Why India needs another Mahatma, Loknayak or Lokmanya.

Off late everyone is talking about how corrupted India has become and that there is dire need of change in the situation. A few days ago while discussing the situation with a friend all of a sudden a question popped up in my head, 'In present day India is there any leader who the masses and the classes can equally relate and look up to?'

I still haven't been able to find a satisfactory enough answer to this question but then I did have a few conflicting thoughts in my mind thus I decided to write them down. Going by India's history during the Independence movement and the Sampoorn Kranti (Total Revolution, a highly under-rated event in India's history but whose implications are visible all around us till today) one can say that for any movement to be successful there has to be a prominent leader, a face whom the common people can rally behind.

The Jasmine revolution in Egypt was an exception but at the same time in Egypt there is still a leadership crisis. I don't think we Indian's will let such a situation occur here. We are a much stable state than Egypt or 90% (and I think I'm being conservative) of the world's countries.

This does not mean that a change is not needed! If someone steals even a blade of grass from our courtyard then we Indians are ready to fight tooth and nail, so we do need to do something if someone made away with Rs 1.76 lakh crore, another one with Rs 8000 crore. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. An estimated $1.4 Trillion of Indian money is stashed away in Swiss banks. This is enough money to take India into the league of developed nations over the next decade. Isn't just that reason enough to ask for a change?

The big question before me and many other people like me is whom to align with? Till now many individuals and organisations had been fighting against corruption but none of them had a mass following. They were small groups of few people, not people with mass following which is important in a democratic setup to make yourself audible to the government.

Indian public needs a person who they can rally behind, who they have faith in, who they can look up to. And I'm sorry to say that there is no single individual in India to whom I can point out and say, 'Yes, he can be the next Gandhi, JP or Tilak.' Most (if not all) politicians today are directly or indirectly corrupt. They either take money directly or through their aides and stash it in their Swiss bank accounts.

The social workers are there but their domain of work has become so specialized and centered in a specific area that they are hardly recognized outside their town or state. The power that Gandhi and JP wielded in oratory terms and mass appeal is something that most of these social workers lack. The media is also more interested in finding the steps of heaven or some blood colored river leading to hell than telling us what actually is going on in our country.

A few people here and a few activists there do make a difference but is that enough? Doesn't the common man deserve to be a part of this anti-corruption fight? I think he does and he wants to but he does not know how to.

For past few weeks I have been hearing about Yog guru, Swami Ramdev giving speeches on anti- corruption and nationalism and I was a bit surprised. To be frank I've never been a fan of Baba Ramdev, more so after I came across a young gentleman in a train who was taking his mother ailing from Cancer to Baba's ashram in Haridwar rather than some doctor. That day onwards I had decided not to be a part of any activity even remotely related to him and that included not practicing the yoga he taught and not buying the juices and oils he sells through his outlets all over the country. No hard feeling but this how I am!

For the first few days I took baba's comments to be just another gimmick but when people from eminent citizens from different strata of life started to rally behind him I did sit up and take a note of it. Even for a secular country like India it is not usual for a Swami to be invited to give a speech at a convention of Muslims in Deoband.

Thereafter Congress party's attacks on Baba raised further suspicion that may be Baba was on the right track. It is not everyday that the Congress or any other party for that matter pays heed to what general people are saying. Yes, I included Baba Ramdev in general people, I still do. He's doing what everyone in India thinks of doing but cannot do as they have families to feed.

Thereafter I came to know about the launch of 'India Against Corruption' campaign and I attended their rally at Ram Leela grounds in Delhi on 30th January. If I was asked to put the experience in one word I'd say, 'Electrifying'. I wasn't there for long, just about an hour or so as I had other things to attend to but that one hour was one of the most intriguing ones in my life. It made me think about a lot of things going around me and to some extent it was also the reason I started with this blog.

With people like Sri Sri Ravishankar, Swami Agnivesh, Arch Bishop of Delhi Vincent Concessao, Mahmood A Madani, Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi, J M Lyngdoh, Shanti Bhushan, Prashant Bhushan, Arvind Kejriwal, Syed Rizwi, Mufti Shamoom Qasmi, Mallika Sarabhai, Arun Bhatia and Sunita Godara rallying behind Baba Ramdev it would be a surprise as well as disturbing if this movement fails.

A bigger challenge before Baba and his colleagues (not followers, but colleagues) would be to help the general public develop an anti-corruption mindset because bribes are accepted because we are willing to bribe. Until and unless this mindset changes this and many more movements would be useless.

Gandhi Ji and JP are two examples of revolutionists who did achieve their short term goal but failed in their long term goals primarily because the people who came into power after the movement were as corrupt (if not more) than the outgoing establishment. This is something that Baba, Anna Hazare and others need to keep in mind. Throwing out one corrupt government and replacing it with another equally corrupt one would not do the job. JP has already shown us that it doesn't work.

If these people are indeed serious about rooting out corruption then they should also provide an alternative to the current available choices. A formidable choice, not just a 'this would do' one. I hope that this movement would achieve what it is aiming for and make India a better place. People like me are waiting to become a part of the change.

Need of the hour – An average Indian’s view about Kashmir issue

Even if after 63 years of Independence of India and almost the same amount of time being spent by Kashmiris’ with India if people still ask the question if J& K is a part of India then it disturbs me.

Kashmir for years has been an issue over which the rest of India has only one opinion; it is a part of India, though certain groups in Kashmir valley hold a different view. But the question is, why? Why do these people have a different view?

Truly speaking, I have never been to the valley despite going up to Jammu thrice in the past five years but I got a chance to study with a few Kashmiri migrants and spend some time with a handful of them. In that time in Jammu and the time I spent with those acquaintances of mine I found out that the average Kashmiri is just that, average, all s/he wants is food to eat, a house to live and a bit of peace.

It is the peace factor that seems to be missing in their life. The previous generation of Kashmir had a sentiment associated with POK and even Pakistan as their relatives and many of people whom they had known during their childhood and youth were on the other side of the line of control. They always had that, ‘My brother lives there’ feeling in their heart, then there was the generation which can most aptly be called ‘The children of midnight’, people born around the period of Independence of India. They did not have that strong bonding with the other side as the generation before them but still it was there as they grew up listening to the stories about how unified Kashmir was like. The new generation, which in the metro’s called itself as the X-generation became the V-generation in Kashmir, where V without any guesses stands for violence, the generation that grew up seeing continuous violence since 1989 till now.

That violence brought the Army to the state and even after more than twenty years majority of Kashmir looks like a big cantonment area. It is this cantonment area look that the people of Kashmir want to get rid of. You would have heard very few young educated Kashmiri’s saying that they want to get merged with Pakistan; they know that they have no future with an almost failed state, a state where the ex-presidents and prime-ministers live in exile or are assassinated in full public view. They demand for withdrawal of troops and the ones who are a bit more frustrated with the Indian set up demand for Azad Kashmir but they forget to notice the state in which the narrow strip of land known as Azad Kashmir right now is, failing to provide even the most basic necessities to its people. More over the people of POK are being tossed around like ping-pong balls with some part of POK being given to China as a gift by Pakistan government and some parts harboring militant camps. Just imagine the life of people living in these areas.

People like Ahmed Shah Geelani and Arundhati Roy (I still fail to understand why people give her so much importance, most of what she talks and writes is just crap and attention seeking material) are not concerned with the future of Kashmir and its people, Mr. Geelani has a political agenda and Ms. Rai just has a knack of sticking her leg into any damn problem which attracts media attention, till some time ago it was the Maoists and now it’s Kashmir. If Ms. Rai was so keen on solving the Maoists problem she should have gone forward and accepted Maoists request of becoming the mediator, talked them out of violence, killing innocent people and destroying government property.

The people of J& K need to realize that India and Indians consider them a part of their own, even giving them special status and quotas, something which a country like Pakistan, where people who shifted there 60 years back are still called ‘Muhajirs’ (The ones who shifted) cannot give them. Pakistan has never supported Kashmir’s independence, it has always been in favor of Kashmir becoming a part of Pakistan and even if somehow Kashmir manages to become a free state (though there’s a very rare chance of that ever happening) then also Pakistan will leave no stone unturned to destabilize it and merge it into itself.

The need of the hour is for the people of Kashmir to recognize the fact that without their co-operation the government cannot put an end to insurgency and militancy and if that doesn’t end then the Army will also not be removed. The government should also think of ways to minimize impact of military on normal lives.

The time is ripe for Indian government, the people of J&K and the Pakistan government to sit down and sort the matter out. There will be people who will object to Pak being a part of these discussions but they fail to understand that the Kashmir problem would not have existed in the first place had Pak not been laying its claim on J&K. In all, it’s time to stop talking and start doing things.