The book takes off like a shot with Kapil Satish Komireddi describing a childhood friendship with his friend Murad. Kapil's father sent him to a madrassa type of a school in Hyderabad for a short while, to learn about the Muslim culture perhaps (you could do that those days!) and that's where young Kapil met Murad. Not allowed to pray with the others because he was not of their faith, Kapil finds an ally in the much older Murad, who tells him to get a skull cap and he could pray too. Murad becomes his friend and takes him under his wing. Then Kapil goes away to study in the UK while Murad lives a tough life in Hyderabad. The two meet several years later when Murad comes to meet him and Kapil wonders if the impoverished man has favours to ask. But Murad relates his tale after Kapil left - the trouble at his house without a father, working for his uncle for no money and then rounded up on some fake charges of terrorism after a bomb blast in Hyderabad and tortured. Murad is leaving the country soon but he tells Kapil that during those days of his torture and that of others, he came very close to signing up with agents who recruit disillusioned youngers for terror activities. Murad tells him he was angry, but he didn't because the memory of young Kapil and his friendship, stopped him. 'Aap ki yaad ne hamein rok diya' or something to that effect. Murad merely wanted to tell him that. Murad offers Kapil a beef biryani - but by now Kapil had turned vegetarian! And then Murad leaves. A story I will never forget.
Kapil takes us through Indian governments and leaders and their worst sides from 1947 onwards, sparing no one. Nehru, Harrow and Cambridge educated, who spoke of high ideals and peace, yet showed an iron fist in overthrowing the Communist government in Kerala, used excessive force in Kashmir and Nagaland by equipping the army with the Armed Forces Act. And for someone who wrote under a pseudonym in a newspaper that people like Nehru were dangerous to India, he also groomed and promoted Indira Gandhi to succeed him, out of turn. The story about Kamala Nehru who was isolated in the refined Nehru home and how she became close to Feroze Gandhi, a freedom fighter was a first fro me. They even hinted at an affair between those two. But then she died and Feroze married her daughter Indira. Something doesn't add up there - never did. This Feroze Gandhi needs some attention.
Nehru passed away in May 1964, soon after the Chinese war, and after a caretaker Prime Minister Gulazarilal Nanda, came Lal Bahadur Shastri, who seemed weak enough for Pakistan to misjudge and attack India in 1965. Shastri acted decisively and seized Lahore in double quick time and Pakistan had to retreat. When Shastri died soon after, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, who had come to venerate the tough Indian Prime Minister offered to be a pallbearer at his funeral. In another part of the book Kapil quotes Shastri who was asked about his views on religion - 'One should not discuss one's religion in public' was the curt reply.
In came Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister and she was tough and believed that no one else but her could hold India together but her. Her weakness however was her son, Sanjay Gandhi, a school drop out. Sanjay came with a proposal to produce cheap cars in India and promised to produce 50k in a year. 450 acres were allotted to the young man operating with nothing much in terms of a prototype and five years later, he had produced zero cars! Indira had by then started messing with the judiciary and appointed a junior and pliant judge as the Chief Justice of India. But she was decisive and when West Pakistan could not take the results of the elections in Bangladesh and butchered 3 million Muslims, America sided with Bhutto and told India to keep off. 'Indira spat on Nixon and Kissinger..' says Kapil, and after some timely provocation by Pakistan which made some preemptive strikes, had the Pakistan army surrender to the Indian army. Bangladesh was created in two weeks.
Sometime then she started a Gairibi Hatoa campaign but the rural India was starved, the rich got richer. Then came a twist when a judge found her violating an election code which would have set her back. The judge was offered a bribe, but he did not yield and on June 25, 1975, Indira declared a state of Emergency to maintain India's security. You can read who's security.
For the next nineteen months, Sanjay Gandhi terrorised India says Kapil, with his ideas of casinos in the Himalayas, beautification of cities and population control through mass sterilisation of men. About 6.2 million Indian men, boys, old men were sterilised by force to meet targets set by the government. One state reported 6 lakh sterilisations in two weeks. The privileged classes were left untouched and it was the working class, students and intelligentsia that were attacked. It was around this time that Indira and Sanjay patronised an illiterate preacher named Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to counter the Akali Dal's growing popularity.
Indira for some reason revoked the Emergency and called for elections, perhaps misled by her advisors and the Congress suffered a rout - she lost, Sanjay lost his deposit. Janata Party, a coalition government led by Morarji Desai, came to power against all odds. But it was not bound to survive on its fragile equations and Indira Gandhi returned in 1980 to power, the same year that Sanjay Gandhi died in a freak plane accident. Bhindranwale had meanwhile made the Akal Takht his base and demanded Khalistan, a separate nation from India, and spawned terrorist activities. Indira ordered Operation Blue Star with the army on June 4, 1984, and the army stormed the Golden Temple where Bhindranwale was hiding. The operation continued for a week or so leaving 5000 civilians and 700 army personnel dead, including Bhindranwale. However, the attack on the Golden Temple was not forgotten easily by the Sikhs. Operation Blue Star was a disaster.
In 1984 Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh guards who had been taken off the roster for security reasons. Indira personally intervened and said that we are a secular country and we cannot discriminate on the basis of their faith and had them reinstated. The two Sikh bodyguards shot her. Delhi went up in flames as organised murder of Sikhs took place and it was estimated that around 3000 Sikhs were murdered in 72 hours of mayhem during which the state chose to watch and the police actually helped the mobs by disarming the Sikhs beforehand with false promises. The Sikhs who form 2% of the country's population and 10% of the army were devastated. Indira Gandhi's elder son, pilot Rajiv Gandhi, was asked to lead. In the 1984 elections, Rajiv won 415 out of the 542 seats, the largest mandate ever. Despite having the largest mandate Rajiv vacillated - in the Shah Bano case when the courts said that the divorced lady was entitled to maintenance as per the constitution, he backtracked and put forward the Muslim Women's Bill where divorced women would get support from their families and charities. Arif Mohammed Khan resigned in disgust. To appease the Hindus Rajiv asked that the Babri masjid, which was sealed until then, be opened for Hindus who believed Lord Ram was born there. And to appease the Muslims he banned Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, making India the first country in the world to ban that book. He got embroiled in the Bofors scandal where kickbacks were alleged on purchase of Bofors guns, sacked VP Singh the upright defence minister who was probing the case and then sent a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka which cost India 1200 soldiers. In 1991, while campaigning for the 10th General Elections, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber near Madras.
PV Narasimha Rao, scholar, lawyer, freedom fighter, ex-CM of Andhra Pradesh and holder of Ministries in Delhi (including Home when Indira Gandhi was assassinated and the riots happened) was packing his bags to head back to Hyderabad from Delhi, having been thrust into political oblivion when he was asked to become Prime Minister. He was seen as a compromise candidate someone who would not ruffle anyone's feathers. But Rao, who had in his term as Chief Minister in Andhra Pradesh, brought in Land Reforms, took a tough stand, did not give the big wigs Pawar, Tiwari and Arjun Singh preferred portfolios and ignored their people. He bought in Manmohan Singh from the UGC as his Finance Minister and went on a one-way street called liberalisation. India was then a nation with 843 million, having 5 million telephone connections and was 2 billion short of bankruptcy. At around the same time, LK Advani took out his rath yatra then from Somnath to Ayodhya, and despite assurances to the PM, watched over the demolition of the Babri mosque. Muslims were butchered. Rao jailed Advani, banned Hindu religious groups and promised to build the mosque which he never did.
By 1995, the inflow of FDI was more than it was in four decades combined, the forex piled up. Rao pretty much reinvented India, says Kapil. There was hope, and the common man could now afford a bit of luxury, stock markets were booming, business was not a bad word. Rao pretty much did this at the cost of the four pillars dear to Nehru - democracy, secularism, socialism and non-alignment. Rao was shunted out after his term to political oblivion, fought corruption cases, and was given a lonely and inglorious send off after his death with no place in Delhi.
In 2004, Manmohan Singh was made the Prime Minister as Sonia Gandhi refused to wear the crown. Singh with his Oxbridge pedigree, Planning Commission, RBI Governor and Finance Minister story, never won an election, was a theoretician and had no contact with people. His government made more billionaires and caused farmer deaths. When farmers marched 600 kms to protest in Delhi they were herded into open-roofed enclosures in the terrible Delhi heat with no water. When Dalits protested his government ordered firing killing hundreds. Salwa Judum, a loose army made of tribals was created to seek out tribal rebels who were branded Maoists. the Salwa Judum torched villages, drove tribals into concentration camps and killed, raped the tribals. When this failed Operation Green Hunt was used with sophisticated weapons against the anti-development tribals. The Congress was scam ridden by then - Kalmadi, Raja (40 bn USD in the spectrum scam). To her credit however, Kapil says Sonia pushed through important bills like Right to Information, to work and education.
The anti-corruption movement by Anna Hazar also threw up Arvind Kejriwal but it fizzled out with no progress though for a few weeks it held the interest of the nation. And then Singh's government executed a Kashmiri Muslim in 2013, someone who had been on the death row for ten years, without notifying his family. Something which Kapil says would have hurt the Kashmiri sentiment - those who chose Indian over Pakistan.
Part 2 of the book is dedicated to Narendra Modi which speaks enough. 67 years of free India on one side and four years of Modi's rule on the other. In 2014 Congress was wiped out and Modi emerged as India's most powerful leader since Indira Gandhi. The RSS ideologue who abandoned his family at a young age was given important jobs in Delhi because he was pitting one against another in Gujarat. But when the time came Modi was offered the Gujarat Chief Minister job in 2001. Soon after the Godhra incident happened followed by riots where 1000 Muslims were killed on a conservative estimate as the police and the state watched. MP Ehsan Jaffri was dragged out of his house and sliced open and torched - his many calls through the day to LK Advani who tried to reach Modi went in vain. 250 people hid in Jafri's house of which 69 were killed inside his house. The SIT cleared Modi and when asked if he could have done anything differently he said 'I could have managed the media better.'
The image of Modi as a child who fought crocodiles and even bought a baby crocodile home were folklore. Meanwhile, Haren Pandya, the dissenting Home Minister in his cabinet was shot dead, some Muslims thrown in jail, and till date no one knows who killed him. Amit Shah, Modi's aide was told to be out of bounds on an extortion case, taped while instructing police to stalk a woman that his boss liked. Modi's story grew, as a billion dollars of investment was pledged but little came.
Riding the 'success' story in Gujarat, Modi promised a Corruption free and Congress-free India and came to power with 282 out of 543 seats. Congress won a measly 44. Modi's PR was in overdrive appearing with the charkha, as a yoga practitioner, and even teaching school children on Teacher's Day. He wrote a book called 'Exam Warriors' for children. Apparently he wanted his dialogue with Barack Obama to be made into a book. Two biographies on him have come out written by two foreigners Marino and Lance Price (Price was offered an undisclosed sum they say, he had never heard of Modi he said before that). Kapil says that Modi has succeeded in the congressisation of BJP. A whopping 5000 crores have been spent n publicity since taking office. In 2018, a 30-minute biopic was released titled 'Chalo Jeete Hum', which shows him as an enlightened child seeking questions from everyone. Kapil brushes it off as propaganda.
Then came Demonetisation on November 8, 2016, when with one announcement all 500 and 1000 rupee notes were not legal tender and people had to stand in long queues to change these notes in their banks, which only released small sums of money. 86% of currency in circulation went out, worth 17 trillion rupees in a country with 90% cash transactions. Modi's justification was that it would purge black money and would also stop terror activities from Pakistan which was printing counterfeit money. Kapil says this was the biggest blow since mass sterilisation. Most small businessmen, farmers etc got affected, and some hundred people died. Modi shed tears in a public meeting in Goa saying that 'they will not spare me for this'. Kapil says ' he cast himself as their ally despite being the source of their misery.' In two years RBI returned figures - 99.3% of all abolished currency had been returned, Rs. 15.31 lakh crore was turned in. The black money story went up in smoke.
By this time the story had changed that the idea was to make it a cashless economy. Modi never acknowledged it as his mistake. Sometime after that, they removed limits on corporate donations to political parties. BJP gained from this considerably.
Akhlaq Khan a farmhand was killed in his house because some people suspected he killed a calf and ate beef. The fridge was raided and samples of the meat were sent to some labs. His son was severely injured, another son works in the IAF. Yogi Adityanath (Ajay Bisht) sought prosecution of Akhlaq' family - he is now the Chief Minister of UP. Pehlu Khan was lynched in Rajasthan on charges of being a cow smuggler. In 2017 Shanbhulal Regar, had his nephew shoot a video while he drove a pickaxe into a Muslim worker's back saying 'Jihadis - this is what happens when you do love jihad'. and he poured kerosene and torched him. Young sixteen-year-old Junaid Khan was stabbed to death in a train for no reason other than that he was a Muslim. Dalits in Gujarat were stripped and beaten up. Gauri Lankesh was murdered, a journalist with anti-Modi views, and several pro-Modi trolls rejoiced. Amidst all this there was no condemnation from the PM. Kapil says that this was an organised campaign to entrench Hindu supremacy.
Modi visited 80 countries at a cost of Rs. 2000 crores, at the time of writing the book, in 2018. It did not bear much fruit - there was a run from India by overseas investors and slow growth. Nepal was treated badly and it went to China, not trusting India anymore. The surgical strike in Uri was publicised, exploiting the army. September 29 was declared Surgical Strike Day. The Chief of Army was made a Minister in the cabinet. Kapil quotes a poet - A poet does not adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste.
Then the RBI - Raghuram Rajan, highly qualified, was driven out ingloriously after speaking his mind out. The new governor Urjit Patel quit abruptly when the RBI's cash reserves were under threat for use for welfare schemes. The Universities were a battleground with the ABVP, BJPs student wing, constantly fighting the left - mostly charges were slapped on the left. In JNU, charges of sedition were slapped on the JNU Students Union President. Interestingly the government announced 'Institutes of Excellence' which would receive hundreds of crores in grants, among which was Ambani's Jio Institute which only existed on paper. Justice Loya who was to make a key judgement, died mysteriously.
Kapil's chapter on Kashmir gave me a good insight into the dynamics of Kashmir. In 1947, Kashmir was a princely state which was largely Muslim populated, but ruled by a Hindu king, Hari Singh. This was the exact reverse of Hyderabad where a Muslim king ruled over a Hindu population. Hari Singh, couldn't join the Islamic state for obvious reasons, nor India because he would lose his privileges. But while he dilly-dallied, Jinnah authorised war to annex Kashmir forcing Hari Singh to seek help from Nehru. Sheikh Abdulla, Nehru's confidant, and a popular leader in Kashmir, convinced the Kashmiri population to go with India. Hari Singh acceded.
Instead of yearning for Jinnah's Pakistan, Kashmiri Muslims mourned the death of Mir Maqbool Sherwani, a National Conference leader, who died after leading a heroic resistance against the Pakistani mercenaries where he was crucified and riddled with bullets. His last words were 'Victory to Hindu Muslim unity'. Hari Singh, in his attempt to convert Kashmir into a Hindu majority state, put to death some 2 lakh Muslims, far greater than what the Nizam did in Hyderabad against the Hindus. A third of Kashmir fell to Pakistan and Nehru instead of letting the army settle the issue, went to the UN which gave sequential conditions - Pakistan must withdraw, India must reduce numbers and the people can vote. Pakistan never withdrew. Sheikh Abdullah introduced the land ceiling act with a cap of 23 acres - the Hindu coterie around Hari Singh owned thousands of acres. When Kashmir chose India over the Islamic state of Pakistan and Sheikh Abdullah apparently played a key role by pointing out that when Kashmir was free, it was Pakistan that attacked it. In 1988 Congres held elections and blatantly rigged them. Some time after that terrorism started. In April 2017, when elections were held, 7% was the atteNdance. A reelection after a few days saw 2%. One voter who went to vote was tied to jeep and paraded as a human shield.
Kapil ends his book in 2018 (there have been much greater stories since then). He says - Seven decades after the holocaust of Partition in the name of religious nationalism, can we throw away the improbable unity for which so many good people sacrificed their everything?
I loved the book. It's packed with sentences dripping with information. Kapil Satish Komireddi, a journalist, writes with such clarity, organisation depth and ease about such complex issues that I couldn't put the book down, nor skip a line. The whole story of India post-independence made sense, with each part falling into place where earlier I knew them as separate stories. He writes fearlessly, spares no one, and puts to sword the biggest names. Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, PV Narasimha Rao, Manmohan Singh all are dissected in this malevolence. Modi occupies the second part of the book entirely. The title of the book puts Kapil in a place where he cannot really write about the good the governments or leaders did or intended, though he does give them a concession or two. Overall, brilliant and fearless writing and a great debut from the Hyderabadi. When you hear such voices, one feels there is hope. One cannot but admire them and hope they keep showing us the truth which can so easily fade away.
Kapil takes us through Indian governments and leaders and their worst sides from 1947 onwards, sparing no one. Nehru, Harrow and Cambridge educated, who spoke of high ideals and peace, yet showed an iron fist in overthrowing the Communist government in Kerala, used excessive force in Kashmir and Nagaland by equipping the army with the Armed Forces Act. And for someone who wrote under a pseudonym in a newspaper that people like Nehru were dangerous to India, he also groomed and promoted Indira Gandhi to succeed him, out of turn. The story about Kamala Nehru who was isolated in the refined Nehru home and how she became close to Feroze Gandhi, a freedom fighter was a first fro me. They even hinted at an affair between those two. But then she died and Feroze married her daughter Indira. Something doesn't add up there - never did. This Feroze Gandhi needs some attention.
Nehru passed away in May 1964, soon after the Chinese war, and after a caretaker Prime Minister Gulazarilal Nanda, came Lal Bahadur Shastri, who seemed weak enough for Pakistan to misjudge and attack India in 1965. Shastri acted decisively and seized Lahore in double quick time and Pakistan had to retreat. When Shastri died soon after, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, who had come to venerate the tough Indian Prime Minister offered to be a pallbearer at his funeral. In another part of the book Kapil quotes Shastri who was asked about his views on religion - 'One should not discuss one's religion in public' was the curt reply.
In came Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister and she was tough and believed that no one else but her could hold India together but her. Her weakness however was her son, Sanjay Gandhi, a school drop out. Sanjay came with a proposal to produce cheap cars in India and promised to produce 50k in a year. 450 acres were allotted to the young man operating with nothing much in terms of a prototype and five years later, he had produced zero cars! Indira had by then started messing with the judiciary and appointed a junior and pliant judge as the Chief Justice of India. But she was decisive and when West Pakistan could not take the results of the elections in Bangladesh and butchered 3 million Muslims, America sided with Bhutto and told India to keep off. 'Indira spat on Nixon and Kissinger..' says Kapil, and after some timely provocation by Pakistan which made some preemptive strikes, had the Pakistan army surrender to the Indian army. Bangladesh was created in two weeks.
Sometime then she started a Gairibi Hatoa campaign but the rural India was starved, the rich got richer. Then came a twist when a judge found her violating an election code which would have set her back. The judge was offered a bribe, but he did not yield and on June 25, 1975, Indira declared a state of Emergency to maintain India's security. You can read who's security.
For the next nineteen months, Sanjay Gandhi terrorised India says Kapil, with his ideas of casinos in the Himalayas, beautification of cities and population control through mass sterilisation of men. About 6.2 million Indian men, boys, old men were sterilised by force to meet targets set by the government. One state reported 6 lakh sterilisations in two weeks. The privileged classes were left untouched and it was the working class, students and intelligentsia that were attacked. It was around this time that Indira and Sanjay patronised an illiterate preacher named Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to counter the Akali Dal's growing popularity.
Indira for some reason revoked the Emergency and called for elections, perhaps misled by her advisors and the Congress suffered a rout - she lost, Sanjay lost his deposit. Janata Party, a coalition government led by Morarji Desai, came to power against all odds. But it was not bound to survive on its fragile equations and Indira Gandhi returned in 1980 to power, the same year that Sanjay Gandhi died in a freak plane accident. Bhindranwale had meanwhile made the Akal Takht his base and demanded Khalistan, a separate nation from India, and spawned terrorist activities. Indira ordered Operation Blue Star with the army on June 4, 1984, and the army stormed the Golden Temple where Bhindranwale was hiding. The operation continued for a week or so leaving 5000 civilians and 700 army personnel dead, including Bhindranwale. However, the attack on the Golden Temple was not forgotten easily by the Sikhs. Operation Blue Star was a disaster.
In 1984 Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh guards who had been taken off the roster for security reasons. Indira personally intervened and said that we are a secular country and we cannot discriminate on the basis of their faith and had them reinstated. The two Sikh bodyguards shot her. Delhi went up in flames as organised murder of Sikhs took place and it was estimated that around 3000 Sikhs were murdered in 72 hours of mayhem during which the state chose to watch and the police actually helped the mobs by disarming the Sikhs beforehand with false promises. The Sikhs who form 2% of the country's population and 10% of the army were devastated. Indira Gandhi's elder son, pilot Rajiv Gandhi, was asked to lead. In the 1984 elections, Rajiv won 415 out of the 542 seats, the largest mandate ever. Despite having the largest mandate Rajiv vacillated - in the Shah Bano case when the courts said that the divorced lady was entitled to maintenance as per the constitution, he backtracked and put forward the Muslim Women's Bill where divorced women would get support from their families and charities. Arif Mohammed Khan resigned in disgust. To appease the Hindus Rajiv asked that the Babri masjid, which was sealed until then, be opened for Hindus who believed Lord Ram was born there. And to appease the Muslims he banned Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, making India the first country in the world to ban that book. He got embroiled in the Bofors scandal where kickbacks were alleged on purchase of Bofors guns, sacked VP Singh the upright defence minister who was probing the case and then sent a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka which cost India 1200 soldiers. In 1991, while campaigning for the 10th General Elections, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber near Madras.
PV Narasimha Rao, scholar, lawyer, freedom fighter, ex-CM of Andhra Pradesh and holder of Ministries in Delhi (including Home when Indira Gandhi was assassinated and the riots happened) was packing his bags to head back to Hyderabad from Delhi, having been thrust into political oblivion when he was asked to become Prime Minister. He was seen as a compromise candidate someone who would not ruffle anyone's feathers. But Rao, who had in his term as Chief Minister in Andhra Pradesh, brought in Land Reforms, took a tough stand, did not give the big wigs Pawar, Tiwari and Arjun Singh preferred portfolios and ignored their people. He bought in Manmohan Singh from the UGC as his Finance Minister and went on a one-way street called liberalisation. India was then a nation with 843 million, having 5 million telephone connections and was 2 billion short of bankruptcy. At around the same time, LK Advani took out his rath yatra then from Somnath to Ayodhya, and despite assurances to the PM, watched over the demolition of the Babri mosque. Muslims were butchered. Rao jailed Advani, banned Hindu religious groups and promised to build the mosque which he never did.
By 1995, the inflow of FDI was more than it was in four decades combined, the forex piled up. Rao pretty much reinvented India, says Kapil. There was hope, and the common man could now afford a bit of luxury, stock markets were booming, business was not a bad word. Rao pretty much did this at the cost of the four pillars dear to Nehru - democracy, secularism, socialism and non-alignment. Rao was shunted out after his term to political oblivion, fought corruption cases, and was given a lonely and inglorious send off after his death with no place in Delhi.
In 2004, Manmohan Singh was made the Prime Minister as Sonia Gandhi refused to wear the crown. Singh with his Oxbridge pedigree, Planning Commission, RBI Governor and Finance Minister story, never won an election, was a theoretician and had no contact with people. His government made more billionaires and caused farmer deaths. When farmers marched 600 kms to protest in Delhi they were herded into open-roofed enclosures in the terrible Delhi heat with no water. When Dalits protested his government ordered firing killing hundreds. Salwa Judum, a loose army made of tribals was created to seek out tribal rebels who were branded Maoists. the Salwa Judum torched villages, drove tribals into concentration camps and killed, raped the tribals. When this failed Operation Green Hunt was used with sophisticated weapons against the anti-development tribals. The Congress was scam ridden by then - Kalmadi, Raja (40 bn USD in the spectrum scam). To her credit however, Kapil says Sonia pushed through important bills like Right to Information, to work and education.
The anti-corruption movement by Anna Hazar also threw up Arvind Kejriwal but it fizzled out with no progress though for a few weeks it held the interest of the nation. And then Singh's government executed a Kashmiri Muslim in 2013, someone who had been on the death row for ten years, without notifying his family. Something which Kapil says would have hurt the Kashmiri sentiment - those who chose Indian over Pakistan.
Part 2 of the book is dedicated to Narendra Modi which speaks enough. 67 years of free India on one side and four years of Modi's rule on the other. In 2014 Congress was wiped out and Modi emerged as India's most powerful leader since Indira Gandhi. The RSS ideologue who abandoned his family at a young age was given important jobs in Delhi because he was pitting one against another in Gujarat. But when the time came Modi was offered the Gujarat Chief Minister job in 2001. Soon after the Godhra incident happened followed by riots where 1000 Muslims were killed on a conservative estimate as the police and the state watched. MP Ehsan Jaffri was dragged out of his house and sliced open and torched - his many calls through the day to LK Advani who tried to reach Modi went in vain. 250 people hid in Jafri's house of which 69 were killed inside his house. The SIT cleared Modi and when asked if he could have done anything differently he said 'I could have managed the media better.'
The image of Modi as a child who fought crocodiles and even bought a baby crocodile home were folklore. Meanwhile, Haren Pandya, the dissenting Home Minister in his cabinet was shot dead, some Muslims thrown in jail, and till date no one knows who killed him. Amit Shah, Modi's aide was told to be out of bounds on an extortion case, taped while instructing police to stalk a woman that his boss liked. Modi's story grew, as a billion dollars of investment was pledged but little came.
Riding the 'success' story in Gujarat, Modi promised a Corruption free and Congress-free India and came to power with 282 out of 543 seats. Congress won a measly 44. Modi's PR was in overdrive appearing with the charkha, as a yoga practitioner, and even teaching school children on Teacher's Day. He wrote a book called 'Exam Warriors' for children. Apparently he wanted his dialogue with Barack Obama to be made into a book. Two biographies on him have come out written by two foreigners Marino and Lance Price (Price was offered an undisclosed sum they say, he had never heard of Modi he said before that). Kapil says that Modi has succeeded in the congressisation of BJP. A whopping 5000 crores have been spent n publicity since taking office. In 2018, a 30-minute biopic was released titled 'Chalo Jeete Hum', which shows him as an enlightened child seeking questions from everyone. Kapil brushes it off as propaganda.
Then came Demonetisation on November 8, 2016, when with one announcement all 500 and 1000 rupee notes were not legal tender and people had to stand in long queues to change these notes in their banks, which only released small sums of money. 86% of currency in circulation went out, worth 17 trillion rupees in a country with 90% cash transactions. Modi's justification was that it would purge black money and would also stop terror activities from Pakistan which was printing counterfeit money. Kapil says this was the biggest blow since mass sterilisation. Most small businessmen, farmers etc got affected, and some hundred people died. Modi shed tears in a public meeting in Goa saying that 'they will not spare me for this'. Kapil says ' he cast himself as their ally despite being the source of their misery.' In two years RBI returned figures - 99.3% of all abolished currency had been returned, Rs. 15.31 lakh crore was turned in. The black money story went up in smoke.
By this time the story had changed that the idea was to make it a cashless economy. Modi never acknowledged it as his mistake. Sometime after that, they removed limits on corporate donations to political parties. BJP gained from this considerably.
Akhlaq Khan a farmhand was killed in his house because some people suspected he killed a calf and ate beef. The fridge was raided and samples of the meat were sent to some labs. His son was severely injured, another son works in the IAF. Yogi Adityanath (Ajay Bisht) sought prosecution of Akhlaq' family - he is now the Chief Minister of UP. Pehlu Khan was lynched in Rajasthan on charges of being a cow smuggler. In 2017 Shanbhulal Regar, had his nephew shoot a video while he drove a pickaxe into a Muslim worker's back saying 'Jihadis - this is what happens when you do love jihad'. and he poured kerosene and torched him. Young sixteen-year-old Junaid Khan was stabbed to death in a train for no reason other than that he was a Muslim. Dalits in Gujarat were stripped and beaten up. Gauri Lankesh was murdered, a journalist with anti-Modi views, and several pro-Modi trolls rejoiced. Amidst all this there was no condemnation from the PM. Kapil says that this was an organised campaign to entrench Hindu supremacy.
Modi visited 80 countries at a cost of Rs. 2000 crores, at the time of writing the book, in 2018. It did not bear much fruit - there was a run from India by overseas investors and slow growth. Nepal was treated badly and it went to China, not trusting India anymore. The surgical strike in Uri was publicised, exploiting the army. September 29 was declared Surgical Strike Day. The Chief of Army was made a Minister in the cabinet. Kapil quotes a poet - A poet does not adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste.
Then the RBI - Raghuram Rajan, highly qualified, was driven out ingloriously after speaking his mind out. The new governor Urjit Patel quit abruptly when the RBI's cash reserves were under threat for use for welfare schemes. The Universities were a battleground with the ABVP, BJPs student wing, constantly fighting the left - mostly charges were slapped on the left. In JNU, charges of sedition were slapped on the JNU Students Union President. Interestingly the government announced 'Institutes of Excellence' which would receive hundreds of crores in grants, among which was Ambani's Jio Institute which only existed on paper. Justice Loya who was to make a key judgement, died mysteriously.
Kapil's chapter on Kashmir gave me a good insight into the dynamics of Kashmir. In 1947, Kashmir was a princely state which was largely Muslim populated, but ruled by a Hindu king, Hari Singh. This was the exact reverse of Hyderabad where a Muslim king ruled over a Hindu population. Hari Singh, couldn't join the Islamic state for obvious reasons, nor India because he would lose his privileges. But while he dilly-dallied, Jinnah authorised war to annex Kashmir forcing Hari Singh to seek help from Nehru. Sheikh Abdulla, Nehru's confidant, and a popular leader in Kashmir, convinced the Kashmiri population to go with India. Hari Singh acceded.
Instead of yearning for Jinnah's Pakistan, Kashmiri Muslims mourned the death of Mir Maqbool Sherwani, a National Conference leader, who died after leading a heroic resistance against the Pakistani mercenaries where he was crucified and riddled with bullets. His last words were 'Victory to Hindu Muslim unity'. Hari Singh, in his attempt to convert Kashmir into a Hindu majority state, put to death some 2 lakh Muslims, far greater than what the Nizam did in Hyderabad against the Hindus. A third of Kashmir fell to Pakistan and Nehru instead of letting the army settle the issue, went to the UN which gave sequential conditions - Pakistan must withdraw, India must reduce numbers and the people can vote. Pakistan never withdrew. Sheikh Abdullah introduced the land ceiling act with a cap of 23 acres - the Hindu coterie around Hari Singh owned thousands of acres. When Kashmir chose India over the Islamic state of Pakistan and Sheikh Abdullah apparently played a key role by pointing out that when Kashmir was free, it was Pakistan that attacked it. In 1988 Congres held elections and blatantly rigged them. Some time after that terrorism started. In April 2017, when elections were held, 7% was the atteNdance. A reelection after a few days saw 2%. One voter who went to vote was tied to jeep and paraded as a human shield.
Kapil ends his book in 2018 (there have been much greater stories since then). He says - Seven decades after the holocaust of Partition in the name of religious nationalism, can we throw away the improbable unity for which so many good people sacrificed their everything?
I loved the book. It's packed with sentences dripping with information. Kapil Satish Komireddi, a journalist, writes with such clarity, organisation depth and ease about such complex issues that I couldn't put the book down, nor skip a line. The whole story of India post-independence made sense, with each part falling into place where earlier I knew them as separate stories. He writes fearlessly, spares no one, and puts to sword the biggest names. Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, PV Narasimha Rao, Manmohan Singh all are dissected in this malevolence. Modi occupies the second part of the book entirely. The title of the book puts Kapil in a place where he cannot really write about the good the governments or leaders did or intended, though he does give them a concession or two. Overall, brilliant and fearless writing and a great debut from the Hyderabadi. When you hear such voices, one feels there is hope. One cannot but admire them and hope they keep showing us the truth which can so easily fade away.
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