Will The Dead Be Cremated As Part of Europe’s Austerity?

Will The Dead Be Cremated As Part of Europe’s Austerity?


                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi



The conversation, that evening, took a macabre turn on how European austerity was beginning to affect the ancient custom of burying the dead. This reminded me of a story.



Peter Duval Smith was famous among journalists in the 60s and 70s for the creative work he had done in launching the BBC radio talks programmes. Covering the Vietnam War for London’s Daily Telegraph, he was among the first journalists to have got hooked on opium. The addiction got the better of him. One day he choked on his own vomit and died.



A question arose as to what should be done with the body. The Saigon Press Corps fell into deep thought. The editor, when informed of his correspondent’s death, asked for the cost involved in sending the body to London. The cost, it turned out, was prohibitive.



For economy of words and a singular absence of sentimentality, the editor’s instructions are a classic: “cremate body locally: dispatch ashes”.



In the Czech Republic this is a serious debate. In Prague, the capital of the most representative of what Ronald Rumsfeld called “new Europe”, burial is turning out to be expensive. Purchase of land, cost of coffin, marble, grave digging, bricks and cement – it all adds upto quite a packet.



Cremation, by contrast, is simple matter. Place the body in the incinerator and it’s all over. Collect the ashes if you like.



I suppose the clergy will, at some stage, have to sanctify the proposal.



Would the discontinuance of an ancient custom have costs in after life?



In Prague the issue has come out in the open but it is of relevance to most urban societies including ours. Pressure on Urban land will result in pressure on graveyards which in turn will bring into focus the inevitability of bodies being piled on bodies, a sort of horizontal arrangement. It could become a high pitched religion vs secularism debate. Surely there will be a Muslim angle to the discourse since Muslim too are buried.



Inevitably, the conversation drifted to the fashionable theme in recent years: Islamic fundamentalism. The obsession, I said, has obscured the growing phenomena of all religions digging their heels in on the fundamentals.



Some years ago, a diplomat at the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi, sought an urgent transfer become India’s capital city did not have the facilities for his wife to fulfill ritual obligations of her faith. Her religion required her to dip in a fresh water pond during her monthly periods. She was taken to the Bhadkal Lake in Haryana but it was found inadequate. They left Indian in double quick time.



Another, Jewish friend, a high powered journalists who traveled with me to Godhra during the pogrom of 2002, refused to eat in my house because “your kosher is not like our kosher – we have to say a specific prayer before any meat can be declared kosher.”



An orthodox Jew brought his own chopping block to the fish shop in New Delhi’s INA market! His solemnity in adhering to the ritual was harmless even amusing.



These somewhat disjointed bits of religious exclusiveness link up nicely with a chapter I have been reading in Madeleine Albright’s the Mighty and the Almighty: “the holocaust may have been the tipping point in US support for Israel’s statehood, but American policy has its roots in the Balfour Declaration – that there is indeed a promised land and that Israelites were the recipients of the promise.” Many Americans are convinced on the basis of numerous biblical passages that Jesus will return to earth only when Solomon’s temple is rebuilt and the climactic war between good and evil, described in the book of Revelation, is fought.



But Christopher Hitchen’s description of what happened at Bagram air base takes the cake. Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, Chief of the United States Military Chaplains in Afghanistan, tells his audience, all in military uniform: “The Special Forces guys, they hunt men, basically. We do the same things, as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them in the Kingdom.”



That is Chaplain Hensley’s understanding of the US mission in Afghanistan. Hunt them for the Kingdom of God! What more can the Afghans ask for?



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After Attacks, Afghan Endgame Seems More Of A Mirage

After Attacks, Afghan Endgame Seems More Of A Mirage

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi


Do the latest attacks by the Taleban on government buildings, western embassies and military bases across four provinces bear some resemblance to the dramatic attack on Kabul’s Intercontinental hotel in June last year? In fact the intercontinental attack was probably more telegenic – blazing flames, billowing smoke. Let us also not forget last September’s attack on the US embassy, then, as now, directed from construction blocks.



In these instances the message from Haqqani network based in Pakistan’s north-west was: look we’re still around. Dare you script scenarios for Taleban being in the power structure without us?



The earlier attack linked up with the arrest in Karachi in February 2010 of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Taleban commander who led the Quetta Shura and directed operations from Pakistan. The arrest was ordered because Baradar was engaged in conversations with the CIA which Pakistani intelligence chanced upon. In other words, neither the CIA nor Baradar had kept Islamabad in the loop on the talks which could have a bearing on the future power structure in Kabul. This has been something of an anathema for the Pakistan establishment.



And now talks with Taleban have been launched in Qatar, not quite Pakistan’s preferred rendezvous. Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai is huddled with US officials on the Strategic Document where the fine print is being read carefully by the skeptics on what, for instance, is the understanding on “night raids” to be carried out by Afghans with US troops playing a support role.



Americans have, in spells, been hated in Afghanistan, but over the years other hate objects had come into focus – Pakistan, for instance. But the burning of the Quran at the Bagram base, Marines urinating on dead Afghans, posing for pictures with mangled bodies, the gruesome murder in Kandahar of 16 people mostly women and children by “a group of US servicemen” according to the Chief of Operations of the Afghan National Army, Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi – all these have raised Anti Americanism to fever pitch. Americans insist only one serviceman was involved in the mindless massacre. In other words negotiating anything with Americans in an atmosphere of feverish Anti Americanism depletes whatever goodwill President Karzai has.



In these circumstances, Karzai has to prepare himself for the high table at the NATO summit on May 20 to 21, focused on Afghanistan. President Obama is determined to show the Chicago Meet as his successful management of the withdrawal process from Afghanistan. But how? Drawdown, reduce, withdraw are terms being used for what the US will do with its troops in Afghanistan. I doubt if a cogent withdrawal strategy can be given shape in a month when the Summit is due. The situation on the ground in Afghanistan, leave alone Pakistan, is in total disrepair.



The irony is that in a region of such noisy anti Americanism, there is no regime which is actually interested in the US departing from Afghanistan, whatever the public postures.



President Karzai would have difficulty surviving in Kabul without US protection.



Iran would be happy to watch the Americans embroiled in crises and not, with pruned numbers, comfortable and settled in their bases. Would Pakistan like to lose its “frontline” status with the US depending on supply routes through its territory and those billions of dollars. On current showing, relations between Washington and Islamabad are hopelessly bad. Can they sort out the rules of engagement, a prohibition in unilateral military action which includes drone attack?



Russians too have tossed their hat in the ring. They are willing to open up Lenin’s birth place, Ulyanovsk, as a supply base for the Americans so that they remain pinned down in Afghanistan and end poppy cultivation in Helmand because Russia has become not just a transit route for drugs but also an end consumer. This could also be the Russian olive branch to the US for balance of power because Moscow probably feels uncomfortable playing second fiddle when Moscow and Beijing move in concert as at the UN recently.



Yes, there will be some withdrawal agenda discussed in Chicago but the real policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan will only be delineated when the new administration takes charge in Washington in November.



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Cool Syria To Focus On Afghanistan In Chicago

Cool Syria To Focus On Afghanistan In Chicago

                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

Let me jump the gun on the global pundits. The great charge on Damascus is about to be called off, sorry toned down.

Why is the Syrian story taking this turn? For several reasons.

There is a tide in the affairs of nations. This tide, for good or bad, was speedily taken at a flood in Libya primarily by the French and the British, egged on by Qatar and Riyadh. The Americans came late but Hillary Clinton will be remembered for her remark in Tripoli. “I came, I saw and he died.” This, when Qaddafi had been murdered in the most ghastly fashion, sodomized by a knife, then shot. Or was he shot first?

Whatever Libya’s future (who cares)? The expedition was launched with lightening speed. NATO, which has sent a punitive bill to Riyadh and Qatar, did a fine job, quite worth the rental.

In the flush of victory at Tripoli, the victorious gang though of replicating it in Damascus. The two situations could not have been more dissimilar.

The ruling cliques in the Arab world hated Qaddafi because he taunted them as poodles of the West. It was this kind of bluster that caused the Saudi King to scream at him across the table at an Arab summit at Sharm el sheikh: “Kalb”, which means dog!

Qaddafi was unique because he was the only point of convergence for Riyadh and Teheran. The Iranians disliked him for two reasons: he competed with them, often upping the ante on the Palestinian issue which the Iranians would rather keep as their monopoly. Above all, the Iranians nursed a grievance on the disappearance of Shia cleric Musa Sadr over Libya in the 80s.

After Ben Ali and Mubarak had fallen and Yemen and Bahrain were in convulsions, king Abdullah of Saudi Arabia returned after medical treatment in Europe and saw an unrecognizably altered neighbourhood. He was furious that Ben Ali and Mubarak had been allowed to go and swore that not a single monarchy or Sheikhdom will be allowed to fall, “peoples power” be damned!

At this stage the Israeli stand was: “since 1973 our border with Syria has been the most peaceful.”

It was Riyadh, now holding Qatar’s had as well, which persuasively developed two plots.

Israel’s Iranian focus will dim unless the Iran, Syria, Hezbullah, Hamas nexus is broken by wrenching Syria away from the quartet.

Secondly, Shias had to be projected as a threat to mobilize the Sunni Arab world on a sectarian plank. Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait all had huge Shia populations. Iraq and Bahrain had overwhelming Shia majorities.

In this theme too there was a Syrian angle. Although the Alawis and Christians formed only 20 percent of the population (the majority being Sunnis), they formed the bulk of the army. In their belief (very tepid belief because primarily they are secular Baathists) they are more like Shias and this has been something of an irritant to the majority Sunnis which occasionally erupts as in Hama in 1982 and stoked elsewhere more recently.

In the absence of a Security Council Resolution, the strategy of lending external support to malcontents in the country has proved time consuming. Also, French, Qatari and Turkish officers have been held well inside Syrian territory, much to the embarrassment Paris, Ankar and Qatar.

Notice, there is total silence from French officials. In the GCC, the Saudis are probably not exerting as much pressure. Otherwise, why would the UAE intercede with Damascus for the release of Qataris.

Lack of progress on the Syrian front has been accompanied by the anti Iranian rhetoric rising to a crescendo. The “attack Iran” chant has one effect on the GCC Sheikhdoms: buy more defensive weapons, at the same time seek back channel peace.

Gradually, it may well be sinking into the Riyadh establishment that continuous TV attention on Syrian protesters could well be the cause of aggravated public anger in Bahrain and oil rich, Shia dominated areas like Qatif in Saudi Arabia.

Turkish Prime Minister Tyyep Erdogan’s recent meetings in Teheran with supreme leader Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad must be seen to be bringing down regional temperatures.

Remember, it is President Barak Obama’s political requirement to have a calm Middle East so that he can keep a steady gaze on Afghanistan the country on which the NATO Summit in Chicago must focus in May in ways that it is useful for his re election in November.

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Best Wishes On Zardari’s Journey To Ajmer

Best Wishes On Zardari’s Journey To Ajmer

                                                                             Saeed Naqvi

At a time when Hafiz Saeed and others of his intolerant ilk appear to be determining the tempo of Pakistan’s Islamic fervor, it is important to note that Asif Zardari’s pilgrimage is to the shrine of Sufi Saint Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti, in Ajmer where devotees have for centuries been both Muslims and non Muslims.

Most people do not know that the famous “langar” or “prasada” cooked for thousands of pilgrims is vegetarian. Also, it does not have ingredients like onions and garlic to which some Hindu sects are averse. The idea is that the “prasada” must be acceptable to all who visit the shrine.

Zardari is not the only Ajmer bound devotee. Numerous leaders from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and numerous Muslim countries generally visit Ajmer or Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia’s shrine in Delhi. His Guru Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaki’s shrine in Mehrauli. The “do gaz zameen” or two yards of land that the last Moghul Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar yearned for is next to the Mehrauli shrine.

So fertile was the land of India to a compatible spiritual idea that Islam mushroomed across the length and breadth of the country so rapidly because of the Sufis. It was organically a part of both, Sufi influences as well as customs and life styles of the area where this interaction took place.

For instance the Mapillas or the Muslims along the Kerala coastline, retained Arabic as well native Keralite traditions in language, music, marriage customs, food and almost every sphere of life. The best speaker of Malyalam in Kerala Assembly was Mohammad Koya. This at a time when stalwarts like E.M.S. Namboodiripad decorated Kerala’s political landscape.

The edict that the language of Quran, namely Arabic, was the language of God was first challenged in Kerala. It was in Kozhikode that I saw the first copy of a “Malyalam Quran”

It was practical commonsense to make the words of the Quran accessible to those who do not know Arabic. Confining the Quran only to those conversant with Arabic would appear to be restrictive.

The audacious Urdu poet Yaas Yagana Changezi asked the question quite bluntly:

“Samajh mein kuch naheen aata;

Parhey jaaney sey kya haasil?

Namazon mein hain kuch maani

To pardesi Zuban kyon ho?”

(What will you gain by reciting verses you do not understand?

If Namaz-prayer-has any meaning, why should it be in a foreign language?)

In far flung parts of rural India Sufis set up their ashrams, Khankahs or hospices. This enabled them to transmit to the common people what Malthew Arnold called the “high seriousness”, which in this case was distilled from major Sufi thinkers like Ibn Arabi who wrote extensively on the oneness of Being.

Conversations with the Sajjada Nashin of Dewa Sharif, on the outskirts of Lucknow, Hazrat Waris Shah or with Naim Ata Shah of Jais in Rae Bareli are remarkable examples of Sufism simplified for common, sometimes uneducated people.

Asked why he never said his “namaz”, Waris Shah, laughed: “There is no space between me and my God to go down in prayer.” What he was trying to say was simple: He is in me. This must not be misunderstood that he discouraged Namaz. Not at all. The courtyard of Dewa were filled with ramazis at the appropriate hours. Shah Sahib was making a point in his inimitable style.

Naim Ata Shah derived from the 16^th century author of Padmavat, Malik Mohammad Jaisi, whose writing is replete with Hindu imagery. There is no Urdu poet who was not influenced by the Sufis. The rapid growth of Islam in India was due to the generous adoption of local cultural motifs and festivals like Holi, Deepawali, Dussehra by the Sufis.

Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, Shah Wali Ullah, right upto the clergy at Darul Uloom, Deoband, have been puritanical, reform movements, attempting to cleanse sub continental Islam of exactly the influences which are at the heart of our composite culture.

These reform movements are active in India and have the patronage of politicians bereft of any aesthetics. But in Pakistan the movements have declared Jehad on the soft Islam, soaked in sub continental Sufism. That is why Asif Zaradari deserves every ones best wishes for his journey to Ajmer.

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Turkey Gets Its Finger Burnt In Syria

Turkey Gets Its Finger Burnt In Syria

                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

A world which seemed to be on the edge of a catastrophe a few weeks ago, suddenly gives the impression of pulling back from the brink. President Obama and Supreme leader Ali Khamenei have both indicated a preference for diplomacy over militarism. In Syria President Bashar al Assad has thanked the five nation BRICS summit for upholding principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Turkey which played a role in raising the stakes and now lowering it, deserves a close look. A mildly Islamized democratic Turkey ruled by its most charismatic Prime Minister ever, Tayyep Erdogan, was incorporated in the management of what had at one stage acquired the label of Arab Spring.

Folks in Erdogan’s entourage, particularly foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, were sketching tentative plans of playing out Erdogan’s charisma and Turkey’s new economic status on a larger Arab canvas.

These plans had clearly not been thought through because they came into conflict with stated policy. One such policy was fairly explicit: zero problems with neighbours. Such a policy would entail a curbing of obvious quest for influence beyond the borders.

But Erdogan’s exceptional success, a substantial improvement in his party’s vote share through three successive elections, something of a record, placed temptations in the way of his foreign policy team.

At its outset, the Arab Spring conjured up images of people’s power leading to a search for democratic models. What better model for an awakening in the Muslim world than the secular Republic of Turkey under soft Islamic influence?

Few leaders have been mobbed the way Erdogan was in post Mubarak Cairo. After Qaddafi’s brutal murder, he turned up at the Tripoli square to say his prayers like the Caliphs of an era long past.

It is a truth Arab leaders (not the people) hate to admit that Iran, Hezbullah and Syria, in that order, are the most popular entities in the Arab street because of their rhetoric and unwavering support for the Palestinian cause.

The US and the Saudis would be happier if Turkey, mostly Sunni and a member of NATO was to replace the Iran-Hezbullah-Syria trio in the popularity stakes. Erdogan knows elementary West Asian politics: for popularity in the Arab street, it is almost an essential pre condition to be viewed with suspicion in Jerusalem.

This Erdogan has achieved with distinction by gestures like walking out on Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos or taking a tough line against Israel for their attack on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.

When the West set up a role for Turkey to prevent suspected Iranian nuclear plans, Ankara accepted the role with a proviso that enhanced its stock in Arab eyes: Iranians can be dissuaded from their alleged nuclear plans only if Israel’s nuclear arsenal is also placed on the table!

In the meanwhile, some Turkish think tanks began to have visions of replicating an Ottoman version of the British Commonwealth in the Arab region. This is anathema to the Arabs and may well have been one reason for a decline in enthusiasm for a Turkish role in the region.

Ankara too is beginning to realize that a dilution of its “zero-problems-with-neighbours” policy has heavy costs attached to it. Its material and military support to the protesters in Syria was to some extent because of Erdogan’s earlier Muslim Brotherhood association. It was this weakness of Erdogan’s the west exploited to destabilize the Syrian regime. But to their utter embarrassment 49 Turkish soldiers were arrested by the Syrian army. It also occurred to Ankara that Syrians can always aggravate Turkey’s Kurdish problem. After all, Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian Kurds are bunched in contiguous territory. They can always make common cause against Ankara.

Buried under the surface is a deep rooted issue most Turks have developed an amnesia about.When the Sunni-Alawi divide widened in Syria, the 20 million Turkish Alawis (who have under Kemalist edict compulsorily adopted Turkish identity) showed signs of restiveness. The issue is no trifling matter.

Above all, something Turks are privately suspicious of is the West prodding Ankara to play a larger role. “They never allowed us to enter Europe. Are we now being pushed into a larger role so we come into conflict with all our neighbours. In fact it must be galling for Europe that Greece, the mother of Western Civilization, is on its knees while we, whom they would not allow to enter Europe, are the regional power by a long shot!”

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Giving The Marginalized A Voice

Giving The Marginalized A Voice

                                                         Saeed Naqvi

Nothing fuels conflict more than a sense of injustice across a broad spectrum. Of these, some issues have a more powerful emotional resonance than others.

Helplessness, a feeling that there is no redressal for injustice leads to the sort of suffocation which often erupts in violence. If there is a ventilator of, say, the ballot box, the aggrieved vent their cumulative anger by voting out a party identified with injustice. This is what happened in UP.

In India some of this anger can possibly be dissipated by taking the route of the ballot box. But how does one address the grievances of the legions whose plaints are against the international system?

There is no nightmare more scary than the one in which you cannot scream, run or hit back despite your best efforts. This is precisely the sort of frustration, anger, helplessness which grips you when confronted by a brazenly one sided discourse beamed at you by the media. Here you are, a captive audience of a narration which you find totally unconvincing and about which you can do nothing except to vacillate between anger and rage.

There are different ways in which the media impacts. If you are indifferent or neutral or not terribly fastidious about the veracity of a story, your mind is liable to be made up or atleast influenced by the anchor or writer who is dispensing information or opinion. But if you are familiar with a subject you will not accept the version, particularly a doctored version, and feel a quiet anger build up because you cannot rebut.

You would, however, feel your sense of isolation relieved somewhat if other points of view were incorporated into the narrative to give it balance. Hence the need for a public service (not government) media.

During the cold war, Soviet propaganda was countered by the much more credible fare provided by the western media, particularly BBC World Radio. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the western media has allowed its credibility to plummet on two counts.

Since the victory over the Soviet system was wrongly interpreted as a vote of confidence in unbridled capitalism, the media became a creature of the market.

Secondly, from the cold war, the West descended into a series of hot wars. In wars, it is universally acknowledged, the first casualty will always be the truth.

In no sphere has the media done more harm than in its coverage of the war on terror. The world has been divided down the middle between those who choose to believe the media and those who see themselves as its victims. This divide is not only restricted to the coverage of the war on terror.

It has now been carried over to the coverage of wars themselves in the Muslim world: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria. Ofcourse, the manner in which the war on terror is being fought and covered has divided the Muslim world from the rest. But conventional wars and their coverage have played an even more pernicious role, that of dividing Muslim societies along sectarian lines. In the past five decades who had ever heard of Shia assertion and Al Qaeda’s revenge in Iraq?

Let me revert to my original theme: a sense of helplessness among those whose point of view is never included in the discourse generated in the western media. Does anyone remember the deathly silence in the West after Rev. Jerry Falvel’s post 9/11 rantings?

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians – all those who have tried to secularize America – I point a finger in their face and say: “You have helped this happen”. Falvel was in the company of thousands who saw God’s revenge in the collapse of the twin towers.

Can you then blame Sheikh Salman of the Wafaq party complain in Bahrain: “This kind of nonsense is never placed under the western microscopes. The smallest Muslim misdemeanor is amplified.“

Likewise, when did you last hear a TV discussion on the causes and conclusion of, say, the Samjhauta Express bombing? Whereas a Muslim journalist whose guilt is far from established becomes a staple for the 24X7 media. It is this kind of perceived injustice which leaves a community seething with rage.

The panacea is public service media, insulated as much from the government as the market, something the Prime Minister promised during UPA-I.

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Will Akhilesh Emerge From His Father’s Shadow?

Will Akhilesh Emerge From His Father’s Shadow? Saeed Naqvi Is there a whiff of fresh air about Samajwadi Party’s 38 year old Akhilesh Yadav being sworn in as the Chief Minister in Lucknow? I was in a cheerful frame of mind about the event until the Pundits waylaid me. “The goons are back” said one. “How will Akhilesh ever control them?” “You mean Raja Bhaiyya?” I asked. “His crimes derive from his feudal temperament”, said the pundit. He then rattled off a host of other “real goons”. “And do you know?” asked another conspiratorially. “Mulayam Singh has planted on him the same IAS officer Anita Singh as his secretary, the very same whose name was linked with Mulayam Singh.” He winked wickedly. The third, much the most excited, navigated the conversation into the expected alleys. “The same old links are being firmed up” he said like he were Wikileaks. “Soon after the swearing in, Mulayam and his gang went to Subrato Roy’s party, whereas poor Akhilesh had to follow protocol and make a mandatory appearance at the Governor’s tea party.” Then, “did you see how the thugs pulled down the podium on which the ceremony was held?” griped the fourth. These are senior journalists, mind you. Just when my good cheer was beginning to fade, I snapped “can’t you see anything positive on a day when the youngest chief minister, from a family of homespun “other-backward castes”, was being sworn in as chief minister of the country’s biggest state?” His term at a Sainik school and University from Bangalore makes him that much more in tune with the times compared with his father. The negative talk mentioned earlier, travels across the metropolitan whispering galleries. The attitude integral to this talk is then dressed up as material for the media. For the hardened politician, like Mulayam, it does not matter, but for new entrants like Akhilesh, it can be disconcerting. Even for someone like Rahul Gandhi, the “attitude” is misleading. Instead of letting him reflect on why he came a cropper in UP and whether there is any traction left in him, the pundits are at it again, fawning all over Rahul. “He pulled up the Congress vote share by 4 percent which will be a huge advantage in 2014.” Frankly, if Rahul is going to allow himself to be surrounded by the same self seeking groups singing the syrupy tune, is there any doubt that he will be deluded into another debacle come 2014? Surely, he knows elementary Congress history. Except those who derive their political lineage exclusively from the Hindu Mahasabha, all other regional, caste, communal parties were once under the Congress canopy. Even the Hindu Mahasabha spawned Congressmen. Pushottam Das Tondon, for instance. In fact one of the terminal problems the Congress faces is just this: its avowal of secularism is no longer taken seriously, certainly not by the minorities as recent UP elections demonstrate. Also, I wonder what Rahul makes of the mess his party is in Uttarakhand. The sequence of events need not have followed the script which suggests that the state was created to preserve the traditional Indian caste hierarchy which egalitarianism has toppled elsewhere in the country. What else do you expect Harish Rawat, a Rajput, to conclude after having helped the party win in 2002 and again in the recent elections and yet, on both occasions is bypassed? Brahmin Chief Ministers are preferred. As if the “Savarna-Avarna” (high caste/low caste) divide was not bad enough in UP and the rest of the country, the Congress has gone and institutionalized the rupture in the “Savarna” fold too, further aggravating the atomizing process. Unlike the Grand old party, Akhilesh’s outfit is not burdened with so much history. An OBC based party with Socialist pretensions, it held out a helping hand to the Muslims in distress. The love affair with the minorities remained an up and down affair while Mulayam was around. The challenge for Akhilesh is to consolidate, something he cannot do without a fresh infusion of advisers. These will help insulate him from critics mentioned at the outset, the ones who control most of the media and will not give up their hostility for visceral caste reasons. Mulayam Singh’s experience will be of value but Akhilesh must, like Ghalib, have the courage to say: “Don’t quarrel with me, my father. No man of vision has ever pleased the faith of his forbears!” # # # # # #