Barely a week after cricketer Mohammad Shami was attacked by Muslim fundamentalists for sharing picture of his wife in sleeveless dress on Facebook, another cricketer Mohammad Kaif is now facing criticism for sharing a picture of him doing Surya Namaskar – a yoga pose – on Twitter.
Surya Namaskar has been attacked by Muslim fundamentalists earlier too, who consider it a form of idol worship, even though yoga gurus term it a physical exercise. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which is fighting to retain the triple talaq practice, had termed the yogic pose against Islam.
And this is why when Mohammad Kaif shared a picture of him doing this yogic aasan as a fitness lesson, he received some unsolicited advice from the fundamentalists:
@MohammadKaif why u compormise ur religion only for publicity stand strongly on ur religion Allah will give u respect.
Earlier, Kaif had supported Shami and spoken up against such fundamentalist thinking. This time too, he hinted that he didn’t care about such comments:
UPDATE: Appears that Kaif thought to play it safe before bodies like AIMPLB or some Maulana issues a fatwa, so he clarified that he had “Allah” at his heart while doing Surya Namaskar:
In all 4pics,I had Allah in my heart.
Cant understand what doing any exercise,
Surya Namaskar or Gym has to do with religion.It benefits ALL pic.twitter.com/exq5pUclvu
As Dhulagarh burnt on 13th December, there was another incident at Tehata – an area not far away from Dhulagarh – that failed to make news just like most of the communal skirmishes in West Bengal this year.
On 16th December, the Teacher-in-charge of Tehatta High School in Howrah district of West Bengal wrote a letter to the Uluberia police station apprising them of a tense situation building up. The letter revealed that some students of 9th and 10th standard of the school aided by outsiders, who were influenced by some local Islamic fundamentalists, had entered the school campus and forcibly celebrated Nabi Diwas (Birthday of Prophet Mohammed) on 13th December without taking permission from the school authorities.
Teacher-in-charge’s letter to the police
According to reports, those who entered the school premises forcibly, roughed up students and teachers, and also hoisted green Islamic flags atop the building. This forcible outside intervention in the functioning of the school led to school staff feeling insecure and communal tensions in the locality, thereby resulting in the school needing to be kept shut. This hampered the form fill-up of 10th standard students, who have to appear for board exams.
This report by Eenadu dated 20th December sheds more light on the incident. The report suggests that after staying closed for 7 days, the school was allowed to reopen only after the assurance that Nabi Diwas would be celebrated. A meeting took place between the administration, school authorities and representatives of Islamic groups. They agreed to a 15-min celebration of the religious event and removal of religious flags hoisted on the school building.
It appears that the protesters had argued that birthday of Prophet Mohammad should be celebrated on school premises because Saraswati Puja is celebrated. However, the school teachers explained that Saraswati Puja was celebrated because of age old tradition where goddess of learning has been worshiped in educational institutes. It was more of a cultural celebration than religious.
It should be noted that no other Hindu festival, not even Durga Puja that is celebrated widely in the state, are celebrated in government schools. However, the protesters were not convinced and they demanded that Nabi Diwas must be celebrated on the school premises. Rallies demanding the same were held in the area, declaring the teacher-in-charge of the school a “coward who ran to the police”:
The gravity of the situation can be realized after listening to the speech in the above video, reportedly from the same area. The leader is seen whipping up communal sentiments after claiming that no police force can stop them. In fact, he boasts that the OC of the police station called him up and asked him to forgive the teachers.
Not just that, the leader claims that even if Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee came there, they will not relent in their demands as they are united for their prophet and for Allah. He further gives a veiled threat to the teacher-in-charge that he may escape the net (by going to the police) but will not escape the pond (he has to live among these people only).
And it appears that the leader addressing the crowd in the video was right; their demands were met as per the Eenadu report above, and Nabi Diwas was agreed upon to be celebrated on the campus.
Now this could open up a Pandora’s Box with Islamic groups all over the state, especially in the areas with considerable Muslim population, demanding such religious celebrations on government school campuses. Not just that, other religious groups may also demand similar provisions to celebrate their festivals on school premises. Or will it lead to Saraswati Puja being banned from government schools to preserve communal harmony?
Just last evening the desi Game of Thrones in the Samajwadi Party’s Yadav family looked like it was culminating with father Mulayam expelling his eldest son and UP CM Akhilesh from the party for the period of 6 years. He also sent his cousin Ram Gopal Yadav who was in the Akhilesh camp, packing.
Just when one thought that Mulayam was King of the World after defeating his foes, TV Today’s Rahul Kanwal stepped in with a leaked email. It was also tweeted three days earlier by another account:
The alleged email dated 24th July was sent by SP’s political consultant Steve Jarding, who wrote to his alleged friend Adwait Singh, a former student at Harvard stating that and we quote (emphasis ours):
“On the media push front, my two cents are to advice Yadav Sr to orchestrate family feud scenario. Implicate the uncle consolidate Yadav Jr’s clean image and project as future head of the party.”
The rest of the alleged mail talks about Jarding’s other agendas. Jarding has previously worked for Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Spanish PM Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
The timeline of the event also fits if this indeed is the real email correspondence between SP’s political adviser and his friend. Even though Jarding’s appointment as political adviser was officially confirmed on 18th September, as stated by him in an interview he gave, the meeting between Akhilesh and him was first set up in June. So if he and Akhilesh first met in June, the family feud drama might have been one of his initial ideas as evident by this alleged email dated 24th June.
Also the whole feud began when somewhere in August when Shivpal Yadav threatened to resign alleging rampant corruption in the Uttar Pradesh government. This rift further deepened when Akhilesh removed Principle secretary Deepak Singhal in September.
If we are to believe this email that the plot was hatched somehwere in June or July, the family could have got a good one or two months to plan their moves. Also the advice to implicate Uncle too rings true as just Mulayam stated Ram Gopal Yadav was ruining Akhilesh’s future
Prof Ram Gopal Yadav is finishing chief minister @yadavakhilesh‘s future: Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav
Interestingly in the same interview Jarding was asked about the family feud.
How will you handle the feud in the Samajwadi Party family?
My experience is that most people know family matters are just that, “family matters”, and that they are normally worked out within family members who at the end of the day love each other regardless of differences… Families normally work through their differences and move on and that is as it should be and that is what I believe will happen here
We had also speculated that all this could be a fixed match in our report on UP elections. Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’s grand family reunion ending might just get topped by the Yadav clan this new year!
Adwait Singh, who is mentioned in the email and is Jarding’s colleague and deputy director of the company, Steve and Partners, though has denied ever having such an e-mail exchange. “The email is a fake released with the intention of making trouble in a party when it is already caught up in an internal family feud. First, Steve only began working with CM Akhilesh Yadav from August this year, while this email appears to have been written on July 24.”
Rahul Kanwal too, who had tweeted the email out, now says Steve Jarding has denied the email:
‘Those threatened by @yadavakhilesh impeccable credentials are spreading canards.’ CM’s advisor Steve Jarding denies he sent out the mail
Our website is barely two years old and we are still a small team, albeit hopeful of growth in the new year as we are now part of the Swarajya media group. We hope to continue receiving support from you as will keep our focus on mainstream media bias.
On an average, we published just around 10-12 articles per week in these two years, while other media houses publish thousands of articles, and yet we could create an impact thanks to your support.
These are the top 10 articles that you helped go viral and made them the most read this year. You can click on the preview images or the link below the images to read the respective articles:
1. 10 rumours related to demonetisation that you might have believed as true
Demonetisation was the buzzword of 2016, undoubtedly. It surely helped a lot of media organisations push up their TRPs as people needed to know what happens to their cash. But they also needed to know what not to believe, and for that OpIndia.com was there. Our top post was about top rumours related to demonetisation:
2. Why Indian media is against Arnab but India isn’t
The other newsmaker of 2016 was Arnab Goswami, who first went ballistic over ‘bharat tere tukde honge’ gang and then left his channel to announce his own venture. While the establishment media may hate Arnab, most people loved him. And that reflected in the traffic to our website too, with the following post – explaining why the common man was with Arnab – being the second most read article of the year:
3. An open letter to Rajdeep “IAmAntiNational” Sardesai
While Arnab was singing the nationalist tune, his detractors declared themselves “Anti-National”. The one doing it proudly was Rajdeep Sardesai. His rants were responded by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, and that was our third most popular article of the year:
4. Exclusive: The exact reason why I&B Ministry recommended a token ban on NDTV India
This year also saw Pakistan backed terrorists launching attacks on our army camps. Media yet again faltered in their reporting of live terror situation. NDTV India was awarded a one day token ban, but the government of India could not show spine to stand by their own decision. Our exclusive article explaining why this one day ban was awarded to NDTV India got into the top 10 list:
5. THIS is why so many money launderers are getting caught. And it will only get worse
Demonetisation again. Apart from long queues outside banks and ATMs, what made news was daily raids and recoveries of suspected ill-gotten money by police and tax authorities. Surely not ‘achchhe din’ for money hoarders and launderers. Our article explaining why these guys were getting caught went viral:
6. Shocking: Rajdeep Sardesai loses cool, abuses Twitter users via Direct Message
Rajdeep Sardesai again. The angry young man (angry due to Madison Square scuffle he got into, and young due to standards set by our politicians) of Indian journalism got angry again and sent abusive Direct Messages to Twitter users. He later claimed his account was hacked, but didn’t appear to file any police complaint about this alleged cyber crime:
7. Meet the journalism student who almost lost his career for shouting anti-Barkha Dutt slogans
If Rajdeep is there twice, how can Barkha be behind? The angry young woman (refer to her countless threats about suing people on the social media) had once got angry with one journalism student who shouted slogans against her in public. We carried interview of that student, which was among our top read articles:
And Barkha Dutt again. 2016 also saw Barkha openly attacking Arnab and lobbying for support in her tirade against Arnab, whom she accused of trying to gag media. She further claimed that Arnab had painted all other journalists as anti-national and “terror sympathiser”. Stand-up comedian Nitin Gupta explained to Barkha, in his style, why she was not a terror sympathiser. And it went viral:
9. How the ‘intellectual mafia’ works every time there is terrorist attack
Terror attacks and media coverage was another much talked about issue this year. An article contributed by one of our readers, Prashant Jha, who observed how the Indian media and “intelligentsia” changes tune with passage of time after any terror attack was widely read. It was a perfect observation and analysis for channels like NDTV and their ecosystem, how they go from caring for the nation to attacking those who are singing nationalist tunes:
10. This guy has been replying to Rajdeep Sardesai’s tweets in style, and they’re hilarious
We get most of our traffic from the social media, and thus we keep a close eye on these platforms too. And we spotted a Twitter user “The Lying Lama” who was just killing it with his replies to some celebrity journalists. A collection of some of his best replies to Rajdeep Sardesai was one of the most read and shared articles this year:
“More you sweat in peace, less you bleed in war” is an old saying and I had planned well.
As the 50-day deadline of the Demonetisation exercise neared, the cash crunch should have ended by now and everything should have been in place. This was the time when media would be hunting for the story, any story, on how people were still suffering and things were as bad as three weeks back. And I wanted to be the story. Accordingly, I planned my trip.
I had chosen a time when tourist crowds would be huge, creating a seller’s market for hoteliers; Christmas weekend was ideal time. I had chosen a place which was in backyard of nowhere as far as communication facilities are concerned; Lavasa was ideal. I had not booked a hotel and confirmed before hand that most hotels were booked to capacity. And I had planned to reach there only later in the afternoon to reduce any chances of getting too many options.
The planning was meticulous; the execution had to be perfect.
We reached Lavasa around 4 PM and took the first trail leading to a hotel. The hotel had a board clearly stating that the credit / debit cards were not accepted there.
Luck is nothing but a designed consequence of perfect planning!
As the counter guy searched for the key to the room number 1, I stole a glance to the dashboard on his desk. The numbers from 2 to 9 were struck out, only number 1 was staring happily at me. This was the last room available.
Everything was working out! To the last detail!
We saw the room, liked it, accepted the tariff and told the manager about our cash crunch. The tariff was 4000 and total cash available in my pocket was 3000. After listening to an unsolicited advice about keeping sufficient cash, always, we paid an advance of 2000 and acknowledged the unstated threat of the manager that if we could not arrange the balance in cash by evening, we would need to vacate the room.
Perfect! Now only one last piece had to fall in place. The ATMs should not have cash.
As we sauntered to the waterfront, we found the first ATM shutter down. I was almost jumping with the joy of one whose dreams are close to coming true. As we walked towards the second ATM, I began visualizing the fame and celebrity status, the invites and interviews, the memberships and grants and everything else that would come my way, once the last piece fitted into place.
The subsequent turn of events was kind of automated, like a self-fulfilling prophesy coming true. Once the second ATM was found to be cashless, the hotel would evict us, and events would follow the script.
Once evicted, we would go to the riverfront, take a picture of four of us along with our suitcases, looking miserable, dishevelled and famished, shivering due to cold, sobbing & crying alternately but trying to comfort each other. I had carried a DSLR for this purpose; quality is important, you know.
It would begin with a tweet, “My cashless family forced to spend night on the footpath of Lavasa, starving, freezing in a winter night. #Demonetization is a success PM Modi?” It would be instantly retweeted by a couple of Chief Ministers, their followers, paid or unpaid, their supporters in media, both paid and unpaid.
By morning, media would have the story, running it as ‘Breaking News’, showing our picture and talking to us over phone, asking us about how we spent the night, how are we feeling now and our view on the disastrous economic policies of the government.
By afternoon, one Chief Minister would demand Prime Minister’s resignation, another CM would compare our current position with Nazi concentration camps. By evening, the quiz master turned politician would arrive in Lavasa to do a dharna in our support. Another CM would declare us as #Demonetization martyrs and announce a compensation of two lakhs.
By evening I would be a celebrity. And the real fun would begin then.
I would get a short cut to the cosy club of intellectuals, I would be invited to lecture in JNU, feted at Literature festivals, a book contract would be within reach.
One of the clicks from our Lavasa holiday
As I was contemplating the title and contents of the book I would write (or copy), striding purposefully towards the ATM, I was distracted by a conversation between my son and a younger kid at the games corner. “I would buy two tickets you want using my mobile wallet and you pay me the amount of Rs. 300 in cash. We have run out of cash and need it.” The kid agreed instantaneously and my son walked towards us proudly flaunting the three 100 rupee notes.
I was aghast! This wasn’t supposed to happen! People were supposed to fight each other in this situation, become enemies of those with cash, mock those without it but not help each other!
I was about to blame this incident on the innocence of the kid as my daughter walked up to a take away food-joint & told the person at cash register that she wanted to buy snacks worth Rs. 500 if he could swipe her debit card for Rs. 1500 and give her Rs. 1000 as cash. The counter boy agreed quickly and few seconds later, she walked back to us with one note of 500 (new) and five notes of Rs. 100!
My well laid plan was being blown to smithereens by my own family! They were hell-bent on changing my cashless status and crushing all my hopes and dreams!
While I was still in my grief-stricken state, my wife entered into shop selling creams, ointments, soaps and other things that they sell at tourist places. The purposefulness of her stride warned me that the ruins of my hopes were about to be subjected to another calamity and I followed her.
My nightmarish foreboding turned out to be true! Here too, the shopkeeper happily agreed to accept Rs 2000 through a mobile wallet while selling items worth Rs. 650.
Next hour or so, my family went around with the zeal of those fighting the scrooge of black money, converted the credit in cards and wallets into cash while they ate, shopped, played games and did what tourists do. By end of the evening, we had enough to pay hotel bill, in cash, and a lot more.
As I surrendered to the hopelessness and despondency of my shattered dreams, the astonishingly contrarian behaviour of the shopkeepers came back to trouble my mind. Since decades I had heard the oft-repeated saying, “90 out of 100 are corrupt but my India is great” and believed it. I always thought that the common man, especially the small businessman is corrupt or doesn’t care about corruption, doesn’t bother about colour of money, whether black or white, wants to avoid taxes, can resort to fraud or cheating when the opportunity offers itself.
But, here they were, having lost their business income over the last month or so due to cash crunch caused by demonetization, having stood in queues outside ATMs or Banks, only to deposit their hard-earned money or withdraw it, forced to shun the warmth of cash and adopt the cold cashlessness and unfamiliar technology, but still willing to go out-of-the-way to help a tourist who needed cash, without being legally or morally bound to do so, even waiving off the charges they would incur while encashing the credits they received.
Maybe what I had been taught about all Indians being corrupt was wrong.
Maybe, the inherent goodness of Indians had been covered by the black soot of a corrupt ecosystem that thrived in our beloved land and hence had become invisible. All it needed was one strong gust of wind, the wind of change, of a government with right intentions, to make the goodness start becoming visible, again, in patches though.
Some more scrubbing, washing & cleaning and this goodness can shine through.
Passing thought: Had I been a journalist, I could have crafted this story sitting on the couch at his my home, with a glass of scotch in my hand, hate in my heart and agenda on my mind. But alas! I am not a journalist and I had to live through this story to give it a life.
News has broken that PM Modi is planning to address the nation on New Year’s Eve. This will be his first address since the one he gave on November 8th wherein he announced demonetization. It would be delivered when 50 days of sacrifice which Modi had asked for ends and the country moves into a New Year. So naturally people reacted and speculations were rife as to what exactly Modi would announce this time round.
Here are some of the best we could find:
We know Modi likes to be a step ahead but this would be taking it to a whole new level
I am predicting that Modiji will cancel 2017 and directly make country move to 2018. https://t.co/ALzL7JBV5p
The last few days has seen powerful people attempting to stifle the freedom of the media, at least a section of it that attempted to differ from the usual mainstream narrative. Just a couple of days back an FIR was filed against Zee News for reporting on the Dhulagarh riots, and now a Congress leader took upon himself to complain about a journalist, whom he thought was not “friendly” to the party.
India Today journalist Shiv Aroor found himself on the wrong side of things after Congress leader and party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala called up the management of TV Today to complain about his supposed (political) “leanings”.
A little bit of a background. An abusive Twitter user Swati Chaturvedi has written a book about BJP using social media to target critics in an abusive way. India Today, like other media channels, decided to give her airtime. Shiv Aroor anchored a show that debated the allegations made in the book:
Although Twitter user Suresh Nakhua was invited as someone whom Swati Chaturvedi, an abusive troll herself, had termed an abusive troll, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi, who thinks Barkha Dutt is a pro-Narendra Modi, claimed that the panel had two BJP representatives. She later said that it was not a concern and sounded happy at the end of the show.
But appears that Congress was not happy that a show that should have simply maligned the BJP and its supporters, gave the opportunity to people to defend themselves. Senior leader of the party Randeep Surjewala appears to have called top management of the news channel to complain about Shiv Aroor.
This came to light after Shiv Aroor sent out the following tweets (now deleted) last night after the show was over and aired:
So Congress could not tolerate the fact that unlike other channels, say NDTV, India Today and Shiv Aroor tried to give the opportunity to those maligned by a book to defend themselves. This is not the media Congress is comfortable with, as the default “leaning” a journalist should have is pro-Congress.
Though Shiv Aroor proceeded to delete all these tweets – voluntarily or under pressure is not clear – this has exposed the intolerance Congress has to dissenting views and also their idea about how media should behave. After all when Priyanka Chaturvedi had declared that she had no problem with the choice of guests, why did Surjewala have to step in? Or did the orders came from Congress high command?
What’s more important is the fact that a systematic effort is being made by the Congress aligned establishment to stifle and discredit all those voices that go against their agenda. The book that Shiv Aroor was talking about in his show is a part of this Congress establishment thuggery. Earlier, another India Today journalist, Gaurav Sawant’s family was targeted by Congress aligned trolls. On another occasion, he too was forced to delete some tweets that did not align with Congress establishment’s views.
However, such arm-twisting and attack on dissent is never considered worthy of outrage or concern when the Congress indulges in this. Compare this with the chatter that was generated when Firstpost deleted an article critical of Arun Jaitley.
By now everyone is quite familiar with the deplorable reporting standards on NDTV. We have repeatedly exposed NDTV for their false and propaganda based news reports. NDTV’s anchor Nidhi Razdan too is a professional when it comes to lying.
Earlier, we had shown a video of Nidhi Razdan where she was caught off-guard while desperately tying to spin an argument, on her show Left, Right & Centre:
On Tuesday night, Nidhi Razdan was once again spotted parrotting a lie. It was a debate in which the focus was a “book” written by noted abusive social media troll turned lying journalist Swati Chaturvedi. The book talked about how according to Chaturvedi, BJP was directing and coordinating attacks on other social media users and establishments.
At one point of time, the debate veered to the issue of the Boycott Snapdeal movement, and it was alleged by Nidhi Razdan, working in tandem with Chaturvedi, that this was a movement backed by the BJP or even the Government. Razdan, at this point, chose to read out a passage from the book written by Chaturvedi, which quoted Defence Minister Parrikar as saying:
“….people have shown their power. An actor made this mistake….some of our people are very smart, there was a team working on this, they were telling people you order and return..”
The focus was on the word “our”, as Nidhi Razdan used this word to argue that it was either Parrikar’s or BJP’s or the Government’s team which was running this movement.
This video of Parrikar’s speech had originally surfaced in July 2016, and even then, a few media houses and journalists had used the words “our” team to create a furore. Even back then, we had written a detailed article with the original video and a transcript of the same, which showed that at no place in the video did Parrikar use the word “our” or any such synonym. He only stated that he was aware of a team working on this issue:
When this actor did this, the company for which he was advertising, was an online trading company. Many people broke relations with that their company. Many people quit from the lease, and some over smartpeople ordered goods and sent them back. There was a team, which I know, which was working on this. They were telling people you order and return it, this company should learn a lesson. That to pull out his advertisement.
Yet, Swati Chaturvedi, deliberately used a false quote in her book, Nidhi Razdan parroted the same, and then based a line of questioning exactly on this false quote. Firstly, can anyone trust a repeated liar like Swati Chaturvedi who has been called out multiple times with hard evidence? Secondly is this the standard of journalism practised by NDTV and Nidhi Razdan where they use false quotes to run their TV show?
It gets worse for Razdan, as in August itself, Barkha Dutt, Razdan’s senior, had clearly admitted on her show, that the defence minister never used the word “our” or “my” but referred to “a” team. We have pieced both the videos together:
Does this mean 2 of NDTV’s leading anchors have 2 different versions of the truth? Is this in line with another NDTV anchor who once famously said: “news is always subjective”? Or is it line with another top NDTV anchor who infamously sliced and diced an interview video, to present a picture which he wanted to? Can anyone take NDTV seriously anymore?
The Aam Aadmi Party has been under fire recently over mysteriously choosing to remove the list of donors from its website in June this year. The list was never put back despite the website declaring to the contrary.
First a Chanda Bandi agitation was launched by some former AAP supporters, then the Guru of AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, Anna Hazare wrote an emotional letter regarding the same issue. Now the issue has been joined by former AAP leader Yogendra Yadav. He has challenged AAP for a debate over the issue and is claiming that the party is running away from debate.
It was speculated that AAP was receiving more funds from “traditional” sources than public donation and hence it removed the list, but now new details are emerging. The party had received an IT notice, and now this is being seen as one of the reasons why the party removed the donors list.
According to documents accessed by Times Now, there were many donations over 20,000 rupees that were documented on AAP’s website, but the party had not reported those to the Election Commission of India (ECI), which is required as per existing rules.
The Income Tax departments sent summons to the party at least four times this year. Along with the summons, the IT department also attached the list of all the donations which were under IT scanner. But instead of providing the information, AAP removed the details of donations from their website!
Almost seven months have passed, but it still says “coming soon”.
AAP has been claiming that these were “inadvertent errors”. The party further boasts that it receives just 8% of its donations in cash thereby hinting that they have nothing to hide.
V gud idea. I fully agree. AAP receives less than 8% of its donations in cash against 70-80% cash donations by Cong-BJP https://t.co/q2cxCTkSZ3
If these were merely inadvertent errors, why even after almost 7 months now, the errors have not been corrected and the list is not back on the website? Furthermore, former party insider Yogendra Yadav claims that these errors were repeated:
AAP claims “inadvertent error” in list of donors given to EC.
Same “error” in 2013-14 and 2014-15?
“Error” around Rs.16 cr?
Do you buy this?
If AAP has nothing to hide by taking funds via digital means, why did the party not respond to the IT department even after 4 summons it received? Why did the party fail to notify the ECI about the donations above 20,000 rupees it had claimed to receive on its website? Were all those donations put up on the website bogus, so as to just make people believe about AAP’s transparency while the party was actually receiving funds from other sources? These questions remain unanswered as of now.
Sunderlal Patwa, the two-time Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister passed away today after a heart attack.
Patwa was amongst the first generation of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders who tasted power as the Congress party weakened in the aftermath of the 1975 Emergency. Like many others in this generation, Patwa learnt the ropes of running a government that hard way. This generation often criticized Congress leaders for lack of probity in personal and public life, but often fell short of the high standards set while in opposition, finding it tough to change the institutional political set up so tightly controlled by Congress since 1947.
Yet, Sunderlal Patwa and many of his generation were instrumental in creating an alternative to the Congress. In Patwa’s travails as Chief Minister, BJP found the organizational strength in Madhya Pradesh to build a strong counter to the Congress party. In Patwa’s successes and failures lay the foundations of the spectacular electoral run BJP has had in Madhya Pradesh since 1989 in Lok Sabha elections and later in the Assembly elections. Patwa, like his many Jan Sangh and BJP peers, was one of the architects of the modern day BJP, which is equipped to confidently govern learning from the experiences of men like Patwa.
Born in 1924 in Kukdeshwar, a small town in the North West corner of MP in Mandsaur district, Patwa was part of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh through 1940s. He joined the Jan Sangh in 1951 when it was established as a political party, and continued holding various positions in the set up till 1977. He was first elected to the MP assembly in 1957 and won three terms. In 1977, when the Janata Party came to power in the center and in various states deposing Congress, Patwa was included in the Working Committee of this multi-party coalition. He briefly served as the CM for a month in 1980, after Virendra Saklecha, another Mandsaur district leader, resigned from the post due to infighting within various Janata factions.
Patwa’s first term was cut short and President’s rule imposed after Janata coalition fell through in Delhi. Congress then returned to power in June 1980 and Patwa became the leader of the opposition in the assembly. It took ten years for the BJP to come back to power in Bhopal, and Patwa was sworn in as the first BJP CM of the state in March 1990.
This was an extremely turbulent political period for much of North India. The Mandal-Mandir politics was at its peak while the economic growth stuttered. Patwa brought much of the same approach to the office what Janata Party had done in Delhi in 1977. He started off by identifying administrative constituencies which were close to the institutional Congress set up and started dismantling them all at once with a missionary zeal.
In the first year of his rule, Patwa transferred nearly 50,000 government employees across the state. MP was then the largest state in India – Chhatisgarh was yet to be carved out – and widespread geographic movement at such a large scale created a lot of resentment in administrative circles. The previous Congress regimes under Arjun Singh, Motilal Vora, and Shyama Charan Shukla had all been notorious for running a transfer-posting industry. In a politically charged environment, where government employees were used to manage their own postings, this move almost immediately backfired on Patwa, with the administrative machinery coming to a grinding halt in many districts.
Unfazed, Patwa continued with his agenda and took up the mantle of cleaning up the encroachments in large cities in MP. He found a committed deputy in Babulal Gaur, then Law Minister and later to be the MP CM in the post-Patwa era. The duo proceeded to act on illegal encroachments in all large cities, especially focusing on Indore and Bhopal where the BJP had tasted its initial spectacular Lok Sabha success. Gaur was dubbed as Bulldozerlal by the local media and Madhu Dandavate, then Union Minister, apparently remarked on one of his MP visits that Gaur had made MP worse than Turkman Gate – a reference to the demolitions carried out in Delhi during the Emergency period.
Patwa was also accused of moving away from his characteristic soft and simple lifestyle when he organized a grand function for his father’s death anniversary. This function was attended by most state ministers and Patwa even managed to get the then Prime Minister VP Singh. India Today published a memorable picture of Patwa driving Singh personally in an open top vintage car to allege impropriety on part of Patwa. He also battled local BJP leaders who accused him of being too close to RSS ideology and being a remote control of the Sangh. In a surprise move, Patwa shot a long letter to a local newspaper Swadesh, otherwise friendly to the BJP, and made a counter accusation of the newspaper begging for government ads.
Amidst such factional wars and pressure from Congress directly in assembly and indirectly through the state government employees, Patwa continued to be on shaky grounds for much of his 33 month CM term. These controversies took the sheen away from what was his biggest achievement – clearing large MP cities of ghettos which had become nerve centers of communal riots.
From 1987 until 1993, several MP cities witnessed continuous rioting, violence, and communal strife. Many cities used to be under curfew for extended periods of time disrupting day to day life. The situation was especially bad in Indore in 1988 and 1989. As CM, Patwa asked Rakesh Asthana, the then Superintendant of Police (SP), Indore to deal with the rioters with a strong had. One of the key protagonists of rioting in Indore was Bala Beg, a local leader in the ghetto of Bombay Bazar. Asthana with the support of Patwa, worked hard to rid Indore of this ghettoization and bringing calm and peace to the city. Asthana who will take over as the next chief of Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), is said to have been appointed to the top intelligence body by PM Narasimha Rao on behest of Patwa himself.
Patwa faced a second dismissal in the wake of rioting after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. President’s Rule was again imposed in the state and it continued for a year. During this period, BJP lost out on some of the goodwill from the 1990 assembly election, and Digvijay Singh stormed in power as the Congress CM.
Patwa, after being out of political reckoning for a while, decided to contest the 1997 by-poll to the Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat, vacated by Kamal Nath’s wife so that he could get reelected as a Member of Parliament after his name was cleared in a hawala case. Patwa defeated Kamal Nath in his stronghold, the only time BJP has won this Lok Sabha constituency since 1951. However, Patwa failed to retain this seat in 1998 Lok Sabha election, losing to Nath and then moved to the nearby Hoshangabad seat in 1999 to be elected as a Member of Parliament for a second time.
Patwa was made a Cabinet minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. He held various portfolios in this government – Rural Development (12 months), Chemicals and Fertilizers (2 months), and Mines (10 months). However, through this tenure, Patwa could not adjust to the Delhi bureaucracy and was his working style was criticized as heavy handed. Frequent portfolio changes did not help, and amidst rumours that Vajpayee was about to drop him as a non-performing minister in 2001, Patwa chose to resign himself on health grounds before the September 2001 Cabinet reshuffle.
He then returned to MP, where BJP was rebuilding itself as Digvijay Singh continued his second term as the CM. He decided to stay away from day to day politics, even as BJP won the 2003 assembly election. Babulal Gaur, once seen as a Patwa protégé, was appointed the Chief Minister after replacing Uma Bharti subsequently. Patwa however never made the lost ground, and decided to retreat quietly from the political scene.
As a party patriarch, he continued to meet the local cadre and be involved in discussions and debates on public issues. As late as a week before his death, Patwa had met local BJP leaders to accept a memorandum on demands of village heads.
Sunderlal Patwa will probably never find a space in the pantheon of indispensable BJP leaders when the party history is written. But his contribution to the party in building MP as a strong fortress is significant. Patwa took upon himself several blemishes and fronted many lapses as BJP learnt to transition from an opposition party to a ruling one. His personal battles, rooted in a hard, uncompromising Sangh ideology opened the path for a more pragmatic, political face for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh.
As in his long political life, Patwa remains a quintessential party man in his death.
