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M J AKBAR'S COLUMN |
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COVERT (1-15 April 2009)
Banking on Bankruptcy
By M.J. Akbar
| March 28,
2009
Washington: Why did the Washington Post downgrade its business section
when a crime story is always a great read and the best crime stories
of America are now on the business pages? Add this to the many things
one cannot understand about American media.
- Read more - Add your Comments
COVERT (15-31st March 2009)
Forward to the
18th Century!
By M.J. Akbar
| March 8,
2009
Such is the uncertainty
of our times that astrologers are searching for politicians almost as
fervently as politicians are looking for astrologers. Both sets of
professionals want to feed off the other’s core competence. To be
fair, politicians are far more unsure than astrologers. Their
nervousness is understandable. They have much more to lose.
COVERT (1-15 March 2009)
The Curious Vibrations of Sound and Silence
By M.J. Akbar
| February 28,
2009
The Congress has begun its campaign — for the general elections of
2012-13. All over Kolkata, to take a revealing instance, the party has
put up hoardings with a single face, that of a smiling,
heavily-dimpled Rahul Gandhi. The visual message is “cute”. The
written message is unambiguous: this is the face of the future. He may
be forced to share the limelight with his elders in 2009, but this is
the last compromise.
- Read more and Add your Comments
COVERT (16-28 February 2009)
The High Fives of the Big Five are over
The release
of Pakistan's serial nuclear-offender A.Q. Khan, after
five years of house arrest, is concrete evidence of the dual narrative
that all nuclear nations employ over proliferation. There may be
solemn sermons about law and security in public but there is hero
worship of scientists who have delivered in the national, and, in the
case of Khan international, interest.
- Read more and Add your Comments
COVERT (1-15 February 2009)
The Public Faces of
Power
By M.J. Akbar
| February 1, 2009
Dr
Manmohan Singh is the Abdul Kalam of politics: both are admired among
the middle classes for decency, integrity, education and achievement
in their preferred discipline. Sometimes it takes a tragedy like ill
health to evoke emotion, and the response in the urban areas to the
Prime Minister's hospitalisation must have come as a bit of shock to
the Congress Party, which had convinced itself that Sonia Gandhi was
its only mass leader and Rahul Gandhi the only possible heir. Dr
Manmohan Singh today is far more popular than the Congress president
among the middle class.
- Read more-Add your Comments
COVERT (15-31 January 2009)
Flattery, please;
who wants friends?
By M.J. Akbar
| January 17,
2009
One
of the most instructive stories I have read about democracy comes from
1865. Just to place the date in context, America had just saved the
Union from a civil war; Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated; Paris
was in turmoil; the fabulous Ottoman Empire was rotting at the roots;
and Delhi was still a ghost capital, being punished for the temerity
of having risen against the British Raj. Only America, with partial
franchise, and Britain, with limited franchise, could claim to have
governments which were accountable to civilian audit in the form of
elections.
-
Read more / Add your Comments
COVERT (1-15 January 2009)
A Real Con Called
Conspiracy Theory
By M.J. Akbar
| December 27, 2008
If you forgot the source of a quotation in our parents' generation,
you could safely attribute it to Winston Churchill. Churchill smoked
Cuban cigars, drank champagne for breakfast, painted for pleasure and
won wars for a living.
-
Read more
COVERT (16-31 DECEMBER 2008)
WHAT'S GENERAL ABOUT A GENERAL ELECTION?
By M.J. Akbar
There is nothing general about a general election. It is the sum of a
set of particular elections in separate but contiguous and
occasionally overlapping geographical and demographic spaces.
- Read more
COVERT (1-15TH DECEMBER 2008)
POLICY, PROFILE,
POLITICS:MATCH GIVES YOU GAME
By M.J.Akbar
What
wins elections? Policy or profile?
You can lose elections through failed policy but win them through a
positive profile. If the profile of a leader has been projected with
sufficient dexterity, an incumbent can even overcome the liability of
inadequate delivery during the years of governance.
-
Read more
COVERT (16-30th November 2008)
The Insecurity of Petty Ideas
By M.J. Akbar
The times have changed. Patriotism used to be the last refuge of
the scoundrel. The scoundrel is now the last refuge of patriotism.
This is not because the cad and the poseur have filled up, but
because we are busy chopping democracy up into little pocket-sized
units of petty patriotism.
- Read more
COVERT (1-15 November 2008)
The Quiet Shift to New Horizons
By M.J. Akbar
The sound of a stereotype crumbling travels deep into the individual
psyche and the collective consciousness. The two largest democracies,
India and America, comparable in size, demographics and ethnic
tensions, have both heard such a rumble in the last few days. The
trigger in both cases might have been the relentless pressure that
elections bear upon social relationships, the amoral quest for power
that brings subterranean flows to a boil.
-
- Read more
COVERT (16-31st Oct. 2008)
Who
wants to be the pinprick inside a bubble?
By M.J. Akbar
It often needs a startling image to convey the dimensions of a crisis.
Bloggers have time to discover such startling analogies. Someone on
the net has had the time and patience to conjure up this image about
$700 billion, the most dramatic figure among the many mountains of
cash that Governments have doled out to capitalism's poster boys in
order to save capitalism.
- Read more
COVERT (1-15 Oct. 2008)
Fuse of self-destructive terrorism gets shorter
Governance is the easy
part of being in power. You govern through systems. Systems are
protected by institutions. Institutions grind their way forward on
hierarchy, oiled by memory or precedence. When there is need for
innovation, change is sifted through a time-consuming committee. The
end product may not be brilliant, but it comes with minimal-risk
insurance: it will not do damage, and might even do some good.
- Add your Comments
FIND
COVER IMAGES & LINKS TO M J AKBAR PRINT BYLINES IN COVERT HERE |
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M J Blog - Post Global Washington Post |
Hugo Chavez's defeat
in the referendum is extremely welcome, not because Chavez was
defeated but because democracy won. A hint from Indian democracy,
where someone in power is defeated virtually every month, given
the number of states in the Union and the haywire schedule of
elections: it is always the one per cent that makes the decisive
difference. It’s that one percent that is beyond the reach of
either oil or any well-oiled state machinery. God is on the side
of One Percent....
-
PostGlobal is
an interactive conversation on global issues moderated by Newsweek
International Editor
Fareed Zakaria and
David Ignatius of The Washington Post. It is
produced jointly by Newsweek
and washingtonpost.com
Post Global:
MJ's Washington Post Blog
 .



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M J Voice on the Web |
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READER'S LETTERS |
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First article of
your series CRESCENTS & CROISSANTS in
TOI really appealed me, only respecting and understanding of
religions of each other is a modern era’s tool to spread
the message of ISLAM or any other. Basically all leads to almighty
or SARVASHAKTIMAN. To club humanity in one chain this has become
must to understand Allah/God/Ishwar, following your message we
only can quote Mahatma Gandhi- Ishwar, Allah tero naam sabko
sammati de Bhagwan.
READ MORE
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Is
Decline to the Fourth Estate here...
Never
let your head stoop as a Journalist
M
J Akbar Shunted Out Unceremoniously!
A
black day for Indian journalism
As
long as the ink flows
How
Free is Indian Media?
M
J Akbar ka Safar
HAVE YOUR SAY! POSTED
ON YOUR BLOG ON MJ? Send your
Link to be posted here.
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FREE SPEECH
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'F*** All Editors'

The hard truth about Indian journalism: proprietors matter, editors
don't
KHUSHWANT SINGH
in OUTLOOK [Opinion] 24/3
[
READ MORE IN FREE SPEECH]
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The
power of fear is immense and intense. It is axiomatic that evil of the
magnitude perpetrated in Mumbai, through a collusion between
Pakistan-based hate-filled terrorist organisations like
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Indian fifth columnists will have a direct
impact on the political mood of the nation. It is inevitable that the
mood will reflect on polling in an election season. But we need to
understand the nuances of this impact carefully. The hyperinflation of
knee-jerk analysis can be toxic to the truth.
- Read More and Add your Comments
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BYLINES
ARCHIVE SINCE SEPTEMBER 2004 |
|
BYLINES 2009
January
February
March
April
May
BYLINES:
2008
December
Antulay
is the Simi Garewal of Indian Politics
The
real Con called Conspiracy Theory
Biting
the BBC bullet
Fettered
by fear, Muslims fritter away their vote
What's
general about a general Election?
Two-nation
theory has bred practice of hatred
Gagsters
and Gangsters
Policy,
Profile, Politics:Match gives you Game
November
Toothless
Leaders turn tough nation...
The
26th of November
Mumbai
Attacks
Would
anyone dare issue a fatwa against Iqbal?
Is
there a Plan B, Mrs Alva?
The
Insecurity of Petty Ideas
The
economic partition that still grounds us
In
the semi-final analysis…
The
paucity of hope: Pleaders can’t be Leaders
Free
and Independent
US
& us: United they stand, divided we fall
The
Quiet Shift to New Horizons
October
In
black, white and grey
Why
Zardari said what America wanted to hear
Who
wants to be the pinprick inside a bubble?
Deep
Inside India, Secularism is a Way of Life The
Parallel Streams of Anger
September
Is
it really Muslims whose credibility at stake?
Fuse
of self-destructive terrorism gets shorter
Tentacles
of dread and the terror Gameplan
Plants
and Implants
Fluff-and-bluff
can't change harsh truths
Fundamentalists
flourish in secular vacuum
For
Peace with Pak, India has to be Strong
On
Sharada Prasad
August
Soiled
Past
Fasadi,
not Jihadi
There
are no Role Models
Why
Mumbai
is the heart of Muslim Terrorism
Melody needed Poetry, Sound needs Phonetics
Identity
Wars
Band
aid for Cancer
July
Headmaster
of A School for Scandal
Inflation
hits Delhi Politics
Check
the Impossible to find the Possible
How
Public is Public Opinion?
Have
you ever heart a cake crumble? (Covert)
June
War
and Consequences
Are
economic reforms the solution to communal riot...
The
Fine Art of Doing Nothing (Covert)
How
Pakistan insulates India from terror
Equality
is a right, not a favour for Muslims
The
myth of forced Islamic conversions
There's
something about Indian secularism
Calculator
vs Calendar
The
Secret Diaries of Manmohan, Advani
May
From
Promise to Compromise
Double
Jeopardy
The
Dance of the Ghosts
Will
we, Won't we?
The
Alibi Game
April
9%
for 9%
Inflated
Egos
Maya
and Reality
A
Bali Diary
March
A
real chance in Kashmir
The
World is Round
The
Long Onion Road
Double
Play
February
Queue
and Collect
Free
for All
A
Dhaka Diary
A
Wealth of Questions
January
Friends
and Masters
A
Roman Diary (Blood Brothers)
Knockout
Time
A
Policket Quiz
FROM SEPTEMBER 2004-2007
Sept
- 2004
October-2004
Nov
- 2004
Dec
- 2004
Jan
- 2005
Feb
- 2005
March
- 2005
April
- 2005
May
- 2005
June
- 2005
July
- 2005
August
- 2005
Sept
- 2005
Oct
- 2005
Nov
- 2005
Dec
- 2005
Jan
- 2006
Feb
- 2006
March
- 2006
April
- 2006
May
- 2006
June
- 2006
July
- 2006
August
- 2006
Sept
- 2006
Oct
- 2006
Nov
- 2006
Dec
- 2006
Jan
- 2007
Feb
- 2007
March
- 2007
April
- 2007
May
- 2007
June
- 2007
July
- 2007
August
- 2007
Sept
- 2007
Oct
- 2007
Nov
- 2007
Dec
- 2007 |
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CURRENT BYLINE :
The batter is
the matter
By M.J. Akbar
| June 28,
2009
Take a guess. What would be the answer to this question in an
India-wide opinion poll: which has upset you more, India’s early
departure from the T20 world championship or the toxic wars against
Maoists raging across the heartland of the nation?
No prizes for getting the answer right.
The spoilt brat of Indian cricket used to be an individual who had
better be left nameless since he has finally departed from the team.
He has been replaced by a collective noun. The utterly spoilt brat of
Indian cricket is the cricket fan. This silly idiot has come to
believe, for no worthwhile reason, that cricket is a game with only
one result, a victory for India. All of us want our team to win more
than it loses. But the fun of sports lies in unpredictability. No one
can be sure what the particular chemistry of a set of men will be on
any given day, or when luck will bend its momentum in one direction or
the other. The part that media plays in publicising stupid tantrums
following a defeat convinces me that this is not the work of genuine
sports fans. They are publicity-seekers. If television cameras did not
hover around their stupid protests, there would be no protests.
No one expects a captain to celebrate after his team loses, but the
grovelling apology by
Captain-Commander-General-Admiral-Marshal-President Dhoni strikes me
as well-planned humbug of the sort encouraged by PR agencies. If you
depend on the fans to buy all the products you advertise, then it
makes sense to pamper even the most petulant with a pre-emptive
apology. An apology costs nothing. Ads bring big bucks.
Media is clearly desperate for anything to fill the page or occupy the
screen. We do want to know why Ravindra Jadeja was sent up the batting
order when the tic in his eye is sufficient evidence to prove that he
will not be able to see a rising ball, but do we want the answer from
Aamir Khan or John Abraham? Their terribly inane reactions were turned
into news stories. I just hope we do not see the day when Dhoni and
Virender Sehwag are expected to double up as literary critics.
A panoramic sports championship has one undisputable merit: it reveals
a great deal about any national frame of mind. The churning point of
the cricket fiesta in England, at least for me, was when a British
master-of-ceremonies (face unseen on television, but accent
unmistakable) asked everyone to stand up for the national anthems that
were played before the start of the match. “Be upstanding!” he boomed.
That the English language is subject to various forms of torture, many
of them unknown even to Dick Cheney, is a recognised fact. But this
was murder of the language at home, matricide at its worst.
What the chap meant was “Please stand up”. “Upstanding” means
something else altogether. It is a synonym of honesty and virtue, a
definition of morals. To deepen my anguish, an advertisement followed,
trying to persuade me to buy a cellphone in “deep black”. What on
earth is deep black? Have you ever seen “shallow black”? Blue or green
or red lend themselves to variations of deep and light, but black is
black. A paler shade of black is grey, not light black. This may not
be on the scale of matricide, but it is a wound nevertheless.
In an effort to make the 20-over form of the game more American, the
organisers have decided to change the language of commentary into
American English. Hence the prolific and nonsensical use, in
reportage, of “batter” for “batsman”. To begin with, “batsman” is
perfectly adequate. The change does not add anything to meaning. A
clever lawyer might argue that a change was needed to make the term
gender-neutral, particularly with the growing popularity of women’s
cricket. That would not be the truth, but it is an argument. If change
is essential then you cannot usurp a word that already means something
else. “Batter” is an existing term. It can be a verb, meaning “to hit
repeatedly with hard blows”, derived from the French batre. Or it
could be a noun, “a mixture of flour, egg, and milk or water, used for
making pancakes or coating food before frying”. The Pocket Oxford
English Dictionary does not recognise, as yet, a third meaning for
“batter”, but it is possibly only a matter of time.
If it were elegant, there might be some aesthetic justification for
murder. But all that is happening is that English is being battered to
death. Can’t the Americans be content with taking over the world? Must
they take over the English so completely? Or is it a case of mere
subservience? Americans do not play cricket, and are unlikely to do so
in the foreseeable future, so why should they care one way or another?
I had planned to end this column with a handsome flourish, a grand
solution to the problem of finding someone to play in place of
Ravindra Jadeja. Judging by the manner in which most Indian batsmen
were getting battered by the rising ball, the coach, Gary Kirsten,
could have summoned someone from the Indian women’s team to bat for
the men. Alas, the women’s team also lost in the semi-finals.
But at least its captain did not apologise.
(Byline of June 21, 2009)
- Add your comments
God isn't
saving the left
By M.J. Akbar
| June 28,
2009
Bertolt Brecht, the leftist German playwright, was brilliant enough to
give cynicism a good name. Parliamentary democracy, for him, was a
moveable feast. He once suggested a great alternative to dissolving
the legislature and electing a fresh set of representatives. “Wouldn’t
it be easier,” he asked, “to dissolve the people and elect another in
their place?”
He might never say so publicly, but Bengal’s Chief Minister Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee is probably ruing the fact that Comrade Brecht’s
admirable suggestion cannot be implemented. It is useful to remember
that the CPI[M]-led Left Front got hammered in the elections before
the Maoist insurgency in and around Lalgarh became front-page news.
How much worse have the prospects of the Left Front become in Bengal
since Lalgarh?
The news is not very good for the democratic children of Marx and
Stalin. The conscience of the Left in Bengal, Mahashweta Devi, has
expressed sympathy for the Maoists and contempt for the
administration. The police probably did not take permission from the
Chief Minister when they filed an FIR against filmmaker and filmstar
Aparna Sen for visiting Lalgarh to assess the situation. If the police
did check with the CM, he had no business authorising such a
vindictive and counter-productive action. If they did not check with
him, it means that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s authority has crumbled.
Would the Bengal police have filed an FIR against Suchitra Sen or
Madhabi Mukherjee when Jyoti Basu was Chief Minister without
consulting him?
Aparna Sen is not an ideologue, but her heart and mind are in the
right place. She can see what Governments, whether in Kolkata, Delhi,
Chhattisgarh, Ranchi or Bhubaneswar cannot. The Naxalites may be wrong
in their tactics, but they are not terrorists sent by the
Lashkar-e-Tayaba from Pakistan. They are born of an economy that has
turned a handful of capitalists into the bloated masters of the
nation, given the middle class the reality of a better life and the
dream of riches, and left the poor to the whiplash of hunger and the
misery of indifference. The overwhelming majority of Naxalites only
ever wanted the self-esteem that comes from an honest wage. The CPI[M]
has abandoned its core commitment by walking away from this reality.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee seems to have become besotted with power,
which is probably why he will lose. Nor will the police war against
the Maoists end in celebratory triumph for Writers Building, draped
for more than three decades in fading red. It will continue long after
the Left Front and Delhi have declared victory. The Governments have
state-power; the Maoists have time.
The people of Bengal have sensed that while Mamata Banerjee may not
have the sophistication of Marxist dialectic on her side, she is
instinctively closer to their sentiments. That is why they shifted so
significantly in the general elections, and will incline even further
towards her in the Assembly polls. The CPI[M] has been reduced to
seeking brownie points in a university debate. Sitaram Yechury is
currently engaged in a debate with Rahul Gandhi over which
constituency is more wretched. Rahul Gandhi thought, during the
election campaign, that the tribal regions of Bengal were more
backward than the worst in Orissa. Yechury responded that Bankura and
Purulia in Bengal had better socio-economic indicators than Amethi or
Rae Bareli. Both may be right, which means that we should offer a
round of applause to Naveen Patnaik.
Quiz question: When was the last time Yechury dipped into Frantz
Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth?
The Indian political class may not be doing very much for the poor,
but it also seems to have lost all sensitivity to poverty. You can
hear Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s indignation simmer and boil in his
voice as he denounces Maoists before his Cabinet and Front colleagues
while defending the ban on them. When was the last time he got angry
over poverty in Bengal? Unless, of course, he believes that he has
eliminated poverty already and that Lalgarh is nothing but a
conspiracy between Maoists and Mamata Banerjee to destabilise him
before defeating him?
The Left Front would be better advised to take a long and hard look a
little to the east of Bankura and Purulia, at the Muslim-dense
districts that sweep towards Bangladesh and then bend into South
24-Parganas. Mamata Banerjee is Union Railway Minister largely [though
of course not solely] because the Muslims of this arc abandoned the
Marxists. Justice Rajinder Sachar intended nothing more dramatic than
an honest report on Indian Muslims when commissioned to do so by Dr
Manmohan Singh. His bleak portrait of Bengal had a sharp counterpoint:
Bengali Muslims could not believe Muslims had more Government jobs in
Narendra Modi’s Gujarat than in CPI[M]’s Bengal. That was the turning
point, exacerbated by the Chief Minister’s ham-handed insensitivity
towards cases like Rizwan, the young Kolkata boy who died as a
consequence of an inter-community love affair. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
is not communal. It was not, to paraphrase another playwright that the
Bengal CM should recognise, that he loved Rizwan less, but that he
loved the Kolkata Police more.
I should amend my suggestion: both the CPI[M] and Mamata Banerjee
should take a serious look at the marginalised Bengali Muslims. Their
young have not been attracted to Maoists because Muslims will not give
up Allah and Maoists will not give up atheism. The first will not
change, but the second might. The CPI[M] became an electoral force in
Bengal because it softened its rigid position on religion. The Maoists
might too.
Mamata Banerjee has been long enough in Bengal politics to understand
that replacing the Left Front also means acquiring a crushing burden
of aspirations. No one will be more demanding than the poor,
particularly the tribals and the Bengali Muslims. The Left Front got
30 years. Mamata will get about 30 months.
Tony Blair had some non-Brechtian advice for those politicians who
wanted to win elections, as recounted in the diaries of one of his
associates, Chris Mullin. Go around smiling at everyone, he said, and
get someone else to do the shooting.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee not only has stopped smiling; he also picks up
the gun himself when there is any shooting to be done.
- Add your Comments
Silence is not an
answer
By M.J. Akbar
| June 14,
2009
Every ruling system, no matter how radical its origins, develops a
vested interest in silence. The most widely used justification for
secrecy is national interest, of course; and, once in government,
politicians quickly acquire the skill of extending the breadth of
national interest to include their personal interests. This personal
interest does not necessarily have to be venal. It can be partisan, in
the sense that a party might opt for silence in the pursuit of a
hidden agenda. But the culture of suppression works wonderfully for
those who need to hide the unacceptable.
What happens when a politician begins to peel off the layers that have
been used to hide a dramatic truth?
We do not know when the system will force Barack Obama back into the
grooves of convention, but he is still young enough in his term, and
radical enough in his thinking, to challenge the established wisdom of
his own turf, Washington. Perhaps the most dramatic departure he has
made is in upending American policy towards Israel’s nuclear programme.
The fact that Israel has a nuclear arsenal of over 200 bombs is surely
the worst kept secret of the last few decades, but till Obama became
President it remained an official secret in both Israel, and in its
strongest ally, America. Israel jailed any citizen who dared to utter
a word on the subject, and American Presidents, across party lines,
resolutely avoided any mention of the “n” word in reference to Israel.
George Bush repeatedly threatened Iran with war on the grounds that it
had transgressed its obligation to keep its nuclear programme
peaceful; and Bush went to war against Iraq, with appalling blowback
for his own country and horrific consequences for civilians in the
battle zone, in ostensible search for nuclear weapons. He never
uttered a word about Israel’s illegal nuclear stockpile. He was
following precedence.
Obama has, bravely, ended this hypocrisy. He understands that this
duplicity cannot be sustained. You cannot wink at Israel and scold
Iran with the same face. It is, in essence, racist to justify Israel’s
nuclear status with silence and deny a neighbour like Saudi Arabia the
right to defend itself and the Arab world with matching weapons. The
implication is that one nation can be trusted with restraint in its
use of nuclear power, but another cannot.
Obama first permitted an official of the US government to speak openly
about Israel’s weapons, and upped the ante with the demand that Israel
sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty along with India and Pakistan. He
has now made the same point, albeit less starkly, in his Cairo speech.
The credibility of his Cairo oratory was strengthened immeasurably by
the previous American recognition of Israel as a nuclear weapons
power.
Such candour will not persuade Israel to abandon its arsenal, and no
country can force it to do so either. Israel will remain a nuclear
power as long as any country in the world has a single bomb, which
probably means forever. But recognition of this fact changes the
dialectic of the Middle East discourse completely. It lends greater
legitimacy to American pressure on Iran, and strengthens the argument
for some form of a nuclear umbrella for those of Israel’s neighbours
who ask, rightly, whether this institutionalised imbalance in
strategic strength can be justified. So far, America has avoided a
response to such a question through its non-recognition of Israeli
capability. This, in turn, has persuaded nations like Iran to pursue a
clandestine programme.
The history of nuclear weapons is the story of fear, cause and
consequence. America and Britain developed the atomic bomb during the
Second World War in the Manhattan Project for fear that Germany might
do so before them. (It was a joint scientific effort, although America
got all the public credit.) Stalin could not afford to be without a
nuclear response once the hot war changed to a cold war. Britain was
part of the original partnership; France developed an independent
capability for reasons of status. China perceived both the American
and the Soviet arsenals as a threat; and India, which had fought a war
with China in 1962, had to find its answer. Pakistan responded to
India.
Israel used
regional conflict as its rationale; and Israel is Iran’s implicit
justification. There is a cyclical logic in operation. North Korea
also has an argument; its war for survival in the early Fifties. The
rest of the world does not have any sympathy for this argument, which
is why China has joined the United States in condemning North Korea’s
brazen behaviour. But the very fact that the Security Council can do
very little about disarming even a nation as weak and unstable as
North Korea indicates the difficulties inherent in the very laudable
concept of disarmament. Anyone with a couple of bombs, and the
capability to launch them, has the ultimate blackmail mechanism. It
might be suicide for North Korea to actually launch a bomb at Japan or
South Korea, but this is surely the ultimate suicide mission. Anyone
who is sane has to shudder at the sheer havoc such insanity would
cause. This, of course, leads us to the existential dilemma: what
happens if a weapon ends up in the command of terrorists, or those who
believe that such havoc will destroy their perceived enemy? The civil
war in Pakistan is tinged by the dread that if the Taliban, or its
clandestine supporters in the political establishment, succeeded, the
world would enter an unprecedented age of dread. This seems unlikely
just now, but the future is another story.
What is the answer? I do not know. What I do know is that silence is
not an answer.
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Thank You for
the Nildus Speech, Mr. President
By M.J. Akbar
| June 06,
2009
Dear Brother-Husain,
I am certain about two things. I am a Muslim, and I live in this
world. Now the uncertainties begin. On 4 June you gave what was
heavily advertised as a major speech to the
“Muslim world”.
Does that mean that while every Christian believes in the divinity of
Jesus, he can be legitimately and widely varied in his political
interests, but Muslims must have both Allah and politics in common?
As an Indian Muslim I belong to the second largest Muslim community in
the world. I also live, proudly, as an equal, in India, a nation that
contains the largest Hindu community in the world. Do you think I have
the same political views as my fellow Muslims in Pakistan or
Bangladesh or Nepal? You did mention that there are around six million
Muslims in America. Were you speaking to them, or on their behalf, in
Cairo? But for the accidents of life, you could have been an American
Muslim, a Kenyan Muslim or an Indonesian Muslim. Would the same speech
serve for all three?
Muslims live not only in different cultures and geo-political spaces,
but also under different Constitutions. Indonesia, which is the
largest Muslim nation, does not believe in a state religion. Pakistan,
the second largest, became the world’s first Islamic republic. There
are kings and autocrats and elected heads of government in the “Muslim
world”, and one category that can only be described as “immoveable
object” unopposed by any irresistible force. Many Muslims live on the
margins. Not many seem aware of this fact, and it is possible that
none of your speechwriters pointed it out, but 10% of the Russian
population is Muslim. Islam came to that vast Eurasian region around
the same time as the Christian church. Do Russian Muslims belong to
the same “Muslim world” as Indonesians and Moroccans? The Chinese keep
their Muslim-majority province, Xinjiang, a sort of closely guarded
state secret, frightened that Islam might jump up and bite off
Communism’s ear. Which world do these Muslims belong to? And what
about the chaps in Britain, who probably went over on the assumption
that Britain was still Great. Or the French Muslims, whose ears are
still ringing with the famous Sarkozy diktat: “Off with their
headscarves!” Where would you place them? In Above-Saharan Africa?
At one point you were kind enough to suggest that
“America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam”.
But no sane person ever accused America of being at war with Islam.
America would have to be a theocracy, with Inquisition as its
preferred domestic policy, and conversion as the principal instrument
of foreign affairs, to declare war on Islam. I hope you will not
accuse me of being pedantic, in the sense of calling a toothache a
gum-ache. The conflation of Islam and Muslims is precisely the kind of
misconception that encourages pre-nation-state fantasies like the
revival of a Caliphate. One might add that while every Muslim was
deeply committed to his faith, political disputes among Muslims began
with the election of the very first Caliph, Hadrat Abu Bakr. Muslims
see themselves as a brotherhood, not a nation-hood. If Islam is
sufficient glue for nationalism, why would Arabs be living in 22
countries? That should have been obvious while you were snacking on
Arab cookies and Islamic lemonade in Cairo.
“Islam and the West”
is another phrase wandering through
a dialectic shaped within the Queen of Alice’s Wonderland. Islam is a
faith; the West is geography. How do you construct a relationship
between faith and geography? You can have a debate on Islam and
Christianity, or indeed between the West and West Asia, or the West
and South Asia, or South East Asia. There is a past and a future to
discuss. “Islam and the West” is straight out of 19th century
Orientalism, laden with a subtext that is best left to warmongers.
Peace requires a different idiom.
We understood your problem as you weaved through political and
rhetorical swamps, because your predecessor managed to achieve what
the mightiest of Muslim rulers failed to do – unite Muslims, albeit
against him, rather than for something. But every Muslim does not need
a homily on democracy. Muslims of Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and
India, who add up to nearly half the Muslim population, are not
democracy-deficit.
The appropriate venue for a speech on Islam would have been Mecca,
Medina or Jerusalem. But the first two cities are barred to
non-Muslims or apostates; and the third would have been too toxic for
an American President.
Cairo was the perfect podium for the speech that we did hear, since
your true theme was not the “Muslim world” but the region between the
Nile and the Indus, which I have, elsewhere, called the “Arc of
Turbulence”. Those searching for a convenient caption for the Cairo
oration might want to call it the “Nildus Speech”.
For the citizens of this region between Egypt and Pakistan, and
particularly for Muslims, this was a brilliant gleam in the gloom to
which they have become accustomed. Its great merit was justice and
fairness, virtues that are repeatedly exalted in the Holy Quran. You
did not deny Palestine its rights because you wanted to preserve what
Israel has acquired. Of course you will be criticised for being
even-handed, but you have survived worse.
It was extremely important that a President of the United States
quoted the Quran’s unequivocal condemnation of terrorism, through a
verse that is particularly beautiful. This will go a long way to
correct the propaganda unleashed by those who controlled the White
House and influenced media before you.
There was one element of your speech that did address almost the whole
of the Muslim world: your stark, unambiguous condemnation of gender
bias, one of the besetting sins of the “Muslim world”. If Muslims do
not eliminate gender bias, they will not be permitted into the 20th
century: who is going to send them an invitation to join the 21st?
Barack Obama has offered the key, but it is up to Muslims to open the
door.
Add Your Comments
A Political Safari
By M.J. Akbar
| May 30,
2009
Victory and defeat in an election are a judgement call between
options, not an epic choice between good and evil. It takes a couple
of days at most for the celebrations to peter out and the tantrums to
ease; then it is back to the difficult business of delivering
governance against the background of raised expectations.
Dr Manmohan Singh is showing every sign of being a sensible victor.
Being sensible means taking decisions in silence, instead of churning
out a statement a day to keep television channels in play. The wisest
victor cherrypicks the best programmes in an opponent’s manifesto,
takes note of any criticism that may have stung without being a fatal
bite, and absorbs it without any fuss into the agenda of Government.
The smart thing to do is to make this so much a part of your
commitment that the voter forgets the origin when it comes to making a
choice yet again. The evidence for this assumption lies in the
decision to give Kamal Nath, one of the stars of the last Government,
Road Transport and Highways.
It is possible to argue that Kamal Nath, now the oldest sitting member
of the Lok Sabha (not in terms of age, but in number of elected terms)
turned Commerce into a glamorous ministry by the force of his
personality. By the measure of any political yardstick he has had
every right to feel that he is both senior to and at least as
competent as P. Chidambaram, who has had the better portfolios.
However, politics is less about justice and more about being in the
right place at the right time.
The most suitable metaphor for power in Delhi comes, appropriately,
from the safari park, with variations to extend the nomenclature
beyond the cat family. At the top are the Big Five. The Prime Minister
is the lion, though hopefully with the diligence of the lioness rather
than the feed-me indolence of the male cat. The Finance Minister would
be legitimately the tiger. Defence and External Affairs would be
elephants, controlling their patch with hauteur, but essentially
vegetarian by nature. Elephants might trumpet and trample, but they
don’t bite. I suppose the Human Resources Minister could lay claim to
being the leopard. That gives the job status in the eyes of the
jungle, but over the last decade the claws of this leopard have been
manicured to non-existence. Both the BJP-led NDA and the Congress-led
UPA allotted Human Resources to seniors in order to minimise the
damage he could do to the Big Boss. Dr Murli Manohar Joshi and Arjun
Singh considered themselves worthy of the Prime Minister’s job, and
were convinced that it was only a matter of time before summons
arrived from destiny. It may sound a bit cruel, but the fact is that
P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh converted
the HRD office from a waiting room for promotion into the ante-room of
oblivion. Dr Joshi left office with a faintly malodorous air, and
Arjun Singh left in tears. His relevance in the Congress Party is more
or less over. Kamal Nath’s name was bandied about as the HRD minister
of this Government because he was considered too senior to take a
lesser job. But being a sharp man, wise in the ways of the Congress,
he decided to avoid the trap of a first class waiting room with second
class prospects.
The Prime Minister has sent a signal, picked up early and clearly by
Kamal Nath, that the quality of infrastructure development in the next
five years will be a vital key to public perception of the success or
failure of this Government. This was one area in which the BJP’s
charge that the Vajpayee initiative had tapered off was received well
by the voter. Dr Singh fought hard and successfully to keep the DMK
out of infrastructure because he knew that this perception had some
truth in it. These nodal ministries are much in demand because of the
massive spending involved. Spending is a gilt-edged invitation to
corruption. Road transport and highways is a responsibility that
extends equally to every part of the country, urban and rural. It is
the most visible measure of change. The manner in which Praful Patel
transformed Civil Aviation into a dynamic development office, rather
than a status quoist job riddled with babu-level favouritism, is an
indication of what a good minister can do with opportunity. A quiz
question will perhaps clarify what I mean a bit more. What was the
name of the last highways minister? The fact that you would probably
have to be the last minister’s close relative to recall his name is
evidence of the decline it suffered in the last five years. Trust me,
you will not forget that Kamal Nath is in charge this time. Neither
will the contractors.
Every Government will have its share of file-shufflers. That is a
demand of the Cabinet system we operate, in which political
considerations have to take some precedence over competence. If
Vilasrao Deshmukh was a disaster as Maharashtra Chief Minister, there
is no earthly reason to expect that he will be a paragon of Harvard
business school now that he has been put in charge of heavy
industries. He is being, as they say, “accommodated”. I presume the
Prime Minister believes that all the heavy industrialists in the state
sector have competent managers and the best thing that the minister
could do is limit his intervention in their lives. The case of
Chemicals and Fertilisers must be similar. The only really in-demand
ministry that he has given the DMK is Communications, and he has put
two Congress Ministers of State as guardian angels -- to guard
Congress interests.
There is no confusion this time about the pecking order at the top.
Pranab Mukherjee is the clear second-in-command, while A.K. Antony
comes next. The highest table has no fourth place. There is a high
table after that, shared by the External Affairs Minister, Finance
Minister, the Law Minister and the Road Transport Minister. The rest
contribute to the attractions of the political safari, but they don’t
sell tickets.
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Season of Mellow
Music
By M.J. Akbar
| May 23,
2009
Has the BJP got trapped in the Bosnia
joke: nothing can succeed, not even a crisis? As the party thinks its
way through the present impasse, it needs two things that politicians
avoid since both come with uncomfortable demands: clarity and honesty.
Arun Jaitley, the general secretary who played a significant part in
shaping the campaign, summed it all up succinctly when he said,
“Shrillness does not pay.” It would be too much to expect Jaitley to
dwell in public on the shrillness that characterized the rhetoric of
too many disparate BJP candidates, the most notable of whom was of
course the overblown Varun Gandhi, but one presumes that he has made
the point in private confabulations that must be taking place in the
BJP leadership.
No one, and particularly not anyone young, wants the shriek of
conflict to disturb the peace of India. Throwing pebbles at any caste,
community or gender is a vote-loser. India still loves a preacher, as
the epidemic of religious channels on television would indicate, but
it has no time for the bully. Independence is not an esoteric
political fact, handed down to us by Gandhi and his remarkable
generation. Independence is now the motif of individual life. Young
people who go to bars do not interfere with those who might seek
solace in the brotherhood of the Bajrang Dal. In return, they expect
the Dal to leave them alone to their definition of pleasure. It is
with great difficulty that Indians tolerate the police; reason forces
them to do so even when their instinct tells them to ride around or
beyond the law in the small matters of daily existence. Why on earth
would they have any patience with a moral police in a free society?
It is perfectly possible to note trends of political behaviour in the
changing patterns of Indian life. Urban middle class Indians throng
towards malls; the poor aspire for them. The mall is now a community
centre for the young. They see merit in order, availability,
convenience and of course the air conditioning. The corner shop is
being replaced. The vendor will gradually be displaced. The old
market, a collection of individual vendors, now represents haggling
and uncertain quality. Regional parties are the vendors of the
political marketplace, and the sound of their haggling, compounded
with their uncertain quality, has begun to grate on the voter. He did
not abandon the corner shop completely — neither has India — but he
preferred the mall. Between the two principal centres available, he
chose the tricolour variety in 2009.
The BJP can take comfort in the fact that it is also a mall, but in
need of serious redecoration as well as a radical reorientation in its
display of goods. In some basics there is no difference between the
saffron and the tricolour malls. They share a common economic policy,
which is after all the meat and bones of the political shop. There is
not much difference in foreign policy either. The divergence comes in
the culture of the environment. People want pilau and papad to coexist
even if they are not available in the same restaurant. You cannot
impose a vegetarian code on a public environment. Freedom means the
right to choose, and you can choose only if there is choice.
A modern nation is much more than a collection of skyscrapers or
fantasy cities shimmering in the middle of nowhere. It is an idea that
permits the individual to live without fear. Sometimes (often?) this
absence of fear can degenerate into licence. We need to go no further
than the nearest urban street to see how an Indian can stretch freedom
into chaos. I often feel that we need our new highways not for speed
but simply for mobility, for they eliminate the Indian driver’s
ability to overtake illegally, or cross lanes; the only real damage he
can now do is to himself. But no Indian is going to exchange the
confusions of intemperate behaviour for dictatorship. Governments have
learnt to abjure dictatorship after the Emergency. Parties who feel
that they can invoke fear, whether against women, or lower castes, or
upper castes, or minorities have missed the social and cultural
nuances of a changing India.
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The Real Game Changer
By M.J. Akbar
| May 17,
2009
Contrary to a view inspired by late Raj
fiction, the British valued India as much as they held Indians in
contempt. The British Empire on the subcontinent owed far more to the
man who saved it around the world, the Duke of Wellington, than to
Robert Clive, who has got excessive credit from history. Clive
defeated a tottering, self-indulgent Nawab of Bengal; Wellington
buried Scindia’s ambitions at Assaye and destroyed Tipu Sultan at
Seringapatnam. They were the two most powerful Indian princes of the
19th century, perhaps the only ones who could have checked the
British. Indians, said Wellington, were “the most mischievous,
deceitful race of people… I have not yet met with a Hindoo who had one
good quality and the Mussalmans are worse than they are”. At least he
was secular in his prejudice.
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