I hate agreeing with anything that the RSS says. But, i must admit that their head has it right . Advani and Vajpayee need to make way for a younger generation. Primarily because they are losing their minds.

I can live with Jinnah being called secular – probably because he was. He believed in the separation of the “church” and political power. I can see through the crocodile tears on Ayodhya but take the statement with an entire salt factory, and put it down to politics! I also don’t really have an objection to Emergency being declared as a “black” patch in our Democracy. It was.

But, today’s statement where Mr.Advani declares his belief that Emergency had worse atrocities than the British Raj – is way off the mark.

I am not an apologist for the Emergency. It was a blot on Indian Democracy, Civil Rights, and Human Dignity. But, to compare it to a foreign regime that made millions landless overnight – the zamindari system; condoned the public execution of a prayer meeting, who made hundreds of thousands of skilled labour jobless overnight by punitive sanctions against their produce, – and this is just stuff that i remember of the top of my head – is a travesty.

In his desire to cover up internal dissent – and bolster his own shaking crown, Mr.Advani’s is attempting to deviate attention from the sorry state of affairs in his own party. Attacking the “dynasty” – especially when you have two of them sitting in your party – is not really going to paper the cracks that have appeared in the Sangh Parivar. Calling the Congress fascist, when you still have Narendra Modi ruling the roost in Gujarat – is a bit cocky.

Remember Emergency by all means. Ensure that it never happens again. But, to say that Emergency was worse than British Rule is to insult all those who fought for Freedom for over a 100 years. Incidentally, as late as 1943, the British Raj ended up comandeering the entire rice produce of Bengal that led to 4.3 million deaths.

But, then this kind of stance is hardly surprising. Mr.Advani has declared himself to be a ‘swayamsevak” and the RSS sat out the Independence movement in most cases, actively collaborating with the Raj in others. So it is hardly surprising that Mr.Advani exhibits his preference for the British Raj over Emergency.

finally, today Shahnawaz Hussein, also of the BJP, said:

Paswan is the Jinnah of Bihar

After his noble leader’s tour of Pakistan, do we now believe that Mr.Paswan is a great secularist who will create history!

also read Vikrum’s excellent post on Indian nostalgia for the Raj.