Biplab Dasgupta Quotes in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
“The city is still stunned by the simultaneous explosions that tore through a bus stop, a café and the basement parking lot of a small shopping plaza two days ago, leaving five dead and very many more severely injured. It will take our television news anchors a little longer than ordinary folks to recover from the shock. As for myself, blasts evoke a range of emotions in me, but sadly, shock is no longer one of them.”
“I feel a rush of anger at those grumbling intellectuals and professional dissenters who constantly carp about this great country. Frankly, they can only do it because they are allowed to. And they are allowed to because, for all our imperfections, we are a genuine democracy. I would not be crass enough to say this too often in public, but the truth is that it gives me great pride to be a servant of the Government of India.”
“Like many noisy extremists, [Naga] has moved through a whole spectrum of extreme political opinion. What has remained consistent is only the decibel level. Now Naga has a handler—though he many not see it quite that way—in the Intelligence Bureau. With a senior position at his paper, he is a valuable asset to us.”
“The inbuilt idiocy, this idea of jihad, has seeped into Kashmir from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now, twenty-five years down the line, I think, to our advantage, we have eight or nine versions of the ‘True’ Islam battling it out in Kashmir […] Some of the most radical among them […] are actually on our payroll. One of them was recently blown up outside his mosque by a bicycle bomb. He won’t be hard to replace. The only thing that keeps Kashmir from self-destructing like Pakistan and Afghanistan is good old petit bourgeois capitalism. For all their religiosity, Kashmiris are great businessmen. And all businessmen eventually, one way or another, have a stake in the status quo—or what we call the ‘Peace Process,’ which, by the way, is an entirely different kind of business opportunity from peace itself.”
“This was Kashmir; the Separatists spoke in slogans and our men spoke in press releases; their cordon-and-search operations were always ‘massive,’ everybody they picked up was always ‘dreaded,’ seldom less than ‘A-category,’ and the recoveries they made from those they captured were always ‘war-like.’ It wasn’t surprising, because each of those adjectives had a corresponding incentive—a cash reward, an honorable mention in their service dossier, a medal for bravery or a promotion.”
Biplab Dasgupta Quotes in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
“The city is still stunned by the simultaneous explosions that tore through a bus stop, a café and the basement parking lot of a small shopping plaza two days ago, leaving five dead and very many more severely injured. It will take our television news anchors a little longer than ordinary folks to recover from the shock. As for myself, blasts evoke a range of emotions in me, but sadly, shock is no longer one of them.”
“I feel a rush of anger at those grumbling intellectuals and professional dissenters who constantly carp about this great country. Frankly, they can only do it because they are allowed to. And they are allowed to because, for all our imperfections, we are a genuine democracy. I would not be crass enough to say this too often in public, but the truth is that it gives me great pride to be a servant of the Government of India.”
“Like many noisy extremists, [Naga] has moved through a whole spectrum of extreme political opinion. What has remained consistent is only the decibel level. Now Naga has a handler—though he many not see it quite that way—in the Intelligence Bureau. With a senior position at his paper, he is a valuable asset to us.”
“The inbuilt idiocy, this idea of jihad, has seeped into Kashmir from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now, twenty-five years down the line, I think, to our advantage, we have eight or nine versions of the ‘True’ Islam battling it out in Kashmir […] Some of the most radical among them […] are actually on our payroll. One of them was recently blown up outside his mosque by a bicycle bomb. He won’t be hard to replace. The only thing that keeps Kashmir from self-destructing like Pakistan and Afghanistan is good old petit bourgeois capitalism. For all their religiosity, Kashmiris are great businessmen. And all businessmen eventually, one way or another, have a stake in the status quo—or what we call the ‘Peace Process,’ which, by the way, is an entirely different kind of business opportunity from peace itself.”
“This was Kashmir; the Separatists spoke in slogans and our men spoke in press releases; their cordon-and-search operations were always ‘massive,’ everybody they picked up was always ‘dreaded,’ seldom less than ‘A-category,’ and the recoveries they made from those they captured were always ‘war-like.’ It wasn’t surprising, because each of those adjectives had a corresponding incentive—a cash reward, an honorable mention in their service dossier, a medal for bravery or a promotion.”
