Macron: “I Must Admit Western Hegemony Coming To An End”

Macron: “I Must Admit Western Hegemony Coming To An End”

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

Now that French President Emmanuel Macron has, in so many words, declared that “western hegemony may be coming to an end”, the conflict in Ukraine, the real fighting, may expand to theatres where US and Russian proxies may be available to attack and be attacked. If the conflict follows this pattern, strategists will have to sort out whether having more military bases is an advantage or a handicap?

The fear that the conflict could spread increased after Ukraine, prodded by the US, attacked Crimea which Russia claims as its territory. The Russian foreign office has made it clear: any further US encouragement to extend the war to Crimea will mean that the US is part of the conflict.

Escalation of the conflict by either of the two principal combatants, Moscow or Washington (Ukraine is only the West’s chosen turf) would become imminent if any one side appears to be losing. Neither side can afford to lose the Ukraine war because defeat would imply an unfavourably altered world order.

The French statement which would obviously demoralize the West was not made in public. But it will do even more damage because it was a detailed, cogently argued presentation by the French President before an audience of senior French diplomats and envoys in a closed door, internal meeting. Titled, “Macron surveys the end of western dominance”, this internal document has been leaked.

France, the UK and the USA have made the West great for 300 years Macron said. In his view, the three contributed in the following way: “France is culture, England is industry and America is war.” Is he mocking at the US?

“We are used to this greatness which gives us absolute dominance over the global economy and politics – but things are changing.”

He dwelt on “wrong choices” made by a series of US Presidents long before Trump “Clinton’s China policy, Bush’s war policy, Obama’s world financial crisis.” In this astonishing obituary of Western power, Macron then turns to “our underestimating the rise of emerging powers, not just two years ago but as early as ten or twenty years ago.” He insists that “that China and Russia have achieved great success over the years under different leadership styles.” In Macron’s world view, India looms too. “China, Russia, India, these countries compare well with the US, France and UK.”

The political imagination of these countries “is far stronger than today’s Westerners.” He himself was shocked: China has lifted 700 million people out of poverty….. but in France “the market economy is increasing income inequality at an unprecedented rate.”

It is nice that almost a decade after publication, Thomas Piketty’s Capital In The 21^st Century, a French statesman is taking note. Macron has candidly analysed, though not in these words, his own party having been trounced in the recent National Assembly Elections. Macron is at present hemmed in by the Left alliance led by the charismatic Jean-Luc Melenchon and the far right, Marine Le Pen. What Macron does not mention is that at the sight of a larger than life Melenchon making a bid for the Prime Ministerial chair, the centrists with him, helped the ultra right, Le Pen, to increase her seat share. This increasingly is a pattern in Western democracies: people’s demands articulated by the Left, threaten the Capitalists structure on which centrists stand. With their control over instruments like the media they divert discontent by raking up issues of identity which is the staple for the far right everywhere. This is the crisis of Macron style Centrism in France as elsewhere.

This is not the first time that French exceptionalism has punctured the façade of Western unity. We do not have to go far into history. Charles De Gaulle’s exceptionalism once famously drove him to end his speech in Quebec (Canada) with the French trade mark Vive la France. Churchill and Roosevelt found him conceited. He was convinced they conspired against him.

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine would not tire in the late 90s describing the US as a “hyperpower” which needed to be contained by a stronger UN system. “The US supremacy extends to economic power, currency, technology, military, lifestyle, language and the products of mass culture that inundate our lives and which even the enemies of the US long for.” Is this admiration or envy?

President Francois Mitterand was the most reluctant to join the “coalition of the willing” that Margaret Thatcher and President Bush Sr were drumming up for operation Desert Storm. He knew it was an operation to keep the Anglo-Americans on top of the post-Cold war world order. A reunified Germany was another anxiety. Commercial interests forced him to join.

In 2003, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, when the sole superpower moment shone bright, it was French exceptionalism which argued against the misadventure. The intervention by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is difficult to forget: his was the only statement against the strong current at that charged UN Security Council session. Later, Villepin, as Prime Minister was even more blunt: France knew Americans did not wish to pursue the inspections route to establish the presence of weapons of mass destruction. “They wanted to invade and occupy.”

Macron has rolled up his sleeves when the US is in decline.

He has left room for deniability: he has, after all, only spoken to his officials in confidence. He must have known that the bombshell would explode. He has spelt out a new security architecture for Europe with room for Russia in it, a European army, a French strategy for the Indo-Pacific with the US. “France will promote a better integration of China’s new silk route with the European connectivity strategy.”

The rapidly changing global situation has placed India at a sweet spot, opening new strategic options on all sides. US decline post Ukraine likewise, encourages France to see itself as a Western power, with options all around. In the French framework the US is only one among equals.

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Rushdie’s Assailant: “My Name Is Legion For We Are Many”

Rushdie’s Assailant: “My Name Is Legion For We Are Many”

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

Salman Rushdie was dead right when he described the banning of the Satanic Verses in India nine days after its publication in London as “political football”. The expression seems innocuous today but it spelt a world scoop for Madhu Jain, Principal correspondent for India Today, who had spoken on the phone to Rushdie in London.

Jain had special access to the author because she had “pigeoned” the controversial pages of the manuscript for India Today. References in those pages mocking the Prophet was like pouring oil into a blazing cauldron of communalism. Communalism was at fever pitch after the upturning of the Shah Bano judgement by Rajiv Gandhi, a brazen effort to consolidate the Muslim vote. With ratlike cunning, the Prime Minister’s men rushed to balance the situation: they opened the locks of Ram Mandir, promised Ram Rajya.

Later, to keep the Muslim flock in his electoral enclosure he banned The Satanic Verses. Then he proceeded to lay the foundation of the Ram Mandir to win Hindu support. Sheikh bhi khush rahey, shaitaan bhi naraz na ho” (keep the Mullah and Satan in good humour at the same time). He crashed between many stools.

This was the torrid hothouse atmosphere into which Satanic Verses were tossed. Could not a calmer place have been chosen to test the waters? Rajiv Gandhi’s paranoia about the “Muslim” vote was because of the way his party understood his (3/4^th) three fourth majority in Parliament after the 1984 elections. Congress stalwarts saw in the results solid Hindu consolidation against Sikh extremism in Punjab.

Hindu consolidation against one community can easily mutate into consolidation against the biggest minority. So this business of Hindu consolidation is not just a Hindutva dream, it was Rajiv Gandhi’s pipe dream too.

In his letter to Rajiv Gandhi on October 7, two days after the ban, Rushdie pulled no punches: the book has been banned with “devilish forethought”.

Among his statements around the time of the ban, Rusdhie offers the diagnosis for Muslim anger: I am not “reverent” enough, he said.

Cultures have different grades of irreverence as my first visit to the UK in the 60s revealed. Watching BBC on Christmas Day in London was something of a culture shock. A standup comedian was trying to regale us:

“If every day was Christmas

by some fantastic trick,

If every day was Christmas

we’d all be bloody sick.”

The next scene was a row of panties fluttering on a line. A man, obviously selected for looking like a debased lecher speaks with sensuous deliberation:

“You would wonder what these have to do with Christmas?

Well, these are Carol’s”

Shakespeare would probably put this low humour to characters in the “pit” – Pistol, Bardolf and Nym.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem on Jesus is not exactly low brow irreverence when he describes Christ on the Cross:

“Him just hang there on his tree

Looking real Petered out and real cool

And also

According to a roundup of late world news

From the usual unreliable sources, Real Dead”

Of the multiple personalities that make up a human being, this was the part of me which recites a brief portion of the poem with relish. The part of me which rejoices in Ferlinghetti’s irreverence was quite clearly groomed at school.

The abiding part of me was shaped by my extended family, the sherwani clad boyhood with a surfeit of Urdu poetry, verses bristling with irreverence but never ever mocking at Mohammad and his family.

“Ba khuda deewana baash o

ba Mohammad hoshiyar.”

(Take liberties with God; Be careful with Mohammad).

This was the red line.

When Chandra Bhan Brahman crossed this red line he knew he had protection in powerful places. He was Dara Shikoh’s Prime Minister. He could therefore write with aplomb.

“Panja dar panjaye Khuda daram

Mun che parwaaye Mustafa daram”

(My hand is in God’s hand;

Why should I worry about Mustafa)

Brahman’s irreverence is of an elegant order. By placing his hand in that of God, he has already protected himself. He leaves the Prophet’s supporters in a bind. They cannot pelt stones at him for holding God’s hand. In any case, whatever Brahman was saying had a restricted audience.

Rushdie mocking at the Prophet, his wives and messages from God is in a globalized world of instant communication when the salacious passages can be discussed in magazines published oceans away and thereby create mayhem and push sales.

Did Rushdie flourish the red rag to agitate the bull? In 9^th century Spain (Andalusia) forty eight, 48, Christian Bishops sought martyrdom by cursing Islam and its Prophet regularly to invite the harshest punishment from the Muslim authorities.

Muslim rule in Spain, which began in 711 AD and lasted for about 800 years, had created a harmonious society of Muslims, Jews and Christian. Cordoba with one of the world’s most magnificent mosques, was counted among the largest cities of Europe. Sleeping cells of the Church were in deep thought. Martyrs were needed to awaken the Christian flock.

One Bishop at a time would curse the Prophet in front of the Mosque. An administration, reluctant to disturb the peace was, willy nilly, provoked to act against the Bishops who, quite ironically, were themselves seeking martyrdom. This was one of the points of ignition which ultimately led to Spain’s “Reconquesta” in 1492.

Clearly, in my limited experience, irreverence for Christ is not a matter of life and death on the scale that irreverence for the Prophet is among Muslims. I suspect the tolerance level for taking liberties with the great Sikh Gurus would be zero. Hinduism, spectacular but with caverns of deep thought was once gloriously flexible and accommodating. It is becoming a brittle, congregational faith. But with Islamophobia as a sort of norm for our times, Rushdie and Satanic verses will encroach on the world’s attention now and then indefinitely for “political football”.

As for Hadi Matar, the assailant, well, he could well be the devil who told Jesus: “My name is legion, for we are many.”

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Mustafabad’s Tragedy: It Believed Everything Nehru Told Them 75 Years Ago

Mustafabad’s Tragedy: It Believed Everything Nehru Told Them 75 Years Ago

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Last three decades since independence have placed on many of us a burden of identity. The drift towards Hindu majoritarianism has aggravated this sense to a point of anxiety. I know people gripped by it 24/7. Identity pinned onto you by rampaging majoritainism induces a sort of lonesomeness. “Is bhari duniya mein hum tanha nazar aaney lagey” (Among milling crowds, I stand out alone.)

This mood could be mistaken for creeping pessimism. That would be a mistake and which is difficult to explain. From his window poet Josh Malihabadi sees darkness slowly fill the vessel of the universe. Can the mood induced by day transiting into night be described as sadness? No, says Josh. It is a “subtle”, inexplicable mood experience:

“jis tarah kohrey pe ho

Jaata hai baarish ka gumaan”

(Sometimes mist creates an optical illusion of rain)

Stories of victimhood should be set aside because a larger tragedy stares us in the face: the Constitution under threat. But I must be forgiven for taking my eyes off these dark clouds because I am occasionally distracted by that chant at deafening decibel levels:

“Mussalman ke do sthan

Qabrustan ya Pakistan”

(The choice for Muslims: Graveyard or Pakistan)

And then, the bulldozers.

One escape from all of this gloom is nostalgia. It is 15 August 1949. The verandah of my uncle’s house in Rae Bareli is full of Congress grandees seated on the floor covered with a white sheet lined with Congress-trademark white upholstered sausage cushions. This is my intimidating audience. I am 9 year old. Imagine my nervousness when I am invited by my uncle, the first Congress MLA from Rae Bareli, to recite Kaifi Azmi’s poem on Independence:

“Naye Hindostaan mein hum nayee jannat basayenge.

Hum abki ghunche ghunche ko chaman bandi sikhaayenge.”

(We shall create a paradise in free India,

We shall teach every budding flower, the ways of the garden.)

Rae Bareli wings my imagination to 1857 when my ancestor, Mir Baqar and his twelve companions were hanged by the British from a tamarind tree outside the Collectorate. Mir Baqar was regularly supplying men and material to Rana Beni Madhav, who helped Begum Hazrat Mahal fight the British and escape to Nepal. Mir Baqar’s grandson, Mir Wajid Ali, was my great grandfather.

What would have been Gandhi’s attitude to the first war of Independence? Well, he called off the Chauri Chaura agitation in 1922 because protestors in support of non-cooperation, clashed with the police. The 1946 Mutiny by “privates” and sailors against the British Indian Navy caused such panic in London that Prime Minister Attlee dispatched the Cabinet Mission. But Gandhi and Patel were opposed to the mutineers. Nehru, on this occasion too was something of a Prince Hamlet.

Oh’ how we were kept in line by our elders on Nehru. I am now free to mention him by his sir name. In my boyhood, this was sacrilege. He had to be mentioned as “Panditji” or “Pandit Nehru”. If I were to extrapolate from the limited experience from Mustafabad to Lucknow, the undisputed leader of Indian Muslims until his death in 1964 was Nehru.

“He will never allow the country to be Partitioned” declared grandfather, with undiluted trust, a function of pure adoration. Even after 3 June 1947, Partition plan was announced, the gentility of Mustafabad, clung to their faith in “Panditji” who, they thought, will pull a rabbit out of the hat, bamboozle the back room boys, and embrace Maulana Azad and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in celebration.

Events followed a contrary route. At the crucial CWC meeting Maulana Azad nervously smoked a can full of cigarettes; the Frontier Gandhi wept “You have left us to the wolves.” But the gentle folk of Mustafabad would not give up until the inevitable happened: the spectre of Partition reared its head.

“What, Shahla is going to Pakistan?”

“No” grandfather was corrected. “She is going to Karachi.”

A measuring tape was placed on a map of India. Distances between Mustafabad and Bombay (where Shahla was married) and Mustafabad and Karachi, were compared.

“Distancewise not much of a difference”, an uncle mollified grandfather.

Partition did happen but Nehru was not to blame. Remember, those fateful 30 pages of Maulana Azad’s India Wins Freedom were still in the archives then. These pages were opened only in 1988. Azad thus avoided hurting his “friend and comrade Jawaharlal”. In those pages Azad pulls no punches. He lays the blame for Partition on Jinnah, ofcourse, but also on Nehru, Patel and even Gandhi for having buckled under pressure.

The elders had barely accepted the tragedy of divided families when the next shock came. Mustafabad was too small to be spoken to separately, but “Panditji” had privately told the Concorde of Taluqedars that the Congress would delay the implementation of its land reforms policy. This “Panditji” quite rightly though was absolutely necessary.

The Congress plank of land reforms left landlords vulnerable. The Hindu had taken to Western education with remarkable foresight. The Muslim opiated by the feudal system until 1947, had held onto his culture and language, leaving him unprepared for the challenges that democracy had abruptly placed at his door. Nehru understood that Muslims needed a little more time to create a middle class. With this end in mind he whispered in their ears yet another promise. He would delay the implementation of land reforms to give the community time to catch up. Govindacharya once observed that Atal Behari Vajpayee was only the “mukhauta” (mask) while backroom boys pushed in other direction. This seems to apply to Panditji as well. Nehru reassured the Muslim landed elite particularly in Awadh, that they would be given time before Congress comes in full throttle with its socialism. Barely had the promise been made than Govind Ballabh Pant implemented land reforms in 1952.

What descended on our house in Mustafabad was not quite penury but a dark foreboding of an altered lifestyle.

My grandfather died in 1964, exactly when his abiding icon “Pandit Nehru” did.

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Why Congress Opposed Naval Mutiny Which Led To August 15?

Why Congress Opposed Naval Mutiny Which Led To August 15?

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

It is nice to remember the 1946 – Royal Indian Navy Mutiny just a few days before we celebrate our Independence Day. It is not just a neglected event in the history of Independence but one that was suppressed equally by the colonial masters as well as by leaders of the Congress. In fact, the Congress remained so gripped by paranoia of the traumatic event that its government in Bengal as late as 1965 tried every trick in the book to stop Utpal Dutt’s “Kallol” (Storm), a play based on the mutiny, from being staged. Despite Congress obstructions, the play was staged at Minerva theatre to record audiences. Scholar Ashis Nandy, also in the audience, is a witness to its popularity. These are some of the layers to the unputdownable narrative Pramod Kapoor has woven around the historic event in a well researched book.

The Naval Mutiny of February 1946 was the greatest embarrassment the British faced. Britain, after all, boasted of an Admiralty. Brittania ruled the waves for nearly two centuries.

A riveting part of the book is the conspiracy before the spark was ignited by the “privates” (non commissioned officers) and sailors. Who were the politicians involved? Where did the conspirators meet? How did they escape British Intelligence consisting largely of “loyal” Indians?

In his advance praise for the book, film maker Shyam Benegal introduces a nugget about one Balai Dutt “barely out of his teens” among the Mutiny’s leaders. Later, Dutt, a staunch communist, rose to become an advertising executive in Lintas which Benegal joined as a copy writer. This is when Benegal read the Mutiny of the Innocents, Dutt’s insider account of the Mutiny, much before it was published. Popular historian William Dalrymple asks a pertinent question: “could 1946 have turned into a rerun of the Great Uprising of 1857?”

The book places something of a dampener, on the romantic image that many have nurtured of our national leaders – Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel as “fighters” against the British. All of them appear to be more sympathetic to the British than to the ratings who had ignited a massive rebellion against discrimination and poor rations. It was a popular uprising against the British. Why was the Congress opposed to it?

What must have rung alarm bells in London and conservative Indians like Gandhi, Patel and Jinnah was the fact that the leadership of the uprising was with the Communist Party of India. Leaders like S.A. Dange, who later became Secretary General of the Party were in the vanguard as were leaders of the left wing of the Congress party like Aruna Asaf Ali. Nehru’s dilemma was acute. He was anxious about the left faction of the Congress: what if it deserts the party, thereby weakening him?

After extensive planning by the “plotters” (writes Kapoor) “the fuse was ignited on Monday, 18 February. Kapoor extracts a quote from historian Sumit Sarakar’s Modern India: “the afternoon of 20 February saw remarkable scenes of fraternization, with crowds bringing food for the striking ratings at the Gateway of India and shop keepers inviting them to take whatever they needed.” And the Congress opposed this?

The mutiny spread to 78 ships, 21 shore establishments and over 20,000 ratings. “In less than 48 hours, it had crippled one of the most formidable navies of the Second World War. There were pitched battles. Hundreds were killed.

It impacted severely on the leadership of the Congress and the Muslim League who were making cow eyes at the British as a matter of tactics. Freedom, they seemed to have reckoned, would come as a reward for good behaviour not by scaring the British – sinking their Armada, for instance.

On the opposite side was a mesmerizing, vocal galaxy: Prithviraj Kapoor, Salil Chowdhry, Balraj Sahni, Zohra Sehgal, Utpal Dutt, Aruna Asaf Ali, Minoo Musani, Ashoka Mehta, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Josh Malihabadi, Sahir Ludhianvi, and a host of others.

Hindustan Standard of 28 February has its page 1 cluttered with reactions of Congress leaders. Gandhi’s reaction is a banner across five columns.

Gandhi opposed Aruna Asaf Ali’s call: “I would rather unite Hindus and Muslims at the barricades, than on the constitutional front.” Gandhi’s response, “the barricade life has to be followed by the constitution.” According to Gandhi, Aruna “betrays want of foresight in disbelieving British declarations and precipitating a quarrel in anticipation.”

The same page has Maulana Azad, President of Congress, arguing that “the national spirit must not be suppressed.” Sardar Patel on the other hand is worried about “the mass awakening being exploited” by others.

Who are the “others”? This is the crux of the matter.

That the Navy, the pride of Brittania, was so vulnerable was disconcerting enough. What really set the cat among the pigeons in Westminster was the rapid gains being made by the communists in India and globally.

Although the Telengana uprising occupied newspaper headlines only in July 1946, intelligence reports on the massive underground network was available to the British much earlier. Beyond India Mao’s long march was in its final stages when mutiny erupted in the Navy.

In the 40s and the 50s, just as colonialism was receding, Imperialism was being challenged by communist expansion in Korea particularly after China crossed the Yalu river in 1950. In 1957, the first communist government through the ballot box was installed in Kerala. These events happened later but the Imperial establishment had sensed the wind blowing in one direction.

As soon as the mutiny expanded, Clement Atlee’s government in London, dispatched the Cabinet Mission, replaced Lord Wavel by Lord Mountbatten, set 30 June1948 as final date for independence.

Mountbatten brought the date forward to August 15. Mountbatten swiftly grasped the message from London: hand over power to leaders the British had cultivated, leaders who were “people like us”. Considering the left wave sweeping the world since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, there was every danger of the ground being cut from under feet of the “moderate” politicians in India the British had struck a rapport with.

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