Trump Blinked At Multipolarity

 What got lost in the din of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday celebrations, vote-chori allegations by leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and the Asia Cup India-Pak match chatter was the fact that US President Donald Trump blinked. Modi picked up the phone when Trump called for the fifth time, now to wish him on his birthday. According to a German newspaper, Trump’s previous four phone calls were left unanswered. That was the only way to handle a bully ––– stare him down.

Early this week, the US trade negotiation team led by Assistant Trade Representative Brendan Lynch was in Delhi. And that visit was a strong indicator to show the direction the talks were taking. Why would the chief negotiator fly down if not to hasten a deal? Meanwhile, India’s Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said yesterday that he believed that the penal sanction would not go beyond November 30. He was quick to add that his optimism is purely intuitive and not based on facts.

The details of the give-and-take between the two negotiating parties have not been made public. The prospect of Indian red lines drawn around its farm and dairy sectors and its sovereign right to engage in trade with Russia remaining or getting diluted is too early to predict, as the India-US relationship has become unpredictable altogether. Soon after the phone call, Trump has gone around repeating his boastful lie of using trade tariff to force India and Pakistan to end the conflict. Trump is vaingloriously thundering that, “I have sanctioned them.”

No wonder India is seeking alternate markets for its exports. Garments, fisheries and leather are the most affected by the sanctions. Now, the exemption to US sanctions on the Chabahar port too are being revoked. India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is on a tour to find markets for the troubled sectors in the United Arab Emirates. He is talking about doubling the $50 billion trade with UAE and seeking newer markets in Central Asia and Africa.

Multilateralism, thus, is the key to safeguard sovereignty in all its manifestations –––security, trade, et al. Trump or any other US administration will blow hot or cold depending on its political, economic and security exigencies. But India can no longer afford to be at the receiving end of Western diktats, not because of any false notions of greatness, but because of genuine fears of loss of sovereignty. Even this visit by the US trade team and Trump’s fifth phone call were necessitated by Modi’s China visit for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit.

All those who poo-pooed the idea of multilateralism as a failed notion of being friendless should now sit up and take note. Is it not India’s dexterity in walking up to the Chinese leadership that made Trump blink; that led the US trade team to visit India just two weeks after the grand Russia-India-China huddle? Even a New York real estate wheeler-dealer would know when he has overplayed the cards. And the best of intelligence networks could easily pick up signals of new possibilities in global groupings.

Imports worth $86 billion are indeed a lot, no doubt. But it is not too much for a post-colonial nation to pay for its sovereignty. While Trump and his advisors were heaping abuses and relentlessly attacking India, it refused to respond, instead quietly mending its relations with China. Import markets can be found elsewhere, but sovereignty once lost will be lost forever. In today’s world, China offers a countervailing force and multipolarity.

India’s urgency was not met with cold cynical calculations. China’s response of warmly inviting, respectfully hosting and offering the all-important visual symbolism of the Russia-India-China pull-aside at Tianjin proved that the Asian giant is willing to play its role in balancing the geopolitical poles. Russian President Vladimir Putin had a big hand in making all this possible, but not without equal Chinese enthusiasm. This balancing act cannot be a one-off, but a perennial struggle to retain strategic autonomy to fight forces of neocolonialism.

In fact, Western enthusiasts baulk at this term. But if the Indian government had acceded to the Western diktat and stopped buying crude oil from Russia, India would have effectively become a neo-colonial vassal without sovereign agency. India refused to budge. It was at that juncture, the Russia-India-China huddle helped to restore the balance. Had it not happened there would have had no compulsion for Lynch to travel or Trump to call. The huddle worked.

That is a lesson that India needs to carry for two reasons: One, India shares a 3500-km-long civilisational border with China, unlike those created by the British with Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is militarily impractical and economically inconceivable to have inimical relations with a superpower on one’s border. Two, when China guarantees multipolarity, it is worth holding hands because unipolarity would only mean strategic servitude. So, it is in India’s interest to have a peaceful border and to strengthen multipolarity, which assures trade with everyone including the US.

The latest development of Pakistan-Saudi Arabia mutual defence pact signed by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pak PM Shehbaz Sharif yesterday with Pak army chief Asim Munir accompanying him should be seen more in the context of Trump feting Munir than as an immediate aftermath of Isreal’s attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar. Pakistan has never posed an existential threat to Israel like Iran, and in return the Zionists never attempted to take out Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and missiles, which many believe are guarded by the West.

After all, West Asia was carved up by the British after the demise of the Ottoman empire making many Persian Gulf countries a Western creation like Pakistan. When two of them come together, it obviously cannot be against a third, favourite child of the same forces. Any Pak defence pact directly threatens India, particularly in the context of Op Sindoor. If this is another attempt by the West to corner India, it need only move eastwards opening its doors and windows to easterly winds of change.

Containing China, Threatening India

The letter “z” is pronounced as ijjed, issed or sometimes zed and rarely zee in India. Coming to think about it, these variations are a function of geography, mother tongue-influence and social class. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, it is ijjed and that makes one wonder who would be calling themselves gen zee in neighbouring, poorer Nepal. Obviously, only the western educated, the wealthy or the Thamel crowd that caters to Western tourists; not the poor, unemployed, angry, frustrated young man who is waiting to catch a bus to Sitamarhi and then to Delhi to sell momos on the streets.

That seething youngster on the bus wouldn’t have a clue about “nepo babies”. In fact, only nepo babies use this term to attack fellow favourites of the entitled class. To see this phrase on a banner carried around as part of the anarchic violence is to identify a telltale sign of the well-heeled triggering a regime change, after failing to win elections. A viral video clip of a school kid adds to this doubt. A boy in expensive school uniform with a fake Western accent is attacking political parties over unemployment and corruption without probably ever having suffered lack of opportunity. His breathless schoolboy performance (now when seen during the violence) tragically ended up as a bad rehearsal for what happened later ––– cruel cops shooting down boys in school uniform. Then there are theories abound on social media about a Western-funded colour revolution bringing in regime change in Nepal.

Sudan Gurung, a 36-year-old activist at the centre of the tumultuous episode in Kathmandu, fits the bill. He used to run a nightclub OMG and became a “born-again” philanthropist after the 2015 earthquake, launching Hami Nepal, a non-governmental organisation (NGO). But the problem here is two-fold: Only a nepo baby can have a nightclub at the age of 26, whether he is in Kathmandu or Delhi. And if the nightclub is indeed in Thamel, then he ought to have very wealthy and hugely indulgent parents. Then again, only the blue-blooded can pull family strings to get multinationals like Coca Cola and Al Jazeera to support an NGO. That is how sickeningly nepotistic the Indian subcontinent is. But if Gurung had built his nightclub and his NGO with his own money and networking skills, then undoubtedly, he deserves to be the executive president of Nepal.

But the plot of a political upheaval unravels in its process and the identification of the beneficiary. Here, one can see that as in Bangladesh, the army let vandalism and violence play out before stepping in as an arbiter. A redux of the Bangladesh drama. It was army chief Waker-uz-Zaman, who announced Sheikh Hasina’s resignation on August 5, 2024, after the student protests. Two days later he invited the unelected Western darling Mohammed Younus as the new head the of the interim administration. The uncanny similarity gives away the plot.

According to news reports, Nepal Prime Minister KP Oli was asked to resign by army chief Ashok Kumar Sigdel as a precondition for restoring peace. Soon after ensuring Oli’s exit, Sigdel asked former Chief Justice of Nepal Sushila Karki to head the interim government. Nepal’s Constitution does not allow a former CJI to take up a post-retirement constitutional job. Someone’s South Asian playbook is in circulation. Elected representatives and the electoral process are getting discredited, while chosen individuals are being foisted on the nation after unconscionable violence by gen x, why or zee.

Is this a harbinger of regime change in India, as a social media influencer “followed” by a former armed forces chief, hopes? Or is it a Western attempt to contain China? Or is it both ––– containing China and threatening India. Though the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) between US, India, Japan and Australia was initiated in 2007, it became a coherent grouping only in 2017. China saw this as an attempt at containment and the Ladakh standoff of April 2020 was its response. Though India actively participated in the first-ever Quad military exercise in November 2020, it soon began diplomatic efforts to de-escalate and disengage. India did not want to play the proxy role offered by the West to clash with and diminish China ––– a role that could have destroyed its economy and security.

Once India stepped back from the Himalayan brink, governments in the Indian subcontinent began falling one after another, to be replaced by assets, proxies and tinpot generals. The first to go was Imran Khan in April 2022. He is still languishing in jail. In July 2022, the Sri Lankan government was forced to kneel down to violent street mobs in Colombo with the Prime Minister first resigning and then the President fleeing the country. Two years later, elected Prime Minister Hasina was replaced by the unelected Western favourite Younus. Now, a year after that, Nepal’s Parliament has been gutted as if those who are going to replace the current set of political leaders would all be lily white puritans.

Myanmar is reeling under a crippling civil war which offers immense potential for trouble against neighbouring countries. Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir has already warned India that the next attack would come from the east. And now Nepal is on the boil. It can be read as a Western ploy to ring fence China, something that India failed. It could also be a two-pronged strategy because this line of containment faces both China and India.

Interestingly, the immediate trigger for violence in Nepal was a ban on Western social media platforms. Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong had in a recent statement on US tariffs pointed out that the US export of software services far outweighed its import of goods. This is particularly true about social media services run by tech giants, which are a huge drain on national wealth, productive energy; and they can also be used to create political upheavals. The Nepal violence could also be seen as a warning sign to those who consider measuring the export surplus created by social media platforms against import of goods.

Addressing Tejashwi Than Trump

 The Goods and Services Tax (GST) reforms are being framed as a smart response to the impact of Trump tariffs or rather American sanctions against India. The new reduced rates aim to put more buck in the consumer’s hands, who is expected to buy more and create more demand in the economy. But is that all? Domestic economic decisions are mostly triggered by local political exigencies. There is one around corner –– Bihar elections.

The Bihar elections are expected to be held in November 2025. And it has already generated considerable heat. Giving the example of one assembly constituency of Mahadevapura in Bengaluru, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi accused the NDA government of having stolen all the elections to the state assemblies and Parliament.

The accusation defies logic at many levels starting from the Karnataka assembly polls of 2023: Congress won 135 seats, which were more than double that of the BJP’s seat count of 66. Later in the Lok Sabha elections of 2024, Rahul won the Rae Bareli seat polling 6,87,649 votes with a margin of 3.9 lakh votes, which was better than his mother’s performance in the 2019 elections.

In fact, Rahul Gandhi’s victory margin was more than double that of the Prime Minister’s. While Rahul polled 6.8 lakh votes, Modi garnered only 6.12 lakh votes in Varanasi and won by a much lesser margin of 1.52 lakh votes. So, if a party is stealing all the elections, won’t it secure its leader’s seat with the best of margins? Conversely, won’t it steal Rahul’s Rae Bareli seat as well? After all, Rahul knew that he was losing his Amethi seat in the previous election and had hence travelled southwards to choose a safe seat with a majority of Muslim and Christian voters.

While these questions defy the logic of the “Vote Chori” campaign, it needs to be said that the campaign has indeed struck a note with at least those inimical to the BJP, if not the larger public. Rahul’s “Vote Chori” press conference was indeed convincing and compelling. Politis is not merely statistics. So, the accusation stuck, however absurd it might sound to extrapolate an assembly constituency to the entire country with thousands of such constituencies and many of those won by the Congress.

The “Vote Chori” accusations and the subsequent “Vote Adhikar Yatra” campaign were launched amidst the Special and Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar. The SIR and the Vote Chori accusations have got linked and mixed up to become a potent campaign in favour of the Opposition. And the elections are just two months away.

The GST reforms should be seen in this context.

The Indian middle class is an anomaly because those who earn Rs 6 lakh per annum and those who take home Rs 60 lakh a year would happily call themselves middle class. Having climbed the steep ladder of relative success and prosperity in one generation, this class is cost conscious. Price reduction is something that matters to them. But this class cannot offset the economic impact of Trump’s tariffs. They will not buy the export-priced apparel or footwear or gem and jewellery. Why, they won’t even consider cooking the export-quality shrimp.

Their consumption pattern is not going to change, but they might consider voting for Modi and Nitish Kumar again for reducing the price of everything from toothpaste to motor bikes to mid-sized cars. This is more a winning political formula than a geoeconomic measure against a global bully. The middle classes are India’s whining multitude, they make opinion. Modi has offered them the ultimate sop –– telling them that more and more consumables are within their reach. This could change the topic of conversation in the run up to the polls.

But for brief interludes, the NDA has been continuously in power in Bihar since 2005. That is a long stint by any measure in an almost ungovernable state with the greatest levels of poverty. Thanks to the complete polarisation of the polity, caste and communal considerations often override biting anti-incumbency. Yet, the NDA fared badly in Bihar in 2024 Lok Sabha polls with just 30 out of 40 seats whereas it had won 39 in 2019, 31 in 2014 and 32 in 2009.

The Opposition to SIR was expected to exacerbate the communal divide as the attempt was to identify non-citizens, a euphemism for illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh. The more the Opposition from the Congress and the Lalu clan to SIR, the worse the Hindu-Muslim divide would get –– could have been the calculation. However, when the “Vote Chori” campaign gets mixed up with the SIR, the end result would be something else making even the fence-sitters wonder about the truth behind the allegations.

When a bonanza is announced at that very moment, the political climate gets altered, introducing a political or electoral equivalent of a feel-good factor. Bihar is the land of the desperately poor, the poor and the lower middle classes, where every paisa counts. If the Income Tax slab revision just four days before the polling could fetch bountiful votes for the BJP in the 2025 Delhi elections, the GST rejig offering massive price reduction to the working classes could be a welcome relief.

And it is important to look back at Modi’s Independence Day speech. There were two very important messages: lowering of GST rates and unqualified praise for the RSS. Many Sangh insiders believe that apart from price rise, the lack of enthusiasm of the RSS could have played a big role in the BJP losing the simple majority in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The I-Day speech addressed both these issues. Modi is going out of his way to accommodate the RSS, without which the BJP becomes a cadre-less party like the Congress; and also, to arrest price rise.

Here is a consummate politician recalibrating his policies to suit the demands of the electorate, which was getting increasingly apathetic towards the government. The Bihar results may prove him right.

New Partnerships and Possibilities of a Russia-India-China Huddle

 The huddle or “pull-aside” on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit Monday morning at Tianjin offered the much-awaited photo-op: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping engaged in a friendly banter. Putin signalling his aide to step in to translate, Modi making a point and Xi listening intently completed the visual symbolism of a new possibility –– of a powerful geopolitical and geoeconomic grouping in the making. One that has complete strategic autonomy.

Modi and Putin hugging, walking hand-in-hand towards Xi, later both travelling in the Russian President’s car for the official meeting at the latter’s hotel and the bilateral bonhomie were all carefully curated geopolitical theatre. This was Modi’s response to 50% tariff and the abusive comments that have come from the White House. The intended audience was not just US President Donald Trump, but the entire West. It was a power statement of three top military and economic powers of the world standing together to safeguard their sovereignty, refusing to bend down to Western colonial diktats.

The message was threefold.

Putin’s leadership: he holds the key to bring peace between India and China. The ice was broken and de-escalation of tensions and disengagement of Indian and Chinese troops at Ladakh began only after the meeting between Modi and Xi at Kazan in Russia in October last year. Monday’s huddle underscored Putin’s personal charisma and credibility vis a vis Modi and Xi. He is not isolated one bit, as the Europeans might want the world to believe. And Russia’s friendships have only deepened despite the US imposing secondary sanctions on India for buying Russian oil. Putin holds strong levers of global power, vast reservoirs of goodwill and resources galore.

Modi’s manoeuvrability and options: he stands tall taking on Trump and is definitely not cowed down. Something akin to the Indo-Soviet treaty of friendship and cooperation of 1971, which thwarted the US military intervention, has been achieved in terms of economic relations with the possibility of Chinese partnership in the horizon. Instead of Nixon’s Seventh Fleet, Trump slapped trade sanctions on India and the answer ought to have been economy/trade related. And so it is. The Indian market is always hungry for Chinese digital and telecom equipment, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, fertilisers, rare earths, magnets and all that it manufactures. An economic partnership, with investments flowing from China, would be a magic potion for India’s capital-starved industry.

China has risen. It has emerged as the centre of the world. One of the key takeaways from the India-China bilateral meeting was the assurance that both countries should accommodate each other’s concerns and uphold harmonious coexistence. Simply put it means that India will not become a puppet in Western hands to play the role of a rival, competitor or a containing military force. China’s concerns over Quad and Western containment are being addressed. By offering Modi the grand stage and the imagery of a Russia-India-China huddle, Xi has emerged as a geopolitical powerhouse transmitting strong currents of electricity to energise multilateralism and a multipolar world.

Sure, the Russia-India-China platform is only a possibility. But the seed of an idea whose time has come has been sowed in the minds of 2.8 billion people and the leaders across the world. There are contradictions aplenty between India and China, no doubt. In fact, contrary to the normal practice of the visual media going gaga over an ambitious Prime Ministerial gambit, most of the commentariat immediately exposed their Western bias by using this moment to attack China.

The cause for their grief was the Tianjin Declaration –– that it had reference not just to the Pahalgam massacre but also to the attack on Jaffar Express. Why not? When India is not fuelling the conflict in Baluchistan, it need not baulk at a reference to a terror incident in Pakistan. A section of the Indian commentariat found it hard to digest that China continues to be friends with Pakistan. Is it not strategic autonomy that India strives for? India too is tentative in engaging in the Elephant-Dragon dance. Modi indemnified himself against future diplomatic missteps by visiting Japan (China’s traditional rival) prior to the Tianjin summit and inviting Japanese PM Ishiba Shigeru to the Quad meeting.

But that does not lessen in any way the gravity of Modi’s China visit after seven years. This is a moment –– one that would seldom come –– pregnant with the possibility for peace and prosperity in Asia. Two Asian giants have got together to bury their bitter differences, recalibrate their relations and to reset their engagement. The debilitating standoff on the icy tops of the Himalayas, which had cost both sides men and material and commitment of huge resources, has been resolved. That in itself is a matter of joyous relief.

While the Chinese side did not want the border dissonance to define bilateral relations, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri clearly articulated India’s stand: the insurance policy for bilateral relations is peace and tranquillity on the boundary. Sadly, Indian diplomacy is hostage to domestic politics of the worst kind, which refuses to acknowledge that conflict is only an extension of diplomacy and that war is not a permanent state of human endeavour. Unless, of course, the aggressor is a colonial or neo-colonial war machine that profits out of misery.

Soviet Russia and China were engaged in a conflict that began with an ideological divergence leading up to border clashes in 1969, which gave the opening for Kissinger and Nixon to bring China closer to the USA. Sovereign states do fall out and then repair their relations and move on. India has shown the maturity to understand the Western game of containing China and the sagacity to pull back from a disastrous proxy war. For, the West had not exhibited any intention of diversifying its supply chains to benefit India; and the latest attack from Peter Navarro only proves that Churchillian hatred for India continues to be the bedrock of Western foreign policy.

Redefining Hindu Rashtra, Embracing Muslim Patriots

 A political bug that could have eaten into the entrails of the government’s credibility or even its very existence was removed by RSS Sarsanghachalak Dr Mohan Bhagwat when he laughed off the question that he ever suggested a retirement age for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both Bhagwat and Modi are turning 75 next month and the former reassured the assembly of top RSS leaders and Delhi’s media that neither he nor anyone else need retire at 75.

The retirement controversy was ignited early last month at a book launch when Bhagwat quoted the late RSS veteran Moropant Pingle’s joke on retirement at 75. Amidst this big breaking news of vote of confidence for Modi by Bhagwat and Trump’s tariff the day earlier, what got lost was a RSS’s redefinition of itself, Hindu Rashtra, Hindu, and its attitude towards Muslim and Christian minorities. In a no-holds barred exposition of RSS ideology and its projections, the RSS probably for the first time unveiled an inclusive agenda for itself and its future.

The RSS celebrated 100 years of its founding (on September 27, 1925 in Nagpur) in Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan with a three-day lecture series or vyakhyanmala by Bhagwat on August 26, 27 and 28. He made the clarification about the lack of retirement age for RSS functionaries (Modi remains an RSS volunteer and was a former full-timer or pracharak) on the third day of the lecture series on “100 year of Sangh journey – New Horizons”. Interestingly, this reassurance came after Modi praised the RSS to the skies in his Independence Day address just 10 days earlier.

Politically and organisationally, the RSS is on an upswing. Its volunteers run the country, and it remains the nation’s agenda-setter. Yet, it has set out to redefine itself as a consensus-building organisation that respects the Constitution and celebrates India’s diversity, accepting religious and linguistic differences. The RSS might point out that it was always so and that it is merely reiterating its position. Well, vyakhyanam, in Indian languages, means explanation or commentary.

If the supreme leader of the organisation is offering a commentary on the RSS ideology to dispel “misconceptions”, it only means that the organisation understands that at least a section of the people had hitherto perceived the RSS as communal, sectarian, militant, violent, fascist and primarily anti-minority. The RSS chief has completely refuted all these claims and put out an agenda for consensus, coexistence and confluence of all faiths.

This is a giant transition from the old slogan attributed to the Sangh ––– Hindu, Hindi and Hindustan. Instead, Bhagwat has proclaimed all languages of India as national languages; all people of India as having the same shared DNA; and that Hindu and Muslim are one people with just different rituals (puja padhati). The RSS was always known for pursuing an exclusivist idea of Hindu Rashtra, where Hindus have primacy. However, Bhagwat has redefined Hindu Rashtra as one where non-Hindus are not left behind.

While reiterating that the RSS always stands for organising and uniting the entire Hindu society, Bhagwat has made an elucidation of the idea of being Hindu: one who believes that all paths lead to salvation, respects other belief systems, doesn’t make others change their religion, doesn’t fight over faith and live peacefully along with others, upholding the tradition and culture of India. This is not how the world had perceived the RSS all along. Hindu Rashtra as envisaged by Bhagwat is a place for peaceful coexistence of all religions, where the prime unifying force is nationalism and devotion to the nation as personified or rather deified as Bharat Mata.

Well, this is secular nationalism or Gandhian nationalism at its best ––– “Bharat Mata ki Jai, Hindu-Musalman ki Jai and Mahatma Gandhi ki Jai” were the prime slogans of the national movement. Further, Bhagwat, without an iota of doubt, stated that Islam will remain in India just as it has been here since the time of its founding. He addressed the issue of Hindu-Muslim contradictions as products of past conflicts and present lack of confidence in both the communities to come forward and hold hands.

To say that to be united is not to be uniform, that Ashfaqulla Khan inspires the RSS as much as Ram Prasad Bismil and that we all are one people –– we the people –– is indeed a statement of inclusive transformation. The glue of this oneness, according to Bhagwat, is shudh satwik prem or pure, spiritual, love of Indian brotherhood taking everyone along. This is not even the maximum good for maximum people but happiness for all.

This has been an extremely well-articulated attempt to open the RSS arms to embrace the Muslim community. While answering questions on street names, Bhagwat says that the RSS is opposed only to names of foreign invaders not Muslims. And as an illustrative example, he said streets should be named after Vir Havildar Abdul Hamid (Param Vir Chakra awardee) and former President APJ Abdul Kalam.

The grand message of peaceful and fruitful coexistence also has an appeal to Christians and Muslims not to identify with Europeans and Arab/Turks. Of course, religious conversion remains anathema, but there too, Bhagwat says he has been reassured by the Catholic Church that it does not promote conversion.

Is all this for real? In fact, one of the questioners even asked how long it would take for this message to reach the foot soldiers. When the supreme leader speaks so passionately, quoting Gandhi, Tagore and Abul Kalam Azad, the message becomes weighty enough to percolate down to the lowest level. No volunteer could be seen, at least on official videos, wearing the RSS uniform and Bhagwat categorically abjured violence and refuted allegations of a militant character for the organisation.

These promising expositions are going to be tested on the streets of Nuh, Alwar or Sambhal against cow vigilantes and militant pilgrims who assume proprietary rights of nationalistic assertions. That there is no need to sport a religious flag along with the national flag on the Independence Day is a message that hopefully gets conveyed. Till then this lecture series will remain an enigma.