Did Leaders March In Support of Prophets As Pansies And Punks?

Did Leaders March In Support of Prophets As Pansies And Punks?

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi 

It challenges credulity that Europe did not anticipate terrorist attack after its recent involvement in direct and indirect military action against the people of Libya, Syria, ISIS and so on.

In March 2011, I wrote: “Have President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister David Cameron ever paused to consider how the 20 million Muslims in Europe will react to their military action in the Arab world?”

I shall never tire of repeating the signal truth: the global electronic media was born when Peter Arnett of the CNN brought Operation Desert Storm into the world’s drawing rooms in live telecasts from the terrace of Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad.

That day in February 1991, the world was divided into two ever growing sets of audiences diametrically opposed to each other – millions and millions of them. For the West and its friends it was triumphalism, doubly impressive so soon after collapse of the Soviet Union. For Arabs and the Muslim world in general, it was humiliation, defeat and anger.

It was in the shadow of the West’s triumphalism that the correlation of forces altered in India too. Remember, there were no multiple channels to cover the demolition of Babari Masjid on December 6, 1992. They mushroomed soon thereafter in celebration of globalized capitalism having arrived in India too.

After Desert Storm, the global media had an orgy: the two Intefadas, the four year long brutalization of Bosnian Muslims, occupation of West Bank, invasion of Afghanistan, the droning of Pakistan’s North West, occupation of Iraq, Darfur, Mali, Yemen, the 50 day bombing of Gaza. There was no end.

During my journey from Bosnia to Turkey I saw with my own eyes the boost the siege of Sarajevo gave to the Islamists in Turkey.

The expanding conflict between the West and Islam has been given a tactical twist. The conflict being promoted now is between Sunnis and Shias with Riyadh and Teheran as the two poles. This did accelerate attacks on Shias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Pakistan without in any way diminishing the danger of anti western terrorism.

Not only did the West help halt the Arab Spring, in doing so it ended up doing something much more dangerous. Countries with a majority of their populations in their 20s, the youth bulge, had come out on the streets waving their banners of freedom. These are now angry young muslims headed to other parts of the world, including Europe. Did Europe imagine it was exempt from Arab anger after the bombardment of their lands?

The Saudis are the spider in the web in conflicts in Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen controlling Islamic militants as a strategic asset.

Islamic Madrasas along the Afghan-Pak border since the 80s are commonly known. Not so well known are the Jihadist hatcheries set up by the late Prince Naif bin Abdel Aziz, as the Saudi Interior Minister, in Yemen. In those days the Jihadist were being trained as a bulwark against Soviet influence in South Yemen. It is these Jihadis who mutated into todays Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The name of this militant outfit was mentioned in the Paris outrage too.

France has worked out convoluted arms deals with the Saudis. For example $3 billion worth of French arms were diverted to the Lebanese Army. The transaction was financed by Saudi Arabia. Chemical weapons in Saddam Hussain’s arsenal came from France. France has its hands in many tills.  It was neck deep supporting the opposition in Syria. All this mayhem Europe has helped manufacture just the other side of the Mediterranean. The surprise is that retribution has been so late in coming.

Is it retribution at all? The parallel media is replete with conspiracy theories. A question that pops up frequently concerns Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s presence in the front row of world leader in the march of solidarity in Paris. What qualifies him to wear the badge of liberty?

While one verifies every side of the Paris attack, one statement can be made with certainty: the carnage in Paris has clearly diverted attention from a crucial campaign launched by ISIS against Saudi Arabia.

Just before the Charlie Hebdo attack, ISIS sent a suicide team across the border into Saudi Arabia. Incharge of the Saudi Northern Border, General Oudah al-Belawi was killed. The Kingdom has dispatched 30,000 additional troops to guard the border with Iraq. The suicide squad clearly had inside information about the General’s precise location.

In the current incredible lineup, Saudis are Israel’s close allies. Their vulnerability to ISIS would be a matter of greater anxiety to Netanyahu than terrorism in Paris.

Postscript: A mild example: Were the world statesmen assembled in Paris conversant with Charlie Hebdo’s wit? In one cartoon God the father is being sodomized by Christ the son. Christ in turn is being sodomized by the Holy Spirit. Should there not be some distinction between smut and humour?

#          #          #          #         

Attack On Good Sense And Left: Editor Was Communist?

Attack On Good Sense And Left: Editor Was Communist?

                                                                           Saeed Naqvi

My first Christmas in London in the 60s surprised me. The BBC camera, having dwelt extensively on Christmas shopping, a church service, finally settled on a pair of singing comedians:

“If every day was Christmas

by some fantastic trick

if every day was Christmas

we’ll all be bloody sick!”

Next, a pair of a woman’s skimpy under garment floats onto the screen. The joke, accompanied by raucus laughter, was:

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

Then comes the coarse punchline:

“These are Carol’s.” The pun on a woman’s name and Christmas carols harmonized in those jolly times

In the current global mood, would the BBC mount such a show? Firstly, feminism would have knocked out the second joke. Just a little earlier in chronological time, Josh Malihabadi was keeping the packed hall of the Lucknow University Union, riveted at the annual mushaira or poetic symposium, with his jibes at God:

“Hai waqai muntaqim to khota hai khuda

Sona naheen hai jismein woh gota hai khuda

Shabbir Hasan Khan naheen letey badla

Shabbir Hasan Khan se bhi chota hai khuda.”

(God is a fake if he really takes revenge

He is not pure as gold, only an alloy

Shabbir Hasan Khan Josh never takes revenge

Is this vengeful God even smaller than Josh?)

He would be stoned to death today.

For the most elegant irreverence in world literature, Urdu and Persian poetry remain unparalleled. Only occasionally were a few restrictive rules laid out. One piece of advice was:

“Ba khuda deewana baash o

Ba Mohammad, hoshiar!”

(Take liberties with God but be careful with Mohammad). But Dara Shikoh’s Prime Minister, Chandrabhan Brahman, violates this dictum with impunity:

“Panja dar panja-e-khuda daram

Manchey Parwaaye Mustafa daram”

(My hand is in the hand of God.

Why should I worry about Mohammad?)

When Punch magazine became the premier vehicle for English satire, the Urdu elite in India did not allow itself to be left behind. They proceeded to publish a satirical magazine with anti colonial cartoons galore and proceeded to name it Awadh Punch! From the second half of the 19^th century for a hundred years everybody – statesmen, politicians, priests were in the Awadh Punch firing line.

A verse became popular after the frequency of the P & O liners to Britain was stepped up.

“Chaley hain Sheikh kaabey ko;

Hum inglistan dekhenge,

Wo dekhen ghar khuda ka;

Hum khuda ki shaan dekhenge.”

(The Mullah is travelling to Mecca;

I am England bound.

He wishes to see the house of God;

I am more interested in god’s wonders)

What adds exponentially to a feeling of helplessness these days is that several tragedies are brought into focus at the same time – a sort of competition in carnage. How can one compare the murder of French cartoonists with that of 136 Muslim school children in Peshawar? Although both sets of murderers – like hundreds of others in this dreadful decade – appear to have been driven by a similar sense of anger, or desperation.

Clearly, this horrendous attack, like all others, has a context. Our media has never developed the means to keep us informed of the catastrophe that is building up in Europe. The other day, in the central French town of Champlan, the Mayor refused permission for burial of a Roman infant. The incident raised a minor storm.

The ultra right wing, Dawn of Direct Democracy in the Czech Republic, has called on people to walk to “mosques with pigs and dogs” to show their disgust with Muslims. Angela Merkel has called for “counter” rallies against the growing number of anti Muslim demonstrations in Dresden.

Muslim immigrants in Sweden, once the world’s most tolerant country, have invited such a backlash that mosques have been set on fire repeatedly.

The Balkans are on a boil. A giant Serb cross appeared on the hills behind Sarajevo as an act of Serbian assertion. Regular street battles are on between Albanians and Christians in Macedonia. The US sponsored enclave of Kosovo has European troop protecting it in the midst of rampaging Serb nationalism.

All of these will serve another purpose soon: they will take focus away from the real Tsunami about to strike Greece, the mother of western civilization. The Radical Left Party, Syriza, under the leadership of Alexis Tsipras, is knocking at the gates, come the election on January 25. That could set the stage for the unraveling of the European Union.

Interestingly, Stephane Charbonnier, the slain Editor of Charlie Hebdo was a member of the Communist Party. Quite independent of the desired sectarian fallout, this is an attack on another European institution: the progressive, left leaning intelligentsia.

#          #          #          #

For The Readers, Simple New Year Gifts And Thoughts

For The Readers, Simple New Year Gifts And Thoughts

                                                                       Saeed Naqvi 

In recent years, I have been alert to the possibility that I may one day be identified as a Muslim. Instead of pride, this new sense of being has arrived with doubt. Some items of identity are so close to ones skin that one grows up without noticing them. But we are now advancing towards an age of such concentrated focus that we need to narrow our vision.

I fear I may now be called upon to declare where I stand, say, on the Imam of Jama Masjid or on Khushi Mohammad, the pujari of Goga Mehri temple, the latter being of greater sociological interest because the legend survives tenaciously, away from major highways. I am perfectly willing to put it down to a kind of cowardice, but I have become increasingly quiet on many issues.

Some of this self imposed silence is actually tactical. Since communal polarization is the staple of current discourse, the best step some of us can take for self preservation is to fall deafeningly silent. On provocative issues, if you say nothing, those trying to provoke you cannot retaliate. If you do not present yourself as a foil, communal polarization cannot be affected. Ofcourse, this tactic of silence is offered with the full knowledge that sometimes nothing works.

In Julius Caesar the mob turns upon Cinna the conspirator. The man throws up his hands. “I am Cinna the poet”. Someone in the mob, all charged up, shouts. “Kill him for his bad verses.”

Let us, however, persist with the “silence” theme.

How do you give effect to this policy of silence on a wider, public stage. Well, one trick is to deter self appointed Muslim spokesmen from trooping into prime time TV shows where they are generally knocked out by the double-fisted tattoos of professional harangues.

If this communal polarization can be contained by reigning in the professional Muslim spokesman, the other much more important polarization could grow exponentially – the polarization between good sense and its exact opposite.

A few days ago one thought the nation was on edge because of televised reports of mayhem at cinema halls screening “PK”. But the film, which takes a dig at Godmen, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, down to sects, Shias and Sunnis, has actually, broken all box office records.

This is the important polarization which is obscured by the TRP chasing prioritization of news. Lumpens digging up pitches is news but management of the world’s largest cricket crowds is not. Vested interests keeping artists in exile is news; exponential growth of art galleries exhibiting their work is not. A few vandals outside cinema halls in opposition to PK is news, but record crowds are not.

My sister, Naheed, has given me a simple New Year gift I would like to share with you. She has returned from a driving holiday from parts of North India with an observation which will appear commonplace but it made my New Year Day.

“Spend a fortnight in rural areas, away from TV and newspapers, and the country is quite as lovely as it was when we were children.”

Brother Shanney’s gift for the New Year is a poem which may well have been the inspiration for “PK”.

“Yeh Mussalman hai, woh Hindu,

yeh Masihi, woh Yehud

Ispe yeh pabandiyan hain,

aur uspar ye qayud,

Shaikh-o-Pandit ne bhi kya

ahmaq banaya hai hamein

Chotey chotey, tung khanon mein

bithaya hai hamein

Koi iss zulmat mein soorat hi

            nahin hai noor ki

Mohr har dil par lagi hai

ek na ek dastoor ki

Ghat tey ghat tey mehr e aalam

tab sey tara hua

Aadmi hai mazhab-o-tehzeeb ka

mara hua

Kuch tamaddun ke khalaf, kuch

deen ke farzand hain

Qulzumon mein rehne wale

bulbulon mein band hain.

Kya karey Hindostan, Allah ki 

hai yeh bhi dayn

Dudh Muslim, chai Hindu, Nariyal Sikh,

ber Jain

Apney hum jinson se keeney mein

bhala kya faaeda?

Tukre tukre hoke jeenay mein bhala faeda.

(Here’s a Muslim, there a Hindu, Christian

jew

Here these rules apply to me, and there

those ones are meant for you

In God’s fair name, these priestly types have made such idiots of us all,

They’ve pinned us down in tiny square, where none of us

            can grow at all,

Man, meant to beam his glorious rays, is now

            all darkness and all strife

Confined to curious, cults and cant,

promoting just some narrow life.

In his imagination man was meant to

            hold the oceans, wide

But he now lives in little bubbles, protected from both, time and tide.

Now our fair India shows these trends, why are

            we worried, you and me?

Muslim milk, and Jaini Jam, Sardarji nuts

and Hindu tea.

Let’s free ourselves of bogus priests,

            who make us quarrel for their gain

let’s fly with birds or hide in groves

            and trample on sweet sugarcane.)

This, free translation by Shanney of Josh Malihabadi is offered for improvements.

#             #             #             #

Indian Navy Ignored During Tsunami For Want Of Media Policy

Indian Navy Ignored During Tsunami For Want Of Media Policy

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Boxing Day earlier this week reminded me of 26 December 2004, the day the Tsunami trampled Aceh, Galle, Trincomallee and devastated the east coast of India. An air force plane enabled me to be in Galle, Sri Lanka, that fateful day.

Captain Murlidharan Nair, Captain T. Asokan and a host of other naval officers from Cochin were holidaying on the high seas with their families when news of the Tsunami reached them. Families returned home in smaller boats even as reinforcements arrived for the Navy to advance with 37 ships to ports in the eye of the Tsunami.

Galle’s ample harbour was choked with debris, which included giant trees, smashed boats, furniture, doors, household goods and bloated carcasses.

The host country, Sri Lanka were astonished at the efficiency with which Indian officers and men could clear Galle and Trinco harbours. It was a heartwarming Indian show along a vast stretch of the coastline from Indonesia, Sri Lanka to India.

Then something quite extraordinary happened.

A giant US warship docked a few meters at sea, visible from the Galle airport from where I was to be flown to New Delhi. The first passengers to disembark from the warship were two US cameramen. A speed boat brought them ashore where a high platform was in readiness for the cameramen to position themselves.

Then came the marines with gear that would be impressive on film. Americans had arrived on relief duty with great fanfare.

It was dark by the time I reached New Delhi. Next morning’s newspapers were a shock. Across six columns of the Times of India was a photograph of the US ship disgorging marines, engineers, grenadiers. The headline in heavy font was: “American ship brings relief.” Not a word about the Indians.

Here I was witness, yet again, to the triumph of propaganda over fact. Everybody in Sri Lanka knew that Indian ships had arrived the day after the Tsunami hit the coastline. In fact by the time the American ships arrived most of the required relief had already been administered by the Indian Navy. It was a performance the nation could have been proud of. This was the sort of stuff Prime Ministers took special leave to inform their respective Parliaments about. Sadly, no such notice was taken of the Indian Navy.

In this instance there was a total disconnect between soldiers involved in the world’s most challenging expedition and Defence headquarters. In fact the most well informed person in South Block was Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran who could tally the US version from Chanakyapuri and the Indian one from Colombo.

Saran was at this stage managing another issue of some delicacy that the Tsunami had thrown up. The first diplomat to visit him was the Ambassador of Israel. He wanted permission for Israeli pilots to fly a plane to Nicobar Islands to rescue their citizens. What were they doing in Nicobar. The issue resolved itself because the Israelis in Nicobar chose to extend their idyllic holiday once the water level dropped.

Not only was there zero publicity for the extraordinary work done by the Indian Navy, but late comers like the Americans allowed their publicity departments to heap all the credit for the Tsunami management on themselves, the Americans.

This was the period when Indo-US relations were being given the sort of boost that would end up in a huge, strategic embrace after the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. A new term was introduced and promoted by the US ambassador to Nepal, James Moriarty to define regional co-operation between India, US and the European Union. The term was “Tsunami model”. The implication was quite stifling. Regional initiatives would require US, EU endorsement. It has been dropped because it tended to shackle New Delhi regionally rather than confer on it any new authority.

India was ahead of all the other nations eventually involved in Tsunami relief for reasons I have explained at the outset. Boxing Day is plonk in the middle of Christmas, New Year holidays. That is why Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, George Bush, Kofi Annan – indeed most world leaders were on holiday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, his cabinet colleagues and the armed forces could by contrast meet immediately and act.

The question is: why was the heroic work done by 37 Indian Naval ships in Sri Lanka, Aceh, Maldives and India’s eastern coast completely missed out by the global as well as the Indian media?

The reason is simple. The global media, BBC and CNN, will always aggressively promote their own national interests. For India’s achievements to be noticed, New Delhi will have to have a global media of its own. Otherwise the nation will fritter away its prime time programming on trivia, with little plausibility, brought into focus as aggressive debate.

#          #          #          #