Emergency And The Nation’s Current Travails: Comparing The Circumstances

Emergency And The Nation’s Current Travails: Comparing The Circumstances

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

“Globalization” may not have been part of the discourse 45 years ago when Indira Gandhi shelved Civil Liberties after declaring the Emergency but it is not possible to sketch that bleak episode on a wide enough canvas without touching such disparate points on the world atlas as Latin America and India’s cow belt. There was, after all, an external and an internal context to the Emergency as, indeed, there is to the erosion of civil liberties in India today.

The coup in 1973 which ousted and killed Salvador Allende, the world’s first communist leader to come to power through the ballot box, had a ripple effect on the communist movements in Europe. The counterpunch from the Right caused Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the powerful Italian Communist party to nimbly distance himself from the Soviet Union, invent Eurocommunism and seek a “Historic compromise” with the Christian Democrats. This was roughly the trajectory of all European Communist parties. True, Communists had come to power in Angola in 1975, but White South Africa was full square behind Jonas Swimbi’s relentless guerilla war against the Angolan regime.

This was the state of play between the power blocks, when Indira Gandhi, weakened by defeat in eight states in 1967, sought to consolidate her power by splitting the Congress party in 1969 and seeking support of the Left, specially the Communist of India (CPI) which attached itself to Congress (I) – (I) stood for Indira – as a sort of ideological motor. “Unite and Struggle” was how Sripat Dange, party chairman, described the arrangement – unite with the Congress but “struggle” against its “anti people” policies.

India’s Principal party, the Congress, in such apparent dalliance with the Left, against the backdrop of the global Left-Right contest touched upon earlier, had to invite a counter punch. A group to administer such a counterpunch was readily at hand: the “syndicate”, the Congress regional power brokers, placed by the split on the Right of the political spectrum – C.B, Gupta, Atulya Ghosh, S. Nijalingappa, Morarji Desai, etcetera. The RSS, Socialists and sundry, anti communist forces began to hold a meeting here, a seminar there and plan.

At this stage, Jayaprakash Narayan had more or less given up his socialist party work. He had become a heavy duty Gandhian attaching himself to Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s Bhudaan, or land gift movement. Then a series of Youth movements began to look for a leader and typical of the Indian mind, a father figure to revere, which is not the same thing as “respect”. It would be flawed to find links with Kent State campus in the US, barricades in Paris, and Grosvenor Square pickets in London, but it is uncanny that Navnirman Samiti in Ahmadabad which was triggered by an agitation against increased hostel fees erupted at the same time. JP, as he was affectionately called, was now in the drill to lead the much more powerful Bihar movement from the cozy comfort of his house in Patna’s Kadamkuan where he accommodated me in a room on the ground floor. This gave me a ringside seat to cover the story for The Statesman along with my partner in sin, the wonderful photographer, Raghu Rai. Remember, there were no multiple channels then and Raghu’s photographs amplified the movement sky high. The movement was primarily carried on the shoulders of the RSS cadres, under Nanaji Deshmukh’s firm leadership. Paradoxically, it also spawned caste leaders like Karpoori Thakur, Laloo Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar.

1969, the year of so much political upheaval, also happened to be Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary. To celebrate the occasion, Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Gaffar Khan was invited for a tour of India. Indira Gandhi and JP (with RSS, Socialists, Gandhians in tow) began to vie for favourable utterances from the Frontier Gandhi. He collected shawls at every function, diligently counted them at night and at every meeting next day, proceeded to chastise both the political formations for having “betrayed Gandhi”.

All concerned were in deep soup when the Frontier Gandhi arrived in Ahmadabad in September, a few days short of the Gandhi centenary on October 2. He decided to put down anchor in “Gandhi’s and Sardar Patel’s city”. This to witness firsthand the fiercest Hindu-Muslim riots in which the hand of the Gujarat Congress was discernable. The Khan docketed all these details which became inputs for the hundreds of public speeches he delivered across the country during that tour.

According to the Jaganmohan Reddy Committee the death toll was 660 of which 430 were Muslims. Unofficial figures exceed thousands. That the great singer Rasoolan Bai’s house was burnt is a detail etched on my memory. These were the first riots where I heard the terrible slogan for the first time: “Musalmaan ke do sthan; Pakistan ya Qabrustan”, (There are two destinations for Muslims; Pakistan or the graveyard).

This was the beginning of the series of riots climaxing with the macabre pictures that Gujarat yielded in February 2002. There is a major difference: an element of retaliatory violence on the part of Muslims was on show in 1969; 2002 was a pogrom, a trend inaugurated with the anti Sikh monstrosity of 1984.

In a nutshell, the Emergency of 1975 was in an East-West, Left-Right context and it lasted 18 months. The East-West context disappeared in 1990, exactly when Manmohan Singh embarked on economic policies which worldwide were creating inequalities. Lest economic distress strengthen demands for social security nets, establishments channelized popular discontent into identity politics which, in the Indian context, translates into rank communalism. The global war on terror and subsequent Islamophobia provided just the tailwind the Hindutva project required. Now come the headwinds – a shattered economy, dismally mismanaged pandemic, China hovering like Banquo’s ghost, unknown fate of the millions who walked in distress, and, FIRs upon FIRs as a preemptive strategy to cope with the gathering storm on the horizon. Will the storm materialize given such a stale, limp Opposition at the Centre? The Jury is still out.

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During Standoff In Ladakh, Remembering Another China, India, Vietnam Story

During Standoff In Ladakh, Remembering Another China, India, Vietnam Story

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

A strategy to undermine China beyond recovery has been spelt out by closet Sinologist in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet, Ramdas Athawale, MP from Maharashtra and Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment. He exhorted the nation on the most popular current affairs show, Prime Time with Ravish Kumar, on Wednesday that restaurants must stop serving Chinese food.

The Minister’s edict is at the moment redundant because, in deference to Coronavirus, all restaurants are in any case shut, including the one’s notorious for Chinese cuisine. This begs the question: is the mushroom growth of Momo stalls to be checked too? Or, will a culinary inquiry have to determine whether Momos are Chinese, Tibetan or Ladakhi?

Levity apart, the standoff in Ladakh takes the mind back to External Affairs Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee’s 1979 visit to Beijing. That visit was conceived in a context. Until 1971, the Cold War at full throttle, a tiresome parity existed between India and Pakistan. When Indira Gandhi intervened to help create Bangladesh, the geography on the sub-continent changed: India became a large country surrounded by a necklace of small countries.

To balance power, regional countries in concert began to flourish a China card – classical balance of power politics. This was one dimension of SAARC’s genesis. The other depended on what India made of the altered situation. It was both, a challenge and an opportunity. What if Vajpayee moved towards some sort of an entente with Beijing?

Meanwhile, Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing had broken the bipolarity in the global power balance. Henry Kissinger had sketched a triangular balance of power – Washington, Moscow and Beijing. Nixon fell, in disgrace. Subsequently, the terms of Morarji Desai and Jimmy Carter coincided – a twice born Prime Minister and a born again President. Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, began to alter Kissinger’s design:  he talked of regional influentials. Morarji’s India and Shah’s Iran had barely been fitted into this frame when the Shah fell. Ayatollah Khomeini was sliding into the frame when Vajpayee was embarked on a brightly concaved but poorly prepared visit to Beijing. The timing was bad.

Deng Xiaoping must have been a bit distracted when Vajpayee arrived. The Supreme leader, who had just launched the four modernizations to strengthen Agriculture, Industry, Defence, Science and Technology, had simultaneously taken upon himself the task of “teaching Vietnam a lesson”.

Vajpayee was, according to his own lights, on an epoch making visit. But for Deng, the Vietnamese situation was high priority. India’s Ambassador to Beijing Ram Sathe had a sense of what was to come. He had alerted New Delhi: the timing of the visit was, well, “chancy”.

After a fruitful day at Hangzhou, one of China’s cultural centres, we had retired to our hotel rooms, when Subhash Chakravarti of The Times of India, called his editor, Girilal Jain in Mumbai. Jain said the stories were making fine play on the front pages of all the newspapers. Before ending the conversation, Jain mentioned something almost as an afterthought. “Subhash, you may like to check up with the officials in your delegation; there seems to have been some kind of an invasion.”

“What?” Chakravarti muffled his scream. He walked straight to Foreign Secretary Jagat Mehta’s room, in his pajamas. The Foreign Secretary, also in his pajamas, called Vajpayee.

Without as much as taking the visiting External Affairs Minister into confidence, the Chinese had invaded Vietnam. Sino-Soviet differences, particularly after the end of Vietnam’s war with the US in 1975, had extended to their respective affiliates, in this case Moscow’s friend Vietnam.

A disgusted Vajpayee cancelled the last leg of the visit and returned to New Delhi. N. Ram of the Hindu and I stayed on, having placed our request with the Chinese: we would like to visit the Sino-Vietnam front. Initially, the Chinese were enthusiastic. But after making us wait for two days, they came back with an official response: the visit to the front was not possible. This was something of a giveaway. Were the Chinese making heavy weather of the conflict? Instead of teaching Vietnam a lesson had they been taught one?

I found my way to Bangkok where Abid Hussain who later became Ambassador to Washington, was on a spell with a UN agency. Always helpful, Abid Hussain introduced me to his colleague, a member of the Bao Dai family, one of Vietnam’s aristocracies which were not in bad odour with the revolutionary government.

Lo and behold I found myself in Hanoi, much to the astonishment of our ambassador, Sivaramakrishnan. Abid Bhai’s “Bao Dai” friend in Bangkok must have been a man of considerable reach. The day after my arrival, I was granted an interview by the Secretary General of Vietnam’s Communist Party, Xuan Thuy. He opened the ultimate door for me. I became the only journalist to be driven to Lang Son where the decisive battle ended, in Vietnam’s favour. I was witness to much celebration and vast quantities of equipment being moved triumphantly away from the battlefield.

Two brief points before I exceed my wordage. It reflected on the civil relations between the Press and South Block those days that Defence Secretary Sushital Banerjee requested me to be de briefed at Army headquarters about the rare ringside seat I had had on a crucial battle which possibly changed global power equations.

The reception at the Indian Express was well short of what I had expected – a tepid sort of “good coverage” stuff. Ultimately, Ramnath Goenka, the feisty publisher of the newspaper, put his finger on the heart of the matter. “American newspapers have said nothing; Americans have said nothing.” This was revelation. The mist lifted.

“American journalists said nothing because they were not there.” In fact photographs of Hanoi I shot with my primitive camera were used by Time Magazine. Moreover, Americans would be loathe to play up the defeat of a friend they had just begun to cultivate and, that too at the hands of the old culprit, Vietnam.

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A Delusion That Our Lives Were Better During The Cold-War?

A Delusion That Our Lives Were Better During The Cold-War?

                                                                                           Saeed Naqvi

Pictures of unrelieved despair everywhere on TV and, that too, in the course of an extended house arrest (lockdown), does leave one, to use Faiz’s words, with “pain where the heart once was”. Heaven knows there were problems then too, but in these days of stress, I reflect on the period of the cold war with an almost irreparable sense of loss. The period spanned my childhood, between my village and Lucknow, school, college, employment at The Statesman, The Indian Express, with papers in London, Boston and Salem, Massachusetts. All of this experience was without religion ever being an obstacle in the three continents where I worked. During my spell at Salem, my wife and I lived in nearby Marblehead where we were much pampered members of the prestigious North Shore Jewish Community Centre, something unthinkable in the post 9/11 Islamophobia.

I find it difficult to believe at this distance in time, the warmth with which the gorgeous Bathsheba Hermon, donning a large straw hat, Public Relations officer for the Jerusalem municipality, received me at Ben Gurion airport. The year was 1969: an Australian lunatic had set fire to the Al Aqsa mosque. Israel in those days was a series of cooperatives called Kibbutz, collectively owned by the inhabitants, an almost dreamy kind of socialism. Total partiality to the Palestinian issue on my part did not obstruct a benign contemplation of the Kibbutz system. This response must be attributed to two factors – attractions of soft socialism and Bathsheba Hermon as the tour guide.

Hard to believe in the days of the Ayatullahs that one route from Ben Gurion to New Delhi was via Teheran. North Teheran those days was Paris to the power of infinity. The elite were totally unaware of the diligence of the clergy in the mosques and the Tudeh (Communists) who had latched assiduously onto the national mood after Socialist Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq’s ouster by the Anglo-American combine in 1953.

Compared to Beirut, Teheran was, well, tinsel. European cosmopolitanism with an Arab soul best defined Beirut. Casino du Liban and the Crazy Horse Casino (which came from Paris for seasonal spells) and pubs, restaurants, café sparkled with conversations. I was a junior journalist, insistent on ambitious itineraries, my ears always cocked for scraps of conversation to be picked up, say, where Edward Said, Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Eqbal Ahmad were in attendance. Beirut was the world’s most charming city, the only one where sport enthusiasts could, within the space of two hours, ski and swim in sea.

The metropolis never could rediscover its élan after Israeli Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon’s brutal invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Cairo’s early Arab socialism had its attractions but intellectual life centered largely around Nasser’s moves, revealed in Hassanein Heikal’s columns in the Al Ahram which were debated and scrutinized for the entire week. Whatever the limitations of the system, editorials did matter because they were the bridge between public opinion and the state. They provided insights into what policy makers were thinking. Post-Cold War Murdochization of the media afflicted all continents; it proceeded hand in hand with globalization whose central grid was to be in Washington. The collapse of that project and global Establishments obstinately stonewalling any change in direction is at the heart of our current misery.

Even though Australian multicultural experience could never measure upto Canada’s, the period between the cold war and its end, was exactly when Australia was at its most relaxed, particularly after Prime Minister Malcolm Frazer (1975-83) buried for good Australia’s “White only” policy. Slowly multiculturalism picked up, the odd Pauline Hanson, Australia’s Marine Le Pen, notwithstanding. I interviewed a Chinese Mayor of Sydney in the late 80s, early 90s.

The project was hit for a six when Prime Minister, John Howard, Britain’s Tony Blair hitched their wagons to President George W Bush’s Islamophobia – all post cold-war, remember. For peace on earth, it was a terrible trio.

Indian multiculturalism was weak in its foundation from the very beginning in 1947. How could there not have been incipient communalism when a Muslim state is created next door but the larger part which falls to the Hindu’s lot, must, per force, be called a secular state. Initially communalism’s was the “Hindu rate of growth”, an expression made famous by economist K.N. Raj for describing the crawl of the Indian economy. Even so it did impact lives. In the golden period I have described at the outset the prejudice I faced was in finding a house until Kuldip Nayar and Bikram Singh, intervened. That intervention is totally missing today.

Congress-BJP competition for the Hindu vote, Prime Minister V.P. Singh stirring the caste cauldron accelerated communalism beyond the “Hindu rate of growth”, but the neo-liberal economic policies added fuel to the fire by creating unspeakably wide inequalities worldwide. Popular discontent was crying for policies that would redistribute wealth, strengthen the welfare net, provide universal health care, education, Universal basic income. It suited establishments to duck economic demands. Instead, popular discontent was channelized into the gutters of identity politics. In India, identity politics translates quite simply into communalism which already had lethal inputs from “1,200 years of foreign subjugation” (Modi’s phrase) and caste. And yet we have the same, tired list of economists paraded on our TV screens, sunk in the deepest layers of thought, proposing ways to “place the economy on track” the unmistakable assumption being that the “tracks” have been laid to perfection.

With coronavirus on a gallop, the economy in free fall, I wonder if millions who have walked will be satisfied with dollops of identity politics alone. Some bread may be required.

Meanwhile, all the cheerful places mentioned in the snippets from my diary from 60s to the 90s have today been transformed into desolations by the authors of the post Cold-War world. And, for want of space, I have not even mentioned the wilful destruction of Tripoli, Damascus and Baghdad.

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Race Riots In US And Walk Of The Dispossessed In India

Race Riots In US And Walk Of The Dispossessed In India

                                                                                           Saeed Naqvi

A passionate appraisal of the widespread anger at George Floyd’s murder by a white policeman that newspaper columns are full off, inspires no lasting change in race relations. Establishments have entrenched themselves too securely. In India the jury is out: will the establishment be able to contain street level eruption of discontent. It has never been tested on a scale it will surely be once the lockdown has been lifted.

In the US, Gen. James Mattis, respected soldier and former Defence Secretary, is enjoying what Andy Warhol called his five minutes of fame. He chastised a President whom everybody chastises except Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Never in his life had Mattis known a President so dedicated to dividing Americans. He was particularly severe on Trump’s call to “dominate” the rioters by taking recourse to troops, in violation of the military’s rules of engagement. His successor, Defence Secretary, Mark Esper, also did himself proud by going against Trump’s pronounced inclination to bring in troops.

I wonder if it shames us that there is neither a Mattis nor an Esper to provide relief in our arid wasteland, bereft of dissenters. Journalist Aakar Patel has an FIR staring at him for having asked the dispossessed in his homeland to express sympathy for African Americans. Rex Tillerson, as serving Secretary of State described Trump as a “moron”. The Texas police chief, Art Acevedo, was comparatively mild: he asked the President to keep his “mouth shut” if he has no constructive ideas to offer.

The vigour and success of a free society covered up an undercurrent of flaws like racism from the very beginning. Extraordinary success in many fields was able to induce a national amnesia about some harsh realities: the nation was founded on genocide and slavery. Unreliable records of Christopher Columbus combined with modern anthropology point to anywhere between 2.5 million and eight million natives killed by disease or other means of extermination. This was a matter of envy for Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. He lamented the fact that the Brazilian cavalry had not been as effective as its US counterpart in exterminating natives.

I have not seen anything as disturbing as the brutality of pre abolition slave lives portrayed in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. A gruesome image, fairly commonplace in the film, shows a petrified slave, tied to a tree. A pack of hungry dogs, the size of full grown wolves, is let loose upon him, by way of canine supper. Do not dismiss it as cinematic exaggeration. I have just been forwarded a clip from current disturbances – a police dog set upon a black woman, screaming for dear life, even as three white policemen watch with scant interest, a sort of mechanical operation.

To flavour the past, let us rewind at fast speed. In 1919, a black teenager, swimming in Lake Michigan, drifts involuntarily towards a beach for Whites-only. He is stoned until he drowns. Record riots follow in Chicago. This, when President Roosevelt, his cigarette holder at a jaunty angle, is busy persuading senators to ratify the Versailles Treaty. What flourished simultaneously were called “lynch laws”. Bodies of “niggers” hanging from tall, shady trees were occasions for family outings, yielding photographs for albums preserved for posterity. Such memorabilia was the stuff of American pride.

Everyone talks reverentially about Martin Luther King having brought to fruition the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. But this reporter saw “busing” an issue in Boston even in the mid-70s. Was an attitude ingrained over centuries going to be disbanded by pieces of legislation? Communalism in India has recent, deliberate beginnings, but caste beats western racism by millennia. Is its erasure possible by legislative means? And the recent walk of the impoverished, was laden with images of caste-class overlap.

There have been a surfeit of newspaper writing on the US riots. But a friend has placed in my hand an editorial from New Democracy, which touches the nub of the matter. The piece contrasts Martin Luther King’s failed quest for salvation within the American Dream with Malcolm X’s search for revolutionary change.

Look farther afield, and even Nelson Mandela’s adjustment with white South Africa’s last Prime Minister, F.W. De Klerk begins to look like a bargain struck in a hurry. I was in South Africa weeks before Mandela walked free. That he was free of rancour or bitterness against whites, despite having been in their jails for 27 years, did further elevate his charisma. De Klerk on the other hand came out smelling or roses for having righteously renounced power. In truth, what decided their fate was the global situation. At the end of the cold war, a nasty, nuclear armed white outpost in the face of rising black anger had become unnecessary. The odium of apartheid could now be shed.

In the high voltage emotionalism of Mandela’s release, reporters did not seek out what Mandela’s colleagues like Joe Slovo, the white Jewish firebrand communists were thinking. How could they have been happy when Mandela’s first Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel had to be cleared by Gavin Riley, chairman of South Africa’s largest Corporation? No two situations are absolutely similar, but memory ferrets out an interesting detail from independent India’s first cabinet. When V. Shankar, ICS, was first inducted into Sardar Patel’s secretariat, he had to go through a ritual interview with veteran industrialist, Ghanshyam Das Birla.

Capitalism, in other words, kept a wary eye on all transitions away from its stranglehold. Then capitalism overreached itself by mismanaging the post-Soviet globalization. The 2008 financial crisis, and a record economic slump after the Covid 19 mayhem, have induced some rethink. Comprehensive health care for all, Universal Basic Income, an appraisal of the Scandinavian model, are all part of a vigorous discourse in the West. There is, on the other hand, a deafening silence on these issues in India where the millions of the hungry and the destitute sent on a trek may well return to plague us.

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