Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Exercises in Sophistry: A Note to the BJP

Dear BJP,

I wish your party members (some of whom are eminent lawyers) would go attend a refresher course in logic. Perhaps that might teach them to steer clear of befuddling fallacies and bemusing absurdities. Such as, for example, the following line of reasoning, which ya'll have been shouting out from the rooftops over the last couple of days:

A. The CBI has been misused by the Congress to serve its own political agenda.
B. Sohrabuddin was a criminal and a terrorist.
C. Amit Shah is innocent of all crimes that he has been accused of.

A crash course in basic logic will tell you that premises A and B -- even if they're true (and I am not even challenging their veracity) -- are not sufficient grounds to derive conclusion C. So kindly do the nation a favour and let the investigation take its own course. And then take the CBI to court if you like. But till then, stop behaving like the Pakistani establishment. You remind me so much of the way they reacted on 26/11 and the way they've been brushing away the evidence against Hafiz Saeed et al. Same panic, same hysteria, same high-pitched rhetoric, same denial. But even so, the truth came out, didn't it?

And lastly, please don't waste the nation's time and money in Parliament today. Be a robust opposition and engage in good solid debate based on good solid reasoning, on all the issues that you need to be challenging the Congress-led UPA government on -- there are lots of them, and I fully support your demand for accountability on all those counts. Please, please, please do not stage a walk-out as you are wont to do, it achieves nothing.

Have a nice day!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Effing the Ineffable

As this rather tumultuous week ends, it is heartening to see attempts at bringing the high and mighty to book:

Common thread: all 3 events occurred this week, and all 3 events involve individuals in commanding positions (in their own respective worlds) who could well have been abusing the meek and defenseless under their control -- the very people who looked up to them for protection and leadership. In each case, powerful friends and allies of the accused have tried (and are still trying, as we go into the next week) to suppress their (alleged) crimes and misdemeanours, obfuscate the core issue in each case and divert public scrutiny by hurling counter-accusations at plaintiffs and/or investigators. We can only hope that justice is done in each case. What happened this week was just the first step, in each of the 3 cases, in what may well turn out to be a thousand mile journey. As we all know, it is not easy to bring to book those who have friends in high places and consider themselves above the law

Alan Watts once said (albeit in a very different context): "I'm in the business of effing the ineffable." Let's hope the Indian justice system is in that business too. 

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