Impotency after all is a subject which like death is a great leveler. May be Charlie Chaplin is an exception, but it comes to each one of us stealthily, leaving us confused and groping. It functions beyond politics and, all said and done, defies the reach of “Mandalization”

I can foresee busy husbands, on their way to office, cutting out this article with furtive and trembling hands for detailed study before bedtime.

I can also foresee wives serving their spouses their breakfast of eggs and bacon, or maybe puri bhaji, with the newspaper article right in their face, hoping it will turn out to be for them a mixture of 30+, ginseng and Chavanprash.

The fact is that of late, all kinds of people are getting involved in bringing my impotency to my attention in ways that would have driven a weaker soul to hanging himself from the ceiling fan. A major usefulness of ceiling fans which, strangely, ceiling fan manufacturers have not exploited in their marketing strategy.

Let me tell you something. There are stages in one’s impotency. You can use a scale of 0 to 10. At the peak of my career in Human Resources Management with a German organization my team was able to successfully influence the Vision and the thrust of the Organization in the direction of openness and transparency and fairness and justice and growth for all employees.

I don’t think the secretarial pool had an opportunity to identify my level of impotency but I gave myself a low score of 2 in the scale. The reason being that I was impotent only as far as being unable to convince the German Management to permit Managers to abandon suit and tie and be allowed to come to work dressed casually.

Let me move to an area where my inadequacy in the scale of 0 to 10 had almost reached 8. It is my membership, in fact a very active and committed membership, at national and international levels of the Catholic Church in India which I have loved so very dearly.

Not as the parish councilor, not as President of the All India Catholic Union, not as a member of the Asian bishops think tank and not even as a member of the Pope’s advisory Council for five years have I made any substantial progress in my goal in seeking transparency in matters that affect members of the church, in justice especially for women and dalits and a strong collaborative decision-making role for the laity.

Presence at seminars, conducting of countless training programs for the laity, religious and clergy including bishops and an assertive Christ driven presence in various committees and commissions have hardly created a dent. The impotency scale stuck at an all high figure of 8.

A rare moment of adequacy and power was the occasion when 150,000 people, cutting across many denominations, gathered together at the Azad maidan to protest the unjust withdrawal of recognition of St. John’s Medical College and the attempted introduction of the Tyagi Conversion Bill.

I tasted the sweet smell of success and the impotence scale hit 0.

I write this piece years after what I’ve described earlier

At my age, with the legacy of activism that has witnessed the election of our “citizens choice” as Municipal Corporator, the successful public interest litigation against hawkers, the retrieval of open spaces from greedy builders and corrupt politicians, the taking over of the entire sea-front along Bandra for providing amenities that cater both to the body and mind, for protecting open spaces at personal cost to activists and for the hope of flood free residential areas, I thought we had come a long way in regaining my potency the non-Viagra way.

On the contrary. A recent spate of scholarly, unprejudiced and well-meaning white papers from various sources has led me to believe that all hope is lost. That my “circle of control” has shrunk to the size of a little puddle inside a gigantic ocean of my “circle of concern”.

Well-intentioned people are asking whether India is in a coma. Is it a fact that the problem of corruption in India has assumed enormous and embarrassing proportions in recent years although it has been with us for decades?

Are we at a juncture in the life of the nation where tripping over the precipice cannot be ruled out?

If all the scams of the last five years are added up, are they are likely to rival and exceed the British colonial loot of about a trillion dollars?

India, says a commentator, is becoming a Banana Republic instead of an economic superpower. Special treatment is promised at the expense of the people. So Ms Mayawati who is the chief Minister of the most densely inhabited State is pacified when an intelligence probe involving millions of rupees is scrapped.

The multimillion rupee fodder scam by another Chief Minister wielding enormous power is put in cold storage. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh presides over this kind of unparalleled loot.

European newspapers talk about, what every Indian knows, namely the shadowy financial deals of the Indian Cricket League. Some talk about some powerful entity in Poona who with his wife is operating a 1,000,000,000 Swiss account with the “sanction of the Indian regime”

Another story is about a former Chief Minister of Jharkhand who is reported to have funds in various tax havens that were partly used to buy mines in Liberia. There is no news about the progress in the inquiry of this case.

In the nastiest business scam in Indian records (Satyam) the government is accused of cleverly covering up the political aspects of the swindle predominately involving real estate.

Says an Austrian newspaper “If the Indian prime minister knows nothing about these scandals he is ignorant of the ground realities and does not deserve to be Prime Minister. If he does, is he a collaborator in the crime?

Says Mohan Murti in a brilliant piece written from Germany where he lives, “in the European mind the caricature of a typical Indian encompasses qualities of falsification, telling lies, being fraudulent, dishonest, corrupt, arrogant, boastful, speaking loudly and bothering others in public places. Not to mention spreading rumors and attempting to swindle if the slightest opportunity arises.”
Even if most of these are perceptions and only a fraction of these is true, I know I have lost control and my impotence meter has crossed the benchmark of 10 and crashed into 100 pieces.

The only consolation is that I am a powerless impotent. And I’m in the august company of the Indian Prime Minister the powerful impotent not to mention his remote controller the presiding deity of the Congress party…

What more could a person in the winter of his life ask for?

Watching the disturbing details of cover-ups by clergy — even those at the highest levels — unfold during Holy Week, of all times, I can’t decide whether to cry out in despair or be ever-so-slightly optimistic that real changes may result from this tragedy. Most days, I feel both.

Tears come easily when I think of the abuse and the horrifying realization that some within the church clearly believe that protecting priests is more important than safeguarding children. When I think of Jesus suffering during Holy Week, it is the broken bodies of children, betrayed by their own religious leaders, that come to mind. They bear the crosses of the church’s abuses of power.

That said, I also weep because this latest sex scandal adds to our distrust of religious leadership in general and keeps us from remembering all the good work the Roman Catholic church does for the poor, hungry, and homeless, and has done for many decades. I am personally indebted to countless nuns and priests I’ve encountered over the years, who patiently taught me what it means to “stand with the least of these.”

Here I would like to quote extensively from a mail I’ve received from a very enlightened Protestant and President of a well-known seminary known for its commitment to progressive theology.

He talks about the great Roman Catholics of recent times. Thomas Merton and his outspoken protest of the Vietnam war. Dorothy Day and the Catholic worker movement that began during the depths of the Great Depression and which continues today to give care and comfort to the forsaken

He talks about the Catholic bishops who stood side by side with Caesar Chávez in his fight for justice among the farm workers in California. He remembers Archbishop Oscar Romero in the struggles of San Salvador for which he paid with his life. He applauds passionately the wonderful work done by priests, nuns and committed Catholic laypeople in the blighted neighborhoods across America (which are totally ignored by the State) who offered hope to the nearly hopeless through soup kitchens, schools and community centers.

For such people including women who are unjustly banned from priesthood that sorely needs them… the importance of justice making always exceeds the importance of collars and confessions, .he says.

Tragedies come and go; issues like labor and immigration burn bright in the public consciousness for a time and then are forgotten. Long after the rest of the world has moved on, however, often enough the Catholic Church alone continues to affirm economic justice, offer a moral critique of capitalism, and, most importantly, insist that a radical love of the powerless and marginalized is the truest form of faith.

All this, he says, at makes these latest reports of priests molesting children — and getting away with it — that much more upsetting. Will the faithful work done by so many Catholics be overshadowed by a church hierarchy that goes on the defensive when questioned about cover-ups and complicity? I pray this will not be the case. I also pray that the church might change for the better as a result of these terrible discoveries. And I pray, too, for the deep, ongoing grief — indeed, belly-wrenching lamentation — suffered by so many everyday Catholics who feel betrayed by their own leadership.

What more can I add to this wonderful opinion from a Protestant. I am terribly distressed and I feel I am drowning helplessly in a cesspool together with the Catholic Church which I have loved and for which I have, despite moments of anger and sadness and dissent, contributed the little that I could,

In the parish as a Councillor , as President of Bombay’s Council of the St Vincent de Paul Society, as National President of the All India Catholic Union, as a member for five years of the Pontifical Council for the laity and as a member of the Asian Bishop’s Think Tank,

More than that, the tons of articles I have written and the many protests I have led in defense of the Catholic Church.

In all this I’m also slightly relieved to think that we may finally have come to the end of the line. How much higher up can a scandal go, after all, than implicating those standing at the very top? And, I breathe a bit easier in anticipation that a chastening bright light may be about to shine into previously impenetrable realms of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

I am a also completely conscious that power corrupts everybody. Disregard for public accountability is dangerous, in any form. It is not only in politics that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. No church is immune. No person is.

The Catholicism I cherish — and the Catholicism that the world so desperately needs — is one that models an unguarded honesty about human failing, a gentleness of spirit that welcomes criticism, and a determination to hold all people, no matter their station, accountable for their actions.

This is the lesson of Holy Week, and it is one that Christians all — bishops, popes, and pew-sitters alike — would do well to consider carefully in the days ahead.

Finally, if the Holy Father is un-accountable, are we going to arrest the Holy Spirit ?

I have met several Gandhis in my life. Some of them I have tried hard to forget. One was a class mate and school bully. Imagine us calling him Gandhi. The boys called him  G****u, an expletive not to be found in the dictionary. Not even in the community developed encyclopedia, “Wikipedia”

Ironically many years later he came to see me after attending one of my  Management training  programmes. He had become mild mannered and was struggling to do well in his career as a Manager in a Pharmaceutical Company.

In some of the exercises we conducted I noticed that he was reluctant to push his point of view. He also had a high score on submissiveness.

Over a cup of coffee we chatted and laughed about our days at school. He confessed that he had lost two well paid jobs. He had realized that could not get away with bullying people at work.

In sessions the next day he was fascinated with negotiations skills. He was able to work out some “win-win” results in the simulated games we played.

He said Nelson Mandela was his role model.

Today we hear of the heated discussions taking place loudly and quietly in private and public arenas about the relevance of Mahatma Gandhi versus the other Gandhy, Kobad Ghandy from Doon School, St Xavier’s College, and a Chartered Accountant from London.

Most remarkably but not surprisingly the  discussion while it is subdued amongst  intellectuals, the elite, the leftists and human rights advocates, is loud and clear and unambiguous in the public domain of Government Departments amongst bureaucrats and Ministers including our mild mannered and revered Prime Minister.

It appears that our Government has informed its citizens that it will crush the Naxalites once and for all using all the force at its command. The plan is believed to be called “Operation Green Hunt” replacing the old and much discredited “Salwa Judum” where innocent tribals were caught between the fury of the Naxals and the fury of the State.

My information comes from news on television, the printed media and, most enlightingly, from a brilliant piece in the “Tehelka” by Shoma Chaudhury.

The news is frightening for a people already experiencing inexplicable levels and weird manifestations of violence.

I am traveling by train and sleeping on a lower berth in a coupe of four berths. All occupied. It is 11pm and the guy above me has put on the lights and is reading the news paper. The Army officer in the other upper berth requests the newspaper reader to put off the lights. He makes the request three times, the decibel level of his parade ground voice increasing with each request.

When the news paper reader does not respond the Army Officer pulls out his pistol and shatters the lights with a well aimed shot. Every one pulls their blankets over their heads and quickly goes to sleep.

The incident is not mentioned even when we reach our destination and go our individual ways as if shattering railway lights with a gun is expected behaviour and is recommended in some clause of our out-dated Railway manuals.

In Andhra an elected representative of the people finds he has not been invited to an inauguration of a project in his constituency and arrives with his followers and destroys the stone plaque with inauguration details and is feted by his constituency.

Relatives of patients dying at a hospital go on a rampage and destroy the place to which they had come for healing. Passengers are regularly thrown out of trains in the fight for space just as the occupation of road space by timid looking car drivers and muscle flaunting bikers lead to sudden death.

Fortunately we hear today that the Government is listening to saner voices. Influential people in the bureaucracy, the Armed Forces, their own political Party members and opinion Makers in civic life. Such people have learnt from past errors in Jammu and Kashmir, in Assam, in Manipur and from the lessons of other nations and from what they are watching in Pakistan.

The horror of civil war, the reality of understanding that we should not be fighting for territory but for the minds and hearts of disaffected people of our own country, our brothers and sisters living on the edge of despair because even a microscopic percentage of all the socio economic benefits of a prosperous India has not reached them all these many years.

Many years ago I had close encounters with another Gandhi. Rajmohan Gandhi. A grandson of the Mahatma. He was involved with the “Moral Rearmament movement” and I was invited to speak on my days as a member of the Laity Council of Pope John Paul 11, a truly great Gandhian.

In my speech I mentioned a special encounter with the Holy Father. He was receiving a delegation of young people from a South American country governed by a ruthless military dictator.

They told him of sisters and mothers raped, of male family members who had just disappeared, of writers, journalists tortured and maimed for life.

Of banned political parties and dissident student voices crushed under the boots of a ruthless Army. Of years of turning the other cheek, of internal and international attempts at dialogue all in vain.

Then they asked. “Holy Father, is violence and an armed revolution the only answer, now?”

Pope John Paul 11 knelt down, folded his hands in prayer and I could see that he was crying. In voice filled with emotion he replied. “What would Jesus have done in your place?”

Mahatma Gandhi may have replied “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” His context, though, was Capital punishment.

The Jet Airways strike hogged the headlines for over a week. So many questions. Should pilots be allowed to form a Union? Should pilots call a strike and create chaos for thousands of commuters who are exercising their legitimate right to fly from point A to point B for reasons that could even be urgent and compassionate? Can pilots go on mass sick leave?

No two people will agree on the answers. Our antiquated Labour laws permit “workmen” to form a Trade Union and manage their relationship under the “Industrials Disputes Act”

Broadly speaking a “workman” is an employee who is not accountable for the work of others except his own. He does not sanction anything and has no authority to make decisions as is the case of Supervisors and Managers.

Strangely, years and years ago, the Air India’s Pilots Guild was recognized as a Union. But then Air India was a public sector organization and Governmental appeasement was a well entrenched Management style of functioning.

As is well known Air India had to pay a heavy price for this bringing a truly great Maharaja flying on a magic carpet crashing, almost dying and needing bailouts from tax payers money.

In those days I used to write a column called “By George” for the Indian Express and later for “Midday”. I wrote a piece called “Pontius Pilot” in which

I also mentioned the pre-arrival scene of all the “goodies” including miniature bottles of alcohol being loaded into the bags of the crew, some part for family members but mostly for sale. The article was illustrated by Mario Miranda and depicted a terribly obese pilot with a big paunch struggling to get into the narrow door of his cabin.

Not surprisingly I received threats from members of the Guild and the Cabin Crew’s Association saying that if I ever dared to travel by Air India I would be chopped to pieces and served as mince-meat to the passengers.

Non vegetarian passengers, I presume. With a the contents of a raw egg to top it, making it into a French delicacy called “steak tartare”

If I did not ever travel by Air India it was not because Lufthansa offered discounts to German Hoechst Pharmaceuticals for whom I worked and Al Italia almost gave away tickets to members of the various Pontifical Councils of the Vatican, but because Air India became the most unreliable Airline in the world !

Let me say categorically that I am not against trade unions. I have worked with them successfully for 25 years including with the late Dr Dutta Samant. Hoechst Pharmaceuticals whose Human Resources I managed did not have a single day’s work stoppage, including before my time and after it if I may say, honestly and modestly.

The scenario has changed drastically. Globalization, market driven economies, the demise of internationally powerful unions, and recently one of the most frightening recessions in history.

By no stretch of imagination, at least today, would a pilot earning an astronomical salary and having leadership roles in critical decision making for the comfort, safety and security of his passengers and crew be defined as a “workman” and therefore entitled to be a member of a “trade union”

But I strongly advocate that all groups vulnerable to the idiosyncrasies of Management decisions, especially in the area of fairness and justice, should band together to be able be a strong, collaborative stakeholder and partner in the Organisation.

Mr. Goyal who manages his power equations with so many stake holders so admirably would surely know that his Pilots and everyone of his Managers are vital stakeholders and sharing power with them must become his top priority.

In the final analysis all relationships are governed by the sharing of power.

When a party loses power a vacuum is created. The powerless seek the help of outsiders (non stakeholders) to restore the balance or it uses they use unconstitutional means, including violence, to restore parity. No one is more dangerous than a powerless person.

Your son or daughter, ill-treated or neglected, run away from home in an act of such powerfulness that you have to shamefully advertise “Come back, all is forgiven” or “Mother serious, return at once”

Humiliate your wife and wonder why she is having an affair with your neighbour.

Remember the frail, old lady who was changing the tyre of her car when the jack collapsed? She was pinned under the car on a lonely road. Utterly powerless she called up all the energy she had and with one mighty heave got out form under the car.

Remember the teenager villager confronted by a tiger in the forest? Totally powerless, with his back to the wall and the tiger with its paws on his chest, the villager summoned unknown resources of strength and choked the tiger to death.

Think of our Naxalites. Think of the Palestians deprived of their Statehood and the land that rightfully belongs to them

Nothing generates violence as much as powerlessness

Powerlessness corrupts and absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely!!

The country has to be saved. From our neighbours. Not neighbouring countries but from ourselves. Our  neighbours down the street. The unlincensed driver who mowed down an 82 year lady standing on the pavement.

We have to be saved from defrauding bankers and criminal policemen. Professors who rape and rapists who profess high connections and get away to rape another day.

 We have to be saved from such frightening wanton freedom that nobody, just nobody ever has to pay for a crime . Not politicians, sons of politicians, Corporate honchos and  their kith and kin, not  self appointed moral policemen, nor high profile drug-doers.

And mind you not even a new avatar of a violent, hate spouting, minority baiting ahimsa-renouncing, completely “chakrified” Gandhi.

Indian Citizens are running scared and quite rightly are grouping together to respond to zero inflation, tumbling stocks and crumbling markets and bankrupt Insurance Companies using bail out money to bail out the life styles of their top people.

 There has never been witnessed such blatant criminality by those special people into whose hands we simple citizens have entrusted our rights, our freedoms, our security our very souls, only to be shamelesly betrayed.

And now with the next round of electing our “netas” citizens are saying that they will not taking it lying down anymore.

Witness the multiplicity of  unbelievable groups of people getting together to try and stop the rot in the coming elections.

 Lead India movement, Loksatta, Group of Groups, CitiSpace, AGNI, Citizens for Change, Commmunalism Watch. Just go to the net and sign in or better still attend their meetings .

Yet those of us who are octogenarians have gnawing doubts.

People say “What is the sense of our small effort?”

They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time

As Eknath Eashwaran of the Blue Mountain Ashram in California says “It is repeated acts of unkindness that make us unloving and repeated acts of kindness that can make us loving. How do I become patient? By trying to be patient every day, little by little, poco a poco.

We shouldn’t expect to go to bed one night the most impatient man or woman in the county and get up in the morning flooded with patience. Every day, every night, it takes continuous practice, continuous striving. If you are doing everything to be patient, you are going to become inexhaustibly patient. If you are struggling everywhere to become loving, you are going to be unfailingly loving.

In the gradual development on the spiritual path, it is better to concede that most of us start with a good deal of inertia. This shows itself as an attitude of avoiding challenges, shutting our eyes to the problems that confront the world. This inertia is slowly transformed into energy, just as ice when heated becomes water that flows – which can be used for irrigation and harnessed for any useful purpose that we approve of. In the same way, all of that locked-up energy can be released. But it requires steady effort, one step at a time.”

The change will come. Revolutions take a little longer. Be patient and do your bit.

It was 1952 and I was posted to “Number 5 Explosives Maintenance
Unit”, an Air Force Ammunition and bomb storage facility. From
time to time we drove truckloads of life-expired ammunition and
bombs into an open space between the hills outside the town and
destroyed the stuff.

Pilot Officer Kanwar Kohli and I took turns. The bombs were
detonated with the help of a long fuse which we lit from the safety of
several hundred yards. If the bombs did not explode, only the officer
in charge was expected to walk the distance to check if the fuse had
“died.” Which sometimes it did, like a damp firecracker.

One Friday morning it was my turn to take the squad. As I was about
to leave, my Commanding Officer received a call from the Army
Commander. “We are playing the finals of the district hockey
Tournament,” he said. “Ask George to report to the ground at 1500
hours”.
My boss knew my goal-scoring potential. He called Kohli and asked
him to take my place. I scored the winning goal, but Kohli never came
back from the trip.
The flesh and bones of an Officer and a gentleman lie scattered on
hills that are eternally green in memory of one who died in the service
of his mother land.

If there is a gap between the recent terrorist bombings and the writing of this
piece it is because I have been hemorrhaging deep within me since that
event.

I bleed for those who died without a chance to protest that the room service was not good enough for the likes of them and that there was not enough mayonnaise in the stuff that hit their guts.

I bleed for those who died valiantly who did not know where to go but went there all the same. And those who knew the way and, in trying to show the way, paid a price not recorded in the accountant’s “cost to company”

I bleed specially for those in uniform, Railway announcers Firemen, Policemen, Police Officers and Commandos whatever their rank, region, caste and creed, who are always called to go and, without ever eating at a five star place, went and saved strangers and died and killed so that “freedom” not “heritage” might be preserved.

But most of all I bleed over the bodies that were scattered all over our Chatrapathi Shivaji Railway Terminus and Cama Hospital, pass holders and ticket less travelers, diabetics and asthmatics. Marginalized in death as they have always been in life.

Gone quickly with no cell phones to make a call, to a place eternally free of communal riots, illegal arrests and rapes. Free, once and for all, of pangs of hunger, threatened house demolitions, debt collectors, bribe demanders and vote seekers.

I bleed finally in the knowledge that our country will always and forever be visited by the cockroaches of terrorism because cockroaches breed in dirty places. And my beloved India has never been as dirty as it is now.

It takes a lot guts and humility to put our house in order. People who seek votes to come to power and people who seek office tenure in comfort zones
without accountability are not going to volunteer to put the nation’s house in order.

It is only “We the people of India” who can push and push hard for an acceptable level of cleanliness.

So let us, in a small way, look at our filth clinically, from a Pest Control point of view.

There is the endemic excreta of corruption. There is almost no one who will not pay or accept money, whatever the amount, to break a law. A terrorist’s entry into India is facilitated not so much by skill but by graft.

With enough cash to bribe their way, these cockroaches have been around on our infested soil much before the 26/11 hullabaloo, living in rented accommodation with forged identity cards, studying in colleges and working for Corporations. These are soldier terrorists, the executors. At the highest level of planning the bribe rate is in millions, between known refugee criminals and our politicians whose patriotism is safely locked in Swiss bank accounts.

Another level of filth is caste, regional and communal politics. This divide is fodder for cockroaches. And when the divide leads to open, uncontrolled, unpunished genocide of thousands of our marginalized, our dalits, and our minorities; where sacred and even ancient places of worship are desecrated and destroyed in the name of history or religion; where the State looks on or abets; where victims rather than the aggressors are held indefinitely without charges and often falsely convicted, terrorist cockroaches find huge “recruiting” grounds. Mountains of the garbage of fear, feelings of alienation, unrelenting injustice and, above all, uncontrollable levels of anger.

The home grown cockroach has arrived.

We have a huge amount of cleansing to do that all the new laws, the new committees, the forced resignations and changes in the Cabinets and the SMS generated candlelight vigils and seminars cannot do.

We all know that on 26/11 the top Police brass were not available because they were busy in court fighting their own battles against each other for the post of Chief Pest Controller. Unless the long promised Police reforms are implemented giving the force independence from the politician, as in the case of the judiciary, the cockroach terrorist will come and go taking with them some of our finest boys to the grave.

So there we are, hopefully doing much more in cleansing our own night soil, quickly and seriously, not forgetting a key factor in cockroach management.

And that is. No matter how clean you keep your own place, if the neighbour’s environment is a den of shit, the trans-border migration of cockroaches cannot be halted. The neighbour’s garbage heap has to wiped clean as well.

“We will do it if you don’t, and no holds barred” is the message that needs to go to Islamabad loud and clear.

I write to you in anguish. A mixture of sadness and anger. I do not expect you to remember me. I am therefore attaching a picture of my induction into the BJP’s National Executive at the instance of my friend Ram Jethmalani and the invitation of Mr. Vajpayee.

I joined the BJP because I believe in the checks and balances of Parliamentary Democracy where a non performing Party is replaced by another that holds out hope of good governance. I had hoped that the BJP would do better than the Congress did despite years in power with large majorities.

You could have done better, much better because of the discipline in your Party, because, at that time, you did not have people tainted by corruption. But as they say in cricket, which you understand, you blotted your copy book.

We had a nice moderate group in the Party. Ram Jethmalani, Shanti Bushan, Rajinder Puri and some not so well known members like me.

What hopes we had! All dashed to pieces. Each one of us quit for reasons of their own. I quit when your Rath Yatra started to assume menacing proportions leading to the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque.

It is an irony that I am writing to you instead of the Government in power when heinous acts of genocide are being committed against my community in Orissa, Karnataka and other parts of the country.

Logically I should have appealed to the Government and Party in power at the Centre. A Party that most members of my community vote for, opting for the evil of non governance and corruption over the evil of communalism.

But the Congress of today is a Party in power that lives in denial, thrives on ignoring the inhumanity heaped upon minorities that are too miniscule to be vote banks.
I write to you because you are “Prime Minister in waiting”, because of the faint hope that something at St Patrick’s school where you studied has rubbed off on you. Compassion, for example.

I write to you because the atrocities unleashed on a peace loving, completely patriotic and law abiding people is taking place in the States governed by your Party and executed by the cadres that owe their allegiance to you.

Violence that diminishes the possibility of dialogue or the functioning of the rule of law is a dangerous instrument in the hands of those who use it. As I write this, violence is the first choice of a Party in Mumbai who want to drive North Indians (you excluded perhaps) from the State.

You have always had a strong commitment to fighting terrorism from Pakistan. I appreciate that. I urge that you extend that commitment to the terrorism that is home grown and used against brothers and sisters who are Indian first and Christians, Muslims and Dalits later.

For the good of this country I pray that you can control your cadres and not vice versa. I pray that unlike many leaders in this world who encouraged their cadres to violence and had violence visiting them in the long run, you will use the power that God has given you to do good.

I encourage participants in my seminars to write their own obituaries so that they can work towards living up to those obituaries.

May your obituary read that you were a statesman and not a mere politician. That you brought peace and tranquility to a nation that was being torn asunder. That you were able, against great odds, to uphold the Constitution of this multi-religious, multi-cultural and beautiful country.

God bless you and give you a long life

George Menezes

Today, any excuse is enough for Hindu fundamentalist organizations to let loose their goons on the hapless and peace loving community. Not only are there rapes and murders, but hundreds of houses are burnt, places of worship destroyed, but even consecrated places in churches, completely desecrated.

Another dimension is that such a massive scale of violence is unleashed with the guardians of law, acting as mute spectators. No attempt is made to stop the violence. Most often it is the victims who are at the receiving end of police brutality and, in the long run, no action is taken against the perpetrators of the violence.

In most cases the reaction of the Church and community has been a flurry of activity, doing those things that we are known to do best. Provide the victims with material aid and prayers.

In recent times the reactions have been more militant. We have issued Press statements, given interviews, and organized meetings, morchas and dharnas, big and small.

Proverbially, after the initial euphoria, there is a slackening of follow-up with the result that the final goal of bringing the perpetrators of the crimes to book is not achieved. Thus the community is led to believe that “activity” is the same thing as “achieving results”.

When I visited Fr Edward Sequeira of Orissa in the Holy Spirit Hospital I was fortunate to meet Bishop Cheenath in whose diocese the worst atrocities have been committed last Christmas and once again this year. When I told him that the AICU was organizing a massive fund-raising drive, he turned to me, and very gently and firmly said. “Money is not our top priority, George, although it is always welcome. What we need is an assurance that these atrocities will not be committed again”

What could I say to him? Can any of the leaders off our Lay organizations or any of the leaders of the Hierarchical church give him and all the frightened members of his diocese any kind of assurance at all? And if not, why not? The reasons are many.

1.The Christian Church is fragmented.
I use the word “Christian” to include all her denominations. If you read the headlines about the atrocities in Orissa they say “hundred churches burnt”. If there are a hundred churches in a small area in Orissa how many must there be in the whole of India? And who is the authority that will unite and speak on behalf of all of them when their constitutional and human rights are trampled upon?

Even the Catholic Church that is so well-organized and apparently effective consists of three Rites and a host of disparate organizations of the laity.

When the Catholic Bishops Conference off India takes up matters with State and Central Government does it speak on behalf of all the Catholics in India? Does it have the authority and support of all Catholics when there is no joint decision-making authority?

The knee-jerk reaction to close all our schools has only backfired with Education Departments of some States seeking penal action.

Many attempts to set up a “Think Tank of experts” for broad consultation within the Church was proposed in several dialogues between the All India Catholic Union and the Bishops Conference. It has not borne fruit.

2. The Community is fragmented.

Despite the tremendous activism of the laity at great cost to their personal and family life, Christian Lay organisations are unable to unite and present one front. They try to upstage each other, ride piggy back on others’ successes, criticise each other publicly and have become experts in self-promotion through the media both print and electronic.

To make matters worse there is fragmentation within the lay organizations themselves. After every general election, the organizations see some of its excellent members quitting the organization. The reason for this is groupism sometimes based on regional affiliations in voting, resulting in a small coterie of office bearers calling the shots.

3. Lack of information, intelligence and political savvy.

In order to respond to a crisis of gigantic proportions facing the community and church we need to be highly technologically updated. Every diocese needs a backup of websites, databanks and intelligence gathering and storing of critical information to be used at the right time. We also need a network of e-mail and SMS users, and conferencing facilities to keep the Bishops, Heads of Religious Communities, Parish priests and leaders of lay organizations in the loop for instant action.

To take only one example. How many of our decision makers know much about Orissa.?

I quote antropologist Angana Chatterji “Savagery against minorities is not new in Orissa. The VHP’s post colonial history in Orissa is long and violent. From Rourkela in 1964 to Kandhamal. last year and now.”

The gang rape of Jacqueline Mary a Catholic nun, the murder of Fr Arul Das, the beating to death of a Muslim truck driver transporting cattle, and the shameful and horrifying burning of Rev Staines and his sons is part of Orissa’s history.

Should the Church and community not have anticipated recent attacks? More is surely yet to come. As I write this Mangalore and parts of Karnataka are burning.

Did we do our homework after the BJP came to power in Karnataka for the first time ?

4. Absence of lobbying and lack of clout

There was a time when Valerian Cardinal Gracias could pick up the phone and make an appointment with the Chief Minister.

There was a time when there were so many Christian members of Parliament and members of the Cabinet that even lay persons could get to see the Prime Minister. As National President of the A ICU, I could meet two Prime Ministers and a whole host of Ministers

When the nuns in Gajraula were raped, we called George Fernandes, Minister for Railways. The very next day he not only met AICU members, but took them personally in his Jeep to visit the nuns and assuage their fears. It did not matter that the Janata Dal was in power. Neither did it matter that he was a Mangalorean and the nuns and AICU leaders were not

Today the senario has totally changed. We have no clout. We are paying a heavy price for our blind faith in the Congress Party. We have not lobbied other major Parties and we have openly declared our hostility to the BJP.

In fact the Hierarchical Church and an entire community involving itself in “partisan” politics is contrary to the teachings of the Church.

We must reverse this disastrous trend and be open in our choices. Like the Tatas, Ambanis and Birlas it should not make a major difference who comes into power if we can learn the art of lobbying decision makers.

5. Need for open-ness and honesty at all times
I can say with all confidence that the Catholic Church is not involved in conversions by force, fraud or allurement although we insist on our fundamental right to practice our faith, share the “good news” and give witness to the teachings of Jesus in our own lives.

But mindless conversions of ignorant, poor, purchasable people whose allegiance is temporary and who are unworthy of being followers of Jesus Christ is taking place. We need to counsel the fringe Christian groups involved.

This is the reason why, when I was a member of the BJP’s National Executive Council, I found it difficult to convince friends in the RSS and the BJP that no conversions were taking place in our orphanages and Mother Teresa’s homes.

Disassociating myself from fringe Christian activity did not help.

Let it be clearly said that the present violence against us and our institutions and Churches by the VHP and Bajrang Dal is no different from the bombs of terrorists in our cities. Both are expressions of anger, humiliation, discrimination and hurt. Some real, some perceived.

It should lead us to wake up to the reality of a changing India. A shared Vision, a Think Tank, use of modern technology, complete collaboration. Political savvy, and fresh strategies and goals to deal with a horrific situation is the need of the hour

We must do this without conceding our rights as citizens of this country to which a miniscule community has contributed far in excess of its numbers and demonstrated outstanding patriotism in times of peace and especially on the battle field.

And we must do this by any means possible and available.

Did I say “any means”? I remember a time when as member of Pope John Paul’s Pontifical Council of the Laity I witnessed a young delegation from Chile telling the Holy Father how their fathers had disappeared, their mothers and sisters raped and homes burnt. “It is time to take up weapons”, they said.

They Holy Father laid his tired face in his hands and wept.

Violence will never, never be an option for us. Let us rather accept the pain, the suffering, the dying unto oneself knowing that the resurrection and a new life are around the corner.

In Dharwad, in Karnataka, where we lived for many years, I went to school in a “tonga” with four pretty looking Saraswat girls who lived in the house next door. It was a bit of a squeeze, with three of them sitting behind and one of them, Prema Sirur sitting next to me in front with a sweat-exuding “tongawalla” who mercilessly whipped the emaciated horse.

At that time and age I did not enjoy being squeezed between the “tongawalla” and a pretty Saraswat girl. So a few months later, I decided to go to school on a borrowed bicycle.

It was an enjoyable experience being in control, feeling the freshness of the wind in my face and able to show off with the old stunt “Hey guys, look no hands.”

It took me many years to own my own bicycle. I bought it with the first salary from my summer holiday job as a Rationing Inspector. It was a “Raleigh” a famous name in bicycles in those days.

It took me places and it took me faster than the “tongas” and it was romantic. Innumerable are the women who took a ride on the cycle bar including my pint-sized mother who agreed to be dropped for Mass as the tongawallas were celebrating “Id”

She said it was the first and last time. Not so the girls from my college who were thrilled as the bicycle tore down the slope from the college past the All India Radio Station towards Kelgeri lake and, despite the sudden braking or perhaps because of it, never volunteered to sit behind on the butt-snapping carrier.

In the meanwhile I enjoyed the jasmine scented ride as the tresses of my bar-riders flew into my face.

The bicycle was I believe the precursor of the Lambretta scooter that drove Roman couples to ecstasy on wheels. The wheel was reinvented one more time.

On one of my vacations to Dharwad from the Indian Air Force I met the Police Superintendent of Dharwad district. He invited me to play for the Police Hockey team which I enjoyed, and we became really close friends.

One day I had to visit an old classmate from Hubli, 12 miles away. Half an hour by the local train. Wanting to impress her I asked my friend if I could borrow his car. Turning down offers of his constables taking me to Hubli in a jeep, I agreed that a constable would ride with me as I drove the Police Superintendent’s Ambassador car.

On the way back from Hubli a cow suddenly crossed the road. In my panic to avoid the cow I drove to the extreme end of the road and hit a cyclist. An old farmer wearing a dhoti. By the time I had brought the car to a stop the cycle looked like an “avant garde” sculpture by Salvador Dali.

Luckily the cyclist had not been run over. As I got down I witnessed a scene I will never forget in my life. The policeman had jumped out of my car and was beating the cyclist to pulp.

I intervened, and was happy to discover that the only injuries to the cyclist were from the blows of the policeman’s “lathi”.

We took the old farmer for some First Aid treatment and I gave him money to buy a new cycle much against the wishes of the policeman whose mantra was that no body should have the gumption to come in front of his Saheb’s car.

A few years ago when I moved to the suburbs of Bandra and saw friends of all ages, including elderly nuns and pregnant mothers, cycling away to wherever they were going and I overcame my allergy to bicycles and my fear of policemen who were integrating themselves into our Citizen’s movements.

In fact only a month ago my grandchildren who have picked up cycling skills on their vacations in Goa wanted to go bike riding in Bandra.
I took them to a shop not far from where we live and bought them a brand new shiny blue bike and have grown ten years younger seeing their tresses blowing in the wind as they ride the curves in our local park.

And now Bangalore and Ahmedabad. And bicycles with bombs becoming the permanent and most repulsive face of terror.

Even the fall of Sewag’s wicket, first ball from carrom player Mendis is not exciting enough. Despite Sonia we have learnt nothing from the Italians whose governments have a shorter life span than a balloon in the hands of rowdy kids.

This makes Governments arrogant. And the arrogance passes on to bureaucrats and to Corporation bosses. And, as we have seen, it flows over to economic indices that refuse to fall and others once fallen refuse to rise. Above all “arrogance” becomes the mantra of coalition partners, an adulterated version of Fevicol that holds things together with the arithmetic of numbers but takes no responsibility for governance.

And therefore governments must fall.

By upbringing I am a socialist. I inherited it from my father who bailed me out of prison when at the age of thirteen I had participated in the burning of Amergol Railway Station half way between Dharwad and Hubli.

We were asking the British to quit India. That was my first mistake.

Years later disillusioned with Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialism I started to hate the Congress Party. In the 60 years since independence no political party has had such large majorities in Parliament and in the State Assemblies and so many years of uninterrupted opportunity at governance.

Instead of slogans of “am aadmi” they could have utilized the industrial development and agricultural abundance of so many years to really transform the lives of the truly authentic Indians in our villages by providing them shelter, food, power, basic education, medical facilities, good roads and transportation.

They failed miserably on every count.

In my understanding, Parliamentary Democracy requires a system where two national parties compete for the national vote for the right to govern the country. It also envisages a system of checks and balances so that when one party fails to deliver it is replaced by the other.

India can be called the world’s largest democracy but then we are only talking of universal franchise involving millions and millions of people. The reality is that we are neither a parliamentary democracy nor are we a free people.

And so it came to pass that in a moment of blind anger and total frustration I accepted Mr.Vajpayee’s and Ram Jetmalani’s invitation to join the BJP as a member of its National Executive

That was my second mistake.

The BJP was handed the governance of the country on a silver platter and they soiled it by a concerted agenda of hate not only against minorities and dalits but against all freedom loving people from the majority community who opposed its fundamentalist agenda.

It blotted its copybook and had to return to the pavilion. I dislike it as much as I dislike the Congress party.

At the fag end of my life I started once again to lean to the left and hallucinate that my long lost friend George Fernandes and his ilk would iron their crumpled kurtas and iron out their differences and form a formidable Third Force of the Socialists, Leftists and Secularists and monitor the checks and balances of a parliamentary system of democracy.

That was my third mistake.

Alas this hope proved to be nothing more than a left-leaning tower of Pisa. A tourist attraction crumbling under the weight of its own contradictions

Regrettably, we do not, as of today, have the leadership in any political party that can live up to the aspirations of the people of India.

We only have leaders in all Parties that can mismanage a sickening circus of horse trading, criminality, corruption and a brazen disregard for morality and the needs of their countrymen. Even the clowns in this circus make me weep.

On 23rd of July however after BJP bribe takers tossed bundles of unaccounted money in the face of the Speaker and turned Parliament into a whore house Somnath Chatterjee the greatest Speaker of all times kept his calm, called for a Trust vote and the Congress and its opportunistic and self serving allies survived.

Generally speaking after the shameful conduct of our MPs and despite some excellent speeches no Party has won the confidence and Trust of the people India.

So let all the Parties fall so that the “am aadmi”, that is, you and me, can say “What a fall there was my countrymen, then you and I and all of us fell down and bloody treason flourished over us !!”

As we have seen all Mayawati’s horses and all Karat’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together in Third party coalition again.

The Indian Parliament has murdered. May be something good will emerge from the ashes of its cremation so that Indians can rise above their own dead selves to higher things.

The history of Civilization tells us that it has happened before and can happen again.