The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Friday 22 March 2013

UNHCR SRI LANKA RESOLUTION: RAHUL GANDHI HARD-TALKS ‘POLITICS OF CHANGE’ YET THE CONGRESS PARTY REAFFIRMS ITS NOT GOING TO CHANGE

The way the national events and the international developments, directly affecting the internal politics of the country, are happening tell us the Congress party has not even given a thought to the prospect that it is the time to change, to follow the politics of principles, that ‘enough is enough’, that no more unethical compromises to cling to the seat of power.

Abuse of power by the democratically elected governments in India has become a norm and the Congress party leads the pack, for it has ruled the country for the maximum number of years.

NOW could have been the time to walk the talk when, once again, Rahul Gandhi, the future prime-ministerial candidate and the party’s recently crowned vice-president, is talking not only to change the way the Congress party functions, but is also speaking about making the Indian politics free of undemocratic values like the dynasty politics.


Rahul has not been able to walk the talk in the past and has not been able to leave any strong political imprint yet but given his brief career in politics and so a less-exploited stock of ideation from the pool of thoughts, due weightage can be given to see if he intends to walk the talk this time.

Vote on the US sponsored UNHCR resolution against the human rights violations in Sri Lanka was such an opportunity when India needed to think from the perspective of ‘country first’ and not from the lure of clinging to the ‘power first’. That would have been a direct reflection of what Rahul Gandhi is talking about.

But! Alas!

Allegedly, the slain LTTE chief’s minor son was killed by the Sri Lankan troops in cold blood after he was captured during the civil war. Overall, there has been a global outcry on how the island nation crushed the LTTE war, greatly compromising the human rights of its Tamil population.

Post the civil war, efforts are on to the rebuild the nation and here, the international community including India can do much to ensure that the Tamils get what they lost during the war phase, by extending assistance and supervising the process effectively under some United Nations mandated body. If the international community could not interfere during the civil war phase, it has no right to make a point out of the civil war dangerous enough to derail the rebuilding process.

The compulsions of the foreign policy said India needed either to abstain or vote against the resolution moved by the US.

Sri Lanka is strategically important for India due to its location. Any deeper access to the anti-India powers like China or Pakistan in Sri Lanka is something India would never like to think of, for it would provide the these countries strategic outreach to India. But that has been happening in Sri Lanka for quite sometime now. China is developing projects in Sri Lanka, latest being launching the island nation’s communication satellite in the space.

India needs to be alarmed at the rate such events are happening in its neighbourhood. China is making good inroads in Myanmar, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka.

India, a country that is not in a position to armtwist its neighbours, should adopt a policy to go along where its national interests demand to go.

In case of the UNHCR resolution, India needed to follow a path that would not allow China deeper access in Sri Lanka. But India didn’t do that because it needed to placate political allies like the DMK in order to save its government that is surviving on volatile support of not-to-be-trusted political parties like SP or BSP who can pull the plug on any given day after the DMK withdrew the support.

But! Alas!

There was no walk the talk moment. The government chose to play safe in order to save its days in the office, even if it was at the cost of a potential foreign policy risk that can give India security nightmares in future.  

The Congress party led government could have set a precedent by sending out a tough message that it was not ready to compromise with the national interests anymore by not supporting the Sri Lanka resolution during its vote.

But that didn’t happen.

It was never enough just to have a resolution diluted that is what many see as India’s doing. As of now, the DMK has criticised the government for failing to introduce tougher words in the resolution and has said would not join back the government. But who knows what happens tomorrow.

The way the top leadership of the Congress party went into panic on CBI’s raid at M K Stalin’s residence last morning tells us the government still believes it can bring the DMK back on the table.

The India vote against Sri Lanka on the UNHCR resolution was, indeed, yet another let-down by the Congress party.

And this is not the standalone event diluting the Rahul Gandhi hard-talk about the politics of probity.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/