You wrote: “Doon school !! I mean school alumni association. That’s stretching the logic”.

Trying to explain Dosco kinship to a non-Dosco is like trying to explain calculus to a kindergartener. Like many others, you probably went to a regular day-school for a few hours (from 8 AM to 3 PM) for 5-odd days a week. You spent more time with your family than you did with your residential school-mates. So, if you don’t get the point about lifelong camaraderie between Doscos and ex-Doscos (Doon school Old Boys), I won’t be surprised.

Doon School is not just your regular run-of-the-mill school. Since 1935, Doon School is an all-male institution where the elite, privileged, influential families of India have sent their sons to study and get groomed to be India’s “leaders” in different fields. To Doon’s credit, it is rated as the ‘most respected residential school’ in India in a 2008 survey conducted by the Education World. These privileged kids (Doscos) spent the most formative years (6th grade to 12th grade) bonding and learning from their peers 24/7 in the residential school. At the residential school, they spent more time with each other than they did with their own families (whom they visited once or twice a year).

As teenagers, they had spent memorable years together, debated topics together, struggled together in academics, played sports together, talked about childhood crushes and strummed guitars over a campfire. Even after these Doscos graduated, there were shared joyrides in cars, dinner invitations to each other’s homes, weddings and baptisms to fraternize at – all these are life-long bonds formed between these rich kids before they inherited powerful political dynasties or started well-funded media outlets or became prominent diplomats. All these shared experiences and undying loyalties from an early age forged the Doon School students into a “Band of Brothers”, whose loyalty to each other and shared memories (of the best years of their lives) are not wiped away by the sands of time.

Plus as they got older – a common notion of “self interest” that is intrinsic to elitists keeps them working together – out of losing their privileged positions if a different ideology gains preponderance in the polity.

Who says alumni networks don’t wield clout? Alumni networks are quite powerful and fiercely loyal to each other. I guess you are not part of any of the IIT or IIM alumni networks, are you?

You wrote: “Prabhu Chawla has links with RSS”.

You should get your sources checked. The RSS filed a defamation lawsuit against the Prabhu Chawla. See: http://www.thehindu.com/2004/12/25/stories/2004122505841100.htm

You wrote: “Do you want to say we should listen to Kanchan Gupta & Rajeev Srinivasan with his “undie TV” and “cut price news network” commentary

Don’t set yourself up for libel, my friend. Neither Kanchan Gupta nor Rajeev Srinivasan have ever referred to NDTV or CNN-IBN in the terms you’ve described above. But if you’ve transposed your subconscious opinions about these two TV channels in your comment above, then so be it. But don’t put your words into Kanchan da’s or Rajeev ji’s mouths.

It’s obvious why your ilk dislikes Kanchan da and Rajeev ji – both of whom are iconoclast mavericks hailing from states (Bengal and Kerala respectively) that are India’s surviving bastions of regressive Stalinist dogma.

• Rajeev Srinivasan, an IIT-ian and Stanford alumnus, thinks outside the box and is doing quite well as a freelance journalist and blogger.
• Kanchan Gupta (and Chandan Mitra) get the credit for running a successful pro-India newspaper like “The Pioneer”, which refuses to kowtow to the Indian English Language Media’s tradition of selling itself to the highest bidder – both western interests and Arab petrodollars. That must really get your goat.

You wrote: Regarding Gujrat riots !! why do you want to bring such insane logic like Election and its results. Comeon dude you can do better than that a country like ours where 5% vote means clean sweep and you are judging on basis of that .

Let’s see whose logic is insane, my brother. You must really dislike democracy so much that you disregard the electoral will of the voters of Gujarat. If Gujarati voters approve of Narendra bhai, what is your problem?

“Jaswant Singh fiasco — answers to some queries”

Regarding Gujrat riots !! why do you want to bring such insane logic like Election and its results. Comeon dude you can do better than that a country like ours where 5% vote means clean sweep and you are judging on basis of that .

@Ajax Das
India has been dealing with your stereotypes for centuries, so you can take a chill-pill.

Armchair psychology is the most easiest and difficult to do, if you know what I mean. However, JS may have experienced a very, very belated mid-life crisis in the BJP. He mulled over the extensive years of his life gone by, and realised that …. he had achieved nothing. Nothing at all. And this in spite of holding key portfolios in a nationalist government in an exciting time for a dynamic nation.

His pronouncements were always pretentious yet prosaic, bombastic yet vapid. I would have thought his afternoon tea chats consisted of long Marlowian soliloquies. And once he realised that his life amounted to nothing more? Sheer despair and despondency. His frustration turns to nasty vilification of the softest, most convenient and most immediate cause at hand ….. the hand, the party and the ideology that fed him.

This would be easy to achieve, amass immediate national (sic) sympathy and acquire a modicum of international blips as a swansong. It would also be very simple …. he knows the facts, all he needs to do is ‘reverse’ them, both to himself, as well as others.

And thus a Jinnah, whose call for ‘Direct Action’ was tantamount to nothing less than a slaughter of defenceless Hindus, is ‘reversed’ in to a paragon of Hindu-Muslim friendship.

I have mentioned before, the final position and actions define a man. Jinnah may have displayed secular tendencies in the past, whether you call them smatterings or genuine credentials. He was DB Naoroji’s secretary at one time. But he assumed the guise of the apostle of hate in the end, calling for the cruel butchery of a nation, and a slaughter of a community as a precursive warning of what would engulf India if his demands were not met.

I cannot understand why people harp on about his early avatar, when his final ghoul was the one that defined those innumerable dead bodies lying on the streets. This is the image of Jinnah that stands and is pervasive.

I am glad that JS is gone and for good. The BJP needs to define its identity. Is it a soft-looking party that infact consists of truly hard men? Or is it hard-looking party that is really comprised of cry-baby softies?

Great challenges are upon us. If history repeats itself, and it unfailingly does, the time is nearly nigh when we shall be reduced to fighting for our survival.

Our encirclement by enemies .. IN ALL DIRECTIONs, is nearly complete. A SUPERPOWER dreams of shattering us to pieces (China). We have NO ALLY left (Soviet Union). Those paying lip service to our friendship (USA, UK, UN) are funding Pakistan to divert their fury on us. After the Congress aided the Sri Lankan government to slaughter fellow-Indians by sending them military hardware, Sri Lanka is repaying us by sending army representatives to Pakistan to co-ordinate anti-Indian activities!! Hah!!

I have not even touched upon the mass of internal enemies … the Congress and jihadis.

Many of us do not believe it. Many of us do not ‘want’ to believe it. But when all the facts point to impending war, it is idle, wishful and dangerous thinking to brazenly assume hostilities will not break out.

In such a scenario, we need every single asset we can muster. People like JS are liabilities. If he had a shred of dignity, he would have retired as soon as he realised his speech was slurring and he was growing senile.

That’s “IF” he had a shred of dignity. From his disgusting and egregious exit, including possibly going to Pakistan to promote a false book in praise of the architect of mass-murder of his fellow citizens, it is evident he has none.

The sentence “…vacuous accusations against Shri.Narendra Modi…” says everything. I mean I know the Sanghis are adept at rewriting history (Patel as Sangh mole in Congress! Ha!), but even such recent history? Truly Faith is all powerful and makes people believe anything…

@Arnab:

Here’s an article I came across that also espouses the theory that Jaswant’s days were numbered anyway because he did not have a vote bank (as opposed to Vasundhara Raje). He realized that and went for broke.

http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_jaswant-s-swan-song_1285288

I use my real name, here and where-ever else I go – never used any other handle on this board; don’t need to.

You prove my point pretty nicely – thanks for fitting the described stereotype to the T.

”Flawed thesis on partition”

@Ajax Das
Howdy? Your rehashed handle comes as no surprise, neither does your clichéd whining. How does it feel to be completely outgunned and outsmarted by India-lovers?