The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

New Asia policy of US
It’s disturbing for India

Though Indo-US relations reached a new high after the signing of the civilian nuclear deal between the two when Mr George Bush was the American President, some of Washington DC’s policies have been worrying for New Delhi. Among these is the US plan to shift 60 per cent of its naval assets controlled by the US Pacific Area Command to the Bay of Bengal. The US idea, of course, is basically to counter China, which has a large presence in the area as a result of its agreements with Bangladesh and Myanmar. But the new US strategy does not suit New Delhi as militarisation of the Bay of Bengal will pose a major security threat to India. New Delhi made this point clear to US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta during his two-day visit to India.

India, no doubt, wants to upgrade defence cooperation with the US, but it has to be on an equal term. Though Mr Panetta declared that in the new Asian strategy of the US, “India is a linchpin”, New Delhi cannot feel comfortable with it as India may acquire the image of being part of the US policy to contain China. That is why Defence Minister AK Antony pointed out to his US counterpart the need for the calibration of Washington DC’s strategy vis-à-vis the Bay of Bengal. It is a different matter that countries like the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore are happy with the US strategy to expand its military partnerships and presence “in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean Region and South Asia”.

China’s smaller neighbours have been feeling uneasy because of muscle flexing by Beijing every now and then. China has also been unreasonable in asserting its claim over the entire South China Sea in the wake of the India-Vietnam pact for oil and gas exploration in that area. India was told that it could not indulge in any kind of exploration activity in the South China Sea without China’s consent. But India as a mature nation considers it as a matter between New Delhi and Beijing or between China and Vietnam.

Courting controversy
Party politics may cost govt dear

Shiromani Akali Dal leaders were conspicuous by their absence at the recent ceremony to honour Balwant Singh Rajoana. The SAD-led government in Punjab is trying to distance itself from the event. However, few would doubt that a person convicted of assassinating a former Chief Minister of Punjab would have been honoured at Akal Takht without a clearance, if not the active involvement, by senior SAD leaders.

The anniversary of Operation Bluestar, which led to a large number of deaths and struck a major blow to the psyche of the people of Punjab, was expected to be observed in a dignified manner. After all, the Akail Dal government in Punjab could realise the consequences of playing with the emotions of the people. Thus, it was expected to play the sanguine role it had during the recent years, when religious ceremonies marked the occasion, often with a political or sectarian flash that was contained.

A section of the SAD leadership has always been accused of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. This is a dangerous game, and the Chief Minister of Punjab should have ensured that any action which could fan sectarian fires and bring alive the tumultuous past is not allowed. He should have prevailed over others and taken active interest in how to commemorate those killed in the 1984 operation, instead of succumbing to pressures from militants. The Shiromani Akali Dal has a long history of representing the interests of the Sikhs in Punjab. That is why the onus is on the party to ensure that there is no reactivation of the violence and trauma that had stalled progress in the state. It is high time the party realised that the interests of the Sikhs could only be served by prospering in an integrated nation, not by pandering to sectarian pulls.

Thought for the Day

A friend is a gift you give yourself. — Robert Louis Stevenson

ARTICLE

Undoing recent damage to Army
Merely forgetting the “turbulence” won’t do
by Inder Malhotra

OVER the passing of the baton from former Army Chief General V. K. Singh to the present Chief of the Army Staff, General Bikram Singh, there has been an audible sigh of relief in the country deeply distressed by the former chief’s shenanigans beginning with his unprecedented decision to drag the government to a court of law on a petty personal issue of the date of his birth. Defence Minister A. K. Antony has described the sad interlude as “turbulence of the last few months”, and has advised all concerned to “forget” it so that this “baggage” is jettisoned.

Unexceptionable words these, but totally inadequate. Merely to forget what has happened and do nothing about its consequences would be nothing short of perpetuating the mess. The serious damage done to so fine an institution as the Indian Army has to be undone, both quickly in a manner that is not only fair but also seen to be so.

The two of the most serious problems that need immediate attention are best summed up by the distinguished army veteran, Lt-General (retired) Satish Nambiar, with impeccable credentials to pronounce on the subject: First, civil-military relations “rarely cordial even at the best of times are at their worst in living memory right now”. And secondly, the Army has “never before been subjected to such division and subversion of loyalties at the senior level”. To combat these twin-evils is a stupendous task.

It follows that while the new Army Chief, with a meritorious career, will have to exert all his personal and professional qualities to the utmost, he would also need full cooperation from the political leadership and the civilian bureaucracy of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Hopefully, the recommendations of the Task Force on Security would help overcome the problem that civilian supremacy over the military — which the Indian armed forces have always accepted willingly — has become the supremacy of the civil servants. Be that as it may, nothing should be allowed to impede the undoing of the wrongs that have piled up.

In this context, Mr Antony has his task cut out for him. With all due respect, it must be said that in the past he erred. It was within his power to nip in the bud the date-of-birth controversy, the starting point of all the dismal developments that followed. It was indeed his duty to do so. But unfortunately he didn’t. Nor did he make any effort to put an end to the spate of Gen V. K. Singh’s highly controversial interviews subsequently. It is not known whether he sought the intervention of the Prime Minister who is, after all, ultimately responsible for national security. The country can no longer afford such casual approach. The Defence Minister and, if necessary, the Prime Minister must firmly oversee the remedial measures that are now absolutely essential.

At the same time it should be recognised that the Gen V. K. Singh affair has heavily polarised not only the army officer corps at higher levels as well as ex-servicemen, including retired generals, but also apparently the entire Indian society. That perilous polarisation persists. Even today, there is a petition before the Supreme Court seeking a review of its earlier verdict rejecting the public interest litigation seeking the quashing of Gen Bikram Singh’s appointment as the Army Chief.

One expects that, as in all other democracies, all political parties and even all sections of civil society would refrain from dragging the armed forces into the vortex of partisan or parochial politics. But what can one say about a polity in which 20 Rajput MPs, cutting across party lines, seek a meeting with the Prime Minister to plead the case of a general belonging to their caste? About other efforts to arouse the caste sentiment in this connection the less said the better. In all fairness, it must also be acknowledged that in the midst of a murky atmosphere, Gen V. K. Singh did focus the country’s attention on some of the glaring shortcomings in the national security apparatus. Through his leaked letter to the Prime Minister he drove home the message that modernisation of and improvement in the operational preparedness of the armed forces is grossly inadequate and tardy. Presumably because the letter hit the headlines in a fraught ambience the government’s response was surprisingly prompt. There was a sudden acceleration of decision-making in the MoD. Let there be no slackening of this pace. Gen Bikram Singh and his senior colleagues must play their part in ensuring this.

Corruption is the third and very painful issue that the former Army Chief, to his credit, has pushed to the fore though it remains a mystery why both he and the Defence Minister sat for nearly two years on the alleged offer of a bribe of Rs 14 crore to Gen Singh. Anyhow, the Tatra scandal has brought into the open how our own public sector undertakings are making huge money by importing equipment from abroad and selling it to the armed forces at inflated prices. Nor is it a solitary example of its kind. However, to root out corruption in the procurement of sophisticated equipment at astronomical cost is not going to be easy unless there is a determined and joint effort by both the political leadership and the top brass. Personal example rather than preaching is called for.

A long neglected but grave problem faced by the Army is the acute shortage of officers. According to one account, an army battalion must have a minimum complement of 25 officers. Very often, it seems there are barely nine because some of them have to go on leave, or are sick or are required to go for training and refresher courses.

As injurious as the shortage of officers is the ageing of the Indian Army down the line. The issue of reducing the very long service under the colours and providing the men alternative employment in paramilitary forces has been hanging fire for more than a decade. And given the faulty procedures of promotion, most army officers become battalion commanders when they are in their late forties and thus overage.

MIDDLE

Embarrassing typos
by Vaidya Viswanathan

There are times when we come up with near-heroic performances in our work places and yet end up donning the villain’s costumes, thanks to what are casually referred to as typographical errors or typos in short.

The other day, on behalf of the company I represented, I had adroitly negotiated with a supplier and finalised the procurement of a high-value material with substantial savings for my firm. I anticipated a pat and a possible recommendation for a robust increment from my boss. So, quite naturally when he invited me to his office cabin on seeing my email about the transaction, I was on cloud nine.

I strode into his room with my head held high and took my seat. “Shall I order some starters followed by fried rice, butter naan, dhal fry and paneer butter masala?” the boss floored me with his opening shot. “Why should he offer me all these stuff, that too at the start of office hours and convert his cabin to a restaurant?”

“Something is seriously wrong”, I could pick up the cue and looked perplexed.

“No, thanks, sir”, I replied, looking awkward.

Now he slid a piece of paper on the table to my side and continued, his voice turning coarse, “Read your mail and tell me as to how many rounds of meals you had with the vendor before closing the deal. Perhaps you know that dining out with suppliers violates our ethical code of conduct.”

I decided to read my mail before defending my integrity and there it was. “Further to our various meals and discussions, we are pleased to finalise this order….” I had erroneously typed “various meals” instead of “various mails”, perhaps due to the overbearing influence of a heavy festive meal that my wife had served me that morning.

“I know, man, it is a typing mistake. Just wanted to have fun at your expense. Congrats, anyway! Now tell me where we can have a meal and celebrate your good work?” the boss detonated his high-decibel laughter.

There was another occasion, this one in the typewriter era when I had meticulously drafted a letter for approval of certain documents to the Chief Inspector of the approval authority. The inspector used to send everyone into a tailspin, quoting both bureaucratic and technical rules. After a week of our submission, I had to meet him to get an update on the status. As I pulled out a copy of the letter from my office file, I discerned to my utter dismay that our typist had inadvertently put us on the chopping block. Instead of “Chief Inspector”, he had typed “Thief Inspector” and the same had regrettably escaped everyone’s notice.

Before entering the inspector’s chambers, I was trembling, rehearsing my responses. “Shall I simply fall at his feet and plead for atonement?” Finally, I decided to feign ignorance of our gaffe and approached him. He glanced at me up and down twice and sprang a surprise, “Your documents are approved. You can collect it and proceed.” To this day, I am not sure whether the officer really noticed our faux pas before clearing our documents!

oped the arts

The line never ends
Husain's art was shaped by the unique composite fabric of India. Unfortunately, the ideology that shaped his artistic journey lost ground to the rising power of sectarian politics. These facts taint an honest evaluation of Husain's contribution to Indian art
K Bikram Singh

17-9-1915
09-6-2011

Husain in his London studio 2006

When time accelerates not only future events hurtle towards us faster, even the events of the recent past disappear into oblivion more rapidly. It was only on June 9 last year that Maqbool Fida Husain died in a London hospital far away from India, his motherland that had forced him into exile. Already in a year his memory has become faint. It is mostly his former tormentors and current collectors that remember him - the tormentors whenever his works appear in a public place and collectors when his works appear in public auctions and go under the hammer.

The controversies surrounding Husain, during the last decade of his life, have caused double damage by obstructing a serious evaluation of Husain's place in the cultural history of India both as a public figure who personified multi-cultural India, and as a major artist who has left a decisive mark on the modern Indian painting. Let me make a beginning towards such an evaluation.

The persona

Maqbool Fida Husain was born to Zaineb and Fida Husain in 1915, in the temple-town of Pandharpur in Maharashtra, then a major Hindu pilgrim centre. The family spoke Marathi and was well integrated with the local community. His devout Sulemani Muslim grandfather had a lampmaking shop in the street leading to Vithobha Temple.

This sense of shared cultural heritage for Maqbool was further strengthened in Indore where he had his early schooling. It was here that Maqbool first witnessed the iconic Duldul horse of Imam Husain in the Muharram procession that was to become a major source for his horse paintings. In Indore, he was equally attracted by Ramlila performances and began to enact Ramlila scenes with his friends at home, and loved playing the role of Hanuman.

This enchantment for Ramlila became a wellspring of Husain's Ramayana paintings. In the late 1960's Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, the socialist ideologue, advised Husain to stop painting for Tatas and Birlas and start painting for the common man. "Paint Ramayana", he said. "That is the best way to penetrate the popular psyche and reach the masses". Husain set about systematically studying the Ramayana and then created his Ramayana series over several years. This was followed by a series on the Mahabharata, and paintings on several other Hindu gods and goddesses.

Maqbool was also exposed to Mahatma Gandhi's ideas and the freedom struggle at Darul Tulaba Husamiya Madarsa in Baroda where he did a part of his schooling. It was perhaps the influence of Hakeem Abbas Tayabji, a Gandhian, who headed the school that prompted Husain to stay back in India after the partition of 1947, even though several of his close relatives migrated to Pakistan. Rest was done by the streets of Bombay, where he came in 1936 to earn a living. His days of painting cinema hoardings and living on the pavements and chawl which offered material for making of a legend, profoundly exposed him to the real and fantasy world of the ordinary working people - a world of multiple identities, distinct but shared cultures. This world of the common man, both rural and urban, was to become a major theme of Husain's paintings for several decades.

Soon after he won the Lalit Kala Akademi's National Award in 1955, it brought him into media focus. Husain instinctively knew how to cultivate the media and the media found him charming. It was courtesy Rajni Patel that he met Jawaharlal Nehru and was asked to do a portrait of him in 1963. This was followed by two more portraits perhaps immediately after Nehru's death on May 27, 1964. In 1967, his first short film "Through the Eyes of a Painter" won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival. Husain had truly arrived on the public cultural space of India.

The non- conformist

In the next decade, his public persona grew. Here was a person emerging from a humble background and strutting the stage of high art and culture; a practicing Muslim with a flowing beard and bare feet who loved painting Ramayana, Mahabharata, Hindu gods and goddesses and the Christian Mother Teresa; a painter who painted horses and loved making films; an artist with a golden touch but who casually gifted his paintings to chaiwalas and panwalas; a non-conformist who had easy access to powerful politicians of the day but who enjoyed the company of dhabawalas in Nizamuddin basti. Husain symbolised the true integration of Muslims despite the scars of the Partition. This phenomenon also created the hope that Hindus of India will eventually learn to accept their Islamic heritage.

For almost three decades after 1955, Husain was universally applauded by the Hindus, the Christians and the Muslims. In 1980, the Ramlila Committee of Delhi invited Husain to design the cover of its annual diary. That diary was distributed in thousands and no Hindu found anything objectionable in this cover. But the same cover painting came in for hostile attacks by a section of Hindu fundamentalists after the demolition of Babri Masjid. What had happened in the meantime? Husain's work had not changed in its essential spirit but tragically the social space in which he was working had become communalised.

The first major crack in the culture of Nehruvian tolerance and celebration of diversity came with the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975. All dissent was brutally put down. Even cartoons had to face censorship.

The national consensus on a multi-cultural and multi-aspirational India speaking in different voices, having been suppressed by the Emergency, offered a space to the rightist parties with religious fundamentalism as their main ideology, which emerged as forces of resistance. They gained popular acceptance both amongst the Hindus and the Muslims. The attacks on Husain and his paintings began in this changed and charged atmosphere. The attacks came both from sections of Hindus and Muslims, the former accusing Husain for depicting goddesses in the nude and the latter for painting Hindu gods despite being a Muslim.

In the cultural history of India, Husain thus represents the ideal of a multi-cultural society that independent India was trying to create. This has received a huge setback with the death of Husain in exile but it remains an ideal that is still worth aspiring for.

The artist

The portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru done over several sittings in 1963

Ramlila Committee Diary: The Ramlila Committee of Delhi invited Husain to design the cover of its annual diary in 1980. A decade later, this cover became controversial

(Above) The portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru done over several sittings in 1963. (Below) Ramlila Committee Diary: The Ramlila Committee of Delhi invited Husain to design the cover of its annual diary in 1980. A decade later, this cover became controversial

Husain's unique language of painting was formed during the years that he spent painting cinema hoardings - flowing lines, bold colours, evoking an illusion of completeness of the image with minimum details, emphasis on movement within the image, and a combination of reality and fantasy. Later he picked up other elements like making faceless images to give it universality. This unique language of Husain has influenced a large number of younger painters.

As for his worldview, the common man was central to his vision. Much before Husain arrived on the scene of Indian painting with his images of potters and peasants in the initial years, the common man had already entered Indian painting through the works of Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij in Santiniketan.

Husain's empathy with the common man was like a gut response of a man who arose out of them. Much like Satyajit Ray in Pather Panchali, he neither romanticised them nor pitied them. He painted them in all their ordinary dignity and his language gave them a certain abstract universal quality. Besides, Husain went beyond their real world and also painted their myths and fantasies - the world of cinema, mythology and the eccentric world of the Raj. For Husain as an artist, nothing was too insignificant and nothing too holy to be untouchable. He could paint the humble umbrella and the oil lamp with as much joy as Hanuman or Mother Teresa as Yashoda Maiya. Not that Husain has not painted serious subjects in a serious manner e.g. his paintings inspired by Bhutto's hanging, Andhra Cyclone and Bangladesh War. However, the dominant mood of a large body of his work remains joyful and quite often full of humour and quirkiness.

Years in exile

The canvas of Husain's work is very large. We do not yet have access to his work done in his five years of exile. This included a series called 'History of Indian Civilisation' for Laxmi Mittal, and 'History of Arab Civilisation' along with a large installation of fancy cars and glass horses for the Shekhina of Qatar. A proper evaluation of Husain's significance as an artist will involve a study of these works as well. These may become accessible at a later date. But even before that happens it can be safely said that Husain was one of the most significant contemporary Indian painters who has left a lasting impact on the art scene of modern India. If today Indian art has acquired respectability in India and abroad, in the market place as also in prestigious museums, a part of the credit for this goes to Maqbool Fida Husain.

The writer is a well-known film producer, who has authored 'Maqbool Fida Husain' a book that chronicles Husain's artistic journey

The queer chronology of his art

1915 Born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra

1948 Joins the Progressive Artists' Group

1955 First solo exhibition in Zurich, also awarded Padma Shri

1955 Wins Lalit Kala Akademi's National Award

1964 First exhibition in New York

1971 Invited along with Pablo Picasso at the Sao Paulo Biennial

1973 Awarded Padma Bhushan

1986 Nominated to the Rajya Sabha

1996-2006 His works declared controversial, house and studios vandalised, works burnt

2004 Delhi High Court dismissed cases of obscenity against him

2005 His single canvas fetches $ 2 million at Christie's auction

2006 Went on a self- imposed exile after several threats to his life