A Muffled Viewpoint

A recipe for living with COVID-19 As the days pass by, an eerie feeling is pervading within our hearts – that Corona is here to stay. The feeling darkens when the thought of absence of any preventive vaccine comes to mind. The only solace comes from the fact that the fatality rate is low, though we are misinformed about it because what we are being told is the percentage of deaths to those infected and not to those in whose case, the treatment has terminated! In India, 1,82,490 cases have been confirmed as Corona positive till 8 AM today (31-5-20) out of which 5186 have died, 86,970 have recovered and remaining 90,323 are still active and undergoing treatment. Hence, we are told the fatality rate as 2.84% (i.e. dead as a percentage to total confirmed cases) But it is misleading. In fact, the treatment has been completed in respect of 92,156 persons out of which 5186 died and 86970 recovered. Thus, the effective and true mortality rate is 5.63%. But what is dreadful is no...

WORLD WAR III – COVID-19 PANDEMIC            A  HISTORY IN MAKING Round -1:       Advantage China The year 2020 came with a horrendous gift from China – The Corona Virus. By the time the world awakened to its lethality, it was already too late. By mid-April, the death toll has risen to around one hundred thirty thousand and the number of affected people to above two million. The worst affected are the USA, Italy, Spain, Iran, France and Britain and almost all the countries across the globe. Till this time the world is still ignorant about the cause. Some believe that the virus crossed over from bats to humans from animal markets of Wuhan, while others believe that it got leaked from a military Bio-chemical warfare laboratory located on the outskirts of Wuhan. Now, while I call it a world war, obviously I subscribe to the latter theory. The format below is how the History textbooks will record this history in ma...

2.         THE HIMALAYAN BLUNDER              No, with apology to Brig. J. P. Dalvi, I am not talking about his book by the same name, which kicked up a considerable controversy about the most crushing military defeat that modern India ever faced in 1962. In fact, the genesis of this debacle can be found in the erratic appreciation of India’s defence needs by the first government of free India under the premiership of Shri Jawahar Lal Nehru.         An ambiguity and confusion overtook my mind, as I delved deep in this subject. Was it a blunder or simply a failure? Protracted thinking led me to the argument that had we lost the war to China despite our war-preparedness and diplomatic efforts, we could call it a ‘failure’, because, after all one side was bound to loose and definitely the weaker one. But we were not prepared for war, we failed to appreciate the new world order that was emergi...

EPIC BLUNDERS OF INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS With this post I am beginning a new series on the above title. A Curtain Raiser :             The Indian National Congress or shortly ‘The Congress’ was founded in 1885 by Sir A. O. Hume, a retired ICS officer  and a group of 72 people, to form a platform for civic and political dialogue of educated Indians with the British Raj. After the first war of independence of 1857 and the transfer of power to rule India from the East India Company to the British Empire (the Raj), it was the goal of the Raj to support and justify its governance with the aid of English-educated Indians, who would be familiar and friendly to British culture and political thinking, so as to eliminate possibility of another such ‘rebellion’. The founder group, mostly the alumni on Calcutta University consisted of loyalist men decorated with western education. It had 54 Hindus, 2 Muslims 3 British civil serv...

8    Hindu Rashtra – The Final Step  (Continued from the last post – Hindu Rashtra, the redundancy)             Now we come to the most important part of our series. Here I would request you to recapitulate one of my last posts titled, ‘HINDU RASHTRA – the meaning’. Unless we are clear about the meaning, we may go astray in its implementation. At the cost of repetition, I shall reproduce the hallmark of the meaning of a Hindu Rashtra, as I understand it in the context of Indian panorama.                   “Therefore, by Hindu Rashtra I mean the assimilation of all people living in geographic   boundaries of Hindustan in Hindutva, with complete freedom to profess their religions and co-exist peacefully under a unified civil and political code. It is not possible to wish away a vast section of population, which constitutes about 20% of total population o...

7    Hindu Rashtra – the redundancy.                                                     (Continued from the last post – Hindu Rashtra, the need)        Now let us have a look on the most stubborn reasons against a Hindu Rashtra. Because I am advocating Hindu Rashtra as I understand it, it will be natural for me discuss alongside why I find these arguments unconvincing or otherwise. 1.              Democracies which give complete freedom of speech, thought and worship are the best and religion must not be imposed against ones free will. How sonorous and convincing this argument sounds! I agree this would be an ideal arrangement, provided all nations of the...

 6.     HINDU RASHTRA – the need                                  (Continued from the last post – Hindu Rashtra, the meaning) The question is why we need India to be a Hindu Rashtra. A protagonist of Hindu Rashtra will give the following reasons in support of his belief: 1.      The genesis of Hindu Rashtra has its roots in the “Ramayana and Mahabharata Era”, which maintained that whole of ‘Jambu-dweep’ or Bharat Versha, though divided into independent states or kingdoms, was united in a unified culture, language and Dharama. It had a unified social and political value system codified in various scriptures including Vedas, Ramayana and Mahabharata. Though the system was never called Hindutva, nor the residents were called Hindu, because probably, nothing else existed requir...