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Democratic Afghanistan Towards reconciliation |
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Polls apart Everybody enjoys US elections There's nothing like a good show. The best, and the greatest, show is the US presidential elections. There's good reason to keep this going, every four years, if not more frequently. It is easier to understand than football.
A rejoinder
The all-powerful me
What will Bush do in his 2nd term? Delhi Durbar
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Democratic Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has won his country’s first battle of the ballot, as officially announced by the UN-Afghanistan Electoral Board, but he had to face a tough fight. He could hardly get more than the mandatory requirement of 50 per cent votes to avoid a second round of polling, despite all the advantages he had. The performance of two of his 17 challengers, particularly former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni and Hazara chieftain Mohammed Mohaqqeq, was impressive, considering the odds against them. This, however, also proves that the elections were fair and transparent. There were allegations of electoral malpractices. But an independent enquiry has brought out the truth that these malpractices were not widespread to affect the outcome of the elections. Mr Qanooni and Mr Mohaqqeq still have their reservations and hence their refusal to formally accept defeat. This is a cause for concern which will have to be removed in the interest of political stability in Afghanistan. During the interim period of his rule, Mr Karzai could not get tough with the tribal warlords, controlling many regions with their private armies. They pose a serious threat to the government in Kabul. Now that Mr Karzai is an elected President, he should not hesitate in launching a concerted drive to disband these militias and seize the illegally held weapons. He has also to take on the well-entrenched drug mafia. This is essential not only for establishing the rule of law but also for shedding his image as a timid ruler. Achieving success on these fronts is, however, not an easy task, particularly when there is widespread unemployment and the government is totally dependent on international aid even for its day-to-day functioning. A country-wide rebuilding programme is urgently needed to eliminate the destabilising factors. The world community, particularly the donor-countries, will have to come to the aid of this war-torn nation with sufficient funds in the interest of peace and stability in the region. |
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Towards reconciliation CLOSE on the heels of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s promise to replace the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, with a more humane law, the Union Government’s decision to form a special committee to review the Act is welcome. It is noteworthy that jurists will be included in the committee to look into the legal aspects of the Act. Reports quoting the Union Home Ministry suggest that draconian sections in the Act like granting sweeping powers to security forces to detain anyone for questioning without a formal arrest will be diluted in the new Act. Similarly, the provision for conducting searches without valid warrants will also be dropped. The decision, belated though, is bound to assuage the feelings of the people of Manipur. Even though the Apunba Lup, the apex body of 30 organisations in the state, is yet to call off its three-month-old agitation formally, there is no doubt that the situation has been defused to some extent. Ever since the rape and killing of 32-year-old Thangjam Manorama Devi on July 11, allegedly by the Assam Rifles personnel, normal life in the state has been paralysed. The Centre failed to gauge the mood of the people and dithered in taking timely action. Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil took as many as 55 days to visit the state. This exacerbated tension and alienated the people further. Now that the situation has calmed down, the Centre should take every possible step to win the hearts of the people. Apparently, the recent meetings the representatives of the Apunba Lup had with the Prime Minister and the Home Minister helped to allay apprehensions among them about the Centre’s intentions. In particular, they seem to be convinced that if the Act was withdrawn from Manipur, as demanded by them, it would have serious implications for counter-insurgency operations in the Northeast. They seem to have understood the limitations of the Central government. This should help restore peace and normalcy in the strife-torn state. |
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Polls apart There's nothing like a good show. The best, and the greatest, show is the US presidential elections. There's good reason to keep this going, every four years, if not more frequently. It is easier to understand than football. Just one guy is elected, even if he is George Bush, and he is elected twice. There are not too many parties and symbols to confuse the voter like in India; just two parties with their respective symbols, an elephant and a donkey, and there's not much difference between them. The votes, however, are of quite a few kinds — popular, provisional, electoral, absentee, etc. But not so many that they cannot be counted on the fingers of two hands. Most informed and intelligent people in the world follow the elections better than they do the democratic exercise in their own countries. Everyone — spectator, participant, terrorist, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy — feels deeply involved. Naturally so, since unlike Britannia, which only ruled the waves, its former colony rules the earth, besides water, moon and much of space too. And, equally naturally, everyone in the world wants a say in who runs the US of A. Given this worldwide enthusiasm, which is only to be expected given that the US affects the lives of every human being, it is time every adult in the world has a vote in deciding who becomes the Prez. Otherwise, the only non-American who gets to have a say in who should stay in the White House is Osama bin Laden. The US is the world's only indispensable democracy and it is a terrible denial not to let citizens of the world vote in the US elections. It is one election that makes everyone feel good and everyone is entitled to feel good, at least once in four years. |
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It is good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. — Winston Churchill |
A rejoinder This refers to Anita Inder Singh's two articles, which focus on the causes of the partition of India in 1947 (The Tribune, Oct 4 and 5). These articles are a rehash of the conclusions which she had arrived at with meticulous care in her DPhil (Oxford) dissertation, "The Origins of Partition of India''. For the last two decades or so Dr. Anita Inder Singh and her peers, a squadron of like-minded professional historians holding prominent positions in the academic hierarchy, have been feeding us with the mistaken belief that the conflict between the Congress and the Muslim League was ideological; that the Congress was secular, and the League communal; and that, as Dr Singh says, “the country had no intention of becoming a communal body” by joining the League in the UP coalition ministry. Such a one-tunnel interpretation is simplistic. I think before we draw conclusions about the causes of Partition, we must pause and ask candidly: how is it that Jinnah, who was secular-minded and hailed as the Ambassdor of Hindu-Muslim unity, and was willing to abandon separate-electorate idea in favour of adult franchise, turned into an inveterate foe of Indian nationalism and asked for a separate Muslim state? How is it that the Ali Brothers-Mohammad and Shaukat- who had received a thunderous applause as heroes at the Congress session in December 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, became staunch supporters of the League; and Shaukat campaigned virulently against the Congress in the UP 1937 elections? How is it that Nehru's blue-eyed boys, Khaliquzzaman and Iftikharuddin too left the Congress to join the League? Dr. Alam and Daud Ghazni did likewise. Even M.A. Ansari too got disenchanted, and resigned from the Congress Working Committee. Dr. Singh writes that in the 1946 election the League won more than 80 per cent Muslim seats. The question is: why was the Congress marginalised, and why did the League gain ascendancy? Why? Dr. Singh has no answer! I think that ideology has little role to play in politics. Politics is practice. It is acquiring and sharing power in a multi-religious society. Of course, there were far-sighted men in the Congress like C.R. Das, C.Rajagopalachari, Maulana Azad, Bhulabhai Desai and others like Fazl-i-Husain and Fazl-ul-Haq who exerted pressure to reconcile differences to settle the communal problem through compromise and negotiations, but theirs was a voice in wilderness. Like many others, Dr Singh gives exaggerated importance to Nehru's role in the decision-making process. Till 1945 it was Gandhi who determined the Congress policy, but from 1946 it was Patel, who asked the Mahatma to step aside, and took decisive actions on policy matters. Gandhi had even asked Nehru and Azad to resign from the Congress Working Committee in 1942 when he found them adopting a conciliatory attitude towards the British on the question of participation in war. Aurobindo Ghosh had said that Gandhi, if not a dictator like Hitler, had much in common with Stalin in his "authoritarian outlook". To be fair to Jinnah, one may ask that if he was so rigid and uncompromising, why was he urging the Congress to settle the communal problem in his correspondence between 1937-39? This correspondence with Gandhi, Nehru and, Subhash Bose and Rajendra Prasad is highly significant. Was it wrong on Jinnah's part to ask for the protection of Muslim interests? And if he asks it, how can he be described as a "communalist" on that ground. After all, the Muslims constituted a 13 per cent minority in a multi-religious country. It is absurd to suggest that the British made Jinnah the sole spoksman of the Muslims. Jinnah was a man of fiercely independent character, upright and honourable, who could not allow himself to be a puppet of anybody. For understanding the causes of Partition, it is not so much that Gandhi, Jinnah and Nehru matter, but the underlying forces that operated such as the Muslim grievances, the Congress leadership, the impact of the World War, the Quit India movement and Subhash Chandra Bose's exit from India. Jinnah had accepted the Cabinet Mission proposals without qualifications. After the failure of London talks in 1946, Jinnah decided that Partition was the only way to protect Muslim interests from the domination of Hindu majoritarianism. The trouble with Dr. Singh and her like is that they do not see the other side, and thus Jinnah's and the Muslim League's case go by default. Let us hear the other voices too. It is not enough to hear the Congress voice. Finally, the Linlithgow Correspondence at Teen Murti and the Churchill archives at Cambridge show clearly that the British Government was very keen to reconcile the Congress in 1937-39, but the Congress launched the Individual Satyagraha movement and Quit India movement during the war years and thus threw Jinnah and the Muslim League into the lap of the British. All this was the Congress's own doing. And from 1945 until Partition, the Congress was fighting the Muslim League, the British and the Unionist Party, and the results, obviously, proved disastrous. Absolutely, there was lack of statesmanship. Mercifully, Patel negotiated a deal with Mountbatten with the help of V.P. Menon, and saved the entire Punjab, Bengal and Assam from being a part of Pakistan. This comes out clearly in the "Transfer of Power" volumes, "Jinnah Papers", "Mani Behn Diary" and V.P. Menon's and V. Shankar's writings, etc. n |
The all-powerful me Perplexed you seem to be. Scratch your brain to know who I am. Don’t you worry too much, I would love to help you establish my identity. Must have witnessed a mushroom growth of tiny hutments springs over the land which was once a stretch of lush grass. The glistening dew drops that whispered sweet nothings to it are moaning badly. How come numberless jhuggis appear with the drop of a hat? None dare raze them, incur my wrath and be doomed forever. Corridors of power bloom or whither at my sweet will. Those up in the saddle yesterday may be simply trampled over by me tomorrow if they go against my will. My word is final. Roadshow! a new phrase with a sophisticated touch. Perhaps coined to display the “feats” of our so called “netas”. A garland is thrown back. Lo! the beneficiary accepts it as the most precious gift on the planet. An old man in tatters is hugged (of course, the neta withholding his breath against the sweaty odour) flashing a big grin. Anon a press photographer clicks. Who knows our beloved neta’s sole motive was to be photographed like that alone. Why not? It will definitely take his popularity graph up. Hence our media-savvy leaders. At such moments my chest is inflated and ego swollen. I relish the scene and relive it hundred times, nay thousand times. So caring and solicitous about me. They know they can ill afford to ignore me fearing their breed will get extinct if they don’t woo the media. Ever heard all water agreements entered into with other states being terminated by the lawmakers themselves? Yes, it did happen. Made history. Became a do-or-die question for them as if they apprehended their account with me would be dead very soon. Surprise of all surprises! Another political stunt! A gentleman politician raises the pitch of the matter by venturing into the neighbouring country to fetch water from a holy well over there to solicit the public. Religion is an opium of the masses, he knows it well. Seems he has mastered his lessons in the school of politics thoroughly. Just the other day truck-loads of men made a beeline for the Boat Club. Presumably rushing to join a rally. Must have been hired. My goodness! a surging sea of humanity having been brought to please me and ...........me alone. Once the leaders had exercised their glib tongue and made tall promises et al to their heart’s content thirsty and hungry crowd was left high and dry to exhale the dust around. Wish it had been birthday bash of some leader. At least could get pocketfuls of cake. Why not? A leader is meant to quench thirst and satisfy hunger of the people he represents. Your curious looks betray your keenness to know who I am. Okay, I am the great mover, a formidable power to reckon with, a force that demands — rather compels you — to pay obeisance at my door. Even the gods (Kuber devta especially) roll red carpet in my honour. If you want I can give a fair demo of how powerful I am — I can throw even those in power who have worshipped me, have performed “Dandvat Pranam” at my temple if I desire so. I am their precious lifeline...........the vote bank.
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What will Bush do in his 2nd term?
It’s over. President George W Bush has won a convincing victory. Overwhelmingly, voters in Europe favoured Kerry — in Britain by a margin of four to one. Rest assured, nearly half of all Americans are feeling as baffled as you are. And so, I have to admit, am I. Though not one of life’s natural-born Democrats, and despite the fact that I supported the war in Iraq last year, I had come to the conclusion that Bush deserved to lose. Why did I want Bush to lose? For one thing, because the occupation of Iraq has been an avoidable mess. The President and his advisers made fundamental errors of judgement about the number of troops that would be needed to stabilise the country. Second, and perhaps more important, because I’ve come to regard the fiscal policies of this administration as crazily reckless. There has been no serious attempt to grapple with the looming crises in the systems of social security and medicare; if anything, matters have been made slightly worse. Meanwhile, the Bush tax cuts had no meaningful macroeconomic justification and were shamelessly to the advantage of the very rich. Finally, I have found it increasingly hard to stomach the Republican Party’s increasingly strident intolerance on social questions from social marriage to stem cell research. At Oxford in the early 1980s, I was one of those Tory boys who cheered Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as they stood up to the Soviet Union, the trade unions and rampant inflation. For us, conservatism was about freedom in the sense of free markets and individual freedom versus collectivism. This is not what the Republican Party today means by freedom. Not so long ago, I saw one of my old Oxford friends, who now lives and works in Washington. “You know, Niall,” he said to me, “I used to think of myself as a conservative. But I have learned something about myself since I came to this country. It is that I am in fact a liberal.” Such sentiments help to explain why so many of us - from Andrew Sullivan to the Economist - ended up backing Kerry. So why did he lose? After all, he put on a good showing in the three presidential debates, at times making Bush look almost as stupid as his critics say he is. And the Democrats got the voters out as they have not done since the 1960s. The simple answer is, of course, that the Republicans got their voters out too - and there are marginally more of them. Hats off, therefore, to Bush’s campaign manager Karl Rove, who has pulled off an astounding feat of political mobilisation. Yet Rove was only able to get Republican activists so fired up because they discerned a meaningful difference between the two presidential candidates on the issues. What was that difference? In many ways, the key can be found in a single quotation from a profile of Kerry that appeared just a few weeks ago in The New York Times magazine. In it, Kerry was asked how he would deal with the problem of terrorism. This is what he said: “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organised crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.” In two fundamental respects, what this revealed was that Kerry just didn’t get it about the post-9/11 world. First, needless to say, it showed that he underestimates the magnitude of the threat posed by radical Islamist organisations like al-Qa’ida. But it also showed that Kerry is chronically afflicted with a moral relativism that may be the norm in Boston, but is utterly abhorrent to the Christian Americans of that heartland that now stretches all the way from Montana down to Texas and right across the once solidly Democratic South. An “acceptable level” of terrorism, prostitution, illegal gambling and organised crime is not what the majority of Americans want their president to aspire to. And this is what President Bush, who loses no opportunity to attest to his born-again Christian faith, understands. Precisely those moral over-simplifications that have characterised his first term - typified by key phrases like the “axis of evil”, the “war against terror” and the “onward march of freedom” - resonate irresistibly with a critical mass of Americans right across the country. He is, as is too seldom understood in Britain, fundamentally “a messianic American Calvinist”, someone for whom all setbacks are merely a divine test to which a “faith-based” president can only react with obstinate resolve. And that was why Kerry’s attacks on the war in Iraq, though they got out the Democratic faithful, weren’t enough to win over swing voters. Too many Americans essentially share that religious sensibility. Faith has secured President Bush a second term. What will he do with it? The one thing you can rule out is that he will seek to heal political divisions. As they say here: Uh-uh. In September, Bush told senior members of the Republican National Committee exactly what he planned to do with his divinely ordained victory. First, he’ll appoint at least one new - and, of course, conservative - Supreme Court justice. On energy, he promised to “push nuclear energy [and] drilling in Alaska”. “I’m going to come out strong after my swearing in,” he promised his audience, “with fundamental tax reform, tort reform, privatising of social security.” And the Middle East? No change of tack there, either. As Bush told the same audience: “Osama bin Laden would like to overthrow the Saudis ... then we’re in trouble. Because they have a weapon. They have the oil.” If that gives just a glimpse of what the Republicans plan to do over the next four years, Democrats and Europeans alike have reason to be depressed this week. Let me add to their gloom. Throughout his presidency, Bush has repeatedly denied that the US is an empire. He has insisted that America is a “liberating power, not an imperial power”. But earlier this year, the journalist Ron Suskind was granted an interview with someone whom he identified as “a senior adviser to Bush”. It’s a sobering read. “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works any more,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’” Hail to the Chief, indeed. —By arrangement with The Independent, London. |
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Delhi Durbar A
little under six months in office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s first meeting with his Council of Ministers reflected the quiet confidence of stability of his coalition government. The emphasis was on good governance. Sources insist that Dr Singh, who was catapulted to the high office of Head of Government, has learnt the art of managing a coaltion government. Having settled down, the Prime Minister exhorted his ministers to focus on implementing the promises and deliver. Dr Singh underlined the need to take the coalition along and inform the coalition partners as well as the Left about policy decisions. The bottomline was that the government and the ministers have to deliver. The Prime Minister drew their attention to the imperatives of administrative reforms and sound financial management. He also told his senior ministerial colleagues to take the juniors along. The junior ministers continue to whine that their seniors have assigned them no work.
RSS turns to Varun Gandhi
There is consternation in BJP circles that young Varun Gandhi was specially invited by RSS chief K Sudershan to the annual Dasehra celebrations in Nagpur. The other BJP leader to be so honoured was its new President and former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani. Insiders are quick to point out that Sudershan is impressed with Varun’s vote-garnering abilities as evidenced in the assembly elections in Maharashtra, even though the BJP-Shiv Sena combine lost to the Congress-NCP Democratic Front. It is argued that wherever Varun campaigned in Maharashtra, the BJP won a sizeable number of seats. Varun will be 25 next year which will enable him to contest from Uttar Pradesh.
Cabinet reshuffle?
After the assembly elections in Maharashtra, the talk has veered round to the possibility of a Cabinet reshuffle-cum-expansion. There are hints that this may take place before Dr Manmohan Singh leaves for the Hague for the EU-India summit from November 7 to 10. Rashtrapati Bhavan sources, however, say that Dr Singh has not yet sought an appointment with President A P J Abdul Kalam for undertaking such an exercise. There are several people eyeing ministerial berths. They include Capt Satish Sharma, a close friend of Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Shibu Soren of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha is also waiting in the wings to be reinducted in Dr Singh’s Cabinet.
Chandraswami is back
Godman Chandraswami’s high-profile image might have taken a battering with a slew of cases against him, but he is not without friends in the political firmament. Following his acquittal in the St Kitts case, Chandraswami received any number of telephone calls to congratulate him. The godman, who had looked forlorn for several years taking morning
walks virtually on his own in South Delhi with barely any hangers-on or even onlookers, seems to have received a big shot in the arm.
Cashing in on Sonia’s name
Lalu Prasad Yadav’s increasing propensity to invoke Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s name at the drop of a hat at public platforms has rattled the Congressmen in Bihar. No rally is complete without Lalu in attendance shouting a full-throated “Sonia Gandhi ki Jai”. This was evident even in Maharashtra where Lalu campaigned. However, Bihar Congress leaders are drawing the attention of the party high command to the fact that the “Jais” for Sonia Gandhi are a harbinger of trouble. This is a clear signal that Lalu is setting the stage for doling out fewer seats to the Congress in next year’s assembly elections in Bihar. Bihar Congressmen apprehend that Lalu would once again prevail upon Sonia Gandhi to align with the RJD, with the latter arraigning to itself majority of the seats. —
Contributed by Gaurav Choudhury,R. Suryamurthy, Prashant Sood and S. Satyanarayanan. |
If one wants to be independent of God, one is put under the control of the inferior material potency. The only way for materially conditioned souls to achieve perfection, therefore, is through devotional service to Krishna. — Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Bhakti is greater than Karma, greater than Yoga, because these are intended for an object in view, while Bhakti is its own fruition, its own means and its own end. — Swami
Vivekananda I beg from You, my Lord, the alms of chastity and modesty as rice; compassion as wheat; attainment of Your grace as the receiving of charity in the leafy bowl; good deeds as milk and contentment as butter. — Guru Nanak
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