Siddhartha Varadarajan turning to Holiness and Spirituality.

American citizen, Siddhartha Varadarajan, writes in the Wire (which is funded by not journalism but corporate charity)-

August 5 – the date chosen consciously by baleful men to humiliate the people of India whose independence on August 15 they never fought for – will go down in history as a day that celebrates the triumph of vandalism and destruction over renewal and regeneration, crime and illegality over law and justice, fiction and fabrication over reality and truth.

Why did Pakistan become independent on August 14 while India had to wait an extra day? There were two factors, Mountbatten, a Britisher, liked a certain date because it was the anniversary of the Japanese surrender. Hindu astrologers had some objection, so the country gained 'Freedom at Midnight'. In other words, India's Independence day was determined by a British man's preference as modified by Hindu Astrologers. Muslims were not consulted. They had gone their own way or else were subject to ethnic cleansing and a dramatic clawback of entitlements.

Hindus fought for their Independence. American citizens, like Varadarajan, were not involved- save for Satyananda Stokes, who converted to Hinduism. 

The vast majority of Indian people are not humiliated by the fulfilment of Manifesto pledges by their elected leaders. On the contrary they are jubilant. A minority may not like it, but then that minority, in 1946, overwhelmingly backed the Muslim League and its demand for partition, so that an Islamic State could be created.

Varadarajan liked Communism. But Communism has failed in India. Still, as an American, he stood in little danger even if it had triumphed in India.

On the appointed day, when India slept, the people of Kashmir awoke to curfew and unfreedom.

While those of Jammu and Ladakh woke to the opposite. What was the result? Terrorism declined. It seems unlikely that the good people of the Valley can once again ethnically cleanse their non-Muslim neighbors. The fact is August 15 commemorates the day the Japanese woke to occupation and subjugation. They could no longer kill and conquer their neighbors. Similarly, Nazi Germany woke to defeat and humiliation on 7th May 1945. In the medium to long term, this turned out to be salutary.

On the appointed day, a group of criminals – who should be in prison for having planned and orchestrated the demolition of a 450-year-old mosque – basked in the freedom they have to build a temple at the same spot.

Varadarajan knows very well that Gandhi and Nehru and Azad were 'criminals'. They courted arrest deliberately. Why? They believed right was on their side. It was their prison record which established their fitness to lead. Similarly, it was obvious, those who demolished the structure wanted to be arrested. The fact is two years previously, the police had shot some pilgrims and the Chief Minister who gave the orders had lost the elections. It was clear that the Indian voter would not stand for the Government killing people simply to protect bricks and mortar. Had prison sentences been imposed on those who razed the structure, they would then have swept the polls and altered the Constitution.

Varadarajan himself could raise his profile if he courted arrest by defying any law he considers unjust. But, as an American citizen, he can't stand for election. Even if he re-acquired Indian citizenship, the problem remains that the Indian people do not share his views on what is or isn't just. He began condemning Modi almost twenty years ago. But the more Varadarajan and his ilk attacked Modi the better Modi began to look to even Western educated, deracinated, Indians.

Had Varadarajan & Co done good investigative journalism we would now respect them. But they chose to double down on stupid lies and ended up hurting the Left. Consider the fate of Sharjeel Imam who wrote a couple of pieces for Varadarajan's 'the Wire'. The fellow is now in jail after calling for Muslims to cut off the Siliguri gap- leaving the Assamese free to conduct plenty of Nellie type massacres. Varadarajan himself got into trouble with the law for falsely claiming that U.P's Chief Minister was telling people they could not catch the virus if they participated in some religious ceremony.

Varadarajan, as a Communist, may well disapprove of Temples. He has a right to express his views. But in making the Wire a vehicle for his grievances he destroys its journalistic credibility. Just kidding. It has no credibility. 

Their temple, and not Rama’s and certainly not India’s.
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi supervising the obsequies, the wreckage of what remains of the Indian constitution has been interred in the foundations of the temple that his organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is building with the full backing of the ‘secular’ Indian state.

The problem here is that we believe that the Temple is being constructed by a Trust- not by the R.S.S. A good journalist needs to try to show that the Trustees are men of straw. Behind them is the RSS. Since Varadarajan is not doing so, we think the Trustees are independent. The silly man is simply telling stupid lies.

A better angle of attack would be to say 'why aren't RSS cadres building the Temple? Surely that would benefit them most? Is the reason because RSS cadres are not considered 'ritually pure'? In other words, enemies of the BJP should try to divide the Hindus by playing the caste card. They should hint that the Temple is being built in a manner the hyper-orthodox might think improper. Varadarajan, blinded by hate, misses a trick. On the other hand, the Wire does carry an article highlighting Orthodox objections to the timing and nature of the 'bhoomi puja' ceremony. But, it contradicts Varadarajan's assertions. It is apparent that the a scholarly Hindu body from the Prime Minister's constituency, not the RSS which is based elsewhere, which is running the show. They have controverted the allegations raised by a Shankaracharya- i.e. a upholder of Brahmanical orthodoxy- in a manner ordinary Hindus can easily understand.  Furthermore, the writer of the article has elsewhere highlighted the role of the 'Dalit'- who laid the first foundation stone more than 30 years ago- in the performance of this ritual.
The writer for the Wire, as may be expected, tells stupid lies. He says  (Modi)' was not only the chief guest but also the master of ceremonies and the official yajmaan (patron of a religious ritual) during the ceremony.' This is bizarre, the patron can't be the 'master of ceremonies' any more than a patient on the operating table can be the surgeon. The chief guest can't be the yajmaan host anymore than I can invite myself to dinner.
The Trust's tweet clarifies matters- “Shri Mahesh Bhagchandka and Shri Pawan Singhal from family of Shri Ashok ji Singhal will be Mukhya Yajman (main worshippers) in Bhumi Pujan. PM Shri @narendramodi, Shri Mohanji Bhagwat, Pujya Nritya Gopaldasji Maharaj, Governor Smt Anandiben Patel and CM Shri @myogiadityanath will be present on stage.

The fact is, the Trust as constituted by the Government did not include anyone with charges against them relating to the destruction of the disputed structure. Such people were brought in by the Trust afterwards. Furthermore, the ex Civil Servant who has a prominent role in the Trust was associated with other political parties and leaders earlier in his career. Thus, the expectation is, other Hindu leaders will be conciliated as time goes by. The truth is, things like this can be easily mismanaged. Indeed, many of us expected that there would be all sorts of internecine conflict re. guest lists and auspicious dates and the sequence of rituals and so forth. What the BJP Government has done is shown it can arrange things smoothly. This was unexpected. It is the reason that Hindu leaders are reconciled to what has happened. They imagined the BJP would be like a dog with a bone. It wouldn't play nice. This would backfire sooner or later. The 'Sadhu Sangh' would get split. The Hindu vote would get factionalized. This has not happened. Maybe the lockdown helped. Or maybe the BJP is just better at getting things done in a proper manner.

I say ‘what remains of the constitution’ because key sections of that document had already been waterboarded and drowned in the dark waters of Dal Lake – its pages torn and scattered in the days, weeks and months which followed the scrapping of Article 370 and 35A last August.

But the Supreme Court, which alone has the right to interpret the Constitution, has not taken this view. This is another example where the 'intellectuals' fell down. They needed to get really smart Constitutional lawyers to at least obfuscate the issue. They didn't bother, choosing to rely instead on the work of a 90 year old man whose assertions were controverted by a crucial 2016 judgment of the Court re. J&K having no 'vestige of sovereignty'.

Bad journalism and recycling failed arguments have contributed to the calamitous decline of the Left. Just ten years ago, these people were respected. Now look at them! They sound utterly senile!

Both these acts which help to define the ‘New India’ Modi is ushering in – of turning citizens (in Kashmir, but later elsewhere) into subjects without fundamental rights, of allowing Hindu chauvinist criminals to take control of the scene of their crime and present their factional project as a ‘national’ one – would not have been possible without the indulgence of the Supreme Court.

This is the crux of the matter. People like Varadarjan should have proactively recruited smart people to uncover new facts- or plausible new lies- and to come up with new arguments of an abstruse sort- so as to keep the Supreme Court occupied. Everybody expected these particular cans to be kicked down the road. But, the Left simply gave up. They concentrated on talking hysterical nonsense. So they have lost salience.

But as a journalist, I find the complicity of the media to be just as shocking.

Why is the Wire so shite? This is not complicity, it is complacency. Varadarjan and his ilk should have talent-spotted smarter, younger, people and given them space to raise new issues so as to keep the debate going. But these lazy sods did not bother to do any such thing. They don't want competition. So they just keep recycling their bogus cri de coeurs. After all, they don't have to compete in the market. They get charity from capitalists. 

A dominant section of India’s media has helped the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party market two enormous lies. First, that a temple of the Sangh, by the Sangh and for the Sangh is really a ‘Hindu’ temple or, even more fancifully, an ‘Indian’ temple.

Varadarajan may be a Communist who does not visit Temples but he must know that some of his relatives, who may be with Congress, will visit this particular Temple. Most Hindus, given the chance, will do so. But Hindus are 80 per cent of the population! The fact is, when Iyers first settled in New Delhi, we would go only to one or two South Indian temples. Then we started branching out as we became more familiar with the place. Consider the Swami Narayan temples. We didn't build them. We didn't know much about the sect which did build them. But once we started going to their Temples we felt that we belonged. The first time you eat 'dhokla' you are suspicious. But then you start to like it. You compare it favorably with Idli. Your Mummy starts cooking it for you. It has become part of your own cuisine though, no doubt, it is Gujerati, not Tamil.

And second, that the abolition of Article 370 and 35A of the constitution and the scrapping of statehood for Jammu and Kashmir was intended to help the fight against terrorism, promote economic development and make the people of the erstwhile state true Indians.
I don’t know what perverted axiom of astrology has linked both these big lies with the same date on the calendar but one can sense a desire on the part of the RSS to build a narrative around a chosen day which they can present as the marker of their ‘New India’.

A journalist's job is to find out, or at least speculate in a plausible manner, about why a particular date should become significant. That is 'news' not 'views'.  Varadarjan is proud of his ignorance. He says it must be for some astrological reason. But that is pure deracinated ignorance! Indian astrologers use a different calendar. Every Hindu knows their 'star birthday' is movable unlike their official birthday. Thus it can't be the case that a day in the solar calendar has a special astrological significance. Either it is a birth or death anniversary of some particular figure or it has just come to be seen as an 'auspicious' day. This is the sort of stuff journalists should try to figure out.

The campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid and replace it with a Ram temple was first and always an RSS-BJP campaign.

Is the BJP paying Varadarajan to say so? No. They know the fool will help them because he is too stupid to help himself or to help his own cause. There is no need for payment.

From the mid-1980s to the destruction of the mosque on December 6, 1992, the BJP used the RSS cadre base to launch a highly visible agitation. And though the resulting communal polarisation helped the BJP grow its presence in parliament from two seats in 1984 to 85 in 1989 and 182 a decade later, its vote share, even when Atal Bihari Vajpayee became prime minister in 1999, never exceeded 24%. A decade later, the party’s vote share had fallen to 18% and though Narendra Modi has increased the BJP’s votes, the 2019 election saw only 37% of Indians voting in an ‘either you’re with us or against us’ fight for the party whose manifesto promised a lot of things and also a Ram temple in Ayodhya.

The problem here is that 80 per cent approve the Temple and, if able to do so, would visit it. That is why other parties did not want to let the BJP build the Temple. Indeed, according to the letter of the law, they are not doing so- an independent Trust is. To give them all the credit if you oppose them is foolish.  Furthermore, saying the BJP has fulfilled 3 Manifesto promises does not hurt them even if you yourself opposed those pledges. On the contrary it makes that party seem more credible and fit to govern. To attack the BJP you need to say, 'only by accident have they achieved these Manifesto pledges. But luck can only get you so far. The voters can't be fooled. '

I mention vote shares here because that is the only observable metric we have to gauge the actual appeal of the temple.

Says a guy who went to the LSE! The fact is the extent of the 'revealed preference' of Indians for, first, the Ramayana TV serial and then the 'brick donation' and 'rath yatra', took Indian social scientists by surprise. It was clear that if the thing could be done without too much blowback, then 80 per cent wanted it done. What mattered was Muslim preference intensity in the opposite direction. That is what has changed. Consider what happened the first time an Israeli P.M came to India. The poor fellow couldn't even get to the Taj Mahal! Now Israeli Presidents and P.Ms come and go with nary a ripple of opposition.

Yet, today we are being told, by the RSS and BJP of course, but also by breathless television anchors, that the temple whose foundation stone Modi laid on August 5 represents the fulfilment of a long pent-up national demand. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Varadarajan could not be further from the truth even if he had never returned from America in the first place. Hindus like Hindu temples. A Ram temple would be visited even by Sikhs and Jains and Buddhists. The vast majority of the country is Hindu. Even Communists go to Temples to pray for the overthrow of Capitalism!

“Centuries of struggle are coming to an end today,” the prime minister said, forgetting the fact that the Sangh’s “struggle” is barely 35 years old.

Varadarajan forgets that the dispute over the site, according to British records, stretches back to at least the Nineteenth Century.

Modi then added: “I’m sure scores of people can barely believe that they are alive to see this day.” What he did not say was that thousands more are indeed not alive to see this day – because the violence triggered by the Sangh’s temple agitation took their lives.

Yet a repetition of that violence is not feared. Why? Because the country is better run.

Modi fast-tracked the mandir project through the apex court even as he used his control over the Central Bureau of Investigation to ensure the criminal case against the conspirators who demolished the mosque made no progress.

This is the sort of charge which requires good investigative journalism in order to be sustained by a Court of Law. Varadarajan and his ilk fell down in this department. Consider the BOFORS or 'Coffingate' scandals. Clearly some Indian journalists could uncover damaging facts which changed the political landscape. Varadarajan seemed bright and well connected. We thought he'd prove his mettle sooner or later. But he turned out to be a maudlin cretin.

The Supreme Court’s verdict was perverse – it accepted that the Muslims had been illegally and forcibly dispossessed of their mosque and that the 1992 demolition was a crime, and yet allowed the site to be given to those who were still standing trial for that crime.

This is nonsense. The destruction of the mosque was illegal. But it was popular. That is why the State did not press charges. The site has been given to the deity of the shrine in accordance with Indian law.

What made this bizarre verdict possible was that very criminal act, without which the court would have had to order a historic mosque’s demolition in order to allow the Sangh parivar to have its way.

So what? It is not the case that the party which won the suit did not have 'clean hands'.

I like to believe our lordships would have baulked at delivering such an order.

Journalists should not tell us what they like to believe. They should try to uncover facts so that our beliefs can be corrected in a salutary manner.

After the verdict, the government promptly announced the establishment of a trust to oversee the temple. However, the pretence of this being a non-partisan project came to an end quickly when Nritya Gopal Das and Champat Rai – key figures in the Sangh’s temple agitation who have been indicted by the CBI for demolishing the Babri masjid and can still be imprisoned for the crime – emerged as president and secretary of the trust, respectively.

It was the Trust which brought in these two men. Why did they do so? Nritya Gopal Das is the head of an important temple and has built other temples in the area. He is innocent of any crime till proven guilty in a court of law. The same is true of Varadarajan himself. Champat Rai belongs to the VHP which is often at odds with the RSS. No doubt, it is convenient for the BJP to leave a sword dangling over both their heads.

Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath have used the temple event and its surrounding media hype to force-fit the Republic of India into a Hindu mould that its constitution would never have allowed.

Why not? There is a Directive Principle re. Cow Protection in it. Perhaps Varadarajan thinks Cows are sacred to some Religion other than Hinduism. The fact of the matter is that China had gone Communist by the time the Indian Constitution was published. Religion was in the dog house. Marxism was supposed to prevail. But, perhaps because of the low intellectual caliber of its recruits- e.g. Varadarajan himself- it began to sink, if not stink.

The August 5 event is the clearest sign yet that the Hindu rashtra project of the RSS is now in high gear and will gather even greater momentum in the months and years ahead.

Why concede this point? If you oppose the BJP you should point out that their gains have come more from luck than cunning. Their momentum is petering out.

Modi gave advance notice of this project during the 2019 Lok Sabha election, when he attacked the voters of Wayanad for belonging to a constituency where “the minority is the majority” and when he ridiculed the notion that Hindus could be terrorists and hand-picked Pragya Thakur as the BJP’s candidate for Bhopal.

 Is Varadarajan pleased that Rahul took a safe seat from the Left? Is he very happy to learn that Rahul wears the sacred thread, is a Saivite Brahmin, and likes visiting Temples? Does Varadarajan approve of Priyanka's tweet on the Temple? Look at what she wrote-' “Simplicity, courage, restraint, sacrifice, commitment, are the essence of the name Deenbandhu Lord Rama. Ram is in everyone, Ram is with everyone. With the message and blessings of Lord Ram and Mother Sita, the Bhoomipujan of Ramlalla's temple became an occasion for national unity, fraternity and cultural congregation,” Even the Communists in Kerala aren't making a fuss about this. They accept that Hindus- including Rahul- will go to that Temple if they are able to do so.

With hindsight, it was folly to jail a Hindu nun as a terrorist. The voters don't believe this sort of trumped up charge. That is why the heavyweight, Dinesh Singh, lost to Pragya Thakur on his own home turf.

His first major act in his second term as a prime minister, apart from the ‘triple talaq’ detour, was to take an axe to the constitutional arrangements with Jammu and Kashmir that had actually served the Indian state and its requirements perfectly well.

Nonsense! Kashmir was a shit-show. The police were terrified. That has changed. Imran Khan promised a blood bath. He was disappointed. Now he has formalized the annexation of PoK. 'Azad Kashmir' is off the table.

One year on, it is clear that ‘integration’ for the Kashmiris means being deprived of rights that the constitution of India gives all citizens.

This is certainly an issue which good investigative journalism can contribute to. But such journalism has to be credible. This is where Varadarajan and his ilk have fallen down. If you publish shite by a nutter like Sharjeel Imam, smart people won't want to write for you.

And since there is no one to speak up for the constitution anymore, people in the rest of India will slowly find themselves getting ‘integrated’ with the new reality that the Kashmiris have been dealing with – and they will find their own freedoms and right increasingly trampled underfoot.

If they wage war against the State- yes. But Indians consider that a good thing.

As the experience of Pakistan and Israel demonstrate, cultural-religious states that privilege identitarian values over citizenship are incompatible with democracy.

Yet Israel is a democracy. Pakistan has fallen behind Bangladesh in per capita Income. Yet, at the moment, it too is a Democracy. Imran may yet finish his term.

Given the current wave of right-wing populism, it has become something of a fashion to compare Modi with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro and Recip Erdogan. But the strongman in whose disastrous footsteps Modi appears to be dragging India is Slobodan Milosevic. Younger readers will be forgiven for asking ‘Who?’, for his country, the former Yugoslavia, no longer exists.

Very true! Uttar Pradesh is going to go to War with Bihar! Gujarat will declare U.D.I. Tamil Nadu will be broken up into cantons. How stupid is Varadarajan?

The UN’s long-standing ambassador in India in the late 1990s was a diplomat named Feodor Starcevic. He came to India as a citizen of Yugoslavia. But when he was leaving Delhi after retiring sometime around 2003, I remember him saying, ‘I don’t know which country I’m going back to’.

This is bizarre. Starcevic came to India, on a UN passport, though he had Serbian Citizenship, in 1995, three years after the breakup of that country. Starcevic went on to serve as a Serbian diplomat.

 Communism had failed to unite Yugoslavia. But India was not united by Communism. It was united by Hinduism. Our regional loyalties have shifted because States have been reorganized. Thus the Nation State of India is the locus of our patriotism.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Yugoslavia’s leaders decided to turn their back on the idea of a state that belonged equally to all its citizens, regardless of religion, ethnicity, language or script. So today, there are seven separate countries or entities, if we include Kosovo, where there was once one.

Why? Because Communism failed. The Soviet Union too broke up. But this is irrelevant to India. Communism never took power at the Center.

India was just emerging from the trauma of the Gujarat violence of 2002 when Starcevic was leaving. At a farewell speech, he urged his host country to look at Yugoslavia in order to learn what not to do.

The man was clearly a cretin. Most people who work for the UN are. I too recall being lectured by a Yugoslav- Dr. Borna Bebek, a friend of Rajiv Gandhi's- about the Yugoslav model of pluralistic democracy back in '82. The thing was all eye-wash. Communism was a sham.

No one could have foreseen at the time that the man whose stewardship had prompted that sage advice would eventually be at the helm of national affairs.

That is true. Modi seemed destined to be a scapegoat. But people like Varadarajan gave him prominence by telling stupid lies about Gujarat. What was the outcome? Gujarat prospered and then gave India a popular two term Prime Minister. Varadarajan, like Ashish Nandy, had met Modi briefly. Both of these patricians sneered at this low-born fellow. They thought they were on a safe wicket denouncing him. But their stupid lies repelled their own class. We started to say to ourselves- 'there must be another side to this story'. Then, people like Madhu Kishwar gave that side of the story to us. But this was not what clinched matters. 'Darbari intellectuals' of the Left, like Varadarjan himself, went too far in denouncing Hinduism. This damaged the Dynasty. Then Rahul failed to step up to the plate. In 2014, it was a case of Modi or Nobody. But Modi improved on his opportunities. I never thought he'd preside over a faction-free Cabinet. Nor did I think he'd do so well in International Diplomacy. But then, I must admit, my thinking is of a very low grade indeed. Modi's isn't. Nor is the thinking of those who vote for him. Varadarajan, on the other hand, is the one person I can still feel superior to. He listens to no one but himself. He keeps repeating the same tired, worn-out, lies. He has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Now I rate him lower than even Prem Shankar Jha.

But the RSS listens to no one but itself. On August 5, Modi laid the foundation stone for a structure conceived in the crucible of lies and deceit, violence and bloodshed. He can call it a temple, perhaps he can convince millions of people that it is a temple. But nothing spiritual or holy can ever emerge from a structure built by men who have spent their entire political career demolishing law, morality and the bonds of unity that unite Indians with each other.

It is a sad day when an American Communist with advanced degrees from prestigious Universities feels he has to start blathering about holiness and spirituality. Suddenly, it turns out, the guy is an expert in Temple building. He objects that the thing is not being done properly. He isn't yet saying that he could do a better job himself- perhaps because his ancestors were priests- but that is the road he is headed down. As Trump would say- sad!