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FLIPSIDE
The
PM's Lament
By
Dilip Bobb
The ongoing
attacks on the prime minister for his intemperate remarks on the Babri
Masjid issue and the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya has, for
the first time, seriously damaged his reputation as a secularist and a
man of reason. As has his defence of the three ministers widely seen as
having encouraged the demolition. As is his wont when in trouble, Prime
Minister Vajpayee turns to poetry to soothe the troubled soul. Here's
his latest effort to turn rhyme into reason.
I'm as secular
as they come, my life's an open book,
I will invite anybody, even Kapil Sibal, to take a look,
at my past record and they will see that I've been utterly rational,
I simply cannot understand why I've been branded antinational.
It's not
easy balancing the party and the government,
there are times when it does cloud one's judgement,
but what I'd like to know, is there any reason, pray,
to suddenly equate me with Bal Thackeray?
It's a thankless
job being the Indian prime minister,
everything I say or do is turned into something sinister,
The opposition says it'll be happy if my government sank,
but everybody knows their real target is the Muslim vote bank.
Which is
why they have picked on the Three Musketeers,
and made them the repository of the country's fears.
Blaming L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharati
is like the prosecuting attorney being made the guilty party.
They are
true patriots, their actions prove that they were innocent
of inciting the kar sevaks to bring down the offending monument.
The reason why they were seen celebrating and taking a vow
was because the blame would fall on poor Narasimha Rao.
Yet, the
pseudo-secularists are still shouting themselves hoarse,
in proclaiming that my government is now a spent force.
Their efforts to brand me communal is a lot of nonsense,
after all, in the Lok Sabha, they lost the vote of no-confidence.
In the coffee
houses and among the intellectual community,
they are saying the mask has come off, revealing the real me.
As a seasoned politician, I know exactly how to counter the stigma,
most effective prime ministers have been those who remained an enigma.
We will
await the court's verdict and the final report compiled by the CBI,
it will show the world that the real culprit behind the scenes was the
ISI,
and that the actual cause for the eventual destruction of the tomb,
was the result of Pakistan having detonated a nuclear bomb!
I made this
accusation knowing I will not get into a political pickle,
my experience has shown that public opinion in India is very fickle,
whenever a disaster happens that makes the government look bad,
our spin doctors have a simple solution: blame it on Islamabad.
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METRO TODAY
As
the Government brings in more people and mops more money in taxes, it
must be seen to be rewarding those who come forth and pay up, writes India
Today Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in 