Chanakya Neeti

We have had spate of PMs and political leaders who have been naïve to the extent they couldn’t see our own national interests. Some of them especially the ones belonging to erstwhile Punjab part of Pakistan now, are bleeding hearts when the name Pakistan Punjab is evoked. They will go for dialogues, friendships, Samjhauta Express and becoming gullible to whatever trash Pakistan dishes out. Do these politicians take the citizens for granted, I think they do. It shows from the voting patterns? Even BJP that claims to be super nationalist had good old Atal Bihari Vaajpai eating out of hands of Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf and selling our friendship for free. What do they think they are up to? Don’t they learn from past experience with Pakistan and China? These two countries are untrustworthy snakes and have to be handled with utmost care and caution.
China is buttressing its military might to become world super power and and conducting war games that equal USA. They have a menacing partner Pakistan. They both in duplicity have set up a game to annihilate India’s ambition of becoming any Global Power or economic power. They want to have us under their paw as a pawn. Chanakya wisdom says to get help from such people who have vested interest to take on these two countries as a result of their own self interest. Of course, I am referring to USA and Israel.
Now we have a juicy item on our platter in that we have the Baloch desire to get rid of Pak subjugation. We should get into the frey covertly and help the beleaguered Baloch to attain their goals ilke we did to make Bangla Desh. Afganistan could help us in this direction and we might be able to muster help from Iran as well. Awake ye Indian leadership and MEA, we need you to deliver goods and take some proactive measures to make India strong!

Ashoka: A Misconception for India to be Global Power

Ashoka has been coined as the ‘Great’. Was he really Great? He wasn’t so great after all for what he did to the then India, and of course current India, and the Indian psyche as far as the safety, security, military and people’s view on ‘peace’ and ‘forgiveness’ to the enemy is concerned. What we lost in Ashoka’s quest for antiwar mindset after his Kalinga war, was a total disbanding of military and propagating peace and anti war culture. His furious Buddhist forays within India and around India made him a Great leader but created a citizenry of coward ‘peaceniks’ who believed in less and less of military thereby losing marshal and military skills and strategies. Consequently after Ashoka, India was broken up into small principalities and eventually we had Prithviraj Chowhan and Mohammad Gauri fiasco. We lost India’s might and independence for ever.
Now, we must learn a lesson from our past and get rid of this ‘peace’ cloak. Our scripture Gita says that peace can only be for those who can defend it with their might. This might as we call it has to be built over time with a lot of people investment and financial investment. We must prepare our intelligence skills for covert operations and military, i.e., army, navy and air force, for overt operation and we must not shy awat from taking proper action at the right time. We must not waste time in waiting for results by offering ‘peace’ carrot instead of teaching a lesson with mighty ‘stick’ to bend the trouble makers and terrorism sponsoring nations to co-opt for peace themselves. This mighty stick should have a built-in big covert operation that could destabilize the enemy in their plans to use terror as the state policy. For that we need a real gung-ho set of intelligence operatives and funds. Also, we need to use cooperation of like minded highly skilled intelligence forces like Savak or Mosad or CIA.
We have to take on twenty first century problems head on and fight fire with fire. Let’s not get our down and keep losing our pride, men, peace and, of course, the land in our attempt to be termed as ‘good peaceful guys’ in the comity of nations. Every one of these nations laughs at us for our cowardice. The only time we got our heads high when Indira Gandhi had the first nuclear test and then when covertly we repeated again with umpteen tests that were even more powerful and mightier that the previous one. Our first Prime Minister Mr. Nehru died as a result of shock of defeat from our Panchsheel Friend and Brother China! So much for peace!
Wake up and pull up your socks. Tell your government to prepare India to become a Global Power. Use your voting power to impress upon this theme. Also, influence your media, both print and electronic, to start the theme of mighty and powerful India devoid of poverty and controlled population growth and to be economically and militarily strong Global Power. We can align with other nations to tackle both China and its menacing partner Pakistan!!
So, friends and Indians! Let’s get rid of this folly of useless syndrome of peace and cowardice of Ashoka. We got to come out of ‘Ashoka the Great’ mindset!

India Political Mantra

Barkha Dutt in her article Baloch boomerang has presented a stereotypical analysis devoid of any real gutsy point of view. That’s the problem I find with our leadership like BJP, CPM and media pundits. We must know, no guts no glory.
Why do we hide behind a ‘good guy syndrome’? We ought to emulate guts like Israel and hit Pakistan with covert operation in Balochistan, POK, portion of Kashmir handed to China and Aksai Chin areas. We had a bad & weak prime-minister, Gujral, who withdrew RAW from Pakistan theatre of action. We must strongly strengthen RAW in Pakistan and border area of China like Tibet and Xingiang provinces and collaborate with Mosad of Israel to get our covert operations in these areas with real bite and finesse. We must get big bang for the buck. We must commit plenty of “buck” to give a real ‘bang’ in those terrorist camps in POK and reinforce separatists in Balochistan, Tibet and Xingiang. We can take help of Afganistan in such operations since now they are on our side. It’s high time we created our own MI5 and MI6 or CIA if you will!
I must say at this time, hats off to Man Mohan Singh. He should not say sorry, but give out to the opposition that it’s all a diplomatic game and when time comes we will support covertly Balochistan for freedom. Indira Gandhi dissected Pakistan to make Bangladesh, now be ready to get new surgical procedure ready to get Balochistan separated from Pakistan!

It was the summer of 1987, as hot as it could get. It was only May and the temperatures were soaring in Sacramento. I had taken a decision to move to India and set up an IT university in Dehradun. I also had convinced one of my IT friends from San Jose, rather the Silicon Valley to move back and help me set up this venture. In spite of the heat, I made it to the airport along with my family and a friend, Mark.

There were some anxious moments for me waiting at the Sacramento airport. Waiting always made me a little on the edge. Not that the airport lacked in any of its conveniences or I had some thing against this airport or any thing of that sort. But a wait was like killing time that was a total waste of time in one’s life in my opinion. The airport had a nice small coffee bar, a drink bar and a snack bar. It even had a small restaurant. No one had to climb up and down a bus in order to board a plane. It had the boarding gates with leading tunnel sort of flexible and moveable corridors up to the entry door of the plane. One could carry the wheeled carryon without having to undo the wheel gismo. So it was nice and small family oriented airport. I kind of liked it, my hometown airport!

My baggage was already checked in. Only my carry-on pieces were at the chair next to my son. He was playing with his electronic toys and muttering exclamations of attack, run, ka-pow and bang-bang. That was my future – a dark horse – in the race of life. Will he come out ahead in this race, a winner? I had certain confidence in this notion. If I could do it, he could do it. Life was full of paradoxes and of sublime joys and surprises. When you expected some thing the least it popped, it came through, it was all there to your surprise. So I knew against all odds, whatever those odds might be, he would be able to shine, he would be able to spring that surprise, I had hope or at least I desired that way.

My friend Mark had come to the airport to bid us farewell. He was sad. I could see his eyes wet. The picture of his wet eyes told me thousand words in one go. He didn’t want me to leave the US and go. But I was as stubborn as a mule. Once I made up my mind no one could detract me from my decision, it could be good or bad. I always stood by my words and did what I felt I got to do. I got burnt as a result. But I faced the consequences with brave resolve. I had grit and perseverance.

I looked out of the huge glass expanse at the side of the concourse and saw the planes taxiing, taking off and landing. It brought back the memories of yesteryears of my life, way back when I, the dark horse, had won the race beyond all expectations and flown off to Tehran on my maiden voyage from my native hometown of New Delhi. I was younger and full of zeal. The memories were vivid, they flashed before my eyes as if they happened just yesterday and their charm lingered on.

I couldn’t yet think of whether my next move was to be delightfully pleasant or would it have the murkiness of my native ethos as usual. My little son had no inkling of what was in store for him, my friend was opposed to my leaving the US and my wife, well that was another wild tale. These were the moments of great reflections that probably I couldn’t do at this point in time. I had discussed the pros and cons at length with my friend, wife and pondered over it incessantly and I still couldn’t think of any problems against my decision.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Dark Horse
The older kid, Jason, was totally off his rocker. He went on a tangent and asked me if India indeed had any cars or the people still used elephants for transportation. I didn’t quite fathom what prompted him to ask such ignoramus nonsense. That was such a dumb questioning that I couldn’t help but snigger. And I must admit he was just being curious in a very simple sort of way with no offence intended to me. Axel shook his head for a moment and then looked at me with a grin on his face. I nodded at him knowingly in an approving manner. So Axel took over from there.He said, “Heck no, kid! Don’t you know this simple fact? India doesn’t have any cars or automobiles for that matter. It must be pathetic wondering about such trivia. But why do you ask?”“No, I am just curious. Like we have here fancy cars. What do they do over in India?”Axel said, ”Well, Jason! They ride elephants as you rightly pointed out. For these animals they have special type of roads. Like any where else, some times there is a traffic jam with all those elephants running amuck. You know what I mean.”Jason asked Axel, “There must be whole heck of a lot of elephants over there. Eh!”“You better believe it. It’s really crazy out there in the middle of all those elephants running around.”“So, how does one control the beast?”Axel said, “You see, like we have a driver to drive a car around. They also have a person mounted on the neck of the beast controlling its movements.”“But, where are all those animals stored?”Axel said, “No problem at all for them elephants. You see, like we have parking lots, they have multi-storied parking for elephants. There are huge elevators to move these animals up and down. In fact all the elephants have identification tags so the owner can find them.”Jason exclaimed, “Oh, wow! You aren’t kidding me, right?”“No, absolutely not.”Jason continued, “Far out! That must be fun.”
Posted by Uday Agnihotri at 11:11 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, April 20, 2008

Dark Horse of Seventh Samurai
With all the new beginning of sorts, I was laughing at myself inside. It was for the simple reason that having had one hell of an education, what I meant was from a topnotch school, IIT Kharagpur, I was not able to earn a decent living. What a joke! What a travesty of justice! My highly valued alma mater could not guarantee me what I had expected it to precisely do. That was to help me provide in my own profession, some semblance of good generous pay packet to support the comforts and luxuries I had aspired to have. Was it too much to ask for? Really! Probably, some of it was because of my own folly. I must admit that I was quite a simpleton in my worldly ways. I could have compromised with the circumstances like the bribery, licking up to bosses and undercutting my coworkers and friends. But I never thought these traits to be honorable or decent. At least not for me, treachery didn’t make sense at all. So there I was getting rewarded for self-pity. It dawned on me, perhaps, my own country didn’t have enough need of me. Or rather it had, by way of euphemism, made me an NRI (Non Resident Indian), or in more circumspect thinking, tongue and cheek of course, I was exiled to a foreign land for a few pieces of gold so to speak. That way I was liable to send back whatever little or more I could, out of shear love for my native land of birth. The sweat money sent to the native land was not called taxes, oh no, not at all, it won’t be convenient or politically correct. Would it? But we did definitely know, however, that Mother India did benefit enormously from the NRI dollars and we mustn’t forget that. Unless we would rather be ungrateful bastards! But nevertheless I was quite pleased with my new beginning. I looked forward to learning new ways, knowing new culture and speaking new tongue, Fascinating prospects I must say!
Posted by Uday Agnihotri at 4:10 AM 0 comments
Labels: NRI in the Making