Anger Erupted On The Issue Of Hijab But Has Economic Basis

Anger Erupted On The Issue Of Hijab But Has Economic Basis

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

by refusing to sing the National Anthem at the opening encounter with England during the Qatar World Cup game, the Iran football team made a historic statement before the largest audience ever – billions across the globe.

The unrest in Iran which began in September when a 22 year old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who died in custody of Iran’s morality police, shows no signs of abating. The charge against Amini was that she did not wear the hijab properly, that her hair was exposed.

The nature of the crime and its punishment, invited a novel form of demonstration by women film stars, women from the world of fashion, politics. Even European Parliamentaries participated. These women defiantly chopped off their hair with expert ease in front of cameras. This became a global phenomenon too but on a much more limited scale compared to the world cup bombshell.

The other dissimilarity between the serial hair chopping and the symbolic statement made by the football team is the pronounced class difference. The chopping of hair by ladies of fashion, was a relatively elite group. The catchment area for the football team, like that of the army and police, comes from the lower middle class and therefore that much more representative of the Iranian masses.

Folks have been suspicious from day one in September when the protests in Iran began. The sources of information were suspect. For instance how did an Associated Press reporter in Europe give graphic accounts of the march of the protesters when our own limited sources told us that internet had been blocked by the Iranian state.

This is where the Americans come in with their Liberation Technology Movement. And it is not something that the Americans deny, rather they wear it on their sleeves in the general promotion of democracy everywhere. Help for the Iranian protesters was announced by the Secretary of State Antony Blinken when addressing the media along with External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar after their meeting at the UN.

Blinken was asked how the US proposed to help Iranian protesters against state repression. Blinken virtually indicated the size of the equipment that would be made available to the Iranian protesters.

The technology Blinken was talking about had been perfected by the Obama administration during the Syrian operations. I learnt of it from James Glanz and John Markoff, two reporters from the New York Times who described “one operation was out of a spy novel in a fifth floor shop in L street, Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs, looking like a garage band, are fitting deceptively innocent looking hardware into a prototype ‘internet in a suitcase’”. It was all in preparation for an elaborate “Liberation Technology Movement” which had now found robust entry in Iran.

According to two NYT reporters, it was the Obama administration which was leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” internet and mobile phone systems that “dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments.

Surely all of this is available to the targeted elite in Iran. How do they react? Moreover, how do we find out how the ruling elite in Tehran are planning to cope with the surging protests? The Economist alerts us weeks ago that the protests which show the “exhilarating bravery of women”, may, with the help of men, make possible the “removal of the vile system.”

Time was when The Economist could be relied upon. This was well before the days when the soul of Rupert Murdoch took up residence in journalism as it evolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The neo-cons have subsided but some of their agenda lives on in publications like The Economist.

There is a problem. When The Economist, or its many cousins, support the protests in Iran, ones tendency in recent years has been to put on ones doubting cap and search for alternative sources of information.

In this instance, I did not have to look far for sources. The protest of Iran’s national football team came across live to the whole wide world. We saw it live on TV. It looked so authentic.

The Economist has been hostile to the Ayatullah ever since they replaced the magazine’s favourite, The Shah, in 1979. Those opposed to the regime generally find themselves on the right side of the publication, its partisans, which could include some spurious illiberal interests.

This agitation has gone way beyond the issue of hijab, which, in any case was always something of an exaggeration. Yes, I have stayed in hotels across Iran where there was always a plaque advising women guests to respect Iranian culture by covering their heads. I never found it offensive.

In fact on the streets and in many social institutions women, in the most fashionable western outfits, would either discard the hijab or wore it in its flimsiest form – a scarf covering only half the head almost a statement of fashion.

No, these demonstration are an eruption of a society groaning under a host of economic ills. And, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, himself put his finger on the nub of the matter – the Economy.

This he did in the course of an important speech in Isfahan, the “city of culture and learning”. Iran faces many economic and social problems. The protests are an expression of people’s anger. This anger was being taken advantage of by the Enemy (America) for a simple reason: “progress of the Islamic revolution invalidates the western world’s logic of liberal democracy.”

After talking to as many sources as I could, I can say with certainty that these protests have jolted the Iranian regime, but it is nowhere near collapse.

The hundreds who have died are being blamed by the pro regime intelligentsia on Kushtey-Saazi or “manufacturing death”. Example: “Deceased was a participant in anti government protests and ‘rioting’, was deliberately killed by fellow rioters to increase body count that can be blamed on the government.”

When the government puts out such material, it does not smack of truth but its exact opposite.

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Impose Hindi And It Will Remain Non Starter As National Language

Impose Hindi And It Will Remain Non Starter As National Language

                                                                                           Saeed Naqvi

I have long held that Sangeet, Sari and Sanskrit unite the country like nothing else does. On Sanskrit I have been fiercely challenged. Sanskrit became part of my triple X matrix after my friend, Abu Abraham, a remarkable cartoonist, chastised me for being facetious about Sanskritized Hindi.

Balraj Sahni, who had graduated through the Indian People’s Theatre (IPTA) to Bollywood, was invited to address the first convocation of Jawaharlal Nehru University. In the course of his address, Sahni told a joke about “my friend Johnny Walker”. Johnny says “These days’ newsreaders shouldn’t say ‘Listen to the news in Hindi’; they should say ‘listen to Hindi in the news’.” Abu flared up like his cartoon had been rubbished.

“You North Indian chauvinists will never understand this.” He was in a rage. “The more Sanskritized Hindi becomes, the more intelligible it becomes to a Malayali like me.”

The passion with which Abu made the statement stayed with me when I was posted in Chennai as editor of the Southern editions of the Indian Express. Since Chennai, Bengaluru, Viaywada, Hyderabad, Kochi and bureaus across the four southern states were part of my parish, I was able to travel extensively. The Abu mantra became a constant point of departure for linguistic inquiry.

I consider myself uniquely privileged for having been given the Chennai assignment. Imagine a Muslim from Mustafabad, near Rae Bareli seated behind a large teak table that once belonged to Ramnath Goenka, founder publisher of Indian Express. I was supervising an office where every cubicle and desk was occupied by men and women who either wore on their foreheads several stripes of ash horizontally or a vertical vermillion streak right down to the space where the nose begins.

Having been reared in the Catholicism of Lucknow, I was fascinated by the cultural variety. My new circumstance did not cause alienation, rather it provoked inquiry into a rich culture most North Indians have no clue to. The Express Empire was professional, very archaic and feudal. The News Editor was a tall, big man called ‘Master’ because he was once tutor to Ramnathji’s only son, Bhagwandas. Master later mutated as RNG’s model news editor, punctilious and painstaking. He did not sparkle; he was staid and dependable.

In a country as religious as ours, Master was a model of secularism. Deeply religious but a stranger to communalism. He had two fixations: Chakravarty Rajagopalachri was God’s gift to statesmanship just as M.S. Subbulakshmi was to music. These were non negotiable propositions, on all else he had an open mind or so I thought.

I was in full flow one day and, to keep pace with my thoughts, I lapsed extensively into Hindi. I noticed Master look at me piercingly, turn his back towards me and silently resume his seat at the head of a long table around which sat diligent sub editors poring over raw copy.

One of them walked upto me. “Please don’t mind Master’s tantrums” he said. “He finds it patronizing when someone speaks to him in Hindi.” My experience with N. Ram of The Hindu was worse. As I inadvertently slipped into Hindi, Ram gestured that I stop. “Speak a civilized language” he said.

Master and Ram were not the only ones who stopped me in my tracks when I, by sheer habit, lapsed into Hindi. They are both thoroughbred Aayangar Brahmins. A false impression in the North is that opposition to Hindi is only from the Dravidian communities of whom Tamilnadu Finance Minister, Palanivel Thiagarajan is the most articulate representative.

Now, place Master-Ram attitude to Hindi alongside Abu Abraham’s. The first two find Hindi a North Indian imposition. Abu offers ideas of making it more acceptable to a wider audience. What Abu is saying and what I learnt during my five years in the South is that all south Indian languages, with the solitary exception of Tamil, have a large component of Sanskrit – anywhere between 65 to 75 percent. Indeed all major regional languages – Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, for instance – are packed with Sanskrit.

In other words, if the Sanskrit quantum is increased in Hindi, it would become that much more intelligible to the regions. This truth would appear to contradict another reality we have learnt to live with since independence. The sole credit for the wide acceptance of Hindi, atleast in the north must go to Bollywood. This is simple Hindustani, indistinguishable from the Urdu of Nazir Akbarabadi. Sanskritize Hindi and it will become that much more accessible to the regions where Sanskrit already has a presence in the local language. By this very token it will become that much more difficult for the average cinema goer.

Let me cite my personal problem with my favourite program; Prime Time by Ravish Kumar, NDTV’s super hit telecast. I marvel at Ravish’s aggressive, defiant attitude towards the establishment. The problem is that a good fifty percent of the script is lost on me probably for the same reason that it would have been more intelligible to Abu.

If so many regional languages are vehicles for Sanskrit in substantial degrees, would Sanskrit have been a better bet as the national language? Caste is cited as an obstruction. It was the language of Purohits and high caste sages. The laws of Manu banned it from trickling lower down.

The other argument was that it would be like reviving Latin and Greek. This argument is advanced by folks who are unfamiliar with people from 160 countries who have made Hebrew into a language of advanced technology in Israel.

The politician in New Delhi may find it tempting to consider Abu’s formula of raising the Sanskritic content in “Khari boli” to bring it in line with the regional languages. But that will not necessarily make it acceptable as the national language. Any push towards that end and the regions will scream “North Indian chauvinism”. The whole terrain is so littered with minefields, that the slow, evolutionary approach of Bollywood remains the safest route to see Hindi grow.

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Chastened By The Mid-Term Verdict, Biden May Encourage Ukraine Negotiations

Chastened By The Mid-Term Verdict, Biden May Encourage Ukraine Negotiations

                                                                                 Saeed Naqvi

What Emanuel Macron told France’s top diplomats in a closed door meeting in August, 2022, about the “changing world order”, would have caused Western resolve on Ukraine to collapse had it been a public statement before TV cameras.

“I must admit Western hegemony is coming to an end.” This was only one of the statements Macron made about the West’s post Ukraine decline. A verbatim report was pigeoned out and found its way to some of us.

In August it was the first “on record” statement by a key member of what was being touted as the “unshakable” Western alliance. When I published contents of Macron’s statement on 26 August 2022, I expected brickbats. So completely sold on Western propaganda about the Ukraine war was the Indian media, that the story was given no traction.

An earlier TV interview with Valery Fadeyev, Adviser to President Putin, invited not curiosity about what the Kremlin was thinking during the early months of the war, but rather suspicion that “anti Ukrainian” propaganda was afoot. One distinguished editor thought the interview with Fadeyev was “bad journalism”, because no questions had been asked about the massacre of the innocents at Bucha by the retreating Russian army. Time proved that Bucha had been set-up by the propaganda arm of the Ukrainian campaign.

The Ukrainian Ambassador to New Delhi, with scant knowledge of Indian history, compared the Russian aggression against Ukraine to “Moghul” barbarities against the Rajputs. He had to tone down his hyperbole under some public pressure.

During wars like Ukraine or the US occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, proxy wars in Libya and Syria, what is mostly missing is an Indian perspective. Elections are round the corner in Nepal. The outcome is of supreme interest to New Delhi and Beijing. In fact I would not be surprised if news bureaus representing the official Chinese media have already taken up position in the Himalayan state. There is no evidence that any Indian channel has taken any initiative.

While we scream Atmnirbharta (self sufficiency) from rooftops, the entire Indian media is totally and abjectly dependent on Western sources of information.

It worked while Indian foreign policy was tilted towards the West, a stance which prospered most since the 1992 collapse of the Soviet Union when New Delhi basked under the Sole Superpower. Ukraine has totally changed the circumstance. South Block has been quick to shift gears and readjust to the imminence of a multi polar world. No, South Block is not falling back on a new non alignment. The new pragmatic phase will be defined by aggressive, but cautious alignments on all sides.

This new foreign policy demands a self-sufficient media, independent of the bloc which has so far been the solitary source of information on world affairs. New centres of information may emerge with India as the regional power. An active SAARC could be a reality if the unthinkable happens with Pakistan and China after the 2024 general elections.

A basic provocation for such fanciful thinking is located in Macron’s candid sharing of ideas with his officials. As I mentioned there was an initial lack of interest, partly because the ideas seemed remarkably outlandish in the midst of the conventional wisdom forged by Western propaganda. Indeed the absence of any reaction to my story published in August caused me to doubt my own sources. A fake story may have been planted on me to discredit the independent line I had taken on the conflict from the day it first erupted. I am taking up the document now, for the second time, because I now know that the French Ambassador to New Delhi, Emmanuel Lenain, was, like all the other French Ambassadors, present at the all important meet. The document now stands authenticated.

Let me now pick on some of the nuggets from Macron’s statement:

a) Because of the existence of NATO, it becomes very difficult for Europe to form another European army, and as long as the “European army” does not exist, Europe will be controlled by the political instructions of the United States.

b) Yes, the United States is an ally, our long-term ally, but at the same time it is an ally who has been kidnapping us for a long time.

c) Taking Russia out of Europe may be an absolutely far-reaching strategic mistake.

d) If the West keeps pushing harder, will Russia and China still say that they will not form an alliance? Is the enemy of our friend necessarily our enemy? In other words, if Russia is the enemy of the US, must it be an enemy of Europe?

e) We need to build Europe’s own security architecture, because if we don’t ease relations with Russia, there will be no peace on the continent.

f) I asked the Americans to swap Russia and Canada.

g) Ultimately, the world will revolve around two poles: America and China, and Europe will have to choose between these two.

h) But there is a way out: Only France can reestablish a profoundly European civilization.

i) When we discuss European sovereignty, we must also include the United Kingdom very deeply, regardless of the final outcome of Brexit, European sovereignty includes the United Kingdom.

In the midst of a war in which Western hegemony of the world order is on the line, the leaking of Macron’s candid thought must have been highly disruptive. But now the chips in real life are falling approximate to the general drift of Macron’s thoughts.

The Congressional elections have not left Biden like a wounded stag, nor brimming with over confidence. The voters have nicely put him in his place. From now till November 2024, the electorate has given him a cluttered domestic agenda.

How far towards negotiations Russia, Washington over Ukraine are inclined will be revealed in their respective body language when Anthony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov meet at the G20 Summit in Bali on November 15-16.

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November Congressional Results May Determine Biden-Putin Meet At Bali

November Congressional Results May Determine Biden-Putin Meet At Bali

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

The 30 Democrats in Congress avowedly of a liberal bent were rapped hard on the knuckles by the hawkish party establishment for urging President Biden in a joint letter, to “negotiate directly with Russia”. Wringing their hands, the letter writers all but walked the streets in sack cloth and ashes. After withdrawing the letter, ofcourse.

This action-reaction, within the ruling party has refocused attention on the deep divisions within the ruling party, indeed the entire western ruling class on how to bring the Ukraine war to a conclusion? To cut losses and negotiate, and thereby lose face because Putin’s popularity remains intact? Or to gamble and remain in the fight to eventually bleed Putin in some remote future?

It was a carefully worded note which quoted President Zelensky in May that the war “will only definitively end through diplomacy.” Where the letter writers faltered was probably their falling back on a statement Zelensky made six months ago, which apparently is when the first outlines of the draft emerged. It was mailed just a few days ago when the White House is understandably nervous about the Congressional elections next week. Hence the furore.

Pramila Jayapal chair of the Caucus did not cover herself with glory for blaming the “timing” of the letter’s dispatch to official mismanagement.

For the record, the operative paragraph of the two page letter should be noted: “In conclusion we urge you to make vigorous diplomatic efforts in support of a negotiated settlement and ceasefire, engage in direct talks with Russia, explore prospects for a new European security arrangement acceptable to all parties that will allow for a sovereign and independent Ukraine, and, in coordination with our Ukrainian partners, seek a rapid end to conflict and reiterate this goal as America’s chief priority.” A Putin-Biden meet on the margins of the G20 summit in Bali on November 15? No one knows how November 8, Congressional elections will go. A Biden with a winning hand may well be able to summon up the courage and stiffen the sinews.

Should Biden come out smelling of roses, the war may well be seen as having contributed to his welfare. This would give The White House some leverage to negotiate on terms which would help the 2024 Democratic campaign. This line of thinking must not obviate the very real possibility that the President may come a cropper too. Negotiations then will become that much more difficult for a weakened President whose war aim, as articulated by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, was to “weaken Russia”.

The illusion that the war is going well for America is being sustained by the media which is like a continuous drone to the musical score. Elsewhere in this “score” some real things are happening. Matters of War and Peace for a great power are never determined by whim or instinct. A country like the US has invested so much in the life of the mind – university faculties, think tanks, specialized institutions – that anyone with ears close to the ground on this circuit will pick up information on the kind of research work the administration, directly or indirectly, has farmed out to think tanks.

Media disinformation notwithstanding, one outcome of this war is more or less established – we are transiting from US hegemony to a multipolar world. The process became imminent in 2008. The Lehman Brothers came down like melting ice cream. Then countless other citadels of capitalism including some in which we too were heavily invested – Enron, for instance – fell.

The collapse of the Soviet Union conferred on the US the Sole Super Power moment which the neo cons in the Washington wasted by their over-reach.

In the present circumstance, think tanks like the Quincy Institute published a paper in September, 2022, which spells out “A US Grand Strategy for a Multipolar World.” What this strategy should be is summed up in the headline: Managed Competition.

A sample para: “Just as we did during the Cold War when the US and Soviet Union recognized that the consequences of super power conflict in the nuclear era created a shared interest in keeping their rivalry within safe bounds, we must establish rules of the game for a multipolar era to manage threats that cannot be addressed through American might alone.” The retreat from being hegemonic is going to be excruciatingly painful. What happens to American exceptionalism? A very unpredictable and turbulent phase lies ahead before final destination.

There will be a shrill reaction against voices of moderation. It is not fashionable to discuss the reality that Russia was “lured” into this conflict as Prof. John Mearsheimer of Chicago University, among a host of other public intellectuals have consistently maintained.

Rand Corporation as early as 2019 produced a 325 page document advising the state, step by step on the elaborate expedition of “Extending Russia” to “compete from advantageous ground.” The “special action” by Russia on February 24, 2022 therefore was not an event which was unthinkable.

From the day that the Nixon-Kissinger team helped create the Washington-Moscow-Beijing triangle in the early 70s, the US foreign policy makers have never deviated from the line i.e. Beijing and Moscow must be kept apart.

Put it down to super-power chauvinism, that US practitioners of foreign affairs conducted their relations with the two so carelessly that, instead of separating them, they brought the two closer. After their Beijing summit in early February 2022, weeks before the Ukraine war began, Xi Jinping and Putin announced a “Friendship without limits”, which had “no forbidden areas of co-operation.” The alliance was “superior even to the cold war era.” This truly set the cat among the pigeons. Instead of a cool application of thought on how to loosen the bear-dragon embrace, a highly charged (or panic stricken) Nancy Pelosi defiantly turned up in Taiwan.

In the entire international system, not one country has given up its established position to become a western drum beater since the Ukraine war began.

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The Sunak Factor Showcases Britain At Its Best Or Decline?

The Sunak Factor Showcases Britain At Its Best Or Decline?

                                                                                    Saeed Naqvi

Can Rishi Sunak be placed with Macaulay’s children? Thomas Babington Macaulay described these as “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion in morals and intellect.” Traces of Rishi, there?

Had Macaulay manifested himself by some miracle in the Calcutta of the 50s and 60s, he would have patted himself on the back. All English companies were in the safe hands of brown-Englishmen – boxwallahs they were called. But Macaulay would have gulped at the sight of his cultural progeny of colour elevated to the job his contemporary Benjamin Disraeli once occupied – that of Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Macaulay’s Minute for Education policy was circulated in 1835. As if on cue, Doon School, modeled on Eton, opened its dormitories for the first batch in 1935. This facilitated princes, civil servants, army top brass and sundry elites to recycle their progeny through Doon School, St. Stephen’s College (or its equivalents), and Cambridge or Oxford.

This recycling lasted barely two generation because a large part of this elite ran out of cash. It found it difficult to afford the Rs.10,000 required to put their wards through a Tripos at Cambridge. By the mid 70s, it was the turn of the scholarship elites from the Ivy League to take over top jobs in the economics sector. Rishi Sunak does not trace his ancestry to this earlier elite. His is more the aspirational tribe which did not have an elite base in India. This lot turned up not to recycle itself through famous universities. It did one better. It settled in places like South Hall, Birmingham, Leicester Rochdale, Leeds. The last named triggers a story I cannot resist telling. The story was told to me by Denis Healy, the best Prime Minister Britain never had. During an election in the 20s, the short list of three Labour candidates for Leeds South contained one M.A. Jinnah.

Healy peers at me from under the bushiest of eyebrows: “supposing Jinnah had been nominated and won, would the history of the subcontinent been different?”

Had Sunak’s ancestors, who left Gujranwala, now in Pakistan, come directly to Britain where would they have settled? It is difficult to map them because they left for Kenya before India was Partitioned. In a sense, Sunak is Idi Amin’s gift to Britain. Had the Ugandan dictator not set into motion a chain of migration from East Africa by first expelling them from his country in the 70s, Indians may still be in East Africa.

The planning by the Sunak family into the making of Rishi is exemplary. But let me first tell you a brief story of a planned life, destination clearly in view.

A young man of modest means sought accommodation near a Golf Course so that his daughter could join the nearby school. He and his daughter would then join the Golf Club, at whatever cost, beg, borrow or steal. By the time she is past her higher-secondary, ready for college, she will be an expert, if not a champion, golfer. This is high premium qualification for admission in the fanciest US colleges on his diligently drawn up list. The whole trajectory worked out.

In Sunak’s case the career was conceived and mapped with the best possible education as a stepping stone to networks, wealth and power. Stroud preparatory school, Southampton, Winchester College where he was head boy; Oxford, Stanford and the campus secret societies en route double distilling the elite network.

It is, ofcourse, misleading to place a person who became Prime Minister in double quick time in the same frame as those who achieved less. With a first from Oxford, when he entered Stanford as a Fulbright Scholar, he met Akshata Murthy, heiress to the multibillion dollar Infosys empire.

An unbroken first class record through the best possible schools and universities wedded to the wealthiest family in Britain quite clearly helped break the colour barrier. But it must never be forgotten in India, Kenya, Gujranwala, wherever they celebrate Sunak, that a practicing Hindu is made Prime Minister in a country which has its own proud Church. Britain is an Anglican monarchy, a Christian country but which, quite admirably, is socially and politically so secular as to find Sunak doubly kosher.

The hoopla surrounding the swearing in obscured the cardinal fact that he was “crowned” by an uncrowned king. Thus far Charles is king only by succession. He is yet to be crowned king at a ceremony where the Archbishop of Canterbury will confer on him the aura of which the crown is but a symbol.

In this perspective is it not possible to conceive a Hindu state which treats all its citizens, of diverse denominations, as equal? If you are so averse to the word “secularism”, change the dictionary and assign to Hinduism that meaning –– secularism.

The large hearted accommodation in this instance by Britain must be glorified, ofcourse, but do keep room for a thought: how far will this accommodation go without straining the fabric? A Prime Minister, Mayor of London, Ministers in cabinet, always from the colonies. Also, I have watched four cricketers of subcontinental origin play for the English test team and so much more. Some of it betrays a decline in quality, attitudes which probably come from resting on ones oars, a sort of ennui after satiety, a blasé shrug of the shoulders.

When I first entered the Sunday Times, the Best and the Brightest on Fleet Street were uniform, without exception, in their marital circumstance. They were all waiting for their divorces to come through; they all had mistresses who were quite visibly advanced in the family way. The only half way stable marriage was Phillip Knightley’s that too, because he was married to a Mangalorian who are tenacious keepers of the institution of marriage. It was this institution which I saw fray in my very first outing to England. Is this a pertinent variable to be looking at to grasp a country’s generosity which may also carry seeds of its decay?

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Great Chance For Kharge To Redesign Congress Architecture

Great Chance For Kharge To Redesign Congress Architecture

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

In a sense the wheel has come full circle. On March 14, 1998, Sonia Gandhi was made Congress President by a virtual coup manufactured against Sitaram Kesri by party stalwarts like Pranab Mukherjee, Jitendra Prasada, Sharad Pawar and a host of others. Kesri was locked up until Sonia formally replaced him. It was a clumsy, insulting operation.

It is a relief therefore that, after several gyrations, the Congress Party held its first election for President in 20 years. The remarkable feature of Mallikarjun Kharge’s elevation is this: he is the first Dalit President of the Congress and he came through a free and fair election. Shashi Tharoor, three times MP from Thiruvananthapuram, contributed to the credibility of the outcome by putting up a real fight giving notice that he was the preferred candidate of 11 percent of the 9915 strong electoral roll. In defeat, Tharoor’s stature in party has grown.

Some blame must be placed at the door of the Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot for having devalued the stature of the Congress President by preferring not to be one. If there was an official Gandhi nominee for the job, it was Gehlot. But he found the Jaipur gaddi more alluring than Congress Presidentship. He chose to be a Chief Minister on a long leash rather than a Party President on a short one – so he imagines.

In a Congress dispensation, Party President is top job when the party is in the opposition. When in power, the President has often been the Prime Minister, a system discontinued after Sonia Gandhi, sensing her foreign origin might be raked up, shirked from Prime Ministership. Sushma Swaraj had given notice that she would have her hair shorn, should Sonia be seen anywhere near the Prime Ministerial chair.

Kharge will doubtless be watching the Pilgrim’s progress with as much interest as Meroli Shnigha the 10^th grade student from St. Joseph’s School Mulgumoodu, Tamil Nadu. Rahul had left Meroli wonderstruck by doing 10 pushups in seconds last year. The Tamil 10^th grader will watch with admiration Rahul’s physical fitness, endurance, stamina along the 3500 kms he proposes to traverse, preparatory to the 2024 general elections.

Kharge’s eye will be on the mass mobilization, upsurge, popularity and enrollments for the new party. The Gandhis with another serial loser, Sitaram Yechury as their Sancho Panza, were never able to resist the temptation of wanting to “revive” the Congress nationally and the CPM in Bengal.

The task at hand is to tone down your ego to a point where you become acceptable as coalition partners to leaders who are well entrenched in the regions. Coordinate with them for a role in the states; they coordinate with you for a role at the centre. This is the way a “salad bowl” coalition takes shape as opposed to a coalition patched up with chewing gum.

May I, Khargeji, do you a favour with utmost humility? I would like to loan you my pendrive loaded with the greatest political documentary I have seen in recent times. The Edge of Democracy focuses on an ideologically divided Brazil and how it is manipulated by the Corporates. Obama called Lula da Silva as the “most popular politician on earth.” Then what happened?

The documentary is timely because the final run-off on October 30 is between Lula and Bolsonaro who was Narendra Modi’s handpicked chief guest for the Republic Day three years ago. To this screening invite the Gandhis, your advisers, the Working Committee. The discussion after the screening will expose the Judases at your supper, the tweedledees who are in lock step with Corporate patrons of Tweedledum.

You are taking over the reins of one of the world’s oldest parties at a time when the Ukraine war has caused a complete reordering of the global distribution of power. A hegemony is yielding to a multipolar world, a situation to which Modi’s foreign office is adjusting nicely. But there is one proviso – the MEA’s heart is still with the US but its mind is with the ground realities.

Kharge’s cohorts will say: “but this is not what the media tells us.” Kharge is experienced enough to know that democracies worldwide have been subverted by big corporations who, one way or the other, control the media. These are the ventriloquists for whom the anchor is only a plausible town crier. Ofcourse there are notable exceptions like a handful of anchors in the NDTV.

This media gives you, the Congress, considerable attention because you have chosen to be tweedledee and are therefore no threat to the established order. Eversince Randeep Surjewala declared him a “janeudhari” Brahmin, Rahul has been visiting temples at the rate of knots, Priyanka too has been vigorously pasting her forehead with thick vermillion and dipping in holy waters with amphibian ease.

The siblings clearly hope that temple hopping will give them a slice of the Hindu vote which appears to be at the moment in the BJP’s thrall. The Aam Aadmi Party has done what the Koel does with her eggs. She lays them in the crow’s nest. AAP’s message to the Ram temple builder in Ayodhya is clever: you build the temple, we shall send our Hindu constituents on a pilgrimage gratis.

These are tricks. What Kharge must focus on is strategy. For a strategy to become kinetic you need a party and an election machine. By the time Rahul returns from his yatra all charged up, bristling with ideas Kharge must have a preliminary plan ready for party elections right down to the bloc level. This is after Rahul’s heart.

The coming elections are important, ofcourse, but will be a distraction if the optimism generated by Kharge’s election is not quickly harnessed to enervate a listless Congress by building it to its grassroots which will acquaint the Party President with bread and butter issues. Remember, a poor country must eventually settle on the left. In the course of redesigning a new architecture for the party, risks will have to be taken. Remember he who loses shall win.

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Stray Thoughts For Their Lordships As They Focus On Hijab

Stray Thoughts For Their Lordships As They Focus On Hijab

                                                                                     Saeed Naqvi

What does the controversy surrounding hijab have to do with the 1973 Yom Kippur war? Well, the quadrupling of oil prices by the Sheikhs of Araby caused an upheaval.

Hoardings in Arabic came up on Oxford Street. Rooms at Dorchester and Savoy were sold out to the Sheikhs who came to see the rain. The anti Christ had entered the citadel.

At the other end, petro dollars were attracting Indian labour, initially from Malabar in Kerala. These blue collar workers earned enough in a short time to be able to build in Kerala the garish “Dubai” houses which intruded on a traditionally simple skyline. Since the Kerala Muslims were among the first to turn up in quest of the GCC El Dorado, the resentment was tinged by inter religious jealousy.

Muslims being Muslim soon lost the edge which made them objects of ire. The more educated Hindus and Christians outshone them in white collar jobs.

That non Muslims registered greater success later did not erase the initial “Dubai house” resentment because the politician had by now incorporated it in his repertoire. This was a propitious time for a politician to prosper on religious antipathy. Gen. Zia ul Haq’s Nizam-e-Mustafa caused anxiety this side. The broad brush act of conversion in Meenakshipuram boosted divisions sky high.

At the other end in London, publishers were gauging the market for books of high salability. This is the time when exceptionally generous advances were made for books like Among The Believers, by V.S. Naipaul (1981) and Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988). Both expose Islam to satirical scrutiny.

Larger than life focus on Islam, assisted by the media and the book industry, gradually transformed it into Islamism. This very Islamism received a further boost with the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Since Ayatullah Khomeini projected himself as the leader of the Muslim world, there was deep consternation in Riyadh which considered itself the central pole of the Islamic world. It controlled Mecca and Medina, the two Holiest places. The “control” of the holy shrines had been opened up for questioning by a dramatic occupation of the Mecca mosques by a wing of Akhwan ul Muslimeen or the Muslim Brotherhood. This incident traumatized the Muslim world.

Occupation of the Mecca mosque and the Islamic revolution coincided. Both pronounced the institution of monarchy in Saudi Arabia as anti Islamic. With anxious alacrity the House of Saud declared themselves as “keepers of the holy shrines,” toning down the royalty.

Even so, a fierce competition ensued between Tehran and Riyadh on who was purveying true Islam. Since one of the items on the Ayatullahs agenda was to erase all traces of North Tehran fashion patronized by the Shah, the hijab acquired a very high priority. To this day all hotels in Tehran have a plaque at the entrance requesting women guests to “respect Iranian culture and wear a hijab in public places.”

The Arab Mullah was not going to allow the Ayatullahs to walk away with the trophy of Islamism and its manifestations like the hijab. It is difficult to explain to friends who have not travelled to Beirut, Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus during the peaceful years of the Cold War that these cities once defined gracious living.

Why go that far back. I was seated with Ambassador Rajan Abhyankar, who knows Syria like the back of his hand, at a popular wayside schwarma joint in Damascus at the start of recent troubles when he suddenly spun around and pointed to three young women wearing white hijabs. “You see, this is the result of the Iranian revolution.”

Syria, after all, is the land of Comrade Michel Aflaq, founder of the Arab Ba’athism which took root in Syria and Iraq. In their aversion to Islamic ritual they were not very different from Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a generation earlier. It turns out that the thoughts of Hasan al Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Maulana Maududi, tilted towards Salafism, clearly had durability. After all Turkey’s first lady had to fight her way to wearing a hijab which the Kemalist culture resisted. Tayyip Erdogan is a Brother (Akhwan) in disguise.

The rapid expansion of the hijab is in direct proportion to televised Islamophobia which burst on the scene in 1991, the first post Soviet expedition called Operation Desert Storm. Peter Arnett of the CNN inaugurated from the terrace of Baghdad’s Al Rashied hotel a new era of global media. For the first time in history a war was brought live into our drawing rooms. One telecast divided the world into two antithetical sets of audiences – the victorious West and the Muslim world, humiliated and angry. This continued through the post 9/11 wars giving acceleration to be wearing of the hijab. The Indian media followed in their steps.

Missile strikes against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, launched on October 18, 2001 coincided with the arrival of Narendra Modi in Ahmedabad to take over as Chief Minister. The Ahmedabad pogrom of 2002 took place in the shadow of American fireworks. Hindu-Muslim ill will was apace with galloping Islamophobia globally.

The hijab in India is tangled in the threads mentioned above, but it is also an expression of choked anger against the perceived excesses of Hindutva against the world’s largest minority.

The minority factor aggravates the problem to an extent that their Lordships appear not to have noticed. The hijab protests in Iran are a self-confident assertion by women aware of their rich heritage. Girls of South Kannada and Udipi belong to a minority under unspeakable pressure.

There is no hijab problem in Pakistan or Bangladesh because the state neither opposes it nor has any urge to promote it.

Trust the late Khushwant Singh to have put his finger on the nub of the matter. The festive atmosphere of the India-Pakistan cricket match at Lahore in 2003 was enhanced by Pakistani women turning up in formidable fashion – dark glasses, tinted hair and blazing colours. The only lady in the VIP enclosure draped in the hijab happened to be Irfan Pathan’s mother.

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