Great Power Berserk: Fair Is Foul, Foul Is Fair

Great Power Berserk: Fair Is Foul, Foul Is Fair

                                                                                 Saeed Naqvi

The famous newspaper tycoon, builder of San Simeon castle in California, William Randolph Hearst, knew the nexus between war and journalism. “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”, he told American artist, illustrator, Frederic Remington.

The brazenness with which the media has been used by the Americans and their cohorts in Libya and now in Syria has its origins in American history.

The general attitude of racial superiority over those currently in the line of fire also has its abiding historical precedents.

When questions were asked about American excesses during the conquest of the Philippines, Senator Albert Beveridge, like so many others in Congress, said: “It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.”

It is an undeniable reality that racialism were rampant in the United States in late 19th early 20th centuries when atleast “two negroes were lynched by the mobs every week”. After all, Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights movement was climaxing just the other day when King had to pay with his own life. Also, we tend to forget that Mrs. Margaret Thatcher flatly refused to withdraw support to the apartheid system in South Africa when Rajiv Gandhi along with frontline African statesmen engaged her in London in 1986.

Indeed, it was only in February 1990 that Nelson Mandela’s 27 year long incarceration was brought to an end signaling an end to apartheid.

Despite the debris of war which surround it and over which it towers, there is the human side to the American which gets no play in the media. These are the conscientious objectors, who, atleast since the Iraq occupation are giving up their establishment jobs.

Some months ago, when the Syrian situation was under control, I found myself in the company of Edward Lionel Peck, an ex US ambassador to several Arab countries, driving in a bus from Damascus to Homs and Hama. That very day, the US ambassador Robert Ford with his French counterpart was driving from Deraa to Hama, Homs and sundry trouble spots, exhorting the people to rise. Obviously there were CIA trained Syrian cells which clustered around the ambassador. That afternoon I visited the palace to meet President Assad’s adviser, Buthaina Shabaan, one of the most elegant women in public life. She was as dazed as I was at the US ambassador combining in his persona both, diplomacy as well as 007 style espionage. As his boss in Baghdad’s Green zone, John Negroponte had praised him for his audacious outdoors diplomacy plus direct action.

A professional diplomat, Ed Peck, was disgusted with what he saw. He wrote to a friend of his also in that bus in Syria: “I have been dismayed by the accolades and support given to Ambassador Ford, our man in - and now out of Syria, for stepping well out of the traditional and appropriate role of a diplomat and actively encouraging the revolt/insurrection/sectarian strife/outside meddling, call it what you will, that is still going on.  It is easy to imagine the US reaction if an ambassador from anywhere were to engage in even distantly related activities here.  I fear my country remains somewhat more than merely insensitive, and is sliding into just plain rampant and offensive arrogance.”

When two planes flew into the twin towers, the US launched an endless (still continuing) war on terror. But when terrorists bomb and kill the Syrian Defence Minister and two other members of Assad’s cabinet, an overjoyed Economist says the attack “is greatly to be welcomed”!

When Al Qaeda and Taleban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, in March 2001, the world, Washington included, went into convulsion. And now, when Al Qaeda type movements, created by Western intervention in Libya, are destroying heritage sites in Timbaktu, there is barely a whisper.

What is going on? A war against Al Qaeda in Af-Pak and a deliberate manufacture of just those elements in Syria? Has New Delhi forgotten its breast beating against cross-border terrorism in Kashmir atleast since 1989? How will it ever raise that issue again having voted along with the west which stands for cross border terrorism by US, France, UK, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey against Syria?

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Stalin Not A Bad Word In Russia Any Longer

Stalin Not A Bad Word In Russia Any Longer

                                                                            Saeed Naqvi

Stalin is no longer a bad name in Russia.

As I get into the sleek Mercedes parked outside my downtown hotel, the big, burly Russian driver puts aside a book on Stalin he has been reading.

“Why Stalin?” I ask. He points to a large Metro station we pass. “He built this in 1937 the world’s greatest metro system with over 200 stations.” Then he is unstoppable in Russian which ofcourse I cannot follow.

My taxi driver is not the only Russian wrapped in nostalgia about the past. At a seminar on Pluralism and Separatism outside Moscow, in village Rogozinino, Russian scholar Sergey Kurginyan, takes my breath away: “a recent opinion poll suggests that 80% of the Russian population feel the people were better off during the Soviet period.”

Other Russian scholars find Kurginyan way off the mark. “Yes the older generation misses the stability in their lives.” They miss the world’s best public transport system – underground metro, trams, buses, subsidized taxis. “Not only could we reach our destinations easily, but the air was not polluted and there were no traffic jams.”

The younger generation, particularly the one in their 20s, are excited about the new cars, fancy restaurants, shops and shopping malls matching anything in the west. Not to be ignored are Moscow’s very own tailoring outfits, controlled by Sindhis from Hong Kong and quite in the image of Savile Row.

Russians across the board are sensitive to the status reversal they suffered with the Soviet collapse. This is Vladimir Putin’s strong point: he stokes Russian nationalism by appearing to stand upto the West. Informed opinion in Moscow suggests that Putin would have vetoed UNSC 1973 which gave NATO the right to impose a no-fly zone in Libya.

And now, Putin has dug his heels in on Syria. The view in Moscow is that “terrorism” as means of war will first recoil on countries of the region and then proceed to take its toll in enlarging concentric circles.

This does not mean that Putin is reckless in taking on the West. A source close to the Kremlin put it succinctly: if the choice is between Syria and Russia, then obviously he will not put Russia at risk.

Indeed, there is enough indication that he would like to ease tensions with the West. He needs this breathing space to consolidate on Russia’s vast oil, gas, timber, diamond and endless mineral wealth. Russia’s financial systems are not “globalised” and therefore not vulnerable on the European scale. This confidence provokes the US to devise ways to keep Russia off-balance, externally and internally.

When Pakistan closed the Karachi-Balochistan supply route to Afghanistan, Russians promptly enabled the Americans to set up a transportation hub at Ulyanovsk (ironically, Lenin’s birth place) to utilize the northern route.

Washington insisted that NATO radars in the Czech Republic and Interceptors in Hungary would be a pre condition for START negotiations. Putin agreed.

Putin also accommodated Washington on other conditions to begin START talks. Kremlin accepted terms which the military was opposed to.

Why? First it fulfils Putin’s desire to accommodate Washington.

Also, Moscow-Washington Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, creates an illusion of superpowers in conversation.

Numerous state sponsored programmes for Russians to study in American universities is part of the friendship offensive with the west.

The impression after a visit to Moscow is that the Kremlin is eager to ease its tensions with the West without compromising on its strategic interests. Recent floods in the south exposed systemic gaps. These Putin would like to plug on a priority basis before looking outwards.

Compared to Europe, Russia is such a cheerful story that Ukraine’s pro Europe bloc may soon wilt. A remarkable success story abutting Russia is Belarus. Call it Stalinist but, without having Russia’s resources, it is totally self sufficient sans crime. It escaped the trauma of Bandit Capitalism conferred on Moscow by the Boris Yeltsin regime.

As far as India is concerned, Russia is numero uno in the fields of Defense, Space and Atomic energy. Agreements for the third and fourth phase of Kudankulam Atomic power project were in the process of being signed during my Moscow stay. While negotiating pressures from the powerful, New Delhi must not be careless with its Russian assets.

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Kashmir Graves, Murder In Chattisgarh, Gopalgarh… Is Anybody Listening?

Kashmir Graves, Murder In Chattisgarh, Gopalgarh… Is Anybody Listening?

                                                                                                                                 Saeed Naqvi

I have stopped reading columns in the International Herald Tribune because I get most of them pushed through my door as op-ed articles in our mainstream English language newspapers. But last weekend, browsing through the edit page quite randomly, I spotted an article I had not seen in my New Delhi newspapers.

“Awaiting Justice In Kashmir” is an eight inch deep bottom – spread, written by Mirza Waheed, whose novel, “The Collaborator”, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award in 2011.

The column, datelined London, begins: Last September, a lawmaker in India controlled Kashmir stood up in the State’s Legislative Assembly and spoke of a valley near his home constituency in the mountains. “In our area, there are big gorges, where lie the bones of several hundred people who were eaten by crows”.

Reading this, Waheed was “filled with a chill – I had written a similar story, a fictional one, in my novel about the lost boys of Kashmir”.

The Assembly that day was discussing 2,000 unmarked and mass graves discovered not far from the Line of Control. The facts being discussed formed the core of a report by the State Human Rights Commission. In other words what the law makers were discussing was an official report.

Most of those killed were civilians, ‘potentially the victims of extra judicial killing”. Waheed continues: “Corpses were brought in by the truckload and buried on an industrial scale”. The report catalogued 2,156 bullet-riddled bodies found in mountain graves.

Suddenly, I became acutely aware that atrocities like the one Waheed has written about will recur because the sheer accumulation of atrocities over the years has made us insensitive to pain outside our immediate environs. This results in mass amnesia, and that too without much interval between a tragic event and its erasure from memory.

What Waheed has written about did make quite a splash in an NDTV show last year. Typically, such has been the consumption rate of atrocities, that the Kashmir story had vacated my memory cells until Mirza’s column.

Take another example. In September it will be exactly one year when the Gopalgarh unit of the Rajasthan Police shot and killed 10 Muslims in the local mosque. Attacks on Muslims during prayer by a group or a sect, with the support of the local police, are occasionally reported from Pakistan, but the Gopalgarh atrocity inside a mosque is a first in India as far as my memory can fathom.

The Gopalgarh incident arose from a dispute between Meo Muslims and local Gujjars over a watering hole behind the mosque which the Gujjars use for their cattle.

Meo’s are a fascinating community deriving lineage from Meena’s a politically powerful tribal community totally opposed to the Gujjars. Here comes a sociological twist. A Meena may belong to the BJP but, he can still claim support in Meo pockets by virtue of their caste and “gotra” or sub caste links.

Gujjars find the Meenas too strong to take on frontally, but a spineless Congress leaves Meos exposed as soft targets in places like Gopalgarh. Initially Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot took an interest in the matter but failed to take action against the local police and district administration. “RSS and VHP which backed the attack on the mosque are free” says Ramzan Chaudhry, a social worker, “but a dozen innocent Meos are in jail without trial”. After a year’s waiting Ramzan and his group met the Chairman of the National Minorities Commission, Wajahat Habibullah. He promptly arranged for the agitated group to meet Rahul Gandhi. “Let us see if some action follows”, says Ramzan.

The next scene opens in Bijapur, Chattisgarh, where bodies of teen agers haunt you until the next spell of amnesia. Let us see what the Judicial inquiry finds out.

In March 2011, following a report in the Hindu about 300 houses torched, two men killed and three women raped in Sukina district, a judicial probe was ordered. The government has not made the report public. In fact, going a bit into history, even the Ghulam Hussain report on the Hashimpura massacre is gathering dust for 25 years.

Mirza Waheed asks a question: “Kashmiris who have disappeared; Kashmiri Pundits who fled in 1990; the mass graves. Would there have been a (global) uproar had such atrocities been reported from Libya or Homs in Syria?” Is he asking the question of Washington or New Delhi?

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A Mid East War In The Cards?

A Mid East War In The Cards?

                                                    Saeed Naqvi

Is a war in the Middle East in the cards? What is happening at the moment is something of a paradox: a war is not being planned but there is frenetic contingency planning all around. It is precisely in these kinds of situations that “accidents” take place which lead to war.

In other words there is no conflict as such, except inside Arab societies, notably Syria and Bahrain, but there is sufficient tension in the region which can be amplified by the willing electronic media. Washington’s ability to give suitable “spin” to events in the region, particularly, Syria and Iran, will from now on be determined by the requirements of Barack Obama’s re election strategy.

If, for instance, his campaign managers divine that he will be hugely helped by war drums without war actually breaking out, the propaganda war will be ratcheted up and he will go into the election looking like a President at war.

War drums, sans war, will also keep public and Congressional attention riveted on the Middle East. This will have the additional advantage of keeping focus away from the “war of choice”, Afghanistan, which Obama has been promising to wind down ever since he assumed office.

There is no credible script available in the public domain which gives the slightest indication that the Americans are about to leave Afghanistan. Terms like “draw down” and “cutback” have been used but even these terms have a caveat attached to them. “The date of inauguration of the drawdown is not cast in stone; it will depend on the situation on the ground, on how many of 3,200,000 Afghan troops are in readiness”…..and so on.

However degrading a bargain Pakistan may have struck with the Americans on the Karachi-Balochistan supply route to Afghanistan, it will convince itself that it has resumed having some leverage on the Americans.

From the American point of view, resumption of supply routes eases a burden, ofcourse, but it also provides them with another opportunity to have more secure relations with a country they have penetrated so deeply over six decades. It is that much more important to watch it up close and from neighbouring Afghanistan because it is the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons.

A case is made out that the Americans, indeed the International Community, is extremely anxious the Pakistan nuclear weapons may fall into “militant”, “extremist”, “fundamentalist”, “terrorist” hands.

If this be a genuine anxiety, surely the effort should be to contain terrorism. To the contrary, the manner in which the war on terror has been fought has only swelled the ranks of terrorists and enlarged their area of operation.

It is universally acknowledged that terrorism has grown in North West Pakistan, Punjab, Karachi and large swathes of Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda, trained in Yemen by the Saudis at the same time that the Mujahideen were being trained in Afghanistan to expel the Soviets, are rampaging through Yemen under an inexplicable label AIAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula).

Daily suicide bombings in Iraq must also be placed at the door of those who occupied the country for a decade.

There was a procession of Tripoli bound Western leaders after Qaddaffi shed his nuclear programmes, until some West supported regimes in the Middle East fell. How can those who have stood by the West fall and those in opposition allowed to survive?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proceeded to parody Julius Caesar. She rephrased Vini, Vidi, Vici, to match her style: “I came, I saw and he died”. From her statement the video cuts to a trapped Qaddaffi, sodomized by a knife!

Clinton has for the past year been exhorting “Assad to get out of the way”. But Assad won’t listen. He sits on a system quite as durable as the one Saddam Hussain supervised in neighbouring Iraq. The US had to occupy that country for a full decade. Without that kind of commitment, Assad cannot be pushed out. Yes, US, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey can help the disparate groups some of which have Ayman Zawahiri’s support, to create conditions for civil war.

Is the West, not averse to Zawahiri’s company, left with any credit to mobilize the world against those who destroyed the Bamyan Buddhas and are now, like a wandering malignancy, turning upon heritage sites in remote Timbaktu?

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Syria Will Drag Down Turkey

Syria Will Drag Down Turkey

                                                 Saeed Naqvi

Turkey is being pushed into a role which will recoil on it unless it rethinks its policy in West Asia.

For decades Ankara has been trying in vain to join the European Union. “European Civilization was essentially Christian” proclaimed French Statesmen, Giscard d’Estaing. Turkey, being Muslim, had no role in that club. And now the same interests are mobilizing Turkey for their plans in West Asia.

For years Rauf Denktash argued the Turkish Cypriot case for joint management with the Greek half. Once the issue was close to resolution under the Annan plan. At the last minute, Turkey was ditched. Greek Cypriots were given EU membership. There was always a certain shoddiness with which the West treated Turkey.

Ofcourse, the Turks extracted a great deal of good in trying to measure up to EU standards. The economy, environment, civic amenities, tourism – everything improved. Turkey began to register growth in all spheres.

Imagine Greece, mother of Western Civilization, on its knees next door. TV pictures of middle class office goers looking into garbage bins to retrieve whatever is of value – old newspapers for instance.

These are telling images. The contrast with an economically and politically secure Turkey, just across the Aegean Sea is even more galling.

It is universally acknowledged that President Lula da Silva in Brazil and Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan are two of the most charismatic leaders whose popularity has been reflected in their successive electoral returns. Erdogan’s vote share has risen from 36 percent to, 42% to 50%.

But according to Turkish law, Erdogan cannot seek a fourth term. At this time, therefore, the internal political situation in Turkey has livened up.

With quickening politics, should Erdogan be seen to be losing momentum in the next political season, there are enough internal and external interests which can join hands to check, even reverse, mild Islamism in favour of mild Kemalism with which they are more comfortable.

Historically adversarial relations between Turkey and Europe suggest the West would not lose sleep if Turkey were to stumble.

Erdogan had at the outset spelt out his goal as building a nation at peace with all its neighbours. What we have instead is Turkey embroiled in conflicts all around. Something is going out of control.

Although neighbouring Iraq did not become three distinct states as Peter Galbraith had predicted, the semi-autonomous status of Iraqi Kurdistan was the sort of status quo custom made for Turkey. South East Turkey was virtually indistinguishable from Kurdish Iraq. Turkish business was booming. The assembly house in Arbil, airport in Suleimaniyah were being built by Turkish businessmen.

By offering itself on an anti Assad plank, Turkey has exposed itself as a target for Kurdish militancy in which Syria, Iraq and Iran can all join hands.

Kemal Pasha Ataturk had by an edict transformed Turkey into a nation of Turks. No other entity existed. Gradually, a Kurdish entity has been accepted. Likewise, the Alawites. There is a silent but substantial Alawite minority in Turkey.

Should the Sunni-Alawite conflict grow in Syria, Turkey will not remain untouched.

Turkish co-operation with the US has been mutually beneficial in the Balkans. The creation of a Muslim state of Kosovo is very much a joint US-Turkish project. A great deal of this co-ordination is despite Russian opposition. Russia has Slavic plus the Eastern Orthodox Church links with the Balkans. In fact, the Orthodox Church links are very strong with Greece too.

Turkish role in trying to dethrone Assad would provoke Russia coming in directly in the eastern Mediterranean, ofcourse, where oil and gas on vast scales are in the bargain.

What should worry Turkey more is Russia pressing on other pressure points. Recently thousands of citizens of Mitrovica, a Serbian dominated district of Kosovo bordering Serbia, sought Russian citizenship!

Turkey is playing a role with Iran and with the Arab world. The latter conjures up images of the Ottoman Empire, anathema with Arabs. Erdogan’s visceral Islamism impels him to help likeminded groups in the Arab world. This raises the hackles of closet Kemalists in Turkey.

Iran, Israel, new Egypt are all new and complicated arenas, traversing which could cause Erdogan to fall flat. What Turkey needs is to revert to a policy of peace with all its neighbour. CIA Special Forces operating from Turkey will harm Turkey more than they will Syria.

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Communists Controlling Shimla Are All From Elite Schools

Communists Controlling Shimla Are All From Elite Schools

                                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

The takeover of the country’s oldest Municipality in Shimla by young members of the CPM as Mayor and Deputy Mayor is a piece of history I witnessed by the sheer accident of being present in the celebrated Hill Station.

Most north Indian hill stations – Shimla, Naini Tal, Ranikhet, Mussoorie – have fallen from grace because of burgeoning populations.

Therefore, our expectations were low when we accepted friends’ invitation to escape the torrid heat of the plains to take refuge in their 100 year old cottage-bungalow, not far from the Shimla Railway station, itself one of the world’s wonders.

It was a surprisingly pleasant experience for several reasons. First, the road to Shimla is a six lane highway, like the New Jersey Turnpike, with clever deviations which by pass Kalka. A drive to no other hill station could be more convenient.

Contrary to the impression I had, the Mall is free of cars, except for the absolutely essential ones. It is the cleanest space for pedestrians. Apparently there is a fine of Rs.500 for spitting and sterner punishment for carrying or scattering polythene bags.

The restored Gaiety theatre resembles the finest of theatres in London’s West End, something the National School of Drama should take an interest in.

It is quite creditable that local Communists do not claim Shimla’s many improvements as their achievement. They give the credit where it is due – primarily with the administration of Yashwant Singh Parmar from 1963 to 1977 and Virbhadra Singh through four stints as Chief Minister intermittently from 1983 to 2004.

Indeed, it is the enlightened social base left behind by the earlier leadership that has created a secular platform on which the Left offers itself as an alternative to the quarrelsome Congress and the BJP.

It might please the Malabar Hill – Maharani Bagh bourgeoisie that the seven member state committee of the CPM are all public school alumni. The Secretary of the party, Rakesh Singha, passed out from one of the country’s oldest Public Schools, Lawrence School, Sanawar, founded in 1847. In other words it preceded Shimla’s elevation as the summer capital of the viceroys from 1864.

Mayor Sanjay Chauhan studied in St. Edwards and Bishop Cotton School. Deputy Mayor Tikender Singh Panwar is not only from Bishop Cotton School but also of Princely stock, against whom communists of earlier generations waged extended “class wars”.

These communists have not sprouted overnight. The solitary University in Shimla and six other colleges in the city have been in the grip of Students Federation of India (SFI) for decades.

A simple reason for the Congress defeat recently is the division in the Congress at New Delhi. Virbhadra Singh, four times Chief Minister, is not comfortable with Vidya Stokes, Kaul Singh and Anand Sharma who derive their power from Sonia Gandhi. If Virbhadra Singh finds himself ignored by the Congress High Command, he may break away and join hands with the Left and dissident elements in the BJP. This trio may well win the coming state elections in October.

In many ways, Himachal Pradesh resembles Kerala in its socio-economic structure. The enlightened Princely rulers of Travancore and Cochin, left behind an efficient administrative infrastructure.

Communism and the Christian missionary school system laid the foundation of a joint, formal as well as political education. Complete literacy in Kerala is matched by universal literacy in Himachal Pradesh. Like Kerala’s Rajas, Himachal Pradesh had 30 small “rajwaras” or principalities with as many State People’s movements, primarily anti feudal, but, with Congress support, anti colonialist too.

Here was an irony. While State Peoples Conference had an anti colonial edge, it also sought facilities, the British had begun to provide in Shimla. This explains the countless Public Schools (in the British framework public school was a term for expensive private schools) which has begun to churn out the current crop of communists.

“What is helping the CPM are the application of neo-liberal reforms on civic bodies”, says Singha. For instance, the Irrigation Department provides 3.7 crore litres of water for distribution in water starved Shimla of which 60% is lost in leakages. The CPM has launched a mass mobilization drive to conserve water and it is working. Outsourcing of water will cost Rs.40.00 per thousand litres as against Rs.8.00 today. Outsourcing brings in the exploitative contractor. In a secular framework, the public organizations then begin to talk to the Left. So, if you wish to arrest CPM’s growth, sow seeds of communalism!

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Mehdi Hasan Filled Different Vacuums in India and Pakistan

Mehdi Hasan Filled Different Vacuums in India and Pakistan

                                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Mehdi Hasan once said he aspired to do for Urdu ghazal what his relative Ustad Amir Khan did for Hindustani classical singing.
Amir Khan controlled and stabilized the note on which, with effortless deliberation, he built the architecture of a raga.

With similar control on the note, Mehdi Hasan proceeded to sketch the raga, not build it, so that he could superimpose its outlines on the mood of each ghazal.

Ahmad Faraz’s lyrical ghazal (unlike, say, Ghalib’s intellectually taxing verse) “Ranjish hi sahi”, has been given a hauntingly original tune by Mehdi Hasan in raga Yaman Kalyan. It will never be just a passing tune. “Phool hi phool khil uthey” has been adorned with Megh, Kedar and Bahar, something of an overkill, but pleasing, because the notes match the words.

Casting the ghazal consistently in the mould of classical ragas is a singular contribution of Mehdi Hasan.

Amir Khan would never have dreamt of such large audiences. But this limitation on the size of audiences is an unintended consequence of the choice a classical musician makes in any society. Yehudi Menuhin would never have aspired to fill football stadia. Even so, let it be said that Amir Khan in his day, like Ulhas Kushalkar, for instance, today, could fill the National Centre for Performing Arts at Nariman Point in Mumbai – and elsewhere.

The extraordinary popularity of Mehdi Hasan and the genre he mastered is also an interesting sociological study. It filled a need in India for one set of reasons and in Pakistan for quite another.

The “dhishum-dhishum” cinema of the 80s, dominated by Amitabh Bachchan, took the lyric out of Bollywood song. The Indian sensibility, reared for centuries on the rural, pastoral lyric, felt an aesthetic vacuum. The prospect of “hum, tum ek kamrey mein band hon” becoming a staple was forbidding. This space was filled up by the Urdu ghazal. The market found the commodity.

In Pakistan music was being muzzled by the votaries of Islamization. Abdul Karim Khan’s youngest daughter, Roshanara Begum, migrated to Pakistan and proceeded to fade out in the absence of sponsors or an audience. Her sister Hirabai Barodekar thrived in India.

The bogus conflict created by the clergy between music and shariah in Pakistan, snuffed out pure classical music. This in its turn created the space for the ghazal which Mehdi Hasan cleverly tied to classical music. Singing Urdu ghazal was kosher for the Mullah; music otherwise was not!

Ofcourse, Mehdi Hasan cannot claim monopoly over ghazal singing. So many in previous generations have bummed Ghalib sung by K.L. Saigal. It is a flawed understanding of the history of music that, somehow, ghazal has a long tradition of being a musical art form. Yes, simple, low brow versifiers did set words to accompany the seductive dance rhythms of the “nautch” girl at the “Mujra”.

Kamla Jharia’s two ghazals mark an emancipation from the “nautch” parlour. A little later, Malika Pukhraj left her stamp with ghazals like “Be zubani zubaan na ho jaaye” or “Taskeen ko hum na royein” and, ofcourse, Hafeez Jullundhari’s nazm “Abhi to main jawaan hoon”, all sung with unsurpassed vigour and verve.

One of the reasons for the tardy progress of the ghazal to the concert stage has been an occasional ego conflict between the singer and the poet. Except for a remarkable ghazal of Mir Taqi Mir’s, “Dil ki baat kahi naheen jaati”, which she sang, full throated, like a thrush, when she was a young Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, Begum Akhtar (the transformation occurred when she married a minor aristocrat) seldom sang great poetry.

Only when she was roped in by Shiela Bhatia and S.M. Mehdi to provide music for a play on Ghalib did she add the great poet to her repertoire.

Those eager to know more about Mehdi Hasan should also visit the haveli of the thakurs of Bisau, 40 Kms from Jhunjhunu where his father, Azim Khan and uncle, Ismail Khan sang.

As a 20 year old he migrated leaving his thatch roofed house in Luna, Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan. Today, after news of his death, a memorial is being planned in his place of birth. Yes, he crossed the border in 1947 but then, on the wings of his art, he transcended all boundaries, committing to posterity the best in poetry and song, visiting everyone everywhere.

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