A prime minister-in-waiting dances while on Satyagraha

Don't make a mockery of SATYAGRAH!

  

Baba Ramdev‘s fast was barbarically, brutally and abruptly ended on June 5^th 2011 and the Yogi was shifted to Dehradun in secrecy while   the silent protestors were not spared by the police high handedness.  A five thousand strong police force was used to serve an externment order on Baba Ramdev. The decision shows the Congress party was in two minds in dealing with the austere baba..The descision show the Congress Party was of two minds in dealing with the austere

A month ago the same Indian media went into a loud and vulgar rapture as Anna Hazare went on his four-day fast against corruption at Jantar Mantar. We all saw the hyperventilating television anchors with their idioms and sensibilities forgetting how to evaluate the worth of a protest and captured the mass hysteria, ignoring corruption the most visible rationale, lending to an epidemic of cynicism and anger in them.

Satyagraha evokes in us the memories of Mahatma Gandhi   who described in a letter in September 1935 to P.K. Rao, Servants of India Society as  “I have also called it love-force or soul-force. In the application of satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and compassion. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.”

Isn't today's satyagraha "individualistic protests" and "manufactured and well-crafted protests? What we are seeing is short-lived and naive playing with the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and with the innocent lives, hobnobbing with a few naïve liberals. Hunger for publicity at any cost is the hallmark, and moral corruption is manifest. How conveniently are protests being used by opportunists, opponents, blackmailers, politicians and activists! The media is being specially addressed as "bhailog". At the same time we are watching the amalgam of forces that drive a protest lacking core and issues of human survival. We witnessed the farce of negotiations recently.

How many know of Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast for the last 10 years against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act? She is a living example. Injustices cannot be evaluated, modified, twisted, suppressed or brushed aside. The colour of the anti-corruption movement should be the tricolour..

Protest cannot be mocked upon; Satyagrah cannot be a tool in the hands of Fascists and for commercial use. “The Satyagrahi’s object is to convert, not to coerce, the wrong-doer.”Success is defined as cooperating with the opponent to meet a just end that the opponent is unwittingly obstructing. The opponent must be converted, at least as far as to stop obstructing the just end, for this cooperation to take place. Gandhi used an example to explain this: If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation

When Gandhi was criticized while offering Satyagraha as a method of combating oppression and genocide at Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany he said “Friends have sent me two newspaper cuttings criticizing my appeal to the Jews. The two critics suggest that in presenting non-violence to the Jews as a remedy against the wrong done to them; I have suggested nothing new... What I have pleaded for is renunciation of violence of the heart and consequent active exercise of the force generated by the great renunciation.

Where are our sensibilities? Why is Rahul Gandhi who recently asked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati  why was Section 144 imposed in Bhatta-Parsaul if she had nothing to hide -- not questioning his own government? Such a premature use of prohibitory orders only exposes the weakness of the Congress government. What the central government did is certainly deplorable. Despite one disaster after another the corrupt dispensation survives because we have no credible opposition as an alternative 

Deep Breathing Ramdev felt the RSS will help his political ambitions as planned instead of weakening the corrupt UPA. We watched RSS BJP gearing in april to tackle their crisis with the announcement of L.K. Advani while sharing the stage with Baba Ramdev in Delhi.  He endorsed Ramdev’s campaign: “Corruption has struck at the roots of faith in this country.

Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari announced a 24-hour satyagraha from 7 p.m. on  Sunday at Rajghat with top leaders like L.K. Advani, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj.  The voters thought that the half dead and divided BJP is geared. It lacked seriousness. The general public saw leaders in a happy mood, chatting , singing, dancing, clapping, whistling, eating ice-creams, few sleeping and disappearing.

How do you justify Sushma Swaraj of the BJP, leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister in waiting and a mass leader of BJP dancing along while in satyagraha at the Samadhi of Father of the Nation. This is not Kirtan or Bhajan at all to me. It was outrageous seeing the PM in waiting dancing at Raj Ghat. Isn’t she an elected representative? BJP certainly  didn’t show the  sense of occasion but send a message of in cash on public outrage.

When I tweeted she tweeted back from two different handles @MrsSushmaSwaraj: It is the tradition of our Party that we sing patriotic songs during our protests & shivirs to keep up workers' 

@MrsSushmaSwaraj: Shocked that this is the sole clip picked up as representative visual of the Satyagraha & is being repeatedly telecast.

@SushmaSwarajBJP  :stepped in for a brief moment to boost the morale of our Party workers.

It’s time to think twice about our national parties as they stand exposed. It took UPA a year to act against Raja, 6 months to arrest Kalmadi and not even a day to arrest Baba. People of India rise and have courage to break shackles of a corrupt political system. The political class is also in a Catch-22 situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuh7Pc3nt2Y&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuh7Pc3nt2Y&feature=youtu.be

Forensic tests show CD was doctored: Prashant Bhushan .... congress-BJP- Corruptmedia ..t foot in mouth . Janlokpal

J M Lyngdoh leading civil society activist speech

His Address to all Civil Society Activists at recently concluded seminar on Electorals reforms, Corruption and Strengthening Democracy :  

I would like to very briefly present a couple of important observations of my own. Even a cursory glance at human history throughout various phases of time would reveal that 10-15 per cent of society fattens itself at the expense of the remaining 85 per cent, which usually languishes at the bottom. Democracies are no exception to this, and we find that not only in India but throughout the world, inequalities are becoming sharper. A book called We, the People, written by Huber, which talks about the American Constitution, says that the American War of Independence (1776) was fought by the majority of the poor people. On the other had, it was the feudal aristocratic class that funded the war by printing a lot of paper money. But, when the war was won by the Americans, those who had fought the feudal royalty, suddenly found themselves awash with a lot of easy money and wanted this situation to continue. On then other hand, the wealthy class, especially from colonies like New England, who were basically carbon copies of the British who had just left the continent, wanted to fatten themselves on the rest of the population. They feared that the printing of paper money would make the rich class the losers. It is said that they hit upon the idea of binding the poorer classes by writing a constitution, which is today known as the Constitution of the United States of America. A close look at this constitution will reveal that it is weighted heavily in favour of the US Senate, which we may be aware, comprises mostly of people who favour the status quo. The Senate was meant to block whatever the House of People wished to bring about. It is feared that the people can go berserk any time. Another institution of blockage was set up that was i.e. the US Supreme Court, which, in fact, has judges for life. These institutions have a definite purpose, which is to prevent anything radical coming up the pipeline. This then happens to be the Constitution of the United States that talks of “We, the People”, and is also the constitution from which the Constitution of India has drawn a lot from. In substance, Constitution of the United States is not what it appears to be. It happens to be a reflection of the wishes of the 10-15 per cent which lives off the remaining 85 per cent of the people.

Democracy, it is interesting to know, was not a respected idea in the age of the Greek civilization. Democracy and the right to participate in administrate was restricted only to citizens and slaves, foreigners and other categories of people were excluded from this system. Thinkers and philosophers like Plato had some very unkind things to say about democracy. In fact, they did not even believe in it. Democracy apart, communism survives in a few pockets in the world. Despite its claims of ushering in equality, communism has failed in getting rid of 10-15 per cent elitist stranglehold over the polity and economy. It came in with big promises of socialist equality, which its intellectuals propagated, but once its intellectuals were squeezed out of the reckoning by its more radical elements, when the generation of Lenin had passed away, all that was left were bureaucrats and dictators like Stalin. In fact, they were not very different from the bureaucrats that India has today, who represent no more than the top 10-15 per cent.

What I wish to stress is the fact that in the history of human affairs, we have never reached a situation when we have been really free of the stranglehold of the top 10-15 per cent exploiters. I certainly do no wish the audience to rest with this status quoist acceptance. This 85 per cent cannot be wished away, but what we can do is to awaken them and make them aware of the laws and their own rights under the same constitution and also make life as difficult as possible for the top 15 per cent exploiters. We can certainly do that. Whatever we have discussed today must be analyzed against this historical background for us to be able to move ahead. Thank you very much.Thank you very much.

The Citizens have started gathering at the Ground Zero of Bhopal- Yadgare Shahjehani Park to light a candle and Sing National Anthem Janlokpal

The JanLokpal Bill will be a major victory against corruption if we all stand united and raise our voice

Anna Hazare ..I appeal all political parties that you have gathered enough cash as party funds, that's good now work towards making Janlokpal

People who find crack in the Anna Hazare team are Cracks Janlokpal

Anna Hazare is Injurious to Corrupt Janlokpal

The govt must pass JanLokPal bill in consult'n with People of India.This demand is justified.

Netaas keep out of Janlokpal Movement. BJP , Congress enough is enough

Completely thrilled to c women joining the IAC Movement in Madhya Pradesh Janlokpal