Author: Surajit Dasgupta
Publication: Niticentral.com
Date: April 19, 2014
URL: http://www.niticentral.com/2014/04/19/aap-part-of-international-anti-india-racket-part-2-213876.html
The leftist and disruptive outfits named in part 1 of the report may appear mutually independent, but there is at least one person who is associated with two or more of these groups to link them all together.
We now come to Medha Patkar, the ubiquitous activist who is known not only for her Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) but also for surfacing in support of agitations happening anywhere in India — from the protest against setting up of the factory to manufacture Tata Nano in Singur, West Bengal, to that against the Government for delaying the enactment of Shanti Bhushan’s draft of Lokpal Bill, named by the self-styled India against Corruption (IAC) as the Jan Lokpal Bill.
Medha Patkar has worked with Angana Chatterji who was named in the first part of this report. The email correspondence between the NBA head and Patrick McCully, former director of the Berkley-based International River Network (IRN), is insidious. When the Supreme Court dismissed NGO National Council for Civil Liberty’s (NCCL’s) PIL on rehabilitation of people allegedly displaced by the Sardar Sarovar project on July 10, 2007, Patkar sent the information to McCully immediately. Two days later, McCully replied, “You have mentioned in your message (email) that Judge Thakkar (CK) is ex-chief justice of Gujarat and anything can happen. How you manage this. What was the second judge?”
The next day, Patkar wrote that McCully had made a mistake in quoting Thakkar as an ex-chief justice of Gujarat. Though he was initially a judge, it was Justice Altamas Kabir who wrote the judgement, Patkar informed her American friend. The mail reads, “…Many eminent persons wrote to the UPA Government. We dealt with the Press selectively and ensured that pressure was kept all through.” She also sent a soft copy of the judgement and the profiles of Justice CK Thakker and Justice Altamas Kabir.
On July 17, McCully congratulated Patkar and suggested that five or six people associated with ‘managing’ the verdict be honoured at a function in London (UK). The mail reads, “…We must honour Judge Kabir for supporting you. Please explore the possibility. He will retire in 2013 — a very useful man for your future battles.”
Niti Central does not wish to cast aspersions on the character of Justice (Retd) Kabir, notwithstanding the fact that he was embroiled in an unrelated controversy wherein Gujarat High Court Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya had complained that the then CJI had blocked his elevation to the Supreme Court because, as a member of the collegium of the Calcutta High Court, he had opposed the appointment of then CJI Kabir’s lawyer sister to the Bench. We are merely reporting the contents of a sinister email exchange. Patkar did mention in an email to McCully, “Along with this, the petitioner’s case was so weak. Its triviality was obvious. Legally it was non-maintainable.” However, the word “manage” in McCully’s email is disturbing as are the following suggestions by him and Patkar’s responses to those.
On July 19, McCully wrote to Patkar again, this time proposing felicitation of advocates and other individuals who supported the NBA in a function to be held in London. On 22 July, Patkar replied, “…Apart from advocates, no one would like to be acknowledged for writing to pressurise (sic) the Government. That might boomerang.”
The international racket’s nefarious act of trying to influence the Indian judiciary was reported by Navin Upadhyay in The Pioneer on September 10, 2007. “Senior Congress leader Urmilaben Patel and Ratilal K Verma of the BJP, both MPs, have submitted identical evidence to the Prime Minister to establish that Patkar was in touch with a foreign agency, who wanted to oblige even a judge of the Supreme Court after he, along with another judge, dismissed a PIL against NBA. The PIL was filed by the National Council for Civil Liberties, a Gujarat-based NGO alleging that NBA was engaged in anti-national activities,” Upadhyay reported.
How are McCully and Chatterji connected? In an April 2004 Press release issued by the AID, whose whereabouts are described in the first part of this report titled, “International activists to fast in front of World Bank headquarters during annual meeting to demand end to forced displacement,” Chatterji along with two foreign activists mentions McCully’s name among the demonstrators. An activist named in the list is David Pellow. This man authored a book, Resisting Global Toxics, where he acknowledged both McCully and Chatterji to be in his “network”. Further, Chatterji features on the board of the IRN.
And making this racket completely political, the AID supports the NBA on the one hand and it supplied volunteers to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the Delhi Assembly election and collected funds for it on the other, appealing to the people using a photograph and name of Arvind Kejriwal as an “AID Saathi”.
That the AID works under the ultra-leftist PROXSA umbrella was mentioned in the first part of the network. Two other groups attached to this network are ASHA and India Literacy Project. To pass itself off as innocent, it also maintains relations with mainstream communist organisations like the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] and its wings — the All India Democractic Women’s Association (AIDWA) and Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI). In 2005, journalist Amit Varma, writing an article in Rediff, praised AID’s work and marked that “(the) DYFI suffers from the drawback of not having a high profile and, consequently, having rather low funds. But (the) AID takes care of that.”
In the “50 Block Plan” for Tamil Nadu that the AID sponsors, it asserts how communism must be promoted in the State, thus: “As a policy, encourage libraries only where linked to such an activity or to an active TNSF/AIDWA/DYFI/PWA group or activist.” TNSF means Tamil Nadu Science Forum; PWA stands for the Progressive Writers’ Association — both are communist groups.
AID leader Balaji Sampath identifies himself as a communist and also explains the communist ideology of TNSF, an organisation funded by AID, thus: “The ideas of power, politics, hegemony, social consciousness, how people think, struggle, Marxist analysis techniques, etc that I have learnt are now a part of me.” In the TNSF’s document explaining its ideology, Sampath writes, “(In the period August 1997 – August 1999) I was working primarily with two organisations — AID & AID-India and CERD & TNSF and to a much smaller degree with Asha and a few other NGOs. I was supported financially by an AID Fellowship from May 1998 – August 1999 @ Rs 4000/month (sic). The fellowship also provided money for travel, and project-related expenses (final accounts to be submitted). Reimbursements for expenses on CERD work were supported by CERD.”
CERD is the Government of Kerala’s Centre for Engineering Research and Development. This shows communist penetration in the country’s state machinery.
If the Government is not a player in this racket, it must explain why Kejriwal was never transferred outside Delhi — a unique track record for any income tax professional. And if the AAP’s claim that it is not a pawn in the hands of the Congress is to be believed, it must explain why so many of its decision makers had links with the first family of India’s oldest party in advisory capacity. Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia both assisted Aruna Roy when she headed the National Advisory Council (NAC). Yogendra Yadav was once a political adviser to Rahul Gandhi. He had worked with the NAC too — for the Right to Education Act. Yadav was funded by the ICSSR of the Jawaharlal University that received $350,000 from the Ford Foundation. Sanjay Singh was an acolyte of Amar Singh when the latter was a prominent member of the Samajwadi Party (SP). Sources say Sanjay Singh was used as a mediator whenever the SP rocked the UPA boat, threatening to pull out of the coalition. Prashant Bhushan was, in April 2012, named as a preferred mediator by Maoists when the Government of Chhattisgarh offered to hold talks with them. While rejecting the offer, the lawyer — and then eminent member of IAC — did say that the demands of the Maoists were justified. Shazia Ilmi belongs to a Kanpur-based family that is, except her, entirely in the Congress. When her family fell out with her over some property dispute, one of her brothers released details of her trying to secure some position in the Congress, along with her photographs with then Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit. The photograph predates the Jan Lokpal Movement. Harsh Mander, another sympathiser of Guru, was a member of the NAC, too.
The AAP must also explain its communist links as Kejriwal insists his party is neither Leftist nor Rightist. It is believed the party’s Lok Sabha candidate from South Mumbai, Meera Sanyal, made a lateral entry from the banking sector. Let it be known that her NGO, Pradaan, works in Maoism-affected regions of the country.
Gopal Rai owes an explanation to this correspondent too. He had told activists like us that his partial paralysis was caused by a bullet injury that he had suffered at the hands of “student mafia” in Lucknow University as he was leading a movement to relieve the campus of such elements. That’s a lie that we had credulously believed in. We used to introduce him to sundry audience across Delhi with this story that we didn’t know was concocted. His former colleagues in the AISA — All India Students Association, student wing of the CPI(ML) — have revealed to this correspondent that he fought over contracts for bicycle and motorcycle stands in the campus. He was shot at during a showdown with a rival students’ gang.
The cases against Gopal Rai that have nothing to do with any political movement, are registered under IPC Sections 147, 148, 427 and 506 in case 336/97, at the Hasangarh district police station of Lucknow, dated November 6, 1998 and January 1, 1999. The cases are being heard at the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court of Lucknow. Sec 147 refers to rioting; Sec 148 is rioting while armed with deadly weapons; Sec 427 slapped on him is for mischief causing damage to the amount of Rs 50, and Sec 506 applies to criminal intimidation. The combination of these IPC Sections actually shows this man is both petty and dangerous.
Back to the AID, let’s study its further Indian political links now. One knows Bhushan as well as the former boss of Kejriwal and Sisodia, Aruna Roy, has petitioned against the hanging of Ajmal Qasab, convicted for the November 26-28, 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai, and Afzal Guru, convicted for the 2001 attack on Parliament. The AID campaigned for these terrorists, too.
Furthermore, there is a character called Feroz Mehdi who links various communist organisations to the AID. He has been secretary-general of the South Asia Program and Alternatives International since 2007. He is one of the founding members of the Alternatives International (AI), who has been working largely on projects related to South Asia in Quebec and the rest of Canada by way of organizing conferences and publishing newsletters and other analytical documents. The AI has nine member organisations from Canada, France, Brazil, Israel, Palestine, South Africa, Niger, India and Morocco. In 2005, Feroz Mehdi, writing for the AI while on a tour of areas hit with the tsunami, described a meeting with the director of AID India MA Devdas. He elaborated on the strategic partnership between various communist organisations and AID as: “The groups associated with the CPM and the All India Peoples Science Movement have reached a strategic alliance with AID by implementing relief measures and taking up mid and long-term rehabilitation work. While the material purchase and construction is done by AID, the human power is provided by over a thousand volunteers of the AIPSN [All India Peoples Science Movement], SFI (Student Federation of India), DYFI (Democratic Youth Federation of India), AIDWA (All India Democratic Women’s Association) and TNSF [Tamil Nadu Science Forum] itself.”
Interestingly, the website of the extremist CPI (ML) was registered under the AI with the address as 3680, Rue Jeanne-Meance, Montreal, Quebec, H2X 2K5, CA.
The AID’s links with FOIL and FOSA have already been written about in the first part of this investigative account. That is where the international sponsor of the AAP stands. The AAP, on its part, is suspected to have got money also from one or more American citizens through awaaz.org that was found involved in agitations in Syria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia as well.
The AAP’s founding members, like this correspondent, who did not make it to its decision-making bodies such as its national executive and political affairs committee (PAC), wondered for long why these positions were kept out of bounds for nationalists while they were filled to the brim by communists and socialists. Now the perspective is clear. When this correspondent sought an explanation from Kejriwal about the leftist skew in the PAC over the breakfast at his residence in the last week of November 2012, wanting to know why positions in the AAP did not reflect his assurance that his party would accommodate activists of all ideologies, he said, “Politics men jo dikhta hai, hamesha woh hota nahin hai. Kuchh bolna padta hai, kuchh aur karna padta hai (in politics, what appears need not have actually transpired; I have to say something but do something else).”
I understand now, Mr Kejriwal. An organisation dancing to the tunes of an international Leftist racket that wishes to destabilise India cannot afford to have Right-of-Centre thinkers and activists among its policy makers. Of course, such a report is not likely to figure in the mainstream media that is in a vice-like grip of former members of the CPI(M), beneficiaries of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi Governments, journalists exposed by the infamous Radia Tapes and, most importantly, former employers of Sisodia, Ilmi, Yadav, the post-Delhi poll entrant in the AAP — Ashutosh and a journalist who found Kejriwal pretending to be a follower of Bhagat Singh “bahut krantikari” (extremely revolutionary).
(More exposes on these lines are expected in coming days and weeks. Stay tuned.) |