The pseudonationalists and the pseudohindus

The latest post of the TOOTBWAHNP attributes Astang yoga to Panini instead of Patanjali. The sheer shallowness. Was it Sandhya Jain's fault or TOOTBWAHNP's? Most likely, the article has been posted without reading.

is BJP like rajeev2004 blog?

At a wider philosophical level, people should have freedom to say whatever they wish to say. At operational level, every organisation, country, society has to balance this with the need for a smooth function of the organisation. The way to do that is to have a well clear policy framework. With such a policy, as long as a member sticks to the rules, he is free to say whatever he wishes to say.

BJP seems to have inverted this practice on its head. There does not seem to be a policy about what people can say and cannot say. Neither Advani nor Jaswant singh seemed to worry about any party rule while saying whatever they said about Jinnah. Advani got away lightly, Jaswant Singh has been insulted and punished to the hilt. That is the shocking outcome of the practice "Restrictions based on Personalities, full freedom to some, none to others." No wonder most lower rank BJP leaders seem to talk like parrots and the top ones sound erudite and thoughtful.

Come to think of it, doesn't the rajeev2004 blog mirror this inversion? The owner deletes comments by certain user ids, but seems to allow almost anything by anyone else!

OMG OMG ROTFL ROTFL: China plotting against a Hindu Nationalist

In dailypioneer Swapan Dasgupta writes "What began as an e-mail campaign involving some isolated pensioners located in southern India has suddenly gathered momentum among politicians".

Is he pointing towards the one and only Hindu Nationalist? The Jawaharlal Nehru of the blogworld? TOOTBWAHNP? The owner of the blog with a Hindu nationalist perspective?

In response, TOOTBWAHNP writes "several people have written thoughtful essays about this topic. here is a link to what i wrote". Guys, take it from the god. What he writes is thoughtful. He knows about software. He knows enough about Cricket to criticize Sachin Tendulkar . He knows enough about Game Theory to exactly know how India should handle its relations with US. He knows about everything. He knows about EVMs and he knows they were tampered.

No wonder Swapan used the term 'pensioners located in southern India'. Wonder of wonders, the article appears in the daily pioneer. Now, that will test one pseudo-nationalist's nationalism. Has China begun its work on dividing India? I guess TOOTBWAHNP would know. He knows everything.

Herd mentality. Try adding 2+ 2 now.

Last few days, there has been incessant shouting about alleged foreign policy mistakes of the Manmohan team. We tried to make out what all the shouting was about. This is what we found.

Here is a link 1 It concludes “Nonalignment is no ideology. It is an idiosyncrasy.”

Here is link 2 that says Bharat Varma says a chinese attack on India is imminent.

Here is what TOOTBWAHNP's satellite poster says in his post Another Manmohan capitulation.

"Other write ups in this newspaper have the "redoubtable" SM Krishna saying that there's nothing wrong in opening ones kimono WIDE (as in REALLY WIDE) to intrusive american inspections.
If this is how totally Manmohan and Co are selling us down the drain in a deal so simple, imagine how total the sell-out in the nuke deal, once the technical gobbledegook is removed, must be. "

Now, if a Chinese attack is imminent, and if non-aligned stance is useless, and if Amercian weapons could help avert attack, and if America won't sell weapons unless an end-use inspection agreement is signed, where is the capitulation? is 2+ 2 = 5?

Or is it that you will oppose Congress even when it is clearly doing the best to forward Indian interests?

We will be glad to show the mistakes of the shouting brigade if there is more interest in it. Let us know.

Advani and his blog

How do you know whether a leader means what he says? Just look at his actions over a period of time and you can draw your own conclusions. Advani has been talking about Hindus and India at the top of his voice for last 20 years. Many believe him. Many think he is inspirational and so on and so forth. Many others strongly believe that it is only a gimmick for grabbing attention and votes.

A few weeks before the recent elections Advani started a blog. We checked the last post on that blog recently. The date was 22nd April. It is about three months from that date and Advani hasn't felt a need to connect with his web audience. Some leader, he is. . He can fool some people all the times. Let us salute him.

Taking stock

About 30 months ago, Rajeev adopted the policy of deleting our comments outright. We started the rajeev-2006-critique blog to counter the censorship. Within weeks our blog brought about some desirable changes. Post the critique blog, Rajeev's blog has fewer obscene posts about women, much less bashing of Hindu icons, and much greater focus. At one point in time, we thought that the critique blog was being counterproductive, so we closed the blog.

We reopened the critique blog as rajeev-2008-critique simply because the policy of summary deletions continued and nobody objected to it. As expected the shoot-the-messenger type of censorship that Rajeev adopts has resulted in the blog post often going comment-less. People have realised it is futile to post comments that have a different perspective and have abstained from posting. Thankfully, the virulent original posts have also reduced.

Earlier this year, there were new entrants to the blogosphere. Both Kanchan Gupta and Swapan Dasgupta started their own blogs with an open comments policy. The debate is much more lively and inclusive. There is now a better platform for any debate about BJP. Rajeev's blog is irrelevant from that angle.

It is still important to promote democracy on Rajeev's blog. I cannot do it alone. I will wait for someone else to take this up. We will be looking for a suitable opportunity for that. Let us hope Rajeev's blog does not suffer the fate Advani is suffering. Advani squashed intra-party opposition with a heavy hand. He lost the elections and he is likely to lose his status forever. He never delivered any results for Hindus or India but bloggers like Rajeev never allowed anyone to publish such views. Public has learnt the truth too late.

In the meantime, BJP is realising it cannot combine Marxism, Hinduttva, and personal ambitions of the members of the geriatric club and their sidekicks in one single offering to India. Let us hope that the vigorous debate generated by election results strengthens both Congress and BJP, and India in the process.

Election results and quotable quotes.

Elections are over. BJP supporters are busy venting out against the leaders that were so dear to them a few days back.

The BJP has conceded defeat. We are really missing Atalji's presence in the elections and campaign," BJP leader Sushma Swaraj said.

We would like to remind you what Rajeev Srinivasan said some time back about the Indian cricket team.

There are only two ways the indian team can accomplish progress:
1. the team plays well. but this is impossible, given that the team is chosen not for competence, but to satisfy various satraps. it wont work unless there are disincentives and incentives. for instance, i liked the disincentive for the losing pakistani coach -- he was mudered. the indian team bozos should be given similar disincentives. you lose matches, you lose body parts. that would solve the problem pronto, and these guys will be out there applying themselves fielding and batting and bowling like their lives depended on it (which in fact they would).

Does that apply to BJP? Also, shouldn't the Hindu Nationalist blog take some blame for not being able to convince 1/3 people that they tried to convince? Maybe Rajeev should take a 3-month holiday from blogging and rethink his 'strategy'.