Saeed Naqvi

Indian Vote at UN Notwithstanding, Syria Not Falling Soon

2012-02-13T09:27:00.001+05:30

Indian Vote at UN Notwithstanding, Syria Not Falling Soon
Saeed Naqvi

Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Roshomon, is an examination of the same reality from different perspectives.

Syria today would lend itself admirably to the Roshomon treatment. Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the supervising deity of all the Arab regimes who are most reliably in the US camp, Saudi Arabia, all have distinct perspectives on Syria, with some overlaps.

Powers arrayed against Bashar al Assad of Syria are exactly the ones which transformed a no-fly-zone into regime change in Libya.

In fact, like road repair gangs working on different stretches of a highway, one stretch at a time, the same gang of Arabs and their western minders are proceeding from Libya to Syria to…..sorry, hang on. Syria is proving to be a much tougher project than earlier imagined.

There are various reasons why Assad has to be brought to his knees.

The West and Israel obviously find it easier to manage a Mid-East without independent minded trouble makers like Qaddafi and Assad who had a history of being on the wrong side during the cold war. The Soviet Union is history but habits acquired during that period, the kneejerk anti Americanism for instance, will not go away unless these regimes are smashed and Israel plus energy interests are secured against their caprice.

The Israeli experience during the 2006 Israel-Hizbullah war has taught all friends of Israel a lesson: Hizbullah derives its muscle from Iran and Syria. This cannot be given the emotive label of a “Shia arc” because Iran, Syria, Hizbullah link up eventually with Hamas in Gaza, a patently Sunni outfit in Israel’s underbelly and which Israel dubs as “terrorist”.

The removal of Syria from this chain weakens Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, all in one strike.

The removal of Assad, an Alawi (moderate variant of Shiaism) would result in power being distributed among the majority Sunni population of Syria. An enlargement of Sunni power has become an article of faith with the Saudi regime.

During the earlier phase of the cold war the Shah of Iran and the Saudi King sat on the same western lap. But with the coming of the Ayatullahs to power in Teheran in 1979, the Shia-Sunni divide resurfaced.

The most scary of Saudi nightmares materialized when American occupation of Iraq in 2003 resulted in the rise of Shia power next door in Baghdad. To check this turn of events, Al Qaeda type terrorism was introduced into Iraq on America’s watch to keep the new Shia rulers off balance.

In strengthening Sunni regimes, the Saudis are the most enthusiastic players but they have competition in the business. This competition comes from Turkey.

Until 2000, Turkey was comprehensively in the grip of secularism as dictated by the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk. The west (unknowingly) helped weaken this secularism by allowing the five year siege of Sarajevo (no UN resolutions then), the massacre at Sebrenica and the unspeakable cruelties of the Bosnian war – all on live TV. Sarajevo derives from the Turkish word Sarai which means “resting place”. The region is part of Turkish nostalgia.

The consequence was the rise of the Islamist Refah party with Nikmetin Arbakan as Prime Minister. The Army, guarantor of Turkey’s secularism, scuttled the regime. A softer version of a tolerant, secular Muslim group, the Peace and Development party under Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan has broken all records by increasing its vote share dramatically through three elections.

Naturally, Erdogan sees himself, (not the Saudis) as a model in the context of the Arab Spring. Hence Turkish pressure on Assad to accommodate the Muslim Brotherhood in the changes Syria must undertake. When Erdogan turned up in Tripoli to say his prayers after Qaddafi’s fall he was building up this Arab constituency.

There are three obstacles in his way. He must gain popularity in the Arab street if he has to offer himself as an acceptable model. For this he must stand upto Israeli-US polices on Palestine, a stance which has made Iran, Hizbullah and Syria Pariahs in West’s eyes.

The second obstacle is a deep seated Arab aversion to the Ottoman Empire which Turkey’s high profile would evoke.

The third is a very tricky one: Syria, Iran, Iraq all have Kurds which can be powerful pressure points on Ankara.

But where does all this lead to? In brief neither Syria, nor Assad are falling anytime soon, secure as they are in a strong, largely united Alawi Army, a two million strong Baath party, on all sides of sectarian divides, notwithstanding an Indian vote for a resolution seeking a repeat of Libya.

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Where’s The Other Side Of Story In Mid East?

2012-02-04T15:01:00.000+05:30

Where’s The Other Side Of Story In Mid East?
Saeed Naqvi

One of the great tragedies of our time is the near total decline in the credibility of the Western media. There are some exceptions but only some. Since much of the global media, including India, is largely imitative, indeed, completely dependent on Western sources for its international news, the lack of credibility attaches to it too.

The harm this does in the arena of foreign policy is incalculable: influential sections of the elite become passive recipients of images or stories doled out by the traditional metropolitan centers of control serving their interests.

Happily, this imbalance is being corrected by the alternative media which is increasingly taking the internet route. This media will not, for a while, have the means for news gathering on the scale the mainstream media has. But, in time, it will.

Almost the first consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the emergence of the global electronic media. Peter Arnett of the CNN clambered onto the terrace of the Al Rashied hotel in Baghdad to inaugurate the era of wars being brought live into our living rooms. This was operation Desert Storm. Two months later, BBC World Service TV was born.

Naturally, this dramatic live coverage projected the Anglo-American approach, something which came across to the Arab world as the most visible form of Arab humiliation, an Arab defeat in the Arab drawing room.

I am surprised how this turn in coverage of wars and conflicts – Bosnia, the two Intefadas, Israel-Hezbullah war, occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq – is not mentioned as one of the potent catalysts for what came to be further amplified as Islamic terror.

It was to provide ventilation to Arab suffocation that the rulers of Qatar, at that stage not on the best of terms with Saudi Arabia, launched Al Jazeera. This coincided with the BBC World Service retrenching staff providing the new Qatari outfit with world class technical and editorial media personnel.

Since open societies like India would not resile from habits inherited from the colonial period – for foreign affairs turn to AP, Reuters and BBC – the rulers of Qatar filled in the gap.

From its inception there was a question mark on Al Jazeera. Qatar, after all was the regional headquarter of the US Central Command which was prosecuting all US military action from Iraq to Afghanistan. How could Al Jazeera co-exist with CENTCOM? How could it “independently” cover CENTCOM military action. This coverage would stoke Anti Americanism on Arab, indeed, Muslim street.

Libertarians like Prof. Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University wrote scathing articles against Al Jazeera “harming” the US project. Why blame Ajami alone: even Tom Friedman was describing Iraq as the greatest project the US had undertaken in the interest of peace and democracy. Why, Najaf’s Ayatullah Sistani was being recommended for the Nobel Peace Prize! And all this wonderful work was being undone by Al Jazeera. Secretary Colin Powell went ballistic. So agitated was Pentagon that Al Jazeera office in Kabul was bombed. Its principal correspondent was jailed in Spain. Guantanamo Bay was probably not ready then.

To arrest the impact of Al Jazeera, Saudis launched their own channel – Al Arabia. Al Jazeera became the global voice of dissent. Its credibility was priceless.

Its credibility having plummeted, the Western media needed Al Jazeera’s credibility. The Arab Spring provided the opportunity. As dictators began to fall in Tunis and Cairo, the Kings and Sheikhs got together in a scrum. Forgotten was the Saud-Qatar antipathy. The two got together, first to coax a resolution out of the Arab league seeking a no fly zone over Libya and are now helping manufacture regime change, hand-in-hand in Syria.

In both these enterprises they have thrown in the media they control –Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, its “priceless” credibility placed at the US’s command.

This confluence of the Western and Arab media has been brilliantly choreographed by military strategists. If a story is less credible or a downright concoction, it can always be sourced to the Arab channels. This the BBC and the CNN can then quote without harming their own bruised reputations further.

Peter Arnett inaugurated the era of live coverage of wars from Baghdad. Which face have you become familiar with in all the footage from Libya or Syria? You are told footage has been smuggled or flashed out by mobile cameras.

The only face etched on my mind is of an eager young BBC reporter in Libya leaning triumphantly over the body of Qaddaffi lying in a refrigerated warehouse meant for slaughtered animals.

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Have Taleban Promised US That Women Will Be Treated Kindly?

2012-01-30T10:38:00.000+05:30

Have Taleban Promised US That Women Will Be Treated Kindly?
Saeed Naqvi

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address to the US Congress begins with America’s recent military engagement in self congratulatory terms. Among the more modest claims is: “For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country”.

The speech ends with a graphic account of the SEAL Team’s mission “to get bin Laden”. He says “one of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission”.

Between these extended bits of military triumphalism, are other substantive themes that will play themselves out in great detail upto the Presidential election in November 2012.

Part of the choreography being structured for the campaign is the conference on Afghanistan due in May in Chicago, with NATO seated on the front benches along with others including all those present at the first Bonn conference. In his speech Obama talked of the 10,000 troops who have already returned. He then said that “23,000 more will leave by the end of summer”.

The Chicago conference will be in the Spring. The 23,000 US troops will not have left Afghanistan by then. That will happen only by the “end of summer”, say August or September, weeks short of polling day. If troops can really be brought back by then, the resultant photo ops can be given a favourable spin. Some sort of success can be projected.

Between the announcement of the exact date of the next phase of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and the actual departure of troops, there can always be a hitch which will enable departure to be delayed beyond November 5, leaving the next administration to devise a more plausible policy for Afghanistan or for that hyphenated Af-Pak region. That expression has been gradually shed as Richard Holbrooke recedes from memory.

I suppose it is the prerogative of the powerful to blandish daily improvisations as carefully crafted, deeply thought out foreign policy. Put it down to my inadequate grasp of events, but in recent years I have not been able to spot anything resembling policy towards Af-Pak.

Remember when Peter Galbraith was posted to Kabul as Holbrooke’s sidekick? Soon after Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s re election in August 2009 he packed up and left because the elections had been “rigged”.

Those were the days when every visiting American journalist, briefed either at Bagram or the US’s Kabul embassy, described Karzai as something less than the Mayor of Kabul, one who could not even step out of the Palace.

Then came General Stanley McChrystal who was disarmingly blunt: India’s socio-economic development work in Afghanistan “creates complications and distracts Pakistan from its war on terror”. This is what I was told in Kabul.

Was this derived from some policy? If so, how do I square it with well placed Americans in Islamabad, during that period, fairly vocal about the Pak army playing “both sides of the street” in their war on terror?

One has lived so long with the absence of a coherent US policy in the region, that the frenetic activity between Washington, Kabul, Islamabad and now Qatar cannot by any stretch of imagination be seen as part of a deep design. It smacks of yet another improvisation.

The limited short term objective is to prepare a script for Chicago where “success” in Afghanistan can be credibly “promised”. Success cannot be “announced” because “success” cannot happen in a short time frame.

What is the implication of this Qatar digression?

Have the Taleban, a “nightmare” of the 1990s, been transformed into harbingers of a sparkling new dawn for Afghanistan, by the sheer passage of time?

In the 90s, Holbrooke and friends were passing through New Delhi. US ambassador Frank Wisner held a dinner for the group before escorting them to Bhutan for a holiday. By a coincidence, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour happened to be in Kabul. Her powerful reportage of the Taleban’s harsh treatment of women changed Washington’s policy so abruptly that, just then, Holbrooke received a call from the White House on this subject. He returned to the group shaking his head. “Washington is unhappy with the way Afghan women are being treated.” Someone in the group succinctly observed: “Afghan policy has now got embroiled in US gender politics.” Another improvisation was affected. The policy was changed. Facilitators of an American hydrocarbon pipeline through Afghanistan became pariahs overnight.

Will the Taleban this time sign statements on oath that they will be kind to their women?

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Rushdie Not A Problem For Muslims But For Politicians

2012-01-27T12:29:00.000+05:30

Rushdie Not A Problem For Muslims But For Politicians
Saeed Naqvi

The Maulana from the Darul Uloom seminary at Deoband who threatened the Jaipur Literary Festival with disruption, in case Salman Rushdie participated, is only the latest in a long list of spoilsports appointed by God.

When Pakistan was beginning to take shape and had not yet acquired the Islamic passion it is currently famous for, the country’s second Prime Minister, Haji Sir Khwaja Nazimuddin, organized a cultural evening where the great Sarangi player, Ustad Bundu Khan, was the star attraction. Among the invitees was a Maulana.

When it was time for the guests to depart, master of ceremonies “Patras” Bukhari, himself a great wit and man of letters, escorted the Maulana to a limousine. Since Ustad Bundu Khan lived in the same direction, Patras requested the Sarangi maestro to accompany the Maulana.

Next morning the Prime Minister found himself facing a Maulana shaking with rage. “How dare Patras expect me to accompany a Sarangi player!”

The PM promptly called Patras and acquainted him with the delicacy of the matter. “You must do what is proper and report to me.”

Patras informed the PM the following day that he had taken suitable action. “I have apologized to Ustad Bundu Khan!” The Maulana on one side Patras and Bundu Khan on the other have rolled along parallel tracks from medieval times.

In 1988, Rajiv Gandhi, in political difficulties, needed the Muslim vote. This was the reason he succumbed to pressure from the so called Muslim leaders and banned Satanic Verses.

Even in those days opinion among Muslims was divided. Clearly Rushdie had, while talking about the Prophet’s wives, transgressed from the sort of irreverence which is part of literary license to hurtful rudeness.

There were those who thought the book should be banned but there were many more who argued that banning of books was immoral and counter productive.

Supposing Satanic Verses had not been banned in India. Well, there would have been no global hullabaloo about the book and no Iranian Fatwa, all of which cumulatively helped boost sales.

And now the Jaipur festival is taking place in the middle of the UP election campaign in which the Muslim vote is again on a premium. Coincidentally, an internal power struggle is on in Deoband itself in which the nephew is challenging the uncle. In this situation either can raise the stakes to embarrass the other by raking up the Rushdie issue.

Rajasthan Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot is, meanwhile, smarting under Congress High command displeasure for tardy action in Gopalgarh where the police shot Muslims in a mosque. Since Rahul Gandhi is busting his guts campaigning for the party in neighbouring UP, one false note on the Rushdie issue can cause the Muslim vote to bolt and for Gehlot to be shown the door. Or, so the partymen, in a state of funk, seem to believe.

Supposing the organizers ignored Deoband and went ahead with Rushdie’s well advertised programme. Would the country’s Muslims take over the nation’s roads in fiery agitating? Ofcourse not.

Rajiv Gandhi’s decision to upgrade relations with Israel (ultimately Narasimha Rao implemented it) has a lesson for the Congress. Muslim leaders, the usual suspects, advised him against upgrading relations. Muslims would be annoyed, they said.

Others argued that there are other negatives in upgrading relations with Israel, but one thing is clear: Israel is not a priority issue for Indian Muslims. Continuous projection of Rushdie like issues, as vital to Muslims, comes in the way of development as their priority requirement. They become a mindless religious herd in popular perception.

The wide acceptance of this perception is partly related to the decline of Urdu and the composite culture on which their identity is built. This cultural identity has in the season of vote banks been replaced by a bland religious identity. Religious identity is easier to stoke for minority mobilization. Cultural identity derives from Sufi traditions, music, architecture and, above all, poetry which has challenged religious dogma frontally.

Sab tere siwa kafir
Aakhir iska matlab kya?
Sar phira de Insaan ka
Aisa khabt e mazhab kya?
(Every one other than you is an impious kafir? what kind of non sense is this? Shun religion which is illogical)

There is not a passage in Urdu poetry which gives any quarter to orthodoxy or the clergy but poets make a clear distinction between irreverence and disrespect.

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In UP, Keep Your Eyes On The Peace Party

2012-01-14T17:04:00.000+05:30

In UP, Keep Your Eyes On The Peace Party
Saeed Naqvi

Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh have consistently taken divergent stands on the Batla House police encounter. Chidambaram says the issue cannot be re opened because it was a proper encounter in which lives were lost including that of a policeman. The Prime Minister supports the Home Minister’s stand in the name of national security.

Digvijay Singh maintains it was a “fake” encounter. In other words, it was a deliberate attack on Muslim youth who had come from Azamgarh and were registered at the Jamia Millia University. Is this why Digvijay Singh raised the Batla House issue in Azamgarh where Rahul Gandhi was campaigning?

The Muslim has always been in focus in North India either as a potential voter or a foil against which Hindu consolidation can be attempted.

Hindu consolidation was a ploy (as during Mandir-Masjid) when BJP was a rising power. In days when Hindutva wore the “Shakti” mantle, Muslims, in search of security sought shelter in the Congress verandah. But after Babari Masjid the verandah came crumbling down and Muslim ran helter skelter even supporting caste formations.

Currently, disgusted with caste formations too, the Muslim is re evaluating his strategy. “Muslims will vote tactically” goes the refrain among tired Lucknow analysts. This means they will vote for anyone who can defeat the BJP candidate. This line of thinking pre supposes there is something like a muscular BJP around to scare the minority. Such a BJP does not exist any longer.

The absence of BJP as ogre is a new electoral problem for the Congress grown accustomed to the minorities quaking with fright come election time.

A possible way out of the jam is to create conditions of tension by constantly harping on issues which would soften the Muslim vote. Batla House is one such.

But all this sophistry is obsolete because what has emerged through six decades of trial and error is a Muslim vote in UP extremely suspicious.

That is why the Digvijay Singh – P. Chidambaram point-counterpoint is having a resonance among a large number of Muslim voters which is totally at variance from my earlier analysis. I thought Digvijay Singh would be quite the darling of the minority voters. That is not the case, among Muslims who are abandoning the Congress for a rapidly growing outfit called the Peace Party. The party has positioned itself not as a Muslim party but with Muslims, among others, in leadership positions.

The formula resembles the BSP’s approach tailored by Kanshi Ram and Mayawati. The BSP structure is built on Dalit as the base vote. Give seats to all the communities and on polling day transfer Dalit votes to augment the BSP candidate’s vote share.

The leader of the Peace Party is a bright medical doctor Mohammad Ayub. He has latched onto the theory of the Muslim “base” vote which, according to official estimates is 18.5 per cent. Dr. Ayub believes the percentage is higher – say, 22 percent.

Dr. Ayub has deftly steered clear of the easy temptation to create a Muslim party. His Peace Party has Brahmins, Thakurs, the most backward groups like Khatiks, Valmiki, Dasi and so on. There are six Peace Party members in the present UP assembly of whom three are thakurs and three most backwards.

In its step by step approach, the Peace Party has adopted the politics of horizontal growth, a gradual enlargement of the vote share. In this fashion, rival parties are denied space and the Peace Party then make slow vertical growth, a sort of “appam” effect.

It is not possessed by unrealistic ambition. “We will certainly get 25 to 35 seats”, says Dr. Ayub. There is likely to be such a multiplicity of parties in the fray that “no government can be formed without our support”. The searing ambition is to be in the government – “any government with any combination even the BJP”. Power is what the Peace Party is aiming at! Since the Peace Party seeks to balance various Hindu interests with Muslims in the lead, communal harmony is high priority.

This, precisely is the reason that in the PC – Digvijay Singh stand-off, Muslims in the Peace Party find Chidambaram’s approach more helpful. “In Malegaon, Mecca Masjid and all such incidents” Chidambaram is quietly proceeding against the Hindutva forces.

Digvijay Singh’s heart is in the right place, but by raising the decibel level on these issues he ends up “provoking the forces” the Peace Party would rather have in deep slumber.

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Is Digvijay Only One Tasked To Fight Communalism?

2012-01-12T12:27:00.000+05:30

Is Digvijay Only One Tasked To Fight Communalism?
Saeed Naqvi

Why is it a constant battle between Congress General Secretary, Digvijay Singh and the Sangh Parivar? Where is the mounting support for Digvijay Singh within the Congress so that political war can be waged with the Parivar?

But why would Tweedledum wage war against Tweedledee? Sometimes they are on the same side. Take the demolition of the Babari Masjid on 6 December, 1992. Was P.V. Narasimha Rao less guilty than Kalyan Singh?

Ahmad Patel is a Congress leader from Gujarat closest to Sonia Gandhi. Why did he not escort the Congress President to Ahmadabad after the February 27, 2002 Gujarat pogrom to see the pathetic condition of Muslims in camps?

Batla House, Azamgarh, Malegaon, Mecca Masjid are all Hindutva plots exposed by Digvijay Singh. Each one is a valid issue, but where is the Congress to take up the chorus? All the sparrow heads can cook up are 4.5 percent of 27 percent and so on. The stupidity of it is astounding. They really imagine they have fooled the community.

Never in history has the police shot and killed members of a congregation in a mosque. This happened two hours drive from New Delhi in Gopalgarh, in Rajasthan a Congress ruled state adjacent to yet another Congress ruled state, Haryana.

Not only did senior Congress leaders not make an early appearance, even the great independent media (except Indian Express) did not cover the tragedy.

The election season is in full swing. On my table is a newspaper open on a page showing six young men wearing black hoods. The story in Mail Today reads:
“Six activists of the right wing Sri Ram Sena, who had planned to spark communal violence in the North Karnataka town of Sindhagi by hoisting the Pakistani flag on the mini Vidhan Sabha premises are now lodged behind bars.”

Apparently, some very obvious clues led to the arrest of the six. But why were the alleged culprits being handled with such caution: why have their heads been covered with hoods? We have grown so accustomed to photographs of youngsters with beards and skull caps a day after their arrest that hoods look like an aberration.

When the Sachar Committee was formed in 2005, Muslims thought justice was at hand. A delegation from Gadchiroli, a remote town near Nagpur, submitted to the committee photographs of a house where alleged Hindu extremists fabricated beards, clothes and varieties of Muslim disguises. The Sachar Committee also sent the photographs to Sonia Gandhi.

Leaders other than Digvijay Singh have chosen to sit on the fence on all such incidents. The result of this fence sitting is that the Muslim, once a congress vote bank, are today in quest of all manner of alternatives. In UP, the Peace Party, is not a negligible phenomena. Just as Mayawati can weave coalitions while she has the support of chamars, so is the Peace Party banking on the community of Muslim weavers as its base vote. Other backward caste Muslims may drift towards the Samajwadi Party leaving a handful of Aashraf (upper caste Muslims) wondering what to do.

It is in such circumstances that Digvijay Singh with his consistent anti communalism should be profitably supported by the Congress. Mani Shankar Aiyar is another Congressman who would have credit among Muslims provided, of course, that he has respite from TV chat shows. Do you know who is the most popular public figure among newspaper reading Muslims? Justice Markandey Katju! Remember, the undisputed leader of Indian Muslims until his death in 1964 was Jawaharlal Nehru.

The other day, President Pratibha Patil gave her ascent to the gau-vansh vadh Pratshedh (sansodhan) authored by the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The anti cow slaughter Bill gives inclusive powers to investigating agencies and provides for seven years jail sentences as compared with six month in Maharashtra. There is no restriction on cow slaughter in Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar and all the North Eastern states.

In 2002, the Gandhian scholar Dharampal (at the instance of the NDA) researched the issue and traced the incremental increase in cow slaughter to the British requirement of beef for their troops.

Digvijay Singh may like to obtain a copy of Dharampal’s book which has on its cover the note in Queen Victoria’s hand written to Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne in 1893.
“Though the Mohammadans cow-killing is made the pretext of agitation, it is in fact directed against us, who kill far more cows for our army…..”

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Bharat Ratna For Ghalib; Centenary For Madan Mohan Malaviya?

2012-01-03T14:50:00.001+05:30

Bharat Ratna For Ghalib; Centenary For Madan Mohan Malaviya?
Saeed Naqvi

For a country as self conscious of its past as India, culture and civilization are alluring themes. In recent weeks two themes have surfaced which may attract attention. One idea has been placed in the public square by Justice Markandey Katju, who, as Chairman of the Press Council, has energized discourse on many subjects.

The other theme is taking a more cavernous route in the corridors of the Ministry of Culture.

Justice Katju’s idea stems from his abiding interest in Urdu poetry. There was hardly a judgement of his at the Supreme Court which was not laced with choice Urdu couplets. He thought the great Urdu poet Ghalib deserved to be honoured posthumously with a Bharat Ratna.

The other idea on the anvil is to observe 2012 as the centenary year for Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, founder of the Benaras Hindu University.

There is in the Ministry of Culture a “Centenary Wing” which tosses up centenary candidates.

While the Ghalib suggestion, though quaint, has no controversy attending it, there will be more than one view on Pandit Malaviya’s centenary idea. For example his being in the vanguard of the Hindu Mahasabha. The case in his favour would be dressed up with other details: his having founded prestigious English dailies like the Leader. But his somewhat aggressive Hinduism which grew as he anchored himself firmly in the Hindu Mahasabha could invite contention.

There are folks who would spend time justifying the Mahasabha and Pandit Malaviya’s contribution as it’s President, but will the Congress party be comfortable projecting this association?

It can be argued that the centenary sought to be observed is of a national figure, not a Congress leader. Fair enough, but the ruling party’s position is a delicate one, particularly on the eve of state and national elections when it is fiddling around with percentages in reservations that would attract a reluctant Muslim vote.

Varanasi is where Malaviya spent long years. And yet, what irony, he would have been unfamiliar with Ghalib’s epic on Varanasi, Chiragh-e-dair or the Temple Lamp.

Ghalib compares Varanasi to a beautiful woman who sees her face in the mirror of the “Ganga”. Here people make soulful music out of conch shells. “This truly is the Kaaba of Hindustan.”

Is it an unrealistic demand that Justice Katju has posted for discussion? Some faint hearted Congress leaders may consider the idea unrealistic because the Congress is mortally afraid of doing anything that might register adversely with the majority vote. But how small minded can we get? Would a posthumous honour to one of the world’s great poets, whose secularism remains unparalleled, and whose adoration for Hindustan is part of his poetry, annoy anybody?

When a modernizer like Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan asked Ghalib to write a preface to Ain-e-Akbari or laws of Emperor Akbar, Sir Sayyid did not expect a reprimand.

Ghalib had just returned from Calcutta, smitten by modern administration, miracles of science like the wireless. He advised Sir Sayyid to disentangle himself from “Laws” which had been overtaken by new systems. It is quite astonishing this openness to new ideas by a man who lived all his life in old Delhi.

It is always foolish to compare apples and oranges, but in this context Malaviya emerges as the sort of reactionary Ghalib might have been uncomfortable with. Purshottam Das Tandon was Malaviya’s intellectual soul mate and one Jawaharlal Nehru was not comfortable with. His father, Motilal Nehru, was outrageously frank. He said that the Malaviya and Lala Lajpat Rai “gang” was being aided by big money “to capture the Congress”.

There was always in the Congress a streak of Hindu revivalism. Nehru stood in total opposition to this tendency. The undisputed leader of Indian Muslims, therefore, until his death in 1964 was Jawaharlal Nehru. This solid support walked out on the Congress en masse after the Babari Masjid demolition. Since that date the party has been trying to lure the community back, proceeding two steps forward on Sachar Committee and three steps back on the Ranganath Mishra Committee.

A confused party has no courage either to respond to Justice Katju nor to debate candidates worthy of centenary celebrations.

Primarily the party lacks conviction. Hence the tactic: Sheikh bhi khush rahey; shaitan bhi naraaz na ho (keep the clergy and devil equally pleased). This is a recipe for falling between stools.

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Remembering A Crisis As Pak Sinks Into Another

2011-12-26T10:15:00.000+05:30

Remembering A Crisis As Pak Sinks Into Another
Saeed Naqvi

President Bill Clinton’s five day visit to India in 2000 followed by a five hour stopover in Islamabad convinced New Delhi that the world order had changed. Relationships were to be shaped by the new post cold war realities, not old loyalties.

But quite as abruptly, this order was once again re fashioned by President George W. Bush, post 9/11. Pakistan became a frontline state all over again.

Oh, the praise that was lavished on President Musharraf, mornings and evenings, by President Bush as “our most reliable ally”. This “most reliable of allies” kept a plausible manner in fighting the American war on terror as its very own. This entailed a shrewd selection of enemy targets: which target to hit so as to minimize the blowback. That this was an impossible circus act, soon caught up with Musharraf. There were those deep differences with President Hamid Karzai who repeatedly pointed out Pakistani fingerprints on Taleban activity in Afghanistan

A regular pattern emerged in which Musharraf and Karzai accused each other of being “soft” on Taleban on the other side. This mutual recrimination implied an absence of concerted action against the Taleban. This suited Pakistan to the extent that it kept Pushtoon nationalism on both sides of the Durand line from flaring up uncontrollably. In Kabul this has never been much of a concern. It does not recognize the Durand line.

Contemporary International politics these days is sometimes not determined so much by ground realities as by the manner of their projection on Washington’s late night serious talk shows. These shows began to focus excessively on Musharraf’s “double dealing” in the war on terror. This at a time when the war in Iraq was by now an unmitigated disaster.

Republicans were proceeding towards the 2009 elections in a daze, with reversals in Iraq being compounded by the mess in Afghanistan. Noises in the US became more shrill by the day that Musharraf was either unwilling or unable to wage effective war on terror.

To still some of these noises, large scale US and Pak military action in Swat and Waziristan were launched with predictable consequences. The blow back shifted from Afghanistan to the Pak side of the border. The entire Pushtoon belt along the border was in a state of rebellion.

Lal Masjid in Islamabad had flared up occasionally since 2001 but in 2007, Ghazi Rashid and Maulana Aziz raised their decibel levels against Musharraf “fighting America’s war” against terrorism. Followed assassination attempts on him. Military action on Lal Masjid coincided with the lawyer’s agitation. Chief Justice Iftekhar Chaudhry began to press for he missing persons cases, something that would have brought the Army’s participation in the nasty “renditions” under the arc lamps at a time when the Army’s reputation was the lowest in living memory.

Removing Musharraf at this juncture would have meant going soft on the “war on terror”. Also, President Bush could not be seen to be dumping his “most reliable ally”, particularly when the “ally’s” neck was on the line.

It was then that a formula was devised to have a troika consisting of a President, Prime Minister and Army Chief replace the lonesome figure of Musharraf. The troika, not just Musharraf, would be exposed to the ever stronger blowback from the war on terror.

Such was the wave of anti Americanism that when Benazir Bhutto landed in Karachi, after having recklessly promised a fight to the finish on terror and allowing nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan to be interrogated, that she became easy prey for determined assassins. Asif Zardari is, therefore, an unintended consequence of a deal that was struck between the Americans, Benazir and the Army.

As Pakistan proceeds towards a new scenario which includes fresh elections, a few facts from 2008 elections: Nawaz Sharif untainted by American and Army affiliations, came up trumps in the Punjab. And, something I will never forget about that campaign: neither India nor Kashmir were mentioned even once. A common refrain in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi was: an enemity and a friendship have cost us dear. But that was many moons ago even though optimists may like to keep their fingers crossed as preparations are under way for the Commerce and External affairs Minister to visit Islamabad.

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Turkey And Syria Press The Pause Button

2011-12-19T11:25:00.000+05:30

Turkey And Syria Press The Pause Button
Saeed Naqvi

Just as Europe is beginning to look economically desperate, Turkey next door looks like the very picture of economic, political and strategic stability. The ultimate irony, ofcourse, is that after having prepared itself on every possible count for eligibility to enter Europe, Turkey is no longer interested in Europe.

Paradoxically, having to fulfill the criteria for European entry, Turkey has had to improve all its institutions. These many improvements will have stood Turkey in good stead whether or not it ever enters Europe. For the foreseeable future that project appears to be on the abandoned list.

For years German, French and various central European leaders have held that Europe was basically Christian in its religious and cultural orientation. And, now the sheer economic decline of Europe may trigger a rethink at a time when enthusiasm for Europe is at its minimal in Turkey.

A region where the Americans have been leaning on Turkish help has been the Balkans. The warmth in US-Turkish equation climaxed with the creation of a Muslim state of Kosovo.

It is therefore not surprising that whenever US-Russian relations dip, the Russians locate a place in the Balkans from where to exert pressure on the Americans.

Recently, at the time when tensions were being ratcheted up around Syria, the Russian sent their fleet into the eastern Mediterranean in support of the Bashar al Assad regime.

Since Kosovo has been carved out of Serbia, the northern enclave called Mitrovica, contiguous with Serbia, is often restive against Muslim Kosovar domination. The minority Serbs, who reject Kosovo’s statehood, have been blocking roads and border crossings dislocating supplies into Kosovo.

This year, in the process of poking their finger into the US and Turkish eyes, thousands of citizens of Mitrovica made a public demonstration of their application for Russian citizenship. The move was designed to underscore pan Slavic nationalism, as well as to expose the fragility of American hold on Kosovo. It is generally not recognized that despite all their joint exertions, the US and Turkey have not been able to mobilize recognition for Kosovo beyond a dismal figure of about 45 states which includes countries like Nauro.

To balance the US creation of Kosovo, Russians too have not been tardy: they have carved out of Georgia, the two pro-Russian enclaves of Abkhazia and Ossetia.

The tight embrace between Russia and the Southern Slavs of Serbia is on account of two factors: the inseparable Slavic bond and an equally durable Orthodox Church linkage.

For Turkey the Balkans are an area of co-ordination with the US and possible contention with the Russians.

In Iraq, one would normally expect the Turkey-Iran rivalry to extend. But this has not been the case so far. In fact the very fact of American presence in Iraq has had the effect of bringing Teheran and Ankara together on the Kurdish issue.

The evolution of the Akhwan ul Muslimeen or Muslim Brotherhood across the Arab world has generated some enthusiasm among the Justice and Development party (or AK party). First, Prime Minister Teyyip Erdogan was welcomed in Cairo and Tripoli with the sort of fanfare which was once reserved for leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The extraordinary charisma of Erdogan became a huge incentive in the rapidly transforming Arab world. He became a model to emulate. Turkey became the democracy to follow.

That Erdogan has Akhwan ul Muslimeen roots, makes him interested in the expansion of the Akhwan turf across Arab lands.

It was this positive response to the Brotherhood that was at the heart of Erdogan’s change of heart towards Syria.

Kemal Ataturk’s secularism was a mirror image of the Ba’ath secularism in vogue in Damascus. But after Erdogan won three elections in succession on a platform of mild, Islamic conservatism, Kemalist secularism became irrelevant to his purposes without his having to do anything about it.

This mild variety of Islamism which is Erdogan’s hallmark, was sought to be promoted in Syria. Bashar al Assad was invited to accommodate this variety of the Brotherhood in the political reforms he was being persuaded to undertake.

But before Assad could get into his stride, Stephen Ford, a 007 like US ambassador, was running around the country creating conditions for civil war. This kind of aggressive diplomacy has had the effect on Assad to press the pause button which has then been played up by the media as his dictatorial obstinacy.

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US-Pak Love-Hate Takes A Dip

2011-12-05T10:00:00.001+05:30

US-Pak Love-Hate Takes A Dip
Saeed Naqvi

Major General Ashfaq Nadeem, Director General, Pak Military operations, says NATO Forces were alerted that they were attacking military posts but the helicopters kept attacking. The death of 24 officers has raised a storm in Pakistan.

During the early years of the US invasion of Afghanistan, it was fairly common for the US, NATO or ISAF to hit wrong targets. Military officials, attached to various embassies in Kabul, were full of stories on how the local “contacts”, part of the improvised mercenary intelligence, had deliberately misled the Americans to attack, say, a wedding party belonging to a tribe with which the “contact” had an old score to settle.

Countless scores were settled. Every incident had its own novelty, but the broad pattern was similar. The military official, mostly American, would be taken to an obviously secure place to meet a “contact” who would demand money, arms, and thousands of yellow packets of food. The “contact” would ask the US official to hold his fire until he, the official, got a signal to summon the helicopter gunships to exhaust their magazines on the other side of the hillock on an Al Qaeda training session. On numerous occasions, the target was a wedding party.

Double dealing with the Americans was built into Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s U-turn to fall in line in the war on terror. Musharraf was being invited to destroy exactly the forces Pakistan, Saudis and the Americans had diligently trained to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.

As the center of gravity of the war on terror gradually shifted from Afghanistan to the Pakistan side of the border, consuming Musharrf, destabilizing an internally tense and divided Pakistan, bringing a new set of political actors, the Pakistan army became less willing to part with all the “Mujahideen” assets it had built up once an Afghan Endgame became the incantation.

This enlarged the trust deficit between the Pak Army and the Americans. The US sergeant incharge of a communications center involved in the attack which killed Pak soldiers, gave no credence to Pakistani protestations. The US and Pakistan are coordinating their war on terror in an atmosphere of total mistrust.

There is a school of thought in Kabul, close to the intelligence community which believes that Pakistanis cross border mischief in Afghanistan will continue until the Americans frontally take on the GHQ in Rawalpindi.

The growing divide between public opinions on both sides of the Af-Pak border may also come in handy at a time when the Strategic Partnership Agreement with the US is in the bargain. It reflects on the adversarial Af-Pak equation that the souring of US-Pak relations helps soften the Afghan mood towards the US, an enabling condition for the Agreement.

Pakistan has no option but to respond to Public outrage. Blocking of the two NATO supply routes to Afghanistan and denying the use of a Baloch airfield to the CIA is actually a low risk retaliation when Iran, Hezbullah, Syria are much more in the eye of a huge, global storm.

Iran’s Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh of Aerospace Division, has raised the stakes in the region by declaring that Teheran will target NATO missile shield in Turkey if Iran is attacked by Israel or the US.

All these distractions notwithstanding, the blocking of the NATO supply routes is no trifling matter either. Even though a large percentage of the supplies now take the central Asian routes, at least 40 per cent of supplies have to traverse Pakistan.

Further, Islamabad’s virtual absence from the Bonn conference on Afghanistan upsets the White House script on an issue of considerable interest in the build upto the November 2012 US Presidential Election.

President Barack Obama has created an illusion the US is withdrawing from Afghanistan by, say 2012. The script will emerge in bolder relief by May 2012 when Obama will host an important conference on Afghanistan. The conference, in Chicago, with NATO and other stakeholders in attendance, will take stock of the situation at that stage. It is just conceivable the global recession will be overshadowed by a war for which clouds are already gathering in and around the straits of Hormuz. Will a nice, big war help Obama’s re election?

Whoever wins the election, the script in Afghanistan until 2014 and beyond will be written by that new administration after November 2012. You need a superior clairvoyant to enlighten you where President Hamid Karzai may be resident after 2014?

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Media Lies: Basra Fell 17 Times Says BBC Reporter

2011-11-29T09:34:00.000+05:30

Media Lies: Basra Fell 17 Times Says BBC Reporter
Saeed Naqvi

My first encounter with Western propaganda was during the Sino-Vietnam war of February 1978.

I was in Beijing as part of the media team which had accompanied Atal Behari Vajpayee, then India’s Minister for External Affairs. Deng Xiaoping, who had warned he would teach Vietnam a lesson, carried out the threat without taking Vajpayee into confidence, although other non aligned countries like Yugoslavia were informed.

The Indian delegation, faces in the lower mould, cut short what was billed to be a historic visit, and left for home after that mandatory shopping in Hong Kong.

I applied for permission to visit the front. The Chinese promised they would try. Two days later they said a visit to the war front was not possible. I rushed to Bangkok where the ever helpful Abid Hussain (who retired as Ambassador to US) introduced me to a scion of the distinguished Bao Dai family who obtained for me the priceless visa for Hanoi in a jiffy. In Hanoi the all powerful Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Xuan Thuy, arranged for me to be driven to a vantage point on the hill with a commanding view of Lang Son where the most decisive battle of the war was fought. The celebrating, rejoicing soldiers in Lang Son confirmed Vietnam’s victory.

The Indian Express front paged the Lang Son datelined story in which it was clear that Vietnam had won. Ranjit Sethi, who was in our Beijing mission sent me an ecstatic note but Defence Secretary, Sushital Bannerjee, was more cautious. Was I sure of my facts because the western media was saying quite the opposite?

I countered: “How could the western media say anything without having covered the war from either of the fronts?” I was the only foreign correspondent in Vietnam. The Chinese had refused.

It was clear the triangular strategic balance Kissinger had sketched, Washington-Beijing-Moscow, was not going to be allowed to be wrecked by the media. The new US ally during the cold war, China, was not going to be exposed to negative publicity for being defeated by a country which had just a few years ago driven the US itself out of Vietnam.

A huge question mark was placed on my Vietnam-victory story which otherwise was a scoop. Even my editor, Sri Mulgaokar was more inclined to accept the Western version than one having been put out by his own reporter. It took years for global conventional wisdom to change: Vietnam had, indeed, won the 1978 war.

The western attitude of simply ignoring a version not to its liking was effective largely because of considerable indigenous preferential support for the foreigner’s point of view.

Birth of the global media with the CNN’s live coverage of operation Desert Storm in 1992 was gingered up by advances in techniques of media management. Many of us in Baghdad speculated war may not take place because of the American’s post Vietnam aversion to body bags on TV screens.

So, the Anglo American combine took care to hide the body bags “totally from view”. The monopoly of TV coverage was with CNN’s Peter Arnett on the terrace of Al Rashied hotel. By the time of the Intefadas, Bosnian and Serbian wars and occupation of Iraq, BBC World Service too was in full cry.

With each war, the technology for propaganda has been consistently refined, as in Libya and Syria. In Afghanistan and Iraq Al Jazeera exposed the Western media’s lies. Leaders of the free world bombed Al Jazeera’s offices in Kabul and Baghdad, a fact Ragge Omar, the once star BBC reporter cannot ever forget. “We reported the fall of Basra 17 times, each time a lie”, says Omar.

By the time of the Libyan and Syrian action, Qatar had made up with Saudi Arabia in solidarity of monarchies. So BBC and CNN tried to minimize damage to their plummeting reputation by quoting Al Jazeera and Al Arabia distortions.

Now comes the scandalous case of the satirical programme Parazit supposedly telecast from Teheran to lampoon the regime. The programme actually beamed from LA, is totally financed by the US government. Go on your youtube and you will find Hillary Clinton being interviewed on Parazit. Indeed, CIA Chief David Petraeus says future wars will be in the Information Space.

What space for a credible media now?

Meanwhile, everyone is catching on, including the Wall Street protestors.

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Why Such A Thin Audience For Pilger

2011-11-21T10:08:00.001+05:30

Why Such A Thin Audience For Pilger
Saeed Naqvi

“The War You Don’t See”, a stunningly honest portrayal of the deceptions of modern warfare kept a small audience at the India Islamic Centre riveted earlier this week. The film is by one of the best known war correspondents, twice winner of Britain’s journalist of the year award, John Pilger, who introduced the documentary and answered questions. The thin attendance, therefore, was both a surprise and a pity.

Half the audience, a modest total of about 50, had received no invitations. True the Indian Express had published an interview with Pilger some days ago but had given no indication of a film show. There were no advertisements, no posters, no notice. Did the organizers have cold feet? Were they warned by the funding agencies?

One expected the precocious Indian electronic media to be in some token attendance to see a film of great relevance today. Not one showed up.

Since it was the Islamic center, one thought Muslims would be there in full force since they are being hammered everywhere in wars Pilger exposes. Yes, there was an apostate Shia in the audience, but no Muslims. Some Muslim countries have long arms but I doubt if they have the sophistication to be able to manage attendance at the India Islamic Centre. Whatever the reason for this apparent indifference to a remarkable piece of journalism, a great deal of guilt lies at the door of our profession – journalism.

Not only are we incapable of the sort of journalism which has placed Pilger at the top despite the establishment, but we even shy away from an instructive film just in case our presence is cited as evidence against us! Or, is it, that we are afraid looking into the mirror?

Pilger traces media manipulation to the first World War when “embedded” journalists first made an appearance. The great ideologue who set into motion the propaganda industry was Edward Louis Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud who moved to the US from Vienna, became a journalist and applied his uncle’s psychoanalytical concepts and extended them to crowd psychology.

Little wonder, Bernays served President Woodrow Wilson’s administration on the committee in Public Information during World War I. He was responsible for promoting the idea that America’s war efforts were primarily aimed at “bringing democracy to all of Europe”.

Since the word “propaganda” acquired a negative connotation because of its use by the Germans during the war, Bernays blazed the trail of what the copycat world describes as “Public Relations”.

The most powerful idea is one which, when in control of the mind, leaves no room for curiosity about its source. It has become an organic part of the life of the mind.

Take this nugget from Bernays: “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?”

Quite incredibly, Bernays lived as long as his ideas enclosed the so called free minds. They are still in full gallop. The man died in 1995 at the age of 103! Repeat age of 103!

Sometimes there is very little difference between state control of the media and the promotion of a delusion about a free press. This delusion leaves yards of space for “engineering consent”. It might in these circumstances be fair to ask whether a cuckold is better off than a witness to infidelity?

In the case of colonized minds, the tragedy is two fold. Bernays, however perniciously, was serving the interests of the United States. But whose interest is the great Indian media serving when it allows itself to be co opted into the Bernays framework?
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As we all know, the reality or the pretense, of the endgame in Afghanistan is of crucial importance to India. Already, an India-Afghan strategic partnership agreement is in place. The Afghan-US agreement is being dragged on by the Loya Jirga and the entire Afghan establishment.

Why? Because the Americans are unpopular and the Indians are not. In fact if an Indian TV team were to travel across Afghanistan, it would have friendly reception almost everywhere except some knotty junctions of conflict.

And yet Western TV crews, along with their Afghan stringers are all over the place. You might argue that Western crews have the entire NATO war machine helping them out.

Frankly, the great advantage of being an Indian journalist is the access Indians can have on all sides – occupiers and their victims.

And yet the Indian media prefers to be under the Bernays canopy, even avoiding an excellent evening that might have jogged the mind about the grand delusions we nurture about our freedoms.

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Rahul Will Wait As President of Ruling Party Or of Opposition?

2011-11-14T12:23:00.001+05:30

Rahul Will Wait As President of Ruling Party Or of Opposition?
Saeed Naqvi

Eversince Indira Gandhi centralized political power and proceeded to be distant, pundits have not been very convincing they have a grip on political information, leave alone wisdom. Thanks to the inaccessibility of the present Congress “High Command”, the situation these days is even worse. A report by Amitabh Dubey on the way the cookie might crumble within the Congress Party, has caused pundits to carry neatly folded clippings of the document and make appearances at parties with the sort of glint in their eyes which comes from knowledge.

Universal credibility was accorded to the report because he is the son of Suman Dubey, Rajiv Gandhi’s schoolmate. No surprise, then, that Amitabh knows Rahul Gandhi quite well.

As Director of London based Market Research Consultancy, Trusted Sources, Amitabh is required to keep investors, who are his clients, posted on important political events in India. Heaven knows how the story leaked to the Economic Times.

The inside page story on October 30 carried the headline: “Rahul Gandhi as PM will galvanize Congress says his analyst friend.” The repeat on November 5 had a different heading: “Rahul Gandhi to take over as Congress Chief in weeks.” Then on November 6 “Rahul Gandhi now needs to rewrite campaign”. The first sentence in this story was: “Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, who is expected to take over the reins of India’s Grand Old Party shortly……………..”

Just when the Pundits had begun to greet each other with that I-told-you-so bravado, the chairman of the Congress Media department, Janardhan Dwivedi, who occasionally knows, said something which was neither a confirmation nor denial of Amitabh Dubey’s appraisal, just a statement to keep the issue, and himself, in play.

Dubey’s report for his business clients had also hinted that Manmohan Singh may be on his way out by 2012, when the crucial UP elections are due. The implication was that a more dynamic Rahul Gandhi as Prime Minister might impact more positively on the Congress outcome in UP.

Alternatively two other reliable candidates mentioned were Defence Minister A.K. Antony or Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar but the first was “too slow” in taking decisions while the second had “no administrative” experience. Names of Pranab Mukerjee and P. Chidambaram were mentioned with the rider that the open spat between them may have “hurt their chances”.

Dwivedi answered media queries in these words: “there is no suspense about it. He (Rahul) has a role, which is increasing constantly. In natural course, his role will go on increasing. This is what Congressmen want and this is what in their opinion is natural.” He then tosses the political googly: “Congress President Sonia Gandhi is here to lead the party and she will decide what to do and when.” This does not contradict earlier stories, only places the coronation cap in Sonia Gandhi’s hand.

The Congress sometimes divides itself into three coteries even though the principals, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi are by themselves mostly in one huddle.

Sonia Gandhi’s unfortunate health is no longer a mystery. What is not known is her ability to cope with the workload Congress Presidentship requires, now that the election season is opening up. It makes immense sense for the family and well wishers for Rahul Gandhi to be strategically positioned to step in just in case Sonia Gandhi’s health requires him to.

This, it turns out, is Rahul’s best bet for the time being until the UP elections are out of the way in March 2012. Should the party do as well as some leaders like Digvijay Singh expect it to, Rahul’s time will have arrived to lead the party in the 2014 General Elections as Prime Ministerial candidate.

But the swollen ranks of pessimists on that score within the Congress may tend to obviate that possibility.

In which case Rahul follows his mother’s formula: Heads, I win; Tails, you lose. That is, I remain leader either of the ruling party or the one in opposition. I am only 41, I can wait and watch. And build the party.

For a party which is squeamish even about carrying out minor cabinet reshuffles, I don’t see how people are contemplating high voltage drama like looking for a Prime Ministerial change in such perilous times.

So, the Prime Minister stays on even as his detractors rub their eyes in disbelief, astonished that “The old man hath so much blood in him!”

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Ask For I & B Report on Public Service Media, Justice Katju

2011-11-08T12:47:00.000+05:30

Ask For I & B Report on Public Service Media, Justice Katju
Saeed Naqvi

In his avatar as Chairman of the Press Council, Justice Markandey Katju has raised a storm by describing the Indian media the way it is. Had he been around during UPA I, he would have received support from the Prime Minister who had set up a committee to chalk out a blue print for a Public Service Media.

While Indian newspapers have a history of over 150 years and therefore a built in mechanism for atleast minimal self correction, the electronic media came riding on Dr. Manmohan Singh’s economic reform in 1992.

The arrival of the Indian electronic media coincided more of less with the launching of the Global media by the West when Peter Arnett of the CNN reported operation Desert Storm from the terrace of the Al Rashid hotel in Baghdad. For the first time in our lives, we watched a war, live, in our drawing rooms.

The outcome, its live coverage, registered as triumph with the West, but as Muslim humiliation with the entire Muslim world. A humiliated, demoralized Muslim world became fertile ground breeding anger and revenge, raw material for militancy and terrorism. The Indian media had from the very beginning developed a poor-cousin relationship with global media: we shall cover national affairs and take footage from you on world affairs which we shall cover rarely. You shape the world; we shape the country.

When terrorism spiraled out of control on 9/11, the war on terror had to be launched. Taleban, who accorded hospitality to Osama bin Laden, were hammered out of power with logistical help from Pakistan. In the process of being hammered, some Taleban and Al Qaeda found sanctuary among cousins in Pakistan where many of them had, in any case, been trained by the ISI to fight the Soviets.

And now as NATO, the US and the Pakistan army exert themselves to eliminate militants they also kill innocent civilians. Every elimination results in a dozen militant recruitment centers opening up. The result is that moderate civil society in Pakistan is on the backfoot. The Army cannot show its preference either way for fear of agitation in its own ranks. The country is teetering on the brink, a scary scenario for the region.

Having established this background, let us revert to Markandey Katju’s critique of the Indian media.

“The media often divides the people” says Katju. “Whenever a bomb blast takes place anywhere in India, within a few hours, TV channels start saying an email or SMS has been received from Indian Mujahideen or Jaish-e-mohammad or Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islam claiming responsibility. The name will always be a Muslim name. Now an email and SMS can always be sent by a mischievous person who wants communal hatred. Why should they be shown on TV screens and next day in print? The subtle message being sent by showing this is that all Muslims are terrorists or bomb throwers.”

In its attitude to “terrorism”, the Indian media is in large measure imitative of the West. At the outset it did not even see the lack of logic in the way battlelines on the subcontinent were drawn by the West in its war on terror.

Since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the spare, high voltage Islam manufactured in Afghanistan struck in Kashmir. Some of the Afghan Arabs are now looking for work in Benghazi too. Cross border terrorism from Pakistan plagued India for decades. But after 9/11 the US enlisted the very same Pakistan as its frontline state in the global war on terror. US ambassador Robert Blackwill explained to Indians: “cross border terrorism was part of an old regional conflict; it was global terrorism that Pakistan had joined the US to fight.” Only after the December 13 attack on Parliament did New Delhi acquire equal status in the global war on terror.

Ofcourse, Katju is spot on as far as the media’s coverage of Muslim terror is concerned. He is equally right on the market driven focus on Formula 1, Lady Gaga, Mettallic group, bollywood gossip, fashion and other razzmatazz in a country where the majority are poor. And, ofcourse, a disproportionate 24X7 on Anna Hazare for ten days without a break.

Something else that needs to be brought into focus is the understanding between the Indian and global media on the coverage of foreign affairs. Is there an understanding indeed an agreement, that Indian channels will focus only on national and local issues and that foreign affairs will be covered by BBC, CNN, Reuters, AP etc? The Prime Minister, like Rajiv Gandhi and Atal Behari Vajpayee before him, is all too aware that India will never be at the global high table unless it has its own eyes and ears cover world affairs.

Is it not a shame that there is no Indian bureau in the SAARC countries, none in the countries where the so called Spring is breaking out? The mind of our decision makers on Libya for instance, is shaped by journalism which is from the countries raining bombs on Libya. Our journalism would have provided balance in such a polarized situation. During UPA I, several meetings were held in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to devise a Public Service Media insulated from the government and the market by a high powered Board of Trustees. At one such meeting an official asked a question which will remain etched on my mind as a stunner. “Supposing such a channel has a bureau in a country where there is deep American interest, will the bureau slant the story or cover it honestly?”

Justice Katju, ask for a copy of the report, that is if a report was ever prepared. I can vouch that meetings were held and I attended them.

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Reasons Why Qaddafi Had to be Killed

2011-10-31T09:36:00.000+05:30

Reasons Why Qaddafi Had to be Killed
Saeed Naqvi

The irony is that a handful of small minded men in England and France have set up a tragedy of epic proportions in the Libyan desert which the blind have not yet seen. It will take a latter day Joseph Conrad, with his sweep of colonial history and a steady gaze on the depth of the human soul, to put it all together. But lesser works will come sooner. At the moment events have numbed us all. Chaos will follow like a hurricane. The story will begin all over again.

It is a pity that Philistinism, an essential companion to unbridled Mammonism, has taken its toll of artistic creativity. Jack Keruak, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlingetti, the great writers of protest, the Beat generation who cleared the air for the youth eruption at Haight Ashbury, the hippies who, despite their depravities, had the instinct to set up a platform for Ravi Shankar and Allah Rakha at Woodstock. That verve and spirit has not yet broken through the ranks of Occupy Wall Street. But that too will happen.

Remember, David Hare’s most pertinent play, Stuff Happens was on London’s West End within months of Bush, Cheyney, Rumsfeld and Condi blundering into Iraq. Even as George W. Bush was campaigning for re election, the play Guantanamo was shaming the Washington establishment off Broadway. From Sardi’s Bar in New York’s theatre district, hoardings for “Enron”, America’s 2G, were going up.

The liberal conscience, in other words, has not exactly died in the midst of the West’s money making orgy. But what about the 5,000 year old civilization called India where Shah Rukh Khan’s Ra One is the only aesthetic enterprise? Enron, after all, took India for a ride. A government was cobbled up for 14 days so it could sign the Enron deal. Likewise scripts on the Qaddafi saga will follow as Stuff Happens did on Iraq.

Qaddafi must have heard stories from the elders of his tribe – how Libyans had to walk in drains at the sight of an approaching Italian soldier. Libya in those days was under the control of Ottoman Turks, a fact which explains the presence of a young Turkish officer, Mustafa Kemal Pasha (remembered as Ataturk) is several battles with the Italian occupiers. It was about this time that the legend of the Libyan hero, Omar Mukhtar was being born.

Two decades earlier, a 23 year old Winston Churchill, ranked a captain but a correspondent for the Morning Post graphically described the British exterminating “the Mahdi’s army in Sudan”.

But the Mahdi, Mukhtar and later, Qaddafi, were all victims of what Churchill called “the mechanical scattering of death which the polite nations of the world have brought to such monstrous perfection.”

I can see eyebrows being raised at Qaddafi being placed alongside a Libyan hero like Omar Mukhtar. Mukhtar challenged the colonialists for 20 years, until the Italians captured and hanged him in 1931. Well, Qaddafi was proud of his record: over 40 years he had defied the “imberialists” (imperialists).

Ofcourse he was vain, possibly even a narcicist contemplating himself as a Mao-Nasser amalgamation, a fountain head of wisdom contained in his unreadable Green Book. But (it must be added in parenthesis) there was something mesmeric about the theatrical way he carried himself, upright, which was a huge contrast to the obese Arab potentates seated on Western laps. He was audacious to the point of being cheeky: “Israel should have been settled in Alsaice and Lorraine!”

When the West’s very favoured were being blown away in the “Arab Spring”, how could the West permit the survival of a person whose entire persona over four decades has evolved in defiance of them.

Ofcourse, oil wealth, the miraculous Great river project, his record of support for Palestine, for the IRA, his brazen contempt for Saudi rulers, his unbreakable links with Africa were all good reasons for his termination. But what was totally unacceptable to the West was his fierce independence. He was realistic enough to notice the currents of history. That is why he made peace with the West once the Soviet umbrella was torn to shreds. And yet he could not help hoping that the trend could be reversed. When he asked Atal Behari Vajpayee to initiate moves for a reunification of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it was a crazy dream and he knew it. “I know, I know” he said “But remember they make us fight to remain powerful. We should unite and take them on.”

Did he have a premonition of his eventual end when Ronald Reagan had Tripoli bombed in 1986. “If they gill”(kill) me, they will not know where to bury me because “beoble” (people) will find my grave.”

So, after much procrastination they have put him away in a secret location in the great Sahara desert where in compulsive reversal to his beduin roots, he sometimes pitched his tents with his camel in tow. And now they will not let his son Saif ul Islam live: he knows too much.

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Tripoli Diary

2011-10-29T10:44:00.002+05:30

Tripoli Diary

Nostalgia in Tripoli
The first meeting with Muammar Qaddaffi was the most dramatic. It was exactly a week after President Ronald Reagan ordered the bombing of this city on April 15, 1986.

In a sense, the current Anglo-French enthusiasm for Qaddaffi’s elimination completes the circle begun with Reagan’s air attacks. Remember, the Reagan-Maggie Thatcher combine had taken upon themselves the daunting task of reversing the process of Western decline after US defeat in Vietnam, emergence of communist governments in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua plus powerful communist parties in Italy, France, Spain. The attack on Libya was part of Reagan’s counter offensive, climaxing in the Star Wars project leading to Soviet implosion. This alas was followed by Neo Cons overreach and the fall of rampaging capitalism, Occupy Wall Street. The Anglo-French rush into Libya is (partly) to keep the wolf from the European door.

Yes, that memorable first meeting. Past midnight I find myself being driven to Bab el Azizia, the fort like compound where Qaddaffi lives. Foreign Minister Kamel Maqhour greets me at the gate. Then, past a series of rectangular spaces to a dimly lit room with low ceiling, like a spruced up army camp. Behind a rectangular table, in air force over alls, a black embroidered gown over his shoulders, and flanked by gorgeous, well chiseled women body guards, (one ebony black the other, its marble counterpart) stands Qaddaffi. It is a stunning trio, like an ad for a fitness parlour.

X X X X X X

Man for Thatcher
The conversation bristles with self conscious sexuality. Reagan attacked him to impress Margaret Thatcher, he laughs.

“He is a failed actor who became President of a great power and he wants to show he can move fleets, big war machines. He is suffering from old age. He wants to finish the world before he goes. I have studied psychology. I know what I am talking about. He has a special relationship with Thatcher – he wants to prove to her that he is a man.” Men from Sirte, reared on camel’s milk, are known for flaunting their macho sexuality.

He looks athletic compared to the Kings and Sheikhs who populate Arab summits. His arrogant carriage is itself something of a taunt. Occasionally he adds insult to injury by calling them “lackeys of imperialism” provoking outbursts some of which have become part of Arab summit folklore. At a summit at Sharm al Sheikh Prince Abdullah (now King of Saudi Arabia) screamed across the table, pointing at Qaddaffi, “Kalb” which means “dog”.

X X X X X X

Rajiv Gandhi’s initiative
At Rajiv Gandhi’s initiative, Non aligned foreign ministers decide at their meeting in New Delhi that a delegation of foreign ministers led by India’s Bali Ram Bhagat should proceed to Tripoli in the spirit of NAM solidarity.

Rajiv asks me “aren’t you covering the story?” His special assistant Ronen Sen navigates my request for an interview with Qaddaffi through diplomatic channels. At Tripoli’s hotel Mahar, I buttonhole Bhagat and hand him a copy of my interview request to be handed to “the leader”. I was granted the interview, but, ironically, Bhagat was sacked soon upon his return. Reagan apparently threw a ginger fit at the Indian initiative.

Qaddaffi, meanwhile stepped up his diplomatic contacts with New Delhi. His son, Saif ul Islam visited India with a “sealed” letter from Qaddaffi for Prime Minister Vajpayee. This was in 2001, after Qaddaffi had made his peace with the West. In those days Qaddafi was a ghost of his former self, like an actor without a stage.

The letter is his “new internationalism”. He urges Vajpayee to take the initiative to “reunify” India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, a reversal to the pre 1947 structure! Vajpayee is amused. He should take up the project first with Pakistan, Vajpayee suggests with a glint in his eye.

X X X X X X

Shikar Trophy
The straightforward colonial solution as to what to do with Qaddaffi’s body would have been to hide it from people who might be tempted to build a shrine around which might grow popular movements – like the last Moghul emperor dispatched to Yangoon to die in the garage of a junior officer or, better still, like Osama bin Laden tossed in the sea.

Why did the West want him to be killed? In his appraisal to me, Qaddaffi was on target: oil, one of the world’s largest reserves of under ground water, an angry clergy choked by his secularism, his links with Africa, promotion of African population in Libya annoying the Mediterranean Arabs, unwavering support for Palestine and, ofcourse, “my fierce independence”.

Only when the mist lifts shall we know how many of Libya’s six million population divided into 140 tribes will agree on a leader through the democratic route.

It must enthuse the faithful that every kick on Qaddaffi’s body was accompanied to the sound of “Allah o Akbar”. Is this not poetic justice for a man who had banned the Mullah? The most educated in a community could lead the Friday prayers. He had opened the World’s first military academy for women, something women in Saudi Arabia will have to wait for a hundred years.

For such misdemeanours he was shot at close range and even as his body lies in a freezing room, a BBC camera brings a young, unknown reporter into focus, kneeling next to the body, with the triumphant look of a shikari over a trophy.

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West Sets Up The War Within Islam

2011-10-24T10:32:00.000+05:30

West Sets Up The War Within Islam
Saeed Naqvi

Concerned European powers should instantly round up Libyan immigrants by way of evasive action just in case they get very angry at the sight of Qaddafi’s body being dragged through the streets of Sirte, kicked and punched. In time, anger will pass even as TV cameras dwell selectively on the unspeakable chaos in Libya, which will skirt oil installations. Pull back the camera and take a wide angle view of the larger picture.

The scene is now set for a first class conflict within Islam (Libya included) stretching from Pakistan right across the Arab world, North Africa embracing large swathes of sub Saharan African. On occasion this conflict within will spill over as terrorism abroad.

When the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan got into a scrum to launch a programme of manufacturing triple distilled mujahideen Islam in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets the seeds were sown for a conflict within Islam as well.

The three had the same agenda but different emphases: the US wanted to oust the Soviets; Saudis a Wahabized Islam as a bulwark against Shia Iran. Pakistan’s Zia ul Haq saw in the Islamization project in the vicinity an end to his country’s existential problem of national identity. Hard “Arabized” Islam would replace a more “Indianized” Islam.

Reverberation from the Iranian revolution were felt in pockets of Shia dominance in Bahrain, oil rich eastern province of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Lebanon, but the tremors were mild. What shook the regimes which host these Shia populations was the consequence of US occupation of Iraq – emergence of a Shia ruled Iraq,

The psychological effect on Syria of a Shia dominated Iraq was considerable. Sunnis are a bigger majority in Syria than Shias are in Iraq. Yet, the minority Alawis in Syria control the reins of power. Even though the Alawis, being Baathists, were quite as indifferent to religion as Kemalist Turks were, the consolidation of Shia power in Iraq (in addition to the continuing patronage from Iran) has had the effect of causing them to admit to their Shia tilt. If the Baathist blanket frays a little more (and it is fraying) a potential can be developed for Sunni-Alawi tensions.

In Lebanon, the Hezbollah derives directly from Iran and Syria. But sectarianism here can be overdrawn. Consider the trio’s resolve behind largely Sunni Hamas in Gaza.

This embarrasses Riyadh which seeks status in the Arab street where Iran, a non Arab entity, is miles ahead in the popularity stakes on account of its strident support for the Palestinian cause. Little wonder, former ambassador to Washington, Turki al Faisal, has warned the US that Riyadh will break ranks with Washington if a two-state solution for a Palestinian is not swiftly found to wrest the initiative on this score by the “two pariah states”, - “Syria and Iran”. Never has a Saudi Prince spoken more bluntly. Saudis, he said, would adopt an “independent and assertive” foreign policy “like our recent military support for Bahrain’s monarchy, which America opposed”. Saudis would pursue other policies at odds with those of the United States, “including opposing the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq and refusing to open embassy there despite American pressure to do so”.

Without mincing words, Turki al Faisal, has sketched the sectarian faultlines Saudi Arabia is excavating.

In Pakistan, the civil society moderation towards India, for instance, is occasionally scuttled by “the India centered” army. In the context of the Afghan war and particularly after the Lal Masjid fiasco in 2007, the civil society itself is fractured, the moderates now on the backfoot. After the killing of Osama bin Laden, a somewhat cornered army is wary of the Haqqanis of this world, for whom moderation is anathema. Is the Army itself divided between Haqqanism and its exact opposite which is continuously losing ground. The conflict is raging.

In Afghanistan, the Pushtoon are divided between Durranis and Ghilzais who together are in conflict with Tajeks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.

In Egypt and Tunis, the softer Islam bequeathed by the Fatamids between the 10th and the 12th century is not exactly comfortable with a thin band of Salafism in the Muslim Brotherhood, hardened because of the Mubarak dictatorship, and his use of the war on terror to keep the hard state in place. Zaidis and the Huthis in Yemen, the Arab and African Muslims are the Central faultline exemplified by Darfur. Both varieties of African Muslims run into potentially the most violent faultline between Muslims and Christians in North and South Nigeria.

With this thumb nail sketch of the backdrop, consider the effects of the “Arab Spring” with those horrible pictures of a dead Qaddafi fresh in our minds. When authoritarian Muslim societies open up, mosques play a decisive role because they have been the only social, political ventilators. And, when the choice is between soft and hard Islam, it is the latter which keeps determining the tempo of the discourse, raising the decibel level as it responds to external stimuli like the NATO bombing of Libya, War on terror, Mid East Peace, unilateral US action in Pakistan’s tribal belt, rubbing of Hamas election results, pulverizing Syria, Lebanon or Gaza by sanctions or any other means when the scramble begins for oil and gas in the waters of the Levant, threatening to leave Afghanistan but building bases larger than a dozen Red Forts.

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For Love of Democracy West Prefers Islamisation In Syria

2011-10-17T09:26:00.000+05:30

For Love of Democracy West Prefers Islamisation In Syria
Saeed Naqvi

The luxury bus leaves downtown Cam hotel to Qassion mountains for a panoramic view of the world’s oldest, continuously inhabited city, Damascus. The picture has to be sketched because outside Syria everyone is counting on the level of chaos we did not see.

There are diplomats, journalists, scholars, some NGOs too, invited by a Syrian think tank to study the current situation. Edward Lionel Peck, former US ambassador to several Arab countries was in the group. From the Ahlatala Café at the Qassian heights, the vast expanse looks the very picture of tranquility. The city’s calm is all the more noticeable because, thanks to the media, we have been conditioned to expect tension, conflict, street protests.

“No fireworks here” the manager of the Café intervenes. Derra, Alleppo, Homs, Hama – “those are the cities where you might see some action”.

An Indian businessman invites me to spend the evening with a Syrian Sunni family he has known for long years. The husband is a retired civil servant; the wife dons a white chiffon scarf. She has a sad, beatific smile on her face. Her two daughters in frocks are constantly replenishing the centre table with fruits, baklavas, scones, soft drinks, Turkish coffee – endless hospitality.

The negative media focus on Syria in recent months has erased from minds the continuing reality: the country is among the few remaining parts of the Arab world where elegant, gracious living is still possible.

“But it may end soon” the wife says, wiping her tears. “Can you imagine – I have to wear this scarf now”. She is Sunni who are supposed to be with the Islamist rebels opposing the Alawi ruling elite. Then why is she unhappy wearing a scarf? Syrian social order is in turmoil.

The population of Syria consists overwhelmingly of Sunnis – say 80 percent. The biggest minority are Alawis, in their origins a Shia Sect but as a result of decades of Baath party training, have shed their religion. They are secular in a non religious sort of way, rather in the image of Mustafa Kemal Pasha or the more Socialist, left leaning Jawaharlal Nehru, a blend of an abiding local culture and western education.

Until the Ayatullahs came to power in 1979, Teheran, Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Baghdad, Algiers, Tunis and any city in Morocco, and even Tripoli had among their populations the most secular elites. The secular enclaves may have been few but emphatic secular presence was a check on mindless religiosity. How was the secular stamp rubbed out in most of these societies in the space of three decades? Each city has a different narrative. The narrative of Damascus is currently in the making.

With the world’s media arrayed on the other side, it is difficult to persuade those who would care to listen, that it is secularism which is fighting with its back to the wall in Syria.

But the narrative the media beams about Syria is: Assad brutalizes his people.

It can be nobody’s case that Arab monarchies and dictatorships, Kemalist Turkey and Shah’s Iran were paragons of liberal democracy, if that be such a non negotiable value. But a certain elegant urbanity was available in these enclaves. In Cairo and Beirut, this urbanity came along with a sparkling intellectual life. Mubarak’s Cairo stilled the fizz. An anti intellectual aridity crept in which gradually overwhelmed most of the cities listed above. Damascus, believe it or not, is the last bastion where one can sit with friends and discuss ideas.

What, then, is our hostess that evening so distraught about? The growing religiosity travelling from across a post Kemalist Turkey and post Saddam Hussain Iraq have generated peer pressure for the scarf. And now, the impulses which brought in the scarf are providing hospitality for Islamism to topple the Baathist structure. Islamism is being preferred to secular Baathism by the US, Europe, Israel (Saudi Arabia) because the move removes Syria from the Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas chain. The regional chessboard changes.

Historically, in Syria Sunnis owned most of the lands and the rather poorer Alawis gravitated towards the army and other services. Just as the great Red Army, in the ultimate analysis, turned out to be a Russian army, the Yugoslav army, a Serbian army, the Syrian army is mostly an Alawi army. This army is the backbone of the Baath structure. Much the largest membership of Baath party comes from the Sunni majority for the obvious reason.

But they do not have as much of a “control” on power as the Alawis do particularly since the ascent of Hafez Assad in 1971.

There has always been a little bit of Muslim Brotherhood of varying strengths throughout the Arab sub stratum. The Iranian revolution in 1979 and breakdown of the Lebanon power sharing system after the Israeli occupation caused something of a stir in the central city of Hama, inviting a brutal crackdown by Assad in 1982.

The “Arab spring” broke up into three theatres – North Africa upto Egypt. Britain and France are to this day trying to manage the mess they have created in Libya. The Saudis are at the wheel on Bahrain and Yemen. Syria appeared to have been spared. Then Turkey began to look like a good model for Arabs in search of the electoral route. Moreover, if Syria can be fitted into that scheme, Iran will lost an ally and Turkey will gain influence.

The media has taken up the project with its concoctions and exaggerations. Double check this last fact with Ambassador Peck who is quite as puzzled. Meanwhile the lady with the scarf will swear by the holy book that she and her family in Alleppo have seen arms being funneled in for the protestors from Turkey. Others talk of Protesters being armed from Iraq and Jordan, a story the media will not investigate.

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All Talk Of US leaving Afghanistan Premature

2011-10-17T09:22:00.001+05:30

All Talk Of US leaving Afghanistan Premature
Saeed Naqvi

The Indo-Afghanistan strategic partnership is also an important backup for the region because of uncertainties on account of the run upto the US Presidential elections in November 2012. During the campaign Barack Obama faces the impossible task of explaining American policy on Afghanistan. After 1,500 lives lost and $500 billion spent, what will the President’s men put out in the public domain as achievements of the Untied States in Af-Pak?

Obviously a theme projecting some sort of success has to be gradually given shape. Towards this end a meeting in Oslo, Norway, has prepared for the important Foreign Ministers summit on Afghanistan to be held in Istanbul under Turkish auspices in early November.

The script from Istanbul will help shape the agenda for the important conference in Bonn in December.

This conference is, in some measure, at Hamid Karzai’s initiative. At the NATO summit in Lisbon in November 2010, Karzai asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to host a follow up conference ten year after the 2001 Bonn conference. Merkel has given a signal for a conference of a 1,000 delegates from 90 countries.

The contact group for this conference, consisting of Special Representatives for Afghanistan from 50 countries, met in March in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In other words, the energetic Turkish-Saudi duet on Afghanistan are exactly the ones playing an aggressive role in the Arab theatre.

By design or accident, Turkey’s quarrel with Israel enlarges the country’s constituency in the Arab street.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erodgan has the endorsement of the Saudis to co-ordinate moves with the Muslim Brotherhood to pressure Assad, either to vacate or to accommodate the “Brothers” in a new Syrian dispensation.

At the other end of the Muslim world, Saudis are also hand-in-glove with Islamabad in regional and GCC enterprises. For example the Kingdom of Bahrain leans on Saudi military support which, in turn, uses its influence in Pakistan to hire mercenary soldiers for several GCC countries particularly Bahrain.

Turki al Faisal, former Saudi Ambassador to Washington and Intelligence Minister, has in a recent article in the New York Times, said if the US does not support the Palestinian bid for statehood, the “special relationship” between Saudi Arabia and the US will be seen to be toxic by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims. In which case Saudis may part company with the US in pursuance of their own policy in Afghanistan too.

What is the implication of this threat? It is a pithy statement considering that the Saudis in large measure financed and accorded logistical support to the “Mujahideen”, a project which later morphed into Al Qaeda and Taleban. Not just the Haqqani network but the entire militant project in the Af-Pak region is not exempt from Saudi influence. The Saudis will work hard for damage control in the current Pak-US spat too.

Equally, Saudis and Pakistanis have their ears close to the ground on secret negotiations on a “long term” security arrangement between Washington and Kabul. An agreement would imply American military presence in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 deadline by when 1,30,000 US troops are supposed to leave. Saudis are comfortable with this arrangement because it fits into their anti Iran strategy but their allies, Pakistanis are unhappy with anything that limits their influence in a future Afghanistan.

Numbers of US troops departing are quite as unpredictable as the shifting deadlines for the date of their departure. First, Americans were to leave by 2011. Then the Obama team changed the deadline to 2012 when the “American departure from Afghanistan” could be laced into a script being prepared for the Presidential campaign.

Meanwhile at the UN sponsored Kabul conference in July, 2010, Hamid Karzai declared himself President until 2014.

Is it anybody’s case that Karzai will have captured the hearts and minds of the Afghan people by 2014? What happens to him after that date? Also will an Afghan army capable of guaranteeing the nation’s security be in place when the US troops clamber onto departing aircraft? Everyone knows the US will never vacate bases in Bagram, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Shindand, Mazar-é-Sharif and so on.

Some sort of script will be firmed up in May 2012 when President Obama has invited NATO allies and sundry others for an Afghan summit in Chicago, barely six months before his bid for a second term.

How the Afghan script will change after the US elections will depend on whether Obama wins or loses. Until then all talk of US troop departure is grossly premature.

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Did Pataudi Derive From Urdu Composite Culture Too?

2011-10-03T09:39:00.001+05:30

Did Pataudi Derive From Urdu Composite Culture Too?
Saeed Naqvi

I thought the din had died, but the memorial meeting in New Delhi triggered some more nostalgia on Tiger Pataudi.
Miliye us shaqsh se ki jo adam hovey,
Naaz apne Kamal par usey kam hovey.
(Meet the person who is, above all, a human being! Who carries his achievements with modesty)

There is no fuss in Mir Taqi Mir’s description of the man he holds in high esteem. Tiger Pataudi is probably chuckling somewhere at this somewhat pretentious reference. But the simple couplet goes some distance in explaining the aura in which Tiger has been shrouded these past few weeks. No fuss: that was the cardinal ingredient in Tiger’s carriage.

In a general sense, a triple hierarchy defines the highest rungs of the Indian elite. The princely order, for one, would come under the broad feudal category. Second, two hundred years of British experience left behind another category – Macaulay’s elite. Third has been the most durable, if not the most glamorous, caste elite.

A combination of the three would appear to be a compelling formula for unbeatable charisma. But, it turns out, mere possession of these attributes does not make for an outright winner. There were other, compulsory pre conditions for a winning combination – good looks, speech, demeanour, carriage and that inexplicable agent of attraction called phiromenes, which some people exude to attract others of their kind.

For all these elements to come together is a rare enough occurrence, but Tiger Pataudi exceeded even this rare configuration. His achievement as a cricketer, youngest ever Indian captain, one who knit together the greatest quartet of spin bowlers in world cricket, authoured the country’s first overseas series win, stroked the ball along a silken carpet and that supple agility in the covers which earned him the title, Tiger.

If this is hyperbole, where does one fit in other details: his sporting lineage, for instance, in addition to the princely one. His father, Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi, played for England and captained India. He had a gentleman’s disdain for Douglas Jardine’s Bodyline tactics to contain Bradman. “This is not on” he said. “This isn’t cricket.” This lack of obsequiousness was a trait Tiger inherited.

It is so appropriate that Tiger should have held Jawaharlal Nehru as something of a model. They shared several elements in their background – aristocratic demenour, education, achievements in totally diverse fields.

Put it down to my biases, but that extra élan they had, derived from a shared composite Urdu culture.

Pandit Nehru’s “mother” tongue was not Kashmiri: it was Urdu. This, because like hundreds of Kashmiri Pandit families, the Nehrus had settled in Oudh. In fact they played a pioneering role in shaping Urdu literature.

Tiger’s grandmother came from the family of the Nawab of Loharu with which the great Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib also had links.

The word “Nawab”, unlike “Raja”, resonates in Urdu. The basic character of Urdu derives not from religious texts, but elegant agnosticism, a certain irreverence bestowed on it by its poets. It is this broad Catholicism which explains Nehru’s aversion to religious rituals at his funeral. He shunned religious rites. Nehru most lyrically wanted his ashes to be sprinkled on the Ganges, the Himalayas.

Did Tiger have any “will”, for his funeral, that he should be buried according to a strict religious code? If I know anything of him, he must have left his family totally confused where to look for a “moulvi” of suitable affiliations to perform the last rites.

In the framework sketched by Urdu poets, a distance from dogma associated with the clergy is an essential pre condition for realization of my Truth. Little wonder, throughout the annals of Urdu poetry there is not a single passage of any note which has a good word for orthodoxy, dogma, wares that the clergy peddle.

I have dwelt on the Urdu component in Tiger’s personality because it also gives him an indigenous platform on which is settled his very anglaise persona, making for an integrated human being, rather like the person he held up as a model. Without the Discovery of India, Nehru would have been something of a rootless person, neither here no there, complaining to his father, Motilal Nehru, that he had made an outrageous mistake in hiring an English governess for his sister, Vijaylaxmi, in total violation of custom prevalent among the British aristocracy which placed a premium on French governesses. Mrs. Vijaylaxmi Pandit told me this story. But proximity to Mahatma Gandhi and the national movement changed all that.

With his insights into the game why did Tiger not commentate more or serve on cricket boards and so on? Also, why did he not join politics? Because he could not. That would involve what the vagabond poet Jafar Zatalli calls, “ghusar phusar”. He told an interviewer “I don’t think I would have achieved very much more by running around”.

Yaas Yagana Changezi warns “Dawar-e-Hashr” or “Creator”, not to lose sight of the profound distinction between “banda-e-naumeed” and “banda-e-beniaz”, a disheartened loser and the elegantly indifferent, one who couldn’t do the “running around” and which others including “Princes” do all their lives for pointless prominence.

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Police Joins In Gopalgarh To Kill Muslims: Rings A Bell?

2011-09-23T16:56:00.001+05:30

Police Joins In Gopalgarh To Kill Muslims: Rings A Bell?
Saeed Naqvi

Home Minister P. Chidambaram would do well to take a 20 mts helicopter ride to Gopalgarh, in Rajasthan, close to both Haryana and UP, where on September 14, the police, in collusion with local Gujjars, fired and killed nine Muslims (of the Meo community) in a mosque. Muslim anger spilling over into UP would be disastrous for the Congress 2012 campaign.

The post mortem report, conducted in Sawai Man Singh hospital, Jaipur, has confirmed three deaths by “bullets” and three were burnt alive. The remaining three died of injuries from sharp weapons. Officially, seven are missing and twenty-three injured. The unofficial figure of the injured is in excess of fifty.

Of the nineteen policemen at Gopalgarh police station, nine were Gujjars. In the entire Meo belt, beginning from Nuh on the Delhi-Alwar highway, and spreading across Rajasthan, Haryana and UP, there is a large presence of Gujjars in the police force and none of Meo Muslims, much the larger community.

The number of dead does not tell the story of Meo helplessness which becomes apparent at every turn on a two and a half hour drive from New Delhi past Nuh, Pahari and Gopalgarh. The logistics being so convenient for all the channels headquartered in New Delhi, the blackout of the story is inexplicable. Salman Rushdie once made an observation about European (media too) attitude towards the Bosnian carnage: “You reverse the religious affiliations of those brutalized and NATO would have moved in immediately.” Put it down to my cowardice that I hesitate to make that point about our media’s attitude to Gopalgarh. But it is tragic that, except for the Indian Express, I saw no other media in an area known for its unique culture and where almost everybody is aching to tell a sad story.

The great historian and author of the History of the People of Hindustan, the late Dr. K.M. Ashraf was a Meo. The Meo community was, until a few years ago, a unique blend of Islamic faith and Hindu culture – rather like Indonesia, where the practice of Islam has no conflictual equation with the local culture which derives from Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Ramzan Chaudhry, a lawyer, remembers his grandmother wearing the Rajput “Lehnga” and organizing Govardhan Puja without prejudice to namaz each day.

Successive administrations treated Meos with neglect. This gave an opening to the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Tablighi-Jamaat to step in, “refine” the faith and dilute the colourful culture.

Three kms from Gopalgarh is the large Meel ka Madrasa, where 2,000 boys and girls live in a series of gigantic courtyards ringed by verandahs and tidy rooms like major universities anywhere. “What job will you get once you pass out from the Madrasa?” I ask 15 year old Jamal.

“A moulvi” (priest) he responds with pride. A moulvi in the kind of Mosque where the police and Gujjars opened fire?

It is uncharitable and wrong to link Madrasas with militancy. But what is frightening is this large turnover of unemployable “moulvis”.

Even though the Meos are much the largest population in the area, Gujjars are more self assured after their recent publicized agitation for reservations. They also feel more muscular because of the support they have from the police.

The scene of the violence is a set of three properties – a mosque, two acre enclosure for special Eid prayers and a few acres of disputed land which the Muslims use as their graveyard. On this some Gujjars have encroached.

It is at this point that communal politics gets mixed up with a land dispute. On September 13 Gujjars beats up the moulvi of the mosque precisely to raise tensions. Gopalgarh is tense. On September 14, RSS, VHP and Gujjar leaders mob the Superintendent of Police and Collector and forcibly obtain orders for the police to fire on Meos seeking shelter in the mosque.

At this stage, politics takes over. Rajasthan’s Congress Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has 96 seats in a House of 200. He makes up the deficit with the help of BSP MLAs from the Meena tribe with whom Meos have “ties of blood” and Gujjars have traditional antipathies. Meos and Meenas have the same sub castes and “gotras”. So, Gehlot suspends the collector and SP and removes all the Gujjars from Gopalgarh police station. He announces a judicial and CBI inquiry plus a compensation of Rs. Five Lakh for relatives of those killed.

Four bodies are quietly buried, after relatives accept five lakh cheques. But Kirorilal Meena, who has emerged as the leader of the Meos, raises the compensation demand to Rs.25 lakh and a plot of land for a memorial to the dead plus resignation of Rajasthan Home Minister, Shanti Dhariwal who has been tepid on the Gopalgarh tragedy. Gehlot cannot annoy the Meenas, who are the front for Meos, because his survival in Jaipur depends on them. He is helpless on Dhariwal whose hold on the “Hindu” vote is priceless. So he is in a bind.

Like every other group, Meos too have created their tiny dynasties. Zahida Begum, Congress MLA from Kama in Rajasthan, is under pressure from Gehlot to use her influence and end the Gopalgarh story before New Delhi tweaks the Chief Minister’s ears. If she succeeds she will become Minister. Bhupendra Singh Hooda, Haryana Chief Minister, is pressing his Meo MLA Aftab Ahmad to stop Muslim anger from spilling over into his state. Aftab and Zahida are political enemies but are together in limiting the “Gopalgarh-effect” for their own reasons. Zahida’s brother, Fazal may be given an assembly ticket in Haryana if she can join forces with her political enemy Aftab Ahmad to help Hooda. But everyone is at this moment being neutralized by Kirorilal Meena, the most influential leader of the Meos. Congress, which has lost the habit of doing its homework, probably does not know that Kirorilal Meena, the most popular leader of the Muslim Meos was once a BJP MP and has just returned from Ahmedabad after attending Narendra Modi’s sadbhavna fast!

At his instance, the burials may be delayed, the charge sheets against the local administration be more comprehensive. Should tensions linger and travel to UP, Chidambaram will be asked questions. Should he travel to Gopalgarh? If he does not visit, Digvijay Singh may.

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Credibility Deficit In The Western Media

2011-09-19T09:47:00.001+05:30

Credibility Deficit In The Western Media
Saeed Naqvi

The story could not have been summed up more succinctly: the photograph shows David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy in Tripoli holding aloft the hand of a Libyan leader they would like to promote. Below, the headline across three columns – “Islamists Rise in New Libya”. This was refreshingly honest.

The world Information order, like much else, was shaped when India was a colony. It is a matter of astonishment how the Indian elite allowed itself to be a passive recipient of images beamed at it by the western media and, in foreign coverage, its Indian transmitters.

I had lodged the issue in some deep recess of my mind and allowed it to freeze until the so called Arab Spring impelled me to the region. Here I was again, the lonesome Indian journalist, in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Amman, Baghdad, Bahrain, the oil bearing eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Later, in Damascus, Homs, Hama in Syria just as I had been to Sana’a, in Yemen and Tripoli before all hell broke loose. I list these news spots only to make a point: unless you have your media there, in the midst of the story, how would you ever know the lengths to which the Western media can go, when it rallies behind a national agenda, to dissemble and purposefully shape your mind? Even the coincidence of that telling photograph and the contradictory headline would require decoding unless you have followed the drift of the from a consistent source.

On my return from Damascus, when I suggested to a senior leader that an Indian delegation should visit important countries in what is virtually India’s “near abroad”, he looked at me like I was pushing him into the line of fire.

“You are not suggesting that we go to Hama, are you?” he asked weakly.

Hama causes raised eyebrows because of the harshness with which Hafez al Assad suppressed an Islamist uprising in 1982. But all recent reports of protests being put down by tanks and rockets are concoctions, in most instances, as a group of six Indian journalists recently found out. Damascus seemed more at peace than New Delhi is before or after the recent High Court blast. Yes there was tension in Hama, a certain restiveness, nasty graffiti painted over in black. But no trace of a “massacre”.

The negative images on Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya channels are being flashed by the Islamic rebels who have been equipped with technology provided by the US keen to weaken Syria’s links with Iran and Hezbollah.

James Glanz and John Markoff of the New York Times say:
“The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy ‘shadow’ internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.”

“The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cell phone networks inside foreign countries, as well one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase” – all part of what is being called “Liberation technology movement”.

The suitcase can be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

“The state Department is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya.”

In this Information war, on whose side are we? In the absence of our own sources of information, these are the traps we can walk into. If BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya were to provide free service to Indian channels, do you think are great “independent” media will be able to resist the bait?

When the Anglo-French plot on Libya was first hatched, I wrote in these spaces that folks in Benghazi luring Europe are the very same who started 2006 uprising against the Danish cartoons. The sole voice was drowned out by the drumbeat of “revolution”. And now, after six months of relentless NATO bombing and Special Forces operating away from the cameras (these were focused on t-shirt and jean wearing youth brandishing AK 47s on pick up vans), Qaddaffi remains elusive and a wave of something resembling Salafism is already discernible. H.D.S. Greenway, in a superb piece, says: “Libyans will remember Qaddaffi differently in the chaos that is coming.”

Let us, then, move on to Baghdad – a shattering experience. I visited my favourite “mazgouf” joint which means fish from the Tigris grilled on open fire on the riverbank. It looked exactly what it was: a bombed hut. The fish is no longer from the Tigris but a nearby lake. A macabre incident ended that culture of eating. Human body parts were found in the stomach of the fish which, having lived for thousands of years on live bait, had become scavenger because of bodies floating down the river since the invasion.

Yes, we need our own reporters in every part of the globe otherwise the world will pass us by. Events will take place outside our ken.

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Win In Libya And Lose The Arab Spring

2011-09-12T11:18:00.000+05:30

Win In Libya And Lose The Arab Spring
Saeed Naqvi

In the decade since 9/11, has the West’s rift with the Muslim world widened? There was a window of opportunity to compose the rift when the Arab Spring ushered in a secular mass mobilization in Tunis and more decisively in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

Secular Muslim youth, Coptic Christians, a toned down Muslim Brotherhood, were all there, seeking change. Not once did one hear slogans against Israel or the United States. This was true of the fervent in all the countries this journalist visited – Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria even Qatif and Dahran, the oil bearing region of Saudi Arabia. But monarchies, sheikhdoms, dictatorships looked at each other in a state of funk because the people were out on the streets.

A handful of American columnists are being shortsighted in owning upto the mess that is being left behind by Britain and France in Libya. The United States was not interested in getting involved in a third Muslim country, the other two being Iraq and Afghanistan. How it was blackmailed into acquiescence in the name of saving NATO is another story.

Now, ofcourse, US diplomat and Arabist, Jeff Feltman has appeared in Benghazi just in case the scrambling Europeans forget their premier Atlantic partner.

How would the Muslim world have taken the six month long televised marathon in Libya? Also, there are 20 million Muslims in Europe. How would they react? Here is yet another occasion where one image evokes diametrically opposed responses between the West and the rest, particularly Muslims. In Europe, the responses would range from Anders Breivik’s in Oslo to the Muslim fringe, in a heightened state of agitation, after Libya. A glass, full of promise, has been spilt. Can an attempt be made to rescue some goodwill in the run upto the UN General Assembly vote on Palestine later this month?

A pity the Spring ushered in by Arab youth has been willfully wasted by the West. Indeed, the shaken monarchies and the remaining dictatorships have rallied around the US and Europe to protect themselves.

While some of the western diplomats have been selling the lemon that Libyan oil was not the reason for the invasion, facts on the ground suggest oil, water, Libya’s links with resource rich Africa are the prime reasons for European interest in the country whose leader, Qaddaffi, was their friend until the other day.

I was reading an autobiography which touches on the King of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah’s exile from Lucknow in 1856, an event which triggered the great uprising of 1857. That was classical regime change, one of the many that colonialism engineered. The metropolitan centers of control in Europe have not shed habits picked up in the 19th century. Indian statecraft probably has its own logic, what I find disgraceful is the deafening silence in India’s intellectual corridors.

Western media, which in the past threw up its hands in horror at the very mention of Muslim Brotherhood, is suddenly so accommodative of the Brothers that the Economist is editorially advising whoever would care to listen that all Muslims are not ogres provided they play by democratic rules.

This is true, but this line is being devised to justify the overthrow (almost) of possibly the most secular dictator in the region other than the two Baa’th regimes in Syria and Iraq. As someone who visited Tripoli after President Reagan bombed the country on “suspicions” of terrorism and more recently, I can say with authority that it was the only society in the region free of the Mullah. The most educated person in the neighbourhood could lead the Friday prayers. The country boasted of the world’s first military academy for women. Indeed, Qaddaffi’s two bodyguards were women. Difficult to believe that he “murdered” his own people as Alain Juppe and David Cameron have repeatedly alleged?

If he was such a tyrant, how do we explain cosy deals between British and French Intelligence agencies and Tripoli? When the dust settles all lies will stand exposed. In the meanwhile do not give credence to the well informed businessman from Tripoli who insists that in the melee, Qaddaffi placed his bets on both sides. In other words, watch the man being brought into focus as Libya’s interim leader: keep a steady gaze on his eye which he might wink in warm recognition whenever he sees Qaddaffi or his minions at a moment opportune for both.

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Media For TRPs And Prasar Bharati For Murdoch?

2011-09-05T11:05:00.001+05:30

Media For TRPs And Prasar Bharati For Murdoch?
Saeed Naqvi

One may have to turn to major advertisers to find out what slots are being booked beyond September 16 when the India – England ODI series ends. Because that is when the political season will open up for the UP assembly elections, and for which the channels are already smacking their lips.

It is at that stage that the marketing whiz-kids have to take a call whether to invite Anna Hazare for a sojourn at Delhi’s Ramlila Ground or, for variety, transport fifty or more cameras to Ralegaon Siddhi itself. Crowd mobilization in a remote area may not be insurmountable because crowd amplification is an elementary media trick.

It was by this trick that the Dick Cheney pulled wool over the world’s eyes by putting out a complete fabrication that Saddam Hussain’s statue had been pulled down on April 9, 2003 by Iraqi crowds celebrating victory. Nothing of the sort happened. Some workers from Baghdad’s Palestine hotel and a handful of bystanders saw US marines place a hook around the neck of the statue and an armoured personal carrier pull the rope to leave Saddam hanging at an awkward tilt, gifting the world with an iconic image of American triumph.

Poor Rageh Omaar, the BBC’s correspondent, received instructions from headquarters to provide commentary suitable for a great victory. So, he went on and on: O’ my god, this is unbelievable, the crowds are coming from this side and that. The fact of the matter was that the crowds did not come, only Omaar did.

In between the contrived frames of the statue falling, were snatches from Dick Cheney’s “victory” speech in which he thanked “religious” leaders for having made the occasion possible. Who were the “religious leaders” being thanked and why? Shia clerics Baqar al Hakim and Muqtada Sar had been contacted to send out Shia crowds to celebrate. Yes, that is when Tom Friedman, who thought Iraq was the greatest liberalizing project ever undertaken, recommended a Noble Prize for Ayatullah Sistani. The story bears repetition because it is on mass amnesia that the contemporary global media feeds as I know too well from recent travels through most of the Arab world in the grip of violent change. It quite beats me how the western media has heaped so much shame on itself by telling lies that would make ones hair stand – in Libya and Syria. Joseph Stiglitz, the American Nobel laureate is right. Bin Laden wished to hurt America, but the manner in which the US has proceeded to hurt itself by dismantling its institutions, of which a credible media is part, is quite dismaying. And we, in India, give currency to columnists who, at their lowest, spew racism. “The West must at times be prepared to fight for its values against barbarism.” Really? When did Martin Luther King lead the Civil Rights movement? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, a million civilians killed in Iraq. And our obsequious media publishes columnists justifying military action on Arab people to end “barbarism?”

But let me not mix up print with electronic media. These have been good days for TRPs eversince the Cricket World Cup began earlier in the year, leading upto a dream climax in the semi final in Mohali, garnished with an Indo-Pak summit, and then the final of finals when India became the world’s number one team.

It was not that the marketing managers had taken their eyes off life after the world cup. Here was the worlds number one team (it had just won in the West Indies too) headed for England. It was mind boggling the bonanza that loomed on the horizon. Unfortunately, team India flopped in England.

But by the time the last test match ended at the Oval on August 22, channels were busy reheating the Anna project.

In a fast paced novel or movie P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Swami Ramdev, Anna Hazare and the media, would all be found to be batting on the same side, heightening dramatic effect from their own vantage points in geometrical progression, filling the media’s coffers with mysterious altruism.

Barely two days before a dismal test series ended, Anna was reinstated at Ramlila ground. The 24X7 media had never had it so good. Anchors mobilized superior pundits to analyze every inflection of Anna and his cohorts. For ten days, without a break, morning, evening, afternoon, all other news disappeared from the media.

And now as the country prepares for the UP and national election, the channels must keep their gaze on the main chance, the TRPs. In wars the western media becomes part of the war effort, batting for the country as it were. But whose purpose does the Indian media serve when it becomes part of the Anna campaign? We shall never know the answer to this question unless we know who owns the media and what are the foreign linkages.

When Rupert Murdoch was on the mat in Britain and the US his representative in India was doubling up as member of the Prasar Bharati Board! Really, what salvation when neither the state nor Anna know a jot about the media which ties them up in knots?

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Is Damascus Burning?

2011-09-03T13:10:00.000+05:30

Is Damascus Burning?
Saeed Naqvi

It was not easy to fit Syria into a pattern eversince Mohammed Bouazizi, Tunisian pavement seller, ignited Arab change by setting himself ablaze for being slapped by a policewoman on December 17, 2010.

The Arab world divided itself into three distinct theatres of change. First were the North African states, stretching from Morocco to Egypt, having a Mediterranean face but an African depth too. The turn of events in Egypt were tectonic.

The second theatre was Libya where Muammar Qaddafi, in a solo, walked through minefields inexpertly laid by the Anglo-French combine. This has now turned into a fox hunt – hounds, bugles et al.

The most violent theatre was in Saudi charge, a Shia arc around the realm – Yemen with its Zaidis and Huthis (Al Qaeda, too), Bahrain(80 percent Shia), Kuwait(30 percent), Iraq(65 percent), the last three converging on the Saudi oil fields in Dahran, Dammam, Qatif, all Shia dominated.

Damascus was more like pre occupation Baghdad. Saddam Hussain and Hafez al Assad were both secure as leaders of the iron-clad Ba’ath Socialist parties. Order was maintained by the army and party cadres.

But in Iraq Saddam, Army, party were all smashed by the US occupation, focused overwhelmingly on oil. Only a subsidiary interest was to insulate Israel’s east from an oil rich, efficient dictatorship. An unintended consequence was the emergence of Shia power around which the Saudis are now doing a vigorous war dance.

Syria was spared the American wrath because it had no oil and its border with Israel had been the most peaceful in the region. War drums around Damascus are a surprise because another Iraq is not possible. That would entail American invasion, not in the cards now. So Damascus has to be destabilized in other ways – by encouraging the Sunni majority against the Alawite dominated regime, for instance.

Why this focus on Damascus now? Have they found oil on a scale comparable with Iraq? It takes time to digest startling reality. Yes, oil and gas are in the bargain now, offshore, within the territorial waters of Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus, as much oil as there is in Saudi Arabia. Do a Google search and find Israel Energy Initiative. Familiar names like Dick Cheney, Murdoch, Rothschild swim into focus.

New Delhi clearly has a lively embassy in Damascus. Here, seated in President Bashar Assad’s palace, I find officials quickly process documents submitted by ONGC Videsh Ltd. to prospect in blocks claimed by Syria.

Some political facts to complete the picture. A Shia ring around Saudi Arabia gives Riyadh nightmares. A larger, strategic Shia arc (plus Hamas) is Israel’s nightmare. It is in this latter category that Syria fits in because Assad, his clan, the army, are all Alawites a secular variant of Shias. The majority is overwhelmingly Sunni. These sectarian divisions in the Syrian context are slightly misleading: Baa’th socialism nurtured a deeply secular society. Creeping anger inclined towards Sunni extremism is an import from neighbours after televised destruction of Iraq.

Ataturk’s Turkey and Ba’ath Syria had a durable, secular bond. But a more Islamic Turkey has been pressing Assad to give political space to the Muslim Brotherhood, while introducing reforms in Syria. For Assad, this would be the thin end of the wedge.

A more “sunni” Syria would remove the country from the Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas nexus and enhance Turkey’s influence way above Iran’s in the region. Also, Turkey is strategically placed to ensure fluent flow of fuel to Europe or elsewhere when the off shore oil is placed in pipelines.

In this scenario, US ambassador to Syria Robert Stephen Ford’s role is vital. John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq, said of Ford, his deputy then: “he is one of those very tireless people…...who didn’t mind putting on his flak jacket and helmet and going out of the Green Zone to meet contacts”. Well, he is putting his genius to use driving to such trouble spots as Hama’a and Darr’a patting the rebels. Why Assad has not shown him the door probably reflects on the besieged President’s weakness, possible divisions in the highest leadership.

In this destabilization process the Iraqi insurgency next door also finds an outlet, relieving pressure on US troops planning departure from Baghdad.

The media, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, BBC, CNN, in that order are putting out stories which neither this journalist nor non Arab ambassadors have found to be true. In a drive to Homs, even Hama, the real trouble spot, I saw fewer pickets than on Indian roads. At the end of the day media’s reputation will be quite as battered as the region is. How are these bogus stories being flashed despite dictatorial censorship? The New York Times says that “the Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy ‘shadow’ internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.” All for love of freedom?

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Million Arab Lives, Small Price For Freedom

2011-08-30T10:44:00.001+05:30

Million Arab Lives, Small Price For Freedom
Saeed Naqvi

Just in case you did not know, Muammar Qaddafi and Bashar Assad are victims of a media war, relentless, no holds barred.

I am making this observation with a degree of authority because I returned last week from Damascus, Ham’a, Homs and vast Syrian spaces in between in searing 45°. As for Libya, well, I have been there earlier.

Some months ago, when David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy were salivating at Libyan oil, the International Herald Tribune published a cartoon.

A group of hatted Europeans are sipping Campari under an umbrella. Uncle Sam, looking rather like a butler, says, “There is a fire raging next door”. The European grandees reply: “don’t just stand there; go put out the fire”.

Altruism is obviously at a discount when major fires, like the one in Libya, are to be put out. European leaders may be drooling at the sight of Libyan light crude, but all their representatives, flying in from Malta to Benghazi, have been trumped by the visit to Libyan opposition leaders by Jeff Feltman, US envoy and expert on Middle East. Americans are not likely to loosen their grip on Energy resources.

The ultimate compliment to Feltman came from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israeli reversal in the 2006 Lebanon war. The government of Fouad Siniora, installed with American help was called the “Feltman Government” by Nasrallah. The label was adopted by Lebanese opposition groups.

The US ambassador to Syria, Robert Stephen Ford is no mean operator either. He has been travelling around the country with the audacity of a Special Forces stuntman in diplomatic guise. His visit to Ham'a, a Salafist center, along with the French Ambassador, in early Ramadan created conditions for some frightful rioting against the regime. The army retaliated, killing 75.

Just when the Bashar Assad establishment was seething with rage, last week Ford decided to poke his fingers in the regime’s eye by turning up in Darr’a, another trouble spot where the variety of Muslims in bad odour with the west are up in arms against Assad. But there is no ambiguity in Ford’s mission: he had gone to boost the morale of exactly the variety who, two months ago, had come out on the streets across the border in Jordan, brandishing their swords and demanding Shariah.

But has anyone seen that story? Ofcourse not, because stories about human rights in any monarchy in West Asia are taboo by edict of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on whose coffers an economically declining West has its eye. Only Republican dictatorships are in the line of fire. And towards this end the media has been deployed – BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and Al Arabia, the last two represent the Monarchies (Saudi Arabia and Qatar) now in the coalition of the willing, (Israel is the silent partner) in a blistering media assault on Assad’s regime. Mission Libya, in their perception, is as good as accomplished.

After the Darr’a visit, the Syrian cabinet got into a huddle. Should the meddlesome US ambassador be shown the door? There were divisions in the highest leadership. Ford stays on. Assad knows his clout. When John Negroponte was US ambassador to Iraq, Ford was his deputy. The Pentagon confirmed to Newsweek in 2005, that the two masterminded “hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency”. Negroponte described Ford as “one of those very tireless people…..who, didn’t mind putting on his flak jacket and helmet and going out of the Green Zone to meet contacts”. And now his genius is being put to good use in Syria.

It is universally accepted that disinformation is part of warfare. But who is the Assad regime at war with? In imitation of the choreography in Libya, an impression is sought to be created that the Alawite dominated regime is brutalizing the majority Sunni population.

To amplify this image, totally fabricated stories are being flashed on Al Jazeera, Al Arabia, BBC and CNN. “I have seen with my own eyes,” says a lady hosting some Indian friends, “how arms are being smuggled from Turkey in my hometown, Aleppo, given to the rebels but the subsequent violence is being blamed on the regime”. The lady is a scarf wearing Sunni.

Non Arab ambassadors visited the coastal town of Latakia to verify reports of “heavy shelling from the sea”. Persistent questioning of a cross section of people revealed that no shelling had ever taken place.

Journalists on a tour of Ham’s were shown the police station from where seventeen people, including policemen, were pulled out, beheaded and their bodies thrown in the nearby river. However macabre the story, it gets no play because it is a narrative of the government which is in the west’s line of fire.

The story of “mass graves” in Darr’a makes headlines on BBC and CNN even though inquiries made by embassies reveal that the burial of five members of a family (intra family vendetta) had been exaggerated as “mass graves”, resulting from an army crackdown.

But how is the media circumventing censorship? The New York Times says that “the Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy ‘shadow’ internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.”

Really, what some people will not do for freedom. A million deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and heaven knows how many more to follow in Syria, and wherever else, is but small sacrifice to keep the flame of freedom burning eternally and all flames need fuel.

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Anna, Home-Grown-Terror, Sonia’s Health And Other Stories

2011-08-23T10:05:00.001+05:30

Anna, Home-Grown-Terror, Sonia’s Health And Other Stories
Saeed Naqvi

Given the media’s preferences, Anna Hazare will, in the foreseeable future, obscure other stories which may be equally important.

An edit page cartoon in the Hindu shows Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leaning hard against a cupboard, trying to hold back skeletons. He is pointing at the opposition: “there are skeletons in your cupboard!”

This at a time when Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal issue was threatening to overshadow the monsoon session of Parliament.

The skeletons the Prime Minister is trying to hide are, presumably, corruption cases on a magnitude which have already sent Union ministers and others in that league to jail. But what skeletons is Manmohan Singh pointing out in the opposition cupboard?

For the first time ever, Home Minister P. Chidambaram, admitted in parliament that there “were indications of involvement of Indian module in the July 13, Mumbai blasts that killed 26 people.” Chidambaram continued: “we cannot live in denial; we cannot close our eyes to facts. There are home grown modules.”

What is it that we have been living in denial of? Only when the media takes its eyes off the Anna movement can this frightening story be brought into focus. Even a cursory investigation suggests that the Indian Mujahideen generally blamed for acts of terror since 2008 are actually the “home grown modules” Chidambaram is talking about. At some appropriate moment, for wider credibility, Anna may wish to take this one up too.

According to one of the country’s leading experts on terrorism, Wilson John of the Observer Research Foundation, atleast a dozen major terror attacks since the Uttar Pradesh serial blasts of November 2007, have been linked to Indian Mujahideen who, it turns out, may be these “home grown modules” linked to right wing terror.

Wilson John is candid: “if a fraction of what has appeared in the media about Indian Mujahideen is anywhere near the truth, then we are in for serious trouble – we have a terrorist group capable of networking across this vast country, one which can recruit, train and carry out attacks at will as if intelligence agencies and police forces and a host of federal agencies are either incompetent or complicit.”

The other story that must await its turn to be brought into focus is Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s health and the effect it will have on the Congress succession. Ofcourse the Gandhi family’s privacy has to be respected but the family would be well advised to end speculation. The Congress party could issue regular health bulletins if she is seriously unwell or to make one urgent statement on her health if she is recovering. The calmness with which Rahul Gandhi proceeded to Pune in aftermath of the police firing showed a certain unflappability, that Mrs. Gandhi’s health did not seem to weigh on him.

A spoiler for Anna and his cohorts could well be the fourth cricket test between India and England at the Oval, particularly if, by some miracle, India begins to look good. Principal anchors will then have to wait for custom with their Anna packages while the viewers will have defected to Star Cricket in droves. Rains could also ruin the Anna’s TV potential.

By accident or design, team Anna has hit the political jackpot. He has truck exactly the chord with the people, urban middle class particularly (exactly the one most taken in by the shining India illusion) because he provides them relief from a sense of helplessness in the face of rising prices which in popular perception are jumbled up with rampaging corruption.

The insensitive even cockey handling of Anna by the Congress leadership absolutely justifies the Mail Today banner headline, across two pages: “Cong a Rudderless Ship Minus Sonia”.

When Sonia Gandhi was in control she generally turned to the experience and sagacity of Pranab Mukherjee for all firefighting operations. But just when all political skill was required to handle Anna, the Finance Minister was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the quartet authorized to look after party affairs in her absence – A. K. Antony, Ahmad Patel, Janardan Dwivedi, Rahul Gandhi. A pity the Prime Minister’s apparent absence from issues of political salience is not even noticed these days – except by the opposition to score debating points.

How the Anna phenomena plays itself out is not clear. Should he run out of steam, middle class disappointment will be enormous with unpredictable consequences. The Congress, with luck, must have its leader back soon or, in the alternative, find some way to keep together the flock which has grown accustomed to the apotheosis of a family. A simple way is to hold party elections, never attempted after the Tirupati session of the Congress in 1993.

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Ramadan Fast for Swami Agnivesh, Lord Meghnad Desai

2011-08-16T14:01:00.000+05:30

Ramadan Fast for Swami Agnivesh, Lord Meghnad Desai
Saeed Naqvi

It was an extraordinary group of five that turned up at Delhi’s Jama Masjid at 3.30am last week for “Saheri”, or the last meal before the day’s fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. Saheri derives from Saher which means dawn.

Only those in the vicinity of mosques make it a congregational affair. And, when the mosque happens to be one of the world’s great monuments, Jama Masjid, people sometimes travel long distances to participate in this remarkable confluence of faith and aesthetics. The incentive to visit the area multiplies because of several well known restaurants, particularly Karim’s renowned for a special fare during Ramadan – Nihari, mutton cooked all night on slow fire and paya, or goat’s trotters, with “khamiri” roti or leavened bread.

These may sound like mouth watering delicacies but not when one of us happens to be an Arya Samaji, acute vegetarian, Swami Agnivesh, from head to toe in his elegant saffron outfit. (I carried home cooked vegetables for him.) Others in the group were Lord Meghnad Desai, a Nagar Brahmin from Gujarat, now member of the House of Lords who was in the reckoning to be the Speaker plus a Distinguished Professor at the London School of Economics. His wife, Kishwar Ahluwalia a Sikh by origin, a writer and their daughter, Mallika, who has just completed her Masters in Politics at Harvard and wishes to plunge headlong into Indian politics – an eclectic group, you would say.

My qualifications as a Ramadan guide would be quite as suspect as Ghalib’s would have been. Asked by a magistrate to declare his religion, Ghalib said: “I am half a Muslim”. The puzzled law officer asked him to clarify. “I drink but I do not eat pork!” In his letters, he is frank about his attitude to fasts. “I keep the fast mollified – a piece of bread here, a gulp of water there”.

Let me place on record the fact the each one of the group except Meghnad (he had to travel) actually fasted that day in exactly the sort of spirit that many of us participate in Deepawali, Holi or Christmas. The simple compact is: your religion exhudes a culture which decorates my spaces too and the other way around!

Every Ramadan, I visit Jama Masjid with family and non Muslim friends in pursuit of a singular purpose. This is my small contribution towards making ourselves aware of the apartheid system in which we live. Apartheid, as we know from South Africa and Rhodesia, means separate development.

In South Africa, apartheid, consisted in parceling Whites, Indians and African Blacks in totally separate compartments. It was in Lenasia, the prosperous exclusively Indian township (two swimming pools per bungalow were not unknown) that I first learnt how comfortable Indians can be with this kind of separation.

Jayant Patil, a Lenasia businessman, told me in 1992 (on TV) that apartheid was “good” because it “helps us keep the race pure”. How would Mahatama Gandhi, who spent 21 years in South Africa, have reacted?

This annual ritual was triggered by an incident in Allahabad. I was jolted out of my shoes during a lecture to a group of youth during communal tensions in Allahabad soon after Babari Masjid was demolished. I asked for the Hindus in the group to raise their hands. Half the hands went up. I asked how many had Muslim friends. Not one. I asked the remainder, all Muslims, if anyone of them had ever seen a “tulsi” (Holy Basil) plant in a traditional Hindu courtyard. Not one had.

Does it not resemble apartheid? In fact, it appears to me to be even more pernicious because here separation has not been imposed. It has evolved voluntarily.

Living in separate compartments, it is so easy for popular imagination to conjure up ogres, one about the other, during periods of stress. Worse than a negative image, however, is total disinterest in each other. This disinterest, at the level of governance, becomes benign neglect of the disadvantaged group, in this case Muslims.

What was the profit from this group’s visit to Jama Masjid. Well, we saw warm, smiling, hospitable people. Declining quality of cuisine. Total lack of any civic contribution to a sense of décor or cleanliness. It were not just the grimy streets, but even the wide stairs leading upto an ill kept gate opening onto a jewel of a monument, one of the very best in the world. History is being lost as the number of visitors, both Indian and foreign, decline in direct proportion to the squalor on the pavements.

There clearly has to be a muscular “Jama Masjid-in-Ramadan-Committee” to take responsibility for lights, cleanliness, and general ambience. The Lt. Governor and Chief Minister must atleast visit the area to see what they can do.

As for corroding the apartheid system, Swami Agnivesh and others were quick to latch onto a social engineering idea the late Basheer Hussain Zaidi spelt out. “Let every Muslim family in the country find a corresponding Hindu one (and vice versa) as a friend to be visited every month – not just for a meal but even such serious consultation as fixing the date for the daughter’s wedding.”

I know this language is syrupy nonsense to most today, but not to Swami Agnivesh.

Incidentally, is uninstitutional apartheid not part of the problem behind the current violence in Britain?

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Where Has It Fled, That Arab Spring?

2011-08-11T10:22:00.000+05:30

Where Has It Fled, That Arab Spring?
Saeed Naqvi

If Macbeth is a tragedy of ambition, the last scenes of the Hosni Mubarak saga in Egypt are ending as melodrama on that theme. It is pitiable pathos. There was nothing heroic about Mubarak, essential for a great tragedy.

A fallen dictator, wheeled in on a stretcher, placed before TV cameras in a large, iron cage: it was cunning choreography.

Cunning because it divided the people between those rejoicing at Mubarak’s disgrace and those who have lived in three decades of dictatorial patronage. There was symbolism in the clashes which erupted between rival groups outside the court house.

A nation so divided is unlikely to arrive at an early consensus on a Constitution or candidates for Parliament or the Presidential Palace. Meanwhile, who should hold the fort? The Armed Forces Supreme Council, ofcourse. This was the body given the reins after Mubarak announced his resignation on February 11, 2011.

And who handed them the baton? Vice President, Omar Suleiman, Head of Intelligence, incharge of America’s extensive “rendition” programme, transporting terror suspects to the choicest torture destinations, of which the one he himself ran has yielded such macabre stories as to make one’s hair stand. Where is he? If Mubarak’s court appearance is the beginning of a process, surely Omar Suleiman should also make an appearance in a cage some day? If not, he will one day take over the cage.

Those who have handled “renditions” or messed with Western Intelligence agencies, generally recede from public view – Omar Suleiman, Libya’s Moussa Koussa or nearer home, Pervez Musharraf, who lost his job after the determined Chief Justice Iftekhar Chaudhry pushed him to reveal details about “missing persons”, a euphemism for Pakistan’s role in renditions. Pakistan’s enthusiastic participation in rendition is one of the reasons why the Afghan Taleban are so allergic to an enhanced Pakistani role in the Afghan Endgame which, as I have said repeatedly, is in any case not taking place anytime soon.

In recent days, there has been something of a buzz in Cairo that elections may be postponed. If true, this fact itself will place a construct on the Cairo Court drama. The army will have demonstrated the lengths to which it can go to punish Mubarak and his coterie. With this credit, the Army can buy some more time to stay in power. Then some more time, then more until engulfing tumult makes the Army indispensable for a while!

Washington, Jerusalem, Riyadh and Europe would be comfortable with this delay. September is the month when the UN General Assembly in New York may be required to consider a vote on the state of Palestine. To have such an emotive issue in the vortex of Egypt’s electoral politics is to tilt the outcome in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood which is already being played up as a bogey – illogically, because in dictatorships the only political ventilators are the mosques. In these circumstances to pose the Brotherhood as the bearded ogre is to obstruct movement away from the dreaded Mubarak years.

The gentle Arab spring is a long way behind the region which has entered a phase of unprecedented turbulence, conflict and worse. In Libya, some European leaders are about to eat crow, not the best dish in Ramadan. The west wants Qaddafi’s head on a platter even though there is no provision for a Salome “nautch” in UNSC 1973. A prankster even in adversity, Qaddafi is now fielding his son Saif al Islam to tweak Europe’s nose. “We shall have an alliance with the radical Islamists” and make Libya look like Iran and Saudi Arabia. How can David Cameron and Sarkozy go down on their knees and plead “No, no, not like Iran and the Saudis”.

How can the west criticize the Saudis who are looking more muscular than them (for the moment) dictating the script in the region against Shia Iran. “Saudis are spreading a sectarian conflict in Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon”, says Ahmad Chalabi, once candidate for Iraqi premiership.

Events in Syria, particularly Hama, are not encouraging despite a visit to the blighted town by the US and French Ambassadors. Dr. Fayssal al Mekdad, Syrian Vice Minister of Foreign Affair told S.M. Krishna in New Delhi that Saudi King Abdullah was keen for stability in Syria which was only possible if there was no power vacuum in Damascus. Does President Bashar Assad’s continuance forestall such a power vacuum, Hama massacres notwithstanding? As rotational president of UN Security Council, India “condemned” widespread abuse of Human Rights in Syria but urged for an “inclusive and Syrian led political process”. The Lebanese representative at the UN, Caroline Ziade’s vote was a caricature of Lebanon’s position. She accepted the Indian draft but refused to vote. On the west’s behalf, “willing to wound and yet afraid to strike”. She could not have abandoned the club of growing relevance: India, China, Brazil, Russia.

Americans destroyed the Ba’ath Party in Iraq creating vast spaces for the Al Qaeda. Have they now concluded that the Al Qaeda is preferable to the Ba’ath and the “murderous” Alawites. Should Al Qaeda find its feet in Syria, (says this absurd logic) it would be one force that could ram into the Hezbullah in Lebanon!

All the Kings, Potentates and Dictators in the region must have watched with a sense of foreboding the image of Mubarak looking supine and helpless. The last scene in the melodrama should have these grandees in a scrum. The song in the background (to revert to Macbeth) could be sung in American, English and French accents:

“For a charm of powerful trouble
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

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Shaping The Mind of The Oslo Killer

2011-08-01T13:54:00.000+05:30

Shaping The Mind of The Oslo Killer
Saeed Naqvi

Anders Behring Breivik’s monstrous act in Oslo is another leak in the sewer of Islamophobia, anti Marxist fanaticism and worse which runs through the western sub stratum and breaks out into open every now and then.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy terrorized America in the 50’s with his anti communist witch hunt. But there was sufficient muscle in American liberalism of that era to throw up a journalist like Edward Murrow of CBS News who took on McCarthy and almost single handedly created conditions for the Congressional Committee chaired by the Senator, the singular forum for the witch hunt, to be wound up.

If Breivik’s atrocity were a result of some home grown, Norwegian affliction, then I am certain (I have some knowledge of Norway and have met Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg in Oslo) it would have been arrested well before it went over the edge. Indeed, the local media would never have created an environment in which such minds are shaped. In this it is not a solely Norwegian event. It can happen anywhere. Breivik’s is a globalized affliction, conditioned in the hot house of global 24X7 media. Murrow could take on McCarthy frontally in the local arena, without any globalized obstruction.

Breivik is the creature of the Murdoch press which has throttled the Murrows of this world. His mind set would synchronize perfectly with Bill O’Reilly’s the famous anchor of Fox News. The coverage of American military action in Afghanistan in November 2001 would have been orgasmic for Breivik. The channel’s star correspondent, Geraldo Rivera, whips out a weapon: “I would shoot him, if I could lay my eyes on Osama Bin Laden!”

In both, vocabulary and image, the agenda pushed by the Murdoch press (and, by infection, others including CNN and BBC) nursed and manufactured the Breivik mind by the sheer incantation of hyped anti Muslim-Marxist hysteria.

In the 60s, Protestant triumphalism of the Orange Marches were disrupted by Roman Catholics and Rev. Ian Paisley was taking up cudgels for Protestants and Unionists by spewing venom on the Pope. Across the Atlantic, Americans were mourning the death of their first Roman Catholic President, John F. Kennedy. It was in everybody’s interest to confine the intra-Christian quarrel to Ireland. In any event, there was no global media in existence then, except BBC radio, a useful colonial habit. The global media made its entrē as part of the triumphalism that the collapse of the Soviet Union brought in its wake.

The first major event covered by the new global media was Operation Desert Storm, Iraq, in February 1991. If Breivik was in his impressionable years then, he would have seen Saddam Hussain painted as a latter day Hitler, barbarous, invader of a neighbouring country, oppressor of his people. A young Nordic mind would celebrate Western triumph. The entire Muslim world – among a host of others – would internalize the outcome differently, as if from the opposite side of the trench.

Is there a hesitation to mention Christian or Hindu terrorists when Muslim names are mentioned as possible perpetrators within hours of the attack? The first scenario sketched by Stratfor after the Oslo outrage dwelt on Muslim terror. A trademark image of Muslim terrorism became vast congregations bowing in prayer. Bush Senior knelt in prayer all night with Rev. Billy Grahame on the eve of that messianic mission, Operation Desert Storm or George W. Bush before the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq: on TV these would have looked too much like medieval crusades. Bush Jr. restrained himself by simply mentioning “crusade” to describe his mission.

In this, too, the global media and its imitative appendage, the Indian media, have played their part. That which is known as the Bosnian war actually began with Serbian attack on Croatian positions – part of an ancient Orthodox Church and Catholic Church conflict. Bosnian Muslims were initially squeezed in the middle. But how did the global media cover the war? It consistently described the conflict as one between Serbs, Croats and Muslims. The Christian denominations were completely hidden from view. And the manner in which Europe kept aloof from the brutalities visited upon the Bosnian Muslims, day after day for full four years on live TV, Sebrenica and all, created conditions for Islamism to grow in Turkey, which has historical memories of Bosnia, and its lethal opposite number – the mind of a lonesome, psychopathic, confused young man in Oslo, making the Klu Klux Klan look like a moderate idea. It is frightening that the fascist badge he wore was designed in Varanasi?

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After Clinton, All Eyes on Pakistan’s Hina Khar

2011-07-25T09:22:00.000+05:30

After Clinton, All Eyes on Pakistan’s Hina Khar
Saeed Naqvi

For the first time in my recollection, the Pakistan Foreign Minister visiting New Delhi will attract more notice than US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton did exactly a week earlier.

There could be several reasons for this, the most compelling being that Hina Rabbani Khar is the first woman Foreign Minister of Pakistan. At 34, she also happens to be the youngest ever. Then, the Clinton visit coincided with the 24X7 focus on Rupert Murdoch’s trial by fire, taking the spotlight away from her.

It is just as well that the Secretary of State’s visit was in a low key, investing it with realism divorced from the hype which generally imparts to Indo-US relations exaggerated expectations.

The US has, in its history, vacillated between global dominance and isolation. A phase of inwardness may be in the cards.

Everyone knows the Civil nuclear deal is in a bit of a jam and Clinton almost said as much. There was nothing new in the US supporting India as a Permanent member of the UN Security Council. What was heartening was the imagery she used for India’s Election Commission: “it is the global gold standard for running elections.”

Without in any way offending China she spelt out roles for India in theatres of Chinese proximity – Pacific and Central Asia. India “straddling the waters from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean is, with us, a steward of these waterways”. Will this region “build the regional architecture of institutions and arrangements to enforce international norms on security, trade, rule of law, human rights and accountable governance?” Chinese know how to decode “human rights”!

She then talks of interlocking triangles: US, Japan (a treaty binds them) and India, also US, China and India. Similar co-operative linkages are sought with Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. What Clinton sketched at the library in Chennai is a comprehensive document of intent.

It is in this context that she spelt out a scenario for the Af-Pak region after US withdrawal. “We and the Afghans are making progress on a new strategic partnership declaration that will define our relationship after 2014.”

What the US seeks is in fact a contradiction in terms: how to stay on in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US troops?

This explains extensive construction at the Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif and at US bases. According to Russians, who know the terrain well, the US has 30 bases in Afghanistan of which the ones in Bagram, Jalalabad, Kandahar, Helmand, Shindand and Mazar-e-Sharif are, by the sheer volume of masonry, not temporary. There is nothing new in all of this. US diplomats in the Af-Pak have for the past five years been fairly vocal about their being in the region for the long haul. Yes, the counter insurgency phase maybe getting a new look, but the entire question of the US withdrawing from Afghanistan is, in my view, an open one.

Yes, there will be photo ops of Marines clambering onto departing aircraft or Gen. David Petraeus looking pensive in a helicopter about to take off. These would be effective visuals on US TV preparatory to the 2012 Presidential election but only if viewers had interest left in anything other the plummeting economy – at home, across the Atlantic or the Pacific where Japan has yet to find its feet after the nuclear disaster.

Some things are not likely to happen soon. The agreement that Americans seek with the Afghans on the bases they wish to maintain in the country is not a document President Hamid Karzai can ink in a hurry given the anti American sentiment. A puzzle for the Americans seems to be “Karzai’s state of mind”. Yes, the Americans are unpopular but not as much as the Pakistan army looking for “strategic” depth in Afghanistan. This is my personal observation after visiting Afghanistan. By playing both sides of the street, the Pakistan Army has lost credit both ways – with the Americans and the Afghans.

The Pakistan Foreign Minister will have met the US and Chinese Foreign Ministers in Bali before arriving in New Delhi. Who knows, Ms. Khar may begin to open up many regional possibilities if she is able to gauge the sincerity with which Dr. Manmohan Singh and his team contemplate Indo-Pak relations in a world changing at dizzying speed.

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Tokenism For Muslims Now Counter Productive

2011-07-18T10:54:00.000+05:30

Tokenism For Muslims Now Counter Productive
Saeed Naqvi

In these unsettled times, it is always reassuring to be invited to banquets at the Hyderabad House hosted by the Prime Minister or members of his cabinet. It boosts ones sense of self, ofcourse, but it also enhances a sense of communal well being because, as one ambles up the carpeted staircase, one meets other Muslims in suits of reasonable cut. Next week, the beginning of Ramadan, will see the appearance of Shervanis and headgear peculiar to certain Sufi Shrines.

Would unsuspecting Presidents, Princes or Prime Ministers, from any one of the 54 Muslim countries, return suitably impressed with the well being of the world’s second largest Muslim community, having seen so many of them at a banquet meant only for the country’s highest echelons?

The Sachar Committee report into the socio economic condition of Indian Muslims would not make for such depressing reading had Justice Sachar taken into account Muslim attendance at VIP banquets and Iftar parties. In the interest of accuracy, a caveat must be inserted. For the Sachar report, flattering data would only emerge from banquets in honour of visiting Muslim dignitaries. If Justice Sachar were to ferret the guest list under Right to Information, he would find that a banquet for the Cypriot, Armenian, Serbian or even Israeli leaders would probably not have a solitary Muslim on the list. There would not be such self conscious deletion of the Muslim when other Western leaders visit but there would be no premium on them either.

The deep design behind the hospitality list for a visiting Muslim leader could possibly be that India is good to its Muslims and would therefore be good to the visiting leader’s country. But, snicker my non Muslim friends, this communal outreach flies in the face of the secular ideal which entails even handed treatment. Is it a nagging awareness of deviation from the equal-rights ideal, which results in dollops of tokenism doled out? Invitations to banquets and Iftar parties are the tiniest part of this tokenism. And, above all, having been in the drill of democracy for 60 years, Muslims have caught onto tokens as pacifiers. Tokenism is now counterproductive. Do an opinion poll!

Most pernicious of all is institutionalized tokenism. A special Haj terminal at the Indira Gandhi airport for instance. This sort of stuff invites the chorus “appeasement!”

Further, there are Haj subsidies and special VIP Hajis on freebies to facilitate their passage to paradise. Does the government believe that such favours ensure Muslim support during elections? Yes, a benefit once conferred upon a group is difficult to withdraw because such a withdrawal would provoke editorials in Urdu newspapers. This, a government on sixes and sevens may not like to risk on the eve of the critical 2012 UP Assembly elections. After all, 14 of the 21 seats Congress won from the state have a decisive Muslim vote share.

If such fears are to determine policy, I am afraid other tokenisms will also have an extended lease of life. A government so pulverized on the issue of Muslims is not likely to alter a totally untenable policy that the ambassador to Saudi Arabia must be a Muslim. The argument that a Muslim ambassador is an enormous asset during Haj is about as convincing as the presumed requirement for a full fledged air terminal for Hajis. If the state pulled itself out of this area of patronage, it would make immense sense for private enterprise, Muslim or non Muslim, to step in to facilitate Haj. Business by its very nature is secular. Witness Indians in Saudi Arabia: senior management of Indian origin are increasingly non Muslim because they are better educated, they do not seek five breaks in a day for namaz nor a month for Ramadan.

There is a lesson here somewhere for the short sighted Muslim leadership which has, by converting a remarkably secular, internationally known university, Jamia Millia Islamia, into a “minority institution” has gifted a dud to the community. Graduates from this institution will be discriminated against even in Saudi Arabia. A Muslim minority institution faces resistance in the secular job market.

As for a Ministry of Minority Affairs the less said the better! It is grist to the communal mill whenever it stirs out to serve the community. I have said this before: a non Muslim with a secular image in this slot would be able to chart out an agenda for minorities which is free of the odour of tokenism, which would really enthuse the community, not bluff it.

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How Not To Project The Party or PM

2011-07-11T10:04:00.000+05:30

How Not To Project The Party or PM
Saeed Naqvi

The invitation by the Prime Minister to five newspaper editors to share his thoughts or, months ago, TV editors seated around a rectangular arrangement for a televised transmission of ideas, are two recent examples of effort at building a communication link between reticent leaders and a precocious public.

TV, particularly its 24X7 variant, is a recent phenomenon, beginning around the mid 90’s. In other words, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and, contrary to the general perception, even Rajiv Gandhi pre dated the barrage of 24X7 channels rained on us the past sixteen years.

The first Prime Minister who completed his full term in the 24X7 age was P.V. Narasimha Rao, articulate in several languages but singularly indifferent to media arc lamps. Narasimha Rao and his Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh’s arrival on the scene coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of (it seemed then but no longer) a lasting unipolarity, accompanied by bugles of undiluted capitalism, which needed advertising which needed the amplifying media. The balance of power in news establishments shifted radically from the editor to the marketing manager.

It seems difficult to believe that before the “total” market takeover of the media in the mid 90s, newspapers were more free. True, the then 20 year old Doordarshan however largely remained a government department.

Overwhelmed by the market, print and electronic media began to serve partisan interests on key issues, leaving just that much space in between – a bit like the speaker’s corner at Hyde Park.

Having an “independent” media is one thing but having one held on the leash by Business Houses quite another. One does not necessarily need dictatorships to have a controlled media.

The quest for media management in an environment of a media so controlled is a quest for the impossible. Even assuming that the Prime Minister’s conversation with the chosen five last fortnight had helped clear the air on issues and that the unfortunate statement on Bangladesh was just that, unfortunate, how will the PMO justify conferring Prime Ministerial favours selectively, five at a time?

As the media is structured today, it calls the shots.

The culture of obsequious eager-beaver spokesmen for the major parties, hopping from channel to channel, gives power to anchors disproportionate to their grasp of the subject.

A private market survey will reveal, the channel hopping spokesman does himself and the party more harm than good. It imparts to anchors, not always informed, the role of arbiters. If a political party does not send its spokesman to defend an issue will it concede an advantage to the opposition which will? Quite the contrary. In fact the channel concerned will carry the episode only on pain of being accused of being biased.

Will this tactic remove the issue from public view? Not at all. Political parties must wrest the initiative and hold weekly briefings themselves rather than turn up in channels, cap in hand. The idea is to avoid the shouting match, the tu-tu-maen-maen format from which our Parliament has begun to take its cue.

The PMO, and relevant ministries must likewise hold regular briefings.

Briefings, by their very nature, are tepid and can be dull unless handled by someone interesting – and there are such talents available. Sometimes their being an asset outweighs the risks involved in having them bat for you. The person I have in mind reminds me of Mir Taqi Mir’s line: “Hai aib bada usmein, jsey kuch hunar aawey”. In other words he is cursed by his own ability. Talent inspires jealousies. No hierarchy likes to keep in its stable someone who can run away with the show!

Then, an essential requirement of a developing society and country is a public service multi-media, an idea that Rajiv Gandhi, Inder Gujaral, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Dr. Manmohan Singh have all endorsed. The Prime Minister himself announced it twice during UPA I. Regular meetings were held in which PMO officials participated. Then what happened?

As for the Prime Minister, his interaction with the media must consist in a projection of the future, not 2G and “haan ji”.

To quote Jean Genet, “as for living, my servants will take care of it.” The PM’s response to 2G like queries should be: “As for recent scandals, my minions will take care of them.” Find suitable “minions”. Don’t place the Prime Minister on show, pinned and wriggling against the wall, allegedly blundering on Bangladesh.

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Taleban’s Hurrah at Kabul Intercontinental

2011-07-04T09:43:00.000+05:30

Taleban’s Hurrah at Kabul Intercontinental
Saeed Naqvi

The dramatic attack on Kabul’s Intercontinental hotel earlier in the week ties in somewhat convolutedly with the arrest in Karachi in February 2010 of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a Taleban commander who led the Quetta Shura and directed the insurgency from Pakistan. Let me explain.

The dream of strategic depth in Afghanistan, nurtured by the ISI, which helped train the Afghan Mujahideen against Soviet occupation, was eventually to be realized by “installing” a government of its choice in Kabul whenever an opportunity arose.

Towards this end, the Taleban that the ISI was nurturing, would be helped and protected to climb up the ladder. This facile game plan was blown to smithereens after 9/11 when President George W. Bush, egged on by the neo-cons, mounted a massive military retaliation in Afghanistan and the Pak-Afghan border which became the sanctuary for the Al Qaeda-Taleban operations.

The US could not have thought of a more menacing figure than Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to deliver the threatening message to Pakistan. If Pakistan did not support the US-led war against Islamic terrorism, the country would be “bombed back to the stone age”. This quote would be unbelievable had it not been repeated by Musharraf himself on CBS News 60 minutes in September 2006.

The complications of what Musharraf was being asked to do are clear as daylight. He was being asked to eliminate exactly the force his ISI had helped create and nurture over the past two decades. Double dealing was built into Musharraf’s response – shoot the Taleban (or their look-alikes) when the Americans were watching, hide them behind the sofas when they were not. Ambidexterous though he was, he could not avoid participating in the “rendition” programme or in helping American’s ferry Afghan Taleban to Guantanamo Bay. Remember, when the lawyers agitation began to destabilize Musharraf, a sensitive issue the Army and the ISI had to duck concerned “missing persons”. If the Army’s hand in the “missing persons” came to public notice, the army would invite public anger on a massive scale.

Over the years much more came to light. Some sort of a crescendo was reached with the Lal Masjid affair. The blow-back from the Afghan war, which was by now raging in the North West Frontier Province and FATA, eventually consumed Musharraf.

Despite Musharraf’s departure, neither the ISI nor the Army, could disengage itself from its dream – strategic depth in Afghanistan. For this, Baradars, Haqqanis and their tribe had to be pampered as well as kept on a leash.

Pushtoons in Afghanistan have had to cope with so many traumatic shifts since the ouster of President Daud in 1978 that the traditional social structure has broken down. Pushtoon society on the Pakistan side has been relatively less unsettled. This explains why the Pakistani Pushtoons were able to open their “hujras” or hospitality quarters for their cousins escaping disturbed conditions in Afghanistan. A large Pushtoon population has therefore spread as far as Karachi where Al Asif is a Pushtoon ghetto on an epic scale, like Dharavi, in Bombay. Al Asif is one of the many.

This Pushtoon Diaspora is sensitive to the “misfortunes of our brothers” at the hands of the US and Pak military. Since all Taleban are Pushtoon this hurt for “our brothers” includes, in many instances, the trouble visited up on the Taleban.

It is therefore not surprising that the former Taleban Ambassador to Pakistan, Abdus Salaam Zaeef, on the terrace of his Kabul hideout, froths in the mouth at the mention of a Pakistani role in Afghanistan. Not only did the Pakistan army facilitate his deportation to Guantanamo, where he was prisoner for four year, “Pakistan has proved to be unreliable – it has no role in Afghanistan”.

And now that President Obama has indicated a dialogue with the Taleban without mentioning a role for Pakistan, the Pakistan Taleban and their handlers are flaring at the nostrils. They will snap the leash and rush into exactly the sort of demonstration, blazing flames and billowing smoke, that was on display at the Intercontinental hotel in Kabul. This is desperation, not some well thought out long term strategy.

As I said at the outset, the latest outrage in Kabul ties up with Baradar’s arrest in Karachi in February 2010 because that was the showdown with CIA who had started establishing direct contacts with the Taleban, circumventing their Pakistani handlers.

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Will Obama Fall Between Stools?

2011-06-27T15:01:00.002+05:30

Will Obama Fall Between Stools?
Saeed Naqvi

President Obama has tried to reconcile the irreconcilables – the requirements of his domestic audience and the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. It will take a while before we know whether he has fallen between stools.

After all 1,500 American lives lost and $450 billion spent in Afghanistan, will need to be explained in the run upto the US Presidential election in November 2012. As President Obama has said, some sort of a beginning will have been made when 10,000 troops begin to return home in the coming six months. The subsequent choreography is also geared towards 2012 election: in May of that year, six months prior to the election, “in Chicago we will host a summit with our NATO allies and partners to shape the next phase of this transition”.

Obama dwells at length on the “terrorist safe – havens in Pakistan”. And he leaves no one in any doubt that “so long as I am President, the United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us: they cannot elude us, nor escape the justice they deserve”. Notice, only those in Pakistani safe havens who “kill us” are the objects of the President’s ire.

In his speech delivered on December 1, 2009 at the Military Academy at West Point, Obama promised an induction of 30,000 additional troops. That surge did take place. So, on the induction of troops Obama was able to keep his word. But on the drawing down of troops? Let us wait and see.

President Hamid Karzai has grown in confidence which is largely because the American media, which takes its lead from the establishment on critical issues, no longer calls him “the Mayor of Kabul”. But is there evidence that his popularity is growing, even in arithmetical progression, in such a way that he will be able to survive in Kabul after 2014, the deadline Obama indicates for the final withdrawal? Surely, between now and 2014, another script will be written, most certainly after the results of 2012 election is known.

US diplomats in Islamabad were pretty frank in 2008 – 2009. “It will take atleast 10 years to train the Frontiers Guard.” Clearly all this training was focused on Afghanistan. A more straightforward statement was: “We are here for the long haul”.

This “long haul” becomes quite transparent when you travel in Afghanistan. The huge block which passes for the US embassy in Kabul, with 700 hands, is being doubled. In Mazar-e-Sharif the US Consulate under construction would dwarf large embassies elsewhere. Not quite the looks of folk saddling up to leave!

The current “talk-to-the-Taleban” incantation also resonates differently with ethnic groups and regions. The Rais or the Chief Priest of Mazar-e-Sharif, Atiq Ullah Ansari, abruptly ends his conversation on mystic elements in Hindustani classical music at the very mention of Taleban. Mention Serajuddin Haqqani, Taleban leader in Pakistan, to Hamid Karzai, and he sees red.

Pakistanis insist on inserting themselves as interlocutors with the Taleban, something the entire spectrum of opinion in Afghanistan firmly resists, the Afghan Talebans most of all.

“Talk-to-Taleban” has another dangerous dimension. During my stay in Kabul a riot broke out between the “Hazaras”, a Shia sect and nomadic Pushtoons called Koochis. Where would the Koochis turn for protection – Hamid Karzai or the Taleban who are being projected as the future rulers?

All Taleban are Pushtoons. Further, Pushtoon is synonymous with “Afghan”. Herein lies another potential for future conflict. Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmans constitute 60 percent of the population. Consider the complications.

For instance, any talk of regional conference to address the Afghan problem is anathema to the Taleban (Pushtoon) because Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan will never accept Pushtoon dominance. Also, Pushtoon dominance conceptually opens up a cross border Pushtoon link up which is neither totally under the control of Kabul nor of Islamabad.

And yet it need not be a tidy tie up. King Amanullah, greatly influenced by Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk’s strategy of submerging all ethnicities under the over arching Turkish identity, tried to knit a Pushtoon nation by transferring Pushtoons to regions dominated by other identities. Likewise, minorities were transferred to Pushtoon dominated areas. Pushtoons coming on top can lead to retaliation against them in the regions. Ethnic cleansing and civil war could follow.

There is yet another complication. The Saur (April) revolution of 1978 ousted Daud Khan, and paved the way for Noor Mohammad Taraki and other Khalq and Parcham, Communist parties of Afghanistan to come to power. Outsiders do not notice that history was made in a sense that seers Afghan memory. Daud was the last in the chain of Durranis, the ruling class from among the Pushtoons, who ruled Afghanistan without a break for 200 years. Taraki, who broke this chain, was from another line of Pushtoons called Ghilzais. The Talebans, including, Mullah Omar, are Ghilzais. The Bonn Conference on Afghanistan, proposed a “provisional” government under Karzai, who is a Populzai, from the Durrani line. He was imposed, in a manner of speaking.

Will the Taleban (Pushtoons) of their own free will, settle under a Durrani?

These are just some of the complications. And I haven’t dwelt on Pakistan yet.

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Ramdev, Hazare and JP Movements

2011-06-21T09:18:00.001+05:30

Ramdev, Hazare and JP Movements
Saeed Naqvi

Are there traces of the 1974 JP movement in the anti corruption show mounted by Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare?

First, the backdrop. In 1969, Indira Gandhi split the Congress to sideline the regional leaders like Atulya Ghosh, C.B. Gupta and a host of others more to the right of Indira Gandhi’s pronounced socialism at that stage. Congress split was accompanied by nationalization of banks and stopping of Privy Purses of Princes.

To keep the Congress buoyant in Parliament, Indira Gandhi fell back on Left support. One of her cabinet colleagues, Mohan Kumarmanagalam and CPI leader S.A. Dange devised a formulation – unite and struggle. In other words, the left would “unite” with the Congress’ “pro peoples” policies like the nationalization of banks and “struggle” against its “anti Peoples” stand.

This leftward lurch of the Congress coincided, more or less with the Tet offensive bringing the US closer to its sad conclusion in Vietnam. This was also the period of anti Vietnam restiveness among the Youth – Kent state university, Grovesnor square, London, the barricades in Paris. In the early 70’s in India too, youth anger, on another issue, erupted as the Nav Nirman Samiti agitation in Gujarat.

Then came the Bihar movement.

After the Bangladesh operations in 1971, Indira Gandhi was “Goddess Durga”, invincible. To beat Indira Gandhi’s charisma, another charismatic persona had to be placed on a pedestal. In those days Socialist, Gandhian Jaya Prakash Narayan had retired into Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s “Bhoodan”, a voluntary land distribution movement. Also he made for a rather lonesome seminarist in New Delhi.

Crafty minds got together, notably Ramnath Goenka, powerful newspaper magnate, and his friend, the senior RSS leader, Nanaji Deshmukh. Later, Managing Director of the Statesman, C.R. Irani also joined as Goenka’s sidekick.

JP’s house in Kadam Kuan in Patna, became the headquarters of a movement with various names – JP movement, Bihar Movement, total revolution, anti corruption movement. For its target, the revolution chose a rather innocuous, without any history of corruption, Abdul Ghafoor, the Congress Chief Minister.

The global, national situations were reflected in Bihar as well. When Indian Communists split into CPI and CPM, the CPI in Bihar remained intact, making it a powerful block in the state assembly.

To defeat Indira Gandhi and her Left affiliates, in the guise of fighting corruption, a coalition was forged in which JP was a “Mukhauta” or mask, and the organizer was Nanaji Deshmukh who mobilized Akhil Bharatiya Viyarthi Parishad and RSS cadres as the primary foot soldiers. Socialists, Swatantra supporters, Congress(O), the right wing of the Congress discarded by Indira Gandhi in the 1969 split, sedentary, wheel spinning Gandhians–all joined to mount “total revolution” built up by the Indian Express and The Statesman. After the Railway strike led by George Fernandez, an atmosphere of anarchy was created which caused an unnerved Indira Gandhi to declare a state of Emergency in 1975. Yes, it was only after Allahabad high court disqualified Indira Gandhi on technical grounds from membership of parliament that emergency was declared. She lost the 1977 General Elections. Morarji Desai led the Janata Government as Prime Minister in which Atal Behari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani became Foreign and Information Ministers respectively. The project promoted by Ramnath Goenka and Nanaji Deshmukh, among others, in response to Indira Gandhi’s 1969 congress split and leftward swing, had borne fruit. It is another matter that India’s first non-congress coalition collapsed in 1980 and Indira Gandhi bounced back.

Compare the situation today.

There is no Left surge, rather Left decline in India unless we begin to regard Maoism-Leninism with more seriousness. In the 70s, the US was under pressure - détente was working against it. This time, there is an overall dissipation of western power. In other words there is a global constant linking JP movement to the present – western decline. It was true then, it is true now. Worry of worries, China has risen.

In those days, the infection of youth anger in the west spread to India and it were the youth who manned the JP movement.

Corruption in 1970’s was built up as an issue to be placed at the service of politics. Today it dwarfs all other issues. Shockingly, ruling UPA partners, the DMK has produced record breakers in corruption. Cabinet Ministers are in jail on that count without the UPA having the courage to part company with the DMK. Abjectly subservient to morality is power at all costs. And now Jayalalita has taken a direct shot at the Union Home Minister’s credibility.

The infection of youth anger in the west spread to India and it were the youth who manned the JP movement.

Again it is the “youth bulge” which has dramatically altered the political landscape in North Africa and West Asia. The idea has been transmitted by the media.

JP’s strong point was his innings in public life and, ultimately, his “tyag”, renunciation, willingness to work outside public glare. The Indian mind reveres renunciation.

Anna Hazare is also on the renunciation path, having stepped out of Gandhian stables, but doesn’t quite measure up-to JP’s stature.

Baba Ramdev is better known but more for his yoga feats. Renunciation is not quite his forte. He is a millionaire. His saffron image has also been compromised when he donned a white salwar-kurta and covered his face in a white chunni to escape the police. In this he followed in every detail the principal mullah who tried to escape wearing a burqa from Lal Masjid in Islamabad in 2007.

It was Indira Gandhi’s charisma that JP was set up to challenge. Whose charisma were the Hazare-Ramdev duet expected to challenge? Sonia Gandhi is not invincible; she is irreplaceable as Congress President. In that position her future is secure either as leader of the ruling party or leader of opposition. Jayalalita and Mamta Bannerjee have charismatic potential but within their states. The person on whom most eyes are riveted is Mayawati because her durability in UP blocks alternative game plans from 2012 to 2014. That is where all political interests would like to derive mileage from the current anti corruption campaigners, provided Ramdev does not sully his saffron and is found escaping, this time in a burqa!

In brief, JP movement was to replace a left lurching Indira Gandhi. Hazare-Ramdev ball is being tossed up for political parties to smash it on a deft and durable Mayawati. Also, remember, all puritanical movements will be eventually exploited by exactly the right wing groups who rallied around JP.

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Hussain: Death Of An Exile

2011-06-13T13:58:00.001+05:30

Hussain: Death Of An Exile
Saeed Naqvi

Maara dayar e ghair mein mujhko watan se door
Rakh li mere khuda ne meri bekasi ki sharm!
“Mirza Ghalib”
(I breathed my last in alien lands,
My god protected me from disgrace at home)

There are no instruments to gauge the pain Maqbool Fida Hussaid must have experienced in abandoning for good the country he strode, barefoot (he was averse to wearing footwear) like a colossus among artists. But pained he was. This was clear from the manner in which he avoided conversation on his exile.

I knew him since the 60s but never well enough which remains one of my regrets. In those days, Sapru House was New Delhi’s only rendezvous. Standing applause for a superb rendering of Tilak Kamod by Vilayat Khan accompanied brilliantly by Shamta Prasad on the tabla had barely subsided when a bearded man, tall and very upright, walked up the side staircase to embrace a cross-legged Sitar Maestro. It made for an awkward arch, leaning across Shanta Prasad. It was then I noticed that Hussain, wore no footwear. It was the image of a barefoot artist which remained etched in my mind as a sort of motif for Hussain. This eccentricity of his occasionally created problems, as in the instance when a Mumbai club asked him to leave for being inadequately dressed.

In my impressionable 20s, I found his iconic figure compelling except for a slight squeamishness I experienced when I saw him walk past the filth of Jama Masjid’s fish and chicken market, greeted by senior Imam Bukhari, in his booming voice and by Delhi Congress Chief, Mir Mustaq Ahmad, drunk as a sailor, leaning from the balcony of his house, just above the paan shop at the corner of the street that leads to Karim’s: “Jootey pahen lo, mian, sardi hai” (wear shoes, dear man, it’s cold), he would yell. Hussain, never a great one for quips or repartees, would mumble a greeting and walk the grimy path leading to Naaz hotel where he lived. This was much before his paintings began to sell for millions. From Naaz he graduated to the Taj.

One of life’s unwholesome realizations is the invasion of personal jealousies in the world of art. It is a long list. They even pitted Zauq as Ghalib’s equal simply because he (Zauq) was the Mughul Emperoro’s “ustad”. History is replete with Mozart-Salieri sequences.

Hussain always towered above his peers in every sense of the term. Being particularly deficient in appreciating painting and sculpture, I am hesitant to compare his works with those of his contemporaries. But in his earlier phase, I found his horses compelling because I saw them as “Ablaq” or “Surang”, the Arab steed Mir Anis sketched in his “Musaddas” or “sestet”, the style of epics in which Marsias were written, describing every detail of the battle of Karbala, including the horses of Imam Hussain and his brother, Abbas. He liked the comparison.

Hussain enjoyed these recitations. He had a sense of poetry but of a lighter, less complex variety. This made for a kind of balance: he knew just a little more about poetry than I did of painting.
He dismissed with a shrug my simple thesis that muslims, even from culturally emancipated backgrounds, knew little about painting or sculpture because of the Islamic taboo on visual representations of reality as the thin end of the wedge towards idolatory. Hussain was not the world’s most articulate man, but in his grunts and mumbles, interspersed with a jab of his elbow in your ribs to seek appreciation for the mischievous point he had made, he would say: “yeh bakwas hai”, or “This is non-sense”. He thought I was imposing my Lucknow parochialism on a vastly varied country.

After all, many of his contemporaries like Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee and Sadeqain, were all from muslim backgrounds. In fact Raza never stops talking about the “high class” Brahmins who influenced him, his tantric interests, his preoccupation with the “bindu” or the dot.

Indeed, Hussain himself had painted Bharat Mata in the 70s. He painted Indira Gandhi as Durga after Bangladesh. His Mother Theresa series is steeped in universal devotion. After a poetry session, Pavan Varma had organized at London’s Nehru Centre, he asked for a line that would describe Madhuri Dixit. Here was a sweet adolescence resident in a man in his late 80s.

That devotional painting of Bharat Mata and goddesses were, in the highest Hindu tradition, painted with pure intent which later political mischief makers distorted as irreverent nudity. Hussain was pained not so much by the lumpen demonstration as by the silence of the majority and its elite.

The intolerant streak evident from Salman Rushdie to Lelyveld’s Gandhi had never really been met headon by the elite which showed itself as cowering and bogus once again in the Bhandarkar institute case.

And the media, which builds up a national movement around a boy in a well or Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev – where was it when Hussain was being hounded? During the Gujarat riots, mobs razed to the ground the grave of Wali Dakkhini, just outside Ahemadabad’s main police station. One of Wali’s poems says:
“kooch a e yaar ain Kashi hai,
Jogia dil wahan ka baasi hai.”

(The street where my beloved lives is like the holy city of Varanasi. And the yogi of my heart has made his house there!)

Where is the movement to restore the grave, indeed, build a tomb right there?

Hussain, who lived his life on an epic scale, was pained by his own exile, but he never allowed himself to be cast in a tragic mould.

“In life’s tavern, they sat frozen, holding their cups.
I came, drank, spilt and left.

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Arab Springs Global Linkages

2011-06-06T10:03:00.002+05:30

Arab Springs Global Linkages

Saeed Naqvi

A high profile event extended over a period of time, like the one that goes under the short hand “Arab Spring”, shelters so many other episodes with a global potential, happening even as I write. Take the arrest and possible deportation to the International Court at the Hague of Ratkin Mladic, responsible for the Srebenica massacre in 1995, when the Bosnian war was coming to a close.

Like Osama bin Laden, Mladic was clearly helped in escaping arrest so far. Pressure on Belgrade to deliver him for justice was immense because non compliance was blocking Serbia’s entry into EU. This is not a simple matter. Serbia’s EU entry will open other sensitive issues – Turkey’s entry for instance. This, Europe will resist, although it may find itself deflated on the issue because Turkish desire for an economically depleted Europe is now somewhat tepid.

But Belgrade, having delivered Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadic and Mladic to the Hague, has a strong political case for entry. Also, Belgrade has swallowed the bitter pill in acquiescing in Kosovo’s independence from Serbia. In the capital of Kosovo, Prishtina is the monument to the battle of Kosovo, where, in 1389, the Serbs gave stiff resistance to Turkish troops, blocking their advance into Europe. Some of Serbia’s most sacred monasteries and shrines are in Kosovo. That is why Turkey’s instant recognition of Kosovo was so galling for Serbia.

This is precisely the reason why Orthodox Christian nations like Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria have not recognized Kosovo. Spain’s non recognition is for another reason: Madrid feels secessionism in the Basque region would derive strength from the recognition of Kosovo.

Some such reason was behind New Delhi’s polite “no” to the US request. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia, the arch Muslim country, was disinterested in the emergence of a Muslim entity. The Saudi resistance to the idea is the one that determines its many foreign policy moves. The Saudis will never accept a principle of secession which can be applied to their Shia dominated Eastern Province where all of their oil is located.

It is for this reason that the Saudis are a major force behind the project of eliminating Qadaffi from Libya, by death, because his survival leaves a Libya partitioned into an oil rich eastern half and the rest. Considering that borders have already been altered in Sudan leaves the Saudis uncomfortable.

Their anxieties on their score approach paranoia both, in Iraq and Yemen. Iraq is defacto Kurdish, Sunni and Shia regions and Yemen is clearly headed towards a north-south partition.

The end of the cold war world engaged western intellectuals in shaping a new world order. While Francis Fukiyama and Samuel Huntington concerned themselves with the “end of history” and “clash of civilizations” respectively there were others, like Morton Halperin, who studied Self Determination and US Intervention.

Halperin and his colleague in the Clinton Administration, David Scheffer and scholar Patricia Small in 1992 wrote a book: “self determination in the new world order.” The book justifies US intervention in support of self determination.

Halperin became director policy planning under Madeleine Albright as Secretary of State. Halperin invited former editor of foreign policy and professor of international relations at Princeton, Richard Ullman, to set up a group of scholars at the state department to study a “History of Kosovo” to spin a theory for a “Just War.”

This background is useful for a study of ethics in the current Libyan operations.

In her book, “The Mighty and the Almighty,” Albright refers to Mark Twain’s harrowing War Prayer. “Even to pray for victory in war is tantamount to asking that horrors be visited upon the innocent of the opposite side.”

She anguishes over Milosevic, his three wars against Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and his “final solution” for the Albanians of Kosovo. She spells out her dilemma: “since Kosovo was part of Serbia, Milosevic’s crimes could not be characterized as international aggression. No member of NATO was under attack, so the Alliance could not claim the right of self defence. Serbia had not threatened to invade another country so there was no rationale for preemptive strike.”

Albright concluded that there were those “vulnerable other” to be defended. NATO’s presence in Europe gave her the means.

Bush years were, of course, guided by more crude principles. But consider military action against Qadaffi’s Libya keeping Albright’s perspective in mind.

For good or bad, Qaddaffi’s is a secular regime which the group in Benghazi may not be. Britain and France, not the US, have rushed to recognize the group in Benghazi whose Salafist Links are known.

The UN resolution was to impose a no-fly zone to protect the people of Libya. Instead western intervention has resulted in the death of Qaddaffi’s son and three grandchildren in addition to hundreds of innocent Libyans.

How does this monstrous outcome square with UNSG resolution 1973 or, in an earlier regime in Washington, with Albright’s sober deliberations?

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Even On Slippery Slope, An Ace Up Pak Sleeve

2011-06-03T15:40:00.000+05:30

Even On Slippery Slope, An Ace Up Pak Sleeve
Saeed Naqvi

The elimination of Osama bin Laden in the military cantonment town of Abbotabad on May 2 and, within three weeks, on May 23, the 17 hour siege of Pakistan’s major Naval-Air base in Karachi have heaped humiliation on the Pakistan Army and the ISI.

Do these unfortunate experiences chasten the Army or does Gen. Pervez Kayani still fall back on the expedience: “Ours is an India centered army?”

The Abbotabad operation remains a mystery. There is a body of observers, in Pakistan as elsewhere, which is convinced that the Army, or at least a section of it, collaborated in Osama’s capture. It is simply not possible for a fugitive to find a comfortable hideout in the shadow of Pakistan’s premier military academy.

If the Army denies knowledge, it is incompetent. If it accepts participation it invites a storm by way of “revenge” from the Pakistan Taleban.

The basic suspicion remains: elements in the Pak army or its affiliates, retired officers, were in cahoots with the Americans.

The siege of the Naval base in Karachi leads to an even more frightening conclusion. The base was attacked without outsiders having been noticed at the countless checkpoints required at a military facility. Does it not prove without a shadow of a doubt that it was an inside job?

If both Abbotabad and Karachi are “inside” jobs, the narrative becomes frighteningly confused. In Abbotabad the collaboration was with the Americans to get Osama. In Karachi the operation is avowedly to Avenge Osama’s death.

The charitable conclusion is that the left hand of the army does not know what the right is doing. A more sinister line to pursue is to look for fissures in the army on the issue of Jihad.

There was a nasty little theory doing the rounds: it was called the “one percent solution”. The implication is that if one percent of say 9.5 lakh of the army, Navy and Air Force is infected with Jehadism, then the siege of the Naval base or the attack on the GHQ in Rawalpindi in October 2009 are spontaneous eruptions linked to a secret society which grows in direct proportion to rampaging anti Americanism. It is quite a frightening scenario for the region and beyond, particularly when such anarchy grips a country strapped to unclear weapons.

How does one calm a Pakistani establishment on sixes and sevens? Consider the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Kabul. It cannot be anybody’s case in Pakistan, even those obsessed with strategic depth, that an Indian Prime Minister must never visit Kabul because otherwise the Pak army will be in a heightened state of agitation.

The Prime Minister promised to continue development assistance and much else. So far so good. Tucked away in the joint declaration is a mention of Afghanistan’s “security” concerns. Immediately comes a riposte from a Pakistani journalist I know too well. “Why must you poke your nose in Afghan security?

This is paranoia, but let it pass. Let us, for the sake of argument, give Gen. Hamid Gul his favoured turf – Afghanistan. In preparation for this transfer of influence, I suggest Pakistan’s Geo TV (or any other channel) to organize a discussion between Hamid Gul and former Taleban Ambassador to Pakistan, Abdus Salaam Zaeef, follower and friend of Mullah Omar, who spent four years in Guantanamo Bay. What he told me some months ago in Kabul is what he will tell Hamid Gul. “Pakistan simply has no role in Afghanistan.” Why this anger with Pakistan?

“For four years I was in Guantanamo where human rights violations are not as bad as they are in Pakistan: for seven years our boys languished in Pakistan prisons without trial.”

Well, assuming Zaeef is a spent force, let us consider Serajuddin Haqqani as a Pakistani asset among the Taleban. President Hamid Karzai will thump the table hard. “Haqqani is the worst of the lot” he will exclaim.

Quite ironically, the day Pakistan was in convulsions over the seventeen hour siege of its important Naval base in Karachi, businessmen, including some Indians, were being flown by the government in Kabul to far flung parts of Herat in search of business, trade, joint ventures.

This is not to suggest that peace has enveloped Afghanistan. But it does confirm the other reality: the Af-Pak conflict’s center of gravity has over the past five years shifted decisively to the very heart of Pakistan. Does all of this still leave Pakistan with a hand to play? Yes, ofcourse. The ultimate ace up its sleeve is to search seriously for peace with India, step by step, but sincerely. The incantation of Hindu India, Hamsaya Dushman has begun to pall, even on Hillary Clinton who visits Islamabad next week.

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Commissions, Omissions in Obama’s Speech

2011-05-23T09:37:00.000+05:30

Commissions, Omissions in Obama’s Speech
Saeed Naqvi

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netaniyahu requires astrological consultations, preferably in Varanasi, to free him from an unfortunate conjunction of stars. President Obama’s blueprint for Middle East could not have come at a worse moment. Bibi was planning a virtuoso performance before a joint session of US Congress.

It is commonly recognized in Jerusalem, and elsewhere, that the Likud PM nurses an adversarial chemistry with the US President. He went ahead with jewish settlements in a most insulting reception to US Vice President, Joe Biden. That was precisely what Biden had come to prevent.

Pushed to a corner and isolated, who can blame Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas endorse a resolution to be placed before the United Nations General Assembly in September to recognize the state of Palestine.

Just as Netaniyahu’s men set about plotting their move, the Arab Spring knocked out the interlocutor Israel had grown accustomed to – Mubarak. This strengthened the Israeli lobby which argued: “who do we discuss peace with; what will be the face of the emerging Mid East?” Obama comes down firmly on this stance.

“I disagree” he says. “At a time when people of the Middle East are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace……..is more urgent than ever.” The status quo, he said, is simply “not sustainable”.

Why is the timing of Obama’s speech embarrassing for Netaniyahu? As I have said, the Arab Spring took Israel by surprise. Poor anticipation exposed poor intelligence. To escape constant nagging by Senator George Mitchell, Netaniyahu’s friends in Washington fetched for him an invitation to address a joint session of Congress in May.

The PM’s men fell into deep thought. Should the speech invite Mahmoud Abbas as a partner in quest for peace, or announce a peace plan?

Just then came the biggest shock of all. Again, Israeli intelligence knew nothing about Palestinian interlocutor Mustafa Barghouti shuttling between Ramallah, Damascus and Cairo, arranging meetings in Cairo between Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, all under the new Egyptian Intelligence chief, Mourad Mowafi and Foreign Minister Nabil al Araby.

Egypt was once again center-stage, playing its role as Arab leader. This is most disconcerting for an Israel used to dealing with a rubber stamp despot for over three decades.

With circumstances so altered, what will Netaniyahu say on the Capitol Hill on May 24? Ofcourse, he will go hammer and tongs on Iran’s nuclear ambition. But that may not be enough to keep the Congressman riveted.

Before the PM’s team could produce that magical speech, President Obama, looking good after concluding the Osama bin Laden saga, took the wind out of their sails with his speech. It is the most comprehensive speech yet made by any world leader on the theme.

There is a degree of thoroughness in the manner in which this speech of Obama’s has been prepared. Not only is there fulsome praise for Hillary Clinton who “will go down as one of the finest Secretaries of State in our nation’s history” but there is an imprimatur of professional diplomacy throughout the speech.

For instance a somewhat tired Senator George Mitchell has been replaced by young David Hale as Mid East Envoy. He has first hand knowledge of almost every Mid East station mentioned by Obama, including Bahrain.

In an all important paragraph on Bahrain, Obama chastises those responsible for “mass arrests and brute force.” The leadership in Manamah would know exactly where the President’s barbs are directed.

One spots US diplomat Jeffrey Feltman’s hand in this paragraph. Feltman had painstakingly helped draft a six point power sharing agreement to which Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Khalifa and Moderate Shia leader Shaikh Ali Salman committed themselves. Much to Feltman’s disappointment, the Prince’s uncle (King’s brother) Prime Minister Khalifa ibn Salman al Khalifa and his coterie of hardliners, scuttled the agreement. It was then that Saudi armoured Personal Carriers rolled in.

Obama mentioned reforms in Bahrain and Yemen as being important for “America to be credible”. In which case Bahrain may have to pick up the thread where Feltman left it.

Since Obama names almost every Arab country which is reforming or needs reform, the omission of Riyadh places Saudis beyond all critical examination as the perfect society, Peace Be Upon It!

Incidentally two important West Asian countries have watched the Arab spring with doubt, even some anxiety –Saudi Arabia and Israel. To the extent that both are fearful of Iran, a sort of unstated common purpose binds them. Since Jerusalem and Riyadh have clout in Washington far in excess of anything that all the Arab countries can jointly claim, there is in place a very powerful troika.

The troika would have been even more imposing had the Libyan misadventure not created a rift in the Atlantic alliance on whether the group in Benghazi should be recognized as the legitimate government of Libya. David Cameron, the latter day, would-be Winston Churchill, rushes in where Obama fears to tread.

There is another aspect which worries Riyadh as much as it worries Jerusalem: New Egypt’s approach to Iran. For Egypt, Hamas and Hezbullah are of greater concern than meditations on Iran’s nuclear ambition.

Demonstrations in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain all the way around to Yemen has produced paranoia in Riyadh about an encirclement by Shias who will, they fear, eventually have Iranian support.

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Osama: Impact on Indo-Pak Relations

2011-05-16T09:28:00.001+05:30

Osama: Impact on Indo-Pak Relations
Saeed Naqvi

How will Osama Bin Laden’s elimination by US Special Forces impact on Indo-Pak relations?

The Pak army is demoralized.

The Civilian authority, without any sheen at the outset, is looking creditable.

It is beginning to look like 2007 all over again.

Gen Pervez Musharraf had signed on with the Americans post 9/11, in November 2001. The theatre for military action was Afghanistan, but even in early 2002, militants or their relatives had started crossing over to the North West Frontier.

Ofcourse, Musharraf made the U-turn on Afghanistan but with one caveat. He would join the US led war on terror in Afghanistan, but the Jehad in Kashmir would continue because the Pak establishment would not be able to cushion the backlash if Pakistan were to turn its back on both the militancies. New Delhi must remember: Americans accepted the difference between global and regional terror.

The Americans and the Saudis understood Musharraf’s predicament. The General had committed himself to fighting the very same militant Islamist forces his all powerful Inter Service Intelligence had diligently put together since 1980.

Initially, Musharraf was given room to play both sides of the street. But as the theatre of war shifted from Afghanistan to the Af-Pak border, indeed regions like Swat, Pakistani military action invited a huge backlash in terms of suicide attacks and general unpopularity among the people, as the impression was amplified that Pakistan, in fighting America’s war, was killing its own people.

Remember, these were days when President Bush’s regular incantation was that President Musharraf was his stoutest ally. In fact Musharraf’s grades in the White House were in inverse proportion to his grades in the Pak street – particularly after the Lal Masjid crackdown in the heart of Islamabad, killing hundreds of Madrasah students, including women.

Opposition by the Chief Justice, Lawyers agitation, the pressure from US Congress to have democratic elections in Pakistan (because both Afghanistan and Iraq had gone woefully wrong for the US), were all votes of no confidence in the Army.

The atmosphere in which the elections of February 2008 were held was something of a watershed. Not once was an anti India slogan raised. Kashmir was not even mentioned.

The Pak army, its head bowed over the Af-Pak operations, bereft of the Anti India card, its raison d’etre, because of total public disinterest in the theme, had never felt so humiliated since the creation of Bangladesh. To be seen in uniform was an embarrassment.

This was the state of affairs when the Taj in Mumbai was set ablaze on November 26, within three weeks of President Obama’s victory and barely nine months after the most India/neutral election campaign in Pakistan’s history.

It was such high voltage drama on live TV that the Indian media virtually declared war on Pakistan. Pakistani media, which behaved with exemplary restraint on the India theme so far, willy nilly retaliated. All promises of Indo-Pak bonhomie were turfed out of the window.

The Hamsaya Dushman (enemy neighbour), Hindu India loomed once again. The army uniform was back in vogue.

Despite the uneasy CIA-ISI equation (for over a decade), the apparently cozy drift continued until the US NAVY SEALS administered a lethal one-two punch on the Army’s chin in Abbotabad. It was supposed to be a routine sparring round in the ring, not the real thing.

In other words, as in 2007, the Army’s stock is dismal. PMLN leader Nawaz Sharief has criticized the army and demanded a judicial inquiry. Even the Jamaat-e-Islami is chastising it.

The Supreme Court Bar Association, Lahore and Peshawar High Court Bar associations, among others, are seeking judicial inquiries.

The decline in public esteem in 2007 was galling for an army which generally keeps itself pampered. But it bounced back after 26/11.

How will the army seek to rehabilitate itself in the public eye this time? The end of Osama bin Laden will loom so big in global consciousness that anything resembling terrorism (even the cross border variety) will come under close scrutiny of the international community. Pushed thus against the wall, the mind may furnish some sensible solutions.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has the right ideas on Pakistan. The Indian media can help by gloating a little less.

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Deniability a Must for Infidelity: The US-Pak Affair

2011-05-09T09:49:00.001+05:30

Deniability a Must for Infidelity: The US-Pak Affair
Saeed Naqvi

All clever infidelities have deniability built into them.

Pakistani establishment would have to be out of its mind to enter Osama bin Laden’s Abbotabad hideout on a white charger. Such foolhardiness would swell the ranks of Jihadi outfits in Pakistan. Murderer of Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer would resurface as a model. Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadiris would sprout, searching for targets and expecting to be showered with rose petals.

Speculations will continue till doomsday on the level of coordination between the US and Pakistan in tracking down Osama. Four helicopters in a garrison town and the host (invaded) country knew nothing about the prize resident?

Admit to invasion of sovereignty and the army loses face. Acknowledge cooperation, and Jihadists expand exponentially. Therefore, fall back on “deniability”, cure for all infidelities.

President Obama’s May 1 statement announcing Osama’s death could not have been drafted carelessly.

“Tonight, I called President Zardari and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts”. Notice the next line: “they agree that this is a good and historic day for both our nations”. This means President Zardari and his National Security team which must include the army, are agreed that Osama’s elimination is a “historic day for both our nations”.

Look at the last line of this pithy paragraph: “and going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates.” Pakistan is not being asked “to join us” in the fight against Al Qaeda. It is being asked to “continue”. Only an ongoing arrangement is “continued”. It is therefore pointless to split hairs on the extent of Pakistani cooperation unless the purpose is to embarrass Pakistan.

That Pakistan continues to harbour militants, Jihadists and terrorists is a story as old as the Murree hills. And Americans armed with technology which enabled four noisy helicopters navigate through blind spots in the Pak radars, did not know all the terrorism being hosted by Pakistan? This is the kind of rubbish even Americans do not believe?

Who would believe that all the CIA and local mercenary Intelligence did not know about the goings on in the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in July 2007? It played a key role during the Mujahideen war against the Soviets from 1980 to 1989. Maulana Mohammad Abdullah, the head of the mosque, had excellent relations with President Zia-ul-Haq who, with Saudi and American co-operation, built up a series of Madrasas for the manufacture of Jihadist all along the Af-Pak border. The most significant training unit in the hinterland was Lal Masjid. And Americans did not know?

It was only after Lal Masjid was raided and hundreds of young men and women in the seminaries attached to the mosques were killed, that there was an incremental spurt in suicide bombings. In that perspective, imagine the price the Pak establishment would have had to pay had it been tempted to claim Osama as trophy. A country where sensible people are afraid opposing an uncivilized Blasphemy law is hardly in a position to take on the most awesome militant in history.

What will be the consequence of Osama’s elimination? Cancer when punctured sometimes flares up. There may be terrorist eruptions by way of revenge in the short term.

And in the long term? Remember how Veerappan, the bandit in the jungles of Karnataka and Tamilnadu kept the security forces on their toes for years. But when he was killed, sandalwood smuggling stopped.

Osama’s death however does not end the scourge of Islamic terrorism boosted by him.

This scourge will taper off only when injustice tapers off in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Palestine, when the West palpably sides with justice. Pakistan is a distinct case where popular anti Americanism and an India centered army combines to manufacture militancy.

Speculations that US-Pak relations may rupture because of US unilateralism on Pak territory are premature. To the contrary, US and Pak relations may look demonstrably healthy when the Af-Pak meeting takes place in May with US participation.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Kabul last week was called off because there was information that something was afoot in the vicinity, all the talk of US unilateralism notwithstanding.

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New Egypt Trumps Israel on Peace Process

2011-05-02T09:41:00.001+05:30

New Egypt Trumps Israel on Peace Process
Saeed Naqvi

The dizzying pace of developments in the Arab World have left dictatorial casualties, sectarian and tribal conflicts, unsettled monarchies and opened up possibilities of at least two democratic elections. The first, ofcourse, is Egypt in September.

The second election on the cards has been made possible by the surprising announcement in Cairo that Hamas and Fatah have agreed to reconcile their differences. Next week Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Politbureau chief Khaled Meshal will meet to sign the agreement.

The agreement calls for a caretaker government of technocrats who will also set the ball rolling for Presidential, Parliamentary and National Palestinian council elections within a year.

Israelis, barely recovering from the week long Passover observances, are in a state of shock. In the first week of May Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was to visit Paris and London, presumably to firm up the resolve of these capitals on Libya and also to refine passages in what he had hoped would be a historic address to the joint session of the US Congress.

By so doing he would have sailed around the Obama team with which his equation is frosty. But with the surprising turn of events in the Palestinian parlour, the game changes radically.

Winds of change in the Arab world left Israel initially distraught with the fall of Mubarak. But then the mood changed. Changes elsewhere were seen as popular quest for empowerment in which, for once, Arab-Israeli peace (or its obverse) was not the centre piece.

Broadly, there emerged two dominant schools of thought in Jerusalem. Yes, tectonic shifts were taking place across the Arab world but it was totally unclear where these changes would lead. “The Arab spring could easily turn into an Iranian winter!” is Netanyahu’s favourite incantation.

So, this school of thought says: don’t be hasty on the peace process. Let us watch which way the Arab cookie crumbles.

The other school of thought suggested the opposite: this is the time to take the initiative and shape the outcome in the various Arab states, initiative toward a settlement with the Palestinians.

But settlement with which Palestinians? Mahmoud Abbas has little credit even in the Fatah. To talk to Hamas would be to confer legitimacy on it. In the circumstances the best course open to Netanyahu was to spell out a peace plan with or without any consultations with Mahmoud Abbas. This was the advice being given.

The option to wait and watch while the Arab picture clarifies was overwhelmed by the other danger looming on the horizon: the Palestinian intention to ask the UN General Assembly during its upcoming session in September to recognize an independent Palestinian state which would include the Gaza strip.

Netanyahu, ofcourse, has condemned Fatah’s reconciliation with Hamas “which seeks the destruction of Israel”.

No one expects Hamas to publicly backtrack on its stand vis a vis Israel. But once the UN recognizes a state of which both Fatah and Hamas are sponsors, where is the requirement for Hamas to announce another recognition in a annexure?

Jerusalem is an alert city. There was some speculation that Hamas-Fatah reconciliation would certainly be attempted. But the tightening speed with which the Egyptians were able to deliver a difficult agreement has taken peoples’ breath away.

One clear conclusion observers will draw is that the change of regime in Cairo has weakened Israeli intelligence. Surely meetings in which new Egyptian intelligence chief, Mourad Mousafi, Foreign Minister, Nabil Al-Arabi, Deputy Head of Hamas’ Damascus Political Bureau, Fatah’s Azam Al Ahmad all participated, would not have remained secret in the Mubarak days.

In fact Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Intelligence Dan Meridor told me with remarkable candour: “we were all taken aback” by recent developments in the Arab world. “First thing we must learn from these developments is humility – we simply did not know.”

Well, for the time being the New Egypt has clearly pre empted whatever Netanyahu was planning to tell the joint session of Congress.

The serious business now is to navigate Egyptian and Palestinian elections successfully. This means a commitment not to discard results that are not fancied by Israel or US or both.

From Algeria in 1991 to the Palestinian elections more recently, the West has been guilty on this count: it has thwarted popular verdicts, aggravating militancies.

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The Three Theatres of the Arab World

2011-04-25T10:02:00.001+05:30

The Three Theatres of the Arab World
Saeed Naqvi

Arab spring was always a media short hand. After spending some time in the region, I have in my focus three distinct dramas being played out.

From North Africa – Tunis, Egypt – to Jordan and Syria is one theatre. This is the arena of positive evolution.

Then there is the GCC theatre. Saudi Arabia is the spider in this web, its tentacles deep in Bahrain and Yemen, two countries it shares border with.

The third is something of a solo number with Muammar Qaddafi dancing between minefields being inexpertly laid by an Anglo-French pair of plotters. The Americans, having had their fingers burnt in Iraq, are clearly keen not to be seen conferring martyrdom on another Arab despot.

In an excellent interview with a journalist who specializes in Africa, Fareed Zakaria conclusively established Qaddafi’s immense popularity with sub Saharan Africa where people are collecting donations to help Qaddafi. Surely slaughterers of their citizens are made of harsher stuff.

Little wonder African leaders have been jointly pleading with the international community not to apply UNSC resolution 1973, as a means to advance Western interests.

The Anglo-French desire to dress up their designs with altruism, is just not selling. The Arab public is taking the Anglo-French propaganda with large doses of salt. “Foreigners have entered my house in Mesrata”, says Rafiq Hamadi in Baghdad, “and When I shoot them, they run to the media with the story that I am ‘slaughtering’ my people!”

In the short term, it appears Libya will be divided between East and West. The world, including the Arab public and 20 million Muslims in Europe will see the partitioning of the country for what it is: not to stop the “slaughter” of the innocents but for Libya’s light crude for which European refineries are specially geared.

Bahrain, meanwhile, has been an avoidable tragedy. Avoidable, because the Americans very nearly navigated an agreement between the Crown Prince and the opposition. But hardliners in Riyadh and Manama scuttled it.

Events in Bahrain deserve to be understood because they will resonate for a while. A 37 km causeway links Dammam headquarters of Saudi Arabia’s exclusive oil bearing eastern province which also happens to be a Shia majority region. In fact, in one of the districts, Qatif, the Shia population is over 90 percent.

Ever since the Ayatullahs came to power in Teheran in 1979, the Saudi state has been firm in handling Shia restiveness in the province, real or imagined. Since King Abdullah’s benign rule, Moharram processions and other Shia practices have been tolerated. But vigilance is as total as can be in a police state.

Across the causeway, Bahrain is, by comparison, a haven of openness except that political freedoms are cleverly circumscribed. A large segment of Bahrain’s 1.5 million population are expatriate.

Nearly seventy percent of the 8,00,000 Bahrainis happen to be Shias. The rulers, however, follow a strict Sunni school. For over 200 years the Khalifa family have been Emirs of Bahrain.

A decade ago Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa declared himself King. An Emir, he thought, had colonial connotations. Kingship would lend itself to the possibility of a “constitutional monarchy”. Along with Kingship, almost in sequence, comes a Crown Prince – in this case Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

King Hamad, ever since he ascended the throne has had his uncle, Khalifa Ibn Salman al Khalifa as Prime Minister under whom, by popular consent, corruption has flourished as it has elsewhere in the Arab world. He was one of the targets of recent demonstrations.

Infection of popular protest from Tunisia and Egypt arrived in Bahrain and youngsters, Shias and Sunnis, began to collect at Pearl Square for peaceful demonstrations. They even mounted Mahatma Gandhi posters.

The, police largely Pakistani, cracked down hard. In the ranks of the protesters there was some confusion. Did they want freedoms? A free press? Participatory democracy? Constitutional monarchy? or that the Kahlifas must flee?

American special envoy, Jeffery Feltman, the Crown Prince and moderate Shia leader Shaikh Ali Salman secretly met hand hammered out a compromise agreement.

The Prime Minister, seeing his power recede, agreed to Saudi Interior Security chief Prince Naif’s hard line. No quarter should be given to the Shias who will be the staging post for Iran. Brutality on the Shias was unleashed. And now the Crown Prince and the Prime Minister are probably in rival camps. Obviously the story is not yet over.

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Henry Higgins And Lucknow’s Clear Speech

2011-04-18T10:11:00.000+05:30

Henry Higgins And Lucknow’s Clear Speech
Saeed Naqvi

“Language most reveals a man; speak that I may see thee”. Says Ben Johnson. Can you spot a man from Lucknow on this basis? You could in the 60s.

Professor of Phonetics, Henry Higgins, takes up a unique challenge. Higgins believes impeccable speech determines class. With his phonetic skills he will be able to coach a bedraggled Eliza Doolittle to pass off as a duchess. He will transform her slanted “raain in Spaain” into “rain in Spain”. With Higgins’s persistence, Eliza develops the speech which superficially elevates her class. But only superficially.

You can take Eliza out of her squalor but the culture which that squalor breeds cannot be expelled from Eliza. At a critical moment, the “real” Eliza reveals her true self; she reverts to her cockney accent.

But why am I talking about Henry Higgins? The subject came up during a discussion on Urdu diction, a discussion which generally leads to the late, lamented Lucknow!

It is clear as daylight that Urdu varies in intonations, region to region. This is so because it picks up words and accents in the region where it is spoken.

Urdu’s first poet with his own collection of verse, Quli Qutub Shah, builder of Charminar, has a clear Telugu lilt in his diction. On many occasions “Q” becomes “kh” and so on.

The occasional Avadhi or Lucknowi tone one hears in Hyderabad is largely an importation. The senior bureaucracy around the Nizam’s court was imported from among the Saiyyids of Avadh – Bilgramis and Jungs, for instance.

In Punjab too, where the synthesis of various dialects with Persian and Arabic predates the Deccan, the spoken Urdu has an unmistakable Punjabi stamp.

Two of the greatest poets of Urdu in the 20th century, Iqbal and Faiz, happen to be Punjabis. But their eminence as poets does not by any means place them on the highest pedestal of Urdu diction. Mastery of diction, the intricate filigree of sound, arrangement of words, their cadence, in brief, the craft of Urdu, remained a close preserve of Lucknow and its Avadh environs.

It is generally not recognized that Urdu speech, its phonetic magic, was at its urbane best with Kashmiri Pandits, followed by a limited number of Kayasthas. The adjective “Urbane” has been used advisedly in this context: Kashmiri Pandits had no rural colloquialisms in their speech.

Since Lucknow was in some instances a camp town for Avadh’s rural elite, there was an automatic accrual of a certain rural lyric in their speech.

As the name suggests, Josh Malihabadi was from Malihabad, a Qasbah about 20 kms from Lucknow. Josh epitomizes Lucknow but his diction does not remain untouched by the flavour of Malihabad countryside.

How would Henry Higgins evaluate Faiz and Josh as speakers of Urdu as she is spoke? His class characterization would not work. In their respective environments of Lahore and Lucknow, both represented elites.

In the eloquence and magic of Urdu sound, Josh would dominate because he embodied Lucknow speech. I am talking only of the spoken word, mind you.

The remarkable fact about Lucknow speech was that it operated on principles way beyond Henry Higgins’ class framework. Ofcourse Lucknow was class ridden; it was quintessentially feudal. But good speech cut across class barriers. Stories of the horse carriage or the tongawallah’s suble satire at the miserly passenger are not apocryphal.

“After a day in your scintillating service, what recompense?”
“One rupee”
“Softy, Sir, the horse understands.”

The spell that this speech cast on Bollywood was enormous. Actors like Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Ashok Kumar rooted in linguistic cultures as varied as Pushto and Bengali, had to speak the “Lucknow speech” to be accepted as romantic heroes. Crash course would not do as in the case of Eliza Doolittle. Assimilation of Ganga-Jamni or composite culture which Urdu represented ensured a permanent displacement of an earlier linguistic entity by a new one.

Bollywood is a burgeoning industry and yet no hero can break into it unless he follows that singular law of romance: speech from Lucknow or Avadh. This explains Amitabh Bachchan’s continued success – his diction.

Without offending my Hindi purists, it is a combination of Urdu and Bollywood which has welded the nation into the acceptable Hindustani, the very essence of our composite culture.

When BBC Hindi Service was launched in the 50s, do you know the man chosen to head the service?

Aale Hasan, a thoroughbred representative of the composite culture which is both Urdu and Hindi – and its epicenter is Lucknow.

Yes, it does feel nice when Urdu/Hindi speakers anywhere ask with barely disguised admiration: “are you from Lucknow?”

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After Libya, Give me BBC Radio Anyday

2011-04-11T10:24:00.000+05:30

After Libya, Give me BBC Radio Anyday
Saeed Naqvi

A book on war correspondents by my friend Philip Knightley has a pithy title: First Casualty. When wars break out, the First Casualty is truth. The war correspondent becomes the myth maker, an integral part of the war effort.

Fair enough. If the US, Britain and France are at war, say, in Libya, who am I to object to their journalists becoming drumbeaters. The problem arises when that customized coverage becomes the only source of information for the intellectually colonized world.

I myself learnt the hard way that scooping against the national purpose in a war is sacrilege. Sasthi Brata, author of My God Died Young and Confessions of an Indian Woman Eater, walked into my cubicle at The Statesman in New Delhi, and tossed in my direction two type written documents, about 2,000 (two thousand) words each, looking as sinister as only he can look. “Publish these if you have the b….ls.” I was editor of the paper’s Sunday Magazine. Bangladesh was being liberated. Sasthi had sneaked into what was then East Pakistan and given graphic accounts of Indian participation in the war. I published it.

Next morning the Hoogli, Chowringhee Square, Statesman House were in a manner of speaking, all ablaze. What should be done about the more explosive second part due for publication next week? What better way to stop the leak than sink the ship? Sunday Magazine was instantly discontinued. When it resumed after a few months, I was not its editor.

After Sasthi Brata’s alleged recklessness had been tamed, the “war effort” the Indian media joined remained a local affair. It did not inform or shape opinion beyond India. The Nixon-Kissinger duet continued to hate Indira Gandhi till the very end, quite oblivious of the Indian media’s extended patriotic slants.

The situation now is totally different because all perceptions of an event like Libya are dominated by the global media inaugurated by CNN’s Peter Arnett from the terrace of Al Rashied hotel in Baghdad during operation Desert Storm. This one event altered the global media hierarchy.

Until Desert Storm, BBC radio was by far the most credible and influential news source anywhere in the world. I remember Nelson Mandela’s first day out of prison in Archbishop Tutu’s house in Cape Town. Religiously, every hour, he would bend to pick up a transistor he kept by the wall, listening to BBC World Service.

There was always a lull in the continuous, sputtering sound of small arms fire during the Sierra Leone war, at specific hours when BBC Africa Calling was broadcast.

During an election campaign in Mahmudabad, UP, Mark Tully and Waqar Ahmad were startled by an elderly man, relaxing on a cot under a mango tree, when he refused to divulge his voting intentions. “I will first listen the BBC” he said “then make up my mind”.

That was the credibility of BBC radio which its TV avatar has willfully surrendered by constantly dissembling in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Libya.

Suddenly, a battery of the BBC’s TV stars, led by Liz Ducet, materialize along the stretch from the Egyptian border to Benghazi and beyond. You see men in jeans making V signs from a ramshackle station wagon. The reporter describes these as “advancing” rebels.

The clever Miss Ducet scoots from the implausible visuals, to keep her credibility for another invasion, armed intervention.

Meanwhile, John Simpson appears in what he says is Tripoli. No-fly-zone, regime change, arm the rebels, but supposing they are Al Qaeda, NATO air strikes killing civilians and so on, are parallel stories.

But an undeterred Mister Simpson, his neck at a perpetual tilt, dons a plausible manner: “Well, to be honest, the picture here, I doubt if anyone can, the rebels too…”, he continues, even as focus shifts to Ivory Coast until the props in Libya are ready to make fireworks more telegenic. Only last Monday a CIA operative with a satellite phone and chests full of money is rumoured to have reached Benghazi. CNN will now certainly revert to Libya and BBC will follow.

That’s the BBC for you in a war no one is clear about. Oh! Give me BBC radio any day.

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Remembering Vajpayee at Manmohan’s Moment in Mohali

2011-04-04T16:39:00.002+05:30

Remembering Vajpayee at Manmohan’s Moment in Mohali
Saeed Naqvi

It is easy to overanalyze Mohali, Thimpu, UN General Assembly, Agra and arrive exactly where we had started. When it comes to Indo-Pak relations the devil, sometimes, is not in the detail. It is in the mind – on both sides.

The dossiers on Mumbai, the FBI’s role or non role, reference to Balochistan, Qasab, Aseemanand, etcetera etcetera can, all of them, singly or together, be tossed as the monkey wrench in the wheel. But these are not the reasons for relations being in disrepair.

These niggling details are the stuff that politics feeds on. To amplify the politics of pettiness is the function of the contemporary media in frenetic pursuit of ratings.

Statesmanship consists in rising above the petty politician and the panting, puffing media, to seize upon the moment, something Manmohan Singh is perfectly positioned for. I can see jaws drop: how can the Prime Minister be in a position for anything positive after the continuous mauling at the hands of the opposition through two sessions of Parliament? But we must not forget the Prime Minister too has seen the bruised and the wounded on the other side of the aisle. Who knows, Mohali may turn out to be his moment, provided he can plug his ears for insulation from that section of the media which aims to influence foreign policy by going ballistic, at deafening decibel levels.

Manmohan Singh must take a leaf from the Atal Behari Vajpayee book. Remember how he was stung at Kargil by Pervez Musharraf after his bus journey to Lahore. But he persisted. He was willing to go some distance even at Agra in July 2001; the hardliners in his own party pulled him back.

Remember Agra? Prevez Musharraf at the head of a large rectangular seating arrangement? Seated on three sides are God’s gift to Indian media, including the noisy one mentioned above. One by one they stand up to sing paeans of Musharraf in full throated melody. But, once the summit fails, they press “rewind” and over a period, “unsing” their songs, note by note.

But Agra or no Agra, knowing Vajpayee’s tenacity, I am sure he would soon have picked up the thread and resumed his peace commitment. But, alas, within two months 9/11 happened, providing grist to the hardline mill.

Then, in sequence, came the December 13 attack on Parliament, setting the scene for the February 2002 Gujarat pogrom. The hardliners were on top.

But did that stop Vajpayee from searching for the right opening?

Americans, by now deep in Iraq, began to lobby for Indian troops to administer northern Iraq, the Kurdish area. The armed forces salivated as did those of the BJP who liked the analogy of their looking after a “sector” of Iraq exactly as the “big powers” administered “sectors” of Berlin after the war. Yes, the establishment had all but bitten the bait.

Then on April 9, 2003, Vajpayee watched on TV Saddam Hussain’s statue being pulled down from the square at Palestine hotel. He kept his counsel.

On April 18, on a visit to Srinagar, Vajpayee the statesman, startled the world, most of all, his own party. Eyeball to eyeball confrontation between Indo-Pak armies notwithstanding, he offered his hand of peace to Pakistan. An awesome power has arisen, making regional quarrels a self defeating waste, he said. This led to the January 6, 2004 statement in Islamabad where Pakistan agreed that its territory would not be used against India. Manmohan Singh followed up and went further for peace than any Prime Minister. Then 26/11 happened.

The Vajpayee moment presents itself again. Manmohan can see an incoherent, inconsistent west groping for strategy in Libya. There never was and never will be any altruism in their moves. It is in our self interest to have the best of relations with each and every member of the currently quarrelling west.

But it is in our paramount interest to compose our regional differences, to be able to cope with an unstable, unpredictable and a frightfully self seeking world. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, by their very presence, provide him with support he needs. The two Home Secretaries have cleared some thicket. There will be road blocks, terror attacks. But a variation on the Biblical dictum says: he who is willing to lose, shall win!

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Europe Helps Create ‘Jihad’ Next Door

2011-03-28T16:55:00.000+05:30

Europe Helps Create ‘Jihad’ Next Door
Saeed Naqvi

Have Prime Minister David Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy ever paused to consider how the 20 million Muslims in Europe might react to their military action in Libya? I doubt if the rest of their countrymen will ever place them with Churchill or de Gaulle.

Arabs, like people anywhere, do not like dictators. But Western military intervention amplified on global media, stokes nationalism, localism. A dictator then becomes “our son-of-a-bitch” against an even more despised Western “outsider”, particularly when this “outsider’s” successive interventions over decades have been devoid of any altruism.

Where there has been any demonstrable sympathy (by Americans not Europeans) for the people of Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Muslims have worn their “thank you” on their sleeves. The image is so etched on my mind that I never tire of repeating it: avenues and squares in the name of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright in Kosovo! A pity there will never be a street in Benghazi named after Hillary Clinton or Cameron and Sarkozy.

Not only has the West halted the Arab spring, it may have done something much more dangerous. Countries with a majority of their populations in the 20s, the youth bulge, who had come out on the streets waving their flags of freedom, where will they turn now?

Cavernous staircases from the Arab street lead to the basements where extremist recruitment centers are looking for custom.

Since, on current showing, Western leaders have eased to see things beyond their nose, it may be useful to din it into their senses that Muslims, like the rest of the world, have on 247 watched Operation Desert Storm, occupation of Iraq, the two Intefadas, a four year long brutalization of Bosnia, occupation of the West Bank, invasion of Afghanistan, civilian deaths in drone attacks in Pakistan – and now, just when the mood in the Arab street was softening towards the West and Israel, come these images of Western action in Libya and rank hypocrisy in Bahrain and Yemen.

A straightforward lesson should have been learnt from Afghanistan where Islamic Madrasas to train Mujahideen against Soviet occupation in 1980 continues to plague the region to this day. How helpless can the Americans be? They have allowed a quarrelling Europe to drag them into their third war with a Muslim country in eight years.

Incidentally, Yemen’s direct link with the Afghan project is generally not understood. Prince Naif bin Abdel Aziz, Saudi Interior Minister, while helping set up training centers for Islamic militancy in Afghanistan, thought of manufacturing thoroughbred Arab Jehadis next door in Yemen. President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s half brother, Ali Mohsin Al Ahmar was given charge of the training camps. Just as the Afghan Jehadis were motivated to evict the Soviets from Afghanistan, so were the Yemenis trained to fight the then pro Soviet regime in the South, with Aden as the capital. Unification of Yemen took place only in the 90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Afghan Jehadis (Taleban leavened with Al Qaeda) are plaguing the US in Af-Pak; the Arab Jehadis in Yemen are a thorn in the US-Saudi flesh. Hence, drone attacks on Al Qaeda positions in parts of Yemen, every attack breeding more Al Qaeda.

For the Saudis the matters are a trifle more complicated with Yemen’s Zaidi Shias in Saada, abutting Saudi Arabia, making common cause with the Socialists in the South against the House of Saud.

It obviously suits President Saleh to play the Saudi card to protect himself from the mounting unrest which has taken a toll in lives. How long can the Saudis ward off multiple pressures – from Bahrain, Yemen, Shia dominated Iraq contiguous with its own the oil bearing Shia dominated Eastern Province?

As if all this was not enough, Messrs Sarkozy and Cameron have committed themselves to Benghazi which was rocked by the Danish cartoon controversy and from where Jehadis have participated in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Libyan revolt was led by a group called the National Conference of the Libyan opposition, founded in London in 2005. Can overseas Libyans make a revolution? If Qaddafi survives, will not opposition to his soft Islam be the harder version of the faith? Remember the Danish cartoon protests in Benghazi in 2006 eventually turned upon Qaddafi.

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Outline of New World Order?

2011-03-21T09:29:00.001+05:30

Outline of New World Order?
Saeed Naqvi

Numbing spectacle of Christchurch’s Catholic Cathedral, like the rest of the exquisite city, reduced to a heap by the 6.3 magnitude quake that struck New Zealand last month; Hamid Karzai’s Populzai tribe in mourning over the killing of his cousin in Kandahar by US soldiers; agonizing tussle over Raymond Davis, part of covert CIA team in Pakistan who shot dead two Pakistani operators. All images of varying degrees of helplessness.

Just as these stunning pictures begin to register, comes an avalanche of images ever more catastrophic. A quake of an unprecedented 8.9 magnitude hits Japan, stirring memories of World War devastation – Hiroshima, Nagasaki et al.

And, just look at the coincidental configuration of the stars! In 1986, just when Chernobyl erupted, Col. Muammar Qaddafi was finding his way through bombs and falling rubble in his Tripoli palace, trying to help his wife strapped to a bed because of a slipped disc.

This time too a coalition of the willing has been, well, almost drummed up either to scare Qaddafi or to pound him and, the frightening nuclear disaster emanates from Japan – echoes of 1986.

Another coincidence? Foreign Minister Bali Ram Bhagat turned up in Tripoli to commiserate but Regan rapped Rajiv Gandhi on the knuckles and Bhagat was sacked. Well, this time New Delhi has withstood pressures and abstained.

President Obama has clearly stated: “no boots on the ground” and that the resolution has the limited purpose of protecting human lives.

American reluctance to enter this North African theatre has been transparent. Trust an American cartoonist to capture the essence of the transatlantic confusion. Some Europeans are sipping Campari and Soda under a sun umbrella. Uncle Sam, standing somewhat like a butler, reports: “There is a fire raging next door.” Europeans answer: “Go, put it out. Don’t just stand there!”

Every itinerant journalist who crossed over from Egypt into Benghazi found an interviewee who demanded a no-fly-zone. Whether the two score British Special Forces and diplomats arrested by the protesters in the vicinity of Benghazi preceded the interviewees or followed them, only time will tell.

Unlike President Mitterand, who had to be coaxed into the coalition for Operation Desert Storm in 1991, President Nicolas Sarkozy has been something of a pioneer demanding the international community’s recognition for the Benghazi rebels. Clearly Sarkozy has in his possession all the East Libyan oil maps.

Even as British Prime Minister David Cameron faced an angry House of commons for his men being caught with their pants down in Benghazi, prompt moral support arrived from Sarkozy. Germany said no. Bertie Wooster would have gulped: “Axis and Allies, what!”

But no help arrived until Qaddafi had retaken the hub of Ajdabiah from where roads fork to Tripoli and to Tobruk near the Egyptian border.

Lebanon backed by Britain and France introduced the UN resolution supported by the US. What next? Not quite clear except that a huge question mark has been placed on the future of east Libyan oil reserves, rather like the one on Kirkuk in Iraq’s Kurdish north.

The US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates was quite clear. European’s cannot be packing up their bags in Afghanistan, where so much “blood and treasurer” has been spent, and expect the US to be in lock-step with them in Libya.

A senior Kremlin insider, places recent events against a larger backdrop. “In a totally interconnected world, the post imperial hierarchy is taking shape – US, China, India and Russia. US inability to shape events in West Asia boosts China’s relative image. Japan’s tragic collapse removes another counterveiling force. Hence the delayed UN resolution.

Another country that has gained in stature in recent years, despite the US, is Iran. Shia power in Iraq, uprising in Bahrain and Yemen with a restless minority agitating in Dammam, adds upto a Saudi nightmare. Hence, Saudi armoured carriers driving into Bahrain, designed to check perceived Iranian influence.

There is considerable significance in Lebanon having taken the lead in sponsoring the UN resolution. Hezbullah supported by Iran, is the leading partner in the Lebanese government. Likewise, Saad Hariri has Saudi support. Does this Iranian-Saudi coordination by proxy have a larger potential?

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Can US Lead While Europe Scrambles for Oil

2011-03-14T09:29:00.001+05:30

Can US Lead While Europe Scrambles for Oil
Saeed Naqvi

Peoples’ power in Tunisia and Egypt not only swept away symbols of dictatorial tyranny but also mobilized Arab masses behind a liberal agenda. Not once in Tunis or Tahrir Square was an anti Israeli slogan raised. Nor was anti Americanism in evidence. How little it takes for people to soften, once the weight of injustice is lifted from their shoulders.

Against this backdrop consider Libya. Is “people’s power” being allowed to prevail in that country or is foreign intervention the dominant image? Yes, I did see the BBC’s principal foreign correspondent ask a rather forlorn lady in the vicinity of Benghazi whether she thought the “protestors” would win?

The lady kept pointing a finger at the sky, circling it rather like children flying toy helicopters. “Impose no-fly-zone” she chanted, “impose no-fly-zone”. She asked for guns, tanks so that the “mad man does not finish us”. She was well attired and clearly not from the trenches.

Who was she? Did she live in Benghazi? Or had she walked over the nearby border with Egypt? In a dictatorship, people can revolt but will they invite foreign intervention on live foreign TV? Has anyone studied the mosaic of Libyan tribes?

Precursors to foreign intervention, a dozen or so British Special Forces with two diplomats cross over from Egypt. They are promptly detained by the protestors, causing a convulsion in the House of Commons.

With egg on his face, Prime Minister David Cameron, persists before TV cameras. “The world can’t stand by if Qaddafi brutalizes his people”.

Coincidentally, in Ivory Coast a determined Laurent Gbagbo, refusing to accept electoral defeat against Allassane Ouattara has been for weeks “brutalizing” the “victors” in and out of Abidjan, the capital.

Cameron’s compassion for the Libya people coincides with his principal ally in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai, beating his breast in his Kabul palace. “O’ they have killed my cousin; O’ they have killed my cousin”. Apparently NATO forces stormed 65 year old Mohammad Karzai’s home in Kandahar.

Imagine, how the Al Qaeda, Taleban, ordinary Afghans and across the border, the murderers of Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti in Pakistan are watching the situation in Libya.

There is utter lack of clarity on what the Western game plan in Afghanistan is. The date of withdrawal of US troops is, well, shall we say, “sometime” in 2014? In 2012 President Obama must seek re election.

A spectacular war would be an election winning devise! The sheer spectacle of it would obscure indecisiveness on Af-Pak. But isn’t the US Gulliver pinned down by its own disapproval of unilateralism? And by China, Russia, deep divisions in Europe between those who had sweet oil deals with Qaddafi and those who didn’t.

Europe allowed the Bosnia war to continue for five years without intervening because Germany and Vatican’s premature recognition of Croatia had caused Britain and France to gear up on the opposite side. To prevent another intra European war, all sides held back their horses.

So what if the Muslim Bosniacs were “brutalized” (Cameron’s term) for four years, with Gen. Sir Charles Rose toting up figures of the Bosniac dead at his daily briefings. European nations avoided falling over each other in a war. But for Europe the collateral damage was enormous. TV images helped bring the Islamic party to power in Turkey.

It was then, even as Europe prevaricated, that the US came to the help of Muslims. Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was removed. A Muslim dominated state of Kosovo was formed. Millions of Muslims in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and even Bosnia are the only ones of that faith who are positive about the United States. There are avenues in Kosovo named after Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright.

Good sense prevented Europe from starting another war. That is what would have happened if they had taken sides on Bosnian Muslims.

But greed for oil in days of economic despair is causing Europe to fall over each other.

Can good sense prevail in Washington once again? Military action in Libya will generate anti Americanism, which will swell the ranks of Al Qaeda and cause the “Arab Youth” bulge to find a frightening outlet. Asking Saudis or Britain to arm rebels will boomerang unless focus is also kept on Palestinian-Israeli peace.

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West Casts Qaddafi in Saddam Image

2011-03-07T09:21:00.000+05:30

West Casts Qaddafi in Saddam Image
Saeed Naqvi

Put it down to Qaddafi’s craft or inept handling of the situation by Washington and Europe, but a certain ambiguity has crept into the evolving scenario in Libya. There are different perceptions emerging. Some days ago he was being ousted by his people. Now the West appears to be involved in his impending ouster. This is a totally new picture. It will change the mood in the Arab street.

Is Qaddafi’s brutal crackdown killing over a thousand protesters, the dominant narrative? Is his invocation of Libyan nationalism not being unwittingly promoted by aggressive Western plans to “impose” a no-fly-zone and that this tends to neutralize the earlier narrative?

Arab TV channels are abuzz with British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s conversation with “several Libyan rebel leaders” on the possibility of the “UK along with its western allies” planning to impose a no-fly-zone in Libya. Is Washington now going to help “rebel leaders” in other countries? Has anyone taken note of the Arab summit in Cairo?

Some clarity was introduced into the proceedings by the Central Command’s Gen. James Mathis – “No-fly-zone would have to be a military operation – it wouldn’t be just telling people not to fly airplanes”.

No-fly-zone would require removal of air defence capability, Gen. Mathis said. “Such an operation would mean sorties involving military facilities throughout the Mediterranean” – Cyprus, Sicily, Crete. Obama is clearly on this slope.

How does all this register with the Arab street? Does it not begin to sound like western ganging up against Libya?

If the west had moved with such alacrity against Mubarak or Ben Ali, it may have rehabilitated itself, in some small measure, in popular Arab esteem.

Why? Both, Mubarak and Ben Ali along with a host of Arab dictators are seen by the people to be serving western interests, subservient to Israel.

Qaddafi hardly fits in this gallery. To the contrary, he was the most provocative, nasty anti West, anti Zionism, Arab. No other Arab leader would have had the cheek to suggest that a “home for the Jews should have been located in Alsace and Lorraine”. But even he is human, after all, because after the treatment handed out to Saddam Hussain, he gave up his nuclear ambitions.

Since his was a largely tribal society (different from the urbanity of Tunis or Cairo), far-flung tribes were prone to superstitious practices, a sort of Libyan voodoo. Playing on people’s superstitions was therefore declared a criminal offence. He banned the system of Mullahs or Imams leading Friday prayers.

So, unlike mere Arab dictators, Qaddafi is a maverick megalomaniac draped in spectacle and pageantry – never obsequious, but consistent and unpredictable. But no Islamic fundamentalist which some of the West’s closest allies are.

The challenge he faced from Benghazi 1000 kms east of Tripoli earlier in the 90s was from Islamists opposed to his Islam with a mod twist.

There are some common elements in the wave sweeping the Arab world – fifty percent of the population between 20 and 30, the 24´7 media like Al Jazeera, youth’s impatience with suffocating dictatorships, corruption, unemployment etc.

Equally, there are differences between the countries so affected. For instance, some observers have noted that Monarchies from the colonial days are less vulnerable than US supported republican dictatorships, more despised because they go through motions of elections which are rigged. No such pretense in the monarchies. Attitude to the Palestinians insulates Syria, Hezbullah, Iran from people’s ire on this count.

In which league, then, does one place Qaddafi? He is flanked by Egypt and Tunisia. Benghazi is closer to Egypt where the Armed Forces would not be comfortable with a mercurial, non conformist, always ready to show up Egyptian indifference to Mid East peace.

Neither Egypt nor Tunisia has oil. In this Libya begins to resemble Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, both rich in oil, both “rejectionists” on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, exactly the framework in which Saudi Arabia is “moderate”.

Qaddafi may have gone on his own. But noisy western orchestration will place on his head a halo he does not deserve. With his penchant for unpredictability, he has gone and inserted Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez as a mediator between the regime and protestors. Are western town criers going to blare: “Plague on both their houses!”

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Curtains on the Qaddafi Pantomime

2011-03-01T09:25:00.000+05:30

Curtains on the Qaddafi Pantomime
Saeed Naqvi

Nothing became him less than the manner of his own departure. Or, impeding departure, for precision. How deceptive was the theatrical self assurance with which Qaddafi carried himself. He can be caricatured brilliantly on a Broadway musical. “Don’t cry for me O’ Libya!”

I can never forget my first meeting with him in a palatial bunker where I was navigated from my Tripoli hotel two days after the US had bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986.

Even in the midst of tragedy, Qaddafi’s theatre had been choreographed to perfection. His two women bodyguards, one a beautifully chiseled ebony masterpiece and the other a perfect white opposite number, flanked him. He positioned himself on an ornate chair placed on an elevated platform. In those days Qaddafi was the noisiest “anti Zionist” Arab. The state he ran was a dictatorship but without a hint of Islamic extremism.

There were no Mullahs. The most educated in the community could lead the Friday prayers. Not only was there complete gender equality but his was the only state with a military academy for women.

Later, when I met him in his Beduin tent, two years ago, he had abandoned all Arab causes – “because Arab leaders were Western cronies” – and concentrated on Africa where his influence reached as far as Sierra Leone and the notorious President Charles Taylor of Liberia. His footprints were in Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, even the Polisario in Tinduouf in Western Sahara.

From Tripoli, it is an attractive, 1000 km, drive along the coastline to Benghazi, exactly the distance between Khartoum and Darfur in Sudan, bordering Chad.

At Darfur’s Al Fasher airport, I had, during another journey, met Abdul Lehman al Tijani Ali Dinar, great grandson of the last Sultan of Darfur. He was surprised that I did not know Arabic. This is the crux of the problem of all North African states that stretch south into the Sahara and deeper into “dark” Africa. There is an assumption that to be a Muslim you must know Arabic. This is contested by non Arab, African Muslims.

In these areas it is possible to be Muslim without being an Arab. Then there are the tribal divisions. For example Darfur is a combination of two words – Dar, which means home or gate and Fur, the name of a tribe. But Darfur has two other tribes – Zaghawa and Maseelat.

The Zaghawas are dominant in neighbouring Chad, where President, Idris Debey is a Zaghawa.

Both, Chad and Sudan, have borders with Libya. And thereby hangs a part of the tale. The Benghazi based, Arabian gulf Oil company operates the Nafoora, Messala and Sarir oil fields. After the Libyan uprising, these oil fields are under the control of a tribe similar to the one which dominates Chad, except that in Libya it is called the Zawiya. Another tribe, Tuareg in the south, are part of a growing coalition opposed to Qaddafi.

When Qaddafi, a beduin from Sirt, first ousted King Indris in 1969 in imitation of Nasser’s coup in Egypt, it turned out that the deposed King had sympathizers in the Benghazi area. Benghazi was never quite in Tripoli’s grip. And now witness the rebellion in the army. Two air force planes, in defiance of orders, turn up in Malta!

An East-West division of Libya is already beginning to loom as a possibility. The sanctity of post colonial borders may no longer remain inviolable. There is a readymade example in a country contiguous with Libya – Sudan. A Muslim north and a Christian south with a brand new capital in Juba.

Should Libya be halved, the European scramble for the oil bearing regions cannot be checked, particularly now when some of EU members are stone broke.

It is the mass arrival of refugees that could well cause the international community to contemplate a model where European troops take care of different sectors to keep the peace. The Italians will be the first to suggest such a model – Kosovo.

Since European intervention in the Mediterranean will smack of re colonization, the ball will be tossed upto the UN Secretary General to devise a muscular UN Force.

Meanwhile Qaddafi’s pantomime begins to resemble the last scene in Brecht’s Arturo Ui, the ultimate spoof on doomed dictatorships.

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Arab Regimes Tottering Variously

2011-02-21T09:27:00.001+05:30

Arab Regimes Tottering Variously
Saeed Naqvi

Winds of change across the Arab world have been carried on the wing of Al Jazeera, Twitter, Facebook and, then by the mainstream global media. Even the Indian media made an appearance in Tahrir Square.

Changes have taken place in Tunisia, Egypt and run into artillery fire in Bahrain, but Bush era analysts like Prof. Fouad Ajami have their fixations. Ajami places Saddam Hussain, Hafez Assad, Muammar Qaddafi, Mubarak, Bin Ali side by side.

He would have us believe that Saddam and Mubarak are on the same side of the Arab street. They are not.

Yes, they were both ruthless dictators but Saddam was not overthrown by his own people as Mubarak was. His regime was dismantled by American military might. Unlike Tahrir Square, celebrations in Baghdad had to be contrived.

Remember how Dick Cheney, fearful of losing face, choreographed that theatre in Baghdad on April 9, 2003. Worried that “shock and awe” had not brought celebrating Iraqis out on the streets to greet US troops, messages went out to Shia leaders Ayatullah Baqar ul Hakim in Najaf and Moqtada Sadr in Kufa to initiate some “celebrations” at Saddam’s fall.

To coincide with the Shia crowds from Sadr city, beating Saddam posters with sandals, Marines were invited to help pull down Saddam Hussain’s statue in slow motion in front of Palestine hotel. Interspersed were shots of Cheney delivering a victory speech in which he thanked the “religious leaders”.

Ofcourse, emergence of Shia power strengthened contiguous Iran where, in another era, Ayatullahs had been installed as an anti Soviet force, just as the Mujahideen were manufactured in Afghanistan later.

In 1979, Ayatullah Khomeini was flown in from Paris. The simmering again the Shah was allowed to froth over. First, the Ayatullahs proceeded to eliminate the Tudeh (Iranian Communists). Then, Marxists with an Islamic tinge, Mujahideen-e-Khalq were pushed out to Iraq and the Ayatullahs have since been in power in Teheran.

To the chagrin of US’s Saudi partners, the ultimate guidance on policy matters to the new Shia dominated Baghdad comes from Grand Ayatullah Sistani in Najaf. Even Iyad Allawi, US-Saudi candidate opposed to Nuri al Maliki during the nine month stand off on Prime Ministership, paid visits to Najaf.

As it turns out Baghdad may be something of a model for Teheran of the future. One of the debates in the Shia University at QOM is whether the “Islamic Revolution” should be “administered” or only “guided” by the clergy. Surely guide-the-revolution model should be preferable.

I have meandered a bit. Let me revert to Ajami comparing Saddam Hussain with Mubarak. The two stood on opposite platforms on the central issue agitating the Arab streets and basements – the Israeli/Palestinian process. Mubarak’s dictatorship stifled the street to support the broad US-Israeli stand. Saddam was implacably opposed to what he called “Israeli intransigence”. Why, during Operation Desert Storm, Yasser Arafat, was Saddam’s guest in Baghdad!

There are some common elements unsettling the Arab dictators. One is just this – dictatorship. Another is the “youth bulge”, half the 350 million Arabs are under 30, in search of employment in a shrunken, corrupt, nepotism ridden job market. Sheer economic want would be more pronounced in Yemen, Egypt and Jordan, for example, but clearly not in the Gulf States. Algeria’s volatile history cannot be suppressed. Morocco is an enigma – Sephardic jews have not forgotten Morroccan hospitality after the 15th century Spanish inquisitions. But how do the Palestinians regard Rabat?

Regimes sympathic to the Palestinian plight would, to that extent, be insulted from peoples’ wrath in Syria and Libya, for instance. Demonstrations in Iran and Libya are part of the internal turmoil in these countries, unrelated to the Palestinian issue.

A majority Shia population in Bahrain opposed to the Sunni ruler makes it unique as does the fact that it is an important western base. A combination of Shia (Huthi) in the north and socialists in South with anti Americanism knitting both is a lethal mix besieging Sanaa. Bahrain, Yemen and Iraq all with their Shia ferment must create acute anxieties for the Saudis who have borders with all three. Moreover, even their own Wahabi clergy cannot be sanguine with Al Quds once again swimming into focus. Surely they cannot allow the Quds issue to be an Iranian monopoly.

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Faiz, The Exile From Islamabad to Beirut

2011-02-12T18:13:00.001+05:30

Faiz, The Exile From Islamabad to Beirut
Saeed Naqvi

On Sunday, February, 13, 2011, one of the most remarkable men born on this sub continent, the great Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, would have been 100 years old – his first birth centenary.

Faiz was not just admired but adored, as much in India as in Pakistan. Indeed there were large circles of his admirers in various parts of the world.

He was not an inveterate traveler like Tagore who traveled to 32 (thirty two) countries, ranging from Argentina to Iran in the 20s and 30s when travel was not easy. Allama Iqbal too traveled but not as much. Faiz’s journeys were not journeys of choice. In most instances his were journeys of an exile, mostly from Zia ul Haq’s Pakistan. Poetry of exile is a strong strand in his verse.

Faiz derived greatly from classical poets like Sauda, Mushafi and, particularly Ghalib. It was from him – and varied sources of Sufis and Marxists – that Faiz derived the art of handling adversity with balance and dignity.

Another kind of exile Faiz experienced was in the 50s, his five years in jail for trumped up charges in what is known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case.

It was this jail experience that became the source for an extraordinary mix of revolution and lyric, dressing up traditional symbols of Urdu poetry in contemporary garb:
Mataa-e-lauho-qalam chin gayee
to kya gham hai
Ki khoon-e-dil mein dubo li hain
unglian maine
Zubaan pe mohar lagee hai to kya
ki rakh di hai
har ek halqa e zanjir pe zubaan
(They have taken away the pen and ink
So I have dipped my fingers in the blood of my heart.
Doesn’t matter if they have sealed my lips;
I have given voice to every link in the chain that shackles us)

Is Faiz the greatest poet of the modern era? In the popularity stakes, he will win by several lengths. But scholars will toss up some other names – Josh Malihabadi, Yaas Yagana Changezi, Firaq Gorakhpuri among others.

Josh’s mastery of diction is like a river in torrent; lightening thunder, a pageantry of words to the accompaniment of a full 100 piece orchestra. But he is not just a wordsmith. He remains unmatched in the range of thought in his “Rubayat”, or quatrains in a specific meter. Faiz doesn’t even claim to be a poet of rubayi.

By universal acclaim, both Firaq and Yagana would be superior poets of ghazal, Firaq for his delicacy of thought and sensuousness, Yagana for his freshness and inventiveness. Some critics would even consider Majrooh Sultanpuri as a more chiseled ghazal writer. Majaz, too, would be in contention but his body of work is thin because he died at 46.

What then in so special about Faiz? Well, he is the most modern of all Urdu poets in every sense of the term. He wrote excellent ghazals but they do not place him with the best.

Where he remains unsurpassed is in free verse. While all the poets listed above were wedded to traditional formats, Faiz got out of the structural constraints which even Ghalib had complained about:
“Kuch aur chaahiye wusat
mere bayan ke liye!”
(I need much more space for my theme)

In this genre too there will be awkward critics who will urge you not to ignore N.M. Rashid!

Josh, Firaq, Yagana even Majaz and Majrooh were intellectually cosmopolitan but were all confined to the decaying feudal ambience of Avadh.

Faiz was conditioned by the virility and intellectual vigour of Lahore. Even though he had early training in Arabic from Maulvis he crossed over to the Government College Lahore, the country’s premiere college where he did his Masters in English literature.

The great Marxist historian, Victor Kiernan taught at Lahore’s Aitchison College at about the same time. This probably explains Kiernan’s translation of Faiz’s poetry.

During his exiles he got acquainted with Edward Said in Beirut and Louis MacNiece in London. These were some of the associations which made Faiz into something of a global citizen – the only Urdu poet to break out of the small town stereotype.

Faiz died in 1984. In his last two years he nursed a deep hurt that Beirut, his favourite rendezvous (when in exile) was occupied by Israel in 1982. How thrilled would he have been at the winds of change sweeping the Arab world. Equally, he would have been shattered at the bizarre spectacle of rose petals being showered on the murderer of his nephew Salman Taseer.

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Egypt: Israeli Interests

2011-02-07T10:50:00.001+05:30

Egypt: Israeli Interests
Saeed Naqvi

The Economist, which knows what goes one inside the heads in Washington and Jerusalem, had on its cover of the issue ending January 7, the following headline: The threat of war in the Middle East. That was three weeks ago. Protestors at Tahrir Square were not in the world’s focus. Nor had the Tunisian President fled.

The Economist’s case was built around the failure of President Obama’s Christmas initiative at Arab-Israeli peacemaking. “There is reason to believe that unless remedial action is taken, 2011 might see the most destructive such war for many years.” Iran’s nuclear ambition; Israel’s implacable opposition to it. The fear that should “a balance-tipping new weapon” be added by Iran and Syria to Hezbollah’s rocket inventory of 50,000, Israel would take military action.

Do the events in Egypt alter these calculations? Only the most reckless would calculate that since the Arab world is preoccupied with its own problems, this may be the moment to settle issues with Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.

Generally wars stoke nationalism which causes people to rally around their leaders. The paradox of the Arab world is that any war involving Israel sends the dictators who form a ring-around Israel scurrying for cover. Their plight would be even more pitiable now when their people are already rising against them for a whole range of reasons. Such is the perversity in the region that Arab dictatorships spell Israeli security – obverse of Wilsonian Liberalism. So, no war now.

What stares Israel in the face is an existential issue: the future of the Peace Treaties with Egypt and Jordan. The existence of these treaties on the other hand further fuels Arab street anger, although foreign policy at the moment appears to have been superceded by issues of freedom and bread.

Israeli and Egyptian intelligence communities and the armed forces have worked closely over the past 30 years, overseen by their common benefactor, the US.

In the current crisis the benefactor seems to have lost its centrality in the process. Hosni Mubarak refused to see President Obama’s personal envoy, Frank Wisner when he sought a second meeting after having delivered a “tough” first massage. The former US ambassador to Egypt evidently suggested a speedier transition than appears to be emerging.

For the time being, the Israeli-Egyptian duet appears to be on the same wavelength, scripting the transition.

Vice President and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, Defence Minister Marshal Tantawi and Armed Forces Chief, Gen. Sami Annan are the sorts of faces that will ensure continuity in Foreign Policy, Israel’s main concern. But what coalition do they represent? And are they in a position to calm the protesters in Tahrir Square by announcing an early date for Mubarak to give up the “gaddi”?

The September deadline preferred by Mubarak will be seen by the people to be a ruse: it makes Mubarak a self confessed lame duck, which Egypt cannot afford, or someone buying time.

In this context Israeli concession to Egypt that it can position 1,000 troops at Sharm el-Sheikh, is interesting. Apparently, Mubarak has a house there. But even if he were to occupy this house, he cannot move in tomorrow or the day after because packers have to identify items that have to be transported from the presidential palace.

When I called the Indian Ambassador in Cairo he came on the line but seemed preoccupied with urgent business at hand – the safety of 3000 Indians in Egypt. I could not have discussed politics with him on an open line but I doubt if there is any substance in the bilateral relationship that exercises our embassies in any of the Arab countries, except the Gulf States.

Time was when a visit to the imposing India House on the Nile was a treat. The Ambassador would take you on a tour. “That is the sofa occupied by Nehru and Nasser”. No leader of that elevation has occupied the sofa since.

Why this loss of interest in the Arab world? I suppose the end of the cold war made non alignment irrelevant. It turns out that New Delhi’s engagement of the Arab world was part of the non aligned outreach. The deep civilizational links we talk about is a lot of hypocrisy.

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Arab World at the Precipice

2011-02-07T10:49:00.001+05:30

Arab World at the Precipice
Saeed Naqvi

The two million protestors at Tahrir Square have triggered memories of my other visits to Cairo.

The interview with Hosni Mubarak is preceded by an elaborate drill through the Ministry of Information – filling a form here, submitting an outline of the questions there.

Here I am, about to interview Egypt’s President, but this fact does not seem to place me on any pedestal with the otherwise disinterested officials. What does bring a smile to their eyes is the place of my origin.

“Sahafi al Hindi?” (Journalist from India?) This leads to handshakes and greetings. Suddenly, they all turn their heads towards the TV screen. Gen. Sir Michael Rose, British Commander of UN forces in Bosnia is holding one of his briefings in Sarajevo. Some more bodies of Muslims have been found in villages along the Drina river.

“Slowly, they will finish us all” Exclaims one, holding his worry beads in both his hands. There is despair, anger, rage, not targeted at anyone object of hate. It is a sort of ranting, an expression of helplessness. Hosni Mubarak in their circumstance had become the symbol of their distress.

All Muslim distress anywhere was available on TV (global TV having been born since Operation Desert Storm). As happens when fleeting images determine the national mood, all anger was focused on Mubarak, collaborator with “our enemies” and oppressor-in-chief at home. And now when I see millions in Tahrir I ask myself: why did such an uprising not take place decades ago, when I witnessed the anger of those officials? Would it not have been tidier then?

Yes, it would have been tidier, but it would not have been possible. Those officials were past their middle age. Today, almost half of the 350 million Arabs are in their 20s – Youth bulge, is the catch phrase. Over 85 percent of those in the shrunken job market hold university degrees or diplomas. Prices have skyrocketed, and economies have stagnated.

When I met Mubarak, 9/11 had not happened. In fact he was complaining how US policies in Afghanistan had bred “Islamic fundamentalism” which, after expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan was “plaguing you in Kashmir and us in Egypt, in Algeria”.

He was dissembling when he bracketed Algeria with Egypt. In my view, the Algerian experience in the 90s deserves to be examined separately to understand the present anger in the Arab world. I have some sense of it because I had accompanied Rajiv Gandhi to Algeria where, at President Chadli Benjadid’s prodding, he somewhat impulsively recognized Polisario, the Soviet supported movement which claimed Spanish Sahara, vacated by Spain soon after Franco’s death. The territory was hotly disputed by Morocco, on the other side of the cold war. After a fashion, Islam had been introduced into the intra-Arab quarrel.

The reason I believe Hosni Mubarak was less than honest on Algeria was because he had endorsed Western plans to set aside the results of the Algerian elections in 1991. What had happened was this.

During the first Algerian Legislative election in 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front won over a two-thirds majority. The military’s fear was that with that size of majority, the Salvation Front could change the constitution and “democratically” impose an Islamic State.

Since the Salvation Front had direct links with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the ascendance of Islamists in Algeria would automatically spread the contagion throughout. Little wonder, Hosni Mubarak endorsed the US and European decision to support the Algerian army in setting aside democratic results. Algerian Civil war followed.

Just imagine, a Civil War was preferred to an Islamic formation. Who knows power may have moderated this formation. Moderation, not extremism, may well have radiated from Algeria. What the West (and Israel) prefers not to understand is a simple fact: in dictatorships, supported by the West, the only political ventilation is provided by the mosque.

Far from learning this lesson, the West took its eye off this issue in the heady days following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Instead of employing America’s unprecedented power towards an architecture of moderation in West Asia and beyond, George W Bush, embarked on a project of “full spectrum dominance” – and fell flat on his face.

This garish celebration of Capitalism’s victory did bring out in relief an apparent ideological vacuum – Socialism and Communism on the Left and Fascism and its variants on the right had suddenly became insubstantial.

The mosque, always the congregational space in Muslim societies, also became the space for an ideology of discontent. There was no other coherent system of beliefs. So anti-Americanism became a powerful belief system. History’s most powerful country became an enemy figure because its extraordinary power was seen to be at the disposal of Israel which, after a brief demonstration of reasonableness following the Oslo process, turned to unprecedented hawkishness on the Palestinian case. Moreover, in the guise of fighting terrorism, it was, in Arab eyes, targeting Muslims.

Hosni Mubarak becomes a hate figure in the Arab street because he has been an inseparable part of the Western-Israeli concert, which, in addition to its other perceived sins, has brutalized Palestinians. Had the Israelis pushed for peace with Palestinians, the ground beneath Mubarak’s feet may not have slipped so irretrievably.

And now that he is poised precariously on the precipice, there is acute anxiety in Jerusalem and Washington on one issue: what will his successor look like. Does someone like Mohamed Elbaradei, former IAEA Director General, have it in him to rally the opposition against Mubarak? This is one of the questions Frank Wisner, former US Ambassador to Egypt (and India) will ask in Cairo where he is now parked on a “special mission” from President Obama.

Back channel Israeli diplomacy must be working overtime to forestall any outcome which leaves any levers with the Muslim Brotherhood. The irony is that no alternative to Mubarak is possible without the Brotherhood having a say in it. In 30 years of Mubarak’s repression – torture, police brutalities, packed prisons, penetration of “Mukhabirat” (secret service) in every walk, have enabled the Muslim Brotherhood almost as a reflex to expand as the only organized political force waiting for exactly the opportunity which has opened up with the Egyptian protests. Mubarak’s chant to the Americans, “If I go, they come” today rings hollow.

The West, in serious decline since 2008, has been too preoccupied with its own problems. It may well have taken its eyes off the subterranean shifts in the Arab world, inducing a sort of stupor in aging dictators like Zine El Abidine Bin Ali in Tunis and Mubarak in Cairo.

The world was taken by surprise with the rapidity of Bin Ali’s collapse and Mubarak’s impending fall. Now, juxtapose the rejoicing in Arab streets to the grim mood in Israel.

Listen to Yossi Klein Halevi of the Shalom Hartman Institute.
“… few Israelis believe in-a-hopeful outcome. Instead, the grim assumption is that it is just a matter of time before the only real opposition group in Egypt, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, takes power. Israelis fear that Egypt will go the way of Iran or Turkey, with Islamists gaining control through violence or gradual co-optations.”

This is a very real fear. But this need not be the only way the scenario unfolds. The biggest obstacle to a harmonious future is a mind-set which recoils on the term “Islamic”, almost habitually mixing up Islam with terrorism.

Shimon Peres once told me: “Look, we have to live in this region, with our Arab neighbours”. He added: “if trust comes, love will follow”. Peres does have a way with words, but that exactly is the route to follow. What we are witnessing may well be a moment as historic as the fall of the Berlin wall. The stakes are so high that there can always be a twist in the tale.

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Arab World: Old Order Changeth!

2011-02-07T10:47:00.001+05:30

Arab World: Old Order Changeth!
Saeed Naqvi

Some issues have already been settled. For example, President Hosni Mubarak’s son will not succeed him. This takes the future away from Mubarak’s grasp.

There is now a recognition across the Arab world that Al Jazeera news channel, headquartered in Qatar, became the credible carrier of news and images from Tunis to Cairo. BBC and CNN scrambled to catch up. For once they were second or third best.

Al Jazeera is now compulsory watching for anyone trying to follow the West Asian world. For years New Delhi dragged its feet, resisting a full fledged Al Jazeera coverage from India. Some months ago all documentation were cleared. Indeed, a launch party was held, Ministry of External Affairs officials in due attendance. But after all this why are the historic events in West Asia not being televised in India?

Happily Indian journalists, both TV and print, have turned up in Cairo to give us, by way of relief, an Indian perspective on the unfolding events. And they are on their own unlike in 2003 when a bevy of them cheerfully allowed themselves to be “embedded” in Kuwait to cover American “victory” in Iraq.

Just imagine, if the Indian media were to turn up in Cairo in full force, this could well be a defining moment, the Indian global media which would then liven up the foreign office and be seen worldwide.

Tanks, torture, brutal police force, prisons packed like sardines and the frightful “mukhabirat” or secret service are the stilts that keep dictatorships steady. Straightforward information, modern communications, Twitter, Facebook are anathema to such regimes. Little wonder these lines of communication were snapped. Why have Al Jazeera offices in Cairo been shut down but not others? BBC and CNN, for instance. Can they be managed more effectively without the competition from Al Jazeera showing them up?

If you visit the magnificent India House on he Nile, the ambassador in earlier years would have taken you on a tour charged with nostalgia: “There in that sofa sat Nasser and Nehru”.

Nasser died in September 1970 and Anwar Sadat succeeded him in October of that year. Having something of the Muslim Brotherhood in his background, he did not have to grapple with his conscience to abandon Nasser’s Arab Socialism and join the American camp when the cold war was at its most intense. Indeed, in 1979 he signed the peace treaty with Israel for which he paid with his life. He was assassinated in 1981, clearing the way for Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship which has lasted 30 years.

In a bipolar world, non alignment, which Nehru and Nasser had nurtured, seemed relevant. But when Egypt, under Sadat, crossed over to the other side, he had abandoned the Nehru-Nasser idea of non alignment too.

If New Delhi’s relations with Egypt dwindled because of Cairo switching sides during the cold war, it logically follows that there should have been a repair in these relations after the Soviet collapse which caused New Delhi to lurch towards the US and Israel the way Sadat had done. Hosni Mubarak, after all, sat squarely on the Israeli-American lap.

This did not happen. In fact, foreign policy towards the Arab world since the 1990s revealed a different reality. New Delhi’s engagement of the Arab world was only part of its outreach as leader of the Non Aligned. With non alignment having lost relevance, India quite incredibly lost interest in the Arab world – a complete departure from Nehru’s vision. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states were exceptions largely because of substantial remittances and oil supplies.

An exponential growth in high tech arms supplies from Israel could have been cited as one of the reasons for tactical Indian distancing from the Arab world. But this did not make sense because most of the Arab states (except Syria and Lebanon) were western puppets.

And now that the democratic urge is ascendant in Tunisia and Egypt, will the world’s new “risen power”, aspiring for a Permanent seat at the Security Council, step out of its diplomatic “purdah” in the Arab world?

For proper perspective of current developments, one has to place the region against the events of past 60 years. In 1951, Britain and the US snuffed out democracy in Iran by removing the elected government of Mohammed Mosaddegh because he nationalized Western oil interests. From that day Western strategy in the region has been conditioned by the twin interests of oil and Israeli security.

At the other end of the spectrum, Nasser was stoking political Islam quite unintentionally by keeping in jail for ten long years, Saiyyid Qutub, who spelt out a plan to recreate the Muslim world on Quranic grounds. His book, Milestones, advises Muslims to prepare themselves for “a life until death in poverty, difficulty, frustration, torment and sacrifice”. Qutub recommends “offensive Jehad to carry Islam throughout the earth to the whole of mankind”. Somewhere here are the ideas perfected by Al Qaeda.

It is generally believed that the manufacture of radical Islam in Afghanistan to evict the Soviets eventually boomeranged on the twin towers in New York on 9/11. A key detail in the narrative is missed out. The military in Algeria, with support from the US and Europe, set aside the elections of 1991 in which the Islamic Salvation Front swept to victory with a two-thirds majority. This sent shock waves across Arab populations.

Brazen western insensitivity to peoples’ will in the Middle East is part of the reason for acute anti Americanism in the region. Lip service to electoral democracy but an acceptance only of pro-West outcomes! Hamas’ electoral victory is a case in point. Let us wait for the outcome in Lebanon. When Arab regimes are seen to be obsequiously supportive of such gross injustice, popular anger against these dictatorships is immeasurably higher.

Anger which simmers below the surface for long years begins to look like a condition of normalcy. Quite as imperceptible are demographic changes leading to phenomena encapsulated in catch-phrases like “youth bulge”. This means that more than half the population in the Arab world is under 25! Over 80 percent of those in the shrunken job market have university degrees or diplomas. Add to this the rising prices, growing unemployment and ageing dictatorships becoming ever more brutal and you have a recipe for all that is happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and to a more manageable extent, in Jordan.

If God came riding a thunderbolt and all the ills listed above were miraculously removed, there will still remain one which will rile Arab populations until a solution is found: the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the mindless building of settlements by Israel.

Will Mubarak be able to ride over this crisis? Will the Army step in? To save an ailing, 82 year old dictator? I doubt it.

In some obscure resort, Americans, Israelis, Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptian (minus Mubarak) must be deliberating the transition, looking over their shoulders, making sure that no paper or computer trail is left behind for an outfit smarter than Wikileaks.

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Collapsing Muslim Dictatorships

2011-01-31T09:26:00.000+05:30

Collapsing Muslim Dictatorships
Saeed Naqvi

“Nor heaven, nor earth have been at peace tonight: Thrice halth Calpurnia in her sleep cried out, Help, ho! They murder Caesar.”
Julius Caesar

Who knows, this mood may have echoed in the Shah’s palace in Teheran in January 1979, in Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s palace in December 2010 or President Hosni Mubarak’s palace in Cairo. Something equally serious is afoot in Yemen. Even Amman, relatively secure because of its many ventilators, has had its quota of demonstrations.

Across the Gulf of Aden, Somalian pirates continue to confuse particularly when a ship or two is found with western arms for third countries.

Riyadh, Jerusalem, Washington, in that order of anxiety must be in a huddle on the change in Tunisia and chill winds blowing across Egypt, Yemen and Jordan. The State Department has issued a warning that must send shock waves throughout the Arabian peninsula “status quo in the Middle East and North Africa is not sustainable”.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a January 26 speech in Qatar said:
“The United States supports the aspirations of all people for greater freedom, for self-government, for the rights to express themselves, to associate and assemble, to be part of the full, inclusive functioning of their society.”

This is sensible stuff coming from a chastened America, a contrast from the pursuit of “full spectrum dominance” at any cost during the Bush years.

Ofcourse demographic changes, the increasing ranks of the educated unemployed, rising prices, dictators secure in their vaults are all obvious causes for the eruptions. But these should not obscure the overriding reality: insensitivity of the regimes to Palestinian distress.

If the United States were to dilute its support to these regimes, the anger in the Arab street may recondition Israeli thinking.

Those who wield power in Iran, Lebanon and Damascus are not facing the peoples’ ire largely because they reject Israeli unreasonableness. And, who knows, Hizbullah may soon have its very own Prime Minister in Lebanon!

There are some similarities between the current rash of uprisings and developments in the 70s. Just as the United States is in relative decline at present, in the 70s too it was on the back foot, particularly after Vietnam.

There were powerful communist parties in Italy, France and Spain. Communist parties had come to power in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Nicaragua. To prevent this from happening in Afghanistan and Iran, it was essential to eliminate the Communist parties – Khalq and Parcham in Afghanistan and Tudeh and Mojahideen Khalq in Iran.

A plan by the Shah’s secret service, Savak, to eliminate the left in Kabul was accidentally leaked. In a preemptive move by the left, President Daud was killed. Khalq and Parcham came to power. This was the Saur or the April revolution of 1978.

It was now even more urgent to stall the left in Teheran. Ayatullah Khomeini was flown in from Paris. Joint demonstrations by religious groups, liberals and the Left caused the Shah to flee. This is when the Ayatullahs, riding a crest of Shia fervour, eliminated Tudeh. Mojahideen-e-Khalq escaped to Iraq.

Khalq and Parcham in Kabul paved the way for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

Meanwhile, the consolidation of the Ayatullahs in Teheran introduced a bipolarity in the Muslim world – Riyadh and Teheran. It was Iran’s opposition to “Kingship in Islam” which caused the Saudi King to adopt a new title: Keeper of the holy shrines of Mecca and Madina.

This competition determined the character of the Islamic force manufactured in Afghanistan to expel the Soviets: it had to be Arabised, possibly even Wahabized to work as a bulwark against Shia Iran.

The Shia-Sunni tension in the context of Afghanistan was challenging enough but it was in the world’s focus. What has gone relatively unnoticed is probably an even more complicated situation in Yemen.

When Pakistan set up a string of Madrasas along the Afghan border to train Jihadis, Prince Naif bin Abdel Aziz, the Saudi Interior Minister, launched a scheme to create similar Islamic hatcheries for thoroughbred Arabs too. Unlike, Afghanistan, Yemen was contiguous with Saudi Arabia. This Arab Islamic force would come in handy to fight on multiple fronts.

There are various sects of Shias believing in seven, twelve or a continuing chain of Imams. The Zaidis of Yemen belong to this last category. In March, 1924, the first President of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemel Ataturk abolished the Caliphate. But an Imamate continued in Yemen until 1962 when a revolution upturned it.

Yemen remained two countries, with 20 million in the North with its capital in Sanaa under President Ali Abdullah Saleh. South Yemen, a population of four million with capital in Aden, created in 1967 when Nasser’s Arab socialism swept a part of the Arab world, came under Soviet influence. As a reflex, Saleh sought an alliance with the Saudis, a pillar in the American camp.

For Prince Naif, it was a case of killing two birds with the same stone: an Islamic force to fight Sovietism in Afghanistan and Yemen, in addition to checking Shiaism in both.

President Saleh’s half brother, Ali Mohsin al Ahmar was appointed to train the Yemeni Jehadis. They would be the reliable Arab force which, as it turned out, spawned Al Qaeda as distinct from the largely Pushtoon Taleban.

Tunis, Cairo, Sanaa, Amman: In varying degrees, this elaborate system is now threatened.

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Pandit Bhimsen Joshi

2011-01-29T17:24:00.000+05:30

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi
Saeed Naqvi

I did not have the priviledge of knowing Pandit Bhimsen Joshi the way some of my colleagues, Dileep Padgaonkar in particular, knew him. This is because they were rooted in Pune where the great musician lived. Between Pune and Lucknow there is some distance. And yet look how his music traversed the distance. “Babul mora naihar choota jai” is a “Babul” or a “Bidai” song composed by the last king of Avadh, Wajid Ali Shah, on his way to Matia Burj, near Kolkata, where he had been exiled.

There is yet another reason why my recollections are hazy: I had given him a place in those recesses of the mind where memories reside five years ago, when he fell fatally ill. I had borne the tragedy of his departure then, placed him on the pedestal I keep in my imagination alongside Pandit Mallikarjun Mansur, by whose bedside in Dharwar I was when he died. It was an extraordinary death. He had lung cancer. Doctors had given up. So, his daughter was instructed not to keep him away from things he loved most. The last thing he asked for was a bidi to smoke. He was humming raag jogia, almost inaudibly. His daughter placed between his lips a lit bidi. And, his bead rolled over. He was gone. I told this story to Bhimsen Joshi. He heard the story with a distant look, smiled and a tear rolled down his cheek.

Bhimsen Joshi, by contrast, was a much more robust man. I can never forget how he ate up every single puran puri his wife had prepared for me, their guest for lunch.

A singular tragedy he was nursing in those days was a very private one, the sort of tragedy he could not share. But those close to him knew: his daughter had not got married. In a traditional Brahmin home, if a daughter, in her 30s, had not got married, parents were quite as worried as Bhimsen Joshi was. Such traditionalism in a man so unconventional? This tension between the traditional and unconventional, the creative was also the hallmark of his music.

His weakness for alcohol was known, but I suspect his relapse into dark spells of alcoholism were triggered by things he grieved deeply about.

And yet his drunkenness also worked as a sort of purgatory – a cleansing process, which imparted to his melody that intense pain, colour, rhythm, and that range in his tans or passages when he communicated with the Gods:
Hakim Momin Khan Momin said:
“Us ghairat-e-Naheed ki har taan hai Deepak
shola sa lapak jaaye hai, aawaz to dekho.”
(His taan or passage would embarrass the singing bird;
Like the light of a lamp, it leaps)

The only musician in my experience who was also a chiseled intellectual was the great violinist, Yehudi Menuhin – he could articulate an idea with professorial clarity. Pandit Ravi Shankar has something of that talent. Bhimsen Joshi did not.

One evening, the conversation drifted to the next generation of singers. I said: “Panditji, you have done most of your singing. What distinguishes you from others is that ‘extra something’.” Then I asked: “Can you name the next generation of singers with that ‘extra something’.”

Pat came the reply, without a moment’s hesitation. “Rashid Khan”.

This was years also. I wonder if Bhimsen Joshi would be satisfied with Rashid Khan’s progress. Where would he place Ulhas Kushelkar, for instance.

While globalization has scattered the seed of Indian classical dance and music to all parts of globe, I suspect Indian vocalists have greater difficulty breaking through cultural barriers. The wordlessness of instrumental music gives it easier passage, makes it more accessible to untrained ears in alien lands.

The singing of the Koel, a very Indian happening, is contained in the words that convey the pastoral mood of say, raga Bageshwari. The instrumentalist throws up passages of Bageshwri without any reference to the Koel. But downloading of this music is a subjective experience of an audience in a country where there is no Koel, indeed there is no monsoon season to induce the Koel to sing.

As an Indian musician, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi ranks with the greatest, but he would have to yield to a Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan or even the very homespun Bismillah Khan in the ambassadorial role. The instrumentalist, in other words, is better suited to man the musical embassy.

This is what makes Bhimsen Joshi’s heritage that much more precious. The globalized avenues of fusion are not quite as easily open to him. Yes, he can sing a duet with Bulamurli Krishna, transcending the very thin Hindustani/Carnatic divide. But there would be cultural confusion if you placed him and, say, Pavrotti on the same stage.

His universalism is rooted in the devotional and pastoral mystique of India. Within India, Bhimsen Joshi links several linguistic and cultural zones.

A man from Dharwar, he could not have been totally oblivious of Karnataka’s very own Purandardasa, who predates the great Carnatic trio of Thyagaraja, Syama Sastri and Muthuswamy Dixitar.

And yet he traverses all the regions and ends up with Amir Khusro, Adarang and Sadarang singing “Piya milan ki aas” or “Ambua ki dari” which are charged with Hindavi, Braj Bhasa and Avadhi.

This is partly explained by his guru and founder of Kirana gharana, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan’s cultural mores – not far from Saharanpur.

Bhimsen Joshi heard Abdul Karim Khan sing Jogia (Piya milan ki aas) on All India Radio and set out on a quest for music.

To escape from his penury in Mumbai and to pursue his search for music, he set out for Gwalior. Why? Because he had heard that the Maharaja patronized music and there was an open kitchen for music lovers.

How he reached Gwalior is a metaphor for life’s struggles. At numerous railway stations he was thrown out for ticketless travel. He sang at platforms.

Singing at platforms links up nicely with a story from Abdul Karim Khan’s life or rather his death. On his way to Pondicherry at the invitation of Sri Aurobindo, Khan Sahib had a premonition that his end was nearing. He left the train at an unknown railway station. Spread out his prayer mat and sang his last song. He died on the railway platform. The news was carried to Sri Aurobindo by the disciples accompanying him.

I have no doubt that many of these stories are apocryphal. They will remain so unless painstaking research brings out in bold relief a larger than life artist like Bhimsen Joshi.

His music was silenced when he fell ill. But we have hundreds or recordings which will keep his music alive for all time to come. He is unforgettable in many senses.

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Does Kasuri’s Message of Peace have Official Backing?

2011-01-24T09:14:00.001+05:30

Does Kasuri’s Message of Peace have Official Backing?
Saeed Naqvi

Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was totally supportive of the Indo-Pak peace process, including demilitarization and even joint mechanisms to administer Kashmir. “He sat in on every meeting Gen. Musharraf called to discuss the peace process then underway with Prime Ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and later Manmohan Singh”. Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, foreign minister during the five years when India and Pakistan come close to a settlement told me in the course of a conversation. “We had agreed on 80 per cent of the issues and Gen. Kayani was most supportive.”

Kasuri was foreign minister until 2007. How does he know that Kayani is still on board?

Kasuri cites a cable to the State Department from Anne Patterson US ambassador to Islamabad leaked by Wikileaks. Kasuri had suggested to her that former Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Ahmad Khan should be the “back channel” with India. Patterson raised the matter with Kayani who agreed that Khan keep the back channel open. These details were in the cable Patterson sent to the State Department.

How then does Kasuri explain Kayani’s repeated statement that the Pakistan army was “India Centered”.

Kasuri believes this should be seen as a tactical statement in the context of the perceived “Endgame” in Afghanistan. I did not draw Kasuri out on this one but I do believe that there is no Afghan “endgame” in sight, atleast not in the foreseeable future. The US has a desire, no policy towards that end. “Tactical statements” on the part of the Pak military anticipating a conclusion to the Afghan affair may, I believe, unnecessarily delay or retard an Indo-Pak process.

But Indo-Pak relations appear to be on hold largely because of complications created by the Afghan situation. Part of the problem are Pakistani suspicions about Indian ambitions in Afghanistan. Kasuri believes there are misperceptions on both sides.

Pakistani quest for strategic depth in Afghanistan and India’s search for influence in Afghanistan to facilitate the emergence of a Pushtoonistan at some stage are both “ogres” in minds on both sides. All that the Pakistani establishment wants is a peaceful friendly neighbour, which, precisely should be the Indian quest too, he says.

The conversation with Kasuri was revealing but much more instructive was his 90 minutes prepared talk at the Indian Council of World Affairs. He gave a ball by ball account of the peace process pursued on Pervez Musharraf’s watch with Prime Ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.

The details he shared with a spellbound audience must leave hawks on both sides in a heightened state of anxiety. He spoke at an official forum, ICWA, and the Pakistani High Commissioner, Shahid Malik sat through the talk. Do these details impart to the Kasuri visit more than casual significance? Kasuri’s close friend Mani Shankar Aiyar was in the chair. The forthcoming meeting of the foreign secretaries in Thimpu and the subsequent visit to New Delhi of Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmud Qureshi will now be watched with greater interest.

Kasuri was Foreign Minister from 2002 to 2007, when Indo-Pak relations peaked. When I was traveling around Pakistan during the February 2008 elections, the atmospherics were perfect. Not once was India or even Kashmir mentioned throughout the election campaign.

How the atmospherics, so positive in February 2008, plummet to their worst ever after 26/11, needs to be grasped by both sides.

Never was the Pak army more unpopular than it was in mid 2008. the Blowback from the Afghan war, the attack on Lal Masjid aggravated by the Chief Justice and the lawyers had all recoiled on the army.

Then 26/11 happened. Here was a prestigious Mumbai monument ablaze, occupied by Pakistani militants. Obviously someone in the Pak establishment was searching for a strong anti Pak reaction from India, strong enough for it to destroy all traces of Indo-Pak goodwill so diligently put in place by Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Kasuri with total support from Musharraf. Kasuri remembers most tellingly: “When I came to India in February 2007, the Samjhauta Express happened; when Shah Mahmud Qureshi visited New Delhi, Mumbai blew up.” Obviously, powerful Interests on both sides are opposed to peace. It was in anticipation of precisely such a situation that during Pervez Musharraf’s visit to New Delhi in April 2005, the two sides agreed that acts of terrorism would not be allowed to derail the peace process. The peace process was “irreversible”.

If the 26/11 provocation had been responded to by the media with understandable shock and anger but a degree of restraint too, the purpose of the perpetrators of 26/11 would have been defeated.

Instead, the Indian media went ballistic. The media, in the highest decibels, virtually declared war on Pakistan. This was precisely what the authors of 26/11 wanted. So belligerent was the Indian media that the Pakistani media was compelled to react.

India, not mentioned once throughout the election campaign of February 2008, was, post 26/11, “Hamsaya Dushman” (enemy neighbour), “Hindu India” all over again.

Kasuri discounts “strategic depth” as a Pakistani preoccupation in Afghanistan. This is much more in the minds of India’s strategic community, an echo of something Pakistani Generals said in the past.

“I know Gen. Kayani would want peace with India” Kasuri says. “He endorsed all we decided in the years when we had come to a near breakthrough on Indo-Pak ties.”

“I know him. He will not go back.”

So, where should one begin. Is there something in the air?

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Overcrowding in Paradise

2011-01-15T10:45:00.001+05:30

Overcrowding in Paradise
Saeed Naqvi

Did the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) have prior knowledge of Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer’s assassination? Surely it had profiles of security guards detailed to protect him? It must have had an idea of the national mood on the Blasphemy Law which Taseer opposed and that, therefore, rose petals would be showered on his killer. How widespread was the knowledge within the agency of pockets of celebration in its own ranks? How infected is the army, police, frontier corps, civil service, ordinary people minus the deluded cocktail circuit of which, alas, Taseer also was a part?

These would be malicious question were they not about an organization which has extraordinary intimacy with Islamic militancy, terrorism since the 80s when it created it, reared it and has nurtured it since.

It is always useful to remember that the showdown which eventually consumed Pervez Musharraf was on the issue of ISI: who controls it? Interior Minister Rehman Malik was given charge only for it to be snatched back by the army within hours.

Is civilian control possible of an organization led by a Lt. General? Below him are six major Generals, supervising six different branches, helped by dozens of Brigadiers, a hundred colonels and hundreds of junior officers. This is just 60 percent of the total organization. The remainder 40 percent consists of civilians.

This mammoth proselytizing machine, committed to a brand new politicized Islam imported from the Arab world, has been preparing drafts, gameplans for Kashmir, strategic depth in Afghanistan and a huge game of bluff diligently designed for the American establishment: credible help interspersed with its exact opposite. For 30 years it has cooked up these plots with unwavering dedication. Can it be controlled?

Malik Mumtaz Qadri, Taseer’s killer, probably has no links with the ISI, but he is irredeemably part of the web of extremism ISI has woven.

A few years ago, Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI told me a frightening story. A young man approached him in Peshawar with an unusual request. Could he (the Maulana) use his influence with the Islamists and promote him to the top of the long list of suicide bombers? His ailing parents were eager to have him ascend to paradise in their lifetime.

Now the young aspirant for paradise does not have to wait in lengthy queues to be strapped to bombs. Qadri has simplified the matter. You chose your apostate or heretic, pump him with bullets, bludgeon him or exterminate him in deviant congregations and proceed to paradise. The logical conclusion of this trend, of course, is an overcrowding of paradise and an emptying of such of the liberal Pakistan as still latches on to the tattered Jinnah fabric.

There is something of the Ostrich about American policymakers keeping a steady gaze on the July 2011 policy review on Afghanistan. They have forgotten the hyphenation – AF-Pak. They should be running scared of what is happening to Pakistan, their ally of almost as long a standing as Israel. Both are getting out of hand in their own ways.

For the Americans there is no easy choice, which probably explains why they have no policy either for Afghanistan or Pakistan, the latter in my view being much the trickier problem.

Pakistan’s current problems are a direct consequence of Pervez Musharraf’s U turn, joining the American war on terror while keeping a screen on Lal Masjid in the heart of Islamabad, the hatchery where thousands of Qadris and his female variants were reared. Lal Masjid, let me add, is only a metaphor for a much more widespread phenomenon.

Musharraf’s dilemma remains the dilemma of the Pak Army: how does the army exterminate exactly the fighting force it has trained for Soviet expulsion, strategic depth in Afghanistan and Kashmir? So, the Army plays both sides of the street – alert the villages, then send the soldiers in. Egged on by the Americans to “do more” and sometimes truly motivated because Pakistan soldiers have been killed, real and fierce action takes place. This on-and-off offensive has been going on since 2003.

Naturally, Pushtoon nationalism is enflamed. Pushtoon and Afghan are synonymous terms. All Taleban therefore are Pushtoons and Afghans at the same time.

When the Army strikes at Taleban, collateral damage and all, Pushtoon nationalism is fired. When the Army pulls back, Taleban mop up the peace in unstoppable evolution of a Pushtoon entity, only loosely linked to Islamabad and Kabul.

Americans, aware there can be no victory in Afghanistan or Af-Pak, are, in demonstration of muscle, persistently Droning the Waziristan region. Rampaging anti Americanism is exponentially visited on the Pak Army.

Quite unintentionally, the Americans have achieved something they are not fully aware of. Pakistani inconsistency, sometimes embedded with the Americans, have made them (the Pakistanis) the most hated quantity in Afghanistan, with near zero potential for any negotiation with Afghan, indeed any Taleban.

But Americans are desperate and do not have a policy in the entire Af-Pak complex. They are exasperated with the Pakistan Army’s hot-and-cold. So, in demonstration of power, more and more Drones are going to be unleashed, accompanied by Special Forces, inviting a catastrophic blowback in Pakistan. There will be such mass recruitment of Malik Mumtaz Qadris that the gates of paradise will crash open for an avalanche of “Muslim” martyrs with Archangel Gabriel at the gate, raising his hands in despair: “Enough; enough!”

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Who is Happy with Digvijay Singh?

2011-01-10T09:24:00.001+05:30

Who is Happy with Digvijay Singh?
Saeed Naqvi

Is former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and Congress General Secretary, Digvijay Singh living dangerously? Or is he on high wire act secure of a safety net below? In other words does he have the support (and to what extent?) of the party High Command, particularly Congress President Sonia Gandhi?

It is generally believed that Rahul Gandhi supports him totally. That mother and son are sometimes gauged separately could well be a result of New Delhi’s grapevine mischief.

By his statements in recent months Digvijay Singh appears to be diligently erecting a platform which, in his view, is the only one on which the Congress should stand if it is in a serious quest of a comeback.

He spelt out this platform in a recent TV interview. He saw Jawaharlal Nehru as an anchor. The line then becomes clear. “The party must be secular, left-of-centre, pro poor” with an independent foreign policy – and all of this without any prejudice to economic growth.

There is nothing in these formulation that should invite a howl of protest. But whispering there will be for a variety of reasons. Congress leaders, on a slow trot, do not like anyone among them to break loose on a gallop. Also, if they have been managing national and state politics, sitting, proximate to the leader, in obsequious obedience, it is unlikely that they will gush forth with admiration if one among them unbends his back to talk.

What is most disconcerting is straight talk in a culture of double speak, dignified over the years as a form of clever politics. But clever for whom? Certainly not the Congress which came down to its lowest electoral performance on Congress President and Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s watch in the 1996 General Elections – 140 seats in a House of 545.

It is a long story but two landmarks can be cited en route the Congress’s current debilitations and which Singh is trying to address. After Indira Gandhi’s second coming in 1980, possibly in a state of funk after the 1977 defeat, Congress leaders began to lend their ear to the Sangh Parivar’s chant, risen to a crescendo in the classical style of propaganda, that Muslims were “appeased”. How “appeased” they were has been laid bare by the Sachar Committee report two years ago.

Hospitality to Parivar propaganda confirmed the reemergence in the Congress of a streak, a certain inclination. Soon after Nehru’s death, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri led the country to the 1965 war with Pakistan. During this war, Guru Golwalkar’s RSS volunteers were commandeered by the government for Civil Defence. Little wonder, BJP leader L.K. Advani, in his moment of exuberance, described Narasimha Rao as the best Prime Minister since Shastri!

A fear, real or simulated, that the Hindu would walk out on the Congress, led to an ambidextrous policy – open the locks of the temple at Ayodhya to please the Hindus; upturn the Shah Bano judgement to please the Muslims. The policy boomeranged resulting in the demolition of the Babari Masjid. The Muslim walked out on the Congress en masse. He flirted with caste and regional forces but, in the absence of secular options, has hovered on the edges of the Congress with Hamletian indecision.

Another factor, in fact a landmark, which has distanced the Muslim from the Congress, is the perceived insensitivity with which the UPA government joined the global anti terrorism chorus, in which the line between the Jehadi and the Muslim was increasingly blurred.

When George Bush enlisted Islamabad as its premier ally in the war on terror, New Delhi felt badly left out. Here was a victim of cross border terrorism since 1989, and Washington enlists the very source of terror as its anti terror ally. Washington’s explanation was that Islamabad had joined the “global” war on terror. New Delhi‘s plaint grew out of a longstanding “regional” quarrel, Washington said.

It was the charged, post 9/11, global anti Muslim atmosphere that encouraged the Gujarat 2002 pogrom. Worldwide pressure on Muslims, amplified by the media, generated Muslim anger in India too but which never exploded as mass terrorism.

Meanwhile, post Gujarat, political uses of terrorism were cunningly recognized. Acts of terror, pinned on the Muslims, would create a hothouse atmosphere, divisive, in which an over arching Hindu consolidation was possible.

It was part of this strategy that Malegaon, Mecca Masjid, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti’s Dargah in Ajmer, Samjhauta Express, Hemant Karkare, happened. Ofcourse it is the strength of Indian secularism that such mischief was investigated. Equally, there is this reluctance even among folks wearing the secular badge to discuss this kind of “embarrassment”.

It is here that Digvijay Singh (supported by Rahul Gandhi) has generated a debate where those wearing badges will have to wear them with commitment.

This is a departure from the recent Congress electoral politics of tactically changing platforms from state to state. The wizened voter, particularly Muslim, has seen through the Congress hypocrisy. The writing is on the wall.

To revert to the old Congress charter with a commitment to abide by it requires courage, a willingness to gamble the electoral future in 2014.

The party could well be shifting from tactics to strategy, a strategy predicated on the principle that he who is willing to sacrifice for a set of values will win the people.

But will this platform create a cleavage between the party and the government? I suppose in this season of scams that may well be a thought crossing minds inclined to protect the party.

A softened political atmosphere would not be congenial for terrorism to breed. What “terror” material would the intelligence agencies then furnish to their patrons at Langley? Malegaon?

There may also be some difficulties for the industry grown accustomed to the Congress and the BJP fighting electorally but putting their heads together in the House on Bills of interests to Industry.

Such considerations make “cowards of us all”. Will cowardice or courage prevail? Will the party proceed paraphrasing the Biblical dictum: he who is willing to lose will win!

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From “Adi” Shankara to “Adi” Vasi

2010-12-31T14:50:00.001+05:30

From “Adi” Shankara to “Adi” Vasi
Saeed Naqvi

Funny, the mind should flit from Binayak Sen to Anthony Trollope? Trollope describes a conversation between two Tasmanians (if my memory does not fail me) in which one asks the other: if you see a native and a snake whom should you kill first? In a matter of fact way, the other replies: the question should not arise!

Those were days when the aborigines were hunted in hundreds for trophy. Let us not forget that Australia’s “whites only” policy continued until 1974.

In the Americas, natives experienced much worse. The intervention of the Church softened the pain: natives were shot to paradise after being duly baptized.

I appear to be digressing into these frightful stories because they are the very antithesis of the good work the remarkable medical doctor, Binayak Sen, has spent a lifetime doing among the tribals of Chattisgarh. But what about those elements of the state which seek life long incarceration for people like Sen? No genocide but “them” versus “us” exists, more so since “they” sit on resources required by “us” to sustain 11% growth. But did not “our” Home Minister suggest helicopter gunships last summer?

The amazingly imbalanced judgement on Binayak Sen handed down by the Chattisgarh court has some lessons for all. There has been from colonial times, reasonable co-ordination between the local courts and the police. This was in pursuance of the colonial purpose of keeping substantive laws for the administration of such justice as was necessary, and allowing procedural law (police lock up, for instance) to generate fear among people, whatever the eventual judgement.

The (A) that was added in 1870 to section 124 concerned sedition under which Mahatma Gandhi and such like figures were jailed for, say, six years. That was the colonial limit. But justice B.P.Verma obviously has his eyes set on posterity giving a record life imprisonment for a man who inspires universal admiration. Justice Verma is one of “us” trying to make an example of Binayak Sen, one of “us” collaborating with “them”. Basically, intellectuals are being put on notice. Don’t cross the Red Line otherwise this will be your fate. It would probably have been something of a deterrent in the confines of Chattisgarh. But His Lordship’s moffussil mind had not taken globalization and an age of instant communication into account which has enabled people like Noam Chomsky to join the explosion of sympathy for Binayak Sen.

The burgeoning tribe of intelligentsia among whom sympathy for Binayak Sen is in direct proportion to the severity of the Chattisgarh judgement, are now pitted against those who consider Sen a threat to their version of the hard state.

That Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh appears to be isolated is just that – an appearance. Just as he has been forthright on Malegaon and Samjhauta Express terror (along with Jehadi terror), so has he been candid on the Binayak Sen issue. The Congressmen who whisper that he is isolated have developed amnesia about a letter their leader, Sonia Gandhi, wrote in May 2010 on the issue exhorting her party men to make navigational corrections. She was very clear:
“While we must address acts of terror decisively and forcefully, we have to address the root causes of Naxalism. The rise of Naxalism is a reflection of the need for our development initiatives to reach the grassroots, especially in our most backward tribal districts.”

The Congress Working Committee member who supported the Party President in the most ringing tones was one who is in the news again – K. Keshav Rao. He is in the thick of Telegana issue which too is partly linked to Maoism throughout what is loosely called the “red corridor”. Through cavernous routes, the corridor also links up with Nepal where, given the deadlock over drafting the constitution, some Indian hardliners (a minority) would acquiesce in a spell of Nepalese army rule until the next elections

The numerous interconnections sometimes blur the faultlines that are spread accross the Indian landscape – communal, caste, regional, linguistic. A most durable faultline is the one least noticed at the popular level in that form – a faultline.

This faultline between the plainspeople and those of the forests, sometimes invested with demonic attributes in ancient texts, is the most durable one whose resolution requires exactly the healing touch of Binayak Sen.

A most perplexing paradox concerns the differentiated status we accord to the “Adi” Shankara, original Shankaracharya and the “Adi” vasi, original inhabitants of India. One is our highest “sage-saint” and the other not just the lowest of the low, but outside the pale.]

Gangajal is holy to the caste Hindu; Mahua brew to the tribals – a drop is given to a child at birth and sprinkled on the dead before burial. The tribal must carry defensive weapons which the Forest Act forbids. This is not just a civilizational gap but a system of separate development, apartheid, which a reformed sate and thousands of Binayak Sens will take decades to bridge.

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Spokespersons at the Inquisitions, Cap in Hand

2010-12-25T13:40:00.000+05:30

Spokespersons at the Inquisitions, Cap in Hand
Saeed Naqvi

The Burari session of the Congress, NDA rally, JPC-PAC sparring, onion and scams, are all building up to a lively election season beginning early next year – Tamilnadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Pondicherry, Assam, leading to UP elections in 2012 and the General Elections in 2014. And the media, not political parties, have snatched the initiative.

In no great democracy in the world have I seen two major political parties, ready with a battery of spokes persons, skating their way from channel to channel in mesmeric control of the anchor, whose job is to initiate a relentless tu-tu, main-main, a telegenic version of the traditional cockfight, described aptly by the poet:

“Udhar raqeeb, idhar hum byulaye jaate hain,
Ki daana daal key murghey laraye jaate hain.”
(Rivals from both sides invited and made to fight over a bait.)

Who gains? The political parties?

The gainers from these painful inquisitions are never the political parties. The only gainers are the channels who operate on the principle that louder the din, higher the TRPs.

If this, indeed, is the state of affairs why do political parties feed programming which is counter productive?

Supposing the Congress (or BJP) were to decide that it would not send its spokespersons, cap in hand, to the Anchor’s parlour, what would the party stand to lose?

The Nation, I am afraid, does not sit around prime time news shows as around an altar or a God. Lutyens Delhi and Malabar Hill do. We know all about the latter: the most vociferous breast beaters after 26/11, showed no interest in the subsequent elections!

In fact not only does the Congress (or the BJP) not stand to lose anything by their non appearance in the humiliating arena, the channels would suffer enormously. Will they proceed with the show minus the Congress (or the BJP) point of view, and thereby risk their declining credibility plummet further?

Supposing the parties have teams of researchers working on the day’s or the week’s press briefing on any subject ranging from the Scams, urban crime, onions or Nerega. Do the channels dare ignore these? For the parties, subsequent TV discussion would have the following merit: they, not the channels, will have set the agenda.

For example, there has been no national debate on the political or economic resolutions adopted at Burari. Or, for that matter, on foreign policy.

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao lamented in Karan Thapar’s excellent interview, that the Nation requires a more informed debate on China. The transcript of this interview appeared in the Hindu. What we have at the moment is a surfeit of uninformed, negative attitudes on China shaped by the anchors who do not know their elbow from their knee on the subject.

Anchors are careful on the US and Ratan Tata. In fact Ratan Tata, touched on the raw in the Radia Tapes, chose to grant an interview to a channel of his choice.

It was said of the great Egyptian singer Umme Kulsum’s performances on Radio Cairo that even news broadcasts were delayed indefinitely when she was singing.

In Indian history, when Mikhail Gorbachev as Secretary General of Communist Party of the Soviet Union, granted the first ever interview in the Kremlin, Doordarshan played the interview in full, lasting one hour and twenty minutes. Doordarshan was a government channel. What better could we expect?

But the Tata interview was on a channel which carries the free market on its shoulders. It beat the Gorbachev interview in sheer duration by a long shot.

All I am saying is that the political parties must ask, when they send their bleating lambs in, not who will slaughter them but who owns the slaughterhouse?

Pardon my memory tossing up couplets with nagging frequency:

Mir Taqi Mir, whom some consider a greater poet than Ghalib, says:
“Kitni daaman gir hai yaro uski maqtal gah-e-wafa,
Us zalim ki tegh taley se ek gaya to do aaye!”
(How compelling the arena where she (or he) puts the faithful to the sword; just when one has been put away, two more queue up in the shadow of that sword)

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200 Years Of Lucknow Should Be Planned Creatively

2010-12-20T09:27:00.001+05:30

200 Years Of Lucknow Should Be Planned Creatively
Saeed Naqvi

The development route to popular governance appears to have infected UP’s capital as well. Mayawati plans to make Hazratganj look brand new – underground cables to replace overhead wires, all hoardings removed, fresh paint, that, familiar pale yellow of the Hazratganj of our memories. All for the fabled avenue’s 200th anniversary.

But will it all be ready by December 26? The scene today is reminiscent of those nervous weeks before the Commonwealth games. The games did take place, rather spectacularly. Is Monsoon Wedding an apt metaphor for the way we do things?

The real Lucknow, the city’s core, had, with the winds of change, enclosed itself in Aminabad, Nakhkas and Chowk, distancing itself in that order from Hazratganj’s partly Anglo-Indian veneer.

In the old city the saying was “gandi galiyan; saaf zubaan” or “dirty lanes but elegant speech”. Hazratganj did not live in the confusion of this past. It was one broad avenue, lined on both sides with shops, some of which were institutions like Kazim and co, the watch dealers, a sort of rendezvous for Lucknow’s declining aristocracy.

Transaction at no shop or business was possible without a brief conversational interlude. This was particularly true of Ram Advani’s civilized book shop, where to be seen was to be literary,

When I was a boy, the best pastry shop in the world was “Benbow’s” at the big chauraha which has given way to a garment outlet. I remember longingly watching the pastries, scones, chocolates from the pavement outside. Yeat’s description of Keats literally describes my circumstance.

“ I see a schoolboy, when I think of him;
his nose pressed hard against a sweet-shop window.”

Across the street from “Benbow’s” was Lucknow’s intellectual hub, the Coffee House. Precocious lads we must have been, because the faces of those around each table are etched on my mind. I was generally escorted by a communist uncle, a socialist cousin, and that moody cousin with an intellect like a basement junkyard of ornaments. Not to be forgotten was my “Aunt Agatha” who rubbed shoulders with the finest minds in the coffee House with a twin purpose – pursuit of knowledge and compilation of a catalogue for name dropping.

There, in that corner sits communist leader Dr. Z. Ahmad and Dr. K.M. Ashraf (author of the History of the People of Hindustan). At the adjacent table, Ram Manohar Lohia holds court. Amritlal Nagar and Prof. Ehtesham Hussain are all ears as Ananad Narain Mullah recites his ghazal. Then Majaz, Lucknow’s most beloved poet, winds his way between the tables with his sidekick, Salaam Machlishehri. Majaz pacing up and down Hazratganj was a constant – witty, sensitive, always stone broke and in search of a drinking host.

Ironically, Majaz wrote the anthem of Aligarh Muslim University, his alma mater, and died this month forty five years ago in a Lucknow country liquor shop.

His epitaph:
“Phir iske baad subah hai, aur subhe nau, Majaz.
Humpar hai khatm shaam e gharibane Lucknow.”
(There, a new dawn breaks. The evening of Lucknow’s dispossessed ends with me)

And how can the story of Hazratganj be complete without that brilliant vagabond, Safdar.

When Safdar reached home in the early hours of the morning, his father was asleep. When the father was up to spread out his Aminabad pavement bookshop, Safdar was slumbering. “For forty years we have not seen each other”, Safdar boasted. He generally washed his face in Kwality’s (another institution) and ate breakfast at Royal Café, across the street. There were always people vying with each other to host him for his wit and conversation.

Outlook editor Vinod Mehta, a contemporary, summed it up succinctly: “He doesn’t know where his next meal will come from: all he knows is that it will be a terrific one.”

The 200th anniversary is a great idea, but why this hurry? Hazratganj will not be ready by December 26. Let the very best in the land choreograph a show to remember nearer March in time for Holi. We can even consider a grand Sound and Light show, pulling together all the marvels of Lucknow on this occasion.

Since the concluding cultural event on December 29 will be at the Residency, we can fall back on the 1857 siege of that address. In situations of war, there are tragedies on both sides. An evocative recitation can be from the pages of “A Lady’s Diary of the Siege of Lucknow”. It can be a gripping show with proper lighting – December’s cold will not help. March will be perfect.

As for the Mushaira, one can suggest to the invited poets that a quartrain, sestet or a ghazal be on the theme of Lucknow or Hazratganj.

One of Lucknow’s theatre groups can contemplate a skit or a play at the coffee, bringing to life its memorable past.

And a bust of Lucknow’s most lovable poet, Majaz outside the Coffee House. An entrepreneur with imagination can transform the Country Liquor Shop near Lalbagh, where Majaz suffered the stroke which killed him, into a compelling port of call for the creatures of Bachus, a pilgrimage for Sufis who resonate well with the meaning of Majaz. A film director can picturize Majaz’s masterpiece, Awara.

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Leaks Legitimize Conspiracy Theories

2010-12-11T10:40:00.000+05:30

Leaks Legitimize Conspiracy Theories
Saeed Naqvi

Wikileaks has not only knocked open the door on 250,000 secret diplomatic cables, it may also have inaugurated an era when audacious discourse will not be placed under the stifling blanket of that expression – “Conspiracy Theory”. So far only a tiny fraction is in the public domain. In fact at this rate we are in for a sensational five years unless, ofcourse, Julian Assange loses the world war in cyber space.

Eversince Columbus set sail to discover the new world, all important discourse has been controlled by the West. We learnt to remember Columbus Day, but nurse an amnesia about the genocide that followed his landing. Over the five centuries since Columbus the avenue for discourse has narrowed to an alley: bear left or right and you stray into the forbidden turf of conspiracy theories.

In no other field were the terms of discourse increasingly more rigid than in the conduct of international relations, particularly since the First World War when the Ottoman Empire was dismantled and transformed into modern Middle-East, Israel being central to it.

A sort of dismissive disbelief greeted me earlier this week when I told a group of media scholars that Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussain’s Foreign Minister, was a clear headed, and one of the more lucid interlocutors I had ever met. How could someone on the side of “Evil”, so acclaimed universally, have anything to commend him?

Do the US ambassador to Baghdad, before operation Desert Storm, April Gillespie’s cables to Washington paint Aziz in flattering colours? Wait for Wikileaks.

It was not quite Kosher to discuss at a diplomatic dining table, say, Anthony Lewis columns in the New York Times suggesting that Gillespie had told Saddam (though with some diplomatic ambiguity) that his interests in Kuwait were understandable. There were all those encouraging gestures from the US Exim bank, senator Bob Dole’s meetings with Saddam. Again, wait for Wikileaks to confirm it all.

A number of writers and diplomats gave credence to the line that Saddam had been “lured” into Kuwait to create justifications for a new global coalition. This coalition had multiple objectives: to smash the old Soviet affiliate, Saddam and his Baathist infrastructure; to confirm a post Soviet role for the US in NATO; to check enhanced German-Japanese (Axis) role in the post Soviet distribution of global power.

The discourse was not centered in India, although the MEA may find its Baghdad ambassador’s notes of the period interesting. He now rears honey bees!

It did not take long to snuff out such unauthorized discourse. Deviants from conventional wisdom were promptly proclaimed the lunatic fringe, “conspiracy theorists”.

Take the bombing of Tripoli Libya, in April, 1986. Why was Qaddafi being targeted? His six month old daughter was killed in the attack. Conventional Wisdom in Tripoli’s sea front hotel, infested with journalists, was that the CIA had picked up “reliable” gossip that a Berlin discotheque was singled out by Qaddafi for acts of terrorism. A Berlin discotheque? Strange target. Was trouble not brewing since the Tripoli regime laid claims to the Gulf of Sidra? Such queries were greeted with raised eyebrows. Qaddafi was a fundamentalist supporting terrorism. That settled the issue.

Qaddafi’s much advertised fundamentalism was nowhere to be seen in Tripoli. The country had possibly the world’s first military academy for women. No Mullahs, but the most educated in the community led the Friday prayers. Women had equal rights. Indeed, Qaddafi’s personal bodyguards were women. Where was the alleged fundamentalism?

No, I was told. I was deluded by conspiracy theories. To end my isolation, Foreign Minister Bali Ram Bhagat, with a few other Non Aligned Foreign Ministers, materialized in Tripoli to commiserate with Qaddafi. Wikileaks may be able to confirm why, but soon upon his return, Bhagat was sacked! Was Rajiv Gandhi rapped on the knuckles by Reagan? Conspiracy Theory?

A conspiracy theory I have nursed privately concerns Israeli “hippies” keeping a watch on the straits of Mallaca, from Indian territory – Nicobar islands.

When the Tsunami struck Sri Lanka, Aceh in Indonesia, Andhra and Tamil Nadu on December 26, 2004, guess who was the first ambassador to call on South Block? The Israeli Ambassador! He sought permission to evacuate Israeli citizens from Nicobar which was in the eye of the Tsunami. The Ambassador asked if he could arrange to fly out the Israelis. But once the waters subsided, the Israeli “holiday makers” preferred to stay on!

So good was the subsequent co-operation between the US and India during 2004 that a term, “Tsunami model” was coined to institutionalize co-ordination between New Delhi and Washington in South Asia, a sort of three legged diplomacy.

This is just a flavour of the kind of stuff that will find its way into journalism in the coming weeks, months or years. Is this good or bad? As the Editor said to his doubting reporter: publish and be damned!

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The Media’s Hall of Fame.

2010-12-06T10:25:00.002+05:30

The Media’s Hall of Fame.

However much those in the media, ignored by Niira Radia, discuss those who were not, the fact of the matter is, that Niira Radia has established the Indian Media’s First Hall of Fame, a sort of high point for media aspirants. Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of “notoriety” (“fame” did he say?) would be a churlish way to describe those in the spotlight.

Pain would be bearable if my diminished utility for the likes of Radia was attributable to my declining years. But the truth is mortifying: one never had any utility whatsoever of the variety that would entitle one to a niche in the Hall of Fame. Ridiculous, the waste, sad time!

Just as we must choose our parents with care, so must we choose with care the institutions where we take our first steps. Woe is me: I made bad choices on both counts. Parents emphasized culture, manners, speech, books, morals but not wealth. So I grew up with the wrong values.

The Statesman as a professional nursery was another hopeless choice. We don’t like to increase our circulation, I was told, because being Nehru’s first newspaper, its prestige was national. The Editor, to insulate himself from pressures, had just two friends in New Delhi – one Sinclair of Burmah shell and the other, army chief J N Chaudhury, the latter for being suitably “English”.

With such training, what hope?

To build media empires, seek Rajya Sabha nominations, contest elections, were instincts pulled out of our DNA by those inept choices of parentage and professional nurseries.

Ofcourse, there were those need based transgressions like that Public Relations officer helping a colleague’s name taken off the Press club notice board for non payment of dues. But word was soon out. This one misdemeanour affected the yearly increments.

But pardon me because I am comparing apples and pumpkins. Nostalgia is sometimes unhelpful in analyzing contemporary reality.

The first major hit that rattled the media was Indira Gandhi’s 1975 emergency. It divided the media between those who hated Indira Gandhi and those who hated those who hated Indira Gandhi. The divide has not yet been composed. After she split the Congress in 1969, she depended on the Left. Appeared the 1974 JP movement, backed by Ramnath Goenka, Nanaji Deshmukh and others opposed to the left. The post emergency libertarianism was heavily laced with Hindutva and socialism tolerant of it. It was a promising platform for sections of industry inimical to the Left. The metropolitan media, traditionally westward inclined, also became implacably hostile to Indira Gandhi.

The next major change in the media followed the post Soviet Liberalization of the economy. First, the victorious authors of market economy inaugurated an era of live 24 X 7 global TV with the coverage of operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Almost on cue, the Indian TV opened up. Indeed, it burgeoned.

The linkages between the global media and the new, energetic, untested Indian metropolitan media were not comprehensive but limited and insidious.

The global media would have atleast two sets of software: one for its own viewers, another for the global audience. International affairs, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Iran, Europe would be controlled from Washington (Atlanta, Georgia) and London. The Indian media would not (could not) take any initiatives in the coverage of world affairs. The line would be “foreign affairs do not give us the TRPs”. If it became essential to use some foreign clip, there were always CNN, BBC, Reuters, AP and Sundry others to oblige.

Has anyone thought of using the RTI to check out the Murdoch, CNN antecedents or linkages of the media currently in the news? Nothing wrong with the links but there are implications for a “self professed” prospective UNSG member.

In earlier days, the journalist had to seek a professionally fruitful and ethical equation only with the governmental establishment. Today, the TV journalist /star is also entrepreneur, worried as much about news as about TRPs, Ads, Corporates, whose money is often keeping the channel buoyant.

The balance of power between the government and the corporates has changed radically, buffetting the TV entrepreneur/ journalist from both. In the confusion, an embassy or two in Chanakyapuri toss in their line. Sometimes the media is rendered so supine by an unnerving coherence between the government, corporates, the MNCs, and the embassies that speakers corner at Hyde Park looms in the mind’s eye as a happy vision of freedom. In that moment of weakness if only Radia would call! But, as in Prufrock, I do not think that she will “sing to me”.

Bihar’s Double Fisted Punch on Caste and Corruption

2010-11-29T09:24:00.000+05:30

Bihar’s Double Fisted Punch on Caste and Corruption
Saeed Naqvi

Bihar’s much derided electorate has administered a resounding double-fisted punch on the chin of exactly the sort of politics which breeds 2G spectrum, Adarsh and CWG. JDU’s Nitish Kumar has also demolished caste and emerged as 21st century India’s model leader.

It was smart anticipation on the part of Congress President Sonia Gandhi to walk briskly towards the cameras and, avoiding the Bihar debacle, rattle off the list of corrective measures against those of her party or coalition partners caught with their hand in the till. She contrasted this against BJP’s triple summersault on Yedurappa and his scams in Karanatka. In her brief performance there were shades of Indira Gandhi who, when cornered, generally lashed out.

Holding onto Nitish Kumar’s waist coat, the BJP has exceeded all expectations in Bihar. They could have basked in that glory a little longer. Instead of partying in Patna, they yoked themselves to Yedurappa in Bangalore, because, by some accounts, he threatened to split the local BJP and deny the party the support of every single Lingayat Muth in Karnataka.

Nitish Kumar, of course, has made history by universally acclaimed good governance and brilliant politics. Once it became clear that the minorities had totally given up on the Congress particularly after the Ayodhya Judgement, the expectation was that the Muslim vote would habitually drift towards Lalu Prasad Yadav.

That the Muslims turned to Nitish despite his alliance with the BJP could well be another turning point in the country’s political history. This confirms the extent of Muslim exasperation with the Congress. Nitish harnessed this disgust deftly by coming across as a firm leader who could keep the BJP on a tight leash. In other words, he could moderate the BJP.

No BJP leaders, who are anathema to the minorities, were allowed to campaign. Then there was the record of five years free of communalism, years of development, roads, schools, uniforms, gender equality, 11 percent growth, a general ambience of welfare. The compelling attractiveness of development, dwarfing caste and religion, places Nitish as the tallest leader today.

The BJP worked with the diligence of ants.

Taking full advantage of Nitish’s secular efficiency, under his attractive, overarching canopy, the BJP cadres moved (rather like “Birnam wood” coming to “Dunsinane Hill” in Macbeth) and clinched their 91 seats varying their flight and spin imperceptibly from constituency to constituency. A dedicated cadre in the alliance must have helped Nitish too to clock 115 seats.

What Nitish has on his hands now is a first rate political situation. The BJP was never expected to come so close to the JDU in numbers. Together they now have a record four fifth of a House of 243. It is a paradox of politics that Nitish would have had an easier five years with a simple majority plus 20 seats. Why? Because friction is built into the present numerical equation between the JDU and the BJP.

A pity Lalu Prasad Yadav is walking into the sunset. He was an amusing figure in a country bereft of political humour. Also, he probably had outlived his utility at a time when Mandal is a fading memory. Some credit must also go to him: the caste churning he inaugurated prepared the ground for Nitish to aim for a new social equilibrium. This must not mislead folks from believing that we have moved into a post caste era. Far from it.

In the two by elections in UP, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party trounced the Congress. Apparently in the October Panchayat elections, the Congress suffered reverses in its citadels of Rae Bareli and Amethi. The spin being given is that Panchayat elections were on non-party lines and Mayawati was now buying up the winners. Does it sound plausible at all?

The election season has truly begun. Elections to Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Assam, West Bengal and Kerala stare a debilitated Congress in the face in March and, a year later in UP and then the ultimate Kurukshetra, the General Election in 2014.

Congress rules alone or as UPA in eleven states. So do the BJP and its NDA incarnation, as in Bihar for instance. There are as many states where the Chief Ministers come from stables other than BJP or Congress.

Neither the Congress nor BJP leadership at the center inspires. One of the shackles on the Congress is the party’s almost servile inability to spell out whether the Youth Surge, with Rahul Gandhi in the vanguard, is real or ephemeral. Does anybody in the party dare speak out that “Ekla chalo” in Bihar or UP is an unrealistic slogan?

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Corruption And Eleven Day Test Matches

2010-11-22T09:59:00.000+05:30

Corruption And Eleven Day Test Matches
Saeed Naqvi

Three batsmen at separate test venues on the same day score a triple hundred, a double century and a century. Captain M.S. Dhoni throws up his hands: “We will need eleven days of play continuously to obtain a result”. A spinner hits two hundreds in a row.

What does all of this have to do with 2G Spectrum, Adarsh, CWG? A great deal.

Pundits say Chanakya’s Arthasastra refers to “utkot” which means bribe, something that was fairly common for “rajkramcharis” or state officials to accept.

The British used the caste hierarchy to minimize corruption at the lower level bureaucracy. The ICS steel frame kept order at the top. It was, for instance, not uncommon for a Saiyyid from the landed gentry to monitor the excise department in a district where poppy cultivation was extensive. Genteel upbringing, it was assumed, would create an automatic distance between the excise official and the potential bribe giver.

Word “sharafat” was at a premium. Unfortunately, there is no exact English translation for that word. “Nobility of character” minus the class connotation and “honesty” do approximate to “sharafat”.

There was sufficient corruption even in 1950 to inspire Josh Malihabadi to write his poem “Rishwat Khori” or “bribery”. Josh’s satire is directed at traders and businessmen who had “fattened” themselves in cahoots with the corrupt instruments of the state:
“Tond walon ki to ho teemardari
Wah, wah!
Aur hum chaata karein imandari
Wah, whah?”
(The fat bellied and the corrupt, their cups full, are pampered;
While we lick the sweetener of honesty.)

Rising prices also underpinned corruption. Witness Josh’s punchline:
“Hum agar rishwat nahin lenge
to phir khaen ge kya”
(How will we feed ourselves without taking bribes.)

The corruption that disturbed Josh was largely a function of a sudden breakdown of the feudal order. Declining aristocrats were overnight reduced to penury. Middlemen turned up to pick up the heirlooms at throwaway prices. Patwari upwards, everyone in the revenue and land departments got into the act of transferring land to the “investor” or “Lala” at fictitious prices. The upheaval of partition followed by zamindari abolition brought in its wake a variety corruption.

From 1952 onwards, demands of electoral politics opened up another channel. Arrange for jeeps and country liquor for four “bastis” (colonies) of low caste voters. If the candidate wins, turn up at his MLA quarters in Lucknow for a canal building contract. This is the tiniest example.

There had always been a nexus between the Congress party and big business. After all, Mahatma Gandhi’s Ashram at Sevagram was financed by Jamnalal Bajaj; Gandhiji was assassinated in Birla House, New Delhi. Members of the Union cabinet like Satyanarain Sinha never disguised their loyalty to the Birlas.

The nexus between the party and sources of funding was monitored by individuals of integrity: Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, C.B. Gupta, Atulya Ghosh, L.N. Mishra, Rajni Patel (the last named with a caveat). It has always bothered me that Sitaram Kesari, remained Treasurer of the party for nearly two decades without a single allegation of corruption being made against him. But the manner in which he was dismissed confirmed that in Congress culture considerations of caste and power would trump financial honesty.

The system expanded where politicians with less than few thousand crores began to suffer from an acute inferiority complex. Why can’t the finances of all these fat cats be investigated? Yes, bureaucrats, industrialists, journalists, everybody.

By the time the post Cold War economic liberalization was upon us, ancient wisdom had been made to stand on its head. We had been taught: “The purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness”. Rampaging capitalism altered the basic lesson: “the purpose of life is the accumulation of wealth”.

The balance between Lakshmi and Sarawati, the basic Indian equilibrium, has been tilted obscenely in favour of wealth. It is this culture of grab, grab, grab of which 2G Spectrum, CWG, Adarsh are only the latest examples.

Avarice and greed were values for Henry Ford when he advised: “Buy when there is blood on the streets”. The theology had currency until Enronn, Fannie Mae, Freddie Max, Lehman Brothers, AIG have cumulatively brought down the global economy to a point where even a nervous Economist is editorially advising us not to lose “confidence in capitalism”. The guiding theology of our times is being re examined.

Pitches are “guaranteed” for matches to last five days so that billions in TV ads (never mind the empty stands) are not lost just in case a fast track or a turning wicket terminates a test match in three days! This grab, grab application on cricket has denied it of the game’s poetry encapsulated in Neville Cardus’s description of Hammond driving between cover and extra cover.

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Obama supports India’s “Diplomacy by Default” But Will Indo-US Unity Help in Afghanistan?

2010-11-15T09:19:00.000+05:30

Obama supports India’s “Diplomacy by Default”
But Will Indo-US Unity Help in Afghanistan?
Saeed Naqvi

In search of saliency in the Obama visit, pundits have missed out on “Indo-US” co-operation in Afghanistan, a major shift since the narrative so far has been about US-Pak collaboration in the Af-Pak theatre.

The joint Indo-US statement issued at the end of President Obama’s visit reads:

“The two sides committed to intensify consultation, co-operation and co-ordination to promote a stable, democratic, prosperous and independent Afghanistan. President Obama appreciated India’s enormous cooperation to Afghanistan’s development and welcomed enhanced Indian assistance that will help Afghans achieve self-sufficiency. In addition to their own independent assistance programs in Afghanistan, the two sides resolved to pursue joint development projects with the Afghan government in capacity building, agriculture and women’s empowerment.”

The paragraph shuts up a noisy but uninformed lobby in India seeking a more muscular, “macho” (for which read “lethal”) presence in Afghanistan to check Pakistan’s military engagement with the US for controlling influence in Afghanistan.

Additionally, it is a rap on the knuckles for the US military policy makers in Afghanistan who are on record that India’s “political and economic influence” and “significant financial assistance” are impeding Afghan war efforts.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former US Force Commander said in June “Increasing Indian influence is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani counter measures in Afghanistan or India”.

The “countermeasures” cited by McChrystal’s colleagues were, for instance, attacks on Indian Embassy in Kabul. The implications of the McChrystal thesis were far reaching: that India should turn its back on Afghanistan so that the US-Pak combine can clear up Afghanistan of Al Qaeda and Taleban.

Even if one sets aside the India angle, the McChrystal thesis was a recipe for the US to sink deeper into the Afghan quicksand.

A leak from McChrystal’s note book insulting to Obama’s team resulted in him being sacked. He now teaches a course at Yale.

His successor in Kabul, Gen. David Petraeus, has so far not suggested that India quit Afghanistan to facilitate the US war effort. But he too has been talking about Pakistani fears of India’s “Cold Start” doctrine. “Cold Start” is a fancy term for Rapid Deployment. The term was apparently used in a seminar but has never been a doctrine locked up in some archive.

The Joint statement, carrying Obama’s imprimatur, shuts out this US military inspired thinking which has traditionally had a considerable resonance with the Pak Army ever since the US-Pak military pact was signed in the 50s and sustained through the Cold War. The joint statement almost scuttles a longstanding systematic synchronization.

Appreciation and endorsement of “India’s enormous co-operation to Afghanistan’s development” is a major shift. Obama justifies India’s concentration on construction of infrastructure, hospitals, schools and facilitating Afghan students in Indian schools, colleges and universities. Also, New Delhi, barely 90 minutes away from Kabul, has become a favoured destination for Afghan patients.

Stereotype diplomacy in Afghanistan as being an adjunct to military force has been made to stand on its head by almost Gandhian, non-lethal “good works”, done by New Delhi. Exasperated by bombings, searches, humiliations not unknown to Pakistan with its on and off participation in the war effort, Afghans have found Indians the most calming presence in difficult times. A common exclamation in Mazar-e-Sharif as well as Kabul it: “They flood us with arms; India helps us rebuild.”

This “diplomacy by default” as Indian low key presence in Afghanistan has been described by a think tank, has not only worked but has been applauded by Obama.

The further US commitment, “in addition to India’s own assistance program” is to jointly take up “development projects with the Afghan government in capacity building, agriculture and women’s empowerment”.

This Indo-US combined effort with the Afghan government serves a twin purpose. It creates and expands space towards an eventual political settlement in Afghanistan. At the same time Pakistani fears that India may be sharpening the pincer on it from the West, is taken care of by the US keeping an eye on the “nasty works” India may be upto. But there is a catch: New Delhi’s popularity in Afghanistan has been because of the widespread perception of its independence. Going hand in hand with the US may spoil it.

The joint commitment to promote a “stable, democratic, prosperous and independent Afghanistan” obviates any hegemonic role in Afghanistan by neighbours or, indeed, the US.

Two broad themes, in the works for months, were discernable in the interactions: growing US frustration at being stuck with a “nuclear”, increasingly unstable but logistically indispensable Pakistan which nurses “terror camps”. Without their elimination, Afghanistan cannot be stabilized.

The other theme was China, its domineering presence on the world stage. China’s rise was not seen in confrontational terms, but rather as a challenge to keep it in a cooperative global concert. Witness Manmohan Singh deflecting attacks on the currency issue at the Seoul, G20.

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Obama: Lessons on Caste and Babur

2010-11-09T09:48:00.000+05:30

Obama: Lessons on Caste and Babur
Saeed Naqvi

It might be an interesting detail for a US President who has come up the Civil Rights ladder. The role caste politics in India has played in boosting Indo-US ties in recent years. The dynamics in the connection are somewhat awkward to explain, and are a theme for another article.

The Indian Diaspora that went out to the colonial plantations as indentured labour in the 19th century were all lower caste. But the one that went to the US since the 70s were overwhelmingly upper caste.

Caste politics brought in its train a system of reservations in education and government jobs. Excellence, in other words, was being challenged by other social considerations because electoral politics had opened doors to burgeoning egalitarianism. Entrenched class and caste elites (to accept socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia’s thesis) which had recycled themselves for centuries, saw themselves being replaced, in phases, by new classes-castes in the foreseeable future. This began to happen in the 90s. Don’t forget Mandir-Masjid politics coincided with the opening of the economy post cold war when Washington became the world’s most magnetic capital.

A steady stream of Indian students had begun to populate American universities since the early 70s after the numbers going to Britain dropped. These Universities were anathema during the colonial period: Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah were all creatures of British education. Jayaprakash Narayan always had a complex because his father-in-law could only send him to Wisconsin. Britain remained the favoured destination for the recycled elite upto the 60s. Three years at Cambridge or Oxford in those days cost no more than Rs.10,000 (Rupees Ten thousand).

The Labour government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson took up “decolonization” seriously: British Councils were close down. There were few British scholarships. Meanwhile, the Indian elite ran out of money.

This was the turning point. US Universities opened up their campuses to Indian students who, if they had ability, also had access to full scholarships. What began as driblets were regular streams by the late 70s to 80s. Indians with American degrees obtained in the 70s are today in key positions in India.

This flow of Indians to the US coincided in the 90s with the surge in “reservations” in North India.

Fearing total status reversal on account of reservations, the elite began to park their wards in the US, first through the university system then permanent residence and Green cards. Others joined the exodus.

There was hardly a Prime Minister who did not have a son, daughter or close relative in the US. Could other members of the cabinet have been far behind?

It would be interesting to have the following data: children of Foreign Service officers above the rank of Joint Secretaries, Secretaries to Government at the Center, senior members of the armed services, senior journalists, whose children are studying or working or are citizens of the US. They are not a negligible glue in Indo-US relations.

A large section of the Silicon Valley, large number of CEOs, and such like Indian success phenomenon are mostly post Mandal happenings.

What Britain lost out in the 60s has ofcourse become America’s gain. But that is not all. It is this Indian Diaspora which has powerful links in New Delhi and works as a strong binding factor.

There should be logical sequence to this trajectory. More educated and therefore upper caste Indians should be looking for pastures in the US. But will they? Joseph Stiglitz and others of his ilk who see the US economy in Freefall (Stiglitz’s book) are painting the US in such lurid colours, that we may soon see US-bound Indians a diminishing commodity.

Bill Clinton’s famous three words, “the economy, stupid”, may give way to Barack Obama’s two words “Jobs, stupid”.

This may be payback time. And here too, US faith in Indian talent appears to be paying off. Indian companies in the US are already employing 60,000 Americans. The wheel may well be coming full circle. More and more Indian entrepreneurs are examining profitability of investments in the US.

Obviously business newspapers will obtain a few headlines on Indian business outsourcing $10 billion in the US. Studies done by businesses on how outsourcing, in a roundabout way, ends up generating jobs will make for op ed pieces. The expectation is that restrictions on ISRO, AEA, DRDO will be lifted, allowing them to do business with US firms.

Incidentally, talking of caste churning and how it differs from the Civil Rights movement which prepared the ground for Obama to be where he is, the differences between his educational reach and the home spun cunning of caste leaders, Salman Khurshid is just the right man to educate the visiting President on this as on Moghul history. Obama will certainly go back with a copy of Sons of Babur, Salman’s maiden effort as playwright.

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Obama Visit: Realism Without Hype

2010-11-03T12:46:00.001+05:30

Obama Visit: Realism Without Hype
Saeed Naqvi

All those who were, until the other day shrugging their shoulders and despairing at no “deliverable” packages during the Obama visit, suddenly have a relaxed pensiveness in their eyes which comes from the dawning of realism. In essence, the visit will be directional not “destinational”.

Little wonder someone involved in the preparations was heard with rapt attention when he narrated Obama’s description of his exchange with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Oval office: it was an intellectual exploration of the myriad problems that afflict the globe. The two, between them, are more intellectually equipped, than any other pair of summiteers. Manmohan Singh’s meetings in Malaysia and Hanoi and Obama’s coming itinerary in that region, all point to a pooling of ideas.

Jaswant Singh, who was Foreign Minister during the Bill Clinton visit, recalls his conversation with Strobe Talbott: Let the “sherpas” negotiate the trading lists of “must do” and “can do” items. “It is demeaning to treat an arriving President as a stars-and-stripe Santa Clause.” Nor should the President of the United States, in pinched economic circumstances, turn up as a trader.

Presidential visits can sometimes be misleading pointers to subsequent history. Circumstances change. Remember when the born-again, President Jimmy Carter met the twice born Prime Minister, Morarji Desai during his visit to India in January 1978, it seemed to herald a navigational correction in New Delhi’s foreign policy. The excitable Haryana leader, Devi Lal, even christened a village, Carterpuri. Such was the excitement.

Who could have imagined that within three months, in April 1978, Noor Mohammad Taraki, a Communist to boot, would become Prime Minister in neighbouring Afghanistan, paving the way for the Soviet invasion, making Pakistan the frontline state.

The first post cold war visit to India by a US President was Bill Clinton’s in March 2000. The American perception of the altered regional realities was reflected in the itinerary: Clinton spent five days in India and five hours in Islamabad, mostly chastising Gen. Pervez Musharraf for turning a blind eye to cross border terrorism.

Post 9/11, Musharraf made a U-turn and, to New Delhi’s chagrin, the US embraced him as its principal ally in the global war on terror forgetting how cross border terrorism had plagued India since 1989. With help from countries in the region, the US ousted the Taleban from Kabul. It had entered the conflict in a mood of “full spectrum dominance”. But, since the global economic downturn, a chastened US finds itself in urgent quest for policy options to scale down in Afghanistan. How does India play a calming role in this situation without getting involved in the mess?

Heaven knows how much work has been done on this count and incorporated into Obama’s briefs.

Gen. Stanley Mccrystal, from whom Gen. David Petraeus has taken over as US Force Commander in the region, was quite explicit: India must vamoose from Afghanistan to ease Pak anxieties about an Indian pincer from the east and the west.

Gen. Petraeus didn’t go quite that far but even he could not resist talking of India’s “cold start” thesis (a term for rapid deployment) possibly to keep the Pak military in good humour. No such thesis exits.

One can understand Pakistan’s indispensability on account of the supply route from Karachi through Balochistan to Afghanistan and US anxieties about religious extremism in the world’s most powerful and unstable Muslim state “with a 100 nuclear warheads”.

These are realities but how will they come up in the discussion? That Pakistan, strapped to a nuclear bomb, is about to go over the precipice? Or that sober appraisals are required bilaterally, then trilaterally and so on.

American desire to scale down in Afghanistan is clear but its ability to do so by 2011 is less so. Who will protect Hamid Karzai until and beyond 2014? Mullah Omar, Gulbudin Hekmatyar and Serajuddin Haqqani? Karzai begins to froth in the mouth with anger at the very mention of someone like Haqqani? So much for the acceptability of Pakistani assets in Afghanistan.

India’s popular infrastructure and development projects, supported by the widespread magic of Bollywood, has given it a wholesome profile in Kabul which must not register in Islamabad as facts adversarial to its interests.

Look! In varying degrees, all of us in the region are in a mess and should get into a scrum which must include Pakistan, Obama’s destination early next year. On this we shall look for hints from the summit.

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Karachi Cauldron Bubbles Over

2010-10-25T10:18:00.000+05:30

Karachi Cauldron Bubbles Over
Saeed Naqvi

If the US is to stay on in Afghanistan’s half a dozen or so bases in the event of it scaling down its combat troops by July 2011, these bases will require a steady flow of supplies. It is in this context the continuing violence in Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial hub and the main port for US supplies to Afghanistan, is disturbing for the US and NATO in addition to the people of Karachi.

In the past few months atleast 250 people have been killed in violence which is political, sectarian and, above all, a crucial tussle between Karachi’s largely moderate population and an increasingly assertive Muslim extremism. In fact it is an explosive brew of all these elements.

Post partition migration of population, mostly Hindus from Punjab, were described as “refugees” in the earlier years, but have since been assimilated totally. Two such people have been Prime Ministers of India – Inder Gujaral and Manmohan Singh.

In Pakistan the migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar settled overwhelmingly in Karachi, have been institutionalized as “Mohajirs” or “refugees”. They brought with them their language, Urdu. Many paradoxes attended this language. Its very soul was forged in undivided India’s composite culture but it was made Pakistan’s national language. How does the very epitome of “ganga-jumni” culture enmesh with the evolution of a theocratic state?

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement or MQM became almost the sole representative of Karachi’s Mohajirs, a massive majority in Karachi’s 18 to 20 million population.

After the turbulence in Afghanistan since the 80s, waves of Pushto speaking Pathans (Pushtoons) have populated clearly demarcated areas which, over the years, have burgeoned into Pushtoon ghettos like Al Asif, just outside Karachi airport. There are now over four million Pushtoons and numerous such fortified ghettos which are no-go for non Pushtoons.

Over the years as Pakistan created its “Jehadist”, “Talebanized” “assets” in Afghanistan, North West Frontier Province, the militant Islamic streak has penetrated these ghettos and begun to condition them.

The Awami National Party or ANP, a political force confined to the NWFP, is making inroads into Karachi’s politics. The aspiration to create political base in Karachi has grown in direct proportion to the ANP’s decline in NWFP where it is increasingly despised as being part of the Pak establishment which is in cahoots with the Americans raining bombs or targeting areas with unmanned drones. ANP leader, Asfandyar Wali, cannot easily enter NWFPs premier city, Peshawar.

In this atmosphere, Haider Raza, MQM member in the Sind Assembly, was assassinated in August leading to riots in which a hundred people died. This was in addition to the tit for tat murders between rival gangs affiliated to rival political and ethnic parties which are Karachi’s almost daily routine.

Add to this cauldron ultra fundamentalist outfits like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba pushing their rabid anti Amadiya, anti Shia agendas and you have vapours of confusion and strife choking Pakistan’s biggest city.

The reason for the latest wave of violence unleashed last week was the by election for the seat made vacant because of Haider Raza’s murder in August. Haidar Raza had polled 80,000 votes as against ANP’s 923. This time, the ANP, presumably fearing a similar drubbing, announced on the eve of polling that they would like elections to be halted because they feared the MQM would “rig” the elections.

Four MQM supporters were picked up. This was followed by indiscriminate firing in which 33 people were killed and many more wounded.

As for the results of the by election, well, MQM polled 91,000 votes against ANP’s 210. The violence is, to all appearances, a consequence of sections of the ANP unable to cope with a humiliating electoral defeat. Also, the indiscriminate violence is a means to intimidate the MQM’s silent support base.

Farooq Sattar and Babar Khan Ghori are two MQM ministers in the coalition at the centre. If the MQM withdraws support or joins the opposition, the government in Islamabad could collapse.

The survival or otherwise of the PPP led government is not such a momentous development.

What is critical is the slow and steady growth of pernicious, intolerant ways of designing Islam where civilization itself is condemned as apostasy.

A more frightening development than any in recent weeks was the attack on October 6 on the Sufi shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi. This follows attacks on Lahore’s most revered shrine.

Karachi, in addition to being the centre of the MQM, also happens to be the capital of Sind, the sub continent’s most Sufi inclined people.

It is all a catastrophe waiting to happen in the port city indispensable to US war effort in Kabul unless, of course, in some distant future the mist lifts and some Iranian ports swim into focus.

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