Adviser’s parting kick
ONE major crisis a month is about the painful average for the BJP-led government at the Centre. But the past seven days have seen a crisis a day, at least four of them of high-voltage variety. The latest is the angry resignation of Mr Mohan Guruswamy, adviser to the Finance Minister.

More of a balance-sheet
WITH most of the tax increases and hikes in the rates of water and electricity, etc, being announced before or after the Budget, the presentation of the Budget proper has become a lacklustre exercise. Haryana has been no exception.

A POLITY UNDER SIEGE
by Hari Jaisingh
AS one watches the frightening drift, non-governance and violence in the polity, certain basic questions need to be raised about the sickness of Indian society in all its segments. Hinduism is not a mere religion. Nor can it be confined to narrow parameters of rituals.

For two-party coalition
by P.D. Shastri
INDIA ‘s main problem is its multi-party government, the factor that brings about instability in the present and uncertainty for the future. It was a conglomeration of 13 parties before and 19 parties now. So many horses driving the chariot of the state, each looking in a different direction and some having different destinations.

The glory and the agony
of Cambodia
By T.V. Rajeswar
CAMBODIA, or Kampuchea in the national language of Khmer was the ancient Kambujadesa or Kambuja. Chinese chronicles of the third century have recorded the rise of an Indian state in the Mekong valley and named it Funan and by the fifth century it was known as Kambuja as recorded by Sanskrit inscriptions there.

Taking PM for a ride
by L.H. Naqvi
IF Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is not talked out of travelling to Lahore by bus, even then he would not be the first Prime Minister to do so. The honour of travelling as an "ordinary bus passenger", while in power, belongs to Mr V.P. Singh. Of course, Mr V.P. Singh, was not Prime Minister of India when he decided to travel by a "regular" passenger bus from Lucknow to Tindwari, in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, for filing his nomination for an Assembly by-election.

75 Years Ago

A case of conversion
PANKAJAM, a Hindu girl, who was alleged to have left her home to become a Christian recently and who was sent home to Palamseottah by the C.E. Mission, Lyalpore, was, it is alleged, taken away from the Mission Home by her relatives.

Adviser’s parting kick

ONE major crisis a month is about the painful average for the BJP-led government at the Centre. But the past seven days have seen a crisis a day, at least four of them of high-voltage variety. The latest is the angry resignation of Mr Mohan Guruswamy, adviser to the Finance Minister. He is not well known to newspaper readers, unlike Mr Madan Lal Khurana who too read out a chargesheet against the VHP, Bajrang Dal and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh after he quit the Cabinet. That is why the adviser’s expected departure is sure to generate much discussion in the media. He is the intellectual type (with degrees from Harvard and Stanford), articulate, hugely successful as a consultant to several business houses and a passionate economic “nationalist” as distinct from being a swadeshi warrior. He is popular with economic journalists and of late, this tribe is very vocal. As it is, the Finance Ministry is convulsed with many serious problems and it is budget time. Mr Yashwant Sinha is already within the firing range first for raising foodgrain price and then for partially rolling it back. The resignation of his adviser will quicken the impulse of his detractors to bring him back in the gunsight.

Mr Guruswamy has provided deadly ammunition in his two-page letter. No, he does not confine himself to economics; his six months in a hot seat in the government has left him bitterly frustrated. He sees all-round failure, a near total loss of direction, and reneging on the election promises. It is all a lacerating denunciation, not by a non-believer but by a thinking man who came to the BJP fold because of an intellectual appreciation of its policies and not through an emotional attachment to its Hindutva plank. During the short period of just over 10 months, the BJP-led government has developed an “excessive policy bias in favour of multinational companies”, he says and refers to the concessions lavished on Enron, US portfolio investor GE Capital and Maruti Suzuki. “We are no longer able to advance our agenda as stated in our election manifesto. We seem to have allowed the system and process to overwhelm our concerns...Nothing illustrates this better than our inability to nominate new directors to the RBI, IDBI, UTI, SBI and several other nationalised banks for well over half a year. Even more serious is our inability to focus national attention on issues relating to agriculture and poverty.”

Mr Guruswamy was not airing his own grievances in this somewhat eccentric fashion, but was actually speaking on behalf of the Finance Ministry bureaucracy. With Mr Jaswant Singh, a key political player, taking a hand in shaping economic policy and a former revenue secretary, Mr N. K. Singh, occupying a vantage point in the PMO, the ministry has lost much of its clout. The recent decisions on price rise were taken at the PMO; in fact the one on cooking gas was not even formally conveyed to the ministry. The budget exercise too suffers from this diffusion of authority. Finance Ministry bureaucrats are complaining that they receive daily inputs in budget-making from Mr Jaswant Singh and the PMO. So enfeebled is the ministry that for the first time the Finance Secretary was sidelined for the Davos meeting and it was the PMO official, Mr Singh’s who attended it. This litany of woes was circulated to an economic newspaper in advance of the resignation, and it has naturally hurt the Finance Ministry. That explains the claim that Mr Guruswamy was “sacked” and the strongly worded statement charging him with overstepping his brief. This is an ill thought-out damage control measure, and is likely to prove more damaging.

More of a balance-sheet

WITH most of the tax increases and hikes in the rates of water and electricity, etc, being announced before or after the Budget, the presentation of the Budget proper has become a lacklustre exercise. Haryana has been no exception. Its Budget presented by Finance Minister Charan Dass Shorewala on Wednesday is rather an accountant's balance-sheet, which only details where the money will come from and where it will go, without displaying any dynamism. Nothing new there, except that this time it was presented with the Opposition benches being empty, thanks to a boycott. Whether the Opposition should thus stay away or not is a debatable question. But some of the objections raised by the critics of the Budget are indeed noteworthy. The tradition of presentation of the State's Budget after the Central Budget and finalisation of the annual Plan has indeed been broken. And the claim of a hike of 27.7 per cent in the annual Plan for 1999-2000 after lowering the Plan for the current year by Rs 460 crore does strike one as odd. The Budget shows no new taxes and no new relief. If there was any guarantee that there would be no imposition of any new tax in the near future, it would have been some relief, but these days no such assurance is offered. That the State is facing a severe financial crunch is obvious. The downward revision of the current year's Plan outlay from Rs 2,260 crore to Rs 1,800 crore points to the shape of things to come. But the new Budget does not show any extra effort to set things right. It has been highlighted that the deficit would be kept down to a "manageable" Rs 44.58 crore. But this optimism is pegged on the belief that there will be buoyancy in the economy and anti-evasion and tax rationalisation measures would show result. This is the perennial panacea for all the ills, which proves to be ineffective when the time comes.

The focus of the Budget is on the creation of better infrastructure, and rightly so. But the subjectwise breakup of allocations does not seem to be all that proportionate. For instance, out of the total of Rs 1,472 crore earmarked for power, irrigation, roads and transport sectors, as much as Rs 500.80 crore has been kept aside for power alone. This would have been justifiable at any other time but not at this stage when Haryana is going in for privatisation in a big way. In comparison, health and medical education have been allocated only Rs 53.27 crore. Haryana is one of the few States where the overall rise in the income has not got reflected in the modernisation of society in general. Many villages in the interior continue to live in feudal middle ages because the benefits of education, better health care facilities and communication have not percolated to these places even today. That can be possible only if more attention is paid to the social needs of the poorest of the poor. Leave alone making progress in this direction, even the road network, which Haryana used to feel justifiably proud of at one time, is a shambles today. Ironically, it was Chief Minister Bansi Lal himself who had put it in place during his previous tenure. One expects the approach of a visionary from him rather than the red-tape bound functioning of a government servant.

A POLITY UNDER SIEGE
Tolerance holds the key
by Hari Jaisingh

AS one watches the frightening drift, non-governance and violence in the polity, certain basic questions need to be raised about the sickness of Indian society in all its segments. Hinduism is not a mere religion. Nor can it be confined to narrow parameters of rituals. It has within its fold a human vision and a philosophy which make the followers fervently believe in tolerance, understanding, mutual respect, brotherhood, shared values and service for the good of humanity and the spiritual uplift of every individual on the earth and beyond. That is the reason why Hinduism is rightly seen as a way of life.

In today's competitive politics of negativism, the platform of Hinduism has been hijacked by third-rate politicians and riff-raff elements patronised by certain vested interests. The question here is not one of conversion, but of criminalisation of the polity. What sort of a state are we running? Is there anything like law and order? Have our rulers lost the will to govern? They all speak in different voices and tones, without addressing themselves to the core issues of drift, non-governance, non-performance and duplicity.

Those who indulge in arson and murder as in Orissa, Gujarat and other parts of the country have to be treated as criminals and not as new heroes of Hinduism. The law must take its course, swiftly and smoothly. If those at the helm have failed in their duties, they should not only atone for their sins but also bow out of power.

Eminent jurist Nani Palkhivala once said: "It has been my long-standing conviction that India is like a donkey carrying a sack of gold — the donkey does not know what it is carrying but is content to go along with the load on its back. The load of gold is a fantastic treasure — in arts, literature, culture and some sciences like Ayurvedic medicine — which we have inherited from the days of the splendour that was India. Adi Shankaracharya called it the accumulated treasure of spiritual truths discovered by the rishis."

These observations realistically depict the paradoxical Indian situation. We cannot blame the "donkey", the Indian nation. It is its job to carry the burden of this priceless "treasure". What is tragic is the ignorance of the masters of this "donkey". They don't know what to make of the "treasure" and how to utilise it to their own advantage and to that of their own people. This is one of the misunderstood tragedies of India.

The real challenge before the Indian polity is how to create an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and understanding among different sects and communities. We need to work towards building a tolerant society based on proper appreciation of one another's faiths, practices and values. Here rationalism should help the human mind know what is "intellectually true and morally right." However, the problem arises because there are variations in the level of intellectualism. So, the question of truth and morality is often seen as a relative term. In any case, tolerance needs to be seen in a broader perspective of respecting the people of other faiths, without attempting to denounce their beliefs, values and practices.

Fundamentalist traits, seen in any religion, disturb social equilibrium and harmony. So, fundamentalism in any form must be challenged firmly and decisively. In fact, a distinction has to be drawn between fundamentalism and the purity of religious belief.

Religion, as a Sikh scholar once put it, is that which binds. It is a kind of yoga, which yokes you to your inner self and those around you. It both integrates your mind and illumines it. It universalises your sympathies and awakens your intuition. It synthesises what seems differentiated. It gives unity and wholeness to the parts. It co-relates knowledge and cancels out the individual ego. It creates hope among the dispossessed and the discriminated, in the "justice, grace and goodness" of God. And so also in the spiritual nature of man and the universe. It endows you with social responsibility and awakens compassion for all life, of "I" loses its clamour in the symphony of "thou". That which disintegrates you or divides you is not religion, but the work of the devil.

Of course, the question of social reforms has to be viewed in terms of reorienting society to the changing times and needs. Thus social evils such as caste, untouchability, denying education to women and lower castes, child marriage, female infanticide, widow marriage and widow burning need to be seen as a challenge to contemporary India. Equally crucial in this battle is the question of poverty and development. And every Indian, irrespective of his religion and creed, ought to have a passionate commitment to the uplift of the poor and deprived sections of society. Viewed in this light, the nation should be thankful to the Australian missionary for working among leprosy patients in Orissa with dedication.

Mutual trust has to be part of our operational creed. For, "lack of inner integrity makes people untrustworthy". Similarly, lack of mutual trust makes it difficult for one section of the population" to cooperate with others".

In fact, this is necessary for the very success of our democratic polity. Democracy, after all, is all about organising our community life on the basis of "rational discussion and moral decisions".

The people must accept what is right and good for society as a whole, even if it means adjustment and accommodation of one's thoughts and beliefs.

Hinduism puts society above the individual. And to ensure harmony in this social order, righteousness is to be the key element. Unfortunately, when religion is communalised and politicised, the pristine concept of righteousness gets diluted. Viewed in a larger frame, doesn't Hinduism tolerate "a wide variety of philosophical positions?" Well, it does. Then, why this crumbling edifice of tolerance and righteousness?

Communalism is the very negation of Hinduism, and we must guard against any distortion and violence. Equally necessary is to listen to other viewpoints, especially in respect of a different faith.

And as Prof Toynbee once put it in the course of a debate on religion, in the next century only that faith will endure which does not divide mankind on the basis of colour, caste, dogma, creed, sex or nationality, but offers a quality of life which, without distinction, could be attained and shared by anyone, equally, all over.

Here it may be added that means should "neither be violent nor hateful and domineering," but self-sacrificing, giving and service-oriented.

We cannot live with the past, at least those facets of the past, which hamper India's "tryst with destiny". Of course, the rich multi-faceted tradition can be a source of inspiration for us. It can be blended harmoniously with the process of liberalism and modernisation.

Modern India has to have firm roots in the tradition of harmony, understanding, secularism, tolerance and rational scientific temper. We cannot afford to shed tears, real or crocodile. Nor should we be apologetic about our failures. Our main objective should now be to draw right lessons from our mistakes and move on.

What we see in New Delhi today is the wages of drift. One may sympathise with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for running a government which is being subjected to blackmail every two hours either by his partners including the two mighty ladies, or by the lunatic fringe within the Sangh Parivar. Whatever might be his visible and invisible compulsions as Prime Minister, he is supposed to set the agenda for the nation, and take stern action against all those who are bringing bad name to the nation. Half-hearted patchwork responses can take us nowhere.

The die is cast. It is now or never. History is not written by the timid or the fence-sitter. It belongs to those with courage and convictions. Whatever be his intentions, Mr Vajpayee has to show guts and live up to the expectations of the people. History neither forgets nor forgives. Those who allow themselves to be overtaken by unwanted events are invariably dumped in the dustbin of history.

Secularism is a cardinal principle of modern India. It should not be subjected to a bloody assault of Thackerayism. Those who feel strongly about Hinduism, let them learn a lesson or two from the slain missionary from Australia and work among the lepers and the downtrodden of Indian society.

Finally, it is the spirit of service to the poor and the unfortunate that makes a religion sublime. The new custodians of Hinduism need to do some soul-searching and reflect quietly on how and why today's power-brokers are destroying the basic tenets of an ancient faith to the disadvantage of the nation. Over to India's enlightened citizens.

For two-party coalition
by P.D. Shastri

INDIA ‘s main problem is its multi-party government, the factor that brings about instability in the present and uncertainty for the future. It was a conglomeration of 13 parties before and 19 parties now. So many horses driving the chariot of the state, each looking in a different direction and some having different destinations. They can hardly make any move that can bring lasting good to the long-suffering masses. Call it non-governance or non-performance or what you will. Whatever good programme the chief of the ruling parties (govt) may want to embark upon, someone or the other of the constituents is sure to put his foot down. Others have their own ego problems — their own individual political future to safeguard. Such a situation gives rise to a Jayalalitha and Mamta phenomenon.

We desperately need large-scale foreign investments and, more importantly, most modern technical knowhow that comes with it to improve our economy in a big way, in order to banish poverty, backwardness and ill-health. The intending foreign investors, though conscious of India’s gigantic market — daily growing and ever more promising — shy away in the face of instability, not sure which party or group might be in office tomorrow. We have received only a trickle, though we were hoping for a flood of this good fortune.

If a government completes a whole year in office, it congratulates itself. We change governments as quickly as weather. Mr Deve Gowda, Mr Gujral — Mr Vajpayee is on the way out. What next?

Our position is analogous to the position of pre-De Gaulle France. There were daily changes of huge ruling coalitions, and France seemed to be on the verge of losing its status among the Big Five. De Gaulle put back the country on the rails, and it steamed off to glorious future.

We had such universally accepted leaders in the days of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Today every second class leader of so many parties feels that he is fit enough to assume that historical role and become the nation’s man of destiny. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride; little fishes posing as future whales.

The BJP lost the recent elections because it had no great achievements to show to its credit. Under such conditions, no party could do well. The BJP thought unlike its predecessors that a strong dominant leading party of the coalition could deliver the goods — it could not. Mrs Sonia Gandhi is shrewd and wise; she is in no hurry to pull down the Vajpayee government and take office herself. The BJP had 190 original MPs as against the Congress 140. Even if she is able to cobble together a majority by joining some 15 parties somehow, it will be as unstable as Mr Vajpayee’s (living from day to day) and as unable to show any spectacular achievements.

The best is the single-party majority rule as India was blessed with till nearly two decades after Independence. People took the stable government for granted.

Not only the major two but also many others dream of being in a majority sometime — “we represent the shape of things in the future”. It is pure wishful thinking. Mr Vajpayee and the BJP had that dream and today the Congress seems to be suffering from that illusion. It has certainly made some good showing in the recent minor elections and Mrs Sonia Gandhi, they feel, is the future messiah.

The Congress party had become exhausted with time, and rendered unadventurous for innovative thoughts and brand new programmes. So it lost due to complacency till events gave it a big shock.

To Mrs Sonia Gandhi must go the credit for having put a new life in the dying Congress. But the recent vote was as much for her bringing in new blood in the Congress as a vote against the BJP’s failure on many fronts — a vote for anti-incumbency. A ruling party everywhere suffers from that disadvantage.

Large crowds came to her meetings, more (it is whispered) to see the woman in her or the European lady from the Nehru-Gandhi family, which our feudal mentality makes us feel is born to rule over India. She cannot be another Indira Gandhi. She is from the family, but she is not of the family. There will always be reservations about her foreign birth, suspicions about her Italian connections. She cannot unwrite her pre-Indian citizenship past, nor her pre-marriage past. She will always lack the advantage of the son of the soil.

The only solution that the present system offers is to hold a fresh general election. We have held two such poll recently, and the result was a hung parliament. You may hold 10 elections and the chances are that they will throw up hung parliaments one after the other.

Where do we go from here? Some people have suggested a national government as the way out of this imbroglio. But there is the rub. The Election Commission has recognised a number of organisations as national parties. All of them would demand a place in the Cabinet which will make a nonsense of any such scheme. The remedy would be worse than the disease.

The only solution at the present juncture is the coalition of the two top parties; the Congress and the BJP. That would provide a solid majority and obviate daily pressures and coercions. A two-party coalition would be any day better than a 15-party or 19-party arrangement. Are we willing?

Taking PM for a ride
by L.H. Naqvi

IF Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is not talked out of travelling to Lahore by bus, even then he would not be the first Prime Minister to do so. The honour of travelling as an "ordinary bus passenger", while in power, belongs to Mr V.P. Singh. Of course, Mr V.P. Singh, was not Prime Minister of India when he decided to travel by a "regular" passenger bus from Lucknow to Tindwari, in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, for filing his nomination for an Assembly by-election. The election was forced upon the State because of his elevation as Chief Minister in 1980.

The Charbagh Bus Stand was given a fresh coat of paint for the VIP visitor. The rickshaw-pullers and "pheriwallas" were pushed out of sight. The bus itself looked anything but ordinary. That the bus stand looked deserted had nothing to do with the oppressive summer heat. The only thing that was not changed was the scheduled time of departure.

The Chief Minister arrived on the dot for boarding the Banda-bound bus. The ordinary passengers who were to travel with him comprised ministers, bureaucrats, securitymen and journalists.

Minutes after the bus carrying Mr V.P. Singh pulled out another decrepit and over-crowded contraption on four wheels carrying very ordinary looking passengers to Banda appeared on the scene from nowhere. It did not take long for the usual chaos to return to the Charbagh Bus Stand.

The bus by which Atalji proposes to travel from Delhi to Lahore is still in mint condition. The only alteration which may be necessary has something to do with the security requirements of the Prime Minister. At the end of it India may be the only country to boast of having a bullet-proof Delhi-Lahore-Delhi bus for ordinary passengers. And why not given the high-risk nature of the 500 kilometre journey from Delhi to Lahore and Lahore to Delhi?

There are other advantages of such a yatra. Atalji may not succeed in "building bridges of goodwill on behalf of the people of India with the people of Pakistan" in just one overland trip. But chances are that the work on the bridges being built on the route as part of removing bottlenecks on National Highway I between Delhi and Amritsar may get completed in double quick time.

Look at the stretch near Ambala. No stone seems to have been touched ever since the road-building material was dumped on the site for the four-laning of the highway. If the Prime Minister sticks to his promise made in response to an invitation from Mr Nawaz Sharif the authorities will leave no stone unturned to ensure that "aap ki yatra safal ho"!

In any case, Atalji had no choice but to accept the invitation to avoid being called a "bebus" Prime Minister.

The glory and the agony of Cambodia
By T.V. Rajeswar

CAMBODIA, or Kampuchea in the national language of Khmer was the ancient Kambujadesa or Kambuja. Chinese chronicles of the third century have recorded the rise of an Indian state in the Mekong valley and named it Funan and by the fifth century it was known as Kambuja as recorded by Sanskrit inscriptions there. Kambuja was one of the many India-colonised states, which included Pagan in Burma, Srivijaya in the Indonesian isles and Champa in Vietnam. From 802 AD to the end of the 14th century there was continuity in Hindu and Buddhist kings ruling over the region with their dynasties. The most famous of them were Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII who built the great Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom respectively in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The glory of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom which highlighted the perfection of the fusion of Indian and Khmer art and architecture was unparalleled in those times when they were constructed. These temple complexes included the palaces of the kings and dwelling places for numerous others. The bas-reliefs in the temples depicting the epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are without compare. The apsaras of Angkor who number 1850 are rare specimens of art and no two are alike. Many western explorers and historians have written eloquently on these monuments:” “Undeniably an expression of the highest genius”. “Its beauty and state of preservation are unrivalled. Its mightiness and magnificence bespeak a pomp and luxury surpassing that of a Pharaoh or a Shah Jahan, an impressiveness greater than that of the Pyramids, an artistic distinctiveness as fine as that of the Taj Mahal” are some of their observations. The kings were Saivites, Vaishnavites and Buddhists and true to the Indian tradition the entire pantheon of gods and goddesses are there. The Kambuja kings were contemporaries of Chalukyas, Guptas, Pallavas and Cholas and they maintained close ties with them.

Every king added to the construction of temples to commemorate his rule and the extensive building of monuments over the years depleted the resources of the empire. The decline of the Cambodian or Khmer Kingdom was brought about by wars with Thailand whose kings defeated the Khmers and destroyed Angkor Thom. There was a long period of lawless drift for about four centuries and by the early 19th century the French colonisers had arrived and Cambodia became a French Protectorate in 1863. In the post second world war phase, Cambodia gained her freedom in 1853. Inevitably ‘however, Cambodia got embroiled in the 20-year-long war which the Americans unleashed in the neighbouring Vietnam.

King Norodom Sihanouk tried to maintain a neutral posture which was a red rag to the Americans who manoeuvred to get him ousted and install a puppet regime headed by Lon Nol in 1970. The Americans carried out bombing raids in the eastern region of Cambodia, apart from Laos, to obliterate the famous Ho Chi Minh trail, which was the lifeline of the Vietcongs. It is estimated that the US bombings killed up to four lakhs of Cambodians.

The Lon Nol regime was ousted by Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist fighting arm, with the active help of China in 1975 which ushered in the most traumatic phase in Cambodian history. During the years 1975-79 Pol Pot who had absorbed all the negative lessons from Mao’s Leap Forward programme in China, applied them with unimaginable cruelty in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, the schools and colleges and forced all the people to move into the villages and work in the fields. All of them were directed to dress in black and work for long hours, with little to eat. Private property was abolished and Buddhist monasteries were closed down. In this unprecedented “social experimenting” about two million Cambodians, about 20% of the country’s population, perished.

When Vietnam intervened and drove Pol Pot and his followers into the jungles in 1979, yet another political phase began, with the Americans and the Chinese backing Pol Pot against Vietnam which in turn was backed by the Russians. Chinese arms, and more unfortunately a very large number of landmines were supplied to the Khmer Rouge and the civil war in Cambodia claimed countless victims. The landmines blew up the arms and legs of thousands of Cambodians since they were planted indiscriminately in the fields all along the fighting line which was constantly shifting. Cambodia today has hundreds and thousands of maimed people, and the visitors to the Angkor complex come across the unfortunate maimed victims, including children, sitting at every corner, begging for alms.

In 1991, the UN brokered a peace agreement that led to elections in 1993, the King’s son Ranaridh forming a government. Hun Sen of the Communist Cambodian Peoples Party however muscled his way into the government. In the UN supervised elections last year, Hun Sen got a larger per cent of votes and his government has since come to stay. Hun Sen has the full backing of China which has emerged as the largest donor of aid funds and investments in Cambodia. Cambodia had looked upon China in the recent years as a protector against Vietnam and Thailand. This position may change as and when Cambodia becomes a full-fledged member of the ASEAN and peace stabilises within the country.

Pol Pot’s death last year in the northern jungles adjoining Thailand was a major event in Cambodian history. Most of Pol Pot’s followers and principal aides have since come out to join the mainstream. At present there is a major controversy on the course of action to be taken in respect of Khieu Samphan and another erstwhile Khmer Rouge leader, who collaborated with Pol Pot in his genocide. But the question is, where will the prosecution stop? As a commentator observed recently, “Who has not been in bed with the Khmer Rouge? China has, so has neighbouring Thailand, the ASEAN countries, the UN and the USA” since both USA and China sustained Cambodia’s position in the UN during Pol Pot’s mad regime. Even King Sihanouk was tainted, as he was the head of state during the Khmer Rouge regime. Pol Pot’s death took place in Thai territory and the Thais did not carry out an autopsy, knowing full well the importance of the dead man and the unknown cause of his death. Thereby ended a murky chapter and a lot many people and nations heaved a sigh of relief. The king has now refused to pardon Khieu Samphan but there is said to be some negotiation over a formal impeachment followed by a pardon, very much on the lines of what is happening in the United States in respect of President Clinton.

Whatever may be the outcome of the trial and the performance of Hun Sen’s Communist government, the lot of Cambodians will take many long years to improve. The 11 million Cambodians are among the poorest in the world, with a literacy rate of 37.8% and a life expectancy of 53 years. King Sihanouk made some apt comments on the situation in Cambodia during his discussion with some of the foreign correspondents last year. He said that there were three types of leaders — clean and competent, competent and corrupt, and lastly, corrupt and incompetent. In Cambodia, the king added, there were many in the third category, a few in the second but none at all of the first. Cambodia has therefore a long way to go before the people’s lot registered a change for the better. The days of Khmer glory are now only a matter of history.

75 YEARS AGO

A case of conversion

PANKAJAM, a Hindu girl, who was alleged to have left her home to become a Christian recently and who was sent home to Palamseottah by the C.E. Mission, Lyalpore, was, it is alleged, taken away from the Mission Home by her relatives.

As a result, the Mission authorities have filed a complaint with the police at the Tinnevelly Bridge for trespass and abduction against the brother and sister of the girl.

The Sub-Inspector of Police, Tinnevelly, with the help of the Mylapore police, arrested them and applied to the Commissioner of Police, Madras, for their remand and for their production before the First Class Magistrate, Tinnevelly.

The Sub-Inspector, in his application for remand, stated that he was investigating charges of alleged house breaking, abduction, hurt and intimidation, and that the accused were wanted at Tinnevelly for identification.

The Vakil for the accused applied for bail, stating that Pankajam, who was 21 years of age, came away of her own accord. In support of this, a letter written by the girl was produced, wherein she said she left the place voluntarily and, therefore, no offence of kidnapping or abduction was committed. The Vakil also submitted that the whole incident had created a sensation in the Hindu society, and any unfavourable order would be misunderstood.