Gautam Rishi's

Anti-Sikh Riots: 2733 Killed; 13 Punished !

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:35:00 +0000

Never again?

Javed Anand
On December 2, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, the 43-year-old Akali Dal MP from Bathinda, filled the Lok Sabha with sadness and remorse with her poignant account of the victims and survivors of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, and how even after 25 years they have not been given justice... House Leader and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said he agreed with Kaur that the tragedy should never happen again. “Not just tragic, it’s horrendous,” said Kaur.
Never again? Fact is, the “horrendous” has happened: again and again. Mercifully, 1984 has not again happened to Sikhs. But it happened to Muslims in 1989 (Bhagalpur), 1992 (Ayodhya, Mumbai) and 2002 (Gujarat) and to Orissa’s Christians in 2008. It happened just a year before 1984 too, to Muslims in Nellie (Assam). By the definition given in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948, that adds up to six “genocidal killings” in 25 years. Only in India, the world’s largest democracy.
Never again? Great idea. Will someone, please, do something to stop the carnage carnivals that are a familiar feature of the Indian landscape? But if the report of the Liberhan Commission, the Union government’s ATR (Action Taken Report), editorials and comment pieces in the media are anything to go by, there’s little room for hope that that which must not happen will not be allowed to happen ever again.
Who can rescue Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan, a reckless man apparently bent on digging his own grave? Seventeen years is a long time, eight crore a lot of rupees. And he can’t even get the date of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination right: January 31, says the report. Howlers apart, the learned judge seems all too eager to portray the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao as a “helpless” man. In his detailed account of the build-up to December 6, 1992, he also carefully skirts any mention of the role of the previous Congress regime in the opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid as a trade-off — sarva communalists’ sambhav — for the Shah Bano case (1986). Had Justice Liberhan been more candid his report could possibly have dwelt on the inability, or unwillingness, of the Indian state to address the unsettled “law of the land” vs “religious belief” duel.
It is easy to punch a dozen holes in Justice Liberhan’s report. But to unceremoniously bury it would be yet another horrendous thing to do for it’s the only documentation on how, and who all, pushed the Indian Republic to the brink in 1992. Despite the howlers and bias, it contains invaluable and highly incriminating information which both the state and society must address if “never again” is sincerely meant. With all its faults the report remains a damning evidence-based account of what the institutions sworn to protect the Constitution of India did when rogues inveigled their way inside the system and manipulated it to the hilt aiding those leading the charge from without. The commission’s report can be summed up in a simple sentence: unless the System (pillars of state) addresses the rot within, forget about ever meeting the challenge from without. It’s about the future, not only the past.
Among the favourite war cries of the kar sevaks and their ringmasters before and on December 6, 1992 in Ayodhya was this: “Bade khushi kee baat hai, police hamare saath hai!” (“Oh happiness, the police are on our side!”) The commission’s report establishes in minute detail how this was not about ordinary constables manning the barricade. This was the message repeatedly sent out — within hearing range of the Allahabad high court, the governor of UP, the Supreme Court of India and the Union government — by UP’s chief minister, Kalyan Singh. Kalyan Singh surprises no one. But the report also indicts five top IAS and five IPS officers among others who, though sworn to serve the Constitution, functioned as loyal soldiers of the Sangh Parivar’s private army.

In Gujarat in 2002 it was the same story with a slight difference: “Ye andar kee baat hai, police hamare saath hai!” (“I’ll tell you a secret, cops are on our side!”) The Union government now promises action on its communal violence prevention bill. The only problem is that instead of making policemen and civil servants more accountable and enforcing the principle of “command responsibility”, the new legislation proposes more powers to them. Never again?
In conclusion, says Justice Liberhan, “historians, journalists and jurists may — and should — explore these dimensions and tell these untold stories for the benefit of the current and unborn generations.” The dimensions, the untold stories have to do with “the intransigent stance of the high court of Uttar Pradesh, the obdurate attitude of the governor [of UP, a Congress appointee], the inexplicable irresponsibility of the Supreme Court’s observer and the short-sightedness of the Supreme Court itself”.
You read it right, the learned judge counts his own brotherhood among the culpable and here are his parting words: “These cannot unfortunately be dwelt upon in this report (not being part of the commission’s mandate) although I have neither suppressed nor minced words about these at the appropriate places and in appropriate contexts in my report.”
When was the last time a judge spoke like this? If all we can do is to damn Justice Liberhan’s report, we are doomed. Dare I say a word more except that I have read it in full? Painful and time-consuming though it is, perhaps you should too.
P.S. On April 22, 1993, Stephen Lawrence, a young black man was stabbed to death by five white racists at a bus stop in London. The accused were all acquitted for lack of “firm evidence”.
Heeding the cry for justice from Lawrence’s parents, the then
home secretary of the UK, Jack Straw, appointed a three-member commission headed by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. The Macpherson Report was published on February 24, 1999.
While tabling it in Parliament, Straw said the report “challenges us all, not just the police service”. The prime minister declared his commitment to “drive home a programme of change”.
Action on the recommendations of the Macpherson Report led to a roots-and-branch overhaul of the policing system in the UK. It can be no one’s case that racialism has altogether vanished in the British police system. Every new entrant is now made aware of the no nonsense message of the “Hate Crime Manual”: “There is no place in the police service for those who will not uphold and protect the human rights of others.” Another planet?

The writer is co-editor, ‘Communalism Combat’ and general secretary, Muslims for Secular Democracy

Exclusive : As Published in Indian Express

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:59:00 +0000

Babri demolition meticulously

planned, says Liberhan

Indicts Atal, Advani, Joshi

Calling them “pseudo-moderates,” the Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan Commission of Inquiry has indicted former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee along with current Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha L K Advani and former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi, among others, for the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.
Citing the evidence it gathered, which includes witness statements and official records, one of the key conclusions of the Commission is said to be that the entire build-up to the demolition was meticulously planned. And there was nothing to show that these leaders were either unaware of what was going on or innocent of any wrongdoing.
The one-man Commission probed the “sequence of events leading, and all facts and circumstances relating, to the occurrences at Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid complex on December 6, 1992” — the day the Babri Masjid was brought down by kar sevaks
Sources in the Union Home Ministry have confirmed to The Indian Express that the report is also severely critical of many Muslim leaders representing organizations such as the Babri Masjid Action Committee and the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee.
The elite leaders of these Muslim organizations, the report is learnt to have observed, constituted a class of their own and were neither responsible to nor were they caring for the welfare of those they claimed to represent. These leaders failed the community by failing to put forth a logical, cohesive and consistent point of view on the dispute, both inside and outside the courts, the Commission is said to have stated.
The Home Ministry, which is giving final touches to the action taken report (ATR), intends to table the ATR in Parliament along with the report of the Commission during the ongoing Winter Session.
The Commission was set up 10 days after the demolition as communal riots rocked several parts of the country. After 17 years and 48 extensions, it submitted its report on June 30 this year.
It is learnt that among others indicted and found culpable — for what the Commission calls pushing the nation to the brink of communal discord — are the entire top brass of the Sangh Parivar. These include the leaderships of the RSS, VHP and Shiv Sena.
It is learnt that Justice Liberhan has not come down heavily on the then Union Government headed by P V Narasimha Rao. Its argument: as per the Constitution, the Union Government can act only after it receives the recommendation of the state Governor. In this case, the Governor didn’t do much and also didn’t seek the Centre’s intervention.
The report is learnt to have said that despite claims to the contrary, the Ayodhya campaign did not enjoy the willing and voluntary support of the common masses, particularly Hindus. In fact, Liberhan is learnt to have said that the demand for a temple never became a mass movement. The campaign only ended up silencing the voices of sanity and shaming them into joining the movement.
Liberhan is learnt to have said that despite claims by Advani and Vajpayee that they had no role in the demolition, the two leaders cannot be absolved of their responsibility for the same. When he appeared before the Commission, Advani had said he was pained by the events at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.
Liberhan is said to have stated that while Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi could have been used by the Parivar as the publicly acceptable faces of the movement, they were still party to all decisions.
And that none of them had the capacity to defy the orders of the RSS without damaging their political future. In fact, the Commission calls them tools in the hands of the RSS.
However, drawing from history, particularly from the trials of Nazi soldiers, at which the plea of having acted on the orders of superiors was not accepted, the Commission is learnt to have concluded that these leaders can’t be given the benefit of doubt or absolved of culpability. Vajpayee, Advani and Joshi have also been indicted for having violated the trust of voters.
Rath yatras by Advani and Joshi, Liberhan is learnt to have concluded, were targeted at making the emotionally-charged common man join the movement.
In sharp contrast to the BJP and the Sangh Parivar stand that the demolition was a spontaneous outburst, Liberhan is said to have argued that the events resulting in the demolition were carefully planned. The Commission is also said to have concluded that diversion of funds to Faizabad and Ayodhya just before the kar seva, mobilization of kar sevaks as well as arrangements made at the site with military-like precision, clearly proves that the plan was not just limited to symbolic kar seva, as stated by Sangh and BJP leaders.
To substantiate this argument, Liberhan is learnt to have pointed to the mode of assault on the disputed structure as well as easy availability of instruments and material. The small number of kar sevaks who actually carried out the demolition, the hidden faces of such kar sevaks, the removal of idols and cash boxes from under the domes and the eventual installation in the makeshift temple clearly show that demolition was carried out with painstaking preparation and planning, he is learnt to have said.
The report is said to suggest that the emergence of a host of leaders to lead the movement from among the ranks of the BJP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and other Sangh Parivar groups was because of the lure of wealth and power rather than ideology.
Liberhan is learnt to have written that these leaders saw the Ayodhya movement as their road to success, and they acted as executioners wielding swords provided by the ideologues.
Referring to the funds collected by leaders of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the Commission has reportedly said that many tens of crores of rupees collected from the people were deposited into bank accounts operated by these leaders. These funds were used to provide infrastructure and other amenities for kar sevaks in the days leading to the demolition.

Carnage 84

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:14:00 +0000

Let's Tackle Hate With Love

by H.S. PHOOLKA, Esq.

In 2009, it's difficult for young people to conceive of a time when no member of the Sikh community was safe in any corner of India's sprawling capital. But this was the terrible reality of November 1-3, 1984.
Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh Aurora, the legendary war hero, could not sleep under his own roof on those nights; he took refuge in the home of I.K. Gujral. The eminent writer Khushwant Singh found shelter at the Swedish embassy; Justice S.S. Chadha, a sitting judge of the Delhi High Court, had to move to the high court complex.
I, only a young, budding lawyer at the time, was even more vulnerable to the mobs roaming the streets, baying for blood after Indira Gandhi's assassination. Miraculously, I escaped them on the evening of October 31, but on November 2, my house was attacked. Thanks to my Hindu landlord, who hid us in his storeroom, my pregnant wife and I were saved.
I was lucky, but nearly 4,000 of my fellow Sikhs were not. (Though the official death toll in Delhi is 2,733, in 1985 we submitted a list to the Ranganath Misra Commission, of 3,870 persons killed.) The worst affected was Delhi's east district where, according to official figures, over 1,200 Sikhs were killed on November 1 and 2.
Where was the police, you might ask. Well, the police made 26 arrests here, but, unbelievable though it may sound, those arrested were Sikhs - members of the very community being targeted and slaughtered by the mobs!
Logbook entries and evidence from the police control room later showed the police only went to places where they got information of Sikhs defending themselves. For three days, mobs killed, looted and raped openly and not one member of a mob was arrested for the first two days. The arrests began only on November 3, when the government decided to control the violence - and within hours the situation was under control.
A glaring example of the police-mob connivance was at Pusa Road in the Patel Nagar area, where a Mahavir Chakra awardee, Group Captain M.S. Talwar, fired at a mob that had set his house ablaze. The police failed to come to his rescue despite repeated calls, but after he fired at the mob, police and army arrived, led by the commissioner of police, arrested Talwar and jailed him for over two weeks.
Not a single member of the mob was held.
When I asked the SHO of the area, who appeared before the Nanavati Commission, why no one from the mob was arrested, his answer was, the police was outnumbered. How two truckloads of soldiers and policemen were outnumbered remains a mystery.
That very month, as a junior lawyer, I began pursuing cases relating to the carnage and have been pursuing them since. They are unlike any other cases I have handled, in that, for years they were simply not allowed to proceed.
Extraordinary though it sounds, a single FIR was filed for 292 murders committed at different places at different times between November 1-3, 1984. This (FIR 426/1984) was registered on November 3 for the killings in different parts of Trilokpuri, one of the worst affected areas.
Over a decade later, in 1995, thanks to an order by Justice S.N. Dhingra, who was then additional sessions judge, the chalaans were split, and this one FIR was divided into 50 different cases. Only after that did some of these cases lead to convictions. Until 1995 - that is, for all of 11 years - there had been only two convictions in the Delhi carnage cases.
In 2002, we saw a repeat of 1984 in Gujarat, but due to the Supreme Court's promptness in appointing an independent special investigation team, cases could not be covered up so blatantly.
In the case of the 1984 carnage, out of 2,733 officially admitted murders, only nine cases led to convictions. Just over 20 accused have been convicted in 25 years - a conviction rate of less than 1 per cent.
One of the basic principles of criminal jurisprudence is that punishment to the guilty should act as a deterrent for the future. Does such an abysmal rate of conviction and punishment serve to act as a deterrent or does it send out the message that one can get away with committing heinous crimes?
Think: if the guilty of 1984 had been punished, perhaps the Gujarat carnage would not have happened.
The year 1984 also completed the evolution of a certain brand of politics of violence - belonging to the ruling party led murderous mobs. It saw the beginning of a disturbing trend of political parties complicit in the mass killing of citizens winning elections with a thumping majority - Rajiv Gandhi's Congress in December 1984, the Shiv Sena in Mumbai in 1993 and Narendra Modi in Gujarat, in 2002.
It was primarily due to the active role played by the media that official connivance in the killings was highlighted in Gujarat 2002. Nothing of this sort happened in 1984. Barring exceptions, the voice of the media was subdued. But recent media responses to the 1984 riots, and equally to the situation in Gujarat after Godhra, have been encouraging.
In 2007, my book When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and its Aftermath, co-authored with senior journalist Manoj Mitta, received tremendous response - there was hardly a newspaper or magazine that did not review it favourably.
The Congress party, however, maintained a studied silence, despite all the damaging disclosures in the book. Given its own dubious record, it is no surprise that the so-called secular party could not muster the will to pass the Communal Violence Bill promised in the Common Minimum Programme of 2004. Having pushed our justice system to its limits over two-and-a-half decades, my associates and I have decided to observe the 25th anniversary of the massacre with a life-affirming gesture.
In July this year, we initiated a massive tree plantation programme across Delhi as a tribute to those killed in 1984. We plan to plant and tend 25,000 trees in Delhi through Gyan Sewa Trust, a registered charity.
The 1984 killings were meant to teach a lesson to the Sikh community. The lesson we seek to impart in turn is to respond to hate with love, death with life. We trust the trees we have planted will not only help us remember the victims of 1984 but also prevent the recurrence of such a terrible crime on any community.

[Courtesy: Outlook. H.S. Phoolka is a senior Supreme Court advocate.]
October 12, 2009

Akali Dal wins its first assembly seat in Haryana

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:36:00 +0000

Chandigarh: Punjab's ruling Shiromani Akali Dal Thursday scored its first electoral win in Haryana with its candidate Charanjeet Singh getting elected from the Kalanwali (reserved) assembly seat. Charanjeet Singh defeated Sushil Kumar Indora of the Congress by over 12,500 votes. This is the first electoral victory for the Akali Dal in Haryana. The Akalis had an electoral alliance with the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) in the state in this election even though its candidates fought under the Akali Dal symbol. Indora had left the August this year to join the ruling Congress. The only other Akali Dal candidate, Charanjeet Kaur, however, lost the Ambala city assembly seat to Congress candidate and former union minister Venod Sharma by over 35,500 votes. IANS

Kirpan Bill in USA

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Sikhs feel let down by Arnold Schwarzenegger

S. Rajgopalan
WASHINGTON: In a major disappointment to California’s Sikh community, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a Bill that would have made it mandatory for law enforcement officers to be educated about the ‘kirpan’.
The Bill, intended to help stem the arrests of Sikhs for carrying their article of faith, had been passed unanimously by both Houses of the state legislature and there was a general expectation that the governor will sign the measure into law.
But in a surprise move, Schwarzenegger termed the legislation “unnecessary” and vetoed it, pouring cold water on the Sikh community’s efforts to use the California Bill as a model legislation across the United States in their protracted battle over the ‘kirpan’.
Sikh organisations suspect that the final veto was the result of the law enforcement agencies’ strong desire to avoid promoting the acceptance of Sikhs with ‘kirpans’.
“We have been here in (California) for over 100 years. It’s a shame that we haven’t been able to get even a basic education bill passed,” lamented Prabhjot Singh, the Sikh Coalition Board Chairman.
Activists of the Sikh community, who have been closely following the progress of the California Bill, termed the veto a big blow.
In the enhanced security system that has been in place since 9/11, there has been a marked increase in arrests of Sikhs for carrying ‘kirpans’ with the police treating them as violation of concealed weapons laws, disregarding protestations that the arrests violate Sikhs’ religious rights.
“This loss for the Sikh community is a reminder of our serious lack of political clout in this state.
After months of hard work and 100 per cent support from our lawmakers, the Sikh voice was still not strong enough to overcome the whim of one man,” said Prabhjot Singh.
The Bill, AB 504, was introduced last February by Democrat Warren Furutani in the California Assembly in response to the Sikhs’ long-standing representations.
The Bill did not touch on the legality of the ‘kirpan’, but asked that police officers be trained about who Sikhs are and learn about the significance of the ‘kirpan’, in the hope that religious understanding would decrease arrests.
“The Governor’s response is very disappointing. It shows his lack of support for promoting religious understanding in California.
It is an utter shame that he does not understand the value of educating our law enforcement agencies on the diverse communities they are policing,” said Neha Singh, Western Region Director of the Sikh Coalition.
The Sikh Coalition, which has taken the lead in pushing the legislation, said it hopes to work with lawmaker Furutani to reintroduce the Bill in next year’s session. “I am committed to carrying this legislation again until this or any other governor signs it. I urge the Sikh community to stand with me as we continue this fight,” said Furutani.

The Art Of Firing Blanks

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:06:00 +0000

Jaswant Singh’s summary dismissal is a clear sign that the BJP is caught in the midst of an ideological crisis. Will the pragmatists prevail or will the party be claimed by the champions of insular Hindutva?

SWAPAN DASGUPTA,

Senior Journalist

MEMBERSHIP OF a political party”, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party told me on phone from the venue of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chintan baithak in Shimla last Wednesday morning, “also involves personal compromises. You must be prepared to accept curbs on your individual rights.”

The suggestion that political activism is not merely a set of entitlements but also involves genuflecting at the altar of the “party line” is known to all those who take the plunge into public life. It is to the credit of Jaswant Singh that he could persist with his individualism and free thinking and, at the same time, climb to the top rungs of the BJP leadership. To a large extent this was due to the remarkable indulgence of his angularities by three BJP stalwarts: Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and, most important, Atal Behari Vajpayee. It was Vajpayee who persevered with him despite the misgivings of the RSS and the exasperation of middle-rung BJP leaders who could never quite fathom what he was all about. The cumulative effect was that Jaswant remained his own man, never afraid of undertaking voyages into either uncharted or potentially hazardous waters.
Since 2004, however, the party’s exasperation with his individualism had been mounting. The release of his autobiography A Call To Honour, was accompanied by huge controversies over his version of the Kandahar hijack of December 1999 and his suggestion that there was a “mole” in PV Narasimha Rao’s Cabinet. On both counts Jaswant caused a huge embarrassment to the party, something he disregarded with disdain. He added to his offence by attempting to become a faction player in Rajasthan and campaigning openly for the then Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje’s ouster. Then, following the defeat in this year’s Lok Sabha election, he took the injudicious step of teaming up with Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha to ask uncomfortable questions of the leadership. The points he raised weren’t entirely invalid but it prompted too many people to retaliate with the query: “When has he lifted his little finger for the party? For 29 years he has eaten the party’s cream.”
The accusation against Jaswant was that he viewed his privileged status in the BJP as an entitlement, sans obligations.
That Jaswant was undertaking a political biography of Mohammed Ali Jinnah was known since 2005. He had made that public during the row over LK Advani’s misadventure in Pakistan. At that time, he had also let it be known that he would resign his primary membership of the BJP if it failed to back Advani on the Jinnah issue. It never came to that because the Advani tangle was settled — or, more accurately, brushed under the carpet — through some face- saving compromises.
In January this year, when news of the imminent publication of Jaswant’s Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence broke, an alarmed party leadership pressed the author to delay publication till after the Lok Sabha poll. It was rightly calculated that the Congress would have a field day if the so-called “face of Kandahar” was now seen to be heaping lavish praise on the man who created Pakistan. Jaswant obliged. But never for a day did it enter his mind that the publication should be shelved for a time when he was no longer active in politics.
JASWANT’S ASTONISHING reassurance was not bravado; it was based on calculation. He was certain that the BJP faithful would take a dim view of any reappraisal of Jinnah that made him appear as just another canny politician. The demonization of Jinnah has, after all, become a part of the broad nationalist consensus, just as Jawaharlal Nehru always wanted. However, this storm, he believed, would be managed. The BJP, he believed, would dissociate from the book, perhaps drop him from the Parliamentary Board, but would then allow the storm to pass. Jaswant took solace from the belief that the BJP would not really like to resurrect the Jinnah debate because Advani too would suffer collateral damage.

In hindsight it was a colossal miscalculation. The first part of the script went perfectly when BJP stalwarts stayed away from the book release at Teen Murti and so did the second act when, first Sushma Swaraj and then Rajnath Singh dissociated the party from Jaswant’s views. But things had already started going wrong. Jaswant’s interview to Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN on Sunday night and its reports in the next morning’s newspapers fuelled anger in the BJP ranks in much the same as when Advani uttered his praise of Jinnah at the mausoleum in Lahore four years ago.
The party faithful were incensed on a number of counts: the description of Jinnah as “secular”, the suggestion that Muslims were yet to be regarded as equal citizens in India and, most important, the inclusion of Sardar Vallabbhai Patel as a man also responsible for the Partition. That Jaswant’s view of the Muslim plight in India was actually a subtle indictment of a two-nation theory which had led to an unending spiral of minorityism was too subtle for ordinary comprehension need hardly be stated. Read in isolation and without reference to the arguments in the book, it seemed very much like an endorsement of religion-based fragmentation.

Of greater consequence was the inclusion of Sardar Patel among the architects of Partition, along with Nehru and Lord Mountbatten. Since 1989, the BJP had very consciously tried to appropriate the legacy of Sardar Patel by including him in their pantheon of national heroes. At one time, Advani had cast himself as another Iron Man in the mould of Patel and after 2002 Narendra Modi had been deified as the Chhote Sardar.
To be fair, Jaswant does not deal at length in his book on the culpability of Patel. He is included as a part of the larger Congress leadership that had to finally acquiesce to Partition as a way out of spiralling sectarian riots that followed the Muslim League’s Direct Action Day in August 1946. Yet, the perception, gained from a reading of his interview with Thapar, that Jaswant had tarred Patel with the brush of ignominy proved too much for the volatile Gujarat unit of the BJP to stomach.
There was another political compulsion that Jaswant never factored: a set of seven by-elections to the Gujarat Assembly where the Patidar (the community to which Patel belonged) vote was crucial. The Congress, which had jumped gleefully into the controversy by dubbing BJP the Bharatiya Jinnah Party, was more than prepared to remind Gujaratis and the Patels in particular that a front-ranking leader of the BJP had insulted their greatest icon.
Had Jaswant confined his indictment of the Congress to a targeted criticism of Nehru — something the BJP does routinely — his worst punishment would have been the withdrawal of invitation to attend the Chintan Baithak and subsequent exclusion from all posts in the BJP. In fact, that is what was contemplated till Tuesday morning. However, by the time Rajnath Singh mustered the requisite self-confidence to communicate the order to stay away from Simla, Jaswant was already ensconced in the very agreeable Oberoi Cecil in Simla.

When the order to stay away was finally communicated at 8.30 am or so on Wednesday morning, it was a case of too little and too late. The party leadership, influenced by reports of BJP cadres burning effigies of Jaswant, demanded exemplary action. This appealed to Rajnath who had seen his own authority successfully challenged by Vasundhara Raje the week before. He too wanted a scalp, if only to establish his claim as a tough, no-nonsense leader. Throughout Wednesday, the party president’s spin doctors kept feeding a hungry media the assertion that it was Rajnath who had decided to crack the whip, emboldened by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s pronouncement that inner-party squabbling must stop immediately.
When the Parliamentary Board members met on the sidelines of the Chintan Baithak at 9 am on Wednesday, Jaswant’s goose was cooked. The decision to expel him from the party was unanimous. Even Advani endorsed it.
From a public relations perspective, the Jaswant expulsion drama was a disaster for the BJP. First, there was the obvious discourtesy involved in communicating a decision of this magnitude by telephone and, if Jaswant is to be believed, with a chuckle from Rajnath. Secondly, the BJP leadership proved utterly insensitive to the perception that Jaswant was being expelled for writing a 600-page treatise which it was common knowledge almost none of the Parliamentary Board had actually read. To the faithful, the leadership had taken the right decision, albeit belatedly, but to the Indians (including BJP voters) unfamiliar with the innards of the party, it seemed an act of intolerance.

THE LEGITIMATE outrage over a party arrogating to itself the role of a thought police has, quite rightly, fuelled speculation about greater RSS control over the BJP and the formal abandonment of all liberal pretensions. The BJP, it is being claimed, has retreated into the shell of a narrow, insular Hindutva and being an extension counter of Nagpur. It is said that it will no longer entertain the “overdose of democracy” that many leaders had in private complained of.
Are these fears real? At present, it is difficult to arrive at definite conclusions but certain factors are worth considering. For some years the BJP has been witnessing a tussle between ideology and politics. There are those who believe that the BJP exists as a Hindu party to uphold Hindu interests, even if such an approach proves electorally counterproductive. By this logic, the responsibility for organising the party should be entrusted to RSS functionaries and that lay RSS members should be encouraged to enter electoral politics in a big way and emerge as trusted mass leaders. The pragmatists who prefer the political approach feel that the 2009 election is an eye-opener. The BJP, they insist, must focus only on those issues that are aimed at winning back the middle classes and the youth — segments that have deserted the party in favour of the Congress. In short, the BJPmust embrace modernity, be in a position to re-forge meaningful alliances and relegate identity politics to the backburner. Interestingly, it is the Chief Ministers who favour such an approach.
An interesting feature of this debate is that the adherents of one position are not necessarily always on the same side. Unfortunately for the BJP, a decision on political positioning has been derailed by unresolved leadership questions. Who will be the party president in January? Will Rajnath Singh manage to amend the party constitution and a procure third term for himself? Is Advani really going to play out his full term as Leader of Opposition? Will the RSS chief’s desire for a younger leadership be translated into reality?
The answers to these questions are relevant because the redefined priorities of the BJPmust match with the image and personality of those who are entrusted with the leadership. Tragically, the BJP has no institutionalised democratic mechanism to choose a leader who is most acceptable to both its ordinary karyakartas and, more important, ordinary non-attached voters. Traditionally, the party has left complex leadership questions to be settled by a small cabal that works closely with the RSS. The RSS would prefer if Advani drew up his own succession plans, but Advani has shown no inclination to redefine himself as an elder statesman. Does Bhagwat’s clear preference for a younger leader mean that Advani will now be forced into revealing his hand? More important, does Advani still have the authority to not merely nominate his successor but ensuring he or she actually secures the post.
Alternatively, the BJP may decide that it will not rush things and wait for its next prime ministerial face to emerge at a time nearer the election. As of today, the real BJP leadership is in the states. Yet, it is the Centre that pretends it wields authority.
The chintan baithak may well help clear confusion in the minds of the top leadership and help forge something akin to a consensus. But that is assuming the participants speak their minds frankly and fearlessly. The kerfluffle over Jaswant and the abstruse non-debate over Jinnah may have defined politics in the age of swine flu – when voices are muffled by the most visible symbol of self-preservation, the ubiquitous mouth gag.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 34, Dated August 29, 2009

World watch's Indian Election

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:20:00 +0000

The Verdict : India votes for

stability, the world salutes

The world’s largest democracy has just concluded a free, fair and peaceful election, and the world is applauding.

International newspapers praised the complex process of conducting the elections and noted that Indians had rejected Right and Left parties and voted for middle path politics. “The governing coalition led by the Indian National Congress sailed to a surprisingly decisive victory in India’s grueling parliamentary elections, vaulting Manmohan Singh, a soft-spoken economic reformer, to a second term as Prime Minister, and sweeping away the prospect of political instability in the world’s most populous democracy,” said the New York Times on May 16.
The Times, London, said the election results would help in consensus and unity. “That means the ruling coalition should face fewer internal divisions over reforms desperately needed to stimulate growth and spread its benefits to the 880 million Indians who live on less than 2 dollars a day," it said.
“Congress wins election, Singh to remain PM: India votes for hope; rejects religion, caste”, said the headline of Daily Times, the Pakistani newspaper, on May 17.

Has this election result boosted India's image abroad? CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose asked this to Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, and Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP and former UN undersecretary general.
“This is a very, very significant moment for India,” said Zakaria. “China’s coming-out party was the Beijing Olympics. India’s coming-out party as a great power may well turn out to be these elections.”
India had till now been “hamstrung” from playing its appropriate role on the world stage because its government had never been able to mobilise national power.
“There always has been a sense that India is divided, decentralized, defused between castes and regions, classes and parties. For the first time in many years you have sense of a government that has a national coalition behind it that is purposeful,” said Zakaria. “If that happens I think you will see a very different reception India will get on world stage.”

India, America, and the world
The Western media has commented that the clear verdict would allow Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to push for economic reforms. Will Singh’s test be his ability to implement reforms?
“The government has demonstrated the capacity to reconcile policies that encourage growth with policies that are attentive to the need of the dispossessed and marginalised,” said Tharoor. “We should not do anything for anybody’s approval. We do what is right for us.”
US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are the two “most erudite” chief executives in the world, said Zakaria. “The key issue is does have the energy to play a responsible world role--without being hobbled by fears of being seen as pro-American or being seen as part of the capitalist world.”
The election result gives Singh the opportunity he always sought in foreign policy. “This allows him to move forward, and I think the Obama people will be very willing partners,” said Zakaria.
Tharoor believed the new government, with a clear mandate in its favour, had the opportunity to pursue a foreign policy guided by India’s interests and not dogma.
“If a Indo-US nuclear deal achieves national goals you don’t worry if that makes you look non-aligned. You are being empirical--you are looking at what the world offers you; what is needed by your people and then you proceed,” he said.

What next for BJP
The BJP has gone into a shell after its electoral defeat but it is the country’s main Opposition party. What does it need to revive itself?
“In almost all parts of the world where you have democracy there is a backlash against globalization and against modernization that takes the form of nationalism or some form of Hindutva,” said Zakaria.
Zakaria believed Hindutva-like ideologies had no answers for the modern world. “The BJP has got to recognise that it can no longer prey on people’s fears or scratch their hatreds or incite them. They have to answers to the modern world.
“Unless they can embrace the agenda of modernity rather than the agenda of resentment I think they are going to have a tough time. They say their ideology is not for sale or change, but I think they are not going to walk alone.”
The BJP calls secularism “pseudo-secularism, tokenism and minority appeasement.” What will the Manmohan Singh government be doing to prove that its secularism is genuine?
“Opportunities must be extended to all (minorities) because it is not in the interest of India for any segment of the population to feel that somehow their opportunities are less because of a fact of birth,” said Tharoor.
Zakaria’s final comment: “I think Manmohan Singh is the most intelligent decent, incorruptible Prime Minister India has had since Nehru. He should do what is in his heart and in his mind.
“He knows what India needs. Just go for it, don’t worry about the short-term political costs. This is your moment; this is the chance to take India to a whole different stage. Don’t hesitate now because you probably won’t get this opportunity again.”

SMS poll on ‘has this election result boosted India's image abroad?’
Yes : 96 per cent, No : 4 per cent.

THE NATIONAL PICTURE

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:11:00 +0000

Congress-led UPA has been projected to have an edge over NDA
The curtains came down on the staggered Lok Sabha elections on Wednesday with millions of Indians voting peacefully in the fifth and last round covering 86 constituencies, and the first exit polls putting the Congress-led coalition on top of a fractured verdict.
Even as both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed they would finish as the number one, an India TV exit poll telecast after balloting ended said the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) could end up with 195-201 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha.
This tally could go up to 227-237 if the seats bagged by estranged allies such as Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party were to be included. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was tipped to bag 189-195 seats and the Third Front 113-121 seats, it said.
But political leaders and analysts kept their fingers tightly crossed, with the expected cliffhanger verdict forcing both the Congress and BJP -- the two main contenders for power -- desperately scouting for new allies. As the voting progressed, some parties switched loyalties, making it one of the most difficult electoral battles to predict.
"It seems to be a very complex political situation. It is the complexity that makes it difficult to make any predictions," Kerala-based political analyst NP Chekutty told IANS, reflecting an opinion widely held in the world's largest democracy.
Election officials estimated that some 55 per cent of the 714 million electorate - which is more than the combined population of Russia and the US - had voted over five phases starting April 16. The result will be known on Saturday.
Wednesday's polling was overwhelmingly peaceful but for the murder of a political worker in Tamil Nadu and clashes in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, two key states whose outcome will have a bearing on government formation in New Delhi.
The exercise involved all 39 seats of Tamil Nadu, all four seats of Himachal Pradesh and all five seats of Uttarakhand besides two in Jammu and Kashmir, nine in Punjab, 11 in West Bengal and 14 in Uttar Pradesh besides one each in Chandigarh and Pondicherry.
The most notable of the 1,432 candidates included Home Minister P Chidambaram of the Congress (Sivaganga, Tamil Nadu) and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee (South Kolkata). Fearing uncertain times, Indian markets turned edgy on Wednesday, with a key index losing 138 points from its last closing figure at end of trade. The 30-scrip sensitive index of the Bombay Stock Exchange opened at 12,201.93 points and fell 138.38 points or 1.14 per cent from Tuesday's close.
"I'm fully confident that a BJP-led government will be formed at the centre. We will get new partners (after the polls)," BJP president Rajnath Singh said confidently. Within hours, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh asserted that his party would occupy the number one slot.
Not to be left behind, the Third Front - made up of the Communists and regional parties - announced they would meet in New Delhi Monday to decide the future course of action. The meeting would be attended by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is widely expected to win around 40 seats, said Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and a key mover behind the Third Front.
With neither the UPA nor NDA expected to cross the magic figure of 272 in the Lok Sabha, the Congress and BJP tried to outsmart one another in order to woo leaders of smaller and regional parties.
AIADMK chief and former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalitha, a key Third Front partner, said in Chennai: "There are feelers from many places. I am not responding to them now. Everything depends on the results. If the results are as expected, then I will go to Delhi."
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who in 2004 pulled off a coup by most unexpectedly worsting the BJP-led alliance in general elections, Wednesday telephoned estranged ally Ram Vilas Paswan after a fire in his house which adjoins her own in the heart of New Delhi.

It’s Badals vs. Patiala royals in Punjab

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Thu, 07 May 2009 08:22:00 +0000

Four constituencies in the State go to polls in the first phase

V for victory: Shiromani Akali Dal leader and Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal with his son and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and daughter-in-law Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who is contesting from the Bhatinda parliamentary constituency, at a public meeting in the constituency on Tuesday.

K. V. Prasad

SANGRUR: Punjab is getting ready to go to the polls in the first phase on Thursday and the battle opener in the four constituencies of Patiala, Bhatinda, Sangrur and Ferozepur can set the pace for the main political rivals – the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Congress party.
While the Akali leader and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal may claim that the contest is between parties, the buzz among party workers is that this election is a direct duel between the two big political families of the State -- the Badals and the Patiala royals represented by former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh; his wife and Congress MP from Patiala Parneet Kaur who is now seeking a third term in the Lok Sabha; and their son Raninder Singh, a candidate from Bhatinda.
Deputy Chief Minister and Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal, who has taken over command of the campaign, has made the contest a matter of prestige by fielding his wife Harsimrat Kaur Badal in Bhatinda, considered an Akali stronghold. She also hails from another prominent Majitha family with her brother Bikaramjit Singh serving as a powerful Minister in the Badal Government.
On the other hand, Raninder Singh has been nursing the constituency for the past few years and is credited to be the architect behind the Congress winning the maximum seats in the Malwa region when it faced a rout in Majha and Doaba, the other two regions of Punjab, in the 2007 State Assembly polls. The stakes are high for both sides.
Yet one factor, the call by the influential Dera Sacha Sauda sect to vote for the Congress two years ago enabling the party to buck the anti-incumbency trend against the Amarinder Singh Government, is missing. Having faced turbulence and criminal cases against its chief, the Dera has preferred to advise its followers spread across Punjab and Haryana to vote according to local “consensus”.
Elsewhere the Congress has fielded former MP and strongman Jagmeet Singh Brar from Ferozepur while in Sangrur, former State Youth Congress chief Vijay Inder Singla is engaged in a tight contest with sitting MP and former Union Minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa.
Mr. Singla may be a rookie in poll politics but being the son of former State Minister and former MP Sant Ram Singla he has the blessings of the Patiala palace.
Adding to it is the talk that he is among the four youth candidates handpicked by Rahul Gandhi in the State where he initiated the process of internal democracy in the State Youth Congress to elect its leaders.

Taking on a feudal mindset

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:46:00 +0000

by Sarabjit Pandher from Bathinda

PARTY: Shiromani Akali Dal
CONSTITUENCY: Bathinda
STATE: Punjab

MISSION STATEMENT

Roll back female foeticide and halt denudation of Punjab’s green cover
Born into Amritsar’s Majithia family, and trained as a textile designer, Harsimrat Kaur is married into one of the most powerful political families of Punjab, the Badals of Muktsar.
Daughter-in-law of Sardar Parkash Singh Badal, who has been Punjab’s Chief Minister four times, she is the Shiromani Akali Dal’s candidate from Bathinda, where she faces the Congress’s Raninder Singh, son of the former Chief Minister , Amarinder Singh and a scion of the Patiala royal family.
Both Bathinda and Harsimrat Kaur have been in news for different reasons. Bathinda and Mansa districts, which are part of this constituency, were among the 10 districts of the country to report the worst sex ratios. Apart from being Punjab’s cotton belt, the region has a high incidence of diseases .
Ms. Harsimrat Kaur has launched a programme “Nanhi Chhan” (the elfin shade), to project her struggle against female foeticide and denudation of Punjab’s green cover.
“Nanhi Chhan is my politics,” asserts Harsimrat as in her public meetings where she makes her voters realise that a tree and a mother are the embodiments of nurturing. However in Punjab, the number of girl children aged 0-6 has dwindled fast as has forest cover, from 33 per cent to a pathetic six per cent. She accepts that her programme is a struggle to liberate Punjab from the vicious grip of the feudal patriarchy, which has also led to various socio-economic problems.
In January, when her husband, Sukhbir Singh Badal, was sworn in as Punjab’s Deputy Chief Minister, she saw the opportunity to use political power to spread her programme.
Though she was initially quite reluctant to plunge into active politics, Ms. Harsimrat Kaur hopes that she will be able to take her programme to the next level if she gains entry into Parliament. She is optimistic that being an MP will help her get support to change a mindset that is heavily biased against the girl child.
So far, she has involved a pharmaceutical major, religious leaders, the SGPC, social activists and the forest department in the distribution of the “Buta Prasad” (saplings).
Her target is to distribute about 12 lakh saplings of neem, ber, mango, guava and other fruit trees as well as medicinal plants. The programme, which was launched from the Golden Temple last year, has attracted appreciation even from her political opponents. Her electoral rival, Mr. Raninder Singh, says he would like to promote the project.
As she appeals for votes, Ms. Harsimrat Kaur seeks to draw the attention of women to a rare opportunity to enjoy the fruits of “shakti” (political power).
“If you elect me, you get a Chief Minister, a deputy Chief Minister and a Finance Minister as free,” she says.

What forced Cong hand on Tytler, Sajjan

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 08:51:00 +0000

'Jutta Factor'

RAMESH VINAYAK

Even as the Congress has attempted to cut its political losses by withdrawing the Lok Sabha candidature of 1984 anti-Sikh riot-tainted Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), a key NDA ally, is showing no sign of piping down. Instead, in tandem with radical Sikh organisations, it appears intent on keeping the issue alive as high stake elections draw nearer. Two days after the shoe-hurling episode by a Sikh journalist catapulted the political row over the tickets to the duo into an expression of collective anger of the Sikhs, Congress president Sonia Gandhi moved decisively by asking both beleaguered leaders to opt out of the electoral arena. What ostensibly forced the high command’s hand was the blunt feedback from Punjab that any delay in dropping Tytler and Sajjan would seriously undermine the Congress’s poll prospects. Former CM Amarinder Singh amplified the party’s nervousness saying the resurrection of the riots issue had aroused the sentiments of the Sikh youth, and that allowing Akalis to stoke the emotive issue would make the going much tougher for three GenNext candidates handpicked by Rahul Gandhi. The Gandhi scion had ensured tickets to Ravneet Singh Bittu (Anandpur Sahib), Sukhwinder Singh Danny (Faridkot-reserve) and Vijay Inder Singla (Sangrur). However, a palpable pro-Congress groundswell across Punjab suddenly seemed to swing into antagonism for the party riding on anti-incumbency sentiment against the SAD-BJP rule until last week.While the Congress has reason to heave a sigh of comfort, all of a sudden SAD, which was staring at grim poll prospects and was rattled by a spate of defections to the Congress, has spring in its feet. “At stake is not tickets to the accused, but the core issue of punishment of the guilty and the CBI’s dubious role,” said Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.Implicit in the SAD’s game plan to throw the Congress off balance is its move of pitching the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee — the apex Sikh religious body controlled by SAD – as the spearhead of a shrill tirade pegged to the riots. The Akalis have another reason to milk the issue. A running animosity between Sirsa-based Dera Sacha Sauda, with a sizable following in the Malwa, and the Sikhs has cast a shadow on SAD poll prospects. In the 2007 Assembly elections, the Dera openly supported the Congress, leading to the SAD rout in its turf. Clearly despite the Congress backing off, the election heat in Punjab is poised to rise.

Shoe hits home after two days, Tytler, Sajjan out of poll race
Journalist Jarnail Singh’s size-9 Reebok shoe may have missed P. Chidambaram on Tuesday, but two days later, it brought down two Delhi political heavyweights, Congress MPs and candidates Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.“Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar will not be the Congress candidates in the Lok Sabha elections,” announced Congress general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi on Thursday. Here is what he didn’t say: they had been asked to step down.But that was later in the evening. The day began with the run up to a Delhi court case on allegations of Tytler’s involvement in the 1984 riots. It was postponed to another date, amid protests and burning of effigies outside court premises.Outside courts again, claims and counterclaims flew thick. Protestors alleged being pushed around by Tytler’s men and the Congress leader alleged he was being targeted. News channels had a busy day.Later in the afternoon Tytler told a news conference at his house, “In my heart I know this incident has embarrassed my party and me and I would not like to contest the elections.” That was the first indication of things to come.

And then the Congress leader said he was leaving it to his party. His party, however, was not forthcoming immediately. Its leaders had been in a huddle for the last two days starting with the shoe throwing at its head office on Tuesday.The party had taken the position that its president would decide after she returned from campaigning down south. She returned Wednesday night, and consultations began in earnest. They had to close the issue quickly.“Sonia had assiduously built bridges with the Sikh community over the last few years,” said a source not authorised to speak to reporters, adding, “she was anxious to protect this relationship from further damage.”Something had to give here.The Punjab unit of the party chipped in, telling the central leader very bluntly: get rid of Tytler and Kumar. The party is likely to do well here in the elections and let’s please not do anything to spoil our chances. Former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, who is spearheading the Punjab campaign panel, told Delhi the resurrection of 1984 had upset the Sikh youth, who form roughly 65 per cent of the electorate in the state.If they dumped the Congress, Singh argued, it would be difficult to ensure the victory of the three GenNext candidates handpicked by Rahul Gandhi — Ravneet Singh Bittu, Sukhwinder Singh Danny and Vijay Inder Singla.Singh was not exaggerating. Desperately fighting anti-incumbency, the ruling Akali Dal had very quickly latched on to the shoe throwing incident -- deputy chief minister Sukhbir Badal was almost constantly on news channels talking up the issue.Party seniors didn’t need any more convincing now. Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee and political secretary Ahmad Patel were entrusted with the task of talking to Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.While the shoe-thrower was protesting CBI’s clean chit to Tytler, Sajjan Kumar got pulled in because of allegations of involvement in the riots against him. “Mukherjee and Patel conveyed to them Sonia’s anxiety,” said a source.Kumar didn’t make any public statements, but Tytler did, saying he was leaving it to the party. And then later qualified it by saying his heart tells him not to contest. And he will not.Their replacements will be named shortly.

CBI clears Tytler in 1984 anti-Sikh riots case

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:47:00 +0000

New Delhi: Congress leader and former union minister Jagdish Tytler was on Thursday given a clean chit by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a case registered against him for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi. De-sealing its final report in the case in a court in the Capital, the CBI pleaded that the case against Tytler be cancelled. The CBI is also hoping to quash the FIR in the 1984 riots case. Counsel for the 1984 riots' accused H S Phoolka said, "The CBI has given the benefit to Tytler as he is contesting polls this time. There might be serious flaws in their report therefore the CBI does not want the report to be shown." In an affidavit filed before the Karkardooma court in New Delhi last year, the CBI said: "We don't have any evidence or witness to file a case against Jagdish Tytler."
This echoed the Government's stand that Tytler cannot be prosecuted due to insufficient concrete evidence. The Nanavati Commission - probing the case - had stated that there was 'credible evidence' against Tytler, and that he 'very probably' was one of those responsible for orchestrating the attacks. Tytler had responded that the evidence in question was unreliable because it was a matter of mistaken identity. Speaking to CNN-IBN on Thursday, Jagdish Tytler said that he had been suffering for so long for no fault of his. "I have suffered enough now. I just want to be left alone. Let those who oppose me say whatever they want. I will continue to serve the people of the country," he stated. "The truth has now finally come out aided by the CBI," he added. The BJP has lashed out at the CBI saying that it is not the Central Bureau of Investigation but the Congress Bureau of Investigation. "To give a clean chit to a man who is in serious trouble shows the political convenience of the Congress. The Congress is bent upon destroying all institutions in India and is now trying to influence the judiciary," said BJP Spokesperson, Prakash Javadekar.

Varun Plays The BJP’s Communal Card

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:48:00 +0000

Method in madness

Amulya Ganguli

Despite Varun Gandhi’s lineage, he is still a minor figure in politics. In fact, but for his genealogy, he would have been an even more insignificant person. His immediate background, too, is less exalted than that of the other members of the family. He belongs to a branch which can hardly claim to be the true heirs of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy. The reason is that Varun’s father, Sanjay Gandhi, the “wayward, uneducated, inexperienced boy”, in the words of his uncle, BK Nehru, is hardly a much admired person in Indian politics. Instead, the role of this enfant terrible was widely believed to be responsible for Indira Gandhi’s defeat in 1977 after two years of the Emergency.

Since Sanjay Gandhi’s fascistic tendencies were evident during this period, it isn’t surprising that both his wife, Maneka, and Varun, found refuge in the BJP which, too, exhibits similar traits. So has one of Sanjay Gandhi’s henchmen, Jagmohan. Sanjay Gandhi’s stint at the top was too brief to reveal his anti-Muslim sentiments although members of this community suffered the most during the sterilization drives as a part of his family planning initiatives. As a result, they turned resolutely against the Congress in 1977, especially in UP and Bihar from where the Congress, astonishingly, did not win a single Lok Sabha seat.

Stridently pro-Hindu

Since Maneka Gandhi, too, did not show any overt anti-minority feelings during her political career perhaps because she is a Sikh, it is difficult to say from where Varun has acquired his stridently pro-Hindu outlook, which has been disowned by his own party. It is possible that he sees his aggressive anti-minority posturing as the only way to make his presence felt. Besides, as the support extended to him by the Shiv Sena and at least two contributors to the saffron newspaper, The Pioneer, shows, his combativeness will have admirers even if, like Pramod Muthalik of the Ram Sene, he falls foul of the law. But illegality can yield dividends, especially in a party and a parivar where there are any number of hardliners ~ from Narendra Modi to Ashok Singhal ~ who make no secret of their antipathy towards what a saffron scribe called “non-nationalists”. It is not impossible that it is in the company of these hawks that the “inexperienced” Varun’s anti-minority sentiments were honed. After all, the essence of the Sangh Parivar’s worldview is what Varun said in his speeches in his constituency, Pilibhit ~ that the Hindus are under pressure from the unpatriotic Muslims, who invaded the country in medieval times, divided it in 1947 and now pose a demographic threat because of their increasing numbers. To buttress this last point, Modi coined the slogan, hum panch, hamare pachis, to underline the practice of the Muslims having four wives and not observing family planning. Varun’s supposedly doctored CD is not the only one which has drawn attention to the BJP’s venomous propaganda.

A similar CD was in circulation before the UP assembly elections of 2007. It was a typical potpourri of the BJP’s and the saffron brotherhood’s hate campaign. It features a saffron “masterji” saying that the BJP “is a party which thinks about the country, it thinks about the Hindu religion. The other parties are all agents of the Muslims”. There are scenes of slaughtered cows, of a Hindu girl being deceived into marrying a Muslim and a speech by a “social worker” who says that “the day is not far away when we will be afraid to even call ourselves Hindus and soon you will never be able to find a Sohanlal, Mohanlal, Atmaram or Radhakrishnan … we will only see Abbas, Naqvi, Rizvi and Maulvi”. The BJP, of course, disowned the CD even though it was released at a public function by Lalji Tandon, a prominent leader of the party in the state. The tactical retreat was not unlike its present ploy of distancing itself from Varun or from Pramod Muthalik earlier. The party with a difference has become a party of dissociation from its firebrands. There may be a method, however, behind this madness. Notwithstanding these subsequent denials, the BJP’s purpose is served by such CDs and speeches. They tell its core constituency that its heart remains uncontaminated by its tactical dalliance with “secular” allies of the NDA like the Janata Dal (United), which has predictably expressed outrage over Varun’s speeches.

Golwalkar’s view

As long as the central point of the BJP’s and the parivar’s remains Golwalkar’s perception of Muslims and Christians as Internal Threats Nos. 1 and 2 along with Savarkar’s view of these two communities as essentially alien, such inflammatory audio-visual means of propaganda and speeches by individuals like Varun will continue to be a feature of Hindutva politics. Even while pretending that it had nothing to do with such outpourings, the BJP cannot but note with satisfaction the voices of support not only from members of the extended parivar like the Shiv Sena, but also from those who express themselves, often in an offensive manner, on the Internet. To give one example, a contributor has said that “there is no question that Hindus are lambasted by the minority community in their own country. How else could an Italian head this huge nation? All because the selfish and egotistical founding fathers wrote a Constitution that benefited themselves and not the majority community. That was blatantly unfair. Varun (like I feel myself) has given vent to it”. Such comments probably act as a whiff of oxygen to the BJP and the parivar, sustaining their illusion that they are basically on the right track and that the only obstacle is the constitutional arrangement which prevents India’s conversion into a theocracy.

The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman.

Inside the Swat Valley

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:35:00 +0000

The Devil In The Backyard

The Zardari Government is making peace with the Taliban which is hanging amputated bodies from electric poles. AMIR MATEEN analyses the dangers for Pakistan

THE ONE-TIME tourist heaven of Swat looks like a ghost valley today. The people have still not recovered from the gory nightmare that was unleashed by the local Taliban. The last one-and-a-half year has seen a population of 1.5 million people being held hostage by a ragtag force of some 2,500 Taliban. They are under the leadership of Maulvi Fazalullah, popularly known as Mullah Radio for his jihad-inflected sermons, aired through his illegal FM radio. Fazalullah’s men have fought bloody battles with the army over the past two years. They virtually took control of most of Swat last year. Over 1,200 civilians have died so far and around 350,000 hapless locals forced to leave through rough mountain terrain.
The rich have left for Peshawar — 70 miles away, and the richer for more posh Islamabad — 100 miles in the south. The poor, with no place to go, suffered the trauma that makes Hollywood horrors look like a picnic. Intelligence sources dubbed as ‘spies’ and government officials — particularly from law-enforcing agencies — were specifically targeted by the Taliban. They were abducted and maimed and their killing turned into a gruesome spectacle in order to send a message to others.
The reign of terror is symbolised by what has come to be known as Khooni Chowk — the Crossing of Blood. A band of Taliban would, late at night, block the central crossing in the city centre of Mingora, the district headquarters the size of Srinagar and no less beautiful. They hung amputated bodies — some headless — on an electrical pole in the middle of the crossing, with notes giving their name and details of their ‘misdeeds’ against Islam. The bodies were not to be removed before a given date. Anybody violating this dictat could do so only at the risk of being himself put up headless.
THIS SCENE — perpetuated for days and weeks — is not from the Wild West of the cowboys. It happened in the Swat valley, which once took pride in having the most peaceful and bettereducated residents not just in the frontier province alone, but all over Pakistan. The princely state — annexed by Pakistan in 1969 — had better schools, hospitals and police stations than anybody else. It had an airport, and attractions like ski resorts and trout fishing on the meandering River Swat, which used to attract hordes of tourists every year. No more.
A majority of the police force has either run away, resigned or simply not turned up for work. Local newspapers are filled with advertisements from policemen declaring that they have left their jobs, and hence they be spared “in the name of their small children.” A new force of 600 locals was recruited for special commando training to combat what is actually an insurgency. The story goes that 450 of them disappeared during the training itself, and another 148 did not appear on the date of joining. The two men left in the force have not ventured outside their office in uniform since.
This left the entire populace at the mercy of the wolves that are masquerading as saviours of religion. People have seen throats being slit. Those who violate the Taliban code are either lashed or hanged in public jirgas (gatherings). Events where masked gunmen with the latest weaponry went on the rampage were skillfully orchestrated, and then their videos released in order to instill fear in the public. This took a severe toll on the psyche of the public, already hard pressed thanks to unemployment and hunger.
Life has come to a standstill for 80 percent of the people whose earnings came from tourism. Orchids have become rotten in the absence of labour and markets; and the fields lie barren. People go without fire, food, and electricity for days. The only cinema in Mingora was forced to down shutters, television and music has been banned, and CD shops have been closed. Even barbershops were shutdown as shaving, according to the interpretation of the Taliban, is un-Islamic.
It has been particularly hard for women, children and the handicapped because of the problems of age or sickness. Over 200 schools have been blown up as they were giving “western education.” Girls are barred from schooling. Over 100,000 Swati girls stand to lose their chance of education and, consequently, any career or professional life. This is happening in a place where the ratio of women in literacy and the job market was one of the highest in the province. The new edict may allow girls an education till the fourth grade, but with a revised curriculum. Also, they must always wear scarves on their heads. In any case, it will take awhile as most schools have been destroyed.
Women have been rendered prisoner in their own homes as they are now barred from going out in public, something that even Saudi Arabia has not tried. The central bazaar for women — with items like cosmetics and bangles, when partially open — today gives an image of a haunted place without shoppers. But then, cosmetics are a lesser priority when your children sleep hungry. Women are not allowed to work. Even women doctors are not permitted to carry on with their jobs. Stories abound where women lost babies because of the non-availability of doctors. Many others have died because of the lack of medicines and medical treatment.
The question is — how did over a million people accept the inhuman dictates of a bunch of jihadi thugs who do not fit into any Islamic school of thought? Well, they have not. They voted liberal parties to power in the last election. But these parties did not have either the political muscle, or the will, to protect them from the evil of the Taliban.
But how did the Taliban gain ascendancy? The system of justice under the princely state was more efficient than what followed. The people, therefore, wanted Sharia courts to be established as a way of achieving quick justice and dispensing with the long delays and corruption of the civil courts. But the Taliban, who had a different agenda, hijacked their demand. For ordinary people, in the absence of the writ of the state, it’s just a matter of choosing a lesser evil.
All hopes now hinge upon Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the father-in-law of Fazalullah. Sufi Mohammad is no angel himself. He is a radical cleric freed in 2008 after spending six years in jail for leading 10,000 Pashtun tribesmen to fight the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Nearly 7,000 died in the bombing and he ran back for his life. The people whose children he took with him after indoctrinating them, leading to their being killed, hate him. He has now been resurrected in order to persuade Fazalullah to accept the government’s offer of a ceasefire, which he has agreed to partially. How long this respite will last, only time will tell.
The ceasefire agreement with the Taliban has raised questions as to whether it is a victory for the Pakistan Government, capitulation before the Taliban who want to recreate a 1,500-year-old replica of Islamic rule, or a strategic retreat by the military.
IT IS ironic that Frontier Chief Minister Ameer Khan Hoti, the great grandson of the champion of nonviolence, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan — the Frontier Gandhi — has signed the agreement. He has justified it saying, “I have done this to stop violence and to fulfill my electoral promise of restoring peace.” His uncle and Awami National Party Chief Asfand Yar Wali — whose party runs the troubled province bordering Afghanistan — is under attack from the Taliban. He survived a suicide bomb attack three months ago while most of his party members are on the run because of constant threats to their life.
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Government at the Centre is playing it safe. President Asif Zardari’s position is that he will decide when the agreement will come to him for his signature. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood has tried to pacify the Americans while on a tour of Washington, saying, “it’s a local remedy to a local problem.” The PPP has neither accepted the agreement nor rejected it. Obviously, the PPP Government would like to see what the outcome will be in a couple of months, if not earlier, before taking a stand. In the meantime, PPP spinmasters are arguing that the Sharia courts are not the same as strict Islamic law. The new laws, for instance, would not ban education of women or impose other strict tenets espoused by the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
LIBERAL CIRCLES in Pakistan and abroad are fuming over what they call “the sellout.” Some, like human rights activist Iqbal Haider, have described it as a deal with the devil. “How can you sit with the very people who have maimed hundreds of people,” he protested. “It’s a matter of principle which should be supreme. These people should be tried for crimes against humanity.”
The liberals have a valid argument that the agreement will now be a model for the rest of the Taliban. They will demand similar Sharia in other parts of the province. “Now they know that militancy is the way to coerce the government into submission,” said senior analyst Saleem Khilji. They have a point, as the agreement extends the scope of their power. The government has conceded that the new Sharia will be extended beyond Swat to the other five districts of Malakand division also.
The Pakistan Army has taken refuge behind the government, saying that it is following orders to stay out till further notice. They should be the happiest lot if this agreement were to result in peace. They have taken the brunt of the fight. Media reports say army casualties number more than a hundred dead but the Taliban claims that it might be much higher.
The issue is that the Pakistan Army has been trained to fight with India, and it may not be comfortable with counterinsurgency operations. It does not have sufficient experience of that except for the Balochistan insurgency in the 1970s, unlike its Indian rival, which has consistently countered insurgencies in Kashmir, Nagaland and Mizoram.
The army will remain stationed in Swat to deal with the fallout. The underlying assumption is that either Sufi Mohammad will deliver peace or fight with his son-inlaw. This will be a tactical victory. Instead of the army fighting the Taliban, it would be the militants fighting each other.
But then there is a counter-theory — the two factions might use the time to regroup, consolidate their power and fight later with even more ferocity. There are already signs of this happening. An indicator is that the price of arms in the tribal belt has almost doubled because of the massive demand.
In any case, the agreement is simply not implementable. Each party has a different interpretation of it. The governments in the Frontier and Islamabad think that the Sharia court is old wine in a new bottle. Sufi Mohammad believes that his mandate is to provide Sharia courts where religious scholars will be independent judges and not advisers to the regular civil judges like in the earlier agreement of six years ago. “The choice of judges will be ours and they will be all-powerful,” said Maulana Izzat, spokes man of Sufi Mohammad, in a telephonic interview.
Fazalullah wants the complete domination of the Sharia, encompassing all sectors beyond the judiciary. “We shall run the entire area in accordance with the holy book, “countered Muslim Khan, another spokesman for Fazalullah. “We don’t accept any system but our own and will inshallah spread it to other parts of Pakistan very soon.”
The legal and administrative intricacies involved in merging the old system with the new are something beyond these clerics. The Taliban have simply ceased fire but not surrendered. Both sides are waiting for the next round to start with bated breath. It almost came to that when a newly-appointed senior district official was kidnapped by militants two days after the ceasefire. After a tense standoff lasting hours, the official, Kushal Khan, was freed.
Later, it was disclosed that his release had been the result of a swap: Pakistani authorities released two militants who had been picked up a day earlier in Peshawar. Next time around, it is possible that some freed militants like this might renew the fighting while both sides continue to sit in the trenches.
Swat is different from other trouble spots like Bahaur, Waziristan and Khyber. It is the only trouble spot that is not a federal (FATA) but a provincial tribal area (PATA). It is wrong to generalise about the Taliban and the Swat situation in particular.
FAZALULLAH, A barely-literate former lift operator, was an indigenous product. He does not come from the ranks of Taliban or Al-Qaeda, but was later accepted by them and adopted as the commander of the area looking after his hold in the area. It is only in Swat that schools have been closed in an organised manner, otherwise the Taliban have not done so in FATA, except for occasional episodes. The Taliban have generally refrained from killing hostages, except for spies or the recent Polish engineer in Waziristan. The Swat Talibans have slit throats of hostages and security forces with ruthless abandon.
Swat is the only place which has been completely taken over by the Taliban. This may be because of its geography — it is a bowl-shaped valley. The Swat terrain makes it strategically easier for Taliban to hold power against numerical odds. There is one major communication artery along the Swat River that could easily be blocked from anywhere. In Bajaur, Khyber and Waziristan, the Taliban are dominant, but they do not run those agencies. Swat is also the only hotspot that does not border Afghanistan. In fact, it remained aloof and generally peaceful during the war with Afghanistan.
Swat has a past of peace and culture where thousands thronged from all over Pakistan and abroad every summer. Its capital, Mingora, happens to be much bigger than any other town in any of the troubled agencies.
Also, it houses the elite of Pashtun tribes, and is the abode of the royal, sophisticated Yousafzais of Tana, whereas the other agencies have a history of warring tribes. The impact of Swat’s takeover, like in the classical Clausewitzian centre of gravity, has been immense on the psyche of Pashtuns.
If the impression goes out that it’s a victory for the Taliban, it will encourage militancy elsewhere, in the rest of Pakistan. It becomes more alarming when seen in the larger context where the Waziristan commanders, pro-Pakistan Mullah Nazir and anti-state Baitullah Mehsud, along with Haji Gul Bahadur, have patched up differences in Waziristan to become a formidable force; Bajaur Taliban now expect similar Sharia in their area, and Hamimullah is blocking NATO supplies in Khyber. The Taliban seem to be on the ascendant, which should be a source of worry for not just Pakistan, but also the entire region and the world.
If the social fabric continues to be torn apart as it has in Swat, this will lead to the rise of more non-state actors who are not under the control of anyone. Since all of these commanders are connected to each other, including the militants in Kashmir, the genie is threatening to become ever more dangerous. The question is not just about the outcome of the investigation into the Mumbai attack. A more serious question is: what will happen if there is another attack of a similar nature?

Mateen is an Islamabad-based journalist
WRITER’S EMAIL amirmateen@hotmail.com
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 9, Dated Mar 07, 2009

Full text of Obama's inaugural address

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:23:00 +0000

Barack Obama, after being sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and the nation's first African-American president on Tuesday, delivered the following speech

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebearers, and true to our founding documents. So it has been.

So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land -- a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights. Don't Miss

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again, these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act -- not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions -- who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control -- and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.

And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort -- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West: Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment -- a moment that will define a generation -- it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed -- why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: "

Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

enough is enough

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:13:00 +0000

Why war is n’t an option
Barkha Dutt
I just got an email from a friend in Pakistan. He had written just five words: do something; stop this war. War? I wrote back arguing that there was no war to run scared from and that the illusion of an imminent catastrophe had been manufactured on the other side. Our dialogue collapsed in a dead-end, which may work well for TV talk but not in real life. Most Pakistanis I have been speaking to in the last one month are convinced that the
Indians are coming. And most Indians, with the inarticulateness that comes with rage, want the government to “do something”. We just aren’t sure what that “something” can or should be.
We are frustrated and angry that even a month after the Bombay attacks, there is no tangible shift in the way Islamabad is respo-nding. If anything, things have only got worse. Even the UN-pushed crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (the ideolo-gical launchpad and political front of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba) has turned out to be cosmetic. And Masood Azhar — the terrorist who walked free in exchange for the safety of the IC-814 passengers — has vanished, after being declared under house arrest. The flip-flops are brazen enough to destroy diplomacy.
And yet, the truth — painful as it may be to families who have suffered directly in the Bombay attacks — is this: war is not an option; it is neither practical nor desirable. First, there are the commonsensical reasons to rule it out. A military conflict will not manage to eliminate the seeds of terrorism that are sown deep into the subsoil of Pakistan’s strategic architecture. Washington cannot be treated as the automatic deterrent to nuclear conflict; the stakes are too high, the game too risky. A civilian establishment that does not trust its own institutions to investigate the assassination of Benazir Bhutto (the centrepiece of the PPP’s election campaign was the promise of a UN probe) will hardly be able to control rogue players with a mind of their own, in case of a war. Even surgical strikes (bound to escalate into a full-blown conflict) don’t have ready targets to plan with. Terror camps can be swiftly dismantled and resurrected at new locations once the conflict is over. A military conflict does not even guarantee that the Indian forces can come home with Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed or Masood Azhar. So, what would we really achieve by risking the lives of our soldiers?
But for those who dismiss all this as arguments made by the fainthearted, there’s a more compelling reason not to consider war: India would be playing straight into the hands of Pakistan’s military regime. Talk to Pakistani commentators and they agree that a war with India strengthens the Pakistan army like nothing else has or could in the past year. Some even suggest that precision air strikes by India will present a near-perfect scenario for the Pakistan military. Islamabad will retaliate without immediately risking the fatalities of on-ground conflict; Washington will jump in within days and the military will be back in the centrestage of public approval. This, in a country, where just a few months ago, General Pervez Musharraf was pushed out unceremoniously and the army was blamed for everything from the rise of the Taliban to the price of onions.
Bhutto’s tragic assassination (blamed by her own people on elements in the security establishment) was meant to usher in a political revolution. Exactly a year back, in December, I remember sitting in the Bhutto House at Larkana, and feeling goosebumps when Bilawal Bhutto announced in a trembling voice that that “democracy” would be the “best revenge” for his mother’s murder. But we have seen that democracy being whittled down systematically. Many in Pakistan believe that sections of the ISI and the Army have moved in with quiet, but brutal aggression because President Asif Ali Zardari was moving too quickly in peace talks with India. The offer of a no-first use of N-weapons; the consent to start border trade across the line of control, the attempts to reign in the ISI and the willingness (at least on paper) to investigate its role in the Kabul bombings — none of this made Zardari popular with his own security establishment. And frankly, in the last month it has become clear that neither Zardari nor Nawaz Sharif is the author of this script any longer. The refusal to send the ISI chief to India, pushing Sharif to retract his statement on Pakistani involvement in the Bombay attacks, and now the artificial war hysteria created by moving troops and flying air force jets over residential areas — all have the imprint of a larger plan — one that goes well beyond the terrorist strikes in Bombay.
By whipping up the impression of imminent war, Islamabad’s security establishment is hoping to catapult itself back into the role of saviour. It isn’t my argument that India should be overly concerned about the inner failings of Pakistan’s experiment with democracy. Our decisions should be guided by self-interest. And so we must ask, does India want to strengthen the very section of the Pakistani power structure that it sees as innately hostile to us?
Yes, the domestic mood remains one of “enough is enough.” And contrary to the rather over-imaginative understanding of some TV-bashers that this was an exhortation to war, it’s a simple, effective phrase (first used passionately by Shobhaa De) to capture the mood of a country that is no longer willing to accept a system that lets us down and fails to protect us. But before we demand quick-fix solutions on moving against Pakistan, let us ask ourselves this: are we helping India? India must now look for an unconventional solution that lies somewhere between war and peace.
Barkha Dutt is Group Editor, English News, NDTV

Truth Behind Border

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 13:04:00 +0000

Into The Heart Of Darkness

HARINDER BAWEJA visits Muridke, the headquarters of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and goes behind the mask of piety to discover the face of terror

YOU ARE in an educational complex but you are from India and you work for TEHELKA, so it will take you time to change your mind,’’ is what Abdullah Muntazir, (my guide and the spokesperson for the foreign media), threw at me within minutes of us reaching Muridke, believed worldwide to be the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT). It was perhaps, for the first time, that due permission had been granted to any Indian journalist to visit the sprawling campus that lies 40 kms out of Lahore. The barricade that leads to the complex is heavily guarded, and no one can enter without prior consent.
The guided tour took me through a neatly laid out 60-bed hospital, schools for boys and girls, a madarsa, a mosque, an exorbitantly large swimming pool and a guest house. Nestled between tall trees and a meshed wire boundary, the 75-acre complex has manicured lawns, turnip farms and a fish-breeding centre. The students who enroll in the school pay a fee while those who study in the madarsa and pass out as masters in Islamic studies can come for free. Learning English and Arabic from class one on is compulsory, as is a course in computers.
"Welcome to the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. You think a terrorist organisation will be based just a few metres away from the main Grand Trunk Road?’’ is the next loaded statement. The administrators of the complex, drawn from the LeT’s political wing, Jamaat-ud- Dawa, are clearly at pains to disassociate themselves from the group widely believed to be behind the terror attack in Mumbai on 26/11. Other foreign journalists were guided through the complex a few days before my visit. During their orchestrated tour, they saw students working in chemistry and physics laboratories, peering into microscopes and connecting electric circuits.
None of us went there thinking we would see firing ranges or target shooting in progress, but the tour itself is surreal, because even as you walk through the neatly trimmed lawns and veer left or right to see the hostel or the mosque or the hospital, the conversation itself is dotted entirely with words like terrorism, lashkar and in my case, Kashmir. Even though the gates have been opened — after clearance from Pakistan’s security agencies (read ISI) — to dispel the impression of Muridke being the training camp that "India has made it out to be,’’ the conversation is not about the school syllabus but wholly about how India is an enemy.
ADAY AFTER I visited Muridke, I met a family whose sister-in-law lives right next to the complex. "But of course it’s a training ground. You can hear slogans for jehad blaring out of loudspeakers in full volume and you can also sometimes hear the sound of gunfire,’’ members of this family confided. But during the two hours that I spent within the complex, there was enough conversation about jehad even if there were no signs of it being a sanctuary, not just for the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, but for Ramzi Yousef, an al-Qaeda operative, and one of the conspirators of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.
Kasav, the lone terrorist who was captured alive in Mumbai, is supposed to have studied here, according to his interrogators, and its time to ask some straight questions.
So did Kasav study here, in Muridke? Even if he did, we are not responsible for what any one of our students do after passing out.
Do you support the LeT? We used to. You used to? Yes, we were like-minded but the group was banned after Indian propaganda following the attack on its Parliament, which was done by the Jaishe-Mohammad and not the LeT. We used to provide logistical help to the Lashkar, collect funds for them and look after their publicity.
Did you also provide them with arms?
They must have bought weapons with the money we gave them. They were obviously not using the money to buy flowers for the Indian Army.
The Lashkar has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Red Fort in Delhi and the airport in Srinagar.
We do not consider Kashmir to be a part of India. It is a part of Pakistan. Those who attack the security forces are not terrorists, they are freedom fighters.
President Musharraf moved away from the position that Kashmir either secede or be given independence. He proposed joint control.
Pervez Musharraf did not enjoy any legitimacy. He had no business making such proposals.
Do you consider India an enemy?
Without doubt. India is responsible for the attack on Islamabad’s Marriot hotel, for the bomb blasts in Peshawar. Sarabjit Singh has been convicted of being a RAW agent.
Your Amir, Hafiz Sayeed, has given calls for jehad.
He supports the freedom movement in Kashmir. We think it is right. It is ridiculous to call him a terrorist. When India is even pricked by a thorn, the whole world stands up. Why did Condoleezza Rice not put pressure on India for handing over Narendra Modi after the Gujarat carnage?
Kashmir is no longer entirely indigenous. Foreign fighters like Maulana Masood Azhar were arrested in Anantnag.
He was a journalist and still is an inspirational writer. Anyone from here can go to Kashmir. We do not see it as part of India. Did you sanitise this place before bringing me in?
This is an educational complex and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a charitable organisation. There are very few people here because of the Eid break.
Does the ISI support you?
He just laughs.
THE JAMAAT-UD-DAWA, which was banned by the US in 2005 for being a Lashkar front, draws patronage from the ISI and though proscribed abroad, has a free run in Pakistan. It has branches all across the country and is as famous for the social work it renders, as it is infamous for its terror activities. It sees itself as a movement and not an organisation and has appeal to many in rural and urban areas. When the Observer correspondent went to Kasav’s village in Faridkot, just off a town called Depalpur close to the border with India, to establish if he indeed was a Pakistani, he was told that "religious clerics were brainwashing youths in the area and that LeT’s founder Hafiz Sayeed had visited nearby Depalpur. There was a LeT office in Depalpur, but that had hurriedly been closed down in the past few days. The LeT paper is distributed in Depalpur and Faridkot."
The Jamaat-ud-Dawa has a wide base and operates 140 schools and 29 seminaries in different towns and cities of Pakistan. According to the Jamaat’s website, "Islam does not mean following a few rituals like performing prayers, keeping fasts, performing the pilgrimage to the Ka’ba (Hajj), giving alms (Zakat), or donating to charitable works, but in fact, it is a complete Code of Life. That is why Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s struggle is not limited to any particular aspect of life only; rather, Jamaat-ud-Dawa addresses each and every field of life according to the teachings of Islam. Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a movement that aims to spread the true teachings of Islam, and to establish a pure and peaceful society by building the character of individuals according to those teachings." Its appeal extends to urban professionals like doctors who were out in large numbers in Muzaffarabad (the capital of Azad Kashmir or POK, depending on which side of the line of control you are on) in 2005, after a devastating earthquake. Unlike the Taliban, the Jamaat is modelled after Hamas and is not merely an army with gun-toting members but a complex and intricate organisation with a social and political agenda. It has a huge following and reports have often indicated that in its annual congregations, where Hafiz Sayeed gives a call for jehad, as many as 100,000 people are present in the sprawling Muridke compound.
IT IS groups like the Jamaat and the Jaish-e-Mohammad — started by Maulana Masood Azhar soon after he was set free in Kandahar — that both India and Pakistan are up against.
The complete U-turn, post 9/11 when General Musharraf lent complete support to George Bush, saw Pakistan take a slow but sure journey that has today placed it on a dangerous crosshair. While Musharraf joined the war against terror — forced to by Bush who had infamously said you are either with us or against us — he also got isolated from his own people who took to the streets, openly protesting his support of America that was bombing and strafing civilians, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. The last straw on the camel’s back — to use a cliché — came when his own army stormed the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in mid-2007. Reports of machine guns being used against innocents who got trapped in the Masjid, converted many within the army and the ISI and those who had retired from these outfits. It was the tipping point for former ISI chief Lt Gen Assad Durrani, who says, "It was the most blatant homage paid to the Americans. The mosque is located under the nose of the ISI headquarter and you cannot first allow it to become a fortress and then fire on people who were willing to surrender."
The storming of the Lal Masjid was a tipping point in more ways than one. If the release of Masood Azhar and the subsequent formation of the Jaish saw the advent of fidayeen attacks in Kashmir, the Lal Masjid operation led equally to the birth of intense attacks by suicide bombers. The suicide attacks were not just targeting civilians, they were seeking men in uniform and the figures, in fact, tell the story. The first half of 2007 saw 12 such attacks all over Pakistan, between January and July 3, and an estimated 75 people were killed. But after the Lal Masjid operation which reduced large parts of it to rubble, 44 suicide attacks took place between July and December, killing 567 people, mostly the members of the military and paramilitary forces, ISI and the police. December also saw the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a grim reminder of the fact that the militants had declared a war against their ex-masters. The attack on Islamabad’s Marriot Hotel, the city’s most high-profile landmark, only confirmed the fact that terror can strike at will, any time and anywhere. It confirmed also that terror was not restricted to Pakistan’s tribal belt alone. President Musharraf himself had, in fact, also survived three assassination attempts and now lives under extremely tight security. The terror threat in Pakistan, can, in fact, be gauged from the fact that both President Asif Zardari and the Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, in a complete first, offered Eid prayers at their respective residences on December 9.
The wave of suicide attacks in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan does not just testify to the revival of al Qaeda and the Taliban networks but as Ahmed Rashid, strategic writer and author of several books on the jehadi networks, says, "The army is embroiled in fighting these forces in the Frontier and one-third of the country is not even in the state’s control. This is hardly the time to pick a fight with India."
THE RATCHETING up of tension and animosity between India and Pakistan after the Mumbai terror attack on 26/11, points to another dangerous faultline — while the Pakistani Army joined the global war against terror, it never completely gave up its support to the jehadi network that is active on its border with India. Even after Lashkar and Jaish were banned, neither were their back accounts frozen, nor was there any attempt at forcing them to shut shop. The Army and the ISI continued to support fronts like the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which does more than just equip men with arms. It motivates and indoctrinates minds, and as Rashid points out, "Musharraf used to place Hafiz Sayed and Masood Azhar under house arrest for Western consumption. He may have stopped infiltrating them into Kashmir too under international pressure, but there was no attempt to stop their activities in Pakistan after they were banned. They were just allowed to hang loose." Concurs former interior secretary Tasneem Noorani, "There was no effort to mainstream the radicals."
Kasav’s journey from a remote village in Faridkot to Mumbai is a testimony to this. So is his revelation to his interrogators that he was trained by a ‘Major’. Zardari may have been right when he attributed the Mumbai attack to ‘nonstate actors’ because the Major does not necessarily have to be a serving officer employed with the ISI. "Retired ISI officers are helping the Pakistani Taliban and they have become more Lashkar than the Lashkar,’’ is how Rashid puts it but any number of strategic and security analysts will testify to this dangerous trend — to how ex-ISI officers are still in business because they have now attached themselves as advisors to militant organisations like the Lashkar and the Jaish. Admits one such analyst, who prefers not to be named, "You don’t need large training camps. Ex-servicemen are imparting arms training within the compounds of their homes. Different officials are attached with different groups."
The switch from one alias to another — Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Markaz-e-Toiba, Markaz-e-Dawah-Irshad, Jamaat-ud- Dawa — speaks of the Establishment’s (the Army and ISI combine are referred to as the Establishment in Pakistan) more than subtle support of groups that are used against India. The long-standing relationship between the Establishment and the India-bound militants is now under pressure. The overriding message from America after the Mumbai attack is for these groups to be reined in. This is testing not just the army’s carefully crafted support for the militants but has also focused attention on yet another faultline — the equation between the Establishment and the civilian government.
Committed to better relations with India, Pakistan’s top-most civilian representatives responded instinctively to the horror in Mumbai, in keeping with what Zardari had told the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, held a few days before the gun and grenade battle at Nariman House and the Taj and Oberoi hotels. In what took the Indian Government by surprise, Zardari committed Pakistan to a no-first-use of nuclear weapons. It was the first major securityrelated statement to come from Pakistan’s Government after the February 18 election and more than just surprise the Indian Government, it caused unrest amongst its own Establishment. The next statement, made by Prime Minister Gilani — and confirmed through a press release issued by his office — pertained to the civilian government agreeing to sending its top-most ISI officer, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha to India on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s request.
The sequence of events following Gilani’s offer and Zardari’s quick retraction, saying they had agreed to send a director and not Director General Pasha, in fact speaks of the internal battle of supremacy between the Establishment and the civilian authorities, especially on the crucial issue of national security, which the army believes to be its exclusive domain. As Imtiaz Alam, a peace worker and head of the South Asian Free Media Association, who had dinner with Zardari a day after the Mumbai attack put it, "Zardari is very firm on terrorism. He thinks democracy is a better weapon but the terrorists have succeeded in creating a psychological gulf between India and Pakistan. Instead of Pakistan fighting the jehadis, it has become a fight between India and Pakistan."
Senior journalists in Pakistan admit that briefings from the ISI changed the post-Mumbai discourse. Reacting perhaps to the loud, jingoistic demands on Indian television channels for action against Pakistan, the ISI told a select group of journalists that India had in fact ‘summoned’ their chief. In these briefings, the ISI is also surprisingly and shockingly supposed to have reffered to Baitullah Mehsud — Benazir Bhutto’s assasin — as a ‘patriotic Pakistani’. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa Amir, Hafiz Sayeed — with a clear nod from his handlers — appeared on one news channel after another, making the same points: that the list of 20 most wanted which also includes him, was old hat, that India was playing the blame game without evidence, that India had its own band of ‘Hindu terrorists’ and India should give freedom to Kashmir and end the matter once and for all. The leak soon after, of the hoax call, purportedly made by Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherji to President Zardari, sealed the debate — India bashing was back in business. The jingoism overtook the more important debate of the threat Pakistan itself faced from terror networks flourishing on its soil.
PAKISTAN’S NEWS channels went on overdrive and as some even blared war songs, the question that gained importance through all the din, was — who really runs Pakistan? Who is in control?
The answers to the questions are both easy and complex. Mushahid Hussain, Chairman, Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate, is clearheaded on the answer: "War on terror, national security and relations with India, Afghanistan and China are the domain of the army. Thanks to India, the army has been rehabilitated and the war bugles are all over. No one person, no one institution is running Pakistan. Musharraf ran a one window operation and the army and the ISI used to report to him, but now decision making is murky and that is causing confusion. The hoax call and the DG ISI controversy are symptomatic of that."
THERE ARE other examples. Only a few months ago, Zardari quickly retracted on his effort to bring the ISI under the control of the Interior Ministry. And even as the Pakistan Government’s response to Indian pressure to rein in the terror networks, plays itself out on a day-to-day basis, it is evident that the civilian authorities have had to embrace the Establishment’s point of view vis-a-vis India. Therefore, the talk that India should provide concrete evidence. Therefore, Zardari’s statement that the guilty — if found guilty — will be tried on Pakistani soil. That the 20 most wanted will not be handed over. Even on sourced reports, put out in the local media, that Masood Azhar had been put under house arrest, Prime Minister Gilani went on record to say that no such report had come to him yet.
If India believes that Pakistan’s response has been poor — two Lashkar men, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and Zarrar Shah have been arrested in Muzaffarbad — it is because the government here is tied down by the Establishment and pressure from its own people. It cannot be seen to be buckling under pressure either from India or the US.
Some moves seem to be on the cards, including the banning of the Jamaat-ud- Dawa. But Lashkar was banned in the past, as was the Jaish. Prime Minister Gilani has committed to not allowing Pakistani soil to be used for terror attacks, but then Musharraf had made the same exact promise on January 12, 2002 soon after Parliament was attacked in New Delhi.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has gone as far as to say that "Pakistan needs to set its own house in order’’but he is in the Opposition and he can afford to make such statements. If Pakistan has begun to resemble a house of terror, it is because the army and the ISI are yet to change their stance, not just vis-a-vis India but vis-a-vis the terrorists they create and support. Until then, the sprawling compound in Muridke will continue to remain in business. If the Jamaat-ud-Dawa does get banned, all it will need is another alias.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 50, Dated Dec 20, 2008

Major election boost for India's Congress party

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:10:00 +0000

NEW DELHI : India's ruling Congress party has scored unexpected wins in a string of state elections, officials said Monday, defying predictions of a voter backlash after the Mumbai attacks and an economic downturn.
Election Commission officials said the governing party had chalked up victories in the capital area New Delhi and in the remote northeastern state of Mizoram as results from five state polls held over the past month came in.
Official figures also showed Congress well on track to wrest power from its main rival, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the northern desert state of Rajasthan.
The polls -- which have seen straight fights between the Congress and the BJP -- are viewed as a key indicator of voter intentions ahead of national elections due by May 2009 at the latest. The BJP, however, was likely to retain its hold over the central states of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, media projections said.
BJP president Rajnath Singh described the projected Delhi results as "shocking as we thought we would win."
The party also conceded defeat in Rajasthan, with incumbent chief minister Vasundhra Raje saying she respected "the people's verdict" and promising to "play the role of a constructive opposition."
The results are an important boost for Congress, which leads the federal coalition government but has been on the ropes over the economic slowdown and punishing inflation.
The government's record on national security has also come under the spotlight following the Islamic militant attacks in Mumbai, which left 172 dead, including nine gunmen, and exposed India's intelligence failings.
Definitive results were expected later Monday, but supporters of Delhi's Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit were already celebrating outside her official residence -- distributing sweets and dancing to drum beats.
"Many thanks to the people of Delhi who supported us and our slogans of development and progress," a smiling Dikshit told cheering colleagues.
"It's an outright rejection" of the BJP playing up "the terror card," she said adding: "The people of Delhi have given a fitting reply."
During the more recent polls -- held as Mumbai was still under a state of siege -- the BJP had painted Congress as being "soft on terror."
Congress party spokeswoman Jayanti Natarajan admitted the Mumbai terror attack had been a "worrying factor" for party strategists.
But another Congress spokesman Tom Vadakkan said the results "showed that terror is a national issue and not an issue patented by one party."
Political analyst Rasheed Kidwai described the expected Congress victory in Delhi as "a very, very remarkable achievement."
"Bucking anti-incumbency is a big thing, but the Delhi chief minister has also beaten the BJP's twin campaign planks -- price rises and terror," said Kidwai. (AFP)

Bombay Attacks

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 09:29:00 +0000

The rampaging elephant

Vir Sanghvi, Hindustan Times
I wrote last week that I had never known such anger in urban India as we have witnessed after the Bombay attacks. Over a week after the attacks ended, the fury has not dissipated. Rather it has spun almost entirely out of control.
I have no problems with anger. It is often the precursor to change. Unless Indians make it clear that they are mad as hell and are not going to take it any longer, the system will never change.
My problem is with misdirected anger. Over the last ten days, the great Indian upper middle class (and especially those who live in South Bombay) has resembled nothing as much as a marauding elephant on a pointless rampage. Anger has overcome reason. The right targets are missed. And genuine grievances are trivialised when vapid Page 3 morons go on television and talk of sending more Indian soldiers to their deaths while they themselves sit back and wait for the re-opening of Wasabi.
Rarely have I heard as much nonsense as has been spouted over the last week. God knows, I was born into the South Bombay elite. The institutions that were attacked mean as much to me as they do to anybody else. (Just see my story on the Taj in today’s Brunch if you don’t believe me.)

Now the anger is so diffused and so unconstructive that I doubt if it will achieve anything more. So, what went wrong? Why did we suddenly lose our focus...

But I’m still appalled by the kind of rubbish that is emerging from the mouths of the Frangipani-Vetro set: don’t pay your taxes; give up on democracy; hand the country over to the army; refuse to vote; carpet-bomb Pakistan; worry about the Indian Muslims in our slums who fly Pakistani flags; hide at home till the anniversary of the Babri Masjid has passed; never question the police and para-drop Raj Thackeray into Pakistan. (Frankly, I have to concede that the last one does have a certain appeal....)
When the attacks began, I applauded the anger. It did make a difference. Nobody ever loses his job in India because of failure. But such was the public rage that three heads promptly rolled: the Union Home Minister, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra and the Deputy Chief Minister.
But now the anger is so diffused and so unconstructive that I doubt if it will achieve anything more. So, what went wrong? Why did we suddenly lose our focus and start striking out wildly in all directions?
My theory is : impotence.
Absolute power, as we know, corrupts. But so does absolute impotence. And the current rage seems directionless and random mainly because it stems from our impotence.
The ‘Do-something-now!’ anger has given way to the hysterical rage that comes out of frustration.
The frustration exists on many levels but the most important one is class. One of the problems with universal franchise is that an educated person has exactly the same one vote as an illiterate. This means that the middle class — visible, articulate symbols of the Indian story — can write articles (like this one) or clog TV channels but we can never ever bring down a government.
We simply do not have the numbers.
Even in big cities such as Bombay, no constituency (not even South Bombay) can be swung by middle class votes. Politicians need the poor to get elected.
You could argue (as I do) that this is a good thing: it makes India a fairer society. But it does mean that the middle class has zero political relevance. It is heartening to see 200 people gather at the Gateway. But Bombay is a city of 13 million. The 200,000 wouldn’t even show up on an electoral map.
It is significant that even as the middle class railed against politicians, voter turn-out reached record levels in such states as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and even Delhi. Though the middle class wanted to have nothing more to do with the political system, Indian democracy continued to flourish.
At some subliminal level, we recognise our political irrelevance. When we complain about vote-bank politics, about elections being decided by people in the slums etc. what are we really saying? We are saying that others control India’s political destiny. And there’s nothing we can do about it.
That frustration explains our anger against politicians. It explains why we don’t want to vote. It explains why we want to withhold our taxes. It explains why we regard politicians on par with terrorists: ‘Never mind those who come by boats,’ runs one widely circulated SMS, ‘worry about those come up by votes.’
Hence the anger of the rampaging elephant: it is an impotent rage.
The other primary cause of our frustration is that we do not know how to avenge the horrors of Bombay. And that accounts for much of the fury.
When the US had to respond after 9/11, it knew where to go. Osama bin Laden was being given shelter by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Americans asked the Taliban to hand over bin Laden. When the Taliban refused, America invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban. Once Kabul fell, America had closure of a sort: 9/11 had been avenged.
But what can we do? The attacks appear to be the work of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. The LeT was set up in connivance with the ISI to foment trouble in Kashmir, and while it may once have had official backing, nobody seriously believes that President Asif Ali Zardari and his party either support it or have any control over it.
However, Pakistan has a more complex power structure than India. The army does not necessarily listen to civilian presidents. The ISI reports to the army but doesn’t necessarily tell the chief everything. And there are vast private armies controlled by retired generals and former ISI officials which have links with the Lakshar.
The most likely explanation for the Bombay attacks is that the Pakistan army and ISI were coming under increasing pressure from the Americans to crack down in Pakistan’s tribal areas where bin Laden and his men are believed to be holed up and needed a diversion. It is not politically expedient for the Pakistani army (or any Pakistan government) to kill Pakistanis in the tribal areas at the behest of Washington or even to hand bin Laden over.
So, the Pakistan Army needed a new front. Already troops have been moved from the border with Afghanistan to the Indian border. The Pakistanis have told the Americans that they cannot proceed quickly with the operation in the tribal areas because of the threat of a retaliatory Indian strike in the wake of the Bombay attacks.
In such a situation, what can New Delhi do?
If we attack Pakistan, we play the Pakistan Army’s game: the Pakistanis know that the world will intervene to stop two nuclear powers from fighting before any serious damage is done to Pakistan. If we destablise Zardari, we hand Pakistan back to the army.
One option is a surgical strike aimed at training camps in Pakistani Kashmir. But this is no more than symbolic. Contrary to the popular image, these camps are not well-equipped military bases. They are makeshift operations run in schools and college buildings over the weekend. Take one out and they’ll just move elsewhere. Plus, we run the risk of killing civilians.
So there is no easy retribution available, no obvious means of revenge and no prospect of closure. That accounts for another level of impotence. We feel that terrorists have had the audacity to walk into our greatest city and shoot people at will — and we are unable to do anything about it.
The frustration is understandable. There are no quick fixes. But on both scores, there are long-term solutions available and we must work towards them. The problem with our political system is that parties have no mechanism to allow talent to rise through the ranks. So Indian politics is a squalid, corrupt family business. I found it strange that nobody in Bombay made this point. Instead, they listened to young dynasts who appeared on TV to lecture us. Such is our class bias that if politicians speak good English we think they are okay. And politics never changes.
Similarly, the only way to fight terrorism is through covert operations and better intelligence, not through carpet-bombing. Our intelligence agencies are demoralised and faction-ridden. They need more money and better leadership.
Sadly, we are not making any of these points or thinking constructively. We are just flailing about angrily in all directions.
As long as public anger is random and unfocused, nothing will change.
And the terrorists will strike again.

Exiled rebels

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:51:00 +0000

By Gurpreet Singh
The recent request for amnesty for Sikh rebels settled outside India by the country’s National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has raised hopes among blacklisted members of the community in British Columbia, and across Canada. These Sikhs have been denied entry to their home country for indulging in “anti-national” activities since 1984, the year in which political events in India galvanized the Sikh separatist movement across the world. As a result, the Indian government prepared a “blacklist” of Sikhs suspected of being involved in separatist activities in order to deny them entry to the country for security reasons.
NCM member Harcharan Singh Josh recently recommended that those Sikhs who “have realized their faults” and want to return to the “mainstream” shall be allowed to visit their homeland for the first time in nearly 25 years.
Although no official record is available to suggest how many Sikh rebels are on the blacklist, these migrants are now primarily settled in Canada, the U.S., Britain, France and Germany and number around 15,000, according to Josh.The now defunct South Asian Human Rights’ Group (SAHRG), which campaigned for the blacklistees’ cause, estimates that between 70 to 80 Sikhs living in Western Canada continue to be denied a visa and an Indian passport by the Indian government.
Among them is Surdev Singh Jatana of Abbotsford. He was associated with the now banned International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF). Jatana claims that he was never involved in violence, but was in the forefront of peaceful protests.“The situation has changed now and I wish to return to the mainstream,” Jatana told the South Asian Post.
Jatana, who is a former employee of Canada Post, became a member of the militant ISYF group following Operation Bluestar in June of 1984. There were angry protests in B.C. and across North America following the infamous military operation, which was launched to flush out extremists who had stockpiled weapons inside the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. The government-backed military operation resulted in massive destruction to the temple complex.
The army operation was linked to the Oct. 31, 1984 assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards. A wave of anti-Sikh violence subsequently swept India, alienating the Sikh community from the Indian mainstream and leaving nearly 3,000 innocent Sikhs dead.
The army operation and the subsequent anti-Sikh pogroms had a far reaching effect on the Sikh community in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, with a number of emotional Sikh men joining a movement for Khalistan, a separate homeland for the Sikhs.
Even in B.C., Sikh protesters stormed the Indian Consulate in downtown Vancouver in the weeks following the initial troubles in India.
Jatana came to Canada in 1969 and visited India twice before 1984. He says Operation Bluestar changed his life. He could not visit his ailing mother, who died in 2001.
Though he was granted amnesty in 2003 and was allowed to visit India following negotiations between the SAHRG and India’s Bharatiya Janata Party government, he was later blacklisted again and couldn’t visit India at the time of his brother’s death in 2004. The story of Kuldip Singh Malhi is similar. An editor of Surrey-based Phulwari, a Sikh cultural magazine, he has not been able to visit India since 1981. Malhi participated in the 1984 protest rally in Vancouver.
“My close relatives were also denied a visa because of my participation in the anti-India rallies,” he said.Like Jatana, Malhi was also associated with the ISYF and was once accused of assaulting a moderate Sikh in Surrey – although he was acquitted by the B.C. courts. His daughter is getting married in July this year and his family plans to visit India for shopping.“I won’t be able to join them although I wish to visit the place of my birth,” he lamented.SAHRG leader Harpal Singh Nagra recalled that the BJP government allowed 22 Sikhs to return to India in 2003.“Most of them had participated in the protest rallies and had nothing to do with violence, except three convicts, who were denied visas at the last moment,” he told the South Asian Post.
Since Operation Bluestar was blamed on the Congress Party, its opponent, the BJP has tried to woo the Sikh minority for political survival in Punjab. The BJP is a coalition partner in the current Punjab government led by the Akali Dal, the mainstream political party of the Sikh-dominated province.
Ironically, these overtures suffered a major jolt after the Congress regained power in India with Manmohan Singh, the country’s first Sikh Prime Minister. Singh rejected a demand to scrap the blacklist.
There are some die hard separatists, however, who are not impressed by such campaigns and do not even wish to apply for a visa to enter India. “It’s all drama,” said Satinderpal Singh Gill, a former member of the Panthic Committee, an umbrella group of the Sikh militants. “The Indian government continues to discriminate against the Sikhs.”Gill has not visited India since 1983. His father passed away in March this year, but he still did not apply for a visa. “Since the tenth master of the Sikhs had lost his father and four sons in his war against the Islamist Empire, we shall also be determined to suffer personal losses instead of begging for the mercy of the Indian state,” Gill opined.
Harcharan Singh Josh said in his amnesty-request report to the Indian government: “The migrants admitted that being disturbed by the Bluestar operation and the 1984 (anti-Sikh) riots in India, they joined extremist groups and terrorist camps.”
But many, he suggested, were simply young men caught up in the times.
“Now they are well settled in these countries and are financially supporting their families in India. They are separated from their families for the last 24 years and want to come back home,” he said.
Kashmir Singh Dhaliwal, the moderate president of Vancouver’s oldest Sikh temple on Ross Street, said that he welcomes the amnesty initiative, but only for those men who have “realized their mistakes.” He cautioned against a general pardon for those who continue to indulge in anti-India propaganda and politics of violence. The Indian government is currently reviewing the amnesty request.

Khalistani cause not forgotten in B.C
A decade of Sikh militancy began in the Indian border state of Punjab in the early 1980s and officially ended in 1993. The violence during this period claimed more than 25,000 lives.
The problem began with political and religious demands that brought a sense of alienation among the Sikhs. The full scale terrorist violence for the achievement of a separate homeland for the Sikhs was also supported by Pakistan, the country next door. With the return of normalcy, several top Khalistani ideologues have already returned to India.
Among them was the late Jagjit Singh Chauhan, who was running a Khalistan government-in-exile in the UK and opened a Khalistan consulate in Vancouver. Wassan Singh Zaffarwal, another top notch militant leader, has also returned to India, as has Didar Singh Bains, another Khalistani ideologue from the U.S.Although many Sikhs in Western countries have bid goodbye to the Khalistan cause, Indian officials believe a small section is still active. Indeed, a low intensity campaign for Khalistan continues in B.C. and other parts of Canada.
The pro-Khalistan management of the Dashmesh Durbar Sikh temple in Surrey recently organized special prayers for the assassins of the former military chief of India, A.S.Vaidya, who led Operation Bluestar against the holy Golden Temple. The two assassins, Harjinder Singh Jinda and Sukhdev Singh Sukha, were hanged in 1992.
The father of a Sikh prisoner who allegedly murdered a Punjab police spy was also honoured on this occasion. Hem Singh came from the U.S. to accept the “award” on behalf of his son, who allegedly burnt to death Ajit Singh Poohla, a Punjab police agent who was detained in Amritsar jail on human rights’ violations.

Singer Hans Raj Hans is SAD candidate for Jalandhar LS seat

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:09:00 +0000

Charanjit Singh Atwal (Fatehgarh Sahib),
Sukhdev singh Dhindsa (Sangrur),
Ratan Singh Ajnala (Khadoor Sahib)
JALANDHAR: Prominent Singer Padam Shree Hans Raj Hans on Sunday joined Shiromani Akali DAl (SAD) and party president Sukhbir Badal on Sunday announced Hans' candidature for Jalandhar (Reserve) parliamentary constituency"Hans Raj Hans has formally joined SAD today and he will be party's candidate from Jalandhar (reserve) constituency", Sukhbir, accompanied by Hans, announced at a Press Conference here. Hans has earned fame due to his voice at both national and international level and his joining SAD would not only fetch win for the party from Jalandhar but would definitely have positive impact on all 13 constituencies of the state, Badal claimed. Sukhbir also announced that till now four candidates have been selected including Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal (Fatehgarh Sahib), former Union Minister S S Dhindsa (Sangrur), and sitting MP Ratan Singh Ajnala (Khadoor Sahib) apart from Hans Raj Hans (Jalandhar). Remaining names of candidates would also be announced very soon, he added. Apprehending that parliamentary election would be held in the month of February, Sukhbir said that party was fully geared up to defeat the Congress in the state. Pointed out that BJP had rejected SAD's demand of 15 assembly seats in Delhi election, Junior Badal said "SAD-BJP enjoys strong relationship and it does not matter how many seats SAD is contesting but it is significant that it is for the first time SAD is contesting in Delhi assembly polls on its own symbol" On four seats in Delhi assembly elections SAD was contesting and on the remaining seats BJP has fielded its candidates, Sukhbir said adding that it was first time that BJP has aligned with any other political party to contest Delhi assembly elections.

Black in White House

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:37:00 +0000

How Barack Obama defied history

To measure fully the historical achievement of Barack Obama's victory it is worth recalling what America looked like in 1961, the year of his birth।

By Nick Bryant, BBC News, Washington
Back then, much of the American South remained segregated, the races separated from the cradle to the grave. Black people - or Negroes as they were known then - were born in segregated hospitals, educated in segregated school systems and buried in segregated graveyards.
Handed down in 1954, the Supreme Court's Brown decision, which called for the integration of southern schools, had been met in many southern communities with a campaign of "massive resistance". For segregationist die-hards it became the twisted metaphor of the age, as they fought to uphold a system of racial apartheid that was known by the deceptively friendly aphorism, Jim Crow.
Washington DC was regarded still as a hardship posting for African diplomats, despite the efforts of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to desegregate the nation's capital.
Restrictive covenants prevented them from living in the most fashionable parts of town, and they were denied service in the high-end barber shops.

Distance travelled
When they made the journey to the United Nations in New York, they travelled a road, Route 40, which was lined with segregated motels, diners and restaurants.
Back at the start of the 1960s, America's first black presidential aide, a former public relations man called E Frederic Morrow, published a memoir of his years working under Dwight D Eisenhower.
It was titled Black Man in the White House. It revealed how he was never allowed to be left alone in the same room as a white woman, such was the fear that he might sexually molest her.
On becoming president in 1961, Jack Kennedy made a series of senior black appointments. Still, the young president's most valued African-American aide was a man called George Thomas, whose job each morning was to lay out his clothes.
Leaving others to attach racial meaning to his candidacy, Barack Obama has not spoken much about the struggle for black equality, nor the tumultuous decade into which he was born.
Go through his speeches, and you will find little mention of the civil rights era.
For to become a history-defying candidate he has been something of a history-denying figure. The strategy throughout has been to de-emphasise his race.
A quirk of scheduling and a quantum leap of history meant that Mr Obama delivered his acceptance speech in Denver on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech.
But even then, Mr Obama did not mention Dr King by name, referring to him instead as the "young preacher from Georgia".

Black and white
Back in June, on the night when he finally saw off the challenge from Hillary Clinton, his celebration speech made no reference to his historic racial first, and noticeably he dedicated his victory to his white grandmother. Throughout the campaign, Mr Obama has emphasised his whiteness as much as his blackness. The president-elect understood one of the great paradoxes of the civil rights era. While it helped pave the way for his ultimate success, it also made it more difficult for northern candidates, like him, to win the presidency.
When President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act into law, he told an aide: "We have lost the south for a generation". But he had miscalculated.
The once solid Democratic South - the Democrats used to be an unhappy alliance between Northern moderates and progressives, and southern segregationists - started to go reliably Republican in presidential elections.
Prior to 1964, the Democrats won six out of eight presidential elections. After 1964, they lost seven out of 10.

Achieving the impossible
The civil rights era was responsible for the great historical anomaly of US post-war politics: the process through which the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, established a stronghold in the states of the Old Confederacy.
It is no coincidence that every Democratic president since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has hailed from the south: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and, the die-hards would contest, Al Gore. The new law not only demolished segregation, but re-drew the US political map.
So it is worth remembering that Barack Obama will not only be the first African-American president, but the first Northern Democrat to serve in the White House since Kennedy.
To achieve this racial first represents the most extraordinary of achievements.
Since the end of Reconstruction - the period in the aftermath of the US civil war - there have been just three black US senators.
Only two states, Massachusetts and Virginia, have elected a black governor. With the election of a black president, what many considered the politically impossible has now become real.
On 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King spoke of his dream for America, with the brooding statue of Abraham Lincoln offering the most glorious of pulpits.
On 20 January 2009, Barack Obama will appear on the west steps of the US Capitol, at the other end of the Washington Mall, and seal his historic triumph with just 35 words: the presidential oath of office.

Nick Bryant is the author of The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality

Eight Indian Canadians elected

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:39:00 +0000

Toronto : Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party Tuesday returned to power with a larger tally but short of the 155-mark for a simple majority in the 308-member parliament, even as the number of Indian Canadians in the house went up from seven to eight।The ruling Conservative Party, which held 126 seats in the dissolved House of Commons, won 142 seats, 13 short of the majority mark.
The main opposition Liberal Party, which held 95 seats last time, was set to get only 75 seats this time. However, the smaller New Democratic Party (NDP) made major gains, securing 38 seats.
The regional Bloc Quebecois won 50 out of the 75 seats in French-speaking Quebec.
Costing $300 million, Tuesday’s exercise was the 40th election which was held a year ahead of the schedule by the prime minister with a view to securing a majority to implement his agenda. All the sitting seven Indian Canadian MPs were returned. In fact, the new House will have an eighth Indian Canadian MP this time - Tim Uppal from Alberta province.
In the Toronto area, all the three sitting Indian Canadian MPs - Ruby Dhalla, Navdeep Bains and Gurbax Malhi (all of the opposition Liberal Party) - were returned with a comfortable majority.
Dhalla won the Brampton-Springdale seat for the third time, beating Parm Gill of the ruling Conservative Party and Mani Singh of the NDP.
Malhi, who in 1993 became the first turbaned MP in Canada, won for the sixth time from Bramalea-Gore-Malton. Bains also won easily for the third time in Mississauga-Brampton South. In British Columbia province, former Canadian health minister Ujjal Dosanjh won narrowly in Vancouver South. Nina Grewal of the ruling party also retained Fleetwood-Port Kells seat for the third time. The highest-ranking Indian Canadian in the current government, Deepak Obhrai, also won his East Calgary seat.
Obhrai, who was a parliamentary secretary in the outgoing government, may be elevated to a minister this time. “He deserves a higher position and we will urge the PM to elevate him,” top Conservative backer and business leader Hemant Shah, who campaigned with the prime minister and Obhrai, told IANS. “The return of Stephen Harper augurs well for India as he wants to speed up trade ties with the country,” he said. The sitting Liberal Party MP, Sukh Dhaliwal, defeated Sandeep Pandher in Newton-Delta in British Columbia.

Barack Obama's letter to Dr Singh

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:17:00 +0000

Exclusive
Aziz Haniffa in Washington, DC
US Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama, while regretting that he could not meet with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his recent visit to the United States, has said he very much looks forward "to doing so in the near future," and has expressed his "great admiration for the courage you showed in shepherding the civil nuclear cooperation agreement through your Parliament, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group."In a missive to Dr Singh dated September 23 on the day of the prime minister's arrival in New York, and made available to rediff.com, Obama said at the outset, "I am very pleased that your visit provides us with the opportunity to strengthen the US-India relationship: deepening and broadening the friendship between our countries will be a first-order priority for me in the coming years. I am sorry that I was unable to meet with you on this trip, but very much look forward to doing so in the near future."Before getting on to policy matters, Obama first offered his condolences to Dr Singh "on the painful losses your citizens have suffered in the recent string of terrorist assaults.""As I have said publicly, I deplore and condemn the vicious attacks perpetrated in New Delhi earlier this month, and on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7. The death and destruction is reprehensible, and you and your nation have my deepest sympathy. These cowardly acts of mass murder are a stark reminder that India suffers from the scourge of terrorism on a scale few other nations can imagine.""I will continue to urge all countries to cooperate with Indian authorities in tracking down the perpetrators of these atrocities. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families," Obama pledged."I also want to take this opportunity to express my great admiration for the courage you showed in shepherding the civil nuclear cooperation agreement through your Parliament, the IAEA, and the NSG," he wrote, and pointed out, "I was pleased to vote by proxy for the agreement in (Senate Foreign Relations) Committee today, and I very much hope we can vote on this agreement before the US Congress goes out of session (the Senate voted overwhelming in favour of the deal on October 1 with Obama casting an aye vote).""As you know, there are some procedural obstacles that may prevent a vote this year," but he promised, "when it does come up for a vote, however, I will of course vote in favour. If time should run out in the current Congress, I will resubmit the agreement next year as president," Obama said.
"I strongly support civil nuclear cooperation, because I believe it will enhance our partnership and deepen our cooperation on a whole range of matters. Importantly, it will help India to meet its growing electricity demands while aiding in the important effort to combat global warming. But I see this agreement only as a beginning of a much closer relationship between our two great countries. I would like to see US-India relations grow across the board to reflect our shared interests, shared values, shared sense of threats, and ever burgeoning ties between our two economies and societies," he informed Dr Singh.Obama then laid out his vision for US-India relations going forward by suggesting that "as a starting point, our common strategic interests call for redoubling US-Indian military, intelligence, and law enforcement cooperation.""The recent bombings remind us that we are both victims of terrorist attacks on our soil, and we share a common goal of defeating these forces of extremism," he pointed out.Thus, Obama called for New Delhi and Washington to be in sync in terms of working together "to promote our democratic values and strengthen legal institutions in South Asia and beyond.""We should also be working hand-in-hand to tap into the creativity and dynamism of our entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists to promote development of alternative sources of clean energy," he said.
"Imagine our two democracies in action: Indian laboratories and industry collaborating with American laboratories and industry to discover innovative solutions to today's energy problems। That the kind of new partnership I would like to build with India as president," he wrote।Obama also expressed the hope "that a civil nuclear cooperation agreement can open the door to greater collaboration with India on non-proliferation issues," and informed Dr Singh that "this subject will be one of my highest priorities as president. I am committed to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and will make this a central element of US nuclear weapons policy.""I will work with the US Senate to secure ratification of the international treaty banning nuclear weapons testing at the earliest practical day, and then launch a major diplomatic initiative to ensure its entry into force," he said.The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was envisaged to be one of the major foreign policy successes of the Clinton administration, and president Clinton was on the verge of pressing India and Pakistan too into signing this treaty, but all of his plans were thwarted when the then Republican-controlled US Senate dumped this agreement and refused to endorse it, much to the embarrassment of Clinton and his administration.In fact, at the time it was rumored that the Clinton administration was holding out India and Pakistan's acquiescence to signing the CTBT as a quid pro quo to the lifting of the punitive sanctions imposed against both New Delhi and Islamabad after their tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May of 1998. In his letter to Dr Singh, Obama vowed to "also pursue negotiation on a verifiable, multilateral treaty to end production of fissile material for nuclear weapons," known as the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty.Obama said in conclusion that he very much hoped "and expect India will cooperate closely with the United States in these multilateral efforts," and argued that "with the benefits of nuclear cooperation come real responsibilities--and that should include steps to restrain nuclear weapons programs and pursuing effective disarmament when others do so.""I greatly look forward to working with you on these and other issues in the future," he told Dr Singh.

Sikhs dominate Ethnic stake in Canadian Elections

noreply@blogger.com (Gautam Rishi) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Jagmohan Singh/World Sikh News

With close to two dozen out of the thirty Indian origin candidates, from the three main contesting parties, Sikhs are making their presence felt like never before in this third general election in last five years in Canada। The Liberals were the first to recognize the poll potential of the Sikhs, the Conservatives are catching up and the New Democrats have fielded the maximum number of candidates. Gurbaksh Singh Malhi, the first turbaned MP would be running for the sixth time from Bramalea-Gore-Malton and in case if he wins and his party comes to power, is likely to be a senior minister in the government. Two-time MP Navdep Bains from Brampton-Springdale also likely to get a berth in government as his victory is certain in this densely Punjabi populated constituency. Ditto is the case for Ruby Dhalia in Mississauga-Brampton South just outside Toronto. In the South Asian dominated areas, where Sikhs are not in a position to win, they are supporting candidates en bloc thereby expanding their political bargaining position. In Brampton West, Sikhs are supporting Liberal party nominee Andrew Kania.
In 2006, there were ten Members of Parliament of Indian origin and Punjabi is the fourth most common language in the country, with primacy in the state of British Columbia.
In 1974, Bhai Sahib Kapur Singh in a speech to the All Canada Sikh Federation had said that the mosaic-pattern of Canadian society suited the Sikhs the most. The Sikh Canadians have never looked back since. The political climate of Canada has stifled the Sikhs in some ways, but on a larger canvas it has given them the full freedom to practice and preach their religion, hold their political and propagate their political perceptions and beliefs -howsoever inconvenient that may have been to the Indian government. Recognition of their historical contribution by setting up heritage sites, seeking pardon for past wrongs and despite local opinion against them, successive governments have opened more immigration possibilities and rendered maximum respect to the faith requirements of the community have all emboldened the Sikh Canadians to participate in a big way in all Canadian elections, including the present one.
The faith of the Sikhs –from atheists to diehard religious individuals in the Canadian system is the key for such massive participation in Canadian elections. Cutting across party lines, Sikh politicians have scored well with the Canadian population.
As this election is the third in five years, there is a general indifference among all Canadians. However, the participation of Punjabis is overwhelming, prompting the national media of the country to take notice and the Punjabis are adding their rich colours to the beautiful Canadian autumn.
While continuing their issue-based party political plank, the Sikh candidates in Canada are on the threshold of carrying out what Joyce Pettigrew termed as the 'paltibazi' of the Sikh polity. With the plane-load of politicians who are going to spend their autumn in Canada, helping their candidates, the focus is likely to shift from issues to personal contacts and relationships.
The vociferous Punjab ishtyle campaigning is likely to take roots in Canada this time around and whether that is good for the Sikh Canadians or not only time will tell. Already, some Badal Dal politicians have started to deny their intervention in the elections there, particularly where one Sikh candidate is pitted against another.
The Resident Punjabis wooing the Non- Resident Punjabis is perhaps out of a sense of gratitude for the non-resident Punjabi money that pours in here during the elections in Punjab. The NRPs have made Punjab elections go out of the reach of those who adhere to principles and commitments. It is only a money game. Comparatively, less money is spent in Canada elections. Well, only time will tell.
Just as Canada has to be French-friendly to keep Quebec and the Quebecois happy and to be politically correct, in British Columbia , Punjabi language is so far a significant issue, what with board signs, stickers in Punjabi and the use of Punjabi election literature.
In a broader perspective, South Asians are candidates for all political parties, though the Greens have not attracted any Sikh candidates, or shall we say it is the other way round as the issues, concerns and adherent-type politics of the Greens unfortunately do not interest them.
Some local campaigners are worried that Asian candidates could sway these snap elections and have derided all the parties for 'ethnic pandering.' While the average Canadian citizen adopting a couldn't-care-less approach and the ethnic communities go big, the nature and scale of multiculturalism in Canada is on test. It seems that Prime Minister Stephen Harper knows this and his election campaign are tailored accordingly.
The influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe and erstwhile Russia has also added to the ethnic pre-dominance in this general election.
An ethnic Jewish leader, Mr. Faber commenting upon the Canadian election has said, "Jewish people are like anybody else, maybe a little more so political animals, and they will be moved based on how their issues are being dealt with." With Punjabi likely to be recognized as an official Canadian language, whichever party wins and substantially increasing their presence in Parliament, Sikh Canadians will be nearer to the Jewish political animals.