From Telegraph, 17 Feb., 2005

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Not in the accepted sense of the word 
Even three decades after the Emergency, India continues to miss its political relevance, just as it did during the crisis, writes N.J. Nanporia


In evil hour
<b>Thirty years after the event, reactions to the Emergency continue to be shaped by political bias, platitudes like “murder of democracy” and an overwhelming sense of political correctness. </b>Not long ago, Rahul Gandhi “admitted” that “excesses” had occurred, an admission that hardly made sense because no one has denied that people were arrested, that censorship was imposed or that a wide variety of oppressive acts were perpetrated, some under the directions of Sanjay Gandhi. <b>Sonia Gandhi herself is on record saying that she regretted the Emergency, all of which reinforced the view that the 1975 crisis is not something to be understood but to be condemned. </b>The Prasar Bharati’s decision to drop the film on Jayaprakash Narayan hasn’t helped matters either.

<b>But neither apologies nor admissions can ever provide a key to what the Emergency was about.</b> It can only be found by focussing on the one individual who matters — Indira Gandhi herself. <b>And also by asking the only question that matters — what were her motives and what moved her to do what she did?</b>

<b>Shortly after the Allahabad judgment in 1975, Indira Gandhi said that she was “not a politician in the accepted sense of the word”. </b>Though she had her share of egotism, this was not a display of defensive arrogance. Nor was she implying here that she occupied a position of exceptional privilege and that the normal rules of public conduct did not apply to her. <b>It was an unintended and indirect disclosure of a subject that governed her turbulent career since the 1969 split — her disgust for and absolute rejection of politicking.</b>

As a member of the Congress working committee in 1955 and later of the central parliamentary board; as president of the Congress in 1959 (when she played a persuasive role in the bifurcation of bilingual Bombay and the dismissal of the communist government in Kerala); as her father’s political hostess; and in 1964, as Lal Bahadur Shastri’s minister of information and broadcasting, Indira Gandhi was exposed to the full blast of politicking. <b>At this point, we have another of her revealing comments, “The nation is in a hurry and we cannot afford to lose time.” Combine her strong aversion to politicking with her sense of time draining away, and arguably we have the first intimation of the approaching tragedy.</b>

<b>During this time, the Congress was also running out of the energy that had sustained it as a movement. There was a mismatch, unseen by the party, between the old guard that was firmly in the saddle and the new challenges that confronted it. </b>There was, additionally, a sense of a mission having been accomplished and lost moorings. <b>War with Pakistan and the party’s internal dissent induced organizational paralysis and an inability to redefine itself.</b> These could not have been acceptable to someone of Indira Gandhi’s temperament, though she was, undoubtedly, aware that her own elevation to prime ministership under the auspices of K. Kamaraj was itself a prime example of politicking. Of course the atrophied old guard hadn’t the remotest clue to what Indira Gandhi was about to do. Confined within the stagnating limits of syndicate culture, it was unable to realize that she could read its motivations and calculations like an open book.

<b>Her conclusions are not difficult to guess. The syndicate culture was incompatible with her idea of national achievement and the urgency of the task. All those associated with the syndicate were victims of a mindset that couldn’t conceive of a politician having any concern other than those held by it. </b>There was a complete lack of comprehension about a prime minister who refused to be a run-of-the-mill politician. The old guard came to regard her as a pliable instrument in its hands.

On her part, Indira Gandhi realized that she could survive only by mastering the techniques of politicking. She did this with the panache and determination. She beat the syndicate at its own game. Her expulsion from the syndicate marked her out as someone with a bold, uncompromising and dynamic approach to national affairs.

Psychologically and symbolically, for her, this was one way of disinheriting the politicking politicians. Yet, tragically, this was the only kind of politicians available, given the system that had bred them. Indira Gandhi also realized that her convictions could not be translated into an understandable public ideology or into terms the Constitution would find acceptable. An appreciation of this persuaded her to repeatedly try and reach out to what she called the “masses”. With them, she felt a rapport that was impossible to replicate with anyone else in the political jungle. Jayaprakash Narayan spoke of “total revolution”, signalling a break with the past. For Indira Gandhi, the revolution was primarily in her mind, while for Narayan, it was out there physically, which unfortunately was also a recipe for chaos and indiscipline. In the event, neither could make a headway against factionalism, violence, corruption, the pursuit of power, regionalism and so on. Collectively, these represented “parliamentary democracy”, but actually, it was the “greatest demagoguery in the world.”

Indira Gandhi helped popularize the legend of a ruthless person, frequently hiring people and firing them, thus lending credibility to the Janata campaign against the “personality cult”. Yet, even in her increasing isolation, she kept hoping to find some empathy that would elude her forever. <b>JP too was frustrated and, confronted by the crisis, pushed himself to the limits — as the romantic idealist is apt to do — calling out to students to agitate, to the armed forces to revolt, and to civil servants to disobey orders that were not to their liking. The infamous railway strike and 92 derailments followed. </b>Under total revolution, all the ills of the system, all that Indira Gandhi wanted to uproot, came to be magnified.

Prakash Tandon struck a note of sanity and balance when he said: “For years we wished an end to chaos and willingly promised to forgo some rights for some order and an end to how a whole town of ten million could be held to ransom by whoever chose to call a strike for whatever cause. A question we should ask is whether Mrs Gandhi was carrying, somehow, unknown to her, the cumulative will of a democratic people looking for a catharsis, long tired of incompetent governments.” Indira Gandhi did what her father could never have done — critically question a system imposed on India for the sole reason that it was favoured by the departing colonialists.

<b>As for the Shah commission and the legal trivialities into which it sunk, it should be said that the commission was more keen to pursue Indira Gandhi than on ensuring an inquiry into the origins of the Emergency.</b> So much so that it is pointless to ask whether it was competent to investigate the circumstances or the way in which the Emergency was declared. In the end, Indira Gandhi realized that she had all the right reasons for doing the wrong thing in conditions in which she could never succeed. All she could do was administer what she called “shock treatment”, which, nevertheless, left the system largely unchanged.

On the sidelines were those who expediently applauded Indira Gandhi without the slightest understanding of her motives, but became her harshest critics post-Emergency. There were others sincerely associated with her but who remained entirely innocent about what was going on. And then there were the would-be Emergency heroes, so remote from reality and so full of their egotistic concerns that they waited eagerly to be arrested, only to be ignored by an unimpressed Emergency authority. We are indebted to them for injecting some comedy into an otherwise tragic affair.

As for Indira Gandhi, she remained the way she had started, a person whose image was writ large on the national and international scene, but whose core remained private and intense. The statement that “only a political illiterate could disapprove of the Emergency” is well worth pondering over.
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( Earlier version of this thread available at..

http://indiaforumarchives.blogspot.com/2...ons-i.html
http://indiaforumarchives.blogspot.com/2...ns-i1.html


<b>Hinduism and the Contest of Religions</b>
Subhash Kak

Junior Sankaracharya granted bail!!

Previous versions of this thread are available at ..

http://indiaforumarchives.blogspot.com/200...karacharya.html
http://indiaforumarchives.blogspot.com/200...racharya-2.html
http://indiaforumarchives.blogspot.com/200...racharya-3.html

- Admin

Older thread http://indiaforumarchives.blogspot.com/200...asa-purana.html

Puranas Quiz - for Kids.

PURANAS

1. Who were the parents of Dhruva
2. Who manufactured the sudarshana chakra?
3. Who were the parents of Parashurama?
4. What deadly poison came out of the samudra manthan?
5. Whose bow is the pinaka?
6. Name the 2 asuras who tried to destroy Agastya.
7. This king of Ayodhya cut part of his flesh to save a small bird.
8. Who is Ashwapati in Ramayana?
9. Name 2 brothers of Shurpanaka.
10. Who gave Ravana the idea of kidnapping Sita?
11. Name Ravana's oldest son.
12. What is the name of Sugreeva's wife?
13. Name the mountain where Sugreeva was staying.
14. Who is Bali's son?
15. Name the wives of Lakshmana, Bharata and Shatrugna.
16. Who is Ravana's brother who was a devotee of Rama?
17. Name Dasharatha's 4 sons.
18. Name 2 sons of Arjuna.
19. Give the name of Duryodhana's sister's husband.
20. Name the Kaurava who changed over to the Pandava's side.
21. Adhiratha and Radha adopted which child?
22. Name the 5 Pandavas.
23. Who is also known by the name Vrikodara?
24. King Dushyanta, an ancestor of the Pandavas fell in love with which lady?
25. Who is Krishna's sister?

Answers are here. (don't peek.)

Old thread found at .. http://indiaforumarchives.blogspot.com/200...mor-thread.html

Kyun Kya chal raha hai??
Theek se kaam kar rahe ho na
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.see response below...
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..Mat Pooch yaar Bahut tension hai .. !!!
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From Deccan.com, 1 Feb., 2005
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Congress may call for a snap poll
 

New Delhi, Jan. 31: <b>The Congress is seriously contemplating a mid-term Lok Sabha election in 2006, if it succeeds in reviving the party in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The four States are the targets of the current Congress strategy directed at capturing a majority in the Lok Sabha, with party president Sonia Gandhi as Prime Minister.</b>

HRD Minister Arjun Singh is being credited with the ga-meplan to revive the party in these States as a precursor to early Lok Sabha elections. <b>The decision to disturb the coalition with the RJD in Bihar by contesting the Asse-mbly elections separately was taken by the top leadership of the Congress in a bid to “test the waters” in the State. </b>The results will determine the Congress strategy for UP, where sufficient indications are being given by the party, including Sonia Gan-dhi and son Rahul Gandhi, that they would like to withdraw support to the Mulayam Singh Yadav government.

<b>The Congress now appears to be a party in a hurry with the strategy of revival, as the sources put it, centering on the “strike while the iron is hot” assessment. The party is keen to move out of the coalition which it views as an “irksome necessity” and cash in on the goodwill for Sonia  before the vote turns away from the party.</b> The Congress is reportedly of the view that “the national mood is in our favour”, and wants to present itself as the alternative, minus the burden of coalition, before time changes public opinion.

<b>Interestingly, not a single Congress leader spoken to from the Centre or the States was of the view that a mid-term poll was not on the cards. All said that this was inevitable, with 2006 cited as the year for “action”. </b>The only difference was that wh-ile some leaders were of the view that the poll could be held along with that of West Bengal in March next year, most favoured a later date in the year. But again, all party leaders were agreed that fissures would dent the Congr-ess-Left relations before the Bengal elections. Economic policies is the other area of contention, with financial ex-perts in the Congress keen to part ways with the Left as a prerequisite for “independent” functioning.

In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress is optimistic about benefiting directly from the anti-incumbency factor, whi-ch it expects will help it improve its position in the Lok Sabha elections as well.  <b>In Gujarat, the Congress has  decided to organise the “Dandi march” in order to project itself as an alternative to the BJP government.</b>

<b>The Congress has also taken a decision to keep away from a minority agenda. </b>Even in Gujarat, the message of the Dandi march will be national integration and not the rehabilitation of the Muslims or the cases under trial.<b> Leaders from the regional parties in coalition said that they were aware of the Cong-ress’ new strategy, maintaining, however, that this stems from Sonia Gandhi’s desire to become Prime Minister. </b>
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Only discussion related to RC Mujumdar finding and other writers based on Historical facts.

Hi Guys,
Posting after a long time. And this might be the right forum and the right audience to answer this question.

First is Vedic Astrology (a science or art or whatever) capable of predicting your future.
The answer can be of two types - The first one will use scientific logic to prove or disprove the above notion. The second approach can be of people giving personal account of prediction coming true.
Can we have some discussion on this?

Second are there online resources (or offline resources) to understand and interpret Vedic astrology.

rgds,
fanne

Post away!