Dilip Simeon's blog

The formal purging of Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav at the meeting of the national council on Saturday gives us a clearer understanding of the nature of the Aam Aadmi Party. It teaches us that the AAP is a form of sole proprietorship, not the political cooperative that many thought it was. The  faux  collegiality of the AAP's early days, the association of people well known in their own right like Medha Patkar, Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, persuaded many that the AAP's rhetoric of decentralized democracy applied to the party's organization. This latest assertion of Arvind Kejriwal's ownership of the party has helped clarify that confusion. This wishful thinking owed nothing to the things Kejriwal said or did. On the contrary, during his first chief ministership, Kejriwal's behaviour bore witness to his belief that the AAP was an instrument of his will. Whether it was his  dharna  on Rajpath or the decision to resign office, his political style was...

There is a very sinister force in control and it is that sinister cabal which is responsible for caging him in and showing him what they think he should know about and keeping away from him things which are not in their interest, and this for me is the most dangerous situation that any nation can be in.” Not for  Wole Soyinka , Nigeria’s foremost man of letters, a gentle retirement or attempt to separate art from politics. The 80-year-old spent election day in Africa’s biggest democracy working the phones late into the night, gathering reports of technical glitches, irregularities and violence. There was plenty to keep him awake. “We’re talking about a very positive response by the public in terms of determination to register and vote but, you know, this has been one of the most vicious, unprincipled, vulgar and violent election exercises I have ever witnessed,” Soyinka reflected sadly. “I just hope we won’t go down as being the incorrigible giant of  Africa .” A Nobel ...

Reacting  online  to reports on the Hashimpura massacre in The Sunday Express, and particularly the eyewitness account of photographer Praveen Jain, a former General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Army’s Northern and Central  Commands , Lt Gen H S Panag (retd), has tweeted that he would write to the Chief of the Army Staff seeking an investigation into the Army’s role in the infamous incident. Lt Gen Panag tweeted the link to a  video  posted on  YouTube  by The  Indian  Express of Jain’s  first  person account, along with photographs that he had taken during the Army and police operation in Hashimpura in 1987. “Ashamed in 87 [the year the massacre happened], more ashamed now as was not aware of the dubious role of the IA [Indian Army]. Salute to Praveen Jain!” Lt Gen Panag posted on Twitter. A sessions court on March 21 acquitted the 16 surviving PAC personnel accused in the massacre of 42 Muslims in Hashimpu...

अब ऊपर मोदी और नीचे केजरीवाल हैं और इस समय भारतीय जेलों में कौन कौन से भ्रष्टाचारी बंद हैं, आप बताएं. रॉबर्ट वाड्रा या शीला दीक्षित या कोई उद्योगपति या कोई बड़ा अफसर? कौन है जेल में? वहीं, मनमोहन ने राज चाहे जैसा चलाया, लेकिन उनके समय में जो करप्शन में जेल गए, उनमें कुछ नाम ये हैं: सुरेश कलमाडी ए राजा कनिमोई ललित भनोट ए. के. मट्टू सार्थक बेहूरिया आर के चंडोलिया संजय चंद्रा गौतम दोशी हरि नायर विनोद गोयनका शाहिद बलवा करीम मोरानी रशीद मसूद.... और राज्यों के मामलों में जेल जाने वालों का हिसाब इसमें नहीं है. मतलब कि केंद्र में कैंबिनेट मंत्री से लेकर सेक्रेटरी लेबल के अफसर और सबसे बड़ी सहयोगी पार्टी की नेता से लेकर यूनिटेक जैसी उस समय की भारी कंपनी के मालिक तक जेल गए. बिना लोकपाल के प्रपंच के ही जेल गए. कानून ने जेल भेजा. इन दोनों के नकारेपन में, मनमोहन जैसा करप्शन का सरताज भी संत दिखने लगा है. मनमोहन के समय जेल जाने का डर तो होता था. आज है क्या? प्रेम से बोलिए, एंटी करप्शन मूवमेंट स्वाहा -2 - केंद्रीय मंत्री तिहाड़ में - देश के सबसे बड़े खेल प्रशासक और सत्ताधारी पार्टी के स...

Admiral L Ramdas, who was on Sunday removed as AAP's internal Lokpal, expressed disappointment that the party leadership took the step without informing him about the decision.  He said, in an informal meeting last month, the party had actually requested him to continue for additional five years. "It is with great surprise and sadness that I heard today from a reporter that the Aam Aadmi Party no longer requires my services as its internal Lokpal. Various media reports have subsequently confirmed this news. "I am disappointed that the leadership of the party did not... inform me first before making this decision public. I still await their phone call," Ramdas said in a statement. AAP today removed Ramdas and Prashant Bhushan as the chief of National Disciplinary Committee, a day after the latter and senior leader Yogendra Yadav were expelled from the National Executive (NE). The former navy chief has been the party's Lokpal since its inception. His remov...

What Arendt’s work tells us about the value of universities as places of thinking together Education was, for Arendt, an expression of that care – “the point at which”, as she wrote in her 1954 essay on The Crisis in Education , “we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it”. Education provides us with a protected space within which to think against the grain of received opinion: a space to question and challenge, to imagine the world from different standpoints and perspectives, to reflect upon ourselves in relation to others and, in so doing, to understand what it means to “assume responsibility”. She had observed at first hand how such opinion can solidify into ideology. Universities are – if nothing else – places where people meet to think together. Hannah Arendt passed through many such places in the course of her life, but never defined herself as an academic. She was – first and last – a thinker. She thought about many things, but particularly abo...

The collusion of the state, political parties, police and investigating agencies ensured that evidence was destroyed and neglected in a systematic manner, denying families of the victims any closure even after a trying 27-year-long trial. A night before May 22, 1987, when 42 young Muslim men from Hashimpura, a mohalla less than two kilometres away from Meerut city, were murdered in cold blood by men in uniform, another death was registered in the nearby Civil Lines police station. The death was due to a bullet injury, the shots allegedly fired by someone from Hashimpura. Prabhat Kaushik, 23, an RSS worker, died around 9.30 pm sta­nding on the roof of the house of his aunt Shakuntala Kaushik, a feisty BJP leader of her time. Curiously, less than 14 hours after Prabhat’s death, his elder brother, Major Satish Chandra Kaushik, posted in Meerut, was seen conducting house to house searches in Hashimpura, along with two ot her army officers, Major B.S. Pathania and Colonel P.P. Singh. Hi...