Priyanka’s Entry Makes For Riveting Triangular Pre Election Pirouette

Priyanka’s Entry Makes For Riveting Triangular Pre Election Pirouette

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

The image of Priyanka Gandhi that has stayed with me is of her campaigning for her mother and brother in Rae Bareli and Amethi in April-May 2014. It was a desperate bid to keep the family in play.

The extraordinary element in the campaigning was that it took place at all. For weeks, months if not years, Kishori Lal Sharma, assigned by Congress President, Sonia Gandhi to keep a watch on the two family constituencies, would wait for Priyanka Gandhi to turn up. Sharma, with a moustache like Hardy’s (as in Laurel and Hardy), would mobilize crowds, Panchayat leaders, teachers in schools and colleges to be addressed by Priyanka but on most occasions shamianas had to be dismantled after the invitees had tea and samosas. Priyanka, ofcourse, had not turned up.

Sharma, handpicked by Satish Sharma, Rajiv Gandhi’s pilot friend, was the local incharge. Priyanka Gandhi had been given the task in overall, political control of the “fiefdoms”. But her long absences and repeated non arrivals led to irresponsible speculations about her health.

Her disinterest or disability must have alarmed the family as Modi mounted history’s most expensive media campaign. The media was comprehensively under Modi’s spell. Reports reached Sonia Gandhi that the Congress score in UP was likely to be zero. Never having lived without power, the family pressed panic buttons to atleast keep Sonia Gandhi and Rahul in play in the Lok Sabha. That is when Priyanka galvanized the campaign so effectively that the family’s “izzat” was saved in the two constituencies. The credit must go entirely to her for the two elections.

Her husband, Robert Vadra’s business misdemeanours were, in popular expectation, the vulnerable points where the opposition might choose to strike. But Priyanka turned the game around. She raised the subject herself. “I am confident like my grandmother always was that the truth will eventually come out”. What saddened her was not that the opposition had tried to humiliate (she used the expression “zaleel kiya”) the family but that her “bewildered” children had to be explained what they were hearing.

Indians are nothing if not a feudal people, holding on to their hierarchies adoringly. It is the dream of the lowest in the land to enact the “princely” image and come riding a horse as a bridegroom on marriage day. Imagine, then the “princess” from the country’s premier family, taking “her” people in the family pocket borough into confidence on the humiliations that the opposition has tried to heap upon her. How evocative. Will not the people be moved?

Priyanka has what in Hindi is called “chhab” or elegance, in the way she carries the sari on her tall frame, just like Indira Gandhi. In her public engagements she follows the stately dictum:

“Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,

Oft’ she rejects but never once offends.”

In her speech she comes across as someone who has grown up among Kashmiri aunts and uncles, with clear diction. It is possible that she picked up the cadences of her diction from limited exposure to her extended Kashmiri family. In this she is far removed from Rahul’s blandness of tone and expression.

Priyanka’s persona is potentially a very promising package for public life but with two caveats. There is no assessment available of her intellectual or cultural pursuits, areas that were reasonably cultivated in Indira Gandhi. The second caveat is on her ability for hard work. What her brother, the party President, said while announcing her candidature is fairly ambitious. Priyanka and Jyotiraditya are not being sent to UP for two months but for much longer. “We want to have our Chief Minister in UP.” That will require staying power.

All the empirical data we have so far confirms one fact: she has the stamina for one short burst of energetic campaigning. There will be a question mark on her stamina as a long distance runner. She has demonstrated strong instincts of self-preservation. Towards this end she can work for the family. The unknown quantity is this: can political ambition be ignited in her breast. Her status as Mrs. Vadra may be an obstruction.

For the Mayawati-Akhilesh combination Rahul’s move comes across as:

“Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike.”

Rahul has explained it nicely. “I respect Mayawatiji and Akhileshji and we shall defeat the BJP together.” If requested, he said, he was open to talks with the SP-BSP combine. What else he said in the same sequence expresses either pique or determination. “We shall not be on the back foot.” Playing on the front foot would entail a leadership role in the UP alliance. This would be an outlandish negotiating gambit. Ofcourse, the Congress is the country’s premier upper caste party. That the state of Ganga, Jamuna, Triveni, Kashi, Mathura, Ayodhya, should be timidly conceded to the lower caste formations, is anathema to the party. The prospect makes it feel hollow in the pit of its stomach.

Nothing can be done about the discomfort because the party’s performance in recent elections has been dismal. The formula for seat distribution in UP was straightforward: BSP, SP, Congress, RLD would be entitled to the number of seats in which they came second, that is, 34, 31, 5, 2 in that order. Against this backdrop the Priyanka shock may be designed to pressure BSP-SP to open negotiations for more. Seat adjustments placing a premium on winnability against the BJP is one way to go. But that will not gain it seats – it will have to search beyond the formula. Otherwise will it play spoiler. Can it? Or will it sting the BJP by weaning away the Brahmins from the arch Thakur, Yogi Adityanath?

Mamata Banerjee’s alliance jamboree in Kolkata did not sideline the Congress but it sidelined Rahul Gandhi by inviting Sonia Gandhi instead. The former Congress President is aiming at retirement. Not only did she not go to Kolkata (Mallikarjun Kharge and Abhishek Manu Singhvi were sent instead) but it is believed she has also decided not to contest from Rae Bareli. Will Priyanka inherit that seat? That will change the whole game.

#          #          #          #

How Is The Electoral Game Shaping Up In Key States

How Is The Electoral Game Shaping Up In Key States

                                                                                           Saeed Naqvi

The BJP in Kerala may have boosted its saffron image on the Sabrimala issue but is unlikely to gain much electoral advantage in 2019. That has been the pattern for decades: it has zero conversion rate even though it has a vote share of 10 percent. It would certainly like to weaken, harm, destroy the CPM. Towards this end it has to direct its cadres to quietly help the Congress. But in this instance it is not inclined to augment Congress numbers in New Delhi.

K. Karunakaran, as the Kerala Congress maestro had mastered the art of playing “footsy” under the table with the RSS. Victory margins in Kerala were generally slim. Whenever it suited both the parties, the RSS cadres were injected into the process, thus improving Congress chances. In 1989, the wily, Karunakaran went one better. Holding the BJP with one hand, he gripped the Muslim League’s hand with the other.

Kerala-UP linkages were brought into play even in the aftermath of the “Shilanyas” or the brick laying ceremony in Ayodhya. On November 10, 1989, Rajiv Gandhi was the darling of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad because in violation of the Allahabad High Court order, he allowed the Shilanyas to take place on disputed land, precisely what the VHP demanded. His officials were instructed to put out the story that the brick laying ceremony was done “a good 100 metres from the disputed area.” But the truth was leaked by the VHP, out to prove its muscle.

The VHP, in seventh heaven because of the turn in Ayodhya, paid Rajiv Gandhi back in Kerala by instructing its cadres to help the Congress. But despite all exertions, Rajiv Gandhi, who had won 400 seats in 1984, lost the 1989 elections.

This somewhat extended focus on an election this reporter was witness to may help understand facets of the electoral battle ahead. Note how the Congress mistakes tactics for strategy with unerring frequency.

For UP 2019, a seat sharing formula had been suggested some months ago. BJP’s stunning victory in the state for Lok Sabha in 2014 had not been with wide margins. Based on this fact a formula was suggested. The Samajwadi Party, SP, Bahujan Samaj Party, BSP and Rashtriya Lok Dal or RLD and the Congress would be given tickets for seats wherever they came second in 2014. By this formula the BSP, SP, Congress and RLD would be entitled to 34, 31, 5 and 2 seats give or take a few. That Congress performance in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh entitles it to more seats in UP is now purely theoretical because the BSP, SP (and possibly RLD) deal has been sealed and delivered. By announcing its intention to contest all 80 seats the Congress is helping nobody except possibly the BJP.

The Congress cannot have forgotten the panic which gripped it when all assessments indicated the party might be a cypher in UP, in 2014. Week after week, Sonia Gandhi’s side-kick in Rae Bareli and Amethi Kishori Lal Sharma twiddled his thumbs waiting in vain for Priyanka Gandhi’s promised visitations. To look after the two family fiefdoms was the therapy assigned to her. But she would not show up. Only the fear of her mother and brother losing in their citadels spurred her to action. In a week of effective campaigning, beaming an Indira Gandhi like charisma, she did help keep her family in Parliament.

That was just four and a half years ago. To play spoilsport in UP now will diminish the party. There is so much else to play for. Look, how ham handedly the BJP has played its hand on the Citizen’s Bill in Assam. Here is a chance for Rahul Gandhi to try recover its turf in the North East. It is generally believed that the Congress lost the brilliant organization man, Himanta Biswa Sarma to the BJP by treating him high handedly when Sarma came to consult the Congress President. Apparently, the duration of the meeting was spent with Rahul feeding biscuits to his dog.

There is a profound lesson for the BJP and an opportunity for the Congress opening up in the North East. There will be far reaching consequences for the BJP in the lesson it is about to learn. There are limits to Hindu consolidation that can be affected by targeting minorities. The party’s hands were more or less forced when Prime Minister V.P. Singh dusted up the Mandal committee report providing reservation to other Backward Castes (OBCs). That was the context of L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra and the movement to build the Ram Temple. The rest is familiar history.

The RSS and its creatures like the BJP have never quite accepted the centuries old caste pyramid being exposed to western notions of democracy, upward mobility, social justice. There is a huge, visceral resistance to ideas of equality in a system which, in this life, is inherently unequal, where upward mobility is only possible in a series of lives hereafter. Communalism, therefore, does not only feed on imagined or real historical wrongs alone. It is, in effect, also a strategy to keep the caste pyramid from keeling over.

In Assam and the North East, the faultline is not caste but Bengalis versus Assamese and plainsmen versus the tribes. The situation is custom made for constructive intervention by the Congress.

In West Bengal the Congress presents a confused picture. A small section is willing to go along with Mamata Banerjee. Of the 44 Congress MLAs, eight have crossed over to Mamata’s Trinamool Congress. At her rally in Kolkata, Mamata pointedly invited Sonia Gandhi, ignoring Rahul Gandhi. The upshot is that the Congress will send a senior leader to the rally. In other words the party will remain on talking terms with Mamata without letting her dictate the terms of endearment. But if the Congress is on talking terms with Mamata so far, CPM Secretary General Sitaram Yechury’s insistence to hold the Congress hand in Kolkata must await clarity. Also, the Congress is fighting the CPM tooth and nail in Kerala. Should that also not require some clarity?

#          #          #          #

Remembering 40 Years Ago When Afghanistan, Pakistan, The Region Changed Forever

Remembering 40 Years Ago When Afghanistan, Pakistan, The Region Changed Forever

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

“Problems” like Afghanistan, even Iran, created in the thick of the Cold War, are now in the lap of a declining sole super power in a withdrawal mode. Since I was witness to both, the Saur and Islamic revolutions, I thought the New Year might be a good occasion to ferret out material from my notebook focusing on the Genesis. To synchronize with the arrival of 2019, let us revert to New Year’s Day, 40 years ago, 1978 when President Jimmy Carter accompanied by his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski arrived in New Delhi. Morarji Desai was Prime Minister and Atal Behari Vajpayee the Minister for External Affairs.

The two events need not be bound together by conspiracy theories but within four months of the Carter visit, the Saur revolution on April 28 brought Communists to power in Kabul. The next morning my story was banner headlines with Indian Express. That communists had taken over in Afghanistan. It was a world scoop. And I owed it to one impeccable source.

A year after Carter’s New Delhi visit, the Shah was dethroned by the Ayatullahs in Tehran. The youth in the vanguard of the revolution laid siege to US embassy from 4 November 1979 for 444 days until January 20, 1981. I still remember the tears of relief in Carter’s eyes as he embraced Vice President Walter Mondale when the hostages were released. The Carter Presidency was consumed by Iran. Soon murals of Uncle Sam went up with cryptic captions:

“Shaitaan e Buzurg” or Senior Satan. These incidents continued to cast a long shadow on the West’s fluctuating relations with Iran even during the bizarre Iran-contra deal when Iran, Israel and the US were in one amazing scrum.

The Shah’s notorious Savak agency, never secretive with the CIA, planned to eliminate the Left which was gaining in influence around President Mohammad Daud who had deposed King Zahir Shah in a coup in 1973. Thereafter, the King lived in exile, in Rome until the post 9/11 US occupation when he returned as Father of the Nation.

Two communist parties of Afghanistan, Khalq and Parchan corresponded more or less to India’s CPI and CPM. I was able to attend the historic press conference addressed by Afghanistan’s head of the government after the coup, Noor Mohammad Taraki. He was leader of the Khalq faction. It was on the margins of this occasion, where well informed middle level communist leaders were present, I picked up bits and pieces of how the coup came about.

On April 17, Mir Akbar Khyber, a trade union leader attached to the Parcham faction was murdered, exposing prematurely the plot to eliminate the Left. Thus alerted, Communist cells in the Army and the Air Force led by Aslam Watanjar and Abdul Qadir were activated. Reinforcement, entered the palace and killed Daud. Coming of the Communists to power paved the way for the Soviet invasion in December 1979.

Brzezinski was back in the region, this time in Pakistan, peering over the parapets into Afghanistan, plotting the world’s largest programme of breeding Salafists, arming them to the hilt, to wage war against Soviet occupation. After this war had been won, spare ultra-Islamic Jehadis, their morale boosted by having helped defeat a super power, flexed their muscles in Kashmir, Cairo, Algeria where the West blundered by helping the army upturn the result of the 1991 election which brought the Islamists Salvation Front in the lead. The cancellation of election results bred more Islamism. Another complicating factor has not been mentioned yet. Since 1990, the US egged on by UNICAL, the gas giant has developed a major interest in TAPI – Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India Pipeline. Brzezinski shrugged his shoulders: we wanted to bring down the Soviet Union; “we were not worried about some stirred up Muslims”.

I must put it down to lack of hard work on my part but the beginnings of the Islamic revolution have remained something of a haze. Was Ayatullah’s first instinct to give the new regime a civilian face? A few days after the revolution the person journalists like me were directed to meet was suave Prime Minister, Mehdi Bazargan. In form, feature, sartorial detail, he was the very antithesis of the Ayatullah. He looked very European in a bow-tie and spoke English like a French grandee. That he lasted barely nine months in that post was because of his strong opposition to the occupation of the American embassy and the taking of US hostages. Abolhassan Banisadr, who escorted Ayatullah Khomeini from exile in Neauphle-le-Chateau, 30 kms from Paris, was made President. He was exiled because of internal conspiracies.

From the holy city of QOM came stories of the civilians plotting to oust the Ayatullahs who required a civilian front because a true blue Islamic revolution cannot be deemed to have taken place in the absence of the 12^th Imam whose appearance will impart legitimacy to the revolution. The concept of the awaited messiah is common to all Abrahamic religions.

Various interests jump into a revolutionary situation to extract advantage. Just the other day Marine Le Pen with her fascist agenda tried to move in sideways into the yellow vest agitation in Paris. The confusing chaos caused a strong wing of the Ayatullahs dust up the theory of Vali Faqih or the intermediate Imam who can guide the revolution pending the appearance of the Mehdi or Messiah.

Like the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, one use of the Islamic revolution was to be the bulwark against the Soviets. But for them to play this role the pro Soviet Tudeh party, which had played a role in the success of the revolution, had to pay a price. They were no longer underground, as they had been during the Shah, and easy targets to be eliminated. A more radical Mujahideen e Khalq, crossed over to Iraq where Saddam Hussain nursed them as an anti Ayatullah force.

If the CIA had a hand in eliminating the Communists, well, by the same token they have helped consolidate the Ayatullahs. What joy in this outcome?

#          #          #          #

Announcing Withdrawals: Trump Is Doing What He Promised At Outset

Announcing Withdrawals: Trump Is Doing What He Promised At Outset

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

With the suddenness of revelation, withdrawal from Syria and “drawdown” from Afghanistan have been announced by Donald Trump. In the past such announcements were followed up with a tidy pattern: two steps forward, one step back. But this time debate and hesitation have been foreclosed. Witness the way Defence Secretary James Mattis is being shown the door because he finds himself not on the same page as the President.

Pundits will have difficulty digesting the proposition that President Donald Trump is setting out to do in Syria, Afghanistan, the Mexican border, Russia, what he had promised during the election campaign right upto its closing days in November 2016. He suddenly turned up in Baghdad to signal his disapproval of the mess his predecessors made of that expedition. Some cameos will be forgotten in the rush of news that must be expected.

I have followed Syria closely since August 2011 when I found myself in President Bashar al Assad’s office in Damascus. His adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, knitted her brows when I pointed out the ease with which US Ambassador, Robert Stephen Ford, along with his French counterpart, were driving around Hama, Homs, Daraa, all centres of agitation, meeting anti Assad insurgents. “Just shows how penetrated we were”, Shaaban said. The past tense is important.

Like colour revolutions elsewhere, the initial ignition was amplified by the global media to mobilize opinion in the region and beyond. An article by James Glanz and John Markoff in the New York Times gave graphic descriptions of the technology designed by the Obama administration to bypass state communication controls, and to deploy ‘shadow’ internet and mobile phone systems that “dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments.” Did I hear someone wail that Russian interfere in other countries?

Against this backdrop let me fast forward to Trump’s interview with Jake Tapper of the CNN just before the elections. “Where do you think have billions of dollars’ worth of arms – and cash – gone in the course of our involvement in Syria? To the extremists, ofcourse: I believe so.”

Trump was right. Obama’s Defence Secretary, Ashton Carter, made several humiliating Syria related announcements. His face in the lower mould, Carter announced that the $500 million project to train “rebels” in Syria was discontinued because arms reached groups the US intended to fight.

That the US intelligence agencies were mixed up with militant groups became more or less clear in subsequent leaks. An admission that Obama made to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in August 2015 when the rise of the ISIS was the big story is revealing. Friedman asked Obama why he had not bombed the ISIS when it first reared its head. The interview was given in August 2015. Obama minced no words. “That we did not just start taking a bunch of air strikes all across Iraq as soon as the IS came in was because that would have taken the pressure off Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki.” ISIS was, in other words, an asset then.

Maliki was in bad odour with the Obama establishment because he refused to sign the Status of Forces Agreement: “that would have involved the surrender of Iraqi sovereignty”. In this stand Maliki had the support of the Shia establishment at Najaf led by Grand Ayatullah Sistani. This stance of Sistani’s placed him on the wrong side of the American media. There is delicious irony in this. The media sang paeans of the high priest in 2005. In fact Friedman had written a column proposing Sistani for the Nobel Prize for the constructive role he played in inviting Iraqi Shias, an overwhelming majority in the country, to help stabilize electoral democracy.

True, a structure for the practice of democracy is in place in Baghdad but the Two River Civilization has been ripped apart and terrorism is endemic. On this too Trump, in his conversation with Tapper, pulls no punches:

“Saddam Hussain and Qaddafi may have been bad men but there was no terrorism in their countries. What we have created is terrorism.”

There have been many false troop withdrawal alarms in the past, even during the Trump years. The Syrian army, aided by the Russians, appeared to be in control, until the next eruption, in Aleppo, Del Azour, Idlib, anywhere. The motivation to keep the pressure up on Assad came principally from Riyadh. But a somewhat lame duck post Khashoggi. Riyadh is winding down in Yemen and probably lacking in spunk vis a vis Syria. A greater credibility therefore attends announcement of troop withdrawal on this occasion.

Trump’s announcement of drawing down troops in Afghanistan has coincided with the appointment of Amrullah Saleh as Minister of Interior. He is a Tajik, former spymaster and close adviser to the late Ahmad Shah Masood and a persistent critic of Pakistan’s role in the Afghan civil war. Let me share with you a flavour of Saleh’s thinking when I met him in Kabul a few years ago.

“The enemy is headquartered in Pakistan and he should be defeated there. For the US, the “expendable” part of the Taleban is in Afghanistan. Why would we ever collaborate with NATO who wish to kill Afghans they consider expendable? NATO has no strategy in the region because it has no policy towards Pakistan. They know they cannot defeat the Afghan Taleban without hitting hard at their bases in Pakistan.”

Much water has flown down the Kabul River since Saleh spoke to me. Trump’s newly appointed special Envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad has also tried to correct the image attached to him, that of being anti Pakistan. During a recent visit to Islamabad, Secretary of State Mike Pampeo, gave Khalilzad a high profile in his delegation. Much was made of the fact that Khalilzad visited Islamabad before New Delhi. Obviously, Khalilzad would like to get rid of the perception that he proposes a higher profile for India in Afghanistan.

Anyone interested in visually observing the success of India’s policy of “diplomacy by default”, a slow tortoise-like movement, should visit Hauz Rani opposite Max hospital where a virtual afghan colony has sprung up, eateries et al, harmoniously merging with the landscape.

#          #          #          #

An Oasis Of Peace In A Troubled World

An Oasis Of Peace In A Troubled World

                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Yellow vests in Paris, Brexit in Britain, Trump in the US, George Soros and Steve Bannon vying for the soul of Europe, Turkey embroiled in the Kurdish enclaves in Syria, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in post Khashoggi free fall, corruption allegations enveloping Netanyahu: In the midst of these global wind storms, cyclones, tornados is the calm centre which I visited last week. It is four hours flight away from New Delhi – indeed most major Indian cities – Qatar or, to be more precise, Doha, the capital, where 80 percent of the population lives.

For this reason, among others, traffic is a nightmare at peak hours. Bumper to bumper, Jaguars, Mercedes, BMWs, Land Rovers, Lexus – luxurious means of transport all static exhibits of high end automobiles in Doha’s traffic jams.

This is the price which the 300,000 Qataris, 700,000 Indians and a host of others who make up Qatar’s total population of nearly three million (mostly expatriates from countries as diverse as Sri Lanka, Ukraine and Georgia) have agreed to pay. With a little more inconvenience until 2022, the FIFA World Cup promises to shower incalculable windfalls on the country. Its GDP of 167.60 billion makes it the world’s richest country by World Bank calculations. Frenetic activity to build nine air conditioned football stadiums and all the infrastructure, roads, hotels and, to ease the traffic, an elaborate underground metro system are possible only when a country so small is insulated from upheavals endemic in the world all around. It is almost unreal.

In a strife ridden neighbourhood Qatar exceptionalism invites jealousy. The May-June 2017 closing of Saudi land border leads to a catastrophic situation. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan sever diplomatic relation, shut down the Al Jazeera channel, impose land, sea and air embargo. But the coordinated effort to bring Qatar to its heels boomerangs on the conspirators. With Metternich like diplomatic finesse, the Emir, Sheikh Tamim Al Thani (advised by his father) wove a formidable coalition. Just in case Saudi’s thought of a military adventure, Turkish troops in brigade strength had taken pre emptive positions in Qatar.

The line being enunciated by the strategic community in the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia is straightforward: the Shia-Sunni faultline in the Arab world will subsume the Palestinian issue. This is anathema to the Qatari rulers. A Sheikh with direct access to the palace minced no words: “There are two taboos in Qatar – never speak about intra tribe conflicts and total silence on Shia-Sunni identities. “ In the Emir’s framework, “We are all Qataris – period.” So firmly has this line been pursued that it is impossible to know whether Shias are five or fifteen percent of the population? In a country as rich as Qatar, the top three or four businessmen are Shias.

Broad spread of Wahabism in the GCC countries has been tempered with strands of Sunni belief, a fact which gives Qatar access to activists of the Akhwan ul Muslimeen or the Muslim Brotherhood which holds sway over Hamas in Gaza.

Brothers must be ruing the day they appointed the inept Mohamed Morsi as the President of Egypt after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. For that one year of Morsi’s rule, there was a coherent Muslim Brotherhood ring from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey to Hamas.

Hamas meanwhile had support from another formidable axis – Iran, Hezbollah, Syria. The paradox was that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ayatullahs in Iran representing two antithetical interpretations of Islam converged on the Palestinian cause. This was cause for alarm for Tel Aviv as well as Riyadh, the latter because the Brothers, like the Ayatullahs, are opposed to monarchies and wahabism. Little wonder the late King Abdullah turned up in Cairo with $8 billion to help Abdel Fattah el-Sisi stabilize himself after Morsi’s ouster. It was important to remove Egypt, a key link in the Brotherhood chain, for a simple reason. A similar effort to breach the Iran led axis, by bringing about a regime change in Syria, had come a cropper despite persistent efforts since 2011.

Egypt, the largest Sunni country having been neutralized, the idea of digging deep along the Shia-Sunni faultline received a determined push from Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Much to his irritation, his cousins in Qatar were, with great suppleness, as comfortable with the Brothers in Hamas as they were with Iranian support for the same cause.

The closer MBS gets to Israeli positions in the region, the more do the Qatar Emirs tap into their generosity towards the battered economy of Gaza. This goes down well even in today’s relatively desensitized Arab Street. Gaza civil servants were saved from abject penury when the Qataris picked up the entire salary bill for last month. More is in the pipeline.

While these gestures are lifesaving ones for Hamas, they are sources of annoyance to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority nurses conspiracy theories. Tel Aviv is aware of these transactions, say Palestinian officials, since most of this cash is transferred from Ben Gurion airport across Israeli territory.

Earlier, US sent $840 million to Hamas annually. But an essential part of Trumpism is to invite regional players to chip in for problems in their neighbourhood. The President’s son-in-law, Jarred Kushner’s recent talk of “Palestinian misery” is designed to invite the oil-rich Sheikhdoms to loosen their purse strings. By harping on this narrative, the Palestinian Authority is, by implication suggesting that Qatari generosity towards Gaza is at Washington and Israel’s bidding. If true, this more or less confirms the thesis popular in Doha and Ankara since the mid-90s: Turkey under Tayyip Erdogan’s three terms pursued a policy of zero conflict with neighbours and major powers. Likewise, Doha maintained excellent relations all around. In fact it was at American behest that Qatar opened an office for the Taleban in Doha as a channel for dialogue.

The genesis of the Saudi-Qatar bitterness is old, cavernous family feuds. But the recent reckless escalation by MBS is a function of his own irritation at the mess he has landed himself in Syria and Yemen. In these circumstances Qatar’s excellent relations with Iran stand in the way of MBS, Netanyahu, Kushner’s promotion of a Shia-Sunni faultline.

Who knows by 2022 when the universe will be riveted on the FIFA world cup, Khashoggi, like Banquo’s ghost, will continue to menace MBS, possibly to the bitter end.

#          #          #          #

Can Rahul’s Hinduism Succeed Where Bogus Secularism Failed?

Can Rahul’s Hinduism Succeed Where Bogus Secularism Failed?

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

It will be impossible to resist the temptation of attributing Congress gains in the three northern states to Rahul Gandhi’s demonstrative adoption of Hinduism. In some measure, that is. There are two ways of looking at it. It is a trick which worked. Or it is the enunciation of a line which has to be developed?

So effective has been the BJP’s saffronization of the atmosphere that even Communists shy away from discussing minorities. West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee has decided to build 10 Sun temples. Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav will build a Vishnu temple. There is, ofcourse, the biggest temple of all to be built in Ayodhya. If Rahul places his new found religiosity on a creative track, he can trump the BJP on that count too. Absurd though it may sound, he can, under certain circumstances, bring Muslims around to the idea that the ailing Lucknow cleric Maulana Kalbe Sadiq has been consistently propagating. Even if the Supreme Court verdict goes in their favour, Muslims should, in an act of magnanimity, help build the Rama temple. This cannot be expected of a community which sees itself as an object of hate. But if Rahul’s is an all-inclusive Hinduism where all are equal, well, the terms of endearment can change.

Rahul’s father, Rajiv Gandhi, after all, had the Ayodhya temple locks opened, an act which facilitated the temple movement. Rajiv promised “Ram Rajya” while inaugurating the 1989 election from Ayodhya. He allowed the bricklaying ceremony of the Ram Temple on disputed land but asked officials to look the other way. He fell between stools. Gingerly flirting with Hinduism proved counterproductive. Rahul has come out overtly, causing some of us to smirk. How far will it go?

The Congress, as Rahul must know, was implacably opposed to the “Two Nation” theory i.e. Hindus and Muslims constitute two distinct nations. Maulana Azad, President of the Congress from 1939 to 1945, had arrived at an agreement for an undivided India with the Cabinet Mission. He was unequivocal. “Partitioned India will be unadulterated Hindu Raj”.

It may have sounded rhetorical in the earlier years but where we have arrived is exactly what Azad had predicted. The Congress Working Committee meeting of June 3, 1947, accepted Mountbatten’s Partition plan. Why was Maulana Azad the only leader to have had serious misgiving? Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, wept. “You have thrown us to the wolves.” Only these two Doubting Thomases? All the others swallowed Partition hook-line-and sinker? With some reluctance, even Mahatma Gandhi accepted Partition. Atleast this is what Azad writes in “India Wins Freedom”.

An endorsement of Mountbatten’s plan to divide India implied that the two nation theory had been accepted. The creation of Pakistan was one step in that direction. Just as the neighbour was called Pakistan could we not have been named Hindustan? In reality, we glided seamlessly from British Raj to Hindu Raj but, ridden by a guilty conscience, hesitated to spell it out. It is this hesitation which created room for the BJP to step in and grow.

If I were a Hindu, I would ask, as the late Vinod Mehta, my friend of 60 years, asked me in his Nizamuddin apartment: “800 years of Muslim rule, 200 years of the British and next door there is now a Muslim state. Against this backdrop, would you grudge me a Hindu state?”

Volumes would have to be written to focus on the nuances embedded in Vinod’s query but for purposes of a quick column this may be the appropriate moment to touch on issues now that the Indian National Congress has, with unprecedented honesty, embraced its Hindu credentials. And, on current showing, the switch has been accepted by the people.

Nehru would have been uncomfortable with “Hindu Raj” for a variety of reasons but the overriding reason for keeping aside “Hindu Raj” was realpolitik: what principle would then be cited to keep Kashmir?

When the founding fathers charted a course of neutrality, tolerance, respect for all religions without priviledging any one of them, they had probably not taken into account the crucial reality: a multi religious, multi ethnic, multi lingual, society frozen for centuries in a caste system, suddenly exposed to notions of democracy, upward mobility egalitarianism would create upheavals. A society inherently unequal was being set on a path of equality. The way ahead had to be unspeakably turbulent.

Add to this the following: the world’s largest minority and third largest Muslim population which had no role in the creation of Pakistan found itself unable to produce that certificate of nationalism which is not available without a compulsive hatred for Pakistan. This hatred, tied with the televised image of Kashmiris as terrorists and Indian Muslim as a potential fifth column is a lethal mix, custom made for a societal wreck, which is what we are today.

How can Rahul calm this cauldron? By deftly upping the ante for the BJP? While the Hindutva brigade is busy changing names of lanes and culverts, should he sail above the BJP? Should he insert in the Congress manifesto “Hindustan” as the official name to replace the ambivalence of “India that is Bharat”?

All of this flounders against the logic that Muslims and other minorities may not be comfortable with the overt Hinduization of a party which has so far pretended to stand on a secular platform. There is an abundance of warped minds who are obstinately attached to labels like secularism without critically examining where this bogus secularism has landed them.

I constantly give the example of a society like Britain. Christianity is the official religion. This fact has not stood in the way of Sadiq Khan being the Mayor of London, Sajid Javed, Home Secretary and Moeen Ali as a regular man of the match and so on. This is not because the Anglo Saxon is inherently secular. This is so because the rule of law prevails resulting in social harmony.

The Sachar Committee report on the socio economic condition of Muslims was bad enough. In 70 years they have been brought down to the lowest rung. Hysterical focus by the electronic media on Pakistan, Kashmir and by inference, Indian Muslims, has fouled up the atmosphere so much as to justify the Washington Post headline “Modi’s India is a living nightmare for Muslims”.

The results from the three northern states will serve as a balm. Let Rahul build upon it.

#          #          #          #