Prashant Kishor’s “Reincarnation Plan” for Congress is based on Retaining the Very Leadership that is Decimating it

 The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference:

Since yesterday (April 21st), the English media is abuzz with an 88-slide presentation that Prashant Kishor (PK) presented to the Gandhi family last year. Everyone from The Hindu to NDTV to Hindustan Times have claimed exclusive access to this and have given us snippets into the presentation. And then sources “close to PK” have also revealed how PK actually has a 600-slide presentation that “no one saw” yet!

The English media is calling this as the “Reincarnation Plan” of Congress. According to a report in The Hindu, it is PK’s plan to:

1. Continue Sonia Gandhi as the President of the Congress party
2. Appoint Rahul Gandhi as the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party
3. Appoint Priyanka Gandhi as the General Secretary in charge of coordination.

In a recent interview, PK had wondered how can Congress claim that their problem is Communication and yet retain the same communication head for 8 years? Fair question but then how can PK plan to reincarnate Congress party by retaining the very leadership that is decimating it? To overcome this conundrum, PK apparently has suggested the appointment of a Working President for the Congress party to take care of the day-to-day affairs! It is left to anybody’s guess if he has pitched this title for himself or not.

The report of the inhouse channel of Congress party, NDTV, is even more enlightening. PK’s plan includes:

1. Destroying a sense of entitlement and sycophancy.
2. Fixing the alliance conundrum.
3. 'One Family, One Ticket', to counter prevalent nepotism.

Ok, so basic question. How exactly does one “destroy a sense of entitlement” by having Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi hold all the key leadership posts in the Congress party? How exactly does one destroy “sycophancy” in the Congress party by appointing the entire family into all the key leadership posts in the Congress party? Instead of “fixing the alliance conundrum”, shouldn’t PK and Congress first work on fixing the family conundrum?! I think we don’t even have to discuss the hilarious “One Family, One Ticket” plan to “counter nepotism” because how exactly will you “counter nepotism” by appointing an entire family to all key leadership positions?

Hindustan Times tells us that a committee formed to study this 88-slide presentation submitted a 4-page summary report. Diggy Raja doesn’t want the Gandhi family to give a formal position to PK. Kamalnath however wants the Gandhi family to appoint PK as the General Secretary (strategy)! And like we discussed earlier in an article on this site, the Hindustan Times report also tells us that PK would want a key position in which he will report directly to the Congress President – which the veterans of Congress party will obviously not like!

NDTV also tells us the other salient points from this 88-slide presentation.

• Protecting its values and core principles.
• The creation of a new Congress for the masses.
• Reconstituting organizational bodies via elections across all levels.
• A federation of 200+ like-minded influencers, activists and civil society members to: Coordinate Action, Raise Dissent and Build Synergy.

Does anyone know what exactly are the “core principles” of the Congress party? Most in the country think that the “core principles” of the Congress party are corruption, inefficiency, and nepotism! At the risk of repeating myself, how is the “The creation of a new Congress” possible by having the entire Gandhi family control all key leadership positions in the party?

The “federation of 200+ like-minded influencers” already exists for the Congress party! Large sections of the English media; sections of the movie industry; sections of defunct NGOs; and the Communists are all part of this failed federation!

Back in 2019, we had wondered in article – “How is common sense eluding the Indian National Congress?”. In his recent interactions, PK also wondered the same. Some things are so obvious that it really doesn’t need a genius to figure out what is wrong with the Congress party – the Gandhi family! It is truly a miracle as to how the Gandhi family has held the mighty party in their clutches.

The excitement that the English media is showing is totally absent in the regional media. The regional media are busy highlighting how each CM belonging to a non-BJP party is the next PM candidate! No one, absolutely no one, thinks that either Rahul or Priyanka are PM candidates and yet this hyper-ventilation by the English media is amusing to note!

Prashant Kishor and his flawed calculations on how Congress is stronger than BJP

 The following article was written for OpIndia. Pasting it here for reference:

What are the 3 weaknesses of BJP? Shekhar Gupta (SG) asked Prashant Kishore (PK) in a recent interview. At ~29th minute in this interview, PK begins to explain the second weakness of BJP – “their inability to do well in Eastern and Southern India”. Your mind immediately races to actually how well BJP has actually performed in the 2019 elections in the entire North-East and West Bengal. While the mind is trying to understand the statement, PK begins to elaborate.

PK: “You divide India’s 543 seats into parts. And you take the Eastern and Southern states. And you start from Bihar”.

Now you would assume that since he now says Bihar is from Eastern India, Jharkhand also will be included in his list. He yet again flummoxes you by (deliberately) not including Jharkhand but including Bihar in eastern India!

PK continues: “Start from Bihar, go to Bengal, down below is Odisha, united Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala”

Maybe he meant East Coast states, but then why would Bihar get included? But if he meant Eastern India and if he wants to start Eastern India with Bihar, then what wrong did the poor NE states and Jharkhand even do to miss the radar of an astute person like PK?

PK continues: “All these states have approximately 200 seats. And BJP won only ~50 seats in these states”.

You must again be perplexed. Because NDA won 39 out of the 40 seats in Bihar alone! And that’s when you realise PK is again intelligently choosing to highlight only the BJP seats and not the NDA seats! His choice of Bihar still flummoxes me because he would have had a stronger argument if he actually didn’t include Bihar in it. He tells us in this interview that lot of people think BJP would sweep Bihar but “that’s not true”. Yet another googly – the NDA literally swept Bihar Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and came close to a sweep in 2014 – so why wouldn’t people see Bihar as a strong state for the BJP?

PK continues: “Despite everything that the BJP has (and he lists out a bunch of things) they have not been able to penetrate these states.”

Not been able to penetrate these states? In the year 2019, BJP won 18 seats in West Bengal as opposed to 2 it won in 2014. In the year 2019, BJP won 8 seats in Odisha as opposed to 1 in 2014. It won 4 in Telangana as opposed to 1. In Bihar, NDA won 39 in 2019 as opposed to 31 in 2014! If you remove Bihar from his list, then the grand total of seats won by BJP in 2014 in the other states he mentions are in single digits! How much more penetration was PK expecting to happen in a short span of 5 years in states where one assumed BJP did not even exist?

Undeterred and uninterrupted, PK continues: “In the remaining 300 seats….where BJP is strong…if for some reason a party or a formation snatches 100 seats from BJP in Western and Northern India, then the power balance will tilt”

Shekhar Gupta had been silent during this bit, so he had to intervene at this moment and give his insight – “BJP is like the Janata Party of 1977 which swept the Hindi heartland and the west, but Mrs Gandhi still retained the South”.

PK’s reaction and analysis of this comment is even more insightful than his inclusion of only Bihar in Eastern India. He says: “Hindi heartland has now extended to Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka” The mind is in a tizzy trying to understand this statement coming from a man of PK’s stature in an interview with a man of SG’s stature. Your mind boggles at how the analysts are altering basic concepts of geography, language, and common sense! How does Karnataka remotely get classified as a “Hindi

heartland” state? How do Gujarat and Maharashtra get into the bracket of “Hindi heartland” when crores of people in these states speak and take pride in their own languages?

Other analysts elsewhere have already cancelled out Goa and Karnataka from South India because the states have voted for BJP. Now, they are continuing this game of splitting the country, not based on sub-regions but splitting the sub-regions themselves according to how they voted for the BJP!

PK has repeated these statistics in other interviews too. The gist of all his interviews is that the Congress does not need to win even 150 seats to regain power at the centre. The burden of winning 272 is only on the BJP. The congress just needs 120-140 seats (in his own words). His version of “Eastern and Southern” India areas are already offering 150 seats against the BJP, and so according to him, all that needs to be done is “snatch away 100 seats from the BJP from the remaining ~350 seats”.

PK has been on record saying that he spent “every minute” of 5 months post the Bengal elections in 2021 to devise a plan for Congress and join Congress. In this interview with SG, he tells us that the primary reason he fell out with Prime Minister Modi is because of the delay in enabling lateral entry into the Government. If he feels so strongly about an issue like this (which by the way, the Modi government has begun to implement), how oh how does he think the Congress party will remotely think of enabling reforms like this?! PK is also on record in all these interviews that the BJP is doing well because they are ensuring door delivery of welfare schemes. Hearing all this, it really beats me why PK thinks Congress is the alternative to a party that is actually reforming the country!

PK met Sonia Gandhi, her children, and some congress leaders a couple of days back, for nearly 4 hours. In fact, Sonia Gandhi again met PK yesterday, indicating that PK has certainly proposed something big to have shaken Sonia Gandhi. While we can’t be blamed for assuming that this will also end up as a damp squib, given the history around the Congress under the Gandhi family, you can never write off the remote possibility of a genuine surprise being sprung.

Irrespective of the result of the latest activities, it was staggering to hear an astute strategist like PK indicate his thoughts that centered around changing geographical indicators, reviving a corrupt and inefficient Congress and defeating the BJP despite himself claiming that they are doing a lot of good for the people of India. It is therefore an opportune time to ask the question – Is the bubble of PK going to burst soon?

PS: In the interview, notice how Shekhar Gupta keeps on saying that his colleague Neelam Pandey will soon ask a question but goes on asking multiple questions himself!

KCR claimed Prashanth Kishore is his best friend. Do PK’s recent moves indicate a possible TRS-Congress informal alliance?

 The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference:

Prashanth Kishore (PK) recently met Sonia Gandhi, her children, and some other Congress party leaders for nearly 3 hours. As usual, through sources, we came to know that PK presented a strategy to this group – a strategy that included going alone in certain states and allying in certain other states. What immediately stuck to me was that, in this source-based information, Telangana was not included in neither group!

Recently in one of his press conferences, the Chief Minister of Telangana praised PK to the hilt. KCR told us that PK has never taken a single rupee for the work he has done so far; that PK is his best friend for the last 7-8 years; and that PK will be helping TRS for the 2023 elections. PK, meanwhile, in his other interviews elsewhere has told us that he has spent every minute of nearly 6 months, last year, to work to make Congress stronger.

KCR who started his national ambition by claiming that both Congress and BJP need to go away as national parties has off late aimed his bullets at only the BJP. He has called for BJP-mukt Bharat; has used foul and abominal language while addressing BJP leaders and central ministers; has shown huge disrespect to the Governor of Telangana; has taken more offense than the Congress party has, for Himanta Biswas Sarma’s comments on Rahul Gandhi; and neither he nor any of his family members have taken any umbrage at the Congress party in recent times.

This sudden ignoring of the Congress party is strange though – the PCC chief and KCR’s family don’t get along well at all. Infact, the PCC chief’s verbal attacks on KCR’s family have often created controversies in the state too. It’s also not that the Congress is a spent force in Telangana – they still are strong in certain pockets of the state.

Does PK’s meeting with KCR have anything to do with this? Is some strategy brewing up where there will be no formal alliance but there will be an informal understanding between Congress and TRS for the 2023 elections? Because, if there is a formal alliance between the TRS, Congress and the MIM – then it is simply game over for KCR – the people of Telangana will never accept an alliance between the TRS and Congress. But if there is an informal understanding between TRS and Congress in such a manner that the TRS can cross the 60-seat mark (infact, TRS just has to cross 54-seat mark because MIM will win 7 seats and will anyway support the government), then KCR-PK would have dealt a crushing and demoralizing impact to the state BJP. The Telangana elections will be held along with elections to Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh in late 2023 – so the timing is also very crucial. We will have to now wait and see how this “best friendship” of PK and KCR will play out in the near future.

The focus of the barrage of articles regarding PK’s meeting with Sonia Gandhi was more on how awesome PK is; how involved Sonia Gandhi is; and how a master plan is being brewed up with the only suspense being the role that PK will take up. Some sources suggest a General Secretary role; some suggest a pivotal role in charge of Gujarat and Himachal elections first; some suggest that he will have no title but an advisory role and so on.

Given his success with various regional parties, PK would definitely not accept something as simple as an advisory role. He would need full control over whatever role he is being given. The Congress party is of course not ready to accept an outsider as election in charge of key states or even as General Secretary in charge of key messaging. The Congress party is perhaps looking for an Ahmed Patel to the Gandhi siblings. Sonia Gandhi knows that her success during her peak is vastly because of deft management by the likes of Ahmed Patel and currently they see no one in the Congress party who can play that role for Rahul or Priyanka. They need someone to tame the arrogance and ignorance of the Gandhi siblings. They need someone to take care of the nitty-gritty of the party; the campaigning; the money and the messaging. And they are all clueless as to who can do all of this!

Sonia Gandhi has met PK twice in 3 days. Such level of importance can only happen if PK has recommended something revolutionary by Congress standards and Sonia Gandhi is thinking seriously of going ahead with implementing the same. We will need to wait and see how this will pan out, but this will not be as dud as PK just joining the party.

‘Hindi imposition’ debate: From Congress’ Shashi Tharoor to ThePrint, the hypocrisy and how troubled is being fanned in Tamil Nadu and beyond

The following article was written for OpIndia. Pasting it here for reference:

On the occasion of Hindi Diwas, The Home Minister of India made a statement that closely translates as follows: “We hope that all of us will be involved with complete dedication in developing national language Hindi as the language of the entire country“.

There was widespread appreciation for this speech that advocated Hindi to be made the language of the entire country. In fact, in NDTV’s own words – “Union Home Minister won the hearts of the audience.”

Am sure you must be baffled because you are expecting to be reading how there was widespread outrage because of the Home Minister’s statement and how South India has erupted in protests. Well, you are baffled because I left out a minor detail. The above statement was made by India’s Home Minister, Shri P. Chidambaram, in the year 2010. Now you know why NDTV was so thrilled back then but is severely upset right now with statements of the current Home Minister, Shri Amit Shah! And now you also know why the outrage is limited to statements made only post-2014 by BJP ministers. 

Post-2014, it became mandatory for certain politicians and media houses to feign outrage on every Hindi Diwas or when meetings related to the official language policy happened. We are reminded of how South India in its entirety is opposed to anything that is remotely connected to Hindi and the BJP’s “Hindi Imposition” is devastating for the country. This argument certainly baffles me for two reasons. 

The first reason being that all the 5 anti-Hindi violent agitations happened only in one state – Tamil Nadu. It was only in Tamil Nadu where there were multiple riots; where 100s of people died; where 100s of houses were destroyed; where 1000s, including leaders were arrested; and where 20 students even committed suicide in 1986. The remaining states in South India very happily adapted to learning Hindi where necessary (and if not necessary, just didn’t care) without any impact on learning their mother tongue or English for that matter. 

The second reason being that 4 out of 5 violent anti-Hindi agitations in India happened when the mighty Congress was in power (either in Tamil Nadu or at the centre) – the other one happened pre-Independence but even then, the Congress was technically in government in the Madras Presidency. Bottom line is that there was violence only in one state and only when Congress was in power. 

In fact, the various governments of Tamil Nadu were so angry about Hindi being made compulsory in Navodaya Schools in 1986 (run by Central Government) that even today Tamil Nadu is the only state in the entire country that doesn’t operate any Navodaya Schools! 

Till last year, it was only politicians from Tamil Nadu who would react to anything remotely connected to Hindi. This year, other politicians belonging to some non-BJP parties have joined the chorus in an attempt to make empty noises around this topic. Buoyed by this meaningless support and forgetting the stellar role of the Congress party in fomenting this violence, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor thought this was an opportune moment to jump on this bandwagon and chose to write a scintillating piece in The Hindu, the newspaper that is headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. 

He begins by saying that the BJP government is imposing Hindi by naming government schemes in Hindi and not in “neutral English” and cites the name “Swachh Bharat” as a sterling example of his argument! In his desperate attempt to fill up space for the page, Shashi Tharoor even went to extent of telling us that the Modi government renamed Teacher’s Day as Guru Purnima! Is it any wonder that the once-mighty Congress party is on a steady decline in the country where Guru Purnima precedes Teachers Day not just by centuries but by millennia! 

Shashi Tharoor’s article in The Hindu

This is the same Congress party that named its flagship programme in its 2019 manifesto “Nyuntam Aay Yojana”. It really takes some special skill to come up with a name like that and talk about Swachh Bharat being complicated, in the same vein. But what exactly is the solution that the Congress party, through Shashi Tharoor, is now offering to the problem they created in the first place? Brace for it – “use Hindi where it is understood, but use English everywhere, since it places all Indians from all parts of our country at an equal disadvantage.” 

Shashi Tharoor’s article in The Hindu

You read it right – use English because it puts everyone at a disadvantage! The gems of Shashi Tharoor in this article are simply never-ending – he claims that since Malayalam is gender-neutral, they would never understand the usage of gender for certain scenarios – so don’t use Hindi! 

Shashi Tharoor’s article in The Hindu

Shashi Tharoor credits Bollywood (or did he blame them? It’s just difficult to understand from his article) for the popularization of Hindi in the country. Shashi Tharoor is no ordinary person – he is a 3-time elected MP; he was a Union Minister, working in the ministry responsible for educating our children; he was in the running for UN Secretary-General, and he is a very (very) vocal member of the Congress party. There is no way he would have written such a hare-brained article without the approval of the higher-ups in the party. The arrogance of the Congress party in lecturing the people of India after it creates such problems is simply astounding. 

Speaking of arrogance, how can Shekhar Gupta be far behind to exhibit this inherent trait of his? He goes ahead and publishes an article to bring in a caste angle also to this topic. 

Article in The Print

This article was authored by a known Modi hater – Kancha Iliah Shephard who relishes bringing in a caste angle to any issue that is under discussion in the English media!  Even in this article, we are told that “First Brahmins benefited from the pro-English agitations of Tamil people.” – basically yet again stressing that this problem is only with the people of one state in the entire country. 

If anything, Prime Minister Modi has been at the forefront in encouraging Indians to learn multiple Indian languages. Recently, he had even cited the example of the Tanzanian brother-sister duo who were lip-syncing to Hindi songs and asked fellow Indians to send in their lip sync videos of a song in a language different from their own. He has been at the forefront of promoting the Tamil language in his various speeches, even at International forums. He had even arranged for an India-China summit in Tamil Nadu, to showcase the rich cultural heritage of India. Guess what – we didn’t see any “PM wins hearts” headlines from the likes of NDTV when all of this happened. 

Tamil Nadu continues to be the only state where Hindi is an issue. Politicians trying to make this an issue in other South Indian states are barking up a wrong tree – the people of these states are not averse to being multi-lingual for their own benefits. It is time we know these cold facts about the Congress party before the next outrage happens again next year. 

Siddharth Varadarajan rants, repeats a probably fictitious sob story about a Hindu-Muslim couple he met in Italy: Here is the problem with it

 The following article was written for OpIndia. Pasting it here for reference:

After getting strong feedback that stories starting with “My cab driver told me that…” are now getting funnier, the English media gang in India has been trying out innovative options to make their stories sound more credible. Siddarth Varadarajan who is an American citizen and the editor and co-founder of The Wire made one such innovative attempt today, through a tweet thread.

He started with – “I’m not easily given to pessimism!”. Oh my my! You open The Wire at any given hour, the only things you read are stories of gloom and doom. You open the timelines of any of the journalists belonging to this gang, all you see is a pessimistic view of India and how we will literally disintegrate as a country! Siddarth Varadajaran and the entire gang thrive on being pessimistic. Siddarth Varadarajan’s – “I’m not easily given to pessimism!” would have been a great opening line for a thread written on 1st April. I began to wonder how an astute editor like Siddarth Varadarajan lost the plot while firing his opening salvo itself.

He then proceeds to tell us that he is in Perugia, Italy for a conference. And that there he met a couple – a Hindu husband and Muslim wife. I immediately remembered that he once tweeted about some experience in a café in Paris. And then I began to wonder why his experiences of speaking with people happen only in foreign lands and not in India. Maybe because he can’t make up stories like these in India? Or maybe he thinks it is beneath his dignity to meet people in India?

Anyways, let’s move on to his alleged conversation with the couple. The guy who is not “easily given to pessimism” has told the couple that the picture is gloomy in India. So much for being optimistic! And what examples does he cite to bolster this claim? That Aakar Patel has been stopped at an airport from leaving the country and that his only crime was to sign an Editors Guild report in 2002 that “indicted Narendra Modi”. 

Again, oh my my! By the power vested by themselves upon themselves, the supreme lords of the highest court on planet earth – The Editors Guild – have indicted Narendra Modi back in 2002. The mind boggles to think of the arrogance with which these people conduct themselves. Who is The Editors Guild to indict anybody? They often are criticized by their own fraternity for not doing anything at all for editors or journalists – instead of focusing on the job they are meant to do; these people are going about handing indictments to all and sundry! Is it therefore any wonder that The Editors Guild has become a joke onto itself?  

After enlightening how awesome Aakar Patel is and how “Gogoi was a rotten CJI”, he also tells us that “The couple mentioned horrid anti-Muslim WA forwards sent by ‘uncles’ who should know better.” Day in, day out, the English media gang makes sarcastic comments about “WhatsApp University”. I am even reminded now of how Harvard fame, Nidhi Razdan, held a t-shirt that read WhatsApp University – where facts are not facts! And suddenly today, just because the couple told him about forwards on WhatsApp that he tends to agree with, WhatsApp has become credible beyond any doubt! 

At this point, it looks like Siddarth Varadarajan realised that he is being pessimistic contrary to his staggering opening line, he starts to sound optimistic. We are told that the couple asked him – “How come The Wire does what it does”? I think Siddarth Varadarajan wanted to frame this differently but ended up exposing the entire paradox of the pessimistic arguments he and his ilk make day in, day out! Because how this came out is the exact opposite of his intention – If Modi is fascist, how come you are able to say it so openly and thrive? If the situation is so gloomy and scary, then how come you are able to write so freely? How can you live under a dictatorship and yet abuse the same government day in and day out? 

However, the best line in his entire tweet tirade was that he had the audacity to write “we can’t let them decide what India will be”. That an American citizen who doesn’t get to vote in India has the gall to make this statement is hilarious beyond imagination! Contrary to what the likes of Siddarth Varadarajan may believe, the citizens of India are mature enough, confident enough and intelligent enough to know whom to elect and whom to reject. They get to decide what India will be – not an American editor roaming around the world and trying to make up stories! 

If the Gandhis step down now from Congress leadership and Modi wins in 2024, The Wire thinks the Indian Union will cease to exist by 2029. What explains this paranoid meltdown?

The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference:

The meltdown and paranoia in the editorial rooms of The Wire is so high that they now have gone to the extent of predicting that the Indian Union will even cease to exist by 2029, if Modi wins again in 2024! Am sure your blood also boils at reading such hyperbole, but the author very calmly tells us that “This is not an alarmist prediction.” Of course, it’s not alarming for folks at The Wire because it’s just another run-of-the-mill, another-day-in-office for them!  This pipe dream of wanting to disintegrate India is however not new. This gang has been trying to somehow achieve this goal right from 2014 but the people of India have slapped them again and again. But wait, these people don’t even realise that they are getting slapped again and again. Because the author strongly believes that all those who voted back Modi in 2019 are foolish and ignorant people!

According to the author – “In 2014, the youth of northern India voted overwhelmingly for the BJP because they believed Narendra Modi offered them hope of a better, more secure future. He failed to deliver it, but in 2019 they still voted for him”. You would be wondering why a large block as huge as “the youth of northern India” be foolish enough to vote back someone who failed to deliver on promises. To which the author enlightens us that they did this “because the opposition had offered no alternative vision of the future either.”

This pattern of insulting of the voter for choosing someone that the Delhi elite scorns upon is nothing new. The Wire’s elder cousin, The Hindu had already tied itself in knots trying to espouse a similar argument recently. However, The Wire took this to an entirely different level by claiming that India itself will cease to exist because of these choices. The Wire has been on the forefront of creating this imaginary North-South divide from the year 2018 itself. In the 2019 elections, the North-East had voted overwhelmingly in favour of Modi; Karnataka voted overwhelmingly in favour of Modi; very very significant gains were made in states like Telangana, Odisha, and West Bengal. Yet, The Wire is continuing to stick with this phony argument that the BJP doesn’t exist beyond North India.

But why does The Wire think India will cease to exist by 2029? Because the Planning Commission was disbanded; because the National Development Council was disbanded; because Article 370 was removed but Article 371 continues to exist; because of delimitation of seats planned in 2026; and because Prime Minister Modi supported The Kashmir Files. And the rant just goes on and on. Nearly 1800 words out a total of 2800 words in the article are dedicated to telling us how evil Modi is; how cunning Modi is and how pathetic the Indian voter is. Now, you would be assuming that the article is about the BJP. You would also be wondering why this sudden escalation to “India will cease to exist” by merely citing their age-old rants.

Here is where The Wire stumps you. Nearly 1800 words out of a 2800 worded article that is titled “‘Out With the Gandhis’ a Cry of Despair; With No Obvious Replacement, Cure May Be Worse than Disease”, are dedicated to merely repeat ad-nauseam rants!  Instead of focusing on why the Gandhis should continue to be at the helm of Congress despite defeats in 39 out of the 49 elections since 2014, The Wire is focusing on ranting about Narendra Modi! With the latest defeat in 4 out of the 5 states, the English media is abuzz with articles on how Congress should get rid of the Gandhi family siblings. However, this is also the season where the believers of the Gandhi family, in the English media, get yet another chance to exhibit their unparalleled loyalty to Sonia Gandhi and her children.

What better way to show your loyalty to the Gandhi family by criticizing Modi and predicting doomsday scenarios? You’d think that if 1800 words have been dedicated for Modi, what is the essence of the remaining 1000 words? Most of the remaining 1000 words are dedicated to understanding “Why the Congress footprint shrank”. You’d think that the shrinking began somewhere in late 80s but the article traces this back to 1967! Because we are now enlightened that “By 1967, this degeneration had alienated a vast section of the urban elite and civil society”. I can never understand the fascination for “urban elite” and especially the term “civil society”. Does this mean that those who still voted for Congress in 1967 are uncivil? The bubble of elitism has been burst long back but these authors/editors still seem hell-bent on creating another bubble to give themselves self-importance of an unparalleled level.

We are then told that revival of the Congress must be through alliances with regional parties in every state – “the way ahead clearly lies not in creating an entirely new grassroots organisation but in partnering with regional parties and relying on their cadre to spread the coalition’s message.”  What The Wire doesn’t tell us is that there are very few regional parties that want to even ally with the Congress! Powerful regional entities like the YSRCP, TRS, TMC, BJD, SAD refuse to even be seen close to the Congress party! Other powerful regional parties such as AAP, DMK etc will merely go in the way the wind is blowing and wouldn’t care about allying with only the Congress for long periods of time! Even the Karnataka example that the author so proudly cites (and credits Rahul Gandhi) has resulted in a massive failure, with the people of Karnataka flatly rejecting that arrangement.

We are also told that there is no alternative to the Gandhi’s, merely because there is a no replacement in sight. There-in lies the fundamental problem for the Congress – and it’s really baffling how any sane analyst cannot see this problem. As long as the Congress is guided by veteran journalists like Prem Shankar Jha; as long as the congress party is patronized by folks at The Wire; as long as the Gandhis believe that they are the owners of the Congress party, then we can safely predict that it is the Congress party that will cease to exist by 2029. On the other hand, the Indian Union will emerge even stronger than before.

The Hindu finally realises violent undertones of “Khela Hobe” after Muslims start getting killed in Bengal: How BJP lives did not matter to them

 The following article was written for OpIndia. Pasting it here for reference:

Every Saturday, The Hindu runs a full-page section called “Ground Zero”. Every week, a new issue gets a full-page analytical report, often coupled with proficient language to make the article sound impactful. Perhaps, for the first time since they rolled out this “Ground Zero” section, they discussed the same topic in consecutive weeks – the violence in the state of West Bengal.

The Hindu edits

Both the articles have a word count of over 5000 words. The first article wanted to focus exclusively on the death of one Communist “student activist”. The second article wanted to focus on the Bogtui village massacre in which 8 people were charred to death. While you would assume that the articles would detail the gory murders under the watchful eye of the beacon of peace and free speech, mysteriously though, The Hindu thought it absolutely fit to have a section titled – “Violence in Speech”! 

What The Hindu wrote

We are told that the TMC leader who coined the famous “Khela Hobe” slogan is known for “violent innuendos”. Now, you will begin to wonder why we were not told about this antecedent before the elections in May 2021 or at the same time when the slogan was coined and was being made popular. Because The Hindu was also hand-in-glove with Mamta Banerjee to popularize this violent slogan. Wait, did I say violent slogan? Technically I didn’t, because it is The Hindu which is now telling us that “In fact, the ‘ Khela Hobe’ slogan, is often used as a thinly veiled threat.” 

My mind immediately went back to the cartoon that The Hindu published, to support the “Khela Hobe” campaign of Mamta Banerjee. 

The Hindu cartoon during West Bengal elections

“Leg of God” it seems! Should we now assume that this not-so-thinly veiled reference to “Khela Hobe” by The Hindu was actually a call to endorse the violent methods of the ruling TMC? Or is it too difficult a question to answer? In fact, one can never forget how the whole English media went bombastic with the plastered leg of Mamta Banerjee and the “Khela Hobe” slogan – were they all complicit in encouraging violent methods of the TMC? 

The “Ground Zero” on March 16th was about “The death of a young student activist, who was critical of the Mamata Banerjee government, has sparked off massive protests in a State that is accustomed to political violence.” One can never get around to this constant commentary that the state is “accustomed to political violence”. The doyens of our English media are desperately seeking to normalize murder just because one of their icons is at the helm of the state.

According to the article, the student activist, Anish Khan was “popular among the Left students’ unions in Kolkata” and his murder has created “ripples in the state”. 100s of brutal killings of the BJP cadre are often sought to be normalized with the ludicrous comment that the state is “accustomed” to it, but the killing of the cadre of Communist parties suddenly creates “ripples in the state”! Strong adjectives like “massive” were used to describe the campaigns organized by the nearly defunct Communist parties.

In fact, the only other violent incident that The Hindu referred to in this nearly 3000-word article is yet another arrest of 16 “Left activists”! Reading the article felt that the political murders in the state are still happening between the TMC and the Left parties until you come to the section titled “The Muslims of West Bengal”. The Hindu innocently wonders the following: 

What The Hindu wrote

For the entire first half of the article, we are told about how brave a Communist, comrade Anish Khan was. And then suddenly his Muslim identity takes centre stage, and we now digress to the “social and political reality of Muslims in West Bengal”! In 5 paragraphs, we are told that though nothing changed in their economic conditions and yet they threw their weight behind Trinamool because “The 2021 Assembly polls were fought by the BJP on a strong Hindutva pitch”!

I, for one, was relieved after reading this statement because I was beginning to get worried why, nearly 2000 words into the article, the BJP was not yet blamed for this situation! In fact, the first 2000 words focused exclusively on the murder of one communist cadre. And then suddenly The Hindu chooses to brush all other murders into one bracket – “Opposition”. 

We are also told that “Anish’s death is shockingly similar to the death of Rizwanur Rehman, a 30-year-old computer graphics teacher in Kolkata, 15 years ago.” So, in the 15-year period in which massacres have happened; the murder of 100s of political cadre have happened; dissent was stifled mercilessly – The Hindu could yet again think of only the murder of another Muslim? 

With the editors now realizing that they have accomplished their main task of generalizing this with religion and blaming the BJP even though they had to digress, they come back to the issue at hand by now telling us about how “Anish’s death also highlights how anyone questioning established power structures is frowned upon, kept an eye on, and even attacked in the rural hinterlands.”

The TMC is in power for nearly 11 years. Before that, the Communists were in power for nearly 35 years. Why couldn’t The Hindu just bring itself to name these parties as the main cause for the violent culture of politics in West Bengal? Why make this sound like the murders are an act of God in which Mamta Banerjee is merely a pawn executing the orders coming from above? 

The second “Ground Zero” report titled “Bengal’s violent politics of area domination” was a mere extension of these arguments. The premise of the article was the horrific massacre in Bogtui district where 8 people were charred to death. The Hindu innocently asks us “What makes West Bengal so susceptible to vendetta politics and deadly violence?”

After establishing the sequence of events that led to this massacre, The Hindu gives us another example of how a Congress councillor and a TMC councillor were also brutally murdered a few days back. In both the articles, that amounted to nearly 5000 words – not a single case of the murder of a BJP cadre was mentioned by The Hindu. We were told about the Communist cadre being murdered, the Congress cadre being murdered and even the TMC cadre being murdered, but not even a squeak on the murder of the BJP cadre. If I were not active on social media and my only source of Bengal violence was articles such as these from “Ground Zero”, I would simply believe that the poor Congress and Communist cadre along with cadre from other sundry opposition parties are being mercilessly killed in Bengal. 

Whenever a reference needed to be made for BJP, The Hindu faithfully generalizes it to the entire Opposition with sentences such as these – “when supporters of Opposition parties were targeted for weeks after the results of the 2021 Assembly polls on May 2 were declared.” And of course, faithfully doesn’t forget to insert the one line that is everyone’s favourite – “As the BJP raised a strong Hindutva pitch to capture the State, Bengal also began to witness communal violence.” Neither the context of any article nor the relevance of any topic matters to The Hindu when it comes to blaming the BJP. 

The essence of these 5000 words in The Hindu and these 50 words by known serial commentator Shekhar Gupta is the same – Bengal is known for being violent and therefore it is normal for BJP cadre to be killed. The essence of either 50 or 5000 words is that Mamta Banerjee is one of the best tyrants to have ruled in the landscape of political India. Every time a massacre or violent incident happens (that doesn’t involve the killing of BJP cadre of course), we are treated to editorials that tell us about the stifling of dissent and the violent nature of the TMC in West Bengal. Crass generalizations of violence and murder by terming them as “commonplace”, just to make Mamta Banerjee look good, have now become the norm in our English media. 

The TMC and Communists have ruled the state for nearly 45 years. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who is responsible for “political violence becoming commonplace”. There are examples galore of Mamta Banerjee’s staggering intolerance towards dissent. Yet, we are also continuously bombarded with propaganda that despite being the antithesis of everything that a free society believes in (Free speech, Non-violence etc)  – Mamta Banerjee is the hope of this nation. Don’t believe me? See this snapshot of what The Hindu published in May 2021. 

What The Hindu wrote during West Bengal elections

It will really take a genius to decode this unlimited hypocrisy exhibited by newspapers like The Hindu where they normalize violence and murder as “commonplace” when it happens under the watch of leaders opposed to Modi. The blind hatred for Modi is that much real!