The Missing Questions in the Arnab-Rahul Interview

An interview and a plan
Prince Rahul obliged India with a TV interview after 10 years. Apparently, age did not dim his instinctive ability to respond to questions that nobody in India was asking. Rahul was mocked relentlessly for this on social media, and other unpaid media. However, we conjecture
- that maybe, just maybe, that his team worked with the PR firm Dentsu to shape a 'hedgehog strategy' customized for the princely genius.
- that the 500 crores were not spent in vain. That after Dentsu confirmed that the prince's sole trick (that in itself was surprising, given his ill-endowed gene pool) was an ability to remember and reproduce up to 4 statements, the plan was simply to get this message across regardless of the questions.
- that in any case, the UPA is so far down the opinion polls that there is no way but up for them, and they had nothing to lose. This was the right time.
- that the soap-watching, mentally colonized India would simply look at the buzz words in TV news channel tickers the next day (thanks to VIKAS PANDITA ‏@TORUKH_MAKTO Jan 27 : we have the buzzword stats:

RTI: 69 times, System: 76, Empower: 25, Women: 19 #ArnabvsRahul)

Next, here is a simple word-cloud I created using the text from the interview transcript. If people only saw these words without context, and ignore the total nonsense that links these words and the actual questions asked, it looks pretty reasonable. A serious guy talking about people, system, riots, and country. wah.

Public Response
We hypothesize that the job of the primary paid / anti-social media partners was not to actually host the actual interview (Arnab was the sacrificial goat), but to simply filter the these buzzwords from the gibberish by de-contextualizing the answers from the questions, and spoon-feed it to India as shown above. Then, for added safety, you have the English-speaking sepoys ever ready to intellectualize even such gibberish and add the right amount of sanctimoniousness to justify this diabolical plan of hoodwinking the public. As they say, once you've lost your dignity, there's nothing to lose. In fact, if one were to re-watch the interviews without looking at the questions at all, and just the answers, Rahul indeed does a plausible job. And we that was always the plan from day-1, and it was apparent with a few minutes of the start of the interview. The only problem with voting in a bright chap like Rahul Gandhi along with a UPA-3 is this:
just one example. If a Pakistan were to take advantage of this situation to declare war on India and attack Kashmir,  Mr. PM may launch an invasion to annex the Andamans. Or he may file RTIs, or launch a Rajiv Yojana to empower women that his dynasty impoverished. In real life, useful answers are tied to the question. inextricably.

What I will take away from this decision of the prince and his courtiers to make a mockery of Arnab (rather than the more loyal anchors of NDTV/CNN-IBN) is the sheer cynicism, sense of entitlement and vanity, and the utter disregard for a long-suffering public that is required to even contemplate such adharma. And of course the paid media that participates willingly in this sham.

Sane Indians responded thus:
1. Recognized Rahul's incredulously poor intelligence and laughed their heads off

2. Fact-checking web-sites scrutinized the many unsubstantiated claims in his interview and exposed him for the incorrigible liar that he was in that interview.

3. Others recognized the kid-glove treatment given to Rahul and presented the interview conducted in an alternative universe.

4. Then we have the excellent site "Ask Rahul Anything" (http://engagedino.com/askrg) that is going viral, which allows you to ask Rahul any question you want.

The Missing Questions
We managed to identify ten questions to Rahul's answers that were previously float aimlessly, orphaned without any questions to go along, using the 'Ask Rahul Anything' website. Our analysis absolves Rahul of all crimes: we show that in fact our questions result in no unsubstantiated claims, we questioned all answers briefly, honestly, and to the point, on a wide range of topics:

1.   Futility of Modi's smart cities (brightest bulb - 1)
2.   The brightest bulb in the dynasty - 2
3.   The economic race with China
4.   1:1 debate with Narendra Modi
5.   The specific women he will empower
6.   Moving from undesirable pSecularism to undesirable secularism
7.  The original interview: interview or a date
8.   The brightest bulb in the dynasty -3
9.   How Manmohan became PM
10. National security

Contemporary Discussions on Feminist Issues in Hinduism - 1

This page, like others in this blog is a work in progress and will try to collect links to useful and data-driven discussions on topics like Sati, Karva Chauth, and Agni Pariksha, etc, which are moderated by informed Hindu scholars and historians. A superficial reading of these topics may suggest to some that texts of Hinduism target women, and indeed there are many ignorant Hindus who try to "enforce" such practices. Hopefully these discussions (using an Indian/Dharmic point of view rather than regurgitated western paradigms) will bring more clarity to those seeking answers to these questions.

Introduction
Hinduism is the only religion that also worships the divine in a feminine form, and these feminine forms are approached first when Hindus pray for wealth, prosperity, education, and even military strength!. Shakti is another fundamental concept of Hinduism that differentiates it from History-centric faiths, and for which there is no equivalent in those religions. A non-trivial chunk of the Vedas was authored by women. The breath-taking debate between Mandana Misra and Sankara was moderated by Misra's wife. Both Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are fought to right the injustice against the main female protagonist (Sita and Draupadi). In contemporary India, Women have occupied the highest positions of political and economic power, are an integral part of the Indian armed forces, but much progress needs to be made in terms of repairing the broken law and order apparatus of India, especially in terms of safeguarding women's rights and curbing violence against women and children.

It will help immeasurably to distinguish between the individual actions of those born into Hindu families and the Dharma-based texts of Hinduism. Steve Jobs disregarded medical advice to delay his cancer treatment and paid the price. That doesn't mean that medicine is inhuman :)
However, it must be conceded that if a person wants to deliberately twist facts and the words of a text to suit a polemic and score points rather than honestly look for lessons in self-realization or seek to reform, then there is no defense against that.


The Practice of Sati
In this post, Sandeep Balakrishna, a genuine and outspoken authority on Hindu Dharma and Indian history rebuts an English writer who wrote:
"It was the British, let us not forget, who outlawed Indian slavery, infanticide and the horrendous practice of suttee, whereby widows were burned to death on their husband’s funeral pyre."

Sandeep: "That’s a new one. Indian slavery! One would want to ask how Mr.Sandbrook defines this term or show us exactly one instance of “Indian slavery.” On outlawing infanticide, it’s no thanks to the British but largely the Indian reformers who persuaded the government to outlaw it. Also note the spelling of “sati.” Nothing like the good ol’ “suttee” eh? While I do cringe at Sati, let’s not forget the era we’re talking about. The whole “liberation from Sati” like the “evil caste system” is exaggerated. Sati was by and large a voluntary practice by the wife. Sati and Jauhar are in many ways synonymous, a practice that held death preferable to dishonour. Perhaps Mr. Sandbrook would like to read accounts of how Indian widows were fair game for Brit officers."

Is Sati sanctioned by the Rig Veda?
NO. The reason is your average Western idologist of the 20th century with limited Sanskrit skills, wrongly translating crucial words into English. For this, we don't even need to look far. Even the simplistic and much maligned Wikipedia has some data.

" it [Rig Veda] explicitly states that the widow should return to her house.

उदीर्ष्व नार्यभि जीवलोकं गतासुमेतमुप शेष एहि |

हस्तग्राभस्य दिधिषोस्तवेदं पत्युर्जनित्वमभि सम्बभूथ || (RV 10.18.8)

Rise, come unto the world of life, O woman — come, he is lifeless by whose side thou liest. Wifehood with this thy husband was thy portion, who took thy hand and wooed thee as a lover.^[65]

A reason given for the discrepancy in translation and interpretation of verse 10.18.7, is that one consonant in a word that meant house, yonim agree "foremost to the yoni", was deliberately changed by those who wished claim scriptural justification, to a word that meant fire, yomiagne" 



Karva Chauth:
Ritual fasting is prevalent all over the world. The complaint is that KC targets women. What i've seen of this is largely from bad Bollywood movies where the leading lady always volunteers to fast on a particular day as a token of her love for her husband.

[watch this space for updates]

Agni Pariksha:
This topic (trial by fire of the blameless Sita) was recently debated during Diwali. There are some excellent and fairly impartial blogs that present their views.

Satyamevajayate.org

The second, and more recent post is by a lady (and a feminist to boot :)

The third one is by Vijayendra Mohanty, and is a wonderful exposition on the Dharmic principles underlying that incident of the Ramayana.

A fourth, and very good article on this topic is by Sri. Aravindan Neelakandan, co-author of Breaking India.

Part-2 will focus on collecting articles on the practice of female infanticide and dowry deaths (it should come as no surprise now that neither is sanctioned in the texts, and would be considered extremely Adharmic).