Manmohan Singh: Decency in Public Life
Saeed Naqvi
The spontaneous outpouring on Dr. Manmohan Singh’s death reflects on the widespread yearning for decency we have lost lot in public life.
I remember with affection the occasion when he turned up at the Habitat Centre for the screening of a collection of short films on composite culture – e.g. Abdul Rahim Khanekhana’s Sanskrit verse on Lord Rama, Hasrat Mohani’s adoration for Krishna committed to verse in Urdu, Awadhi and Braj Bhasa; Munshi Chunnilal Dilgir’s pre Anis Marsias on the tragedy of Karbala and so on.
He waited for the audience to thin, then waved to me. “What a beautiful country we are spoiling.” He surprised me by repeating a couplet with which every episode in the series opened:
“Uske farogh e husn se jhumke hai sub mein noor
Sham e haram ho ya ki diya Somnath ka”
(His light permeates all;
The lamp in Kaaba; the diya at Somnath.)
“That’s Mir Taqi Mir” I said.
“I read poets other than Iqbal also” he laughed.
Second Term: Third power centre
Manmohan Singh second term, beginning 2009 was something of a surprise to him. Before the result, the Prime Minister had begun to advise his confidantes to look for other pastures. But the increase in the number of seats from 145 in 2004 to 206 in 2009 was attributed to a certain “youth surge.” The expression boosted Rahul Gandhi’s standing. This created problems for the party managers. The bipolarity at the top, the Congress President and the PMO, was already preoccupying pundits. Was Rahul, riding a supposed Youth surge, likely to be the third power centre?
Biting his finger nails, Ahmad Patel would talk of Rahul like he had seen an apparition. A suggestion gained currency that Rahul should be absorbed in the Union Cabinet. This would be just the sort of apprenticeship which would equip Rahul for the bigger stage being planned for him. Would that not have given him the slot he needed?
x x x x
Congress President during the emergency Deb Kant Barua once invited Rishi Kumar Mishra, Editor of Patrol for a hush-hush conversation on the lawn of his house where there was no fear of the exchange being bugged. Furtively a crumpled piece of paper, names of three Congress leaders scribbled on it, was handed to Mishra. Indira Gandhi needed Mishra to find out with some urgency their ideological antecedents, specifically “how close were they to the Americans.” Remember, this was not long after Congress President Shankar Dayal Sharma’s obsession with the ubiquitous “foreign hand”.
Mishra’s self esteem boosted by such abundant faith in his resourcefulness by the most powerful leader in the land, spurred Mishra to swift action! As he dug deep into his Top Secret assignment and found himself nearing the end of the tunnel, he received a high voltage shock one morning. The three names in the crumpled piece of paper adorned page one headlines in the newspapers. The three had been absorbed in the Union cabinet.
A cheated Mishra turned up at Barua’s office seething with rage. Anticipating the storm that was about to break, threatening the glass top table, Barua held him by the hand shared with Mishra his most succinct interpretation of the apparent double cross.
“One way to monitor recalcitrants in the party was to sterilize them in the cabinet system.”
x x x x
The excitement about Hungarian – American billionaire George Soros trying to do in India what the US is doing elsewhere – bring about regime change – takes my mind back to Donald Trump’s first term, 2016 to 2020. A huge influence in the White House in Trump’s earlier months, Steve Bannon, spent months, after giving up his White House job, across western democracies identifying Right Wing leaders like Marine Le Pen (France), Nigel Farage (UK), or Bolsario (Brazil), who would easily fit into the category of fascist for some future global coalition. At about the same time George Soros, the other capitalist ideologue was searching for the “liberal” like a needle in a laystack.
A Soros story I value is set in the Bosnian war 1992-96. During this calamitous war, was played out the siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital – a year longer than the siege of Leningrad and the longest siege of any capital city in history.
A story of brave journalism that deserves to be celebrated, annually if possible, concerns Sarajevo’s oldest newspaper, Oslobojema. How did the journalists of this newspaper manage to produce the daily regularly, without fail for the 1,440 days that the siege lasted and during which over 15,000 people were killed?
When we asked for the address of Oslobojema, people in Sarajevo pointed their finger in one direction. We scanned the horizon without being able to see any building.
There was no building to be found, only a huge heap of a debris. This must have been a multistoried structure. From beneath the debris light shimmered like lamps in a graveyard. It was a trek not a walk through broken brackets and slanted slabs of cement and concrete. I was able to recognize the editor, Kemal Kurspahic from our meeting at the Non Aligned Summit in Belgrade in 1989, a year before Yugoslavia broke up, leading to the Bosnian war of which the siege of Sarajevo was the crowning tragedy.
Kemal was no longer a lively, gregarious journalist, strong of elbow, knocking back an improbable rounds of schnapps. Now he had a mark on his forehead which devout Muslims develop as proof of multiple sajdas or the act of placing the forehead on the ground for supplication.
“That’s a huge change”, I said, pointing to his forehead.
“That is what happens when the world abandons you” he said.
Despite unbelievable odds in the midst of a raging war, it was almost miraculous that Oslobojema hit the stalls on a daily basis. Above all such an enterprise required a steady source of finance. Who financed this paper for Bosnia’s pre dominantly Muslim population? “You really want to know.” Kemal asked looking at me severely.
“George Soros.”
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