HT, Patna 24.11.08
Time for some meditation
The mess that is Hindutva is a legacy of
ideological confusion and intellectual laziness.
AN AMUSING spectacle is unfolding on most news channels these days: the top leadership of the BJP strenuously arguing that it is wrong to speak about 'Hindu' terrorism. These are the same people who demolished the Babri mosque, coining the slogan "Garb se kaho hum Hindu hain' (Say it with pride that we are Hindus). They are the same people who encourage and incite lumpens to attack M.F. Husain's exhibitions in the name of preserving 'Hindu' culture. The same who glorified and justified the willful killing of thousands of Muslims in a premeditated, planned and systematic fashion after the Gdhra tragedy in the name of 'Hindu' pratishodh (reaction, retaliation).
Among them are also people who have invented the most hateful, diabolical and misleading formulation in recent times, arguing that 'all Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims'. Among these very people are individuals who have flouted every norm and tenet, every single article of faith of the Indian Constitution in the name of preserving Hindu asmita (sense of self). Among them are also people who certify Jinnah's secular credentials, but brand anyone talking about coexistence, civility and debate as pseudo-secularists.
Having said this, I agree with them that there is no 'Hindu terrorism', just as there is no 'Islamic/Muslim terrorism'. But there is something called Sangh parivar terrorism, just as there is al-Qaeda terrorism. Neither Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur nor Osama bin Laden represent their respective faiths, nor do their organizations represent the people who they claim to represent. To push aside misplaced legalism, just as the charges against the sadhvi are yet to be proved in a court of law, even Osama bin Laden has not yet been indicated by a court of law anywhere in the world.
The only difference between Osama and Pragya is that the former is unlikely to contest an election in the future and become a member of an elected body. In the case of Pragya Thakur, given the way in which criminal investigations are conducted, there is a strong possibility of her becoming a people's representative, as she would only be following a 'great' tradition. Just as Osama hides in the impregnable mountains of Afghanistan, the likes of Pragya will hide behind the fig leaf of the democratic 'will of the people'.
This is why very few people in the country speak about political, electoral and administrative reforms, and the Indian polity has been penetrated by criminal elements of both communal and secular hues. If a hundred people tell a lie and another hundred believe in it, it does not become the truth – this classical formulation has been conclusively reversed in our country.
The predicament of the Sangh parivar is akin to having a tub bath, where one only floats in one's own dirt and filth. From the 19th century onwards, apologists of Hindu nationalism have sought to portray Hinduism as a unified, seamless and monochromatic faith. The mess that is Hindutva is a result of this ideological confusion and intellectual laziness. While it argued, on the one hand, that Hinduism was a tolerant, peaceful, inward-looking, all-embracing faith; on the other hand, there was a call to all Hindus to regain their Kshatriyahood and resort to the virtues of biceps and the Bhagvad Gita.
Every proponent of Hindu nationalism encouraged and promoted the idea of retaliatory violence, be it Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo or V. Savarkar, in the name of preserving righteousness and a fictional unbroken, centuries-old Hindu tradition. All of them were ensnared by 19th century definitions of religion and attempted to mould their own faith, as they understood it, in ways that were alien to the diverse strands of 'Hinduism'.
Without exception, all Hindu nationalists from the 19th century onwards argued that religion was the core of hindu nationalism, and moreover, that it was the only core of nationalism. They further argued that if the former was true, then, nationalism was the only religion. It is this formulation that allows the likes of Vajpayee and Advani to argue, to this day, that Hindutva stands for idealism whereas nationalism is their ideology. They say so in the belief that this linguistic and rhetorical contortion will go unnoticed, and it often does.
It also manifests in contemporary times as Indian middle-class aspirations of envisioning India as an economic and military superpower. Very little time and energy are expended in discussing the constellation of values that will constitute the heart of this putative superpower. Like their 19th century predecessors, the Hindutva votaries are satisfied as long as they can vanquish their real and imagined enemies, at home and abroad, and impose their national socialist understanding of the idea of will to power.
No nation is either entirely tolerant or wholly wedded to violence. Any civilization is a composite of the pure and the tainted, and from the struggle between the two emerge values that are sublime, civilized and truly human. This struggle is neither a given, nor is it a zero-sum game, and it impels human beings to make choices. Choosing peace, tolerance, civility and truth is not a sign of weakness as the apologists of violence and retribution will make people believe, but a way of sublimating the beast within us. Buddha, Mahavir and Gandhi were not weak men. Why, then, are their spiritual children afraid to take this crucial leap? I posed this question to a Japanese writer, who also writes on questions of identity and nationalism. He paused for a moment and said : "They did not have the burden of contesting and winning elections.'
Friday, April 10, 2009
Don't keep up with those Joneses
HT, Patna 15.1.09
Don't keep up with those Joneses
It is in India's interest to practice caution lest it becomes another Pakistan.
A DISCONNECTED elite living in heavily guarded villas or speeding down high ways in gleaming Pajeros with tinted glass in the front and gunmen at the back. An elite that has contempt for elected politicians and instead worships the army. Beautiful women writing escapist sex and fashion columns by day and by night arguing for bombing the enemy. And almost next door to the fortified villas and Pajeros: another world. A world where the desperately poor blow themselves up either as suicide bombers or as foot soldiers of ideology, insane with aspiration, without any stake in the ruling system, hopeful only of the five-star lifestyle available in jannat.
This is not just a description of Pakistan. It's a description of what India could become if we don't keep our democratic institutions safe.
In the aftermath of 26/11 India's case against Pakistan has rested on its identity as a superior liberal democracy, as a rising economy, a responsible nuclear power. India is the successful democratic experiment, Pakistan is the failed State, goes our conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom, for the moment, is not false. Pakistan, as its noted lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan once described it, is a "bonsai democracy", a stunted artificial plant set out as window dressing for its Western sponsors. The civilian government headed by Asif Ali Zardari is revealing its catastrophic lack of control over the country every day. Notwithstanding the peacemaking missions of American diplomats and India's diplomatic offensive to get the world to recognize Pakistan as a rogue State and to get Pakistan to act on the 26/11 dossier of evidence, there are now reports that the LeT has now emerged under a new name – the Tehreek-e-Tahafuz Qibla Awal – and has just held a protest rally in Lahore.
Yet the Pakistani ruling class continues to insist that the war on terror is being waged. Indeed the predicament of the Pakistani elite is an example of what could happen if the rich and educated withdraw into their own private fortresses, if politicians are not held accountable by a watchdog media and if civilian government becomes so weak that there are no options but martial rule. The sacking of the Pakistani National Security Adviser, Mahmud Ali Durrani, simply because he acknowledged that Kasab was a Pakistani, shows the extent to which the fight against terrorism for Pakistan, in the case of 26/11, is really just a game of political shadow boxing and one-upmanship with India, a game which the politicians play umpired by the Pakistani army. The weakness and helplessness of Pakistani politicians stem from the fact that none of them is a genuine mass leader.
Most Pakistani politicians are feudals or highly privileged. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani comes from an influential family of Multan. Information Minister Shehrbano 'Sherry' Rahman cmes from a highly educated elite family. The Cambridge-educated Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who still speaks English like Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady, also comes from another wealthy feudal family and is a graduate of the elite Aitchison College. In the absence of landreforms, a dynamic party system or genuine democratization, the Pakistani political class is not as rooted in the soil as Indian politicians are.
The upsurge of middle-class activism that occurred when lawyers protstd on the streets against the sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary by Pervez Musharraf seems to have petered out. After decades of martial rule, in the absence of a Mayawati or a Lalu or even a Mamta Banerjee, Pakistan remains a glaring example of how civilian power and social dynamism have been destroyed by the army. There is little scope for the poor and backward to fight their way up Pakistan's political system. Democracy is practiced by those born into privilege rather than those who claw their way up from the dirt. As long as the Pakistani political elite remains restricted to the rich feudal class, they will always be emasculated and always be at the mercy of the army and the ISI. Pakistan needs a Lalu Prasad to sit in his baniyan on a verandah and roar out to the army: "Yeh sab nahi chalega."
Which is why it is important to recognize that India's politicians may be by and large a nasty undesirable lot but they keep alive an important dream and they are crucial safety valves in a society fast becoming marked by savage differences between rich and poor. Our political system, (however terribly flawed it may be) makes disconnection or deracination impossible beyond a point. A Kapil Sibal will have to share his space with a Ramvilas Paswan, an Arun Jaitley, whether he likes it or not, will have to perhaps one day sit at the table with Mayawati, the intellectual Manmohan Singh relies on the political support of the wrestler Mulayam Singh Yadav. I the US, the current Senate majority leader was born in a shack and his mother did the laundry for local brothels. Similarly, the social depth of our democracy is our greatest resource. The social co-existence which our politics forces upon is what keeps our country somewhat sane and stops us from producing armies of suicide bombers. If terrorism and suicide bombing are seen as the last desperate resource of the destitute and disfranchised, the Mayawatis, Paswans and Mulayams, however annoying their ways, remain examples of how our political system still delivers patchy services to the very poor.
It is this organic democracy that we must zealously guard. As differences between rich and poor widen, India's rich too are tending to remain imprisoned in their villas and Pajeros, pouring scorn on politicians and espousing anti-democratic values like warlike postures, hatred of the media and wholesale adoration of military power and efficiency.
But after 26/11 it is more crucial than ever that we remember the ideals of that other 26th – the 26th of January, and hold those values close. A country that upholds mass-based politics, that respects the law, that understands the need for a free Press, which above all upholds the right of the poorest of the poor to gain access to the citadels of power. It is social openness, social co-existence, delivering power to the people that will keep our country from becoming an armed cantonment surrounded by terrorists and bombers. Citizens of India, throw open, the windows of the Pajeros and villas and let the winds of democracy blow.
Don't keep up with those Joneses
It is in India's interest to practice caution lest it becomes another Pakistan.
A DISCONNECTED elite living in heavily guarded villas or speeding down high ways in gleaming Pajeros with tinted glass in the front and gunmen at the back. An elite that has contempt for elected politicians and instead worships the army. Beautiful women writing escapist sex and fashion columns by day and by night arguing for bombing the enemy. And almost next door to the fortified villas and Pajeros: another world. A world where the desperately poor blow themselves up either as suicide bombers or as foot soldiers of ideology, insane with aspiration, without any stake in the ruling system, hopeful only of the five-star lifestyle available in jannat.
This is not just a description of Pakistan. It's a description of what India could become if we don't keep our democratic institutions safe.
In the aftermath of 26/11 India's case against Pakistan has rested on its identity as a superior liberal democracy, as a rising economy, a responsible nuclear power. India is the successful democratic experiment, Pakistan is the failed State, goes our conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom, for the moment, is not false. Pakistan, as its noted lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan once described it, is a "bonsai democracy", a stunted artificial plant set out as window dressing for its Western sponsors. The civilian government headed by Asif Ali Zardari is revealing its catastrophic lack of control over the country every day. Notwithstanding the peacemaking missions of American diplomats and India's diplomatic offensive to get the world to recognize Pakistan as a rogue State and to get Pakistan to act on the 26/11 dossier of evidence, there are now reports that the LeT has now emerged under a new name – the Tehreek-e-Tahafuz Qibla Awal – and has just held a protest rally in Lahore.
Yet the Pakistani ruling class continues to insist that the war on terror is being waged. Indeed the predicament of the Pakistani elite is an example of what could happen if the rich and educated withdraw into their own private fortresses, if politicians are not held accountable by a watchdog media and if civilian government becomes so weak that there are no options but martial rule. The sacking of the Pakistani National Security Adviser, Mahmud Ali Durrani, simply because he acknowledged that Kasab was a Pakistani, shows the extent to which the fight against terrorism for Pakistan, in the case of 26/11, is really just a game of political shadow boxing and one-upmanship with India, a game which the politicians play umpired by the Pakistani army. The weakness and helplessness of Pakistani politicians stem from the fact that none of them is a genuine mass leader.
Most Pakistani politicians are feudals or highly privileged. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani comes from an influential family of Multan. Information Minister Shehrbano 'Sherry' Rahman cmes from a highly educated elite family. The Cambridge-educated Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who still speaks English like Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady, also comes from another wealthy feudal family and is a graduate of the elite Aitchison College. In the absence of landreforms, a dynamic party system or genuine democratization, the Pakistani political class is not as rooted in the soil as Indian politicians are.
The upsurge of middle-class activism that occurred when lawyers protstd on the streets against the sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary by Pervez Musharraf seems to have petered out. After decades of martial rule, in the absence of a Mayawati or a Lalu or even a Mamta Banerjee, Pakistan remains a glaring example of how civilian power and social dynamism have been destroyed by the army. There is little scope for the poor and backward to fight their way up Pakistan's political system. Democracy is practiced by those born into privilege rather than those who claw their way up from the dirt. As long as the Pakistani political elite remains restricted to the rich feudal class, they will always be emasculated and always be at the mercy of the army and the ISI. Pakistan needs a Lalu Prasad to sit in his baniyan on a verandah and roar out to the army: "Yeh sab nahi chalega."
Which is why it is important to recognize that India's politicians may be by and large a nasty undesirable lot but they keep alive an important dream and they are crucial safety valves in a society fast becoming marked by savage differences between rich and poor. Our political system, (however terribly flawed it may be) makes disconnection or deracination impossible beyond a point. A Kapil Sibal will have to share his space with a Ramvilas Paswan, an Arun Jaitley, whether he likes it or not, will have to perhaps one day sit at the table with Mayawati, the intellectual Manmohan Singh relies on the political support of the wrestler Mulayam Singh Yadav. I the US, the current Senate majority leader was born in a shack and his mother did the laundry for local brothels. Similarly, the social depth of our democracy is our greatest resource. The social co-existence which our politics forces upon is what keeps our country somewhat sane and stops us from producing armies of suicide bombers. If terrorism and suicide bombing are seen as the last desperate resource of the destitute and disfranchised, the Mayawatis, Paswans and Mulayams, however annoying their ways, remain examples of how our political system still delivers patchy services to the very poor.
It is this organic democracy that we must zealously guard. As differences between rich and poor widen, India's rich too are tending to remain imprisoned in their villas and Pajeros, pouring scorn on politicians and espousing anti-democratic values like warlike postures, hatred of the media and wholesale adoration of military power and efficiency.
But after 26/11 it is more crucial than ever that we remember the ideals of that other 26th – the 26th of January, and hold those values close. A country that upholds mass-based politics, that respects the law, that understands the need for a free Press, which above all upholds the right of the poorest of the poor to gain access to the citadels of power. It is social openness, social co-existence, delivering power to the people that will keep our country from becoming an armed cantonment surrounded by terrorists and bombers. Citizens of India, throw open, the windows of the Pajeros and villas and let the winds of democracy blow.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
TOI Patna 27-12-08
Pakistan must put an end to war hype
New Delhi : Pakistani newspapers prominently reported the unanimous resolution adopted by the National Assembly calling for an end to ‘war hype’ and urging collaboration with India to investigate the truth behind the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
Karachi-based ‘Dawn’ wrote on Thursday. "The text of the resolution, which also condemned the devastating attacks and reaffirmed Pakistan’s desire to pursue ‘constructive engagement with India’, seemed milder than a lot of rhetoric that dominated the debate." Interestingly, the resolution urged the international community to ensure that "India also dismantles its terror networks", the paper said.
Winding up the 10 day long debate, parliamentary affairs minister Babar Awan was reported to have visualized horrific on consequences of another war between the two now nuclear-armed rivals and said: "Rose petals cannot rain in a war between two nuclear countries." Writing in the ‘Daily News’, (retd) Lt General Talat Massod says that from a western perspective, apart from focusing on the fight against terrorists on the Western front, another significant development is that "lines between alqaida and LeT are getting blurred and the two are reinforcing each other." Incidentally, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’s offer of support to the Pakistan army if there’s a war with India barely got a mention in the English press.
However, Urdu dailies are still in the grip of war hysteria. Daily "Ausaf’ says that India has already identified 5,000 places to target in case of a war. Attributing a statement to chief of the air force (Western Command) Air Marshal PK Borbora, the paper said 5,000 places in Pakistan had been identified and if asked to act, the Indian Air Force could start attacking within six hours of notice. The paper said Indian could secure its western airspace within two hours while Pakistan would be smashed if war breaks out. The daily ‘Jasarat’ lashed out at Pakistani entertainment industry for promoting Indian movies and serials. "The Economist’, in a piece entitled ‘United against the wrong enemy’, has put it best: "If Pakistan’s leaders had ever united against Islamist militancy as they have against India over the past three weeks, their country would not be the violent mess that it is. Tough words for us to swallow perhaps, but nevertheless true."
The ‘Frontier Post’ too criticized the government for its ‘diplomatic paralysis’ in the face of "Indian-American-British onslaught". It wrote, "The Pakistan leadership must launch into a diplomatic effort to put across to the world community Pakistan’s position, which intrinsically is very sound." The News’ quoted the adviser to PM on interior Rehman Malik as saying. "There was no truth in media stories reporting that war was imminent. The leadership in India and Pakistan was mature enough and the people of both the countries did not want war."
Hell Next Door
T.O.I., Patna 26.12.2008
Hell Next Door
India must be tough in dealing with Pakistan.
Amit Mitra.
The Mumbai terror attack and the subsequent incapacity of the democratically elected government of Pakistan to act decisively against the obvious roots of terror are only logical outcomes of Pakistan’s deeply embedded socio-political architecture. Despite the genuinely warm and endearing words of President Asif Zardari in India – "there is a little bit of India in all of us" – he is himself facing a Frankenstein, nurtured over 60 years, which devoured his father-in-law and his wife.
Today, liberals and the mainstream media in Pakistan are appealing to India and the West to give democracy in Pakistan another chance. They hope it will help mitigate the pervasive and often pernicious presence of the military and neutralize institutions of terror. Unfortunately, voluminous research by Pakistani and western scholars paints a horrific picture today. Based on this, one can predict that many more terror attacks will follow, targeting the centre of India and the western world, a strategy borrowed from the al-Qaeda by Pakistani terror organizations. In this milieu, India has no option but to prepare for a protracted and multidimensional war against terror, an enemy that moves stealthily and changes colour like a chameleon, as it constantly raises the level of technological sophistication of its operations.
The futures of India and Pakistan diverged a long time ago. Both became independent in 1947, but India promulgated its Constitution within two years, by 1949, while Pakistan promulgated its own as late as 1956. Similarly, India held its first free elections within two years, in 1951, while Pakistan’s constitution was breached within two years of its existence by a military coup d’etat in 1958.
Parallel to the growing power of the military in Pakistan, the forces of Islamisation grew incipiently every day. In his significant book, ‘Pakistan Between Mosque and Military’, Husain Haqqani, now the ambassador of Pakistan to the US, writes: "The emphasis on Islam as an element of national policy empowered the new country’s religious leaders. It also created a nexus between the "custodians of Islam" and the country’s military establishment, civilian bureaucracy and intelligence apparatus, which saw itself as the guardian of the new state." Today, this nexus has widened and deepened, despite the initial attempt by Julfiqar Ali Bhutto to dilute it, which was later followed up by his daughter Benazir. Interestingly, it was Zulfiqar who created the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and the Federal Security Force (FSF) to dilute the powers of the army and ironically, it was the chief of the FSF who betrayed him by becoming the ‘star witness’ in his trial, after receiving full immunity from General Zia-ul-Haq.
Even the nuclear bomb, which Pakistan acquired under Zulfiqar’s watch, with help from Beijing and A Q Khan, apparently was developed to not just deter India. The projct was also aimed at diluting the power of the Pakistani army. South Asia expert Stephen Cohen, in his insightful book, ‘The Idea of Pakistan’, opines: "Bhutto saw a bomb as a device to erode the army’s central military role." Unfortunately, says Cohen, Bhutto’s bomb ultimately came under the control of the army, strengthening it further. Cohen also laments that Benazir "had not come to grips with the fundamental problem of reducing the power and influence of the military-bureaucratic complex, notably the much expanded intelligence service." However, will her husband, President Zardari, attempt to do what she – and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif – had failed to do?
While the tentacles of the army and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) grew, so did the reach of the madaris (Islamic seminaries). From 136 in 1947, the number of madaris reportedly grew to 30,000 by 2000, and today could be as high as 45,000. The Pakistan Government estimates that 8,00,000-10,00,000 students attend madaris. Noted British-Pakistani scholar Tariq Ali describes the madaris as "indoctrination nurseries designed to produce fanatics". Cohen goes a step further in suggesting that 10-15 per cent of the madaris "preach a particularly virulent kind of hatred or provide military training". This suggests that thousands of students, who are emotionally and ideologically prepared to join the terror groups and embrace jihad, come out of these seminaries.
While these are frightening numbers indeed, what views do the common people of Pakistan hold today? A survey conducted in June by two US think tanks, in collaboration with the Pakistan Institute for Public Opinion, arrived at some startling results. Fifty-eight per cent of Pakistanis polled were amenable to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban, 48 per cent with the Afghan Taliban, and most strikingly, 50 per cent were amenable to negotiate with the al-Qaeda! And these are the very organizations that have seamlessly integrated with the Pakistani terror groups targeting India.
On the other hand, there are millions of Pakistanis who want to lead a normal, peaceful and harmonious life, seeking economic progress and prosperity. It is this silent, and at times brave, majority that also seeks democracy and civilian governance. Unfortunately, it has repeatedly lost against the powerful hegemony of the military, the Islamists and terrorists.
Given these facts, it is evident that there is no quick-fix. India must take massive preventive steps to shield itself from a wide range of terror attacks that are inevitable. And we must win. We must also engage in relentless covert activity, targeting specific terror groups for whom Pakistani civil society will not shed a tear. We have no option today but to be tough and deliver these twin objectives.
TOI Patna 22.12.2008
Living With Terror
Only security won’t do; we need better governance too
The most recent Mumbai tragedy points to a general way some of the negative effects of globalization are bringing us to the threshold of a post-democratic age in the 21st century. Given the diverse global tensions in the world – with terrorism, economic-environmental crises, and civil wars dislocating populations – democratic states will increasingly tend to develop a strong security aspect in the coming decades.
The violence in Mumbai was perceptibly different from terrorist violence that India has seen before. This time the terrorists themselves wanted to create a "global" event. Their targets included many "ordinary" Indians but also the transnational elite that patronises the most well-known hotels of Mumbai, itself the most global city in India. Their technology and targets were global – witness their use of Voice over Internet Protocol system to keep in touch with their masters in Pakistan or their deliberate targeting of a small Jewish community from overseas. Indian democracy has now, sadly, been ushered into a debate of the 21st century: Should democratic states become security-states as well? Security measures are, of course, no substitute for the political processes needed to heal rifts between countries and communities. But they cannot be ignored either.
This immediately raises two challenges. One is related to questions of democracy in general. The prospect of a security-state understandably and rightly concerns rights activists. Yet it is clear that the "security of populations" is itself emerging as a powerful right. In the developed countries today, it is hard to distinguish measures adopted to fend off terrorist attacks from the politics of refugees and "illegal" immigration. Of course, the balance between security and other rights cannot be decided in any a priori fashion, which is why it always should be open to debates with reference to specific contexts. There is, besides, the very important question of ensuring that the pursuit of security does not become a tool for oppression of and discrimination against minorities or immigrants. But the globalization of this debate is what marks our times.
The second challenge arises from deep within the history of Indian politics. To have an effective cordon sanitaire against terror would require India to inject a degree of efficiency, alertness, and performance into an administrative apparatus that simply has not delivered on these scores for decades. Since the 1970s, government or public institutions in India have gradually ceased to be effective deliverers of goods and services. There is much that democracy in India has achieved by way of giving many low-caste and marginalized communities a sense of participation in the country’s governmental institutions.
The growth of this politics of identity, however, has made elections into the mainstay of Indian democracy. It has distanced politics from issues of governance, and has gone hand in hand with a deepening of corruption, financial and otherwise, on the part of politicians and officials. A large number of the elected members of Parliament have criminal cases pending against them. Media reports and everyday experience suggest an elephantine, unaccountable, inefficient bureaucracy mired in self-indulgent use of resources with corruption and insufficiency often going together.
There was, for example, no effective coast guard force to intercept the Mumbai terrorists. It took the first lot of firefighters hours to respond to the fire at the Taj. It took nine hours to mobilize the commando force many of whom are usually kept busy providing "security" to politicians who often see such security as a matter of prestige. It has also been reported that a very large grant recently given to the Mumbai police for their modernization was mostly spent on buying luxury cars and other expensive items for the use of senior officers and their ministers!
Creating a security system that will provide effective protection to the population from terrorist attacks will not be easy. Corruption follows public money in India as it does, unfortunately, in many countries, and undermines performance. Secondly, the effective functioning of any institution in India in a non-partisan manner would require that institution to be insulated from political interference. The second condition is not easily met. The required reforms thus call for a certain kind of political will that the political class in India has not quite shown in recent times.
Yet India cannot any longer avoid debates over security and other rights. The government has already announced certain measures making anti-terror laws more stringent. Some other reforms will also certainly follow on paper and perhaps in action as well. Many members of the Indian educated middle classes are angry at the inability of their government to protect them.
We do not now how effective that anger will be. If the nature of the political class remains the same, Indians will probably have to get used to living with a degree of terror the exact quantum of which is difficult to predict. One hopes though that the nation will address both the long term and short term problems together so that, important as security considerations are, this tragedy will initiate not just a rethink but also a revitalization of democratic institutions in India as they cope with the challenges of this global century.
HT Patna, 15.1.09
Don’t keep up with those Joneses
It is in India’s interest to practice caution lest it becomes another Pakistan.
A DISCONNECTED elite living in heavily guarded villas or speeding down high ways in gleaming Pajeros with tinted glass in the front and gunmen at the back. An elite that has contempt for elected politicians and instead worships the army. Beautiful women writing escapist sex and fashion columns by day and by night arguing for bombing the enemy. And almost next door to the fortified villas and Pajeros: another world. A world where the desperately poor blow themselves up either as suicide bombers or as footsoldiers of ideology, insane with aspiration, without any stake in the ruling system, hopeful only of the five-star lifestyle available in jannat. This is not just a description of Pakistan. It’s a description of what India could become if we don’t keep our democratic institutions safe.
In the aftermath of 26/11 India’s case against Pakistan has rested on its identity as a superior liberal democracy, as a rising economy, a responsible nuclear power. India is the successful democratic experiment, Pakistan is the failed State, goes our conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom, for the moment, is not false. Pakistan, as its noted lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan once described it, is a "bonsai democracy", a stunted artificial plant set out as window dressing for its Western sponsors. The civilian government headed by Asif Ali Zardari is revealing its catastrophic lack of control over the country every day. Notwithstanding the peacemaking missions of American diplomats and India’s diplomatic offensive to get the world to recognize Pakistan as a rogue State and to get Pakistan to act on the 26/11 dossier of evidence, there are now reports that the LeT has now emerged under a new name – the Tehreek-e-Tahafuz Qibla Awal – and has just held a protest rally in Lahore.
Yet the Pakistani ruling class continues to insist that the war on terror is being waged. Indeed the predicament of the Pakistani elite is an example of what could happen if the rich and educated withdraw into their own private fortresses, if politicians are not held accountable by a watchdog media and if civilian government becomes so weak that there are no options but martial rule. The sacking of the Pakistani National Security Adviser, Mahmud Ali Durrani, simply because he acknowledged that Kasab was a Pakistani, shows the extent to which the fight against terrorism for Pakistan, in the case of 26/11, is really just a game of political shadow boxing and one-upmanship with India, a game which the politicians play umpired by the Pakistani army. The weakness and helplessness of Pakistani politicians stem from the fact that none of them is a genuine mass leader.
Most Pakistani politicians are feudals or highly privileged. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani comes from an influential family of Multan. Information Minister Shehrbano ‘Sherry’ Rahman cmes from a highly educated elite family. The Cambridge-educated Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who still speaks English like Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady, also comes from another wealthy feudal family and is a graduate of the elite Aitchison College. In the absence of landreforms, a dynamic party system or genuine democratization, the Pakistani political class is not as rooted in the soil as Indian politicians are.
The upsurge of middle-class activism that occurred when lawyers protstd on the streets against the sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary by Pervez Musharraf seems to have petered out. After decades of martial rule, in the absence of a Mayawati or a Lalu or even a Mamta Banerjee, Pakistan remains a glaring example of how civilian power and social dynamism have been destroyed by the army. There is little scope for the poor and backward to fight their way up Pakistan’s political system. Democracy is practiced by those born into privilege rather than those who claw their way up from the dirt. As long as the Pakistani political elite remains restricted to the rich feudal class, they will always be emasculated and always be at the mercy of the army and the ISI. Pakistan needs a Lalu Prasad to sit in his baniyan on a verandah and roar out to the army: "Yeh sab nahi chalega."
Which is why it is important to recognize that India’s politicians may be by and large a nasty undesirable lot but they keep alive an important dream and they are crucial safety valves in a society fast becoming marked by savage differences between rich and poor. Our political system, (however terribly flawed it may be) makes disconnection or deracination impossible beyond a point. A Kapil Sibal will have to share his space with a Ramvilas Paswan, an Arun Jaitley, whether he likes it or not, will have to perhaps one day sit at the table with Mayawati, the intellectual Manmohan Singh relies on the political support of the wrestler Mulayam Singh Yadav. I the US, the current Senate majority leader was born in a shack and his mother did the laundry for local brothels. Similarly, the social depth of our democracy is our greatest resource. The social co-existence which our politics forces upon is what keeps our country somewhat sane and stops us from producing armies of suicide bombers. If terrorism and suicide bombing are seen as the last desperate resource of the destitute and disfranchised, the Mayawatis, Paswans and Mulayams, however annoying their ways, remain examples of how our political system still delivers patchy services to the very poor.
It is this organic democracy that we must zealously guard. As differences between rich and poor widen, India’s rich too are tending to remain imprisoned in their villas and Pajeros, pouring scorn on politicians and espousing anti-democratic values like warlike postures, hatred of the media and wholesale adoration of military power and efficiency.
But after 26/11 it is more crucial than ever that we remember the ideals of that other 26th – the 26th of January, and hold those values close. A country that upholds mass-based politics, that respects the law, that understands the need for a free Press, which above all upholds the right of the poorest of the poor to gain access to the citadels of power. It is social openness, social co-existence, delivering power to the people that will keep our country from becoming an armed cantonment surrounded by terrorists and bombers. Citizens of India, throw open, the windows of the Pajeros and villas and let the winds of democracy blow.
Calling all Pakistanis
TOI, Patna 04-12-08
Calling all Pakistanis
Thomas L. Friedman
New York: On February 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirized the Prophet Mohammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis & other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?
After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their two-year-old son – purely because they were Sunni Muslims – where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.
So what can we expect from Pakistan and the wider Muslim world after Mumbai? India says its interrogation of the surviving terrorist indicates that all 10 men came from Karachi, and at least one, if not all 10, were Pakistani nationals.
It seems to me that the Pakistani government, which is extremely weak to begin with, has been taking this mass murder very seriously, and for now, no official connection between the terrorists and elements of the Pakistani security services has been uncovered.
At the same time, any reading of the Pakistani English-language press reveals Pakistani voices expressing real anguish and horror over this incident. But while the Pakistani government’s sober response is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individuals Pakistanis are critical, one is still hoping for more. I am still hoping – just once – for that mass demonstration of "ordinary people" against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake.
Why? Because it takes a village. The best defence against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicity and repeatedly the murders – and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or "explain" their activities.
Sure, better intelligence is important. But at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn’t dare do or say. That is why the most powerful deterrent to their behaviour is when the community as a whole says: "No more. What you have done in murdering defenceless men, women and children has brought shame on us and on you."
Why should Pakistanis do that? Because you can’t have a healthy society that tolerates in any way its own sons going into a modern city, anywhere, and just murdering everyone in sight – including some 40 other Muslims – in a suicide-murder operation, without even bothering to leave a note. Because the act was their note, and destroying just to destroy was their goal. If you do that with enemies abroad, you will do that with enemies at home and destroy your own society in the process.
"I often make the comparison to Catholics during the paedophile priest scandal," a Muslim woman friend wrote me. "Those Catholics that left the church or spoke out against the church were not trying to prove to anyone that they are anti-paedophile… They wanted to fix a terrible problem" n their own religious community.
We know from the Danish cartoons affair that Pakistanis and other Muslims know how to mobilize quickly to express their heartfelt feelings, not just as individuals, but as a powerful collective. That is what is needed here.
Because this kind of murderous violence only stops when the village – all the good people in Pakistan, including the community elders and spiritual leaders who want a decent future for their country – declares, as a collective, that those who carry out such murders are shameful unbelievers who will not dance with virgins in heaven but burn in hell.
New York: On February 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirized the Prophet Mohammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis & other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?
After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their two-year-old son – purely because they were Sunni Muslims – where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.
So what can we expect from Pakistan and the wider Muslim world after Mumbai? India says its interrogation of the surviving terrorist indicates that all 10 men came from Karachi, and at least one, if not all 10, were Pakistani nationals.
It seems to me that the Pakistani government, which is extremely weak to begin with, has been taking this mass murder very seriously, and for now, no official connection between the terrorists and elements of the Pakistani security services has been uncovered.
At the same time, any reading of the Pakistani English-language press reveals Pakistani voices expressing real anguish and horror over this incident. But while the Pakistani government’s sober response is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individuals Pakistanis are critical, one is still hoping for more. I am still hoping – just once – for that mass demonstration of "ordinary people" against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake.
Why? Because it takes a village. The best defence against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicity and repeatedly the murders – and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or "explain" their activities.
Sure, better intelligence is important. But at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn’t dare do or say. That is why the most powerful deterrent to their behaviour is when the community as a whole says: "No more. What you have done in murdering defenceless men, women and children has brought shame on us and on you."
Why should Pakistanis do that? Because you can’t have a healthy society that tolerates in any way its own sons going into a modern city, anywhere, and just murdering everyone in sight – including some 40 other Muslims – in a suicide-murder operation, without even bothering to leave a note. Because the act was their note, and destroying just to destroy was their goal. If you do that with enemies abroad, you will do that with enemies at home and destroy your own society in the process.
"I often make the comparison to Catholics during the paedophile priest scandal," a Muslim woman friend wrote me. "Those Catholics that left the church or spoke out against the church were not trying to prove to anyone that they are anti-paedophile… They wanted to fix a terrible problem" n their own religious community.
We know from the Danish cartoons affair that Pakistanis and other Muslims know how to mobilize quickly to express their heartfelt feelings, not just as individuals, but as a powerful collective. That is what is needed here.
Because this kind of murderous violence only stops when the village – all the good people in Pakistan, including the community elders and spiritual leaders who want a decent future for their country – declares, as a collective, that those who carry out such murders are shameful unbelievers who will not dance with virgins in heaven but burn in hell.
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