The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Modi’s intolerance
Jaswant has the right to hold the wrong view

Whatever the BJP leadership’s internal compulsions behind Mr Jaswant Singh’s expulsion from the party, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi choosing to ban his book Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence in the state has disturbing implications for the right to freedom of expression. This not only typifies the Modi government’s intolerance to a writer’s right to interpret a slice of history from his own perspective but also amounts to showing disrespect to the people’s right to know. The government did not spare a thought for what the action portends for the freedom of expression in a liberal society which should respect a dissenting opinion, even if it turns out to be disagreeable. In a democracy, it is for the people to decide which is good and bad and the government’s police cannot — and should not — sit in judgement. Despotic regimes have always been harsh to independent thinking writers. But banning books is an offence against democracy.

Apparently, the Modi government has taken exception to the writer’s portrayal of the late Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in poor light in the book. But Gujarat is an enlightened society and the government cannot presume that Mr Jaswant Singh’s view of Sardar Patel’s role in Partition will persuade it to accept his contention.

The release of Taslima Nasreen’s Dwinkhandita and James W. Laine’s Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India had triggered protests in West Bengal and Maharashtra respectively not long ago and not letting M.F. Husain live in the country are disgraceful. If Mr Jaswant Singh had distorted history in his book, the Modi government should have left it to the readers to decide rather than peremptorily banning it. Mr Jaswant Singh may be wrong on who was responsible for Partition, but he has the right to live with his errors.

Plots for MLAs
HC sees through Haryana ploy

It is a matter of much relief that the Haryana government’s move to allocate residential plots to MPs and MLAs in the state has been frustrated for now by the Punjab and Haryana High Court granting a stay on its implementation. Since the land was allotted on the eve of the proposed dissolution of the state assembly and consequent elections, there was a strong suspicion that it was intended by the Hooda government as a sop to the legislators. While the government could take refuge under the pretext that the Election Commission’s code of conduct had not come into force, it was contrary to the spirit of the law which does not favour largesse of this kind.

So desperate was the government to ingratiate itself with the legislators that even while the court was deliberating on the application for stay, the Haryana Urban Development Authority hurriedly conducted a draw of lots for allotment of plots. That the draw was held on a day when the state was in mourning due to the demise of a Cabinet minister and that even allotment letters were issued in a mad scramble only reinforces the impression that there was an allout effort to get these through before the court took up the stay application. It is regrettable that the Speaker of the assembly was present when the draw was done.

It now devolves on the complainant to convince the court that the allotment of plots was unjustified. There would indeed be no end to the demand by legislators for allocation of plots as every election throws up some new legislators. It would be in the fitness of things if members of Parliament and state legislatures were to predominantly think of housing for the people they represent rather than their own interests. It is such selfish action of the legislators that erodes public faith in them.

Thought for the Day

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form. — Andre Maurois

Corrections and clarifications

n In the report “No end to commuters’ woes in sight” (Page 5, August 20) the word ‘flouted’ has been wrongly used instead of flaunted in the first para. The sentence should have read: “These mega projects that were being flaunted as face-changers……

n In the report “Tale of two Chintan Baithaks” (Page 9, August 20) in the second para the sentence should have been “The strategy finalised by the party actually worked and it upstaged the NDA alliance to pave the way for the UPA government. The words ‘the way’ were left out of the published report.

n The headline “BJP dissociates from Jaswant’s book” (Page 13, August 19) should have been “BJP dissociates itself from Jaswant’s book”.

n The headline “Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan guvs meet Vohra” was factually incorrect. It should have been “Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan envoys meet Vohra.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

This column will now appear thrice a week — every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua
Editor-in-Chief

ARTICLE

Engaging Myanmar
World having second thoughts on sanctions
by Inder Malhotra

SOME crucial developments in recent days have engendered a very faint glimmer of hope that the ruthless and remorseless military junta of Myanmar, formerly called Burma, might be inclined at long last to respond to international pressure on it. No, it is not going to release from captivity any time soon the heroic leader of the democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for nearly two decades. It just cannot risk this until after next year’s tightly controlled elections because she is loved as much as the generals are hated. However, it is just possible that the junta might start loosening, albeit in extremely slow motion, its horrendously authoritarian rule over the 55 million hapless people.

Ironically, the recent chain of events began with the military rulers’ reprehensible decision to sentence Ms Suu Kyi to another spell of house arrest for 18 months. The pretext for this could not have been more bizarre. An American eccentric swam to her lake-surrounded home. She was charged with harbouring a foreigner against the rulers of her detention. Originally, she was sentenced to three years’ house arrest, but the Interior Minister commuted it to half that period. Understandably, even this invited worldwide condemnation but, as usual, it was so much water on the duck’s back.

As it happens, the American offender, John Yettaw, who was sentenced to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment, has already been released and deported to Thailand. Obviously, this did not happen accidentally. It resulted from the path-breaking visit to Myanmar by Senator Jim Web, a key member of the United States Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee and the highest-ranking American to have set foot on the Myanmar soil since 1988 when the country went under the military’s jackboot.

Remarkably, the junta extended to Mr Webb courtesies it had never before shown any foreign visitor, including the UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon. Senior General Than Shwe received him immediately and with conspicuous cordiality. The senator was allowed also to meet Ms Suu Kyi, a privilege denied to the Secretary-General.

On return to Washington Mr Webb stated that the results of his conversations with the Burmese generals would not be known in weeks or months but would take time, indicating that something is in the works.

A usually well-informed Australian journalist has revealed that before Mr Webb’s arrival in Myanmar, the Obama administration had been conducting secret negotiations with a senior Burmese general in Beijing. In the course of these, the junta indicated that Ms Suu Kyi would be awarded “light sentence”. The American side indicated that President Obama was “reviewing” George Bush’s policy of isolating Myanmar completely.

At the recent ASEAN conference attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the American side’s “appreciation” of Myanmar’s decision to “turn away a North Korean ship carrying conventional weapons” somehow went unnoticed. At the same time, Washington firmly conveyed to the generals that the US was greatly concerned about reports that North Korea was willing to offer Myanmar a nuclear reactor.

The North Korean factor has surely augmented the reasons behind America’s review of its Myanmar policy. The Americans are also coming to the conclusion that the sanctions against Myanmar have been counter-productive. These haven’t affected the military regime but have added enormously to the woes of the people already crushed by grinding poverty. For instance, the ban on textile exports to Europe and America has led to hundreds of thousands of workers being thrown out of jobs. The consequence of a similar prohibition on the export of gems is even worse. The small cutters and exporters of gems who are ardent supporters of Suu Kyi have been driven out of business. Big exporters from whom Germany buys are doing well.

Another catastrophic consequence of the sanctions is that, according to UNICEF, the humanitarian aid to Burmese children, in per capita terms, has got reduced to one-tenth of that reaching Laos and Cambodia.

A powerful plea for ending the sanctions’ regime and “engaging with the Burmese junta” has come from a Myanmarese scholar who was born in America and resides in that country. Until recently, he was a vigorous campaigner for isolating the junta and making its life as difficult as possible. He is Thant Ming-U, a grandson of U. Thant, the UN secretary-general in the 1960s. He has argued in the Washington Post: “Twenty years of sanctioning and isolating Burma has failed; the world needs to engage with it commercially and to increase humanitarian aid to it. If this does not happen not only will change in Burma remain as elusive as ever, but also Burma will turn quickly into a vassal of China”.

This indeed is the nub of the matter. China offers the junta all help it needs and at the UN Security Council vetoes any action against Myanmar it disapproves of. This should explain India’s low profile policy of remaining engaged with Myanmar but using every possible opportunity privately to urge the military junta to restore the democratic process of which the first step has to be the release Ms Suu Kyi as early as possible. To be sure, this falls on deaf ears.

There is, therefore, every reason for anger over Ms Suu Kyi’s imprisonment but, alas, it is greater elsewhere than in India. Yet, anger, however justifiable, is an emotion, not policy. India cannot drive a neighbour strategically vital to it deeper and deeper into China’s embrace. Furthermore, Myanmar cooperates fully with this country in curbing insurgencies in the Northeast. Myanmarese soldiers have often shed blood in aid of India. These are matters that cannot be publicised. Nothing prevents private Indian citizens from protesting against the incarceration of Myanmar’s heroine. But sadly few of them take interest in Myanmar or any other neighbour except Pakistan.

There is another angle to the whole problem of Myanmar that has been put in perspective by, of all people, Ms. Suu Kyi’s international counsel, Jared Genser. In an article in International Herald Tribune, he says, “I would urge caution against focusing too heavily on her (Ms Suu Kyi’s) plight to the exclusion of the broader situation in Myanmar”. He quotes her to the effect that international focus “not be on her alone”. Even if Ms Suu Kyi “had been released, nothing would have changed. Some 2,100 political prisoners would remain imprisoned …and the regime’s systematic abuses of human rights would persist”, Mr Genser says.

MIDDLE

When God is made to wait
by Iqbal Singh Ahuja

THE entire bureaucracy is at his command. His one nod can trigger off a virtual nuclear bomb. He is none other than the Indian politician.

The only time he is on his knees is election time, when he seeks the blessings of the Almighty.

“I am a beggar and you are the supreme lord,” he says as he bends, kneels and folds his hands before Guru Nanak Devji, Lord Krishna, Mata Vaishno Devi, Shirdi Baba, Allah and Christ. He wants each one of them to help him.

The scene changes once the results are out. If he loses it is the Almighty to blame for not showering him with blessings. But if he wins he rises to insurmountable heights, occupying a pedestal from where even God’s abode seems lower.

Chants of Jai Ho, Zindabad and being garlanded by his bevy of supporters make him feel supreme. He forgets to thank God as he does not have the time nor the inclination.

Now he wants the Almighty to wait for the thanksgiving till he is free from his celebrations. Barely one week back he had stood in a queue as a commoner for His blessings. But now the picture has changed. He wants to thank God in style — surrounded by a coterie of supporters carrying garlands and shouting “jai ho” in full media glare. It is absolute power that has brought about this change.

I recently visited a religious place. My car was stopped with 2 km still to go. I did not mind as I have become accustomed to such security bandobast for VIPs. A lady in a car following mine was requesting the security inspector to let her proceed pointing to the old couple and kids sitting in the car. But to no avail.

As we trudged those 2 km in scorching heat, I was wondering if head of State was visiting the shrine. Seeing the strict security arrangement I could not help asking an inspector about the expected VIP.

“MP Sa’ab aa rahein hain,” he replied.

Suddenly the sun felt hotter and I felt difficulty in walking. Barely one week back the same person had visited the shrine as a commoner to seek the Almighty’s blessings. But today he was stopping thousands of common devotees from seeking the blessings of God.

Inside the temple there were hardly any devotees. It appeared that even God was being made to wait and receive the VIP.

OPED

Pride and prejudice
America biased against non-whites
by Kuldip Nayar

Why has America, after electing President Barrack Obama, continued to be racist? There may be many explanations. One of them is that by installing him at the highest position in the country, the whites feel that they have cleared the debt they owed to the non-white world.

Yet this does not make America liberal. In fact, the conservative path that Obama has been taking of late shows that he would rather acquire pro-white credentials than those of a liberal who looked as if he had joined issue on colour as well as capitalism.

I feel let down because I saw in him a bit of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy. What Obama has done is that he has effected only some cosmetic changes. He seems to have compromised with the vested interests in the fields of race and religion.

A fresh thinking which I spotted in his pre-election speeches turned out to be a strategy to win votes. I feel sorry for him, but more so for America, which invariably disappoints after evoking hope.

The treatment meted out to Shah Rukh Khan at New Jersey airport, where he was detained for two hours, is out and out racialism. That he is a Muslim doubled his sin. There is no explanation given for the biased questions he was asked. The lame excuse that it took time to check his luggage does not condone the drilling he was subjected to, as the US does to Asians and non-whites.

The fact is that the democratic America ends when the real America, arrogant and prejudiced, takes over. The authorities who showed no decency to Shah Rukh Khan are trained that way. None of them are accountable and none of them are punished because they have humiliated even the best of Asians.

In the case of Shah Rukh Khan they could not have made a mistake because he was there one month earlier, the computers at the customs and immigration counters having his full details, with his photograph.

India’s former President Abdul Kalam was also roughed up. So was the then Defence Minister George Fernandes. I do not know if any punishment was given to the officers who humiliated Kalam and Fernandes.

America is concerned about what happens to the white. The other day an Indian family of five and 25 Poles travelled to America in the same plane. Only the Indians were checked and detained. The Poles were not stopped even for a second to keep the appearance at least.

Washington is also careful about what happens to the Chinese because they have the type of economy which can hurt America. Hapless India hardly matters, particularly when it is already queuing up before the White House or the State Department for favours.

The successive governments in New Delhi have reduced the country to a client state. The Ministry of External Affairs indulges in some diplomatic acrobats whenever a Shah Rukh Khan-like incident takes place but then it goes back to its obligations under the strategic alliance with America. The ministry awaits another insult to go over the exercise once again.

I was happy when Information Minister Ambika Soni said after the Shah Rukh Khan incident that we should pay back in the same coin. I wish we would do so at least in one case so that the Americans come to realise that the nation which ousted the British has not yet become part of furniture. One MBA girl student assured me that the day was not far when India would be rejecting visa applications of Americans as they are doing in our case.

It is time that the Americans realise that the word, ugly, for them is returning with a vengeance. America’s resolve to fight against terrorism and its soldiers in Afghanistan pale into insignificance when Washington has no respect for the non-whites and when it believes that it can get away with all the insults it can heap on Asians, Africans and Arabs. Enough is enough.

And how Washington meddles in the internal affairs of nations can be judged from a circular the US Commission in International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has issued. It has placed India on its ‘watch list’ for what it calls the Indian government’s largely inadequate response in protecting its religious minorities.

The USCIRF has said that India earned the ‘watch list’ designation due to the disturbing increase in communal violence against religious minorities—specifically Christians in Orissa in 2008 and Muslims in Gujarat in 2002—and the largely inadequate response from the Indian government to protect the rights of religious minorities.

“It is extremely disappointing that India, which has a multitude of religious communities, has done so little to protect and bring justice to its religious minorities under siege,” says Leonard Leo, Chairman of the USCIRF.

India feels itself ashamed over what has happened in Gujarat and Orissa. The happenings have put a question mark against our credentials of secularism. The media on the whole has taken the culprits to task. The Supreme Court has itself intervened in the case of Gujarat.

Still, we are more concerned over racialism practised in our own country. We suffer from the same bias of superiority of the white. Students from Africa and the Northeast complain of our prejudice against them on the basis of colour or race. They find it hard to get accommodation and have practically no opportunity for social gathering with other Indians.

Our literature is full of praise for a woman who has a white complexion. Kalidas in his books compares the beautiful with the ones who are white. Shakuntala is bewitching because she excels the white in looks. Probably, this attitude is because of our slavery of 150 years at the hands of the British. We have not been able to jettison our slavish complex.

But who are Americans to teach us how to treat the minorities? They have a society which feels superior because it comprises the white. The treatment meted out to minorities in their country is unprintable. We should also set up a committee to look into complaints by the black and the religious bodies against Americans and then place Washington on the ‘watch list’. All that I can tell the US is: Physician, heal thyself.

N. Korea appears to change gears
by Blaine Harden

In a shift from pugnacious confrontation to measured conciliation, North Korea appears to be recalibrating its relations with the United States, South Korea and the outside world.

The isolated communist state that began the year by launching missiles and testing a nuclear bomb has released two U.S. journalists and freed a South Korean worker this month. And on Monday it agreed to resume reunions of families divided by the North-South border, as well as restart a cross-border tourism business.

Kim Jong Il, the 67-year-old leader who suffered a stroke 12 months ago and whose fitness to run the country had been widely questioned, has chosen to grant highly publicized audiences to two important outsiders.

He met for more than three hours earlier this month with former president Bill Clinton, who flew into Pyongyang to retrieve the American journalists.

On Sunday, in a meeting that the South Korean government described as “positive,” Kim held talks with the chairman of Hyundai Group, the South Korean conglomerate that is the largest investor in the North.

The official Korean Central News Agency said the conversation with Hyun Jung-eun was “cordial” and that Kim “complied with all her requests.”

“My luncheon meeting with Chairman Kim proceeded in a friendly atmosphere,” Hyun said Monday after returning to Seoul from a week in North Korea. “We exchanged views on the resumption of the joint tourism project . ... and other pending issues.”

North Korea on Thursday released a Hyundai employee it had detained in the spring on vague charges of political misbehavior.

The reasons behind North Korea’s apparent softening in strategy are known only to Kim and his inner circle. But analysts in South Korea have speculated that much of North Korea’s sabre-rattling this year was for internal consumption, as Kim began to prepare the country for a succession process that might hand power to his third son, Kim Jong Un, who is just 26.

“North Korea has put all its cards on the table, and now it wants some kind of negotiations with the United States,” said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.

The Obama administration has said that it is willing to have bilateral talks with North Korea, but that it also wants Pyongyang to return to six-party talks focused on ridding the North of nuclear weapons.

Kim’s government has said it will never return to those talks, which include the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.

But in another potentially conciliatory development, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported Monday that Wu Dawei, China’s senior nuclear envoy, was planning to go to North Korea to try to restart the six-party talks.

The North, meanwhile, is being squeezed by U.N. economic sanctions and by intense U.S. efforts to seal the country off from the world’s banking system. The sanctions were toughened in the spring in reaction to the North’s nuclear test.

Pyongyang announced Monday that it would relax rules on North-South border traffic and “energize” its joint industrial complex at Kaesong, where more than a hundred South Korean companies employ about 40,000 North Korean workers.

The future of the complex, which injects desperately needed hard currency into the moribund North Korean economy, has been in jeopardy since early this year, when the North demanded a huge increase in rent and salaries.

A possible reason for North Korea’s new flexibility in relations with South Korea is lack of food.

North Korea suffers from chronic food shortages, and U.N. food agencies have said that about 37 percent of the country’s 23.5 million people will need food aid this year.

Food supply problems might have increased in recent weeks, as North Korean state television has reported that flooding damaged crops.

Earlier this year, the North severely restricted the ability of U.N. agencies to distribute food inside the country, and in March it abruptly canceled a deal to accept hundreds of thousands of tons of food aid from the U.S. government.

In the past two years, South Korea has stopped deliveries of free food and fertilizer, pending an agreement with the North that would monitor distribution of the aid.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Health
Why do some people need such little sleep?
by Steve Connor

How much sleep is necessary for a healthy mind and body, and does this amount truly need to vary between people and age groups?

The latest study into sleep may help to resolve the issue with the discovery that certain people in the population carry the smallest of genetic mutations in a gene that appears to play a significant role in deciding just how much sleep human beings need.

Scientists studied an extended family in California and found that a mother and her daughter shared a life-long habit of rising in the very early hours of the morning with no apparent ill-effects. They routinely went to bed between 10.30pm and 11pm and got up between 4am and 4.30am.

The researchers took blood samples from all members of the family and analysed their DNA for any signs that could explain this unusual behaviour. The tests revealed that the mother and her daughter did in fact share a tiny “point mutation” in a gene known as hDEC2, which is known to affect the regulation of other genes and has been implicated in the control of sleeping patterns in animals.

Other members of the family who followed a more conventional sleeping pattern were not found to have inherited the same mutation. These family members typically required the normal eight hours or so of sleep a night instead of the five to six hours of the mother and daughter. Just to make sure that the hDEC2 mutation was truly involved in this unusual sleeping pattern, rather than a coincidental occurrence in the two women, the scientists went on to create genetically-engineered mice with the same point mutation to the same gene. These mice also exhibited unusually short patterns of sleep, a feature not seen in ordinary mice.

“The implication from the study would be that there is a genetically-wired system in our body to tell us how much sleep do we need,” explained Ying-Hui Fu, Professor of Neurology at the University of California in San Francisco, the study’s head.

“Yet, we really don’t know anything about how this is done. This discovery provides an opportunity for us to begin to probe into the pathway regulating our sleep quantity and need,” said Professor Fu, whose study is published in the journal Science.

“It is not clear at the present time how this mutation can lead to short sleep quantity. This is one of the areas that we are pursuing actively,” she said.

The scientific evidence suggesting that different people are genetically wired to require shorter-than-average periods of sleep goes back many years.

In 1999, for instance, scientists identified the existence of a gene – or more specifically an inherited mutation within a gene – that appeared to confer something called familial advanced sleep-phase syndrome.

This is an inherited condition where people tend to go to bed early and get up early, which can also happen when people abandon normal sleeping routines, such as at the weekend and when on holiday. People who exhibit this all the time are known as “morning larks”, to distinguish them from “night owls” at the other extreme who routinely go to bed late and get up late.

The scientists in this study, led by Christopher Jones of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, did not actually find the gene or its mutation – they could only show that it must exist in the 29 people from three different families that they had studied.

People with advanced sleep-phase syndrome, however, still sleep for the usual seven and a half to eight hours a night, it’s just that their daily routine or “circadian rhythm” is shifted. Scientists believe that genetic mutations can also occur in the genes influencing this aspect of the 24-hour sleep-wake cycle.

Sleep is a product of both circadian rhythm and another controlling factor that, put simply, measures the amount of sleep we have had. When we need sleep, this “homeostatic” mechanism makes us sleepy; when we’ve had enough sleep, it tells us to wake up.

— By arrangement with The Independent