Illustration by Gayatri
What an eventful week! Full of noise, tweets and finally ending with a tweetergate! Twitter took its first toll in Indian politics – atleast it all started with a tweet.
But last week actually started with khap-shup.
In love? Are you on the verge of falling in love? Hold on. All is not fair in love and gotras – Going by the stance taken by some still-in-medieval age khap panchayats of Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab. Don’t tell them love is blind coz they are deaf to any romantic reasoning that may crumble their own archaic marriage code. If you fall in love with someone of same gotra – you will be wanted shot or lynched. No sympathies here.
So next time you are about to fall in love, stop. Check both of your gotra first. Imagine, you are all decked up for your date, dressed to kill. You meet, exchange smiles and your gotras and pray that it does not match. If it is same gotra, and you are a die-hard adventurous lover type, then my silent prayers for you and best of luck.
See this young couple in the pic. Like you and me, dreams in their eyes and heart and starting a new journey in their life together but only to be brutally killed in the name of honour by the relatives of the girl and a khap panchayat leader. This is just one of the many honor killings that happen some reported, many unreported.
Next comes the modern face of India. Era of twitter politicians. Shashi Tharoor – Face of Indian Twitter GenX. Twitter must be happy with the amount of free publicity they been getting coz of Twitter of late. Now that he is sacked from his ministerial post they could approach him for being their Indian brand ambassador.
First mistake our ex-minister did was failing to understand the Trimurthis of Indian controversies. He messed with two of the the trimurthis and now paid a heavy price.
Religion. Cricket. Politics – the Trimurthis of Indian controversies. A potent mix. They can stir maha controversies and make or bury many dreams. Unfortunately, Shashi Tharoor messed up with two of the maha murthis and that too with Cricket – a religion on its own for Indians and that proved a costly mistake for him and let it spill over his political life.
First it was his tweet In cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows that alienated him within his own party men. He was a twitter follower’s delight cos he had something and everything to tweet everyday. When Kochi bagged the IPL auction, he cheered it tweetrociously ( read: vociferously)
But he failed to comprehend the Indian politics.
- Networking. The mistake Shashi Tharoor made was he branded himself as a techie politician. Yes, we are a fast developing tech-giant but Indian politics is a different ball game. You need to network and maintain a decent relationship with your co-ministers, party leaders, party men and public and not just restrict to tweets.
- Tweets don’t translate into winning votes. Real “poli-tricks” lies in the world outside your virtual networking.
- Tread the path of the trimurthis carefully. Politicians have a penchant for cricket. Sharad Pawar, Arun Jaitley, Lalu Prasad, Narendra Modi knows how to spin a trick or two being the presidents of cricket boards. But IPL is a different ball game since is it is perceived blatantly capitalistic venture and the chances for you to be vilified and de-sanctified is considerably high. Cheer for IPL team of your voting catchment, you will be loved but the buck should stop there or atleast make your back door moves invisible.
- Give time to mature in Indian politics. Sudden meteoric rise of junior politician unless you have a strong dynasty tag will lead to many heart burns who will leave no chance to bring you down.
Finally, I don’t understand how an intelligent person like Sashi Tharoor who has served in UN could think his public life and private life will not be clubbed when he was seen together with Sunanda Pushkar at many a place and still maintained he has nothing to do with the 75 crore sweat equity offered to her while he proclaimed himself as the mentor of the Kochi team.
Finally he could not bat the IPL googly. Mr.Tharoor, Welcome to real world of Indian politics. You still can bat your second innings, if you read the pitch clearly after all, we mango people have a short public memory.
Next what? The Great Indian Paisa League may see more skeletons out of it’s closet and most probably the man who made it happen, Lalit Modi may go down with Tharoor. A double whammy for Twittergate.
Tweet. Tweet. Tweet this.
- Written by Lakshmi Rajan. He is the Chief Blogger-Editor of GingerChai. To read other articles of Lakshmi Rajan, Click HERE.
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gr8 analysis!
never thought Tharoor would land in such a big mess.
about the khap panchayat – they just make my blood boil :pissedoff:
Great post. . Loved the way you analysed the honor killing issues and the fall of Shashi Tharoor. . . But probably he was made the scapegoat here. . I personally believe, that youth could identify with Tharoor…
And yes , thank u Gayatri for those illustrations. .
my pleasure
One more thing behind all these things are the business big shots…. who actually run the show from background and IPL is where they have very high stakes so Tharoor should have known that …now lets see how Lalit Modi bats and whether he can save his neck because he is next in line….
Honor killing is a common issue in Northern India states like UP, Bihar, Haryana..are full of family who would like to see their child dead than….letting them marry a partner of lower caste……..have experienced a case like this in my locality also when i was in Noida…when the parents of girl killed the boy…….cause he was still seeing the girl even after they warned him.
This honor killing is not restricted to only villages. It’s mind set which needs to be broken…..ppl thing education can bring some sense to these people…but i don’t think so…….these people have rigid beliefs……and no one can question that……
other than that …..Tharoor VS Modi…..i don’t believe either of them……
techie politicaians are yet to have a full impact on indian political scenario. let alone computers ,the grass root level who constitute the majority of vote bank, are yet to enjoy the full benefits of education.
Both Shashi and Modi couldnt handle money and fame with maturity
And killing for gotras is wrong but there is scientific reason also why one should not marry in same gotra, risk of having genetic problems in consanguineous marriages, i am not defending any killer… ofcourse they should be punished and they are doing it for religion, they dont know science… just want to throw some light on what is gotra… but ofcourse love is blind…