Germany And France View Ukraine Differently From US, UK

Germany And France View Ukraine Differently From US, UK

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

“Stupid son of a bitch” President Joe Biden snapped at a Fox News reporter who had the temerity to ask him whether 7% inflation would be a liability in the mid-term election. “No, it will be an asset” snarled the President, grinding his teeth. A few days ago a similar expletive was hurled at another reporter. The question this time was about Ukraine. Is the President losing his nerve?

Donald Trump hovers over his Presidency, like Banquo’s ghost, even as Biden walks around minefields – pandemic, plummeting ratings, economy, charges of stolen election, exaggerated fears of civil war – he has added another to the list – Ukraine.

What is the problem in Ukraine all about?

Keep in mind Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II: the first brings gas from Russia to Germany; the second when complete will double the volume, bypassing Ukraine. Ukraine will thus be denied transit fees. This will give Russia the hold on Europe which a depleted US does not want. This may well be the nub of the matter.

NATO and subsidiary regional military alliances came into being during the cold war. When the cold war ended it was the Berlin wall which fell. Germany had been in the eye of the storm. Note the understated centrality of Germany even in this crisis. The German Naval Chief, Kay-Achim Schonbach’s statement at a New Delhi seminar on Ukraine revealed Germany’s understanding of the crisis. His subsequent resignation clarified that Germany wears an EU hat as well particularly on collective security issues. Schonbach debunked US anxieties that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine. “That was nonsense” he said. All that President Vladimir Putin wanted was respect. “It is easy to give him the respect he really demands – and also probably deserves.”

There may have been some cheer when the cold war ended but West’s victory also reunified Germany, a country which was at the heart of two previous world wars. In the post cold war redistribution of global power Germany possibly having a larger share of the pie was an anxiety. The Japanese economy too was at its peak. “Axis” again?

Margaret Thatcher, on a visit to Finland, was asked by a reporter: “Does Britain need its nuclear deterrent now that the cold war is over?”

Thatcher: “We still have a problem in the Middle East.”

The coalition of the willing into which a most unwilling Francois Mitterrand was dragged at the last minute, launched Operation Desert Storm to pulverize Saddam Hussain, ofcourse, but mostly to put western imprimatur on victory over the Soviet Union. The status quo was maintained in the global power structure. A reunified Germany was not given any space to make any impression.

Similar fears again lurked in the background when the former Yugoslavia broke up. Croatia’s Cardinal Franjo Kuharic met the Pope in Rome. German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher went one better: he “recognized” Croatia, a war time German ally, ahead of the European partners. This set the cat among the pigeons. “Axis” again?

The UN system was utilized to side with friends like Serbia who had been with the allies during the war. So we had British General Sir Michael Rose’s daily briefings from the Serbian side, until the ghastly events of Srebrenica happened. 8000 Bosnian Muslims, boys and young men, were shot and buried in mass graves by Serbian soldiers.

The tragedy came into profile once again the other day when Germany withdrew an award to well known Israeli historian, Gideon Greif, known for his work on the Holocaust. He did not consider Srebrenica a “genocide”. Germany held back the award.

Again, on Ukraine, Germans demonstrate their own exceptionalism.

Some 170 tonnes of US “lethal equipment” reached Ukraine last week. The UK is sending more defensive weapons and extra troops for training. In other words the most enthusiastic arms donors – with some boots on the ground – are the US and UK, two countries where the leader’s survival in the gaddi is suspect for different reasons.

When the media mentions “several” NATO members sending arms, is France among them? Why then has Emanuel Macron been suggesting that EU must talk to Putin? He is himself arranging to meet Putin, even as I write.

Germany has been the most straightforward: no weapons will be sent. In the name of goodwill, it has sent a full fledged field hospital. Germany has also blocked Estonia from sending German origin weapons, according to the Wall Street Journal. This immediately invited an angry response from Ukraine. Berlin is “undermining western unity by refusing to transfer weapons to Ukraine.” Nor was it allowing allies like Estonia to do so.

The image of the western alliance, in lock step, rearing to go for Putin’s jugular is not borne out by facts on the ground. Much of western coherence on Ukraine is media hype. In fact the consequences of hurried supply of arms to the armed forces of Ukraine where salaries are meagre could spur an arms smuggling bonanza in the region.

Look at the other side. Putin has China by his side now as it was in Kazakhstan earlier this month. When 2,500 Russian troops marched into Kazakhstan to restore order, Washington was cross. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken thought he was at his invective best when he picked on Russians as guests who never leave. Xi Jinping supported CSTO entry.

Russia having moved 1,20,000 (one lakh twenty thousand troops) to Ukraine’s border is the prime western grouse. This is a precursor to an invasion, regime change in Kiev and worse, proclaims the media.

The Russian argument is that since 1991, 14 new members have been added to NATO, mostly from the former Soviet bloc. And now Jens Stoltenberg, Chief of NATO has decided that Georgia and Ukraine would also be added as members. This, for Russia, is a red line. Supposing Russia were to position nuclear weapons on America’s borders. What would Washington’s response be? Meanwhile remember Nord Stream II which, says the State Department will be blocked, “should Russia invade Ukraine.”

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No Leftists Please: We Prefer Drunken Prime Minister, Weak President

No Leftists Please: We Prefer Drunken Prime Minister, Weak President

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

The saga of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s serial drinking binges signifies democracy’s nosedive. If he were not Prime Minister, he would be fictionalized as a pub companion of Sir John Falstaff, a boozy, buffoonish suitor of women, quarrelling with them in public.

Nick Hopkins of The Guardian and BBC’s newsnight had written some years ago a graphic account of Johnson, rolling like a drunk sailor at the San Francesco d’ Assisi airport. He was returning from the castle of newspaper owner Evgeny Lebedev, renowned for hosting uproarious parties. Hopkins quoted eye witnesses “Boris looked like he had slept in his clothes, and was struggling to walk in a straight line.”

Hard to believe because he was Foreign Secretary in those days. He had apparently evaded the 24/7 security detail and travelled without a suitcase. He must have slept in pyjamas he borrowed from Lebedev. Little wonder, then, Labedev has been a member of the House of Lords since 2020 – i.e. during Johnson’s Prime Ministership.

Mark my word, he will leap into action should the Ukraine issue boil over. Who cares for drunken binges when issues of national, nay, Western security are at stake. US President Biden will lead him because he is sinking too.

Calls for Johnson’s resignation are becoming louder, but will he step down? No if he has not done enough for the establishment which brought him to power in the first place. The belief that in democracies people vote a government to power is increasingly a delusion. The electoral process, voters pressing buttons or pushing slips of paper into the ballot box, provided legitimacy, a plausibility. Even that is now evaporating. Remember, 70% of the Republican voters believe that the 2019 election was stolen.

A government to remain in power, needs help in managing the opposition too. In India the easiest way to obstruct the unity of various regional parties is for the media to keep focus only on the solitary ruling class national party, namely the Congress. Since the Congress has no heart to win nationally, the balance of advantage remains with the other ruling class party, the BJP. Corporates will gradually, imperceptibly begin to redistribute their favours if the government they have brought into being begins to slip in the popularity stakes.

Why would the British establishment have settled on Johnson when his reputation for being flippant, unreliable, a liar was all over the British media atleast since 2017? Because the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was too far left to be acceptable. All the world’s sins had to be pasted on him by the media – he was a friend of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan communist; he was anti semitic. Liberal values would be threatened should he ever become Prime Minister and so on.

He has to be grounded before he can take off. He faltered balancing diverse approaches on Brexit, clinching issue in 2019, but the media had left him no lee way to recoup. The alternative may be an unreliable drunk but he is atleast not a “communist”.

No wrong doing was involved if Corbyn knew Hugo Chavez. He knew many others of varied persuasions. You had to be in London to see hatchet jobs, not just in the media, but even in biography form: Dangerous Hero: Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power. Written by Tom Bower, the book paints Corbyn in lurid colours – “a ruthless Marxist” hell bent on destroying liberal values. What Peter Oborne of the Daily Mail calls a “spurious” document, soon found itself on the second slot in The Sunday Times best seller list. Oborne researches revealed the biography was “replete with falsehoods.”

“It is hard to see how any decent person reading much of the newspapers or absorbing the broadcasting coverage of the last few years could have possibly voted for Corbyn”, Oborne wrote.

Corbyn himself noted in an interview that even he “would not want to live on the same street” as the man (Corbyn) he read about in British newspapers.

This was the new McCarthyism amplified a hundred times by a media in the thrall of the post 90s Murdoch culture. And the malaise is on both sides of the Atlantic. The establishment dug its heels in against Corbyn and ended up with the embarrassment called Johnson. The system in the US would not allow Bernie Sanders, with his socialist ideas, as a possible candidate for the White House.

An anti establishment mood had been diagnosed for months before 2016 US elections, even before the primaries had picked up. Washington establishment was in bad odour, but the Democratic Party machine had set its heart on Hillary Clinton who, ironically, was at the very core of that establishment. Hillary got the nomination but lost the election – to Donald Trump. Any data analysis will tell you that Sanders would have won.

Despite the outcome in 2016, the very same Democratic Party shackled Sanders once again. The media was in action. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote two columns on “Why I like Mike”. The “Mike” of his adoration, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, way to the right of the John Birch Society, tossed his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination, spent billions on the campaign and muddied the water. Everyone scrambled to produce a compromise candidate, Joe Biden. In the popularity stakes Biden is so low that Trump is only one percentage point behind him.

Contemporary democracy has gifted us a US President so weak as to be a virtual invitation for Trump to return. The process has also produced a serial binge boozer as Prime Minister.

Irish poet Brendan Behan, known for his drinking bouts was asked: “Wouldn’t you be a much greater poet if you didn’t drink so much.”

Behan: “I am basically a drinker with a writing problem.”

Recast the same question for Johnson; what would he say? To save his job he would probably fall back on blasphemy:

“Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just God when he is drunk.”

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Kazakhstan: Blinken Receives Punch On The Jaw By Russian Foreign Office

Kazakhstan: Blinken Receives Punch On The Jaw By Russian Foreign Office

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

The upheaval in Kazakhstan is totally incompatible with the image of serenity etched on my mind. The Tien Shan Mountains brooding over the endless steppes, the biggest in the world: in this panorama, a solitary horseman followed by a sheep dog, travelling to heaven knows where.

A TV crew of three – Devlin Bose, Kabir Khan, now an outstanding film maker and I drove through all the Republics on an eight seater van, with a burly Russian driver at the wheel. Some images were common everywhere. American capitalism had established visibility. In Almaty, as in other capitals, the biggest departmental store, spacious enough to contain a tennis court, had United Colors of Benetton painted above the glass exterior, end to end. Inside, a dozen or so young men and women, in designer clothes, walked between galleries of lingerie, dresses, blouses, coats, scarves and fancy shoes – all to be sold in dollars which the Kazakhs did not have.

At night our hotel room door was virtually pushed open by the loudest banging that a wooden frame can withstand. I called up Ambassador Kamalesh Sharma to rescue us from the fallen ladies of Almaty, desperate to find access not so much to us as to our wallets.

This is what the Soviet collapse had done to all post Soviet economies. Dollar was king. In these circumstances, The United Colors of Benetton in every major city, was not an invitation for citizens to buy. It was an advertisement for capitalism.

The meat selling centre was a carnivore’s delight – beef, horse, game animal, pork. Pork in a Muslim country? Don’t forget 70 years of Sovietism. Yes, there was considerable propaganda about the Central Asia having opened up to Islamic fundamentalism. Our inquiry was revealing. Almaty’s solitary priest, a scrawny young man in shirt sleeves, supervised a congregation of zero. Kabir found a unique way of gauging how “Islamic” a country was: a vox pop on camera in every city asking for directions to the “mescit” or mosque. Nobody knew the way to the masjid. In contrast, the orthodox churches, which had played a role in bringing down communism, were packed. After all, 45 percent of Kazakh population being Russians and 70 years of Communism had altered local cultures.

This was the state of affairs that Nursultan Nazarbayev inherited the key central Asian republic as large as India but with a population of only 18 million. Like his previous boss, Boris Yeltsin, he shuffled out of his communist coil and, if you will stand for a mixed metaphor, took to authoritarianism like duck to water. Like Yeltsin’s coterie, Nazarbayev’s family cornered much of the oil wealth. Naturally, people were angry. In 2021 Nazarbayev, 81, handpicked Kassym Tokayev as President, retaining top security positions himself. When the riots erupted last week, Nazarbyev’s coterie was seen to be hand in glove with “foreign” elements seeking Tokayev’s ouster. A “colour revolution” was suspected. Then came stories of the US being hand in glove with the regime since the 90s in manufacturing chemical weapons. This was possible in the wave of pro Americanism when the Republics became independent. Sadly for America, the wheel has come full circle now.

The messy, humiliating American departure from Afghanistan in August, 2021 was more debilitating than the Vietnam debacle. In 1975 the US had enough spunk left to enable Ronald Reagan to mount a counterpunch in the 80s which shook the USSR. Leaving Afghanistan was a bigger disaster because it put an imprimatur on American decline.

Nazarbayev had seen the full gamut –– America’s sole super power moment, a phase of over reach, and decline, reaching its nadir in Afghanistan. Consistent with regional realities, Kazakhstan deftly navigated between the US, Russia and China.

This strategic state kept altering its distance from the three powerful nations according to the waxing or waning of power in the neighbourhood. With the US on a slope, China, Russia became the new rising powers.

After the Afghan fiasco, was the US going to pick up its marbles in the region and walk away? Was 20 years of Afghan occupation and clandestine biological research programmes, scores of sleeper cells – all going to be abandoned? Not quite.

How to look muscular in foreign affairs, having been so weakened from within? Wise men of foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and a host of others, whispered the mantra to The White House: a weak America must dedicate itself to the task of keeping China and Russia distant from one another.

Quite the opposite has happened. Russia and China have seldom been closer. When the State Department criticized Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for having invited the Russia led Collective Security Treaty Organization, to send 2,500 Peacekeeping troops to control the situation, Xi Jinping made a most uncharacteristic statement supporting Tokayev’s move. US diplomats were embarrassed. As soon as violence erupted, Tokayev relieved Nazarbayev of his post. The former strongman’s coterie had given the violent demonstrations a helping hand. CIA was accused of plotting a “colour revolution”.

Not only has the US been caught with its hand in the till of biological weapon manufacture but they are flat footed on regime change allegations.

The new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken must be red faced, having been socked on the jaw by the Russian Foreign Ministry. Without having an inkling of what the Russian intention was when 2,500 CSTO peacekeepers were sent to Kazakhstan, he put his foot in his mouth: “One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.” Blinken looked silly when Russian troops began to leave after having restored order. But the Russian foreign office was merciless in its parody on Blinken’s statement.

“When Americans are in your house, it can become difficult to stay alive, and not be robbed or raped. Indians of North American continent, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Panamanian, Yugoslavs, Libyans, Syrians and other unfortunate people who are unlucky enough to see these uninvited guests in their “homes” will have much to say about this.”

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UP Tough For Modi But 2024 Demands Brand New Platform

UP Tough For Modi But 2024 Demands Brand New Platform

                                                                                         Saeed Naqvi

Drawing room hopping in the capital, restricted as much by corona as by a singular absence of information on which lively political gup-shup can be sustained, came alive last week with Meghalaya Governor Satya Pal Malik’s public assault on the Prime Minister. Narendra Modi was “ghamandi” (arrogant), he said. This was not all. He quoted Amit Shah saying unflattering things about the Prime Minister’s mental balance. Malik has not yet been removed as Governor of Meghalaya. He clashed with Narendra Modi on the issue of farmers. Is that the reason why he is not being “touched” on the eve of state elections next month, particularly in UP.

Drawing room chatteratti are perking up. On political issues they are breaking out of the whispering mode; they are giving voice to speculations, even of infirm veracity. “Inside” sources are cited by the more unreliable. But when more than, say, four persons, unconnected with one another, begin to tot out the same figures, it is discreet to take note – 150 to 155 for the BJP in UP. The more adventurous speculators are bringing the figure down to 125. Why would the BJP ever accept this outcome in exchange for the 312 seats which it has at present in a House of 403?

Remember always Modi’s genius, his ability to transform a negative into a positive for himself. Look at the whodunit of his cavalcade stranded on a Punjab overbridge for 20 minutes. Had he travelled to his destination, he may have faced an almost absent audience. That is why he changed the route and ran into a traffic jam. This is the opposition narrative. His version is that he was deliberately exposed to danger. Temples have been mobilized for special prayers for the Prime Minister.

There is every likelihood of the Omicron virus peaking in February. Surely this will call for a strict adherence to Covid norms. Look how the virus galloped in Goa after the New Year eve jamboree. Can political rallies be permitted in these circumstances? Priyanka Gandhi has already jumped the gun – no rallies for two weeks. Is there a suggestion that elections can be postponed by making Omicron the excuse because the field reports are negative for the ruling party? Should this happen, would not the thousands of crores spent on advertising one infrastructure project after another go down the sump?

This invites the riposte: once the public has been made aware of the good works the government has done – in this case Yogi Adityanath – electoral advantage can be extracted within a reasonable period. This line of thinking ignores a fundamental reality: public memory is very short, shorter still in the time of google. This advertising blitz must be encashed immediately because otherwise there is nothing as dead as yesterday’s newspaper and nothing less persuasive than stale ads.

Ground reality is that the wind is not blowing in the BJP’s favour. The surge for Akhilesh Yadav is in reality a surge against the BJP. “Hubbe Ali kum; bughz e Muaviya zyada” which means “not for love of Ali but for hatred of Muaviya, Ali’s implacable enemy.” For a precise application of this aphorism the BJP will have to be broken up into its constituent parts. The surge in UP is against the Yogi. Modi is losing points largely by association with Yogi Adityanath.

The extent to which the BJP High Command has a say in UP, Yogi will be the fall guy either way. Victory in UP will be because of Modi’s tireless campaigning. Defeat will be placed at the Yogi’s door.

In other words, this could well be Yogi’s last term in Lucknow – so goes the drift of drawing room punditry. Those who claim to possess inside information talk of a tussle between the Yogi and High Command. Yogi is demanding 120 seats for his Hindu Yuva Vahini. He imagines this would give him leverage to dig his heels in should there be a move to replace him even in the event of a BJP victory.

Modi’s eyes are primarily set on the 2024 General Elections. Towards that goal UP is an irreplaceable staging post. Win or lose in UP, can the BJP ever go into a national election without hardening the Hindutva already in play.

The hard Hindutva, relentless minority bashing, scared voters into believing they were on God’s side because it flowed straight into the global torrents of Islamophobia during the post 9/11 war on terror. A miraculous coincidence has gone totally unnoticed by the global media. Modi was sent to Ahmedabad to replace Keshubhai Patel. He took charge on October 7 as Chief Minister. October 7 turned out to be the date of choice for the Pentagon to launch the war on terror, with Afghanistan as the target.

TV sets world over were saturated with fireworks on Afghanistan. Geraldo Rivera of Fox News was brandishing a gun on camera. “I shall shoot Osama if I see him.” Hysterical Islamophobia was enveloping the world. It was in that mood of global bigotry that Modi’s Hindutva was given shape. Hindutva had tailwinds of global Islamophobia behind it.

Circumstances today are exactly the opposite of what they were when Modi embarked on blood curdling Hindutva. Not only is there no Rivera flourishing a gun in front of the camera to finish Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, the Mujahideen have since mutated into Taleban. Today Taleban are the rulers in Kabul. Sooner or later a photograph will appear of Modi and a Taleban, even a Pakistan leader in some international conference on Afghanistan. Global and regional development are not conducive to a hard line. Hindutva by itself is politically useless. You don’t win elections on beef and love Jehad. Communalism has to be tied to nationalism to yield political results. In other words Balakot and Kashmir are required to stir up the cauldron. That string to Modi’s bow may loosen further as 2024 approaches.

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Soviet Union Thirty Years After Collapse: Gains And Losses

Soviet Union Thirty Years After Collapse: Gains And Losses

                                                                                        Saeed Naqvi

The collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago was a tragedy for half the world but frothed with possibilities for the other half which the West spilt, mistaking rampaging markets for democracy.

My memory of events three decades ago is of a personal nature because I was the only journalist who interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who, on a high wire act of historic reforms, lost control. Foreign Secretary, Romesh Bhandari would not obstruct my interview but he promised the media accompanying Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi to Moscow that “they would all stand around an arena while I did the interview.”

The choreography dictated the set. A circular boxing arena was created, ropes et al, in which four chairs were placed. Two for Gorbachev and his interpreter, one for the interviewer, but the fourth? Since Romesh Bhandari did not wish to be unpopular with the media accompanying the PM by allowing one journalist to steal a scoop. He, therefore, awarded the third chair to a notional representative for the rest of the media. Who could this be but the inimitable Russi Karanjia, the colourful editor of Blitz.

What Romesh did not realize is exactly what Andrei Gromyko, USSR’s longest serving Foreign Minister who stayed on for Gorbachev’s first year in office, immediately did. He peeped into the hall where the “rope-ring” had been set up. After concluding his talks with Rajiv Gandhi, Gorbachev would walk towards this arena.

Imagine the scene. Two interviewers looking at two empty chairs in the ring, and thirty journalists, craning their necks into the arena, clearing their throats and waiting for Gorbachev to take his seat. Gromyko, the old fox, was not going to allow the new Secretary General of the CPSU, in his very first outing with the media, to be exposed to a free for all press conference, a “tamasha”. Gromyko called it off.

My disappointment could not be measured and, for that reason, I persisted. I returned to Moscow the next year to interview Gorbachev, but that is another story. Before I close the Gorbachev segment for this column, a word on what was Gorbachev’s eventual vision for Soviet Russia was? “Something like the Scandinavian welfare state.” This was before neo con excesses during the fleeting unipolar moment and a rushed Murdochization of the media had disfigured much of the world, including Scandinavia.

The second image is of South Block, Ministry of External Affairs split down the middle on the goings on in Moscow. Arundhati (Chuku) Ghosh, that heavy smoking, clean hearted Brahmo, Joint Secretary for Africa, is in a state of anxiety. She is following events in Moscow – the coup, a tense moment for her. She is not clear what she wants, but her DNA demands a “liberal” system, not the Soviet Union. To her it does not matter if Boris Yeltsin replaces Gorbachev.

Round the corner from Chuku, in his room at the far end of the corridor, Foreign Secretary, Muchkund Dubey, a homespun Bihari intellectual, culturally as distinct from Chuku as chalk is from cheez, is on the line to his Ambassador in Moscow, Alfred Gonsalves. The two are classical status quoists. Having spent a lifetime writing position papers mindful of the two blocs, the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union is, for them, like having to walk on one leg.

This brings me to the third question: was the Indian Establishment ever emotionally embedded with the Soviet Union?

On the one hand C. Rajeswara Rao, longest serving General Secretary of the CPI, is shaking with rage at a reporter who asked him if the Soviet Union was collapsing.

“Sir (loaded with satire), not a pin in this world moves without the Soviet Union being involved.”

This touching faith in the Soviet Union was all pervasive among progressive writers and Urdu poets carted to Mumbai by an earlier General Secretary of CPI, P.C. Joshi.

“Kremlin ke minar jaage hue kharey hain.”

(The minarets of Kremlin beckon us.)

This was Javed Akhar’s father Jaan Nisar Akhtar, ecstatic about the Kremlin minarets. A fine ghazal writer like Majrooh Sultanpuri could not resist the pressure of his peers.

“Meri nigah mein hai arze Moscow, Majrooh,

Woh sarzameen ki sitarey jise salaam karein.”

(My eyes are set on Moscow, that blessed place where stars come down from heaven to shower their salutations.)

Poets, writers, painters, actors, film producers, college campuses, and coffee house regulars – a comprehensive segment, under the domain of Saraswati were largely, Left. Wealth was scoffed at. Gentlemen travelled by “tongas”; cars were for upstarts.

This entire lot was marginal to the pro west establishment, big industrialists whose “proximity” to Gandhiji gave them an all pervasive influence. Before V. Shankar, ICS, could join Deputy Prime Minister, Vallabh Bhai Patel’s office, he had to be interviewed by Ghanshyam Das Birla, leading industrialist in whose house Gandhiji died.

Marwari owned newspapers which Indira Gandhi dubbed the “Jute Press” never posted a correspondent to Moscow even in days when the Indian Ambassador had direct access to the Central Committee. Instead, correspondents were posted to London and Washington where they had no access. A much valued qualification for these correspondents was their ability to arrange for vegetarian food without onions or garlic preferably from their own kitchen for families of proprietors.

The only Indian journalist in Moscow was the towering figure of Masood Ali Khan, a pathan to boot, representing the CPI organ, New Age. He had phenomenal access to the otherwise impenetrable Soviet system. He was a mandatory fixture for all visiting Indian journalists, diplomats, progressive writers. When the Soviet Union collapsed Masood fell into abject penury. His salary which the Soviet system had arranged through the Red Cross was stopped. He died on the box-sofa of his one room tenement close to a metro station. Beneath the cushion on the sofa, were lined hundreds of 78 rpm records of western classical music he had collected during better days at the BBC in London.

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Farmers’ Agitation Inspired The Movement For Change In Chile

Farmers’ Agitation Inspired The Movement For Change In Chile

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

Indians must note that the farmers’ movement in the country, was one of the inspirations for the historic regime change in Chile.

That Gabriel Boric 35, a candidate of the Left with Communist support, trounced the far Right, Jose Antonio Kast, to become Chile’s youngest President is now a reality. And the Indian angle is heartwarming. The popular movement which brought Boric to power had in its final stretches, drawn inspiration from the farmer’s movement in India. Thomas Hirsh, member of the Chilean parliament representing the Humanist forum closely associated with Boric, was the point man in touch with the farmer’s leaders for guidance and support. The farmers said that they would refrain from endorsing Boric’s candidature but would support the people’s movement. “Just as we have steered clear of politics here.”

Dr. Ashish Mittal, General Secretary, All India Kisan Mazdoor Sabha, wrote to Thomas Hirsch, “Our struggles present many similarities in the challenges we face from the cruel and dehumanizing neo-liberal regimes attempting to destroy the well being of our people…..and opening the way to control these resources and markets by transnational corporations.”

Boric is yet to announce his cabinet, Chileans are eager to see which important posts Communists are invite to occupy: after all they played a key role in Boric’s victory. The leader of Chile’s Communist party, Guillermo Teillier, explained the reason for supporting Boric. “He is the only one who can bring together a broad movement that will lead the people of Chile to prevent the rise of neo fascism.”

Fear of “fascism” is justified on many counts. First, the opponent, Kast, the conservative who lost was the darling of the copper magnates, other corporates and, ofcourse the CIA. Also, he was a fan of Pinochet, known for his unspeakable brutalities. Given Latin America’s roller coaster shifts, Kast may be down but cannot be counted out for good. Recent Latin American experience fits the image of the pulley: people bring to power their governments which vested interests work hard to replace. Chileans, indeed Latin Americans, have an abiding memory of Salvador Allende and the Chilean spring of 1973 which was snuffed out by corporate interests and direct US support. The Truck owners, CIA, corrupt armed forces and, ofcourse Augusto Pinochet, who staged the coup d’état, all combined to bringing down Allende. The dramatic footage of the Presidential palace bombed by British Hawker Hunters is all part of Patricio Guzman’s superb documentary –– The Battle of Chile. Then there is that permanent danger from that great global compact between imperialism and neo-liberal establishments. Corporates are the lynchpin in this plan.

During the Cold war, all People’s Liberation movements were legitimate. After the Soviet collapse, these became terrorist movements. Likewise wherever people bring into power governments on issues of bread and butter, health care, pensions, inequality, the media, at the instance of the corporates who own them, focuses elsewhere. It amplifies issues of identity, ethnicity, migration, even Covid, a pandemic though it is. Remember, the Shaheen Bagh movement against the Citizens Amendment Act (CAA), which had spread nationwide, was wound up following the earliest Covid scare in 2019. The Covid “scare” even when real can also be misused by cynical states. For instance postpone elections in UP if defeat looms.

Two facts are worth noting. Boric’s movement and the farmers’ agitation, both succeeded despite the media being arrayed against them. Is the declining credibility of the media a global reality? This is a serious problem for manipulated democracies.

Can the Boric euphoria be ended just as Allende was? Not impossible. In fact, corporates, elements in the Armed forces and the CIA must already be in a huddle in secret locations. Chile is the world’s top producer of copper and iodine. This is what the corporates and their supporters in the US were not comfortable leaving in “Communist” hands in 1973.

We in India had experienced the world’s first communist government come to power through the ballot box when E.M.S. Namboodiripad became Chief Minister in 1957. President’s Rule was imposed in 1959 at Nehru’s behest.

For the US, obsessed as it was with the Monroe doctrine and Domino theory, a duly elected communist President in the western hemisphere was worse than anathema; it was like another fall of man. American fingerprints were therefore, all over the military operation which killed Allende.

One motivation then was also to prevent the Soviet Union from finding hospitality in Latin America. Boric in Santiago offers a threat of another kind. In 1973 the US and Europe were interested in mineral resources. Today, the most voracious consumer of minerals is China, with whom an open “competition” has been declared by the US. What competitive action can the US be pushed into to protect its interests in Chile? This is where a major factor makes 1973 very different from 2021 –– the decline of US power.

A weakened power will not punch above its weight but, like pugilists on the wane, will not hang up its gloves either. With big powers it will not risk major conflict but it will make it known that it is still around. And around it is. Look at the way it imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran, Venezuela –– there are atleast 30 countries on the list.

The other asset the US has is the western media, always ready with cans of black paint to tar those nations the US does not approve. Once Boric is sworn in as President in three months, he will be in the line of fire, just as Cuba, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia are.

It is universally acknowledged that Boric won the election fairly. Does this entitle him to be on President Biden’s invitation list for the next “summit for Democracy”? To the last such jamboree on December 9-10, 80 world leaders were invited. Among the distinguished invitees was Juan Guaido, a Venezuelan non entity sporadically touted by Washington as the “interim President” of Venezuela. By this yardstick, the far right Pinochet admirer, Antonio Kast, roundly trounced by Boric, may well be looking for sources who will carry the following message to Washington –– “Barkis is willing.”

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Kashi Corridor: A Wonderful Project And A Hurtful Ceremony

Kashi Corridor: A Wonderful Project And A Hurtful Ceremony

                                                                                      Saeed Naqvi

 

Ganga, the eternal symbol of life and death, a continuity measureless to man, registered another episode this week which was billed as an extravaganza – the opening of the new Kashi corridor.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked imperiously on the spotless red carpet, he had the airs of someone who knew he was making history. Cameras from myriad angles committed the event to posterity. It is romantic to imagine that the strains of music that Bismillah Khan played at the temple would have enhanced the choreography around the majestic expanse. I suspect such a suggestion would be politically incorrect.

I may be forgiven for feeling a little bit like Shambhu in Bimal Roy’s masterpiece, Do Bigha Zameen. Shambhu, on whose land a factory has come up, regards his plot from behind barbed wires, he bends down and picks up a fistful from the field he once ploughed. Oh, my numerous visits to Kashi with my friend and outstanding architect, the late Satish Grover.

All rivers have a lore for people settled on their banks and beyond, but Ganga is different because it is special to us.

“Ai aab rooy e Ganga, woh din hain yaad tujhko,

utra tere kinare jub karavaan hamara?”

(O Ganga, our very pride

is bound with you

Do you remember our caravan,

which rested on your banks – forever?)

Iqbal was not remembering Aurangzeb; he was celebrating the dawn of a civilization on what the British called the Indo-Gangetic plain.

Ganga was part of our songs, similes and metaphors. As children we never forgot to toss coins in the great river and make a wish whenever the train crossed the bridge. During the Urdu-Hindi debates, my grandfather could only fall back on the image of Ganga:

“Hai dua yeh, ki mukhlif jo hain dhaarey mil jaaen

Aaj phir kausar O Ganga ke kinarey mil jaaen”

(Streams of Urdu and Hindi should

flow together, not in opposite directions.

May the banks of Ganga and

‘kauser’, the river of paradise, become one)

To fight penury, the great poet Ghalib (1797-1869) embarked on a journey to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to have an old pension revived by the British authorities. He travelled on horseback, carriages, on foot and river barges. He disliked Allahabad but found Benaras so compelling that he put down anchor for an extended stay. Here he wrote his longest poem – Chiragh e Dair or The Lamp in the Temple. He sees Benaras like a beautiful woman who sees her face in the Ganga at all times:

“Ibadat khana e naqoosian ast

hama na kaaba e Hindustan ast”

(This is a place of worship where people

make music from conch shells,

This truly is the Kaaba of Hindustan)

Ghalib was not the first to compare Benaras with Kaaba. Sheikh Ali Hazin from Isfahan, in Iran, found it impossible to separate himself from Benaras which, he wrote in Persian, is all mankind’s place of worship:

“Har Barahman pisare Lakshman-o-Ramast een ja”

(To me every Brahmin here looks like the very son of Ram or Lakshman)

When Mohsin Kakorvi (1826-1905) sketched the elements in ecstasy on Prophet Mohammad’s birthday, the most picturesque image he could conjure up were of clouds floating over Kashi and drifting towards Mathura.

“Samt e Kashi se chala jaainbe Mathura badal”

Ali Sardar Jafri (1913-2000) positions himself in “Benaras” when he seeks cultural commerce with friends in Lahore:

“Tum aao gulshan e Lahore se chaman bar dosh

hum aayen subhe Benaras ka baankpan le kar”

(You come to us with breezes from the garden of Lahore;

we bring to you the exquisite dawn of Benaras.)

If I have inflicted on you a surfeit of poetry it is for a compelling reason. This is my way of reestablishing my claim to the civilization bound with Kashi and the Ganga, and from which I was distanced by the choreography of the pageant last Monday.

By firing the Aurangzeb missile, you froze us in our tracks. If we reiterate what some of us have proposed for a long time it will be seen, in the current jingoism, as our having succumbed to pressure. A reasonable conversation on such charged issues as Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura are possible when the communal temperatures drop.

Just as every musical score requires a counterpoint there are plenty of Muslim busybodies willing to take hard positions that will keep communal tension at boiling point. There is, after all, no Papacy in Islam. No edict can be issued which insures that the community will fall in line. The Muslim Personal Law Board, to remain alive, must take a stand which represents the mainstream devouts. In other words “dig your heels in” which is precisely what the Hindu Right wants.

The late Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, a liberal to boot, maintained that a Muslim can spread his prayer mat anywhere facing Mecca and say his prayers; a Hindu’s deity is in the temple. By this logic, the mosques in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura represent medieval assertion and will only hurt the Hindu.

Mir Taqi Mir had shown us the way in the 18^th century:

“Mut ranja kar kisi ko ki apney to etiqaad,

Jee dhaye ke jo Kaaba banaya to kya kiya”

(Don’t hurt a fellow human being;

It is my belief that even building the Kaaba is not worth it if hearts are broken in the process.) the verse applies to both sides.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of the many singers of Benaras were to set the following verse to music:

“Kooch a e yar ain Kashi hai

Jogia dil wahan ka baasi hai”

(My beloved’s lane is like holy Kashi

The yogi of my heart has taken up residence there.)

The poet is Wali Gujarati (1667-1707). His grave outside Ahmedabad’s main police station, was razed to the ground by rioters in February 2002.

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