Verse 78: One should not associate with bad friends, nor with
the vile. One should associate with good friends, and with those who are
noble.

Verse 77: The man of
wisdom should admonish others; he should give advice and should prevent
others from doing wrong; such a man is held dear by the good; he is disliked
only by the bad.

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[ZESTCaste] Mayawati
rubbishes surveys showing BSP faring badly

Siddhartha Kumar
;

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_up-polls-mayawati-rubbishes-surveys-showing-bsp-faring-badly_1651579

VOICE OF SARVAJAN

Uttar Pradesh gears up for fourth phase of Assembly polls

Lucknow: Polling for the fourth phase of Uttar
Pradesh Assembly election covering 56 seats spread over 11 districts would be
held on Sunday that would decide the fate of three ministers, 32 sitting MLAs
and 12 former ministers.

More than
1.74 crore voters are expected to cast their vote to seal the fate of 967
candidates in the polling to be held in Hardoi, Unnao, Lucknow, Rae Bareli,
Farrukhabad, CSM Nagar, Kannauj, Banda, Chitrakoot, Fatehpur and Pratapgarh.

Stakes are high for ruling BSP for the
403 Assembly seats. This phase has  139 ‘crorepatis’.

The fourth phase would test
fate of several stalwarts and heavyweights including three ministers, 32
sitting MLAs, 12 former ministers.

Among
ministers while Urban development minister Nakul Dubey has shifted to Bakshi ka
Talab seat, Science and technology minister Abdul Mannan is re-contesting from
Sandila seat.

Chairman of
Housing and Development Board Achche Lal Nishad is in fray from Tindwari and
chairman of UP Agro Brijmohan Singh Kushwaha from Baberu seat.

Uttar pradesh Chief
Minister Mayawati will be addressing rally in Jalon and Jhansi

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[dhamma_voice]
UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA …WEB SITE…ARTICLE BY NAT GEOGRAPHY

JOYSINGHC@aol.com
;

Please add these two sites into the
latest E mail sent: the first one below has more material
 to make people stop and think of Indian government as the real problem..

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0306/feature1/

By Tom O’NeillPhotographs by William Albert Allard

Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling
excerpt.

The sins of Girdharilal Maurya are many, his attackers
insisted. He has bad kamma. Why else would he, like his ancestors, be born an
Untouchable, if not to pay for his past lives? Look, he is a leatherworker,
and Hindu law says that working with animal skins makes him unclean, someone
to avoid and revile. And his unseemly prosperity is a sin. Who does this
Untouchable think he is, buying a small plot of land outside the village?
Then he dared speak up, to the police and other authorities, demanding to use
the new village well. He got what Untouchables deserve.

One night, while Maurya was
away in a nearby city, eight men from the higher Rajput caste came to his
farm. They broke his fences, stole his tractor, beat his wife and daughter,
and burned down his house. The message was clear: Stay at the bottom where
you belong.

* * * * * *

To be born a Hindu in India
is to enter the caste system, one of the world’s longest surviving forms of
social stratification. Embedded in Indian culture for the past 1,500 years,
the caste system follows a basic precept: All men are created unequal. The
ranks in Hindu society come from a legend in which the main groupings, or varnas,
emerge from a primordial being. From the mouth come the Brahmans—the priests
and teachers. From the arms come the Kshatriyas—the rulers and soldiers. From
the thighs come the Vaisyas—merchants and traders. From the feet come the
Sudras—laborers. Each varna in turn contains hundreds of hereditary castes
and subcastes with their own pecking orders.

A fifth group describes the
people who are achuta, or untouchable. The primordial being does not
claim them. Untouchables are outcasts—people considered too impure, too
polluted, to rank as worthy beings. Prejudice defines their lives,
particularly in the rural areas, where nearly three-quarters of India’s
people live. Untouchables are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and
higher caste homes, made to eat and drink from separate utensils in public
places, and, in extreme but not uncommon cases, are raped, burned, lynched,
and gunned down.

Some believe in that only
human beings have soul. But the other living beings do not have. So that they
can do whatever they want to do with tose beings.

Here we have 1^st
rate, 2^nd rate, 3^rd rate 4^th rate and the
Panchamas without any soul. So that they are doing anything they wanted to do
with these untouchables and un seeables.

Get the whole story in the
pages of National Geographic
magazine.

India’s “Untouchables” Face Violence,
Discrimination

Hillary Mayell
for National Geographic News

June 2, 2003

More than 160 million people in India are
considered “Untouchable”—people tainted by their birth into a caste
system that deems them impure, less than human.

Human rights abuses against these people, known as
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST)s, are legion. A random sampling
of headlines in mainstream Indian newspapers tells their story: ” SC boy
beaten to death for plucking flowers”; ” SC tortured by cops for
three days”; ” SC ‘witch’ paraded naked in Bihar”; ” SC
killed in lock-up at Kurnool”; “7 SC/STs burnt alive in caste
clash”; “5 SC/STs lynched in Haryana”; ” SC woman
gang-raped, paraded naked”; “Police egged on mob to lynch SC/STs”.

” SC/STs
are not allowed to drink from the same wells, attend the same temples, wear
shoes in the presence of an upper caste, or drink from the same cups in tea
stalls,” said Smita Narula, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch,
and author of Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s
“Untouchables.” Human Rights Watch is a worldwide activist
organization based in New York.

India’s
Untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and live in constant fear of
being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by
upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through
an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense.

Nearly 90
percent of all the poor Indians and 95 percent of all the illiterate Indians
are SC/STs, according to figures presented at the International SC/ST
Conference that took place May 16 to 18 in Vancouver, Canada.

Crime Against SC/STs

Statistics
compiled by India’s National Crime Records Bureau indicate that in the year
2000, the last year for which figures are available, 25,455 crimes were
committed against Dalits. Every hour two Dalits are assaulted; every day three
Dalit women are raped, two SC/STs are murdered, and two SC/ST homes are
torched.

No one
believes these numbers are anywhere close to the reality of crimes committed
against SC/STs. Because the police, village councils, and government officials
often support the caste system, which is based on the religious teachings of
Hinduism, many crimes go unreported due to fear of reprisal, intimidation by
police, inability to pay bribes demanded by police, or simply the knowledge
that the police will do nothing.

“There
have been large-scale abuses by the police, acting in collusion with upper
castes, including raids, beatings in custody, failure to charge offenders or
investigate reported crimes,” said Narula.

That same
year, 68,160 complaints were filed against the police for activities ranging from
murder, torture, and collusion in acts of atrocity, to refusal to file a
complaint. Sixty two percent of the cases were dismissed as unsubstantiated; 26
police officers were convicted in court.

Despite the
fact that untouchability was officially banned when India adopted its
constitution in 1950, discrimination against SC/STs remained so pervasive that
in 1989 the government passed legislation known as The Prevention of Atrocities
Act. The act specifically made it illegal to parade people naked through the
streets, force them to eat feces, take away their land, foul their water,
interfere with their right to vote, and burn down their homes.

Since then,
the violence has escalated, largely as a result of the emergence of a
grassroots human rights movement among SC/STs to demand their rights and resist
the dictates of untouchability, said Narula.

Lack of Enforcement, Not Laws

Enforcement
of laws designed to protect SC/STs is lax if not non-existent in many regions
of India. The practice of untouchability is strongest in rural areas, where 80
percent of the country’s population resides. There, the underlying religious
principles of Hinduism dominate.

Hindus
believe a person is born into one of four castes based on karma and
“purity”—how he or she lived their past lives. Those born as Brahmans
are priests and teachers; Kshatriyas are rulers and soldiers; Vaisyas are
merchants and traders; and Sudras are laborers. Within the four castes, there
are thousands of sub-castes, defined by profession, region, dialect, and other
factors.

Untouchables
are literally outcastes; a fifth group that is so unworthy it doesn’t fall
within the caste system.

Although
based on religious principles practiced for some 1,500 years, the system
persists today for economic as much as religious reasons.

Because they
are considered impure from birth, Untouchables perform jobs that are
traditionally considered “unclean” or exceedingly menial, and for
very little pay. One million SC/STs work as manual scavengers, cleaning
latrines and sewers by hand and clearing away dead animals. Millions more are
agricultural workers trapped in an inescapable cycle of extreme poverty,
illiteracy, and oppression.

Although
illegal, 40 million people in India, most of them SC/STs, are bonded workers,
many working to pay off debts that were incurred generations ago, according to
a report by Human Rights Watch published in 1999. These people, 15 million of
whom are children, work under slave-like conditions hauling rocks, or working
in fields or factories for less than U.S. $1 day.

Crimes Against Women

SC/ST women
are particularly hard hit. They are frequently raped or beaten as a means of
reprisal against male relatives who are thought to have committed some act
worthy of upper-caste vengeance. They are also subject to arrest if they have
male relatives hiding from the authorities.

A case
reported in 1999 illustrates the toxic mix of gender and caste.

A 42-year-old
SC woman was gang-raped and then burnt alive after she, her husband, and two
sons had been held in captivity and tortured for eight days. Her crime? Another
son had eloped with the daughter of the higher-caste family doing the
torturing. The local police knew the SC family was being held, but did nothing
because of the higher-caste family’s local influence.

There is very
little recourse available to victims.

A report
released by Amnesty International in 2001 found an “extremely high”
number of sexual assaults on SC/ST women, frequently perpetrated by landlords,
upper-caste villagers, and police officers. The study estimates that only about
5 percent of attacks are registered, and that police officers dismissed at
least 30 percent of rape complaints as false.

The study also
found that the police routinely demand bribes, intimidate witnesses, cover up
evidence, and beat up the women’s husbands. Little or nothing is done to
prevent attacks on rape victims by gangs of upper-caste villagers seeking to
prevent a case from being pursued. Sometimes the policemen even join in, the
study suggests. Rape victims have also been murdered. Such crimes often go
unpunished.

Thousands of
pre-teen SC/ST girls are forced into prostitution under cover of a religious
practice known as devadasis, which means “female servant of
god.” The girls are dedicated or “married” to a deity or a
temple. Once dedicated, they are unable to marry, forced to have sex with
upper-caste community members, and eventually sold to an urban brothel.

Resistance and Progress

Within India,
grassroots efforts to change are emerging, despite retaliation and intimidation
by local officials and upper-caste villagers. In some states, caste conflict
has escalated to caste warfare, and militia-like vigilante groups have conducted
raids on villages, burning homes, raping, and massacring the people. These
raids are sometimes conducted with the tacit approval of the police.

In the
province Bihar, local SC/STs are retaliating, committing atrocities also.
Non-aligned SC/STs are frequently caught in the middle, victims of both groups.

“There
is a growing grassroots movement of activists, trade unions, and other NGOs
that are organizing to democratically and peacefully demand their rights,
higher wages, and more equitable land distribution,” said Narula.
“There has been progress in terms of building a human rights movement
within India, and in drawing international attention to the issue.”

In August
2002, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UN CERD)
approved a resolution condemning caste or descent-based discrimination.

“But at
the national level, very little is being done to implement or enforce the
laws,” said Narula.

Most
unfortunately a few scribes and media including the western ones are supporting
the oppressors rather than the oppressed.

The above
authors and the media have missed how Ms Mayawati the Uttar Pradesh Chief
Minister is being discriminated just for the simple reason that she is an
untouchable. Most of them are paid news. They just don’t tolerate an
untouchable becoming the Prime Minister of PraBuddha bharath. And they have
also how the SC/ST employees from Group A to D and the contract labourers are
being ill treated in State, Central, Public Sector Undertakings. Permanent
nature of jobs of Protectors of the lives of living beings are given to
contractors to make money depriving permanent salaries to them. People have
died while working in manholes. Whenever a SC/ST employee becomes elegible for
his promotion he uis being falsely charge sheeted to help an upper caste
employee, because he does not come under the category of reservation. Most of
the cases booked under Lokayukta are against SC/STs.

Some people believe in Souls for Human Beings and that other living beings have no souls, so that they can torchure them.

Where
as here we have 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th rate souls and panchamas (who follow
Pancasila)or the untouchables without any soul, so that they can
torchure them

That is the reason why Dr BR
Ambedkar took back these aboriginals to their original homes i.e., the
Buddhism. Manyawar Kanshiram followed the same path. Now Ms Mayawati is
following the same path. The only hope and solution of the nation is Ms Mayawati becoming
the Prime Minister of Jambudvipa i.e., the Great PraBuddha Bharath with her
highly promising best and meritorious governance following the policy of
Sarvajan Hithay Sarvajan Sukhay i.e., for the peace,happiness and welfare of
the entire people.

Ms
Mayawati a Ssheduled Caste Untouchable is going to become the Chief Minister
for the 5^th time and ultimately the next Prime Minister of PraBuddha
Bharath because of her highly promising best and meritorious governence with
the policy of Sarvajan Hithay Sarvajan Sukhay i.e., for the peace, welfare and
happiness of the entire people.Hence she is given full protection. It is
because of this popularity she is unable to move as she wishes.

Mayawati’s seclusion were “exaggerated”.BSP’s top functionaries meet
Behenji once in four months. They don’t care if she interacts with them or not
because their job is to propagate her achievements and her safety.

Jagatheesan Chandrasekharan

Bhara Khuni Maaf!

Congress is aware of the fact that it is going to
loose the elections. Hence the leaders started violating the Model Code of
Conduct and then say sorry. Bhara Khooni Maaf!

Congress is not cooperating with the Aam Aadhmi. The UP
elections will prove this.  Congress
government in the Centre and States is not for the common man in its efforts to
bring back the nation back on the path of developmemt and progress.

Lakhs of crores of rupees of tax payers are not reaching the
common man.But it is distributed to a hanful of rich people leading to price
rise, due to misgovernance and overlooking the common man’s problems. Manmohan
singh’s government will face the condemnation in UP election by the rejection
of congress by the very same common man.

Earlier it was merit mantra now it is development mantra.

The congress and the BJP condemn SC/STs in the name merit and
development mantras.But the broad minded Sarvajan Samaj of Uttar Pradesh will
strengthen the elephants of Ms Mayawati’s BSP and would make her the Prime
Minister for the real progress of the nation, because of  equal distribution of wealth for social
transformation and economic emancipation through the policy of Sarvajan Hithay
Sarvajan Sukhay i.e., for the peace, happiness and welfare of the entire
people.Ms Mayawati has made politics sacred with her highly promising best and
meritorious governance by uniting all sections of the society and brought in equality.
Where as the Congress, BJP and SP are dividing the society in the name of caste
and religion for the sake of votes. They will fail.

EC issues notice to Beni Prasad for sub-quota speech

The Election Commission on Saturday issued notice to Union steel
minister Beni Prasad Verma over his remarks on sub-quota for minorities,
holding that prima facie it was a violation of the Model Code of Conduct and
sought his reply by Monday evening.

Verma is the
second Union minister after law minister Salman
Khurshid who has been issued notice from the poll body for poll code violation
over the sub-quota remarks.

The Commission,
which examined the video recordings of Verma’s speech at a rally in Farrukhabad
in UP, said it “is prima facie satisfied” that the steel minister,
“by making the aforesaid statements, has violated the aforesaid provisions
of the Model Code of Conduct”.

The EC notice further
states, “It is evident from the above statements of Shri Beni Prasad Verma
that he was well aware that by making such utterances, he was violating the
model code of conduct and yet he deliberately and wilfully did the same.”

The Commission asked Verma
to explain his position by 5 PM on February 20, as to why action should not be
taken against him for violating the provisions of Model Code of Conduct.

In case Verma fails to
reply to the notice, the EC will decide the matter without any further
reference to him, the notice said.

Sources said the Election
Commission had taken serious note of his comments, particularly for daring the
poll body to take action against him.

While addressing a poll
rally on Wednesday night in Farukkabad in the presence of Congress general
secretary Digvijay Singh and Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid, Beni had said,
“Reservation for Muslims will be increased and if the EC wants, it can now
issue a notice to me.”

Verma said in Lucknow
today that his remarks were not intentional and were a slip of tongue.

“I have been
addressing four to five rallies everyday and sometimes I fail to pay attention
that in which reference I am saying something,” Verma said, adding he
respected the Election Commission and every person should do so.

The EC notice states
further that since the Model Code of Conduct for political parties and
candidates is in force since December 24, where it is laid down that
“there shall be no appeal to caste or communal feelings for securing
votes.”

It also stated that
“the Party in power whether at the Centre or in the State or States
concerned, shall ensure that no cause is given for any complaint that it has
used its official position for the purpose of its election campaign.”

Besides, the Mode code also
seeks to ensure that “Ministers and other authorities shall not announce
any financial grants in any form or promises thereof, which may have the effect
of influencing the votes in favour of the party in power.”

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[Arkitect India] BJP’s
Team B: The mask is off. Anna Hazare and his lieutenants are batting for the
BJP / Open Magazine

Arun Khote ;

Open Magazine

BJP’s Team B

The mask is
off. Anna Hazare and his lieutenants are batting for the BJP

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/bjp-s-team-b

BY
Dhirendra K Jha

On
30 October last year, when Mohan Bhagwat claimed that Anna Hazare’s
anti-corruption movement was actually supported by the RSS, the remark conveyed
palpable nervousness and attracted criticism from Team Anna. Three months
later, as Team Anna launches its voters’ awareness campaign in UP, there is not
even an attempt to keep its secular mask intact.

The
mask, in fact, fell off at the very first stop that Team Anna made in the state
to remind prospective voters of their duties in the upcoming Assembly polls. It
happened on 2 February at Fatehpur subdivision of Barabanki district, the spot
that marked the beginning of the voters’ awareness campaign in the state by the
lieutenants of Anna Hazare, and repeated itself through much of the first
leg—four rallies, the last on the evening of 3 February at Basti—of Team Anna’s
campaign. Kiran Bedi led Team Anna through this leg of the campaign, and the dais
was set directly, in three out of four places, by the RSS.

To
begin with, the public meeting at Fatehpur was a typical RSS show. Rakesh Kumar
Premil, the man who led the local group organising the entire event, has been a
prominent member of the local unit of the Sangh Parivar. “Hindus must be
aroused to fight against corruption,” he told Open. Premil is known in
Fatehpur for his aggressive Hindutva ideology. During the late 1990s and early
2000s, he was president of the Shiv Sena’s Fatehpur unit. Later, he formed an
NGO, Manav Utkarsha Sewa Sansthan, and started working under this banner. The
banners of this NGO were prominent at the Mahadev Talab ground, where Kiran
Bedi, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, Gopal Rai and some other members of Team
Anna addressed their first public meeting. Ably assisting Premil was Ram Kumar
Yadav, a local quack who is also the president of the Fatehpur unit of the
Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, the farmers’ wing of the RSS.

According
to Premil, about 50 volunteers from outfits like the Manav Utkarsha Sewa
Sansthan, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and Rashtra Bhakta Vichar Manch, with known if
not professed leanings towards the RSS, worked day and night for almost a week
to make this event a success. Some of the volunteers, who had come all the way
from Agra, belonged to Jai Kali Kalyan Samiti, another NGO with professed
Hindutva leanings. No less significant was the role played by teachers and
students—they were present in numbers to swell the crowds—of various branches
of Saraswati Shishu Mandir, schools run directly by the RSS in and around
Fatehpur, as well as those controlled by Sangh sympathisers, including Sai Usha
Montessori High School, Glorious Public School and Rabindranath Tagore Senior
Secondary School.

If
the RSS set the stage at Fatehpur and gathered the crowds, the speakers of Team
Anna did the rest. Though members of the Team asserted that they had not come
to tell voters who they should vote for, their categorical attack on
“corruption” in the Congress, “criminalisation” of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and
“misgovernance” by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and high praise for the BJP
government in Uttarakhand for bringing in a “really strong Lokayukta Bill” in
the state left no doubt in the minds of listeners who they were being asked to
vote to the new UP Assembly.

Also,
while members of Team Anna spoke, their volunteers distributed a
leaflet—containing a 13-point ‘letter of oath’—to prospective voters. The
‘letter’ is an exhortation to the electorate to obtain 13 pledges from the
contesting candidate before committing their vote. The first pledge in the
‘letter of oath’, quoting Swami Vivekanand, invokes an idea of India that today
only the RSS will endorse: ‘…that I am a citizen of India and every citizen is
my brother. Indians are my life and Indian gods and goddesses my divinities.
India and its society are the swing of my childhood, the garden of my youth, my
sacred heaven and the Kashi of my old age. The soil of India is my highest
heaven. My welfare lies in the welfare of India. And this whole life I will
chant, day and night—O, Gaurinath, O, Jagdambe, make me more humane and take
away my weaknesses and unmanliness.’ It is inconceivable for a non-Hindu to
take this oath.

The
remaining 12 points in the ‘letter of oath’ are no less absurd, if not so
religiously charged. They prod voters to obtain a commitment from contesting
candidates that they would never sit in an AC room and remove ACs from their
residences, that they would never travel in a luxury car but always in hooded jeeps,
that they would never keep a driver and would drive their jeeps themselves—and,
surprise, surprise, would always support the passage of the Jan Lokpal Bill.
There are many other points in this one-page ‘letter of oath’ that point to a
simple thing—the anti-corruption agitation of Anna Hazare has gone nuts.

It
was hard to miss the farce at Fatehpur. Nearly half the 2,000-odd present at
the Mahadev Talab ground were children, most of them from local Saraswati
Shishu Mandirs, who had come in their school uniforms and are clearly not yet
eligible to vote. When Kiran Bedi, speaking after other members of Team Anna
had delivered their speeches, asked “voters” in the crowd to raise their hands,
the ones that shot up instantaneously belonged to schoolchildren. Those who
might be eligible to vote didn’t even get Bedi’s instructions immediately, and
by the time they realised this, it had become too awkward to obey. Bedi,
apparently unfazed by all this, went on: “See, how voters are responding to
Anna’s call. Now all of you stand up and swear with me that we will never vote
for the corrupt.” This time nearly everyone responded, but the schoolkids were
again the most eager.

That
was the first voters’ awareness rally of Team Anna, which left Fatehpur as soon
as Kiran Bedi had finished her monologue around 2.30 pm on 2 February. The next
destination was Gonda, about 140 km away from Fatehpur. Here the meeting began
at 4 pm at the Ramlila Maidan in the heart of town, though the cavalcade of
Team Anna reached slightly behind schedule. The farce was repeated here too. So
was the silent message, though members of Team Anna continued to maintain that
they were not foisting a political choice on prospective voters. As in
Fatehpur, the organisers of the event at Gonda too had among them a generous
peppering of the Hindutva brigade. The chief organiser of Team Anna’s voters’
awareness rally at Gonda, Dr Dilip Shukla, is a known RSS face in the area.
Once again, the lieutenants of Anna Hazare set about their task in earnest—ripping
apart Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Digvijaya Singh and many
others, besides SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and BSP leader Mayawati. Once
again they maintained a calculated silence vis-à-vis the saffron party. When
they spoke of the BJP, they didn’t fail to mention the “strong” Lokayukta Bill
brought in by the BJP government in Uttara khand. And as they concluded the
meeting, once again, they left no doubt in the minds of those present who Team
Anna would have them vote for.

By
the time they reached the Gulab Bari ground at Faizabad, around 1 pm on 3
February, Team Anna’s language had acquired the subtlest change in inflection.
Here, they started off with the need to change the present system so that
farmers, labourers and the unemployed could get their due, before returning to
the familiar theme of bashing every other party save the BJP. Praise for the
Uttarakhand BJP government’s “strong” Lokayukta bill was now a little subdued;
there was mild criticism too of the party’s UP state unit for not yet promising
voters that they would follow Uttarakhand’s example. But only the envelope had
changed, the message hadn’t—by the time the Faizabad leg concluded, Team Anna
had left voters here in no doubt which way they leant. ‘Don’t vote for the BJP
till it promises you a strong Lokayukta in your state’ was another way of
saying ‘vote the BJP if it does’.

The
reasons for Team Anna’s restraint in Faizabad are not hard to figure. Unlike in
their previous stops at Fatehpur and Gonda, the rally at Faizabad was organised
mainly by those who have for long been associated with the Left and Dalit
politics in the region—names like Gopal Krishna Verma, who led the group that
organised the rally at Faizabad, and team members Arvind Murty, Nitin Kumar
Mishra and Vinod Singh, among others. The presence on the dais of Tariq
Sayeed—a senior member of the local intelligentsia and head of the Urdu
department of KS Saket PG College, Ayodhya—who presided over the public meeting
at Faizabad, may have been a deterrent for members of Team Anna and forced them
to be less deferential to the BJP than in the previous two meetings.

Their
restraint notwithstanding, most members of Team Anna were silent on the threat
of communalism. Only one of them, Mufti Shamoom Kazmi, underlined the need to
fight communal politics. “Ayodhya means the place where no one fights, but some
politicians of a particular party have tried to damage Hindu-Muslim unity in
the name of religion. We must not forget that we can fight against corruption
only if we remain one irrespective of our religious identities.”

Here,
too, Kiran Bedi created a flutter on the dais when she elbowed out stage
manager Arvind Murty, who wanted to call speakers to the mike in a prearranged
order. Bedi had ideas of her own, and when she grabbed the mike, Murty left the
dais in a huff. She proceeded to hold forth for half an hour, and by the time
former MP Ilyas Azmi, who was supposed to speak before her, began his address,
the crowd had begun to recede.

In
Basti a few hours later, the last stop of the first leg of the campaign, the
Anna anthem had been restored to its original fervour. Gone was the aberrant
restraint of Faizabad, most apparent in the speeches of Bedi and Sisodia. Only
three speakers of Team Anna—Sanjay Singh, Manish Sisodia and Kiran Bedi—spoke
here, and the meeting was wrapped up in less than an hour because some of the
Team’s leading lights had to catch a train to Delhi. “Rahul Gandhi says UP has
been looted for the past 21 years. He says if you give him a chance, he will
change the state in the next five years. Fact is, the Congress is in pain
because it has not been able to loot UP for the past 21 years. That’s what they
want to do now.” That was Sisodia. Bedi made a shorter speech here (remember
she had a train to catch), signing off with the now familiar reference to the
BJP government in Uttarakhand and its “strong” Lokayukta Bill.

As
for the organisers of the rally at Basti, the presence of the Sangh Parivar was
even more obvious here. Harishchandra Pratab Singh, an advocate and a key
figure in the local committee, has been district convenor of the Shri Rama
Janmabhoomi Mukti Sewa Samiti formed in the late 1980s and was one of the
leaders of its karsewak wing. He is a well-known Hindutva face in the district.

Even
the four-page message of Anna Hazare, distributed at all four stops, has a
clear pro-BJP bias. Anna’s message is a litany of charges, framed as questions
for Rahul Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati. For the sake of form, the
tail-end of the message has some questions for the BJP too, but they sound more
like exhortations to repeat what Team Anna sees as the party’s stellar
performance in Uttarakhand. There’s not a mention, for example, of the
corruption of the BJP government in Karnataka, nor its communal record in
Gujarat. So, while the pamphlet names P Chidambaram and Mulayam Singh and
Mayawati, it bestows no such honour on former Karnataka Chief Minister BS
Yeddyurappa or Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

When Anna Hazare sat on his first indefinite fast
at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in April last year, his proximity to the Sangh Parivar
was on show. Hindutva symbols were a feature of the stage decor.
Understandably, it drew flak from people then close to the movement but not
similarly inclined politically. When it still seemed important to take these
people along, as in Anna’s next show at the Ramlila Maidan, his lieutenants
tried to play down this association—Gandhi had now replaced ‘Bharat Mata’ as
stage backdrop. In UP, Anna and his henchmen were back to home base. In the
days to come, as the political battle rages in the state, Kiran Bedi and her
cohorts may continue to make a great deal of sound and fury. But it won’t
amount to much except this: Team Anna’s transformation into Team B of the BJP
is complete.
–
ARUN KHOTE
PMARC

From: Ritesh Manwatkar
To: “BuddhistCircle@yahoogroups.com”
Sent: Saturday, 18 February 2012 1:07 PM
Subject: Re: [The Buddhist Circle] Article in Loksatta

Congress
General Secretary Rahul Gandhi tearing away the manifesto of a political
during his public meeting in Uttar Pradesh, the entire episode is  undemocratic.

He has  now become a senior member of the party. And to tear apart,
the opposition’s manifesto in public is not a democratic tradition. However, if
he has done it, it is his concern.

Rahul Gandhi had on Wednesday tore a piece of paper at an
election meeting to drive home the point that ‘’mere lists'’ of assurances were
of no use.

The Congress is being involved in the National Rural Health
Mission (NRHM) scam.

“A lot of skeletons are still going to
come out. The larger issue is, what
about the liability of Congress itself as a Chief Ministers in the
states it ruled  and also of BJP because the entire scam extends to last
about 7-8 years, we all know it, is spreading into 50 billion rupees.

The NRHM scam inthe states ruled by Congress and BJP has turned murkier.

      
Inflation was bound to rise as a Congress minister committed scam of Rs 1.76 lakh crore.

      
The BJP leaders had
nothing to do with the common man and blame BSP for spending  Rs 600 on installing
statues of SC/ST/OBC icons which has created history of the common man, since
they cannot tolerate this.

BJP had
indirectly supported Congress in not bringing the lokpal bill despite the scams
and price rise. In fact the Congress and the BJP are the two sides of the same
coin. One is A team and the other B team.

      
SP supremo Mulayam
Singh Yadav’s flip flop over supporting Congress in post-poll Uttar Pradesh. This
tendency of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav showed he has accepted defeat even before the results are out.

     
There was a hidden
understanding between Congress and Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh
which has been exposed by Mulayam Singh Yadav accidentally. Mulayam Singh Yadav
has exposed it by talking about extending support to Congress That by saying
such things, the SP supremo has admitted to the fact that the BSP was on its
way to form the government.

This is the traditional way of divide and rule policy of the
BJP. The BJP had ruled in the Centre and many states including Madhya Pradesh.
Have they created memorial for the birth place of Dr Ambedkar in MHOW? They
should have created memorials throughout the country for Lord Buddha, Sahu
Maharaj, Mahatma Phule, Narayan Guru, Periyar Rama swamy Naikar,Manyawar
Kanshiram, Ravidas, a cobbler, Kabir, a weaver who is
highly regarded by Koris, Raja Bijli Pasi, Jhalkari Bai Kori, a key associate
of Rani Jhansi, Uda Devi, a Khatik, and sage Valmiki, a local Valmiki icon,”
said BJP national spokesperson and SC
leader Ramnath Kovind.who is a election time SC leader like curry
leaf like use and throw leader.Let them keep statues in their RSS head quarters
and BJP HQs along with their inner circle leaders.That way they can do good to
the nation.

      
http://in.mg50.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=a867fhla4dksv

     
From:
Abhijit Sengupta
To: Int’l Human Rights
Organization ; media monitor
; samukhya@yahoogroups.com
Cc: ananya dasgupta
; ananya.1968@gmail.com
Sent: Saturday, 18 February 2012
1:41 AM
Subject: [IHRO] Most Indian
children are underweight

      
http://in.mg50.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=a867fhla4dksv

[IHRO]
India is shining? ~ Joarder

Hide Details

FROM:

·        
Abhijit
Sengupta

TO:

·        
Int’l Human
Rights Organization

·        
media
monitor  

·        
samukhya@yahoogroups.com
 

CC:

·        
ananya.1968@gmail.com
 

Message flagged

Saturday, 18 February 2012 1:17 AM

 The ruling Castes that are ruling this country for the last 65 years are responsible for all the above happenings.

Prime
Minister Manmohan’s government misused funds meant for SC/STs in the CWG as
well as neglecting development of the entire people in general and SC/STs in
particular. In all the Government jobs back logs were not filled. Permanent
nature of jobs have been handed over to contractors and large number of
SC/STs/OBCs/minorities are working as contract labourers.Privatisation has
deprived SC/STs/OBCs/Minorities getting govt. jobs. In the name of the so
called merit they are denied jobs.

Congress and
BJP in many states are facing allegations of corruption.

The Central
government is misusing the tax payers money for the benefit of the rich and the
common man is facing price rise and all other difficulties.