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Distant
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Mitrokhin
papers: Ambika Soni defends Congress Widows
on the river Samuel
Beckett shadow on awards
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Crime
and compassion President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s suggestion for taking a humanistic view of prisoners sentenced to death calls for both reflection and deliberation. Confronted with a score of petitions for clemency, the President has taken the rather unusual step of indicating that he is inclined to consider a pardon for most of the 50 individuals on death row. Mr Kalam is known for his compassion towards fellow beings. His views, therefore, ought to be shown all the respect they deserve, even by those who may disagree with his suggestion and are prone to saying “No” to him. The President’s suggestion underscores the enduring dilemma and ambivalence characterising both attitude and policy towards capital punishment and clemency. In the Indian context, there can be no case for a general pardon to all those facing the death sentence. Doing away with the death penalty or routine clemency will only encourage terrorists and those guilty of heinous crimes. The terrorists, such as those who attempted to blow up Parliament or indiscriminately kill innocent citizens, deserve little mercy. To even suggest such an avenue of escape would mean elimination of a powerful deterrent. Therefore, each petition for clemency should be treated on the merits of the individual case. The extreme punishment is reserved for the rarest of rare cases, and conditions are not yet such as to do away with it altogether. It is all very well for human rights activists and idealistic liberals to advocate abolition of capital punishment and canvass for clemency after a judicial verdict. But the state has overriding responsibility to safeguard life and property and to take recourse to the deterrents necessary to discharge this. Any blanket approach to the issue would not only undermine the authority of reasoned judicial orders but also encourage terrorists and criminals. Even in the West, those who want abolition of capital punishment are on the retreat after 9/11 and the London attacks in July last.
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Building
the region During his meetings with the Haryana and Punjab Chief Ministers in Chandigarh on Monday, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani made two promises: to set up a special economic zone in Haryana and start a fruit and vegetable export project in Punjab. States now vie with one another in attracting corporate investment. Haryana’s proximity to Delhi is a major attraction which it should fully exploit. After Gurgaon, Faridabad and Manesar, the state needs to develop more industrial townships without repeating past mistakes. The state government will have to humanise its police and strengthen its labour dispute-settling mechanism to avoid a Honda-like situation in future. Feeble attempts to promote the cultivation of fruits and vegetables notwithstanding, the Punjab Government has failed to attract any major corporate investment. Potential of the food-processing sector remains under-utilised. Mr Ambani plans to provide corporate expertise to help farmers grow fruits and vegetables of global standards and build a strong distribution network to tap domestic and foreign markets. Divesification is still limited despite high talk and involvement of agricultural universities. That the corporate sector is chipping in with the knowledge of latest farm practices and resources is welcome. If Reliance is here today, others may follow, that is, if politicians and bureaucrats allow them. Rampant corruption and systemic delays defeat corporate attempts to enter the region. Today private investment has many alternative avenues open to it. Politicians can create hurdles, but cannot dictate terms as before. To lure investment, the states will have to create a congenial investment environment and establish reliable infrastructure. Areas without roads will miss the bus. Cold storages would close if power breakdowns are frequent. Small airports and inadequate ports too hinder exports. A dynamic political leadership, efficient officialdom and sound infrastructure alone can attract and retain private investment. Mr Ambani came for four hours in his own jet, made the deals and left. How many politicians are that business-like? They also at times travel by air but they treat their trips as jaunts.
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Unsettled
North-East Whenever North-Eastern states hit the headlines, it is invariably for all the wrong reasons, be they floods, ethnic violence or terrorist attacks. If it is Manipur today, tomorrow it may be Assam or Nagaland. The massacre of 34 Karbi tribals in Assam’s strife-torn Karbi Anglong district also conforms to this unfortunate pattern. The entire region is suffering from the vagaries of lack of development and education. Most of the money sent for the progress of the region ends up lining private pockets. It is high time the Centre re-examined its North-East policy in the light of the yawning gap between what is proposed and what is actually implemented. In this case distance has not made hearts grow fonder. On the contrary, North-East tends to stay off the radar of the national leadership till a violent incident takes place there. The general neglect breeds alienation. People seem to have lost faith in government institutions. That is why not many come to government courts. Even serious disputes are settled at community meetings which are nothing more than kangaroo courts. Local political leaders corner all the money and at the same time spread disaffection towards the country. The army is believed to have complained about the machinations of such small-time leaders many a time but hardly any action is taken against them because of “political affiliations”. In such a state of drift, lawlessness is bound to grow. People are given to settling their own scores. Even the massacre of Karbis is believed to be an instance of revenge killing by Dimasa tribals. The situation can be salvaged only if the writ of the administration is re-established. At present, the reach of the law and order machinery does not go very far beyond state headquarters. This is a crisis of our own making. If correctives are not applied soon enough, enemies of the nation are likely to jump into the fray with greater vigour.
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Everyone is more or less mad on one point. — Rudyard Kipling
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Distant
neighbours Sufferings efface identities. I thought something like that would happen when the earthquake struck Islamabad and both sides of Kashmir, causing more death and destruction in the areas under Pakistan’s control than in India. I imagined that there would be an unending queue of trucks carrying tents, food, medicine and other things passing through the Wagah border, followed by a convoy of doctors and volunteers. But I did not realise that Islamabad would spurn New Delhi’s offer for joint relief and rehabilitation. How could have I thought that Pakistan would say “no” to even a British television presenter of Indian origin? Even the Line of Control was not softened for the Army men to reach the cut-off areas. The Pakistan President was ebullient in his appeals for help from the West, but sparing in his words when it came to India. He made it clear that the helicopters, which he badly needed, were not welcome from India because of “sensitivities”. He should know that satellite cameras have already pictured every nook and corner of Kashmir. My worry is that if the two countries do not warm up even during times of adversity, there is something basically wrong with them. Despite people-to-people contacts, they still have not overcome the bias and prejudice they have nourished since they parted company in August 1947. So many meetings between the two governments, so many visits by non-official delegations and so many conclaves should have evoked the spirit of kinship in the people who have shared the same history, same culture and same land for centuries. Although disappointed, I was not surprised when at the European Union meeting on Kashmir, before the earthquake, I found delegates from Azad Kashmir, the Kashmiri expatriates and some Kashmiri leaders from our side articulating the same kind of animus. True, our security forces have not been a paragon of virtue and have indulged in excesses which are not becoming of democratic and secular India. But there was not a single word of condemnation at the Brussels meeting of terrorists who were described by speakers as “freedom fighters.” I am sure some of the insurgents measure up to this description. In fact, I believe that even the uprising in 1989 contained elements of nationalism, although the weapons supplied and the training imparted were from Pakistan. Even the other day they deliberately picked up Hindus as their targets. How many innocents were killed by the militants was on their conscience. I do not want to go into how many were killed by the terrorists or the security forces because every killing is a scar on humanity. What I have not been able to make out is why the European parliament held what it characterised as the “World Discourse on Kashmir.” At the first session of this discourse last year at Brussels, I made it clear that no third party was welcome and that insistence on the European Union’s participation would complicate matters. I made the same point this time also and beseeched the delegates to wait for the outcome of talks between India and Pakistan, which are now more than one-year old. Today even the Hurriyat has been involved, in the sense that its president Mirwaiz Farooq has had a series of meetings which started with General Musharraf, continued with Prime Minister Dr Dr Manmohan Singh and were followed up again with General Musharraf. He is due to meet Dr Manmohan Singh again, probably after the SAARC meeting which is scheduled for the first week in November at Dhaka. Both General Musharraf and Dr Manmohan Singh are scheduled to review confidence-building measures, including Kashmir. What surprised me at Brussels was the observation by the Mirwaiz that he welcomed third-party intervention. “Azadi” (independence) was one word used by him and other Kashmiri leaders from both sides. Without questioning the representative capacity of these delegates, I want to bring to their attention that General Pervez Musharraf himself has reportedly observed at a closed-door meeting that “azadi” is out of the question. The phrase “self-determination” has been voiced repeatedly. What does it mean? In today’s world of the 21st century when nations are forming larger groups and unions, any suggestion of secession sounds archaic and represents jingoistic nationalism. If the logic of self-determination is applied to the state, Jammu and Ladakh will separate themselves from the valley. Whether we like it or not, it is resurrecting the two- nation theory of the Partition days, which killed one million people and ousted 20 million from their homes. There is no doubt that the ultimate solution should be on the basis of the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. But when aspirations avoid realities, they melt into will-o’-the-wisp dreams. The fact is that rightly or wrongly the state acceded to India and after 60 years it cannot be turned around into a status that is founded on religion. However weak, India’s polity is secular. It cannot accept a settlement which may undo the country itself. What amazed me at Brussels — and I have watched this at other conclaves on Kashmir — is the intransigent stand of Kashmiri expatriates. They even suspect India and Pakistan of coming to a settlement which they believe will be against the wishes of Kashmiris. Their attitude reminds me of many Sikh expatriates who still go on financing the demand for Khalistan. Their plus point is that they have contact with intelligence agencies, both indigenous and foreign, and have money to finance any movement or uprising to undermine the unity of a particular country. They could be of help to their country of origin if they were to abandon their personal agenda. What India and Pakistan require are people who can span the distance between the two and who can help create conditions in the subcontinent which make it move towards an economic union. The countries in the region should stay sovereign and continue to have their own identity, but pool their resources — economic, technical and others — for the development of the area as a whole. As in Europe, borders should be soft, allowing for the free movement of people and goods. Students of one country should be able to study in another. I recall when Mohammed Ali Jinnah came to the law college in Lahore where I was studying and after articulating the demand for Pakistan, he invited questions. I asked him: The manner in which Hindus and Muslims hate each other means it would take them no time to jump at each other’s throats once the British leave. He replied assuringly, “Young man, you know about Germany and France. They fought each other for hundreds of years and now they are the best of friends. That’s history, remember blood is thicker than water.”
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A
poor picture My father’s friend was a good painter. Long back, he had painted a life-size portrait of Sardar Patel. The childhood memories of the painting are still vivid. The Sardar looked serious, stern and straight. He was a picture of confidence. Looked a leader. I was still in school when the “iron-man” of India had become a part of our history. However, his picture is even now preserved in the mind’s eye. Today, the eyes search for someone who may look like the Sardar. It proves an exercise in futility. What do we see? No leader. Mere liabilities. No statesman. Only power brokers. Small men, surrounded by sycophants. They hire hoodlums to make a show of popularity. Need “black cats” to protect them from the very people they proudly claim to represent. Today’s politician is very promising. Promises all the time. More particularly, at the time of elections. Coins high-sounding slogans. Vote catching clichés. But the poor and gullible have vainly waited. For decades. Hoped for just two square meals a day. Actually, even potable water is not available to a majority of the people. Talks of principles. But acts only on interest. Talks of secularism. But at the time of election, selects candidates only on the basis of caste and creed. Region and religion are always at the back of his mind. Talks of democracy. Delineates the benefits of collective wisdom. But thrives on individual’s ignorance. Proclaims to stand for peoples’ power. But acts like a monarch. Travels around the country and across the continents. In style. Under tight security. With hangers-on. All at the taxpayer’s cost. Is fully conscious of his status. But not even fractionally conscientious. If anyone tries to check the ticket, he is seriously offended. The offender is dubbed as a “drunkard.” Powerful in dealing with the poor employee, but otherwise he is simply spineless. The backbone has no bone. Can effortlessly stoop to the lowest. Never to conquer. Always to concur. Claims to be wedded to truth. But like the modern married couples, the two stay apart. Integrity? When bought, he tries to stay bought. Can be often seen standing sheepishly in courts. Facing serious charges without any compunction. Accepts corruption as a qualification. Yet boldly blames the opposition for all the evil. Today’s politician is pliable. Commits crimes that call for no courage. Depends on “memory for his jests and imagination for the facts”. Parliament is becoming model of a good home for the erring and the old. Alas! A poor picture.
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Mitrokhin
papers: Ambika Soni defends Congress The controversy over Christopher Andrews’ recently released book titled “Mitrokhin Archive 11” refuses to go away. The Mitrokhin papers reveals how the KGB’s first prolonged contact with Indira Gandhi occurred way back in 1953. The papers further go on to allege that suitcases of money used to be sent to her house when she was Prime Minister and that L. N. Mishra was one of her chief recipients of money. Congress General Secretary Ambika Soni denies the allegations, insisting this is one more attempt to besmirch the Gandhi name. The book makes serious charges against both Indira Gandhi and other leaders in your party . What is your response to these? Many charges have been levied against the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the past also, but none of these have been substantiated. My question is: what is the basis of these charges? Have they ever been authenticated? The West has constantly been making attempt to lower the stature of leaders from the developing nations. This is obviously one more such attempt. But these allegations have been levied by people of credibility. Vasili Mitrokhin has been a former KGB officer while Christopher Andrew, the author of the book, is a leading specialist in matters relating to intelligence and espionage. I don’t know why the media is insisting on giving this Mitrokhin so much credibility. Mitrokhin was working in the archival section of the KGB. He ran away to the US where he was given asylum. The material he carried with him to the US has been claimed as genuine by the CIA. Why should we accept the CIA version of these facts? Intelligence agencies are all known to follow their own agenda and their dirty trick departments can operate in a very under-hand manner. Those of us who have known Indira Gandhi at a personal level know the kind of individual she was. She stood for certain ideals and there was no way that she would have compromised on the nation’s security. Are you implying that all that has been written on the issue is fictitious? Unless this information is authenticated, I am not willing to make any serious comment. I would not like to go into the details of this matter. I’m a party activist. I would rubbish any claims that a party like ours, and more especially a leader like ours, would allow something like this to take place and that is why Indira Gandhi continues to be held in such esteem. Indira Gandhi had always kept herself away from political funding of any kind. What is more, the signing of the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty in 1971 was done for strategic reasons. My other question is: why should the book have been brought out now? All the major players reported to be mentioned in this book are dead. Magazine reports say they have been identified by all kinds of codenames. If the author was so confident about the truth of what he was writing, then he should have given their real names as well. I find what has written extremely slanderous. Your party continues to be caught in one controversy or another. Recently, Raul Gandhi in an interview said he could have become Prime Minister at the age of 25. How could he have managed that? I must insist that no such interview was given to any journalist. Rahul visits Amethi regularly. He has not denied talking to that person but no Q&A was given. A lot of things were reported completely out of context. Rahul is on the move all the time. When the tsunami took place, he was touring Meghalaya. He immediately went South to get a first-hand impression of what kind of relief could be provided on the ground. He keeps travelling around the country to familiarise himself with the local situation. That is important. Seventy per cent of the electorate is below 35 years of age. MPs need to equip themselves with what is happening on the ground. But despite all this touring, the situation of your party on the ground in UP is quite poor. In a recent byelection in Allahabad, your party got only 600 votes. The state of the Congress in UP is a cause of concern for all of us. But that does not mean we should enter into competitive populism as is being indulged in by other parties in the state. Nor are we going to play one section of the public against another. We may have lost some of our political space, but we are trying hard to get it back. The Congress has always been opposed to competitive populism, which seems to have become the order of the day. If you are so unhappy with Mulayam Singh’s government, why does the Congress continue to give him support? We were the first party to support him, but we did not want to be part of the government. We are willing to give him issue-based support. All our leaders have been raising issues of the deteriorating law-and-order scenario in the state. We have also taken up the issue of sugarcane growers and the rights of small farmers. We can raise these issues because we are not part of the government. With elections around the corner in Bihar, what is your strategy going to be there? We are putting up 50 candidates. We expect to win quite a few seats because even there, the public wants a change. —Asia Features
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Widows
on the river VARANASI: One of the world’s oldest cities, it is bigger than I expected. Pilgrims from all over India come to Varanasi, the religious capital of Hinduism, to the Ganges river and the ghats — the stone steps that lead to the holy river from the city’s many alleyways. Even with ever-present trinket peddlers and busloads of tourists, a few smaller ghats remain solemn, where the city’s residents — the faithful — go for their daily bath and prayers at dawn. They wash copper dishes, clothes, even their teeth in the river that also washes away their sins. Most of them are widows — their sunken cheeks and white saris making them easily identifiable. Many Hindus want to die in Varanasi, believing that if they die here they are saved from the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Families bring the bodies of their loved ones to the river to be cremated, their ashes carried in the river that, they believe, flows directly from Heaven. During my visit to Varanasi, the Ganges is still high from monsoon season. Raw sewage trickles into the river from the city above. Sometimes bright pink or purple dye runs into the river from the silk businesses in town. Every morning I wake up before dawn and walk to the Kedara Ghat. There are no lights shining in the streets, just the glow from cow dung fires started for morning tea. Shopkeepers, vegetable sellers and rickshaw drivers have deserted the streets for the river. Everyone participates in the morning bathing and prayers. My first morning on the ghat I was without a translator. Holding my camera, I sat on the edge of the last step. Each widow had her favorite spot. With patience and awe, I started shooting. Every 10 minutes the light melted into a different color — creating different moods. By the third morning, Mahum welcomed me by putting her cool hand on my cheek. This is the feeling I think most of us photographers yearn for — to be invisible and accepted at the same time. Mahum — she wouldn’t tell me her age or her family name — has been a widow for 17 years, living in a charity house in the city. Her children live far away. There are several charity houses for widows around the city; some are run by the government, others by wealthy families. Many residents of Varanasi have opened their doors for one or two. One house, marked by a red-painted wall that surrounds the small compound, exists for lepers and widows. It survives on donations. These are not the poorest of the poor, but close. They are from a lower caste. The courtyard borders a sewage canal. Most widows have their own shed-like room, about four feet tall and only big enough to fit a woven cot. During the day the women pull the cots outside to sit and feel the post-monsoon breeze. They sit all day, barely talking and almost motionless. In the narrow alleys in the heart of the city, a Western tourist wouldn’t know that most of the women begging on the streets are widows. In fact, unless he was really looking for them, a stranger wouldn’t know they were there at all in their thin and yellowed saris. The widows have learned to live in the shadows of daily life, to go unnoticed. Widows are expected to devote the remainder of their lives to the memory of their husbands, without whom, according to their traditions, life loses meaning. By withdrawing from everyday life and luxuries, these women are living a form of suttee, the now-outlawed practice of burning widows alive, chained to the dead husband’s funeral pyre. Now they’re waiting in Varanasi, waiting for the Ganges to bless them with death. —LA Times-Washington Post
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Samuel
Beckett shadow on awards If you believe that quality and integrity trump novelty and celebrity, then it was a bang-up week for literary awards. The English playwright Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize for literature and the Irish novelist John Banville’s Mann Booker Prize were better than well-deserved. They were right. But the week’s big winner was the 1969 literature laureate, Samuel Beckett, who died 16 years ago and in whose fecund shadow both Pinter and Banville have worked so admirably and admiringly. At this particular historical moment — besotted as it is by piety and passion on all sides, by cruelty in attack and reciprocal cruelty in response — recognition of Beckett’s continuing relevance through the work of his foremost admirers hardly could be more apt. It’s even amusing to note both writers’ Beckett-like responses to news of their awards. Last Thursday, a Swedish journalist working for the Nobels’ official website rang Pinter and said, ``I would like just to ask you what, in your career, you think has been the most important, what has the most “ Pinter interjected, ``I cannot answer. ... I can’t answer these questions.” On the day Banville’s novel ``The Sea” was short-listed for this year’s Booker, a reporter called and asked, ``Can you summarize your book in your own words?” Banville replied, ``I already have — 65,000 of them.” No one ever summed up Beckett’s ethos better than the critic Hugh Kenner, who said, ``His argument was with the Book of Genesis.” What better antidote to the gooey piety that seems to spread across the surface of our public life like some uncontrollable religious oil spill than Beckett’s astringent verity: ``God is a witness that cannot be sworn.” Pinter, who was Beckett’s friend and to whom the Irish playwright was a mentor, has been most explicit in his admiration. "The farther he goes the more good it does me,” he said once of Beckett. "I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going. ... He’s not flogging me a remedy or a path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs. ... He brings forth a body of beauty. His work is beautiful.” Banville also frequently has drawn attention to Beckett’s influence on his work. His own sequence of novels, "The Book of Evidence” (1989), "Ghosts" (1993) and "Athena” (1995), usually are compared to Beckett’s "Molloy,” "Malone Dies” and "The Unnamable.” Among the most telling of ``Ghosts’ “ many memorable sentences are these, pure Beckett and Banville: "Such suffering, such grief: unimaginable. No, that’s not right. I can imagine it. I can imagine anything.” In the US at least, Pinter’s Nobel is bound to be a source of dismay to some who object to his fierce criticism not only of the war in Iraq but also of its conduct, particularly the use of torture by U.S. forces. His categorical opposition to cruelty and oppression, however, springs from an insistence on the primacy of decency and humanity over ideology in any form. In this too he is a disciple of Beckett, who famously left his neutral homeland for France on the very verge of World War II. As he later said, "I should rather be in France at war than Ireland at peace, and by the grace of God I made it just in time.” —LA Times-Washington Post
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From the pages of Honour to lord Curzon His Majesty the King-Emperor was pleased the other day to order the coveted decoration of the Order of the Garter to be conferred on Lord Minto... An Anglo-Indian contemporary observed in this connection that the Garter was granted to every Viceroy on his return from India. Now that was not a correct statement. The Order of the Garter is not conferred except for services of an exceptionally meritorious character. It was not given to Lord Curzon, who would have got it had it been the rule to make every Viceroy on his return home Knight of the Order of the Garter. The unwritten law of Great Britain is that this is granted only when a Viceroy has annexed a new province to the Empire. The Marquis of Dalhousie was granted this privilege and in later days the Earl of Dufferin was created a Marquis for his annexation of Burma. Lord Curzon went very near annexing Tibet to the Empire; but the policy which would have culminated in the annexation of Tibet was knocked on the head by his own party and on the return of the Liberals to power Lord Morley lost no time in putting the extinguisher thereon.
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Concentrate on finding your goal, then concentrate on reaching it. It is a gift of God to be able to share our love First secure the oil of divine love and then set your hand to the duties of the world. I take refuge in the Buddha; I take refuge in the Dhamma; I take refuge in the Sangha. We can know that what God is not, but we cannot know what He is. Do not hesitate to protect yourself from evil. |
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