A Few Words for BSY and BJP: Time to Switch from Top-Down politics to Bottom-Up politics!

It looks like that the pussy, cry-baby from Karnataka, B S Yeddyurappa, fondly known as BSY or Yeddy, is at last going to roar like a lion in the month of December. Until the roars have happened, we do not want to be sure or believe that they indeed are going to happen. However, for the sake of argument, we can tentatively assume that they might happen.

For the BJP, it will be (it has been already) a crippling blow. The only southern state where it has wrested power for itself, its supremacy might be going down the tubes! Thus both the BJP, and BSY are at a critical juncture at this moment.

For an outsider, the case of BSY is plain and simple. He has been a 'disciplined' RSS-man, he built the party from grass-roots level. He was made a victim of BJP's high-command arranged regional marriage, just as Kalyan Singh was victimized to favor Hajpeyee's sister Mayawati, with H D Kumaraswamy, himself the son of the infamous opportunist H D Devegowda.

As we have mentioned earlier, most political parties in India operate (or gravitate towards operating) like the Congress, where the "high-command" dictates the lowly soldiers. Every incompetent and sycophant (remember the poison-filled Arjun Singh?) prides himself about being a devoted-and-disciplined soldier of the party; whwrein the party is always the "high-command".

We would also like to clarify that we are not commenting about the dynastic politics in India. So long as we keep singing glories of universal suffrage democracy with the result that big money keeps playing the key-role that it has been playing, the money-keeper will always be the one running the dynasty. It is not difficult to perceive India's democracy as an hierarchy of dynasties. Also, we are not criticizing dynasties per se. Dynasties are not bad in themselves. However, nasty dynasties indeed are bad. The problem is not dynasty; but bad dynasty! However, let us skip even that for the moment.

The systemic problem in India has been that of over-centralization (this is vaguely related to being a bad dynasty!); and high-command domineering has been a prime factor both as the cause as well as the manifestation of that. However, all bad things come towards their end too; and therefore as our Central Powers are slowly crumbling, Regional Assertions (smaller dynasties with their satraps!) are slowly gaining.

And this is surely natural and hardly illegitimate. Nevertheless, there is a BIG catch: Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai, or Patna etc. no longer want to be centrally controlled and micro-managed from Delhi. However, they conveniently forget that equally naturally, Darjeeling, Mysore, Nagpur, or Arrah too do not want to be centrally controlled and micro-managed from Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai or Patna, as the case may be! This is where the DF-ery of these regional satraps lies. They oppose over-centralization by Delhi; but they want regional reins to be completely within their hands. In short they want to become local Delhies! And this will NOT work.

Thus a more comprehensive solution will be to introduce effective de-centralization, down to the smallest units. And, tentatively speaking, the guiding principles can be Voluntary-Centralization and-or Least-Centralization. And in order to implement it effectively, we will have to appreciate the idea of Bottom-Up politics. However, all of these points need to be debated comprehensively and details for optimal performance need to be worked out. So what happens to the promised few words for BSY or the BJP?

BJP will have to go Bottom Up. It was SO in the past. Despite all their follies, leaders like LKA et al did climb the ladders putatively starting from grass roots. However, after they reached the top, the game changed! They had their own blue-eyed boys, or surrogate children if you will, who were groomed for their respective thrones. And bad dynastic practices began. Remember that even during dynasties, the king had to pick the best among his children (usually sons) to be the heir-to-the-throne. The prince too often had to climb his way up; first controlling small rebellions and then winning medium sized battles and then wars and so on. This is completely unlike the present situation wherein neither Rahul Gandhi, nor Akhilesh Yadav, nor other such aspiring heirs, have any demonstrated abilities in running the show. For example, A Yadav is in fact running a pretty bad show! And yet!!

Compare this, on the other hand, with, say a Mamata Banerjee, who without any 'Godfather', without any 'family connection' worked hard from bottom-up! Needless to mention that despite all the brouhaha about his mass appeal Mohandas was a Top-Down phenomenon; while Loknayak Jaiprakash Narain, notwithstanding the early failure of the Janata Party experiment, created a Bottom-Up movement!

So BSY must be given his due, whatever that may be. Politically there may be bargaining, so the exact details of what a putative compromise would be, can scarcely be second-guessed. However, one thing is absolutely clear. Exactly like what the the Congressman from MP said: Those who sit in AC rooms have a disconnect from those in the field; the BJP (or any party for that matter) can ill afford to ignore the message from Bottom Up except at its own peril. BJP has already burnt its fingers by adopting under the guidance from high-command use-and-throw policies in the cases of Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti. It is matter of open perception that it has hardly recovered from these blunders. Under such circumstances, if it again betrays political wisdoom, it will be finished for the foreseeable future.

For BSY, our recommendation is that he must guard against falling into the trap of being 'disciplined soldier' etc., to be merely exploited by the high-command. He must assert himself, and never allow himself to be ill treated. But that will not be enough, though much easier. In addition, he must also remember to practice accordingly towards his own 'sub-ordinates'. In abstract terms, even Narendra Modi will have to work out something similar if he wants to be capable of doing a good job of being PM, should he become one someday. He himself is risen Bottom-Up, and he will have to identify about fifty more Narendra Modis, and so on.

Most importantly BSY must position himself relatively much more pro-Hindu than the best in the BJP. BSY must strive to be, so to speak, a Kalyan Singh from the south (Not in getting exploited by high-command, but in taking a firm stand in favour of Hindu causes). Always remember, be a disciplined soldier of Sanatana Dharma, not merely your political party or its high-command.

The Senile Wisdoom of the Ideologue!

Wish you all a Very Happy Diwali. And please be not surprised, there is no spelling error in the title. More about it later in the article.

Diwali festival is also a festival of fire-crackers and fire-works. However, the patrons of the festival will recall  that there exists a fire-work, often called a 'snake'. This is usually a black coloured tablet, and when ignited, starts delivering a continuously oozing black tube like structure, often accompanied with a sort of foul smell. Few adults enjoy that, though there are many among children who do, and they are well within their rights to enjoy it as children.

Recently, MG Vaidya, who we should have referred to by the term that we use often, a dumb-fuck, has betrayed his childishness on his blog (Marathi here, Hindi here). Recall that we have time and again blamed the Hindutva Brigade of being headless, and this time the old-man displayed the same shame in its full glory by sharing his senile wisdoom. The use of the word senile seems obvious going by the geriatric state of the person, however wisdoom might need a small clarification. These elderly thinkers are entrusted with the burden of showing farsightedness in the interests of the organisation. What would you call their opinion when these alleged wise give out material which will most likely spell doom for the goals? We have used our limited intelligence to coin the term 'wisdoom', to refer to such special cases of DF-ries.

In a nut-shell the developments are the following:

1. The old Jethmalani vomitted his wisdoom recently regarding the president-ship of the BJP, and who should be BJP's PM-candidate.

2. Since the person demanded resignation from Gadkari and annointment of Modi, the wise-Vaidya put the twos and twos together to claim that the needle of suspicion pointed towards Modi.

The first point, and the first half of the second point are matters of facts, or rather news items. Our focus is more on the second half of the second point: the putting together of the twos! Despite lamenting about the tendency among people to undermine bigger causes by not raising contentious issues within internal fora while choosing to stir the hornets nest by raising them at public fora, the old man betrays his wisdoom by he himself raking the matter up in a public fora, his blog!

For the sake or argument, let us assume, tentatively, that the rotten Jethmalani is a stooge of Modi and his baying for Gadkari's blood at Modi's insistence. However, what should a typical, and strategically astute response should be? Especially by those who keep crying about the absence of unity within the fold? In our opinion, their consistent response should be: It is an anti-Hindu conspiracy hatched by vested interests. However, as we have mentioned repeatedly, those whose brains have been addled by constant dose of Savarkarian-Hindutva, and those who have fallen into the trap of moral-high-ground, can scarcely understand the obvious and can hardly get their basic instincts in place. They are like the proverbial moth who instead of pissing in the fire to extinguish it, falls in love with the fire to eventually successfully immolate and destroy itself.

Just out of curiosity we perused through articles by Vaidya here, here and here. We chose these articles purely by their seemingly impressive titles. And lo and behold, the highest point among all these three articles was a passing criticism of 'Mohandasian-Socialism' in this article. The rest of the article spaces are full of the abominable True-Secularism, the senile Savarkarian-Hindutva, the peevish The-Congress-Initiated-Ayodhya-Crisis, and such sour balderdash.

A complete Freedom of Expression of opinion is absolutely fine, even if it means having to endure the feculent outpourings of a Jethmalani, or even a Karnad. However, when it comes as a pearl of wisdom from an ideologue like M.G. Vaidya, who is an ex-spokesperson of his esteemed organization, it does betray a deeper malady.

As we have often pointed out, be it Jaswant-Advani's Jinnah moments, Bangaru-Laxman's telelka moment, Gadkari's we-have-moved-from-Ram-Temple-to-Ram-Rajya moments, the infantile cunning of these Hindutva type is so puerile that it often makes even dyspeptic rattle snakes like Manish Tewari seem as composed and profound in comparison! The senile ideologues, as well as, this tottering ideology needs a comprehensive overhaul. Understand that Savarkarian-Hindutva is not enough. The inferiority-complex-ridden performance akin to a B-team of Congress is shameful. The platitudes of Hajpeyee-ian Statesmanship are annoying. 

Return to Vivekananda and even beyond. Go to the very roots. Go forth to the Rishis-propounded Sanatana Dharma. Otherwise, you will keep blabbering your senile wisdoom. O Hindus, ...

Women, Prostitution, Rape, and Exemplary Punishment

This post was prepared during Navaratri. We apologize for this delay in posting it.

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Consensual Sex and Prostitution have always been very contentious issues. However, those who think it is easy to take a decision will do well to recall that in medieval Europe sex was allowed only for procreation. Recreational sex itself was a taboo.

In this post, we do not propose to answer the deeper moral issues of whether recreational sex, consensual sex, and prostitution are sin or not. We rather assume that notwithstanding our stands, instances of these things will happen, and we need to have a somewhat more balanced view on the matter.

While we are not official spokesperson for Sanatana Dharma. However, it is a matter of common knowledge that prostitution existed, and there were many instances of prostitutes who later spiritually evolved into saints or devotees. It is quite possible that prostitution was never a recommended profession in the sense that possibly no parents wanted their children to pursue careers in commercial sex-work. However, prostitutes were not, let us put it that way, subject to witch-hunt, much less stoned to death! At least in pre-Islamic India. The stories of Pingala in ShrimadBhagavatam and that of Amrapali during Buddha's life are well known. Similarly prevalence of texts like KamaSutra indicates that sex was not a taboo subject.

We are not Feminists of any sort, and we surely are not gender-feminists, the likes of those who are criticized by the equity-feminist author Christina Hoff Sommers. Feminism is a complex issue and we would rather not get into that here. Also, we are gender-realists in the sense that we do acknowledge that gender matters in many ways. At the same time we also emphasize that jiva (loosely called the soul) has no gender, it is a spark of life, and in that sense, a woman's life can not be less important than a man's life. If at all, it can only be somewhat more important, which possibly explains the prevalence of chivalry across many, if not most, cultural lines.

We also appreciate that once any empowerment happens, it can also be misused, in exactly the same manner in which a Dalit man can accuse an upper caste man of using a 'casteist slur' and make the life of the upper-caste man immensely difficult.

With such background, we make a few points:

1. Prostitution must be Legal: If a woman, for whatever reasons, desires to trade her body, this right can not be denied to her.

2. Freedom to Disassociate must be Legal: Freedom not to associate with meat eaters, gamblers, prostitutes, is also a fundamental freedom. If there exists freedom to do certain things, there must be equally freedoms not to associate with persons indulging in these things.

Thus, Separate regions, even cities, can be set-up where such things can be done. While those, who for whatever reasons, want to live, want to bring up their children, etc., in a 'protected surrounding' must be allowed to set-up such surroundings.

3. All Rapes must de dealt as Very Serious Crimes: A prostitute conducts some business; the right of a seller to refuse to sell to a buyer, like the right of a buyer to refuse to buy from a seller, is a fundamental right. Thus, Rape, on a prostitute is as severe a crime as rape on other women. If at all, what constitutes rape may be defined somewhat differently (if at all) by legal experts incorporating opinions from women (including prostitutes).

We have mentioned earlier that Rape on a woman (as seen by her) is worse than a murder. Thus, rape must be seen almost as bad as murder. 

4. Exemplary Punishment must be accorded: And rape must be dealt with extremely severe punishment, including death penalty, decapitation etc. (see for example here, and here)

5. The issue of 'public' places, like train-stations, bus-stations, etc., is somewhat more complicated. Our guess is that once there are places where prostitution, gambling, etc. can be freely conducted, the tendency among people to attempt such transactions in 'public places' will greatly reduce. The general principle mentioned in point-2 would possibly suffice to handle most issues.

There would be a great many practical difficulties in implementing any of the above. As always: We also submit that these are by no means The Last Word on these matters. However, we do emphasize that serious debates and discussions on these matters must begin as early as possible.