Itinerant

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

2010-05-26T20:04:00.006+05:30

An Essay written to make sense of the situation in Darjeeling after the grusome daylight murder of an opposition leader Madan Tamnag. It was first published in Sikkim Now, a english daily published from Gangtok, Sikkim on 26th May 2010. The essay is also available at Darjeeling Times .

Photo from Outlook India

It has been four days since the assassination of the All India Gorkha League (AIGL) President Madan Tamang. There have been some developments in the Darjeeling hills which are being interpreted as anti-Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) mood by commentators. The candle light vigil, the mass of people who joined the funeral procession are but welcome signs of a civil society that has been shaken awake.

In the opinion of this commentator, it would be pre-mature to read more into these developments as they are a result of the shock and dismay at the barbarism of the act. As much as all discerning observers wish to see such developments, it would be recommended that one wait for the dust to settle to see the evolving situation.

There are many ways in which the situation in Darjeeling could evolve. One is the path of escalation. With the naming of GJM leaders in the First Information Report (FIR), the resignation of the ‘intellectuals’ and the general resistance of the common folk, a cornered GJM would make efforts to raise the bogey of the ‘threat’ to Gorkhaland, the ‘West Bengal government to gain’ conspiracy to reiterate their relevance and spread rumors, conspiracy theories which thrive in a charged context. And the observed lack of any alternative leadership being thrown up either by the opposition or from within the GJM ranks will prompt the GJM to regain the lost space. This trajectory might result in violence due to resistance by the police, people and the opposition parties.

The other option is that the confusion and the dissociation in the GJM ranks, over the allegations of the brutal slaying of the AIGL President, sinks the party. In such a situation, the Gorkhaland movement would need time to re-group and build momentum. The United Front of opposition parties can take leadership to capture the momentum and take it forward. But these are all estimations which might fall short owing to the sheer complexity and unpredictability associated with human affairs and the number of actors involved in the conflict. However, there are a number of lessons to be learnt from the developments and dynamics of the past three years of the GJM led movement.

The vital issue over which the tensions in the hills were raising is over the leadership of the movement. When the talks continue, who will be at the table? This is a key issue and has determined the trajectory of GJM’s politics in the past three years, with their exile of Ghising and then the efforts at brow-beating AIGL. In simple terms, the GJM is unwilling to share the leadership of a movement they had captured with their imagination and fortitude. But what is also true is that the GJM’s claims to represent the people of Darjeeling is a trifle doubtful having never participated in the electoral process. If there was one party which could claim such legitimacy it is the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF), which will of course not be acceptable to most of the people of Darjeeling. In such a situation, it makes sense to have an all party group participate in the talks, which was exactly the point being made by Madan Tamang repeatedly.

The heart of the matter for those grieved by the turn of events for the fate of Gorkhaland should not be the lost time or momentum. The crux of the matter should be about the inability of the leaders to come together and form a united front for achieving the goal of statehood and to achieve the objectives without giving into the politics of violence. It has been observed all over the world, that movements which are violent, intolerant of dissent and undemocratic, practice the same politics after their aims have been achieved. The struggle mode of dictatorial politics is explained away by the non-negotiable nature of their aims of ‘independence’, ‘identity’ or statehood in this case. But it is difficult to imagine a social group or organization to turn a new leaf after they have achieved their objectives and they continue to not let go of power. These are the reasons why methods of struggle become vital as they create a culture which becomes institutionalized.

The legitimacy of a movement is also judged on their means and methods of struggle. In both instances 1986-1988 and the current phase, the Gorkhaland movement falls short in terms of democratic modes of struggle and the GNLF was accused of intolerant politics and we see the same with the GJM. While the GJM led movement carried out their struggle via ‘Gandhian’ methods, there were enough bursts of violence against the dissenting, social ostracization (of GNLF members) and consistent use of threats. The diktats on traditional attire, the harassment and browbeating of the Naari and the Vidyarthi Morcha, the school students on hunger strikes were a few examples where the GJM was treading the fine line between people’s support which was voluntary or support gained by the fear of reprisals. The illegal alcohol ban also falls into the same category of controversial methods. It is tempting to compare, rhetorically, these methods which are meant to invoke the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement but they fall flat owing to their vigilante imposition. There might have been a delicate balance on some issues where the party could claim a certain level of people’s consent but the case of the Gorkhaland Personal (GLP) was an outright case of holding out the threat of violence to those who disagreed or did not toe the GJM line. The GLP is illegal and threatening despite the GJM claims of innocence.

It was the success of the GJM owing to people’s support which turned the party into their arrogant posturing. It was the people’s tolerance and connivance at the earlier instances of coercion which brought the matter to such an impasse. As has been mentioned before, journalists and intellectuals ceased to be non-partisan participants and became sloganeers for the GJM. This is where Shri Madan Tamang became very important through the course of the struggle, as the sane voice, fighting for democratic space, speaking for his right to disagree despite GJM efforts to hound and scare him away from the hills as was done to the GNLF leadership.

In the headiness of the movement, a number of issues started fading as people became short sighted and the logic suggests that such sacrifices are necessary to achieve their aims. One need not be a puritan for non-violent methods to sense the coercive undertones of the supposed ‘Gandhian’ demeanor. There are other greater sacrifices that a movement aims to achieve in its struggle rather than the ones forsaken by civil society in the hills. One is reminded of Gandhi’s tolerance of his critics, Ambedkar, Jinnah without resorting to the sort of tactics the GJM indulged in and Gandhi also called off the Non-cooperation movement after the violence at Chauri Chaura. However, to expect such bravado from the leaders our societies throws up in these times, maybe a trifle too high a moral. In order to take lessons from the recent events, it is of foremost importance that no group, organization seeks to banish and exile the GJM leadership. It is a matter of the law and order agencies to pursue that agenda, which of course, is not the most reliable option. However, it goes without saying that we cannot have our cake and eat it too. To expect the rule of law to function, we need to respect the rule of law and amidst the events in the past three years during the GJM led agitation, none of us even bothered to raise question regarding the rule of law. Shri Madan Tamang was a victim of such an anarchic context.

Peace and Conflict Studies at Sikkim University

2010-03-25T20:02:00.004+05:30

A small essay written for the purpose to disseminate the idea of Peace and Conflict Studies and generate awareness of the discipline. It was published in Sikkim Now, a english daily published from Gangtok, Sikkim on 25th March 2010. The essay is also available at Beacon Online. Please click on it to enlarge it.

Chinese Incursions into Indian Territory: Seeking an Explanation

2009-09-15T13:45:00.000+05:30

It all began in mid-July with a TV story on Chinese incursions in the Finger Tip area of North Sikkim. This was the first of a series of press reports that continue to emphasize the conflict element of Sino-Indian relations. The public response has also been in sharp contrast to the ‘all is well’ that normally permeates the External Affairs officialdom. In an unprecedented coverage of China in the Indian media, we saw an article by an Indian defense expert on how a ‘nervous’ China would attack India by 2012, another article, this time by a Chinese defense expert speculated how the Indian federation can be broken up if the Chinese concentrate on supporting the various secessionist movements. But the most potent was saved for the last, in the past month we have been witnessing a series of media reports about the Chinese violations of Indian territory in many sectors of the Sino-Indian border.

The slew of such news pointing towards an aggressively intent China set the local rumor mills rolling. For instance, the information that the Indian army was moving tanks up to the Chinese border for which the National Highway 31A would be closed for 3 days was only denied by the authorities after it had swirled and even engulfed the neighboring Darjeeling district, where as a friend mentioned, the rumor went around that the tourist season in Darjeeling was looking good as the Indian army had occupied all the hotels in Sikkim!

The more fascinating aspect of the various incursions by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into disputed and even into non-disputed areas has a peculiarity which has so far never been verified. These are not the first instances that such reports are finding their way into the mainstream press; they have been highlighted in the past years as well. The Home Ministry reports that there were around 270 ‘violations’ by China on India’s western, middle and eastern sectors in 2008, while 60 such incidents have been reported so far this year. Sources are invariably unnamed and predictably the Government of India downplays these Chinese forays into Indian territory. Even this time around, the Minister of External Affairs suggested that the Sino-Indian border was one of the most peaceful of India’s borders and that there are mechanisms in place to resolve any violation. The reasons for the incursions are not difficult to fathom in the disputed or the undisputed areas as there is no exact demarcation of the mountainous border. Any logical extrapolation would also suggest that the Indian military also perhaps violates the Chinese/ Tibetan borders and that any violation is based on the respective interpretation of the border.

In such circumstances, how is one to make sense of the profusion of these reports (mostly delayed, some of these incursions date back to January 2009) on one hand and the mild-mannered response of the Indian establishment on the other? It sets the stage for conspiracy theories and for the more rational-minded, an exercise in myriad and competing interpretations. The essay you are reading purports to be of the latter category.

An interpretation that is frequently cited in explanation of the selective highlighting of the border violations is that the armed forces do so, for their organizational interests which can be interpreted as seeking a bigger pie in the defense budget or winning some turf battle against the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) or other services. It is important to keep in mind that the military has a monopoly on information from the border areas since these areas can be accessed by civilians or journalists only with their support. Any disagreement or divergence from the army’s point of view and the journalist will find his access cut. Another interpretation which came from an informed journalist and a friend was that these leakages were part of the Research and Analysis Wing’s (RAW), the external intelligence agency, turf battle against the super-cession of seven of their officers which is being interpreted as the first step towards the merger of the RAW with the Intelligence Bureau (IB).

As one has already suggested, there can be many informed interpretations of an event and it is the work of the trained to predict the most likely set of circumstances linked together by cause and effect. The predictions are not meant to be literal but merely plausible and the interpretations can be used singularly or as an assortment to explain an event. One line of thought runs along the following lines.

There is no doubt that Sino-Indian relations runs into potholes in the security sector. There are a number of reasons for this, among which the respective nations self perception as future great powers is a key variable. There is also little doubt that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has hardened its stand in the border talks to resolve the disputed territory, from the simple basket approach to now insisting on the centrality of entire Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese territory occupied by India. The basket approach, first broached during the first phase of the border flare up in the 1950’s, was a suggestion from Chou En Lai that China keeps what it occupies, Aksai Chin, while India keeps what it occupies, Arunachal Pradesh. Nehru disagreed with this political approach to take on a more legal approach of insisting on the sanctity of the borders as drawn by McMahon.

In the mid-1990’s, when Prime Minister Narasimha Rao visited Beijing, there were efforts to freeze the border dispute and move the relationship forward on other areas. It was also decided that in order to build trust and confidence, the border dispute be examined through the lens of Mutual Understanding and Mutual Accommodation. Over the various summit level meetings in the past decade and despite a 2005 agreement on the Guiding Principles to resolve the border issue, we are now witnessing a Chinese approach that appears to be suggesting that ‘Arunachal Pradesh is ours and Aksai Chin is also ours’. The contentious border issue coupled with the Chindia discourse is also reminiscent of the 1950’s when the Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai phase was at its peak and within a few years it unraveled due to the occupation of Tibet by China and the subsequent border dispute resulting in the short war of 1962.

We can see a similar process at work under the veneer of Sino-Indian cooperation on multilateral issues and on the economic front. Trade figures have grown exponentially and in greater value than the figure predicted by the two governments and amounts to almost U$ 50 billion despite the economic recession. But the occasional troughs of the relationship remind us of the uncertainty of International Politics. As a caveat, it should be mentioned that this essay is not trying to imply that China is a threat or harbors aggressive intentions or that the incursions are a means to test the response of the Indian government, we are purely ascertaining the status of much bandied about facts.

The South West frontier of China, which is the Indian border, is perhaps the most sensitive for the Chinese government for many reasons. It is the only border along with the Sino-Bhutanese border which remains unsettled; it is the only border which has a robust nation-state similar to China with similar civilisational roots and on the trajectory to a powerful economic and military status. Lastly and most saliently, this is the border along which the Chinese state faces its persistent challenge by the self determination demands of the Tibetans and the Uyghurs in Sinkiang province.

Owing to a multiplicity of factors like the border dispute, the Tibetan government in exile’s residence in India, the global search for natural resources to power their economic engines, the strategic competition towards a more expansionist presence and the mutual self image of both India and China as great powers, that play into Sino-Indian relations, there is a high likelihood of a Sino-Indian conflict. However, it needs to be stressed that the distrust and differing perceptions need an immediate cause to ignite and facts suggest otherwise. In the context of the flare up in Tibet last year around the Olympics Games and the anti-Han Chinese riots in Sinkiang, it would be foolhardy on part of the Chinese military to test this frontier. Apart from facing an able and professional Indian army, the Chinese run the risk of a secessionist struggle in its restive provinces. Many analysts cite the Tibetan and Uyghur unrest as the very reasons for which the Chinese state might look for adventures abroad in order to divert attention and to unify the Han Chinese. However, in the opinion of this writer, if that were to happen it would not occur when Tibet and Sinkiang are restive, as the Chinese would not risk fighting with a soft underbelly.

A second plausible line of thought suggests that the press hullaballoo is an orchestrated affair and that the Indian government appears to be behaving innocuously to maintain the façade of being helpless while approving of the media reports to shore up a public opinion for an important event in November. In November, the Dalai Lama is going to visit Arunachal Pradesh. Last year, around the same time, due to Chinese pressure, the Indian government did not permit His Holiness to visit Tawang, but for public consumption it was suggested that the Dalai Lama had dropped his plans due to the impending Lok Sabha elections. It appears the Government of India does not want to be taken in by Chinese pressure and is preparing to fight off Chinese requests by citing public opinion, a useful tool in the best of circumstances especially in a democratic country.

The Dalai Lama’s itinerary is not known yet, but it looks likely that he is going to visit Tawang where he will inaugurate a multi-specialty hospital. The Tibetan leader’s visit to Arunachal assumes importance as it was through the Tawang region that the exiled leader made his way to India from Tibet in 1959 and for the more important fact that Tawang remains central to the border dispute between China and India. The status of Tawang also assumes significance as it has its origins to the Simla Accord in 1914 when the Tibetan Government, the British Indian government and the Chinese representative agreed to the McMahon Line that recognized Tawang as a part of British India. The line is named after Sir Henry McMahon, foreign secretary for the British-run Government of India and the chief British negotiator of the convention. Although its legal status is disputed, the McMahon line remains the effective boundary. The Chinese representative later renounced the Accord as being forced on him and China rejects the Simla Accord, contending that the Tibetan government was not sovereign and therefore did not have the power to conclude treaties.

And therein lies the significance for both India and the Tibetan Government in exile, as it supports their respective claims, for the Indians, claim over Arunachal Pradesh and for the Tibetans, the fact that they were an independent nation, one of the attributes of which is to enter into treaty relations with sovereign countries and the Simla Accord is an oft cited example. For China, this is exactly the problem and its consistent stance has been to debunk claims of Tibetan sovereignty, past or present, and to lay claim to the entire Tibetan region among which Tawang occupies an exalted space as it is an important centre for Tibetan Buddhists as also the birth place of one of the Dalai Lama's. Thus, the status of Tawang intricately ties up all the three parties.

The visit of the Dalai Lama also assumes significance because the stance of the Tibetan Government in Exile has been that Tawang is a part of India, an assertion that knocks Chinese monopolistic claims over Tibet and Tibetan history. It should be mentioned that this is not the first time that the Dalai Lama is visiting Arunachal Pradesh or the Tawang region, he has been to Arunachal Pradesh six times and to Tawang five times in the past. As suggested before the Chinese have hardened their stance on Tawang owing to various reasons, one of which is the Chinese insecurity with regard to its hold over Tibet and the Indian Government perhaps is looking to assert itself this time around. It remains to be seen though when November comes, whether the Government of India lets the Dalai Lama proceed with his planned visit despite incurring Beijing’s disapproval.

The piece was published on 15th September in Sikkim NOW, a daily published from Gangtok.

Bandhs: Evaluating Modes of Protest

2009-07-30T14:01:00.000+05:30

It has been a fortnight since the indefinite strike was called by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) in the Darjeeling hills. When the strike began, the only national daily (if one can call The Telegraph, Siliguri edition, a national daily), one subscribes to, carried a number of stories on the difficult choice of boarding schools in the hill sub divisions of West Bengal. The schools are part of the Darjeeling brand, the first t of the three t’s, with tea and tourism that is the bed rock of the charm of the Bengal hills and its tradition. Some of the schools are more than a century old and attracts students from different parts of India and once again from abroad. The timing of the strike was unfortunate as most of the schools had recently re-opened after their summer break. It is a difficult choice in the best of circumstances but when a deadline is staring you in the face, it is an impossible logistical task to send the boarders home, in a matter of days, never mind, the rush that overwhelms the Indian Railways summer.

The events transported me, almost a quarter of a century back, to my own days in a boarding school in Darjeeling. My first years in Darjeeling coincided with the, peaking of the Gorkha National Liberation Front’s (GNLF) push for statehood in the years 1986-1988.

In the current round of the agitation for Gorkhaland and being located in Sikkim, I have perhaps been only marginally affected by the bandh. But I had an eerie feeling of having gone through it before, a ‘been there and done that’ feeling, what in French is termed déjà vu. The dictionary describes déjà vu, as an experience (real or imagined) of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously.

In the year 1986, not taking into consideration the flash strikes, we had two major strikes, for six days and thirteen days, respectively. These two bandhs occurred in June and September if memory serves me accurately. In 1987, the major strike was a closure of the hills for thirteen days around June or July. The litany of strikes were to continue, a regular feature of life, but in that period, the biggest, the mother of all strikes, was the fourty day strike in March, 1988 which was the beginning of the end of the movement with the establishment of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC).

After school, I came back to the region only twice in the next 15 years and both times, one had to re-work thought out schedules to escape the noose of the bandh. The first was in August 2003, when a bandh in Siliguri, intervened leading to a change in our plans. In April 2008, I was in Darjeeling and yet again, due to a bandh in Siliguri, we had to hasten our departure to get to Bagdogra before Mamta didi’s goons’ took over the highway, narrowly making it to the airport on a thela.

It is a documented fact that the state of West Bengal experiences the maximum number of shut downs (average of 40-50 per year!), Assam is another state which has a high incidence of bandhs. In an almost cultural manner, uniform across the length and breadth of this vast and diverse country, political, social or religious organizations, call a strike. It is also accepted by all and sundry that bandhs are enforced with the threat of violence by party cadres, causing hardship, suffering and disrupting normal life and throwing normal life out of gear.

The bandh can be a relief to some, as it liberates them from their dull, dreary jobs and children from school. For the others who have travel plans, or an examination, an assignment to complete, it is a spanner in the works. However, when bandhs become regular, as it is in this ‘strategically’ important region of India, it becomes a nuisance, it restricts economic development, it discourages investors, it keeps away visitors and it gradually leads to a cutting off, of economic ties and integration to the national economy, pushing the region into a ‘periphery’.

This leads us to the question of the methods of protest. How should one protest? And what methods will generate the expectant, public and official, response to bring about the change in policy? We also have to consider, the question of violence and its efficacy in bringing about desired change. As, The New York Times correspondent for South Asia, wrote in an aptly titled dispatch, “Want to be heard in India? You'd better form a militia”, suggesting that, “[violence has]…started to replace hunger strikes, sit-ins and marches as the basic tools of Indian political life: guiltlessly deployed, fatally effective. Forget what you've heard about Gandhi and nonviolence in India. This is a nation of militias now.”

Ominous in any circumstances, the struggle for self determination and identity, the lack of development or the inequality of it, has generated remarkable discontent across the nation. The Kashmir, Assam, Manipur and Maoists issues have been endemic for a few decades and are noticed by the powers, only when the violence crosses a threshold level. In these circumstances, how is to one go about evaluating the bane of strikes? Are we to be gratified at the lack of violence?

Bandh's were declared illegal by a Supreme Court Judgement in November, 1997. However, it remains a common and an effective means of expression for the aggrieved and their right to the freedom of expression, the right to organise and protest. On the other side and to paraphrase the words of the then Chief Justice of India, Bandhs put others to inconvenience, depriving them of the freedom of movement, expression and go against the very right to life, denying people access to health care and hospitals. Political bandhs are expected to paralyze the life of the people and that is un-constitutional.

Should a bandh be illegal only if there is an act of violence and the life of the common people are affected? What are our choices? Are legal and constitutional methods of protests like peaceful processions, Public Interest Litigation, mass media campaign, fasting and political platforms like the Legislative assembly and Parliament not enough to be heard in India?

The piece was published on 28th July in Sikkim NOW, a daily published from Gangtok.

Neighbourhood Watch: Testing Times Ahead in Nepal

2009-07-05T14:14:00.001+05:30

Nepal has been in a state of perpetual crisis for most of the past two decades, beginning with the pro-democracy movement in the late 1980’s, the unstable and corrupt democratic governments, the start of the Maoists insurgency, palace massacre, the royal coup and the triangular struggle between the Maoists, the Monarchy and the political parties. It was only in 2006 that hope returned with the settlement between the Maoists and the political parties to corner the berserk monarchy that brought Nepal back from the brink of collapse. There was optimism, the monarchy blinked under sustained pressure, a cease fire was in place and the Maoists had been brought into the democratic process after the parties put aside their differences to work together.

Since then, the experience has been topsy-turvey of unending jockeying, pushing and then withdrawal of the varying interests being represented and negotiated since the formation of the Constituent Assembly. The present state of affairs can be interpreted in different ways, it is perhaps the result of the prevailing distrust and the clash of political cultures, the authoritarian Maoist one and the resistance of the mainstream parties to the Maoists efforts to have their way or it is about a recalcitrant general testing civilian supremacy in a fractured polity.

It all began with the National Games in April as the narrative goes. The Nepalese Army (NA) refused to play ball with former Maoist rebels also participating in the games. The received wisdom that sports is war by other means proved to be right in the case but in an inadvertent manner as the NA refused to engage with their former rivals and walked out of the National Games.

But the incident was merely another round in the running battle between the Maoists government trying to assert its will over the NA. One of the institutions among the few along with the judiciary that has not been brow beaten by the Maoists deluge that is sweeping all aspects of Nepalese society. The Maoist government accuses the NA of disobeying it over several issues and couches its argument in the supremacy of the civilian over the military. In March, the army chief's recommendation to give three-year extensions to eight retiring officers of Brigadier's rank did not go down well with the Maoist government. Prior to this, the NA, refused to toe the government’s order to not go ahead with the recruitment to fill vacancies in the NA.

The Army Chief’s, Gen Rookmangud Katawal, personality clashes with the Defence Minister, a Maoist, who is hardly seen at army programmes, fresh recruitments to the army, the National Games walk out and the dogged opposition to the induction of the Maoists’ guerrilla combatants into the NA have brought things to the brink in Nepal.

The rehabilitation of about 20,000 former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighters in the U.N.-monitored camps is a major issue of contention between the Maoists and the military, with senior officers led by the Army Chief, resisting the integration of the indoctrinated Maoist fighters into the army. The PLA fighters have had their weapons locked away under the 2006 peace deal. The UN’s tenure will expire in July 2009 and any delay in the management could threaten the tenuous peace.

The 2006 peace deal also stipulates that both the NA and the PLA will not add to their ranks and any recruitment would be a violation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The Army’s enrollment drive was taken up by the Supreme Court which upheld it but asked the authorities to not make any further appointments till the final judgment. The Army officials have said that they did not violate the peace accord as it was just filling up the vacant positions. The Defence Minister and Maoist Army's commanders have strongly opposed the NA's move to recruit new soldiers and the Maoists PLA has even started to recruit new PLA personnel to counter the NA move.

In light of these developments and the walk out of the National Games, the Maoist government demanded a clarification from the Army Chief. Katawal submitted an explanatory note promptly, but it was found unsatisfactory by the Maoists who are decided on dismissing him. The General's contention is that he could be dismissed only by the President of the Republic, who is of the opinion that the government should take action against Katawal after reaching an understanding with other parties. The move to remove the army chief does not have the backing of most of the parties and even the CPN (UML), Maoists ally, is divided on the issue. Thus, while the parties agree that the army should heed the elected government's orders, they do not support the move to fire the army chief and there is an effort to forge consensus on the issue.

The Maoists have the most seats in the Constituent Assembly. In some views, the major parties like the Nepali Congress (NC), the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) or CPN (UML), and the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) are standing up to the Maoists efforts to steam roll their agenda on Nepal. The coalition government was possible with parties compromising to cross the impasse in the larger national benefit. After ceasefire, the Maoists have committed themselves to multiparty democracy and democratic elections. The task of the coalition is to draft a new Constitution taking into account the multi-ethnic character of Nepal.

The Maoist government sought to sack Katawal in early April but failed after opposition by its main ally, the opposition parties and even major foreign donors, including India, the US and UK. Maoist sources assert that the ruling party is still bent on removing Katawal and was waiting for main ally UML to reach a decision. The UML’s Standing Committee decision has refused to support the Maoist move to replace General Katwal by Lt. General Khadka. The CPN-UML suggested a “middle-path” approach to resolve the crisis that proposed to remove Katawal and the second-in-command, Lt. General Kul Bahadur Khadka and settle for a third person to lead the Army, besides getting rid of Defence Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa. In effect, the two factions have their backs to the wall and any outcome will result in a loss of face for one or the other. It appears that with the lack of UML support, the Maoists are isolated. UML’s middle path compromise formula has been rejected by all parties including the Maoists. While the Maoists say they are determined to take action against Katawal, they are trying to reach a consensus among political parties. But what is certain is that any action along the lines is likely to further sour relations between the army and the former guerrillas.

Katawal’s term ends in August, the urgency to sack him stems from the Maoist desire to appoint as his successor, the second senior-most general, Lt-Gen Kul Bahadur Khadka. While Katawal staunchly opposed the Maoist bid to induct its over 19,000 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighters into the Nepal Army (NA), saying they would have to meet international recruitment criteria, Khadka is assumed to be more flexible but there is a catch, that Khadka needs to be promoted soon or he will retire next month.

The Foreign Hand

The biggest pressure not to remove Katawal before his tenure comes from Delhi. After the abolition of the monarchy, an institution Indian wanted retained, even if merely titular, the NA harks back to the traditional linkages with India and the Indian Army. Acrimony between the two armed groups that represent powerful but divisive tendencies would make the Indian neighborhood a lot worse than it already is, with three of its neighbors at civil war. The proximity of Nepal to the Hindi heartland, linkages between the Maoists and the steadily increasing Chinese influence under a Maoist Nepal has had the Babus in South Block anxious. The Indian ambassador to Nepal, Rakesh Sood met Nepalese Prime Minister Prachanda to express concern. India has been tight lipped about the whole issue and explains away the flurry of meetings, third in a week since the dismissal order, as discussions over issues of mutual interest. The strategic community in New Delhi is alarmed at the Maoist bid to turn the army into a Maoists stronghold and ignoring the fallout on the fragile peace process. The Indian envoy, though, was not alone in his mission and was part of an ambassadorial collective, representing the major donor nations among which the United States and United Kingdom are mentionable, indicating the concern at the breakout of new hostilities.

The fear is that the Maoists are trying to push the dismissal of the Army Chief in their efforts to control the army, the one institution which would in the event of a future civil war or turn towards a dictatorship, stand up to the PLA cadres. Though, the Maoists, call such allegations propaganda and express their commitment to multi-party democracy. Amidst all this, there has not been any effort to figure out the fate of the 20,000 odd PLA fighters and their absorption into society. The lessons from around the world of disarmed groups becoming a law onto themselves are not encouraging. It appears the only option remains their absorption in either the police or the military services but this also means the Maoists getting effective control of the institution, the proverbial dilemma between the devil and the deep blue sea.

The impasse has reached such proportions that Prachanda has had to postpone his eight day visit to China beginning in May where he was due to discussing fresh assistance and investment and negotiated a new peace and friendship treaty that Beijing is keen to sign with Kathmandu.

Despite the lasting military ceasefire, the current imbroglio severely challenges Nepal’s peace process by threatening the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and also opens the possibility of the two armies inching towards armed confrontation and inordinately delaying the drafting of the new constitution.

The piece was published on 3rd May in Sikkim NOW, a daily published from Gangtok.

India, Governance, the Railway Budgets and the coming future

2009-07-04T10:29:00.009+05:30

The railway budget by Mamta Banerjee was surprising only in its details. We have known in India from the past that Railway Ministers (RM) reward their constituencies(in the case of the railways, it is their respective states). The earlier RM's Laloo Prasad Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Ram Bilas Paswan have done it within my political memory. So it was known that Mamta would provide the goods to Bengal in keeping with trend and this is what has happened in the Railway Budget for 2009.

My home state, Bihar, has been the beneficiary of the earlier RM's (from Bihar) munificence when I was living in Delhi. The rail connectivity to Patna from Delhi was one of the sectors which drastically transformed. The choices in numbers of trains, speed, as well as the services in trains improved considerably. However, since I have left Delhi and moved to the North East, I see the criminal neglect, AC coaches crawling with cockroaches, dirty, the negligent attendant, even in the premium class Rajdhani trains. After nine months in this part of India and many train journeys, it has led one to conclude that this is the norm. If you take the North East Express from NewJalpaiGuri (NJP) to Patna, in the non-AC sleeper coaches, which apart from being filthy are full of military men travelling home for holidays, the passage is lined with steel trunks and movement is a hazard. The journey from NJP to Guwahati in sleeper coaches is equally bad, with a large number of people who do not possess reserved tickets. In the last journey, I can safely assert that those without reservations out numbered us.

The litany of railway complaints is never ending, we all have our share of anecdotes, but the larger point I wish to make, is that in the challenges that India faces in the next couple of years, it would be difficult to improve or maintain the system in this political culture where essential services play the spoils of election victory. Important to note that financial health of the Indian Railways has not even been considered in this analysis, reflective of how the RM's think. There is financial logic, there is social logic and then there is political logic, the Indian system appears to be working only with the political. The current state of affairs will not improve the lives of the majority of Indians and nor will it help in keeping our state owned services in a healthy condition. Not being a blind liberaliser, especially of essential services, nor am I, a dogmatic 'privatisation is hell' believer but yet I am appalled at the details of how this country is run. In order to keep the essential services running without breakdowns, India needs to respect financial and social logic. The political has to take a back seat.

The RM's appointed by the government in New Delhi, are ministers for the entire country and not for any select province. We already have political leaders representing communities, tribes and caste. Are we never going to get the notional 'Indian' in the ministry? China's technocratic governance is a model worth examining. We, in India, should be looking to learn from China then perhaps, we can imagine competing.

The example of Air India and its request to the government for a bail out package, is a good example about the short sightedness of the way government services are abused in the country. If we imagine the railways in the same situation, imagine the crisis, it would result in drastic measures and lending agencies will demand their pound of flesh, they will run it in the basis of financial logic. In short sighted political greed, the political class has lost the larger picture. If after 20 years, Mamta Baneerjee were to become the Railway Minister again and the current trend continues, while importance of the railways will continue, the government may just not find the money to make social decisions, never mind political ones.

One would like to state something, one has been thinking over for sometime now, that central government ministries (to begin with) should be handled by experts. The Railway Ministry should be run by someone from the Railways, the Human Resource and Development Ministry by an educator. And these should not be political appointments rather they should be selected on the basis of merit and their appointment approved by the Parliament. It goes against the grain of the Indian system of representation but these experts could be collectively responsible to the Prime Minister and the Parliament. The Prime Minister can be appointment as it exists but his team of ministers should be 1. experts 2. non-partisan.

Extra-ordinary times need extra-ordinary measures, the challenges that India faces due to its population are not and cannot be handled effectively by generalist bureaucrats or politicians, who merely win elections on the basis of their community support (a norm). The coming challenges need professionals. I will digress to illustrate the point I have in mind. I am at a new university, established in 2007. We are as basic as it comes, with infrastructure even smaller than a primary school at this stage. I have been here for the past nine months. It has been a learning experience at governance and how things work and the importance of individuals towards putting in place, systems which will outlive many a human lives. Any system being instituted or managed is reduced or elevated to the understanding, vision of the individual who mans it. There are systemic checks and balances but the individual space is enough to cripple a system or raise its level, in the discharge of its services. It is at this point where corruption finds its way into the system. Individuals are important and in the sheer rush of numbers, this country and its systems have forgotten the individual, having been reduced, by and to the lowest common denominator due to the numbers. It is going to be an individual's personal world view which will stamp it self on the country and its institutions. It is not merely about setting up structures, once set up, the individual (not the community, tribe, province, caste) is the key to interpret the space. The point is being well documented in how the various processes at my young university are shaping. A lot of it is in good hands but some of it leave much to be desired. But it does provide a convincing argument with regard to the importance of individuals.

The political class in the past few years have offered very few individuals who were above their sectarian or provincial parochialisms. But from the specialists, one can name, numerous individuals, who have excelled and instituted world class organisations while on government appointment. It is time, India turned to these men owing to their proven track record. And unfortunately for the votaries of corporate India, I do not have businessmen in mind. I have in mind people like MS Swaminathan, Verghese Kurian of Operation Flood (Amul), APJ Abdul Kalam for the service in Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO), E. Sreedharan of Konkan Railway and now Delhi Metro, and many others of who I am not aware. The government sector individuals are used to illustrate the point as they worked within the 'social' world of the country with governmental briefs (a limiting system), at government salaries and yet managed to change their sectors. It is not to suggest that this is a fool proof system and will be perfect but it will definitely bring to better skills, decisions and a more enlightened governance for the nation.

In a similar manner, the various provinces in India could switch over to such a system with the Chief Minister as a political appointment and the team of experts as ministers responsible to the state assembly. It would be akin to the American system where individuals with detailed proposals in their respective areas are able to make it to the government. There remain problems with regard to the basic democratic system envisaged by the constitution but if we start with such an idea, we can improvise and tailor it to achieve the necessary ends, which is to provide good and durable services to all citizens of the country.

Trees, King Makers, Sikkim and Elections in India

2009-04-28T16:49:00.001+05:30

It is election time in India and since am located in Sikkim, I am following the local election scenario. It entails following the local press and understanding the Sikkimese scene, issues and community configuration. The general sort of advice to anyone trying to make sense of elections in India is that they should look to understand the ethnic issues community, clan, caste, tribe, religion, language or race and you will have the larger picture of the contest, like the frame of a painting. In most parts of India, it is one of these factors or a combination of them which determine the ruling coalition. Issues play a certain role but by themselves alone, issues even if developmental, will not win you seats, if you are brazen or modern enough to claim ignorance of the identity of your constituents or if you consider it not relevant. Cynical but this is my understanding of Indian politics and I think of it as the norm. We do have exceptions to this generalization. Biharis would point out that George Fernandes, an outsider and a Christian always won his elections from Muzaffarpur. People from other parts of the country would mention the exceptions (and there are quite a few) from their region. However, the norm remains extremely primordial in the fact that identities decide the winner.

The Department also organized a talk on the issues and players in the Sikkim Elections by a prominent journalist from Gangtok, Joseph Lepcha. Joseph's talk was bare and focussed, on the election arithmetic with percentage of votes and seats. He also briefly looked at the issues in the past, for instance, the de-merger demand of the Sikkim Sangram Parishad (SSP) led by Nar Bahadur Bhandari (now in Congress),the effect of the Mandal Commission report and the Income Tax issues. Personally, for me the talk was so good, with the numbers at the finger tips and the easy flagging of important issues that I was tempted to churn out a piece for some journal on the Sikkim election scene. But I resisted the immoral, self fish call. Since I am on this confessional mode, I ought to admit, that most of the information I have is due to the kind indulgence of two friends, one of who is the editor of the largest selling newspaper in Sikkim, and the other, a bureau chief for a Hindi Daily.

The ruling party is a regional outfit called the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF). The SDF has been in government for three terms and the last 14 years and in my opinion, it appears likely that they will continue for the next five. But that is not the interesting part of the story, the more exciting part is the Congress Manifesto, but some background first. The Congress is led by a man called Nar Bahadur Bhandari (mentioned earlier), who was the Chief Minister of Sikkim for 14 years before SDF under Pawan Chamling formed the government. When in Darjeeling as a kid, I used to hear suspicious stuff about Bhandari, I do not recollect the details, but the things were not cheerful, it had that smell of bullying. I have faint recollections that the stories were disturbing. Bhandari is/was in the mould of the regional leaders of the Door Darshan-days, leaders who were brazen about power and used it like imagined Hindi film villains. Bhandari has been out of the government structure for a long time.

Sikkim is an organic state and grazing, felling of trees in forest areas are not permitted. The Sikkim State Congress's manifesto actually promises that fertilizers and pesticides will be distributed for free if the Congress is brought to power, it also promises free grazing everywhere and the felling of trees as also the development of saw mills to process the cut trees. I was shocked when I read this, after all this is the age of climate change, saving forests is of prime importance and global warming has also had its effect on Sikkim. On inquiring about the irrational promises, I was told that Bhandari's sole poll agenda is anti-Chamling and so he opposes everything the SDF government has followed and his explanation to the public is that new forests are generated every few years, so there are no problems in cutting them down! There is truth though in the matter that such steps taken by the SDF government did affect interests of the agricultural population but it seems oddly disturbing to actually turn the clock back on such a progressive state of affairs. But in many respects, such morbidity defines Bhandari, similar to perhaps, Mulayam Singh Yadav protesting in favour of students rights to use unfair means during examinations.

Rahul Gandhi was here in Gangtok lending support to Bhandari's campaign. He spoke for about eight minutes and in my view his description of the attributes of the 'North East' people were rather patronizing. Interestingly, Rahul also claimed that he was in Sikkim 18 years ago in the Sonam Gyatso Mountaineering Institute (SGMI) for over a month, for I think a rock/mountain climbing course. I was with Sikkim journalists who were just returning to the office after the public meeting at Paljor Stadium and with Varun Gandhi's (fake degrees from SOAS And LSE) in mind, I asked them to follow up, Gandhi's tryst with SGMI and check if his claims were legitimate.

I will perhaps follow this little introduction of Sikkim politics with another write up some time later about the community issues and the social engineering that keeps the SDF in power. It would suffice to say that, the Newar, Bahun and Chettri (NBC and Non Backward Castes) are the traditional support group behind Bhandari and the Congress while the Nepalese OBC castes are with Chamling and the SDF. In the SDF's kitty and essentially due to its conduct over the past 15 years is the confidence of the Bhutia-Lepcha (BL) group. As to how these and the other factors like money, individuals and the random factors work remains to be seen. I do hope I can do this before the election results in Sikkim are out and I am proven wrong, pre-election analysis, even if wrong, is an indulgence we all need.

But since, I am doing it, I will take it a little further and make some predictions. My hunch on the numbers is that out of the 32 assembly seats, at best, only 3-5 will fall in the Congress kitty, the rest would remain with SDF. I am marking out those seats for the Congress despite the fact that in the last Assembly SDF had the following numbers 31/32. Such numbers was due to the fact that a number of Congress candidates nomination papers were rejected in the 2004 elections. The other important issue to mention is that the SDF with its ticket distribution has effectively managed to blunt the anti-incumbency factor it could be facing. It did not give tickets to 21 of its sitting MLA's out of which 10 were ministers. Earth shaking for any party, anywhere in India but so far we see little or no discontent. This is undoubtedly due to Chamling's dominating leadership and the fact that he remains focussed on governance and the distribution of state benefits to a significantly larger section of the Sikkim population. It should also tell us something about Chamling's reputation and chances in the near future of Sikkim. And since the politician class is a wily lot and is prone to throwing its weight in whichever direction the wind blows, we can safely assume that, the wind is going to blow in the direction of the SDF. At the best of times, people during elections change parties in their search for tickets so my conjecture is that despite dropping 20 MLA's, if none have gone in search for another ticket, the results of the Sikkim elections, just requires intelligent guess work.

Staying with elections, psephologists, analysts and the insufferable TV herd is at it again, making predictions about who will form the next government in Delhi. I think everyone is certain that the Parliament is again heading towards a scenario in which no party will get enough seats to form the government on its own. The situation is even more lucrative for the TV clique, they can churn out millions of 30 second length stories, contradicting each other, about the 'king makers', who as the press continues in the same vein, wish to be Kings!

Mayawati is the flavor of the season. The adulation of Mayawati is centred on the imminence of her political party, the Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) gaining in the North Indian belt at the expense of Pehalwan Mulayam's Samjwadi Party (SP) and the BJP. Thereby, holding the 'key' to who forms the next government at Delhi. Mukul Kesavan, in, Virago in Diamonds- Who’s afraid of Kumari Mayavati?, writes succinctly about the social attitudes to Mayawati. The Foreign Press also appears to be having a field day with Mayawati, Newsweek calls her India's Anti-Obama and WSJ titles its piece, Whose is afraid of Kumari Mayawati? (I am also wondering about the similar title in the Kesavan piece and the WSJ).

So the scenario is that we might have leaders of the regional parties, with only blinkered domestic agendas and no external experience or outlook, who are to perhaps come to power. Malvika Singh in her column Mala Fide, The Telegraph, 21st April 2009, suggests that the media, Should put them to Test Now, "Maybe the time is right for the anchor-persons to invite Mayavati and ask her how she would handle the havoc in Pakistan, how she plans to deal with the Taliban in the border, how she would work on the next phase of the nuclear deal with Barack Obama. India needs to know what its aspiring leaders are all about. Invite Mulayam Singh, Jayalalithaa, Nitish Kumar et al, get them out of their regional and local issues since they are desperately aspiring for the Dilli gaddi, and let us all hear their expositions on other — national and international — issues that plague the world — from global warming to terror. Parochial mindsets, limited passions, and predictable attitudes do not make national leaders. We have seen the rabblerousing skills on podiums, heard the hysterical rhetoric and hollow promises of a better life from all those who have been out of power. We must now hear them articulate their policy positions, then make our choice."

twit, tweet, twitter

2009-04-24T18:59:00.003+05:30

I wonder how many of you know of Twitter, it is a different sort of a social networking site. One quality I can point out is that it is bare. All that I understand so far is that one can 'share' (catch line is, What are you doing?) in the length of a text message, about 140 words. There are just three technicalities to sieve through; Following, Followers and Updates. Friends/Contacts are 'followers', so you follow me and you get updates (What am I doing?), I make.

It is quiet brainless and redundant. You could check these brilliant videos poking fun at Twitter and twitter-ers, Twouble with Twitters: SuperNews! and this one Twitter Tease.

You could ask me, if that is so, what the hell am I doing on Twitter? A great question in many a fatuous circumstance. My reply would be that having never been on Facebook and after a dear Pakistani brother liberated (hacked into my profile and deleted everything) me from Orkut, I needed some internet affliction to stay contemporary and perhaps relevent. Imagine admitting that i was not a part of any social networking groups. So I permitted Twitter to win me over, with its simplicity. I also used the platform, to show off (smart ass comments and my enlightened reading-shared as a tweet) and to network as convincing reasons to tweet.

On twitter, I follow Brahma Chellaney, an interesting (read hardliner) strategic affairs specialist, Anand Giridharadas, a Indian American writer/journalist, to give an example. Chellaney's updates are in the form of small comments on Indian Foreign and Security issues, as well as the links to his media articles, as are Giridharadas's. US President Barak Hussain Obama is also on twitter as are many news and journal organisations which tweet their link.

But this post is not about such arid thrills. It is prompted by a substantially, greater ethereal experience, a starry one. A couple of nights ago, an email in the inbox appeared with this subject tag, "Shahrukh Khan has requested to follow you on Twitter!"

Yes, and it appears (or I would like to believe) that SRK manages his tweet's himself. I mean or I hope, that, this is the least, our Gods ought to be doing, some menial work, sigh!

But, I bet you are confused as to how (does he know I exist) and why would SRK want to follow me and the little dumb, bored updates that I will make, in my efforts to project a (more??eh) sophisticated and a cool version of myself, which would be mostly determined by my very impulsive motivations. You might even wonder, how did SRK, find me, after all, there are millions of people. But he found me, I mean, Satya, me. The secret, dear friends, is a lot less exciting than I have wanted you to imagine. So cutting to the issue at hand, SRK wishes to follow me (on Twitter) as I am following him. Despite such rationalisations, I am flattered, as I bet all losers would be trying to follow him, I wonder, how many such losers would he follow, separating the grain from the chaff. Now I can keep sniping at Dada (Saurav Ganguly) and hope SRK plays into my hands.

IPL 2, Cricket, Dravid and Ganguly

2009-04-23T00:26:00.006+05:30

Indian Premier League (IPL) Season 2 is on the roll in South Africa. Last time around, I could only get into the IPL fever, after half the tournament was over, it was more of a function of my lack of patience with 'not interactive' mediums, namely Television. Once into the League, I chose my team in with proper care, entirely on my whim. Bihar, not being a cricket centre of any repute (crowd holliganism does not count) nor any metropolitan attributes, does not find it self with a team. The other non-existent teams, I could cheer for might be the Ladakhi Lions. Though, I wonder about what the Patna IPL team might be called, I am certain, it will be along the lines of Patliputra (the ancient name of Patna) or Magadha or maybe it will be Bihari Babus. And in trying to stay away from dumb 'non-interactive' mediums, we will use the comments section in this post, to collate possible funny and exciting non-existent IPL teams and I would also bully you into suggesting some names for my home team (hint, Bihar).

So, Rajasthan Royals, led by Shane Warne, was going to be my team. For their low profile, lack of Bollywood stars, behaving like they were on the sets for a movie shoot at the Super Bowl in the United States. For Shane Warne, the best captain, Australia never had, leading a bunch of second grade domestic Indian cricketers. A class of cricketers, who would not have otherwise made it to the Indian cricket team. That is how obscure, they seemed before, Warney, brought them together, and went on to actually win the first edition of IPL. So this time around, I was keen on watching the champion team's first outing against the Bangalore team.

The point of this post being to register some thoughts on IPL but primarily, the motivation found its origins in Rahul Dravid's performance. So this is a salute to Dravid for quiet dignity, unassuming rectitude, temperance, and patience. In his professional sporting life of 14 years, Dravid has been under attack for his slowness in adapting to limited overs format and in 20-20 format but his grittiness being such, in IPL 2, Dravid with his anchored innings deserves the credit for the win over Rajasthan Royals (66 runs in 48 balls) and consistent performance despite the losses in the next two games, Chennai (20 runs in 18 balls) and their final loss tonight (to Deccan Chargers) where in Dravid ticked 48 in 27 balls.

There will not be press statements on issues that penalise Dravid, bad treatment during his India captaincy, after his resignation, being unceremoniously dropped and constantly being threatened due to his supposed 'slowness'. He even took to wicket keeping to serve the team. But you have never heard him claiming to being victimised. Just a simple man, trying to do his job, taking the adulation and the brick bats with equal élan. The contrast with our spoiled cry baby, Saurav Ganguly, cannot be starker. Reading some of the reporting on him, specifically, The Telegraph sports reporter, Lokendra Pratap Sahi, who is constantly beating the-Ganguly-as-captain drum. The most vociferous are of course that chauvinist group, that prides itself in its enlightened modernity, a section of Bengalis. Some of the reactions to this sacking of Ganguly II is nauseating and unsurprisingly, deja vu. Eloquent phrases are used, 'planned Ganguly's execution as captain in advance', 'rob Ganguly of the captaincy', 'discriminated against Ganguly (who displayed excellent all round capabilities even in the last IPL), 'insulted India's successful skipper' etc. I can go on, but this is so painful. This second round of an aggrieved Ganguly has two villians and one of them happens to be an Australian (predictable by Bengali standards) and the other a Bollywood star (a quote on SRK following the controversy, the least said about SRK the better!).

One can relate to the disappointment of being removed as captain but to actually go on about this cribbing and twice over, is only maniacal. Ganguly of course is not responsible for all of the crying but his toleration or assent, is the reason behind the continuing saga. A gross over estimation of his capabilities and contribution, a self image so vain, it reduces his talents, for which he would have been remembered. Both Dravid and Ganguly began their professional lives together, when one watches the Ganguly saga and his refusal to come to terms with reality and the bitterness, he is going about creating for himself, one can only admire Dravid for his grace. Dravid in an interview once remarked, 'On the off-side, first there is God, then there is Ganguly'. I think I will only remember the eloquence and the grace of the man who made this remark, rather than the brilliance of Ganguly's off side stroke play.

Take a look at this

2009-04-18T07:25:00.003+05:30

Would you believe that this was my horoscope for yesterday 17th April 2009:

Sagitarious[sic]: Be very alert around mid week for accidents. Keep your cell phone handy so you can out it to use when you come across one. Fire of could also happen now as well as gun fights so be aware of your surroundings at all times. Robberies are rampant now so hide your money and valuables.

And the flavour of Indian elections and their vocabulary from The Times of India, 18th April, 2009

No READ MORE option in this post.

The Mutiny in Bangladesh: An early post-mortem

2009-03-01T10:56:00.007+05:30

The mutiny of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), the paramilitary force manning Bangladeshi borders just got more interesting as one scans the assortment of news items from various sources that google links. On February 25th, the soldiers of BDR at the headquarters in Dhaka, killed and wounded officers in a mutiny said to be over pay, work conditions and career advancement. The news trickling in on the first day was sketchy at best with the number of deaths begining at a meagre number and steadily climbing over the next three days, duration of the mutiny and beyond. The events played out thus- the mutiny, the killings, the hurried general amnesty by the Bangladesh Government to handle the crisis, then the withdrawal of the amnesty and the escape of the mutiniers and then the discovery of graves in and around the BDR complex, seemed like one of the many plots from the writings of Mario Vargos Llosa documenting the innumerable coups in the Central and South Americas.

But for us leading more simplistic lives in South Asia, it was a case of simmering anger finding the lost path to expression. The soldier's mutiny over pay and working conditions is not a regular occurance but it was understandable. The other important aspect of the event was that the officers manning the BDR are drawn from the ranks of the regular Bangladeshi Army and they discriminate against the BDR soldiers. So the story goes and since the end of the mutiny, the discovery of graves and more bodies of officers killed and which were badly mutilated are prompting a closer look at the events. Till then it seemed like an institutional problem limited to perhaps to demands of better pay and the discontent in BDR against the army, a regular developing world phenomena.

The story was fascinating for another reason which was the use of the word, mutiny, to describe the events. As mentioned, mutiny's are unheard of in South Asia due to the legacy and tradition inculcated by the British Indian Army, from which the Indian and the Pakistani army was carved out. The event and its reporting also prompted me to think of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 when a section of the Indian soldiers led by Mangal Pandey turned on their officers. This event has been dubbed as the First War of Independence by the Nationalist historians but it goes by the name of the Sepoy Mutiny in popular parlance. I thought of it in that manner due to this headline carried by The Telegraph, 26th February 2009 where they called it the Sepoy Mutiny in Dhaka.

So there it was, a rather momentous event but simple in its logic and ramifications, of a group of soldiers turning on their discriminatory officers with work conditions grievances. But then a few stories from the Indian media which I happened to come across made it appear deeper and richer than it seemed. The Times of India titled their story, Bangladesh mutineers name tycoon with Pak links, 1st March 2009, which suggested that the mutineers were backed by a Shipping tycoon with links to the Pakistani Military-Intelligence complex and the opposition Bangaldesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The current government is headed by Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League elected a month ago after a two year emergency military rule. The new reports surfaced as the committee headed by Bangladesh Home Minister started a probe into the gruesome revolt by Bangladesh Rifles. There is so far no indication that this was a intended coup. Bangladesh has witnessed many successful and failed coup attempts. Sheikh Hasina's husband was Mujibur Rehman, the man, who with the help of India achieved independence from Pakistan in 1971 and who was killed in a military coup in 1975. Sheikh Hasina is seen as close to India.

The Indian Express, meanwhile, reports, Dhaka rebels reveal plot to provoke Army, topple Govt, 1st March 2009, that mutiny was intended to 'provoke a strong Army reaction. Any such response from the Bangladesh Army would have had serious consequences. The interrogation is said to have revealed that separate plots had been hatched to assassinate Bangladesh Army Chief Gen Moeen U Khan. Already, similar plots against Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have been uncovered in the past few weeks.

The Bangladesh Army has cooperated with the Hasina Government and has so far shown restraint despite seething anger among its officers and troops. The Bangladesh Army is now baying for blood and wants to avenge the massacre of its officers — most of whom are sons of army officers and civilian bureaucrats. Gen. Khan too has been able to demonstrate control over his forces despite fissures and camps in his Army. Former Bangladesh PM and BNP leader Khaleda Zia too have supported the inquiry launched by the government but has criticized it for wasting time in negotiations. But the political fallout of the inquiry is likely to be murkier.

The Times of India report goes on to add more of the usual ISI-Islamist connections, real or imagined, to the story when it addes that, 'Sources are also pointing to the scale of the brutality of the murders, the mutilations, etc, which they say are tell-tale signs of the Islamist ideologies that have infiltrated the lower cadres of the BDR, thanks to their extensive Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) connections. Behind the mutiny is the war crimes tribunal that Sheikh Hasina promised to set up for the trial of Pakistani collaborators or razakars from the independence war. This had created trouble inside Bangladesh and Pakistan as well. In fact, Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari sent an emissary to Sheikh Hasina, Pervez Ispahani, to persuade her to put off this trial as it could embarrass the Pak army considerably.'

One does not mean to be sceptical of the reporting, a lot of what one has quoted is the reality in Bangaldesh, the cleavge between its Bengali linguistic identity exhibited by its warmer ties with India, the 1971 war for independence and its religious identity going back to the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. These two tendencies are represented by the two parties, Awami League and the BNP, with the army more with the BNP in this specturm. The party of Khaleda, widow of former army chief General Zia-ur Rehman, has in its ranks a large number of former army officers as leaders.

The fact that Bill Clinton in his South Asia visit in March 2000 visited Bangladesh as it was a 'moderate' Islamic country is a bygone era, the growth and spread of fundamentalism has been an ongoing process and the last government headed by the BNP was in coalition with the Jamat-e-Islami. The mutiny and the conspiracy suggestion can perhaps be seen as a fall out of the 1971 war crime tribunal Sheikh Hasina's government intends to establish and this would implicate sections in Bangaladesh and Pakistan, therefore the need to scuttle the move. The Islamists in the 1971 war were on the Pakistani side of the proverbial fence. The Pakistan government after the independence of Bangladesh appointed a commission under the chairmanship of Hamoodur Rahman to probe the role of the Pakistan army. Hamoodur Rahman commission report revealed many aspects of politics in Pakistan army during the Civil War of 1971. Because of the nature of the findings it was not declassified for decades until an Indian newspaper published the details.

Further, see this story complicates matters as it appears the large number of mutiners are headed towards India and are seeking refuge in India and have also written to their counter-parts in the Indian Border Security Force. The Bangladesh government has requested the Indian government to disarm and hand over the rebels and it is seen to have the tacit American blessings. However, India in the next few days or so will have a tight rope to walk as it does not want to be seen as partisan to any side which has been the bane of Indian policy towards Bangladesh since its inception. The Indian position appears to merely prevent the soldiers from crossing into India, if necessary by force but it will not be aparty to disarming the rebels. The only official reaction so far is here. The Prime Minister of Bangladesh is under pressure from the army ranks to act swiftly against the rebels, the first expression of which was the withdrawal of the amnesty granted to the rebels. The army leadership has expressed their subservience to civilian authorities, the next few days will decide how Sheikh Hasina handles the issue and how the army reaction will impact on the government.

This BBC report would be the latest on the developments in Bangladesh as I publish this post on 1 March 2009, 7.30 pm, local time.

A Harvest Of Khans by Mukul Kesavan

2009-02-20T20:02:00.005+05:30

I liked this piece by Mukul Kesavan. There is this ease with which he translates interesting ideas and hypothesis into great writing. Kesavan is always a delight to read on films, cricket or his comments on popular culture. I will refrain from waxing eloquent about his skills as I doubt it will do justice. This opinion piece which was published in The Telegraph on 19th February 2009 is Kesavan at his best. It is an intelligent look at an institution that has traumatised and entertained a number of our dull lives with its epic inanities.

A HARVEST OF KHANS- Bombay’s superstars are Muslim, but they mostly play Hindus

Recently I fulfilled a long-standing ambition to see a Bombay film in a Bombay theatre. I bought a ticket at the Regal in Colaba for a late-night screening of Luck By Chance, which is the thinking man’s Om Shanti Om with Farhan Akhtar playing Shah Rukh Khan’s role: the struggling actor set on becoming a hero. Like Shah Rukh in OSO, Farhan’s character, Vikram Jai Singh, makes it big; even more creditably, he manages to pull this off without the bother of reincarnation.

Watching Farhan Akhtar in this film (and this was the second film of his I’d seen in quick succession, the other one being the first-rate Rock On!!), it seemed truer than ever that the most successful and interesting male actors in Bombay cinema are Muslims and, the odd Akhtar apart, they’re nearly all called Khan. We have Aamir, Shah Rukh, Salman, Saif, Imraan and Irrfan, and if Farhan Akhtar had re-invented himself as Farhan Khan, he might not have had to wait till his early thirties for stardom. (Even the Khans who don’t make it — Sohail, Arbaaz, Fardeen — get a lot of press by failing in a newsworthy way.)

The importance of being Khan is made in a tongue-in-cheek way within Luck By Chance, via the character played by Hrithik Roshan. The film is full of guest appearances by major stars, including Aamir and Shah Rukh, who play themselves. Ironically, Hrithik plays his real-life role as the established megastar, but he doesn’t play himself: he’s a fictional star who is called…you’ve guessed it, Zaffar Khan!

So how is this significant? Well, you could argue that it proves that if you want to be a star in Hindi cinema, it’s worthwhile investing in a surname that begins with K. A great deal has been written on the way in which all the television serials made by Balaji Films begin with K, from Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu thi to Kkusum, but the fact is that K has been crucial for male stardom for more than half a century. Apart from maverick exceptions like Amitabh Bachchan, being a Kumar, a Kapoor or a Khanna was virtually a necessary condition for being a successful hero. Dilip Kumar took no chances on the K front; a Khan in real life, he covered his bases by being a Kumar on the marquee.

But trivia apart, does this harvest of Khans tell us something about Hindi cinema? A friend of mine claimed, only half-jokingly, that there was a story of Muslim empowerment to be found in the history of Indian cinema from Dilip Kumar to Shah Rukh Khan. First, he argued, you had Yusuf Khan who, starting out in the troubled Forties, used the camouflage of a Hindu name. Then, twenty years later, many years down the road from Partition, came Abbas Khan who started his film career as Sanjay and then reinstated his surname and came to be known as Sanjay Khan. And now the Hindi film industry is home to a whole crop of Khans who are proud to be known by their real names.

This is a plausible thesis but it misses the point. Yusuf Khan didn’t become Dilip Kumar on account of the ill will generated by Partition; he began his career before that traumatic division in 1944. And while there were many Muslims, men and women, who chose non-Muslim screen names like Madhubala, Meena Kumari and Johnny Walker, there were others like Mehmood, Rehman, Talat Mahmood and Nargis who didn’t. No, the real lesson that Khans, past and present, hold for us is that despite the large and powerful presence of great Muslim stars in Hindi cinema, the default identity of the heroes they play is Hindu.

Looking through the characters Dilip Kumar played through his long and distinguished career, I found that while he had been Jagdish, Ramesh, Ram, Mohan, Ashok, Manoj, Vijay, Shankar, Devdas and even Gunga, he had never played a Muslim character except once and that once doesn’t count because Prince Salim in Mughal-E-Azam is a historical character who happens to be Muslim.

This is not to suggest that this is born of bad faith or to imply that the Hindi film industry is, in some subtle way, ‘communal’. On the contrary, no professional world in India has been more open to talent and less concerned with ascriptive origin or identity than Bombay cinema. Anglo-Indians, Jews, Muslims, Parsis, Germans, Americans, people of every sort have come to this world with change in their pockets and have prospered. So it isn’t malevolence or discrimination that’s the issue; rather, a concern that Hindi cinema has become lazy, that it has been content to mine a narrow vein in a terrain that’s bursting with rich and various ores.

It can be reasonably argued that all commercial film cultures produce stock hero personas which reflect dominant cultural types and with which a mass audience can identify. Thus Hollywood was dominated for decades by the WASP hero: regardless of their own ethnic origin, actors like Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson and Paul Newman played variations on the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant theme. So if Hindi cinema produced a standardized hero called Raj who was Hindu, generally upper-caste, preferably light-skinned and subtly Punjabi, it was merely doing what all mainstream cinemas do to sell tickets and turn a profit. So if Sanjay Khan, like Dilip Kumar, never played a Muslim character in a long career till he produced and starred in a television serial about a historical figure, Tipu Sultan, it shouldn’t be cause for worry: it’s in the nature of the beast: commercial cinema is like this only.

What this argument neglects is the fact that as time passed, Hollywood became more diverse, not only in its personnel, but in the roles its heroes played. Brando played a Pole in A Streetcar Named Desire, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro played Italian gangsters, Will Smith pulled on a cape to play a black superhero, and a varied bunch of actors played a range of Jewish protagonists in Hollywood films. Paul Newman himself, whose father was a Jew, played the ardent Zionist, Ari Ben Canaan, in Exodus. The Chosen, Marathon Man, Funny Girl, Bugsy, Private Benjamin, The Way We Were and The Jazz Singer were films centred on Jewish characters of every sort: comic, heroic, scary and ordinary.

Contrast this with Bombay cinema where sixty-five years after Yusuf Khan, aka Dilip Kumar, made his debut, his Khan successors are still playing Vicky, Raj, Ajay, Karan and Vijay to the exclusion of any other sort of character; where Shah Rukh Khan plays Raj Mathur, Anil Bhansal, Ajay Sharma, Rahul Mehra and Vijay Agnihotri when he essays everyday Indians and, very occasionally, Amjad Ali Khan and Kabir Khan when a film wants to address communal harmony or discord and where Aamir Khan, after bravely playing a contemporary Muslim in his second film, Raakh, never played a Muslim character again till Fanaa, 17 years later, where he played Rehan Khan, a terrorist.

It can’t be healthy that in a film industry where the A-list of heroes is dominated by Khans and in a country inhabited by a 150 million Muslims, there are barely any films centred on ordinary Muslim characters going about their lives in a matter-of-fact way. Iqbal comes to mind and then…nothing.

But there’s hope yet: Shah Rukh Khan is currently shooting a film that is forthrightly called, My Name is Khan. It’s about “a Muslim man who suffers from Asperger syndrome”. Here’s hoping that by the time this remarkable bunch of Muslim actors are done with their careers, Khans might figure in the storylines of Hindi movies, not just on the marquees.

Am I reading this story right?

2009-02-18T15:31:00.003+05:30

MNS workers disrupt the screening of Billu
Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 11:43 [IST]

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) launched a protest against screening of the movie Billu starring Shahrukh Khan. They objected that the lyrics of the song ‘Marjaani’ insult the works of Prophet Mohammed. Over 500 workers of the MSN protested outside a theatre at Kurla and demanded the deletion of item number starring Shahrukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor as it hurt the religious sentiments of the Muslims.

There is NO READ MORE option in this post.

Mirror Images

2009-02-15T02:01:00.004+05:30

Compare these two news stories:

Basant, Valentine’s Day celebrations attacked

KARACHI: An enraged mob attacked merrymakers celebrating Basant and Valentine's Day at Defence Housing Authority's Nisar Shaheed Park on Saturday, private television channels reported. The park, which is located in a posh residential area of Karachi, was hosting Valentine's Day and Basant festivities when the attack occurred. The assault led to a commotion with residents rushing to vacate the area. The police have subsequently taken control of the situation. No injuries have yet been reported.

From the Dawn, February 14, 2009.

Sene men attack V-Day celebrators in Karnataka, injure two

Belgaum/Bangalore, Feb 14 (PTI) Sri Rama Sene activists today attacked workers of a BPO while they were celebrating Valentine day, injured two of them and ransacked the venue in Belgaum even as parts of Karnataka witnessed trouble-free celebrations. A 15-member group of sene activists, which was on the prowl to stall the celebrations in line with their threat to disrupt the event, spotted the banners put up at Katwa Infotech, a BPO, located in Jyoti Towers complex on the city outskirts. The intruders forced their way in, pulled down the banners and issued a warning to the gathering to disperse. Earlier in the day, a group of Sena activists took out a motorcycle rally in Belgaum city, visiting colleges and warning those celebrating the day.

From Press Trust of India, February 14, 2009.

It makes me wonder about the threats we discuss. NO

Clouded By Confusion by Ravinder Kaur

2009-02-14T12:23:00.006+05:30

The Times of India, 14th February 2009

A straight line can be drawn backwards from the Mangalore type of incidents to the Delhi murders of Nitish Katara and Jessica Lal. The canvas can be broadened to include the recent resurgence of honour crimes in northern India, instances of acid being thrown at women, and the backlash against women who dare to voice an opinion or choose a lifestyle of their choice. Young people are being punished for what is being perceived as immoral and detrimental to so-called Indian culture and tradition. Yet, physical assaults and assaults unto death cannot simply be comprehended as protests against what is objectionable to the sensibilities of some.

And it is the young who are victimising other young people, particularly women, drawing supportive responses from those responsible for law and order, whether it is a Ashok Gehlot supporting 'Indian culture' or a confused Sheila Dikshit asking women to stay indoors. The particularly virulent form the actions are taking and their vigilante nature propel us towards a more nuanced reading.

Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist, had a term and a theory to explain such (anti) social behaviour. Although his theory applied primarily to understanding suicide, it can, and has, been extended to other areas of human behaviour. Durkheim classified all periods of rapid change as leading to a state of 'anomie' or 'normlessness' in society. In such circumstances, individuals and groups are often in a 'state of confusion', uncertain of the appropriate norms to follow and uncertain of their place in society. Their response may be either in the form of extreme steps such as suicide, or violence against those perceived to be causing grievous harm to the moral foundations of society.

That India is undergoing a period of rapid transition is not in doubt; the anomie induced may be held responsible for many of the responses and incidents listed above. Indian society has had few social revolutions, such as students' revolts or strong feminist protests, or movements for greater individual freedoms, which could explain the changes we are experiencing. The transformation in Indian society has primarily been brought about by changes in the economy and technology. Yet, the social implications of far-reaching economic and technological change have been little studied or commented upon, apart from the railing we hear against globalisation and its presumed role in the destruction of 'traditional' culture and values.

For Indian women, globalisation has generally done good. It has brought them into the workforce, and done so in large numbers. Earlier, working women in India were either the elite or the poor. This picture has now changed with women of many classes choosing to work both before and after marriage. But there is a downside to this. Despite obvious class differences between women working in factories or call centres and in managerial jobs, tensions are perceptible and palpable in most families and in society at large.

Men (and in-laws) are happy that daughters, sisters and wives are bringing home incomes but are not fully reconciled to them venturing out of the house. Work and independent incomes enable women to try out new freedoms. On offer are choices and an escape from the stifling confines of parental or marital homes.

Society is uncertain about how to respond to these new demands, and the new mores espoused by the young. Which are the constituencies most affected by change? If the old are protecting so-called tradition and their own hegemony, what are the young involved in incidents such as those in Mangalore or the Nitish Katara and Jessica Lal murders protecting or fighting against? Here class combines with a more general gendered targeting young men desirous of economic and social upward mobility, who are looking from the outside at others who have already got where they secretly wish to be.

In such cases a genuine confusion over 'morals' combines with a destructive class envy, resulting in targeting of youth, especially women, who themselves are exploring the boundaries of their new freedoms. The targets are individuals who appear to have a glamorous lifestyle or putatively stand for a 'modernity' that has not yet embraced all. In all such cases, the freedoms sought to be curtailed are those of women, especially those seen as espousing a 'western modernity'. Additionally, the rise of the Hindutva parties gives a platform to these uncertain young men as defenders of 'traditional, Hindu culture,' providing them with respect from certain quarters.

That there is genuine confusion among our youth, especially among those associated with the socially conservative right, is often obvious in our classrooms. In an IIT classroom, peopled mostly with young men from small towns or cities, discussions of gender or homosexuality generally evoke embarrassed titters and reiterations of the importance of not losing 'Indian culture' to the juggernaut of globalisation.

Yet, at least some of those with politically conservative affiliations are assailed by self-doubt are they right in hating Muslims, in agreeing with excessive parental control or in looking at women wearing jeans and T-shirts as 'loose'? Conservative ideologies often become a protective shield against the flux of rapid change, especially if one nurses the feeling of being left out. It is here that a liberal arts education has a lot of work to do in our universities and educational institutes.

The writer is a professor of social anthropology, IIT Delhi.

The Shrinking Liberal Space in India

2009-02-12T15:06:00.003+05:30

Mr Ravindra Kumar, Editor, The Statesman, and Mr Anand Sinha, Printer & Publisher, were arrested on 11th February 2009 on a complaint by a resident of Eliot Lane, Kolkata, and charged under Sections 295A (deliberate act with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code. The Statesman republished an article on Feb. 5 titled "Why should I respect oppressive religions" originally written by columnist Johann Hari in the British newspaper, the Independent. The article triggered protests by Islamic groups before the Statesman House, a heritage building in Kolkata. Last month it was the Sri Ram Sena forcing its will on a group of people specifically women, this month we have this. Over time one sees the curbing of individual freedoms under the threat of religious/community sensitivity. This is not the kind of country I want to live in. On a more practical note, there are too many sensitivities to take of in this country, there is no end to them. To survive and flourish, India can only be secular and liberal. I am carrying in this post the article written by a Johann Hari. A number of these incidents keep ocurring in India but there is declining hue and cry about such infringements.

Why should I respect these oppressive religions? by Johann Hari

The right to criticise religion is being slowly doused in acid. Across the world, the small, incremental gains made by secularism ~ giving us the space to doubt and question and make up our own minds ~ are being beaten back by belligerent demands that we “respect” religion. A historic marker has just been passed, showing how far we have been shoved. The UN rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian of free speech has had his job rewritten: to put him on the side of the religious censors.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that “a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people”. It was a Magna Carta for mankind and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. Today, the Chinese dictatorship calls it “Western”, Robert Mugabe calls it “colonialist”, and Dick Cheney calls it “outdated”. The countries of the world have chronically failed to meet it, but the document has been held up by the United Nations as the ultimate standard against which to check ourselves. Until now.

Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to “respect” the “unique sensitivities” of the religious, they decided, so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within “the limits set by the shariah (law). It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community”.

In other words, you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.

Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN’s Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech ~ including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he can seek out and condemn “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets”. The council agreed, so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who wanted to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.

Anything which can be deemed “religious” is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN ~ and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah “will not happen” and “Islam will not be crucified in this council” ~ and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims.

Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest ~ but the shariah police declared it was “un-Islamic” and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country’s most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry 10-year-old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year-old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.
To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women’s, those children’s, this blogger’s ~ or their oppressors’?

As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it: “The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom.”
Those of us who passionately support the UN should be the most outraged by this.
Underpinning these “reforms” is a notion seeping even into democratic societies, that atheism and doubt are akin to racism. Today, whenever a religious belief is criticised, its adherents immediately claim they are the victims of “prejudice” ~ and their outrage is increasingly being backed by laws.

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don’t respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a “Prophet” who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him.

I don’t respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don’t respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. This is not because of “prejudice” or “ignorance”, but because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.

When you demand “respect”, you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.
But why are religious sensitivities so much more likely to provoke demands for censorship than, say, political sensitivities? The answer lies in the nature of faith. If my views are challenged I can, in the end, check them against reality. If you deregulate markets, will they collapse? If you increase carbon dioxide emissions, does the climate become destabilised? If my views are wrong, I can correct them; if they are right, I am soothed.

But when the religious are challenged, there is no evidence for them to consult. By definition, if you have faith, you are choosing to believe in the absence of evidence. Nobody has “faith” that fire hurts, or Australia exists; they know it, based on proof. But it is psychologically painful to be confronted with the fact that your core beliefs are based on thin air, or on the empty shells of revelation or contorted parodies of reason. It’s easier to demand the source of the pesky doubt be silenced.

But a free society cannot be structured to soothe the hardcore faithful. It is based on a deal. You have an absolute right to voice your beliefs, but the price is that I too have a right to respond as I wish. Neither of us can set aside the rules and demand to be protected from offence.

Yet this idea ~ at the heart of the Universal Declaration ~ is being lost. To the right, it thwacks into apologists for religious censorship; to the left, it dissolves in multiculturalism. The hijacking of the UN Special Rapporteur by religious fanatics should jolt us into rescuing the simple, battered idea disintegrating in the middle: the equal, indivisible human right to speak freely.

Voyage of courage runs out of gas by G.C. SHEKHAR

2009-02-11T00:20:00.002+05:30

This story from today's newspaper caught my attention for its hilarity. My comments on the story will be limited to a little backgrounder. The island nation of Sri Lanka has been at civil war for over three decades, owing to the stand off between the Tamils and the Sinhalas. The Tamils were immigrants from India brought over to the country during the British period. State power lies in the hands of the majority Sinhalese. The Tamils are largely located in the North and North Eastern parts of Sri Lanka.

The problem began soon after independence when the Sinhala majority tried to impose its will and language on the Tamils. The resistance over time lead to the creation of the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Elam (LTTE) also called Tamil Tigers. The LTTE since its inception in 1980's, with considerable help from the Indira Gandhi government become one of the most organised and lethal insurgent groups in the world funded liberally by the Tamil diaspora based in the West. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu is a huge support base for the LTTE. The failure of the Indian Peace Keeping Operations in Sri Lanka, the assasination of Rajiv Gandhi by LTTE and perhaps due to the similarities with the Kashmiri secessionaist demands, the Central government in Delhi has tried to distance it self from the LTTE, while expressing amnesic concerns on the condition of the Tamils after prodding by the Tamil parties. In Tamil Nadu, the concern for the well being of their Tamil brethern, remains an emotional rallying point for all political parties. The following story should be seen in such a context.

The current scenario is that the Sri Lankan army operations have, it appears reduced the military power of the LTTE after a two year long operation. One hopes that despite the military victory, the Sinhalas will provide the Tamils their space and autonomy so that the LTTE, a terrorist organisation, does not have space to exploit the Tamil grievances.

The Telegraph, Calcutta, Tuesday , February 10 , 2009

Chennai, Feb. 9: They had set sail for Sri Lanka this morning to lend much-needed muscle to the Tamil Tigers in their battles with the army. But the 14 Tamil Nadu lawyers could reach only the anchorage outside the Tuticorin harbour as their borrowed fishing boat ran out of fuel, turning their “journey of courage” into a joke within half an hour.

Stranded and hungry, the legal eagles stayed afloat for three hours by tying their flimsy wooden vessel to a buoy and eventually had to plead with the police to rescue them. But the cops and the coast guard preferred to look the other way. So the lawyers sent desperate appeals to the CISF, manning the Tuticorin port, over their mobiles. A CISF patrol boat brought them back around 3pm, four hours after their departure.

The lawyers — eight from Karur (300km from Chennai) and six from Tuticorin — had announced they would sail to Mullaithivu in northern Sri Lanka, 250km away, and take up arms for the LTTE. Many, however, believe they merely wanted publicity amid the current wave of pro-Lankan Tamil protests and hoped the police would arrest them and foil the trip.

So, led by Murugaiayan, the Karur Bar Association president, the lawyers went to a fishing colony near the harbour at Tuticorin, 450km from Chennai, posing as fisheries department officials on a mission to inspect the boats’ seaworthiness.

They got into a boat and forced the owner, Senthilvel, to take it out to sea despite his protestations that he was low on fuel. Journeys such as these are not made on wooden boats anyway, sources said. The boat’s outboard engine sputtered to a halt just outside the jetty area. The frantic lawyers called up friends and policemen on the shore urging them to organise a rescue. But the cops were not interested.

Since Senthilvel’s family filed a police complaint saying he had been duped and abducted, the lawyers were arrested after they reached the shore. “The CISF too has complained they had trespassed into a prohibited area,” said Tuticorin police chief Deepak Damor. The lawyers, though seasick, put up a brave front. “We would have reached Mullaithivu if we had a proper vessel,” Murugaiayan said.

Earlier this morning, another 50 lawyers on a similar “mission” had hung around with fishermen right in front of Tuticorin North police station. But they found to their dismay that neither were boats available for hire, nor were the cops interested in arresting them. So they merely posed for photos in front of the boats, shouted slogans and left.

In 1983, Tamil Nationalist Front leader P. Nedumaran had led a group of youths on a march from Madurai to Rameswaram, planning to lead a Tamil army to help their Lankan brethren. He managed to get into a leaky boat before being arrested, only to be released in the evening.

In 2007, Nedumaran collected money and organised a few vanloads of medicines and food for war-zone Lankan Tamils. He led the convoy to Rameswaram where none would lease him a boat. The food and medicine are still rotting in a godown.

The Fuss about Slumdog Millionaire Redux

2009-02-09T11:34:00.011+05:30

The news has it that Slumdog Millionaire won seven prizes including Best Picture at the British Academy Film Awards. The movie went into the ceremony with 11 nominations and won 6 prizes, Best Film, Best Director, Adapted Screenplay, Music, Cinematography, Editing and Sound. The film has created a controversy in India, as in some opinions, it shows the country in an 'unflattering' light. The BAFTAs have a reputation for suggesting the winners at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. All four of last year's acting prize winners went on to take home Oscars.

I have browsed through almost half of Slumdog Millionaire. I think it looks like an interesting watch. But since I have not seen the film in its entirety and nor am I the sorts to cheer for a film at award shows, the objective of this post is not to debate the merits/demerits of the film and its golden run at awards. The purpose of this post, in continuation to the last one, is to bring about greater clarity than I exhibit in the earlier effort.

I do not understand the hue and cry over debating the nuances of 'representing' India. Our TV channels are/were also going on about the same and how the 'West' only fetes poverty in India. They point to the Booker Winner, The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga and the movie Slumdog Millionaire. In The White Tiger, Adiga sets out to show a part of India that we hear about 'infrequently': its underbelly. As noted in the previous post, years ago, Satyajit Ray faced the same allegation from these image conscious Indians.

The current controversy started after Amitabh Bachchan made a point in his blog about Slumdog Millionaire. I think Bachchan ought to be counted as one of the most moronic, insecure and politically dumb public figure of the previous generation. Despite his father, a great poet with a left progressive intellectual position, this illustrious son is a classic example of feudal-filial concerns, selfish, ignorant and paranoid. All his success and the respect that 2-3 generations of Indians have showered on him are wasted on a person like him. Without doubt, the celebration of Bachchan was due to his movies, acting skills and charisma, not his political stance. But in such circumstances, Bachchan ought to limit himself to enacting the card board characters he has always excelled in, but being the opportunist, Bachchan does not let go. I wonder why Bachchan does not speak on the violence against the North Indian migrants in Mumbai, or his chosen silence on Gujarat 2002 or the innumerable issues that plague all our lives including his but it is important to keep in mind that the issues that we chose to speak (and its selection) about are a reflection of our politics, regressive or feudal.

In the earlier post, I hastily concluded that the Indians including Bachchan who have raised the question of the 'poverty' of India, are merely jealous of the success the movie, and the refusal (through the surprising success)to respect the lines of hierarchy that Bollywood thrives in. It appears galling to them in terms of what Danny Boyle (director of Slumdog) has done. Bollywood films are talked about for their fantasy proportions, far removed from reality and the co-option of poverty only through a disinheritance and romanticism.

Two things can be said about the issue, one is that post-1990 economic reforms, India has changed so much that we live in denial about our poverty, about the inhuman level of existence of a large section of our population. The world in the past two decades has largely been flooded with images of sky scrappers in Gurgaon and Bangalore, its a rude shock to awaken to the degrading imagery of Slumdog Millionaire and The White Tiger. We had neatly tucked it away, the farmers suicide was an aberration, the slums were being readied for beautification- its residents- problematic immigrants and so the question about 'representing' India.

I ought to clarify, I do not think Gurgaon/Bangalore/Hyderabad represents India nor do the slums by itself, though, when people speak of representation vis-a-vis Slumdog, that is exactly what they have in mind. It is difficult to imagine how a single imagery, whether of rootless sky scrapers or of filthy township, representing anything, least of all a country as varied and different as India.

Secondly, the movie Slumdog is based on a book by an Indian bureaucrat called Vikas Swarup, the book is called Q& A. It was a successful novel though of course not in the same league as Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy or Amitav Ghosh, but nevertheless successful. The book is about 3 years old if I am right. No one bothered to attack the book, until the movie came into the award lists.

What's the fuss about Slumdog Millionaire? and other things...

2009-01-20T16:05:00.003+05:30

I am at home as it's my semester break and there is not much do you can do in Patna. I watch TV, shoot sh*t and appear to be busy.

We shifted into the area we live in Patna in the year 1997, more than a decade ago. It was part of my father's retirement plans, to have his own house and in Patna, improving the Sinha lot from backwater Chapra.

So, the big news is that, since we shifted here in 1997, the roads are being laid for the first time. The entire lane appears upbeat and excited, we see more of our neighbors and they even talk to each other. Old men are protecting the road, till it dries and is strong, with great enthusiasm. It is important, for most who have been living here since 1988, this is the first time, the road has been built and they realize, that it will never be built for the second time in their life time.

The irony is that it is not even your usual road, with the tar and smooth and all, this is just a concrete construction of gravel, cement and sand. And trust me, we are all thrilled, suddenly, life feels and looks hopeful.

Life feels so different. After all the Pakistan, China, United States and Iraq war, sigh.

So I watch TV, and I notice this fuss about Slumdog Millionaire. Discussions, panel groups, audience voting etcetera. A few things, the fuss happened only after the movie picked up the Golden Globe Awards. Now, they are tying the Booker Winner, White Tiger and this together to make the point that the 'West' only fetes poverty. They then cite Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, as a case.

Nargis, the much respected Indian actress had also attacked Satyajit Ray in the Parliament of India (she was a nominated member) on this issue. Why?

The controversy started with the Big B's blog entry, where he makes the above point about how the 'west' only sees the poverty aspect of India.

This is ridiculous to say the least. If you look at the media coverage of the past half a decade, we have seen a lot of Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon. This argument of the 'west' seeing only poverty in India is not an issue. I mean aren't we all individuals? Adiga and Vikas Swarup (who wrote the book Q&A, which was adapted to Slumdog Millionaire), they are Indians.

Lastly, I like Sanjay Dutt and all, but his standing for elections, seems ridiculous to put it mildly.

Satyam ka Satya-nass

2009-01-18T17:30:00.004+05:30

Maytas is actually Satyam spelt backward.

I am revolted and sick of this trivia that every article, essay on the Satyam story goes out of its way to highlight.

Am I reading too much?

I was also dissapointed at the failure of the English media's headlines to rise to the occassion when the Satyam story broke.

I think the Hindi Newspapers got far more exciting headlines. Limitation of language?

IGNORE the READ MORE option in this post.

Will India heed the wake-up call? Mark Tully

2008-12-03T15:23:00.003+05:30

Sir Mark Tully was the BBC's correspondent in India for many years. With the Indian intelligence community appearing to bear much of the blame for the attacks in Mumbai, he reflects here on intelligence failings and what to expect next.

The morning after the second day of what some are calling India's 9/11, the Indian Express front page carried the headline: "Our Nightmare, Our Wake-Up Call'.But will India wake up? If the past is anything to go by the answer has to be "no". India is like a great ocean liner that pitches and rolls precariously but never capsizes as it sails through tempests in which smaller and less stable craft would turn turtle.

Weaknesses

The storms that have rocked India include wars, riots, assassinations and, of course, terrorist attacks. The Indian liner also tends to right itself rapidly. I remember after Hindu extremists tore down a historic mosque in Ayodhya, being asked whether the harmony between the two main religious communities would be shattered and India would become like Lebanon or Northern Ireland.

I didn't think it would because, as I explained, tension tends to erupt rapidly in India but to subside with equal rapidity. The negative side of this is that Indians, once they are back in calm waters, tend to ignore the storm and so don't wake up to the problems which created it. The attacks in Mumbai have once again shown the weaknesses of the police and the intelligence services. On the first evening the police were at sixes and sevens. There appeared to be no order and no discipline.

Political interference

The head of the anti-terrorist squad, who should have been in the control room, went to the front line and was shot. Television crews were given freedom to show pictures of the police operations which could have provided valuable information to the terrorists. It's now also clear that there was a serious lack of co-ordination between the intelligence services and the security forces, including the police and the coast guards.

The prime minister has promised there will now be a new federal agency to fight terrorism. One of the main factors which has undermined the existing agencies has been political interference in their working. I once heard a retired head of the Central Bureau of Investigation, the federal detective agency, admit that political interference had made it an instrument of oppression in the hands of the government.Will the new agency be free of political interference? Here again I have my doubts. If I am to be proved wrong the ingrained habits of politicians will have to change.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7761502.stm

For Bombay

2008-11-28T18:17:00.007+05:30

The Wada Pav, a snack of Bombay is delicious. It is made of a bun with a fried mashed potato patty and is served with chillies. I loved it, the last time I was in Bombay in August, I gorged on it, from 3-5 per day. I first discovered it when I traveled to Pune on my own for the first time for the Film Institute of India interview in 2001. When I think of it, I actively (as opposed to a passive longing) miss it.

I love the variety of food available in Bombay, especially the area around South Bombay, Colaba. I thoroughly enjoy the choices available there and try to head in that direction as soon as I can. From filling Wada Pav's at the museum entrance to Bade Miyan, Baghdadi and Cafe Mondegar to name a few. Sea Food, Mughalai food, Continental Food, Mughlai Sea Food, all you have to do is head towards the Colaba Causeway. When you have had your fill, walk towards the Gateway of India and stare at the Taj Hotel and to take a break, turn around and watch the boats gently rock in the sea.

I love the liberation that Bombay infuses in my other wise staid movements. I feel a spring in my step. I have thought about it and I think it is to do with the fact that I am a visitor, tourist, itinerant traveler with no bourgeois worries to keep me from enjoying a city, the Mahanagar. But I have concluded that the spring in the step is importantly encouraged by the presence of the sea. A vast open space stretching out, depending upon your eyes and imagination to limit your horizon. In August, after a few drinks in a Permit Room (another plus point), a director friend and I, went to the beach at Versova at about 9 pm. It was windy and rainy. In those eight days in August 2008 in Bombay, I did not see the sun once. The sea was choppy and the wind was strong enough (or the Blenders Pride) to make us sway on our feet, our sandals in our hands. It was a different kind of darkness at the sea.

Permit Rooms are so called as they have permits to sell alcohol. The one way to understand it's idea for those who do not know it is to imagine a upscale dhaba that sells alcohol. You want half of a half (or half of a quarter), they will provide it to you. It is cheaper, a NO frills bar, with only male clientele (as I noticed in my visit). I was informed that earlier with your drink (in any quantity), they provided the snacks (famous one being-masala papad finely chopped onions, chillies, tomatoes and cucumber with pepper and salt on a papad), now it is said that inflation has led to Permit Room's withdrawing that privilege. But it was a good experience after the lack of cheap alternatives in Delhi. You can tipple your self at nominal price (ten or twenty rupees above marked price) and concentrate on the conversation. I thought the atmosphere was so Bombay.Though, I have been told Permit Room's exist in a few more states in South India.

I also like to walk along the Marine Drive when I am there with the surf hitting over you once in a while, the stretch of road that resembles a necklace.

If the walks feel too long, there is always the local train to try out. Get pushed, push your self in, stay plastered against other men till you get lucky and the train clears up, then hang out of the window and enjoy the salty humid air hit your face. Watch this Vivek Oberoi-Rani Mukherjee sequence from Sathiya to enjoy a feel of the Bombay local train.

I have in the past and still continue to enjoy the street language of Bombay. Apart from the essential fact that I like it, like Bombay. The Mafia movies from the Bombay Film Industry has for long fascinated a whole generation of us. After watching the movie, Satya, during my undergraduate days, I talked like the Bhai log's for a week and in certain moments of life still break into the 'idhar ich aane ka' (come this side). It is a wonderfully bastardized amalgam of Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, perhaps Gujarati and has been perfected in its streets.

Bombay again for the arrogance of its film industry. Without visiting Bombay, many Indians know places like Chowpatty (beach in marathi), Pedder Road, Bandra, Juhu and Mahim (film stars live there). Sample this song from a film that names different places in Bombay. We are expected to know them, there is no explanation provided, but the hindi film world's celebration of Bombay while bordering on the cliched is unconditional. The sheer number of songs that are meant to serve as paean to Bombay must be unparalleled. You can try this one.

Bombay again for being rich enough to feed writers, 3 terrific books written in the span of 2 years. Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, for its brilliant reportage and research. Vikram Chandra for the monumental and his path breaking linguistic flourishes in Sacred Games. At 900 pages, it was a difficult book to pick up but I did it and it was crackling with energy from the very start. Whether it was the romanticized, Sartaz Singh, the suffering-vulnerable cop or the fullness of Ganesh Gaitonde's narrative, Sacred Games holds you spell bound by the world it captures. For long the underworld has been left to Bombay film makers to document, here Chandra does it for an English speaking world and that too in novel format. The book has many stories, amidst the two mentioned above. For some it was tiring and easily breakable into two. But that to me is missing the point. The book is structured alternatively with chapters on Gaitonde, the underworld don's narrative and Sartaz's. The language is terrific in that it captures that modern Indian metropolitan slang gorgeously and since this is specific to Bombay the Mumbaiyaa-tapori-marathi-meets hinglish kitsch.

For example sample this sentence from the book, I have chosen it randomly:

And now he was shitting twelve times a day, and he said he was very afraid he was going to keep huggoing until he died on this behanchod white throne on this maderchod Malyali city in this harami cesspool of a country.

Finally, I would want to hope that all this remains the same.

Awesome!

2008-11-18T11:27:00.002+05:30

From The Times of India, 18th November 2008.

CLICK on the picture for a better view.

No READ MORE option in this.

Want to be heard in India? You'd better form a militia By Anand Giridharadas

2008-10-24T15:31:00.003+05:30

The International Herald Tribune,Thursday, October 23, 2008

MUMBAI: Not long ago, officials in this seaside megalopolis announced plans to retire taxicabs built before 1983.This was no radical idea: So withered are Mumbai's taxis that they must often shut the radio when they need the horsepower to climb a hill.

But one union leader here didn't like it. Last week he ordered the drivers of 55,000 taxis to strike. A few hundred drivers, needing money, defied him. Strikers smashed dozens of their taxis. Meanwhile, a fleet of newer, air-conditioned taxis, unconnected to the striking union, operated as usual, until mobs attacked its cabs, too. Thousands of officegoers in India's financial capital were stranded.

Five days later, they were stranded again — but for a different reason. A local ethnic-baiting politician was arrested for inciting violence against north Indian migrants. Followers of his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, or MNS, party flooded the streets hurling stones and bottles, and taxicabs were smashed once again, this time because many are driven by north Indians.

From Mumbai to Bengal to the central plains, violence is achieving an exalted new status even by this region's bloody standards. Politically motivated beating and burning and killing, never wholly absent from the subcontinent, have become more than spasmodic human failings. They have started to replace hunger strikes, sit-ins and marches as the basic tools of Indian political life: guiltlessly deployed, fatally effective.

Forget what you've heard about Gandhi and nonviolence in India. This is a nation of militias now.

"Only nonviolence cannot work," said Sandeep Deshpanda, 34, vice president of the student wing of MNS. "Some people understand only when you kick them," he added, citing an old Hindi adage.

The MNS has come to symbolize this broader phenomenon. Earlier this year, its leader, Raj Thackeray, fired a verbal fusillade against migrants in Mumbai. Young party cadres fanned out and began to thrash migrants in the streets. Then he went after Mumbai stores that print their sign board in English but not in the local Marathi language.

His party is a minority in the state legislature; he runs no organ of state. Yet, as his cadres began to smash the windows of uncooperative stores, thousands of other stores tacked on Marathi signs. The city's appearance changed overnight.

Thackeray's successes evidently left an impression on 1,900 employees of Jet Airways, who were fired last week thanks to the global financial crisis. They rushed to Thackeray's office. He thundered that no Jet Airways flight would leave Mumbai until the employees were rehired.

If an Indian politician said that a generation ago, it might have been empty bluster. Today, the threat was taken seriously enough that the airline's chairman, Naresh Goyal, held telephone discussions with Thackeray. After Thackeray's and others' lobbying, the employees were rehired the next day.

"It is disturbing that workers of Jet Airways sought the help of the MNS when they were given the pink slip," The Times of India newspaper wrote in an editorial. "It is as if they were contracting the mafia to serve their private needs because they didn't have any other recourse."

Political theorists define sovereignty simply. What separates Jordan from Lebanon is a state monopoly on force. In sovereign countries, militias do not decide who drives taxis and doesn't, who is fired and isn't. If this is the definition, it is difficult to call India wholly sovereign today.

Tata, an Indian conglomerate, decided not long ago to build the world's lowest-cost car in West Bengal State. It got into a land dispute. Good arguments surfaced on each side. But arguments matter ever less. Goaded by yet another state politician without a majority, activists besieged the Tata plant, pelted stones at journalists and threatened workers. Tata left the state.

In an open letter to West Bengal citizens last week, Ratan Tata, chairman of the group, wrote that they face a choice between "a prosperous state with the rule of law" and "a destructive political environment of confrontation, agitation, violence and lawlessness."

Maoist insurgents are firebombing their way through central India, winning control over some destitute areas. The government's response? More violence. Government security forces, in tandem with a vigilante group called Salwa Judum, have, according to Human Rights Watch, engaged in "threats, beatings, arbitrary arrests and detention, killings, pillage, and burning of villages to force residents into supporting Salwa Judum."

Meanwhile, Muslim extremists blow up markets, Hindu extremists slaughter Christians and politicians convene commissions.

Whatever its reputation, India has never exactly been a nation of pacifists. Gandhi represented just one strand of thinking, and his view is not the only one to have prevailed. From Kashmir's jihad to various secessionisms to Hindu-Muslim riots, political violence is as Indian as tandoori chicken. Yet in the past it was generally seen as regrettable by people with power. It was rarely a workaday tactic, the way hunger strikes are a tactic.

But in recent years the hollowing of the Indian political center has allowed violence be mainstreamed. The major national parties draw ever smaller fractions of the vote. Challenging them are caste-based and regional parties that narrowcast to electoral pockets. Factional identities are hardening as citizens "vote their caste rather than cast their vote," as a popular refrain puts it.

This political fragmentation pits tribe against tribe. It has corroded the faith among Indians that the institutions that hear and answer grievances — the police, courts, media — are neutral. All increasingly are seen as biased, answerable to their different masters, rather than impartial executors of the public good. All contribute to a growing sense of powerlessness. And so if you are a leader of a political faction that wants to be heard, it is not irrational to believe you need a militia of violent young men to make yourself heard.

Yasin Malik once commanded a militant group in Kashmir, waging war against India. Fourteen years ago, he surrendered his weapons and declared himself a "Gandhian." This week, he told me he is struggling to recruit a new generation to nonviolence.

"Gandhi is the person who created and gave the concept of nonviolence to the world," he said. "He inspired Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. But, unfortunately, in India right now Gandhi is no longer relevant."

"I'm in search of Gandhi in the land of Gandhi," he added. "I've failed to find him."

Lost and waiting to be Found

2008-10-20T19:01:00.001+05:30

I think I am lost. Can someone find me? Help!