South Asia Citizens Web

Reliance Running a Parallel State . . . I do not know of any country where one single firm exercises such power so brazenly, over the natural resources, financial resources, professional resources and, ultimately, over human resources as the company of the Ambanis. . . . I wonder why it is that Indian science which has done such wonders for us, is yet to make an impact on what Nehru used to call the scientific temper. Superstition has increased exponentially in our country. I value the affection and faith of those who tie strings and charms to my wrists for love and care of me. But the rings and strings on the fingers and wrists of our politicians are signs of their fear psychoses, insecurities and desperate placatings of benign stars or for the averting of evil eyes. he number of Godmen and, to a lesser extent, Godwomen, is increasing in algebraic leaps.

Producer - Abbas Syed | Director - Rohit Tiwari | Writer & Associate Director - Anurag Thakur

This article should be read carefully by everyone interested in Indian politics. The logic employed by the BJP leadership is revealing. By her reasoning, Sonia Gandhi is bound to be a fascist because her father was an Italian soldier. Are political ideas inherited along with one’s DNA? Today, the doctrine of historically transmitted guilt is used by all communalists to justify their violence against innocent people. Is this not what lies behind slogans such as ’Babar ki aulaad’? Since Ms Lekhi is announcing her awareness of the evil of Nazism and facism, may we expect the BJP leadership to finally make a public repudiation of Gowalkar’s and V.D. Savarka’s sympathy for the Nazis and their racial hatred of Jews?

In February of this year, after a long career of relative obscurity in the ivory tower, I suddenly became notorious.1 In 2010, Penguin India had published a book of mine, The Hindus: An Alternative History, which won two awards in India: in 2012, the Ramnath Goenka Award,2 and in 2013, the Colonel James Tod Award.3 But within months of its publication in India, a then-eighty-one-year-old retired headmaster named Dina Nath Batra, a proud member of the far-right organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had brought the first of a series of civil and criminal actions against the book, arguing that it violated Article 295a of the Indian Penal Code, which forbids “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class” of citizens.