« Blog Mela #25 - Patriotic Version | Main | Stupid is as stupid does »

I would never participate in such candle vigils.

However I really fail to see why people are so vitriolic about them. These people go to the border, spending their own money, to light candles with people from across the corder. It is a gesture aimed at wishing for peace. They do not hurt anyone, do not kill anyone. They do not call for bandhs crippling our country’s economy. They never asked that the government release hostages in 1999. they never told vajpayee to declare a unilateral ceasefire against kashmiri terrorists in 2000.

their only fault is that they are hopeful romantics. and they are not yet fully sold on hate. but with so many other things to target, dislike and hate, we still want to pick on those candle vigilantes and deride what they do.

next time, please ask yourself, exactly who is getting hurt by these candle vigils or the numerous trips kuldip nayyar makes to pakistan. has a single piece of writing of nayyar’s been anti-india? he steadfastly sticks to the official indian position on kashmir.

hating the anti-national stuff that pinkos like bidwai and dsouza write is understandable. i fail to see what problem anyone could have with nayyar.

Hey I blogged about this independently before seeing your blog :beam:

Umm…Gaurav, aren’t you projecting a bit here? I just called this a farce and laughed at it - Where is the “vitriol, venom and hate” in the post?

I agree with Gaurav. We don’t need to continually mock these small peace efforts. Calling them morons (JK’s post) or the vigil a “farce” (your word Shanti) is both unfair and unneccesary.

I don’t think we should mock them, but we should call those people by their correct name.

Nuts

I’m not saying it. Albert Einstein said it.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and
over again, but expecting a different result.” -Albert Einstein

hey shanti, it wasnt a reaction specifically to this post of urs, but against the general tendency of many people to spew “v,v and h” in the direction of Nayyar and co.

>>“The definition of insanity is doing ……but expecting different result”

If that’s the definition of insanity, then, insanity is much better than hopelessness..:tongue3:

Thanks, Stefania :)

Niraj, By that definition, a certain Mr. M. K. Gandhi was nuts! He tried the same old civil disobedience thing again and again and again. As I see it nothing’s changed.

This “independence day” that we just celebrated is an illusion!

And hey, I’d gladly be such a nut!:mad:

Maybe you could check the word diligence

Niraj?

Gandhiji’s efforts yielded intermediate results as well as the final one of independence. So we’d have some reason to believe that we were going in the right path. In this case, we have none.

And seriously, Kuldip Nayyar is well-meaning and a nice chap, but that does not stop him from being an idiot. When Musharraf took over power, Nayyar wanted to organize protests and candle-light vigils in India. When told that Pakistanis’ themselves reacted to the coup with emotions ranging from indifference to jubiliation (after all, Nawaz Shariff wasn’t very much loved and there is hardly any difference between a democratic and a military government anyway) he answered that it was because they were terrified of speaking out. Ergo we should rush to the Pakistanis’ help.
I mean, if I were a Pakistani, I’d be pissed off too..

I am planning to open a candle selling business in Wagah. There will be 25% discount for repeat customers. So people like Kuldeep Nayya and Raj Babbar need not worry about bringing candles. I will need to apply for export permit to sell on the other side of the border, but with CIA running Pakistan, that should not be a problem, as my “Agent” friends can help.

LOL, JK - don’t mention it, my friend :) You know we will always help you ;)

Agent Shanti!
Whom all are you recruiting as double agents? :angry:
I’m very afraid that this kind of track II diplomacy might bear fruit of a different kind.

You know, it might be heretical to say it (and I think I’m going to blog on it)…

But wouldn’t it have been better if India had thrown off Britain’s shackles violently, like America did?

Instead Gandhi basically made the British feel sorry for India…independence was attained through charity. That, IMO, is part of the reason why India pursued such ruinous, utopian socialist policies (domestic & foreign) after independence: swadeshi, Hindi Chini bhai bhai, non-alignment, and so on.

Ravi, I thought you and Niraj were personally taking care of that little, ahem, “situation” :tongue3:

Godless, that is a pretty good point you make there - what if Bose’s way won over the British before Gandhi’s did? Maybe that would have given us a little more attitude and pride and a lot less socialism…

Nope. I don’t know about attitude but we’d have been socialist in any case. Or we’d have been communist. All the violent revolutionaries we had at the time were also leftists. Nothing you could do about that. The atmosphere of the time was like that.

Godless, I don’t think what you are saying is “heretical”, but I also don’t think the connection is valid. Two points to start off the debate.

1. The main proponent of the “violent” approach, Subhash Chandra Bose, was a socialist. (So too were the Nazis whose support he sought — “National Socialists” to expand the term). I think Bose’s success would have been worse for India than whatever Nehru did. Bose would most probably have become a communist dictator of India. Please think North Korea. Ouch!

2. At least 2 of Gandhi’s lieutenants were not socialist. Rajaji and Patel. Rajaji was widely thought to be Gandhi’s successor in the 20’s and early 30’s. And in his eighties, Rajaji formed a new liberal party to fight Nehru’s socialism. The Swatantra Party was pro free market.

Yaz, it is so great to see that somebody has already said the things you wanted to say, especially with reference to Bose, whom people attribute more qualities than desired.

About independence……both the supporters as well as opponents of non-violence neglect the fact that our freedom struggle had very little to do with independence. Brits left cos they were finding the whole colonisation thing unprofitable. They didnt go cos they felt sorry for us, but left cos they felt sorry for themselves.

And while Nehru’s Fabian socialist policies were not the best thing to happen to India, we also forget what a major role he played in forging a united and modern India, along with Patel. If he had died early, like Jinnah, we would have been a Hindu Pakistan. His monolith-like presence for almost 2 decades gave us at least a semi-stable foundation for a country where democracy, though rickety, still rattles on. We have a looooooong way to go, sure, but he at least got us started.

This whole “Nehru da bad man” attitude is more of an exercise in denial where we as people want to pin the blame on someone and absolve ourselves (as in not individual selves, but the whole nation) of the mess we find ourselves in.

Well said…It’s time to move on….:beam:

Gaurav, I didn’t see Ravi’s comment on Bose. It was entered while I was composing mine (otherwise I would have stated my agreement with him)

Earlier, I did belive in the “Nehru did so much and we would have collapsed without him” theory. I no longer do. There were many leaders of the freedom movement who outlived Nehru. Rajaji was Gandhi’s foremost lieutenant and outlived Nehru by 8 years. Rajaji actually lived to see the Silver Jubilee of independence in 1972. Going by what I am reading in his biography, he would have made a much much better Prime Minister.

I agree with that. CR wouldve made a much better PM.