Rediff on Bahadur's funeral

Rediff in many ways is a sign of the decade. They started out as an excellent Indian portal, full of high quality writing and a solid webmail service. These days they seem to put out mostly sensationalist tripe, but occasionally there is some good stuff to be read on the site. This article makes a good point.

I didn't know of the Field Marshal's death, or the fact that he had been based in Wellington until I chanced upon the article a couple of days ago. It's nice to learn of the public reaction and I hope the media acted suitably as well. Apart from that, the article says it all and there's not much to add. But a glance at the comments section was quite telling. It features the inevitable crass mudslinging between two camps that seems to characterise any feedback on articles related to politics, cricket, films or the weather. In this case, the bone seems to be between supporters of the Congress and the BJP (read:'secular' and 'communal'), and they use the article to try to highlight the apathy of the opposition while absolving their leaders of any blame. Reading the comments proves to be disappointing not only because the readers appear to ignore the point of the article, but also as it shows the privileged class in poor light. We urbanites (and I use the term in the assumption that all of the estimated 60 million Indian Internet users are English-knowing city dwellers)seem unable to evolve beyond name-calling and a clannish us vs them mentality. But then, as a 52 percent voter turnout in Bangalore showed, we are probably indifferent to the real cause, and more concerned with satisfying our own pet propaganda.