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Maoists in mainstream Hands off varsities |
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King of chess
Judging Generals
Baker of ideas
Iran’s war of humiliation George Bush is on the mend Delhi Durbar
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Maoists in mainstream SOUTH Asia is home to some remarkable experiments in the history of struggles for freedom and democracy. Nepal, which was never a formal colony like its bigger South Asian neighbour, has charted out a radically different course towards an inclusive democracy. Much as this may cause alarm bells to ring in a few distant western capitals, nearer home, events in the Himalayan country hold out the promise of a peaceful transformation towards a democracy. The landmark development of the Maoists joining the government of the Seven-Party Alliance is a natural progression rooted in the cataclysmic political events that forced an autocratic king to bow to the demands of a popular struggle for democracy. It is also an international landmark of sorts: the Nepali Maoists are, perhaps, the first rebel force to abandon their “revolutionary government” and join hands with mainstream parties to pursue their goal of a republic through electoral democracy. The leap from a monarchy towards a Maoist-driven democracy has not been without its problems given the 11-year long Maoist insurgency that claimed over 14,000 lives and destroyed a lot of critical infrastructure in one of the world’s poorest countries. While the struggle against an obdurate monarch united the Maoists and mainstream parties against the excesses of a feudal despot, they fell apart in agreeing on the way forward. However, the acuity of Prime Minister G P Koirala and his unrelenting quest for a consensus enabled the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), a timetable for the Maoists to enter parliament, lay down arms, agree to a new statute, join the government and participate in the electoral process. The fact that Mr Koirala has been able to carry with him thus far all the democratic forces and the Maoists, and declare that elections will be held on June 20 is an exceptional achievement in the face of the odds against him. Reservations about the Maoists are bound to persist until and after the elections. The future of Nepalese democracy — and peace and stability — depends on their commitment to the parliamentary process and how far they stick to the promised course. |
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Hands off varsities THE manner in which PAU Vice-Chancellor Dr K.S. Aulakh had to resign is unfortunate, to say the least. Even if he did so merely because he was allegedly addressed in a rude manner by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal over the issue of opening a gate of the university which the Vice-Chancellor had closed a few years ago, it was a clear case of interference in the day-to-day affairs of the university. And if the resignation took place as a cumulative effect of several instances of political meddling, that makes it even worse. There are allegations that Dr Aulakh was being targeted because of his reported proximity to former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. What gives credence to such allegations is the fact that the Vice-Chancellor of Punjabi University, Mr S. S. Boparai, is also in trouble with the new government. Vice-Chancellors being sent packing or being hounded on a change of government does not make a pleasant sight at all but that has been happening all too often, whether it is in Punjab or other states like Haryana. In the first place, vice-chancellors are appointed at the whim and fancy of chief ministers. If they fall foul of the political leadership, or a new chief minister takes over, they are kicked out unceremoniously. Teachers on the campuses are also divided along political lines. The real sufferers are the students. There is so much friction and intrigue in the temples of learning that academic matters get ignored. Political parties not only meddle in appointments, but also take over elections to student bodies. For them, universities are no more than local wings of their organisations. The degeneration has been going on for long. When there is decay everywhere else, can the universities be insulated from the bad influence? Surely they can be, provided various parties resolve unanimously to leave them alone. Let them be autonomous centres of excellence. |
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King of chess UTTER the name Vishwanathan Anand amongst the chess playing fraternity in the country, particularly in Chennai where many an enthusiast has pitted his wits against his and come out feeling battered and bruised, and the sense of awe is unmistakable. The man was after all, not just a grandmaster, but a lightning fast one. Stories are still told of how Anand, even as a young player, would take on a dozen challengers simultaneously, steady concentration on his gentle face. One by one they would fall, and they would all crowd around the last man standing, egging him on, only to collapse in laughter as the champion ended it all with one startling master stroke. At last, at 37, Anand has taken his rightful place as the best of the best. After an avoidable lapse in the way the ranking was calculated, the world chess body, FIDE, released a list which puts Anand at No 1. It took a while coming, but is entirely deserved. Moving past a loss to then reigning champion Garry Kasparov, Anand stayed in the game to eventually win the world title, and other tournaments like the rapid chess championships. He recently won the Linares championship, and this was the event that was not taken into account when FIDE released a ranking putting him at No 2. While FIDE cited a new rule that all results had to come in before February 28, the rankings had taken Linares into account for the last 15 years. The All India Chess Federation did well to immediately lodge a protest, and it is to its credit that FIDE revised the rankings, averting what would otherwise have been a gross injustice. For a nation starved of sporting excellence, Anand’s ranking is testimony to what sustained brilliance and staying power can achieve. Lesser glories have been feted and raved about. Here is a chance for the country to salute a true sporting icon. |
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So all my best is dressing old words new, /Spending again what is already spent. —William Shakespeare |
Judging Generals
Gen Pervez Musharraf like Macbeth spoke eloquently about his love for the “rule of law” and “freedom of expression” after summarily rendering Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry ‘non-functional”. The whole episode had the trappings and intrigue of high drama. The CJ in his judges robe is summoned to the General’s camp office in Rawalpindi on March 9 and made to wait for more than an hour before he is ushered into the presence of the General in his full military regalia. Charges of misconduct and abuse of authority are read out with a rare hauteur. Condescending reprieve is offered if he resigns. The CJ demurs. Reference, at once, is announced to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). Everything went smoothly until a tactical mistake was committed by way of manhandling the CJ while escorting him to the Supreme Court. The Bar arose like a phoenix in a nation-wide protest against the humiliation and ridicule of the judiciary by the General. As many as seven judges and a deputy General resigned as per the dictates of their “individual conscience”. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Nobody else other than the judiciary itself is to blame for the predicament it is in today. Chickens have come home to roost. “That which otherwise is not lawful, necessity makes it so,” declared the Supreme Court of Pakistan when Ghulam Muhammad, Governor-General in 1955, dissolved the Constituent Assembly and dismissed the government of Mohammad Ali Bogra. It has since then come to be known as “the doctrine of necessity”. Courts have repeatedly cited it to justify the military coups by General Ayub, General Yahya, General Zia and General Musharraf against the civilian government. General Zia dismissed Chief Justice Yaqub Ali and five other judges of the Supreme Court during his tenure. It is not only that the Generals flaunted their disdain for the independence of the judiciary, the duly elected civilian rulers and brother judges also showed scant respect. It is during the time of Mr Nawaz Sharif that the Supreme Court was stormed by miscreants when the authorities silently looked on. The nadir in the judicial history of Pakistan was reached when the “brother judges” conspired to oust their Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah. Stephen Philip Cohen in his book, The Idea of Pakistan, says, “The Pakistani courts have sustained the ‘myth of constitutionalism’ by pretending that military coups were legally and constitutionally justified. They exercised ‘judicial review’ of government policies only to ratify coercive acts.” In the judicial history of Pakistan the pliable courts have lent themselves to be easily manipulated. The CJ’s judicial activism and suo motu inquiries into the cases of “forced disappearances” without the due process of law, though, came as a whiff of fresh air for the moribund judicial system of Pakistan, it started suffocating the General. The General came to power in a bloodless coup in October 1999 and his term is slated to expire in October this year. Harbouring a Ceaser-like ambition of getting re-elected, he fears the judiciary’s stab. Under such circumstances what would be the outcome of the SJC proceedings can be easily predicted even though Mr Justice Bhagwan Das, the Acting Chief Justice, fresh from his meditations in Lucknow, has assured that all issues, including the charges against Mr Justice Chaudhry, his objections to the composition of the SJC and the request for open trial would be dealt with in accordance with the constitution and law. Mr Justice Bhagwan Das, born in 1942, is the second non-Muslim judge after Justice A.R. Cornelius, a Christian, to reach the highest position in the Pakistani judiciary. The devil is not in the law but in “stretching of the law”. It remains to be seen how far the faithful will stretch it this time. The litany of charges is long. Something out of the tumbril will get stuck. Eminent lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, leading the defence team, is already wary of it. Some of the serious charges against the CJ pertain to the misuse of his position, influence and authority for first securing the appointment of his son, Dr Arsalan Iftikhar, as Section Officer, Health Department, Government of Blochistan, against a non-existent vacancy, and then to have him sent on deputation to the Federal Investigation Agency as Deputy Director, and now making efforts to have him inducted into the Police Service of Pakistan in violation of rules. As one peruses the reference document from para 1 to 22, one finds that all the above happened between 1996 and May 2005, before he was appointed CJ in June 2005. So, one thing is clear, he did not misuse his position as CJ. But if these acts did not matter when he was to be elevated as C.J. how they matter now is not clear. Obviously, before becoming CJ, he was a pliable judge. After all, he supported the General’s coup in 1999, accepted the provisional constitution in 2000 and allowed the constitutional amendment in 2003 for the General to retain his uniform along with the presidency. The other charges are of writing judgments which are contradictory to orders announced verbally in the open court and the CJ’s insistence on the protocols not entitled to. One wonders that had such charges been true, there would not have been such large-scale protests by lawyers. In Pakistan today nobody seems to be really interested in democracy. They are satisfied with the rule of the army-bureaucracy combine. The politicians of all hues, including former Prime Minister and leaders of the two main Opposition parties, Mr Nawaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto living in exile, were slow to react at first and then frittered away the opportunity to use the forces unleashed by the protest for the restoration of democracy in the country. It is the refrain of fear that brought them together rather than their love for democracy. They feared that the General could impose an emergency and postpone the elections. On the other hand, the General carried out the damage limitation exercise with his usual suave manner during an interview with Geo TV and took the wind out of the sails of the Opposition. He promised to hold the elections in time and not to impose an emergency. As far as the US is concerned, it is least interested in the institution of democracy in Pakistan. Its only agenda is a pro-West Pakistan and a pro-American leadership. If US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher called it the internal matter of Pakistan “to be handled in their own way”, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack seized the occasion to describe General Musharraf as a “good” and “solid friend”. They say he has a “commitment to keep”. Will he keep it? Will he hang his uniform by the end of this year? Only time will tell. For the present, he seems to have come out stronger from the
crisis.
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Baker of ideas
WHEN my colleague Sudhir Tailang produced a series for Doordarshan on the living legends of Indian cartooning in the nineties, he started with a visit to the late Abu Abraham’s house at Thiruvananthapuram. That was the first time I had a glimpse of the famous house with un-plastered brick walls and frameless windows and doors that allowed a free flow of air and sunlight. The house has been featured in several interior design, architecture and lifestyle magazines and it is still a favourite destination for those who want to have a look at an aesthetically built low-cost house. Abu who cut his cartooning teeth in London and did many memorable cartoons when he worked for the Indian Express enjoyed the attention his house received. When nobody cared to give a second look at houses into which their owners had sunk crores of rupees, it was quite amusing for Abu to find his “humble” house constantly in the limelight. Was it because the house was built around a big, fruit-laden jackfruit tree, which would have been axed had he engaged any other architect? Abu’s house is one of the best examples of Laurence Wilfred Baker’s - Laurie Baker, in short - architecture. Born British, he came to India to work for a Foundation, had a chance meeting with Mahatma Gandhi and loved the land and the people so much that he never cared to return. He passed away at Thiruvananthapuram on Palm Sunday, aged 90. Baker spent most of his life advocating against the unbridled use of cement and steel in the construction of houses. In a state where people associate their status with the size of their houses, he had a huge task cut out for him. It is to his credit that he helped build a movement, which aimed at building affordable houses. He believed that in the construction of houses only locally available materials should be used. They would not only be cheaper but also environment-friendly. A traditionalist, he argued that in Kerala’s climate, concrete houses with liberal use of glass made life miserable forcing even the not-so-rich to go in for air-conditioners. Needless to say, Baker hated air-conditioners. His advocacy did not prevent a neighbour, flush with petro-money, from designing his house in the form of a boat with a water tank on top, which, too, was in the shape of a boat. For all his ingenuity and the huge money spent, people nicknamed it as the “boatman’s house”. But Baker had his takers too. He himself designed over 2,000 houses, which have been emulated all over the country. Many of the owners of such houses may not even know that the idea of their buildings originally came from Baker. When his request for citizenship was kept pending for a long time, it caused him some heartburn. Finally, he got it with the icing of a Padma award. Baker, who was known as the “architect of the poor”, had a bizarre experience when a rich man once approached him with a request, “Build me a low-cost house, no matter how much it costs”. For once, Laurie Baker realised that his design had become fashionable, though that was hardly on his mind when he started designing houses for leprosy patients way back in 1945.n |
Iran’s war of humiliation British marines are hostages in Iran. They may be put on trial. Petrol bombs burst behind the walls of the British embassy in Tehran. But it’s very definitely not the war on terror. It is the war of humiliation. The humiliation of Britain, the humiliation of Tony Blair, of the British military, of George W. Bush and the whole Iraqi shooting match. And the master of humiliation – even if Tony Blair doesn’t realise it – is Iran, a nation which feels itself forever humiliated by the West. Oh how pleased the Iranians must have been to hear Messers Blair and Bush shout for the “immediate” release of the luckless 15 – this Blair-Bush insistence has assuredly locked them up for weeks – because it is a demand that can be so easily ignored. And will be. “Inexcusable behaviour,” roared Bush on Saturday – and the Iranians loved it. The Iranian minister meanwhile waited for a change in Britain’s “behaviour”. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying president from hell, calls Blair “arrogant and selfish” – and so say all of us, by the way – after refusing to play to the crowd at the United Nations. They’ll release ‘serviceperson’ Faye Turney. Then they won’t release her. Veiled Faye with her cigarette and her backcloth of cheaply flowered curtains, producing those preposterous letters of cloying friendship towards the “Iranian people” while abjectly apologising for the British snoop into Iranian waters – written, I strongly suspect, by the lads from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance – is the star of the Iranian show. Back in 1980, when Tehran staged its much more ambitious take-over of the US embassy, the star was a blubbering marine – a certain Sergeant Ladell Maples – who was induced to express his appreciation for Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution just before America’s prime-time television news. The Iranians, you see, understand the West. And they understand it much better than we understand – or bother to understand – Iran. We have forgotten the years of Allied occupation in World War Two, the deposition of the pro-German Shah and then, humiliation of humiliations, the overthrow of the democratic prime minister Mohamed Mossadeq, engineered by the CIA’s Allen Dulles and an eccentric British scholar of Greek, an ex-SOE operative – ‘Monty’ Woodhouse by name – with a few guns and a pile of dollars. And the Iranians remember well, how back came the Shah of Iran, our ‘policeman’ in the Gulf, the King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, descendant of Cyrus the Great, to stretch out the young Iranian men and women of the resistance on the toasting racks of their Savak torturers. Nor have the Iranians any real intention of putting Faye and her chums in front of any court. They’d far rather have the Britons chomping through their ‘nan’ bread on Sky TV, courtesy, of course, of Tehran’s Arabic ‘Alalam’ channel. And did you notice that little ‘exclusive’ label in the top left hand corner of the screen when Rifleman Nathan Summers decided to go public? How the Iranians love mimicking their oppressors. When the gold braid of the Ministry of Defence produce a complexity of maps to prove our boys were in Iraqi waters, the Iranians produce a humble coastguard with a Minotaur map to show that they were in the Iranian briney. The Union Jack still flies on their rubber boat – but the Iranian banner floats above it. No-one has yet explained, I notice, why our boys and girls in blue carry rifles on their sailing adventures if their duty is to hand them over when attacked. Are we actually trying to supply the Revolutionary Guards with more weapons? But behind all this lie some dark questions – with, I fear, some still unknown but dark answers. The Iranian security services are convinced that the British security services are trying to provoke the Arabs of Iran’s Khuzestan province to rise up against the Islamic Republic. Bombs have exploded there, one of them killing a truck-load of Revolutionary Guards, and Tehran blamed MI5. Outrageous, they said. Inexcusable. The Brits made no comment, even when the Iranians hanged a man accused of the killings from a crane; he had, they said, been working for London. Are the SAS in south-western Iran, just as the British claim the Iranians are in south-eastern Iraq, harassing the boys in Basra with new-fangled bombs? Will the Americans release the five Iranians issuing visas to Kurds in Erbil whom they locked up a couple of months ago. No, says Bush. Well, we shall see. There is a lot we do not know – or care to know – about all this. In the meantime, however, it will be left to Blair, Bush and the merchants of the SKY-BBC-CNN-FOX-CBS-NBC-ABC axis of “shlock”-and-awe to play the Iranian game. Will they put Faye on trial? Will our boys be threatened with execution? Answer: no, but be sure we’ll soon be told by the Iranians that they are all spies. A lie, needless to say. But Blair will fulminate and Bush will roar and the Iranians will sit back and enjoy every second of it. The Iranians died in their tens of thousands to destroy Saddam’s legions. And now they watch us wringing our hands over 15 lost souls. This is a big-time movie, the cinemascope of political humiliation. And the Iranians not only know how to stage the drama. They’ve even written Blair’s script. And he obligingly reads it to cue. By arrangement withThe Independent |
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George Bush is on the mend
A reputation once made, good or bad, stays with politicians and bureaucrats. Neither good nor evil is interred with their bones. But they desperately try to go out in a trail of glory towards the end. President Bush is in that phase of his political career and he feels obliged to mend his ways to find a place in history, not as a villain, but as a saviour of national honour and prestige. He wishes to erase the better part of his second term to regain the image he had when he contested for the second term. His election to his second term was a foregone conclusion because he alone had the nerves of steel to lead the United States after the biggest challenge to its homeland security. Having lost that image, Bush is trying out a statesmanlike image for himself. Iraq was lost long before the first bomb hit the ground, before the first American soldier made the supreme sacrifice. The invasion just exposed the anticipated dangers. Unlike the war on terror in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq was patently unjustified, because it was common knowledge that Saddam Hussein was neither an Al Qaida leader nor a despot with nuclear teeth. Mohamed El Baradei got his Nobel Prize for Peace for the effort he made to put some sense into Bush. But the President was sure that Hussein’s Kuwait adventure was sufficient to keep his people with him as he proceeded to do the unfinished task of his father. It is possible that that Bush did not anticipate that Hussein’s resistance would outlast his incarceration and elimination. But not to anticipate a civil war and a possible break up of Iraq was to be naďve. Did he ever have a Plan B for adoption if the anticipated walk over did not come about? The Plan B that he has now put forward of a surge in the US military presence and a reluctant dialogue with Iran and Syria is a miss match of policy. President Bush, should, however be credited with flexibility when he reluctantly closed his eyes to his officials hobnobbing with evil. Of course, that does not amount to a change of heart, but just a tactical move to secure respectability to the Iraqi regime. Like the journalistic coverage of apology after damage is done, the Bush recantation is not seen not as a bold move, but the desperate struggle of a drowning man. Bush does not have sufficient time in office to see through the initiative. His successor, having fought an election, by distancing himself from Bush and his policies, will reap the benefits of Bush’s moves to mend his ways. In Latin America too, we did not see Bush as Don Quixote, but as a Good Samaritan, ready to forget and forgive and give all that Brazil, Uruguay, Columbia and Guatemala wanted. His language, both of body and tongue, was conciliatory. Hugo Chavez’s parallel tour did not seem to irritate or infuriate him. President Putin’s provocation to resuscitate the cold war would have elicited a different reaction from President Bush, if the latter were not on the mend. The harshest words ever spoken since the end of the first cold war were dismissed as the fulminations of a former spy. If it had happened before the Iraq disaster, Bush’s speechwriters would have invented a new vocabulary for a second cold war. On North Korea, Bush has allowed US policy to come full circle. Offer of bilateral carrots rather than threat of multilateral stick was the preferred policy of the US from the beginning of the nuclear crisis in North Korea. Having explored the multilateral route, Bush has essentially returned to the original formula, which appears to have worked. Has Bush’s old readiness to defy the Congress also begun to diminish in his rebuilding phase? It does appear so in the case of the India-US nuclear deal, which seems to have disappeared into the endless caverns of Washington. Bush and his officials were very confident when the Hyde Act was passed that its stipulations would not hamper the signature of a 123 Agreement as required by India. Reports say that the deal was not even discussed during the visit of Foreign Secretary Menon on the ground that it was the turf of Special Envoy Shyam Saran. Menon decided to focus on other issues as though he was preparing a contingency plan for a scenario without the nuclear deal. If Bush dilutes his commitment to the nuclear deal, it will be to regain the confidence of the Congress. All the good that Bush is trying to do in the din and bustle of a most divisive election campaign will not save his Presidency. In fact, he has nothing to lose by appearing moderate and reasonable. It may well save the Republican Party from perdition and prepare George Bush for a career as a peacemaker like Jimmy Carter, who accomplished much more outside office than inside. Even an unsuccessful President can be a successful statesman. |
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Delhi Durbar Now that the leader of the Congress Legislature Party in Punjab has been named, the race is on for the post of PCC president. The incumbent state party chief Shamsher Singh Dullo had put in his papers after the dismal election results. All those eyeing this post have been lobbying hard as in most cases, the PCC president is projected as the party’s chief ministerial candidate. Last Saturday, a group of party MLAs from the state even called on Congress president Sonia Gandhi to plead for the early appointment of a new PCC chief. The legislators stressed that the new president should have statewide appeal and be sufficiently aggressive to take on Akali Dal leader Parkash Singh Badal. Speculation is, however, rife as to whose case they were actually pleading – given that there are several contenders for this plum post, including former Lok Sabha MP Jagmeet Singh Brar and former Youth Congress chief Manish Tiwari.
Tagore in Hindi There is good news for Hindi-speaking lovers of Rabindra Sangeet.. The rich repertoire of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs has now been translated into Hindi and specially-produced music videos will be telecast at prime-time on Doordarshan from next month. Eminent singers like Kavita Krishnamurthy, Anuradha Paudwal, Anup Jalota, and Bhupendra have lent their voice to these songs. Information and broadcasting minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi has taken personal interest in this project as it is his fervent belief that Tagore needs to be liberated from the “living rooms” of Bengali households and placed on the national canvas.
Welcome guests There were two surprise guests at the recent special screening of senior BJP leader L.K.Advani’s daughter Pratibha Advani’s film on Vande Mataram. Jammu and Kashmir governor General S.K.Sinha and veteran Congressman Vasant Sathe were among the select invitees. It is well known that Sathe has fallen out with the Congress leadership and is not averse to taking potshots at the party in public. The J&K governor’s proximity to the BJP is well-known as he had unsuccessfully contested an election as its candidate and was subsequently accommodated as a governor by the NDA regime.
Try again, Rahul The jury is out as to who was responsible for the media management of Congress scion Rahul Gandhi’s roadshow in Western Uttar Pradesh last month. The poor media response to young Gandhi’s first foray outside the twin constituencies of Amethi and Rae Barelli has left everybody in the party squirming. As is typical, the blame game is on with the Congress media managers in Delhi blaming their counterparts in Lucknow. The party is not taking any chances now that Rahul Gandhi has set off on the second round of campaign in UP. Ahmed Patel, Congress president’s political secretary, has apparently stepped in to personally supervise media management. Contributed by Prashant Sood, Tripti Nath, R.Suryamurthy and Anita Katyal |
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