As a matter of fact

Facts come in every shape, size, variety. Their survival is determined
not by value but by how inexplicable they are. The human being has
23,000 genes, only “half as many as a tomato”, I am told. But humbling
as this formative fact of life might be, it does not quite catch the
imagination as much as the perplexity called death, particularly when
death escapes the boundaries of reason: A plague decimates a
continent, war murders a generation, or an evil maniac orders a
genocide.

Statistics distil facts to stark simplicity. Between September 1939
and August 1945, the period of the Second World War, 27,000 people
were killed each day.
(This figure does not include war-related casualties like the three
million-odd Bengalis who died of a famine that was a direct
consequence of war policy.) There is always enough to be learnt from
war, its machines and its machinations. Guess who is the largest buyer
of oil in the world? If you thought it was a country,  wrong. The
Pentagon.

America’s military consumes more oil each year than the whole of
Africa. And yet, when you think about it, is this very startling? The
armies of the British Empire surely drank up more oil than all the
colonies they ruled. None of us were there to count, and contemporary
historians had more delicious details to record, but you can safely
bet that Rome alone had more chariots than the rest of the Roman
Empire.

It has always been thus. To the victor goes not only the spoils of war
but also the far more substantial rewards of its blanket peace: A Pax
Romana then, a Pax Americana now. So what’s the story? The privileges
of power have not changed, but the world has.

If the ascent of America begins with victory in the First World War;
its supremacy after the Second; and domination after the Third (also
known as the Cold) War, then many of today’s contradictions also lie
in the liberal ideas that America encouraged as a template for the
future it hoped to control. America sought the rights of power without
the problems or obvious injustice of foreign rule. It tried to
fashion, particularly after 1992, what might be called the Good Empire
as distinct from the Evil Empire (Ronald Reagan’s description of the
Soviet Union). The thesis, broadly, was this: All nations would be
equal; post-colonial nations would be formed on the basis of public
will, with claims being resolved by plebiscite; the world as well as
its parts would be governed by the broad principles of democracy.

Confusion is the bridesmaid of change, so after the applause died down
there was achievement, failure and bewilderment in roughly equal
measure. The fault line of democracy is that while it offers equal
rights in theory, it does not guarantee equality in practice. Every
vote has the same weight, but every voter does not possess equal
weightage, whether in a municipality or the United Nations. Wealth
feeds power and power reinforces wealth, both at the macro and micro
levels.

In countries like India, the co-existence of democracy with degrading
poverty cannot be easily justified, by either idealism or intellect.
But poverty is both absolute and comparative. America’s poor,
famously, are better off than the middle class in most of the world.
However, they do not compare themselves to sub-Saharan Africa, thank
God for their good fortune, and live happily ever after.

They get angry with their president when their comfort zone is
threatened. No child suffers the anguish of malnutrition in Greece,
and yet Greek rage at loss of standards of living has boiled over into
a volatile crisis.  The battles being fought across the world are over
inequity, a perception of injustice. Democracy does not, unlike
socialism, offer economic equality, which is impossible; but its
spirit does insist on economic equity. When disparity between the top
5 per cent and bottom 50 per cent becomes obscene, the deprived do not
remain silent forever.

The establishment’s traditional response has been to blame the victim.
But democracy permits a victim to scream, and the Greeks are doing so
pretty loudly. Europe and America are rushing to its help, as they
should if they want to. It does seem odd, though, that India, where 50
times the population of Greece lives below the poverty line, should
gift $10 billion to help resolve a problem it did not cause. Till two
decades ago, rich nations still felt some mild moral obligation to
reduce poverty through aid. They now expect aid from the poor.
Miraculously, they get it. Delhi cannot find Rs 20,000 crore for
Bengal, but hands over Rs 56,000 crore for Greece. Bengal’s poor can
shout as much as the Greeks. Will India ever get this money back? Fact
from history: Greece is still waiting for Germany to pay what it
claimed as reparations after the Second World War.

Days of Judgement

Politicians fear the law, as indeed they should. But what truly terrifies them is the great hall of justice known as the court of public opinion. A court trial may be no more than an occupational hazard; the law, moreover, is known to take its own course, particularly when like an ass it defeats its own purpose through delay. But public opinion, while it may take a while to reach the crescendo of judgement, is unwavering. It is also relentless, delivering an unsentimental sentence every five years or less through a set democratic framework.

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Should the best man remain a bachelor?

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian

Margins cannot determine the fate of the text. At the moment, the story of the next elections to Rashtrapati Bhavan is in neither array nor disarray: it is blank, because the principal political parties, Congress and BJP, have not written anything down. The Congress refuses to name a candidate; the BJP is under no compulsion to hurry. It might seem, from environmental chatter, that a whirlwind candidate like P.A. Sangma is making some progress, but he is merely blotting the page with blobs of ink. In this phase the best candidates write in invisible ink, which is faintly visible under close scrutiny but should  disappear from view under the glare of too much attention.


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Shah Rukh Khan: The limits of destiny

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian

Money is a strange aphrodisiac. It stiffens obstinacy and softens the brain, when the reverse might be far more useful. Add a bit of face recognition, which celebrities crave and idol-worshippers offer, and the cocktail becomes so heady it takes only a moment to explode in your face. Petulance is but a step away, since celebrities consider it injurious to their health to admit guilt. Not every superstar becomes victim of this syndrome, but few escape an occasional attack of mania.

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Life in the Last Century

From Byword- India Today

Some very shortsighted cynics with cotton in their brain and dyspepsia in their disposition have been carping that Sachin Tendulkar and Rekha took their time before appearing in the Rajya Sabha to be sworn in as nominated MPs. Delhi’s caste of pundits is so used to drooling aspirants who rush into democracy’s gilded hall even before All India Radio has finished pronouncing their names that it tends to affix some mysterious theory to perfectly comprehensible reasons.Look at the situation from Sachin’s point of view.

I am not suggesting we write a condolence letter, but sympathy is certainly due to Sachin. Nomination to the Rajya Sabha is a prett desultory substitute for someone who has been promised the Bharat Ratna. There are consolation prizes which console, and some which char the soul. Sachin did not ask for this honour. Delhi’s politicians, ever eager to climb a bandwagon, led the clamour for Sachin’s elevation to jewel of India after he got his 99th international hundred. Perhaps Lady Macbeth’s insightful law for crisis management, that if it were done ’twas best ’twere done quickly, works as much for assassination of Scottish kings as for the coronation of Indian icons. If Sachin had got his 100th century in a Test innings against England at Lord’s or against Australia at Sydney, with style, and without dropped catches, the momentum for Bharat Ratna would have become irreversible. It is not quite as glamorous when you plod along till you finally reach Bangladesh, and then dither so much during the century match that India loses.

The hero did not arrive on a flashing steed, laden with battle honours; he trotted in on a mule, the faint outline of a hidden crutch visible from the baggage. By the time Sachin conquered his Everest all that was left was grey above and fog below. You could hear a nationwide snigger scrape against the applause. Sachin could also see what the rest of us did. The powers that be squirmed away from Bharat Ratna, leaving some sort of a thank you note behind. Membership of Parliament is a handsome freebie. But joy or depression is often relative; it depends on the starting point. Sachin also had to consider the practical side. The daily allowance of an MP is “Rs 2,000 per day during any period of residence on duty”, with an exotic entitlement of “Rs 16 per kilometre” as road mileage bonus. Don’t bother to ask what Sachin’s daily allowance from ipl is, and what happens to his bank account when he burns a few miles on the road. I wouldn’t know how to calculate ipl remuneration, with or without the extras you get for being in the company of lollipops. If Parliament had any sense it would not hold its sessions during an IPL season, at least not if it wants Sachin Tendulkar to take an oath. You will not, most regrettably, get paid for either pleasure, but where would you have rather been on Sunday the 13th of May, the 60th anniversary of India’s Parliament? In the company of Lalu Prasad Yadav as he barrelled through increasingly tired and tiring jokes; or in the stands as David Hussey smashed the ball with a pirate’s swagger? There was live and free coverage of both events. Which did you choose? If MPs want to find out the answer, they should sell advertising on Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha tv. A spot on Sachin’s bat would cost more than sail’s exclusive sponsorship of the Prime Minister’s speech. Why blame Sachin if he prefers being in Bangalore to check out if Kingfisher can still fly rather than in Delhi among birds in borrowed feathers. Parliamentary fundamentalists are upset that Sachin has not rushed to eat sugared toast and drink semi-sipid coffee in Central Hall. But no one has answered a basic question: What’s the hurry? His nomination did not come with a sell-by date. Nor is Sachin in any haste to shake the nation and wake the Government with fiery oratory on the impending collapse of telecom infrastructure. Svelte, buxom Rekha does not play cricket. That much is known. She took three weeks to appear before the decorous Hamid Ansari, chairman of the Rajya Sabha, to recite the few simple words that made her a distinguished member of India’s most august House. I discount totally nasty suggestions that this delay was prompted by discomfort about the company she would have to keep. Nor did she have any worries about the script for the occasion; an adaab before Hamid Ansari is an easy glide for anyone who has opened the scene in Umrao Jaan. Rekha is a big girl now. But do you have any idea how long it takes for a big girl to decide what to wear on her big day? Have a heart. And if you cannot have a heart for a heartthrob like Rekha, then you are utterly heartless.

The Whiff of 1969

From Byword- India Today


There is a straight connect between the knee and the tongue: Through the jerk. When a political knee jerks, it smashes into your chin, cuts your tongue and produces garble that you can regret in the luxury of time. Mrs Sushma Swaraj is a veteran who has seen the seasons, and is careful with words. She must be wondering which slip of the mind persuaded her to describe Pranab Mukherjee, the leader of her House, the Lok Sabha, and Hamid Ansari, chairman of the Rajya Sabha, as men of insufficient stature for the post of President of India. To be fair, she possibly meant that her preferred candidate for President,
Abdul Kalam, had higher stature than Congress nominees. But that is not what the world heard.

A lapse lasts only as long as a news cycle. The hurry to name candidates is quite inexplicable. There are still six weeks left for nominations; and 10 for the actual poll. This is the time to ponder; judgment can come later.

Long used to filling Rashtrapati Bhavan by selection, political parties seem a trifle bemused by the prospect of a genuine election. Congress is merely repeating what it did in 2007: Throwing up names to check which will float, which will be punctured by pellets, and which will sink under their own deadweight. In 2007 Pranab Mukherjee was on the first Congress list. Mrs Sonia Gandhi sabotaged Mukherjee only after he shifted from probable to possible, after endorsement from the Left. She then pulled out Mrs Pratibha Patil from well-deserved anonymity, aware that a short deadline left little opportunity for debate. The early Congress bird does not necessarily get the worm. 2012 is different for at least two reasons. After five years of Mrs Patil, Indians want someone with dignity, calibre and honesty as their President. Another sleight-of-the-hand choice might, just conceivably, muster up numbers in the electoral college, but will be punished by public opinion.

In 2007, discussions were about candidates, not victory. Today, Congress is racked with uncertainty because it heads a coalition that is invulnerable on paper and vulnerable in practice. Numbers do not bring stability; governance does. upa 1 had focus and cogency, as well as allies who knew the value of questions. That partnership of the willing has degenerated into an alliance of the haphazard. Congress has destabilised itself; and this infection has spread to allies. If the axis of a coalition becomes unsteady, the rim cannot hold. Defeat in UP or Punjab or Delhi is only a symptom; the wasting disease is shrinking credibility.

Each week something happens, minor or major, to jolt a party already in grip of ceaseless tremors. Examine the catalogue of the past seven days. A former Maharashtra chief minister is indicted in high-rise corruption. A former national spokesman of the party is trapped in low-rise shenanigans. A court hears allegations of corruption against the Union home minister. Revolt begins to unhinge the most successful Congress CM, in Assam. Rumour gives the Congress CM in Andhra only a few more weeks in office. A frightened Government tries to frighten media with a private member’s “Print and Electronic Media Standards
and Regulations Bill, 2012”. It seeks to legitimise censorship and authoritarian coercion through familiar means, like an annual licence renewal and punitive fines for “unverified and dubious material”, a phrase whose elasticity could bankrupt most media companies through legal fees. Government, incidentally, never has a problem with lawyers’ fees: It pays them with your money. The author of this proposed legislation is Meenakshi Natrajan, whose fame rests on her
proximity to Rahul Gandhi. Congress spokesmen deny Rahul Gandhi’s role; but you could hardly expect them to confirm it.

Curiously, neither the Government nor the Opposition has a majority in this Lok Sabha. The Opposition is in disarray since the largest Opposition party, bjp, has not successfully negotiated the terms of reference for a viable alternative. The Government is not strong enough to govern; the Opposition is not strong enough to displace it. Government wafts along from crisis to crisis on this anomaly. The situation is reminiscent of 1969. Exploiting uncertainty with great skill, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi defied her own party and put up V.V. Giri against the official Congress nominee Sanjeeva Reddy. Presidential campaigns are conducted in silence. When 1969’s deals were done, every traditional line between left, right and centre had blurred. No one was certain which way the vote would go. Mrs Gandhi triumphed thanks to the Akali Dal and the second preference votes of a west UP leader, Chaudhary Charan Singh. In six years, the Akalis as well as Charan Singh were in Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency jails; in 1977, they routed Congress and made Sanjeeva Reddy President.

In 1969 Mrs Gandhi prepared two speeches on counting day. One of them was meant for defeat, in which case she would have resigned. Selection is tick-tac-toe. An election is a game with formidable stakes.

Spring comes to Malaysia

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (March 6)

Anyone can get angry. But to rise in anger, it helps to be young. The young constitute the heart of any uprising for two good reasons. They have not yet had time to compromise. Their mobility is still unhampered by the usual constraints, otherwise known as the litany of social security that keeps us locked into the conventional, of job, family, property. The second reason is more interesting. The most important stimulant in the complex mix that instigates a mass movement is hope, not anger.

Hope is the positive face of anger. The first two decades of the 21st century will be remembered as the season of volcanic rage across those parts of the world subdued into stagnation in the name of isms [faith, economic philosophy, patriotism] that were often nothing more than pathetic alibis for authoritarian exploitation by local elites. There is a frisson in the air that is reminiscent of the first half of the 20th century, when there was turbulence against colonial power. This time the post-colonial world is challenging those who have usurped authority and denied their people the essence of ferment: freedom. Freedom is not merely independence from foreign rule. It is, equally, freedom from local dictatorship.

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M J AKBAR : Books by M J Akbar

Don't miss seeing Mr. M J Akbar at Writer's Week, Day 2. The program is chaired by Mr. Pal Ahluwalia

"Tinderbox, a history of Pakistan that reaches back to the 12th century and reads like a thriller. Akbar is an impassioned and knowledgeable thinker." - Prof. Pal Ahluwalia

LISTEN TO PODCAST - INTERVIEW OF M J AKBAR BY MARK COLVIN ON TINDERBOX ( ABC Interview) 2nd March 2012

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST - 27 mins

Read the INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

The art of the jostle

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (January 22)

Which of the two is more difficult to deal with in the political style of South Asia: affection or anger? In physical terms, the first. The principal motif of any display of popular support is the jostle. Whether it is Yousaf Gilani on his way to the Supreme Court in Islamabad, or Mulayam Singh Yadav scrambling towards the legislature in Lucknow, supporters feel entitled to test the body warmth of their leaders by getting as close to him as possible.

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Salt of the Earth

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (January 29)

The virtues of salt are infinite, both in diet and language. Salt was a symbol of the honour code in the institution that held together empires and colonies, the army. The metaphor for a soldier's loyalty was salt. If you were true to your salt, you remained loyal to whosoever's salt you had eaten. You were namakhalal. The opposite, namakharam, is still an accusation that stings, although contemporary values are determined by mercantile attitudes rather than ancient oaths. In today's job market, one is more loyal to the next salary than word given to the company you kept.

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The Tortured Eleven

From Byword- India Today (January 27)

The historic moment has arrived for a radical revolution in the rules of the game. There is no other option, if we want to protect hapless Indian masses from severe bouts of depression, leading directly to loss of national vigour and collapse of carefully nurtured pride. Cricket must now be played according to the laws of boxing.

Compared to cricket, boxing is a humane and civilised sport. It knows when to stop. If the referee feels that a contest has become a one-sided exercise in hammering, and infers that while a boxer might remain technically on his feet but his brain has become softer than an election candidate's morals, he arbitrarily stops a bout. By all norms of decency, the Australia-India series should have been halted. It is immoral to see eleven mature men, a fusion of superb spirit and individual brilliance, pummel a patchwork coalition of Dad's Army and Mum's Brats with ruthless ease and consistency. One of the significant successes of 20th century diplomacy was the Geneva Pact. It has banned torture. Why then does this callous world permit such unbridled torture on the cricket field? Why doesn't the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Amateurs) intervene in such a humanitarian crisis?

Purists will argue that India lost its way when Rahul Dravid dropped Mike Hussey at Melbourne in the first Test, and Australia recovered from 27 for 4 to an unbeatable 240 in the second innings. That sort of comment might, at best, fetch you a free coffee from naive friends. Wars are not lost because an officer dropped a flag. Every Indian journalist on tour has by now met the Australian taxi driver who asked the question, "What's gone wrong with your team, mate?" That question misses the point as inevitably as Indian batsmen miss the ball. India does not have a team. It has half-a-dozen players who are punishing their ageing limbs in search of even more cash from an indefatigable lottery. Some batsmen are more anxious about the prospect of free land from chief ministers under the spurious excuse that they are setting up cricket academies, than about their next score. A heretical question is circling around even the finest we have seen: are you playing for Bharat or for the Bharat Ratna? The formidable patrician Dr W.G. Grace, whose beard was as long as his wit was sharp, once told an uppity bowler who had the temerity to get him out that the British spectator had come to see Grace bat, and an upstart bowl. He continued at the crease. We should now apply that useful principle to Sachin Tendulkar: let him get his 100th 100, and get on with stitching together a totally new team, including at least one 17-year-old who can become our next Sachin.

Perhaps it is wrong to get harsh with Sachin Tendulkar, who still has runs to offer. Cricket is not a game you can play alone. But Sachin might yet want to recall what Vijay Merchant, the great Mumbai sportsman, once said: You should retire when the public still asks why, not when. But Merchant belonged to a generation when a Test player got one pound sterling as spending money per day on a foreign tour. Those players didn't know how to spell a five-letter word called 'crore'.

Don't get me wrong. There is nothing unethical about the wealth that now dominates the game. But money increases accountability. Indian cricket is, instead, controlled by a crony system in which administrators, selectors, players and their chosen commentators protect one another. Australia became invincible in my book on the day its captain Michael Clarke refused to cross Don Bradman's score when he could have easily done so. That was not merely team before self; it was homage to Australia's history, and a young genius telling us, with astonishing humility, that he would not break an implicit honour code.

If there was a Border-Gavaskar trophy for alibis, however, Indians would have returned with heaps of silver. Gautam Gambhir's throwaway accusation that the hosts had fixed the pitch was beneath contempt. Lose, but don't cry. It was not defeat that shamed India, but the manner in which the side crumbled repeatedly. Of course the players never allowed their performance to affect their camera-perfect preening. These guys are professional. After all, they spend more time on television than soap opera stars. Even a newcomer grimaces with distaste at the umpire after having pitched four balls short and one full in a single over. Nothing is ever his fault. And he either already has or will soon get an advertising contract to prove it.

The majestic Dr Grace had some useful advice for fellow cricketers faced with columns such as this one. "Never read print, it spoils one's eye for the ball." If India's present eleven had any eye left for the ball, there wouldn't be such print either.

The year of ludicre

From Byword- India Today (January 20)

What precisely is the difference between ridiculous and ludicrous? With their inter-changeable syllables they even sound like each other. Philology is not very helpful. One word has a root, ridicule; but there is no 'ludicre' in English. Why? Since language does not have a Pope whose word is law, we will never get an answer. My own view, that ridiculous is pathos and ludicrous is bathos, is probably no more than a literary conceit dredged up to justify the inexplicable.

Since lists are a congenital part of year-end rituals, one feels obliged to offer some sort of homage to custom. A short list of two will do: the most ridiculous, and the most ludicrous. A rummage through politics poses a problem. There is simply too much to choose from. It doesn't seem worth the effort. The harvest is so much better outside the realm of pomp, power and pretty sordid levels of corruption.

Nothing I have heard in the deathbed year of 2011 was more ridiculous than Sourav Ganguly's command to our cricket team in Australia on the "Agneepath Series": Be Fearless! After which he added a paean to his own fearlessness. That was both cheeky and thick. Long before he retired, Ganguly began to play cricket with his neck: his neck was far more agile than his bat against the rising ball. On more than one occasion Ganguly developed mysterious back aches at the sight of a green pitch on the first morning. Whenever the world's quickies were short of a laugh all they had to do was watch a video of Ganguly trying to get out of the way, and the party could begin.

Ganguly had class, but he lacked courage. No one is perfect. Virender Sehwag has courage by the bucket, and talent by the pail, but when it comes to judgment you need to measure it by a tablespoon. That is him. Take it or leave it, and we take it, happily, for the joy at Sehwag's presence far outweighs the sniffle at his departure. On the other hand if you want an example of the ludicrous, you can watch the rate at which hair is reappearing on Sehwag's head. Since we don't watch Sehwag to study the pace of hair transplants, it doesn't matter. (Incidentally, what do Australians call the Agneepath Series? Probably the XXXXpath Tests; the Xs are of course code for a fourletter word called 'fire'.)

We may have to search elsewhere, however, for the heights of ludicre (what the heck: let's coin a word for the new year) established in 2011. It is well known that Press Council Chairman Justice Markandey Katju's heart is in the right place, and his high intellect worthy of those who have achieved a place on the Supreme Court bench. But his mind does like an occasional walk in space. He has said, in his new avatar as conscience-keeper-cum-godfather of hacks, that journalists can be unread, tasteless and enjoy a bit of opium in the office. In his ideal world, cricket and Dev Anand's death do not constitute frontpage news. By such Olympian standards he has a lot of work ahead, so let us wish him a happy new year.

But his campaign for a Bharat Ratna to Mirza Ghalib and Saratchandra Chattopadhyay is ludicrous. One of my great personal regrets is insufficient knowledge of Urdu, and ignorance of Persian: the two books I would carry to the proverbial desert island are the complete works of Shakespeare and Ghalib. Ghalib's poetry is eternal, but his views did not always belong to the narrative of the modern India. Ghalib lived through 1857. He watched 23 Mughal princes being hanged and fellow Dilliwallahs being massacred by merciless British columns. Ghalib was more interested in a pension from Queen Victoria, as is evident from his diary, Dastambuy, than a war for independence. This does not diminish his poetry, but it does raise questions about his politics.

Justice Katju has read a million more books than any silly journalist, but perhaps he has not come across Joya Chaterji's masterly Bengal Divided (Cambridge University Press, 1996). He would surely have noticed a speech that Saratchandra, an undoubted literary genius, made in 1926. There isn't space for the full text, but a few sentences establish the flavour-and trust me, I am leaving out the more gruesome bits: "The truth is that if Muslims ever say they want to unite with Hindus, there is no greater hoax. The Muslims came to India to plunder it, not to establish a kingdom... Unity can only be realised among equals... 'Hindu-Muslim unity' is a bombastic slogan... Hindustan is the homeland of the Hindus." Et al. Saratchandra's India was not the India that Mahatma Gandhi lived and died for.

The past has its glories. The past has its dilemmas. The past has its mistakes. The past has its rage. Shall we reserve the Bharat Ratna for those who fought for a future in which every Indian is an equal?

City Of Wailing Walls

From Byword- India Today (January 20)

The most complex word to explain is surely normalcy. The standards of 7,000 years flutter over the beautifully-lit battlements of Jerusalem. The sun sinks; the temperature plummets; the decibels fade: it has become a city of silence. The living trip warily around the dead, who are exalted in prophets' tombs, or massed in graveyards, or echo within memory and prejudice in competitive, combative narratives.

Jerusalem is the theatre of the final judgment for Jews, who will either descend to gehenna (Arabic: jahannum) down the hill, or pass through God's gate of mercy above. Christians lament the betrayal of their saviour, Jesus, not merely by Judas, whose guilt drove him to suicide, but also by Peter, who choked whatever anguish he may have felt. They mourn the crucifixion and celebrate resurrection. Muslims glory in the ascension of Prophet Muhammad to heaven from the rock on the mount at the spot where Solomon built his great temple.

If faith was not enough, Jewish' Crusader and Arab empires have left their mark on stone. Dinner conversation creeps through the intricacies of claim and survival, possession and legitimacy, construction and decay, before it gets lost in the labyrinths of ultra orthodoxy, Salafist exclusion, aggression, response and the diminishing core of secular liberalism.

Fear, pride, bitterness and the excitable phantoms of suspicion hammer away at Jerusalem's humanists. Time has not been kind; it has created new barriers in the city famous for walls. Today's divisions, marked in cement and electricity, cut through emotions like frozen laser beams. Sunrise through a red haze over east Jerusalem brings light, but not much clarity. The horizon is lost in the Judean desert, among the Jordan hills, battlefields of a war in all its creative facets.

Within the city, a turn of a street defines the difference between the first world and third. But the first is not always a modern world. The last time I saw the Wailing Wall of the Temple, devotees mingled; this time they were separated by gender, testimony to the rising grip of ultra orthodox Jews upon the holy city. Their numbers have been estimated at some 2,40,000 in a population of 7,00,000; roughly the same number consider themselves secular Jews. The rest are largely, but not solely, Muslim Palestinians. They live in Jerusalem because they are determined never to leave. They do not, however, participate, awaiting instead another tide to shift the destiny of unborn children. A century is a mere page in a long history.

Palestinians lost their part of Jerusalem in the 1967 war. Since then, the defeated have been in search of alibis and victors have been in search of peace. If the first is delusion, then the second is destabilising. Attrition debilitates one tiny nerve a day, but eventually it leaves both sides unnerved.

Israel might be able to deal with Palestine, but how long can it deal with the world? It can't build electronic walls against London and Paris. I picked up Haaretz, Israel's leading newspaper, established in 1919, just after the Balfour Declaration that set the stage for the creation of Israel in November 1948, on Tuesday, January 17, for breakfast reading. Here is a mix of the day's news. In London, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg condemned Israeli settlements on Palestinians' land as "deliberate vandalism". In Paris the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament had published a report accusing Israel of using water as "a weapon serving the new apartheid". 450,000 Israeli settlers, it pointed out, used more water than 2.4 million Palestinians. Vandalism. Apartheid. These were words being used not by the Muslim Brotherhood but by friends of Israel.

The enemy, in the meantime, had switched generations. Hackers based in Saudi Arabia, with net names like Group XP and Nightmare Force, had exposed details of thousands of Israeli credit cards, blocked access temporarily to El Al, the national airline, and engineered the crash of the Tel Aviv stock exchange website. The young Arabs behind this technological warfare promised much more, even as Israel's tech-security elite scrambled to build yet more walls, this time in cyberspace. On the edit page of the same day's Haaretz, columnist Yitzhak Laor said all he needed to say in the headline over his short, sharp piece: "Arabs have never been equal under the law". Many would find such news good reason for not reading a newspaper. But there is an uplifting part of the story. Israel has a free press, guarded vigilantly by Israelis with a strong liberal conscience. It is such a welcome fact in a dictator-rich neighbourhood where a whisper has often been the only instance of free media.

Conflict is always dangerous to the survival of a liberal. But it is only when the liberal voice commands that peace will obey.

Toxic circle in deadly triangle

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (January 15)

Pakistan's first coup was led by a civilian. When the bureaucrat-turned-Governor General Ghulam Mohammad arbitrarily dismissed Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin on 17 April 1953 he was a little apprehensive about intervention by Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. He had reasons to be worried, because Pakistan was still a Dominion State, and the Queen was legal monarch of the Dominion. Pakistan became fully independent when it adopted a democratic Constitution on 2 March 1956, but it never got the chance to become a democracy because General Ayub Khan stepped in through a military coup before an election could be held. What is curious is that 56 years later its civilian rulers still look abroad for help in a crisis.

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Bedside manners

From Byword- India Today (January 13)

The much-married diva Elizabeth Taylor had an unanswerable riposte for a pesky reporter after one of her husbands, Mike Todd, went up to the Great Hollywood in the Sky. "Mike's dead," she said, "what do you want me to do, sleep alone?"

Elizabeth Taylor should be formally recognised as the defining icon of contemporary Indian politics. True love has its limits. Romance is nice, but not essential to fill a bed. What do you expect political parties to do when a partner is dead or departed? In practical terms, the second is worse than the first, just as a divorcee has more problems than a widow.

Alliances do not come apart for tactical reasons. They disintegrate over strategic interests. In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee and Congress are not squabbling. They are preparing for the inevitable battle for the same space. Both Mamata and Congress know that the Left Front will need a decade in Bengal before it can revive, but that there is an election due in another four years. The Congress will be Mamata's principal opposition in the next Assembly elections. For the Congress, the Trinamool Congress is an usurper and a maverick intervention in what should have been a natural return to power for the Congress.

The Congress lost Bengal in stages, through a two-step alliance between a breakaway Congress faction and the Left. Its first manifestation, in the 1967 elections, was the United Front. It took ten turbulent years, including a bloody Naxalite insurrection and the Emergency, for the Left Front to emerge as the natural ruling force of Bengal in 1977. While there is no certainty in politics, it is possible that Congress will mount a similar two-stage assault on Mamata Banerjee, which means an initial alliance with the Left in the next Assembly polls. Mamata Banerjee is certainly worried about such a possibility, not least because it makes sense for those determined to dislodge her at any cost.


Congress and Left are not in a hurry because time is always on the side of Opposition. Mamata Banerjee is in a hurry for precisely the same reason. She has to maximise her strength at the peak of her popularity. There is after all only one direction in which you can travel from a peak, downwards. Mamata Banerjee has a vested interest in a mid-term poll, because she (along with Jayalalithaa) is certain to make huge gains from a Parliament election. She could easily have 30 or even more MPs if polls were held this year, with commanding Cabinet portfolios in the next Central government. Some of the butter salesmen in her entourage might even be encouraging dreams about the Prime Minister's gaddi.

Ideally, Congress would have wanted Mamata Banerjee to merge her party into the national organisation, but the Lady of Calcutta has tasted independence, always dear to a Bengali's temperament. Conversely, the patterns emerging out of Uttar Pradesh suggest a slow transition that fructify into a Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance that could, in a few years, lead to merger. Congress is not as hopeless in UP as it is in Bihar, but nor is it a natural claimant for power. It needs some bulk infusion of ground presence, in addition to its high-flyer leaders. SP provides that. There are no serious ideological differences between the two parties, given that ideology has shrivelled into a corpse anyway.

SP faces one serious problem, however. For nearly half a century UP has been a rewarding playground for fractious parties. The reasons are slowly becoming irrelevant. UP's political consciousness, shaped by the freedom movement, as a bulwark of nationalism and natural home of prime ministers, will reassert itself, and sooner rather than later. The next general elections could well be the last in which regional parties get any mileage; after that the state will gravitate between the Congress and the BJP. Regional leaders will have to choose in order to survive. The appetite for separate identity will fade once the vote begins to wither.

Mulayam Singh Yadav was weaned by Dr Ram Manohar Lohia's socialist, anti-Congress thesis. His son and heir Akhilesh wears the party red cap but has no real interest in such baggage. Mulayam is a child of the Hindi movement of the 1960s. Akhilesh is a child of the English movement that has been such a remarkable fact of the last two decades in India. The British Raj has been replaced, after an uncertain gap of a few decades, by an English Raj. Its powerful bureaucrats in media have already discovered, to their delight, that Akhilesh is "one of us". The English-centric Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav make comfortable partners, and might wonder why they are contesting on separate symbols, and for the same Muslim vote, by a general election in 2019.

Both in the contrivance of Hollywood and the simulation of politics, marriage is a pact held together by convenience.

Overtake, and die happily ever after

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (January 8)

Philosophers use deconstruction as an academic tool to understand intention or deceit behind words. In India, deconstruction is a highway epidemic. We construct a beautiful road with World Bank or Japanese funds, and then deconstruct it, bit by bit, pothole by pothole, entirely with Indian ingenuity. Indians never need foreign aid to destroy. This is totally within the Indian range of core competence.

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On the Record

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (January 1)

The principal difference between an "off the record" and "on the record" conversation with a politician is that the former is likely to be much closer to the truth. Off-the-record does not mean outside-the-discourse; after all, the best way to keep anything to yourself is to remain silent. When a politician chooses to talk without attribution, it only means he, or indeed she, is sending a message with an in-built denial clause. Off-the-record is a means of placing frustration and anger into public play. This is par for the course, and far more fun than the carefully chosen phrases of official fudge.

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The world of Maya

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (December 25)

That formidable number cruncher of the Mayan civilisation who, 5,125 years ago, initiated a calendar which decided, without much by way of explanation, that its last date would be 21 December 2012, had one distinct advantage over any contemporary astrologer. He isn't around to find out whether he was right.

So will the world end in a little less than 12 months?

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Different Strokes

From Byword- India Today (December 23)

Dear Doctor Dubai:
You are a very busy man, Doc, as anyone who commands the sole confidence of the President of Pakistan must surely be, so I hesitate to waste your time over a niggle. But this niggle just won't go away. On December 6, President Asif Ali Zardari unexpectedly left his country ostensibly in search of your care in Dubai. Zardari returned to Pakistan on December 19 amid intense speculation that he would disappear again, this time for a more generous absence. It seems, therefore, that the fate of a nation hangs on a niggle.

Doc, all you have told us is that Zardari had "stroke-like symptoms". This carefully mysterious formulation has left us a trifle confused and a bit thirsty for more information. Every stroke may have stroke-like symptoms, but every symptom does not, it seems, owe its origin to a stroke.

So, Doc, was it a stroke or not a stroke? If it was a stroke, where did it strike? If it was merely "stroke-like" then you could perhaps let us know what it was like.

Please don't take this personally, Doc. But was there anything specific in those "symptoms" that required treatment in Dubai and only from your capable hands and doubtless brilliant mind? Are there no doctors in Islamabad, or Lahore, or Karachi, capable of dealing with dislikeable symptoms? One asks because nasty wags in Pakistan and despicable rumour-mongers in India are thoughtlessly spreading the idea that the President of Pakistan does not trust any hospital in Pakistan, and is terrified of being poisoned or some such. This cannot be true, of course, for if a President cannot trust his own people then he has no right to continue in office. But loathsome western journalists have even reported that Zardari was "recuperating at his home in Dubai" after, apparently, you sorted out those malicious symptoms. If Islamabad isn't safe even for some much-needed recuperation by its President, then you are up a creek without a paddle, isn't it?

Your medical knowledge is vast, Doc, so perhaps you could enlighten us on this one, without, I hope, violating the Hippocratic oath. Is it possible for a President to get a stroke from a memorandum?

I am referring of course to the memo passed on to the Pentagon by a Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz, allegedly on behalf of Zardari's ambassador to Washington Hussain Haqqani, begging American generals to avert a possible coup in Islamabad. Haqqani, predictably, denied authorship but the memo was so toxic that Haqqani has disappeared into a coma. His resignation on November 22 did nothing to impede the rampaging infection of the memo. Haqqani is not a diplomat, by profession or temperament; he was and is star yes-man in the Zardari court. His appointment to Washington was a graceand-favour gift from Zardari. Add two and two and you get the contemporary Pakistan crisis.

Zardari ran but could not hide. His government fired shots in the air, insisting that Parliament, press, and its friends in Lahore and across the world would never tolerate another coup. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was not particularly impressed by bluster. Instead, the army chief showed that his grasp of politics and the comparative power of his country's institutions was more astute than civilians had bargained for. The army petitioned the Supreme Court to investigate the origins of memo which "unsuccessfully attempted to lower the morale of the Pakistan Army". Very smart: the memo was a failure, but its intentions were treasonable. If the Supreme Court after due process can find someone higher up the civilian command chain guilty, then Zardari is pincered. This would, in effect, become the most legitimate coup in Pakistan's history. Kayani could recover his own, and the army's, prestige by refusing to occupy the consequent vacant space, and letting a general election find the next president and prime minister.

Zardari recognises a crossroads by instinct. On the night of Friday the 16th, Kayani had a threehour meeting with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, an unusually long chat for peacetime palavers. Within 48 hours Zardari was back to his residence in Pakistan from his home in Dubai. Never imagine that a scapegoat cannot hear the sound of sharpening knives; indeed, the fever of his imagination raises decibels. When a military-political commentator like Lt Gen Talat Masood (retired) states deadpan that civilian and military leaderships are on a collision course, Zardari doesn't need any advice on who will be in the middle of that collision. At the age of 56, a hospital bed in Dubai, with recuperation facilities nearby, must be immensely preferable to years in a damp Attock prison, even if it is on the banks of a brisk Indus within breathtaking view of the Himalayas.

So you see, Doc, how vital those "stroke-like symptoms" are? Do reply when you find a minute.

Gathering power of moral snowflakes

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (December 18)

You can create a Lokpal, but how do you change India?

Anna Hazare's movement has been among the most important developments since Jayaprakash Narayan's stirring leadership in the 1970s marked the second phase of that long historic process known as minting a nation out of a country. Anna's breathtaking contribution is that he has forced us to recognise that there is cancer in the body politic and that it is entering a terminal stage. He has withstood threat, pressure and inducement, including temptations aimed toward both ego and bank balance. He has insisted with courage and conviction that we find a doctor and fund a hospital that will begin to address this national disease. Both are essential, since there can be no forward movement until we identify and institutionalise those who can heal the patient. But diagnosis, however brilliant, is not a cure; it is only the beginning of a process. The next step, if anything, is harder.

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How do you censor a teashop?

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (December 11)

Spokesmen do not speak for themselves; they are their masters' voices, or they don't remain the voice for very long. Ministers, similarly, do not propose dramatic, or drastic, policy options without implicit clearance from their boss. This is standard practice. Kapil Sibal is not solely responsible for the proposed censorship of social media, currently the most effective communication system on the net.

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Death takes no prisoners

From Byword- India Today (December 9)

Dev Anand hated death as intensely as he loathed the consequences of time. Age itself was an unbearable coffin; and in some unfathomable way he believed that death could be postponed indefinitely. He thought of death as some kind of personal defeat, and defeat did not enter his vocabulary. He might falter, but never fail. For a six-decade superstar life does not imitate art so much as become an art form.

His movies always had a happy ending, and there was no way he was going to deny himself the same privilege off screen. He was not quite a Peter Pan, the child who froze time, but he remained rooted in his Twenties, unable or unwilling to step beyond a bracket that distilled the exuberance of existence into love, sex, success and adulation.

But a body does not have the flexibility of the imagination, and Dev Anand chose to wrap his neck in flowing scarves to curtain the tell-tale desolation of skin stretching away from flesh. He could hardly hide his face, but a miracle occurred each time I met him. The years visibly peeled off, through his eyes, driven out gradual layer by layer by the dazzle of his smile and the mystique of memory as conversation crept inevitably back into the past. There was nowhere else to go. The past was the only golden age, and if gold needed constant burnishing to glisten, it would get all the massage it required. In that exultant narrative, Dev Anand was both his name, a God of Joy, as well as Kama Dev, God of Love; the two were indistinguishable.

The one startling variation in a resplendent career was Guide. The film had very little to do with its origins in R.K. Narayan's book; Dev and his brilliant younger brother Vijay, who directed the best of Dev's oeuvre, threw it out of the window and made their own movie. Guide's Rosie, played exquisitely by Waheeda Rehman, was not mere rebellion, but a revolution that injected gender independence into the consciousness of an India still wandering through the fog of social norms.

Guide is also the only film in which Dev Anand dies. But this death was a strategic manoeuvre. He resurrects triumphantly as eternal truth, beyond the tragedy of time. No ghost has ever been so handsome.

While Dilip Kumar made a lachrymose fortune as part of his public persona obligations, and Raj Kapoor evolved from saving his trousers in Awara to saving the nation in Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, Dev Anand stayed faithful to an insouciant street smile, whether in Baazi's cheap gambling dens, or amid diamonds in Jewel Thief. He seemed ambivalent about smart theft; his loyalties were securely with law and order, but there was always a faint suggestion that his heart belonged to the panache of sophisticated crime.

Dev Anand was 42 when Guide was released in 1965. He solved his unacknowledged midlife crisis with style. He created the 1960s look with a sequence of memorable hits: Kala Bazar, Hum Dono, Bombai ka Babu, Asli Naqli, Tere Ghar ke Saamne, Guide, Jewel Thief, Johny Mera Naam, Tere Mere Sapne and Hare Rama Hare Krishna. He was the Sixties. His high collar shirts, exotic hats and ankle-length corduroys ended the baggies era. His heroines were a cast from heaven: Waheeda Rehman, Nanda, Sadhana, Suchitra Sen, Nutan, Vyajayantimala, Hema Malini and finally the only woman who broke his heart because she went over to Raj Kapoor for a role in Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Zeenat Aman. As he grew older, his girlfriends became younger. He had broken so many hearts it was but fair that someone should break his at least once.

When history is written, as it should be, the tipping point will be a subject of legitimate debate. When did the decline begin? His hand, it is true, began to go limp from the wrist in Kala Bazar (1960), but that remained no more than a personal oddity even when his pistol in Jewel Thief notoriously pointed 45 degrees south instead of straight at villains. The ebb began with Gambler, offered to a shocked public in 1971: Dev Anand had a straight handlebar moustache that Groucho Marx would have shunned. The icon of charisma had lost it. By the 1980s his films were nothing more than a tawdry list of embarrassments. But, to use a phrase that has never seemed more appropriate, it was "Never say die".

Dev Anand had the rare ability to make a stranger seem a friend, and a friend feel irreplaceable. Anyone who entered his aura returned with at least an anecdote. Alas, now that there is no one to contradict them, stories about personal encounters with Dev Anand will both magnify and multiply. But that is how a life becomes a legend.

The 5-point Political Reform Programme

From BYLINE- Sunday Guardian (December 4)

It is time for the father of economic reform to initiate political reform. Priority Number 1: Dr Manmohan Singh should abandon the oath of secrecy which Cabinet ministers take, very solemnly indeed, when being anointed to the highest level of government. Step 2: a ban on mobile phones during Cabinet meetings. Which of the two is more difficult? The first, since it is easier to amend the Constitution of India than change the ideological commitment of politicians to their self-image. Democracy has its demands.

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Chaos Theory, UPA Style

From Byword- India Today (December 2)

The decision on FDI in retail has been so clumsy that there is a counterintuitive theory to suggest that it must be secretly brilliant. There is always a good case to be made for chaos as an alternative to coma.

The Delhi variation of the chaos theory is persuasive, if you happen to belong to the innermost ring of the many concentric circles of power that constitute the capital of India. Thus travels the logic: the decision was taken during a Parliament session to deliberately provoke Opposition parties into hostility. A shut Parliament is good for a government without answers on contentious problems from the statehood of Telangana to the state of Anna Hazare. Add low economic growth (the rate has slipped to 6.9 per cent) and high inflation, and you have enough to keep Opposition hungry in Parliament. FDI successfully deflected the primary focus of a session during which BJP, with able help from Subramanian Swamy on the outside and former telecom minister A. Raja on the inside, hoped to whittle down Home Minister P. Chidambaram. The Almighty has turned an attentive ear to Chidambaram's prayers.

The corruption debate had only one side; a hapless Government under relentless attack. Foreign investment has at least two sides. Government can always claim that it will create jobs, help farmers and bring down prices-who's to check? These are projections drawn in smoke against a 10-year horizon, by which time most of today's leaders will be irrelevant. The helpful bit for the establishment is the existence of a mall class which hopes to turn India into America before the next general election, or at least within its lifetime. So, even if Rahul Gandhi takes a hammering in Uttar Pradesh next year, as his resident intellectual Jairam Ramesh seems to have whispered at the Cabinet meeting where the FDI decision was taken, the Youth Congress can always be sure of a warm welcome at any mall pub.

Pity, you can never be equally certain about what will come into the House with the storm you induce. There was never any danger to survival, since this Cabinet decision did not need confirmation by a vote in Parliament. This was a ruckus problem, not a mortality matter. The Congress was confident of being able to manage an aggregated Opposition. It was taken aback by a disaggregated Government. The leader of the House, Pranab Mukherjee, expected turbulence from Bengal, for he is familiar with Mamata Banerjee's style.

But Dr Manmohan Singh and his finance minister were thrown aback by the DMK's sudden discovery of spine. Sometimes injury can be good for your political health, and DMK has decided that it is not going to take its wounds lying down. Its strategy for Sonia Gandhi is borrowed from Mahatma Gandhi: it has begun a non-cooperation movement. It does not, as yet, demand independence from upa, but it wants a sort of Dominion status. It will make life as difficult as it can without seeking separation. The hurt at Kanimozhi's long imprisonment is apparent; in DMK eyes this was betrayal. Some insiders are livid; they are hinting that 2G money was shared in equitable proportions but DMK was left alone to twist in the wind.

If the Prime Minister was surprised by his allies, he must have been startled by the revolt over FDI within the Congress triggered by the leftish Defence Minister A.K. Antony. This was more than local political manoeuvring for while Antony fell silent, Ramesh Chennithala from Kerala and Sanjay Singh from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh decided that this would be a useful banner to unfold.

Denied the foreground, Anna Hazare flickered in and out of the screen from the background. Perhaps it is time to check out a seeming paradox.

The Anna Hazare movement is over, but it is not dead. It is over because it has completed its historic work. It is alive because it has successfully convinced Indians that corruption is the enemy they must destroy in order that the nation might survive. Some smug ministers imagine that Hazare's demand for radical change was maverick theatre, that the last scene has been played out and its impact can be erased by procrastination given the proverbial limitations of public memory. Memory might be fickle, but anger is not. Corruption has touched the national gut because it has corroded the body. Corruption is pervasive and persistent. Corruption is not sectarian. Retail FDI may enrage 10 per cent and enthuse a different 10 per cent, but bribery is the loathsome price 80 per cent pay to the 20 per cent with power.

In the immediate future, Anna Hazare might overplay his hand. He might even invite a few jeers. But the next general election will be a burial ground for anyone who thinks Anna Hazare's movement has lost its life.