On Wednesday 23 Jan 2008 9:12 am, Dave Kumar wrote: > On the subject of this thread, though, there's no question that a > significant chunk of the country -- the people from places like Florence > who aren't accustomed to diversity -- is paranoid, and their reactions end > up influencing policies and happenings since the paranoid are always louder > than the non-paranoid. And it also true that too many in this country are > apathetic, and don't do enough to fight the paranoia because it doesn't > affect people "like them."
In this connection, let me cross post an article from my alumni website (maintained by silk-lister Shyam). I have not taken the author's permission but I know him personally and will just let it be known that he writes well and goes by the name Bhatta. ------------------------------------------- An Inconvenient Chooth** Perhaps I look at things in life quite differently from my peers and fellow men. Perhaps I just have a twisted perception of reality. But a small voice inside of me keeps telling me that I might actually be the one that gets it right, for it seems to me that the vast majority of people either see what is the most socially convenient version of events or worse still, let someone else (i.e. The Media) do the thinking for them. Right now, events are unfolding, that to me, define a certain change in the psyches of various Nations around the world, yet some of them have occurred with hardly a ripple both in the mainstream media as well as in the internet blogsphere. Yes folks, I am talking about the re-election of Narendra Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat. An unexpected event to a large measure, for he had been written off by the main stream media in India in contemptuous terms and pretty much ostracized by the world media as some kind of unrepentant bigot. After all wasn't he the notable Indian who was denied a visitors visa to the USA to address the Gujarat Sammelan while his arch nemesis General Pervez Musharraf was welcomed as a noble guest of the Bush administration?? You would think that the re-election of such a polarizing figure would draw attention from the mainstream media if not the bleeding heart left wing liberals but surprisingly this event has got as little attention as (by way of contrast) the enormous barrage of attention that his government got during the Godhra incident and the Gujarat riots. Strange that a person could be the central figure of two separate but related incidents, yet one generate so much attention while the other so little. Why is this so?? I have my own theories that tie in with other observations of recent world events to the point that there appears to me some predictability in the pattern of these events. Allow me then to elaborate on this. To begin let me say that to get a real perspective of my point of view I need you, gentle reader, to do two things. And yes, both of these things are essential if you want to see what I see. In some ways the analogy is like squinting down the sights of an old three naught three rifle, without the benefit of a snipers scope or night vision sights. Unless you are really aligned to line up your target in your sights yourself, you will never be on mark. Hence, if you do not acquiesce to the two preconditions that I want, I feel that you will never see my point of view. The first is to distance yourself from both your political and religious bias and leanings until you have heard my thesis and argument in its completion. The moment you leap in (in your own mind as you read down these lines) to interrupt your own edification, spurred on by an instinctive reaction from your bias, you will have missed the point that I am trying to make. When you react midway through my argument, it is not only interruption to the seamless intake of my point of view, but also the fact that you have already decided on a contrarian argument and you are in no state to really contemplate what I have to say. The second is that I want you to see this event in the context of an evolving timeline of events. Things are what they are and although they have their own independent value and worth, it is their worth and importance in how they fit into the larger scheme of things that matter most. When you focus down just on the specifics of Godhra and Gujarat, murder and Modi you fail to see how these events are woven into the broader tapestry of the social fabric of the Nation that is still emerging from the ever humming looms of our political and religious ideology. And trust me dear reader, our Nation and our people are defined not just by the pattern of the tapestry but also by the quality of the looms that weave the designs. Having swiftly moved through this preamble I will ask you to take yourself back in your mind to 1998. Although you and I probably never saw the import of this particular year in the world events that followed, I think that it was of monumental importance. From mid 1998 to mid 1999, events would occur in diametrically opposite ends of the world and in two Nations with a somewhat similar energy, outlook and mindset which would then embark on a common path to bring them up to where they are today. Yes, dear folks, I am indeed talking about India and the US of A. Up until 1998, liberal outlook and attitudes along with a global vision of things dominated world thinking. Liberal thinking had it seemed encouraged both the stock market boom in the US and the loosening of trade in India leading to the "outsourcing business" and relatively immense wealth generation. The US had Clinton (who would later put a completely different meaning to the term "come" back kid) and India the United Front Government that had wrested power from the nascent BJP after only thirteen days. However in 1998 and 1999 two seminal incidents occurred that would change the tone of both these countries to a much more conservative nationalistic view, removing the last vestiges of liberalism for the most part. In the US it was the Lewinsky scandal which shocked people not so much by it's sexual peccadilloes as by the sight of a president lying straight faced on television, while in India it was the NDA government conducting the Pokhran nuclear tests and the events that followed. India was a tad behind the US in this move to conservatism, for the nuclear tests were followed in 1999 by the Kargil War (and its emergence of Pervez Musharraf as the leader of Pakistan) which really became the agent of change for the mindset of the Indian public. Little wonder then that the new millennium started with two large and vibrant democracies, geographically at opposite ends of the Earth taking a much harder nationalist view on issues. In India's case it was the constant hemorrhage from Islamic militants masquerading as Kashmiri nationalists while in the US it was the culture war, led by the Christian right against the Godless left coast hedonist and Hollywood types. In the two years that would lead up to 2001 and the horror of 9-11, the religious majority in both these countries slowly hardened their hearts, not because they were cynical and insular but the fact that they felt unheard and neglected in their own countries. The Christian right in the US and the right wing Hindus in India felt that the culture of liberal thinking and secularism, did nothing more than to pander to those who were given far more recognition than their numbers warranted or their attitudes justified (i.e. Muslims in India and Hispanics and minorities in the US who were illegal immigrants or on welfare) without any due recognition given to the majority of the land. With this undercurrent of disenchantment brewing, 9-11 (and Kargil, for that matter) was the perfect spark to the powder keg and a call to action in both these countries. 2001 would see two large calamities in these two countries. One would be a natural disaster while the other would be a hitherto unimaginable act of mass murder. Both would however see the ascent of these two local heroes, Dubya and Modi, who despite vast differences on a superficial scan have actually much more in common than one would imagine. The 2001 Gujarat earthquake in Modi's home ground and the 9-11 disaster in Dubya's backyard allowed them to rise to the role of major decisive leaders. The magnitude of these disasters left the average citizen looking for a leader to lead. Thrust into this role by default both of these leaders would subsequently take decisions very similar to each other which would define their rule and legacy. But more of that later. Let's start by looking at the similarities between Dubya and Modi. Sure both are conservatives but there is a unique flavor that defines these two men. Growing up in the shadow of his fathers and Ronald Reagan's legacy, Dubya had little to make himself noticed except the fact that he had a deceptively disarming personality, which coupled with his rock solid marriage, gave an impression of the moral high ground. Now this, despite his unexamplary service record, alcoholic past and two teenage daughters who gave dysfunctional high jinx partying a whole new meaning. Yet in spite of all this Dubya projected the steadfastness of your everyday American with simple, conservative moral and religious values. With this, he was able to pull off a worthy win for nomination in the Republican Party, beating John McCain who by contrast is a much more centrist conservative. In similar vein Modi rose quietly in the ranks of the RSS, watched by his mentor L.K. Advani. Moving right of the (relatively) centrist Advani, Modi was willing to flaunt his Hindu belief of vegetarianism as well as his bramhacharya (despite snide suggestions that he was actually married to a school teacher) in a way that resonated with what everyday Gujarati's dreamt of being but never expended the energy to be. It could have been the time. It could have been circumstances. It could have been the mistakes of their predecessors. No mater what, both these leaders - one with an international high profile and the other an emerging national star, found themselves putting on the mantle of a leadership role, the magnitude of which they could never have possibly imagined when they were elected. And perhaps that was their undoing. I believe that it is a given fact of life that when circumstances raise your perceived worth to be much more than you yourself believe in, you are bound to overstep. Both of these leaders took the universal accolade and support of their defining moments to bestow on themselves the belief that their ideas were much bigger than they ought to be. This, in my opinion led to Dubya's Iraq and Modi's Godhra. The mistaken belief of self serving grandeur made both of these leaders to momentarily take their eyes of the target. In Dubya's case it was mistaking the magnitude and focus of militant Islam while in Modi's case it was forgetting that the Pakistani Muslim enemy was not necessarily the Indian Muslim. In some ways, I think that these mistakes only served to prove how mediocre these leaders really were. Both seemed to lack the vision thing and struck out at targets that they thought were easy or winnable without realizing that it takes more than a victory in battle to declare success in a war. But that is all water under the bridge today. No amount of explaining will wipe away the irrefutable fact that the basic tenets of the war in Iraq and the response to Godhra were wrong. And even if you have the side show spectacles of Abu Ghraib (to show how the concept of democracy flowing from the barrel of a gun can be so wrong) to the Best Bakery case (designed to show the worst of political shenanigans and lying) in each of these tragedies, the fundamental fact that both were wrong cannot be undone. However, what I don't hear today is an analysis of these mistakes to tease out if it was just these illustrious leaders or a bigger force that led to these errors. To this end I really believe that the media had a left wing conspiracy against exploring these issues. Let me explain. The world over, printed media tends to liberal rather than conservative. It would appear that liberals are not just more articulate in print but are also given to be the masters of printed verbal diarrhea. Little surprise then, that as far as the liberals are concerned, neither Dubya nor Modi can ever do anything right. For them these two have become the pariahs of the civilized world. So how then can we explain Dubya's second term and Modi's re-election?? The liberal media are really at a loss to explain this. The reason, as I see it, is a failure to acknowledge that both Dubya and Modi are not aberrations of our times. They are the creation of a silent disenchanted majority who feel that their rights are being trampled on. If that truth is so simple and self apparent would you not think that the intelligentsia in the media would be able to see this in a heartbeat?? The fact of the matter is that they cannot. To do so would be tacit acknowledgement of the fact that there is a silent majority which may not be as articulate as the liberals, nor share their beliefs but who are, unfortunately, a majority. Acknowledging the presence of this majority is acknowledging liberal defeat. And that is the reason why Modi's re-election has been greeted with such a stony silence in the media. Sure there are BJP and Hindutva publications that have made much of the event but compared to the reams of damnation written about the man during Godhra, there is little to examine and explore as to why he still continues to hold such a following in Gujarat. All that the media can do is snipe and make tawdry remarks about the man, waiting out his time to leave office just as they are waiting out the time for Dubya and his coterie to leave stage. Today, no matter what he does, Dubya can do no right, and there are very few people (including his once staunch scribe, The Weekly Standard) that are willing to write anything objective, let alone in praise. And that is exactly the same place that Modi finds himself today. As far as the liberal media is concerned there is no moving beyond Godhra. They cannot explain his popularity, yet they cannot stand it. They curse and snipe at his personality, his policy and his populist appeal, all to no avail. And the more that they rant and the less they achieve, the more frustrated they become. It would seem (at least to me) that like global warming to Al Gore, Modi to the Indian liberal media has become an inconvenient chooth.
