BBC Documentary: Thames Not On Fire, Why Is The Jamuna?

BBC Documentary: Thames Not On Fire, Why Is The Jamuna?

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

Sky high excitement about the BBC documentary, “India: the Modi factor”, caused me to connect with friends in London who I imagined would help me balance the column by comparing the British reaction to the war dance going on here.

First, let me clarify. This section of the column concerns the first part of the documentary which focuses on Godhra and, quite brazenly accuses the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi for having a hand in the killings. Reports of this episode having been telecast in London disturbed New Delhi. In one leap of uninformed decision making, New Delhi banned and blocked the screening of the documentary in India.

Ban a TV show, and you are guaranteed a record audience. These audiences materialized, falling back on every ingenious trick to download the contraband. What boosted the demand even more was the vocabulary employed by the spokesman. He accused the BBC of a “colonial mindset” which threatened India’s sovereignty and integrity.

Is the colonial affliction in the mind of the BBC? By diligent research and a range of interviews giving both sides of the story, it made a documentary which no Indian journalist even attempted? There have been brave hit-and-run cinema efforts but no journalism. Or is it an Indian malaise? On the pain of being repetitious, may I point to the NDTV setting aside a prime-time slot every week for a news episode canned by the BBC. Does India’s premier channel imagine that its BBC association enhances its prestige?

The overreaction in India is not without its irony. In the first paragraph to this column I had mentioned friends in London I contacted to gauge how widespread was the damage among BBC viewers in Britain.

Let me reproduce verbatim the conversation with a Labour party member of South Asian origin.

Q: How is the BBC documentary faring in Britain?

A: Which documentary? What’s it about?

Q: India: the Modi question. Part one blames Modi for having encouraged the riots by restraining the police from stopping the carnage. It was telecast in Britain last night. Surely there is some reaction in the British papers?

A: Nothing that I have seen.

The mist lifted only partly when I asked someone from the BBC. Yes, the India episode was telecast but only on BBC II which is even less inviting at 9.00 pm. So, there you are. The British TV viewer far from taking a malicious interest in India being shown in dismal light, took no interest in the show at all. The jitters, the banning, the consequent inflated viewership for the episode – all took place here.

The hullabaloo that followed telecasting of part one of the documentary which blamed Modi for having helped the riots were singularly absent during the part two telecast even though it was much more damaging to the regime for a simple reason: it focused on beef lynching, love jihad, hijab, disproportionate number of Muslim youth in jail without trial for years and decades – all contemporary, works in progress. The government escaped public ire because the public got to see the episode only sparingly. Why? Because there was no high voltage official reaction.

The official signals are mixed: hyper reaction to the first episode and dismissive indifference to the second which as I have said, being contemporary, is much more damaging.

This is not the way Navin Kumar of the growing portal “Article 19” sees the events. He sees the BBC effort not being different from the “Godi media”, or a media which is Modi’s lapdog.

Navin Kumar’s reasoning is straightforward. Elections to nine state assemblies are round the corner and joblessness, price rise, dubious record with the Chinese on the border are the unflattering bundle of issues Modi carries on his head. Modi and his cohorts are most comfortable with divisive, identity politics heavily focused on Hindu-Muslim issues which acquire an added edge of nationalism when Kashmir and Pakistan are added to the mix. How the BJP drums up its campaign will establish how prescient Navin Kumar has been.

New Delhi’s drawing rooms, particularly short on information in recent decades, have broadly divided themselves into two categories of chatterati. One is addicted to the social media like The Wire, The Print, The Citizen, News Laundry etcetera.

The other, with more tinsel upholstery, derives its intellectual staple from the channels and mainstream newspapers plastered with page one ads of the Prime minister, Chief Ministers, captains of industry and star students from the coaching class industry.

If there are a handful of takers for Navin Kumar’s conspiracy theory, there are others who see the documentary as a response to some persistent nagging by South Asian voters populating the constituencies of MPs belonging to the two main political parties. Remember, constituencies in the UK are much smaller, enabling greater direct contact between individual voters and party leaders.

Assuming this factor was at play, why a 21 year gap between Godhra and the screening of the episode? Jack Straw, who was the Labour Party Foreign Secretary at the time of the massacre, was revealing in his interview with Karan Thapar after the Godhra episode was telecast last week.

When the Gujarat pogrom erupted, as the country which had played a role in India, “we felt obliged to find out what had happened in Gujarat.” The British High Commission in New Delhi mounted a detailed inquiry, but the final report remained a confidential document in the Foreign Office presumably because Britain was averse to risking excellent relations with New Delhi. Modi, then only a Chief Minister was rapped on the knuckles. His visa was cancelled.

The Gujarat story was resurrected now possibly because the 2002 report was probably leaked to the BBC. A 21 year old report had to be padded with recent details which makes for part two of the documentary.

There is no end to speculation. The latest being that the BBC was the cat’s paw for the foreign office: Modi was being punished for having veered away from the Western line on Ukraine.

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Reviving Yatra on October 2 bad idea: Soufflé Rises Only Once

Reviving Yatra on October 2 bad idea: Soufflé Rises Only Once

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

There is a certain poetic power in politics of renunciation. As an immediate example just look at New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden: how elegantly she stepped out of the Prime Minister’s office into something possibly more permanent like a life of love and family.

It is difficult to apply the Jacinda model on Rahul Gandhi for two reasons: there is no Prime Ministership to renounce and no one has yet spotted an interest in marital love in his eyes. And yet a renunciation of “conventional” politics becomes Rahul more than a simulated aspiration for an elusive Prime Ministership.

In fact he may have found his vocation in leading the Bharat Jodo Yatra which has softened the national mood. It would be problematic to invoke in this context the movement inaugurated by Jayaprakash Narayan in the mid 70s.

JP was in political retirement when global and internal interests coalesced to search for a power centre other than Indira Gandhi. Détente was going badly for the West. Portuguese decolonization had brought communists directly into power in Angola, Mozambique and even Ethiopia. Euro communism was bubbling over. Nearer home, Sri Lanka sought Indian military help to quell the JVP (left) revolt in 1971.

A fact less noticed in Indian journalism is that communists were already in power in Kerala in 1957 and crawling towards a three decade long rule in Bengal and Tripura since the late 60s.

Indira Gandhi had become dangerous for the West after she split the Congress in 1969 and clasped the hand of communists like S.A. Dange, Secretary General of the CPI. The Times, London’s correspondent Peter Hazlehurst hit the nail on the head: “Indira Gandhi is slightly left of self interest.”

The JP movement targeted Indira Gandhi as the centerpiece in the growing pattern of leftism. While the JP movement targeted the left tendencies in the Congress, Bharat Jodo Yatra is creating an atmosphere in which the Congress can politically challenge the right – the obscurantist, divisive core of BJP’s politics. As far as economic policies are concerned, I doubt if much change has come in the thinking of the two major parties from the days of P. Chidambaram as Manmohan Singh’s Finance Minister. At a congregation of economists at the Nehru library, Chidambaram addressing his BJP counterpart, Arun Jetley seated in the front row said: “there is hardly any difference in our economic policies.” Whatever there is can be easily sandpapered.

The core Congress interests liaising with the Yatra probably had this in mind when they choreographed former Reserve Bank Governor, Raghuram Rajan seated by the roadside with Rahul even as the Yatra flowed by. Rajan spoke acceptable Hindi too for wider play. He has backers who have long insisted on some sort of second innings for him. I have seen Prannoy Roy of NDTV implore him in Davos: “Please, Sir, come back to India.”

Rahul’s Yatra is now in its final phase, dedicated to fly the national flag at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has bitter memories of another flag hoisting in Srinagar by the then BJP President Murli Manohar Joshi in 1992, when militancy was at its peak in the valley. Joshi’s Rath was stalled in Udhampur. Eventually he had to be flown to Srinagar for the flag hoisting. P.V. Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister was softer on the BJP then the BJP is likely to be on Rahul. Modi was an RSS volunteer accompanying Joshi. Will he concede a point to Rahul?

After completing the Kashmir leg of the Yatra, Rahul will come under inexorable pressure from those in the Yatra and those waiting in the tent with Congress President, Mallikarjun Kharge. In the run upto the 2024 General Elections, there are nine state elections which, by the narrative of Congressmen, will demand Rahul’s attention.

Recently, asked how the Yatra has affected him. Rahul gave an astonishing response. “I have killed Rahul Gandhi, he doesn’t exist anymore. The person you are looking at is not Rahul Gandhi – read Hindu scriptures – read about Lord Shiva, you will understand. Don’t be shocked. Rahul Gandhi is in your head, not mine. He is in the BJP’s head, not mine….” Is this not dangerous transformation?

The sheer momentum of walking thousands of miles with adoring crowds will be difficult to terminate. Congressmen aching to extract electoral advantage from a mood altering event will end up spilling whatever gains Bharat Jodo Yatra has bestowed on the party. Renunciation will begin to look like greed.

Rasping Congressmen will ask, “What then was this Yatra for?” Well, to combat the all pervasive politics of divisiveness and hate. Rahul puts it quite effectively. “I have seen people across caste and communal lines reach out to each other, embrace, converse, share – throughout these miles I have seen no hatred.” He contrasts this mood along the entire stretch of the Yatra to what he watches on the national TV. “24X7 Hindu-Muslim, Hindu-Muslim.” Some more effort is required for the capitalist controlling the media to note Rahul’s lament?

The widespread Congress party structure has clearly been enervated by the march. It should be able to extract advantage from an improved national mood without impeding the Yatra’s momentum.

And yet, Rahul, after all, is only human, his rapid pushups, incredible stamina notwithstanding. He can’t be expected to walk endlessly although at 52, he should keep past stalwarts in mind. Janata Party’s Chandrashekhar undertook a similar journey in chappals at the age of 63. Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 forced him to terminate his yatra. Some transport including the old Congress symbol of yoked bullocks can be brought into play in subsequent laps. In reasonable time the air will be cleansed to accommodate politics of issues not for two parties alone but for a federal India.

There is a suggestion that an East to West stretch of the march should be launched from Gandhiji’s birthday on October 2. Those who have bought this idea do not know that the soufflé rises only once, that a bhatura does not inflate twice.

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When 6,00,000 Indians Lost Power In Fiji, Did India Take Note?

When 6,00,000 Indians Lost Power In Fiji, Did India Take Note?

                                                                                   Saeed Naqvi

How would the Indian media respond if 6,00,000 people of Indian origin lost power in perpetuity in a remote Pacific island? Even if they had been incarcerated, I suspect the reaction would have been the same – ask Reuters to file more details.

When I read last week in The Economist a 1,000 word report on Fijian strongman Sitiveni Rabuka installed as the island nation’s Prime Minister for the third time, my mind went back to the frightful anti Indian coup staged by this very gent in 1987.

A series of coups and Prime Ministerships has made Rabuka a familiar figure. Searching for him in the summer of 1987 was like looking for the yeti.

What had happened was this. After the first ship bringing Indian labourers to Fiji under the indenture system in the 19^th century, clearly devised to circumvent the abolition of slaves in 1833, the Indian population just grew and grew. There was plenty of work on the sugar plantations and plenty of Ngona, Fijian bhang to relax on.

The Imperial centre of authority began to decolonize – but not if colonies rejected freedom. Fiji refused to accept independence in the 60s: “Please let us be with you.” The Chiefly order implored the Queen.

Willy nilly, in 1970 Fiji was free, creating space for the 6,00,000 people of Indian origin to dream of elections. Finally in 1987, the occasion found the man: Timoci Bavadra a Fijian medical doctor, gave Indians equal participation in the Labour Party he founded. Mahendra Chaudhry and Dr. Satendra Nandan were others in the vanguard.

Then the historic cabinet was announced – eight ministers of Indian origin and eight local, Melanesian Fijians. Just when the island was celebrating multiculturism for the first time in history, came the rumbling of armoured carriers. Parliament House was pulverized. Slowly, hotels were filled with journalists from Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the usual western news centres. Even though the entire story was about disenfranchising Indians, not a solitary Indian journalist showed up.

Silly of me to have hoped that Indian journalists would show up. They never do. It is an article of faith with Indian journalists that they never will see world events with their own eyes.

Eversince power came into the hands of TV channels, things have become much worse. Each one of the channels has an arrangement with CNN, Reuters, BBC, Fox News and so on. Indian channels cover Indian news while the International channels dole out footage on major events like the Ukraine war at its peak. Well before the takeover of NDTV by Adani, the channel with inexplicable obsequiousness, telecast a weekly, prime time programme by BBC. “Atmnirbhar” (self sufficient), did someone say?

As I said if 6,00,000 people of Indian origin were to be disenfranchised overnight, it is unlikely the news would make a splash. Remember 1987 was about five years away from the channels explosion. Against this backdrop, for me to exert every muscle to interview the coup leader, Rabuka, made little sense. But then some of us are habitual journalists, competing against ourselves for stories.

My meeting with Rabuka took shape quite accidentally after my meeting with the Governor General, Ratu Penaiya, a man so tall that his shank muscles looked the size of Moghul columns. I have always wondered why cricket was never introduced in the most “loyal” of British colonies? In Fiji, Joel Garner would be counted among players of moderate height. If a Melanesian fast bowler, 7+ in height, delivered the hard cricket ball from the height of a minaret, injury to any batsman would be fatal. I suspect that is why the British discouraged the native Fijians from cricket. It would have been suicidal. Instead, they were encouraged to play Rugby.

The Rabuka interview was manufactured on the way out of the Governor General’s mansion. I was being escorted by one of Ratu Penaiya’s staff, wearing kilts like a Scottish highlander. When I turned to him for the phone number of Rabuka’s staff, he somehow thought that I had the clearance from CG to obtain the top secret number. To secure the interview, I made a call from the CG’s office. In the Chiefly System this would be persuasive.

In the context of times, the interview revealed a great deal. It was elementary that a system controlled by Melanesian chiefs who owned all the lands, would never accept an Indian parity, leave alone Indian preponderance in the power structure. Yes, Rabuka said it in so many words. There was no guile or diplomacy about everything else he revealed.

In the Cold War, ANZUS, a defence arrangement involving US, Australia and New Zealand, was crucial. Fiji was too strategically important to be “sub contracted to Indians.”

Fiji’s geopolitics today is conditioned by different players.

In 1987, the Cold war was with the Soviet Union. Today Rabuka sees himself as a bulwark against ever increasing Chinese investments. For instance, one Chinese company owns the goldmines. Another is well on its way to monopolizing bauxite. Chinese concessional loans are responsible for new roads and bridges, poking Australia in the eye, Quad or no Quad.

In 1987, the Audio cassette containing the interview was priceless for Australia and New Zealand. I can never forget the eager face of Graeme Waters, New Zealand High Commissioner in New Delhi, imploring me for a copy of the interview. The Australians were chasing me through their High Commission in New Delhi. Sonia Shand was the political secretary most interested in what Rabuka said.

I thought I would share it with my Indian friends first. It turned out, that none of them were interested in the affairs of a remote island in the pacific. But 6,00,000 people of Indian origin? The Indian population now has shrunk to 3,50,000. These were progeny of Indian indentured labour, two generations removed. The diaspora in the US would be another kettle of fish. How can you compare, silly – isn’t the US the land of milk and honey where we like to park all our offspring and ourselves?

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Rahul’s Yatra Changing National Mood; Don’t Chase Electoral Rewards In Hurry

Rahul’s Yatra Changing National Mood; Don’t Chase Electoral Rewards In Hurry

                                                                                   Saeed Naqvi

At 52, one thing Rahul Gandhi has confirmed is his physical fitness by walking 2000 miles for his Bharat Jodo Yatra and looking none the worse for it.

This he had established beyond any shadow of a doubt during his visit to Tamil Nadu. Priests and teachers of St Joseph’s Higher Secondary school watched Gandhi outshine their champion athlete in rapid pushups. Just in case there were school partisans still rooting for their champion, Rahul went down for a one hand push-up like a gymnast. For him to have walked nearly 2,000 miles already, at 15 miles every day deserves a round of applause.

Equipped with extraordinary stamina and fitness, Rahul Gandhi is embarked on a Kanyakumari to Kashmir march which has acquired the potential of altering the national mood. Heaven knows if one thing needs to be changed it is the foul national mood. That is the critical point the coteries clustering around him must realize. The yatra if marketed as an electoral asset, will fall flat. What the yatra has achieved is way beyond what the skeptics anticipated. They have been proved wrong and I include myself in the category. A suffocated nation was waiting for some such happening.

Ironically, it is the apparent invincibility of the BJP with its ever increasing hate culture that is turning out to be an asset for the “Bharat Jodo” Yatra. Hindutva and hate provide a stark backdrop to the march. Had the hate content been minimized, choked emotions would not have been powerful enough to become a movement galvanized on a platform of love and cohesion. It cannot yet be classed as a movement but that is the direction in which it is headed provided Rahul can keep the affairs of the Congress party and those of the yatra in separate channels. One will influence the other, ofcourse, but one has not been made for the other.

There is a party hierarchy regularized under Mallikarjun Kharge, whose job it must be to extract whatever advantage it can from the national mood which the yatra is changing.

Clues have been available to us from much earlier about the thoughts gestating in Rahul’s mind, but he was never able to quite articulate them. For instance his performance at the Confederation of Indian Industries in April 2013. For full 75 minutes, Rahul walked up and down the stage at the CII, where a hall packed with captains of industry were eager to know his mind on economic reforms and foreign policy. But Rahul was on his own song.

“Not more than 200 select the 5,000 or so candidates who are elected Members of Parliament and State Assemblies.” His point was that an abysmal gap exists between the country’s elected representatives and the 1.2 billion they represent. Unless the party system embraced the village panchayats in its policy making mechanism, the Congress would remain a party alienated from the people.

What Rahul said was not wrong, but he showed himself up as someone devoid of a sense of occasion. At another function he held forth on his train journey from Gorakhpur to Mumbai. Again completely out of place. On the way he met Girish the carpenter, with stars in his eyes, in whom Rahul spotted high aspirational levels. His homespun yarn did not create much of an impression. But what became clear was his disinterest in drawing room chatter. Indeed his desire to connect with the ordinary people of India was clear from the very beginning. And now, he must have had a surfeit of it in the course of Bharat Jodo Yatra.

And the things he has been able to say would not have been possible without the popular upsurge backing him. A speech like the one he made at the Red Fort would have been met by heavy police bandobast had Rahul not won hearts and minds by leading the March.

He described the establishment (in which he counted Adani, Ambani by name) as “pick-pockets” who have mobilized the entire media to telecast “Hindu-Muslim, Hindu-Muslim, Hindu-Muslim 24x7 to saturation point.” I suspect he is making the same mistake with the “pick-pocket” image which he did with “Chowkidar chor hai” during Rafale. To differentiate himself from the rabble rousers on the opposite side, he must be careful about his vocabulary.

“I have walked thousands of miles and met hundreds of thousands of people of all faith mingling, embracing each other, shaking hands, making friends – it has been an open yatra. Not once was there even an iota of hate – It was friendliness and bonhomie all along. And then, you watch our TV – the same hate, Hindu-Muslim.”

“Do you know what a pick pocket needs most to pick your pockets?”

“Razor blade” screams the audience. Razor blades comes into operation later: first the pick pocket must distract your attention. Hindu-Muslim is just that distraction so that he can cheat you out of your economic stakes, jobs, prices, shortages, education…..”

“Look behind you” he said pointing to the Jain Mandir, Shiv Mandir, Gurudwara, Jama Masjid: “this harmony is India.”

Now comes Amit Shah’s announcement. “Ram Mandir will be opened on January 1, 2024.” He may as well have added – “preparatory to the General Elections.”

The Hindu-Muslim content in the TV debates which Rahul has brought out in such bold relief have revealed what Hindutva will harp on during 2024 elections: Gyan Vapi and the Shahi Masjid for instance. The strategy of “pick pockets” continues.

Kharge and all the senior Congress leaders must begin to strategize accordingly. This, however, is not the time for Rahul to terminate the yatra. One realizes that the human machine must show signs of wear and tear. In which case, we must think of alternate ways to travel from East India to the West. The aim to fly the tricolor in Srinagar may be challenged by the establishment. Rahul’s leadership will be on test. Then, he must complete the East-West loop and not be impatient with a priceless opportunity.

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