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Friday,
August 22, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Bridge that divides Another link with J and K When cops become robbers |
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Church is in a tailspin
Travelling in a “Turkish bath”
Kashmir pashmina may go the Basmati way
Laloo Yadav and elephant’s teeth NDA caught on wrong foot Indian Americans visit Delhi Fashion show on animal motifs Tailpiece
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Bridge that divides MR Vinod Khanna and Capt Amarinder Singh are mature, grown-up men who occupy senior positions, the former at the Centre and the latter in Punjab. And yet, the tantrums they threw over the opening of a Rs 46-crore bridge over the Beas reminded one of the fight of schoolchildren over a pencil or a sharpener. The ruckus that developed did credit to neither of them. The issue went beyond the ego clash between two persons. It unnecessarily cast a reflection on the Centre-state relations too. It also raised a broader issue: why should leaders be called upon to inaugurate a project at all? The huge expenditure incurred on organising the inaugurals has no practical utility except jacking up the cost of a project further. The plaque unveiled on the occasion mentioning the name of the leader who did the honours is nothing but an attempt, perhaps to leave a message that few of the posterity will read. And yet, the fetish has gone to laughable lengths. Not only the name of the person who carries out the inauguration is carved out in stone but also those of the chief guest and even the other VIPs present on the occasion who have hardly contributed to the project. The Beas bridge witnessed the problem of plenty when two leaders vied with each other to dedicate it to the people. There are other projects which suffer a different fate. A suitable VIP may be available to declare them open but at the time of his choice. This leads to outlandish situations where the public is not allowed to use a completed facility for months because the golden hands to cut the ribbon are busy elsewhere, perhaps laying a foundation stone. In place of preening that a project has been completed, the leaders owe an apology to the nation as to why there was a delay of decades in commissioning it. Completion of the project in time would have saved a lot of people’s money and the government some effort that could have been put in for another facility. |
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Another link with J and K THE launching of the mobile telephone services in Jammu and Kashmir is an important indicator of the situation in the border state becoming normal. The facility has, however, come after a long wait, as it was in last December when the Union Government had expressed its readiness to allow cellular phones in the militancy-hit state. The decision could not be implemented because of the fear that it might be misused by terrorists. This was obviously borne out of a genuine concern for keeping security as the top priority. There was considerable pressure from the security agencies on the ground that the mobile phones would make their job more complicated. The government, however, seems to have gone by the new mood of the people and a change in the ground situation. The operations of the security forces are making headway and the people have begun to live a normal life. There is little sympathy for those engaged in the business of violence in the name of jihad. This means that depriving the J and K people of the most popular mode of telecommunications would amount to treating them as unequal citizens. The rush for forms for a mobile connection is not without reason. Owning a mobile means increased connectivity, among family members, friends and acquaintances. It has a multiplier effect, capable of boosting business in a state known for its difficult terrain. It is also bound to help the process of removing the feeling of alienation. The people of J and K can no longer complain of discrimination in sharing the fruits of advancement in telecommunications. The cellular phone facility in the state has come after the restoration of the Internet, STD and ISD services before last year’s assembly elections. The PCOs in J and K, helping the less privileged to remain in touch with their near and dear ones at distant places, were closed down in the wake of the December 13, 2001, terrorist attack on the Parliament complex. In fact, mobile phones could have been allowed in J and K immediately after the STD and ISD services were restored. Anyway, it is better late than never, as they say. |
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When cops become robbers THE shocking incident of Government Railway Police (GRP) officials threatening and looting migrant labourers travelling by the Howrah-bound Jammu Tawi Express on Monday is not an isolated case. Many such crimes have been reported in the past. Condemnable that these are, they shake the public’s very faith in the police. Here are the policemen who are supposed to provide security to passengers. If even they turn into robbers, there is no hope for society. And to cap it all, they chose the poorest of the lot as their targets. Famished labourers leave their hearth and home in Bihar and other states to come to Punjab and Haryana to earn their livelihood the hard way. They work for months on end to save a bit of money to take care of the family back home. And when they finally return, the thieves in khaki lie in wait for them and deprive them of everything. Even if they do not rob the hapless passengers of all their belongings, it is very common to see them forcing every passenger pay bribe to them failing which they threaten to arrest them on suspicion of being thieves or even terrorists. Panic-stricken labourers are too innocent to even protest. Because of the fear of the policemen, many of these incidents go unreported. Why, some of them even take money from passengers to let them sleep in reserved compartments. The risk this poses to everybody is too obvious. There are allegations that sometimes such heinous crimes are committed by off-duty policemen in civilian clothes. The wicked practice goes on because senior officials instead of coming down heavily on the wrong-doers tend to ignore the allegations. Ironically, the labourers do not suffer at the hands of policemen alone. In fact, they are forced to carry hard cash with them mainly because they have no other dependable means to send money home. Moneyorder is the staple mode followed by many such people but it has been abandoned by most because the intended recipient sometimes gets his money after giving a cut to the postman. There were reports some time back that a few postal employees were running a full-fledged racket of holding back moneyorder payments for long and lending this money as short-term loans at high interest rates. Such crimes deserve to be treated in a separate category inviting exemplary punishment. It will not do to say that there are only a few black sheep. It is necessary to identify and weed out such elements from the departments which have the duty to serve the people. |
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Thought for the day We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. —
Jonathan Swift |
Church is in a tailspin AS the world remembered Hiroshima on August 6, it also woke up to a cataclysmic event at Minneapolis in the US. That day the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the US confirmed the election of Canon Gene Robinson as the next Bishop of New Hampshire. Millions of Christians the world over, already rattled by the growing child-abuse cases against Catholic priests in the US, were shocked by the decision because of his colourful past. The bishop-elect is a divorced priest and father of two daughters, now living in a “committed relationship” with his same-sex partner. Following the decision, a newsperson asked Frank Griswold, who heads the Episcopal Church, by which name the Anglican Church is known in the US, whether it would be all right for a divorced hetrosexual man with a female lover to be an Episcopal bishop. He could not give a cogent answer, although, logically, he could have asked a counter question: “Why not?” Of course, it is possible to dismiss the development as of no consequence as the decision concerns only 2.1 million US Episcopalians, who are fewer than the convicts in US jails. But then allowance has to be made for the fact that they remain in communion with the rest of the 70 million Anglicans spread all over the world. Incidentally, the Church of North India, the Church of South India and the Mar Thoma Syrian Church have conciliar relationship with the Episcopal Church. Whether the schism in the church would lead to separation and eventual disintegration of the Episcopal Church or not is not as important an issue as the ethical questions Robinson’s appointment raises. No other ecclesiastical decision has caused as much horror as this one has. It has sent shockwaves through the whole of Christendom. A Bishop from Honduras spoke for them when he said, “It will undo my life’s ministry, all that I have invested in.” At the other end of the spectrum, a 56-year-old layman said, “I have been faithful to God’s sexual standards all my life and now my bishop and my church tell me it doesn’t matter.” As for the soon-to-be-consecrated bishop, I heard him on BBC radio say that he is always guided by “the spirit”. The question is: What kind of spirit? It is not the first time such “spirits” have moved the religious leaders from the Bible Belt of North America. Over a century ago, John Taylor, “president, prophet, seer and revelator” of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints, challenged the US Government when he said, “Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been handed down direct from God. The US cannot abolish it. No nation on earth can prevent it, nor all the nations of the earth combined… I defy the US; I will obey God.” Well known journalist Jon Krakauer narrates his extraordinary story in his just released book, “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith”. His reference point was the murder of a woman and her infant daughter in 1984 by two brothers who believed they were ordered to kill by God. How did all this happen? Many would be inclined to trace it to an incident in the German backwater town called Wittenberg. There, on October 31, 1517, a devout monk, Martin Luther, famously nailed to the door of the Castle Church 95 tightly reasoned theses frontally challenging the authority of the church. It signalled the birth of Reformation dethroning the Pope and enthroning the Bible. He restored to the church the original meaning of the Greek word ek-klesia, “called out (of the masses) by God”. Luther would have turned in his grave over the Minneapolis vote. He could not have foreseen that four centuries after he said, “Here I stand”, and dared to set himself against the Church and the greatest Empire of his time that his Protestantism would be reduced to an easy-going doctrine that tolerates much and requires little. As Fareed Zachariah has powerfully argued in his latest book, “The Future of Freedom”, Luther was not a liberal as he was in many ways “what we would today call a fundamentalist, demanding a more literal interpretation of the Bible”. His attack on the Pope was from the conservative end of the theological spectrum. Not liberal. Juxtapose this with the fact that when Robinson is consecrated, a Lutheran bishop will hold his hands over his head and the tragedy that has befallen Protestantism will at once become clear. Imagine all this happens in the US, founded essentially by Puritans who left their hearth and home, fearing persecution, and in search of a sanctuary where they could truly be “people of the book”. They recognised only two sacraments instituted in the Gospel – Baptism and the Lord’s Supper — and they abhorred divorce and certain types of sexual activity proscribed by the Holy text. It is against this backdrop that Robinson’s appointment signals a monumental ethical revolution. It is not that the church has not been trying to come to terms with homosexuality, which has come out of the closet even in India as underscored by the recent gay parade in Kolkata. At the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Bishops, it was agreed that “in view of the teaching of Scripture” the church “upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage.” At the other end of the theological divide is the argument made by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams: “If physical sex was about human bonding as much as about procreation, there was a case for thinking same-sex relationships may also be legitimate in God’s eyes, if stable and faithful.” Small wonder that all he said after the Minneapolis decision is that “difficult days lie ahead”. His own Anglican Church has been turning a blind eye to homosexual clergy and at one point he was even accused of encouraging a priest of such sexual persuasion to pursue the post of bishop. Someone can turn around and ask: have not people always committed adultery, and is not homosexual behaviour as old as man? The answer is: never before had it been argued that it was moral to do so. What makes Robinson’s appointment repugnant is that it vests deviant sexual behaviour with moral sanctity. Of course, supporters of Robinson have situation ethics to support their case. Formulated by the existentialist theologian, Joseph Fletcher, this approach to ethics focuses not upon applying moral absolutes like “Thou shall not kill or Thou shall not give false evidence” but upon responsible decision-making based upon the unique circumstances of each situation. In this view, amassing wealth through corrupt means is valid, if it is the selfless action of a political leader trying to help his party fight the elections. Adultery may be good, if it helps a woman come to terms with her sexuality. Killing one’s father may be a moral act, if he is only being kept alive by a machine. In other words, situation ethics replaces transcendent values with immanent values. But does all this constitute a crisis for Christianity? Most Christians know that worldly concerns and desires are never faith’s launching pad. They are called to discipleship and not called to edit God’s will according to their preferences. As disciples, they are expected to suffer like their incarnate God. Meanwhile, Robinson and company can celebrate in their ever-more empty churches and cathedrals. |
Travelling in a “Turkish bath” TAXIS at the doorstep; a smooth ride of 40 kilometres every day, without feeling even a trifle exhausted; excellent weather; just the type that makes you want to go on a no-destination spree in your car. I was out of Kolkata recently on an official trip and had quickly got accustomed to the luxuries of the office picking up the tabs, especially for transport. A week later I was back home. Kolkata was its usual self; sweaty, jams, rains, roads full of potholes, people travelling like sardines in jam-packed buses. The euphoria of travel received its jolt no sooner had I hailed a cab from the desultory traffic to go to office. The driver did not want to go to my destination; shook his head and disappeared. What stayed was the sun, beating down on me, the sweat in my collar and a huge packet of documents, floppies and files in my arm. I hailed another cab and failed again. All of a sudden a bus swerved beside me and halted for a second. With no other alternatives around, I braced myself and jumped into the already moving bus. I immediately realised I had entered a Turkish Bath. The only difference being that there was neither a single bath or a masseur in sight, and the poor bathers — men, women, children — were fully dressed. I found an inch of space between two legs and shoved my left leg inside. After a couple of minutes of standing in this state of limbo, I managed to manoeuvre more space to stand straight and actually place both my legs side by side. Meanwhile, the bus crawled on and more bathers joined in the steaming. The conductor’s voice blared like a recorded message, urging passengers to move in to accommodate more entrants, without carrying a fig for the already unmanageable number of people inside. Fresh air was a luxury now and I was sweating profusely, managing to keep body, soul and packet intact with the support of the handlebar, till it came to paying for the ticket. Taking out the fare, or the handkerchief from my pocket meant letting go of the support, a dangerous proposition in this lurching vehicle, which was throwing people around anyway, leading to pushing and jostling and bitter remarks. A drop of my sweat innocently fell on the head of a passenger sitting right under me. He looked up and gave me a look that could kill. I gave him one of the apologetic Charlie Chaplin smiles, but of no avail. He continued to stare up for around half a minute and finding no more dangerous sweat beads on my forehead went back to his daydreaming. Immediately behind him sat a girl and a boy, in their early twenties, chatting happily; quite oblivious of their surroundings. As the bus approached their stop they looked out and got ready to get up. Immediately those around their seats repositioned themselves: not one but two precious seats were being vacated. It appeared more like an army squad ready to be unleashed at the command “CHARGE”. Finally the moment arrived. The two teenagers unassumingly got up and people stood with bated breath, legs poised, ready to slide into the vacant seats, the moment they stepped on to the aisle. And then something happened. The girl, who had appeared to be oblivious of her surroundings, raised her hand towards me. Before I realised what was happening, I found my office packet snatched out of my hand and slapped back on her freshly-vacated seat with the authority of an army general. A couple of expectant heads turned and glared at me but by the time I could gather my wits and thank my benefactor, she had nosedived into the hot crowd along with her boy friend.
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Kashmir pashmina may go the Basmati way
ONE of the worst impacts of the 12 years of militancy in the Kashmir valley has been on the exquisite traditional pashmina shawls. Chinese machine-made yarn and shawls have swamped the markets, edging out the hand-made local pashmina. In fact as Mifta Shaw, whose company has been showcasing Kashmir pashmina since 1840, as well Fayaz Ahmed Beigh, who manufactures the traditional pashmina shawls working with some 3,000 families of the valley, fear the traditional hand-spun shawl is facing extinction. While Shaw maintains the end may come within a decade, Beigh fears it may all be over in four to five years. A range of fakes from China, Nepal and our own powerlooms in Punjab are being passed off as pashmina from Kashmir. With pashmina being produced in bulk on powerlooms, prices have dropped to an all-time low. In 1985-86, pashmina shawls (1m x 2m) were selling for Rs 5,500 to Rs 6,000. Today the price should be Rs 12,000 to Rs 15,000. Instead it is down to Rs 4,500 to Rs 5,000. Asif Ali of Kashmir Looms maintains that the cost of the pashmina stole or small shawl in London was initially $200 a piece. Now the adulterated product is being sold in flea markets of Europe for just $15 to $20. While some amount of blame can be put on the turmoil in the valley, the sad fact is that the Indian pashmjina has no patent. Neither the authorities in the valley nor those in Delhi realise the importance of a patent. So spurious shawls are being marketed abroad as cashmere or pashmina. Most buyers are not discerning enough to see the difference in quality and are easily taken in by the brand names. It may be too late already to save the Kashmir pashmina. So the exquisite pashmina, whose history dates back to the days of Mohenjadaro, (the soft fine fabric draped around the statue of a woman found at Mohenjadaro was probably pashmina from the valley) may go the way of Basmati, neem and haldi. It is said that some 700 years ago Badshah Zen-ul-abidan, one of the most famous Central Asian leaders, introduced pashmina to artisans of the valley to lift their economy. The word “pash” is derived from Pushto and means fine. Now with a direct competition between the machine (Chinese and Punjab powerlooms) and the man (the traditional weavers), the craft that the Badshah gifted to the people of the valley seems a fading dream. The Chinese pashmina yarn first began coming in small quantities in 1996 when the Kashmiri pashmina was at its zenith. Fashion houses across Europe began using it as a fashion accessory and the Chinese capitalised on the new demand and special status that Indian pashmina enjoyed in the West. Beginning with a toehold entry into pashmina trade, they have now pushed the doors wide open, says Mifta Shaw. Initially, the counterfeit Chinese pashmina was of a good quality but they have not been able to retain that quality. Today 50 to 60 per cent of the pashmina available in the valley is Chinese. The traditional pashmina with its exquisite embroidery was a family heirloom. If looked after, it would be handed down generations. Even today the damaged shawls are rafooed (repaired with fine thread work), aired in winters and kept away as antiques for posterity. “But today we cannot be sure if these new shawls will last even a decade,” says Mifta’s brother, who runs the business in the valley. While the threat to the pashmina was brought to the notice of the Chamber of Commerce in Kashmir, there was no follow up. The Kashmir Handicrafts Board was equally silent. Desperate for survival, some of the shawl manufacturers in the valley began using the imported yarn so that they could make shawls at a competitive price. The labour rates for the traditional Kashmiri spinners and weavers have dropped. While women do the spinning of yarn on charkhas, locally known as yendir, the weaving of shawls and embroidery is left to men. In a run-down house in downtown Saidpora Iddgah, all the adults of Ghulam Nabi’s 30-member family were busy spinning and weaving pashmina shawls. It was almost like a factory. While five women, Ghulam Nabi’s mother, wife, sister, sister-in-law and aunt were spinning yearn with great concentration in a small room at the ground floor, upstairs men were weaving on four looms. The women finish their household chores and sit at the charkha, spinning for five hours a day. They get Rs 30 a day, which is less than half the daily wage rate for hard labour, and it is seldom more than Rs 1,000 in a month, the women admit shyly. There are some 36 processes like dehairing, removing dust, powdering and combing the wool, doubling the thread etc before the yarn is spun. The men claim they earn Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500 a month. Mohammed Rafique, 20, said he makes three shawls in a mongh and the labour rate has been static for a decade. “I have survived because I am in a joint family. I cannot bring up a family on the amount I earn if I live on my own,” he points out. The eight women and 22 men of the joint family earn Rs 15,000 to Rs 18,000 a month. There is no other source of income. However, most of the vegetable needs of the family are provided by the small piece of land they own. Bihari labour do the vegetable farming because Ghulam Nabi maintains the hands have to be kept soft and supple for the fine work of weaving. With the Chinese and Punjab yarn swamping the valley, some 30,000 to 40,000 women have lost their only source of livelihood, says Mifta Shaw. For the weavers too, who want to continue their traditional craft on handlooms, the future is bleak. Ghulam Nabi’s family is not educated or qualified for any other job. The only alternative for survival is manual labour, says Rafique. Laila Taiyabji of Dastkar says Kashmiri traders have to understand it is not in their interest to sell spurious products. In the valley, on Janpath and little shops in Delhi’s hotels fake products are being sold as traditional pashminas. Trying to sell his products as genuine, handcrafted shawls from the valley, Asif Ali has put the Kashmiri Loom brand name in English and Pharsi in a corner of the shawls he manufactures. All over Europe his team gives illustrated lectures (from the raw work to the finished product) on the Kashmir pashmina and why it is expensive. Asif has also spoken at conferences organised by the Crafts Council of India and UNESCO. The Chandra goat from which the pashmina wool is extracted is found at a height of 14,000 feet in Ladakh. More recently, it is being reared in government farms in Kargil. While most of the goats have cream or white hair, some have other colours like brown and beige. Because of the dryness of the region they are reared in, they produce more wool and it is extremely soft. The goat is never sheared or its wool cut. With a special comb, the goatherds remove the hair gently ensuring that the fibre or hair is at least 5 cms long. This is the minimum length required for making the handcrafted pashmina. Collected in large bundles through gentle combing, the wool is brought to the valley where the coarse hair and dust is removed and the processing for yarn begins. Even for cleaning the wool or hair, machines are not used for that would shorten the fibre and make it inappropriate for spinning yarn. The Chinese get their wool from Mongolia, Tibet and from their goat farms. However, their entire process is mechanised. They don’t have charkahas for spinning the yarn and mix the goat wool with silk and other wools. The spinning is done by machines are weaving on large power looms. A lot of this Chinese yarn comes to Punjab and is woven on mechanised looms. But the finished product is branded ‘Kashmir’ and not Amritsar or Ludhiana. Brands are protected by copyright laws. There are laws for design regulation too but no one is enforcing them, says Asif Ali. However, under the Prime Minister’s recently announced package for Jammu and Kashmir, the Development Commissioner for handicrafts at the Centre is trying to bring some order into the mess created in the pashmina trade. |
Laloo Yadav and elephant’s teeth ONE man who was visibly itching to speak during the debate on the Congress-sponsored no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha earlier this week was none other than RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav. Laloo watched the proceedings from the gallery reserved for Rajya Sabha members. When there was furore in the Lok Sabha over the remarks made by Congress President Sonia Gandhi on the 1975-77 Emergency, Laloo moved out of the gallary and reached out to some scribes in the corridors of Parliament. Needless to say he had a captive audience. No prizes for guessing that he argued for Sonia Gandhi. At the end of this impromptu interaction with mediapersons, a TV journalist asked him whether he would speak on camera on the issue. The Bihari Babu replied in his inimitable style: “Kuch baatein samajhne ki hoti hain dikhane ki nahin” (Some things are to be understood, not to be displayed). It reminded one of the Hindi saying about the elephant having one set of teeth for eating and another for showing off. NDA caught on wrong foot The RJD’s irrepressible Raghuvansh Prasad Singh caught the BJP-led NDA on the wrong foot during the debate on the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha. Known for his penetrating voice and well-marshalled arguments, Dr Singh took the ruling benches by surprise when he started quoting from a document about former RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras, who had written to the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency that RSS workers should be released from prison as they had done no wrong. Asked to authenticate the material, he went to the Lok Sabha table and when he gave a newspaper clipping members of the ruling combine heaved a sigh of relief. However, Dr Singh gave another jolt to the NDA members when he said that on the demand of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, he has a letter from which he wants to read. The hand-written note on a letter head carrying the official Ashoka emblem created a stir as the treasury benches sprang on their feet using their lung power. In the coming days the letter is bound to make an impact as it reportedly has a damaging revelation about one of the top leaders of the country. Indian Americans visit Delhi Six second-generation Indian Americans working with Congressmen and Senators were on a week’s familiarisation trip to understand the land of their forefathers better. They met K R Narayanan, I.K. Gujral, Najma Heptullah and J.N. Dixit, besides senior officials in the MEA, the CII, the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis and the United Services
Institute. While they uniformly felt that Americans pursued their interests in a determined manner, they found this lacking with Indian policymakers. These bright Indian Americans have the portends of entering the political arena in the US. Expected to present papers about their Indian sojourn, they were hugely struck by the I-Day celebrations at the historic Red Fort. Fashion show on animal motifs For one
reason or the other, Maneka Gandhi never ceases to be in news. Maneka is back to promoting her own organisation — People for Animals. Helped by her sister Ambika Shukla, the PFA’s event coordinator, Maneka and her team succeeded in bringing together 33 fashion designers to design T-shirts with animal motifs. The four-day show at a five-star hotel drew an overwhelming response from animal lovers who wanted to buy designer labels at competitive prices and in turn pay for a noble cause. The fabric for 13,000 T-shirts was sourced from a Ludhiana-based hosiery unit. Maneka surprised visitors doubling as a saleswoman. Clad in a black silk saree with a red border, she was seen helping customers make a choice and re-arranging T-shirts for designers. Tailpiece Emblazoned on a tempo: “Buri nazar wale tu Pakistan chala ja.” So much for India-Pakistan people-to-people bonhomie. Contributed by TRR, Satish Misra, S Satyanarayanan, Tripti Nath and Rajeev Sharma
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Religion consists not in mere talks. He who looks on all alike and considers all as equals, is acclaimed as truly religious. — Guru Nanak What benefits accrued by meditation in the first of the four stages, by conducting rites in the next and by worshipping Vishnu in the other, can all be obtained by Krishna Nama Sankeertana in the Kali Yuga. — Chaitanya Mahaprabhu When the sky is rent asunder; when the stars scatter and the oceans roll together; when the graves are hurled about; each soul shall know what it has done and what it has failed to do. — The Koran
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