Different Strokes

A B

This week has provided some interesting pieces of news.

One is that a veteran RSS pracharak and a founder-member of the RSS affiliated Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, Lalji Bhai Patel by name, has defied both the BJP and the RSS in order to launch a farmers' agitation. According to him, 'more than Rs 1.73 lakh crore in bank loans taken by 12 industrial houses have been waived in Gujarat' while 'the distress in the farming sector had forced 3.5 lakh farmers in Gujarat to quit agriculture and more than 13 lakh hectares of farmland in the state was lying fallow'. Lalji Bhai Patel reportedly tried to get the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh to protest against this state of affairs and after having failed, floated another organisation named the Kisan Kranti Manch. His move has naturally caused discomfiture to the ruling BJP.

On 12 October, the Delhi High Court set aside the punishments handed by the JNU authorities to Kanhaiya Kumar and 13 other students, asking the authorities to give the accused the chance to go through the documents and to allow them to defend their case. It is clear to any sane person that Kanhaiya Kumar and others were punished on the direction of the government and earlier, doctored videos had been used to project them as chanting anti-India slogans.

On 11 October, the Congress MP of Kerala concluded a 24-hour hunger strike against the delay in a railway gauge conversion project. Because the MP happened to be a dalit, the BJP Mahila Morcha members poured a mixture of cowdung and water in order to 'purify' the spot of the hunger strike immediately after the strike was ended. This event of 'purification' was not denied even by the BJP, although it accused the MP of trying to appropriate the 'credit for central projects'. The present ruling party of India has patently been continuing the practice of untouchability, the millennia-long curse of the Hindu society.

Eighteen cows, three calves and seven oxen were killed within a fortnight in a privately run cow shelter in the Faizabad district in Uttar Pradesh after the state government stopped supplying fodder three months ago. One may form one's own conclusion on how seriously cows are being protected by the worshippers of cows.

Frontier
Vol. 50, No.18, Nov 5 - 11, 2017