View from the right

Medha Patkar comes in for attack as always. But this time the Organiser extends its range of targets to include Aamir Khan and Saifuddin Soz.

Echoing, ironically, Arundhati Roy, it makes a point to describe the filmstar as 8220;more famous than the main character in the advertisement for Coca Cola when this multinational-owned soft drink was in the dumps on charges of being laced with dangerous pesticide residues8221;. Soz is attacked for going 8220;hammers and tong against the project8221; and ordering suspension of work on the dam. 8220;Soz was made to realise later that he did not have such powers, and so he retracted,8221; says the report.

Sonia8217;s studies

A detailed report on Subramaniam Swamy8217;s petition in the Allahabad High Court against the 8220;false affidavit8221; filed by Sonia Gandhi on her educational qualifications was carried in a previous issue of the Organiser. It has now been followed up with an editorial, no less. The burden of Swamy8217;s petition is that in the May 2004 elections, Sonia Gandhi had claimed to have been educated in the University of Cambridge. After Swamy proved she wasn8217;t, the Congress president8217;s new affidavit for the Rae Bareli bypoll clarifies that she received a certificate in English from the Lennox Cook School in the city of Cambridge, UK. 8220;It is like saying that a certificate from a Delhi coaching institute is a degree from the Delhi University,8221; the editorial says, giving vent to the anti-Sonia obsession shared by Swamy and much of the Sangh Parivar.

Swamy8217;s Nepal formula

Subramaniam Swamy8217;s ire against Sonia8217;s Cambridge connection may have another angle too. For Swamy went to the other Cambridge in USA with its equally famous University. Writing on Nepal, he makes it a point to mention that 8220;King Birendra was a student at Harvard when I was teaching economics there8221; and the two became good friends. Swamy claims that he was instrumental in persuading the King to agree to elections8212;first on a non-party basis and after 1990 party-based polls.

Asserting that the Nepal crisis was 8220;part of the general problem of the Hindus under siege, encircled by the anti-Hindu forces8221;, Swamy offers his own four-point formula for Indian intervention. India should end terrorism, cleanse Nepal of anti-Indian forces and make the country adopt 8220;an Indian-type quasi federal Constitution for restoration of democracy8221;. It should seek a mutual defence treaty and post two divisions of the Indian Army in Kathmandu and offer Indian advisers to the King. India should make the SPA delink it8217;s alliance with the Maoists, which was 8220;signed in the fifth-column enclave called the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi8221;. And lastly, it should engage China to cooperate in this policy and politely tell the US to stay away.

Red dread

Varun Gandhi, who has been writing regularly on security issues and against India8217;s 8216;soft state8217; syndrome in the Organiser, trains his guns on the Naxalites this time. In a detailed and ponderous article, he traces the the movement from its in 1967 to its current dimensions. Rubbishing the argument that Naxalism is a social problem that cannot be tackled only through force, the BJP8217;s Gandhi prefers the law-and-order approach. His conclusion: 8220;If free enterprise is to survive, if India has to remain a parliamentary democracy, then the poison of Naxalism must be countered immediately, otherwise as Naxalism spreads, the India we know would be increasingly threatened by the Red bully8221;.