News on India

No Right to Rule Now
There is absolutely nothing in even what the Congress-led UPA government is pretending in its so-called bid to counter terror. The pretence being perverse, what the government seems to be telling the people of the country is this: ‘‘Protect yourself from terrorists. That’s not our business. Our main concern, even when you are being slaughtered by terrorists, is our most cherished vote bank. It is this vote bank that guides our course of action. And since a tough anti-terror law means a total crackdown on jehadi groups and their modules and sympathizers without any second principle of pseudo-secular restrain, we are not going to pay that cost. We’ll not effect any tough anti-terror law because that will give the impression that we have gone all out to eliminate the jehadis that in turn will give the impression that we are indifferent to Muslim sensitivities as well. So be content with whatever laws are in place to fight terror. If the jehadis attack you, that’s your problem. We have other pressing issues to attend to, including the welfare of minorities. Jehad is a global phenomenon, so don’t be panicky and fall into the BJP’s communal trap. We’ll face terrorism collectively, our laws are more than adequate. And don’t talk about POTA. Never talk about such laws because we are a secular country. Such laws are a communal Hindu invention. They run counter to our secular ethos.’’

If this is not what the UPA government is telling us — and thus telling the people to go to hell because it cannot afford to offend the ‘sensitivity’ of the community in question — what else is it communicating? It has ruled out reviving the repealed POTA or even bringing in its place a suitable legislation to arrest the terror trend. True, there are some proposals that the government has cleared, such as setting up of a research and technology wing in the Intelligence Bureau (IB), sanctioning of additional manpower to IB and Delhi Police (only in the aftermath of the Delhi blasts), and installation of CCTV and metal detectors in busy market places. But do these counter-terrorism strategies have anything new or radical in them? These are used methodologies that the terrorists have seen through and exploited to the hilt. Despite calls by experts for innovation in counter-terrorism strategies, the government is choosing a path of complete inaction and the time-tested expedient of vote-bank politics — as if tough posturing against jehad will pit the government directly against the entire Muslim community of the country and cause that prized constituency to erode. So welcome to the Congress’ moral world, where it would even impress upon us all that jehad, at best, is exported, and not home-grown, or that it is a figment of ‘communal’ Hindu imagination. What can be, in the circumstance, more anti-national than the attitude and action of the government — mind you, elected by the people of the country?

A government that cannot protect its subjects ceases to have the right to rule them; it is the subjects who give their government that right. And a government that does not have the will to protect them — because if it has that will it has to have the will to do away with its perverse brand of politics too — becomes not only a butt of ridicule but also a monstrous liability. What privilege, then, does the highly educated Dr Manmohan Singh have as Prime Minister? His government has committed an open fraud on the people of the country in the matter of countering terror. And yet it is unapologetic about that crime. Or is the Congress wise enough that it is awaiting the great punishment due to it, come general elections?

Wise Words
Assam Rifles Director General Lt Gen Karan Yadava has sounded what the people of the militancy-infested parts of the Northeast have long demanded: abrogation of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act or AFSPA. The other day he said that he would be ‘‘happier’’ if the controversial AFSPA — a law that this newspaper has all along harangued as Draconian and discriminatory — was scrapped by the Union government, but asserted that the decision solely rested with the Centre. Lt Gen Yadava also gave an indication of the change in the line of thinking of Assam Rifles in its counter-insurgency mode of action, saying the militants ‘‘are not our enemies but our brothers who have gone astray’’. While we compliment the Assam Rifles chief for having realized the grave danger of continuing with a colonial piece of legislation as AFSPA, there are no signals as yet of the Centre having come to accept that reality. The law, which empowers the security forces to shoot down a person on the mere suspicion of his/her being a militant on the run, has been in force all these decades. But has it stemmed the growth of militancy? Not at all. Rather, more rebel outfits have sprouted. It is time for serious rethinking.

The Question of Identity and Violence
MV Kamath
In a world full of conflict, any analysis of historical origins will inevitably invite controversy. Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen’s latest work Identity and Violence cannot be an exception. Sen is highly controversial. His argument is that conflict and violence are sustained today, no less than in the past, by the illusion of a unique identity. Sen does not say so but he could have been referring to the ways the Tamils think of themselves in Sri Lanka and the Kashmiris think of themselves as belonging to a special category in the cultural mosaic that is India. In Assam, ULFA wants separation from India. And to attain their puerile ends the leaders of these associations want to use violence as their preferred weapon. In recent years fundamentalist Islam has taken to violence in a big way. Sen loftily insists that “a person’s religion need not be his or her all-encompassing and exclusive identity”, but what if it turns out to be so? Is it to be ignored, especially when it has been leading to mindless terrorism as is witnessed in Kashmir? As Sen sees it, “there is no empirical reason at all why champions of the Muslim past... have to concentrate specifically on religious beliefs only, and not on science and mathematics...” Of course there is not. But the fact remains that increasingly many active Muslims think of themselves primarily as Muslims and not as scientists, artists or whatever.

Sen is living in an idealist’s dream world. He refuses to see reality. “The insistence, if only implicitly, on a choiceless singularity of human identity,” he says, “not only diminishes us all, it also makes the world more flammable”. Sadly Sen has no answer to the harsh realities that the world is facing today. We would all be happy if the identity-conscious Muslims in Kashmir accept plurality of their identities and work in harmony with the people in the rest of India. But will they?

T he world will be a happier, richer and certainly
a more peaceful place than it is now, if only
individuals forget their personal identities and become part of the larger identity of a nation. But that calls for greatness and a proper understanding of what life is all about. Where Sen is right is when he says that “the illusion of unique identity is much more divisive than the universe of plural and diverse classifications that characterize the world in which we actually live’’. Is not that true? One can accept diverse classifications, whether religious or caste-wise, but what is damaging is the sense of “unique identity” which says that one cannot live in comfort with people of another identity and must opt out of a multi-cultural society or nation, as MA Jinnah told Muslims to do to force the partition of India in 1947.

Sen, let it be said, is opposed to the “solitarist” approach and insists that “what needs to be recognized is not only that this solitarist approach has accomplished little so far, but also that it cannot really be executed to achieve much”. That it is evident, is true of Pakistan. It is a failed state even if no Pakistani will openly admit to it. On the contrary, it wants to destroy India which is a multi-cultural, multi-religious state which has achieved significant progress in many fields of human endeavour in the bare space of six decades. This is plainly because India is a Hindu-majority state and whatever the other shortcomings of the Hindus, they are pass masters in the art of making a success of living in a multi-cultural and multi-religious world. That, indeed, is its strength.

Where one differs from Sen is in the matter of defining civilizations in terms of ‘‘Hindu’’, ‘‘Islamic’’ or ‘‘Western’’. Sen strongly disagrees with Samuel Huntington who has written meaningfully about the “clash of civilizations”. Sen believes that portrayal of India as a ‘‘Hindu civilization’’ is a ‘‘crude mistake’’. According to him it is impossible to think of the civilization of contemporary India without taking note of the major roles of Muslims in the history of the country. In fact, he says that it would be “quite futile to try to have understanding of the nature and range of Indian art, literature, music, film or food, without seeing the range of contributions coming from both Hindus and Muslims in a thoroughly intermingled way’’.
It may sound impertinent to challenge the views of
a Nobel Laureate, but is it possible that Sen is

confusing culture with civilization? Civilization has a time frame. We have an Indus Valley Civilization, but not British or French or Russian civilization. (This writer once had a sharp dispute with a distinguished American scholar who insisted that America is a civilization whereas the point was made that what exists is an American culture, the product of people from various parts, largely of Europe, freely intermingling with the over-arching umbrella of one language.) Whether Sen likes it or not, there is a distinct Hindu civilization going back even beyond the Vedic Age, while at the same time there is a distinct Indian culture which is a fascinating intermingling of Hindu and Muslim ethos, whether in art, literature, music, dance, drama and food. Civilizations and cultures can — and do — coexist. They are not necessarily antagonistic.
What is unbelievable is that Sen has insisted that Muslims are not the only non-Hindu group in the Indian population and there exists a ‘‘major presence of Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains’’. This is a vicious attempt at dividing Hindu heritage, an attempt at decrying Hindu inclusiveness and a blatant and noticeable attempt to separate Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains from mainstream India — and needs to be strongly condemned. Sen says that to talk of ‘‘Hindu civilization’’ is “politically unstable” and tends to “some highly deceptive credibility to the extraordinary distortion of history”.

Sen is writing rubbish and he must be told so in plain language. To talk of a Hindu civilization is by no means ‘‘a simplistic characterization of India” as Sen would like us to think, nor is it an ‘‘artificially singular line” or a “deeply flawed” concept. Hindu civilization is a fact of life and Sen is advised not to speak in the language of Mills and Thackeray if he wants to command the respect of real scholars. This country has had enough of these pseudo-intellectuals who live abroad and claim to know the land of their birth only to denigrate it before a western audience. Sen should be ashamed of himself.

What Price is Azadi?
With
Malice
towards
One and
All..
Khushwant Singh
I have yet to hear a Kashmiri Muslim describe himself as Indian. It was, and is to this day, “I am a Kashmiri”. Perhaps among the exceptions was Sheikh Abdullah, his son Farooq and grandson Omar. Right from the beginning in 1947, whenever India played cricket matches against Pakistan, Kashmiri Muslims supported Pakistan. If you don’t believe me, read Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night (Random House). Don’t dismiss this as a trivial aberration because it does in fact reveal the Kashmiri Muslim mindset. Now it has been revealed for all to see. They want us, Indians, out of the Valley. They may or may not throw in their lot with chronically unstable Pakistan, but have the leaders of demand for azadi from India considered the consequences that may follow our getting out of the Valley? The language they use to rouse the rabble in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk indicates they have not. And that applies to leaders of all the separatist factions including the Mirwaiz, Geelani, Yasin Malik and Mehbooba Mufti.

The most serious consequences of azadi will be the exodus of non-Muslims — Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs — from the Valley. Don’t accept their assurances that it will not hapen. On a small scale it happened when Kashmiri Pandits left the Valley in large numbers because they felt insecure where they were. Jinnah and Nehru gave us similar assurances preceding the partition of India. Recall what happened: ten million were uprooted from their homes, one million were murdered.

If and when Hindus and Sikhs are pushed out of the Valley, right-wing Hindu groups, extending from the RSS, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal up to the BJP will press for the expulsion of Muslims from Jammu (where they are in majority in two tehsils) and elsewhere. The Valley’s only commercial outlet and tourism is India. There is not a hotel in the country which does not have a shop selling Kashmiri handicraft, carpets and shawls. Thousands of Kashmiri Muslims work as labourers in Indian towns and cities. Will not their future be jeopardized by the call for azadi? Whatever way Hurriyat leaders construe it, if there is the slightest risk of starting mass migrations, we must reject it come what may.

The situation has been going out of hand since 1990. Basharat Peer tells us that ever since, thousands of Kashmiris have crossed over to Pakistan to get military training and arms and sneaked back into the valley to create mayhem and murder. The locals give them shelter and food. The only response India could make was to send in more troops, impose severe restraints on the locals and kill those they thought were anti-Indian militants.

Every village in the Valley has its quota of unmarked graves. How long can this be allowed to go on? Give the Valley azadi it wants, but spell it out to mean only internal autonomy to manage its affairs. No more. India must retain its military presence to guard its frontiers against unwelcome intruders. But at all costs put an end to this sorry state of affairs.

Sharda Prasad
He joined the Publications Division of the Government of India to take over the editorship of Yojna from me. He came with the formidable reputation of a fiery student leader of Mysore University who had been jailed during the Quit India Movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi. He was held in awe by most south Indians in the Publications Division. They believed in due course of time he would rise to great heights. He had a most attractive wife and was envied by all of us. However, whatever fire he had in his younger days had doused by the dampness of Civil Service. He never betrayed his inner feelings. He rarely smiled and I never heard him laugh. He was the acme of an experienced civil servant.

I had a few occasions of running into him in later life. He had been selected by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to be her press adviser. Whenever I called on Mrs Gandhi at the South Block office, I was received by him and escorted to her room. He stayed with us till the interview was over without uttering a word. I saw him take down notes. He saw me off. It was same when Rajiv Gandhi took over the Prime Ministership. He saw more of them from morning to evening, day after day, year after year than any of the others working for them. Nevertheless, while many have written books on what they knew about Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, Sharda, though he wrote other books, did not put a word down in print about his two bosses.

After his retirement Sharda Prasad wrote regularly for The Asian Age. They were scholarly articles on various subjects. In one he described me as “the oldest teenager of India”. He did not mean it was compliment, but I took it as one. He had little sense of humour.

Some years ago Sharda had fallen in his bathroom and injured his head. He was already suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The injury to his skull deprived him of his speech. It was a prolonged illness. His doting wife and two sons looked after him. Some months ago my daughter accompained Salman Haider and called on him. She reported back to me that Sharda was in very poor condition and would not last long. He did not.

I wonder if Sharda kept a diary and recorded his impressions of the two Prime Ministers he served and their visitors. If he did, it would be gold mine for research scholars.