No appeal filed so set Q free, says AG, doesn’t mention he scuttled appeal June 7, 2009
Posted by reader111 in Uncategorized.Tags: Congress, Corruption, INC, Ottavio Quattrocchi, Quattrocchi, Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi
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Posted: Wednesday, Apr 29, 2009 at 1105 hrs IST
RITU SARIN & AMITAV RANJAN
NEW DELHI:
To justify withdrawing the Red Corner Notice against Bofors-accused Ottavio Quattrocchi, as first reported in The Indian Express today, both the Law Ministry and the Central Bureau of Investigation said they went by “advice from the highest legal quarters.”
That’s a reference to Attorney General Milon Banerji who, on October 24 last year, sent a four-page opinion pointing out that the CBI did not challenge the February 2004 order of the High Court quashing all charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act in the Bofors case. And argued: “Since no Special Leave Petition was filed on this ground…the Red Corner Notice is invalid.”
What Banerji did not mention and what’s buried in confidential files accessed by The Indian Express is a telling fact: it was Attorney General Milon Banerji himself who, barely two months after the Congress-led Manmohan Singh Government came to power, overruled CBI investigators and directed the agency not to file the SLP against the High Court order.
This is what Banerji signed on file on July 5, 2004: “I have perused the papers, in particular, the careful summary prepared by Shri R L Meena, Law Secretary. I agree with the view of the Law Secretary that this is not a fit case for filing a Special Leave Petition.”
The Government also cited the views of O P Verma, Deputy Legal Advisor, who also argued against filing of the SLP. File notings show that CBI’s Joint Director and Additional Director both made identical comments: “We perhaps have no option other than to allow the matter to rest.”
Once the Law Ministry (read the Government) had ruled, the then CBI Director U S Misra fell in line. “In view of the opinion of the Law Department,” he said, “there is no merit in the case to file SLP in the Supreme Court against the order of High Court.”
The way in which the 2004 High Court order remained unchallenged is, perhaps, the most brazen instance of the CBI immediately changing its line of investigation in the Bofors case with regime change at the Centre.
Records obtained by The Indian Express show that before the UPA came to power, the CBI’s key investigators in the case (between February-April 2004) had recommended filing the SLP. These included N Natrajan, Chief Public Prosecutor in the case who prepared a 12-page opinion for an appeal; and Deputy Legal Advisor U R Prasad.
On April 24, 2004, barely three weeks before the UPA came to power, CBI’s Director of Prosecution S K Sharma stated: “Both these counsel have recommended to go in for SLP against the order of the Delhi High Court. We may act accordingly and send a proposal to the Cabinet Secretariat for instructin g the Central Agency Section to file the SLP in Supreme Court.”
This is the same Sharma who has now argued for withdrawing the Red Corner Notice under the UPA Government.
The 28-page draft SLP, in fact, is with The Indian Express. Questioned on this sudden turnaround after their Government came to power, Law Minister H R Bhardwaj today said if a draft SLP existed, it was not forwarded to the Law Ministry.
“It must have been circulated among junior CBI officers,” he said. Asked what he made of the AG’s opinion then and his opinion now, he said: “There is no conflict of interest.”
MGR gave us Rs 6-crore, says LTTE June 7, 2009
Posted by reader111 in Uncategorized.Tags: LTTE, MGR, Srilankan Tamils, Tamils
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Posted online: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 at 1235 hours IST
Chennai, January 27: Anton Balasingham, the LTTE ideologue, has claimed that the late M G Ramachandran had assiduously promoted the interests of his organisation. He helped them out financially too, giving them as much as Rs 6 crore from out of his personal funds, and in hard cash at that.
In an anthology of articles titled Viduthalai (Liberation), brought out recently in the United Kingdom, Balasingham has made several sensational disclosures, including the gift of an AK-47 to MGR by Prabhakaran. His almost unrestrained eulogy of MGR and tacit admission that the LTTE leaders played on his ego are quite revealing.
Their very first encounter, in 1984, came through in some unusual circumstances. At the time a number of Lankan militant groups were operating in Tamil Nadu, and MGR, in an attempt to unite them, had called a meeting of the leaders of those groups.
But DMK leader Karunanidhi, in an attempt to show off his commitment to the Lankan Tamil cause, also called a meeting of his own, a day earlier. Not wanting to get caught in the internal politics of Tamil Nadu, the LTTE kept out of the meeting convened by Karunanidhi. They decided not to meet MGR either.
But as it happened, when the meeting between Karunanidhi and three LTTE leaders made a splash in the media, a cut-up MGR peremptorily cancelled the meeting he had called. At the same time, he sent a senior police official to persuade the LTTE leaders to meet him at his residence. And Balasingham agreed, but only on condition that no other rebel leader would be present at the meeting.
(Prabhakaran, though still in Madras then, was not that easily accessible, even to the chief minister of the day. He would not meet MGR at the time, but would do so at a later stage.)
Balasingham and his associates quickly managed to strike a rapport with MGR, two key factors being their badmouthing his rival Karunanidhi for ‘‘playing politics’’ in an issue involving the very future of the Lankan Tamils and unashamedly flattering MGR on his face about his social concerns. His face lighted up when they described him as a ‘‘social revolutionary,’’ equating him with Prabhakaran himself, Balasingham writes.
And as the conversation proceeded apace, Balasingham slips in his request for money, towards training his cadres and for arms. MGR asks: ‘‘How much?’’ Rather hesitantly, Shankar, a senior leader of the LTTE, mumbles, ‘‘Rs 2 crore.’’ The response was prompt: ‘‘Come tomorrow and collect it.’’ Later the LTTE team wondered whether they should not have asked for more. The next evening Balasingham arrives at MGR’s residence in a van, is taken to the basement wherein he finds boxes (of what type, he doesn’t describe) stacked to a height of ten feet. MGR tells the security guards in Malayalam to take out ten of the boxes and pile them up in the van.
It is late in the night, and the LTTE folk are worried about the security and possible police interception. ‘‘No problem,’’ MGR says and the team goes to its destination under police escort.
Thus the foundation for a historic friendship was laid, Balasingham remarks and says that at the time it was essentially MGR’s money that kept the LTTE wheels moving.
Still later, Prabhakaran demanded Rs 5 crore. This time MGR chose to dip into the funds collected by the government for the rehabilitation of the Lankan Tamils affected by the 1983 riots. A project for their health care, to be managed by an LTTE-front organisation, was to be the cover. After some hassles, Balasingham was handed a cheque for Rs 4 crore at the secretariat. (Only that much had been collected by the government.) But the media exposed the transaction, and all hell broke loose. (Incidentally, Balasingham mentions only the this website’s newspaper and not the upcountry newspapers in that connection.)
The then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, spoke to MGR rather sharply. The LTTE spokesman says that MGR was dismayed and wondered what wrong there could have been in handing the money meant for Lankan welfare to an organisation that was fighting for their rights.
But not wanting to lock horns with the Centre, MGR got the cheque back and compensated the rebels with cash from his basement.
It was not just monetary help that MGR was rendering. He went out of his way to go to their rescue whenever they were caught in one crisis or other. Once a consignment of arms meant for PLOTE, a rival organisation, was seized by the Madras Port authorities. Wiser by that experience, the LTTE promptly sought the Chief Minister’s help when its own shipment, worth thousands of dollars, docked. ‘‘No problem,’’ was the answer again. He pulled the necessary wires and they got their goodies cleared. It was as a token of his gratitude that Prabhakaran gifted an AK-47 to MGR, who was of course delighted at his new toy, says Balasingham.
Again when MGR’s most trusted police chief, Mohandas, ordered a crackdown on all militant outfits and seized their arms and communication equipment, and Prabhakaran went on a fast, the Chief Minister personally intervened and ordered the return of whatever had been seized. Plus, as a bonus, the arms seized from the other groups too went to the LTTE’s kitty.
Strangely, the book is silent on MGR’s failure to raise his voice against the IPKF offensive and Karunanidhi’s vociferous protests. It should, indeed, be galling to Karunanidhi that there is no reference at all to his role, except for an occasional dig or two.
Source: Newindpress.com
Railways: Accounting for profit March 22, 2009
Posted by reader111 in Indian Companies.Tags: Indian Railways, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Lalu Yadav, Railways
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Was the Railways really ‘bankrupt’ in 2001?.
Mamuni Das
Had the accounting methods that the Indian Railways follows now been followed during Mr Nitish Kumar’s stint as a Railway Minister, the Railways would have had an annual cash surplus of Rs 4,789.5 crore in 2001, Rs 6,286.58 crore in 2002, and Rs 8583.25 crore in 2003. And, please hold your breath — in 2004, the year when Mr Nitish handed over charge to Mr Lalu Prasad, the Railways would have had a cash surplus of Rs 9,552.27 crore!
This startling information is tucked away in Appendix 6 of Sudhir Kumar and Shagun Mehrotra’s lucidly-written book, Bankruptcy to Billions (OUP, 2009, Rs 495). Indeed, it is one of the key takeaways from the book.
So, was the Indian Railways actually not bankrupt in 2001? It is this that has made Mr Lalu Prasad’s tenure seem so wonderful. The readers can take a call on the issue.
Great transformation
The authors also admit that, in 2008, accounting changes helped the Railways reflect an incremental cash surplus of Rs 3,489 crore (14 per cent of Rs 25,006 crore surplus).
Sudhir Kumar, a 1982-batch Bihar IAS officer, is the officer on special duty of Mr Lalu. Shagun Mehrotra, the co-author, is pursuing his doctoral studies at Columbia University and has worked in the World Bank on the infrastructure reforms.
Sudhir Kumar has been instrumental in implementing the profit-making policies for the Railways. He also deserves credit for managing the Minister’s image. A case in point is the sponsored study by IIM-Ahmedabad (where the ‘sponsored’ bit was hidden) on the Railways turnaround.
The first sentence in the first chapter — “How Indian Railways was transformed in four years under Lalu Prasad” — sets the tone for the book. From there, it does not look back and the reader is treated to a nice, long account of the Great Transformation. The Railways was quick to see an opportunity in the booming commodity cycle, and through consecutive freight rate hikes in iron ore for export, freight rates were increased by 400 per cent, say the authors. The Railways earned an additional Rs 9,000 crore in profits from this.
The chapter “Milking the Cow” provides more insights into how they utilised the assets. The authors provide a detailed account of how the Railways increased the freight earnings during Mr Lalu’s regime.
The Railways also increased axle loads. Mr Lalu realised there was rampant overloading in the system. By simply legalising higher axle loads — through some clever interpretation of the laws pertaining to it — the Railways started billing for much higher levels of loads without having to physically chase extra loads.
Thus, by adding six tonnes of load per wagon, the Railways transported 90 tonnes of incremental load each year or Rs 6,000 crore in incremental revenue.
The authors have accorded due credit for this strategy to the former chairman, Mr M. S. Gujral, who, as the Railway Board Chairman in the 1980s, had initiated a similar move. But his attempt was subsequently discarded due to risks associated with it.
The passenger rail business dynamics are extensively explained in the chapter “The Market”. Railways ran longer, faster, high capacity trains on a priority basis in areas with high demand and reduced fares by token amounts of even one rupee. But unlike the details provided regarding the freight business, the authors have not shared much details about how the Railways raised passenger fares by hiking reservation and cancellation charges, levying super-fast charges by converting many trains to super-fast trains.
Similarly, it would have been nice to read up on the Tatkal service that allows passengers to pay extra for securing a reserved ticket. Charges for booking under the Tatkal scheme were increased by Rs 100-150 for nine months of a year, in 2004.
They also do not mention how the Railways subsumed the safety surcharge into fares even after the charge was discontinued in 2007. This, in effect, disallowed a fare reduction for passengers.
Privatising The non-core areas
In the chapter “Political Economy of Reforms”, there is a detailed explanation on how the Railways identified areas for reforms. Mr Lalu Prasad was not against privatisation, say the authors, of non-core railway functions.
So, the Railways did partially try to follow some of the Rakesh Mohan Committee recommendations on privatising non-core functions such as allowing private container train operators, getting private firms to run the Rail Yatri Nivas and inviting private investment in new production units. But not much has come out of it.
Another key point is that under Mr Lalu, the Railways became more responsive to market conditions with a dynamic pricing policy. So through surcharges, freight charges were increased wherever possible and incremental freight was captured with incentives. In effect, he successfully milked the robust system created during Nitish Kumar’s regime.
Ref: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2009/03/13/stories/2009031350250900.htm
Try and say this in Hindi—bet you can’t March 8, 2009
Posted by reader111 in India, Language.Tags: English, Godhra, Gujarat, Gujarat riots, Gujarati, Hindi, Indian English, Indian Muslims, Language, Sanskrit
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Aakar Patel
Our dance floors light up only when Bollywood songs play. But why? Bollywood melodies are Indian in their modulation. We respond to the words; we feel their emotion, more than we do for songs in English. An Englishman will not “get” Mitwa, no matter how often he listens to it. This is because words are loaded with meaning that is more than just definition; we invest them with an emotion. Other words are based on evolved concepts. What happens when we borrow such words from another language is that often we don’t really understand what they mean.
Indians think secularism means inclusion. This is because we have no precise word for it in any Indian language. The word actually means distance from religion, but in no Indian language can distance from dharma be a good thing. The word does not exist because the concept is alien to us. Hindi uses binsampradayik, which means non-sectarian, and that’s why the meaning is lost to us. We have the strange phenomenon of parties with names such as Hyderabad’s Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (Group for the Unity of Muslims) and Kerala’s Indian Union Muslim League in the Lok Sabha calling themselves, and believing themselves to be, secular.
This inability to understand because of the limitations of our language and culture extends to concepts such as rights. When one points to the violence against Muslims in their state, Gujaratis will say, “but they started it first with Godhra”.
The Gujarati is not being evasive when he says this, nor is he being cruel. He is stating fact. He cannot understand why you cannot understand how “Muslims” could have “started it first” and then escaped punishment.
Gujaratis don’t have the vocabulary to internalize the horror of collective punishment, or the uniqueness of the individual. This is because identity comes from community in India, not from the individual. Unfortunately, though it’s India’s most urban state, English is not popular in Gujarat because it is not the language of success. Its merchants trade in Gujarati, which is a superb language of trade, given its rich and evolved vocabulary of Perso-Arabic (hawala, hundi, badla), which is used in all of India’s markets.
Gujaratis are pragmatic, but their language and culture do not accommodate individualism. Even their dances, Garba and Dandiya, are communal, another word which Indians do not understand clearly.
Seven years ago, the Editors Guild sent three of its members (I was one) to Gujarat to meet local editors and write a report on the role of media bias during the 2002 riots. What the team members heard made their hair stand on end.
Distance from English, from the European languages of reason, is always a bad thing for the developing world.
Isolationist states such as Iran and North Korea, defying the world at the cost of hurting their citizens, are more likely to have populations that don’t speak English. The danger to Pakistan comes mostly from its non-English culture, which wants the supremacy of religion. Urdu-medium Muslims are unhappy under secular law based on reason because the rule of reason is not utopian.
A study by Tariq Rahman, a professor of sociolinguistic history at Pakistan’s Quaid-i-Azam University, (www.tariqrahman.net) showed that Urdu-medium Pakistani students were almost twice as likely as English-medium students to favour discriminatory laws for Pakistan’s Hindus. Madrasa students were four times more likely.
Allama Iqbal knew the limitations of Indian languages. Iqbal spoke Arabic, German and Punjabi. He knew Sanskrit well enough to translate the Gayatri Mantra.
He wrote his poetry in Persian and in Urdu. But his great text of reform was written in English because you cannot communicate reform without its vocabulary. He wrote the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam in the 1920s as a series of lectures. The lectures comprise the world’s finest document on Islamic reform, and lie mostly unread. Muslims love the emotional Iqbal who wrote stirring songs of Muslims on horseback conquering the world. They are bored by the rational Iqbal who talks of reason—or they cannot access him because he’s talking in English.
But Iqbal could not have written his Reconstruction lectures in Urdu, or for that matter in Persian or in Arabic, even though all the Islamic terminology he used was Arabic. He was giving those words flexibility through English, something he could not do in Urdu.
We connect emotionally to our culture through our language. And that is important, because it is our culture and we should be able to feel it not just through words but also visuals and sound and movement. But we understand the world, its science, its intricacies and its wisdom, through the language of Europe. It is the language of our universal civilization; Europeans have only achieved it before the rest of us, and that is fine.
The best Indian writers are those who understand this and are truly bilingual. They talk about our culture with the Westerner’s method and vocabulary. That is why we like the English writing of men such as Gandhi, Tagore and Iqbal, because it is illuminating.
English monolinguals, those who do not read their mother tongue fluently, are also at a disadvantage. They cannot understand their own culture fully since they have limited access, though they can sniff its odour. And their penetration into the West is cosmetic because of the attached prophylactic of the pidgin English which most of us know. We don’t really understand the West. We can follow its rules when we migrate but we cannot build a society along its lines here, even a housing society, because it’s not yet in our nature. That civilization hasn’t really been penetrated, because a study of its classical roots, its harmony, is needed to actually internalize it.
And so we return to the Englishman who cannot really “get” Mitwa.
Can we in turn really understand the English songs we listen to, and the books we read, the way that the English do?
Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media. Write to Aakar at replytoall@livemint.com
Ref: http://www.livemint.com/2009/03/05210959/Try-and-say-this-in-Hindibet.html
The same people? Surely not March 8, 2009
Posted by reader111 in India, Pakistan.1 comment so far
Vir Sanghvi
Few things annoy me as much as the claim often advanced by well-meaning but woolly- headed (and usually Punjabi) liberals to the effect that when it comes to India and Pakistan, “We’re all the same people, yaar.”
This may have been true once upon a time. Before 1947, Pakistan was part of undivided India and you could claim that Punjabis from West Punjab (what is now Pakistan) were as Indian as, say, Tamils from Madras.
But time has a way of moving on. And while the gap between our Punjabis (from east Punjab which is now the only Punjab left in India) and our Tamils may actually have narrowed, thanks to improved communications, shared popular culture and greater physical mobility, the gap between Indians and Pakistanis has now widened to the extent that we are no longer the same people in any significant sense.
This was brought home to me most clearly by two major events over the last few weeks.
The first of these was the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team on the streets of Lahore. In their defence, Pakistanis said that they were powerless to act against the terrorists because religious fanaticism was growing. Each day more misguided youngsters joined jihadi outfits and the law and order situation worsened.
Further, they added, things had got so bad that in the tribal areas the government of Pakistan had agreed to suspend the rule of law under pressure from the Taliban and had conceded that sharia law would reign instead. Interestingly, while most civilised liberals should have been appalled by this surrender to the forces of extremism, many Pakistanis defended this concession.
Imran Khan (Keble College, Oxford, 1973-76) even declared that sharia law would be better because justice would be dispensed more swiftly! (I know this is politically incorrect but the Loin of the Punjab’s defence of sharia law reminded me of the famous Private Eye cover when his marriage to Jemima Goldsmith was announced. The Eye carried a picture of Khan speaking to Jemima’s father. “Can I have your daughter’s hand?” Imran was supposedly asking James Goldsmith. “Why? Has she been caught shoplifting?” Goldsmith replied. So much for sharia law.)
The second contrasting event was one that took place in Los Angeles but which was perhaps celebrated more in India than in any other country in the world. Three Indians won Oscars: A.R. Rahman, Resul Pookutty and Gulzar.
Their victory set off a frenzy of rejoicing. We were proud of our countrymen. We were pleased that India’s entertainment industry and its veterans had been recognised at an international platform. And all three men became even bigger heroes than they already were.
But here’s the thing: Not one of them is a Hindu.
Can you imagine such a thing happening in Pakistan? Can you even conceive of a situation where the whole country would celebrate the victory of three members of two religious minorities? For that matter, can you even imagine a situation where people from religious minorities would have got to the top of their fields and were, therefore, in the running for international awards?
On the one hand, you have Pakistan imposing sharia law, doing deals with the Taliban, teaching hatred in madrasas, declaring jihad on the world and trying to kill innocent Sri Lankan cricketers. On the other, you have the triumph of Indian secularism.
The same people?
Surely not.
We are defined by our nationality. They choose to define themselves by their religion.
But it gets even more complicated. As you probably know, Rahman was born Dilip Kumar. He converted to Islam when he was 21. His religious preferences made no difference to his prospects. Even now, his music cuts across all religious boundaries. He’s as much at home with Sufi music as he is with bhajans. Nor does he have any problem with saying ‘Vande Mataram’.
Now, think of a similar situation in Pakistan. Can you conceive of a Pakistani composer who converted to Hinduism at the age of 21 and still went on to become a national hero? Under sharia law, they’d probably have to execute him.
Resul Pookutty’s is an even more interesting case. Until you realise that Malayalis tend to put an ‘e’ where the rest of us would put an ‘a,’ (Ravi becomes Revi and sometimes the Gulf becomes the Gelf), you cannot work out that his name derives from Rasool, a fairly obviously Islamic name.
But here’s the point: even when you point out to people that Pookutty is in fact a Muslim, they don’t really care. It makes no difference to them. He’s an authentic Indian hero, his religion is irrelevant.
Can you imagine Pakistan being indifferent to a man’s religion? Can you believe that Pakistanis would not know that one of their Oscar winners came from a religious minority? And would any Pakistani have dared bridge the religious divide in the manner Resul did by referring to the primeval power of Om in his acceptance speech?
The same people?
Surely not.
Most interesting of all is the case of Gulzar who many Indians believe is a Muslim. He is not. He is a Sikh. And his real name is Sampooran Singh Kalra.
So why does he have a Muslim name?
It’s a good story and he told it on my TV show some years ago. He was born in West Pakistan and came over the border during the bloody days of Partition. He had seen so much hatred and religious violence on both sides, he said, that he was determined never to lose himself to that kind of blind religious prejudice and fanaticism.
Rather than blame Muslims for the violence inflicted on his community — after all, Hindus and Sikhs behaved with equal ferocity — he adopted a Muslim pen name to remind himself that his identity was beyond religion. He still writes in Urdu and considers it irrelevant whether a person is a Sikh, a Muslim or a Hindu.
Let’s forget about political correctness and come clean: can you see such a thing happening in Pakistan? Can you actually conceive of a famous Pakistani Muslim who adopts a Hindu or Sikh name out of choice to demonstrate the irrelevance of religion?
My point, exactly.
What all those misguided liberals who keep blathering on about us being the same people forget is that in the 60-odd years since Independence, our two nations have traversed very different paths.
Pakistan was founded on the basis of Islam. It still defines itself in terms of Islam. And over the next decade as it destroys itself, it will be because of Islamic extremism.
India was founded on the basis that religion had no role in determining citizenship or nationhood. An Indian can belong to any religion in the world and face no discrimination in his rights as a citizen.
It is nobody’s case that India is a perfect society or that Muslims face no discrimination. But only a fool would deny that in the last six decades, we have travelled a long way towards religious equality. In the early days of independent India, a Yusuf Khan had to call himself Dilip Kumar for fear of attracting religious prejudice.
In today’s India, a Dilip Kumar can change his name to A.R. Rahman and nobody really gives a damn either way.
So think back to the events of the last few weeks. To the murderous attack on innocent Sri Lankan cricketers by jihadi fanatics in a society that is being buried by Islamic extremism. And to the triumphs of Indian secularism.
Same people?
Don’t make me laugh.
Pakistan an ordinary nation March 8, 2009
Posted by reader111 in Pakistan.Tags: India, Indian Muslims, Islam, Pakistan
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Salil Tripathi
So many myths came crashing down in Lahore. That Pakistan is an ordinary country with extraordinary problems. That Pakistan’s security forces are hand-in-glove with terrorists. That extremists would never attack cricketers.
In the end, the horror near the Gaddafi Stadium showed how the bizarre becomes the ordinary: Witness the number of people who said: “I told you so,” as cricket boards congratulated themselves for having avoided touring Pakistan. Recall, too, that all the dead are Pakistanis —all but one of them brave security guards who laid down their lives to protect the cricketers, nailing the myth that all Pakistanis are complicit with terrorism. And then the third myth—when Imran Khan said, the week before the Mumbai attacks, that cricket is safe from terror. How could one be so sure in a country where so many rules of war have been broken?
But Khan believed it just as Pakistan wanted to believe in another idea, which had better not be a myth—that it is a normal country—for the alternative—a nuclear-armed failed state—is too horrible to contemplate. Many, if not most, Pakistanis want to live normal lives. Their families want to go to Clifton in Karachi and admire the sunset. Their teenagers want to go hiking in the Karakoram, and their rich like to ski on the slopes of the Swat valley. They want their kids to go to schools that teach math and computers, and not only scriptures and hate-filled history. They take delight in the peccadilloes of Bollywood stars and hum along with the songs of the rock group, Junoon. They post videos critical of generals on YouTube and write blogs challenging their politicians who succumb to the mullahs and the military. Their lawyers protest the removal of the Supreme Court’s chief justice, and their novelists ridicule the pious nonsense of their imams and generals with an aplomb that’s lacking in the more didactic “socially relevant” fiction of new Indian authors. And they want to go to a stadium, to admire some nice stroke-play, inspired bowling and exceptional fielding.
And it is that normalcy which the terrorists attack, because the terrorists want what’s regular to be the unexpected, and the unexpected to make you afraid, and not wonder. That means audaciously razing Islamabad’s premier hotel; ruthlessly assassinating a politician who thought this time, the third time, she’d get it right; brazenly attacking presidential convoys; boldly humiliating the government by demanding, and getting, a large chunk of territory where only their peculiar tribal interpretation of religious laws would apply, not national laws or international norms. In this topsy-turvy universe, a conniving, petty trader of nuclear secrets, who saw a new world order in a mushroom cloud, is released from house arrest, and a foreign correspondent meeting a contact outside the hotel gets beheaded.
Finally, it is that peculiar country where its President has in the past claimed to be suffering from mental illness to avoid a corruption trial while in exile, and upon assuming presidency used all methods to get a rival politician outlawed, even though working with him to ward off the twin threats the cantonment and the mosque represent is in the interest of the nation’s fragile democracy.
That’s the universe many Pakistanis inhabit—caught between intransigent generals, incompetent politicians and intolerant mullahs. They don’t need reminding what terrorism is; they live with it. They have lost thousands of civilians and soldiers in the past decade. They live with the consequences of cynical, cold, political choices and compromises their leaders have made on their behalf.
And yet, many in India don’t see that reality, and see all Pakistanis as extremists, as if all of them accept at face value the rants of Zahid Hamid on Pakistani television—who believes everything that’s evil is because of “Hindu Zionist” conspiracy.
We must then learn to separate that sinister fringe from the Pakistani men and women who don’t believe in juvenile jihadis. We must not succumb to the idea—as Simi Garewal momentarily did (though she was hardly alone) —that if only we bomb Pakistan, all problems will be solved. Starting a war is a not a choice as easy as sending a “Yes” SMS to a televise on channel desperate to improve ratings, and which wants politicians to announce foreign policy manoeuvres on live television. It also means we must prevent our own saffron Taliban, which wants to empty our bookshops of Pakistani writers, and prevent Pakistani artists from performing in our theatres.
At its simplest, it means not gloating at what Ahmed Rashid calls Pakistan’s descent into chaos, but to appreciate Pakistanis’ struggle to reclaim their country from the triumvirate Tariq Ali describes as “greedy generals, corrupt politicians and bearded lunatics”.
That’s not easy. Building a civil society never is. It needs nerves of steel. We must wish strength to the millions in Pakistan who have that resolve.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. Your comments are welcome at salil@livemint.com
Ref:http://www.livemint.com/2009/03/04180643/PAKISTAN-AN-ORDINARY-NATIOn.html?atype=tp
Public tragedy as a learning tool? February 22, 2009
Posted by reader111 in India, Psychology.Tags: 26/11, Gouri Dange, Mumbai attacks, terror attacks
1 comment so far
Gouri Dange
After the 26/11 attacks, my friend often tells her children, aged 13 and 15, when they complain: “Stop whining— you’re lucky to have this food. People today can be killed in the middle of their dinner.” If one of them complains about lack of space in the room she shares with her brother, the mother says: “People have spent hours, days, hidden under beds… count your blessings that you are safe and have a nice room and a brother alive to share it with.” I find all this too much. She says it is time for her children to get some perspective. I agree, but isn’t there another way?
Like the rest of us, your friend, too, is shaken to the core by the events of November. We all process tragedy of these proportions in different ways but from what you describe, her way of doing it is really doing no one any good. Events of this kind force many of us to change our way of looking at things in a fundamental way. For her, like for many other people, the tragedy has brought home the fact that it’s a blessing to be alive and well. Nothing wrong with that. However, expecting her children to see it in exactly this way is inappropriate.
Incorrect approach: Don’t use the 26/11 attacks as a means to discipline. Lorenzo Tugnoli / AFPWhile she may feel prompted by those events to sensitize her children to the suffering of others and to be grateful for what they have, this is simply not the way to do it. This way, in fact, will ensure that they get desensitized to those tragic events. It will soon become, for them, just something that their mother holds over their heads when trying to get them to do something.
No doubt children need to be taught empathy and guided to see themselves as part of the larger picture of things when there is a crisis in the public domain—whether disasters or attacks or other such life-changing occurrences. But the lessons that flow from such events should be taught or reflected quite, quite independent of day-to-day home and family rules about eating and sharing space with other siblings, among other things. First, if your friend keeps processing her response to the tragedy in this in-your-face fashion via her kids, she may be deeply shocked one fine day to find that they will just laugh her off as their connection to it becomes trivialized.
Second, when we keep telling kids to see their own complaints or needs in comparison to other much worse things, it tends to invalidate their real anxieties, likes and dislikes, or needs. Of course, in comparison to something like a terrorist attack or a flood, a child’s whining about something or the other that he wants looks trivial. But to keep reducing and dismissing it in the way your friend is doing, under the name of “keeping perspective”, simply denies her kids legitimate access to her time and attention on something.
If she wants to sensitize her kids to the larger inequalities and unhappiness in the world, she needs to do it in an ongoing, non-guilt-inducing way, by involving them in a larger programme of sharing and caring and volunteering somewhere in any small way. This is much harder work for a parent than simply telling them that their problems are nothing compared to 26/11. How long can a horrific tragedy serve as a life lesson, after all?
Gouri Dange is the author of The ABCs of Parenting. Send your queries to Gouri at learningcurve@livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/2009/02/20210911/Public-tragedy-as-a-learning-t.html?d=1
Belgian title for Sonia February 22, 2009
Posted by reader111 in Congress, Politics.add a comment
No punishment under the law
by K.N. Bhat
HAS Mrs Sonia Gandhi committed any offence by accepting the award “Order of Leopold” from the Belgian government? If not, can Tendulkar become “Sir Sachin”? The complaint against Mrs Gandhi seems to be that the acceptance of the award is “acknowledgement of allegiance to a foreign State”, which would disqualify her from continuing to be a MP under Article 102 of the Constitution. Prima facie, the charge looks frivolous.
But there is another provision in the Constitution — Article 18 — with the title “Abolition of Titles”. Strangely, that article is housed among the Fundamental Rights. So, it is the fundamental right of every citizen not to be conferred with any title other than military or academic distinctions. It further says, “no citizen of India shall accept any title from any foreign State”. What if a citizen accepts one — like the “Order of Leopold” —or a knighthood? Article 18 is silent on the sequel to its violation.
The philosophy behind Article 18 is that in a democracy, all citizens are equal and the State should not disturb this concept through award of titles — academic or military distinctions are earned — not gifted. Constitutions of different States like the US, Germany, Ireland and Japan prohibit the State from conferring titles of nobility.
Why did the makers of our Constitution prescribe a prohibition without spelling the penalty for its violation? This aspect was specifically considered. While discussing the draft Article 12, which eventually became Article 18, T.T. Krishnamachari, a member of the Constituent Assembly, suggested that the words “not being a military or academic distinction” be inserted. Another member, Loknath Misra, said: “We know instances where people have got titles which they do not deserve and the entitled gentleman belies the import of the title”.
Naziruddin Ahmad pointedly asked, “If anybody accepts any foreign title, what is the penalty which is provided? No penalty is provided for accepting it. The State has no means of giving effect to this clause”. To this Dr Ambedkar replied, “The State shall not recognise it.” H.V. Kamath raised a query, “If the State inadvertently or in a fit of absentmindedness or due to some other cause, does confer titles, what can be done against the State? After all, the State itself has conferred the title”.
After considerable exchange of thoughts, Dr Ambedkar said, “My answer to that (to the query as to what is the penalty) is very simple: That it would be perfectly open under the Constitution for Parliament under its residuary powers to make a law prescribing what should be done with regard to an individual who does accept a title contrary to the provisions of this article. I should have thought that that was an adequate provision for meeting the case which he has put before the House”.
Dr Ambedkar further said, “The non-acceptance of titles is a condition of continued citizenship; it is not a right, it is a duty imposed upon the individual that if he continues to be the citizen of this country then he must abide by certain conditions, one of the conditions is that he must not accept a title because it would be open for Parliament, when it provides by law as to what should be done to persons who abrogate the provisions of this article, to say that if any person accepts a title, certain penalties may follow. One of the penalties may be that he may lose the right of citizenship. Therefore, there is really no difficulty in understanding this provision as it is a condition attached to citizenship, by itself it is not a justiciable right.”
It may be recalled that the Citizenship Act, which was enacted in 1955, makes no reference to the acceptance of the title. Nor is there any other law that has given effect to the solution offered by Dr Ambedkar. As the law stands today, Mrs Sonia Gandhi cannot be punished for accepting the Belgian title.
It is a different question whether any person having taken the oath to “bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India” can violate a provision like Article 18 without suffering any consequence. And Article 51-A makes it the fundamental duty of every citizen to “abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals”. Again, no penalties are prescribed for disregarding this constitutionally ordained duty. The Constituent Assembly had rejected the suggestions by many members that no foreign title shall be recognised in India. So Tendulkar can be “Sir, Sachin” without inviting the wrath of law.
What about our own Padma awards introduced in 1954 — four years after the Constitution came into force? In 1977, soon after the Morarji Desai government assumed office, the then Attorney-General late S.V. Gupte opined that the awards were opposed to Article 18. As a result, from 1978 to 1980, the January 25 ritual stood abolished; they were, however, reintroduced in 1981.
In the case of Balaji Raghavan (1996), a five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that the Padma awards were only methods of recognising excellence. The court, however, decreed that these honours conferred by the State should not be used as suffixes or prefixes, i.e. as titles by the recipients. A passing glance at some of the recipients of these awards is enough to make one marvel at the art or science of recognising excellence. It is a different matter that many of these excellent men and women do not mind letting the awards being used as suffixes or prefixes, with impunity.
What about the “honorary doctorates” conferred by universities? These institutions of higher learning generally are “States” within the meaning of the expression in the Constitution. Recognition of academic distinctions — Ph.Ds or D.Phils and the like — is conferred from time to time on the basis of merit proven according to the established rules.
The honorary doctors are generally modest enough not to lay claims to any special achievement. Nevertheless, in some States a sizeable number — especially among the politicians — are “doctors” flaunting their prefixes. There was a belief some time ago that these honorary doctorates are like garlands presented at a ceremonial occasion — not intended to be displayed on the streets after the function, though the recipient is its owner. One sees no reason not to treat the honorary doctorates conferred by the universities as anything but titles prohibited by Article 18, if they can be legitimately used as prefixes to the names.
The writer is Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India.
Ex-nun’s confessions set to rock Kerala Church February 22, 2009
Posted by reader111 in Religious Conversions.Tags: Christians, Church, Kerala, nun, Nuns
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Shaju Philip, Feb 19, 2009
Thiruvananathapuram: Already reeling under several controversies, the Kerala Catholic Church is facing fresh embarrassment from a tell-all autobiography written by a nun who recently quit the Order alleging harassment from superiors.
‘Amen — an autobiography of a nun’, released last week, is written by Dr Sister Jesme, 52, who was the Principal of St Mary’s College, Thrissur, till last August when she quit the Congregation of Mother Carmelite (CMC).
“Dedicated to Jesus”, Amen is explicit in its details of the sexual repression and harassment behind the Church walls as well as the draconian rules and “greed” of the Order. Jesme claims that since the book was released, she has been getting calls pledging solidarity.
“Nuns mingle with the whole spectrum of the community around them. They teach students, comfort the aged and nurse the sick; still the brides of the Church remain an enigma. My work would throw light on the misunderstood convent life, engulfed in darkness,” says Jesme.
Apart from the Abhaya murder in which a nun and priests are accused, the Kerala Church was recently in the news for a priest “adopting” a 26-year-old woman.
RamadaBangalore.comAds By GoogleJesme’s autobiography includes a poignant version by her of how the convent authorities tried to twice prove that she had mental problems and get her admitted into a rehab centre after she reportedly spoke out against the malpractices within the Order.
Starting with her first days in the Church, 30 years ago, she talks of priets forcing novices to have relations with them and the closet homosexuality within nun ranks, “which the Church reckons as the dirtiest thing possible”. “If nuns developed unusual interest in each other, authorities would deploy other inmates to watch them,” she writes.
The book says Jesme herself was forced into such a relationship by a fellow nun, and that her complaints to a senior nun were ignored. According to her, the other nun said she preferred such a relationship as it ruled out pregnancy. There were others who had affairs with priests, she writes.
Another passage in Amen deals with a chance encounter Jesme had with a priest in Bangalore while on her way to Dharwar to attend a UGC refresher course in English. “My plan was to stay at the waiting room at the Bangalore railway station. But sisters in the convent gave me the address of a pious, decent priest. When I reached Bangalore, the priest was waiting to receive me. He embraced me and took me to his presbytery. After breakfast, he took me to Lalbagh (Botanical Garden) and showed me several pairs cuddling behind trees. He also gave a sermon on the necessity of physical love and described the illicit affairs certain bishops and priests had.”
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/exnuns-confessions-set-to-rock-kerala-…/425407/
Why Slumdog Millionaire is unbelievable February 22, 2009
Posted by reader111 in Movies.Tags: Slumdog Millionaire
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The single most important fact of poverty is the loss of dignity in the individual
Aakar Patel
No, really unbelievable: It could never happen. Not the money (a slumdog may have every chance of making a fortune), but the manner. It could never happen through the dignity and repose of Dev Patel’s Jamal, an utterly improbable slumdog.
Unlikely heroes: Could a real-life Latika transcend the brutality of rape and prostitution? Director Danny Boyle has reported on the Indian slum with the Westerner’s thoroughness. He has shown its squalor, the randomness of its violence and the distance of the state from its problems more precisely than an Indian could have.
But he has not observed the character of the slum’s occupant standing beside him as the sweeping camera records the filth.
The single most important fact of poverty is the loss of dignity in the individual. The Indian knows this. The poor are actually second-rate human beings. Their existence is like that of animals: Their concerns are all immediate because that is the only level at which life engages them.
It is an existence of eternal reaction.
Constant hunger and helplessness have obliterated their dignity. Dignity is not congenital; it is acquired. The poor have very little opportunity to acquire it. The boy’s experiences inform the man, incident upon humiliating incident, layer upon undignified layer. That is why the man’s character cannot stand apart from the boy’s life.
Jamal Malik, whose mother is killed for her faith, whose friend’s eyes are spooned out so that he can beg better, whose hungry plea society rolls the window up at, is not going to be a disinterested observer of the world.
In the building up of his character, the influences on Jamal the boy are those incidents of theft and flight that result in his survival. Jamal the man cannot escape that through the goodness of his heart.
But Boyle shows Jamal’s heroism as coming not from his courage but from his dignity; his distancing of himself from his surroundings.
His carriage and manner, even when he is on national television, are that of a man for whom survival has a higher purpose. But that is impossible in a man who has lived a life where he has stolen and duped to feed himself. Jamal’s eyes, the softness of his face and the tenderness of his manner do not talk of the life Boyle narrates to us.
That is why he is unconvincing.
Enormous intellectual effort is needed for the man to distance himself from the trajectory of his fate and observe; but Jamal is not equipped intellectually to do that. He is practically illiterate, and in indicating that, Boyle is correct.
The poor are not particularly interested in knowledge. Those who have spoken to the poor will notice the glaze over their eyes. There is no curiosity in the nature of the world, because it has already revealed itself to them in full.
The boys who sell books at Mumbai’s traffic signals know which books are popular, but they don’t know why. They don’t care either, as those who will have offered them lifts to the next signal (“Uncle, please”) know.
The dignity of their profession dissolves immediately into an act of begging if it can swing the sale.
The poor have no poise because they are nothing as individuals. The poor are not dignified; they are craven. To show them in dignity is as fantastic as to show them content in their poverty. It is an act of imagination; it is as Boyle wants the slum dweller to be.
Latika, Jamal’s girl, is still fragrant after being sold into prostitution, and living through rape and an abusive marriage. Not possible.
The character of Salim, who rapes his brother’s love, who betrays his friend, who shoots his tormentor, rings true—even though he’s painted all-extreme.
The poor are rejected in India for their condition: Nothing beyond that matters because that fact is supreme. That is why the poor evoke our pity; very rarely do they evoke true compassion. If they did regularly, it would be intolerable for us to live, surrounded by such sorrow.
We are inclined to feed the dignified beggar, because he is “good”, more than we are the craven, filthy one.
But yet the poor do not telegraph dignity well because they do not know it.
After the quality of his depiction of the slum, and it is quite superb, Boyle lets us down by Sellotaping his fairy-tale characters on top of Indian reality.
Jamal’s spirit shines on the filth around him; he floats above the shimmering cesspool, even when he takes a dip in it.
Boyle tells us that there is individual redemption; he has taken what we can call the Christian’s view of poverty and the poor—blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the earth.
But we know that they won’t.
Aakar Patel is a director with Hill Road Media Services Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai.Write to Aakar at replytoall@livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/2009/02/19212120/Why-Slumdog-Millionaire-is-unb.html
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