One big thing I learnt when working in and for the Americans was the way credit for success was shared across all participants bottom-up and accountability for failure was placed top-down. I pretty much learnt the same as an Indian Armed Forces offspring in the ’50s and ’60s too, though it does appear as though this process has changed in India somehow in the last 50 years or so, to all visible observations. The prime example of this is how everything in India is sought to be portrayed as somehow thanks to the Nehru family, and before that, the British and the Mughals.
It would seem that some sort of mass hypnosis as well as indoctrination happened and there was nothing else in our past other than these three elements. Probably the biggest example of this perception management was the Rajpath and Rashtrapati Bhavan area. My late father was in the Republic Day Parade in 1952 when it marched down Kingsway and I took part in 1974 when it was Rajpath – which my father would often tell me was vindication of how change happened. I was too young to realise what he meant then.
Now I do. The recent green signal for the renewal and re-building of the Central Vista area in Delhi is an example of how vindication continues. And how for larger common good, the credit goes all over, as will the success be shared.
At the crest of Raisina Hill stands the world’s largest Presidential Palace, previously the Vice-Regal Lodge, also known as Rashtrapati Bhavan now. But that is not the real claim to fame. Bigger and much older architectural wonders exist all over India, many of them more than a 1000 years old, though most of them are in Central and South India. Sitting in awe of Delhi, however, many Indians get blinded by this huge area, most of it built by contractors who owed their wealth to the fact that they were stooges and collaborators to the British – most significantly to the trial and murder of Bhagat Singh, Shivram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar (image below)
This group of people and their descendants, known in truth more as the Gangs from LaWhore, continued to exercise considerable influence on the way perception has been built about Delhi, especially Lootyen’s Delhi, for over 70 years now. It is now time for them to be removed from these pedestals they have built for themselves. The War Memorial at India Gate is an example of this change.
To them goes the honour of this shared success. I have friends and family listed there, now searchable online, too. The renewal and rebuilding of the Central Vista area is a tribute to them as well as to other Indians. New India belongs to all of us, especially Delhi, and not just to descendants of builders who were colonial stooges and collaborators.
Veeresh Malik was a seafarer. And a lot more besides. A decade in facial biometrics, which took him into the world of finance, gaming, preventive defence and money laundering before the subliminal mind management technology blew his brains out. His romance with the media endures since 1994, duly responded by Outlook, among others.
A survivor of two brain-strokes, triggered by a ship explosion in the 70s, Veeresh moved beyond fear decades ago
