Irony

Hours before Amit Varma posted on his blog “Buy Elections”

Hours later we are told IU has been nominated in the 2008 Weblog Awards and, ironically so, Amit write on his blog:

“The category I have great hopes of is Best Asian Blog, so do vote there wholeheartedly. I’m most unlikely to win Best Political Coverage, where giants like Daily Kos, Townhall and Politico have also been nominated, but hell, we’re the world’s largest democracy, we know how to vote, so do vote there as well”.

Amit, we know how to vote, after all you only have taught us this here.

“Well, every election is really an exercise in buying voters. Either you can buy them with promises of good governance, better infrastructure, law & order and so on; or you can buy them with money and material goods. If the promises have no value, and both voters and politicians know that every promise is an empty one, then what’s a pragmatic voter to do? Take the money, of course. A self-perpetuating cycle duly begins, and there you have it, democracy at the grassroots”, says Amit.

Well what can you promise us if we cast our vote in your favour.

I think clarity on some issues.

The most important and imperative among them is: Your take on J & K and secession, especially after your previously stated position and the subsequent elections which saw participation of 62 % Kashmiries.

I hope you are listening..

Disclosure: In one of my post on allowing Kashmir to secede, i too had admitted that argument made by liberals look rather convincing than that of others. But then at the same time I had advocated to be selfish to keep Kashmir. Now I am glad to say that Kashmiries doesn't want us to be selfish. But they want us to be objective; objective enough to judge their aspirations, their problems and their emotions.

Lets be selfish

The two columns that appeared last Sunday in HT and TOI have finally started evoking reactions. Allowing Kashmir to secede was the base of articles that came from Vir Sanghvi and Swaminathan Aiyar.


Many have attempted to put counter arguments on the thoughts. I find none of these counter argument as convincing as opinions by Sanghvi and Aiyar.

Yet I don’t want to support idea of separate Kashmir.

Liberal Aiyar, a prime contender for this year’s Bastiat for contributing towards free society through his writings, doesn’t like “ruling people against their will”. Sanghvi, a prominent journalist known for picking right pulse at right place, asks "why are we still hanging on to Kashmir if the Kashmiris don’t want to have anything to do with us?".

Well, to me, Kashmir is crucial as part of India’s geopolitical maneuvering. Agreed that Kashmiries want to secede, but aren’t these emotions politically driven ?.

If Hindus get carried away by opportunist BJP and demand ram mandir in Ayodhya, shouldn’t the government respect majority view ?. After all democracy is made up of majority view.

Kashmir affair has third party angle (read Pakistan), hence the issue turn international. In international relations, might and interests always overtake democratic views.

So, let me be selfish for my country and play the same card that India is playing.

Here I recall Americal thinker Bernard Baruch’s quote:
“The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves”.