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Does the Conspiracy theory that BJP lost Delhi on purpose make sense?

Gaurav
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Does the Conspiracy theory that BJP lost Delhi on purpose make sense?

An article by a Bobby Naqvi written for the GulfNews is doing the rounds on Social Media. It claims BJP might have engineered this defeat in Delhi for other benefits. Initially I thought this theory was too idiotic to waste time on, but since many people are actually believing this, I thought of taking a closer look.

One of the arguments placed is that BJP inducted IAC rejected Kiran Bedi only as a scapegoat, to shield Modi. Well has that worked? Even if BJP had put up the strongest face and lost, would Media make it a non Modi election? Why media, even  BJP’s own ally Uddhav Thakeray has used this demolition to target Modi. And if indeed they wanted Modi to emerge free of blemish, why did he address all those rallies? Why was Modi’s face plastered on all news papers 1 day before the elections?

Next he says all of BJP’s missteps and bad management were actually stage-managed, deliberate ploys. Really? BJP Delhi Unit is by far the most unorganized state unit. Even in the 2013 Assembly elections, Dr Harshvardhan was a sort of compromise candidate acceptable to all factions. Along with Delhi, elections were held in 3 more states, i.e  Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh. BJP came to power with over 40% vote share in all states except Delhi where it garnered just 33% votes and fell short of majority. This inherent weakness in Delhi unit was evident even then when other states rode on Modi wave.

The motive given by the author behind this entire scheme of self-defeat is the most hilarious. According to him, once Delhi is won by AAP all media attention will focus on AAP’s Government and its functioning. This will allow Modi Government to pass unpopular reforms in the Budget, away from media spotlight and secondly it will give a free hand to fringe elements to go under the radar and polarise voters on religious lines in UP and Bihar, for their upcoming elections. As far as budget is concerned, let 28th February come and you will see how much airtime Kejriwal will get. Secondly, the largely anti-Modi editors in mainstream media will never let up any chance to skewer Modi, let it be budget or Hindutva loonies, and never because they are too busy scrutinizing their blue-eyed boy Kejriwal.

Say what you may, Delhi is not just another state election. 1 year back Kejriwal showed the guts to go into Modi’s camp in Varanasi and take him head on, making it a battle of prestige. Modi won that round on home turf. Now Modi had to come to Kejriwal’s home ground and take him head on. Would Modi and Amit Shah knowingly let Modi lose this battle of perception? The voters may have voted for who will give them a better state government but the Modi vs Kejriwal, Goliath vs David undercurrent remained, and in fact was hyped up immensely by Mainstream media.

Also, with this loss, BJP has lost the sheen of invincibility. It has shown how it can be defeated, by consolidating the anti-BJP votes with the strongest opponent. It has left Congress completely destroyed. Who would BJP prefer to fight day in and day out? A lame duck Congress or a resilient AAP? Then why would BJP let AAP win, and emerge as a somewhat viable option to BJP, not in the near term but definitely in the future.

On the other hand if BJP had vanquished AAP in Delhi too, the AAP story would have been finished. Humiliated in Lok Sabha and then beaten on their own turf, AAP’s relevance would have disappeared. There would have been internal fights, like we have seen in the past. The entire party could have collapsed. BJP would have defeated its strongest potential opponent, leaving it to battle with Congress and gang for eternity.

As to why are people believing this theory? There are 2 sets of people who support this theory:

1. The disappointed hardcore bhakt: He just cannot come to terms that BJP, Modi and Amit Shah have genuinely lost an election. He is searching for some sort of reason which will put them in good light, make them not losers but winners, make them the proverbial “Baazigar” who has lost something to win something bigger. And for such a distraught bhakt, such a theory is a god-sent panacea

2. The sceptic AAP supporter: While the full AAP”tard” has no doubt that AAP has decimated BJP, the sceptic can’t believe that his party has won in such a resounding manner. He can’t believe the BJP folded on just 3 seats. And he also has deep distrust of the BJP and its machinations. Hence he believes that this is an elaborate ploy by BJP. His justifications may differ from what Mr Naqvi proposes, but he still believes BJP stage-managed this.

In fact, this article proposing this “conspiracy theory” could itself be a conspiracy by detractors of BJP, to give BJP supporters some easy excuses so that they don’t look deeper into their organization to find the real flaws. The best course for a BJP supporter now is to accept defeat, and ask questions of its leadership rather than accepting such lame duck theories.

What disappointed me as a BJP supporter during Delhi election

Rahul Raj
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What disappointed me as a BJP supporter during Delhi election

Delhi election result has shattered so many beliefs, delusions and predictions that most of the political pundits who flaunted their social and political wisdom are reduced to excuses like “I had a feeling that AAP will win by a huge margin.” 10 February 2015 is a disaster day for BJP. The party which was capturing zones after zones in the north, south, east and west like Ashwamedha horse got slaughtered in its own citadel. Even the best political strategist, the most popular face, and the most vibrant social media hordes couldn’t save the bastion. On 2015, BJP is snubbed by the same set of people who raised it to glory a few months back.

Social and political catastrophes provide a break from routine and force organizations/individuals to contemplate about what-went-bad and what-harmed-the-most. The big victory of BJP in May 2014 raised expectations of masses on impracticable heights, therefore it was anticipated that unfilled promises will hurt them within a year. Delhi was unlucky to suffer it the most. However, 3 seats out of 70 uncover darker stories apart from failed promises or inaccurate strategies. In fact, on a failure pie-chart, the “what-harmed-the-most” segment will distinctly cover more are than “what-went-bad”.

I stood for BJP for last one year because I found myself aligned with the political, social and economic philosophies of BJP. I appreciate Arvind Kejriwal for his ostentatious victory, but I can’t appreciate his idea of freebies and communism. I wish that he improves Delhi – by reducing corruption, by introducing facilities, by providing prosperity to all, but as a believer of center-right ideologies, I am hurt and I have some serious grievances with BJP. Now onwards, for each of these, I will have put my views after calibrating BJP steps on “is-this-something-I-wanted.” Here are some of them:

Silence: When people like Sakshi Maharaj and Sadhvi Jyoti made some ridiculous statement, BJP tried to diplomatically handle it by warning them but avoided a strong message against such stupidity. It is argued that these people may be tarnishing the urban image, but they are crowd pullers at grassroots. My concern is – if these people bring victory to BJP, would I like to celebrate a victory laden by stupidities of such people? The answer is always a no.

Swaccha Bharat: Modi has responsibly taken the initiative of Swaccha Bharat. He is leaving no stones unturned to propagate it to every possible layer. However, the mudslinging and vulgar attacks – which started in 2014 and peaked during this whole campaign – were exceptionally disappointing. If BJP talks about cleaning streets, but it couldn’t control its social media team to become ambassadors of clean campaigns, I would not be excited join the bandwagon.

Desperation: The sudden entries of Kiran Bedi and Shazia Ilmi may be anticipated as masterstroke, but if on the fundamental level, it was a hollow desperate move to gain votes. Sadly, it harmed BJP and now these people will be used as scapegoats by workers/leaders who were sidelined during elections. BJP Delhi couldn’t grow a local face. Even in last elections, apart from Harshvardhan, no one had an impressive background.

Excuses: Media is targeted as one of the reasons for this loss. Seriously?  The same media which went gaga over Narendra Modi becomes one of the biggest reasons.  Media didn’t cover AAP and Newspapers were flooded with Narendra Modi, Kiran Bedi and Amit Shah’s advertisements. If BJP supporters, even after gaining such advantages, attack media for the image management, I can’t support a party which is so dependent on media for its victory.

Dependency: What was BJP selling in Delhi – Modi. From the first day, Kiran Bedi threw inessential praises and accolades on Modi. Election campaigns revolved around Modi, social media hypes were woven around Modi, promises were bolstered around Modi and hopes were carved around Modi. The same promotional team during political mess justifies, “What all do you want Modi to do. He is the PM.” If that is the known reality, how can I promote and consume such campaigns?

It would be too early to make a permanent opinion. I will wait for the next steps and I hope that BJP incorporates some optimistic changes. One of the simplest, but most beautiful revelations of Classical Mechanics is that Friction – which opposes the motion of an object – also helps rolling objects to move forward. I hope that BJP acknowledges friction and uses it to roll forward.

What to make of the Delhi Elections

Gaurav
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What to make of the Delhi Elections

There have been numerous pieces giving reasons why BJP lost and why AAP won and why the margin was what it was. Any or all of the reasons could be true, but there are some observations one can make from this election which will have ramifications all over:

1. BJP can be defeated, if the opposition is united

In Delhi, although AAP and Congress were never together, the voters of Congress had decisively shifted to AAP. This is evident from the vote share. While BJP has almost maintained its 2013 vote share, Congress and Others have lost almost 20% and all that has gone to the AAP. This is most relevant for upcoming elections of UP and Bihar. Lalu, Nitish, Mulayam have formed an alliance. If they are able to pool all their votes, they may give BJP a real run for its money even in Bihar, where unlike UP, BJP has some ground level organization. Add the Congress votes to this formation and it will become massive

2. AAP beat the media, but because it was only Delhi

Yes off late the Media had become vocal about AAP, but nobody can deny that there was a near black out of AAP for a long time. Events like Delhi Dialogue got hardly any coverage. Many AAP press conferences were not telecast. AAP got over all this only because they were fighting in a small place like Delhi. They didn’t need the media much because the physically reached to most parts of Delhi with their campaign. This is not scalable though, because in larger states, a party cannot imagine doing this kind of door-to-door campaigns.

3. People vote for what they feel is good for them

A lot of people feel Delhi voted for AAP because of freebies. That Delhi-ites were not thinking about the greater good of the state. Thats exactly how all people vote. Even in the Lok Sabha Elections, people gave a mandate to Modi not because India’s GDP will grow at x % or Fiscal Deficit will go to y %, it was because he promised them development, jobs, “vikas”, which each voter wants for himself. Kejriwal and AAP also pitched the same, they gave what the voter wanted, cheap electricity, free water, free wifi. This is also development.

4. People have begun voting decisively

This cannot be a coincidence. From the Lok Sabha elections, almost all elections one party has got a huge chunk of the seats, if not the majority. Even in Maharashtra, BJP fell just short of the half way mark, but was the first party to cross 100 seats for almost 4 elections. In Jammu and Kashmir case, both Jammu and Kashmir need to seen separately since the demographics are quite different. The BJP managed to get the majority of seats in Jammu while PDP got the lion’s share in Kashmir, again reflecting how each region wanted 1 party to win. In Delhi also the pattern followed, Congress traditional vote bank split from it and backed AAP to the hilt, because they knew Congress would only be a vote-cutter.

5. Modi cannot rescue a sinking ship.

Lets face it, the BJP Delhi unit is probably one of the most abysmal units in the country. Even in the 2013 elections, Dr Harshvardhan was a sort of compromise CM candidate. And this time BJP imported Bedi at the very last minute, causing unrest in the organization. To worsen this, BJP was not contesting against Congress, but a regional force like AAP, which had single mindedly focussed on Delhi for a months now. To counter this BJP should have put up a face after taking all state leaders into confidence, and then added on the Modi wave.

 

AIB – All India Bhagodas? Why avoiding legal battles makes it worse for Free Speech

Editorial Desk
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AIB – All India Bhagodas? Why avoiding legal battles makes it worse for Free Speech

India is not a country known for its laws on Free Speech. It began in 1950 when the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, brought in the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution against “abuse of freedom of speech and expression”. This was in response to an article which was critical on Nehruvian policies.

The Indian Penal Code makes matters worse. Section 294 of the IPC mandates that any kind of public obscenity can be punished with upto 3 months in jail.

The only to change a law in our country is to wait for our MPs to sit up and take notice. Unfortunately that is not quite in our hands. Free Speech is hardly a priority for our lawmakers. In fact, they would want more curbs on speech!

The next best thing is to make the courts hear your plea and force them into getting a favourable opinion on a draconian law through logical debates. This can spur the Parliament into changing the law itself.

A classic example of this was Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalised sexual activities “against the order of nature”, arguably including homosexual acts. The section was declared unconstitutional by the Delhi High Court in 2009. This judgement was later overturned by the Supreme Court, but it was a moment which made everyone sit up and question a colonial law. The battle continues there.

But in the case of Freedom of Speech, many of “activists” often take the easy route and don’t prefer to fight for their case. Even stalwarts like MF Hussain did not stand up to the ones who he “offended” but chose to run away to another country instead of fighting his court battles.

AIB had a golden chance to set it right. They had the financial might, backing from the big guns of Bollywood, and support of the people. AIB are arguably the most successful stand-up comedians in India. Even though some people found their jokes offensive, unfunny or repetitive, most people defended their right to say those jokes. If not them, who else will stand up for their fraternity? and for Freedom of Speech as a whole?

As we have said earlier, laws in the case of Freedom of Expression can never be precise and objective. This is where precedents help. A court ruling in the AIB issue could have served as a source of support to numerous artistes who are bullied by people who take “offense”.

But running away doesn’t help. It only worsens the case and makes interpretations of the law even more unfriendly to Freedom of Speech. AIB still have time to buck up and make a difference and go into the History books. Lets see if they bite the bullet!

AIB Apology. Minority appeasement or a precedent?

OpIndia Staff
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AIB Apology. Minority appeasement or a precedent?

In an earlier post, we had mentioned that some of the first people to raise their voices against the AIB roast were a Hindu group and a Christian group. They were followed by many other people eventually but the floodgates opened from there. Today, AIB declared that they had met the Archdiocese of Mumbai and tendered an “Unconditional Apology” to the entire Christian community. They say:

Amidst the din over the AIB Knockout, we’ve had the opportunity to reach out to some groups who have had questions about the jokes and the taste they were made in.

The Brahman Ekta Seva Sanstha also had some grouse with the AIB, we assume AIB hasn’t yet found the time to “reach out” to this group and have a discussion with them let alone apologise. AIB also mention that:

The kind archdiocese acknowledged the fact that we have never been against any community, nor do we bear any ill will towards any community.

Its quite puzzling that although the Archdiocese feels that they don’t bear any ill will towards any community, yet it deemed fit to extract an Unconditional Apology from AIB. This entire episode reminds one of the times when Leela Samson deemed it fit to show movies to Christian groups before release so that they are pacified. One is also reminded of the recent case when author Perumal Murugan was asked by an aggrieved caste to issue an unconditional apology for defaming them, and how the entire issue was played up as a Hindutva vs Freedom of Speech battle.

Untitled

By and large, AIB’s response to this controversy has been slightly disappointing. Firstly, taking down the video made people feel they couldn’t stand up for what they said. The damage of course was already done and there was no real need to take it down, unless they were threatened by some group, and these threats were never made public by them, which could explain why they felt the need to apologise to a group.

Secondly, the apology has now set the ball rolling for competitive apology demands. As we pointed out above, other groups are bound to latch on to this and ask for their fair share of apology. This could have an effect on all further such events where an artist “offends” a group.

Thirdly, will AIB offer similar unconditional apologies to other “minority” groups? Fat people, Dark people, LGBTs are all “minority” groups, who were slaughtered by AIB using humour. Are apologies reserved only for religious minorities?

As for us, we always believed AIB should have taken this battle to the courts, to silence the intolerant elements and also to make the courts finally set the law straight as to what can be called “offensive”. We believe AIB has the financial might, the public support and the legal backing needed to make a fight out of this.

The most interesting aspect of this entire apology episode is yet to play out. Will the offended Christian groups withdraw their complaints thanks to this apology? If so, then will only Hindu groups be left as complainants? And will the entire argument be spun around to show it as yet another Hindutva vs Freedom of Speech issue? Only time will tell, if all groups are given the same privilege of an apology or is it just Minority appeasement.

The Indian Express HSBC #SwissLeaks list, More sensationalism less substance?

OpIndia Staff
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The Indian Express HSBC #SwissLeaks list, More sensationalism less substance?

After generating a lot of hype on Social Media, about their “big break”, The Indian Express published a series of reports on HSBC’s clients, the details of their accounts in Switzerland and the balance in the accounts as of 2006-07. The list was sourced from French journalists who in turn got it from their sources in the French Government. The list was also given to a consortium of over 140 journalists from 45 countries. The date of publishing of this list i.e. 9th February, was decided by all the members of the consortium, well in advance. This should put to rest conspiracy theories that the list is out only after Delhi Elections.


//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe Indian Express published only the Indian names, and also provided a list of top 100 account holders, calling it the “#SwissLeaks List”. On the page of the list itself there is no mention of black money or illegitimate accounts, but many on social media construed it to be a “Black Money list”

The Indian Express clarified this in a separate post, where it said that it is “Unlikely” that all these accounts have black money and haven’t been disclosed to the Indian tax Authorities. It further said that the list “may include legitimate account-holders who had taken permission and have declared the accounts, as well as holders of undeclared accounts who currently have to pay taxes and penalty, even face prosecution ”

And there lies the problem. Does any media agency have the right to publish names of legitimate account holders with legitimate “white” money, under a #SwissLeaks list, and thereby fuelling theories in the minds of a lay reader that such accounts are of “black money”? This question should go to all agencies around the world, not only Indian Express. Saikat Datta, a journalist himself raised this issue:

Again, the question arises, is Media competent to judge whether an account is related to tax fraud or not? We would have liked Indian Express to clearly mention on each page that this list may or may not have “black money” account holders, instead of a small disclaimer in another page. To their credit, they did ask for comments from some of the account holders, and while some have denied having HSBC accounts, some have taken a nuanced stand that they don’t have “illegitimate accounts”.

Some people on the list like Naresh Goyal, founder chairman of Jet Airways, and former Navy Chief Admiral Nanda, have made it clear that they have been NRIs for a long time and have always declared such accounts to the Indian Income tax department. Whether such people have been unfairly targeted or not, will be revealed only after the Government conducts its enquiry. Hence, there needs to be a clear distinction between legitimate accounts, illegitimate accounts (could be benaami accounts), accounts with “white” money and accounts with “black money”. 

While the actual list contains many of the usual suspects like the Ambani family, many were surprised by the absence of anybody from the Gandhi family. Some even went on to say they wont believe any list which doesn’t have Gandhis’ names in it. 

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//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsA more plausible explanation was given by @ParmarChandrika , a twitter user:

It is also possible that much of the money was long shifted to other financial centres such as Dubai and Singapore and tax havens such as St Kitts and Cayman Islands.  

The real news though will break soon, when the Government will reveal names of 60 people against whom prosecution has been initiated in the Black Money case. These are the cases where the Government has actually established that tax evasion has occurred, in contrast to the Indian Express list, which just summarily gives names of all people holding HSBC accounts in Switzerland. 

Consequently, what the Indian Express #SwissLeaks list will achieve is this:

1. Reveal names and details of legal account holders with legal money, thereby invading their privacy

2. Clubbing such legal names with people who have “black” money in such accounts, thereby defaming such legal account holders

3. Giving fodder to conspiracy theorists: When the Government, after investigation, will reveal the names against whom cases of Tax fraud have been established, there will be a section of people who will compare the Government’s list with the Indian Express list and start claiming that the people against whom the Government hasn’t acted have paid off the Government and that the Government is “XYZ agent”.

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How will Delhi vote? Some findings of our Contest

OpIndia Staff
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How will Delhi vote? Some findings of our Contest

We started a Contest on 22nd January 2015, where in people from all over the world, could predict the results of the Delhi Assembly elections. The contest ended yesterday at 8pm, and now we wait for the results to see who got the the predictions right. Till then we decided to do some number crunching with the entries. Remember this is NOT an opinion of Delhi voters, but it is the opinion of people around the world, trying to guess how Delhi will vote. The analysis will not be affected by how the parties are campaigning in Delhi, but it will be affected by how the Media is covering it and reporting it. Also note that this is NOT a scientific survey. It is only a collection of responses.

Firstly, we saw that over almost two-thirds i.e. 67% of the respondents felt that BJP would get the majority in this election. Only 17% felt that AAP would get a majority in these election. The balance 16% felt that Delhi voters would throw up a hung assembly. It is amusing to note that 2 people felt that Congress will get a majority.

If one takes an average of all the responses, then the most likely outcome of Delhi Elections seems to be BJP getting a majority with 37 seats, AAP coming second with 26 seats, Congress getting 6 seats and others making up 2 seats. A similar simple average of all the Opinion Polls conducted till date also throws up similar numbers, with BJP getting 35 seats, AAP getting 30 seats, Congress getting 5 seats and others getting 1 seat.

We also decided to track the views of people over time, taking daily averages of seats predicted for each party. Plotted on a graph, it looks like this:

chart

The singular most interesting phenomenon occurred on 28th January, which is the only time the average of the days predictions showed that more people felt AAP would get more seats than BJP. What could have happened on 28th January for this trend to change course so dramatically? Remember, we are looking for media events which could have influenced people all over the world. 28th January happens to be the day when the Ravish Kumar – Kiran Bedi interview was put up by NDTV! Although Ravish did not really do a major expose, and he used some underhand methods, its seems the interview affected people’s opinion and made them think maybe Delhi wont go BJP’s way. Also most of our entries come from Social Media users and the Interview was hyped as a major loss of face for Bedi on Social Media.

Another interesting thing is, contrary to Opinion Polls conducted by News channels, the opinions of our users did not drastically change from 22nd January till 6th of February. There is a very minor change in the seat predictions of each of the parties. If anything, AAP has lost a bit of ground from where it started.

All said and done, these opinions don’t matter much. The ones which do will be out on 10th February. Till then we have to make do with Opinion Polls and Exit Polls.

Jitan Ram Manjhi teaches lectures of puppet-politics to Nitish Kumar, and many others

Rahul Raj
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Jitan Ram Manjhi teaches lectures of puppet-politics to Nitish Kumar, and many others

Since 1946 till today, Bihar has seen 23 people as the Chief Minister of the state – which, if documented in the format of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – will enlist administrators, criminals and puppets. Though, the coronation of Rabri Devi in 1997 formalized the acceptance of the Ugly i.e., puppet leaders on the CM chair, the entry of Jitan Ram Manjhi, the current CM of Bihar, took the ugliness of puppet politics to the next level.

Politics of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is quite different from the politics of other states of India. While political tactics in other states try to deal with social and economic subjects separately, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh merge both these attributes to weave combinations of new socio-economic dimensions like Mahadalits and Ati-Pichda Dalits. Jitan Ram Manjhi was installed to exploit this catse angle of this socio-economic dimension and replenish the image loss which Nitish Kumar faced after his segregation with BJP in the state.

Jitan Ram Manjhi was never known to be a good administrator. He started his political career from Indian National Congress, moved to Rashtriya Janata Dal and when RJD lost the October 2005 elections, he switched his loyalties to the JDU. Prior to swearing in as the CM of Bihar, Manjhi was already known as a politician with blotted reputation, a leader with terrible thinking and a contestant with poor victory record. During the 2008 food crisis in Bihar, Manjhi, as the Minister of Social Welfare said, “On behalf of the government, we will promote eating rats. There is nothing wrong in eating rats. The way the people eat mutton or chicken, they can also have rats,” and justified it by saying that rats damage lots of food grains, so it should help the crisis.

jitan

However, even after all these fiascos, he was promoted as the CM of Bihar due to his closeness with the ex-CM and JDU supremo Nitish Kumar, his Mahadalit background – as advertised by all the major media houses1,2,3, and primarily because he was expected to play a puppet role.

What goes around comes around. The close trustee of Nitish Kumar, who grew in ranks within JDU by praising Nitish Kumar, started hitting at all the places where Nitish Kumar was hurt the most.

Very soon after taking the oath of CM, Jitan Manjhi said, “I’m No Rubber Stamp.” Then he wounded the struggling image of JDU by threatening doctors with chopping off their hands for neglecting poor people. By the time JDU would have done some damage control, Manjhi spat venom of casteism by saying, “Upper Caste People are Foreigners.” Sadly for Bihar, a puppet politician who was picked to appease lower castes on the excuses of equality, shamelessly started attacking the upper caste. Manjhi gave the strongest blow to Nitish Kumar by praising Modi for his stand on Pakistan, and praising him again for his benevolent stances.

Nitish Kumar with Ram Jitan Manjhi
Nitish Kumar with Ram Jitan Manjhi

Nitish Kumar, after being stung by his own creation, has clearly shown signs of anger, desperation and frustrations. On 6 Jan 2015, Jitan Ram Manjhi hit the panic button by asking the Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi to remove Nitish Kumar’s close aides and senior JD(U) leaders Lallan Singh and PK Shahi. Recently, in two separate events, supporters of Nitish Kumar have clashed with the supporters of Jitan Ram Manjhi, and Lalu Yadav has spoken against Manjhi.

Amidst the entire episode of hotchpotch and mumble jumble, two things have suffered the most – the public of Bihar and the concept of bringing equality by giving some additional push to marginalized society.

Christian missionary meets Jashodaben to “heal her”, Hindu groups are busy being stupid

OpIndia Staff
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Christian missionary meets Jashodaben to “heal her”, Hindu groups are busy being stupid

According to a report published in Amar Ujala, a team of Christian missionaries recently visited Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s estranged wife Jashodaben.

Brother Peter Paul, who was one of the visitors, said, “I have heard about her prayers and her loneliness. Her soul-touching story affected me. I heard through newspaper that she is in Mumbai.  I searched for her whereabouts and went to meet her with my colleagues.”

“I have worked with Mother Teresa for 10 years. I saw a glimpse of Mother Teresa in Jashodaben,” Paul emphasized. He also added that Jashodaben has same positive aura as Mother Teresa had around her.

Jashodaben with a group of Christian Missionary
Jashodaben with a group of Christian missionaries

Peter and his team also invited Jashodaben to join their mission. The report further states that Jashodaben showed her willingness about joining the team. She appreciated the invite and said that she would like to work for the mission. However, she also added that the final decision will be taken by her family.

Peter stressed that he was not advertising religious conversions, but he wanted Jashodaben to help lots of destitute and helpless Hindus by teaching Geeta and Ramayan to them. He believes that it will also help Jashodaben to get liberation from the lifestyle she is living.

It is interesting to note that while Hindu groups are maligning their names by getting involved in redundant regressive proceedings like Valentine’s Day diktats, Christian missionaries are smartly spreading their messages and reaching out to all kinds of people. If Hindu groups keep prioritizing trivial issues over important issues like women upliftment, they will surely be sidelined by all the communities over a period of time.

Obama attacks Modi on Religious Intolerance? Really?

OpIndia Staff
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Obama attacks Modi on Religious Intolerance? Really?

If you read some of the tweets by some members of our media and other spin doctors, it would appear to you US President Barack Obama has strongly rebuked PM Modi for his attitude towards Hindutva forces and resultant growing intolerance. Here are a few of such tweets:


Of course, as always, the truth is quite different from the fiction produced above. We reproduce the relevant portion from Obama’s speech below:

Michelle and I returned from India — an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity — but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs — acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.

So this is not unique to one group or one religion.  There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.

Two clear points emerge from the above:

1. Obama refers to acts of religious intolerance in the “past years“. Even the most conservative estimate of “past years” will be construed as 2 years, while Modi has been in the driver’s seat for barely 8 months. Thus a majority of this period belongs to the Secular rule of Sonia Gandhi via her able puppet Manmohan Singh. If at all Obama wanted to attack Modi, he could have used “past months” or a reference to the present. 

2. Secondly, Obama mentions “religious faiths of all types”.  This is in stark contrast to the oft-repeated pseudo secular liberal narrative of Minorities are being persecuted by Majority i.e. Hindus, and via correlation by Modi, who is touted as the poster boy of Hindutva. Obama very adeptly steers clear of this probably because he wishes to condemn religious extremists from all religions including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc.

The best example of stellar reporting comes from veteran “journalist” Sagarika Ghose:


Either, Sagarika’s English comprehension skills are extremely poor OR she is wilfully distorting a statement to make it suitable to her agenda. Nothing else explains how “past years” can be turned into “in India today”, because the “today” reference aims at deflecting all the blame on the current regime.

We hope Rajdeep Sardesai comes forth to apologise for his wife’s disservice to the PM of India, especially because Rajdeep is so willing to apologise on public platforms for alleged misdemeanours of his co-workers to even unelected members of AAP.

On a side note, we would like to ask Obama for his help in reducing such acts of religious intolerance in India. Firstly, we request him to stop funding the Military establishments of failed states like Pakistan which openly sponsor religious terrorism. Secondly we also urge him to curb US funding to Missionary groups who not only add to the religious tensions with their Evangelical activities but also support extremism in North East regions of India.

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