Tuesday, March 07, 2006

reader asks: WHy are you so negative?

mar 7th

in a word, no. they are not doing anything right. they are congenitally unable to. their attitude is 'we'll sell this country down the river to the highest bidder'.

i am negative because i see the nation being decimated by short-sighted men with no motive beyond lining their pockets. it is in the nature of dissenters to have to come out with the unpleasant news that those in power are happily sweeping under the carpet.

i am not a big fan of any political party, i just pick the least offensive one.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pramodh

Hi Rajeev,
I am no big fan of the Congress government and am in fact an ardent supporter of the BJP. However, everytime I read your blog, all that it has is doom and gloom for India under the present government. Do you think they are anything right?
Thanks,

11 comments:

iamfordemocracy said...

I, too, fail to understand why Rajeev's blog is 'neagative' in the sense that it is hard to think of any meaningful way forward.

Take just one example. If most media houses are against Hinuds, does anybody not see it as a great business opportunity? If not, perhaps, there is something seriously wrong with Hindus, not with Hindu-bashers.

Secondly, not much is going to be achieved by discussing political parties like Congress and CPM. Blogs like this must begin by bashing and teasing BJP. Has anyone ever thought why no media has ever asked BJP as to what it has really done for Hindus?

schuncher said...

Hindu cause will not be served just by faulting Congress or Marxists and getting aggravated over it... try repeating that Hindus are invincible, not even foreign rule could destroy them, if anything Hinduism is at its best in over 1000 years and is regaining whatever it lost, that ours is a blessed land .... there is an immensely powerful quote from our scriptures - - yad bhAvam tad bhavati - - we become what we feel - - having said that, I find Rajeev very consistent in his combative style and he is looked open by many Hindus who see the daily assault on us, not so much from the Mohammedan or Christist but from "secular" politicians and "intellectuals". I don't always agree with him but I have immense respect for his consistency. I hope he will be play a greater role in Indian news media (a stake in a global desi TV news channel, perhaps, Rajeev?)

siva said...

>>> However, every time I read your blog, all that it has is doom and gloom

Because it’s only doom and gloom for India, especially Hindus and adherents of other Indic religions, ever since these buffoons came to power.

Unknown said...

Rajeev, I love your blogs and enjoy many of your analyses on the different subjects. But Pramod is right, you are very negative. But the bigger problem is that in most of your blogs, all you do is ooze poison againt the enemy camp. Thank you very much for laying down the conspiracy theories (though some of them are too far streched), i love reading them. But all you do is to point your finger at everything that is wrong and never provide a direction or a solution to the problem. If all you can do is ooze poison blindly then what is the difference between you and them? (This is exactly why i love your articles on rediff than the ones on your blog.)

Are you personally doing something about all these things which are falling apart in out country ? If you are averse to joining politics, why dont you atleast organize some events where you can lecture the educated and mobilize public opinion. Iam sure you are quite famous enough to get a few speechs done a year.

I dont know why u r so critical about the nuke deal. I think the govt has done a good job on the Nuke deal with the US. We shouldnt oppose everything they do just because itz the congress. Iam sure everyone here is educated enough to know that the finer details of the deal are discussed by the babus and not the politicians. So no matter which Govt, the very same babus would be the one who sketch out the deal and they have done a good job. The politicians can take NO credit for this, be it vajpayee or singh. Everything is not done yet, more midnight candles to be burnt over the next year or two, And iam sure our babus will do a good job. I surely dont trust the US, so we should do just like the US does. Stick along until it serves our purpose, once we get our thorium machines ready, slowly disengage.

nizhal yoddha said...

guys,

i'm intrigued by your comments.

first, let me be very clear about the division of labor. my job is to be a polemicist and theoretician. i am not about to go out and organize people and lead marches and so forth. that is *your* job. i give you the information that is necessary for you to sell the concept to others. pen mightier than sword and all that.

second, i am being honest about the real sense of doom that the kaangress and marxists bring to the picture. they are respectively the fifth colunmnists of the mullahs/vatican and the chinese. with these people in power, how on earth can things be anything other than disastrous? just look at the list of scandals the UPA has wrought: mitrokhin, bofors payment to quattrochi, iraqgate, uc banerjee, this us cave-in, the fact that the court system in india has now become 'for teesta setalvad, by teesta setalvad, of teesta setalvad', the arjun singh hate crusades, etc. etc. and tell me honestly why you feel any sense of optimism.

third, the bjp is criticized harshly and venomously every day by every news outlet in the country. me adding to that is not really going to make any difference. why is no media outlet in the country criticising the kaaangress or the marxists?

fourth, i think there is a pretty good track record that whatever the kaaangress does is bad for india. this has made them all rich and famous, so why should they change now? not to speak of the marxists, who have never done one thing that was bad for china. so whatever they do i view with immediate suspicion.

fifth, i have become more and more convinced that the nuke deal is a major problem as it caps india's ability to deter. it is 'cap, rollback , eliminate' in a new guise. and the yanks have gotten away with it, too. the only hope is that the congress in the US will kill it off, which is highly likely. india has a habit of respecting its treaty obligations, unlike both china and the us. this is also suicidal. realpolitik requires that you sign all sorts of treaties and then tear them up when they become inconvenient (note us regarding tarapur).

fifth, being nice guys and honest -- which naiive indians have been brought up to believe is the right thing -- will ensure india will always finish last. it is a rough and tumble world out there, and you have to lie, cheat, and so forth. just ask mohammed and his followers -- they have made al taqiyah (lying in the greater interest of islam) a cornerstone of their successful pursuit of empire. india needs to establish its own empire. the alternative is to be china's colony.

iamfordemocracy said...

One does not need to prove things again and again. If you take the prepositions that 'Hindus are being persecuted' and 'secularism as discussed in India is a sham', they have been proved beyond any doubt many times over. Yet, most written material of bloggers and analysts does precisely that. That is why it begins to appear negative in the end.

Can one do something about it? Can any one, any body help it? Or is the world intrinsically unfair? I would like Rajeev to post some thoughts about correcting the situation.

nizhal yoddha said...

guys,

i want to ask *you* what *you* have done so far for the 'cause' as you see it.

let's see, so far all you have done is post anonymous comments from the comfort of your office/home. this, of course, is a completely risk-free activity.

i at least post under my own name; i am taking a risk as the congress and marxists have been known to not tolerate dissent. nor are the americans happy to be criticised. it is quite possible that the NSA + CBI is monitoring my mail.

as for you, iamfordemocracy, glad to hear that you are convinced that 'hindus are being persecuted' and that 'secularism is a sham'. okay, now go and convince 10 other people this month. get them to convince 10 other people each the next month and the month after that and the month after that and so on. otherwise your conviction + 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee.

why are all you guys suffering from what i call the 'messiah complex'? waiting for someone/something to come and show you the way? aren't you smart enough to figure out what to do once you have a sense of mission? how much are you willing to contribute, how much are you willing to sacrifice? are you like the gadar party members of san francisco in the 1900's? are you willing to sacrifice everything for your convictions like they were for india's freedom?

think about it. my suspicion is that all of you are not even willing to step outside your comfortable cocoons, and you want someone, somewhere to do the hard work for you. this is a relic of the socialist raj that you grew up under. sorry, if you want something to happen you need to make it happen yourself, not wait for messiahs and mahatmas. they may have agendas that are different from yours.

nizhal yoddha said...

ask not what the country can do for you, ask what *you* can do for the country.

good advice then, good advice now.

please do not wait for messiahs. those who do become sheep being led by the nose. being a sheep is a waste of a life.

iamfordemocracy said...

Rajeev wrote -- "third, the bjp is criticized harshly and venomously every day by every news outlet in the country. me adding to that is not really going to make any difference". True, for all wrong reasons. Nobody criticizes BJP for ditching Hindus.

If Congress and CPM have mastered the art of Indian politics, why hasn't BJP? They dismissed Lalu's government, why not CPM government in Bengal? All hindu-bashers exploit caste and regional conflicts in India. Why can't the BJP pick on similar conflicts in Muslims and seculars? The seculars control the media, you say. Why can't BJP beat them at that game? Can't BJP bring about (or in the least, think about) a hostile take-over of NDTV?

BJP talks of Hindus. Although I am fairly intelligent and educated, I don't understand that talk. Who are Hindus? What is common to them? Who represents them? Who unites them? If BJP thinks they don't need to address these issues, why does it use the word Hindu at all? And yes, why is the Hindu newspaper allowed to use that word when it is anti-Hindu?

I did raise some of these questions from time to time on this blog. Usually, there are no replies. Posters here prefer to go on celebrating that they have found yet another way of proving that seculars are bad. I say, move on.

nizhal yoddha said...

iamfordemocracy, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that i represent the bjp. i don't. i am not a member of any political party. if you have a beef with the bjp, raise it with them, not me.

i merely support the bjp because they are less offensive than the alternatives.

i believe in the principle of triage used by managers in sticky situations: one third of the people will never be on your side, one third of the people are already on your side, and one third of the people are on the fence.

the kaaangress and marxists are the first group; the bjp is the second group; i concentrate on the fence-sitters whom i hope to convince. hence i provide factual information.

i see no value in alienating the bjp. even if they didnt do a lot of things, out of a foolish triage decision, they are certainly not as offensive as the likes of arjun singh and company.

the bjp did the right triage analysis and the wrong triage action. their forever opponents are the mohammedan+'secular'+marxist crowd; their forever friends are the hindu right; and the unconvinced are the fence-sitting hindus.

the bjp, instead of abandoning them, thought the mohammedan+'secular'+marxist crowd could be placated or convinced that the bjp were good. so they spent their efforts uselessly on them. in the process they pissed off their natural allies, and did not make inroads into the fence sitters.

also, of course, the rs. 258 crores from iraqgate was spent *somewhere*, right? that sure buys a lot of votes.

daisies said...

Re. nizhal yoddha comments:
"first, let me be very clear about the division of labor. my job is to be a polemicist and theoretician. i am not about to go out and organize people and lead marches and so forth. that is *your* job. i give you the information that is necessary for you to sell the concept to others. pen mightier than sword and all that.

...

let's see, so far all you have done is post anonymous comments from the comfort of your office/home. this, of course, is a completely risk-free activity."

--- Rajeev, I hate to criticise you
on the blog, because you do so
much by way of writing. Not
that I completely agree with
all of it, or the way it is
presented at times. Yet it is
valuable, and something I
respect.

However I am compelled to
openly criticize the lines
above.

To say that writing is your
job, and doing all other work
is the readers' job is most
arrogant and unreasonable.

You have chosen to be a writer,
that is fine. It is arrogant to
say that ground work is others'
job.

At best you could say, you dont
feel inclined to fight in the
field, as that does not seem
like your calling. And this may
be true for several of us, not
only you. In what way are you
so special ? Just because you
write more and own a blog ?

You ask - what has the reader
sacrificed ? This is so
arrogant. You know nothing
about anybody's life, and we
know nothing about yours. How
do you know what sacrifices
others are making, have made,
or what responsibilities they
have ?

You also seem to think that
unless we risk being caught be
CBI or risk a fatwa or two, we
are being ineffective.

If we are mentally calm, we are
impotent and irresponsible and
utopic. If we arent breathing
fire and brimstome, we are
inactive and adding no value.

I will stop here. I dont enjoy
posting criticism about you on
the blog. I had to do this on
behalf of the readers here.

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