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Captain’s choice Benazir’s homecoming |
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Murder most foul
Objections to 123 Agreement
Tongue untied
Fallout of Shinzo Abe’s resignation An urge to smash history into tiny pieces Chatterati
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Captain’s choice RAHUL DRAVID’S decision to quit as captain of the Indian cricket team less than two years after he succeeded Sourav Ganguly at the helm has come as a bolt from the blue. Doubtless, there has been criticism of Dravid’s decisions and it is no secret that he had problems. These are inevitable baggage any captain has to carry even if he does not enjoy doing so. Captaincy is a tough call where you win and lose, welcome the bouquets and weather the brickbats and carry on with the job. However, Dravid’s sensitivity and temperament appear to have made it difficult for him to continue with the pressures and pulls from the cricket bosses above and the team members below. Comparisons are odious but the fact that his predecessor, Ganguly, is rated as India’s most successful captain could have also raised the bar of expectations for Dravid. Even those who criticised Dravid’s decisions would agree that at this time he is the best man to head the team. He led from the front, was modest and conspicuously shunned flamboyance despite his immense public stature. The results of his leadership were mixed as it always is in this game of glorious uncertainties. There was no call for him to quit as captain. But now that he has, it is best to respect it and make the most of his batting prowess, which, he felt, was affected by his captaincy. As a batsman, his importance needs no over-emphasis. That said, this would be the appropriate time to reflect on what kind of leadership Team India requires to go forward after its recent setbacks, particularly in the World Cup earlier this year. What, rather than who, should be the starting point in the search for Dravid’s successor. A new face at the helm may prove to be more rewarding than falling back on any of the usual suspects who thrive in the culture of bossism and politicking that characterise Indian cricket. It would be in the best interests of cricket to confine power play to the prescribed overs on the pitch, rather than resort to it for selecting a suitable captain. |
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Benazir’s homecoming WITH Ms Benazir Bhutto finally deciding to come back to Pakistan on October 15, the question demanding an immediate answer is whether an undeclared understanding has been reached between her and President Gen Pervez Musharraf. Despite denials, the two sides seem to have found a way to accommodate each other’s demands without entering into a formal deal. Otherwise, she would not have decided to end her self-imposed exile. Obviously, the General is under tremendous pressure from the US to let Ms Bhutto enter the poll arena so that the anti-US forces — those opposed to the General’s continuance in power — get weakened. Her presence in Pakistan suits the US even if there is no deal between her and the General. Ms Bhutto’s negotiations for a deal with the General have, no doubt, affected her following considerably, but she can regain much of the lost ground once she starts functioning from within Pakistan. With a large political base, she is well placed to meet the challenges from any side, including the one posed by Begum Kulsoom Nawaz, who has made up her mind to take care of the affairs of the PML (N) during the remaining period of her husband’s exile in Saudi Arabia. Most of the opposition parties, excluding the PML (N), are too week to prevent Ms Bhutto from realising her dream of becoming Prime Minister for a third time. The only problem is the constitutional bar, which the General may have to remove through an amendment in return for her support to remain President for another term. Ms Bhutto’s plan can, of course, be scuttled by the opposition alliance — the All Parties Democratic Movement — which has threatened to ask its members to resign their assembly seats if General Musharraf tries to get himself re-elected as President or floats his wife Sehba as his covering candidate in case the court makes him ineligible for the post. The mass resignation will render the electoral college incomplete, ruling out a presidential poll before the coming general election. Much will depend on how Ms Bhutto plays her card on her return to Pakistan. |
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Murder most foul THE CBI’s credibility has touched a new low following Special Court Judge Rama Jain’s direction to it to frame charges of abduction, rape and murder against Moninder Singh Pandher in the horrendous Nithari serial killings case. Ms Jain’s fiat is a big blow to the country’s premier investigating agency because it had earlier given a clean chit to Moninder and charged only his domestic help, Surinder Koli, with rape and murder. Having cited lack of evidence, the CBI had charged Moninder with a relatively minor offence of suppressing evidence in the killings. Its soft corner towards Moninder has strengthened the impression that it was trying to bail him out. Had the CBI been allowed to have its way, Moninder would have gone scot-free and the Nithari case would have ended up as yet another farce. The court’s directive has placed both the master and the servant on the same platform. Moninder is now charged with rape and murder of 21-year-old Payal whose disappearance led to the unearthing of 19 skulls and bones of children buried near his house at Nithari in Noida in December last. In the chargesheets filed before the Special Court in Ghaziabad, the CBI has claimed that Koli has confessed to the murders, which occurred during Moninder’s absence. However, Payal’s father, Nand Lal, says that Moninder admitted during his arrest that he had used a knife to commit the murder. The special court’s directive follows this revelation. One can only hope that the CBI will do its duty properly and impartially. The serial killings, it may be recalled, had shocked the conscience of the nation. They revealed a grave crisis in governance and the collapse of authority at various levels. The case underlines the increasing sense of insecurity and helplessness among the people, particularly the poor, because of the total lack of accountability among the police and other law enforcement agencies. With its shoddy investigation, the CBI has made matters worse. Now is the time for the agency to make amends and thereby regain its lost credibility. |
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You write with ease, to show your breeding,/ But easy writing’s vile hard reading. —
Richard Brinsley Sheridan |
Objections to 123 Agreement
The
Left and the BJP, strange bedfellows, have become even more strident over the government’s determination to stand fast on the 123 Agreement. The one having got a joint mechanism to discuss the Left’s concerns is now virtually seeking a veto, stating that nothing must progress until it approves the deal. For the Left, the joint mechanism has become an instrument for delay leading, it hopes, to denial. It is now agitated about the viability of nuclear power, fearing that if pursued the nuclear path will lead to the calamitous entry of private corporations into defence production, gift the US the power to blackmail India for the next 40 years, arm twist the government into amending the country’s labour laws, allow Wal-Mart to run riot in India, and jeopardise the
projected Iran gas pipeline. What any of this necessarily has to do with the 123 Agreement is by no means clear. Like the NDA, the Left wants debate and transparency but will not permit a parliamentary debate. The BJP goes further. Mr L. K. Advani has thundered against a cosy internal UPA-Left joint mechanism that will usurp the rights, privileges and prerogatives of Parliament, which his party has noisily held to
ransom for days on end. Indeed, he has charged the government with handing over decision-making to the Left. The BJP solution is a Joint Parliamentary Committee and ratification of the 123 Agreement and all future treaties by Parliament. The argument is flawed on three counts. First, JPCs may be formed for considering matters originating in Parliament but cannot be demanded in case of matters lying within the executive domain of the government such as treaty-making. It has a right to be informed and consulted and to recommend changes. This has been done and Parliament has by no means been kept in the dark, let alone bypassed. Secondly, it would be absurd at this stage of advanced negotiations to change established and well-understood national procedures and to insist that the constitution be first amended to vest treaty making powers in Parliament before proceeding any further with the 123 Agreement. If at all, such international agreements are to be ratified, such an amendment to the Constitution can only be prospective. Its retrospective application would amount to shifting goal posts in the middle of the game and establish a dangerous precedent. Thirdly, such a procedure is unnecessary, even to meet the BJP’s current objections and strategies. Parliament may not have ratificatory powers in respect of treaties. But if the BJP has strong objections to the 123 Agreement it is open to it to move a no-trust motion in the present government and bring it down
if it does not enjoy the confidence of the Lok Sabha. This being so, the demands and postures of the BJP must baffle even some of its own more thoughtful members and expose its tactics as disgracefully disruptive and totally unmindful of the dignity of the House
and the national interest. The parrot-like declamations against the Hyde Act — a strangely convoluted internal US procedural necessity that is constitutionally non-binding on the American President and certainly irrelevant as far as India is concerned — defy logic. Dr Manmohan Singh has said so. Future US insistence on compliance with the Hyde Act will mean the deal is off, with the onus of deal-breaking being
on the Americans. The resultant consequences for Indo-US relations will be the same whether there is a 123 Agreement in place or not, except that unilateral action will be more difficult and less tenable ethically and in international
law with the 123 Agreement in place. It would be the US that would be pariah, not India. It is in this context that the Prime Minister lamented the polity’s excessive obsession with ghosts of the past and ignorance about the future. Both the Left and the BJP are hopelessly caught in the coils of dead ideology. One is amazed to find even reputed academics asking why the US is wrecking an NPT regime that it so determinedly put together 40 years ago and that if it can destroy its own creation
once why it cannot do so again. The answer is simple. The NPT represents a flawed sunset regime that has not worked, while the 123 Agreement is a sunrise accord that lays the foundation of a new edifice whose architecture India can join with the US and others in building. That is the difference between looking back and
looking ahead. Parties that seek to walk backwards into the future may never get there. Should elections be forced — and that may not be
such a bad thing in the circumstances — the BJP may collapse in confusion and the Communists may find themselves facing obloquy and even oblivion in one of their last habitats —
India.
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Tongue untied
Dharmendra
called English an “avigyanik bhasha” in Chupke Chupke, wondering why “do” was pronounced as “doo” but “go” wasn’t spoken as “goo”. In Namak Halal, Amitabh Bachchan termed it a very phunny language in which “Bhairon becomes baron and baron becomes Bhairon, because their minds are very narrow.” Big B and Big D both hit the nail on the head. Indeed, nothing shows the farcical side of English more than its pronunciation. There are any number of words which aren’t spoken the way they are spelt. Some have different spellings but the same sound (“Colonel” and “kernel”), while in a few cases it’s the other way round (“expose” the verb and “exposé” the noun). The right pronunciation of certain words sounds quite odd to people who are accustomed to speaking and hearing it wrong. A cousin of mine thought I was joking when I told her that “extempore” was pronounced as “ex-tem-paree”. She was convinced only when I showed her the dictionary. While compering a cultural event at college, she enunciated the word exactly as I’d told her. The audience was amused by the “mistake”, and the head of the English department pointed it out to her afterwards. My cousin couldn’t help doubting whether me and my Oxford were right, but her confidence in both was restored when the senior lecturer did a U-turn. What adds to the phonetic confusion is the profusion of “foreign” words. The British haven’t been narrow-minded at all while borrowing from other languages, particularly French, Latin and Greek. The French don’t waste their breath uttering all the vowels and consonants in a word. They sometimes drop one or two towards the end, like a lizard shedding its tail. It’s a “faux pas” by a public speaker if he fails to keep “x” and “s” silent. In words of classical origin, on the other hand, it’s the “head” that is chopped off. The hapless victim is “p”, which is dislodged by “s” in “psychosis” and “t” in “ptosis”. Mobile (ab)users and Netizens are busy trying to bridge the gap between written and spoken English. Out of sheer laziness or to look trendy, they come up with short-cut messages like, “I m in the q. Where r u?” The peeved purists, however, call it an attempt to corrupt the language. With so many English dialects and accents around the world, there’s simply no stopping the Babelic bedlam. It might be somewhat mandatory for people to follow rules and norms while writing, but they are relatively free to speak a language in their own unique way. All said and written, the tongue is mightier than the
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Fallout of Shinzo Abe’s resignation The government in Delhi had rolled out the red carpet for Mr Abe despite the fact that the Japanese Premier’s position was shaky after his party lost its majority in the Upper House in July. The government’s assessment had been that even though Mr Abe was personally well disposed to India, the prevailing view in Japan was that Japan-India relations should be strengthened. Mr Abe had been accompanied by a high-powered business delegation from the big names in Japanese industry. The agreements and contacts forged during the visit are unlikely to be affected by a change in Prime Minister since the trends in the bilateral relationship had been set since the time of Mr Abe’s predecessor. However, it is the quadrilateral initiative espoused by Mr Abe and his arc of freedom stretching across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean that is likely to lose some steam. Japan was the initiator of the proposal for a quadrilateral dialogue involving India, Japan, Australia and the US. All four countries showed interest in the proposal and held a meeting of their senior officials on the sidelines of the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) security policy meeting in Manila last May. However, the quadrilateral concept has irked China, which promptly sent a demarche to the four countries on the rationale to the quadrilateral meeting. Japan, Australia and America already have a trilateral strategic dialogue as countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Australia and Japan signed a security pact earlier this year, while Australia has a long-term alliance with America and the three countries also have strong strategic ties among themselves. All three countries have stated that their strategic dialogue is not aimed at isolating or encircling China. US President George W Bush, Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe and Australian Prime Minister John Howard had a trilateral summit in Sydney last week just before the APEC summit. China criticised the trilateral meeting at Sydney as “lacking in transparency”. The members of the quadrilateral dialogue proposal, Japan, Australia, India and America have denied that security is the focus of the quadrilateral dialogue. But the five-country Malabar 07 naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal added to China’s unease. During the exercises, Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi said in Delhi that his government was not worried about the exercises but “I am watching them carefully.” There are signs of back-peddling over the concept since neither Australia nor the United States wish to irk China. While Washington continues to issue strong statements against Beijing’s policies, it needs Chinese support and backing at the six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. The negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang are at a delicate stage. Negotiators from the two countries had met in Geneva at the beginning of September when both sides claimed a breakthrough. North Korea had committed itself to declaring and disabling all its nuclear programmes by the year-end and Washington agreeing to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. However, getting Pyongyang to actually implement its agreements on the nuclear issue is not an easy task and a round of the six-party talks scheduled to be held later this month could be crucial. On its part, Australia maintains a delicate balance with regard to its relationship with China as China has become its largest trading partner. Also, as the host for the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, Canberra was in no mood to upset China. Australia’s economic boom is largely fuelled by the large-scale purchases of raw materials by China of oil, gas, iron ore and recently uranium. China has also looked at strengthening its ties with Australia as a major source of energy resources and raw materials. China and Australia are talking about a free trade agreement and also in strengthening their defence links as part of their growing ties. There have been high-level exchanges between Canberra and Beijing, including Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s high-profile visit last year when the agreement to supply uranium was signed and President Hu Jintao’s week-long visit for the APEC summit. China’s ongoing modernisation of its huge army and upgrading its navy with plans to build an aircraft carrier has caused some concern among its seaward neighbours. Japan under Mr Abe had been making efforts to improve relations with China, which is its largest trading partner. The Chinese Defence Minister paid a visit to Japan in late August and a Chinese naval ship is to visit Japan by the year end. China has been uneasy about new groups and alliances in its neighbourhood. In April, 2007, America and Japan had held joint exercises in the Western Pacific when Beijing had sought an explanation from the participants regarding the naval exercises. But China has itself begun taking part in military exercises with other countries. Earlier in the year Chinese naval ships held exercises in the Atlantic Ocean with the British navy. In mid-August China was itself part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) military exercises, involving six-nations, including Russia, called “peace mission” aimed to combat terrorism. China is also holding naval exercises with Australia and New Zealand. Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson during a visit to India in July had said that Australia was comfortable with exploring the notion of a quadrilateral engagement on trade and economic matters, and at the most peacekeeping issues, “but not a strategic dialogue”. He said that Australia would not want a dialogue if it contributes to concern in the region, especially in China. Japan had proposed the four-nation quadrilateral initiative of countries sharing common democratic values. But it is now likely that the four participants will want to keep it low profile and take their time in evolving the talks into a regular political dialogue. |
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An urge to smash history into tiny pieces What
is it about graven images? Why are we humanoids so prone to destroy our own faces, smash our own human history, erase the memory of language? I've covered the rape of Bosnian and Serb and Croatian culture in ex-Yugoslavia - the deliberate demolition of churches, libraries, graveyards, even the wonderful Ottoman Mostar Bridge – and I've heard the excuses. "There's no place for these old things," the Croat gunner reportedly said as he fired his artillery battery towards that graceful Ottoman arch over the Neretva. The videotape of its collapse was itself an image of cultural genocide – until the Taliban exploded the giant Buddhas of Bamian. And yet there I was earlier this week, staring at another massive Buddha – this time in the Tajiki capital of Dushanbe, only a few hundred miles from the Afghan border. So gently was it sleeping, giant head on spread right hand, that I tiptoed down its almost 40ft length, talking in whispers in case I woke this creature with its Modigliani features, its firmly closed eyes and ski-slope nose. Saved from the ravages of iconoclasts, I thought, until I realised that this karma-inducing god had itself been assaulted. The top of its head, eyes and nose are intact, but the lower half of its face has been subtly restored by a more modern hand, its long body, perhaps three-quarters new, where the undamaged left hand, palm on hip, lies gently on its upper left leg above the pleats of its original robes. So what happened to this Buddha? Surely the Taliban never reached Dushanbe. A young curator at Dush-ambe's wonderful museum of antiquities explained in careful, bleak English. "When the Arabs came, they smashed all these things as idolatrous," she said. Ah yes, of course they did. The forces of Islam arrived in modern-day Tajikistan in around AD645 - the Taliban of their day, as bearded as their 20th-century successors, with no television sets to hang, but plenty of Buddhas to smash. How on earth did the Bamian Buddhas escape this original depredation? Needless to say, there are many other fragments – animals, birds, demons – that made their way from the monastery to the museum. And I had to reflect that the Arabs behaved no worse than Henry VIII's lads when they set to work on the great abbeys of England. Did not even the little church of East Sutton above the Kentish Weald have a few graven images desecrated during the great age of English history? Are our cathedrals not filled with hacked faces, the remaining witness to our very own brand of Protestant Talibans? Besides, the arrival of the Arabic script allowed a new Tajiki poetry to flourish – Ferdowsi was a Tajik and wrote Shanameh in Arabic – and in Dushanbe, you can see the most exquisite tomb-markers from the era of King Babar, Arabic verse carved with Koranic care into the smooth black surface of the stone. Yet when Stalin absorbed Tajikistan into the Soviet empire – cruelly handing the historic Tajiki cities of Tashkent and Samarkand to the new republic of Uzbekistan, just to keep ethnic hatreds alive – his commissars banned Arabic. All children would henceforth be taught Russian and, even if they were writing Tajiki, it must be in Cyrillic, not in Arabic. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was similarly "modernising" Turkey at this time by forcing Turks to move from Arabic to Latin script (which is one reason, I suspect, why modern Turkish scholars have such difficulty in studying vital Ottoman texts on the 1915 Armenian Holocaust). Get rid of the written language and history seems less dangerous. Didn't we try to do the same thing in Ireland, forcing the Catholic clergy to become hedge-preachers so that the Irish language would remain in spoken rather than written form? And so the Tajiki couples and the children who come to look at their past in Dushanbe cannot read the Shahnameh as it was written - and cannot decipher the elegant Persian poetry carved on those extraordinary tomb-stones. So here is a tiny victory against iconoclasm, perhaps the first English translation of one of those ancient stones which few Tajiks can now understand: "I heard that mighty Jamshed the King/ Carved on a stone near a spring of water these words:/ Many - like us - sat here by this spring/ And left this life in the blink of an eye./ We captured the whole world through our courage and strength,/ Yet could take nothing with us to our grave." Beside that same East Sutton church in Kent, there still stands an English tombstone which I would read each time I panted past it in my Sutton Valence school running shorts on wintry Saturday afternoons. I don't remember whose body it immortalises, but I remember the carved verse above the name: "Remember me as you pass by,/ As you are now, so once was I./ As I am now, so you will be./ Remember Death will follow thee." And I do recall, exhausted and frozen into my thin running clothes, that I came to hate this eternal message so much that sometimes I wanted to take a hammer and smash the whole bloody thing to pieces. Yes, somewhere in our dark hearts, perhaps we are all Talibans. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Chatterati Faced
with the prospect of a snap poll, the BJP and the Shiv Sena have conveniently buried their differences to defeat the Congress-NCP alliance. Udhav Thackeray, Speaker Manohar Joshi, BJP president Rajnath Singh, his party colleagures Bal Apte, Gopinath Munde and Nitin Gadkari, for the first time, held talks in the Capital. Bal Thackeray has always been averse to travelling outside Maharashtra, so discussions have traditionally been held in Mumbai. Anyway, Udhav has been blamed for wrecking the ties between the two parties because of “arrogance and brash behaviour”. Hence to make amends he drove up to Mr Advani’s residence.
Leadership tussle The BJP and its NDA allies are still squabbling over the leadership issue. The parties as of now have decided to stick to the old seat-sharing formula for the general election. The smiling leaders of the two parties held a press conference with bouquets of flowers and smiles in place. Well, this is the second generation, so changes in working style led to grievances and complaints. But most interesting is that it is actually the Mayawati factor which is scaring all. The second-rung leadership in all political parties will have to prove its mettle now in the coming elections.
Glamour-struck Judging a beauty contest of Delhi University students was an eye-opener for me. It also struck me that my generation might have been brought up in comfort these kids were brought up in luxury. My generation was trying to establish itself while these youngsters are taking it easy and chilling out. Glamour is what they are after. Page 3 is what they read. Or the sports page for the boys. All want easy money and a good life full of five-star culture and quick fame. Their ambition is to join dad’s business after three years of fun life in college. Amazing! The girls want to be Sonia Gandhi. They want glamour and power, which the UPA chairperson has in plenty. General knowledge is not much as no one reads daily papers. Their favourite Prime Minister is Manmohan Singh. They are far removed from caste, creed and Mandal. It’s amazing not one of them thought of Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela. No one wants to wipe out poverty or terrorism. How lucky is our younger generation, I wondered as they live in their own world of comfort and
luxury.
Unruly legislators Parliament was adjourned much ahead of time because of disruptions and the unruly and callous behaviour of our members of Parliament. It’s a shame and a waste of public money. In the monsoon session the Lok Sabha worked only for 65 hours. Last year it was 124 hours. Bills are being passed without discussions. What has happened, one wonders, to the respect and dignity of Parliament? |
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