The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Victory for diplomacy
India, China show pragmatism

Intensive diplomatic efforts have ultimately ended the standoff that came about between India and China on April 15 in the Daulat Beg Oldie sector in Ladakh. The problem began with Indian troops spotting about 40 men of the People’s Liberation Army of China intruding 19 km inside Indian territory across the Line of Actual Control and setting up tents in the area. India responded with men of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police pitching their tents 300 km away to prove that India would not take it lying down. This caused commotion on both sides with the armies of the two neighbours holding flag meetings to prevent the situation from taking a turn for the worse. The joint mechanism established for resolving disputes by India and China proved to be of considerable help in cooling down the tempers and finally getting the situation back to where it was before April 15.

While the two countries were intensely engaged at military and diplomatic levels to resolve the crisis, some strategic analysts found an opportunity to point out that the Chinese cared two hoots for India mainly because of a weak government at the Centre. Some analysts had started advising that India should accept the fait accompli as it had no guts to get the Chinese troops leave the area in the Daulet Beg Oldie sector that was ours. They wanted India to acquire more military muscle to deter China from creating such embarrassing situations for this country.

The standoff had also cast a shadow on External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s China visit on Thursday with a view to preparing the ground for the coming sojourn of Chinese Premier Li Kepiang to New Delhi. Now, happily, all this will happen as planned. Both countries have shown pragmatism. There is a lesson to be learnt from the successful handling of the crisis with diplomacy. Patience pays even when the nation’s honour is to be saved and diplomacy can do what the display of military might cannot. Even if India militarily is not as strong as China, the latter cannot afford to create a situation in the region that can affect its larger objective of becoming the future super power.

Murder and after
Sarabjit case needs sensitive handling

BJP protesters on Sunday marched aggressively towards the Attari-Wagah border post in a demonstration of anger towards Pakistan for the murder of Indian national Sarabjit Singh in that country’s prison. What would have been the natural corollary of the march had the police not stopped it? That and other questions need to be answered by those working to arouse passions over the Sarabjit case. And that includes the media itself. The attack on a Pakistani prisoner in a Jammu jail was the result of such jingoism. It was a horrible tragedy that the family went through, and Sarabjit himself suffered a life of misery. But if a nation were to work up its emotions over every development, the country would be on fire, for there is a Sarabjit suffering and a family in pain in every street.

Punjab in a special Assembly session declared Sarabjit a martyr, besides the government offering an award of Rs 1 crore for the family and jobs for the two daughters. The relief — even if unprecedented — may be justified on humanitarian grounds, but the title of ‘martyr’ is inconsistent at least with the official stand taken by any government regarding Sarabjit’s actions in Pakistan. It has been said he crossed the border in an inebriated state. There are hundreds of Indians who have either suffered or continue to suffer in Pakistan jails, many caught while working for bona fide national cause. There are murmurs of discontent already from them or their families. By promoting one beyond a point, we by default end up belittling another’s contribution.

This brings us to the lack of policy on the Centre’s part regarding people working for the country in ‘undisclosed’ roles, which is responsible for the ugly situation that obtains following Sarabjit’s killing. There is always a chance of such people someday coming out with their role. The government has to be prepared with a plan on how to address the situation if we want to avoid national embarrassment. The post-Sarabjit developments have given reason to many hitherto silent underground workers to speak up. That negates the very purpose of the work they were employed for.

Thought for the Day

Personality is everything in art and poetry.— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

ARTICLE

Bloody political turmoil
Indo-Pak relations remain hostage
by S. Nihal Singh

Indo-Pakistani relations run in cycles, and often prospects of smooth sailing are demolished overnight by gusts of strong head winds. So it has proved to be in the latest tempest that has overtaken the two countries with competitive populism here confronting a delicate and bloody prelude to the first normal elections in Pakistan.

Sarabjit Singh’s death in the circumstances in which it occurred in a Pakistani prison is a tragedy for both countries. Priming for the 2014 general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party in particular raised the pitch considerably as the nation mourned the loss of a man who had already endured suffering for more than 20 years. One tragedy was further compounded by another, the attack on a Pakistani prisoner in a Jammu jail.

Beyond the cause of the present mourning in India, it is time to look past the rhetoric and the anguish to determine the kind of steps the two countries can adopt to maintain a measure of sanity and stability in these relations. From India’s point of view, this exercise has become far more difficult in view of the disturbing developments in the neighbouring country. The nature of the problem was starkly brought home in Islamabad by the shooting down of the chief prosecutor of cases involving not merely the death of Benazir Bhutto but also the murderous attacks in Mumbai in 2008.

Indeed, the stark fact that is emerging is that Pakistan is no longer a normal country. Terrorism, which the state agencies partly sponsored for their own ends, has now become a Frankenstein monster seeking to devour the country. Pakistan is persevering with its first normal elections for good reasons, but the circumstances in which they are being held, with liberal candidates and parties targeted by militants through murder and mayhem, are anything but normal. And elements in the Army establishment and the spy agency ISI that sponsored terrorists are, more often than not, themselves the victims of attacks.

Two factors have further complicated the picture. One is the impending departure of American and other NATO troops from Afghanistan next year, the other is the distraction posed by the return from self-exile of the former Army ruler, General Pervez Musharraf. Islamabad is, of course, a major player in Afghanistan and is still essential to American needs, if only for the smooth return of millions of tonnes of US equipment and war material through Pakistani territory. Second, the Masharraf return and his travails in courts, quite contrary to his own expectations of being treated as a returning hero, is testing the patience of the Army leadership, still a major power factor in the country.

The problems posed by the militarisation of Pakistan’s political space are growing exponentially and it will be up to the next elected government to begin to tackle them. But if Pakistani political pundits’ expectations of a victory for Mr Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League (N) prove true, with former cricket hero Imran Khan’s political venture performing well, they would have to seek a way out of the consequences of Pakistani power elements’ long serenade to militants using them as instruments of their policies. Even with the best of intentions, it will be a long haul.

The fact that the Pakistani civilian leadership has come as far it has implies a tacit understanding by the military brass that it was time for them to stay in the background for the moment while continuing to exercise influence in key foreign policy and security areas. But in the courts’ enthusiasm for hauling General Musharraf over the coals on a string of charges he faces, the civilian establishment and the legal fraternity are getting dangerously close to hurting the Army’s amour proper in humiliating a former Army commander, whatever mistakes he might have committed.

Against this background, it is clear that Indo-Pakistani relations will remain hostage to the bloody political turmoil taking place in a country in transition in which the so-called military industrial complex remains the dominant factor, despite the progress the civilian leadership has made. And the Army’s, and Pakistan’s, priority will remain the consolidation of their position in the post-American phase in Afghanistan. Relations with India will be determined in part by Pakistan’s political and other moves in relation to its northern neighbour.

Given this reality, what should India’s approach be? The emotional factor is an important element on both sides of the border. While jihadi elements’ aim in Pakistan is to harm India and its interests, there are elements in India who have built an ideology around a hate Pakistan platform. Neither of these forces can be a guide to the imperative of following a level-headed policy that must be determined by the reality of the geographical proximity of the two neighbours and the burdens of the Partition millions across border still carry.

In relation to Afghanistan, India nurtures the suspicion that Islamabad will seek to diminish Indian influence to the extent possible and the United States will not protest too much over Pakistan’s actions because its main priority would be to leave the luckless country as smoothly as it can with essential help provided by Islamabad. There are elements not only in Afghanistan but also in neighbouring Iran desiring a significant Indian presence for their own reasons. How this power plays out remains to be determined.

While the manner of Sarabjit Singh’s death has been a disturbing development, this event alone or its unfortunate retaliation in an Indian jail cannot be allowed to mar the future Indo-Pakistani trajectory. Any attempt by Pakistan in its new effort to buttress its democracy would be a good omen for India. But it will be neither an easy nor quick fix because Islamabad has many demons to fight and conquer. An encouraging factor is the number of parties and politicians who have been ready to face bullets and murder to achieve their legitimate objectives. It would be right for Indian civil society to recognise the sacrifices so many in Pakistan are ready to make to fight militants and extremism for the good of their country.

MIDDLE

Thatcher's Indian connection
by R.C. Rajamani

The Indian media coverage given to the death and funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was truly mind-boggling. All national newspapers carried the story on their front pages with plenty of photographs. There were analytical articles too that kept coming in for days together. Parliament too paid homage to Thatcher. The Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari, a former diplomat, observed that lady Thatcher was a leader of great eminence and would be remembered for her notable contributions to the evolution of relations between India and the United Kingdom.

Was it all due to the 'colonial hang-over'? Or did the Iron Lady deserve the massive coverage? In fact, it is a combination of the two. There is no doubt that Thatcher was a global leader who played a major role in the Cold War era. She hit it off famously with President Ronald Reagan in their common cause against the “evil empire” (the erstwhile Soviet Union). She was Britain's first female prime minister who transformed her country's political and economic life with her conservative, free-market policies. The sobriquet Iron Lady truly fits her, the way she crushed the coalminers' strike, the way she fought a war to reclaim for Britain a small island in far off Argentina in 1982 and the way she fought the Irish Republican Army, even surviving an assassination bid.

Her critics variously called her "Margret Torture" and "Thatcher, the milk snatcher" (for ending the subsidy on free milk supplied to children in government schools). Coalminers did not forgive her even after her death. They sang ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ at a party on Margaret Thatcher’s funeral day.

No doubt, Thatcher made many enemies, even within her Conservative Party. She was notoriously unpopular among working-class communities in northern England, Wales and Scotland, where many lost their livelihoods when her government closed Britain’s mines in the 1980s. But the fact remains that she restored economic health to a seriously ailing Britain. Nations need such a leader at times of crisis.

She was an admirer of our own godman Chandra Swamy who predicted Thatcher would become PM when she was in the opposition. He advised her to wear red and Thatcher promptly did for some time! God knows if 'red' did the 'trick' for Margaret!

OPED-THE ARTS

Divorced before marriage— media and culture
Post-Independence, when editors were framing new editorial policies, they could have set an agenda for shaping cultural modernism in India as was done in many Latin American countries. Media never treated culture as an area of mainstream concern
Vandana Shukla

IN India, media has a longer history than the history of art; newspapers and magazines were used for mobilising public opinion during the freedom movement since the middle of nineteenth century. Compared to media’s association with the making of political history of India, the emergence of the field of Indian art history and art - criticism is rather young. Even younger than the contemporary art practices.

Crouching : The giant of Indian culture – receives only juvenile attention Photo by the writer

Perhaps for this reason, the role of media in creation of an infrastructure of cultural knowledge in post-colonial India has been rather abysmal. Today, when almost the entire news space is taken over by the narratives of moral decadence — of crime and corruption, and mainstream newspapers, magazines and TV channels have done away with art critics and culture analysis, it is worthwhile to examine the relationship between the arts and media.

Shedding colonial hangover

Our first art historian and philosopher, Colombo born Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, who created a pan- Asian understanding of the Indian art in the early twentieth century, rescued our much maligned monsters-the many headed gods and goddesses encountered in the caves and temples of India by the Europeans from a negative place in the world art history. As our histories and criticism were largely oral, it was with Coomaraswamy that a disciplined and structured format of art history and criticism began, one that was accessible to the West. Then, there were others, like Karl Khandelwal who played an important role in writing about and talking to artists like Amrita Sher- Gil, while it was Rudy Von Leyden, an Austrian scholar who started writing critical pieces on the Bombay Progressives for newspapers. It was perhaps for the first time, when the Progressives emerged on the Indian art scenario, media got into a serious engagement with arts. This courtship lasted for a while, newspapers and magazines were enthusiastic about the emergence of Indian signatures in the contemporary art world and this movement gave birth to, for the first time, a number of eminent art critics. But, media failed to crystallise certain ways of thinking about art and the art world.

The niche identity

In India, writing on the arts could never break the niche segment. It never acquired interest of the general readership. Art critics contributed to drawing a certain kind of crowd and fostering a certain kind of attitude towards art. They created a completely walled up area that art novices dread to enter. By turning art into an exclusive commodity, art critics did not let art enter the public sphere, where public opinion about art could place the creative arts in the mainstream. Here again we had a caste system that worked well; the common people had folk arts to claim as their arena, which was looked down upon by the gallery and auditorium visiting elite connoisseurs who maintained their exclusivity.

Later, critics like Geeta Kapoor, Gulam Sheikh, Keshav Malik, Ranjit Hoskote, Girish Sahane et. al. took art criticism to a new height with their erudite commentaries, it did not appeal the common men and women, and readership on art remained lower than four percent.

Art activity rarely ever inspired editorials or serious opinion writing. At best, it offered an informed critique of the events, but engaging readers in a serious discourse on art — its role in influencing individual and society, in education, need for better art infrastructure, trends and genres-never became central issues for the media, the way other subjects that entered media space much later could. It so happened that art became personality oriented, it created its own star system, aping the trends of Bollywood reporting. So, Husain became larger than his art, Tayab Mehta’s art became secondary to the jaw dropping price his works fetched at Sotheby’s or Christies.

The missing nucleus of modernity

Post-independence, when editors were framing their editorial policies, they could have set an agenda for shaping cultural modernism in India, as was done in many Latin American countries, where poets and thinkers became symbols of change rather than the politicians, with their red beacon flashing cars. Media never treated culture as an area of mainstream concern, relegating powerful tools of cultural modernism like theatre, poetry and visual art to entertainment.

The post- independence Nehruvian modernity, with its simultaneous emphasis on a self-critical national renaissance and an internationalist expansion of horizons should have included culture at its nucleus- the way it included science and technology, and media should have played a major role in shaping cultural modernity, as it did for a while to bring IPTA or the Progressives in focus, but that space was soon usurped by trivia.

That, production of art is not separate from larger political and cultural questions, that, in the absence of cultural modernism, true modernism will remain a mirage, escaped the focus of our editors. Somewhere someone clubbed culture with entertainment, and no one questioned the veracity of this decision. Serious issues that relate to the cultural fabric of a society were either relegated to the columns on entertainment, or, were put on such high pedestal that they became undecipherable for common men and women. The validity of such editorial decisions was not debated when a new media was shaping up in India. The way mass media has treated complex issues of culture; drastic changes brought about by globalisation, consumerism and migration in the cultural arena that triggered serious issues of alienation and identity crisis have been equated with naach gaana. And, for some strange reason, reporting on art and culture acquired feminine tone, it was not as macho as reporting politics or defence.

How did it come about?

Indian media largely viewed creative arts as a leisurely activity that hinges on personal vagaries. We did not witness art activism per se, nor did we throw up a movement in art. Most art remained influenced by what was happening in the west, it is only very recently that Indian artists have found confidence in their distinct Indianness in the choice of subject matter and style, primarily with their exposure in foreign galleries that enhanced the ‘rate’ of their art works. Major landmarks of Indian history-like the partition of 1947, remain almost unrepresented in our art, artists have largely been looking for inspiration elsewhere. In theatre, a few instances that could come close to some kind of ‘activism’ were witnessed in West Bengal and Maharashtra, but they died their own death. In creative writing, small pockets of forceful writings in vernacular remained subservient to English, and failed to receive the required media attention. Therefore, reporting on arts could never find its purposefulness for society.

Art activity in India never reached that level where it could create excitement that would involve masses and could be of relevance to people outside the domain of art. Like Nicanor Parra’s poetry was written on bill boards in Chile. Or, even Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s couplets blew a siren for change in Pakistan. In our media it acquired the week-end space for leisurely reading, inching towards entertainment. No art is created in a social and political vacuum. Art is a mirror of society and so is media, if art is not happening in a social and political vacuum then how is it that media continues to reflect that vacuum in the context of art? Why has media failed to contextualize art with the larger socio-political issues that it is supposed to be voicing?

Perhaps an answer to this dichotomy is offered in ‘Life is Elsewhere’, wherein Milan Kundera, the Czech author narrates an anecdote where the poet, Jaromil, is called to read poetry in a Police Academy. It is a comment on the status of artists, writers and poets in a civilized society. The artist must always seek approval of the bureaucracy or aristocracy, whatever be the case. He must conform to their ideology to practice art, or remain inert. The artist can have a license to create ideas, but not ideology. If he fails to do so, his art dies for lack of support and recognition. Or, it is viewed as a weapon of destruction, from which the society must be protected. Media takes interest only in the latter part. One is also acutely aware of the fact that, India could not produce a Bansky or, a P183 or not even Ai Weiwei to create buzz around art activity that would make a general reader sit up and get involved in a process of cultural change that comes through the route of arts and literature.

The unproductive culture

In the absence of a well drawn policy for culture and a developed infrastructure for culture promotion, artists and art academies remain dependent on the government grants for their sustenance. The government apathy to art and matters related to culture is well known. They support art and artists with an attitude of extending a favour- for funding an ‘unproductive’ activity.

The difference between Broadway and Mandi House is simple; whereas all the 40 theatres in the centre of New York earn millions for their professionally managed shows for which tickets are sold on an average $100 per seat, and premier shows could go as high as $350 per seat, our pass seeking culture, promoted by the subsequent governments in the name of promotion of art have kept the artist community dependent on approvals of all sorts.

It is worthwhile to know, by an Act of Parliament in 1759, the British had decided to give British citizen an idea about his place in the world by way of promotion of art and culture. The British government made a commitment to funding the arts as an inspirational statement of who the British wish to be. Despite serious economic constraints, the British stick to this commitment, which was underlined in the way the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games -2012 was conducted.

Arts and culture offer economic potential- both direct and indirect, that has not been understood by our arts and culture management. Investment on arts is not an add on; arts are fundamental to the success of a nation. In a report published by Nesta (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), in UK , the creative economy employs 2.5 million people and makes up 10 per cent of the overall economy. Growth in employment in the creative sector runs at about four times the average. In a report published by Financial Times this July, the US economy will officially recognise an extra $70 billion as the capital value of “artistic originals”, a category that in itself will contribute an extra 0.5 per cent to the GDP of the world’s largest economy. In other words, the US is recognising the full value of its own creative and culture sector.

When culture is treated as part of the nation building activity, which indirectly creates a delicate balance between diverse forces; the Japanese stoicism is well celebrated - a product of their cultural fabric, directly it contributes to an important segment of economy, if only it is treated as mainstream activity and thus receives media attention it deserves.