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An indecent proposal Aggressive postures |
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When silence is not golden
‘And the family lived happily thereafter’
Building bridges over the wall of Partition
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An indecent proposal THE reported proposal to appoint P. Sathasivam as the Governor of Kerala has raised justifiable concerns in various quarters. It is for the first time that a former Chief Justice of India, who retired in April this year, is being made a Governor. This is a clear case of political patronage being extended to a former head of the judiciary and, if it goes through, would set a bad precedent. By attempting to win over a former CJI with a post-retirement job and denying judgeship to Gopal Subramanium, the message the Modi government is sending to the judiciary is clear. Sathasivam's reported defence is that he is accepting only a constitutional post. He points out that there are ex-CJIs doing consultancy and commercial work. One former CJI is a member of the Rajya Sabha. Some former high court Chief Justices have worked as law ministers. In terms of protocol the Chief Justice of India occupies the fourth slot after the President, Vice-President and Prime Minister. One expects the occupant of this august office to maintain that dignity and status post-retirement also. The legal fraternity needs to set a code of conduct and exercise moral pressure against deviations, when and if any. Justice Sathasivam may not like to believe in hierarchy after retirement. But how would he stop people from drawing conclusions about the order issued by a Bench headed by him providing relief to Amit Shah, BJP president, in an encounter case and the offer of a gubernatorial post from the BJP government in which Shah is a key player? If Sathasivam accepts this proposal, he would not only end up hurting his own image but also of the judiciary at large. As for the Modi government, the ignominy is no less. It is already seen in a tearing hurry to have a greater say of the executive in judicial appointments. By making such overtures to former judges it would set an example for politicians at the state level to follow. This is a new challenge to the independence of the judiciary, which requires a wider debate.
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Aggressive postures South-East Asian
nations have become increasingly restive in the wake of what they perceive as active Chinese moves to assert its dominance over the South China Sea. The Philippines recently accused China of building structures and a possible air-strip on the Johnson Reef, which the Philippines claims as its own territory. Japan has voiced its discontent about the Chinese claims on the
Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands. Even the friendly communist nation protested vociferously when China deployed an oil rig in an area that Vietnam claims as its exclusive economic zone. The rig was moved later but the rift remains. India is now far more active in the region than earlier. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Look-East policy is being implemented. The South China Sea issue, however, often figured significantly in External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to the East Asian countries. It was also referred to during the Prime Minister's visit to Japan. The littoral nations are worried about assertive posturing by the economic giant that is now also flexing its military muscle. The disputes are old and, in some cases, historical. However, predicated on who controls the tiny atolls that are often the butt of contention is the issue of the substantial quantities of oil and gas that the area is thought to contain. The exploitation of such hydrocarbon deposits can be vital to the economic development of all countries in the region. The Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea Agreement, signed in 2002, is non-binding, although it is cited by various countries to support their claims. The Chinese would like to deal with individual nations. However, the aggrieved nations are now internationalising such incidents. China needs to make moves that provide its littoral neighbours with the reassurance that they need. India has no direct role in the dispute and has to be mindful of its long land border. It can still help ASEAN countries build a broader diplomatic consensus on the issue, even as it increases its engagement with the region.
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Thought for the Day
Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?
—Bill Watterson, author of the comic strip 'Calvin and Hobbes'
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India's contribution to the war GREAT Britain declared war on Germany on the night of the 4th August. The news was published in India the following morning. Forthwith the Ruling Princes of India came forward in a body with offers of the entire body of their troops for active service in the war. When His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales opened a national fund for the relief of distress among the members of the family of soldiers who have been sent to the front, the Nizam, the Maharaja of Bikaner, the Maharaja of Kashmir and a number of other Princes sent in liberal contributions in aid of that fund. This was followed by the offer of a Hospital ship by the Ruling Princes, the initiative in this respect having been taken by His Highness Maharaja Sindhia of Gwalior and the rest of the rulers of Central Indian States including Bhopal; and contributions from the Maharaja of Kashmir, the Maharaja of Mysore, the Maharaja of Jodhpur and a number of others. Indians enlisted in the British Army ONE piece of news deserves to be rescued from the mass of confusing cablegrams that are being sent from England in the shape of war news. It refers to a possible relaxation of rules as regards Indians who have been enlisted for the Ambulance Corps but who may be allowed to enter the firing line. The London report says: "Under the new arrangement friends were allowed to enlist together. Several Indians are included in the battalion and they received a special ovation. They joined as medicals, but they will now probably have their heart's desire to enter the firing line." We hope the report is well founded. Indian enthusiasm is unbounded. Indians yield to none in their devotion to British Crown.
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When silence is not golden THE Prime Minister acted like greased lightning last week to defend his Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, against rumours that his son was guilty of political misdemeanours. So did Amit Shah, in quick succession, setting in motion speculation of some kind of internal party crisis, with influential insiders gunning for the Home Minister. Rajnath’s pacification was soon followed by a snub with the PMO blackballing his ministry’s nominee for appointment as the new interlocutor for the Naga peace talks. The new regime does not tolerate tall poppies. Everything is being centralised.
Contrast this with masterly inaction on the Supreme Court’s advice to the PM and CMs that those charge-sheeted should not be appointed or retained as ministers. Amit Shah, charged with murder and out on bail, is Modi’s right hand man while Nihal Chand Meghwal, among some other Cabinet ministers, is charged in a 2011 sexual assault case filed by a married woman in Jaipur. All those holding public office must enjoy moral authority if they are to command respect. These men, however, exemplify the worst in public life. While the course of justice in the 2002 riots drags on, Nanavati is still to submit his post-Godhra report after 12 years, even as police officers investigating the Ishrat Jehan case, in which Amit Shah is an accused, are being transferred to distant places. Meanwhile, the crude rantings of the BJP Gorakhpur MP, Yogi Avaidyanath, against the Muslim minority grow ever louder. These provocative and divisive taunts constitute incitements to offence, yet this foul-mouthed man is allowed to continue his abusive spree and has now been made in charge of the party’s UP election campaign. Modi remains silent. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Yogi is possibly echoing His Master’s Voice and is therefore beyond reproach. The slanderous Hindutva campaign against Christian conversions and Muslim “love jihad” is based on manufactured untruths for the most part. Two of the BJP's most visible Muslim spokespersons have Hindu wives. Are these men scoundrels to be derided and hounded and their innocent wives abused by a bunch of communal rowdies? And what to speak of Hindus, who cannot now by law practise bigamy and who therefore convert to Islam to marry a second time. Well-known film stars, Dharmendra and our famously silent Rajya Sabha MP Hema Malini, fall in that category. Are they guilty of “love jihad” by mutual consent? How can we tolerate such vicious and demeaning campaigns? Yet Mr Modi remains silent, disinvesting moral authority from his high office. How can he tolerate Adiyanath's latest assertion that any concentration of 10-20 per cent minorities spells communal riots in that area; a concentration of 20-35 per cent means greater trouble; and that if the concentration exceeds even the latter figure “there is no place for non-Muslims”. The Sangh Parivar is meanwhile reported to be engaged in organising “love jihad” groups in western UP to fight this presumed menace in all regions where its own cadres have been active in sowing communal discord. Is this a declaration of war against the nation's minorities and a warning that a plural society will not be tolerated at any cost? Is only a fanatical Hindu(tva) Rashtra to prevail? This is surely a caricature of the core Hindu belief in Vasudaiva Kutumbakam — that the world is my family — and its civilizational record of accommodation and tolerance. Can the courts, governments at all levels and public opinion remain silent and applaud hate speech by the Parivar's Hindutva Taliban? The Prime Minister plans to celebrate Teachers’ Day on September 5 through a national hook-up of his proposed speech that has been officially mandated to reach all aided and unaided schools countrywide. What wisdom or values is he going to impart to the nation’s children and teachers? Not that Mr Modi boasts any outstanding educational values. His warm endorsement of Dina Nath Batra's fantasies such calling on children to depict the true map of India as Akhand Bharat, including all of SAARC, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Tibet, preaches rank unconstitutionalism and scientific gibberish. Not content with that, his government is now intent on robbing proven institutions of excellence like the IITs of their autonomy by placing them under the UGC. Why this mania to control everyone and everything, especially education, information and communication? This bears a stamp of creeping authoritarianism. We seem headed for government and governance by innuendo. The PM is silent when he should speak and speaks when he should remain silent. These straws in the wind have not gone unnoticed. The Modi mystique is unravelling even before the 100-day “celebrations” of his regime. The nation's 5.7 per cent growth rate in the quarter ended June is welcome but derives from decisions, emerging trends and impulses that essentially belong to the earlier UPA era, whatever the government might claim. Some signs of early public disquiet can be read into the recent Assembly by-election results in which the BJP could win only seven out of 18 seats, plus one by its Akali ally, losing at least four seats in the bargain. Too much need not be read into this, but the message cannot be ignored. And what is one to make of the raging and tearing campaign the BJP has launched against Omar Abdullah and the J&K Assembly for daring to resolve that India and Pakistan should engage in talks. Is the BJP’s favoured option to have the government sit on its hands forever? Vajpayee was statesman enough to invite Musharraf for talks in Agra despite his terrible betrayal in Kargil. What is the BJP’s Kashmir policy other than joining Pakistan’s jihadists in reducing it to a communal cauldron? The party continues to betray profound ignorance of the origins, meaning and significance of Article 370. Let the BJP remember the poet’s wisdom: “Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war”. We must win the peace. www.bgverghese.com
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‘And the family lived happily thereafter’ Pesky calls made by tele-marketers often forced me to stay away from my landline telephone. One thing that irritated me time and again was the blatant invasion on my personal life by unknown callers, who seemed to know about by job and were ‘sure’ that I might be earning in six digits. Mostly they would start with an investment proposal and on refusal, would reveal the hidden secrets of a wonderful loan scheme. I repeatedly tried to convince them that I was neither too rich to make huge investment and nor too poor to ask for loans. But the pesky calls didn’t stop.
Unable to do anything about the nuisance, I silently came out with a new and noble idea. Unlike most other occasions, I was able to convince my wife that the placement of the phone-table was not right and it should be shifted to another suitable place. After consistent efforts made over a week, I was, somehow, able to convince her that an empty corner could be the most suitable place for this noise-maker. I knew that once convinced, my wife would like to do it herself and take the credit for this commendable job. “Look, how good the phone is looking at the new place,” she exclaimed after a few days with new-found enthusiasm and I appreciated her 'initiative’. I never realised that the new place was very close to my son's room. I would not like to call it a bedroom as it was more of a viewing, listening and playing room. Initially, he found his new companion quite interesting and engaging, but as this medium started interfering with his TV viewing and playing games on the computer, he came out with full-throated complaints against the placement of the phone. I could feel his agony, but was not able to do anything for many days. One day when I came back from my work place in the evening, he came rushing to the door and announced, “Papa, I think they will not make those silly calls now.” “That is good, but how do you know?” I questioned. When the most frequent caller asked, “Where is your Papa?” my son answered that he was not at home. When the lady asked again, “Where is Mum?” he replied that she was also not at home. And when she further interrogated by asking, “Where have they gone?” my son told them that they had gone to sell vegetables on the “rehri.” When the caller further asked him that when they would come back, he told her: “After finishing the entire stock”. While looking at me with both confusion and confidence, he asked, “Papa, did I do the right thing?” “Yes, you have done the right thing,” I answered with a smile. I was happy that 11-year-old Manraj had found a solution to the problem before ‘Trai’ could do anything about the pesky calls. The punch line appearing at the end of some the old Hindi films came to my mind as I hugged my son: “And the family lived happily thereafter.”
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Building bridges over the wall of Partition Ahmad Rafay Alam, a young man from an affluent Lahore family, was studying law in London. He met Martand Khosla, a student of architecture from India at their common residence in William Goodenough House, popularly known as Willie G in London’s Mecklenburgh Square. Alam recalls, “We hit it off immediately. For a Pakistani like me it was a great way to learn about the country next door that figured so prominently in defining what my country was. I had no notion of what India was other than the opinions I had picked up from school textbooks, television and the Press.”
The two found some common social connections and Alam came to know that both (the maternal as well as paternal) grandfathers of Martand shared the alma mater of his father, Lahore’s famed Government College. And one day Martand barged into Alam’s room and said in mock outrage, with choicest Punjabi curses, that he wanted rent because Alam was living in his house. True enough, the house, 90 Upper Mall, in Lahore, had belonged to Martand’s father before the Partition when they migrated from Lahore. Today they share a close friendship. Gen Now’s response This story seems so typical of the lost-and-found formula of Mumbaiya films but it is for real and a part of This Side, That Side, an anthology of graphic narratives, curated by young artist Vishwajyoti Ghosh. The young generation today is twice removed from the tragedy of the Partition and even from those who were born to families who were victims of violence or had to migrate never to return to what was once their home. So away from tragedy and nostalgia, the young are still curious about “the other” and the colleges and universities abroad have played a significant role in bringing together people who share a common heritage and speak the same language. In fact, this generation is sufficiently far away from the event to be able to view it more objectively and move onto a greater understanding of the dark political event that, according to scholars, saw a million die and some 15 million displaced. There is no account of rapes of women as the communal conflict saw unprecedented sexual violence against women on both sides of the border. The people-to-people contact in the civil societies’ initiative too has not gone in vain and there is an effort to build borders across Partitions through Facebook pages and other social network sites, recording oral narratives, and expressing it their own way even in comics and graphics. The Partition of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh and the impact of mass migration from there to the North-East in India is also a subject that is being studied now. The Partition did not end in 1947 as the Radcliffe Line ran through the hearts of Punjab and Bengal. Then came the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 midst violence and larger ramifications. There are several stories on the crises of 1971 in This Side, That Side. Recently, the young editor of a journal brought out in Silchar, Arjun Chaudhri, whose area of research has been cultural memory, held a symposium in Delhi analysing what had happened in 1971 and its impact on the North-East. The process of demystification is gradually happening in spite of a concerted effort on both sides to keep the situation of confusion and conflict intact. The process has indeed been slow but various reconciliation and conflict-resolution initiatives all over the world have contributed in the shift of thinking minds away from an engineered legacy of alienation and abhorrence. The popular manifestation of the divisive psyche is to be seen in what the guides have to say when one visits heritage sites. On a trip to Khajuraho, we found the guide saying that there was much more erotica by way of sculptures but it had been vandalised by the Muslim invaders. Years later, while walking through Lahore’s Shalimar Bagh, a guide took upon himself to come to our group and say that many Mughal splendours of the garden had been destroyed during the Sikh rule of Punjab. The conspiracy of history books on both sides extended itself to ensure that the chasm thus created was never bridged.
Reworking the subcontinent’s history The 1980s and 1990s had seen several conscious efforts by historians in India to rework the history of the subcontinent in ways different from those of colonial historians to dispel the myths that not only resulted in the Partition of 1947 but also led to continuing rioting between the two communities who had lived side by side in secular India, thereby resulting in the rise of intolerance. This was the time that the subcontinent saw the revival of Saadat Hasan Manto and a study of Partition literature by other writers. These writers had stood by those chroniclers who had written of the shared human tragedy and not viewed it on a communal basis. Strangely, historians of that time had not played a very fair role as communal polarisation had created violence of a kind never before witnessed between the two communities, leading to the mass exodus on both sides. Contemporary historians turned to literature as an unbiased source of the event, given the silence of the social scientists. It is literature perhaps that touches the nerve most poignantly. Oldtimers recall that at one of the first India-Pakistan mushairas held in the 1950s in Karachi, young Zehra Nigah, a celebrated poet and activist, got up and recited a couplet: “Ashiyane ki baat karte ho, Kis zamane ki baat karte ho”! (“You talk of a nest called a home, Of what lost age do you talk”!) Everyone present shed tears. Similarly, Ustad Damun, the Punjabi poet of Lahore’s gardens, recited lines to the shared sorrow at another such mushaira in Lahore: “Barbaad ihna azaadian ton hoye tusi vi ho, hoye assee vi haan/ Laali akhiyan di payi dasadi hai roye tusi vi ho, roye assee vi haan” (“You were ruined in the name of freedom, so were we/ Your reddish eyes reveal you wept, so did we”). Confessional accounts Who were the guilty? It is a question difficult to answer when the reference is to a carnage as gruesome as that of 1947. It is in literature that many confessional accounts were published but some 50 years after the divide, oral histories were collected by people on both sides of the border. In the narratives on film as well as in the print media many people admitted the failings of their own community. Distance from an event makes room for being dispassionate. So it was with the Partition. A sad Partition story that comes to my mind involves the famous playback singer, late Mohammad Rafi. A couple of decades ago, a memorial was erected to the singer at his village, Kotla Sultan Singh. Visiting the village near Amritsar, one met his class fellows who recalled many anecdotes from his childhood. They also said that when a Rafi Nite was held in Amritsar in the 1960s, the villagers reached there in tractor trolleys to the delight of the singer. A villager recalled, “Rafi declared on stage that he would sing all night for the people from his pind. We invited him to come here but he did not do so.” At this, an aged woman quipped, “What would he come here for?His entire clan was butchered by the mobs, his sisters were raped and killed. A hundred bodies rotted for four days here till the villagers decided to cremate them. Would he come here to remember that?” The truth came out from the woman’s heart quite spontaneously. In fact, women activists and groups have also played a significant role in connecting across the barbed wire. There has been a concerted effort to organise women all over South Asia in their struggle for empowerment. Well-known journalist, writer and activist of Pakistan, Beena Sarwar, holds that women have been at the forefront of peace initiatives all over the world and so also is the case between India and Pakistan. She says: “Women have played an important part in the peace process in part because they have a particular experience of the suffering that has accompanied the seemingly endless conflict and wars between India and Pakistan.” It may be recalled that Urvashi Batalia had taken the initiative in her remarkable book, The Other Side of Silence, to record oral narratives of the Partition from both sides of the border. Oral narratives by women who were victims of the Partition violence went into making of a research volume, Borders and Boundaries by Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon. However, in Pakistan while there is a sizable number of peace activists yet the preoccupation of the young with the Partition is less in comparison. There are multiple reasons for this and a London-based Pakistani Punjabi poet sums it up thus: “A majority of the Pakistani youth is unconcerned about the Partition and the main reason is the socio-political crisis and systematic distortion of history and deprivation of native rootedness that has engulfed Pakistan especially since Zia's martial law. But for me personally, being a Punjabi, thoughts about the Partition bring back all the grief, torture and shame. We Punjabis proved ourselves to be a suicidal nation that has never recovered from the communal curse of 1947 and even our great literature about Partition proves insufficient to heal us. Tensions on the India-Pakistan border have furthered those distances that I always believe exist only in foreign office registers. I hope we can learn from history.” It is a young woman of Indian origin in the US again who has taken up the initiative to build the 1947 Partition Archives. She is Guneeta Singh Bhalla, the Indian-American founder of The 1947 Partition Archive. A physicist by profession, she was moved by the Partition story her grandmother related to her. However, she did not record her grandmother’s account before the lady passed away. Later, inspired by the peace memorial in Hiroshima that records the testimonies of the survivors of the atomic bomb dropped there during World War II, she is all out to collect as much as she can from those who lived through the turbulent times of the Partition. A group of volunteers in Berkeley, besides many other young people in different countries are actively and intensely involved with the digital project as their target is to collect 10,000 stories by 2017, when seven decades of the Partition are completed. We wish then and now for many more meetings of Alams and Martands and peace for the sub-continent. Narratives of unity * Various reconcilication and conflict-resolution initiatives all over the world have contributed in the shift of thinking minds away from an engineered legacy of abhorrence and alienation. * There are moves to record oral history and build links through Facebook pages and social networking sites. * The Partition and the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 and its ramifications are being studied. This caused migration to the North-East and a ripple-down effect. * Since the youth is twice removed from the trauma of loss and despair, they are more objective in their approach. Thus the initiative to mediate the Partition through literature, symposiums, seminars and graphic novels and comics. nThe effort to build a Partition archives on the lines of the Peace memorial at Hiroshima is the initiative of Guneeta Singh Bhalla, a young physicist at Berkeley, California, US.
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The ancestral tag attached to our old telephone set didn't allow me to replace it with a new one which would reveal the identity of the caller. As my wife consistently refused to pick up the phone, “zara suno ji” became the most commonly heard jingle in my house.
