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| Monday, January 8, 2001, Chandigarh, India    |
Lower phone tariff No smoke without fire |
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COMPOUNDING THE NEPAL UPHEAVAL Need for fresh look at China policy
by Anupam Gupta
“Vajpayee is but a part of BJP’s hidden agenda”
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| Lower phone tariff TELECOM revolution gathered further momentum on Friday with the government initiating four steps. Short distance trunk calls will cost a lot less. MTNL will enter the mobile service this year with a target of a modest one lakh users and also offer the answering facility free of charge. These apply only to Delhi and Mumbai. Ground rules have been set for inducting one more operator in metropolitan centres and circles. With increased competition, the existing fee rate can only come down a little more. Telecommunications has been the sole sector which has dramatically benefited from liberalisation. In the past decade telephones have become easily available, service has improved and, of late, the tariff is coming down. Last year TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) shrunk the bill by a hefty 36 per cent. Now subscribers dialling a number within a distance of 100 km will pay the local call charges, even if they have to use the STD facility. Those calling within 200 km will have 50 per cent relief. For the rest the rental has gone up; at the highest slab it is as much as 46 per cent. This is said to set off the shortfall in revenue and to keep the total loss to just Rs 150 crore. There is an inbuilt incentive to use the instrument just 200 times a month, in which case the rental hike is nominal. Linking the rental or the tariff to fewer use is a novel move and the result will be interesting to watch. One piece of statistics is interesting. As high as 87.5 per cent of calls within a distance of 50 km and 100 km will become local calls. Obviously, the concession will benefit a large number of ordinary people and rural users. The slashing of the tariff is Minister Paswan’s way of resisting the demand by several MPs to connect their town to the STD network. He could not say no since he quietly provided a direct link between Bihar capital Patna and his own Lok Sabha constituency, Hajipur. The calculation seems to be that most, if not all VIP towns, will be within the “local access” area. In the Gulf region all calls within the country are treated as local ones and charged accordingly. Equally juicy is the opening up of the cellular sector to a fourth operator. At present there are two private operators and the BSNL having the right to become the third. The newcomer will bring in the latest technology which will cost a lot less than the older one. This is because of a crash in the price of equipment. This factor and the need to poach on the subscriber base of the rivals will force the entrant to offer lower tariff which should have a cascading effect. An increase in bandwidth also helps. The MTNL’s presence in cell business should hopefully change the impression that a public sector leviathan is a stodgy set-up which moves at a snail’s pace. With the privatisation process gathering speed, there should be an all-round improvement. It is here that the opening up of basic telephony — fixed instrument connected to an exchange — to the private sector all over the country fits in. At present there are only six operators in six circles like Himachal Futuristic in Punjab and Mittal’s Bhartitel in MP. |
| No smoke without fire THE script had violence written into it. What began as a show of strength between Trinamool Congress and CPM activists in Midnapore by the weekend gave birth to incidents of bloody violence. Both sides were guilty of using terror tactics and rumour-mongering to paint the other black. The fact that train services suffered the most during the Trinamool Congress-sponsored Calcutta bandh, to protest against the Midnapore violence, gave credence to the CPM charge that Ms Mamata Banerjee abused her official position as Union Railway Minister. The fact that the Left Front has in the past itself organised violent demonstrations against the Centre should not be used to justify the incidents of weekend violence in West Bengal. As if that was not enough her cadres spread the rumour that CPM activists had set fire to a house in Chotoangra in Midnapore in which 18 persons were burnt to death. Trinamool supporters even managed to persuade Abdul Ghani, a party sympathiser, to file an FIR about his house having been set on fire by CPM hoodlums which resulted in the death of his family members. West Bengal has a large Muslim population and stories of atrocities against the minority would evidently help the Trinamool Congress to improve its prospects in the assembly elections. However, reporters who visited the village where the ghastly incident was said to have been enacted found no evidence of the death of 18 persons in the so-called incident. Neither the police nor the other local functionaries could throw light on the charge of “large-scale” violence indulged in by CPM activists. Of course, there is usually no smoke without a fire. Reporters who visited Chotoangra did get to see the remains of a burnt-down house. Whether the CPM or Trinamool Congress goons were responsible for the incident was unclear. Left Front supporters are notorious for using terror as a political weapon for winning elections. However, in the present case the Trinamool activists seem to have devised the strategy for cashing in on the old image of the ruling party by blaming it for the Midnapore violence and the burning of a house in Chotoangra. They may ultimately succeed in building up an anti-Left Front mood in the run-up to the assembly elections. But the question which every act of political violence throws up every time a political party gives a call for a bandh needs to be repeated. Is it a fair strategy to disrupt normal life and make poor people pay the most by forcing them not to earn their daily bread for the duration of the bandh? A case too can be made out against Ms Mamata Banerjee for abusing her official position and instigating people to mindless violence simply because she has set her eyes on the Chief Minister’s chair, under the Left Front’s control for nearly a quarter of a century. Her conduct in every respect is unbecoming of the high office she holds as Railway Minister. When it suits her, she uses the threat of destabilising even the government of which she is a senior member. However, if her heart is in West Bengal she should first resign as Railway Minister, as Ms Uma Bharati had done when she wanted to lead street agitations against Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh. The fact that Muslims have been shown to have been the victims of the terror tactics of the CPM cadres was meant to make the politically significant minority in West Bengal stop accusing the Trinamool Congress of sharing the table with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Surveys have shown resentment among a large section of Muslims against the Trinamool Congress for helping the BJP gain a toehold in what was essentially perceived as the secular citadel of the Left Front. By showing Muslim blood on the hands of the CPM cadres, though without any basis as it seems, the Trinamool Congress may improve its chances in the assembly elections. But Ms Mamata Banerjee should search her heart and soul to find out whether the use of violence against the enemy for winning elections in a democracy is justified. She may turn around and say that the Left Front has been indulging in it for the past 25 years. But two wrongs have never and will never make a right. |
| COMPOUNDING THE NEPAL UPHEAVAL THERE is no dearth of reasonable Nepalese who readily admit that the recent upheaval and mayhem in their country over a remark that Indian film actor Hrithik Roshan never made was entirely unjustified. The Royal Nepalese government, and its Ambassador in New Delhi, Mr Bhekh Bahadur Thapa, have been generous with assurances that they would never allow Nepal’s soil to be used for “anti-India activities”. But even before these assurances could be put to test, some vile elements in Nepal attacked a meeting that was propagating friendship with India. A no less shocking and deplorable development took place also on the Indian side. Mr K. R. Malkani, a prominent leader of the BJP, the core party in the ruling coalition, also a former editor of the party’s official organ, Organiser, chose to make the preposterous statement that Nepal should really have been a part of India. He went on to denounce Jawaharlal Nehru for turning down in the early fifties the request of King Tribhuvan — who was overthrown by the then governing oligarchy of the Ranas and restored to the throne with Indian help — for “Nepal’s accession to India”. Mercifully, both the Vajpayee government, through the official spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs, and the BJP Vice-President, Mr Jana Krishnamurthy, have repudiated Mr Malkani. Both have emphasised that the extremely close relations with the northern neighbour are based on “full respect for each other’s sovereignty”. However, to expect that this would be the end of the matter will be a classic case of the triumph of hope over experience, notwithstanding Mr Malkani’s “withdrawal” of the statement that should never have been made. Those in Nepal who fabricated a news-item and cynically used it to create anti-India hysteria and cause the loss of innocent lives and properties of both Indians and Nepalese can be expected to exploit Mr Malkani’s statement for their nefarious ends. The pernicious but powerful combination of the Gulf-based Mafia dons, with their stranglehold over Mumbai’s lucrative movie industry, Pakistan’s ISI and Nepalese extremists, particularly the Maoists, are always looking for such opportunities. Not to put any gloss on an unhappy situation, the tragedy is that we Indians are rather like the Bourbons, the pre-revolution monarchs of France. We learn nothing and unlearn nothing, and seem to be proud of this. Unfortunately, this is as true of political leaders and public men like Mr Malkani as of the rulers in the national capital, regardless of the political complexion of the governing party or coalition. This is wholly unbecoming of overwhelmingly the largest country in the subcontinent that is also its pre-eminent power. Before any corrective measures can be thought of, leave alone applied, the infinitely complex problem has to be comprehended first. Nepal is the world’s only Hindu kingdom, a relatively small country, sandwiched between two mighty nations, India and, behind the Himalayan wall, China. The favourite metaphor of the kingdom’s founder, Prithvi Nath Shah, was that of a delicate “gourd between two huge rocks”. And yet, geography, history, religion, culture and the imperatives of economics make India-Nepal relations uniquely close. It is difficult to think of any international dividing line so utterly open as the border between India and Nepal. But this shining coin has its flip side, too. The sheer disparity in the sizes of the two countries, to say nothing of the different stages of their development, has bred extraordinarily strong complexes and sensitivities. Sometimes these exceed bounds of reasonableness. That is when Indian policy makers get irritated over the undoubted mismatch between what this country does for Nepal, especially in the economic sphere, and the treatment it gets from the northern neighbour. Nepal’s litany of complaints against India is astonishingly long, but running through it, like an unbreakable thread, is the Nepali feeling that India constantly behaves like the proverbial Big Brother, utterly unsympathetic to Nepal's sentiment and sensitivities. The dynamics of Nepal’s internal politics, particularly the antics of vastly irresponsible Maoists, exacerbates the resentment and grievances, real or imaginary. It may be news to most Indians, but the Nepalis are proud of the fact that they were never colonised while the mighty subcontinent, now divided into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, was. The British, of course, exercised firm control over independent Nepal and even imposed on it unequal treaties. But that, too, is working against India rather than the former colonial power. The argument in Kathmandu is that independent India has inherited the British (or rather Curzonian) mindset. The Nepalese cite the 1950 treaty of peace and friendship, accompanied by an exchange of secret letters, as a case in point. The tragedy is that for all practical purposes the India-Nepal treaty of half a century ago is a dead letter. But there has been no progress on Nepal’s request for its revision and replacement. Another factor has also to be taken into account even if it is painful to do so. Nepal had a different attitude towards this country before 1962. After the debacle during the brief but brutal border war with China, there was a sea change. Since then Kathmandu has often yielded to the temptation of trying to play off India and China against each other. To India’s plentiful economic and technical aid most Nepalis react the way many Indians have done to America’s aid to this country. Nepal’s rivers can flow into India alone; they cannot be diverted anywhere else. Also India is the only possible customer of electricity that Nepal can generate in enormous quantities. And yet many Nepalis have convinced themselves of India’s alleged designs unfairly to grab their natural resources. So much so that India-Nepal agreements on the Pancheshwar and Mahakali hydro-electric projects, duly ratified by the Nepali Parliament by the requisite two-thirds majority, encounter obstructions in their implementation. All this is enough to show that the present vulnerabilities of the India-Nepal relationship cannot be blamed on only one side. But surely as much the larger country India has much and larger responsibility to keep this relationship on an even keel. The Malkani episode underscores what the difficulties are. A former Foreign Secretary says that we Indians make little attempt to understand the psyche of our neighbours, and when a crisis develops, “we blunder like buffaloes crossing a highway”. At the height of the anti-India agitation in Nepal there was an incident that threw revealing light on what is, in some respects, the worst element in the situation. A visibly angry Foreign Minister of Nepal, when asked by an Indian TV channel why his country was allowing the Pakistani ISI to operate from Nepali territory, retorted: “Isn’t the ISI operating in India? Does this mean that the Indian government is allowing it or helping it?” He added that if the Indian government had any complaint about this matter, there were ways of dealing with it. This is the hub of the matter. It is not only the ISI that is playing havoc by using the totally open India-Nepal border to the great detriment of this country; so is the Karachi-based mafia don, Dawood Ibrahim, who has been at war with the Indian State, with the ISI’s full cooperation since the 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai. It is not only Nepal where he is operating. In this country, too, his gangsters have managed to establish a virtual stranglehold on Bollywood from where he is extorting huge sums of money. Because Mr Hrithik Roshan’s father is a thorn in the Mafia’s flesh, it is no surprise that a statement falsely attributed to the popular film actor became the spark that lit a virtual forest fire. Nor was it a mere coincidence that the Roshan film to be attacked was “Mission to Kashmir”. Under the circumstances, the best way to deal with the multiple menace is to do so in cooperation with Nepal, preferably quietly rather than through a slanging match. Such an exchange had marred relations also at the time of the hijacking of the IC-814 exactly a year before the simulated fury against the Roshan films. At that time a leading Nepali journalist had written in an Indian magazine that an Indian government “wedded to Hindutva” should show some sensitivity to the “sentiments of the only Hindu kingdom”. — The writer is a well-known political commentator. |
| Need for fresh look at China policy INDIA and China are two great countries and also two great civilisations. Intimate religious, cultural and social relations existed between the two neighbours for a long time. The close association of the people of India and China over a long period cannot be ignored. At the start of the era of independence, the two countries understood the importance of each other and signed the Panch Sheel agreement in 1954. This marked the first phase of India-China relations but they remained ignorant of each other. Both slipped into acts of omission and commission which pushed them into a clash in 1962. Thereafter, there has not been any serious effort by either country to remove the misunderstandings. Meanwhile important changes took place in China after 1978. The domestic policy moved from Mao's radicalism to Dheng's pragmatism. Economic reforms at home were accompanied by a new turn in foreign policy. Economic development necessitated a peaceful international environment. Rajiv Gandhi took the initiative in 1988 towards normalisation of relations with China. It resulted in a breakthrough and the second phase of India's relations with China started. Three agreements were signed and the relations started improving. Later the visit of Lie Peng, Prime Minister of China, to India further improved the relations. Visits of Mr R. Venkataraman, then President of India and the then Defence Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, to China also contributed to the improvement of relations between the two countries. But most important visit was that of the then Prime Minister, Mr Narasimha Rao, to China which resulted in greater understanding between the two countries, and the agreement of peace and tranquillity at the border and setting up of a joint working group (JWG) for delineating the border. The process got further impetus by the visit of the President of China, Mr Ging Zaimen, in 1996 when a number of agreements for taking confidence-building measurers were signed. Unfortunately, the statement of our Defence Minister that China was our enemy number 1 and the statements of others that China posed a threat, to justify Pokhran-II created problems and the policies initiated by Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao lost their momentum. There were no violations on the border, no troop movement on the border took place, no air violations were reported and China did not deploy its missiles on the border. It took a neutral stand on Kargil and advised Pakistan to respect the LoC. Yet we considered China a threat. It took long to convince China that the Indian people as such did not consider China to be an enemy. Our Foreign Minister went to Beijing to assure the Chinese about this. Later President Narayanan went to China to clarify the position. How much China was satisfied with these clarifications is not known. But the presence of the Karamapa in India is another problem which India must solve. Globalisation of trade, the new information order and the advance of science and technology, are creating a new environment. Nations are becoming inter-dependent. All this calls for new responses to the world situation. India must realise that the new situation is full of challenges as well as opportunities. If we are serious about developing our relation with China, the first requirement is to build a national consensus on how we define our interests vis-a-vis China in the new world situation. A major priority and focus of India's foreign policy naturally is to strengthen friendship and cooperation with our neighbours and work for a durable trust and understanding in the region. Economic, political and security needs of India make this imperative. It is time for politicians, intellectuals, defence analysts and strategic thinkers in both countries to take an objective look at alternative approaches to a political solution of the dispute. The future should not become hostage to old memories, however unpleasant. — The writer is a former External Affairs Minister of India. |
Qureshi — the surprise visitor “I WISH they (would) know me as one whose perceptions and ideas reflect the hopes and aspirations of millions in the sub-continent, and their burning desire to wriggle out of the looming fear of a disastrous confrontation.... I do not want to be known only as Hashim Qureshi — the Hijacker of Ganga.” Thus wrote Hashim Qureshi, now in Tihar jail, less than three years ago in a poignant introduction to his book “Kashmir: The Unveiling of Truth”. A rare, exceptionally rare example of a terrorist turned peace-maker, Qureshi’s return to India on December 29, 30 years after he hijacked an Indian Airlines plane from Srinagar to Lahore, is a dramatic turning point in the politics of Kashmir. Arrested immediately on his arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport, Qureshi’s fate and future in India now hangs in the judicial balance. Seized of his petition for habeas corpus, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court sought last Thursday, January 4, the assistance of the Attorney-General in resolving what is already the most important double jeopardy contest in Indian judicial history. Lionised by Pakistan to begin with — hundreds of thousands of people thronged the Lahore airport in an outburst of national euphoria and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto himself rushed to the tarmac to embrace and congratulate him — 17-year-old Hashim Qureshi was later slandered, detained and tortured in Pakistan as an Indian agent. His grotesque maltreatment in the country in which he had reposed blind faith opened his eyes to the realities of the Kashmir problem. “The episode of Ganga hijacking has made me the centre of attention for the Kashmiri youth,” Qureshi writes in his book, a book which all lawyers and judges examining his case must read. “However...after having braved the oppression of imprisonment, I concentrated on finding a peaceful solution to the problems of my Kashmiri compatriots.” Prosecuted under Section 3 of the Enemy Agents Ordinance, 1943, Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923, and Sections 120-B, 342 and 435 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), Qureshi was tried by a Special Court headed by Justice Chowdhary Mohd Yakub Ali Khan, a judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Justice Abdul Qadir Sheikh, a judge of the Sindh High Court, was the other member of the court, constituted under the Criminal Law Amendment (Special Courts) Order of 1971. The prosecution was conducted by Mukhtar Ahmad Junejo, a former High Court judge, while leading defence counsel Abid Hassan Minto appeared on behalf of Hashim Qureshi. President of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association in 1997-98, Minto has defended leading political dissidents in Pakistan, including Khan Abdul Wali Khan. Started on December 4, 1971 — the day on which the Indo-Pak war climaxing in the creation of Bangladesh broke out — the trial took eighteen months. As many as 84 witnesses were produced by the prosecution, 42 by the defence. Another seven were examined as court witnesses. Standing trial alongwith Hashim Qureshi were his co-hijacker, Ashraf Qureshi, now a lecturer in Punjab University, Lahore, and four others, including Hashim’s idol and inspiration Maqbool Butt, who later slipped back into India and was caught, tried and executed for murder. His “martyrdom” served as an important rallying point for militancy in Kashmir, as is well known. Butt’s role in and regarding the valley remains to be fully explored by history, as even the former J&K Governor Mr Jagmohan concedes. “Was Maqbool Butt an adventurer, or a spy, or a terrorist, or a genuine believer in Kashmiri freedom?” he asks in his book My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir. “It is difficult to give an answer.” But about Hashim Qureshi, his intellectual and moral integrity and his commitment to a peaceful and secular solution of the Kashmir problem, there can be no doubt whatsoever. And it would be grave folly for the Indian legal and judicial system, on whose discerning judgement his future now hinges, to entertain any such doubt. “Those advocating division of Kashmir on the basis of religion,” he writes, “are not only the enemies of my native land but are also the enemies of mankind. If we are to talk only in terms of division on the basis of religion and also act in that direction, then the entire world, including Islamic states, will have to be fragmented into tiny segments and ghettos only to re-enact the tragedy of the crusades to destroy one another. We have the examples of Algeria and Afghanistan before us. Both the countries are inhabited by people of the same faith (Islam) yet in each the people are at war with one another.” It was perhaps for this reason that while all the other accused were virtually let off by the Special Court — they were formally convicted under Section 120-B, PPC, for conspiracy to hijack the plane but were sentenced only to imprisonment till the court rose for the day (!) and absolved of the other charges — Hashim Qureshi was convicted and sentenced to 14 years rigorous imprisonment under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act for spying. He was also convicted and sentenced to 2 years RI under Section 435, PPC, for burning the hijacked plane, to 2 years RI under Section 120-B, PPC, for carrying arms, ammunition and explosives, and to one year RI under Section 342, PPC, for wrongful confinement of the passengers and crew of the hijacked plane (who were all allowed to leave before the plane was set aflame). By the time his appeal was heard and decided by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Qureshi had already suffered imprisonment for more than nine years. Arrested in 1971, he had remained in confinement throughout. Pronouncing judgement on May 7, 1980, a three-member Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Aslam Riaz Husain agreed with Qureshi’s counsel, Abid Hassan Minto’s submission that “the sentence already undergone by the appellant would be sufficient to serve the ends of justice.” It accordingly reduced his sentence “to that already undergone” and ordered that he be “released forthwith, unless required in any other case.” While denying the charge of spying or acting at the behest of Indian intelligence, a charge which bordered on the absurd, Qureshi (it may be noted) admitted the hijacking. So far as the destruction of the aircraft is concerned, his book contains eloquent evidence — evidence that was laid by the defence before the Special Court as well — of how the hijackers set the plane on fire at the Lahore airport at the asking of, and with the aid of petrol supplied by, the Pakistan authorities. The challenge of double jeopardy that Qureshi has now raised before the Delhi High Court in the face of opposition by the Delhi and J & K governments compels, in these circumstances, the most serious consideration and the High Court has done well to invite the Attorney General to assist it in the matter. Whichever way the court decides, it will, whether it intends it or not, be making (or unmaking) history in Kashmir. More on the nuances and complexities of double jeopardy next week. |
| “Vajpayee is but a part of BJP’s hidden agenda” MR Madhavrao Scindia, the scion of the Gwalior royal family and the deputy leader of the Congress (I) in the Lok Sabha, is always looked upon by many as a Prime Minister in waiting, not because of his royal heritage but because of his leadership qualities and proven administrative capabilities. If his image as a politician with a difference appeals to the urban middle classes, his lineage definitely inspires the rural poor to look up to him as a “raja” who can deliver them from their sufferings and ordeals. What makes him all the more acceptable is his willingness to mingle with the masses and that explains why he is so popular, particularly in the Hindi belt. Born on March 10, 1945, this Oxford educated former scion of the Gwalior royal family grew in a political atmosphere with his mother “Rajmata” Vijaya Raje Scindia actively involved in it. It is an irony that the mother drifted slowly from the Congress Party to the BJP over the years, while the son who made his foray into politics as a Jan Sanghite in 1971 moved over to the Congress without much delay. Madhavrao Scindia is one of those very few parliamentarians who can boast of an uninterrupted parliamentary stint for the last three decades. Since 1971, Mr Scindia has been contesting elections to the Lok Sabha and has never lost a single election, irrespective of the party he represented. His stint in the Bharatiya Jan Sangh was short-lived and he contested the second elections in 1977 only as an independent. From 1980 he has been in the Congress (I). K. Vaidiyanathan of Newscribe recently met Mr Scindia in his New Delhi’s Safdarjung Road residence for an interview on the just ended controversy over the remarks of the Prime Minister on the Mandir-Masjid issue and the subsequent stalling of the Parliamentary proceedings. Excerpts: Q: Don’t you feel that the combined opposition not only lost their case in the Lok Sabha but also lost their face in the recent controversy involving the Prime Minister and the three BJP ministers connected with the Ayodhya controversy? A: I think it was the Prime Minister who lost his case by offering certain compromises to please the allies and it was the NDA allies who lost their face by exposing their secular credentials. As far as the opposition was concerned our endeavour was to bring the issue to the notice of the nation and also to ensure that the Prime Minister does not behave like a politician belonging to one particular party. We have achieved these two ends. We knew for certain that the allies in the NDA would rather sacrifice their principles and ideologies than let go the opportunity to share power at the Centre. In that respect also, I think, we have exposed them sufficiently as opportunists whose secular credentials are suspect”. Q: Is it not the prerogative of the Prime Minister to have the ministers of his choice in the Cabinet and how is it justified in demanding their resignations? A: Prime Minister does have the prerogative to have his handpicked men in the Cabinet, I agree. But there are certain criterion for a person to be appointed as a minister and the Prime Minister cannot just make anyone a minister in his Cabinet. Does that mean he can appoint someone who has been chargesheeted in a criminal case or somebody identified with espionage? It is rather surprising to hear the Prime Minister giving a clean chit to his ministers involved in a criminal case even while the case is under trial. Q: He only said that the case was political and not criminal ..... A: Prime Minister’s comments on the merits of the case against the three chargesheeted ministers, one of whom happens to be none other than the Home Minister of India, was in a way denigrating the judiciary of the country. Virtually it was tantamount to contempt of court. Court has already ordered that the charges be fixed. It is only a question of three accused putting in an appearance for the charges to be framed. They have not been doing so on one pretext or the other. Having read the submissions of the CBI, the court has already made up its mind that the charges should be framed. After the court has said this, should the Prime Minister of the country then say that there is nothing in the case and the charges are not justified? Q: Probably the Prime Minister was voicing his own opinion about the case which he considers to be political and not criminal. Does he not have a right to express that opinion? A: He does not have a right to express his opinion on certain crucial issues which are before the courts. I am sorry to tell you that a person of Atal Behari Vajpayee’s stature cannot plead ignorance on this score and if he says so, he will be cheating himself. Now coming to the case, the CBI comes directly under the Prime Minister. If these are the signals given out by the Prime Minister, how does one expect the CBI to function in an unbiased, unpressurised and independent manner? This government has always been saying that we are honest, we are transparent, we stick by the conventions, we will not overtake democratic principles and so on. Then, what is this happening? Their words and deeds do not go hand in hand in all the things they do. Q: Even after the Lok Sabha has put a seal on the issue, you do not seem to be convinced about the matter, is it? A: Prime Minister is answerable to not just the Parliament but to the country and the people at large. He must also explain how he made a statement which is tantamount to denigrating the judiciary of the country, which is tantamount to pressurising and giving tacit, indirect direction to the CBI, and so on. It is also tantamount to unmasking himself and unfolding the BJP’s hidden agenda. It has now become clear that Vajpayee is but a part of the BJP’s hidden agenda. By now he should have unequivocally withdrawn the statement, which he has not done so far. |
| SPIRITUAL NUGGETS Material wealth is bound to depart, but spiritual wealth is abiding; it abides by us, here and hereafter. One who does not possess spiritual wealth is a pauper in spite of all his material riches. On the other hand one who lacks material riches but possess the spiritual wealth is an Emperor. Material wealth is a swamp. Once we are caught in it, we sink deeper and deeper. —Baba Hardev Singh, Gems of Truth. *** All the duties of householder who conducts his home life with his wife, consist in receiving guests with courtesy and attending to their needs according to the occasion. *** Even if the food eaten by the householder is of as high value as ambrosia of immortality, it ought not to be consumed by the householder while the guests are waiting outside. *** If a householder attends to the needs of honoured guests everyday, the prosperity and wealth of his household will grow from more to more and will never decline. *** One who fails to entertain guests, though living in plenty will be considered as living in poverty. Such a senseless folly would be associated with only senseless persons. —The Tirukkural, chapter X, 81, 82, 83, 89. *** A fool or scholar let him be, Pleasant or hideous to see, A guest, when offerings are given, Is useful as bridge to heaven. **** By honouring the guests who come Way worn from some far-distant home To share the sacrifice, you go The noblest way that mortals know. *** If guests unhonoured leave your door, And sadly sighing come no more, Your fathers and the gods above Turn from you and forget their love. —The Panchtantra, Book IV. |
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