'Yes, it may have been offensive to some, but an expression of regret is all that's called for. No lasting harm has been done, and people should put it behind them, and move on,' says Rajeev Srinivasan, defending Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti who made abusive remarks in Delhi last week.
The worldwide condemnation of the atrocities in Ferguson, Missouri, in the US, where a black teenager was shot to death by a trigger-happy white policeman, who was then exonerated by a jury of his peers, has begun to wind down as people, fatigued, move on to the next new and exciting cause.
However, not to be outdone, the leftists of India are now attempting to lynch Sadhvi Jyoti, a scheduled caste minister of state in the Narendra Modi government.
The parallels are substantial. In Ferguson, it was a black man whose human rights were violated. In the Sadhvi's case, she is a double minority: A woman and an SC. In both cases, the elites have systematically denied them their rights as citizens. The elites are totally brazen about it, too: they just don't care. They know they can get away with it.
The interesting, and totally unsurprising, thing in the Sadhvi's case, is that it is the so-called 'liberals' who are doing the lynching. The so-called conservatives are rallying to her side, defending her: Yes, she may have made an unfortunate statement, which appears to have been merely poetic alliteration ('Ram's sons' and 'ha-ram sons').
Yes, it may have been offensive to some, but an expression of regret is all that's called for. No lasting harm has been done, and people should put it behind them, and move on.
But no, that doesn't happen with the Jawaharlal Nehru University leftists and the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress who are determined to blow this molehill up into a mountain.
It makes sense from their perspective: The JNU types see a bleak future for themselves, now that their sinecures and their ability to attach themselves to the mammaries of the welfare State seem in jeopardy. The AAP has an election coming up, and it's make or break for them. The Congress is desperate to appear like they matter.
Yes, it's just politics, but there are some home truths out there.
The first and foremost is that the leftists, the alleged champions of the subalterns in India -- essentially the rural lower castes -- are not really worried about emancipating them or uplifting them. The loud protestations on their behalf are pure theatre.
In fact, the leftists would like to keep the subalterns impoverished and downtrodden, because that fits in with their vested interests -- after all, if they didn't exist, how could the leftists benefit from sob stories about them?
Further, they are offended if the subalterns refuse to be doormats, and wish to improve themselves on their own, rather than depending on the maa-baap sarkar (the self-same leftists) to give them doles.
If said oppressed actually want to help themselves, well, we can't have that, can we? Whatever will we lefties do if the objects of our alleged affection don't actually want our affection?
This palpable distaste that the lefties feel for the OBC/SC/STs of the country is obvious, and is daily trumpeted by the mainstream media, which is generally owned, edited and composed mostly by leftists.
Look at the caste names of the MSM journos: Almost none of them is lower caste.
On the other hand, they are full of solicitous concern for upper castes. For instance, there have been far more unparliamentary things said by leftists: Perhaps you recall the '100 per cent tunch maal' leer, the 'maut ka saudagar' taunt, or the 'chaiwallah' insult. Why weren't the media and the leftists up in arms about this?
I will tell you why. The 'tunch maal' leer was made by a high caste man. The 'maut ka saudagar' taunt was made by a white woman, and in the leftists' scheme of things, all whites are by definition the top-most caste. The 'chaiwallah' insult was made by another high caste man. Therefore, since it was 'People Like Us', the media and the leftists responded with a 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge' (as Monty Python famously said).
Oh, there's plenty more where that came from. Deshgujarat identifies a large number of attacks on Narendra Modi, here (external link): Where were the tender sensibilities of the morally upright leftists when all this was going on?
Were there any outbreaks of outrage? No, dear reader, there were not. They sniggered, that's what they did.
It is not just in Modi's case. What struck me as significant was what Ashis Nandy let slip inadvertently a couple of years ago. Nandy is not an upper caste Hindu, but a Serampore Christian, and alas (not saying that this is true of Nandy), many Christians are highly casteist, as the travails of the SC/ST converts shows.
Nandy's statement from January 2013, which I reproduce verbatim below, should not so easily be forgotten. I personally think Nandy should be congratulated for his candour, not condemned. For, here is a lifelong leftist laying bare a dirty little secret that all of us should be cognisant of. What he actually said, according to Outlook (external link) magazine, is this:
It is a fact that most of the corrupt come from the OBCs and the Scheduled Castes and now increasingly Scheduled Tribes and as long as this is the case, the Indian Republic will survive. And I give an example, one of the states with least amount of corruption is the state of West Bengal where when the CPM was there. And I want to propose to you, draw your attention to the fact that in the last 100 years nobody from the OBCs, the backward classes and the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes have come anywhere near power in West Bengal. It is an absolutely clean state.
The part that got the attention is, for convenience, what I shall call Part A: 'Most of the corrupt come from the OBCs and the SCs and now increasingly STs'. Now this may or may not be true, and it may depend on which state you are talking about. For instance, in Kerala, this may not be true, as the powers that be are either Christian or Muslim or deracinated Communists. But it may well be true in Dravida Tamil Nadu.
But the really interesting thoughts come where Nandy is saying that in the past 100 years, no OBC/SC/ST has had a shot at power in Bengal.
Let me rephrase that in context: Despite the fact that for a large part of the last 100 years, (West) Bengal has been ruled by Communists and other leftists, the self-proclaimed messiahs of the oppressed, no OBC or SC/ST has been anywhere near power.
Now that is a truly explosive statement. In other words, Ashis Nandy, a sociologist and a leftist himself, in stating baldly, in so many words, that the Communists are die-hard casteists!
That is the dirty little secret of the leftists: Extreme bigotry and contempt for the subaltern. This has been nicely demonstrated in Kerala. The backbone of the Communists in Kerala are OBCs, especially from Malabar.
However, even though the Communists first came to power as long ago as 1957, they never made an OBC a chief minister until V S Achuthanandan in 2006, and that too only under protest.
The party bosses once got him defeated in a safe seat, and in 2006 they openly pushed forward a Muslim to checkmate VS's appointment as CM, after projecting him during the election as the CM candidate, which played a large part in their win in the first place.
If you consider that the OBCs are numerous, well-organised and relatively well-off, and this is what is done to them, we can imagine what is done to less assertive SC/ST groups. According to the Communists, the OBC/SC/ST's role is to be their hewers of wood and carriers of water, never leaders.
Thus we should not be in the least bit surprised about the attempted lynching of Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti. It merely shows us, yet again, that the leftists are the worst hypocrites around. The government should pay absolutely no heed to their faked outrage and moral posturing.
Image: Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti greets President Pranab Mukherjee (not in photograph) after being sworn in as minister in the Narendra Modi government on November 9, 2014. Photograph: PTI Photo.
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