By Badri Raina, ZNet, September 1, 2009
“That you may smile and smile and be a villain”
His great contribution to politics: pulling his party, the BJP, from two to some one hundred and eighty seats in parliament—all on the back of a hate-filled, anti-Muslim pogrom.
His great contribution to “thought”: coining the phrase “pseudo-secularism,”—defined as any activity on behalf of the state to ameliorate the abysmal social and economic situation of India’s Muslims.
This lean and hungry man, unctuous in speech, guilt-ridden finger-tips gingerly touching across his chest, watched over by foxy moustache, affecting gravitas with tentative stoop and bended head within which breed impulses of self-serving small-mindedness—this undeserving man who would be India’s prime minister has finally been found out.
And, like the priest who forged the gun-powder plot (and justified, during his interrogation, equivocation as sanctioned religious practice), he no longer can equivocate either to the nation or to god. Perhaps to himself as well. Although that must be in doubt.
Four members out of five that constituted the Cabinet Committee on Security during the Vajpayee regime in 1999 have made public averment that he was always present in the meetings that deliberated the hijack of the IC-814 by terrorists, and, contrary to his denials, was wholly in the know of and in agreement with the decision to let the then foreign minister accompany three high-value terrorists to Kandhar.
Thus, the Lauh Purush (iron man) has been found to be an abject equivocator merely, and a cowardly one at that.
Peace and Justice Post 
Raina: India, Australia
February 10, 2010What is the Difference?
By Badri Raina , ZNet, Feb 9, 2010
Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page
I
The Victorian police chief, Simon Overland, has finally found the answer to the attacks that Indians have been subjected to down under.
“Try to look as poor as you can,” he advises Indian immigrants to Australia: “don’t display your iPods, valuable watch, valuable jewellery.”
The implication here is explicit: if you don’t flaunt, you will not tempt.
Thus, the onus that the state and law-enforcement ought to bear is neatly transferred to the victim on a principle of the call of “nature,” if you will. To wit, men will be sinners; so the best course is to seduce as little as possible.
The Indian community has characterized this approach to crime as “ridiculous”—with justice.
I have no doubt we shall soon have fiercely outraged debates on Mr.Overland’s take on crime here on Indian TV channels.
But do ask yourself: how is Mr.Overland’s advice here any very different from what Indian women are routinely advised by our own custodians of morality? Or custodians of morality in large parts of the world?
If you flaunt, you invite rape—and on the same principle of “nature” that informs Overland’s counsel to Indians down under. Thus, bigots of all hue argue that it is not the rapist and the molester who is out of order but the women who are thus raped or molested.
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Tags:Australia, Badri Raina, Bal Thackeray, India, Indians, treatment of Indian women
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