{"id":982,"date":"2012-10-03T14:39:30","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T09:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teekhapan.wordpress.com\/?p=982"},"modified":"2012-10-03T14:39:30","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T09:09:30","slug":"if-modi-is-goebbels-what-does-that-make-digvijaya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/2012\/10\/03\/if-modi-is-goebbels-what-does-that-make-digvijaya\/","title":{"rendered":"If Modi is Goebbels, what does that make Digvijay?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nVivek Kaul<\/strong>
\nDigvijay Singh, currently one of the powerful general secretaries in the Congress party, was born in February 1947. Given this he must have been in his late teens when the Yash Chopra directed multi-starrer Waqt <\/em>released in 1965.
\nWhile I am not sure whether Singh is a movie buff or not, chances are he might have seen the movie. We all do when we are in our teens.
\nThere are two things from Waqt <\/em>that have survived the test of times. One is the qawali \u201cae meri zohra jabeen\u201d<\/em> sung by Manna De, set to tune by Ravi, and written by the great Sahir Ludhianvi.
\nAnother is a dialogue written by Akhtar-Ul-Iman and spoken by Raj Kumar in the movie, which goes like this: \u201cChinoi Seth\u2026jinke apne ghar sheeshe ke hon wo dusron par pathar nahi feka karte<\/em> (Chinoi Seth\u2026those who live in glass houses don\u2019t throw stones at others).\u201d
\nIf Digvijay Singh hasn\u2019t seen this movie its time he did. If watching a 206 minute long movie doesn\u2019t fit into his scheme of things, he can at least watch this 18 second YouTube clip<\/a>, to realise that those who live in glass houses don\u2019t throw stones at others.
\nSingh has accused Narendra Modi of being well trained by the Rashtriya Swayemsevak Sangh (RSS) in the \u201cNazi tradition\u201d of false propaganda. He tweeted twice on this to say:
\n1. “Sangh\u00a0trains it’s cadre in\u00a0disinformation\u00a0campaign. Obviously\u00a0Modi\u00a0has been trained well! Sangh\u00a0has modeled itself in the Nazi tradition<\/em>.\u201d
\n2. “Sangh\u00a0training to its cadre.\u00a0Jhoot<\/em>\u00a0bolo<\/em>\u00a0zor<\/em>\u00a0se bolo<\/em>\u00a0aur<\/em>\u00a0baar<\/em>\u00a0baar<\/em>\u00a0bolo<\/em>\u00a0(Tell a lie, tell it loudly and tell it hundred times). Doesn’t it remind you of Hitler’s Goebbels?<\/em>”
\nThese tweets came after Narendra Modi accused the government of having spent Rs 1880 crore in the treatment of Sonia Gandhi\u2019s mysterious illness. Modi claimed to have got this number from a media report.
\nSingh has compared Modi to Paul Joseph Goebbels\u00a0who was a German politician and Adolf Hitler\u2019s Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany. There is no denying that Modi might be wrong with his Rs 1880 crore claim but the fact of the matter is that the Congress leaders including Digvijay Singh have been doing the same thing that they have just accused Modi of i.e. false propaganda, over and over again.
\nLet\u2019s take a look at something that Digvijay Singh said in the context of the coalgate scam sometime back. \u201cThe way the CAG is going, it is clear he (i.e. Vinod Rai) has political ambitions like TN Chaturvedi (a former CAG who later joined the BJP). He has been giving notional and fictional figures that have no relevance to facts. How has he computed these figures? He is talking through his hat,\u201d said Singh.
\nThe CAG put the losses due to the government giving away coal blocks for free at Rs 1,86,000 crore. Singh would like us to believe that the figures put out by the CAG were notional and fictional and had no relevance to facts. As I explain here<\/a> it was Singh and not the CAG who was talking through his hat.
\nSingh\u2019s esteemed colleague, the finance minister P Chidambaram, also tried to tell the nation that there had been no loss in coalgate. \u201cIf coal is not mined, where is the loss? The loss will only occur if coal is sold at a certain price or undervalued,\u201d said Chidambaram.
\nThe union Finance Minister wanted us to believe that since almost all companies which got free coal blocks have not started to mine coal till date, hence there have been no losses. This is like saying that I gave away my house for free, but since the person I gave it away to is not able to sell it, hence I did not face any losses.
\nChidambaram was basically trying to confuse us by mixing two issues here. One is the fact that the government gave away the blocks for free. And another is the inability of the companies who got these blocks to start mining coal. Just because these companies haven\u2019t been able to mine coal doesn\u2019t mean that the government of India did not face a loss by giving away the mines for free. (You can read the complete argument here<\/a>).
\nKapil Sibal the union telecom minister wanted us to believe that the government hadn\u2019t faced any losses by giving away licenses to telecom companies on a first come first serve basis rather than auctioning them. The CAG had put these losses on account of this at Rs 1,76,000 crore. What these examples clearly bring out is that Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh are indulging in false propaganda of the worst kind, something they have just accused Narendra Modi of.
\nAnother interesting point is that there can be a clear difference of opinion when it comes to the losses suffered by the government on account of coalgate. The assumptions that CAG worked with put the losses at Rs 1,86,000 crore. As I showed in an earlier piece with some more aggressive assumptions the losses could have even shown to be at Rs Rs 13.5 lakh crore (You can read about it here<\/a>).
\nBut there can be no such variation when it comes to the amount of money that the government has been spending on the treatment of Sonia Gandhi\u2019s illness (if at all it has). A very simple way to puncture Narendra Modi\u2019s argument is to just tell the nation, how much money has really been spent.
\nModi claims that the government has spent around Rs 1880 crore or around $356 million on Sonia Gandhi\u2019s illness.\u00a0 That\u2019s a lot of money. If that is not the right amount, what is the right amount? All it needs is a simple clarification from the government.
\nAnd that hasn\u2019t come. What has come is a comment that accuses Modi being a Nazi. As an earlier piece<\/a> on this website pointed out that there is an RTI application pending before the UPA government asking for details of her visits, the amounts spent and for what purposes. What Singh\u2019s comment also shows is that the Congress doesn\u2019t know how to tackle Modi in Gujarat. Sonia Gandhi in 2007 had labeled him maut ka saudagar. <\/em>Singh has now labeled him a Nazi. By trying to tarnish Modi’s image the Congress is only\u00a0helping Brand Modi become much stronger at least in Gujarat.\u00a0And that can\u2019t be clearly good for a party which claims to be secular.
\nThe article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on October 3, 2012.\u00a0http:\/\/www.firstpost.com\/politics\/if-modi-is-goebbels-what-does-that-make-digvijaya-477800.html<\/a>
\n(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at <\/em>vivek.kaul@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vivek Kaul Digvijay Singh, currently one of the powerful general secretaries in the Congress party, was born in February 1947. Given this he must have been in his late teens when the Yash Chopra directed multi-starrer Waqt released in 1965. While I am not sure whether Singh is a movie buff or not, chances are … <\/p>\n

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