From Javed Akthar’s  Twitter feed: “Dr Binayak Sen’s life imprisonment reminds us that standing by the poor and the helpless is an unforgivable crime in our society”. This sentiment is repeated in different ways in the general chatter about the Binayak Sen verdict—he is an awarded doctor with a sterling record of public service and what a terrible country India is when such a man be punished when corrupt officials who siphoned off crores walk free? Unfortunately all of this is emotional hot-air used by activists, with a definite agenda, to provoke an emotional response rather than a cerebral one. Even the LET’s parent organization does extensive social work in Pakistan and Kashmir as part of their outreach activities and, for that matter, so do Naxals themselves—-as a matter of fact, C. Vanaja’s extremely sympathetic dispatches on the developmental work done by Naxals were themselves awarded by the Prime Minister of India as part of the RN Goenka sponsored  “Uncovering India Invisible”. Hence using Dr. Sen’s record of altruism is neither here nor there and should have no bearing on whether he is a criminal or not except proving that unlike champagne liberal hypocrites of the Azmi and the Roy type, this man has the conviction to walk the talk. Which is admirable no doubt. Also just because corrupt officials go unpunished should not excuse Dr. Sen, should he be guilty, as two wrongs we all know just make two wrongs and not one right.

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If you are the caretaker of the store and the owner finds that inventory has been pilfered and the cash register emptied, there are two options open to you. Fall at the feet of the maalik begging forgiveness or rip one’s kurta and accuse the owner of having tried to force himself on you.

The Congress has gone for the last option. At a time when the government presides over the kind of corruption that actually makes one feel sorry for the guys who made small change during Bofors, the Congress have trained their guns on the BJP for their support of the “Bling Bling Rappah”, showing that those those who stay in glass houses can throw stones if only there is no one outside who can throw the stone back. And the BJP for long has been exactly that—–a toothless, leaderless entity, a political Nirupa Roy who sits at the steps of the temple waiting for God to come down and restore her eyesight.

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Much has been written about Julian Assange and about Wikileaks these last few weeks. Mainstream American political figures have called for him to be put to death on charges of treason. The full force of American economic, political and technological power has been brought to bear down upon one man, in a brutally ferocious manner of the kind not seen in recent memory. Assange has been condemned by influential voices in the US public space as an anti-American anarchist who has launched an unremitting war against the entire US system, using ironically infrastructure that they created (The Internet after all having originated from a DARPA project), setting into motion a bloodless but perhaps equally damaging 9/11. At the same time, he has also been made into a hero, beatified for using the greatest weapon of mass destruction otherwise known as the truth to bring to its knees the world’s greatest power, a power that invites revulsion and fascination in equal measure from the rest of the world—with the fervor of anti-Americanism being matched only by the desire to emigrate to it given half a chance.

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