Tag: Gandhi Dynasty

India Elections Going Egypt Way

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An important series of state elections is happening is India today, and people are rejecting a corrupt and tyrant, “liberal” Congress Party.

People are overwhelmingly voting for a conservative, right-wing BJP. In Delhi, the capital of India, an anti-corruption third party got a third of the seats.

The election results remind us of what we’ve seen in Egypt recently. The election results also remind us that just like they reacted in Egypt, U.S. government and corporations, IMF and other Western superpowers are not going to like the outcome.

I do not support BJP and their feudal-patriarchal doctrine. I have written a whole book about their politics of bigotry and hate (you can click here to know more). I have no illusion about them.

But I strongly believe that this is peoples’ verdict in India — against an extremely corrupt, violent, inefficient and fake-liberal Gandhi Dynasty and their Congress Party.

I have written before on this blog how this corrupt dynasty with their extreme zeal to remain in power has sold India out to Western powers, just the same way Mir Jafar and feudal, Muslim and Hindu rulers had sold India out to East Indian Company and British colonizing powers two centuries ago. I have shown how history is repeating itself in India.

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India is now going the Egypt way. We may not like it, but the so-called centrist-elite liberal one percent in both countries have destroyed their economies, sold out to Western economic and political powers and their domestic hatchet men, and in the name of democracy, have looted all the wealth, creating unthinkable inequality. They have permanently destabilized the social fabric of both countries in the name of progress and prosperity. They have undermined and ridiculed traditions and mores that the ordinary Indians and Egyptians believe in, and unprecedented social vices have spread across the countries like cancer. Most importantly, for the ordinary people, prices of essential items such as food, oil, education and health care have gone through the roofs, thanks to a rampant, out-of-control IMF privatization of the economy.

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The ordinary, working people — men, women and families — are reacting back with the only weapon they have: their vote. This is their 99 percent moment.

It is a revolution. We the educated, modern, progressive and liberal may not like the huge tilt back to the right. The left in both India and Egypt are angry. But this is really how it is shaping up.

U.S., IMF, World Bank and Western superpowers have quickly destroyed the historic, Tahrir Square revolution.

I have a feeling they’re going to play a similar game in India, in the next few months. National elections are probably going to be held in March. Between now and then, billions of dollars will play underground in Indian politics, to manipulate the so-called democracy. Politics will be like a mega casino, just like Indian cricket, and even bigger.

I am warning, in my small way, against such massive manipulations.

I may not support BJP. But I do support the Indian  99 percent who are now electing BJP.

They have no other way right now. This is how the ordinary men, women and families are coming together — against lies, corruption and violence.

This is their Second Circle moment.

Still Believing in Peoples’ Power,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

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P.S. — Watch out for a rapidly-rising Aam Admi Party (AAP, or common peoples’ party). Is it a real phenomenon against corruption? Or, is it a platform financed by dubious sources?

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Sonia Gandhi’s Mother In-Law

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Indira, Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka...Gandhi.
Indira, Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka…Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi had a mother in-law. Her name was Indira Gandhi. We grew up when the mother in-law was the queen of India.

Actually, she was not the queen. She was what we called the prime minister. But in all her acts and actions, she was no less than a queen.

She walked on this mortal earth like a queen. She rode her limousine like a queen. She lived in her maximum-security castle like a queen. She drank like a queen. She spoke her speeches like a queen. She smiled like a queen. She even sobbed like a queen.

Rumor has it that once she went to see the devastating floods in the state of Gujarat, flew over it in her royal airplane…and sobbed. Our poet Sunil Ganguly wrote a poem about it. You can visit my translation here.

She was even a college dropout like a queen. Rumor has it that our Nobel poet Rabindranath Tagore asked her father Nehru — then prime minister of India — to take her away from his abode of peace university Shantiniketan. Tagore said Indira Gandhi was too much of a burden — an un-peace — with her lifestyle and lack of studies.

Rumor has it that Indira Gandhi married Feroze Khan aka Gandhi, quasi-adopted son of Mahatma Gandhi, and later divorced him. Rumor has it that she converted to Islam to marry Feroze. But that didn’t go well with Nehru and his wife Kamala. So, upon royal dictates, Feroze Khan became Feroze Gandhi, without converting to Hinduism. And Indira kept her husband’s adopted title — a title that goes well in Indian politics.

(Okay, I’m not entirely sure if this is true: that Feroze was a Muslim and Indira converted to Islam. Some say Feroze was a Persee: a sect that practices religion similar to Jews. I give them the benefit of the doubt. Of course, I have NO problems if Feroze or Indira was a Muslim either. That is not the point here. The point is Indira Gandhi, her family and their royal, dictatorial lives and politics. You can read the rest of this post without this one paragraph. IN FACT, IF IT IS A RUMOR, THEN I AM READY TO APOLOGIZE FOR IT. BUT THE REST OF THE ARTICLE IS STILL VALID.)

They had two sons — Rajiv and Sanjiv. The sons also grew up as Indian princes with their lifestyles, lack of studies and lackadaisical attitude toward their country people. Sanjiv was the younger son and slowly turned to politics. Then he became a tyrant. He took advantage his royal dynasty, and chopped heads left and right. He became a household name in India not for his benevolence or kindness, but for his dictatorship and cruelty.

Indira with Sanjiv...I mean...Sanjay. Gandhi.
Indira with Sanjiv…I mean…Sanjay. Gandhi.

Rajiv Gandhi, meanwhile, showed lack of interest in politics and went to Italy working as a pilot. There he met Sonia, originally Edvige Antonia Albina Maino, fell in love, and married her. After Sanjay Gandhi, groomed by Indira as the crown prince, died in a plane crash (he was piloting it), Indira forced a reluctant Rajiv to join politics. Indian media suddenly found great praise for Rajiv’s functioning styles and friendly smiles.

(This was around the time when Indira imposed an emergency rule to stay in power changing the constitution, put a blanket press censorship, and imprisoned all the opposition leaders and thousands of grassroots activists. I know: I was involved with the anti-emergency movement.)

It all paid off. When Indira was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984, after a bloody anti-Sikh carnage by the ruling Congress Party thugs (nobody was ever punished for the mass murder, and Western media is silent about it, hypocritically), Rajiv was put on the Indian throne without any scrutiny. Rajiv, a political neophyte, opened the Indian economy — a largely semi-socialistic, somewhat pro-poor system — to foreign corporations with help from his finance minister Manmohan Singh, and India was sold out ever since to IMF, World Bank and Wall Street.

Rajiv Gandhi was killed by Tamil extremists. Later, Manmohan Singh became prime minister, and opened the floodgates. In ten years of Singh’s rule, India completely deregulated its economy, devalued its currency by more than two hundred percent, and killed most of the pro-poor economic safeguards. Corruption is historic. India is now perhaps the most rich-poor-divided country, perhaps right next to the United States.

Sonia Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi’s two children — Rahul and Priyanka — also grew up as royal babies. Indian media never scrutinized their lack of education or political acumen, let alone compassion, and automatically projected Rahul as the next prime minister. Meanwhile, Priyanka with her husband Robert Vadra, along with the rest of the dynasty, amassed unbelievable extra-constitutional power and reportedly, Swiss Bank wealth. Robert reportedly killed opposition too, just like Sanjay did.

Bengali author S. Wajed Ali had once said: “The tradition is on in India — without any change.”

Enough said.

BY THE WAY, I DO NOT SUPPORT EITHER A CORRUPT AND VIOLENT CONGRESS PARTY OR A BIGOTED AND VIOLENT BJP, IF IT MATTERS TO YOU.

Sharing History — Honestly,

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

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Indira and Rajiv...I mean...Sonia and Rahul. The great Indian royalty is well.
Indira and Rajiv…I mean…Sonia and Rahul. The great Indian royalty is well.

I Am Bangladesh, I Am Palestine

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UPDATE on January 6, 2014. — Bangladesh is falling apart. Bengal is falling apart. First Britain, and then USA, with help from their cronies and crooks, have managed to destroy a very prosperous land with a thousand years of glorious history, art, poetry, literature, wealth and religious harmony. Oh God!! I don’t know Palestine well. But I know Bangladesh. I weep for Palestine. I cry out loud for Bangladesh.

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A garment sweatshop in Dhaka, Bangladesh just killed over one hundred poor workers. UPDATE: A building collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh on April 24, killing at least 1200 workers. Many more are permanently crippled.

Bangladesh Body Bags, Again and Again.

This is a repeat slaughter of Bengali workers — mostly young women aged 12 to 24 or so — at a Wal-Mart, Disney, Gap, H&M, Hanes or Tommy Hilfiger outsourced factory run by these corporations and their international and domestic agents. Even New York Times expressed their disapproval. Even CNN thought it was not pleasant to have so many sweatshop workers killed so often.

I wrote before about Trayvon Martin when they killed the seventeen-year-old, unarmed kid because somebody thought he was a criminal and could therefore be killed. I said Trayvon was my kid. I wrote about Troy Davis when they killed him strapped on an electric chair. They killed Troy because somebody thought he did not deserve justice.

I wrote about Sikhs in America after 9/11. They started killing and hurting Sikh men and women because somebody thought they looked like Osama Bin Laden and therefore deserved hate.

I wrote about Muslims in Brooklyn after Afghanistan and Iraq. They started killing and hurting Muslims because some people thought all Muslims were terrorists and therefore they deserved random arrests, imprisonment and mass deportation.

I wrote about Latino immigrants in Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft’s America. I wrote straight from the Arizona-Nogales border — straight from a van we took to cross through the Sonoran desert when it was 115 degrees Fahrenheit. I wrote from the morgue where they kept unidentified dead bodies of women and children who perished walking across the scorching desert into the U.S.

I wrote about my experience in Israel and Palestine when I had an opportunity to visit the Middle East as a journalism student from a prestigious journalism school here in New York. I saw how Palestinians lived and suffered at the hands of the powerful. I went to see Golan Heights at the Syrian border where the Six-day War back in 1967 permanently displaced Palestinians from their own land and international big brothers made sure they remained destitute forever.

We Keep Mourning.

I wrote about the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation Struggle when some people decided a British-pauperized, partitioned East Bengal and its millions of newly-impoverished people had no right to food, freedom, dignity or even their own language, and they decided to send a Kissinger-crafted CIA war into that land through Pakistan, and killed ten million people, raped half a million women, and evicted ten million more from their homes and lands — to repeat a similarly bloody and catastrophic 1947 history in less than twenty five years.

I went to work on the borders of India and Bangladesh to see the suffering of those refugees first hand. I wrote about them.

I am now writing again to express my feelings about the poor Bangladeshi garment workers who were burnt alive yesterday in a repeat inferno at a Wal-Mart, Disney, Gap, H&M, Hanes or Tommy Hilfiger sweatshop at the outskirts of Dhaka.

Just a few days ago, I wrote about the barbaric killing of innocent Palestinian children in Gaza. A few weeks ago, I wrote about Obama’s drones that killed innocent children in Pakistan, Yemen and Mali.

I don’t know if my writing has any impact at all on the minds of the otherwise intelligent, educated and human rights-minded liberals in America and India — the two countries I know the best — or for that matter, anywhere else in the world. I have every doubt that such killings are now transient news blips that come on the surface, shake up a few minds for thirty seconds or less, shake up their conscience for an even smaller amount of time, and then disappear into oblivion.

They Keep Mourning.

Worse, these otherwise intelligent, educated, human rights-minded liberals in America and India — the two countries I know the best — or for that matter, anywhere else in the world keep supporting the Democratic Party and its leaders like Obama or Clinton, or the Congress Party and the Gandhi Dynasty in India…or…you put your favorite country and its political system and leaders…and by doing that, they sustain an inhumane, corrupt and cruel, exploitative socioeconomic system that is responsible for all these horrendous acts that are killing and torturing and maiming and starving and displacing and destroying millions of poor men, women and children — all over the world.

I have no hope that bringing up these horrendous acts of violence — political or economic — on the surface would make any long-term change within the status-quo minds of these intelligent, educated and human rights-minded people.

I have learned how not to hope anymore. Not from the elite liberals anways — American or Indian.

I just write about it because I have no other way to cleanse myself of my own sin — of being a part of this system.

She could’ve been my child. Or my sister.

Thank you for at least listening. Now if you want, you can go back and do your Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart, Disney, Gap, H&M, Hanes or Tommy Hilfiger. If you’re in India, find your favorite shopping mall for Diwali shopping. Soon, you’ll find Wal-Mart and Disney too…across the country.

Please do it. I wouldn’t mind at all.

Sincerely Writing (without caring about the outcome),

Partha

Brooklyn, New York

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The Global Inferno That Kills All of Us. One at a Time.