| The End Result
The truth is simple and direct. Anna Hazare has replaced Baba Ramdev as the central figure in the nation’s war against corruption in exactly the same way that Gandhi replaced Tilak and Aurobindo within the Indian National Congress; and for the exact same reasons: no people’s movement in Hindu bhumi will be allowed to be led by a conscious Hindu, no campaign in this country will be allowed to wear a Hindu face; the critical difference being, as events proved, Ramdev is no Aurobindo.
Aurobindo, having studied and judged Gandhi for what he was, was not impressed by Gandhi’s premature, motivated and imposed mahatma-hood, was not intimidated by his undeserved stature and refused to meet Gandhi anytime in both their lifetimes. Not so Baba Ramdev, and as we read from newspaper reports, not the RSS either. Living up to the writer’s firm and disheartening belief that Hindu organizations and Hindu religious and political leaders doing politics, armed with nothing more than their colossal egos,
- have no political sense
- can be intimidated into compliance
- can be coerced into proving their imposed inclusive credentials by being seen in the company of non-Hindus and anti-Hindus in their work
- can be pressured into sailing with the wind even if the wind is leading them astray
Baba Ramdev belittled his saffron robes and the RSS demonstrated appalling poor judgment by visiting the hero of the Cheltenham tragedy at Jantar Mantar to extend their support – support which he did not need, did not acknowledge, did not respect.
Baba Ramdev and the RSS, who stood in Hazare’s shadow and sang the chorus to his NGO-authored song, urgently need lessons in political history – the Hindu view of the freedom struggle and its end result to be exact.
Sonia Gandhi and her minions in English television news channels were taken aback when Baba Ramdev galvanized the nation against endemic corruption afflicting every arm of the state and every aspect of public life. Reeling under the still unfolding saga of meta-corruption, the Congress party denounced Baba Ramdev’s foray into politics and advised him to confine himself to giving tummy-tucking lessons in Yoga.
Baba Ramdev’s campaign against corruption, which was seen as attacking the Congress and its imported President, had an explosive beginning on February 27 at Ramlila grounds in Delhi with a blood-curdling mammoth gathering of around two lakh people; but all major English newspapers and English TV news channels, in stark contrast to their contrived hysteria over Anna Hazare’s campaign, either blacked out entirely or made only passing reference to the start of what would soon become Baba Ramdev’s cataclysmic campaign against corruption in public life.
Baba Ramdev followed Delhi with Goa, Chennai, and Bangalore, and at every stop the movement against corruption gathered unstoppable momentum. Sonia Gandhi and her handlers in the Generic Church had to move fast to stop the Ramdev juggernaut and contain the damage.
The writer had observed on an earlier occasion that the Church has the unmatched capacity to turn all events, including adversities, adroitly in its favour. In less than two months the Church changed the face of the people’s movement against corruption. The saffron-clad Hindu religious face of the movement was replaced by the Gandhi cap; and Baba Ramdev’s movement, which was aimed directly at Sonia Gandhi, was now turned into a movement directed by Sonia’s minions in the NGO industry!
The Church and the world feel safe again as idiot Hindus – film stars, students, upwardly mobile professionals, lawyers, judges and politicians – indulged their craving for catharsis to cleanse their corrupt, guilt-ridden souls and gathered penitently around Anna Hazare’s toothless belligerence under the Gandhi cap.
Breaking his thunderous ‘fast-unto-death’ in just 97 hours, the first thing that Anna Hazare said was, “The most significant thing about this movement was that it had no religion”. What Sonia Gandhi and her NGO industry speaking through Hazare actually meant was Baba Ramdev and by extension all Hindus had been effectively de-fanged and marginalized. This was now Sonia’s show all the way.
In light of this wholly Freudian slip, Baba Ramdev and the RSS must ask themselves and tell us why they extended support to this man. It would be well for Baba Ramdev to observe silence for a fortnight and introspect upon why the campaign he had launched with such fanfare and success came to such an ignominious end; as for the RSS, it has proved yet again that it lacks the drive and the will to equip itself with the intelligence and skill to do even simple politics, and succumbing yet again to the pressure to sail with the wind, the RSS placed itself with eyes wide open on the wrong side of an important issue.
The RSS is still labouring without direction, stuck with antediluvian ideas and methods, because it has not summoned the courage to discard powerbrokers doubling as in-house intellectuals. The fatal weakness of sailing with the wind afflicts not just the RSS; it afflicts all Hindus without exception. The Hindu competition to Reliance-funded think-tank, the Observer Research Foundation, calledVivekananda International Forum (tired old faces manning a new desk) conducted a two-day seminar in Delhi last week and invited Arvind Kejriwal as one of the speakers.
In fact, another RSS affiliate, India Policy Foundation, began the business of sailing furiously with the wind by inviting Kejriwal to speak about corruption. Vivekananda International Forum and India Policy Foundation invited Kejriwal because Baba Ramdev showed off the Magsaysay awardee as a prize catch in his movement; and these are Hindu think-tanks. Talk about oxymoron.
The writer has come to the conclusion that Hindus doing politics do not think, do not read, and do not listen. The Vigil book on NGOs detailing the lives and deeds of NGOs and a certain species of social activists, published in 2006, had entire sections and even chapters dedicated to Arvind Kejriwal, Harsh Mander, Sandeep Pandey and others of their ilk; yet even Baba Ramdev relied on these very personages to adorn his movement – Kiran Bedi, Swami Agnivesh, Arvind Kejriwal and Mallika Sarabhai, to name just four.
It has to be repeated and repeated yet again, that when the RSS sent its letter of support to Anna Hazare, it chose to ignore the explosive material contained in the Vigil book on NGOs and despite knowing the unhealthy company which surrounded and powered Anna Hazare’s hunger strike, the RSS went ahead and announced support to the man. The writer will bet her last pair of dog-eared shoes that the RSS had not read the fine print of the papers that Hazare’s NGO friends were shoving in the face of the nation, and its in-house intellectuals in the Vivekananda International Forum and India Policy Foundation had not read it either or if they had, did not understand the import of what they were reading.
Headlines Today, CNN IBN and my favourite-for-all times Times Now in the last three days competed fiercely to project three-year and nine-year olds with balloons and ice-cream in hand and earnest-looking bespectacled management graduates from Pune and Penzance as the face of mass frenzy to tell us why we must all march to Jantar Mantar or at least allow our soul to take wing and fly there, or at the very least, like the RSS, send letters of support because, and smile when you say it, ‘Anna is doing it for me and you’.
Remember Jesus died for your sins and mine and those of our great grand fathers and mothers and great grand sons and daughters, be they Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsi or Jew? Just as bizarre is the generic Church’s propaganda that Anna Hazare is doing Gandhi-like fast-unto-Jesus-like death for me and my great grand sons and daughters.
Anna Hazare’s actions will therefore be judged by –
- The end result
- His inspiration/role model and
- The company he keeps
While the entire episode beginning with Hazare’s threat to fast-unto-death and the course the melodrama traversed until the moment Hazare broke his fast will come in for ruthless analysis, the end result of the Cheltenham melodrama-turned-farce merits immediate attention. The end result is that the Government of India for the second time in 12 years succumbed to blackmail which was instigated, goaded, aided and abetted yet again by English TV news channels. The UPA government, like the NDA government in 1999, capitulated to a bunch of anti-national blackmailers.
It is hard not to question the timing of it all. Just as Baba Ramdev’s anti-corruption juggernaut seemed like gathering greater momentum with every passing day, Anna Hazare, out of the blue, one fine day, announced that he was going on a fast-unto-death until the Lokpal Bill was passed or whichever happened first.
Surrounded by familiar, notorious and discredited NGOs, social activists, one disgruntled lady police officer and one activist danseuse, Hazare put on his Gandhi cap, climbed up the well-arranged and well-equipped dais and sat himself down on a hunger strike. To retain the focus on the end result of the media-driven blackmail, we will telescope the events between Anna Hazare sitting down on day one with microphone in hand to day four when microphone in hand Hazare announced he would end his hunger strike because the government spine had finally been broken.
The writer is convinced Anna Hazare was the single stone useful instrument with a colossal ego, chosen for his Gandhi cap, to bring down two mangoes – one, push the Prime Minister into a corner and send him the unmistakable signal not to think or act independently of the imported Congress President; resurrect the defunct NAC by pushing some member NGOs and activists to center-stage by staging this dangerous blackmail melodrama. Needless to say, both mangoes were intended for Sonia Gandhi’s consumption.
By handing over the letter of support to Anna Hazare through their ubiquitous spokesperson, the RSS has only strengthened Sonia Gandhi vis-à-vis the Prime Minister and the Indian parliament. Anna Hazare and the bunch of NGOs and activists blackmailing the government from behind Hazare in the Gandhi cap, have demanded that the government should pass the Lokpal Bill with draconian provisions which will give them the right to usurp the powers of parliament, judiciary and the police and make them a three-in-one monster body with vast scope for misuse and abuse of power.
There are two drafts of the Lokpal Bill – one that has been drafted by successive governments, a version that is available with the incumbent government in some form, and the second which has been drafted by Hazare’s foreign-funded NGO camp. Just so did the same group of NGOs and foreign-funded activists act through the Lawyers Collective to get the Domestic Violence Bill amended and passed in 2005 by the UPA government as the Domestic Violence Act.
When Baba Ramdev and the RSS went to Jantar Mantar to express their solidarity with Hazare and these NGOs and when they extended their support, what exactly were they supporting?
The draft Lokpal Bill, as crafted by Kejriwal, Agnivesh, Kiran Bedi, in collusion with Prashant Bhushan, an activist lawyer, demands that members of Lokpal be conferred with judicial and police powers. These appointed members will form their own investigating team, will summon persons to depose before them, will initiate action, will order prosecution and will also mete punishment. Sonia’s NGOs and foreign-funded social activists with the full support of all English Television news channels were all pushing Hazare to fast-unto-death to impose an oligarchy under Sonia Gandhi’s leadership to rule the country, by-passing every and all national democratic institutions! This is what Baba Ramdev and the RSS supported –
Section 12 of Hazare’s draft Bill states –
- Lokpal to be deemed police officer
(1) For the purposes of section 36 of Criminal Procedure Code, the Chairperson, members of Lokpal and the officers in investigation wing of Lokpal shall be deemed to be police officers.
(2) While investigating any offence under Prevention of Corruption Act 1988, they shall be competent to investigate any offence under any other law in the same case.
Section 10.2 of their draft Bill says –
- We are also deemed judiciary
(2) For the purpose of any such investigation (including the preliminary inquiry) the Lokpal shall have all the powers of a civil court while trying a suit under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, in respect of the following matters, namely:-
(a) Summoning and enforcing the attendance of any person and examining him on oath;
(b) Requiring the discovery and production of any document;
(c) Receiving evidence on affidavits;
(3) Any proceeding before the Lokpal shall be deemed to be a judicial proceeding within the meaning of section 193 of the Indian Penal Code
Lokpal, after getting such enquiries and investigations done as it deems fit, may take one or more of the following actions:
a. Close the case if prima facie, the complaint is not made out or
b. Initiate prosecution against public servants as well as those private entities which are party to the act
c. Order imposition of appropriate penalties under CCS Conduct Rules Provided that if an officer is finally convicted under Prevention of Corruption Act, major penalty of dismissal shall be imposed on such government servant.
d. Order cancellation or modification of a license or lease or permission or contract or agreement, which was the subject matter of investigation.
e. Blacklist the concerned firm or company or contractor or any other entity involved in that act of corruption.
Baba Ramdev and the RSS have supported Anna Hazare’s fast-unto-death whose end objective is to force the government to accept this blackmailing group’s version of the Lokpal Bill, arrogating to themselves unbridled powers of parliament, police, CBI, CAG, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one as shown above. Sonia Gandhi’s NGOs have forced Manmohan Singh’s government to accept all their demands which essentially renders the Indian Parliament, the highest democratic institution of the country with powers to impeach judges and even the President of India, totally redundant.
The generic Church is selling gullible idiots in the nation the lemon that what the nation’s investigating agencies, police, parliament and judiciary have failed to do, Lokpal can and will do – impeach judges and Presidents for dessert even as they punish politicians and bureaucrats for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Such was the media-instigated hysteria over the fasting Gandhi cap that the nation collectively put its brain to sleep. Subjecting the components that will go to make the Lokpal to intense scrutiny is in order. The core components of the Lokpal are –
- Who are the people constituting Anna Hazare’s drafting committee which will draft the Lokpal Bill
- The law itself (assuming the Bill is passed by a frightened and cowering parliament) and its provisions
- Members of Lokpal who will enforce and implement the law
- The selection panel which will appoint the all-important members of the Lokpal
The melodrama has already turned to farce with Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Co. bickering fiercely over who should form part of the drafting committee and who should become members of the supra-god selection panel which will select members who will constitute the Lokpal. Greed and overarching ambition lie at the root of all corruption, and these have already given the country a preview of what lies in store for the nation if this group is allowed to become the ruling oligarchy under Sonia Gandhi. The fight to squat on the floor in the corner in the same room as Sonia Gandhi can only get bloodier and noisier.
We have already seen the relevant sections of Hazare’s draft Bill which confers upon our foreign-funded activists who aspire to become Lokpal Members, the high status of deemed police and deemed judiciary. Now the norms for constituting the selection panel which will appoint the members is even more of a give-away of what really is the real intention behind this melodrama to pass the Lokpal Bill. Hazare, Kejriwal, Agnivesh and co. have listed -
- The Chairpersons of both Houses of Parliament
- Two senior most judges of Supreme Court
- Two senior most Chief Justices of High Courts
- All Nobel Laureates of Indian Origin
- Chairperson of National Human Rights Commission
- Last two Magsaysay Award winners of Indian origin
- Comptroller and Auditor General of India
- Chief Election Commissioner
- Bharat Ratna Award winners
Baba Ramdev and the RSS Sarsanghachalak should tell us if they saw this before offering their support to Hazare. Did Shri Mohan Bhagwat know that Hazare came with a huge baggage which also included this draft Bill and Hazare’s views on who should be made members of the Selection Panel? Let us cast our eyes back to 2004 when Sonia Gandhi rode piggyback on the Congress and its shameless Hindus to rule the country as de facto Prime Minister. There is no UPA, no INC, no Cabinet and no Government of India. There is only Sonia Gandhi.
Sonia Gandhi made the choice of who will sit in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The distasteful controversy surrounding Sonia Gandhi’s choice is of her making
- Sonia Gandhi appointed the CEC
- Sonia Gandhi appointed the CAG
- Sonia Gandhi appointed the CJI
- Sonia Gandhi appointed the Director of the CBI
- Sonia Gandhi appointed the CVC
Every constitutional office, every high institution has been defiled and diminished because of the choices that Sonia Gandhi made. The NAC is also a creature of Sonia Gandhi’s making. Members of the NAC are the personages around Anna Hazare on the issue of the Lokpal Bill. While most categories for consideration to choose members of the Selection Panel have a direct or indirect Sonia Gandhi connection, the Magsaysay Awardee and Nobel Laureate suggestion is downright Machiavellian. There is a Rothschild and Rockefeller connection in these categories
Considering the sweeping powers that Hazare, Agnivesh, Kejriwal and idiot Hindus want for the Lokpal, considering that the Lokpal wants to be judge, jury, police and parliament in their dealings with politicians, bureaucrats and judges, to insist on foreign entities having a say in constituting the Selection Panel must cause grave disquiet in every thinking nationalist mind. Amartya Sen is married to Emma Rothschild who is a member of the Jewish Rothschild banking family in England, while the Magsaysay Award has a direct Rockefeller connection.
The Magsaysay award may sound Asian because it is named after the late Ramon Magsaysay of the Philippines, but the award is all American and the money component of the award is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Vigil book on NGOs exposed the intent behind the selection of persons for the Magsaysay award. Like the Nobel peace Prize, the Magsaysay too, no matter for what reason and in which category it is awarded, is political in its ultimate intent. To have a Rothschild and Rockefeller connection to the Lokpal no matter how distant and how remote, is still nothing to laugh about.
There is no doubt in the writer’s mind whatever that forces outside the country instigated these NGOs and social activists, Sonia loyalists all, and the English print and electronic media, to select a Gandhi cap to stage a drama whose purpose is ostensibly to pass the Lokpal Bill. If the ruse succeeds in parliament, and it will not succeed, not in its current form, then the Lokpal is the least of our worries. Like the arrest of the Kanchi acharyas, this melodrama, in the view of the writer, was a test case. This experiment was conducted to test –
- If Hindu can be replaced by Gandhi in 2011 as was done in 1909
- How Hindu organizations react in times of mass hysteria
- The power of the (electronic) media in setting in motion a course of events to move in a specific direction
- The capacity of the Indian government to withstand pressure – pressure from blackmail and pressure of public opinion – even when the opinion is manufactured by the media
Anna Hazare was foisted on the nation by unseen forces; these forces used NGOs loyal to Sonia Gandhi to conduct this experiment and the writer’s worst nightmare turned real. Hindus and Hindu organizations failed and failed roundly to read the situation correctly from start to finish. Hindus proved yet again that they will readily pant behind every red-herring shown to them as long as it wears the Gandhi cap; the RSS and Hindu religious leaders being no exception. It is left for India’s parliament to defeat this diabolic plot by not allowing the Lokpal Bill to be tabled by these forces. By all means let us have a Lokpal Act, but it has to be national and nationalist.
The writer is left with a question that will not go away. Did Baba Ramdev’s overseas constituency goad him to choose corruption over cow slaughter, over the alarming imbalance in religious demography and over the state of Hindu temples? It would seem so. The last two could not have been hijacked by Sonia Gandhi and her minions to her benefit. Corruption, as was proved, was a different matter.
(To be continued …)
The author is Editor, www.vigilonline.com |
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