News meeows - 15

Madrasa student cracks UPSC

At a time when eyebrows are being raised on the kind of education being imparted in madrasas across the country, a maulana from the Darul-Uloom-Deoband in Uttar Pradesh has passed the country’s most elite examination, the Civil Services exam, in his fourth attempt. Maulana Waseem-ur-Rehman, 31, is the first madrasa product who has cleared the civil services exams in the country. Moreover, for his interview, the maulana took training from the RSS-run institute Samkalp at Paharganj in New Delhi.

Oh wow, what would poor madrassa students do without the RSS? I tell you what – they make some neat weapons, learn to fly planes…UPSC exams are a piece of truffle. And what does this fellow do with it now? Where will he get employment? He already has a Bachelor’s degree in Unani medicine and surgery, so what was wrong with that? How many non-Muslims who attend religious schools need to prove that they can also do it in the civil services?

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The BJP wins in Karnataka

The BJP’s triumphant chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa met Karnataka governor Rameshwar Thakur on Monday to stake his claim to form the government, stating, “We have the numbers’’. His said this after two independent MLAs attended the legislative party meeting earlier in the day. Late reports said three more independents had pledged their support to the BJP, taking the party well past the magic number of 113—over the halfway mark in the 224-member assembly.

Okay. I want to do something drastic, mainly because this is only the beginning. The first state in the South goes to the hardcore Hindutva party. Who is to blame? The Congress and the JD(S). Deve Gowda, who made sleeping on the job a part of his PMship, couldn’t sleep with the ‘enemy’. Now we are left with this sorry state, and Narendra Modi who was crowing before will be really happy. The saffronites have got the tech city in their pocket.

As always the media is talking about L.K.Advani as the PM in waiting. He has begun to smile a lot and now even resembles Dr. Manmohan Singh without the turban. Lord Ram save Bharat, and I mean not just your brother.

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Omar Abdullah, National Conference Chief, has criticised pictures of President Pratibha Patil holding an AK-47 during her ongoing visit to Jammu and Kashmir

The former Union Minister has said he would have wanted to see her photographs with children in some far-flung hamlet rather than "brandishing" the "object that has caused so much death and destruction over the last 18 years."

"The photograph was of President Patil brandishing an AK-47 and smiling... Somehow the two things didn't seem to go together…They say a picture speaks a thousand words and I would have been thrilled to see a photograph of the President talking to kids, as a grandmother would, in some far flung hamlet about the promise of a better future…I know she's the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, but the photograph reminded me of a rather forgettable Sylvester Stallone movie - `Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot'".

Dear, dear Omar…did you tell the little Kashmiris while Farooque was busy playing golf ‘Stop or my Pa will get a hole in one’? Take a look at the picture instead of trying to be this smart-ass son of a gun. Does it look like she is brandishing anything? If you want the locals to have grandmothers, then make sure the political parties and terrorist outfits and army guys behave. You want to see pictures of her in some hamlet, then take her on a tour, invite her to a waazwaan, and then watch her lounging in a shikara on the Dal Lake sipping kahwa. You want feel-good, you get feel-good. Nothing more. Life in Kashmir won’t change because the President behaves like a grandma. Would you say the same had the president been a man? How many of our old men act like grandpas or are expected to? What is this rishtedari business, anyway? Your dad was busy taking filmstars (the activist actress Shabana Azmi, no less) pillion riding on a motorcycle.

Trust me the children of Kashmir are not going around screaming, “Oye, humko bandook do, madamji waala”.