Bull, Bear & Bullshit

He felt orphaned when Harshad Mehta died and, went into deep depression when Ketan Parekh was arrested by the CBI for his involvement in multi million rupee stock exchange scam. His dream of making it big by following the Big Bull and KP appeared to have been shattered. They were the only God figures he looked up to since he learned to play with marbles.

While other children of his age dreamt of becoming an engine driver, a pilot or an engineer, a doctor or a writer, Hardshell Shylock (HS) told his granny he wanted to become a wealth manager, so focused was he on his life goal. “I don’t mind going to jail or fleeing to Andorra or Costa Rica if only I can make Moolah,” he would tell his close confidantes, who included his female classmates and his loyal maid servant.

To HS, Money, Moolah and Mammon mattered most, not even matrimony.  He lived in Moneynagar, which later became the constituency of his hero, Modi the Nero, popularly known as Nemo. Noticing that all the children of petty shopkeepers in his mohalla attended the local Shakha, HS too followed them to the common municipal ground usurped for the purpose by the pracharak whose side business was booking betting numbers (Worli Matka) on the Ratan Khatri network.

At the shakha, HS learned among other things the importance of Marxism. “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” Karl Marx had said in Das Kapital. The local shakha pramukh used to quote this in his daily sermon while propagating Guru Golmalkar’s preachings. “All swayamsevak’s of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your khaki knickers,” he would proclaim before the gathering of school kids.

HS didn’t mind losing his knickers if he could get a Raymond’s suit in exchange. He saw how his hero, Nemo the Nero, too had discarded the knickers for Armani’s and GAP after his election to the highest executive post in the state. Nemo had executed the Marxist theory by dividing the people of Gujarat on religious lines and intoxicating them with the opiate and driving them into a state of frenzy.

Once elected to the throne, Nemo helped his money launderer KP escape from the long arms of the law. Nemo mastered the art of twisting the law and using corrupt police officers like Bon Zara to perfect the craft of extortion. No wonder, HS was dazzled by Nemo’s super duper strategy of making money.  He started imagining and projecting himself as ‘THE KING OF BULL TIMES’. 

“If Nemo can bullshit his way to power, why can’t I do the same as a wealth manager giving the unsuspecting clients bullshit tips in collusion with the stock market operators of the Dalal Street?” he would tell his confidants.

Hey Ram

Savarkar had seeded the idea of partition by propounding the theory of 'Hindurashtra' in the 1920s, much before Mohammed Ali Jinnha came up with his two-nation theory. When the country was partitioned in 1947 and India decided to remain a secular state, the followers of Savarkar were angered that India had not become a 'Hindurashtra'. So, one of them, Nathuram Godse, killed Mahatma Gandhi who was a living symbol of universal brotherhood and secular India.

The Muslims who had opted for Pakistan were far less in number than those who had chosen to stay back in India. It was their conscious decision to opt for the citizenship of a secular and democratic nation. But for the followers of Savarkar's ideology, a secular and democratic India was neither palatable nor acceptable. They had no reasons to celebrate either the Independence Day or the Republic Day.

When the Union government banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Hindu Mahasabha after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, there was no sympathy for the Hindutva forces. The dogmatic Hindutva was stoutly rejected by the country's diverse religious, linguistic and ethnic people, who have had coexisted peacefully for centuries, enriching their respective cultural heritage through inter-mingling and sharing.

The Hindutva forces, represented in the political arenda by the erstwhile Jan Sangh (renamed later as the Bharatiya Janata Party), were rebuffed by the Indian electorate in all the successive elections to the Parliament and various state legislative assemblies but for the elections held in 1977.

The 1977 general elections proved a turning point in the post-independence political history of India. The elections were held under the shadow of a dictatorial rule. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, indicted by a court for indulging in corruption during her election and facing a country-wide protest movement led by youths, had declared a state of emergency and suspended all the fundamental rights of the citizens, gagging the press, arresting her opponents and unleashing a reign of terror.

The Indian voters expressed their anger against the dictatorial rule through the ballot papers, routing the Congress party and electing to power the Janata Party, a newly formed coalition of opposition parties. Mainly because they had joined the Janata coalition that most of the Jan Sangh leaders got elected to the Parliament.

It was a negative vote against the dictatorial rule of Mrs. Indira Gandhi and not a positive vote for the Hindutva ideology that helped the Jan Sangh gain political legitimacy in the country. When the Janata government fell due to bickering among the constituentsand fresh elections were held, people voted Mrs. Gandhi and her Congress party back to power. The biggest loser was the Jan Sangh that had renamed itself as Bharatiya Janata Party. Only two BJP candidates managed to win their seats in the Lok Sabha.

From the subsequent events and developments, it would become clear that the BJP gained more political mileage from the follies of the Congress than from the popularity of the Hindutva ideology. It was because of fragmentation of opposition votes due to the presence of a large number of political parties in the election fray that the Congress was managing to win a majority in the Parliament and in state assemblies. Else, the popularity of the Congress party was fast depleting on account of corruption in high places, rising inflation, the culture of sycophancy and perpetuation of one family rule - that of Mrs. Indira Gandhi.

A Leaf from Mein Kampf - Part I

One had only read about Fascism and Nazism in books of history and fiction. But had never experienced living under a Fascist state. One had lived under the constant fear of arrest and police torture during the 19 months of the Emergency. But what the Muslims in Gujarat experienced in 2002 must have been much more dreadful than that.

There were massacres of Muslims, gang rapes of Muslim women and looting and arson of shops and establishments belonging to them.

Armed mobs, led by known Bharatiya Janata Party and Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers, were on a killing spree, targeting Muslims to avenge the burning alive of over 50 VHP volunteers returning from Ayodhya by train on February 27 near the Godhra railway station.

Instead of providing protection to the Muslims, the police aided and abetted the killer mobs. Worse, the police refused to file First Information Reports in several cases and where it became unavoidable to register a case, the FIRs were so doctored as to help the killers, rapists, arsonists and looters escape unpunished.

Gujarat had become unsafe for Muslims. Hundreds of Muslims fled their homeland, Gujarat, after the mayhem. Many enterprising, forward-looking, well-to-do Muslims, like the members of the Chelia clan from north Gujarat, who owned over 400 restaurants, most of them serving only vegetarian food and bearing pronouncedly Hindu names, sold their establishments to move to Hyderabad and Bangalore.

These popular restaurants, other shops and business establishments doing flourishing business in Ahmedabad and elsewhere in central and north Gujarat were singled out, plundered and then set on fire by the Hindu mobs in the aftermath of the Godhra carnage.

(Introduction)