Amoral Code

Byline By M J Akbar : Amoral Code

In India, secularism means respect for the other’s right to practice faith in whatsoever manner the other chooses. Hindus and Muslims have lived with each other almost as long as Muslims and Christians.

When a coalition begins to melt, its partners subtly, if not silently, begin to shift their public agenda from common concern to individual need. The debate over the bridge built by Lord Ram between the Tamil Nadu coast and Sri Lanka is hardly new. A year ago, the supreme leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Mr M.K. Karunanidhi, would not have fractured sensibilities nationwide with intemperate, unacceptable remarks about Lord Ram, revered and worshipped by Hindus as the paradigm of virtue. Today, the political calendar has a premature general election marked within the first half of 2008. His party’s fortunes are now more important to him than his coalition’s fate. After all, what use is any coalition to him if he cannot get the seats that can make him a power broker?

Under pressure, Mr Karunanidhi is dipping into the source of Dravida nectar for sustenance. The origins are lost to public memory, so it may be useful to recall them.

The movement began in 1914 when Dr C. Nadesan Mudaliar started the Dravida Association. But it got its first impetus when the son of a rich landlord, privileged enough to be educated in England, walked away from his background to fight for the lower castes against the domination of the Brahmins. The name of this remarkable man was E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, popularly known as ‘EVR’ and then ‘Periyar’. His philosophy was practical: he likened caste to malaria and said that his search was not for medicine but for the mosquitoes that spread malaria. He declared himself an atheist and went to war against Brahmins, the chief perpetrators of caste iniquity. He launched an agitation against his personal friend, the Maharaja of Travancore for reform: an Untouchable could not walk on the streets of the princely state, let alone raise his eyes in front of someone from an upper caste. You can get a flavour of EVR’s views from this quotation: "(Aryans) concocted absurd stories in keeping with their barbarian status… The blabberings of the intoxicated Brahmins in those old days are still faithfully observed in this modern world as the religious rituals, morals, stories, festivals, fasts, vows and beliefs". Inherent in the doctrine was the Aryan as an outsider, who had driven true Indians, Dravidians, south and then maintained his power through an iniquitous system. Brahmins were agents of that domination. The Dravida movement would move away from the eccentricities of EVR into the sager leadership of C.N. Annadurai, but the basic philosophy did not alter. When the DMK was formed after the split in the Dravida Kazhagam on 17 September 1949, it did not name a chairman. That chair was kept vacant for the "soul of Periyar".

Mr Karunanidhi has made two basic miscalculations in trying to revive his party by resurrecting the spirit of Periyar. No faith has undergone more dramatic reform than Hinduism has in the last seventy-five years. This is a tribute to both Hinduism’s leaders, the most notable of them being Mahatma Gandhi, and to ordinary Hindus, who realised that the excesses of caste were self-defeating. The India of 2007, with a supremely confident Mayawati as chief minister of India’s most important state, would be unrecognisable to the Hindus of 1932, a dramatic year in the history of caste relations. A nation cannot be modern until it destroys the shibboleths that have kept it chained to regression. There is much talk of a Hindu renaissance in the 19th century. That is a myth compared to the true renaissance that came in the 20th century, and became the engine of social change, a vital necessity for the kind of economic growth that India is witnessing. When the Brahmin votes for Mayawati, he makes Periyar, once a crucial catalyst of change, irrelevant. Periyar’s genius created the change that has made Periyar unnecessary. Tamil Nadu has changed as much as the rest of India. The "low caste" Hindus of Tamil Nadu are no longer subservient to the Brahmin. Mr Karunanidhi’s electoral success is evidence of this.
Mr Karunanidhi is talking to the Tamil Nadu of 1967, not the Tamil Nadu of 2007.

Nor does the venerable Dravida leader quite understand the meaning of secularism, at least as we practise it in India. The European benchmark of secularism is the separation of faith and state. In India, secularism means respect for the other’s right to practice faith in whatsoever manner the other chooses. Hindus and Muslims have lived with each other almost as long as Muslims and Christians. But there is no instance of the kind of ferocious diatribe that Dante, author of Divine Comedy, indulged in against the person of Islam’s Prophet, in any epic written by a Hindu. Similarly, there is not a single writer of any standing among Muslims who has ever been insulting towards a Hindu god. We do not have to believe in each other’s creeds to have respect for each other’s religions. That is the essence of co-existence. Mr Karunanidhi, who is probably an atheist, forgot that simple rule.

The debate about proof is inane, to opt for the most polite word. I cannot ‘prove’ that Allah exists; a Jew cannot ‘prove’ that Jehovah exists; a Christian cannot prove that ‘God’ exists. This may be, for all I know, less a reflection on divinity, and more an indication of human limitations. It is arrogance to believe that truth is merely the little that the human brain comprehends.
Gravity existed before Isaac Newton’s brain "discovered" it; indeed, it would be presumptuous to claim that the Pyramids were built without a thorough knowledge of gravity. The human brain is a work in progress.

Belief that has sustained itself for centuries is rarely constructed on a chimera, no matter what deviations (like caste) men may impose on the original faith. The past is littered with forgotten claims. Mr Karunanidhi would have been wiser to respect the faith of the millions who have prayed in the temple at Rameshwaram, the offshore island also called the Kashi of the South: no prizes for guessing that Rameshwaram is named after Lord Ram. It is interesting that a Sri Lankan, King Parakrama Bahu, built the sanctum sanctorum of the Ramanathswamy temple. Incidentally, "mythology" has an answer to Mr Karunanidhi’s question about whether Lord Ram was an engineer: the bridge between the mainland and Sri Lanka was constructed by Nala, the son of Vishwakarma. But such political wisecracks only trivialise a sensitive issue.

A voter decides on the fate of a ruling party because of a bouquet of reasons. There is rarely just one reason that becomes the decisive driver, submerging others. What parties need to worry about is the tipping point, the final straw that persuades a voter to move from the past to a different future. Many voters, across the country, will be hurt by the insult to Lord Ram and establishment’s inability to do anything about it.

Mr Karunanidhi has one advantage over his critics. He knows that no one cares how you win an election, or what you do to stay in power; the only thing that matters is numbers in an age of coalitions. His allies may fudge and squirm but no one will dare ask him to leave the alliance. If he retains his MPs after the next election, he will be welcome in the next permutation and combination, whatever it might be.

Power has its own moral, or amoral, code.

A Joke Too Far

Byline by M J Akbar: A Joke Too Far

President Pervez Musharraf is proving to be a far better tactician with politicians than his commitment to an Army uniform might suggest. Ms Benazir Bhutto is not even back in Pakistan and her credibility has already been eroded. General Musharraf has many disadvantages after more than seven years in power, but he does have one serious advantage in terms of public perception. No one has accused him of being individually corrupt.

Which of the two is funnier? Take your time, there is no hurry, for the competition is keen. If one of the gems is priceless, then the second can only be called invaluable. Ladies first, so let us quote Pakistan’s Prime Minister-in-Waiting Ms Benazir Bhutto. She called her rival Nawaz Sharif’s attempt to return to Pakistan to contest elections, "a mockery of democracy".

If this statement encouraged a belly laugh, as it should, then how do we react to the claim by Pakistan’s Prime Minister-in-Exitmode Shaukat Aziz? The dapper Mr Aziz had this to say about Nawaz Sharif’s brief stay at Islamabad airport, before he was deported to the ever-accommodating Saudi Arabia: "The government did not force Nawaz Sharif to return to Saudi Arabia. We did not force him. I have been told that he was given two options, either go to prison or proceed to Saudi Arabia."

There used to be a gentleman, or not very much of a gentleman, in Victorian England named Thomas Hobson. He used to hire out horses. If any customer wanted a horse, he had to take the one nearest the door or he would not get any. The horses did not become famous, but Thomas Hobson did. His name is immortalised in the phrase ‘Hobson’s Choice’, which implies that you really have no choice. Shaukat Hobson Aziz’s nuanced proposition to Nawaz Sharif would have pleased the old Englishman. Nawaz Sharif was not "forced". He was told, as rudely as possible (simply shoved into a bus and bumped into a waiting plane, while Army commandos laughed and joked), that he could either return to a harsh prison in Pakistan or a gilded cage in Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister Aziz, alumnus of the World Bank School of Diplomacy, was careful not to take the blame himself. He is Prime Minister of Pakistan but, according to his own version of events, he seemingly had nothing to do with the decision. He was informed after the event. "I have been told," he said. If this is true, he is not very prime in his ministership. Would Benazir Bhutto, who is desperate for Shaukat Aziz’s job, accept such a limited, primitive prime ministership? Would she be a quiet little dormouse if Nawaz Sharif turned up at Islamabad airport while she was sitting in Shaukat Aziz’s office, and the President decided whether Mr Sharif should go to prison or purgatory or a democratic paradise called the election trail? I daresay she would, unless she wanted to join Nawaz Sharif in Jeddah or Riyadh.

Careful observers will, of course, have noted that Shaukat Hobson Pontius Pilate Aziz has washed his hands of any suggestion that he might be involved in the persecution of Nawaz Sharif. The first lesson World Bank diplomats are taught is that governments might come and governments might go, but the World Bank lives on forever.

The only bank that Expectant Prime Minister Bhutto can depend upon is the vote bank left by her late father, Zulfiqar Ali, assassinated by the cruel rope of a flawed judicial process. She has depleted the Zulfiqar Bank resources substantially with a murky triangular deal between her individual self, Washington and President Pervez Musharraf. It takes some gall to describe a self-serving deal with Army rule as restorative democracy, and dismiss Sharif’s attempt to join the electoral process as a "mockery". It says something about the state of Pakistan’s polity when a lady who would be Prime Minister has to wait in Washington for permission to seek her nation’s foremost executive post.

One has no idea who advises Benazir Bhutto, if, that is, anyone has the temerity to do so, but she might want to forget about the forty suitcases Nawaz Sharif apparently took with him when he was exiled seven years ago. Benazir Bhutto took away a whole English castle when she was turfed out by the Army, not to mention fairly healthy bank accounts in Switzerland. Nawaz Sharif may indeed be as black as black money, but it does not behove a pot to call a kettle black.
What is quite extraordinary is the duplicity of the Pakistan People’s Party over the legitimacy and authority of the nation’s Supreme Court. PPP leaders, most notably the pre-eminent lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, were in the forefront of this year’s passionate, nationwide movement to restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to office. This struggle was said to have marked the beginning of a fresh chapter in Pakistan’s democracy, and was certainly instrumental in forcing the Army to compromise with civilian power. The moment Benazir Bhutto was offered the scent of office, she joined the Army in trampling over an order of the Supreme Court permitting Nawaz Sharif to return home.

The Benazir argument, echoed by her parrots, that Mr Sharif should stay away because of some verbal agreement made seven years ago, is specious and untenable. A Supreme Court’s decision supersedes any private agreement that is disputed by one party and, in any event, has no basis in law. Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan with the specific permission of the Supreme Court. The Pakistan People’s Party has just dug a future grave by treating the Supreme Court so contemptuously.

President Pervez Musharraf is proving to be a far better tactician with politicians than his commitment to an Army uniform might suggest. Ms Benazir Bhutto is not even back in Pakistan and her credibility has already been eroded. General Musharraf has many disadvantages after more than seven years in power, but he does have one serious advantage in terms of public perception. No one has accused him of being individually corrupt. He is unlikely to surrender that advantage by withdrawing corruption cases against either Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif. He might bend under pressure from his mentors in Washington, but one doubts if he will stoop so far. Ms Bhutto will not be deported when she returns to Pakistan in late October, since Washington insists upon some cosmetic changes in the power structure of Islamabad. But that is not quite the same thing as re-gilding the lady in honest hues.

Now that Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party has become the King’s Party, Nawaz Sharif will inherit the popular space along with those smaller parties who see merit in his continued confrontation with Army rule. The most vocal of the latter is surely the former cricketer Imran Khan, who commands the attention of the media and makes effective public interventions. Imran Khan possesses the virtue of clarity. He told President Musharraf fairly bluntly that it was about time he woke up. "If you think that by sending Mr Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia you can save your skin, you better stop fooling yourself. Neither can America save you, nor Benazir, and not even the PML(Q) turncoats… God willing, the entire Pakistani nation will rise against you and we will fight you in the streets."

One can see a new political compass drawing fresh arcs: Benazir Bhutto, pro-Musharraf elements in Nawaz Sharif’s party and America are placed in one group; Nawaz Sharif and friends are now the legitimate opposition. It may be too early to claim that the entire Pakistani nation has joined this opposition. But presumably God, whose will Imran Khan has invoked, will soon let us know — through events on the Pakistani street rather than deals in the Islamabad secretariat.

Look East for the Left

Byline by M J Akbar : Look East for the Left

The nuclear deal was the perfect opportunity for the Marxists to walk out of the Bengal trap, precisely because it was an ideological issue. The Manmohan Singh government wants to bind India into a strategic relationship with the United States, specifically targeted against Iran (in writing) for starters but developing into a larger axis of the kind that America once had with Pakistan through the Baghdad Pact.

One of the oldest laws of politics is back at work: when a government is not in control of events, events take control of a government. Delhi, obsessed with itself, believes that events only take place in Delhi. Government is in a tight geographical ring; voters live outside this pseudo-magical circle.

If you want to understand what the Left is doing, you have to hop across from Delhi to Kolkata. The Marxist machinery has been cranked back into gear. You can hear the occasional squeal of age, of course. And the design is not pretty. But it still works. This week saw the surest sign that the Marxists are getting ready for a general election. I don’t mean the posters and the processions, evocative as they are. The CPI(M) brought out its genuine heavyweight and put him into political play. When Jyoti Basu speaks Bengal listens. It would not be inaccurate to suggest that Mr Basu’s influence extends over much larger space than the Marxist vote bank or the Bengali world: the Indian poor know he is on their side even if they do not have his party’s candidate in their constituency.

Mr Basu made two statements, connected by an unseen cord. He remarked that "anything" could happen if the Manmohan Singh government went ahead with the 123 Agreement. It does not require a philologist or a scientist to decipher the meaning of "anything". His second public statement was in response to Mamata Banerjee’s rather facile explanation that she was in the previous BJP-led alliance only because of her personal respect and admiration of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Mr Basu thought that he had never heard, in his 67 years of public life, anything more ridiculous. Mr Basu rarely makes a point unless he has a point to make. If that is the best reason that Mamata Banerjee is going to offer for being an ally of the BJP, it is not going to wash. She would have been far more credible if she had been a little more honest. She could have argued that defeating the Left was the most important part of her political agenda, and she chose to align with the BJP precisely because she thought this alliance could take on the Left. After all, if she thought the Congress was good enough, she would never have left the Congress, would she? But some politicians continue to believe that the simple truth is injurious to their health. They must be firmly convinced that the voter is a fool.

A primary reason for the split between the Congress and the Left is the secret understanding between the Congress and Mamata Banerjee’s party that they would contest the next elections in harmony even if they could not manage a complete alliance. The alliance was not formalised because the Congress needed the Left’s support in Delhi to survive. But workers of the two parties had begun to cooperate on the ground, the parties were together in the Singur and Nandigram movement, and when Mamata Banerjee decided to go on her famous hunger strike Congress ministers made every gesture of sympathy and support.

The announcement would have been made just before the elections were due, after the Congress had made full use of the Left’s support in Parliament, and in the process neutralised the Left’s ability to criticise it on the hustings. How do you attack, in an election campaign, someone you have defended during five years in power? The Left was in a trap, a clever one set by the Congress, and unable to wriggle out of it. Moreover, some Left MPs had succumbed to the obvious temptations of being associates of a ruling alliance; the beneficiaries were loath to end this relationship prematurely. But realpolitik had to supersede the preferences of individuals. As the Left moves towards departure mode, Mamata Banerjee turns up in arrival lounge. This is not the only trap that the Congress has set for partners that it does not consider reliable enough for a long-term alliance. When the escalating price of food becomes a subject of steamy exchanges during the coming election campaign, will the Congress blame Sharad Pawar, the agriculture minister? Priya Ranjan Das Munshi has already gone on record to suggest that the wheat purchases were mishandled because Mr Pawar is more interested in being president of the cricket board than in being agriculture minister.

The nuclear deal was the perfect opportunity for the Marxists to walk out of the Bengal trap, precisely because it was an ideological issue. The Manmohan Singh government wants to bind India into a strategic relationship with the United States, specifically targeted against Iran (in writing) for starters but developing into a larger axis of the kind that America once had with Pakistan through the Baghdad Pact. This was sweetened by much talk of nuclear energy on rather salty terms, intrusive, expensive and imbalanced. The Left could hardly have found a better reason to take a stand. Incidentally, those who are waiting for the Left to split on the nuclear deal do not understand Marxists.

We live, thank Heaven, in a free country, but freedom does not give anyone the freedom to dictate the pace of a vital national debate.

The most important point relates to common sense rather than special expertise: what is the hurry? Why cannot Parliament and the people be permitted time to discuss a matter that will set the course of investment and strategy for the next four or five decades? China took fifteen years over its negotiations with America; why can’t India be permitted a few months to examine the complex issues? Most people simply do not know the meaning of the strategic embrace that seeks to create a nexus of long-standing American allies, Japan, Australia and Singapore, with India. All these countries go to war when America goes to war, as they did in Iraq, even when majority public opinion is not in favour of self-defeating conflicts like Iraq. How many Indians are aware that there are four clauses in three sections of the Hyde Act which bind India to a "congruent" foreign policy with America on Iran, and that they express and impose an operational obligation on the US administration to bring India into full compliance? Link this with statements made by American officers that the current war games between the "allied" navies are designed to achieve operational compatibility in war. One has a right to ask whether this is preparation for a potential conflict with Iran, particularly when Pentagon sources are openly talking about an Iran plan in which the country’s nuclear and other assets will be flattened by three days of intense aerial bombing. The government has an obligation to discuss this.

Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh is still waiting for a response to his query on the price and value of the peaceful nuclear energy that has suddenly become the key to the future. I hope he is not condemned as a traitor — or even a Marxist! — for asking inconvenient questions. But such is the hurry of the Prime Minister that he even had a chat with Mr Amar Singh in the hope of getting the support of the Samajwadi Party. There is no danger to the government if it doesn’t rush through the deal: why would the Prime Minister want to risk his government when he can tell George Bush that he needs a stable majority in Parliament behind this deal before he can go through with it? Surely Dr Singh can crave for something without being craven?
India has begun to ask questions. A slogan is not an answer.

Clues in Candlelight

Byline by M J Akbar : Clues in Candlelight

The basic question before the nation is actually a fairly simple one: is the future of India linked to every Indian? Or is Dream India the destiny of only some Indians? Has Jawaharlal Nehru’s tryst with destiny been converted from a national challenge into a self-satisfied statistic?

The decisive moment in Indian politics comes not when leaders believe that they have convinced the electorate but when they are certain that they have convinced themselves. The system is then informed: Members of Parliament, party officials, and whatever is left of the structure down the scale. If you want to know when a general election is likely to be announced, check the faces inside Parliament. If the leaders look buoyant and the MPs glum, you know an election cannot be too far away.

Any half-decent Sherlock Holmes could have offered a reasonable guess on the date of the next general election. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has strewn his public utterances with clues. It is obvious that, although a man of laconic demeanour, he cannot resist a riposte. When CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat indulged in the metaphor of a nuclear winter, Dr Singh asked whether spring could be far behind. It seems that a spring general election is about to be sprung.

While Pranab Mukherjee was defending the "mechanism" set up to calm nuclear nerves between the Congress and the Left, and implicitly purchase amity for another year, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, who as information minister is also reasonably well-informed, sabotaged peace prospects by saying that talks with IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group had not been cancelled. It only remained for the dates to be finalised.

This date, doubtless, will be finalised the moment the present session of Parliament gets over on the 14th of September. An Indian team will be in Vienna as part of routine discussions with IAEA. They might not be required to return to India, and could take up discussions on the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Left would then be welcome to do what it liked. Or didn’t like.

Here is an even more revealing clue. Minorities minister A.R. Antulay was pulled out from the woodwork this week to announce a "follow-up" to the Sachar Committee recommendations for Muslims. When Congress throws sops in the general direction of Muslims by the Congress, can elections be far behind?

Sometimes I feel that the ruling class must consider Muslims to be the biggest idiots in India. In 2006, Dr Manmohan Singh, possibly moved by the Sachar Committee report on the abject plight of Indian Muslims, promised something of an extraordinary multiple rise in the budgetary expenditure for their welfare. When his budget appeared in 2007, the allocation for minorities had actually been slashed. The finance minister apparently forgot to read the Prime Minister’s instructions. The Prime Minister of course forgot to do anything about it. Now Antulay, who was given a ministry without an office, has announced a few more committees.

They must also believe that every Muslim is illiterate, and does not know the difference between a guideline and a law or an order. The government has sent "guidelines" that Muslims should be given more jobs in the bureaucracy. These are not orders, just guidelines. I can visualise every secretary of every ministry, his visage flush with the excitement of a new purpose, getting into office on Monday and ordering the immediate hiring of millions of unemployed Muslim youth. It is one thing if they cannot give jobs; why twist the knife with jokes?

Why does Shelley’s line about the desire of a moth for the flame keep coming back to me?
India is in the throes of a violent fever. You can see it shivering everywhere. There is a bus accident in Agra and the young turn to stones and arson. A dalit dies in Haryana, and the community is out on the streets. Caste wars surface only sometimes, but the turbulence is a permanent stream just under the surface. Muslims are restless and angry, imbued with a sense of betrayal as yet another government they helped elect has given them committee reports rather than justice. One part of the crimes of the winter of 1992-93 has been punished, but those who indulged in anti-Muslim riots, including policemen named by the Srikrishna report, are untouched by the law. Any protest is fobbed by the promise of action tomorrow. Tomorrow is a day that never comes.

The poor, of all regions, faiths, castes, economic denominations, want economic and social justice; they want life and sustenance, and if they do not get it they will make their voice heard, and their anger evident. Whenever they ask a question, they are told by the government to wait till 2020 for an answer. They are not looking at 2020. They are looking at deprivation and death. There is no 2020 for the farmers who have committed suicide. There is no 2020 for vegetable vendors and the egg-suppliers who see their only form of income being swallowed by a retail giant. A policy for 2020 can work only if sustained by immediate programmes for those who are being dispossessed on the way to El Dorado. A limited dole is not a policy, particularly when it is punctured by corruption.

The nuclear deal with the United States will be an issue in the next general elections, but it will not be the only debate. Campaign season is question time, so the questions that have not yet been articulated will rise to the top of the debate. One can understand, for instance, the family silver being hocked to protect or expand India’s military nuclear programme, but why get into an embrace as demanding, one-sided and restrictive as that detailed in the Hyde Act for civilian nuclear energy? We have enough fuel for our military purposes.

This nuclear deal was not part of the Congress manifesto in the last elections; it did not exist in the Common Minimum Programme that is the basis of the ruling alliance. When the last civilian energy policy of the country was announced, a document which was the sum of collective effort, there was no hint that nuclear power was to become so crucial to India’s energy requirements. From which bottle did this genie suddenly materialise? And if nuclear power is so green and so beneficial, why has America not invested heavily in civilian nuclear power after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979? America doesn’t need either the Hyde Act, or anyone else’s technology to do so. As this column has argued before, it would be a very foolish country that would prefer hostility with America, but the fundamental requirement of friendship is equality. Subservience is not an equitable or sustainable long-term relationship. How cost-effective is nuclear energy? There is never a direct, or even an indirect, answer from the government to this question. Can those at the bottom of the pile afford this energy, or do they need more hydro power? Water is one natural resource that is not going to disappear, for if it does there will be nothing left to protect.

The basic question before the nation is actually a fairly simple one: is the future of India linked to every Indian? Or is Dream India the destiny of only some Indians? Has Jawaharlal Nehru’s tryst with destiny been converted from a national challenge into a self-satisfied statistic?
Shelley’s flame drew the fluttering moth. Ghalib’s flame, methinks, defines the vote. Shama har rang main jalti hai sahar hone tak. The flame sparkles in every colour until dawn. What comes at dawn when another multi-dimensional electoral candle is exhausted? The clarity of sunlight, I hope.

Chicken Soup

Byline by M J akbar: Chicken Soup

Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the United States, has sullied a long and distinguished career by an uncharacteristic outburst that reeks of personal frustration. Whether he will enter the history books remains to be seen. But I fear that his description of the deal's critics as "headless chicken" will enter that vast vault in which the foreign ministry's memory bank is stored.

Frustration is unprofessional in a government servant. It is a gesture of personal peeve, contrary to the ethos of governance, which must at all times be an expression of collective will. There are some unusual occasions that become even more demanding, as in the case of the Indo-US nuclear deal, when a decision must be raised above the limitations of executive authority and sifted through a national consensus, for it commits the nation to a course of action stretching ahead through four or five decades.

Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the United States, has sullied a long and distinguished career by an uncharacteristic outburst that reeks of personal frustration. Whether he will enter the history books remains to be seen. But I fear that his description of the deal's critics as "headless chicken" will enter that vast vault in which the foreign ministry's memory bank is stored.
Sen did little for his reputation by compounding his mistake with a clumsy lie when he "clarified" that he was referring to the media rather than MPs. Most of the media has in fact been supportive of his deal, and, in Sen parlance, the greater proportion of journalists thereby fall into the category of chicken with head. In any case, journalists cannot stop such a deal. Members of Parliament can.

An interview, particularly one which has the stamp of a command performance, often reveals far more than it sets out to convey. The discerning try and read between the lines. But it is also useful to read behind the lines, into the mind of the nabob giving the interview. Stress and vehemence, for instance, are clues to motive or a hint towards the next step being taken. The Ronen Sen interview should be read carefully for reasons other than the use of an unhappy phrase.

There is by now a familiar pattern in pro-deal arguments that breaks down with a little analysis of inbuilt contradictions. I shall give only one example. Sen asserts that every concern about guaranteed nuclear fuel supplies has been met. He then goes on to stress that the Hyde Act, signed into American law by President George Bush, will govern American decisions. (We have accepted this qualification in the 123 Agreement.) The Hyde Act clearly specifies that fuel supplies will be conditional upon clearance from the American Congress, which will require a certification of good behaviour by India across a range of issues.

It is possible that the government might float another line (already put into limited circulation) during the debates in Parliament: that a bilateral treaty takes precedence over American domestic law. This is self-deception, to use the kindest phrase. If this is true, why was the law needed in the first place? The government of India has repeatedly characterised Hyde as the "enabling legislation" on the deal, which of course it is. After the 123 Agreement was signed on 23 July 2007, Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state and the chief American negotiator, said, on the record, that "we kept reminding the Indian side, and they were good enough to negotiate on this basis, that anything we did had to fall within, and respect, the legal guidelines that Congress had set forth". Those legal guidelines are what is known as the Hyde Act.

Negotiators on both sides are agreed, and have said so publicly, that the agreement must live within the parameters set by Hyde. Delhi has said that no provision of the Hyde Act has been breached in the agreement. How many more times do we need to hear such plain language in order to understand their import?

Sen also rules out any renegotiation of Hyde. This "cannot even be considered". If nothing can be altered then it makes a nonsense of the government's current argument that the next stage of discussions, in Vienna with the IAEA and later with the Nuclear Suppliers Group, should be allowed to proceed while the Left's concerns are addressed. The Vienna talks are in fact an operationalisation of the 123 Agreement, since they are a consequence of its provisions. The outcome of these talks will be amicable, since that is pre-arranged.

Perhaps the most revealing part of this interview, done by Aziz Haniffa, is the section in which Sen's name does not figure.

The interview is divided into two parts. In the first, Sen is quoted directly. Then, mysteriously, the quotes are attributed to "senior diplomatic observers", named once in the plural and once in the singular. These "senior diplomatic observer/s" are happy to be quoted, but very nervous about being identified. Why? Will they be imprisoned in Guantanamo because they are saying that no future government can abrogate this deal? Why were their quotes added to a Ronen Sen interview? Would it be wrong to surmise that these quotes came from Sen as well, but he requested that his name be kept out since he was being critical of a particular political party, and calling its position a "childish tantrum"?

This unnamed but very senior diplomatic "observer" named the BJP, but he should have been even more wary of the Communists. It is their opposition that has stopped the nuclear deal. The government made a serious miscalculation in its reading of the Left. Just because the CPI(M) supported a Congress-led government three years ago, it did not mean that the CPI(M) had become a wing of the Congress. The CPI(M) remains an ideological party, and there is a limit that it cannot cross without compromising its raison d'être. The Left's concern extends to the "strategic partnership" that is being developed by this government with the United States. What is interesting is the belligerence with which the "senior diplomatic observers" condemned any thought of the deal being abrogated by a successor government.

This fits in with the latest strategy being pursued in some circles of the Delhi government.The thinking is that Dr Manmohan Singh should go ahead and sign the deal even though he has lost the support of the Left on this issue. The alliance with the Left is dead for all political purposes, so why become hostage to its demands? However, there are still two stages of negotiations left before the deal can be inked. They can be hurried through with American assistance, but it will still need time, perhaps eight weeks or so. Till then the Left needs to be placated, or hoodwinked, with the argument that these interim discussions do not amount to an operationalisation of the deal. The Left has set the condition that it will withdraw support only when the deal becomes operational. The deal will become operational, it will be argued, with various degrees of ingeniousness, only when the Prime Minister of India signs a document either with Bush or the American secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

The worst that the Left can do at that stage is withdraw support, but the Congress will be ready to go to the country on the strength of this "achievement". The Prime Minister is convinced that he will obtain nationwide support for the partnership with America, and that he can lead his redesigned coalition back to power after an early general election. Further, he will not be hampered by a leftist baggage in the future. In any case, since no future government can renegotiate what has been signed, the deal will survive even if the present government does not. India was shining for the last government. America is shining for this one.

Freedom's Another World: On 15th August

Freedom's Just Another World:
We still struggle with freedom—we have to defeat the sins within by M J Akbar

India became independent on August 15, 1947. When did Indians become free? Jawaharlal Nehru, an architect and master-builder of independent India, often remarked that Mahatma Gandhi's greatest gift to Indians was abhaya—freedom from fear. Some 50,000 Britishers held over 300 million "natives" in the grip of fear. Gandhi led them out of this prison, but only after he had lost his respect for the Empire. Till virtually the end of the First World War, Gandhi was a servant of the Empire, fawning and obsequious in his support of the war effort. Jallianwalla Bagh smashed that heavy illusion.

Once Gandhi had released himself from himself, he crafted the non-cooperation, or the aptly named Khilafat, movement between 1919 and 1922. It was a swivel moment of history. Gandhi could not end British rule, although he made the Empire's knees wobble, but he destroyed British mystique.

After 1922 it was never a question of if, but when.

August 15 is celebrated as Independence Day.We should rename January 26 Freedom Day, because that was the day that India first celebrated its freedom, in 1931. The Congress declared itself free on January 30, 1930, at its Lahore session, with the adoption of the Purna Swaraj resolution. Gandhi gave the party and the people time to commemorate this moment of liberation, and chose January 26 as the day for nationwide celebrations. Not many now know why the framers of the Constitution chose January 26 as Republic Day; We have enjoyed more than 75 years of freedom, as against only six decades of independence.

The amnesia is not accidental. We celebrate independence because we have protected it with pride. Freedom is quite another matter. Gandhi gave us freedom from fear, but that was only the first item on a long wish-list. We have freed ourselves from famine, a remarkable achievement of modern India; but we have not freed India from hunger, illiteracy, communal bias against minorities, economic exploitation, injustice, the legal and social indignity suffered by women, casteism.

We Indians have a rather awkward propensity. We keep declaring victory in the quarter-finals. And sometimes even before that: remember the parties we organised even before our cricket team had left for the World Cup? No victor's laurels could have been illuminated with more gauche glamour. A similar sentiment is evident in the triumphal hurrahs raised each day to economic growth. The government and the media are the main cheerleaders as both have limited themselves to the same constituency—the middle class.Growth is good, but there is a mine hidden in each letter of that word.

Growth can be sustained only if it is protected by a few adjectives, starting with equitable. Instead, a trickle-down theory is always tagged to this 9% growth, that some of the great froth at the top will trickle down to the bottom, eventually lifting the poor from their morass. What pernicious self-delusion! The poor need the benefits of growth most, and quickly. They won't accept a waterfall for those whose stomachs are sated, and a trickle for bellies bloated by hunger. Both justice and nature demand a reversal.

As do the Naxalites, of course. How often does the Indian Establishment need to be woken up by the crackle of gunfire? Faced with a problem, frightened by the price of a prescription, the Establishment retreats behind the thin security of an assumption. Punjab festered for decades, but we only saw the face of its agricultural wealth until the 1980s left us reeling. The tribals have experienced nothing in the sixty proud years of independence except neglect, exploitation and marginalisation, but we assume that they are too weak, or "uneducated", or docile forest people to make themselves count.Indian Muslims have got democracy, so we assume that they don't really need schools and jobs. Indian philosophy is non-violent and non-aggressive, so communalism can only be a passing flare. India is independent, so it can never be snared by economic or strategic neo-colonisation.

Our independence movement climaxed in a triumph. Our freedom struggle, which began earlier, is far from over. Defeating the British might have been the easier part, for now we have to defeat the sins within ourselves. Gandhi could not lead the freedom struggle until he had rid himself of illusions. Is there any Mahatma around who can liberate Indians from their own complacency?

-(Appeared in Outlook India - 20th August 2007)

The Ambush

Byline by M J Akbar: The Ambush

Instead of concentrating on poverty, Dr Singh concentrated on George Bush.Heads of government who have invested in Bush at the expense of their national interest are on a losing streak this year. Tony Blair has disappeared into insignificance so quickly that his decade in office already seems like a mirage. Any good he might have done for his country has been lost in that colossal and unthinking blunder called Iraq.

What is human about nature? Bystanders enjoy conflict more than resolution. Partisans may prefer peace, but an audience can be persuaded to pay good money to watch gladiators. Which street in the world ever stopped to applaud a serene couple strolling by, hand in hand? But let a husband and wife begin screaming at each other and a crowd will collect instantly. Let the couple be marginally familiar and a posse of journalists will arrive to turn them into minor celebrities. Such is the law of inhuman nature.

A divorce, therefore, will always get much more coverage than a marriage. Good news has only limited rights over airtime and newsprint. A marriage gets decent attention only at the time of nuptials. You might recall for instance the photographs flooded with smiles when the present UPA government was joined together in functional matrimony a little more than a thousand days ago. Such pictures aren’t news after 24 hours.

But a divorce can make news every day. There are so many issues to deal with. Who keeps the house after the split? That is a tough one since the house would never have been stable without the willing consent of both parties. The bickering can get intense over the most trivial detail, and each bicker feeds further demand from an insatiable media. Accusations get hurled across that nasty wrestling pit called a television studio. Mud sticks. Everyone has heard of some happy marriage, for such things are still possible. Whoever heard of a happy divorce?

Now that divorce proceedings have begun between the Congress and the Left, the best thing to do would be to make a quick and clean break. The House — the Lok Sabha of course — is now unstable. The partnership has become untenable.

The one thing that the Congress and the Left will not fight about is custody of the child. In three years the Manmohan Singh government has produced just one child, the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Left has made it clear that it has serious doubts about the circumstances of its arrival.

This government was elected because a majority of Indian voters rejected the fatuous claim that India was shining. That was a moment tailor-made for a new economic agenda that shifted the focus from wealth creation to wealth distribution. Instead, this government of World Bank economists insisted that wealth creation was, in a very fundamental sense, incompatible with wealth distribution.

It stuck doggedly to a crumbs-policy. If it ensured a feast for the rich, there would always be enough crumbs for the poor. This, in essence, is the trickle down theory advocated by the highest in the land, and applauded by all those given a free ticket to the table. One could sense that elections were around the corner when the Prime Minister rediscovered the poor during his speech on the sixtieth Independence Day. In Indian democracy, the poor get homilies, while the rich get policies.

If Dr Manmohan Singh had fought for and staked his government’s survival on an anti-poverty programme, no one would have dared to bring his government down. He would have won an election on his record, for the poor vote. How poor is India? Some startling statistics have just been released by a forgotten wing of Dr Singh’s own administration, the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector. Around 80% of India’s working population is in this sector. Nearly 80% of this group earns less than 20 rupees a day and 85% of this sub group is trapped in debt. By that usual sleight of hand we have drawn an arbitrary line to define poverty: Rs 12 a day constitutes the poverty line. This encourages the illusion that 77% of India is now above the poverty line. It isn’t that much above in any case. Nor is this poverty line index-linked to inflation. Twelve rupees a day buys much less today than it did three years ago. The traditional poverty groups remain where they were: 88% of Scheduled Tribes and Castes, 80% of "Other Backward Classes" and 85% of Muslims belong to the "poor and vulnerable" class.

If these statistics are lies the government should disown them, sack the author of the report, and produce alternative figures that indicate a different scenario. Dr Manmohan Singh cannot hide from facts by taking shelter behind silence.

Instead of concentrating on poverty, Dr Singh concentrated on George Bush. Heads of government who have invested in Bush at the expense of their national interest are on a losing streak this year. Tony Blair has disappeared into insignificance so quickly that his decade in office already seems like a mirage. Any good he might have done for his country has been lost in that colossal and unthinking blunder called Iraq. John Howard, the other great Bush ally, is heading for defeat in this year’s Australian elections.

Dr Singh always misunderstood the nature of the debate on the nuclear deal. That political fault line has now extended to the parties in his alliance, who did not have much to do with the decision but surrendered (unlike the Left) their independent judgment in order to hang on to office. Lalu Yadav, Sharad Pawar and M. Karunanidhi will be answerable to voters for a decision that they rubber stamped without examining the consequences.

For some reason that one has been unable to fathom, Dr Singh once called protests against the Bush visit to India "communal". If he thought that only Muslims were suspicious of his eagerness to accept any terms imposed by the Bush administration then I presume he has changed his views now. Any investment on such a scale, in both financial and strategic terms, cannot be pushed through by merely the will of a government. It has to be sifted through the process of national debate, particularly in Parliament. If the American legislature has the right to interfere in decision-making, and impose qualifications, why not the Indian legislature? Is the Indian MP less patriotic than the American Senator, or indeed more ignorant?

The logic of democracy travels in only one direction: the popular will. The Prime Minister pushed the pace by presenting his allies with a timetable that they were unable to accept.

There has also been a serious misunderstanding about the nature of government. India’s ambassador to Washington, an extremely capable diplomat, Ronen Sen, says that he has been privately assured that Washington will not react excessively if India uses the option to test. Alas, nations last longer than individuals. The life of this deal is estimated at around forty years. Ronen Sen will not be ambassador that long. Bush will not be President after January 2009. What matters is the law of the land and the written record. The law of America, by which every President is bound, is called the Hyde Act. It will prevail when a Democrat takes the White House from the Republicans. India’s national interest cannot be compromised on the strength of a private assurance. It is astonishing that a senior diplomat should make such a statement, when American negotiators and spokesmen have insisted that the law of their land will determine the course of their actions in any dispute. It is astounding that a government should accept this as some form of guarantee.

No marriage ever survived because of prolonged divorce proceedings. The time has come to go to a higher court than even the Indian Parliament — to the people of India.

Dependence Day

Byline By M.J. Akbar : Dependence Day

If America does move militarily against Iran, there will be continuous war from Beirut on the Mediterranean to the borders of India and maybe seep across as well. And if we do not cooperate with Washington in that conflict, will we get sermons from American candidates and instructions from the American administration, as our neighbour Pakistan is getting at the moment?

In July Mrs Sonia Gandhi took charge of an election that had suddenly become difficult, thanks to a candidate of her own choosing. Her nominee for President was a last-minute surprise with a dreary record and a dubious approach to public finance. And yet, within days, she split the opposition so comprehensively that it was bleeding after the result.

In August Prime Minister Manmohan Singh achieved a unique reversal. Within a week he not only united the Opposition that Mrs Gandhi had dispersed, but managed to lop off a vital slice from the coalition that keeps him in office. It remains to be seen whether the Left has fallen out, or still remains hanging in the alliance, but the threads that bind it to Dr Singh are looking tenuous. Dr Singh has had three years to prepare for the denouement of the Indo-US nuclear deal. The last stage was bungled because it was managed in precisely the same way as every other stage of the process. At all times the Prime Minister was making two simultaneous deals. One was with Washington, whose details were naturally kept secret. And the other was with Delhi’s closed-circuit elite, a quadrangle of politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and journalists, on the assumption that their support, managed through ego-massage and more concrete benefits, would be sufficient to get domestic endorsement.

He never could quite comprehend that Indian nationalism had stronger foundations than the self-interest of the establishment; or that, in a democracy, the base can affect the top. Indians are not yet ready to celebrate sixty years of independence by handing over the next forty years to dependence.

He thought he could get away by a display of the text and was unpleasantly surprised when India asked for the context. The context was public knowledge thanks to the transparency of American democracy. The Hyde Act, with its extensive demands on the Indian right to independent behaviour, was one context, but not the only one. As V.P. Singh pointed out in a letter to the Prime Minister, we also need a proper evaluation of the cost-benefit ratio of civilian
nuclear power, and whether we can generate much more power for far less investment. V.P. Singh is not a foam-in-the-mouth adversary; he is among those who helped Dr Singh become Prime Minister.

A Prime Minister holds a political office. Dr Singh has promoted, and enjoyed, a carefully nurtured disdain for politics; he likes his bread buttered on both sides. Politics is the art of establishing harmony between policy and the people. Dr Singh was only ever interested in establishing harmony between his policies and the elite, the inmates of a circular road in Delhi. India is now letting him know it exists.Three years is sufficient time to garner the material needed for the construction of an image. Dr Manmohan Singh has identified himself with only two passions: economic growth and the Indo-US nuclear deal. There is nothing wrong with either on principle. There is a great deal wrong with both in practice. Both have serious
electoral limitations.

The policy of wealth creation as pursued by this government has never been adjusted for economic justice or equity. This emerges from statements consistently made by the highest in the government, that the poor will be beneficiaries of the "trickle down theory". Think about it. Cream is collecting at the top of the Indian pie at the rate of 9% a year. About 80% of this cream is swallowed up, to differing degrees, by perhaps a quarter of the population. The three-quarters below have to wait for a thin trickle which is lapped by various strata before anything can reach the depths of those below the poverty line. Common sense suggests that the poorest should be the first beneficiaries of wealth creation, as they live on the margins of hunger and the edge of anger. Instead, the poor believe that they have been left out of an Indian success story
to which they have contributed with sweat, and, in the case of that rising ulcer, the Special Economic Zone, with their land. They find themselves marginalised or even deleted from the distribution of rewards.

Those with swimming pools get a waterfall; those dying of thirst are fended off with a trickle. This trickle is the breeding ground for Naxalites. Young people do not live only on the fashion and celebrity pages of newspapers; there are young in hovels as well. And they vote.

Neither is Dr Manmohan Singh helped by his intense identification with President George W. Bush, a relationship visible in his slightly tremulous body language when the two meet. Let us keep to one side the fact that Bush has done more harm to his own country, and to the world, than any American President in memory. Or that people equate Bush with the havoc in Iraq. It is more important for us, who are still fortunate enough not to have been liberated by Bush, to understand the implications of Iraq. At issue is the meaning of sovereignty.

American policy under Bush has abandoned all respect for the concept of sovereignty, and is ready to go to war to further an American economic and political agenda. One no longer need point out that the war in Iraq had nothing to do with the war against terrorism. If there had been no resistance in Iraq, who could have prevented Bush from invading two other Muslim nations, Syria and Iran? This would have been the strategic centre of the "New Middle East".
Is India rather than Pakistan to become the guardian of the eastern flank of this New Middle East? Is India now going to become part of the politics, and indeed the wars, of the region? If America does move militarily against Iran, there will be continuous war from Beirut on the Mediterranean to the borders of India and maybe seep across as well. And if we do not cooperate with Washington in that conflict, will we get sermons from American candidates and instructions from the American administration, as our neighbour Pakistan is getting at the moment? Is this the meaning of the specific reference to Iran in the Hyde Act? It is completely unusual for a third country to be mentioned in legislation which is meant for bilateral purposes. Why was it done? Why have we not questioned it? Why is it being treated as something inconsequential? If it was inconsequential, why was it included, not in a statement, but in the law of America? The Hyde Act is not political posturing. It is the law of the land, and every President of America, present or future, has to abide by that law. Prime Minister Singh has already compromised the integrity of India’s independent foreign policy with his silence on the Hyde Act. There also seems to have been a message sent to the American administration not to roil Indian waters by stressing the Hyde Act. But this is too serious a business for fudge.

Dr Singh’s allies are beginning to wonder about the extent of the damage through decisions on which they were never really consulted, but accepted in order to keep the government going. I can’t see Lalu Yadav discussing the nuances of the nuclear deal, but he will be answerable when he meets his voters next time.The Left, which survives by thinking ahead, has realised that Dr Singh has driven the UPA to a crossroads. You can hunt with the Opposition hounds and run with the government hare on a flat course, not at a crossroads. Moreover, a crowd has collected. Bengal is watching Delhi as closely as it is watching Nandigram. When the street speaks sensible politicians listen.

A Good Deal Walks on Two Legs

Byline by M.J. Akbar: A Good Deal Walks on Two Legs

Much to my regret, I cannot change my nose into one of the Seven Wonders of the World by calling it a pyramid. Spin, make-up or clever photography might disguise its excesses, but in the loneliness of the morning mirror, I have to admit that it is nothing more than a slightly protuberant outcrop on a fairly arid base. The Principle of the Nose extends to the text of agreements. The manipulation of words, or their contrived omission, does not deny fundamental facts.

There is still some way to go before the proposed nuclear deal between India and the United States becomes operational, but it is very clear that the two negotiating teams, and their governments, have agreed on one thing: that they will sell different narratives on home turf, even when the narratives contradict each other.

Delhi, to give the most obvious instance, is massaging the media and trumpeting the absence of any reference to the consequences of a new nuclear test by India as a triumph. Delhi is treating this as de facto American recognition of India’s right to resume testing if it so decides.
The 123 Agreement was announced on Friday 27 July. On 2 August, just six days later, Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state and chief American negotiator was asked by a journalist, Robert McMahon, in a recorded interview, "Some say that under the deal, if India holds a nuclear weapons test, the US would delay its own nuclear fuel supplies to India but the US would help India find other sources of fuel, which violates the spirit of the Hyde Act. What do you say to those concerns?"

Burns replied: "That’s absolutely false. I negotiated the agreement and we preserved intact the responsibility of the President (of the United States) under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 that if India or any other country conducts a nuclear test, the President — he or she at that time in the future — will have the right to ask for the return of the nuclear fuel or nuclear technologies that have been transferred by American firms. We’re releasing the agreement on our website on Friday afternoon (3 August 2007) and people will see that when they cite the text."
The answer could not be more categorical: "absolutely false". That is the American position, and it is being enunciated for the record, without any ambiguity. The message is clear, and it is loud. America will demand fuel and technology back, and probably not return the still-uncounted billions of dollars we paid for it either.

Delhi is pretending as if the Hyde Act does not exist, or at least is not binding upon India. But it is, as Burns has repeatedly and publicly insisted, binding on Washington.

Why is this a vital fact? Because of the nature of the agreement. This is not a two-way deal. India is not selling something of critical interest to America in return for nuclear fuel or nuclear technology. India is a buyer. It is a one-way transaction. America can sell only if India is in compliance with the conditions imposed by the Hyde legislation, which was specifically designed for this deal, and which makes no bones about its intention to place Indian nuclear activity as well as Indian foreign policy on watch. This is why Burns added, "…we hope very much that India will not conclude any long-term oil and gas agreements with Iran. The Indians, as you know, have voted with us at the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors against Iran on two occasions". This is nothing to do with his personal views; he is enjoined, as a public servant, to place these issues on public record.

India has formally accepted this obligation in the 123 Agreement, a point that seems to have escaped the notice of some, but certainly not all, instant analysts. Article 2.1 says very specifically: "Each Party shall implement this Agreement in accordance with its respective applicable treaties, national laws, regulations, and license requirements concerning the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."

The Hyde Act is the national law of the United States, and any perceived violation would give any "future President" — he or she, as Burns wisely pointed out — cause to declare the agreement null and void and demand American fuel and technology back.
I suppose we could retaliate by banning the export of mangoes to America, but there would not be much else that we could do.

The question is a simple one. America is the supplier; has it made India a supplicant?
Only a very foolish person advocates enmity as a national objective. It is utterly stupid to seek the hostility of America, a genuine great power, not because of its military might (which it is squandering in Iraq) but because it is the true fountainhead of technology, education, economics and democracy. India has exactly the same passions, and no two modern nations are better designed for true friendship. America became, in my view, the oldest country of the modern world because its democratic Constitution is the template on which nations must find their future in an age of liberal freedoms. India is the ideological leader of the post-colonial world, because our Constitution is proof that independence is the birthright of a nation, and freedom is the birthright of the people. But a sustainable friendship can only be built between equals. One might be tempted to wink one’s way past potentially conflicting interpretations of clauses, but this would at the very least sour relations between India and the United States.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, architect of the nuclear deal, made a small but perhaps significant mistake when trying to persuade us of its merits. He suggested that it would be unpatriotic to oppose it. I believe that the mistake was unintentional, for I cannot doubt his sincerity or his excellent manners. Perhaps the problem is that language can sometimes be an impediment to understanding. He probably wanted to suggest that it was in the national interest to accept this pact.

There is a way of ensuring national support: by making this a national, rather than merely a government’s, decision. How?

For a start, the pace of implementation must slow down. There is no reason why this agreement should be signed within four weeks. What is the hurry? The text will not change. America will wait until we have concluded a safeguards agreement with the IAEA and convince the 45 Nuclear Suppliers Group members to give it acceptable terms in civil nuclear trade. When India’s Parliament convenes the Prime Minister should take the initiative to set up an all-party committee that would be tasked to take evidence from experts, examine the implications of each clause and arrive at its recommendations by the end of the year. It will be a bipartisan process without rancour and politics, and each section of the House will be co-owner of the consensus. So far, the whole process has been handled by a small group around the Prime Minister, consisting primarily of bureaucrats.

This decision will influence Indian policy for the next half century, and must have the legs to walk for fifty years. A partisan approach would give this decision but a single leg, and how far can you travel with a crutch? The American administration has taken care to use the House of Representatives and the Senate to make it a bipartisan decision, compromising with the likes of Senator Hyde when it had to. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can afford to do no less. You cannot run a marathon at the speed of a hundred-metre dash; there could be a grievous injury en route.

It is in the national interest to make the Indo-US nuclear deal a national decision.

A Nilgiri Viewpoint

Byline by M J Akbar: A Nilgiri Viewpoint

My name Kennedy, sir!" exclaimed the chauffeur of the black Ambassador driving me up to the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington, from Coimbatore airport through blaring city, quiet woods and picture postcard valleys to a 6,000-foot high perch in the Blue Mountains. He glanced back to confirm my curiosity. "Born day Kennedy died. Father thought good man," he explained. Kennedy proved to be a driving encyclopaedia of Coimbatore’s virtues: four medical colleges, 28 engineering colleges et al, but was just a shade apprehensive about one statistic. A quarter of this Tamil city’s population was from next-door Kerala. "Kerala no space for legs," he added on a forgiving note.

As behoves a good chauffeur, Kennedy was an incisive analyst of national as well as regional politics. He approved warmly of Abdul Kalam, and turned 120 degrees to shrug at the worthy Tamilian scientist’s successor. He had heard about only one of the candidates for Vice-President, Najima Abdullah. Like any shrewd pundit, he laid out the analysis but reserved final judgment lest time might prove him wrong. He was eloquent about his state. Jayalalithaa had polled only 15 lakh votes less than the DMK-led alliance; Vijayakanth 28 lakh votes; in many constituencies Amma (Jayalalithaa) lost by less than a thousand votes, five hundred, even two hundred! I asked about the future. "DMK, free TV, two-rupee rice. TV going only to DMK worker, rice going to Karnataka, Kerala, selling twelve rupees."

I had no idea whether his figures were correct, but only a very courageous person would argue with the authority in his voice. When, like weasel journalist I did check later, these were the facts: Vijayakanth had launched the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam in September 2005, positioned himself as the "Karuppu MGR" or "Black MGR", contested 232 of the 234 seats, picked up 8.33% of the votes, or nearly 28 lakhs, and although he was the sole person in his party to actually win a seat he had taken enough votes away from Jayalalithaa to ensure her defeat.

The Nilgiris are a gentle range, the valleys undulating and verdant, the hills flecked with floating garlands of clouds. Builders have hammered smallpox marks on the face of nature with rows of tightly strung matchbox houses. The thirst for occasional pleasure and permanent status will of course only rise with economic growth, as greater numbers enter the holiday-home class. Aesthetics is not necessarily a handmaiden of success. Kennedy slows down and to the left spreads the green bowl above which Lawrence School, Lovedale, has been built. "Fully viewpoint," says Kennedy, and I agree. Other points are less than fully viewpoint. The town just before we enter the Army haven at Wellington is a mess of modern mismanagement: roads dark with broken tar, traffic at both cross and illogical purposes, policemen bored with their thin benefits, small shops that have miraculously preserved a sense of dust despite the generous sprinkle of rain. India changes as you cross the gates into defence discipline and budget. The tar isn’t different, but it is cleaner. It is a realm of order; work by the clock, leisure by the clock. Stuff happens outside. Things happen in Wellington.

Lt. Gen. Bhaskar Gupta (Gurkhas, as his distinctive soft hat confirms) offers a brisk and hospitable welcome. I learn, with added pleasure, that he is from Bengal; his father was in the Army as well. Naturally we slip into Bengali as often as circumstance and vocabulary will permit. He invites me for dinner at 2000 hours. Informal, even a kurta will do, although it is not advisable: the clouds can dissolve without notice, and the temperature can drop by ten degrees. The locals wear a sweater at all times. (Tourists from Tamil Nadu, in my considered view, come only to be able to wear a sweater.) But the lecture the next evening is tie and jacket, as is the reception at the Mess later. Abashed, I find my small suitcase is without any ties to formality. Who can conceive of a tie in half-baked Delhi? I am promised a regimental tie. Kennedy has the rest of the answers. We head off to Ooty to find a jacket.

A Shrine to Our Lady of Health, followed by a wine shop, the Holy Spirit Church, a notice welcoming the imminent presence of Charing Cross and a wax museum pave the way to Ooty. A lovely British cathedral dominates one side of the city; the other side of the road is largely the property of an Afghan called Baba Seth, who arrived many decades ago, possibly along with dry fruits and built up one of the finest car collections in the South. His heirs now live in the traditional manner, by selling off their inheritance, bit by bit. Inevitably, Charing Cross has gone native, and been renamed Charring Cross by more than one shop. I am directed towards the upper floor of Mohan’s where the lights are switched on but the dust left in place. A proud sign promises "Service Quality Value since 1947". The jackets are double-breasted, and top half of a suit. The salesman has no qualms about selling me only the top half. While the service is kind, the material of good quality, the suits were probably made in 1947. Stopping at the Savoy for a cup of tea, I ask for a table with a view. The young man is charmingly honest. "We don’t have a view," he says.

Before dinner Bhaskar points to distant lights from the lawns of his glorious residence at the top of his Wellington mountain. That is where Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw lives. The Army remembers its Field Marshal with respect and affection. The conversation with senior officers from all the services over dinner is splendidly convivial, and the morning alarm is birdsong. The past has been improved but not changed at the exquisite Wellington Club. Bhaskar Gupta was the last golfer to get a hole in one, says a scroll of honour. The librarian unearths just the book I was looking for, a 1941 biography of Gertrude Bell, the British civil servant instrumental in making Faisal king of the newly created Iraq in 1921, although Faisal had never set foot in the country before he accepted the British-sponsored crown. About 240 officers are selected each year for the Staff College course through a written examination. This splendid institution is gate to the haven of senior command.

The jacket was the easy part; I simply didn’t wear one. The regimental tie constituted summer formal. They didn’t buy my bluff; they were just being decent to a thoughtless civilian. The auditorium, everyone in dark suit, was stiff with discipline, but eyes and faces were relaxed. This was both reassuring — there was absolutely no chance of getting booed; and discomfiting — you don’t want your audience to be too polite either. There was no doubt about the interest. Islam and terrorism is not a favourite subject anymore; it seems to be the only subject anyone is interested in. I suppose the only reason I get invited is because I have some familiarity with both Islam and English grammar. Lots of people have one or the other. The questions were articulate, and rid of either ambiguity or hypocrisy, which was a relief because the answers were offered in the same vein.

Early next morning, before goodbye, I put on the regimental tie, albeit briefly. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to.

Tomorrow's Agenda

Byline by M J Akbar: Tomorrow’s Agenda

You can argue with success but can you win the argument? An argument is a conversation about detail, and the more minor the nuance the finer the argument. Success is a heavy blanket that tends to shroud details. A happy result diffuses blemishes and paints a positive gloss on reasons for victory. But an election in a functioning and even zealous democracy is only a link in a chain that connects to the next poll, and only an honest analysis of the reasons will determine whether they become seeds of future fortune, or misfortune.

The election for the President of India on 19 July had a limited electorate. Only legislators, either Members of Parliament or the Assembly, could vote.

No legislator voted for either Mrs Pratibha Patil or Mr Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. Each person voted for himself or herself. Those who abstained were equally motivated by self-interest.
The result was determined early on, when the Congress softly dropped the message that the defeat of its candidate would mean the collapse of the ruling alliance. For the allies, the risk was not worth any alternative game, for the very good reason that there was no alternative game. Neither was heroism on the agenda of the non-Congress parties outside government, whether in the chipped NDA or the confused Third Front. They preferred any possible local gain to a national objective. Shiv Sena opted for sect instead of its traditional political alliance with the BJP, and its leader Balasaheb Thackeray was duly rewarded with a formal visit by the Congress chief minister of Maharashtra, who decided that this was not the right moment to consider whether Mr Thackeray was communal or anti-Muslim. Another partner of the BJP, Mamata Banerjee, decided that she did not need to alienate any Bengali Muslim sympathy by voting for Shekhawat. With friends such as these, the BJP could hardly hope for fervour from possible bedfellows. Chandra Babu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh and Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh are anxious for Muslim support in the next election. Why would they risk the future, and a probable alliance with the Left, for a present that was at best uncertain? The cause was lost before the election was lost.

Neither character nor ideology, or what passes for ideology, made any difference to this limited electorate of legislators. The BJP believed that it could make corruption a decisive difference, which would sway legislators. Corruption is an issue with the man on the street, who is forced to give bribes in order to survive. It cannot be much of an issue among those more accustomed to taking money rather than giving it. At least one of the voters, a Member of Parliament, took a break from jail, his residence since arrest for kidnapping and murder.

The Congress made much out of the fact that their candidate would be the first woman to become President. But Mrs Pratibha Patil is going to Rashtrapati Bhavan by accident rather than design. Hers was the last name on a long list that was discussed among the UPA partners at much length. Women’s liberation would have been far better served if her name had been at the top of the list rather than at the bottom. A fluke cannot be converted into an ideological virtue.

All the problems of last-minute selection were immediately apparent. Even minimal due diligence would have disclosed a rather awkward proximity to political and fiscal improprieties that are easily hidden under a distant carpet in a small town, but can hardly escape the glare of a searchlight that is thrown on a presidential candidate’s track record.

Mrs Patil’s exotic habits extend to an optimistic conversation with a dead guru, but that may be less of a problem in a country where no respectable politician would be seen without his astrologer. In fact, there may be politicians searching for the dead guru now after her spectacular rise from anonymity to President. The only question now is whether she carries such a spirited view of destiny into the office that she will inhabit next week.

The outgoing President, Abdul Kalam, was an apolitical bachelor-rocket scientist who created a formidable constituency among children by promising them an India that would rise to the leadership of the world in the 21st century. Mrs Pratibha Patil will be more representative of today’s political class: holier than thou in public and shadier than thou in private.

Elections to the office of Prime Minister and Parliament are about power. Elections to the office of President are about dignity. That is an office that has been, more or less, preserved from the fetid whiff of politics ever since Dr Rajendra Prasad became the first President of the Republic of India. The new incumbent of Rashtrapati Bhavan brings with her a bit of malodorous baggage that will need some urgent spring cleaning to prevent the odour from spreading.

The new President will get the palace, but the loser could get the sympathy of the ordinary voter, who did not elect the President of India this week, but will certainly elect (or not) the electors of the President very soon. A Catch 22 lurking around the corner if the Congress does not take pre-emptive action. President Kalam has now made it virtually a part of the President’s duties to interact freely around the country, and meet children. I do hope that President Patil refrains from theorising about the barbaric Mughals and how they forced Indian women to wear veil for self-protection.

The Congress is making a mistake when it compares Mrs Patil to her opponent. The comparison that should worry the party is between Mrs Patil and the candidate that the Congress could have had. Home minister Shivraj Patil was the public frontrunner for weeks. I do not know what the Congress or the allies had against him, but he would have been an infinitely better choice. Pranab Mukherjee would have lent maturity and finesse to the highest office of the land. The UPA has selected an excellent candidate for Vice-President in Hamid Ansari, a distinguished diplomat who will, unlike Mrs Patil, happily declare his assets.

The shambles within the Opposition is already deflecting the Congress from its own inadequacies. There is a mood of mini-euphoria, and a feeling that the election for the Rashtrapati Bhavan is the prelude for re-election to Prime Minister’s House. General elections will be fought on different territory, by different rules, among different voters. A victory on Raisina Hill is no substitute for defeat in Uttar Pradesh. The agenda for today’s friendships, for example with Mayawati, is exhausted with this victory.

Next year’s agenda is a different one: who will dominate the next Parliament? All bets are open.

Any Questions?

Byline by M.J. Akbar : Any Questions?

Is the world under siege? Are Muslims under siege? If you know the answer, go collect your Nobel Prize for Peace, or at least an invitation to a seminar in Europe.

Is the world under siege by Muslims or are Muslims under siege by the world?

Now that the last hope of liberals, Indian Muslims, seem to have joined this world in Glasgow, or perhaps the world has reached their doorstep through Australia, the question has shifted yet further from an answer. Are we in that dark penumbra of history when the only response to a question is more questions?

Let me unburden myself of the one at the top of my mind. Which of the two is more self-defeating — the bruised breast of a self-flagellating Indian liberal who moans that all certainty has collapsed ever since Kafeel Ahmed drove a flaming Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport, or the crude fist of the zealot who gloats that you can put the Muslim anywhere but you cannot change his fundamental fanatic character? On consideration, the first is the bigger problem if only because nothing better could be expected from the second. Both positions are based on the same fallacy. They lay the sins of a few upon the head of the community.

Must all Indian Muslims be punished with collective guilt because a Kafeel or a Shakeel, provoked by memories and images that could easily range from Babri to Basra, has chosen to vent his rage through unacceptable violence upon innocents? Do we blame Hinduism or Hindus for the malevolence of those who killed and terrorised Muslims in Gujarat five years ago? We do not, and must not. Is there any reason why Muslims converge so easily into a category?
A related question: how Indian is the Indian who has left India? Think about the nuances before jumping into that dangerous pit called a conclusion.

Those of us who live in India, and have worked through the snide insults of the Sixties, the jeers of the Seventies, the doubts of the Eighties, the despair of the Nineties to arrive at the rising confidence of this decade have a right to some marginal satisfaction at our nation’s achievement. We have no right to be smug, though, as long as half a billion Indians go to sleep hungry, perhaps even famished. Our social fabric has strengthened, but is still vulnerable to wear and tear. The immediate future is going to be as difficult as the past, as the guns of Naxalites constantly remind us. But there is a question: is India of the 21st century only as strong as its weakest link?

If that is true then there is something untenable about the structure of success.
Cause and effect are such troublesome concepts. Which comes first? That is only the beginning of another round of questions. Cause and effect mutate, then interlink and spawn bastard progeny. In Iraq, George Bush has trapped America in the coils of linkages that have now escaped the limitations of logic.

Five years ago, there was only one terrorist in Iraq: Saddam Hussein. He terrorised his people, perhaps the worst form of terrorism. There was one reason for anger five years ago. Who can count how many reasons jostle for attention in a young person’s mind after four years of war, mayhem and occupation? Four million Iraqis have been displaced; the demographic equivalent in India would be more than 200 million uprooted. That is the scale of the human disaster. No one has an accurate count of the Iraqi dead. Bush spends a quarter million dollars a minute on just the war in Iraq. Read that again, it isn’t a mistake: a quarter million dollars every minute. That bill doesn’t include the costs in Afghanistan. Even the British appetite for Bush has ebbed, with a Cabinet minister saying that British policy will not be joined at the hip to Washington. British casualties are now approaching the rate suffered in the Second World War. And only 22% of Iraqis support the presence of Anglo-American troops.

Whatever the cause, such are the effects. As Paul Wood, defence correspondent for British television’s Today programme, said on Friday, "Who wants to be the last man to die for a lost cause?"

A newspaper is life distilled into still life. If the siege we mentioned is global, then perhaps a good checkpoint is a global newspaper through which we might ponder the mysteries of cause and effect.

The top of the front page of the 12 July edition is a moving photograph of a woman, her head bowed beyond sight, her tears hidden in the cusp of an anguished hand, sobbing on the coffin of a lost son or husband, one of the over 8,000 Muslims massacred by Serbs in Srebrenica twelve years ago, during the ethnic cleansing that began on 11 July 1995. They have just identified a fresh lot of 465 victims.

Where is one of the principal leaders of this genocide, a mass murderer called General Ratko Mladic? If you want to chat with him, down at the nearest cafe. If you are the European Union or America, then he becomes invisible. He cannot be found.

Below this picture is the story of Lal Masjid, a citadel of paranoia, xenophobia and terrorism masquerading as a mosque and madrasa. There are no Christians or Serbs in this battle in Pakistan, which has taken at least a hundred lives. This is a war between different attitudes to faith. And this is proof that terrorism is a fire that can also burn the hand of those who feed it.
To the left of this picture is a story about Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s top security official, a heavyweight in Angela Merkel’s Cabinet. He is demanding the detention of potential terrorists in Germany and the extermination (death, in simpler language) of their leaders outside Germany. Schauble, but naturally, will determine the definitions of "potential" and "leaders". He will not send anyone to exterminate General Ratko Mladic. He is on the lookout for Lebanese Muslims.

Turn the page. A suicide bomber kills 10, wounds 35 at a military camp in Algeria. Turkey complains about American arms in the possession of Kurdish secessionists. In Britain, four young Muslims, in their 20s, who "very nearly" succeeded in another outrage on the London Tube two years ago, are sentenced to forty years’ imprisonment at the very minimum. What will Iraq be like when they emerge from jail in 2045? Which passions will remain unspent four decades later?

Is the world under siege? Are Muslims under siege? If you know the answer, go collect your Nobel Prize for Peace, or at least an invitation to a seminar in Europe. To me, six of one looks suspiciously like half a dozen of the other.

Gordon's Knot

Byline By M.J. Akbar : Gordon’s Knot

On the evening of 5 July, with the unerring instinct of an ass, I missed a great opportunity to become a sycophant of the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. We were at the summer party of the Spectator in the garden of their new offices in London. There had been an unfamiliar stiffness at the entrance as invitation cards were checked, double-checked and ticked off in the manner of a functioning police station, but once inside it was again very British and very jolly. A very British fellow guest welcomed me to the Mad Mullah side of the fence upon being introduced and then described how his daughter had been converted to Islam. Apparently her maternal grandfather, a Muslim, had picked her up when she was born and whispered a prayer in her ear before he, a fulltime agnostic like most other Londoners, could do anything about it.

I escaped to the back of the garden, away from such moral dilemmas, to chat with old journalist friends, when a small gate near the hedge opened. Gordon Brown strode in without fuss and made straight for our group to greet my columnist friends. Here is what I wanted, very sincerely, to tell the new Prime Minister of Britain. "May I, Prime Minister, use the opportunity of this accidental meeting to say how relieved most of us are at the quiet, efficient, unfussy manner in which you have handled the terrorist attack at Glasgow airport? You refused to make political capital out of this nasty business. You set the tone for London and your country with your calm, reminding us that ‘phlegmatic’ is a British rather an English word. Within three days you actually reduced the threat perception level rather than pushing it up further. This may not seem very much, but the rest of us, particularly in the Muslim world, have seen how your predecessor, the unsurpassed drama queen Tony Blair, flooded every television channel with his quivering lip. Blair would have probably banned all transatlantic flights from Scotland, rushed across to visit George Bush, prohibited all carry-on luggage on every plane by now even while his home secretary debated the merits of more legislation to curb British freedoms."

In my imagination I see Gordon Brown listen intently, if modestly, to this fulsome praise, his eye lighting up only once, at the description of Blair as a drama queen, then summon the aide lurking pretty obviously two steps behind him, and ask him to take my mobile number so that he can sip at the fount of my genuflecting wisdom for the rest of his decade as Prime Minister.

Alas, the truth is different. I was more or less a silent bystander, not because one is tightlipped by temperament, but because I had absolutely no clue to the subject they were discussing. What do the high and mighty ask a Prime Minister at a social gathering? It would clearly be crass to discuss policy or war. They discussed the comparative merits of 11 Downing Street, Brown’s home as chancellor of exchequer for ten years, and 10 Downing Street, the famous official residence of British Prime Ministers. I know now, from the sidelines, that No. 10 has an extraordinary number of rooms behind that unassuming, even deceptively quiet facade. Had Brown actually moved in yet despite being PM for a week? No, not yet.

My cue to butt in. "You aren’t waiting until you’ve been properly elected, are you?" I suggested gingerly.

Over a lifetime of journalism, I have experienced my share of dirty looks. This one was brief, very brief, but unmistakeable. And a few seconds later Prime Minister Brown had moved on to a more salubrious group.

For those who might miss the point, Brown is a bit touchy about the fact that he has become PM through a mechanism of the House of Commons and the Labour Party, rather than the morally proper process of a general election. Be that as it may, let it not be said that a mere, fleeting dirty look put me off my admiration.

Within a week of being in office, Brown has altered the culture of power beyond recognition. I am writing this column on 7 July, the anniversary of the horrific London bombings that left 52 dead in underground trains and shattered a nation’s nerves. Brown remembered that moment with dignity and calm, recalling the pain of families who had lost their loved ones and reaffirming national resolve without stopping traffic or massaging tears. The clever manipulation of pseudo-hysteria, always carefully monitored to remain below the top rather than go over it, the continuous mobilisation of spin doctors and media hype, have suddenly vanished like a punctured bubble.

Gordon Brown used the word "change" eight times in the short speech he made the day he became Prime Minister. It is already evident what he meant. It is not simply the fact that he has created a Cabinet of young people who would probably not be considered old enough to lead the youth wings of Indian political parties (the new foreign secretary is only 41 years old, and certainly got his job as much for his youth as for the fact that he was publicly critical of Blair’s hirsute warmongering). There is no sophisticated finger-pointing, the kind in which you never actually raise your hand in any direction but nod so heavily that one would have to be a cretin to miss the meaning. Men of Indian origin are involved in the Glasgow outrage; that is well known. But an individual’s sins are not being transferred to a community or a country.

Where is Tony Blair? No one vanishes faster than yesterday’s Prime Minister. After a decade of media dominance he is nowhere. He can be glimpsed occasionally, bland and uncertain, lost in the withering fire of drawing room jokes. But you can still gauge the success of his extraordinary media management skills. Most people in Britain remain convinced that he is the new Peace Czar of the Middle East, even though both the White House and the European Union (more gently) have clarified that peace talks are outside his mandate, and that his only job is really as the new fund collector for Palestinian institutions.

Gordonian sobriety is certainly good governance, but does it also make for good politics? Blairite hype may be distasteful to columnists who do not have to get elected, but it won Blair and Labour three general elections. You do not argue with such a rate of success.

The answer to such a question is not available in the murky logic of an opinion or the opaque density of a government position. It can only be found through a general election. One of the finer points of British democracy draws a distinction between legality and legitimacy. Brown became Prime Minister through the support of Labour MPs. That is perfectly legal. But his tenure at 10 Downing Street will not become legitimate until it has been endorsed by the British electorate. It is Brown’s decision as to when he takes the legitimacy test. Some are urging that he go for an election as early as in October, particularly since he has a bounce that has taken Labour once again ahead of the Conservatives. That must be a hard call. When you have waited ten years to become PM you want to savour a little more of the satisfaction before risking a gamble. No matter what opinion polls might say, every politician knows that every election is a gamble.

Democracy is a huge casino. But that gamble is compulsory, not optional.

Gordon Brown will shift, in his mind and his heart, from No. 11 Downing Street to No. 10 only after the results of that gamble are known.

A long Goodbye

Byline by M.J. Akbar : The Long Goodbye

One must not be harsh: it is not true that liars do not have a conscience. Why else would Tony Blair edge, at the cautious pace that public life demands, towards the Roman Catholic Church? He dropped in on Pope Benedict XVI in Rome on his farewell free ride around the world, and British media is full of stories about his proposed conversion to Catholicism.

Why would Blair want to become a Catholic except to confess? This Catholic practice has a unique advantage. Its details can never reach the front pages of the "feral" British newspapers. The Father Confessor shares details of the guilt only with God. Such a privilege is not available in the many schools and sects of the Protestant dispensation, a revolutionary theological movement inspired by a German reformer in the early 16th century, Martin Luther, because, in his view (with much evidence to back him) the Papacy had become dissolute. There were many venal sins that individual Popes were prey to, but Luther was angered most by the degeneration in the system of "indulgences" by which a sinner could, literally, pay his way out of sin. Money to the Church purchased forgiveness. The key to heaven lay in the treasury of the Vatican.

Protestants seek a solution. Catholics can get an absolution. True, matters are not quite so simple, for the Roman Church has long ended such deviations. Blair can’t sell the mortgage of his homes in London, and send a cheque to the Vatican appropriate to the dimensions of his lies on Iraq. But he is not turning into a Catholic to find out how many angels can dance on the head of a needle.

Somewhere in his conscience there must be a thirst for redemption. The guilt of young lives sentenced to war must be heavy.

It is entirely in character therefore that he is trying to relaunch himself as a missionary, with Palestine as his mission.

There is some confusion about the precise profile of the mission. His few remaining friends are suggesting that Blair has been appointed some sort of High Plenipotentiary who will bring peace to the Middle East with the same skills that he displayed to bring amity in Ireland. But Blair’s Boss, George Bush, has just put in a corrective. State Department officials clarified on Wednesday 27 June that his only responsibility is "shoring up" Palestinian institutions, and not trying to negotiate a peace deal, or "final status", between Israel and the Palestinians. This
latter job is for the Big Boys. And for a Big Girl. The State Department said that Condoleezza Rice would handle the serious bit herself, because, as she and Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have said, the United States is the only country Israel trusts as broker. Blair is a "true friend of Israel" agrees Olmert, but Britain is not the United States.

Blair’s mandate is really not much more than to ensure there is enough money for the Ramallah municipality to clear the garbage, and wheedle out all the Palestinian cash that Israel has withheld on one excuse or the other.

Blair’s parish is not even the whole of Palestine. He deals only with the part under the control of Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas and Gaza are out of his bounds. As presently defined, Blair has even less responsibility than once entrusted to the former World Bank President, Jim Wolfensohn, by the Quartet (America, European Union, Russia and the United Nations). Wolfensohn was told to get on with the economics of Palestine but to keep out of politics.

Blair, to state it simply, is no longer one of the Big Boys. He may or may not get a salary in his new mission, although he will certainly get a plane. I do hope, however, they don’t send the bill for the costs of the plane to Mahmoud Abbas. Nothing is impossible in the worldview of accountants.

Wolfensohn, whose sincerity and stature were beyond question, failed because the economics of Palestine is inextricably linked to its internal and external politics. Assuming Blair can manage more elbow room than a World Bank official, can he do any better at a moment of severe crisis?

What can Blair do as part-time envoy over the next one year that he could not do during ten years as full-time Prime Minister?

What can anyone do during an American election year, when balance is held hostage to election sensitivities? This process used to last less than a year. It has now extended to almost two years. New ideas do not get an airing during the missile wars of election debates. The risk of a missile becoming a boomerang is too high.

Blair’s mandate is limited to the patch controlled by Mahmoud Abbas. But the difficult part of the story is Hamas and the support it commands, not Abbas. Or is it the new strategy that Blair can mollycoddle Abbas while Israel goes to war with Hamas? It would be an easier war for Israel than Lebanon last year. Unlike hilly Lebanon, Gaza is flat, and Hamas is not Hezbollah.

Can Blair, perceived by most Muslims as part of the problem, reinvent himself as part of the solution? Blair represents a past that must be swept out of the way if a new route map is to be found. His successor, the new Prime Minister of Britain Gordon Brown, understands this. He has appointed David Miliband, a critic of the Iraq war and of Blair’s foreign policy, as his foreign secretary. Jack Straw led the campaign to make Brown Prime Minister but did not get his old job back because Straw was too closely identified with the war. Even before being sworn in, Brown said, "I would like to see all security and intelligence analysis independent of the
political process and I have asked the Cabinet Secretary to do that." This was as sharp a slap across the Blair face as it was possible for a colleague to deliver. It was candid admission that Blair had manipulated intelligence (a charge Blair has assiduously denied) to build his case for the Iraq war.

A last question: was giving Salman Rushdie a title the best career launch for a job as middleman in the Middle East? Or even for a role as do-gooder for Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine?

But there is some good news for Blair. His famed and accomplished ability to lie with smouldering conviction should stand him in very good stead in his new mission. Who wants the truth in the Middle East? No one. The truth would upset too many governments. It might even uproot some of them.

Blair now accepts that Iraq is a "disaster". In his farewell remarks, he expressed his sympathy for the British troops who had sacrificed so much in his cause. He wished both his friends and his foes well as he said goodbye, but could not hide his long-suppressed hatred for the "feral" media (in a category beyond either friendship or enmity) which had been instrumental in aborting his term to a mere ten years. But at no point during his long goodbye did Blair apologise for Iraq.
Being Blair means never having to say sorry. Except, possibly, in the solitude of a confession in a Roman Catholic church some time soon.