Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #220

Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The British killed around 50 million Indians (35 million in just orchestrated famines). Hitler killed 6 million Jews. So when Netaji decided to join hands with HItler and the Japanese, it was not endorsement of Hitler but finding a way to throw a greater devil - the British rule, with the evil Churchill, out. (Watch this - Source)

In the history books, however, Churchill became the hero and Hitler a definition of evil.

Sanctifying certain villains while trashing others is the work of those who want a certain narrative to go ahead. No one cared for Indians or their urge to throw away the yoke of British evil!

Those who work to destroy the alternative narratives usually push for a complete purge of the other side’s voice, works, and tools. And, then provide sanctity to only one set of ideas and ways. Unless the purge is comprehensive and burial of the other really deep, a backlash is a certainty.

Which of the two - deep purge or backlash - will happen now is to be seen. But we are now knocking at the door of a collective global insanity.

Wanted to sincerely thank Iqbalji for his contribution to Drishtikone. Truly humbled, Sir. 🙏

a disaster in the making in the Punjabi world

There is a company named Lahoriye Records. It has a Facebook page (Source) where the most popular video it has is titled “ਐਦਾਂ ਫੈਰ ਕੱਢਦੀ ਹੈ AK 47” (This is how AK47 Fires) in Gurmukhi. The song has over 29k likes and over 6,200 shares.

It also has a YouTube channel. (Source) That channel has over 634K subscribers and has had 54,492,187 views so far. Here are some statistics for its channel. The main audience is in India and it is young. (Source)

Why are they important (apart from the fact that they are teaching how to use an AK-47 on Facebook)?

They are taking out videos in support of the “Farmer protests” in Delhi. (Source)

Strange coincidence? And an ominous harbinger of things to come?

Well, there is another similarly named Youtube channel “Lahoriye Music”. (Source). It has a song titled “Punjab” that has been sung by Shahzad Sidhu, Waqar Bhinder (Pardhan), AR Wattoo, Ijaz Ghoug, and Mansoor Ahmad.

It starts with how there is a pain in the heart of the singers regarding the division of Punjab based on tales told to them by their elders (babeyan) and how all that anger will come out now. And very interestingly, it talks of one Punjab, East and West. That which went to Pakistan and the one that is in India.

The song warns that Punjab in India is not alone, the one on the West will come “to its rescue.”

‘Charda Punjab nayi o kalla soch lo, lehnde walon aaoo ga jawab gadwan (Keep in mind that East Punjab is not all alone, a hard hitting reply will be given by West Punjab too)’ (Source)

The song has many jingoistic and plenty of chest-beating references to “Punjabi pride” and power.

Of course in Pakistan, Sikhs and Hindus aren’t that welcome. In fact, every year around 1000 Hindu, Sikh, and Christian girls are abducted, raped, converted, and married off in Pakistan. (Source)

In 2019, Jagjit Kaur from Nankana Sahib was converted to Ayesha Bibi.

Pakistan’s record on hostilities towards the minorities and forceful conversion of girls from minority religions into Islam has remained poor over the years. The abduction and forceful conversion of young girls from minority religion has also remained a major Human Rights issue in the country. One such fresh incident has come to light where a Sikh girl was abducted from Pakistan’s Nankana Sahib. Reportedly, the girl was missing for three days. After three days a video surfaced, in which she was seen converting to Islam and marrying a Muslim boy. The family which was protesting against the abduction said that she was forcefully converted to Islam. (Source)

In 2020, the daughter of the head granthi of historic Panja Sahib Gurdwara in Hassan Abdal city met the same fate. According to the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC), 55 Sikh girls had been taken the same way in just 9 months until then!

According to the committee, as many as 55 Sikh girls have been kidnapped and forcefully married in the last nine months in Pakistan. (Source)

This is the real context of the situation in West Punjab despite which such a jingoist song of Punjabi unity is being promoted. The song has close to 1.5 million views in mere 3 weeks!

India’s clueless media talks about this inexplicable interest from Pakistan in the “Farmers protest” as some kind of “Oneness and Brotherhood” song.

Two Punjabi songs titled ‘Punjab’ and ‘Panjab’ from Pakistan and India, respectively, focussing on farmers protests, have been making waves on social media recently. While the Pakistani song harps on the oneness of the two Punjabs and support for the ongoing farmers’ agitation, the Indian song makes references to fiery speeches of Khalistan sympathisers. (Source)

Really?!! That’s all it talks about?

There are other songs. For example, this one from 22G

The lyrics include threats to convert Delhi into a cremation ground and how the Punjabis can bury people into the ground alive. (Source)

‘Shamshan tainu Delhiye bana denge, duniya dekhugi tera dhuan ud da’ (Will convert Delhi into cremation ground, the world will see flames)

‘Assi bande v jameen vich gadd dene aa’ (Not just the seeds, we can also bury the people in the ground)

There are many such songs with very clear Pakistan-love, Hindu-hatred, and Sikh-jingoism going around as they promote the so-called farmer protests. With 19 million views, this song “Punjab Bolda,” while backing the Sikhs on the Delhi border also goes on to share its anti-Hindu mindset.

‘Rab na kare je gora pher aa gaya, Le leyo aazaadi ohdon yoga karke’, (God forbid if the British come back. Then reclaim freedom by doing yoga).

As if the independence was achieved only by the Sikhs and/or Punjabis! When the reality is that India’s independence was finally and decisively neither won because of Punjabis or Gandhi but because of the actions and strategies of Netaji. (Read How India got its Independence – The Real Story)

So to play up Punjabi jingoistic ways and intertwine it to the farmers’ and Punjabi pride is the recipe for a long-term disaster for India’s national security.

This is a movement for revisionism in Punjab’s history specifically in terms of what happened during Partition when hundred of thousands of Punjabis - Sikhs and Hindus had to themselves kill their daughters, wives, sisters lest they fell into the hands of Muslim killers.

Here is a heartfelt interview with a Sikh man who himself saw his own mother and sister drown in a well, as he stood by within the well on the other side!

And just see the height of lunacy of today’s Sikh generation that Ranjit Bawa goes on to sing - Reh gaye jo lahore wich ohvi khoon saade aan’, he sings (The ones who are left in Lahore are also our blood)

This idiot, Ranjit Bawa, does not understand that Punjabis (Pakistani Muslims) who are in Lahore now were “not left behind,” but rather the Sikhs (like him or his family?) who came to India from that side of Punjab were “kicked out” as their daughters, mothers, sisters were raped and made sex slaved by those who he says were “left behind”!

This is the level of nonsense that is going on in the Punjabi music industry in a fast and increasingly viral way!

And, given the money that is being pumped into this whole industry by the wealthy Khalistani-minded Punjabis, Pakistani ISI, and the arhtiyas - this whole drama is nowhere near the end.

More importantly, this battle is not just being fought on Delhi’s borders but on the music airwaves, social media, and the drawing rooms of many families.

the challenge in Punjab

Punjab is a major state in every which way. Its disintegration or any form of disenchantment, specifically of the Sikhs, triggered by Pakistan, would be devastating for all.

In the 1990s, KPS Gill was used to quell the entire Khalistan movement. He did that in a very brutal way.

That can not be done in this time and age. Nor is it desirable.

What is needed is a strong communication blitzkrieg where folk singers, Punjabi poets, writers, and intellectuals are engaged on the one side and prominent Sikhs are engaged on the other. In the last few years, the global Sikh intellectual and literary voices have been coopted by the Khalistanis.

That will be the biggest challenge that the Indian government will have to counter.

More importantly, for the future of Punjab and Sikhs in India, it is absolutely critical that the farm bills are not taken back. The Arhtiyas system will have to be dismantled and these leeches - they also play the role of predatory loan sharks (Source) - have to be destroyed for the well-being of small and medium-size farmers.

When Osama Bin Laden secretly visited India

Osama Bin Laden had visited India and had even met the Kerala PDP politician Abdul Madani in February 1998. Madani was one of the accused in the 1998 Coimbatore Blasts in February 1998. The objective of the blast was to assassinate BJP leader LK Advani who had an election meeting that day at 4 PM.

Jayalalitha in The Economic Times dated 11 October, 1998 said that she had received vital information that the Saudi-born multi-millionaire Osama Bin Laden had a hidden hand in the Coimbatore blasts on February 14 this year. This had come to light after the arrest, of Mir Sabir Ahmed from his hideout in Hyderabad on September 28, by the Tamil Nadu CB CID Police who filed a chargesheet against him. According to the confession of Mir Sabir Ahmed, Bin Laden was in India in February and met the Kerala PDP leader Abdul Madani, the fourth accused in the blasts case. Mir Sabir Ahmed, she said, comes from Satyamangalam in Tamil Nadu and spent six months in arms training at Bin Laden's camp in Afghanistan. He was accompanied by Kutty and Basheer, also implicated in the blasts. They travelled to Mysore where they collected explosives while the bombs were made in Coimbatore. Kutty was subsequently arrested but Basheer is still absconding, she said. Quoting the arrested Ahmed, she said 200 Afghani-trained terrorists were at large in the country. (VN Gadgil in The Hindustan Times dtd October 25, 1998 “Internal Security at Danger Level”(Source)

Now, remember that 1998 was also the time when the Americans were in hot pursuit of Osama Bin Laden! In fact, Operation Infinite Reach had targeted cruise missile strikes on Al-Qaeda bases in Khost, Afghanistan, and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, on August 20, 1998

Interesting that someone like Osama had traveled to South India to push an obscure politician to unleash attacks against a BJP leader in an election.

In March 2006, the Kerala Legislative Assembly passed a unanimous resolution seeking the release of Mahdani on “humanitarian grounds.” (Source)

Abdul Nasser Madani has in recent years been forging a consolidation of Islamic radicals and Dalits. He delivered a speech at the Chengara Adivasi Protest in support of these “Dalits” in May 2008. He declared the objective of Muslim-Dalit-Adivasi Unity under the banner of "Power to Avarnas and Liberation to The Oppressed."

"I am a committed Muslim and every Muslim has the obligation to support the poor, Adivasis and Dalits.It is my duty to stand by you to fight for your rights.If needed, to be a martyr dying for this cause. Freedom has not been achieved so far; to those cannot give proper education to their children, to Dalits and enslaved people of this country, to those innocent people- who were massacred at Bhiwandi, Assam, Gujarat, Jamshedpur, Guwahati, Varanasi, Ayodhya- to the minority communities, to the dispossessed and deprived, to those landless and poor, to those who have no land to bury their dead …When the 50th anniversary of Indian independence day of "Masters" is being celebrated, I have declared that the Subalterns of this country have not yet attained independence."(Source)

Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO) which brought out the posters below - is the students' wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind.

From Osama Bin Laden and bomb blasts to forging Jihadi-Dalit ‘unity’ has been the evolution of anti-India politics and narratives.

Dalits and the whole narrative around it is not a social issue anymore in India. Dalit is a weaponized word and concept that is used by anti-India and anti-Hindu bigots to peddle their terror agenda with complete impunity.

Al-Ummah was said to be behind the Coimbatore blasts in 1998. That organization was banned in India. However, in the last few years, it resurrected itself as the “Base Movement” after Ayman Al-Zawahiri pushed for a greater presence of Al-Qaeda in India.

The arrest of five persons from Tamil Nadu by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the blasts at five lower courts in south India strengthens the fears of Kerala police about the reincarnation of the proscribed Al-Umma as a new terror outfit. Senior officials believe that the outfit called Base Movement is a regrouping of Al-Umma, which was banned following the Coimbatore blasts in 1998, and a section of the Al-qaeda. It came up with bases in Tamil Nadu and Kerala after Al-qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri launched Al-qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) in August 2014. (Source)

Dalit backing is the camouflage. The real aim is to unleash terror and then quickly go behind the fig leaf of “Dalit-Muslim” unity and seek complete immunity from all crimes. For, who will speak against the whole nonsense of “Dalit”? It has been sold so well by the Christian evangelists to the most liberal corners of Western intellectual halls.

blanking out Trump and his ecosystem

In the last few days, there has been a lot of action in the social media tech area.

Twitter permanently suspended Donald Trump’s account.

Twitter has permanently suspended President Trump's account over a pattern of behavior that violated company rules. (Source)

Facebook and Instagram also blocked Trump indefinitely.

After originally planning to block President Donald Trump from posting to his Facebook and Instagram account for 24 hours, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that the blocks have been extended "indefinitely." (Source)

Reddit also banned /donaldtrump subreddit. (Source)

So within a matter of a couple of days, Donald Trump was taken off from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram. Not just that, he has been thrown off of CampaignMonitor and other email sending services like Sendgrid as well (Source). That is why people are reporting that they haven’t been receiving any emails from Trump.

Meanwhile, Parler, an app where those who were unhappy with Twitter’s censorship of Trump and his supporters went to, was taken out of Apple and Google stores. Even Amazon has taken it off the web hosting.

First, Apple and Google removed the app from their app stores because they said it had not sufficiently policed its users’ posts, allowing too many that encouraged violence and crime. Then, late Saturday, Amazon told Parler it would boot the company from its web-hosting service on Sunday night because of repeated violations of Amazon’s rules. (Source)

All this has been done on the back of what happened at the Capitol.

The backlash has been strong and quick.

Amazing that just a few months back, a continued reign of violence, arson, and destruction was unleashed, justified, and buried in the name of righteousness by most of the media. And not one social media platform took any action against the perpetrators or their backers.

market corner: 10 quick bytes

FPIs invest Rs 5,156 cr in Indian equities in Jan so far - more
Zhong Shanshan $5B short of joining Bezos, Gates, others in $100B wealth club; may pip Zuckerberg soon - more
Apple generates $64 bn revenue from App Store in 2020 - more
Hyundai in talks with Apple for developing electric cars - more
India’s annual oil usage falls for the first time in 21 years - more
4.62 lakh healthcare professionals registered on CoWIN portal in Bihar - more
Indian exports show signs of revival, up 16.2% to $6.2 bn in Jan first week - more
India’s unicorn base six times smaller than that of the US, China even as it remains third largest globally - more
7 Mega textile parks on lines of China, Vietnam in the works as part of a plan to double the industry size to $300 billion by 2025-26 - more
There is a cartel in cement and steel industries, says Union Minister Nitin Gadkari - more

nota bene

Bird Flu scare: The Centre has directed states and union territories across the country to increase surveillance around water bodies, live bird markets, zoos, and poultry farms as well as strengthen biosecurity at poultry farms amid the bird flu scare. (Source)

DRDO’s Cold Weather Gifts: With over 50,000 Indian troops are deployed in Eastern Ladakh to fight against China, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has developed multiple products such the Him-Taapak heating devices and snow melters to help the soldiers fight the enemy in form of the extremely low temperatures. (Source)

Pakistan’s Major Cities go Dark: Several cities and towns across Pakistan plunged into darkness late on Saturday (January 9) night following a huge blackout due to a fault in the power distribution system, according to media reports. The power outage was reported shortly before midnight almost simultaneously in many cities. Residents of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Islamabad, Multan and others faced the blackout, the reports stated. (Source)

Where’s Melania?: First Lady Melania Trump has vanished from sight following huge riots on Capitol Hill which rocked the US capital city – and she hasn't been heard from publically since New year's Day. (Source)

Militias vs Cartels: Self-defense militias are waging war against Mexico’s most powerful cartel and bravely trying to reclaim seized territory. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has become the country’s dominant gang and trafficking huge quantities of drugs into the US. Last month, one of these groups – known locally as an autodefensa – managed to repel a CJNG attack while traveling in an improvised armored fighting vehicle (IAFV). (Source)

video corner: some refreshing sanity!

In the US, there is hardly any sane take on things available anymore. It is based on outrage, anger, vengeance, and political one-up-manship everywhere. There are no real sanity-based discussions anymore.

That is why when you listen to someone like Tulsi Gabbard, one feels that at least there is someone who is still grounded speaking up.

Very good interview.

Today’s ONLINE PAPER: Check out today’s “The Drishtikone Daily” edition. - THE DRISHTIKONE DAILY

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