Soviet Union Thirty Years After Collapse: Gains And Losses

Soviet Union Thirty Years After Collapse: Gains And Losses

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

The collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago was a tragedy for half the world but frothed with possibilities for the other half which the West spilt, mistaking rampaging markets for democracy.

My memory of events three decades ago is of a personal nature because I was the only journalist who interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who, on a high wire act of historic reforms, lost control. Foreign Secretary, Romesh Bhandari would not obstruct my interview but he promised the media accompanying Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi to Moscow that “they would all stand around an arena while I did the interview.”

The choreography dictated the set. A circular boxing arena was created, ropes et al, in which four chairs were placed. Two for Gorbachev and his interpreter, one for the interviewer, but the fourth? Since Romesh Bhandari did not wish to be unpopular with the media accompanying the PM by allowing one journalist to steal a scoop. He, therefore, awarded the third chair to a notional representative for the rest of the media. Who could this be but the inimitable Russi Karanjia, the colourful editor of Blitz.

What Romesh did not realize is exactly what Andrei Gromyko, USSR’s longest serving Foreign Minister who stayed on for Gorbachev’s first year in office, immediately did. He peeped into the hall where the “rope-ring” had been set up. After concluding his talks with Rajiv Gandhi, Gorbachev would walk towards this arena.

Imagine the scene. Two interviewers looking at two empty chairs in the ring, and thirty journalists, craning their necks into the arena, clearing their throats and waiting for Gorbachev to take his seat. Gromyko, the old fox, was not going to allow the new Secretary General of the CPSU, in his very first outing with the media, to be exposed to a free for all press conference, a “tamasha”. Gromyko called it off.

My disappointment could not be measured and, for that reason, I persisted. I returned to Moscow the next year to interview Gorbachev, but that is another story. Before I close the Gorbachev segment for this column, a word on what was Gorbachev’s eventual vision for Soviet Russia was? “Something like the Scandinavian welfare state.” This was before neo con excesses during the fleeting unipolar moment and a rushed Murdochization of the media had disfigured much of the world, including Scandinavia.

The second image is of South Block, Ministry of External Affairs split down the middle on the goings on in Moscow. Arundhati (Chuku) Ghosh, that heavy smoking, clean hearted Brahmo, Joint Secretary for Africa, is in a state of anxiety. She is following events in Moscow – the coup, a tense moment for her. She is not clear what she wants, but her DNA demands a “liberal” system, not the Soviet Union. To her it does not matter if Boris Yeltsin replaces Gorbachev.

Round the corner from Chuku, in his room at the far end of the corridor, Foreign Secretary, Muchkund Dubey, a homespun Bihari intellectual, culturally as distinct from Chuku as chalk is from cheez, is on the line to his Ambassador in Moscow, Alfred Gonsalves. The two are classical status quoists. Having spent a lifetime writing position papers mindful of the two blocs, the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union is, for them, like having to walk on one leg.

This brings me to the third question: was the Indian Establishment ever emotionally embedded with the Soviet Union?

On the one hand C. Rajeswara Rao, longest serving General Secretary of the CPI, is shaking with rage at a reporter who asked him if the Soviet Union was collapsing.

“Sir (loaded with satire), not a pin in this world moves without the Soviet Union being involved.”

This touching faith in the Soviet Union was all pervasive among progressive writers and Urdu poets carted to Mumbai by an earlier General Secretary of CPI, P.C. Joshi.

“Kremlin ke minar jaage hue kharey hain.”

(The minarets of Kremlin beckon us.)

This was Javed Akhar’s father Jaan Nisar Akhtar, ecstatic about the Kremlin minarets. A fine ghazal writer like Majrooh Sultanpuri could not resist the pressure of his peers.

“Meri nigah mein hai arze Moscow, Majrooh,

Woh sarzameen ki sitarey jise salaam karein.”

(My eyes are set on Moscow, that blessed place where stars come down from heaven to shower their salutations.)

Poets, writers, painters, actors, film producers, college campuses, and coffee house regulars – a comprehensive segment, under the domain of Saraswati were largely, Left. Wealth was scoffed at. Gentlemen travelled by “tongas”; cars were for upstarts.

This entire lot was marginal to the pro west establishment, big industrialists whose “proximity” to Gandhiji gave them an all pervasive influence. Before V. Shankar, ICS, could join Deputy Prime Minister, Vallabh Bhai Patel’s office, he had to be interviewed by Ghanshyam Das Birla, leading industrialist in whose house Gandhiji died.

Marwari owned newspapers which Indira Gandhi dubbed the “Jute Press” never posted a correspondent to Moscow even in days when the Indian Ambassador had direct access to the Central Committee. Instead, correspondents were posted to London and Washington where they had no access. A much valued qualification for these correspondents was their ability to arrange for vegetarian food without onions or garlic preferably from their own kitchen for families of proprietors.

The only Indian journalist in Moscow was the towering figure of Masood Ali Khan, a pathan to boot, representing the CPI organ, New Age. He had phenomenal access to the otherwise impenetrable Soviet system. He was a mandatory fixture for all visiting Indian journalists, diplomats, progressive writers. When the Soviet Union collapsed Masood fell into abject penury. His salary which the Soviet system had arranged through the Red Cross was stopped. He died on the box-sofa of his one room tenement close to a metro station. Beneath the cushion on the sofa, were lined hundreds of 78 rpm records of western classical music he had collected during better days at the BBC in London.

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Farmers’ Agitation Inspired The Movement For Change In Chile

Farmers’ Agitation Inspired The Movement For Change In Chile

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

Indians must note that the farmers’ movement in the country, was one of the inspirations for the historic regime change in Chile.

That Gabriel Boric 35, a candidate of the Left with Communist support, trounced the far Right, Jose Antonio Kast, to become Chile’s youngest President is now a reality. And the Indian angle is heartwarming. The popular movement which brought Boric to power had in its final stretches, drawn inspiration from the farmer’s movement in India. Thomas Hirsh, member of the Chilean parliament representing the Humanist forum closely associated with Boric, was the point man in touch with the farmer’s leaders for guidance and support. The farmers said that they would refrain from endorsing Boric’s candidature but would support the people’s movement. “Just as we have steered clear of politics here.”

Dr. Ashish Mittal, General Secretary, All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha, wrote to Thomas Hirsch, “Our struggles present many similarities in the challenges we face from the cruel and dehumanizing neo-liberal regimes attempting to destroy the well being of our people…..and opening the way to control these resources and markets by transnational corporations.”

Boric is yet to announce his cabinet, Chileans are eager to see which important posts Communists are invite to occupy: after all they played a key role in Boric’s victory. The leader of Chile’s Communist party, Guillermo Teillier, explained the reason for supporting Boric. “He is the only one who can bring together a broad movement that will lead the people of Chile to prevent the rise of neo fascism.”

Fear of “fascism” is justified on many counts. First, the opponent, Kast, the conservative who lost was the darling of the copper magnates, other corporates and, ofcourse the CIA. Also, he was a fan of Pinochet, known for his unspeakable brutalities. Given Latin America’s roller coaster shifts, Kast may be down but cannot be counted out for good. Recent Latin American experience fits the image of the pulley: people bring to power their governments which vested interests work hard to replace. Chileans, indeed Latin Americans, have an abiding memory of Salvador Allende and the Chilean spring of 1973 which was snuffed out by corporate interests and direct US support. The Truck owners, CIA, corrupt armed forces and, ofcourse Augusto Pinochet, who staged the coup d’état, all combined to bringing down Allende. The dramatic footage of the Presidential palace bombed by British Hawker Hunters is all part of Patricio Guzman’s superb documentary –– The Battle of Chile. Then there is that permanent danger from that great global compact between imperialism and neo-liberal establishments. Corporates are the lynchpin in this plan.

During the Cold war, all People’s Liberation movements were legitimate. After the Soviet collapse, these became terrorist movements. Likewise wherever people bring into power governments on issues of bread and butter, health care, pensions, inequality, the media, at the instance of the corporates who own them, focuses elsewhere. It amplifies issues of identity, ethnicity, migration, even Covid, a pandemic though it is. Remember, the Shaheen Bagh movement against the Citizens Amendment Act (CAA), which had spread nationwide, was wound up following the earliest Covid scare in 2019. The Covid “scare” even when real can also be misused by cynical states. For instance postpone elections in UP if defeat looms.

Two facts are worth noting. Boric’s movement and the farmers’ agitation, both succeeded despite the media being arrayed against them. Is the declining credibility of the media a global reality? This is a serious problem for manipulated democracies.

Can the Boric euphoria be ended just as Allende was? Not impossible. In fact, corporates, elements in the Armed forces and the CIA must already be in a huddle in secret locations. Chile is the world’s top producer of copper and iodine. This is what the corporates and their supporters in the US were not comfortable leaving in “Communist” hands in 1973.

We in India had experienced the world’s first communist government come to power through the ballot box when E.M.S. Namboodiripad became Chief Minister in 1957. President’s Rule was imposed in 1959 at Nehru’s behest.

For the US, obsessed as it was with the Monroe doctrine and Domino theory, a duly elected communist President in the western hemisphere was worse than anathema; it was like another fall of man. American fingerprints were therefore, all over the military operation which killed Allende.

One motivation then was also to prevent the Soviet Union from finding hospitality in Latin America. Boric in Santiago offers a threat of another kind. In 1973 the US and Europe were interested in mineral resources. Today, the most voracious consumer of minerals is China, with whom an open “competition” has been declared by the US. What competitive action can the US be pushed into to protect its interests in Chile? This is where a major factor makes 1973 very different from 2021 –– the decline of US power.

A weakened power will not punch above its weight but, like pugilists on the wane, will not hang up its gloves either. With big powers it will not risk major conflict but it will make it known that it is still around. And around it is. Look at the way it imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran, Venezuela –– there are atleast 30 countries on the list.

The other asset the US has is the western media, always ready with cans of black paint to tar those nations the US does not approve. Once Boric is sworn in as President in three months, he will be in the line of fire, just as Cuba, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia are.

It is universally acknowledged that Boric won the election fairly. Does this entitle him to be on President Biden’s invitation list for the next “summit for Democracy”? To the last such jamboree on December 9-10, 80 world leaders were invited. Among the distinguished invitees was Juan Guaido, a Venezuelan non entity sporadically touted by Washington as the “interim President” of Venezuela. By this yardstick, the far right Pinochet admirer, Antonio Kast, roundly trounced by Boric, may well be looking for sources who will carry the following message to Washington –– “Barkis is willing.”

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Kashi Corridor: A Wonderful Project And A Hurtful Ceremony

Kashi Corridor: A Wonderful Project And A Hurtful Ceremony

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

 

Ganga, the eternal symbol of life and death, a continuity measureless to man, registered another episode this week which was billed as an extravaganza – the opening of the new Kashi corridor.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked imperiously on the spotless red carpet, he had the airs of someone who knew he was making history. Cameras from myriad angles committed the event to posterity. It is romantic to imagine that the strains of music that Bismillah Khan played at the temple would have enhanced the choreography around the majestic expanse. I suspect such a suggestion would be politically incorrect.

I may be forgiven for feeling a little bit like Shambhu in Bimal Roy’s masterpiece, Do Bigha Zameen. Shambhu, on whose land a factory has come up, regards his plot from behind barbed wires, he bends down and picks up a fistful from the field he once ploughed. Oh, my numerous visits to Kashi with my friend and outstanding architect, the late Satish Grover.

All rivers have a lore for people settled on their banks and beyond, but Ganga is different because it is special to us.

“Ai aab rooy e Ganga, woh din hain yaad tujhko,

utra tere kinare jub karavaan hamara?”

(O Ganga, our very pride

is bound with you

Do you remember our caravan,

which rested on your banks – forever?)

Iqbal was not remembering Aurangzeb; he was celebrating the dawn of a civilization on what the British called the Indo-Gangetic plain.

Ganga was part of our songs, similes and metaphors. As children we never forgot to toss coins in the great river and make a wish whenever the train crossed the bridge. During the Urdu-Hindi debates, my grandfather could only fall back on the image of Ganga:

“Hai dua yeh, ki mukhlif jo hain dhaarey mil jaaen

Aaj phir kausar O Ganga ke kinarey mil jaaen”

(Streams of Urdu and Hindi should

flow together, not in opposite directions.

May the banks of Ganga and

‘kauser’, the river of paradise, become one)

To fight penury, the great poet Ghalib (1797-1869) embarked on a journey to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to have an old pension revived by the British authorities. He travelled on horseback, carriages, on foot and river barges. He disliked Allahabad but found Benaras so compelling that he put down anchor for an extended stay. Here he wrote his longest poem – Chiragh e Dair or The Lamp in the Temple. He sees Benaras like a beautiful woman who sees her face in the Ganga at all times:

“Ibadat khana e naqoosian ast

hama na kaaba e Hindustan ast”

(This is a place of worship where people

make music from conch shells,

This truly is the Kaaba of Hindustan)

Ghalib was not the first to compare Benaras with Kaaba. Sheikh Ali Hazin from Isfahan, in Iran, found it impossible to separate himself from Benaras which, he wrote in Persian, is all mankind’s place of worship:

“Har Barahman pisare Lakshman-o-Ramast een ja”

(To me every Brahmin here looks like the very son of Ram or Lakshman)

When Mohsin Kakorvi (1826-1905) sketched the elements in ecstasy on Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, the most picturesque image he could conjure up were of clouds floating over Kashi and drifting towards Mathura.

“Samt e Kashi se chala jaainbe Mathura badal”

Ali Sardar Jafri (1913-2000) positions himself in “Benaras” when he seeks cultural commerce with friends in Lahore:

“Tum aao gulshan e Lahore se chaman bar dosh

hum aayen subhe Benaras ka baankpan le kar”

(You come to us with breezes from the garden of Lahore;

we bring to you the exquisite dawn of Benaras.)

If I have inflicted on you a surfeit of poetry it is for a compelling reason. This is my way of reestablishing my claim to the civilization bound with Kashi and the Ganga, and from which I was distanced by the choreography of the pageant last Monday.

By firing the Aurangzeb missile, you froze us in our tracks. If we reiterate what some of us have proposed for a long time it will be seen, in the current jingoism, as our having succumbed to pressure. A reasonable conversation on such charged issues as Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura are possible when the communal temperatures drop.

Just as every musical score requires a counterpoint there are plenty of Muslim busybodies willing to take hard positions that will keep communal tension at boiling point. There is, after all, no Papacy in Islam. No edict can be issued which insures that the community will fall in line. The Muslim Personal Law Board, to remain alive, must take a stand which represents the mainstream devouts. In other words “dig your heels in” which is precisely what the Hindu Right wants.

The late Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, a liberal to boot, maintained that a Muslim can spread his prayer mat anywhere facing Mecca and say his prayers; a Hindu’s deity is in the temple. By this logic, the mosques in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura represent medieval assertion and will only hurt the Hindu.

Mir Taqi Mir had shown us the way in the 18^th century:

“Mut ranja kar kisi ko ki apney to etiqaad,

Jee dhaye ke jo Kaaba banaya to kya kiya”

(Don’t hurt a fellow human being;

It is my belief that even building the Kaaba is not worth it if hearts are broken in the process.) the verse applies to both sides.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of the many singers of Benaras were to set the following verse to music:

“Kooch a e yar ain Kashi hai

Jogia dil wahan ka baasi hai”

(My beloved’s lane is like holy Kashi

The yogi of my heart has taken up residence there.)

The poet is Wali Gujarati (1667-1707). His grave outside Ahmedabad’s main police station, was razed to the ground by rioters in February 2002.

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The Economist, Mamata, Prashant Attacked The Gandhis: Congress Indispensable

The Economist, Mamata, Prashant Attacked The Gandhis: Congress Indispensable

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

 

The Economist, Mamata Banerjee and Prashant Kishore, in sequence, landed a triple punch on the Gandhi trio’s chin but it did not knock them out. In fact Rahul Gandhi carried on, regardless, to London where he met editors of papers like the Economist and The Financial Times and heaven knows who else.

Recent attacks have been on the Gandhis not on the Congress. To separate the two is an urgent, dynamic, political process. The unionists who see the two as Siamese twins are the coterie who require the furniture at 10, Janpath under which they can crawl and nibble.

Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena says that a front which is parallel to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) would be self-defeating because it would divide the opposition’s effort to replace Narendra Modi. Raut cannot be expected to say anything else. After all the Shiv Sena led government depends on Congress support in Mumbai.

This is Raut’s regional compulsion, not his roadmap for power in Delhi. Mamata has no such compulsions. She has trounced the BJP, CPM and Congress, in that order. Among Mamata’s opponent in West Bengal happen to be two disabled national opposition parties. Of these two, Congress and CPM suffer from a self-defeating obsession: they are aching to revive on their own, the CPM in West Bengal and the Congress nationally. Both are impossible aspirations.

Mamata and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi, can both claim similar records albeit on different scales. Both have trounced the BJP and the Congress repeatedly. Mamata is so much on top of the situation in Bengal that she is now looking for expansion. The fear of TMC making inroads into neighbouring Tripura caused the BJP to throw the state in tumult: in the recent local bodies election 112 of the 334 wards went uncontested. No elections were held in these wards. Notice of the mayhem was given in October when, for reasons unknown, opposition party offices were attacked. This is BJP’s nervousness, not triumphalism.

Mamata has another card up her sleeve. She was once with the Congress which she left in 1997.

As Ghalib said:

“Go waan naheen, pa waan ke nikaale huwe to hain”

(I may not be there now; but I was once there.)

Trinamool Congress, after all, is a regional version of the Congress. Those Congressmen who are unhappy with the present leadership are welcome: her doors are open. The group of 23 letter writers asking the leadership to pull up its socks are only a representative few, a mixed bag of successful professionals and spare “has-beens”. Much the larger number of Congress workers, voters, sympathizers, in whose hovels one can still find tattered posters of Congress bullocks as party symbol, or a hand, photographs of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi – these are the party orphans Mamata has her eyes on. The idea is to squeeze the Gandhis out – exert external pressure to induce a settlement within the Congress.

Kejriwal may not have Mamata’s Congress affiliation, but he too is looking for turf being vacated by the Congress in states neighbouring Delhi. His expedition to far off Goa is to leave something of a footprint wherever he can. This effort of his, and of Mamata, will be interpreted by observers as being helpful to the BJP. To disrupt the Congress, says this school, is to help the BJP. This is an old ruling class chant: don’t weaken tweedledee because tweedledum will gain.

Under the Gandhis, Tweedledee is a consistent, persistent, habitual loser of elections. To focus extensively on Priyanka Gandhi in Lakhimpur Kheri, her taking a dip in the Ganga or championing the farmers is to keep the searchlight deliberately on the weakest aspirant in the opposition line up. Greater focus on Rahul would be possible if only he didn’t fly away so frequently. It was said of Vinoba Bhave that no one knew when he would pick up his stick and walk.

The tailwind of Bengali nationalism enables Mamata to carry the 30 percent Muslims in the state, thwarting the BJP’s urge to polarize. After all, her Hindu credentials are impeccable. Kejriwal has no linguistic regionalism to fall back on. He therefore has to play a straight “good” Hindu card to neutralize a “bad” Hindu one. Credit must go to Narendra Modi: he has made Nehruvian indifference to safronized religion a negative value in politics. Every political party, including CPM’s Pinarai Vijayan in Kerala, must now be conscious of Hinduism in public life.

The fact that Kejriwal occupies the Delhi stage is his handicap as well as his advantage. The advantage is obvious: though Delhi is only a Union Territory, Kejriwal is amplified nationally. His national projection, however, must not outshine the regime at the centre. So, the centre, via the efficient agency of the Lt. Governor, keeps Kejriwal’s one hand tied behind his back. But where there is a will there is a way. Kejriwal is out, both guns blazing, with Hinduism tied to welfare as his unstated plank. A promise of Ram Mandir within reach, pilgrimage after pilgrimage for the elderly arranged by “your son, Kejriwal”, Hanuman Chalisa on tap.

Add to these, free water, cheap electricity, neighbourhood clinics, focus on government schools and you have a brand new model: a Hindu friendly socialist state. It does not offend Muslims either: no lynchings, no love jehad campaigns. Yes, AAP says nothing about the riots in North East Delhi but there is a clever reason for this silence: because the BJP would then play up AAP as “pro Muslim” and polarize the vote. So Muslims have to lump it so long as the current politics of division lasts.

Everybody in the opposition knows there can be no credible opposition to win in 2024 without the Congress. On this TMC, AAP and others are all agreed but with a proviso: the Congress becomes an active player in opposition ranks only if a Gandhi hat is not prematurely in the ring for the leadership stakes.

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Farmers And Post Taleban Region: Will PM Be Equally Supple?

Farmers And Post Taleban Region: Will PM Be Equally Supple?

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

There have been two game changing events in the region demanding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s focused attention – the farmer’s agitation and the ascent of Taleban in Kabul. The way he has switched gears on the three controversial farm laws has caused raised eyebrows.

The Prime Minister has a reputation for being tough, firm, uncompromising, determined, even obstinate, secure in the massive mandate of 2019. And yet he paused after having pitted the government against the farmers almost to the point of no return. Ofcourse elections are round the corner in UP, and elsewhere, and the outcome of these elections will have a bearing on the 2024 General Elections.

Whatever the compulsions for the PM to make a tactical withdrawal on the farmers’ demands, he has, in the course of doing so, signaled something Modi watchers had not expected: the Prime Minister can change. He has demonstrated a suppleness and this, precisely, is what will be required in full measure in coping with the regional challenges precipitated by the messy US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Clearly Modi’s men had such faith in the Americans and their handpicked Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, that they chose not to notice much else – the, Taleban, for instance, who they saw as an extension of Pakistan. This gloomy, self defeating appraisal, imposed a kind of immobility on policy. This would inevitably have led New Delhi to a dead end.

One purpose of the Regional Security Dialogue organized by the National security Adviser, Ajit Doval, was to break out of this isolation. No one expected Pakistan to attend the meeting but their National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf could have refused in better language. In a situation of such flux all doors should be left ajar, by Pakistan as well as India and others in play.

At the New Delhi conference, Iran’s NSA Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani had a field day, tearing into the US military training skill: look how the much touted 3,00,000 strong Afghan National Army collapsed. Indeed, they spread out the red carpet for the Taleban to take over.

Apart from anti American invective, there was much else in Shamkhani’s presentation which Doval must have highlighted for the Prime Minister’s consideration – that Islamic State or Daesh mercenaries were being flown to Afghanistan. This was not new. For several years now Iranians, including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been giving details of Afghanistan being readied as a centre for terrorism.

More recently Vladimir Putin gave similar details to a group of ex military officers. His foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2016 that the US was training militants in Syria. Donald Trump corroborated all of this in his conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper. In fact he named Obama and Hilary Clinton: they were spending millions in arming militants, he said.

Is the centre of gravity for Islamic terror shifting to Afghanistan? In the recent past, these stories were emanating from the West Asian theatre, countries like Syria which were relatively “remote” from South Asia. Militancy gestating next door, in Afghanistan and in the notice of closest friend, the Americans, places New Delhi in an awkward bind.

The situation today is exactly the opposite of what it was on 7 October 2001 when the US launched missile attacks on Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and its head, Osama bin Laden. It is an amazing coincidence of history that it was exactly on that date, basking in the post 9/11 Islamophobia, that Modi arrived in Ahmedabad to take charge as Gujarat Chief Minister. The Gujarat pogrom of February 2002, almost blended with the hysterical global anti Islamism unleashed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and a host of others.

In 2001 New Delhi’s plaint was against the Americans having incorporated Pakistan as “the” frontline state in the “global war on terror”. It was painfully ironical because New Delhi’s much amplified chant was against “cross border terrorism” from Pakistan. New Delhi’s tormentor was now being chaperoned by the US as democracy’s protector. The 13 December 2001 attack on Indian Parliament was a terrible event, but it went some distance in restoring New Delhi’s self image as a victim of Pakistani terror.

In the past 20 years, the world and the region have changed radically. It was its “sole super power” moment which propelled the US to attack, invade, occupy Afghanistan. The departure from that country showed the US at its Nadir.

Imagine a tennis racquet. The round frame with a network of tight strings is, for our image, Afghanistan surrounded by Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China, Russia and Pakistan, all shoulder to shoulder, quite literally on the Afghan issue. Even Kazakhstan, which does not have a border, has been holding military exercises with Uzbekistan on the Afghan border.

At the end of the racquet’s handle, across two oceans, is the US. That leaves us somewhere near the “Y” holding the racquet’s head. The geography, the contiguity of the states peering into Afghanistan, dictates its own policy of convergence.

In the recent three hour long virtual summit between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, there is nothing for the hawks to celebrate. Biden reiterated the “one China” policy and the two leaders talked of “managing” their “competition”; they will not allow it to spiral out of control.

It would be foolish to expect any ostensible change in neighbourhood policy until the February-March state elections. But there has to be an inevitable quest for a co-operative approach post the state elections. Some good signs may already be there. A junior Pakistan hockey team is in India. Prime Minister Imran Khan has made an exception: Indian trucks can carry food assistance to Afghanistan via Pakistan territory.

TV anchors are not busting their lungs out on a new Chinese village in Arunachal Pradesh. This allows cool headed policies to take shape. The US is a good enough friend to tolerate a shift in nuance – from fixation to consistency.

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Decisions By A Prime Minister Which An Ambassador Could Reverse

Decisions By A Prime Minister Which An Ambassador Could Reverse

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

Not many ambassadors have lived to tell the story but Ambassador to Washington, Shankar Bajpai, who died from Covid last year, can claim the credit for having two of Rajiv Gandhi’s dramatic foreign policy initiatives reversed. Since I was the journalist covering both instances, let me begin with the first story.

Suddenly last week Polisario, or Western Sahara was across two pages of The Economist. This triggered my memory. America’s willingness to stand with its friends, in this instance Morocco, was on test. I had visited Polisario country after disengaging myself from the media team which had accompanied the Prime Minister to Algeria in June 1985, on his way to meet President Reagan in Washington.

Just the previous month, Gandhi had visited Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Secretary General of the Soviet communist party. Algerian President, Chadli Bendjedid, totally in the Soviet camp, discussed the non-aligned movement and, holding Gandhi’s hand, stressed the importance of Western Sahara and the liberation struggle waged for nine years by the Polisario Front. Gandhi was obviously impressed.

Until the death of Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco in 1975, the territory was named Spanish Sahara. After Franco it became the most hotly contested real estate between a West backed Morocco and the Polisario, the latter supported entirely by Algeria at a time when the Cold War was at is fiercest.

After Rajiv Gandhi’s meeting with Bendjedid when the Polisario decision was tacitly taken, I decided to stay back in Algiers. Next morning I caught the flight to Tindouf, 1900 kms south-west, deep in the Sahara desert. The capital of Polisario was a fairytale city consisting of rows upon rows of tents. It was a poor man’s version of the tented township Shah of Iran had erected near Shiraz to celebrate 2,500 years of Persian civilization.

My quarter was a tent in exquisite taste. Mercifully it had an attached toilet. Others, highest and the lowest, went to the sand dunes for their ablutions. The purest rays of “Shams”, the sun, burnt everything, which then became indistinguishable from the sand. The leader of Polisario, Mohamed Abdelaziz was a charismatic figure and something of a favourite with Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Polisario recruits were being trained in Cuba.

Though short on cash, the Saharwi Republic opened an embassy in New Delhi. But within months, a very shaken Polisario representative came to me. “Your government does not talk to me.” It would have been embarrassing to close the embassy, but a defacto de recognition was on. The Polisario story faded out slowly from 1985 to 2000 when Jaswant Singh as foreign minister finally closed the embassy.

Well, the Polisario man who came to me with tears in his eyes, may today find his spirits uplifted. The powers that backed Morocco’s case on Western Sahara are giving out signals that they may no longer be interested in playing imperialism. In fact, Russia and the US are inching towards a referendum in the territory.

A hilarious image in my mind is that of Ambassador K.V. Rajan, trapped right in the middle of this sport of recognition and non recognition. After Gandhi had communicated his positive decision to Bendjedid, a high powered delegation of the Polisario floated into the Prime Minister’s chambers to thank him. It was all sealed but the decision would only be announced after the Washington visit for obvious reasons.

During the return journey, Foreign Secretary Ramesh Bhandari called up ambassador Rajan. “Hold your horses on the Polisario issue; there has been a change of heart.” But before the “change of heart” had been communicated, an elated Bendjedid invited Rajan and kissed him on both his cheek in true Arab style. When an ambassador is in the embrace of the President of a country of his (the ambassador’s) accreditation, he must not flinch. Just as Bendjedid began to celebrate, word reached Rabat. King Mohammad V was hopping mad. Former foreign secretary, M.K. Rasgotra, was flown to Rabat to mollify the King. It was an opera on a high scale.

John Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis yielded a classic, Essence of a Decision, by Professor Grahame Allison. What kind of scholarship would be possible on the decision and indecision under South Block’s masterly handling of the Polisario affair?

Today, let me add in parenthesis, the Polisario story is on a cusp of a change once again. And this change is a function of basic rethinking in Washington the first glimpse of which was available in President Obama’s interview to Atlantic magazine in March 2016. He talked of “America’s inability to be everywhere.”

Another dramatic decision which was abruptly reversed also carried Rajiv Gandhi’s imprimatur. Ambassador Bajpai played a key role in having this decision reversed too.

A year after the Polisario fiasco, the US bombed Benghazi and Tripoli in April 1986, killing among scores of others, Qaddafi’s baby daughter. This somewhat inexplicable military action caused the foreign ministers of non aligned countries in conference in New Delhi to sit up and take note.

With Rajiv Gandhi’s “wholehearted” endorsement, a delegation of four foreign ministers, with India’s Bali Ram Bhagat as leader, left for Tripoli to commiserate with Qaddafi. After what Bhagat thought was a successful meeting in Tripoli, Bhagat possibly expected to be feted by the Prime Minister. May be the foreign office would hold a press conference.

Unbeknown to Bhagat, another script was being played out between Shankar Bajpai and the foreign office. Bajpai posed the question starkly: was India willing to forego a flourishing relationship with Reagan who, having laid the red carpet for Gandhi in June 1985 was laying yet another one in October 1987? And all in exchange for a “sentimental visit to Tripoli”? The answer to Bajpai’s query was contained in Rajiv Gandhi’s decisive action: Bhagat was shown the door out of the foreign office.

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US’s Afghan Terror “Assets” Will Weaken New Delhi’s Anti Pak Plaints

US’s Afghan Terror “Assets” Will Weaken New Delhi’s Anti Pak Plaints

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

 

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval must be given credit for resuming the Regional Security Dialogue to consider the radically new situation in Afghanistan after the messy US withdrawal. The initiative signals New Delhi’s entry in the playfield of Afghanistan from where its ambassador had hurriedly walked away at the first sight of the Taleban in Kabul. We were too deeply embedded with President Ashraf Ghani’s establishment, particularly former spy chief, and Tajik leader Amrallah Saleh.

And now reports suggests, the US may be proceeding towards a de facto recognition of Taleban, something Russia and countries around Afghanistan have been suggesting with one major proviso: the Taleban must include all ethnic groups in the government.

That Taleban was the ascendant power in Afghanistan was clear to New Delhi’s patron saints in Washington for years. Why else would the US Representative to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad sign a peace deal with Taleban in February, 2020? Surely the US had shared every detail with New Delhi on the navigation of the Doha talks. Nothing less should have been expected by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after his stellar performance at the Howdy Modi event in September 2019 at Houston, Texas. “Abki baar Trump Sarkar” Modi had proclaimed.

True, Pakistan and China, key players, were not present in the New Delhi meet. But so was not the US which, had it attended, would have got an earful from the Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, NSA from Iran.

“The whole world saw how the US military – based army and security system collapsed, like the US itself, causing the US to flee the country in disgraceful defeat. It is a lesson for everyone: instead of relying on their own resources they rely on a ‘weak power’ like the US.” He continued at his invective best. “The US has been deceitful in prohibiting Afghans access to what is their property”, namely the assets frozen in the US. Shamkhani pulled no punches on what he alleged was the US handiwork: the presence and expansion of Daesh (Islamic State) and other Takfiri terrorist groups in Afghanistan.

Others, like Russia and China have said it quite as openly elsewhere, but the Iranian NSA laid all the blame for “relocating terrorist groups” at the US door in a conference hosted by New Delhi.

I have in recent columns written about the US establishment’s role in promoting terrorism as an unstated asset. The distillate of this wisdom is available extensively in the columns of the New York Time’s Thomas Friedman.

The Friedman line of punditry maintains that fighting a group like the ISIS or Al Qaeda is self defeating because such outfits are sworn enemies of Assad in Syria, Shia militia’s in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and, their ultimate trophy, the Ayatollahs in Iran – all “our enemies” says Friedman. Shall we add China to Friedman’s list to complete this narrative?

New Delhi must have a view on this particularly now that the centre of gravity of the terrorism-as-an-asset doctrine is shifting next door to Afghanistan.

“Ab yeh sholay tere rukhsar tak aa pahunchey hain.”

(Now these flames are about to singe your face.)

The traditional belief in South and North block has been that this particular menace emanates from Pakistan. I generally fall back on an incident as a kind of parable to point out the conceptual limitation in New Delhi’s appraisal of terrorism.

Robert Blackwill was the US ambassador when George W Bush’s fireworks in Afghanistan began in October 2001. President Musharraf made a U-turn to fight the creatures and progeny of the very militants Pakistan had helped create, along with Saudi Arabia and the US to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. By 1989 that mission was accomplished.

Unemployed Mujahideen (plural for jehadis) fired by Islamic zeal, barged into Kashmir, Egypt, Algeria. They expanded and found a wholesale market for themselves in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan. In Afghanistan they gestated, mutated, fought a fierce civil war until, under US patronage once again, they found their feet and overran Afghanistan. TAPI or the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline began to look like a feasible proposition. Incidentally, at the NSA’s meet in New Delhi, Charymyrat Amanov of Turkmenistan hawked TAPI again, now that the territory is “hopefully” stable under Taleban.

At this point, let me revert to my parable. A somewhat carelessly self assured Taleban became hosts to Osama bin Laden. After 9/11 Osama became the prime target for the US war machine now gearing up for the global war on terror. When bombs rained on Afghanistan, Taleban’s Supreme leader, Mullah Omar and Ambassador to Islamabad, Abdul Salam Zaeef would brief the world media on the Pakistan side of the Durand line. Quite abruptly these cross border press conferences ended.

Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage bullied Musharraf to fall in line for the global war on terror as the coalition’s “frontline state”. When Robert Blackwill informed guests at his routine round table lunch about the “cheerful” news, he never expected angry retorts from such guests as the late Pranab Mukherjee, then an opposition leader. “For years we have been plagued by cross border terrorism from Pakistan”, said he with anger. “How can you incorporate Pakistan as the frontline state in your war on terror?”

Instead of remaining quiet, Blackwill twisted the knife. “Your’s is a regional quarrel with Pakistan” he said. “Pakistan has joined us in the global war on terror.” And now that reports are picking up in frequency about export of terrorism to Xinxiang, are these part of the US strategic calculus?

This extended diversion is to focus on India’s post Taleban dilemma. New Delhi may habitually keep pointing fingers at possible Pak perfidy against us in coordination with Taleban. But which way will New Delhi turn when our best friend the US develops an abiding interest in its terror “assets” to destabilize Xinxiang, China, with whom we are enlarging our conflictual stakes? And China’s inseparable friend is Pakistan, our sworn enemy. We meanwhile are squarely in the American camp. Does all of this not make the head swim?

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Nostalgia For Real Ram In Days Of Full Page Ads

Nostalgia For Real Ram In Days Of Full Page Ads

                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

The diyas or earthen lamps with which we decorate our walls and cornices every Diwali, and are outshone by electric bulbs around us, may not be such an anachronism any longer because they can now be home delivered by Amazon.

Full page newspaper ads announcing new Ram temples everywhere cause me to recede into nostalgia of Ram of my childhood, memories of that short, squat man in white who walked past our house chanting:

“Kahu kahu ma magan

Kahu kahu ma magan

Hum apne Ram, Ram karey ma magan

Jaa se laagi hai lagan”

(People are happy with this, or with that

I am happy chanting Ram Ram

Because He has settled in my heart.)

Dawn was not dawn without this chant fading away towards the Gomti River.

Aseemun, that splendid singer who graced our house in Mustafabad, had, in her repertoire, a song in which the master of the house marches off to Ayodhya to place before Ram a dispute he cannot settle. The man’s sister is demanding his wife’s “kangan” or gold bangle because she, the sister, has been praying for her sister in law to give birth to a “Lallana”. Now that the birth has taken place, the sister insists on a “neg” or an auspicious gift. Her eye is settled on the bangle the sister-in-law has brought as part of her “dahej” or trousseau. “My father gave it to me” she resists. “I cannot part with the only sentimental gift from my father.” The dispute goes to Ayodhya.

How exquisitely the Rama and Krishna legends mingle in Aseemun’s song.

Sheikh Ali Hazeem of Isfahan, who settled in Benaras, could never free himself of its spell:

“Az Benaras na rawam

Maabade aam ast eenja

Har Barahman pisar e Lakshman

O Ram ast eenja”

(I cannot leave Benaras

It is the kaaba for all.

Every Barahman here looks like

the very son of Ram and Lakshman)

I doubt if all those taking out ads for Ram would know that Abdul Rahim Khan e Khana is the author of the following verse on Ram written in Sanskrit:

“Ahalya, who had turned to stone because of a curse, became human when you touched her, O’Lord.”

You created an army of the righteous, Vanar Sena, from the animal kingdom;

You elevated a lowly “chaandal”.

“Despite my boundless adoration,

Lord, why do you not bestow on me the boon of your affections.”

How Ram Bhakti transforms itself into Hindi chauvinism is one of the many distortions of our time. In fact it is not even Hindi chauvinism but brazen anti Urdu politics. Enthusiasts who objected to “jashn” in a Fabindia ad are clearly unaware that Bharatendu Harishchand, who was in the vanguard of Khari Boli, today’s Hindi, was an accomplished poet of Urdu and Persian ghazal.

Like much else in Hindu civilization, Ram is a continuous part of Urdu poetry written by Muslims and Hindus. Two of the greatest poets of Awadhi are, chronologically, Malik Mohammad Jaisi and Tulsidas. The scent of this cultural soil permeates marsias or elegies focused on the battle of Karbala. The master of this genre, Mir Anees, who wrote in musaddas or sestet, becomes a model for Pandit Brij Narain Chakbast’s description of Ram’s banishment.

“Rukhsat hua woh baap se lekar khuda ka naam,

Raahe wafa in manzil e awwal hui tamaam”

(Head bowed, he parted from his father, it was God’s will

This was the first step on his fourteen year long journey)

I have found an excellent compilation by Rakhshanda Jalil. She quotes some poets I had not heard of –– Zafar Ali Khan, for example:

“Naqsh e tehzeeb e Hunood aaj numayan hai agar

To woh Sita se hai, Lakshman se hai aur Ram se hai.”

(Much that shines in Hindu civilization

Derives from Sita, Lakshman and Ram.)

There are plaints galore when politicians misuse Ram.

“Rasm o rivaj e Ram se aari hain shar pasand,

Raavan ki nitiyon ke pujari hain sher pasand.”

“Shar pasand” means those who derive advantage from conflict.

(Those promoting conflict have abandoned Ram’s message of love.)

Much before the Mandir-Masjid issue exploded, Josh Malihabadi describes a distraught Lakshman at any sign of social strife.

“Lakshman ka dil hai shiddat e ghum se phata hua,

Hai dar pe Ram Chandra ke Raavan data hua”

(Lakshman’s heart is shattered at the spectacle of hate;

The gate to Ram’s palace in Ayodhya is guarded by Raavan)

The phenomenon of Raavan doing duty at the gate has been particularly pronounced since December 6, 1992 when the Babari Masjid was demolished. There is no better footage of the immediate aftermath than a VHS copy of Newstrack, a pioneering effort by the India Today group. There is no relationship between the two, but Economic Liberalization and Babari Masjid demolition happened more or less at the same time.

Except Doordarshan, there was no independent TV channel. Liberalization boosted the market for consumer goods. Multiple channels were required to support the burgeoning advertising. But none of this was in place when the mosque was demolished. India Today launched a VHS Newstrack for home viewing. On one such cassette is an extraordinary record of celebrations in the vicinity of the rubble.

The first scene shows girls seated in a circle, clapping rhythmically to a song “Ab yeh jhanda lehrayaga saare Pakistan pe.” (This flag will flutter over Pakistan.) Next is a shot of fierce looking young men, virtually thrusting their lances into the camera” Bum girega Pakistan pe.” (Bombs will fall on Pakistan.) Next a Swami with wavy hair booms, “Abhi hamein Lahore jaana hai; Rawalpindi jaana hai.” (We have to reach Lahore, Rawalpindi) Where in all this is Ram?

That Ram Bhakt of my childhood in Lucknow, chanting his way to the Gomti River, would never have understood all that was happening in the name of his adorable God.

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US Expects No Terrorism From Afghanistan But Russia, China, Iran Do

US Expects No Terrorism From Afghanistan But Russia, China, Iran Do

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Terrorists cannot be trained with the fanciest weapons, pillowed with cash, drugged for violent killing and, after the assignment, expected to resume their lives as tax paying citizens. They have mutated into a different kind of life.

That is why Joe Biden has to be taken with a pinch of salt. “We withdrew from Afghanistan because our mission was over: Afghanistan would now never be used for terror attacks against the United States.” Maybe not against the US, but trained terrorists are in the drill for action against Iran, China, Russia, countries which are quaking with fear that Islamic extremists may target them. What on earth is going on?

Anyone watching the Syrian tragedy since 2011, cannot forget Abu Sakkar, the Free Syrian Army’s “heart eating cannibal”. Sakkar had actually ripped open an official Syrian soldier’s body, pulled out the liver and heart and bit into it. He became a prize item for TV features. Paul Wood of the BBC looked like a concerned psychoanalyst interviewing him. How do “independent” western journalists so quickly reach a Muslim cannibal in a war zone?

It was precisely to boost the Free Syrian Army’s ability that the CIA/Pentagon created a budget running into billions. Candidate Donald Trump told Jake Tapper of the CNN as much. In fact he went onto name his favourite culprits for the lavish budget – President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Trump may have exaggerated but he was not entirely wrong. After all there were TV clips of Obama’s Secretary of Defence, Ashton Carter chocking in front of cameras. He admitted that arms meant for the Free Syrian Army had landed with terrorists. To Gen. Lloyd Austin’s lot fell the ignominy of being grilled by the Senate Armed Services Committee about one of the many boo boos the US made in Syria. He is now Secretary of Defence. A group of “good terrorists” in one theatre for whom a project of $500 million had been budgeted simply walked away with loot in arms and cash. Asked how many hands trained on his watch were still in battle, Lloyd mumbled “four…..five”.

Against this perspective terrorism is something that “they”, the bad guys, indulge in, but when a peacenik President like Jimmy Carter, arranges for the Saudis to open their coffers for sums in excess of billions to fund hundreds of “madrasas” on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border, hundreds of thousands of Mujahideen are trained, stinger missiles are placed on their shoulders to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan and lo and behold the Mujahideen have acquired the halo of a martyr’s brigade.

Sometimes the problem for Americans is “American exceptionalism”. A number of clubs in the US play American football (different from Rugby), basketball, baseball and call it the World Series because in the American subconscious, the rest of the world is presumed beaten. Or it is irrelevant.

The rest of the world, meanwhile, keeps a steady gaze on the Americans as on a ticketless parade. For a non American journalist watching US affairs, the careless slip by, say, the US President, is priceless copy. Let me give you an example.

It is the summer of 2014. President Obama is livid with Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki for refusing to sign the Status of Forces agreement before US troops depart. Maliki has to be ousted.

On July 4, 2014, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi releases a video from Mosul’s main mosque. He declares the formation of the Islamic caliphate. Within months the Islamic state warriors in glistening new Humvees, hurtle towards Baghdad. I call up Iraqi contacts. “Yes US planes are pretending to bomb ISIS but the bombs are falling on the Shia militia.” And there are many of these in Iraq.

On August 14, 2014, Obama gives a wide raging interview to New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. “Why did you not order air strikes against ISIS just when it reared its head in June-July?” asks Friedman. Obama gives the game away in his response.

“If I had ordered a bunch of airstrikes then, it would have taken the pressure off Maliki.”

In September 2014, Maliki is shown the door.

Obviously, Obama knew that he was taking a likeminded journalist into confidence. Like a good journalist, Friedman did not betray his confidence (nor his steadfast convictions) while later advising Trump on Syria. “Why should our goal right now be to defeat the Islamic State in Syria?” He then asks the key question “Is it really in our interest to be focusing solely on defeating ISIS in Syria right now?”

“There are actually two ISIS manifestations” he writes. One is “virtual ISIS – it is Satanic, cruel and amorphous; it disseminates its ideology through internet. It has adherents across Europe and the Muslim world. In my opinion, that ISIS is the primary threat to us. Because it has found ways to deftly pump out Sunni jihadist ideology that inspires and give permission to those Muslims on the fringes of society, who feel humiliated from London, to Paris to Cairo – to recover their dignity via headlines grabbing murders of innocents.”

“The other incarnation is the territorial ISIS” he says. “It still controls pockets of western Iraq and larger sectors of Syria. Its goal is to defeat Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria plus its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies and defeat the pro Iran regime in Iraq, replacing both with a Caliphate.” which, by inference, is in the US interest. It would be tactless for an establishment columnist like Friedman to say it now, but he will at an opportune time. Are ISIS and its numerous variants not an “asset” even today in Afghanistan? Friedman gives you a clue into the thought processes in the US establishment.

On 13 October 2021, Vladimir Putin told a summit of ex-Soviet security forces that battle hardened terrorist are entering Afghanistan from Syria and Iraq. Iranian and Chinese leaders have said the same thing. Is it being pro American to ignore these warnings?

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