever won 30 seats (I could be wrong on this). And regional parties like SP or TMC or ADMK only managed this feat because they were in seat rich states: specifically the ones where Congress is totally out of the game now.

So splinters of the Congress would struggle to break 30 seats. The majority mark is 272. LOL! Voters simply aren’t going to go for parties that are so far from forming a real government.

So how does the Congress go on? Well, with Rahul’s leadership, they will disintegrate eventually. There is genuine disaffection in the Congress now. Even P C Chacko.

Adhocism prevailing in Delhi, not invited for CWC meeting despite being permanent member: Chacko

Read @ANI Story | https://t.co/4gzrnYiuU6 pic.twitter.com/ckgenOYfAn

— ANI Digital (@ani_digital) August 25, 2020

How long can they cover this up by blaming various Pidis? So with Rahul at the helm, they will disintegrate. Without Rahul at the helm they will disintegrate, just a little faster. Congress mukt Bharat is not far now.

As with most European capitals, there is a World War 2 memorial at the heart of the city of St. Petersburg. Now, St. Petersburg is not the capital of Russia, but it is close enough. When I went there last year and saw the memorial, I could not suppress a chuckle. The giant monument reads: 1941 – 1945. Why? Didn’t we always hear that the Second World War stretched from 1939 to 1945?

One of the most curious subplots of World War 2 is also the least known. In the first two years of the war, the Communists were actually allies of the Nazis. When Hitler invaded Poland in Sept 1939 from the west, his Communist allies simultaneously invaded Poland from the east. The two allies met up for a joint victory parade and then proceeded to divide up Poland. The Communists then moved to occupy the Baltic states : Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia as well as Finland. The Nazis turned towards the occupation of Western Europe, i.e., Belgium and France.

(Aside: Early on, the giant Communist Red Army suffered some shocking defeats at the hands of the tiny Finnish forces, believe it or not. It exposed to the whole world the miserable condition of the Soviet military).

Everything went according to the pact between Molotov (Stalin’s foreign minister) and Ribbentrop (the Nazi foreign minister). Now, the Communists have wiggled out of their alliance with Nazis in the usual way: by leaving it out of history textbooks.

But that’s not my point here. The question is: how could the Communists have been so foolish in the first place as to enter an alliance with Hitler? Did they not read all the things Hitler said? How could they not know that Hitler despised Communism?

The Communists were absolutely aware of how Hitler felt about them. But they became friends of the Nazis anyway. Because the Communists were blinded by two things that appealed to them about the Nazi regime:

(1) Hitler’s authoritarian state had natural appeal for the Communist dictatorship.

(2) Nazism and Communism were united in their hatred towards the Jewish people.

A common belief in authoritarianism and shared hatred towards a group of innocent people. That’s what brought the Communists and Nazis together.

That was a long story. Now let me give you some parallels. Have you ever wondered about this curious alliance between Communists and Islamists in the modern world? How do the two get along? One is supposed to be staunchly atheist and the other is deeply religious.

” … if the Islamic systems are implemented in its true revolutionary spirit, or its faulty implementation is reformed, then results better than the Communist regimes can be achieved.“

That is a direct quote from Sharjeel Imam, from an article coauthored by him on Teesta Setalvad’s website Sabrang). As you can see, Sharjeel tells the Communists in no uncertain terms that his way is better than theirs. In fact, his article is a stinging indictment of Communists who try to portray the poet Faiz as some kind of atheist. Here is more from the same article:

“It is unfortunate that this orthodox Muslim propaganda has succeeded in convincing many Muslims as well as many progressive and liberal circles in the subcontinent that Faiz was indeed an atheist, or at least his revolutionary ideas had nothing to do with Islam. It is high time that this distortion should be rectified.“

He is talking about the same poem “Hum dekhenge” and the lines about breaking idols. The one that Communists claim is a metaphor for universal justice. Sharjeel rejects their point of view completely.

Why then do the Communists join Sharjeel Imam in singing Faiz’s song? The Communists have high admiration for him, but he has nothing but bitter rebuke for them. Why this one sided reverence, almost like an abusive relationship?

Because, Communists are led to ally with Islamists based on two factors: a common belief in authoritarianism and a shared hatred towards Hindus. Get it now?

You might wonder why I am focusing so much on Sharjeel Imam. Because Sharjeel Imam is different. His Islamism is different from the low IQ rants that you would see from Shoaib Daniyal or Rana Ayyub or Safoora Zargar. The guy is not studying history because he flunked science and math in Class 3. No, far from it. Sharjeel is a computer science graduate from IIT Bombay and it shows in his clarity of thinking and expression. His Islamism is a very well thought out, a very deliberate supremacist position. Like Jinnah, the man is no fool. This is the kind of man who is truly dangerous. Here is Sharjeel writing about Jinnah in the Wire:

“The AMU portrait of Jinnah must not go. If anything, we need thousands more.”

Don’t just go by this catchy line. I would encourage everyone to read every word of the detailed article written by Sharjeel Imam. Read in detail how Sharjeel makes a case that Muslim majority provinces needed to secede from India in 1947.

Now go to Sharjeel’s famous speech that got him into trouble. In it, he speaks of how the chicken’s neck of India is inhabited primarily by Muslims. And how they can cut it off. He’s not angry, he’s not speaking off the cuff. He is just elaborating on his opinions about partition: when any part of India becomes M majority, he expects them to secede and create a supremacist state, like Jinnah did.

I deliberately linked to a Wire article by Apoorvanand that tries to make excuses for Sharjeel’s speech. Because it illustrates how a Communist like Apoorvanand cannot understand what Sharjeel is really saying. Even though Sharjeel makes no attempt to hide his agenda. He lays it out clearly and states that non-Muslims must live on terms set by Muslims.

So blinded is Apoorvanand by his hatred for Hindus that he cannot see the obvious. In his mind, he concocts a fantastic story about Sharjeel being a reckless young man who spoke in anger. You can go check the video : there was no anger. There was clarity of thought.

Of course, Apoorvanand lacks the intellectual capacity to understand the gravity of what Sharjeel Imam is saying. But how do you explain the mass delusion among Communists about what Islamists are saying? Here is Sharjeel Imam writing on Kanhaiya Kumar when the latter ran for election from Begusarai:

“It is comical to ask Muslims to vote for a Bhumihar against a Muslim candidate…“

Get that? Despite all the praise that Communists have showered on Sharjeel Imam, his response is very direct, very single minded. In his eyes, Kanhaiya has no worth. This is supremacist ideology, delivered as straight as can be.

In our political discourse, we are always talking about the Hindu right vs the Islamists. The left, many of whom bear Hindu names, have cast their lot with the Islamists. We rarely talk about the deep contradictions in this ill fated alliance. The left thinks they have it figured out, that somehow the Sharjeel Imams of the world will be nice to them. Even though the Sharjeel Imams of the world have made it clear a thousand times that they have no such intention. History is repeating itself. Watch this space.

We’ve heard this smear over and over again. The claim that Delhi riots of Feb 2020 were a ‘pogrom.’ At first, they would not even accept that people of both communities had suffered loss of life. Eventually, they had to concede that much. The argument promptly evolved to something like this:

More victims belonged to community X and therefore, the Delhi riots had to be a pogrom.

Except this theory can be debunked by some basic data analysis. More at the level of common sense.

Let us step back from rhetoric, reduce passions and focus on facts. In the terrible tragedy of the Delhi riots, a total of 51 lives were lost. Of these, 36 persons belonged to Community X and 15 persons belonged to Community Y. The liberal argument goes thus: We know that 36 is greater than 15 and this proves that the riot was a pogrom against Community X.

Let us see what happens to this argument when we apply common sense. Suppose there are 1000 people who pick up a street fight with another group of 1000 people. Which side would you expect to have higher casualties?

Neither, you would say. Since the number of people on the two sides is equal, you would expect both sides to inflict roughly equal damage on each other.

Now let us change the equation somewhat. What if a crowd of 2000 people got into a fight with a crowd of 1000 people? Which side would have more casualties?

It’s easy to see. The side that is numerically weaker would suffer a higher number of casualties. How much more? If it is 2000 vs 1000, the numerically weaker side would suffer roughly twice as many casualties as the other.

Now let us look at the population of Delhi. Roughly speaking, 82% of people belong to Community X and 13% of people belong to Community Y (remaining 5% belong to other groups). If a fight broke out between the two groups, you would expect therefore that the casualties among X would be four times the number of casualties among Y.

A little over 6:1 : That is the ratio you would expect.

Again, this is a very simple minded estimate, but fair enough. It works because the number of casualties is very small compared to the total population of either community.

So 6:1 is the ratio you would expect to see. Now what was the observed ratio in the Delhi riots?

It was 36 from X community and 15 from Y community, a ratio of 2.4:1, which is substantially less than 6:1.

So how could it have been a pogrom against X? Sure, X suffered more casualties, but you have to adjust for the fact that community X was numerically weaker by a factor of 4! In any street fight, X would suffer more casualties than Y. That does not prove it was a pogrom.

Wait! We haven’t even spoken about the police yet. The liberal accusation is that this was a ‘pogrom,’ with the police actively supporting community Y.

But we have already established that in any street face off, with police not favoring any side, the ratio in casualties would be 6:1.

Now if you say that the police was actively helping community Y carry out a pogrom, what would happen to this 6:1 ratio? Would it go higher or lower?

Higher, obviously. Community Y already has the numerical advantage. If the police were to join in on their side, they would inflict even more casualties on X. The ratio would go up, maybe to 7:1 or more.

But it didn’t. In fact, it was much less than 6:1. It was 2.4:1!

Were the riots pre-planned by members of community Y? Again, if Y had the advantage of pre-planning along with its numerical advantage, the ratio would be higher than 6:1, not lower!

So you have to reject both of these claims from liberals. No, the police definitely did not side with community Y. Nor did members of community Y have the thing pre-planned.

Delhi riots were terrible and tragic. But they were NOT a pogrom. Period.

Now let us ask how the ratio could have declined from the expected 6:1 to the observed 2.4:1. There are basically two possibilities.

(1) The Delhi Police worked very hard to shield minority communities from violence. This blunted the numerical advantage of the majority during the riots.

(2) Some leaders of the minority community had pre-planned the violence. So when the riots broke out, the majority community was taken by surprise and hence they suffered more casualties than expected.

Both of these explanations would reduce the ‘pogrom’ theory to dust. If you can come up with another explanation for the numbers being what they are, I am eager to listen.

Finally, let us ask : who had the motive? Who would gain from Delhi going up in smoke exactly as the President of the United States is visiting?

Secular leaders had motive. The casualty figures from the Delhi riots suggest that secular leaders had the advantage of pre-planning when the violence began. We even have videos of riot ammunition being dumped from the homes of secular leaders. Delhi riots are an open and shut case. This is not a pogrom.

India has actually seen a pogrom. Back in 1984, when over 3,000 members of one community were killed but not a single member from any other community. That was not a riot. That was not two groups of people fighting. That was state sponsored violence.

The government has released the latest round of the nationwide cleanliness survey : Swachchata Survey 2020. This is a comprehensive nationwide survey covering not 100 or 200, but as many as 4242 different Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) spread across the length and breadth of the country.

Here are the basic upshots. Indore has maintained its crown as India’s cleanest city. The crown for the cleanest state (among those states with at least 100 local bodies) has gone to Chhattisgarh. The crown for the cleanest state (among those states with less than 100 local bodies) has gone to Jharkhand. Seems the two sister states: Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have done a fantastic job.

Cleanliness. Who could be against this? Or, let me rephrase that: what kind of psycho would see a conspiracy behind cleanliness? Whether Congress or BJP ruled, all states have enthusiastically participated in the survey. It is the kind of totally wholesome, healthy competition between states that would warm our hearts.

Well, everyone has participated. Except one psycho Chief Minister who has kept her state out: Mamata Banerjee.

In 2017 itself, West Bengal dropped out, suspecting some kind of BJP hand to the survey. Don’t ask how.

Perhaps Mamata Banerjee felt some shame the next year and decided to bring Bengal back into the survey. The results were abysmal.

That was it! That was the final straw. Somebody did a reality check on Didi. And if you know anything about the mercurial Bengal CM, it is that you never do a reality check on her. Not when she is busy with her dreams of “Biswa Bangla.”

How dare they find that 19 out of the 25 dirtiest cities in India are in Bengal? The so called Biswa Bangla project does not take kindly to stuff like this. So, according to the TMC, it just had to be a BJP conspiracy.

Not that this even needs to be said, but it clearly was no conspiracy. If it will soothe secular nerves, it should be pointed out that the *last* position in India in that 2018 survey went to Bhadresar in Kutch in Gujarat. This year as well, the topper states in the two categories are Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, both ruled by Congress and allies. So, no… the survey is not a BJP conspiracy to make itself look better.

Politically speaking, the Swachchata survey does not impact elections. In fact, that’s the whole point. Cleanliness and municipal efficiency is best left as a non-partisan issue. Because we all know that the roadblocks in the system; from citizen neglect to municipal corruption are not specific to any party.

The point is that Didi still managed to see red (saffron, rather) where nobody else did. This gives you a glimpse into the mindset of the Bengal CM and her coterie of advisers.

Since 2014, Mamata Banerjee has been living in a state of endless paranoia, too scared of her shadow switching loyalties to BJP. The list of silly things she has done is long, starting from the time she thought that Army trucks passing a toll plaza in Kolkata could be some kind of military coup against her. She rushed to Nobanno (the state secretariat) to reassure citizens that she is still in control as Prime Minister of Bengal. And that, presumably, any invasion by the Indian Army will be resisted. Okay, maybe not Prime Minister of Bengal, but you get the idea….

The latest item on her list is refusing to participate in the Cleanliness Survey. It shows her both as a loser who doesn’t want to change anything. And as paranoid who sees a conspiracy in everything.

I have said this before. Left to his own devices, Joe Biden would have no hostility towards India. I mean, the man is a middle of the road, establishment Democrat from Delaware. He’s not the problem: the problem is his party. Rather, what his party has become.

Let us first establish what we mean by “friend” or “enemy” of India. We should neither expect nor are we entitled to any emotional connection in the common sense of the word. The US President puts the US first. India’s PM puts India first. That’s exactly how it should be. The only reason we can “expect” friendship from the US is because, at the moment, India and the United States share several geopolitical interests.

It does not take very much for a US President right now to be a friend of India. In fact, all that the US President has to do is put American interests first and it will automatically work in India’s favor. That’s why under ordinary circumstances, an establishment Democrat like Biden would have been a “friend” of India — easy peasy.

The only way that could make a US President hostile to India is if they have a specific agenda against us. Which will hurt the US as well. Biden has no such agenda, but his party does. In fact, if I was an American, I would worry whether the current Democrats are even friends of America. India comes much later.

A lot of people are tempted to compare the Democrats to the Indian National Congress. I don’t agree. The Congress is and continues to be, opportunistic. The Congress panders to the ‘secular’ community because they are the last remaining core voters of the Congress. The Congress makes, every now and then, feeble attempts to pander to Hindus.

The Democrats are worse. More dangerous, rather. They have an outright anti-American agenda. The party now runs on twin engines of Islamism and Communism. Folks like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are bigger fans of Stalin and Castro than Washington or Jefferson or Lincoln. They genuinely hate America and the American way of liberty. People like Rachida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar despise the United States and everything about it (except its prosperity, which they soak up like parasites). These people would rather lose the election than give up on their anti-American agenda.

The Indian National Congress puts power first. The Democrats put their radical anti-American agenda first.

I should admit this characterization is grossly unfair to the average American Democrat. Why would a hardworking common Democrat bred in California or Oregon or Ohio or New York hate America? They don’t. Rather their party has been hijacked by an anti-American gang.

In fact, I suspect that Biden’s candidature itself is a silent uprising by rank and file Democrats that hardly anyone is talking about. The most vocal and radical elements in the Democrats wanted Stalin’s ghost brought back from the dead and made President of the United States. The ones militating from college campuses and Hamas bases in Palestine. Meanwhile, the ordinary Democratic voters in the primaries quietly longed for a return of the Obama years. They didn’t like the cruel tone of Trump’s politics. They wanted someone who tinkers with America around the edges : not abolish the country. That’s why Biden is the candidate, Obama’s vice-president.

The problem is that Biden is old and weak. And losing it with every passing day. The fear is that the radical elements in his party will take over. Or at the very least, he has to give them something.

This is where the risk to India comes from. India could be that something that Biden tosses in front of the wolves from the radical wing of his party. To tear apart and devour.

When I express these fears, some people rush to say that India is not that significant to American politics. I would argue that is exactly why I am worried. Because India is a bundle of contradictions that makes it an absolutely perfect target for the Islamist radicals in the Democratic Party.

The contradiction around India is exactly the point. India is not Swaziland or Cameroon that nobody has heard about it. Everyone has heard about India, but almost nobody knows about India.

I dare you to give another example of a country that fits into this strange gap. A country that all Americans have heard about, but know nothing about. Americans have heard of Germany or Brazil but they also know a lot about Germany or Brazil. Americans have never heard of Swaziland and they know nothing about Swaziland.

Only India. They’ve all heard of us. They know nothing about us.

That’s what makes India the perfect target for hate. You take the blank mental space that India already occupies in the mind of every American and fill it up with lies, causing them to hate us. That’s what the New York Times and Washington Post are doing with their relentless propaganda. They are filling up the vacant space with lies.

Indians are easy to demonize. They follow a religion that is completely alien to most Americans. I am really talking about Hindus here. Because we all know anti-India hate is really about anti-Hindu hatred.

What else makes India the perfect target? When people hate, they don’t like to feel like bullies. India is a large and powerful country. That makes it easy to hate India without any sense of guilt.

More about the demography. When thinking about a country, people start with the assumption that the minority is persecuted, not the majority. Hindus are a majority in India. That makes it easy to adapt the standard global rhetoric of majority-minority and demonize the Hindus.

This is where Americans not knowing about India comes in so handy to the left. Americans don’t know that the supposed majority lived in slavery to the minority for 800 years. They don’t know how the majority paid a tax to the minority simply for the right to keep their religion. They don’t know about the destruction of our places of worship, about the cultural genocide of centuries that we faced.

That’s the difference between India and Israel. Everyone knows what the Jewish people have been through. So when someone points out that Israel is a Jewish majority nation, Americans can contextualize that with well known history of anti-Semitism. They can see why Jewish people would need a homeland.

The problem is nobody knows what we Hindus have been through. Nobody understands why Hindus would need a homeland. They just hear about a Hindu majority and assume that the majority would be dominating the minority.

Another thing that makes us easy to demonize is the Indian model of ‘secularism’ and simply the way our constitution is framed. And how it differs from the American model. Tell the Americans that India is giving refuge to Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, etc and they will ask: why is the government making a law with a religious test?

The confusion is understandable. The average American simply does not understand the Indian model of secularism, nor the Indian model of social justice. Americans are taught to believe that the state should not discriminate between people in any way.

But that’s not the Indian model. Our model is “positive discrimination” in thousands of ways. In one-third of panchayats across India, the post of pradhan is reserved for women! Nobody sees this as disenfranchisement of men. LOL. Do Americans know this? Do they know that across one-third of India, no male is allowed the most basic democratic right to represent his village?

We Indians just don’t see it that way. We see it as a good thing for empowerment of women.

To give an even more fun example, Yogi Adityanath’s govt has decided that all the jobs at one station on Noida metro will be reserved for transgenders!

An American would find this sort of obvious discrimination unthinkable. But our model is simply different from theirs. So when the New York Times pulls out just one thread of CAA from this vast fabric of thousands of strands of positive discrimination that make up India, Americans think it’s wrong. They have never seen the rest of the strands. To say nothing of the outright unfair ones, like the government of India controlling all Hindu places of worship.

So let me itemize:

(1) India is far away from America.

(2) It’s major religion is different from everything Americans know.

(3) Nobody knows what the majority in India has historically faced at the hands of the minority.

(4) Our constitutional model is very different from theirs.

(5) We are big enough that you can hate us without feeling like a bully.

(6) AND you get points from the Islamist lobby for hating us.

From the point of view of Biden: India is the perfect target he can throw before the radicals in his party. He has to give them something to use their energy on. A target to tear apart causing minimal damage to the American establishment, which Biden really cares about.

And the choice of Kamala Harris just made it worse. The Democrat case against India had only one weak point. What if white Americans feel like they are being racist when they hate us? Americans are very sensitive to this charge. Now that Harris has a sliver of Indian heritage, they are immune to that accusation as well.

And make no mistake. The Islamist overdrive against India is target practice for their much more difficult target: Israel.

This is a pretty dire picture for India. Is there hope? Maybe.

Like I said, I don’t believe the average Democrat hates India. Why would they? It makes no sense. But what do you do then with the radicals in the Democratic party? Radicalism, by its very nature, tends to thrive among those who are not in power. A Democratic President in the White House would have a mellowing effect on radicals in his party. They are the incumbent. They have to keep a grip on themselves. By his core nature, Biden isn’t a radical. He is not even close. If he bats out one mellow term in office, it might actually push the Taliban takeover of the Democratic Party back by a generation.

Like I said, excuses to find hope. But straws in the wind, nevertheless.