POLITICAL LANDSCAPE OF INDIA.

BY K P PASWAN.

India as a sovereign country follows an open democratic system. Parliamentary system is the cardinal principle of an open democracy. India is highly and dangerously polarized society. Even after partition of India on the religious ground communal tension between majority and minority is brewing up and in recent years has taken very dangerous level. The religion that is known as Hinduism is found only in India. Beset with rigid caste system it is surprising that this religion survived against all odds. From the period when the Aryans spread throughout India, every village had a king who was at loggerheads with his neighboring king. With passage of time Event Horizon of these tiny kingdoms also increased and   we see emergence of large empires like Mauryan in North India and the Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas in South India but there was no love lost among these so-called powerful kingdoms. Taking advantage of a fragile society the robbers and religious fanatics from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan appeared on the scenes and with military help from these small kingdoms in North India Muslims rules known as Sultanate were established. Sultanate was followed by the Mughals. Most of the kings belonging to Mughals were bigots and believed in plundering temples and converting subjugated  people to their own religions. Mughals ruled most parts of northern India with help from local kings. Some of the impressive architectures were gifted by the Mughals but their bigotry was challenged by the Marathas and a strong firewall was created which virtually turned the later Mughal kings prisoners of impressive Red fort.

 Next the British replaced incompetent native rulers of all over India and united the country under one central authority.

 This blog means the reflection of democratic principles after independence. British left India and the nation was declared an open democracy by the constitutional assembly. In 1956 several states were constituted on the basis of languages. In northern India there are several local dialects and Hindi in Devanagari script emerged as unifying language. So, we find local native dialects like Awadhi, Angakia, Rajasthani etc but Hindi is the unifying language and most of Indians understand Hindi and within years Hindi is going to become one of the languages recognised by the UNO.

Now we come to the political landscape of India. There was no political and social anarchy during the period of first Prime Minister. India did not face the problems related to population. The economy was closed and a number of industries and manufacturing units were established with foreign help. But India remained an under developed country. India also suffered ignonimous defeat at the hands of China in 1962. After Pt Nehru we find political instability and noisy oppositions. Indira Gandhi may be regarded as the strongest political figure of Indian history. It is a fact that economy remained restricted neither Indira Gandhi nor her advisors thought of an emerging economy for India, nevertheless Indira Gandhi continued to attract foreign investment. During her reign India became self sufficient in producing sufficient food grains but no large-scale industries were established and some of the bigger units became sick Indira Gandhi’s greatest contribution was division of Pakistan into two parts and crushing the Khalistan movement for which she was assassinated and with her assassination India witnessed an era of neurotic polarisation. Rajeev Gandhi was a reluctant Prime Minister. He played into the hands of disgruntled coterie. He himself was a modern politician ad prepared the much-awaited ground for opening of Indian economy but his handling of Sri Lankan crisis cost his life. His killers are now enjoying the fruits of political power. Rajeev Gandhi was followed by politicians who cared little for the development of the country and instead tried to glorify themselves among the common people. All these Prime Ministers except Narsingh Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh completed fixed tenures of five years. One of the PMs did not face parliament while another one had to mortgage Gold to tide over finance crisis. Even Atal Bihari Bajpai sacrificed quite a good number of young Commissioned Officers when there was no war between India and Pakistan. He aimed at winning a Nobel for Peace but Vajpayee got neither RAM nor IMAM and the Nobel for peace was awarded to war monger Barack Obama. Manmohan Singh was an economist who utterly failed to give new dimension to Indian economy and India failed to progress and a vibrant and emerging economy alluded India. Economic was opened for foreign investment but for some reasons China attracted more foreign investment than India.

It is only under Narendra Modi that Indian economy is an emerging economy occupying 5^th place among the advanced countries even though India is still not a member of G 7 Narendra Modi has emerged as an outstanding Statesman of contemporary politics. The days of humiliations of India are over. In the past India was humiliated by China which invaded India in 1962 and for the first PM of India ,the Chinese aggression was a betrayal of faith as Pt Nehru never expected hostilities from a friend. Than the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev humiliated India by declaring that China was the brother of USSR while India was just a friend.  The end of Nehru witnessed a struggle for power. For a brief period Lal bahadur Shastri became PM and Pakistan launched attack surprising the international community but India proved a hard nut to crack for Pakistan and India emerged victorious but the PM died in mysterious circumstances in Tashkent. He was followed by Indira Gandhi who was a real patriot ,she liberated East Pakistan from West Pakistan and ignored the threats of US, UK, and Australia. She was assassinated by Khalistan Terrorists. Coming to Narendra Modi it appears that all political ideologies have disappeared and only one ideology is to remove Modi. I.N.D.I,A has been formed to take on Modi, INDIA is a group of corrupt politicians  and let us hope that Modi survives the ant incumbency factor.Politics based on cast and creed is likely to destroy tis ancient civilization. There is small province in South India known for false glorification and is dreaming cultural dominance with English as the common language, with such mentality landscape of India is not attractive

 

NUCLEAR ARSENALS THAN AND NOW.

 

By K P Paswan.

Before WW2, Otto Hahn split up atoms, Open Heimer enriched the Uranium and Edward Taylor manufactured Hydrogen bomb in US. Hitler also tried his best to manufacture Nukes and for this legendary physicist Werner Heisenberg tried to enrich Uranium imported from Belgium. Heisenberg is the scientist who propounded the Uncertainty principles which goes beyond the theory of Relativity and puts question mark on the necessity of a creator of the universe. Einstein was alarmed and did not accept Uncertainty Principles and declared that “I don’t think that GOD plays dice”

US came to know the sinister design of Hitler and the secret agency was ordered to eliminate the Nobel Laureate Heisenberg. It is still a mystery why the founder of the Quantum physics failed to achieve the Critical mass while enriching the Uranium which have enabled Hitler to play havoc in the war-torn Europe, the killers found the great scientist but he was not assassinated. US manufactured Nukes. One of the US technologists passed the necessary technological information to a Russian scientist and Soviet Russia also manufactured Nukes.

Igor Kurchatov and Alexanders Sakharov were scientists behind splendid progress of modern Russia in manufacturing powerful nukes. Sakharov was responsible for the development of Hydrogen bomb and the might of Communists empire in nuclear arsenals worried US and the west feared the world slipping away from the grip of Western power. On 31^st December 1961 Soviet Russia succeeded in exploding the most powerful therm o nuclear weapon named as RDS 220 or popularly known as TSAR BOMBA. This nuclear weapon was detonated at Novaya Zemlya in Severn island (Arctic). Blinded by Tsar Bomba, Nikita Khrushchev, the strong man of Soviet Russia tried to encircle US by deploying missiles and deadly weapons in Cuba. Khrushchev also threatened to bury the west, but this threat by Khrushchev is open for debate.  For the first time US and USSR were facing each other but firm decisions taken by Kennedy forced Soviet Russia a humiliating retreat.

During the presidency of Eisenhower US invested heavily in developing tactical nuclear weapon which are designed to deploy in a war fighting situation on the battle field rather than on long range ballistic missiles aimed at the capital of other nations. In 1950 US developed W 25 the smallest nuclear weapon. It is presumed that Russia has also manufactured small nuclear weapon and may use if Putin think that Russia is losing the competition with the mighty nation on the earth but this is just a speculation in a bipolar politics.

 RDS 220 Tsar Bomba led US to accelerate the manufacture the equally powerful nukes and with outstanding nuclear technology, USSR dream to rule the world gradually faded away. Cold war was playing havoc and hardliner Communists in Moscow failed to boost internal economy. In fact, except in nuclear and exploration of outer space USSR lagged behind West in other technological advance and this weakened the Communist ideology

Now it appears that Russia is far ahead in the development of advanced nuclear technology and can challenge the might of a mighty US, But the facts are otherwise. We often hear about UFO and the arrival of aliens in a place in US named as Area 51.The news about arrival of Aliens is perhaps the most ugliest joke. For the last forty years American spacecraft VOYAGER is roaming in outer space and has crossed the foundry of the solar system. Biological human beings cannot cover million of light years to reach the planet Earth, only gadgets with artificial intelligence can roam aimlessly in the vast space and such type of Alien spacecraft can easily intercept VOYAGER,   but no Alien space craft with artificial intelligence has intercepted the American space craft. Fact of the matter is that Area 51 is being used to manufacture advanced  defense mechanism to foil the attempt of enemy to use nuclear weapons against US. Both Russia and China are aware of the developments. Russia has refused to recognized  India, China, France, UK, Pakistan and N Korea as the nuclear power. At the same time Putin has made it clear that since US was already a Superpower, there was no need for Russia to become another Superpower.

So the safety of human civilization is in the hands of US and Russia. All others so called Nuclear powers can bark but cannot bite. So  even in remote future there is not even scant hope that US and Russia confront with each other.It will be an apocalyptic confrontation and there will be no Armageddon.

 Mutual Agreed Destruction are unofficial understanding between US and Russia and if it is real than it is an open  invitation to cloud the civilization with fear of elimination.

Both US and Russia have a clear doctrine setting out the conditions  under which nuclear weapons could be used. And that is wholly reassuring. The mutually agreed doctrine include the options to use nuclear weapons if either US or Russia face existential threat. Defeat of either US or Russia in a battle with another country like Iraq, Vietnam or Afghanistan might be embarrassing for the US but  would not be an existential threat. Fact of the matter is that US won the ground battle in Vietnam under Gen Westmoreland. It also won the battle in Iraq, in Afghanistan it was not a real battle it was like a Crusade. In Ukraine Russia has virtually destroyed the fighting capability of Zelensky despite of deadly weapons sold by NATO and US.As well as the rhetoric  there are real concern  that the changing nature of nuclear weapons  may destabilize the traditional deterrence  equations---- creating many more possible scenarios  than nuclear strategists  and games theory witnessed during the era of Cold war.

But that would be a big gamble. China is the second largest economy but it cannot match either US or Russia in advanced nuclear technology. If China forces Taiwan to surrender by threatening to nuke Taiwan other nuclear armed states would conclude that  the nuclear age has ushered in a new era of nuclear impunity  where they could do  what they liked in regional conflicts and territorial disputes  because no one dare to fight them. Pakistan with help from other Islamic states was dreaming to teach India a lesion by nuking India, fortunately India with its advanced missile system is in a position to destroy the Pakistani stockpiles of nuclear arsenals and divide Pakistan into several sovereign Islamic states by resorting to conventional war methods.

Similarly, China may desist from hostile face off with India. US has rightly concluded that if China’s neighbors suffer devastating fall out  because of Chine misadventures in Taiwan than  US might seek to trigger  AUKUS ‘s collective  defense provisions.

 FINAL THOUGHT, Both US and Russia know that with the end of Cold war and in a new world order they cannot become the living manifestation of destiny, the target being the human race.

 

CASTE CENSUS IN INDIA.

 

BY K P PASWAN.

Caste census has been initiated by a few Indian states and  supported indirectly by the ruling party at the centre. There is sinister design in this type of caste census, After every decade there is general Census which can be used to know the number of castes and the progress made by them. Since Indian politics is caste oriented and the society is divided on the basis of caste so the motive behind the caste census ultimately may prove detrimental to the sovereignty of India

India is only country in the world where Apartheid is officially recognized.High Court has stayed the caste census , this certainly good news.

The caste census has been initiated by a state named Bihar which is notorious for preaching the virtues of caste system. One former Chief Minister of Bihar is in prison for amassing wealth and he was known as the worst politician favouring a particular caste. This particular caste was identified as the government caste. His successor has pioneered three industries in Bihar, Kidnapping, Bootlegging and Extortion. These industries are taking the forms of MNC. This fellow has brought high ranking officers of his caste from all over India and allowed them to plunder Bihar. This man enjoys the support of the ruling party. This chief minister recently released a large number of dreaded criminals and one of them was convicted for killing a Dalit District Magistrate. The objective is to prevent the Dalits and other marginalized castes from casting their votes in the ensuing general election in India. Surprisingly a few rootless Dalits politicians are supporting the moves of releasing the dreaded criminals.

 UNITING POLITICAL CRIMINALS. Chief Minister of Bihar is engaged in uniting the oppositions against the current PM but in reality, criminals are being united. One of the most corrupt Chief Minister from South India has expressed his support for the Caste Census. Diversity and multiculturalism are being cited as the binding forces, if it is so than the logic of caste census may be debated. One of the famous American Nobel Laureate in physics is convinced that diversity has destroyed the mighty nation. But in India situation is somewhat different. Every body is conscious of his caste identity. It is also a fact that while most of the Brahmins hate Dalits but murder of Dalits are being carried by the so called backward castes along with a particular caste who connived with the Mughals for enjoying political power. General Ra heel Sharif is the former Army Chief of Pakistan, now he is in Saudi Arabia where he proudly declares himself a true Rajput belonging to Jodhpur royalty. His claims have been supported by the government of Uzbekistan. But in India most of the Rajput,  are not oppressing the Dalits.

 PRO CASTE LOBBY. There are large number of men and women clamoring for Caste Census but the reasons appear to be without any logic. These groups argue that even the upper castes were oppressed in the paste it is true that with the comings of foreign rulers there was widespread oppression of Indians who refused to accept new religion. But the so-called upper caste were occupying higher status than really oppressed groups among them. However it appears that the current Prime Minister of India, despite of shortcomings cannot be removed by fair means so strong castiest lobby is being created by a group of corrupt politicians to create political and social tensions so that a coalition government may be formed at the centre. But the past records of such type government show dismal performance, so caste census must be discarded. Interestingly the highest court has refused to  declare caste census as opposed to basic structures of the constitution. The highest court however agreed to  hear case related to same sex marriages on strange grounds.

 Origin of caste system is shrouded in mystery. Ancient Vedic religion reveals four Varnas, Brahmins, Kshatriya ( Warriors) Vaishyas (trading cases) and Shudra were supposed to render services to others but it is doubtful if untouchability prevailed. With passage of time lower castes emerged to suffer. Their lives did not matter and as per several ancient scriptures murder and oppression of lower castes were common and without system of justice. Original varna system disappeared. Several foreign invaders like Scythian Huns Kushans merged with followers of Vedic religion and they were recognized as upper castes, Untouchables suffered further at the hands of new warriors, Priestly classes like Brahmins prevented lower castes from reading Vedas and other important religious scriptures.

  Bihar is one of the states of India and is notorious for caste-oriented politics. This state is the poorest state in India. Surprisingly Bihar is producing largest number of groups one officers like Indian Foreign Services, Indian Administrative services etc. Bihar has taken the initiative of  development of all castes, which is against the constitution.   Caste census is likely to increase social tension and Dalits are going to suffer. In India nearly ninety nine percent of Brahmins are supporters of untouchability but atrocities against Dalits are being committed by the backward classes while a particular community Thakurs are still thinking that the Dalits are slaves. So Bihar is in news for wrong reasons. Indian constitution declares equality as the fundamental right of the people, Caste system is not recognized by the constitution but it cannot be erased as majority of Indians believe in sticking to caste system. When certain people approached the Apex court with a plea to declare the caste census as illegal, the Apex Court threw away the petition and the supporters of caste census in Bihar started dancing.

INTERFAITH MARRIAGE is becoming very common in India and generally in such type of marriage brides accept the religion of their husbands. India is a highly polarized society and one lady in an English platform wrongly stated that lower castes were against interfaith marriages. In realty lower castes had no social identity and rape of girls belonging to lower castes were common. So, inter castes  and interfaith among Dalits hardly matters. Dalits girls are marrying outside their religion out of compulsion. In a diverse culture, interfaith marriage has become common and nothing can be done to erase this.Girls belonging to higher castes generally prefer interfaith marriages.

CONCLUSION,Caste census may tarnish the image of India in the world.