An apt metaphor.

This is the perfect metaphor for the state of Indian politics :

Sena-MNS fight leave locals in the lurch

What began as a meeting to hear public opinion on the project ended as a shouting match between the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).

A janata darbar held at Shivaji Park to hear citizens’ grievances on the park beautification project on Friday ended abruptly without the public getting a chance to make itself heard.

Quickly make a list of the most addressed issues by political parties, how many of them concern the welfare of *all* citizens. Congress is an exception — they stood for nothing for a long time until the BJP came along. Then they discovered their USP : They weren’t the BJP.

Say hello to Shonia.

It has been a delight to watch the circus that is the Sania Mirza-Shoaib Malik wedding. The wedding itself has enough drama going for itself with Shoaib’s — ex-wife or whatever she is — leveling one new allegation every day. Sania called off her engagement with some dude a couple of months ago, and claims to be in love with Shoaib for 6-7 months. Whatever works for her, I say.

The wedding itself served a five course menu, but the following are like that awesomely delicious food item you discover after you are full :

Hindu Youth Federation wants her to marry an Indian Muslim :

Twenty members of the Hindu Youths Federation were arrested for allegedly tearing and burning pictures of tennis star Sania Mirza to protest against her proposed marriage with Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.

The members held a demonstration earlier condemning Sania Mirza for choosing a Pakistani, and demanded that she should instead marry an Indian Muslim.

I would have an easier time getting this if this were the Indian Muslim Federation.

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Echoing similar sentiments is Pramod pink-chaddi Muthalik :

“Once she ties the knot, Sania should not be allowed to play for India. Her decision is an insult to Indians,” Sene chief Pramod Muthalik told reporters here.

“Could Sania not find any eligible bachelor among 100 crore Indians, which includes 15 crore Muslims? It is India, which is responsible for her fame and by choosing a Pakistani cricketer as her life partner, she is insulting all Indians. We totally oppose the move”, he said.

He now runs the risk of attracting pink tennis skirts.

But wouldn’t he look adorable in those ?

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Bal Thackeray proves he is equally adept at medical stuff :

Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on Friday flayed tennis star Sania Mirza for her decision to marry Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik, saying “had Sania’s heart been Indian, it wouldn’t have beaten for a Pakistani.”

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Meanwhile, across the border, some dude wants her to play for Pakistan :

“Asian women traditionally follow their husbands which is why I’m hopeful that someday she would be inspired by Shoaib to play for Pakistan,” he added.

As a hardcore feminist, I thoroughly oppose this idea of a woman following her husband and playing for Pakistan. I’m not sure who would stay back at home and cook food if that happened.

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But taking the cake, the icing, the accompanying calories and the following burp, is Times of India. They invited astrologers to predict the fate of the Shoaib-Sania wedding.

Rights and Sena.

Some prominent citizens of Bombay wrote to the state government to curb the growing menace of the Senas. In response, this is what a Sena spokesperson had to say :

“Why these double standards by the so-called prominent citizens? What do they have to say about Kasab? What is their stand on MF Husain’s painting Hindu Goddesses nude and what about many other political parties who indulge in anti-national activities?” asked Shiv Sena spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Bharatkumar Raut.

“If these people have not taken a stand on these issues, then they have no right to question the Sena,” Raut added.

For the sake of atleast some coherence, I’ll only concentrate on the last line. In the past, the Senas have said of celebrities that they had no right to talk about politics. They even went ahead and said that Sachin shouldn’t be talking politics.

Here’s my problem — For a political party that is supposed to serve (not rule, mind you) the people, it is scary that they use the word ‘rights’ in such a loose manner. When we were kids, we all made statements like : He called me so-and-so, I have every right to beat him. We, thankfully, moved on to understand what rights really mean. Some kids didn’t. Which is why we see statements like the above. A minor irony is that a right-wing party knows least about rights.

I’d love to grill such people on the rights that being an Indian implies. Of course, they might realize that many of the rights they assume to exist in our constitution, in fact don’t exist at all. They might even conclude that they’re totally screwed living in a country like India, where they cannot follow their ideals. What is worse is that they wouldn’t even be able to burn buses or break glasses to vent their frustration.

But it would be so much fun nah ?

The Pune blast.

Disclaimer : I have lived my entire life in Pune, but I’ve been living outside for the last couple of years. It is possible my reaction would’ve been more knee-jerk and aggressive had I been living in Pune when the blast occurred. It is also possible that it wouldn’t have been so.

I’ve seen far too many people commenting on the Pune bomb blast and blaming SRK, Shiv Sena and Pakistan. It is not just annoying; it is silly.

Does anyone seriously think that had the cops not been manning the theaters, or had they not been ensuring discipline on Valentine’s day, we could’ve averted the blast ? You’ve got to be kidding ! Or you’ve got to be a kid.

Do you know what the Pune cops were upto on Valentine’s day ? They had decided to be the moral police themselves. They said that they would take action against anyone protesting against Valentine’s day, but would also prevent any public show of affection on Valentine’s day. If they weren’t guarding a theater, they might have been after the Valentine’s day pro and against folks. If not that either, someone still has to convince me that they could and they would take note of a stray bag in a bakery.

We have no information to blame any external entity yet. From all initial information, it seemed to have the footprint of Indian Mujahideen. If and when a link is established, feel free to flood your modes of outlet of anger. At the right targets — if it isn’t too much trouble.

That said, feel free to blame Shiv Sena for the blast. The line of thinking — if you need to defend yourself against me — goes thus : Shiv Sena started a huge controversy, their Sainiks started attacking cinema halls, police needed to protect property rights of theater owners and maintain order, hence cops were diverted. I still maintain it is extremely silly and laughable, but as long as it aligns with my views, you’re fine. Just like most of you are seeking positive reinforcement of your respective lines of thought.

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My friend escaped the blast by roughly 30 mins. I hope he posts his observations somewhere.

The monkey-sena controversy.

If you belong to the Shiv Sena, of course who know who the monkey is.

If you are SRK, of course you know who the monkeys are.

If you are Aamir, stop searching for SRK on the net to go one up on him (in a strictly non-literal sense).

The Shiv Sena/SRK standoff has gone on for so long now that it has exhausted whatever will I had to write a serious post. Instead, I’ll just post all my tweets on the topic. Here you go :

The MNS and Shiv Sena shud first decide whom the Marathi manoos agenda belongs to. Then we’ll decide who Bombay belongs to.

Sena to greet Rahul with black flags http://bit.ly/bUlRgH The Sena has gone crazy. They’re doing a democratic protest ?

Heh, quote of the day : Preity Zinta : SRK is the most secular and the most fair guy I know http://bit.ly/cyLDqo

SRK is clearly losing to Shiv Sena until there is an online petition supporting him. Oh wait, here it is http://bit.ly/atZH3L

Now that SRK is at war with the Shiv Sena, Aamir, as always, is looking to go one up — something like North Korea or Iran.

Someone please check on Suhel Seth. There has been no rant on the SRK-Sena issue.

Sena activists detained as Rahul lands. That’s Sonia’s way of saying Come to Italian momma.

Shiv Sena, MNS should be banned:Paswan http://bit.ly/dhr3Cb That is ridiculously undemocratic. Paswan should be banned instead.

Centre using Mumbai as ATM: Uddhav http://bit.ly/aWXi3d .. while the Sena wants to use it as a bearer’s cheque.

Sena threatens to move court http://bit.ly/dhKbl8 Suddenly someone realized that we have a law in our country.

Sena attacks cinemas after promising it wouldn’t http://bit.ly/agltkh Next time, be sure to look for crossed fingers.

Not the Dude of the Week.

It’s time for me to apologize. I admit I have been rather harsh on Baba Ramdev for some of his controversial views. On more than one occasion, he has been declared the Dude of the Week at this blog. Not anymore.

He recently ‘blasted’ the Shiv Sena and MNS for their anti-migrant policies :

He said, ” It’s the responsibility of Maharashtra government to stop them from infusing anti north sentiments our constitution gives the liberty to all Indians to live anywhere and work for livelihood in any part of country.”

Kudos, as they say. He also has some wise views on a wide range of topics in the article. Do read. I really feel bad about all the parodying and fun-poking at Baba Ramdev. I think it is time to take the Dude of the Week award away from Baba Ramdev. A well-deserved stripping of the award.

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Oh, wait. He has challenged that he shall cure prince Manvendra Singh Gohil of his homosexuality within a week.

Oops. So close. Sorry dude, you need to hold on to it for some more time.

Terrorism is religious.

The BJP recently objected to the use of the phrase ‘Hindu terrorism’ in the Parliament by P.Chidambaram :

While talking about government approach towards any form of terrorism cause by any group irrespective of its religious colour, Chidambram said: “The government maintains zero tolerance for terrorism inspired by religion, may it be Islam or may it be Hindu.”

Chidambaram was immediately pointed out by BJP’s Prakash Javadekar and SS Ahluwalia and other BJP members for his repeated usage of the word of “Hindu terrorists” during his statement on internal security issue.

“When the investigation is on how could you say it would reveal the Hindu terrorists”, Javdekar asked Chidambaram over his Hindu terrorist remark.

Another BJP leader Ahluwalia questioned Chidambaram how could he generalize the entire community over an alleged act of a few individuals.

I am with the BJP on this one; I believe the correct neologism is Saffron terror. But that’s okay. We are going to take a while adjusting to such new words. It would be too obvious an irony to mention the BJP’s use of the ‘Islamic terrorism’, so I’ll skip past that.

One thing we can agree upon : if one form of terrorism is always termed religious, we have a right to call any other form that uses religion as its basis with its associated religion. Else we should agree that terrorism has no religion.

Which brings me to the oft-repeated sentence, ‘Terrorism has no religion’. I disagree. Whenever terrorism is inspired by religious ideas or in defense of a religion, it makes perfect sense to associate it with the corresponding religion. When they call themselves religious terrorists, who are we to disagree ? And let’s face it, every religion today has violent fundamentalists. Period.

The only difference in my association : I’d put together the religion, terrorism and the perpetrators in the association. That would just be fair on the innocent fellow followers.

If that is confusing, the gist is thus : We cannot decouple religion from terrorism, else we’re not looking at the larger problem.

Of all kinds of supporters.

Watch this video of Sarah Palin supporters who turned up in large numbers at her book launch. The money quote is at 5:09, when a supporter justifies her experience with international issues :

I’m sure she’s had boundary issues to deal with [Russia].

It is easy to sit back and mock Palin’s supporters, but they are just as delusional as those who passionately and unconditionally support a political party. These people, I find, often justify the wrongdoings and come up with explanations, at best laughable. Not just the U.S., the same applies to supporters of parties such as Congress, B.J.P., M.N.S., Shiv Sena, etc. I don’t anymore see the sense in supporting a party in every election — each election needs to be studied on a per case basis before deciding who your vote goes to.

For example, in the Indian general elections of 2009 (if I could vote), the B.J.P. would’ve lost my vote the minute Varun Gandhi’s speech became public and reactions from senior leaders followed. Perhaps at the core, I prefer a socially stable society more than anything else.

As for Republicans and Palin supporters, the hypocrisy in their ideology is so obviously visible when they bat for liberty and oppose same-sex marriage in the same sentence. Enough said.

When wrong is accepted.

After their initial attack on Tendulkar for his statement that was a veiled condemnation of the Shiv Sena’s ideology, the Shiv Sena  went ahead and praised Gavaskar for being a better Maharashtrian than Tendulkar :

Continuing its attack on Sachin Tendulkar, the Shiv Sena on Sunday said there was no instance of him helping any Marathi cricketer while Sunil Gavaskar was a “genuine Maharashtrian” and had given Test caps to many players from the state during his tenure as India captain.

Let’s not even go into the fallacies and intricacies of the argument : it is absurd to even suggest that an Indian cricketer should give a chance to his regional mates. I would be more enraged at this statement if I were Gavaskar, more than Tendulkar. While the idea automatically falls under nepotism — and nepotism is the most popular ideology in the political (and every other) sphere in India — we might be reaching a tipping point where nepotism is openly condoned and assumed to be right. The Sena’s statement should rejected for just that.

Delving further, it is obvious the writer of the piece, Sanjay Raut, doesn’t see the irony of praising Sunil Gavaskar. Gavaskar has been outspoken against the Sena during the ’92 riots and another story tells of how he “left his apartment and took up position at the building’s gate to block Shiv Sena thugs as they searched for Muslims during the 1992 Mumbai riots”. I hope the Sena learns to stay away from Marathi icons like Pu. La. Deshpande, Tendulkar and Gavaskar — it usually ends up shooting itself in the foot.

The MNS has been wiser — they called Tendulkar to get the exact extract of his statement, then chose to stay away from the topic. Tendulkar’s statement was clearly against their ideology. They didn’t stand a chance of blaming the Hindi channels for misquoting him and blowing the issue out of proportion.

Sainiks are Gandhians.

If you thought Gandhian ideals were a lost cause, look no further than the Sena. They have not only held them in utmost regard, but are now fighting for it to remain alive.

We all know that the Shiv Sena attacked CNN-IBN channel offices — that’s old news. They beat up reporters and staff — big deal. But few people know that a Shiv Sainik too was beaten up in the fracas :

“We have demanded action against journalists, who beat our activists. A party worker was seriously injured and has been paralysed,” Sena group leader in Assembly, Subhash Desai, told reporters here.

I am sure the biased channels haven’t covered this news. Action must be taken against the journalists who have done this. Don’t people even remember what the old man taught us ?

If the Sainiks attack you, you don’t resist. If you do, they’ll beat you up till you don’t resist. So really if you see, they’re just converting us all to Gandhians.

And here we are, criticizing them.