Mitt Romney might have won Iowa’s Republican straw poll (as was expected) but Ron Paul’s performance was credible too. He came in fifth with 9.1% of votes. Meanwhile, the mainstream media continues to ignore him. The write-up at Washington Post covering this news doesn’t even mention his name. Why?

Barkha Dutt writes a fine piece in Hindustan Times on the recent assault of Taslima Nasreen titled The Secular Silence. She writes:

As far as I’m concerned, Qureshi or Akbaruddin Owaisi (the Hyderabad MLA who led the attack on Taslima) are no different from Praveen Togadia or Bal Thackeray. All of them represent the dangerous politics of intolerance and bigotry. The fact that some of them have popular support doesn’t give them legitimacy; it makes them even more frightening and insidious. And to treat them differently is to embolden intolerance on either side.

I Agree. I have long argued that intolerance has no color. Or we can argue that intolerance can have any shade. Green, saffron and red. Intolerance begets intolerance. People like Qureshi and Owaisi feed on the hatred preached by Togadia and Thackeray and vice-versa.

Dutt also argues in favor of a public debate on whether Indian government should grant (or reject) asylum to Nasreen. As far as I am concerned, GOI should make this decision based on principles. Policy, may be. But certainly domestic political compulsions shouldn’t be a factor in this case. For too long we have let the mob sit onto judgement on the fate of individuals. It has to stop. Now.All the Indian Muslims (Hyderabadis included) I have talked to have expressed deep sense of regret at this incidence. I also wrote about this in Indian Muslims.

Dilip wonders why Manohar Joshi has suddenly lost track of his statements regarding Srikrishna Commission Report. Joshi is also on the record saying that he would prefer to resign than take any action against Bal Thackeray or Shiv Sainiks. Meanwhile, the victims await justice.

Religious Leaders + Votebank Politics + Zero Perspective = Disaster

IMHO there is just one good solution for everyone demanding head of Taslima Nasreen: force them to read all her crappy books. No, seriously.

Noting that Nasreen had made “derogatory references against Prophet Mohammad in her writings,” Tauqeer said: “We demand that the government ban her entry into the country. If it is not done, anyone who beheads her will be given a reward of Rs 5 lakh,” he said.

Dynastic Policitics + BJP = No Surprise

It is no surprise that there is just one Muslim in the list of 316 BJP candidates for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections. No serious rapprochement between Indian Muslims and BJP is possible till BJP cuts off its ideological ties with the hate ideology of the Hindutva groups. It is also not a surprise that the party with a difference is having a pre-poll alliance with Apna Dal, a through-and-through casteist party of Kurmis in UP. Political exigencies of BJP calls for such an alliance. And also not surprising is the inclusion of the son of party chief Rajnath Singh as one of the candidates. After BJP inducted Varun Gandhi, its criticism of Congress on dynastic politics became a sham.

So much for the party with a difference!

The Gujarat forest department has sent a notice to Aamir Khan for allegedly violating the Wildlife Act during the making of his film Lagaan in 2000, when he had filmed a chinkara without permisison in the Kutch district.

When asked what took them so long, the officials said that they were trying to convince the Chinkara to testify against Aamir in court. Chinkara, a big Aamir fan, allegedly agreed only after repeated screenings of Fanaa in captivity. After getting Chinkara to sign a sworn statement, the officials have slapped notice on the hapless fellow on charges of indecent exposure and abetting an enemy in a profitable transaction.

Link via Subcoded.

Today morning when I opened rediff.com, there was a very surprising headline at the top, “US didn’t have guts to offer us same N-deal : Pakistan”. Now, based upon previous record, at least one thing is certain; the Pakistani establishment is not known to talk to USA like this. So, I was literally shocked. When I clicked the link, it was actually about Yashwant Sinha (ex-Foreign Affairs Minister, GOI) raving and ranting on how the current Indian government has sold out on the nuclear deal and that the US didn’t had guts to offer the same deal to the NDA government!

The headline remained there for many hours. Finally, somebody decided to drop ‘Pakistan’ from it. Link for the story is here.

do Ghaz zamiiN bhii na milii kuu-e-yaar meN?

If you still are not sure what is happening in Lebanon, see these photos at Flickr.

I have no sympathy for the self-destructive Hezbollah and I am totally against Israel meting out collateral punishment to the entire Lebanese population.

Karan Thapar writes in Hindustan Times about the speech Rajiv Gandhi gave in the Lok Sabha on 6th September 1990 against the Mandal Commission.

Then Rajiv pointed out that the report is based on the work of a research and planning team “which met for only three days” and a second panel that met for five. Rajiv’s conclusion: “This means no specialist, no sociologist was involved with this report apart from these eight days.”

Now let’s turn to the data the report is based upon. Rajiv pointed out that the first set of data is from the cost indexing of 1891 and the census of 1931. As he asked: “We are talking about data which is a hundred years old or sixty years old. Is that valid today?”

Not me and you but some people would. NYT writes about the new Treasury secretary appointee,

Henry M. Paulson Jr. took home more than $38 million last year as the chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs. If the Senate confirms him as the next Treasury secretary, he will collect a mere $183,500 in annual pay…