I have been noticing a peculiar thing in this Government...

While the Parliament was discussing the Nuclear Liability bill, the MInister in charge gave credit to the last BJP government for having set in motion the process... the Minister commented that we have just taken forward the good work of the previous BJP Government... and he didnt mean it in a defensive way... he was reacting to Jaitely's comment that he approves of the nuclear liability bill....

And just yday at the opening ceremony of the CWG games, Suresh Kalmadi thanked the ex Prime Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee for having agreed to host the CWG...

I also remember a long time back during the attack on the Parliament during the BJP rule, Atal Behari Vajpayee commented about how the then leader of the opposition, Sonia Gandhi had immediately called him up to enquire about his safety ... and said "if this is how the leader of the opposition behaves, then India is in safe hands"....

Political maturity? Maybe the beginnings of it.....

Sometimes I feel the tempo of how a country will turn out is determined by the first leader the country has..... so in the case of India it was Nehru that set the tempo for the emerging country of India..... divided as it was by religion, caste, language and several other barriers... it was Nehru who steadfastly held on to the principles of secular, plural, liberal society.... and that became the unspoken rule (and many times forgotten)for governing of this country... today the leaders are scared of openly flouting these principles.... even if there are aberrations.... and same with the United States... it was George Washington who laid down the foundation of American politics - setting down the 2 term rule (breached ofcourse by FDR), the supremacy of civilians over military and above all the presence of mind to refuse to be crowned the King of America when a grateful nation asked him to take the lead... those very principles now guide America in a large way ....

Ofcourse there are instances of several great leaders leading countries to Independence with splendid ideas... such as JInnah in Pakistan or even Nkrumah in Ghana... however both these leaders had very short lived tenure and hence their principles could not be imbibed by the new nation...

Onto other topics...

Recently I had a discussion with some people about gay rights in India... and one of the people said that a country like India does not promote gay rights... and I was like .. wait a minute, India has just declared Section 377 unconstitutional... quoting from the draftsmen of the constitution, the High Court held that it is unconstitutional to consider homosexuality as a crime... ... and the law minister came on TV and said that they are not going to appeal against the judgment since the court had provided a reasoning which was beyond challenge....and I thot that was far more liberal than what I have seen in the United States... ofcourse some States have recognised civil unions but overall America remains homophobic... recently a kid committed suicide because his room mate had put a recording of him making out with a guy on you tube - if America was that liberal then why did the Kid commit suicide? and then there is the case of the STudent President of Univ of Michigan being targetted by the Asst Attorney General of the State for being gay... the gay student was called the representative of Satan on earth... is that any different from the bias we have in India...

My limited point was that please dont paint India with a brush that is 10 years old... we have moved on.... ofcourse not as much as the West, but seriously, I dont believe that West is always the way to go.... we have as of now granted recognition to the right of people to be gay...

I dont think my friends understood the point .... or maybe I was not clear.... but overall the end result was that my friends decided to believe India is backward...

Hmm... why do I feel the need to defend India all the time???