PERSPECTIVE

ON RECORD
Less obvious presence of forces, a welcome change: Moosa Raza
by Tripti Nath

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Moosa Raza

FORMER Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Moosa Raza was handpicked by the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) to lead a goodwill mission to Kashmir to facilitate the return of Kashmiri Pandits to their hearths and homes in the Valley. Honorary Director-General of the India Islamic Cultural Centre, Mr Raza recently led a delegation to Jammu and Kashmir. He visited the Valley in October after a gap of five years and noticed welcome changes on the streets during his brief stay.

Away from the monotonous routine of "file-shuffling" and "policy making" synonymous with administrative governance, Mr Raza finds time to pursue academic interests. He is a keen student of comparative religion and has studied the Ramayana, the Bhagwad Gita and the Mahabharat. A scholar, he has summarised his early administrative experience in a book "Of Nawabs and Nightingales" published in 1995. At present, he is working on a manuscript on the Dynamics of Islamic Law.

An IAS officer of 1960 batch, he held key posts including Principal Secretary to former Chief Minister of Gujarat, Madhavsinh Solanki in 1975, Managing Director of National Textile Corporation Limited from 1977 to 1982, Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir (1988 to 1990), Adviser to the Governor of Uttar Pradesh and Chairman of the Trade Fair, now called India Trade Promotion Organisation.

A: The atmosphere in the Valley appeared to be much more peaceful than what it was when I visited it in 1998. In the last five years, there seems to be considerable improvement. I noticed a large number of people moving about freely in Maisuma, a congested residential locality. Shops were open in Lal Chowk, Wazirpura where Abdul Ghani Bhat, the Muslim Conference chief and former Chairman of Hurriyat, lives and Haiderpura where Shabir Shah, Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Party chief and Geelani, chief of the breakway group of Hurriyat, live. Another welcome change was the less obvious presence of security forces. The state government had provided us normal security. We travelled along the Dal boulevard several times in the day. While passing by the side of various parks and gardens, we found lots of families picnicing and enjoying the sun. We met 16 persons in the Valley including Shabir Shah, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat, Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, Yaseen Malik and Yosuf Tarigami, CPI (M) leader. We also met Chief Minister Mufti Mohd. Sayeed, some ministers and Chief Secretary Dr Sudhir Bleoria.

A: When we met Shabir Shah he said, "Sir, it is very shocking that you have to come all the way to talk to us about the return of Kashmiri pundits. Voh hamaara ek hissa hain. Unke bagair hum namukammal hain. (They are a part of us. We are incomplete without them).

A: My rapport with the bureaucracy during my tenure in J&K was excellent. People had heard of me and met me. For instance, I had known Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, the father of the Mirwaiz Maulvi Omar Farooq. Subsequent to my departure, I’ve been meeting my successors. I came back in 1991 and revisited the Valley in 1992. In 1996, I was invited to a seminar on industrialisation organised by the state government. I was appointed chairman of a committee for developing a grievance redressal system and administrative reforms for J&K after the seminar.

A: Authentic figures are not avilable but from all the figures quoted by the Kashmiri Pandit leadership in Jammu, the Chief Minister, the Director-General of Police, the Chief Secretary and the Rehabilitation Minister, the mean works out to 7,000 to 8,000 Kashmiri Pandits of 1,600 families who have stayed behind. The number of people who left as part of the exodus can be gauged from the total number (30,228) families registered with relief organisations.

A: I would be very wary about making an assessment on this issue. We posed this question to the DGP Gopal Sharma. We visited a relief camp. The State pays each camp inhabitant Rs 600 a month with a ceiling of Rs 2,400. I asked the DGP because the Pandits want to be assured about their safety. Their confidence was badly shaken after the Nadimarg incident in March in which 23 Pandits were killed. People who braved militancy for 10 years were not provided any security. I strongly believe that you cannot allow people to be killed by militants or security forces and the only way to check these killings is to initiate measures both at the political and administrative level. Human rights violations by security forces should not be allowed. I have my own assessment of the Kashmir situation. Without boasting, I can say that I was the only Chief Secretary after Sushital Banerjee who visited maximum number of villages to establish direct contact.

A: The state government is constructing 700 tenements with two rooms in multi-storeyed complexes in Anantnag, Badgam, Baramullah and Srinagar. The Chief Minister told me that he is sending a comprehensive package to the Centre. Our committee was not a rehabilitation committee. We had gone there to create goodwill, to create an atmosphere to facilitate the return of Kashmiri Pandits. Our visit had a limited objective. Our objective was to meet the Kashmiri Mulsim leaders. We conveyed the feelings of the camp-dwellers in Jammu to the state government. They listed conditions for their return, security being number one followed by employment for their children and reservation.

A: No, I don’t see any reason why there should be any violence because the Kashmiri Muslim leadership of the Valley welcomed us. 

Why university students betray a lack of flair for learning?
by Vikram Chadha

A cursory visit to a modern-day university campus in the region may conjure up an image of the campus being more of a students' club rather than the highest abode of learning. One may spot relatively much larger number of foppishly and flamboyantly attired students flaunting their trendy cell phones around the campus tuck shops and students’ centre, rather than in the library and classrooms. Students seem to be brimming with a sense of hedonism and Epicureanism, instead of exuding their avidness for learning and knowledge acquisition.

Learning is an interminable and a continuous process. It requires an assiduous involvement and commitment of both the teacher and the taught to make the learning process prolific and exotic. It is an intellectual exercise wherein the giver and the taker ought to vibrate on an identical wavelength, to make the experience delectable, profound and exquisite.

But looking at the present-day experience in our universities, one is dismayed at the nonchalance and disinterestedness among students in this symbiotic process of knowledge and information transfer. Gone are the days when the enigmatic Gurukuls provided an ambience for a smug relation between the pupils and Gurus to render knowledge acquisition spontaneous, interesting and fun-filled. Nevertheless, much water has flown down the Ganges, and the contemporary student community, on the average, betrays a lack of flair and fervour for learning and academics. They seem to be mirthfully savouring the present moments of life, while caring two hoots for the vicissitudes of the unfathomed future.

The fundamental reason for the fast dissipating curiosity and inquisitiveness for knowledge among university students perhaps lies in their brittle foundations at the elementary school level. Instead of spurring up and reinforcing their power of imagination and originality of thinking and reflecting, they are spoon-fed on their curricula and courses, and are taught only to score well in the examinations in a stylised and structured manner. They are perhaps given to understand that knowledge is a capsule to be swallowed, rather than being groped and explored through impeccable zeal and effort, which makes the process of knowledge acquisition exhilarating, ecstatic and rapturous. Instead of slogging it out to achieve distinctions, they have found easy short cuts through tuitions, help books and even cheating, which all make the acquired knowledge unsustainable.

The teachers and parents who earlier used to be their mentors and role models, because they inculcated and professed finer moral values among their pupils and wards, are now themselves assorted with baser materialistic values, and thus are no longer their true friends, philosophers and guides. Consequently, the students seem to have lost their way due to faulty direction, and have become ambivalent about their goals and objectives in life.

The exposure to western culture and values through terrestrial information systems has precipitated the rot. Instead of emulating positive and virtuous qualities of those societies, our youngsters have been blissfully tempted to imbibe the worst in their eclectic choice. The pizza-burger culture has turned them more swanky and ostentatious. Humility and reverence for the elders have yielded place to obstinacy and defiance. Cell phones and chitchatting about movies and parties have swapped places with books and serious and meaningful academic discussions. This behaviour pattern of our modern generations hardly contributes to the strengthening of their knowledge base.

Jobless growth of the economy since the last decade has also put the student community in a quandary. Leaving aside a few of them with top honours, others are simply unsure of their placement in future for a decent livelihood. Job reservations in its umpteen sinister forms and facets, and spiraling course fees in the campuses has further de-motivated and disillusioned them. The mindboggling multiplicity of courses and their increasing irrelevance from the job market has puzzled the youngsters and has virtually alienated them from serious academics.

An extremely enlivening and absorbing activity on the college and university campuses is the students' participation in elections to form various student bodies. This process was nevertheless suspended in the campuses in Punjab in the wake of the Punjab imbroglio during the ‘80s. However even much after the heat and dust of the stormy days in the state has settled, the process of elections to constitute representative students bodies in the university campuses is yet to be restored. The election process in the campuses is certainly a training ground to make students responsible citizens of a proud democracy, and fosters a sense of participative work culture among them. Participation in elections at various levels in academics induces students to think positively and constructively instead of loitering, gossiping and incinerating their precious time and energy.

Students are the most vibrant and socially sensitive resource of our country. It is an enormous reservoir of latent energy and new ideas. But they have to be harnessed and chiseled through appropriate measures by involving them concertedly in knowledge and career building activities. A directionless student community may prove to be nothing short of a tinder-box ready to explode a system. n

The writer is Professor of Economics, Punjab School of Economics, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar

OPED

PROFILE
Ramphal: a leading world statesman
by Harihar Swarup

FORMER Commonwealth Secretary-General Shridath Ramphal was emotionally moved when President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam conferred on him last week the prestigious Indira Gandhi Peace Award. He became emotional not because he joined the galaxy of such luminaries as Michael Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter and Vackal Havel, who too were the recipients of the award, but he might have remembered his Indian ancestors. Sir Ramphal’s great-grandmother had “out of the wretchedness of widowhood and poverty” crossed the dark waters from Calcutta to British Guyana 120 years back; indentured to labour on a sugar plantation. This was her second adventure as indenture and she never returned home.

Her tryst with destiny had, in fact, began much earlier. She had to leave India, for the first time, in rebellion for refusing to commit “sati” on the funeral pyre of her husband. She was banished to Banaras to be cleansed her of sins. Wandering in desperation in the narrow winding lanes of the holy city, she came across a Dutch recruitment firm which enrolled her as worker in a plantation in Surinam. She left the shores of India for the first time with her infant son of three. She served her indenture of five years and exercised her right to repatriation having been convinced that she would be welcomed back home. But, on return, she was doubly persecuted; for having been crossed the ocean and lived with meat eaters. She was again back to Banaras but this time lured by the assurance of the recruiters that the British planters were not as cruel as the Dutch and a better life awaited her in Britain Guiana. She crossed the black waters again. The plantation in Guiana was owned by an English merchant, John Gladstone, whose son endowed by the sale of the Plantation, was to become the Prime Minister of Britain. Sir Ramphal says: “I am the product of double encounter with the indenture system”.

His widowed ancestor did not survive for long and her lone son grew up in the care of Canadian Presbyterian missionaries. His son, Sir Ramphal’s father, became a teacher and a pioneer of education in Guyana, fighting and winning particular battles for the education of Indian girls. “I was the first of my family-third generation from that brave great-grandmother-to have visited India; when I did, in 1972, I was a Foreign Minister of an independent Guyana”, he says. Since then, Sir Ramphal had visited his ancestral land many a time and November 19, when he received the Peace Prize at an impressive ceremony in the Ashok Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, it was a special occasion; an emotional moment indeed.

Born and educated in Guyana, the great-grandson of the widow, who refused to die on her husband’s funeral pyre, has become a leading international statesman. Sir Ramphal studied law at King’s College, London, Gray’s Inn, and the Harvard Law School. After holding legal appointments in the then British Guiana and the Federation of the West Indies, he became independent Guyana’s first Attorney-General and, later, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Justice. He held the post of the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, perhaps, for the longest period, from 1975 to 1990 and during the period played a prominent part in the organisation’s efforts to help the struggle of freedom in South African and in promoting alternative views on global economic issues. He made them more favourable to the needs of developing countries and the world’s poor.

Sir Ramphal has emerged as one of the eminent Caribbean personalities, along with Sir Vidia Naipual. Notable among many books, he has authored, is “Inseparable Humanity”. The work is an anthology of his reflections to mark the 150th anniversary of Indian indenture to the West Indies that started in Guyana in May, 1835. He says: “ The winds of history have scattered far and wide the seeds of the tree of India. The currents that have carried them across the world have followed so many varied courses that the resulting blooms are much unlike each other, save only their common roots. The Indian diaspora is as multi-faceted as India itself”. Though the pathways of the progeny of Indian indenture and Indians are different, there is a common bond between them.

In the words of Sir Ramphal: “As someone whose life has been spent largely in global affairs, India’s ethical internationalism, for example, has always been for me”. He quotes Tagore to bring home the point: “The lantern which I carry in my hand makes enemy of the darkness of the farther roads”. India carried that lantern bravely, he says. n

COMMENTS UNKEMPT
Fallout of democracy, American style
by Chanchal Sarkar

ABRAHAM Lincoln was indeed a great man and is worshipped as such by most Americans — Whites and Blacks. And not Americans only. Film buffs will remember in “Zapata” with Paul Muni when Zapata has to escape in a hurry from the pursuing royalists in Mexico, he asks one of his followers to pack in a lithograph of top-hatted Lincoln which hung on the wall. “The Gringo?” asked the surprised follower. “Yes, the Gringo” said Zapata. But even Lincoln could not maintain his tolerance. During the Civil War he considered shipping all the slaves back to American and asked his Secretary of State for War, Stanton, to examine the proposal. There would not be enough ships, it was found!

The Civil War and the ending of slavery is one of the glorious moments of American democracy, but the persecution, denial of civil rights, the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings carried on even to the sixties though America was admired as a democracy. Even during the Second World War black Americans going to donate blood for the wounded were sometimes told that “coloured blood” was not accepted! Roosevelt was Commander-in-Chief of a segregated Army. Thousands of Americans of Japanese descent were rounded up and stuck into camps for several years. From these came soldiers who fought for America and formed the most decorated unit in the American Army. The official American apology came after 50 years!

These contradictions may not all have been described in the BBC phone-in on ‘What has American democracy given to the world’ for which I set the alarm to listen but found it was not on the wavelengths that I groped.

I am sure people in many countries are sometimes put off by the contradictions. Take John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State, drawing up entente cordiales with almost every authoritarian rulers, a formula for the ‘containment of Communism’. By ignoring the thousands of casualties inflicted by the Israelis on Palestinians with American-built and, usually, donated, planes, tanks, helicopter gunships, mortars and an array of high-tech munitions. The reason given is suicide attacks. But what other powerful weapon do the Palestinians have against the armed-to-the-teeth occupiers of their land? Whether as trainers, supportive allies, “peace keepers” or under some such guise America has set up military encampments in scores of countries, even underground in the icy wastes of Greenland according to the latest legal struggle of the Eskimo people of North Greenland to regain their purloined land.

The most disastrous doctrine of American foreign policy is the boast of going it alone, which appeals to the romanticism of the Custer’s Last Stand school of Americans. This has won over the current makers of American Foreign Policy to look upon so important but fragile an institution as the United Nations with contempt and derision. Also to refuse to sign such vital world treaties as the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the setting up of an International Criminal Court. By its stand against abortion, today’s presidency refuses American women the right to do what they decide with their bodies. Viet Nam has taught the Americans only to seek revenge and become neo-colonial in Iraq.

And yet America has perhaps the strongest Human Rights organisations in the world like Human Rights Watch. It also has a sturdy and probing press though over most of America the press is a monopoly. Most foundations and trusts are set up with corporate money, the same corporate world which, it has been found, is riddled with public-cheating corruption. Not just Enron and Worldcom but scores of others.

The era of “From log Cabin to White House’ is long, long over in America. The Presidents have to be rich and be great raisers of campaign funds. That is why the Halliburtons and Bechtels will get plum breaks. The expense of elections and the link of economic prosperity to Defence production are two bad gifts of American democracy. For the election next year the Democratic hopefuls — Howard Dean, Senators John Kerry, John Edwards, and Joseph Lieberman and Representative Dick Gephardt must each raise $20 million in campaign funds. Senators have lavish perquisites not all of which are used fairly but there are also Senators and Representatives with knowledge, power and influence which they use with effect.

Another undesirable fall out of democracy, American-style, is the overweening power and resources of the CIA and the FBI abroad and at home. At home, too, are the population and influence of the Hispanics and Latinos, of the Blacks and ethnic groups like the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and even Indians which grow and will have to be met. Countries like India will have to work hard to side-step some of America’s democratic lessons and face up to America’s hyper-power.

Where America attracts the envy of other democratic countries is by the critics it harbours of itself. About Guantanamo, for instance, which would seem to go against all the traditions and foundations of the American legal system as the critics insist. Or the power which the administrations (not just of George W. Bush alone) allocates to itself of using unilateral force for ensuring “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources”.

A brilliant article by a brilliant man, Noam Chomsky, entitled “Dominance and its Dilemmas” attacks this root and branch in Le Monde and at least one American publication. He cites even as much acclaimed a liberal as Dean Acheson saying (and this was in the long ago reign of Harry Truman) that “no legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power, position and prestige” International Law can then go out the window.

Add to this the stupendous supremacy that America has built up in arms through its Defence industry and the formula for unilateral world domination becomes four-square. One would expect Indian democracy to have the guts to attack such a doctrine. There are some such attacks but they are not applauded roundly enough in this country. In any event the American administration takes scant notice of the stuck-out necks. 

DIVERSITIES — DELHI LETTER
V.P. Singh’s creativity reaching its peak
by Humra Quraishi

I had the cheek to go driving on New Delhi's roads on November 27 when it was officially declared to be a bad traffic day — 14,000 marriages taking place that very evening! Each time I passed a congregation or a crowd or a combo of the two I quietly muttered words along these sentiments “may this marriage last” and tried to move on…Before I move on with this column let me add that the best gift to give a marrying couple is Khalil Gibran's ‘The Prophet’, with the bookmark carefully tucked in the pages on marriage which carry Gibran's perception of a meaningful marriage. This when Gibran himself never married!

Moving on, I'm feeling somewhat rattled for though I am tempted to write in detail about two important men whose works will be in focus this weekend. But then, I'm filing this column several hours before the events…anyway, foremost former Prime Minister V.P. Singh has been battling with cancer for the last eight years or so and yet his creativity is reaching its peak.

This weekend opens a fortnight-long exhibition of Mr V. P. Singh’s drawings and paintings at Ajeet Cour's Academy of Fine Arts and Literature. I think these exhibits will not be that simple — in the sense they'd be accompanied by couplets or lines coming from his heart. Just for your sampling. On the very invite to this exhibition is one of his paintings — a partially covered woman's face with these VP's lines to go along with it — “No one really saw her /she was so well covered /by her face...” In fact, if you look closely at V.P. Singh's own face and eyes they look as though laden to the brim with sentiments and emotions which find expression in his poems and paintings...

And there’s another emotional personality who though is no longer around but will resurface through his verse this weekend. Coinciding with his 90th birthday, noted Urdu poet Ali Sardar Jafri’s poetry will be read out at the IIC lawns. Well-known people like Zohra Segal, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi will do the rendering of those verses. But what I find a little disturbing is that at any poetic get-together it is just these chosen ones who are invited for those rendering sessions.

Where are the new names? New faces? Why aren't the young voices included on the rendering circuit? I just hope that there'd be some focus on the romantic life and times of Jafri, for his love affair with Sultana was along the lines of legendary love tales, except for the fact the couple married and thereafter lived happily together. This 'happily bit' I'm adding along presumptuous lines, for stands out the fact that his name wasn't really linked to any other woman and also some of favourite poetic verse have been dedicated to Sultana.

Banda Bahadur

This week when UBS publishers sent a copy of the latest from Harish Dhillon — The Legend of Banda Bahadur — my immediate reaction was: “Why is this nice man writing about Banda Bahadur?”. And with that in the backdrop, I simply had to read through this book and the readers of The Sunday Tribune will, I suppose, also go through this exercise to get closer to the ‘why’ factor for Dhillon has his reasons lined out. And as to why I call Dhillon a ‘nice man’, when I have never met him, is because at least a dozen people who know him well describe him to be so. And just when I was mentioning about him and his book to former Union Education Secretary P.R. Dasgupta, he too quipped “YPS Principal Harish Dhillon…what a nice man!”

M.L. Sondhi

Not that I knew M.L. Sondhi who passed away last week but the very exterior of his home on Amrita Shergil Marg stood out. You would have to see it to believe that there were actual banners to state his name, designation — his and his home’s — Indo Pacific House and what not. Anyway, it does require great confidence to add these frills right at the gates.

REFLECTIONS

Brahman is Sat-Chit-Ananda, the existence-consciousness-bliss. It is He that manifests in all forms, Brahman is pervading everywhere and is nothing but Atman.

— Shri Adi Shankaracharya

If a religion cannot help man wherever he may be, wherever he stands, it is not of much use; it will remain only a theory for the chosen few.

— Swami Vivekananda

Some lie down to sleep on cushions, others stand guard over them.

— Guru Nanak

Not to believe in the possibility of permanent peace is to disbelieve in the Godliness of human nature.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Forgive thyself little, and others much.

— Leighton

Pardon others often, thyself never.

— Publius Syrus