For a Secular India

The recent drama in the Bhajpa camp sent Indian media into a tizzy and leavened my life as well. Post an FB status update I receive messages reminding me not to “forget that your own clan was mercilessly butchered in Delhi by the ‘secular’ forces of India”, peppered with other such smug solicitudes. First things first: I am a Sikh, and Sikhism is a faith, not a clan. 

I grew up in the ‘militant hotbed of Ferozepur’ during the Khalistan movement, in a cantonment town that straddles the Indo-Pak border where the kafilas of Partition linger to this day - unsolicited advice on secularism is a bit wasted on me, don’t you think?

I am not a NaMo fan, have never been, will never be - just as with Lady Macbeth, it’s a minor case of bloodied hands which all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten. And I do not subscribe to your mathematical posturing which states that a non-NaMo fan equals a Congress acolyte. I spent too much time growing up in Punjab to not be acquainted with the vote-bank politics of Mrs Gandhi and the Frankenstein she unleashed in the name of secularism. I even wrote a book that delved into this, The Long Walk Home. Perhaps you want to read it before mailing off those meaningless messages?

Deploying a Bollywood trope, haath khoon sey rangey hain bahuton key... Come election time, perhaps you want to free yourself of the Bhajpa-Congress-religion-clan-community-caste bind and vote for the person who has really worked for your constituency? If we all did that, the Centre would take care of itself. How’s that for a secular India?

Pakistan on the Brink

This review appeared in the South China Morning Post on Sunday, 6 May 2012

Pakistan on the Brink

by Ahmed Rashid

Viking

4 stars

Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

This week, in what is being called the biggest jailbreak in Pakistani history, Taliban fighters stormed a prison in the NWFP province of Pakistan and freed almost 400 prisoners. The raid was efficiently organized – a blockade of all roads leading to the prison kept the security forces at bay even as the fugitives hightailed into neighbouring North Waziristan, a lawless tribal area rife with Al Qaeda and several militant groups that straddle the Afghan-Pakistani border.

If you’re wondering how the Taliban, who started as a militant Islamic group within Afghanistan, morphed into a rallying force for pan-Islamic militants and jihadis operating out of Pakistan, then this is the book for you.

Ahmed Rashid is a respected Pakistani journalist who has reported on the AfPak region for thirty years. Pakistan on the Brink is the third book in a trilogy that has seen him chronicle the rise of Taliban and Al Qaeda beginning in the 80s, the US war in Afghanistan following 9/11, and the lead-up to the current crises in the region. Divided into nine essays, the book examines the conflict from the different perspectives of the parties involved – key countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and USA, and other critical players such as Iran, India and the ‘Stans’ of Central Asia. 

An insurgency is growing within Afghanistan even as the US timeline for withdrawal of its forces approaches. Meanwhile, President Karzai’s government is corrupt and has little authority beyond Kabul. An economy dependent on aid will go into a deep recession upon US exit in 2014, and worse, see a civil war as its neighbours replay the Great Game.

One key neighbour, Pakistan, has contributed significantly to the current Afghan crisis. To keep the US happy, it put pressure on Al Qaeda in the war on terror, received billions of dollars in aid, but continued to provide sanctuary to Afghan Taliban in its Baluchistan province. Pakistan wants to retain leverage on Taliban who, it believes, will be in control once the US departs Afghanistan.

Despite a civilian government Pakistan is run by its Army and intelligence service, the ISI. Rashid worries that the ISI has become a “state within a state” which advocates a hostile foreign policy towards neighbouring countries even as Pakistani society has become increasingly radicalized. The nuclear-armed nation needs a new narrative, “one that does not perpetually blame the evergreen troika of India, the United States, and Israel for its own ills”.

What then is the way out of this quagmire?

Ahmed Rashid has acted as a turkoman for several Western officials looking to understand the region. During the course of this book he mentions meeting personally with Presidents Obama, Merkel, Karzai, and Zardari. Descent into Chaos, his previous authoritative work on the region was a prescient look at the future, one that is aptly captured by the title, Pakistan on the Brink. An update, it attempts to put some solutions on the table, suggesting that Turkey could be a possible role model for Pakistan’s leaders as a nation that turned itself from a “military dictatorship into a thriving democracy”.

However, this might be a case of wishful thinking: the self-serving nexus of Army-Jihadi-spies-political cronies looks unlikely to yield a better ruler.   

Mr Modi and the Idea of India

India thrives on absurdity.

An Italian-born Catholic widow is the de facto leader of the nation. In its most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, a young Chief Minister, newly-elected on a mandate of change, handed a known criminal the charge of the state’s Prison department. Early in the year, brouhaha erupted over the hurt thatThe Satanic Verses continued to cause Indian Muslims, preventing its writer Salman Rushdie from attending the Jaipur Literature Festival. Last week Rushdie freely delivered the keynote address at a prominent conclave in the capital.

That was possible because the ruling Congress, which had fomented the ruckus with an eye on Muslim votes, was too busy licking its wounds after a stinging electoral loss. Indulging in competitive communalism has been the Congress party’s rallying card for several decades now - Mrs Gandhi, party leader and India’s longest-ruling Prime Minister, was its champion. Even as she maintained the facade of a secular nationalist party she divvied up the electorate along religious and caste lines, pitching the Congress as the secular alternative to a fundamentalist Hindu party.

It was one way to capture votes of the myriad minorities that account for roughly 20% of India’s population. But other parties, especially regional, have wisened up to the game, and the Congress has lost a crucial support plank.

Additionally, the middle class Hindu voter, disillusioned with the governing Congress coalition not delivering on economic reforms, is seeking to fill the vacuum it perceives in Central leadership.

Enter Narendra Modi, featured on the cover of the latest Time magazine with a ratifying caption: Modi Means Business.

Mr Modi has governed Gujarat for ten years during which the state’s GDP has grown at 11%, earning it the moniker ‘India’s Guangdong’. It is no wonder then that industry loves him. Gujarat is also India’s most urbanized state and its middle class has benefited most from the growth story. 

Frustrated with India’s endemic corruption and slow growth, people have begun to posit Mr Modi as the no-nonsense CEO who will fix India’s problems as Prime Minister come the next general elections in 2014.

A Gujarati friend emailed me snippets from the Time coverage: the iron fist of Mr Modi was waiting to ratchet up India’s GDP and lift millions out of abject poverty.

And yet, my friend added, neo-liberals such as myself with their belief in bumbling democracy were standing in the way of India’s economic galvanization that the business-minded Mr Modi would unleash.

Admittedly, I am cautious.

I grew up on the border between India and Pakistan, in a town suffused with stories of partition, which was declared a ‘hotbed of militancy’ during the Sikh separatist movement of the 80s, and went sullen after the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom. It grew me up an old liberal who knows that there is no justification for communal carnage, whatever ‘Time’ it is in - 1947, 1984, 1992, 2002. Mr Modi oversaw the deaths of 2000 Muslims under his watch as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, and he remains unapologetic about that pogrom.

But in a country infamous for its Hindu rate of growth he has certainly struck a chord. Let’s examine therefore the acclaimed growth story and how it has worked for minority Muslims, who form 9% of Gujarat’s population.

Tehelka magazine bared the truth in a detailed report in October 2011. Urban Muslims are 8 times poorer than upper-caste Hindus in Gujarat, twice the national average. While it is mandated that minorities get 15% of priority sector lending, Muslims in Gujarat get 2-3%. Out of 52,260 scholarships that minority students should have got in Gujarat, none have been given. The Muslim share of bank accounts in Gujarat is 12% but their loan amount outstanding is only 2.6%, implying they do not get loans.

Mr Modi’s beacon shines selectively. Yet, there are those who argue that it is time we give him a chance to run the nation - how much worse can it get?

If Mr Modi is elected Prime Minister, it’ll be the first time that a person with such an ignominious human rights record has gained the high office.

The present government is justly blamed for its shoddy performance. But India hasn’t seen a riot in the last ten years.

India is an unnatural nation. That a country riven by multiple axes of conflict, as the historian Ramachandra Guha says, could be bound into one nation was absurd. Yet, India was founded on the idea of a common humanity that would thread our language-religion-culture-class-caste diversity. It is a moral idea.

That moral idea, shaped as “a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic”, is enshrined in the Preamble to our constitution. ‘Prime Minister Modi’ is inimical to that idea.

Mr Modi’s moral compass is clearly broken. It remains to be seen if India’s is.

A Mafioso as Master of its Prisons - How a New CM with Mandate to Fix Uttar Pradesh Makes a Fresh Start

On 15 March 2012 Akhilesh Yadav was sworn in as the 33rd Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. He is also the state's youngest CM.

An engineer by training, Akhilesh was hailed as the new hope for the populous (if it were a separate nation, UP with 200 million people would be the fifth-largest in the world) and beleaguered (the previous government of BSP leader Mayawati was plagued by large -scale corruption scandals) state.

Besides amassing disproportionate assets, Mayawati's chief contribution to infrastructure development in the state was the erection of life size statues of herself, complete with a handbag; of her mentor Kanshi Ram; and elephants, her party symbol. These were veiled under orders of the Chief Election Commissioner in order to prevent biasing the electorate. Ahem! By one calculation, the money invested in these monstrosities could have built two Taj Mahals instead, priced at current value!

No wonder then that the young 38-year-old Akhilesh Yadav who canvassed on a cycle - his Samajwadi Party symbol - was hailed as a fresh beginning.

However, 'Beware the Ides of March' goes the saying...

Caesar mocked the seer who prophesied his death and was assassinated in the Roman Senate by a group of conspirators. In a related manner the media that went ga ga over the Junior Yadav has its face in the proverbial pie with the latest announcement that Raja Bhaiya, who faces eight criminal cases and was charged under the now-defunct Pota, will now be in charge of UP's prison department.

An incompetent teacher has been known to bring a semblance of discipline to the class by appointing the rowdiest child as the class monitor. The Junior Yadav has demonstrated the depth of his intellectual vigour by reverting to such primary school master stratagems.

Or perhaps, this son-of-the-soil is just fulfilling another prophesy which has been sung in a much loved bhajan that has sprung from the UP heartland, and was even enacted by Dilip Kumar in a popular film song.

Ramchandra keh gaye Siya se
Aisa kaljug aayega
Hans chugega dana dunka
Kauwa moti khayega!

If you needed any proof it's the age of Kalyug, there you go - the swan and the crow, the elephant and the bicycle,  have switched places, and how!