Byline by M J Akbar: Many degrees of separation
Uncertainty is the chaotic force-multiplier of insecurity. That is the only explanation, if there is one, for a curious statement made by Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani. When Gilani clambers aboard, he does tend to go overboard with a consistency that is clearly becoming a comfort to foes and an embarrassment to friends.
Pakistan's foreign policy is guided by professional diplomats who have, in a sense, no option except to be exceptional, given the scale and continuity of the challenges they face. But when politicians rush into space where diplomats fear to tread, there is a lot of cleaning up to do for the service.
Gilani topped off a four-day visit to China with a claim that will surely enter the history books. Pakistan and China, he said, were "like one nation and two countries". We shall not discuss the fine distinction between nation and country, except to note that the Prime Minister could have easily interchanged the terms without significant loss of meaning in his personal political dictionary. For mere outsiders, a question is inescapable: has Pakistan re-positioned itself as the new Hong Kong?
Beijing has not let us know whether it has accepted this generous offer by the world's most powerful Islamic republic to become an associate member of the world's most important atheist state. But it has given a "back-present" to Gilani of 50 fighter jets, which may or may not be a symbol of shared nationalism.
Perhaps there was a spirit of competitive genuflection in the Gilani delegation. His defence minister Ahmad Mukhtar told media on his return to Islamabad that his government had gifted an entire naval base to China, at Gwadar, on the mouth of the Gulf. His exact words left no room for confusion: "We have asked our Chinese brothers to please build a naval base at Gwadar." He added that China had been invited to manage the port's commercial operations as well, despite the fact that a Singapore company has a multi-decade contract for doing so. When Mukhtar gets generous, Singapore become irrelevant.
Similar passion and clarity were missing in the Chinese response. Jiang Yu, a spokesman of the Chinese foreign ministry, responded with a far less dramatic "...I have not heard of it. It's my understanding that during the [Gilani] visit last week this issue was not touched upon." Since the time of Confucius the Chinese have given us so much wisdom that it is perfectly likely that they, rather than the Americans, warned the world that there is nothing called a free lunch, or indeed a free naval base.
Pakistan has sought to outsource its security from its inception. This was understandable, since fear of a larger neighbour was a logical outcome of partition from India, which could not, and cannot, accept a two-nation theory inspired by the thesis that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together in one country. But the premise has taken a total somersault from what it was in the 1950s. The meaning of security has altered completely. The threat to Pakistan is not India-centric any longer. India has become a status quo-ist power. It will not surrender any part of the geography it possesses, but it does not covet any more land, in Kashmir or elsewhere. India has not engineered the daily havoc that is Pakistan's narrative of 2011. India did not mastermind the attack on the naval base in Karachi. This is the first, but fourth such attack on the Pak navy, and military authorities have picked up and are interrogating their own navy personnel to find out more about previous assaults. Pakistan's crisis emanates from a civil war with organised militias who have launched a "jihad" not only against the United States and India but also against their own homeland in the belief that they can capture power in Islamabad and use the state's assets, including its nuclear capability, for their own ends. Such ends could easily include the "liberation" of China's sole Muslim-majority province, Xinjiang, from Beijing. As evidence being currently given in the Headley trial in Chicago proves, many of these "jihadis" have been nurtured by intelligence operatives in the Pak military who thought that such volatile double and triple games would never backfire.
Such contradictions have strained Pakistan's relationship with its oldest benefactor, America, to breaking point. Gilani's excitable formula is explicable only as an anxious attempt to switch security from an American umbrella to a Chinese net, if the relationship with Washington goes belly-up. History tells us that China is sophisticated enough to manoeuvre through nuanced degrees of separation or proximity. China's policy towards lands south of the Himalayas is unlikely to be either open-ended or inflexible. Tactically, it will play with options. But its strategy will be guided by China's security interests, not Pakistan's.
The bottom line is a basic law of international relations. A sovereign nation cannot purchase security in the marketplace. Otherwise, it may remain a nation but it will be neither sovereign nor stable.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
You can’t get bail at Guantanamo
You can’t get bail at Guantanamo
M.J. Akbar
Byword in India Today: 27th May 2011
The rich are, as was well said, different from you and I: they have more money. In India, they have more lawyers. Does this mean that they are also more guilty? The law must take its course; no argument about that. What happens, however, when law becomes part of the public discourse?
Justice is not merely judgment, but also process. If the process is flawed the verdict is vitiated. Courts accept this and warn against the inequity inherent in a ‘witch-hunt’ or ‘trial by media’. Civilised jurisprudence is based on evidence and statute, not individual or collective emotion.
Justice rests on a fundamental principle: you are innocent until proven guilty. No wrong can be corrected by an absence of rights. The concept of pro bono has been devised to help those who cannot afford legal counsel, so that they can defend themselves in a trial. A police charge-sheet is the start of a trial, not its conclusion.
If DMK MP Kanimozhi consults astrologers, then she has probably been told that every planet in her constellation has turned retrograde. In the summer of 2009 she was a queen in Chennai and a princess in Delhi. Today, she is defeated in Chennai and the most high-profile prisoner in Delhi. But she is in jail as an accused, not as a convict. There is a world of difference between the two. If she is found guilty after due process, the judges must send her to prison as long as the law permits. But until that decision is made, she is innocent. In the interim, custody can only be a minimalist option, for a special set of reasons, for a finite and reasonable period. Instead, the cbi is demanding, and getting, what seems to be turning into an infinite extension of custody. This is injustice.
India lives by a Constitution that guarantees life and liberty. Bail is not a gift from those who wield temporary power (fortunately, power can only be temporary in a democracy); it is a right. Otherwise, we are one step away from a police state, in which any citizen can be locked up at the arbitrary will of authority. This has happened before, during the Emergency. We thought it would never happen again.
The CBI wants all the accused in the 2G case be kept in jail indefinitely, despite the fact that their interrogation is over, or should be. The courts comply, citing two reasons. One of them is “gravity of the case”. This is inaccurate. As it stands, there is only the gravity of an accusation, not the gravity of the crime. Crime is yet to be proven.
There is more than one opinion about what happened.
The Government of India’s official stand, stated in Parliament by telecom minister Kapil Sibal, is that there was no loss to government.
We all want to, and must, end corruption. But should we destroy the legal process in this effort?
The CBI is selective. There is evidence that Congress ministers were complicit in the decision through which 2G licences were granted. No action has been initiated against them. There is, however, neither administrative restraint nor legal constraint against the DMK, an ally which has been turned into a scapegoat to appease an outraged public.
The second official reason for denying bail is that the accused might tamper with evidence, or pressurise potential witnesses. A. Raja and Kanimozhi were free for many weeks after proceedings began. If they did not tamper or pressurise then, how can they do so now? This excuse is too thin to stand without an artificial prop.
Indian courts honour the right to bail. Wazlul Kamar Khan, whose name was on home minister P. Chidambaram’s “Famous 50” list of wanted “terrorists” sent to Pakistan, has been given bail in Maharashtra. Terrorism, one presumes, is more worrisome than corruption, whichever way you want to draw the chart of judicial gravity. No one has called Raja or Kanimozhi a terrorist. Why should an accused in a terrorist case be given bail, but not them?
Very Important People get into trouble everywhere. The police are rarely polite; it isn’t in their training manual. But the law respects the rights of an accused. Former imf director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested from an airplane, locked up in a small cell and paraded before cameras, unshaven and haggard. He has been indicted on seven counts, including sexual molestation of a hotel maid. But he is out on bail. Recently, American billionaire Raj Rajaratnam became the face of financial corruption when he was convicted for insider trading. But the New York police did not seek to jail him before judgment.
There is one prison in the free world where you cannot get bail: Guantanamo, America’s preferred penitentiary for suspected terrorists. We are, fortunately, nowhere near that ominous stage yet. But the road to many destinations, including hell, can be paved with good intentions.
M.J. Akbar
Byword in India Today: 27th May 2011
The rich are, as was well said, different from you and I: they have more money. In India, they have more lawyers. Does this mean that they are also more guilty? The law must take its course; no argument about that. What happens, however, when law becomes part of the public discourse?
Justice is not merely judgment, but also process. If the process is flawed the verdict is vitiated. Courts accept this and warn against the inequity inherent in a ‘witch-hunt’ or ‘trial by media’. Civilised jurisprudence is based on evidence and statute, not individual or collective emotion.
Justice rests on a fundamental principle: you are innocent until proven guilty. No wrong can be corrected by an absence of rights. The concept of pro bono has been devised to help those who cannot afford legal counsel, so that they can defend themselves in a trial. A police charge-sheet is the start of a trial, not its conclusion.
If DMK MP Kanimozhi consults astrologers, then she has probably been told that every planet in her constellation has turned retrograde. In the summer of 2009 she was a queen in Chennai and a princess in Delhi. Today, she is defeated in Chennai and the most high-profile prisoner in Delhi. But she is in jail as an accused, not as a convict. There is a world of difference between the two. If she is found guilty after due process, the judges must send her to prison as long as the law permits. But until that decision is made, she is innocent. In the interim, custody can only be a minimalist option, for a special set of reasons, for a finite and reasonable period. Instead, the cbi is demanding, and getting, what seems to be turning into an infinite extension of custody. This is injustice.
India lives by a Constitution that guarantees life and liberty. Bail is not a gift from those who wield temporary power (fortunately, power can only be temporary in a democracy); it is a right. Otherwise, we are one step away from a police state, in which any citizen can be locked up at the arbitrary will of authority. This has happened before, during the Emergency. We thought it would never happen again.
The CBI wants all the accused in the 2G case be kept in jail indefinitely, despite the fact that their interrogation is over, or should be. The courts comply, citing two reasons. One of them is “gravity of the case”. This is inaccurate. As it stands, there is only the gravity of an accusation, not the gravity of the crime. Crime is yet to be proven.
There is more than one opinion about what happened.
The Government of India’s official stand, stated in Parliament by telecom minister Kapil Sibal, is that there was no loss to government.
We all want to, and must, end corruption. But should we destroy the legal process in this effort?
The CBI is selective. There is evidence that Congress ministers were complicit in the decision through which 2G licences were granted. No action has been initiated against them. There is, however, neither administrative restraint nor legal constraint against the DMK, an ally which has been turned into a scapegoat to appease an outraged public.
The second official reason for denying bail is that the accused might tamper with evidence, or pressurise potential witnesses. A. Raja and Kanimozhi were free for many weeks after proceedings began. If they did not tamper or pressurise then, how can they do so now? This excuse is too thin to stand without an artificial prop.
Indian courts honour the right to bail. Wazlul Kamar Khan, whose name was on home minister P. Chidambaram’s “Famous 50” list of wanted “terrorists” sent to Pakistan, has been given bail in Maharashtra. Terrorism, one presumes, is more worrisome than corruption, whichever way you want to draw the chart of judicial gravity. No one has called Raja or Kanimozhi a terrorist. Why should an accused in a terrorist case be given bail, but not them?
Very Important People get into trouble everywhere. The police are rarely polite; it isn’t in their training manual. But the law respects the rights of an accused. Former imf director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested from an airplane, locked up in a small cell and paraded before cameras, unshaven and haggard. He has been indicted on seven counts, including sexual molestation of a hotel maid. But he is out on bail. Recently, American billionaire Raj Rajaratnam became the face of financial corruption when he was convicted for insider trading. But the New York police did not seek to jail him before judgment.
There is one prison in the free world where you cannot get bail: Guantanamo, America’s preferred penitentiary for suspected terrorists. We are, fortunately, nowhere near that ominous stage yet. But the road to many destinations, including hell, can be paved with good intentions.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
A Capacity for Farce
A Capacity for Farce
By M J Akbar
Byword in India Today
May 30, 2011
The next time Pakistan foreign secretary Salman Basheer wants to rubbish any wish-list of terrorists sent by India's much-vaunted home minister P. Chidambaram, he needn't bother to describe it as "mere literature". Literature belongs to the realm of high art. He can dismiss it as Groucho Marx and ask for the next question at the press conference.
It requires some capacity to convert India's most serious problem into a farce, but the home ministry under Chidambaram has managed to achieve this. If you are in two minds about whether to laugh or cry at the expose that one of the persons on Chidambaram's "Most Wanted" list of fugitives allegedly given sanctuary in Pakistan, Wazhul Kamar Khan, is actually a zari merchant who has been living for years at Wagle Estate in Thane, next-door to Mumbai, some additional information should help make up your mind. The Mumbai police had pointedly told Delhi to remove Wazhul Khan's name, and added two brothers, Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal, wanted in terror attacks in Varanasi, Ahmedabad and Pune, to the list. The Bhatkal brothers were not included. Maybe the home ministry likes symmetry, and two additions plus one deletion would have made the figure an untidy 51. Fifty is just so much neater.
Chidambaram has treated this blunder with familiar airy disdain. "I don't think," he said, "we should make a big issue of it. It is possible there could be an error or there could be two people with the same name." That misses the point. It is not India, but Pakistan who can make a big issue of this. Islamabad can ask India to circulate the document to its own policemen, with or without a snigger.
There is a third option apart from laughter or tears: anger. At the top of this "Most Wanted" list is Dawood Ibrahim, principal accused in the Mumbai blasts of 1993. Some Don Quixotes in Delhi even made fanciful noises about picking up Dawood in an American-Abbotabad style operation after Osama bin Laden was killed. But you don't need either the US Seals or Marines to pick up Dawood Ibrahim's brother, Iqbal Kaskar, from Nagpada, in the heart of Mumbai. Nor is it the case that while Dawood might be an international villain, young Iqbal lives in a Gandhian ashram from where he does gaon and dharma seva. Kaskar is just another goon. On Tuesday May 17 evening, at 9.15, he was shot at in Nagpada during an after-dinner walk in the company of his driver-cum-bodyguard Arif Bael (also known as Arif Jewellery and Abu Bakr) by two men in a drive-past motorcycle. Mr Jewellery did not survive.
Question: Why is Dawood's brother, a thriving member of Mumbai's underworld, almost certainly in criminal contact with the Dawood gang, not behind bars? It is as inconceivable that the Mumbai police were unaware of Kaskar as that the ISI had no clue of Osama bin Laden's presence. The ISI saved Osama because of some miscued double game. The Mumbai police protected Dawood's brother and his underworld operations out of nothing more dramatic than sheer greed. Law and order may be a state subject, but who rules in Mumbai? Congress and NCP.
Mumbai has become a well-organised jungle, with defined territories. Literally around the corner from Nagpada is the visible paraphernalia of a modern city: an imposing Mumbai municipality, next-door to a grand building that is headquarters of the country's largest media company, divided from a classic railway station by traffic jams and, just a sniff further, beautiful clubs and greens. The government winks at this coexistence of an urban world at its congested best and an underworld that conspires to erode the vitals of a nation. Why should it be surprised when terror is planned within such labyrinths?
All the sins of matsanyaya (law of the jungle) certainly cannot be laid at the door of Chidambaram. But he replaced Shivraj Patil as home minister in the wake of the ISI-planned terror attacks on Mumbai. Terrorism and its links with Pakistan, including through the Mumbai underworld, were his special remit. Chidambaram's USP was believed to be competence. But two-anda-half years later, a litter of mistakes is snapping at his heels. The mismanagement of Telangana, certainly his worst political misjudgment, began the series of miscalculations that have culminated in the overwhelming victory of Jagan Reddy, and could lead to the collapse of the Congress ministry in the fortress from which the party conquered Delhi. There is a new, if slightly subversive, view gaining ground in the capital: when cowboy Chidambaram draws his six-shooter, his own foot is in trouble.
If it was merely a question of Chidambaram turning into a laughing stock, it would be a personal tragedy. When India becomes a laughing stock in Pakistan, it is a national wound.
By M J Akbar
Byword in India Today
May 30, 2011
The next time Pakistan foreign secretary Salman Basheer wants to rubbish any wish-list of terrorists sent by India's much-vaunted home minister P. Chidambaram, he needn't bother to describe it as "mere literature". Literature belongs to the realm of high art. He can dismiss it as Groucho Marx and ask for the next question at the press conference.
It requires some capacity to convert India's most serious problem into a farce, but the home ministry under Chidambaram has managed to achieve this. If you are in two minds about whether to laugh or cry at the expose that one of the persons on Chidambaram's "Most Wanted" list of fugitives allegedly given sanctuary in Pakistan, Wazhul Kamar Khan, is actually a zari merchant who has been living for years at Wagle Estate in Thane, next-door to Mumbai, some additional information should help make up your mind. The Mumbai police had pointedly told Delhi to remove Wazhul Khan's name, and added two brothers, Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal, wanted in terror attacks in Varanasi, Ahmedabad and Pune, to the list. The Bhatkal brothers were not included. Maybe the home ministry likes symmetry, and two additions plus one deletion would have made the figure an untidy 51. Fifty is just so much neater.
Chidambaram has treated this blunder with familiar airy disdain. "I don't think," he said, "we should make a big issue of it. It is possible there could be an error or there could be two people with the same name." That misses the point. It is not India, but Pakistan who can make a big issue of this. Islamabad can ask India to circulate the document to its own policemen, with or without a snigger.
There is a third option apart from laughter or tears: anger. At the top of this "Most Wanted" list is Dawood Ibrahim, principal accused in the Mumbai blasts of 1993. Some Don Quixotes in Delhi even made fanciful noises about picking up Dawood in an American-Abbotabad style operation after Osama bin Laden was killed. But you don't need either the US Seals or Marines to pick up Dawood Ibrahim's brother, Iqbal Kaskar, from Nagpada, in the heart of Mumbai. Nor is it the case that while Dawood might be an international villain, young Iqbal lives in a Gandhian ashram from where he does gaon and dharma seva. Kaskar is just another goon. On Tuesday May 17 evening, at 9.15, he was shot at in Nagpada during an after-dinner walk in the company of his driver-cum-bodyguard Arif Bael (also known as Arif Jewellery and Abu Bakr) by two men in a drive-past motorcycle. Mr Jewellery did not survive.
Question: Why is Dawood's brother, a thriving member of Mumbai's underworld, almost certainly in criminal contact with the Dawood gang, not behind bars? It is as inconceivable that the Mumbai police were unaware of Kaskar as that the ISI had no clue of Osama bin Laden's presence. The ISI saved Osama because of some miscued double game. The Mumbai police protected Dawood's brother and his underworld operations out of nothing more dramatic than sheer greed. Law and order may be a state subject, but who rules in Mumbai? Congress and NCP.
Mumbai has become a well-organised jungle, with defined territories. Literally around the corner from Nagpada is the visible paraphernalia of a modern city: an imposing Mumbai municipality, next-door to a grand building that is headquarters of the country's largest media company, divided from a classic railway station by traffic jams and, just a sniff further, beautiful clubs and greens. The government winks at this coexistence of an urban world at its congested best and an underworld that conspires to erode the vitals of a nation. Why should it be surprised when terror is planned within such labyrinths?
All the sins of matsanyaya (law of the jungle) certainly cannot be laid at the door of Chidambaram. But he replaced Shivraj Patil as home minister in the wake of the ISI-planned terror attacks on Mumbai. Terrorism and its links with Pakistan, including through the Mumbai underworld, were his special remit. Chidambaram's USP was believed to be competence. But two-anda-half years later, a litter of mistakes is snapping at his heels. The mismanagement of Telangana, certainly his worst political misjudgment, began the series of miscalculations that have culminated in the overwhelming victory of Jagan Reddy, and could lead to the collapse of the Congress ministry in the fortress from which the party conquered Delhi. There is a new, if slightly subversive, view gaining ground in the capital: when cowboy Chidambaram draws his six-shooter, his own foot is in trouble.
If it was merely a question of Chidambaram turning into a laughing stock, it would be a personal tragedy. When India becomes a laughing stock in Pakistan, it is a national wound.
Claim Game, Blame Game
Byline by M J Akbar: Claim Game, Blame Game
When is a man at his most generous? When he wants to forgive himself, of course.
Home minister P. Chidambaram is in need of extra supplies of magnanimity. The "Star List" of 50 names he sent to Islamabad, charging Pakistan with giving these wanted terrorists sanctuary, has exploded spectacularly in his face thanks to some incisive reporting by the Times of India. One of these chaps is selling zari in Thane when not visiting court on the dates of his trial. Two more are far closer to the home ministry, since they are being hosted by the police in Hyderabad and Mumbai jails. A fourth, fortunately or unfortunately, is dead. And buried, along with the home ministry's credibility, in India. The home minister coyly attributed this to "human error" and asked us mere citizens to get on with life.
Is "human" sufficient mitigation for error? What would make an error unforgiveable in Chidambaram's estimation? Would it have to be as degenerate as "animal" error, or some savage "sub-human" error? The last time we checked the home ministry consisted largely of human beings, although a few did tend to sound more pompous than should be legally permissible. To err may be human, and to forgive divine, but this blessed advice does seem a trifle skewered when you are forgiving yourself. When does accountability kick in, or do we need something as tragic as the terror attacks on Mumbai [masterminded by Pakistan's ISI, if some of the evidence being given during a trial in America is to be believed] for a home minister of India to accept guilt?
Chidambaram has an extremely elastic approach towards crime and punishment, or error and consequence. He is clearly no fan of the American President Harry Truman who put a sign on his desk saying that the buck stopped there. The buck can stop anywhere it likes, as long as it is nowhere in the vicinity of Chidambaram's office. So far, a Superintendent of Police, a Deputy SP and a junior office have taken the rap. The first two have been transferred so that they can sleep on duty in some other corner of government. The junior officer has been suspended. At different times, Chidambaram has blamed IB or the Mumbai police. He has even, in a different context, blamed the Prime Minister.
Since error has clearly become a genetic disease in the contemporary home ministry, the much-vaunted CBI could hardly be immune from its toxic effects. Long years ago, when the Marxists were still a potent force in Bengal, a foreign mercenary flew into the state on a private plane that had apparently escapted the country's air defence system, and dropped arms in a district called Purulia. To cut a pretty long story short, the pilot Kim Davy, a Danish citizen, has given an interview saying that this was a Delhi plot to destabilize the Left Front government. Delhi wants to extradite Davy. When CBI went to plead its case before a Constitutional bench it carried an expired arrest warrant. This is not a screw-up on the scale of the "Star List" but it is certainly not an advertisement for efficiency. When the BJP laughed, as any Opposition party has a perfect right to do, Chidambaram accused BJP spokespersons of "monumental ignorance". The chaps who went to Denmark, he said, report to the ministry of personnel, which comes under the Prime Minister, and not him.
Go ask the PM to resign, in other words.
When Cabinet ministers slip from the claim-game to a blame-game, you know the rafters have begun to creak. You have only to contrast the array during UPA1 with the disarray now, and that will give you the clue to election results. Something seems to have been unhinged. Rahul Gandhi's advisers cannot even count correctly when he wants to raise the political temperature against Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh. Common sense would have told them that there is some distance between an inflamed accused made by agitators and reality. But the need for hype was so great that no one bother to check anything. End result: what could have been an effective riposte to Mayawati collapsed in its own contradictions.
The real issue is not that police or politicians make mistakes but the context in which you make them. When the home ministry was preparing a list to be presented to Pakistan, on a subject as vital to India's core interests as the sponsorship of terrorism by Pakistan, one has a right to expect that the police will not behave as if they are entering a First Information Report on petty theft on a sterile afternoon in a thana. This list could not have been passed without the personal clearance of the home secretary and the home minister. If it was, then they are doubly at fault. This is too important a document to be left to someone else's signature.
Dr Manmohan Singh's Cabinet is in slippage mode. If he does not intervene, it will go into free fall.
When is a man at his most generous? When he wants to forgive himself, of course.
Home minister P. Chidambaram is in need of extra supplies of magnanimity. The "Star List" of 50 names he sent to Islamabad, charging Pakistan with giving these wanted terrorists sanctuary, has exploded spectacularly in his face thanks to some incisive reporting by the Times of India. One of these chaps is selling zari in Thane when not visiting court on the dates of his trial. Two more are far closer to the home ministry, since they are being hosted by the police in Hyderabad and Mumbai jails. A fourth, fortunately or unfortunately, is dead. And buried, along with the home ministry's credibility, in India. The home minister coyly attributed this to "human error" and asked us mere citizens to get on with life.
Is "human" sufficient mitigation for error? What would make an error unforgiveable in Chidambaram's estimation? Would it have to be as degenerate as "animal" error, or some savage "sub-human" error? The last time we checked the home ministry consisted largely of human beings, although a few did tend to sound more pompous than should be legally permissible. To err may be human, and to forgive divine, but this blessed advice does seem a trifle skewered when you are forgiving yourself. When does accountability kick in, or do we need something as tragic as the terror attacks on Mumbai [masterminded by Pakistan's ISI, if some of the evidence being given during a trial in America is to be believed] for a home minister of India to accept guilt?
Chidambaram has an extremely elastic approach towards crime and punishment, or error and consequence. He is clearly no fan of the American President Harry Truman who put a sign on his desk saying that the buck stopped there. The buck can stop anywhere it likes, as long as it is nowhere in the vicinity of Chidambaram's office. So far, a Superintendent of Police, a Deputy SP and a junior office have taken the rap. The first two have been transferred so that they can sleep on duty in some other corner of government. The junior officer has been suspended. At different times, Chidambaram has blamed IB or the Mumbai police. He has even, in a different context, blamed the Prime Minister.
Since error has clearly become a genetic disease in the contemporary home ministry, the much-vaunted CBI could hardly be immune from its toxic effects. Long years ago, when the Marxists were still a potent force in Bengal, a foreign mercenary flew into the state on a private plane that had apparently escapted the country's air defence system, and dropped arms in a district called Purulia. To cut a pretty long story short, the pilot Kim Davy, a Danish citizen, has given an interview saying that this was a Delhi plot to destabilize the Left Front government. Delhi wants to extradite Davy. When CBI went to plead its case before a Constitutional bench it carried an expired arrest warrant. This is not a screw-up on the scale of the "Star List" but it is certainly not an advertisement for efficiency. When the BJP laughed, as any Opposition party has a perfect right to do, Chidambaram accused BJP spokespersons of "monumental ignorance". The chaps who went to Denmark, he said, report to the ministry of personnel, which comes under the Prime Minister, and not him.
Go ask the PM to resign, in other words.
When Cabinet ministers slip from the claim-game to a blame-game, you know the rafters have begun to creak. You have only to contrast the array during UPA1 with the disarray now, and that will give you the clue to election results. Something seems to have been unhinged. Rahul Gandhi's advisers cannot even count correctly when he wants to raise the political temperature against Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh. Common sense would have told them that there is some distance between an inflamed accused made by agitators and reality. But the need for hype was so great that no one bother to check anything. End result: what could have been an effective riposte to Mayawati collapsed in its own contradictions.
The real issue is not that police or politicians make mistakes but the context in which you make them. When the home ministry was preparing a list to be presented to Pakistan, on a subject as vital to India's core interests as the sponsorship of terrorism by Pakistan, one has a right to expect that the police will not behave as if they are entering a First Information Report on petty theft on a sterile afternoon in a thana. This list could not have been passed without the personal clearance of the home secretary and the home minister. If it was, then they are doubly at fault. This is too important a document to be left to someone else's signature.
Dr Manmohan Singh's Cabinet is in slippage mode. If he does not intervene, it will go into free fall.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Last Train to Calcuttagrad
Last Train to Calcuttagrad
West Bengal celebrates freedom with Mamata's Electric win
By M J Akar
Byword in India Today
May 23, 2011
Democracy is about punctuation marks: disheartening semi-colons, dramatic exclamations and deadend full stops, not to mention expletives deleted. An uninterrupted 34-year sentence must, therefore, reach that moment when it seems like a prison sentence. On Friday the 13th-the Ides of May-Bengal celebrated freedom when Mamata Banerjee capped a quarter century of effort by sending the Left Front into opposition for the first time since 1977.
There is nothing in the history of international electoral democracy to match this Communist marathon. Its founding architects-Promode Dasgupta, Harekrishna Konar, Benoy Choudhury, Jyoti Basu, all dead-were imperturbable men. The cheroot-chomping Dasgupta ran his cadres as a parallel authority from the party office while the charismatic Basu governed from Writers' Building. Politics, they believed, was more important than growth, since the creation of wealth had to be subservient to its distribution.
They accepted imperfections within their thesis, but argued that they were trapped by the constraints of a "bourgeois" Constitution which they accepted once they had abandoned armed struggle as a possibility in India. Their initial impact was spectacular, particularly when they reversed the economic equations of agricultural Bengal. In 1793 the British had altered the landscape through the Permanent Settlement, which transferred vast landholdings from the old Mughal nobility to a new class of ghumushtos, the largely-Hindu middlemen for the East India Company. Nearly two centuries later, the CPI(M) gave Bengal a New Permanent Settlement through Operation Barga, which demolished the old order and empowered the peasant.
Dasgupta and Basu would have been calm on Friday. They had entered public life to serve, not rule, although once they got power they knew how to preserve it. But they would have been devastated by the CPI(M)'s spectacular hara-kiri: lured by false prophets, the party sought to take land away from the tiller in order to transfer it to industrialists. The CPI(M) fell on its own sword. Its bête noire, Mamata Banerjee, merely sharpened this sword from time to time.
Basu lived long enough to see his comrades lost in the fog of illusion after their phenomenal triumph in 2006. My last meeting with Basu, some months before he died, was almost too painful to bear, but he did convey, taciturn to the last, that his beloved party was on its way out. He implied, through heavylidded eyes sunk deep into a sallow skin-tight face, that this setback might even be salutary. But when the sentiment of association and affection is set aside, he must share part of the blame.
Basu's crucial error was his compromise with parochialism in order to sustain his vote base when his economic policies had exhausted their ability to deliver. This retreat was symbolised by his ban on the study of English at primary school level in 1982. He advertised this as a triumph for the mother tongue. It was nothing of the kind. It was a retreat into the narrow mind of regionalism by a party that had lost its imagination. Unable to create jobs, it sought to cynically exploit a barren emotionalism. By the time the decision was reversed in 1999, half a generation from the lower middle class and poor-or, those who needed English most for upward mobility-had fallen behind. Basu's own grandchildren went to La Martiniere, of course.
This ban came during precisely those years when the young began to recognise that English had become the language of aspiration in India; it was no longer "foreign". Modern jobs demanded, increasingly, English language skills. English, once guardian of colonial rule and its fauxaccented servants, has, today, been assimilated to such an extent that it is part of Bollywood's "Hindi" lyrics. The unique aspect of the "item number" Sheila ki jawaani is not that Sheila isn't going to give you her body (there was not much chance of getting it anyway), but that more than half the song is in English. Bengal's young paid a silent price so the CPI(M) could remain in power.
The second swivel-mistake was soft-secularism, the unspoken Leftist assumption that Bengal's Muslims- who constitute over 30 per cent of the state's effective vote- could be taken for granted if you protected their life without ensuring their livelihood. Muslims bought this shoddy deal for a long while, until the Sachar Commission report laid out facts of their unemployment levels in government jobs. Mamata Banerjee is the face of Muslim revenge. The Left bastion could not survive the collapse of its strongest pillar.
The Left ruled longer than it deserved to because cadres filled the chasm created by vanishing ideas and ideology. It was as if by the 1990s the CPI(M) had pawned its intellect, and begun feeding off diminishing returns. By 2000 it was dining off alibis. And yet the gold dust of electoral success persuaded them that power was eternal.
Mamata Banerjee has proved that even in Bengal power is terminal.
West Bengal celebrates freedom with Mamata's Electric win
By M J Akar
Byword in India Today
May 23, 2011
Democracy is about punctuation marks: disheartening semi-colons, dramatic exclamations and deadend full stops, not to mention expletives deleted. An uninterrupted 34-year sentence must, therefore, reach that moment when it seems like a prison sentence. On Friday the 13th-the Ides of May-Bengal celebrated freedom when Mamata Banerjee capped a quarter century of effort by sending the Left Front into opposition for the first time since 1977.
There is nothing in the history of international electoral democracy to match this Communist marathon. Its founding architects-Promode Dasgupta, Harekrishna Konar, Benoy Choudhury, Jyoti Basu, all dead-were imperturbable men. The cheroot-chomping Dasgupta ran his cadres as a parallel authority from the party office while the charismatic Basu governed from Writers' Building. Politics, they believed, was more important than growth, since the creation of wealth had to be subservient to its distribution.
They accepted imperfections within their thesis, but argued that they were trapped by the constraints of a "bourgeois" Constitution which they accepted once they had abandoned armed struggle as a possibility in India. Their initial impact was spectacular, particularly when they reversed the economic equations of agricultural Bengal. In 1793 the British had altered the landscape through the Permanent Settlement, which transferred vast landholdings from the old Mughal nobility to a new class of ghumushtos, the largely-Hindu middlemen for the East India Company. Nearly two centuries later, the CPI(M) gave Bengal a New Permanent Settlement through Operation Barga, which demolished the old order and empowered the peasant.
Dasgupta and Basu would have been calm on Friday. They had entered public life to serve, not rule, although once they got power they knew how to preserve it. But they would have been devastated by the CPI(M)'s spectacular hara-kiri: lured by false prophets, the party sought to take land away from the tiller in order to transfer it to industrialists. The CPI(M) fell on its own sword. Its bête noire, Mamata Banerjee, merely sharpened this sword from time to time.
Basu lived long enough to see his comrades lost in the fog of illusion after their phenomenal triumph in 2006. My last meeting with Basu, some months before he died, was almost too painful to bear, but he did convey, taciturn to the last, that his beloved party was on its way out. He implied, through heavylidded eyes sunk deep into a sallow skin-tight face, that this setback might even be salutary. But when the sentiment of association and affection is set aside, he must share part of the blame.
Basu's crucial error was his compromise with parochialism in order to sustain his vote base when his economic policies had exhausted their ability to deliver. This retreat was symbolised by his ban on the study of English at primary school level in 1982. He advertised this as a triumph for the mother tongue. It was nothing of the kind. It was a retreat into the narrow mind of regionalism by a party that had lost its imagination. Unable to create jobs, it sought to cynically exploit a barren emotionalism. By the time the decision was reversed in 1999, half a generation from the lower middle class and poor-or, those who needed English most for upward mobility-had fallen behind. Basu's own grandchildren went to La Martiniere, of course.
This ban came during precisely those years when the young began to recognise that English had become the language of aspiration in India; it was no longer "foreign". Modern jobs demanded, increasingly, English language skills. English, once guardian of colonial rule and its fauxaccented servants, has, today, been assimilated to such an extent that it is part of Bollywood's "Hindi" lyrics. The unique aspect of the "item number" Sheila ki jawaani is not that Sheila isn't going to give you her body (there was not much chance of getting it anyway), but that more than half the song is in English. Bengal's young paid a silent price so the CPI(M) could remain in power.
The second swivel-mistake was soft-secularism, the unspoken Leftist assumption that Bengal's Muslims- who constitute over 30 per cent of the state's effective vote- could be taken for granted if you protected their life without ensuring their livelihood. Muslims bought this shoddy deal for a long while, until the Sachar Commission report laid out facts of their unemployment levels in government jobs. Mamata Banerjee is the face of Muslim revenge. The Left bastion could not survive the collapse of its strongest pillar.
The Left ruled longer than it deserved to because cadres filled the chasm created by vanishing ideas and ideology. It was as if by the 1990s the CPI(M) had pawned its intellect, and begun feeding off diminishing returns. By 2000 it was dining off alibis. And yet the gold dust of electoral success persuaded them that power was eternal.
Mamata Banerjee has proved that even in Bengal power is terminal.
Alibis are balm, not medicine
Byline by M J Akbar : Alibis are balm, not medicine
One of the more bewildering aspects of electoral democracy is the mesmerising power of false comfort. It stretches from silly posturing to incomprehensible self-delusion, but nothing illustrates its meaninglessness better than the answer to an obvious question: what does a politician hope to achieve by denying a truth that is glaringly evident to everyone else, and will be officially confirmed within 48 or 72 hours? Nothing. Perhaps this cocoon of illusion is the last hope of the doomed, as they seek desperately to postpone the date of execution in the hope of some miraculous reprieve. God does not waste His miracles on political parties.
In the brief interim between the last ballot and counting, the Bengal CPI(M)'s state committee gathered at party headquarters and reassured itself that it was winning at least 150 seats, or just enough to get a majority. Then they went public with this claim, in language that was hectoring, bullying and arrogant, as if they had distilled their principal character flaws into one last broadside. The state chief Biman Bose, normally the most soft-spoken of men, promised that media would have to lick the spit they had hurled at his party after the results were known. Other leaders turned ballistic in the tirades against their object of hatred, Mamata Banerjee, heroine of the subaltern that the Left had lost. They were crude, sexist, tasteless. But this futile rage did serve to expose precisely why the CPM has lost power in Calcutta after 34 years. The party had become so blind and numb that it neither saw nor sensed that the ground had slipped beneath its feet. Unless there is some dramatic self-correction its behaviour in defeat could cost the CPM more than the defeat itself.
The Congress exercise in false comfort is far more subtle and effective. Unlike the Bengal CPM the Congress has learnt how to handle bad news. It hides the truth behind seven veils, and you can easily end up admiring the gauze. The facts are cold. Congress had a spectacular and well-deserved victory in one state, Assam, thanks to the splendid leadership of Tarun Gogoi, fared poorly in Kerala and was devastated in Tamil Nadu. The Kerala Left, led by the remarkable V.S. Achuthanandan, almost turned the tide by decimating Congress targets in the UDF alliance. Congress won only 38 of its 82 seats, and had it not been for the state-specific Muslim League's 20 victories in the 24 seats that it contested, the Left would have formed the government in Trivandrum. It was a consolidation of mosque and church that tipped the balance just barely towards the Congress-led UDF. In the old days a League leader Mohammad Koya would have demanded chief ministership as reward, and settled for Number 2 in the administration. But the League is now led by quieter types like E. Ahamed. Perhaps Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can say thank you by promoting Ahamed to Cabinet in his next shuffle.
In Tamil Nadu, the Congress won only five out of 63 seats it contested. The facile explanation will attribute this to association with the DMK. But the Congress has done everything it could to distance itself from DMK corruption, even sending A. Raja to jail. Its super-holy stance has been that neither friend nor foe would be spared. The voter can see through gauze much more clearly than the psephologist or a journalist. The flatulent cynicism of both these tribes is such that they spread the notion that the DMK-Congress might even win because of caste arithmetic and money power. In other words, these subsidiary ruling classes argued that the Tamil voter had been corrupted, and would therefore condone DMK corruption. This patronising view was an insult to the Tamil voter, who answered the insult by wrecking the DMK-Congress alliance.
Congress rode to 42 seats in Bengal on Mamata Banerjee's coattails, so any congratulations are misplaced. The Congress vote has declined across the country, apart from Assam. The electorate is hugely unimpressed by Rahul Gandhi's personally selected list of handpicked "youth" candidates, who were generally pulped. Achuthanandan's dismissive tag for them, of "Amul babies", will stick until they provide evidence that they have grown up. And Jagan Reddy's triumph in Andhra Pradesh is proof that the party has nowhere to hide in what used to be the party's fortress.
The one genuine bit of comfort for the Congress is the fact that its main opponent, the BJP, has been denied the consolation of even false comfort. It was minced in Assam and could not pick up a serious seat in Bengal or the South. New forces, regional and sub-regional, are rising to pick up the slack left behind by national parties. A process that accelerated in the 1990s has gathered fresh energy.
The big boys will recover, but only if they accept a basic truth: alibis are a balm, not a medicine.
One of the more bewildering aspects of electoral democracy is the mesmerising power of false comfort. It stretches from silly posturing to incomprehensible self-delusion, but nothing illustrates its meaninglessness better than the answer to an obvious question: what does a politician hope to achieve by denying a truth that is glaringly evident to everyone else, and will be officially confirmed within 48 or 72 hours? Nothing. Perhaps this cocoon of illusion is the last hope of the doomed, as they seek desperately to postpone the date of execution in the hope of some miraculous reprieve. God does not waste His miracles on political parties.
In the brief interim between the last ballot and counting, the Bengal CPI(M)'s state committee gathered at party headquarters and reassured itself that it was winning at least 150 seats, or just enough to get a majority. Then they went public with this claim, in language that was hectoring, bullying and arrogant, as if they had distilled their principal character flaws into one last broadside. The state chief Biman Bose, normally the most soft-spoken of men, promised that media would have to lick the spit they had hurled at his party after the results were known. Other leaders turned ballistic in the tirades against their object of hatred, Mamata Banerjee, heroine of the subaltern that the Left had lost. They were crude, sexist, tasteless. But this futile rage did serve to expose precisely why the CPM has lost power in Calcutta after 34 years. The party had become so blind and numb that it neither saw nor sensed that the ground had slipped beneath its feet. Unless there is some dramatic self-correction its behaviour in defeat could cost the CPM more than the defeat itself.
The Congress exercise in false comfort is far more subtle and effective. Unlike the Bengal CPM the Congress has learnt how to handle bad news. It hides the truth behind seven veils, and you can easily end up admiring the gauze. The facts are cold. Congress had a spectacular and well-deserved victory in one state, Assam, thanks to the splendid leadership of Tarun Gogoi, fared poorly in Kerala and was devastated in Tamil Nadu. The Kerala Left, led by the remarkable V.S. Achuthanandan, almost turned the tide by decimating Congress targets in the UDF alliance. Congress won only 38 of its 82 seats, and had it not been for the state-specific Muslim League's 20 victories in the 24 seats that it contested, the Left would have formed the government in Trivandrum. It was a consolidation of mosque and church that tipped the balance just barely towards the Congress-led UDF. In the old days a League leader Mohammad Koya would have demanded chief ministership as reward, and settled for Number 2 in the administration. But the League is now led by quieter types like E. Ahamed. Perhaps Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can say thank you by promoting Ahamed to Cabinet in his next shuffle.
In Tamil Nadu, the Congress won only five out of 63 seats it contested. The facile explanation will attribute this to association with the DMK. But the Congress has done everything it could to distance itself from DMK corruption, even sending A. Raja to jail. Its super-holy stance has been that neither friend nor foe would be spared. The voter can see through gauze much more clearly than the psephologist or a journalist. The flatulent cynicism of both these tribes is such that they spread the notion that the DMK-Congress might even win because of caste arithmetic and money power. In other words, these subsidiary ruling classes argued that the Tamil voter had been corrupted, and would therefore condone DMK corruption. This patronising view was an insult to the Tamil voter, who answered the insult by wrecking the DMK-Congress alliance.
Congress rode to 42 seats in Bengal on Mamata Banerjee's coattails, so any congratulations are misplaced. The Congress vote has declined across the country, apart from Assam. The electorate is hugely unimpressed by Rahul Gandhi's personally selected list of handpicked "youth" candidates, who were generally pulped. Achuthanandan's dismissive tag for them, of "Amul babies", will stick until they provide evidence that they have grown up. And Jagan Reddy's triumph in Andhra Pradesh is proof that the party has nowhere to hide in what used to be the party's fortress.
The one genuine bit of comfort for the Congress is the fact that its main opponent, the BJP, has been denied the consolation of even false comfort. It was minced in Assam and could not pick up a serious seat in Bengal or the South. New forces, regional and sub-regional, are rising to pick up the slack left behind by national parties. A process that accelerated in the 1990s has gathered fresh energy.
The big boys will recover, but only if they accept a basic truth: alibis are a balm, not a medicine.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
An Army wrapped in wool
Byline by M J Akbar: An Army wrapped in wool
The death of two birds with one stone is generally greeted with generous applause, notwithstanding the fact that the second casualty was an accident. What is useful in sport might be less fortuitous in other circumstances.
The four American helicopters which went for the final kill in the long hunt for Osama bin Laden achieved their primary purpose. The world is now busy sifting through the ruins of their second hit. For in the process they also crippled the credibility of Pakistan's most powerful institution, its Army, often described by its apologists as critical to national stability and even cohesion. All pretence and pretension is over; a fudge that the killing of Osama was some sort of "joint operation" was thin camouflage that has been torn apart by minimal public scrutiny. On 4 May Pakistan's information minister Firdous Ashiq Awan admitted in Parliament that American choppers had evaded detection by use of "map of the earth" flying techniques. If the Pak military did learn what was happening during the 40-odd minutes that ground operations took, there was too much uncertainty and confusion in its chain of command to fashion an adequate, or any, response.
Stark fact: the Pakistan Army is impotent before America.
Only the impotent resort to bluster. The Pakistan military rather pompously "threatened" America with "dire consequences" if it dared to violate Pak sovereignty again. America sniffed, not in sorrow but disdain, and sent Drones on Friday to hit targets in the Datta Khel area, killing 12 people, described naturally as "militants". Washington did not seek Islamabad's permission for renewed military action.
Less evident fact, but fact nevertheless: Pakistan's generals, who have controlled defence policy from the moment Ayub Khan became defence minister, whether through their own dictators or civilian politicians who took their dictation [except for the six Zulfiqar Bhutto years], have turned a national army into a mercenary force. Those who pay the piper determine the tune. Since Pakistan's generals have Urdu as their first language, they will not need an interpreter to understand Sahir Ludhianvi's evocative couplet: "Kaise bazaar ka dustoor tumhein samjhaaon, Bik gaya jo woh kharidaar nahin ho sakta [How shall I explain the logic of the bazaar? He is who has been sold cannot become a buyer]".
This is a variation, not particularly subtle, of the neo-colonial syndrome. Neo-colonization was honed and shaped by the British Raj on the Indian subcontinent through the princely states, so we have sufficient evidence from history. In essence, neo-colonization is the grant of independence on condition you do not exercise it. It is an exchange of security systems, where the superior power ensures the survival of an ally, while the ally protects the interests of the superpower in its region.
When, therefore, the Pakistan army feels the need for an alternative policy line which might be unacceptable to Washington, it is forced into double-talk and deception. The ISI must maintain distance and deniability when it nurtures assets it needs to use when its requirements are askance of American interests. This explains its relationship with outfits it has either spawned or fattened. That old codger Pervez Musharraf, whose most effective arsenal has always been stored within his vocal chords, has been trotted out to explain how Osama was living in luxury within smelling distance of the military. This is logical, since Osama made his home in Abbotabad when Musharraf was President. As attorney for the Army, however, Musharraf is hopeless; he thinks raising his voice, combined with a convenient memory, improves an argument. One story is too priceless to be ignored. Former Afghanistan intelligence chief A. Saleh recalls that when, four years ago, he told Musharraf that Osama was hiding in or around Abbotabad, Musharraf exploded, "Am I President of the Republic of Banana?"
The question is rhetorical. Dictators like Musharraf have turned Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Pakistan into a banana republic.
I wonder sometimes if Pak generals get more irritated by an Indian general's barb or an Afghan's taunt. Last Wednesday, General Zahir Azimi, spokesman for Kabul's defence ministry, publicly wondered: "If the Pakistani intelligence agency does not know about a home located 10 metres or 100 metres away from its national academy, where for the last six years the biggest terrorist is living, how can this country take care of its strategic weapons?" The whole of Pakistan, not just Kabul, is waiting for an adequate response.
The deterioration of the Pakistan army is not a consequence of financial corruption. That is a small part of the story. It self-destructive because there is complete absence of accountability. No one, either a wing of government or Parliament, can question its will to do what it wants. In the name of patriotism, it has declared virtual independence from the rest of Pakistan. The consequences are there for all to see. Instead of being an impenetrable wall on the frontier, the Pak Army has become a porous bale of cotton.
You can only sleep comfortably wrapped in cotton; a nation's guardians need to keep their eyes open.
The death of two birds with one stone is generally greeted with generous applause, notwithstanding the fact that the second casualty was an accident. What is useful in sport might be less fortuitous in other circumstances.
The four American helicopters which went for the final kill in the long hunt for Osama bin Laden achieved their primary purpose. The world is now busy sifting through the ruins of their second hit. For in the process they also crippled the credibility of Pakistan's most powerful institution, its Army, often described by its apologists as critical to national stability and even cohesion. All pretence and pretension is over; a fudge that the killing of Osama was some sort of "joint operation" was thin camouflage that has been torn apart by minimal public scrutiny. On 4 May Pakistan's information minister Firdous Ashiq Awan admitted in Parliament that American choppers had evaded detection by use of "map of the earth" flying techniques. If the Pak military did learn what was happening during the 40-odd minutes that ground operations took, there was too much uncertainty and confusion in its chain of command to fashion an adequate, or any, response.
Stark fact: the Pakistan Army is impotent before America.
Only the impotent resort to bluster. The Pakistan military rather pompously "threatened" America with "dire consequences" if it dared to violate Pak sovereignty again. America sniffed, not in sorrow but disdain, and sent Drones on Friday to hit targets in the Datta Khel area, killing 12 people, described naturally as "militants". Washington did not seek Islamabad's permission for renewed military action.
Less evident fact, but fact nevertheless: Pakistan's generals, who have controlled defence policy from the moment Ayub Khan became defence minister, whether through their own dictators or civilian politicians who took their dictation [except for the six Zulfiqar Bhutto years], have turned a national army into a mercenary force. Those who pay the piper determine the tune. Since Pakistan's generals have Urdu as their first language, they will not need an interpreter to understand Sahir Ludhianvi's evocative couplet: "Kaise bazaar ka dustoor tumhein samjhaaon, Bik gaya jo woh kharidaar nahin ho sakta [How shall I explain the logic of the bazaar? He is who has been sold cannot become a buyer]".
This is a variation, not particularly subtle, of the neo-colonial syndrome. Neo-colonization was honed and shaped by the British Raj on the Indian subcontinent through the princely states, so we have sufficient evidence from history. In essence, neo-colonization is the grant of independence on condition you do not exercise it. It is an exchange of security systems, where the superior power ensures the survival of an ally, while the ally protects the interests of the superpower in its region.
When, therefore, the Pakistan army feels the need for an alternative policy line which might be unacceptable to Washington, it is forced into double-talk and deception. The ISI must maintain distance and deniability when it nurtures assets it needs to use when its requirements are askance of American interests. This explains its relationship with outfits it has either spawned or fattened. That old codger Pervez Musharraf, whose most effective arsenal has always been stored within his vocal chords, has been trotted out to explain how Osama was living in luxury within smelling distance of the military. This is logical, since Osama made his home in Abbotabad when Musharraf was President. As attorney for the Army, however, Musharraf is hopeless; he thinks raising his voice, combined with a convenient memory, improves an argument. One story is too priceless to be ignored. Former Afghanistan intelligence chief A. Saleh recalls that when, four years ago, he told Musharraf that Osama was hiding in or around Abbotabad, Musharraf exploded, "Am I President of the Republic of Banana?"
The question is rhetorical. Dictators like Musharraf have turned Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Pakistan into a banana republic.
I wonder sometimes if Pak generals get more irritated by an Indian general's barb or an Afghan's taunt. Last Wednesday, General Zahir Azimi, spokesman for Kabul's defence ministry, publicly wondered: "If the Pakistani intelligence agency does not know about a home located 10 metres or 100 metres away from its national academy, where for the last six years the biggest terrorist is living, how can this country take care of its strategic weapons?" The whole of Pakistan, not just Kabul, is waiting for an adequate response.
The deterioration of the Pakistan army is not a consequence of financial corruption. That is a small part of the story. It self-destructive because there is complete absence of accountability. No one, either a wing of government or Parliament, can question its will to do what it wants. In the name of patriotism, it has declared virtual independence from the rest of Pakistan. The consequences are there for all to see. Instead of being an impenetrable wall on the frontier, the Pak Army has become a porous bale of cotton.
You can only sleep comfortably wrapped in cotton; a nation's guardians need to keep their eyes open.
Friday, May 06, 2011
With Friends Like These!
With Friends Like These!
By M J Akbar
In India Today
May 16, 2011
A lie is always a running invitation to a bigger lie. The Pinocchio school of international relations may begin as a clever little nose, but quickly elongates into an embarrassing self-caricature: the lie walks in ahead of you. Within hours of Osama bin Laden's death in a precisely planned operation that will enter intelligence lore, the Asif Zardari government had interred Pakistan's credibility with Osama's bones through a series of contradictory statements that did not even have the decency to adapt to emerging facts. Perhaps Pakistan believes that because it has become a battlefield, obfuscation is a legitimate tactic in the fog of war. As that brilliant doctor of human nature, Shakespeare, pointed out, what a tangled web we weave when first we set out to deceive.
Opportunism comes naturally to the Zardari establishment, and its knee initially jerked in a familiar direction, towards self-congratulation. The usual suspects rushed to television studios to declare that Osama had been killed in a "joint operation", the crowning glory of the long "war against terror". Envoys in London and Washington went into media over-drive. In London, Wajid Shamsul Hasan offered BBC a bluster-fib, unlikely to have been sanctioned by headquarters: that Osama had been lured into Abbottabad only a few days before, towards a trap with a splendid denouement.
The director of CIA, Leon Panetta, tore apart this fiction: "It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardise the mission. They might alert the targets." Separately, John Brennan, counter-terrorism chief in the White House, went on air to say, "It is inconceivable that Osama could have lived so many years without a support system." They could not have been more candid: America believed that Islamabad would help its ward, Osama, escape to another haven if told about the planned assault. The CIA knew that Osama had been living in Abbottabad, within sniffing distance of Pakistan's most important military academy, for about five to six years, ever since the house was built. Add two and two and you might conclude that the large home with high walls and barbed wire had been built specifically for Osama.
By Monday evening, Zardari was forced to admit that his spokesmen had been lying, and that "the events of Sunday were not a joint operation". Later, perhaps pressurised by domestic lobbies, he even charged the US with violating Pakistan's sovereignty. Here is a thought: sovereignty can only be violated if you have preserved it.
Zardari deliberately ignored a key question that has become a clamour. The ISI is not a stupid organisation. How come it did not know that the most famous face in the wanted world, a terrorist who provoked America into a major war (current cost, $300 million a day) was living, along with wives, a dozen children, and aides, for over five years at its doorstep? If Islamabad did know, as some voices now claim, why did Pakistan abjure its sovereign right to arrest Osama and put him on trial, instead of waiting for Americans to find out his whereabouts with inevitable consequences? The idea is redolent with possibilities. If the assassin of Salman Taseer was greeted with rose petals in Lahore and venerated across airwaves, how much adulation would Osama have generated during his trial? Pakistan could have repaid its national debt by charging an admission fee.
The pincer squeezes from both directions when you lie. The truth is uncomplicated. A few simple housekeeping questions will unravel it. Osama's youngest child, from his latest (Pakistani) wife, is two, and was therefore born in Abbottabad. Who were the doctors? Did his dozen children go to school or were they privately tutored? Who are the tutors? Did his wives visit relatives? Did the children never leave home? Where did they go? How did they get money for groceries? Not from a local bank account, surely? Who paid the electricity and water bills? In cash or cheque? Osama was a kidney patient, as Pervez Musharraf confirmed in 2002. How did he get medication? This is hardly an exhaustive list, but enough to prove that someone in power, most likely the ISI, gave Osama succour and protection. America has a hundred reasons to mistrust Islamabad, and this will imperil the relationship for the foreseeable future.
Till he hunted down Osama, Barack Obama was merely President; he has now become leader of his nation. He has legitimised the Nobel Prize for Peace he so foolishly took when he had done nothing to deserve it. But triumph creates as much space for mistakes as defeat. Osama was only the most septic symbol of the problem that has widened in the past decade. The true danger is not from individuals, or groups, but from an ideology that has acquired firm roots in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and is manifest in parties like the Taliban: a medieval interpretation of theocracy which seeks to seize power in both Kabul and Islamabad and turn the adjoining region toxic.
Obama needs to select his friends with as much care as he has chosen his enemies.
By M J Akbar
In India Today
May 16, 2011
A lie is always a running invitation to a bigger lie. The Pinocchio school of international relations may begin as a clever little nose, but quickly elongates into an embarrassing self-caricature: the lie walks in ahead of you. Within hours of Osama bin Laden's death in a precisely planned operation that will enter intelligence lore, the Asif Zardari government had interred Pakistan's credibility with Osama's bones through a series of contradictory statements that did not even have the decency to adapt to emerging facts. Perhaps Pakistan believes that because it has become a battlefield, obfuscation is a legitimate tactic in the fog of war. As that brilliant doctor of human nature, Shakespeare, pointed out, what a tangled web we weave when first we set out to deceive.
Opportunism comes naturally to the Zardari establishment, and its knee initially jerked in a familiar direction, towards self-congratulation. The usual suspects rushed to television studios to declare that Osama had been killed in a "joint operation", the crowning glory of the long "war against terror". Envoys in London and Washington went into media over-drive. In London, Wajid Shamsul Hasan offered BBC a bluster-fib, unlikely to have been sanctioned by headquarters: that Osama had been lured into Abbottabad only a few days before, towards a trap with a splendid denouement.
The director of CIA, Leon Panetta, tore apart this fiction: "It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardise the mission. They might alert the targets." Separately, John Brennan, counter-terrorism chief in the White House, went on air to say, "It is inconceivable that Osama could have lived so many years without a support system." They could not have been more candid: America believed that Islamabad would help its ward, Osama, escape to another haven if told about the planned assault. The CIA knew that Osama had been living in Abbottabad, within sniffing distance of Pakistan's most important military academy, for about five to six years, ever since the house was built. Add two and two and you might conclude that the large home with high walls and barbed wire had been built specifically for Osama.
By Monday evening, Zardari was forced to admit that his spokesmen had been lying, and that "the events of Sunday were not a joint operation". Later, perhaps pressurised by domestic lobbies, he even charged the US with violating Pakistan's sovereignty. Here is a thought: sovereignty can only be violated if you have preserved it.
Zardari deliberately ignored a key question that has become a clamour. The ISI is not a stupid organisation. How come it did not know that the most famous face in the wanted world, a terrorist who provoked America into a major war (current cost, $300 million a day) was living, along with wives, a dozen children, and aides, for over five years at its doorstep? If Islamabad did know, as some voices now claim, why did Pakistan abjure its sovereign right to arrest Osama and put him on trial, instead of waiting for Americans to find out his whereabouts with inevitable consequences? The idea is redolent with possibilities. If the assassin of Salman Taseer was greeted with rose petals in Lahore and venerated across airwaves, how much adulation would Osama have generated during his trial? Pakistan could have repaid its national debt by charging an admission fee.
The pincer squeezes from both directions when you lie. The truth is uncomplicated. A few simple housekeeping questions will unravel it. Osama's youngest child, from his latest (Pakistani) wife, is two, and was therefore born in Abbottabad. Who were the doctors? Did his dozen children go to school or were they privately tutored? Who are the tutors? Did his wives visit relatives? Did the children never leave home? Where did they go? How did they get money for groceries? Not from a local bank account, surely? Who paid the electricity and water bills? In cash or cheque? Osama was a kidney patient, as Pervez Musharraf confirmed in 2002. How did he get medication? This is hardly an exhaustive list, but enough to prove that someone in power, most likely the ISI, gave Osama succour and protection. America has a hundred reasons to mistrust Islamabad, and this will imperil the relationship for the foreseeable future.
Till he hunted down Osama, Barack Obama was merely President; he has now become leader of his nation. He has legitimised the Nobel Prize for Peace he so foolishly took when he had done nothing to deserve it. But triumph creates as much space for mistakes as defeat. Osama was only the most septic symbol of the problem that has widened in the past decade. The true danger is not from individuals, or groups, but from an ideology that has acquired firm roots in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and is manifest in parties like the Taliban: a medieval interpretation of theocracy which seeks to seize power in both Kabul and Islamabad and turn the adjoining region toxic.
Obama needs to select his friends with as much care as he has chosen his enemies.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Her Kingdom has come
Her Kingdom has come
By M J Akbar
Byword:In India Today
9th May 2011
Now for the good news. If opinion polls are right, more than 60 per cent of India will be ruled by women of substance from the middle of May. Between them, Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee could preside over the destiny of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, along with a part-share in Jammu and Kashmir and the North East. Add a supplementary, that BJP has chosen a woman, Sushma Swaraj, as leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and you have a burst of feminine power not seen in India since Razia Sultan sat on the Delhi throne in the 13th century.
Silly columnists rush in where angels fear to tread. Sensible angels don't make poll predictions. Alas, for journalists, no angels, this is a bread-and-butter requirement. Mamata Banerjee may be more wind than flight, but she will land in Writers' Building once results are declared on May 13; not as comfortably perhaps as she imagines, but still there. She has already acquired heavy-frame spectacles in the billboard image sprawled across Calcutta; if you want to be chief minister of Bengal, it helps to look like an intellectual. In Tamil Nadu, the polls are done. Jayalalithaa has gone on holiday and the Karunanidhi clan returned to family squabbles. No one can be certain of the Tamil Nadu result, but the theme of this series of Assembly elections is taking shape: if you are establishment, you are in trouble.
The Leftist rock in Bengal is looking more like rock salt; while the DMK is writhing in pain from different wounds. The Assam Congress, which began this campaign in a chipper mood, is now visibly distraught at the possibility of losing office. In all states, the Congress vote has dropped sharply from its 2009 levels because of the crime opera being serialised in media every day. But an intriguing variation has spawned an anomaly in Kerala. The Left has repositioned the contest as one between two establishments, the local Left versus the national Congress, and switching the question from 'Who is better?' to 'Who is worse?' But this is unlikely to prevent a Congress-front victory.
Men are psychologically destabilised by the thought of women on top. All through history, across nations and cultures, their contempt for women who aspire for power has been well-documented. They have repeatedly used doctrine and sword to keep the "weaker sex" in its place, which, in their world-view is ideally restricted to the pillow, their influence whispered into the ear, or stretched to seduction. The image is as old as Genesis. Eve initiated proceedings in heaven when she "tempted" Adam with her apple, but on earth it was Adam who occupied the temporal throne. A role reversal has been long overdue, but had to await the gender equality enshrined in adult franchise, a process which began through faltering steps, in the 20th century.
The first phase of feminine empowerment was marked by accident, opportunity and individual ability. Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir have been declared successful (by men) because they were re-imagined as proto-males, the only-man-in-the-Cabinet syndrome. When all three decimated foes in war with calm ruthlessness, men cheered them on as one of their own, implying that their success was due to a functional male gene in a dysfunctional female DNA. The sexism was unnoticed by one gender, and ignored by the other.
Democracy has at long last hit critical mass. Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee-or for that matter Angela Merkel-are where they are not because of genes, but by the collective will of an unsentimental electorate. How much real change will this represent in India? To suggest that women in power will be less corrupt is fatuous, and contrary to all prevalent evidence. Even Mamata Banerjee, who has spent decades suggesting that money was seriously injurious to her health, has abandoned pretence and is promoting a North Indian moneybag as an elixir of the Coming New Bengal Economy. Given the protection of privacy, such women would doubtless argue that they need cash for their counteroffensive in a hostile environment where gender bias starves them of resources. So will they, to use an apt metaphor, be merely cosmetic?
It depends on whether these women decide to behave like faux men, or whether they obey their natural instincts. A woman does not have to bear babies to be a mother. Men take pride in achievement; women take pride in feeding the family. Every member of a family is not an achiever, and will not bring the same amount to the kitty, but everyone has to be fed equally. It is, in essence, the difference between exclusive growth and inclusive growth. Men gave us the first. Women should give us the second.
By M J Akbar
Byword:In India Today
9th May 2011
Now for the good news. If opinion polls are right, more than 60 per cent of India will be ruled by women of substance from the middle of May. Between them, Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee could preside over the destiny of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, along with a part-share in Jammu and Kashmir and the North East. Add a supplementary, that BJP has chosen a woman, Sushma Swaraj, as leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and you have a burst of feminine power not seen in India since Razia Sultan sat on the Delhi throne in the 13th century.
Silly columnists rush in where angels fear to tread. Sensible angels don't make poll predictions. Alas, for journalists, no angels, this is a bread-and-butter requirement. Mamata Banerjee may be more wind than flight, but she will land in Writers' Building once results are declared on May 13; not as comfortably perhaps as she imagines, but still there. She has already acquired heavy-frame spectacles in the billboard image sprawled across Calcutta; if you want to be chief minister of Bengal, it helps to look like an intellectual. In Tamil Nadu, the polls are done. Jayalalithaa has gone on holiday and the Karunanidhi clan returned to family squabbles. No one can be certain of the Tamil Nadu result, but the theme of this series of Assembly elections is taking shape: if you are establishment, you are in trouble.
The Leftist rock in Bengal is looking more like rock salt; while the DMK is writhing in pain from different wounds. The Assam Congress, which began this campaign in a chipper mood, is now visibly distraught at the possibility of losing office. In all states, the Congress vote has dropped sharply from its 2009 levels because of the crime opera being serialised in media every day. But an intriguing variation has spawned an anomaly in Kerala. The Left has repositioned the contest as one between two establishments, the local Left versus the national Congress, and switching the question from 'Who is better?' to 'Who is worse?' But this is unlikely to prevent a Congress-front victory.
Men are psychologically destabilised by the thought of women on top. All through history, across nations and cultures, their contempt for women who aspire for power has been well-documented. They have repeatedly used doctrine and sword to keep the "weaker sex" in its place, which, in their world-view is ideally restricted to the pillow, their influence whispered into the ear, or stretched to seduction. The image is as old as Genesis. Eve initiated proceedings in heaven when she "tempted" Adam with her apple, but on earth it was Adam who occupied the temporal throne. A role reversal has been long overdue, but had to await the gender equality enshrined in adult franchise, a process which began through faltering steps, in the 20th century.
The first phase of feminine empowerment was marked by accident, opportunity and individual ability. Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir have been declared successful (by men) because they were re-imagined as proto-males, the only-man-in-the-Cabinet syndrome. When all three decimated foes in war with calm ruthlessness, men cheered them on as one of their own, implying that their success was due to a functional male gene in a dysfunctional female DNA. The sexism was unnoticed by one gender, and ignored by the other.
Democracy has at long last hit critical mass. Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee-or for that matter Angela Merkel-are where they are not because of genes, but by the collective will of an unsentimental electorate. How much real change will this represent in India? To suggest that women in power will be less corrupt is fatuous, and contrary to all prevalent evidence. Even Mamata Banerjee, who has spent decades suggesting that money was seriously injurious to her health, has abandoned pretence and is promoting a North Indian moneybag as an elixir of the Coming New Bengal Economy. Given the protection of privacy, such women would doubtless argue that they need cash for their counteroffensive in a hostile environment where gender bias starves them of resources. So will they, to use an apt metaphor, be merely cosmetic?
It depends on whether these women decide to behave like faux men, or whether they obey their natural instincts. A woman does not have to bear babies to be a mother. Men take pride in achievement; women take pride in feeding the family. Every member of a family is not an achiever, and will not bring the same amount to the kitty, but everyone has to be fed equally. It is, in essence, the difference between exclusive growth and inclusive growth. Men gave us the first. Women should give us the second.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The power behind the throne
Byline by M J Akbar: The power behind the throne
Power changed hands in the third living generation of Britain's House of Windsor through the touch of a finger. It happened during the most dramatic part of a wedding ceremony, when Prince William began to place the ring on the finger of Kate Middleton, a beautiful young lady of common rather than aristocratic birth. Either the jeweller who fashioned the ring is an ass who couldn't get the measurement right, or the very happy Kate had put on weight since her meeting with the jeweller. Since the latter is unlikely, the first must be true. The groom struggled to get the ring onto his bride's finger while a breathless world watched on television cameras.
There is not much distance between awe and farce; a few more seconds of struggle and the magic would have begun to peel. Judging the dilemma perfectly, and without losing an iota of composure, Kate deftly took William's hand and brought the ring home to what should be, if all goes well, its final resting place.
We know now who will be in charge when Kate and William become Queen and King of Britain and those former bits of the old British Empire that will have them.
There are at least three firsts in these nuptials. This is the first British royal wedding in which 50% of the union is not royal. This is the first time that the bride is older than the groom: William's mother, Diana, was only 19 when she married the much older Charles. And, unlike in the case of Diana, no one is interested in whether Kate is a virgin, or indeed whether she lost her virginity to William. The British royal family has joined the egalitarian spirit of its 21st century subjects.
The extraordinary, and even moving, success of the British royal family lies in its unique ability to step back in order to move forward. If their remaining peers around the world understood just this much they would not be in the trouble they are now. No period in history has seen as much change, evolution, war and upheaval as the last century. The Windsor genius has enabled this dynasty to change before they were changed by tides outside their control. They stepped away from supreme, "divinely-sanctioned" authority, in gradual stages, without any fuss, and blossomed into an imperturbable institution that is a magnet for national social cohesion. No elected British Prime Minister would be so foolish as to test his will against theirs.
There is something about this royal, even majestic, aura that supersedes reality. Would anyone be caught wearing trousers with a seargent-major's red vertical slash running down the side from waist to shoe? But there they were, William and daddy Charles, at the wedding dressed in what is surely the very opposite of a pinstripe, and managed to look elegant. So much of British royal procedure, from decor to decorum, not excluding the faux haughtiness of underlings who populate the palace, is the stuff of potential cartoons that, from a distance, it looks immensely fragile. But it is as strong as silk.
If you or I tried a display of pomp, we would merely look pompous. On Friday the Windsors turned out all the pomp in the world and it seemed totally befitting. The one area that they might want to tweak towards modernity could be in their names. It is still all Henry Arthur Louis Witherspoon-Cutlery in the guest lists. Research reveals that one of William's pre-Kate girlfriends was called Davina Duckworth-Chad. No judgement on the girl, but it is a relief to the rest of us that he didn't marry a surname which was a combination of a publishing firm and African nation. Some leeway is possible in titles, of course. The moment that the heir but one got married, William became, thanks to the gracious generosity of mummy, the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus. The Cambridge bit is quite nice; after all it has a great university. But by the time you descend to the Barony of Carrickfergus you are competing with limericks.
A marriage is an occasion for tradition and sentiment, and one's first wish is of course that the marriage is blessed with happiness. The track record of Queen Elizabeth's children, or her sister, is not a triumph of marital bliss. William is a child of a family that broke in the glare of a merciless media. His mother Diana took revenge against real or imagined slights with a ferocity, and a succession of bizarre boyfriends, that became the subject of relentless gossip. But tradition, the plasma of this bloodline, is not about mistakes but about recovery. Kate, it seems to me, is steely and level-headed enough to nourish a functional family as her contribution to Windsors. Thank God she comes from "common" stock. She has, thereby, common sense.
Power changed hands in the third living generation of Britain's House of Windsor through the touch of a finger. It happened during the most dramatic part of a wedding ceremony, when Prince William began to place the ring on the finger of Kate Middleton, a beautiful young lady of common rather than aristocratic birth. Either the jeweller who fashioned the ring is an ass who couldn't get the measurement right, or the very happy Kate had put on weight since her meeting with the jeweller. Since the latter is unlikely, the first must be true. The groom struggled to get the ring onto his bride's finger while a breathless world watched on television cameras.
There is not much distance between awe and farce; a few more seconds of struggle and the magic would have begun to peel. Judging the dilemma perfectly, and without losing an iota of composure, Kate deftly took William's hand and brought the ring home to what should be, if all goes well, its final resting place.
We know now who will be in charge when Kate and William become Queen and King of Britain and those former bits of the old British Empire that will have them.
There are at least three firsts in these nuptials. This is the first British royal wedding in which 50% of the union is not royal. This is the first time that the bride is older than the groom: William's mother, Diana, was only 19 when she married the much older Charles. And, unlike in the case of Diana, no one is interested in whether Kate is a virgin, or indeed whether she lost her virginity to William. The British royal family has joined the egalitarian spirit of its 21st century subjects.
The extraordinary, and even moving, success of the British royal family lies in its unique ability to step back in order to move forward. If their remaining peers around the world understood just this much they would not be in the trouble they are now. No period in history has seen as much change, evolution, war and upheaval as the last century. The Windsor genius has enabled this dynasty to change before they were changed by tides outside their control. They stepped away from supreme, "divinely-sanctioned" authority, in gradual stages, without any fuss, and blossomed into an imperturbable institution that is a magnet for national social cohesion. No elected British Prime Minister would be so foolish as to test his will against theirs.
There is something about this royal, even majestic, aura that supersedes reality. Would anyone be caught wearing trousers with a seargent-major's red vertical slash running down the side from waist to shoe? But there they were, William and daddy Charles, at the wedding dressed in what is surely the very opposite of a pinstripe, and managed to look elegant. So much of British royal procedure, from decor to decorum, not excluding the faux haughtiness of underlings who populate the palace, is the stuff of potential cartoons that, from a distance, it looks immensely fragile. But it is as strong as silk.
If you or I tried a display of pomp, we would merely look pompous. On Friday the Windsors turned out all the pomp in the world and it seemed totally befitting. The one area that they might want to tweak towards modernity could be in their names. It is still all Henry Arthur Louis Witherspoon-Cutlery in the guest lists. Research reveals that one of William's pre-Kate girlfriends was called Davina Duckworth-Chad. No judgement on the girl, but it is a relief to the rest of us that he didn't marry a surname which was a combination of a publishing firm and African nation. Some leeway is possible in titles, of course. The moment that the heir but one got married, William became, thanks to the gracious generosity of mummy, the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus. The Cambridge bit is quite nice; after all it has a great university. But by the time you descend to the Barony of Carrickfergus you are competing with limericks.
A marriage is an occasion for tradition and sentiment, and one's first wish is of course that the marriage is blessed with happiness. The track record of Queen Elizabeth's children, or her sister, is not a triumph of marital bliss. William is a child of a family that broke in the glare of a merciless media. His mother Diana took revenge against real or imagined slights with a ferocity, and a succession of bizarre boyfriends, that became the subject of relentless gossip. But tradition, the plasma of this bloodline, is not about mistakes but about recovery. Kate, it seems to me, is steely and level-headed enough to nourish a functional family as her contribution to Windsors. Thank God she comes from "common" stock. She has, thereby, common sense.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Death of the whisper
Death of the whisper
The British Monarchy and how Princess Diana defied the rules
How do you whisper in print? With an infectious mix of guile and panache, if you are a journalist in the British tradition. Other hacks might scream or giggle when salting their story, but nuance is an Anglo-Indian speciality. The diary, a staple of the English press, winks its way through social and political stories. The brevity of a diary item, paradoxically, provides a journalist with far more leeway to stretch a meaning than the long report. The implicit is always far ahead of the explicit, encouraging imagination to take it even further. The British press left little to imagination thirty summers ago, when reporting the most titillating fact of the wedding of the 20th century, between an excitingly pretty Diana and the jug-eared Charles, then and still heir to the British throne, in a royal wedding that had much of the old Empire agog with excitement and thousands of colonels drooling with nostalgia. The press reported, in a suitable whisper, that Diana had taken a virginity test, and all was well.
No one expected Charles to take a virginity test. That would be lese majesty. In the good old days-well, good for the sire in any case-the lord of the British manor would exercise his right to sleep with a bride on her first night while the groom comforted himself outside with either the company of friends or beer, whichever was less greasy. That privilege has disappeared with the onset of a more equitable era, but gender is not equal in the aristocracy. Girls were trained to make suitable marriages, and not bother their heads with education.
Chastity was not the preferred virtue of a royal stag. The male was, and actually still is, expected to throw his seed about a bit, with some inevitable consequences. The British aristocracy, with its belief in male primogeniture (the eldest son inherits everything, and siblings get a decent handshake) has never been a good advertisement for gender equality. British bookstores must be currently packed with anecdotal histories of royalty. Even if some have been embellished by the fertile excesses of authors in search of a quick buck, there are enough bastards in the narrative to invite the wrath of all Ten Commandments. Princes still enjoy the company of sidekicks like the Shakespearean Prince Hal's Sir John Falstaff, even if today's Falstaffs possess neither the wit nor extravagance of the flatulent old monster. The modern princely tavern is a nightclub, but the night offers the same vagrant pleasures to the male that it did five centuries ago.
The first laugh might belong to the prince, but the last laugh will be the prerogative of the princess. Diana was a virgin till she married Charles; after two children, she turned Charles into a virgin while she went on an international romp that sent media into hysterics, and threatened the British royal family with the prospect of its first child with Arab blood. British royals don't do anger. Their lips are the stiffest part of their body, even at night. They are not afraid of rage. But they are terrified of ridicule. The 17th century Earl of Rochester's famous put-down of Charles II ("Here lives a Great and Mighty Monarch/Whose Promise none relies on/Who never said a foolish thing/Nor ever did a wise one") was only a smear, not a wound.
It did not matter that Charles II did nothing wise, as long as he said nothing foolish. The frosty silence with which Diana's lusty love affairs were treated helped preserve a dynasty that had peaked in entertainment value, but lost its dignity. While Diana's death in a Paris car crash will be a permanent exhibit in the world museum of mystery, her sudden death must have come as a relief to a traumatised establishment destabilised by the fury of a scorned woman. Since British royals have had centuries of practice in disguising their relief, they did it well during Diana's over-the-top funeral. Her husband Charles, surely the most famous cuckold on record, donned a mask of stone. Charles is blessed with blood, but not much luck: he has already waited 59 years to become Charles III and his mother is perfectly healthy.
The extravagant Diana changed the rules before she died. When her son Prince William gets married to Kate Middleton, a pretty lady of triumphantly middle class origins, on April 29, among the guests will be Kate's ex-boyfriends. They will mingle with William's ex-girlfriends. No one expects Kate to be a virgin, or indeed to have lost her virginity to William. Royalty has finally joined a Britain from which it held aloof for as long as it was possible.
There is no whisper in the British press, for Diana killed the whisper before she died.
The British Monarchy and how Princess Diana defied the rules
How do you whisper in print? With an infectious mix of guile and panache, if you are a journalist in the British tradition. Other hacks might scream or giggle when salting their story, but nuance is an Anglo-Indian speciality. The diary, a staple of the English press, winks its way through social and political stories. The brevity of a diary item, paradoxically, provides a journalist with far more leeway to stretch a meaning than the long report. The implicit is always far ahead of the explicit, encouraging imagination to take it even further. The British press left little to imagination thirty summers ago, when reporting the most titillating fact of the wedding of the 20th century, between an excitingly pretty Diana and the jug-eared Charles, then and still heir to the British throne, in a royal wedding that had much of the old Empire agog with excitement and thousands of colonels drooling with nostalgia. The press reported, in a suitable whisper, that Diana had taken a virginity test, and all was well.
No one expected Charles to take a virginity test. That would be lese majesty. In the good old days-well, good for the sire in any case-the lord of the British manor would exercise his right to sleep with a bride on her first night while the groom comforted himself outside with either the company of friends or beer, whichever was less greasy. That privilege has disappeared with the onset of a more equitable era, but gender is not equal in the aristocracy. Girls were trained to make suitable marriages, and not bother their heads with education.
Chastity was not the preferred virtue of a royal stag. The male was, and actually still is, expected to throw his seed about a bit, with some inevitable consequences. The British aristocracy, with its belief in male primogeniture (the eldest son inherits everything, and siblings get a decent handshake) has never been a good advertisement for gender equality. British bookstores must be currently packed with anecdotal histories of royalty. Even if some have been embellished by the fertile excesses of authors in search of a quick buck, there are enough bastards in the narrative to invite the wrath of all Ten Commandments. Princes still enjoy the company of sidekicks like the Shakespearean Prince Hal's Sir John Falstaff, even if today's Falstaffs possess neither the wit nor extravagance of the flatulent old monster. The modern princely tavern is a nightclub, but the night offers the same vagrant pleasures to the male that it did five centuries ago.
The first laugh might belong to the prince, but the last laugh will be the prerogative of the princess. Diana was a virgin till she married Charles; after two children, she turned Charles into a virgin while she went on an international romp that sent media into hysterics, and threatened the British royal family with the prospect of its first child with Arab blood. British royals don't do anger. Their lips are the stiffest part of their body, even at night. They are not afraid of rage. But they are terrified of ridicule. The 17th century Earl of Rochester's famous put-down of Charles II ("Here lives a Great and Mighty Monarch/Whose Promise none relies on/Who never said a foolish thing/Nor ever did a wise one") was only a smear, not a wound.
It did not matter that Charles II did nothing wise, as long as he said nothing foolish. The frosty silence with which Diana's lusty love affairs were treated helped preserve a dynasty that had peaked in entertainment value, but lost its dignity. While Diana's death in a Paris car crash will be a permanent exhibit in the world museum of mystery, her sudden death must have come as a relief to a traumatised establishment destabilised by the fury of a scorned woman. Since British royals have had centuries of practice in disguising their relief, they did it well during Diana's over-the-top funeral. Her husband Charles, surely the most famous cuckold on record, donned a mask of stone. Charles is blessed with blood, but not much luck: he has already waited 59 years to become Charles III and his mother is perfectly healthy.
The extravagant Diana changed the rules before she died. When her son Prince William gets married to Kate Middleton, a pretty lady of triumphantly middle class origins, on April 29, among the guests will be Kate's ex-boyfriends. They will mingle with William's ex-girlfriends. No one expects Kate to be a virgin, or indeed to have lost her virginity to William. Royalty has finally joined a Britain from which it held aloof for as long as it was possible.
There is no whisper in the British press, for Diana killed the whisper before she died.
Smile of the banyan
Byline by M J Akbar: Smile of the banyan
Does one have to be as old as Anna Hazare to remember India’s freedom struggle?
We were sitting in the shade of a magnificent banyan, a marvel that dominated the single-storey brick structures and temple that constitute his work complex in the village Ralengansiddhi, some 90 minutes by car from Pune. So often during our conversation he addressed this question, sometimes to me and sometimes it seemed to himself: what was that marathon, non-violent war against the British all about? Had all we managed to do was replace white colonists with those of a darker hue?
We ate a simple lunch of local corn, yoghurt and roti, brought by an enthusiastic well-wisher, in a small slap-up building consisting of a claustrophobic living room stuffed with sofas, a dining room barely larger than the dining table, and a comparatively spacious washroom, a few minutes drive away. This was not built by the Anna trust, but by the Maharashtra government. The amenities were not meant for Anna, but for His Excellent Excellency the Governor, who had decided to bestow personal benediction upon Maharashtra’s most famous village. Apparently the His Majesty the Governor’s office decided that a plastic chair, or a charpoy, would be too uncomfortable for the Governor’s buttocks, and so put up this house for the two hours that His Notably Notable Honour would spend in the village. The shock at waste lingers in Anna’s voice as he repeats this anecdote. When he asked officials why they were wasting people’s money, they offered protocol as the excuse. Such protocol, said Anna, might have been considered necessary during British rule, but why was it still in place in free India?
There was a moment when he was young, said Anna, when he seriously contemplated suicide because he could not find a purpose to life. Then he chanced upon a book by Swami Vivekanand at a railway bookstall, and found his raison d’etre: service.
Quaint? Naive? A bit too pious for a world consumed in the terrifying struggle for the next promotion, the next holiday, the next slippery road to some extra income [source irrelevant]?
His smile is the antidote of cynicism, which is probably why Delhi – where most smiles are dipped in grease – dismisses him as either a sanctimonious humbug or, at best, “simple”. The second is the verdict of friends. Simplicity, it needs to be noted, is not a compliment in power-obsessed Delhi. In Ralegansiddhi, where emotions are untouched by mercenary need, Anna is loved precisely because he is without guile. His first name is not “Anna”. This appellation, meaning elder brother, is an amalgam of the respect and affection that captures the essence of his character.
This essence sparked some long-awaited fire in the young of urban India when Anna went on a fast because they understood, instinctively and instantly, that Anna’s reward lay in what he could give, not in what he could take away.
The band on his wagon is of course another story. There is no point in translating the Hindi phrase “Shivji’s baraat” as “Lord Shiva’s wedding” because the cultural chasm between the two is simply too wide. Suffice it to say that, along with the sincere, caring and honest, every hustler is also out with his trumpet, and every peacock and peahen has arrived to join the dance. One senses that Hazare is possibly less dangerous to the government than to the NGO industry, because so many do-gooders turn up with excess baggage, much of it slipped through the rules. When the rules fight back, such guardians of morality use the classic weapon of a hustle: drown out the alternative narrative by screaming at the top of your voice.
Politicians have the merit of being predictable. If there are votes on the bandwagon they will ride it at high speed, always wearing a safety belt of course. They prefer not to die, or even risk injury, in any impending crash. The hospital of politics can be very inhospitable. There will be a crash or two in the journey towards the creation of a national ombudsman for honesty, armed with effective powers that can slice through the comfort zone of wealth and authority. Some cuts to the draft of the proposed Lokpal bill might even be necessary for its arrival: I was aghast at the thought that the august Lokpal would be elected by a self-appointed club of worthies including Nobel Prize winners of Indian origin. V.S. Naipaul, where are you when we need you? The India you find despicable, your area of darkness, cries out for you!
The most important question was raised by Mayawati, even if she could not resist the temptation to politicize her question. Is the Indian corrupt or is the Indian Constitution corrupt? Why should we destroy the great edifice of our Constitution merely because those in power have lost their respect for it? Throw out the mucky bathwater, Anna, but please hold on to the baby.
Does one have to be as old as Anna Hazare to remember India’s freedom struggle?
We were sitting in the shade of a magnificent banyan, a marvel that dominated the single-storey brick structures and temple that constitute his work complex in the village Ralengansiddhi, some 90 minutes by car from Pune. So often during our conversation he addressed this question, sometimes to me and sometimes it seemed to himself: what was that marathon, non-violent war against the British all about? Had all we managed to do was replace white colonists with those of a darker hue?
We ate a simple lunch of local corn, yoghurt and roti, brought by an enthusiastic well-wisher, in a small slap-up building consisting of a claustrophobic living room stuffed with sofas, a dining room barely larger than the dining table, and a comparatively spacious washroom, a few minutes drive away. This was not built by the Anna trust, but by the Maharashtra government. The amenities were not meant for Anna, but for His Excellent Excellency the Governor, who had decided to bestow personal benediction upon Maharashtra’s most famous village. Apparently the His Majesty the Governor’s office decided that a plastic chair, or a charpoy, would be too uncomfortable for the Governor’s buttocks, and so put up this house for the two hours that His Notably Notable Honour would spend in the village. The shock at waste lingers in Anna’s voice as he repeats this anecdote. When he asked officials why they were wasting people’s money, they offered protocol as the excuse. Such protocol, said Anna, might have been considered necessary during British rule, but why was it still in place in free India?
There was a moment when he was young, said Anna, when he seriously contemplated suicide because he could not find a purpose to life. Then he chanced upon a book by Swami Vivekanand at a railway bookstall, and found his raison d’etre: service.
Quaint? Naive? A bit too pious for a world consumed in the terrifying struggle for the next promotion, the next holiday, the next slippery road to some extra income [source irrelevant]?
His smile is the antidote of cynicism, which is probably why Delhi – where most smiles are dipped in grease – dismisses him as either a sanctimonious humbug or, at best, “simple”. The second is the verdict of friends. Simplicity, it needs to be noted, is not a compliment in power-obsessed Delhi. In Ralegansiddhi, where emotions are untouched by mercenary need, Anna is loved precisely because he is without guile. His first name is not “Anna”. This appellation, meaning elder brother, is an amalgam of the respect and affection that captures the essence of his character.
This essence sparked some long-awaited fire in the young of urban India when Anna went on a fast because they understood, instinctively and instantly, that Anna’s reward lay in what he could give, not in what he could take away.
The band on his wagon is of course another story. There is no point in translating the Hindi phrase “Shivji’s baraat” as “Lord Shiva’s wedding” because the cultural chasm between the two is simply too wide. Suffice it to say that, along with the sincere, caring and honest, every hustler is also out with his trumpet, and every peacock and peahen has arrived to join the dance. One senses that Hazare is possibly less dangerous to the government than to the NGO industry, because so many do-gooders turn up with excess baggage, much of it slipped through the rules. When the rules fight back, such guardians of morality use the classic weapon of a hustle: drown out the alternative narrative by screaming at the top of your voice.
Politicians have the merit of being predictable. If there are votes on the bandwagon they will ride it at high speed, always wearing a safety belt of course. They prefer not to die, or even risk injury, in any impending crash. The hospital of politics can be very inhospitable. There will be a crash or two in the journey towards the creation of a national ombudsman for honesty, armed with effective powers that can slice through the comfort zone of wealth and authority. Some cuts to the draft of the proposed Lokpal bill might even be necessary for its arrival: I was aghast at the thought that the august Lokpal would be elected by a self-appointed club of worthies including Nobel Prize winners of Indian origin. V.S. Naipaul, where are you when we need you? The India you find despicable, your area of darkness, cries out for you!
The most important question was raised by Mayawati, even if she could not resist the temptation to politicize her question. Is the Indian corrupt or is the Indian Constitution corrupt? Why should we destroy the great edifice of our Constitution merely because those in power have lost their respect for it? Throw out the mucky bathwater, Anna, but please hold on to the baby.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Children of change will have their say
Byline by M J Akbar: Children of change will have their say
Revolutions are famous for eating their children. There is not much mystery in this menu. The eneegy, rage and even chaos that is necessary for comprehensive upheaval is anathema to stability. When stagnant kings have fallen, the new order needs calm as much as the old order it has replaced. Lenin famously wondered whether it was possible to make revolution without firing squads; the self-evident answer was 'no'. But the range of the squad guns extended to those comrades whose romanticism threatened anarchy, as much as the leftovers who fantasised about the restoration of monarchy.
The dialectic of democracy is a bit different. Revolution has been replaced by evolution. But there do come moments when the confrontation inherent in change is no less dramatic. We saw one during the Anna Hazare moment in the uprising against corruption.
Dr Manmohan Singh is widely renowned as the uncle, if not the father, of the economic revolution of 1991 and 1992 that laid the foundations of New India. His government is being shredded today by the children of his own revolution, by men and women in their twenties who are aghast that their reformed India is still plagued by the maladies of old India, most viscerally the fatal cancer of corruption. The contemporary young have provided the surge that has led India to the doorstep of international economic leadership, and they want the benefits of this growth to rescue the impoverished base of the country, and strengthen the middle class to which they belong. Instead they see wealth being sucked up the needle-point apex of the pyramid, captured by a coalition of capital and comprador politician. They are angry at the thought that the national symbol has become a bloated leech.
The young may be impatient— that is their template mode. But they are not unduly intolerant. They have space in their attitude for some leeway. In any case, democracy is a pretty laidback sort of beast, and the young enjoy the relaxed ride it provides. The beast does transfigure into a fire-spouting dragon once every five years or so, but that electoral conflagration has curative powers, nourishing and cleansing. Democracy, more crucially, is a daily fact. It is life without fear, a non-negotiable need of modern India. We did not win independence from the British in order to surrender our freedom to a gruesome local elite on the excuse of economic progress or stability. Some observers find this confusing, even contradictory, but their cynicism reflects the master-slave syndrome that sustained production systems of colonial Europe. India's economic growth does not require bondage of the worker or the silence of the middle class.
The young, however, are fascinated by change. Their willingness to take a risk with the unknown, or less known, is higher. It is not an accident that Dr Manmohan Singh is the only Prime Minister who has been re-elected after a full term since Rajiv Gandhi gave a vote to the 18-year-old. Dr Singh achieved this because he won the young with the promise of sustained economic achievement. Singh was their king.
Within a year of reelection, that kingdom is frayed. The bitterness of the young is that much sharper because Dr Singh's promise was that much higher. He was a symbol of their aspirations, because he was honest and transparent. They accepted his argument that coalition politics demanded the occasional compromise, until they discovered the extent and magnitude of compromise. What we are witnessing is the first genuine revolt of the Indian middle class. Do not measure their strength by numbers alone, although those numbers are not small. They control the discourse of the nation, and they set the agenda. Their frustration in Bengal may not be because of corruption, since that is not a problem with the Left. But individual honesty is insufficient without a quantum leap in job opportunities. A person born fifteen years after the Left came to power in Calcutta is a voter now; how much patience can we expect of him? It is important to note, however, that the demand on the alternative in Bengal, represented by Mamata Banerjee, will be intense, if only because the expectations are colossal.
The children of change, whether in Delhi or Calcutta, are making their demands clear, and doing so with impressive clarity. If they are left hungry, they will dine on the powerful.
Revolutions are famous for eating their children. There is not much mystery in this menu. The eneegy, rage and even chaos that is necessary for comprehensive upheaval is anathema to stability. When stagnant kings have fallen, the new order needs calm as much as the old order it has replaced. Lenin famously wondered whether it was possible to make revolution without firing squads; the self-evident answer was 'no'. But the range of the squad guns extended to those comrades whose romanticism threatened anarchy, as much as the leftovers who fantasised about the restoration of monarchy.
The dialectic of democracy is a bit different. Revolution has been replaced by evolution. But there do come moments when the confrontation inherent in change is no less dramatic. We saw one during the Anna Hazare moment in the uprising against corruption.
Dr Manmohan Singh is widely renowned as the uncle, if not the father, of the economic revolution of 1991 and 1992 that laid the foundations of New India. His government is being shredded today by the children of his own revolution, by men and women in their twenties who are aghast that their reformed India is still plagued by the maladies of old India, most viscerally the fatal cancer of corruption. The contemporary young have provided the surge that has led India to the doorstep of international economic leadership, and they want the benefits of this growth to rescue the impoverished base of the country, and strengthen the middle class to which they belong. Instead they see wealth being sucked up the needle-point apex of the pyramid, captured by a coalition of capital and comprador politician. They are angry at the thought that the national symbol has become a bloated leech.
The young may be impatient— that is their template mode. But they are not unduly intolerant. They have space in their attitude for some leeway. In any case, democracy is a pretty laidback sort of beast, and the young enjoy the relaxed ride it provides. The beast does transfigure into a fire-spouting dragon once every five years or so, but that electoral conflagration has curative powers, nourishing and cleansing. Democracy, more crucially, is a daily fact. It is life without fear, a non-negotiable need of modern India. We did not win independence from the British in order to surrender our freedom to a gruesome local elite on the excuse of economic progress or stability. Some observers find this confusing, even contradictory, but their cynicism reflects the master-slave syndrome that sustained production systems of colonial Europe. India's economic growth does not require bondage of the worker or the silence of the middle class.
The young, however, are fascinated by change. Their willingness to take a risk with the unknown, or less known, is higher. It is not an accident that Dr Manmohan Singh is the only Prime Minister who has been re-elected after a full term since Rajiv Gandhi gave a vote to the 18-year-old. Dr Singh achieved this because he won the young with the promise of sustained economic achievement. Singh was their king.
Within a year of reelection, that kingdom is frayed. The bitterness of the young is that much sharper because Dr Singh's promise was that much higher. He was a symbol of their aspirations, because he was honest and transparent. They accepted his argument that coalition politics demanded the occasional compromise, until they discovered the extent and magnitude of compromise. What we are witnessing is the first genuine revolt of the Indian middle class. Do not measure their strength by numbers alone, although those numbers are not small. They control the discourse of the nation, and they set the agenda. Their frustration in Bengal may not be because of corruption, since that is not a problem with the Left. But individual honesty is insufficient without a quantum leap in job opportunities. A person born fifteen years after the Left came to power in Calcutta is a voter now; how much patience can we expect of him? It is important to note, however, that the demand on the alternative in Bengal, represented by Mamata Banerjee, will be intense, if only because the expectations are colossal.
The children of change, whether in Delhi or Calcutta, are making their demands clear, and doing so with impressive clarity. If they are left hungry, they will dine on the powerful.
Friday, April 15, 2011
In an acoustic shadow
In an acoustic shadow
By M J Akbar
Third Eye - Byword in India Today April 15, 2011
The question was moot: should a government rush in to pre-empt a crisis with some deft foot-play; or does it make more sense to wait, bide your time and see if the crisis falls into a ditch on the way to your doorstep? The context of this conversation over an amiable lunch in New York was Cairo's Tahrir Square, but it could so easily have been Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
Long experience in power has taught the Congress to wait. So much can happen along the way. A challenge can run out of steam, get diverted by the unforeseen, split into disarray by dysfunctional leadership. Why develop a long-term strategy when short-term tactics will do? Those at the pinnacle content themselves with minimal verbal intervention, leaving noise in the custody of mid-level leaders who can be disowned in a crunch: ministers without political flesh, or hapless spokesmen taught to spin. When you talk every day, who listens? And if anyone does listen, who remembers?
Time is generally an ally of establishment. Governments prefer the pace of sober elephants; and Congress is an elephant with a long memory, heavy tread, institutional demeanour and the amoral ability to crush the skull of an enemy without a pause in its stride when opportunity beckons. But what happens when such an elephant slips on a banana peel? Is that a comedy or a tragedy? Probably a bit of both, to that merciless spectator with a permanent pass to the arena, the voter. Even if the elephant does get back on its feet, its dignity is lost, its majesty punctured.
The UPA Government has slipped in a peculiarly silly manner, repeatedly sending invitations to a whole bunch of bananas as if one or two might be insufficient to destabilise its bearings. Its fatal flaw has been a complete miscalculation about the nature of India's anger against corruption. It dismissed the challenge as yet another ploy from a bedraggled opposition, or, more boringly, some phantom right-wing lurking in the dark shadows of the national psyche. It has encouraged pro-establishment elements to howl against imagined conspiracy, just as it did in the case of Jayaprakash Narayan nearly four decades ago.
The roar that is echoing through the country is the voice of the people, not a political party. The default position of a government under siege is to retreat into an 'acoustic shadow'. This is a term from warfare. The shadow is a strange zone in which you can see the flash of cannon fire but cannot hear any sound, although the thunder may be perfectly audible to those further away. This almost metaphysical condition serves as an unconscious suspension of a faculty that can register some dangerous truth, creating a psychological comfort zone. The UPA is ensconced in this shadow.
Dr Manmohan Singh might have been more comfortable in this crisis were he a complete cynic. He is paying a heavy price for some residual sincerity thoroughly inappropriate to the politics of UPA survival. If all politics is touched by theatre, then the central characters obviously become instruments of high drama.
Dr Singh is principal lead in a five-act tragedy, but neither as Macbeth nor Othello. You can almost see the developing split in his personality as he struggles, Hamlet-like, to be or not to be. His instinct tells him to be; then his lawyers turn up and suggest that he buy time with rhetoric or manipulation of detail, as if this nation were nothing more than a debating society. India expects Dr Singh to act; his lawyerministers tell him to argue.
His dilemma might be explicable to a sympathiser, but will not be condoned by the people. Action involves high risk to his coalition. The arrest of A. Raja in the telecom case has already strained the Congress' flexibility with the DMK to breaking point; the next stretch heads towards the Karunanidhi family. You can flay a scapegoat with as much flourish as you wish, but you cannot condemn the high priest of the temple where you have prayed in partnership. Still waiting in the wings of accountability is a middleweight like Sharad Pawar. Can Dr Singh drop Pawar in his much-promised reshuffle after the Assembly results in May? No.
The government is mired in the status quo, and the status has become septic. Gangrene will waste Congress limbs even as it cripples allies. The only escape route is drastic action, which is improbable, or a general election, which is impossible. In theory there is no threat to the UPA. But governments are elected to rule, not merely to survive. In their present mood, Indians have distilled governance to a single demand: eliminate, or at least control, corruption.
Instead of meeting this crisis head-on, months ago, Dr Singh has allowed the crisis to implode in a serial sequence. Time, they say, waits for no man; but even less so for those who wait for their time to come.
By M J Akbar
Third Eye - Byword in India Today April 15, 2011
The question was moot: should a government rush in to pre-empt a crisis with some deft foot-play; or does it make more sense to wait, bide your time and see if the crisis falls into a ditch on the way to your doorstep? The context of this conversation over an amiable lunch in New York was Cairo's Tahrir Square, but it could so easily have been Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
Long experience in power has taught the Congress to wait. So much can happen along the way. A challenge can run out of steam, get diverted by the unforeseen, split into disarray by dysfunctional leadership. Why develop a long-term strategy when short-term tactics will do? Those at the pinnacle content themselves with minimal verbal intervention, leaving noise in the custody of mid-level leaders who can be disowned in a crunch: ministers without political flesh, or hapless spokesmen taught to spin. When you talk every day, who listens? And if anyone does listen, who remembers?
Time is generally an ally of establishment. Governments prefer the pace of sober elephants; and Congress is an elephant with a long memory, heavy tread, institutional demeanour and the amoral ability to crush the skull of an enemy without a pause in its stride when opportunity beckons. But what happens when such an elephant slips on a banana peel? Is that a comedy or a tragedy? Probably a bit of both, to that merciless spectator with a permanent pass to the arena, the voter. Even if the elephant does get back on its feet, its dignity is lost, its majesty punctured.
The UPA Government has slipped in a peculiarly silly manner, repeatedly sending invitations to a whole bunch of bananas as if one or two might be insufficient to destabilise its bearings. Its fatal flaw has been a complete miscalculation about the nature of India's anger against corruption. It dismissed the challenge as yet another ploy from a bedraggled opposition, or, more boringly, some phantom right-wing lurking in the dark shadows of the national psyche. It has encouraged pro-establishment elements to howl against imagined conspiracy, just as it did in the case of Jayaprakash Narayan nearly four decades ago.
The roar that is echoing through the country is the voice of the people, not a political party. The default position of a government under siege is to retreat into an 'acoustic shadow'. This is a term from warfare. The shadow is a strange zone in which you can see the flash of cannon fire but cannot hear any sound, although the thunder may be perfectly audible to those further away. This almost metaphysical condition serves as an unconscious suspension of a faculty that can register some dangerous truth, creating a psychological comfort zone. The UPA is ensconced in this shadow.
Dr Manmohan Singh might have been more comfortable in this crisis were he a complete cynic. He is paying a heavy price for some residual sincerity thoroughly inappropriate to the politics of UPA survival. If all politics is touched by theatre, then the central characters obviously become instruments of high drama.
Dr Singh is principal lead in a five-act tragedy, but neither as Macbeth nor Othello. You can almost see the developing split in his personality as he struggles, Hamlet-like, to be or not to be. His instinct tells him to be; then his lawyers turn up and suggest that he buy time with rhetoric or manipulation of detail, as if this nation were nothing more than a debating society. India expects Dr Singh to act; his lawyerministers tell him to argue.
His dilemma might be explicable to a sympathiser, but will not be condoned by the people. Action involves high risk to his coalition. The arrest of A. Raja in the telecom case has already strained the Congress' flexibility with the DMK to breaking point; the next stretch heads towards the Karunanidhi family. You can flay a scapegoat with as much flourish as you wish, but you cannot condemn the high priest of the temple where you have prayed in partnership. Still waiting in the wings of accountability is a middleweight like Sharad Pawar. Can Dr Singh drop Pawar in his much-promised reshuffle after the Assembly results in May? No.
The government is mired in the status quo, and the status has become septic. Gangrene will waste Congress limbs even as it cripples allies. The only escape route is drastic action, which is improbable, or a general election, which is impossible. In theory there is no threat to the UPA. But governments are elected to rule, not merely to survive. In their present mood, Indians have distilled governance to a single demand: eliminate, or at least control, corruption.
Instead of meeting this crisis head-on, months ago, Dr Singh has allowed the crisis to implode in a serial sequence. Time, they say, waits for no man; but even less so for those who wait for their time to come.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata
By M J Akbar (In The Sunday Guardian)
The romance of cricket has but one competitor, the mystery of conspiracy. When the two become part of the same narrative, there is an all-time best-seller. We have had two in one week.
The credibility of both SMSes and bookies rose sharply before the India-Pakistan semi-final when a pre-match SMS circulated what the bookies thought — or knew? — what was going to happen: India would bat first, make 260, lose 3 to 4 wickets in first 25 overs, Pak would cruise to 100, lose 2 quick wickets, be 150 for 5, crumble and lose by over 20 runs. Twenty minutes before the finals on Saturday I received this SMS: Lanka will bat first, score between 240 to 250. Tendulkar would fail (meaning, score 37), as would Sehwag, but Gambhir would shine and India would win.
At 2.30 pm Lanka batted first, but the prescient SMS had underestimated their score. They put on a batting performance that began with professional virtuosity, and paced it like a musical overture: minimum fuss at the start, no histrionics, the music's passage crafted by a captain who knew this had to be the innings of his life, but ending with a thunderous clash of cymbals, a mighty final five overs that climaxed a perfect harmony. Mahela Jayawardene's Sri Lanka had outdistanced the know-all SMS by a crucial 25 runs. Would that become the vital difference that kept the World Cup in either the largest or the smallest of the cricket countries of South Asia?
It was evident that Mahendra Dhoni had made his first big mistake of the tournament by investing in Sreesanth. It was not merely the runs that he gave away to Lanka's cool batsmen, but the manner in which he gave them, with that strange alchemy of petulance and ability that has made him a wanderer rather than a fixture in the side. Sreesanth is not a boy big enough for the big moment.
The Indian innings was an essay in transition. The old order was giving way to the new. Gautam Gambhir did not merely deliver in mathematical terms, important as they are; a new captain was claiming his place for the future in front of the most important audience of his career. When Gambhir and Dhoni were batting with India at 170 for 3, the only question was whether those last five overs of the Lanka innings had been the game-changer. At this stage, a target of 140 to 250, with Yuvraj still to come was eminently reasonable. India was full of runs and Lanka short of wickets. There was suddenly a big hole where wickets should have been, and for one reason alone: the last finale of the greatest bowler in Lanka's history, Muralitharan, seemed to have lost its magical, piercing rhythm.
Dhoni and Gambhir made the failure of Sehwag and Sachin irrelevant. A team is always greater than the sum of its most combustible sparklers. Such was their dominance that when Murli returned in the last ten overs, he surrendered a wide and was hit for a four. The mojo was gone. Then, as if to prove that cricket would always remain the eventual winner, Gambhir was bowled. Drama revived, a dying game returned to life. Indian hearts were attacked when a run out and an lbw went to the third umpire at 241. But there was a batting power play left. Surely India could not come so near and yet be so far.
If Sri Lanka had a king as their captain, India had an emperor. Moreover, he had a prince as partner, Yuvraj. Emperors save their best for the last. The six that brought India its second World Cup, in the new capital of international cricket, will be adorned in history as the finest stroke of a game that began in England and has become Indian. The final began with the Indian national anthem. Our anthem was the perfect metaphor. Bharat bhagya vidhata...Jaya hey!
By M J Akbar (In The Sunday Guardian)
The romance of cricket has but one competitor, the mystery of conspiracy. When the two become part of the same narrative, there is an all-time best-seller. We have had two in one week.
The credibility of both SMSes and bookies rose sharply before the India-Pakistan semi-final when a pre-match SMS circulated what the bookies thought — or knew? — what was going to happen: India would bat first, make 260, lose 3 to 4 wickets in first 25 overs, Pak would cruise to 100, lose 2 quick wickets, be 150 for 5, crumble and lose by over 20 runs. Twenty minutes before the finals on Saturday I received this SMS: Lanka will bat first, score between 240 to 250. Tendulkar would fail (meaning, score 37), as would Sehwag, but Gambhir would shine and India would win.
At 2.30 pm Lanka batted first, but the prescient SMS had underestimated their score. They put on a batting performance that began with professional virtuosity, and paced it like a musical overture: minimum fuss at the start, no histrionics, the music's passage crafted by a captain who knew this had to be the innings of his life, but ending with a thunderous clash of cymbals, a mighty final five overs that climaxed a perfect harmony. Mahela Jayawardene's Sri Lanka had outdistanced the know-all SMS by a crucial 25 runs. Would that become the vital difference that kept the World Cup in either the largest or the smallest of the cricket countries of South Asia?
It was evident that Mahendra Dhoni had made his first big mistake of the tournament by investing in Sreesanth. It was not merely the runs that he gave away to Lanka's cool batsmen, but the manner in which he gave them, with that strange alchemy of petulance and ability that has made him a wanderer rather than a fixture in the side. Sreesanth is not a boy big enough for the big moment.
The Indian innings was an essay in transition. The old order was giving way to the new. Gautam Gambhir did not merely deliver in mathematical terms, important as they are; a new captain was claiming his place for the future in front of the most important audience of his career. When Gambhir and Dhoni were batting with India at 170 for 3, the only question was whether those last five overs of the Lanka innings had been the game-changer. At this stage, a target of 140 to 250, with Yuvraj still to come was eminently reasonable. India was full of runs and Lanka short of wickets. There was suddenly a big hole where wickets should have been, and for one reason alone: the last finale of the greatest bowler in Lanka's history, Muralitharan, seemed to have lost its magical, piercing rhythm.
Dhoni and Gambhir made the failure of Sehwag and Sachin irrelevant. A team is always greater than the sum of its most combustible sparklers. Such was their dominance that when Murli returned in the last ten overs, he surrendered a wide and was hit for a four. The mojo was gone. Then, as if to prove that cricket would always remain the eventual winner, Gambhir was bowled. Drama revived, a dying game returned to life. Indian hearts were attacked when a run out and an lbw went to the third umpire at 241. But there was a batting power play left. Surely India could not come so near and yet be so far.
If Sri Lanka had a king as their captain, India had an emperor. Moreover, he had a prince as partner, Yuvraj. Emperors save their best for the last. The six that brought India its second World Cup, in the new capital of international cricket, will be adorned in history as the finest stroke of a game that began in England and has become Indian. The final began with the Indian national anthem. Our anthem was the perfect metaphor. Bharat bhagya vidhata...Jaya hey!
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Bookies and Bathwater
Bookies and Bathwater
By M J Akbar
In Third Eye - Byword
April 8, 2011
Would you be outraged if someone whispered that Mahendra Singh Dhoni had wagered Rs 1 crore on an Indian victory in the World Cup? The sententious answer is yes; the honest answer is no. Dhoni would have bet on India's side; he would have put money where his heart was, just as millions of other Indians did-in fact, those who bet on form must be kicking themselves now. We do not object to betting, even if it is illegal. We object to the unethical.
Betting and cheating do not share an umbilical cord. The silly moaning about bookies is as ludicrous a bit of humbug as any devised in the long and often hypocritical history of commerce. Cheats are dishonest because they are cheats, not because they are gamblers. The best solution to illegal gambling is to legalise it. India, instead, is double-faced. Why should horse racing be permitted as a gambling sport, but not cricket? Has any government prevented anyone from gambling during Diwali? It is perfectly legal to bet on the outcome of any aspect of a cricket Test in England: has that corrupted English cricketers? No. In fact, it may be more valid to say that illegal gambling induces corruption since those in charge of the business have to, perforce, either belong to or work with the underworld.
You might get a bizarre incident or two, but no systematic crime. The most famous case in my memory is that of an Australian fast bowler (still alive, honourably retired, but shall remain nameless in this column) during what has come to be known as the Botham series, thanks to the incredible feats Ian Botham engineered with both bat and ball. In one Test, England were in such a hopeless position that the odds on their victory climbed to 50-1. Our Australian pacer thought that they were too good to ignore, and placed a modest sum on Australia losing. Then Botham arrived and led England to a fairy tale win. The Australian collected from his bookie. Some eyebrows were raised, and a moustache or two possibly quivered, but no one accused the bowler of selling out.
Money and sport are natural partners, even though Victorian and post-Victorian England sponsored the classy fiction that honour was more, well, honourable, than cash. Cricket was unlawful in England till after the accession of Queen Victoria since the despotic Henry VIII banned all sport through an Act of Parliament in order to protect archery. The game survived because no law can ban anything which the people consider legitimate. Gambling was part of the fun, except when it reached ruinous proportions, or when it was hijacked by syndicates. The splendidly named and decorated Englishman, R. S. Rait Kerr CBE, DSO, MC, notes in The Laws of Cricket: Their History and Growth that stakes and gambling were "an essential factor in the development of cricket", and that the highest royalty offered rewards as high as 1,000 guineas for an important match long before 1750.
Where there is money, there will always arrive a pompous journalist, particularly if he can't get his hands on any. The Chelmsford Chronicle intoned in 1774: "This sport has too long been perverted from diversion and innocent pastime to excessive gaming and public dissipation. Cricket matches are now degenerated into business of importance. The increasing evil our magistracy ought to suppress in the Artillery Ground. It is confidently said that a set of idle fellows, or more properly, a gang of dextrous gamblers, are hired and maintained by a most noble lord, at so little expense as 1,000 pounds a year."
Noble lord, of course. Professional bookmakers did try and steal matches, then as now, but instead of sending them underground British legislators did the necessary spadework overground. In 1774, laws were introduced to regulate and clean up betting. The British refused to throw the baby out with the bathwater. MCC removed bookmakers from Lord's in 1820, and gradually both the sport and the flutter surrounding it found its true, and acceptable, levels.
Our present legislators, across party lines, believe that if they close their eyes, there will be no bathwater. It is the sort of bogus moral pose that pretends that prohibition is necessary in Gujarat because Mahatma Gandhi was born there. Every Gandhian value is abandoned, but we cultivate his most irrelevant dictum. If Gandhi were alive, the present state of corruption would probably have turned him into a despairing alcoholic.
Gandhi succeeded in mixing idealism and pragmatism in equal proportions. I daresay he would have approved legalised betting in 2011, with the provision that all its tax revenues be kept for poverty alleviation programmes. They could always be called the Mahendra Dhoni Garibi Hatao Yojana.
By M J Akbar
In Third Eye - Byword
April 8, 2011
Would you be outraged if someone whispered that Mahendra Singh Dhoni had wagered Rs 1 crore on an Indian victory in the World Cup? The sententious answer is yes; the honest answer is no. Dhoni would have bet on India's side; he would have put money where his heart was, just as millions of other Indians did-in fact, those who bet on form must be kicking themselves now. We do not object to betting, even if it is illegal. We object to the unethical.
Betting and cheating do not share an umbilical cord. The silly moaning about bookies is as ludicrous a bit of humbug as any devised in the long and often hypocritical history of commerce. Cheats are dishonest because they are cheats, not because they are gamblers. The best solution to illegal gambling is to legalise it. India, instead, is double-faced. Why should horse racing be permitted as a gambling sport, but not cricket? Has any government prevented anyone from gambling during Diwali? It is perfectly legal to bet on the outcome of any aspect of a cricket Test in England: has that corrupted English cricketers? No. In fact, it may be more valid to say that illegal gambling induces corruption since those in charge of the business have to, perforce, either belong to or work with the underworld.
You might get a bizarre incident or two, but no systematic crime. The most famous case in my memory is that of an Australian fast bowler (still alive, honourably retired, but shall remain nameless in this column) during what has come to be known as the Botham series, thanks to the incredible feats Ian Botham engineered with both bat and ball. In one Test, England were in such a hopeless position that the odds on their victory climbed to 50-1. Our Australian pacer thought that they were too good to ignore, and placed a modest sum on Australia losing. Then Botham arrived and led England to a fairy tale win. The Australian collected from his bookie. Some eyebrows were raised, and a moustache or two possibly quivered, but no one accused the bowler of selling out.
Money and sport are natural partners, even though Victorian and post-Victorian England sponsored the classy fiction that honour was more, well, honourable, than cash. Cricket was unlawful in England till after the accession of Queen Victoria since the despotic Henry VIII banned all sport through an Act of Parliament in order to protect archery. The game survived because no law can ban anything which the people consider legitimate. Gambling was part of the fun, except when it reached ruinous proportions, or when it was hijacked by syndicates. The splendidly named and decorated Englishman, R. S. Rait Kerr CBE, DSO, MC, notes in The Laws of Cricket: Their History and Growth that stakes and gambling were "an essential factor in the development of cricket", and that the highest royalty offered rewards as high as 1,000 guineas for an important match long before 1750.
Where there is money, there will always arrive a pompous journalist, particularly if he can't get his hands on any. The Chelmsford Chronicle intoned in 1774: "This sport has too long been perverted from diversion and innocent pastime to excessive gaming and public dissipation. Cricket matches are now degenerated into business of importance. The increasing evil our magistracy ought to suppress in the Artillery Ground. It is confidently said that a set of idle fellows, or more properly, a gang of dextrous gamblers, are hired and maintained by a most noble lord, at so little expense as 1,000 pounds a year."
Noble lord, of course. Professional bookmakers did try and steal matches, then as now, but instead of sending them underground British legislators did the necessary spadework overground. In 1774, laws were introduced to regulate and clean up betting. The British refused to throw the baby out with the bathwater. MCC removed bookmakers from Lord's in 1820, and gradually both the sport and the flutter surrounding it found its true, and acceptable, levels.
Our present legislators, across party lines, believe that if they close their eyes, there will be no bathwater. It is the sort of bogus moral pose that pretends that prohibition is necessary in Gujarat because Mahatma Gandhi was born there. Every Gandhian value is abandoned, but we cultivate his most irrelevant dictum. If Gandhi were alive, the present state of corruption would probably have turned him into a despairing alcoholic.
Gandhi succeeded in mixing idealism and pragmatism in equal proportions. I daresay he would have approved legalised betting in 2011, with the provision that all its tax revenues be kept for poverty alleviation programmes. They could always be called the Mahendra Dhoni Garibi Hatao Yojana.
A fast unto life
Byline by M J Akbar: A fast unto life
Mahatma Gandhi flagellated himself with 17 fasts. They were not all fasts unto the death; they could be time-specific. This did not reduce the risk to his life, for 21 days without any nourishment or medical intervention could drag a frail man with an average weight of some 110 pounds to death’s door.
Gandhi was a visionary, but not one ever trapped by illusion. He did not believe that a fast would persuade the British to pack up and leave the most lucrative part of their far-flung empire, the jewel of their crown, just because one obstinate, half-clad, toothless native had decided to stop drinking goat’s milk for a few days. The British establishment always treated Gandhi with contempt (exceptions like Lord Irwin apart); and as defeat loomed in the 1940s this evolved into unmitigated loathing, not least because an extraordinary arsenal of non-violence, moral momentum, and an unprecedented national awakening had driven history’s mightiest empire into limp impotence. When Gandhi started his liberation movement, the ranking Indian within the establishment, Lord Sinha, confidently averred that the British Raj would last for four hundred years. Thirty years later, the last Viceroy with any authority Lord Wavell [Mountbatten was a mere midwife, and left the motherland bleeding] had this to say in his diary on 26 September 1946: “The more I see of that old man [Gandhi] the more I regard him as an unscrupulous old hypocrite; he would shrink from no violence or bloodletting to achieve his ends…he is an exceeding to achieve his ends…he is an exceedingly shrewd, obstinate, domineering, double-tongued, single-minded politician”. You have to hate someone with unbelievable intensity to stitch together such a farrago of lies. Wavell wrote this just after his beloved British Raj had killed some four million Bengalis through another man-made famine.
Paradoxically, many of the British on the second rung admired the man who had made it his life’s work to destroy their empire. They understood that if they had been born Indian they would have been with Gandhi. On 11 January 1924, the superintendent of Pune jail, where Gandhi was interned, rushed the Mahatma to Sassoon hospital for an emergency appendicitis operation. The electricity went off when Colonel Maddock, the surgeon-general, was operating on the night of 12 January, with the help of a British nurse; he completed his duty with torchlight. Gandhi thanked them for saving his life, and they were proud to do so.
The British constituted only half the challenge before Gandhi; the other, and bitter, half were fellow Indians. Gandhi knew that unless he could exorcise, or at least contain, the evil of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, even success could become ash in his mouth. He had no instrument of coercion to use against fellow Indians, but he had a secret weapon: moral blackmail. He could hold his own life hostage through a fast while Indians sorted out between themselves whether the ransom, Gandhi’s life, was worth paying. Over and over again, India paid up, for no Indian, Hindu or Muslim, wanted the sin of a Mahatma’s death on his head. It was in 1924, the same year as his appendicitis, that Gandhi went on a 21-day fast after the Kohat riots. Very deliberately, he chose to fast at the home of the great leader of the Khilafat movement, Maulana Mohammad Ali, in Delhi. By the time he sipped some orange juice on 8 October, the fever of violence had passed, at least for the moment.
The instinctive reaction of governments to any such fast is cynicism. A government might be, in fact, as weak as a terminal patient in cancer ward, but will delude itself, till its dying breath, that to surrender before a man ready to sacrifice his life will make future governance impossible. The Congress, which had wept through Gandhi’s fasts, refused to compromise when a Gandhian went on a fast unto death to demand the creation of Andhra Pradesh in 1950. The Gandhian died, and Andhra was born. The Akali Sants put fasts to effective public use during their movement for a Sikh-majority Punjab. The Marxists laughed about Mamata Banerjee’s weight when she went on a fast in Calcutta to protest against their land policy; on 13 May, when the Assembly election results are out, Mamata will have the last laugh.
A fast succeeds not because it bends a government to its will, but because it is the yeast that foments the rise of a populace. Anna Hazare’s fast in Delhi is not meant to bring down a government, its solitary purpose is, or should be, to resurrect an India that had become so supine that it slept indolently while the wealth of this nation was being looted by a handful of politicians and their acolytes. Anna Hazare is not waiting to see how many corrupt, hypocritical ministers come to his side; he wants to know how many Anna Hazares have emulated him on a street corner in front of their homes. He has asked just one question: do you, fellow Indians, have a conscience?
If the answer is yes, then rise and save your nation from the death-grip of corruption. This is a fast for India’s life.
Mahatma Gandhi flagellated himself with 17 fasts. They were not all fasts unto the death; they could be time-specific. This did not reduce the risk to his life, for 21 days without any nourishment or medical intervention could drag a frail man with an average weight of some 110 pounds to death’s door.
Gandhi was a visionary, but not one ever trapped by illusion. He did not believe that a fast would persuade the British to pack up and leave the most lucrative part of their far-flung empire, the jewel of their crown, just because one obstinate, half-clad, toothless native had decided to stop drinking goat’s milk for a few days. The British establishment always treated Gandhi with contempt (exceptions like Lord Irwin apart); and as defeat loomed in the 1940s this evolved into unmitigated loathing, not least because an extraordinary arsenal of non-violence, moral momentum, and an unprecedented national awakening had driven history’s mightiest empire into limp impotence. When Gandhi started his liberation movement, the ranking Indian within the establishment, Lord Sinha, confidently averred that the British Raj would last for four hundred years. Thirty years later, the last Viceroy with any authority Lord Wavell [Mountbatten was a mere midwife, and left the motherland bleeding] had this to say in his diary on 26 September 1946: “The more I see of that old man [Gandhi] the more I regard him as an unscrupulous old hypocrite; he would shrink from no violence or bloodletting to achieve his ends…he is an exceeding to achieve his ends…he is an exceedingly shrewd, obstinate, domineering, double-tongued, single-minded politician”. You have to hate someone with unbelievable intensity to stitch together such a farrago of lies. Wavell wrote this just after his beloved British Raj had killed some four million Bengalis through another man-made famine.
Paradoxically, many of the British on the second rung admired the man who had made it his life’s work to destroy their empire. They understood that if they had been born Indian they would have been with Gandhi. On 11 January 1924, the superintendent of Pune jail, where Gandhi was interned, rushed the Mahatma to Sassoon hospital for an emergency appendicitis operation. The electricity went off when Colonel Maddock, the surgeon-general, was operating on the night of 12 January, with the help of a British nurse; he completed his duty with torchlight. Gandhi thanked them for saving his life, and they were proud to do so.
The British constituted only half the challenge before Gandhi; the other, and bitter, half were fellow Indians. Gandhi knew that unless he could exorcise, or at least contain, the evil of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, even success could become ash in his mouth. He had no instrument of coercion to use against fellow Indians, but he had a secret weapon: moral blackmail. He could hold his own life hostage through a fast while Indians sorted out between themselves whether the ransom, Gandhi’s life, was worth paying. Over and over again, India paid up, for no Indian, Hindu or Muslim, wanted the sin of a Mahatma’s death on his head. It was in 1924, the same year as his appendicitis, that Gandhi went on a 21-day fast after the Kohat riots. Very deliberately, he chose to fast at the home of the great leader of the Khilafat movement, Maulana Mohammad Ali, in Delhi. By the time he sipped some orange juice on 8 October, the fever of violence had passed, at least for the moment.
The instinctive reaction of governments to any such fast is cynicism. A government might be, in fact, as weak as a terminal patient in cancer ward, but will delude itself, till its dying breath, that to surrender before a man ready to sacrifice his life will make future governance impossible. The Congress, which had wept through Gandhi’s fasts, refused to compromise when a Gandhian went on a fast unto death to demand the creation of Andhra Pradesh in 1950. The Gandhian died, and Andhra was born. The Akali Sants put fasts to effective public use during their movement for a Sikh-majority Punjab. The Marxists laughed about Mamata Banerjee’s weight when she went on a fast in Calcutta to protest against their land policy; on 13 May, when the Assembly election results are out, Mamata will have the last laugh.
A fast succeeds not because it bends a government to its will, but because it is the yeast that foments the rise of a populace. Anna Hazare’s fast in Delhi is not meant to bring down a government, its solitary purpose is, or should be, to resurrect an India that had become so supine that it slept indolently while the wealth of this nation was being looted by a handful of politicians and their acolytes. Anna Hazare is not waiting to see how many corrupt, hypocritical ministers come to his side; he wants to know how many Anna Hazares have emulated him on a street corner in front of their homes. He has asked just one question: do you, fellow Indians, have a conscience?
If the answer is yes, then rise and save your nation from the death-grip of corruption. This is a fast for India’s life.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Of Gods and Men
Of Gods and Men By M J Akbar Byword - India Today April 1, 2011 The first hint that divinity was involved in the battle of Mohali came when India won the toss. Till then, there were two opinions on the outcome. The rational analysis (which means, of course, only the British commentators) suggested that things seemed even: India can't bowl, Pakistan can't bat, and both can't field, so clearly a great match was in prospect. The sentimental view backed India. The true connoisseurs of cricket, the bookies, agreed: bookies earn international respect because they are the only ones who put their money where their mouth is. The players were professional enough to internalise their tensions as the ultimate test of nerves began; the stiffest upper lips at 2.30 p.m. were those of Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Yusuf Geelani. Within less than an hour of play, during the 11th over to be precise, there came conclusive evidence that a story circulating through the SMS sprawl was in fact true. Apparently, when Pakistan began to plan for the Mohali encounter with India, their captain Shahid Afridi sent up a fervent prayer to god for divine help against India. God was sympathetic, but pointed out that this was impossible, since he, after all, was opening the batting for India. Maybe Afridi does not know India enough to understand the extent to which Sachin Tendulkar is treated as a god in India. Anyone human would have certainly been out in the 11th over: the finger went up for an LBW the first time, only to be reversed by the camera; and when, immediately after, Pakistan celebrated a stumping, the Great Camera in the Sky proved that a thin part of a Sachin toe, invisible to human eye, was on turf. Then, as if to confirm that destiny can be a tease, Pakistan dropped Sachin twice. Even the experienced and beady-eyed Yunus Khan dropped a dolly. By the time he reached 82, Sachin had been dropped four times, one chance easier than the other. I stopped counting after Pakistan dropped its sixth catch of the day. There is no earthly explanation for such phenomena; this was the handiwork of He Who Controls the Stars. Pakistan's brilliant bowlers, led by a superb Wahab Riaz, had our much-vaunted batsmen in turmoil:each time they took a wicket, there was national silence in India and doubtless a roar in Pakistan that shook Afghanistan awake. But Riaz had to deal not only with Indian opponents but also a powerful fifth column within his side. If Pakistan had been informed by their coach that cricket is a game in which you also have to take catches and stop the ball from reaching the boundary, India could have been out for around a 100 runs, the match over before sunset, and the Singh-Geelani summit held in the calm after the storm. But Sachin survived to score onethird of the total, even though on this day this god seemed to have lost faith in himself. A hundredth century was technically, only 15 runs away; and yet Sachin never seemed as distant from a century. Perhaps he got out because somewhere deep inside he felt that he did not deserve one on Wednesday. Never has Sachin scored so many runs in such misery. Misery is infectious. The great Indian batting stars looked far happier in the ads that challenged cricket on television screens than on the field. My lasting memory of Mohali will not be that of victory or defeat. In any case there will be controversy: why, for instance, did Afridi not take the powerplay when he was batting. I wanted India to win, and desperately: let me confess that I could not bear to turn up the volume of the TV in my office until Pakistan were four wickets down. When Shahid Afridi holed out trying to send Harbhajan to Lahore, the volume went up sharply. The abiding memory, however, will be the rediscovery of a god who was, on the day it mattered, only human; of a genius who played and missed, who changed his bat but could not improve his timing, and yet displayed in flashes the incomparable strokeplay that makes us bow before the immortal. This does not reduce my admiration for Sachin; if anything, it increases the awe, for you can get blase about the perfection of a god. It is only when a god slips that you recognise how difficult it has been to reach that pinnacle, and then to glory in it for two decades. The ascent of man is, after all, so much more fascinating than the descent of a god.
No genius plays only for himself
Byline by M J Akbar: No genius plays only for himself .
The difference between the Indian team that won the World Cup in 1983 and the one in 2011 is an uncomplicated one: the economy. The 1983 victory was a consequence of talent, extraordinary self-belief and some luck. In 2011 the Indian cricket team is by far the richest eleven in the game, sucking the oxygen out of other sports, a template for ambition in homes across the small cities that will become the Delhis and Mumbais of tomorrow, a magnet for middle class and rural India which understands that the distance from obscurity to superstardom is a game that bypasses the educational demands of conventional professional upward mobility, and fetches rewards quite outside the zone of merit and salary. Cricket has become a supreme totem pole of the Indian economy both on an individual as well as a collective level, a classic instance of the virtuous cycle in which money breeds success and success generates greater profits. India begins with a substantial advantage over the other cricket teams of South Asia. Victory and defeat are determined of course by the human element, otherwise sport would be too dull to bother about; but the institutional spread offers both a massive pool of talent as well as the motivation that only an exploding bank account can bring. Yusuf Pathan cannot find a place in the final eleven, but is nearly Rs 10 crores richer out of the IPL which will follow the World Cup. He was born in circumstances where such a figure was beyond imagination.
How much better, therefore, would the brilliant players of Pakistan and Sri Lanka have been had they had the good fortune of such an economy to hone and add lustre to their superb capabilities? The tragedy of a negative environment is profound: when Pakistan players make a mistake (and they made too many in the semi finals against India to be forgiven) cruel whispers of match-fixing swirl around. The post-match talk is all about whether the Pak interior minister had been briefed by his intelligence agencies when he publicly warned the team about throwing the game away against India. The logic is mathematical, rather than moral. There is immediate and continuing monetary reward for an Indian player which makes the risk involved in a fix a stupid option. A crook might be able to continue playing cricket, but no crook is going to get paid to appear on an advertising billboard. But if a player is in the unenviable situation where cash from illegal betting is higher than legitimate earnings, temptation will always hover inside the dressing room. It hardly helps that some Pakistani players were recently caught making deals with bookies, despite high levels of vigilance imposed by ICC. In Mohali, the Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi won millions of Indian hearts when he accepted the adversity of defeat amid a cloud of inevitable suspicion, with the grace of a great champion: how much more would his genius have flowered if he had lived in a more stable age of Pakistan's history!
The tortured internal conflicts within Muralitharan's soul can barely be imagined: a Tamil who got an impossible 800 Test match wickets playing for Sri Lanka during decades shredded by a civil war between a Sinhala-majority government and the Tamil Tigers. Did the ferocity in his eyes belong to inner demons? If they did, he is a man of great character, for he silenced them through a display of commitment to his team and flag that has made him a hero of his nation. No genius plays only for himself: talent might belong solely to the self, but withers when it becomes selfish. Murali, or Sachin Tendulkar have achieved much more than their ability warranted because they also surrendered their genius to a higher, national cause. Neither needed to be captain to prove they were superior; the responsibilities of captaincy diminished Sachin. Those of us who delight in cricket should consider ourselves blessed because we will see, on Saturday, the finest batsman in history compete with the greatest spinner ever born in a match of wits that could define which side will take the cup. This is obviously written before the result, but the result is only going to be a statistic. A statistic has no place in an epic. We shall see the last, dazzling burst of meteors that have enflamed our firmament.
So far, Sri Lanka have been the best team in the tournament. They have been so good with the bat that we do not know how good, or indeed how fragile, they are down the line. The partisan within me admits this reluctantly, but the past is, in such an event, irrelevant to the present. Murali will bowl his last ball in a World Cup, and Sachin stroke his final off-drive through a motionless field. Those are memories that will mature into magic as we weave our own way to our last days.
The difference between the Indian team that won the World Cup in 1983 and the one in 2011 is an uncomplicated one: the economy. The 1983 victory was a consequence of talent, extraordinary self-belief and some luck. In 2011 the Indian cricket team is by far the richest eleven in the game, sucking the oxygen out of other sports, a template for ambition in homes across the small cities that will become the Delhis and Mumbais of tomorrow, a magnet for middle class and rural India which understands that the distance from obscurity to superstardom is a game that bypasses the educational demands of conventional professional upward mobility, and fetches rewards quite outside the zone of merit and salary. Cricket has become a supreme totem pole of the Indian economy both on an individual as well as a collective level, a classic instance of the virtuous cycle in which money breeds success and success generates greater profits. India begins with a substantial advantage over the other cricket teams of South Asia. Victory and defeat are determined of course by the human element, otherwise sport would be too dull to bother about; but the institutional spread offers both a massive pool of talent as well as the motivation that only an exploding bank account can bring. Yusuf Pathan cannot find a place in the final eleven, but is nearly Rs 10 crores richer out of the IPL which will follow the World Cup. He was born in circumstances where such a figure was beyond imagination.
How much better, therefore, would the brilliant players of Pakistan and Sri Lanka have been had they had the good fortune of such an economy to hone and add lustre to their superb capabilities? The tragedy of a negative environment is profound: when Pakistan players make a mistake (and they made too many in the semi finals against India to be forgiven) cruel whispers of match-fixing swirl around. The post-match talk is all about whether the Pak interior minister had been briefed by his intelligence agencies when he publicly warned the team about throwing the game away against India. The logic is mathematical, rather than moral. There is immediate and continuing monetary reward for an Indian player which makes the risk involved in a fix a stupid option. A crook might be able to continue playing cricket, but no crook is going to get paid to appear on an advertising billboard. But if a player is in the unenviable situation where cash from illegal betting is higher than legitimate earnings, temptation will always hover inside the dressing room. It hardly helps that some Pakistani players were recently caught making deals with bookies, despite high levels of vigilance imposed by ICC. In Mohali, the Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi won millions of Indian hearts when he accepted the adversity of defeat amid a cloud of inevitable suspicion, with the grace of a great champion: how much more would his genius have flowered if he had lived in a more stable age of Pakistan's history!
The tortured internal conflicts within Muralitharan's soul can barely be imagined: a Tamil who got an impossible 800 Test match wickets playing for Sri Lanka during decades shredded by a civil war between a Sinhala-majority government and the Tamil Tigers. Did the ferocity in his eyes belong to inner demons? If they did, he is a man of great character, for he silenced them through a display of commitment to his team and flag that has made him a hero of his nation. No genius plays only for himself: talent might belong solely to the self, but withers when it becomes selfish. Murali, or Sachin Tendulkar have achieved much more than their ability warranted because they also surrendered their genius to a higher, national cause. Neither needed to be captain to prove they were superior; the responsibilities of captaincy diminished Sachin. Those of us who delight in cricket should consider ourselves blessed because we will see, on Saturday, the finest batsman in history compete with the greatest spinner ever born in a match of wits that could define which side will take the cup. This is obviously written before the result, but the result is only going to be a statistic. A statistic has no place in an epic. We shall see the last, dazzling burst of meteors that have enflamed our firmament.
So far, Sri Lanka have been the best team in the tournament. They have been so good with the bat that we do not know how good, or indeed how fragile, they are down the line. The partisan within me admits this reluctantly, but the past is, in such an event, irrelevant to the present. Murali will bowl his last ball in a World Cup, and Sachin stroke his final off-drive through a motionless field. Those are memories that will mature into magic as we weave our own way to our last days.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Two and Only
Two and Only
By M J Akbar
By word : In India Today
March 25, 2011
Bob Hope, that great, late Hollywood philosopher, once described diplomacy as the art of describing Jane Russell without moving your hands. Such wisdom cannot be fully appreciated without a fond knowledge of Jane Russell's vital statistics, and Bob Hope had plenty of that. Jane was an actress who could, to put it mildly, stretch a blouse, and turned picking up unnecessary items from the floor into a tour de force: camera and cleavage had an excellent working relationship. Bob Hope used to introduce Jane Russell as the "two and only".
The art of India-Pakistan diplomacy is in quite the opposite mode: all hands and no Jane Russell.
India and Pakistan do not talk to each other; they talk at each other. Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Basheer will confirm this truth when they meet again in a few days. The great secret of Indo-Pak talks is that there is nothing left to talk about.
Both countries are fully conscious of basic realities: that war is not an option for conflict resolution between nuclear powers. They also know that a frozen stalemate breeds seismic trigger points that can quickly go out of control, and escalation could suddenly take a quantum leap toward bristling missiles. They realise, even if they will not publicly admit it, that the geography of the Kashmir map cannot be changed and all rhetoric is designed for domestic sentiment, not international hard talk. This is more relevant to Pakistan than India, since India is content with the status quo and will accept it as the basis of an agreement. Pakistan cannot, officially, do so, but the much-whispered "Musharraf formula" recognised, in effect, that the only solution is dissolution of claims and institutionalisation of ground reality, perhaps by tweaking a phrase or two in any pact. Six decades of declared and undeclared war have not changed the boundary by six inches; and six more decades will not either. We do not have a signed piece of paper between India and Pakistan yet because the boringly obvious, that peace is the shortest route to muchneeded prosperity, is insufficient as a means of persuasion.
It would be a good idea, therefore, if Rao and Basheer stopped wasting time on bilateral issues. They could use the opportunity for social pleasantries, and there is always a decent government budget for interesting menus; the crisis that damaged, beyond repair, the Agra summit between Pervez Musharraf and Atal Bihari Vajpayee began over a breakfast that included eggs with a French name I can't pronounce. But since foreign secretaries meet for more than a gourmand's breakfast, here is an unsolicited suggestion.
They might have something useful, tangible and doable for their political masters if they set an agenda for an adjacent objective: how to convert SAARC into an antipoverty mechanism, and a fulcrum of ideas that establish dynamic economic relations through flexible, if not free, trade in goods, services and finance. India and Pakistan have trapped the SAARC nations in the vicious circle they have created through their partisan conflicts. As the old sufi saying goes, when you are caged by a vicious circle, draw a larger circle. SAARC is the larger circle through which the theme of the next decade can become a priority: the economic uplift of the hundreds of more than half a billion people crushed below the poverty line.
A second thought, worth considering over eggs and toast. There is a nuclear crescent arcing through the whole of Asia. Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Japan and Russia are nuclear powers. Japan does not possess nuclear weapons, but bombs are not the only danger, as should be obvious now. Radiation has no boundaries. Surely the moment has come for a summit on nuclear safety, and why should such a proposal not emanate through India-Pakistan collaboration? If these two antagonists make common cause, they will help create conditions for a new environment over far larger space than their own territories.
Existing disputes, however visceral, however old or new, do not have to become obstacles to cooperation where this is possible. India and Pakistan do not have to agree on an old sore like Kashmir, or a fresh spat like Afghanistan in order to eradicate poverty or protect the environment. All this, alas, is day-dreaming. The establishments of Delhi and Islamabad retreat into the comfort zone of the predictable at the first sign of a new idea. An open mind comes laden with risk, but risk can be minimised with thought and preparation.
As Bob Hope might have said while introducing this subcontinent to the world, India and Pakistan are the "two and only".
By M J Akbar
By word : In India Today
March 25, 2011
Bob Hope, that great, late Hollywood philosopher, once described diplomacy as the art of describing Jane Russell without moving your hands. Such wisdom cannot be fully appreciated without a fond knowledge of Jane Russell's vital statistics, and Bob Hope had plenty of that. Jane was an actress who could, to put it mildly, stretch a blouse, and turned picking up unnecessary items from the floor into a tour de force: camera and cleavage had an excellent working relationship. Bob Hope used to introduce Jane Russell as the "two and only".
The art of India-Pakistan diplomacy is in quite the opposite mode: all hands and no Jane Russell.
India and Pakistan do not talk to each other; they talk at each other. Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Basheer will confirm this truth when they meet again in a few days. The great secret of Indo-Pak talks is that there is nothing left to talk about.
Both countries are fully conscious of basic realities: that war is not an option for conflict resolution between nuclear powers. They also know that a frozen stalemate breeds seismic trigger points that can quickly go out of control, and escalation could suddenly take a quantum leap toward bristling missiles. They realise, even if they will not publicly admit it, that the geography of the Kashmir map cannot be changed and all rhetoric is designed for domestic sentiment, not international hard talk. This is more relevant to Pakistan than India, since India is content with the status quo and will accept it as the basis of an agreement. Pakistan cannot, officially, do so, but the much-whispered "Musharraf formula" recognised, in effect, that the only solution is dissolution of claims and institutionalisation of ground reality, perhaps by tweaking a phrase or two in any pact. Six decades of declared and undeclared war have not changed the boundary by six inches; and six more decades will not either. We do not have a signed piece of paper between India and Pakistan yet because the boringly obvious, that peace is the shortest route to muchneeded prosperity, is insufficient as a means of persuasion.
It would be a good idea, therefore, if Rao and Basheer stopped wasting time on bilateral issues. They could use the opportunity for social pleasantries, and there is always a decent government budget for interesting menus; the crisis that damaged, beyond repair, the Agra summit between Pervez Musharraf and Atal Bihari Vajpayee began over a breakfast that included eggs with a French name I can't pronounce. But since foreign secretaries meet for more than a gourmand's breakfast, here is an unsolicited suggestion.
They might have something useful, tangible and doable for their political masters if they set an agenda for an adjacent objective: how to convert SAARC into an antipoverty mechanism, and a fulcrum of ideas that establish dynamic economic relations through flexible, if not free, trade in goods, services and finance. India and Pakistan have trapped the SAARC nations in the vicious circle they have created through their partisan conflicts. As the old sufi saying goes, when you are caged by a vicious circle, draw a larger circle. SAARC is the larger circle through which the theme of the next decade can become a priority: the economic uplift of the hundreds of more than half a billion people crushed below the poverty line.
A second thought, worth considering over eggs and toast. There is a nuclear crescent arcing through the whole of Asia. Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Japan and Russia are nuclear powers. Japan does not possess nuclear weapons, but bombs are not the only danger, as should be obvious now. Radiation has no boundaries. Surely the moment has come for a summit on nuclear safety, and why should such a proposal not emanate through India-Pakistan collaboration? If these two antagonists make common cause, they will help create conditions for a new environment over far larger space than their own territories.
Existing disputes, however visceral, however old or new, do not have to become obstacles to cooperation where this is possible. India and Pakistan do not have to agree on an old sore like Kashmir, or a fresh spat like Afghanistan in order to eradicate poverty or protect the environment. All this, alas, is day-dreaming. The establishments of Delhi and Islamabad retreat into the comfort zone of the predictable at the first sign of a new idea. An open mind comes laden with risk, but risk can be minimised with thought and preparation.
As Bob Hope might have said while introducing this subcontinent to the world, India and Pakistan are the "two and only".
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