Islamofascism: Muslims in denial mode

Hyderabad bombing: Killed by Islamists but Muslims won't admit it!

Islam’s enemy within
At a recent conference on radical Islam, attended by scholars from India and South-East Asian countries, it was irritating to hear professors from Jamia Millia Islamia repeating the canard about the 9/11 terrorist attacks being an elaborate conspiracy hatched by the Christians (of America) and the Jews (of Israel) to “defame Islam” and use the globally televised images of the imploding twin towers as justification for the US-led “war against Muslims”. The first time I heard this astonishing fiction was in Cairo where I had arrived soon after the terrifying attack, led by an Egyptian, Mohammed Atta, on the World Trade Center, one of the symbols of American power. The war in Iraq had not yet begun but the Taliban hoodlums, including Mullah Omar, were fleeing Afghanistan to save their lives. The fall of a ‘model Islamic state’ and the walloping the ‘soldiers of god’ were receiving from the invading kafirs had greatly distressed my friends in the Muslim Brotherhood who had wrongly believed that the flattening of the twin towers would signal the liberation of Cairo, not Kabul. Instead, they were shocked to see a tsunami of anger striking Arab shores. Rather than accept the 9/11 attacks had proved to be counter-productive, they chose the path of denial. Whispered allegations, anonymous e-mail and stories buried in the inside pages of Arabic newspapers began to do the rounds, spreading the patently false claim that the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon had been planned and executed by the Americans and the Israelis. To substantiate this absurd claim, there were further absurd claims — Jews did not report for work on that fateful day, only the Mossad could have carried out an operation of this scale, the CIA had ensured the hijackers would not be frisked, etc. I found the assertions mildly repugnant and largely amusing, attributing the fiction to the street Arab’s lack of access to facts.
Seven years later, when I hear that absurd claim being repeated, that too by those who should know better, I don’t feel amused, but irritated. And so it happened at the conference on radical Islam when a professor of Jamia Millia Islamia questioned the authenticity of events as they unfolded on September 11, 2001, two of his colleagues nodding their heads vigorously in approval. My irritation gave way to anger when he went on to suggest that analyses of video images of the hijacked aircraft being flown into the twin towers showed they were “studio-generated”. Only someone who has undergone lobotomy would say something so stupid in public. But more than being silly, there’s a sinister purpose to such comments and they should not be attributed to a lobotomised brain; Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil would vouch for this. A lie repeated again and again, as Paul Joseph Goebbels proved through word and deed, tends to be believed by the masses. Islamofascists, both at home and abroad, who peddle the myth that ‘Islam is the solution’ and thus see nothing wrong with the ghastly crimes committed in the name of Islam, would naturally take to Goebbelsian propaganda tactics like a duck takes to water. Fiction propagated slyly at conferences and seminars, mentioned between the lines in newspaper articles, and slipped into Friday sermons by mullahs after the jumma namaaz, acquires a certain legitimacy and is soon perceived as fact.
We have seen this happen on more than one occasion. When Hindus were forced to flee their ancestral homes in the Kashmir Valley by killer squads of Islamists who indulged in rapacious depredations and revelled in the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, an insidious campaign was launched, pinning the blame on Mr Jagmohan, then Governor of Jammu & Kashmir: He was accused of telling the Hindus to flee the Valley. Strangely, this fiction was believed by the secular intelligentsia which, in any event, is desperate to clutch at straws to absolve Islamic fanatics of their crimes and eager to paint Islamist marauders in the most glowing of colours. Similar tactics were — and continue to be — used in the wake of the slaughter of kar sevaks in Godhra and to tar Hindus by blaming them for the violence that followed. After the bombing of commuter trains in Mumbai, killing 187 people, it was blatantly suggested by our homegrown Islamists that the massacre was the handiwork of either “Government agencies” or “Hindu organisations”.
They are now using the same tactics in their response to the jihadi attack on Jaipur on May 14, in which at least 80 people were killed and many more maimed. The Hindustan Express, a Delhi-based Urdu newspaper, pontificated in an editorial comment on May 16, “Apart from elements like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Al Qaeda or HuJI (who may possibly be involved in these explosions) why should we not think also of those international powers and agencies who are known to the Government for their discomfort towards Indo-Pak peace?” Why not, indeed! The Jamaat-e-Islami’s biweekly journal, Daawat, was nauseatingly sly in its comments on May 19, “The truth cannot be out without changing the formula for the probe into the bomb blasts. Instead of going through the formality of a probe and connecting the links, we will have to see which group of people gets political benefit out of such incidents.” The only group that stands to benefit from the bloodbath in Jaipur, the Jamaat-e-Islami, whose mullahs pretend to be as innocent as Goldilocks, needs to be told, comprises those who subscribe to the slogan, “Islam is the solution.”
These are the people who are at ease with explosives being strapped to an eight-year-old girl and the button on the remote control being pushed as she reaches out to take a chocolate from a soldier (not an American) in Iraq. They are untouched and unmoved by the sight of the blood of innocent victims, as was spilled on the streets of Jaipur, of their perverse ideology. They are fully aware of their criminal misdeeds, but they want us to believe they are not to blame. And if you dare point a finger at radical Islam and its army of Islamofascists, they will accuse you of indulging in Islamophobia.
It’s time we called their bluff. The only other option is to subjugate ourselves to those who know no mercy and meekly accept Islam as the solution.

Coffee Break / Sunday Pioneer / May 25, 2008

All that glitters is not Dubai

All that glitters is not Dubai
The shockingly superfluous reportage of life in Dubai in Indian newspapers and news magazines, which would have us believe that the streets of this emirate, from where once upon a time dhows would set sail for Bombay laden with contraband now sold at discounted rates in the shabbiest of our malls, are paved with gold, is not quite the whole picture of what it means to live and work in this booming, flush-with-money former Bedouin outpost where India's bold and the beautiful, bored with Page 3 parties, fly off to for extended weekends of unbridled hedonism. The glittering high life that we get to read about is restricted to Dubai's wafer thin creamy layer, comprising sheikhs who can afford to squander millions of dollars for the company of camels declared winners at 'beauty contests', jet-setting fund managers with mind-boggling expense accounts and a variety of wheeler-dealers, many of whom are involved in 'export-import' businesses. Then there are those who have invested in property built on reclaimed land in the Palm Islands (three palm tree shaped man-made islands) and The World (a man-made archipelago of 300 islands), billed as the playground of the fabulously rich who are no longer charmed by the sun and the sea of the Bahamas and other such exotic places.
But behind the shimmering glass-and-chrome façade of the Persian Gulf's most famous destination that has attracted millions of expatriate workers hopeful of striking it big lurks another face of Dubai. Here there are no sprawling malls with rosewater fountains, swank cordon bleu restaurants and bustling nightclubs. Instead, you will find dark and dingy, overcrowded labour camps where men bunk it out four to an eight-by-ten cubicle and dream of the day they can return home with a pocketful of dirhams. The fantastic cityscape that you see and the overflowing wealth that you encounter, have been created by these overworked, underpaid men -- and women -- from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other South and South-East Asian countries. Emerging as the 21st century's El Dorado where Tiger Woods is paid a million dollars to hit a ball into the sea from a newly-built hotel's helipad, Dubai continues to treat its expatriate blue collar workers as slaves of the medieval era, denying them human dignity and rights whose absence is curiously ignored by those from the West who are the prime beneficiaries of this emirate's booming economy. President Bill Clinton once famously described Dubai as a "role model" for others although he was sufficiently enraged by human rights violations in the Balkans to despatch Nato bombers.
Nobody would suggest that the entire expatriate community is condemned to a life of grim existence. But the vast majority of Dubai's 2.7 million foreign workers (of which 1.5 million are Indians) registered with the Ministry of Labour finds itself excluded from both the emirate's prosperity and the trickle down benefits of an economy shooting through the roof, despite the roof getting pushed higher and higher. The number of such expatriates increases by leaps and bounds when you add to their ranks domestic help, drivers, gardeners, 'free zone' workers and those without legal papers. Immigration sponsorship laws have been designed in a manner that vests employers with limitless power while stripping employees of all rights, including the right to walk out of a job. Even if expatriate workers want to give it all up and take the next flight to, say, Kochi, they cannot do so because passports and travel papers have to be kept in the custody of employers. So, in a sense, they are no different from indentured labour and must toil tirelessly till their contracts come to an end. What makes the situation doubly worse is the fact that these contracts are signed only after workers reach Dubai and their bargaining power has been vastly reduced; more often than not, the terms and conditions of these contracts are entirely different from what had been promised by recruiting agents.
Meanwhile, there is no guarantee that wages will be paid on time. There are numerous cases of contractors winding up operations and leaving workers in the lurch with huge backlogs of unpaid wages. At Burj Dubai, touted as the world's tallest building, workers forced to meet construction targets in the most appalling conditions and in violation of basic safety norms, have gone on strike more than once for not being paid their wages or being denied medical care. Workers have gone on strike at other construction sites, too. Earlier this year, a Dubai court, in a first of its kind ruling, sentenced 45 Indian construction workers to six months in jail, to be followed by their deportation, for joining a protest against poor wages.
A common refrain that one gets to hear, provided you are interested in hearing it, is of working hours being extended beyond what the contract stipulates and without overtime wages. There are numerous reports of employers cutting back on expenses by not paying the utility bills for labour camps. So garbage piles up in festering heaps, power supply is disconnected and transport to construction sites is withdrawn. If you don't show up for work, not because you don't want to but because you can't, you are penalised. It never gets too hot in Dubai for workers toiling under the desert Sun -- you can drop dead but not take a break.
Many of these workers scrimp on personal expenses so that they can send most of their earnings to families back home where debts have to be repaid and hungry mouths fed. With the dirham, which is linked to the dollar, no longer a strong currency, the rupee value of workers' remittances has declined precipitously in the past couple of years even as wages have remained constant. Some estimates place the decline at between 25 and 30 per cent; others say it is more. As a result, Dubai/UAE-based grooms are no longer a hot ticket in Kerala.
In the poorly-lit, ill-ventilated and crowded labour camps of Dubai, far away from where DJ Aqeel spins out foot-stomping, hip-swaying music, expatriate workers brood over their miserable lives and despair at the thought of having to cope with slave-drivers at their workplaces till their contracts come to an end. Many are driven to committing suicide, although statistics are kept a tightly guarded secret and even the Indian mission will pretend either ignorance or lack of information. It must be conceded, though, that Ambassador Talmiz Ahmed has been trying to change things for the better, but there is no guarantee that his successor will be equally pro-active. The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, of course, couldn't be bothered about the unwashed masses since it is busy pandering to rich NRIs and PIOs disdainful of India.

Tourism is killing Goa

Punjabi munda despoiling Goa
It's hot and muggy in Goa this time of the year. The enervating heat hangs languidly in the still air. The rustling of the drooping fronds of coconut palms, heavy with ripening fruit, that accompanies the occasional gust of blistering wind, laden with pre-monsoon humidity, breaks the mid-morning silence. In the distance, the harsh cackle of sea gulls rises and falls in a rhythmic chant.
But despite the heat and the humidity, Goa, where I spent most of this past week attending a seminar, was a welcome break from life in the country's dust bowl, also known as Delhi, which has now grown to become the National Capital Region. Here summer means scorching heat that leaves your head throbbing, negotiating traffic jams made worse by rising tempers, infuriating dust storms that make breathing next to impossible, and an endless wait for what most years is an elusive monsoon.
By mid-April, the little foliage that dots the barren city from where India is ruled begins to turn shades of brown. By mid-May, plants and shrubs begin to shrivel, while the trees, or what remains of them after Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's gross act of chopping thousands of them down for a bogus bus rapid transit scheme for which responsibility is yet to be fixed (this never happens in this wondrous 'democracy' of ours), barely survive till the monsoon and its scattered rain. Delhi looks dusty, grey and dirty in summer.
In sharp contrast, Goa is verdant and lush. The hibiscus shrubs and the honeysuckle creepers are in full bloom. The air is redolent with the fragrance of flowers that we get to see in Delhi for a brief while during what passes for spring. The evenings are cool and the sea breeze is energising.
The only disconcerting distraction is the screeching of children and the uncouth, loud chatter of their parents - Delhi families visiting Goa courtesy incentive schemes offered by Papaji's office. They wrinkle their noses at the sight of sea food platters and noisily look for dal makhni and chicken butter masala. The distant cackle of sea gulls is replaced by the strains of bhangra, snatches of whose lyrics float in with the sea breeze. It's about a 'Punjabi munda' and a 'kudi Gujarat di'. Mr IK Gujral would say it's about national integration; Mr Narendra Modi would be alarmed.
The local newspapers in Goa are refreshingly different from Delhi's so-called 'national' newspapers, which reflect the concerns of politicians and their lackeys. In Goa, the concerns are more related to the people and their daily lives. For instance, a spurt in school dropout rates, which would be ignored by most 'national' newspapers, merits sufficient concern to make it to the day's top slot on the front page. At the moment, Goans are deeply worried about the garbage piling up in designated dumping grounds with no disposal system in place.
According to news reports, Goa produces 300 tonnes of garbage every day. This is apart from the bio-medical waste generated by hospitals and nursing homes. Given the size of the State, it's a huge amount of festering garbage and unless a disposal system is put in place, could begin to have an adverse impact on both Goa's environment as well as the health of Goans.
Obviously the tourism industry contributes to the accumulating garbage in a big way, as it does to the blighting of Goan culture and way of life. Contrary to popular opinion, not every Goan is excited by the sight of foreign back-packers and desi 'incentive scheme' holidaymakers. While it is true that tourism does create jobs and gives a boost to the State's economy, it also upsets those who just wish to be left alone.
It is, therefore, not surprising that there should be an incipient anti-outsider backlash building up among Goans. Last Thursday, the local edition of The Times of India front-paged the findings of a survey conducted by Synovate India, a leading market research agency, which clearly point to Goans beginning to resent the intrusion into their lives. This intrusion is most manifest in outsiders buying land and developing it into hotels and resorts, as well as increasing number of migrants seeking jobs in the service sector.
The survey's findings suggest that 64 per cent Goans, nearly all of them young, want a law banning the sale of land to non-Goans. The 34 per cent opposed to this law are elderly people, probably those whose children have migrated to other shores, are unable to look after their property, and thus have no compelling reason to cling on to home and hearth.
"Ban the sale of land to non-Goans, is the overwhelming response," the report says, and goes on to explain, "Our cultural identity - old ways of life, language, food and dress - is being diluted by the flow of migrants that has swelled in the last few years. Indeed, the fear of the Goan minnow being swallowed by the migrant whale is a recurrent theme... There is a reaffirmation of pride in the land's natural and manmade attributes. Both these sources of pride, say youngsters, are under threat." Most Goans feel that the tallest thing in their States should be a coconut palm.
It's easy to scoff at such resentful feelings and brand them as parochial. But it would be unwise to callously demand that Goans yield cultural and physical space just because tourists and migrants contribute to Goa's economy. There's no reason to be insensitive to local sensibilities. Yet, this is precisely what is on display. The outsider is disdainful of the insider; the despoiling of Goa does not bother those looking for cheap thrills or jobs by undercutting local rates.
Of course, the DJ at the nightclub will turn up the volume and play bhangra and the chef at the hotel will churn out maa ki daal and sarson da saag and tandoori roti for Delhi's Philistines. On the beach, vulnerable teenagers working in shacks that sell vindaloo and beer will be amenable to the illicit demands of the flotsam and jetsam from Europe and America looking for inexpensive nirvana or willing to trade sex for drugs. And owners of hotels and resorts will hire migrants because it costs less than hiring Goans.
But that does not mean everybody's happy about it. On the contrary, the unhappiness is fast morphing into anger. We can either wake up to this reality now or pay for wilfully ignoring it later.

Ten years after explosion of national pride

A decade after May 11, 1998
Ten years ago this Sunday, India stealthily conducted three nuclear tests at Pokhran, sending shockwaves around the world. The 'Powerful Five' and Janus-faced moralists like Canada and Australia were aghast and almost disbelieving -- not so much because India had decided to demonstrate its nuclear capability, which it had kept under wraps for years, but because of its audacious disregard for consequences, especially economic sanctions. The US had an additional reason to feel hugely upset: For all its 'eyes' in the sky and 'ears' on the ground, it had been taken by utter and total surprise.
Unlike PV Narasimha Rao, who almost dared the world but stopped short of conducting the crucial tests that would enable India to cross the Rubicon and emerge as a nuclear power, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee was both crafty and determined. We will never really know whether an accidental discovery by the Americans of preparations for conducting tests at Pokhran resulted in sufficient pressure being applied on Rao for him to call them off. But we do know that Mr Vajpayee instructed, and ensured, that no such discovery occurred between his giving the green signal for Operation Shakti and Buddha 'smiling' on May 11, 1998.
That demonstration of India's shakti was no doubt essentially the achievement of our scientists and technologists who toiled ceaselessly to put together, with indigenous know-how, nuclear devices of calibrated yields, including a hydrogen bomb, despite the barriers that had been raised after Mrs Indira Gandhi taunted the world with her 'peaceful' explosion of May 18, 1974, erasing forever the image of India as a nation with a begging bowl, perpetuated in no small measure by a mocking America since the days of PL 480 aid. Unlike Pakistan, we neither received nuclear technology nor burgled it from unsuspecting countries.
Hence, when the tests were conducted in May 1998, they were seen as an assertion of self-esteem and self-pride, a declaration of national resolve -- thrice over on May 11 and twice over on May 13. The front page of this newspaper captured the mood of the nation by running the story on the tests under a banner headline, 'India explodes H-Bomb', accompanied by a triumphant signed editorial, 'Explosion of self-esteem', by its editor, Mr Chandan Mitra.
Yet, it would be nothing short of cussedness to deny Mr Vajpayee the credit for daring to tread where his predecessors had feared to venture. Since Mrs Gandhi's decision to conduct the first test in 1974, all other Prime Ministers, including Rajiv Gandhi, had chosen to indulge in peacenik mumbo-jumbo about universal disarmament, hoping to join the ranks of disingenuous non-proliferationists like former US President Jimmy Carter. Mr Vajpayee chose to be different and, as subsequent events were to prove, initiated a tectonic shift in India's foreign policy and strategic posture.
Yes, it marked a break with the past, which had become so pitifully meaningless ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire. But it also marked the beginning of India's foray into a brave new world heralded by the advent of the 21st century two years later. In his own way, Mr Vajpayee foresaw the potential of India entering the 21st century as a nuclear power and acted accordingly. It helped that the BJP had never been squeamish when it came to the nuclear question.
The fallout of Pokhran II was felt on two fronts. Pakistan, enraged that it had been upstaged, conducted five nuclear tests on May 28 and a sixth test on May 30. That was Islamabad's assurance to Pakistanis that it could still steal a march over New Delhi. Almost simultaneously, donor countries turned off their taps and came down heavily with economic sanctions, apart from imposing harsh restrictions on technology transfer or whatever little of it was happening.
India rode through the storm and survived the vicious response. We continue to be a stable and responsible state, unlike Pakistan whose nuclear arsenal has become a cause for worry across the world as an unstable state implodes on itself, notwithstanding an elected Government taking over from the illegitimate regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf.
Our strategic engagement with the US to fashion a new over-arching security paradigm and the attempt to redefine our relationship with other countries, including Russia and China, both aggressively pursued by Mr Vajpayee, stands in sharp contrast to the co-option of Pakistan by the post-9/11 US-led Western alliance, not as an equal but as a client state. When the US refers to Pakistan as a "staunch ally" what it means is beggars can't be choosers.
But a decade after that stunningly awesome display of India's determination to secure its rightful place in the comity of nations, of announcing its arrival in a world where the voice of the powerful is heard over the clamour of those whose survival depends on the munificence of the 'Powerful Five', and 34 years after Mrs Gandhi posed for photographers at Pokhran, we appear to be losing the gains that accrued from Mr Vajpayee's decision to go nuclear.
Just how much we have compromised on our self-esteem, our self-pride, can be gauged from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's desperation to strike a flawed deal with the US for civil nuclear cooperation. It is reflected in the hesitation that has replaced confidence while dealing with foreign policy, most noticeably in our relations with China. It is exemplified by our reluctance to take Pokhran II to its logical conclusion by putting in place a credible minimum deterrent that is alive to changing geo-political realities and not a stagnant doctrine with an irrelevant posture.
The decline is as perceptible on the domestic front where non-governance has become the mantra of survival and as Ministers indulge their own perverse whims and fancies, a weak Prime Minister watches from the margins. It's nice to think of India as a nuclear power but that idea of India does not square up to facts that should embarrass us. Nor does it make sense to sell national honour for a nuclear agreement with America when basic issues remain untouched by either policy or programme.
It would be foolish to believe that the image of a resurgent India, that captivated the world after May 11, 1998, still obtains. The Prime Minister and his cronies in the media believe that India's deliverance depends on the 123 Agreement, that nuclear power -- as opposed to nuclear power - will take us to new heights of prosperity and a new level of strategic clout. What they forget is that in this wondrous land of ours, 67 million children below the age of five live without basic healthcare, more than a million children die every year before they complete a month of their wretched lives, and millions of adults and children still go to bed hungry even as the middle class struggles to cope with runaway prices and a tottering economy.
Mr Vajpayee had a vision for India to emerge as a powerful nation, prosperous at home, equal to others abroad. The most memorable highlight of his years as Prime Minister will no doubt remain the decision to empower India by going nuclear on May 11, 1998. But we would be unfair to his legacy if we failed to recall the beginning he had made in empowering Indians by improving their lot. That legacy has been squandered by Mr Manmohan Singh; it's not surprising that his Government should choose to shun the 10th anniversary of Pokhran II.

Israel, at 60, shows admirable grit

Israel, at 60, shows admirable grit
Our newspapers and 24x7 news channels went gaga over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's stopover in New Delhi last Tuesday. Given the exuberant, almost fawning, media coverage accorded to Mr Ahmadinejad, it would seem as if a great friend of India had come visiting although we didn't quite deserve this honour, having stabbed Iran in the back, so to say, at the behest of the 'Great Satan', otherwise known as the United States of America.
Such is the Left's influence on the media and the awesome disregard of our intellectuals -- or what passes for intellectuals -- who straddle newspapers and television channels, for India's strategic interests, that nobody has bothered to point out that a nuclear armed Iran is something we can do without. If Mr Ahmadinejad, with more than a little help from Russia and China, not to mention Pakistan's rogue nuclear establishment, is able to enrich sufficient uranium to produce an arsenal of nuclear warheads, Israel alone won't have reason to worry.
We have also elected to ignore the fact that Iran has been consistent in voting against India at the OIC even while pretending to be a 'friendly' nation. At the UN, rare is the occasion when Iran has made common cause with India, although the reverse is not true. It does not require evidence collated by the US to assert that Iran is currently forging a Shia brand of radical Islamism, much more insidious and potent than the pernicious ideology bequeathed by Sayyid Qutb to the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, with the purpose of becoming the dominant Islamic state by displacing traditional Sunni powers. In the short term this may not affect India, but in the long term it is bound to scorch us.
Nor has anybody bothered to point out that while India needs Iranian oil (and perhaps also Iranian gas), an increasingly isolated and cash-strapped Iran needs an emerging market to mobilise resources. At a time when Western democracies are loath to do business with Mr Ahmadinejad's regime, selling oil and gas to India makes eminent sense for Iran. Yes, it also makes eminent sense for India to leverage Iran's troubles to its advantage, but that would require a certain craftiness which is absent in those who preside over India's destiny. If this is true of the Congress, it is equally true of the BJP. The Left, of course, craftily conspires against India's national interests. The others really do not matter.
Meanwhile, Amit Baruah, writing in the Hindustan Times about Mr Ahmadinejad's visit, mentions something that does not figure in the other glowing reports that appeared in last Wednesday's newspapers. "In his opening remarks, Mr Ahmadinejad once again questioned the extent of the Holocaust against the Jews in World War II and felt this was used as a pretext to occupy Palestine," Amit Baruah says in his report, adding, "He also raised questions about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and felt these acted as an excuse to occupy both Iraq and Afghanistan."
Amit Baruah is a senior journalist and there is no reason to doubt the veracity of his report. Indeed, the fact that others chose not to incorporate Mr Ahmadinejad's odious anti-Semitic rant in their reports tells a story by itself -- of how our media is careful to excise those comments that may reflect poorly on individuals it places on a high pedestal. Not surprisingly, Amit Baruah's report has been picked up by Islamist Websites.
The man who now leads and inspires born-again Nazis and would like to see the remaining Jews exterminated and Israel "wiped off the face of the world" is not as daft as some people make him out to be. He used his stopover in New Delhi to repeat his outrageous lies -- that the Holocaust is Jewish fiction, Jews masterminded 9/11, and Israel is an illegitimate entity -- steeped in anti-Semitism on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day. He needed a platform and we, to our abiding shame, provided him with one.
Will we now onward allow any and every visitor to berate another nation from our soil? What if someone were to use his or her interaction with the media to denounce China and question the legitimacy of its occupation of Tibet? Have we become so soft a state that nothing matters any more? Is our foreign policy now bereft of all morals, scruples and ethics that were once considered central to our civilisational identity as a nation, as a people?
In sharp contrast to our inability to stand up and be counted, and thus be courted for our inherent strength and power, Israel remains firm as a rock in its determination to succeed against all odds. Unlike India, it is just a dot on the map, a small country that can be traversed between sunrise and sunset. Yet it is a giant among nations, ferocious in war and magnanimous in peace. In the last 15 years, ever since we established diplomatic relations, it has done nothing that can be even remotely considered to be against India's interests. Yet we are reluctant to acknowledge this friendship and stand by it.
On May 8, Israel will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its independence. During these six decades, indeed, from the time David Ben-Gurion declared Israel's independence, it has been at war with its implacable Arab foes, fighting for its survival. But that has not stopped it from emerging as a power to contend with, a David among Goliaths who won't rest till the last drop of Jewish blood has been shed. It has been the victim of unceasing calumny and perversion of history by those who blindly support the tribe of Mr Ahmadinejad and endorse their anti-Semitism.
British journalist and author Melanie Phillips, in a scintillating essay published in the latest issue of the Spectator, pithily sums up Israel's heroic struggle: "On the day after Ben-Gurion declared (Israel's) independence, six Arab armies invaded and tried to wipe it out. With the current exception of Egypt and Jordan, the Arab and Muslim world has been trying ever since... At present, the situation looks particularly ominous. Israel is menaced on several fronts...".
It is Iran which has taken over from the Arabs. In Lebanon, it is funding and arming Hizbullah whose leader Hassan Nasrallah is sworn to Israel's destruction. In Gaza, it is nursing Hamas whose army of fanatics has declared it won't rest till the last Jew is dead. In Syria, Iran is working over time to keep anti-Israeli sentiments alive. All this while building a Bomb to "wipe Israel off the face of the world" and achieve what Nasser failed in achieving 60 years ago.
Such is the 'friend' of India our media fetes.

Rusdie's Akbar isn't so great

Rushdie's Akbar isn't so great
In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold. A traveller coming this way at sunset -- this traveller, coming this way, now, along the lakeshore road-might believe himself to be approaching the throne of a monarch so fabulously wealthy that he could allow a portion of his treasure to be poured into a giant hollow in the earth to dazzle and awe his guests. And as big as the lake of gold was, it must only be a drop drawn from the sea of the larger fortune..."
Thus begins Salman Rushdie's tenth novel, The Enchantress of Florence (Random House), with the arrival of Mogor dell'Amore (Mughal of Love) at Fatehpur Sikri, the red sandstone capital city of Emperor Akbar. Mogor dell'Amore is carrying with him a secret so startling that, once told to the emperor, it will force another secret to come tumbling out of the royal family's musty cupboards stuffed with nasty tales of gore and lofty stories of Mughal glory, forcing Akbar to order the redrawing of his genealogical tree by the palace artist, a brooding man given to dark thoughts.
Rushdie has tried to recreate life in two cities separated by land and sea. There's Fatehpur Sikri, where Akbar agonised over faith, fidelity and filial loyalty -- when and how would Salim, remarkably cruel as a young boy, turn on him? -- while unbridled hedonism prevailed in the bed chambers of princes, princesses and others less privileged. Then there's Niccolo Machiavelli's Florence where seductive mistresses cast magical spells -- tulips painted on underclothes -- and authority is exercised through appalling torture even as humanist philosophy sprouts from its violence scorched soil. What is common to both places is the brutality of power.
Mogor dell'Amore, with his distinctive European features and yellow hair, gets to tell his secret to Akbar after demonstrating his 'magical powers': He is the son of a Mughal princess, the forgotten youngest half-sister (the Mughal court, let's not forget, till it lasted, was teeming with half-siblings, each conspiring against the other) of Babar, the grandfather of Akbar. How Qara Koz (Lady Black Eyes) becomes the mistress of Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune, and the rest of the tale is told in the manner of The Thousand and One Nights. But Rushdie, for all his efforts to create magic through words -- "His hair was long and black as evil and his lips were full and red as blood"; "It was as if every man in the city had turned werewolf and was howling at the moon"; "So it was that Shah Ismail of Persia drowned in the 17-year-old princess's black eyes"; "She unleashed the beauty she had kept veiled and he was lost" -- fails to take his readers (or at least this reader) on a magical mystery tour. His first historical novel, woven around romance and fantasy, heavily researched (as the detailed bibliography shows) and strenuously crafted, does not quite add weight to his admirable repertoire of fiction. Rushdie began to slip with The Moor's Last Sigh, and hasn't quite stopped sliding down the hill since then. His ethereal Jodha Bai, who satiated the mortal Akbar's desire by scratching him -- "she was adept at the seven types of unguiculation, which is to say the art of using the nails to enhance the act of love" -- is a pathetic parody of history. Was there ever a Jodha Bai in Akbar's palace? "She existed," writes Rushdie, "She was immortal, because she had been created by love."
To his credit, though, Rushdie stops short of venerating Akbar, and mocks at those who refer to him as 'Akbar the Great', for that would be tautology and utterly silly. And when Akbar would say, "Allah-o-Akbar", as he did before chopping off the "unnecessary head" of a "pompous little twerp", the Rana of Cooch Naheen (that's what Hindu rulers, including in brave Rajputana where tales of valour outnumber the grains of the desert's sand, had allowed themselves to be reduced to under Mughal tutelage) did he mean "God is Great" or "God is Akbar"? That's a question nobody would dare ask, for secular myth-making has placed a glowing halo around the head of Akbar, who in real life was as great and merciful as his god but of which little is mentioned in our history books.
In an interview to Reuters, Rushdie said writing The Enchantress of Florence "saved him from the wreckage of his divorce last year from fourth wife Padma Lakshmi". By spinning a yarn from palace intrigue and bedroom politics, by taking refuge in magical realism, he managed to escape the real world which, at that moment, had turned cold to him. "It was a good place to go at a time when my private life was in a state of wreckage, and yes it was, I suppose, a bit of a refuge," Rushdie told Reuters. "I think in the end what got me through it was the long familiarity of the necessary discipline of writing a novel. I found that in the end a lifetime's habit of just going to my desk and doing a day's work and not allowing myself not to do it is what got me back on track. I was derailed for a while. I was in bad shape and it brought me back to myself," the writer explained.
While that cathartic experience may have helped him survive a personal crisis, it has not really produced a book that's worth comparing to his early novels. But then, it does provide a glimpse of what life may have been like within the walls of Akbar's city where charlatans and philanderers, flatterers and chatterers, connived and plotted as a Mughal megalomaniac, not quite sure of his faith as also that of others -- "In the melancholy after battle, as evening fell upon the empty dead, below the broken fortress melting into blood, within earshot of a little waterfall's nightingale song... the emperor in his brocade tent sipped watered wine and lamented his gory genealogy... He was not only a barbarian philosopher and a crybaby killer, but an egotist addicted to obsequuiousness and sycophancy... He felt burdened by the names of the marauders past, the names from which his name descended in cascades of human blood", presided over the destiny of Hindustan. As for life in Florence, we will leave that for another day.

Coffee Break / Sunday Pioneer / April 27, 2008.

India crawls before China

Torch relay was a pathetic farce
Early last week the popular news portal, rediff.com, carried a delightful story about how China’s men in blue, who are accompanying the Olympic torch on its journey from Oympia to Beijing, threw Indian journalists out of IOC president Suresh Kalmadi’s office. A connected apocryphal story doing the rounds is that Mr Kalmadi did not so much as express a whimper of protest at this obnoxious behaviour by members of China’s elite People’s Armed Police whose primary job is to ‘control riots’ and ‘maintain domestic stability’. Seventy of these tough cops have been selected to form the ‘Flame Protection Squad’ and travel to 21 countries while their comrades patrol the streets of Lhasa ‘controlling riots’ and ‘maintaining domestic stability’ using means that have understandably met the approval of Gen Pervez Musharraf.
The chairman of the 2012 London Olympics organising committee, Mr Sebastian Coe, has described these men in blue tracksuits with snarling faces as “thugs” while Mr David Douillet, a French Olympic official, has lashed out at them for “not knowing how to handle protests and acting as robots or watchdogs”. Mr Douillet should have known better: There are no protests in China and at the slightest hint of dissent, authorities unleash retribution which is so brutal that not only the dissenters but the rest of the world is also shocked and awed. The men in blue, or whatever, were raring to have a go at protesters in Delhi. Thankfully, by barricading central Delhi, making it a no-entry zone, and deploying 21,000 security personnel, including NSG commandos who are trained to take on hijackers and terrorists, the organisers of Thursday’s tamasha made sure there was no contact between protesters and the ‘Flame Protection Squad’. So severe were the restrictions that the stalls were empty and the torch-bearers ran the 2.3-km distance between Vijay Chowk and India Gate with only a handful of children and officials cheering them.
There were far more people — and many of them Indians — at the protest rallies elsewhere than at the venue of the torch relay. Everybody else steered clear of Lutyens’ Delhi or stayed at home and watched a movie. On Tuesday, the Home Ministry issued a circular, virtually shutting down all offices in the vicinity, including the Prime Minister’s Office, on Thursday. “All windows and doors of all buildings opening towards Rajpath must be closed between 1 pm and 6 pm,” the circular said. Strangely, the directive added, “It must be ensured that no smoke is allowed to emanate from these buildings.” Incinerators installed on the roofs of North Block and South Block, used for destroying old files, had to be shut down. Members of Parliament could not attend the ongoing session. The actual schedule of the relay was kept a top secret even from ‘VIP guests’ who, barring a handful, did not turn up for the event. Mr Kalmadi, of course, looked important and busy, and later held up traffic to Indira Gandhi International Airport — he even managed to delay 20 flights, including many to foreign destinations. Mr Kalmadi is no doubt pleased as Punch and thinks the relay has been a grand success, as do those in Government who cravenly made a mockery of India’s democratic credentials to keep China in good humour.
On Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement, appreciating the “great efforts” by the Government of India for the smooth torch run. “China expresses its thanks for the warm support and participation of the Indian people and the great efforts by the Indian side,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s office told PTI. Participation of the Indian people? The state-run Chinese media, hailed the ‘smooth’ relay, and Global Times, a publication of People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, claimed “Tibetan separatist forces were frustrated”. No they weren’t; the Rajghat to Jantar Mantar protest march bears evidence to this fact. The China Daily reported the Olympic torch was welcomed in Delhi with “traditional pomp and pageantry”. Presumably by 21,000 security personnel! Along with its cock-and-bull report, the China Daily carried on its front page a photograph of Aamir Khan running with the torch.
We don’t know whether Aamir Khan, while trotting with the Olympic torch and posing for camerapersons, had a prayer in his heart for Tibet, but he surely had Coca-Cola on his mind. The stretch between Vijay Chowk and India Gate was carved up among corporate sponsors, including Coke and Lenovo, many of whom are also sponsoring the Beijing Olympics. In a BusinessWeek article headlined ‘Tibet could sap Coke’s Olympic zing’, Chi-Chu Tschang writes, “Coke, along with Chinese computer company Lenovo and South Korean electronics giant Samsung, has spent millions of dollars (the companies won’t disclose the exact amounts) to sponsor the relay. Lenovo designed the torch and provided free laptops to Olympic officials.”
But let’s get back to Aamir Khan and Coca-Cola. If you think he ran with the torch to uphold the ancient Grecian spirit of the Olympic Games, as his publicists, apologists of China in the Government of India and assorted friends of China would have us believe, you are absolutely wrong. The Hindustan Times has quoted Mr Venkatesh Kini, vice-president, marketing, Coca-Cola India, as saying, “Aamir Khan is our brand ambassador; people associate our brand with his face.” Similarly, Lenovo fielded Saif Ali Khan. Mr Prasanna Savnoor, general manager, marketing, Lenovo India, has been quoted as saying, “Saif Ali Khan has been associated with Lenovo for a long time. He represents the suave, intelligent, modern Indian man.” So, it wasn’t about promoting the spirit of the games after all; it was about getting paid for promoting Coca-Cola and Lenovo. They and their ilk are truly ‘modern Indian men’ — their lack of scruples is more than made up by their love for lucre.
The Olympic Games have not only been politicised but also commercialised. China will cynically use the Beijing games to make a larger political statement of Chinese power while sponsors will use it to promote consumer products. Where does the ‘Olympic spirit’ fit into such crass display of political might and financial clout?

Coffee Break / The Pioneer / April 20, 2008

Hunger stares us in the face

Hungry kya? But
there’s no food
It’s been a week of disconcerting news. Events at home and abroad, along with grim predictions by those who should know, would suggest that the human race is heading for a Malthusian disaster. The ‘checks’ that the British demographer elaborated on, based on his thesis of rising subsistence levels leading to increasing population growth till the supply of food can no longer meet demand, appear to be coming true. We could, in the not so distant future, find ourselves fighting for rapidly dwindling food supplies. The catastrophic consequences defy imagination.
At home, the most worrying news about hunger and looming starvation has been emanating from two Communist-ruled States, Kerala and West Bengal. Since both are at a distance from Delhi, our so-called ‘national’ media, especially 24x7 news channels, have chosen to gloss over what’s happening in the eastern and southern hinterland. Ms Mayawati calling Mr Rahul Gandhi names and babus demanding more money for their exacting job of spinning red tape, apart from titillating details of the glittering high life of the bold and the beautiful, have been grabbing more media space and time than the spectre of hunger that is stalking vast tracts of West Bengal and Kerala.
It’s difficult to imagine verdant Kerala with its undulating paddy fields, toddy-rich palms, lagoons and backwaters teeming with fish, dazzling jewellery stores the size of shopping malls, booming real estate fuelled by millions of dollars that are dutifully sent to families back home by expatriate Malayalees, could find itself in the vice-like grip of a food crisis that’s worsening by the day. But it’s true. People in ‘God’s Own Country’ are alarmed by the prospect of returning empty-handed from grocery stories, many of which have already put up ‘Rice Not Available’ signs.
According to conservative estimates, Kerala’s annual demand for rice, the staple for Malayali meals, hovers around 30 million tonnes. The State, perched on the Malabar coast, has limited cultivable land and can at best produce up to five million tonnes of rice. The remaining has to be imported from other rice-producing States. Till last year, the bulk of the shortfall was met with imports from Andhra Pradesh, but the situation has radically changed this year.
A new law in Andhra Pradesh limits the export of rice to 25 per cent of the actual produce. This has obviously done with the purpose of increasing supplies, and thus depressing prices, within the State. There is nothing wrong with this approach; after all, the Government of Andhra Pradesh has to look after the State’s interests before it can look after those of Kerala. But the sudden fall in supplies from Andhra Pradesh has left Kerala in a jam. Two other factors have coalesced to make a bad situation worse: The Food Corporation of India has trimmed the amount of rice supplied through the public distribution system by a whopping 96,000 tonnes; and, unexpected heavy rain has destroyed one lakh tonne of processed paddy.
So, Malayalees are now forced to pay an ever-increasing price for rice that is fast disappearing from the markets. Three of the four major markets for rice – Kochi, Kollam, Kozhikode and Thrissur – have run out of stocks; stocks at Kozhikode are depleting fast. On Saturday, parboiled rice in Kerala was selling between Rs 22 and Rs 23 a kilo, way above what it was selling for a couple of months ago. The CPI(M)-led Left Front Government, loathe to admit that there is a food crisis and people, more so the economically disadvantaged, could soon face hunger, however insists that rice is selling for Rs 18.50 a kilo. For once Marxist propaganda stands exposed as fiction, even among the party faithful.
Ironically, retail stores run by Reliance, which have been at the receiving end of Marxist ire and the anger of traders dependent on small retailers, have seized upon this crisis to convert it into a publicity opportunity. Friends tell me that Reliance stores are selling rice at Rs 17.50 a kilo, which is a rupee less than the price touted by the Government and far less than the market price. But such gimmicks are unsustainable and sooner or later Reliance stores will also have to put up ‘Rice Not Available’ signs. Meanwhile, Malayalees are pinning their hopes to promises made by Orissa and Chhattisgarh to supply rice -- by when and how much is anybody’s guess.
In West Bengal, tales of hunger and starvation emanating from districts that witnessed food riots last autumn and where cereals have all but disappeared from ration shops, have a tragic sociological twist to them. Many of the men and women who are on the verge of starvation are elderly and, needless to add, indigent. Abandoned by families which have migrated to Delhi and Mumbai, they can neither work for a living nor afford the prices demanded by hoarders who also happen to be, not so coincidentally, local party bosses on whose support and ill-gotten wealth the CPI(M) is pathetically dependent for its survival in power.
The Left Front Government has opened some feeding centres, but there are reports that only those who are known to vote for the CPI(M) are being allowed access to these emergency facilities. With panchayat elections scheduled for next month, the CPI(M) has decided to cynically exploit the distress of the starving masses to ensure its hold over rural Bengal remains as firm as ever. Earlier, it was the fear of Marxist terror that would make people vote for the CPI(M). This time it is the fear of starving to death.
What is scary is that soon all of India, riding the crest of inflation, could be faced with the grim prospect of food scarcity. Our buffer stocks are not in great health. And given the reality of dwindling international supplies, importing food is no longer an easy option. Mr Jacques Diouf, Director-General of FAO, was in Delhi last week with some frightening statistics: The world’s food grain stock at the moment is just about enough to feed the global population for eight weeks.
To make it last longer till fresh supplies arrive, a whole lot of us will have to go hungry. And hunger does not necessarily kill. It also breeds irrepressible, destructive anger. Witness the food riots that are erupting in country after country.

Coffee Break / The Pioneer / April 13, 2008

Childhood memories of Kaal Boishakhi

Lost evenings of Kaal Boishakhi
There was no intimation of a storm when I left home for work last Thursday. It was only after I hit National Highway 24, which is an apology for an inter-State highway that mocks at our tall claims of ‘progress’ and ‘development’, that I spotted the dark, menacing storm, roaring across the highrise-dotted dust plains that separate Delhi from Uttar Pradesh. Within seconds an all-engulfing darkness descended at high noon and gale force winds swept down, whooshing their way through malnourished trees and scrub, scooping up dirt and millions of discarded plastic bags, and sending them swirling in the gathering gloom. It was not a pretty sight to see garbage and filth of various descriptions, dumped every day along the highway as part of an officially endorsed waste disposal ‘system’, being tossed around.
Mercifully, the rain came soon after. First there were fat drops that plonked dully on the windscreen and turned into streaks of black-brown grime. There was a distant roll of thunder, and then the skies opened up, sending a downpour that came crashing like a sheet of water. Within seconds, the stench of festering garbage had been washed away and the plastic bags had disappeared, weighed down by the rain. By the time I crossed Nizamuddin Bridge into Delhi, the roads were flooded and traffic was crawling at a speed lower than usual. Everybody was cranky, which was not unusual. It rained for the next couple of hours, and then drizzled for a long while.
Later that night, the roads looked fresh and clean, with puddles glistening under streetlights and the damp air redolent with the smell of rain. I rolled down the car windows and breathed deeply. You can’t do that very often in this part of the country. For all its pretensions of being ‘world class’, the National Capital Region, barring Lutyens’ Delhi, is really a sprawling, polluted concrete slum, pock-marked by ghastly glass-and-chrome malls. Next day’s newspapers described the thunder squall as “unseasonal rain” and carried photographs of stalled autorickshaws, cars, buses and trucks with motorcyclists trying to clamber over and across them.
Similar storms at this time of the year are joyously greeted in the eastern hinterland, especially in rural Bengal where they herald the advent of summer. As Choitro gives way to Boishakh, marking the end of spring, Kaal Boishakhis, or nor’westers, make their annual, almost ritual, appearance. The skies turn dark, egrets take flight, their sparkling white plume standing out in sharp contrast to the ink black clouds, and the wind comes roaring, whistling through coconut and palm trees, in a strong blast that lasts for about five to ten minutes. This is followed by a sharp drizzle that drenches the soil, dampens the air and cools the evening breeze which makes east India so very different from the rest of the country, more so Delhi, India’s dust bowl.
Decades ago, while growing up in Jamshedpur, my friends and I would wait for Kaal Boishakhis with bated anticipation. The immediate hour after a Kaal Boishakhi would be spent collecting green mangoes, raw and sour, which were otherwise forbidden, torn off their tender stalks by the raging wind. There was something Darwinian about the mango trees in our colony: The fittest fruit survived the frenzied storms of Boishakh to mature into delightfully sweet mangoes in the scorching heat of Joishtho. But they never tasted as good as the forbidden fruit.
It was during those years of growing up in a small Singhbhum town that we learned the art of grating a seashell on a rock with a rough surface to fashion a peeler for the green mangoes we would surreptitiously collect from Mrs Chowdhury’s garden. She had a dog whom she fed Ovaltine and milk for breakfast; Badshah slept all the time and wagged his tail furiously while we stole Mrs Chowdhury’s mangoes. She would be busy dusting her house — which she kept spotlessly clean — after the storm. Even if Badshah barked, which was a rarity and I can’t recall having heard him bark even once, she wouldn’t have heard him. As soon as a Kaal Boishakhi would pass, Mrs Chowdhury would switch on her gramophone at full volume and listen to Rabindrasangeet on 78 rpm records. Her favourite was ‘Esho hey Boishakh, esho esho...”
On Kaal Boishakhi evenings, dinner would be predictable — and, I guess, they still are predictable in Bengali homes that have not traded their Bangaliana for tandoori chicken and daal makhni. It would invariably arrive on the table in the form of steaming khichuri, begun bhaja and papor bhaja. The highlight of the meal would be an omelette. On some nights, the omelette would be replaced by fried hilsa from Kolaghat. Many years later, I was invited to a dinner hosted by a professor at University of California, Berkley. He and his wife had sought to recreate the ambience of a post-Kaal Boishakhi dinner. There was ‘Esho hey Boishakh, esho esho...’ playing on his hi-fi system, curtains had been drawn to shut out the bright evening light, and there was much rustling of brocade and Banarasi silk. Instead of hilsa, they served crisply fried American shad with khichuri made with aromatic Basmati rice. The professor recalled his childhood in Birbhum, of how he would run wild in paddy fields with his friends as a Kaal Boishakhi raged. Later, he wept copiously into his tumbler of bourbon. The charms of America had obviously proved more seductive for him than the harsh climes of Birbhum.
Just as the ersatz benefits of living in Delhi stops me from going back to the land of Kaal Boishakhis where I could teach my daughters how to make peelers from seashells and they could smell the fragrance of rain-sodden earth while collecting green mangoes and chasing dragonflies in the purple light of east India’s dusk before settling down for a steaming meal of khichuri, begun bhaja and omelette, listening to the strains of ‘Esho hey Boishakh, esho esho…’ playing on a neighbour’s gramophone.

07 April, 2008

Islamofascism, not Islamophobia, is the problem

Our liberty and future are at stake
The resolution adopted by Muslim theologians representing the various schools of Islam at the All-India Anti-terrorism Conference organised by Darul Uloom, Deoband, ‘denouncing’ terrorism but condoning radical Islam’s ghastly excesses, apart from remaining silent on Islamist terrorism in India which continues to extract a terrible price, is of a piece with the Observatory Report on Islamophobia released by the Organisation of Islamic Conference at its recent meeting in Dakar, Senegal. Both documents seek to justify manufactured Muslim rage and lay the blame for the resultant death and destruction at the doors of everybody else but Muslims.
It is ironical that Darul Uloom, Deoband, should have taken it upon itself to preach to others the virtues of tolerance — Deobandis are known for neither tolerating others or their faith nor allowing Muslims the freedom to subscribe to modernism and its attendant values. Indeed, Deobandi madarsas at home and abroad, especially in Pakistan, are known to breed Islamofascists whose dark thoughts and darker deeds generate Islamophobia against which the OIC has demanded an international law. Of course, Islamofascism must remain unrestrained and Islamofascists must be allowed the right to practice their ideology of hate. To contest this would amount to Islamophobia, and Islamophobes, as we have now been told, have no right to exist. So, like the proverbial lamb, we should meekly surrender to our slaughter. The least we can do is believe the bogus declaration issued by mullahs who gathered at Darul Uloom, Deoband.
Here’s a confession: There was a time of innocence when I believed in the thesis that there is more than one Islam. There were those with whom you could swap ideas, share jokes and even the cup that cheers. A decade later, during which time I spent three years in Cairo and travelled more than once into the heart of Islam — well, almost, since non-Muslims are not allowed beyond Jeddah, the gateway to Mecca and Medina — I stand converted to the view that any talk of there being a moderate Islam or Islam as a religion of peace merely because of the salutation sa’laam is so much bunkum.
In any event, the ummah sees Islam as a religion that demands absolute submission, which is not really the same as a religion that is predicated on peace and equality. And although the Quran does not stress on compulsion, it does not overflow with kindness towards those who do not submit to god’s will either. The best they can hope for is to be protected by a treaty (dhimmah), which in this day and age would mean unlimited appeasement, and the privileges of the dhimmi are purchased by paying jiziya apart from humiliating conditions of subservience, for instance communal budgeting and a ‘Muslim first’ policy, as is being done in our country.
The manufactured rage over Pope Benedictine’s comments at a German university about how the Sword of Islam cleared the way for Islam’s march beyond Arabia — he was quoting from an obscure Byzantine text — revived memories of the late Aurobindo Ghosh (he spent his last years waging an intellectual battle against Islamofascism from his perch in Texas) and his painstaking research to prove that Islam and peace never co-existed; that the sword of Islam is as much a reality today as it was in the distant past. In a sense, he was right, as much as the Byzantine text the Pope quoted is correct in pitilessly stating a fact that we tend to overlook in our zeal to draw distinctions between moderate and fanatical Islam to cover up for the crimes of the latter more than anything else.
Indeed, India’s history records this fact in the most lurid colours. The mass slaughter of Hindu men and enslavement of Hindu women and children, the destruction of Hindu antiquities and temples (of which the best examples are Somnath, Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura), the brutal efforts to efface Hindu tradition and the rapacious means adopted to expand the frontiers of Islamic rule — Jadunath Sarkar and RC Majumdar have chronicled how Muslim invaders, and later those who sat on the masnad of Delhi, were relentlessly engaged in waging jihad against Hindus — are too well-known to require elaboration.
The bloodletting in Jammu & Kashmir, the ethnic cleansing of the Valley to lay the foundation of Nizam-e-Mustafa, the bombings in Mumbai and elsewhere, the persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh and Malaysia by preachers of fanatical Islam who have now come to dominate the centrestage of politics in those countries and the pathetic, craven approach of accommodation and concession adopted by the political class of India which was, and continues to be, reluctant to confront the truth, should fashion any honest critique of Islamism and highlight its fascist character. This is not about indulging in Islamophobia, which so agitates the OIC and its cheerleaders, but about coming to grips with the true dimensions of Islamofascism, which should be of over-riding concern for those who believe in freedom and cherish the values of modernism that collectively form the foundation of free and plural societies.
Yes, there will be strident criticism and staunch opposition to any attempt to expose Islamofascism for what it is. And the most strident criticism and the staunchest opposition will not come from the OIC and the mullahs of Darul Uloom, Deoband, but from those who wilfully ignore facts to foist fiction which encourages bigoted hate mongers to typecast those who are appalled by Islamofascism as Islamophobes. The protest will primarily come from two quarters:

• The Lib-Left intelligentsia, which continues to labour under the self-perpetuating myth that all of Islam is a religion of peace and only an insignificant, fringe minority is to be blamed for distorting the great faith that was born in the sterile sands of Arabia; and,
• The so-called moderate Muslims who till now have skilfully used doublespeak to position themselves as representatives of the ummah, more so in liberal democracies. Their status is now seriously threatened by those who have no hesitation in acknowledging the true nature of Islam both as a faith and a weapon of subjugation.

Those who believe in liberty and freedom of thought need not fear either. Being charged with Islamophobia is a small price to pay for securing our future.

April 30, 2008.

India's Lajja: Taslima leaving for freedom

India's Lajja: Taslima leaving for freedom

Dissident Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has decided that rather than suffer solitary confinement in a ‘safe house’ where she is kept under virtual house arrest by intelligence agencies, she will “leave India in the next few days to live in freedom” in another country. Nasreen says she has conveyed her decision to officials of the Ministry of External Affairs.
“I wanted to, I still want to, live in India, make it my home. But look at my terrible existence. I can’t meet friends; people can’t meet me. E kemon bechey thaaka? Is this any way to stay alive?” the author of Lajja (Shame), told The Pioneer on Monday evening.
She describes her stay in the ‘safe house’ as “incarceration”, adding, “My hands have been shackled… I can’t accept these chains any more. I am not doing this (leaving India) of my own volition. I am being forced to leave. It gives me no great pleasure to do so.”
Nasreen, whose resident permit was extended on February 14 after keeping her on tenterhooks for weeks, says she is not even allowed access to doctors. “I need to urgently consult a cardiologist. I am suffering from high blood pressure. But I am told that I cannot be taken to any hospital, as it will ‘create problems’. So I requested them to bring a doctor (to the ‘safe house’). But even this they refused to do,” she adds.
Unlike previous occasions when she would be feisty and insist that she would not succumb to pressure and leave India, on Monday she sounded tired and despondent. “Aami morey jaabo… ei bhabey thaakley aami baachbo na. (I will die… if I continue to remain in this solitary confinement, I will not survive),” she says, adding, “I want to escape to freedom.”
So is she giving up her fight? “If I don’t live to fight another day, how can I continue with my struggle? I tried my best to stay in India. All I wanted was to be in Kolkata. If I can’t do that, if I cannot be among my friends and the people I love, what’s the use of my staying here?” she shoots back.
And then she becomes despondent again. “Because of high blood pressure caused by stress, I have developed heart disease (hypertrophy) and hypertensive retinopathy, which will eventually cause me to go blind. My blood pressure, if uncontrolled, will destroy my heart and kidneys. Tell me, what should I do?” Nasreen, a qualified doctor who gave up her profession to become a writer, asks.
She claims that her request to visit her apartment in Kolkata to collect her bank cards and some documents before she leaves India has been rejected. “Officials of the Ministry of External Affairs have finally had their way,” she says.
Nasreen, exiled from Bangladesh since 1994 when Islamic fanatics demanded she be sentenced to death for Lajja, was forced to leave Kolkata, where she had been living for two years, after Muslims rioted on November 21 last year, accusing her of being anti-Islam and demanding she be thrown out of the city and the country. She was brought to Delhi via Jaipur and has been in the custody of Central intelligence agencies since November 23 in a 'safe house' in the National Capital Region, from where she is not allowed to step out.
Nasreen's offer to delete ‘controversial’ passages from her autobiographical book, Dwikhondito, has been ignored.

March 18, 2008.

Oh! Calcutta was disappointing

Oh! Calcutta was disappointing
Even during the Swingin’ Sixties, records of the times inform us that official London was quite stuffy and staid, and four-letter words were frowned upon. Films, books and plays were closely monitored for anything that could be considered remotely licentious. Had it been otherwise, the Fab Four would not have made history. So, it isn’t surprising that Mary Whitehouse, who made quite a name for herself as a keeper of public morals, reminding the BBC every now and then that strait is the gate and narrow is the way, should have felt outraged when Kenneth Tynan, a dilettante much in demand in London’s fashionable drawing rooms, managed to smuggle a four-letter word into The Observer and then repeated it on BBC3, a late night show. An incandescent Mary Whitehouse dashed off a letter to the Queen, demanding that Tynan’s “bottom be spanked”. The Queen, of course, demurred, but the House of Commons went into a tizzy and the BBC was forced to issue a public apology.

Whether it was Tynan’s way of getting back at Mary Whitehouse or his craving for what Paul Johnson later described as “calculated self-publicity”, in the late-1960s he began putting together a revue comprising short sketches penned by well-known playwrights and musicians of the time, including Samuel Beckett, John Lennon, Sam Shepard and Edna O’Brien. He named it Oh! Calcutta! after Clovis Trouille’s painting, O quel cul t’as! It had nothing to do with Calcutta of the 1960s (or, for that matter, any other period); O quel cul t’as! is French for ‘What an arse you have!’ Tynan chose it because it fitted in very well with his show which featured total nudity that left the audience gaping. Oh! Calcutta! opened in Off-Broadway in 1969 to furious protests, but it was a huge success: There were 2,400 full house performances in London and 1,600 in New York. In 1976 it was relaunched as a Broadway production and ran for 13 years. Tynan had truly thumbed his nose at Mary Whitehouse and the stuffed shirts of Westminster.
In due course, news of Tynan’s revue reached Calcutta and poor sods not aware of the origin of the name thought it was based on the Second City of the Raj and the play was a celebration of its unique cultural identity. I have heard an apocryphal story that Amrita Bazar Patrika, which printed news in Benglish and was disdainful of English as it is otherwise known, began headlining every city report ‘Oh! Calcutta!’ — for instance, ‘Oh! Calcutta! CMDA digging road’, ‘Oh! Calcutta! Tram breaking down’, ‘Oh! Calcutta! Hangings in early morning’, the last referring to overcrowded buses with people jamming footboards. ‘Oh! Calcutta! Flooding again’ was about waterlogged streets during the monsoon. ‘Oh! Calcutta! Dead body of man found dead’ left little to the reader’s imagination. Funny as the headlines were, they would have been funnier if we were to substitute ‘Oh! Calcutta!’ with the French original, ‘O quel cul t’as!’ I recall my editor at The Statesman, Sunanda K Datta-Ray, telling me how he would rave and rant every time somebody would try to smuggle ‘Oh! Calcutta!’ into the news or editorial pages, and strike it out furiously. “Imagine, a headline that says, ‘Oh! What an arse you have!’ for a story on how the corporation has made a mess of Chowringhee. It’s not funny.”
But Amrita Bazar Patrika, which went out of business years before The Statesman fell on bad times, has had the last laugh. ‘Oh! Calcutta!’ as defined by this newspaper has stuck in the popular imagination. Why else would the owner of a chain of Bengali restaurants in Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai settle on this name? Till last Sunday, I steered clear of Oh! Calcutta because it made me feel queasy thinking of dining at a place that could well have been called, O quel cul tas! After much hesitation I did set foot into the place, accompanied by the three women in my life, for Sunday lunch. The restaurant, at Nehru Place, was jam-packed and we had to wait for a table that had been booked a week ago, which does not speak very highly of service. Nor can a restaurant claim sholo ana Bangaliana if it serves chicken tandoori, whose overpowering smell tends to swamp the delicate flavours of Bengali cuisine.
The food was remarkably bad. The chholaa’r daal was sweet, the shukto (bitter vegetable stew) was overcooked and the chochchori (mish-mash) was watery. The laau-chingri (gourd with prawns) was an amazing concoction in which the laau had been reduced to a gooey mash and the chingri tasted as if they had been made of rubber. The kaankra-shorshey (crabs in mustard sauce) was inedible: The mustard had no zing and the crabs were finger-sized. The fish curry was passable, as was the railway mutton curry. We had to wait for the boiled rice which took an inordinately long time to arrive. The notun gure’r paayesh (rice pudding made with palm jaggery) tasted fine, but the roshogolla had Haldiram Bhujiawala stamped all over, and the ledikeni (named after Lady Canning as it was her favourite sweet) was a poor country cousin of Delhi’s gulab jamun. It truly felt like eating at O quel cul t’as! The tacky décor with bogus Raj prints and Bengali waiters who insisted on speaking in Benglish popularised by Amrita Bazar Patrika as the nationalist alternative to English did not help reduce the pain when the bill arrived. The loo looked snazzy but the flush didn’t work. Worse, the food settled down in my stomach like a lump of lead and made me feel heavy and bloated for the rest of the afternoon. Was I plain unlucky?
Oh, well. At least the woman who keeps home for us had an afternoon off. When we told her about the meal we had had, she smirked, and later at night produced an excellent fish curry-and-rice dinner.

OIC's sinister message

OIC's sinister message
The Organisation of Islamic Conference, whose membership is understandably restricted to 57 Islamic countries, at its meeting in Dakar, Senegal, over Thursday and Friday, has released a report that stands out for its remarkable casuistry. The 'Observatory Report on Islamophobia', a bulky document that lists a variety of imaginary grievances to make the point that Islam is being defamed and Muslims are being discriminated against, is of a piece with the OIC's untiring efforts to promote imagined victimhood as a convenient cover to justify Islamist terror.
In the past, the OIC has lashed out at India for 'suppressing' Muslim aspirations in Jammu & Kashmir; it has now lashed out at the entire world (barring, of course, those countries where Islam rules) for "defamation of Islam and racial intolerance of Muslims". The bulk of the OIC's anger is directed at "Western societies", but that is essentially because it wishes to play to the gallery and reflect the "concerns of the Islamic ummah". The report, however, should cause concern across the world, not least because it seeks a "binding legal instrument" that will delegitimise "negative political and media discourse" on issues with which Islam and Muslims are intimately associated, severely restrict freedom of expression, and force universal acceptance of, if not compliance with, all that is claimed in the name of Islam.
A fortnight before the official unveiling of this compendium of rant against the free world and denunciation of open and plural societies, the OIC Ambassadorial Group at the United Nations issued a statement on Islamophobia in New York on February 29. The statement is a summary of the obnoxious contents of the OIC report; its tone is belligerent and dismissive of dissenting opinion. "The Group is particularly and deeply alarmed by the intensification of the campaign against Islam, as it impairs Muslims' enjoyment of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and impedes their ability to observe, practice and manifest their religion freely and without fear of coercion, violence or reprisal," the statement says.
The statement and the report, however, are deliberately silent on non-Muslims being denied the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion - for instance, as has been denied to the Pandits of Kashmir Valley and is now being denied to Hindus in Islamic countries like Malaysia - and thus impeding their ability to observe, practice and manifest their religion freely and without fear of coercion. This is not surprising as the OIC is known for speaking with a forked tongue. Nor is it surprising that it should seek to bring into popular usage a neologism like 'Islamophobia' that serves its sinister agenda, while insisting that others like 'Islamofascism', along with 'radical Islam' and 'Islamic terrorism', must be banned from public discourse. Those who persist with using these terms shall be seen as, and held guilty of, Islamophobia. Terror has a new identity.
Ironically, what Europe is now being accused of owes its origin to entirely misplaced European, more specifically British, faith in 'multiculturalism' which has become the magic password to escape censure for indulging in Islamofascism, the ideology of those who subscribe to radical Islamism. The world first heard of Islamophobia when the Runnymede Trust set up the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia in 1996, much before New York's Twin Towers and the London Underground were bombed. It is no less ironical that the commission's report, 'Islamophobia: A challenge for us all', was released in 1997 in the House of Commons by then Home Secretary Jack Straw. In October 2006, Mr Straw was pitilessly denounced by those who claim to be victims of Islamophobia in Britain and abroad for daring to describe the Islamic veil as a "visible statement of separation and of difference".
By 2004, it was felt necessary to denounce Islamophobia to keep Islamofascists in good humour. In May that year the Council of Europe summit formally "condemned Islamophobia". Seven months later, Mr Kofi Annan, who brought shame and disgrace to his office as UN Secretary-General, gave it the stamp of international recognition by presiding over a conference on 'Confronting Islamophobia'. Between then and now, it has become fashionable to condemn any criticism of radical Islamism and fanaticism of the variety practiced and exported by Saudi Arabia, as Islamophobia, much the same way it is considered politically correct to describe the terrorism of Hamas and Hizbullah as "resistance against Zionism".
The truth is that Islamophobia is not about 'undue fear of Islam'. Well-known scholar Daniel Pipes, who is known to berate those who use Islam to justify their perversions, but not Islam (that has not prevented the OIC from naming him, along with Samuel P Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, and eminent historian Bernard Lewis, as an Islamophobe) says, "While prejudice against Islam certainly exists, Islamophobia deceptively conflates two distinct phenomena: Fear of Islam and fear of radical Islam." So, those who feel repelled by the ideology of radical Islamism and fear the terrible consequences of not putting down its practitioners, are also accused of Islamophobia. Similarly, it has become a convenient tool to silence critics of Islam and reformists within the ummah. It equates freedom to question with racism.
Worse, it gives fanatics the right to abuse others and vilify their faith, secure in the knowledge that anybody who dares protest will be branded an Islamophobe. When Britain toyed with the idea of adopting a law against hate speech, this point was made eloquently by Mr Azzam Tamimi, a senior member of the Muslim Association of Britain, who insisted that while the law should gag critics of Islam, it should not prevent Muslims from berating other religions since it is their 'duty' to do so, or from glorifying Palestinian suicide bombers because, as he put it, "We love death, they love life." Mr Tamimi, curiously, is a leading light of the 'Stop the War Coalition'.
Similarly, criticism of textbooks used in a London school funded by Saudi Arabia, describing Jews as "repugnant" and Christians as "pigs", would be considered Islamophobia, as would any attempt to rein in Islamist terrorist outfits anywhere in the world. When the British Government tried to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, it struck back by launching a 'Stop Islamophobia' campaign on British campuses. Apart from referring to the 9/11 terrorists as the "magnificent 19", as was done by its prominent leader Omar Bakri Mohammed, who later floated Al-Mohajiroun and now sends out e-mail 'advising' Muslim youth from his hideout in Lebanon, Hizb ut-Tahrir is guilty of practising anti-Semitism, abusing Hindus and Hinduism, and preaching that "suicide bombers go straight to heaven". To stand up to Hizb ut-Tahrir, therefore, amounts to Islamophobia.
Closer home, the Students Islamic Movement of India, which has been banned for being a terrorist organisation, insists that it is being targeted because its members are scrupulous adherents of Islam. Hence, if the OIC report is to be taken seriously and its definition of Islamophobia accepted, the order banning SIMI is a manifestation of Islamophobia. The Government of India is equally guilty of Islamophobia for providing dissident Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen with a resident permit. And, those in media who refuse to endorse the humiliation of Gudiyas and the persecution of Imranas by the ulema, and believe there is a connection between radical Islamism and Islamist terrorism, stand accused of "targeting Muslims and Islam".
We can afford to ignore the ringing message from Dakar only at the expense of the values that set us apart from those who decree that a woman who has been raped should be publicly flogged, if not stoned to death.

Artistic freedom yes, but not with Aurangzeb

Artistic freedom yes, but not with Aurangzeb
Artistic freedom in increasingly 'secular' India has come to mean the right to denigrate Jesus Christ and Goddess Shakti, as was done by a callow student of the fine arts faculty of Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda last year. But permission to exhibit exquisite miniatures and firmans related to Aurangzeb has been denied, because 15 Muslims and a bogus nawab have demanded so.
French journalist Francois Gautier's Foundation Against Continuing Terrorism (FACT) has painstakingly -- and at great expense -- put together a collection of 40 miniatures and firmans that tell the story of Aurangzeb's rule. The exhibition is called Aurangzeb as he was according to Mughal records. "We have taken care to present all facets of Aurangzeb, including his piety," says Gautier.
The collection was first exhibited to critical acclaim at the Habitat Centre in New Delhi. It next travelled to Pune where one lakh people visited the show. It was equally well received in Bangalore where the popular Gallery G hosted the exhibition. FACT then decided to take the collection to Chennai where it was supposed to be exhibited at the Lalit Kala Akademi from March 3 to 9.
The exhibition was inaugurated by N Vittal, former Chief Vigilance Commissioner, and B Raman, security expert and former R&AW official, March 3 at 5 pm. Some 100 people attended the inauguration. Since March 4, a continuous stream of people came to see the exhibits.
On March 5, a group of 15 Muslims (Gautier says "they were no more than six") affiliated to the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, Manitha Neethi Paasarai and other Muslim organisations, entered the exhibition hall and confronted FACT volunteers who were present there. Raising their voice, they rubbished the show and alleged that it did not portray the right image of 'their' Aurangzeb.
"They threatened they wouldn't allow the show to go on, that they would send hundreds of protesters after Friday prayers from a nearby mosque," says Gautier. The organisers lodged a complaint with the local police station and the next day policemen were posted at Lalit Kala Akademi.
Meanwhile, RM Palaniappan, manager of Lalit Kala Akademi, rattled by the protest by 15 men, asked FACT to pack up and leave. He panicked after Assistant Commissioner of Police KN Murali visited the exhibition hall, had a cursory look at the miniatures and firmans (written in Persian and hence unintelligible to him), worked himself into a rage and shouted at the organisers, lacing his diatribe with expletives, before stomping off, threatening to return.
On March 6, Prince of Arcot Nawab Mohammed Abdul Ali made a surprise visit to the exhibition at 3 pm. After spending some time looking at the miniatures and the firmans, he lashed out at FACT volunteers and accused them of "misrepresenting facts". He was particularly enraged by two miniatures -- the first depicted Aurangzeb's army destroying the Somnath temple and the second showed the destruction of the Kesava Rai temple in Mathura.
He insisted that the paintings amounted to "fabrication and distortion of history" and that Aurangzeb had never done anything to harm the Hindus. He demanded that the exhibition be immediately shut down and said he would take up the issue with "higher authorities" in the State Government. Later, the 'Prince of Arcot' issued a Press statement, claiming, "the exhibition seemed to dwell only on Aurangazeb's alleged misdeeds and not a word about his munificent contribution. The exhibition would only promote enmity between various groups."
By Thursday, March 7, "higher authorities" in Tamil Nadu Government had issued instructions to the police to shut down the exhibition. Murali, along with his men, stormed into the exhibition hall on Thursday evening and began taking down the paintings. "He was looking for the paintings showing the destruction of Somnath and Kesava Rai temples. He threw them to the floor," said a FACT volunteer.
The police say they acted after receiving "three complaints that the show would disturb communal harmony". They wanted the exhibition to be shut down immediately as the next day was Friday. The police also forcibly took into custody three FACT volunteers -- Saraswathi (65), D Vijayalakshmi (62) and Malathi (47) -- although women cannot be detained after sunset in police stations. They were not allowed to contact their families.
The hall has been sealed and FACT has no idea about the fate of the paintings and other exhibits, including the priceless firmans. "I am told some of the paintings have been damaged beyond repair. This is shocking, especially because what we have witnessed is vandalism by the police," says Gautier.

Khalistan, via US, Britain, Canada

Khalistan, via US, Britain, Canada
An artist's drawing of the Air India trial shows (L to R) accused Ripudaman Singh Malik holding a book and co-accused Ajaib Singh Bagri in bare feet in the Vancouver Law Courts, Vancouver

This past week there have been worrisome reports about attempts to reignite separatist violence in Punjab by inciting Sikh youth to revive the demand for 'Khalistan' with the help of funds collected abroad and more than a little involvement of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. India, more so Punjab, had to pay a terrible price on account of Khalistani terrorism during the 1980s and 1990s; countless human lives were lost, innumerable families were devastated and young minds were scarred forever.
The genesis of those years of blood-letting was the cynical ploy of the Congress to promote a rabid preacher of hate, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, as a countervailing force to the Akali Dal. Rajiv Gandhi, as a callow politician being groomed for the 'big' job by Mrs Indira Gandhi, much like his son, Rahul, is being groomed today by Ms Sonia Gandhi, had famously described Bhindranwale, responsible for the slaughter of innocent men, women and children, many of them Sikhs, as a "man of religion". Coincidentally or otherwise, reports of attempts to revive the Khalistani movement come at a time when the Congress is in power at the Centre and the Akali Dal rules Punjab.
We know the tragic consequences of that initial blunder by the Congress - Operation Blue Star was Mrs Indira Gandhi's desperate attempt to put an end to a strategy that had gone horribly wrong; it didn't quite serve that purpose. In the end, the Frankenstein's monster she had helped create devoured her, triggering the horrendous pogrom that saw Congress lynch mobs massacring 4,733 Sikhs, most of them in the streets of Delhi.
But the blood-soaked Khalistan story did not end in 1984. Next year, 'Emperor Kanishka', Air India's Flight 181/182 from Toronto to Mumbai via Montreal, London and Delhi, was blown up off the Irish coast, killing all 329 people on board. Peace continued to elude Punjab where casualties had ceased to matter. The ISI, by then in command of the Khalistanis, kept the fire of separatism alive, fuelling it with money, Kalashnikovs and explosives. It took the combined efforts of a determined Chief Minister, Beant Singh, and a tough police chief, Mr KPS Gill, to douse the blaze.
Beant Singh's assassination was perhaps the last act of terrorism before the guns began to fall silent. With the Khalistanis routed, there was jubilation in Punjab and across India. I recall spending a week travelling across Punjab, marvelling at the peace that had descended on the troubled land. Accompanied by my wife and my elder daughter, who was then a child, we travelled at night on roads that till a few months ago were known as 'death zones'.
Gurdwaras that had been taken over by extremists now wore a festive look. Our most moving encounter was with a young granthi who had deserted the Army after Operation Blue Star to join Babbar Khalsa, but later repented his decision and surrendered to the police. Dedicating his life to the Panth was his way of seeking forgiveness; it was his act of repentance. But many others like him were not so lucky - they either fell to police bullets or just disappeared, leaving behind families burdened with memories.
Strangely, those who played Dr Faust to Pakistan's ISI and instigated young men to pick up AK-47s have never been brought to justice. They continue to be ensconced in their plush homes in the US, Canada and Britain, and still dream of Khalistan. Dr Gurmit Singh Aulakh, 'President' of the 'Council of Khalistan' with offices in Washington, DC, has access to huge 'private funds' and continues to lobby with American politicians to press his case.
Among those who actively back Dr Aulakh are Mr Edolphus Towns, member of the House of Representatives from New York who wants the US to declare India a "terrorist state", former Senator Jesse Helms and, across the Atlantic, Lord Avebury in Britain. Dr Aulakh's website is indicative of his faith in terrorism, yet the US Administration has chosen not to touch him. When I met him in Washington, DC, in the fall of 1990, Dr Aulakh spent more than an hour lecturing me about the "atrocities being committed by India against Sikhs" in the "occupied nation of Khalistan". After listening to his jaundiced version of events, I retorted that he was talking gibberish. The Indian American who had set up the meeting was horrified by my feisty response; Dr Aulakh looked at me witheringly; and the tea never came. Eighteen years later, he is older but not wiser. Or else he would not still dream of Khalistan.
Jagjit Singh Chauhan, who described himself as the 'President of Khalistan', was more welcoming when we met in London at a common friend's house in Islington. Having served as Finance Minister and Deputy Speaker of the Punjab Assembly, Chauhan continued to maintain a vast network of contacts in the State even after moving to Britain in 1971. There was no dearth of funds and he even had 'Republic of Khalistan' passports, currency and postage stamps printed that he would provide in exchange of British pounds and American and Canadian dollars. If I remember correctly, one Khalistani 'dollar' was valued at one American dollar. I was tempted to purchase a Khalistani passport as a keepsake, but better sense prevailed.
By 2001, Chauhan was a decrepit man, resigned to the fact that he would not live to see Khalistan. He struck a deal with the Government of India and returned to his hometown, Tanda, in Hoshiarpur district. His Khalsa Raj Party remained a letterhead organisation and the man who had once hoisted the 'Flag of Khalistan' at Anandpur Sahib died a broken man last year. But there are many wealthy Sikhs in Britain who continue to subscribe to Chauhan's separatist ideology and ardently believe that Amritsar shall be the capital of Khalistan. Funds continue to be collected; it is anybody's guess as to how the money is spent.
If we were to look for the real instigators trying to rekindle the flames of Khalistani terror, we would find them in Canada, more specifically in British Columbia. To a certain extent, American and European authorities have realised the folly of not cracking down on Khalistanis during the 1980s and 1990s. But in Canada, the Government continues to remain as indulgent as it was in 1985 when 'Emperor Kanishka' was bombed over the Atlantic.
Just how indulgent the Canadian Government is can be gauged from the fact that neither Ripudaman Singh Malik nor Ajaib Singh Bagri, who plotted the bombing of 'Emperor Kanishka', has had to pay for his sins. They have been declared 'not guilty' by a judge who refused to accept overwhelming evidence against them as being conclusive enough to convict them. Both are now claiming damages running into millions of dollars - and possibly plotting how to revive their industry of death and destruction.