The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

PERSPECTIVE

On Record
We were being sidelined in BJP: Shastri
by S. Satyanarayanan

Sunil Shastri

ON December 10, 2004, Sunil Shastri, the third son of former Prime Minister (late) Lal Bahadur Shastri, made a quiet exit from the BJP to float his own political party — Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Mazdoor Congress (JJJKMC). Though his resignation from the BJP did not make big headlines, it definitely highlighted the “step-motherly” treatment being meted out to those senior leaders, who are not from the BJP cadre and lacking the backing of the RSS. Though he is hurt by the way he was sidelined and had virtually no say in the BJP, in which he had served in many senior positions, Shastri has no qualms and is focussing hard to re-establish the legacy of his late father and former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.

In an exclusive interview to the Tribune, he said he is keen to make his presence felt in the upcoming assembly elections in Haryana, Bihar and Jharkhand. He also dwelt on the circumstances compelling him to quit the BJP and his future plans.

Excerpts:

Q: What prompted you to quit the BJP?

A: As a matter of fact I personally feel that politics is not static and is dynamic. There had been many occasions in the past when several political leaders, like me, had made such a move whenever they found that there are opportunities where they could deliver better for society and the nation. As far as I am concerned, when I joined the BJP way back in 1998, I made it a point to go with the sentiments of the people, who felt that there was a need for a stable government at the Centre after the severe crisis due to unstable governments headed by Mr Deve Gowda and Mr I K Gujral. And at that time a leader emerged in Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Although Mr Vajpayee had a long innings in Indian politics, his leadership developed at that moment and many like me having different ideologies started coming together quiting various political parties and flocked around him. And, thus, a new combination emerged. Since I also felt that this country needed a strong and stable government I did join the BJP and whatever responsibilities were given to me I adhered to it in the best possible manner. So, as I said earlier, politics is not static, I decided to quit the BJP to cash in on the opportunities ahead of me.

Q: Why are you trying to hide the real reason for bidding adieu to the BJP? Were you not sidelined in the BJP?

A: As you are well aware, for the past several months while remaining in the BJP itself I had worked hard to address the various issues confronting our farmers, jawans and labour class through my apolitical outfit — Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Mazdoor Forum. But, subsequently, I felt that there was a need for independent political outfit to address the issues relating to farmers, jawans and labour class. At the same time, it is also a fact that many senior political leaders like me, I do not want to take their names, were being sidelined within the BJP. Many of the suggestions given by leaders like me before and after the Lok Sabha polls were given a go by.

Q: What was BJP President L K Advani’s response to your resignation?

A: He did ask me not to quit and urged me to carry forward the agenda of Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Mazdoor Forum while remaining in the BJP. But I told him that my decision is irreversible.

Q: Now what is your future plan?

A: As you know I have already floated Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Mazdoor Congress (JJJKMC). The declaration of assembly polls in Haryana, Bihar and Jharkhand has come as a God-sent opportunity for me to make my presence felt. My party will field candidates in all the three states and give greater thrust on Haryana elections.

Q: How many candidates do you plan to field?

A: In Haryana where the majority of the voters are either farmers or servicemen, we are planning to field at least 40 candidates. Though we have very little time left before the polls, I am confident that my party will make its presence felt as Om Prakash Chautala’s Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) is faced with anti-incumbency and there is severe in-fighting in the Haryana Congress. Already some of the well-known Jat leaders belonging to both the INLD and the Congress have indicated their intention to join JJJKMC and contest the coming polls. I can’t name them at the present moment.

Q: That means you will be fishing rebels of the INLD and the Congress.

A: It is not the question of my fishing for rebels. Many Congressmen and INLD leaders, who are keen on contesting the coming polls and are not sure of getting tickets their respective parties, have started sending feelers to me. So, I would not mind doing a prudent selection from among them if they are willing to effectively carry forward the agenda of my party.

Q: Will you contest alone or in alliance with some other parties in Haryana?

A: It is quite early to comment on that. Once we formalise on the candidates then, of course, depending on the situation decide on whether to go alone or strike an alliance.

Q: What about Bihar and Jharkhand?

A: Our concentration in these two states will be much less as compared to Haryana, where I strongly believe that my party stands a chance. But, definitely my endeavour will be to field as many candidates as possible in Bihar and Jharkhand and to ensure that the party manages to get at least a good percentage of votes if not win.

Q: It is obvious that you are keen are cashing in on the legacy of Lal Bahadur Shastri. But how can you justify your move when the late Prime Minister’s family members are themselves divided on political lines?

A: In a democracy every individual has the right to follow the ideology of his/her choice and join the party of his/her choice. But, I strongly feel that what my father late Lal Bahadur Shastri preached and followed, especially his slogan “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan”, has more relevance in the country today.

Pervez Musharraf under pressure
by Gurmeet Kanwal

PAKISTAN is living through turbulent times and, General Musharraf, its self-styled President, is under tremendous pressure. The United States-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan has shaken Pakistan’s polity like no other event in its troubled history. The ignominious defeat of the Taliban and its Al-Qaeda guests, the self-appointed foot soldiers of Islam, was in reality a military and diplomatic defeat for Pakistan as it was fighting a “proxy war” in Afghanistan, just as it is waging a proxy war against India through its mercenary Islamists. Though the Pakistanis failed to see it, this denouement was inevitable. It was brought about by several decades of the adverse overarching influence of the Pakistan army on the nation’s polity and its foreign policy.

Mired in a virulent madrasa-Kalashnikov-narcotics smuggling-terrorism culture, looted by its wily and corrupt politicians and ruthlessly trodden over by the army’s jackboot, Pakistan was on the verge of becoming a failed state when the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington D.C. in September 2001 gave it a chance to redeem itself. General Pervez Musharraf quickly saw the advantages of joining the international coalition against terrorism. He grabbed the opportunity, unceremoniously jettisoned his nation’s long-standing Afghan policy and threw in his lot with the US.

This expedient step shook the nation and created deep fissures among the Corps Commanders who now guide Pakistan’s destiny. Today, American troops have firmed-in for what is quite obviously a long-term military presence on Pakistani soil and Musharraf has been left with no choice but to launch a crackdown against Pakistan’s Jehadis. With two assassination attempts on his life behind him, the General finds himself in a most unenviable position — Pakistan’s polity has been torn asunder by recent events, the mullahs are up in arms, his support base within the army is being gradually eroded and US troops are lined up in full battle gear across Pakistan’s western border.

Musharraf has made no attempt so far to build bridges with the politicians. He has gone on record to state that he would never hand over power to Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto. Completely ignoring the politicians is another mistake. Though the politicians are in disarray at present, the emergence of a broad alliance cutting across the political divide remains a possibility now that Asif Zardari has been released. Nawaz Sharif’s PML and Benazir Bhutto’s PPP may yet find it expedient to put their political differences temporarily aside and come together to oppose the military regime. Along with 17 other political parties, they have formed an “Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy”. At the same time, a number of politicians from both parties are willing to cut private deals with the military regime.

If there was any section of the Pakistan elite that appeared to be satisfied with the Musharraf regime’s initial performance, it was the Muslim clergy and the numerous terrorist outfits spawned by it. Because of the remarkable convergence in the Pakistan army’s and the clergy’s anti-India posturing and actions, the so-called Jehadis were the only ones who received the military regime’s active support. However, in view of Musharraf’s strong support to the US for launching attacks against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and the imprisonment of several Jehadi leaders, the Islamist parties have fallen out with the Musharraf regime. Musharraf’s promise to put an end to Islamist fundamentalism within Pakistan and the recent crackdown against the Jehadis in Waziristan has further infuriated the Jehadi outfits.

By rebuilding bridges with the US, Musharraf has gained a lifeline. Consequently, almost all US sanctions have been waived, IMF loans have been re-scheduled, Pakistan has been allowed to buy US weapons and, from a pariah state, Pakistan has once again become not only a front line state but also a major non-NATO ally (MNNA). However, the US is acutely conscious of the double game that Pakistan is continuing to play by covertly supporting the Al- Qaeda and Taliban remnants through its various Jehadi outfits and the ISI while overtly professing a change of heart. It is no secret that most of the hardcore Taliban and Al-Qaeda mercenaries who survived the war are now in Pakistan. In the long run, the US will not let Pakistan off the hook for its complicity with the terrorists. It will continue to accept Pakistan’s support as long as such support is crucial to its own national interests and will have no hesitation in once again discarding Pakistan when its own requirements have been met. Quite obviously, there is more trouble ahead for General Musharraf.

General Musharraf’s long-term plans for his country have not been formally articulated but are definitely not a mystery. He will ensure that power is handed over only after the army is given a formal role in governance — a long-standing army demand. In the unlikely eventuality that Musharraf will heed the call to step down as COAS, he will follow in Zia’s footsteps and continue as Pakistan’s de facto ruler. However, dissension in the higher ranks is simmering just beneath the surface and Musharraf’s first priority is to keep his own flock together.

Whichever course Musharraf chooses, there is unlikely to be any change in Pakistan’s hostility towards India and its covert support, even sponsorship, of Islamist fundamentalist terrorism in India. Musharraf has already made it clear that Pakistan will continue to provide diplomatic, moral and political support for what he insists is a “freedom struggle” in Kashmir. While Pakistan might appear to stop the overt infiltration of so-called Kashmiri “freedom fighters” across the Line of Control, it will continue to do so covertly by finding smarter methods of inducting more Jehadis; for example, through neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh. Pakistan’s proxy war with India will go on because the Pakistan army will not allow Musharraf to change its fundamental policy towards India. Hence, peace in Kashmir and between India and Pakistan will remain a distant dream.n

— The author is Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

OPED

Profile
An unrepentant communist
by Harihar Swarup

ERIC Hobsbawm has been, perhaps, the most important historian of the 20th century, having lived through the epoch-making years, standing, as if, at each turning point of history. He was a child in Vienna when Hitler bade goodbye to his career as a house-painter and watched, as a school-going student in Berlin, the failure of Weimar Republic. Born in the year of the Bolshevik revolution, Hobsbawm, now 87, had seen the rise and fall of the mighty Soviet Union, witnessed Stalin's era and collapse of the Nazi Germany. He came to England in 1930, became a Marxist and to date, fellow historians lovingly call him "unrepentant Communist".

Hobsbawm was in Delhi last week to deliver Nikhil Chakravartty Memorial Lecture; perhaps, most educative and thought- provoking oration heard in recent times in the Capital. Now Professor Emeritus at Birkbeck College, London University, Hobsbawm lives in Hampstead with his second wife, Marlene. Versatile as he is, he speaks German, French, Spanish and Italian fluently. Over a dozen books he has penned, The Age of Extremes (1994) has been translated into 37 languages. His latest work is his autobiography: Interesting Times. It is rated as the best narrative of a prodigy who has traversed through turbulent 20th century and seen the rise of the US as the only superpower. Hobsbawm expressed anguish in his autobiography as well as in the memorial lecture over the sole superpower status of the US: "The problem is that its situation has no historical precedent…. And that, almost certainly, the world is too large and complicated to be dominated for any length of time by any single superpower, however great its military and economic resources."

Interesting Times offers an insight into the adherence to communism of many of the brightest of Hobsbawm's generation. He himself joined the Community Party in 1936, remained in it until he let his membership lapse not long before the party's dissolution in 1991. He says: "I have never tried to diminish the appalling things that happened in Russia, though the sheer extent of the massacres we didn't realize." He explains: "In the early days, we knew a new world was being born amid blood and tears and horror; revolution, civil war, famine—we knew of the Volga famine of the early 20s, if not of early 30s. Thanks to the breakdown of the West, we had the illusion that even this brutal, experimental system was going to work better than the West. It was that or nothing."

Hobsbawm's life story reads like a fiction—how a destitute boy rose to be a marvel, word's greatest living historian. Trauma of his childhood would bring tears in anybody's eyes. In his words: "In the late evening of Friday, February 9, 1929, my father returned home from another of his desperately visits to town in search of money to earn or borrow, and collapsed outside the front door of our house. My mother heard his groan through the upstairs windows and, then she opened them on the freezing air of that spectacularly hard alpine winter, she heard him calling for him. Within minutes he was dead. In dying, he condemned to death my mother…'something has broken inside me,' she wrote to her sister. Within two and half years, she too was dead."

It was the most traumatic of times for Hobsbawm, barely into teens, and his sister, Nancy. "My father did not leave much behind except his boxing cups (he was a professional boxer), his season ticket, with photo ID, for the Vienna transport system, and a substantial collection of English books, mostly paperback, produced by a German firm. This story of how, via Sidney and Berlin and then Aunt Mimi Grun in Britain, he made way to Cambridge, followed by a career of profound distinction. His personal fame remains undimmed; his interesting times are also extra-ordinary.

Comments Unkempt
Democracy with a difference
by Chanchal Sarkar

WITH its red soil, distant low hills,smiling tribal faces crowding the weekly haats, Bankura district in West Bengal is easy on the eyes. Next door is Midnapore, the largest district in the state but very different. Both are poor. Midnapore, however, is poorer, its soil much more eroded into hard rock, barren and cropless. Both have strong nationalist traditions. In the heady days of the struggle of the Indian National Congress both had contributed many men and women to British jails. Midnapore has an edge in the nationalistic record.

With its revolutionary movement as well as strong organisation, it ran a “parallel government” during the Quit India Movement of 1942. Successive British I.C.S. District Magistrates were shot dead and women like Matangini Hazra, (whose statue with the tricolour held aloft leading a procession graces Kolkata’s Red Road fettering the moment she was shot) led the spirited women of the district, making life difficult for British administrators. Earlier, the “lion” of Midnapore was the noble social reformer and educationist Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar.

Independence brought the districts Rs 5000 little to the poor population but there was at least one attempt in 1980 in Bankura’s Jhilimili area for women to organise themselves into organisations which sought a better living. These came through microcredit, using the barren land for Arjun trees on which silkworms fed, the babui tree which produced strong hand-twisted rope, saal leaves from which came platters and bowls to eat out of ducks, goats and swine to rear. The forest was the mother which gave but its gifts were not protected or cared for enough.

In several visits to Jhilimili, I have watched with admiration the flowering of the personalities of the village women under the leadership of the working women’s organisation they set up and their disciplined courage in achieving what they wanted. Now there are 28 samities where once there were three, a central Nari Vikas Sangh (set up in 1986) with a respectable amount in the banks and an organisation well respected by collectors, magistrates and all branches of the state’s administration.

There have been five elections in the societies in the last 20 years conducted by the samitis and though the people are not prosperous things are much better than they were in 1980 when it all started. The first and original push came from the late Benoy Krishna Chowdhury, revolutionary, Congressman and CPI(M)’s most respected Minister for Land Reform for the West Bengal government for many years. But is it enough? I have just been reading the report of the 18th year and am quite frankly, disappointed. Loans to members have been for small, almost laughable amounts like Rs 1500, Rs 500, Rs 200 and so on. The income from products like Babui rope has been inadequate (Rs 60,000). Quite a bit of the Samitis’ income has been from contracts given by the state government. There are no signs of new enterprises to push up earnings of the villagers. Of course, the fault is not entirely theirs — with little or no electricity their productive capacity is severely cramped and everything seems to be on a very small scale. Only small quantities of chemical fertilisers have been bought. Training, vitally important, has been imparted mainly for tussar reeling and spinning.

I wonder if there is not something entrepreneurial in the blood of people in some states. For instance, villages in Gujarat which have progressed so much more. Or those in Haryana which, had of course, received the kiss of life from Bansi Lal when he was Chief Minister. Compared to them the training in modernisation has been very limited in Bankura and also Midnapore. Poverty is still very evident in the clothes the women wear, the food they eat and the productive processes they try their hand at.

But there is a difference, a big difference. The Bankura societies are entirely democratic. No loans are made, no elections conducted, no investments from the savings accumulated in the central bank, without the approved decision of all the members. There is a considerable base of knowledge about the Indian Constitution and about women’s rights among the members. There are 13 creches in the villages which are being competently run and 10 village libraries which, the report frankly says, are not well enough stocked. There is no mention of any easy access to medical aid except, I suppose, to government primary health centres which, unfortunately, are in very poor shape. Preventive medicine is mainly in pulse polio drops. Schools cannot function without the crutch of private tuitions and women do back-breaking work in the fields.

When they are working in the barren fields to grow Arjuna trees, rear silkworms and weave tussore their spirits are upbeat. Their village discussions cover the evils of dowry, and of the ways to protect abandoned wives. They take delegations to the Chief Minister’s room in the Kolkata Secretariat and talk to him without obsequiousness. Given the leadership and training for modernised production they, too, could equal the Chinese or Gujarati villagers, who may not have however, so much of democracy in their blood nor so much to opposition to bribery and dishonesty.

In Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the Mazdoor Sramik Sangh has started the jan sunais (public hearings) which are a great democratic step forward. These have not yet reached the Bankura villages. Midnapore is imbued with democratic pressures of a different kind — several naxalite groups have settled there. These and the democratic running of the samitis spell the difference between West Bengal and other states.

North or south, arbitrary judgments
against women are similar
Usha Bande

IN the din created by issues like empowerment of women, reservation in Parliament, and gender sensilisation, the women's real voice, the voice of the woman at the grass roots is often drowned. It goes unheard and even if she feebly articulates protest, it tends to be hushed up. Gudiya, Sonia and a whole lot of women—educated or semi-educated, belonging to the village or towns, employed or unemployed—still suffer the same fate their sisters of yore put up with, thanks to the terror panchayats operative all over the country, except Kerala and West Bengal.

Under the pretext of upholding the honour of the community, panchayats pronounce arbitrary judgements that not only violate human rights but are also humiliating. The victims are often women and the marginalised sections. The "khap" panchayats in the North, the "Oor" in the South and the parallel "gram" panchayats in other states are powerful instruments of oppression.

It was some seven or eight years ago. A terrible thing happened in a tribal village in Orissa. It had rained all through the night and the fields were ready to be ploughed. A tribal woman was waiting for her husband to wake up and start the work because on that day's toil would depend the next year's crop and the family's survival. The man had been drinking all through the night and nothing would induce him to wake up. Ultimately, in desperation, the woman yoked the bullocks and started ploughing the field. The news of this sacrilegious act spread and the village was in a commotion because it would anger the gods. A panchayat was summoned and the woman was given horrendous punishment. She was stripped of her clothes, yoked to the plough in place of the bullocks, whipped and forced to plough till she collapsed. All this in front of the jeering, leering men, hushed women and her crying children! It might be argued that this was a peculiar tribal situation and that it took place almost a decade ago and has nothing to do with the world we live in.

Well, but what happened in 2004 when we boast of globalisation, post modernity and women's empowerment, cannot be condoned! In the South, the Oor panchayats (Oor in Tamil means village) are as active as the khap in the North. And there is no check on them. They often deal out harshest punishment and the victims are women. Recently, a woman, educated and working as a clerk in some semi-government organisation in Chennai was summoned to the Oor of her village. She was made to do "prostrate" (like Sashtang pranam) continuously for eight hours before a group of drunken men and jeering youngsters, while the "honourable" elders sat watching her with satisfaction. Why? Because she had filed a divorce case as her husband harassed her for dowry. On her husband's complaint, she was made to face the panchayat.

The khap panchayats in the North are as strong, active and harsh as the Oors and are also managed by influential men. Sonia of Asand village of Haryana suffered because of the question of "gotra", Gudiya had to face an embarrassing situation because she had to make a hard decision. It is ridiculous how the panchayats interfere in someone's personal life. Is life a doll's play and are emotions as cheap as to be transferred at someone's behest?

Unfortunately, the Oors, khaps and their prototype in other parts of the country cannot be wished away because they are in the hands of the powerful lobby. Any talk on violence against women concentrates on rape, wife battering and other forms of domestic violence. But the atrocities carried out in the name of honour need be taken cognizance of. In humiliating women, interfering in their personal life and causing them mental harassment, whose honour are these "so-called" guardians of tradition upholding?

Diversities — Delhi Letter
Narasimha Rao lived the life of a recluse
by Humra Quraishi

I didn't know former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, but after cartoonist Sudhir Tailang had mentioned that Rao's pout and nostrils are a cartoonist's delight, I'd made an effort to focus attention on his features. I had heard Rao speak at two book releases, and what I found particularly impressive was his ability to speak in a rather concise way, without bragging about his political inputs. He looked and sounded extremely sharp and bright. A widower, during these last few years he lived more as a recluse, though his name was rather romantically linked to a particular woman of the Capital.

Christians in India

Together with cooing "Merry Christmas," let me focus on the latest about the Christian population in the country. In fact, the secretary general of the All-India Christian Council, Mr John Dayal, brought them to my notice—the foremost being the very distortions vis-à-vis the demographics of the Christian population. "The right wing propaganda of a total Christian North East is given the lie by the fact that apart the miniscule population states of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram, Christians are only 34 per cent in Manipur and mere 3.7 per cent in Assam. While Karnataka has measly 1.9 per cent, much less than the national average, Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, allegedly home to mass conversions, have Christian populations of 0.3 per cent and 1.9 per cent, respectively. More depressing is the data on economic empowerment. A careful analysis shows how dependent the Christian population is on the service sector or on jobs they do for landlords, workshop owners or even households—Delhi has over 70,000 Jharkhand Christian women working as maids. Though the church runs almost 45,000 to 50,000 educational institutions, the literacy figures, while better compared with the Muslims, are woefully deficient in themselves. The female literacy is as low as 44 per cent in Orissa, 48 per cent in Assam and 37 per cent in Arunachal. Employment figures are equally dismal — the non-worker population of 14, 528,619 consists of 9,224,365 people in cities," he says.

Sex is not a sin

Sex is not a Sin: Tantra for Healthy Sexuality (UBSPD) is a timely publication. The author, Dr Alka Nanda Dash, is from the 1989 batch of the civil services (Allied), posted in New Delhi. I really don't know why she writes under the pen name, Meena Nanda, especially when she writes rather regularly. Though this is her third book in English, she's been writing fiction in her mother-tongue Oriya. The book centres around the various aspects of sex. It is stark yet maturely put.

Nanda's writing is forthright and she speaks in the same strain. In fact, to my query that what happens to people who are off sex, she quips: "Without sex you wouldn't die but then you are definitely missing out on something vital. Sex does help in the hormonal flow. If possible, try your hands at tantric sex and get a glimpse of that rare experience called bliss and fulfillment."

And though its rare in our society to talk and write about sex, she's been vocal on the subject right from her childhood. As she says, "Don't pretend to be stunned if I tell you that this wisdom was ingrained in me by none other than my parents during my first visit to the Sun temple at Konark, to my query: what are these figures doing?"

For your arteries alone

What strange times we are living in-on one side, all possible bandobasts are coming about for your heart to get clogged (bandobasts in the form of traffic traumas, heavy pollution, little means to de-stress) and then on the other, new findings to get treated. Responding to a recently splashed news item that that the much-awaited "CT Coronary

Angiography," which is a non-invasive test, has arrived in the USA, a New Delhi-based radiologist, Harsh Mahajan, told me that few select medical centres/hospitals in the Capital had also equipped themselves with this new medical device, which checks on the state of your arteries sans cuts-the so-called intrusive invasions etc. And with more and more Indians coming up with troubled hearts, this could be big news. But definitely not for the likes of me, who are firm believers in the homoeopathic system of healing, curing oneself along the natural ways!