Not one, but TWO of India's formidable enemies were in the newspapers today even though the Islamic terrorists and their assault on Mumbai were by far the most prominent.
Politically correct readers would of course take offense at my reference to Islamic terrorists and would point out that Hindu terror also exists and that is precisely the point made most loudly by our pseudo-secularists that I want to debunk first.
For the past couple of weeks the Anti Terror Squad is being used by the UPA government in a vain attempt to find these elusive Hindu terrorists who are claimed to be the most dangerous people in the country.
I have no doubt that anyone who bursts a bomb and kills people is a criminal and should be punished. But when resources are limited the focus should be on the bigger problem !! Despite all claims to the contrary it is an indisputable fact that if you exclude the Naxalites-Maoists, then 95% all terrorist attacks in the country are carried out by Muslims with the active connivance of Muslim countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh.
And yet, the UPA government in its blind desire to see its political rival humiliated is diverting all intelligence resources to dig out obscure groups like Abhinav Bharat and its members -- who would have contributed, at best, 5% to the problem.
Why is this ?
To know the answer let us find out who is the SECOND enemy that I referred to at the beginning of the post >> Vishwanath Pratap Singh.
The Muslim terrorists would at best kill a 100, 200 or 500 people and may damage India's image in the world but that is a minor matter compared to the havoc that VP Singh let loose with his Mandal commission. While the overt reason was to uplift and empower the OBC, the real reason was of course to get votes and build a vote bank.
The Mandal commission by first injecting and then spreading the cancer of militant casteism has resulted in demolishing all that India was proud of ... but none as profoundly and completely as the system of higher education -- in particular the IITs and the IIMs.
Elections in India are of course farcical -- despite our proud claims to the contrary, the people who vote are clueless of who are what they are voting for. So while VP Singh -- and his political heirs -- use casteism to get votes, our pseudo-secularists in the UPA government want the Muslim vote and for that they are even willing to forgive and forget Afzal Guru who was a part of the team that attacked Parliament.
So pseudo-secularism is an offshoot of our pseudo-democracy.
Why do we have this stupid pseudo-democracy ? Because we are a pseudo-nation !!
Our politicians are our favourite whipping boys ... if only they were better, the country would have been far better ... such is the lament in most genteel drawing rooms.
But is that so ? As are the People, so is the Prince.
Our politicians are an accurate reflection of the kind of people that we really are : Corrupt, Hypocritical, Anarchic and Incompetent !! For a vast majority of us corruption -- financial or otherwise -- could be an acceptable way of doing things. We are hypocritical -- we want Pakistan to stop supporting Jihadis and yet we want to support and help LTTE in Sri Lanka. We are anarchic -- we shall obey no law and yet we are incompetent.
But still we want to vote and be counted as the worlds largest Democracy !
As a nation are we mature enough to vote ? We dont allow kids to vote until they are 18 but what about the Indian Nation ? Democracy is an European idea that has taken hundreds of years to take root ... but we think that we can handle this responsibility within days of being born ...
That is why we end up electing films actors and actresses in South India, that is why end up electing thugs and thiefs in the cow belt, that is why we fall at the feet of kids whose only claim to fame are a few scraps of DNA from a long dead politician, that is why an abomination called the samajwadi party or a Chinese agent like the Communist party is allowed to dictate the national agenda.
So what is the solution ?
I do not have an original solution ... but I can say it once more. We have had too much of democracy in the country and this is really distorting all decisions and processes.
Pseudo-democrats would of course disagree vehemently and point out that for every Lee Kuan Yew who has steered Singapore along a very successful course of limited democracy there is a Mugabe and a Pol Pot who have led Zimbabwe and Cambodia to ruin.
Let us take a chance. Our current version of pseudo-democracy is simply not working out and what is worse, there is nothing better in sight in this direction. So let us ditch this and take an alternate route ... and may be we shall move from darkness to light, from pseudo-nationhood to nationhood.