The page when I saw it in the morning had around 6000 odd Fans and around 200 odd photos. Its now doing at 7500 fans and around 450 photographs. Probably must have been triggered as news reports of the Pakistan ban started doing its rounds across various media. The number of people liking and unliking this page notwithstanding, the trend is for number of people going up.

Some of the depictions there are pretty humorous and creative, while some are absolutely shocking and offending, demeaning even. Standards depictions averaged out relate to three major associations : porcine assortments, an arsenal of explosives and little girls. The underlying, veiled expressions however, point to an overall mood of “getting back” … at terror in the name of religion, at threats to the Danish illustrator, at threats IN the name of religion and so on.

Which brings me to the question of the extremely thin, and sometimes vanishing line between Freedom of Speech and Slander.

Freedom of Speech is all about liberty of an individual to express oneself against any thought, person, concept or expression that comes by one. SLANDER is all about using Freedom of Expression, to denigrate a belief or a faith, and moves away from black and white expressions of denial based on logical foundations, to outright abuse, offending depictions and abusive caricaturing. This is where I believe that this group has cross the line. They started off by expressing a PROTEST against the way a section of the Islamic world handled the Danish cartoonist, and somewhere down the line, personal angst, and in cases personal experiences, or thought processes took on abusive representations.

In India, we have had our share of this too. Remember MF Hussain ? And his depictions of Indian Gods and Goddesses that sparked off huge protests, controversies, calls for legal action and so on? This is what I’m talking about. MF did the same thing that this FB group is now doing, SLANDER. The similarity? He called it art, and so does this group.

I would like to point out that MF depicting figureheads of his own religion would have been an acceptable point. Creativity is not really about poking fun / caricaturing / hurting people of other religions right ? And so also I say to the people in this group. I would have LOVED it if you had made a group to caricature figureheads from all religions. Not just targeting a single religion.

The arguments for and against this on various spaces are strong. One side of the argument questions a religion’s law itself in restrictions and impositions of various dogma and funda. To them, I would say that since it is NOT imposed on you, and since one who it has been imposed on does not really seek your aid, stay away. To those that say this is too radical, and calls for death, I would say that human life and peace is above all Gods and religions. Find a resolution peacefully.

1. That Neetaben really, positively, didn’t want to be hefted and lugged and hugged around again. err.. Mukeshbhai neither.
2. That ‘Chin had a bad injury to the webbing of his hand, and he wasn’t really in a mood to lift a heavy trophy. Besides, he’s more used to leading on his statistics front, not really in terms of picking up and hefting trophies, etc. Which is one reason why cheques are so light, y’know.
3. That Dhoni couldn’t go into world cup with a defeat as a captain, and both teams were … *ahem*… aware of problems that happen to posteriors when benches are warmed.
4. That the cheerleaders weren’t exciting enough to watch when you scored a success, not after the cops filed a case against *THEM* for obscenity. Though whats obscene about watching a pretty leg shake, or a bountiful belly bounce is, I fail to figure out.
5. That the fielding went haywire, with 2 catches, easy sitters that too, being dropped, mostly ‘cuz the fielders developed itches and rashes on tender parts, and got confused as to which ball to get their fingers under.
6. That MIs didn’t realize that when it Raina, it poursa Runsa, and gave him too many lives.
7. That Ms. Modi looked so darned stunning, that the ball was often missed for a better view of awesome legs crossing and uncrossing. Which prolly explains all those dot balls in that stretch of game.
8. That Pollard being so tall, dark and handsome, and an extremely ballistic hitter, was missed out in the roll call somewhere till someone suddenly woke up and said EFF … We’ve got Pollard … daym !!! Send him, better late than never.
9. That everyone in the MI team was being rested for the World Cup in a spirit of patriotism that only the great can achieve, where one confuses the dish and the spoon for the meal, y’know.
10. And last but not the least, that the script of the game was suitably “Modi-fied” … AHEM… COUGH !!! you know what I mean, to get a Chennai to Win.

Wah !! Applause, applause, etc.

Varied sources hint at an eye on upcoming Bihar polls, etc etc, collecting sops before elections and so on. As also is being said about the Shiv Sena and MNS raking up the Marathi Manoos issue just before its poll time in Mah. These are to me all side issues. Each party gets darned vocal about a cause they perceive as “close to populace” to get brownie points and steamroll at least a few candidates to power. Election systems over the world see various parties try various stunts and gimmics to get noticed and close to their “junta” prior to elections. And close the day of poll, louder the hullaballoo, disruption and so on.

Peaceful. Don’t want to change this.

What attracts my attention in this entire issue, is that of Rahul Gandhi, “scion” of the Congress Party of India, Leader through birth into the party leadership family, etc, decides to come out and say Mumbai is for all Indians. Again, while I laud this thought, I actually wonder why this man displays such an apparent case of hunting with the hounds and running with the hare. What am I talking about here?

I’m talking about article 370 of the Indian Constitution wrt Jammu & Kashmir. Read THIS to get a feel of what its all about.

To draw your attention to all that matters behind these verbose and possibly confusing terms, we are looking at just one glaring point. That the residents of Jammu & Kashmir live under a separate set of laws, including those related to citizenship, ownership of property, and fundamental rights, as compared to other Indians.

Granted by the Congress Party, during Indira Gandhi’s regime in the period 1974-1975.

Frankly, I have absolutely no idea about why this entire thing is still in force. The Congress Party has assured us time and again, that Kashmir was, is and will always be a part of India, and not be handed over to Pakistan, at any cost. It has assured us that Kashmir is like all other states, on par with any state with India, and that Indians have freedom to be a Kashmiri with full rights, blah blah blah !!

Whither then were they when Kashmiri Pandits were driven out by Mullahs there? Where are they now, when not a single Hindu can setup biz, purchase property or land, or even stay on there?

With this behind them, why are they crowing from top of the posts about a simple issue of Mumbai for Maharashtrians?

I’ll call this 370 degrees of hypocrisy. And a fat slap on the faces of people who chose to invest their votes in them.

This is the second time that one of the best known figures that India looks up to and reveres, has come out in the open and said his bit regarding what he thinks about the MNS motto in life. The person who dumped MNS concepts before Mukesh Ambani was India’s God of Sport, Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin had also openly expressed his thoughts that he is an Indian first, then a Maharashtrian or Mumbaikar.

Raj Thackeray arguably, could not really do anything at that time. He was a friend to Tendulkar, was the funda loudly proclaimed and accepted at that time. However, wisdom in not responding or making a scene about it was the larger picture. Sachin, who India reveres as an Idol for generations to emulate and rise up to in terms of capability and cult levels, is placed far, far above the MNS. Leave alone for the nation, this holds true for Maharashtrians in general, and Mumbaikars specifically. A single slur or outcry against Sachin Tendular would have seen public favor go away from MNS, Marathi or not. Rank and file would have edged, stormed and walked their way outta the MNS into wider open spaces. For cricket is one area across the Indian Diaspora, that does NOT tolerate politicians interfering with their Gods.

And now comes Mukesh Ambani into the picture.

Ranked in the top notches as far as list of world’s richest people go. Head honcho of the largest org that India has ever seen. Owner of the Mumbai Indians franchise (Tendulkar is Captain here, too). Arguably, the largest employer that Mumbai and Maharashtra has today.

This is a good time for people to see whether the MNS is truly convinced in their cause, or wish to just rabble rouse.

Any cause that people hold to their hearts, cares not for status, popularity and other things. Causes are people. People are causes. One man may believe in something and take his belief to the skies in terms of acceptance and popularity cuz he believes in it hugely enough.

Will MNS actually dare take on the commercial and industrial might of an Ambani and the clout of a Tendular combined? They should, if they so seriously believe in their cause.

Instead of harassing and making life miserable for people who can’t even defend themselves, the MNS should actually take “panga” against people like this who with one word could turn their entire follower clan inside out. That will prove that they are actually concerned and serious about the cause that they propagate with so much vim, vigor and gusto.

Go Raj and MNS. And fight Ambani if you have the balls. Throw him and his industry out if you dare. Cuz when he says that he doesn’t care for your thoughts, the hundreds of thousands of people, Marathi or not, will stand by him. Entire environs that he buys and sells from will be with him. Obviously, he provides them the means to run their homes and businesses, not you. And believe you me, Ambani saying this is a far bigger threat for you than a poor taxi/auto driver not learning Marathi through the books you’ve thrown at them.

I’d like to actually see that you care, Raj and MNS. And I will believe you, if you go and whack an Ambani or a Tendulkar.

All subject of course, to you caring enough. You may of course, continue what you’re doing and keep whacking poor people who can’t defend themselves against you.

The poster people of Mumbai.

For them, the world is an eyeball. And every wall that can take their size of communication is an asset. Religion holds no bar for them, neither does locality or status of residents. This army works mainly through the night when they can do their deed unhindered, unnoticed and slips away at the first peep of dawn.

No area is too far away, no wall, however already cluttered is to be spared. They work for ridiculous rates, involving only labor and the cost of gum they prepare of wheat and other things that are discarded. The pastes they prepare for gluing their posters is stronger and more resilient than most brands that claim such awesome powers of bonding and adhesiveness.

The question is, can they, who do this to make money for people who look to advertise for extremely CHEAP rates, be called vandals?

I think not.

The recent case of the wallproject (#wallproject on twitter) has had me raising eyebrows, not for anything other than the fact that these poster plasters are called vandals. Face it … they can’t afford hoardings, they can’t afford to buy or lease media. They way they see it, they’re just adding color to otherwise peeling, unmaintained facades that proliferate in Mumbai city.

For me, these posters are not the problem. Believe you me, there are areas in Mumbai, walls and facades, that would look really, really horrible without them.

But then, they chose to do it on the #wallproject.

So you, a busy tax payer have spent a day indulging in your painting skills, and demand compensation for this labor and all else going waste cuz someone slapped his poster on the space you painstakingly painted.  So what if its commercial in its own way? (I remember this amazing pict that said ‘absolut mumbai’ … isn’t that advtg too?)

Methinks the idea isn’t to punish this industry. The idea however, is to hold those to task that use up public property wantonly through this media, and pay nothing for it at all. The wall publicist, who is told “chaap do ye is shaher ke chappe chappe mein” is not to be blamed for his miniscule rate of Rs. 2 per poster sticking, but the production house is.

Grab ‘em, make ‘em pay Rs. 100 per poster per day even. And employ the poster pasters … the Govt would be doing a far, far better thing that it has ever done before.

For note, we can’t do without posters on some walls walls that our current municipalities and govts are too “poor” to notice or maintain.

Very cleverly positioning himself as a “mole within IPL, armed with a MacBook Pro” etc, he has lead the online junta by their noses. Not naming any direct names, he has used clever behavioral metaphors to build convincing maps to real life personnas.

Wednesday, today, is the day he has promised to reveal himself to a whopping followership of over 7000 net junkies, cricket lovers etc. The world probably is hitting his blog crazy every minute, wanting to be the first to get this revelation of a man who has turned the world of media, audiences, and so on, followers to the most highly valued game in the Indian sub-continent, into a bunch of sheep, bleating and pleading, pleading, for his next cheesy, raunchy post.

His disclaimer is loud and clear. That all “All characters appearing in this work (blog) are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional.“.

So that’s good enough to exonerate him from most libel claims that people might be trying to pin onto him. His use of words like IPL, or Mumbai Indians etc, will really not land him in the soup. After all, any author can weave a story around an event right and call it a “work of fiction” and get away with it, right? Dan Browne got away with using the word “POPE” in his Angels and Demons and got away with it.  Jeffrey Archer has used White House characters, and gotten away with it.

So why not FakeIPLPlayer?

What has he done that’s libelous? Nothing at all … He has not really stated what team he belongs to beyond providing clever metaphors and event tracks to lead the people on.

I also think that rather than harm, this blog has boosted IPL ratings to some extent. I for one, have gone back to see characters, especially to connect their supposed metaphors with the original and have a good laugh. The FakeIPLPlayer has not really done an Equation saying X player = X nick. For example, “a former test cricket player, who will always remain a former test cricket player” is the kind of leading on that one is talking about.

Appam Chu**ya has been the STAR of this blog. This nick has caught fancies of millions with immediate connections to a player who has a darned high irritant recall due to what public calls kiddish antics and weird behaviour.

I think the FakeIPLPlayer is a brilliant author in the making, aware of literary turns of expressions, and more importantly, aware of the fine line between pure fun, and libellous slander. He ROCKS.

There is no way anyone can pin a libel action on him, IMO.

Sanjeev Sarma

And by a whopping mandate it has declared the 100+ year old Congress party as capabale enough to manage this great country for the next 5 years. It has done so without ambiguity, and has left no room for shakiness at the centre in the form of volatile driven-by-need coaltions or by power hungry time serving politicians.

The country has also voted succinctly and clearly against the left and has left them stumbling and incapable, even in their own bastions of Kerala and West Bengal. Not to be left behind, the bourses, when they opened on Monday, lauded this decision by two successive upper circuit breakers as the index spiralled up to glory, leaving no one in doubt about their decision to vote.

For me however, this brings in a huge diaspora of mixed emotions. The happy ones have been listed above, as I shared people sentiments of a stable govt, and market sentiments of faith leading to rises in indices. The ones that really irk me as of now are:

1) I see that we are heading back towards a regime where ruling party reins are handed down in the family, irrespective of capability or qualifications. Takes me back to eras where maharajah’s were elected at birth.

2) I see a weak opposition now, a much needed facet of any democracy that prides itself on being driven by mandate. An opposition that risks the danger of standing leaderless, and probably missionless too.

I have also spent the past 3 days skimming over regions, people who won, margins they won by and so on, and I have these points that hit my face when I look at an inch below the surface of this victory.

1) That the Congress has won on a purely minority vote aggregation. Sounds ridiculous ? Check out their strong bastions as of now : Kerala, TN, Andhra, where Xtian conversion activities are gathering force daily, and plague the very fibre of a really ancient culture. Check out UP and other bastions, where the Muslims have voted en masse for the Congress.

How can I really call a party that has focused on pure divisive strategies to polarize communities and win, secular? Just because they keep their minority forces satisfied and leave the rest of the country to its own devices?

2) Hindu (the majority) votes have been divided and dispersed by regional parties, star power, etc, to the point of being absolutely miniscule and unaccountable.

The bastions that remain with the BJP today in the form of states are ones that firmly protect culture by keeping away minority appeasement policies and by keeping conversions at bay. Staunchly, firmly Hindu with no move or trend to garner those “minority votes” through appeasement. (Many may of course choose to view this as “communal.”) But this is the stark reality that stands out today.

That Varun Gandhi would win, I had no doubt of. That he would win by such a whopping margin surprises me, given especially that he made “communal” speeches.

While I welcome this Govt and the immediate sense of stability it brin’gs to the country, I am worried about the long run. Especially given the ruling party’s leanings towards minority appeasement in various forms. And by its approach to define leadership of both the party and country in terms of Family.

I think its time I joined the BJP. If of course, it changes its fence sitting stand and decides to go and proudly label itself a Hindu party without being communal.

I for one would love to live in an India thats HINDU. A country where all religions from time immemorial have been tolerated and encouraged in terms of practice (not in terms of rsions, mind you). A country where I can go to a temple with my head held high, and not be labeled “communal.” A country whose culture I protect by not permitting conversions or allowing appeasements that lead to nothing but polarization.

Sanjeev

One of the key things that came across is that there now seem to be a lot of entities who feel that brands can be made or marred online, via threads starting out from a simple 140 char string that goes “Product X is bad service, ppl, don’t touch it, #fail” or something like that. The people I met / interacted with over the last week all seem single-minded in terms of focusing on measuring the impact of such statements, and if possible, curbing or enhancing the impact that a negative or positive statement may have.

The key issue I keep wondering about is that of “monitoring” the impact of such statements. The tech aspects of collating or mining keywords related to a product / brand / service is not something that confounds me; anyone with half a grey cell can do it. What I really fail to understand is HOW such a statement and its impact on actual market spaces are measured. I can follow the threads of connect or discord around a product or service, but how do I actually check whether it has resulted in a SALE or LACK OF ONE.

One of the key posts that I HAVE to mention here in terms of its utter lucidity of thought and expression is Prem Kumars blog post on Social CRM. There seems to be a good thought stream out there, in terms of attempts to define spaces, approaches and potential outcomes.

Sugar CRM, the big daddy of all open source CRMs, in one of the versions I last checked, allowed you to run and track a (mailer or ad-serving) campaign online, as part of its offering. Now, while this cannot really be called “social CRM”, it does indicate a larger capability for a user to PUBLISH content to what goes collectively and even “loosely” under the garb of Social Media. Oracle, with their Social CRM App Suite seem to be prime, aggressive movers in this domain. As of now, it seems to be more of Sales prospecting and lead generation function.

So why has this become important?

It is kind of more or less accepted that 6 people out of 10 who spend at least 8 hours in front of a machine, are connected to a group / circle / network through a “social networking” site.

To most people, such sites serve as a connectivity platform, a “solidarity definition engine” or “recommendation engine” (I am buying X product, do you think I should go ahead?), a “Catharssis engine” (I HATE X or Y  services / person / product, and I think you guys should NOT use them).  And such innocuous posts sometimes show tendencies to spread, as the thread that permeates through venn diagrams that support inclusions or exclusions of people respond to it with myriad expressions of connect or disconnect.

Brilliant to do trending and checking.

But then, (as asked earlier) how do you actually monitor whether this has DONE  a sale or DENIED a sale ?

Social CRM and Reputation Engine Evangelists have their work cut out for them. The High Road for these people is not the trending and tracking, nor is it the mining of data and presenting an output.

Its the ACTUAL conversion to dollar matrices that are going to decide the KEY movers and FIRST players in the market that is BEGGING to be robbed.

Sanjeev Sarma

ps. I am currently exploring thoughts and concepts what SOCIAL CRM means to India and how Indian networks currently work in the digital space. I’ll share them soon as I’ve arrived at some gibberish I can pass off as intelligent.

Better than it could have in a Ludlum or a John LeCarre thriller.

The story was being read all these years, the characters and events were unfolding slowly, methodically, without apparent connections or relations to each other.

And once it happened, all  events / characters / thoughts / ideas fell into place with the rapidity of a digital jigsaw puzzle being solved in auto-mode, with pieces seen/remembered/thought of earlier sliding into their respective places and forming a complete picture.

The world, beyond all doubt, understood in the space of the last three days that Pakistan and Taliban are truly one, and that one is not different from the other.

These thoughts did cross the mind of many over so many years, through unexplainable sixth sense or predictability fundas. But there was always a link here or an event there, that was missing in the world terror map. These seemingly unrelated links and events erected a friend or foe maze, peppered with cleverly disguised, even hidden markers, a maze confounded by contradictions ranging across extremes, and of a face put forward that was not a face at all but a mask!

I personally saw inklings of this for the first time, when the Dictatorship, Army driven functioning, of Pakistan was replaced with a “civilian” one. This obviously happened “around” the time the favoured daughter of the Pakistani soil, Ms. Bhutto was assassinated.

It was then that I kind of understood that the true forces that puppeteered Pakistan were calling for a show of hands.

Mumbai 26/11 happened, a war like stance was assumed, belligerent Paki threats tried to draw a raring to go India to war, to mask this as a “this happened while we were away protecting our borders” thing, the Taliban publicly announced its support for the Paki army to fight any Jihad against Indian armed forces, and then, SWAT happened.

Times Now (a channel that I seem to have come to admire for lotsa reasons) made some pointed remarks yesterday in a newscast in the nite:

1. That a British media has gone ahead to say that Obama favoured a Pakistan – “Moderate” Taliban link to weed out “extremist” Taliban, this would apparently lead to a “compartmentalization” and easy “management of terror”
2. It was also drawn attention to the fact, that this “peace agreement” happened barely a day or two after Sentaor Richard Holbrooke met Pakistani “leaders”.
3. (Amazingly, its just around this time that) A UCLA professor has tracked Osama to a hideout, in the Kurram region of Pakistan, not more than a dozen Kms from the Pak Afghan border.

Today, the Taliban is just less than 500 kms away from Amritsar, India. Officially. Not counting all the infiltrations they may have made into India under various garbs, guises and so on. What is really scary is that the euphoria among people to welcome a Taliban there is high, and dissent against various extreme Talibal Sharia Laws are few and far between. After all, the US has allowed that Sharia law is permitted as per Pak constitution and norms. How extreme, is up to the People of Pakistan to agree to or be forced into.

What does SWAT mean to us, to India?

1. I find it mighty strange to believe that the Pakistan Army, that just recently promised to launch a HUGE offensive if India declared war, caved into a few hundred or even thousand hooligans called the Taliban. So there is much, much more that the Indian army will need to address rather than just the Pak army, if war (God forbid) is declared.
2. That a war may not be necessarily an Indian offensive, it may be declared by a “high on Jihad with Taliban” Pak too.
3. That the US might not step in to curb such events, given as per reports on media that it actually “favours a Pak-Taliban Truce”.
4. That a major amount of threat exists within India too from the Taliban, who may have penetrated and infiltrated various areas, sections of the country. And that WE, THE PEOPLE, must be ready and on alert to attend to and quell such inside worries.
5. And last but not the least, Pak’s Nuclear Facilities can easily be taken over by these forces. Pak doesn’t seem to have either the will or the verve to prevent this.

And herein, within point 5, lies the TRUE threat for not only India, but the World too, and this WORLD includes countries and agencies who at the moment, are funding/siding with Pakistan and Taliban for their overall immediate/near future geo-political gains.

Sanjeev Sarma

The concept of “Right Wing” has come a long way from the time it took birth in during the French revolution, representing people who sat on the “right”, indicating their support of Monarchy, and other status quo components, of those who did not favor change in past / existing systems.

Current day political definitions define a Right Wing as positions that are conservationist and reactionist. And here’s Wikipedia’s definition of Right Wing Politics, India

Coming back to today’s concept of a Right Wing in India, so liberally used by media, people, and so on, it indicates anyone who stands up and says they are Hindus, and that they refuse to accept certain expressions, representations and so on, that go against their cultural, moral and other (often religious) values. Going by these definitions (or my interpretations, misrepresentations of them), I’d love to go ahead and declare here, that I belong to the Right Wing.

Definitively, I am a Right Wing cuz :

• I love to go around and proclaim that I am a Hindu
• I love my culture, my festivals, my Gods and my celebrations
• I have no qualms in shouting out Jai Shri Ram or Jai Bhavani in a crowd that comprises different religions and cultures.
• I wear a tikka whenever I can, and go to temples to participate in aartis and worship my Gods.
• I teach my children, and generations after me what it means to be a Hindu and why I am proud to be a Hindu.
• I tolerate other religions, so long as they don’t come in the way of my religion, and tell me how their Gods are better than mine.
• I don’t like being told that the country I love and live in, is not Hindu but “secular”. My country has been far more Hindu and far, far more secular that it ever can be today, before these “definers and upholders of secularity” came in.
• I am aggrieved when I discover that Govts are taking control of Temple Trusts and using (part of) such monies to subsidize Haj pilgrimage, and levies a Pilgrimage tax on Hindus on a pilgrimage in India.
• I am sad when I see that other communities are being given sops and benefits that I, as a Hindu, am not entitled to, in the name of “secularism”
• The above two points smack purely of minority appeasement and I oppose and reject them from the bottom of my heart.

I declare that the above has nothing to do with my extremely “liberal” lifestyle. That I am not compelled to follow dictats by any person, organization or entity to remain a Hindu. Therein lies my freedom of thought, and my secularity of my expression.

As a Right Wing entity, all I ask that India be declared a Hindu nation. Other countries are not lacking or wanting in calling themselves an Islamic or Christian nation. Why should my country hesitate in calling itself a Hindu nation?

Proud to be Right Wing. Proud to be a Hindu.

Sanjeev Sarma