Permanent Conflict Toward Hindu Rashtra Or Peaceful Dialogue For Hindustan?

Permanent Conflict Toward Hindu Rashtra Or Peaceful Dialogue For Hindustan?

                                                                                  Saeed Naqvi

Neither anger nor sadness but a sort of numbness gripped me as a bulldozer was brought into focus, its giant fingers crashing on the roof, scratching the walls and probing deep into the entrails of the house. Within minutes the house was a heap of rubble.

It was impossible to reconcile this image with the bubble taking shape in my mind. The year was 1995. Frank Wisner, one of the most charming of the US ambassadors, looked at me in bewilderment and, without change of expression, pressed the intercom for his counsellor: “I am sending you someone with a case that with tickle you.”

The counsellor was tickled. My daughter was keen to get a US visa stamped on her passport (She had been invited for a seminar in New York) and she was keen to surrender the documents which gave her permanent residence in the US, where she had spent eight years in the groves of academe.

A visa stamped at last on her Indian passport, with an elevated self esteem she went about her duties as a social worker in some remote part of the state which Yogi Adityanath now administers as its Chief Minister. It was once my home state too.

The return journey from her place of work, was in a jam packed second class compartment. She found a seat next to a family having fruit for lunch. The man, a kindly soul, offered her an orange.” Abhi mun naheen hai.” (Thanks, but I don’t feel like having an orange.) The man persisted: “Le lo beti, hum koi mussalman naheen hain.” (Take it, daughter, I am not a Muslim.)

Pride in an Indian passport and the reality of the new emerging India must have hit her like a rifle shot.

I returned to some more bulldozing accompanied by a cacophony of speakers supporting or opposing the spectacle. Then, at Prime Time, Rishika Baruah of NDTV came into focus anchoring a carefully compiled catalogue of atrocities against dalits. The first episode is in Rae Bareli. A group of upper caste boys have encircled a boy from one of the lower castes. The leader of the gang, in jeans and a t-shirt watches the boy being beaten by his friends. Then as a grand finale, the leader, seated on a large high stone, stretches out one leg. The gang then invites the lower caste boy to lick their gang leader’s foot from heel to toe.

The next scene shows a man in shirt and trousers being instructed by middle aged men to lie on his stomach and rub his nose in a circle marked in chalk for clarity. He apparently had the temerity to stand on a stones outside the temple to watch a show.

The third incident shows a girl with a thali full of puja items being turned away by the priest from the temple where she has come to make an offering because her examinations the next day.

The piece-de-resistance is the bridegroom who comes riding a horse. Before the bridegroom is received by his bride and her family, the village influentials encircle him.

One of the village superiors leaps to the height of the horse and administers an almighty slap on the bridegroom’s face, even as the bride watches in horror. How dare a dalit come riding a horse? Oddly this rare focus on dalit atrocities is not backed up by screaming discussants on a long leash.

Provide an instance of hijab in schools, beef in a refrigerator, love jihad and such like provocations: this is the stuff channels instantly divide their screens into four, six or eight windows. From the very start, discussions are a cacophony, with two priceless mullahs thrown in, speaking out of turn.

The hoopla that attends coverage of subject of a communal colour is singularly missing in Rishika Baruah’s impressive catalogue of atrocities against dalits. Each one of the episodes would have yielded a sober discussion on social inequity, the barbarism it can lead to. Remember the dalit girl of Hathras – raped, murdered and cremated under police protection past midnight without as much as informing the girl’s parents. M. N. Srinivas, the great sociologist, asked the pithy question which cannot be easily answered. “What is Hinduism without caste?” Scholar, S. S. Anant introduces another complexity: the three upper castes have relative stability in their enclaves.

The lower castes who are subdivided into a hierarchy of a hundred sub castes live under a firm stipulation: in times of distress they may descend to take up the occupation of those below them but they may never ascend even a notch.

All of this, material is like the categories of Ashraf, Ajlaf and Arzal among Muslims in feudal times. These categories were recognized but treated like family secrets not to be shed light on. Likewise caste during elections is thrashed to smithereens, divided and subdivided into a hundred categories to fulfil electoral needs. But once elections are over, the subject which defines so much of our lives is tucked away in the mind’s most dark caverns.

It has to be left undiscussed because one half of Hindu society does not wish to place its warts before a mirror; the other half can’t imagine a social order without caste. Caste, in other words is an ancient social habit, inextricably woven into our lives. Communalism is a political project which helps contain caste to some extent. The fear of Muslim as an enemy image may result in Hindu consolidation but only politically. Socially that upper caste boy in Rae Bareli still gets the lower caste boy to lick his foot.

On another scale, embers left behind by caste-communal friction can prepare the ground for Savarkar’s or the RSS’s idea of Hindu nationalism. That will also require Kashmir on a boil forever, relations with Pakistan on torrid heat always and Hindu-Muslim enmity, in perpetuity. Are we ready for it? Or should we defuse issues by setting up a permanent dialogue towards Hindustan?

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Is There Another Cuban Missile Crisis In The Offing?

Is There Another Cuban Missile Crisis In The Offing?

                                                                                       Saeed Naqvi

Is another Cuban missile crisis in the works? The agreement between Nicaragua to post Russian soldiers in the communist country must disturb Washington. What happens to the Monroe doctrine which Trump’s Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson announced “was alive and kicking today”. Will Biden’s Secretary of State repudiate this?

Cardinal Ovando Bravo, if he is still around, must be in a state of feverish anxiety. When I visited Nicaragua’s capital Managua in the 90s, when Daniel Ortego was just about to be crowned President, the venerable cardinal virtually led me by the hand to Mother Mary’s statue in Central Managua so that I could see the miracle with my own two eyes: Mary was weeping copious tears because communist rule was imminent. It reminds me now of another miracle which gripped India in 1995: Ganesh statues slurping vast quantities of milk.

The Nicaragua agreement has been given vast amplitude: seven Latin American countries “to enter the country and participate”, says Fox News. There was more for Washington to worry about. This time the salvo comes from cardinal Bravo’s supreme boss. Pope Francis rubbished the diligently orchestrated western propaganda that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”?

In an interview to a Jesuit magazine, the Pope quotes a “wise head of state” who had predicted much before the invasion that “they are barking at the gates of Russia; the situation could lead to war.”

There is no great difference between what the statesman said and what the Pope said some weeks ago. He said NATO may have “facilitated” Kremlin’s invasion by “barking” at the Russian door.

That Russia was consistently “provoked” has been clear as daylight since 1998 when the US senate voted in favour of NATO expansion. The wisest historian of Russia, the one who invented a policy of containing the Soviet Union, George Kennan, announced loud and clear “There will be repercussions.”

At the 2008 Bucharest summit of NATO, to which ironically Putin was also invited, Georgia’s and Ukraine’s possible entry into the fold was announced. It turned out to be a dramatic summit because President G.W. Bush was also in attendance, lobbying like there will be no tomorrow for Georgia and Ukraine to be ushered into NATO. “This would be like a knife on my throat” said Putin. What was suggested, Putin said, was an existential threat to Russia. A deep, dark red line was drawn.

2008 was memorable for two events: Russia-Georgia war which Russia won, and the collapse of Lehman Brothers with $619 billion record debt which hit the US where it hurts most. The expression “US decline” gained currency since this event. It was a dramatic turn of fortune: 1990-91 Soviet collapse brought about the “sole superpower” moment. Who ever imagined that contradictions of capitalism would catch up with the world’s most powerful economy and make it look weak kneed in the boxing ring.

During the West’s build up to the Ukraine expedition I had pointed flaws in the strategy because three of the US’s earlier expeditions, which I had watched from close, had failed. After 20 years of occupation the US left Afghanistan in disorder and unspeakable hunger. On April 3, 2002 it occupied Iraq, for a decade, with gains hard to see unless you see things from the Israeli perspective.

Then the US brought Syria into its focus with an altered strategy. It would not occupy this time but allow Gulf countries, scared of Iran, to break the Shia axis in order to place the knife on Iran’s throat which remains the existential threat for Israel and a fickle cast of characters leading the Gulf States.

When Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with an imperious wave of the hand, demanded “Assad, get out of the way”, I was moved to question her cocksure demeanour indicating regime change. Within days Assad would fall. The gist of my logic was this: when you failed in Afghanistan and Iraq with extended spells of occupation, where do you derive your certitude from that Assad would full by what looked to me like cross-border terrorism. I can never forget the image of Gen. Lloyd Austin, much before he became Defence Secretary, among whose various tasks was to train “good militants” to plague Assad. A budget of $500 million was set aside. The “good” militant learnt all the drills and, one morning, collected all the weapons they had been trained to handle and walked away presumably to join the “bad” terrorists. The General had to face the Senate Armed Services Committee. “How many of the soldiers you trained are still in battle?” the General looked at the panel with sad eyes, “four or five”.

If Assad could not fall by external pick prick, how did you dream up a proxy war on the turf of Ukraine which would defeat Putin with his arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons. You have caused the destruction of Ukraine with your weapons because you wished to get at Putin’s jugular. But why do you wish to “weaken Russia” as Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin or “debase Putin”? In an earlier instance also you played this kind of Billiard: your eventual target was Iran but Syria leading the subsidiary Shia arc, stood in the way.

In the instance of Ukraine you are having kittens because China, your eventual target, has held Russia’s hand and announced a “friendship with no limits”. Your hope is that a “debased” Russia will be that much less attractive to China. It is like throwing acid on a woman’s face so that the bridegroom rejects her.

One would have watched the outcome with interest because the complete devastation of Ukraine is not in any one’s interest. But alas your own allies are undermining your war effort. The unofficial line to all “European officials is to accelerate trade with Russia in food grains, fertilizers, oil and gas.” Your media too has fallen silent. Have they seen the writing on the wall?

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Will Protests In Arab World And India Lead To Something New?

Will Protests In Arab World And India Lead To Something New?

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

“Ba Khuda deewana bash-o

Ba Mohammad Hoshiyar”

In plain language, take liberties with God but be careful with Mohammad.

When Chandrabhan Brahmin, Dara Shikoh’s Prime Minister, crossed the red line, the intention was not to insult the prophet or hurt believers. He wrote:

“Punja dar panjay e Khuda daram

Manche parwaaye Mustafa daram”

(My hand is in the hand of God;

Why should I worry about Mohammad?)

This is more in the nature of literary conceit – a tease, a naughty expression designed not to offend but to amuse. Moreover it is meant for a small intimate company, leaving no room for misunderstanding. Chandrabhan Brahmin’s verses were, in fact, cited as evidence of Dara Shikoh’s liberal court, which, incidentally, showed how intellectually indebted Dara was to his great grandfather, Akbar.

It reflected on the widespread popularity of Akbar that the revolt by Sheikh Sirhindi against The Emperor’s experiment with eclecticism in the form of Deen-e-Ilahi or the Religion of God, were no more than pin pricks. If Sirhindi were a larger than life threat, it would not have been possible for Jehangir to have him confined to jail in Gwalior.

The security of the Empire is reflected in Dara’s audacious cultural experiment. He opened the way to Indology in Europe by having the Upanishads translated into Persian. His Majma-ul-Bahrain or the Confluence of the Oceans was an epoch making effort at trying to find common ground between Sufism and Vedantic Speculation.

The clergy must have been hopping mad at such excesses. Aurangzeb’s 49 year rule was wobbly in the sense that he spent considerable time in the Deccan campaigns. The clergy wasted no time in climbing ladders around him. The Gyanvapi mosque on the site of an old Shiva temple, is more a function of Aurangzeb’s weakness than his assertiveness. It brought cheer to the clergy burdened by the memory of the Dara years.

The promise of the great civilizational compact Akbar and Dara had given notice of survived the Aurangzeb years. There was a burst of it in Mohammad Shah Rangeela’s court in Delhi, in Wajid Ali Shah’s court in Lucknow until the last Moghul Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was dispatched to Yangon by the British where he died in the garage of John Davis, a junior officer.

This very amateurish incursion into history on my part has picked up in frequency since May, 2014 when Prime Minister, Narendra Modi made his very first speech in Parliament.

“Hamein 1,200 saal ki ghulami se nikalna hai.” What Modi meant that we have to come out of 1,200 years of subjugation. Most of us had parroted since 1947, that all Indians together had got rid of 200 years of British rule. Modi’s statement makes that stand on its head.

Over the years, one has got used to the Muslim period, indeed the Muslim being underplayed. Take for instance, the UNESCO’s project for elevating Delhi to a heritage city. This story goes back a decade, way before the appearance of Narendra Modi. For years notes went up and down on the subject. An initial stumbling block was that all the seven cities of Delhi but one happen to be Muslim. The seventh is Lutyen’s Delhi. They all fall well within the period which Modi considers years of “ghulami” but I am mixing `up eras. The UNESCO story belongs to the Congress era.

Ultimately, after years of bargaining, the choice was narrowed down to two – Lutyens Delhi and Shahjehanbad or old Delhi.

Dossiers were exchanged between UNESCO, archaeological survey and the Delhi Heritage society. But on the appointed day when the agreement with UNESCO was to be signed a mysterious hand swooped the documents away even as the assembled officials watched.

Enlightenment came through the agency of a group of retired judges and their families on a guided tour of Akshardham temple on the Jamuna. The guide may have exceeded his brief but he informed the stunned group that the history of Delhi starts with the Akshardham temple.

The protests in Arab capitals against remarks on Prophet Mohammed made by BJP spokesperson, Nupur Sharma and Navin Jindal represent spontaneous anger or do they also denote new affiliations in the region. Earlier, the US would have been in the loop at the very outset and played favourites. India’s independent vote at the UN on Ukraine has freed both Washington and New Delhi. They can now play situations according to their own lights.

Internally a stifled Muslim community has found in the protests an opportunity to vent their anger.

Is New Delhi on notice that its anti minority excesses will from now onwards be under scrutiny in the Arab world? I doubt if recent events indicate an irreversible transformation. Once the dust settles on the current protest, I expect it will be business as usual with the Arab world.

For New Delhi it is a wonderful opportunity. It must dismount the tiger – of communalism. This policy will give negative results henceforth because:

(a) In my recent travels within India, I don’t see much traction for high voltage communalism outside the Hindi belt.

(b) The BJP is already in a position to whistle, throw up its cap and celebrate its status as a Muslim-mukt party. Out of 301 seats in Parliament, soon there will not be one Muslim in this galaxy. If Hindu consolidation was required to consolidate BJP votes for Parliamentary elections that has been achieved. This percentage in the assemblies is unachievable.

(c) Beef, halal meat, hijab, love jihad, namaz in the open, mosques as stone pelting stations on Hindu processions – all these and more have been tried to keep communal temperature on a simmer.

In any case, these tricks, by themselves do not galvanize the nation. All these tied to nationalism do. This entails Kashmir always on a boil and Pakistan in a permanent enemy list. Has the RSS and the BJP plugged their ears so firmly that Atal Behari Vajpayee’s whisper does not reach them. “We cannot change our neighbours.”

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Kashi, Mathura Mosques, Your Private Grief, Not The World’s Concern

Kashi, Mathura Mosques, Your Private Grief, Not The World’s Concern

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

Muslims who are out to transform Gyanvapi, Kashi, and the Shahi Masjid, Mathura, into issues exactly on a scale which the other side wants, must pause to glance at the cover of the May 20 issue of The Economist. It shows Narendra Modi airborne in an electric three wheeler.

“India’s Moment” in bold font dominates the cover. Below the heading, in smaller font, are words of doubt: “Will Modi blow it?”

Your wails about the two mosques may rend the skies, but they are unlikely to veer the world from its main preoccupation. A new world order is being shaped. As this process gets under way, India is in a very sweet spot. No country in the world is being wooed as assiduously. Foreign Minister, S. Jaishankar has found his touch. He has corrected the tilt which has enhanced India’s value in the emerging post Ukraine world order.

The omens are bad for Muslims who have pitched their tents just at this moment around the mosques. The world is riveted on how the global cookie will crumble. The Economist, which is the mouthpiece for western capitalism, is all starry eyed: “India is likely to be the world’s fastest growing world economy this year.” Where do the two minority places of worship figure in this hoopla?

The lavish barrage of expectations being showered is not for love of India alone. The world “will have recognized, if it has not already, that the rise of China was a unique event; the Indian-growth will be world changing.”

By way of caution, the magazine has given sufficient play to the political, social decay which Modi must arrest before India goes full throttle on the straight. The main message of Hindutva, says The Economist, is “that Hindus must unite to face the danger.” which may “sound absurd in a country with an unassailable preponderance of Hindus.”

“But the urgency and the cry against a narrative of a Hindu Reconquista after centuries of Muslim and European rule over mother India is irresistible for many.”

The Gyanvapi and Shahi Masjid enthusiasts must note two points in the paragraph. Hindu “reconquista” is being invoked reminiscent of the Christian reconquest in Spain, against a religious category Muslims. That far the image fits India like a glove. But along with Muslims are listed a people who inhabit a territory, Europe. Surely, Europeans too have a religion. French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing opposed Turkey’s entry into Europe because “Turkey is Muslim and European civilization is Christian.”

Do not blame The Economist. This is an established western sleight of hands. During the Bosnian war, “Serbs and Croats” were in conflict with “Bosnian Muslims” – two ethnic entities in conflict with a religious category. Elaborating on Serbian Orthodox and Croatian Catholics would open up faultlines within the Christian universe as the conflict in Northern Ireland does.

For those protecting the parapets at Kashi and Mathura mosques, it may be useful to know the opposing side. And it is the multitudes on the “opposing side” who are swaying in a mystical trance with their “beens” (snake charmer’s flute), trying to mesmerize Mother India. When India wakes up, it will be “their” bulwark against China.

The word “reconquista” used by the magazine is loaded. It resonates with the return of Christian power in Andalusia. The termination of Muslim rule in Spain which lasted a 800 years, bears minimal resemblance to the Muslim predicament in the Indian subcontinent, but the authors of Hindutva may derive inspiration by the way Jews and Muslims were harassed, harried, tortured during the Inquisition which followed the return of Christian rule in Spain.

Inquisition was harsher on the Jews who found hospitality in the Muslim Kingdom of Morocco and later also in the Ottoman Empire. The Jew’s gratitude to the Moroccan king lasted generations. I have seen King Hassan II’s photographs dominate the drawing rooms of Sephardic Jews in Jerusalem.

What should interest Gyanvapi and Shahi Masjid enthusiasts is the story of one of the world’s most magnificent mosques that I have ever seen. Poet Iqbal’s visit to the monument yielded a masterpiece the opening line of which sums up the metaphysical, civilizational perspective. He sees the great monument of Cordoba (Masjid e-Qarduba in Urdu) as:

“Silsilaye roz o shub

Asl e mamat o hayat”

(A continuity with interchangeability from day to night, a metaphor for life and death.)

Reverting to the two mosques: these are bad times for being reasonable and yet it is tempting to coax something from Rudyard Kipling:

“If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…..”

The Sachar Committee report in 2005 showed the abysmal drop of the Muslim on every social indicator, but even that report was not as hurtful as the reality today is. It had not shown Muslims as battered and bruised. When a people arc down and out how do you tell them that the mosques are medieval relics of conquest and Kashi and Mathura are like Mecca and Medina to the Hindus. Mathura “nagari”, not the mosque, is where Maulana Hasrat Mohani longed to die in “Krishna’s embrace”.

Wali Dakhini wrote:

“Koocha e yaar aen Kaashi hai

Jogia dil wahan ka vaasi hai”

(The lane where my beloved lives is exactly like Kashi

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

This is no time to remind a wounded people about Wali. Although the irony is that Wali’s mazar outside Ahmadabad’s main police station was razed by the February 2002 rioters who probably did not even know who lay buried there. No, this is no time to tell them anything, not even the fact that the issue has been raised now precisely in preparation for the elections in 2024 and the RSS centenary in 2025. It is an invitation to Muslims to dig their heels in. The BJP will then polarize.

Also, be warned on another count. The Economist has already told you: a pity but your tragedies are not in the world’s ken.

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Why Is India’s Successful 1971 Sri Lanka Intervention, A Forgotten Story?

Why Is India’s Successful 1971 Sri Lanka Intervention, A Forgotten Story?

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

The adage, plagiarized from Dryden, which I apply to journalists, came back to me when I settled down to write a column on the mass upsurge in Sri Lanka. A journalist by this system of belief is “everything by starts and nothing long.” It may puncture the self esteem of journalists who carry gravitas on their sleeves, but I am quite content with the definition.

In April 1971, known only to a small group, an Indian Frigate sailed to guard the Sri Lankan coastline against “foreign” reinforcements to help the JVP or Sri Lankan National Liberation Front which had virtually taken over the island. Umesh Mathur was one of the eight pilots to man six helicopters, needed desperately by the island to ferry ammunition to areas where insurgency was intense.

Anuradhpura, the Buddhist heritage site in the middle of the island was sending messages of desperation to the Indian Force control room in the Galle Face hotel where I had also checked in. In those days Colombo had two premiere hotels, Galle Face and Taprobane in the Colombo fort.

I am kicking myself for having forgotten the name of the Indian Brigadier, leading the Indian contingent. I tried but no General I know, including the ones who served in the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka seemed to remember the occasion when India saved the island. There were other army officers to help the Brigadier draw up a list of military hardware and details of a contingent to train 5,000 troops. The Brigadier was a kindly man and he quickly spotted a greenhorn of a reporter from The Statesman, a newspaper revered by the army top brass. He understood that I was on assignment to cover the insurgency but was confined to the hotel because of a strict 24/7 curfew with shoot at sight orders.

He had put his finger on the button. I was worried as hell. My first foreign assignment, if covered well, would boost my senior’s confidence in me and more such assignments would follow. Remember, I am talking of days when there was considerable fairness in journalism. Should I flop, I shall be treated like the thoroughbred who sat down on the Straight. Shot.

To dispel my gloom, appeared the figure of the cheerful Mangalorian Brigadier approaching me from the far end of the verandah. “In 15 minutes a helicopter is taking off for Anuradhpura” he said. “It’s a two seater and he will fly you”, pointing to the pilot. It was like manna from heaven.

The pilot, Umesh Mathur, tall and fit, was good company because, in the absence of conversation because of earplugs to muffle cockpit noise, he kept pointing out interesting locations below – police stations under JVP control for instance.

In about 45 minutes, we were hovering over Anuradhpura where heavy showers obstructed vision. Suddenly, there is a loud report, like a balloon bursting. The helicopter begins to hurtle down. There is a brisk manoevre on Mathur’s part. He has tilted the rotors to cushion the air. I say my last prayer just in case it helps. The helicopter came down not with a crash but a thud. It had sunk in the slush created by heavy rains. We have survived. But the suspense is not over. How near are we to the insurgents. Mathur makes radio contact. Within minutes a IAF helicopter is hovering overhead. The Calcutta (Kolkata) edition of The Statesman, trained never to lose balance, lost it in this instance. The page one headline across three columns was:

“A Copter Crash and I Was in Insurgent Country.”

It was then called Ceylon where the drama began on April 5. When it erupted it had all the trimmings of an international whodunit. Détente was going badly for the Americans. Stand up comedians in Washington had their own take: détente was like going to a wife swapping party and returning home alone. Ceylon was not central to the competition between the two super powers.

The US President in 1971 was Richard Nixon. He was busy with bigger things, creating a Beijing, Washington, Moscow triangular power balances. In totally different circumstances, is that not what the West is attempting now: to distance Beijing from Moscow because their “friendship without limits” is the West’s nightmare.

The JVP cadres in the late teens and 20s, fell back for training on an unexpected source; North Korea. They had built up a cultural centre in Colombo, which was larger than many embassies. On April 5 boys and girls tutored in North Korean cells, among others, their ranks swelled by an assortment of bandwagon revolutionaries, graduates and semi educated unemployed peasants armed with shotguns, bombs, pistols attached police stations across the country. They captured 91 of the 250 police stations. Rail and telelinks were disrupted. That night the insurgents controlled one fourth of the country.

Why then did the JVP not succeed? As often happens in such underground operations, not all the conspirators are of the same stern stuff. There is always a Judas. In this instance, a group of insurgents, instructed to attack the Wellawaya police station, jumped the gun and launched an attack one day earlier than the scheduled date – April 4. This alerted the police.

Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranaike informed a shocked cabinet that the insurgents had a plan to assassinate her or, preferably, kidnap her. At 11 pm, about 50 insurgents were to assemble at Temple Tree, the Prime Minister’s residence, storm it and assassinate the PM or kidnap her. This operation was to coincide with the attacks on the police station.

Among the first diplomats to be asked for instant help was the Indian High Commissioner, Y.K. Puri, the last of the ICS breed. An offer of troops in Brigade strength was shouted down by the opposition. Indian troops in such large numbers would be resented by the people.

The JVP’s ire was, it turned out, directed against “Western imperialism, Indian expansionism and Soviet revisionism. Youth upsurge of diverse hues was the flavor of the season from Paris to Patna those years.

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Sri Lanka Outcome: America Returns To South Asia

Sri Lanka Outcome: America Returns To South Asia

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

 

Whatever the aspiration of the protesters in Sri Lanka, the chaos they created has caused the messiah to appear in the form of the IMF. For the IMF to be effective, it needed a government it could vibe with. That there could not have been a better choice for the job of Prime Minister than Ranil Wickremesinghe because clear as daylight the moment he was sworn in.

“Ranil Wickremesinghe’s appointment and the quick formation of an inclusive government are first steps in addressing the crisis and promoting stability. We encourage meaningful progress at the IMF and long term solutions that meet the needs of all Sri Lanka.”

This instant approval of RW is by US Ambassador Julie Chung.

She knows RW as someone who has always been supportive of American presence in Sri Lanka in every shape and form. He clashed with President Srisena who was not inclined to sign the Status of Forces agreement exactly as the Americans wanted. There can be no better candidate for such abject surrender than someone as politically weak as RW. His UNP was decimated in the last elections and he did not win a single seat.

“This is farcical democracy with the military on the roads and people under curfew” wrote Activist Social Scientist, Darini Rajasingham Senanayake.

Rajasinghe is a little excessive, but RW’s appointment has been greeted with dismay across the board. For political oxygen he was seen prostrating before hawkish Sinhala clergy who would bless the US presence to eliminate Chinese presence from the island. China is on their wrong side because of Tibet. This wing of the clergy is also happy with India for having created the Union Territory of Ladakh by bifurcating Kashmir. There were celebrations in their Viharas when the Union territory was created.

This is all part of the comeback that the US is staging in South Asia after the excruciatingly painful debacle in Afghanistan in August. Even that may not have been such a humiliating retreat in retrospect. President Vladimir Putin’s adviser, Valery Fadeyev told me as much in the course of an hour long zoom interview last week. Who knows, he said, the US may have simply transferred power to the Taleban.

Sometimes political shifts alter geography as well. After 1947 Indian diplomacy, to a large extent, consisted in neutralizing Pakistan everywhere. With the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the geography of South Asia changed. India become a large country surrounded by small ones. These countries, in concert, began to balance power by flourishing a Chinese card in their pocket. It was to neutralize this card that Atal Behari Vajpayee, as External Affairs Minister, made what he thought would be an epoch making visit to China in 1979. Den Xiaoping had other priorities: he had just launched his four modernizations in 1978. A somewhat charged up Deng decided to “teach Vietnam a lesson” in 1979, same year as Vajpayee’s visit.

The visit was something of a disaster. Later, several Prime Ministers, including Vajpayee visited Beijing. Bilateral relations were up and down but the border, viewed from two different perspectives, remained insoluble.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 provided the US with is Sole Super Power moment. Manmohan Singh’s economic reform 1991 onwards brought India in line with the US on many issues. It is forgotten that Narendra Modi’s arrival in Gujarat on 7 October, 2001 to take over from Keshu Bhai, coincided with the US fireworks in Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden. It electrified Hindutva.

Islamophobia was the flavor of the season when the Godhara disaster leading to an anti Muslim pogrom of February 2002 happened. There was perfect harmony between the Bush-Blair Islamophobia and our communalism. Intelligence agencies kissed each other and became chums sharing or creating data on terrorists.

The US began to look in weak health after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. What magnified American decline was the corresponding rise of China. With diligence and with Chinese help, Vladimir Putin build Russia up into a power which it is today.

China-Russia declaration of “friendship without limits”, set the cat among the pigeon, in the Western camp. Just about this time came the humiliating images from Afghanistan.

The American century was a pipedream. The US was in retreat. Even steady camp followers like India began to cultivate other options. Yes, we were in the Quad but then what is this exclusive Anglo Saxon club called AAKUS? How reliable is the US?

India’s balanced votes in the UN on Ukraine are clear indications of diminishing faith in a policy of relying too much on one power.

The image of a tennis racket comes to mind to understand how New Delhi may have felt when the US left Afghanistan. Imagine the wiring of the racket as Afghanistan where once the American presence gave New Delhi comfort. Taleb-Pakistan nexus was the Indian nightmare.

Post American departure, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Russia are all peering into Afghanistan. India is somewhere at the throat, joining the shaft to the rim or frame. The US has gone beyond two oceans. This altered Geography was disconcerting, a pressure on New Delhi to live in peace with neighbours, even the ones with border issues.

Pakistan is part of our internal politics, just as India is Pakistan’s. We need communal temperatures on tepid heat for the national mood to be boosted to a feverish pitch when required by, say, a Balakot. Remember Love Jihad, beef, hijab, stone pelting from mosques keeps the mood in a saffron hue. The national mood is galvanized only when communalism is tied to nationalism. In other word for big game hunting Kashmir and Pakistan are required as issues. Settlement of Kashmir or peace with Pakistan is not in our interest atleast until 2024.

So, we are relieved that the Americans are making a comeback in South Asia, first Pakistan, now Sri Lanka, next……… The people in these countries can stand in long queues till eternity because there is neither foods in the shops nor petrol in the pumps.

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