The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

Seshnag death dance

THE death of 13 persons in a terrorist strike at Seshnag on the way to the holy Amarnath cave on Saturday is a grim reminder that security can be exceptionally tight but not foolproof. The element of surprise remains with the killers. The first major attack on the yatra this year coincides with firing by Pakistani soldiers in Kargil and shows that the neighbour is bent on upping the ante. Gen Pervez Musharraf was trying to negotiate a settlement at Agra by holding the terrorism gun to the head of his Indian counterpart and now appears to be carrying out the threatened escalation of violence with a vengeance. It is not clear who perpetrated the heinous crime, but indications are that it was either Lashkar-e-Toiba or the pro-Pakistan Al-Umar Mujahideen headed by Mushtaq Zargar, who was released in exchange for the passengers of the Indian Airlines plane that was hijacked to Kandahar. The men who carried out the attack are not important. The not-so-invisible hand behind them is. The aim obviously is to make things so hot for India that it agrees to a settlement on Pakistan's terms. What the writers of this scheme forget is that such cowardly attacks can instead steel the resolve of a nation to fight back with renewed vigour. The way the yatra has been resumed after just a day's suspension tells its own story. The statement made by senior separatist leader Shabir Ahmad Shah about the incident is irresponsible and intriguing. By alleging that the attack was "designed by Hindu extremists" to sabotage the ongoing peace process, he has only rubbed salt on the wounds and escalated tension.

A high-powered central team headed by Minister of State for Home I.D.Swami is to review the security network. What has to be admitted is that the terrorists managed to penetrate several layers of security. Now that they have been thus emboldened, there is every chance of their trying to strike again. Their aim is to somehow disrupt the yatra, which is a symbol of Kashmiriyat and Hindu-Muslim amity, and thus projects the central and state governments in poor light. That devious plan has to be defeated at all costs. To do so, vigil has to be mounted at the border itself instead of the route of the yatra. Once the foreign mercenaries and other antinationals sneak into the country, it is very difficult to hound them out. It goes without saying that the border is porous. Still, now is the time to put into practice what Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said at Agra: that the country has the means and the stamina to tackle cross-border terrorism.

UTI veil ripped off

THE head of the former head of the UTI (Unit Trust of India) has rolled. Also those of two executive directors. All of them and a share broker are in police custody for intense interrogation. What the CBI wants to establish is their interest in buying 3.45 lakh shares of a Lucknow-based company, Cyberspace Consultants, at a total price of Rs 32.80 crore. As the CBI statement before the Mumbai special court says, there are grounds to suspect the bona fides of the chief actors in the deal carried out in the middle of last year. One, the UTI agreed to a private placement route. This way it shortcircuited the stock market; instead preferring direct negotiation. This has its plus and minus points. If a very major buyer like the UTI aggressively enters the market, the price will shoot up with speculators busy making a fast buck. Private placement, on the other hand, is a blind bargain, the buyer going by the word of the company and its own assessment. In the case Cyberspace, the assessment was very negative. The economic research cell of the UTI, the vetting window of the biggest mutual fund in the country, felt that any investment was more risky than safe. The cell tore apart the claims of Cyberspace and bluntly stated that the company had no organised network to generate the volume of profit it promised. The matter should have ended there and it did. But four days later the company’s proposal was revived and a final approval was accorded within hours. Even for an organisation expected to respond within minutes, this was extraordinary.

The CBI is totally wrong in saying that the Cyberspace shares were traded at Rs 2 on the day the UTI bought the shares at Rs 936. At the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) it was quoted at slightly more than Rs 1000. What the UTI failed to realise was the jacking up of the share price just before the deal. It was unpardonable and criminal. The share price rose to more than Rs 1230 in a few months when anything connected with computer software attracted buyers. Immediately after the deal with the UTI the prices dropped like a stone losing Rs 600 in one day. Today it fetches Rs 1.15 a share, indicating that the UTI investment of Rs 32.80 crore is dead. Was it a routine bad judgement every fund manager makes when the share market goes berserk? This one is not. The head of Cyberspace has told the CBI that he paid Rs 50 lakh to share broker Rakesh Mehta to clinch the deal. And the CBI found Rs 7 lakh in his house. But the CBI has a hard task in its hands to prove that former chairman of the UTI P.S.Subramanyam has benefited financially from the deal. A search of his residence has not yielded any evidence of wrong doing. And one of those mentioned in the FIR, Prema Madhuprasad, has not been arrested. The case is not foolproof and it is not specious either. The coming months and years will bring out the real story.

OPINION

Agra could have been saved
It should now be salvaged
A.N. Dar

BOTH Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers have said that the Agra talks have not failed. What would they say of the talks which did not end even in a joint statement or declaration, much less of a joint press conference? If they have not failed, what else is failure? So much for the much-criticised media hype. If anyone said the truth, it was the media. The media should now say how the next summit can be more fruitful. For this we should go back to Agra. We should see if we could have done better. And whether we can put ourselves to better use at the next summit.

One regret is that we made no preparations. We succumbed to the Pakistani assertion that the two heads of the delegation should go straight into the talks without an agenda or a structure for the talks. We have it on the authority of the Foreign Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, that India had been pleading with Pakistan to let it send a delegation of officials to that country to draft an agenda or generally decide what should be discussed. The question which should have been asked of Mr Jaswant Singh is why India allowed itself to be led by Pakistan in this regard. Why didn’t we pursue the idea with Islamabad? Why be led by Pakistan? This was the first point of surrender.

Pakistan obviously knew why it should take this attitude. It wanted to throw at Atalji’s face the centrality of the Kashmir issue, take him by surprise and get his affirmation. This script was laid down in Islamabad while India kept on requesting Pakistan to receive a delegation of officials. How disastrous was the Indian surrender was known when President Musharraf made the centrality of Kashmir the centrepiece of his discussion. The breakfast conference of President Musharraf was, from the Pakistani point of view, the finest performance of the summit. He emerged as a master performer. As the Jang newspaper of Pakistan said, he entered the lions’ den and emerged with his audience purring like pussycats. His sandwich-eating audience, used to only criticising Indian politicians and officials, was literally tongue-tied. The only question that brought the touch of a grimace on his face was how he advocated for a vote in Kashmir when he had not given it to Pakistan.

In drawing up his programme in Agra it was as necessary for India to know how he was going to use the breakfast conference as it was important for the Indian authorities to keep track where each security man would stand as President Musharraf went about the lobby of his hotel. One important about his safety and the other about the summit’s success. India should have wanted to know all about the breakfast project. Would the Pakistanis later on have a briefing on the breakfast? Would the Pakistanis authorise two of the invitees to release a gist of his talk? Would they televise it live? These were pertinent questions that should have been asked when the programme was being drawn up. This is what the official delegation, had it gone to Pakistan, would have tried to find out.

After it was surprised by the breakfast broadcast, India obviously did not know how to counter it. Typically, officials looked into the files and miraculously came upon the opening statement of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee at the summit a day earlier. By itself a very good statement but the Indians did not seem to know that it was something which had been made out 24 hours earlier. And, more important, it has by then been overtaken by what President Musharraf had said at the breakfast. Much more important, General Musharraf had already blown off what Mr Vajpayee had advocated in the opening statement. It didn’t thus serve the purpose its disclosure was meant to. The statement had come from the deliberations of the summit. Thank God, the Pakistanis did not make an issue of it as they did with Mrs Sushma Swaraj’s statement and complain that India had disclosed what had happened at the summit.

As sorrowful was the Indian lack of decision on what to do with the Hurriyat. When it became known that President Musharraf was coming, India should have decided what to do with the Hurriyat. It had known how the Pakistan High Commission was treating the Hurriyat. It was an “open house” for the Hurriyat. The question the Indians had to answer was whether New Delhi should allow the Hurriyat to meet President Musharraf or not. Here again India allowed Pakistan to take the decision which India could not change. Unlike India, President Musharraf was not going to surrender before the Indian viewpoint. If they were two countries trying to be friends and influence each other, President Musharraf could concede not to let the Hurriyat come. But he was out to score points (the first warning of what Pakistan was doing should have come here), not only to give a fillip to the Hurriyat but to make it a prime party and tell India that it would do what it wanted. India could have prevented Hurriyat leaders from coming to New Delhi, but it would have been undiplomatic.

Instead, it should have made it the real non-issue and let the Hurriyat leaders come and put themselves in the arms of the Pakistan High Commission. This would not have created a ripple. But sad to say, India did not decide what to do about it. It gave the Hurriyat undue importance. Are we to allow the Hurriyat to decide our Pakistan policy?

One thought will keep on hitting our minds. After the breakfast, could India have done anything better? The Americans have a way out of it. When the US President wants to say something but is not scheduled to do so, he “drops in” at an aide’s room where the foreign VIP is having a talk and joins in the talk or takes him to his room. Some such thing could have been done here too. The easiest way was for Mr Vajpayee to “chance” to meet a couple of correspondents while getting into or out of the car and having an impromptu chat with them and be questioned on what had happened at the breakfast. India should play realpolitik with Pakistan. President Musharraf did it with India.

Don’t believe that the Pakistanis would have taken this lying down. They would also have made their President do something like this. This, of course, would have led to an ugly interlude. But the Pakistanis would have known that Indians can pay back. Had the Indians made President Musharraf do the same, he could not have done better than what he had done at the breakfast and at best he would have repeated himself. But the last word would have belonged to India.

We need not do all this at the next summit. All that the Pakistanis should know is that we are capable of it.

The writer is a well-known political commentator.

MIDDLE

Search for Chekhov’s horse
Narendra Kumar Oberoi

THE first monsoon shower was far too exhilarating. With umbrella in hand I took myself to the Botanical Garden for my morning walk. I started feeling quite distinguished after a while. I was the only faithful left in these infidel times, I thought. The habitual morning walkers were nowhere on the scene.

They would do their walking on condition that it did not rain. There was nobody in the length and breadth of the garden. I felt upfront and exclusive. To my surprise, a sense of outrage started welling up within me. How could this mild shower scare them all:

It kept raining by fits and starts. I expected I would run into someone or someone into me to share my expansiveness.

It was a steady mild wooing interspersed with a lover’s outburst. After so many erratic monsoons it was a well-timed shower. It kept pouring throughout.

I took myself to the shopping plaza in the evening. The light was playing hide and seek. The diminishing light of the evening sun threw up a romantic haze.

People were to-ing and fro-ing at a pace which did not reflect considerable appreciation of the weather except a lilt in their gait by way of courtesy. It grew dark much before it would have.

On my way back I found myself jilted. The switching on of the lights in the shops gave the darkness twinkling effects. The rain-lovers would go lyrical over narration of such weather. How blessed is childhood when one could dance in the nude splashing raindrops around. My despair hyped up as I paced down.

I could not materialise someone in human form to share my feelings with. A friend of mine who had been assassinated many years ago fleshed out of my memory. I was waiting for him for the morning walk the day he was assassinated. From the driving seat he would horn every morning at my door.

At all kinds of hours during the day or night I kept listening for this horn for 17 long years. It had just to rain and within minutes I would have the horn beckoning me for a cruise in the car. There was hardly a corner of the City Beautiful my friend and I had not watched the rain from.

I don’t know how it occurred to me that my situation was no different from that of the coachman in Chekhov’s famous story “Grief”. Plying the coach the whole day long he could not catch the attention of anyone riding his coach to tell that his son was in the hospital with high fever.

After taking the reins off his neck in the evening in the stable he told the horse his tale of woe. Why don’t I find Chekhov’s horse for my tale, I said to myself.

POINT OF LAW

From Krishna Menon to Jaswant Singh: four decades of Kashmir dialogue
Anupam Gupta

FEW summits in diplomatic history have been so one-sided, so ill-planned on the one side and so well-planned on the other, as the Indo-Pak summit at Agra.

With India inanely excelling in making a fetish of what is now, courtesy the United States, declared to be the foremost principle of international law and behaviour — summit-level “engagement” — General Pervez Musharraf, contrary to his own claim, came empty-handed to Agra and returned triumphantly to Islamabad almost as if he, and not India, were the victor of 1965, 1971 and Kargil.

Any one who saw the General rant and rave at his press conference in Islamabad last Friday, a press conference where he broke every norm in the diplomatic rule-book to address the Kashmir “dispute” the way he did, gaining in the process a domestic credibility that no dictator in Pakistan has ever enjoyed, would be fully entitled to ask: does not such summitry for summitry’s sake, India’s new mantra of good-neighbourliness, devalue and delegitimise the politics of peace?

The restraint that Prime Minister Vajpayee and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh exercised at Agra is commendable, indeed. And one must, in all fairness, give them credit for seeking to continue, even if somewhat woodenly, the Nehruvian tradition of serious and silent diplomacy in an age of communications which marks — as Mr K. Natwar Singh put it the other day on television — the “ demise of reticence”.

And yet, and this is what ultimately matters, what has India (or peace) gained from Agra?

Nothing at all except a repudiation, on Pakistan’s part and at the highest level of Musharrafspeak, of 35 years of peace-making between the two countries from Tashkent in 1966 to Simla in 1972 to Lahore in 1999. Each of which agreements or declarations the General, brimming with confidence over his newly-acquired legitimacy, has verbally torn to pieces.

It would be self-deceptive in the extreme to believe, as the Government of India and large sections of liberal opinion in our country still apparently do, that this is not a setback to Indo-Pak relations or that the “highroad to peace” — one of Mr Jaswant Singh’s great flourishes — can be traversed yet again by the two countries as if nothing at all has happened and Agra is a palimpsest, a slate which can be wiped clean.

It is revealing indeed that while General Musharraf “wants to close that chapter” (of the establishment of Bangladesh in 1971) — as he told a Bangladeshi journalist at his press conference in Islamabad — and “would urge everyone to ignore” his earlier observation to the contrary at his breakfast meeting with Indian editors in Agra, he is determined not only to resurrect the Kashmir dispute and push it centre-stage but to use it as a pre-condition for any progress in Indo-Pak relations.

Both Bangladesh and Kashmir — the separation of the former from Pakistan and the accession of the latter to India — represent the failure of Jinnah’s two-nation theory, the founding ideology of Pakistan so completely and irreconcilably at odds with the Indian Constitution, the fundamental law of the Republic of India.

“It is one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically, linguistically and culturally different,” Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, one of India’s greatest Muslims, concluded in his autobiography (India Wins Freedom).

“It is true (he said) that Islam sought to establish a society which transcends racial, linguistic, economic and political frontiers. History has, however, proved that after the first few decades, or at the most after the first century, Islam was not able to unite all the Muslim countries into one State on the basis of Islam alone.

This was the position in the past and this is the position today.”

Twelve years before his autobiography — scripted by Humayun Kabir with his approval — was posthumously published, and just two months after partition, Azad had poured his heart out before the Muslims of Delhi on October 23, 1947.

“Do you remember?” he said, speaking from the Jama Masjid in Urdu — I quote from the English translation by Syeda Saiyidain Hameed — “I hailed you, you cut off my tongue; I picked (up) my pen, you severed my hand; I wanted to move forward, you broke off my legs; I tried to turn over, you injured my back.... The partition of India was a fundamental mistake....”

For any one in India not to accept Pakistan today for that reason would be a mistake even more fundamental. History cannot, and must not, be rolled back and all attempts to do so are destined to end in failure. Or in appalling and uncontrollable disintegration, as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (which once were) would testify.

Precisely for that reason, however, General Pervez Musharraf’s obsession with Kashmir, and his insistence on undoing history, mark a big step backwards in the movement for peace, the lingering fascination with summitry on both sides of the border notwithstanding.

For all his professed dislike for the laboured finesse of diplomatic semantics and his preference for “blunt” talking, at the heart of General Musharraf’s obsession lies an extremely professional camouflage of Pakistan’s refusal to accept Kashmir’s accession to India.

Throughout his press conference in Islamabad, beamed live to millions of households in both countries, Musharraf spoke only of treating Kashmir as the core issue, the central issue, of the Indo-Pak dialogue. Not once did he use the word “accession” and only once, and that too in answer to a question, did he refer to the UN resolution of 1948.

That the camouflage has, to some extent, already succeeded is evident from the fact that even some discerning Indians have approvingly noticed Musharraf’s omission to refer to the UN, or to the plebiscite proposal, and treated that as a positive sign conducive to further discussions over the Kashmir problem.

It is here that lawyers or lawpersons must step in to instruct the Indian public, including the liberal intelligentsia, about the finality and completeness, both under Indian and international law, of Kashmir’s accession to India and to disengage them from an Indo-Pak dialogue on Kashmir that can never truly take off or, in case it does, can lead only to the secession of Kashmir from India.

“This is a very serious matter for us, a serious matter not only for India but for every country seated around this table,” the leader of the Indian delegation, V.K. Krishna Menon, told the UN Security Council on January 23 and 24, 1957, in a speech that ranges over 116 printed pages and would do the tallest of constitutional and international lawyers proud.

“We are a federation,” he said, “we are not a confederation, and the units that accede to (a) federation stay in once they have acceded. There is no provision in our Constitution, there is no contemplation in our Constitution for secession, and that is not peculiar to us.”

“Our institutions (he said, explaining the point) are largely derived from Anglo-Saxon parliamentary institutions which affected the constitutions of the countries of Western Europe and North America. In these countries there is no provision for secession at all.”

Under the Government of India Act, 1935, he said, as in force on August 15, 1947, it has been set out how a State should accede. “Once that accession has taken place, there is no provision in this to go out.”

The only provision there is, is in regard to variation. A ruler may, by a supplementary instrument executed by him and accepted by the Governor-General, vary the instrument of accession of his State by extending the functions which, by virtue of that instrument, are exercisable by any Dominion authority in relation to the State.

“But, of course (he said), the Government of India also has to agree. If the two sides agree, it is possible to vary the conditions of the relationship between the constituent unit in the federation and the Central Government. That is all that is permitted by the law. Therefore, when anyone suggests to us that there should be a divorcement of this territory from our federation, we are being asked to act against our constitutional procedures.”

The ability with which Krishna Menon dealt in 1957 with the objection regarding the Indian Constitution being in conflict with international law on this point is simply breath-taking.

“Now I freely admit (he said) that when the municipal constitutional procedures, as your learned colleague (from Pakistan) will advise you, are against well-known principles of international law, international law prevails. But in this particular matter the Constitution of India is presumed to be known to the United Nations when it was admitted as a member. These provisions were there even before we were independent. Also, it is well known in international law that in a federation of our kind, there is no right of secession.”

He then went on to cite from the judgement of the Supreme Court of the USA in Texas vs White, wherein the court had laid down the nature and consequences of the accession — or “annexation” upon request — to the United States of the State of Texas, when threatened by a predatory incursion from Mexico.

“When, therefore, Texas become one of the United States (ruled the Supreme Court), she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union and all the guarantees of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact ... it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was complete and final.”

Therefore, the Government of India, said Krishna Menon, out of considerations of security, out of considerations of international law and the law of India, and the law that has been given to it by the British Parliament, cannot ever accept the idea that accession is anything but an indissoluble bond. When Kashmir acceded, that matter was finished.

It is this finished matter which General Pervez Musharraf, exploiting India’s newly-developed weakness for summitry, wishes to re-open in the year 2001.

More on Agra and the legal framework of Indo-Pak relations next week.

75 YEARS AGO

Commercial education

The authorities of the S.D. School, Gujarat, have decided to start the Diploma-in-Commerce classes of the Punjab University this year.

The university of the Punjab has been pleased to sanction affiliation. In the Punjab and N.W.F.P. which have made arrangements for training the Punjab youths for the commercial career.

The admission into the first year class has begun and lasts upto the 24th of July. The regular work commences in the first week of September.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Crime rate dips in Singapore

THE crime rate in Singapore dropped by 13 per cent in the first six months of 2001, but the percentage of Malays involved in rioting incidents is up, official data showed on Sunday. Malay participation in rioting associated with gang activity increased from 20 per cent of all cases between January and June 2000 to 28 per cent for the same period this year.

The number of rioting cases dropped from a high of 470 in 1998 to 134 in the first half of this year, said Assistant Police Superintendent Michael Ang. Malays compose 15 per cent of the population in the predominantly Chinese city-state of Singapore. The preliminary figures for the crime rate showed murder was the only major offence to buck the across-the-board fall. There were 17, one more than during the same period in 2000.

Investigations into gang violence showed that most participants are between 18 and 30 years old, school dropouts and employed in low-skilled occupations. DPA

Chinese cloned goat pregnant

In the first case of its kind, a cloned goat has become pregnant in China, the state media reported. Yangyang, a goat cloned from an adult goat’s body cells, is about four months pregnant, Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese scientists as saying. “So far as we know, there is no record of a goat cloned from adult body cells becoming pregnant after mating with a goat cloned from an embryo,” said Prof Wang Qianghua with the cloning project. It is the first case of its kind in the world, which indicates strong potential for Chinese scientists in this field, Wang said.

Yangyang was the second goat in the world cloned by Chinese scientists from adult body cells, following the first one ‘Yuan Yuan’, which died after 36 hours of birth. The goats were cloned by the Chinese scientists through a technique of nuclear transfer different from that used to clone Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal.

Goats usually have five-month pregnancies and Yangyang is expected to give birth next month, Wang said. PTI

Tibetans live 31 years longer

The average life span of the people in Tibet has increased by 31 years to 67 over the past 50 years, latest results of the fifth national census showed.

Local people have their average life span remarkably prolonged from 36 years, upon Tibet’s “peaceful liberation” in 1951, to 67 years in 2000, according to statistics of the census, which was carried out late last year.

The region now boasts 116 people above 100 years old, which is one of the highest figures among all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China, the state media reported on Sunday.

“The much improved living standards and medical care help me live healthily and happily today,” said Yozhol, a 100-year-old woman living in Degze county, 50 km away from Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region. PTI

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

If someone speaks to you with anger, pour the soothing waters of love on the fire.

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Always wear the costume of humility and you will receive the love and cooperation of others.

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The only way to gain respect is firstly to give it.

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No one tortures you except your own nature.

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Be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own success.

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One word spoken with love can soothe the sorrowful hearts of many.

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We all consider ourselves to be part of Mankind... Yes we are part of man but how kind are we?

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The more love you give, the more you receive;

the more you have, the easier it becomes to give.

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Love of God makes you love all mankind and hate none.

Love of one individual makes you love only one and hate many.

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When one will not, two cannot quarrel.

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The best way to get rid of your enemies is to make them your friends.

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Do not expect love and attention. Give it instead.

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Tears of love do not cause sorrow; they become pearls.

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In a bitter world, one drop of true love is an ocean in the desert.

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— Thought for Today (A Brahma Kumaris' publication)

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Never resort to that beggarly morality which goes by the name of disciplinarianism.

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Believe not your admirers, worshippers and flatterers.

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Personal Love = nothing else but weakness and passivity.

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People go on rushing headlong after sensual objects, not seeing before them, till they run their heads against rocks and walls. Thus is caused pain or sorrow.

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— Swami Ramatirtha, In Woods of God Realisation Vol. I: "Notebooks of Swami Rama"