The Young India

Kartikey Sehgal

[October 13 is voting day (State Assembly Elections) for Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh]

The voting day for Mumbai, Maharashtra, and wherever that scary phenomenon called elections is occurring is a dry day. Meaning no alcohol. People could have voted when drunk. That chance is lost.

The phenomenon is scary because apparently, if you don’t vote, you are a monster and directly responsible for the country’s misery. You see, before you stopped voting, the country was very rich and prosperous and gold would …

Kartikey Sehgal

A myth propounded by history-killers and aged freedom-fighter manuals is the enmity between pre-Independence leaders in India.

Subhash Chandra Bose and Mohandas Gandhi shared a healthy and principled relationship despite their opposing ideas on the relevance of violence. In effect, they were comrades in freeing India from British imperialism. Yet, it is not hard to come across learned men and women who speak of them as ‘almost-enemies’.

Kartikey Sehgal

(Secularism implies no religious prejudice)

A short introduction about the condition of secularism–no party is ‘secular’–followed by responses to comments on the story It is Okay to Not Vote.

Introduction: The Present

In 1984, Congress was involved in the murder of Sikhs after the killing of Indira Gandhi.
More than twenty years later, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from the Congress party apologised to the Sikhs and the nation for the acts of the Congress.

In 2002, BJP was involved in the murder of Muslims. BJP’s Atal Behari Vajpayee and L K Advani apologised for the “blot” on the nation.

Kartikey Sehgal

It is absolutely fine if you do not vote in the coming elections. Asking you to vote compulsorily is like enforcing a caste system.

Consider the Jaago Re ad on television in which a ‘young’ man and his friend offer tea to people who have not cast their vote. You are sleeping-he tells them. When they retort that they are awake, the man says that if on Election Day people are not voting then they are obviously sleeping. The embarrassed/awakened people then accept the cup of tea as the two young men walk confidently amidst the crowd.

Compulsory voting is subterfuge.

Despite her loss, Hillary Clinton’s candidature was significant.
Ananth Venkatesh calls it “a measure of the matureness of American democracy and its steady evolution”.

He states clearly the reasons for which American women were suppressed and prevented from the democratic freedom enjoyed by men.