By Badri Raina, ZNet, April 04, 2011
The “Mainstream.”
Ask any ordinary Indian citizen whether the bulk of their elected representatives or members of the administrative tribe ever really can be trusted to square with them on any issue at hand—from the burst water pipeline, to the price of food articles, to any policy issues bearing on domestic or foreign concern.
And you will discover that, among democracies, the Indian political/bureaucratic class scores the lowest worldwide on truth-telling, and absolutely the highest on the fine art of dodge and double-speak.
This is so, Wikileaks now tell us, for the canny reason that India’s “mainstream” power wielders/brokers reserve truth-sharing not for the people of India but for the American Embassy. There is the intimate zone where they bare their hearts out.
Here is a sampling—from the lowly and bumptuous, although not less punishable for that reason, to the venerated sublime:
–in his cable dated August 11, 2009, Timothy Roemer, the US Ambassador, recounting his first ever meeting with the then Indian National Security Advisor, (no less) underlined how the latter had candidly revealed his differences with the Prime Minister, Singh, on issues related to peace with Pakistan; and how Narayanan told him of his retort to Singh’s sentiment about the “shared destinies” of India and Pakistan: “you have a shared destiny, we don’t” Narayanan confided as having said. Presumably, the “you” had to do with Singh being a north Indian and a Punjabi, and Narayanan being a southerner to whom the partition of the country in 1947 carried small resonance. . .
Peace and Justice Post 
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