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Friday,
January 11, 2002,
Chandigarh, India  
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Policemen in Raj Bhavans Developing ties with Israel
Hari Jaisingh |
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Bridge across the world
America and Islamic world
A carrot a day may not keep a hip fracture at bay
1972, Chemistry: ANFINSEN, MOORE & STEIN
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Policemen in Raj Bhavans OLD timers and democratic conservatives will wince at the appointment of policemen as Governor of key states like Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland and now Tamil Nadu and the replacement in Nagaland. But they will understand the compulsion of the Centre. This practice goes against the original principle of selecting individuals to occupy Raj Bhavans. The time was when senior politicians who had retired from active politics were selected as Governors to guide the state government in times of crisis and advise it in normal times. They were less instruments of the Union Home Ministry and more a philosopher and friend of the state government. Now the Centre’s focus has shifted to security concerns and the possibility of crucial states even kow-towing to law breakers and violent elements. For instance, the Nagaland and Manipur governments are known to give a cut to local militants from the grants they receive from the Centre for development work. A policeman at the top, in the case of Nagaland Mr Shyamal Dutta, a retired chief of the Intelligence Bureau, will be able to monitor intelligence reports, evaluate them and both advise the state government and monitor its actions. In fact, in the North-East the Centre has preferred senior Army or police officers to be the head of the state and among them had been Lieut-Gen S.N. Sinha (Assam), Mr R.C.Sharma of Punjab (Nagaland) and Mr Ved Marwaha (Manipur). The appointment of Rammohan Rao, a retired Director-General of Police of Andhra Pradesh, as Governor of Tamil Nadu and Mr Shyamal Dutta as his
counterpart in Nagaland is understandable in these circumstances. In Nagaland a political process is on and talks are in progress between the Centre’s interlocuter Padmanabaiah and the dominant seccessionist group, NSCN (I-M). Ideally, a senior political leader well-versed in delicate negotiations would be the right person to supervise the progress of the talks. The country lacks such persons and the talks are going on outside India, in Bangkok, the Netherlands and Tokyo. It is as well that the Centre has decided to concentrate on Kohima and keep a stern eye on the goings-on in Nagaland leaving the more delicate aspect of restoring peace to the Centre. Tamil Nadu is becoming a major problem from the Centre’s point of view, like the way former Chief Minister Karunanidhi was arrested and journalists were harassed. Anyway, there was a vacancy and the Centre thought that a neighbouring Andhrite will understand the problem better. In the earlier years of the republic there were two rules regarding the appointment of Governors. One, they should be mature political leaders capable of offering sound advice to the state government; it was possible because the country was ruled by the Congress. Two, no retired bureaucrat, including policemen and judges, would find favour. This was related to delinking the professional obligations of these men to the requirements of the political party in power. Radical changes in politics, social relations and administrative compulsions have changed all this. A pity. |
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Developing ties with Israel INDIA has to move cautiously in developing relations with Israel. This is so because of two basic factors. One, Israel and the Palestinians have been on a collision course ever since the Jewish state came into being in 1948. The Palestinians, in the process, lost their homeland which led to a state of permanent tension between Israel and its neighbours — the Arab countries. Of course, the situation that exists today is not what it was over a decade ago or before the Camp David Accord was signed between Israel and Egypt. Yet there is no love lost between the Arabs and the Israelis because of the painful happenings in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority as also by Israel. In fact, with the installation of the Ariel Sharon government in Tel Aviv, the situation has become worse. In such an atmosphere, any enthusiasm that India shows to get closer to Israel may send a wrong signal to the Arab countries, many of whom have traditionally friendly relations with New Delhi. The second factor is related to Pakistan, which will leave no stone unturned to mislead the Arab friends of India. This, however, does not mean that India should not respect the Israeli desire to upgrade relations between the two countries. Israel's keenness in this regard was clearly noticeable during the just concluded visit of its Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres. India can benefit immensely in the area of defence as Israel has a highly advanced military industry. This country immediately needs at least three Israeli Phalcons (a version of the American AWACS — Airborne Warning and Control System), and Mr Peres gave enough hint that there should be no problem in its purchase or its acquisition on a lease basis in view of the growing tension in the subcontinent. The opportunity should be fully exploited. A number of other military hardware can also be acquired from Israel to enhance the armed forces' fighting capability. India has, however, to guard itself against Israeli advice on how to tackle the terrorist menace. There is a qualitative difference between the problem the two countries are faced with. Israel does not have to worry about public opinion while dealing with the militants because they are not its own nationals. In the case of India, some of its own people in Kashmir are feeling disgruntled and have, therefore, taken recourse to violence. They are as Indian as anybody else in any corner of the country. They are working against the interests of their own country after having been misguided by Pakistan. Foreign elements too have joined their ranks, but that is again because of Pakistan's policy of promoting destabilisation and militancy on this side of the border to achieve its unholy aims. Over the years India has gained experience to take on terrorists, who are virtually on the run today. But the country's security forces must be equipped with the latest weapons and support systems. Friendly relations with Israel can prove to be an asset in this respect. |
Not by handshake alone AFTER the tension-ridden SAARC summit, American pressure and global anxiety, where do India-Pakistan relations stand? The question in itself is dicey. We can never be sure what Pakistan wants and what it is up to. India generally reacts to Pakistani moves rather than set the pace for events. This is how I look at Indian diplomacy. It is basically goody goody. South Block broadly follows a safe middle path in conducting its foreign affairs. The whole approach has, however, changed after the dastardly attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13. In recent weeks Indian diplomacy has become both firm and assertive. It has apparently realised the futility of its earlier soft approach while dealing with Pakistan. Signs of this new diplomacy were very much visible at Kathmandu during the SAARC summit where Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee did some tough talking and plainspeaking. His remarks after the famous handshake by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf were both pointed and pungent. It will be worthwhile to recall the words of Mr Vajpayee: "I am glad that President Musharraf extended a hand of friendship to me. I have shaken his hand in your presence. Now President Musharraf must follow this gesture by not permitting any activity in Pakistan or any territory it controls today which enables terrorists to perpetrate mindless violence in India. I say this because of my past experience. I went to Lahore with a hand of friendship. We were rewarded by aggression in Kargil and the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft from Kathmandu. I invited President Musharraf to Agra. We were rewarded with a terrorist attack on the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly and last month on Parliament House of India. "But we would be betraying the expectations of our peoples if we did not chart out a course towards satisfying the unfulfilled promises of our common South Asian destiny. "Our cooperative future will be significantly influenced by the way in which we can tackle terrorism together. The international community has agreed that no country would allow its soil to be used, actively or passively, to finance, shelter, arm or train terrorist groups. "The recent experience of Afghanistan also showed graphically that tolerance, acquiescence or sponsorship of terrorism creates a monster out of the control of its own creator." I see in these simple observations the emergence of a tough Mr Vajpayee. Perhaps, the sad experience at Agra has made him realise that Pakistani leaders do not understand the language of niceties and gentlemanliness. They see signs of weakness in Indian initiatives for peace and friendship. More than General Musharraf, it is equally necessary that US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair ought to understand Indian sensitivities and perspective. The problem with the Americans is that they not only suffer from the Cold War hangover, but also often adopt double standards in international relations. That is why they reserve the right to intervene for acts of terrorism solely for themselves while denying this privilege to India to respond to provocative acts in the neighbourhood. They see the ground realities selectively and adopt a posture not to the advantage of this country. Whether US policy-makers will apply the necessary correctives remains to be seen. At his Monday's press conference, President Bush was surely tough on General Musharraf. The US leader told the Pakistan President clearly that his words must match his actions aimed at cracking down terrorism. US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher was more categorical. He said that any killing of innocent people for political ends is terrorism. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, sometimes gives the impression that he carries the burden of the colonial policy his great predecessors practised in the subcontinent. Much of the mess in the region is a legacy of the colonial past. How united India was partitioned is part of history. The British role is also much discussed in history books. The communal problem in the subcontinent was complicated by a divide and rule policy pursued by the then British rulers. They added fuel to the fire and never opted for a healing touch which could have avoided the bloodshed of Partition. I do not wish to recall the gory events of the past. But I notice certain distressing traits in the personality of Mr Blair. He sees himself as a grand master in India-Pakistan affairs. He either indulges in tight-rope walking or conducts himself as a high priest with an obvious tilt towards Pakistan. How Mr Blair behaves is his own business. All the same, it is time he learnt a few lessons to see subcontinental matters objectively. The problem of American and British leaders is their double standard. They want to be on the right side of the Pakistani rulers in the pursuit of their strategic interests while arm-twisting Indian leaders all the while. Such an attitude of two mature democracies is disquieting. Democracy is a matter of principles and ethics based on people's will. Anglo-American leaders have their own worldviews and angularities. No wonder, they have adopted a distorted view of the Kashmir imbroglio. They fail to understand Indian sensitivities and, in the process, conveniently overlook the historical evolution of this country's secular traditions in sharp contrast to the highly communal politics pursued by Pakistani leaders. Secularism is the very basis of the Indian nation. Kashmir is part of this tradition. Over a long period, sufism and other secular facets of Jammu and Kashmir have got ingrained in the life of Kashmiris. I have said repeatedly that Kashmir is not a matter of territorial dispute. It is a matter of principles of secularism and democratic and ethical values on which rest the very foundations of the Indian Republic. Unless world leaders come to appreciate this fact and revise their views and approach to this highly explosive matter, there can be no normalisation of India-Pakistan relations and, therefore, no peace in the real sense of the term. Mr Bush and Mr Blair have seen for themselves the havoc which the Talibanised Islam has brought about in Afghanistan and even in Pakistan. The preaching of distorted forms of Islam has been going on at the behest of Pakistani leaders and their supporters elsewhere in the world. This is how the distortions in Jammu and Kashmir have crept in. These distortions can be corrected only if western leaders apply the same principle in tackling terrorism with regard to Jammu and Kashmir as they did in the case of Osama bin Laden and his militant outfit. This is simple hometruth. The sooner world leaders come to terms with this basic fact, the easier it will be to defuse the tension in South Asia. I am not a hawk. I fervently believe in India-Pakistan amity. I stand for peace and stability in the region. I believe in the people's freedom from poverty, deprivation, disease, illiteracy and all the other socio-economic problems the region is suffering from. The priority has to be given to faster economic growth and not to politics. The obsession has to be on eradicating poverty within a decade or so. This is possible if Pakistani leaders abandon the politics of brinkmanship and settle for amiable and friendly ties to mutual advantage. However, General Musharraf has not been able to give up the politics of confrontation. He wants to grab Kashmir in the name of Islam through violence and the proxy war. Western leaders should not entertain the illusion that this country will give Jammu and Kashmir on a platter to Pakistan. If a realistic settlement has to be worked out, it may lie only in formally accepting the Line of Control (LoC) as the international border with some "give and take". It is a pity that western leaders forget how India has been exercising restraint so as not to complicate matters. They must not forget how Pakistan has been trying to grab Kashmir by recourse to violence. Unfortunately, the soft language of India's diplomacy does not seem to have gone well with the West. It is only the recent tough posture adopted by an otherwise sober Atal Behari Vajpayee that has made Mr Bush and Mr Blair take a serious note of the complications in the subcontinent. All that is needed now is to see things in right perspective and apply the requisite correctives. This requires casting off of the colonial and Cold War mindset. A positive understanding of India's secular and democratic polity can help the process of normalisation. India must be treated with care and honour. |
Bridge across the world BACK
in Punjab my father played a wicked game of bridge. And because he was so good at it he was often invited to play with the Maharaja of Faridkot, who was close to the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. (Vikram Chatwal). Because of that closeness of one ruler only in name with one who had absolute power over his subjects, Mr Sant Chatwal, Vikram’s father, moved to Addis Ababa and opened two restaurants. And what more natural that with the overthrow of the emperor he should have fled to London. That was in 1975. A year later after exploring the possibilities of the North American continent, he decided on Montreal where he bought a fancy abode reputed to belong to a mistress of the Greek magnate, Aristotle Onassis. That was in 1976. It so happens that was also the year I first visited Canada, the year of the Olympics in Montreal. Old friends of my husband’s beckoned, friends with whom he had lived in the Yorkshire Dales in his youth. But I also wanted to have a look at the county for more than one reason. We were fortunate enough to see a fair bit of Nova Scotia in the east; visit Prince Edward Island, Anne of Green Gables county; drive through the Rockies to Vancouver in the far west where we sailed for a week in a yacht in and around Ganges Harbour and Salt Spring Island before returning to Ottawa, our starting point. A country with varied attractions, but we decided to stay put in Darjeeling. By a quirk of fate, the two of us find ourselves exactly 25 years later back in Canada, this time with our younger son and his family in Toronto. So while my hair is white, the photograph in Saturday Night shows a handsome, smiling Sant Chatwal, his beard jet black, his turban red, looking fearfully pleased with himself while young Vikram appears ever so gauche. Between the two is a familiar face in an unfamiliar Nehru jacket: none other than Bill Clinton. This is one in a collage of photographs, all of which show the young Chatwal with various celebrities whom I do not recognise apart from Hillary Rodham Clinton. The young man reminds me of frightened rabbit, but I am obviously alone in thinking this because he has been on the cover of the best fashion magazine. No wonder that the opening sentence in the accompanying article goes: The hotelier, sometime model, dilettante film producer and international playboy Vikram Chatwal...has just returned from a trip to India suffering from a case of Delhi Belly.... What about the senior Chatwal? If I had known about his bridge partner in his days in the Punjab, I could have asked His Highness, Faridkot, when I was taken to his birthday party in Chandigarh in February, 1999, if it was true that they had played bridge together. I think it was his eightieth birthday though he did not look his age. The evening was most convivial; certainly my stepfather enjoyed himself immensely. Mr Sant Chatwal certainly has gone a long way since then. He owns 15 hotels in America and the Bombay Palace restaurant chain. The latest addition is The Time in Times Square meant for “fashion-conscious consumers willing to pay a premium for cool luxe”. It is managed by his son. A quote to end on, this from Vikram, aged thirty: “I am looking for a girlfriend — and something more serious — and you can print that.” |
America and Islamic world NOW that terrorism has gone out of control, and was almost on the verge of acquiring the nuclear bomb, America is engaged in destroying it. In the process, one fears, it is about to set in motion a whole host of new forces which will bring about the armageddon. I see Islam at the head of these dark forces. Islam was a religion of peace. But it has been seriously distorted. Prof Ziauddin Sardar writes: “We have given free rein to fascism within our midst and failed to denounce the fanatics, who distort the most sacred concepts of our faith”. But such candour was wanting. Writes Wall Street Journal: “Every shred of evidence that discredits an Islamic society (was said to be) an American fakery, done to slander Muslims, or a Jewish counterfeit, or a monstrous Indian/Hindu trick”. A new religion seems to have thus emerged — Jehadism. Its central belief is based on a deliberate misinterpretation of the Islamic concept of jehad. No, this is no jehadism. Let it be called by its true name — Talibanism, a new word in Islamic history, of which Muslims will be ashamed for a long time to come. It is claimed by certain Muslim scholars that Islam is an ideology, not a religion. But the determinism of this ideology robs men of their significance in history. The jehadis went about their business in deadly earnest. The discovery of a 11-volume, 7,000-page guide-book entitled “Encyclopaedia of Jehad” was a major revelation. It was a manual for murder and mayhem. Dedicated to Bin Laden, it contains detailed expositions on how to make bio-chemical weapons, including anthrax, how to create maximum public panic by bombing the nuclear power plants and how to kill a person by pressing on his vital parts. Each copy carries a picture of a machine gun and the Koran side by side. The merger of politics and religion cannot be shown in a more blatant manner. The Encyclopaedia gives a list of targets: for example, the Statue of Liberty (symbolic), nuclear power plants (psychological), human targets (to terrorise). Militancy and extremism in the Muslim world are attributed by some to “rage over injustices” in US foreign policy. Perhaps the reference is to the dispute over Palestine. But there are instances of a far more heinous nature in history: for example, genocide, colonialism, the opium trade, the slave trade and so on. In comparison, the Muslims have suffered very little at the hands of history or the USA. America sees the Muslim world in multiple visions. There is the view of Islam of the organised Christian Church, more so of the powerful Baptist Church of the USA. To say the least, it is hostile to Islam. There is a long history of conflict between Islam and Christianity. Then, there is the view of the US oil lobby. It is interesting that Muslims control much of the oil produced in the world. So the main interest of the oil lobby is to protect this source of energy. In other words, to prevent radical changes. Bin Laden sees this as the cause of Muslim decline. Then there is the view of the whitemen who see the Arab as a desert nomad with a hawkish nose and a knife concealed at his back. Political America sees Muslims positively and negatively. Says a Republican: “There is no such thing as peaceful Islam”. This is a widespread view in the world. Of course, Muslims contest it. The Republican goes on: “They (the Muslims) can’t fit into an America, where the first loyalty is to the Constitution.” Again, he is right, for the first
loyalty of the Muslims is said to be to the Umma (Muslim brotherhood). So, what is the Republican’s final solution? He says: “They should be urged to leave America.” Is this what Muslims aspire for — rejection by the rest of the world? Then there is the powerful Jewish lobby of America, which has much to do with the shaping of American opinion on Muslims. It sees Islam and Muslims in terms of its experience of the Holocaust. Naturally, the Jews got the Hamas and Hezbollah declared as terrorist organisations by Washington. The oil and Jewish lobbies have more often dominated American thinking. But that was when there were no Muslims in the USA. Today, there are six million Muslims in the USA, and they are growing fast with the conversion of Christian blacks into Islam. The blacks too have a powerful grievance against the whites. Only the blind cannot see in all these a powerful time-bomb, ticking away to a cataclysm. The USA knew what was coming when Muslim terrorists bombed, the US military base at Dahran (Saudi Arabia), made the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, assassinated two CIA men in Langley, almost blew up 10 United Airlines planes in 1994, bombed the US embassies in Dar-es-Salam and Nairobi in 1998 and attacked the US ship USS-Cole. After all these, the US State Department continued to pretend that there was no terrorism. How is one to explain this? Two ways: (1) that the CIA is a blind organisation and (2) that the USA had a use of these terrorists to promote its foreign policy objectives. This make-believe continued till September 11. That event shocked America into action. But the damage has been done to Muslims. When NATO sent back the small UAE peace-keeping force, it said all: “We no more trust you”. Nations must be aware that there is a price for excesses. The Germans are still paying it. How can one forget the macabre experiments of the Taliban in Afghanistan? America has lost the trust of the world because it continues to play with the destiny of mankind. And if what the Taliban created in Afghanistan is the alternative model to Western civilisation, then there will be few takers for it in the world — even among the Muslims. |
A carrot a day may not keep a hip fracture at bay THOUGH the ingestion of toxic amounts of vitamin A is known to adversely affect animals, but now it has been proved that long-term high vitamin A intake could contribute to fracture risk in humans. The Journal of American Medical Research says that a high vitamin A intake from foods and supplements increases the risk of hip fracture among postmenopausal women. In an analysis, started in 1980, with 18 years of follow-up within the Nurses’ Health Study, Diana Feskanich and her colleagues have proved that an increased intake of vitamin A or Retinol is not good for the human system. The results of the study said women in the age group of 34 to 77 having the highest quintile of total vitamin A intake had a significantly elevated risk of hip fracture compared with women in the lowest quintile of intake. The association of high retinol intake with hip fracture was attenuated among women using postmenopausal estrogens. Beta carotene did not contribute significantly to fracture risk. Women currently taking a specific vitamin A supplement had a nonsignificant 40 per cent increased risk of hip fracture compared with those not taking that supplement, and, among women not taking supplemental vitamin A, retinol from food was significantly associated with fracture risk. Due to the high rate of absorption and the large storage capacity for retinol in the human body, vitamin A toxicity can result from acute ingestion of a very high dose, or from repeated exposure for several weeks or months to lesser dosages. Vitamin A toxicity has not been observed with excessive intakes of beta carotene, presumably because of limitations on its absorption and conversion to retinol. ANI
Gifted children do not suffer social problems: study
Gifted children and youth are no more likely to be isolated or unhappy than children of normal ability, according to a study by the Professional Association of German Psychologists (BDP). Contrary to widespread belief, they are generally well socially integrated, found the long-term survey that interviewed 151 gifted young people from the age of nine to 20. Only 20 per cent of them claimed to be bored in school classes, which is about the same proportion as children with usual abilities, the experts say. But the study did find that gifted children have higher demands from “friends” and scrutinise the quality of their social relationships more closely than others. DPA |
World tour on cycles
Calcutta: Four Bengali cyclists, who set out on a world tour yesterday, were given a hearty send off at the town hall. The Mayor of Calcutta presided. The BSA Cycle Company presented them with four bicycles, while two Calcutta firms gave them four revolvers and photographic and film making implements. Arrangements were also made to insure their lives, and policies would be issued before they went out of India. |
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As long as we do not cooperate with one another, we cannot progress. We should have at least as much compassion as Jatayu the vulture, who despite being a bird, confronted the evil-doer Ravana for the protection of humanity; and thus gave the message of compassion to all living beings. When an unarmed bird sacrifices his life out of compassion to save the honour of humanity, why cannot a human being have the same sensitivity towards other human beings? Many people take vows not to repeat such misdeeds only to repeat them after a brief interregnum, blaming it on God, claiming, "What can I do? bankruptcy; dear brother! Supplement it with God's strength. — From the discourses of Sant Sri Asaramji Bapu *** Christ had very few books, and yet all the Masters of Arts and Doctors of Divinity rack their brains to interpret what is written in the gospels. Mohammed spoke beautiful things. Wherefrom did they get all the inspiration, wherefrom did they derive all the information? They got it firsthand from a source which is also within you. — Swami Ramatirtha,
*** Lasting harmony between hetergeneous communities can only come through a recognition of the oneness of mankind, a realisation that differences that divide us along ethnic and religious lines have no foundation. Just as there are no boundaries drawn on the earth to separate nations, distinctions of social, economic, ethnic and religious identity imposed by peoples are artificial.... The diversity created by God has infinite value, while distinctions imposed by man have no substance. — Communal Harmony: A statement by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahais of India. |
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