The Leftists, who had raked up a non-issue, are clearly the losers. They have lost a platform to express their views officially on the planning process. The Leftist economists have diminished their own stature by taking an unreasonable stand and, in the process, have exposed their narrow thinking. The Left duplicity also stands exposed. The Left Front government in West Bengal carries out economic reforms with foreign aid and expertise. In Delhi the comrades sing a different tune. Living in the old world, they badly need to justify their relevance. Hence, the frequent fault-finding. They support a government that is run contrary to their outdated ideology.

The ideal situation would be for their offspring to provide them care and affection that they long for. Since this is not happening, the concept of special enclosures for them has to be accepted. After all, if the choice is between maltreatment and being away from their near and dear ones, the latter is indeed the lesser evil. These homes cannot be just refuge for the tired and retired but cheerful places where all their special needs are taken care of and they also have the company of the people of their peer group.

The Indian Olympic Association has at last decided to crack the whip. Perhaps the punishment is a tad harsh. However, the people of India would support the IOA action if it ultimately helps lift the level of Indian sport to that of China which nearly knocked down America from the top of the international sport order at Athens. The life ban slapped on Pratima Kumari, Sanamacha Chanu and Sunaina by itself may prove insufficient in giving Indian sport a fair competitive edge in international events. An honest assessment of the way Indian sport is run would prove that the three disgraced weightlifters were the victims and not the real villains. The chief coach, Pal Singh Sandhu, and his Belarusian assistant Leonid Taranenko should be tried for their role in encouraging the lifters to violate the World Anti-Doping Agency rules.

The latest round of talks, held in New York on September 24, have shown the reports from Pakistan were not quite baseless. The paper which the talks produced in New York contained little of substance about Kashmir. But the meeting ended on a more jovial note than most predecessors, and the participants felt happier with the outcome than with what they had got out of many a previous round. This is not to suggest that the meeting achieved nothing except continuation of the stalemate by other means. It also showed, in the first place, that a stalemate was inevitable in the circumstances, and more importantly it showed in the second place that a stalemate had its uses.

First about the inevitability. What better than a stalemate would have resulted if General Musharraf had repeated to his Indian counterparts at the negotiating table what he had publicly but unilaterally said in New York on September 22, that his impending talks with Mr Manmohan Singh were “the final chance for bilateralism”? After saying anything like that, could he have announced that another round of bilateral talks had been fixed ? Or could he have expected that India would accept a “third party” role in Kashmir talks, a suggestion repeated by Pakistan a few days ago? Or could he have confirmed with a straight face what an anonymous source on his side is reported to have suggested, that Kashmir should be taken out of the composite dialogue, put upon a table of undisclosed shape, and entrusted to some “high representatives” of unknown origin? Or having himself rejected the idea of an agreement along LoC, as he did at his press conference in New York, what else could he have prayed for except a cheerful extension of the unannounced, ambiguous and unannounced stalemate?

The only alternative would have been a clear and “positive” accusation by each side that the other side had deliberately made the deadlock more dead. The result would have been a more abrasive version of what has happened before: as one round of talks after another ends in recrimination the whole idea of talks gets undermined and discredited, and the next round has to begin from further back than square one. The only alternative, a stalemate, has left the door half open at least, with each side free to open it further whenever it felt the time was more ripe for doing so. In the meantime each side has been spared an obligation which continuation of active diplomacy would have imposed on both sides : to come up with something or other, knowing full well that it is not going to work in the given circumstances, or at least to out do the other side in blaming it for the breakdown.

But there is more to it than just that. It has been made possible for Musharraf to admit publicly what he must have known privately since the Kargil war, if not earlier still. After waging — and losing — more wars against India for capturing Kashmir than he would like to remember, and after being blamed around the world for killing on the heights of Kargil the most promising initiative for peace ever taken by an Indian Prime Minister, namely Mr Vajpayee’s after his bus journey to Lahore, General Musharraf had to admit, as he did the other day in New York, that there can be no military solution of this problem. But it is only the intervening stalemate which made it possible for him to recant thus in public, because otherwise he would have been too busy in the blame game to do so.

Moreover it is during this very period of passive animosity that two other things have happened. First, more countries have more frequently acknowledged that Musharraf has not yet lived up to his promise that he would not allow anyone to use any territory under Pakistan’s control for launching terror strikes against another country. The second thing that has happened is that no country which disapproves of terrorism now blames India for doing what it can for curbing terrorism so long as “security” does not itself become a weapon of terrorism (and when it does India itself most needs to put it down most firmly).

More important than either of these are two other developments, one a product of the current phase of softer diplomacy; the other a product of hardnosed economic, political, and diplomatic good sense. All that very energetic track II activity and the unobtrusive person-to-person camaraderie have begun to show their benefits in various places, and most so among the relatively young. This has made a change in the climate of “public opinion” though it is still expressed in private. Influential people are now beginning to advocate that while doing all they can to “solve the Kashmir problem” both countries must also tap those economic and public welfare issues which matter no less.

During the first week, we had one of the most memorable and comforting experiences. Dr Raja Ramanna visited us. He always wore his hallmark khaki pant and white shirt. He was a very simple person. We could approach him any time. Very often, he came to the hostel. As the then Director, Physics Group, the training school was his turf; he always defended its cause.

At the informal meetings he listened to us carefully and spoke quietly. He spiced his talk with funny anecdotes. When he spoke, each one of us felt that he was talking to us individually. His reassuring demeanour gave us confidence.

An unforgettable incident revealed an altogether different facet of his character. The smiling teacher transformed into a steely, taciturn and stubborn disciplinarian.

Two trainees from our batch had a fight. One of them was weak but intemperate; the other one was strong, arrogant and short-tempered! They fought on some trivial issue. The weak fellow was playing table tennis when the strong man entered the sports-room. After waiting for some time, he requested him to give him a chance. “You don’t have to play any games, you are already strong”, the weak fellow told him. Needless teasing developed into fisticuffs.

The weak man got seriously hurt. Friends intervened. Both the victor and the vanquished exchanged apologies. We thought that they settled the issue. We realised that it has become too serious as the victim needed urgent medical help. He went to the dispensary. Our doctor promptly and dutifully reported the matter to Dr Ramanna.

Nirmal Mukherji, Cabinet Secretary, told me that Dr Ramanna was shifted out of BARC, at his own request as he complained it had become impossible to function under the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Mr Homi Sethna.

Both Sethna and Ramanna were close friends till 1974 and their relationship got ruptured after the Pokhran test. Mr Sethna charged that the success of Pokhran had gone to Ramanna’s head and he had become indisciplined and was throwing his weight about. Ramanna as Director of BARC, in turn accused Sethna of harassing him and making it difficult for him to function.

A year after Ramanna left BARC, Sethna moved the government to fill the post of Director, BARC, and proposed the name of Dr Fareeduddin, a specialist in heavy water production, for the assignment. When it came up before the appointments committee of the Cabinet, V. Shankar, Principal Secretary to the PM and a confidante of Morarji Desai, objected to it for reasons I never learnt about.

During the course of the discussion, according to Nirmal Mukherji’s account, it was decided to have an over-all survey of the working of the Department of Atomic Energy and in the light of that survey to decide on the appointment of Director, BARC. It was proposed that a committee headed by Dr Atma Ram, Director General of the CSIR, another Morarji confidante, Dr Sethna and Nirmal Mukherji would undertake the survey and make recommendations. Nirmal Mukherji persuaded Sethna to agree to a two-man subordinate committee consisting of a representative of the Chairman, AEC, and one of the Cabinet Secretary to undertake the basic task, to be reviewed by the three-member committee.

Sethna nominated N.S. Siva, a retired officer of the AEC, Secretary to the successive Chairmen of AEC, Nirmal Mukherji and me. That gave me an opportunity to visit all atomic energy installations and interact with all senior scientists of the department. Siva knew the department inside out and as he was suffering from arthritis and could not walk without assistance, he left me to myself during my interactions with the scientists and told me he would come in at the stage of drafting of the report.

The AEC secretariat made an elaborate and fairly persuasive case of Ramanna’s alleged acts of indiscipline and defiance. When I met the senior scientists of the AEC in Trombay and in Kalpakkam and Hyderabad, they all had one demand, which the majority did not want to be attributed to them: “Please send Ramanna back to BARC”. The demand was near unanimous.

I knew there was no way of getting through a recommendation to send Dr Ramanna back to BARC because Morarji Desai just could not stand him. I had heard him say that Pokhran I was a fake. Nirmal Mukherji was of the view that Sethna was keen to fill the post of Director, BARC, to block Ramanna’s return. He was not happy about it.

At that stage I presented to the Cabinet, in my capacity as Chairman, JIC, an assessment on the Pakistani nuclear weapon programme — about Dr A.Q. Khan and the centrifuge efforts. Nirmal Mukherji succeeded in bringing the report before the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) in spite of Morarji Desai’s reluctance. The Cabinet committee’s decision as given to me by Nirmal Mukherji and recorded by me in handwriting and approved by Morarji Desai simply said: “The Cabinet committee considered the report and gave appropriate instructions to the Chairman, AEC”. I flew down to Bombay and handed over the xerox copy of the hand-written minutes to the Chairman, AEC.

A few weeks later I met him again in connection with the work on the survey of the AEC and possible reconstitution. Siva was also in Bombay. I sought a separate meeting with Mr Sethna. I asked him that in view of the CCPA minutes and his having to restart the work on nuclear weaponry how would he manage without Ramanna. He said that he did not need Ramanna and he could do it with the team available in BARC.

In that case I argued whether he should not be in continuous touch with that team and, therefore, as Homi Bhabha did in his time, he should not also be the Director of BARC in addition to being the chairman of the AEC. Sethna agreed with the logic of this argument. I asked him to instruct his representative to go along with my recommendation that the Chairman, AEC, should also be Director, BARC. He did so.

I was able to submit a report to the committee of three — Atma Ram, Nirmal Mukherji and Sethna — that we should revert to the situation obtained during Bhabha’s time and the chairman should hold additional charge of BARC. The underlying logic that India had to restart the weapons programme was not mentioned in the report. I do not know whether Nirmal Mukherji informed Atma Ram about it. But the committee endorsed the report and the Prime Minister accepted it.

The media savvy Page 3 kinds are famous to keep unsavoury aspects of their personal life well under wraps. The lingering public image of their lives is of it being one big happy party. Class solidarity silences rumours surrounding morbid occurrences in the personal lives of these “happening people”.

Newshounds from private channels owe an explanation to the dramatis personae who were grilled in full view of rolling cameras. One cringed at the anchor’s complete absence of sensitivity towards the traumatised, visibly dazed Gudiya in an advanced stage of pregnancy who repeatedly broke down and begged to be left alone, as she was not feeling well. As the dictum goes “The show must go on”. But in this case we must pause and ponder as to who paid the price and who reaped the benefit.

The immorality of the media aside, another aspect that the affair successfully managed to do is strengthen the stereotyping of the Muslim community as an archaic community. Projecting the “them versus us”. Coming close on the heels of the religious census flareup, it showcased Muslims as living in history unresponsive to the changing times.

The amount of gibberish that found its way into the mainstream media in the name of what clerics had to say about the issue is perhaps more a reflection of the media’s willingness to legitimise this antiquated worldview of Islam.

Several ulemas were certain that Gudiya had indeed been living in “sin” with her second husband, as her first husband had not divorced her. Another learned cleric pronounced in the presence of the shocked woman that the child she was carrying in her womb was actually “najaiz” or illegitimate.

In the garb of the controversy another maulana reasserted an oft-repeated myth. He announced that Gudiya had no right to divorce her first husband as in Islam women did not have the right to divorce! He obviously may not have heard of “Khula” mentioned in the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937.

But in this case the rule of law had no role to play. Gudiya had waited for the stipulated four-year period. What her family obviously did not do was obtain a decree to this effect. According to Gudiya’s father, as revealed in the most-discussed television programme, he had not obtained a decree on the advice of the village haafiz (one who memorises the Quran). Again the question of the reappeared husband “satisfying” any court of law about his willingness to perform his conjugal duties did not arise as the ulemas, propped up by the media were sitting as judges who even without a fair trial were convinced of Arif’s unquestioned “right over his wife”.