I suppose it was inevitable that India blamed the Phulgam attack on Pakistan. I’m surprised that Pakistan escaped blame for the failure of the second-but-last Indian moon mission (the last one succeeded, and went according to plan, and thus Pakistanis couldn’t be blamed).
What worries me is that this time everyone seems so blasé about this, as if it was inevitable that war would be averted. Is Narendra Modi such a non-serious person that his threats are to be taken with such a large pinch of salt?
EVen if there isn’t a conflict, India has done something very serious, which I fear will lead to trouble in the future, even if India walks back on it this time, which is to ‘suspend’ the Indus Waters Treaty. When water issues are concerned, the unreconstructed peasant in us instinctively reacts with “them’s fightin’words”, to quote a phrase from the old American West. It must be two or three decades ago that the Wullar Barrage and the Baglihar Dam first impinged on the public consciousness, but were always seen in the context of the IWT. The focus was on the arbitration of the issue, how well our case was being presented, and how India was trying to oil out. Is that why India wants out? Because it’s afraid of losing a case?
Modi deserves to be congratulated, for a truly original contribution to political thought: water terrorism. And perhaps one can’t blame him, for he has to tackle a ‘sherbet jihad.’ So adding water seems like a good idea?
Anyway, it seems there’s this fellow in India, Baba Ram Dev, who rose to fame about two decades ago by broadcasting Yoga lessons. It is worth remembering that Modi is also a Yoga devotee. The BJP seems to have a thing about yoga, for it has made a full-fledged Yogi the CM of Uttar Pradesh.
Anyway, back to Baba Ram Dev and the “sherbet jihad”. The Indian Supreme Court, no less, had to order him to remove a video advertising the drink he has started, Patanjali, for the implication that the profits of a rival drink, Rooh Afza, were being used to fund mosques and madressas. I’m not sure how Rooh Afza became a Muslim symbol, but there it is. It aggravated the Baba enough that he brought out his own concoction.
The Baba has in common with Modi that he is an Other Backward Caste, a Yadav in Haryana, while Modi is a Teli in Gujarat. OBCs have jobs reserved both centrally and in the states. Yogi Aditya Nath is a Garhwali Rajput, though, in whom the BJP’s caste-ist nature comes through.
Another holy man died, without having founded a drink. Pope Francis passed away. He was the first Jesuit to become Pope, being a member of the Society of Jesus. The Society of Jesus was founded as a missionary body, and became so powerful that the Order’s Superiors General have been called ‘Black Popes’. When Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Superior of the Argentine Branch in 1979, I don’t think he had any thought of becoming Black Pope, for no Latin American had then ever become Superior General.
The 2010s brought a change for first Bergoglio became the first non-Italian, and also first Latin American, to become ‘white Pope’ (the white-black thing is to do with their robes) in 2013, with Artuto Sosa becoming the first Latin American in 2016 to become ‘black Pope’.
Coming back to the ‘sherbet jihad’ and the accompanying ‘water jihad’ launched by India, I noticed that the PTI has not come out frankly and loudly (as they are used to) and called for the release of Imran Khan as the only solution to the whole issue. I wonder why?
That reminds of time, during Benazir Bhutto’s second tenure, when there was a move after the death in office of Ch Altaf Hussain, for the appointment of Kh Tariq Rahim as Governor. Not only would all problems facing the PPP be solved, but so would the Kashmir issue. Anyway, he didn’t get the job. He had to wait until Benazir was sacked in 1995, and President Farooq Leghari gave him the job for the caretaker period. The Kashmir problem was not solved, and here we are.
But there won’t be a war. Will Modi risk for his Army what he won’t risk for his cricket team, the pollution of the shadow of a Pakistani?
#Sherbet #jihad #water #terrorism
