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Safety net on
agenda India and
Af-Pak |
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Show restraint
Vanishing values
In earthy measures
A fresh look at
Patiala’s ex-Maharaja
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India and Af-Pak
At
a time when Islamabad has a change of guard with the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League (N) recapturing power, an interesting proposal has been made by Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has conveyed to India and Pakistan through his Ambassador in New Delhi that the three countries should work out a tripartite mechanism, including a no-war pact, for peace and progress in the region. The idea is meaningful and deserves to be given a serious thought. The region is set to experience changes of various kinds in the coming few months. The US-led multinational forces are scheduled to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, where elections will also be held in 2014 for the formation of a new government. This means that something must be done now so that the Afghans do not get involved in destructive activities again. And whatever happens in Afghanistan is bound to affect the situation in Pakistan and elsewhere in the region. Though there are indications that the new government in Pakistan will pursue a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of its neighbours, it is difficult to believe that Islamabad will quietly watch the unfolding developments in Afghanistan. Pro-Pakistan Taliban factions in Afghanistan may get clandestine support from Islamabad during the coming elections there. If these extremist elements succeed in becoming part of the government, the situation may get chaotic in Afghanistan again. It is, therefore, better that a kind of tripartite agreement is reached before it is too late so that Afghans are allowed to find their own answers to the problems they face. The focus of the proposed tripartite pact must be economic growth with a view to ensuring that Afghans do not deviate from the path of development. India, which has been helping Afghanistan in the revival of economic activity in a big way, would be in a better position to play its positive role if Pakistan allows the use of its territory for the movement of Indian trucks loaded with goods needed in Afghanistan. Such an arrangement can be a part of the tripartite agreement in the larger interest of stability and progress in the region. Pakistan, too, will be a gainer.
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Show restraint
The
Supreme Court has rightly reminded the police of an advisory issued by the Centre in which the government had clarified Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act. It had advised the police to be cautious while arresting people for publishing comments which were found “objectionable.” Police forces in various states have been rather proactive in arresting people who post comments and even those who ‘like’ such comments on social media sites like Facebook. This has led to situations where the judiciary had to intervene in favour of the defendants who had been charged under various acts. Such arrests should only take place after their being cleared by a senior police officer. Social media comments are a part of a general conversation that goes on in the world. The syntax and tone of the content is often verbal, but since it is in the written form, they have a degree of permanence, which should conventionally be conferred on something that is more formal. Popular Indian public figures, especially politicians, have shown a remarkable degree of sensitivity about negative comments, which are thereby labelled ‘objectionable’, something that can lead to arrests under Section 66-A of the IT Act which states that “any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or communication device, any information that is grossly offensive or has a menacing character could be imprisoned for a maximum term of three years, in addition to facing significant fines”. The Supreme Court has already been approached on the issue of the constitutional validity of Section 66-A, but till the apex court rules on it, restraint should be exercised by the police, be it the recent case of the arrest, and the subsequent release of the state general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Jaya Vindhayal, or any other instance in which someone finds something objectionable in a social media post.
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Flowers are happy things. — P. G. Wodehouse
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Vanishing values
Economic
growth in India in recent years has been accompanied by increasing social and cultural problems. Most of our programmes aim at everyone becoming rich or creating a condition of pervasive prosperity. As a consequence, we get involved in tasks which broadly promote greed. If the power to satisfy our desires has increased in arithmetical progression, the power of desire has gone up in geometrical progression. We have an environment in which only growth matters, and morality and goodness are not the most sought-after things. Ultimately, this has resulted in a situation when people resort to violence on the slightest provocation or when they find an opportunity to indulge in such acts, as seen in brutal crimes against women. In India, there was a time when women were given immense prominence, placed better than men. Even today when we pronounce “Sita Rama”, Sita figures first. Not only that, without one’s better half (ardhangini), no yajna, no sacrament or auspicious ceremony can be possible. In the southern part of India, women are called “amma” out of respect. Swami Vivekananda used to dress as a woman --- our Mother --- and we must likewise look upon all women as reflections of the Mother. Now, however, heinous crimes against women are becoming common. Is our society faced with a sharp decline in values, with morality gradually disappearing from it? Why have females and children become so vulnerable? According to a UN observation, “History does not kill. Religion does not rape woman, the purity of blood does not destroy buildings and institutions do not fail. Only individuals do those things.” Why should values decay over time? Several things threaten a value system. In India, perhaps, the single biggest issue is our own success! We are on the path of prosperity without imbibing the relevant values. This is leading to the creation of a purely materialistic culture with a strong desire to get more for ourselves --- selfishness and compromising of values. Selfishness makes us get so wrapped up in our own needs, wants and issues that we forget about others. Tragically, when we forget about others, we often drift away from our core values. Today everyone seems to be in search of easy money and shortcuts to achieve materialistic success. We are all driven by greed and fear. Greed tells us that there is no time to lose. Fear tells us that we are going to lose. In the last 20 years we have become increasingly individualistic; we are more influenced by exaggerated versions of the survival of the fittest and the invisible hand. A man tells his wife that he saved Rs 10 by running behind a bus instead of boarding it. His wife replied that you are a fool; you should have run behind a taxi and saved Rs250. A 19th century British poet wrote, “The child is the father of man”. He was referring to the spontaneous love for nature which enthralled the child in him even when he grew up into a poet who was inspired by rainbows and daffodils and wrote about them. But today our youth do not love rainbows; for them money is everything. India’s young population can become its biggest liability if we are unable to groom our youth into morally conscious individuals. Cultures are shaped by the unwritten rules that guide people, and they learn these from the stories they are told and the heroes they admire. Therefore, the more we honour those who do the right things, the less we admire the rich who promote their own selfish interests, often living dangerously at the edge of law. This is how we can have a stronger culture of trust in our business and society. Therefore, it is time to ensure that we do the right things always. A society that has a low tolerance level will produce people who cannot work as part of inter-cultural and transnational teams. This will mean a disastrous situation in today’s world of global corporations with a multi-national workforce. Tolerance comes when we have a liberal outlook and a value-based society. This will help in building a humane, compassionate and caring society. Surely, we should not lose values in the race for growth. General Mikes emphasised in his book that standing in a queue is a passion for Englishmen. At weekends an Englishmen queues up at the bus stop, for tea and at a railway station, at an airport, etc. According to a survey, an average Englishman spends two-three months standing in a queue every year. In his lifetime, given an average life expectancy of 75 years, it works out to be 14.4 years. Therefore, the queue is a great leveller. But orderliness is what Britons failed to create in India — Indians scrabble into trains, industrialists seek NOCs and VIPs demand everything out of turn. This has increased costs all around and created a class of rulers and babus. Every high public official should be required to take public transportation once a week so that they know how the world lives. As stated by Confucius, the culture of the empire comes down from the house of the Emperor. We have seen too many institutions which seemingly had a sound set of values in the past; somehow they lost their way and forgot to renew the values they were known for. “The only thing more dangerous than failure is success”, as a great visionary said. Too easily we become self-satisfied, self-reliant and arrogant. The main task of the leadership is to help rediscover sound values in society. True leadership is always about struggle and two other things: having values and being willing to fight for those values. One hopes that enlightened politicians, bureaucrats and corporate leaders will subscribe to these ideas. There is need to transform the culture of bureaucracy into a culture of discipline, where people have freedom within a framework of demanding performance standards, values and accountability. Also each one of us as parents, mentors and teachers or as a citizen has to play a role to save our society from plunging into the depths of
immorality. The writer is a senior professor in the University Business School (UBS), Panjab University, Chandigarh.
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In earthy measures The
days are going to come,” declares the Lord, “when the one who ploughs will catch up to the one who harvests, and the one who stomps on grapes will catch up to the one who plants. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills.” I read this explanation of a psalm in the Bible and was transported to the times when in my formative years I witnessed a field where a ploughman was toiling hard, sweating all over. He had a tall frame with a huge black hairy brawn and belly of a popper. His sinews flexed with the lifting up of the whip which he seldom used on his pair of bullocks. He only shouted a near-war-cry —
“Oye tera saeen maray (Death be to your master)” — more to back up the oxen than to really curse them largely for having a miserly and usurper master who was common to him as well. He lent his strength to the limping bullock who suffered piercing of the soft cushion below its hoof the previous day. But he kept coaxing him to keep moving. He called him Joonga — the bent one. In winters he covered the bullocks with a pal woven of thick and coarse cloth. Also for a breather in-between the extended rounds of laps he offered them green foliage while he drank water from a pitcher put under the shade of a nearby tree. The ploughman decorated the yoke himself with frills woven by the women at home. He also put chimes around the mane of the oxen which made music of no less quality than that of a spiritual hymn. His ploughshares, big and small, depended on the hardness of the soil. He had many of them. Some even for turning the soil to let it flatten on both furrowing sides. He visited the blacksmith in the village regularly for moulding the ploughshares suited for different crops that he was to sow — some going deep, some only scratching the surface. His laps called “halaee” were straight from one end to the other for he preferred doing his job with masterly dexterity and precision, almost clinical in nature. He wore nothing on his upper extremities but had talismans tied on his biceps and around the neck with a thick black thread. There was always an “angochha” (a towel) hanging on one of his shoulders to keep wiping the sweat on his body. His day began in the ambrosial hours when even the birds did not wake up in their nests. By the time the latter turned in large numbers to feed at the insects that his plough dug for them, he too was hungry. He would time and again lift his eyes from the deep furrow to the pathway leading on from the village to see if his wife was on her way getting food for him. They would exchange smiles when he would unyoke the oxen and offer their fodder in the make-shift manger. She would offer water for him to wash his hands, her face still veiled. He would then recline a bit to sit up again to begin partaking of the food. All through his wife would gaze at him and inform him of the happenings back home. He would wash down the food with a huge tumbler full of lassi. His short nap would be disturbed by the tweets of the birds who kept hollering around eating their stuff and thanking the ploughman enough. Intimidated and reassured, they followed him in his furrow in large tows. Sometimes snakes too put up their presence and the ploughman was always barefooted while at work. Yes, he was paid a little higher than the other labourers. He might not inherit the earth, but he was the one who was known to abide by in earthy
measure.
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A fresh look at Patiala’s ex-Maharaja
Researchers have made conflicting claims about the life and times of Maharaja Karam Singh of Patiala. Some believe the Maharaja, who reigned from 1813 to 1845 and died aged 48, was a British “quisling”, while others say he was “hanged” by the British.
Capt Amarinder Singh, a descendent of the Maharaja, clears the air.
Shyam
Bhatia's “New light on Patiala's Maharaja” published in The Tribune on May 6, 2013, is pure fiction. His story on Maharaja Karam Singh of Patiala sate is based on Amandeep Singh Madra's and Paramjit Singh's recent research in the United Kingdom. Maharaja Karam Singh died 168 years ago, and since then many historians have written about this period and the man, be they English historians or our own like Mohammad Hassan Khan Khalifa (Prime Minister during Maharaja
Narinder Singh's reign), Sayad Mohammad Latif, Dr Ganga Singh, Dr Hariram Gupta and Dr
Kirpal Singh, amongst others.
Maharaja Karam Singh was not “hanged by a rope from a tree” by the British as the new researchers claim. In the post-Independence era, accepting this version would mean a feather in one's political cap but that would be dishonesty. Having said this, Shyam Bhatia adds that “Karam Singh was a nationalist hero and not -- as previously thought -- just a British quisling”. This is once again off the mark, void of truth and derogatory to the memory of one of Patiala's greatest rulers; quisling or patriot is a matter of perception at any particular moment in history. I have yet to read such an assessment of Karam Singh by any historian
to date. Maharaja Karam Singh reigned from 1813 to 1845, and died aged 48. He was succeeded by his son Narinder Singh, who reigned from 1845 to 1862. Narinder Singh's reign coincided with the First Anglo Sikh war of 1845/46, the battle of Multan in 1848 and the Second Sikh War of 1848/49. He was also Maharaja at the time of the Indian mutiny of 1857. Karam Singh's death, though at a young age by today's standards, was a natural one. In 1857 there was an incident in which Patiala was involved, which I will come to later. Let us first look at the situation that existed then in Punjab to assess whether Shaym Bhatia's “quisling” applied to Maharaja Karam Singh or not.
Of greed and ambition Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore was a great soldier and an able ruler. His negative factor was excessive greed and ambition. He was born in 1780 to Maha Singh, the head of the Shukarchhakia misl and his wife, Raj Kanwar, who was the daughter of Raja Gajpat Singh of Jind. She was called Mai Malwain, being from the Malwa region. He died in 1839. At the start of his rule, the Sikhs had 12 clans or misls -- 11 were north of the Sutlej which Ranjit Singh subjugated. The 12th was the Phulkian misl, ruling the territory south of the Sutlej. The last two misls to fall to Ranjit Singh were the two to whom his wives belonged. The Kanhiyas, and the Nakkais. The day his wives, Raj Kaur Nakkai and Mehtab Kaur Kanhiya died, he invested all their forts and property. The only misl that now lay in his path of becoming the sole ruler of Punjab was the Cis-Sutlej Phulkian's. The Phulkian misl comprised the States of Patiala, Jind, Nabha and many Chiefs, the larger of whom were Kaithal,
Bhadaur, Badrukhan, Malaud, Kot Dhuna and the Laudgarhias of Rampura and Dialpura. By 1806 Ranjit Singh had entered Phulkian territory on three occasions. The first to placate his uncle Raja Bhag Singh of Jind, whose sister Mai Malwain, his own mother, he killed with a sword, as he suspected her of infidelity. The second was to mediate between Maharaja Sahib Singh of Patiala and his wife, but in actual, fact he entered Patiala in order to gauge its military potential in the event of hostilities. The third was to settle a dispute between Nabha and Patiala over a disputed territory, the villages of Duladi and Mansurpur. By leaving the task unfulfilled, he hoped to enhance
the discord that then existed between the two. By then the Phulkian States and Sardars, wary of Ranjit Singh's ambition, were confident that they would be next on his agenda. He had already occupied Faridkot; and to indicate his supremacy he had levied a large fine on the Nawab of Malerkotla. It was believed that he was now looking for an opportune moment to move south of the Sutlej. The Phulkian Chiefs met at Samana on the 14th of March 1808. The meeting concluded with a resolution, the explanatory part, reads as follows: “The British Government is sure and certain to advance from the Yamuna to the Sutlej. Similarly Ranjit Singh has his eyes upon us. It is certain he will cross the Sutlej. We have to choose between the two evils. To go under the British is like courting tuberculosis (Tap-e-diq), which brings gradual but slow death to the patient. The alliance with Ranjit Singh would be fatal, like delirium (sarsam) which finishes the victim within hours”. The three states and the chiefs then sent their representatives to Delhi to meet the Resident to seek protection from Ranjit Singh. Mr Seaton, the Resident, forwarded this request to the Governor General at Calcutta. The Treaty of Amritsar between Ranjit Singh and Charles Metcalf signed on the, 25th of April 1809 incorporates the Phulkian issue. Lord Minto, the Governor General, ratified the treaty in the council on 30th May, 1809. On 11th June, Colonel Octherlony, the British political agent at Ludhiana, issued a proclamation to the Cis-Sutlej States and Chiefs declaring them to be under British protection.
Anglo-Sikh wars Maharaja Karam Singh died just before the start of the first Anglo-Sikh war in 1845. Ranjit Singh had died in 1839. In the six years since Ranjit Singh's death and the start of the First Sikh War, the Lahore Darbar had four Maharajas reign over it: Kharak Singh, Naunihal Singh, Maharani Chand Kaur and Sher Singh. All were killed or removed under treacherous circumstances. During this period, apart from .the four Maharajas mentioned above, four Prime Ministers -- Jawala Singh, Raja Dhyan Singh, Raja Heera Singh and Jawahar Singh -- and 29 other prominent figures of the Darbar were assassinated. When the Anglo-Sikh war started with the lead elements of the Lahore forces crossing the Sutlej on the 11th of December 1845, the Lahore ruler was Dalip Singh, a child of eight. His ambitious mother, Jind Kaur, was the Regent. Raja Lal Singh and Raja Tej Singh, two disloyal Sardars of the Darbar, but favourites of Maharani Jind Kaur, were the Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief respectively. The Darbar was now in a self-destructive mode. Military collaboration with the British, by the sharing of battle dispositions with them, on the eve of the battle of Ferozshah, set the tone. The aim of the Darbar was the defeat of its own army, which had emerged as the de facto ruler of the State. The belief was that the British would permit the Lahore State to continue after the defeat of its army. To answer Madra and Paramjit, with the state of affairs that existed then in Lahore, would anyone wish to ally himself with such a government? Maharaja Karam Singh had died. Narinder Singh was on the Gaddi. The Phulkians, adhering to the decision at Samana, stayed away from the battle. As per the agreement, the Phulkian troops did, however, involve themselves in protecting the British line of communication from Meerut and Delhi to the Lahore State's border at Phillaur. No armed clash, however, took place between the two Sikh forces.
The mutiny of 1857 In the mutiny of 1857, Sikh troops in general supported the British, as did those of the Phulkian States. Six years earlier, during the Anglo-Sikh wars, Indian regiments of the East India Company from the Bengal and Bombay Presidencies were fully committed in battle against the Sikhs. These included 25 regular and irregular regiments of Cavalry and 57 Infantry battalions. This was far in excess of the British commitment, which was for four Cavalry regiments and 13 Infantry battalions. During the mutiny, with the memories of the Anglo-Sikh wars very much in the Sikh mind, Sikh troops supported the British. The two Sikh Regiments raised after the first Sikh war in 1846, the Regiment of Ferozpur received the battle honour 'Lucknow: Defence and Capture'. The Regiment of Ludhiana won its first Victoria Cross at Benaras. The troops of Patiala, Nabha and Jind took part in the storming of Delhi and received the battle honour 'Mutiny 1857'. In Patiala, Maharaja Narinder Singh's brother, the 30-year-old Kanwar Deep Singh, was on intimate terms with the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah. He threw in his lot with the Delhi Darbar. When the mutiny ended, the British Government demanded his extradition. Narinder Singh refused. In a compromise he was exiled from Patiala. Deep Singh went to Rishikesh and after a few years renounced the world. Some years later he established an ashram at Kosi, close to Agra, then another one in the Nandi Hills in Mysore and finally an ashram at Bangalore. During this period successive rulers of Patiala tried to persuade him to return to Patiala, he refused, and died at his ashram at Bangalore, well over a hundred years of age. He was known to his disciples as Tapasvi Ji. The story does not end here. His young wife, 19 years old when he left Patiala, remained in the Quila Mubarik, where she vowed to stay till her husband returned. She was known as Mai Sahib Chahalanwale and was the daughter of General Partap Singh Chahal of the Patiala army. She drew water each day from a well herself and cooked her own food. Her husband never returned and she died alone in 1942, at the age of
104.
It was during the second year of his reign that a Patiala force under Bakshi (General) Bir Singh accompanied the political agent Colonel Ochtolorny to confront Amar Singh Thapa, the Gurkha General, who was moving west from Nepal capturing the entire hill belt of Kumaon, Gharwal and the Punjab Hills. The battle took place at Malaun in Hindoor (Nalagarh) state on 15th April 1815. Amar Singh was defeated.
Hill areas as compensation Maharaja Karam Singh in compensation was given hill territory in perpetuity, from the Sutlej in the west to the river Giri in the east, and from Kalka in the south to Fagu in the north. The State in 1947 covered 5800 square miles. It was this Patiala in 1947 that my late father Maharaja Yadvindra Singh merged with India. He was one of the first princes to sign the Instrument
of Accession. He did so, as he told me on many occasions, that he considered it his duty, to secure
and strengthen our young independent country.
The writer is a former Chief Minister of Punjab
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Perhaps Madra and Paramjit did have records of a
Karam Singh who was “hanged by a rope from a tree by the British”, but that certainly was not Maharaja Karam Singh, who was a much-loved ruler of Patiala. He has always been remembered as the one who contributed a great deal to the expansion and consolidation of the Patiala State.