why we need the BJP

It was in 1989, as a 12 year old deeply interested in the political gossip that Dad and his friends shared over tea, that I started taking a liking for the Bharatiya Janata Party. I saw several of my Hindu friends as completely irreligious in the ritualistic sense. I never saw them at temples or at pujas and all religious holidays were spent playing cricket in the umpteen grounds that dot Jamshedpur, the city I was born.
I started liking being a Hindu. I believed and still do that it gave a man a huge amount of freedom to go about his day in the ways he felt fit.
A nation consisting predominantly of Hindus I believe should have been no different. But slowly I saw change among some of my friends. As teenage years went past, I saw some of my friends – who till yesterday didn’t seem different- suddenly pulling out their skull caps in public.
Others stopped playing with us during Ramzan. When we asked them why, the stock reply was that you people- the phrase always comes with its own set of offensiveness – don’t have to fast like we do but we know how to respect our God.
Something had changed. As the years passed by, many of these friends slowly started cutting off from the rest of us, looking down on us who had taken to enjoying the odd sip of whisky during boisterous parties in our college hostels. I heard the word ‘kafir’ for the first time outside my history books in first year of college in Mumbai from a particularly zealous lot of Muslim students from Bhiwandi. But that was just a small prick in a hostel teeming with students from nearly all other communities in India and be they Hindus, Christians, Sikhs or the avowedly ‘non-Indians’ from the North-East, they went about their day and work without any overt religiosity. Low marks in Accounts didn’t make them jump to the conclusion that the professor was a bigot who hated Sikhs or Hindus or Christians or anybody with slanty eyes.
I sit and back and think what went wrong in the past 60 years. Why has the young Muslim started carrying so much bile within him for the country? How is he any more deprived than I am when it comes to jobs, riches, housing, transport and general well being?
Why is it that one community is running towards its religion the moment any topic that requires application of thought comes about?
I saw my answers in the BJP. Led by two lions who had come forward to ensure everyone from the hare to the lamb to the deer to the tigers and the foxes all stay fed and happy in the confines of the forest.

The party with a difference. That party that would lead India into an era where inherent Hindu secularism leads the way rather than the pseudo-secularism of Nehru and his Gandhi brood.

But alas these two stalwarts- Atalji and Advaniji- never saw when patently Congress-culture afflicted virus like Pramod Mahajan and the likes entered the party and left it sick, dry and hollow from inside.
They didn’t have the foresight to realise when the party went from being one with a difference to being no different from the Congress, of course minus the sycophancy for the divine right of the Gandhis to lord over the party and nation that prevails in the Congress.

For someone who started following the BJP at the age of 12, seeing the party in such blood-curdling despair and sorrow in exactly two decades is numbing.
But hopefully the bloodletting will dispel the bad blood that ran through its veins ever since the party started growing exponentially after the Babri Masjid adventure.

India needs the party because we are a huge bunch of Hindus here, patently hypocritical and selfish self-seeking people. Dealing with a community, quickly closing ranks keeping fossilized value systems as their base, is not going to be easy.
A liberal, nationalistic, right-wing Hindu party is needed to guide us. It is a vacuum the old BJP falsely promised to fill, hopefully the new BJP- as and when it emerges- will in earnest.

MERE SAWAALO KA JAWAAB DO

Under what constellation of stars was Rahul Gandhi/ Priyanka Gandhi born?
When Rahul brought along Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra’s daughter amidst media flashbulbs at Rajiv Gandhi’s birth anniversary function on August 20 in Delhi, was India looking at their Prime Minister of 2047AD?
Should we ban children born in the same constellation of stars as LK Advani?
Can we ever have another family whose very surname spells Prime Minister?
Can a man ever lead the Congress to a split in which some Gandhi is a minor player?
Can the Congress ever be beaten anymore?
Will we soon have currency notes with the mugs of Indira and Rajiv?
Was self-seeking Nehru the cleverest politician among the likes of the selfless Sardar Patel and the brilliant Babasaheb?
Will India one day be known as Gandhistan and become the second nation after Saudi Arabia to be named after a family?

Answers, answers, answers

I write this blog in a very cheerful state of mind. I thought I’d be inside a bunker waiting for some army guy to give me five minutes of his spare time with the laptop to write it. But thankfully we did not go to war and we did not bomb New York, Washington or the White House. The collective anger that our Sonia-led government felt after our dear Shahrukh was detained at a US airport surely had me putting my last penny on Indian jets making mincemeat of the Americans. Sonia’s best friend – of course she will be a minister in that case- Ambika Soni even said we must have a ‘tit-for-tat’ policy. But the Americans chickened out, and left Shahrukh after he managed to convince the whites in the Homeland Sdecurity at the Port of Entry that he is a good actor and that films like DDLJ, KANK are masterpieces of Indian cinema and that India was one massive land mass of mustard fields and all of us usually travelled abroad to Switzerland’s Yash Chopra lake to cavort with our girlfriends, lip-synch with them along with synchronized dance steps. So there was no war because the Americans didn’t show their tits, so we spared them the tats.Come to think of it. Poor little APJ Kalam, a nice bloke if there are any left in India, might be feeling a bit left out. The Americans made him do far worse things, in India beat that, and still not a word from the government. But that is understandable because Kalam has been wasting a lot of time with the saffronwalas of late and touching the feet of sundry babas so the Congress really cannot stand up for someone with such bad taste.Now coming back to SRK. I think he is just pissed off because we in India tend to give our lads enough leeway and space to think they own the frigging establishment.So SRK might be the centre of all attention when he alights at any Indian airport, but sadly this time he just got the rough end of the stick. Now Mid-day says he told the US chaps that he is a friend of Hillary Clinton. That is so typical Dilliwala of SRK. The moment a traffic cop catches you, tell him that Shiela Dikshit is my mummy’s elder sister or Arun Jaitley and you went to law school together.A recent research shows that if all the people in Delhi who say they are related to X or Y politicians are taken at face value, then every MP will need to have at least 783 brothers, 519 sisters, 14679 nephews, 1234 nieces- women tend to pull this stunt less- and 350 wives for it all be true. We are a nation just like that. We treat our heroes better and it is time someone told Uncle Sam that. Look at Sanjay Dutt. The chap is a legally a jailbird as someone convicted under the stringent (only for common Indians though) Arms Act. But our man is off shooting to Bahamas, partying in South Africa and then giving sundry interviews to film glossies on how he longs for the freedom he deserves. Right.To top it all and rub it in, the man appears on Sony’ Dus ka Dum- with ‘booze’um pal Salman- and asks the audience in mock Khalnayak style- bolo main gunehgaar hu kya? And the crowd- of course fed on the channels rent-a-crowd policy with Bisleri, snacks and Rs 500 per day- shout in unison ‘NNNOOOO’. I’m tempted to ask whether that is contempt of court or not. What Mr Dutt pulled off was nothing but a loud shout that the law is an ass and the judge who convicted him a bit off the rockers.Look at Harbhajan Singh. When Usain Bolt, Roger Federer and several other sporting legends have no problem with the anti-doping regulations of the WADA, our man will have none of it. What if the chaps come to check his urine when he is out to shoot a commercial of Royal Stag which he has managed after telling the coach that his spinning finger got stuck in the door so he can’t bowl? Very unfair. So Harbhajan has made it clear he will not bow down to these rules. As for the BCCI, the support is whole-hearted because the Ms Pawar and Modi never wanted cricket to come up within the ambit of any world-recognised sports body anyway. They would continue to let cricket remain a kangaroo sport governed by kangaroo courts as long as the moolah flows in. So if someone takes drugs- like stay Steyn- then we will just announce it six months after the tournament and smugly tell the world you can crucify someone with retrospective effect, can you?Salman Khan might not be the ideal Indian hero when it comes to morals. But he had one sane word to say. Speaking to Asian Age, he said the SRK issue was ‘no big deal’. And then he hit the nail on the head. ‘They are particular about their security and that could be the reason why they have not had anything after 9/11’ Salman said.Now we are at the end of it all a nation that allows 7/11, 26/11 and god knows how many more elevens in store that will leave the psyche of our nation in sixes and sevens. So let it all go.I just wonder how did SRK manage to convince the Americans he is a good actor? That must have been tough after playing Raj Malhotra from age 25 to 45 film after film, interview after interview.

the world's largest toilet

Had a wonderful time last night/ early morning at Shab-e-baraat, a time when Muslims are supposed to visit graveyards to pray for the departed.
Had the magnificent opportunity of seeing autorickshaws at Shivaji Park and Cadell Road, almost ten kilometres into the suburban city.
Was fortunate enough to see wonderful chivalry as bikers, dressed in pathanis and skull caps on their heads, jeered at women who, unfortunately for them, had no roofs over their heads so slept on the pavements and nocturnal movements forced their clothes to go up their legs to show unwanted skin.
Saw five boys stoning a hapless dog from close range at Byculla’ khada parsi bridge. The dog, thankfully, managed to escape though the short whimper it let out suggested that one of the idiots had managed to connect somewhere on its bone.
Heard cries of Allahu Akbar in the middle of the night waking up entire residences as lights came on at the windows of sleepy buildings in a jiffy.Felt very nice to be Indian. The world’s largest toilet. Where the only contribution you need to make is to shit all over it.