I agree - meeting violence with violence and punishing the many for the crimes of the few is not a desirable policy. However, there are occasions when the “tragic choice” of less, controlled violence or more, uncontrolled violence needs to be made. Do you punish or put to death the convicted and tried killer-rapist or allow him to perpetrate further crimes?

This tragic choice arises because the Indian court system is unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes by perpetrators out of fear of upsetting the members of a particular religion. Where justice is linked to politics, the result can never be right or accepted.

In India today, justice delayed is justice denied.
The kith and kin of the many victims of the Godhra train massacre would never see justice in their lifetimes. Just like the Kashmiri Pandits. Just like the Sikhs who perished in the wake of Indira’s assasination. Mohammad Afzal, who attacked our parliament, has had his death sentence stayed for political reasons. And there is talk of Kasab being tried as a juvenile, for which the maximum term is 3 years - that despite killing scores of innocent people and days worth of television footage showing him killing and smiling.

The grievances of victims of any community cannot be ignored. Where it is the grievances of the majority community, this will lead to instability and a polarisation of the polity. In South Africa, the rights of the majority community were ignored and supressed and it was called apartheid. If PM Manmohan Singh is to believed, being non-Muslim in India is a disadvantage just as being black in apartheid South Africa was.

PM Manmohan Singh is on record as saying:
“Minorities have special rights on all resources available in this country - particularly the muslim community.”

In contrast, Modi is on record as saying: “When i introduce a new water scheme in Gujarat, I always think, how many gujaratis will derive benefit from this scheme. I never care about how many hindus are going to get benefit or how many muslims will avail benefit or never do calculations like the ratio of quantity of water available to hindus and muslims.”

What is needed is the development of opportunity and institutions and the preservation and enhancement of their integrity. Modi’s role in developing Gujarat is a model for others. Why do we in India love to tarnish a success story?

The communalist argues for special rights.

The secularist argues for equal rights.

Let all Indians have equal rights, equal opportunities, and leaders like Modi that enlarge the pie for all, as opposed to leaders who divide an ever dwindling pie on the basis of religion, and caste.

If that alone happens, i feel, india will see a giant leap forward.. when all the villages are connected, the potential of our people become unmatched and unpredictable..

The IT companies need not sit only in bangalore or chennai.. and the IT professionals need not travel to far away lands to work in IT companies..

Every capable person can sit in his own village (or atleast nearby town) and work..

When such things happen, it will distribute the enormous talent and knowledge of IT professionals to the unreached masses.. Their professionalism, and the problem solving skills will be used locally to solve the people’s problem..

also when the connectivity is available, all other infrastructure will slowly emerge.. like ATM’s, Internet Kiosks, associated business.. people will not feel alone, and hence more people will migrate to villages, for variety of reasons, like low cost of living etc..

please refer http://www.dharampal.net to find out the reality of caste system.. in his book “The beautiful tree” available there, he has for the first time exposed, that most of the BC and OBC’s in india were the rulers of india before britishers..

Also, he had proved with statistics, that almost all castes had been given education, and that the entire madras presidency alone contained more than 1 lakh schools, during 1830’s..

I wish, we start to understand india in our own perspective rather than through western prisms..

particularly your criticism of Modi, and your quotes on the atlantic.. The extreme sensationalising sound bytes of media during gujarat elections, is a perfect example, how we ordinary people are hoodwinked by powerful media.. In such angle, i question the veracity of an article by a foreign magazine, which is based on indian english media, which had proved itself to be extremely biased..

DO you feel, in such climate, the opinion on modi (including yours) would be honest and factful?

Personally i had gone beyond these media sound bytes, and understood the ground reality.. To say, that Modi did not have universal appeal is entirely wrong.. the fact is that many vested interests do not want him to have universal appeal..

As some one pointed out, all his developmental efforts in gujarat are secular.. both hindus and muslims received the fruits equally..
If modi is to be accused of riots, then the media is to be accused of sensationalising it, and of the so called secular brigades to exploit for political reasons..

Its true that political parties use emotions.. but its equally true that educated people are also using emotions to hate those politicians and those who dont subscribe to their ideals (as can be evident from many of the comments here)..

where is the common ground? Everyone has to change..

Only in india, the educated people are always in hostility with the politicians and have so much contempt for them.. If we cared to engage them constructively through proper mass movement, the situation would have been different..

First, thank you for pointing out a useful article from Robert D. Kaplan on Narendra Modi. Kaplan has also written a useful article on the Indian Ocean at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64832/robert-d-kaplan/center-stage-for-the-21st-century. Kaplan is clearly a man of insight, like you.

I think Modi’s strategy is two-part.
1) Put a substantial price on acts of terror in order to deter further acts.

In this regard, Modi has been like the Israelis who inflict a disproportionately high toll on acts of terror by Hamas. However, there is a crucial difference, which I shall detail later.

The alternative strategy (attributable to Congress) of “absorb, appease, absorb, appease and hope the problem goes away” has led to more attacks and more unrest, and culminated in Mumbai and India being the worst affected nation by terrorism, after Iraq. It has also split the polity through vote-bank politics. What’s worse, is that this strategy has led to great unaddressed ‘majority’ grievances, and which will, if unchecked, eventually explode into uncontrolled reprisals and further threaten the political unity of this country. In other countries, political pseudo-secularism (though none do selective-secularism as well as India) is countered with community communalism. For precisely the same reasons, Muslims are unwelcome in most parts of the West. In the West, debates on multi-culturalism are being replaced with debates on assimilation. And they do not have a 155 million strong Muslim population, making up 15% of the population, and growing 3x faster than the average. These Western nations have these concerns even when Muslims are 1-2% of the population.

I am speculating here but I think Modi wanted to give vent to the rage of a community in ONE controlled, cathartic release. It is an ugly option. But if the alternative is MANY violent uncontrolled reprisals of a wounded community, it would have been far, far worse. At times, one is faced with such ugly options and one has to choose the less ugly among them.

2) Follow-up with development that enhances everyone’s rights to prevent further violence

Unlike Israel, Modi has gone about enhancing everyone’s (including Muslim) rights by focusing on expanding the economic pie, giving 24/7 access to water, electricity, good roads, schools and universities, plus jobs. Much inter-community strife occurs because of a fight over the allocation of scarce resources. By enlarging the pie, there is enough for people’s need (though not greed) there will be a commensurate reduction in strife. “If my needs are met, I have no incentive to disturb the status quo.”

The (pseudo)-secular party strategy of appeasement without development only creates more tension. By not enlarging the pie through development, the minority communities that these parties profess to protect, remain disadvantaged, unemployed, poor, and angry. “..my needs are not met, I have an incentive to disturb the status quo.”

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, ex-National Knowledge Commission member has written of this in today’s Indian Express.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bengal-blues-left-woes/437375/

Moreover, as Kaplan notes, Muslims are voting with their feet to move to Gujarat – that is testament to Modi’s (and BJP’s) development focus.

The bottomline: We may not like Modi’s methods, but they appear to be working.

Because, even amongst the lower strata of the society, mobile phones have become vital - which is covered in your book somewhere. But, do such persons have access to computer ? If yes, access to connectivity ? If yes, is it operable in ‘native’ language ? If yes, is it easy to do monetary transactions with them ? And, mother of all, enough electricity to power them ?

OTOH, operating a mobile phone requires much less learning curve. The handset itself is already widely available amongst masses (lower or whatever the altitude of strata). Thus, (not that I am political enough to support BJP or otherwise completely) I like BJP’s idea about smart-phone. Although, not the “giving out” part; as that reeks of populism.

Having said that, I don’t see why urban (or, better off) folks would not benefit out of such an infrastructure. For example, why not dispense railway tickets from the BMTC bus conductors as well ? Would it not save time of queuing up at the station ? Or, would it not bring in people without bank accounts into digital better-half ? Extrapolating, maybe people will give up their wallets for mobile phones to do transactions !

The only catch is, this idea will never pick up if it is not based on SMS. It will fall on its face even before ‘GPRS’ is half-uttered. SMS is, of course cheaper than GPRS.

So, if the Airtels and BSNLs start providing SMS based credits/debits into one’s pre-paid accounts, I think we will have a revolution !