E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Complaining CMs 
SEVERAL states have joined issue with the Centre on the unfriendly recommendations of the Eleventh Finance Commission (EFC) and have demanded wholesale changes in them. The Chief Ministers, who met in New Delhi on Monday to give shape to their complaints, will not give up their demand and the BJP-led alliance government is no mood to oblige them. 

Wheels within coup wheels 
DEPOSED Fijian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry has added a new twist to the sordid coup drama by alleging that it was not a result of an ethnic divide but of a wider conspiracy hatched by some people of his country to favour an American firm.  

OPINION

Discord on policy priorities
by Balraj Mehta
THE Independence Day speeches of the President and the Prime Minister this year revealed a disconcerting discord on policy priorities for India. This can add to confusion and aggravate the already sharp dissension and social tensions in the country.

Pakistan: army within the army
By B. Raman
WHEN Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS), seized power on October 12 last and proclaimed himself Chief Executive of the state, many sections of the country’s elite hailed him as the saviour. Today, they sarcastically call him “General Retreat.”

MIDDLE

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Complaining CMs 

SEVERAL states have joined issue with the Centre on the unfriendly recommendations of the Eleventh Finance Commission (EFC) and have demanded wholesale changes in them. The Chief Ministers, who met in New Delhi on Monday to give shape to their complaints, will not give up their demand and the BJP-led alliance government is no mood to oblige them. In the days to come the dispute threatens to get shrill what with the inevitable prodding by non-NDA political parties. As usual, the Centre dithered when the protest was taking shape, then struck an unbending posture and finally sought to buy time by seeking a postponement of the conclave. When nothing succeeded it stopped the BJP Chief Minister of Gujarat attending the meeting. His absence said it all. But he took the precaution of deputing the finance secretary to take part in identifying the various issues and drafting a charter. The Centre sees a revolt in the collective demand and the logical next step is to reject the idea of rewriting the EFC report. But at least five states, including Gujarat, have friendly parties at the helm and it won’t do to disappoint them on the issue of devolution of funds. What is more, they are facong a financial crunch and are merely asking for what is their due or would have been if the EFC had not reduced their share in the divisible pool of central taxes. To overcome the shortfall, the states demand 33.5 per cent of the revenue collection (up from the present 29.5 per cent), creation of a special fund (a minimum of Rs 5000 crore every year) and changes in some of the critical criteria. The lukewarm response of the Centre was evident when it asked the Chief Ministers to await the second and final report of the EFC before taking further action.

There is a problem though. The second report is about the progress of economic reforms and then fix parameters to link them to fund transfer. It cannot reopen the settled share of the states, nor can the Centre itself amend the recommendations, not after what it has claimed all along. A senior Finance Ministry official was telling media men that there was no question of “tinkering” with the report, which would violate a long tradition. Earlier the government claimed that since the EFC was a statutory body (set up under a constitutional provision), its report was an award and the government was powerless to change it. It is now apparent that nobody read the EFC document carefully before routinely tabling it in Parliament. If someone had noticed the explosive nature of the new formula, a corrective could have been applied, although there was not much time. The EFC too should share the blame. It is not the forum to address the intractable problem of regional imbalance and a thousand crores of rupees every year will not end the economic and social backwardness of UP or Bihar or Orissa. There is something structural about the ills of these three populous states which are home to one-third of the total population. It should be readily conceded that regional imbalance is dangerous and is widening but the cure does not lie in diverting funds from the so-called developed states. This is tokenism and only salves the conscience of a few liberals and plays into the hands of those who benefit from the cheap labour force from these states. 

Misusing research funds

IT is quite depressing to learn that a major portion of the laboratory reserve fund meant for research and development has not been used for the intended purpose for a long time. The painful truth has come to light at a time when there is mounting pressure on the government to increase the budget allocations for science and technology to at least 2 per cent of the country's GDP. In its damning indictment of the R & D institutions functioning under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India says that a large portion of the laboratory research fund has been spent on providing mobile telephones and eatables and organising annual functions and jubilee celebrations. The CAG has come down heavily particularly on the Directors of the Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehra Dun, the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, the Central Building Research Institute, Roorki, the Central Mining Research Institute, Dhanbad, and the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, for misusing the funds meant for promoting activities related to research and development. The CSIR laboratories' Directors responsible for spending as much as Rs 6.37 crore on activities having nothing to do with the primary functions of the institutions under their control should be punished for wasting money when these pillars of India's scientific advancement are faced with a serious resource crunch.

It seems the heads of these institutions are more interested in self-promotion activities than undertaking work connected with research and development. This is so because over the years the directorship of the CSIR laboratories has degenerated into a political appointment. There is no fear of losing the coveted position so long as one continues to enjoy political or bureaucratic patronage. Thus it is not surprising if these directors are reckless in spending the funds under their control and also unconcerned about promoting a scientifically creative environment. They do not hesitate to marginalise even those who show great promise in their area of spcialisation. Thus it is quite understandable if most of the scientists in these laboratories are feeling suffocated. The atmosphere can be improved considerably if the headship becomes a rotational assignment among the senior scientists, as is the practice in the universities. But the government should issue a directive that under no circumstances should the laboratory reserve fund be diverted to activities other than those related to research and development. 

Wheels within coup wheels 

DEPOSED Fijian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry has added a new twist to the sordid coup drama by alleging that it was not a result of an ethnic divide but of a wider conspiracy hatched by some people of his country to favour an American firm. He has disclosed that the May coup was actually plotted by his predecessor Sitiveni Rabuka to become the country’s President but he was upstaged by George Speight who took Mr Chaudhry and his colleagues hostage three days earlier. The two of them were in league in this murky affair. All this, according to Mr Chaudhry, who is currently in India to solicit support for undoing the mischief, was to ensure that a contract for harvesting forests and processing timber went to a particular American firm instead of a British Government-owned firm selected by the Fijian government on the basis of its good track record. It was Rabuka who played a behind-the-scene role while Speight himself was also interested in promoting the American firm. Mr Chaudhry has further alleged that the US Embassy in Suva was “pushy” about the firm from its country getting the contract. His charge that big bucks were involved is worthy of close examination. From the looks of it, the role played by Rabuka indeed appears dubious. The man who had earlier destroyed democracy in Fiji tried to play the honest mediator this time between the coup leaders and the government with the help of the Great Council of Chiefs. The riots that broke out against the Fijians of Indian origin also were brazenly abetted by Speight and Rabuka men. What needs to be underlined is that Mr Chaudhry is not accusing the US Government of having a hand in the coup. All that he is saying is that “there was big money and power involved”. He has sought an enquiry to identify the real players behind the scene. But it is doubtful if the unvarnished truth would come out in the prevailing circumstances. An emergency has been declared in Fiji and Indians are hardly in a position to enjoy full-fledged rights as citizens of that country. It is not clear who will be the right person or persons to conduct the enquiry.

Mr Chaudhry has also called for a greater Indian role in restoring his government to power. Implicit in this appeal is the grouse that the role played by the country of his forefathers so far has been less than satisfactory. He may not say so in so many words but there is a large section that does feel that the Indian approach has been rather passive. The official response that New Delhi did not want to be seen to be intervening too strongly because that may have heightened the attacks on Indians in Fiji is not very convincing. There is nothing wrong if the Indian diaspora looks up to the land of its ancestors in an hour of crisis. Meanwhile, during his visit to India, there has been an eager attempt to project him as the son of the soil. Several leaders have tried to cash in on his origin. While basking in the warmth of this reception, Mr Chaudhry has done well to reiterate that he is here not as a Haryanavi or an Indian but as a Fijian whose ancestors happened to be from Haryana. Such identification with the country of one’s adoption is very significant for any Indian deciding to settle abroad or any foreigner taking Indian citizenship. 

THE FASCIST IDEOLOGY
Shades and shadows in India
by Darshan Singh Maini

THE fascist ideology as a scourge that swept Germany, Italy and Spain in the wake of World War I undoubtedly could not be revived in its virulent and shattering form or force in any part of the World after its ignoble leaders and cadres had come to their brutal and bitter end with the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies in 1945. The Allied victory in World War II, and the complete destruction of the fascist elements in Europe, however, could never destroy the fascist virus, for it was beyond the reach of guns and bombs, beyond, indeed, the entire machinery of war, beyond even the thought of the civilised thinker in a deeper sense. And since this deadly virus keeps contaminating the bodypolitic of certain nations fitfully, and has symbiotic affinities with certain types of persons, communities and races, there is always a vigilant need for containing the plague wherever and whenever it begins to acquire alarming proportions.

Though one could name several countries where committed fascist groups in their noisy, naked and sinister aspects have kept raising their heads as even in America (the dreaded KKK) — Austria in today’s Europe being a transparent example of fascism rising in its jack-boots to claim and share political power —, my aim in this column is to focus attention on its marginal but ugly manifestations in India for the present. And, of course, my particular case-study here is the dramatic — and traumatic — rise of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra under the “messianic” and manic leadership of Mr Bal Thackeray, the Sena’s self-styled and defied “Samrat”. The recent theatre of absurdity, anguish and shame in connection with his aborted or stalled arrest suggesting ominous signs and consequences cannot but ignite “the imagination of disaster”.

The phrase “the imagination of disaster” first used by the most thoughtful and penetrating psychological novelist of America, Henry James, was meant to anatomise evil in human nature, not in its theological sense, or in its atavistic, primeval, existential sense, but in its most refined, cunning and artful aspects to be found in highly civilised strata of society. Our concern, however, is with its primitive, pathological manifestations in quasi-civilised societies that show their shaggy undergrowth — the jungles within the corporate, communal psyche — when a crisis precipitates the Darwinian urges chiefly in disguise. Though such monolithic, totalitarian, fundamentalist and destructive urges can be seen in action in so many parts of India from Kashmir to Kohima and beyond, the Shiv Sena phenomenon has a sui generis fascist form, complete with its figurative supremo and fanfare. But before we touch upon the Mumbai “deity”, a very brief peep into the nature of fascism per se would help put matters in some perspective.

Some of the most insightful studies of fascism in psycho-political essays, and in art and literature naturally appeared during that dark and frightening period of the Nazi ascendancy in the Germany of the thirties and forties of the last century, the Jewish pogroms, concentration and incineration camps and the war-time hell being the outcome of fascism in action and arms. For those interested in fiction, I may recall its fascinating dramatisation in the novels of the British writer, Rex Warner — in such novels as “The Professor”, “The Aerodrome” and “Men of Stones”. What, indeed, is the true character of fascism? How does it germinate, expand and plume up to claim power? These are very large and complex questions involving a whole lot of perceptions and imponderables. My purpose would, then, be well served if some of fascism’s gruesome, bizarre and beastly features could be summed up in so many words.

To begin with, fascism has all along existed in human history in one form or another, though it emerged as a full-blown, diabolical ideology only in the earlier decades of the 20th century when capitalism and corporate giants directly or indirectly allowed a small section of the lumpen elements, gangster outfits and some fanatical splinter ideologies to become a menace even to their own promoters. And in this structure of racism, primitivism, anti-Jewish phobia (blessed by the extremist forms and churches of Christianity) was the genesis of the fascist syndrome. And its more diabolical features included (a) the sadistic need for victims and scapegoats, (b) the creation of a ghoulish but “glamorous” bogey or phobia, (c) isolating one cause, any historical, unforgotten national injury, and focusing on it with dreams and dramatics, (d) the building up of a cult “charismatic” figure, the “messiah”, (e) the raising of a secret machinery at various social levels, (f) and investing the whole sinister thing with a kind of “religious” fervour.

Fascism, then, is a state of mind in which certain types of sensibilities prone to atavistic impulses evolve their own dark dialectic, and help create a symbiosis of psycho-pathological and psycho-somatic elements. And soon enough the possessed leader and the mesmerised followers in seeking to consummate the chaos within their selves begin to dramatise the buffoonery of their own chaotic urges. A theatre of sorts is hoisted, and the hero and the harlequin merge into a larger-than-life fictive personage. And the ground reality is degraded into a substitute reality, and made to look virtual and viable. The whole aim is to reach down to what Freud styled as “the lower depths” in human nature, and activise them in the service of a perceived or created cause.

Our concern, as I have hinted at the outset, is primarily with the tin-pot fascist Indian leader who has over a period of time managed to create a fascist psychosis among a large section of the Maharashtra Hindus, and who, employing every trick in the trade, has mastered the art of “hurling streets” on the unsuspecting and innocent heads of the Mumbaiites. And he has learnt one lesson quite thoroughly from his profession as a cartoonist and journalist: how to extend the residues of a past even into what Goebbles called “the Big Lie”, and in the process, trivialise or bastardise the truth. Thus is created a dynamics of destruction and demolition.

I was, therefore, not a little dismayed to see a couple of senior columnists and balanced thinkers, otherwise, rationalise the Bal Thackeray phenomenon in terms of the Hindu Renaissance. Those familiar with the history of the Renaissance concept — the European revival of certain Hellenistic virtues and the creation of an age of enlightenment and massive artistic and literary upsurge that included the great Italian painters and, in England, Shakespeare, above all — would, on the contrary, perceive the Shiv Sena revival of “pristine” Hinduism only as a regression. For the Eternal India which inspired even the West with its poetry of thought and spirit, and which created a Buddha, a Nanak, a Vivekananda, a Gandhi, among other greats, is simply beyond the reach of Mr Bal Thackeray’s “men and mice”.

Discord on policy priorities
by Balraj Mehta

THE Independence Day speeches of the President and the Prime Minister this year revealed a disconcerting discord on policy priorities for India. This can add to confusion and aggravate the already sharp dissension and social tensions in the country.

The President, as he spoke, was sombre. But his message was remarkable for its sensitivity towards the apprehensions and aspirations of the popular masses. The Prime Minister, who adopted a hectoring tone and tenor, might have, however, thrilled the cosmopolitan elite.

The Prime Minister, unlike his predecessors heading minority coalition governments in the last decade, was certainly not ambiguous on his single-track market-friendly economic reform policy. He rejected all reservations on this score. But for the mass of the people, the official policy and its implications for a whole decade has been visibly hostile to their interests. The gains of reforms have, after all the rhetoric about “modernisation”, been monopolised by hardly 10 per cent of the population of India. The privatisation-globalisation process has indeed been retrogressive in all its aspects — economic, social, cultural and even political. The Indian people are, however, supposed by the arrogant market-friendly reformers, both inside and outside the governing set-up of the day, to be a patient lot that can be made to accept or submit to all their blandishments.

The time-frame for the market-friendly reforms to work wonders for the Indian economy was originally postulated to be brief — only about three years. But the hectic effort based on large inflows of foreign capital and the mythical efficiency of the private enterprise in business and economic management has failed to give the promised results even after a whole decade. The mass of the exploited and deprived people are, therefore, disconcerted and restive. But the cosmopolitan elite with whom Mr A.B. Vajpayee has so eagerly associated himself after he became the Prime Minister is still glib and smug. What is being demanded of the people of India to make the market-friendly reforms work, the Prime Minister seems innocently to argue, are “efficiency standards at an international level” to partake of a share in the gains of the globalisation process. But this excludes the mass of the people of India from the ambit of the economic reform process as it has been conceived, ordained and implemented in India. Given the illiteracy, poor health care and debilitating malnutrition as well as social and gender oppression for the mass of the people, hardly 10 per cent of the population in India can engage in the “efficient economic system” and be able to benefit from exposure to foreign competition and liberalisation of economic activity.

Meanwhile, widening of economic disparities and social cleavages must be accepted as unavoidable and irreversible. It is not fortuitous that the social cohesion and solidarity that are imperative for steady, efficient and sustainable economic growth and genuine and democratic modernisation of society are coming under a grave threat in India. Mr Vajpayee on his part has, however, chosen to disregard all his electoral commitments to the people, and is at odds with even his own political party. He is brushing aside all questioning of his policies and management of politics within and outside the faction-ridden coalition of disparate political parties that he is heading. He has become devoted to and outspoken about integrating the Indian economy with the economies of the developed countries, especially the USA. He has put high on his agenda the winning of the confidence of the foreign investors and their political representatives abroad who seem to entertain many reservations about the capacity of the backward India to ensure them high returns and foolproof security for them. He seems to be so concerned about foreign confidence that he is not too worried about losing the confidence not only of the opposition but even his political allies, as well as the mass of the Indian people.

The internal security concerns of India do not seem to be perceived properly by the ruling establishment at present. The ruling elite is evidently reluctant and its responses are blurred in dealing with wider and deeper economic, social and political issues. Any manifestation of mass unrest is treated as a “law and order” problem. The ruling elite is keen to streamline “policing” and strengthening a centralised system for the maintenance of law and order.

It is significant, however, that the Chief Ministers at a conference on security, convened by the Union Home Ministry, objected strongly to such moves as a violation of the federal principle and an encroachment on the domain of the state governments under the Constitution of the Indian republic. The proposal to enact a central law for the prevention of terrorism similar to the infamous Tada has been opposed as draconian by the Human Rights Commission as well.

The emphasis on combating the terrorist threat under centralised administrative control and active collaboration with foreign police and intelligence agencies, among them the CIA of the USA and Mossad of Israel, have, however, grave political-strategic implications. The apprehension is valid and widespread that the measures being taken in the name of internal security and putting down of cross-border terrorism seem to be actually aimed at quelling the increasing mass discontent in the country and curbing the mass movements for the assertion of the right of the people to an equitable share of available national resources as well as development gains that are being increasingly denied to them.

The Prime Minister seems, by blowing hot and cold over the threat of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, to belittle India’s military strength and its ability to beat back foreign aggression. It also shows a lack of confidence in the resilience and endurance of the Indian democracy of which the people of India are rightly proud.

The fact indeed is that the vulnerability of the Indian State and Indian democracy is exposed far more from internal subversion of vested interests entrenched in the economy, society and polity than the threat of external aggression. The Indian people, who cherish and celebrate the triumph of their mass struggle against foreign colonial rule to win political freedom for the country, also regard democratic assertion as the most potent instrument for upholding their rights and realisation of their aspirations. The predatory vested interests that were nurtured by foreign colonial rule are aggravating mass discontent and cleavages in the economy, society and polity in all countries in the South Asian region. They are furiously working for the denial of democratic rights to the people to perpetuate their exploitation under neo-colonial domination. They seem to have now stepped up efforts to destabilise the democratic polity of India by many ways and means, ingenious as well as crude, under shady collaboration arrangements with powerful vested interests abroad. The integrity of the Indian State can and must, however, be upheld by the assertion of its sovereign status, its democratic character and solidarity of its people. These are the imperatives that must not be compromised or diluted. Those who advertise the charms of globalisation — a handful of cosmopolitan elite in the country with shady foreign connections — must be stoutly rebuffed. 

Keep the buck moving
by Jaswant Singh

WHEN President Harry Truman placed the sign, “The buck stops here”, on his desk, he displayed his obvious inability to move with the times. Today, as it was in the days of President Truman, the “in” thing is to keep the buck in a state of perpetual spin. The sooner you manage to make the buck jump on to another person’s lap, the more efficient you are in disposing of urgent work. The trick is never to let yourself be made accountable for anything. It has to be someone else, and if some day the rap comes, it will be that someone else who will take it.

Every time a new government comes to power, it invariably breaks its election promises. And the reason invariably is the desperate situation in which the previous administration had left the country.

It is standard practice in our administration to toss the buck in as many directions as possible, even if the matter happens to be as simple as getting a pencil sharpener for an employee. An efficient babu can build on such a minor indent a file as thick as the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and make the poor chap’s need for a pencil sharpener an issue as earth-shaking as nuclear disarmament. The case will hop from table to table, from room to room, from department to department, till the poor fellow gets fed up and makes a beeline for the nearest stationery shop. The secret lies in identifying the person in whose court the ball has to be played, and be ready to lob it in another direction as soon as it gets back to you. The simplest of simple things has to be magnified larger than life so that insignificant molehills are turned into formidable mountains. Now, are you surprised that it takes the government ages to decide a matter “officially”, even if common sense would takes no time to draw that conclusion.

Passing the buck has also become part of our social fabric and we practise it in a variety of ways, sometimes even unknowingly. We avoid calling a drunk and drunk. He suffers from alcoholism. Youths who take to drugs are not addicts, but victims of maladjusted families. Failures in life are not plain wash-outs, they are underdogs brought to grief by an unjust social order. The buck passes from the drunk to a disease, from the drug addict to his family environment, and from personal failing to society at large. It does not matter that many others similarly placed have done well in life.

Even in our personal lives we keep blaming everything on everyone except ourselves. We reach late for an appointment and blame the delay on a traffic jam, or the silly taxi that broke down on the way, but we are unable to say the simple thing that we should have left a little earlier. That will amount to accepting that the delay was our fault.

A person slips on something on the road, falls down and hurts himself. He looks at his bruised knee and curses that idiot who had thrown that slippery stuff on the road, instead of saying that he should have kept his eyes on the ground.

We all thus spend a lifetime shifting blame, searching for scapegoats, looking for excuses, passing the buck. Then why should President Truman have thought differently? Why could he not go along with the world and keep tossing the buck around. He could not have been short of targets. In any case, today we, the lesser mortals, have no reason to be tempted to follow the presidential precept. Our buck-passing capacity should never cease. Like the “paimana”, it must always remain in “gardish”.

Pakistan: army within the army
By B. Raman

WHEN Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS), seized power on October 12 last and proclaimed himself Chief Executive of the state, many sections of the country’s elite hailed him as the saviour. Today, they sarcastically call him “General Retreat.”

Many are the steps announced or promised by him and subsequently withdrawn or diluted under such pressure.

To understand why, instead of riding the horse, the General finds himself caught in the arms of an octopus, one has to focus on certain aspects of Pakistani society. The Punjabis constitute 48.2 per cent of Pakistan’s population followed by the Pakhtuns (13.1 per cent), the Sindhis (11.8 per cent), the Seraikis (southern Punjabis-9.8 per cent), the Mohajirs (7.6 per cent), the Balochis (4.2 per cent) and others (5.3 per cent).

Seventy per cent of the officers and other ranks in the armed forces are Punjabis and Seraikis, 28 per cent Pakhtuns and only 2 per cent come from the remaining ethnic groups. The majority of the Punjabi officers come from the feudal families of Punjab. Their sympathies are naturally with the opposition of their relatives and friends to the imposition of a tax on agriculture. They had in the past prevented Pakhtun and Punjabi dictators and politicians from imposing the tax, and they are not going to now allow a Mohajir General (Musharraf) to do so.

The bazaari-fundamentalist-smuggler nexus has always been strong in Pakistan. The bazaaris and the smugglers have the financial power to pay the street elements for use against rulers unsympathetic to their demands; and the fundamentalists, though lacking in electoral support being able to win only about 3 per cent of the votes in elections, have the street power for use against the rulers with the help of the money from the bazaaris.

It was the agitation of the bazaaris and the religious parties over Mr Nawaz Sharif’s succumbing to the IMF conditionalities; his alleged collaboration with the USA against the Taliban and Osama; and his failure to enforce the Shariat; which facilitated the takeover by Musharraf without any popular protest.

The fear of the three elements once again combining together — this time, against him — is an important reason for the vacillation of the so-called “no- nonsense General”.

The armed forces are the most pampered segment of Pakistan — consuming about 6 per cent of the GDP — including overt and covert defence expenditure — as against around 5 per cent in 1991-92. During the same period, the development expenditure came down from 7.5 per cent of the GDP to three. The State spends twice as much (salaries, pensions, medicare, training and equipment costs etc) on the armed forces personnel, serving and retired, and their relatives, who constitute less than 10 per cent of the population, as it does on the remaining 90 per cent, who have nothing to do with the armed forces.

That is why, the Pakistanis refer to their Corps Commanders as “Crore Commanders”. However, it also happens to be still the only functional segment of the State, the civil bureaucracy, including the police, having been rendered dysfunctional by successive political rulers and military dictators. This should partly explain the power wielded by the military.

Before 1977, the motivating factors used in the military training institutions were patriotism and their pride in themselves as loyal Pakistanis. The young officers passing out looked upon the army as that of the State.

Zia-ul-Haq, changed this and introduced the additional motivating factors of their faith in Islam and their pride in themselves as true Muslims. Those passing out after 1977 started looking upon themselves not only as soldiers of the State, but also of Islam. This feeling was further strengthened by Zia and his US supporters to motivate them to fight against the so-called satans in Afghanistan.

Zia allowed the Islamic parties to use serving and ex-servicemen for training their cadres in their madrasas and equipped them with US-supplied arms and ammunition to use against the Soviet troops. To further strengthen the religious motivation, he inducted religious teachers in large numbers into the Education Department and recognised the certificates issued by the madrasas as equivalent to university degrees for recruitment to government service.

The result was the increasing Islamisation of the middle and lower ranks of the military and the coming into being of a parallel armed force, consisting of the military-trained and equipped madrasa cadres, not under the control of the State. The Islamised soldiers and officers, who constitute an army within the army, often join hands with the parallel armed force of the religious parties and frustrate the attempts of any ruler to rein in the madrasas and their irrational products.

The irrationality is not just confined to the armed forces. It is spreading to Pakistan’s nuclear and space scientific community. Many of the younger scientists had their early education in the madrasas before they moved over to the universities or went abroad for higher education. A.Q. Khan, the self-proclaimed father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, though educated in Europe before 1977, is himself a rogue religious element, who has been fraternising with the scientists of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya.

All these elements in the army, the religious parties and the nuclear scientific community have joined hands in frustrating any attempt of General Musharraf to sign the CTBT, control the madrasas, disarm the jihadists, and pressure the Taliban to moderate its activities.

Under Zia, General Musharraf himself played a role in this Islamisation and in the induction of Osama into the Afghan theatre and later, as the Director-General of Military Operations under Ms Benazir Bhutto during her second tenure as Prime Minister, he distinguished himself as one of the godfathers of the Taliban. Having reared them, he now finds it difficult to control them.

Even if he wants to, in order to prevent the Talibanisation of Pakistan, the army within the army led by the likes of Lt-Gen Mohammad Aziz, his Chief of General Staff, and Lt-Gen Muzaffar Usmani, Commanding Officer of the 5 Corps at Karachi, will not let him. Since it is this army within the army which captured power before his plane landed in Karachi and paved the way for his takeover as the Chief Executive, he cannot be dismissive of their views.

The Pakistan armed forces still have many senior officers, who are concerned over this army within the army, and this is particularly so in the air force and the navy, where the religious influence is not high. It is to them that Mr Sharif has been indirectly appealing by raising the issue of how General Musharraf kept not only his Prime Minister, but also many of his colleagues, in the dark about his Kargil misadventure, undertaken at the instigation of this army within the army.

— Asia Defence News International

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

I am the birth less, the deathless

Lord of all that breathes

I seem to be born;

It is only seeming,

Only my maya.

I am still master of my Prakriti

The power that makes me.

***

When goodness grows weak,

When evil increases,

I make myself a body.

In every age I come back

To deliver the holy

To destroy the sin of the sinner,

To establish righteousness.

***

Even a mind that knows the path

Can be dragged from the path:

The senses are so unruly.

But he who controls the senses

And recollects the mind

And fixes it on me,

I call him illumined.

***

The uncontrolled mind

Does not guess that the Atman is present:

How can he mediate?

Without meditation where is peace?

Without peace where is happiness?

The wind turns a ship

From its course upon the waters:

The wandering winds of the senses

Cast man’s mind adrift

And turn his better judgement from its course.

When the man can still the senses

I call him illumined.

***

O son of Kunti

Lay these alsoAs offerings before me

***

You have the right to work

But for the work’s sake only.

You have no rights to the fruits of work

Must never be your motive in working.

Never give way to laziness either.

—The Bhagavad Gita IV.6 : IV.7,8 : II,60,61: II,66,68 : IX,27 : II,47

***

By and large, the chief characteristic of a religious person has been that he is sombre, serious and sad-looking — like one vanquished in the battle of life, like renegade from life. In the long life of such sages it is Krishna alone who comes dancing, singing and laughing …. Acceptance of life in its totality has attained full fruition in Krishna. That is why India held him to be a perfect incarnation of God.

— Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Krishna : The Man and His Philosophy. Chapter I