The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Pakistan under attack!

OVER 50 years after the British rulers encouraged the political leaders of the subcontinent to commit the blunder of demanding and accepting the partitioning of India, the logic of the creation of Pakistan is again under attack. That too from unexpected quarters. Perhaps not as unexpected considering the background of the leaders who have likened Pakistan to the ill-starred passenger luxury liner, the Titanic. Leading the charge is the irrepressible, and often irresponsible, Mr Altaf Hussain, leader of Pakistan's Muttahida Qaumi Movement. However, the attack is not going to cause any turbulence in Pakistan, because it has been made from his "home-in-exile" in London. Had he had the moral and political courage to sing "Sare jahan se achha Hindustan humara" in Pakistan as an expression of contempt for the country his forefathers created, he would have been sentenced to death for committing treason. The reasons which have made Mr Altaf Hussain cross the limit which may keep him away from Pakistan forever are not difficult to understand. Partition created two sets of refugees. The Hindus left Pakistan and became refugees in India. Similarly, a large number of Muslims, mainly from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, voluntarily migrated to Pakistan with dreams of fashioning a Pakistan of their dream. However, the Hindu refugees in secular India had little difficulty in striking roots in the new soil. Instead of becoming parasites, they contributed substantially to the economic, cultural and agricultural growth of India. If Mr L. K. Advani becomes Prime Minister, he would be the first mohajir [Urdu word for refugee] to occupy the highest political office in the subcontinent without having to overthrow a democratically elected government. In a manner of speaking, the success of democracy in India and the integration of the post-Partition refugee population with the mainstream political, social, cultural, scientific and economic life of the country is at the root of Pakistan's problems.

Mr Altaf Hussain's, and that of the vast Mohajir population literally now feeling trapped in Pakistan, outburst against the country his forefathers had mistaken as "home" should be seen against the backdrop of the success of Hindu mohajirs in India. But the mohajirs are not the only stateless people in Pakistan. The Sindhis, the Baluch and the Pakhtoons too are feeling suffocated because of the domination of the Punjabis. Their leaders too were present at the meeting in London in which Mr Altaf Hussain raised the banner of revolt against Pakistan. He described Pakistan as the Titanic of the Islamic "ummah" which no one will be able to stop from sinking. They announced a plan for launching a united opposition against the domination of the Punjabis in Pakistan. The mohajir leader told the packed hall that henceforth he would address his letters to Muslim leaders in India for keeping them informed about the attempt to treat non-Punjabis as slaves in Pakistan. Of course, the idea of Pakistan had come unstuck in 1971 itself when Bangladesh became an independent country. The same idea is under attack from another quarter with Sheikh Hasina asking General Pervez Musharraf to apologise for the atrocities committed by Pakistan in Bangladesh before it became free. If he decides to apologise, he should do it fast because time may not be on his side. According to a futuristic scenario drawn by US defence experts, there would be no Pakistan in existence by the year 2025. In their opinion, the economic crisis would worsen and the total breakdown of law and order would make Pakistan increasingly unstable. The experts in a 147-page study foresee "Sindhis, Baluch and Pathans, who have long resented a Punjabi-dominated Pakistan, rebel. Mohajirs take to the streets". Mr Altaf Hussain's address in London may have been inspired by the conclusions of the US defence experts. However, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Pakistan deserves a new and dynamic leadership for giving its people political stability and economic security. The current military dictatorship and the political parties which share with it the common one-point agenda of whipping up anti-India sentiments can only make the predictions of the prophets of doom come true.

Chidambaram’s problem

FOR the BJP, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is an eminently courtable Tamil leader though it will provide an odd shelter for so modern and catholic a mind as his. True, his compulsions are many and options are severely limited. Still it is difficult to associate the Harvard Business School graduate with a party he used to dub as “obscurantist” until a few years ago. He is an internationalist in his contacts and economic policies while the BJP is yet to discuss and adopt an economic platform and also faces problems and periodic outbursts from the sister RSS offshoot, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. He is a late entrant to politics and hence innocent of political intrigue. He draws strength from his aristocratic background and the enormous goodwill his family has built there. In the BJP he has to relate himself to veterans who have all been schooled in secret society methods and have tight mutual bonds which are difficult to break into. The present is different from the time when the late Kumaramangalam joined the saffron party. Then it was looking out for middle-level leaders from other parties to help it come out of the political pariah status, to widen the base and win elections and also to weaken the main opposition party, the Congress. Now it is in power, secure in the knowledge that the government is stable. In Mr Chidambaram’s state of Tamil Nadu, it has a base of sorts and also ambitious leaders jockeying for power-spelling slots or already occupying them. His entry or stay in the Sangh parivar will be uneasy and the atmosphere ill-suited to a blunt-speaking, free-thinking leader with justifiable ambitions.

This is the immediate political prospects if — and it is a very big if — he joins the party. His immediate past has been very painful both for him and twice-born liberals. He started as a Congressman, quite in line with the family tradition. For the past four years he knew that there was no future for the party and those in it. Even a staunch Rajiv loyalist like Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar tried to migrate to a greener pasture. So, Mr G.K. Moopanar and Mr Chidambaram floated the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) and in alliance with the DMK swept the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in 1995. But last year the DMK went over to the BJP-led NDA and morally and politically opposed to Ms Jayalalitha, the twosome put together several small parties, contested the elections and lost all seats. Mr Chidambaram retains his hostility to the “iron lady” and she heartily reciprocates the feeling. But Mr Moopanar, not wanting to face another electoral blank, has toned down his antagonism to Ms Jayalalitha and has reached an understanding and hopes the rocky relationship will last until next year’s assembly polls. So the former minister is out of the TMC and, with the Congress still in a deep coma, is feeling stranded. He is very rich and a brilliant lawyer and can retire from politics, but the Indian tradition ordains that once a politician, always a politician. Hence his search for political asylum even if the asylum-giver is the not-so-compatible BJP. His is not an individual’s dilemma. Only in his case it is sharp and sorrowful. Ideology has flowed out of the political system and those who still swear by ideology have insurmountable internal problems. Shorn of commitments or not acquiring them, stay in a political party can be strictly temporary and crossing the street, as it were, is the done thing. The BJP does not have much reason to celebrate. It is in danger of losing its character, for long its only asset. One possibility is that he may fight the Trichy byelection to the Lok Sabha as an Independent with the NDA support. The effort to hide an arrangement reflects the awkwardness of it all.

Change in Peru

NO tears will be shed in Peru over the exit of controversial President Alberto Fujimori, despite what he did for the Latin American country during the early part of his 10-year-old iron rule. By the time Mr Fujimori foisted himself on the country for an unprecedented third term, he had bid adieu to democratic values and was turning into a dictator in the garb of a democratically elected President. It was common knowledge that the May 28 elections had been manipulated to keep him in power. But the matter has come to a head only now, after it has been revealed that one of his closest supporters, Mr Vladimiro Montesinos, head of the secret police, had haggled with an Opposition member of Parliament to lure him into the government camp. The meeting was secretly videotaped and became yet another evidence that Mr Fujimori used underhand tactics to cling to power. He has since announced his resignation and called for new elections. That may pave the way for the victory of Opposition candidate Alejandro Toledo who had been a victim of shady election practices. Interestingly, it has also been announced that the secret police would be dissolved. The breaking out of the scandal may mark the end of a strange decade in which Peru moved on two tracks. The positive developments were tainted with an increasing disregard for democratic norms.

When Mr Fujimori rode to power, Peru was in a precarious financial condition and might have ended up as a basket case. But his “pizza and champagne” style of politics gave the country new hope. The successful economic measures that he took brought about a spectacular turnaround, making it one of the few success stories of Latin America. At the same time, he tackled Maoist guerrilla violence effectively and the Shining Path movement was defanged in a spectacular though illegal manner. But all these achievements were posted at the cost of democratic values. Mr Fujimori showed scant regard for constitutional niceties. He dissolved Parliament in 1992 and suspended the Constitution. Ever since then he had remained in power like a virtual dictator. He narrowly beat Mr Toledo in the April elections leading to a run-off in May. But Mr Toledo withdrew because of the brazen impartiality in the election process. Mr Fujimori registered a landslide victory. What has been heartening amidst all this chaos is the fact that the Organisation of American States and the USA have been pressing hard for the restoration of democracy. Now that their attempts have borne fruit, it will be necessary to ensure that genuine democratic rule returns. The country has heaved a sigh of relief over Mr Fujimori’s announcement that he would not be a candidate in the elections. At the same time, steps should be taken so that terrorism does not raise its ugly head again.

UNENDING FEMALE PERSECUTION
Haryana society in throes of change
by D. R. Chaudhry

JAUNDHI is an obscure, sleeping village in Jhajjar district of Haryana. Recently it shot into dubious prominence. The Jats in the village belong to two gotras — one constituting the majority while the other having a handful of households. All those who belong to the two gotra groups are supposed to be brothers and sisters as per the age-old custom. The fact that this is more of a fiction than a reality in the rural society now is a different matter.

A young man of the minority gotra happened to marry a girl of the majority gotra, hailing from a village in Delhi dehat about three years ago. The couple has one-and-a-half-year-old male child. The issue was suddenly raked up. The village panchayat was called. The panchayat pronounced a ghastly judgement that the husband-wife pair declared itself a brother-sister duo by the tying of a rakhi to the man by his wife in public view. It further enjoined upon the family of the couple to pack up, quit the village in a week and dispose of its property within two months, failing which the panchayat would confiscate it. The aggrieved party appealed to convene a maha-panchayat comprising endogamous groups of the community from the adjoining areas. The maha-panchayat reversed the earlier decision and pronounced a fresh one. The couple was banished from the village for life and the rest of the family had to face “hukka-pani band” (social boycott) for a period of two years.

What is to be noted in this case is that the woman concerned has to bear the brunt of the decision. If the earlier decision had been implemented the man in all probability would have married again, leaving the woman to bear the stigma for life. Even in the case of the modified judgement, she would have to remain an accursed creature for the rest of her life. What is significant is that no woman was present at both panchayat meetings. The sarpanch of the village panchayat happens to be a woman as a sequel to the female reservation in panchayat elections, but even she was absent at both meetings and her place was proudly taken by her husband.

This is not an isolated case of woman persecution in the male-dominated patriarchal rural society of Haryana. A brief mention of a handful of cases that have occurred in the state in the past several months would be in order to underscore the gravity of the situation. A girl from Sudak village in Gurgaon district was gang-raped by her relatives as she married a boy of her own choice. A boy and a girl were killed in public view in Shimla village in Kaithal district for having an affair. In Luhari Ragho village in Hissar district, the panchayat exiled a couple on similar grounds. In Narnaund village in the same district, a couple was caught while eloping. The boy was handed over to the police and the panchayat pronounced a death sentence on the girl. In Throo village of Sonepat district, a couple went through a civil marriage ceremony outside the village and disappeared to escape the clutches of the village panchayat. The panchayat, however, did not recognise the marriage and ostracised the families of the two.

Two teen-agers of Ismaila village in Rohtak district were done to death for entering into an inter-caste alliance. The sarpanch of the village, a law graduate, visited the girl’s family belonging to the dominant agrarian caste but ignored the Lohar (iron-smith) family of the boy on account of the “improper behaviour” of the boy (this is reminiscent of a well-publicised case in a village of Western UP where a couple in similar circumstances was burnt alive on a pyre).

Examples can be multiplied. What is to be noted in such cases is that the woman and the weaker sections are targets of the societal fury in that order for transgressing certain norms which are supposed to be inviolable by village elders. The frequency of such cases involving gross gender injustice is acquiring frightening proportions in the Jat-dominated belt around Delhi where the khap system is traditionally entrenched (even in a small state like Haryana, marriage in the same village is common where the khap system is not prevalent, this being more true of a big state like Rajasthan). Kangaroo courts are frequently held and barbaric judgements are often pronounced. It is this belt around Dehi where the Arya Samaj as a social reform movement has been quite strong and where a good deal of importance has been attached to education through a chain of gurukuls, including those exclusively devoted to woman education, dotting the countryside. This is riddle to be solved by social scientists.

Secondly, the authority of the khap panchayat is never invoked to deal with a series of crimes bedeviling the countryside. These panchayats are mute spectators to the rising crime graph in the countryside — rapes, murders, atrocities on weaker sections, thefts, robberies, dacoities and so on. Corruption in the administrative structure ranging from the village patwari to the higher echelons of the state apparatus is causing unbearable strain on the common man, but this has never agitated these panchayats. Ironically, it is the quaint and outdated notion of village kinship that alone activates these panchayats. (In most of the cases, reason is extraneous. In the latest case of Jaundhi village, it is the strain between the two gotra groups in the village during the panchayat elections that proved handy to dig up an old case to persecute the weaker party).

Thirdly, it is of crucial importance to assess the attitude of different political parties to a growing societal evil in Haryana. The medieval practice of doling out barbaric justice has been consistently opposed only by the CPM and the organisations affiliated to it. The large status-quoist parties, both ruling and opposition, always maintain a studied silence on this issue. The more deeply society is steeped into medieval barbarism and mindless idiocy, the easier it is for these parties to perpetuate the vote banks along the lines of caste, community, gotra and khap. Rather, these parties indirectly connive at such crimes. Most of those who are directly involved in convening the panchayats on such issues and displaying savagery in dealing with sensitive aspects of life are aligned with one such party or the other. Most of the decisions arrived at such panchayats go counter to the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India, but the administration and the political bosses look the other way and shut their eyes to the emergence of a parallel judicial system in Haryana society.

The ruling elites of Haryana are never tired of projecting the state as highly progressive and enlightened. They cleverly hide an ugly reality. An important indicator to assess the progress of a society is the female-male population ratio. The more balanced this ratio, the more healthy is the social organism. As per the 1991 census, this ratio in Haryana is 865 females per 1000 males. This is the lowest in the world as a whole. Even Sub-Saharan African countries like Zimbabwe, Botswana, Kenya and Ghana are ahead of Haryana in this respect. These African countries have been consistently plagued with epidemics, famines and civil wars while Haryana has been a peaceful and prosperous state. The per capita income per year (1991-92) at current prices in Haryana, Bihar, UP and Kerala is Rs 8,690, Rs 2,904, Rs 4,012 and Rs 4,818, respectively. Even states like Bihar and UP show a better record than Haryana in the matter of sex ratio with 911 and 879 females per 1000 males, respectively. Kerala that lags behind Haryana in terms of the per capita income has the most favourable sex ratio (1036 females per 1000 males) in the country.

Gender bias is not a new thing in India. One study shows that there were only five female children in thousands of Jadeja Rajput families of Kathiawad in 1805. In the household of the ruling chief of Porbander — a Rajput — there had been “no grown up daughters for more than one hundred years”, as reported by an Englishman. The same officer who was assigned the task of conducting a survey of female infanticide estimated that in Kathiawad and Kutchh the total number of Jadeja Rajput families was around 1,25,000 and the number of female infants annually killed was about 20,000. This mass slaughter of female babies was carried out by feeding them with mother’s milk mixed with opium or some other poisonous substance or by placing the umbilical cord in the infant’s mouth to prevent breathing.

The mantle of valour and chivalry of the Kathiawad (Gujarat) Rajputs seems to have fallen on the dominant castes of Haryana in modern times. Sex determining clinics abound in Haryana and genocide of the female foetus takes place right under the nose of the authorities. It is this value system regarding the girl child which is responsible for the dehumanised position of the female population in the Haryana society today.

However, there is a glimmer of hope in this darkening social scenario. As per the opinion sought from a cross-section of the rural youth in Haryana by some enterprising correspondents, as reported in a section of the Press, an overwhelming majority of youth does not favour the verdict given by the panchayat in Jaundhi village. This is confirmed by the kind of viewership attracted by the national award winning Haryanvi feature film “Laado”. The female protagonist in this film calls a village panchayat to seek justice but fails. Then she succeeds in vindicating her position in sarva khap panchayat called at her insistence. Viewers of this film are largely the rural youth with a sprinkling of the middle-aged male. The female presence is negligible. It is the male preserve to take the woman out to some public show. The value-free entertainment of a circus is all right for women, but a distinct message of women empowerment is to be eschewed like poison. However, the few women who succeed in seeing this film leave with a positive message. These trends show that the Haryana society is in a stage of transition.

The moribund social organism of Haryana is in the throes of a change. The new Haryana is in the midst of birth pangs. The utmost resistance comes from the decadent ruling elites and their minions. The intellect workers, to use Gramsci’s phrase, in the field of art, culture and meaningful politics — poets, writers, playwrights, film makers, painters and those engaged in adult literacy mission and socio-political organisations with a larger vision and commitment and the others like them — are the carriers of social change. Such elements are scattered and weak at the moment. There is need to strengthen and organise them. Future belongs to them if they handle it correctly, though its shape is still in the womb of time. The battle is crucial. The Haryana society can slide back into medieval barbarism or can have a qualitative leap to knock at the door of enlightenment. What would actually happen is contingent on the outcome of this battle.

The writer, a senior teacher of English at New Delhi’s Dyal Singh College, is a keen Haryana watcher.

Unhealthy judicial delivery system
by Beant Singh Bedi

JUDICIAL delays are not a recent phenomenon. In their own times even Shakespeare and Dean Swift condemned these delays. But in today’s India, the delays in the justice delivery system have become almost catastrophic.

It is not that the causes of judicial delays are not known. Some causes are attributable to the government. Lack of funds for providing the necessary infrastructure, appropriate court rooms, the supporting staff and other paraphernalia. For some delays the courts and judges may be responsible. Lack of proper training of the judges and the supporting staff, or even the lethargy and indifference of some presiding judges. Other causes may be attributed to the lawyers seeking frequent or unnecessary adjournments. The strikes by lawyers also contribute to judicial delays. For some delays the litigants concerned may be responsible. As it is commonly observed, a party having a weak case or a party in occupation and enjoyment of the suit property usually adopts delaying tactics.

It is not that the Supreme Court and the High Courts in India have not addressed themselves to the problems of judicial delays. Efforts have been made to curtail these delays. But most of these steps have been ad hoc. No concerted and all-out effort appears to have been made for the disposal of the backlog of millions of cases pending in the law courts, some of which may be more than 10 or even 20 years old.

Mr Steven Flanders, an eminent and experienced federal judicial administrator from the USA and consultant for improving judicial administration in many jurisdictions, in a speech delivered before legal professionals at the Bombay High Court in 1998 outlined some measures which could go to eliminate the impediments in the expeditious disposal of cases. He suggested getting rid of unnecessary formalities and simplifying the same. He advocated that a Bench/Bar habit of cooperative and energetic focus on the problem of eliminating impediments to effective practices that have outlived their purpose and their usefulness should be developed.

According to him, a lawsuit is a private business only as long as it is an argument in a lawyer’s office. It becomes a public business as soon as it is filed in a court, because the public holds the court responsible for its disposal. So he advocated that it is upto the court to assert control at the outset, sustain it, and assure that the matter is brought to a prompt and economical resolution. He advocated that every lawsuit in an efficient system should be placed on a mandatory fast track.

Mr Flanders also proposed that the presiding judges should be made accountable for the prompt and expeditious disposal of cases before them. For achieving this end, a two-page portrait of each court in the annual statistical report showing what it was up against, what its programmes could have been to address its problems, and what the results were, would bring salutary results. He also advocated the decentralisation of judicial administration because a smaller and more localised organisation can be more innovative because it has better information and fewer obstacles to overcome, and the empowerment of local judges, administrators and the Bar can be truly energising.

He also highlighted the importance of alternative disputes resolution. He informed the audience consisting of law professionals that a common complaint among judges in the US Federal Courts is that “this is a case that should never have been tried.” In the USA, trials are reserved for those few disputes that can be resolved in no other way than through the expensive and wrenching experience of the trial. In fact, fresh winds are blowing in the forensic fields all over the globe. Worldwide the courts are embracing the notion that “a courthouse has many doors”. In this respect, some positive steps have also been taken in India. The institution of the Lok Adalat is gaining popularity and acclaim among the litigant public everyday. In the 1996 Act, arbitration and conciliation proceedings have been made more liberal, simpler and effective.

As pointed out by Mr Flanders, lack of an effective system of justice is one of the main obstacles to the economic development in some parts of the world. Perhaps, it applies to India as well. Therefore, this seems to be the right time to take concrete steps to liquidate the backlog of old cases, and to ensure that in future court cases do not fall in arrears and build up a catastrophic backlog.

Of course, such steps may raise some controversy. But even then innovative steps hovering on the declaration of a judicial emergency have been suggested by Mr Flanders.

“There are a lot of underemployed lawyers in this country. You would empower them to hold conferences and try to resolve all these cases. And you would pay them for this. You wouldn’t pay them much because there would be so many that you couldn’t afford to pay them much. So they would hear 15 minutes of argument from this side and 15 minutes of argument from that side and a best offer from each side. And they would make a recommendation to settle the dispute. Some system like this, some combination of emergency remedies to get rid of the humongous backlog. How that could be done in a way that is lawful and practical is a very difficult problem indeed, but I don’t want to make it sound impossible because it is not.”

An objection may be raised that the steps proposed are not in tune with the provisions in the Constitution. That may be so. But our justice delivery system is not in a happy state of health. In order to restore its health, more particularly the confidence of the common man in its efficacy, drastic measures appear unavoidable.

The writer is a retired District and Sessions Judge, Chandigarh.

India must deal with Pak ‘to become global actor’
From Aziz Haniffa in Washington

INDIA cannot emerge as a “true partner” of the USA or as a “global actor” unless it first deals with the situation in south Asia, especially its relations with Pakistan, according to leading Brookings Institution scholars.

Richard Haass, vice-president and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the institution, said, “Pakistan right now is something of a millstone around India.”

“By that, I mean, if India has to spend most of its resources dealing with Pakistan (and) if it has to go to war with Pakistan...that will distort Indian foreign policy,” Haass said.

“It will sponge up Indian resources and energy and India will simply have very little left over to promote its interests on a wider canvas,” he said.

Haass, who was former Special Assistant to President George Bush and Senior Director for South Asian Affairs in the National Security Council, was one of the panelists at a briefing held by the prestigious think tank to coincide with the visit of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Several of the scholars have formerly served as senior officials in the U.S. Administration.

Stephen P. Cohen, a senior fellow at Brookings who heads its south Asia programme, said it would be “very hard” for India to “act independently in the world” if New Delhi did not figure out a way to resolve the Kashmir problem.

Cohen, who is considered the doyen of American scholars on south Asia, said the Kashmir problem “is sooner or later going to draw America into the region if only because of the risk of a larger conflict between India and Pakistan.”

“The USA has yet not made up its mind (and it) may not be able to make up its mind for some time as to whether it wants to balance India, compete with India, ally with India and so forth,” Cohen said. “You get the same range of ambiguities on the Indian side,” he said.

There is “widespread belief among American analysts of south Asia that the risk of war, even nuclear war, is higher in south Asia than any other region in the world,” Cohen said, adding that Indian analysts did not share this view.

President Bill Clinton has already characterised south Asia “as the most dangerous place on earth.”

Cohen noted that matters had been complicated by the fact that India was now in a “nuclear relationship” not only with Pakistan, but also with China. “Historically, this is an unprecedented situation, where three countries are locked in a quasi-nuclear competition as well as political rivalry,” he said.

The next American Administration would have “to have to address it. It cannot allow the region to sort of drift on its own. There’s been a war between India and Pakistan recently in Kargil and several war scares before that,” Cohen said.

Haass, Cohen and Kanti Bajpai, a visiting Indian fellow at Brookings, agreed that Vajpayee’s visit had helped to institutionalise the relationship between the two countries. “The visit continues to process the institutionalisation of this bilateral relationship and the fact that Clinton is a lame-duck is essentially irrelevant to this process,” Haass said.

Bajpai, an associate professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University and a widely published author on south Asian issues, said: “Anytime is a good time for a India-US summit given that they happen so infrequently.” The visit would also give the Indian government an opportunity to assess the candidates in the US presidential elections.

Republican nominee for the presidency, George W. Bush, called Vajpayee on the telephone when the Prime Minister was in New York attending the UN Millennium Summit, while Democratic presidential nominee, Vice-President Al Gore, hosted a luncheon in Vajpayee’s honor at the State Department and thereafter had a half-an-hour one-on-one meeting with him.

Bajpai said since the expectations of the trip were limited, it was a “positive time for quiet, business-like diplomacy to showcase the changes in India and to consolidate some of the gains.”

— India Abroad News Service

US media takes generous note
From Vasantha Arora in Washington

THE U.S. print media, in stark contrast to the news blackout of the last Indian prime ministerial trip here in 1994, took generous note of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s four-day official visit to the United States which ended on Sunday.

Almost all the major newspapers, including the New York Times, USA Today, LA Times and Washington Post, carried, with photographs, stories about the address to a joint session of Congress and his White House meeting with President Bill Clinton.

However, most of the television networks, with the exception of CNN, did not show much interest in the tour which began on September 14, with the Prime Minister’s address to the joint session.

The Washington Post published about half a dozen stories in recent days about India, including one from Islamabad on September 16, bringing out sharp contrast in Vajpayee’s visit to the U.S.A. and that of the Pakistani military leader Gen Pervez Musharraf, who despite his efforts to see Clinton did not succeed.

“Despite Musharraf’s efforts to portray his U.S. visit as a success, highlighted last week by a brief handshake and chat with Clinton during the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York, the spotlight clearly belonged to Vajpayee, who was received with warmth and pomp during an official state visit to Washington,” the Post wrote.

On the eve of Vajpayee’s arrival in Washington on September 13, the Los Angeles Times carried an article, “Armed India Can Help Stabilise Asia,” by Selig S. Harrison in which he advised President Clinton “to quietly bury this self-defeating policy when he meets Vajpayee.”

Harrison, a Senior Fellow of the Century Foundation, also asked the United States to accept the reality of a nuclear-armed India as part of a broader recognition of its emergence as a major economic and military power. Such a shift would remove the last major barrier blocking a rapid improvement in Indo-U.S. relations, Harrison said.

The daily had another article on September 15, the day Vajpayee met President Clinton, by Professor of Asian Studies at George Town University James Clad which said “Vajpayee’s visit should help us to rethink basic U.S. relationships in Asia. India’s influence in Asia has been expanding in the last few years. We need to stay focused on new agenda opportunities just as much as old anxieties.”

— India Abroad News Service

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Perfect am I

Perfect is my mind,

Perfect are mine eyes,

Perfect are my ears,

Perfect is my breath,

Perfect my entire being,

At peace with myself am I

— Atharva Veda, 19.51.1

***

Thy mind goes far away

To heaven and earth,

Call it back to thyself,

So that it may remain

Under thy control.

— Rig Veda, 10.58.2

***

O Lord,

May we resolve

To dedicate our life

to the service of mankind;

And uplift them to divinity.

— Yajur Veda, 5.4

***

You see your own faults and hate not yourself and if you find faults in your friend, try and keep yourself away from those faults, but hate not. They are God, recognise the godhead in them.

— Swami Ramatirtha, Informal Talks, In Woods of God Realisation, Vol IV

***

You must go up to that point beyond which you feel there is nothing. If you feel there is something beyond that point, then you have not reached the highest point.

— Swami Krishnananda, Your Questions Answered, 16

***

Self-sacrifice is the greatest sacrifice.

—Baba Hardev Singh, Gems of Truth

***

A person walking in the street sees a man on the opposite side of the way.

This is perception;

he recognises him as a friend — intellect;

he feels joy at the encounter — Emotion;

he determines to go across and speak to him — Will.

— Swami Ramatirtha, Notebook VII, In Woods of God Realisation

***

Without God-knowledge, one is a moving corpse.

— Baba Avtar Singh, Spiritual Sparks

***

If there is righteousness in the heart

there will be beauty in the character;

If there is beauty in the character

there will be harmony in the home;

If there is harmony in the home,

there will be order in the nation;

If there is order in the nation,

there will be peace in the world.

—From the discourses of Sathya Sai Baba