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Journalism of Courage
The annual Urs festival celebrations at Ajmer Sharif had an unexpected visitor this year in Murli Manohar Joshi. This veteran saffronite not only offered a chaddar at the Dargah, he also joined the mehfil for half an hour. No one can quite understand what8217;s bitten Joshi. So far, Vajpayee8217;s been the one to send a chaddar during the Urs festival every year. This year too, his faithful representative in Lucknow, Shiv Kumar, travelled to the dargah with Vajpayee8217;s offering. Political circles are speculating about the motive behind Joshi8217;s gesture. Is he, like Advani, trying to 8216;8216;secularise8217;8217; his image to make himself more acceptable to NDA partners? He certainly seems to be jostling with Advani for space in the ruling coalition. And he obviously feels there8217;s no better place to start than Ajmer.
For Rajnath, It Took One Village
In The Name Of JP
Veteran Janata ideologue Jayprakash Narayan8217;s birth centenary celebrations have their share of quirks. One such odd bit, which has raised eyebrows in the Janata family, is a programme slated to be held at Teen Murti Bhavan next week under the auspices of the Loknayak Jayprakash International Research Centre. Now, JP8217;s antipathy to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty was well known, as was Indira Gandhi8217;s dislike of JP. Both must be turning in their graves at plans to honour JP in Nehru8217;s old residence. Sonia Gandhi couldn8217;t be liking it one bit either. But with the Culture ministry determining the fate of Teen Murti House, the family no longer has a say in the functions held in its grounds. The programme is threatened by another controversy. At least two of the speakers listed on the invitation cards, journalists Kuldip Nayyar and Prabhash Joshi, will not attend the function. According to them, they never gave any commitment to the organisers who don8217;t seem to be well known among JP followers.
