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Communal
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Victims
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Golwalkar’s
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The
shortcut
Make
education of masses a priority The new
Silk Route and its global impact Defence
Notes
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Communal disk WHATEVER may be the final decision of the Election Commission on the culpability or otherwise of the BJP in producing and distributing an absolutely communal Compact Disc in Uttar Pradesh, the episode shows the party in a poor light. It is amazing that instead of being apologetic about the CD, a senior leader like Mr Lal Krishna Advani is brazen about it and is hoping that it will bring political mileage to the party. A cursory reading of the excerpts of the CD as published in The Hindu is enough to know the mindset of the party. If the BJP is truthful when it says that it was the brainwave of one person and that the party chief in UP did not know its content when he released it at a public function in Lucknow, why is it not dissociating from the content as well? Far from that, party leaders like Mr Kalyan Singh rhetorically ask, “What is wrong with the CD?” The CD is wrong in every respect. A party which ruled the country for six long years and which is in power in several large states does not need such crude propaganda against a minority community to win an election. It is pertinent that except haranguing the Muslims for whom the choicest epithets are reserved, there is no mention in the CD of what the BJP will do for the common man if it is voted to power. Small wonder that not a single ally of the BJP has come out in defence of the party. The CD shows that when it gets down to the brass tacks, it has only a communal agenda. Officially the party has withdrawn the CD but it draws comfort from the fact that the cadres for whom it was meant would have benefited from it. That is why Mr Advani is hopeful of cashing in on it. However, to assume that the CD would do wonders for the BJP, as some leaders seem to believe, is to overlook the ground reality in the state. Uttar Pradesh has undergone a sea change since the days when the party under Mr Advani unleashed a campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid. The unity Hindus and Muslims showed when the terrorists struck at the sacred Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi proves that the people are no longer swayed by communal propaganda. The BJP should have known that it was not communalism that brought it to power in the Delhi Municipal Council, Punjab and Uttarakhand. Alas, like the leopard, the BJP cannot change its spots.
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Nose in the mud THE fact that two of Air-India’s planes had to make emergency landings within hours of each other does little to reassure travellers about the national carrier’s ability to ensure safety. Pictures of a passenger aircraft with Air-India’s trademark markings in red, with its nose on the tarmac, will only serve to degrade its image further. Coming as it does ahead of a much-hyped merger with Indian, questions will now have to be raised about the two carriers’ readiness to effectively, and safely, integrate their fleet of aircraft. There are a whole host of issues regarding maintenance facilities, spare parts inventories, staff training and co-ordination, which can unravel quickly without proper planning. Both Air-India and Indian possess old aircraft. While older aircraft do not immediately translate to less safe aircraft, the challenges posed by an aging fleet are many. Both the carriers have ordered new aircraft - Air-India will acquire 50 Boeings while Indian has gone with 43 new Airbus aircraft. Considering the amount of usual dithering that went on before the new acquisitions were finalised, there is no doubt that valuable time was lost. And with growing air traffic and pressure from private airlines, the national carriers have been feeling the additional pressure that comes from operating in a competitive environment. Air-India should ensure that any laxity in maintenance and safety is not tolerated. A full enquiry will, of course, reveal the nature of the snags leading to the emergency landings, and whether an ageing plane was being operated beyond its safe life. As passenger volumes and fleet strengths grow and airports and airspaces get more crowded, safety cannot be allowed to be compromised. While the industry is dreaming about a 20-per cent growth rate, even a 10-per cent growth rate will see a doubling in passenger volume from the present 250 lakh to 500 lakh travellers in seven years. Safety concerns should constantly be kept in mind.
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Victims of abuse IF rape is a dark secret which most tradition-bound Indian families don’t want to become public knowledge, sexual abuse of children is something which does not become known even to parents, because children themselves are mortified of the ridicule and shame it will bring them. That is why the menace has been spreading so much so that a government-sponsored survey has found that as many as 53 per cent children get sexually abused. If that is not benumbing, what should come as an even bigger shock is that in 50 per cent of the child abuse cases, the abusers are known to the child or are in a position of trust and responsibility. More boys than girls are abused. Since most children do not report the matter to anyone, most of the perpetrators carry on their ghoulish deed, as was graphically portrayed in a recent film, “Monsoon Wedding”. But just because the shameful incidents are not reported, it does not mean that they are forgotten by the victim children. On the contrary, they singe their impressionable minds for life, leading to horrifying consequences in some cases. Just as keeping AIDS under the wraps has led to its runaway growth, the abuse of children, too, has reached epidemic proportions and only openness about it can exorcise the ghosts of the Nithari kind. Unfortunately, sexual abuse is not the only way children are exploited. There are also problems of physical and emotional abuse and female child neglect. The report sponsored by the Women and Child Development Ministry goes on to add that nearly 65 per cent of schoolchildren reported facing corporal punishment — beating by teachers — mostly in government schools. Of the children physically abused in families, in an astounding 88.6 per cent of the cases, parents themselves were the perpetrators. More than 50 per cent had been sexually abused in ways that ranged from severe — such as rape or fondling — to milder forms of molestation that included forcible kissing. The nation can no longer pretend ignorance.
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Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond. — Thomas Love Peacock
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Golwalkar’s book While
lavishing praise on M.S.Golwalkar on the occasion of the centenary of his birth last year, the saffron brotherhood virtually contradicted its adulation of its revered Guru by disowning one of his well-known books, We or Our Nationhood Defined. Like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the former RSS chief’s book is a seminal contribution to the literature of fascism. Along with his other literary endeavours, Bunch of Thoughts, We … and V.D.Savarkar’s Who is a Hindu are a must for anyone wishing to understand the Hindutva brigade’s warped world-view. It is probably to divert attention from this hate-driven ideology that the RSS has quietly dumped the book, claiming that it is no longer in circulation. Now that this Nagpur-based Hindu patriarchal organisation has acquired political ambition — it has started playing a direct role in guiding the affairs of its political wing, the BJP — it perhaps feels that such a strident exposition of its anti-minority outlook may prove to be counter-productive during the quest for power. In any event, the RSS probably believes that whatever is said in the book has been so well imbibed by the Sangh parivar’s core group of supporters that there is now no need for the main text. We… has become, therefore, the collective smriti of the saffron lobby, like the ancient texts of the Hindus. An outsider cannot fully understand why We … has been singled out for oblivion because Bunch of Thoughts is no less inflammable where the minorities are concerned. So is Savarkar’s thesis, but, then, this companion of Nathuram Godse and an accused in the Gandhi murder case was never really a member of the parivar. Nor was Savarkar enamoured of the RSS, having said that the “epitaph for the RSS volunteer will be that he was born, he joined the RSS and he died without accomplishing anything”. Besides, the RSS cannot afford to completely disown Golwalkar by saying that all his books are out of print because such a step will confuse and dishearten the saffron sect. After all, one cannot knock off the base of an ideology and still expect it to flourish. It is possible that the axe (or is it the trishul?) fell on We … because it is somewhat more direct than the Bunch. It has specific directions about how the minorities are to be treated while the Bunch is marginally less vicious. Moreover, We … has a passage extolling Hitler’s Germany, which the RSS-BJP may find rather inconvenient when these Hindutva warriors are still a long way from establishing their cherished Hindu rashtra. At such a time, praise for the Nazis can be a disadvantage, just as an anti-Muslim pogrom can be, as Narendra Modi has found out through the denial of visas for him by the US. Yet, it is this passage which clarifies what the RSS stands for. Golwalkar was ecstatic in his praise for Nazi Germany’s pre-World War II acquisition of Austria and Czechoslovakia, putting it down to “German pride in their Fatherland for a definite home country, for which the race has certain traditional attachments”. The Nazis were also willing to “risk … a fresh world conflagration in order to establish one, unparallelled, undisputed German empire over all this hereditary territory”. And, in addition, “to keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by its purging the country of the semitic races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here … a good lesson for use in Hindusthan to learn and profit by”. The lesson which Golwalkar apparently had in mind related to India’s own “hereditary territory” of Akhand Bharat. As he said, “the country (India) is still there, the ancient race, too, is there, but it is no longer the same old nation that it used to be. Gandhar (today’s Kandahar) is no more. Similarly with Baluchistan”. Golwalkar then drew a parallel for the Hindus with the fate of Jews and Parsis. “Palestine became Arab … and the Hebrew nation in Palestine died a natural death. (We … was written before the creation of Israel). Where is the Parsi nation today ? Their land is there, still inhabited by the descendants of the old Parsis, but is there the Parsi nation in their home country, Iran ?” Golwalkar’s warning is obvious. Hindus will suffer the same fate if they do not see the imminent dangers. What, then, is his advice ? After his appreciation of Nazi Germany comes his chilling prescription: “From this … experience of shrewd old nations, the non-Hindu people in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and revere Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but the glorification of the Hindu nation, i.e. they must not only give up their attitude of intolerance and ingratitude towards this land and its age-old traditions, must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and devotion instead; in one word, they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen’s rights.” There are other passages, too, which the RSS may be finding somewhat embarrassing. One of these is a thinly-veiled criticism of Buddhism. “Consciousness of the one Hindu Nationhood became rusty”, wrote Golwalkar, “and the race became vulnerable to attacks from without. Buddhistic influence — a misunderstanding of the teachings of the Great Master — had the painful effect of effacing from the minds of the masses their tenacious adherence to their faith … the individual became more prominent than the country, the Nation”. Is the RSS finding the Guru too controversial? Considering that We … was published in the forties, why has it taken nearly 60 years for the parivar to reject it — at least formally and perhaps tactically? Has the parivar discovered, as Mr L.K.Advani seemingly has, that there is no future for its crude sectarianism in multicultural India? Yet, the concept of minorities being aliens is inextricably linked to Savarkar’s view that only those can be regarded as true citizens to whom India is both punyabhu (holy land) and pitribhu (fatherland). “That is why”, Savarkar says, “in the case of some of our Mohammedan or Christian countrymen … though Hindusthan to them is pitribhu as to any other Hindu, yet it is not to them a punyabhu, too. Their holy land is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and Godmen, ideas and heroes, are not the children of this soil. Consequently, their names and their outlook smack of foreign origin. Their love is divided.” What is more, this idea of divided love is so ingrained in the saffron camp that it will take more than a rejection of We … to send a convincing message that the RSS and the BJP have turned their back on their past. Especially when the Bunch of Thoughts identifies Muslims as Internal Threat No. 1. “All over the country where there is a masjid or a Muslim mohalla, the Muslims feel that it is their own independent territory”, wrote Golwalkar in the Bunch. It is no use, therefore, for the RSS-BJP to delete their Guru’s first book. If they want to be believed, they will have to delete Golwalkar
himself.
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The shortcut
The
long Hudson Run as the cross-country run was called, was gruelling, and taking the one shortcut available had become such a common practice that, as children, we took it without a qualm of conscience. As a teacher, it was another matter. I was a Housemaster and when the qualifying took place for that event, while other houses each had only four or five boys qualifying, my house had 18 beating the qualifying whistle. The truth was there for any fool to see — while the boys from the other three houses had not been able to take the shortcut, perhaps due to the presence of a zealous and vigilant member of staff, my boys had had no such disadvantage. A protest was lodged, a meeting of Housemasters called and I was forced to agree to a re-run for my boys. That evening I had a meeting with the boys and in an emotionally charged speech brought home to them how the honour of the house was at stake. If 18 boys failed to qualify, I would have no option but to acknowledge my failure in not being able to inculcate the right values in my boys and with that acknowledgement I would have no option but to resign from my housemastership. The next day the race was run again. I stood nervously at the finishing line, wanting desperately to bite my fingers nails. After what seemed an eternity the first boy turned the last bend and came into sight. I went wild with excitement. One, two — 15, 16, 17, 18. My heart lifted with relief. But it didn’t stop there — 22, 23, 24, and yes, 25 came in before the whistle blew. To this day I do not know how they did it. To this day when I meet these boys, they keep poker faces and say: “The honour of the house was at stake, Sir. This was the least we could do”. I would like to believe that my emotionally charged speech had endowed the boys with superhuman physical strength and speed — it does happen in myths and legends and myths and legends are always drawn from real life. But the cynic in me will not believe this and I hope some day, in an unguarded moment, one of the boys will tell me how exactly they achieved this “miracle”. I came back to the school, one last time, as the Headmaster. On the day of the qualifying for the Hudson Run, I found, to my surprise, that no official had been posted at the point where the short cut rejoined the main course. I took up position there and soon enough, I heard voices and three heads appeared at the top of the short cut. They were horrified to see me and turned back. There was only one reaction to this incident, a consensus amongst the senior boys, that no old student should ever be appointed as the
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Make education of masses a priority The
role of education in the progress of a nation can never be over emphasised. Through right kind of education, we can inculcate citizenship values, liberate people from ignorance, empower them with knowledge, information and skills to know about their rights and entitlements, expand their outlook, form their aspirations and above all, prepare the young citizens to take up the roles and responsibilities to shape not only their own destiny but also the destiny of the nation. Mahatma Gandhi had also visualised education as a means to awakening the nation’s consciousness against injustice, violence and inequality. Despite the vital importance of education in nation building, the literacy level in our country still remains abysmally low. It is a matter of great concern that as high as 35 per cent of our people lack basic literacy skills. About 53 per cent of our children drop out at the elementary stage itself and just one third of high school students graduate. Most of the drop-outs belong to the poorest segments of our society. We need to bring down the drop out rate to zero. For this, the poor and the deprived sections would need special support lest their poverty of resources should compel them to withdraw their children from schools. The State has the obligation towards working for the empowerment of the poor and the deprived to enable them to enjoy their fundamental right to live with dignity. If education has to become integral to people’s welfare, as also to their empowerment and their fight for a life of dignity and self-respect then we, as a nation, have to accord top most priority to education of the masses. Education, when completed, should enable one to secure proper employment. I, therefore, have been impressing upon the need for expanding avenues for vocational training right from high school stage. A disturbing feature of the present system of education, as also of the realities of the employment pattern, is the wide disparities being created not only amongst the rich and the poor students but also amongst students from urban and rural backgrounds. These unfortunate features of our present system are fraught with the risk of causing social and class unrest. There is need to address these concerns with a sense of urgency as well as seriousness. We are living in the stirring times of globalisation. The information age is impacting the lives of individuals and reshaping the societies. As India strives to compete in the knowledge-based economy, we ought to be the very best in the global arena. The youth are our most valuable resource to seize the emerging opportunities offered by globalisation and maximise our interests. We only need to provide a better environment of governance to our youth and build up their capacities through sustained nurturing of entrepreneurial talent, innovation and creativity, research and development. Our institutions of higher learning should be able to foster the spirit of research and enquiry among the students and enable them with requisite knowledge and skills to face the emerging challenges of the 21st century. Unfortunately, the ground reality, as it exists today, presents a disquieting picture. At present only about 7 per cent of the country’s youth in the age group of 17 to 23 years get a chance for higher education. Enrollment in science is less than 20 per cent, in engineering and technology 6.6 per cent and in medicine only 3.3 per cent. Declining enrollment in basic sciences needs to be addressed through making studies in sciences sufficiently interesting and rewarding. I am also concerned about the decline in the standard of research work in the universities. Our universities have to be the hub of quality education and research and become the centres of academic excellence having attribute of highest standard of teaching, a culture of single-minded pursuit of knowledge and top quality research. We are grappling with the scourge of poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and disease with a sub-optimal Human Development Index ranking of 126. Over 3 crore people are unemployed. Every year lakhs of people die due to malaria and tuberculosis. With an estimated 52 lakh infected people HIV/AIDS has today emerged as one of the most serious public health problems. About 26 crore of our people still live below the poverty line. Rural incomes have dwindled; farm households have become more prone to stress and insecurity. The problem of farmers' suicides is a matter of grave anxiety that calls for rejuvenating our agriculture, revamping cooperative institutions and taking up programmes for integrated rural development. We need development that promotes growth not just in terms of percentage increase in GDP but which brings out all inclusive development, a growth that uplifts the poor and deprived sections and that which alleviates poverty and bridges the gap between the rich and the poor. We need development that eradicates illiteracy, development that provides the common man with access to basic education, healthcare and shelter so that the poorest can enjoy in full measure the fundamental right to live with dignity. All programmes of development should begin with a focus on the poorest amongst the poor. The writer is the Vice-President of India. The above is excerpted from his convocation address at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, on April 9
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The new Silk Route and its global impact DUBAI, UAE – When Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the oil giant Saudi Aramco last year, he didn’t need a translator. Plenty of Chinese-speaking Saudis were on hand. A few years earlier, Saudi Aramco had sent dozens of employees to study in Beijing. After all, China, not the United States, represents the future growth for Saudi oil exports. Meanwhile, the Saudis are sponsoring students to study in India, China, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea. Three of those countries – India, China and Malaysia – were among King Abdullah’s first four foreign visits after he ascended the throne in 2005. The Saudi students represent one small part of the growing trade and business corridor between the Middle East and Asia. Dubbed the “new Silk Road,” trade and investment between the regions has quadrupled in the past decade and will continue to rise dramatically through 2020, according to the management consultant McKinsey & Co. Here in Dubai, newspaper headlines last month spoke not of Iraq or of Arab-Israeli peace diplomacy but of the historic visit to India by Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Maktum, Dubai’s CEO-like ruler. Among the dozens of agreements signed on the trip: a nearly $20 billion real estate project to create three townships on 40,000 acres in India’s Maharashtra state. This new Silk Road is not only boosting economies (the India deal is expected to create 100,000 jobs) but is changing the geoeconomic and geopolitical landscape of the East, with serious ramifications for U.S. policy. The new Silk Road is largely the result of the confluence of China’s and India’s economic growth and high oil prices. China and the six oil-rich members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – are flush with cash. What’s more, Chinese and Indian energy needs will ensure that the GCC region – the equivalent of the world’s 16th-largest economy – continues to grow. By 2025, forecasts show, China will import three times as much oil from the Persian Gulf as the United States. Key “caravan posts” on the new Silk Road are regional economic “winners” or rising stars: Dubai, Beijing, Mumbai, Chennai, Tokyo, Doha, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong, Riyadh, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi. The old Silk Road civilization centers such as Persia (Iran), the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan) and Mesopotamia (Iraq) lag behind. Dubai, it might be argued, is the unofficial Middle East capital of the new Silk Road--a gathering place of capital, ideas and traders fueling the growth--and Iran, once a central force, is the sick man, albeit with enormous potential. Investors from the GCC have been pouring money into real estate, banking and infrastructure across Asia. The Kuwait Investment Authority, the largest foreign investor in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, has doubled its Asia investments in the past two years. A Dubai official said last month that some GCC states are contemplating buying the yuan to diversify their reserves. Meanwhile, Chinese, Korean, Indian and Japanese companies are active in Middle East real estate, consumer products and industrial investments. China and Egypt – another Silk Road laggard, just now sputtering to life – have pledged to double trade in the next few years. A great benefit of the new Silk Road for the US is its potential for expanding American security. Security in the Persian Gulf is now as important to Beijing and New Delhi as it is to Washington. China will no longer be content to perch under America’s security umbrella, and the Indian navy now more assertively patrols the Arabian Sea. What’s more, China and India have far more influence with Iran than the US does – and less tolerance for a disruptive war. Many of the Islamic republic’s political elites are also business elites, eager to find a way out of conflict. Charting a path toward greater integration on the new Silk Road will probably be a more moderating force on the Iranian leadership than isolation. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may not be too concerned, but more powerful conservative establishment players are more interested in stability (and making money) than war. Washington might also consider efforts to lure GCC capital to our hemisphere. President Bush recently pledged to assist Latin American economic development. America should leverage its contacts to link emerging Latin markets to GCC capital networks – creating a global Silk Road. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Defence Notes An Indian Navy ship received a distress call recently from a Shipping Corporation of India vessel, ‘MV Maharashtra’ while on transit from Singapore to Japan. The beleaguered ship, in position 270 nautical miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh city, was on passage from Tianjin, China to Bander Imam Khomeini in Iran and was without any power supply due to failure of her Main Diesel Alternators. Attempts by the crew of the merchant vessel to restore the power supply were unsuccessful. Destroyer INS Rana was the ship promptly despatched to provide necessary assistance to the stranded vessel, and a technical team was transferred by helicopter to the merchant ship. The Naval team quickly rectified the diesel alternators enabling restoration of power. During the repairs, it was also observed that the fuel tanks supplying the diesel fuel to the alternators were contaminated. Supply of fresh fuel was essential to ensure uninterrupted power supply, and in an unprecedented operation at sea, for which warships are not designed, INS Rana went along side the stricken merchant ship and supplied 10 tons of fuel to enable ‘MV Maharashtra’ to continue on her passage. Ports of call
INS Rana, incidentally, is part of the Eastern Fleet under the command of the Flag Officer Commanding, Rear Admiral R K Dhowan, presently on deployment to the South-east and
Far-east-Asian regions. They are engaging the US and Russian naval ships in various joint exercises. The group consists of the guided-missile destroyers Mysore, Rana, and Ranjit, the guided-missile corvette Kuthar, and, the fleet tanker Jyoti. During the two-month deployment, the ships are scheduled to effect port-calls besides holding exercises. The scheduled ports of call include Singapore and Yokosuka (which is located at the entrance of Tokyo Bay, in Japan). No less important are the port-calls at Qingdao (which is located on the southern coast of the Shandong peninsula of China, bordering the Yellow Sea) and Vladivostok (located on the Sea of Japan, some 100 kilometres east of the Russia-China border). The first of the exercises undertaken during the current deployment was SIMBEX, which is a regular feature of the operational interaction between the Indian Navy and the Navy of the Republic of Singapore. The next on the agenda is the 2007 edition of the annual exercise between the Indian and the US navies. Malaysian ties Malaysia has sought to step up its economic and defence ties with India and has also evinced keen interest in participating in India’s infrastructure development, where it has expertise. Hoping to sign a Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement (CEPA) with India soon, Malaysia is looking at cooperation in the field of pilot training, supply of spare parts and maintenance of fighter jets like the Sukhois, which it also recently acquired from Russia.
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