Ghastly Sri Lanka Tragedy And Strategic Interests Of Big Powers

Ghastly Sri Lanka Tragedy And Strategic Interests Of Big Powers

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

Not far back in time, Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 hijackers, Wahabis, Salafis, Jabhat al Nusra and their numerous variants, were all traced to Saudi Arabia. Today all of that has been placed in the margin of amnesia. Instead, the US, Israel and some Europeans are inviting all and sundry to go hammer and tongs at Iran.

In a world order so topsy-turvy, where does one turn for help to gauge sources of global terror like the one which struck Colombo? Which Intelligence Agency does one put ones money on?

The ground for current terrorism was laid in the 80s when Mujahideen were manufactured in the Salafi mould with Saudi money, American training and equipment and hundreds of Pakistan built Madrasas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border primarily to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan. Once this mission was accomplished in 1989, Americans returned home leaving high voltage Islam to find work. And work, it did find with a vengeance, in Kashmir, Egypt and Algeria.

Ingredients for extremism were thus available when the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 inspired the US to put its imprimatur on the great victory. Operation Desert Storm was launched in February 1992 to teach Saddam Hussain a lesson for his transgression into Kuwait. Desert Storm is a landmark: it was to cover this event that the global media was born. For the first time in history, a war was brought live into people’s homes. For the West it was a celebration of triumph over another system. For Iraq and the Muslim world it was yet another defeat, humiliation, helplessness. Coverage of one event on global television had divided the world into two hostile camps – a triumphant West and a defeated, demoralized Muslim world.

This chasm widened a hundred fold with the two Intefadas, the four year long Bosnian war, 9/11, air strikes and occupation of Afghanistan, the bogus search for weapons of mass destruction leading to the occupation of Iraq, destruction of Mesopotamia and so on.

As a reaction, Jehadi terror began to evolve as a target against which nations could forge coalitions. Then, as an afterthought, terror groups also began to be seen as assets to be let loose on enemies. This latter game became transparent during the Syrian conflict. Countries like Saudi Arabia began to play a lead role in inducting, breeding, arming Jehadis of the most ferocious variety against President Bashar al Assad, casting him as a “brutal Shia” (therefore heathen) who had to be replaced. US, Israel, Qatar, Turkey, all joined the expedition. The US, began to train and equip militant groups. President Obama’s Defence Secretary Ashton Carter was virtually in tears at being grilled by the Congress as well as the media. In one instance atleast (there were others) he had to wind up a $500 million project on live TV because the Jehadists trained by the Americans had walked away, with the heavy equipment and presumably joined some other group.

The sudden establishment of the Islamic State in Mosul remains an uninvestigated mystery. When the IS charged towards Baghdad wielding the latest arms mounted on Humvees straight from the showroom, my sources in Najaf were convinced of their American sponsorship. Every Arab Ambassador in New Delhi at least (except the GCC) was quite candid: this is an American project. They seemed to make sense because candidate Trump himself told Jake Tapper of the CNN that the Obama-Hillary Clinton team had “spent millions in creating terror groups in Syria.” In an interview with the New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman in August 2015, Obama admitted to the uses of the ISIS. Asked why he did not bomb the IS when it first reared its head, Obama said: “We did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq because that would have taken the pressure off Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki.” In other words, ISIS was an American asset at that juncture. Maliki, an aggressive Shia, had refused to sign the Status of Forces agreement with the US preparatory to their departure from Iraq. The pressure worked. Maliki was replaced.

Later, Friedman advises President Trump in one of his columns not to waste his time fighting the IS. He wants “Trump to be Trump – utterly cynical and unpredictable.”

Friedman adds: “Trump should let ISIS be Assad’s, Iran’s, Hezbullah’s and Russia’s headache.” At the opposite ideological end of the spectrum is that great chronicler of West Asia, Robert Fisk. In a different context, he writes, Trump does not realize that “Israel bombs only the Syrian army, the Shia Hezbullah in Syria but has never ever the IS. In fact the Israelis have given medical aid to fighters from Jabhat al Nusra which is part of Al Qaeda which attacked the US on 9/11.” By Fisk’s testimony, IS is an Israeli asset too.

At a conference on regional issues in New Delhi, Morgulov Igor Vladimirovich, Russia’s Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, startled the gathering. Since the war in Syria has wound down, the Islamic State is as spare today as the Afghan Mujahideen were in 1989. Vladimirovich’s allegation caused raised eyebrows.

“ISIS fighters are being flown to Northern Afghanistan.”

“Since the Afghan air space is under the control of the US and the Afghan government, who is responsible for this transfer of the IS?” he asked. An allegation of much greater global resonance was by Iran’s Supreme leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. In the course of his Friday address on January 30, 2018, he said: “The US transfer of terrorists to Afghanistan is aimed at creating a justification for its continuing stay in the region.”

Xinxiang, the Caucasus are all vulnerable to IS blackmail, as are other, smaller countries. But remember, IS is also seen by some powers as an asset. A ghastly tragedy can shake a nation. That is precisely when powerful Intelligence Agencies move in with help, advice which, over a period of time, becomes the kind of deep penetration which begins to navigate policy.

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Ram’s Birth In Ayodhya: Memorable View From Sanctum Sanctorum

Ram’s Birth In Ayodhya: Memorable View From Sanctum Sanctorum

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

There was a singular absence of frenzy last week in Ayodhya on the occasion of Ram Navmi. As the campaign for election 2019 rose to a crescendo, one would have expected the Hindutva Brigade to turn up in full force for several reasons. To obtain the Lord’s blessings for the do or die battle. And to focus on Ayodhya to keep the issue simmering during these crucial elections. True, the matter is in court but so is the Sadhvi Pragya Thakur matter. When were such niceties sacrosanct for the current lot? More likely, the Mandir-Masjid soufflé is not rising.

I have seldom seen Rama’s city so bereft of political presence. The old colonial bungalow refurbished as Faizabad’s Circuit House looks like a spruced up haunted haven. Cooks, bearers, housekeepers, in white, appear at one end and shuffle past with no apparent work in hand. Well past midnight, there is a knock on the door. “Please let me have your remote” a voice implores. Spooky, isn’t it? Apparently someone of consequence has arrived unexpectedly. It turns out that a solitary remote services all the air conditioners which are available in abundance. Even the dressing rooms are air conditioned.

Cross into Ayodhya and throngs of devotees chanting Jai Sia Ram choke the lanes. Milling crowds climb the wide staircase of the Kanak Bhawan Ram temple. Chanting devotees come in waves, their hands uplifted in reverence, eyes focused on the jharoka or balcony beyond which aarti begins at 11 am in preparation for the Lord’s birth at noon. But even at noon there is no frenzy, just chants of reverence accompanied by a surge towards the balcony for a closer experience of the moment of birth.

I do not know how purists will take this report but my wife and I are rather proud that we had more than a ringside seat, virtually within whispering distance of the birthing suite where Ram was born. The pujari with a “thal” or plate of lamps makes circles around the imaginary bed. The lights flicker on the gold silk and taffeta, neatly folded in Ram and Sita’s wardrobes lining the walls all around us. Once Ram lalla is born, Madhukar Singh of Orchha and his Rani wave a “murchal” a sort of whisk in slow, pampering motions around the infant. Madhukar’s ancestors, the rulers of Orchha in Bundelkhand, built the Kanak Bhawan Ram temple complex in the late 19^th century. Since then it has been the responsibility of the family to personally supervise Ram Navmi and other festivals associated with Ram. It is hard to imagine larger crowds, steeped in such unadulterated reverence. Pardon the thought, but is there a need for a parallel temple of contention which will only neutralize the good natured atmospherics of the birthday celebrations in this magnificent Ram Mandir?

Our visit was a function of both: my passionate pursuit of the multicultural and Madhukar Orcha’s profound hospitality. The red and yellow thread the priest tied on my wrist was, in its minutest detail, similar to what my mother did to visitors of diverse faiths who visited our village home during Moharram. In fact even the Imambara, where a replica of Imam Hussain’s tomb in Karbala is kept, was not very dissimilar to the sanctum sanctorum – all peculiarly Indian.

Mosques, ofcourse, are different. There is a great deal in common between the Jama Masjid, Blue Mosque or the Shah Abbas mosque in Delhi, Istanbul and Isfahan respectively. But these mosques, in their distinct grandeur, are marvels of architecture. Not surprising, therefore, that in Ayodhya, the thought of Babari Masjid, should cross one’s mind. It was by no stretch of the imagination a historic mosque. It had no architectural merit compared to the ones listed above. In August 1989 when I visited Ayodhya for the Shilanyas, the scene was distressing. I have since found myself on the same wavelength as the moderate cleric, Maulana Kalbe Sadiq. Since his cancer has galloped to its last stages, what the Maulana says is virtually his last will and testament:

“A Muslim can spread his prayer-mat anywhere, facing the Kaaba, and say his prayers; a Hindu consecrates the idol forever. The difference is enormous. Just look at the Muslims in India today: unwise politics around the Mandir-Masjid issue has contributed greatly to their unhappy situation.”

If Muslims win the Ayodhya case in the Supreme Court and decide to make a gift of the land for the construction of the temple, “The gesture will electrify Hindu masses; communal politics will be defeated.”

The soft, reverential tones of the ceremonies at the Ram temple are such a welcome relief from the warlike atmosphere of intrigue and deception that we witnessed during the Shilanyas 30 years ago.

I can never forget, the District Magistrate of Faizabad, Ram Sharan Srivastava’s harassed face under instructions to implement the underhand, duplicitous order handed over to him by the Congress High Command – Rajiv Gandhi, Arun Nehru and Narayan Datt Tiwari.

The situation was this: Allahabad High Court had stayed any brick laying on “disputed” land. But Ashok Singhal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad threatened “rivers of blood”, if Shilanyas were not held where the VHP wanted it. The District Magistrate was instructed to accede to Singhal’s demand “confidentially”. In other words, brick laying would be allowed clandestinely on disputed land. Singhal had agreed to keep this secret. But the Congress, to score brownie points, announced that the brick laying ceremony was allowed only on land which was “not disputed”. No sooner was the handout issued, than Singhal, not to be upstaged, held a press conference. “We have laid the Foundation Stone at exactly the place within our construction plan.” The Congress double crossed the people; Singhal double crossed the Congress – and all in the name of Maryada Purushottam, the perfect man.

I removed this nightmare from my mind and left the sanctum sanctorum remembering Allama Iqbal’s couplet:

“Hai Ram ke wajood pe Hindostaan ko naz

Ehle nazar samajhte hain usko Imam e Hind.”  

(Ram is Hindustan’s pride. Men of vision consider him the Imam of Hindustan.)

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Priyanka Preparing UP For 2022, Rahul The Congress For 2024

Priyanka Preparing UP For 2022, Rahul The Congress For 2024

                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

It is true that there are no permanent enemies or permanent friends in politics. But this Machiavellian law is clearly not applicable when a coalition of parties is in the midst of an existential battle. No one can grudge the Congress party’s desire to revive, but fighting the main enemy, in this case the BJP, and at the same time firing lethal rounds at allies has created bad blood among coalition partners.

Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav and Ajit Singh (BSP, SP, RLD) have spoken out in unison: “there is no difference between the Congress and the BJP.” The other day “Gathbandhan” was in a huddle, counting the number of seats where the Congress has entered the fray “as a spoiler”. In Saharanpur, Kheri, Badaun, Sant Kabir Nagar, Sitapur, Bijnor and so on – the Congress is helping not the “gathbandhan” but the BJP.

Why is the Congress in this mode of double containment? One does not have to look far for hints and guesses: Priyanka Gandhi has, in so many words, clarified her party’s intention. “We are preparing the ground for 2022” – the Assembly elections. In other words, for the Nehru-Gandhi parivar, the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are not a matter of life and death. Will Narendra Modi return signal the end of democracy, usher in Fascism and worse? The Congress is not taken in by such alarmist nonsense.

The Congress has not been able to properly market some of its smart, double edged moves. Fielding Rahul from Wayanad in Kerala has been criticized for the obvious reason: that Wayanad is a seat from where the Congress always wins. The unnecessary insertion of the Congress President in the battle has signaled the party’s antipathy towards the Left with which it had been in conversation for some co-ordination in West Bengal. The Wayanad episode came on the heels of the West Bengal arrangement being spurned by the Congress. The coincidence amplified Congress ambivalence, its inability to decide whether it should strengthen the opposition or weaken regional forces. It probably feels that it looks relatively more muscular for future” battles by undoing its own allies. What the Congress has not marketed is this: Rahul from Wayanad may block Congress candidates fleeing towards the BJP which is aching to open its account in Kerala.

Also the intellectual pool around the Congress President appears to have been influenced by the pro Modi media which has projected 2019 as a Presidential contest. This is not new. During the 2014 elections, Arnab Goswami, as the oracle and arbiter of national destiny, was on the same trajectory. He attempted to lure Rahul into his parlour for a Modi-Rahul debate. It did not work out because Rahul was dreaming dreams of building the party brick by brick, village Panchayat upwards, a high pyramid with a wide base.

In fact Rahul had brought in a former election Commissioner K.J. Rao to organize a system of primaries for election to the Youth Congress and National Students Union of India. He sought expert help to select 16 untainted Lok Sabha candidates as a sort of pilot project. At this speed, one wondered, how long will it take Rahul to identify 543 Lok Sabha candidates?

On the pain of digressing a bit, there is a detail of considerable political import I would like to insert here.

What is the reason that the 2004 to 2009 was possibly the cleaner innings that Manmohan Singh played? One reason is that he had outside support of 60 Left Front members who enabled the Congress to keep the riff raff at bay. True they had ideological objections to the nuclear deal with the US, but corruption was nowhere in the vicinity of that arrangement. Fierce Right Wing pressure resulted in the Left’s departure.

The replacement of the Left by greedy interests, opened the floodgates of corruption on a scale that Modi, backed by the world’s most expensive campaign, harnessed to his dramatic advantage. Very few in the Congress remember: after the party turned its back on the Left, it came down to its lowest ever tally – 44 seats.

I have already dwelt on Rahul’s diffidence on the eve of 2014 elections, when his party had its best score in two decades – 209 seats. And now with merely 44 under his belt is it realistic to expect him to bust his guts for the ultimate trophy?

Not surprising, therefore, that in the space of a month both Rahul and Priyanka have publicly backtracked. They have both said separately that they are preparing the ground, particularly in UP, for 2022. Party men are thinking of 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In striking this posture, they miss the basic point. Election 2019 was supposed to focus on bringing down the BJP. The front page photographs on May 23, 2018 in Bengaluru and January 19, 2019 in Kolkata of the Mahagathbandhan represented a United Front against the BJP. Once this mission was accomplished, the coalition would get into a huddle to select the leader of the House.

Had Congress played the game in good faith, the leadership selection phase would have been relatively smooth. Numbers would have influenced the outcome. Btu the manner in which candidates have been fielded by the Congress, particularly against Mayawati, ensures a messy endgame.

If the results are more or less even, this would, for the BJP be an excellent election to lose. The Ram Temple remains unbuilt. Kashmir and the Pakistan cauldrons are bubbling over. On each one of these issues, the B team of the BJP namely the Congress will simply wilt. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was succinct: chances of an Indo-Pak dialogue are more likely in the event of Modi winning, because a weak opposition government would be too much in a state of funk to go against the current of anti Pak nationalism.

Much of this is highly speculative. Should the BJP numbers fall just enough to qualify it for the largest single party status, Naveen Patnaik, K. Chandrashekar Rao, Jaganmohan Reddy in Odisha, Telengana and Andhra Pradesh will be inclined to leap from their fence but only on their terms which will most certainly include a change of leadership in the BJP.

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Progressive Manifesto Gives One Signal, Fighting Left In Kerala Another

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

Rahul Gandhi’s choice of Wayanad as his constituency in South India has set tongues wagging. Is this an insurance just in case there is a shock reversal in Amethi? Since he is fighting the BJP in the company of regional parties, is the Amethi – Wayanad arc designed to give him, and his party, an all India aura?

There was a resonance about “Indiramma” in the South. Even when Indira Gandhi was trounced by the electorate in 1977 for her emergency misdemeanours, she retained her hold in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Chenna Reddy and Devraj Urs were among the most powerful Chief Ministers the Congress party ever fielded anywhere.

True to form, Indira Gandhi removed the powerful Chenna Reddy from Andhra Pradesh and placed on the Gaddi in Hyderabad a weak, even a comical Tangutri Anjaiah whom she had known as a junior labour minister at the Centre.

Subsequently, Rajiv Gandhi and his cocky cousin and adviser, Arun Nehru, roundly insulted the Chief Minister by keeping him outside the Hyderabad airport lounge while he and the young Prime Minister discussed matters of moment. It was only after the “insult” became part of popular gossip, that N.T. Rama Rao, placed his cinematic charisma at the disposal of “Andhra Pride”. That is how the Telugu Desam party was formed. Chandrababu Naidu, a talented administrator, is the late NTR’s son-in-law.

If the space for Rahul was a little dicey in Andhra and Telengana, a seat in Karnataka would have been custom made for the Congress President. His arrival would have given further coherence to the Congress-JDS alliance which is pitted against a fiercely competitive BJP. The party leader B.S. Yedurappa leapt with joy when Balakot happened: “The BJP will now win 22 out of 28 seats in Karnataka.” Rahul’s participation in this battle would have boosted the combine’s chances and his image as an anti BJP campaigner.

In Wayanad he is not fighting the BJP. He is fighting the Left Front. This confusion has been persistent in the Congress’s approach to 2019. A party with 44 seats in Parliament cannot dream of fighting the BJP on its own. It needs allies. The difficulty is that its quest for allies collides with its innate urge to revive. This causes it to lose focus of the main target, the BJP, and poach in the turf of it’s would be allies.

Ideally the dominant parties in the regions, (TMC in West Bengal, for instance) should have been given the luxury of concentrating on one target – the BJP. In this framework, the Congress should have concentrated in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh where the party did well in the recent assembly elections. But this conflicts with the party’s self-image of a national party.

How realistic is this “self-image”? In 1947, the Congress represented shades of interests federated behind a programme for freedom. Extreme, sometimes conflictual ideologies, simmered in the Congress cauldron. Take this as an example. Krishna Menon, a leftist in the Congress, fought an election from Mumbai the same year that arch capitalist S.K. Patil did from another district. In 1967, eight seats were lost to Indira Gandhi. The diversity in the Congress womb left it one by one. The “Hindu” in the Congress DNA was always pronounced. Madan Mohan Malaviya, Purushottam Das Tandon, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad and Govind Ballabh Pant were never creatures of what Jawaharlal Nehru sought to market as “composite culture”. They wanted a Hindu India; Nehru a Hindu led secular India.

The post Babari Masjid hemorrhaging was in two streams. The lower end of the caste pyramid flowed to the caste parties. The reminder, by and large, became interchangeable with the BJP. There has been a bewildering volume of toing and froing between the two parties.

It is against this backdrop that observers will gauge the party’s long term intentions. The irony is that the manifesto that Rahul unveiled is a document of substance which qualifies the party to be slotted as a progressive, left of centre force. This image alone will distinguish it from the BJP whose B team it had begun to look like in its recent behavior.

It is possible to argue that whichever way Kerala’s 20 Parliamentary seats are divided, all the seats will be listed in the margin of parties in opposition to the BJP. But there is a nuance in Kerala’s electoral politics which needs to be understood.

After decades of trying, the BJP has only one seat in the Assembly. This is not for want of RSS cadres. The initial thrust of the Sangh in the state was to weaken the Left in Kerala. Congress leaders like K. Karunakaran exploited the BJP’s anti Left slant to the UDF’s advantages. In fact, there was a phase when two diametrically opposite attitudes towards the BJP had legitimacy within the Congress. Arjun Singh the Nehruvian secularist in the Congress fought the BJP tooth and nail in Madhya Pradesh. Karunakaran on the other hand had a subtle, unstated co-ordination with the BJP in Kerala.

By taking Wayanad in preference to other constituencies in the South, Rahul has decided to take on the Left. This, in my view, is not a happy perception to market. Particularly after having led the CPM General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury up the garden path in West Bengal. It did not agree with the Left’s meagre terms. And now it fights it in Kerala.

It appears that the electronic media as a noisy Modi drum beater and the Prime Minister’s own ranting style has begun to pall to a point where it has begun to affect the electoral turf. The BJP is in some disarray. These are just the moments, when all the opposition parties, including the Congress, should in their own interest, play keeping in mind the people’s pulse.

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Another Arab Spring In Algeria Or Is It Something Else?

Another Arab Spring In Algeria Or Is It Something Else?

                                                                              Saeed Naqvi

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is a tragic variation on Shaukat Thanvi’s short story “Mir Bedana”, the toothless old man who fantasized he could still frolic. Bouteflika is much worse. He is on a wheelchair after a stroke in 2013. Lakhdar Brahimi a former Foreign Minister and a friend of the incapacitated President has the following health report on him: “I think he can hear, but you can’t hear him.”

Robert Fisk of the Independent tells it as it is: “he is being prevented from entering his grave”. But the space in Bouteflika’s heart is not yet devoid of desire. At 82, he was aiming for a record fifth term. But his rendezvous with destiny has been cut by the army chief Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah who, alas, is a loyalist. He owes his stature to the President. So the Gen. has softened the blow by invoking article 102 of the constitution which calls for a constitutional council which, lo and behold, is headed by another loyalist, Tayeb Belaiz. The Council to certify the President’s health, has 12 members.

These fun and games have been managed by a narrow, incestuous elite which is being asked to shed power by a confluence of circumstances. Hundreds of thousands of youth and middle class professional have taken to the streets demanding democratic reforms. What has boosted the power of these protests is because the establishment can no longer conceal the decrepit President from public view.

Arab history has no examples of elites vacating power because the people want them to.

The people smell a rat in the army’s slow moves. They fear that once demonstrations end, the elite will resurface.

The Viceregal presence of the French in Algiers must never be underestimated. The French have coped with stirrings of their own. The yellow vest have been on the streets of France for the past five months. They had started out as a threat to President Emanuel Macron but have, by sheer attrition, been tamed. As a result Macron’s popularity has risen. Since the French have their fingers deep in the colonial pies, whether in Algeria or Mali and Chad, all rich in oil and minerals, they at the moment can set themselves up as a model. Look how patiently the yellow vests are being allowed to dissipate themselves.

The most convenient idea to take root in the minds of the army, businessmen, war veterans – in brief the ruling clique or the oligarchy is this: not to upset the status quo. The easiest trick is to run fast to stand still. The implication is not that the Algerian army, part of the country’s romance claiming continuity with the war which brought independence from France in 1962, may seize power. It is already the most powerful pillar of the establishment. It needs a pliable front. But decades of non-politics since independence has rendered the soil infertile for democratic political faces to shine. As a consequence there is no noticeable political talent around.

A crucial phase of democracy did flare up but was doused. This brief history appears to have become a victim of amnesia. Some Algerians justifiably, claim that they authored the first Arab Spring in 1988 when nationwide violence erupted, demanding an end to one party rule since 1962.

Multi-Party elections in 1991 did deliver a democratic verdict but one not to the liking of the army and its patrons in Paris. The Islamic Salvation Front won nearly two thirds of the seats in the first round. The army panicked and cancelled the second round. That triggered a civil war which lasted a decade.

The myopic elite in Paris, Algiers and elsewhere had learnt no lessons from, say, the coming to power of the Ayatullahs in Iran. The Islamic revolution is a complex subject but, for the sake of simplicity, consider this: the Shah and the notorious Savak shut out all political expression. The mosque became the only ventilator for the people. The mosques were not likely to preach Marxism: they educated the congregations about Islamic tenets to overthrow monarchies. The Shah of Iran was Shia. Consider then the anxiety with which the West Asian Wahabi, Sunni monarchies view Iran. Coordination with Israel has come in handy.

Instead of realizing that snuffing popular discontent by strong arm tactics would heat up the Algerian basement and strengthen anything that grows in mosques, the army chose to throttle democracy by cancelling the election of 1991. At a terrible cost too – taking a toll of 2,00,000 Algerian lives. Embedded in this brief history is answer to a question: why did the Arab Spring of 2011 not touch Algeria? Algerians refused to be infected by the Arab Spring. They had fresh memories of a brutal civil war.

True, the army defeated the insurgency. Btu has the Islamic Salvation Front been totally erased? It would be a mistake to imagine so. Let us for a moment consider the case of the Islamic movement in Turkey. Televised brutalities of Bosnia, Sarajevo, once Turkish enclaves, aggravated anti West Islamism in Turkey. The Refah party under Necmettin Erbakan came to power. The Army as guardians of Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s secular constitution, removed Erbakan. It was later, in the second round, that Erbakan’s disciples, Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul launched their secular “Justice and Development Party” which has been in the saddle for the fourth term and there is no end in sight.

The Army in Algeria was able to set aside the Islamic Front with the total support of the West. It has never been properly analyzed what contribution severe repression of the Islamic Front played in the post 9/11 exponential growth of both, Islamism and Islamophobia.

More recently, Egyptian army Chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, with full support of the Pentagon and Israel, placed the popularly elected Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi in jail. In whose interest was this expedition undertaken? Have those interests been served? The jury is out on that one.

Incarcerating the popular will is never a good idea in the long run. The Algerian army triggered a civil war in 1992 by suppressing the popular will. They must be careful this time.

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Thanks To Ardern, New Zealand Today Soothes The Soul

Thanks To Ardern, New Zealand Today Soothes The Soul

                                                                             Saeed Naqvi

Those who have rushed to psychoanalyze 28 year old Australian, Brenton Tarrant, for the outrage in Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques killing 50 people, are concealing the reality, possibly without their knowing it. This line of inquiry will not explain why Christchurch or Pulwama, Utrecht and now Birmingham happened.

When Phoolan Devi, the low caste “mallah” (boatwoman) shot dead 22 high caste Rajputs in the village of Behmai, 80 kms from Kanpur in UP on February 4, 1981, she had taken the law into her own hands. This she had done because no law enforcement agency had come to her rescue when the very same men had locked her in a room and taken turns, repeatedly, to rape her over weeks. It was gross injustice she was fighting.

During the British mandate over Palestine, Jews formed Haganah a secret, militant organization – guns, hand grenades et al – to protect Jewish enclaves against “Arab gangs”.  Why was Haganah formed? Perceived injustice. In 1939 the British produced a White Paper restricting Jewish immigration. That is when the French built ocean liner, Patria, carrying nearly 2000 Jews to Mauritius was sunk off Haifa killing 267 people. Later, the same group – its offshoot Irgun – bombed the King David hotel in Jerusalem, killing 28 British soldiers. Both were ghoulish acts. But would Menachem Begin, Member of Haganah later Prime Minister have seen it this way? According to their lights, Begin and, indeed, the entire Haganah outfit were fighting British injustice.

April 13 will be the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar. Colonel Reginald Dyer’s character or a psycho analysis will not shed light on whether or not police action was required on a scale which killed 1,000 people. The official British figure was 379 dead. Lt. Governor of Punjab, Gen. Michael O’Dwyer justified military action on administrative grounds. This is not the way Udham Singh the nationalist saw the massacre. He turned up in the UK and shot dead Gen. O’Dwyer in March 13, 1940 at the Caxton hall, now Royal Society for Royal Affairs. It was injustice he was fighting.

In his trial Udham Singh said: “He wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I crushed him. For full 21 years I have been trying to wreak vengeance. I am happy that I have done the job.” There are series of such incidents which the state would have considered acts of terror. The perpetrators have been celebrated as martyrs and patriot including the great Bhagat Singh. They were fighting an unequal battle against injustice.

During a visit to Libya, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State appeared on global TV making a V sign and blurting out the unforgettable line, “I came, I saw and he died.” Even as she spoke this masterpiece of callousness, appeared on the screen images of Qaddafi screaming, being sodomized by a knife. Would this not have made the Libyan blood boil with sheer helplessness?

And not just Libya. Imagine the relentless destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, all the 9/11wars. Millions are killed. Begins the migrant trek to Europe which all but shuts its doors, forgetting that just the other day it was complicit in destroying their homes, their cities and villages.

The samples I have touched upon are of people experiencing injustice, suffocated and, presumably, waiting for their time. But the perpetrator of the Christchurch outrage is in a different category. He experienced no injustice. His phobia, like that of his fellow murderer from Norway, Anders Breivik, derives from the contemporary curse called the global media. They have been fed on the post Soviet Union, post 9/11 wars mentioned above. But they have seen these stories covered by a media which has mysteriously cast victims as villains. Jean Raspail’s novel “Camp of the Saints” shows destruction of Western civilization through third world immigration. This becomes Tarrant’s nightmare.

I was witness to the launch of the global media in Baghdad on January-February 1991. The Operation Desert Storm was covered live by Peter Arnett of the CNN. Not to comprehend the significance of this event is to miss out on the nature of International Affairs in the post-Soviet period. Remember, the Berlin wall fell in 1989; Soviet Union came down like melting ice cream in 1991. This was the first time in human history that coverage of a war was brought live into our drawing rooms.

The coverage divided the world into two hostile camps – the triumphant West and the defeated, demoralized Muslim nations. This critical division got amplified exponentially as the two Intefadas erupted, followed by the four yearlong Bosnia war bringing, once again the brutalities heaped upon Bosnian Muslims, day after day. The climax came with the 9/11 wars and the unbelievable fireworks over Afghanistan.

With each war and accompanying global coverage the West-Muslim divide widened. It was this atmosphere so thoroughly saturated with Islamophobia which shaped the minds of Breivik and Brenton Tarrant. Leaders like George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Australia’s John Howard cynically used this “othering” of the world’s Muslims as a strategy for western cohesion. Fear of terrorism, real or simulated, resulted in loss of status of foreign offices. Intelligence agencies acquired saliency.

In India, the sheer hypocrisy of the elite shrouded and thereby aggravated a corresponding division between non Muslims and Muslims stoked by our anchors. The new liberal economic policies of the 90s demanded a multiplication of TV channels. This coincided with accelerated communalization after the fall of the Babari Masjid in 1992. Capitalism and communalism joined hands and set the national agenda conducive to the consolidation of Hindu nationalism. In the ranks of these nationalist it would not be impossible to find willingness to give a sympathetic quarter to Brenton Tarrant. But to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern goes the credit for having taken the fierce current head on. Do an opinion poll anywhere: she is the compassionate leader the world is looking for. Donald Trump minimized the outrage and all but approved of Tarrant. Thanks to Ardern, New Zealand today feels like a land for pilgrimage to sooth the soul.

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The Return Of The Brahmin?

The Return Of The Brahmin?

                                                  Saeed Naqvi

In 1996 my book “The Last Brahmin Prime Minister” was on the stands. The title was so controversial that friends like Dilip Padgaonkar stopped talking to me – but only for a short while. He was too dear a friend.

And now that my mind is working in the reverse direction I am going to miss Dilip’s call as soon as this article appears. “The Return of the Brahmin?” Why has this thought germinated in my mind? Well it was Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala’s emphatic description of Rahul Gandhi as a “janeudhari” Brahmin which first caused me to wonder why a questionable label was being thrust upon Rahul. The penny dropped when I remembered K. Karunakaran’s untiring efforts to Brahminize Rahul’s father, Rajiv Gandhi. A high caste Marar (a caste of temple drumbeaters), Karunakaran held a special office at South India’s greatest Krishna temple, Guruvayur, where he frequently invited Rajiv for “Ang pradarshan”, a ceremony of lying flat on the ground in abject supplication. How many notches Rajiv climbed up the caste order is less quantifiable. What can be confirmed without any shadow of a doubt is something more delicious: Rajiv fell so wildly in love with Guruvayur’s famous “payasam”, or rice dessert that Karunakaran was obliged to ferry vast quantities of the stuff to Lakshadweep where the young Prime Minister was spending New Year’s Eve with his extended family.

So, this time round, a “Janeudhari” Rahul must have a game plan. He could well be in competition with Mamata Banerjee, Nitin Gadkari and, surprise of surprises, Pranab Mukherjee. Folks who know the former President say: “Barkis is willing”. This kind of contingency planning has surfaced because of the hesitant manner in which the Congress President has been playing the coalition game.

First, he allowed Sheila Dikshit to poke her fingers in the eyes of AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal. This sent a shiver down the spine of the “gathbandhan”. AAP was guaranteed to down all seven of the BJP candidates in Delhi. By pitching her flag in all the seven seats, Dikshit was only ensuring a BJP revival in Delhi. That this game plan of hers was not openly criticized by the party high command sent out a signal that the party was more instinctively liable to play an upper caste game than one in a coalition of unequals. Before this nasty thought could be dispelled, came Dikshit’s statement describing Narendra Modi as being more effective in fighting terror – witness, Balakot – than Manmohan Singh. At the time of writing Dikshit was trying to back track: her statement has been twisted. Clarifications count for little when perceptions have gone viral.

Was Congress participating in the coalition in good faith? That would have been the general suspicion had Dikshit’s tantrums been allowed to stand. I gather Ahmad Patel has been asked by the high command to intervene in the interest of an equitable distribution of seats. I have not been able to confirm the exact seat sharing but the story has been “pigeoned” to me by a usually reliable source: that seat share could be 4:3 in favour of AAP.

In Lucknow, the plaint in both the SP-BSP camps is similar: to talk to us is infra dig for the Congress. Akhilesh Yadav has picked enlightened advisers. They are unanimous: in its guts, the Congress is an upper caste party. That it is today more of a Brahmin party is because of a context: the BJP placed Thakurs on the gaddis in UP, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh, inviting a Pandit response.

It must never be forgotten that, of the 72 years since independence, the Prime Ministerial seat has been occupied by Brahmins for almost 51 years. In fact the 10 years of Manmohan Singh were, in Karunakaran’s framework, because of a Brahminical consensus – he was in lieu of Sonia Gandhi.

It is a history of sorts that Narendra Modi is the only non-Brahmin Prime Minister to have completed his full term. So long as Modi is committed to the RSS ideology, abides by Manusmriti, which visualizes a stable order of unequal categories, he is a good advertisement for the RSS. He stands for a strong, militarized, unitary India, united uncompromisingly on the issue of national security. Manto’s line: “Khali pet ka mazhab roti hota hai” (Bread is the religion of a hungry stomach), does not figure in Modi’s framework.

In opposition to Modi and his cohorts is a federal India, fighting him from their trenches in the states. All these regional forces have issued from the Congress womb, which once contained all the interests federated behind a programme for freedom. That was 72 years ago. Except in 2009 when the Congress won 209 seats, the party has not risen from 142 seats since 1996. Today it is 44 seats. The party will have to think out of the box and weld a new coalition. It could well be a left of centre group with CPM help. This alas, is what the authors of crony capitalism resident in Mumbai will not stomach. The media, which they control, and Modi have done everything in their power to transform 2019 into a Presidential contest. The concept does violence to a multi ethnic, multi lingual, multi regional, multi religious polity.

What was to have been a contest between two formations, unitary and federal, has begun to look a circular combat movement, where every party has its eye on a post poll main chance. That is going to be a melee. Money bags from Mumbai will descend to stir up more confusion. BJP is not getting an absolute majority – not by a long shot. Yes, largest single party status is possible. This will need a supple leader. Should the regional parties score heavily, the game will be thrown even wider open. That will the situation custom made for the Brahmin quartet mentioned above to be brought into play.

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