Take This Vote And Shove It

Manuwant, my journalist friend from Patna, Bihar, where assembly elections are due, writes the following about the CONgress and BJP there:

Yesterday, Congresss workers attacked the Bihar State Congress President Nawab Mehboob Ali Qaiser as he returned from New Delhi...they manhandled him and even attacked his vehicle...Qaiser just managed to get away.

Congress workers are angry because they paid Rs.50 lakhs for a Congress ticket and yet their bids were unsuccessful!

Today they have locked up the main gate of Sadaqat Ashram - the Congress Party headquarters.

In the BJP - the party with a difference- workers ransacked the state office in broad daylight..breaking chairs and tables..assaulting office bearers of The Party.

Read the full post - which also talks about the other parties in Bihar, including that of the current Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar.

My question: If these are "political parties," what then can be said about Indian "democracy"?

Manuwant ends his post with the following plea:

DO NOT VOTE IF YOU LOVE INDIA.

Who is Manuwant? you might ask. Well, I have known him for a few years, and he is a journalist trying hard to set up a "liberal" (in the classical, European sense) alternative in Bihar. He became a liberal opposed to Indian socialism long ago, and was even in touch with Minoo Masani.

Now, as we all know, such an alternative liberal party is disallowed by legislation in India - and, recently, when this was challenged by an NGO, the Supreme Court of India upheld the ban. (See my earlier blog post on this decision.)

Thus, it seems quite clear to me that something is seriously wrong with the socialist democratic government of India. The political parties are essentially gangs of the corrupt; their personnel are interested only in loot. These people legislate away our freedoms. These people run the administration. These people passed Chacha's budget - which included borrowings of 3,50,000 crore rupees. (1 crore is 10 million.)

What is clear is that this is a "pirate ship of State."

And the guns of this pirate ship are manned by Supreme Court judges who want to disallow any ideological competition.

Thousands of crores of rupees will be spent conducting this election - by IAS officers.

The people of Bihar will be conned into thinking that the competition is free and fair. Most people the world over will think so too. Indeed, the other day, at the United Nations, while responding to a Pakistani charge on Kashmir, the Indian foreign minister said that he did not need "any lessons on democracy from Pakistan."

This word "democracy" is just a fig leaf.

The ugliness of reality says something else.

This is a Predatory State. A "kleptocracy."

There are no quick fixes that I have to offer. What is important is that the elites of India think. Manuwant has done well to expose the ugly truth. We must all think of a way out.

For inspiration, all I can offer is a song - a war song. We must declare war on this pirate ship of State - and sink it. This is a song of the British Navy in WW2, called "Sink the Bismarck." You can watch the video here - and get inspired.

WAR!