To Sir Creek, With Hand-In-Glove

A few days back I wrote about the Roman Agent in Gujarat. Yes, Gujarat is in the news and all over the place. Everyone’s talking about Gujarat elections, predictions, forecasts, exit polls, how Narendra Modi lost badly, how ‘sickular’ forces defeated this monster and so on. Umm… everyone, but NDTV. After elections closed on December 17 all the news channels were up with exit polls and endless discussions. For NDTV, who had campaigned so heavily in Gujarat, the state ceased to exist at 5pm on December 17 when voting closed. Someone was arguing with me about the elections and that the Gujjus were nothing more than “communal traders” and not a “secular” society etc. So, for this lady, I had to narrate to this story about a Gujju in the army and his “secular” trading skills. 

In the middle of the war our Gujju soldier got a telegram from his wife that there was an emergency and he should return home. On telegramming her back and forth he found she had broken her toe-nail and was in deep distress. Our Gujju soldier could feel the pain right through his war-torn body. So he put up an application with the General for leave. A furious General asked him to stop being “effete” and “vamoose”. But the guy was a persistent pest and kept pleading with the General. Frustrated and tired of the constant “trolling”, the General finally told him: “Okay, you can have your leave if you capture a Pakistani tank in 24 hours and bring it in”. The General knew well this was well beyond any soldier at that time let alone a Gujju. The Gujju soldier says “Alright, but stick to your promise and don’t cheat”. The General relaxed having gotten rid of the pest and not having to deal with him and his leave application again. But in less than 8 hours the man was riding to the General’s office in a Pakistani tank to the utter disbelief of all the other soldiers. The shock-and-awe-struck General couldn’t believe his eyes.

The thrilled and gleeful Gujju then put up his application for leave again and asked the General to sign. The stunned General responded: “Oh… your leave is fine but how did you do it? How did you capture a Paki tank in such a short time, what’s the secret?” The Gujju waved his hand and responded: “Oh that’s nothing, you see I have this arrangement, when those Paki soldiers want leave they borrow my tank”. 

But the war is long over and Pakistan wages war a lot more differently now. We also have our Track-2 diplomats who trade differently from the patriotic Gujju who at least fought in a war and risked his life. So when the GOI invited Pak Minister Rehman Malik around the Gujarat elections Narendra Modi raised this issue about ‘Sir Creek’. No, this Sir isn’t a knight of the little kingdom of the Queen but a small creek bordering Kutch in Gujarat and Pakistan. Modi created a storm by claiming the GOI was about to hand over Sir Creek to Pakistan. Such an issue rattled the Congress which was battling elections and was faced with what could snowball into a national scam. Giving off land has been a ritual with some of our politicians. Long back Aksai Chin was given off to China because “not a blade of grass grew there”. 

Recently some land was given off to Bangladesh or is about to be given off. Sir Creek was the last straw. PM Manmohan Singh strongly denied there was any such plan and the country was being misled and this was cheap politics by Modi. Yep, even news editors in print and on TV screamed murder by Modi. But trust people in the Social Media to be watchful as ever and bring out the truth. It seems the GOI did have a plan to hand over Sir Creek as a video would show. The video (at 18.20) has Barkha and other panellists discussing peace on a Pakistani channel and can be seen on Youtube. A short clip of the specific portion of the video is appended at the end of this post.

In the video Barkha Dutt, who knows quite a lot about Pakistan, clearly states that former Pakistan PM Yusuf Gilani indicated to her that the agreement on Sir Creek was ready and it could be signed during a visit of Manmohan Singh to Pakistan. One can be certain that the deal claimed by Barkha is not about Pakistan foregoing its claim on Sir Creek forever. So what Narendra Modi claimed wasn’t a lie and wasn’t fear mongering. Barkha, who was in knowledge of such a deal over Sir Creek and had inside information didn’t utter one word during all the noise over the issue in the last ten days. Manish Tiwari the I&B Minister and frequent spokesman for everything for the Congress daringly claimed “December 15 is here and Sir Creek is still with India”. One has enough evidence from what Barkha stated that it was still with India because Modi made all the noises. He probably ambushed the hand-over of Sir Creek to Pakistan. 

It is increasingly alarming what our supposed news media celebs are dealing in. They are certainly not trading tanks for leave applications. Read more here at BarbarIndian’s post on the media spins. It is not just Manish Tiwari, even our media’s bimbo editors went to town rubbishing Modi’s claims on Sir Creek without any serious investigation or fact-check. The denial by the Congress and the GOI doesn’t seem to be credible. They must come out with facts. Either that or Barkha has been lying on Pakistani TV and claiming balderdash that doesn’t exist. Sometime back a whole truck load of media celebs were listed as being on the menu-card of Ghulam Nabi Fai, the American-Kashmiri, who is lobbying for Azad Kashmir. Fai was being funded by the Pakistani ISI and was hosting many of our news traders and media scumbags to luxury trips and conventions on Kashmir. Fai is now in prison and we have to be surprised that none of the journos or social scientologists who were involved in his campaign are being investigated by the govt. 

Crooks in our media are the greatest danger to our democracy. We keep getting more and more evidence of it all too frequently. There is something truly sinister about this Sir Creek episode. I’ve heard of ‘To Sir, With Love’ but this sounds like ‘To Sir with Hand-in-Glove’. The Sir Creek episode does need more investigation and the title of this post would not make for a great movie.