Separate Deal

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Byline by MJ Akbar:Separate Deal

Trouble is, ma-in-law ain’t approved of history yet. Arms-wide-open George Bush and simple-but-hardly-simplistic Manmohan Singh summoned history to witness their alliance. "We have made history today, and I thank you," Dr Singh told his guest in Delhi. Very coy, very nice. But it isn’t legal yet. Marriage awaits mother-in-law’s approval.

Mother-in-law is the Congress of the United States. She is particularly watchful about errant sons who declare victory before she has checked the fine print.

Once upon a time, long long ago, a President of the United States of America offered the President of Pakistan a whole bunch of F-16s, and even collected cash on the deal. Pakistan is still waiting to put those fighters to some historic use.

I don’t want to be a party-pooper at a particularly cosy love-fest, but here are a couple of quotes printed in the March 3 edition of ma-in-law’s favourite newspaper, the Washington Post. Republican Ed Royce, chair of the International Relations Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Proliferation, thought the Delhi deal had "implications beyond US-India relations" and that the "goal of curbing nuclear proliferation should be paramount." Democrat Edward Markey, co-chair of the Bipartisan Task Force on Non-proliferation, called the agreement "a historic failure of this President to tackle the real nuclear threats we face".

When ma-in-law talks from the side of her face she can be a tough old bird.

If history is made, then it will be certainly made in one respect: it will be the first time that India will sign an international protocol that has implications for its nuclear programme and nuclear military assets. A series of Prime Ministers, cutting across party lines, has resisted the most serious pressure to sign on any dotted line. The potential to build a nuclear weapon was created by Jawaharlal Nehru; the ability to build it was confirmed by Indira Gandhi; the decision to go public was made by Atal Behari Vajpayee. The one thing they, and others in between, knew was that any signature became a commitment that might fetch flexibility in the present but could become a prison in the future.

Since this is the first agreement that India might have to sign, unless the American legislatures sabotage it or the present government in Delhi makes way for a more sceptical successor, I hope those who have drafted it have read every line, checked the top line, bottom line, underline and then checked the little comma hidden in the fine print that discusses the separation of 14 civilian nuclear plants from eight military ones.

This is a marriage built on separation, in more senses than one.

The two constituencies, Delhi and Washington, are offering distinctively separate narratives.

Here, in sum, is what the spokesmen of Dr Manmohan Singh will be telling us as they take their message to the country:

This agreement will permit India to produce fissile materials for its nuclear military needs, despite the fact that the recognised nuclear powers have halted, voluntarily, such production.

The fast-breeder reactors, which can make super-grade plutonium when fully operational, will not be under international inspection or safeguards.

India can now hope to make up to 50 nuclear weapons a year, for the availability of imported uranium frees local supplies for use in military reactors.

India gets the latest technology long denied to its scientists.

Listen to the narrative on the American side, some of which has already begun to be articulated, even by the extremely sophisticated and persuasive American negotiator, Nicholas Burns.

India enters the inspection regime, a far better situation than the zero-influence that existed so far. (It needs to be pointed out, of course, that India rose from drawing board to major nuclear power, without indulging in theft, only because of this zero-influence, a status that the Manmohan Singh government is in the process of bartering away.)

The fast-breeder reactors that India possesses will be isolated, and unable to get new technology, thanks to the inspections regime, ensuring, over time, stagnation or decline. Implication: India has been sold a lemon thanks to a gullible government.

The deal brings India into the American zone of influence, and turns it into a virtual ally with a potential for assistance in American strategic interests (that is code word for American intervention). India’s conventional arms programme now shifts dramatically into the supply chain of the American industrial-military complex. If the Indo-Soviet treaty kept India within the Soviet camp till the Soviet Union collapsed, then this agreement will keep India in the American parlour for the foreseeable future.

There is a great bonanza to American industry of arms sales (this will be the most persuasive argument in the Senate, because the one thing a legislator does not want to be accused of is preventing jobs). The starting figure, according to Pentagon officials who admittedly have not dealt with Indian bureaucrats so far, is nine billion dollars. That is a lot of dollars. Keep counting, Senator!

There is no political quid pro quo. The Soviet Union intervened when necessary to protect India’s position on issues like Jammu and Kashmir with a veto in the Security Council. America has given no such commitment. Indeed, Delhi’s leverage with Moscow is reduced with the shift in arms purchases. China will never support India over Pakistan in the Security Council and the West will have the pleasure of balancing Pakistan’s interests with India’s on issues like Kashmir.

With time, the narrative in Washington will doubtless take on other hues, since emerging questions will demand creative answers if the agreement is to be pushed through the Congress. Senator John Kerry publicly worried about fissile material during a visit to Delhi. Others are wondering whether such a reward for a nation that has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is not a signal for others to risk going nuclear. And then of course there is the weight of Pakistan’s pressure to which there may not be any immediate give, but which will make its play in the coming months. Pakistan remains a frontline state in Bush’s war on terror.

Such voices may not be consistent, or even necessarily logical, but they will demand to be heard. Some will pick up claims made in Delhi and ask the Bush administration for clarifications, as for instance on the delicate matter of how many nuclear weapons India is capable of making.

If Pakistan is truly lucky, it will have the extraordinary good fortune of escaping the Bush embrace. The indications are that Bush will not offer the terms of the deal with India to Pakistan. What does this mean?

It means, first, that while India will sign a limiting commitment on its nuclear programme, Pakistan will sign nothing. Pakistan can, therefore, be held down to nothing. Bush is going to be in power for only another two years, and that as a terribly lame duck. His approval ratings are below freezing point, and his own party is distancing itself from him, raising the question as to whether he has the political capital to push anything through Congress.

What are Pakistan’s options? Pakistan’s nuclear programme has been created with China’s help. China may not have technology as good as America’s, but it isn’t a junkyard either. As a friend, China will be much more reliable than America. This is not because of any character defect. America is a democracy, and therefore always vulnerable to democratic discourse. China is a dictatorship.

China, most crucially, will not be propelled by mere goodwill or friendship; its policy will hinge on self-interest. Since a critical rationale for the Bush shift is to help India become a counterweight to China, Beijing will respond by playing the Pakistan card against India. China has already assured Pakistan three more nuclear reactors, and you never hear of any fuel shortage problems in Islamabad. President Pervez Musharraf has gone on record to say that Pakistan has its options. Is this what he meant?

We may never know what the complete truth is. But keep your ears open when the mother-in-law starts asking questions on Capitol Hill in Washington.

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Peace of Justice

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline by MJ Akbar:Peace of Justice

If there is justice there will be peace. Nine men from Baroda were sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court in Mumbai for a massacre of innocents (known as the Best Bakery case) during one of the most terrible communal riots in our history, the Gujarat carnage of 2002; and every Indian can declare with pride that he or she lives in a nation that has not only democracy, but something more: institutions of justice that deliver in matters of honour, truth, life and death. A democracy is much more than counting votes once in five years. A democracy is about rights and wrongs each living day. The peace that democracy delivers, therefore, is a positive, creative, enhancing peace, not the peace of the graveyard that settles like a pall on nations condemned to dictatorship.

Democracy is about civil society and equality, of high courts as well as a scene I witnessed in a 7 a.m. Indian Airlines flight I took from Mumbai to Delhi on the morning of writing this column: an airhostess taking special care of an elderly Muslim man with a cap and a beard who was unsteadied by age as he walked uncomfortably into the aircraft. He was not at all wealthy; this could have been his first flight, perhaps taken for medical reasons. The airhostess gave him more help and attention than she offered anyone else. This is equality and civil society without prejudice in India. The Gujarat carnage is part of the truth; the airhostess is part of the larger truth. India is not secular because it is democratic. India is democratic because it is secular.

In a democracy, elections may be the court of first as well as last appeal, but there is so much space in between. Governments are unstable in a democracy, which is an excellent thing; but society is stable, which is even better. Governments are stable in a dictatorship, but society is unstable, constantly simmering under the pressure of a forced calm, and threatening to erupt at the slightest crack in the edifice. Those in power did everything they could to subvert justice in the Best Bakery case, using authority to try and undermine the judiciary and money to change the evidence. The police are a mighty force in India, and never mightier than when they attempt to become the law. Governments bullied and bribed witnesses who were poor and vulnerable: I would not be too harsh on the poor and vulnerable, for we have very little idea of what constant, daily pressure by the police can mean. The important, and vital, point is that justice survived the malfeasance of the system; perhaps that is the only point. The courts were assisted by the dedication and sheer, determined obstinacy of civil society leaders like Teesta Setalvad, who refused to be defeated by the acquittal of the accused by a court in Gujarat, and went to the Supreme Court. One of those sentenced to life imprisonment, Sanjay Thakkar, begged for mercy once the judgment was announced. He once must have thought that his mentor, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, would succeed in saving him from retribution. Thank God for Teesta Setalvad and the Supreme Court.

And thank God for a free media too.

There were two judgments on the murder of Jessica Lal, in which the prime accused was a rich thug called Manu Sharma, son of a former minister of the Union government of India, no less, Vinod Sharma. There is little purchase in naming the political party to which he belonged, for all parties are infected with this insolent, brutal Delhi plague. The facts are simple, and their simplicity itself is evidence of how Delhi’s ruling elite believes that it can get away with murder after it has got away with theft. Jessica Lal, a model, was shot dead in public in a restaurant owned by Bina Ramani. It was a crime of power, wealth, corruption and arrogance: power was the means to wealth, wealth was the source of corruption, and corruption is the reason for this murderer’s arrogance. The murderer took out a gun in full public view, shot Jessica dead and walked off. As simple as that. The case was widely reported. On 21 February additional sessions judge S.L. Bhayana acquitted Sharma. The judge was hapless if not helpless: he explained that the three key eyewitnesses had turned hostile.

The media delivered the second judgment on this case. It refused to accept the judicial verdict. One of the truths of Delhi is the fact that the police believe that they are employed not only to implement the law, but also to twist it according to their will. The media refused to let police get away with their lucrative indolence in this case. Every newspaper gave headlines that accused the authorities of corruption. No editor, of print or audiovisual media, consulted anyone else. Each editor reached his or her own conclusion, and the conclusion was similar. The stench of corruption was too strong for even the most cynical nose.

This anger was not limited to the police. It was also addressed to the New Class that has become a running, cancerous sore of Delhi. It consists of rich, political or pseudo-political (by which I mean hangers-on of political progeny) thugs who are brimming with black money, and who are convinced that they are a phone call away from safety if they get into trouble. Their cars are a menace on the streets; their behaviour a menace to social life; their criminal side a menace to life. They are the middlemen of deals, the scum that has become obese thanks to cuts from the billions that are spent by the government each year in purchases. Their behaviour might have been funny were it not so deadly. Many of them actually behave like villains from the screen, flaunting their power as if there is no accountability in Delhi’s ravenous jungle, and never will be. The media was also saying that Manu Sharma, a perfect example of this class, would not be permitted the luxury of indifference.

By Friday, the Delhi High Court had summoned the files of the Jessica Lal case from the Delhi police. This too was recognition of injustice.

Standards change; yesterday’s scandal becomes today’s morality; we stop asking questions in the name of friendship, or in the hope of a good time; the culture of consumerism becomes the primal law; your dress becomes your address. Sab chalta hai. Anything goes. Delhi is the world’s largest glasshouse: who shall throw the first stone? But there comes a moment when you no longer care whether the glasshouse remains intact or shatters. If that glasshouse is going to protect the killers at Best Bakery or the murderer of Jessica Lal, then it is time it got shattered into smithereens. Civil society rose in both instances. It threw stone after stone in the Best Bakery matter, rousing the conscience and the best instincts of the highest judiciary. It rose again in the matter of Jessica Lal, and the Delhi High Court has taken the initiative. But one stone was not sufficient in Best Bakery; and one stone might be insufficient in the case of Jessica Lal as well. The establishment has a very very thick hide, thickened further by the belief that the public has a very very short memory. The establishment has an invaluable weapon in time. The media woke up in the immediate aftermath of injustice. How long will it remain awake when the files wend their slow way through the courts, impeded by procrastination and fudge? Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty etc, but how eternal is eternal? The Delhi High Court has asked Delhi’s police commissioner to send a status report in four weeks and said it will hear the matter on 19 April. Six weeks is a pretty long eternity in media terms. We will see if media has the tenacity of a Teesta Setalvad or not.

The dead do not return. But they will haunt us until there is justice.

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A middle-aged government

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Byline By M.J. Akbar : A middle-aged government

Let me first record my deep pangs of envy whenever I see a column written by an American. There is never a shortage of fresh subjects for him or her. That, as you are aware, is the first law of columns: stay as far away from your last theme as possible. Repetition equals boredom and boredom kills a reader faster than stupidity. In America the highest authorities step in to rescue a dull week. Vice-president Dick Cheney shot up his good friend Harry Whittington instead of quail, to give an example, guaranteeing the wastage of a few forests of newsprint in comment. The most exciting thing an Indian vice-president does, alas, is write his autobiography. He also presides over a House of Parliament in which an MP might tear his hair or tear his shirt. It says something about Indian political culture that tearing one’s shirt can be more revealing than an autobiography.

Indian politics is more exciting than an Indian government, but the adrenaline of politics follows a bell curve. It peaks around elections and disappears into the slough of despond after the results. Politicking is a continuous activity, full of sliced backs and hypocritical fronts; politics is continual. We journalists are fortunate that elections now come around at fairly regular intervals, and that the Election Commission stretches each one to its maximum tensile strength, stopping the process just a step before complete and sudden breakdown. The longer the political game the more the number of fouls, errors, wrong passes, egomania and hopefully a penalty or two. That’s the stuff of headlines and sermons, the meat and potatoes of media. The Indian government, in contrast, just hums along, making announcements that interest no one, and pronouncements that are either innocuous or illusionary. How much staccato can you get from a hum?

But at least a hum makes some noise. A transition makes none. That is why no one has noticed a remarkable transition in Delhi.

The Union Government of Dr Manmohan Singh has slipped into middle age.

In a very important sense, that is literally true. Everyone knows that time flies, except when it stands still, which can be even more painful. Two years have disappeared since Dr Singh ushered in yet another dawn in the history of our democracy. A government is elected for five years. Delete the last year for goose pimples and jitters as everyone moves into election mode and goes into best-behaviour, and you are really left with only four years. So we are smack into the middle of this government’s natural life.

There are many ways in which we react to middle age. There are those for instance who worry much more about what is on top of their heads rather than what is inside. They welcome middle age by filling bathroom shelves with hair dye and spending extraordinary amounts of money on hair transplants. Others give way to the indifference of sag, letting their appetites do the talking and their stomachs do the bulging. Dr Manmohan Singh is lean and has not interfered with his hair. He has accepted middle age with realistic pessimism. I don’t think he quite has the courage to acknowledge a misspent youth. If you examine the record you realise, with a bit of a start, that government has virtually stood still for two years, rotating upon its hidden anxieties and apparent contradictions. Witness the evidence in two key areas, which could have formed the reputation of this government and perhaps reformed India in the process.

Its economic policies are still trapped in a tug of war between the critical periphery, the Marxists, who are right in Bengal and left out elsewhere, and a shrinking core, the Congress. Two years ago there was upbeat talk of reform with a human face. The face has been promised a facelift that might or might not become a reality in 2015. Economic reform is still in embryo, waiting for sufficient heat to facilitate its emergence.

Similarly in the crucial area of relations with Pakistan there is stagnation. President Pervez Musharraf, for all his extraordinary worries, has been more articulate, imaginative and original in the search for options on Kashmir. (Note: I used the word "options", not "solutions"; but the search for peace can only be done through the cluster of options.) Delhi’s response has been as swift and inept as a kneejerk. Heaven knows who does the thinking in Delhi. I rather suspect no one. The old foolishness of treating Pakistan as a "failed state" that will crumble under the pressure of its own fissures seems to have returned. Hence the strategy of stall, pretend and buy time. This middle-aged government has not heard of spectacles, so it has lost the vision it once possessed, and which Dr Manmohan Singh epitomised in his early days. Don’t expect anything spectacular anymore.

The rational Dr Singh seems to have concluded that he cannot be sure of how much time he has left. He wants to use the remaining bit of his term in office to do just one thing, and perhaps not much more. That one dimension is to improve relations with America. He genuinely believes that the final equation between India and the United States, once the give and take has been worked out, will shift the balance in India’s favour. India’s nuclear status will be recognised, and India’s economy will benefit from flows of capital and technology. There is nothing wrong with seeking good relations with America, and everything right about it. Only the very stupid would object to this on principle. On the other hand, you don’t have to be very wise to realise the merits of the old adage: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Dr Manmohan Singh, spurred perhaps by the thought that time is running out (middle age angst, really) is moving at a speed that seems reckless to many thoughtful Indians who worry that India’s most precious national asset, its nuclear military capability, is being compromised in the process. If this feeling becomes a conviction, this middle-aged government will not get passage to any other age. The Indian street has been nourished by the view that America is a democracy at home and a dictatorship abroad (I heard this again from an official at Mumbai airport on the morning of writing this column).

Indians do not make good stenographers. They simply do not like taking dictation.

High drama is good for journalism and columnists, but not necessarily so for the country. A middle-aged government should be averse to risk. They do say that one is most vulnerable to fatal heart attacks in middle age.

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The Answer is Gandhi

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline by MJ Akbar: The Answer is Gandhi












Sequence and consequence do not always follow the same logic: the publication of the gratuitously offensive cartoons against the Prophet of Islam (you can translate that, literally, to the Prophet of Peace for Islam means peace) has already resonated through contemporary events. It will also echo far into the future. Any single day’s newspaper was sufficient to indicate that simmering resentment against the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, for instance, found a reason to escalate into anger. There are too many questions around this conscious provocation by an irresponsible Danish newspaper, fuelled by a less than comprehensible Danish government, and not enough answers.

The first question must surely be the simplest one: Why? More than one answer has been offered. One editor of the paper appeared on European television and said, so primly that he was on the verge of sounding pompous, that the cartoons were not meant to hurt Muslims but only to represent, through an image, that a number of Muslims had become terrorists. This is the sort of argument that sounds reasonable to a neutral mind until you pare open the first layer of deception. If that was the purpose, why not use an image of Osama bin Laden? Why use the image of the Prophet, which by itself is offensive to a faith that rejects, very strongly, any iconography or deification? We have published cartoons on Osama fairly regularly in our papers without anyone raising any objection.

This is buttressed by the "freedom of press" argument, a view endorsed so strongly by the media of continental Europe (but not, repeat not, by British media) that sensible publications like Le Monde have reprinted the cartoons twice. Far be it for me to decry press freedom. It is my bread and butter. But I have yet to come across a nation or society that offers freedom of expression without the qualification of libel or similar safeguards. One of our editors asked the Danish embassy in Delhi to let us know if they had any libel laws. They promised to get back to us. We are still waiting. But text is not difficult to find in the age of Internet. I quote from Section 266B of the Danish penal code: "Any person who publicly or with the intention of dissemination to a wide circle of people makes a statement or imparts other information threatening, insulting or degrading a group of persons on account of their race, colour, national or ethnic origin, belief or sexual orientation, shall be liable to a fine, simple detention or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years." Section 140 adds, "Those who publicly mock or insult the doctrines or worship of any religious community that is legal in this country, will be punished by a fine or incarceration for up to four months."

This is as civilised as it gets. The reason for such legislation is not a history of abuse against Islam, but a history of virulent anti-Semitism, for which Europe holds some kind of pernicious record. I warmly applaud such laws which protect Jews from verbal and image-barbarism. There are laws in Europe by which anyone denying the Holocaust can end up in jail, and a poor British historian is in an Austrian jail at the moment for doing so. Excellent. Then why is the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, pleading helplessness? He did not have to convict anyone himself, for the very good reason that he cannot. But he could have easily referred the matter to his own country’s judiciary and awaited their decision. During the long months when nothing happened over the cartoons this would have been sufficient to calm Muslim unease over the insults. The cartoons appeared on 30 September. There was no public reaction in October, November, December and most of January. But there was official reaction. The Saudi and Libyan governments withdrew their ambassadors. The Danish Prime Minister, who is desperate for a peaceful dialogue now, held no press conferences then. Eleven ambassadors of Muslim countries wanted to talk to him. They got a polite letter which they construed as a snub.

One reason for the anger is the conviction of gratuitous bias against Muslims. It has now emerged, thanks to a story in the Guardian, that the same Danish newspaper rejected a series of cartoons against Jesus some three years ago because they were deemed to be offensive. It was the correct decision. Journalists like the editor of the German publication Die Welt, who has gone on record to say that the publication of the cartoons is "at the core of our culture" would not find enough freedom in his press to publish a cartoon (produced in a British newspaper, the Independent, in January 2003) showing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dining off Palestinian babies. I am a journalist too, and would not publish it either. But the editors of continental Europe have suddenly broken into paroxysms of moral indignation at any attempt to question their right to publish offensive cartoons against Islam. Freedom of press was not trotted out to defend nastiness against Jesus or indeed Israel’s Prime Minister. To do so now is mendacity.

The International Herald Tribune of 9 February reported that Fleming Rose, cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten (the Danish newspaper that started the controversy) told CNN that his paper was ready to publish cartoons of the Holocaust that were being encouraged by an irresponsible Iranian newspaper, as if two wrongs added up to a right. His newspaper, however, quickly denied any such intentions.

I was in Britain last weekend when this storm was raging. I don’t think that British newspapers have any less desire for a free press than their Continental counterparts. And yet, none of them published the cartoons, although there was doubtless pressure to do so. The BBC (more accurately known as the British Boredcasting Corporation) did a typical weaselly sort of fudge, showing a bit and then removing the image so that it could claim to have it both ways, but no one was very impressed. Instead, newspapers from across the ideological spectrum, from the Observer on the left to the Sunday Telegraph on the right, published powerful and moving accounts of what it meant to respect the faith of the other. The British media, which is not wimpish and which can be the most aggressive in the world, can today claim the respect of Muslims because of its restraint. British Muslims today feel closer to their country.

Hindus and Muslims have lived with one another as long as Muslims and Christians have. You can go through the literature, popular songs or journalism of India and you will not come across a Hindu writer insulting the Prophet of Islam or a Muslim writer insulting a Hindu God. This does not mean that either has changed his faith. It merely means that in India we have a culture that respects the right of another to believe in a different creed, and values a neighbour’s sentiment as much as his own.

The Danish Prime Minister began to perspire only when Muslims across the world started to boycott Danish products. His God is commerce, so the only retribution he understands is an insult to that commerce. Muslims who think that violence is the answer, have got it wrong. Violence is wrong in itself, and counterproductive. A boycott of Danish products is far more productive.

Who did we Indians learn this from? Mahatma Gandhi, of course. His challenge to the British empire began with a boycott of British goods. It was only when he made a bonfire of the coloniser’s cloth did the world’s mightiest empire begin to shiver. It is not too difficult to live without Danish cheese, or even Bang and Olufsen. One would, in fact, like to extend the logic. If you have to buy a European product, buy British. That would be a nice way of saying thank you.

The Danish Prime Minister is searching for answers. But in order to get the right answers you have to ask the right questions. Here is a suggestion, Mr Prime Minister. Do not worry about the enemies Denmark has made. Worry instead about the friends Denmark has lost.

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A Goliath Called David

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline by: A Goliath Called David

Relax. The days when the world turned to America to solve its problems are waning. America is now turning to the world to solve its problems, particularly when it needs help to clean up little pools of mess created by hyperactivity in those regions fortunate or unfortunate enough to possess oil.

Take relations between Washington and Delhi. America used to be the big bogey on Kashmir. Delhi was constantly haunted by the ghost of CIA wandering through the Kashmir valley, and the body of diplomacy chasing the ghost. American policy now has much more to do with how India can help America strategically, than with how the Indian arm can be twisted by means gentle or harsh. That, I believe, is why we might be missing the point of American ambassador David Mulford’s recent remarks to Indian media.

Not being privy to the inner dynamics of the Mulford mind, I can suggest four theories about why Ambassador Mulford rang alarm bells on the nuclear deal prior to President George Bush’s visit to India in early March.

No. 1: Mulford is a businessman, sent to Delhi in a grace-and-favour posting because he is a friend of Texas’ principal patriarchs. Like the famous protagonist of Gone With the Wind, the ultimate in American-south fiction, frankly, my dear, he doesn’t care a damn.

No. 2: Mulford is tired of the job. He is not particularly young, and there are personal problems that he would rather attend to at home in the US of A. Such remarks are one way of reminding the State Department that any arbitrary spray of verbal bullets would be far less damaging in America because they wouldn’t travel very far.

No. 3: This is a nuanced ploy, crafted by someone very clever in the Bush office, a sophisticated variation of good-cop-bad-cop and a new dimension to the Ugly American syndrome. In this theory, if Mulford mucks up the atmosphere really badly, expectations are lowered, which sets the stage brilliantly for Bush. After Mulford, anything that Bush says will sound better and positive, and everyone can claim that the Bush visit has been a grand success despite lower fulfilment levels.

No. 4: Mulford is telling the truth.

Pardon me for sounding naive, but I have a feeling that the last is correct. Mulford is doing no more than telling it like it is.

Ever since Dr Manmohan Singh returned from his last visit to Washington, clutching a piece of paper in his hand, the Delhi establishment has set about trying to convince India that there is indeed something called a free lunch in international affairs, that Washington has accepted India as a virtual sixth nuclear military power, and an ally, if discreet, in the emerging confrontation with China. Implicit in this conjecture was the assumption that America would no longer treat Indian and Pakistan nuclear military power as equal realities; that India would be permitted to float into superpower category and Pakistan dealt with after the new equations had been formalised with Delhi.

It is not difficult to buy the services of drums in Delhi, and a few free airplane tickets are sufficient to generate a lot of noise. The orchestra plays to the baton of the administration and to an audience heavy with media, for dissemination is crucial. The great thing about Indian democracy, however, is that you can never buy off everyone; and critical analysis finds its way into the intellectual space and public discourse with a persuasive power that can never be matched by purchased voices. And so the first optimism of a great leap forward in US-India nuclear relations has been slowed by reality checks: the leap is sort of frozen in mid-air, uncertain whether to travel forward, return to base, or simply descend to ground at the point where it is frozen.

Such self-congratulation always seemed fantasy-driven, if not amateur. Ambassador Mulford may have been publicly provocative to those who did not want to hear the facts, but he was only restating the facts that any honest reporting from Washington could have confirmed to the foreign ministry. Nuclear policy is not controlled by the White House alone, and while the White House, which is the executive wing of government, must of necessity use gloss to shade the difficult parts, there is no evidence that it sees the future of India in quite the same way as the ring around Dr Manmohan Singh. Did the Delhi establishment hear nothing from Senator John Kerry, who was in India only days before the Mulford remarks? Senator Kerry is a Democrat, and the man who might have been President if a few people in Iowa or Ohio thought so too. Kerry was not in Delhi because he had nothing else to do, or because he needed a winter vacation. He was in Delhi, with the full knowledge of the White House, to deliver a specific message: that the questions being raised were bipartisan, and, when you took the pretty phrases out, they were essentially about just one thing: fissile material.

Look at the conundrum from another perspective. Suppose India had not been a nuclear military power, would there have been any fuss at all? If India had a nuclear power plant in every city of the country, dedicated only to peaceful purposes, there would have been a queue of merchandise merchants sitting outside 7 Race Course Road hawking their wares without much regard for the views of the White or Green or Saffron House. The core issue is the military arsenal, and the basic message from Washington is this, cold and simple: separate military facilities from energy facilities; open the latter for continuous inspections so that they cannot ever be used for military purposes; and then freeze the capabilities of the military plants to levels that we can monitor now and reduce later. This is the project in simple English. Translate into any language you fancy. For reference, check why the discussions between Nicholas Burns and Shyam Saran failed in December.

America has double standards on nuclear arsenals in the case of only one country, Israel, and is beginning to pay a credibility price. Iran has made a few things clear in its confrontation with the United States and many Western nations over nuclear power. Iran’s preamble might be self-serving: example: We have not attacked another nation for two hundred years. So what? That does not guarantee that you will not attack another nation in the next two hundred years. President Ahmadinejad’s destroy-Israel rhetoric is unacceptable and counterproductive, but its core argument is finding echoes across the world. The Saudis, surely the best ally America can hope to have in the region, have said quite categorically that Iran’s nuclear potential cannot be divorced from the reality that Israel is a major nuclear military power, and unilateralism is not going to be permanently acceptable. This is why the big powers who sat in London and Vienna to discuss referral of Iran to the United Nations suggested that Israel could also be mentioned. The United States has rejected the idea, but the idea did not come from America’s enemies.

It was inevitable therefore that America would make Iran the test of India’s ability to compromise. For the moment, the government has bought peace with the Opposition by arguing that an international consensus is developing on Iran, but this is only the beginning of the story. John Negroponte, National Intelligence director, accepted in a rare appearance to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iran had not developed nuclear weapons yet, and was still years away from any realistic ability to do so. There is time for the arguments to develop, and more than one case to be made. Caution is a far better weapon than self-congratulation.

Pakistan is critical to American interests. In fact, as a wise former diplomat in Delhi pointed out, Pakistan should keep quiet and wait: whatever deal was finalised with Delhi would become a fact with Islamabad as well. This seems much more realistic than the wish that America would rubberstamp India as the only nuclear power in the region.

Ambassador Mulford’s term will get over, and he will go. He will be only the first; in a couple of years, none of the authors of the present arrangement, if it becomes law, will be in power. But the problems will not go with them. The nuclear policy of India is not, and has never been, the policy of one government. It is national policy, and therefore non-partisan. It must be conducted with care, consultation and support from all sides of the Indian Parliament and the Indian people. In government, you always have to juggle with the ball, and drop it at your own risk. When you juggle with the nuclear ball you drop it not just at your own risk, but at the risk of the nation as well.

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Grey Area

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline by MJ Akbar: Grey Area

A politician cannot live above politics. Politics is a buyer’s market. A voter will not accept short change once he has made his bargain.

Whoever thought that the uses of adversity are sweet was never in Indian politics and must have been a Trappist monk of the more depressed sort. Indian politicians do not smile in adversity; they shrivel and turn suicidal. This is generic. Look anywhere, at nation or region, ideology or personality.

The Shiv Sena, once the roar of Maharashtra, now shrunk to a whimper by nepotism, has all the buoyancy of Napoleon’s army after a winter vacation in Moscow, feeding on the carcass of horses on which it once rode to victory. The rise of the Shiv Sena was once considered an astonishing and definitive fact of contemporary politics. Its collapse is equally astonishing, and equally definitive. Its fate is proof that the politics which dominated the decades between 1985 and 2005 is dead, and those who cannot rise above this past will wither in its aridity.

The Shiv Sena claims to be an ideological outfit. Its complete disarray makes a nonsense of such claims. Its success, it is now obvious, was built on more traditional pillars, of which anger against the establishment was paramount. Bal Thackeray’s personal charisma helped, but the victories of Narayan Rane prove that it was not a dominant charisma, in the sense that Mrs Indira Gandhi’s was. Leaders like Rane added significantly to the pool without getting anything like adequate credit. Bal Thackeray may have lost the game when he refused to become chief minister after the Sena-BJP alliance won Maharashtra. Thackeray is no Mahatma Gandhi or Jayaprakash Narayan. He was a politician who made promises. When the voter believed those promises, Thackeray backed out from personal responsibility and passed the buck to lieutenants with less than memorable names. A politician cannot live above politics. Politics is a buyer’s market. A voter will not accept short change once he has made his bargain.

The BJP has been overtaken by an epidemic of sulks, and undertaken by black humour. If it doesn’t watch out, it could hiccup itself to insignificance. The BJP doesn’t need a new president, although it has bothered to find one. It needs, first, to hire Greg Chappell, along with a clutch of Australian physiotherapists, who would do good at multiple levels. Chappell has a basic doctrine: Discipline above all else. Discipline in adversity begins with physical discipline. L.K. Advani is the only senior BJP leader with any discipline, so naturally they removed him. Adversity has unique ways of reinforcing itself.

Adversity is a transparent fact. The just-concluded AICC session in Hyderabad was a lake of lively wavelets with just one patch of gloom. The saddest face in the country today is that of Dharam Singh, the short-lived Congress chief minister of Karnataka.

The Congressman is the Brahmin of Indian politics. He believes that he rules by divine right, and occasional spells of misfortune constitute the arbitrary impact of Kaliyuga that might befall the best of the twice-born, and can be ameliorated by the requisite number of yagnas. Other castes, in this self-image, are welcome to share power, but as secondary or even subservient players. Now that the gods had restored the skewed balance of the world by restoring them to power in Delhi, the mood in Hyderabad was one of smug satisfaction. This may be perfectly acceptable when the party is having a party, but does not work on the morning after, as Karnataka showed.

The culture of alliance demands, for starters, respect for the ally. This is more important than the importance of portfolios. There may be give and take in portfolios, but there is no give and take in respect: that has to be a permanent foundation. But respect is the one thing that the Congress does not have on offer, to either friend or foe. Foes can do little about it, but friends can. Dharam Singh is in Bangalore’s departure lounge because he thought he could break an ally, Deve Gowda’s party, from within and occupy space thus made freshly available. Lalu Yadav is in a political dispensary in Patna because the Congress first tripped him badly enough to ensure that his leg was broken, and then offered a crutch in the sure knowledge that he could never hobble to victory. Sharad Pawar is shrewder at protecting his interests, but surely he can see the Congress elbow hammering away at his ribs. He may not feel the pain now, or pretend not to, but he will later. These stretching exercises by the Congress, ratified by the "Only-Congress" mood at Hyderabad, are logical, because the Congress is trying to reclaim space that was once its sole territory. However, it needs to be in power to expand its base at the expense of its allies. The loss in Karnataka is therefore a setback. Sour are the uses of adversity.

Assuming that the Trappist monk had not gone insane from prayer, guilt, self-imposed solitary confinement, silence and the awful grey cold of Europe, we need to consider why he thought the uses of adversity could be sweet. He clearly meant that sorrow and affliction were good for the soul. When out of power you have the opportunity to ponder over mistakes, correct deviations, find a new path forward even as you rediscover the will to return to primary objectives like service to man (and, if you are a monk, obedience to God). The last person to discover such virtues (including obedience to God) in adversity was Mahatma Gandhi, and not all the time, one may add. But now, alas, adversity only tends to encourage perversity. No front is free from dissension, and no back free from a bite.

In such conditions, you can hardly blame political parties from standing still and hoping for the best. This is fatalism, perhaps, but other options seem to them to be fatal. This wait-and-see philosophy emanates out of the principle that no one wins an election but someone loses it. Normally — unless, that is, you are Shiv Sena in Maharashtra or Congress in Bengal — this works. The AGP is waiting in Assam and will probably win the next Assembly election. However, it is not foolproof. The Akalis are waiting in Punjab, and Captain Amarinder Singh might keep them waiting awhile. But the best that can be said about waiting is that it is brain-dead politics. The sharp politicians are those who can see adversity approaching and have the skill to pre-empt it. Witness Deve Gowda.

So what is the best strategy for life in adversity? Honestly, I don’t know any that might be considered practical. However, I have just been reading about the worst possible one.



The ultimate book about adversity is surely a history of the Black Death, as the plague that wiped out half of Europe in the 14th century was known (The Great Mortality, by John Kelly). The plague started in Mongolia and reached, via the trade routes, the port of Caffa on the eastern edge of the Black Sea, controlled by the Genoese and rich with the wealth of silk from China, timber and fur from Russia, slaves from Ukraine, diamonds from Golconda and spice from Kerala and Ceylon. The overlords of the region were the Mongols, who had become Muslims by then in central Asia and south Russia. Tension between the Genoese and the Muslims sharpened into conflict and in 1343 Janibeg Khan drove the Italians to the point of surrender in the port. Just then the plague hit the Mongols. The Genoese went down on their knees to give thanks to the Almighty. They were premature. Janibeg Khan proved to be something of a germ-war strategist. He loaded infected corpses on to his catapults and flung the corpses into Caffa. The Genoese were decimated, and he ensured that both sides lost. That was how the Black Death entered Europe.

The image is drastic, and I certainly do not want to be taken too literally. But it seems to me that in the laissez faire mood currently prevalent in Indian politics, there is great danger of one side’s corpses infecting the body of the host. This is easier when there is no anti-body like ideology to fight against infection. Does a politician who has been worse than Narendra Modi in his invective against minorities suddenly become a devotee of Mahatma Gandhi because he can win on a Congress platform?

I hope the answer is more optimistic than my pessimism.

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The Bangalore Virus

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline by MJ Akbar: The Bangalore Virus

Five questions sum up the breadth of news: What, When, Where, Why and How. The breadth of politics is spanned by a single question: Why? What, When and Where become largely irrelevant because you can hardly undo the past; and How helps with the gossip but does not interfere with facts. "Why" is crucial because its answer is the only means by which you can try to pre-empt a similarly unpleasant surprise in the future.

If you manage to get surprised by H.D. Deve Gowda, then you have not been in touch with his astrologer. On the scale of political mistakes, that is the full twelve inches of the ruler. The Congress, which was shocked rather than surprised when Gowda brought down the coalition government in Karnataka, has itself to blame. Anyone with an ear open in Delhi or Bangalore knew at least a fortnight back that Deve Gowda had placed his hands firmly on the carpet and was going to pull it from under Dharam Singh’s chair. Our newspaper had suggested as much in the political diaries we publish, and we were hardly alone. But ever since it came to power, the Congress has been floating in a delirium. It is hard to see clearly with eyes wide shut.

Five questions sum up the breadth of news: What, When, Where, Why and How. The breadth of politics is spanned by a single question: Why? What, When and Where become largely irrelevant because you can hardly undo the past; and How helps with the gossip but does not interfere with facts. "Why" is crucial because its answer is the only means by which you can try to pre-empt a similarly unpleasant surprise in the future.

So why did the former Prime Minister of India sabotage his own coalition with Congress in Bangalore?

The easy answer is: to satisfy the ambitions of his son, H.D. Kumaraswamy. That is correct as far as it goes. But that proposition makes two assumptions. The first is that the Congress would not have been amenable to making Kumaraswamy chief minister if pressed. As post-mortem flutters indicate, any deal would have been a better alternative to Congress than life in arid wilderness. The Congress is ready to accept Mr Kumaraswamy as the new leader even as I write.

But a deal is unlikely, even in the name of secularism, which brought the two together after the elections of 2004. Instead Gowda and BJP MLAs are off on the familiar countrywide package tour (a resort outside Bangalore for a day, then to the comparative safety of Jayalalithaa’s Chennai, before onward to the protection of Fortress Jaipur, under the pleasant but beady watch of Mrs Vasundhara Scindia) to keep them together, and out of reach of any possible enticement from the Congress.

The second assumption is that we are only dealing with the hopes of a son. You also have to factor in the ambitions of the father.

It is perfectly logical that those who became Prime Minister through the good graces of fortune should be confident that the astrologer who was, quite against the odds, right the first time should be correct again when he predicts a second successful tilt at the windmill. I don’t know who Deve Gowda’s personal astrologer is, but he would not be worth the sandal paste on his forehead if he had not studied the stars and predicted that Deve Gowda would become Prime Minister again.

It is now established that the way to Delhi is through the states. Deve Gowda has set in motion a process that, he hopes, will not only make his son chief minister of Karnataka but also make him either Prime Minister or at the very least deputy prime minister in Delhi. Hope is not quite the same thing as fulfilment but it is the first step towards achievement.

Any coalition in power has two principal strategic objectives. The first obviously is to keep the existing coalition together. The second, no less important, is to prevent the emergence of an alternative coalition. Very often the survival of the first lies in the success of the second.

Untouchability plays an important part in the psychology of coalitions. For a long while the Congress was treated by most smaller parties as untouchable. The riots in Gujarat gave Congress its opportunity to turn the BJP into the untouchable. Mrs Sonia Gandhi used the chance, with remarkable finesse, to put together a rainbow partnership that was very effective, electorally. Such was the pressure of success that Deve Gowda, who had not aligned with the Congress before the 2004 elections, was forced to join a Congress-led government after equilateral results made it possible for any two sides to keep the third in Opposition. In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu broke his partnership with the BJP. In less than two years, Deve Gowda has quietly undermined that untouchability. That process may have started when Nitish Kumar stuck with the BJP in Bihar, and proved that he could still get at least a part of the Muslim vote. But Deve Gowda has taken it a decisive step forward.

To return to the basic question: Why? The Congress has not made any serious political miscalculation or appropriated too much more than it deserved. One could argue that it is hitting above its weight in Delhi, keeping all the key centres of power, but that is a reality which junior partners know they have to live with. The problem is not the present, but the future. The smaller parties in the coalition know one indisputable fact, that the Congress can grow in their states only at their expense. This is glaringly true in a state like Maharashtra, and only marginally less valid in Karnataka. There is only one point on which Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati are agreed in Uttar Pradesh, that they would rather be defeated by each other than be defeated by the Congress. Chandrababu Naidu has only the Congress to worry about, which is why he cannot be in a Congress-led coalition. Nor can Om Prakash Chautala in Haryana. The Left is less worried because it is confident that it will defeat the Congress in both Bengal and Kerala. Others cannot be as sanguine; and the Left might try a quick look over the shoulder just in case there is a de facto understanding between Congress and Mamata Banerjee in Bengal during this summer’s Assembly election.

This is the fundamental problem before the Congress, whether its leaders formally address it during the Hyderabad AICC or not. They might content themselves with pretty slogans rather than real issues, because an AICC has now become the Christmas party of a political party, a happy jamboree of sentimental reunions fuelled by pretty good food. The logic of a coalition permits no encroachment. The logic of power demands encroachment. The history of the Congress demands it as well. That is the dilemma.

Successful politics is the combination of personal ambition with unsentimental reality. Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy’s decisions will be influenced by what they want now as well as what they want ten years later. If the price of power now is elimination in the next elections, they will seek other options while they can.

One reason why the Left Front works in Bengal is because the various partners have, over two decades, established their territories: the Forward Bloc, for instance, knows that it will get this many seats in any election. The Congress-led coalitions are new, and no one knows what they will get in any future seat-sharing arrangement. Nor is it possible to know, for all political parties are personality-oriented. The presence or absence of the leader becomes a huge variable.

The political map of India is a stack of coalition governments: a straight line of coalitions from Delhi to Bengal via Patna and Ranchi, followed by a straight line from Kolkata to Trivandrum via Bhubaneswar and Chennai and back again to Mumbai via Bangalore. Andhra may not look like a coalition government, but it is one. The Congress is in power on its own strength only in small states like Punjab, Haryana and Assam. There is always the danger of a virus moving from one stack to another.

We are in a transition phase of Indian politics, and 2006 could be so transitory it might even bypass Deve Gowda’s astrologer.

A Somalia Notebook

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline by MJ Akbar :A Somalia Notebook

War is a great boon to technology. A cruise liner defended itself against heavily armed Somali pirate boats last year with the LRAD, Long Range Acoustic Device. It emits a sound from a long range that the human ear cannot tolerate and has proved a brilliant answer to pirate guns. So as long as pirates are human they can be driven. I am told that the device is being used in Iraq to disperse unwanted crowds. For more details on LRAD check Google. The Almighty, Omnipotent Google knows all.

How many guns make a warlord? 25 technicals, so about 250 armed men with Russian AK-47s and Belgian pistols make you a lord, and you can go up the hierarchy to viscount or marquis or earl or proper baron if you include a couple of anti-aircraft guns and artillery pieces.



But there are no kings in Somalia. A top of the line AK-47 costs between 400 and 500 dollars; many of the weapons are below the line. I picked up one, while we were lunching off chunks of dry roast camel in a dhaba, lent to me by a young man in a shy smile and a lungi. It was heavy, a little less than ten kilograms. I gave it back after making appropriate noises, carefully avoiding even passing contact with the trigger. At a rough glance, my benefactor had about a million and a half Somali shillings worth of ammunition in his belts: a dollar fetches three bullets.

Three great symbols of modern civilisation are available in Somalia: the AK-47, Coca Cola and the mobile phone. Three mobile phone companies, Nationlink, TelecomSomalia and Hormut, ensure proper competition. An international call costs only 30 American cents. They also double up as money-transfer operations and one of them (defunct after landing up in the suspect category) sent Washington into paroxysms after 9/11 with a word that previously did not exist in a western dictionary but was perfectly understood in much of Asia, hawala. Americans were in Somalia a decade before 9/11 but never picked up this word. Maybe that is why they never stayed. You have to understand Somalia to stay in Somalia.

War is a great boon to technology. A cruise liner defended itself against heavily armed Somali pirate boats last year with the LRAD, Long Range Acoustic Device. It emits a sound from a long range that the human ear cannot tolerate and has proved a brilliant answer to pirate guns. So as long as pirates are human they can be driven. I am told that the device is being used in Iraq to disperse unwanted crowds. For more details on LRAD check Google. The Almighty, Omnipotent Google knows all.

Their present having been stolen, Somalis take comfort in the past. Ancient Egyptians imported cinnamon, frankincense, tortoise shells and "slaves of a superior sort" from Somalia and conceded that Somali civilisation matched their own. If the Magi were kings from Africa, then it is at least plausible that the one carrying frankincense for the infant Jesus came from Somalia. Ibn Batuta, the 13th century Tunisian traveller who did not waste time on inconsequential places, found Maqdashaw a "town of enormous size" where "a single person … eats as much as the whole company of us would eat … and they are corpulent in the extreme". The only parallel I can think of is a Kashmiri enjoying his wazwan in front of us mere mortals, but of course the Kashmiri is not corpulent. The waters of Chashm e Shahi keep him slim.

How many clans make a nation? The Arabs found 39 when Mogadishu became one of their principal trading colonies in the tenth century. This was the breakdown: Mukri (12), Djidati (12), Akati (6), Ismaili (6) and Afifi (3). The Mukri, who also had a dynastic ulema, were in the ascendant when Ibn Batuta visited the port. The nation state is a recent idea. Nomadic Somalis lived across a far wider region than their present borders, including Ethiopia and Kenya. European colonisation came only towards the end of the 19th century. The British came to the north because, as they put it, they wanted guaranteed meat supplies for their garrison in Aden. The Italians wanted the fruit groves of the south. The French were tempted, typically, by temptation and occupied Djibouti. The clans did not wait to be conquered. They took the easy way out and sold their rights, most often for less than a hundred dollars. The treaties were remarkable for their three-point simplicity. Point 1: All rights are yours. Point 2: I get 70 or 100 dollars. Point 3: You have the last word in all disputes. Neighbours could hardly resist exploiting such weakness. In 1891 Emperor Menelik II, founder of modern Ethiopia, wrote to European powers: "Ethiopia has been for 14 centuries a Christian island in a sea of pagans. If Powers at a distance come forward to partition Africa between them, I do not intend to remain an indifferent spectator." He did not. He sent word to Amir Abdullahi, ruler of the historic city of Harar and pivotal to Muslim east Africa, to accept his suzerainty. The Amir, heir to a dynasty of 72 generations, sent presents and a helpful suggestion, that Menelik should accept Islam. Menelik promised to conquer Harar and turn the principal mosque into a church. The Medihane Alam Church, in front of the Galma Amir Abdullahi, or the old palace, is evidence that Menelik kept his word.

The mosque was converted but not the people. While Ethiopia proudly and correctly claimed to have become Christian at the time of Constantinople, lands like Kenya changed only during the wave of missionary activity that accompanied colonisation in the 19th century. As Jomo Kenyatta, first President of independent Kenya, famously said, "When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible in their hands and we had the lands… We closed our eyes to pray and when we opened them, we had the Bible in our hands and they had the lands…"

Harar has the feel of a city that has travelled a long way through history but now has nowhere left to go.

Unesco has recognised Harar, about 450 kilometres east of Addis Ababa through land rich in the local addiction, chat (or khat), a mildly intoxicating but stimulating leaf that is chewed slowly, as a heritage city. There is some excitement among the educated elite that Unesco may do more for Harar than all the rulers since the defeat of Amir Abdullahi at the battle of Chelenko in 1887. There is hope but not too much trust. As a sociologist who did his post-graduate studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai some twenty years ago, told me over mercato in the lovely café in the courtyard of the city, "We have been living too long on a diet of pledges."

Little was done for the people, who are of Somali origin, but bitter wars were fought over them. In the Seventies, Siad Barre of Somalia invaded Ethiopia to take back the Ogaden region, where Harar is. Talk that Ogaden possessed huge reserves of oil and gas might have encouraged the invasion. Siad Barre’s tanks penetrated deep into the desert before they were defeated by Cuban soldiers who acted as mercenaries of the Soviet Union (Ethiopia had a Marxist-Leninist regime then, a fact that merely Socialist Siad Barre forgot). Hararis remember the Cubans as a wild lot, shooting donkeys playfully even after being told how valuable these pack animals were. A few Cuban faces in a traditional and conservative society are more evidence that "liberators" make their own rules.

The elders, gradually losing their eminence as a new anger slowly seeps through the young, are resigned to stagnation, and the eyes flicker with old zeal only when they dream that Menelik’s church will once again become a mosque in their lifetime. The people, as elsewhere in Ethiopia, can be strikingly good-looking. The girls wear embroidered head scarves or, rarely, the hijab with jeans. The boys are in the ubiquitous football T-shirt. One bearded young man had EBAMA, San Jose, California, Badr 2004 written on his T-shirt. It stood for Ethiopian Bay Area Muslim Association. Had he lived in America, I asked. No, he said. Few leave Harar. Those who go send T-shirts along with cheques, but do not return.

The mansion in which the Lion of Judah, Haile Selassie, was born is in the old city, called Jubal, and was built by an Indian. You walk down a narrow stone alley full of shops and tailors with Singer sewing machines. Indians, particularly Bohras from Mumbai, dominated commerce during Muslim rule in Harar. Haile Selassie was born here because his father, Menelik’s brother, was made governor after the defeat of Amir Abdullahi. Unesco has allocated funds for the restoration of the mansion, but ten families have made it their home and will not move. The most interesting occupant is a healer.

He sits, erect, on a mattress at the centre of one end of a spacious drawing room on the ground floor. His fame is recorded for posterity in a notebook where his literate patients describe their miraculous recovery, and attach passport-size photographs to add a face to their identity. He is 52 and learnt his skills from his father, whose picture is framed on the high wall behind him, above a carpet with a drawing of the holy mosque at Kaaba, and a much-extended string of prayer beads which he uses for dhikr, a Sufi form of devotion, at night. A woman enters, kisses his extended hand twice while he continues talking to us, and joins another with a child in a corner. There is a telephone on a table, and two small tape-players, one broken. The telephone rings once during our visit, and is picked by an aide lounging on the side who, we realise later, also speaks English. A notice board indicates that the healer cures all the tough diseases, including gynaecological problems, but, alas, back pain is not on the list. He assures me that he can repair nerves that wrack your back as well, and there has been a cancer patient or two who has gone home happy. He explains that he uses herbs and plants, and not shaman-style magic. Perhaps he tells villagers, who crowd around him in the mornings since they have to return by nightfall, something different; perhaps he is equally candid with them. He asks about herbal medicines in India and I include Tibet’s fame in my response.

The notice outside affirms that the healer does not accept fees, but donations for the cause are not unwelcome. I do not use his expertise, but my donation is not unwelcome either.

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Who Said This?

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline By MJ AkbarL Who Said This?

‘Children nowadays love luxury, have bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for elders."

Who said this?

One of the more educative joys is to read intelligent book reviews. The success of a review is generally measured by the speed with which you order the book afterwards, or cancel any such intentions. Very occasionally there appears a review that is so intelligent that it makes purchase of the book redundant. This is hard luck upon the author and the publisher, and my heart goes out to both for predictable reasons. I saw one such review in the Christmas issue of the Spectator. The unfortunate publisher is Hodder and Stoughton, and the unlucky compiler of Keeping My Words: An Anthology from Cradle to Grave is Magnus Magnusson. The review did nothing more, or indeed less, than string together a selection of the best quotes; in the flavour was the dish.

The quotation recorded above is from this collection. Proof of its relevance appears wherever you look, although its defining words need to be understood more clearly. Luxury does not mean buying Louis Vuitton shoes or Cartier watches. It simply means buying what your parents cannot afford. A pair of Diesel jeans for an insistent child therefore is a serious luxury for any middle-class Indian parent. (When the child stops being a child, earns a salary and buys himself something he cannot afford, he is being self-indulgent, which is no one else’s business.)

Bad manners is a similar disease: it is doing what your parents do not want you to do, like misbehaving with boring relatives or being nasty to their spoilt children.

On the other hand I rather like the idea of children having contempt for authority. This is surely one of the redeeming features of youth. Respect for authority is designed to make you a carbon copy of the establishment, ending all hope of change and progress.

So who said this?

Socrates.

Socrates was born in 469 BC and committed suicide in 399 BC at the venerable age of 70. It confirms my theory that but for electricity life hasn’t changed all that much in two and a half thousand years.

I was familiar with only three of the quotations offered in the review. Of them, Mark Twain’s take on sons and dads finds a place in just about any anthology: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." As Einstein pointed out, everything is relative, but nothing is more relative than relations between father and son.

Those who have read Gore Vidal and Truman Capote, the terrible twins of the old Esquire magazine, a brilliant monthly offering of wit and fiction that has been modernised to suit the tastes of kids of 14, will surely recall Vidal’s remark upon learning that his friend and rival Capote had died: "That was a good career move." Cats cannot begin to compete against New York’s literary elitists.

And if you have not for some odd reason read a non-elitist American called Ogden Nash, then I urge you to rush to the nearest bookstore, for the long-dead author is still alive in reprint. Here are his considered feelings on the complex tiers of age:

Senescence begins

And middle age ends

The day your descendants

Outnumber your friends.

I suppose the point of such an anthology is to provide a working philosophy for the reader, but trust the Russians to take it too far. Since Anton Chekhov is 19th century Russian I expect gloom, but this is life with a permanent overcast: "If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t get married." How do you recognise a married couple in a restaurant? They are the two who aren’t talking.

Americans, unlike Russians, are not gloomy, but when their hearts break you can hear the sound all the way in India. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is as American as his name, gets Chekhovian on another slant: "It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did." But, honestly, who falls in love to be saved?

The French, naturally, have a very different take on friendship; the Frenchwoman being in a class by herself. The author Colette sniffs: "My true friends have always given me supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved."

The Frenchman has a justified foreboding of the Frenchwoman. Alexandre Dumas (of Musketeers fame) is certain that "It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman".

Bertrand Russell, who could not have been less French, was not talking of Dumas, but he could have been: "Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact." Check out the content of any male conversation. If it isn’t about what has gone wrong, then there is no conversation. If there were no bad news, men would go home, presumably to sleep badly. This is one of the few aphorisms that seems to me to be of universal application.

It is remarkable how poignant the stiff-lipped English can get when they are helpless. When they can help themselves, they help themselves to an empire on which the sun never sets. When they become helpless, they can’t see beyond the White House. Two British politicians experience adolescence and infirmity. John Prescott, the large, bluff, gruff deputy prime minister of Tony Blair’s Britain, recalls, "The 11-plus split me from the girl I carried a torch for. She passed, I failed. She went to grammar school, I sent her a love letter telling her I missed her — she sent it back with the spelling mistakes corrected."

If you are on the edge of tears already, let them flow freely in the company of Alec Douglas Home (pronounced, naturally, Hume), who became Prime Minister of Britain after Harold Macmillan only to hand over power to Harold Wilson and the Labour Party.

To my deafness I’m accustomed,

To my dentures I’m resigned,

I can manage my bifocals,

But O, how I miss my mind.

As Alan Bennett, the acerbic British playwright notes, "In England, you see, age wipes the slate clean… If you live to be 90 in England and can still eat a boiled egg, they think you deserve the Nobel Prize."

Being a nationalist, I began to wonder why an Indian was not being quoted. Even the Chinese got a look-in, albeit in the form of a proverb. ("I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Very inscrutable.) The book is clearly littered with wisdom from all manner of nationalities. The Chinese have built up a terrifying reputation for wisdom: is our international reputation limited to the Kamasutra, which requires expertise in gymnastics rather than intellect?

Or was the Indian quota filled by Socrates?

Hear anyone over fifty in India and all you hear is moans about the younger generation: they don’t listen, they want everything, they don’t care.

Thank God for such children. India’s future is bright.

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Conflict,Corruption,Cricket

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline By MJ Akbar: Conflict, Corruption, Cricket

What do we really celebrate when we usher out the old year and cheer in the new — birth or death? I get the politically incorrect feeling that we are far happier about the death of the past than the promise of the new. The last twelve months have generally had little to recommend them. The wish that the next twelve months might be better is the usual triumph of optimism over reality.

Politics has its own calendar. Its seasons, controlled by human nature rather than nature, are whimsical and arbitrary. But December is too often dominated by that demon hovering over the Indian nation state, terrorism, as if those who hate what we have achieved cannot bear to let a moment of goodwill pass without tainting it with innocent blood. The attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore was particularly heinous because a house of learning has been protected from ancient times by respect and honour. Only a savage violates values that are synonymous with civilisation.

Scientists are one of the great success stories of modern India, pioneers who have led momentous revolutions that might be the envy of a Marx or a Mao, for the struggle against hunger is more important than the struggle against class. The fact that killers were able to hit our premier campus in Bangalore indicates not only the depth of their reach, but also underlines how vulnerable we have become.

Terrorism is a dirty war fought at many levels in the bleak and arid ambience of a fog. Its perpetrators measure success by the level of fear they have created, for they know that fear feeds both rational and irrational responses. Since, so often, the enemy is a phantom, you can define him according to your prejudices. A proposition is proved by assumed objective. Assumptions are not necessarily wrong, but anger so often over-rides right and wrong. The terrorist wins when he can sow fear and confusion. The politician and the policeman know that fear can become a key to more votes and more funding. There are layers of evil, deception and exploitation that sustain one another.

The three staples of news in 2005 were conflict, corruption and cricket. Worthy things also happened in 2005. The government introduced a rural employment scheme which the Opposition helped pass with solemn assent: who in his right mind in Parliament is going to oppose a populist idea when it is the government’s job to find the money for it, and take the risks of almost inevitable mismanagement and deflated hopes? Does anyone remember that bill, which will demand a substantial chunk of the budget when it is implemented? No. However, a fair number of news addicts would probably be able to sketch out Monica Bedi’s features, and recall the year in which she met Abu Salem.

They would also know how many MPs were expelled from Parliament for taking cash to ask questions, and the correct spelling of Paul Volcker’s name. At this point, I cannot but pause for an irony. There is an MP from Bengal called Adhir Chowdhury who is accused of murdering 12 people, and has seen the inside of a jail more than once in his rich and varied life. He continues to be an Honourable Member of Parliament because while there is clearly great anger at getting caught with your hand in the till, there is no clarity about what to do in the case of a man with a knife at someone’s throat.

Volcker and Monica Bedi would pale in comparison to cricket. Cricket is the true religion of our times, with various sects protecting the omnipotence of their leaders with a fervour that was once reserved for the Almighty’s affairs. The worshippers at the Temple of Sourav Consciousness rather overdid it, actually. If I were the chief executive of the Saint Greg School of Thought, I would insist that Sourav Ganguly open the innings in Pakistan, and let him face the onslaught of the Shoaib Akhtar Brotherhood, rather than hide him at number six.

One of the finest combinations of artistry, theatre and Mongol-style mayhem was the sight of Sachin Tendulkar and Sehwag taking apart Shoaib during the World Cup semi-finals in South Africa. The runs were not really the issue. It was the brilliance of craft and absolute fearlessness of the batsmen that made those five-odd overs so memorable. That is the standard, in character, we expect from cricketers now and if Sourav is in the team then he must deliver at that level in Pakistan.

Cricket, conflict and corruption will provide the bridge stories between 2005 and 2006, and the paying public will probably get better performance levels in all three areas. The Pakistan tour by the Indian team will look after the mass-frenzy needs of January and February. Any sensible planner would make sure that George Bush’s India visit takes place after the cricket is over: Bush and Manmohan Singh don’t stand a chance against live coverage of Sachin vs Shoaib.

There were two ways in which MPs could have reacted to the expulsion of their errant brethren. They could all have decided to stop taking bribes. They chose the second option: one gathers that anti-surveillance electronic equipment has sold out in Delhi’s black market. If there is a market for intelligence, there is a bigger market for counter-intelligence. Jamming devices are fetching a high premium. This will doubtless encourage the sting-masters of journalism to take their search-and-destroy missions to more complex and lucrative levels. Justice Pathak’s enquiry report will resurrect Volcker in Delhi. The government is in a bit of a bind on this one actually. If it exonerates former foreign minister Natwar Singh it will be accused of bias; if it suggests guilt, there will be consequences for the Congress.

Conflict, and its handmaiden, terrorism, will, alas, remain the burden on the shoulders of an India ready to spring to the high table of the world’s economy. It is important to recall that before China launched its economic miracle, it took a deliberate decision to resolve border conflicts by placing them in the storehouse and getting on with the rest of life. The key dilemma for Delhi will not be terrorism itself, but the degree to which the Pakistan establishment is involved in encouraging it.

Over the last 12 months the view of the Manmohan Singh government has changed; it now believes that Islamabad has not lived up to its promise to curtail terrorism within India. But there will come a political chance to reverse regress, since Dr Manmohan Singh is likely to visit Pakistan before the middle of 2006. If that visit proves a failure, then conflict levels could touch flash-point again. Hawks in both Delhi and Islamabad, who have been condemned to a miserable diet ever since they drove South Asia to war fever but could not take it to war, are back in business with their hands on the menu.

New Year greetings and thoughts are flying at a furious pace through SMS: there is nothing like commerce to generate goodwill. One friend with a particularly devious mind suggested that life had got it all wrong: we should be born old and die young. He provided graphic reasons for his theory, many of them unprintable. But the point is worth considering. A new year is always born old, muddied by the hangover of so many yesterdays, and gets older. Youth means the birth of a new idea, or a new reality; and those are few and far between. We may have been young only once, in 1947, and that birth was a painful Caesarean, which resulted in twins separated at creation and condemned to compete, contest, combat, conspire but rarely to cooperate. Would it have been better if India and Pakistan were born old, and had become young by 2006?

It’s a thought.

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The Bush Fade

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline By MJ Akbar: The Bush Fade





The best thing about 2005 is surely the fact that it has reduced one year from the term of President George Bush. The wisdom of limits has sometimes been questioned, particularly when a sensible President like Bill Clinton comes along. But a George Bush always turns up to reinforce the merits of the law.

George Bush is not malevolent. I have this sneaking suspicion sometimes that he might even mean well. He certainly wants a theoretical democracy to prevail all over the world, for the commendable reason that with all its faults it is the most honest system of governance yet devised. He is simply a man of little understanding, which makes him a victim of the last thing he has understood. Sometimes this is in harmony with previous logic, sometimes in direct contravention, but once he is convinced about something it becomes a conviction, until the next thing he chooses to understand comes along.

His views are a slide presentation of shifting certainties. Because he is well-meaning he is totally sincere about each slide. He was as certain about the need to use torture in America’s war against terror before 10 December, as he was sure on the 11th that torture should, pace the John McCain amendment, never be a part of American policy. He does not abandon a past position; he simply forgets about it and seizes ownership of each defeat by reformulating it as victory.

He is not simple. That would be an underestimation. You cannot win two elections in America by being simple. But he is simplistic. He defers easily to those who prey upon his weaknesses with a simple ruse: they win his trust by applauding his horizon, and then map out highways that have little to do with objectives. Having led him to the centre of that inflammatory maze called Iraq, they are now charting non-existent escape routes booby-trapped with death. When a proper history of his years as the most powerful man in the world is written, it will be a long story of some success, substantial failure — but most of all a narrative of unintended consequences.

Bush was elected in 2000 to take America away from the problems of the world. Those were the innocent days during which he mispronounced "Musharraf". He was re-elected in 2004 to make America safe from the problems of the world. He will leave, in 2008, America more vulnerable to the problems of the world than it has been in a long while. On paper, he wants to change the Middle East by changing Iraq into a democracy. In practice, Iraq is heading towards what might be called a radical-democracy, where popular support has shifted decisively towards those who oppose American policy as well as American values. The one thing that Shias and Sunnis are now agreed upon in Iraq is that Americans must leave their land. Kurds support the Bush White House in the hope of achieving independence, or near independence, and that is not an option that anyone in the neighbourhood wants to hear about. Unless matters are managed with tact and intelligence, they could suffer the fate of the South Vietnamese. The radical-democracy syndrome is visible in Egypt as well, where President Hosni Mubarak opened a vent, possibly so that the West could see who would crawl out from the democratic woodwork. The only surprise when the Muslim Brotherhood got 88 seats in the legislature was why they did not get more.

George Bush and his fawn Tony Blair have now come to the end of their list of reasons for staying in Iraq. They now say that they must stay to train the Iraq Army so that it is able to fight the insurgency. In other words, they cannot pull out because of a problem that did not exist before they came. There was no insurgency before the Occupation. (The average death rate, by the way, is 30 per day; Iraqis also die, although there is reluctance to recognise this.) So we have the classic conundrum. American and British troops will not leave until the insurgency is controlled; and the insurgency will not end unless the Anglo-American armies go. Welcome to the near future.

Sometimes I wonder if policy-makers in Washington and London know what they are talking about. Every day you hear and read, from sources both civilian and military, that the Occupation forces must arm and train an Iraqi Army that can fight the insurgency after the Occupiers depart. This is the civil-war theory: after us, the deluge. This is a familiar of history: empire is always justified in terms of the good that it is doing (civilisation, trade, economic growth et al), and there is always going to be chaos after they leave, if the slaves have the temerity to ask them to leave. Winston Churchill kept harping on the chaos that would descend on India once the Haileybury and Oxbridge Sahibs left.

Let me suggest an alternative scenario. Once Bush and Blair get out of Iraq, if they do it on their watch, the insurgency will end. There will be some residual violence, because this messy war will have left deep sectarian wounds. But, sooner rather than later, the insurgency will be absorbed into Iraqi life, mostly into its politics and partly into its armed forces. We have already seen how Shia militias have become an element in Iraq’s politics and emerging power structure. Space will be created for the Sunnis as well, since common sense suggests that sectarian domination does not work. What, however, about unintended consequences? Will George Bush, over the coming two years, help create an Iraqi Army which could become the strongest Arab force in the region? Could such an Army become a formidable counterweight to Israel, particularly if it works in alliance with Iran? The days incidentally of the Iraq-Iran conflict, which brought such legitimate joy to Washington and London, are over.

Bush is doing Iraq’s Shias a favour they will never forget; has given Iran’s government a lifeline it will never acknowledge; and might have weakened Israel to an extent it will never admit.

It is remarkable that the Bush fade began so soon after the Bush pinnacle. Normally, a re-elected President has two years for a cruise towards history, free from the sinews of political compulsions. By the third year of a second term a President begins to look like the past rather than the present or the future, and starts his farewell visits around the world. In the case of George Bush, the American voter began to ask the very questions that he had ignored when sending him to the White House to continue his war. At the heart of this questionnaire was the most basic of all questions: Every war has a point, what is the point of the Iraq war?

Having admitted that all past answers were wrong, Bush is struggling to find a new answer. If all he can offer is a genie called an imagined Caliphate, then there is very little hope for sanity.

There was a poignant moment in the Bush year of 2005, widely publicised when some embedded but obviously disobedient camera captured a scrawl on a notepad. I can imagine the scene: a worthy but never-ending conference at the United Nations where protocol is in command. At some point, Bush sent a note to Condoleezza Rice wondering if there was any chance of a "bathroom break". I daresay nature doesn’t change its rules for the high and mighty. Presidents and Prime Ministers need a break as often as you and I. Bush surely wasn’t the first eminence to need one. Would Bill Clinton have sent such a note to Madeleine Albright? Somehow, I don’t think so. I rather see him as getting up, making a small but meaningful joke, and promising to return as soon as he could. Television news channels would not have interrupted their broadcasts to telecast this.

George Bush has confidence; you can see it in the arms that loop over on either side, rather than fall down straight, and there is just a hint of swagger in the stride and the eyes. But I am not too sure that he has self-confidence.

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Tripartite Solution

Edited & Brought to you by ilaxi

Byline By M.J.Akbar: Tripartite Solution

Here follows a solution to the most compelling and complex challenge facing contemporary India.

SUGGESTION NO. 1: If Govinda can become a Member of Parliament, why can’t Sourav Ganguly? The Congress leaders of Bengal, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee and information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi have expressed the deepest concern over his fate and future. The Congress has such a shortage of candidates that they put up the hapless Nafisa Ali from Kolkata, although the chances of any voter below 60 recalling that she was born in the city were as remote as the possibility of George Bush winning an election from Fallujah. While Govinda needed a Congress wave in Mumbai to defeat Ram Naik, Sourav Ganguly could generate a pretty strong tide between Narkeldanga and Garia on his own.

After all, it is fear of alienating the young voter in Kolkata on the eve of the Bengal Assembly elections that made Pranab Babu (whose knowledge of cricket, shall we say, is not quite up to selector-level) and Priya Da (whose knowledge of football has made India a tenth-rank world power in the game) identify themselves with the former captain of the Indian cricket team. The logic is simple: if Ganguly has become a vote-getter, let him get the votes for the party that needs them desperately in Bengal. Ganguly certainly isn’t much of a run-getter anymore, and, on the field, more of a run-giver than a run-saver.

It is obvious that Sourav Ganguly has reached his first midlife crisis, and requires both our total sympathy and what help we can provide. Since a sportsman’s working life is short, midlife also comes earlier. Ganguly is too famous to belong to the shadows. He needs limelight like a temperamental plant needs sunlight, or he will wither. There is no better limelight for him than membership of Parliament. In fact, after getting him elected (a Congress MP could always resign in the national interest to make way for Sourav), the Congress could turn the limelight into a spotlight by making him minister for sports. He could then use all the power and influence of office to get his friend and mentor Jagmohan Dalmiya re-elected as chief of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The other advantage is that neither Shane Bond nor Shoaib Akhtar will ever get elected to the Lok Sabha, so Sourav should shine in the House.

SUGGESTION NO. 2: The selection of the Indian cricket team, the only team that matters to India, should be done by the same process that is used to select Indian pop idols like the new Kashmiri role-model Qazi Tauqeer and the svelte Bengali girl Ruprekha Banerjee. We are a proud democracy, and once vox populi has spoken there can be no further argument. The Voice of the People is the Voice of God.

This would take reality TV into a new dimension and assuage the ravenous hunger of TV channels for ratings. In one stroke all TV channels could become profitable. It would also appease the insatiable appetite of mobile phone companies, since the poll would, naturally, be conducted on SMS. Any other form of polling would take time and have to be managed by the Election Commission. If the EC were involved, it would stagger voting into six phases over two months, and you don’t get that much time between matches. So, my apologies to the Election Commission, but there it is: what is good for Bihar may not necessarily be good for Indian cricket.

A television-SMS driven cricket selection process would have enormous beneficial side-effects. I have already mentioned that the channels would become profitable, but look at what it would do for politicians. TV channels would no longer need to hit under the belt of Nehru suits or under the folds of dhotis with hidden cameras to get the stings that drive up ratings. They would have neither time nor interest in exposing politicians, for cricket polls would bring in far, far more revenue. Consider the ad rates for a ten-second spot just after the DJ (yes, sexily-dressed disc jockeys would run the show, not news anchors) announced, "And the winner is…! But before we tell you the name, ek chota sa break..." Since selection is already all about frenzy, imagine the frenzy generated by election.

It would also be a well-funded election. All candidates would be backed by those industrial houses whose goods they sponsor. We are talking multinational money here, my friends; not something siphoned off for asking questions in Parliament. If Indian politicians think that their elections have become expensive, they should watch what happens when Hutch takes on Airtel in the cricket stakes. I can see advertising agencies, direct marketing firms, opinion pollsters and public relations agencies sprouting up just to get their hands on the additional business. There will inevitably come a point when the BCCI charges a royalty of one rupee for every vote cast. If there is money to be made, you are not going to be able to keep the BCCI out of the loot, no matter whether it is headed by Jagmohan Dalmiya or Sharad Pawar. Business is business.

If things go well, and there is no reason why they should not, cricket-elections could add one per cent to India’s economic growth, thereby enabling the government to fund the rural guaranteed employment scheme and keep the interest rates for pension funds at 9.5%. This would immediately stabilise the coalition government of Dr Manmohan Singh, and ensure that a Prime Minister as clean as him remained in office till 2009. I can see nothing but the pervasive glow of good news in my scheme.

SUGGESTION NO.3: Ramanathan Krishnan should be brought back as captain of the Indian Davis Cup team, possibly along with Naresh Kumar and Akhtar Ali in the squad. The most persistent reason I have heard for retaining the "Mahan Kalakar", as an MP described him, in the team, is that Ganguly was so brilliant.

Indeed he was. There are very few joys in my life as great as watching Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar in partnership at their best. It was magic. I think it was Dravid who described him as a god on the off-side. Trust me, those of us who have seen Ganguly at his best find it double embarrassing when Shane Bond turns him into a Jumping Jack, and every bowler who can pitch the ball short gets an extra nip when he sees Ganguly at the crease. Any player should hate the thought of television highlighting his follies on the news. It is not a pretty sight. It is also absolutely true that Ganguly was a great team leader once, and deserves every acknowledgement. I am very serious when I suggest that he must be honoured in some way for his talent and his contribution to modern Indian cricket. What he could not handle was decay, which is always slow, invisible to you but obvious to everyone else. The rewards of sport are commensurate with its demands and dangers. The worst wound to a sportsman’s mind is the stab of fear. Once that lodges in your subconscious, it destroys you. Instead of dealing with the problem, Ganguly sought to prolong his sporting life with politics in the dressing room and the boardroom.

Indian cricket has been jinxed with its captains. Kapil Dev hung around not for the good of the team but to beat a world record in a tussle between age and utility. Azharuddin needed a disgraceful scam to be thrown out, and brought shame to a game he had done much to glorify. The Sachin Tendulkars who can leave the captaincy because it is hurting their contribution to the team are very rare. When Sachin’s time comes to go, he will not wait to be pushed. He will not surrender the aura around his name for that one series more in which you tip over into an abyss. Even the most emotional of Ganguly’s supporters argues that he should have been treated better because he was so good. The "was" is subconscious but accurate.

No player is bigger than a national team. We have a team today that can over the next two seasons be knitted into a winner of the World Cup in the West Indies. Or we can shred it into pieces, as the West Indies did to their once-phenomenal side.