O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

Fake universities
Chhattisgarh set a record of sorts
A controversial decision of the Ajit Jogi government in Chhattisgarh had opened a floodgate for private universities in that state, with as many as 112 being registered in one year. Most of these were universities only in name and were not even as good as a small town college.

The Korean bomb
US will have to lean on China
THE Bush administration may have to redraw its strategy after the North Korean announcement that it has “manufactured nukes” to face the US “undisguised policy to isolate” Pyongyang.

• Thought for the day

ARTICLE

An untenable theory
Congress-BJP can’t come together
by Amulya Ganguli
PROFESSOR Emeritus of the London School of Economics, Lord Meghnad Desai, has returned to his old theme. He has again called upon the Congress and the BJP to form a coalition because he believes that this unusual combination is the only way in which the Indian economy can prosper.

MIDDLE

Language that is law unto itself
by Saroop Krishen
ENGLISH language is endowed with many attractive features — and indeed seems set to become a world language in use everywhere — but so far as its pronunciation and spellings are concerned these harbour very noticeable disregard for all forms of logic and reason.

OPED

The last of the titans
Integrity gave Arthur Miller’s work its strength
by Rupert Cornwell
ARTHUR Miller was perhaps the greatest American playwright of the 20th century. Very few writers in any country at any time have so captured the universal themes of family, of the transience of success - how ordinary, decent people can be overwhelmed by the great tides of events.

Chatterati
Walking for a cause
by Devi Cherian
THE tsunami has actually managed to get Delhi-ites together again. Be it page 3 celebrities, politicians or sportsmen all came together at a walk to raise funds for the victims. “Khsuhi”, an NGO, organised a celebrity walk, which symbolised spirit and unity, from Lodhi Garden to the Claridges where all participants met for high tea.

REFLECTIONS

EDITORIALS

Fake universities
Chhattisgarh set a record of sorts

A controversial decision of the Ajit Jogi government in Chhattisgarh had opened a floodgate for private universities in that state, with as many as 112 being registered in one year. Most of these were universities only in name and were not even as good as a small town college. In fact, most of them had their headquarters in flats, making higher education a cottage industry, literally as well as figuratively. The Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice R. C. Lahoti has done well to order closure of all the 117 private universities in the state, because they were making a mockery of the education system. As the complainant, noted scientist, educationist and former UGC Chairman Prof Yashpal, pointed out, the prerequisite norms regarding evolving syllabus based on thorough research, granting of degrees and diplomas as per the UGC guidelines; and even the control of the UGC had been done away with by the state government while granting permission to set up these so-called universities.

The whole operation was performed in such a scandalous manner that the closure itself is not punishment enough. An enquiry must be ordered as to how permissions were granted indiscriminately under the Chhattisgarh Private Universities Establishment Ordinance. There are reasons to suspect that big money changed hands in this dirty business. There ought to be some punishment for those who play with the lives and careers of the youth for profit.

One’s heart does go out to the students who were lured into their fold by these fake universities. But closer examination reveals that most of these had not established any serious teaching institutions but were only acting as a front for granting fake degrees. To ensure that genuine students do not suffer, the apex court has already ordered that if any institution was established by these universities, then steps would be taken to affiliate them to existing universities in the state. The clean-up operation should not remain limited to Chhattisgarh but should be extended to the entire country because such dubious educational institutions exist in almost every state, much to the discomfiture of genuine organisations.

The Korean bomb
US will have to lean on China

THE Bush administration may have to redraw its strategy after the North Korean announcement that it has “manufactured nukes” to face the US “undisguised policy to isolate” Pyongyang. The news from what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described as an “outpost of tyranny” has come at a time when the US was getting more focussed on forcing Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. Perhaps, the White House strategists thought that any success on the Iranian front would help them in getting the North Korean nuclear issue resolved through dialogue. But the situation has become too complicated with Pyongyang saying that it has no intention of participating in the six-nation talks three rounds of which have already been held.

Interestingly, President George W. Bush was unexpectedly soft on the Korean nuclear issue in his State of the Union Address. He did not use expressions like the “axis of evil” as he did in 2001 when he entered the White House for the first time. But Mr Bush did talk of arresting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction quite forcefully without saying much about his policy direction and methodology. He, at the same time, promised to “work closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions”.

North Korea, however, believes the US has a plan not only to cap Pyongyang’s nuclear programme but also to “topple the political system in the DPRK (short for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) at any cost”. The communist nation’s belief got strengthened by the use of a harsh language by Ms Rice during her latest European tour. The result is the declaration of a “nuclear weapon arsenal” to face the US “hostile policy”. This may be an attempt on the part of North Korea to acquire a better bargaining position, as some analysts have pointed out. Whatever it may be, the emerging scenario requires patient and tactful handling. All eyes are now focussed on China, one of the few countries friendly with North Korea, to bring the aggrieved nation to the negotiating table. The US will have to lean on China more than it did earlier to ensure that the problem is sorted out through talks.

Death of a playwright
Arthur Miller’s last bow

WHAT entrenches a myth more than fact is that it has to be real and true to life. Arthur Miller may not have known this at 33, in the 1940s, when he wrote Death of a Salesman — the story of Willy Loman, symbolising the American Dream turned sour. “It was”, as Miller said, “a literal play about a literal salesman, but it has become a bit of a myth, not only here (in America) but in many other parts of the world.” As the salesman grew to be a part of American culture, the playwright won a Pulitzer Prize for his most unforgettable fictional creation and went on to become a legend. In his 60-year career, Miller won a number of other prizes and was, perhaps, the most revered post-War playwright. There was a powerful moral edge to his plays in which the family, materialism, personal responsibility and values were dominant threads. Miller’s loyalty to values was not confined to his fictional characters. He was one of the few who could not be beaten into submission during the McCarthy era. He fought valiantly against the witch-hunt launched by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and his heroic battles enhanced his legendary stature.

However, he did not stop with fighting off his own persecution but sought to carry the issues of intolerance, represented by McCarthyism, to a wider populace. He exposed the anti-Communist crusade of the US establishment in his play The Crucible, which was inspired by and derived from the Salem witchcraft trials. It is no surprise that The Crucible was the most frequently performed of his plays. Miller was busy till the very end and, one might add, not only with his plays and their revival. Less than three months before he passed away, Miller made public the fact that he was living with a 34-year-old painter, Agnes Barley. Obviously, even at 89, the man, who had been married to Marilyn Monroe for five years, had not lost his charm or joy of life.

Thought for the day

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.

— Georges Simenson

ARTICLE

An untenable theory
Congress-BJP can’t come together
by Amulya Ganguli

PROFESSOR Emeritus of the London School of Economics, Lord Meghnad Desai, has returned to his old theme. He has again called upon the Congress and the BJP to form a coalition because he believes that this unusual combination is the only way in which the Indian economy can prosper. What he probably has in mind is the continuity represented by the fact that Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee carried on the economic reforms agenda of the Narasimha Rao regime and now the Manmohan Singh government has affirmed its commitment to the same programme. Therefore, he believes it will only take the two of them to formally join hands to sing the duet with even greater resonance.

Before considering the suggestion, it may be worthwhile to ponder over what else may have persuaded Lord Desai to air this notion. Perhaps he has in mind the recent convergence of views on the economy between the Labour Party and the Conservatives in Britain. It is widely known that Mr Tony Blair has virtually stolen the Tories’ clothes, thereby obliterating to a large extent the difference between the two long-standing political adversaries in the economic field. Hence Mr John Major’s description of Mr Blair as a “political kleptomaniac”. It is not only Labour’s rejection of its “socialistic” views which has robbed the Conservative Party of its electoral platform, the right turn by Mr Blair has now made the Labour under Mr Blair a natural ally of the American Republicans in place of the Conservatives. Nothing showed this new trans-Atlantic alliance in clearer light than a missive from Washington a few months ago asking Tory leader Michael Howard to tone down his criticism of the British Prime Minister.

However, it is necessary to remember that Labour’s rightward shift did not take place overnight. It has been in the making from the 1950s when the left-right rift between Mr Hugh Gaitskill and Mr Aneurin Bevan first surfaced. It was a time when Mr Tony Crosland said that “in my view Marx has little to offer the contemporary socialist either in respect of practical policy, or of the correct analysis of our society, or even of the right conceptual tools or framework”. It can be noted in passing that Labour’s controversial Clause IV of the party programme (which has now been virtually scrapped) favoured the nationalisation of the “commanding heights” of the economy, the very phrase which the “socialists” of Indira Gandhi’s Congress once used. In a way, therefore, the Congress’s embracement of a deregulated economy mirrors the change of the Labour Party, born of a realisation in both that a controlled economy led to a blind lane.

But the similarity of views between the Labour and the Conservatives on the economy does not mean that the two can coalesce. Across the Atlantic, it is Ralph Nader’s opinion that there is no basic difference between the Republicans and the Democrats (they can be deemed to be somewhat like the Tories and the now defunct Whigs) - the reason why he offered himself as an alternative choice for the US President’s post in the last two elections. But, as is known, Iraq has sharpened the difference between the two parties to such an extent that their common espousal of the capitalist society can hardly bring them together.

The reason why such unity is out of the question is that parties are not artificial constructs. They have long traditions representing a national consensus as well as specific social classes and their aspirations as they emerge and evolve through history. There is also a philosophical underpinning to their outlook echoing worldwide trends. That is why conservatives are conservatives all over the world, with their stress on a strong state, religion and rejection of aliens while the liberals endorse a greater integration with the world, human rights and tolerance of outsiders. In short, the conservatives flaunt a macho attitude while the liberals take a more refined and cosmopolitan view of the nation and the world.

These claims apply, of course, only to major parties and not to those formations which mushroom, as in India, as a result of a “leader’s” whims based on personal ego or caste or regional considerations. However, the two major parties can also influence one another. Just as Labour has usurped the Tories’ economic agenda, Mrs Margaret Thatcher had to cultivate a “gentler, kinder” image to soften the rigours of some of her policies, again relating to her market-oriented economic preferences. But if the economy is apparently the driving force in determining political attitudes in the West, in India there is another aspect which has a far greater relevance in distinguishing the two main political rivals of today. It is the secular-communal divide which militates against their coming together.

It isn’t only the bifurcation and then trifurcation of the country which underscore the perils of communalism, the essence of the difference between the “secular” Congress and the “communal” BJP is the syncretic ideals of the former, stressing a multicultural polity, and the religion- and-community-based weltanschauung of the BJP, which gives primacy of place to the Hindus. The Congress’s concept of India can be seen in Jawaharlal Nehru’s mournful observation in September 1947: “The history of India has been one of assimilation and synthesis of the various elements that have come in … It is perhaps because we tried to go against the trend of the country’s history that we are faced with this (communal riots).”

Contrast Nehru’s emphasis on “synthesis” with the exclusivity of RSS chief M.S.Golwalkar’s articulation of what he believes should be the nature of “Hindustan” where the non-Hindus “must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment - not even citizen’s rights”.

As is known, the RSS is the head of the Sangh Parivar of which the BJP is a member. And the high position of the RSS is affirmed every year when all members of the BJP pay gurudakshina to the organisation at a special function. Any claim, therefore, that Golwalkar’s views are not the BJP’s is absurd. In any event, whoever has had to deal with the members of the BJP at a personal level, or has had the misfortune of receiving hate mail from them, know that these poisonous views are widely endorsed.

It is clear, therefore, that the difference between the Congress and the BJP is so wide that any talk of a meaningful cooperation is out of the question. Even if their views happen to coincide on economic matters, their perception of India is so much at variance that it will be impossible for them to act in concert on any important issue. Besides, it isn’t even certain that the BJP genuinely approves of economic reforms considering that the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, which are affiliated to the RSS, are dead against liberalisation and globalisation.

MIDDLE

Language that is law unto itself
by Saroop Krishen

ENGLISH language is endowed with many attractive features — and indeed seems set to become a world language in use everywhere — but so far as its pronunciation and spellings are concerned these harbour very noticeable disregard for all forms of logic and reason.

It was on this account that Bernard Shaw was a very strong advocate of thorough-going reform of the language though, as it turned out, he did not meet with much success.

If a language has concern or phonetics, as a few languages do, and of course as I.P.A. (International Phonetic Alphabet) does, each symbol in the alphabet represents one distinct individual sound and one only, so that there is no room for ambiguity about how it is pronounced in any particular word. As a corollary, there is naturally nothing like a silent letter in any of the words. English, on the other hand, appears to believe in great profusion of symbols (or letters) to represent one and the same sound and vice versa — a somewhat ever — enthusiastic application of the adage “The more the merrier”.

To take two examples: ‘gh’ is pronounced variously as in ‘rough’, ‘dough’, ‘thought’, and ‘plough’. The sound of consonant — symbol ‘sh’ appears in different forms in a large number of words — ‘fashion’, ‘passion’, ‘tuition’, ‘sociable’, and ‘chaperon’; ‘ch’ is ‘k’ in ‘chaos’, ‘sh’ in ‘creche’, and ‘ch’ in ‘chap’.

Again among the consonants ‘l’ has an unusual feature in that it has two distinct sounds known as ‘light’ and ‘dark’ (syllabic consonant). These sounds vary slightly, though noticeably. The distinction between them actually shows up in the words containing the letter ‘l’:in ‘little’ the initial ‘l’ is ‘light’ while the final one is ‘dark’. ‘Label’ is another similar word which too has both types of ‘l’ in it.

Vowels and diphthongs follow the same wayword course as the consonants. The vowel-symbol ‘a’ represents different vowels as in ‘far’, ‘fad’, ‘fall, ‘fate’; ‘e’ as in ‘fence’, ‘feet’, ‘fear’, ‘fright’ and the other vowels are no different in this respect. There are cases too of vowels which are identical in appearance but represent different sounds: ‘heard’ — ‘beared’; ‘dead’ —’deal’.

As to silent letters the initial ‘p’ in literally scores of words apparently heads the list, while there are other believers in silence in the alphabet too, and that phonetic aberration is there for all to see.

There is also the rather curious case of the word ‘debt’. It was spelt phonetically as ‘det’ for a long time. Then some learned scholars decided in the 17th century that a ‘b’ should be inserted in the middle of it because the Latin root of the word included a ‘b’. It was apparently thought more important to show its elitist Latin link than to be bothered about the phonetic anomaly resulting from the additional ‘b’. (Of course the ‘b” was made silent — perhaps to prevent it from getting too uppish!) And so now we are saddled with ‘debt’ with ‘b’ in it as a legacy of the argument.

It is, however, when it comes to pronouncing some of their names that the British really let their hair down. “Cholmondeley” is called ‘Chumli’ and ‘Featherstone — haugh’ is — hold your breath — ‘Fenshaw’!

This well known attribute of English to follow is inscrutable law has possibly given rise to the story of the Frenchman who thought a stay in England would be of help to him in getting better acquainted with the language. In those days Neol Coward’s play ‘Cavalcade’ was receiving rave reviews and running full houses on the London stage. The first thing on which the foreign visitor’s eye fell at Victoria railway station was a giant bill — board saying “Cavalcade Pronounced Success”. He took the next train back home. “If this is how these English people manage their pronunciation”, he said to himself “then I can never hope to learn their language”.

OPED

The last of the titans
Integrity gave Arthur Miller’s work its strength
by Rupert Cornwell

Arthur Miller looks on as Marilyn Monroe signs an autograph on May 21, 1958. — Reuters

ARTHUR Miller was perhaps the greatest American playwright of the 20th century. Very few writers in any country at any time have so captured the universal themes of family, of the transience of success - how ordinary, decent people can be overwhelmed by the great tides of events.

Miller’s family were at his bedside when he died of heart failure on Thursday night, at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. It was an old farmhouse he bought in 1958 during his marriage to the actress Marilyn Monroe, in the period of his greatest celebrity.

But he will be remembered above all for his plays, several of which have entered the pantheon of world literature. There was The Crucible, written in 1953, part of the curriculum of every American school student, based on the 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, but an allegory for the hysteria and unjust persecutions of the MacCarthyite hunt for Communists of the period.

In his 1967 play The Price, Miller told the desperately painful story of a fortune lost and roads not taken, as two estranged brothers must dispose of the sorry remnants of their father’s estate. Earlier, there was A View from the Bridge, a tale of intrigue and betrayal in an immigrant family in Brooklyn, which drew heavily on Greek tragedy.

Above all of course, there is Death of a Salesman, Miller’s most famous work, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949 at the age of 33. It captures the central strand of his drama - how ordinary families can be swept up and destroyed by social changes they are powerless to combat. “Dislocation, maybe, is part of our uneasiness. It implants the feeling that nothing is really permanent,” Miller once said of his work.

The sentiment is caught exactly in a line from the play’s protagonist.

“I’m still feeling kind of temporary about myself,” remarks Willy Loman, the eponymous salesman, victim of the capitalist system he so admired and trusted.

“I couldn’t have predicted a play like Death of a Salesman would have taken on the proportions that it has,” Miller once said. It had begun life as “a literal play about a literal salesman, but it has become a myth, not only here but in many other parts of the world.” Indeed, Miller’s reputation if anything was even more exalted abroad, especially in Britain, where last night the theatrical world paid tribute to him. David Hare, the playwright, said: “Arthur was the last of the three great theatrical voices of the American century - (Eugene) O’Neill, (Tennessee) Williams, Miller.

“His special achievement was to make political and social plays which belonged on Broadway and yet were also powered to reach out into America and way beyond.” Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director of the National Theatre who worked with Miller on the film version of The Crucible, said: “Arthur Miller was the last of the great titans of the American stage. With Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams he brought to the English speaking theatre a poetic urgency and tragic sweep that had been absent since the Elizabethan era.

“His models were the great classical tragedians and, more recently, Ibsen; and I have no doubt plays like Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge will always stand with the masterpieces of Ibsen, Shakespeare and Sophocles.” At the end of his life, Miller was still writing. Only four months ago, another new play, Finishing the Picture, opened in Chicago, inspired by an incident during his time with Monroe. They married in 1956. Five turbulent years later they divorced and in 1962 she was dead.

Willy Loman killed himself believing that his only remaining value to his family lay in a life insurance policy. “After all ... the years,” he said, “you end up worth more dead than alive.” The same fate, for very different reasons, may befall Miller. His life’s output is already priceless. His death can only enhance its value.

Christopher Bigsby adds: I first met Arthur Miller nearly 30 years ago, tracking from New York into a Connecticut where the woods were aflame. It was what is known as the leaf season when the maple trees turn to liquid colour. There were no hotel rooms to be had and I spent a night on a fold-down bed in the middle of a conference centre. It was the last time I had to do that.

He was a carpenter and took as much pleasure in fashioning furniture from the wood as he did from creating plays from his words. He made the table from which he ate, consulting a professor of mathematics to get the angles right. What he wanted to create was a table at which 12 people could engage in the same conversation. Maybe that was how he saw the stage.

He was an American author who wrote against the American grain. So, beginning in wartime, he wrote a play about a manufacturer who sent defective parts to the Army Air Force. It was banned by the military in occupied Europe. At the beginning of one of the greatest booms in US historyhe wrote Death of a Salesman, about the human cost of the distortion of the American dream. When he might have kept his head down he wrote The Crucible. As a result, his passport was withdrawn and he had to make a trip to the House Un-American Activities Committee. When the Vietnam War broke out he was at one of the first teach-ins and flew to Paris for negotiations.

Yet it was the plays that mattered, plays in which the past was so often brought into the present because he was insistent that actions have consequences. He was not interested in guilt but in responsibility. In so many of his plays there comes a moment when the central characters call out their names, desperate to invest them with meaning, even as they are tempted to betray the integrity for which they reach. Miller had integrity. It is what gave his work and his life its tensile strength.

He wrote his first play in 1935. His most recent opened last year. His career lasted longer than those of Chekhov, Ibsen or Strindberg, alongside whom he can surely take his place. I think Finishing the Picture was genuinely his last work. For the first time there was no new play in prospect. And though that was a play begun in 1978 its title now has a special poignancy.

His characters, shaped for dramatic function, still bear the marks of their humanity as the furniture he builds carries the grain of the wood, with its striations of the passing years. In a poem, he talked of drawing time out of the air and shaping it into form. It described the wood he shaped with his hands but also his plays. In that poem he recalls the pleasure of “mornings in the woods/ Before I vanished into what I made,” adding “I think I endure exactly as I disappear.” So he does. So he will.

— By arrangement with The Independent, London.

Chatterati
Walking for a cause
by Devi Cherian

THE tsunami has actually managed to get Delhi-ites together again. Be it page 3 celebrities, politicians or sportsmen all came together at a walk to raise funds for the victims.

“Khsuhi”, an NGO, organised a celebrity walk, which symbolised spirit and unity, from Lodhi Garden to the Claridges where all participants met for high tea.

Sheila Dixit flagged off the walk with film star Jackie Shroff. Kapil Dev was the main organiser. Must say “Bhaaji da jawab nahi”.

Before this, he had organised a cricket match in Mumbai of stars and crickets for the tsunami-hit. Even during Kargil, he was the first one to organise a match to raise money for the jawans.

He does get celebrities from all walks of life together. For the walk he had young M.P. Navin Jindal, Scindia, Sachin Pilot and Sheila Dixit’s son Sandeep. Vandana Luthra was one of the sponsors and she walked the walk along with Timsy Anand-Javed Jaffery in an open jeep along with actress Nagma. So it probably proves Delhi-ites do have a soul too.

C’wealth games

This Sunday turned out to be a sporty Sunday. There was a power lunch with a difference at Suresh Kalmadi’s. The Indian Olympic Association President hosted the lunch for the Chairman of Commonwealth Games Federation President Michael Fennell. Well, the constant drizzle did not dampen the spirits of either the guests or the host.

For a while, Delhi has been in the federation’s black book for its failure to form an organising committee till a year after the deadline. Fennel cleared the air by saying that Delhi would host the games, but because of a bit of delay in the organising committee, things were at a standstill.

Tension over controlling the turf of tomorrow’s game inevitably resulted from Sunil Dutt’s efforts to keep the Commonwealth games within his ambit without allowing the associations to play the role they insisted was theirs.

With the announcement of the organising committees, Kalmadi and his team now seem set to roll.

A party for women

In Bihar the former National Secretary of the BJP’s women cell has formed a new party called Rashtriya Mahila Kranti Party. Manju Lal, after being denied the ticket, believes that her party would provide relief to the fair sex, which has become an “object of ridicule and humiliation.”

Her argument does seem to carry weight though. Women haven’t been given even 5 per cent representation in the assembly elections in the three states going to the polls.

While the 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament still remains a dream, Rai believes a beginning has been made. Hopefully women will get together and fight for their rights. It is amazing how political parties harp on women reservations, but when it comes to giving tickets, they shy away from taking the step. What stops them, one wonders. Insecurity of sorts, no doubt.

REFLECTIONS

—Mahatma Gandhi