Vimoh.in - Vijayendra Mohanty's Blog
Here is the unedited (and therefore much more fun) interview that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi gave to Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today. Also see the interview that he gave to IBN7. Watch out for the polite challenge he issues to Kanwal in the course of the talk. Would be interesting if HT carries it through.
Ulrik McKnight throws some light on the presence of a cyber battlefront that India seems to be underestimating (at the very least) or ignoring. In particular, he draws attention to continued security breaches being made by China into sensitive Indian installations.
China has repeatedly been found to use its expertise as a cyber-power to access highly confidential information relating to the national security of other nations, including India. India should take note, not only because of its historically contentious relationship with China, but also because of China’s undeniably close ties with Pakistan, a country that continues to sponsor terror across India. Just as armies fight on land, and navies at sea, national cyber-forces now fight in the online world. Cyber warfare is the new battlefront. But it is a battle that India, like many countries, is ill-equipped to wage. This has left the country under-defended against sustained, damaging state-level attacks.
The answer to the above question becomes a tricky affair when you realise that history-writers in India can be very selective about what they choose to term history and what they don’t. A friend pointed out last night that perhaps the reason the Godhra riots continue to occupy so much space in Indian public discourse is that it was the first ever instance of communal violence televised by our mass media. It is nobody’s case that Godhra didn’t deserve attention, but when one goes to the extent of calling it the “worst ever” communal violence in the history of modern India, there are somethings that do need to be cleared up.
That is exactly what this piece by Kanchan Gupta published in Rediff.com in 2005 does. In order to get a hang of the problems India faces, it is important to have a proper perspective on matters as sensitive as communal violence. Over-the-top hyperbole painting things in black and white does not make for a useful environment to do so.
More often than not we come across claims of ‘thousands of Muslims butchered by Hindu fanatics in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat.’ This is a lie that has been repeated ad nauseam since that terrible day when Hindus travelling by the Sabarmati Express were roasted alive after their coach was set ablaze by Muslim fanatics. It has been repeated the most by India’s Marxists who subscribe to the Goebbelsian tactic of repeating a lie till in the popular perception it comes to be identified as the truth. And, it is on the strength of such contrived truth that the Marxists make preposterous claims. For instance, the claim made in a recent editorial in the CPI-M propaganda journal People’s Democracy that the communal violence in Gujarat was ‘the worst in modern Indian history.’
That was part 1. Here are parts 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Here’s the truth behind the Kandhamal riots of 2007. This somewhat choppily-made but unbiased documentary must serve as an example to our country’s media organisations which jump at the opportunity to sensationalise things with suitable background music as quickly as possible.
Because of the media’s portrayal of the 2007 unrest in Kandhamal as a horde of Hindus massacring a small and peaceful group of Christians, the popular memory of Kandhamal even today remains pretty much the same. In truth, the ground situation was something more complicated and needed more delicate handling than our media seems capable of.
What is even more saddening is that due to such sensationalist ham-handed handling of sensitive issues, the media ends up corrupting the national discourse on matters as important such as public welfare, communal harmony, and myriad internal security concerns. After images of mutilated bodies are flashed on TV and digested by the audience who buy the channel’s oh-so-sensitive one-sided tripe about “communal forces that are ripping the country apart”, it becomes difficult to come to sane and fact-based conclusions. Once the sub-conscious has been exposed to feelings of gross violation, the brain might as well take the day off.
I think sentimentality in journalism should be downgraded. It has done far too much damage already. Don’t give me elitist high-speak. Give me the facts and let me make my own decisions.
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s 45 minute long speech at the commencement of his Sadbhawna mission.
Over the last year, the UPA and the Congress have handled the financial scandals relating to 2G and the Commonwealth Games, and the public protests against corruption led by yoga expert Baba Ramdev and activist Anna Hazare in a — to put it mildly — ham-handed manner.
V Ramya, a class 9 student of Emmanuel Methodist Higher Secondary Matriculation School in Pudur near Padi, came back home weeping from school around 5pm. Ramya’s mother V Sudha (30) said, “She told me that the teacher twisted her ears and told her not to show off like Silk Smitha. The teacher is notorious among students and always rude.” … Ramya’s father D Vijayakumar said, “The school does not allow girls to sport bindis or flowers. She fretted over it, but we brushed it aside often. And now I have lost my child”.
I don’t feel as sorry for the girl as I do for her parents. About the school authorities, the less said the better.
A Video Letter from Birar (by Global Video Letters)
Youth in a village in Rajasthan, India get video cameras so they can film their everyday lives. They film and show their village, their culture, their two religions, things they do in their spare time and what they are working with or studying.
Towards the end they tell us about the challenges they face in a small village amongst many other Indian villages. Their concern is that money, which is supposed to reach their village from New Delhi, never reaches them.
Whenever you get disappointed by trolls on the Internet, watch videos like these to see how it has empowered people in remote corners of the country.
I dream of a vastly more connected India in the coming decade.
In which R Jagannathan wonders if the Indian government’s inability to rope in inflation is somehow related to populist spending directed at helping elect Rahul Gandhi as the prime minister in 2014.
Venky Vembu makes a point about India’s foreign policy tone changing towards China.
For long, Indian diplomacy towards China has had only one aim: to avoid saying or doing anything that would provoke a repeat of the 1962 war. Former National Security Adviser MK Narayanan said as much in his interactions with US diplomats, noting that India had concerns about China’s high military spending. Towards that end, if it meant walking on eggshells to avoid offending Chinese sensibilities, India was more than happy to do that, even offering apologies where none were required. But now the worm has turned. India has learnt in recent times to put up a more robust defence of its security interests when confronted by Chinese muscle-flexing – be it in in their disputed border areas, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, or farther afield in the South China Sea.
