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Mother and son Train to Dhaka |
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Tit for
tat
Pakistan’s
political contradictions
Creative
liberty sans smoking
War in Lanka Start of trade across
LoC eagerly awaited Language identity on
the wane?
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Mother and son CALL it quoting the scripture or whatever, it was amusing for Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan to claim that the Congress leadership kept itself away from sycophancy. The provocation for her clarification was a series of reports wherein leaders like Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh and External Affairs Minister Pranab Kumar Mukherjee have endorsed Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi as the party’s prime ministerial candidate. The reports were seen as an attempt to project the image of the young MP from Amethi. Or, Mr Arjun Singh and others are out to embarrass Prime Minister Manmohan Singh whose elevation they are yet to reconcile themselves to. It is now being projected that it did not have the approval of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who has declared that there is no vacancy for the post of prime minister. Coteries in the Congress are as old as the party. They thrive by pleasing the leadership. In this case, too, the attempt was not different. It is four years since Mr Arjun Singh joined Dr Manmohan Singh’s Cabinet but he is yet to accept this emotionally. How could he having once “appointed” Dr Manmohan Singh to the post of Chairman, UGC? Having won a court battle on the issue of reservations, he thought it was the right time to create confusion on the leadership issue and thereby undermine the PM’s authority. But the game seems to have backfired with Ms Sonia Gandhi not falling for it and coming to the rescue of Dr Manmohan Singh. However, to conclude that the Congress would contest the next election under Dr Manmohan Singh’s leadership is to overlook the chances of some stray thoughts taking shape at 10 Janpath. Such speculations occur primarily because of the culture of sycophancy which has always been at play in the grand old party. Whatever Ms Natarajan may say, it is common knowledge that sycophants, be they cooks or security guards, can even manage to get party tickets. Politicians like Arjun Singh try to snipe from the bushes because of their projected proximity to the family. No one may yet be equating Ms Sonia Gandhi with India as Dev Kant Borooah did when her mother-in-law was the prime minister. But given a chance the sycophants will not miss the opportunity to do so. There will always be a Jayanti Natarajan to assert next day that this was against Ms Sonia Gandhi’s wishes.
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Train to Dhaka EFFORTS for improving India-Bangladesh relations are likely to gain momentum with the launch of train services between Kolkata and Dhaka on Monday. The Moitree Express trains, to run on Saturdays and Sundays, are in addition to the bus services between the two countries. The train link may help create an atmosphere for the normalisation of relations between the two neighbours. There will now be increased people-to-people contacts, necessary for removing misunderstandings between the two sides. The people of Bangladesh and India’s West Bengal have cultural and linguistic similarities, which may make it easier to understand each other’s reservations and expectations. Interestingly, Ravindranath Tagore is the author of the national anthem of both countries. The Kolkata-Dhaka train services convey a clear message. The two countries, like the others in South Asia, are destined to live together because of geography. It will, therefore, be better for them to take to a path that leads to peace and progress. Friendly relations will play an important role in speeding up their economic growth. The rail link will boost bilateral trade. In fact, Dhaka may be a major gainer with New Delhi having recently allowed duty-free imports from the less developed countries like Bangladesh. Health and religious tourism will also increase considerably with people having facilities to travel by train also. The re-establishment of the rail link, snapped during the 1965 India-Pakistan war when Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan, is a step forward, but it is necessary to remove the irritants that have been coming in the way of establishing friendly relations. India will appreciate if Bangladesh does not provide sanctuary to anti-India elements like the insurgents from the Northeast and Islamic terrorists, and helps in checking illegal migration from the other side. There are also issues like river-water sharing and a huge trade deficit often raised by Bangladesh. These may be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides if cooperation for economic growth gets the desired attention.
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Tit for tat THE Supreme Court has directed the National Human Rights Commission to probe the increasing excesses committed on civilians by the self-defence groups — under the Salwa Judum campaign — which are sponsored, armed and financed by the Chhattisgarh government in its fight against Naxalites. Tuesday’s fiat comes close on the heels of the court’s directive to the Chhattisgarh government to disband the Salwa Judum campaign. At the last hearing, in response to a PIL, the court took the government to task for arming citizens. “How can the state give arms to some persons? The state will be abetting in a crime if these private persons kill others”, it had said. However, additional solicitor-general Gopal Subramanium, defending the government, said that “if the Salwa Judum is disbanded, the people will be killed by the Naxalites”. He said the state government had only appointed a few special police officers to protect those who had been fleeing from the Naxalites and taking shelter in camps. While the Centre has done a U-turn on Salwa Judum by supporting the state government’s initiative, it cannot overlook reports of excesses being committed on innocent civilians by the village defence groups. Surveys by civil society groups reveal that ever since the campaign was launched in 2005, over 500 civilians have been killed and more than 50,000 civilians displaced. Thus, the court’s fiat on a comprehensive probe into the excesses is just and fair. The NHRC would do well to examine reports of excesses. The state should take all possible measures to help the displaced people return to their homes. Right now, the situation does not seem to be conducive for the villagers to lead a peaceful life. Through the Salwa Judum campaign and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, the state has let loose a reign of terror. If the government is committed to restoring peace and order, solutions should be found within the due constitutional framework. Clearly, state-sponsored repression is no answer to Maoist violence.
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Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got. — Art Buchwald
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Pakistan’s political contradictions
THE February elections in Pakistan in which General Musharraf’s loyalists were routed across the country sent the diplomatic establishments in the White House in Washington and South Block in New Delhi into a tailspin. Despite warnings about Musharraf’s growing unpopularity, the diplomatic establishments in New Delhi and Washington remained wedded to the “Musharraf is our best bet” syndrome and wrongly believed, till the very last moment, that General Musharraf was invincible and irreplaceable in Pakistan. While India mercifully steered clear of dabbling in Pakistan’s internal politics, (though its pro-Musharraf tilt was plainly visible), Washington has been shaken by the extent to which its policies of supporting General Musharraf have backfired. Washington assiduously sought to forge a Musharraf-Benazir Bhutto alliance to give the elections a measure of credibility. It was also perceived as an active participant when former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was bundled off to further exile in Saudi Arabia, when he tried to return to Pakistan from London. Worse still, the wise lads in Washington’s diplomatic establishment made no bones about their suspicions of Nawaz Sharif being a closet Islamist. In the event, a severely embarrassed King Abdullah was forced to step in and facilitate Sharif’s return to participate in the elections. Sharif has neither forgotten nor forgiven the Americans for the humiliation he was made to suffer. Since his return, Sharif has had two driving objectives. The first is to reinstate the judges led by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry who were sacked by Musharraf last year. Secondly, he appears determined to force the Americans to recognise that they will have to pay a price for their unconditional support to Musharraf and that they can no longer expect unconditional Pakistani support in Afghanistan. For once, the ruling elite in Pakistan appears to be attaching only secondary attention to relations with India in the coming months. The primary focus is going to be on dealing with terrorism that Pakistan currently faces, let loose by pro-Taliban jihadis who had been armed and trained by the ISI. Recent reports from Pakistan indicate that as foreign rescue teams poured into Pakistan- Occupied Kashmir after the October 2005 earthquake, the ISI was forced to shift around 10,000 jihadis from PoK to the Northwest Frontier Province. These jihadis joined the pro-Taliban tribals to wage war against their mentors, the Pakistan Army, since 2007. They have fought the well- armed Pakistan Army to a standstill in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and carried their jihad into the Punjabi heartland of Pakistan. Dealing with terrorist violence, unleashed by the one time protégés of the ISI, has become the foremost challenge for the new government. And the elected leaders have not taken kindly to public warnings from Washington that should NATO forces get “actionable intelligence” they will strike across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Taking note of the widespread public anger against the army, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani has decided that at least for the present the army should lower its profile and appear deferential to the civilian rulers. Shortly after the first interaction between the army brass and the top political leadership — which was accompanied by a warning from new Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi — that Pakistan would not “tolerate” American intrusions into its territory, some details of what transpired between the Army top brass and the politicians were made known by pro-Nawaz Sharif circles. It was claimed that during the meeting there was “unanimity of view that a political solution to the problem of extremism and terrorism in the tribal areas would be sought, while the military option would be used as a back-up measure and that too would be managed exclusively by the country’s armed forces”. While politicians in Islamabad may favour a ceasefire and dialogue with militants, the reality is that having exposed the limitations of the Pakistan military, the militants will not end their support for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda unconditionally. A senior leader of the Tehriq-e- Taliban-e-Pakistan Maulvi Faqir Mohammed said that the militants would not lay down arms, or end their jihad till the Pakistan government ended its support for America’s “War on Terror”, the Pakistan Army was withdrawn from tribal areas and all American and foreign forces left Afghanistan. Maulvi Faqir Mohammed also demanded that Sharia should be introduced fully in Pakistan. The Taliban has indicated that it will soon commence operations to disrupt supplies for American forces in Pakistan. Petroleum tankers carrying fuel for NATO forces were recently destroyed at the Torkham post on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. American patience at its troops in Afghanistan being attacked from Pakistani territory, with Pakistani soldiers looking on passively, will crack These crucial problems have to be addressed amidst the differences that are emerging between Nawaz Sharif on the one hand and PPP leaders Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on the other. Zardari does not share Sharif’s zeal for the unconditional restoration of the judiciary led by the mercurial Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, but has little choice on the matter. Zardari also wishes to avoid a confrontation with Musharraf, which would almost inevitably happen if Justice Chaudhry is restored unconditionally. Finally, Zardari and his associates in the Pakistan People’s Party are far more America friendly than Sharif, who would not endorse Foreign Minister Qureshi’s assertion that “the US played a pivotal role for the revival of democracy and transparent elections” in Pakistan. The failure to “manage contradictions” brought down a government in India led by a politician as wily as Mr V.P. Singh. It remains to be seen how Pakistan’s politicians manage their contradictions. Given the contradictory statements voiced in Islamabad on complex issues like Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi should avoid forcing the pace in relations with Pakistan. While there appears to be a growing consensus in Pakistan on improving trade and economic ties with India, two essential factors cannot be ignored. Firstly, Nawaz Sharif has remained conspicuously silent on how the issue of J&K should be resolved and how the dialogue on J&K should proceed. Secondly, groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba enjoy political patronage from high circles in the Pakistan Muslim League. One should not be surprised if efforts are made to relieve pressures the Pakistan Army faces on its western borders by moving some of its erstwhile jihadi allies back to springboards for infiltration across the Line of Control. A willingness to promote cooperation, enhance confidence and address the complex issue of Jammu and Kashmir by New Delhi has to be coupled with realism about the uncertain and volatile political and
security situation in Pakistan.
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Creative liberty sans smoking
Tucked
onto his lips, the cigarette refuses to quit Shah Rukh Khan. It has the pride of place on King Khan’s countenance. More than his love for Lady Nicotine, his “creative liberty” needs the versatile actor. The most common argument made by smokers for not being able to turn away the stub, is their difficulty in concentrating on things they are required to. But with SRK, to whom acting comes ‘naturally’, it sounds nothing short of a subterfuge. Is SRK afraid of role reversal? Would he lose his popularity if he’s seen without that dangling thing on his lips? Reel or real life does not mean anything in today’s world for it is outside the film world also that the actors are of late seen enough. So, I was talking about role reversal from “reel” to “real”. Raj Kapoor cast the ‘dreaded’ mother-in-law Lalita Pawar, in a caring mother-figure in Jis Desh Main Ganga Behti Hai. Manoj Kumar’s ‘Malang Baba’ in Upkar was an exact antithesis of the mould Pran had been portraying in the movies till then. These directors took the creative liberty involving a role reversal. Why can’t SRK do the same in appearing more sober, is surely intriguing. Also, if ‘creative liberty’ be not just a ploy, then I can understand Sohrab Modi’s inability to contract his vocal chords, to lower down his high decibel pitch, while delivering dialogues. Perhaps he couldn’t possibly do that. But why our SRK, exhorting us all with his war cry — Chak de, is unwilling to oblige a well meaning Mr Anbumani Ramadoss, is baffling. Mannerisms do help in histrionics and objects too. I remember Dilip Kumar, with a soft reed tucked in his lips and cajoling his onscreen flame, seeking a kind of confirmation of her love for him. Kabir Bedi in Kachche Dhage is also seen with a similar reed, rolled with his tongue from one end of the lips to the other, to have the desired effect. Ashok Kumar often removed his spectacles, of which one arm reached unconsciously his lips, while either in deep thought, or if he was to act out disgust. It does help to manually stretch expressions on the face. Jaani Raj Kumar always gently stroked the right side of his nape with his right hand to bully his detractor, and so gently at that. When Manoj Kumar needed to come to brass tacks, he invariable covered half his face, with his gaze fixed deep down below. This style of the thespian though was ‘allegedly’ lampooned in Om Shanti Om by SRK himself. Is it this type of a world of creative liberty Shah Rukh is trying to ‘make believe’ for us? All this adds up to say that there are a plethora of substitutes when it comes to creativity. Dilip Kumar used to enact a scene all differently each time, and the best suited would be picked up by the director, as goes the impression. Why can’t King Khan shun the stub and try and put up a façade sans cigarette? Or having received the French title “Officer of the Order of Arts et Lettres” does he think that with Liberty, he can take along the Fraternity of smokers, to the realm of Equality with those who have said quits to smoking. Nah, aise na karo. New title for a SRK
movie?
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War in Lanka ALUM
KULAM, Sri Lanka — As gray-bellied clouds started to blot out the scorching sun, Sara Waeathi, 46, and her sister Kannaga, 30, called their seven children inside just as a light rain accelerated to a downpour. The family huddled under their shelter, a tiny tent of frayed plastic sheeting and stitched-together burlap sacks that leaked rain into cooking pots set out to catch it. For this family, any shelter is better than nothing. The Waeathi sisters, their day-laborer husbands and their children have been running from the front lines of a 25-year war, one of the world’s longest conflicts. Their tent on this shadeless field has been home for a year, since they fled the latest surge in fighting between Sri Lanka’s army and the separatist rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE. Before this, they spent nearly two decades in a squalid camp for people displaced by the conflict. “For us, the war in Sri Lanka is like a tsunami that won’t end,” whispered Sara Waeathi, a wiry ethnic Tamil who used to fish and harvest honey in her original village in the country’s restive north. Today, in this camp near the eastern coastal city of Batticaloa, she and her family depend on international food handouts. “The fighting keeps coming. Only God knows what will happen to us. We are scared.” Sri Lankans have endured sporadic war since 1983, fueled by tensions between the ethnic Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority, whose militant separatists want to claim part of the Indian Ocean island’s north and east as their homeland. The conflict has left Sri Lankans in an often terrifying cycle of violence: suicide bombings, abductions, extrajudicial killings and deadly attacks on aid workers. New fighting has left a 2002 cease-fire in tatters, shattering hopes that peace could help this nation of about 20 million people, renowned for its surfing beaches, palm trees and highland tea plantations, lift its villages out of poverty and thrive as an idyllic holiday destination. Despite international pressure for a lasting peace deal, in the wake of the 2004 tsunami that killed tens of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands, many here fear the worst is yet to come. Ethnic tensions are running high, residents say, comparing the mood to that just before the 1983 riots. Following a rebel attack that year on an army patrol, roving Sinhalese militias attacked thousands of Tamils, plunging the nation into all-out war. “Every Sri Lankan is worried,” said Gayani Udeshik, 24, a Sinhalese hairdresser in Colombo, the capital, who was born one year after the war started. “There isn’t a single family I know that hasn’t been affected by terrorism or fighting. We are all just hoping it will end. But somehow, it never does.” That’s also what the Waeathis want. As mosquitoes collect after the rain, members of the Tamil family swelter under their tent, two generations touched by war. Kannaga Waeathi’s 12-year-old daughter is so malnourished she looks like she’s 7. Sara Waeathi says she is unconcerned with the ethnic hatreds that caused this war, then prolonged it. And she doesn’t care who wins. Like many, she just wants it to end. But that hope seems as fleeting as the afternoon rainstorm. Not far from their fields are reminders of the conflict. Many of the houses in Batticaloa are burned down or marked with bullet holes and mortar fire. There is renewed momentum on both sides to win the war, which has claimed more than 70,000 lives and displaced an estimated 500,000 people. The government has vowed to crush the uprising by militant Tamils in the north by next year. More than 32,000 young Sinhalese men have joined the Sri Lankan army, which has been attacking rebel strongholds. The LTTE, considered by the United States to be a terrorist organization, has responded with a campaign of suicide bombings against civilians in urban areas, including Colombo. On April 6, 14 people were killed, including a top government minister who was an outspoken critic of the LTTE. Ninety people were injured in the attack, which also killed a former Olympian, at the start of a marathon about 18 miles outside the capital. The highway minister, Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, 55, is the second high-level government official to be killed this year. On Monday, Sri Lanka’s air force bombed a suspected rebel bunker, which a government spokesman said was being used to recruit and train suicide bombers. Land and air battles continued through the week, with deaths reported on both sides. Journalists are barred from travel to the front lines because government officials say the areas are too dangerous. The increasing violence has alarmed humanitarian groups, which say the instability is making it more difficult to deliver aid to the hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans displaced by fighting. “Certainly we are concerned that the situation is deteriorating and we are trying to come up with solutions to get food across,” said Zola Dowell of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which oversees the U.N. response in emergency situations. Fighting became so intense in the northwest of the country that Catholic Church officials removed a 400-year-old statue of the Virgin Mary, one of the country’s most-visited shrines, because the local bishop wanted it safe from shelling. “One thing is clear: The level of human suffering and destruction is enormous,” said Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council, a research and advocacy group in Colombo. “The only hope for the future is that the ethnic hatred is not so deep-rooted that we could never stop fighting.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Start of trade across LoC eagerly awaited Srinagar
— Three years after the cross-LoC bus service “Karavan-e-Aman” on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road started on April 7, 2005, a ray of hope has emerged for the beginning of trade between the two sides of Kashmir. If the bus service came as a solace to divided families on either side of the LoC after 57 years, it is yet to meet the expectations of the valley’s common man and business community. There have been expectations about starting trade on the 170-km-long Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road since restoration of traffic, but it has been delayed due to various reasons. The emergence of violence followed by political instability in Pakistan came in the way last year. With the new democratic set-up in place in Islamabad, there are indications of early trade along the LoC. Its restoration would be most pushed forward by the Congress-led UPA government in New Delhi, which has to face general elections early next year. The Congress is heading the coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir with the PDP, and the state too is to face Assembly elections only a few months ahead. The much hyped Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service has been part of the CBMs spearheaded by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to increase people-to-people contact and ease tension on the two sides of the Line of Control. Though the opposition National Conference has been of the view that the party under the stewardship of its founder leader Sher-e-Kashmir Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was the first to persistently make this demand decades ago, the ruling PDP claims credit on the actual development. The issue of the re-opening of this road, once known as the Jhelum Valley Road, has become an important matter before the two political arch rivals, PDP and the National Conference. But the Congress party in the State did not seem to be so enthusiastic over the development when Chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad made his first visit to Kaman Post, on February 20, 2006, over four months after the devastating October 8, 2005 earthquake. Azad said that there was “little enthusiasm” on re-opening of the road and supported his argument with figures that only 831 persons had crossed over between April 7, 2005 and February 2006. But Azad also assured that there was no problem in increasing the frequency of the bus service from fortnightly to weekly, and also opening the road for trade to send fresh fruit, dry fruit and Kashmir handicrafts from this side. So far around 3000 people, all members of divided families, have been able to travel to the other side to meet their relatives via the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road and at the Poonch-Rawlakote crossing. Divided families have also been able to cross over on either side at Teethwal in Karnah sector of north Kashmir during the past couple of years. There are also demands for opening other routes like Suchetgarh-Sialkote in Jammu and Kargil-Skardoo in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir. During his recent visit to Jammu and Kashmir, Union Minister of State for Commerce, Jairam Ramesh, said that trade on the route could begin within three months. The slow movement forward in this regard was due to the political instability in Pakistan, which now is over with the installation of a democratically set up government there, he opined. It is now hoped that the trade of items in nine different categories including fruit and handicraft items begins after fulfilling requisite formalities. He also hinted at Pakistan’s softened stand towards Kashmir, that had led to the near finalisation of trade along the LoC. The PDP president, Ms Mehbooba Mufti made a mention of the road openings and confidence building measures at the recent Pugwash meet in Islamabad. “Be it opening of roads, or allowing of travel on permit and not on passport basis, it all added up to a collective political engagement and consequent reduction in the structural and individual alienation. These were not events but processes that catalysed the peace process”, Ms Mufti said at the meet. The common man in Kashmir, inclusive of the minority Pandit and Sikh communities, await opportunities to move across borders and restore the age-old social, cultural, religious and business ties that were snapped 60 years ago. Kashmiri Pandits have been pursuing the demand for permission to visit and revive the revered Sharda temple near Muzaffarabad in PoK. “The government is not interested. They want to put things in such a way that the governments of Pakistan and PoK do not want our interaction on the other side”, said Sanjay K Tickoo, president of the Kashmiri Pandit Sangarsh Samiti. “Our houses, property and places of worship are there and we should be allowed to interact”, said Jagmohan Singh Raina, president J&K Sikh Ekta
Manch.
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Language identity on the wane? Punjab
Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, while inaugurating the first World Punjabi Conference on March 30, 2008 exhorted scholars and writers to support and promote “Punjabiat” and Punjabi. The Census Commissioner of India has recently released the 2001 Census data on language. Language has always been a very important aspect of Indian culture and society and, in fact, is one of the few ways those can be studied statistically. A second way, of course, is information collected in the census of one’s religion. Language data are actually referred to in the census as “mother tongue,” i.e., the language spoken in childhood by a person’s mother. As such, it is a good indicator of the language group with which one initially identifies. From the published data, we can look at census language for one major religious group that is most often identified with a particular language. Sikhs, who form a majority in Punjab aregenerally perceived to be Punjabi speakers and most closely associated with that language, but people of other religions speak many different languages. In Punjab, the number of Punjabi speakers (2,23,34,369) greatly outnumbered the Sikh population (1,45,92,387) so here we have evidence that large numbers of people of different religions, such as Hindus, Jains and Muslims, speak Punjabi in Punjab in addition to Sikhs. Similar results were obtained in the census in other states. In Rajasthan, 8,18,420 Sikhs were enumerated but 11,41,200 Punjabi speakers. In Haryana, the number of Punjabi speakers (22,34,626) was roughly twice the number of Sikhs (11,70,662). Similar observations can be made about Maharashtra Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and other states. But what of people who reside in other states? What happens when the family migrates to another state with a very different language, as happens more and more often today. Since the census does not ask people to identify themselves as members of a particular ethnic or cultural group such as “Bengali” or “Keralite”. We can look in the census data once again for a religious group closely associated with a particular language and, once again, only data on Sikhs are available for that type of analysis. In Uttar Pradesh, 6,78,069 persons identified themselves as Sikh but there were only 5,23,094 persons who gave Punjabi as their mother tongue. And, it can be also assumed that at least some Punjabi speakers in UP were of other religions. In Andhra Pradesh, there were 30,998 Sikhs in 2001 but only 23,838 Punjabi speakers. So, it would seem that some migrants to other states do lose their identity with the language or their ancestral state. This finding in the 2001 census data is all the more surprising when we consider that the census measure of language, mother tongue, is the language spoken in the home whilst one is growing up. It would be generally expected that migrant families would use their native language in the home and speak the language of the state in which they reside when conducting business or, in the case of young people, in their schooling. Thus, as more and more people in India move about the country, we might ask to what degree language identity, so long an issue in Indian culture and politics, might be on the wane.
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