An alert reader sent me this photograph of a poster put up at the Saharanpur rally (29th March) of Varun Gandhi – his first foray into UP post the elections (Thanks VS).

The slogan at the top – roughly translated – reads (emphasis added):
He is not Varun (Deity of the Sky and the Oceans) but “Aandhi” (Storm);
He is “Doosra” (i.e. second or another) Sanjay Gandhi.
I guess the BJP’s strategists need to be a bit more careful..
And for the reading pleasure of ~50% of Indians who were perhaps not even born …

Dear All: I came across these four links in the last 30 hours – and they made my weekend (not). Together, they read like a sad – very sad – commentary on the state of affairs. You either have to be totally lacking in integrity to be blind to this level of circumstantial evidence – or completely compromised (yourself) and hence unable to do anything about it.
I will leave you to guess on which side Hon PM, Sh MMS falls. Read on. The first excerpt from More murky twists to …

Last month, Hon Sh Chidambaram speaking about the national census called it the “biggest exercise since humankind came into existence“.
As many of you may know already, the enumerators working on the census are aided in their task by a “Census Manual”.  Below are instructions related to Item no. 11 related to “Nationality” (Pg 25) of the Instruction Manual for filling up of the NPR Household Schedule in the Census:
Nationality for each of the enumerated person has to be asked from the respondent and recorded.
Please record the nationality of the …

This is what I’m reading as I find myself stuck in a travel black hole…
1. R Jagannathan on why “Manmohan Singh is the dynasty’s fall guy” (emphasis mine)…
Both the prime minister and the home minister have minced no words in calling a spade a spade. While Manmohan Singh has called the Maoists the biggest security threat to the country, P Chidambaram has promised tough action to deal with it. But here’s the point: months after launching Operation Green Hunt, it is not clear who’s hunting whom. The Maoists have been …

I was alerted to this by E E* (name protected on request). Please click on the image below.
Notice anything odd?

Questions for all of you:

How does a supposedly “secular” state reconcile this contradiction?
Does this not give an unfair advantage to Christians?
What happens in case a different date of birth is recorded in the municipal/high school records from the one in the Baptism Certificate?

Comments and thoughts welcome.
If any of you have seen any similar ad(s), please do bring to my attention.
I am also writing to Sh Devdas Uchil, AGM(HR-O), Mazagon Dock Ltd. …

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Most of you reading this may not have visited Bareilly. And if you are not a particularly avid follower of twitter or any of the “newfangled-tech-stuff”, you may be wondering why on earth am I talking about Bareilly on a lazy weekend morning.  I don’t blame you – especially if you rely primarily on the English mainstream media for your dose of news.
Bareilly is a small city in Uttar Pradesh in a region called Rohilkhand. It is one of the hundreds of sleepy cities in “Bharat”. …

…so am I.

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Images courtesy: The Hindu, ET, ToI, IE
Related Post: Explaining AfPak to a 14-year old

This post was triggered by two unrelated links I read last weekend.  The first: Is Sonia Above Questioning? by Sh Rajinder Puri from which this brief excerpt:
…The BJP has taken up the secret Indian Swiss bank money issue. Does it seriously contemplate recovering the money? Or is it just a poll gimmick?
…Are they political opportunists? Do they or don’t they really intend to deliver results on the Swiss money? If the BJP is serious about fighting corruption there is no dearth of issues. Take one glaring example.
On August 15, 2006 …

A brief & hurried dissection of  Exposing Indian democracy – the Op-Ed in today’s The New Indian Express. Comments and thoughts welcome, as always…

It has now become abundantly clear that Qatar has offered M F Husain citizenship, though it is not entirely clear yet whether one of India’s greatest artists has accepted the offer yet.
What is abundantly clear is that Sh Husain does not have to accept it. It has been offered not forced on him.
If he does, he will have to renounce Indian citizenship. And that, as members of …

Some thought-provoking excerpts from The Human-Rights Facade Is Beginning to Crumble by Noah Pollak (Hat Tip: Kaushal):
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…The UK Times was impelled, finally, to give some space to the fact that Amnesty, one of the two largest human-rights groups* (the other being Human Rights Watch) has been promoting Begg, a former Gitmo detainee and booster of terrorists and radicals. What finally attracted press attention to this outrageous state of affairs was the appearance of a whistleblower from within the ranks of Amnesty.

Meet Gita Sahgal, the head of Amnesty’s …