Indian politicians are famous for their monkey tricks and high level dramas particularly to show how shameless and pathetic they are in spending public money on self advertising. Guess who is the latest one? It’s none other than Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh! 
Amidst the rising Bareilly communal violence for which she has been criticized in New Delhi, Mayawati gave a hard hitting answer by taking out a Rs 200 crore rally (Rs 2000 million), trying to prove that her people are all united and stand one for her. She has been in criticism for quite a while for the violence that erupted in Bareilly. Since the passing of Women Reservation Bill, she and her party has been protesting for the fact that there is no separate quota for the Dalits in the bill. She calls all the other parties who approved the bill as Anti-Dalits.
This massive rally took place on Monday on the 25th anniversary of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and was attended by a million people. The entire event costed a whopping 200 crore rupees (or 2000 million rupees)! Besides the regular arrangements, a 30 bed hospital comprising 200 doctors and around five hundred paramedics was build exclusively for this event. For the decorations, a 1000 quintals of flowers were brought from various parts of the country. Nearly 1600 government buses and five thousand private buses were arranged for the transport of public to the event. In order to dress up the city in blue color (which is the color of BSP), 1 million LED lights were utilized. And God knows what all was done for this event.
But where is that unique stunt from this politician? Every politician takes out rallies so whats so different this time? Guess what! Besides this rally being expensive, a special Garland was presented to Mayawati which was made up of Indian currency notes. It was made out of thousands of 1000 rupees notes, totally amounting to few million rupees. Now that’s the latest stunt from Indian politician!
Mayawati's money Garland
Even though the event was a massive success, it angered the public at large. The entire event was conducted at the cost of Public money. Although Income Tax Department is already on its way to probe the funding, Mayawati clearly says that this money came as donations from the supporters of her party and her people. There was a huge “Dog fight” in the parliament today, with congress and BJP demanding for probe into the funds spent on this event.
In a country that is neck deep in debts, poverty stricken, wounded by communal violence etc, such events in which public money is flaunted for self advertising only shows what kind of people are running the country. Are these the politicians we select by giving our vote?
I was just calculating, if one state can generate Rs 200 crores from public donations, then imagine how much would 35 states (i am including the 7 union territories) generate? It’s simple Math. 35 X 200 crore = Rs 7000 Crore! That’s nearly Rs 70,000 million which comes to around $1.5 Billion!
So what would India prefer doing? Advertise these politicians or clear of its Debts? Isn’t it easy to clear of our debts with the World Bank?
Hope the World Bank doesn’t read this post
It’s high time that people begin to excise their vote properly. If they cannot find a proper candidate to vote, just don’t vote! Atleast you will not regret selecting the wrong candidate. All the Taxes that we pay go into the fat bellies of these politicians.
The irony is that these politicians question us Muslims asking “Can you prove that you are Patriotic?”! (lolzzz…:-) )
Jago India Jago!
Assalamalaikum (Peace be on you all)
Salaam Brother Imran Ali,
It really takes us aback, when we read and hear about the misuse public money by these self-obsessed politicians. Despite, we agree that BSP got funding from its supporters, it does not befit to spend it like flowing water; moreover, the garland of Indian currency notes is really really disappointing. We the middle-class people pay income taxes out of our hard earned money for the welfare of our country; and when we see its misuse, it really knocks us for six.
India has got large section of people, who don’t even get daily wages having been worked day in and day out.
Millions of students give up studies due to lack of financial support.
Millions of women work as prostitutes across the nation for their bread and butter.
Millions of innocent people have been behind bars for years; since they don’t have enough money to run their case and prove their innocence.
There have been hundreds of pretty thieves and trivial criminals in local lock-ups, and are need of only 500 bucks for their release.
And a lot more wounds our country has gotten; but it has also got evil and selfish politicians.
Jago India Jago!
Assalam .. I do agree with You and our brother Mr. Zahack, and it is so disappointing and hurting to see that there is no proper system to deal with this pathetic political scenario. The whole system is to be blamed, and the world is truly becoming a stage full of idiotic minds and insensitive people around. Wish Allah could raise somebody so strong to eradicate or eliminate these kind of things not only at one particular place but all over the globe inshallah, for Innallaaha ‘Ala Kulli Shaieen Qadeer (Indeed Allah has Power over All things). But the sins have been increasing… and things can return to good ways only if we all individually see how much we have been doing things purely for the love and fear of Allah. And it is only then we all can unitedly fight with the system.
Jago Duniya Jago!
Brother Ali, Following is an article appeared in “The Island” news paper in Sri Lanka. Can you please analyze and give your view on this?
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Mosques and Cathedrals
By Gwynne Dyer
There was an unpleasant incident in Corboba cathedral last week. It was the world’s second-biggest mosque until the Spanish reconquest of the city in the thirteenth century, and a group of 120 Muslim tourists from Austria was visiting it. Suddenly, half a dozen of them began to pray – and the security guards intervened and told them to stop. They refused, so the police were called.
Two young men from the group still would not stop, there was a scuffle between them and the police, and they were arrested. One security guard and one policeman, we are told, were “slightly injured”, but one suspects that they did not need time off work to recover. (“…and then the accused struck me right in the fist with his face, Your Honour, causing this cut on my ring finger.”)
The bishop’s office offers a more lurid account of the incident, in which the tourists “provoked in a pre-planned fashion what was a deplorable episode of violence.” The spokeswoman for the National Police, Rosa Ortiz, who may have seen a bit more real violence than the bishop, said it was just a “shoving match” between the police and the two men, who were aged (surprise!) 19 and 23.
And that’s all that happened. But you just know, given the delicate state of relations between Muslims and Christians in this time, that the blogs and websites that obsess about such things are going to make a big deal out of it. Especially since the Roman Catholic bishop of Cordoba, Demetrio Fernandez, recently reaffirmed the ban on Muslims praying in the building.
What he actually said was: “The shared use of the cathedral by Catholics and Muslims would not contribute to the peaceful coexistence of the faiths.” It sounds very stuffy and old-fashioned, but I think he’s right. Because I keep thinking about what would happen if a bunch of Christian tourists went into the Ayasofya mosque in Istanbul and tried to perform some sort of Christian ceremony.
Ayasofya was known as Hagia Sofia Cathedral (and the city was known as Constantinople) until the Ottoman conquest in 1453. For a thousand years it was the largest cathedral in the world, but Mehmet II, the Ottoman emperor who finally breached the citywalls, had it converted to a mosque. The bells, altar and iconostasis were removed and replaced by a mihrab and minbar, the Christian mosaics were plastered over, and four minarets were added at the exterior corners.
That’s how things were done in those days. The borders between Christendom and Islam moved back and forth a lot during the thousand-year struggle between the new faith and the slightly older one, and when either side gained new territory or recovered lost lands, it immediately put its stamp on them.
Since Islam’s first wave of expansion almost exclusively involved the conquest of formerly Christian countries, many of the great mosques of the Arab world outside Arabia are built on the remains of Christian churches – except al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, of course, which is built on what remains of the Jewish Second Temple. (And under that are a few traces of Solomon’s Temple, and under them, in all likelihood, are the foundations of some even older pagan temple.)
The great mosque that is now Cordoba cathedral was built on the ruins of an 8th-century Christian church, and you’d probably find some stones from an earlier Roman temple under that: people build their places of worship in the same places, over and over again. But once they have changed hands, the only sensible thing to do is to accept it. There are too many fanatics around: we are not yet at the point where sharing makes sense.
It would be nice if history were over: if we were all grown-ups now, and we could share this church or that mosque without conflict. But I know Christians who think that Islam is “the Devil’s religion,” and that it is trying to take over the world. And I know many Muslims who cannot see that the Crusades and the Reconquista were Christian counter-offensives to recover lost lands, not unprovoked attacks on Islam.
So everybody is a victim in their own minds, and the historical resentments are only a millimetre below the skin in many people, and it would be a really bad idea to provide a place where those resentments could fester and grow. If you allow Islamic religious services in Cordoba cathedral, for example, or Christian services in the Ayasofya mosque, you know exactly the sort of extremists and obsessives that it would attract.
Except that Ayasofya isn’t a mosque any more. In 1935 the government of the Turkish republic turned it into a museum where NOBODY is allowed to perform religious ceremonies, and you could certainly count on a “shoving match” with the security guards, if not something more, if you tried. It was a cathedral for a thousand years, it was a mosque for five hundred, and now it’s a museum. Full stop.
That, perhaps, is the best solution for Cordoba cathedral and a few other high profile church-and-mosques as well. Make them museums for everybody, not active places of worship for anybody, and the heat goes out of the situation: no more winners and losers. But the Spaniards are probably not ready for that yet. They were an occupied country for seven hundred years.