Tweeting is silly!

My Editor at The Pioneer, Chandan Mitra, disagrees with me on Twitter as the new platform for instant communications which could emerge as the medium of the future. I am grateful to Mr Mitra for sharing his views with the readers of 'Agent Provocateur'. I hope it will initiate a debate on tweeting, its significance and future.-- Kanchan Gupta.

By Chandan Mitra

I am rather amused by the huge controversy in India over twittering. India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, my good friend Shashi Tharoor, got into quite some hot water over an allegedly insensitive remark, for using the common term ‘cattle class’ to refer to economy travellers on aircraft. The Minister is entitled to his opinion but the question is whether people in high office should expose themselves to the risk of being quoted, sometimes out of context, causing acute discomfort to the Establishment. As of now, media reports suggest he is continuing to twitter although the postings have suddenly turned innocuous and thereby lost the fun element.

At the risk of being labelled grossly old-fashioned, I haven’t for the life of me understood why thousands should be interested in the daily itineraries of other people, which often contain utterly banal information such as “Had two eggs for breakfast today. Must keep watch on cholesterol level” or “Just had a cup of life-saving Starbucks coffee. Now to find a place to smoke”. These examples are second-hand because I am still not on Twitter despite considerable pressure from colleagues and my sons. I have only recently climbed onto the Facebook bandwagon. But it is obvious that a lot of people enjoy reading these inane posts. Social networking has acquired obsessive dimensions, often crossing boundaries of acceptable social behaviour. It has also begun to replace physical meetings and even verbal communication.

Arguably, sms and email has made life a lot easier and allowed people to maximise communication. A fair amount of official work gets done through text messages; saves time, cuts out on long phone calls and superficial exchange of pleasantries. The importance of emails in contemporary life is too big to merit reiteration. But I wonder what precise void social networking fills. Is it a fall-out of the immense loneliness of urban life particularly for young people? Is it because some people want to reassure themselves that there are friends ready to share joys and sorrows that maybe even their boy/girl friends don’t have time for? Or maybe it has opened an avenue to express thoughts and emotions to an entire community of known and unknown people and thus feel self-satisfied?

Whatever it may be, there is no doubt that social networking is here to stay. It has resulted in unanticipated changes in our way of thought and expression. Once we lamented the age of sound-byte journalism on TV, which forces people to say in 10 seconds what they would normally take three minutes. Twitter compels the user not to exceed 140 characters – a limit within which no meaningful idea can possibly be expressed. I have no issue with the proliferation of such forums, except that I fear they are increasingly acting as enemies of serious thought, adding to the insulation of the self from the real world and paradoxically intensifying the alienation of humans from humans.

[The impact of Kanchan Gupta's "cattle class" tweet exchange with Shashi Tharoor has been phenomenal. Check it out here.]

So, Congress wants to cut a deal with Taliban!

By Kanchan Gupta

The venerable Wall Street Journal, which still takes the business of journalism seriously, has carried an interesting news story in its Wednesday’s edition. Headlined “Indian Minister Urges Afghan Political Settlement”, it is based on an interview with Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna, who apparently spoke to the writer, Joe Lauria, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which is now in session. The opening paragraph of the story is truly attention grabbing: “India, one of the biggest investors in Afghanistan, believes there is no military solution to the conflict in that country and that NATO combat operations should give way to a political settlement with the Taliban, according to Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna.”

The newspaper quotes Mr Krishna as saying, “India doesn’t believe that war can solve any problem and that applies to Afghanistan also... I think there could be a political settlement. I think we should strive towards that.” According to the daily, Mr Krishna “dismissed suggestions that India’s growing involvement in Afghanistan is intended to encircle Pakistan, a fear prevalent in some circles in Pakistan. ‘I think that is a baseless allegation,’ he said.” Mr Krishna, in his interview, “charged that Pakistan’s disruptive role in the Taliban insurgency continued”, and said “the military situation in Afghanistan was complicated by the ongoing aid for the Afghan Taliban provided by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency”.

A full reading of the news story and the extensive quotes of the Minister published alongside would reveal that he has not suggested a “political settlement with the Taliban”, at least not in so many words. But it is only logical to deduce that this is what he meant when he talked of a “political settlement”. Given the political reality of Afghanistan where the Taliban are determined not to allow democracy and modernism to take root, and want the country to return to the joyless, dark days when a one-eyed monster called Mullah Omar ruled that benighted nation with ruthless force in the name of Islam, the only people you can strike a deal with and come to a “political settlement” are the Taliban.

“If India can work happily with Great Britain after they having ruled us for so long, it only shows that we can play the game,” Mr Krishna told The Wall Street Journal. That is an allusion which only the naïve would miss or misinterpret. In interpreting foreign policy, each word, especially when uttered by the Foreign Minister of a country, is dissected many times over. And the most casual reading of Mr Krishna’s comments would suggest that they indicate a major shift in the Government’s policy on Afghanistan and a break with the national consensus that has helped its evolution: The Congress-led UPA is now willing to “play the game” and cut a deal with the Taliban.

What Mr Krishna has also signalled is the UPA Government’s rethinking on American involvement in Afghanistan. Till now, although India has steered clear of the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan, it has been a beneficiary of everything that has followed the fall of the criminal Taliban regime and the installation of the Government headed by President Hamid Karzai. New Delhi would not have been able to reopen its mission in Kabul and set up consulates elsewhere had Mullah Omar still been in power. Nor would India have been able to re-establish its people-friendly profile among the Afghan masses through infrastructure development and healthcare projects.

It would be foolish to believe that the ‘Indian presence’ in Afghanistan will remain untouched and undiminished if the US and NATO troops were to abruptly pack up and leave that country. A “political settlement” — or, to put it more bluntly, a deal with the Taliban — may please those in the UPA Government who believe Islamism is a benign idea and Islamists are the natural allies of ‘secularists’, but it will be disastrous for India and its national interest.

Since Mr Krishna is the Minister for External Affairs, we must presume that whatever he has told The Wall Street Journal, as well as the implied meaning of his statement, reflect current thinking in South Block. More important, since Mr Manmohan Singh unilaterally frames foreign policy these days, Mr Krishna’s comments must be taken to reflect the Prime Minister’s views — unless they are refuted or denounced by the Government’s drum-beaters in the media. It may not be entirely coincidental that the Prime Minister’s prescription for redrafting India’s policy on Afghanistan bears close resemblance to the current thinking in Washington, DC.

As US President Barack Hussein Obama watches his much-touted AfPak policy unravel, his strategists work overtime to convert the 21st century’s Great Game into a Grand Bargain. Mr Obama spoke of a ‘surge’ in the deployment of US troops, but there are as yet no signs of 40,000 more Americans being sent to win the war against the Taliban. And while policy-makers in the Obama Administration dither, Gen Stanley McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has submitted a ‘confidential’ report — whose contents have been leaked to The Washington Post! — to the American President, underscoring the problems posed by “inadequate resources” at his disposal. “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” he has said.

While Gen McChrystal has made a case for the immediate deployment of additional soldiers to bolster the presence of 64,000 troops in Afghanistan, Pentagon appears to be divided on the issue. It would like Mr Obama to take a political call on whether to go ahead with the ‘surge’ or begin pulling out troops from Afghanistan, and then strategise on the next steps to be taken. Interestingly, Gen McChrystal is also believed to have said in his report that “while Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increa-sing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India”.

That’s an understatement, but it nonetheless accurately reflects the Afghan reality which is intimately enmeshed with the reality of Pakistan’s ‘strategic depth’ policy that visualises Islamabad’s control over Kabul with the Taliban’s help and the imposition of Islamist absolutism. In such a scenario, it is amusing to think of the UPA Government cutting a deal with the Taliban.

[This appeared as the main article on the edit page of The Pioneer on Wednesday, September 25, 2009. The same day, alarmed by the possible fallout of SM Krishna's comments, the MEA spokesperson issued a statement, saying, "The Minister has been misquoted in his interview with The Wall Street Journal." A classic example of the adage -- What did the politician have for lunch? What he said at breakfast! A related news story of interest in The Wall Street Journal which appeared a day later: Dubious Afghan Vote Drove U.S. to Revisit Strategy.]

Manohar Parrikar takes on Dilli4

Goa’s BJP leader and former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is not given to making off-the-cuff remarks. He is a grassroots level activist who has an impeccable (and enviable) record as a party member, leader and commitment to good governance. His integrity quotient is exceptionally high. His commitment to ideology is unimpeachable. He is a technocrat who understands the pulse of politics and popular aspirations. (I have commented on him in an earlier post.)

Parrikar told a local TV channel (and I am quoting PTI): “At present Advaniji's innings is matured. It is like Sachin Tendulkar. However matured innings he may play, sometime he will have to stop playing. It is like a pickle which takes a year to mature. But if it is kept for two years or so, it gets rancid.” He also said: "Advaniji's period is more or less over... Another couple of years and after that he should act as a guardian or mentor for the party. He should be available whenever we need him. His capability and experience should be available for BJP."

I presume Parrikar spoke in Konkan. And the reference must have been to a local idiom. But the gist of what he said is clear to all: Advani has had his innings; he should now retire; and, a fresh, young lot should take over the leadership of the BJP at the national level. He has stated the obvious, but he is the first to articulate it in so many words. By doing so, he has exhibited integrity and honesty. He has shown courage, which is now considered rare in a party increasingly consumed by sycophancy and factionalism.

Dilli4 will be most displeased with Parrikar. He has shown them up. Dilli4 worked the media all of Tuesday to give a twist to Parrikar’s statement and make him sound rancid. Dilli4 met with some success, which prompted Parrikar to issue a ‘clarification’ that is really a reiteration of what he said: "Advaniji is my icon. The media is distorting my comments. I only asked for a young person -- between 40 and 55 years of age -- to be the party president. I stand by my comments." To drive home his point, he added, "There is a lot of wrong projection about BJP which can be cleared with a new face."

Notice the emphasis on ‘young person’ and ‘new face’. He has been blunt and truthful. And absolutely right in his assessment. Dilli4 needed to be told where they get off.

But Dilli4 is not giving up without a fight -- not yet. Rajiv Pratap Rudy, who is among those in the BJP who suffer from an acute manifestation of foot-in-mouth disease, was deployed for ‘damage control’. Rudy told media: "Manohar Parrikar has compared Advani to Sachin Tendulkar and said that just as Tendulkar is progressing by and by and his game is improving with experience.... He has used the same metaphor for Advani. If beyond this some other words have been used for analysis, then it is wrong."

Really? Since when has Rudy been appointed arbiter of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’? By whom?

Meanwhile, two associated developments in the BJP which reflect the prevailing state of affairs in the party and therefore merit mention.

First, Bishan Singh Chufaal has been appointed president of Uttarakhand unit of the BJP. Bachi Singh Rawat has been sacked for the party’s electoral performance in the Lok Sabha poll. We are now told Chufaal will lead the BJP to greater glory. Let’s wait and watch. 2012 isn’t too far off.

Second, Jaswant Singh has questioned why LK Advani kept quiet for a month on his expulsion from the party before saying that he had disfavoured disciplinary action against the author of Jinnah’s controversial biography. "It is to be examined in what context or reference he (Advani) has said this and that too after a month,” Jaswant Singh told mediapersons in Jaipur on Tuesday.

Interestingly, Jaswant Singh also said his son Manvendra is no more in the BJP. Asked whether Manvendra, former BJP MP from Barmer, was in the party, Jaswant Singh said "No he is not.” He said no member of his family was with the BJP now. Rajasthan BJP president Arun Chaturvedi told PTI, “It has to be ascertained whether Manvendra renewed his party membership during the recent membership drive in Barmer.”

Manvendra has not said anything on the issue.

Twittering about Shashi’s tweet

It won’t surprise me at all if Mr Shashi Tharoor is hopping mad at me. But for my question, asked without any malicious intent, he would not have got into trouble with his party bosses and the Congress would not have gone into a tizzy. Let’s rewind to Monday, September 14. While scanning the Twitter-world from my TweetDeck I spotted our Minister of State for External Affairs exuberantly tweeting about his “fortnightly golgappas & chhole bature at Bengali Sweet House” and how he “was assailed by cameras”. Now that’s in keeping with party-dictated austerity in these hard times, I told myself, and dashed off a tweet addressed to him, which read, “@ShashiTharoor Tell us Minister, next time you travel to Kerala, will it be cattle class?” I must admit that I was quite surprised to receive a tweet from him in reply: “@KanchanGupta Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!” I imagined him having a hearty laugh while typing out the tweet; I had a good laugh, too. And then forgot all about it.

On September 16, the tweets exchanged between Mr Tharoor and me were reproduced on the front page of Indian Express, although I was not identified as the person who posed the question. The newspaper also had an editorial on his seemingly casual comment on austerity made in a flamboyant, offhandish manner. Predictably, the Congress’s spokesperson — Ms Jayanthi Natarajan was briefing the Press that afternoon — was asked to comment on Mr Tharoor’s tweet and, equally predictably, she launched a broadside against him. The use of the phrase ‘cattle class’ had hugely upset the party, she told mediapersons, and such callous disregard for sensitivities was not acceptable. By then Mr Tharoor had left for an official visit to Liberia and Ghana, and couldn’t have possibly been summoned for an explanation. Sniffing for a story in an otherwise silly season, newspapers and news channels went to town with the Congress’s response to Mr Tharoor’s tweet. The rest is, as the cliché goes, history.

It is not for me to defend either Mr Tharoor or his party’s reaction; having knowingly stepped into what Amitabh Bachchan colourfully described as the “cess pool” of politics, he should know how to look after himself; if he doesn’t, tough luck. But I do get the sense, as do many other fellow journalists, that our ebullient first time MP-turned-Minister in a high profile Ministry has rubbed too many of his party colleagues the wrong way. Politicians who have worked their way up the ladder don’t take to paratroopers kindly, especially when the latter grab disproportionate media attention. What has also worked against Mr Tharoor is that he has been at the centre of a series of controversies which, for any other politician, would have proved to be disastrous. Not so for Mr Tharoor: On each occasion he has craftily used the media to portray himself as the innocent victim of malicious conspiracies and diabolical plots. Years spent at the UN have taught him the art of converting adversity into advantage.

What life in the UN, where top bureaucrats are constantly trying to trip their colleagues to jump the queue, has clearly not taught Mr Tharoor is that politics isn’t about cutting deals in committee rooms or playing little games of one-upmanship. It is, therefore, not surprising that he should find himself in splendid isolation within his own party, with nobody, including fellow Congress MPs from Kerala, standing up for him as he is pitilessly pilloried by Ms Natarajan who is incensed, as are other Congress worthies, among them Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, over his inclusion of the expression ‘cattle class’ in his tweet. Nor is anybody particularly pleased that he feels compelled to travel ‘cattle class’ out of “solidarity with all our holy cows”. On Friday evening, the Prime Minister tried to come to Mr Tharoor’s rescue by stating the obvious: The tweet was a joke and need not be taken seriously. When asked for his comments, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi pointed out that the party (as opposed to the Prime Minister) had already made its position clear.

In an effort to keep the story going till something else comes up, newspapers and news channels are now busy speculating whether the Congress will take punitive action against Mr Tharoor; if yes, then when. Much of it could prove to be no more than idle speculation. But it would be a pity if he were to be punished for a tweet, no matter how cheekily offensive it may appear to our home-grown politicians. Mr Tharoor has said and written far worse to merit retribution for something which is at best a sarcastic comment on dubious austerity.

Ms Natarajan and her bosses are perhaps unaware of the contents of Mr Tharoor’s book, India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond, in which he takes a rather dim view of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. He is particularly scathing about Mrs Indira Gandhi: “Had Indira’s Parsi husband been a Toddywalla (liquor trader) rather than so conveniently a Gandhi, I sometimes wonder, might India’s political history have been different?” According to Mr Tharoor, “Mrs Gandhi was skilled at the acquisition and maintenance of power, but hopeless at the wielding of it for larger purposes. She had no real vision or programme beyond the expedient campaign slogans; ‘remove poverty’ was a mantra without a method...” For him, Mrs Gandhi’s “visionless expediency” was her “only credo”. And on Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency he wrote: “Indira arrested opponents, censored the Press, and postponed elections. As a compliant Supreme Court overturned her conviction, she proclaimed a ‘20-point programme’ for the uplift of the common man. (No one found it humorous enough to remark, as Clemenceau had done of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, that ‘even the good Lord only had ten’.) Its provisions remained largely unimplemented. Meanwhile, her thuggish younger son, Sanjay (1946-1980) emphasising two of the 20 points, ordered brutally insensitive campaigns of slum demolitions and forced sterilisations.”

The book was published in 1997. He revised it 10 years later. Between 2007 and 2009, his views on the dynasty may have changed radically. That’s for him to say and prove. But what remains on record would have been considered sufficient by the Congress ‘high command’ to shut the doors on anybody else. Let us not forget that Mr Pranab Mukherjee, a diehard Indira loyalist, was expelled from the party in 1984 for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about Rajiv Gandhi’s elevation as Prime Minister following Mrs Gandhi’s tragic assassination. Others have found themselves out in the cold for far less and have twittered miserably to crawl back into favour. In Mr Tharoor’s case such transgressions have been overlooked. A tweet is nothing in comparison.

UPDATE [22/09/09]
Tharoor meets Sonia, PM, Pranab: Party asks him to be cautious
Shashi Tharoor met Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to give his explanation and was asked by the party to be cautious in his comments and actions. Soon after his return from Liberia and Ghana where he was on an official visit, Tharoor met Sonia Gandhi amid demands for his resignation as Minister of State for External Affairs.Later he met Singh and senior Congress leader and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. He is understood to have given an explanation about his "cattle class" tweet. A glum-faced Tharoor did not speak to waiting mediapersons after his meetings with Sonia Gandhi and Mukherjee.Party spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed later said "any well-wisher of the party, Government and Tharoor will advise him to desist from any comments or action even jokingly that would hurt the sentiments of the common man." (PTI)

Modi is the future. Dilli4 is the past.

It’s been a great Monday for the BJP and the larger ideological Parivar. In Gujarat, the BJP has won five of the seven Assembly seats where byelections were held on September 12. All five -- Jasdan, Chotila, Dehgam, Danta and Sami-Hariz – were held by the Congress; these are traditional strongholds of the party. Jasdan has been with the Congress since the first general election. Congress has retained Dhoraji. BJP has lost Kodinar.

The byelections have changed the configuration of the 182-member Gujarat Assembly: BJP – 122; Congress – 54; Others – six. That’s three short of what Chief Minister Narendra Modi had aimed to achieve in the 2007 Assembly poll.

In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has wrested the Tendukheda seat from the Congress. It was considered a stronghold of State Congress president Suresh Pachauri. The Congress has retained Gohad. In the 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly, the configuration changes marginally: BJP –144; Congress – 69; BSP – 7; BJSP – 5; Others – four. One seat is vacant.

In Uttarakhand, the BJP has won the Vikasnagar seat, albeit by a wafer-thin margin. This gives the BJP a simple majority of 36 in the 70-member State Assembly.

[The ABVP has swept the MS University, Baroda, election. To get an idea why this is important, please read Defiling Christ is not art]

The most significant results, of course, are from Gujarat. In this summer’s Lok Sabha poll, the BJP won 15 of the 26 seats in this State; the remaining went to the Congress. Subsequently, the party lost the Junagadh Municipal Corporation election which was touted as ‘mainstream’ media as clinching evidence of Modi’s ‘declining popularity’. Some were bold enough to declare that the ‘Modi story is over’.

Not quite. People in the constituencies won on Monday had voted for Congress in 2007 and then again in the 2009 Lok Sabha poll. They have now voted BJP. Modi says the people have seen through the Congress in 100 days of UPA Government. Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi has predictably waved away the results as inconsequential. Had the Congress won, austerity be damned, champagne would have been uncorked. Arun Jaitley says it was imprudent of the Congress to “sympathise with Ishrat Jahan and her accomplices” killed in a police encounter in 2004 on election eve. Reminds me of Sonia Gandhi’s “maut ke saudagar” speech during the 2007 Assembly election.

Modi, however, needs to figure out what went wrong in Kodinar. After all, the MLA who vacated the seat was elected to the Lok Sabha on a BJP ticket from the same constituency. Was it choice of candidate? Or was it poor arithmetic in terms of local party equations?

Some conclusions that can be drawn from Monday’s results:

. BJP still remains popular at the State level. Narendra Modi and Shivraj Singh Chouhan command support and endorsement.
. Modi has reaffirmed his ability to fight back odds, imagined and real. He has demonstrated that he can finesse the Congress in elections. (In this round he didn’t even campaign, though he personally strategised every move.)
. People who voted Congress in LS poll have voted BJP in State elections.
. Endorsement of BJP State leadership highlights rejection of party’s national leadership as it exists.
. Dilli4 can’t claim any credit for Monday’s spectacular win. They had no role (and thankfully so!).

In a sense, Monday’s results have once again proved that Modi is the future. Gujarat understands this better than the BJP’s central leaders do. Will the eventual waning of Dilli4’s clout lead to realisation that the choice for the party is clear? Or will I-shall-grab-all ‘leaders’ have their way once again?

What do you think?

Qatil-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah

[Review article on Jaswant Singh’s book, Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence. It appears as a full-page in Sunday Pioneer. Photos are of Jinnah's Direct Action Day, Calcutta, 16 August, 1946.]


Mohammed Ali Jinnah, we are told, cried in public only thrice in his life. The first occasion was at the grave of his wife, Ruttie, the day she died. The next time he was spotted weeping was on the train from Calcutta after Congress refused to countenance the Muslim League’s objections to Motilal Nehru’s 1928 report (known as the ‘Nehru Report’) proposing dominion status for India with a Constitution that provided for a unitary system of governance and equal rights for all citizens. The last time Jinnah was seen shedding tears, or so his friends recall in their memoirs, was during a visit to a Hindu refugee camp in Karachi in January 1948. Moved by the plight of the refugees, he is believed to have hoarsely whispered, “They used to call me Quaid-e-Azam; now they call me Qatil-e-Azam.”

It is possible that Jinnah, who is not known to have ever smiled, grieved over Ruttie’s grave. It is also believable that he wept bitter tears of rage after being given the short shrift by the Congress over the Nehru Report (he was to later come up with what is known as ‘Jinnah’s 14 Points’ which, under the guise of proposing that the “future Constitution should be federal with residuary powers vested in the provinces,” demanded that “in the Central Legislative Assembly, Muslim representation shall not be less than one-third”). But it’s rather hard to believe that the man who was unmoved by the blood-letting that followed his call for ‘Direct Action’ in August 1946 and continued till he had attained his “moth-eaten Pakistan” a year later would be moved by the sight of wailing women and orphaned children at a Hindu refugee camp in January 1948. If at all Jinnah was distressed it was because his vanity had been hurt — the ‘Quaid’ was being spat upon as a ‘Qatil’.

Like Jaswant Singh, I am neither a scholar nor a historian. But unlike him, I am the child of parents who suffered the horrors of Partition; my father arrived in India from East Pakistan with his widowed mother and four younger siblings, penniless and virtually with nothing more than the clothes on his back. He didn’t have the privilege of growing up in princely Jodhpur, nor did life afford him the luxury of pondering over the minutiae of the politics of Partition in the amiable surroundings of Nehru Memorial Library. Yet, I do not recall him ever expressing either rancour or regret. Even if he wanted to, my mother wouldn’t have let him. The struggle for survival rode rough-shod over any emotional struggle that might have peeked hesitantly in their minds.

And unlike Jaswant Singh, as well as many others who believe that Partition was a blunder, that India would have been one large happy family had the Radcliffe line not been drawn, that the Congress should not have persisted with its idea of India as one nation with a unitary system in which power would be concentrated at the Centre, that the Muslim League had a case when it argued for proportionate representation if not more for Muslims to compensate them for the loss of the power they wielded before the British took charge of India’s affairs, I belong to the minority which believes that Partition was the second best thing to have happened to us. The first was the failure of the ghazis to prop up a dissolute badshah in 1857. In his literally weighty tome Jinnah: India - Partition - Independence, Jaswant Singh obviously disagrees with this contention: “It was here in the middle of the 19th century that the symbol of our sovereignty was finally seized and trampled underfoot by British India.” Not everybody mourned that event, just as Hindus in Bengal were not terribly upset when Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah was given the boot in 1757.

But that defeat of presumed Muslim supremacy in 1857 was not without significance. Rudely stripped of their status as a minuscule minority ruling over India’s vast majority, Muslims discovered salvation in separatism in the subsequent decades — first in terms of faith and culture, and later with the formation of the Muslim League in 1906, in Muslim identity politics. Jinnah did not gravitate towards the League then, but it was his natural home and he couldn’t possibly stay away for long. The “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity” thought he could bargain for a slice of power through exclusivist constitutionalist politics, which he thought was his forte, but when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi steered the Congress to mass politics, Jinnah, clad in Savile Row suits, scoffing whisky and munching on ham sandwiches, couldn’t quite see himself mingling with the unwashed masses.

Ironically, this is the man, who had little knowledge of Islam and even lesser respect for its core beliefs, who would emerge as the ‘sole spokesman’ of undivided India’s Muslims, or so he would insist on being known as; that was a platform he found convenient so as not to get pushed out from national politics by the Congress and its stalwarts, namely Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Yet, for all his rancid denunciation of Hindu majoritarianism, of Congress’s emphasis on centralisation of power, of everything that together shaped India and the Indian identity, he could never command cross-country Muslim support. Or else the Muslim League would not have to look for proportionate representation.

Much of Jaswant Singh’s book covers territory that has long been charted by scholars and historians, although its documentation is truly rich: Potted history is useful for non-historians and as a ready-reckoner for dates and events. Nor is there anything startlingly new about Jaswant Singh’s thesis spun around the idea of Jinnah as the ‘sole spokesman’ of India’s Muslims. Ayesha Jalal expounded this theory many years ago in her book, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan which, in a sense, provides the most comprehensive explanation for Jinnah’s politics. True, Ayesha Jalal’s is a Pakistani’s perspective; but is Jaswant Singh’s the Indian perspective? If yes, then which India is he speaking for? That which revels in lighting candles at Wagah border even as more lives are laid to waste to satiate the lust ignited by Jinnah’s rhetoric that became the recurrent theme of Muslim League politics after the Lahore Resolution of 1940? Would Jinnah have ever recanted had Nehru toed the line of least resistance? Jaswant Singh writes about the Cabinet Mission Plan, of the divergence in the responses of the Congress and the Muslim League, but that alone cannot be evidence of ‘majoritarian’ perfidy.

Nehru talked of conditional participation in the Constituent Assembly, of reserving the right to modify the Cabinet Mission Plan. Jinnah spoke a sharply different and sinister language: He recalled the Lahore Resolution and reiterated the demand for Pakistan; he threatened “direct action”. Thus was conceived, in the dark labyrinths of his mind, and given shape to in consultation with his Faustian colleagues, ‘Direct Action Day’ to be observed on August 16, 1946. “We shall have India divided or we shall have India destroyed,” Jinnah thundered. Did the Quaid-e-Azam feel any sense of remorse when he saw vultures feasting on the dead after the Great Calcutta Killing? He didn’t. That is the Jinnah which Jinnah: India - Partition - Independence white-washes and presents as a man who was deeply wronged by Nehru and Patel.

Jaswant Singh’s book revolves around the contention that if only Nehru had been farsighted, had he and Patel not colluded to pass the March 8, 1947 Congress resolution asking for the partition of Punjab (and keeping the option of partitioning Bengal open), had they been more accommodative towards Jinnah, there would have been no Pakistan, no Bangladesh today, but a “magnificent edifice of a united India”. Jinnah’s opposition, Jaswant Singh argues, “was not against the Hindus or Hinduism, it was the Congress that he considered as the true political rival of the Muslim League, and the League he considered as being just an extension of himself”. Jaswant Singh oversimplifies the case for the Quaid-e-Azam when he says, “The Muslim community for Jinnah became an electoral body; his call for a Muslim nation his political platform; the battles he fought were entirely political — between the Muslim League and the Congress; Pakistan was his political demand over which he and the Muslim League could rule.” The recrimination is equally sweeping: Nehru was “one of the principal architects, in reality the draftsman of India’s partition” who “began questioning himself, his actions, his thoughts soon enough”. Does Jaswant Singh really believe that had the Congress accepted Jinnah’s conditions and created within an undivided India six separate ‘Pakistans’ — what the Muslim League called the “six Muslim provinces” (the Punjab, the NWFP, Sindh, Balochistan, Bengal and Assam) with near-total autonomy — there would have been a “magnificent edifice of a united India” today?

Jaswant Singh regrets that Jinnah died too soon “to re-examine what he had done… but he too had begun to recognise the enormity of this partition… His pre-1947 statements and the often quoted 11 August 1947 speech are in reality but indicators of his thoughts, not any definition”. This by no means detracts from the fact that Jinnah, who died 13 months after ensconcing himself as the Governor-General of Pakistan, sowed the seeds of his country’s break-up before he discovered that even ‘sole spokesmen’ are but mere mortals. On his first and only visit to Dhaka, he pompously declared that Urdu would be the state language; the Bengalis could either like it or lump it.

Bangladesh chose to lump it. So much for Jinnah’s ‘Muslims first’ identity politics.

If only Advani had...

[For an expanded version, with insider details of Advani-Vajpayee and Advani-Jaswant relations, see my column Coffee Break in Sunday Pioneer.]
These are not happy times for L K Advani. Colleagues in the BJP who were in total awe of Advani and owe their rise in the party as well as in politics to him have turned bitter critics. Fawning journalists who would call Advani’s office incessantly for an ‘exclusive’ interview or felt privileged to be invited for a cup of tea with him are now busy writing his obituary or ridiculing him pitilessly. The South Delhi commentariat, which has arrogated to itself the task of thinking for the masses, would want us to believe that five decades of public life can be summed up in 33 minutes and 47 seconds of discussion as was witnessed last Monday on NDTV.

When I met him on Tuesday morning, he looked his usual affable self. But his eyes reflected a sense of pain and despair. For a while we talked about books. Advani is a voracious reader although, unlike many of his critics, he does not flaunt intellectual pretensions.

The conversation meandered to what’s happening in the BJP and Advani sounded both upset and pained. “This is not the party I knew… it has changed so much,” he said wistfully. It has changed in many ways.

Thirteen years ago, when Advani was party president, the BJP projected itself as an ‘alternative’ to the Congress not merely in terms of political ideology but also policy and programme. Few people would know about it, and fewer in today’s BJP would care to recall, that he and Atal Bihari Vajpayee were constantly thinking in terms of ideas to craft an alternative agenda of governance. Vajpayee was the big picture man – “We should change the system, otherwise governance cannot change” – while Advani would think in terms of nuts and bolts, the small details, of how to change the system.

Today those who aspire to take charge of the party have neither the time nor the inclination to indulge in ideational thinking. Rhetoric has come to replace crafting of agenda. Any serious effort to engage them in discussing alternative policy ideas fails because they find it boring. It’s easier to outsource that task to lobbies and pressure groups: They come up with ‘alternative policies’ and these are then adopted as party objectives.

Advani was deeply pained about Jaswant Singh’s vituperative personal attacks against him. “He was in the party for 30 years, during which time for nearly 28 years he was an MP. He has held every possible post except that of party president and Prime Minister. Yet he now brushes aside his association with the party as if it does not amount to anything.”

On Kandahar, he sounded distraught that media was making a mountain out of a molehill. “I have merely said I don’t recall, I can’t recall a decision being taken on Jaswant Singh accompanying the terrorists.”

Actually, the Cabinet Committee on Security, as I have written in The Pioneer, did not discuss or decide the issue of Jaswant Singh accompanying the terrorists. What was discussed was his going to Kandahar and doubts were expressed whether it was the right thing to do as he could have ended up a hostage too and then the demands would have been spectacular. Jaswant Singh accompanying the terrorists was the result of last minute changes in travel plans. Pakistan gave over-flight permission for an Indian Airlines aircraft and not the Aviation Research Centre (a R&AW-linked agency) plane in which Jaswant Singh was supposed to travel. This resulted in his travelling on the same plane as the terrorists. Given the tight schedule, the CCS could not have possibly discussed this aspect all over again. In any event, a decade later, Kandahar is a bit of a non-issue.

Advani is equally pained by Yashwant Sinha’s criticism of him: “I have gone out of my way to help him… I have done so much for him... He owes a lot to me.” Sudheendra Kulkarni’s departure has not distressed him as much as his declaration that he was disassociating himself from the BJP due to “ideological differences”. Advani is not amused that it took 13 years for Kulkarni to discover these ‘differences’.

Contrary to popular perception, Advani said he would be more than happy to step aside and retire from active politics. “I could do so many things… read books, write. But there is always this issue of who will take over… There are enough young leaders. After all they have to take charge at some time.”

Each one of us has a fatal flaw. Advani’s fatal flaw, to my mind and reaffirmed after my chat with him, is that he could never assert himself. He admitted as much. Good men often suffer from the inability to force their way; or else Advani would not have succumbed to pressure to stay on, as he did after this summer’s election. Those in the party who persuaded him not to step down were concerned about themselves – not about Advani or the BJP. Advani could have stuck to his instinctive decision, but he did not.

Just as he failed to take a stand on the hasty and ill-considered decision to summarily expel Jaswant Singh from the party. Had he stood firm, the parliamentary board could not have gone ahead and done what it did. Nor could Gujarat have banned Jinnah - India, Partition, Independence. The ban is bound to be set aside by the courts, causing nothing but further embarrassment to the party all because Ananth Kumar clamoured the loudest for "immediate action" at the fateful parliamentary board meeting in Shimla and others thought it expedient to second his demand.

[Although, in all fairness, it must be said that Advani is not alone 'guilty' of letting down and abandoning Jaswant Singh. I have been witness to how Vajpayee was made to drop his name from the list of Ministers the night before the NDA team took oath of office in 1998. The then Sarsanghachalak, K S Sudarshan, did not want him included as he had "just lost the election". I carried the letter to Gopal Gandhi, then secretary to the President of India, an hour before the swearing-in ceremony. Jaswant Singh forgets that episode, just as he forgets that Advani did not forget to include him as Finance Minister in the 13-day Government, although he need not have done so.]

If only Advani had… But then, life is really about a whole lot of ‘if onlys’.

Which brings me to the issue of leadership change. The recent intervention by the RSS and elaborate consultations which took place in Delhi, apart from the comments by the Sarsanghachalak, Mohanrao Bhagwat, have helped bring about clarity on what needs to be done. These are:

. The old guard must step down and step aside. This cannot be delayed any further.
. The choice of future leaders cannot be restricted to those stationed in Delhi.
. The RSS will not interfere by way of micro-managing the party’s affairs.
. The BJP will have to decide for itself what is best for the party.
. The Sangh will provide any assistance that is sought.
. The RSS will play the role of moral compass: The BJP sorely needs this.

It has been decided, according to one of the senior leaders who was involved with the consultation process this past weekend, that the new president will be “young and energetic” with a high integrity quotient. Mohanrao Bhagwat has provided enough hint by saying there are “75 to 80” potential leaders in the BJP. This also broadens the choice for the party.

There will be two major changes in the coming days. Advani will step down as Leader of Opposition and become a party mentor, perhaps chairman of NDA or even chairman of the parliamentary party. Whether Sushma Swaraj will be elevated to the post of Leader of Opposition is anybody’s guess, although she would like to believe it so. I don’t think it’s a settled issue.

[Although not linked, I am curious about what qualifies Sushma Swaraj to head the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. It would be in order to mention that this committee was once headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The job requires an instinctive feel for foreign affairs, foreign relations and diplomacy, apart from more than passing knowledge of countries and continents. Political officers at foreign missions in Delhi are amused, although what they have to say is not funny.]

I have no confirmed information. But the new president of the BJP could be a proverbial ‘dark horse’. Two names have been mentioned in various discussions – Nitin Gadkari and Manohar Parrikar.

My vote would go to Parrikar. By making him party president, the BJP would signal a tectonic shift. Parrikar can come across as a soft-spoken man, but those who know him will vouch that he cannot be bullied nor will he allow anybody to ride rough-shod over him. He has organisational experience and a clean image; he is ideologically sound and enjoys high credibility with the Sangh; and his youth appeal could prove to be a huge asset for the party among both urban and rural voters.

A new president will also mean a new team of central leaders, a new National Executive and a new set of decision-makers, including organisational general secretary and secretaries.

What needs to be remembered is that the new president’s term will come to an end in the winter of 2012. That is also the time when Assembly election will be held in Gujarat. The result of this poll will be a big factor in deciding Narendra Modi’s future role in the party. The next general election is due in 2014. So, irrespective of whoever holds whichever post today, whether in party or in Parliament, what will matter is the line-up that will emerge in end-2012/early-2013.

During the interregnum, the BJP needs to stabilise and regain the initiative it has lost in the past month. The rest can follow.

BJP's future tense: Don't worry, Advani isn't stepping aside

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
[Abraham Lincoln]

As the BJP’s central office-bearers and members of the so-called ‘core group’ prepare to meet in Shimla from August 19 to 21 for the much-publicised ‘chintan baithak’, two developments have grabbed media attention.
The first pertains to LK Advani. On August 7, Advani held the customary ‘last day of the session’ Press conference, although this ritual has lost its relevance given the extensive coverage of parliamentary proceedings by media, especially television channels. As expected, mediapersons were least interested in the BJP’s performance in Parliament or issues of governance and policy. They were more interested in what has come to be known as the ‘leadership issue’ of the BJP, also described as the BJP’s ‘crisis of leadership’.
Advani was asked what was the road ahead for him. Before he could respond, his deputy, Sushma Swaraj, grabbed the microphone and said, “I will answer this question. He was ‘elected’ leader of the parliamentary party for a full term of five years, not with any deadline.”
But was he remaining in the post of Leader of Opposition reluctantly or under pressure? Mr Advani replied unambiguously: “Whatever I agree to is of my own volition. The kind of political life I have had and the kind of appreciation I have had from the country, I don’t do anything reluctantly.”
There is no ambiguity here. Advani will remain Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The question of his making an exit in the near future does not arise. The impression conveyed at the Press conference is that unless someone else takes over from him, a possibility ruled out categorically, he will lead the party in the 2014 election.
On Monday, August 10, RSS Sarsanghachalak Mohan Bhagwat met Advani in Delhi. It was a one-on-one meeting and apart from them, and anybody else to whom they may have spoken, nobody knows what transpired. But over the past three days, media has been claiming that Advani was confronted on his decision to stay put instead of stepping down for someone else to take over from him. How far this is true is anybody’s guess.
The second development pertains to former Chief Minister of Rajasthan Vasundhara Raje. The BJP’s ‘central leadership’ wants her to step down as Leader of Opposition in the Rajasthan Assembly for two reasons: To own up responsibility for the party’s defeat in the Assembly election; and, to heal the deep fissures in the State party unit on account of reported differences between her and the State unit president who has been hand-picked by Delhi.
Vasundhara is no pushover. She was formally and unanimously elected leader of the legislature party in accordance with the BJP’s constitution after the Assembly poll. She has decided to fight it out, and to demonstrate that she has the majority of the BJP legislators with her, will parade 57 of the 78 MLAs in Delhi before those who have issued marching orders to her. In brief, we haven’t heard the last word yet.
Vasundhara is not alone in being asked to carry the can for the party’s poor electoral performance which was entirely on account of infighting, motivated dissidence and poor organisation. BC Khanduri has had to step down as Chief Minister of Uttarakhand for the same reason.
It can be argued that State leaders must be held accountable for the party’s electoral performance and that they cannot wash their hands of responsibility. As a principle, this is unassailable. But must accountability stop with State level leaders? What about the accountability and responsibility of central leaders who led from the front?
The verdicts in Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, we are told, amount to a rejection of the leadership of Vasundhara and Khanduri; that voters have refused to repose faith in them; and, that they failed to enthuse party cadre and sympathisers as well as hold together factions and groups.
If this is true, what does the national verdict amount to?
Does the stunning 3.32 per cent dip in the BJP’s national vote share reflect popular rejection of the party’s frontline leaders? Who should be held accountable for the fact that the party’s vote share decreased in 21 States? Who is responsible for the national tally falling to 116 seats, 22 short of the 2004 tally? Is the accountability criterion not applicable while judging central leaders?
Three months after the Lok Sabha election results were declared these questions have not disappeared, much as the central leaders of the party would want them to. On the contrary, they have gained currency following the efforts to hold Vasundhara ‘accountable’ for the electoral rout in Rajasthan while glossing over the rout at the national level.
The upcoming ‘chintan baithak’ should be seen in the context of these and other questions that have been raised since May 16. To avoid the questions would render the Shimla conclave a futile exercise.
The BJP’s leaders need to focus on five key areas to revive and rejuvenate the party:

Ideology
Organisation
Policy and programme
Governance
Performance of MPs/MLAs

But any discussion on these and related issues will be meaningless unless the credibility deficit of the leadership is resolved. Leadership flows from clarity of thought and ideas. Clarity flows from political determination to act decisively. Political determination flows from courage and conviction.
At the moment, what is most visible is the absence of courage and conviction. The rest follows.
PS: Has anybody quite figured out the purpose of releasing the Urdu edition of My Country My Life?

Jihadis can grab Paki nuclear bombs

Exposed: At least three raids on N-arsenal sites despite elite guards

The world’s darkest fear – that jihadis will one day get to lay their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – is not entirely unfounded. Loud claims by Pakistan’s dissolute ‘civilian Government’ and the Pakistani Army that the ‘Islamic Bomb’ is in safe custody need not be taken seriously. Nor should we be persuaded by the Obama Administration’s strenuous insistence that the nuclear weapons of America’s most-favoured terror-sponsoring country are in no imminent danger of becoming part of Jihad Inc’s armoury.
Prof Shaun Gregory, Director of the ‘Pakistan Security Research Unit’ at the University of Bradford in Britain, has made public the details of three attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, exposing just how vulnerable they are to being grabbed by jihadis.
“The risk of the transfer of nuclear weapons, weapons components or nuclear expertise to terrorists in Pakistan is genuine,” Prof Gregory says in an article, ‘The terrorist threat to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’, published in the latest issue of CTC Sentinel, the monthly journal of the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, US.
Pakistan, says Prof Gregory, screens those selected to guard its nuclear facilities to ensure jihad sympathisers are kept out. Also, warhead cores and detonators are stored separately in underground sites. Citing Pakistani and French officials, Prof Gregory says 8,000 to 10,000 members of the Pakistani Army’s Strategic Plans Division and other intelligence agencies are deployed to protect that country’s weapons of mass destruction.
However, “despite these elaborate safeguards, empirical evidence points to a clear set of weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Pakistan’s nuclear safety and security arrangements,” Prof Gregory says in his article. As is known, most of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons infrastructure is located in the north and west, and in areas near Islamabad and Rawalpindi. “The concern, however, is that most of Pakistan's nuclear sites are close or even within areas dominated by Pakistani Taliban militants and Al Qaeda”, says Prof Gregory.
He has mentioned three attacks to bolster his point -- On a nuclear missile storage facility in November 2007; on a nuclear airbase in December 2007; and on nuclear weapons assembly site in August 2008. In the third attack, Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to the armaments complex.
A spokesman of the Pakistani Army, Major-General Athar Abbas, has predictably rubbished Prof Gregory’s claims as “factually incorrect” and part of “Western propaganda campaign to malign Pakistan and its nuclear facilities”. The bases at Wah, Sargodha and Kamra, where the jihadi attacks took place, were used to manufacture conventional weapons, ammunition and fighters jet, he said. “These are military facilities, not nuclear installations.”
Equally predictably, the Pentagon has pointed out that both US Defence Secretary and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen are “comfortable with the security measures the Pakistani Government, the Pakistani military have in place to ensure that their nuclear arsenal is safeguarded”.
Curiously, a senior American intelligence official has confirmed to Fox News that Prof Gregory is not off the mark in his assessment. But he has also said that there is “no waning confidence regarding the safety of the Pakistani nuclear programme”.
Pakistan is believed to have stockpiled approximately 580-800 kg of highly enriched uranium, sufficient amounts to build 30 to 50 fission bombs. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated in 2007 that the Pakistani arsenal comprised about 60 warheads.
[Read the full text of Prof Gregory's article here.]

Whom is the PM batting for?

Manmohan Singh's long-winded intervention on the Sharm el-Sheikh India-Pakistan joint statement debate in Lok Sabha has not answered important questions. Instead, it has left people confused.


Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a rather long-winded, and convoluted, intervention during Wednesday’s debate on foreign policy in the Lok Sabha. A careful scrutiny of his speech will show that he has not said anything remarkably different from what he told Parliament on July 17, a day after the debacle at Sharm el-Sheikh where he met Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

The joint statement issued after the meeting made four substantive points: Placing Pakistan, the perpetrator of jihadi terrorism, at par with India, the victim of jihadi terrorism; delinking action on terrorism from the composite dialogue process (which includes the ‘Kashmir issue’); transforming Baluchi nationalism/separatism from a purely internal affair of Pakistan into a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan, with India portrayed as the promoter of Baluchi violence; and, exchanging real time, actionable intelligence on terrorism with Pakistan. Together, they add up to abject capitulation by Singh, as I have explained in my previous two entries.

According to Ahmed Rashid and other commentators in Pakistani media, the inclusion of Baluchistan in the joint statement followed Gilani handing over a dossier to Singh, containing ‘evidence’ of India’s involvement in fomenting trouble in Baluchistan through its consulates in Afghanistan, and India’s assistance to Baitullah Mehsud and his Tehrik-e-Taliban or Pakistani Taliban.

Singh has denied receiving any such dossier. However, he has confirmed receiving a 34-page dossier from Pakistan, containing details of steps taken by Gilani’s Government to bring to book the perpetrators of the 26/11 outrage in Mumbai. Interestingly, XP Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, which is pro-active in denying stories or issuing contradictions, has not officially refuted media reports on the so-called ‘Baluchi dossier’. The Foreign Office in Islamabad has neither confirmed nor denied stories, but has actively briefed local and foreign journalists as well as diplomats posted in Islamabad on the ‘Baluchistan dossier’ and its contents.]

Back to the debate on Wednesday. The Opposition mounted a strong attack on the Prime Minister and the Government for the sell-out in Sharm el-Sheikh. Yashwant Sinha of BJP, who initiated the debate, was scathing. He made three main points: First, the Prime Minister has walked not “half the way” (to quote Singh) but “all the way to the Pakistani camp”; India’s Pakistan policy (act on terror or no talks) has been turned on its head thus breaching cross-party consensus; and, Singh has fetched trouble for India by agreeing to the inclusion of Baluchistan in the joint statement. In sum, the Opposition described the Sharm encounter as a sell-out.

The Prime Minister spoke at length, often meandering from point to point and seeking to obfuscate the real issues raised by the Opposition. His response was prepared in advance and in anticipation of questions being raised in the Lok Sabha. Yet, it was stilted, shorn of sincerity and lacking in purposefulness.

Singh played at five levels in his usual crafty manner, slyly attacking the BJP/NDA’s Pakistan policy while appropriating a misplaced claim of success.

Obviously at the behest of the Congress, which senses popular disquiet over the shameful surrender at Sharm and has not been enthusiastic in backing Singh, he tried to play to the domestic gallery by repeatedly referring to national sentiment and national position, and how people are opposed to talking to an unrepentant, callous Pakistan. To them his message was: Don’t worry, we are not going to talk to Pakistan. Even if the joint statement mentions ‘composite dialogue’, this shall not happen till there is verifiable evidence of Pakistan acting against terrorism. Intention: Calm frayed nerves and pander to public opinion at home.

He told the Opposition that other countries affected by terrorism emanating from Pakistan were talking to Islamabad, so no reason why India should not do so. He also recalled Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s peace initiatives and tried to place himself at par with his predecessor – ‘he was a statesman, so am I’ – which is truly audacious of him. Intention: He is not alone in treading the path to unmitigated disaster; others are also talking to and appeasing Pakistan.

He played to the Pakistani gallery by talking about the need for ‘peace’ and how ‘dialogue and engagement are the only way forward’. He also praised Pakistan for acting against the 26/11 masterminds, although he was cautious enough to say that more needs to be done. He spoke of ‘trust but verify’, which controverts his assertion that action taken by Pakistan and promises orally communicated to him are impressive and convincing. Intention: He has not abandoned his ‘younger Punjabi brother’, Gilani.

He pandered to his fan club, the lib-left intelligentsia and drum-beaters in media, by saying that war is the only option to no-talks. And since war is ‘not a solution’ between two nuclear powers (‘fear a nuclear holocaust unless we talk to Pakistan’) India must talk to Pakistan. Intention: Get his admirers to portray him as a grand strategist, a peace-maker, a statesman, who is the real winner of Sharm el-Sheikh despite being such a terrible loser.

And, he has let his friends and patrons in America know that he has taken the lead from the US. If Washington is willing to talk to Tehran, betraying the interests of its steadfast allies in West Asia, then there is no reason why New Delhi should not talk to Islamabad. Intention: Let America know he takes his cue from Washington, DC.

I have four questions.

First, the intervention makes little sense, unless it is meant to confuse the nation and confound the Opposition. Are we going to talk, or not talk to Pakistan? Will it be meaningful talks or casual tittle-tattle?

Does delinking Pakistani terrorism from composite dialogue mean a) the composite dialogue will resume even if Pakistan fails to act against terror emanating from territory under its control, as the joint statement says; b) Pakistan cannot make action against terrorism conditional to resuming the composite dialogue, as Singh says; or, c) India must resume the composite dialogue irrespective of whether or not Pakistan acts against anti-India terrorism, as Gilani interprets it? There is no clarity even after Wednesday’s ‘clarification’ by the Prime Minister.

Second, what was the compulsion to include Baluchistan in the joint statement? The Prime Minister’s bunkum about keeping an ‘open book’ means nothing.

Third, why is there this sudden turnaround in policy and at whose behest? This question needs to be answered conclusively.

Fourth, have no lessons been learned from the disastrous experience of trying to set up a Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism with Pakistan? Why have we agreed to share real time, actionable intelligence?

A last point: The Prime Minister waxed eloquent about the “shared future” of India and Pakistan. I don’t think secular and democratic India has any ‘shared future’ with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Why indulge in such bogus rhetoric? Or does the Prime Minister really believe that a terror-sponsoring Islamic state and an open, plural, free society share a common destiny?

This is neither ‘grand strategy’ nor ‘bad drafting’. It is part of a larger game plan hatched somewhere else. The Prime Minister’s tactics remind me of his repeatedly misleading Parliament and the nation on the nuclear deal with the US. What finally emerged had no resemblance to what he had told Parliament.

Are we headed for a similar denouement?

Sharm debacle scripted in US

What made PM crumble so abjectly?

Shashi Tharoor may have been cavalier in describing the July 16 India-Pakistan joint statement, issued after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Sharm el-Sheikh, as a mere “diplomatic paper that is not a legal document” and hence not binding on either country or worth the attention it has attracted, but the Pakistanis are hopping mad. On Friday, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said, “The insinuations made by Shashi Tharoor were unwarranted and inconsistent with diplomatic norms.” Both countries, he added, should refrain from remarks that “detract from the progress made in Sharm el-Sheikh.”

While Mr Tharoor’s supercilious comments, which should really have been put out by him as part of his daily ‘tweet service’ instead of being told to mediapersons at Parliament House, are unlikely to have stumped too many people within and outside the Government, what is surprising is that the Pakistanis are incensed. Here was an opportunity for them to turn around and say, “If the joint statement is not binding on India, nor is it binding on us.” And that would have put to an end needless speculation over whether or not Mr Gilani will fulfil his assurance that “Pakistan will do everything in its power” to “bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice”, an assurance that, we are now told by Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna, prompted our Prime Minister to compromise national interest by delinking terrorism from talks.

But neither Mr Tharoor’s flippancy nor Mr Krishna’s stout defence of the joint statement answers questions that have come to dominate public discourse ever since our pusillanimous Prime Minister’s shameful capitulation in Sharm el-Sheikh. Nor, for that matter, does Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon’s sly attempt to deflect criticism of Mr Singh by suggesting that the joint statement’s “drafting was not perfect” provide us with a clue as to why our tough-talking Prime Minister turned so disgracefully timorous when he met Mr Gilani.

Soon after the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai, the Prime Minister told a shocked nation that “some Pakistani official agencies must have supported” the fidayeen attacks. On December 11, 2008, while speaking in the Lok Sabha, he was all fire-and-brimstone when he described Pakistan as the “epicentre of terrorism”. He added that “the infrastructure of terrorism has to be dismantled permanently” before India can even consider resuming dialogue with Pakistan. On June 16, when the Prime Minister met Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari in Yekaterinburg, he told him bluntly, and in front of mediapersons, “I must tell you quite frankly that I have come with the limited mandate of discussing how Pakistan can deliver on its assurances that its territory would not be used for terrorist attacks on India.” On July 9, Mr SM Krishna told Parliament, “Notwithstanding Pakistan Government’s assurances to us, terrorists in Pakistan continue attacks against India.”

Between July 9 and July 11, something happened that turned all that bluster into pitiful whimper. On his way back from the G-8 summit in L’Aquila, the Prime Minister, discarding all pretensions of pursuing a tough, no-nonsense policy on Pakistan, said India would “walk more than half the distance” if Islamabad offered a “renewed reaffirmation” of its promise to “bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre to justice”. The demand that the “infrastructure of terrorism has to be dismantled permanently”, that “Pakistan must deliver on its assurances that its territory would not be used for terrorist attacks on India”, suddenly metamorphosed into a timidly expressed expectation of “renewed reaffirmation” of a promise that the whole world knows Pakistan has no intention of fulfilling.

By the time the Prime Minister met Mr Gilani at Sharm el-Sheikh, that expectation had turned into snivelling submission to Pakistan’s insidious motives, best exemplified by the inclusion of the implied allegation of India’s involvement in the separatist violence in Baluchistan in the joint statement. No less worse was the Prime Minister’s endorsement of Pakistan’s long-held contention that “action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed”.

Perhaps the Prime Minister believed that he would be feted back home for his gutless deed in Sharm el-Sheikh, if not by the masses then the morally bankrupt middle classes which had collectively ensured his continuation in office by voting for the Congress in this summer’s general election. We can also presume that he had hoped the Congress would be ecstatic and ruthlessly put down any dissenting voices in Parliament and outside. On his part, he would claim that nothing had been conceded to Pakistan, insist that it was a splendid diplomatic victory, and demand that all patriots should support the appalling sell-out of India’s national interest. After all, that’s how he craftily manipulated public opinion and political support in his favour so as to let the US have its way on the nuclear deal.

This time, however, the Prime Minister’s bluff has been called, if not by the middle classes, which are still besotted with him for not finding it offensive to be called an American stooge, then by the masses. There is national outrage over his capitulation in Sharm el-Sheikh and even the Prime Minister’s spin masters masquerading as journalists in the English language media have been compelled to ask some discomfiting questions. As for his party, the Congress, sensing popular revulsion, has steadfastly steered clear of coming to the Prime Minister’s defence.

To the Prime Minister’s credit, he did try to sell the sell-out as a great achievement that his genius alone could accomplish. No, he told Parliament, delinking Pakistani terrorism from peace talks does not mean we will talk to the sponsors of cross-border jihadi violence. Only to be controverted by his Minister for External Affairs who subsequently told India Today that the Prime Minister agreed to delink terror and talks because “we will have to continue to talk to Pakistan (as) there is no alternative”. But to talk, both Mr Singh and Mr Krishna insist, is not to resume the ‘composite dialogue’. That’s bunkum because the joint statement clearly mentions the ‘composite dialogue process’, which includes the ‘Kashmir issue’, and not casual tittle-tattle over tea and biscuits.

What, then, forced the Prime Minister to swallow his brave words and do a grovelling act? Was the debacle at Sharm el-Sheikh scripted in Washington, DC? Or is this the first step towards the Prime Minister facilitating the fruition of President Barack Hussein Obama’s AfPak policy which can succeed only if Pakistan is suitably mollycoddled and allowed to regain its ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan via the Taliban? That would also involve India winding up its development programmes and shutting down its diplomatic missions in Afghanistan. The line of least resistance which has come to define the Obama Administration’s approach to Pakistan is now being slavishly replicated in South Block under the Prime Minister’s tutelage.

[Appears as Coffee Break in Sunday Pioneer, Jyly 26.]

For Manmohan, Indian blood is cheap

So he compromises national interest; caves in to US arm-twisting; capitulates to Pakistani blackmail at Sharm el-Sheikh

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a decent and honest man. His admirers would say he is an economist too. His detractors (a plague on their houses!) don’t quite see it that way and his critics (may they never escape the damnation of hell!) think he is a feckless man given to spinning webs of deceit to cover up his sins of omission and commission. So, there is no reason to doubt that when he met Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement (yes, it still exists) Summit at Sharm el-Sheikh last Thursday, Mr Singh did the tough-guys-don’t-cry act with him.

“I conveyed to him the strong sentiments of the people of India over the issue of terrorism, especially the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. We are reviewing the dossier of investigations into these attacks which Pakistan has provided to us. I also conveyed to Prime Minister Gilani that sustained, effective and credible action needs to be taken not only to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack to justice, but also to shut down the operations of terrorist groups so as to prevent any future attacks,” the Prime Minister told Parliament on Friday. Since he is a man of impeccable integrity, and because the Right to Information Act won’t allow us access to the ‘Record of Discussion’, we must believe that this is indeed what he told Mr Gilani.

And having read out the riot act, presumably in a stern though whiny voice and with an unsmiling face, the Prime Minister agreed to endorse a joint statement along with Mr Gilani, whose contents, in both letter and spirit, fly ruthlessly in the face of what he now claims to have said. Since 72 hours is a long time for public memory to remain fresh, it would be in order to quote the salient points of the joint statement:

“Both leaders agreed that terrorism is the main threat to both countries.”

“Prime Minister Singh reiterated the need to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice. Prime Minister Gilani assured that Pakistan will do everything in its power in this regard.”

“Both leaders agreed that the two countries will share real time, credible and actionable information on any future terrorist threats.”

“Prime Minister Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas.”

“Both Prime Ministers recognised that dialogue is the only way forward. Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed. Prime Minister Singh said that India was ready to discuss all issues with Pakistan, including all outstanding issues.”

Here’s a commonsensical interpretation, which is not quite different from how diplomats with commonsense would interpret it, of the joint statement, based entirely on an understanding of what used to be the Queen’s language:

The Pakistan-sponsored jihadi terrorism India has to cope with, and pay for with the blood of innocent Indians, according to Mr Singh, is no different from the bloodletting in Pakistan caused by those jihadis who have turned rabid and begun to bite the hand that once lovingly fed them. Nothing distinguishes the victim, our saintly Prime Minister believes, from the perpetrator of macabre misdeeds. So, 10-year-old Devika Rotawan, whose right leg has been disabled after she was shot during last November’s fidayeen attack on Mumbai, should feel contrite for deposing against Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani who remorselessly crippled her and sat grinning in the court while she relived the horror of that night at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

Our firm and not easily persuaded Prime Minister demanded Pakistan must bring those responsible for 26/11 to justice. Mr Gilani assured him everything is being done in this regard. We must believe Mr Gilani, because our wise Prime Minister trusts him. Never mind minor details like Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the chief terrorist of Lashkar-e-Tayyeba who operates under the cover of a bogus Islamic charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa’h, and the mastermind behind the carnage in Mumbai, being allowed to walk free and plot the next attack on India. Nor should we feel distraught if others ‘arrested’ in the case by Pakistani authorities are also set free on account of ‘insufficient evidence’.

The US, more specifically the CIA, wants us to share real time, credible and actionable intelligence with Pakistan. The Americans have been haranguing us on this score for some time now. We might as well give in and do Washington’s (or should it be Langley’s?) bidding. Why rub the Americans the wrong way, especially since they have us by our short and curly over our now compromised nuclear programme? And why upset the 300-million-strong middle class which aspires to see India become an American stooge? After all, they determined the outcome of this summer’s general election and ensured that we would continue to have a decent, honest and, not to forget, economist Prime Minister who oozes integrity. So, we shall pass on real time, credible and actionable intelligence to the Pakistanis and they shall rework their terror strategy accordingly so that our security agencies cannot pre-empt future jihadi attacks. No, there's no need to get upset about it. To cavil would be unpatriotic as all patriots are expected to back the Prime Minister who genuinely believes capitulation will “serve to further advance India’s interests”.

Pakistan, we are now told, has “some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas”. The sly reference to Balochi separatism in the joint statement need not shock us, even though this amounts to legitimising Pakistan’s absurd claim that Indian agencies, more specifically R&AW, have been fomenting trouble in Balochistan. The Prime Minister says there’s nothing to fear, ours is an “open book”. So, why feel apprehensive that this shall pave the way to Islamabad accusing New Delhi, and convincingly so, that India has been doing unto Pakistan what Pakistan has been doing unto India? The Prime Minister’s silence on the inclusion of Balochistan in the joint statement when he spoke in Parliament need not intrigue us — he wasn’t being cunning or deceitful; that’s not what decent and honest men do; he was merely glossing over a minor detail whose consequences can be disastrous.

The Prime Minister sincerely believes “action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed”. He is also “ready to discuss”, as the US wants him to, “all issues with Pakistan, including all outstanding issues”. However, this does not really mean what it means, or so we are told by the Prime Minister. What it really means, and I quote from his statement in Parliament, is that “action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process”.

Further comment would be tantamount to questioning the integrity of a decent and honest man, and lending credence to what the Prime Minister’s critics say, that he is a feckless man given to spinning webs of deceit.

Notes from Israel - I

The Rasta and the Haredi

Kanchan Gupta

The Ticho House is where Jerusalem’s artists, writers, musicians and anybody else who qualifies as an intellectual and is appropriately dressed in gloomy black representing the sandal-clad hip crowd’s existential dilemma gather every evening to while away the lazy hours of mid-summer stupor. Nava Bibi, in a billowing flower-printed dress, is a charming hostess. On the lush lawns a huge screen has been set up for the ongoing art film festival and the movie being screened, Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramovic, directed by Babette Mangolte, is reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s Une Femme Mariée. Godard’s chosen medium was black and white; Mangolte’s use of bleak colours is equally brooding. Young Israelis watch the film intently; later, they dissect it frame by frame over wine and fish at Little Jerusalem, the Ticho House restaurant where it’s tough to find an empty table.

At a short distance, in noisy, raucous Ben Yehuda teenagers and twenty-somethings party late into the night. There’s live music (a woman belts out Jai Ho!) spilling into the street; most pubs throb with Goa Trance. In the din, a singer’s voice soars over the cacophony of club music: Idan Raichel, the Rasta Man with matted hair, is a rage in Israel. His music is unique and defies existing categories. He brings together musicians from Israel’s various immigrant communities — all of them are Jewish yet each of them is different. Raichel says it is his attempt to help new immigrants remain rooted in their cultural traditions while blending with mainstream Israeli society.

Meanwhile, the Haredim, who occupy the ultra-orthodox quarters of Jerusalem and collectively represent the anti-thesis of everything that secular Jews stand for, including their lofty disdain for the haredi way of life which is sustained by generous financial assistance provided by the Government and Jewish charities, fight it out with riot police over a perceived violation of Sabbath rules. A month ago, the Government decided to keep a newly-built parking lot across the walled city’s Jaffa Gate open on Sabbath when everything in Israel, especially in Jerusalem, comes to a halt and an eerie silence descends on the city.

The Haredim, appalled by this callous disregard of established tradition that prohibits people from, among other things, driving their cars on Sabbath, have decided to force the Government into withdrawing the order. So, for the past three Sabbaths, the Haredim, including young and old religious Jews, have been gathering in large numbers to confront the police. It’s a fierce battle that follows each Saturday afternoon, but neither side is showing signs of relenting.

In the West Bank settlements, redolent with the fragrance of flowers and ripening fruit, the resident Jews are in a fury. They see themselves as not just settlers grabbing Palestinian land, as they are made out to be by the Arabs and the international media, but as the true and legitimate inheritors of the ‘promised land’ of Judea and Samaria. All construction activity in the settlements has been halted; even building a new room now requires the approval of the Prime Minister of Israel.

The settlers don’t blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (admiringly and loathingly referred to as ‘BB’) for the freeze on settlement construction activity. Their anger is directed at US President Barack Hussein Obama — the middle name is emphatically stressed in Judea and Samaria where settlers have miraculously converted the sterile desert into fertile farms and pine-scented woodlands.

Mr Obama is accused of appeasing Arab sentiments and addressing imagined grievances by forcing the Right-wing Government led by Mr Netanyahu to give in to his demand of halting all settlement-building activity. Israelis of American origin (many of whom still retain their US citizenship) despise Mr Obama with unguarded hostility. For them, the good news is that American gunboat diplomacy has frozen the peace process and restoring the Green Line as a step towards a full and final settlement of the Palestinian issue continues to remain a distant chimera. Abu Mazen is not complaining.

Israeli Arabs, full citizens of the Jewish state, are not complaining either. Any change in the status quo would cause them needless stress. In any event, most of them take a disparaging view of the situation in Gaza Strip and West Bank. Not surprisingly, they would rather live in Israel where law and order prevails than in the anarchy across the Wall.

Between faith and democracy, the choice is clear — at least for those who have benefited from Israel’s economic boom, which has remained largely untouched by the global financial crisis. Young Israeli Arabs may be less hesitant than their parents about speaking up for Palestinian rights, but that does not necessarily reflect split loyalties or subversive tendencies. On the contrary, they are eager to fully assimilate with Israeli society as that would afford them the freedom which Fatah and Hamas deny to Palestinians under their charge.

The certitudes in which the Israeli identity — overwhelmingly Jewish, largely exclusivist and dominated by the cultural preferences, if not biases, of the post-Holocaust generation that came from Europe — has been anchored for the past six decades are still there. But they have begun to yield space to other defining features. The Jewish narrative is witnessing subtle changes and the shift in the Jewish worldview is apparent; victimhood is no longer the main characteristic of the Jewish identity, nor is it cloaked in aggressive religiosity or political Zionism.

The new generation of Israelis is far more confident and aspirational than the previous generation. At the same time, young Israelis have begun to open their doors and windows to the world, absorbing and adopting ideas and accommodating those who were on the margins of a society whose social rules till recently were written by an European elite and religious rites were dictated by the Haredim. Modernity and tradition have found a new equilibrium without disturbing social harmony.

In this Israel, Idan Raichel is as much an inspirational force in reclaiming Jewish cultural identities as the Haredim are in enforcing orthodox Jewish traditions; the Israeli Arabs are not ashamed to flaunt their Israeli identity and the Jewish settlers remain defiant; and, in the heart of Jerusalem, Israelis of various faith and cultural denomination jive to the tune of Jai Ho! and Goa Trance. This Israel cannot but alarm Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Back in Israel...

The past couple of weeks have been one big, mad rush. I am now off to Israel at the invitation of the American Jewish Committee for a week. Hopefully, I will get to blog at leisure from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, a city that never ceases to amaze me. I am sure there will be interesting stories to tell. By the time I am back in Delhi, which has lived up to its name as the 'Dust bowl of India' with the rains giving this wretched city and the NCR a go-by, the silly season should be over. Meanwhile, I came across an interesting picture of the spot where the Bamyan Buddhas once stood before the Taliban came along with their guns and dynamite... Weep for the barbarity let loose by mullahs.