The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Why Seattle is not Bhuj

THE tremors which rocked Seattle in Canada and parts of the USA did not attract the attention they deserved in post-Bhuj India. For the domestic media any accident, caused by nature or man, which does not result in deaths and large-scale destruction is not worth reporting. The earthquake which visited the area adjoining the borders of the USA and Canada measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and yet claimed just one life. Or did it? Because according to reports, a senior citizen in America died of a heart attack and not because the flat he was living in fell on him. The lack of interest in the Seattle tremors only reconfirmed the view that for the average Indian safety is an issue which is meant to be discussed and debated extensively after every mishap. But thereafter life must continue with the same old missing elements of safety as it was progressing before the mishap. The Seattle tremors should have been a major story for India because in spite of the high intensity, they caused only minor "bruises" to the city. How did Seattle, unlike Bhuj, survive an earthquake of such high intensity? A few buildings did collapse, but the overall damage was within acceptable limits. What Bhuj has not made Indian planners think even now was thought off by the Seattle town planners almost 20 years ago. That explains the massive loss of life and property in Gujarat and just "minor bruises" to the city of Seattle. It was saved because of the "earthquake-resistant" building code. Its thriving economy was a contributory factor in helping it evolve the building safety code which made last Wednesday's tremors sound like a sneeze.

What is the link between Seattle's healthy economy and its futuristic building safety code? The booming economy created demand for office space, particularly from technology firms. The demand resulted in the renovation of old structures by introducing the latest building technology. Over the past 20 years Seattle has evolved a policy of periodically updating its building technology database and ensuring strict compliance of the building code. Wednesday's earthquake was the first real test of the policy which is also called seismic retrofitting. Seattle passed the test with flying colours. A major reason for the success of the policy of mandatory seismic retrofitting of structures in Canada is that it is decided by trained structural engineers and not the corrupt troika of politicians, bureaucrats and builders. Any takers for the introduction of seismic retrofitting for structures in Gujarat or anywhere else in India where earthquakes of minor intensity have become a regular feature?

Hurriyat in a changing role
Formidable challenges lie ahead
Pran Chopra

FROM the time when the Hurriyat began to show an interest in taking a delegation to Pakistan a couple of years ago, it has been caught in a game invented by Pakistan. Until lately, the Hurriyat had failed to see that in this game it would be a pawn, not a player. It failed because through most of its early and formative years it had been Pakistan’s political platform in Kashmir, the political arm of most of the underground militants who were waging an armed war against India with the active support of the Pakistan army. Therefore, it did not look critically at Pakistan’s manoeuvres. Those were the years in which Hurriyat leaders during their visits to Delhi became, and were happy to be, prize exhibits at functions at the Pakistan High Commission, particularly on Pakistan’s national day, while their distance from India’s Republic Day celebrations and other such Indian occasions was conspicuous.

On one occasion some years ago they became, perhaps unwittingly, tools for the Pakistan High Commission for slighting India in a way which would have merited the High Commissioner being summoned to the Foreign Office the next day. For this reason few in India were surprised to see that the Hurriyat was more than willing to play Pakistan’s game, particularly during the years when Syed Ali Shah Geelani was its chairman. There was little that India could do about it except to keep the Hurriyat at arm’s length. But this suited Pakistan. It was able to show the people of Kashmir that the Hurriyat had no influence with New Delhi and they had no alternative to the jehad waged by heavily armed militants pushed into Kashmir by Pakistan, even though their non-Kashmiri persons grated on the nerves of Kashmiris.

But in the recent election for the next chief of the Hurriyat, Mr Geelani was defeated by other leaders of the organisation. Mr Geelani denounces them now as “secular” because they do not see the “Kashmir problem” as religious. But they are slowly succeeding in doing two things. They are rescuing Kashmir’s own interests from the coils of Pakistan’s confrontation with India, and they are carving out a role for the Hurriyat as a constructive factor both in the affairs of Jammu and Kashmir and as a possible interlocutor for India and Pakistan. Their demand that the Government of India should let them send a delegation to Pakistan is, among others, a part of the new role. But this does not suit Pakistan. As a political entity based in the soil and society of Kashmir, where priorities are changing in response to the growing desire among the people for peace and order, Hurriyat could become a less reliable instrument for Pakistan than militants nurtured in the currents of jehad which are sweeping through Pakistan.

Therefore, Pakistan is trying to undercut the new self-image of the Hurriyat by doing four things simultaneously, though not all of them are mutually complimentary. First, through Mr Geelani and such non-Kashmiri militant organisations as are thoroughly committed to Pakistan, it is running down the Hurriyat’s proposed visit to Pakistan as a useless exercise. Second, it is portraying the visit as a Kashmiri response to an invitation by Pakistan, and therefore more an instrument of Pakistan’s diplomacy than a Kashmiri initiative. Third, it is claiming that the delegation would come as the sole representative of Kashmir. And fourth, its mission would be to mediate between India and Pakistan and to set up a tripartite meeting between India, Pakistan and Kashmir.

Pakistan had been projecting this picture for some time in various direct and indirect statements. But it did so more formally in a statement dated December 2 last year to which it has been since referring as a definitive formulation of its position on the Hurriyat. This also strengthened, on the one hand, Mr Geelani’s insistence that he should be in the Hurriyat delegation, and on the other hand India’s reluctance to agree to that. There are many things in that statement which are wholly unacceptable to India. But more relevant here is what it says about the Hurriyat and its intended visit.

It says: “In order to enable the representatives of the Kashmiri people to participate in the dialogue” (with India, which the statement proposes in an earlier paragraph) “the Government of Pakistan extends an invitation to the executive committee of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the leader of the Kashmiri freedom struggle, for consultations to prepare the ground for a tripartite process of negotiations...” Before coming to that point the statement accuses India of “repression and violence”.

If such had also been the Hurriyat’s view of its proposed delegation, India would have had nothing to do with it. India would have only reiterated its initial view that first, some of the Hurriyat’s top leaders have already been to Pakistan individually; second, others already had visas and could go there individually if they wished to do so; third, still others who wished to go could also apply for passports, and their applications would be considered in the usual course; but, fourth, if they wished to go there as a delegation representing Kashmir, then the proposal would have to be considered on its own merits. As for a “tripartite process”, India’s position for some decades now has been that talks with Pakistan can only be bilateral, with no mediatory role for anyone, and least of all for any part of India. It is a different matter whether India should or should not agree that there is a dispute over Kashmir, as Pakistan and the leader of the Pakistan-based Hizbul Mujahideen demand it should. But India would never accept any role for Kashmir which requires that India accept that Kashmir is not a part of India.

With such a projection by Pakistan and such a response by India, the Hurriyat’s proposal would have remained in the deep freeze which descended on India-Pakistan relations in the wake of Pakistan’s misadventure in Kargil. This would have disappointed the Hurriyat and the growing number of people in J & K and the rest of India who have been watching the Hurriyat’s recent evolution with sympathetic interest. It would have suited Pakistan to the extent that it would have helped Pakistan to tell Kashmirs that the Hurriyat was a non-starter as an alternative to jehad. But it would have done little else, except to condemn Kashmir to further killings while the jehadis and Indian security forces slugged it out. But the outlook changed when, in spite of Mr Geelani, the executive committee of the Hurriyat took an interesting new stance in the resolution it adopted at its meeting in Srinagar on February 12, distancing itself from the Pakistan position of December 2.

First, the resolution avoids all those derogatory references which Pakistan made on December 2 to various aspects of India’s policies and actions in Kashmir, and particularly to India’s announcement (wrongly described as “ceasefire”) that it will not initiate military actions for another month, till the end of Ramazan. The resolution called this a “positive approach”. Second, it called for “the creation of a peaceful atmosphere “ (India’s phrase is “conducive”), which it described as “imperative in order to find a permanent and peaceful solution of the Kashmir problem”. Third, it described the creation of such an atmosphere as the reason why “the Hurriyat” (not Pakistan) “has moved a proposal to visit Pakistan.” Fourth, in contrast with Mr Geelani and certain militant and religious organisations in Pakistan, the resolution firmly described “the problem” as political and not religious. Fifth, while blaming India for not following up on the “ceasefire”, and describing Pakistan’s response to it as “positive”, it blamed “certain people” in Pakistan too and not only in India for trying “to influence the decision making authority of the Hurriyat too” and declared it would not “accept influence from anybody”. It made no reference to any “tripartite process” as the goal of its proposed visit to Pakistan, and claimed no exclusive right to represent the people of Kashmir.

It is quite possible that as these signals of change in the Hurriyat register in Delhi, the ground will be cleared for it to send a delegation to Pakistan, particularly if Mr Geelani steps aside or is replaced by his leader, Mr G.M. Bhat, President of the J & K Jamaat-e-Islami, which Mr Geelani represents in the Hurriyat. But many questions stand as yet between that event and any fruitful outcome of the Hurriyat’s visit. To be tested in the next few days is the question how well will Indian security forces reconcile their twin duties in this context: to deal effectively with the threats and actions of the heavily armed militants from Pakistan, and at the same time to avoid unnecessary loss of civilian lives, which is the declared purpose of the Indian “ceasefire”. In the past the militants have been able to provoke such actions by the security forces as came close to derailing the peace sentiment in Kashmir. It may be useful to ban anyone from carrying illegal arms. It will not be easy to implement the ban but anyone still carrying them would become a self-declared offender and preventive action against him a legitimate precaution.

To be tested over a slightly longer period is the question how the peace tables are to be shaped, should the need for building some arise after the Hurriyat visit to Pakistan. The Indo-Pakistan dialogue will, of course, require only a table with two sides to it and two flags on it. But whether that table comes to be needed one day or not, there will have to be one in New Delhi or Srinagar — and where out of these two places, and why not also in Jammu and Leh by turns? — for a postmortem of the Hurriyat’s visit and for considering what other steps should follow. Should New Delhi (or Srinagar?) also invite the different regions of J&K on the Pakistan side of the Line of Control to send their representatives? The regions on both sides of the line have an interest in autonomy.

That, of course, raises a number of tough subjects both for New Delhi and Srinagar. Both capitals will have to live down the blunders they made last summer in Delhi that the state’s Autonomy Report would be first discussed with New Delhi and then debated in the state assembly. New Delhi then blundered even more by rejecting the report in a manner so abrupt that it was insulting. How will New Delhi then offer any level of autonomy to any government in Srinagar which it refused to concede to Dr Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference, which has more outspokenly supported accession to India than any political party in Kashmir? And how will any party at present opposed to the National Conference accept a level which was too low even for the National Conference to accept.”

However the Hurriyat may fare in its parleys in Pakistan, how will it fare in such parleys as will have to take place in Srinagar whether it goes to Pakistan or not? How will it not jettison? And how will both find accommodation with the fascinating new actor which has surfaced in J & K, the very large number of panches who have been elected in the hugely successful panchayat elections which have already taken place in some parts of the state and will be completed in other parts before long? The voters have neither obeyed the militants nor the Hurriyat, both of whom had given calls for a boycott of the elections. The voter turnout, largely genuine, exceeded levels witnessed in many elections in the rest of India. Have they given a powerful new platform for the National Conference, which had defied both the militants and the Hurriyat in holding the elections? Or have they themselves become a powerful new platform?

One mentions all these questions not only because they cannot be ignored for long but also because finding answers to them will require that the changes taking place in the Hurriyat will have to go on, and also spread to other political arenas. The consequences may overshadow any discussions which may take place between the governments of India and Pakistan, if any do at all.

(The writer is a former Editor of The Statesman.)

Fate of Fiji’s ethnic Indian farmers
S. Nihal Singh

FOR a man in the eye of the storm, Mr Mahendra Chaudhry has a genial and placid air that belies the steel in him. On May 19 last year, he and his Cabinet were held hostage by Mr George Speight, who earned newspaper headlines around the world, precisely a year after Fiji’s first ethnic Indian Prime Minister had assumed charge. And when he finally emerged from his ordeal, shaken but not bowed, he forgave Mr Speight, described most frequently as a failed businessman, and said he remained the legitimate Prime Minister. An appeal court has now ruled that his successor, the Interim Prime Minister, is not lawful.

There are an estimated 20 million members of the Indian diaspora and while Mr Chaudhry’s present plight is specific to the Pacific islands’ problems, it shines a light on those who go under the unpoetic acronyms of NRIs (non-resident Indians) and PIOs (persons of Indian origin). Stateless persons are few, in large part the divorced wives who have lost the nationality of their former husbands.

Mr Chaudhry has a hard battle ahead of him and it is not even clear that he will be Prime Minister again or when new elections mandated by the appeal court will be held. The army and the tribal chiefs will decide the issue between them. The Prime Minister of the army-imposed interim government, Mr Laisenia Qarase, had declared on the islands’ 30th independence anniversary that Indo-Fijians would not rule again and indigenous Fijians (51 per cent against 44 per cent) must be guarateed control. Mr Speight is in prison facing treason charges but Mr Qarase has sought to make peace with himself and his countrymen by saying that sought to make peace with himself and his countrymen by saying that while he was against last May’s coup, most indigenous Fijians supported its outcome.

Mr Chaudhry came into prominence through the trade union fields. The son of a labourer from what is today Haryana shipped to Fiji’s sugar plantations in 1912, he was trained as an auditor and served as Finance Minister in the first Indian-dominated government until it was overthrown in a coup in September, 1987. After the islands; many travails, a new multi-racial constitution was promulgated in July, 1997, leading to Mr Chaudhry’s success, rudely interrupted by another coup.

Not for the first time, Indian businesses have suffered in the wake of the latest coup, but Mr Chaudhry was much concerned over the plight of Indian farmers being thrown off the land because their leases are not being renewed. Indians do not own the land they cultivate, thanks to the weightage the indigenous people were given by the colonial dispensation and the new political climate is an incentive for the leaseholder to decline to renew them.

What then is to become of ethnic Indian farmers? One option, Mr Chaudhry told me, was to try to settle them in the sparcely-populated parts of Australia, a country that could do with hardy workers on the soil. But such a project — settling some 40,000 Indo-Fijian farmers — would require a Fijian government proposal and Canberra’s assent. The political climate in Australia is already charged with election rhetoric spiced with the reviving fortunes of the anti-Asian one Nation party, which is proving a thorn in the side of the ruling conservative coalition. The big economic power in Fiji is Australia.

While a high-level committee appointed by the Vajpayee government is to report on the Indian diaspora by the end of August, the mixed fortunes of ethnic Indians around the world are tellingly revealed in Fiji. To place these islands’ problems in perspective, the total population is around 800,000. Latterly, the fortunes of India’s dotcom millionaires in America’s Silicon Valley have been much in the news. There is a vicarious pride we feel over those of us who have made good in near and distant lands. The complexion of the NRI has changed over recent years and decades — from labourers who sought their future in the UK, Canada or the USA to the professional class that has settled abroad.

Export of Indian labour still ranks high in the Gulf countries, but the professionals are increasingly coming to the fore as transnational companies tap the graduates of India’s top management and technical institutes to lure them to man offices around the world. There are differences in the kind of Indians going abroad. Many make a home in the West or Australia as new citizens of their respective countries as opposed to others who are in the true sense guest workers who must leave their foreign homes after short or long stints, particularly in the Gulf.

Even in Fiji, I gathered from Mr Chaudhry, professional Indo-Fijians migrate to Australia, New Zealand and the West every year, quite apart from the turmoil set in motion after the coup of September, 1987. They are looking for greener pastures and Australia is the nearest haven they can find. Farmers on the land present a different problem, shared to an extent by the small Indo-Fijian trader and shopkeeper.

The next time we exult in the successes of the Indian diaspora around the world, spare a thought for the poor labourer or farmer toiling to send money home or being denied the fruits of his labour on the farm because he has nowhere else to go.

***

Sane economic policies

Judging by the euphoria with which Indian industry greeted Mr Yashwant Sinha’s Budget, part of the answer must lie in the gloomy Economic Survey that was presented days earlier. Expectations were low and few had expected the Finance Minister to give back surcharges and look ahead, instead of weeping over the past. Apart the other discouraging aspects of the economy, the government’s inability to fulfil anything approaching the disinvestment target for the previous financial year was a commentary on the wages of coalition politics, compounded by the political storm over the Balco disinvestment decision and the presentation of a populist Railway Budget which made little economic sense.

There is still the formidable task of implementing what the Budget has promised, but Mr Sinha deserves credit for striking the right note in promoting sane economic policies. And the government’s decision to stand and fight on the Balco issue gives some hope that grand disinvestment plans will not come to grief at the altar of partisan politics. How Mr Manmohan Singh, the initial architect of the economic reform process, squares his opposition to the Budget with his conscience remains a mystery. Mr P. Chidambaram, another finance minister, had the grace to command the Budget, despite remaining in the opposition.

The writer is a former Editor of The Statesman and The Khaleej Times, Dubai.

A planetary seismology lab

ON either side of the San Andreas fault, which runs almost the length of California, cities move apart at the rate of a few centimetres a year. But at the fault itself, the rocks remain jammed together for years at a time. When they finally give, say scientists at the US Geological Survey, the movement accelerates from practically nothing to 3,000 mph.

Shocks like this over thousands of years build up a pattern of smaller faults, far below the surface rock, threatening the plains that lie west of the San Andreas.

An earthquake in January, 1994, wakened Los Angeles to the fact that it was 10 miles above a new kind of hazard: a “blind thrust” fault. Great segments of rock strata had suddenly ridden one over the other, creating shockwaves but leaving no evidence on the surface that anything much had happened.

The Northridge area of the city felt the full force. There were 57 deaths.

Afterwards, research was intensified into the likelihood of what Californians have always called “the big one”.

The most violent earthquake of modern times — one that sent a tsunami surging towards Japan - may have been in the region of the American north-west that encompasses Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, but that was 300 years ago. The most vivid was the 1906 San Francisco quake, in which the fault moved almost six metres (20ft) in a few seconds, but most of the damage was done by the fire that followed.

The state is still one of the planet’s seismology laboratories, but researchers gave up the tantalising dream of earthquake prediction a decade ago. Since then, the focus has been on education and preparedness, as experts tried to calculate how violent the ground movements might be in future shocks. Guardian

Folk doctors seek registration

Practitioners of traditional Thai medicine, or “Folk Doctors as they are often called, are asking for recognition by the state. They are also demanding that they be given rights equal to those enjoyed by practitioners of other forms of medicine. Recent amendments to the Medical Registration Law require all medical practitioners to be licenced. In order to obtain a licence, the practitioners must pass an examination. The folk healers say that the examination is discriminatory as it is based on the western theories of medicine, which are different from theirs.

Yongsak Tantipidokke of the Health and Development Foundation admitted that most folk healers fail to pass the examination as the language used in the examination process is different. The fact that the folk doctors have not documented their knowledge is another factor that works against them. They get their knowledge by working as apprentices with more experienced folk doctors.

Chali Khonmuang, a folk doctor, says that even though most of them devote their lives to helping and healing the villagers, they receive no support from the government. Rather, the government wants to make the country dependent on western medicines, which have to be imported. He added that the cost of these medicines was so high that most of the villagers could not afford them at all. Thavee Rasee, Chairman of the Folk Doctors Society in Chaing Mai, has urged folk doctors to organise themselves and to train each other in order to obtain registration. (WFS)

How to recognise excuses from colleagues

1. Understand that you are dealing with almost atavistic behaviour if you hope colleagues will always tell the truth. A small group of people will always be blunt (“I will not vote for you to get on the board as I do not think you would be good at it”) and others will say anything to avoid conflict (`I’d love to vote for you but I can’t be there on the day’). People whose success depends on being popular — politicians, hairdressers and salespeople, for instance — are adept at half-truths. Hairdressers who say you your new hairdo makes you look fat are as rare as politicians who accept the blame.

2. See how colleagues behave over time. “Give everybody the benefit of the doubt twice,” says Ruth, a seasoned office politician. Outlandish reasons for being late to work are sometimes true — but be less sympathetic the third time Boris says he was kidnapped.

3. Look out for the blamers. “Some personalities will always externalise things to say it not their fault,” says occupational psychologist Michael Carroll. When Jill is unable to get her report in on time, she may say the deadline was unrealistic, her computer was not working, she had to help a colleague and, anyway, the brief for the report was too vague. The more excuses trotted out, the more she is actually telling you she cannot accept responsibility.

4. Watch out for insincere procrastinators (“I’d love to talk about your proposals — let’s have lunch” followed by silence) and people who make big promises to gain popularity (“Bear with me and I’ll swing you a big pay rise”). People who genuinely want to help you will provide hard facts or analysis now - not the hope of some magic at an undetermined date.

5. Observe body language. Unless they are good actors, people who are about to let you down find it difficult to meet your eye, will leave your office as fast as they can or give some other physical demonstration of shiftiness.

6. Keep an ear out for the tell-tale sign. “Most people avoid the big picture by finding a practicality,” says Carroll. In theory, they will be right behind you — but in practice they will be at a dental appointment, unwell or delayed on a train.

Challenging people directly will often provoke a short-term bad result: if you say they are lying, they will fight back or lose confidence. If you have to tackle a subordinate’s poor performance, however, encourage them to take responsibility but also show that you have belief in them and want to help them do their job better. Observer

Use and abuse: pros and cons of presidential pardon
Anupam Gupta

“Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate,” wrote Alexander Hamilton in New York in 1788, “that the benign prerogative of pardon should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favour of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.”

Contained in The Federalist Papers — a collection of 85 articles on the newly drafted American Constitution authored by Hamilton, James Madison (later President of the USA) and John Jay (later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) — these words form a necessary historical backdrop to the latest scandal that has hit the United States, centring on the largesse of 140 pardons and 36 commutations granted by outgoing President Bill Clinton in a single day on January 20, 2001, his last day in the White House.

Displaying extraordinary physical and mental stamina and keeping up an unbelievably frenzied pace of work in his last few days as President, Clinton wrote into law new federal regulations occupying nearly 4,000 pages, nominated nine new federal judges, created eight new national monuments and, “with a full head of anger at the prosecutors who’d made his own life miserable for so many years” (as the Newsweek magazine informs us), granted a massive “slew of pardons before his time was up.”

The President (reads Article II, Section 2 of the American Constitution), shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

Based upon the pardoning power of the Crown in England, a presidential pardon under Article II, Section 2 was, for almost a century and a half, understood to be a personal act of mercy, “an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws”, as Chief Justice Marshall of the American Supreme Court put it in Wilson’s case in 1833.

“As this power had been exercised from time immemorial (said Marshall) by the executive of that nation whose language is our language, and to whose judicial institutions ours bear a close resemblance; we adopt their principles respecting the operation and effect of a pardon, and look into their books (for the purpose)...”

It was only in 1927 that this approach was abandoned, and a more independent view taken by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most distinguished judges of the 20th century, in Biddle vs Perovich.

“We will not go into history (said Holmes, on behalf of the court), but we will say a word about the principles of pardons in the law of the United States. A pardon in our days is not a private act of grace from an individual happening to possess power. It is a part of the constitutional scheme.”

This was a clear, and fundamental, shift of focus. When granted, said Holmes, a pardon is “the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare is better served by inflicting less than” what a judicial verdict had fixed for the offender concerned.

Not Clinton’s critics but ironically Clinton himself, besieged by controversy, cited (the latter part of) this famous Holmesian quote two weeks ago in an article specially written for the New York Times.

“The vast majority of my Jan 20 pardons and reprieves (claimed Clinton) went to people who are not well known.. Many of these were first-time nonviolent offenders with no previous criminal records.. In some cases I granted pardons because I felt the individuals had been unfairly treated and punished pursuant to the Independent Counsel statue (under which the Monica Lewinsky investigation had been conducted). The remainder of the pardons and commutations were granted for a wide variety of fact-based reasons.. deserving of executive clemency.”

Overwhelmingly, he maintained, the pardons went to people who had already served their time in jail, so the impact of the pardon was principally to restore their civil rights and nothing more.

Among the more visible beneficiaries who fall outside this category, and whose sentences were actually reduced, are Harvey Weinig, sentenced to a 11-year term in 1996 for laundering $19 million for a Colombian drug cartel, and Carlos Vignali, sentenced to a 15-year term in 1995 for being the key financier of a drug network that moved about 360 kg of cocaine into Minnesota.

While Weinig’s term was reduced to half, Vignali’s was slashed by the President to that undergone.

The disclosure late February that Mrs Hillary Clinton’s brother, Hugh Rodham, had received an amount of $400,000 for lobbying for the Vignali commutation as also for a pardon for another convict, Glenn Braswell, shocked even staunch supporters of the Clinton couple. Addressing a press conference on February 22, Mrs Clinton herself confessed to being “heartbroken” by the disclosure, while denying any knowledge of the payment.

More than half of Mr Clinton’s 1700-word article published four days earlier was devoted, however, to his pardon of Marc Rich (and Pincus Green), the pardon that has shaken America.

A billionaire fugitive from justice, Rich fled the United States in 1983 to escape prosecution for massive tax evasion and has been living in Switzerland since then, along with his business partner, Pincus Green.

“Ordinarily (wrote Mr Clinton), I would have denied pardons in this case simply because these men did not return to the United States to face the charges against them.” And proceeded to spell out eight “legal and foreign policy reasons” for acting to the contrary.

The eighth and most important reason — now confirmed as a matter of fact— was (as Mr Clinton put it) that many present and former high-ranking officials of the two major political parties in Israel, as well as leaders of the Jewish community in America and Europe, urged the pardon of Marc Rich because of his “contributions and services” to Israeli charitable causes, to the Mossad’s efforts to rescue and evacuate Jews from hostile countries, and to the peace process in the Middle East through education and health programmes in Gaza and the West Bank.

It is by now established that among the Israeli “officials” who recommended the pardon was the former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, who called Mr Clinton as many as three times for the purpose.

“The suggestion (wrote Mr Clinton) that I granted the pardons because Mr Rich’s former wife, Denise, made political contributions and contributed to the Clinton library foundation is utterly false. There was absolutely no quid pro quo.”

The contributions referred to comprise more than $1 million to the Democratic Party and its candidates; $450,000 to the Clinton library fund; $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign; $10,000 to the President’s defense fund; and furniture worth $7,375 to the Clintons.

Whom should America, and the world, believe? The oral testimony of a former President, the most successful and charismatic American President after John Kennedy, or the hard, palpable testimony of political and personal donations?

The problem may be peculiarly American today but could well be Indian tomorrow, for the pardoning power under the Indian Constitution springs from the same jurisprudential foundations. And the abuse of discretionary power, even at the highest levels of the State, knows no limitations of religion, nationality or culture.

“Wide as the power of pardon, commutation and release is,” ruled the Supreme Court of India in 1980 in Maru Ram’s case, “it cannot run riot; for no legal power can run unruly like John Gilpin on the horse but must keep sensibly to a steady course.”

Well said, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer. But while Indian judges and lawmakers do often pay heed to American decisions, the converse, unfortunately, does not appear to be true.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Let your first prayer be

God's praises,

Your second inner peace,

Your third, humility,

Your forth, charity,

Your fifth subduing the five senses to God:

These five prayers will lead you to God's Infinity.

While you live, remember God:

Instead of washing your hands before prayer Get rid of your evil deeds;

Instead of having a special horn to call for prayer

Grasp, with a pure heart, the Oneness of God.

Eat what you have lawfully earned;

And wash all dirt,

In the river of your heart....

Discipline your body to virtuous deeds!

Take abiding faith as your spouse

And divine knowledge as your handmaid;

Let purifying the impure be your holy Hadith,

And complete integrity be your turban;

A true Muslim should be tender-hearted

And wash the impurities in his heart.

Not caught in the snare of pleasure,

he should be as pure

As flowers, as silk, as clarified butter, as the soft skin of a deer.

— Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Rag Maru, page 1083

***

Iron turns into gold by a touch of the philosopher's stone

So does one become divine by contact with a saint.

A worm turns into a mason-wasp in the company of a mason-wasp,

so does one become divine by association with a saint.

A tree in the neighbourhood of sandalwood takes on its fragrance, so does one become divine in the proximity of a saint.

Whatever goes into fire turns into fire

So does one turn divine by contact with a saint.

A river that falls into an ocean becomes the ocean,

So does one become divine in the shelter of a saint.

Give me the company of saint, O Lord prays Nama; I ask of Thee none else but saints O Father.

—Shri Namdeva Gatha, poem 863.