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Crowning glory
PM offers dialogue
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Electoral battles
Home-grown terror
Tana-tunn!
Physics Nobel winners
Commander is right: you can’t beat Taliban
Chatterati
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Crowning glory
THE signing of the India-US civilian nuclear agreement in Washington on Friday
Dr Manmohan Singh, who put at stake his as well as the UPA government’s future, has come up trumps in successfully carrying to a climax the long and contentious process he had started in 2005. It is a foreign policy achievement that marks the beginning of a new role that emerging India can play in the globalised world. It will provide fresh impetus to the country’s economic development. First and foremost, the signing of the nuclear agreement ends 34 years of nuclear apartheid, adding a new dimension not only to India’s policy muscle but also to the world order. It opens out new vistas of cooperation for India not only with the United States but also a number of other countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. As a nuclear weapons state, India has attained the status to rightfully access nuclear fuel. The right to get enriched uranium for the country’s nuclear reactors, including new ones, is the biggest benefit. In the wake of the agreement, India will also be able to access sensitive technology and equipment that it had been denied all these years. The effect of this will boost not only nuclear, aerospace and defence industries but other sensitive sectors, too, which are vital for the development of the economy. Above all, the nuclear agreement will enable India, to have clean energy — and the country’s requirement of energy is huge — which is a critical need for industrial and infrastructural growth without harming the environment. There can be no looking back now on the agreement, which has addressed all concerns, including the so-called “administrative issues” that had delayed the signing moment by a week. All internal procedures have been duly completed in both countries. Taking the Indo-US nuclear agreement to its logical conclusion was an extraordinary challenge both at home and abroad. In the event, Dr Manmohan Singh has emerged with flying colours. It is a proud moment for India and the UPA. |
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PM offers dialogue
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s invitation on Friday to all those who matter in Jammu and Kashmir to get ready for talks to establish peace in the troubled state is well meant and should be taken seriously. His offer of dialogue even to the separatist elements reflects his conviction that the Kashmir tangle can be settled to the satisfaction of all only through talks. The roundtable conferences held earlier showed that dialogue could help understand divergent viewpoints and grievances correctly. A vocal section of the separatists has, however, not been forthcoming.
These people must change their mindset in the interest of peace and progress in the state. They should seize the Prime Minister’s offer as an opportunity to change the environment in J and K so that people develop their stake in stability and economic advancement.
The state has suffered considerably because of the turmoil continuing for nearly two decades. People are now weary of terrorist violence and all other kinds of activity that adversely affects economic growth in the state. They want peace and stability at any cost. Their aspirations will get reflected in the coming elections, which will be held soon as the current assembly’s term expires in November. Separatists are fearful of elections because they feel their anti-progress approach will get exposed. Yet it is hoped that they will participate in the polls enthusiastically if only to prove their claim of being “genuine” representatives of the people. Those in Jammu and Kashmir who advocate trilateral talks ignore the fact that the state is a part of India. Already a dialogue process is on between India and Pakistan. It has led to increased people-to-people contacts, resulting in the enlargement of the constituency of peace on both sides of the political divide. The Prime Minister has made it clear that no territory can be parted away nor can borders be altered. But borders can definitely be made irrelevant in the interest of the people on both sides of the LoC. India has always been favouring opening of trade and people-to-people contacts. All these steps will create a proper atmosphere for the benefit of everyone. |
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Electoral battles
THE Great Indian Election offers a variety of opportunities for all kinds of interventions. Although elections are no longer what they were in the way they engage and excite the public, thanks to the Central Election Commission taking the “fun” out of the exercise, there remain “entreprises” which ought to have no place in the process.
One such intrusive enterprise is the so-called exit polls, which, regardless of their accuracy, seem to be burgeoning as an election-related business. Pre-poll surveys are all very well, especially when undertaken by credible institutions, which rope in social scientists, and not only psephologists, for an analysis of the political ground and the issues involved. This is growing as a discipline and has engaged some of the best minds whose enquiries and study reflect public concerns. However, exit polls are something else. They are bereft of the rigorous structured study that characterise pre-poll surveys. Exit polls are undertaken for sheer impact through the media and, often, to influence voters in constituencies where polling is yet to take place when elections are held in phases.
The random methodology, if any, is questionable, and the basis for the projected outcome is unverifiable. Exit polls have also become gimmicks used by TV channels to upstage rivals in the ratings war. With the motive, method and effect of exit polls being suspect, they are increasingly viewed as an undesirable and unnecessary influence on the voter during the election process. Political parties as well as other sections have criticised exit polls for their biased projections and attempt to sway voter behaviour. In the circumstances, it was only to be expected that the government would While the Union Cabinet’s decision would be generally welcomed, it would help if the Election Commission desisted from stretching the phases of polling to unreasonable lengths. Perhaps, the “reasonable restriction” on exit polls may have some effect on the EC, too, to conduct elections in as short a period as practicable. |
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The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
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Home-grown terror
IT is now generally accepted that the Babri Masjid demolition and the Gujarat riots have motivated a minuscule section of Indian Muslims to take to the path of terror. Perhaps the misguided youths would have done so anyway given the poisonous propaganda in the Islamic world about the moral duty of launching a jehad against the West. The events in Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere have acted as a catalyst for Muslim young men and women in North Africa and the Middle East and also in Europe (though, surprisingly, not in America) to join the terror brigade. But considering that the Indian Muslim evinced little interest even in the Since such a feeling of being an outsider was absent in India, the Muslims had no reason to rebel against the Indian state. Besides, Indian democracy was expected to act as a barrier against the seeds of terrorism. But December 6, 1992, when the Babri Masjid was brought down by a saffron mob, seems to have changed such fairy tale notions of immunity from a virulent disease. The award-winning film, Naseem (1995), carried a hint about the impending tragedy when it showed an old man, played by Kaifi Azmi, who had refused to migrate to Pakistan in 1947, die on December 6 even as young Muslims expressed their disquiet against the events in Ayodhya. The anger spawned by the demolition was deepened by the Gujarat riots. There had been communal violence earlier, too. As a matter of fact, the post-demolition outbreaks in Mumbai in 1992-93 marked the 100th year of similar disturbances in the city. But there were two reasons why the Muslims saw the latest round of violence in a different light. One was the deliberate targeting of mosques, which was a highly unusual feature in the country’s communal history. Never before had places of worship been singled out for destruction by the cadres of political parties, as the activists of the extended Sangh parivar, including the Shiv Sena, did with their attack on the “ocular provocation” of the Babri Masjid, to quote Mr L.K. Advani. Moreover, two other mosques in Varanasi and Mathura were identified for “liberation”. To make matters worse, the slogan of the saffron storm troopers at the time was teen nahin teen hazar, nahin rahegi ek mazar, emphasising their intention to raze to the ground the hundreds of sites venerated by the Muslims in retaliation for the destruction of Hindu shrines by Muslim rulers in the medieval period. The vicious declaration was not only unique where India was concerned, but perhaps even in the wider world, for apart from the attacks on synagogues in Nazi Germany, the House of God has nearly always been kept outside the purview of political upsurges.
The apprehensions of the ordinary Muslims about their safety in view of such venomous outpourings came true during the Gujarat riots, which showed how vulnerable they were when the BJP had the reins of power in its hands. This was the second reason why a section of the Muslims might have lost faith in the democratic system and become more susceptible to the insidious propaganda of the ISI operatives. The fears of the Muslims are now being experienced by Christians in Orissa and Karnataka where the BJP is the ruling party. Both the communities now know what life is like in a Hindu rashtra. Since hate is the driving force behind fascist ideologies, it is not surprising that the BJP and the parivar are pursuing their excoriation of the Muslims for their past atrocities and present-day terrorism and the Christians for their conversions. But what is odd is that even the BJP’s stints in power haven’t moderated its attitude. The rest of the parivar, of course, remains unrepentant about its attempts to mobilise “passions”, as Robert O. Paxton identified as the goal of the ultra-nationalists in his Anatomy of Fascism. But the BJP should have realised, or at least made to realise by its “secular” allies like the Janata Dal (United), that such demonisation of the minorities can breed terrorism, as it is apparently doing. But in probably no other party is the small-mindedness of politicians more hurtful for the country’s interests than in the BJP. While the other myopic parties with their obsessions with caste (the BSP, the RJD, the Samajwadi Party et al) or states (the Telugu Desam, the DMK and AIADMK, the Trinamool Congress, the Biju Janata Dal) or ideology (the Left) can be oblivious of the larger national interest, they will at least not foster violent reprisals from communities which had been specifically targeted for humiliation and worse. The decline in the Belchi-type caste conflicts is a sign that India is emerging from its earlier debilitating record of caste antagonism. But not only has communalism received a fresh fillip by the BJP’s rise, but also because of the fact that the party has no leader other than Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, who has some notion about the value of pluralism. Although Mr Advani has been trying of late to emulate the former prime minister, Despite the provocations of the Hindutva camp, it may not be too late to Secondly, as the Darul Uloom fatwa showed, the clerics have made no secret of their firm opposition to terrorism in line with what the Muslim intelligentsia has been saying all along. What these responses show is that the Muslims remain as loyal as ever. In any event, there has never really been any truth in the canard spread by the parivar that they cheered Pakistan during cricket matches. In this respect, there was no sight more heartening than the one of Pakistanis waving the Indian tricolour and the Indians waving the Pakistani green-and-white flag with the crescent moon during the Test series in Pakistan a few years ago.
It goes without saying that in both Pakistan and India, the terrorists work in isolation from the large masses of ordinary people. A hint of their distance from the mainstream of the community they purport to serve was available in the well-made Pakistani film, Khuda ke liye. This is truer in India because of its highly vocal middle class. The terrorists, then, do not pose a major threat although as the 100-year history of Irish terrorism has shown that it rarely dies down. In India, however, it is the mixture of the older version of communalism and the new menace of fascism represented by the saffron brotherhood which has exacerbated the
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Tana-tunn!
Slangs
may be more tolerable and less sober. With sufficient amount of faithfulness, sincerity and honesty, they convey the intended message in perfect tone and tenor. This undoubtedly makes the conversation more enjoyable. Hindustani slangs’ list may be exhaustive, but let us have a look at some of these colloquial expressions.
Consider Tana-tunn first. Enquire about someone’s health and he may quip, “Tana-tunn!” Now there are a thousand meanings that can be attributed to this argot. Tana-tunn may connote a “condition”, “position” and so on. Generally, it is an overstatement made when (and mostly) it comes to one’s potency or inadequacy, or both. Mall does not refer to Mall Road or Shopping Malls only. The slang means everything, ranging from merchandise to even someone you may have a crush on. More so when it comes to the supply of betel leaf, footwear, cosmetics, fabric, medicine, machinery, screws, anything or everything on earth, including “kidneys”, the dispenser may say, “Mall hi nahin aaya!” Take for example our own indigenous jugar. It means an alternative, when the actual is unavailable. Jugar encompasses “virtually” everything that “works”; be it a government, a machine, a system or even an improvisation. In the Indian context, jugar may be a stop-gap arrangement, which can be “dragged” on without inviting frowns, and with impunity. Phoonk remains my personal choice ever since I became conscious of my ego. You assume airs and inhale enough phoonk. Others also make you inflate with phoonk. In case of a failure, they always refer to some kind of a deflation of phoonk only; but then they will say, “Sahib ki phoonk sarak gayeei” I don’t know if it is a pointed adaptation to “taking wind out of the sails!” Sho-sha is again exhibitionist in character. It is a gimmick. A prank. A trick to lure. Blandishments. All combined to make one indulge in an impulsive ostentation, or showing off. Sho-sha entails expenditure, and is considered dispensable for the critics, who call it extravaganza. Sho-sha is feed for some, and food for many. Fukrapan relates to one’s style. Of dressing. Of talking. Of ones conducting oneself, in a maner generally perceived to be a fetish, fixation, mania or obsession. Fukrapan also takes its toll on the practitioner’s expenses. In a Rajesh Khanna movie of the seventies, I was shocked (then) to hear him call his soul-mate a Kutti Cheeze—a hurricane, or a bewitching beauty! These days they use callings which in due course have become “acceptable”. They may relate to “wear” and “tear” — no pun intended, please. We are middle writers. Kutti may be a bitch, and cheeze (also vastu) may mean more than that cheesy white stuff. Bindaas is someone who is bold, from out of the world, adventurous, overbearing, go-getter, and what not. The late Devi, a woman journalist who used to write gossip columns, coined this expression which may, no doubt, one day find place in Oxford and Macmillan dictionaries. Other slangs from Bollywodd include Mamu, Beedu, Dhakkan, etc. Last but not the least to mention is tahsan. Finer and even bolder nuances of this slang connote something done as a precursor to another thing which has the force of a firm belief, be it religious, personal or societal. For example, if someone distracts at that very moment when the die is to be cast, then they say the tashan is lost. Remember the successful gimmick of “Yaaran da tashan” in an Amir Khan advertisement of a popular brand of cold drink!
What? Did you really comment on my pen? Well, it is tana-tunn! No pun intended please. We are middle
writers! |
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Physics Nobel winners
THE award of the Nobel Prize in equal shares to Prof. Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago, Profs Makato Kobayashi of the KEK laboratory in Tsukuba and Toshihide Maskawa of Kyoto University nearly completes the series of Nobel Prizes recognising the development of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. This model is a simple and coherent picture of fundamental particles and forces based upon the mathematical formalism of relativistic quantum (gauge) field theory developed between 1960 and 1979. It successfully describes the underlying physics of all material reality (except gravitational forces) in terms of just three families of Quark-Lepton matter particles and three types of force particles (photons, gluons and W-Z bosons, responsible for electromagnetic, strong subnuclear and weak subnuclear forces respectively). The quark pairs of the three generations are called up-down, charm-strange and top-bottom, while the lepton pairs are the electron, muon and tau leptons along with their partner neutrinos. Three Nobel Prizes recognising the theoreticians who built the Standard Model have already been given: in 1979
(S. Glashow, A. Salam and S. Weinberg for the electro-weak and lepton sector), 1999 ('t Hooft and Veltman for proving `renormalisability' of the SM i.e it's mathematical consistency using only a limited number of experimentally determined quantities) and finally in 2004
(D. Gross, H.D. Politzer and F.Wilczek for the discovery of the `asymptotic freedom' or weakness at high energies of the gluon mediated force between quarks or QCD). Similarly, no less than seven Nobel Prizes have recognised the experimental The significance of Nambu's contribution is twofold. On the one hand, he is Proceeding by analogy with the Theory of Superconductivity in metals, which had then just been invented, he transposed its ideas to the framework of QFT for elementary particle physics. This was the fundamental intuition that permitted the construction of the Standard Model. By symmetry we mean changes that leave unchanged the Lagrange function. The Lagrange function is basic because it gives the equations of motion (or ``Newton's Laws'') of the theory. The catch is that the symmetry operations do not leave the vacuum unchanged. As a result, the symmetry of the Lagrange function is manifested to us in a hidden or `broken' way. This is the so-called Nambu-Goldstone mode of symmetry realization. The contribution of Kobayashi and Masakwa (KM) may also be seen within the general framework of broken symmetries but they concern a quite different symmetry respected by all but a small piece of the Lagrange function of the SM. In a way, the work of KM could be called the capstone of the SM as opposed to the foundation stone laid by Nambu. In fact, KM hit upon their model by investigating conditions required for introducing CP violation into the Lagrange function of the SM. They showed that this was not possible without an additional family over and above the one completed by GIM. Their work thus motivated the conception of a SM with three families of matter fermions well before the actual discovery of the
charm (1974), bottom (1975) and top (1994) quarks and tau lepton
(1977). Since the work of A.Sakharov (of Nobel Peace Prize and Hydrogen Bomb fame), CP violation is known to be essential for the creation of a universe like ours. The discovery and successful description of CP violation is thus of truly fundamental importance for our very existence. The standard model is now nearly ``wrapped up". The only major component as yet unconfirmed by experiment is the existence of the Higgs particle predicted by the SM as the residuum of the symmetry breaking mechanism that gives rise to the mass of Quarks and Leptons and W-Z force particles. The enormous investment, gargantuan dimensions and mind-boggling technical achievements as well as media doomsday hype of the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) at CERN in Geneva has the entire world agog to see the next act in the unfolding story of the fundamental constituents of the universe. Whatever is discovered will have a vital bearing on the continuing quest to The writer is a Professor of Physics at Panjab University, Chandigarh |
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Commander is right: you can’t beat Taliban THE first serious talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban took place 10 days ago in Mecca under the auspices of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. During the discussions all sides agreed that the war in Afghanistan is going to be solved by dialogue and not by fighting. The Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, was not present but his representatives said he was no longer allied to al-Qa'ida. The admission by a senior British Army commander, Mark Carleton-Smith, over the weekend that absolute military victory in Afghanistan is impossible has been overtaken by the talks in Mecca. "If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that's precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this," said Brigadier Carleton-Smith. "That shouldn't make people uncomfortable." This sounds as if Britain's latest military venture in Afghanistan is going to end in a retreat with none of its ill-defined objectives achieved. In the US, an understanding of the real situation on the ground has been slower to come. John McCain and Barack Obama still speak as if a few more brigades of American soldiers sent to chase the Taliban around the mountains of southern Afghanistan would change the outcome of the war. US policy in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been constantly denigrated as a recipe for self-inflicted disaster. But President Bush's policy in Afghanistan in the wake of the fall of the Taliban was just as catastrophically misconceived. In both countries the administration's agenda was primarily geared to using military victory to make sure that the Republicans won elections at home. The Taliban has always been notoriously dependent on Pakistan and on the Pakistani military's intelligence service (ISI). It was the ISI which openly propelled the Taliban into power in the 1990s and covertly gave its militants a safe haven after their retreat from Afghanistan in 2001, enabling them to regroup and counter-attack. But at the very moment this was happening Mr Bush was lauding the Pakistani government of General Pervez Musharraf, which had fostered the Taliban, as America's great ally in its war on terror. The self-defeating absurdity of this policy has not struck home in the US as did the debacle in Iraq though it is obvious that so long as the Taliban have a vast mountainous hinterland in which to base themselves, they will never be defeated. The presence of foreign troops was always more popular in Afghanistan than in Iraq. The Afghans have a deep loathing for their warlords. But no foreign occupation force, particularly if reliant on ill-directed air attacks and engaged in combat, stays popular for long. This is particularly true if the foreign troops do not, in fact, deliver security. Meanwhile their presence means that Taliban fighters can portray themselves as patriots battling for their country and their faith. The overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 was never quite what it looked like. Soon after they had given up the fight, I drove from Kabul to Kandahar along one of the world's worst-built roads. The Taliban were adroitly changing sides or going home as local deals were hammered out. Casualties on both sides were mercifully low. In the ancient town of Ghazni, an accord on the end to Taliban power was only delayed because of a disagreement on how many government cars they could retain. In a village outside Kandahar, I asked a local leader if he could gather some former Taliban for me to meet and in half-an-hour the village guest house was full of confident and dangerous-looking fighters. I thought it would not take much for them to make a comeback. Yet they would not have been able to do so without the blunders of the White House and the Pentagon. By invading Iraq they convinced General Musharraf that it was safe to give support to the Taliban once again. There were enough foreign troops in Afghanistan to delegitimise the Afghan government but not enough to defeat its enemies. Chasing Taliban fighters around the hinterland year after year only led to the insurgency expanding. The talks in Saudi Arabia are a long way from negotiations but they are a sign that the present political logjam might be beginning to break. — By arrangement with
The Independent
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Chatterati THERE is going to be an addition to the government libraries of at least the
Congress-ruled states. Home Minister Shiv Raj Patil is writing a book on "good
governance". This old Congress hand is writing a book on "how a king should govern his subjects". The Home Minister may have come under a lot of flak for the way he handles internal security of the country. His well-groomed look may hassle a lot of people but Patil claims he is a cleanliness freak. Patil's spiritual guru, Satya Sai Baba, released his last book on "Bhaghwat Gita" two months ago. Its first edition ran out in one and a half months and had to be printed again.
The Home Minister is a poet too. He has written several books, including a collection of English poets. Hopefully, this book will stem the Home Minister's falling scale of popularity after numerous blasts in the country. Last month Congress minister Kapil Sibal released his book on poetry. Our ministers, it seems, have a lot of free time.
Mayawati's men The BSP-SP battle for the coming elections is becoming intense and interesting. Amar Singh's visit to the slain cop Sharma's residence created "hungama". Trying to woo the minority vote bank is nothing new for political parties. The Samajwadi Party does it with a lot of show. The BSP works at it silently and more effectively. BSP workers have slipped into Jamia, Orissa, Karnataka and wherever the minorities have been hit. They engage in personal dialogue and avoid the press. Mayawati's men of different varieties work at the grassroots level. Today she has Thakurs, Muslims and Christians with her and she uses them effectively. The Samajwadi Party seems to have become a one-man show now with Mulayam Singh making a guest appearance now and then. All eyes are on what alliances these two parties will make for the coming elections. Not that the accusations of Congressmen and Amar Singh have gone unnoticed.
Small fries Amar Singh, in full media glare, called Congress leaders Satyavrat Chaturvedi and Salman Khurshid "small fries". To which, Satyavrat retorted that Amar Singh needed to see a doctor. So Amar Singh, after having met the Prime Minister, told the press that he The Prime Minister is not in favour of having an independent probe into the Jamia encounter case which Amar Singh was demanding. Amar has made it very clear that he only pays heed to Sonia, Rahul, the Prime Minister and Ahmed Patel in the Congress. The rest are all "Chirkuts". Now that is not going well at all with the Congress leaders. |
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by Charanjit S. Aulakh
